hadriel_logs | Event Log: That's My Rubber Ducky

Event Log: That's My Rubber Ducky

Who: All characters participating in the event
What: The event log for the That's My Rubber Ducky event
Where: All over the city!
When: March 14th-19th
Warnings: Probably none?

Good morning! It's another fine sunny day in Hadriel, and what's more, there's a good chance that you've woken up with something new and interesting in your possession - something you've never seen before. Something, in fact, that doesn't even belong to you. That's right, the Door is acting up again and it seems to be pulling things from everyone's world and dropping them into the laps (and homes) of strangers.

When you touch whatever it is you've found, you'll get a brief glimpse through the eyes of the person it belongs to, a glimpse of whatever they're doing at that exact moment. Maybe you'll see them eating breakfast, or walking through the streets of Hadriel, or checking out their own sweet ass in the mirror. That last one might be the best, because then you'll immediately know who this strange striped hoodie or weird book or priceless artifact belongs to. Otherwise, you're just gonna have to try to figure out from context, so - good luck with that!

And of course, you might also catch on to the fact that if things are arriving for lots of other people, something also might have arrived for you. Maybe you should search the city until you find it? Or you can hang out at home and hope whoever has it finds you. Your choice! Well, as long as it isn't something super cool that they'll want to keep. That would be awkward.

► This log covers March 14th-19th.
► 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 someone gets really mad about you ending up with their favorite hoodie, please let us know here.

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1. Imported housing area.

Caedra, of course, does not sleep. She finds the nights pleasant enough, when most of the other creatures in this world have done that silly thing mortals do and go unconscious for several hours. An ideal time to collect her thoughts, to do some writing, or in the case of tonight, to do a bit of exploring around the perimeter of the city, where a variety of monstrosities lurk at the corners of her vision, watching and waiting while she does the same. Some of them are entirely familiar - she knows for a fact that she spotted a Manticore once, as it tucked its wings in a stoop past one of the great dunes, and slipped into some deep crevasse in the landscape, possibly in the pursuit of other prey. This is reassuring to her - the intersection and alignment of the planes that allows this place to be must not have brought her in alone from the worlds she is familiar with.

After the night's foray into wilderness, she returns in the early morning to the home she has claimed for herself. She shrugs off the satchel she managed to find in one of the stores - the material is strange to her, and who makes a lime-green shoulder bag anyway - and then stops in the living room, looking at the coffee table, because what is that? A sleek device, with little holes along its sides. Are those hinges? Is this some sort of strange book?

Worse, if this thing just appeared while she was out, someone had been in here, uninvited. She doesn't hear breathing or footsteps but she summons her sword just in case, as she searches the rooms for any sign of intrusion - or if she's lucky, the culprit themselves. She has bottles, now. These gods may have found a way to prevent her from eating the souls of her kills, but she can still find uses for their flesh and blood, the only other use mortals hold for her.

But no sign, no trace, of anything missing, no footprints, nothing left behind. And sadly, no fragile little idiot hiding in her closet, hoping not to be discovered.

Shaking her head, she keeps her sword drawn as she traces Abyssal symbols in the air with the tip of its blade as she chants phrases that cover her home in a veil of illusions. She should have done this long ago. It takes some time to complete the casting, but when she is done, she steps out onto the balcony and nods in satisfaction, seeing her work.

To all others, it now appears that the building she has claimed is surrounded by a dense thicket of dark, thorned vines, growing over jagged rocks with impossibly sharp edges. It is the opposite of inviting.

It's also not real in the slightest, and interacting with the illusion will reveal that it is just an illusion after all. But it sure does send a pretty clear message, doesn't it?

Now then. That settled, it's time to see what this strange object is, as she sits down and carefully tries to open up the laptop.

