Not Your Kind Of People (A Superhero Quest)
- Thread starter ZerbanDaGreat
- Start date
- Original
Chapter Three: Reboot
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
"So who wants to be superheroes when they grow up? Raise your hands!"
You threw your hand up with what must have been the whole rest of the class. In those days it seemed just as likely as growing up to be an astronaut or a scientist or a fireman.
You're too scared to move.
There are no accurate figures on the rate of superpower development. Estimates, nothing more. It's like playing the lottery. Anyone could win. Why not you?
He's going to die if no one helps him.
Why not you?
Because your body's frozen, you can't breathe let alone move, you're just staring as it happens and you're achingly aware of every fraction of a second that passes as you choose again and again to do nothing.
She asked everyone who put their hands up why they wanted to be heroes. Beat up people who were mean to them. End world hunger. Have cool pet aliens to play with. Just because they were cool. Nothing you wouldn't expect from a bunch of kids. You don't remember what you said. It's like white noise and static eating away at the memory. But there's one thing you do know.
You're not breathing any more. You're not sure your heart is beating. It's like time's stopped, lingering on the edge of a knife.
The last thing that kid wanted to be was you.
Your arm shoots out in a spasm-like punch. The impact splits your knuckles and numbs the nerves but the box you hit goes flying. It lands more heavily than you expected, a jangling resonating crash that seems to echo to the far corners of the warehouse and back again. It's like the world's holding its breath, even the wind and rain barely audible as you stare through the shelf at the crash site, arm still extended, waiting and watching and praying.
The squid-thing looks up at you with a harsh electronic screech, and with all the frantic speed of a scuttling spider married to the sinuous motion of a poisonous jellyfish it pours itself off the helicopter and across the warehouse toward you.
There's no time to worry about whether the man in the helicopter will make it now. There's no time to regret either. The twin spikes of pure, abject terror that transfix your chest and your skull are all you can process. It's like something out of a nightmare. Something coming at you down a long, dark corridor. You turn and try to run but you can't. Your arms and legs won't move right. It's like moving in thick mud, or underwater, or you're sinking into the floor. In dreams it's because of sleep paralysis. In real life, sheer terror can make you clumsy all on its own. Your feet slip, you scramble for handholds on the shelves as you pass, you're hunched so far forward you feel like you're not running so much as stumbling and trying not to fall on your face. Nothing's moving as fast as it should, nothing's obeying you, you try to turn a corner and you just end up slamming into the edge of the shelf so hard that entire side of your body goes numb.
You can't turn around, you can't look back, it'd waste precious seconds but the urge is screaming at you in the back of your mind. It's like it's right there behind you, breathing down your neck, ready to strike at any moment but content to let you run yourself ragged first. That shifting, hissing, keening sound of it moving is all around you, right behind you, everywhere and nowhere but never ever gone. Your breath is rasping in your ears, in your chest, your throat is on fire, the aches of the long night shift run in bone-deep veins of agony. You feel like a busted car, coughing and spluttering, about to blow a fuse and simply break down on the spot. Adrenaline can only take you so far but you beg it, plead with it to take you a little further. Just far enough. Where are you running? You don't actually know. You turn another corner and then turn again, hoping to throw the thing off somehow. Maybe if you find a freight robot you can trick it into running over the squid, maybe if you get to the drone hub you can-
shnk
You stop running.
You stop doing anything.
You take a single, shallow breath in surprise. Your last one.
It was never behind you. It was never even a chase. It must have climbed the shelves and skimmed the top, perfectly positioned to strike no matter where you ran. Easiest thing in the world to scurry down the space between shelves on a straightaway, reach down and just
end it.
You can see your reflection in the glistening, squirming, ever-flowing limb that impaled you. You don't look frightened. You don't look sad or in pain. Mostly you're just surprised. It can't be real, right? This was supposed to be a nightmare. This is the part where you wake up. This is the part where everything is okay in the end.
The squid slides the tentacle free and you just drop. There's no strength left in you anywhere. You limply grasp at a shelf as you fall but your hand slides right off. All you manage to do is turn yourself around, land flat on your back staring up at the metal struts crisscrossing the ceiling high above you.
Your back feels wet. It takes you a moment to remember why.
Wanting to be a hero is a dream with an expiration date. When you're a teenager it's just kind of ridiculous, like highschoolers trying to start a band.
Having no heartbeat is kind of like drowning. Or suffocating. The brain's getting no oxygen either way.
When you're a teenager with failing grades having nervous breakdowns at school because you don't feel safe at home, it's just pathetic.
It's like being covered in snow. Pins-and-needles static slowly crawling up your limbs as you bleed out, your thoughts sluggishly leaking out your ears.
When taking a huff of Promo and making a book float with your mind makes you happier than you've been in years, it just gets you called a junkie.
It hurts. It's like you're being wrung out piece by piece. Draining away. The squid thing looms over you, red glare of its eye almost blinding you. You don't know why it's bothering. Maybe it's going to eat what's left. You don't care any more.
