lifeaftr | October Intro: Louder than Sirens, Louder than Bells

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October Intro: Louder than Sirens, Louder than Bells

INTRO LOG: OCTOBER

Who: Everyone!
What: New souls arrive to the archipelago of LifeAftr
When: October 3rd
Where: Ensō
Warnings: Mark as needed!

The Beach: For All the Rest
The shores of Ensō are far from the tranquil, almost idyllic tropical backdrop that they should be. And so it is that while you fish, or perhaps as you go about your daily business on the islets, the first thing you will note is the persistent sound hammering at the back of your skull.

A drumming.

And it's growing louder.

The source of the drumming will, like it or not, soon become apparent. At the fringes of the trees, wielding slings and hollow, wooden pistols, is a group of large and very displeased simians who have every intent of claiming this spot of beach - yes, traveler, this spot of beach you're standing on right now! - for their own, and by any means necessary.

And they certainly don't look interested in diplomacy.

If you came armed, you might be in luck, because this conflict will require your steady hand in its resolution. If you did not...well, you may be better suited to run, or risk capture at the hands of warriors skilled, cunning, and incredibly vicious. Laugh at their monkey business all you like; they are ingenious fighters and, what's more, they're just as good at killing as they are at capture.

For the uninitiated, this particular brand of chaos doesn't usually sweep across the entire island the way it has. But those who have been here for some time will recognize the monkeys in question, and might even recognize this for what it is: revenge.

Group I: The Squeakquel
Looks like your monkeying around last month has landed you and everyone else in a spot of trouble. The monkeys in question certainly weren't happy to be confronted with others on their lands, nor are they willing to share their territory. While you may have triumphed last time you confronted them, the apes have been planning their revenge in the meantime.

Some of you were unlucky enough to become targets. Overnight, a great deal of them silently invaded the islets. Their blow-dart guns are equipped with a fairly powerful sedative that is more than capable of knocking most living creatures out - and those that were immune were simply snatched up, gagged, and bundled away.

However, it seems that some of their prisoners didn't suit their purposes, for one way or another, and thus weren't retrieved with the intention of long-term capture. Which is why a number of you will awaken in regions of the island that you've already explored.

...the really, really dangerous ones.

Whether it's a Center of Gravity, a parade of centipuppies, a contingent of Lungblossoms, a Fustercluck, or something else entirely, one thing is certain: the monkeys wanted you out of their way.

So get ready to fight for your life.

Group II: Ape Escape
If you're not one of the slightly luckier newcomers that materializes on the shore, then you're one of the unlucky ones that's managed to materialize square in the middle of the jungle. Or rather, in the middle of one of the denser, more populated parts of the jungle. The abodes woven into the canopy are crude, built of mud and sticks, but they're nonetheless sturdy.

And, as an important note - they are also swarming with monkeys. Snarling, baying, armed monkeys. Perhaps they'd be more hostile toward an interloper...if you weren't already in a cage, along with several others.

Fortunately for the newbies, they've all got something the monkeys didn't anticipate, aside from the element of surprise. Most prisoners don't arrive with knapsacks full of newly-acquired gear, and it's a good thing, too - you may very well need it, and the help of the new arrivals, to escape this place. You could always wait for the cavalry to come, but are you really willing to take that risk?

Group III: Pot Luck
As for you, you terribly fortunate third group?

You'll find yourselves suspended in wooden cages as well, though this time, to the hot curtain of whitish steam clouding your vision. It smells an awful lot like smoke down there. An awful lot like something...burning? Unlike your fellows over in the second group, these cages aren't simply a means of containing you, no. These cages are currently hanging over what might be the largest cast iron cauldron you've ever seen. All of this is, of course, for one simple reason:

Some species of monkeys are carnivores.

The acrid scent of smoke is already hot and rancid in your nostrils; the pyre beneath you has been lit, and the hungry flames are beginning to boil the water below quite eagerly. We'd suggest you hurry up in freeing yourself and your fellows - being boiled alive is not a particularly pleasant way to go. At least the monkeys weren't expecting quite so many main courses so soon, which allows you the element of surprise.

