hadriel_logs | Event Log: Bad End

Entry tags:

Event Log: Bad End

Who: All characters participating in the event
What: The event log for the Bad End event
Where: All over the city!
When: August 23rd-September 5th
Warnings: Bad futures, awkward conversations, smashed mirrors

You wake up to find a mirror at your bedside - a pretty nice one, too, a silver hand mirror perfect for fixing your hair in. Only when you try to do that, it's not your gorgeous reflection that you see. It's something else - a terrible future, just about as bad as anything you could imagine for yourself.

Maybe you see your loved ones dead on the ground, and you know it's your fault. Maybe you see the goal you've been working so hard for pulled out of your reach forever. Maybe you see someone you've hurt in the past ruining your life. Maybe you see your hot girlfriend leaving you to shack up with your worst enemy. Whatever you see, it really sucks, and you know that it's possible. This future could happen if you make the wrong choices, give in to your worst impulses.

Break the mirror if you want, but you'll see the same vision in any reflective surface in the city. You can't break them all, but you can sure try. And what will you do when you see your best friend's vision - and it features you betraying them?

Seek reassurance, give reassurance, lash out, vow to yourself that you'll never let it turn out that way, sink into the depths of sorrow because you feel like the future you see is inevitable. Whatever you do, it won't take away those visions - not until the event is over.

► This log covers August 23rd-September 5th.
► Feel free to make your own logs, as well
► Please tag headers of threads with content warnings where they apply
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!
► If you can't handle the idea of your dark future, or maybe you just accidentally slip and fall on a mirror shard, let us know here.

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He has questions - many of them, in fact - but this is clearly a sentient being and Ignis is nothing if not a servant of propriety. Questions can wait, no doubt until such time as they are better acquainted or in the very least not being tormented by visions of their potential futures. For now, this is a pleasant enough diversion, and his own returning smile is equally cordial.

"You might say that," Ignis says. "Though I found myself here more than a month ago, I couldn't say when one ceases to be viewed as 'new'."

The young man would expect, even months down the line, that he will still be finding out new things about this place. "But I could not claim to have seen you, either..."

"It's entirely possible that you have not. After my unwanted sojourn in the caves, I've been keeping to myself," the robot admits. "You'd be surprised how easy it is to do such a thing when you do not sleep, honey."

Mettaton does wonder about that. Technically, isn't he relatively new here too? It's not as if he's caught onto everything yet, and already, he's had his cousin taken from him.

...That's not a thought he wishes to linger on though.

"I don't think the city suffers any more or less from me keeping my nose out of its business anyway! The last time I was properly out and about though, something strange was happening too. I should time it better."

Or, you know. Not take to the streets like a steamroller with issues a mile long because he saw something scary in a hand mirror.

"Mm... I imagine I would be."

... He has a lot of questions. None of them would be ones which could be considered terribly polite to put to a stranger, though, so he holds his tongue. Regardless of what this individual is, he is also clearly a sapient, sentient being.

Who is, most likely, having just as poor a time as everyone else is right now. Ignis makes a small gesture.

"If you wouldn't mind the company, I should certainly appreciate it at the moment."

Mettaton can't really say he wants to turn Ignis away. Deep inside, he wants to reach out and be social with people again, forge acquaintances and possible close bonds.

His standoffishness just settles at the corner, reminding him that every new friend he might make could go the same way as Bucky, or Napstablook.

Or, in his case, even he had abandoned Asriel.

Still...

"I don't mind at all, darling. Any distraction is a good distraction, and you seem like a perfectly lovely fellow!!'

It wouldn't be Mettaton if he didn't lay it on a little thick, of course.

There's something about the way things are at the moment that makes Ignis want to reach out too. Nothing will be gained by sequestering himself to stare at the repeat reruns of a potential future until he drove himself mad with it. He'd already seen it enough times for it to be intruding on his dreams.

"Ah, thank you," he replies, skirting by any ulterior meaning by simply failing to notice it at all.

They walk, and Ignis continues to attempt to clear his head.

"Do you recall anything like this having happened before?"

Haha, he sounds like the evasive type. Perhaps when he's in better spirits, Mettaton might try flirting with Ignis. It's been a while since he's tried to make someone blush, and this guy seems like a tough customer.

At any rate, he keeps stride with the human--he assumes human, but just like Ignis won't ask, neither will he, for the moment. All in good time.

"Mm...not quite this way, but it does remind me of the outbreak of dopplegangers who were sapping the life of their real counterparts. I'm fairly certain it's supposed to elicit negative emotions from us, rather than kill us. But that wasn't a very nice thing to do, make a false version of me and pawn it off to my best friend as a better alternative."

Pawn it off? You thought that other you was entirely better, a voice hisses at the corner of his mind. He ignores it. He's learned to ignore a lot of things...

