lifeaftr | June Event: Chaos, Chaos!

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June Event: Chaos, Chaos!

JUNE EVENT: CHAOS, CHAOS!

Who: Anyone and everyone!
What: It's just a little chaos...
When: June 17th - June 22nd
Where: Primarily Io, though also across Ensō and the islets if applicable
Warnings: Violence, possible body horror, potential anxiety and dysmorphia associated with body-swapping

Who Keeps Spinning the World Around?

The morning of June 17th, you'll probably notice things are amiss rather quickly. Your hands aren't your hands, or you're no longer in a squishy human flesh shape, or worse. Maybe your Lawful Good persona has plummeted into an outright Chaotic Evil one. Or maybe you wake up with a brand new power in your hands! Whatever the case is, no explanation is going to be immediately forthcoming, from Eleu or the Storyteller or anyone else. You'll have to figure out this mess on your own.

Adjust to your new circumstances, master your new powers, and do what you can to make it through the next few days...because they're going to be some very interesting ones, for certain.

Catch Me If You Can!

Come June 20th, whether you're back to normal selves or not, Eleu has a job for you. A request, even. They're going to need your help to take care of this little problem and put a stop to all this absolute madness.

Those interested in helping can get in touch with any of the honeybees buzzing anxiously about Io, and they will redirect you to the Honeycomb, which has now been provided with several barrels of Honeycomb Sledgehammers for your use. You don't have to take one if you don't need it, but they make a very powerful weapon. Additionally, Eleu will take care to assure that, in exchange for your help, you may keep the Sledgehammer, if you so choose.

Those interested in assisting may access our boss fight at its top-level below. This is a single thread with no order, but anyone may participate, regardless of their current state of being. Don't worry about how you contribute, or tag speed. Anyone who's concerned about being left out is welcome to reach out to us to handwave or backtag their involvement, if necessary!

The Clown Box is going to put up a fight, though. And it's not going to be pretty.

Event Timeline

[ ♆ ] June 17th: Chaos begins!
[ ♆ ] June 21st: On the eve of the final battle, Storytelling commences.
[ ♆ ] June 22nd: Characters confront the Clown Box, and all parties return to normal.
[ ♆ ] June 25th: All parties become privy to the final outcome involving the Clown Box.

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

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Garren, in an attempt to be helpful, quickly began signing to his Slammer, making Jules' sign, then the diamond, then swapping their places.

There was a small, head tilting pause before he pointed to Tachibana's (or rather, Jules') wrist before tapping his own and tilting his head the other way.

Tachibana sighed deeply. "At least the idiot Arcana had some goddamned reason. Or something else was reacting to them being idiots," he muttered.

"Do I even want to know what you're talking about?"

He's really not totally sure. Arcana wasn't a name he knew, but the list of idiots was rather long. He wasn't surprised that one didn't register.

If Jules were so inclined to check his (or rather, Tachibana's) wrist where Garren had pointed, he might notice the edges of Tachibana's mark showing from behind his watch. Not that it really illuminated much, without any understanding of what it was, as it just looked like a very detailed tattoo.

"The beings from the last place we were. The ones who were playing some sort of game to resurrect one of their own. One of those idiot 'winner gets a world alternating wish' bullshit things," Tachibana scowled. "Any time some weird bullshit like this happened back there, it was either because one of them had a big idea, or something else they'd pissed off was trying to do something."

"Wouldn't be surprised if any of those were the case here, though personally my bet is still on the so called gods here doing this to us just for their own amusement."

That sounded about right from his life experiences. He really wouldn't expect anything else.

Tachibana's eye twitched slightly as he caught the follow up thought, tension growing in his shoulders. "...goddamnit, is this your damned telepathy? Why the hell...?!"

He could still feel Garren. That his Partner had known right where to find him was proof that they bond was still intact. That should mean that all his powers he picked up Traveling should have been with his mind, not his body, right?

"Is what my telepathy?"

What had he even been thinking about in that moment? Ah, right, his past and the people who'd screwed with him just for fun. Those weren't exactly pleasant memories, and he didn't relish the fact that they'd apparently popped into Tachibana's mind.

Shit that's what it was. And he couldn't block it out like he had with the network. On the contrary, it felt like now that he had realized what that nagging feeling was, he couldn't help but hear it.

He let out a quiet, frustrated curse, even are Garren made a quiet, worried sound.

"Ah, yeah. Sorry 'bout that. I know it sucks. There's no way to turn it off either. Trust me. I even got desperate enough once to blast a highly annoying song on loop in hopes it would get stuck in my head and block out the other voices."

It hadn't worked. At all. And the whole experience had been highly unpleasant.

"How the hell do you deal with that? Bad enough when any idiot yelling on the network was in my goddamned head, that I could at least block out!"

Garren clung tightly, worry radiating off him as his Slammer starting spiralling into a growing panic. There had to be something that he could do... right?

He suddenly perked up, realization hitting him before he patted his Slammer on the shoulder twice, and the lept into the air, transforming into a small, almost hummingbird esque dragon. Fluttering in midair, he focused on the connection between himself and Tachibana before all but flooding it with bright colors and positive, encouraging emotions. (Putting out a small crackle of electricity as he did so.)