As a final note to those who participated in the Test Drive Meme, bear in mind that those threads, if all parties involved would like, can be game canon in the form of dream-like memories involving a place very much like this one, though the layout is considerably different.

All new arrivals will awake with knapsacks with their names stitched to the front. The contents of said knapsacks can be found below!

Feeling a tad adrift? Make sure to check the Locations Page, which has details regarding the starting areas and a handy map for those who feel better with a bird's eye view!

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

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When Karin, Ignis, and Terra awaken, they'll find their cage close to the front cage of the compound. Whilst this is the most heavily guarded area, the eight apes are far more concerned with watching from along the areas walls, all equipped with coconut guns.

In addition to this, they will also see the reason for why this door has not opened prior; a solid log set into a bracket across the back of the gate itself.

All but what Ignis and Terra carry in their pockets is missing - presumably, left behind wherever they last fell asleep. Karin, however, will find that her knapsack contains a a pack of beef jerky, a woodsaw, fishing line, and a bar of soap, in addition to the items specified in her inventory.

Monkeys! It's rude to kidnap a cute girl from her shack when she's asleep! And it's REALLY rude to kidnap a blind man and someone who was new to the island. This is a TERRIBLE welcome party. That being said, she didn't rouse right away, but when she did she found herself in a cage with two others - one familiar, one not. Also, cage. "Ignis..? Um--" Other person? Sorry, she doesn't know your name, Karin, obvsiously. At least she didn't until she noticed the knapsack with Karin's name written on it. WELL that was helpful.

She didn't know how she ended up here, but she was worried for the other two in the cage, tilting her head one way, then the other to try to get a good look at their surroundings. She cold -sense- creatures all around them - and not just the monkeys, but people too.

There are very few things that Ignis hates more than waking up in an unfamiliar place, and the fact that one of those things is happening on top of him waking up in an unfamiliar place just makes it worse. His head feels like it's full of cotton and it's not the kind of fuzziness that comes from having trouble waking up after a deep sleep. Instead, it's the kind caused by some kind of drug. There's a reason Ignis refuses to take most pain medications. He needs his mind clear, not fuzzy.

A soft groan slips from his mouth as he raises his hands to rub at his face as if it might help drive away the fuzziness. It's not really helping, but before he can focus too much on that, he hears a familiar voice say his name.

"Terra? What's going on?" Ignis lets his hands fall from his face. Of course, he can't see there is another person in the cage with them or else he might have made it a point to keep his head tilted down when he sits up. After all, he was sleeping when he was taken which means he wasn't wearing his sunglasses.

Hopefully, Karin isn't too squeamish about facial scarring.

Karin comes awake with what feels like the beginnings of a glassy headache throbbing behind her eyes. She's disoriented twice over, once from the nonsensical dream and once again by the unfamiliar surroundings and unfamiliar voices. She's got her mouth half open with a question on her tongue, wanting to ask what sort of Hero Club nonsense this is. But then her brain screeches to a halt and she does a double take. Now she's blinking away most of the fog of sleep it's starting to sink in what an utterly impossible place this is. She was back home in her apartment the last she remembered. Then there'd been the dream. The rabbit.

"What the hell is this?!" she demands, her voice close to a snarl. The effect is somewhat diminished by the fact that the one snarling is very visibly (and audibly) no older than a middle schooler. But she's got a scowl that means business and when she scrabbles to her feet she's all tension and coiled muscles like a cat ready to pounce. Her eyes are darting around and her gaze is, for a girl her age, startlingly sharp.

Wooden cages. Monkeys. With guns. The sheer ridiculousness of the situation just feels like an extension of the dream and it's only the headache pulsing in her brain that's convincing her she's awake. Karin's not usually one to go and blindly believe any old dream that pops into her head. But well... when a god tells her something, who is Karin Miyoshi to disbelieve it?

