Sunday morning was a half-clouded sky and subtle chill, a strange reversal of the dreary weather Crimen Culpae 1 had been experiencing all month. The Director was down in the containment chambers that day with Fredric and Rosa, overseeing tests of a shifter mage whose abilities had great potential and whose attitude warranted heavy sedation.
At the moment, Hector was on standby with an enlarged Miranda blocking the exit, in case the student somehow escaped the 13 suppression cuffs they had strapped to his arms and legs. Genevieve and Ethan stood nearby as well, one ready to contain and the other ready to detonate within the field.
They were ready this time, unlike with Rain, and when the silver anklet clasped tightly around the boy's dark ankle, the young girl snapped a blue field around the bed on which they had the unfortunate student shackled, a ball of light condensing in Ethan's hand as well.
There was no need for fear that they would lose the student this time, however. The enhancement provided by the anklet dispersed an intangible green trail of something through the air and the wisping bits of power drifted through the force field unhindered, sliding further upward and into the ceiling.
It was Rosa who squinted after the shimmering trails suspiciously, activating her power and finding that, much to her horror, the spells had gravitated to the strongest of the students at the school--or, rather, the strongest potentially, drawn to that specter of power that made them so special in the first place.
Lawrence became a golden retriever.
Grant, a blue koala.
Chris, a white cow.
Callan, a green kangaroo.
Kusari, a red python.
Marcus, a tawny lynx.
Siena, a bird of paradise.
Christmas, a blond chinchilla.
Brent, a poofy Pomeranian.
Sophia, a brown owl.
Lily, a yellow bluejay.
Emma, a purple frog.
Sander, a large bloodhound.
Zoe, an angry giraffe.
Hazel, a pink goat.
Angel, a crow.
Allison, a large bat.
Ernie, a hairless mole rat.
Gregory, a long-haired Dachshund.
"Freddy, I think we're, uh, gonna need to put them somewhere safe for a while--the new kids."
"No. Please. You're joking." The taller man sighed and called for the guards, knowing full well Rosa wasn't joking.
Before long, all the new animals were gathered at Ground Zero, most of them cuffless and under heavy watch.
"You guys can do what you want around here, and we have some food laid out nearby, but until we can get those cuffs back on you, don't try leaving Ground Zero!" Fredric announced to the group of unhappy animals. Catching some of the birds had been easy enough with large nets, but the giraffe had really given them some trouble.
Not to mention they still had their powers despite their new forms and a few were starting to vaguely follow animal instincts, sniffing at the ground and pawing aggressively at the loose bits of concrete.
He thought he remembered Rosa saying there was--at most--a 24-hour limit. Honestly, he hoped they'd turn back to normal way, way before then.
The paper bounced harmlessly off Fredric's shoulder. Ms. Lachance had so far been very vocal about her opinions concerning the match. Even amidst Rosa's panicked shouts and his many attempts to assuage her nerves, this fact hadn't escaped him. Muttering something into his phone, Fredric lowered the device and turned to face the fuming young star with his usual smile.
"Ms. Lachance," he said, the composure in his voice a betrayal of the irritation bubbling underneath. "At least have some consideration for the trees if you don't care to follow instructions." He remained where he stood, speaking loud enough for everyone to hear without matching her volume. "I suggest you refrain from raising your voice and throwing things at the staff if you have a disagreement. I've seen more maturity from Ms. Churchill. I'm sure you're used to being pampered, but I'm afraid we don't have the time nor resources to entertain your every whim today."
"Those who would like to follow instructions, please hand me your evaluation sheets." The smile dissipated into a exhausted scowl before he turned back to the screens.
One of the nearby guards tensed when Grant's chain appeared, but when nothing untoward occurred, the man slowly relaxed.
Uncaring, Fredric jogged the stack of evaluation forms against the desk, slapping a Post-It of concerns and considerations on top of the sheets before tucking them into the clasp of his clipboard. With a real healer on hand, the Director certainly didn't care about pulling her punches, that was for sure, and he'd have to go over the footage with her and a few network-technicians-turned-temporary-video-editors later to pull the most compelling parts. Hiring an outside team to professionally splice and produce the footage was still out of the question for now, at least until later.
Too much risk that they'd spill the information, which had to be kept under wraps in case the Director's attempts to cinch herself an officially sanctioned team fell through. And there were so many ways for it to fall through, especially considering the slow decay of Shane's team over the past two years.
"All right, let's get you guys out of here," he nodded to the guards, who gathered up the students once more.
In the other observation room, Rosa checked her phone for a text message and did the same, relieved that no one had died and nothing further had occurred. The Director could request Benediction, but with a reason as small as "a student died," Rosa doubted the man would have come, even if the Department of Defense had cleared his deployment.
Both rooms of students were escorted outside, the groggier kids woken up and nudged at gunpoint into the chilly night air. The two groups converged at the building's main entrance where more guards than usual were present, most of them arriving to switch shifts.
Rain's eyes roamed the group as they walked. Though he would've liked to spend more time with his new roommate, perhaps it would be more productive to give him some space. They'd have plenty of time to theirselves afterwards. Instead, Rain looked to the participants of the second game, most of whom were sporting hospital clothes. One particularly dejected looking fellow caught his attention. Rain recognised him as one of the more violent players from the game. The boy had brutalised that poor girl's face. But he'd also shielded a little girl from a three-storey fall. How intriguing. A brief skim through the folder revealed his name as Ernest.
"You were quite savage out there," the pink-haired youth sidled up to the Aberration.
"Huh?" the other boy snapped out of his thoughts and turned to find Rain's intent gaze fixed on him. He immediately reverted to a more cheery vibe, "Oh, the eye thing? That was a dumb move. Got tazed for all that trouble and it didn't even help us win."
"That's interesting," Rain touched his chin, as if lost in thought. Ernest had seemed more occupied with getting tazed than the fact that he'd brutally stabbed a table leg into someone's face. That sudden change in attitude was strange too, "You're not really affected by it, are you?"
The dark haired boy raised an eyebrow. "Are you trying to make me feel sorry for it? I already told the girl I was."
"No, I was curious!" Rain giggled lightly, "I wasn't expecting to see such a dramatic game when I woke up today."
"Yeah?" Ernest seemed to have gotten into the groove of conversation now, smiling effortlessly, "I didn't think I'd fall from a collapsed building today. Or stab someone's eye out. East has a habit of surprising its Subnaturals, I guess. Not in the good way."
"Sounds like you have quite the grudge."
"Yeah, well, getting shoved into a 9am class and tazed has a habit of doing that to you."
Another laugh from the effeminate boy. "Well, I hope our time here gets a little better," he smiled, extending a hand, "My name is Rain."
"Ernest. But everyone calls me Ernie. Awesome to meet you."
As they shook hands, Ernie's gaze fell past Rain's lithe fingers and towards his feet. One standard suppression cuff with a silver modified cuff resting above it, both on the same leg.
"Dang. They clamped you with double cuffs, huh?" Ernie remarked at Rain's left foot. The other boy followed his line of sight.
