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etrayalogs2024-09-13 07:54 am
etrayamods) wrote in etrayalogs2024-09-13 07:54 am
Entry tags:
- !mission log,
- baldurs gate: shadowheart,
- dimension 20: fabian seacaster,
- dimension 20: gorgug thistlespring,
- dimension 20: riz gukgak,
- mcu: loki,
- my hero academia: izuku midoriya,
- supernatural: dean winchester,
- ✘ blade of the immortal: asano rin,
- ✘ final fantasy vii | aerith gainsboroug,
- ✘ fullmetal alchemist: edward elric,
- ✘ mcu | ava starr,
- ✘ mcu: yelena belova,
- ✘ star wars | padmé amidala,
- ✘ worm: amy dallon,
- ✘ worm: francis krouse
MISSION 005 (part 1)
WHO: Everyone!
WHEN: September 13th-September 27th
WHERE: Throughout Etraya
WHAT: Mission Log!
NOTES\WARNINGS: Horror elements, including fear-inducing landscapes, distorted environments, unseen predators, mental/emotional distress, potential body horror, corruption, possession, brainwashing, and compulsion.
WHEN: September 13th-September 27th
WHERE: Throughout Etraya
WHAT: Mission Log!
NOTES\WARNINGS: Horror elements, including fear-inducing landscapes, distorted environments, unseen predators, mental/emotional distress, potential body horror, corruption, possession, brainwashing, and compulsion.
 ⏵ reality bends ⏴ A strange anomaly has overtaken Etraya. The skies, once familiar, now shift unpredictably, cycling through hues of unnatural colors as an eerie hum fills the air. Tension crackles beneath the surface, leaving an unsettling heaviness across the land. Aurora’s mission announcement offers little clarity—more cryptic than comforting—and she remains unavailable for further explanation. Reality begins to warp, twisting Etraya into a surreal, haunting reflection of its former self. The hospital deteriorates into a decaying structure, its halls haunted by phantom patients, endless corridors leading to nowhere. Rooms morph into massive white padded cells where characters may find themselves imprisoned, alone with spectral figures who whisper of treatments yet to come. Some of these apparitions seek the attention of those roaming the hospital, warning them of a dire fate: failure in this mission means not just the death of their worlds, but their souls becoming trapped in this fractured reality, far from home, forever. The forest transforms into a dark and twisted labyrinth. The trees close in, their branches twisting unnaturally as unseen predators howl from the shadows. Narrow pathways wind through the maze, and while some may navigate unscathed, others will be violently pulled into the depths by horrors lurking just out of sight. Within this twisted forest, a small cottage appears, its walls echoing eerie whispers: "little scorpion," "selfish bitch," and "by the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes." The rivers, usually calm, have become a dangerous, volatile force. Their waters churn violently, and inky black tendrils rise from the depths, lashing out at anyone who strays too close. These dark appendages drag their victims beneath the surface, where those who resist must battle their way to freedom. But those who surrender will be drawn into an otherworldly dome beneath the water, surrounded by strange fish, far from where they should be. Inside, they will find an eerie stillness, but their earpieces still allow contact with the world above. A large mirror dominates the dome, offering an uncertain way back.  ⏵ shadowy haunts ⏴ Those inside the zones come face to face with an echo of fear - a personalized manifestation of what scares them most. It could be an oppressive figure from their past, or something more abstract, such as the feeling of failure, or isolation. These echoes are relentless, feeding off their weaknesses and digging into what makes them most vulnerable. The Im'mari hungers, and preying on characters' weaknesses appears to be its chosen way of feeding itself. While characters may become stuck in their nightmares by themselves, some of these nightmares are shared between companions. Characters may become trapped within their friends' fears, or strangers'. However, the emotional distress felt by the individual the nightmare belongs to will affect everyone within the nightmare. An emotional prison built to torment those whom it belongs to, these echoes of fears may test the bond between companions, forcing them to face truths they may have rather avoided touching on. Earpieces will still be functional and may prove to be crucial in assisting characters when it comes to escaping their nightmares.  ⏵ contamination ⏴ Im'mari may be weaker than before, but it is slowly regaining power, and the creature’s influence is spreading. It infects the wolves, the plants, and even the very essence of Vanessa Ives (and in addition, Aelwyn Abernant), feeding off the deep-seated fears of those around it. Im'mari thrives in the shadows of fear and darkness, growing stronger with every moment of doubt, pain, and despair. Its presence lingers beyond the edges of awareness, whispering to its victims, urging them to succumb. Through Vanessa and those she has infected, Im'mari extends its reach, turning once-familiar faces into agents of fear, pushing their companions to the brink. For those who fall under its sway, the transformation is slow, at first nearly undetectable. Perhaps a friend acts off, says something out of character, or expresses sudden, unprovoked anger. But as Im'mari’s power grows, so does the darkness in its agents, until they are no longer themselves—twisted into something monstrous, compelled to spread fear and destruction. Welcome to your nightmares. We hope you have a pleasant stay. For all questions relating to this mission, please refer to the plotting post. We will be utilizing this post throughout the mission - including when we process the next round of applications, so please keep an eye out for new comments! All other questions can be directed to the FAQ. |
cw: imprisonment, child abuse and exploitation, grief, suicide, brief description of suicide attempt
Because when it clicks, it clicks like a trigger, and he doesn't know how anyone could fucking live like this.
Reggie, his brain supplies, Reggie and Taylor. Her name used to be Sarah, but Sarah couldn't see it coming. Lisa could see it coming and she still couldn't stop it. And no one cares, because Taylor died for them, and they'd rather be alive than have her be alive, and everyone but you would rather she was dead and they weren't. And they don't care how much you loved her, and they don't say her name like you said it, and you burned everything in you like a star going out just so you could watch her die the way you knew would kill you.
And the answer to her question, at first, in the slide of unvibrated currents in the vent and the stale disinfectant in the air and the hum of fluorescent lights like a hospital, like a morgue, like police custody, is: I don't fucking know.
Krouse hunches over, his head hanging. ]
I keep trying to remember how to hate you.
[ He says, and he's thinking, you were fifteen. You were fifteen and you were sixteen and you were seventeen and how were you supposed to fucking know. And but you know that already. And you'll never stop thinking you should have known anyway. ]
I hated you. I hated you so fucking much. I spent every day in my first goddamn cell hating you.
[ His face is wet. He reaches up behind his head and unfastens his mask, peels it off his face with a slight sucking pop, and puts it in his lap. He rubs his nose on his sleeve like a little fucking kid. ]
Because I thought you pulled it off, and I didn't. I thought you - I thought you figured it out. You got out.
[ If they're both willing to keep pretending, the sound he makes is still like a laugh. ]
And I hated her because she was better than me. [ Lisa knows which her. ] Better leader. Better person. Better at - fuck. Long list.
[ He folds his sleeve over his hand and rubs his eyes, one at a time. ]
I don't know what we're supposed to fucking do.
[ He plants his hands beside him and draws his legs up, feet flat on the ground. He pushes forward, up, catching his mask by the eyeholes so it doesn't clatter off his lap on his way off the floor. ]
But I think I know what we're going to do. [ He tells her, quietly. A low battery alarm beeps. ] Unless you've decided you want to prove me right about something, for fucking once, so, hey. Be my guest. Give up. We can be cellblock neighbours. Just like old times.
[ And, quiet shading into something else: ] Come on.
cw: imprisonment, child abuse and exploitation, grief, depersonalization
Nobody talks to Tattletale like that. The people who don't hate Tattletale need something from her, and even those groups aren't mutually exclusive. Lisa is an acquaintance, a colleague, and once in a while, a friend. But she's an older friend - an older sibling, never a younger, and never an equal. Good for a shopping trip or a sleepover, but not much else. And Sarah is dead.
Krouse talks to the person in the cot like he understands her. Her power only confirms it, the inferences it draws matching up almost precisely with the words he's saying.
