towerofanimus | Glamour Failure

[Sleep just doesn't come all that often for Dave. He didn't care for it. All that waited for him when he shut his eyes was a red path traced by his sword as he cleaved through flesh and bone. The screams of thousands being murdered at once and space cracking would come next and he'd stare at his smirking blood-splattered visage. He'd jerk awake, and go wash his hands until they nearly turned red.

Every time.

It never changed.

Until tonight. The lights shut off and everything is plunged into darkness. Dave draws his sword, ready to defend himself from whatever the tower is about to unleash, when the voice rings out.] Glamour system?

[The countdown is as loud as thunder in his head. Dread makes acid coat the back of his tongue but he doesn't move.

Click.

Red radiance that he's so used to being a sign that he's calling to time, manipulating the seconds to do what needs to be done, shatter his reality. He stares at the film that coats the harsh metal that is the real walls, and follows the electricity as it dances down through the substance with his eyes.

That's when he gets an eyeful of what he really looks like behind the glamour. The wires vaguely create the shape he knows because he sees it every day in the mirror.

Only.

That was never true since he woke up in the tower. Was it?

His attention travels down to the sword in his hand. It isn't real. Just a construct.

He continues to study himself and finally gets a glimpse of the glimmering ball at his center, the real him.

This version of him.

Alpha, doomed, Godtier, there never was a difference between us. I was just the one that survived until now. The echo of his voice...no, the real Dave's voice echoes in his mind. He tips his head back and just laughs.

There's no joy in it. There's nothing broken in the noise, but all the same it's like it tore out of him. He puts a hand over his face and fff, he can see through it. He lets it fall. But the laughter doesn't end.

Because nothing matters.]

Edited 2013-06-01 05:20 (UTC)

[Most of what he was doing was involuntary. Gamzee moved in the way that still felt like he was moving, only he wasn't moving a body. For him and only a few other people, it was a familiar feeling, being a soul. Not having a real body, that is. Whatever he had now was more than he'd had in the bowels of the Tower.]

[He was stumbling in the dark - more fortunate than others because of his nocturnal nature. It was easier to get around, and the dim lights actually helped a lot.]

[Right now, he was panting. He was clutching the shape of his clubs, trying to keep a hold on them, feeling like his muscles were tensed but not really getting any visual of it. He was moving fast, flitting down the corridors and down the stairs in a futile attempt to figure anything out. He didn't have a destination in mind, but he was certainly on a mission for something. He figured he'd know once he found it.]

[For the first time in a while, he was driven.]

Edited (ETA open to all UvU) 2013-06-01 05:25 (UTC)

[Tear and Luke had been in the media room when the Tower let out the announcement about the system failures and the truth about their bodies was revealed. After slapping the redhead into functioning, Tear's first reaction was to hunt down the others from Auldrant and their friends and comrades.

Once she's made sure that everyone is okay and not freaking out, it's time to go speak to a certain princess now that Link had calmed down.]

Edited 2013-06-01 05:23 (UTC)

[So the power outage didn't get her.

What happened when the power came back on?

That is officially grounds for Ayaka to find a corner, curl up, and try not to start screaming. So far, that isn't going so well.]

In some way, Arturia was not surprised by this at all. When the screeching got louder, she had gone out of her rooms and then the lights went out. That meant she had to stalk the halls, waiting as people came out of their rooms.

And when the lights came on, everything changed.

Steel and wires and film and light. That was all this place was. She looked down at her hands, flexed her fingers, ran them over the clothing and over her neck. The only thing familiar was the collar and suddenly she had an idea of what it was meant for. She'd ran to the bathroom to get a better look at herself. If she looked closely, vaguely, she could see where her eyes and mouth should be, if she opened her mouth to speak, she could see the impression of lips and teeth and tongue, but nothing more.

Was this what Dax had meant to show them? Or was there more to it? For her, this was nothing. A more literal way of how heroic Spirits worked and she was not surprised to find she could no longer even summon Caliburn. She missed it, wished for it to return, but could not. It looked like her longest companion, the sword she treasured most, had not been brought with her.

A pity.