Maybe you just wanted to be something you're not.
Wind rushes over your face. One moment the squid's there and the next it's just gone. The whole warehouse buckles in the slipstream. Shelves are tipping over above you. There's a hole in the ones to your right. You can see them as they slowly topple towards you.
It doesn't matter any more. Your thirty seconds are up.
Your eyes flutter closed and you're not in pain any more. You're just nothing.
It's nice.
You're having a dream. It's much better than the other dream. It starts with you buried under rubble and metal pressing down so tight you can't move, so tight it hurts, but someone moves it all for you. You want to thank him but your mouth won't move. You must have been lying in a puddle because you're completely soaked and it's getting all over him. You don't think it upsets him, but you wouldn't know because he doesn't have a face. You want to apologise anyway for some reason.
He takes you away somewhere. You don't recognise it, and he flies so fast you could be anywhere. He's talking to someone in a magic mirror, someone who's upset and angry and in pain. The man with no face wants his friend to give you a new heart. You don't understand a lot of the conversation, like they're speaking another language, but they both sound really upset. You don't want to cause any trouble, but you're dead so you can't really argue. You just have to lie there limp as a ragdoll in the man's arms.
He has to swear an oath like something out of a fairytale. He reaches through the mirror and it's not a mirror at all, it's a window. He pulls out your new heart, glowing like a star, and gently puts it in the hole in your chest. It's too small, you want to say, it'll just fall out, but he says that's part of the magic. It'll fix itself. You don't get it, but it makes as much sense as anything else.
You're so tired. Maybe you just need to have a nap.
And when you wake up... you'll be...
all... better...
==Forge OS v2.5.32 online==
You wake up.
You're not dead. The lights hanging high above you are, but the cold grey light of an overcast sky is filtering in through the windows. The storm is gone, only distant sirens echoing through the stillness. You sit up slowly, numbly peeling yourself off the floor, and it takes a few long moments for you to do anything except stare dead ahead.
The warehouse looks like a bomb went off in it. Half the shelves are smashed beyond recognition, the stock inside utterly pulverised or strewn about the place in a thick carpet of debris. There are holes in the walls, most of the belts are sagging and ready to fall, even the roof is threatening to give way at the slightest extra nudge. The chopper crash site is downright normal by comparison, the busted door torn from its hinges and left on the floor with the rest of the scrap.
You turn around. Oh, that's why you had to peel yourself off. It looks like a murder scene, starring you, the victim. You even left an outline in it, now that it's all dried. That's neat. You stand up and try to check the time before you remember you dropped your phone somewhere. You'll look for it later. You're really tired now, you should go home and sleep. The hole in the wall is closer so you walk out that way.
It's cold outside. The sirens are loud. You know the way home so you don't have to think much to get there. You don't notice anyone else on the street along the way, but some cars go by so it's probably fine. You make it to your building and all the way up to your door before you realise you forgot to check if your keys were in your pocket. You dip your hand in. There they are.
You're in your apartment now. It's nice. Everything you need in a place to sleep and eat, and no roommates to keep up with your odd hours.
You forgot to shut the door. You turn and shut it and notice how bad your hand is shaking when you do it. It's kind of hard to grip the doorknob. Absolutely soaked in cold sweat too but you don't feel that cold, so-
Oh. Wait. Is this what being in shock feels like? You have the thought and you just go still on the spot, arm still outstretched. You wonder, far too late to do anything about it, if you should've walked towards the sirens instead of your apartment. You think better of it quickly - paramedics would've taken you to the hospital. You don't have that kind of money to burn. You slowly pull your hand back. So what do you do when you're in shock? You think of turning on your laptop and googling it but that seems too complicated a task right now so you decide to have a shower and get changed instead. You wander to the bathroom still in a daze, stopping to undress bit by bit along the way. Shoes, bloody. Socks, bloody. Pants, underwear, bloody. Shirt-
It's the shirt that makes it all come crashing down. Because you reach for the buttons and you realise a lot of them aren't there. Because you look down to search for the buttons you missed and you see it. Because you rush to the bathroom mirror in order to See It in even greater clarity, eyes wide and wild and staring, and no matter how many times you blink or rub your eyes it's not going away. There was a hole in your chest, through your chest. You can see the entry and exit wounds reflected in your uniform shirt, the front ragged and stained red around the edges, the back soaked in rusted blood from where you lay dying in the growing puddle. You're so pale now, beyond even the unhealthy pallor you've cultivated from shift after shift in the dead of night, you're... you look like a corpse. Like you shouldn't be upright. Like you're already dead. And your chest...