"Oh, yes. I found both of them on me when I woke up," Rain replied, suddenly conscious about the weight of the two limiters, "I'm not quite sure what the silver one does but I'm guessing that it's on me because of my power."
"Power?" Ernie quirked an eyebrow, "Must be pretty spectacular to get you a second cuff. What's your thing?"
"Intangibility."
"What now?"
Rain let out a delicate giggle.
"It means that I can go through things. Well, it only works when I hold my breath."
"Ohh, that's why you got the second one. Makes sense. Wouldn't want you setting off alarms and going through a wall every time you sneezed, yeah? Your prison break would only last like two seconds!"
"I suppose so," Rain laughed and twirled his hair idly, "Honestly, I don't think I'd get very far, even if I managed to get these two off."
"C'mon, have some faith in yourself!" Ernie nudged his companion lightly. His grin seemed to hold the barest amount slyness now, "I bet you'd have the best chance out of all of us. If you really wanted to... you know..." Ernie eyed the guards as he uttered the last part.
"Hmm, you may have a point there," Rain entertained the boy's idea with a smile. Ernie's suggestions did hold some validity to them. Ah, what was he thinking? Rain dismissed the creeping thoughts with a slight huff. This was the sort of talk that would get him shot again. Or worse. Even so, the idea of freedom was too alluring to wave off so abruptly.
Ernie kept his eye on the pink-haired teen, smirking as he watch his verbal nudges come to fruition. It was great how he could say stupid things and have people take it seriously. Would this girl be dumb enough to try it though? Ernie hoped not. He didn't want that sort of nonsense tripping his guilt. Still, intangibility was a neat power. It'd be rad if he could call in some favors with it down the line. This called for a demonstration.
"Show me."
"Pardon?" Rain raised an eyebrow in confusion.
"Show me your power!" Ernie chirped again, more insistent this time, "You can't just leave me hanging after telling me something so cool. I wanna see what you can do!"
Rain blinked. "O-oh, of course!" He handed his folder and map to Ernie, "Hold my things, would you?"
"Yeah, for sure. C'mon, show me something good!"
The pink-haired boy quickened his pace to stride up to a telephone pole. He was eager to impress. Finally, someone here who was actually eager to learn about him, instead of shutting themselves off behind the cover of a book. Making sure that Ernie had a clear view, Rain clamped his mouth shut and swung his left leg at the fixture. But something shuddered through the boy as he activated his power. A jolt, a wave, a quake? Rain couldn't find the exact word to define it. But something happened. Something that surged from the Hephaestus-crafted silver cuff on his ankle, cascading through his whole body. It was like being electrocuted, but in the way that made him more awake and lighter than he'd ever been before. His leg passed cleanly though the pole. Nothing had changed there.
Then it all came apart so quickly. An ear-piercing screech tore through the sound of quiet chatter. Hands were clamped to ears as the armed escorts surged forward, their weapons trained on Rain. They formed a tight circle around the effeminate teen, shunting students and staff mages alike away from the scene.
"On the ground, now!" the lead officer bellowed, his harsh orders only just audible over the din, "Hands behind your head!"
"Wh-what?" Rain's heart jackhammered from the abruptness of it all. The sudden cuff alarm, the guns and shouting, the surge.
Complete sensory overload.
Rain complied, instinctive tears threatening to spill over as he knelt slowly. One look at his lower body told him exactly what had happened. Only the silver cuff remained on his ankle. His first cuff, the standard suppression tool all the other students wore, was on the ground by the telephone pole, deafening everyone in the area. Rain stared at the source of the alarm, realising the extent of his ability now.
"Get out of the way, dammit!" Rosa struggled to shove past the burly soldiers who circled Rain. The short woman shouted from her position instead, the jagged, white lines surrounding her eyes as she desperately tried to push through.
"Rain, don't move a muscle! Your cuff went haywire so just stay there and--"
"I said, on the ground!" the officer roared again, jerking his rifle closer towards the subnatural. The guards on Rosa's side shuffled closer together to keep the staff mage away from the potential danger. Fredric stood in the background, speaking rapidly into his phone. With the piercing noise and all the guards in the way, it would be difficult for the students to ascertain what was going on.
Even without the barked orders and the screeching, Rosa's pleas would have fallen on deaf ears. Rain was still staring, grasping everything that came with the release of the first cuff.
Move, don't move. Which damned option was he supposed to take? The tears flowed freely now as he glared at the ground, at the cursed silver cuff remaining on his ankle. They'd shot him, they'd drugged him and kept him in captivity for days. And now everything was screaming and pointing at him and he wanted to just leave. His family had sent him here to protect him. But what part of any of this was protection?
Rain stared down the barrel of the officer's weapon with furious tears. The soldier yelled again and Rain swore that he saw the trigger finger twitch. Because if he didn't, everything that went wrong from that point on was completely unjustified.
It was only a brief moment of poor thinking, spurred on by the fear and panic clamping his heart. Rain saw the finger move and everything in him moved by sheer instinct. The surge from earlier burst through him again. His ankle seemed to burn. Waves of energy poured out from the cuff, filling Rain with the drive he needed to take action. He activated his power. More power spilled from the cuff, but now it was more like a fist to the stomach than a jolt of electricity. A geyser, not a wave.
He fell.
There had always been certainties, principles to his ability that he'd always accepted. No, taken for granted. The silver cuff had done something to the very fundamentals of his power--and it felt like he'd been thrown into a raging sea with no lifejacket. Something powerful as much as it was dangerous. He'd never felt so alive. He'd never felt so wrong.
There was no wind as he dropped, only a never-ending darkness. Rain clamped his mouth closed with both hands. He didn't dare to breathe, not as he fell to inevitable death. But that thought hadn't reached the front of his mind yet. The only thing he needed to do at this moment was to hold his breath. After that, he could let himself think whatever he wanted.
The seconds passed like hours. There was no friction, no indication of how long or far he had travelled. He felt the pain in his lungs expand, right next to the cold dread creeping through the rest of his chest. The darkness remained painfully constant, until a flash of light revealed he had fallen into a well-lit room and was still falling. A containment chamber, much like the one he had woken up in. But his instincts were faster than his desire to release his power.
The room was flooded with a writhing mass of colors, all sharp edges and deadly, rapid movements, slamming and scattering against the walls like an ocean tide of mosaic glass. Death no matter what, but some cruel hope thought, as the brief second of that sight vanished back into the darkness of the ground, he might find another room--a safer room. His power, strength beyond him--too far beyond him--phased through the shards of color and he was aware that shouldn't have happened. Not now. Not yet. Not like this.
Thoughts faster than lightning and his lungs burned as the layers of bedrock flashed by him at terminal velocity.
Then suddenly open air and an open room and when the solid ground was no longer around him and through him, Rain gasped for breath, uncaring of the impact if he hit something. Breathing came first and he was only vaguely aware that this cavernous space he had fallen into was monstrous. Catwalks and uniformly lit scaffolding caught his eyes as he fell further down what he now recognized was an immense, circular hole and towards a white, faintly glowing mass at the very bottom.
