Event Log: Senses Fail

[hadrielmods]

Who: All characters participating in the event
What: The event log for the Senses Fail event
Where: All over the city
When: May 14th-May 20th
Warnings: None

You wake up on the 14th, and something is different. Maybe it's something small - you can't smell anything, or your hearing on one side seems to be on the fritz. Or it could be something large and impossible to miss - you've gone completely blind, or you seem to be missing a leg. You've lost something, and no matter what you do, you can't seem to fix it.

Will you ever get it back? Probably, but it's impossible to be sure. And even if you're thoroughly convinced that this is temporary, that still means you have to figure out how to live like this for the next week. Even small things can be huge difficulties. Your sense of taste doesn't seem that important, until you accidentally eat something that'll make you sick. And sure, maybe you can figure out how to live without one hand, but what about when you wake up three days from now and you've also lost your magic?

Do your best to keep yourself calm, but remember: it can always get worse.

► This log covers May 14th-May 20th.
► 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 your lost sense turns out to have been essential to your survival, please let us know here.

Comments

Rey. | OTA

[circumitus]

I. Anywhere (May 14th-18th)

Panic and fear is the more common response when you one day wake up to find something missing. But for someone who so often has experienced ending up in strange places she hadn't fallen asleep at, this should be par for the course for Rey. That also didn't account for the fact that Sorrow did mention a fair warning that the city would need to be relocated soon and Fear would need a boost for it, and Fear himself was rather candid about this fact as well.

The thing is, it's not so much the fact that Rey was expecting something coming from a mile away before it even smacked her in the face. It's that she woke up and...

Well, she just didn't care.

Regardless of the predicament of others -- be they friend or acquaintances -- now devoid of their voice or limbs or some other important trait of theirs, Rey carries on her day as if nothing were the matter. Except the deep hole in her very being is cause enough for anyone to worry about her mental and emotional state. When she speaks, her tone is robotic, her expression unresponsive. She walks and sits herself in stiff and rigid ways. Her husk is as empty as a cracked bottle.

Not even taste gives her much joy anymore. Food and drink has become something more of a chore for her again. It's not that she can't experience the flavor, but she just can't savor it like she used to.

So she stops coming to the Speakeasy. Most of the time, she can be seen wandering, trying to find some way to just feel something again.

I. Camping (May 19th)

There are many reasons to be out in the desert right now. Maybe you caught that tiny glimmer of light somewhere on the outskirts of the city, a few miles away in the pitch blackness of the rare and brief nights. The smoke billowing from the sky throughout the dusking hours might be reason enough to draw attention.

Anyone who thinks to try and locate the source of the smoke and light will find a small encampment of one, outside a small cave-like entrance where a bedroll and large bonfire have been made. Rey can be seen just outside of the fire, her hand in the flames though for no matter how long, she doesn't burn. The fire is large enough that the flames flicker and twist even taller than herself, as Rey stares at the entrancing glow with empty emotion.

"Feels nothing," she mutters to herself.

Despite her best efforts, she is still hollow.

camping

[abyssalarcana]

After several days of this torture, Caedra resigns herself to having to deal with it. Maybe this is just how things are, now (hopefully not) but she's tired of thinking about it. Tired of trying to engage with these mortals, most of whom can never understand what she has lost.

Being unable to see at night still frustrates her to no end and she has resorted simply to grabbing a sword from the armory for now to fill in for hers. It's no real replacement though. The blade is duller, it's heavy and unbalanced, and - well. Lacking in anything she wants, really, aside from being something pointy to keep on hand in case someone gets too close. Everyone else here is suffering too and some of them are more aggressive about their losses than usual.

The one thing she has discovered is the flashlight function on the phone and it feels disgraceful somehow to have to use it, but she's not so proud as to leave herself unable to see. She would still rather be up and around in the darkness than stay at home alone. And so it's late one evening when she just keeps walking with no destination in mind, just going wherever her feet take her as she escapes the prison that the city represents to her. Out here, there's a light, she can see it from a distance - and feeling no reason not to investigate, she heads in its direction only to find Rey. At least the construct is familiar to her and hasn't been openly hostile.

Quietly, she sits by the fire and lays the sword at her side.

"What did you lose?"

[circumitus]

Everything, part of her wants to say, because that's what this feels like. But Rey isn't particularly inclined towards the dramatic. She isn't inclined towards much of anything over the week. Save for the fact that she had figured that maybe putting some distance between herself and the gods would have lifted the effects that this has had on her.

It didn't work, and Rey remains empty as ever. She doesn't even react when Caedra approaches, settling by the bonfire. This is one of the few rare hours of chilliness, and despite wearing her usual sleeveless shirts, she doesn't even shiver. And for once, heat doesn't radiate from her skin to pretend her from the cold. She lets herself feel it this time, if only to allow herself to feel something on her skin again. Even if it's the prickling of a freezing night wind.

"Can't feel anything," Rey finally answers Caedra, her monotone not changing from the last time she had spoken those similar words. She doesn't even look the other woman's way; her eyes transfixed on the flickering flames.

