JohnWolff

Multiverse Exhibit

Despite her initial wariness about him, the more the ork 'spoke', if one could call it that, the less Sayaka could take him seriously as a threat. He reminded her of those cartoon ogres who would speak in one-syllable sentences. Though this one was obviously convinced he had a more coherent language going on than that with his gibberish, it certainly did not further Sayaka's belief in the existence of any intelligence coming from this primitive grunt. His empty threats of being the baddest badass 'in da place' was so ludicrous to her that she had to stifle a chuckle. As he harmlessly fired his cannons onto the big bad ceiling with a maniacal laugh, Sayaka rolled her eyes so hard she swore they had popped out of their sockets.

Multiverse Exhibit

As a child, Sayaka's parents spoiled her with naive fairy tales and similar story books, giving her the idealistic mentality she had today. One of those books was "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", and she believed one of the quotes could be aptly used here right now, for things had certainly became "curiouser and curiouser." The way the wall had sucked in Pistol-Boy's clothing was alarming, but it was the way it had spat the fabric out that caught her interest. He didn't pull it out from the vacuum, the wall instead bent outwards and performed a spitting action, suggesting that Ib's implications might have been accurate, that the structure they were trapped in might be sentient. None of that mattered, however, when the giant cyborg ogre carrying a big-ass gun materialized out of thin air. As if the boy threatening to vandalize someone else's property wasn't enough, now they had to deal with this bellowing orc-like creature who seemed confused, angry, and from the way he randomly fired his cannons at the glass ceiling for reasons unknown, a violent barbarian. Sayaka instinctively reached for her left ring finger, where an iron ring was adorned. Though she was obviously distracted by the hulking beast and his potential to indiscriminately attack everyone in the room, she wondered why or when she had the ring on her. She could sense that it was her means of transforming into a magical girl, but gaps in her memory left her ignorant of why this was so. She decided to put aside the trivial query for later and focused on the larger threat in the room. Though she could tell that battling this creature would surely cause her demise, if she had to protect the people here from this raging beast, she would.

Multiverse Exhibit

Sayaka paid heed to the wise words of the little girl. What she described reminded Sayaka of the witch barriers she had known of, an otherworldly dimensional space witches would use to conceal themselves. Whether if this place was related to what she had been fighting or not, she was quite sure that she was not dreaming, and she certainly didn't remember paying a visit to a museum full of eccentric beings as part of the morning schedule either. So it was either that someone had put her and perhaps these individuals as well under an illusion spell, or it was as that little girl had implied, that they were all trapped in a supernatural reality space, incapable of leaving unless the host of this little gathering was dealt with. She huffed a little sigh, annoyed that things had became trickier than walking out a door and heading home. The more she was convinced that Homura was not responsible for this, the more frustrated she became. She had her own crisis to deal with at home, and now she was expected to drop the responsibility of handling said crisis to have a vacation in some otherworldly dimension. She grinded her teeth upon that thought. "What's going to happen to Madoka and the others? I can't stay here..."

Multiverse Exhibit

Rather than dig an underground exit or climb through the window like a burglar, Sayaka felt that the more sensible option was to find the main entrance of this building, which would allow her to get a better clue of her exact location anyway. Though the painting depicting her life did give her a bit of a scare, she had not seen any hard evidence that proved she was not still on Earth. Now that she thought about it, giant robots and talking animals did not really seem that surreal compared to the stuff she had seen, entropy-solving space ferrets being one example. Sayaka continued to fix her sideway glare on pistol-boy for a couple more moments, but she steeled herself to disregard her moral obligations for now in hope that he would not do anything foolish to harm anyone; she needed to check this place out.

