Ad Visitatores

[animusmods]

Characters: anyone participating in the event
Setting: floor 56 and eventually other areas of the Tower
Format: either
Summary: Welcome to the Tower.
Warnings: horror/creepiness/potential danger/generally unfortunate things all possible
Notes: PLEASE GO HERE TO MAKE NEW POSTS.

A few minutes before anything happens, Ruana's voice rings out over the Tower's intercom--it manages to be louder than anything the residents happen to be doing. "Hey, everyone, there's something exciting going on at floor fifty-six! Go make sure they don't get themselves killed!"


You arrive, stepping or tumbling, in a surgical suite. It looks abandoned, with dust collecting on the table and floors. The lights flicker, and for a moment blood dripping off the table, puddling on the floor--but no, the lights are back, and surely that was your imagination. It's quiet, eerily so, but nothing hinders you, and you're free to spread out and explore. There are multiple rooms here, like in any hospital, and it's all a bit confusing. Occasionally the lights flicker, and it's a bit frightening as Things appear that shouldn't exist. Shadowy creatures stitched together and reaching for you, doctors brandishing phantom surgical tools, blood splattering the walls or floor or ceiling, how did it get there--but none are real, and all of them vanish when the lights return. Eventually you find the staircase, spiraling up and down into darkness. Approach it, though, and the thing glitters with a barrier that will push back any attempts at climbing the thing.

A girl, a teenager dressed in red and black, appears. And she does simply appear, inserting herself into the space, nearly pushing it aside to make room in it for where she is now. Her face beams with unconcealed excitement, and her words tumble out on top of themselves. "You can't go there! Yet, I mean. You'd all die!"

The girl steps onto the staircase, passing through the barrier as if it weren't there, and sits on the steps to address everyone. "Hi! I'm Ruana. You didn't show up the normal way, so the Tower can't support you yet. We got this one floor ready when I saw you were coming but, well, the Tower's kind've big, so getting all of them set up is taking a little longer than I thought." She smiles, sheepishly apologetic in a carefree sort of way. "I've got everyone coming here to visit you--or at least they know they can visit you--and I'll have someone bring food up for you. It'll be oatmeal, and oatmeal is super boring, but you have to eat it, okay? Then you can have whatever you want! The cafeteria's down on the first floor if you get hungry. We should have everything ready in a few hours. I've gotta go help with that, so you guys wait here.

"Don't worry, the monsters can't get to this floor as long as that barrier is up."

And then she's gone, blinking out of existence. The barrier will remain for three hours.

Comments

[helenchanter]

[Six months in a nightmare that he can't wake up from. Her brother doesn't deserve that, no one does. And yet, there is he thinking about everyone and trying to find a way out of here. Being the hero.

...just like she imagined him.]

...

[Trembling, she finally peeks from behind Shinjiro and nearly throws herself into Akihiko's arms. Compared to the one she knew, she can feel his bones a little more, and it serves to breaks her down completely. Her voice is coarse and she sniffs loudly, trying not to be a complete fool in front of the both of them, but failing.]

I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!

[It's not her fault that he's here, she knows that. But part of her feels incredibly guilty, regardless.]

[boxingemperor]

H-huh? Hey...

[Normally he's pretty awkward around girls, but right now it feels right to comfort her. He wraps his arms around her waist.]

Why are you worried about me? I'm going to be okay.

[He looks to Shinjiro over her shoulder. Is she going to be okay?]

[themortalhalf]

[ Well, so much for trying to keep emotions level. He had hoped talking about Hinoto-ri would have been enough of a distraction, to keep everyone focused on something easier, to give he and Miki something solid to think about. Something besides how skinny Aki looks or how terrible this Tower is starting to seem as the shadows and blood begin to creep out of their dirty corners into a more visible light, with the reality of their situation seeping in with it. But of course it wouldn't be enough. No. Of course not.

Aki's her brother. And his, too, really, though he's never vocally acknowledged it. But Shinjiro knows what person he needs to be and what kind of person he can't be. He has to be the equalizing side of the scale. He's been through this scene before, months ago, back in the flagging days of September, except it had been in his apartment, and things had been better there. The only thing that she had to worry about were the fake monsters she had hidden in her closet, because Aki wasn't someone she had to be afraid of meeting.

Shinjiro doesn't need to relive his own emotions from that time and apply it here. That night had been enough.

He meets Aki's eyes, holding his gaze steady, rolls his shoulders in an "of course she will" gesture in answer to his unsaid question. She's a Sanada. That's how he knows Aki's "okay"—at least as okay as he can be. That even if he isn't all that great right now, he's going to be. That's enough, and they're both stronger (and smarter, in Aki's case) than they look and act like sometimes. God help him if they don't cry like there weren't enough tears in the world already though.

Shinjiro smiles. It's small, slight, sincere, if a bit lopsided, a portion of it bound to something some far away nostalgia. A half-sigh escapes his suddenly dry throat. He won't beat around the bush this time. Not today. Maybe he should wait, but he supposes there's not much point in waiting anymore.]

She's your sister, is why.

[helenchanter]

[She stops shaking long enough to take a gasping breath, hoping to calm down her nerves and slow down her emotional downpour. Shinjiro's five words cut through her like a knife and she stands upright a little more. There aren't many things one can say to that.

So she nods looking at him, tears streaming down her face silently. It's not much, but she wants his brother, all of them, wherever they may be, to at least know that, hey, somewhere out in the multiverse, she survived. She has a beating heart, she's breathing, she exists and isn't just a fading memory. She made it. She helped SEES and stopped the Fall in her world.

And none of that could have ever been possible if it wasn't for his own selfless sacrifice.]

[boxingemperor]

[...

...this is Miki? Shinjiro isn't the type to lie, and after his experiences in the Tower, he knows that there are different existences of the same person in different worlds. But it never once crossed his mind that in one of them his sister lived. It's no wonder there's a strange draw to her.

As is custom with the Sanadas, Akihiko now finds himself getting choked up and emotional, and slowly but surely lets tears roll down his face as he takes her to hug her again. He thought he'd never see her again. Everything he's ever done is so that others don't meet the same fate.]

Miki...you're alive. I thought I'd never see you again.

[themortalhalf]

[Shinjiro can share Aki's last sentiment: he hadn't expected to see Miki again, not for a very long time, if ever again—whatever the ending wheel led after you died. It hadn't even occurred to Shinjiro that he'd ever find her within the wall's of Hinoto-ri back in September. Years had come and gone, they had grown up, the sun had gone down, and that time made it hard to ever imagine such things ever coming true, even living in a place that seemed to defy a normal man's expectations. And even had Shinjiro been the type to toy with such a far-fetched possibility, he would have never imagined her to be older than she had been on the day she died.

He doesn't say anything, in the meantime. There's no need to.]