MISSION 2.A

[adsum]

Participants: Shin, Sidney, Hajun, Atsushi
Location: Fourth Floor
Date: 08/08 - 08/14

(ooc notes: I will state any possible content warnings in the subject line of the mod response when it comes up. If anything makes you uncomfortable, please tell me so I can back off and refocus the thread.

There will be no tag order, and a mod response will come after at least 4 player responses 3 player responses OR the next day, whichever is earlier. Please note this means that if you're absent for a day or more, the thread will move on, but I will pace things so that people aren't missing large plot beats.)

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Start

[adsum]

[ Regardless of when they pushed through the door on the fourth floor, each person opens the door to find themselves inside a vast hall of mirrors, turning around to find that the door has disappeared and that they standing facing one another, the next person and the next appearing out of sight behind turned backs.

Rather than a maze, the wide, full length mirrors stand side by side in rows spanning floor to ceiling. Some have toppled, some lie in shards upon the ground, some are cracked, some are smeared with blood, and most show one's normal reflection when stared into. In others, the reflection may freeze as long as one's gaze is fixed on it, or its movements may be half a second too slow. In further others, the reflection looks completely different: it's still your character, but wearing flowing robes or beggar's rags, framed by a warm hearth or dark alleyway, or any other matter of looking like they just stepped onto the stage of a play.

The air smells faintly of vanilla. ]

mild yttd chapter 3 spoilers in the image link

[notsosou]

[He's not entirely sure he hasn't passed out again and isn't dreaming again. He didn't know what to expect on the other side of the door; the warmth made him worry about fire, but this place feels like a physical embodiment along the lines of his symbolic nightmares; images of himself, shattered and different, dead and alive, and all pairs of eyes watching him. The reflection closest to him has him in a familiar black suit in an unfamiliar office setting.

He jolts when someone suddenly appears behind him, but it's better than looking anywhere else. The relief and fear accompanied by not being alone here.]

Ahaha... you too, huh? [The laugh is a little strained.]

[wolfetracks]

( sidney had taken the first opportunity to investigate the door once he'd been able to get it open- a moment of recklessness, perhaps, but. they needed to know more about their prison. the first reflection he saw was a familiar set of mis-matched button eyes, one green with a scratch over it and one gold. and then it's gone.

he wants to look at the different mirrors immediately, but shin... )

That's right. I admit, this isn't what I was expecting... Are you alright?

( despite his notorious resting bitch face and stoicism, sidney does care. )

[thetyger]

[Atsushi came up here with no goals of any sort, unaware the right wing of the fourth floor had been some place off-limits or inaccessible previously. He's just exploring and trying to figure things out.]

Oh. Um, hi.

[It's Shin and Sidney he takes note of first. Then his eyes shift to the mirrors and oh shit. This isn't good. This is nightmare territory. Broken images and strange reflections, one of himself in a black trenchcoat trimmed with white tiger fur, standing in some place that looks like a parking garage. Weird. But he's seen weirder shit and he will deal with this. Attempting to avert his eyes from all of the mirrors doesn't work so well, and they keep shifting back when something seems to move or not move when it should.]

W-where's the door?

[rhymed]

[ His hand still lingers in the air as if he were reaching for the door. Fingers twitching slightly when he notices the three backs before him, eyes descending to the floor and cautious as he takes a step forward. Stepping on a shard, noticing for a split second that his reflection moves a second behind.

Hajun reaches up to take the tinted glasses off his face, pushing them into his pocket. ] It’s gone. So I’ll assume that we’re trapped… Or perhaps it just moved somewhere, but who knows.

[ He’s keeping his tone leveled, trying to be calm. ]

[notsosou]

Just peachy, ahaha.

[He's not good with people appearing to care about him on the best of days, so in this particular spooky room his voice carries a bit of a customer-service-ey 'do not be enquiring further please and thank you' tone.

He does gather himself together a bit though, and Hajun's deliberate calm helps here. Impressions to make, and an existing one he doesn't want to lose. He can push down the part of himself screaming this must be only a trap and they're all already dead. That's not how these things work. There has to be a way out, if only to make failure hurt more.]

There could be one behind one of the unbroken mirrors, right?

[But then how to distinguish it other than breaking every single one? It can't be that easy.]

[adsum]

[ It's not that easy, and it's not the best idea— but it is still an idea. Like the windows in the void school showing normal high school life that must be shattered to return to reality, some of these mirrors similarly show mundane scenes where there is no reflection at all, though they will have to walk far and check many to find them:

One looks like a living room, on a summer's day from the light filtering through the open windows and leaving streaks of sunbeam across the wood floor. The sky is blue outside, and a little distance away seems to be sparse trees building up to a dense forest.

Another mirror shows stone walls, shadows dancing with what must be from flickering torches high up just out of frame, the image shaking a little, erratic, as if from thundering footsteps also unseen.

A third shows nothing but the ocean, clear blue with rolling waves.

