WELCOME.

[lockdownmods]

[ You've had a long two weeks. Perhaps you've been pushed to your limit, perhaps not--either way, you all deserve a break. Jax is your driver, and he seems to be doing okay with the whole driving thing, despite braking a little too hard.

Aside from that, the ride to your new housing, is...interesting. You've gotten to see some of the outside world. The city is just as hi-tech as the university with buildings of varying sizes lining the streets. It definitely feels like a busy city, though there aren't many people out and about on the streets despite there being so much to do and so many things to see.

Weird, considering it's still daytime.

Around twenty minutes pass, and then you notice that you're travelling outside of the city. It's a long road that seems to go on and on. There are smaller houses now, farms and fields...

In any case, you have time to sing a handful of karaoke songs, talk to your neighbor, take a nap--whatever you feel like doing. After around an hour of travel, the bus approaches some sort of wall. It's high, and looks similar to the wall that surrounded Fayflower University. Jax rolls down his window, seems to scan something--and then the walls slowly open.

He drives in, and you're greeted with a colorful assortment of houses. They're also quite large. Jax parks the bus on the road in front of them before he lets you all out. ]

You're all assigned to the Magenta house, the one on the far left. You can do whatever you want from here on out; just don't mess with anything you shouldn't be messing with.

[ Interpret that however you'd like to. Maybe you'd like to talk to Jax. Maybe you'd like to settle in. Or...maybe you'd like to explore. ]

Comments

[covertizer]

[ Well the first thing he's doing after that journey is... taking a shower. Heck. Once he is clean and fresh in body, at least, he's going to focus on the traditional house tour, examining all the different rooms thoroughly before arriving in the games room. He's stopping in each room along the way, but the games room seems like the most unique and interesting of the lot for now.

After exploring the different games, he can be found with Cards Against Humanity littered around the table next to him. Littered around the table are such hilarious and not at all immature combinations such as "What's the gift that keeps on giving? A disappointing birthday party." and "During his midlife crisis, my dad got really into... Vigorous jazz hands."

The final card on the table reads "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of..." but Akira hasn't set down the final card. He's holding it in his hand, and frowning at it.

Coming up behind him should let you see what it says:

"Survivor's guilt.". ]

This doesn't seem so fun anymore.

how could you

[reshoot]

[The game room is without question the most inviting. Something about games are so...normal. Normal, normal, she never realized how much she took normal for granted.

She fixates on Akira and what he's doing, only because she can't help her own curiosity. Seeing him makes her a little uncomfortable. What he went through, being so close to Mishima...

The card in his hand makes her stomach drop, and seems to confirm all of her worries She sidles up next to him.]

I was never a huge fan of this one. A little too dark, sometimes.

...

Hey, Akira.

[covertizer]

It's fun, sometimes. But this was a little too close to the nerves, I think.

[ There's a pause, and then he flips the card and starts folding it - it's thicker than paper, so he has to score the lines of the folds a little harder, but it's pretty obvious he's making a little cardboard plane from it. Origami style. ]

Hey, Max. You doing okay?

[starswink]

[Yoosung was already in the room testing his computers, but he doesn't get up when Akira comes in, keeping his back to him as he plays with the cards. It's uniquely awkward to talk to the person he assumes is the most directly affected by the loss... He realizes that this is a cowardly way of thinking, wishes Rika could tell him what to say. It's not his intention to ignore him, but sometimes you just suffer in silence until it finally breaks - oh. It broke. He turns around in his chair to see the cause, but it's not entirely clear from a distance, so he just bites his lip for a second and then asks.]

Um. I've never played that one... What is it?

[He'd like to say they can't let this place get to them so soon, but...]

[covertizer]

The game?

[ He flips the box lid over and plucks out the instruction manual. ]

You're supposed to make either the rudest or funniest combination of cards using the ones in your hand with the one drawn from the main pile. One person sits out the turn and has to pick the funniest one.

So... not a bad way to get to know each other. If you know how a person works, you can try and appeal to their sense of humour.

[starswink]

[He explained the game instead of what he meant. Well, that's fine too. Yoosung will happily distract him from whatever it was that upset him, doing his best to smile for it too.]

Oh, well, that doesn't sound so bad. So you can't play with two people? Or do you just have to rate their answer on a scale of one to ten in that case?

[covertizer]

[ He has forgotten that card. Yup. What card? Hahah. Haaaaaa. Ha. ]

Two wouldn't work, no. It's more of a group game.

[ ... ]

Or you can use the Ed Balls rule.

