destinystrings | [Game Opening, Part 2 - A Thousand Words or More]

[Game Opening, Part 2 - A Thousand Words or More]

Who: (Everyone OPEN LOG)
Where: (City Hall)
Summary: (After arriving you got to mingle a bit but now it's time for explanations! Finally!)
Warnings: (Some guy LIKES TO TALK LIKE THIS!!)
Style: (The text is in prose, but feel free to write back in action tags if you feel more comfortable.)
Suitable Music: This.

When someone finally speaks up...he's rather hard to miss.

"WELCOME! To YOUR NEW LIIIIIFE!" If anything, this fellow demanded attention, what with the costume he was wearing. What a way to get introduced to this new world.

"My name...is DR. BYRON ORPHEUUUUS! But you can call me Orpheus...Dr. Orpheus if you're really insistent. REGARDLESS! It was BY THE FATES that you were all plucked from your lives and brought here to aid this city in its greatest time of need. Yes, all of you will become HEROES! With the power of your PERSONA you shall become the riotous fury of..."

"Is such enthusiasm really necessary, Orpheus?" The voice that interrupts Byron sounds slightly modulated, and comes from the large blue and grey metal man behind the others. His voice is loud enough that he doesn't require the microphone - one of the few perks that comes with being a giant robot in a world like this.

"I am Brainstorm, and I am responsible for a sizeable amount of the work that went into a lot of the tech you all have, or have experienced the beneficial effects of, unknowingly. Those of you with large objects from home have me to thank for that transport system. The Evokers used in the arena? Me again. As well as a fair amount of tweaking and perfecting your COMPs and watches you received. I do hope you manage some degree of appreciation, as crafting devices to fit such small beings was incredibly painstaking for someone like myself. Working on nanomachines at this size isn't easy. Now, I know you organics have short attention spans, but do try and keep up, because I hate to repeat myself..."

"I suppose it's an unfortunate eventuality that some number of you will somehow manage to break something. If that happens, you may contact me about repairs, but I am usually quite busy, and I'm not going to be happy about having to deal with the consequences of your carelessness. However, if it becomes necessary, my workshop is in the Cancer district."

"And with Brainstorm's explanation, I suppose it is my cue to go next. Permit me to introduce myself..."

"Now then, as it was explained, when the Seven of us arrived here, we found out we had been expected, just like you. Unlike you, however, while they knew we were coming...they had little to no where we'd come from. Let's just say it has been quite a learning experience for both sides and leave it at that." He gave them a small smile. Ahh the misunderstandings that had happened...even amongst themselves.

"We wandered around blindly during the first week. Not just to adjust from our worlds to this one, but, quite frankly, we had no idea what to do! Fortunately, a few weeks later, the Three Wise Men appeared and aided us to understand the nature of Persona. Each of them were knowledgeable in the subject. You'll be able to speak with one of them once he's done...with personal things involving family...but that isn't our concern, isn't it? Let's go on with what we've learned so far."

He moved his hand on his watch and a series of images flashed in front.

"Persona can be called forth in various ways. So far our knowledge extends into three methods; the first is a blast of energy from your soul that gives form to your inner Persona. That one will com naturally to you. The second, is made using this..."

His took something from the nearby podium and held it into the air.

"You might think this is a normal handgun, but it is actually an Evoker. It can also be used to bring out your Persona. By giving you a feeling of stress and danger, which can also bring out your Persona naturally, it jump starts your summoning. However, we tend to encourage using the normal summoning method. The device was perfected by Brainstorm, Hazama, the Wisemen and myself. We created it to aid the police force summon their Persona faster during riots but recently...it's even become popular during Persona Duels."

"...But I'm sure you'll find out about those in the city soon enough, what with their ridiculous popularity. We shalln't dwell on those." He put the gun down. "The final method uses arcana cards. You can summon more than your inner Persona, although I am sure this is completely new information to you. Do not worry, you'll learn it soon enough like we have. To do so...you'll need to gain more. I believe next week is when the Velvet room will appear again according to our calculations, Miss Mcgonagall?"

"That is correct."

"Well then!" The man continued on. "We can explain that in due time. Now let's go into something really interesting. Did you notice how you have items from your homeworld with you? Consider yourselves lucky, we didn't have that luxury. It was only through our preparations that we were able to do this. You see, when a soul enters this world, they are still tied to their old world by a special strand. Normal users can't see it, but ahh!...Those like myself who Intel more than fight, well, our Persona allow us to see them. By combining our technology and magic, we devised a system which grabs those things which are near and dear to your heart. Just how we did this would require a few days of explanation, ergo I will spare you the details for now. Those that wish to know more can come to my office later. In any case...you're welcome."

The man shuffled his hands, and grinned. Obviously he had been waiting to explain to them the next part. It was brief and short.

