text → action

[fracturedsoul]

We're taking Jake's dream corpse into the arena tower.

Anyone who wants to join us should meet us there shortly.


[ By "we", Dirk means himself along with Brobot (who's carrying the body), Jake, Jane and anyone else who wanted to come along. Jade maybe? Anyone, really. Characters not from Homestuck are welcome too.

He'll be answering questions via PDA as they walk to the tower. ]

Comments

ACTION

[fracturedsoul]

[ Ok since there's a lot of people here I don't think we can actually keep a dedicated turn order. Here's what's going to happen.

I will post various subthreads in this thread for the things that happen, as dictated to me by Elle-mod, and people can take turns reacting to those things so that we can keep things moving along at a steady pace.

Ready? Set?

HERE GOES. ]

ENTERING THE TOWER

[fracturedsoul]

[ Brobot continues carrying the body, and as they enter the tower a constant humming sound fills the air.

Jade, you had something to say? ]

[greenspaces]

Hello shadow, we're back! Did you miss us?

[ YELLING IT LOUD AND CLEAR ]

[fracturedsoul]

[ There's no response.



Dirk looks around the room for a moment before shrugging. ]

It was worth a shot.

[greenspaces]

Oh well.

[ Jade looks.....extremely disappointed. 8( ]

Maybe it only talks to the dead.

[fracturedsoul]

If anyone. [ He shrugs. ]

[greenspaces]

Maybe one day.

[ferriedmemories]

Well, why would it want to talk to the dead? Is it bored?

[greenspaces]

I don't know. Probably. I would be bored if I was stuck in a tower all day.

[ferriedmemories]

Yeah, it would be the worst job ever. Worse than my old one, I'd bet.

[greenspaces]

What was your old one?

[ferriedmemories]

I rowed a tiny, shabby little boat across a river back and forth all day.

[greenspaces]

I've never been on a boat before, so it sounds fun to me..

THE SECOND FLOOR

[fracturedsoul]

[ The humming grows louder as they reach the second floor; once they clear the landing, one of the scattered piles of weapons can be seen shaking. Two pistols rise up from the pile and go shooting into the corpse's chest with a flash of white light.

The humming stops.

That's when the shadows appear out of the cracks in the stones making up the walls and floor. Without giving anyone time to react, they wrap around the corpse, ripping it from Brobot's firm robotic grasp, surrounding it completely in shadow.

Dream Jake's chest can be seen to rise and fall briefly as he is dragged down into the floor. The shadows vanish.



After the body is taken, whenever anybody speaks inside this tower they will be able to hear two echoes of their voice -- one male, one female, neither recognizable. ]

[overbiterestart]

[Jane can say she witnessed all of that. Jane can say that she finally believes Dirk on the matter of seeing the Dream corpses breathe for a brief moment before being taken away. This must be why by reaction she's grabbed onto Dirk's shoulder- holding herself there in fear she might lose it completely at the literally unbelievable thing she just witnessed.]

I'm sorry I didn't believe you.

[Ah, what was the echo for? That was strange.] Listen Dirk, when I speak.

[The sound bounces back again, the sounds of a male and a female speaking in the echo.]

[fracturedsoul]

[ Dirk didn't react to the body being taken away, as much as it put him on edge to see his best bro get grabbed and dragged away like that. He does, however, wrap an arm protectively around Jane's shoulders when she clings to him.

He holds his breath to listen to that strange echo. ]

That's new.

[ That's new, it echoes. So it's not just her. ]

[greenspaces]

It does it for both of you.

[ She's standing on the other side of the room from them, near the pile of weapons. Jade's still attempting to investigate them -- after all, they realized last time that the Weapons in the tower belonged to people who had disappeared. So where did those pistols come from? Had Jake been here before and they had just not known?

Or had Exaclan been going on for so long that Jake had come and gone many, many times? Before any of them had any inkling that it existed? After all, someone had had to run Exaclan for the current staff, and presumably for the staff before that, and before that...

How long had this been going on? Was it ever going to stop?

There were way too many levels to this tower to simply hold the missing people's Weapons from this session. The piles were too large, and there weren't enough people. ]

Dirk...I think this city is immortal.

[ The echoes are right behind her: Dirk...I think this city is immortal. ]

[fracturedsoul]

Immortal?

[ He takes note of Jade, how she's examining the weapon piles, and it makes sense to him what she must been thinking. He'd been considering the same thing ever since the previous visit -- whose spear was that that had embedded itself in his other self's corpse? The Dirk who had been here previously? Or nobody's? Had it just been waiting there for that moment? ]

It certainly does seem difficult to pinpoint just how long this cycle has been going.

[overbiterestart]

[Jane held tight to Dirk until the commotion had ceased and Jade was finished speaking. That certainly was a thought to throw out there. Jane looked at the ground, and then at Jade who is examining the weapon piles.]

There is no telling how long Rakuen has been playing this game, I agree.

[She lets go of Dirk finally and steps near Jade, glancing at everything on the ground. Weapons upon weapons. Is this the fate of the people that go missing? Is this their final resting place maybe?

The lot of them were likely getting into deeper things than they realized. Jade just seemed as if she knew how to handle the information better than her and Dirk- and she admires that.]

Immortal is a big descriptive word to toss out, Jade.

[greenspaces]

Maybe not immortal. But I think it's been going for so long that no one knows how many Weapons there have been.

And maybe this doesn't include people who go home. [ If they go home at all, but she doesn't say that, because she doesn't want to scare anyone. She wants to believe that they all get happy endings, either here or back where they belong. But the piles of Weapons seem to say otherwise.

If a Weapon was a soul, didn't that mean those souls were stuck here? If they weren't souls, then what were they? And why did you get hurt whenever one was broken or damaged? She'd already thought about this particular problem, but it came back to her now. ]

[fracturedsoul]

[ Dirk bends down to eye the pile nearest him, and he picks up a dagger to look it over. ]

We can't discern that with just the information we have. Our only choice is to press onward and see if we find out later.

[overbiterestart]

[Happy endings here and there would be the ideal dream, wouldn't it? Jane steps over near Jade and bends down there. Weapons of those long forgotten, or those that have recently "went home".

Strange indeed. Jane would like to come up here and sleuth around herself some time.]

I wonder if every tower we run into will be like this.

[ferriedmemories]

[The constant humming had forced her to stay awake; what had happened afterwards left her speechless for a little bit.]

...I wasn't sure what to expect but that was...

...well.

[greenspaces]

It was weird.

[ She runs her hand over a weapon that she's picked up, examining it. ] I wonder what happens if we try to take these out of the tower?

[fracturedsoul]

They disappear and wind up back in one of these piles.

[ Guess who's tried that. ]