Event - Lullaby

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Lullaby

➥ For You Never Shut Your Eye

(cw: supernaturally-induced sleep/fatigue, supernaturally-induced sleep disorders/somniloquy, needles/injections)

The line between waking and sleep is beginning to blur. People will find themselves sleeping far too much, but it never feels like enough. The music is growing more prevalent and persistent throughout town. The effect is still weaker within the building, but as October wears on, more and more people are affected and ADI staff are more intent than ever to find the source and also figure out how to block the effects. Characters will find themselves conscripted (between Halloween Party preparations) into assisting with building or testing anti-music and sleep devices along or with helping to try to track down the source of the music.

For those helping to build and test devices, there is an R&D lab in the basement levels of ADI that will be available. Devices native staff have been able to devise include:

• Headphones that play different frequencies to try to cancel out the sound of the singing.
  
• An armband that periodically stabs a small needle into the arm with a small dosage of adrenaline.
  
• Headbands set to a constant low vibration.

The efficacy of all of these devices is… questionable, but perhaps others may have their own expertise to lend to the efforts, attempting something on a broader scale than just personal protection devices.

For those helping to track the source of the music, finding it seems to be impossible, but there is a definite pattern that characters will note as the days pass. The epicenters of the music are moving, migrating out of the graveyards and converging on ADI Headquarters. As this goes on, the building will become less and less of a safe haven, the music penetrating its walls and affecting the staff there more heavily. You might find yourself having to help a neighbor who's fallen asleep while working. Or you might not even be able to fully tell they've fallen asleep as they sleepwalk and talk almost like they're actually still conscious. Even those who have never been prone to sleepwalking and talking may find themselves affected and… far more open with what they say when in the unguarded state of semi-unconsciousness.

➥ Till the Sun Is In the Sky

(cw: supernaturally-induced sleep/fatigue, thanatophobia, character death, death by poisoning, blood, choking, emetophobia, death by crushing)

By the 25th, some people may find waking up to be a challenge in and of itself. But they do manage to wake up. Seemingly. Perhaps the day is much like any other, heading to ADI or out around the city, grabbing coffee and- something is wrong. Something is very wrong. That cup of coffee you just drank had tasted a little different than usual. A touch of almond to it? It hits you that your throat is burning, bile and blood rising up and choking you as you hack and gasp and vomit. Your legs grow weak, you're losing control of everything, falling, dying.

And then you wake up.

Just a nightmare. Just a bizarre and horrible nightmare. You head out and… is this home? You're home! Or maybe… wait, this doesn't seem right. Have you gone somewhere else? Some things might be familiar, memories intertwined and mixing with fantastical elements, some your own, some not. You notice people you recognize, ones who might be as confused as you are. This isn't where they should be and they remember dying, too. Or seeing you die or someone else. It doesn't make sense, but somehow, they remember they had a dream they shared last night. And then something falls from above and nearly crushes you or your partner. Or maybe it does crush them, and you're suddenly looking at a dead body as the world and this nightmare that feels so very real becomes more and more hostile. Maybe something falls on you.

And then you 'wake up.'

➥ When the Blazing Sun Is Gone

(cw: supernaturally-induced sleep/fatigue, thanatophobia, character death, body horror, detailed description of painful physical transformation, description of the loss and regrowth of teeth, violence, mental status alterations, temporary power-loss, spiders)

Even with people dropping left and right thanks to the odd sleep effect taking hold, ADI staff are hellbent that their Halloween party will not be completely ruined. And on the 28th (a little before the actual holiday), everyone wakes up. Or… seems to. For those trapped in dreams, it will seem very much that they've woken up, the music has stopped, and they can actually carry on. For a few days, it even seems like things are normal. The party on the 31st is a blow-out bash. The entire first floor of ADI HQ has been transformed with decorations. The canteen is serving festive food and has set up a dance floor with holiday-appropriate music playing. Some of the offices feature additional activities, including party games like bobbing for apples in a trough that's been brought in, a guess this gross food booth, and more general party games. For a quieter time, there are also areas set up with board games and card games to play. And for some extra fun spooks a mini-haunted maze has been set up with faux spiders and webs, along with other goofy-looking monster creatures.

