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.

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"Ugh." He sighs in frustration as he imagines having to deal with that guy four more times. "He's so annoying. Was I that annoying?"

Luka reaches the next door and pauses for a moment of peace, savoring the pleasant sounds of the crashing waves.

"That's rhetorical by the way. Don't answer." He clarifies to Nine before taking the plunge through the next doorway.

The Faridian coastline is instantly recognizable. He can picture this location well in his mind, one of his clearest memories from when he was still sighted. There was perhaps no location which he could have conjured that he'd rather find himself in. If it weren't for the looming threat of clone Luka, of course.

Everything is exactly as he'd recalled - including the merciless wind that obfuscated most other sounds.

"IT'S FARIDA!" He shouts over the roaring wind with a childish glee. Hopefully, Nine can hear him. "But... we're outside? You see anything out of place? A structure or something?"

!!!

Of all the ways Nine expected Luka to respond in this place, excitement was absolutely not one of them! She watches him in silence for a few moments before realizing that he's waiting on her!

"Sorry, looking." She returns, beginning to focus on her search.

If Luka starts wandering around, he'll eventually step in what feels like a pile of spilled jello. Why would someone have spilled jello out here near the coast?

It takes several minutes for Nine to chime in again, and honestly she's not sure that she should even say what she's about to say!

"Um." She starts smoothly.

"It's on the side of the cliff straight ahead of you. About twice your height up the wall." Sorry for the bad news, Luka! Who would put a switch up the side of the rock wall anyway? How was he going to get to it? There were rocks, sure, he could climb, sure, but it was all wet. At least Nine would help Luka make sure he was climbing towards it, but geez, this was mean.

Well, the pile of jello is concerning.

Normally, Luka might assume it was some poor jellyfish washed ashore. It would be a normal sight on the beach itself - but not up here on the cliffside.

Then there is, of course, the matter of the other Luka being made up of this stuff (and himself, apparently, too?). Had the other Luka had been here already, and was destroyed? But by what, or who?

Luka kneels down and gingerly touches the goo, perhaps against his better judgement.

"Hmm." He's still distracted by the pile when Nine announces her discovery.

"Well... fuck." Luka rises to a stand again, but makes no movement toward the cliff ahead. "Which way does it need to be flipped? We could try dropping something onto it."

Unfortunately for Luka, it was, in fact, bad Luka that was splattered on the ground. Whatever had splattered him did it quickly and abruptly! Either that or he thought he could face off against it.

"Down. Is there something you can drop? Oh, or that. " Nine reacts to something that the water washes up and deposits at Luka's feet.

It looks like a treasure chest, and it has handles-- wait.

Was the water up to Luka's feet before? It definitely wasn't, was the water rising...? (The water was totally rising with every wave that came in.)

The pile of jello remains concerning. Perhaps doubly so now, if Luka knew its exact origin. But Luka doesn't have a moment to spare for those particular concerns as even more pressing ones seem to be arising.

"No way. Seawater...? Up here?" He jumps back in surprise when the ocean waves reach him, depositing something heavy up on the cliffside sands.

He investigates the object with a few tentative kicks - discerning that it's some kind of container - before he tries to open it.

"Why is this dumb cube so intent on tainting my memories?" He says, an annoyed urgency to his tone as he tries the latch on the treasure chest. "You should make better cubes. Ones that don't try to kill you."

The water continues to rise! As Luka examines the treasure chest, he'll hear the vague scraping sounds of water bringing various wooden boxes and scraps up on land and then leaving them there as the waves retract. Each new wave brings more water, more wooden things, and lifts up all the bits that have washed up before dropping them again.

Inside the chest are the DVDs that Four was selling. The signed copies. There's a paper announcement, printed, and a braille announcement, both detailing the full 12-day-set of DVDs that would eventually come out to catalogue year 40 up to its dramatic conclusion.

"I didn't put Four's things here. These are from your memory, the cube copied from you." Nine offers, clarifying. The only reason that the cube was trying to kill Luka was because Luka clearly had some things he hadn't confronted yet!

...Also no one was perfect and no one would take being erased from existence without a fight so... it made sense why bad Luka was trying to stop Luka. He was living a pretty posh life in this cube before Luka came along! The man had only his best memories in here! What a deal!

Luka stops and kneels down to carefully examine the chests contents, despite the ocean waves continuously licking at his feet. He recognizes the items as Four's, with the announcement and Nine's comment only confirming his suspicions.

"It's a lot easier to blame the cube, though, isn't it?" He sighs, turning the signed DVD in his hands. He's unsure what he's meant to do with it, if anything.

"Did you know Four very well?" He sits himself on a rock underneath the switch, feeling the ocean water pooling at his feet. At least it was a pleasant place to wait. "You think they'd be mad?"

The water! Continues! To rise! Hopefully Luka likes having wet feet. And ankles. And soon: Knees.

