interstellar5555 | ☆TRACK IV: COME TOO FAR

Entry tags:

☆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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"I'm ready! I'm ready right now." He totally is. All he knows is that he has to get to wherever the sand is - there's nothing indicating what he needs to do once he gets there, so as far as he knows he doesn't need to bring anything with him. Jamie is prepared to walk out the door (or window) just as he is.

He nods and stands back to his full rediculous height. "Then we're getting you the fuck out of here, kid." He cracks his knuckles as he heads towards the front doors. He'll probably be dragged back to the office for this. This is so stupid. He knows better, but he just...he needs to help this kid out.

Jamie trots alongside him, eager and excited for reasons he's not sure of. Maybe once he gets to the beach, he'll be able to get his bearings a little more and figure out what he's supposed to be doing and how he got in this building to begin with.

"I really appreciate this," he says as they make their way toward the exit. "Maybe after we get there and I get my head screwed on a little straighter I can make it up to you somehow. Um - what's your name, again?"

Out of the corner of his eye he notices a couple of burly men in suits watching the two of them as they approach the doors, but this doesn't strike him as odd. Honestly, everything is so weird today that one more weird thing is pretty normal.

It's almost like having an excitable puppy at his heels. That's fine though. It means he's actually doing some damn good for a change. It feels sort of okay to help for once instead of doing what he usually does to make things worse.

"Don't mention it." Really, don't. Because he has a reputation to keep. He'd lose all his bad boy street cred if it was found that he helped this kid go see the ocean. "And it's Xanxus." Yes, that Xanxus.

That Xanxus who is approaching those guards and cracking his knuckles as he goes. He's just as burley and nothing is going to stop him from getting this kid out of the building. Not even if it means seeing the Boss again. "While I keep those gorillas busy, you try the door."

The name means nothing to Jamie, aside from a new piece of information to file away in his brain for later. The guards, on the other hand, are quite familiar with Xanxus and his reputation and therefore dispense with formalities, converging on him at the same time to take a swing at him - one aiming for the face, the other for the kidneys.

Jamie looks horrified at this and, for the first time since finding himself in this mystery building, feels a twinge of fear. Whoever these people are, they don't want him and his new pal getting out. All the more reason to follow Xanxus' suggestion and try to get the door open as quickly as possible.

Skirting the guards and Xanxus, Jamie bolts for the door and throws all his weight against it. It doesn't budge. "I-I think it's stuck!" he yells, voice going high with mounting panic.

Xanxus is utterly not surprised by this. It's pretty much a certain bet that he was going to draw the attention and the beating that was going to follow. Better him than the kid. He's older and he's harder, he can take it. So what if he gets some bruises and some internal bleeding, at least he saves someone else from it. Though it seems really wrong for him to do that. For him to sacrifice himself for anyone else. Whatever.

He's not going down without a fight though. He's going to throw everything he has at these men. This is the man that took four police officers to subdue. Two burly guards about the same size he is are going to have difficulties. He's probably going to knock a few teeth out and maybe break some bones before he's taken down himself.

"Pull hard...mother fucker stay the fuck down...er and calm the fuck do...no you don't you piece of shit...wn." Of course he doesn't know it'd locked in such a way they can't get out and of course he doesn't know when it will be unlocked. All that matters is distracting the guards until the kid gets out.

One of the guards goes down after an elbow to the face, but the other one is giving as good as Xanxus can give, and it's only a matter of time until reinforcements arrive. Jamie tries to pull himself together and get the door open, first shoving at it, then hauling back on the handle with all his body weight.

"It's not working! Is it - are we locked in?" Sure looks that way, and there's no obvious way of getting the door unlocked. His eyes stray to the guard that's currently knocked out on the floor. "M-maybe that guy's got a key or something..."

He gives up on the door for now to start rifling through the fallen man's pockets looking for...anything that looks like it might unlock the doors. Placing himself within grabbing distance of either of the guards is probably the worst idea he's had in like ten minutes, but in his current condition Jamie is kind of oblivious to common sense.

He doesn't doubt he'll be pulled to the ground eventually. It's inevitable, but at least Jamie has proven something he suspected. They are literally locked in. Trapped. Prisoners in their own penthouses. And though it's swanky as fuck, a cage is a cage is a cage.

