etrayalogs | MISSION 003

MISSION 003

WHO: Everyone and their plushies!
WHEN: June 7th to 25th
WHERE: Everywhere
WHAT: The third Mission
NOTES\WARNINGS: Violence against cute inanimate objects, nightmares, psychological horror, potential death and injury. Please add additional warnings as needed within threads.

⏵ care bear delivery⏴

Last week all characters received one of two possible messages informing them about this month’s mission; some people received a message informing them about the plushie delivery and letting them know they are to protect it.

While others were informed that the plushies must be destroyed starting on June 14th, as any ones remaining after June 20th will cause untold destruction upon the city and its inhabitants. Those who received the second message will find themselves unable to share it with other people.

As promised, on the morning of June 7th, all characters receive a delivery from the companion bots: one stuffed animal plushie handed directly to them. The shape of the plushie differs between characters, but their size is somewhat consistent; they’re all bigger than a fist and small enough to be carried around.

The plushies are magical in nature. Those who fall asleep with their plushies in the same room will find that they will not experience any nightmares and awaken feeling refreshed, even if they only sleep a few hours, or sleep in twenty-minute intervals (looking at you, Bats) rather than go for a full night's sleep. If they lock the plushies away, they will still experience some relief, but it won't nearly as much. Those experiencing intense feelings of guilt, sorrow, homesickness, fear, or pain will find that they still feel those emotions, but with significantly less intensity than they may usually have. Stressors are less stressful, and overall, it seems like the plushies and their magical properties are trying to help. It's as if something else is helping to carry the weight of that suffering.

However, characters will also become more attached and protective of their plushies the longer they have them.

⏵ teddy tailor⏴

After receiving their plushies, citizens of Etraya will find a new, colorful addition to the first level of the hospital, where one might expect to see a gift store, decorated with various tiny outfits. Those who wander inside will find that the place is not a store, but a tailor’s workshop. The companion bots manning it will happily guide people through the steps to make an outfit for their plushie. All kinds of fabrics and patterns can be found throughout the workshop, and a few sewing machines are set up for their use.

The companion bots will not physically help, but perhaps other citizens coming in can assist. After all, all those new plushie friends deserve a special outfit.

⏵ tea party⏴

Before the end of the week, citizens will receive an invitation to a Tea Party taking place at Ramsey Farms. Attendance is not mandatory, but the last several days have been nice, haven't they? Surely everyone is feeling like having some tea and scones.

The farm is set up with various tables and tea sets. All tables have exactly four seats and are meant to be occupied by two citizens and their respective plushies. Once seated, citizens may feel compelled to share how their plushie has been helping them these past few days, perhaps they might even get specific about their fears and traumas.

⏵ seek & destroy⏴

As the first week wraps up, citizens receive one more invitation, this one to participate in a game of Hide & Seek with their plushies. Those who received the message to protect their plushies will be told to hide, while those tasked with destroying the plushies will be the seekers. The game will take place over the morning of June 16th; by then, people may feel fairly protective of their plushies.

No information is provided regarding prizes or winning parameters and Aurora will not answer questions pertaining to the game. But hey, the tea party went so well; surely, this will be fun too.

Once a plushie is destroyed, all of those negative feelings that had been suppressed will return to characters. For those who only had their plushie for a week, they'll feel those emotions more intensely, but it won't be as terrible to lose it. The longer they have had the plushie, the more emotions it absorbs, and the more backlash they'll receive when it's destroyed. Characters with intense night terrors may immediately fall asleep once the plushie is destroyed, throwing them into one of the worst night terrors they have experienced.

Characters cannot destroy their own plushies. Those who receive the message to destroy them are welcome to ask other people to destroy it for them, but if they attempt to explain their reasoning, they'll find themselves losing their train of thought or otherwise unable to explain Aurora's mission.

As stated in Aurora's second mission, any plushies that have not been destroyed by the 20th will become a problem all of its own. The exception to this is if Wade Wilson dresses a plushie in the outfit he had received for it. This outfit will both lower the amount of emotions the plushie absorbs, and slow down its transformation.

