☆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

☆GETTING READY

[interdimanagers]

The groups, unsurprisingly, are divided by the Aspect their memory was associated with. All the Loves together, all the Duties together, all the Passions together, and the solitary Hope. Sorry Itachi. Feel free to mingle with the others while you work.

Luce - Duty

[giglio_madonna]

A - Won't you bring all the flowers you find out in the garden?

Luce starts out things optimistically enough. Sure, she's been brought down to a downright eerie basement with her standing bass and for some reason FoB has been split up, but she won't worry about it too much. The entertainment industry is a strange place sometimes. Maybe this is some sort of odd reality show. You never know.

So she waves over to Doctor and mouths her best wishes to Ivan and Kise before she stands up straight in front of the large group she's with.

"Alright then, let's waste no time, shall we? Organization helps in times like these, so why don't we quickly introduce ourselves and our skills? Then we can figure out how to go about this. In case we haven't met-" The grin on Luce's face says she's met basically everyone here. "My name is Luce, and I'm a lead who also does bass."

B - Stop playin' games

Even with all her optimism, however, even Luce can't really do much in the face of such strange instructions.

You can find her doing one of two things as time passes. One, of course, is frowning down at the sheet music she's been given with her bass propped up against her. She seems to be murmuring to herself, trying to make up some music in her own head that will work. Perhaps someone else struggling can help her out.

Or... In a contrast to her generally pleasant demeanor, she can be occasionally seen glancing up a Juno with her lips twisting slightly. It's a complicated expression that she makes sure to keep hidden from the other woman in question, just as much as her very soft murmurs of "Is she entirely sure she's fit to work right now...?"

B!

[i_am_not_cute]

Next to Luce, Pao-Lin is plinking away on her glockenspiel, frowning in concentration. She thinks she's finally gotten the hang of these non-standard tempos and time signature changes, but trying to come up with something that will match the weird chord progressions and still sound good is a trial for the ages. Luce may find some inspiration in Pao-Lin's musical meandering, however.

Greg - Love

[panspermia]

Greg tears his eyes away from the sheet music to check on where Juno is in the room, but his fingers never stop picking away at the guitar strings. Logically, going off his past experiences, there's nothing a jam session can't fix. So long as he keeps the notes coming, things will surely improve. And yet, the heavy air in the basement persists. If anything the thrum of music hanging around them only seems to worsen the feeling as time goes on.

It's just his imagination, Greg keeps telling himself. The room's a little dark, he's tired, it's making him jumpy. Just a matter of distracting himself from whatever trick of the mind has him spooked. He looks to the other folks in the mismatched group, and gives a small grin.

"So, what do you think?" he whispers. "Secret show? One-time event? Cool, right?"

[yuruse]

"I'm... not sure I understand my instructions." Weasel might not have been assigned to this group, but then it didn't seem as if he'd been assigned to any group at all. Whatever it is he's supposed to be doing, he's to do it alone.

Is this because of his poor showing at the bass off? It might have been an unofficial competition, but it had still brought in news, and the report had let everyone know of his failure. What if he messes up here too?

Is he even allowed to associate with Greg right now? Hopefully he's not getting himself in further trouble.

Lenneth Valkyrie | Duty

[nibelungvalesti]

Beneath the icy cool of Meril's usual mien, a distant fire of irritation raged. After all she was being put through, trying to improve herself, trying to write lyrics, trying to play better -- now she was being asked to compose? Was everything merely setting her up for failure?

In the grips of such thoughts, the woman was proving surprisingly difficult to work with. Her music was uninspired, her playing routine, and throughout the composition she barely seemed to be paying attention. No one could blame her fellow groupmates for turning a sharp word on her.

Gaige | Duty

[deusexmechina]

[ it's hard to transport a full mixboard, and so luckily gaige has a "mini" that she's able to bring along down to the basement. she "oohs" and "ahhs" at the atompshere, mostly unphased as she follows along.

once she's split up into her group, she squints at the music, her face screwing up into a frown. ]

Kiiiinda weird. Thoughts?

Ivan - Passion

[sponsorigami]

Truthfully, Ivan has no problem collaborating with others in Virgo. He's loyal to his band most of all, but they are all part of the same label. The other bands feel less like rivals than bands from Pride. One of the people he's with is Hidari. Hidari entered the Bass Off with a bass banjo. Ivan plays shamisen among a music scene with more mainstream instruments, so he has to admire him for his performance and guts. (He still would have voted for Luce, however.)

He's also partly intrigued by Juno approaching him and bringing him along with the rest of his band to this sterile room below ground. This isn't the most inspiring place to compose and practice in, but maybe they're working on a Halloween themed piece. That said, something sits very uneasy within Ivan that grows when Juno leaves.