"They were nice." Nine answers, dodging the first question about knowing them very well as if she was dodging a baseball.

"I don't think they would be mad. And I'm going to get them back." She answers, with as much determination as voice-to-text could afford in those words.

At the same time as she's answering, something long, coiling, and heavy gets washed up against Luka's feet. A snake? No, a rope! And there's a hook on the end? How convenient!

If Luka grabs the rope, he'll hear the roaring woosh of approaching waves a few seconds after. Surely that's nothing!

Luka doesn't particularly like having wet feet, or ankles, or knees! But the rising water doesn't give him much choice, even if he scrambles further up the rocks.

He's quiet for a moment after Nine answers, considering her choice of words carefully and making a mental note on them for later.

"Yeah... they didn't seem like the type to be. Even when it was happening." He sighs as he recalls the grim memory, and his own misplaced confidence in his choices at the time. "Well, when you get them back, we'll see. Five's mad enough for the both of them, anyway."

He perks up when he feels something new and unusual wash up beside him, and he pulls the heavy rope from the ground until he reaches the hooked end.

"Hey, you think this can reach the switch...?" He asks, though he doesn't wait for an answer before he's already winding up an attempt.

The water is relentless! It rises and rises without regard to Luka's presence. The roaring is getting closer: Is that a big wave? That sucks!

"Five is very grumpy. That can definitely reach." Nine answers, having done the measurement to verify that there was honestly about twice the length of rope that was needed to reach the switch, nice!

If Luka goes for the throw and makes it, pulling the switch will have the world's worst side effect: The switch is connected to a drain and pulling the switch pulls the stopper out. Hope Luka likes going on water slides, because the drain is about two feet away from his feet!

Who designed this stupid cube space anyway?

"Grumpy is a generous way of putting it." It's going to take Luka a few good tries before he can hook the switch, so he fills the dead air with complaints about Five's behavior. "You'd think she'd never been ---"

His train of thought is cut off when he finally feels the satisfying tug of the hook snagging on the switch.

"Oh! I did it!" Luka grins. He's rather proud of himself as pulls on the rope triumphantly, and the drain stopper is yoinked out of it's place.

He's not expecting the water to rapidly start draining out from all around him, and before he can get his bearings he's suddenly swept away with the rushing tide.

"Be careful" Nine's voice to text lands too late as Luka is swept away. Fortunately the phase transition happens smoothly. The experience for him would be much like sliding down a lengthy water slide followed by dropping into a recliner.

A recliner where he's got the heat of interrogation lights glaring down on him and there's two people seated across the table from him.

"At least let me hit him once." Bad Luka's voice speaks first, the figure on the left.

"No." Comes the second voice, the person on the right, grumpy and annoyed. Luka has heard this voice yelling at him multiple times before. It's Five. Bad Five.

"This is my revenge, he's a big fat jerk and I'm going to stab him." Bad Five declares, bringing a hand up to jab a knife into the table between herself and Luka.

"They're both not real but they can both hurt you. You're in a police room." Nine offers as a clarification. She's in the middle of her analysis so hopefully Luka can focus on not getting stabbed in the meantime. Two enemies is a new one!

Luka lands in the recliner— jolted by the impact, disoriented, and irritated now by being soaking wet. He stays motionless until the conversation between the two voices reaches him.

Ah, that voice. It's me. He thinks. For once in his life Luka is disappointed to hear his own voice. That guy, again. What a pain.

And then: Five..? At first she seems to be advocating for him, until she follows up on her intentions. Of course not. Ugh.

He's grateful that Nine is still with him. At least someone was. He's also grateful that, despite finding himself in a police interrogation room, he's mercifully not handcuffed.

"Stabbing is a little extreme, don't you think?"

Look, it's Luka's fault that he didn't bring a change of clothes into The Cube. He'll just have to deal with the wetness in the meantime. Fortunately he's been given two more pressing matters to focus his attention on!

Bad Five jolts up from the table as Luka speaks, as she does Bad Luka makes a sound something like "urk--" and grips the table with one hand and his forehead with the other. Is he in pain?

"Stabbing is a little extreme--?? Oh yeah? You don't say? Hold on, let me ask a stabbing expert! Hey! Four! Is stabbing a little extreme? Oh wait, there's no answer! Why could THAT be?!" Bad Five's voice gets increasingly angrier and angrier as she speaks. By the end of it she has both her hands on the knife she stabbed into the table and she's actively grinding it into the metal of the table. The act is making just a terrible metal scraping squeak every time she shifts it.

"The switch is on the underside of the table. You can reach it without moving." Nine chimes in helpfully. Man, it's a good thing that Bad Luka and the Jello Brigade can't seem to hear her isn't it? This switch would make four out of six!

Luka makes note of the switch, and readies one hand to flip it when necessarily. But he doesn't make the move to flip it just yet.