You can see the hole it made. Something filled it in. There should be a hole straight through your torso big enough to push your arm through without touching the sides but instead there's just this... thing. Like carbon-black clay poured into a mould, the edges ragged and blurred where the two materials mingled and fused in the kiln. You're trembling, you can feel it properly now. You're staring and shaking and the blood's pounding in your ears as your ragged breaths-
N-no. This isn't right. It can't be real. You know it's impossible because you're looking at it. If that thing cored out your chest then how are you breathing with one and a half lungs? If that really happened then why can you hear your heartbeat? It's speeding up in your ears as if in defiance or mockery. You just seem to topple over and you steady yourself against the wall heavily, gasping for air. It feels like it's made of soup, like you have to swallow each breath to make it go down. You're face-to-face with a lunatic in the mirror, face dusty and bloodied, eyes pleading for some explanation. 'No, no no no, no it's not happening this isn't real this can't be real, it's a dream it's not really happening' your reflection murmurs with you, the denial as insane as what's right in front of you. Your fingers curl but you can't bring yourself to touch it. You're afraid of what will happen. You're afraid of what it will feel like. You're afraid of it being real.
"(what happened to me?)" you whisper.
You hurl yourself away from the mirror the moment the text appears in your eye. Running doesn't save you. It's scrolling through the corner of your vision, neat and orderly, even as you hit the far wall and steady yourself against it like a cornered animal. No matter where you turn your gaze it follows you, like it's scrolling across the inside of your cornea.
No. No this isn't- you don't- the squid thing killed you, it wouldn't have stuck some kind of AI in the hole to fix the damage it did. It was going to finish you off or eat the body or something and then something... someone...
You double over and clutch your head. It's not pain in your head but the pressure is so bad it's the next best thing. You feel like you're falling apart, like you're about to burst at the seams and the stitching's fraying by the second. You can practically hear the EKG blaring a warning cry in your ear and when you open your eyes you even see it. Your heart-rate - what the fuck does that even mean now!? - spiking like a saw-toothed blade, each peak stabbing against the upper limit of the readout. You clench your jaw until your face hurts to bite back the urge to scream as your thoughts whirl like they're caught in a storm.
"NO!" you scream at the top of your lungs, your voice cracking, the word sawing at the raw agony in the back of your throat. You stay there for a few precious seconds, panting for breath, frozen in anticipation of a sudden rush of anaesthetic numbness that doesn't come. Your nerves feel like live wires, your veins feel like they're full of battery acid. You- you have to make the most of this. This moment of if not sanity then clarity, in the eye of the storm. You're teetering on the edge of a full-blown meltdown. You feel about ready to pass out.
[ ] Ignore it. It's not real, none of this is real, stop treating it like it's real. You're in shock, it's some kind of fucked-up post-traumatic hallucination, and the more you entertain it the worse it's going to get. You just have to ride it out until it stops. Take a shower and go to bed, and when you wake up it'll be like nothing ever happened.
[ ] Leave. You feel trapped in here, it's suffocating you, the walls are closing in and you can't think straight. Get out and get back on the street and walk, somewhere, anywhere. Shock yourself with the cold air and run until the fight-or-flight energy drains out of you.
[ ] Vent. You don't think you can hold it in long enough to handle this. You don't know if you want to. Dive into the spiral and swim down.
You threw your hand up with what must have been the whole rest of the class. In those days it seemed just as likely as growing up to be an astronaut or a scientist or a fireman.
You're too scared to move.
There are no accurate figures on the rate of superpower development. Estimates, nothing more. It's like playing the lottery. Anyone could win. Why not you?
He's going to die if no one helps him.
Why not you?
Because your body's frozen, you can't breathe let alone move, you're just staring as it happens and you're achingly aware of every fraction of a second that passes as you choose again and again to do nothing.
She asked everyone who put their hands up why they wanted to be heroes. Beat up people who were mean to them. End world hunger. Have cool pet aliens to play with. Just because they were cool. Nothing you wouldn't expect from a bunch of kids. You don't remember what you said. It's like white noise and static eating away at the memory. But there's one thing you do know.
You're not breathing any more. You're not sure your heart is beating. It's like time's stopped, lingering on the edge of a knife.
The last thing that kid wanted to be was you.
Your arm shoots out in a spasm-like punch. The impact splits your knuckles and numbs the nerves but the box you hit goes flying. It lands more heavily than you expected, a jangling resonating crash that seems to echo to the far corners of the warehouse and back again. It's like the world's holding its breath, even the wind and rain barely audible as you stare through the shelf at the crash site, arm still extended, waiting and watching and praying.
The squid-thing looks up at you with a harsh electronic screech, and with all the frantic speed of a scuttling spider married to the sinuous motion of a poisonous jellyfish it pours itself off the helicopter and across the warehouse toward you.
