yogen | may missions

[ Alice absolutely screams at spooky things and can't stomach horror games, and he may have yelped and jumped back reflexively, pulling the floorboard with him. In his opinion, Noah's reaction is perfectly warranted and reasonable. Thank goodness the boy is fine, and wrapped in his friends' arms, however!

Letting go of a breath, Alice loosens his grip on the floorboard now broken off and clutched against his chest. The unsettling message is fully on display, the piece of wood held out once Nene begins to inspect the writing. ]

So it attacked you, Noah Ebalon?! This... thing?! And now there's nothing... right?

[ i'm crying poor noah and alice getting picked on

The hand appears to be connected to an arm! It's deathly pale, and it retracts quickly. But if anyone in the group is quick about it, or just lucky enough to be looking at the right angle, they might catch the fleeting sight of the familiar face of the original student council president laying beneath the floorboards before the form melts into the shadows.

There's nothing on the floorboard! It looks like it was scratched in using a blade of some sort, but it does seem to be fairly recent. Unfortunately, there's no way of knowing exactly when it was etched in or who left the message for them to find, or even why they had left it. It's a bit of an unusual sight in the void where everything seems to be aged nearly beyond recognition, and which seems to reset each time one visits. ]

( oh- oh.

nene's eyes widen for a moment and anyone paying attention might catch her mouthing 'okane-san?' in shock- despite never having met the girl personally in this year, she always felt a little... attached, in a sense. having spoken to okane's ghost and knowing that she had wanted to help and didn't want to die did that, i suppose. she almost reaches out but stops before she can cross into the hole, and something heavy weighs in her heart.

even now she's still carrying this, huh. )

Better be nothing, or else.

[It's grumbled under his breath as he shakes his head, giving Noah a little hair ruffle before he's letting him go. Childe himself misses the sight beneath the floorboards, more so focused on the mirror shard clutched in Noah's grasp.]

Well. I'm not particularly the gambling type, but I might place a bet or two on that being our way out. Either that, or... Well. Beyond breaking it? I don't have too many ideas on that front.

[Not enough time... He's clearly thinking real hard as he glances about, tapping his foot a few times. It's... Different here, in ways he's not entirely certain to the extent of. But as someone who spends most of his free times taking trips to the void, the vibe is off.]

Hold on—

[ With effort, Alice keeps his voice steady, though his heart is still pounding, and there must be a reason why Nene Yashiro abruptly looks so shocked. His three companions are more experienced when it comes to the void, whereas his only other visit was restricted to the pool building. It's not reassuring at all that even the two who willingly make trips to the void seem perturbed now! ]

Then... all of this is out of the ordinary? Can we trust anything here?

( oh- right. she needs to calm down. )

The message is fresh. I don't think things like this normally happen.

Not usually, no. Things are rather straight forward here usually. Maybe it’s starving, and that’s why things have started to change…

[That thoughtful look on his face clears up just a bit, and he gestures towards the mirror with his left hand.]

Hang on— Noah, hold that out in front of you and do a slow spin. [There’s a steadily forming idea in his mind that maybe this is meant to be their guiding light here, both literally and figuratively. As in, maybe the glow gets brighter when facing a specific direction. Sort of like the leyline compasses he’s seen the Traveler use back home in Teyvat.]

The shadows also don't normally grab people unless those people are close to death. Which... unless something's really wrong with me, I'm not. [lol @ the crystallization though.

Noah does as instructed, holding the shard out so that most of the light can be seen, and he spins slowly. Wheeeeeee]

[ It does seem to have a faint response when pointed toward the right side of the room, though unfortunately there's nothing of interest there, so it might be safe to assume that whatever it's responding to is on a different floor. Fortunately, the elevator is here, and it is functional despite being as poorly maintained as the rest of the other school, the metal dull and rusted in places. ]

[The Noah Compass stops spinning and faces toward the right side. Hm.]

It glows a little more pointing that way.

[Because the others can't hear the voice of god whispering in his mind obviously.]

Looks like we’ve got our heading then!

[He’s too bright and chipper given the situation, but that is simply because he’s entirely unhinged as a person. He stoops down to pick up the hunk of floorboard, tossing it over in Alice’s direction. Think fast.] Here. This’ll be a better weapon than your bare fists, and you don’t want to be caught unarmed if things go south.

[He then reaches out to offer one hand to Nene, his Vision giving a pulse of blue light as a gleaming blade of water coalesces and solidifies within the other. He jerks his head towards the elevator.] Shall we?

[ Everything is so creepy! In fact, the pool filled with worms and mud might have been better... Preoccupied with watching the Noah Compass, not to mention thinking about the talk of human sacrifices fed to the void, and how cheerful Childe seems in these unnerving circumstances, Alice reacts too late as the floorboard comes flying through the air for him to catch. Its flat side whacks him across the head, prompting another yelp, pained this time.

