Event - Heavy

[apocalypsehowmods]

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Heavy

➥ Deep

(cw: claustrophobia, existential dread, power loss, victim-blaming, time distortion, supernatural compulsion and hunger)

After the cold snap and plumbing issues comes the calm. For a few days, at least, nothing seems to break. Or break more than normal where the Flophouse is concerned. A heavy snow sweeps through and covers the streets. Not a blizzard, but thick white fluff that forms a blanket overnight. The snowplows aren't prepared and it's simply… quiet. People stay indoors, waiting for the weather to clear a bit. There are light flurries throughout the next few days, topping off the snowfall, and for the most part, the city just shuts down.

Even ADI puts out a notice that employees should stay home. Stay safe, stay cocooned in what warmth you have. Just… stay. Each day the message comes out from a generic work email, help@adi.com:

Shelter in place. No work today. Stay safe. We'll get by without you.

The next day is the same. The snow piles higher overnight, covering windows and freezing doors shut.

Shelter in place. No work today. Stay safe. We're s̴̳͘͠ͅt̶̨͂̍r̵̯̼͊͝ŭ̷͚̳g̶̠͋̓g̴̳̱̔͘l̸̤̻̎i̷̭͑͠ń̵̗͜͝g̷̤͂, but we'll get by.

Day after day. Frost creeps into the corridors of the ADI housing complex and the Flophouse. There is no food or other supplies coming and it feels like the hours are stretching out more and more.

Shelter in place. No work today. S̴̬̓t̸͉̿a̴̫̿ỳ̸͉ ̸̠̉s̸̲͆a̶͙͊f̶̢̏ē̷̤. We can't keep doing this, but we have to.

Attempts to leave the housing areas will be met with walls of snow that appear to be impossibly high. Around the flophouse, especially, it's as though they've been placed into the bottom of an icy hole. The walls stretch up higher than anyone can climb or fly, with only a pinprick of bluish light coming down from the opening above, deeper than anyone can dig through. Not even a magical portal or beam of heat can get through. There's just a wall of snow and/or ice through the portal and more snow beyond the beam. What's more, anyone who has supernatural abilities or is tied to a patron, even those not actively trying to feed that patron, will find themselves feeling increasingly drained, like something is sapping away whatever reserves they have, leaving them hungrier and hungrier, their powers waning by the minute, with a very limited set of options to feed upon.

S̸͉͗ḣ̷̦ȩ̵͒l̷͈̍t̸͎̽e̵̺̓ř̵̠ in place. No work today. S̴̬̓t̸͉̿a̴̫̿ỳ̸͉ ̸̠̉s̸̲͆a̶͙͊f̶̢̏ē̷̤. Why aren't they coming? This is their fault.

S̶͔͆h̸̅ͅȅ̴̮l̵̬̈́t̷̯́e̴̥̐ř̷̙ ̶̳̕ì̷̲n̵͓͌ ̷̮̋p̵̟̈́l̶̢̎a̷̺͠c̷̻̈́ḙ̵̊.̷̦̇ ̴̬̀N̸͕͌o̵͎̊ work today. S̴̬̓t̸͉̿a̴̫̿ỳ̸͉ ̸̠̉s̸̲͆a̶͙͊f̶̢̏ē̷̤. Why aren't ỹ̸̡͐ͅô̷͕̫ù̶̟̣͊ coming? Ḟ̴͓i̷̤͗x̶̨͝ ̴̜͒t̵̯̅h̴͔͛i̸͖̽s̶̱̚!

((ooc: Plain text versions of all messages are located here (LINK). You can also hover your mouse over the distorted text for hover text translations.))

➥ Chasm

(cw: warped perceptions, memory-loss, implied trauma, supernaturally-induced feelings of missing out)

You've missed a step.

After what seems an interminable time, someone is finally able to tunnel through, to get out of the massive snowy prison everyone has been trapped in and-

And the city looks normal. Checking the wall you just came through, it's not actually there. As soon as one person makes it out, the effect collapses for everyone. There's a wintry wonderland of Gloucester beyond, and it seems like things have gone on without everyone. But there is a sense in the air that something has happened, something earth-shattering that everyone missed out on.

People on the streets seem to have a look about them. Haunted? Something happened, but when they're questioned about it, they can't seem to come up with an answer as to what. They just seem… confused, overwhelmed. Yes, something happened. No, they can't tell you what. Weren't you here for it? Didn't you see it? Didn't you feel it? How could you have missed something that big?