"Hurry it up." He takes a fist to the face. "Find it and get the hell out of here!" He might have a bloody nose now. And there's a couple more guards and he's going down hard. All he can do is hope Jamie gets the key and gets out. If not, then they can always regroup and try again as soon as their bruises heal.

Jamie more or less pulls the entire contents of the guard's pockets out in his frenzy to find something to unlock the doors, and finally he thinks he's found it: an ID card in the man's jacket pocket.

"Hey I think I - "

Jamie straightens with it - and nearly ends up in the clutches of one of the guards just arriving on the scene. Jamie squeaks and ducks away, pivoting on one heel and bolting back toward the door. He knows he can't fight these guys off, and Xanxus is down - all he has to rely on is the fact that he's quicker and more nimble than the guards.

"Just hang in there for a sec, okay?" he calls back to Xanxus. "I've got it, I got the key, we're getting out of here - " He rambles as he flips the keycard around in his trembling hands, swipes it through the lock beside the doorway, yanks at the door. It opens a crack -

- and then someone is grabbing him bodily around the waist, hauling him away from the door. Jamie utters a wordless squeal of frustration and fear, squirming and kicking in desperation.

XANXUS HALP.

For the love of... Xanxus is trying okay. He's down and everything he is is screaming that it shouldn't be like this. That he should be able to just punch these assholes through the walls but nope. He's on the bottom of what's pretty much a typical pile of guards, keeping his arms pinned and his face beat in. He's not giving in though because Jamie has the door open.

He's not a nice fighter and he will kick a dude in the junk. Just shows a guard the intersections of Steel Toed Boot and Balls. Then there are elbows and more kicking and he sure is swearing in a language he doesn't really understand. Just cussing in Italian on his way back up. "Let him go, you fucks. Let him go or I swear to fucking god I will kill the lot of you."

It probably sounds better in English or whatever common language everyone is using. But he'll wear a guard or two on his way to getting to Jaime and trying to help him, even if they aren't getting out of that door anymore. Freeing the kid from the gorilla is more important at the moment. Sadly though, he's going to probably end up knocked the fuck out for his troubles. Just suckerpunched right in the neck leaving poor Jaime on his own.

Sure enough, there is an elbow to the neck in Xanxus' immediate future, as well as a few more assorted kicks and punches just to make sure he gets the message. Jamie, for all his struggling, isn't nearly as much of a threat - a good hard shake and some manhandling to get his arms twisted behind his back is enough to subdue him - but he gets a fair amount of cursing aimed his way for his part in the troublemaking.

They also take back the keycard he stole fair and square. Jerks.

Then the guard will escort Jamie to one elevator, while Xanxus will get a whole team of them prepped to haul him to his feet and drag him off to another. You're both going to your rooms.

Feel free to fight them some more if you've got it in you, Xan. Otherwise, you go upstairs and think about what you've done.

He gets thrown into his special elevator. But not before yelling out to Jaime. "Which floor are you on!" Because it's not like he's going to just go to his room like a good boy. Hell know. The kid got hurt and it was his fault for not fighting hard enough. So he's going to take it on himself to find Jaime as soon as he can to help patch him up if needed (even if it's Xanxus that looks like he's gone rounds with Mike Tyson).

"What?! How should I know?!" Jamie can barely remember who he is, let alone where he's supposed to be in this stupid building. The guard holding him punches the button to call the elevator, and as the door slides open Jamie panics, pulling his legs off the floor to brace them on either side of the opening. This prompts another torrent of angry profanity from his escort, but Jamie yells over it to Xanxus.

"Where are they taking us? Are we going to die?!"

Because honestly, after the shit he's seen just now, he could believe it.

This kid...This poor fucking kid. He's more messed up than Xanxus thought. Not to even know where he is in the building. Shit. He had to do something. Anything. He struggles more, even though he's pretty much under a pile of guards in the elevator.

"Calm the fuck down kid. If they were going to kill us, they already would have! Deep breaths and look at the button they pushed. What's the number! I swear to fuck I'll come for you as soon as I can. Just hold on until then. I won't let any of these asshats hurt you!" He seriously seemed to mean that too.

