apocalypsehowcomm | Event - A Little Perspective

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Event - A Little Perspective

A Little Perspective

The citizens of Gloucester are abuzz with talk of the new town square in the heart of the city. After some miserable few months… years(?) for some of the citizenry, it's a welcome spark of joy. The prize at the center of the square is a perfect replica of Gloucester set upon a large stone slab for people to view and enjoy. Some small festivities have been set up around the square. Food carts with tasty local offerings–it's a lot of seafood–and hawkers looking to sell jewelry, paintings, and other sundries.

The new town square, itself, is bracketed by the General's Store on one side, other tourist-type shops on two others, and an open park field with benches and plenty of shade trees on the other side. There are planters with gorgeous new flowers and everything has a shining, new feeling to it. Ring out the end of summer with the tiny bells that adorn the mini-clocktower in the replica city!

➥ Small Fears

Photo of a miniature New England town. Based on the toy cars, it seems to be from the 1950s or 60s.
(cw: altered perception of reality, existential crisis, possible starvation, isolation)

The disappearances don’t happen all at once, but they do take place over the course of a few, unremarkable, hours. One by one, seven people step through a door, cross a street, or go to investigate the brand new replica of Gloucester unveiled in the middle of town and vanish.

Except, to them, they don’t. It’s everyone else who vanishes. Whatever path they were on goes uninterrupted, but every other soul is gone, leaving the streets eerily silent. Perhaps you can find each other through calling out or through chance, but it seems only a few others have been left behind.

It’s not just the lack of anyone else that’s off. It’s there in the very sky, a fog-filled horizon leaves little else to see even from the tallest building in the city…if you’re lucky. Where there should be stars or roads or trees beyond the confines of the city, there are unimaginably massive shadows, creatures that loom and shift and seem to occasionally try to stretch their dark and foggy forms down to grab for people who stay outside too long. Surely inside will be safer.

And, for the most part, it is. There’s no running water, no food that isn’t made of plastic, and only the weak yellow glow of lights that seem to come on and off every few hours without any switches or plugs to be seen. Except then there’s the nightmares. There’s no rhyme or reason, no indication of which building will hold the nightmarish scenario that plays out. The only certain thing is that there’s seven of them…and they’re oddly specific, as though tailor made to one individual. Hopefully a friend or stranger can be the voice of reason needed to see you through, but even facing your fears doesn’t seem to set things right. If anything, as time goes on, it only seems to make the shadows get more agitated. More creative…

➥ Big Fears

An enormous, shadowy figure shrouded in mist reaches out toward a tiny figure on the ground.
(cw: gaslighting, potential for sadism, potential for large-scale destruction and injury/death, body horror, nausea, vertigo, supernaturally induced dread)

For those fortunate enough not to be sucked into the miniature town at the center of Gloucester, there's still more than enough trouble to go around. Mainly, the matter of getting people out of the town, whether they be friends or strangers. You might notice the little figures darting about the replica streets or banging at the tiny windows of buildings. Unfortunate that most (or maybe all) of them run in terror at the sight of you when you try to reach out and the sound of you when you make to run.

Most ordinary people walking by don't seem to notice anything amiss like you do. To them, it's just a quaint little attraction to view for a few minutes and then move on. The people trapped within it go unnoticed or unremarked. Even some of the people who work for ADI can't see it, like they have some sort of blindspot that you lack.

Regardless, there's the matter of rescue (or torment for the more sadistic persons out there). The tiny town, itself is designed in such a manner as to make access to the deeper portions of it challenging. The raised platform and general size makes it all but impossible for anyone under 8 feet tall to actually reach the center of the town without having to climb up onto it. And that… has rather dire ramifications. Those seeking to simply pull apart the town or climb onto it with little regard to the structures will find that any time they disturb or destroy a structure, they have a sinking, horrible feeling in the pit of their stomach. If it's a building that's near to where they are, they might even hear the sound of the real structure in Gloucester buckling and breaking as people scream and flee. Some unnatural force seems to be destroying their town and they have no explanation for it. You do, though. You know exactly what you've done. Perhaps you'll even hear about the injured and dead the next time you happen to read, listen to, or watch the news.