She startles a little when the other girl rouses and is understandably put out by the situation. So her first response is for the both of them as she edges back a little, partly to try to get a different angle on the area around them. "It.. looks like we were kidnapped by... odd looking creatures." She offered. Odd creatures that looked like they smell. "Are you both unhurt?"

Then she glanced at Ignis, who might have been surprised by another voice. "There's another girl here, who was kidnapped with us." No point in saying she didn't recognize her since...well...obviously. "There are a bunch of other cages like ours - they all have people in them too."

She furrowed her brow a little, "I can see about.. eight of the creatures around us. They're watching us." Which will make escape difficult. She had no idea what those coconut guns were though.

Ignis is definitely startled by the unknown girl's presence, not that his reaction is all that noticeable aside from the slight turn of his head in her direction. Waking up with strange people in strange places. This is a trend he's most certainly not pleased with.

"It seems the Storyteller must have thought us in need of more material this month," Ignis voice is laced with a dry wit that makes it hard to tell if he is joking or absolutely serious. Whichever the case, he doesn't linger long enough to allow time for much debate.

"I'm uninjured, thank you my dear, but I'm afraid I'm going to need a better description than 'odd looking creatures' if you want me to help us figure a way out of here. What sizes are they? Are they armed?" He doesn't hear anything resembling human language outside of their own words, so his first thought is to question how intelligent their captors are, but at the same time, they did kidnap quite a few of them very quickly. Human language or not, the intelligence is there and it won't do for them to underestimate it.

It's only a moment after she catches onto the thread of their conversion that Karin realizes ah, the man can't see. It's a few seconds late to the punch perhaps but it's information they're going to need of any of them are getting out of here alive.

She stoops so she can start going through her knapsack, her movements sharp and a little angry. She doesn't have time for this sort of nonsense -- the Shinju-sama needs her back home and her impatience is clear in her voice when she responds.

"I'm fine. I've got a headache from whatever they knocked us out with but I'll live." Handsaw -- a potential weapons but not exactly ideal. Soap. Just in case she wants to smell nice for their captors, obviously. "And they're monkeys. Big ones. They've got these weird gun things and I'm not sure what they're loaded with but I'm not jumping to find out."

Nothing else of interest in the knapsack except -- what's this right at the bottom? Did those monkeys really leave her with her phone? Karin turns it over in her hands for a moment, looking puzzled but then glances up, looks between her two fellow prisoners.

"Anything useful in yours? Your knapsacks, I mean."

"Do you really think he's responsible..?" Terra doesn't like that implication, to be quite honest. Well that's something to ponder on later when they DO see the Storyteller.

She lets out a soft sigh, relieved that both of her fellow captives were unharmed - at least for now. "I think they're about our size." She adds to Karin's description. It was a little hard to tell, what with the perspective, but ...well she's never even heard of a monkey - Ignis might have though!

She glanced back at Karin, shaking her head, "I'm afraid I don't have my knapsack with me," she glanced around the cage, "And.. I don't see any others either. Just yours." And she didn't have anything on her person so nothing in her pockets. Still why did Karin have -her- bag and they didn't? That was odd.

Monkeys? What is the name of the Six are monkeys? Aside from obviously being yet another creature Ignis has never heard of? He bites back a sigh, grateful that Terra gives him a little more to go on. Considering their current captive state and the fact a little feeling around tells him they are in some kind of lashed together wooden cage, he's going to assume that these 'monkeys' are at least somewhat humanoid with the limbs to match.

Ifrit be damned, he hates all this ambiguity!

"Coconuts. If the size of the weapon is what I think it is, then they are coconut guns. I was 'gifted' one when I arrived," he guesses that solves one mystery anyway. "The projectiles are slow, but being hit with one is as painful as you are imagining."

Speaking of things they arrived with, or at least things they can access, Ignis raises his right hand, careful to keep it pointed away from the two girls in the cage with him and then summons one of his daggers. It's a relief when the familiar weight settles home.

