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

[closerift]

"Liches?" [ She frowns even more deeply, trying to summon memories, or knowledge, associated with the word... and comes up short. ] I've... never heard of them. Are they here? Or...?

[ Back home? Something that will affect Lup long-term, unlike the monstrous events of their current world? ]

So - hang on. We've all lost something, but she... got lost?

[ Sorry to make you explain, Taako. It's an understandably delicate - and complicated - situation. ]

[pocketspa]

[He sighs, heavy, frustrated, and shaky. Damnit, why now, why does he have to talk about this now. He feels like he's unravelling, like his spool's been cut and there's no anchor to tie himself to.]

No, the liches who run this place. Most of 'em suck, it's just a thing, it's-- it's like--

[He can't compose himself into a well thought out explaination here, so this is all he can give.]

Look, a lich is a dead person who like, lives because of emotions, and if you've got your shit together you just function off your own and you're immortal and it's fine. If you're an asshole you take other people's and poke 'em for your fun. The liches in charge suck, but Lup isn't like that, but-- they had to've taken her, her thing, the emotional thing she has that stops her from wigging out, which makes no fucking sense because it's basically me and she still wasn't fucking attacking me! So she still had to have been in there! But she was fucking posessed and killing people and I don't know what they fucking did but they took her.

[Fuck, he has to get it together, and he sucks down the impulse to cry.]

They took her and left... whatever that was.

[Whatever it was that they had to put down like a sick animal, and his stomach churns at the very thought.]

[closerift]

[ It's enough of an explanation. Possessed. Her stomach turns sickeningly, bile rising into her throat and threatening to spill out like a scream.

She'll never forget the experience - something much like what he's talking about. Except, then, she was the creature who'd had to be put down. ]

... I'm familiar with the - with that particular curse. [ Not exactly, but they've both suffered because of the gods. She and Lup, apparently, were both transformed into monsters and had needed their loved ones to stop them from hurting others.

Cecily draws a long, steadying breath. ]

I won't ask anything else. [ ... ] We'll make them pay for this, Taako. I swear it.

[pocketspa]

[His teeth are clenched, hands tight. He hates this. Hates the breakdown, the admittance of what he fucking did, because he fucking did it. He brought Kravitz to her without a plan and without remorse and it fucking happened.]

They'll just find some fuckin' way out. They're cheaters. They're cheaters and the game's rigged and all they want is us to suffer. I've done this before, you're supposed to not let 'em get to you and not feel it but it's been a fucking year. Killed the last ones in a damn day.

[Or well... Lup did, huh? Another moment of her by his side. He pushes it off, keeps going.]

But here we fuckin' are! Suffering Game v2, it's a whole city this time and there's like eight of us! Grrrrreat! Just fucking great!

[His shoulders fall again with a huff as he tries to get some of the tension out of his body.]

'Ss just bullshit. They're cheating fucks and it's bullshit.

[closerift]

[ They're all dealing with this in their own ways. Cecily studies the wizard, eyes dulled with the grief of it all. Cheaters. Taako thinks of this as a game, and she isn't sure she views it the same way - as something to be won or lost - but she can certainly appreciate that that point of view might make things a little easier. ]

... Are your friends safe? [ She asks finally, daring to venture another question. A risky one. ] If they're here, any of them, then they'll be able to help you through this. That's what we're all doing in this place, isn't it? Just trying to survive from one day to the next, helping each other to the other side.

[pocketspa]

[If pressed, he doesn't know if he'd describe life as a game. But there are structures like it is one- there are ways to lose, so there are ways to win. There are ways to play it right, so there are ways to cheat. People have been trying to wrong him his whole damn life- deadbeat parents, relatives who would only feed their kids and not him, a birthright of being unwanted. He's cheated his whole life. But when he can't win, when the deck finally falls? He has to get better. He just doesn't know how.

He feels like he's barely breathing, a hand having worked itself up to the side of his head, gripping hard at his hair. An old nervous tic. An almost literal grasp on his mind, like something's going to slip if he lets go.]

I don't know. Some of 'em.

[He can't think about Kravitz now, Kravitz who he fucking ran from and left there and probably never wants to fucking see him again. Another thing, lost.]

It's just... what's the fucking point. If they can kill us whenever the fuck they want, just for fun, just because they want to, what's even the fucking point?

[closerift]

Taako, if this is all a game? ... And even if it isn't. The point is to beat them. To stand against-- whatever it is: the gods, the Null, the monsters from the coliseum, and to win. [ She doesn't get closer, doesn't grip him by the shoulders, but her eyes are blazing, her voice emphatic. ] They have incredible power, but so do the lot of us. We can resist them and fight and stand together, because even if all that is to them is a nuisance, then we are taking some kind of damned meaningful action. Whatever it is that we can do here, we do it, and that is where our power lies.

[ No matter what hell they're put through in Hadriel, they've dug themselves out again. Sometimes literally. Cecily knows now that the face and name of their enemy doesn't matter, and that the only truth to hold on to for dear life is that they are all here together. ]

If you can put your trust into one thing today, Taako, please. Believe me.

[pocketspa]

[He doesn't really understand why she's still here. He's been nothing but unpleasant and he knows this, even if he has no desire or energy to ever make himself more palatable for others. But she has strength. A fire he's sorely missing. There's a joke here, about how he always gravitates towards these types of people- people who pull him into danger, people who believe the best in others, people who want to do well. Maybe it's what he wants to do, too, and it's just impossible to get there on his own.

Trust is funny, with him. He never wants to give it. But he does, without knowing, an extension of simply wanting not to be so alone. He's safe, in isolation, but he's not happy. He never was.

He tries to will his breathing slower, hand in his hair shaking as he pushes it back like he was smoothing something out, like he wasn't about to pull something right out.]

Trust you, huh?

[I trust nothing, and no one.

He doesn't want to be that way.]

... We'll get 'em. But sometimes you gotta regroup, so.

[He's not giving up. But he needs her back. He knows this.]

You can. I mean. I'm still gonna go wreck a temple or two. 'Ff you wanna come with.

[closerift]

I do. [ It's what they both need right now. ] I've only got the one arm, but I'll do enough smashing for two.

[ If this helps either of them a microscopic amount, then it will be worth it. ]

Ready? [ She asks with some gentleness, tilting her head toward the nearest temple. ]

[pocketspa]

[He watches her carefully, when she looks away. He wants her so desperately to be Lup, to curl around a person made perfectly to mirror him and escape the world. But she's not. And yet, she reminds him of plenty of others he's met along the way, the energy he needs to pull him through.

She would've fit right in, on the ship. For a moment, he's sad she wasn't.

So he nods, and starts walking.]

Let's mess somebody's day, bubbleh. They owe me.

[And he'll start finding ways to try and heal from this.]