With wanton destruction a less-than-ideal solution to get to the darting figures in the town, that leaves a few other solutions. You could gather a team of people to help you corral the figures. If your hands aren't enough, perhaps others will be. The figures are far faster than they should be when they're that tiny or maybe it's that you're having trouble perceiving the depth of the place and where they are in space. In any case… more hands.

Or, maybe you'll go for a more creative option. If hands won't work, then some tape or netting or other traps might slow your quarry down enough to snatch. Perhaps you're even the sort to construct elaborate, Rube Goldberg-style contraptions to catch the tiny figures without hurting them. Much.

Emotion might rule the day for you instead. If you can just find some way to communicate that you're not a danger, that you're there to help, maybe that would have the figure willing to approach you, to climb into your hand of their own accord. It's maybe the kindest and least terrifying route, but it's also likely to take the longest, and time is of the essence.

At least once you manage to pull a rescued person past a seeming threshold, they transform very suddenly into their full-sized self with all the pain, nausea, and vertigo that comes with the sensation of your body exploding from within. The sense of being too large may persist for just a few hours or up to several days for the particularly unlucky.

Those who spend long enough observing the tiny town will note that there is a small timer affixed to one of the buildings where a billboard is in the real Gloucester. It is steadily counting down and it carries with it a sense of impending doom. When the clock strikes zero, the entire display will simply vanish from the center of Gloucester, like it was never there. Anyone still trapped within will also vanish. All references in newspapers and news stories from the past few weeks will vanish.

Was it ever really there? Most ordinary people don't seem to think so. What an interesting suggestion. Maybe you should let the mayor know. A tiny version of Gloucester sounds like it would be a lovely little attraction in the new town square!

➥ One Fear

A deer-like, humanoid figure stands in black and white, slightly hunched.
(cw: altered mental states; compulsion; painful transformation; dehumanization; being hunted; potential for violence, injury, and death, including gun violence)

There's a restless feeling about ADI headquarters, a strange sort of readiness and tension growing under the day to day office drudgery one always experiences in a lull between major crises. It's an itch in the back of one's mind, a half-noticed shift like the scent of blood carried on a distant wind. The longer the feeling lingers, the more unbearably dull all the paperwork and research and so forth becomes.

Then, all at once, it comes into focus. For some, it's sharp pain followed by a sudden feeling of terror, the knowledge that you are among predators that mean you harm. For others, it's that scent growing sharp and strong the moment you spot your prey.

The prey are easily spotted, at least within the bounds of ADI property, where Milo's glamour doesn't hide nonhumans and not-quite-humans from one another. The change is often small but always unmistakeable: a set of horns or antlers sprouting from one's head, still bloody from their sudden extrusion; the long ears of a rabbit, quivering with the effort to hear the hunters' approach; feathers that ripple out along one's arms in a mockery of wings; or the silky tail of a fox or mink, the mark of a predator long turned prey at the hands of humans. Any who find themselves marked as prey undergo one or more of these small transformations, gaining characteristics that clearly mark them as one of many animals traditionally considered to be game for hunting or trapping.

And if you're not prey? That makes you the hunter. The compulsion to hunt is overwhelming from the moment you spot a coworker, roommate, or even a dear friend marked as prey. Perhaps you're sly about it and set traps, or stalk them from afar. Or perhaps they run and you simply can't resist the urge to chase. What you'll do if you catch them…well, that depends on one's personality, or perhaps on luck. Maybe you'll snap out of it long enough to let them go. Maybe you'll try to lock them up–for their own good, of course, until you work out how to fix this. Or maybe just chasing them down isn't enough to satisfy the urge–the most obsessed hunters might attack, maul, or even shoot their prey if nothing stops them.

Everyone feels it, though. Anyone who isn't marked as prey will feel the compulsion to hunt when they see someone who is, and it simply will not stop as long as the mark remains. Even outside of ADI, normal citizens will even start to react the same way to something they can't even see through the glamour. The only way to end this curse is to remove the animal feature that grew from you–whether that's sawing off a pair of antlers or chopping off a tail.

Good luck…and good hunting.