The body in the cot takes of her mask. She rises, strides over to the computer, and looks in the reflection. An exhausted, half-alive girl stares back at her, but this one doesn't wear a white dress. She has a green eyes, and freckles, and a face that changes when she puts her hair up. ]
It's easy to hate me.
[ The girl in the screen says about Tattletale. Laughing, like she's told a joke. But it's not even funny, because she's just riffing on someone else's material. ]
Anyone can do it, you fuck-up. [ It sounds wrong. It might be the gentlest anyone has ever called someone a fuck-up. ] You remember that I killed your girlfriend, and I separated you from your team, and if that's not enough, I destroyed a hundred other relationships too, and then when everyone else was too broken to do anything about it, I took over the city.
[ The problem is, the girl in the screen is lying. That's what Tattletale did, and she isn't -
It's ugly, that reflection. Ugly and hideous and confusing, and her power keeps saying self, self, self, and she doesn't know what to call it, but she knows she wants it to stop.
The next thing Krouse will hear is the crash and crumple of breaking glass. ]
Are you trying to manipulate me, Krouse?
[ The smile she says it with doesn't match the noise. ]
I want it on the record that I'm not doing this for Madison, Wisconsin's seventh-best Ransack player.
Someone's going to come get us in a few minutes. I can't imagine the boss liking all this property damage. [ A scissor-slash smile, just for herself. ] Computers are expensive.
[ Then, quieter: ]
I hated you because I thought you got out, too.
cw: imprisonment, child abuse and exploitation, grief
Wow.
[ He says, dry as desiccated skin over bone. A low battery alarm beeps. He goes over to the chair, examining it, and plants a boot on the bent leg before he hauls on the back, experimenting with leverage. ]
You really do love giving yourself credit you don't fucking deserve.
I killed my girlfriend.
[ He's never been able to say it like that. He's never been able to almost, almost keep his voice level. It doesn't sound any better. He opens a pouch on his belt and catches a small lead weight meant for fishing lure between index finger and thumb, swaps it for a screw in the chair. ]
I broke up my team, too. You were there. And if you're still taking responsibility for that goddamn shithole you people call a city, you're unbelievably up your own ass. You were just the last ones left standing after everyone else fucked up trying to take it. Everyone knows a technical win due to disqualification is bullshit.
And manipulate you? You'd break your own legs to skip walking to water if someone asked you to drink. Can't even try reverse psychology. You have the most annoying goddamn power, you know that? Well. Of course you do. That's your whole gimmick.
[ The leg of the chair comes free with a shriek. Krouse tosses the rest aside with a fresh clatter, stoops to pick up the bent leg, puts it on the table. A low battery alarm beeps. He doesn't have anything in mind for what he might do with it yet. It's just handy to have more discrete moving pieces.
Seventh-best, she says. Of course she knows the number. It was probably written all over them the entire goddamn time. That gaping hole like an empty tooth socket, raw and twitching, from a rotten molar ripped loose. ]
So, no. I don't think you're doing anything for the fourth-best Ransack player from Madison, Wisconsin. I think you're doing it for the same fucking reason you do anything.
[ The world's the only thing Lisa had left to her. What else is she going to do?
He rubs his sleeve over his face, the inside of his mask. He puts it back on, closing the fastening with a whisper of a click. The cell is so many feet by so many feet. Transparent front. Absence of cover. Not much to work with. That's workable. He's been worse off. ]
And be real, Lisa. Do you think I'd ever get that fucking lucky?
[ There's no way out. There's never been a way out. He can't even die right. There's something thrumming in him that's like the opposite of hope. Not despair, or resignation, or horror. It's just energy. A hum. Potential. ]
When they show up, how are you going to play it? [ He asks, facing the front of the cell, hands full of a slight, ready tremor. ] Smash and bolt isn't your style. So, what else?
cw: imprisonment, child abuse and exploitation, grief
At least the crack about breaking her legs, while not exactly funny, doesn't cut quite as close. It's a good assessment about her act. Ranking himself as the fourth-best gamer in Madison is a good assessment of his.