There's no time to worry about whether the man in the helicopter will make it now. There's no time to regret either. The twin spikes of pure, abject terror that transfix your chest and your skull are all you can process. It's like something out of a nightmare. Something coming at you down a long, dark corridor. You turn and try to run but you can't. Your arms and legs won't move right. It's like moving in thick mud, or underwater, or you're sinking into the floor. In dreams it's because of sleep paralysis. In real life, sheer terror can make you clumsy all on its own. Your feet slip, you scramble for handholds on the shelves as you pass, you're hunched so far forward you feel like you're not running so much as stumbling and trying not to fall on your face. Nothing's moving as fast as it should, nothing's obeying you, you try to turn a corner and you just end up slamming into the edge of the shelf so hard that entire side of your body goes numb.
You can't turn around, you can't look back, it'd waste precious seconds but the urge is screaming at you in the back of your mind. It's like it's right there behind you, breathing down your neck, ready to strike at any moment but content to let you run yourself ragged first. That shifting, hissing, keening sound of it moving is all around you, right behind you, everywhere and nowhere but never ever gone. Your breath is rasping in your ears, in your chest, your throat is on fire, the aches of the long night shift run in bone-deep veins of agony. You feel like a busted car, coughing and spluttering, about to blow a fuse and simply break down on the spot. Adrenaline can only take you so far but you beg it, plead with it to take you a little further. Just far enough. Where are you running? You don't actually know. You turn another corner and then turn again, hoping to throw the thing off somehow. Maybe if you find a freight robot you can trick it into running over the squid, maybe if you get to the drone hub you can-
shnk
You stop running.
You stop doing anything.
You take a single, shallow breath in surprise. Your last one.
It was never behind you. It was never even a chase. It must have climbed the shelves and skimmed the top, perfectly positioned to strike no matter where you ran. Easiest thing in the world to scurry down the space between shelves on a straightaway, reach down and just
end it.
You can see your reflection in the glistening, squirming, ever-flowing limb that impaled you. You don't look frightened. You don't look sad or in pain. Mostly you're just surprised. It can't be real, right? This was supposed to be a nightmare. This is the part where you wake up. This is the part where everything is okay in the end.
The squid slides the tentacle free and you just drop. There's no strength left in you anywhere. You limply grasp at a shelf as you fall but your hand slides right off. All you manage to do is turn yourself around, land flat on your back staring up at the metal struts crisscrossing the ceiling high above you.
Your back feels wet. It takes you a moment to remember why.
Wanting to be a hero is a dream with an expiration date. When you're a teenager it's just kind of ridiculous, like highschoolers trying to start a band.
Having no heartbeat is kind of like drowning. Or suffocating. The brain's getting no oxygen either way.
When you're a teenager with failing grades having nervous breakdowns at school because you don't feel safe at home, it's just pathetic.
It's like being covered in snow. Pins-and-needles static slowly crawling up your limbs as you bleed out, your thoughts sluggishly leaking out your ears.
When taking a huff of Promo and making a book float with your mind makes you happier than you've been in years, it just gets you called a junkie.
It hurts. It's like you're being wrung out piece by piece. Draining away. The squid thing looms over you, red glare of its eye almost blinding you. You don't know why it's bothering. Maybe it's going to eat what's left. You don't care any more.
Maybe you just wanted to be something you're not.
Wind rushes over your face. One moment the squid's there and the next it's just gone. The whole warehouse buckles in the slipstream. Shelves are tipping over above you. There's a hole in the ones to your right. You can see them as they slowly topple towards you.
It doesn't matter any more. Your thirty seconds are up.
Your eyes flutter closed and you're not in pain any more. You're just nothing.
It's nice.
You're having a dream. It's much better than the other dream. It starts with you buried under rubble and metal pressing down so tight you can't move, so tight it hurts, but someone moves it all for you. You want to thank him but your mouth won't move. You must have been lying in a puddle because you're completely soaked and it's getting all over him. You don't think it upsets him, but you wouldn't know because he doesn't have a face. You want to apologise anyway for some reason.
He takes you away somewhere. You don't recognise it, and he flies so fast you could be anywhere. He's talking to someone in a magic mirror, someone who's upset and angry and in pain. The man with no face wants his friend to give you a new heart. You don't understand a lot of the conversation, like they're speaking another language, but they both sound really upset. You don't want to cause any trouble, but you're dead so you can't really argue. You just have to lie there limp as a ragdoll in the man's arms.
He has to swear an oath like something out of a fairytale. He reaches through the mirror and it's not a mirror at all, it's a window. He pulls out your new heart, glowing like a star, and gently puts it in the hole in your chest. It's too small, you want to say, it'll just fall out, but he says that's part of the magic. It'll fix itself. You don't get it, but it makes as much sense as anything else.
You're so tired. Maybe you just need to have a nap.
And when you wake up... you'll be...
all... better...
==Forge OS v2.5.32 online==
You wake up.
You're not dead. The lights hanging high above you are, but the cold grey light of an overcast sky is filtering in through the windows. The storm is gone, only distant sirens echoing through the stillness. You sit up slowly, numbly peeling yourself off the floor, and it takes a few long moments for you to do anything except stare dead ahead.