2. Any time, anywhere.

At first Caedra had thought perhaps the object she had discovered was a sort of scrying tool. Nice. But the 'network' - which she is slowly learning to use, fumbling her way through reading the messages, not quite ready to post anything of her own just yet - has started to receive notes from a few others about mystery items arriving, of people having glimpses at the lives of others.

Not nice.

Normally she can sense a scrying attempt, though they have been exceptionally rare - she's the one who does the spying while hidden away at the Garden of Thorns. So few who would gain from trying to watch her even know of her existence. But there's no feeling of being watched, no little tracking orb following her around. Nonetheless, paranoia strikes. If someone has an object that lets them spy on her, then she needs to know. She needs to retrieve it immediately, and find out what that person managed to learn.

She shoulders her bag and throws the weird new machine in - once again receiving a flash of a vision from its presumed owner. Perhaps she can hunt him down as well, not that she intends to give this back. It's not that she enjoys watching someone else's private life, but it could be a useful tool in her arsenal. Free undetectable scrying? Yes please.

Before she sets out, she gives herself a foresight casting, as is habit here now that her usual target of its benefits is unreachable. She takes a deep breath as the high hits her, providing its intense clarity. Everything that will happen she knows ahead of time - only by seconds, but sometimes seconds can make all the difference in the world.

Sword in hand, there is one pissed off demon coming out to look for something that's hers. You might be holding it. You might have seen it. She doesn't know what it is, but she wants it back.

• my freakin' shoes - ephemera

Perhaps the greatest tragedy about being here is that her condition prevents her from tanning. Ugh. All this sunshine, and she’s stuck being pale like the dead. Regular brains for meals keep her on the least pale end of the pallor spectrum, but that’s not what she wants. Rita misses her red hair and light skin, her taste buds and normal heartbeat. She misses tasting booze and having sex whenever she wants. She misses her car, her apartment, her money, her clothes.First Vaughn, and now the Door have taken too fucking much from her.

So imagine her surprise when she spots a guy in armor with an extremely familiar pair of high heels in his hands. Shit. Those are definitely hers. Who else could afford them? Nobody here has taste that good, she’s willing to bet.

The closer she gets to him, the more sure she is they’re her shoes. Purpose in her every step, she speeds up a little until she’s close enough to talk to him in a cool, commanding tone.

“Those are mine. Where did you get them?”

• out, damned gore - angus + possibly one other tag-in once i confirm with the player

By the river, Rita kneels on a blanket and gently works at scrubbing the dried blood and gore off her shoe. It’s not going to be easy, but dammit, these are hers. They’re the only thing she has here that she chose, and even though her last memory of them is leaving them at her apartment after surviving her encounter with a Romero, they’re still hers. They’re more than just a fashion statement; they’re a tangible reminder that she’s a survivor and a fighter, and that even if her own flesh and blood abandons her, she’ll make it.

Her eyes are narrowed as she concentrates on her task, alternating between using her fingers and a damp hand towel to accomplish the job. The result is dark red stains of old blood on her hands and the fabric of the towel. At her side lies the other shoe, drying in the sunlight after a quick scrub to get it black and shiny again.

She’s quiet as she works, but that blood sure stands out against her pale skin, doesn’t it?

Edited 2018-03-14 20:25 (UTC)

Caedra doesn't do routines, not really, so feel free to use any of these at any time of day however you see fit. For a few seconds, Rita may see:

Home: Caedra has taken up residence in one of the imported homes on the south side of the city. Not much of the interior has been changed yet from the default furnishings, except that things may be in minor disarray only because Caedra has zero interest in organization, so you might see papers just sort of scattered about on top of things, boots knocked over by the door laying in the hallway, her coat draped across a chair, etc. Nothing too dramatic. Most of the time she's home she's trying to continue the research she was working on when she left, in which case you'll see odd diagrams of circles and symbols and strange dark walking stick-like creatures, with notes haphazardly written at angles and in corners. Alternatively she may just be writing for her own enjoyment and who knows what any of this means but it looks vaguely artistic compared to the other stuff. I'm working off the idea that like with spoken language, text isn't automatically translated if the writer intends for it to be in a specific script.