Primal instincts knew danger, but even as he sucked in his breath again and became transparent, his body still found collision with the object that was so substantial he had no definition for what it was--so large it was like falling into a river of white light. Given time, he might have seen enough of it to understand.
But that was a pointless thought.
It tore into him, not with claws or teeth, but with its mere presence. He couldn't fall through it, and where he touched it with his immaterial body, it shredded those parts of him to particles, and he barely registered the pain as his body fell apart. Letting go of his intangibility now was death. Holding on to this broken, unstable form of it was equally damning.
Even that doomed choice was taken from him when his arms disintegrated and his head pitched forward into the dim light and scattered into miniscule fragments beyond sight and sound. What was left of him sloughed off the side of the object, the splatters of flesh, blood, and long locks of braided, pink hair remaining for only a second more before wicking away into nothingness as well.
She'd screamed when the boy fell through the ground. She couldn't stop her mouth from making that horrid shriek when she saw him plunge into the concrete.
Rosa finally made it into the circle of guards. She dropped to her knees where Rain was last kneeling, the thick, glowing lines on around her eyes resembling a painted mask as she strained her sight through the asphalt. The wispy trail that extended from the sky to Rain was descending rapidly, far too quickly for her or any of the guards to react properly. They were running out of time. Rain's end of the trail fell further and further, the journey lasting around forty seconds before it came to a halt. Rosa breathed a shortlived sigh of relief. He'd managed to stop his descent, hopefully in one of the containment chambers below. Judging from the distance of the trail, the boy would have ended up in--
Oh no.
"No..." she breathed and clapped a hand to her mouth. She looked to Fredric, desperation in her solid white eyes, "Fred. Down there, t-the--"
She fell silent as she saw the sky behind the towering man, one of the trails dissipating mere seconds after Rain's landing. Rain's trail was gone. And Rosa could do nothing but let out a small choke.
Fredric's mouth thinned in response, but where Rosa panicked, he remained calm--as calm as he could be at least.
The Director's clearance came through and he shut off the shrill cuff with a few taps on his phone, hands steady despite it all. All that remained of Rain was the suppression cuff on the ground, the standard one everyone else had. They had made a mistake. Or Hephaestus had made a mistake and they had allowed it to propagate. Now a student they had meant to save was dead.
"Director," he spoke into the phone, leaning down and rubbing Rosa's back as she continued shaking.
A moment while the Director's cutting voice stung his ears.
"Right. I'll take care of it."
His movements were stiffer than usual, lacking that fluidity that always accompanied them, and as he turned to the rest of the gathered students, it took a deep breath to steady his voice for the shout.
"All of you, disperse! Now. Do not loiter in the area. Go back to your rooms. Go eat. Go into town. Just. Go."
He waved for the guards, more of them spilling out from the outpost behind him in response to the alarm.
The majority of them shoved the students away quickly, brokering no protest and forming a tight perimeter around the area as Fredric resumed talking with the Director on his phone, mouth a blur of movement while he rattled off the events leading up to the incident. The words were indistinguishable through the soldiers shouting off orders to each other, a large contingent of them escorting the remaining students back towards the main cluster of buildings before finally leaving them alone.
Rosa was crying in her office, and Fredric was too busy to deal with it, looking over classroom forms and current attendees scattered across the polished surface of his hardwood desk, the papers organized into rough piles depending on the classes they were in.
The staff had all known the risks of putting the untested cuff on Rain, but they hadn't thought it would result in something so severe. Enough power that the standard suppression cuff hadn't even fazed it and now Rain was gone. One of the rare mages gone along with Padma, Alexis, and most likely Aaron. If he had to count the students as the number of chances they had against the worst--the number of lives in a video game, even, then they were losing lives at an alarming rate.
Rosa had checked, double-checked, and checked yet again that they had gathered a set of powers not only strong, but absurdly unique in ways far less than obvious.
And they had been abysmally careless in keeping those students safe. Too little freedom and the kids would chafe. Too much freedom and they would run away, only to be taken in by one of the mage factions that the government had no effective way of fighting against without devoting too much of the Precursors' time. That, or simply killed by irate citizens blaming the wrong people for the world's problems. If they were lucky, one of Dreamcatcher's monsters or a Precursor would give them a swift end.
In the end, the balance was hard to strike, and they had wanted to keep Rain contained for longer given his power, but it was Rosa who had proposed the solution of the second cuff.
"It can mimic the properties of their powers, right? As long as we can track him with it, it shouldn't be too much a problem even if he runs away. I just don't think we should keep him in there any longer. It seems too cruel. He hasn't done anything."
Mistakes had been made, but Rosa no doubt blamed herself the most.
Fredric placed the thought aside, as carefully as he would a spun glass sculpture. He wasn't neglecting Rosa. He certainly didn't want to. But work needed doing, and he was doing her share as well to give her time alone. Uninterrupted.
Sorry, Daisy. The mental apology gave him nothing but more guilt, so he thumbed through a sheaf of papers instead, looking for the earmarked form from Nicholas proposing a steady training regime without powers so the kids could build up a healthier baseline.
30 minutes of light warm ups--jogging around the track, followed by lifting weights and some simple stretches, then into squats, deadlifts, lunges, calf raises, bench presses, bent-over rows and overhead presses--10 of each for three full sets, and a note followed that anyone who fell behind could take a lighter load until they were more fit. A ten-minute break followed the workout, followed by another ten minutes of high-intensity interval training involving rapid ladder drills using a jump rope. Ten minutes of break after that and students would walk around the track for half an hour to cool down, totalling a rough two hours of fitness training every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Fredric approved it with a quick signature and put the form on a much neater stack to the left of his keyboard, flicking through yet more papers detailing electives and room partitioning.
He was shuffling a lot of students and professors around to cater to the school's special group, and while that task itself wasn't hard, it was all the organizational paperwork that had him reeling. He could understand Rosa's aversion to this work. Staring at ink on pages all day nearly every day was taxing and he wondered how the Director managed it all the time, especially now that she was revving up to jump over the mountainous hurdles of forms and signatures that sanctioning an entirely new team would require.
If they even made it that far.
Just getting to that starting line was a different kind of war. One that involved the public eye and rules shackling their throats. He would have his work cut out for him in the coming days if they managed to shift the tides of public opinion onto the side of mages for once.
Not that he wasn't buried in work already. Lecture Building Z would be cleared out of other students for the week and repurposed with the majority of the elective classes on the same floor as the special unit, for the sake of keeping them all within easy access. That meant stoves and sinks and island counters needed to be installed in one of the rooms after everything inside had been removed, and they would have to smash down one of the walls dividing two of the rooms to make sure there was enough space for all the cookware.
And that was just the worst of the renovations that needed to be done.
It would have been simpler to let them move around to the different classes and buildings on their own, but the Director was slowly reprocessing the building as something of a team headquarters--though for now it would simply be classes within easy reach.