She left the bathroom then and explored the Tower to see what else had changed, to see what had become of the others. It was during this exploration she found another person, another grid of wires in a person-like shape, filled with colorful fluid and shining with light from within.

"Hello?" she called to the person and was pleased to hear she still sounded like herself even if she could not recognize herself at all.

(ooc: I'm not going to tag until the morning. Just an FYI. I wanted to get this up while I was awake and thinking about it.)

Edited 2013-06-01 05:25 (UTC)

[Robin had not been expecting this truth.

She had come in completely unawares, and now she is just...wandering the halls, staring blankly ahead of her.

It is all falsehood, smoke and mirrors. Her body is not her own and never was. In fact, can it even count as a body? It's smoke and mirrors too...

...Yeah, she's got nothing. The Tactician of Ylisse is stumped.]

[... Ah.

So that's what he meant by not knowing what to believe. And so it's time to look for something that's still true. The romantic side of her thinks of her soul, shining away inside her indigo body, her choices, which brought about this revelation, and the bonds she's made while inside this false sanctuary.

But the practical part of her knows of something far more concrete. The very thing that dispelled this illusion: the box her group retrieved from the administrator levels, and the microchips that lay within.

An indigo, vaguely feminine figure stands next to the elevator on the first dormitory floor, holding a box that lacks the filmy coating everything and everyone else is covered in.

She does not regret her actions, but she realizes few, if any, are going to appreciate them...]

[Screaming.

That had been what he was doing ever since he woke up from a pod and finding that his body was literally a wireframe construct. Of course it'd make sense that their body had been artificial, but to think that everything else besides his soul is that way.

Well, uh.

That's a whole another ball game, to be honest. ~~Sorry Leon~~.

So yeah, feel free to have a wireframe with a certain ahoge just running around the tower up and down the dormitory, trying to check for his friends while being really antsy.]

[For one moment, she could believe that she was her true self again. For one beautiful moment, she had shed her human form and become herself.

Then the lights had come back on, the illusions were broken.

...All of them.

...And yet, while most of her is freaking out, the part of her mind that is still rational remembers - the illusions when she was with the group. The film. It's the same damn thing-

That's why-!

...She shakes her head. Still horrified at the mechanical abomination, but - this is the same thing! The film, everything-! She hurries to find Zelda, the others, as soon as possible.

...Though she does stop every so often to collapse in a corner in horror. I mean, really. Bad enough to be stuck in another body, worse to learn that it's not even organic and that your powers don't really exist.]

[...so there really isn't anything. Feferi slumps against a metal wall, wireframe body folding in on itself.

She'd been fooling herself, thinking that there would be something real - something that wasn't just her soul - behind all the bullshit. Behind all the fighting, behind all of those fake deaths. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

She couldn't even get mad at her favorite target anymore. He was playing with shapes, playing with abstracts.

...she's never wanted to go home before now. Death is all that's awaited her. She didn't want to be a blip, someone who could affect nothing, be nothing.

In the end, though, Feferi thinks, that's all she is, isn't she?]

[Luke? Luke is not okay. Sure, he was a lot calmer than what he was when his real body was revealed, but he is not okay. He's shaking, despite keeping a tight grip on Tear's wire hand, and trying not to panic.]

[He's not... real. He's not alive. Well, sure, he's alive, but not exactly... it's more like he exists, than being alive. He just... he can't process that; he always kept saying on how when they got out of the Tower, they'd do stuff. He wanted to save Auldrant, he wanted to see all the other worlds, and help where he could. He wanted to do all sorts of things...]

[But there was no way he could like this...]

[Luke took a shuddering breath, trying not to panic again. No, he didn't need to be slapped again, as he had no doubt Tear would do. H-he needed to focus, he needed to find the others. Ion, Anise... even Asch was probably freaking out over this.]

[He squeezed Tear's hand a little tighter, hoping she would be okay too...]

So it was all a lie? Just some big sham set up to fool them all? Rabbit didn't understand well what this all was, he never was good at this sort of thing, but he could certainly grasp what it meant. Nothing was real? From his clothes to his accordion, everything that had ever made a lick of sense with him was suddenly nothing.

