Day 9: Twilight

[wizardseason]

Twilight: 12:00noon - ??:00 Unknown

[ IRL Timeframe: July 20th - Onward, 2021 ]

In the past, the heroes had found themselves face-to-face with the Protector and the Wizard on year 0. They'd found the shattered pieces of Sxicq. They'd found the story before anyone had polished it into what it was today. It was free of all the lies, save for the ones coming from an alien's mouth.

The heroes influenced the past in subtle ways: Confronting the Protector with questions. Shaking the Wizard's solid foundations and instilling curiosity about the truth. Most importantly, Sxicq had seen all of their faces.

After chasing the crystals around the town and mountain, the heroes were pulled back into the room beneath the mountain. There, to their huge surprise, they were hidden behind some incredibly convenient piles of rocks to watch the events unfold that would define the next forty years. Floating over twelve of the platforms in the cavern were twelve of the crystals with kids inside of them that had been floating around the mountain. In the center of the circle stand two figures: Sxicq and the Wizard. The two appear apprehensive, but it's the third figure at the edge of the circle that's ruining it:

"Contain it! What are you doing!" The Protector shouts, stomping a foot. The air feels heavy, like it's made of electric cotton, and the hairs on everyone's arms stand upright.

"Get-- out! Of the way!!" He continues, stomping forward into the circle. As he does, a familiar blade slides out into his hand. Its shape is a tear in reality, a hole in the very makeup of the world itself.

The only thing that keeps the heroes from leaping forward to change history is the twelve small, glowing forms that are holding their hands. Smaller than children. Animals. Twelve of them, pleading in whispers: Stay. Watch.

True to their word, there is something to watch. The Protector rushes in, swinging his blade in a high arc before plunging it downward into the center of the circular floor of the platform. From it: A blue beam of energy, like lightning, fires forth through his chest. It pierces out from him, through Sxicq, through the Wizard, through the twelve crystals, and finally through the twelve animals where they're sitting around the heroes.

One bright white explosion later: The animals are gone. The crystals are gone. Sxicq is gone. The Wizard is gone. Only the Protector remains, standing over the circular rings in the floor. Slowly, he retracts his blade from the center. The edges of reality start to go to static.

"It is done." He declares with an air of finality. The static creeps in on the edges of everything, fading the vision as Sxicq descends into slumber.

The Protector's wrist beeps in defiance. He looks down at it, his face scrunching up in disgust. "It has to be done! Acknowledge: Mission complete!" He nearly yells at his wrist, only to be met with a response that stuns him.

"User not recognized, access privileges locked down." Says the same voice that came from within the ship. The static finishes pouring over everything, fading the vision of the cavern into nothing but noise.

And then everyone wakes up.

Everything feels wrong: The clocks all say it's sometime after noon, but the sky is an ever-churning, ever-shifting muddled mess of blues, purples, and darkness. The sun is missing. Weather outlets everywhere didn't have any explanation for the phenomenon. News stations were being careful to avoid referring to it as a sign of the end. The Protector had told them things were dire, after all, but they couldn't cause a mass panic.

And, most importantly, a small handful of news headlines on the planet were talking about time travel being real. They're talking about the blip to forty years ago. They're talking about the very same things that the heroes had just experienced, like they had experienced those exact same things. What effect would this have on the carefully-crafted story that the Protector had pieced together over forty years? Just how many people had shared this experience too?

Unknown to Luka, Gyre, and Olivia: Terrence had been to the past and had an experience much like the one they'd shared as a trio. He ended up with two regular people from the world who didn't recognize him as one of the heroes from this year.

What would happen now?

Ninth Afternoon Event: Afternoon Twilight

---

The Weather

• The birds aren't chirping.
• 68°F
• A little breezy.

---

Prompts:

• 12:00noon The Return, The Garden: When Gyre, Luka, and Olivia return, they're placed on the ground around the portal arrival in the garden. Nearby, Terrence has also been deposited: But he's in a tree about three feet up.
  
  At least the gang's all here?


• 1:00pm Onward, Around the Garden: Once the heroes start making their way around the garden and inside the monster house, they'll realize that, for the first time, all of the monsters are here either inside or somewhere nearby. If the heroes wanted to find anyone, now was the chance for them to do so!

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Procedure:

Reply to the appropriate toplevel comments for events below. Indicate if a post is a private conversation with "Private" in the subject otherwise all threads should be open to interaction with others. Plan OOCly how you'd like to toss everyone around.

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Comments

9: Asleep(?)

[wizardseason]

Nine was one of the few monsters who hadn't left her room. Though the door was cracked open a few inches, it wasn't clear if that was unintentionally left open or if it was deliberate.