Fredric checked the upcoming schedule, a small note on next Monday when renovations should end and when rooms should be finished rearranging. He made a mental note to hand Gregory and Christmas their elective forms at the next class period, preferring the more personal touch when he could spare the time. Sophia and Lilianna, unfortunately, would get theirs Tuesday evening, after the guards had finished sorting out the chaos of earlier and checking if Rain's fall had changed anything belowground. Between the mess of preparing rooms, dealing with the real aftermath of the flag football game, and preparing for the future, Fredric had his hands full. Just free period for their electives this week, then, though they would have to remain inside the classroom, boring as it was.
The Director wanted order. And she wanted them to become used to order, or at least tolerant enough of it that they would become comfortable. Failing that, at least obey, however reluctantly. For all she was, the woman had never advocated the harsh isolation and callous experimentation of other research facilities, nor did she approve of the carelessness with which Director Kleinfelder managed his school of weaker miscreants. She was, after all, looking to a future they all wanted. Her methods were simply less than kind.
But under all that, she wanted the semblance of normality. The persistent reminder that they were more than just mindless machines meant to fight in a war no one understood against creatures no one had asked for. Not that the Director would ever put it in such clear terms herself--not that part, at least.
Fredric disliked her.
But not because she was heartless. That disposition unfortunately came with her status.
He disliked her because she was too comfortable playing the villain when real monsters lurked on their doorstep. Had already taken one of theirs. For just a second, he wished she'd drop the pretense and send out a group to find Aaron. But the mask had settled onto her like a fine dust and she was making no move to shake it off.
So he looked back to the binder clips and reams of papers, then to another stack of manila folders detailing the powers of USARILN West's unlucky arrivals, with plenty of Rosa's addendums and corrections. Resting above that stack were the evaluation forms and Fredric groaned, remembering that he still needed to make copies of those and sort them out so each student had a stapled packet of the other teams' thoughts.
They'd get those in class on Wednesday, too, he decided, taking the excuse to leave his desk and head to the photocopier machine. Sarah could probably do this faster, but he didn't want her reading some of the scathing remarks on the sheets.
When Lily gets back to her room later, there are five boxes of variously flavored and styled donuts in her room, with a note from Rosa apologizing because the place she ordered them from was slow to process and deliver. Rosa also apologizes for the other parts of her request that the school can't fulfill.
Eval forms come around to you guys on Wednesday. Every person gets a stapled packet with all of the evaluation forms for both teams clearly designated.
Gregory and Xmas got elective forms on Wednesday; Sophia and Lily got theirs delivered to their rooms Tuesday night (include the form turned in at some point during Wednesday or Friday class).
Elective periods are free periods for this week while the school sets up more conveniently located rooms.
Training is mandatory for all students in this class. Students who asked for CQC instruction can talk to Nicholas during training sessions for more help, though for now he'll insist you guys need better physiques first, and will only give light instruction and only if you finish the exercises with time and energy to spare.
Weather is cloudy and cold all week. Overcast. Worsens by the end of the week. No rain.
People who didn't fill out electives (you know who you are) will have courses chosen for them. Electives will be good points in the day for interaction while doing something productive, so if you don't decide by some point in the week, the GMs will shove you off into an elective course at random.
You have two weeks to work through a week's worth of IC interactions. Keep in mind the general thoughts on initiating/participating in IC interactions.
If everyone gets all their interactions in before the time limit, we'll move on, as has always been the policy.
Guards grabbed the two healers still sweating and tired from the exercise, ignoring any protests. The two were taken to the administrative building and to the second floor, into a large office filled with plush, white sofas and colorful paintings on the walls depicting bright landscapes and picturesque family settings. Stuffed animals peppered the couches and chairs around the room while a large, circular ceiling light shone soft shades of white and pink across the space.
At the long desk near the front of the room sat Rosa, hunched over a mess of papers with her mussed hair down, looking like she hadn't slept for days. She wore little makeup most of the time, and now none at all, revealing the bags under her eyes. Several minutes of silence passed before she finally looked up at the two of them with an uneven smile.
"Hey, you two. Just give me a bit, okay? Sit where you want." She nodded at the guards. "You guys, too." Her voice was dry and the words scraped through quietly.
The soldiers remained standing by the healers, despite her offer, but one gave her a quick "Thanks" in return.
The lines of white drew themselves outward from her eyes, broadening and angling sharply, overlapping until the top half of her face was almost masked. She simply stared at them for a long time, looking down occasionally to write something on the back of a sheet she carelessly grabbed and flipped over.
Almost 10 minutes later, the lines retracted rapidly and she blinked back to tired, brown eyes.
A quick wave from her and the guards escorted the healers back out, leaving them once they reached the main crop of dorm buildings.
Thoughts flickered on the lines of awareness and dimmed just as quickly. He was conscious and aware, but he wasn't fully present. Just enough of a mind left to manage his five senses and know when to stand and follow the guard who pulled him up by the arm.
It didn't matter where they were leading him. A part of him cared only enough to keep pace with the movements, so they wouldn't jab at him with the rifles or bark orders at him that made him instinctively flinch.
"Heal."
He knew that command. Knew it like the embedded instinct that wired his mind to understand the capabilities of his power. Even that was muted, but he at least understood. Fingers found their way back to the shallow cut in his palm and pressure pulled on the wound.
The pain prodded at the haze in his mind, his static thoughts shifting into half-formed ideas and resignations as the instinct took over and spread the white mist around him, blurring his vision where tears failed to rise. Christmas blinked rapidly, catching just a faint aftertrail of his awareness from the panic that had scattered pieces of him into the far depths of his thoughts. Not enough to face reality, but enough to steady his whimpering breaths.
"That's enough."
He obeyed and waited, eyes on the slate gray of the concrete because it was simple to grasp. Flat and monochromatic. Silent.
It was something that didn't need thought. Just as easy as letting the flow of power take over when the soldiers commanded him to heal a second time.
Simple.
There wasn't enough of him around to like simple so much as resign himself to it, so Christmas let the imposing uniforms of armored gray and black firearms move around him, let the curt sounds and commands that didn't pertain to him pass over his ears. If they wanted him to do something, they could insist. They could catch his attention. They could make it simple.
When they sat him back down in that room of flashing screens and he heard the shuffling of papers and clattering of pens falling from boxes, he thought--only for a second--that the air was too heavy with his unspoken fears. A small weight tucked into his pocket felt like the only affirmation he needed, so he floated fragments of awareness around that knife, knowing it would be there if all else failed.
"Not good," Fredric mumbled to himself as he watched the game start. Gregory's opener had kicked the most volatile participant into high gear, but the Director's orders had been clear: the game proceeds unless someone dies or tries to escape. At the onset, he had already motioned for several of the guards to escort the barely responsive Christmas down to the location, around the same moment Hazel had broken Gregory's legs in retaliation. Now he was just watching for someone to paralyze--
He let out a low whistle at Determination's torpedo through the roof. "There's an entrance."