That feeling will sit with characters as time passes, dragging down on them. It may even begin to feel like a physical weight for the most affected. You missed it. You could have done something to change things, but you missed it.

➥ Stuck

(cw: flooding; natural disasters; damage to homes, workplaces, and possessions; references to burial, suffocation, crushing, and murder; supernaturally induced anxiety, responsibility fatigue, and feelings of inadequacy; illness.)

The feeling of having missed something only intensifies back at ADI headquarters. It looks as though the storm itself attacked the building; several exterior doors have been broken off their hinges, ice expanded within the metal past its breaking point, and the expansive water damage and muck ground into the carpets, walls, and battered elevators conjure images of an indoor avalanche…or a glacier pushing its way through, slow but biting cold and utterly inexorable.

There's no time to dwell on what's happened, on the days of hunger and isolation nor whatever disaster occurred here. There's too much to do, too much to fix, one crisis after another. There's the obvious problem: the need to repair the building and proof it against the cold wind that still blows in across the foyer, but no matter one's work area there is more to do than can be done. Endless requests and projects flood in from every quarter, all of them urgent, all of them important. As soon as one thing is finished, three more problems emerge: contracts to manage, investigations to be made into reported phenomena, glitching computers to repair, vandals to repel from the gaping wound that is the lobby entrance in the middle of the night–the list goes on, and on, and on.

Rumors circulate, stories about a prisoner in the depths of the building's secret basements who disappeared into the crushing ice and grit that had filled the cells, disagreements about whether it was a rescue or if the unnamed prisoner was suffocated, snuffed out by some indiscriminately vengeful force. No one seems to know the truth; no one even seems to know the name of the prisoner, who they were, what they had done to end up there. No one has the time to look too deeply into it; even head of security Neil Grace, is caught leaping from task to task, never catching up long enough to turn his attention to the matter in any meaningful capacity.

The struggle to keep up, the futile effort to keep one's head above water, never relents. No matter one's priorities at work or at home, something is always wrong, always in need of attention, the knowledge of things undone needling at the edge of consciousness like a toothache in one's soul. The Flophouse is in a disastrous state worse even than ADI headquarters, a wild-eyed Bonnie all but pouncing on residents with an endless list of tasks to fix it, to make the building livable again. At the ADI apartments, exhausted caretaker Benny Holt seems to traipse up and down the halls at all hours of the day and night with his toolbelt, gaunt and exhausted and tapping at doors in reply to requests to fix plumbing, lighting, and water damage that never seem to stay fixed. Local staff and interdimensional residents alike begin to fall ill, bodies and minds burning out under the strain, but giving yourself time to rest and heal means piling more work on those around you.

There is no time. There is no rest. There is only the work you are failing to complete.

➥ Sink

(cw: claustrophobia, suffocation or near-suffocation)

As if that isn’t enough, there’s still investigative work to be done. Once again, it seems as if Coffins Beach is a site of interest, as ADI has been tipped off that there might be something (or things) in the water. Again.

For safety’s sake - and perhaps to make sure that no one collapses out there alone - pairs are sent out to the beach to keep an eye on the water and to see if anything interesting has washed up. Orders are to both watch the water and walk along the beaches and through the dunes nearby.

Watching the water doesn't seem to yield any results, no matter how long it's observed. Nothing washes ashore either. But then there's the dunes. Sooner or later, it seems like climbing them and walking among them is all there is to do. Anyone who has spent any time at Coffins Beach might notice that they seem a bit larger than they have been in months past. Not inconceivably, but noticeably. There are dunes tall enough to scale the sides up to the top, though some are still no more than little mounds.

It doesn't matter which, when you fall into it. Small hill or gentle mound, one minute you’re walking on the surface. The next minute, as you put your foot down, it begins to sink. It can't be sinking, of course, sand dunes on a beach don't have quicksand. They’re nothing but dense piles of sand. You can't fall into a sand dune.

You are falling into a sand dune. There’s a hole in the sand, just wide enough for your body and you have fallen into it. Perhaps you're a little bit lucky and your partner witnessed it. Maybe you aren't and you suddenly just disappear. It's a long fall, though, down a tube of sand that seems hard-packed around the edges. At first. The drop is just far enough that light can be seen from above, but not the top of the hole itself. Call out. You might be heard. And maybe your partner is already trying to get you out.

