Day 9: Twilight

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!

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The door to Four's room opens when Luka tries it, the hinge creaking as it swings open. The room's curtains were open, allowing plenty of natural light into the space. But the space doesn't look lived in. There's a bed to the side with no sheets, just a white mattress. And on the other side of the room are a stack of five or six cardboard boxes. Other than that, the space was empty.

But in the dead center of the room, though, was a solid metal cube with a bright, glowing red light on the top of it. If anyone tried to lift it: It was easily a hundred pounds. What was that?

It actually opened?!

He steps inside and quickly- but quietly- closes the door behind him. He still wasn't quite sure what his business was in here. Maybe just to learn something more about who Four was? But regardless, getting caught snooping around was never a good look.

Luka feels around the room, disheartened to find it empty of any personal charm. Emptier than the most bland and sterile hotel rooms, even. He wonders if Four had lived like this, or if their belongings had been removed upon their death.

He's still wondering when he quite literally stumbles upon the strangely placed metal cube, nearly tripping over it in the process.

"Ugh!" He sighs and resists the urge to kick the heavy metal thing in frustration. "Who leaves something like this in the middle of the floor?"

As annoyingly placed as it was, it was at least something, he thinks, and he reaches to touch it and maybe figure out what this thing did.

Luka does the smart thing by closing the door behind him: After all, most of the residents in the house tended to wander around regularly. It wouldn't be out of the question for any one of them to wander by and ask what he was up to.

The non-smart thing he does is complain to no one about something being on the floor in a room that isn't his. Yeesh Luka, that's pretty rude!

When Luka's fingers get close to the cube, he'll start to feel static electricity crackling from his fingertips to the cube. If he keeps pushing forward to touch it, it'll make all the hair on his body start to stand up.

Unfortunately the experience doesn't escalate past that. This seems to be all there is for this cube at the moment. But if this cube was here, was someone else working on it?

Complaining is always a valid move!

He frowns when the cube doesn't seem to have any purpose outside of being an obstacle. He pulls his hand away when the static sensation intensifies, after concluding that it wasn't getting him anywhere. It wasn't really worth messing up his hair, anyway.

Instead, he produces his phone and takes a photo of the thing. For future reference. Maybe someone knows what it does.

His attention is then turned to the cardboard boxes in the room.

"There's got to be something interesting in here, right?" He thinks to himself, gingerly opening one on the top of the pile.

Five would completely agree that complaining was always a valid move. But both she and Luka would be facing steep competition on this front. Fortunately the idea was theoretical and no one had to know, whew.

Luka is spared the mortifying side-effect of having a gigantic static poof of a hairstyle. But some of the static still sticks with him, crackling between his clothes and his skin and waiting for the first time he reaches for a door handle to shock him.

When he rudely invades the boxes containing Four's personal belongings and starts rummaging through them, he does end up finding several interesting things. The first thing he finds is a box containing hand-crocheted plushes of each of the twelve monsters. The second thing he finds is nineteen hand-bound binders with 'Script' or 'Playbook' written on the fronts of them. The last thing he finds is the pile of signed DVD copies that had been on the table when... a certain event happened.

Luka smiles weakly when he realizes the handmade plush must correspond to each of the monsters. If Four had made them, it wasn't a hobby Luka would have imagined they'd had. Instead of putting them back, he leaves them lined up in the order he'd removed each of them from the box. It seemed like a shame to hide something like that away, to him.

The purpose of the binders is lost on Luka. Well, there sure are a lot of them!

But then his hand feels out the DVDs, and he remembers the last time he'd held these. The realization causes a pang of guilt in him, and he hurriedly shuts the box and heads for the door. And as if some of kind of divine punishment, the door handle shocks him on the way out. Wow!

Nine enters Four's room before Luka, walking into the space and pausing as she looks down at the metal cube. She waits for several moments before stepping to the side. It was time for them to carry out the plan they'd made in Nine's room earlier.

Now Luka just had to... plug in.

Luka follows behind Nine, wondering the entire time what the hell she was talking about.

Machines with big handles, like they're pulled from your brain.

He has no idea what machines those were. Definitely not any machines he was familiar with, like she had said. He was beginning to wonder if handling this cube task might be over his head when they reach Four's room.

"Uh, so these cables like, just attach?" He approaches the cube with a newfound reluctance, holding the cables in its general direction. "That's how I get in?"

"They'll get sticky when you twist them, that lets them connect." She explains, idly twisting the cables she'd brought for herself. Luka should be counting his lucky stars that he can't see just how gross the thick, oozy black goop blobbing up on the ends of the cables looks. It was like if glue was clear like syrup and got as blobby as whipped cream. And was horrible oily black in color.