As he stands in his corner, Ivan assembles his shamisen.

[[ OOC: I'm writing this as a plural in case there is someone who signs up late and also chose Passion. ]]

Doctor - Love

[trustme]

A Someone had to say it

Doctor is all ready jotting down tune ideas when he pauses to speak the observation that had been eating at the back of his mind, "This place makes me think of sci-fy movies. Like we're in the lower decks of a spaceship. What do you think? It's not just me, right?"

B For the Love Group

Doctor turns to the nearest member of the group he's been assigned to and passes the paper he had been writing on. "Pass it around," he says, "Not my best work but it fits the requirements and I like to think it's fun to play. We have a decent mix of instruments here."

A cello, two guitars, a bass, and a drummer. Sounded like some sort of alternative rock band.

For those who didn't know all ready, when Doctor wasn't practicing his cello or another instrument he was almost always composing. He for one wasn't too stressed about throwing something together in the moment.

[[ooc: I'm imagining if they go with Doctor's song they'll likely sound something like One Republic with less piano.]]

☆THE PERFORMANCE

[interdimanagers]

It's only when the performance has finally fallen into rhythm that the effects of this venture finally become apparent. A strange energy fills the room as the notes fall in place, an energy that seems to come, at least partially, from you. It's almost as if the music you play is reaching out the world around it in a near physical way, and trying to pull something back with it. This goes on for about fifteen minutes before the effects finally become overt.

You can almost see them - something like shimmering blue lines, like the action lines of a gesture drawing. The flicker in and out of sight as you place, and when they grow close, it's like you can feel their presence. You don't understand what's happening, exactly, but you feel a profound connection with these lights - as if they are a part of you, and you're a part of them.

But then it stops. It stops, because the music stops.

Suddenly, Ivan, the shamisen player from Flowers Over Bones, shudders to a halt. And then, in one furious movement, he swings his shamisen at his team's speaker and violently hits it across the room like a golf ball.

He spins to face the ceiling, one finger thrust outward, in accusatory rage.

"YOU THINK YOU CAN STOP US, MAN? WELL, YOU CAN'T!"

His yell echoes through the room, and the spell permeating the room seems to break. The energy, mingling so freely with you own, is abruptly and violently pulled out - and it seems that it takes something of yours with it.

[giglio_madonna]

The force of something tearing out of her knocks Luce's breath out from her chest, and she crumples against her bass clutching at her shirt. Something is missing, gone, and there's a sensation that crawls through her skin telling her its important. At the same time, somehow.... It doesn't feel noticeable. It's a strange contradicting thing that isn't important in the face of Ivan's yelling.

That's what she focuses on, staring up in confusion to him. "Ivan!" She doesn't know what else to say.

☆THE AFTERMATH

[interdimanagers]

Juno drags Ivan aside, but even when he returns, she doesn't. If anyone bothers to check the elevator to the upper floors, they'll find themselves locked out. It seems that you've been delegated to the basement while things sort themselves out.

You are left free to search the grim corridors, feeling as if you've been left with an open wound. All the doors have been locked to prevent any access, but there are bits and pieces of this place's purpose left out to be found.

And for some of you, the word of the execs seems to matter a while lot less.

Luce

[giglio_madonna]

A - So you should just quit

The strange thing for Luce is that when Ivan is left out of sight, she seems to... stop being worried about him. Immediately, she's airy and unconcerned and-

Immediately getting up to leave? "Well, whatever it is we were called here to do, obviously it's done with. Those higher ups really do like wasting our time, so I think I'll be done with it." Feel free to follow her.

However, even if you don't, she comes back fairly soon. Luce is frowning and clearly annoyed. "Hmph. She locked us in. How annoying."

B - And nobody sees what we do

Eventually, Luce's attention wanders to the strange wisps that are about. You can find her interest waning with apparently no real pattern, sometimes even looking like she's debating on touching one.

Is it your memory? Or maybe you're nearby when hers flutters through you...

C - I will not rest until I learn

When she's not investigating the unusual wisps, Luce can be found almost bored as she investigates the basement and trying to see what doors are unlocked. "I imagine it would be too much to ask for that anyone brought a flash light?"

[nibelungvalesti]

Meril drifted through the halls like a ghost -- indeed, with her clear skin and pale hair, she very much looked the part. One hand trailed slow lines down the walls, fingers touching it as a point of contact to keep her grounded.

Silent, thoughtless, almost not there. The woman seemed lost, and heedless of what lay before her or behind.