City: You can use anything that ends up in log comments for ideas as far as I'm concerned but basically she's going to be stalking through the city looking for whatever is hers. She fully intends to get violent whether she finds things or not. You could catch her threatening someone, literally stalking someone while glancing around to see if she's being watched, or raiding the stores for more stuff like nicer furniture, more bottles, more paper.

Riverside/park: She'll probably come here at some point to chill out. If she looks at where she's been walking, or if she's been sitting down for a bit and looks around, it will be pretty obvious since plants that she makes physical contact with blacken and wither and die. She does not like this because it makes her easy to follow so you might also catch her casting something, which visually pretty much would just look like her making weird gestures with her sword or with a hand, and then all the crumbly black burned-looking tips of the vegetation will lift off the plants and disperse like ashes and just kind of disappear. She also does more writing here, particularly late when nobody is around.

In all of these cases, as she can see in darkness, things that normally might not be easily visible due to lack of lighting will be pretty easy to see, so Rita will get a glimpse of the place at night in a way she never has before. Anyone who is shapeshifted will be seen as their true form, with their shifted self more an illusion over the top, so that both are visible. She's also going to have the effects of foresight on her as much as possible, meaning she knows what will happen a few seconds before it does happen and it might make her movements, actions, reactions all a bit uncanny since she's able to predict things with a freaky degree of accuracy. I don't know how you want to use that but feel free to have fun with it!

(( for Komaeda ))

This is one item that won't require much detective work to determine its owner, especially considering that Komaeda is the one to pick it up and will recognize the subject. It's a photo album, documenting the life of a boy with brown hair and a broad smile, from infancy to death. In the early childhood section some photos are cut up as if to remove someone's presence -- likely the other parent, as the only constant presence besides Drake is a woman that's obviously his mother. In general, the photos are unremarkable. Amateur and taken at the usual key points of a person's life. Holidays, birthdays, posing wearing his martial arts medals, dressed up for prom, behind the wheel of his first car, graduating the police academy... and then the only photo Drake isn't actually in, it's just a picture of another picture of him at what looks like a memorial service. Still, there's nothing weird about the images. This could have been anyone's life, a normal life. And despite the fact his hair has turned white in Hadriel, Komaeda will recognize him easily to give it back.

What's decidedly not normal, however, and what might give him pause in returning the item, is what he saw when he first picked it up. A tupperware containing what appears to be a human brain, being removed and put on a cutting board beside pepper and onion. Obviously, being treated as food. The brief vision ends before it's clear what Drake was making, but uh. Does it really matter?

(( for Ephemera ))

Drake had tucked the book away for safekeeping while he was on patrol, but now that he's home for the night (as much as Hadriel has 'night') he actually sits down to look through it. He'd recognized it immediately -- his mother had always been a huge pain about taking pictures for it, and he can still hear her cheerful "That's one for the book!" ringing out from his memory. Hopefully this isn't her actual album from home, he wouldn't want to take that away from her now that he's gone. But he does want to see her again, and these pictures are the only way.

He's just about to open the cover when he hears a key in the lock and startles, hand jerking away from the book and lifting to wipe his eyes, which are a little blurry. Ugh. Suck it up, man.

(( for Jo ))

One good thing that's come out of this awkwardness is that Komaeda's reaction and subsequent offer was the kick Drake needed to finally talk to Jo. It's long overdue, but even though he'd been fairly certain she wasn't going to go all torches and pitchforks on him he knew her opinion of zombies was... extremely low. After making sure she was okay and returning her things he'd just avoided her. Avoided thinking about what he'd done, and what he'd seen of her life after doing it. But that was a cop out.

He probably should have just texted, asked if she wanted to meet at the Speakeasy, but that's a little public for the kind of shit they'd probably wind up talking about. So now he's knocking on her door instead, a bag in his other hand, hoping it's not George who answers. She doesn't like him.

