apocalypsehowcomm | Event

Entry tags:

Event - For Sport

For Sport

➥ Breaking It In

(cw: mentions of apparent mutilation of/violence against animals and animal death)

The conference room on the upper floors of ADI HQ is bright, airy, perhaps unnaturally so for the grim tidings that bring people here today. Those who have recently arrived will be ushered to the meeting by ADI employees or by Bonnie. It's not just the newest arrivals, but some other people who seem to be longer-term employees. The room is rather large and arranged like a lecture hall. Bonnie takes up a seat near the back, looking somewhat uncomfortable, but smiling at anyone who greets her.

At 9 AM sharp, a person steps into the room and heads to the front. They have curly hair and are wearing a gray business suit with a dark blue bow-tie. When they address the group at large, they speak in a calm, measured tone. "Good morning. I appreciate some of you may be here more reluctantly than others, but… there are matters of import to all of us to discuss. Some of you may have seen me already. I am Reyes Amador, assistant to Ms. Lehrer, the head of ADI. Earlier this week I sent out a message regarding some unusual activity at Coffin Beach. Thank you to those who investigated."

Their eyes seem to find the people who did, in fact, go looking, whether they found something or not.

"We have determined the creatures are shape-shifters. Some sort of, em... horse thing. In lieu of a term they might give themselves, we are referring to them as kelpies. Given the locations these were found, as well as other information into disappearances and deaths and mutilations of sea mammals in the area, we believe the kelpies are coming from the Essex Bay area to the north.

"For those willing to assist, we are mounting a reconnaissance mission. This is not intended to engage kelpies, just to find out where they are and how we might best approach an attack. All supplies, transportation, and monetary compensation will be provided. We will meet at ADI HQ in main lobby at 6 PM three days from now. Essex Bay is a remote site and conservation area, accessible only by boat, and not without a scientific permit. As you may guess, we will be traveling under cover of nightfall." Reyes smiles.

"I will be accepting questions about further details. I understand this is the first mission away for many of you, and you may have concerns. I will do my best to allay them. Bonnie also has some experience in these missions, if you would like first-hand accounts. Please also feel free to discuss amongst yourselves if this is a mission you think you are ready for. You will not be required to attend, nor penalized in any way if you do not. There is additional work to be done here, both with continuing examinations of the bodies we have and other efforts unrelated."

➥ Move the Goalposts

(cw: kidnapping, violence, sadism)

It happens away from the safety of ADI HQ one evening or so early in the morning, it's still dark, away from the potential for help, maybe. One moment, you (and possibly someone you're with) are walking, and the next, you will find someone has grabbed you and slammed you into the nearest surface. For those unable to fight back, a cloth will be held to their noses and mouths--chloroform, something to knock them out. For those able to fight or even to escape thanks to not actually being corporeal, they'll find that it is a trio of people who have attacked them. They wear jagged smiles and they're all much too sharp around the edges beneath their clothes. Those who saw the kelpies at Coffin Beach may recognize these people as something like them.

"Run, rabbit, run," one of the group says, voice rolling out like a gurgling tide.

Those who run will be chased and, if caught, chloroformed. Perhaps you're lucky, though. Perhaps you can race them back to safety. Or perhaps you'll find help along the way to protect you. Either way, the kelpies are relentless in their pursuit unless one of their number is injured or their prey can make it to ADI. The kelpies seem reluctant to actually enter ADI HQ or their housing, and will break off pursuit there, slinking back to the shadows.

➥ Curveball

(cw: kidnapping, violence/violence and mutilation against apparent animals, sadism, body horror, transformation, potential for claustrophobia)

For those unlucky enough to be caught, they'll find themselves waking amongst mud and bodies. Living, breathing bodies, thankfully. You have been tied up, but not gagged, and left with a group of other captives. A nearby fire casts light over everything, showing a large group of naked people with long, scraggly hair hauling a seal up out of the water. The animal fights them with a cunning that might seem odd, but the kelpies just laugh at it. They get it up near the fire, one raises a knife, and stabs into the seal, dragging the blade down its belly.

The seal bellows and then goes limp, seeming to collapse in on itself. It isn't long before a woman is drawn from the skin, shaking, fighting, wild-eyed with terror as her captors shove her around the fire in their own game. A few others turn their attention to the captives who are just beginning to wake and move about. They approach, one grabbing the skin the woman had come out of, others grabbing more skins from a nearby pile.

"Hush, hush... you'll have your freedom soon... while you can swim." The words come just before the kelpie slices your bonds and throws the skin over you.

The skin grapples your body, twisting tight around you, encasing and restraining. Your body is different now, thick and round, ungainly in the mud. Your legs have fused together and your arms have shrunk to thin flippers. This is not your body, you can feel how foreign it is, how you're crammed into the too-small confines of it... but you have instincts to go with it. Water is freedom! Or it's an attempt at freedom. It's either swim for your lives as some mockery of a selkie or stay and see how it feels to be cut open. Luckily for you, you'll find yourself psychically linked to the other selkies around you. Maybe you can do something together? Best think fast because the kelpies are setting their sights on new prey to chase once they've finished with their latest victim.