"They have some intelligence, but not enough to block special abilities it seems," Ignis lets the dagger vanish again, not wanting to risk calling the monkeys' attention to them just yet. "We were probably brought here with whatever we had on our persons at the time, but you," he motions in Karin's general direction, "I suspect you are newly arrived. That's why everything you have is with you. I apologize for the impolite welcome. Up until now, things haven't been exactly pleasant all the time, but it was fairly quiet."

"Huh." is all Karin apparently has to say at first, too occupied with her phone to say much more. But she's puzzled. If they were all brought here together, she'd assume their captors would've tossed away anything they had on them. And these monkeys -- if they're smart enough to build cages they have to be smart enough to not want one of their caged up captives to have a saw on her. But then, maybe she's expecting a little bit much out of a bunch of literal monkeys.

"I guess I can decide who I'm gonna take this up with once we get out of here." she says eventually, giving her phone a little shake. It's not turning on. Either it's out of power or just busted. It turns out to be the latter after a little more shaking (and Karin actually thwacking the thing with her fist) gets it to buzz and start turning on with a queasy sounding chime. Karin pulls a face. It might be dry now but this thing's been waterlogged. Great.

Heaving a sigh, she looks up and glances between her two fellow prisoners again, her gaze sharp and interested. Might as well assess what they've got to use apart from a hacksaw and a smartphone.

"When you say special abilities... what kind, exactly? Anything good for getting us out of here?"

The confusion doesn't leave Terra's face even when Karin puts a name to their captors. ".. I don't think I want to be hit with coconuts from a gun." Obviously. She glanced over at Ignis when he summoned his daggers. "Oh..! That's like when Noctis gave me his clothes." Summoning something from thin air. Move on Terra, this is not the time. She glanced back up on the wall, where the monkeys were engaged in some sort of monkeybusiness, presumably.

"I can draw their attention, but we have to get out of the cage first." Terra offered. As for the special abilities... Terra glances back towards Ignis, in particular his scars. Yeah. She's... going to keep her fire away from him - she'd rather not be a reminder of that. "I don't have anything on me that we could use." She doesn't need to be told setting fire to the ropes or wood itself would be a bad idea.

It's almost as if Ignis reads Terra's mind, or at least now that he knows of her magical ability, his thought process goes in the same direction as hers does, "Considering how burnable the materials our cages are made of are, burning our way out is an option. Of course, we are quite burnable ourselves."

Oh, hi there black humor. It's been what, a couple minutes since he spoke with you last?

"However, even with my other special abilities also being things of more use once we are free, we have plenty of options besides that," he summons both his daggers this time, resting them in his lap before freeing the one in his hidden arm sheath as well. "We have no shortage of bladed weapons to work with. Cutting the bindings holding the door closed should free us in no time with the added benefit of not cooking us or alerting the monkeys to what we are doing before we are in a better position to deal with them."

It takes another few thwacks of her fist before the screen of Karin's phone lights up and she immediately squints at it in confusion once it does. All the apps she'd expected to see (like a way to contact someone from home maybe) are just... gone. It's not her usual homescreen -- it's the one she sees whenever the Jukai spring up. That's not right in the slightest.

"Bladed weapons, huh?" she says slowly, tapping the one remaining app icon on the screen and hoping against hope that it works. There's a heartstopping moment where her phone just locks up and she's sure the whole thing is going to shut down again. But then the app fills the screen with that familiar icon in the middle and Karin feels herself grin.

Alright. Okay. Wherever she is might not be home but that doesn't mean the Shinju-sama's just abandoned her. Slowly, she rises to her feet, clutching her phone like a talisman and when she speaks up, there's a curious mix of confidence and childish excitement in her voice.

"I think I can do one better than that. How d'you guys feel about explosions? Big, loud, distracting explosions?"

