interstellar5555 | ☆TRACK IV: COME TOO FAR

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☆TRACK IV: COME TOO FAR

Who: Everyone!
What: Something explodes in the distance. In a figurative sense.
When: November 6th.
Where: Anywhere you are.
Warnings: ???

“Like the legend of the Phoenix,
All ends with beginnings,
What keeps the planets spinning,
The force from the beginning.”

☆COME TOO FAR

On November 6th, the sudden lockdown of Pride Records and Virgo Entertainment finally ends. But not before some unseen actions have their consequences.

Due to the nature of the conflict, none of you can be there to see it, but that doesn't mean it can't be felt. In the morning of the 6th, something cries out to you spiritually - like the voice of a guardian angel, or a haunting ghost. Something, somewhere, is calling on you for aid. Pleading for you to lend it your power.

Whether or not you consciously agree, you'll feel a connection stronger than anything you've felt up till this point, like whatever this creature is is somehow in the room with you, or maybe like you're with it. What happens next depends on your alignment.

► LOVE & HOPE: All at once, characters with these alignments will feel as if they have taken a deep, spiritual blow - much like having someone clasp their hand around your "soul" and attempt to snuff it out. The attack itself will be brutal but brief. It's the after effects that linger, which may be any of the following:

1) Lingering spiritual pain that triggers symptoms akin to a fever in the body. It may also trigger effects such as nosebleeds and other signs of intense stress.

2) Forgetting everything except the memories you've regained.

3) A feeling of being desperately alone. How your character reacts to this feeling can vary, but the most common response will be seeking comfort from anyone nearby, even if you are not usually the sort of person to do that.

These effects will last from anywhere as short at 15 minutes to as long as 5 hours. You can pick more than one of these effects for a character, but try to balance the potency of each if you take more than one, so you aren't completely kicking the shit out of them. Vestiges of these effects can linger throughout the rest of the day, but in a significantly reduced capacity.

► DUTY & PASSION: All at once, characters with these alignments will feel an intense sense of fear and grief, as if they have lost something extremely precious to them. Generally speaking, this will manifest as a sort of panic or desperation to save whatever that thing is - but not being entirely clear on where they have to go or what they have to do to accomplish it. This can very well trigger some brash and irrational actions as they sort out this abrupt feeling of urgency.

1) Soon after the feeling begins, affected characters will feel empathically drawn to the characters suffering from the effects listed for Hope & Love, even if they are not normally the sort to be so concerned for others. This can go as far as having them be aggressively protective to the point that they will conflict with each other over it.

2) Along with that feeling of being drawn to protect them, all characters will feel an intensified kinship with all the other player characters - from both labels. This feeling of kinship won't cause them to know anything more about each other than they did before, but it will cause them to feel like much closer friends than they actually are.

These effects will last from anywhere as short at 15 minutes to as long as 5 hours. After that period has ended, all these empathetic effects will fade off on their own.

Any network posts made in the chaos will be deleted by the execs after the 5 hours period has closed, if not sooner. By the end of the day, Lesedi Santiago and Edward Blanche will announce their return, and bans from leaving HQ will be lifted.

They will not acknowledge the events of the morning unless someone goes to ask them about it.

“We've come too far 
to give up who we are.
So, let's raise the bar 
and our cups to the stars.”

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"Come back with me to the penthouse, Greg." Some of that deep worry broke through in her voice as she looked at him in imploring anger. "Please."

For a few moments more, he still stared, too conflicted to move. She was genuinely worried, he could tell, but the idea of returning somehow felt like a defeat. He had to find them, his wife and his son, he needed to make sure they were safe. But he knew, with just as much clarity, that he couldn't leave this place. He was being foolish to even try.

He couldn't move forward, but he didn't want to move back. So Greg remained, frozen in place.

"I... really..." He clutched at his hair, gulping for breath. "...really screwed this up... didn't I...?" He didn't know what it was, exactly, that he'd gone and ruined, but he was sure he'd made a mess of it, stumbling around like an idiot. "I'm, I'm sorry, I'm being a real nuisance, I thought..." His chest heaved. "I don't know."

Such were her troubled feelings, her overwrought anxiety and alarm, that Meril did something incredible -- she lifted a hand to grip his shoulder. A bit harder than maybe she should have, perhaps. "You are not a nuisance. But you are scaring me."

He was scaring himself, too. The more he tried to understand, the more scrambled up his head became. The only thing that helped ground him was the touch of her hand. He swallowed, throat dry, and looked up at her through dissheveled hair. "All right. I'm sorry." It didn't feel like the right choice, but it was the only one he had.