At least... to an extent he found he could stare at the shimmering soul inside him and be relieved in the fact that even as a robot, he had one. He always knew he did but to see it face to face was something entirely new. He almost wanted to touch it, but instead he took himself to the halls, unable to face the pod of goo that used to be his bed or look at the filmy items in his chest.

Everything that had ever been in this place was fake. No wonder he'd come back to life, there wasn't anything really to resuscitate. Just build a new frame and stick the soul back inside, he guessed blandly, almost blindly wandering the darkened halls.

His orange frame work was a sharp contrast to the bright blue of the soul in his center. What he was, really.

Some of him was still real.

And he was going to focus on that. But now he had to try and find The Spine among so many similar armatures of colored frames. Which one could be his brother?

"... Spine?"

[Saki's laugh sounded so strange, coming - as it did - from the strange body. She'd mostly been hiding after dying the way she had, staying to herself, but now, she's out, looking at people, laughing strangely to herself.

So. This was the truth of it? A soul in - not even an actual body. Why had she despaired so? That witch hadn't been real. Her transformation was a mind trick. A game.

And right now, she is tired of mind tricks and games. If this is the truth, it's time to accept it. It's time to stop feeling sorry for herself.]

[Yotsuba wasn't taking any of this well. The amplified chip noises had kept her up, so she was wandering the dorm corridors, holding Juralumin and wearing her sling sash, in case she came across any bad people. She didn't understand the announcements she heard, but when the lights went out, she panicked and gripped Juralumin harder.]

What's going on, Juralumin?! Do you know? Yotsuba doesn't..

[And that's when the glamor system failed and as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw was she and her teddy bear really looked like..and would have cried if she could. She was tired and scared out of her wits, so she yelled before calling out for her friends and makeshift family members.]

Help! Rabbit! Spine! Diarmuid..Edgeworth! Enoch! What's going on?! I don't look like this..

[If she could have cried, she would have.]

As Yotsuba wandered around, scared and trying to find her friends and family members, she heard Rabbit's voice. He wasn't calling out for her..but she didn't care. He was her honrary big brother, and she needed his help. Something was wrong with her and Juralumin, so she chased after the voice.

"Rabbit!! Help..please!"

[Somehow, the announcement over the speakers managed to wake up the normaly near-impossible-to-rouse John Egbert. Honestly, he hadn't even realized he'd fallen asleep, he'd been waiting for Rose to get back and when he woke up and she wasn't there...and then the glamour failure...]

[Well there was only one thing to do. Keeping his "Pokémon" inside their balls (because they aren't real, and they never even were!), John exits his room to start looking for his friends. But a certain box, held by a certain indigo figure catches his attention before he manages to make it very far. She may be wireframe and night indistinguishable from everyone else, but with as many times as John saw that box last month, he knows who she is.]

Zelda. [He raises a hand in greeting.] It's John.

[Since yeah she...probably can't really tell who he is, can she?]

Uh...'sup?

[Dammit, you could have said something poignant and instead you go with "'sup"? What the hell is wrong with you.]

[[Actually, this was all pretty cool. Weird sure, but cool! I mean, how often do you find yourself in the middle of some science fiction movie? The boy didn't seem too bothered by anything at all, just investigating everything as he passed by it. Whether that be walls, supports, tables or people, though the people got the added bonus of a wave and a smile - even if it was hard to distinguish the broad grin from the rest of his face - as he passed, as well as a friendly -]]

Hello!

[The first thing that hit Meiling was pure shock. She had been pacing her dorm room as she could not fall asleep when everything happened. The screeching hurt her ears and ended up with hr curled up in a corner, trying to stop her ears from hurting.

But this? Looking down at herself and seeing just the suit and her soul floating in the blue liquid....She panics a bit and gets up to quickly dart out the door, shouting at the top of her lungs as she runs through the dorm floors]

Flandre! Patchouli! Wriggle! Reimu! Marisa!

[She will stop and look around in the middle of each dorm floor before taking off again, still yelling.

She had to find someone...anyone...]

[It was quiet again.