Funny enough, it's almost reminiscent to their first meeting, only Rey is without Safronov's accent and she sounds much more robotic now than even the Russian had been.

[abyssalarcana]

Well. That's different. Everyone has suffered in one way or another, though. This one just seems to have gone entirely numb. Lost emotion, perhaps, or expression. What a shame - the only few redeeming traits most mortals have, that had somehow been granted to this construct, look and sound to be gone, leaving her a detestable shell of a creature.

Or perhaps not, so Caedra, despite her immediate revulsion at that completely flat tone, decides to pry.

"What, like the fire? Can you not feel its heat? Or do you mean something more figurative?"

[circumitus]

If she could, Rey would laugh at that remark. "Figurative. Yes."

She brings her hand back into the fire, the heat not even remotely touching her skin the way it would a normal person. Rey then withdraws her hand from the flames for Caedra to see that it's not to the literal extent she assumes -- that Rey can already feel the heat. It just doesn't bring her harm.

"Something else is missing, inside." She touches her chest, over where her heart should be.

[abyssalarcana]

"I can tell."

Not that Caedra has a real idea of what exactly is missing. But the complete lack of affect, the way Rey is acting, all of it is that of a creature simply going through basic motions without any emotion involved. It's a shame she can feel heat, though, because telling her to just walk into the fire then might have been funny.

The truth is, a creature's soul isn't a thing she can experience or judge while that thing is still alive. She can only assume its existence. The only way she can interact with it at all is to kill whatever living thing is harboring it. She's not some talented necromancer, she's simply someone who lives to destroy.

[circumitus]

What's really funny is that she would have no second thoughts about stepping into the bonfire, and her clothes are not nearly as fireproof as Rey is herself.

"And you? Am assuming you didn't come all the way out here for the fire."

Maybe Caedra had a similar idea Rey did.

[abyssalarcana]

"No, I didn't. I was simply out on a walk."

But the way Rey is acting is deeply unpleasant. Whatever it is that's going on, something with her internal instructions or perhaps those past memories she might harbor, it has resulted in a creature that represents the very opposite of that which she is drawn to normally. The light is nice. The company is not, and already she is beginning to think she out to kill this thing and leave its body in the fire, just get rid of it entirely. Maybe it will come back normal, if Hope even resurrects constructs. Maybe it will just be gone, which would be a shame as she also quite likes the idea of gifting Amamot with a murderous construct, but perhaps its man-made mind is simply too broken to be consistently useful.

1

[sciencelizard]

Alphys is in, unfortunately, the same boat.

She's spent the first two days cleaning. She's always missing the motivation, depression holding her back from organizing her room, the lab, her apartment. It's nice, not to be held back by fear or loathing. But there's also nothing else.

She tries to find motivation somewhere, some spark of it, but there's not much to it. She ends up in the park, doodling some designs, when she spots Rey in her periphery. But there's no worried smile, no pull on her to be afraid of the interaction. So she waves.

"Hey. How're you d-doing?"

[circumitus]

You'd think that not being able to feel a damn thing would be inconvenient to the gods. Fear requires just that before the move, and what Rey has lost is hardly profitable to their needs.

But it doesn't take long for her to realize that she doesn't necessarily have to be the one in fear. That her presence may inspire such in others, be it worry or the fact that she might snap someone's neck and feel not a scrap of remorse for it.

Then there's Nick, always full of worry for her, who would no doubt be suffering another heart attack if robots had hearts.

"Mn?" Rey pauses when she hears Alphys' voice, not shifting her head or gaze to meet the lizard woman. "Sure. Am fine. Never better."

Her tone doesn't change a single cadence when she speaks. It's almost as though she's a walking, talking corpse.

[sciencelizard]

Alphys has already reasoned her own issues away, as well. Sure, they lose her for a week- Fear must be plenty put off- but they gain her worries for years after. It doesn't just have to be what was taken from her; it can be reflections on it, thoughts on what she inflicted on others. It'll follow her for a long time.

Maybe she should be thankful it's not happening to her now, just so she isn't folding under it all when everyone else is also hurt.

Alphys tilts her head at Rey's speech, brain already working, unable to be worried about her state.

"What did you lose?" She knows she should feel shame from that, asking so bluntly, but at least curiosity can stop her from being bored. "You don't s-sound the same. Though I guess I don't, either." Alphys tilts her head back down to her work. "It's strange."

[circumitus]

"No, you don't," she points out. Alphys seems a little off as well, so Rey is less remiss about being blunt. "Hard to say, because 'losing the ability to give a shit' doesn't sound like Fear's modus operandi."

That's the only answer she can think of at the moment, anyway. If someone were to cry for help, Rey isn't sure she would even bother. All she wants is to get this over with, if even that.

Any sign of that soul that had been so lively at the feast might as well have been scraped clean.

[sciencelizard]

She raises an eyebrow, feeling almost curious at that. "They took your emotions?"

