september 2020. welcome to the void.

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Who: Everyone in Anchor.
What: Monthly Mingle
When: The Month of September 2020
Where: Around and outside the city.
Warnings: Please add any warnings in the subject lines.

Redshift: Welcome to the v͖͕̺̲̘̱̜͎o̴̦̣̠̦̘̹͞i̯̖d̛̪̬͈̱̦̝͍̕.

Click here to read what characters will experience when arriving in Anchor.

a. the shuffling.

It's dark.

No, like, really dark.

Not only have the lights of the suns been extinguished, but the lights of Anchor are fading as well. It seems the skies are shifting again, and taking Anchor's solar power with them, again. The lights don't fade entirely, leaving Anchor basked in a grayish glow with shadows painting unpleasant shapes along the walls. In parts of Anchor, the emergency lights have come on, illuminating the areas around them in red.

You could be forgiven for assuming the first shadow you see moving is your imagination. But the second or third? And what's that soft moaning noise coming from some of the vents? At first, there's no answer to that question. Then they start appearing.

Zombies. It seems that the cemetery outside was occupied after all. Though not brain-eating, fast-moving zombies, they move in packs, and they're smart. The more of them in one place, the more intelligent their hunting and planning seems to be. Get cornered, and you might find yourself in pieces, in need of new limbs or, y'know, a new life...

If they get a bite in, it's not as bad as your typical zombie apocalypse, but you're in for an unpleasant ride - hallucinations of people you hate will drive you to attack anyone and anything that comes near you. Either that, or visions of people you've failed or disappointed will haunt you. These hallucinations are invisible to everyone else, and last no less than a day.

b. somebody to love.

Maybe the worst part of the zombie invasion, though, is that these are people you recognize. Not all of them, many of the faces of the shambling dead will be completely unfamiliar, but a lot of them are people from home. Loved ones, mortal enemies, and everyone in between. If they get close to you, their almost-familiar voices will start calling your name. Are they still in there? Is it worth finding out?

It's not just faces from home, either. The man from the welcome video shows up in zombie form frequently enough that there has to be more than one, and there's even multiple versions of Creepy Joe limping around, body unmarred by tentacles. Every now and again, pink-haired woman with a familiar voice and a long white dress will shamble out of seemingly nowhere. Endless double-faces, a city's worth of doppelgangers. Some of them seem drawn to places that were significant to them. Others wander aimlessly, making low, sad moaning sounds.

c. home sweet home.

One of the zombies has done the residents of Anchor a favor, though. It walked straight into one of the power generators and shorted it out, releasing the locks on the doors to the fancy apartments down at the base of the city, near the park.

These are multi-level condos with windows that face toward the park and gardens. Each suite has a private bathroom including a tub and shower, a miniature kitchen, and two to three bedrooms. Each one is furnished in soothing pale colors with high-quality furniture.

They're all fit to inhabit, too - if you don't mind the occasional laser scoring on the wall, or that streak of perfectly preserved dried blood. It seems even this place wasn't immune to what happened in the rest of the colony. But there's no sign of anyone being locked in, either. No bodies, no rotting smells, not even dried husks. Just colonial luxury splashed with violence. And the occasional lost zombie.

d. the walking robo-dead.

Even the robots aren't immune to what's going on, it seems. Whenever one comes into contact with a zombie, it seems to short out, going offline until the offending monster has left the area. When it slowly comes back to life, it rolls about drunkenly, slamming into walls, people, and guard rails with equal lazy force. Sooner or later most of the bots in Anchor are affected, wandering aimlessly, trying to serve you sluggishly and usually doing it wrong, or - oh dear, that one's rolling to the edge of one of the upper walkways. You should probably stop it.

Unless you're Kabal or Starscream, then you can just watch it roll over the edge and smash into a million pieces at the bottom, you animal.

Navigation.

Comments

Yamamoto Takeshi || OTA |CW: Aftermath of his boyfriend's death, may be a little less than pleasant.

[tsuyoi_ame]

The collar is a weight around his arm, proof of what they are to each other, what they were, and what they always will be. Because now, at this moment it is all he has left besides the shattered heart in his chest and his memories.

That and a horde of zombies waiting outside the door for him. For a moment it is tempting to open the door and let them in, not raise his weapon, put his companions in their box, and let go. Only for a moment though because he made a promise and no matter what pain he feels, he will be here when his boyfriend returns.

Jirou whines at his leg as the noise outside the door increases, the young hitman takes one slow breath in, then another out. He raises his sword.