Greg

[panspermia]

When the energy pulls away from them, it nearly pulls Greg along with it; he staggers to keep his feet. Startled, he stares at the floor, evidently trying to process what's happened.

For a long, long time, he simply stares at the ground, expression hard to place, as he struggles to process anything. His mouth twitches, brow furrows, eyes darting as he searches, internally, for something, anything.

Slowly, one shaking hand cups over his mouth, covering his uneven breath. He raises his gaze, just enough to glance around the room, at the people and dispersing wisps of light, before recoiling from--from their presence, the mere idea of existing near anyone. Suddenly, he pulls his guitar off from around his neck and throws it on the floor, grimacing at it, before running down the hall.

He can't do this. He doesn't know what this is, but he can't do it.

He's going to find someplace dark, someplace quiet, someplace away from everything, and try and figure out what he has left.

Rei

[faithfulflame]

Suddenly extremely frustrated, Rei's only real course of action is to stalk around the room like an angry alleycat. She's practically bristling, mumbling to herself in quiet apprehension. These strange lights are...unnerving, but not quite as unsettling as Ivan's outburst. That just seemed so out of place on the normally quiet young man.

There's something off about her, too, though. Ordinarily when upset she might be sitting quietly, or fidgeting in a corner, but now she seems just on the edge of a rage. Rei's shaking, her fists clenched hard, knuckles white as she continually paces back and forth, trying to avoid these lights.

The pain in her chest in immense, a shattering sensation wracking her whole frame periodically. Her violin is abandoned as she wanders, left like some unwanted trinket as she continues her pacing, gradually moving further and further out before returning, seemingly devoid of any real direction...

Krieg, cw for graphic descriptions of violence

[pecsonpecs]

If you looked at Krieg now, you'd think that he was out of his mind. He isn't responsive in the least, trained his unfocused eyes in the direction that Ivan was dragged in. It's not until the shamisen player is returned to the fold that Krieg stands slowly, cackling to himself lowly as he pries the bass drum off of his set and drags it to the elevator doors.

His mind is full of bloodlust, fleeting fantasies of all the awful things he would do to Juno if he got his hands around her; all he has to do is to get to her and then he could feel the thrill of the kill once again. Krieg slams the bass drum against the elevator doors, denting the drum body and it rolls away ineffectively. Undeterred, he tries to pry his fingers between the crack of the doors, attempting to pry them apart with strength alone. It's fruitless, even though the muscles in his back visibly strain against the doors as he roars loudly enough to reverberate through the whole basement.

Eventually he goes back to repeatedly slamming the bass drum against the doors before angrily throwing it aside--hopefully you're not standing in the way when it flies by. Krieg presses his forehead against the door, undeterred, screaming, as if Juno was standing directly on the other side.

"I'LL TEAR YOUR RIBCAGE OPEN AND MAKE YOU WATCH AS I SUCK THE BLOOD THROUGH YOUR PULMONARY ARTERY! SQUEEZE YOUR LUNGS WITH MY FINGERS, YOUR TRACHEA WILL MAKE THE MOST DELIGHTFUL WHISTLE!"

Pao-Lin

[i_am_not_cute]

Any worry that she might have felt at seeing Ivan's moment of rage has quickly dissipated to a mild curiosity. It isn't long before Pao-Lin gets up from her place to wander around and maybe chat with people about what just happened. Not to figure out what to do next, oh, heavens no: she just wants to waste some time. Who needs to do things right now? Things will probably resolve themselves, eventually. She won't worry too much about it. Not her circus, not her monkeys.

Eventually she might park herself back in the corner and plink away on her little glockenspiel. Hey, at least everyone's got a delicate little soundtrack for this fiasco.

Meanwhile, her little slice of Duty is floating around, waiting to find its way back to its owner...

The Doctor

[trustme]

A Exploring and Observing

Once the strange sensation from the performance dissipates, Doctor puts his cello back in its case. For some time he sits near the corner silently watching as others seem to explode or implode. Such dramatic reactions to being locked in the basement? Childish. Ridiculous.

If one doesn't interrupt him while he's watching this unfold, they might find him hauling his cello down the hall and taking a close look at the security panels on doors. Was he seriously the only one trying to logically find a way out?

B The Wisps

Eventually Doctor finds where the memory wisps are floating in the air. Clearly this isn't natural and it's enough of a distraction to draw him away from his attempts to unlock the closed doors.

When he tries to touch one it disappears. It's when he stops trying to reach out towards them that he turns around and walks right into one. The sensation of it entering him leaves him stumbling and grabbing at the wall for support.

Is it his memory? Or is it yours?