Alphys knows that humans and monsters don't work the same way- a human losing their SOUL, operating as she does, may or may not be possible. She's never really been able to test it. Most bodies that lose their SOULs are dead.

But you know. Anything is possible.

"Do you feel... anything?"

[circumitus]

Rey shrugs, remaining placid instead of responding to such a discovery appropriately, just to drive the point home.

"Took something that was there." She doesn't see how it accomplishes much of anything, but who knows with the gods. Their logic doesn't exactly align with the reality Rey knows. "Can still feel things physically, if that's what you mean. Sense of touch is still intact."

That's something, at least.

[sciencelizard]

"No, I understand that." Alphys realizes she should have clarified, and continues. "Emotionally, I mean- I've heard of people losing a lot of things, but I feel it would be difficult to just take feelings."

She knows she shouldn't just give away any reaction, any information, but it's more cerebral than anything. Alphys usually uses her emotions to stop herself from oversharing, and while she knows logically that it'll be uncomfortable if she gives away too much, the worry isn't there. "Do humans keep those in their SOULs, too? It seems like that would make sense."

17th

[outofthefire]

[Laura has been working her shifts at the Speakeasy, even without her hearing. people can write down a drink order just fine. working the Casino has been harder, but she's toughed it out. Laura Palmer can endure just about anything.

on her way home, though, she sees Rey. even from a distance, Laura can tell there's something a bit . . . off about her. so, Laura approaches her, notebook and pen on offer as she says (a bit too loudly)]

Hi, Rey. What did they take from you?

[circumitus]

[The muscles in Rey's face twitch at the volume of Laura's tone when she speaks, more out of the fact that she wasn't expecting it.

[From what she has observed, Laura seems to have lost her hearing. It's almost a relief that Rey doesn't have to deal with any sort of reaction the girl might have to the unsettling flatness of her tone.

[She opens her mouth to speak, then blinks at the notepad a moment, takes it, and scrawls the words:]

not sure yet

[Since she's still trying to piece together the possibilities.]

[outofthefire]

[sorry, she can't help it, not being able to hear what she's saying.

thank goodness for small favors?

Laura reads what Rey wrote and replies]

Really? That's got to be confusing.

[there are that many?]

[circumitus]

[Rey opens her mouth to speak, only to snap it shut again when she remembers that Laura wouldn't be able to hear a damn thing she's saying, anyway. Not unless she expects the girl to read lips. But then she wouldn't need the notepad, would she?

[She just shrugs a shoulder before taking the pen back to the paper on the netbook, adding:]

not really

think they took away my ability to give a shit

don't know how thats supposed to inspire fear in anyone, but whatever

[outofthefire]

[Laura reads what Rey wrote and looks confused and says]

Yeah, that's . . . weird. How are you supposed to be afraid if you don't give a shit?

[circumitus]

[She sighs as she decides to tell Laura exactly what she's been telling others so far about her situation:]

who knows?

maybe it's supposed to instil fear on others than in me

[It's hard to care when you just... don't.]

[outofthefire]

[once Laura reads what Rey wrote down, she shakes her head no]

Maybe. It's not working on me, though.

anywhere!!

[hasitsthorns]

It likely doesn't take anyone long to figure out what Rose has lost. For someone who can never seem to shut up, she's suspiciously quiet currently. Too quiet. In fact, it's downright uncharacteristic. She isn't even singing along to her favorite songs playing in the Speakeasy, she's just- Silent.

But she sees the way that Rey's acting and can't help but be concerned. Despite being unable to audibly ask, the blond taps on the other woman's shoulder to grab her attention. Her head cocks to one side, expression visibly softening. What's wrong? For someone who spends a lot of time hiding her emotions behind fake smiles, being this vulnerable in her expressions is definitely a test.

[circumitus]

Whatever it is she was expecting from all of this, Rey still hasn't found it. She hasn't eaten much in days, and what little sleep she's allowed herself have granted her nothing more than a few dark, dreamless hours.

She would hate this, but she can't even bring herself to feel even that. Sometimes it seem as though her time is spent just trying to feel something -- anything -- once again.

Sorrow had said that Fear was the one who needed the boost, but none of them would get much out of Rey's condition. Hell, it's not much different from the one time she voluntarily attempted to shut down her own emotions like a flick of the switch. Turn herself off, throw the humanity towel in and call it quits. Only now she didn't have a say in the matter. Perhaps the Fear was intended for someone else...

Maybe that's the impression one would get when Rey shoots a sharp look at Rose trying to get her attention.

"What do you want?" Rey says, and not a single inflection changing in her voice when she both meets and ignores Rose's obvious concern.

[hasitsthorns]

He'll get the burst from it later when Rey's terrified of what she could become.

For Rose, she's terrified of never being able to speak again. To sing again. Despite knowing this is likely only temporary, it's still a lingering unease of what if. He's getting a lot of juice from her this event. Usually, most of her emotion goes to Sorrow.

The blond doesn't answer. That's... not like her. But she does cross her arms, looking stubborn as can be. She wants an answer. What's wrong?