➥ Below the Belt

(cw: violence/violence and mutilation against apparent animals, body horror, gore)

The journey to Essex Bay isn't a long one, but it's somewhat treacherous as a small group of powerboats make their way into the refuge. The mission is simple: find where the kelpies are and see if there are any strategic points of-

Was that a seal? There are, in fact, many seals that pop up once boats enter the bay. The animals might seem to have an unusual cunning about them. Will they lead you somewhere useful? Perhaps try to flop themselves into your boats? The point is, there are seals accosting you in the middle of the night, and that's weird. Perhaps they have something they want to communicate.

Or was that a horse? A crocodile? There's something that seems to have noticed you, and it's smart enough that it's going to try to tip you and anyone else in your boat into the water rather than trying to engage otherwise. Sit down, you'll rock the boat.

➥ Sticky Wicket

(cw: potential for severe burns/injury, pain)

ADI is engaged in far more than one mission at a time, and for those not dealing with Essex Bay, or even before that, there are pick-ups to handle. Artifacts, you've been told as you're paired with someone else, whether you like it or not. The mission is simple: go to the Docks, collect a package from a locker there, and return with it to ADI. You've been provided an exact location and a code for the combination lock. The section of the Docks you've entered seems to be one with a lot of empty warehouses covered in graffiti, but the locker is there, something heavily reinforced and designed to be virtually impossible to get into. There's evidence that people have tried to gain entry without success.

Your code works, though, and you have your prize! You've been given strict instructions not to open the box the artifact is in… but there's nothing technically stopping you now, and there is a strange pull toward it.

Those who can't help themselves will find they have just picked up… some piece of sports gear! It looks wholly innocuous. Touch even a finger to it, though, and a horrific, searing pain will consume your entire body as 3rd-degree burns bloom across the skin where you've touched your artifact.

Or maybe you have a will of iron and sense enough not to touch strange, supernatural objects. What should be an easy mission is quickly derailed by some young punk darting out of an alleyway to try to steal your package. Or, at the very least, knock it from your hands. The youth is not alone, either. You've found yourself on someone's 'turf,' and they want what you've got. Are you cruel enough to let them have it?

➥ Mod Notes

BREAKING IT IN (21 July): Both Reyes and Bonnie will be available to answer questions that characters might have or listen to their complaints. Please put "NPC Requested" somewhere in your top-level response if you would like a mod response. For characters who can access their supernatural abilities and have some measure of supernatural spidey sense, both Bonnie and Reyes will register as off, but in different ways. Characters are welcome to attempt to use whatever powers they believe will work on the NPCs. There are potential IC consequences for this.
MOVE THE GOALPOSTS (23-24 July): Characters are welcome to capture or kill the kelpies. The only information they will be capable of providing to those who capture them and attempt to compel them for information is that they consider the entirety of the Massachusetts coast as their 'hunting grounds.' Whether that's true or not, it's what they believe.
CURVEBALL (23-24 July): Kidnapped characters will become seals! Sort of. Psychic seals who are extremely ill-fitted to the skins they're in. The only way to escape their current state is to be cut open and pulled out. As soon as they start to flee, the kelpies will chase them. Those who are captured will be cut out, toyed with, and shoved back into a skin again and again to continue the chase until they simply can't go on anymore.
BELOW THE BELT (24 July - night): Characters may encounter their selkie-fied comrades! Unfortunately, while the selkies can communicate with each other psychically, they are incapable of human speech. They are also being actively hunted by the kelpies. Characters may kill any kelpies they come across. Capture will not be possible in this case while they're in their horse forms. If PCs do not eradicate the kelpie threat that night, NPCs who have joined the mission will do so. Unfortunately, reconnaissance has become engagement, whether they like it or not.
STICKY WICKET (21 July - 5 August): You may select any piece of sporting gear you'd like for your character to pick up as long as it can fit in a reasonably-sized box. The pain associated with the burning will last only as long as a character is touching the object. Holding onto it for more than a minute will likely result in coming very close to death. Characters with inorganic appendages will find that the artifact will start to melt that appendage, whatever it is made of and it will still, somehow, hurt while it does it.
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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A; Breaking It In
[Monika listens attentively. Kelpies... She's familiar with the idea of the mythological creature, at least, and she did get closer than she would have preferred to one on the beach. She'd been lucky to have been paired with someone who knew what they were doing that time. With that thought in mind, paired with that urge to continue to be useful, she looks around at the people who look as if they have a handle on this kind of thing.]

Does anyone have tips on how to do a mission like this one? [Right now, Monika can only think "bring a weapon" and "stay hidden while doing recon", but that makes it sound like a stealth video game or something...]

