☆TRACK III: THE STREETS ARE EMPTY

[interdimanagers]

Who: Drafted Virgo Members
What: Juno makes everyone do a seance.
When: October 21st-22nd.
Where: The basement of the Virgo residential tower.
Warnings: Ghosts, apparently.

“You can't shake the feeling. Be quiet not one sound. But the wind seems to speak, Something's here in the room with me.” ☆THE STREETS ARE EMPTY Juno arrives without notice. In fact, you can’t even really remember seeing her approach. One moment you’re doing your business, and the next she is telling you that you have to come down to the basement with her, in order to complete a “task” you’ve been assigned. This sort of thing would seem preposterous to a normal person, but even if you don’t realize it, you aren’t one. As Mr Blanche’s personal assistant and sometimes second in command, her word seems to carry almost as much weight as his does. You don’t really have any choice but to agree. “Bring whatever instrument you know best,” she says. “You’ll need it.” She snaps up every one of you that she sees in her initial sweep, and soon she has a whole pack of Virgo newbies following her down to the lowest floors of the residential tower. It feels weird, but it’s like you can’t quite articulate why. No one else seems to be able to either. Most of the lights are turned off on those lower floors, but it’s easy to tell it’s a place you’ve never been before. It’s strangely...hospital like, down there, in both aesthetic and a sense of sterility. Maybe some kind of laboratory setting? Which seems like a super weird thing to be in the basement of an apartment building, but this is yet another thing you can’t quite bring yourself to ask about. Juno leave most of the lights off, except for a few central features. The ambience is dim and cold. She tells you not to stray, and you don’t. The thought of going against her becomes somehow repulsive, like you don’t even want to think about it too long. You try not to think about your surrounding too hard, either. She lines you all up, and then after some strangely intense eyeballing, she starts breaking you up into some incredibly lopsided groups that seem to have nothing to do with your actual bands. In the end, she looks disappointed with resulting teams, but carries on regardless. Each “group” is given some complexly timed sheet music and a funny looking mobile speaker. She says that you have a half hour to compose a group piece to play alongside the sheet music , and that it needs to be good. Then, she wanders off to start pacing the basement in a strangely arcane series of movements, and leaves you all to it. Only among your peers do you start feeling like you can voice any of your previously stowed concerns, but make sure Juno doesn’t overhear you – occasionally she’ll come by to bluntly critique anyone who is performing inadequately. You feel lucky that she doesn’t have a whip with her, because you’re almost certain that she’d use it without much remorse. ☆THE SEANCE The performance is about as awkward as you’d expect, given the set up. The four groups are set up so that they’re facing each other, as if standing at the corner of a square. Each speaker is set up in the center of its group, and the precisely timed electronic beat that plays from them is what you’re supposed to perform along to. Odds are that you do your level best, but, outside of your control...something goes wrong. “Have you ever felt... Something evil, Lurking around? The moon is full, The streets are empty. Shadows cover the town.”

Comments

[nibelungvalesti]

"Why..."

Long, pale fingers clutched a flicker of blue light as if trying to crush it, the first obvious thing about Meril as she stepped up.

Without Duty, she had nothing of her own. When she lifted the wisp up just slightly, it cast reflections on long wet lines trailing down her cheeks and set her eyes glistening. There was nothing sad about this feeling, and yet it left her feeling cold and empty, like a torch thrown into a great underground cavern without so much as a skittering bat to give it life.

"Why?"

[sponsorigami]

"Are you asking me?" Ivan walks over despite not knowing if Meril is talking to him. "Even if I answer you, you're just going to be disappointed anyways."

He thinks that she's asking why Ivan did what he did earlier. She looks distraught, and he should do something to help. However, he thinks he'll ultimately be unable to do anything to improve her mood.

[nibelungvalesti]

She hunched over the wisp as she brought it up to her chest, as if to protect it, but in truth Ivan's approach had nothing to do with it. She barely knew he was there, and her words came out for anyone to hear. "Why would anyone mean so much to another person...?"

[sponsorigami]

Yep. Any answer Ivan can think of to that question will only lead to disappointment. Why are some people mean? It's a question that many have tried to answer, and there's no easy answer for it if there is one at all.

"I'm not going to take that if that's what you're worried about." He had been fascinated with the blue lights but not enough to take one from someone else or to hold it when another wants it. Seeing her clutch it makes him stop walking toward her. No threat here.

[nibelungvalesti]

"...What?"

She barely remembered she held that wisp, never mind how tightly she held it. The memory, so foreign to her in both content and nature, had practically driven it from her mind. "I..."

She lifted the wisp slightly, her fingers relaxing around it. "What is this, anyway?"

[sponsorigami]

"I don't know. I think they started to appear when we were playing." Before he shut the whole thing down with an angry shout and swing he had no control over. Ivan remains where he stands in case she decides he's a threat after all. He looks around the lab-like room. There are fewer wisps than he remembers before leaving the room with Juno, but maybe he just wasn't paying enough attention at the time.

[nibelungvalesti]

"I... don't remember." Her mind was a shattered thing without Duty to hold it together; so little seemed to exist to her besides that. "Everything has been.... dark."

Has Meril found her wisp yet in any thread?

[sponsorigami]

"Dark?" Ivan repeats. It's been dark since everyone arrived. That's what made the floating lights stand out so much. Is Meril afraid of the dark?