Tattletale never took off her mask, so she doesn't reach under it to wipe her eyes. She does smile, though, and lets it stay there. The paint she wears under the mask has probably run, but she doesn't really care. He's seen worse. ]
You got to go somewhere else. I'm always - [ An inhale, an exhale. Both are too shaky. ] - I'm always right here.
[ That's not even true. She's here most of the time. But sometimes, she's standing in a doorway, Panacea huddled over the wreckage of Lisa' entire life. A dilated pupil peers at her through a tangled mess of black hair, and Lisa doesn't even scream. She can't scream. There's something in her throat, and it's never worked its way out.
There are two doors in the cell. The door that smells, and the door that doesn't. She walks to the door that smells, leans her forehead against it, and breathes. She doesn't claw at the handle. She doesn't jiggle the lock. Instead, she lays a hand against the flat of the door, gently, like closing someone's eyes one last time.
When she picks her head up, the door is gone, and that's all the information Tattletale needs. ]
I'm not going to play it. We can't. This isn't something we can win through force or trickery, unfortunately. And you know how big of a believer I am in trickery.
[ His name is Trickster. It's funny. She turns towards the door, rocks back and forth on her heels. It's almost showtime. ]
Coil is going to chew me out. He's going to threaten to make me his pet. He's going to make me small, and kick me while I'm down, and - and I'm not going to be able to stop him.
And that's going to be okay. It's like you said. She's dead.
[ There's nothing to be afraid of anymore. ]
cw: imprisonment, child abuse and exploitation, grief
Trickery. It is funny. It's funny Lisa thinks she's the one who stayed stuck, when Krouse always thought it was the other way around.
He's spent a long time telling himself the difference between them is that Lisa wanted to be here. That she'd had a choice he didn't have. But really, how much could that have ever been true, if he'd let himself think it all the way through? Power like she has, you don't get to walk away. It's claw yourself a niche somewhere in the dark guts of the lifestyle, or - end up someone's pet.
He really needs a fucking cigarette. His fingers twitch at his sides as his mind works, catching threads, pulling on as much nothing as he has up his sleeves. ]
I always fucking hated how he talked to me.
[ He says it idly, like he's said it to anyone before instead of keeping it locked and shuttered away. It was probably obvious. No one appreciates being talked to like that. ]
It wasn't the threats. That's how it is. I get that. It was how he always acted like you should be grateful for the shit he made you eat.
[ She's dead. He can't touch that open wound, can't dig his fingers into it any deeper or try to press it shut. She's dead. Nothing matters. He walks up to the plexiglass, laying a hand flat on it. The words over his cot reflect, ghostly and hovering, in the transparent surface. ]
So we can't win. [ He allows, accepting, for now, that this is an informed call. ] Can we try? You know. For the hell of it. I mean, how much worse could it get?
[ That's a real joke. A real question, even. He's assuming: infinitely. He's assuming: worse than you can fucking imagine, you moron. ]
cw: imprisonment, child abuse and exploitation, grief, threats
When Krouse tries for empathy, she can't know exactly how much he's worked out. Or, rather, she could, but she doesn't run through the information she knows Krouse has, and allow her power to offer the full range of logical extrapolations available from that particular dataset.
It doesn't matter. If he was in that store, he would have let it happen too. ]
I don't know about you, but I had a lot to be grateful for. He gave me an awfully long leash.
[ It's not I hated it too. But it's close. ]
You, he'd kill, but only after he killed her first. [ Order of operations. Echidna would be too enraged if he went first. ] Me? Well, you saw how he kept me, right at the end. I don't need my arms or legs to be useful to him, and I only sometimes need my eyes, mouth, and ears.
[ It's: please understand. ]
But odds are, we'd just end up right back in here. So lay it on me, and don't make me guess, because that's annoying for me, and embarrassing for you. What do you have in mind?
cw: imprisonment, child abuse and exploitation, grief, threats
He doesn't have anything in mind. Not for tapping the plexiglass, which tells him nothing but how hard it is under his knuckles, so probably not plexiglass at all, or that the way it sounds itches at a memory he can't place. Not for the next move. But he does have something to say while he thinks, so there's that. ]
I don't think he could've killed her.