But the moment you hit the bottom, it seems like the hole becomes unstable. Especially if someone is above and trying to reach down. Even if they're not, though, sand begins to crumble from the edges and sides of the tunnel, falling down on the body trapped at the bottom of it. A slow trickle, not a burial. Not yet. Still, it could be, if rescue doesn't come, if the person left up above can't dig you out. Meanwhile, the sand falls and falls, pressing down on limbs and creeping up your body. It’s cold and struggling only seems to make the sand fall faster.

Surely you’ll be rescued before it covers you completely. Or soon after. Surely.

➥ 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 prompts should be sufficient and ordinary people will act like… ordinary people! You're welcome to make up any details beyond that for your specific scene. Please remember that character deaths are permanent and plan accordingly!
  
  
• DEEP (16-20 February) - Characters will be trapped in their homes for five days, confined to either the Flophouse or the individual apartment buildings within the ADI complex. It will feel like significantly longer, even for characters with fully accurate internal clocks. Travel outside of these bounds will be impossible, even with the use of supernatural abilities. The network will be fully operational; though, not the regular internet or anything beyond the internal ADI network. Characters will also receive periodic messages from help@adi.com begging for help, even as they order everyone to shelter in place.
  
  Characters who are outside their homes when the snow starts will find they're able to get inside just fine, but will not be able to get out again. Characters may be trapped with people who are not their standard roommates/at their usual housing, if they're unlucky (or lucky).
  
  
• CHASM (21-24 February) - The first character(s) to break through the snow barrier will feel an especially powerful weight fall upon them before there's suddenly just… nothing. The snow walls are gone. Even if another character was in the middle of digging through, the snow is just there one minute, then gone the next. Characters will experience a profound sense that they have missed something. This may dissipate within a day or maintain over several days. Anyone trying to question residents of the city will receive confusion and incredulity, but no answers. There is no indication that anyone seemed to notice the walls of snow. Even some of the natives at ADI will be perplexed. All non-native NPCs and some native NPCs will have experienced the same thing as the PC characters.
  
  
• STUCK (21-28 February) - The need to be doing more than they can will be ever-present for all NPCs and player characters. Those who would choose to eschew responsibilities at work or try to reprioritize will find that there is always something in need of doing that is important to them, to the point where new problems may seem to arise in impossibly, almost cartoonishly quick succession. Tasks and problems can be mundane matters related to work, building repair, and living spaces; as well as minor supernatural occurrences similar to past Dogtown TDM prompts (players are welcome to make up small supernatural encounters; anything that would affect other characters beyond a single thread should be submitted as a player plot). Characters may find themselves feeling mentally foggy and struggling to focus on core issues in the face of this inundation of needs from the people and environment around them, and may fall sick from overwork. These effects will overlap with both the Chasm and Sink prompts.
  
  
• SINK (24-28 February) - Characters who find themselves falling into one of the dunes will end up in what appears to be a vertical tunnel that is definitely too high to climb back out of, regardless of how tall the dune actually seemed to be when they were on top of it. The temperature of the sand is very cold and in addition to possible suffocation, characters may find themselves slowly freezing. Struggling or rescue attempts will quickly make the walls of the tunnel unstable. Additionally, the tunnel may not be exactly straight, depositing characters slightly or more than slightly off of their original falling point.
  
  

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Comments

[bossyboiler]

He's touched her knives. Her fucking knives that she had bought specifically for cooking and are not the ADI-provided ones. Did they need sharpening? It wouldn't have hurt them to be extra sharp. Should he have asked? YES.

In the couple of days of being stuck in, Kate has grown increasingly territorial about places she considers hers. Normally, everything is fine. She recognizes that her behavior is irrational. The kitchen is a communal space. It's there for everyone. However, she's been stuck inside and her personality flaws are becoming magnified.

Plus, she really needs to feed her Entity. She knows what the feeling is. She has been experiencing it since being magically transported to Gloucester but it's different now, it's more magnified. Kate is trying desperately to ignore it by doing everything she can to make the apartment cleaner.

At the current moment, it's time for lunch. She'll bake something with a lot of chopped vegetables. She figures that having to focus on slicing and dicing will help. Kate washes her hands, noting that Winter is in the living room, and then goes to her knives. That's when she noticed that the blade to her chopping knife is extra shiny. She checks the rest of her knives and sure enough they've all been sharpened.