The warehouse looks like a bomb went off in it. Half the shelves are smashed beyond recognition, the stock inside utterly pulverised or strewn about the place in a thick carpet of debris. There are holes in the walls, most of the belts are sagging and ready to fall, even the roof is threatening to give way at the slightest extra nudge. The chopper crash site is downright normal by comparison, the busted door torn from its hinges and left on the floor with the rest of the scrap.
You turn around. Oh, that's why you had to peel yourself off. It looks like a murder scene, starring you, the victim. You even left an outline in it, now that it's all dried. That's neat. You stand up and try to check the time before you remember you dropped your phone somewhere. You'll look for it later. You're really tired now, you should go home and sleep. The hole in the wall is closer so you walk out that way.
It's cold outside. The sirens are loud. You know the way home so you don't have to think much to get there. You don't notice anyone else on the street along the way, but some cars go by so it's probably fine. You make it to your building and all the way up to your door before you realise you forgot to check if your keys were in your pocket. You dip your hand in. There they are.
You're in your apartment now. It's nice. Everything you need in a place to sleep and eat, and no roommates to keep up with your odd hours.
You forgot to shut the door. You turn and shut it and notice how bad your hand is shaking when you do it. It's kind of hard to grip the doorknob. Absolutely soaked in cold sweat too but you don't feel that cold, so-
Oh. Wait. Is this what being in shock feels like? You have the thought and you just go still on the spot, arm still outstretched. You wonder, far too late to do anything about it, if you should've walked towards the sirens instead of your apartment. You think better of it quickly - paramedics would've taken you to the hospital. You don't have that kind of money to burn. You slowly pull your hand back. So what do you do when you're in shock? You think of turning on your laptop and googling it but that seems too complicated a task right now so you decide to have a shower and get changed instead. You wander to the bathroom still in a daze, stopping to undress bit by bit along the way. Shoes, bloody. Socks, bloody. Pants, underwear, bloody. Shirt-
It's the shirt that makes it all come crashing down. Because you reach for the buttons and you realise a lot of them aren't there. Because you look down to search for the buttons you missed and you see it. Because you rush to the bathroom mirror in order to See It in even greater clarity, eyes wide and wild and staring, and no matter how many times you blink or rub your eyes it's not going away. There was a hole in your chest, through your chest. You can see the entry and exit wounds reflected in your uniform shirt, the front ragged and stained red around the edges, the back soaked in rusted blood from where you lay dying in the growing puddle. You're so pale now, beyond even the unhealthy pallor you've cultivated from shift after shift in the dead of night, you're... you look like a corpse. Like you shouldn't be upright. Like you're already dead. And your chest...
You can see the hole it made. Something filled it in. There should be a hole straight through your torso big enough to push your arm through without touching the sides but instead there's just this... thing. Like carbon-black clay poured into a mould, the edges ragged and blurred where the two materials mingled and fused in the kiln. You're trembling, you can feel it properly now. You're staring and shaking and the blood's pounding in your ears as your ragged breaths-
N-no. This isn't right. It can't be real. You know it's impossible because you're looking at it. If that thing cored out your chest then how are you breathing with one and a half lungs? If that really happened then why can you hear your heartbeat? It's speeding up in your ears as if in defiance or mockery. You just seem to topple over and you steady yourself against the wall heavily, gasping for air. It feels like it's made of soup, like you have to swallow each breath to make it go down. You're face-to-face with a lunatic in the mirror, face dusty and bloodied, eyes pleading for some explanation. 'No, no no no, no it's not happening this isn't real this can't be real, it's a dream it's not really happening' your reflection murmurs with you, the denial as insane as what's right in front of you. Your fingers curl but you can't bring yourself to touch it. You're afraid of what will happen. You're afraid of what it will feel like. You're afraid of it being real.
"(what happened to me?)" you whisper.
[Severe trauma in chest cavity. Two ribs broken, left lung damaged, heart destroyed. Cardiovascular system severely compromised.]
You hurl yourself away from the mirror the moment the text appears in your eye. Running doesn't save you. It's scrolling through the corner of your vision, neat and orderly, even as you hit the far wall and steady yourself against it like a cornered animal. No matter where you turn your gaze it follows you, like it's scrolling across the inside of your cornea.
[Repairs underway. Estimated time until function is restored: unknown.]
No. No this isn't- you don't- the squid thing killed you, it wouldn't have stuck some kind of AI in the hole to fix the damage it did. It was going to finish you off or eat the body or something and then something... someone...
You double over and clutch your head. It's not pain in your head but the pressure is so bad it's the next best thing. You feel like you're falling apart, like you're about to burst at the seams and the stitching's fraying by the second. You can practically hear the EKG blaring a warning cry in your ear and when you open your eyes you even see it. Your heart-rate - what the fuck does that even mean now!? - spiking like a saw-toothed blade, each peak stabbing against the upper limit of the readout. You clench your jaw until your face hurts to bite back the urge to scream as your thoughts whirl like they're caught in a storm.
