lifeaftr | January Intro: It Grips Me

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January Intro: It Grips Me

INTRO LOG: JANUARY

Who: New arrivals, and you!
What: New souls arrive to the archipelago of LifeAftr
When: January 5th and onward
Where: All over Ensō
Warnings: Mark as needed!

Shores of Ensō: The Sun's a Harsh Reminder Why
As dawn arrives - and with it, new adventurers to Ensō's shores. It appears the Storyteller is not about to allow a repeat of last month. The ever watchful pages that have guarded the shorelines the month prior now begin to move closer inland, circling the landscape in closing, careful arcs. To the particularly astute, their purpose may quickly become clear. Anything foreign to Ensō's natural ecosystem will be met initially with wary hovering, ruffled pages flocking to nearby trees and wheeling overhead. Now and again, a particularly brave little page will swoop down to tap against the top of an unsuspecting entity.

Foreign entities, in this instance, just so happen to include...well, all of you. These partially sentient notes can be found flitting across the entirety of Ensō and the neighboring housing islets, intent on surveying every little nook and cranny of the tropical landscape. While they may little more than a vague irritant, their attitude towards a person they’re surveying can absolutely get worse, depending on the response they receive.

Though responses may vary (and creativity, encouraged), the pages are looking for indications of anything that is not only out of the ordinary, but also that which is acting suspicious. Unfortunately, they're not quite experienced in determining what does and does not count as a genuine threat, and thus they might very well interpret even the smallest signs of surprise, anxiety, and (justified) irritation as signs of hostility.

Unfortunately, their response to this is likely to be just as unpleasant as it is abrupt. Those of you who protest a little too vigorously may find yourselves abruptly doused with a viscous black ink - a marker to return and inspect you again in future. Where more aggressive behavior is…noted, you may very well find yourself swept up in a tornado of angry paperwork, only to be abruptly (and not at all comfortably) deposited at the Storyteller's temple. A very weary Storyteller will do their best to apologize as they slowly smooth out the kinks in this new security system.

But surely you agree, dear adventurer, that this sort of security system is indeed necessary.

Ensō, Inland: Who Knows Where Our Limits Lie
Unsuspecting adventurers aren't the only creatures the pages seem intent on harassing, it seems. Across Ensō, the activity of the native fauna will become much more apparent as creatures are driven from their usual haunts by invading paper. From the smallest of snaplings to herds of cariborn, it will take some time for the wildlife to settle down as many disturbed creatures will find themselves displaced miles away from their natural homes, seemingly at random. Unfortunately, this also includes the creatures most would prefer not to have on the move.

For the unappraised, Ensō happens to play host to a particularly horrifying brand of wildlife known only as the fustercluck: a large swath of appropriated limbs with katamari-like qualities, if katamaris were more well known for digesting the majority of their victims and using what little remained (usually the hands and feet) to propel themselves towards their next meal.

Despite Ensō being home to two such creatures, very little has been discovered about them, aside from how unfortunately indestructible they seem to be. Magic, guns, bombs - name your poison, and a fustercluck will most certainly be impervious to it, including poison itself. Should you be unlucky enough to wander into the path of a fustercluck, your best option is to run - or lend the fustercluck a hand.

And another hand. And your entire body, since you offered so nicely.

The fusterclucks have a more directed path than most creatures - they can be found moving up and down the rows of G and H until January 10th, when they appear to settle down...unless they're diverted elsewhere first.

All new arrivals will awake with knapsacks, their names stitched to the front. The contents of said knapsacks can all be found in your acceptance notices!

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.

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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[Oh, good. This isn't working at all. He's pretty sure that attempting to bodily grab the guy and haul him away is liable to get Tim filled with tiny stab-holes. It's not that he's opposed to that morally, per se; he's weathered that plenty at this point. He'd just prefer not to deal with that again, especially if he ends up needing to repair Denny.]

[So he settles for something a little safer. He lines up a shot with his coconut gun and fires, sending the fruit hurtling through the air. It breaks open on the fustercluck's flailing arms just above Karako's head, showering him with fragments of shell and coconut milk.]

[Hopefully that will be enough to alert him to the fact that someone is behind him, and trying to help.]

[Karako is so startled by the bang-crack and combined rain/hail of coconut shrapnel that he jumps--

Thankfully, he jumps back instead of up into the arms and legs of the fustercluck. Or worse, forward into it.

He shoots Tim a look that's halfway between bewildered and accusatory--]

Honk?!

[Even that doesn't completely stop him from plunging the knife back into the fustercluck, though, this time in the muscle of some kind of animal leg.]

Come on.

[He waves, trying to gesture frantically that Karako should move away from the damn thing. The guy's gusto, while admirable, is likely to get him killed at this point.]

If it catches you, you're gonna get stuck to it, and that is not a fun way to go.

[Karako squints--

Wait. What?

This time he jumps further back, a jump that turns into a hasty scurry as he scrambles away from the not-even-noticeably-weird-to-him abomination, and towards Tim, at least somewhat. He whirls back around once there's a yard of distance between him and it, though--the fustercluck is still advancing, and every inch it gains towards the Denny is an inch closer than Karako can stand.