[OTA]

[Law's back in town yeah, back to his old routine, which means he's in the clinic most often but also the lab - he has some new ideas inspired by his road trips and wants to check on research progress. Run into him either place, or the Speakeasy if that's more likely. If he finds an object that isn't terribly unusual, he may pick it up out of curiosity - but the flashes of vision are enough to make him drop it like a hot potato. Has he just seen your day?]

[OOC: if you want to mess with his head, mention what he might have seen from your character's POV. If you don't have anyone finding your item yet, hit me up here and we'll work out a scenario. Otherwise, open prompt is open.]

[CLOSED to Maglor]

[unbeknownst to Law, his favorite shirt is somewhere in this godsforsaken city. His special sweatshirt with his Heart Pirates mark on the front and black feathers - homage to Corazon - around the collar. Ordinarily, it would be easy to associate with him, but that's if the finder has ever seen the flag on his wall or the tattoo on his back. It has been some time since he last posted video from his apartment, or gone around shirtless from the heat. The one who picks it up will see few clues to its owner - an open journal with scribbled notes in a random mix of katakana and roman lettering, sketches of anatomy, and the like; Law's tattooed fingers busy about writing or mixing medications; the sun reflecting on the surface of a pool as he waits for signs of fishy life.]

[CLOSED to Kelson]

[The one object which has captured Law's attention entirely is a flask he stumbled upon perched on a damaged wall. Touching it brings the visions, but it's no one he's met. One of the new folks, maybe? Either way, it's what's in the flask he can't resist. He suffers the visions in order to uncork it and give it a sniff. There's something odd about it. This is going to require going to the lab for some testing. At worst, he'll sample it himself and deal with the fallout, if he can work quickly, but...let's not accidentally sample fatal fast-acting poisons, shall we? He's more interested in identifying the contents than finding the owner, which is why he's not immediately posting to the network to ask.]

Edited 2018-03-14 21:18 (UTC)

for Kyna

[Ephemera's coming back from patrol when he spots Kyna, helmet tucked under his arm. It's been a good day. Some decent fighting, no one got maimed, and there's good food waiting for him at home.]

Hey, Kyna. What'd you find?

[She's holding something. It's small enough to fit in her cupped palm. A small metal rose, some of the petals dented where they were welded to--

Ephemera stops. He can hear Daisy's laughter, high and cheerful. How she'd snap her teeth and clap, how she never spoke.]

...where'd you get that?

Open - roof of Spire 4

[Apparently the gods are going for the emotional gut punch right over again. Ephemera leans back against the wall and watches the stars. He's not drunk, but there's a bottle of gin next to him and he's pleasantly buzzed.]

Can't beat the view, huh?

"Guess what I found," Ephemera announces, stepping inside with a bag of groceries. He's in civilian clothes for once. Somehow, it doesn't seem insane to go out without his armor every once and a while. But he's been hunting for food and come back with something better: chocolate.

Occasionally, Hadriel does well by them.

He pause, glancing over to Drake. "Hey. You okay?"

Of all the weird shit to find...

Ephemera squints at the shoes. He's seen high heels before, he's not an idiot. Chica wore them whenever they had shore leave. Slinky things with needle-thin heels that made her seem tall. She pared them with a dress and perfect lipstick without fault, no matter where they were stuck. Even in the middle of shithole nowhere, she looked good. Found shoes and a dress, or at least some decent lipstick, and then she was off.

These aren't Chica's shoes, of course. They've got blood and what looks like brain matter on them. She never wore heels to a fight. Still, he's thinking about her, how she'd grin and crush hearts left and right. And then he gets a flash of something - a woman with bone white hair, fussing with her phone. And....pictures of naked people.

Ephemera blinks. Shakes himself. The shoes are still there. Still black with blood.