The second group lacked--severely so--the mostly good-natured humor of the first set and Fredric thought back to similar exercises with Shane's group, where most of them had taken it as a fun bit of sport, and even when Shane could have easily encased his flags in crystal and lifted himself well out of reach, the mage hadn't, because that wasn't the point. Well, not the point until Decker had snapped red threads along the floor onto Shane's pants and then pulled them together.
But he and Rosa had both warned the Director about this: this group wasn't as familiar with each other yet; they couldn't be trusted to maintain any semblance of sportsmanship. She needed more visual confirmation of data without risking the new students against threats they were woefully ill-prepared to fight, but she had also needed them in terms of a mock combat scenario.
This had been an attempt to compromise on the matter, but even then the students were effectively losing their minds over it.
"Oh, boy, that's another one down and out." On the screens, Zoe dropped to the floor beside an unconscious Gregory and Fredric's phone buzzed with a call from Rosa.
"I know, I know," he picked up the device, already guessing her complaints and letting her go on with them for a moment. "Yup, I've got Mr. Halvost on the way, Daisy, don't fret."
"Holy shit." Rosa's reaction on the other end was almost exactly the same as a large chunk of the building slid clean off and pandemonium broke out. He looked through the screens, watching everything feverishly to check for casualties and more than a little relieved when Ernie's durability dampened the fall for Savannah and Emma's summons did the same. But that kind of display was almost exactly what the Director wanted, so he held off on knocking Hazel out, the girl providing one of the most concrete displays of marked improvement in just three days.
"No, of course I--what is he doing--out." Brent knocked out next to Hazel this time and the noises on the other end of the line increased in speed and volume.
"Daisy, Daisy, please. My ears. I know, yes, I know, but they'll be fine. The healer's on the way--"
He kept an eye on the screens as Ernie and Savannah retrieved Sophia while Lawrence bunkered down near the four unconscious students. Had to give the veteran props for remaining calm in spite of the chaos around him, making a mental note to refer Lawrence for a potential staff mage position if the Director didn't have alternative plans for the group. They needed more calm heads on shoulders around the place--calm heads that weren't brutally unsympathetic either.
At the very least, the Director would have the visuals she needed, but Fredric couldn't help but think she was pushing the kids too far. Ruthless and terrifyingly efficient when she wanted something done, but she lacked empathy--except where she feigned it. She hadn't always been like that, but Fredric wasn't betting on a return to the past anytime soon.
"Oh!" Fredric flinched at the blow Allison received, wincing as he tapped the button on his phone's screen that activated Ernie's cuff. The girl's power had shut down Ernie's durability, so the taze went through without any trouble, but Allison's pained gasps in the aftermath and her weak movements had Rosa freaking out on the other end of the line.
"I said he's on the way, Daisy! Calm down!"
The guards moving Christmas to the building confirmed with him, just as Hazel woke up and downed the last members of the opposite team ("Girl's a damn machine..."), that they were near the game's location and Fredric sent out orders to the soldiers already on site to begin extracting the remaining students from the building.
"Carefully, by the way. Two of them's trashed the house quite magnificently," he added, a quiet growl of a sigh escaping his calm veneer.
A moment while one of the guards replied and Fredric tapped away at his phone, checking with various personnel for truck-mounted cranes nearby. "Yeah, go ahead and take one from the nearby construction site," he confirmed, ending the call and putting the phone away.
He pivoted smoothly on his heels and turned back to face the group gathered in the second observation room, customary grin back on his face.
"Well, then, that was an exciting round!" A cheery laugh without any substance behind it followed. "Let me make it official while you guys fill out the evaluation sheets."
A guard picked up the small stack of papers on the front desk and handed them out while another passed out pens to all the students who were still awake.
Over at the game's location, a long beep blared from all the cuffs.
"Wow! Talk about a match, huh? That's Victorious Secret's win, but...I don't think it matters too much at this point. Most of you are definitely more concerned about injuries. Don't resist the soldiers. They're gathering you up for the healer."
On cue, soldiers began moving the students together, carrying the ones in easy reach who couldn't move and grouping them at team three's safe point while another one motioned for Lawrence to remain in place with Brent on the building's highest (and mostly decimated) floor.
Several minutes later, a group of guards arrived escorting a short, blond boy with a cornflower blue ribbon in his hair who kept his gaze fixed to the ground. One of the soldiers bent down and said something, which seemed to have no effect until the man leaned down further and repeated it again, louder: "Heal."
Shaking, the boy fumbled for the bandages on his left hand, peeling them off and pressing on the recent cut in his left palm, small whimpers the only indicator he could speak. Red vapor thinned into a white mist that spread slowly around the group of injured students, repairing all the physical damage accrued over the past eight or so minutes and restoring blood lost, though the magic left mental fatigue and exhaustion alone, its effects still unable to catch that much.
Everyone was fine now, relatively, but the shimmering veil of mist remained, sliding and shifting around them aimlessly.
"That's enough," the same soldier commanded and the effect dissipated, trailing away into light wisps of white before fading completely, leaving only a wounded hand in its wake. A small group of paramedics arrived, cleaning up the students and providing hospital pajamas to the ones who had lost most of their clothes, Fredric's command to hurry leaving them little time to gather clothes from the students' respective rooms.
While this proceeded, a truck-mounted, telescoping crane arrived and several soldiers lowered Lawrence carefully to the ground, checking for external injuries and finding none. The crane raised again for another soldier to retrieve Brent, bringing the student down and placing him on a stretcher. The guards near the truck beckoned over the group managing the healer and another bit of white, glassy mist made sure there were no lasting injuries on both Brent and Lawrence. With that, a soldier rewrapped the bandages on the healer's hand and sent Fredric the confirmation that everything was taken care of.
As aftercare finished, more guards arrived and the students of the third and fourth teams were escorted back to the security outpost and into their original waiting room while the healer was brought back to the second observation room.
Students who were still unconscious or unsteady were taken back on stretchers and lowered into cots that had been set up during the match, a worried Rosa eyeing them carefully as they trudged back in.
"We'll let you go back to your rooms, soon, okay? You guys can wash up in the bathrooms or eat something while you wait." She tried for a sheepish smile, worry still etched into the furrows of her forehead. "Just gotta hold on for Freddy to gather up evaluation forms and everyone can go back in a jiffy!"
It was a strain to be positive, but Rosa didn't falter. There were too many depressing things in the world for her to waver.
Okay, so with the current interaction planning in the works for the upcoming IC bits, I just want to remind everyone of some key points when considering what interactions to write out and which ones to skim over and combine into a solo post or skip completely.
First, do not expect interactions to fall into your lap. If they do, great! But they probably won't to any significant degree, especially if you play any kind of character who wouldn't normally seek out and actively befriend a bunch of magical strangers.
This means if you want your otherwise reticent loner to actually develop, you (as their personal god) need to cook up ways for people to run into them, talk to them, get to know them, etc. That means planning, and OOC communication is for more than just "can I do x and y and is that feasible?"