[starswink]

arrival;

[As soon as they'd taken off in the van, Yoosung had leaned his face toward the window to watch their surroundings, but crashed headfirst into a depression nap. When he stumbles out, wiping his eyes, he looks around and sees the giant wall in the distance, and his heart twists. Of course he knew they weren't going to be free at this place. With how similar it looks, he imagines the ghosts of that school (imagined, not the literal disembodied voices that he thought were ghosts) are still trapped with them, too, and his hands tighten around one of the laptops he was bringing. The house they're directed to, he hears as he turns to look, is the Magenta one. He's caught by a strange feeling... There's probably no significance. If anything, maybe it was just a color Rika liked. No... maybe it's an eye color. That person who comforted him (that time that he's not sure if it was a dream), he thinks possibly their eyes were magenta-color. But it... could be off. He decides to stop thinking about it.

Anyway, it sounds like there are places in this house that Jax doesn't want them looking, which is suspicious but he's playing it safe, and there's another order of business that comes first. Yoosung finds a round table in the game room to set up the four laptops. As they are "school use" primarily to show off the gaming prospect, each laptop came with a separate pre-made account name and password for LOLOL labeled on a sticker beneath the keyboard. Of course each one has a few different character slots, and on one of the accounts, a slot is filled by the support character 'Mishiman', with a night's worth of hardcore leveling on it. ...He's doing what he can to protect the traces of his memory.

It would be possible to catch Yoosung sitting at each laptop and ensuring that they're all working fine. He remembers a couple of people who wanted to play, after all - as strongly as his grief is tempting him to bargain by quitting this game, it would be selfish to let them stay only as sentimental value. And... another part of him really does think he'd have nothing left, if he did that, so it wouldn't make sense. It still feels bad enough that he'll eventually move on from this spot of his own volition.]

exploring;

[Once he's got all the gaming stuff set up, it's time for a restless walk throughout the house!! Jax didn't explicitly tell them which places they shouldn't stick their noses into, so surely there wouldn't be any harm in that. In his head, he's just like a game character looking for the bonus treasure chests, opening boxes and peeking inside any out-of-the-way doors. Room closet? Bathroom closet? Hopefully he won't get really crazy and start throwing pots. Actually, to his credit, he is trying to look casual about it but it only does so much when he's still high-strung. He doesn't entirely trust that they won't be forced to kill anyone again, so getting rid of possible weapons early seems like a good idea to him.]

exploring

[lockdownmods]

[ Looking inside of one of the room closets will certainly yield results. There's a cardboard box inside, sitting in the back left-hand corner. It isn't super dusty, implying that it's been moved there recently.

> Open it? ]

[starswink]

Oh... was someone in this room before we got here?

[Heck yes, let's get this puppy open.]

[lockdownmods]

[ Good job, Yoosung! You've obtained one (1) laptop! This one seems more basic than the ones Yoosung grabbed from the university--at least from the outside. It's much smaller. Doesn't seem like he can really run any games on here. ]

[starswink]

[WELL HE'S STILL GONNA ADD THAT TO HIS COMPUTER HOARD. Shame about the lack of games though?? But it is pretty small... probably doesn't have much memory. Then what is it for. Anything immediately obvious?]

[niugen]

[ Nine has always been a guy of little words, saying nothing more than nevessary. Maybe that's why he didn't speak up as they were herded off from the execution to the bus— it had nothing to do with the warmth of Twelve's hand entwined in his own surely. Sherlock's death, Mishima's unwanted "sacrifice", Oswald, Vivianne-he just wanted to ignore and forget it all. So for the bus ride here, that's exactly what he did. He was always selfish, what's indulging in another vice on top of all the rest?

The hard stop when they arrive at their destination is enough to break him out of his indulgence and all at once he's up and moving (letting go of Twelve's hand for the first time in hours). He finds a room for them easily enough, throwing down his backpack on the bed and sits down. His thoughts threaten to drown him like they did earlier, though these are more like pounding waves than letting the ocean lap gently over his head. Eventually (it's fortunate that his partner is this patient), he speaks. ]

Twelve. We can't let that happen again.

[ Late at night Nine can be found in the game room, setting up a chess board. From the looks of it he might be expecting someone as the pieces aren't in their starting position. But if you hang around long enough you'll see that no one comes to join him and he remains sitting there stone-faced. Weird. ]

[starswink]

[Chess moves... but no chess player? Yoosung was once That Guy who joined every club for a week and then quit for another, so he recognizes at least the starting moves enough to know that this isn't right. Hmm.]

Are you still playing that?

