☆TRACK XII: LOVE AND TRUST

[interdimanagers]

Who: Everyone!
What: The tour hits Europa, and Edward Blanche plans a trap.
When: May 25th - June 17th, 2055
Where: Any of the potential tour stops, but mostly MOSCOW.
Warnings: Probably violence.

“Oh, will you break my fall When I climb too high? I always lose my nerve, It happens every time.” ☆LOVE AND TRUST After the disaster that was the beginning of the World Tour, things from there have proceeded innocently enough in comparison. Virgo ended up being able to pull its act into some semblance of order before the festival finished, and so the magic on their side was not entirely lost. Things are tense, however, for anybody who has an idea of the stuff going on upstairs. Whatever is going on, Pride is in the lead by a landslide, and the desperation is present in the managers and the execs alike. Lesedi, however, couldn’t be happier. In fact, she is getting cockier by the day. Her plans with Lapis went wonderfully, and wherever the gem is now is irrelevant. Barring any major disasters, she is increasingly certain of her defeat of Virgo, and is encouraging her elite members of take potshots at them any chance they get. (This includes her beginner music mages.) The beginning of the month is spent with both labels visiting a lot of very familiar locations across Americana - most of which are places they will have visited in the past. The routes are very similar to the ones the first bands took during their opening tours last summer. As for the rescuers, now is the time to regroup. It’s not practical to follow the musicians to ever stop they make, but Shep has apparently enabled his spaceship with a cloaking device, and will be taking all the rescuers and free musicians to the major tour centers of each continental tour - the headline festivals, each lasting for days, and each carrying an important role in the ongoing ritual. That’s what Silver thinks, at least. As some of the rescuers may now know, Gold has apparently gone solo. ☆EUROPA TOUR As the Americana portion of the tour comes to a close around the 25th of May, both labels will be finishing up in Britain and heading on into the conglomerate of Europa. All of these cities are basically what they are like IRL except about 50 years more future-like, and you have full creative liberty to make up some developments to the local culture and worldbuild because this is the last time these places will ever be mentioned meaningfully! THE OFFICIAL STOPS: Paris (May 30th - 31st), Berlin (June 1st - 2nd), Madrid (June 3rd - 6th), Istanbul (June 7th - 8th), Rome (June 9th - 10th), Vienna (June 11th - 12th) THE HEADLINER: Moscow (June 12th - 17th) The festival in Moscow is much like the festival in Vista City - a musical blowout to end all blow outs. The two labels festival grounds are practically blending together at this point, almost as if fighting for physical territory along with fighting for the attention of the crowds. The thick energy of magic follows the tour like a comet’s tail. ► RESCUER PROMPT: Instead of cutting through all of the earlier stops, Shep loads all the rescuers up into the now-cloaked spaceship and will bring them to Moscow, the last step in the Europa tour path and the place they’ll be stopping the longest. Silver has been saying that the lot of them should start working on freeing captives at all costs, especially now that the labels are on the road and increasingly disorganized. Shep has gotten together a bunch of new material for disguises as well as more holo projectors - a lot of them have been spotted at this point, but if they can get close to the musicians and catch the labels off guard it could be their best hope of bunging up the rituals for both of them. Meanwhile, Gold is obviously absent from the team, and some may have seen their former leader essentially announce their intent to leave during their fight with Lapis. Silver and Shep seem to have been avoiding talking about it, but occasionally it will be referenced in public places and the conversation will turn rapidly tense. ► MUSICIAN PROMPT: Everything is more or less business as normal, except for the pressure