In the context of planning out a week, think about which characters you might want your character to interact with and then message that player with a proposed scene about how [usually not social character] could be convinced to talk or do something and see if so-and-so's character would be able to manage that. It doesn't need to be detailed--in fact, given the propensity of character interactions to derail goals, I'd recommend not setting and forcing a goal, but rather just coming into the scene with a rough direction and letting your characters drive the conversation/events from there.
Though, of course, as their personal gods, you guys have the ability to assess the selection of words and actions a character would say and do in any given scenario and choose one that hopefully moves towards a meaningful scene and not just shooting the breeze (though sometimes shooting the breeze is also a meaningful scene, so really, it's hard to mess that part up).
Second, I highly caution against writing out later scenes before earlier scenes. Most people behave and think based on past events, so finishing up that Friday scene and solidifying it before a Wednesday scene means your character cannot have any significant changes in perspective or opinion coming out of that Wednesday scene or it'll look like they just forgot all that in two days. Probably not great for most types of characters.
Third, scenes can be private or public. Unless it's a matter of someone trying to claim that jumping on a desk in the middle of class and yelling at someone else is a private scene (protip: it's not), for the most part, when players say a scene is private, it's private and that's final.
Fourth, missing out on interactions in public scenes: If it happens, it happens. Oh well. Sorry.
If it's a public scene (and sometimes even when it's not), the collab link will probably be up in the collab link channel on Discord and will likely be a WIP for a few days with some people mentioned in case it significantly affects them (so check the events available). If you miss out on the interaction even when your character would likely do something about it, that's a shame, but there's not much to be done there. If you still want to internally react to it, write up a solo post later or incorporate it into some summary of events from your character's perspective sometime after, but don't expect anyone to go back and extensively rewrite reactions unless you have a damn good reason.
(Again, if the players think your character would do something major in the scene, you would likely have been tagged anyway. On the flip side, players writing up scenes should keep in mind who, if anyone, might be reasonably affected by the scene and tag them appropriately.
Don't tag people if it's not likely they'd notice/understand much and/or if it's not likely they'd be able to do anything in time--you don't need a chunk in the collab about someone not doing anything at all.
Do tag players writing up a scene and mention that your character would do something in said scene if you'd like to participate and then wait for their confirmation before writing up your segment in a reasonable amount of time. Not everyone sees events the same way. You may think a character would do something, someone else may disagree, but if you want to participate in a WIP scene, let the involved people know and see if they're okay with that.)
Fifth, very short--but important--scenes can probably be incorporated into solo posts for better flow, though use your own judgment on that since there are too many variables for me to effectively cover here.
Sixth, keep in mind what your character does and doesn't know and how much they can reasonably deduce about another character. If another player unwittingly metas information, do bring it up with them and don't just let them keep doing it. Call in the GMs if the discussion gets tedious.
Seventh, not everything is a noteworthy scene.
There's a mountain of exceptions, situations, and bullshit when considering all the little details of scenes, but just keep in mind the tl;dr below, apply some forethought, and there shouldn't be too many issues.
For weekly details not mentioned in the general notice on Discord, ask the GMs and we'll clarify if the IC update hasn't rolled around by then.
Tl;dr:
You get as much out of interactions as you're willing to put in.
Any character can be personal-god-shenanigan'd into interacting with another one if you plan it sufficiently, and that depth of planning usually involves some degree of character investment and scene direction.
For your own sanity, just quickly summarize events and jump back in, though hold off until the current deadline has passed. You may not have to do much if certain circumstances are met.
Rosa sent Jerry to collect the evaluation forms as she gestured for the rest of the guards to move the second set of "healers" to their locations, turning off the relevant screens with a few taps on the control panel.
In the break room, two guards entered with weapons ready, nudging Gregory and Sophia out the door and towards Ground Zero. The sky was darker now as evening slowly dimmed the sunlight and the last vestiges of twilight were slipping past the horizon. Within the ghost's projection, the unreal people had hidden away in buildings, or tucked themselves under overhangs, awaiting a new day that would never come.
The guards led the two healers through darkened streets and shattered buildings, walking past small groups of survivors huddled around makeshift fires for warmth. Any that drew near were turned away at the point of a rifle. An unruly teenager, burly and heavyset with a long jaw and thick eyebrows, ran out in front of the group. Before he could say anything, a burst of gunfire ripped through his torso.
Nearby, a woman with the same jaw and eyebrows screamed, but didn't approach, her sobs following the group and petering off into the distance as the soldiers continued towards the only miraculously intact building within the ghost's projection.
From the direction of their approach, a large circle with the words "SAFE POINT 3" printed inside in stenciled, yellow glow paint shone dimly in the darkness of the asphalt several meters in front of the main doors while the same faintly glowing paint marked out "SAFE POINT 4" to the side of the villa, positioned in front of the back doors.
Several of the long, vertical windows on the building's second and third floors were alight with flickering, failing lights, illuminating enough of the exterior to make out a white, three-story villa cut in a modern, asymmetrical style with jutting rectangles of floors and protruding blocks of rooms that still looked quite clean and well-kept despite the disaster zone surrounding it. Who had turned on the lights was a question for the ages, since no one was inside when the guards led Gregory and Sophia into the ground floor of the building. The soldiers took the two "healers" upwards, walking them past the living room where a wall-mounted TV played loud static and towards the stairs against the back wall. Like this, the two were taken to the third floor bedroom, Gregory shoved into the bathroom and left to stare at the toiletries with the simple order to "Stay hidden," and Sophia into the closet with the same command.
Fredric toyed with the blood-stained tissue in his pocket as he stared at the screens, watching the guards set the second round's "healers" in the correct building. He had long finished managing some small details on his phone and now held his clipboard in front of him from habit.
The students were still, understandably, extremely uncomfortable in their new environment. The bit of sport he and Rosa had cooked up for the group was meant for another purpose, but he had still hoped it would distract them from the depressing state of affairs that marked everything touched by Dreamcatcher's power. Ten years ago and he would have laughed at the idea that the world would end up like this when, for as long as history could remember, Dreamcatcher and its creations had never truly interfered with humanity. The being had seemed content enough to craft creatures on a whim, never remaining in place long and rarely coming into contact with people.
Before The Slumber, research into the creatures that could be contained and dissected had yielded nothing of note. Either they were typical flesh-and-blood or their makeup was so alien there was no identifying them with current methods. Even the decidedly more "regular" ones had failed to display any viability through genetic testing and experimentation, like their only purpose in existence was to be and nothing further.
Theories and data and chewing the fat, because it made no difference to Dreamcatcher. Not then. Not now.
And now was an uphill battle against the creatures that would be considered "generals" if Dreamcatcher's scatter of monstrosities counted as an army. Fredric paused that thought, scribbling it out in his mind and editing it to "lieutenants" instead in the military metaphor. The "generals" were a force very few of them could hope to defeat. A city and some hundred or so powerful subnaturals had been the price of victory the last time something of that sort reared its head.