But it's just gore. He could clean them up. Maybe give them to Kyna. Does she wear heels? He should ask.

He turns, frowning. It's hidden behind his helmet. "They were on the ground. You want 'em back?"

Edited 2018-03-15 01:14 (UTC)

[At first, Kyna had no idea what she'd found, just that she was getting flashes of... something every time she picked it up. And then those flashes started to look familiar—someone entering one of the spires, someone sketching, walls covered in murals. Ephemera, obviously. This is probably another weird event, but she doesn't know if it's actually his or just something weird the gods cooked up. His reaction answers that question.]

Um... It was in my apartment. Is it yours?

How....

[Stop. Focus.

Ephemera shakes himself. He holds a hand out, swallowing hard.]

Can I--? Please. It. It belonged to my sister.

Is he? Drake takes a slow breath, glancing back down at the book weighing heavy in his lap. Coming to terms with his own death wasn't actually that hard -- it was done, he had no choice but to roll with it, and Liv had seemed like she was dealing -- but thinking about his mother? That was just depressing.

"Hadriel's playing games again." He shifts, putting the book down on the coffee table instead and getting up to help put groceries away. Up close his eyes are red and glossy. "What'd you find?"

[ It's a little strange when Drake gets back to their apartment and Ephemera's not there. They're not under attack right now and as far as he knows everything's going fine with the Blues so Drake isn't worried exactly, but. Considering the special delivery he got yesterday it's not unreasonable to think something's up. Maybe it's nothing, the other man could just be hanging out with a friend. But there's a cupboard open in the kitchen, and a bottle missing. Hmm. It is nighttime... ]

Thought I'd find you up here.

[ He comes over and sits next to Ephemera, reaching for the bottle. ]

What'd they send you?

See Tony Skate.

Skate Tony Skate.

Tony has found a skateboard.

He is 47, and does not need to grow up.

I mean please, what would you do if you found one of your favourite childhood toys like it's Christmas morning? So, it belongs to someone else? He knows that much, but whoever it is that owns this was a little busy doing something Tony is intimately familiar with and yet not so keen to interrupt. Not that he knows who exactly it is that was doing the fucking, but eventually he'll call out the brown-eyed, long haired, elf-eared girl who looked like she was having way too much fun for someone stuck in Hadriel and find out who the lucky guy (or girl) was.

Until then, Tony will be taking to the street on the skateboard. With a baseball cap and a hoodie to finish the look off.

Wash and Kyna are heading out of her spire just as Tony rolls on by. He's in full armor except for the helmet tucked under his arm, and he was talking to Kyna but trails off when the sound of the skateboard draws his attention. It's possible someone could have shown up here with one, of course, but as the other man gets closer... this particular skateboard looks very familiar. It's the exact same color as the last one he owned. Which means his gaze follows Tony curiously as he passes, peering at the board to see if there's a white stencil under his feet.

Kyna doesn't think much of the skateboard—it's weird, but honestly, she's seen weirder. Maybe he found it in one of the shops, or brought it from home. Whatever. But then she recognizes who's on the skateboard, and she stops, frowning. That's weird.

[Oh. Kyna hands it over instantly, studying him.]

It was? How the hell did it show up here?

Oh.

Ephemera bites his lip, reaching out to touch Drake's shoulder. Knowing it's a trick doesn't make it any easier. "Chocolate. There's peppers in it. Which could be awesome or terrible. Wanna find out?"

[Michael's item is a purple 3DS with a game inside ~~it's totally Animal Crossing~~. The batteries are dead, so unfortunately even someone who knew how to use it wouldn't be able to find a name.

Touching the DS will at first spark a vision of a table, seen through a pair of glasses. Whoever's eyes these are, they seem to be engaged in messy business, using a scalpel and their bare hands to take apart some kind of gelatinous black organ mass. Gross! To make matters even less sanitary, they insist on using their blood-covered fingertip to push their glasses back up whenever they slide.