The only thing that's certain is that she's sitting in the lone chair in the center of her room, body flopped backwards as if she'd fallen asleep, with nine 3" thick metal cables running to her body from various ports in the walls. How are those plugged in? What are they? How bizarre.

[sustainer]

Gyre stands outside the cracked door for a long time, trying to justify to himself why he was allowed to just barge in. An open door had never symbolized an invitation to someone's space before, but he knows it doesn't work like that for these people. He's already inside their home. Is it any different to go into a room that's been left open?

Yes. Yes it is.

But he does need to talk to her, and she doesn't seem like the most social of the monsters. He reaches forward and slowly pulls the door open, peeking inside and seeing her body splayed out in the chair. He pauses there, glancing backwards over his shoulder nervously. He shouldn't do this. He has to do this.

"Nine?" he calls into the room hesitantly, knocking light on the inside of the door.

[wizardseason]

Most people would consider Gyre a weirdo. Those same people would consider Nine even weirder. Especially because she doesn't respond at all when he pulls the door open, knocks lightly, and calls into the room.

Honestly it seemed like nothing would wake her up based on previous experiences?

At least until Gyre's phone vibrates, at maximum strength, and beeps with a notification, at maximum volume.

The text he's received is from "??? ??? ???" and says: "Yes."

[sustainer]

Gyre flinches away from the noise and the buzzing, hand jerking to the chest pocket where he's kept his phone. He grabs it through his shirt, and then scrabbles through the folds to pull it out, scanning the text, then the garbled name, then the text again.

"Uh, I," he begins, and then he starts to type, I heava. He pauses there, frowning deeply, before speaking again, "Eleven told me to talk to you."

[wizardseason]

Nine's body continues to not move where she's slumped in the chair, essentially ragdolled in place. But Gyre's phone goes off again at max/max as a reply arrives in response to what he'd said out loud.

"What did they tell you to talk to me about."

Two seconds later, another text arrives:

"Oh no."

As it does, gravity finishes its slow assertion on Nine's body and she goes from being slumped against the back of the chair to sliding slowly sideways off the back. The various cables attached to her slow her descent, but even those can't stop her from collapsing sideways in slow-mo in the chair.

[sustainer]

"They said--" he tries to respond, glancing down at his phone when it goes off a second time. Immediately, he takes a step forward, expecting something uh much worse then her slumping over, and smiling faintly when that's all it is.

"Do you need help?" he asks, shifting further into the room and stopping beside their chair. He reaches a hand out to touch them, but doesn't quite yet, unsure how to continue.

[wizardseason]

"It's fine." The response comes immediately, despite her body awkwardly sprawled with legs dangling off one side of the seat and torso dangling off the other side. Her ragdolled arms were laying across her body with one hand barely touching the floor.

"I'll fix it later." She adds. A moment later there's a gurgle from her stomach that advertises she's hungry. Mortal flesh body betrayal one after another... So she adds:

"I'll fix that later."

[sustainer]

"Ah," he mumbles out as he reads the text, brow furrowing deeply. It goes even deeper when he hears her stomach rumbling, taking a step closer to her, but not quite touching her yet. If she really wants to do it on her own, he won't stop her, but...

"I can bring you something. We can eat and talk," he offers hopefully, not wanting to deal with his phone as much as he wants to help her, really.

[wizardseason]

"I can eat later." Her answer comes after a long pause, long enough that assumptions could be made about why it was delayed.

"Unless you have food with you." She adds, only a few seconds after the first text.

[sustainer]

He lets out a soft, amused sigh, finally reaching forward and nudging her body up into a better position in the chair. So she's this kind of person? he thinks to himself, and he turns towards the door.

"I'll get something. It'll be quick," he reassures her before leaving the room and heading towards the kitchen, closing the door behind him on the way out.

[wizardseason]

Fortunately for Gyre, Nine isn't going to go running away while he's out. She remains in the room the whole time.

The only difference when he gets back is going to be the fact that she's slid fully onto her side on the floor in his absence. Oops. Looks like his help to get her situated in the chair didn't stick.

Or maybe she'd started to get up and just laid down again?

[sustainer]

I pokes his head into the room, taking a look around quickly before he actually steps inside. He tips the door open, nudging it closed behind him, and quickly going to her side.

"Ah, are you alright?" he asks softly, moving to start nudging her back up into her chair. "I brought something for you to eat, if you... uh, if you'll wake up?"

[wizardseason]

At first, Nine doesn't respond. She's silent and unmoving. But when he gets closer and starts to move her into the chair, he gets a response although it isn't the one he was probably hoping for or expecting.