B; Move The Goalposts; ADI Apartments
[After Monika's own brush with the kelpie kidnappings, she's been spending some time in the evening camping out in the lobby with a first aid kit. She doesn't know anything fancy, but anyone who comes in looking worse for wear will be approached immediately.]

Are you alright? Do you need bandages or anything?

[She spares a glance out the nearest window, too; the kelpies don't seem to want to come near the building, but it doesn't stop her nerves from sparking with some instinctual fear that this time they'll change their minds.]

C; Network; un: lilmonix3
Has anyone else noticed a lot of seals around lately?

D; Wildcard
[Monika will be staying in at night unless she's specifically out on one of the ADI missions. She can be found around the ADI HQ trying to make herself useful during the day, as well as generally around town. If you have something in mind you want to plot out, hit me up at my plotting comment or

maiiau!]

[This comment reserved for additional prompts; please don't reply to it!]

[It's later in the evening as Monika heads back to the apartments--plenty of time to get back before curfew, but still later than she expected to be out. The neighborhood the ADI apartments is in seems like a nice, safe place, but Monika can't help but be a little nervous being out on her own after dark.

Then someone grabs her, and her vague fears all burst into crackling alarm. There's a feeling like static all through her body, her shriek muffled by a hand and a cloth. For half a second, she doesn't know what to do. But no--someone's taught her what to do, and she's been practicing.

She shifts her hips and jabs hard with the heel of her palm into the crotch of the guy who's got her pinned. He jerks, bends forward, frees her to knee him and kick him. There's three people, but she has surprise on her side. She darts out of the alley she'd been dragged into and down the sidewalk. At least she's always gotten good times in track. The three people--or are they people? Monika didn't get a good look at them--chase after her.]

Hey! Help! [She can't see anyone, but maybe someone else is around? She doesn't stop running, in any case.]

[This mission seemed a lot more doable than the one that involved kelpies that might drag her into the water and short-circuit her (not that she'd told anyone about that particular danger to her person). Collecting a package from a locker even seems easy, though once she'd started walking through the docks Monika had started thinking maybe this wasn't the greatest place to store whatever weird objects they're being sent after. Still, at least getting there is a quiet enough process.]

The locker looks really banged up, huh? [Like someone tried really hard to get into it. It still looks like it's locked up tight, though, so she guesses it didn't work out.]

[A quiet enough process in terms of them not getting interrupted or attacked, yes. Quiet in the sense of no chatter? Probably not. Archie's a bit of a chatterbox and definitely has been quizzing Monika for basic information about herself. Or telling Monika things about home (she's not shy about the fact that she comes from a world where....a lot of people are turned into zombies, or dead), or just commenting on the scenery and things. It's maybe endearing and maybe annoying. Depending on your perspective.]

It does. [Archie gets a little bit closer, looking the locker over.] Well, it is locked up! Or something else was locked up before it. Probably at some point something was locked up before it. Anyway, I guess someone was curious at some point.

I hope it's still there. It would be very disappointing to come all this way for an empty locker.

[Monika had been doing more listening than talking on the way here, but she chimed in when prompted and when she had something to say, filling in basic information as requested. She's just a normal high school girl, so it's nothing interesting. She doesn't mention the literature club at all. Monika enjoys the conversation; she enjoys being able to talk to anyone at all.]

Yeah, they probably won't pay us much if we come back with nothing, huh? [Possibly nothing at all, though it wouldn't be their fault if someone else snatched whatever's theoretically inside before they even got here. (Possibly literally before they got to this universe.)

Monika keys in the code, which she'd been dutifully repeating over and over in her head, and the locker pops open easy, not even a squeak of the hinges. There's a box in the locker, and when Monika picks it up, it's lighter than she expected.]

Good, it's here. [Whatever it is.]

[Archie peers over Monika's shoulder - well, really, she peers down because she is a bit taller than Monika! - as she opens the locker door. Then she makes a pleased sound when it turns out there's something inside.]

Yay! [Yes, she is a fully adult woman who says 'yay'.] I'm glad it isn't taken.

...I wonder what it is. Of course, I know, we aren't supposed to look. We probably shouldn't look.

[But she sounds like she wants to know very badly what's inside. Which she does. Archie is generally very curious about everything. Still. She's gotten sort of used to following orders because of her time in New Canton. She can...not look. She won't look.]

[Monika can feel that pull of curiosity, too. She doesn't quite shake the box so much as shifts it just enough to hear a gentle thunk confirming there's something inside. Part of her says a peek wouldn't hurt. But--]

They told us not to open it, so the responsible thing to do is to leave it alone. [Right. She's responsible. No opening the package.]

Monika | Doki Doki Literature Club

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Move the Goalposts; closed to toji fushiguro

Sticky Wicket; closed to archie jensen

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text message to Goro Akechi

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B;

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C; un: galliard

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