[Acute stress reaction detected. Synthesizing sedative.]
"NO!" you scream at the top of your lungs, your voice cracking, the word sawing at the raw agony in the back of your throat. You stay there for a few precious seconds, panting for breath, frozen in anticipation of a sudden rush of anaesthetic numbness that doesn't come. Your nerves feel like live wires, your veins feel like they're full of battery acid. You- you have to make the most of this. This moment of if not sanity then clarity, in the eye of the storm. You're teetering on the edge of a full-blown meltdown. You feel about ready to pass out.
[ ] Ignore it. It's not real, none of this is real, stop treating it like it's real. You're in shock, it's some kind of fucked-up post-traumatic hallucination, and the more you entertain it the worse it's going to get. You just have to ride it out until it stops. Take a shower and go to bed, and when you wake up it'll be like nothing ever happened.
[ ] Leave. You feel trapped in here, it's suffocating you, the walls are closing in and you can't think straight. Get out and get back on the street and walk, somewhere, anywhere. Shock yourself with the cold air and run until the fight-or-flight energy drains out of you.
[ ] Vent. You don't think you can hold it in long enough to handle this. You don't know if you want to. Dive into the spiral and swim down.
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[ ] Vent. You don't think you can hold it in long enough to handle this. You don't know if you want to. Dive into the spiral and swim down
- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
[X] Ignore it. It's not real, none of this is real, stop treating it like it's real. You're in shock, it's some kind of fucked-up post-traumatic hallucination, and the more you entertain it the worse it's going to get. You just have to ride it out until it stops. Take a shower and go to bed, and when you wake up it'll be like nothing ever happened.
Venting might be good, but 'swimming down into the spiral' doesn't sound so. And leaving might be a literal escape, but we're still wearing just the shredded and blood-soaked remnants of our work clothes, so... at least a shower and change first. So... wash, eat, sleep, and take stock of this when we're not about to fall over completely?
Venting might be good, but 'swimming down into the spiral' doesn't sound so. And leaving might be a literal escape, but we're still wearing just the shredded and blood-soaked remnants of our work clothes, so... at least a shower and change first. So... wash, eat, sleep, and take stock of this when we're not about to fall over completely?
- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[x] Leave. You feel trapped in here, it's suffocating you, the walls are closing in and you can't think straight. Get out and get back on the street and walk, somewhere, anywhere. Shock yourself with the cold air and run until the fight-or-flight energy drains out of you.
I can tell a definite difference so far is there's been a lot less dialogue than in the original Lamplighters, that and a comparatively more serious tone. I feel a little mixed about this, I mean it's true written text is better at conveying thoughts and internal monologues better than any other medium, and it's possible there'll be more dialogue once we start meeting people.
I can tell a definite difference so far is there's been a lot less dialogue than in the original Lamplighters, that and a comparatively more serious tone. I feel a little mixed about this, I mean it's true written text is better at conveying thoughts and internal monologues better than any other medium, and it's possible there'll be more dialogue once we start meeting people.
WolfKit
Pay no attention to the fox behind the keyboard.
- Location
- [█████]
- Pronouns
- They/Them
@ZerbanDaGreat The invisitext end tag is broken.
will408914
(slouching towards bethlehem)
- Location
- California
[X] Ignore it. It's not real, none of this is real, stop treating it like it's real. You're in shock, it's some kind of fucked-up post-traumatic hallucination, and the more you entertain it the worse it's going to get. You just have to ride it out until it stops. Take a shower and go to bed, and when you wake up it'll be like nothing ever happened.
Ignore all of your problems, like a healthy human being! None of which we may currently qualify as.
Ignore all of your problems, like a healthy human being! None of which we may currently qualify as.
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
Fuck's sake. Well it's fixed now.
- Location
- France
[X] Ignore it. It's not real, none of this is real, stop treating it like it's real. You're in shock, it's some kind of fucked-up post-traumatic hallucination, and the more you entertain it the worse it's going to get. You just have to ride it out until it stops. Take a shower and go to bed, and when you wake up it'll be like nothing ever happened.
Eternal_0bserver
(Unverified Bookworm)
- Location
- Earth, Northern Europe
[X] Vent. You don't think you can hold it in long enough to handle this. You don't know if you want to. Dive into the spiral and swim down
- Location
- Spain
[X] Ignore it. It's not real, none of this is real, stop treating it like it's real. You're in shock, it's some kind of fucked-up post-traumatic hallucination, and the more you entertain it the worse it's going to get. You just have to ride it out until it stops. Take a shower and go to bed, and when you wake up it'll be like nothing ever happened.
Everything is fine.
Everything is fine.
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
Heroes get compared to famous singers and sports stars in HeroAca, but the sheer rarity of actually hitting the big time in those professions makes the "who wants to be a hero" scene from that story kind of depressing in the abstract. That's fully realized here, and the hopelessness of it is really hammered home by the protag's flight - entertaining brief, frantic, action movie ideas of luring the deathbot under a conveniently-dangling anvil, but it was never a chase at all.