➥ Mod Notes

GENERAL - Players are welcome to play background 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 for your specific scene. Also, please remember that character deaths are permanent and plan accordingly!
SMALL FEARS (16-19 September) - Characters trapped in the tiny town will notice the buildings themselves, while sturdy and able to hold their weight, aren’t exactly built to code, almost like they’re made of various craft supplies and short cuts, even if the end result is very convincing. There’s no food or water in the tiny town, but enterprising characters might be able to collect dew outside and survive a little longer that way. Each character has their own ‘nightmare room’ across the various buildings in town and they won’t be able to escape their own nightmare room without someone else’s help. How they get out of the town through the various efforts of those outside is up to the individual player, but anyone still left in town after four days will either die of lack of resources or from the miniature town’s collapse. Please remember that death is permanent.
BIG FEARS (16-19 September) - Players on the outside are welcome to enact as much destruction and mayhem on Gloucester and its citizens as they would like via the tiny town. Please just let the mods know on the OOC Post in the section dedicated to Town Destruction and Damage so that we can make note of it for future events/the final chapter of the game. Characters that destroy the town will sense the weight of what they've done, even if they don't see or hear the immediate effects. It feels bad to destroy the tiny town. Players are also welcome to come up with creative rescue solutions. The only limitations are that the tiny characters will not be able to understand their speech or anything written for them, so another form of communication may need to be found that doesn't use language.
ONE FEAR (16-30 September) - Players are free to choose any variety of animal features beyond the ones listed, so long as a.) the feature is linked to an animal traditionally hunted and b.) the change is a discrete feature that can be removed, however painfully. Characters with animal features will find that everyone, not just offworlders and people within ADI, seem to feel the same compulsion to hunt them down until the feature is removed.

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"Winter -" he gasps again, and then he rolls toward him, and this time he can't hold himself back. He rolls a little more, right into Winter, and wraps his arms around him and just tries not to squeeze too tight.

Rogers might be setting himself up for an elbow to the nose or worse, but he couldn't really care less at this point (if he were even thinking at all, which he's kind of really not).

"Hey. Hey, I gotcha," is what comes out of his mouth, and honestly it's to convince himself just as much as it is to convince the other.

For the moment, that's okay. The arms around him mean he's not in the Chair. Not on the train. Not being grasped by a dozen reaching doll hands. Not flying apart because somehow he was tiny and now he's not. It's grounding to some extent-- though not enough to keep him from hyperventilating a little, or to make him let go of his own head, because everything hurts so damn bad.

Give him a minute, Steve. Or maybe five.

Oh, he can have as many minutes as he wants. Rogers is not letting go until Winter moves or protests. For now, he's breathing hard, too - not hyperventilating, but still. Emotional. Relieved, in that adrenaline-crash sort of way that hits you when the later you keep pushing most of your worry onto finally arrives.

So he keeps himself wrapped around Winter, and maybe breathes in his (slightly ripe; he doesn't care) scent, and just mumbles a quiet little, "You're out," or "It's me," or "I've got you," when it seems like it's been too long since the last one.

Frankly, he doesn't care what it looks like to any passersby. He isn't really paying attention to anything else, all of his energy and emotion focused on Winter.

Winter lasts a good five or six minutes of huddling before something breaks inside, he realizes he's touching a person and it's too much too close too much. He scrambles back with a pained whine, breaking the circle of Rogers' arms.

He lets him go, not moving back but not following Winter if he pulls back or moves away. (Yeah, that's hard, but there's some part of his brain still working enough to know that lunging after Winter won't get him the results he wants.)

"Hey," he says, softly, trying to actually look at Winter; if he can't hold him, then he's going to check him over instead. "Hey, how are you feeling? What do you need? What can I do?"

Okay, maybe it's too many questions at once, but they all come tumbling out.

"Don't know. Don't know. Don't-- it hurts. Everything hurts," Winter manages to get out through his still-rapid breathing. He's clearly having a hard time focusing, too, which isn't helping. "Where--" Are they. What happened. But words are hard, drying up in his throat between pants.

Hearing it hurts makes Rogers want to go right back to hugging him, but obviously that's not the answer, either. He can't touch him, what can he -

"Winter," he says again - voice soft, but calm. Firm. Trying to keep him here and now. If he can't touch him, he'll need to keep his focus some other way. "We're at the model. I just pulled you out. I don't know how you got in there, but you're out now. You're back."