"As for the strands, considering they are your passport to your old homeworld, so to speak, your anchor to your life...we've named them..."

"Destiny Strings."

"Don't worry, you will not be able to see them right away. It took me a week before I could grasp the strings to become visible. Of course there were only ten of us, so therein the challenge....

Not that there's that much to see here currently..." he sighed, exasperated in a way that only a man of his caliber could do (and yet it was so delightfully British) "Is this really what we'll have to be working with? We already have Orpheus who--"

"I BEG YOU PARDON?!"

"Oh you know exactly what I mean. Talking about in that exaggerated manner of yours--"

"Really, if you two are going to continue blathering and arguing like true imbeciles," McGonagall spoke in the middle, coldly, "let someone else speak up. At this rate, we'll be here all night and it is a full moon..."

The two men glared at each other for a second before Q finished, adjusting his tie.

" Yes, well....I do not think of myself as a fool, thank you very much, but there is truth in your words. Ciel, if you please?"

"Okay! I guess it's my turn then!"

The petite girl gave the assembly a small bow. Despite the amount of people before her, she didn't seem the least bit phased. A natural leader, if there was one.

"There is much to discuss." Her fingers moved over her watch and a 3D map of the city appeared before them, glowing green shapes with markings over each district. You might notice a few areas are still in the dark. "This is what we have of the city...so far. Unfortunately, many places still allude us. Hinoto-Ri is vast, and there are a number of areas in each distinct that are currently too dangerous to enter. Those restricted areas are protected by the police force to keep the population out. We hope to finish mapping them out as soon as we can...carefully."

"Regardless, let us look at what we have about each district, one by one."

"Now, are there any questions?"

[OOC - You can start your own threads, speak amongst yourself with the new information or just ask questions to the assembled cast]

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Give him a moment to get over the shock of realizing that there's someone standing near him, and then he'll collect himself enough to reply.

"A-A video game?!" OK on initial thoughts that's actually really cool but his brain wouldn't let him stop at just initial thoughts! "You've gotta be kidding me...!"

"They're asking us to be heroes! There's too many of us to be a normal RPG, so it's gotta be an MMO of some kind."

Maybe this was his reward for bringing Babel to its knees before humanity. Yehowah was good.

Geez, real nice reward, Atsuro! Daichi would've just preferred to go back home...

"Huh... I never really played many MMOs...."

...WAIT THAT WASN'T THE POINT THOUGH-- "Hero?! I'm not cut out to be a hero! If this were a video game, I'd just be some NPC standing on the side of the street!"

~~You guys are getting way too meta here.~~

The world revolves around Atsuro and his needs, OK? Obviously the Death Clock was right and he died and went to heaven.

"Hey, c'mon, even NPCs do important things! You can, uh. Be the guy who shows up early on and no one thinks he's important until he trains off-screen and comes back and saves the day."

~~Never.~~

This was seeming a lot like the opposite to Daichi, honestly. Rather Hell or Purgatory. The lack of a giant void eating the world kind of helps.

"W-Wha?! No way, I'm not really the saving the day type of guy-- or the training type." There was that one time he drove a truck into an alien, but he's kind of convinced that was a fluke by now. "Besides, I think I'd rather people kept thinking I was unimportant. Otherwise I'd get kidnapped by the bad guys." ~~Again.~~

Looked like it was time to pass on the favor of the time-honored pep talk.

"Aw, you're not giving yourself enough credit. They wouldn't have brought us here if they didn't think we could handle it, right? ...So maybe you don't like to fight so much. Bet there are other ways you can help out -- tech support or intel or something. What kind of thing did you like to do back home?"

"You sure? The selection seems pretty random to me..."

Yeah, he's basically pretty sure that he just keeps getting involved in these things on accident.

"I'm not really that good at anything useful. The last time something bad happened, I just fought as back-up to the rest of my friends." Ignoring the fact that they kind of punched out some variation of god.

"Back-up's still doing something! It's not like you ran away and ditched your friends, right?"

Atsuro tries on another encouraging smile.

"...I kind of know what you mean. Back home, this... disaster struck completely out of the blue, and for a long time, all we could think about was surviving. We were just kids, right? What could we possibly do to help?"

"N-No way!" He was almost too quick to defend himself, but even if he freaked out and had to fight Kaito for a bit, he could never think of actually abandoning him.

Atsuro's encouragement does set him at ease a bit. At least until the...disaster talk. "Haha, you too, huh? Back where I'm from I just got finished taking my mock exam and suddenly Tokyo got invaded by aliens. No joke."

Huh. That sounded suspiciously familiar. Atsuro's eyes narrow slightly as he tries to recall the name.

"It wouldn't happen to have been... Septic-drones? Something like that?"

"You mean Septentriones?"