of the tour seems to be causing all the authority figures to lose their minds, especially in Virgo. Beyond that, though, it’s all deceptively the same. Both labels stop in the various cities and put on their best show, only stopping briefly to enjoy the local culture. Everyone is under very careful watch, however, no matter where they are. No one leaves the performance areas without an escort - it’s clear that both labels are desperate to hang on to musicians at this point. The gravity of the situation is increasingly obvious. Both labels have been booked into the same hotel this time, which is essentially a castle in Moscow. It’s every bit as lavish as you would expect, and it’s easy to get distracted from the stress with the luxuries that are offered at every turn. The consistent sense of desperation that Virgo has running through it at the moment is totally absent in Pride - Lesedi seems like she’s in an absolutely fantastic mood. ► FESTIVAL PROMPT: The festivals crowds are bigger than anything you’ve ever seen. Rescuers will easily be lost in a crowd, and musicians will be followed by a detour of body guards that honestly feel needed for reasons besides imprisonment. The stages are colourful and elaborate in set up. The musical event goes on for three full days, and most of everyone’s time will be spent backstage or in their hotels. Rescuers will have to do their best to keep up. ☆BLANCHE MAKES A MOVE In the wake of Virgo falling behind, Edward Blanche has come up with a magical scheme of his own. Using the soul crystal of pure love from Greg Universe and pure duty from Meril, he has been devising a ritual - and with any luck, it take out two birds with one stone. Greg and Meril, having mostly lost their real personalities after having parts of their souls torn out and crystalized, will be set up in a central location in the hotel, after the performances on the last night in Moscow. They’ll be set up to play music, and while that music is playing it will be reaching out to all of the rescuers, whether they can hear it or not. This music is going to trigger the love and duty within their own souls, and direct it to a particular cause - a sudden and desperate need to save their friends, family, or other sympathetic souls from the labels. And the need to do it tonight. This will hit them particularly hard if they are naturally of a love or duty alignment, but it will have an effect regardless. How much it gets them exactly is up to you. Virgo’s musicians will be protected very heavily during the ritual, as Blanche is expecting the attack. His hope is to lure rescuers in and kill or capture them, having the advantage of foresight. He’s also hoping that the rescuers will go after the less protected musicians of Pride and steal them away from Lesedi, who isn’t aware that this is happening. If things go well for Blanche, both the rescuers and Pride will take a major hit, all in one go. Why not let your enemies destroy each other? Player participation in this can go two ways: one is that your character can simply go after any of the musicians you choose, and you can work out between the players and the mod how well it goes. Alternatively, you can have your character go to the heart of the matter and try to take on Greg and Meril. The tricky part? Blanche is going to be overseeing the ritual as well. However, without the focuses of Greg and Meril’s soul crystals, the ritual will fail. Also, there will absolutely be a few opportunistic ghosts looking for the opportunity to give everyone a hand. Communication with the mod is key for this event! Please run by plans to have any musicians successfully escape by me before going through with it, and also do let me know if you’d like the ghosts to help out! This can absolutely be combined with other player plots, such as the Pride break out initiative that’s been floating around. The night of the ritual is June 17th, so take some time to plan things out, and then get threading. Let me know if you need help setting any scenes! “Oh will you bring me home When I'm barely alive? It's the state of love and trust, And this is for you, And this is for us.”