"Then touch them to the cube and hold the other ends." She continues, moving in to connect her two cables to two sides of the cube. She helps Luka with his if he needs it, making sure they're attached.

When Luka grabs the ends of his cables: He'll find himself standing in the center of his bedroom. At home. The sun is shining outside, is it morning?

His phone beeps to announce the arrival of a new text. This one does not auto-read loudly on its own like the others had.

"Where are we?" says the text from Nine's mystery number.

If this was Luka's bedroom, the rest of his house had to be connected, right? (The rest of his house was not, in fact, connected. But what else was out there?)

He wants to complain about the stickiness of the cables, and how irritating it is, but Luka's thought is interrupted by the sudden, jarring shift in his location.

"Inside of the cube, I hope." He says aloud after the text comes through. He wonders if Nine can hear his response at all, and types it back for good measure. "Give me a moment."

It doesn't take long for him to recognize his surroundings.

"This is... my house?" His confusion is quickly overtaken by excitement, despite this being some kind of simulation. He hadn't realized just how much he missed the comfortable familiarly of home. "What are we doing here?!"

"I can hear you." Nine offers Luka as a reassurance as he moves to also text her back. She doesn't want him distracted by texting her while also trying to deal with the situation he'd found himself in.

When he declares that this is his house, she takes several moments to analyze the space before answering his question.

"You... don't have any machines here?" She asks, confused. He seemed excited, but she didn't get why. Why would they be in his house if he didn't have machinery here? The way this was supposed to work were that there were six machines? She's silent for a few moments before she tries a theory:

"What's under the sheets?"

If he looks: Where the center of his mattress should've been, there was a comically huge power throw switch just sitting there, waiting to be flipped.

"There's machines!" He begins to protest, as if Nine's question was a criticism of his personal choices. "Look, this is a record player. Machine, right?"

Her next question takes him by surprise. There were certainly no machines under there, as far as he knew.

"Wow, Nine, at least take me on a date before you try to get into my bed, hmm?" He laughs, heading toward the unnecessarily large bed in the middle of the room pulling the bedsheets back.

But the pull doesn't feel right, and he quickly notices that something is amiss.

"What the fuck?" He whispers, his hand finding the switch. "Is this one of your machines?"

"Not complicated enough. What's a date." Nine answers both Luka's claim about the Record player and also his other statement, but the answer to both are far less important than what Luka's found in the center of his bed.

"That's one of the six for the cube." She confirms, taking note that this is what they're going to look like-- actually, she should probably tell Luka that. It takes her several moments to come to that conclusion, though, she's far too used to working through things in her own mind.

"The other five will look like that. You have to flip all of them." She explains.

Sure enough, if he were to pull it it would start to move. It was honestly probably deeply tactilely satisfying to pull. The hinges in the middle were metal with an overly gooey grease on them that helped them move but with resistance. The handle had some heft to it. And on both sides were three clips that the handle snapped into with a grinding sensation as they pinched it into place.

A common household light switch couldn't hold a candle to it.

"It's when you go somewhere with someone to get to know them. In a romantic sense." He says as he feels out the switch, unable to pass up the opportunity to explain. "Maybe it's not a thing for you?"

Do the monsters experience romantic love? Luka's pretty sure they don't, but he's been wrong about a lot of assumptions he'd made about them so far.

Regardless, as soon as Nine tells him he has to flip the switch, he's going to do it.

"Easy enough." He says, pulling the handle into position.

Nine considers why Luka was bringing up a date. Sorry Luka, she's missed the chance to board the train of thought she needed to be on to understand. So she defaults to the easiest answer that meant she could perhaps get clarity later.

"I don't know." She lets that float in the air as she watches him pull the switch.

Once the switch has clasped into position, someone kicks open the door to Luka's bedroom.

That someone is Luka.

"I thought I heard a rat sniffing around." False Luka says, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed. Light from the room behind him illuminates his silhouette. That's not good!

"Oh, it's the you I warned you about." Nine adds, clearing up any doubt that it was, in fact, another Luka. A bad Luka.

Okay, well - he wasn't prepared for this guy to pop up quite so suddenly. As such, he's caught completely off guard when.... Luka bursts onto the scene.

"Hey!" Luka jumps up from his position leaned over the switch. "A rat!? Really?"

He keeps a distance between himself and the doorway as he tries to gauge the other Luka's intentions. At least he had intimate knowledge of his surroundings, even if it was some kind of cube-generated simulation.

"I'm only sniffing around here to try and fix your fuck-up. What do you want?"

"I knew you were delusional, I'm all your best parts. I've never made a single mistake in my life. Unlike you." He counters Luka, absolutely going for the emotional kill with his words.

"If you can get through the door behind him, the second switch is through there." Nine chimes in. Her voice is played out loud but bad Luka doesn't seem to react?