"I didn't know you could touch and hold those." He looks around to see a few others doing holding or chasing after the wisps. "Do you want another?" He's there, so he might as well grab another one for her.

Nope, no one loves her ;)

[nibelungvalesti]

"All this one does is hurt..." She tried to push it away, tried to get rid of it. It barely moved, like she was trying to shove it through water, but it passed far enough away for the intensity to leave her as if it had abruptly drained through a great hole in her soul.

The girl shuddered, slumping. Without her usual athletic posture, she seemed even tinier, and far more fragile.

Maybe Ivan can help with that

[sponsorigami]

He's going to take that as a yes. If Meril didn't want any of the lights, she would have told him no. Or if he's wrong, she'll just get angry at him, and he'll suffer the consequences. The wisps all look alike though. How is he going to find one she'll like better?

"How about that one over there?" He points to a wisp floating near a speaker.

Gonna be a race against time!

[nibelungvalesti]

"It does not matter," Meril whispered, almost visibly drawing back into hersel -- like deflating or crumpling. She might say that, but she clearly needed some help. Even pain would be preferable to this transparent, hollow emptiness.

I'll give it a go

[sponsorigami]

Okay, so he'll grab that one and see if she likes it. If she doesn't, he'll push it aside and find a new one. The wisp gently orbits around the speaker, bobbing up and down slightly. He reaches out, and suddenly, he sees a gigantic zombie like thing before him. He's filled with an overwhelming need to fight it, finish it off. It's existence is a crime to the world and himself. He needs to act. It's what he lives for.

It's that feeling on the verge of losing his own senses that has Ivan stepping back. This feeling has happened before, and the music stopped with a speaker hit across the room by a shamisen.

"What... was that?" he asks aloud as the feeling is pulled from him once more.

[nibelungvalesti]

Meril should have reacted to the sudden instrumental strike -- but she didn't. Why? He was not going to hurt her... he was not going to hurt anyone else. What was the point of flailing about?

"You hit the speaker," she answered.

[sponsorigami]

"I did, earlier," he says, and when he looks to his hands, he finds that he's holding his shamisen much like one would a sword. (Which is strangely familiar for a completely separate reason.) Luckily, he didn't actually swing it to cause further damage to his instrument.

"I don't know why it happened the last time, but I felt something strong when I touched this one. I felt like I needed to fight something."

[nibelungvalesti]

"What is the point?" Meril asked, a breathy sigh punctuating the words. Why fight anything? Why waste effort trying, especially when the odds were against you and victory only gained more fighting? Better to simply sit and do nothing.

[sponsorigami]

"I don't know." He shrugs. It's more of a fight for him to figure out why he had acted as he did. "I just did."

He felt like he was possessed the earlier time, but he thinks she won't believe him, so why bother mentioning it?

[nibelungvalesti]

"I..." The word took effort to find, a careful consideration that normally would not give her pause. She was far out of her depth.

After the pause became excessive, she took a mental breath and chose a word she hated. Perhaps she hated it because it was true. "I envy that."

[sponsorigami]

"If you envy it, you could just try it yourself." Ivan doesn't know if anything he's doing is working. He motions a little to the wisp by him, which has returned to circling the speaker in a fashion that betrays the intensity of action upon touching it.

[nibelungvalesti]

"Try... that light?"

Meril was, for the first time she could remember, afraid. The wisps has done her no favors. Some had hurt her -- not physically, but emotional wounds cut across her soul now that it had no defense.

"What did you feel?"

[sponsorigami]

If he was in his right mind and soul, Ivan might have gotten annoyed or frustrated or hurt that she asked a question he already answered. However, he's not, so Ivan just sighs instead.

"I felt something strong when I touched it. I felt like I needed to fight the thing before me, and that was what I lived for." Or something like that. He didn't fully understand it, so he'll probably get yelled at for giving the wrong information later. Whatever.

[nibelungvalesti]

She needed as thorough an answer as he could give. And it had worked. No one could say what he had described was pleasant, but for all that it sparked a yearning in her. A need.

"Yes." An odd note of urgency in her voice, she rose from her slump.

[sponsorigami]

Ivan wonders if he has to deliver the wisp of light to her or if she'll work up the strength to get up herself. He doesn't really want to touch it again, but he's not going to fight it if he has to in the end.

He steps aside and motions to the wisp as if to say "Here it is. Go get it."

[nibelungvalesti]

Practically stumbling, she shuffled forward with a determination that fought the lassitude clinging to her at every step. Her hand stretched out to touch the little light--

The moment she made contact, she dropped to a knee. Not because she had stumbled or lost the strength to stand, but more as if she were kneeling TO someone.

"Lord Odin," she said out loud, her voice sharp and rich and hard once more.

[sponsorigami]

When she scrambles to the light, Ivan jumps back a little further in surprise. She actually moved herself. Meril carries herself differently now. Her voice is something Ivan recognizes more from past encounters.

Who's "Lord Odin" though?

"... Are you okay?" Did she see the same thing he did because she's taking it a lot better than Ivan did.

[nibelungvalesti]

"I am --" She rose like water surging upwards, fluid and implacable and determined. When she saw again, remembering abruptly where she was, she started backwards as one hand rose to her chest.

"I am all right. That was... " Lacking words, Meril simply shook her head.