[ If they're talking about: here's what I thought I had to lose. ]
I thought he could. But - [ he almost says we, doesn't ] - I didn't know what it'd take, back then.
[ Then he knows what he's going to say, and he fucking hates it. He really does, even after everything else. Because this is something he does for people he wants to protect, and whatever else Lisa is, she's not that.
But she's got arms and legs, still. So does he, he guesses. But it's not the same thing. ]
This isn't real. [ Obvious, basic premise, but: he has to keep remembering. ] So we have asymmetrical info, right? We know the future. He doesn't. We could go back in there and say...we say you were baiting me. Seeing if I'd sit on things he needed to know until it was convenient for me, right? That you were suspicious I was going to approach you for an out from my deal with him, so you let me think I was picking up threads. Fed me some bullshit precog insight, or something. I don't know.
And before you tell me it's a shitty plan, yeah, it's a fucking shitty plan. I genuinely have no idea how you pulled off keeping all of that to yourself, so I don't fucking know how I'm supposed to have figured it out in this scenario, but the point is, spin it on me. He expects me to fuck up. He expects you to play games.
[ So stick to their relative weaknesses. Be disappointing in the expected way. It really is a fucking shitty plan, but that's a first draft for you. ]
Or he brings us back in there and just shoots us.
[ Krouse shrugs, unseen. ]
cw: imprisonment, child abuse and exploitation, grief, threats
[ Said quietly, almost - but not quite - too quiet for Krouse to hear. Coil never let Lisa tell them the truth. Not the whole truth, at least. Noelle would have torn herself free from that cage a hell of a lot sooner if Lisa had.
This is the closest she'll get to admitting that to Krouse. It doesn't feel like a relief. Confessions never do.
And then they're back to planning, and that's for the best. That's something both of them can do without their pesky history getting in the way.
It's another patented Shitty Krouse Idea, but there's nuggets of usefulness in there all the same. It's not real. Asymmetrical info. He expects Krouse to fuck up, and he expects Tattletale to play games.
It's the complete opposite of what they did last time. It essentially involves Krouse to put himself in the line of fire for Lisa's sake, to hand over control of the entire enterprise to Tattletale, a person who's supposed to hate his guts. Who probably still does. It sounds terrifying. Almost as terrifying as being back here in the first place.
There's no way to win. Her power has already given her that. But Echo loves their teamwork exercises, and - oh.
She groans, clearly and loudly annoyed. ]
Fuck. It is an after-school special. Oh, fuck me. And fuck you, Echo, because this isn't even funny.
It's not going to be your fault because I fed you some bullshit insight. It's not going to be my fault because - oh, I don't know, because you found another lead to get home, so you were trying to abort the mission and scram.
We're both scared of the old boss, so we're both supposed to cover for each other. That's how corny it is.
cw: imprisonment, child abuse and exploitation, grief, threats
Isn't that fucking heartwarming.
[ Heartwarming, and never could have happened. Not with things the way they played out. Krouse had his chance to throw himself on the Undersiders' side, but it just never worked out that way for a series of reasons that all made sense at the time. Split second gut calls made under pressure, two teams who never quite found synergy, misunderstandings and miscommunication and outright lying fucking up any groundwork of cooperation they could have figured out.
The Undersiders fucked them over. Krouse can admit, in this moment, through the micro-beats of silence that Lisa can decode on the other side of the wall, that the Travelers fucked them over too.
It couldn't have been any different. Not even because of fate, or chance, or unfortunate circumstances. It couldn't have been any different because Krouse couldn't have been any different then.
So all this is really banking on is the improbable possibility that Krouse could be any goddamn different now. ]
Okay. Sure. I've heard worse ideas. [ He gives just enough time to start to seem like Lisa can get a bit in, then snatches it back: ] Mostly from myself.
But they do love that power of friendship gimmick here, don't they? Fuck. Did you watch the Care Bears when you were a kid? Because I think we're doing the plot of one of the movies.