☆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

[panspermia]

"Meril? Hey--Meril, you doin' okay?"

With Greg's memories returned, he's taking a lot more concern for the his trapped peers and their bizarre behavior; he acted in equal parts genuine worry for their action, and shame from his previous lack of effort. Whether or not he'd been himself, it was selfish to ignore obvious distress on everyone else's part. Looking at Meril's dazed, empty posture, it boggled him now to even think of ignoring her.

"You, uh. You still in there, buddy?"

[nibelungvalesti]

Meril still had very little left to her. That little was enough for her eyes to lift to Greg. They cleared as if a film had been wiped away.

She respected Greg, and that was both real and not taken along with Duty. So she straightened slightly, a gesture that meant much more mentally than it did to her slight physical height.

"I am still here," she responded, her voice flat and dull as if every rich tone in it had been pounded out by a hammer.

[panspermia]

She says the words, but they don't have a whole lot behind them. There's a wide, frightening world of difference between Meril's common cold front, and the flatness before him now. Greg chews his cheek, brow furrowing. "If you say so, pal."

He sighs, tucking his hands in his pockets. "But... how are you feeling?" That's the real question of the night.

[nibelungvalesti]

The idea of lying never occurred to her.

"Empty," she said, as flat and matter-of-fact as if she has said 'hungry' or 'tired'.

[panspermia]

...Well, at least she's being more forward about it than he'd been.

"Yeah... okay. That figures." Greg looks around, frowning. "You haven't tried any of these light thingies, huh?"

[nibelungvalesti]

Meril jerked away the moment he mentioned the lights, a motion of pure reflex burnt into her by the sharp images and feelings those brought with her. "What are they?" she whispered, sounding more like herself than before (which was saying something, given how little she still sounded like herself).

[panspermia]

"I think..." He hesitates. He doesn't know, and given the chance he'd shrug it off as a mystery for someone else to explain. Tonight, however, they're too important for him to claim ignorance. "I think they might be the parts of us that're missing."

[nibelungvalesti]

"How can a part of us be missing?" The statement was barely a question, and asking it like that ought to be answer enough. "Or is this some... spiritual thing? It seems unlikely."

[panspermia]

Greg chews his cheek before answering, slowly. "Well... have you always felt empty? Or is this... new?"

[nibelungvalesti]

"Do I seem like an empty person normally, Greg?" A hint of her usual spark flickered in her voice as she glanced up at him. Uh, you might want to answer that in relative terms rather than absolute ones.

[panspermia]

He glances away as she looks up. "You seem like a heck of a lot more than you are now."

[nibelungvalesti]

She couldn't deny that. The brief embers died within her again as her head nodded back down.

"Perhaps I am just having a bad day..."

[panspermia]

"No." It's said softly, but firm. Usually Greg would play it off like that, but he couldn't deny how he felt before. "Something happened, Meril. It was like... like everything I'd ever cared about got ripped out of me." He shook his head. "This isn't just a funk. Juno did something to us."

[nibelungvalesti]

Anyone else she would have cut sharply with her words. Greg had been listening to his own songs far too much, she thought; making up impossibilities because the fantastic held more appeal than the reasonable.

But she respected Greg, and even lacking a duty to bind her to him, that kept the sting out of her tongue. "How could that be possible?"

[panspermia]

On any other night, he could have been convinced that he'd gotten a little too caught up in his dreams, partied a bit too hard the night before. It was all just too weird to make any sense of.

For now, all he could do was shake his head. "Wish I knew." He's just some dumb kid who wanted to make music. He didn't plan on any of this.

[nibelungvalesti]

At the moment, their current situation made them all dumb kids. And a lack of an explanation made his belief in his answer all the more credible.

"If we want to believe that, we must consider how it is possible," she said, sounding a little more like herself.

[panspermia]

After a moment, Greg took a deep breath. All he could think about were all the things he didn't know, but Meril was right. Even in her state, she was always more grounded than him.

"Juno must've known something about it. Did you pay any attention to her before this all happened?"

[nibelungvalesti]

"I try to avoid it," she admitted. "Contact with her is never pleasant even in passing."

[panspermia]

"Can't argue with that." She spooks him out. "She was doing something while we were playing, I think, but... I was pretty focused on the music."

[nibelungvalesti]

"As is your way," Meril said with what was very, very close to fondness. In the absence of duty, other emotions seemed all the stronger.

[panspermia]

He laughs, weakly. "Never thought that'd get me in trouble, in this business."

[nibelungvalesti]

"That has always been your strength and your flaw at once," Meril responded without any particular pity or cruelty. "You are in it for the music."

[panspermia]

He watched Meril a moment, before sighing. "Well, right now, I'm in it for you guys. I'll figure how to get you fixed, I promise."

[nibelungvalesti]

Not really aware of her own problems at the moment, Meril misinterpreted the specific for a general, and raised an eyebrow. "Do you think I am broken?"

[panspermia]

She still didn't feel it? Greg couldn't say if that was better or worse than what had hit him. For the glimmers of herself that kept peeking through, she still wasn't quite the same woman as the one he knew.

"Maybe not broken. A little damaged, though." Greg bounced on the balls of his feet, looking around. Talking wouldn't bring back what was missing. He had to go looking. "Do you mind staying here, for a little bit?"