All at once the metal cabling running to Nine's back disconnects, every heavy metal cable clonking to the ground in an abrupt and loud display. And, as if that wasn't startling enough, once they're all disconnected she sits upright where she is on the floor.

Gyre's phone bleeps as the message arrives: "Hello."

[eutychia]

After some investigation, Luka makes his way to where Nine should allegedly be. He approaches the door with some trepidation, having never spoken to this particular monster in any meaningful capacity before. But his curiosity about the weird cube in Four's room outweighed any reluctance he had to impose himself upon a near stranger, anyway.

"Uh, Nine?" He gently knocks on the doorframe. "Are you in here. I've got some questions about a... cube thing."

[wizardseason]

There's no response from inside the room where she's sitting slumped in the chair in the middle of the room. However what there is a response from is Luka's phone. The settings of his phone get set to maximum vibration and maximum volume as the sound of a new text message goes off.

The text is from "??? ??? ???" and contains a question: "What kind of cube thing?"

[eutychia]

He jumps slightly at the louder-than-normal text notification, and pulls it up on his phone promptly.

"The metal kind." He replies matter-of-factly. "With the static electricity."

Duh, Nine! What other kind of cubes are there?

[wizardseason]

There were so many other kinds of cubes. What if he'd been asking about sugar cubes? The kind you mixed into hot cocoa and maybe ate one on the side too? A moment before Luka receives a text in response, there's the unmistakable sound of Nine's stomach gurgling hungrily. Whoops.

"That's one of my cube things. Which one is it?"

[eutychia]

"The one in Four's room." He says. "What does it do?"

He sends the picture he took via text, just in case 'the cube in Four's room' wasn't explicit enough.

[wizardseason]

Oh. That cube. Well. There was the more important first thing to address about that cube:

"You went into Four's room."

The text is matter-of-fact, a little accusatory of course, but then she follows with more information. If she saw the picture he sent, she doesn't give any indication from where she's flopped.

"It isn't ready yet. You didn't move it did you?" She asks, her body giving the first indication of life this whole time as she jerks slightly. The movement causes a metallic rattling from the nine cables she has plugged in.

[eutychia]

"Yeah, I did." He admits readily. "The door was unlocked."

Luka is aware it was presumptuous to let himself into Four's room - but it turned out to be unoccupied and practically barren, anyway. Hardly anything to intrude upon.

"Didn't move it - way too heavy. It moved me more than I moved it, really." He clarifies, slightly annoyed by the memory. "Well, I did touch it a bit, though. Is that okay?"

[wizardseason]

Well... If Luka was being honest, then there was only one answer to his question. Nine had to reason to believe he was lying, but there was still reason to be cautious, so...

"It might be okay." Comes her first text, spaced out by a ten-or-so-second delay before the second text:

"I'm going to need to plug you into it later."

[eutychia]

Those texts are... concerning! Luka taps his phone screen a second time, prompting it to read them out again - just to make sure he hadn't misheard them.

"Might be okay?" He repeats back, somewhat alarmed. As if touching the cube without permission hadn't been entirely his own choice!

"And what do you mean you need to plug me in!? What does that mean? Why does it have to be me?"

[wizardseason]

Whatever Nine is doing, it seems she doesn't mind the time Luka takes to re-listen to the messages. She doesn't elaborate on his concern that it might be okay, deciding to focus on the several questions he'd asked.

"Answer in three parts:" Comes the first text, why is she doing this in multiple texts?

"One: If you broke it I need you to unbreak it and I can't unbreak it if you're not in it so I have to plug you in to put you in it." She explains in, what she thinks is, a perfectly understandable and not-at-all-confusing way.

"Two: It means you might have done something bad." She adds, not noticing (or caring?) that the way she'd phrased it sounded a little accusatory.

"Three: It's you because you touched something you shouldn't have in a room you shouldn't have been in." She finishes, uh, way more accusatorily. Geez Nine, that's a little mean!

And, after the texts finish, her body shifts slightly in the chair, her head lolling forward as her shoulders hunch slightly. Is she going to get up? She doesn't continue moving, though, the cables still largely holding her in place.

[eutychia]

"Hey, how was I supposed to know what rooms are off-limits to me? Are there any more areas that I should stay away from?" Luka huffs and folds his arms, not appreciating the implied accusations.

Even if Nine had an answer for his question, he didn't intend to let it stop him.

"It's not broken." He insists. "And if it is, I couldn't have been the one who did it. It barely even reacted and all I did was touch it."

[wizardseason]

"No others, just Four's room until they're back." She answers, leaving that hanging in the air before she answers his other statement.

"If you touched it you might have broken it. It's touch activated." She explains, not clarifying on why something that's touch-activated would also be touch-broken?? Nine, that seems like an oversight??