"I'm not the only one who's killed a... one of you, you know." He says. "Why do you reserve this resentment for me alone?"

His fingers are resting on the switch now, and he'll flip it if he hears movement before words. But he figures some dialogue might be worth an attempt, at least.

"None of them are here so I can't stab them. But you're here so I can stab you! Any last words before I stab you?" Bad Five counters, sounding just as annoyed as before.

"Just don't stab him in the face." Bad Luka chimes in, unmoving from his uncomfortable position. His tense voice paired with his fingers gripped against his head make it clear he's enduring some amount of pain.

"Shush or I'll stab your face." She counters him, turning and pulling the knife out of the table to level it at... Bad Luka.

What a twist!

Well, he's not sure what to make of this. Luka's hand falls from the switch, but not too far, just in case.

"That's bullshit." He says, hoping to distract her attention from Bad Luka. He'd noticed now that something was wrong with him, and as annoying as Bad Luka has been, there was something deeply unsettling about hearing himself in pain.

"You like Gyre. You never stabbed him."

"You won't stab me either." Bad Luka chimes in, apparently oblivious to the fact that Luka was trying to help. He rolls his eyes after he speaks.

"I'll stab Gyre too. I'm the best stabber there is. Watch!" She declares much in the way that a child shows defiance by doing something phenomenally stupid does. Except she has a knife, Bad Luka has a face, and the man goes to jello cubes the instant the knife sticks into him.

Much like dominos falling, though, the jello cube collapse cascades down Bad Luka's body all the way down to the floor before it rushes up Bad Five's leg, up her body--

"What the--" Is all she manages out before she collapses into cubes and the knife she was stabbing with clatters onto the table.

There is a long, uncomfortable silence before the only other person here chimes in.

"They're both gone." Nine offers less-than-helpfully.

"... your cube is definitely broken." He sighs heavily, clearly tired from that fruitless and kind of frightening experience.

The constructs don't listen to reason. They only seem interested in stabbing him, and fighting them off every time was exhausting.

"What was that Five doing to uh, the other me?" He asks. Maybe Nine could enlighten him on what exactly he'd dropped into.

"I didn't program it to do this. The real Five isn't like that." Nine tries to offer as an explanation or a reassurance before she gets to the next question.

"They were attached. The cube can only produce one construct but your memories resulted in two. It made them both... inaccurate. All it's designed to do is stop you. There are only two switches left after this, it might happen again. The last one will be the hardest. Be ready for your memory with the strongest emotions for the last one." Nine goes on a bit of an exposition there so hopefully the information was helpful to Luka!

"Ah..." It wasn't much reassurance, but it was better than nothing at all.

Luka still had some lingering questions. Perhaps it didn't matter, anyway. He perks up when Nine explains that the next switches will be the last ones.

"Oh, thank the gods. I'm ready to be out of this cube - no offense, Nine." He did hear the part about the last one being the hardest, but he's conveniently chosen to ignore that.

Regardless, he flips the switch beneath the desk.

"It's okay." She answers Luka just before he flips the switch.

Instead of the typical transition where the switch disappears from Luka's grasp, this time it shifts into something else. A once-familiar weight, the handle of a weapon: The sword from the Protector.

Worse, there's a fading smell in the air. A combination that Luka has only encountered once before: the mixed scents of copper, wet sand, ashes, and roses.

There's a table, a signed video set, and a signature that Luka himself made.

There are no sounds.

Only silence.

Luka recognizes the sword near instantly. He'd never held anything like it before. He recalls laughing with the Protector as they'd discussed the specifics of its design, and he felt those details now weighing heavy against his palm.

"Four?" He calls out, though he doesn't expect an answer. Luka knows what part of the scene he's dropped into, and he knows well that Four wouldn't be here to respond.

"Where's the switch here?" He asks Nine. He didn't prefer to linger here long, if he could help it.

Instead of Nine's normal answer, there's only a brief moment of static. It's like someone tried to speak but a bundle of aluminum foil was the only thing that could make the sounds. It's just too much crumpling to make anything out.

Fortunately for him, he won't need Nine's help to find the switch. For all his familiarity with the sword in his hand, he'll know when that familiar weight is gone. Instead of something that he was holding, the handle has changed into something that his hand is resting on. Through some kind of cube fuckery, the sword had turned into the switch.

If he flipped it, there would only be one left.

If he flipped it, there was only one place he could go. For this switch, in striking comparison to all the others, the change would be instantaneous.

Flipping the switch would land him by a table in the industrial magitech shop. Accompanying all its sounds and smells is the voice of one of the higher-ups who ran it; but not his family: "...you have to sign, you're next in line."

But they aren't talking to Luka. They're speaking to... someone. Nearby. Behind a door? He was just outside the door to a... meeting room?

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Day 9: Twilight

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

The Weather

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