The sudden, mentally deafening deluge of telempathy was enough to snap past the well of panic, Tachibana blinking in utter befuddlement a moment at the sudden contrast.

"Generally by staying away from people."

That rather explained why he lived where he did, really. Of course his personality made him want to avoid other people too.

Jules had no idea what Garren was doing, but he had to admit the little dragon form was pretty darn cool.

Garren let out a chip that was somewhere in between bird-like and cat-like, sending a small mental burst of happy, golden light Jules' way. It was always harder, sending telempathic bursts to people he wasn't bonded to, but since Jules' was his friend, he was sure it would work.

Tachibana blinked a few times before shaking his head, trying to focus on Jules' words. "Might be a good idea. Garren's... doing a distracting job, right now," he acknowledged, giving his partner a faint smile.

The dragon-formed Pog let out a happy trill, looping in mid air.

"But I'm... not sure I could function, with that level of distraction."

"You get more used to it over time, but I'm not going to say it every feels good. That would be a flat out lie."

He turned away and gave a vague wave over his shoulder.

"Come on. I know a few places where nobody typically goes."

More than a few, in truth. Jules spent a lot of his time avoiding people, so he knew a rather ridiculous number of places that weren't on the commonly threaded paths of the islands. For Tachibana's sake, he was willing to give up one or two of them.

"...It took a lot of work, to get used to just the network, back in Liminal," Tachibana admitted as he began following, Garren hovering behind him. "Bad enough when it's just people speaking into your head. This..." he hesitated a moment before shaking his head. "The other goddamned side of the issue," he finished in a small mutter.

"Because nobody's actually trying to?"

Jules hated it when one of his friends read his mind and got things out of him he wouldn't openly speak of. The fact that he unintentionally did that to other people didn't make him feel any better.

Tachibana was silent a moment, hesitating.

"...there was one person, who did. Back home, the only one in my world who had this sort of power," he explained, voice soft and very tired sounding. "He forced his way in, saw everything. And always used his damned telepathy to give me orders once he--"

He pressed his lips together, looking to the side.

"Shit like this... always reminds me of that asshole. Made it so damned hard to deal with... benign forms of it."

Jules winced.

"Ah, yeah. I could see why you couldn't stand it then. Personally, if I were you, I'd be doing my damnedest to kill me."

It seemed like mental powers caused pain and disaster wherever they were. In Jules' world the pain hadn't be caused by those with Trisani abilities but had been given to the Trisani. Because of their abilities nearly the entire Trisani race had been wiped out. Jules only knew of three who had survived, though there might be a few more. The three he did know of had done a damn good job of hiding themselves. It was the only reason they'd survived.

"The hell good would killing someone do?" Tachibana asked. "Especially when they're not acting like that asshole."

He hesitated a moment, pressing his lips together. "... He would have caused pain and disaster without those powers. Plenty of other Undead did, after all. He was just the sort of asshole who thought nothing of killing people who got in his way, and using others like pawns. Hell, a regular person can do that shit," he scowled. Tennouji hadn't had any power of his own and had been the reason for everything, back home -- the restarting of the Battle Fight and the near destruction of the entire world.

"Call it past scars and trauma I guess. I've been hit enough times to start hitting first to make sure I'm not a target again. You can probably blame that on the fact that I knew someone that fits your description, but she didn't have any special mental powers. She's also my grandmother, so, you know, lasting physical and mental damage and all that shit."

While his soul searching shortly after being disinherited had taught him that not everyone was an asshole, his first instinct still tended to be attack first given the first indication of hostilities.

Tachibana winced. Even knowing... having talked with the younger version of Jules' self...

"...Tennouji was the same. Head of my company. He almost caused the total destruction of the world, so that he could remake it in his image, and rule over it as a god," Tachibana explained before looking away and giving a small, almost bitter snort.

"And you'd think I'd learn something like that too. But I never do. I'm still the trusting fool, no matter how many times I've been betrayed by someone like that," he admitted with a faint, wry smile. "Anytime I to lash out first... I'm always hitting the wrong person, so it's probably just as well."

"Sounds like we're both on opposite extreme ends of the spectrum when we could really use to be in the middle."

A lot of the people Jules knew had learned the lesson Tachibana still couldn't learn the hard way. They'd been so brutally betrayed that any trust anymore was basically non-existent. It certainly wasn't a pleasant way to live, but it did keep them all safer. Generally.

"Yeah," Tachibana nodded with a faint smile. "I'd say maybe we'll rub off on each other, but I'm fairly sure we're both too stubborn and set in our ways to change that easily."

Jules barked out a laugh.

"Damn. That's terrifying. You know me far too well."

For him, it actually was a little bit terrifying. The number of people who really knew him could be counted on both hands, if that.

Tachibana couldn't help a faint laugh himself. "Stubborness is easy to spot. I stare at it in the mirror every morning," he pointed out. "And you can blame Hajime for making it even more obvious. He's worse than even I am, and that takes some effort."

"Yeah. You've told me about him. Seems like all of us stubborn bastards tend to draw to each other for some reason."

All of Jules' friends back home had just as much of a stubborn streak as he did. That and a wide trace of asshole in them.

"Yeah. Likely we're the only ones who won't be defeated by someone pulling the same crap that we pull."

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suspecteverything - 2019-07-16 00:36 (UTC) - Expand

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