Kate braces both palms on the counter and sighs. She takes another deep breath and another but it doesn't work. Her mind screams mine! She shoots a look at the obvious suspect, Winter. The back part of her mind tells her that she's being dumb. He did her a favor.

She takes all the knives out. They have to be washed. "Thank you for sharpening the knives."

[worthallthis]

Winter is staring out the window, having already cleaned his guns and done push-ups and paced around the apartment several times. Staring at the snow is next on the agenda, apparently.

He glances in her direction when she speaks. Pauses. Takes in her posture and her tension. Frowns.

Why does she look angry? Why is she thanking him if she's angry? Is she angry at something not-him?

"You're welcome," he says, voice toneless, because that's safest when someone is angry.

[bossyboiler]

You're welcome.

At his reply, her eyes grow big as saucers. Her little nostrils puff out. THAT MOTHERFU---R RIGHT THERE! She starts to say something and then stops herself by placing her hand over her mouth. It is one of the few instances when Kate recognizes that she is being ridiculous.

She turns away from him. Despite the previous recognition, she still has some thoughts. And it is for Winter's benefit that she doesn't face him. In her head, she's slugging him in his non-metal arm. They are inanimate objects, she tells herself. They needed to be sharpened anyway, she adds to her inner monologue. It's fine. You're just stir crazy.

It's fine. Everything is fine. She takes in a breath and then releases it. "I'm going to make pasta." She still has her back to him.

[worthallthis]

That's what you're supposed to say when someone thanks you. Isn't it? But that isn't a good reaction. He's confused, and a little annoyed at how confusing it all is.

He waits, awkward, for her to decide what she's actually going to say.

Pasta. Okay. That's easy. He actually knows how to make that himself, by now. But she's the cook, and she said she was going to do it. So after a pause of his own, he offers, "Do you want help."

[bossyboiler]

"Not right now," Kate replies in an even tone. She doesn't want or require anyone's help. She is the cook after all. The kitchen is her domain and woe to anyone who disturbs her domain.

"Unless you're not hungry right now... I can put it off." Kate isn't worried about Yelena. Yelena always seems to have an appetite

[worthallthis]

She almost never turns him down when he offers to help. This is weird. He doesn't know what to do.

"I'm usually hungry," he says. Frankly, he's another one that always seems to have an appetite. He works hard, and when his serum is active it's a black hole of calories, and also food is comforting, after a fashion.

There's an uncertain quality to his expression, even if his voice is as flat as ever. He's debating asking what he did wrong, but asking is. A bad idea. If someone is angry with him. Maybe he'll just retreat to the couch and... stare at nothing while he listens to her work. He doesn't have any more weapons to maintain and the network has been quiet in the past hour, so he'd have nothing to do, just sit.

[bossyboiler]

"Good, good." That's great that he's hungry. "I'm out of meat so it'll be mostly vegetables." As long as they have pasta, garlic, and canned tomatoes, she can make them food. And they do have those things plus plenty of vegetables that Kate can use to make a nice and filling pasta dish. Already her head is turning on what to make and she knows she wants to use the eggplant before it starts to go bad.

Once the knives and then eggplant have been washed, Kate sets on the task of actually cooking lunch. She gets the skillet out then the garlic and olive oil follow. Soon after that the aroma of garlic starts to drift out of the kitchen while Kate is chopping the eggplant into bite size pieces.

"So, uh... Any sign of the snow starting to melt?" Kate asks since he has been staring outside.

[worthallthis]

"Vegetables are important," Winter says mildly. This is okay. She's not acting like she's angry when she's washing things.

He glances back at the window, and adds, with some actual tone: "No sign." That tone? Is morose. Weary, maybe. He's concerned about the people at ADI, and about them if they have to stay here that much longer.

[bossyboiler]

"They are. Most people don't get enough of them." Kate replies as she chops but she has to stop a moment. She feels compltely ravenous but not for food. She reaches up and touches the bridge of her nose with her free hand. Despite the distraction she can feel the need to scare and startle, the need to have information on people. Her patron entity wants her to feast badly.

There is no one to scare, however. She cannot do that to her roommates and they would not scare easily. Besides, she knows most things about them. What new secret information could she gleam? There's nothing.