The young man adjusts his spectacles carefully, clearly considering everything he is being told. From the moment he arrived he hasn't stopped trying to learn about this place - how it works and what makes it tick - and this is just another piece in the increasingly complicated puzzle.

"Interesting, that they freely manipulate us like this and yet still feel secure enough to request our assistance in certain matters." Like the matter of the Null, and other things he had seem while using Cecily's device to scroll back through archived messages.

Frowning, he shakes his head.

"And that some individuals here even appear fond of the creatures. Ill intent dressed as benevolence is no less ill."

At that...Mettaton openly scoffs. Not because he disagrees with Ignis, but because he's just met this man and they are already on a similar page.

"Tch. If there is one thing I have learned, dear, it is that every place has its own motives, and attempting to put it all behind a wall of 'the greater good' is just as duplicitous as pretending that whoever is in charge has the best intentions for their enemies.

These Gods are not our friends. We are a means to an end."

"Indeed..." Ignis murmurs, feeling that in this chance meeting he may have found a kindred spirit. He knows well that he cannot be the only one with such thoughts, but the hopelessness of it was that they truly had no options in the matter. Emotions were not a thing that one simply turned off.

"I have seen Gods. These creatures are not Gods, though they might use a fine definition of the term."

He slants a look up to his companion. A new ally here would not go amiss.

"I dislike being manipulated, and I dislike being toyed with. The idea of a 'greater good' is duplicitous by its nature. The good of whom?"

Mettaton nods, crossing his arms as they walk. Finally, he feels as if he's found someone he can truly air his grievances around without possibly adding to their burden. And boy does he have grievances.

"The truth of the matter...is that I'd already spent a year being manipulated before I even showed up here. To then immediately be forced to kill rampaging monsters, deal with doppelgangers sucking the life out of the people I cared about, and now to be shown such atrocities over a mirror? That does not tell me that these 'deities' have anything good in mind for us.

Though of course, they'll posit that there are worse things than them out there, and that they only require our emotional distress to prevent a worse fate."

The corner of his mouth twists into a mild scowl.

"If the fate is worse here, then why pull us through? Is this meant to be some sort of punishment, then? Ha! What a joke!!"

"From what I have been able to surmise, the emotional manipulation is purely for their benefit. I don't believe that they view it as a punishment, so much as a necessary evil."

Ignis sounds like he does not view said evil as very necessary at all, but he is in the position of understanding that this is what they currently have to deal with. It isn't an enviable position in the slightest.

"As for there being worse things that them..." He frowns, shaking his head. "What is 'worse' is purely down to personal opinion."

Here, Ignis sighs and resists the urge to massage his temples. "I have yet to form an opinion on this 'Null' collective."

"If it makes any difference, I've not put much thought into the Null at all. I've my own problems to deal with. Friends, fami...ly..."

He sighs. No, he doesn't have to deal with family anymore after all, does he? That hurts to think of, but he pushes it back and resumes speaking as if he hadn't just trailed off.

"The point is that happenings lately have made it quite clear to me that I have others to prioritize. If it means that eventually I'll have to address the Null, then that's fine. I shall do what I must to assure that as many people as possible are safe during these acts of 'necessary evil'."

After all, he's done enough killing where he came from. He'd rather like to make himself redeemable again. Maybe then Chara's words wouldn't chase him at the corner of his mind, reminding him about all the things he is, and the things he wishes he still was. They didn't have to be there to have an effect on him, apparently.

But...he wants to be a good person again. he just...needs to sort his priorities.

And it's hard to sort those priorities when one is being reminded of dark endings through every reflective surface.

The Null. An enigma in this place that sits far higher on Ignis' list of mysteries than any other. He has yet to understand just where they came from, or why they were so keen on destroying the things that brought them here. There was a deep and abiding animosity, he had worked out that much, but... just why had thus far eluded him.

"What do you know of the Null?" he asks his new companion, chasing the subject as one that might be a very good way to distract them both from the other things playing on their minds. Mettaton is not the only one struggling to process images of his entire world on fire.

"They are.. very enigmatic, from the little I've seen."

"Not very much," the robot admits. "I should ask Alphys about them, but unfortunately, I've had other things on my mind. And if something plans to cause me harm, there's very little I can do to stop or dissuade it."

That much he's learned, though that's probably just him being selfish again, given that he isn't organic like most people here. The only part of him that wasn't metal was his SOUL.

"As far as I'm concerned, the Gods are as much to blame for the Null than anyone."

"I can't understand this fascination that everyone has with referring to these beings as 'gods'," Ignis says suddenly, following a moment of thought. He has considered this label, and the widespread use of it alongside the abilities that those using them in this place seem to have and they do not align with any 'god' that he has ever heard of before.

"Their powers seem limited to certain functions and they are not omniscient in any sense of the word."

He isn't accusing Mettaton, but sounds more like he's mulling over the idea as he speaks. "Where did this title spring from?"

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Event Log: Bad End

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