There's more, but in a place with infinite mirrors, they'll be here forever looking at each one by one, just looking instead of doing. ]

[thetyger]

Or the door is a mirror.

[That actually seems more logical to him than a door being behind one. The laws of physics don't apply in illusions, which Atsushi is 95% sure this is. Hesitantly, he reaches out to touch the nearest one, to see if it... melts into some kind of portal or something.]

The first mirror. cw: brain horror? uhh YAMA DON'T LOOK just in case, gen gore

[adsum]

[ The four of them come tumbling out one after another onto hardwood floor, turning around to see a full length mirror hanging on the wall that is, as expected, a one-way trip. Also immediately apparent in the mirror is a copious amount of red in the background, and when they step back from the mirror and properly take a look at the room, I hope they aren't surprised to see and smell a pool of blood originating from the ground next to the small bed, with drag marks out of the bedroom in which they arrived.

It's a cozy little cabin, with a child's room consisting of a bed and dresser and sparsely populated bookshelf, the trail of blood passing by the parents' bedroom adjacent with two separate beds with a nightstand in between, leading down the hallway to a kitchen with something bubbling on the stove, and finally, ending in the living room. Here, a body lies less than a foot away from the open door, torn into shreds of flesh and splintered bone to the point where it's barely recognizable as human, if it weren't for a hand snapped off at the wrist lying several feet behind the body as if left behind in transit, and the long dark hair swimming inside the brains and shards of bone in what's left of a crushed skull.

There is an axe plunged deep into the body's chest, stuck in the floorboards on the other side.

The scent of vanilla hangs in the air. ]

[wolfetracks]

... Jesus Christ.

( he doesn't necessarily recoil- it's not his first grisly scene, unfortunately, and despite hope he knows it won't be the last while they're in this school. but he does pale, one hand over his mouth and perhaps finally, wavering in expression. part of him wants to shield the eyes of the younger men around him, but he knows it won't do any good. )

The attacker could still be around. Stay alert.

( and he is not taking his eyes off the goddamn body, no matter how broken it may be. he turned up in the modern day, he's seen horror movies. )

[notsosou]

[Shin had seen a few horrible deaths in quick succession before he came to Yogen, but never anything this... this. He can't look at it for long, gaze darting anywhere in the room but at the form in the middle of it. The fact that the blood trail started in what appeared to be a child's room is joining the myriad other things in the mental compartmentalization box.

He's always kind of wan, but he's definitely not looking well right now, panting like he needs air.]

W-we need to get out of here...

[He starts stumbling towards the living room door, making to snatch the scarf from Sidney (sorry Sidney) as he passes.]

[thetyger]

[Oh my god. There's no way that person should be alive, but... Atsushi knows first hand sometimes you can come back from something that gruesome and violent. And this was some strange mirror-world; you just never know. Atsushi kneels beside the body, looking for any signs of life while cringing at getting their blood all over him, and trying hard not to keep looking at the brain and skull shards.]

T-there's only one... body. Where are the others?

[He's less concerned with who, or what, did this, but where the other two presumed occupants of the cabin are. His shaking fingers close over the axe. They might need a weapon.]

[rhymed]

[ Hajun can feel the acid in his stomach twist and turn, urging him to throw up whatever he managed to eat that day. He does his best not to and looks to the ground, finding the pool of blood and a particularly gross piece of gray matter near his foot.

A devastating scene, and yet he has to remember that he had to pick up and carry a body that had been dismembered and gutted. He's seen worse, unfortunately, and while they investigate the body Hajun splits from the group. One hand grips the glass shard in his pocket while the other goes to the stove to ensure that it's turned off.

Something normal to distract him, to not throw up. ]

Outside, maybe. [ Hopefully. ] Unless they have them hidden under the boards.

[wolfetracks]

( sidney says nothing as the scarf is snatched away- it's a fucked up sight in a terrible situation, and he cannot fault a man for wanting to get out. with atsushi checking the body, he risks glancing out the windows. is anything there? )

[adsum]

[ There is no sign of life from the body on the ground. It's a small body, a little girl from what's left of her face.

There is a pot of grits with bits of sausage on the stove that's mostly stuck to the bottom of the pot by now, but Hajun prevents a house fire by shutting off the stove.

Sidney glances out the window, just in time to see a man standing outside the door— there's a click, and regardless of any prior warning Sidney may be able to utter in that split second, the door swings open and a man with a rifle nearly runs into Shin. He stumbles back in surprise, lifting the rifle off his shoulder as a warning for apparent trespassers in his home, when his eyes fall upon Atsushi with his hands wrapped around that axe.