[lifandi]

[Twelve is a man of too many words, as Nine might tease some days, but he has stayed more or less silent since the executions had started. The most he’s said were barely there platitudes, “excuse us” and “pardon me” and “oops sorry about your foot”. Once they’re seated, Twelve just leans into Nine’s side, leaves him to his silence, and let’s the quiet sounds wash over him. If he zones out and doesn’t focus, he can pretend there aren’t a couple colors missing, most of all that cool blue he knows better than anything else. This is okay though, the blue always comes back, through thick and thin it always returns.

When the bus screeches to a halt, he’s only marginally more prepared than Nine. The cacophony from the brakes was hard to miss for him. It’s easy to then fall into step with Nine as he finds the most strategic room. When Nine heads to the bed, Twelve checks and makes sure the door closes behind them and that there were no immediate cameras—what a cherry on the top of an awful day that would’ve been, if there were any.

Twelve drops next to Nine before he responds.]

No, we really can’t. It was too... messy.

[emotionally, physically; bad memories and unfortunate circumstances, and very very much out of their control. They haven’t been so out of depths like that since they found their ability to stand alone together.]

[lockdownmods]

[After Yoosung found that advertisement, on a device belonging to Vivienne no less, he’s been wondering what she was trying to tell them. Number One and Number Two were there, but not acting the way he remembered, and moreover, the difference in the campus size was suspicious. After staring out the window at the high wall that so resembled the one at the campus they’d all been to, he decided that there must be a connection between this place and that. Maybe this whole little area was a part of that campus that wasn’t there anymore!

But if that was the case… could Number One and Number Two have a connection to this place too? They disappeared when the power went back on before… Yoosung had been curious even then what would happen if the generator were to be turned off again. After what happened to Aiden, he’d really wanted to ask them more questions - they knew, they told him that bad things would happen, and if he had been able to talk to them again then maybe he would have been able to warn Sherlock and Mishima too. He still wants to know what else they knew… and with these puzzle pieces, he believes it may be possible to contact them again from here.

And thus, he’s spent the rest of the week lowkey obsessing over finding where the power comes from… keeping his head down, pretending he’s trying to boost the connection for LOLOL, doing whatever it takes. He couldn’t just spin his wheels. Eventually, he found it…in back of the bookstore in the mall. After that, all that was left was to find a time to mess with it where Jax couldn’t see it. That time is now, around 7pm - when he laid down his sleepy head for a nap. Your resident gamer made his way as fast as he could and turned it off, now the Magenta House is dark as fuck.

…

A few moments pass. Maybe you were in the game room playing cards, or watching tv in the living room, but whatever you were doing is interrupted by the sudden power outage. It’s certainly dark outside, too; the only lights that are still on are on the opposite end of the property, as if only half of the area’s lost power. It’s certainly possible that your first instinct is to tell Jax that the power went out so he can fix it.

Well...if you’re in the lucky part of the area that’s lost power--Magenta House, the bookstore, the bar, or the craft store--you’re in for a surprise. You’ll hear a gentle voice echo throughout whatever building you’re in.]

I think we may be trapped here forever.

[covertizer]

[ He'd been in the kitchen with a glass of water - not thinking about much in particular other than the mechanical action of raising the glass to his lips, and lowering it again.

Akira stops when he hears a soft voice, spinning in his seat as though the owner of the voice is behind him. ]

-- Hello?

[lockdownmods]

[ Indeed, he will get a reply: ]

...Huh? Hello?

[covertizer]

[ ... ]

HellllLLLLlllloooOOO?

[ He's... purposely raising and lowering the pitch of his voice because of course he is. ]

Friend or foe?

mall

[starswink]

[Yoosung ran away from the generator as soon as he successfully brought down the power, not wanting to be directly connected to the incident. But his heart beats faster when a voice comes through after all. He's thrilled that his shot in the dark (literally, as of this moment) actually worked, but... Is this a new voice he's hearing?]

[lockdownmods]

[ It is. And this time, Yoosung gets to hear another voice that's deeper, like Number One's, but far less aggressive and easier on the ears.

There's a loud sigh, then: ]

No, Kasumi. I don't believe these are ghosts--it's the same thing that happened earlier. ...Erm, hello? You can hear us, right?

[starswink]

[Huh, this is a different line than when she said they were stuck forever. Someone else must have said something to them, out of earshot from where he is... he'll just roll with it.]

Yes! This is Yoosung Kim. I talked to someone before just like this....

[But neither of these voices sound exactly like 1 and 2.]

How many of you are there?

1/2

[itwasfeyt]

[Maya, who is currently in the bookstore, replies without a second thought...]

Yeah, no kidding.

2/2

[itwasfeyt]

[...And immediately notices that she's still alone in here.]

Wait! Who said that?

[lockdownmods]

Eek! G-Ghost?! Ghooooost!

[ ....... ]

I'm so sorry about her. Uh...hello. You can hear us?