Comments

Jamie Hemeros | Pride Records | Flashstep

[mildwildchild]

A - JAMIE TAKES IN SOME CULTURE: (Madrid, June 3-6 - OTA)
Torn between trying to take advantage of his increasingly limited down time and keeping an eye on his friends and bandmates, Jamie opts to wander around an art museum during a free afternoon - it's close to the hotel where they're all staying, and he's too disoriented from the instantaneous magical travel version of jet lag to muster up the energy for anything else. Once he's there, though - flanked, as always, by some Pride escorts - his mood becomes melancholy.

There are so many lovingly rendered butts here, and neither Yosuke nor Sora are around to enjoy them.

The casual passerby may therefore observe him staring almost mournfully at Picasso's Plaster of a Male Torso, among other bootylicious masterpieces.

B - JAMIE HAS A NEED, A NEED FOR SPEED: (Istanbul, June 7-8 - OTA)
During a trip to the Istanbul Aviation Museum, however, his demeanor undergoes a marked improvement. He actually seems excited as he is about so few things anymore, flitting from one displayed aircraft to another, rattling off questions more quickly than the museum director can comprehend them and respond. He drags anyone nearby into his geeking-out, too, whether they want to be there or not.

"Oh my god look at how cool this one is," he enthuses, all but teleporting his ass over to an impeccably maintained relic of an F-16 Fighting Falcon. "How old is it? How fast can it go? Something this old I'm guessing Mach 2, maybe 2.5? What's the thrust-to-weight ratio? Man, I bet this thing can really move. I don't even care if it's old, it'd be so cool to see one of these in action. Am I right? Hey, do you think they'd let us sit in it?" he asks the unfortunate bystander who's gotten sucked into his nerdgasm.

C - JAMIE SUFFERS FOR THE SAKE OF GLASNOST: (Moscow, June 12-17 - OTA)
The joint Pride/Virgo tour is being touted as the biggest thing to hit Moscow since the great bear wrestler Vladmir Putin took the animal-grappling world by storm, culminating in a face-off with professional reptile taunter Steve "The Howlin' Australian" Irwin for the world championship title in a match that drew peak audiences and shattered all previous records for worldwide pay-per-view TV ratings. Or at least that's the gist Jamie gets, his Russian is more than a little spotty and he's too fatigued and nauseated to try and make any real sense of what he's hearing.

He's not quite the household name that Maxxie is, but he still attracts a fair amount of attention, so parading him around - with or without the rest of the band, though always accompanied by a phalanx of bodyguards - is a logical way to make sure the public is sufficiently hyped for the upcoming show. Fielding questions, signing autographs, in general trying to charm the bejesus out of the Russian people - he's out there whether he likes it or not, and judging by how generally wretched he looks, he's not totally feeling up to this.

D - JAMIE DEFILES THE FINEST TRASH CANS IN ALL OF RUSSIA: (Moscow, June 12-17 - open to musicians)
The energy has been building throughout the tour, steadily growing into something that feels like it's going to devour them all whole. Jamie, in turn, has been increasingly on edge, and by the time they hit Moscow he's all but climbing the walls. He tries to pass off his restlessness, insomnia, and overall shitty appearance as more jet lag - and to be fair, he's still feeling the effects of that, too - but jet lag doesn't generally make people jump out of their skins at the slightest provocation.

Just before the show, he's backstage, dressed to the nines, coiffed within an inch of his life, and pacing like a caged animal. He runs through lyrics and choreography in his head, staring at nothing, musical energy thrumming through him like electrical current. It fills him, overwhelms him, threatens to swallow him completely even as it tries to claw its way into him and back out again. It's so vast, so all-consuming, pressing in on him and around him and through him, something that he can't see or touch but that he can feel nonetheless, something so thick and strong he can almost smell it, almost taste it -

- surging down and through him and up and out through every pore in his body, writhing beneath his skin, burrowing into his brain, roiling in his gut -

He lurches to a stop mid-stride, drags in a shaky breath, and bolts for the nearest trash can, where he proceeds to vomit. Very noisily.

WILDCARD - hit me up dawgs

B

[yellowcopycat]

Surprisingly, Ryouta is right up there with Jamie in the geeking out over the planes.

He's vaguely recalling having gone through an airplane phase as a kid and considered being a pilot as a plan C, after basketball and modeling.

(or was it after music, basketball, modeling, and then pilot? it was getting confusing)

So anyone watching is given a show of a rather short teenager and a very tall teenager racing around the museum.

"Says it was developed in the Seventies, so it's way old," he said and looked around. The military aspects of the aerodynamics are interesting and all, but Ryouta's more inclined to appreciate the luxury private planes. That's way more his speed. But they probably don't have those here.

B

[killerbeep]

B doesn't like planes.

It's only recently that he's figured this out - in fact, mostly just in the time since he somehow ended up getting dragged along to the museum. There are a lot of planes here. He feels like he should be ready to pull out his blasters run at any second.

"Uh... yeah, probably pretty old and really fast." He grimaces a little. "Not sure sitting in it is the best idea."