Terra glanced over at Ignis, a little troubled. Was that really the kind of thing someone should joke about? "Well...that could be useful if you make something out there blow up to get their attention. Then they won't notice what we're doing in here." Because Karin didn't mean blowing up the CAGE - that would be insane. So using the bladed weapons to cut through the ropes and/or wood, Karin to provide the distraction and Terra could ambush them before they could regroup. "I think it could work." Maybe? That's just her opinion though, she much preferred the input of people who were more familiar with the sort of thing. So naturally she defers to ~~senpai. Senpai notice meeeeeeeeeee~~ Ignis.

Quite honestly, Ignis would prefer to pull no attention to themselves until they are freed, but with so many monkeys turning their eyes the direction of their cage at one time or another, he understands the need for some kind of distraction first. In this case, the bigger the better.

"As long as the explosion occurs a good distance away from us or any other nearby cages, then it sounds like our best course of action," as he can't see the troubled look Terra turns him, he continues without acknowledging it, turning the handle of one of his daggers toward her, though not offering it yet.

If the black humor truly worries her, it is something best talked about at another time anyway.

"We have two options for who is doing the cutting. You can either guide me to the door and explain what it looks like so I know where to set to work, or I can offer my blades to one of you to do it. Terra, ideally, since I'm sure cutting bindings and creating explosions are two mutually exclusive actions."

"You'd be surprised." says Karin and that grin, that shit-eating grin on her face is steeped into every single word coming out of her mouth. She sounds maybe a little too cheery for a girl still stuck helplessly in a cage but she keeps coming back to the icon still lit up on her phone. The Shinju-sama and the Taisha still have her back and hell, for all she knows, they could still be getting performance reports from her phone pinging back her activities to them. She has to make sure she's acting appropriately for a Hero.

"It's gonna be a little flashy when I transform, though. That'll probably get a few eyes pointing over here but if we blow something up quick enough they'll probably all be too worried about that to come check on us. How's that sound?"

It was a little concerning, but not enough for her to talk to him about it. Yet. So it will definitely be a topic for another time, yes. She didn't get what Karin meant when she was talking about transforming, and flashy wasn't an issue for Ignis, obviously. But.. uh. Y'know with all these explosions and fire spells being flung around, ...no no, it was fine. This is fine.

She nodded again as Karin confirmed her guess earlier, a little relieved because she was not used to or familiar with jailbreak scenarios. "All right." Go for it Karin! You do that Flashy Thang!(tm) Terra turned towards Ignis, "I'll describe them for you, Ignis." The ropes - so with that plan in place, she'll let Karin start the fireworks. Literally. She'll also guide Ignis over to the spot to cut through the ropes when everyone is ready.

Transform? Ignis is as lost on the whole 'transforming' thing as Terra is, but he brushes his curiosity aside for later, nodding his approval to Karin and then allowing Terra to guide him to the ropes. As she describes the door set up, he lets one hand trail over it, finding the best places to set to work with her help. Once he's ready, he turns toward Karin again, giving her one more nod.

"When you are set, we may begin. Terra, be ready as soon as the door opens. It won't take me long to get through bindings like these."

His daggers are meant to cut through daemon and behemoth hide, after all. Ropes are nothing.

For all her confidence before, Karin finds herself suddenly hesitant in the moment before actually tapping the icon. What's she going to do if she presses it and then... nothing happens? What if it turns out she's here alone and the Shinju-sama's abandoned her? She forces herself to push the thought aside, crush it into dust but she can't pretend it hadn't been there. Can't pretend it hadn't filled her with dread.

She sucks in a breath and finally makes herself tap the flower icon on the screen. And it happens, like she promised, in a flash. It's only a moment but Karin's swallowed up by a warm red light that scatters apart into petals, leaving her stood tall and dressed markedly different than she was a moment ago. There's a strong scent of flowers in the air, azaleas, and Karin looks down at herself as if dumbfounded for a moment but then she gives a huff of relief.

And then grins.