Multiverse Exhibit

The wailing lasted about half a minute, maybe even lesser. Sayaka breathed in as she tried her best to regulate her heartbeat. Leaning against the wall behind her for support, she picked herself up. Her snow white cheeks flushed a deep red, not just from the crying, but also from embarrassment. She thought that she had became stronger than this by now, that she was used to the fact that she had unwillingly committed sins beyond her control. She had to learned to live with those nightmarish memories everyday, after all. Well, almost everyday. Perhaps after Homura had wiped her mind clean, she became out of practice. The way that picture suddenly came flashing before her had taken her aback. It was like an old enemy rending her heart with its scythe, reminding her that it will always be by her side, haunting her. "Ahem, sorry about that," Sayaka whimpered under a cracked voice, her throat sore from the screaming session she just had. She did her best to put up a cheerful smile, but her attempt to dart her eyes away from the picture was conspicuous. Even now, subtle trembles were still visible across her arms. She used to be so good at hiding her true feelings from even Madoka, her closest friend, always putting on a mask to protect herself from the friends she should had trusted. Seconds passed. Her heart rate had returned to normal. She regulated her breathing just to make sure. Her sweaty palms ran across the wall she was leaning against, a small action she used to reassure herself of her safety. And with her mind clear, she rolled her eyes back in the direction of the picture that had scarred her. It was no hallucination, and she was not having a flashback of guilt. That solved one problem, but it begged the obvious question regarding the reason the worst part of her life was put up for display in an art gallery. It had to be a joke, she told herself, perhaps a prank by the mischievous Homura. That would explain the presence she felt, a magical trail left by her actions. Being a prank, she would probably not care much for covering her trail. At least that was the rational explanation she was feeding herself to keep her from panicking. But something else was off; it was not just her who entered a state of shock after looking at the paintings. "This place is not good for our sanity. We need to leave." said the little girl named Ib, before she headed down the hall. The girl was right, despite being a lot younger than Sayaka. There had been a sick presence unlike anything she had encountered before ever since she entered this room, and it was getting on her nerves fast. She began to pace around the room again, shifting her gaze from side to side as she tried to put her finger on that one other thing that bothered her about this gallery. More paintings of historically popular characters throughout the ages adorned the unblemished white walls; Napoleon, Spider-Man, Rocky, Han Solo. In her mind, she pressed the question, "What exactly does Octavia have in common with them?" She frowned. It did not seem like much could be done with the situation at the moment, let alone done by herself. She was always a fighter, not a thinker. Though her heart told her not to trust anyone in the room, for her mind knew not whom was ally or foe, she had learned that no man is an island, and her self-isolation had caused her more harm than good in the past. "My name is Sayaka," she softly announced, her voice echoing through the room regardless of the volume she spoke with. With that, she began to follow the little girl down the hall; the least she should do was find out if this was a normal museum. That was, until pistol-boy decided to become trigger happy. "Everyone get behind me. I think I know how to make an exit. I can shield you from the blast if you're behind me, but if you're anywhere else there's no guarantees." Sayaka came to a sharp halt. As she glanced at the boy's actions without fully turning her head, she puffed out a heavy sigh. She felt like making a comparison between the boy and the stereotype of gun-totting males, but it seemed like it would be an insult to those gun-totting males.

Multiverse Exhibit

The other occupants of this room had began introducing themselves. She saw no reason not to give her name, but she did not see a reason to do so either. The only thought she had at the moment was to figure out what was going on and how she had got into this place, not make friends with a bunch of strangers. Clearly enough, she and everyone here were taken away from their familiar lives and gathered together by an entity whose power was great enough to teleport this many people. If it was no witch, nor a deed of Homura, then what was it? And what did she have to do with this seemingly unrelated group of individuals? Another magical girl? What? And the ironic part was, the strangest thing she felt was not the fact that she was in a room with a talking jaguar and a giant robot; it was the fact that she had remembered everything that had happened to her before coming here, including Homura taking both her memories and her powers away from her. Yet her memories were intact, and she could feel her power surging inside her once more, instead of the numb feeling she had the last couple of weeks as an average high school student. If coming here restored the memories and powers she was stolen of, did it not mean it was related to Homura after all, the one involved in the theft? She became even more puzzled than before, if that was possible. The confusion left her weak and breathless, and as she leaned against the nearest white wall for support, she felt like sitting down and think about this. "Query: Organic why is your hair blue?" "Terrific," she thought. First, the strangers were making nice with each other, and now, one of them was asking silly questions about her hair color. And then it hit her, though not as hard as the memory-restoration she had. "Why is my hair blue?" she wondered. She never had to ask herself that question before. Both her parents had natural black hair, and so did the parents of her friends, yet most of the people she had hung out with had unnatural hair color like they were in some kind of... anime. "...Nah!" She shrugged off the notion. The world around her seemed crazy at the moment, but they couldn't be that crazy. And besides, there were more important things to worry about right then than whether if she had unconsciously dyed her hair or not. "Well, I'm not sure," she answered the robot with as friendly a tone as she could muster, scratching her scalp in nervousness, "it has always been blue like that..." There were certainly a lot of weird individuals in the room with her, yet they acted so normally, talking with each other, acquainting with one another. One of them certainly stood out from the crowd; after all, he was trying to shoot the paintings. She would have normally stopped him if this was a museum back in her reality, being the self-righteous marshal she was. But the fact was, she did not even know if she was dreaming or trapped in another world where the logic she was used to did not apply, magical logic or otherwise. She held her movement, keeping a stern observation of the boy's next move in case he decided to hurt someone with his pistols. "W....whatever you're doing, kid, I don't think it's gonna make a difference. Maybe you should take a closer look at the picture before you do anything rash?" Upon the short man's mentioning of the paintings, Sayaka paid but a brief glance to them and quickly pivoted her eyes back onto the armed boy. She had thought that they were just normal pictures hung in an art gallery. But after an equally brief moment since she had peeped at the artworks, she felt something was off and gradually shifted her attention back to them. She felt a presence from the paintings unlike the ones coming from the people in the room - a malicious, overwhelming aura oozing out as if powerful magic had been imbued into them. The invisible air of terror did make her nervous, but in terms of pale appearances, those pictures did not occur to her as out of the ordinary. Santa Claus and Sherlock Holmes, Caesar and even Jesus; this gallery might not have a consistent theme, but it seemed like a normal collection of random pictures to the naked eye. That was until she saw it, the one painting that mattered to her. "Oktavia von Seckendorff", the witch form she was able to summon at will, an armored mermaid knight wielding a cutlass not unlike the one she used. She covered her mouth, muffling her scream, and hopefully stifling her vomit. Her arms began to shake like a dying leaf in Autumn, her knees were trembling so much that she nearly fell onto the marbled floor. It was not the sight of her other self that she had been frightened of - she had got used to that - it was the sight of Oktavia slaughtering her friends, slicing the teenage girls up with its sword, being reminded that she was once that mindless, raging beast. She finally cracked. First a whimper, then loud sobs, and finally painful screams for mercy. "NO!" she yelled, huddling her head between her hands as she slid against the wall into a fetal position. She buried her face deep into her thighs, but taking her eyes away from the picture did not help; the images were still repeating in her mind. She had no choice! She could see her friends through the eyes of Oktavia, but all she could feel at that time was hopelessness and despair, a vast emptiness that ate at her soul. All she wanted was to satisfy the only thoughts in her head during those moments she was turned into a witch - utter hatred and bitterness for the world. Madoka had told her what must be hundreds of times by now that it was not her fault, but even today, no matter how much she told herself otherwise, she could not truly accept it in her heart. She knew - it was her who had tried to murder her friends, not the witch. And "tried" was the definitive word. She never really wanted to kill them. Amid the soul-sucking despair, she had only wanted their attention, lashing out at the world like a child throwing a tantrum. When a voice screams in a person's head, all one could do is scream back. And that was exactly what she had done - angrily scream back at the voices in her head. "Why couldn't I just forget?!" she had wanted to shout, but quickly stopped herself. "No... I deserve this. It's my punishment... I'm so sorry."