Shotaro

[tanteiotaku]

Shotaro is at first distracted by ducking that shamisen. They'd been playing together, and that thing has quite the long neck. Once their speaker had been sent for the hills, he had a different issue to cope with.

As the memories were ripped out of him, he staggered, but kept his feet. He gripped his shirt and banjo strap over his heart. Something was missing, and painfully so. He stared blankly in the general direction that Ivan had occupied, desperately trying to identify what was gone, but it was no use. But one thing he did know was that he wanted to get out of here.

But honestly? That was a lot of work. As for what was going on with Ivan, and Juno ushering him away, well he didn't have anything to say in Ivan's defense, or even asking him if he was okay. He just didn't have it in him. The Shotaro the others knew would be the first to grab a bottle of water and a chair for someone acting out uncharacteristically. That would have been a sure sign of stress, in his eyes, and he would make sure they take a breather. But instead, he just caught his breath, and shrugged out from under his banjo to put it away.

Kouen

[goateeocracy]

[A]

Yan has had enough of this shit, to be honest. Once things get weird, his face immediately darkens and he starts pacing around the space they've found themselves confined in. Anyone who gets in his way gets snapped at or immediately shoved out of it. Even if you thought you had a pretty good relationship with him before, for some reason, even you aren't spared.

[B]

Eventually, Yan takes a break from the pacing and sets himself up against the wall with his guitar and his copy of the piece they attempted to play. He keeps going over his part over and over again, like that guy who only knows a few chords of Smoke on the Water and who's determined to play them again and again, except the music is much more complex. It just pisses him off that they didn't get to finish the performance properly, almost as much as the fact that it seemed to cause more of the weird bullshit they've been suffering with lately. Maybe he can kill two birds with one stone and perfect his part and figure out why what happened might have happened.

It's going to get annoying fast for anyone else.

[C]

[Return his memory to him! Or let me know if you want him to get yours back to you!]

[OOC: If you're more comfortable with brackets, go for it! I'll match whatever you want to do.]

Gaige

[deusexmechina]

[ all things considered, gaige doesn't feel much different at first. nearly everyone around her is acting strange, the kind of strange that isn't all that fun, seeming almost -- lost. she's up and about, exploring, doing what she can to figure out what's going on and help out everyone else in the process.

her attitude changes some when she wises up to the wisps. she'd been curious about them, approaching them with no sense of apprehension, but when one passes through her, then another, she seems disoriented. she mutters to herself: ]

Oookay, guess we can mark "hallucinations" down on the list of tonight's fun.

Momo

[eyettentionplease]

A

[Well. That was certainly a thing. Momo's been keeping to herself mostly because seriously this place is. Freaky. But then the thing - whatever that thing was - gets torn out of her and she just... doesn't care. So she just sort of... starts wandering around. Later, losers, she doesn't owe any of you anything.]

B (this time with wisps n such)

[The only thing that really gets her attention without trying is the wisps. Nothing else really matters - and these don't necessarily matter, they're just pretty. She tries to touch a couple, maybe, then... backs into one. Whoah. Was that yours? Do you have hers? All-purpose wisp-related prompt here.]

Ivan Karelin

[sponsorigami]

"... What is everyone doing?" he asks mostly to himself once he steps back into the main area to see everyone scattered and acting strangely. Juno has disappeared upstairs and hasn't given him any answers as to what just happened, only promises of being examined and talked more to later.

He sees the wisps of blue floating around, but looking at them doesn't help him to make sense of everything or fill that strange emptiness within him. They probably wouldn't help either. (So he thinks.) For now, he'll return his attention to his poor, damaged shamisen.

[[ OOC: Here is his memory for reference if anyone wants to play with it. ]]

the latest wow

[warrior_princess]

Lora had been summoned with a hangover and some very sore knuckles. She's been spending more time out since the gala; that memory had ratcheted up her dissatisfaction a few notches. She couldn't think of anything to change to make it better, and if there was nothing she could do she might as well go please herself. She has restraint enough not to cause the label too much shame, and that's enough.

The pounding behind her eyes preoccupies her. Something is missing and that's... not good, but ugh all the yelling and added noise. And now she can go somewhere less crowded. It's actually really nice to not have to worry about what people like Juno think. What's Virgo matter, anyway?

She explores on her own for a bit, discovering the mugshots on monitors and that there isn't a way out. There's also the will-o-the-wisps. She avoids them as best she can with this kind of headache, and eventually runs out of things she's willing to try that make the throbbing in her skull worse.

When you don't have something to accomplish, you do what feels good. This will help with the headache anyway. Lora leans against a likely wall, produces a neat white cylinder and a lighter from her pockets, and starts toasting the end.