He had brought a bottle of water, where had he - he looks around, locates it where he'd left it a few feet away, and moves to get it and bring it back, setting it where Winter can reach it. "You should drink something."

"There was water. Belova gave us water," Winter grinds out, unsure if he can even unlatch his hands from around his head to take the bottle. Or if he wouldn't manage to crush it if he tried. "I need. I need." What does he need? He needs to not hurt. He needs to not be so damn big.

He pries one hand away, but uses it to push himself unsteadily to his feet. To try and look around.

Rogers doesn't appear frantic on the outside, but he sure feels it on the inside. Those two words, I need, with nothing after them are tearing him apart; he doesn't know what to do, how to help. He wants to insist that Winter does need water. He wants to wrap him in his arms again, wrap his entire body around Winter's until nothing can touch it or take him away. He wants a lot of things, none of which are what Winter needs, even if the other doesn't know what exactly he does need, himself.

"Can you walk?" he asks, trying to keep his voice calm and level still, not let the desperation that's his own damn problem leak through. "We should get some distance - we can go home."

Something about that feels like a lie - they can never go home - but it's the next best thing. At least they can be not here and he can keep an eye on Winter and make sure he isn't going to... to shrink again.

God, please don't let that happen again.

Home is here. Home is people. It's not a lie, to Winter.

He looks over his shoulder at the model. He has a visceral desire to put as much space between it and him as possible. But--

"The others," he rasps, fighting panic that wants to pull him in two different directions despite the ache everywhere. "There's more. Still in there." How much time is on the clock? Is there time to get them out, too? To get them to trust someone's giant hands?

Rogers nods. He knows there are others. "Yeah. Yeah, I know. Let's get you squared away, and I'll try to get more of them."

Winter comes first, but he's not about to leave everyone else there. Not that he knows how he's going to convince them, but he'll try.

He hopes they don't take Winter's sudden absence as a bad sign.

"Could you - did the pictures work? I could draw you in there, and then draw you being - okay," he adds, though he maybe falters a little on the last word. Winter doesn't seem okay okay, but he's better than he was, in that tiny town. Right?

"Told Mercy I was gonna try. Let you take me," Winter says, wrapping his arms around himself instead of trying to wrap them around his head. Easier to move that way. Then offers a suggestion: "Draw me with cocoa and a blanket." That's his definition of okay. And also hopefully a prediction of his near future.

So yeah, the pictures worked.

He could stand a bath, too, but drawing him in the bath was dumb.

Rogers is nodding. "Okay - okay, yeah. I can do that. I should - I should do that now," he adds, trying not to look as distressed and worthless as he feels, watching Winter wrap his own arms around himself.

He's torn, wanting to take care of Winter, but also knowing he can't just leave the other people in there.

He looks to the model again, then Winter. "Okay. Okay, let's at least get you a little ways away. Then I'll draw a new picture, and you can okay it, and I'll come back."

There: a compromise. They won't just go all the way home, but they can at least get Winter down the block a little. Rogers always has some paper and a pencil stub in some pocket or another.

Winter hesitates a moment longer, then visibly gives in and turns away. There's nothing more he can do. They'll run from his hands. Even the metal won't be visible, in there, for them to know it's him. This is what he can do.

And he has the itching worry in the back of his mind that he'll get trapped again if he dares to reach inside. Or stays too close.

So he'll let Stevie lead him away, though he stays hunched and curled around himself.

It's a relief that he can at least do this much for Winter, even though the way he stays hunched in on himself, like he's still trying to make himself small - or hold himself together - cuts like a physical wound to the gut. He still doesn't touch Winter, but his hand hovers over the small of his back and he stands as close as Winter will let him as he corrals him away from the model and down the block a bit - not out of sight of it, because he doesn't want to lose sight of Winter when he goes back, but far enough away that maybe its pressing, well, presence will lessen a bit.

When he deems they've reached a reasonable distance, he slows to a stop, and says, gently, "Okay. Why don't we sit on the curb here, and I'll draw."