...Hey wait. He sure didn't recognize this guy from JP's or anything. "How do you know about those...?"

"I think I probably talked to a friend of yours earlier." Atsuro's expression is a bit more serious now as he digs around in his pockets and removes his gaming system. ...COMP. "...You should take a look, too."

The moment he boots it up, it's clear what the device is for - the demon summoning program is installed, as is the Cathedral of Shadows, the auction, and practically everything else Daichi would have on his phone.

Daichi looked kind of suspicious, but nevertheless he looked over Atsuro's shoulder to investigate the screen of the COMP (which he vaguely recognized as a new gaming system from some years ago that he didn't have money for at the time).

What he sees...is definitely a surprise. "Wh-- What?!"

He quickly dug into his pockets for his cellphone, flipping it open and hitting a few buttons before confirming-- yep, it was the same programs he all had, Cathedral and everything.

"So.. You're a Demon Tamer... but how did you get that?! I thought only members of JP's and people signed up for Nicaea could get it! And I thought we found everyone that had signed up..."

~~Actually he's also surprised that it still works, but that's a puzzle for a later time.~~

"This stuff was sent to me by the person who made the demon summoning program - a friend of mine, though we didn't find that out until later."

He flips it close and shakes his head slightly.

"It's a different world entirely, I think, but it happened pretty much the same way. I compared earlier - almost all of our demons are the same, too."

Saiduq sent other people the program? But-- no, that didn't make sense. He hadn't even shown himself to then until a good amount into the week, he wouldn't have revealed himself to other people just like that.

"Seriously...?"

With a sigh, he followed suite and flipped his phone closed, putting it back in his pocket.

"What happened with you guys? It wasn't Polaris again, was it?"

Atsuro shakes his head.

"No. It was basically the same, though - judgment from a god. Back home, it was the... you'd call it the Christian god, putting humanity through one last trial. Instead of aliens, we got a series of ultra-powerful demons called the Bels."

It was all rather convoluted when he was trying to explain.

"That was something else on the side - the demons fighting for supremacy to determine who would be king."

Well, Daichi is certainly getting real sick and tired of these judgmental god-things.

"No matter where we go, are they just going to think we're useless until we prove otherwise...? Is it just gonna keep happening...?"

Whoah he was getting kind of heavy there-- "I mean, hopefully it was just those two incidents it's limited to. The odds were already low for it happening twice, but there's no way it'd happen again, right?"

They say, as Izanami the goddess of death stands less than thirty feet away from them.

Atsuro shrugs slightly, a somber expression on his face. "Yeah. If they really are our gods... why did they put us here in the first place if they didn't think we had the potential to become something more? You can't just... decide you don't like what you started and hit the reset button. Not on so many people."

Another shake of his head and he glances up with a brighter expression. "Aha... But it doesn't matter, right? Wherever there are gods, there will always be people who will stand up to show them that they're wrong! That's what's great about humanity, what they never see."

Hey, what the big scary death goddess doesn't know won't hurt her.

He was a bit despondent himself, but it was hard to stay so down when Atsuro was talking like that. Besides, they had to think positive!

"Yeah, I guess not! We've got all sorts of people that have dealt with it already; and with these Persona things, I'm sure we can stop it if they even try it again!"

"Hah, yeah! ...But, uh. I'm just gonna hope there aren't any angry gods here or anything. I think I've done my share for the human race for my lifetime."

Atsuro scratches at the back of his head for a moment or two.

"So... right. You don't have to be so hard on yourself! You did your share, too."

"I hear you. You'd think we'd be allowed to skip to some kind of retirement after that."

He chuckled, and even though he didn't feel... necessarily as self-depricating, he was still pretty unsure. Though he smiled, nevertheless. "Heh-- I guess. The best that I could, at least. I think anyone can say that when it comes to the end of the world."

And though Atsuro wasn't exactly comfortable himself with everything that had gone on over the last week, he pushed it aside for the moment in favor of encouragement.

"And from what I hear, you did a pretty good job. A world where nothing like this can ever happen again, huh...?"

Oh right, this guy had spoken to Kaito hadn't he. Or, Yamato, but he highly doubted it was the latter, actually.

"Yeah-- you should've seen it. After the week we went through, it was the most amazing thing I've ever seen. And our friends is there to make sure that doesn't happen again."

"I'm glad... I'm still waiting on the fate of our world myself. But... after going through all that, I feel like things here won't be so bad."

Atsuro pauses for a moment. "A real bed, that's all I ask."

"Hey, if my friends and I managed to pull it off, I'm sure your world will be just fine too!"

And then he let out a laugh, while making a mental side note that wow, they actually got off pretty good being in JP's facilities, he keeps forgetting that.

"And a good meal!"

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otakuro - 2012-09-14 02:23 (UTC) - Expand

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