Still, though. His body moved on its own. Gotta be worth something.
The sequence of events following his "death" is confusing, deliberately so; presumably a superhero showed up, removing the squid and saving the guy in the helicopter... but if they were involved in his "revival", as the dream suggests, why leave him to bleed in a warehouse? If not, why leave his body untouched after the squid was dealt with? I guess there could have been more of them to take care of, so they just moved on, but... still seems a bit callous.
[X] Leave. You feel trapped in here, it's suffocating you, the walls are closing in and you can't think straight. Get out and get back on the street and walk, somewhere, anywhere. Shock yourself with the cold air and run until the fight-or-flight energy drains out of you.
Still, though. His body moved on its own. Gotta be worth something.
The sequence of events following his "death" is confusing, deliberately so; presumably a superhero showed up, removing the squid and saving the guy in the helicopter... but if they were involved in his "revival", as the dream suggests, why leave him to bleed in a warehouse? If not, why leave his body untouched after the squid was dealt with? I guess there could have been more of them to take care of, so they just moved on, but... still seems a bit callous.
[X] Leave. You feel trapped in here, it's suffocating you, the walls are closing in and you can't think straight. Get out and get back on the street and walk, somewhere, anywhere. Shock yourself with the cold air and run until the fight-or-flight energy drains out of you.
Theaxofwar
Definitely not a Bunny Cat in disguise.
- Location
- Standing right behind you
[X] Leave. You feel trapped in here, it's suffocating you, the walls are closing in and you can't think straight. Get out and get back on the street and walk, somewhere, anywhere. Shock yourself with the cold air and run until the fight-or-flight energy drains out of you.
WolfKit
Pay no attention to the fox behind the keyboard.
- Location
- [█████]
- Pronouns
- They/Them
[X] Ignore it. It's not real, none of this is real, stop treating it like it's real. You're in shock, it's some kind of fucked-up post-traumatic hallucination, and the more you entertain it the worse it's going to get. You just have to ride it out until it stops. Take a shower and go to bed, and when you wake up it'll be like nothing ever happened.
Even if it doesn't change the facts, a shower and a good night's sleep are always a good idea. Plus we're still covered in dried blood, so a shower is a necessity.
Even if it doesn't change the facts, a shower and a good night's sleep are always a good idea. Plus we're still covered in dried blood, so a shower is a necessity.
- Location
- Vermont
[X] Ignore it. It's not real, none of this is real, stop treating it like it's real. You're in shock, it's some kind of fucked-up post-traumatic hallucination, and the more you entertain it the worse it's going to get. You just have to ride it out until it stops. Take a shower and go to bed, and when you wake up it'll be like nothing ever happened.
Clearly this isn't happening, and we should just go back to work tomorrow. Wait, it's a weekend, we don't have work tomorrow.
I guess we're still on track for that movie?
Clearly this isn't happening, and we should just go back to work tomorrow. Wait, it's a weekend, we don't have work tomorrow.
I guess we're still on track for that movie?
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I just wanted to highlight this line in particular because I feel like it really sells the- feeling of weight and impossible momentum to something/someone that superhuman. The MC doesn't even see the moment of impact or the dramatic splattering or a few thrown punches in a fight scene. There's just this flicker and the shockwave and then half the warehouse is cored out and the xeno-predator is gone. It's honestly almost played a little for horror really. Like yeah they're coming to our rescue but concrete walls, metal catwalks and scaffolding, and the thing that basically killed us were all less than Nothing in the fact of the actual arrival. The feeling of a scope of power and ability so far beyond what you can even perceive or really internalize and comprehend.
Putting these together to try and tease out like- the start of a thought in the juxtaposition.
It's something that MHA in particular makes a big thematic point of but that a lot of hero media (understandably if not always coherently) does and some really roots around in and dissects (The Boys tv series fr'ex). The idea of heroism as an innate quality that shines true when the chips are down. An involuntary moral reflex almost that throws you into danger despite the odds against you and all the safer things you could be doing. A kind of validation of What Kind Of Person You Are. And there's a lot of good reasons it's a genre staple don't get me wrong! And sometimes it's used really, really skillfully (Spiderverse comes to mind on that front). But it's an idea that's worth teasing apart imo and it's something that this update in particular is picking at. We're only a few installments in but there's been a pretty consistent throughline on the idea of actual hearts and minds and household name heroes being something that's slickly produced, synthetic to an extent, cultured by corporations and then the image exported for consumption. That how good you can be or are allowed to be is itself a product of your circumstances.