But it's not as if Childe Tartaglia is wrong, or didn't warn him... Wincing, Alice rubs the sore spot with one hand, picking up the floorboard with the other. If only he could produce magic weapons out of nowhere! ]

Let's hope that things don't go south at all... Though we're prepared, of course!

[ Into the elevator it is — he'll follow the others into the compartment. ]

( void hellevator... ugh... but fine, she'll follow along. is there anything unusual about the buttons, though?

careful not to tug too much, slender fingers curl into noah's jacket before she reconsiders- if... if something does need fighting, he doesn't need to get snagged on her. no one does. she'll keep to herself and hopefully nothing needs punching or beaming with beams or literally anything else. )

[ The only buttons that are lit up are for floors one and three, and those are the only two buttons that will be responsive to being pushed. But aside from the small amount of dried blood on the button for floor three and the general state of disrepair, there doesn't seem to be anything of note.

The first floor has the auditorium, student store, and library to the right. The third floor has the student council room, art and music clubs, and science lab. ]

[Well, the bloody button is cause for concern. As much as he would like to investigate the auditorium, it makes sense logistically for them to clear the floors out in a rough order just to be sure they don’t miss anything important.]

One floor at a time?

[He waits to be sure that everyone is safely inside the Hellevator, and provided that no one reaches out to stop him before he can do so, presses the lit up button for floor three.]

[tags in to say no Noah doesn't stop this, he just crams himself into the elevator BUT some of you are real tense and so he makes a shadow cat to improve morale.]

[ The elevator creaks and rattles as the door shuts and beings to move, but they'll reach the third floor without incident. This floor, too, has seen the left wing eaten away at by the void rather than the right. It's cold, difficult to breathe, and there's a tension hanging in the air, but perhaps that's all in line with what one would expect.

The shadow figures come and go, walking throughout the school aimlessly. Ever once in awhile one of them will change and they'll find themselves looking at one familiar figure after another. The change is brief and flickering, like static interrupting a video, before the figures continue their wandering. But they only go after students who are dying, so there should be no need for concern.

Will they keep going? ]

( guess who's hurt right in the heart? that's riiiight, it's nene, who loved hinata and hajun as family, who called shinobu her sister and teacher, who was friends with nanami and had briefly admired figaro because she didn't know better! admittedly, she does reach out to let her fingers graze against hinata and hajun both, even though this is probably a very bad idea.

provided nothing too awful happens when she does this, nene glances around before signing. )

Isn't it all supposed to be on the other side?

[Translating for the others, then:]

Yeah, it's supposed to b—

[Epiphany.]

Wait. Wait, wait, waitwaitwait! It's — the mirrors have been going crazy all month, right? I nearly got yanked into one when I turned my back on it, not to mention all the stuff you could see inside of them! The shadows and the mirrors have to be correlated — when you look in a mirror, you see things "flipped", right? That's what this is. It's a mirrored version of the void.

[And now that Noah having a brief moment of intelligence has worn off:]

That's all I got.

[They will, in fact, keep walking. At least, Noah's going to.]

[ Blood, dried or otherwise, indicates nothing good! Childe Tartaglia won't have the means to wash his hands anytime soon, either... Yet they must visit the third floor first, in search of answers, and as the creepy and unsanitary elevator descends, the shadow cat efforts don't go unnoticed — that's charming, at least.

The other shadows in the hallways... As Nene reaches out, Alice stops in his tracks, first to glance at down at her in a question, and then to stare after one figure in particular, no matter how quickly the recognizable features vanish. ]

Chiaki Nanami...?!

[ And Hajime Hinata, too, a former Star 4 resident. The room really must be cursed after all.

It takes Alice several moments to compose himself enough to focus on the conversation, the observations being voiced, and to resume walking with the others. When he speaks, he sounds distracted. ]

...You're right, Noah Ebalon... There was something wrong with the mirrors for weeks.

[He’s quiet for a long moment, mostly just listening as the others speak and letting his eyes wander about. If there are particular patches of void goop that seem a little difficult to traverse over, he waves his hand and constructs a water bridge for his companions to better pick their way across the broken flooring.]

It’s almost as if the polarity has shifted.

[It’s an idle comment, one he clearly hadn’t meant to speak forth out loud given how he starts a bit in surprise. He blinks, glancing at the shadow students, then Noah, then the mirror shard in the boy’s hand. Breaking a mirror releases one from the void school… Maybe it didn’t work because they’re not in the void school.

It’s a very casual movement, clearly still driven by absentminded musings as he draws the sharp edge of his blade across his palm and tilts his hand to watch the blood drip down onto the ground below them. Just to see what happens.]

Edited 2022-05-18 01:11 (UTC)

( NIICHAN????? )

[HYUNG????]

[ CHILDE TARTAGLIA??? ]

...CH— CHILDE TARTAGLIAAAA?!

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tw self harm???? Sorta??? Kinda ig

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