He sighed and focused his thoughts back on the screens and the immediate future. There was no point dwelling on things they couldn't change. If anything, that reminder was all the more reason to focus on these students. If the only answer to the war was to kill every single monster Dreamcatcher had left behind, then they needed to be strong enough to fight until they saw the sunrise.
An old conversation with a younger Director and a younger him came to mind as Fredric checked a series of texts from Rosa, gleefully spamming him with emotes and tildes about the next round starting soon.
"You're nuts, lady. And that's saying a lot coming from me."
The Director had only stared into a distance he couldn't see, eyes tracking and roving over some mental image as she held his paperwork in her hands.
"Do you know Foresight's weakness, Mr. Francisco?"
That was weird. Didn't everyone?
"Yeah? She takes too long to read her cards."
The Director had shaken her head.
"The power to see a future on request, but for all she tries, she can never truly change it."
"I thought she influences the future all the time. She can tell others how to fix things, right?"
"And what has she really fixed?"
He couldn't really come up with an answer for that--not one that would satisfy him and certainly not one that would satisfy the Director. Instead he asked something else.
"Well, if even Foresight can't fix things, how is anyone else supposed to?"
"...That's a good question. One I intend to answer. In time. Should you choose to remain, Mr. Francisco, perhaps you might see it firsthand."
He eyed several of the screens replaying the first two teams' fights for a moment longer before switching them to current footage of Ground Zero. They were strong, that much was certain. But would it be enough? Or was this a venture doomed to failure from the start? There were quiet thoughts that had been lurking, little moments of worry as time had passed with no meaningful gains over the past ten years. Most people didn't dare voice it, their last hopes for a better future hinging on one desperate denial of an insidious whisper that had grown stronger over the years: the Precursors weren't strong enough.
And if even they weren't strong enough, what hope remained?
A rush of vibrations from his phone reminded him that the ever-optimistic Rosa was still waiting for a confirmation that he had the screens ready on his end. Her hope certainly remained, and some part of him was grateful she was around. He knew the Director felt the same way.
Fredric spun on his heels with his familiar grin, turning to face the group of teenagers.
You're all in a different observation room in the same security outpost tower. Big room, two long desks with snacks on them (lined with chairs and sufficient space for the eventual evaluation forms), wall of screens in front.
Feel free to chat/comment as the round progresses, though do remember that your character would very likely be watching the events unfold instead of turned around and talking extensively.
Once the soldiers had positioned the healers and left the area, they confirmed with Rosa, who checked the message on her phone before spinning around to face the remaining students gleefully.
"Okay! You guys are up! Break a leg!" she laughed at her own joke with a few quick claps of her hand.
The soldiers inside the large observation room rounded the students for Teams 3 and 4 up again, marching them out of the room and down the clean, white hallway before emerging into the chilly evening air. One of them heaved out a quick breath before checking behind him, something like apprehension on his fresh features at the prospect of dealing with so many powerful subnaturals bundled into a group. A guard dying before the cuffs could stop anyone was not unheard of, and in the urban mess that was the city projection in Ground Zero, they could only hope their bodies were found before the reset. The new soldier's features settled back into neutrality as they marched, some vague break room story about his predecessor dying in Ground Zero tapping away at the back of his awareness. Some man named Henry, if he recalled the story correctly, with "caterpillar brows and a face like a horse" whose body they had never found.
But his fears were unfounded that day as the group arrived at the designated building for the next round of flag football. Here the guards split the teams up accordingly, positioning both at their respective safe points.
"Five minute prep! Don't move from your starting points! You're searching inside the house--keep demolition at a minimum!" one of the guards called out, checking with his phone to make sure all the marked students were correctly separated. When everything looked good, they backed away, moving far enough from the house to not be caught in any unfortunate crossfire, but close enough that they could respond at a moment's notice.
The same apprehensive guard from before caught a flicker of a girl on the periphery of his vision, looking like the Ground Zero ghost herself. But in the fraction of a millisecond he took to turn his head, the specter was gone. And maybe he was just antsy, or the lighting was playing tricks on his eyes (who could say anymore in a world gone mad?), but he thought everything looked a bit more dilapidated than the day before. Just a few more cracks here and there. Nothing worth reporting, and it was so miniscule he would have missed it entirely had he not been straining to catch sight of the girl again. Shaking the extra thoughts from his head, the soldier took up position and sounded off to the supervisors in the security outpost, his eyes on the villa in the distance.
After five minutes, the cuffs beeped in that toneless voice, "START."
Here is your CS code back at you with some small edits (fixed the hider name, re-uploaded your image to Imgur so we don't have the potential issue where the source link changes again and your picture gets replaced by something else, and added "a little more" before the "two weeks" in your history section).
For everyone else: I know I said the original soft cap was 25, but in light of some recent events happening on the GMs' end, we've decided to just close applications here so we don't end up biting off more than we can chew between our lives and incorporating new players coming in on different timetables (and also because we're getting to that point in the IC where adding new members to the "team" will be pretty difficult--but not impossible--following several events after this flag football game and assuming no emergency plot updates need to happen).
Of course, priority consideration for current players has never been in question. Our first priority in WE is always to upkeep the running IC, then work in new players, so when I say "bite off more than we can chew," it has nothing to do with current players and everything to do with adding more in.
So for now, we can only get smaller.
P.S. If we've already discussed powers with you and you're just working through the IC/CS, you're still okay to post an app.
Guards walked up to him almost immediately after Sander had exited the dining hall and Christmas felt another shot of anxiety hit just as the previous stomach pains finally receded. Double whammy. His breathing ran ragged with nerves and fear, but beyond shaking visibly he didnβt protest when they hauled him out of his chair and grouped him with an unfamiliar girl.
The forced walk to the security outpost was mostly silent, affording him some time to consider every single way he was about to die. Had he done something wrong? Maybe they would kill him because he hadnβt cooperated with the doctors. But wouldnβt it make more sense for them to keep him alive and lockedβ¦upβ¦
Please no. Please, please no.
He turned to look at the girl accompanying him, gentle face and mischievous eyes betraying no hint of fear. Maybe she didnβt know where they were going either? Or maybe she did and didnβt care? Christmas couldnβt bring himself to ask in the guardsβ presence and settled on picking at the loose bandages on his right hand again. He had never been the type to test the waters in situations like theseβor in general.
I donβt want to be locked up.
A worry he didnβt dare voice.
And one that was quickly put to rest when Daisy explained the game to him. It only vaguely made sense because he wasnβt paying attention through the sudden relief. When she let up on talking to watch the screens and repeatedly check her phone, he stared at some of the displays closest to the ground, watching the movements of various students going to and fro from various buildings, or talking with each other in lounges with lidded cups in hand.
A couple sat in a study lounge with their heads together, faces hidden in the cameraβs high angle. The girlβs wavy, brown locks draped over her boyfriendβs right shoulder, her hand clasped in his while he caressed it with a thumb. They seemed to be enjoying the silence of each otherβs company, though from the birdβs eye view, Christmas couldnβt quite be sure they werenβt talking. Just that they were still. Calm. Peaceful.