He couldn't remember the last time it was-- consistently. A year? No, less than that. Time wasn't Jin's strongest point. Before it was something to revel in-- he remembered during the pods that it was a glory to have weeks without violent threats and portents. Then those very-- very few-- minutes, or hours, where he had had his own mind back, and it was still quiet, and it was the most debilitatingly terrifying silence of his life.

This was more like the latter.

Alone-- silent-- and made of... well he doesn't even know. Wire? Some sort of digital construct? Did Moros even exist, or was that just a figment of his imagination?

For someone who was only so carefully teetering on the edge between keeping himself together, only by foregoing his own mental integrity to assure himself that it didn't matter if they could rip apart his mind--

Well. For the gold-tinted "construct," seated on the floor in the hallway, it wasn't something he could very well take.

He idly tugged at the loops around his-- neck. There weren't even any glasses to slide down his nose.]

((ooc: warnings for swearing, mental breakdown, talk of death/mental health/body horror/basically any bad, Animus-like thing you can think of, plus normal Richtofen warnings. see his permissions post for details. there's a risk of injury for characters who tag in, but nothing really bad or fatal unless permission is given.))

[Out in the hall, there's screaming. It's often wordless, but it's loud enough to upset the eardrums of anyone nearby. People who are familiar with Richtofen's voice will recognize his German accent when he does get around to forming words, but for the most part, he's just a wireframe blob of orange with a catsuit ripped apart at the chest thrashing around and tearing at everything he can get his hands on. Walls are kicked, floors are stomped on, terminals are grabbed and shaken in an attempt to dislodge them.

But none of it's real, and every electric pulsation from a wall or an object sets off a new bout of hysteria in Richtofen's mind. His all-too-quiet mind, at that, because for once, for once, for the first time since he obtained them, the voices are silent, and he doesn't know what to make of that. If they're stunned into shock, or leaving him alone for their own amusement, or if they were never really there at all, Richtofen doesn't care, but the silence infuriates and upsets him more than their chatter ever did.]

What is this?!

[He screams so loudly that his throat (the throat that isn't really there, he thinks) feels like it's about to start bleeding. There's a crack to his voice that was never there before; it sounds almost as if Richtofen is on the verge of tears. He stops at a wall and bangs his fists on it, but the sight of his own arms as just a mess of framework brings him more pain than comfort. He lets out a wail and drops heavily to his knees.

It's too much. It's all too much. He's always been in charge of his own fate, scheming and plotting and working to make everything go the way he'd planned it. Figuring out his soul was recycled through endless bodies was one thing, but this is another entirely. He's just a glowing little ball, a soul, a soul that he can now see clear as day trapped in some computer program of a body. The feeling of powerlessness is so overwhelming that it almost suffocates him. His cry breaks off into a whine, and he curls in on himself, gripping his head with both hands, willing it all to go away so that things can go back to the way he's always thought they were.]

No! No, I want it to go back... [His voice is broken up, as is to be expected of someone who's just screamed himself raw. He sounds smaller, more pathetic than ever.] I want it to go back, change it back, you can't do this- [He sucks in a breath for one final, hoarse shout.] -change me back!

He knew that little voice. He froze, and then turned, looking wildly for Yotsuba in the dark hall way.

"I he-hear ya s-sweetheart! Keep yellin', I'll fi-find ya!" Oh God she was a wire frame too this was going to be hard to figure out. No, it's okay, just look for the little wire frame. What color was her collar again? He never looked...

"D-d-don't move! I'll c-c-come over th-there!"

*A blue-filled masculine, muscular person kneels in the dirt, before the sapling. He is picking up handfuls of dirt and watching it sift through his fingers. His posture doesn't look particularly defeated, but his breath is coming a little heavy.

This is the floor that appeared after Dax died. Idyllic, beautiful, alive.

Still alive.

There is something real of it.