We don't actually know much about our MC in terms of specifics! But we know a lot in terms of broad strokes I think. They work very hard at a job with low investment in them-as-a-person, hostile family, a history of addiction with a big-ass psychological element to it (drugs-that-give-you-minor-powers as self-medication), a relatively solitary life. And they try and save someone sure, out of a kind of desperation and disgust for who they are and what they see themselves to be as much as a reflexive desire to help. And then-
They are validated for it in a way I think. But the way its framed makes it come off as very different. It's not a moment of triumph so much as someone pulling them free from a horrible accident and then panicking because their heart is a deep red smear on the concrete floor. Someone saving them after apparently having a kinda fraught argument with their mission control(?) or teammate maybe. And then they fuck off without much explanation like you said yeah, leaving the whole thing much more ambiguous.
I guess insofar as I have an actual point it's that the quest seems, in addition to the horror influences bleeding through, to be angling to dig into some of the assumptions of the genre and putting them in the context of someone who was basically a real, real unfortunate bystander.
[X] Ignore it. It's not real, none of this is real, stop treating it like it's real. You're in shock, it's some kind of fucked-up post-traumatic hallucination, and the more you entertain it the worse it's going to get. You just have to ride it out until it stops. Take a shower and go to bed, and when you wake up it'll be like nothing ever happened.
POWERS OF SUPREME DISASSOCIATION
ACTIVAAAAAATE!!!
Lmao but no actually, I do like the idea of just- the kinda pitch black comedy of going through what's essentially another horror sequence but just willfully in denial about what's happening. Plus the whole "clean up the scene of the crime(???)" element, where we're just having a totally normal one as we erase the evidence of our own uh- untimely demise because Well That Just Doesn't Seem Likely I Mean Really.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
bluh. want to provide commentary but still fuzzy from first vax. good togetherslapping of words.
[X] Leave. You feel trapped in here, it's suffocating you, the walls are closing in and you can't think straight. Get out and get back on the street and walk, somewhere, anywhere. Shock yourself with the cold air and run until the fight-or-flight energy drains out of you.
I want to be someone who reacts to this kind of thing by doing something rather than shutting down, but I feel like Vent might be the sort of thing that causes uh... an incident.
[X] Leave. You feel trapped in here, it's suffocating you, the walls are closing in and you can't think straight. Get out and get back on the street and walk, somewhere, anywhere. Shock yourself with the cold air and run until the fight-or-flight energy drains out of you.
I want to be someone who reacts to this kind of thing by doing something rather than shutting down, but I feel like Vent might be the sort of thing that causes uh... an incident.
- Location
- Ireland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I like this bit a lot, especially given the buildup which was very similar to shows like MHA and whatnot. We did move without thinking, we did push to save someone, and...we got, uh, mildly eviscerated because of it. All Might didn't show up until a few seconds after we'd already gotten killed, and it's a neat spin on things. I'm interested in seeing how things go from here, especially with the first two chapters emphasizing the fakeness and glitz of heroes with this chapter having one save our life and apparently going against regulations to do it.
Ooooooof. Yeah that'll be a sticking point for a while. We didn't have a good life.
I really like this whole sequence, the slow muted going through the motions that persists even after realising we're in shock, the rising panic as the reality of the situation hits and finally all of it culminating in the reveal that we traded the hole in our heart for a voice in our head.
i'm hearing pod 042 and you can't stop me
[X] Ignore it. It's not real, none of this is real, stop treating it like it's real. You're in shock, it's some kind of fucked-up post-traumatic hallucination, and the more you entertain it the worse it's going to get. You just have to ride it out until it stops. Take a shower and go to bed, and when you wake up it'll be like nothing ever happened.
I like the idea of just putting our foot down and proving that denial is more than just a river in Egypt tbh.
Madou Sutegobana
Autocorrupt has been disabled.
- Location
- Twin Realms Mandala
[X] Ignore it. It's not real, none of this is real, stop treating it like it's real. You're in shock, it's some kind of fucked-up post-traumatic hallucination, and the more you entertain it the worse it's going to get. You just have to ride it out until it stops. Take a shower and go to bed, and when you wake up it'll be like nothing ever happened.
Venting might include a little more colllateral damage with our new guest, so let's wait until we have a worthy target to vent on that really deserves it.
Venting might include a little more colllateral damage with our new guest, so let's wait until we have a worthy target to vent on that really deserves it.
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[X] Leave. You feel trapped in here, it's suffocating you, the walls are closing in and you can't think straight. Get out and get back on the street and walk, somewhere, anywhere. Shock yourself with the cold air and run until the fight-or-flight energy drains out of you.
[X] Ignore it. It's not real, none of this is real, stop treating it like it's real. You're in shock, it's some kind of fucked-up post-traumatic hallucination, and the more you entertain it the worse it's going to get. You just have to ride it out until it stops. Take a shower and go to bed, and when you wake up it'll be like nothing ever happened.
Leaving might expose the fact that we are dead and venting might hurt somebody. So i guess denial it is.
Leaving might expose the fact that we are dead and venting might hurt somebody. So i guess denial it is.