Sitting is okay. It might hurt less if he's sitting, making himself smaller. Winter eases himself down, knees up to his chest and arms wrapped around them. "Feel too big now," he mutters, aware Stevie is worrying about him, but unable to force very many words out. "Everything hurts."

Rogers lets out a little - thankfully quiet - burst of laughter that he definitely doesn't mean the way it sounded (although to be honest, it probably sounded just the tiniest bit hysterical. He's very stressed, but aren't they all). "Yeah," he says, wishing for the three thousandth time he could touch Winter, but keeping his hands to himself as he sits down next to him instead, shoulders not brushing, maybe an inch or two between them just so they won't, accidentally. But still close enough, he hopes, to offer comfort. "Yeah, it's a weird feeling. Feeling too big."

At least for him, the pain had been temporary. It had felt like forever, but there had also been a very clear cutoff.

"You'll feel better in a minute," he says, though of course, this is nothing like the procedure he went through and he has no actual idea if that's true. But still, "Your brain just needs to catch up, probably."

At least Winter is the same size he started out as. So maybe it will take only a minute.

"Maybe." He sounds a little dubious. Only a little, though. Mostly he sounds tired.

Then he wrinkles his nose a little. "What I really need. Is a bath." He feels so gross, on top of everything else. There hadn't exactly been soap in there, and the little water Yelena got them wasn't really used for bathing-- as if Winter would remove any clothing in a dangerous place like that, even if water had been plentiful.

Rogers can't help but smile softly. "You do smell a little ripe," he agrees, though of course it's the least of his worries. But he can bet Winter wants a bath. Getting clean might go a long way toward putting that behind him.

"Let me just - " He fishes out the pencil stub and paper from his pocket so he can draw the new picture. "Let me do this. I can leave it and walk you home, give them some time to see it. Absorb it." Work up their courage, maybe.

Winter makes a noise that sounds affirmative, and drops his forehead onto his raised knees. He'll keep still and quiet, just breathing and trying to catalogue his aches, until Rogers is done. Only when Rogers gets up does he shift, and even then it's just enough to tilt his head so he can watch him going back to the model.

Make sure the model doesn't try to eat him or something.

It takes a tad longer than it might otherwise to sketch things out while also trying to keep an eye on Winter out of the corner of his eye, but Rogers still manages to complete the drawing in relatively short order. He doesn't approach the model with anything but purpose, even if he does take care while climbing back up into it, aware of Winter's eyes on his back. It's a comforting feeling, really, if anything.

It takes him another few minutes to decide where to put the little card so it's most visible to the most tine people. (Plus, he's also taking extra care not to elbow any more buildings.) He finally climbs back down out of the model and tries not to whip around, but he wants to get his eyes back on Winter, like he could've disappeared in the meantime.

When Rogers turns around, Winter's eyes are definitely on him. He even lifts his head a little, uncurling slightly, preparing to get up, once Rogers is heading back his way. He wants to be home. As far away from that thing as he can get.

He still hurts, but that's nothing new. He's used to it.

Rogers wants to come over, to offer him a hand, to wrap an arm around his shoulders once he stands, but he doesn't think that would be welcome. Still, one arm awkwardly shifts for a second, like it's thinking of doing that of its own accord, before he simply waits for Winter to rise, trying to keep his expression - well, it's not neutral. But comforting. Steady.

"Ready to go home?" he asks, softly.

Winter knows what that motion means, and for a moment he's almost-- angry. Not at Rogers, but at the part of him, the too-big part, that wants to shy away from even the suggestion of being touched again. He knows that he likes it, in moderation: shoulders touching, hands, a head tucked up under his chin. But right now the thought makes him want to shudder and shrink.

He doesn't, but he doesn't come closer, either. He just finishes easing to his feet, and he nods.

Take him home, Rogers.

When Winter doesn't come closer, Rogers maybe tries for a step or two nearer of his own, watching each time for a twitch or flinch or even just a tightening of skin around mouth or eyes. He'll get as close as he can, whether that's three inches or three feet (more likely the latter), and then he starts moving, keeping Winter in his peripheral vision at all times.

If that's the most he can do, then by God, he's going to do it.

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Event - A Little Perspective

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wrap this one?

sounds good!