☆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

[giglio_madonna]

"And if it was a big deal?" she prompts gently. She's starting to find that whatever is going on here, it prompts itself in extremes nine times out of ten.

On one hand, people like Greg or Krieg who blow up.

And on the other... What seems like apathy.

[i_am_not_cute]

Pao-Lin shrugs. "Then it's a big deal, I guess."

[giglio_madonna]

"Then you'll be glad to know it's a big deal and you should come with me." Luce offers her hand with a tilt of her head.

"I think you're missing something important to you, Pao-Lin."

[i_am_not_cute]

Pao-Lin gazes up at Luce, mildly confused. She doesn't feel like anything's missing; nor does she feel concerned at the idea that something might, in fact, be missing. But she trusts Luce, and she doesn't have anything better to do.

So Pao-Lin gently sets her glockenspiel down and gets up to take Luce's hand.

[giglio_madonna]

Thatta girl. Giving an encouraging nod, Luce starts to guide her along. There's not as many lights, now, floating about. That means it's a little easier to find one and have a better chance that it's Pao-Lin's.

So, when she comes across the first of the remaining lights, she points it out to Pao-Lin. Hopefully, this won't end up like another Ivan. "Try touching that, alright? It's not dangerous."

Not in the typical way, at least.

1/2

[i_am_not_cute]

Without a second's hesitation, Pao-Lin reaches out to brush at the floating blue light with her fingertips...

And her apathy positively burns to ashes from blinding spotlights and childish anticipation and wonder at the moment of reckoning.

Her hands fly to her mouth in shock, shoulders tensing together with the motion. She probably hadn't won that season -- knew she hadn't won it, seeing her name (but "Dragon Kid" wasn't her name) in the third place slot. But she didn't care. She had held her own as well as the rest of those standing on stage with her, and somehow there was a reason to be even prouder of that fact than usual. It was the happiest she'd ever been in her life.

2/2

[i_am_not_cute]

In the next instant, a bolt of ice-cold terror shatters her happiness, throwing up a cloud of suffocating despair. Her cheeks feel half-damp with tears, and the burning in her eyes promises more to come. Her shoulders sag from the weight of the collar (the bomb) around her neck; her heart with resignation to inevitable betrayal. There was no way out of this death trap they'd all gotten caught up in. Someone, or multiple someones, were going to have to die.

And she knew she would be one of them...because she was never going to kill others to save herself.

"I've made up my mind," chimes the sweet voice of a teenage girl over the intercom.

The clownish-looking man on the TV screen in front of her sneers with glee. "Oh, how unfortunate for you all. Blue Rose has made up her mind. Now, Blue Rose, push the button."

"...I won't push the button."

A moment of blank shock settles into Pao-Lin's body, stilling the roiling emotions in her.

"I believe in everyone," the girl continues. "I believe in Tiger and Barnaby."

"Everyone, listen! Those two will never lose. We know them. There's no reason for us to make a choice!"

"As a Hero, I'll trust my friends until the very end. That's what I've decided."

"I want to believe in Mr. Tiger and Barnaby, too," Pao-Lin murmurs in the present, her hands loosening with a different kind of awe.

[giglio_madonna]

No yelling, no panic, is this better? Luce watches in concern at the emotions that flash across Pao-Lin's face, and immediately starts tugging a handkerchief out of her dress pocket at the sign of tears.

"Mr. Tiger and Barnaby?" she echoes, wiping at Pao-Lin's face.

[i_am_not_cute]

Pao-Lin blinks confusedly up at Luce, barely registering the woman dabbing at her sudden onset of tears. Who are Mr. Tiger and Barnaby, and why does Pao-Lin want to believe in them so much?

"I...I don't know," she says. "What's going on, Luce? What just happened?"

[giglio_madonna]

"I wish I could tell you, dear..." Luce shakes her head, the question one she's been wondering for probably an hour now. Greg had suggested 'premonition'. Lian had been convinced this was some sort of reality show. Even with those ideas, however, it didn't really explain anything.

There's really no satisfactory answer she can give.

"I just know that these little lights... They seem to have something we somehow know, and when we get them back... We learn of something else. It's the best I can explain."

[i_am_not_cute]

Pao-Lin sniffles. "So you saw something from the lights, too? What was it?"

[giglio_madonna]

And that's where Luce pauses.

She'd already told Rei about the song, because it had been clear that she had heard it as well. There wasn't any point in hiding it. Yet it seems strange to be so free with them when it had seemed so... important, personal, to see everyone there. Like they were some of the most important people in the world.

But that's not fair, not after what everyone else has shared with her. So, after a moment, Luce nods. "It was a group of people, sitting around a table- six of them. Most of them were men, but a couple of them weren't."

[i_am_not_cute]

"Was it, like, a dinner party or something?" Seems pretty mundane compared to what Pao-Lin had seen, so far.

[giglio_madonna]

"No... There wasn't any food." Gently, Luce starts to rub at her chest, right over her heart. "One was a military woman, and there was a scientist, a martial artist... Three more, but they weren't as clear. It was... business-like."

[i_am_not_cute]

"Mm...I see."

At least that's not as bad as what Pao-Lin saw, unless there's something Luce is leaving out of the picture. But why would Pao-Lin know something so...horrible? She, who had led such a sheltered life until this point?

[giglio_madonna]

"Enough about me, dear." Luce genty pats her hair. "Ivan was feeling similar. Perhaps the two of you can talk to each other?"

Empathetic as she may be, she still knows that sometimes comfort only comes when one knows the other person has gone through similar. Maybe that will be the case for this.

[i_am_not_cute]

"Ah, that's right!" How could she have forgotten? "Where's Ivan? Something happened to him earlier, didn't it?"

Pao-Lin remembers that Ivan had suddenly destroyed his shamisen and one of the speakers earlier. Anything after that is a bit of a blur, though; she hadn't been paying much attention.

[giglio_madonna]

"Yes, Juno took him away, but it's... fine, I promise."

It's not fine, even as Luce smiles and tucks some of her hair away and out of her face. Ivan had obviously not been well with whatever he had seen. She can only hope that he gets better from it.

"He came back, and I ran into him. Rei and I have been trying to get you all together- seems we got a bit scattered, didn't we?"

[i_am_not_cute]

Well, if Luce says so, then things must be okay.

"Y-yeah, seems like it..." She glances around the basement, where some of the other Virgo musicians are still milling around. "Is Doctor okay too?"

[giglio_madonna]

"He is." Luce squeezes Pao-Lin's shoulder and laughs a little.

"You know Doctor. He's already running around and trying to poke his nose into everything he can stick it into."

[i_am_not_cute]

That gets a laugh out of Pao-Lin too. "He'd better be careful that nothing chomps his nose off."

(There may or may not have been an incident like this with his cello case at some point.)

[giglio_madonna]

"I don't think there's any open doors, so that's one trouble we don't have to worry about." Chuckling, Luce shakes her head. "Come with me, and we'll all get together, alright?"