"M-murderer!!" the man stammers, swinging the gun past Shin and towards Atsushi, and pulls the trigger. ]

[thetyger]

[Oh shit.]

through the looking-glass

[adsum]

[ One by one they touch the water, and the world turns on its head and they find themselves falling, weightless, blurs of color passing by their periphery too quick to really see but there's the feeling of being watched, bright yellow eyes, a splash of crimson—-

the warm brown of hardwood floor that they collide into, Shin then Hajun then Sidney with seconds between them, opening their eyes to bookshelves towering over them, black smoke thick in the air above them, the smell of blood overpowering that of vanilla. Under Shin is a copy of Grimms' Fairy Tales, the book's spine split and pages torn from their landing, open on the story of "Little Red Riding Hood." Surrounding them are other children's stories: "Peter Pan," "Rapunzel," "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", some of the pages torn, some with thin smears of blood on the margins.

It's a library. The school library, except they can hear and speak, except the door and window don't open, except in the corner of the room, tucked away as if hiding from sight, is the body of a little girl in pigtails lying on the ground. ]

cw injury stuff he. he lost an arm in the last few tags--

[wolfetracks]

( sidney doesn't even realize what's around them, not yet- he's a little focused on dropping the axe and tearing off a piece of cloth (a sleeve, he thinks), to try and start on a tourniquet- but his head is racing and his vision's a bit blurred from everything. cloth- something rigid now, he needs- a, a pen, or something- )

Fuck.

( ... that's great, honey. )

[rhymed]

[ Hajun groans upon hitting the floor, coughing loudly before he turns to his side. Then his knees, slowly craning his neck to look around the notice and find something comforting in the familiarity around them.

He then looks at Sidney and notices that he's muttered a word -- that's different. That's not right. That has him pissed off again.

He then looks over and sees the girl, panic in his voice: ] Oh -- Fuck! Again. There's another fucking body.

[notsosou]

[Shin hit the floor front first and then two people landed on top of him in quick succession so he lies there and wheezes a bit. There's something digging into his ribs and he manages to roll over onto his side and prop himself up on an elbow. He's somewhat distracted from whatever he landed on by the oh god there's more blood factor. Once more someone is bleeding to death in front of him, because of him. The dead body and the smoke ratchet up the alarm.]

Why does this keep happening...

[He shuffles over to Sidney over the ripped-out pages, and because he doesn't actually know all that much about first aid, he's focusing on tying the cloth Sidney ripped off and pulling it as taut as he's able, heart in his mouth.]

sidney got a trophy but i don't think anyone would appreciate it right now so its being hidden.

[wolfetracks]

It needs an- an anchor, something to twist it with. Then tie it off- ( and then the outburst- ) God damn it.

( but with hajun's comment, he wants to make an effort to push past the pain. past everything. he's brought the axe- and... ................... oh. huh. looks like he and the wolf both took something from each other, but he's pretty sure no one wants to look at what he took- so he drops the rest of his jacket onto it.

with shin's help, however, he can at least finish stopping the bleeding, and focus on what's around them- the school. but. not... is there anyone else in the library with them? )

Little Red Riding Hood... hah. ( it is bitter and humorless, yes. ) ... The others... they match the mirrors... Ah. Sou- thanks...

[adsum]

[ PLEASE SHE'S NOT DEAD

The little girl stirs at the commotion, taking a great effort to turn around so that she's facing them while lying on her side, a finger lifting to her lips in a shushing motion. ]

...Are you...

[ Her voice is hoarse, and she tries to clear her throat but it doesn't make a difference. ]

...Is it over now...?

[wolfetracks]

( OH THANK GOD HE COVERED UP THE WOLF HEAD BUT ALSO DON'T LOOK AT HIM AND HIS HORRIBLE INJURY, HARUKA-

still, if the girl- who clearly knows whats up- says to be quiet, he's going quiet. but also ori please you dropped us on a corpse already we are not to blame in this assumption- )

[notsosou]

[Wolf head? What wolf head? We can stuff and mount it later.

The remaining laser pointer probably works pretty well as an anchor... F the one still left in the storybook somewhere. Shin glances away.]

Don't move too fast. You're nothing more than dead weight to us if you pass out.

[LISTEN THERE HAVE BEEN SO MANY CORPSES TODAY. He stares in the way of the startled, opens his mouth, closes it, and then nods in answer. Is it over? He sure hopes so. He really does, smoke aside. This girl... was she the one who...? No, that doesn't make sense. What does here though.]

End

[adsum]

[ Shin comes to the end of the crawlspace, feeling the loose tiles shift below his knees and elbows, and drops down into the hallway in front of the library. He can grip the handles of the library door, and it swings open easily, the three of them turning to see bright white light spill through the open door, blinding and forcing them to squeeze their eyes shut.

They open their eyes. Shin is standing in front of the doorway by the stairwell, holding open the door to the fourth floor and staring at the other two members of his group. Sidney, Hajun, and the wolf head find themselves in the hallway, staring back. Smears of bloody pawprints lead from the bleeding head out the door, fading away when it reaches the stairs.

On Shin's wrist are 2 additional tallies.
On Sidney's wrist are 3 additional tallies.
And on Hajun's wrist are 2 additional tallies.

From the 28th onward, the silence has been lifted from the library. ]