Anyone familiar with Michael could probably guess who this is, but anyone not familiar may at least recognize the inside of the lab from whenever he happens to look up.

Later visions will include a lot of scrolling through network posts, staring blankly at walls from a sideways position, and, if the item is kept long enough into the evening, Michael finally remembering to eat food.]

[It's a tiny thing, but somehow it isn't delicate. Daisy had never been a small woman, she'd been an inch taller and about forty pounds heavier than Ephemera and had never once taken his shit. The only who'd been taller or stronger was Crow, and he'd been a beast. There was no comparison. Even Dane had been a little smaller, a little quieter, and everyone had called them twins.

She'd been a ceeb, before. Putting ships together. Got pulled off the welding line when an officer noticed how fucking strong she was, how steady. She'd always been good at welding, though. Fixed their gear. Made things.

There'd always been a flower welded to her helmet, towards the end.

Ephemera swallows. Takes off his gauntlet so he can trace the edge, just to make sure. There might be blood on it.]

I don't know. The gods, maybe. It's hers. I can see where she bonded it to her helmet...

[Ephemera tips his head back. He had a feeling Drake would find him, sooner or later. Unlike the last time he got drunk, he's not feeling awful and confused. Mostly he's tired. Remembering things. Family.

Silently, he hands the metal rose to Drake.]

My sister. She made these. Welded 'em to her helmet. Her and Dane. Thought it was a little tacky, honestly, but they liked 'em.

At the touch he stands a little taller, not wanting to admit how much a simple book is fucking with his head. He forces a smile. "Yeah. I'm betting on awesome. But bring it into the living room, I've got something to show you."

It's Wash that he spots first - between a step on the floor, and a brief wiggle as he finds his centre again. It's one of the guys in the power armour, but more than that... better than that.

"Hey, it's you."

Wearing a huge grin, Tony drops down off the skateboard reaching to grab it. For the most part, he succeeds, but only because he's quick enough to stagger forward and grab the end of the board, spinning on the spot to face them.

"Kyna-- and... so this is the lucky guy huh?"

When Tony scoops up the board Wash gets a look at the bottom of it, and sure enough there's a scuffed white stencil there -- somehow, this is his old skateboard. He hasn't seen it since his implantation back on the MoI.

It'd be rude to just step in and yank it away from Tony, especially since the guy seems to know Kyna well enough to know about him. Behave, Wash.

He glances down at Kyna first. "Friend of yours?" Then back to the stranger, gesturing at his board. "Where'd you find that?"

"Uh... Not really." They met once, briefly, but that was it. She's frowning at Tony, head tilted. "Lucky guy? What are you talking about?"

[ At first, it had seemed like a nice, albeit unusual, gift. It's not like he'd ever really owned video games, just seen other people play them. But the moment he touches the 3DS, it's obvious that there's definitely more to this gift than meets the eye.

And that's not just because he can see the remains of some kind of creature, and someone else's hands poking through it. (Honestly, the idea of touching something like that without gloves on is more a discomfort than the blood and organs he can see. Priorities.)

And after hearing from others, it becomes clear exactly what's going on.

Which is what brings him to the lab-- at least, from what he can guess, this seems to be the right place. The door isn't locked, but he figures it's better not to startle someone holding a scalpel, at least not if he's on the same side of the door as said scalpel.

So for now, he'll just knock on the door. ]

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Page 1 of 33

Event Log: That's My Rubber Ducky

Caedra Nisariel | OTA | Will match format

Rita Du Clark | closed

[closed] For Rita:

Drake Holloway | closed

Trafalgar Law - closed and open both

Terrence Ephemera/Sharkface - Closed and Open

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Tony Stark | Open

skate, Tony, ska-- wait, that skateboard looks familiar

rude tbh

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Michael Munroe | Closed | cw light gore?

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HOW?!

RIP kyna's dignity

this is how she dies

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