⏵ cadaver consolations ⏴
And they do transform. After thirteen days of absorbing negative emotions and taking on nightmares for others, the plushies become something so much more than just plushies. Instead of being soft, huggable items meant to assist in lowering stressors, they take on aspects of those stressors. Perhaps your worst nightmare involves watching your loved ones burn to death - your plushie is no longer a cute little teddy bear but is instead the shape of what had once been your mother, burned and singed almost beyond recognizable if it wasn't for her voice calling out to you, telling you that you did this to her as she chases you down. Perhaps you've been feeling guilty for how things went down in the Labyrinth, and the plushie takes on the shape of a friend who had fallen to save you, whispering into your ear about how it is your fault, you did this to them.

From the 20th through the 25th, these plushies remain corporeal. While they may not look soft and fluffy, it's possible to find threads hanging off their bodies. Yanking on these threads will cause them to fall apart, thus destroying the nightmarish creature intent on following its owner to their death. After the twenty-fifth, they will no longer be corporeal and cannot be destroyed through traditional methods. Instead, player characters will need to pull aspects of their fear out of the mangled creature. Perhaps the creature is carrying a replica of a treasured necklace that needs to be yanked off it, or its chest has been torn open, its heart hanging loose for those around it to grab hold of. The character responsible for the plushie will need to devour their fears, which will cause the creature to unravel piece by piece.

How this looks is wholly up to you, as is how far your character's nightmarish creature gets. Whether it's devour in a literal sense, or if it's overcoming their fear by destroying it or overcoming it - the extent of how messy this gets is up to each player, as is how messy their plushie gets.

⏵ NOTES ⏴
The soothing nature of the plushies is magical. They are magically charmed to absorb negative energies and contain them. Characters who can sense magic of this nature are free to notice this.

Those warded from being affected by others' magic may also find that their plushies are not effective for them. This can be played to players' preference; maybe the plushies can work around the wards, but maybe they cannot.

When a character’s plushie is destroyed, the character will feel the full hit of all the emotions it had been holding for them, if a character's plushie survives past June 20th it will transform into a monster, if it survives past the 25th it becomes much harder (and traumatizing) to destroy. They will need to be destroyed, as the plushies will not disappear on their own regardless of how long they're around.

Any questions can be directed to the mod queries thread in the plotting post

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[ The stuffed insect wants something. What was Lisa ever going to do, other than give it to her?

An exhausted, worn-thin body with blonde hair and heavy, smeared eye makeup shuffles towards Trickster's place in the forest. The body moves like a sleepwalker, feet heavy, head in a daze. The body's eyes don't quite focus right. Another sign of exhaustion. The body holds the stuffed insect close to the chest, like one might hold the stuffed animal they sleep with at night.

She's on the wrong side, so she's not allowed to answer the question. Fortunately, her power is one of speech, and so it's not difficult for something else to formulate a response. ]

I'm sorry.

[ She says, and the imitation is perfect. The body's knuckles blanch where she clutches the insect.

It's important, when working on a team, to admit when you've been wrong. ]

[ He'd been prepared for things to go sideways as soon as he recognized who it was stumbling through the trees. Even if they are on the same side, there isn't a chance in hell they're going to cooperate. He asked as much to buy time as he asked to know where they stand, but either way, he wasn't sticking around.

Whatever this is, it isn't going sideways. It's going somewhere worse.

His skin crawls as he stares at her, a surge of atavistic revulsion coiling in his gut. Almost without thinking about it, he takes a step back, then another, slow and careful. The thing in his pocket rolls over, twisting into a knot. ]

Fuck you.

[ He spits it like blood, wounded and outraged, a shuddering flinch. ]

[ The body would do the same, if she could.

Ordinarily, an outburst like that would be met with a sneer, a curl of the lip complete with a flash of teeth. But this is different. If there's an animal caught in a trap, it isn't him.

The body is instructed to sit down, and so it does. The insect held against its heart wriggles and clicks, as if impatient. ]

That's fair.

[ She says, because it's something Lisa would say. Lisa would always tell you when you're fucked.

It doesn't make the body watch Trickster for this next part. It isn't cruel - far from it. This is a kindness. She's helping, just like how Lisa helped. The body stares at a patch of grass, and does not run hands through it. ]

Taylor's dead.