"Do you have a vegetable preference?" She asks, trying to shift her mind out of hungry mode. Kate looks down at the eggplant and starts cutting into it again.

"That's a shame. I wonder how the townspeople are doing."

[worthallthis]

Winter is actually not that hard to scare. Yell at him a little and he'll probably crumble. That's probably not the kind of fear that will help her particular hunger, though.

"Probably better than us. They don't have. A bunch of people. Crammed into one building," they comment. "And I don't have a vegetable preference." A fruit preference, sure, but not vegetable.

[bossyboiler]

Kate is not going to yell at Winter. She may glare. Her nostrils could flare. But she isn't going to yell (not right now anyway).

"Yes. I know it's tight quarters but I know we're all doing the best we can with what we have-- Ow! Goddamnit." She has cut herself with the knife. She goes rushing to the sink and turns on the cold water to stick her hand in it.

[worthallthis]

"Kate?" He looks over sharply, pushes up from the couch again, concerned.

He has gauze in his pocket. And regular bandaids. And there's the first aid kit under the sink.

[bossyboiler]

"I cut myself!" She hollers over while still holding her finger underneath the cold water while trying to reach for the paper towels so that she can stop the bleeding.

[worthallthis]

He did in fact figure that out. He prowls in, fishing in his pockets for the aforementioned gauze and bandaids. "How bad is it?" he asks, coming up to her, though not touching her yet.

[bossyboiler]

"Not too bad, it just hurts." She is not having any luck getting a paper towel with just the one free hand that she has. What she has done is nearly pull every towel off of its roll.

[worthallthis]

Winter gingerly pushes the paper towels out of her reach so she can stop making a mess of them and tears one off the end for her, to offer that, instead. "I have gauze if you would rather." That gets offered in his other hand, so she can choose between.

[bossyboiler]

The cut is shallow and exposes more nerve endings. "Which will make it hurt less?" Kate asks and wraps the offered paper towel around her finger. It stings, it stings so much! She thinks it would be less painful to have lost the entire finger.

[worthallthis]

He has a glimpse of the wound once she takes it out of the water, and considers. It doesn't look like it will need stitches. It will probably stop bleeding pretty quickly. It won't need the gauze to be wrapped in place, he thinks.

"The paper towel should be fine. Add another in case it bleeds through," though he doesn't think it will, "and hold it tight."

[bossyboiler]

Kate grabs another paper towel and wraps it around her finger, applying pressure like Winter had said to. "You know, I never had to worry about tiny wounds before. This is bullshit."

[worthallthis]

"I know," Winter says, not without sympathy. (Though not with a lot; mostly because there's not a lot of tone of his voice, still.) "I didn't, either. You could. You could shoot me, stab me, flay me open and lay metal on my bones. And I'd be fine. But now we have to be careful." He gives her right eyebrow a serious look. "I don't want anything bad to happen to you."

[bossyboiler]

"Like how does this world just turn off our genetics and natural abilities?" She is applying steady pressure to her cut. In a few moments it will have stopped bleeding but the stinging will remain.

His casual admission of what could be done to him is nothing short of terrifying. It sounds so honest that she doesn't doubt for a second that some, if not all, of those things had been done to him. "I don't want anything bad to happen to you either, Winter. You're my friend." Whether he likes it or not!

[worthallthis]

Gotta attach a metal arm to him somehow. It's too heavy and he abuses it too much for it not to have deep attachments on his skeleton.

He's more used to the idea of friends now. He's not terrified of the idea of having friends. Maybe he might not call them that, exactly, because he's not quite the same as them, not quite a person still, but she'll get no protest from him. "Thank you," he says solemnly. "I appreciate being your friend, Kate."

[bossyboiler]

Kate smiles at Winter. She has a lot of affection for him. She knows that he's come away from where he had started out. It doesn't seem long ago that Winter had told Kate that he doesn't add much to her life¹.

"I appreciate you appreciating that, Winter. Can you please open a band-aid for me?"

[worthallthis]

He's still not really sure how much he adds to her life, but if she chooses him for a friend, he's done arguing about it.

He solemnly opens the band-aid package, and holds it up, fully intending to put it on for her once she pulls the paper towel away.

[bossyboiler]

"Thank you," she says after the band-aid gets placed on her finger. She feels bad now. "I'm sorry about being passive-aggressive about the knives. I've just been feeling a little odd with all of the snow out there."