"Kojiro, Cambio forma" When the transformation is complete the rain has no hesitation, his dying will flares to life as strong as ever, he will wash this battlefield clean. He will pave the way for his friends to be safe and more than that, for Hayato to have somewhere safe to come home to. Because he would be back, Yamamoto has to keep telling himself that or he may well lose his mind.

When the fighting ends, that is probably, when it will come down for him, till then it's fighting to survive and keep as many people safe as he can. Something that the empty eyes of his say he has already failed at, he's shut down anything but his will to fight. Because anything else, every other part of him is too raw to touch. Too broken to take out and examine right now.

His flames explode, ripping through the door in front of him and the swordsman is not far behind, he'll fight his way from the building like a fury, for a moment he is not the smiling, grinning baseball player, always using the blunt side of is blade. He is the death, the very thing Squalo and Reborn saw in him, a natural killer and he decimates anything that stands in his way as long as it is foe.

When he escapes the horde and finds himself free of any enemies he stops, bending forward, hands closing around his knees as he draws in ragged breaths. He will search out the next undead he can find, but for this moment he has to breath, no matter what is in going on inside of him, he is still human.

[suicideprototype]

Ritsu is having a slightly rough time of it, since as athletic as he is, it still doesn't change the fact that his weapon wasn't built to kill or to even cause physical damage. The blasts from his guns may be able to slow the zombies down or knock them back, but if he wants to incapacitate, cripple, or do worse to them, he's stuck resorting to brute force - smacking them with the guns themselves, crushing them underfoot... It's pissing him off. It doesn't help that the longer he stays with his Catharsis Effect activated, the more of a toll it takes on him. At the moment, the black beneath his skin hasn't spread far beyond his arms, but he'll have to try his damndest to keep his emotions in check for it to stay that way.

So, for the time being, he decides, "fuck it." He can continue playing exterminator later if need be; for now, he needs a break - just enough to let his Catharsis cool down for a bit. So he decides to play the evasion game, deftly avoiding zombies as he opens a path for himself with a storm of bullets.

Then he sees someone mowing through the zombies, and his eyes briefly widen because he recognizes that face, but the expression on it is completely new - and uncharacteristic. "Yamamoto...?"

[tsuyoi_ame]

True, his battle mode is one thing, this is another he is grief-stricken but more than that within each group of zombies he encounters is the face of someone he cares about, his father, his mentor, his best friend, his fellow guardians. The only thing he has been spared so far to this point, that none of them wore Hayato's face, not that he can forget as it faded away to ashes between his fingers but at least he has not had to run his blade through it again.

When he hears his name he tenses, it's Ritsu, he knows the voice but for a moment he hesitates, heartbeat rising, fingers tightening around the grip of his blade as he studies the other from his bent position.

"Ritsu?" There is no spark to the eyes, there is no ready smile, he remains hard because to open the smallest door now could create a flood. And there is more fighting to come, the time to be broken outwardly can come later.

He does rise, loosening his fingers so his blade is not held at the ready as if he is going to attack anything that moves.

"Are you okay? You haven't let any of them bite you have you?" He is not sure if everyone here would have played zombie games or seen movies as he has and he hopes against everything that none of his friends have had to see what a bite does first-hand today.

[suicideprototype]

Ritsu notices that lack of a spark in Yamamoto's eyes, and he knits his brows slightly. This sudden plague has clearly taken a considerable mental toll on Yamamoto - in a way that Ritsu doubts was merely caused by exhaustion from fighting for one's life. It's commendable, in a sense, that Yamamoto still has it in him to show concern for another human being, given the state he's in.

"I'm fine. I haven't been bitten." He knows the state of his arms probably looks alarming - not to mention the large thorn sticking right out of his chest where his heart should be - so he briefly gestures to it with a hand. "This will heal. It's not from them."

But if Yamamoto is so concerned about whether he's been bitten, specifically... Ritsu wonders just what on earth will happen if one bites him. Infection? Disease? It can't be that they're the bonafide type that turns you into one of them if they bite you, could it...? That sort of thing only exists in trashy movies and low caliber novels, after all.

But then, if that is the case, it would explain why there are so many of them - and why Yamamoto looks so emotionally worn down. How many of these zombies are former inhabitants of the Anchor? How many are people Yamamoto once knew?

