tornheart | AWAKENING

Who: Everyone
When: Midnight, June 6th
Where: Green Valley Orchids
What: It is time.

THE FINAL COUNTDOWN

The subway stop near the orchards was not the type of place that most people liked to be when darkness fell. The orchards near the school were set up almost like a public park, which wasn’t so bad in and of itself, but it’s also the area where over half of the murders happened before the curfew was first put in place. It was a place people didn't go unless absolutely necessary and most had started taking alternate routes to avoid the stop. As one of the first subway stations built in the city, its architecture didn't really mesh with those that came after it. It had jagged corners where the smell of wet earth lingered, making it unpleasant even for those brave enough to continue to use it, and there had even been talk of closing it permanently once routes and nearby stations had been revamped to be better able to take care of the traffic.

Due to this, it only has the bare-bones of a shelter, fallen into disrepair as the curfew was enforced city-wide, and a couple of night guards, (probably already asleep due to the lack of activity they’re expecting), so characters arriving there will be mostly unnoticed. For a place that had such a bad history, most people rightfully avoid it.

For most of them it will be their first meeting with each other. There will be a bit of time to talk before their phones display a zero. Plenty of time to talk about what they suspect and what might just happen...and that horrible vision they had shared. Then there’s that countdown on their phones...ticking away the last few minutes.

ZERO UNTIL MIDNIGHT

The lights go out when the countdown ends. The lack of sound is, for lack of better word, worrying. Very soon, only the light of the phones serves as makeshift flashlights for the small group. But soon, even as words get displayed, a deep male voice echoes, which could be much more worrying.

FINALLY! Ahahahahah! Ahhh, damn does it feel nice to be able to speak and not
just write. Hey lambs, are you all ready?

Considering the choice of words, that might be Luci.

It's time. Can you feel your heartbeats increasing? Your mind about to explode? Questions swirling in your mind? Just make sure you don't go alone. Groups are
best, go all together and you'll never find the answers.

The voice laughs again.

Not that you have much of a choice at this point! Have fun, give them hell, and tell
them I sent you! I'll be taking care of that pesky guard problem for you.
...Let's go for a night stroll."

Communication ends just as abruptly as it started. No time to back down now, as the door where the guards are staying is quickly locked on its own before the subway system itself appears to be taken over by a virus that flashes on every available screen. With a click, the locked doors to the outside are swung open.

A voice in your mind warns you this might be the biggest mistake you'll be making in your entire life...and yet your heart feels like it's going to burst from your body from the joy you feel...

AWAKENING

It begins with a scream nearby. The same noise that they heard during the vision. The trees begin to turn grey as the sounds of hundred of creatures moving can be heard from all sides. The application opens, displaying them all in real time.

The group is surrounded.

By all logic, they should be running, but their legs feel bolted to the ground. They can't move.

The creatures begin to get closer. The trees start to rot nearby.

Breathing begins to increase. The sound of voices and memories quickly flashing before their eyes that might cause some to clutch at their head...exactly the same thing that the man had been doing back in the vision. If they look down at their hands, they will see them fading, see-through.

Yet for them, something is different. Just as the creatures are about to attack, they stop. A vision of the Velvet Room flashes before the eyes of those gathered as the two attendants silently nod. Then a return to reality as a light of color pierces the night from their hearts. A single voice can be heard, drowning out anything they might be hearing.

The time is now. I am thou, thou art I! Your mind is trapped, but I can set your soul free! My other self, will you die, or fight back?

Accept me for who I am! Forge this contract by letting go of your fears! Revolt against this world, and TEAR OUT YOUR HEART!

It laughs and fades, as time quickly returns to this world. There's only a few seconds to react before it all goes to hell. A faded hand to reach into your chest.

The choice is yours. Death...or Awakening.

THE BATTLE IN APPLE GROVE

It’s a feeling unlike they have ever felt. Never have their bodies been so alive. Their minds fill with lost memories, their bodies adapting into tools to defeat the creatures before them.

Defeat...destroy...unlock the skills of your heart and show them what it means
to cross you."

The voice is encouraging, almost. To those with navigator skills, the voice speaks up once more as well.

Lead them into battle. Hone their skills into true annihilation!"

It’s time to reclaim the night.

[OOC: For the purpose of this battle, the shadows all have 1HP and are strong against nothing. That means any attack will be able to kill them, weapons and guns included. For this log only, CHARACTERS WILL NOT BE ABLE TO COMBINE SPELLS, as knowledge of this will be unlocked later on. There are about a HUNDRED shadows to be defeated, so there are as many needed for your characters to enjoy killing off. You are free to NPC them and to create situations and close calls.

An OOC PLANNING POST can be used to ask questions or to form teams.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Gabe is lost, and Guts is forfeit, having surrendered himself to something which Solange had heard whispers of in the text which had been sent to him not long before their arrival—"but I don't care, it's like I'm used to this"—and havoc had been let loose upon them not in the form of Shadow, but in remembrance. In the way tears had streaked down Sion's cheeks when Solange (what could have been) diminished, and the Hero King had stepped forward, inhuman in precisely all the ways needed to calm the hellhound which Guts had become.

"Focalor," Sion calls, and suddenly the scene shifts, a distraction coming into play during battle. Where Guts lunges in for the attack, Sion evades seamlessly as the apple grove and the sound of combat fades away, replaced by the warmth of sunlight and the rolling hills of meadowland, all darkness gone and leaving only the tranquility of a warm, early summer's day.