He points in the building's direction with an aggressive thrust of his knife.]

Honk!!

I know, okay? I built the place.

[Evidently he can't say anything aside from...that wonderfully onomatopoeic phrase, but he's fortunately got at least a vague experience with interpreting the nonverbal. Or the...monosyllabic. It certainly helps that the intent here is all too obvious.]

But it isn't worth anybody getting stuck to that thing. We can deal with it - from a distance, maybe.

[Karako's expression clouds with doubt. He glances back at the Fustercluck. He looks at Tim. He frowns, then scowls his shoulders hunching up as he decides he doesn't like that (lack of a) plan, actually--]

HONK!

[Fuck you, he can take this... rolling... orb of aberrant anatomy. Just watch!]

Do you know what happens to you if you get too close?

[He points at it, at the waving mass of limbs of every shape and size.]

It grabs you and pulls you in, and you become a part of it. If you wanna deal with this thing, you deal with it from a distance. So it doesn't grab you. All right?

[He sighs and digs one of his flare guns from his pocket, flipping it out, handle-first, to offer it out. Tim Wright, one of many deliverer of weapons to children.]

[Tim doesn't know what a strife specibus is, or why giving a knife clown a gun is risky business--or rather, why it's risky business outside of the part where he gave an apparent five-year old a flare gun.

The good news is that Karako is a different kind of five years old than Tim probably thinks he is. The better news is that Karako is a troll of surprises, and one of those surprises is the ability to equip the Kind Abstrata pistolkind to his strife deck and not just engage in a comical sequence in which he tries and fails to hold a gun or something equally absurd.

So he takes the gun, and he looks at it, and he looks at the abomination of rolling flesh, and he gets a very determined look on his face.

He takes aim and fires.

One of the more humanoid looking legs on the orb explodes in a gory shower that smells like cooked meat.]

Okay, [says Tim, trying to sound more relieved than shocked and mildly concerned that this child was able to just...do that. So he's not completely helpless. Good. That's - that's good, though it's not fucking excellent.]

[The fustercluck is growing rapidly more agitated. He can't say he blames it, but that doesn't mean they can't work with that.]

How about we try and lure the thing away from Denny at a distance. How's that sound?

[Karako's face suggests that it sounds dubious at best, but he's willing to give it a shot--if only because this guy was generous enough to just arm him with something for free, he should probably at least try to be cooperative. It didn't really... do much, though, that projectile. One limb might have gotten smoked (and chunked) but this orb doesn't seem to need limbs to move.

It's still more effective than his knives, though, so he scurries around the Fustercluck in an arc-shape, keeping a roughly equal distant between him and it, and honks in fury before firing again--and again, two shots in rapid succession.]

HOOOOOONK!!!

[There was... something that might have been the top of a head, some kind of skull cap, but now it's open and empty and smoking and raw, like a burst cyst.

He glances at Tim, as if for approval. Or maybe backup fire. Possibly both?]

[Well, he's going through flares like a pro. The fustercluck certainly doesn't like having bits of its jellied limbs souped up by pyrotechnics and blasted into chunks of smoking meat. It's certainly not capable of any kind of sound, at least as far as Tim knows - but from what he can tell, if it could, he'd imagine it'd be hissing or growling in some kind of pissed off, menacing way.]

[It's moving, basically. It's moving very rapidly toward the irritant.]

Good job. [His tone is a little too high and uncontrolled, because he's about two seconds from straight up grabbing the kid and running.] Time to go. Let's move, okay?

[Karako doesn't really turn and book it the way Tim probably hopes he will--he's backpedalling rapidly, but making a strange, low clicking sound is coming from his throat now, as well as a sound that can only be described as 'if a bike horn could growl.'

The practical suggestion to run is at very strong odds with the instinctive urge to kill, and you know what?

For a clown, Karako is doing a very bad job at juggling them both.]

Hey. It's following us, all right?

[This is - kind of what they wanted? It's not what Tim initially wanted, but it is just about all that he can run with at the moment, so it's time to just - run with it.]

If we keep it following us, we get it away from Denny. That's good.

[But if it's alive, it can come back, say the two brain cells operating in Karako's skull at the moment.

He does keep moving away from it, at least, but only in short spurts, running a couple yards before stopping to make sure it's following, honking threateningly at it before running ahead.

Also, the amount of distance he's willing to put between him and the Fustercluck is shrinking each time.

Cooperation level: dwindling.]

Hey. Hey. Come on. [Frustration is leaking through his relatively even disposition as he's losing the kid's cooperation.]

You're not gonna be able to get rid of this thing at all if you get stuck to it. That is not a fun way to go. [Does he even understand him? It's nigh impossible to tell, at this point. He seems to have understood him thus far, easily enough, but maybe he's just plain too pissed to bother, anymore.]

[The good news is that Karako goes for the flare gun before he goes for the knives.

The bad news is it only has one more round in it, and that after he smokes a flailing hand (charred, bloody fingers hitting the ground), he tries to fire again.

And it clicks. And clicks again, and clicks three or four more times before he gets mad enough to try and crush it in his claws--but he's too small, and too weak, and that makes him so mad that he just throws the whole thing at the fustercluck and whips out his knives in preparation to charge back in.]