It's around 9 PM when the music and lights suddenly cut out. There's nothing for several seconds. Then, a voice begins to sing, filling the halls of ADI. It's a young girl's voice.

"Bye-bye, bye-bye,
Quickly you will die,
On the morning will be frost,
And you’ll go to the graveyard, the graveyard.

Grandfather will come there, too,
And he will bring the coffin.
Grandmother will come along,
Her tears, they will not soften.
Mama sings the prayer song, then,
And falls down on her knees.
Daddy takes you to the grave,
No one can hear his pleas.

Bye-bye, bye-bye,
Quickly you will die,
On the morning will be frost,
And you’ll go to the graveyard, the graveyard.

As the last notes of the song fade away, all hell breaks loose. Those who had been wearing particular sorts of costumes, ones that are more monstrous in nature, may find themselves transforming, growing, twisting, shifting. It's not a clean change, but a violent, agonizing one that cracks bones, tears and reshapes muscles and tendons, pushes out teeth to make room for new ones. Those transformed will find themselves compelled to chase, to hunt, to kill anyone they can get their claws, teeth, or other appendages on.

For those who stay themselves, it's not just their transformed friends who pose a danger, but the decorations they've set up, as well. Those fake giant spiders and webs? They're no longer fake. Neither are any of the other demonic little creatures. The goal of everything in ADI and even outside for those who manage to make it out the doors, is to remind you how very, very mortal you are. Those typically possessed of fantastic abilities will find that they have been sapped away. There's no calling on magic or innate abilities. You are mortal and you are going to die like everything mortal does.

In the chaos, characters will catch glimpses of a young girl flitting amongst the chaos, seeming unperturbed by it all. Trying to catch up to her or speak to her is fruitless, but she's there, and she's humming that song from before.

➥ When He Nothing Shines Upon

(cw: supernaturally-induced fatigue/malaise, thanatophobia)

Those who are killed at the party will find themselves waking up wherever they actually fell asleep a few hours or even days ago. If your character was one of the lucky few who somehow managed to escape the effect, you'll notice people waking up all over ADI HQ and elsewhere. There are no signs of damage on the bodies, but those who died in the dreams will find themselves feeling incredibly weak and generally ill for several hours to several days after the experience.

The music has actually stopped, and this time, it would seem you've actually woken up. Depending on how long you were passed out for, that may be a more unpleasant experience for some than others. There's a message posted from a random ADI employee's phone a few days later to the network:

Mr. S was right. This was fun! I'll have to come back next year to play with you. - Ava, the Lullaby Girl

P.S. Sorry for stealing your phone, horsegirl67. But I wanted to say, hi. C:

Unfortunately, there are no further messages and attempts to respond to the message will receive no reply for now.

But... fortunately…? All of the Halloween preparations are still up, and there's a festive party to attend if anyone actually feels keen on trying it in real life. Pam Ruan, the main organizer is bloody-minded about it now and will have her God damn Halloween party, but those who work themselves up to attend out of festive spirit or morbid curiosity will find it a distinctly muted affair that breaks early in the evening.

Happy Halloween, Gloucester!

➥ Mod Notes

• GENERAL - Players are welcome to play NPCs for themselves when they are needed in a thread. If you need more information on general behavior for these types of NPCs, please feel free to ask! In general, the information provided in the prompt should be sufficient and you're welcome to make up any details beyond that for your specific scene. The Lullaby Girl (Ava) can be seen throughout character dreams, but they will not be able to interact with her during this event. They will either wake up or simply find that the physics of the dream are warped and she cannot be reached or there's a sheet of glass between her and the character or whatnot.
  
  
• FOR YOU NEVER SHUT YOUR EYE (15-24 October) - Characters are welcome to develop their own devices for attempting to stop the music. Characters will have modern day technology available to them along with a few slightly more advanced electronics and tools. Please do not go too out there. This isn't Tony Stark's array of tools and the like. But characters can create additional devices to test within reason. Some of them may be more or less effective, but with how sporadic the effect is, it might be difficult to tell what's actually working or not. There can also be negative side-effects from devices, if you'd like to play those out. Characters with the appropriate magical charge may also attempt to supernaturally block the music, but this will not be condoned or facilitated by ADI. Characters searching for the source of the music will not be able to find it, just discover that it is moving. For characters who are sleep-talking, they may find themselves unusually honest. They may or may not recall conversations with other characters and all that they told them.
  