"My friend..." Sion pins Guts beneath a pervasive, too-fathomless stare. Would the man attack again? Would frenzy consume him? "Where have you gone? This is not you."

As far as Guts is concerned, Gabe was nothing more then a facade. Strip away everything he is, what drove him, what he cared about, and you go something that simply could not exist when reconciled with a lifetime of suffering. Gabe, Gabriel, whatever poor fuck of a kid that was, was dead. He was never coming back. In an aimless bit of thought, he wonders if he could be called his murderer. He finds he's killed enough people in his life to not care.

To him, everything is nothing but gnashing teeth and familiar white noise. His body move to survive, even as his mind quiets. It's easy, so easy, to forget himself in that.

And then the scene changes and Gut's staggers backward, single hand gripping his sword. A single grey eye darts up to meet Sions face and- white hair, impossible effeminate, beautiful, the eyes are wrong but he knows that look-

Its meant to calm, but Sion has misjudged. Its not his fault really, he just looks quite a bit like someone Guts used to know.

"Griffith." His voice is horse, and theres a different intonation from the way Gabe speaks. More rough, like every word has to be dragged out of him. "You. You know why."

His eye is impossibly wide and his face splits open in a mix between a snarl and a smile. "Why are you looking at me like that. Don't you care. Why-" Something snaps. "STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT!"

The red eyed hound behind him springs to life, snapping its jaws in a wave of dark energy as Gut's readies a charge.

Had it been a miscalculation, removing Guts from the battle at hand? Perhaps. With the Shadows cloaked from sight by way of Focalor's distraction—swaths of tall, golden-touched grasses bending along with the blossoms of flowers in the breeze—there is but one thing alone which Guts might turn his anger toward, and that is Sion himself. Sion, whose King's robes rustle as they are caught in the scenario's capricious, playful wind, his expression beautiful but stagnant, unchanging until the moment when the creature at the other man's back snaps its jaws, bares a mouthful of gnashing teeth, and Sion--...

Allows for his eyes to fall closed ("Why are you looking at me like that?"), lashes fanning silver against the curve of his cheek in the instant when Guts drops into a crouch, for all intents and purposes readying to pitch himself forward in attack.

"I am sorry, my friend, but I am not him." Not Griffith, the one whose name fell from Guts' lips with only the utmost vehemence—what had that person, had Griffith done to inspire such tempestuous emotion? as surely as Guts had been smiling, so too had the grin boasted a vicious edge, accusatory and defensive at once—leaving Sion swept up and away in the feel of it. "I care for you, and that is why--..."

Somehow, it is Focalor who guides Sion's hand, the Hero King's fingertips disappearing for the second time into the depths of his own chest, beyond the ribcage and deeper than the heart, into the very void where that monster once slept to retrieve a a slender blade of black and gold, feathers forming the crossguard in artful arabesques as the sword manifests, the King's eyes opening once more:

"...I'll not let you mistake me for another again! It is Sion Astal, Hero King of Roland Empire that you face now!" Blade? Held to guard, back left. "He who sundered the darkness of old, and he who moves now not only to properly greet a friend, but..."

Without missing a beat, Sion surges forward himself, throwing his weight into the motion.

"...to knock some sense into the fool, as well!"

In battle, Gut's could normally be counted upon to not pay attention to much of anything that wasn't on the down end of his sword. Some people (Casca comes to mind first) would call it mindless brutality but it was that laser focus that let him fight so effectivly.

And Sion now had the lovely pleasure of having that murderous focus upon him.

"Shut up." Words, words meaningless, useless. There's nothing Griffith can say that would change this. He rushes forward unheeding. His blade is deflected by Sion's sword but he barrels through, trying to push the slimmer man over. If he is hurt, so what. He lost an arm to his friend. He lost an eye. He lost his dearest friends and the only person he ever thinks he ever managed to love. He lost his whole life. What more could Griffith even do.

"Shut up shut up shut up! You and your fucking kingdom! What right did you have! What right!!"

"I have every right to see you returned to your senses!" Where he'd parried Guts' greatsword, edge to edge and steel singing against steel, the other man does not stall; there is no pause given, no thought spared to raising the greatsword for a riposte blow. Guts, who certainly has no need to wield a blade at all in order to thoroughly dismantle an opponent, only continues to blitzkrieg forward, heedless of all else, creating an opening which Sion had hoped to capitalize upon ever since the moment he'd been aware that he commanded the whole of the other man's attention.

Guts, who could only see Griffith where Sion himself stood, cared only for the sight before him and nothing for guarding his own back, seeming to forget their Persona entirely. Forgetting Focalor, whose affinity allows for Sion to cast kouha, the spell manifest as a crest of light which will strike the other man (the King had promised, after all, to knock some sense into a certain fool!) as surely as Guts will topple Sion himself.

(Sacrifices are necessary, at times, to benefit the whole.)

"Wake up, Gabriel Brent! Do not let your past swallow you whole!"

There is a voice, it is high pitched and musical and familar in ways that ring true in both lives, light and airy and free. Gabe wishes it would stop. Guts want to kill it. These desires are not contradictory.

He screams loud and raw instead, slashing, trying to break through, blocking it out, blocking everything out.

Blinding light shoots up and dashes him to the ground, the red-eyed wolf thing at his back screeching and wailing. But as he lies dazed on the ground, his new memories for the moment forgotten, a little bit of Gabes life manages to dribble through.

Sol is yelling at him again, and it is very irritating.

AWAKENING

3...ISH...

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hgh this is so late im so sorry i was sick