No.

[The word is sharp and flinty and - there's nothing for it. He hates having to do this, hates that it feels like he's always the one who does this, always the one who breaks these kinds of unspoken promises, hates that he ends up doing the thing that he hates having done to him, hates that it always feels like there's never any choice in it - ]

[He expects at least a minimal risk of getting something sharp and pointy lobbed at him for the trouble, but he considers the risk to be evidently worth it. He tries to snap a hand around the back of Karako's shirt, or maybe his wrist, and pull.]

[Tim isn't Karako's enemy.

He's not so pissed that he'd miss that and erroneously stab the soft guy with weird face hair. But he is really pissed, and his forward momentum is such that Tim's hand closing over his wrist actually yanks Karako backwards when he reaches the end of it.

He tries to yank his hand back. And tries again. His grey skin is cool to the touch--much cooler than the surrounding air--and his eyes are so flushed with blood that they're no longer yellow. They're dark orange.

But for all that Karako is strong for his tiny size, he's not big enough to take Tim with him, so he can only struggle against the man's hold--honestly, Tim could just pick him up and run away with him.]

[That's pretty much exactly what he's going to end up doing.]

[Not carrying, exactly. Carrying would imply something with a lot more grace and coordination than Tim is currently capable of exacting. He just kind of starts dragging the little kid back, step for step. His skin is peculiarly cold, almost icy to the touch, but there's no time to spend wondering about why. He doesn't know why.]

[He's just gonna focus on hauling Karako away from the thing, for as long as he's able, until it no longer get sto be sustainable.]

[There is a parallel here, across universes--Tim might be overall more competent (it's hard not to be), Karako's rage far less justified (it's hard to be anywhere close), but nonetheless there is a parallel and it's only because Tim is a lot stronger than a certain noodle-armed individual that it doesn't end the same way.

Karako's short legs pump furiously as he fights for purchase, putting his entire tiny body into the effort, but short of grabbing Tim and suplexing him into submission, he doesn't have a lot of hope.

Still, it's a good thing fusterclucks aren't fast.]

[This is just...Tim's life, now. Grabbing furious, knife-wielding children are too enraged to stop doing whatever they're doing. Chara, Chip, and now this unnamed clown kid whose name he doesn't even know, though at least he's not getting stabbed for his trouble. Just...having a lot of trouble carrying this weirdly cold lump of scrambling limbs, which is, to his credit, making himself very hard to carry.]

Hey. Hey. [At this point, he's a little worried that the kid is going to hurt himself, or end up tearing free of Tim's grip entirely - neither of which he really wants to see happen.] It's okay. It's okay. It's not moving toward Denny anymore, right?

[It's just moving toward them instead! Hooray!]

[It'd be easy to claim that Karako would not have made it to five entire sweeps if he was that prone to injuring himself with his own weapon(s), but honestly Trolls die in stupider ways all the goddamn time, so Tim's concerns are pretty fair.

The sheer volume of knives on his little body isn't making it any easier on Tim, either--it's a little bit like going toe to toe with a porcupine on a wrestling mat, only the porcupine is filled with an inhuman quantity of rage and bicycle horns, and also ice cubes or something? This simile is really getting off the rails.

Point is: this kind of sucks?

But: it's working. Neither of them are getting any closer to the fustercluck, Tim isn't currently sporting any extra holes, Karako even seems like he... well, he isn't getting any more angry? Maybe he's slowing down? Maybe not? He's cognisant of Tim's interference, anyway, and his own lack of progress towards the fustercluck and has chosen not to bite the guy, so that's great!]

It's following us instead, okay? That means we have to go so it doesn't catch us. Okay?

[Credit to Tim: he doesn't sound desperate so much as he does exhausted and sick of this and also just, kind of wincing every now and then when one of those many, many fucking knives manages to dig into him in a more than mildly uncomfortable way.]

[It's fine. This is fine.]

Do you - understand me?

[Karako understands him, but whether Tim understands his reactionary honk as confirmation or not is up in the air. It's one of those loud, clear honks, like a bigger-than-average bike horn got stepped on unexpectedly.]

Honk!!

[He does stop struggling for at least a second, though, illustratively brandishing the knife in his free hand.]

Honk!

[No offence, Tim, but he still wants to kill it.]

[At least he's getting through to him. Kind of. He thinks? It's hard to tell.]

We don't know how to kill these things yet. People have tried, and it doesn't work. These things are...way stronger than anyone else here.

[This is not the weirdest one-sided conversation he's ever had, he thinks. It's not really one-sided because at least the kid is responding, and god but it would be nice to get a name from him but he only seems capable of saying the one word, so until he communicates anything else, Tim might just end up having to call him Honk.]

[It's not the worst possible nickname. It's not like that would be referring to anyone else here.]

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hurricane_clown - 2019-02-17 08:28 (UTC) - Expand

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January Intro: It Grips Me

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I was going to say Karako couldn't use guns but then he rolled a 20, so now we have Gun Clown

JESUS THANKS RNG

CW gore

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How much ammo does a flare gun have

four rounds!

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