Lost Souls

[shimmershimmer]

[You don't wake up, exactly, but at some point you come to. There's something wrong with you, a numbness and translucency. Should you try to touch something, your hand will pass through it. Why, it's as if you were a ghost. So that's the bad news. Sorry about that. The good news is that mentally, you've woken up entirely. You remember the real truth of who you are, your relationship to your so-called "family," and all the other lies you've been fed by the Shimmering Lady.

You can move freely around what you will soon realize to be the village. The reason why it may take moment of realization is simply because it doesn't look anything like you remember it. The sky is black, the grass is dead, and the cottages are run-down and shoddy concrete buildings. The pond is dirty, and there are no animals whatsoever, anywhere.

And the temple. It's more like a storehouse than a temple. The Shimmering Lady is there, or that mass of flesh and tendrils that calls itself the Shimmering Lady...

She doesn't seem to see or hear you. When the others exit their "homes," neither will they. And there's some strange force keeping you within the walls...]

((Popcorn, mingle, curse the Lady, etc! Also! There will be a special thing for you to do here once Night 01 starts. Watch for it~ :>))

Comments

[theloneeagle]

[ANGRY SIGH.]

Really...

[rockmegaphone]

Somehow, I can't bring myself to be surprised.

[Just another day in the life of Organization XIII.]

[rockmegaphone]

[…Well, looks like they’ve been neatly fooled by this Shimmering Lady. Ugh. Even though Lexaeus is supposedly out of her grip now, he can’t help but feel ashamed with himself. How could he be so blind…?]

[That said, however, he’s no stranger to waking up after ‘death’. In a way, this is like the Nobody’s birth all over again. The human self died, consumed by darkness, and his heart fled his body… leaving the rest, the emotionless shell of a human, woke up the next morning. And now, here he is again.]

[A perfectly normal human consists of three parts: a soul (life force/willpower/thought), a heart (emotions), and a body (vessel). Well, he’d lost his heart ages ago, and his body was lying emotionless in a strange bed… he’s even less of a human now than he was then. He can’t feel upset about this, because he can’t feel anything, but he does know that it’s a truly depressing state of affairs indeed…]

[Hello, spirit friends; a wandering soul approaches you now.]

We need to speak with this ‘Shimmering Lady’ woman.

Now.

[nuvolo]

[Oh god Kyouya is not happy.

NOT HAPPY.

He lashes out a whole lot with his fists, but hits nothing but air, which makes him even angrier. There's nothing to take his frustrations out not, not the herbivores that are now talking about his death (wait, he's dead? nah, who cares). And Lexaeus'. And the chief's.

Oh fuck this, he wants to have a tantrum.

Kyouya throws himself on the ground, tucks his arms underneath his head and sulks as he stares up at the sky.]

Typical. That leech has decided to remove the only predators to leave the herbivores defenseless. [Blaming the "Glitter Lady"? Why yes.]

[nuvolo]

You too.

[On the one hand, he's pleased that his assessment of the man being strong is correct, because it seems only the strong people in the village are the ones in this specific situation, but on the other hand, he's not amused that someone had managed to sneak up on all three of them in their own houses.]

[rockmegaphone]

Relax.

[What are you, five? Lexaeus' commanding tone doesn't sound relaxing in the slightest.]

Are you saying that you're now invested in their fate?

[nuvolo]

[Kyouya cracks an eye open to glare at him.]

They're herbivores. They wouldn't know how to keep the discipline if they even tried. [Meaning they're his herbivores and only he can push them around.]

[rockmegaphone]

[...Forgive him if he doesn't seem to understand where you're coming from here. Not having emotions seems to do that to people.]

It's not our problem.

[If they can't keep themselves alive, let them die.]

[nuvolo]

[That makes Kyouya bare his teeth at his former 'partner'.]

My territory, my problem.

[rockmegaphone]

You are dead.

You have no territory.

[nuvolo]

I am not dead.

[Dead? FUCK THAT there is no such thing for a carnivore like him. He's not weak.]

We are here. And that is enough.

[rockmegaphone]

To them, you are dead.

[To him, you're a soul and a heart without a body, which is... 1/3rd dead.]

There may yet be a way to influence the outcome of this... competition, even from a position such as ours. I merely wonder why you care so much about the well-being of total strangers.

Night 01

[shimmershimmer]

[Once curfew hits, everyone returns to their cottages and the village goes quiet. There's not much to do but watch Connor parkour around and set rope traps in various spots in the village, presumably to catch people who are out after curfew.]

[Around midnight, however, all that changes. Legs emerge from the Shimmering Lady's temple, long and chitinous, dragging that fleshy mass of segmented eyes and hairy, whiplike appendages behind it. It's making a noise not unlike the chirp of a cicada, but deep and loud and strangely melodic. It begins a slow crawl toward the cottages... and the people within come out to greet it.]

[Well. They don't exactly come out. Rather, they float through the walls, transparent in much the way that you are right now. They are swaying and humming in rhythm with the monster's song, eyes closed, as they slowly encircle it.]

[They look happy. What pleasant dreams they must be having.]

[nuvolo]

[Kyouya's first instinct? To attack the insect-like monster, of course, because what the hell does it think it's doing with the herbivores. And just like his attempts to touch material objects, he fails miserably.

Getting up again and brushing himself off after the nth failed attempt at crushing the damn thing, he turns his attention to the 'villagers' themselves, eyeing them all very carefully. They all look the way he does right now, and yet unlike them, he's not affected by the song.

So he reaches one hand out to the nearest one to slap them over the head. After all, what's stopping him from doing so? He's experimenting.]

[shimmershimmer]

[The slap connects, and the dreamer wobbles out of the formation. But tell me, who did you hit?]

[tellurianterror]

[At Kyouya:

What are you doing.

[Does the idea not cross your mind that maybe, just maybe, striking someone's unprotected soul while it's being severed from the heart and body is a bad idea?]

[...That's not to say he approves of these happenings, though. The Lovecraftian entity they've been calling the Lady is clearly responsible, and he'd have to be a fool to trust her.]

[nuvolo]

Be quiet.

[Not like Lexaeus is physically stopping him anyway. So he stares at... well. The form staggering out of the formation. The one he recognizes as the older one of the engineer brothers. The ones with the giant... balloon thing. What else is going to happen now?]

[shimmershimmer]

[The rest of the dreamers move on, swept away (and out of range) by the beast. He, however, stops, opens his eyes, and looks directly at Kyouya — then disappears.]

[tellurianterror]

[Oh god, is he going to turn into a Heartless. Please don't turn into a Heartless.]

[Instead of saying that, however, he just turns to look at Kyouya-- glare at Kyouya.]

You realize he could be truly dead now.

[nuvolo]

What, the way we are?

Because we are not dead. Don't be such a herbivore.

[tellurianterror]

No, not the way we are.

I mean truly dead.

[nuvolo]

[A snort.]

Then we'll see come day time. If he's truly dead, I will find him and bring him back myself.

[tellurianterror]

[Oh, child...]

Good luck with that.

[He clearly doesn't believe you.]

[theloneeagle]

[Yeah you guys slap the kid. Haytham's experimentally punching an arm through his corporeal son's head.]

[shimmershimmer]

[No luck, dad. He doesn't even pause.]