  
• TILL THE SUN IS IN THE SKY (25-27 October) - Characters will experience repeated nightmares of dying in a shared dreamscape. They will remember every time that they die in the dreams. Feel free to get as creative and gruesome with this as you would like. These are dreams and fantastical situations that might not actually happen (e.g., a robot showing up and shooting a laser through your character) may occur. Players are welcome to introduce elements of their memories into the nightmares and mix those memories around between characters who might wind up in a dream together. Please ensure all top-levels are appropriately tagged for any and all content warnings. Add content warnings as you go along, if needed. Dying in the dreams will trigger the sense of waking up. This can be a fake wake-up or characters might actually wake for a short while and find others passed out around them.
  
  
• WHEN THE BLAZING SUN IS GONE (28-31 October) - Again, this will be a shared dreamscape where characters will be under the illusion (at first) that all has returned to normal. For those who investigate, everything seems to be real, nothing too off, excepting the night of the Halloween party. Once the Lullaby Girl finishes her song, characters who are dressed in costumes that depict animals or other monstrous creatures may find themselves transformed into their costumes. Transformed characters may gain powers for the duration of this prompt/event related to their monstrous forms without mod approval. Go wild, kill your friends and neighbors, and generally trash everything around you. The decorations that come to life will be attempting to murder all characters, transformed or not. If characters escape into the city, they will find all of the festive decorations out there have come to life and want to kill them, as well. Death is unavoidable for this particular prompt, but it can be something swift and painless or something drawn out and horrible at player discretion. It is the only way to actually wake a character fully. Players also have the option of keeping their characters awake. They will not experience the shared dreamscape and will just be stuck with a lot of unconscious people around them for the duration of this portion of the event.
  
  
• WHEN HE NOTHING SHINES UPON (31 October) - Ava, the Lullaby Girl, cannot be contacted or immediately located, but she will be available in future plots for interactions with characters. There is no immediate information regarding who Mr. S. is. Players may have the general sleep/death malaise last for a minimum of two hours and a maximum of three days. Regular medications for the flu can ameliorate some of the symptoms, but they will ultimately clear up on their own. Characters may wake up in whatever state players would like. Feel free to play out the effects of them having been slumped in a corridor for three days without food or water. It's going to be a bad time all around. Those who attend the real Halloween party will be thanked profusely by Pam and showered with candy. At least they'll get a few HR brownie points?

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Comments

iii. cw: medical experimentation

[musicdied]

For the first few moments, Yelena isn't even aware that this isn't her nightmare. She tenses her muscles, testing the give in the straps, fingertips moving almost imperceptibly against her leg, where there should be--

Of course there's no knife. Why would she think there would be? There never is when--

Then the doctor mutters something, and for a moment she struggles to process the speech, her expectations primed for another language entirely. But no. Wait. That was--

"Wait," she says, first in her mother tongue, and then again in the same language the doctor had spoken. "Wait."

But it's too late for that. The machine lowers, and it's like her veins have been set on fire. Her back tries to arch, and she clenches her jaw tight enough that it feels like her teeth are going to shatter as she struggles to swallow the scream that's trying to claw its way out of her throat.

[worthallthis]

He's never seen this from the outside. Never seen someone else strapped to the table, someone else cut into or injected or-- or hurt. He didn't think it was even possible. No one did this sort of thing to actual people.

He's not dressed in his usual combat gear, or even his usual civilian gear. He's in the dirty remains of... of an army uniform? Maybe? He doesn't think too hard about it. His own body feels on fire. He still has the track marks from multiple needles in his own flesh.