[ Something inside the body - the nameless part, the one that no one and nothing can touch - curls up, as if struck. ]

[ He and his passenger (the second, not the first) go icily still.

Taylor's dead. Taylor as in Skitter, as in the conquering warlord of Brockton Bay, as in the human cockroach. Taylor, as in the girl whose ambitions set the agenda Tattletale executed.

His first thought, absurd as it is, is that she's lying. Lying the way I'm sorry has to have been a lie leading into something else - I'm sorry you're such a pathetic asshole, I'm sorry this is going to be so embarrassing for you.

But there's no follow through. She's just sitting there, huddled up with her fucked up little bug doll, gutted hollow.

He thinks it might be true. He knows less about what to do with that than he would a lie. ]

Why tell me that?

[ He asks, sharpness splintered defensive on the upward curl of the question. ]

Why would you tell me that?

[ She wouldn't. Neither Lisa nor Tattletale would say a word of this to Trickster, and that's the problem. He's so close to getting it, and isn't that typical? The difference between her and him, at the end of the day, is that only one of them has the guts to follow through.

The body makes a small, choked noise from the back of its throat. It's not acting with the permission of the one who guides it, so the sound never gets loud, and it stops quickly. A battle is waged in the throat of the body, and the result is this: the throat swallows. In exchange, the eyes crumple at the edges. ]

So you understand.

[ Maybe Trickster will run. He's always been so scared of her, and he's good at running away. He should be scared of this. Then Lisa wouldn't be the only one. ]

Please. [ The two of them say, in unison. ] Understand.

[ He doesn't understand. He doesn't understand in a huge, deafening clamour that begins between his ears and radiates out through his body, sheets of heat and sheets of cold. His hands are full of shivering needles, his throat stopped up with a clot of distress. ]

So I - ?

[ The mirrored, incredulous question breaks up halfway. He shakes his head, shoulders heaving, then bends sharply to brace his hands on his knees like he's about to be sick. As his head swims, he thinks he could be, if he tried. ]

So I understand. [ He repeats, with a quaver like heat rising off pavement. ] God. God, fuck both of you.

[ He sinks down into a crouch, hands still on his knees, his forehead pressed against his curled knuckles. His eyes are hot and gritty as he squeezes them shut, right at the slippery edge of tears. In his pocket, between his stomach and his thigh, a mouth makes a small, curdled trill of upset. ]

What the fuck is wrong with you? [ Voice suddenly wrung out, twisted up into a plaintive near-murmur. ] I don't mean in general, so don't - just fucking don't. What's wrong with you right now.

[ Trapped inside a body that doesn't belong to her, the person who most recently went by Tattletale thinks this might be why she hates Trickster the most. It isn't the self-loathing presented as self-aggrandizement, or his sheer incompetence, or the fact that he truly is really fucking annoying. It's that he's not kind enough to get up and leave her alone, and he's not cruel enough to take her out of the picture while she's at her most vulnerable. He equivocates at some bullshit periphery, and doesn't realize that it's worse.

None of this shows on the body's face, or in any other part of it. The body doesn't even answer the question. Instead, the insect does, wriggling and clicking. But it's not even Trickster's question that the insect answers - it vocalizes to the thing in Trickster's pocket, the thing that is like the insect, but not.

While the insect communicates, the body is perfectly still. Awaiting instructions. Control only slips briefly, and only just long enough for a tremor to run up the body's shoulders and neck, culminating in a shake of the head.

The insect stills. The body speaks. ]

I'm cooperating. Keeping it - professional.

[ The thing in Krouse's pocket tenses like a spasming heart, tough muscle tightened to quivering hardness. He breathes against it, a knot digging into him underneath the rising span of his ribs.

The insect's clicking. Skitter is - was - a Master cape. Tattletale's bizarre behaviour. He was already most of the way to being sure of what he was dealing with, so it's less realization than acceptance. But she controlled insects, not human beings. Second trigger? A distortion of her power, like the clones? Tattletale's fears twisting around to trap her, turning her into a drone under the control of something else instead of the puppeteer holding all the strings?