"Alright, I'm ready. Point me where you need and let's get this started!"

"Right." Terra nodded to Ignis, moving her hands away from him, the air warming slightly as she started to ready her spells. And then Karin does ... the thing that, to Terra, is really weird. So weird she can't even properly put to words what the heck she just saw. So Karin gets an odd stare from Terra for a second. Alas she knows nothing about job classes or it might seem less strange to her - in any case, the scent of flowers is a vast improvement on the smell of monkeys and god knows what else, and she immediately points, "The structure there, to the left of the cages." A nest maybe? Well it'll definitely get the attention of their captors when Karin blows it up, and she moves back to give Ignis plenty of room to work on the door, readying herself for the next step.

Well, the floral explosion is certainly not what Ignis was expecting, but at this point he's not even going to question it. After all, he wasn't expecting to wake up a captive in a cage this morning either.

"It seems you have little to worry about should the job in explosions not pan out. Why, florists are going to be knocking each other out left and right to hire you," Ignis grins, setting his blade against the first set of ropes. "If that structure is made of the same stuff this cage is, it will be a prefect target. Do deconstruct it with the utmost abandon, won't you my dear?"

You know what? This guy might be alright. Karin grins to herself more than either of her fellow captives and turns to follow the trajectory of Terra's pointing arm. Alright. That doesn't look too hard. With her teeth still bared in that overconfident smile, she nods.

"This is gonna be a peace of cake. Just brace yourselves, yeah?" she tells them before bouncing the hilt of the blade lightly in her hand and drawing her arm back. It'll take some careful aim but... she thinks she can do it. After a moment she wings her arm forward and the blade goes spinning through the air. She's terrified for a moment that it won't pass through the bars of the cage but whizzes straight at her target and the blade stabs straight in.

She only has a moment or two to feel triumphant, though. Only a second later, the blade detonates. It's not an explosion of fire but of heat and light and an overpowering scent of flowers. Just enough to net them a distraction.

"Alright, that's our cue! You done with the door yet or what?"

It was something she learned about Ignis in the first few minutes of meeting him. Not just that he was really, REALLY nice, but he's also really, REALLY wordy. But he was also really smart so that was probably to be expected. Smart People Equals Wordy People.

..at least way more wordy than HER. She flexed her hands a little, rubbing her fingers together as she watched Karin curiously as the blade zipped through the the bars of the cage and into the other structure and... that wasn't fire, but a Glade explosion. It was kind of interesting to see, though she half expected to see flower petals fluttering out from the explosion as well.

"They're moving," Terra reported as the monkeys on the wall, offended by the pleasant flowery scent, immediately started to run over to discover who just blew stuff up and covered up the smell of Grossness - even for only a moment. That was a very flashy explosion after all. And she had no doubt Ignis would have the door unlocked by then, so the moment the door was open, Terra glanced at her fellow captives, "I'll go first," so she could cover their escape. That said, she was ready to jump out, (making sure the area below was safe to jump onto first, of course), magic gathering and igniting the monkeys that were distracted from the contents of the cage, and soon more distracted by the fact that they were ON FIRE.

Maybe Karin's flower scented explosion is stronger than the smell of burning monkey though?

Edited (How do words work again?) 2017-10-22 23:13 (UTC)

Ignis can't see the explosion, but he can certainly smell it and hear the confusion it causes the monkeys. A grin crosses his face as the ropes part below his daggers like butter.

"Well done!" That's all he has time to say before the door is open and he's moving back away from it to let Terra through to do her part of their escape. He motions for Karin to follow her knowing his blindness will make him the slowest of the three. Ignis has no intention of allowing himself to remain captive, but he also doesn't want to slow either girl down unnecessarily.

Give them hell girls. You're going to be able to do more damage than he can unfortunately.

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October Intro: Louder than Sirens, Louder than Bells

CAGE 6: KARIN, IGNIS SCIENTIA, TERRA BRADFORD

CAGE 6: The Awesome People + one half esper cage

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