Okay. Okay. He can stay calm long enough to do that. And except for some panicked yelping as the guard yanks him around some more, so that he can back into the elevator instead of pushing his captive ahead of him, Jamie manages to remain relatively composed.

"It's augh no please don't hurt me - " Jamie screeches the floor number to Xanxus. Before the elevator door can close, Jamie once again puts his legs to work, hooking them around the edges of the opening so he can call to Xanxus for what might, as far as he knows, be the last time. "Don't do anything stupid, okay? I don't want you get hurt anymore because of mOW geez that's my ELBOW please don't do that - "

Jamie's escort finally manages to get all of him fully inside the elevator, the door slides shut, and he's on his way to the Flashstep penthouse.

He catches the yell just before his own door closes. Shit...He's going to have to take an asston of stairs. And with bruised kidneys. Fucking hell. But he had made a promise. Even as he goes up to Chez Carnie to get tossed there, there's just no question that the second he's left on his own, he's going to be out that door and to the stairwells so he can get to the floor Jamie had yelled.

He might even run the entire way there because he's serious when he makes promises. It's the one and only thing that's good about him. He keeps his word.

It's fortunate that Jamie hasn't quite been dragged to his band's suite just yet, because he would probably be much less successful than Xanxus at escaping his manager and getting away. As it is, the guard who's dragging Jamie along is probably regretting his decision to go this alone because Jamie is making this whole thing ridiculously difficult for him, despite the fact that he's roughly half the guard's size and can't fight worth a damn. Still, by struggling, squirming, kicking and digging in his heels he's making a dent in the guard's progress.

Finally, the man has had enough, and he loosens his grip just enough to spin Jamie to face him and plow a fist into his stomach. Jamie doubles over, and the guard hefts him up under his arm like a sack of potatoes, satisfied that he's going to make it down the corridor without any further trouble.

And then Xanxus shows up. The guard might or might not hear the door to the stairwell open behind him, but Jamie, tucked under the guard's arm, sees him and looks immensely relieved, even if he doesn't have his breath back yet to call out to him.

The door flies open and sadly the first thing Jamie is going to see is the large scarred man leaning on his knees gasping for air. Running up that many fucking stairs sucks major balls. Specially after the beating he'd gotten. But then he sees the kid over the guys shoulder and his eyes narrow. Fuck. He had promised. He had promised that no one would hurt the kid. FUCK!

He puts a finger to his lips and mouths 'shut up'. Then he's trying his best to sneak up behind the dude. It's hard as hell to be stealthy when you're over six foot tall and built of a wall of muscle, despite every bone in his body saying he should be. A smart man might wait for the guard to toss the kid into Flashstep's living room but hell if Xanxus was smart or patient.

So there he goes, tapping the dude on the shoulder. "Oi...You. Put the kid down. Put him down right fucking now."

The guard whirls around at the tap on his shoulder, which makes everything go unpleasantly spinny for Jamie. Even moreso when the guard unceremoniously dumps him on the floor to take a swing at Xanxus. Hey, he put the kid down like you asked, big guy!

Jamie, for his part, has had enough of being the damsel in distress and pushes himself upright, even though his gut still aches and it sort of hurts to breathe. Xanxus is clearly in a lot more pain than he is, and look at how hard he's been fighting! The least Jamie can do is try to make things a little easier for him.

He takes a staggering couple of steps for momentum and then flings himself at the guard's back. He's got strong legs for a kid his size and manages to land pretty much squarely on the guy's back, where he proceeds to wrap his legs around his torso and his arms around the man's throat. "I got him! Now hit him, hit him hard!"

If he wasn't so busy trying to save the kid, he might have given Jaime kudos for finally digging deep and finding some courage to fight back. He had to give it to the kid. He might be small but even the smallest of lions can have huge bites.

"Got it!" He yells. Then he's throwing his full weight and strength into his punch. He hopes the guard will fall forward unconscious and not backwards. He doesn't want to lift a passed out body off the kid. After, he doesn't know. They can't leave. That much is clear, but maybe they could hide out somewhere. He could always take Jamie back to Chez Carnie, but he didn't know how being surrounded by the other crazies of the Carnival would help the boy, but he's already decided he's going to do whatever he can for this kid.

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☆TRACK IV: COME TOO FAR

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