He's trying to think around it. A distraction from reality dressed up as strategy, because it's always easier to break the worst things in the world down to a series of problems he can tackle.

He slides one hand into his hair and makes a fist, swallowing a treacherous hitch of the chilly night air, before he teeters back on his heels and lands on his ass. The jar up his tailbone barely registers. ]

Yeah. [ He manages, raspy and tight. ] That would be your worst fucking nightmare.

[ His passenger squirms angrily, digging a splay of tiny limbs bluntly into his side. He takes his hand out of his hair so he can cup it like a baby animal, or a bruise. ]

You want me to understand, huh? [ The question borders on soft, it's so quiet. ] That's what's supposed to fuck her up?

[ That would be your worst fucking nightmare, and the thing controlling the body siezes its moment. ]

It's not - ngh.

[ At the same time as the body's voice chokes out, Lisa's hands wrap around the neck of the insect, cutting off its own airways. She succeeds in holding her tongue, but only for a moment. The body's fingers relax. Its throat works, trying to form a scream that does not come. It is silent when Trickster asks his next question, and then it is silent a little while after that. Nothing happens, save for some intermittent, helpless twitching. ]

I wanted her to live.

[ Tattletale doesn't tell people what she wants. That would ruin the show. It's almost more accurate to say that Lisa is the one who wants, and even that is a stretch. ]

I was supposed to see it coming and - I couldn't. That's what my power is for, and I couldn't.

[ A smile, twisted and saccharine. ]

You were right. It's not working the way it's supposed to.

[ Watching her choke the insect and collapse into suppressed twitching drags bile out of Krouse's stomach and into the back of his mouth. He doesn't feel sorry for her. She did this to herself, one way or another. He just doesn't like looking at it.

(Macrame and spoon feeding. Not cautionary examples, because he didn't need them. Examples, instead, of how much he cared. Anyone else wouldn't have bothered to still try to find a use for things so broken.)

He doesn't like listening to her, either, so it's not like there's any way to win. The horror in her lap spills her sad, ugly little secrets, and the twist of bitter spite he feels doesn't touch the sides of the dull, blistering numbness swelling up through his chest.

Under his hand, the thing twitches harder, scrabbles at the palm of his hand through fabric. He screws his mouth up pale and hard as he shifts to slip his fingers into his pocket, skimming gently over feverishly hot skin, scaly dry patches mixed with slick sores. A tentacle latches around his wrist and tightens hard enough to make him far too conscious of his own bones. ]

And this is the part where I relate?

[ The tears aren't gone from his eyes, but they've dried up from his voice, as soft and silkily desiccated as ash. ]

'We're not so different, you and I'? [ He sucks in a raspy breath, half-sound, half-nothing. ] This whole time - this whole fucking time - that's what this has been about?

[ Tiny teeth clamp to the webbing between his forefinger and thumb. He grimaces, then smooths it out, dropping his head to stare at the grass between his feet. ]

[ The body watches the twitching mound with some interest, something that both the parasite and the host can agree upon.

It doesn't take any sort of supernatural ability to know what's going on under there - not when you've seen a several story tall version of that same creature. The fact that he would keep it safe at the expense of the city also checks out.

You sent me to prison and killed my girlfriend. What the hell was she supposed to do, Lisa wanted to ask him, once she had gotten good and far away. Let herself get eaten for the sake of someone's first high school relationship?

She could kill this version. It was in the instructions Aurora sent. The parasite might even think she was being a team player, and let her do it. But if she doesn't, maybe that will stick with him. She can use it as leverage later on. ]

No. [ The parasite makes the body say. But it's a gentle no, without Tattletale's usual jeer. ] Not about you.

It was about Taylor. And Reggie. And Sarah.

[ The labyrinth sent her to a cluttered room in a silent house, and all she could do was sit at the foot of the bed, curled up and still.

This feels a little like that. ]

[ How is your brother, Tattletale? Sarah?

Krouse's head snaps up like someone grabbed him by the hair and yanked, his eyes enormous and black in the moonlight. ]

Shut up.