I miss that.
What aspect, though, he wouldnβt identify. He let that train of thought continue without him, watching instead another batch of screens displaying a curiously demolished city. Where was that? The map he had tried so hard to remember before only drew itself vaguely in his mind, with the dining hall and dorm building the only locations he could place. But even then he knew there hadnβt been any location like βruined cityβ or βravaged boroughβ marked on the map.
The various screens kept him busy and staring long enough that by the time he realized he had been mentally gone for several hours, the sky on several of the cameras was already starting to lose its daylight colors. He would have been surprised if he wasnβt already used to that. Staring at screens had always helped him tuck his mind away into daydreams and wishful thoughtsβa habit he had developed to dull the boredom and solitude of being βgrounded.β Now it had ascended to a mental reflex, and Christmas wondered if one day heβd run off in his own dreams and never bother coming back. Tempting and terrifying all at once.
The sudden movement of the guards pulled him back completely and Christmas managed a few vacant blinks as they took him and the other girl out of the room, escorting them towards that broken metropolis he had seen on the screens. Even as they approached, the jarring presence of a jagged sidewalk edge suddenly appearing beneath his feet where barren, broken dirt had been before was nothing short of surreal. For a second, he wondered if he was still daydreaming, but the nudge of a rifle barrel confirmed this was very much realityβor something like it.
It was just a game, right? But that reassurance didnβt help his renewed fear when they separated him and the blonde-haired girl (β¦I didnβt ask her name, he finally realized) and dragged him towards an open manhole, its cover nowhere to be found.
βWhββ his shock translated into that single noise as they gestured at the wide iron rungs protruding from the smooth concrete of the sewer entranceβs shaft.
βDown,β was the order and he only hesitated a second before obeying. The rungs were spaced just far enough apart that he fumbled with his feet nearly every other step, occasionally almost losing his footing. Well before he reached the bottom, the overwhelming odor of rot, feces, and stagnant water wracked his lungs with coughs in an attempt to expel the foul air and stung his nose until tears welled up. He remained still on the step irons for a while, trying to stop his body from retching.
The air was already chilly in September, but even at the halfway point down, the further decrease in temperature covered his skin in goosebumps.
βMove!β the guard above him shouted, voice echoing around them.
He moved, breathing as little as possible with every step downwards and clutching the step irons even harder in an attempt to quell the shivering. The stench and chill only got worse and by the time he reached the bottom Christmas was ready to throw up his lunch and curl up in a corner for whatever measly warmth his body could provide. The manhole shaft had lowered him onto a narrow walkway (and not directly into sewage, luckily) that seemed to span the length of the large sewer pipe, but his nausea forced him to the ground for a short while, one hand against his mouth while the other braced against the floor.
Compromising in some small regard, the soldier gave him a few minutes to recover while checking his phone before pulling a small flashlight out from one of the uniformβs many pockets. Before long, though, Christmas was forced to move again, following behind the only source of light other than the dim column of evening sunlight petering down from the open manhole. His shaking hands patted the clammy cement wall for stability, small pangs of pain from his right palm completely overwhelmed by the drastic change in environment.
The guardβs flashlight was quite strong for its size, and in its bright beam he could make out the water-stained, circular walls and dark liquid several feet lower than the walkway. Shadows of service platforms and smaller, parallel piping on the walls and ceiling darted between short and long erratically as the light bounced with the escortβs movements. Their footsteps echoed loudly in the space, especially where Christmas followed the soldier onto rusty steps and steel catwalks connecting opposite walkways, the sound bouncing rapidly and shattering the eerie silence of the subterranean tunnel.
Finally, at a small juncture where a lower walkway ran around the perimeter of a square, four-walled room with passageways extending on every side, the two of them stopped. Christmas reluctantly stepped down the small set of stairs that connected the path they had used to the current room, and the tacky feeling of walking onto concrete layered in a thin covering of that murky liquid seeped into his every step. The guard handed Christmas the bright flashlight, a sharp βStay hidden,β the only order he received before the man deftly flicked on the mounted light of the assault rifle and turned away, leaving the boy down in the muck and grime.
The flashlightβs beam shook violently in Christmasβs hand as the echoes of the soldierβs footsteps finally faded. He strained his ear to listen for anything other than the thudding of his own heart and the irregular breaths his body forced him to take despite the pervading reek. Some small hope had whispered in his mind that someone would find him quickly and he wouldnβt need to be here long, but as the minutes ticked by with only silence as comfort, he could no longer hold back the rising panic.
He sat down on the steps leading up to an adjacent corridor, wrapping his arms tight around his stomach and fighting back the tears he already knew would spill out despite his best efforts.
The sounds of quiet sobbing soon rebounded faintly around the room.
Sewer cameras are displaying footage through infrared illumination. Resulting feed is monochromatic (green).
Because I need to outsource more work to third-world countries, Iβll need a fourth GM for Wisheater (and also because Bakβs and banjoβs lives are starting to gnaw viciously on their faces).
As everyone knows, we RP to write stories with each other and, probably more importantly, have fun doing it without ruining someone elseβs fun. Engaging in meaningful interactions with characters inside an interesting (hopefully) setting tends to satisfy both of those main reasons. That means the GMs need to provide both aspects (meaningful interactions and setting) in sufficient quantity and quality to keep the RP hale and hearty. Usually players manage the first aspect just fine without intervention, but where needed, a GMβs hand could be the difference between invested writing and bare-bones reciprocation, individual player efforts notwithstanding.
The application for the fourth GM position, then, will involve just two things:
1. Write a short story (your mileage may vary on what βshortβ means, but weβll read whatever you send) set in the Wisheater universe that does not include your character. You can write it from the perspective of a random citizen, or you can try interpreting an NPC, or maybe a rogue mage running around. It doesnβt matter, just get creative.
Where youβre not certain on a rule or aspect of the universe, make shit up. Managing a large group means planning and adaptability are both required in equal and significant amounts. We wonβt answer anything about the application to keep things fair (and we're trusting you to not try and disguise questions as "next post" queries), but remember that the goal isnβt to write a textbook-perfect panorama of the universe.
The goal is to write an engaging short story, because in-universe rules aside, the core of a GMβs job is always to keep things engaging in some fashion. You wonβt please everyone, but if youβre applying, I sure as hell expect you to try.
2. Follow up the short story with a list of no more than ten questions you may have about the universe. You may have less than ten.
The questions give us an extra peek into your thoughts and let us see what you prioritize in terms of setting infrastructure.
Of course, we wonβt answer any of those questions unless youβre kidnapped as the fourth GM.
PM the application to all three GMs (or link us a Google Doc, Etherpad, Imgur pic [???]βhowever you want to do it) when youβre done.
The one we like best will be the fourth GM.
Applications are due by the end of February 28, 2017 (deadline timer).
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