The Fifteen Strangers Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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15corpses2017-12-02 02:07 am
strangerpeople) wrote in 15corpses2017-12-02 02:07 am
WELCOME TO THE GAME.
[You have died. When you awaken, it's in your body back to the shape it was in before whatever it was that killed you - but not all is right. Nothing surrounds you but darkness as far as the eye can see. A girl's gentle voice speaks to you from seemingly nowhere. It is a voice you probably haven't heard before.]
It's all right...it'll be all right.
Please forgive me for this, but, you're in the True Game now. As you're now here, on this plane, I...took something from you. Something important. The thing dearest to you. It has to be taken, though, as it's your entry fee - it's one of your means of surviving this!
I promise, we don't mean to do anything terrible to you! But this Game is important, and you getting through it is, as well. You'll receive missions, and for the missions you complete, you'll be given points. The more points you earn, the closer you'll get to leaving this place. And then, when you do finally leave, perhaps you'll understand why you were brought here. You'll regain what you lost, and you'll know the truth.
So please...please survive! I have faith in you! You'll be all right!!
[Sure enough, as soon as she's done explaining and collects your fee, something important of yours is missing. It might be memories, an object, or even a person (that's not a Titled), but they are your collateral now. Your motivation for continuing your existence in this world. You black out, and when you wake again, you're back in the mall, in the bedroom you'd been assigned. You remember everything you'd forgotten while you were alive, although you might have re-forgotten it if that was your entry fee. At least everything here seems mostly the same.
However, there's a few new things to discover... your cell phone now lets you read the surface thoughts of everyone that's living, and imprint thoughts into their heads (except for Croix, The Chance. Maybe it's because she didn't have a power? Who knows.) You also have all the items and money you had when you were still alive, which will be useful, because you still get hungry and, we'll say you still need clothes, but that's actually debatable because you are invisible. Not to other dead people, no, but to the other people in the mall.
Yeah. That's a thing. This version of the mall is full of random people who are using the mall as a mall, and even working the registers - oddly enough, there's this one girl with pink hair who seems to work at all of the restaurants at different times. But no one can see you, except for the shopkeepers of food and clothing stores specifically. (Luckily, the Barcade counts as food.) The Titled can be seen going about their business as well, and you can follow them around and watch them, listen to their conversations. However, nothing you say or do can be perceived by them. Even using your powers goes unnoticed, no matter what you try to do with them. It's like you're in parallel worlds. So that's a little spooky.
Speaking of spooky things, there are also monsters in this version of the mall, though the living seem as able to perceive them as the Titled can perceive you, and even to you they are only barely visible unless you focus on seeing them clearly. But these monsters attack people - they attach to the mall-goers like parasites, however for now, they seem to be leaving the living Titled alone... they prefer to attack the dead Titled, and only the power you gained here seems to truly damage them. They also seem quite difficult to defeat on your own. If one of them happens to come for you, you'll need to find the others, fast. At least if you checked your phone, your first mission told you where to go!]
It's all right...it'll be all right.
Please forgive me for this, but, you're in the True Game now. As you're now here, on this plane, I...took something from you. Something important. The thing dearest to you. It has to be taken, though, as it's your entry fee - it's one of your means of surviving this!
I promise, we don't mean to do anything terrible to you! But this Game is important, and you getting through it is, as well. You'll receive missions, and for the missions you complete, you'll be given points. The more points you earn, the closer you'll get to leaving this place. And then, when you do finally leave, perhaps you'll understand why you were brought here. You'll regain what you lost, and you'll know the truth.
So please...please survive! I have faith in you! You'll be all right!!
[Sure enough, as soon as she's done explaining and collects your fee, something important of yours is missing. It might be memories, an object, or even a person (that's not a Titled), but they are your collateral now. Your motivation for continuing your existence in this world. You black out, and when you wake again, you're back in the mall, in the bedroom you'd been assigned. You remember everything you'd forgotten while you were alive, although you might have re-forgotten it if that was your entry fee. At least everything here seems mostly the same.
However, there's a few new things to discover... your cell phone now lets you read the surface thoughts of everyone that's living, and imprint thoughts into their heads (except for Croix, The Chance. Maybe it's because she didn't have a power? Who knows.) You also have all the items and money you had when you were still alive, which will be useful, because you still get hungry and, we'll say you still need clothes, but that's actually debatable because you are invisible. Not to other dead people, no, but to the other people in the mall.
Yeah. That's a thing. This version of the mall is full of random people who are using the mall as a mall, and even working the registers - oddly enough, there's this one girl with pink hair who seems to work at all of the restaurants at different times. But no one can see you, except for the shopkeepers of food and clothing stores specifically. (Luckily, the Barcade counts as food.) The Titled can be seen going about their business as well, and you can follow them around and watch them, listen to their conversations. However, nothing you say or do can be perceived by them. Even using your powers goes unnoticed, no matter what you try to do with them. It's like you're in parallel worlds. So that's a little spooky.
Speaking of spooky things, there are also monsters in this version of the mall, though the living seem as able to perceive them as the Titled can perceive you, and even to you they are only barely visible unless you focus on seeing them clearly. But these monsters attack people - they attach to the mall-goers like parasites, however for now, they seem to be leaving the living Titled alone... they prefer to attack the dead Titled, and only the power you gained here seems to truly damage them. They also seem quite difficult to defeat on your own. If one of them happens to come for you, you'll need to find the others, fast. At least if you checked your phone, your first mission told you where to go!]
no subject
[Dio heaves a deep sigh and falls into step with the Life Coach, his feet clopping on the ground. He waves his arm to convey the sentiment that yes, fine, they're getting the crab.]