[ He growls out the words as he braces his hand at his side and shoves himself up to his feet, a twitchy, sharp jerk. His foot catches on something as he backs up, but his eyes don't come off of her and his doll as he half-stumbles. A buzz of horror floods his ears and spills out into the rest of his body, loud enough it almost could have drowned out a name he wishes he hadn't heard.

Did you ever get my PRT file from Coil?

He hits a tree with his shoulder, stops against it, a tremor running through him nearly as bad as the ones that have run through her.

This is a moment he's imagined a thousand times. A chance to turn around and do to her some tiny fraction of what she's done to him. It was supposed to feel good. Fair, like nothing ever ends up being. And now the universe has handed her to him gift wrapped and belly up, and all he needs to is grab the handle of the knife already sticking out of it and twist.

She'd do it to him. She's done it to him. She deserves it. She wants it, in some sick, fucked up way, because she knows she deserves it.

But when he pictured it, it was never like this. Not her this vulnerable, mask ripped off and discarded by something even worse than she is. If he does this now, he knows what it makes him, and there will be no one and nothing else he can blame for it but him.

The teeth in his hand clench and rip. The rest of the mouths erupt in snarls and keens as he gasps. The tentacle bears down until he thinks something might snap, a huge wall of compressed pain slamming up through the back of his skull. ]

I know, I know - [ He half-curls in, grinding his shoulder into the bark to hold himself up; his eyes still don't move. ] Fuck, fuck, fuck, stop, no -

[ Or maybe that's a name, too.

It doesn't stop. The blood on his fingers is as hot as his eyes as he blinks, swallowing a rough, unready sound. He stops thinking about it.

A city block or two. Further, if she pushed it, or had the right tools. A sphere of control that he's already inside of, but that doesn't mean anything. The important thing, slippery and bright at the forefront of his collapsed focus, is that he has better range. His gaze flicks past Tattletale, into the dark, and he presses out.

A tree branch sits in her arms. He bites the tip of his tongue as he closes his wet hand around his shrieking betrayal, staring at Tattletale in a welter of loathing. ]

Not about you.

[ Weak, shaky, a scrawl of noise in the clamour. His pupils shift away, and the screaming is a high pitched note in the distance. A companion bot, face plate a luminous reference point, stands impassively next to the tree. ]

[ A computer freeze is an imprecise term that could describe any number of faulty processes. The gist, however, is generally this: a machine attempts to execute a series of code. An error occurs. The machine becomes stuck in its execution, attempting to work through the error, all while background processes attempt to continue to operate.

What's happening to the body's mind isn't unlike that. Her face is stuck in a pleasant, helpful smile, devoid of any scorn or bravado. And while she waits, politely, for Trickster to work out his feelings, the information keeps pouring in for Tattletale to sort.

He wants to hurt her. But more importantly, he's locked in that ever-present and juvenile gamer need to win, and if he kicks her while she's down, that's not really a victory. He knows what Tattletale was getting at with her taunt about the PRT file. His beloved, like hers, is clutched close to his chest. It hurts.

Specifically - because her power has always dealt in specifics - it's eating him. Some miserable, fucked-up part of her brain is jealous of it. Once again, Trickster has no clue how good he has it. When something eats you alive, there's nothing left.

None of that matters. There's something warm, pressed against the hollow of the body's chest, and then there is something hard and rough and comparatively cold. The shoulders that belonged to Sarah and then Lisa and then Tattletale sag. It's not that she's like a puppet with her strings cut. It's that she is one.

Grief-filled green eyes meet a face. A slashed mouth parts, like it's preparing to say something. Her tongue touches the base of her front teeth.

Not about you, Trickster says, and she doesn't even get a chance to tell him that she knows. But that doesn't matter, either. Everyone knows that she knows.

Before an impassive companion bot, a body curls up on the ground like a child, knees to chest, crying quietly. She clutches a tree branch like a doll. An insect crawls over to join her. It scuttles up her leg, then burrows its way into the cavity between her arms and her chest. Of course she welcomes it in.

They depart together, and leave nothing behind. ]

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MISSION 003

2; cw: body control

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cw: hand trauma

cw: suicidal thoughts, grief