Multiverse Exhibit

"Even if you say that, I won’t forget this: you, Homura Akemi, have become a devil!" "I won't forget... I must not forget..." she had repeated to herself in her heart that mantra for weeks. She did not know what it was exactly that she had to desperately remember, but she knew it was something negative related to her classmate, Homura. And yet, upon that very instant when her surroundings suddenly warped into that bleak, monotone room, all the memories of her past ten reincarnations or more came rushing back to her with the speed of a bullet train. All the fun times she had shared with her childhood friend, Madoka Kaname, as well as all the nightmares of having her mind enslaved in the body of a witch, they all came flooding back into her consciousness like she had known about them all along. She didn't know which was a more agonizing experience - having Homura brainwashing her and leaving her an empty shell, or having all these thoughts violently shoved back into her mind. She required but a few seconds to collect herself as her blurred vision gradually recovered. The way her world instantaneously shape-shifted into shades of white and grey was already a lot to take in, and the rush of hundred memories did not help one bit. But surprised as she might be, she dared not let her guard down, the voice in her head urging her to get a hold of herself and quickly transform. For all she knew, this could be another manipulation of the new Homura Akemi, the omnipotent entity who had snatched the fire of god for her selfish desires. With her power, she could have wiped Sayaka's entire existence simply by willing it. Or in this case, teleport her into a strange joke where a giant robot, a cowboy with a poncho, and a jaguar of white rosettes, were in the same room together. She wondered which of those were the punchline. When she finally became calm enough to get a good look at the scene before her, she started to realize that she might be dealing with something entirely different. Her first thought when the walls had started to shift around her was a "witch barrier", something the witches she had fought would use to trap their victims. The phenomenon certainly started out familiar, the way her world had melted away into existence like she was watching Alice in Wonderland while on drugs. But when she saw how clean this room was, how it was deprived of the colorful papercraft models that would adorn a witch's lair, or just any bright colors at all, it all just didn't project the same ominous atmosphere she was supposed to feel among witches. "If any of you have an explanation for why I am missing two mates and a rainforest, I would like to hear it!" "Yeah," she thought to herself, "definitely not witches." For one thing, the witches she knew wouldn't speak human, let alone speaking it with a voice of such clarity; they would merely sprout gibberish in their own 'witch language'. For another, she noticed a couple of normal people like her among the crowd, one of whom was even a little girl. A creepy girl with a rose, but a normal girl otherwise. "Would anyone like to explain what the bloody hell is going on?", said a brunette with beauty that easily made Sayaka felt insecure about her own looks. "That's what I would like to know as well," Sayaka calmly responded. Despite the girl appearing slightly older and taller than her, she nonetheless felt a bit more secure about having someone normal - and human - to talk to in this strange situation.

Multiverse Exhibit

On a another note, I'm sorry if I'm micromanaging or not being personable and friendly enough. I'm really tired, and I'm anxious because this is my first time GM'ing on this site. Hopefully I'm not doing too terribly?

Entropsy

You are doing fine. I'm actually kinda tired myself, so I could relate to the crankiness that comes with exhaustion. I've also not roleplayed or done any serious writing for a long time, so this can be considered a 'first time' in a long time for myself as well, at least in terms of roleplaying, if not GM'ing. But I think we all will get used to these things eventually. It's just a matter of getting our feet wet. :)

Multiverse Exhibit

I've added a school uniform for Sayaka, as she can switch out between her battle outfit and her normal school uniform at will. Sorry for any inconvenience caused. :P

The Heist [RP IDEA]

A heist RPG. Interesting. It's not everyday we get an urban setting based on realistic elements rather than stuff of fantasy. Count me in.