But belatedly, too late maybe, he recognizes the body on the table. He gives a roar that's maybe more of a screech and lunges at the doctor, hurling him away from the table, but it's already begun-- how does he stop it-- how does he get her out--

[musicdied]

Yelena is not unaccustomed to pain. She's not unaccustomed to the way it stretches time and space, twisting them into new and different configurations. That doesn't make it any less unnerving.

She is aware in flashes, between pulses of fire ice and acid in her veins that feel like they're ripping her apart. (Her heartbeat? The machine cycling? She has no idea, isn't sure if it matters.) The roar registers, and the motion. The doctor is suddenly not where he was, and that's probably a good thing, or at least not any worse a thing than his presence as been. She registers ruined fatigues, a man's large frame visible from shoulders down, but her muscles are locked tight in their spasm and she can't turn her head to see his face.

Her throat convulses, and she will not scream, will not scream, will not--

[worthallthis]

He still has his metal arm, at least so he does the only thing his wild, panicked dream-brain can think of: he uses it to smash the machine's control box and wrench the hovering piece up and away. The needles retract, leaving the same bloody marks as there are on his right arm and legs, but the injection is already done, and that's what's causing the pain at this point.

No one's ever come back out of there alive, someone says in his memory. He did. He knows he did, somehow. But what if Yelena doesn't?

He starts yanking at straps, next. He has to get her out.

[musicdied]

She hears the sound of something breaking, smells the reek of overheated wires as something in the smashed box begins to smoke. She isn't certain if any of it is real, or if it's just her confused nerves desperately dumping input into any senses that might be free.

Then one of the straps pinning her arms snaps, and she scrabbles at the edge of the bed, all animal instinct to get away and no thought.

[worthallthis]

More straps snap, so she'll manage her goal of getting off the bed, tumbling into the arms of her rescuer. Whether it will matter is another story-- she may or may not survive the bastardized serum she was injected with.

"Lena. Yelena." He sinks to the ground with her, his own legs shaky from reaction and fear. For some reason, he's not panicking at the contact. He's panicking at everything else, but he's got no urge to throw her off of him. "Hold still. Breathe." He thinks that will help. He hopes that will help. He has no goddamn idea, but comfort is not a thing he can do right now, so he's going to offer what advice he can, at least.

[musicdied]

One of her hands clamps around the wrist of his metal arm, and it's probably fortunate that's the one she found purchase on, because her grip is bone-cracking tight. Two of her nails splinter, shearing away in strips. Two small notes in a symphony of pain. She doesn't notice.

His voice filters sluggishly through the agony. It's something familiar, someone trusted. And she tries to comply, stops scrabbling at any surface to escape, but her nerves are on fire and her muscles are twisting against themselves, continuing to spasm without any direction from her. Her breathing is ragged, and the little choked sounds she makes each time her lungs expand enough to take in a breath would be humiliating if she were aware of them.

[worthallthis]

The strangled breathing, the hitches of pain at each breath, that's-- that's familiar. He knows this. Someone else used to breathe like that. He doesn't know who. He can't think about who.

Without knowing where the knowledge comes from, he puts the flesh hand on her back, held practically in his lap now, and leans her over a little, ear to his chest and spine curled over her spasming lungs. He rubs a slow circle, then another. It probably won't help, not with all the pain and the serum, but it's automatic. "Breathe," he says. "With me. In and out."

[musicdied]

Her heart is beating too hard and too rapid, a frantic drumbeat beneath his hand, all too easy to feel beneath spine and ribs and flesh. Her breathing doesn't ease. Her chest hitches, bloody foam flecking the corners of her mouth.

Her vision hazes red; inasmuch as she's capable of thinking anything at all, she thinks it's just the pain. She can't see the mad spiderweb of tiny broken blood vessels marching across her eyes like some horrible time lapse.

He's the only one who ever survived the experiments. Not, perhaps, the only one who would have survived, had that particular laboratory not been destroyed, but the dream has latched on to was, and not might-have-been.

[worthallthis]

And he has very little idea of what to do, here. His first aid knowledge is limited to fixing up his own wounds long enough for the serum to stabilize them, and Steve's various health problems-- not that he remembers those. He just rubs her back helplessly, recognizing the blood at her mouth as something that's very beyond his ability to help, and says blankly, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."