He pauses for a moment. And then begins to push dirt aside, to dig idly, not with any sense of urgency, but to see just how deep the real dirt goes.*

Edited 2013-06-01 05:48 (UTC)

[He hadn't really been fazed by the sudden blackout. It was something to be deeply concerned about, yes, but Waver wasn't one to jump a mile in the air and panic--not anymore. No, he'd simply cursed under his breath, called up Volumen Hydragyrum and fumbled in the dark for his usual case of equipment. Performing alchemy blind was absurdly difficult even with the mercury familiar's help, but Waver knew he could create even a temporary light source with some effort. Why he didn't have any of those in reserve had been an oversight on the magus' part, one he made a mental note not to repeat.]

[And then, in the middle of Waver's third blind attempt at not screwing up his own magecraft...everything stopped.]

[Stopped, as in the flow and motion of prana was interrupted--no, eradicated. The senses and energy that were as natural to magi as breathing had completely vanished, and Waver immediately felt dread mix with the instant shock to his system that came with such an extreme change. Several things had happened at once, the largest issue (at the moment) being his complete loss of magical capability. Second and related was the severed connection to his Servant; that one was worrying on many different levels ranging from a lack of protection on either end to a tiny but nagging fear that he was essentially alone without that constant presence.]

[But at least there were lights on now, the lecturer concluded as the shock of his own personal power loss wore off. One thing at a time; deep breaths, don't panic. No matter how the sensation of utter helplessness and vulnerability clawed at the back of his mind, Waver insistently gave himself the hollow reassurance that everything would be fine. Raising an unsteady hand to his head, he--]

Fuck.

[--oh god that wasn't even his hand. Finally ignoring his loss of magical power long enough to look around, he realized with a wave of legitimate fear that the Tower didn't even look like the Tower. Nowhere, nowhere in all his days on end of correlations and hypotheses had he ever given thought to the idea that the Tower was anything but what it appeared.]

[And he...what the hell was he? This wasn't the homunculus body he'd thorized they had been given. Waver didn't even have words for what the hell this container for his soul was. If this was even his soul at all. If all this was an illusion, what else was fake? Was he really Waver Velvet to begin with? Had he ever been since arriving here?]

Fucking hell.

[If he thought he had the physical capacity for it, Waver might have said he felt sick. He might have looked utterly horrified. But of course not--in this scientific abomination of a body, what did he have the capacity for? Surely not standing, as false shaking legs gave out and he slid to the floor with his back to the wall.]

I never thought of this, stupid, stupid, what's wrong with you--

[Hands pressed against his head, Waver tried to reconcile a thousand contradictions and impossibilities in his head. Applying logic where there was none to be found on top of having a severe existential crisis, however, was just resulting in making him sound increasingly more unhinged as he muttered under his breath.]

Edited (god i can't html) 2013-06-01 06:03 (UTC)

[There is a manila folder buried beneath the sapling.]

[Trying to find a specific someone in a sea of mostly indistinguishable, vaguely human figures is ridiculously impossible. John had been in bed when the announcement crackled over the loudspeakers. He'd been waiting on Rose and fallen asleep before she made it back to the room, apparently. And in light of what had just happened, he had to find her. And Dave. And the other John and the other Dave and everybody else and damn this was going to be hard.]

[But a laugh coming from an indigo figure catches his attention. It's the kind of laugh that John would never want to hear, especially from the person he's 99% sure is his best friend. This is not an okay laugh.]

[It's broken and terrible and it would make John's skin crawl if he actually had any skin.]

Dave? Is that you? [A blue figure approaches, speaking in a familiar voice.] It's John. Pokémon trainer John, if I can even rightly all myself that anymore...

Glamour Failure

Open | Warning for: Swearing, body horror, talk of character death, murder, and oh yeah swearing.

Open!

Replies are open to all of Tear's friends at this point!

Open | Warning for body horror and freakouts

Warning: I have no idea, but better safe than sorry!

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Dormitory Floor 1

Open | Warning for: breakdowns and well, general freak out.

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[open; warnings for death talk - tags in the AM]

Luke is open to reply to as well, fyi

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[open; tags in the AM]

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Open!! | Warning for: ...stalwart optimism?

[Open]

Open | Dorms | Warning for mental instability and identity loss

2nd Dorm Level Halls | Open | See body of message for more detailed warning

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Floor 101, open

open | dormitory halls | warning for basically any of the above?

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