"Just lay down on the bed. I'll take it from here." He says as he steps into the bedroom with his arms folded. It's just one Luka, how bad could he be?

'Good' Luka doesn't react to Nine's words either, though he hears and makes note of them. He's too busy processing just what the hell this other Luka is trying to get at.

"My best parts, hm? But not my mistakes." He just can't let this slide. Who did this guy think he was? He literally lives in a cube. "Well, that's too bad. Some of my mistakes have been pretty sexy."

Luka is still visibly on the defense as he steps closer toward the doorway.

"And what will you do if I do that?"

He lives in an amazing, expensive cube! He rolls his eyes in the most exaggerated way possible when Luka asks the dumb question of what he'll do.

"The pillows are soft, I'll make it quick. It's the least I can do to thank you for all your hard work." He explains, threatens?, as his answer, before he repeats himself.

"I'll take it from here." and then he's advancing on Luka? He's walking with definite intent. The biggest thing, the biggest danger, is that he's got ~~brass~~ gold knuckles on that he's going to take a swing with.

Good thing Luka's not a professional fistfighter.

"He's going to punch you." Nine chimes in as bad Luka advances. Yikes!

Thank him? For his hard work? Luka can't help but agree he's deserving, especially considering the chaos of last couple of days.

"Welllll, I— " He's readying his next cheeky reply when the other Luka is suddenly approaching.

Luka reacts as soon as Nine graciously explains the situation, throwing himself out of the way. No way, this was not happening again.

He doesn't have any magic or weaponry to fight back with, but he can at least try to subdue the copy. So he's going to throw himself at himself, and hopefully at least get the other Luka off his feet.

One of the fortunate things about being Luka was that he could expect what he would find unexpected. Sure enough, bad Luka doesn't expect to be tackled?

But he has a surprise up his own sleeve: When he hits the ground, when Luka lands toppled atop his now-prone form, he bursts into little cubes. Little cubes with the consistency of jello. Every single part of him glorbles apart into a splattered mess of jello cubes.

"You won." Nine contributes, helpfully.

Could that... really be called a victory?

Well, that was... gross. And kind of terrifying? And definitely not victorious.

Luka recoils from his position after his other self seemingly melts away beneath him. He feels around the goop just to double check that he's really gone.

"Let's get the hell out of here." He says to Nine, heading for the door she'd mentioned earlier.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Luka's going to know exactly where he is when he goes through the door. The dust in the air is obvious from the moment he passes through the threshold, the space seemingly not even in the same building as the bedroom he'd just left. Shouldn't he have exited into a hallway?

Why was there a bit of an echo...?

Was this a concert hall?

Sure enough, the door has deposited him on the left side of the first stage he'd ever played on that sold out. Honestly, it looked like a place that had seen better days... stayed open, and then got worse. At least the brickwork would stand up for generations? But the balcony seating was probably only for people who had a death wish. The alcohol in the bar at the back was probably pure poison by this point too.

"Where are we?" Nine asks, a little distracted as she tries to figure out where a switch would be in this location. It was all open, so... was it just on a wall or something?

Though neither she nor Luka had found it yet: It was behind the bar.

It takes Luka a few moments to adjust again, his heart still racing from his encounter in the previous room. This isn't his home anymore. The light level, the feel of aged wood floorboards under his feet - none of it matched up. But the location was all too familiar nonetheless.

"No way." He whispers, stepping out onto the stage. He wasn't used to it being quite so empty - there was usually at least a few crew members bumbling around somewhere. "This is the Queen of Clubs!"

He hops into a seated position and slides off the stage, taking a few steps into the open pit area.

"Oh, I saw so many great shows here!" He beams proudly. "And I played a few myself, too."

But his excitement tapers off when he remembers that they're here for another purpose. And that none of this likely interests Nine at all!

"Right, the machines. You see one anywhere, Nine?"

"I forgot you were a performer. Eight talks about you a lot." Nine answers as Luka explores the space and basks in the nostalgia of it. Somewhere else, Eight would be up in arms that Nine was spilling his beans! Those are his beans to spill, Nine!

"It must be important for it to be here." She adds, considering where the switch is... until a familiar voice calls out from behind the bar. This time there's the clink of a martini glass as he toasts.

"A drink, to the old me. To swear in the new me. Cheers." Bad Luka states simply, elbows leaned up against the bar behind him before he downs the contents of the martini in one go. Considering that the alcohol in that was probably pure poison, the only reason bad Luka was alive was because he was made of jello cubes. Somehow he'd found time to change into one of the outfits Luka had worn years ago. He'd pulled it from their memories, after all, so it fit him perfectly.

"The machine is probably over there." Nine adds, starting to investigate closer to where Bad Luka had revealed himself.

The Weather

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