She drew him along, with gentle but solid pressure on his shoulder as she turned to guide him down the hallway. She'd hoped finding him would quell her inner turmoil, but the fear and alarm only grew within her. Her heart was pounding as it never had before, tension thick in her arteries and the muscles of her neck and shoulders so that her entire body seemed to throb with each beat.

"Tell me," she said, her voice thick and hoarse, "what is in your thoughts right now?"

Defeated and weary, Greg put most of his energy into keeping steady on his feet. Anything more sent his head throbbing and his heart aching. She said he wasn't a nuisance, but he'd clearly gone and caused her worry.

"Not a lot, honestly." His voice had turned quiet. "I pretty much woke up without a clue how I got here, or where this is. I thought if I could find my kid, or my wife, maybe... something would start coming together."

There they were again -- ideas that were impossible to contemplate. How could he wake up with such illusions? The answer...

She took a deep breath, squeezed her eyes briefly shut, and then spoke without looking at him as she led the way. "This is not the first time something like this has happened. You must not remember, but just the other night we had a very -- a very curious incident."

Even if she would not look at him, Greg found himself staring at her. This sort of thing happening often didn't make him feel better. Rather, it madehim wwonder if he was truly ill, beyond the fever.

"What sort of incident are we talking about?"

"You truly must be sick," she murmured, finding herself close to breaking in those words than she was comfortable with. Slapping a layer of iron will over the cracks, she looked back to him with more harshness than she intended. "The other night, we all found ourselves trapped in a basement and behaving and feeling strangely, while we chased around blue wisps that seemed to be a part of us."

It occurs to Greg that this should sound very odd, but he somehow can't help but feel it's about par for the course. "Yikes. I usually try and keep out of this stuff." Which stuff, exactly? "You think this is more of that? Find some blue bits, I'll get fixed...?" He can't deny that he's sick, or that he's missing a part of himself.

"I do not know, Greg." If he could tell from the undercurrent in her voice whether she was angry or despairing, he was doing better than she was. "I do not have answers. All I am sure about is that someone needs to look out for you, and right now that someone is me."

One emotion tends to feed into the other. Greg's too tired to sort out his own, at this point; if he hasn't got any answers, he shouldn't be expecting her to have much, either. "Thank you, Meril." He's not sure what else he can say. "I'm sorry. About... whatever this is."

The apology punctured her emotions, letting them begin to drain out just a bit as exhaustion rushed in to fill their place. "It is not your fault," she said, wishing dearly that she could find someone whose fault it was and deal with them thoroughly.

"Maybe not." The odds of that seemed slim, at least. "But still, you... shouldn't have to deal with this." It's bad enough for him to be such a jumbled mess over whatever's going on. It's not fair that he's dragging people down with him.

"No one decides who 'should' or 'should not' deal with problems. Problems simply exist, and people choose to deal with them as they see fit. You are my bandmate, and..." Friend? That was a word Meril rarely used, and not without great cause or explicit permission. "And I choose to deal with it."

He breathes a deep sigh. "Well. At least I've made some pretty smart friends." It's not a word Greg's ever hesitated to use.

"You are very eager to like." Distracted by worry and the need to get him back to safety, Meril made an error atypical of her -- she spoke without thinking. "I find myself envying that at times."

Silence fell for a moment while Greg took in her comment--perhaps blurted in error, but all the more truthful for it. "I just... get scared of being alone," he admits finally, voice soft. "That's nothing too special to anybody, I don't think."

Meril slowed, the better to look over at him with unusual seriousness -- even for her.

"So long as I am here, you will not be alone if you do not wish to be."

Greg looks back, and nods, slowly.

"That goes both ways, y'know."

"I don't have such worries, Greg, but I thank you. For some reason, more people wish to be my friend than I would have ever suspected..." She faltered, there, as worry stabbed hot and fierce into her stomach again. Some of those friends were Pride, after all, people she could not see.

"Not a shocker. If you take care of all of us this well."

As they're nearing the penthouse, he grows quiet, thinking hard. "I wrote you a song, didn't I?"

"A brief serenade, as part of your obligation to serenade ladies," she said, dismissing any significance to the music even as she blushed very faintly.

He pulls a face. "Am I that sort of person? Do I sing out of obligation?" There's a click of the tongue. "That doesn't sound like me. But my head is pretty screwed up right now."

Meril stopped short, lowering her head as she blushed with even greater embarrassment. Now here she was, implying to Greg that he was some sort of -- monster, something he wasn't. "A self-imposed obligation done for your own entertainment, because it delighted you," she clarified quietly.

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