[tsuyoi_ame]

Ritsu would be right for the young swordsman this has been the hardest, longest fight of his life. And that is saying something he has faced foes in battle who were certainly stronger than him and more experienced and still never felt this level of defeat and exhaustion. Not even after Choice did he feel like this much of a failure. Never mind that every walking dead no matter the face they wear that hs come toward him since he left the apartments is dead, in tatters or otherwise incapacitated. He has failed and that is the only thing that he knows for certain.

He could not say how long he has been out here, how many he has killed. Has it been minutes since Hayato faded away to nothing, literally in his hands, days, hours? It's all a blur and he could not tell Ritsu if he tried.

The hitman lets out a breath, his shoulders seem to relax a little. Right now he is forcing his brain to focus on the here, the now, the moment he is living in because to do anything less would break his promise and cost him his life. He does not know if it's all of them, what he does know that the one who wore Bel's face infected Hayato and in the end, Hayato went out with his storm flames and Yamamoto's own blade before the diseases could turn him. They held out till they had no choice but it was inevitable and he can not face that fate for any of his friends.

"Good, don't let them, it's just like the movies or a weird video game." There are no sound effects, no laughs, nothing of his usual explanation, he seems all business.

"And be careful, they can wear the faces of people you know from home." There is a seep of the sadness he feels and Yamamoto's body jerks as he locks it down. It is a constant wave of a threat to steal his ability to fight and he can not let his guard down, not yet.

[suicideprototype]

"They can--" What? That takes Ritsu decidedly off-guard (he's heard nothing of zombies being able to do that before). "How is that possible?"

If it's mere some form of shapeshifting, that's one thing. But it makes no sense; in order for them to choose those faces, they'd have to know things about their targets - know things about the worlds Yamamoto and Ritsu came from. Zombies aren't exactly known for being intelligent, much less capable of deception and even, Ritsu fears, telepathy. He doesn't want to consider that possibility, hates how naked he feels at the thought of someone probing into his mind for weaknesses.

There's also, of course, the possibility that some of these zombies really are - or, well, used to be - people from back home. Also a less than pleasant thought. He's hoping there's a third possibility he hasn't thought of.

[tsuyoi_ame]

"I don't know, there are people I know have never been here. My old man for one, my mentor, several of our friends from home. More than once, it's like there are multiples of them."

All of them, other than Hayato who he knows died here on Anchor, Yamamoto has today more than once killed every face he can remember from home. And some he remembers from here who have since gone away. The zombies seem tailored to give the maximum shock factor and pain, to make this as hard as it can possibly be. It is like they know things, the Bel zombie even had his laugh, Squalo zombies are yelling VOOOIII as he kills them, his old man wears that same smile that usually graces his son's face. It's them and it's not them all at the same time.

Unfortunately, he is probably doing nothing to ease how this is all making Ritsu feel and when this is over, when life goes back to normal he is likely to seek the man out to apologize for being what he feels is utterly useless.

[suicideprototype]

"Will two people looking at the same zombie see the same thing? Do you know?"

If Yamamoto sees his father while the person next to him sees their father, it would confirm that these zombies are messing with their victims' minds rather than capable of shapeshifting.

[tsuyoi_ame]

"I don't know, Hayato and I did but we come from the same world, we share the same enemies, friends, and family." We shared, and when he says that name his eyes show emotion for the first time, it is not there long but they swim with pain, loss, grief and he swallows, hardening them as he refuses to accept it, refuses to acknowledge it now while there are still people to protect.

He looks around, for the moment they seem to be in the clear but what Ritsu is suggesting makes sense, it seems worth testing the theory.

"Should we see if we do? Since your friends and family would be different than mine."

Basically want to go fight some zombies and see if we can traumatize ourselves together cause this is friendship Vongola style.

[suicideprototype]

Vongola style sounds fine with Ritsu; he wouldn't have it any other way. So with a resolute nod, he looks off in the direction of the zombies.

"Yeah. Let's do it. I can lure one away from the rest so we can trap it here."

Isolating one seems like the best way of doing this - it carries the least risks and minimalizes the possibility of outside factors messing up the experiment.

"Can you wait here with something to restrain it?"

[tsuyoi_ame]

This is a good thing, in his current frame of mind Yamamoto knows no other way, he's fallen on battle instinct and shut down the rest of himself as much as he can.

Staying alive and keeping everyone else that way is priority number one, not that it wasn't before the incident.

He nods at Ritsu's plan, flames licking along as his blade.

"I can hold it in place with my flames, I've done it before." And the Phantom Knight could not break free, he is definitely stronger than a zombie.

"Be careful..." He will be ready in case this does not go to plan, he does not intend to let Ritsu get bit.