Okay. Obviously the customers can't be "on the same plane" because they're free to come and go so they'd get asked to call the police in, what, ten minutes, and we can't have that. But why do you have to do this in a mall that's already packed to the gills with people in the first place? Is it that hard to find a warehouse to cram your fifteen strangers in?
no subject
[Actually keeping pace with her may require a bit of power-walking, since she tends to skip ahead, sometimes with those wings of hers. She can't help it, she's got too much energy.]
And anyway, clearing the Noise is an important part of any day's mission for you guys. But they, like, follow people. Stick to em'. They prey on their negative emotions... sooo if they come through here, it kills two birds with one stone. You can erase them before they latch on. It's something to get used to!
[They've made it to the busy food court now. If he focuses he can probably see what she's talking about.]
no subject
...
[He averts his eyes by tucking his head in to make longer strides and catch up with her. It'll be a blessing if she can't read his thoughts anymore when they're in the same realm, because the answer to her rhetorical question arises immediately - he's got memories of a murder game in a warehouse, and in every way the mall is better than a warehouse. Dio only shows his face again when they pass the threshold into the food court, and the noise flutter into his shadowy field of vision.]
A long time ago you said you're here because we can use these shitty powers. Which apparently erase the noise. But why not just kill us right away if we can only erase the noise from here? It's not like you can only get to this plane by being justly executed or some shit. [case in point wake, rip]
no subject
no subject
[Dio actually seems to accept this explanation almost wholesale? It's not an order of magnitude more convoluted than VLR spoilers redacted for lack of thematic necessity. He listens to the whole speech without really objecting, just bringing up his phone to the counter.] Interesting definition of alien you got there. It's not like [he waves his free hand at her wings] the customers are the same species as you.
no subject
You're just aliens cause you're from a different world. Or at least, a world that's, like, different enough that it's not already part of the existing system of parallel worlds that these angels oversee. It could still be, like, Earth.
VLR spoilers
Yeah, sure, I'm from Earth... [He guesses in a sense he's from Earth - Left is, anyway, that's close enough. And of course it's what Dio is supposed to say, he was briefed on that much. But what's the point of that when he's dead as a...] You really just had to read about us from the profiles, huh? Do you have the faintest freaking idea who the wolves and sheep are?
no subject
You mean people who they just put in to see if they'd kill, huh?
[She pauses.... then giggles, shrugging.]
I had, like, a pretty bad feeling about you to be honest! I mean, you're a "Ringleader." That word seriously has negative connotations, though like, that's probs just me.
no subject
[Dio gives her a wolfish smile, because that is just a thing he does.] So you noticed it didn't actually say ringleader of a circus, huh? Good eye. I know somebody up there had to have a sense of humor...
no subject
I'd ask what a Ringleader really is, but...
[A few minutes have passed and the CRAB is ready. Is DIO ready? Because the Life Coach is already skipping over to a chair.]
no subject
...but you know what's good for you.
[Dio sits on a chair backwards and grabs a knife. Because he's like this.]
You make it sound like the writer is some other guy under the Boss?
no subject
Hey, I'm totes not scared of you! Grr! [She's making claw hands at him! ...Her nails are actually pretty long and sharp despite the pretty colors, wow. But this is definitely not more threatening than being growled at by a kitten.]
Well he didn't, like, get it out of a phone book. What do you think?
[She's not confirming or denying his assumption of the person's heirarchy position.]
no subject
[A brief wavering frown suggests that Dio does not recognize the set phrase "phone book". He barrels forward, taking a crab leg and trying to snap off the shell with his bare hands.]
I guess it's not that hard if some people in this "plane" can read minds.
no subject
Like this, k?
[With bare hands can actually be fine for these, though she's using a cloth napkin. She bends the joint a little forward and back to loosen it, before snapping it in half with a satisfying crunch and pulling the ends away from each other. Taking one half, she snaps it again in the middle.]
And then you just, like... [She slides the shell off, leaving a stick of meat in her hand.] Pull it out! Done!
[And she punctuates that by dunking it in the melted butter they came with.]
no subject
[Dio doesn't realize the way she's testing the give of the leg, so when he tries to snap it all at once, the crack only goes partway around the shell, and he has to make a second rally that fractures in a different place, dispersing more chips; but in the end, the flesh is liberated from its prison of s... shell. He bites it. The meat is so... wet, almost bland for lack of chemical buildup. He swallows and stares down at it again.] Holy shit...
[He clears his throat.] I mean! Holy shit! That was so hard to figure out. You'd think they could include diagrams or something.
no subject
Haha. But you'd normally have a diagram for like, cookin' a thing, not eatin' it...
no subject
Yeah, normally. This is just especially frigging hard to eat, okay?
[He takes a couple more bites, entirely finishing one half of this leg.]
...not bad, though. [The meat is just settling in his stomach. Dio feels so... aware of the meal. Man, it would suck if this overmoisturized earth food made him sick later. It's really, really different from almost everything he had before the mall. Expressing these feelings is a concession to the temptations of the corrupted world, though, and also just not particularly cool or manly. He takes some time to come up with a different idle conversation.] Looks like they managed to replace those crabs.