rakuen | [backdated to round 4 rest day] Tower exploration [open to all]

Entry tags:

[backdated to round 4 rest day] Tower exploration [open to all]

Characters: Everyone who wants to!
Format: Prose/action/whatever you feel like
This log is: Open
Location: Everywhere, well this post is in the courtyard, your character can start anywhere and the end destination is the humming tower
Summary: Alright so Elle gave me permission to start this thread, pretty much on the rest day of round 4 the northenmost tower is unsealed (see this thread: Here)

So pretty much this is the everyone who wants to goes to the tower and meets in the lobby (by coincidence), but once we get to the loby we wait for Elle.

So take your pick, you can either overhear Romeo and Grenn and tag along with them or your character can make their own way/go exploring alone/in other groups etc

Once you get to the loby the description from Elle is:

"The lobby of the tower is empty other than having white walls with red highlights. There's a tiger-head decoration around in a few places. The floors are pale, seamless stone. Other than a slight breath-like hum and vibration in the walls, there is no sound from within the tower. It's a little too warm temperature-wise to be comfortable. Uhhh what else... I think that's it."

Warnings: Will be added as necessary

"Miss Grenn, Miss Grenn!" An excited voice called, an excited voice that belonged to the filthy disheveled kid that was tearing across the courtyard towards poor Grenn.

Romeo had ran as fast as he could! Every day he went to check on the towers, going round each one every morning after his training with Zoro and nothing ever changed, they were all silent and still except the one that hummed faintly. Nothing ever changed; until today.

"It's open it's open! The tower! I went today and the gate is open!" He hadn't gone inside, hadn't dared to go in alone. After all Grenn new so much more than him about the towers and he had promised to inform her if anything changed. That was why he went each day. He paused to get his breath back as he had been running really hard and grinned at Miss Grenn, excitement shining in his eyes.

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Grenn suppressed a grimace because if the Tiger actually did, they would probably be helpless, and ought to have had other people with them (though maybe better if they didn't...).

"Well, let's have a look around..."

Romeo nodded, noticing that Grenn didn't automatically jump in to tell him he was being silly and that the tiger definitly wouldn't come here. That meant she was unsure, and it made Romeo worried.

But he couldn't give up now, he smiled at Grenn trying to keep his spirits up. "Let's go then!" He led the way, making sure not to go too far from Grenn.

They slowly walked up the first set of stairs, it seemed to be getting warmer, or maybe that was because they had been inside for a little while now. When they entered the next floor Romeo gasped softly.

"Weapons!" And so it was, pile upon pile of weapons, swords, shields, lances, guns. Piles of them. One pile in particular stood out to Romeo for on the top was a flail and he had seen it before, fuzzy and half forgotten but it had been in his dream.

"Miss Reiko's!" Romeo tugged on Grenn's shirt to point out the weapon in question.

Edited 2011-04-25 12:16 (UTC)

Grenn's gaze flickered around and she frowned. Too many weapons here--- then Romeo interuppted her thoughts and she looked to the flail, and beside it was a katana that was, faintly, though she wasn't sure why, familiar.

"... Why... is her weapon here?" Grenn looked around again, but if all the weapons here were representations/belonged to the students who had been here, there were too many of them. They had been the first group, hadn't they? A sort of 'beta' test...

But 'beta' was a second stage. Had there been an 'alpha' round, too? Shaking her head, ignoring the sweat that had begun to pool at the base of her neck and soon would slide down, Grenn walked up to the pile the flail was on top of and reached out.

"I don't get it..."

"Me neither," Romeo edged closer, pretending he was less scared then he was. He watched closely as Grenn reached out to touch the weapon, scared, half expecting the giant tiger to burst through the wall at any time and eat them.

But as Grenn's fingers touched the flail it simply faded from existance. Romeo's mouth dropped open and further still when he saw it reapear on a pile a little bit further away. How had it done that! "Grenn?" He asked, his voice less certain than it usually was.

...

"Huh," Grenn muttered, following Romeo's gaze to where the flail had reappeared. A 'proper' holographic weapon? Or whatever. Something. Grenn looked away from the piles of weapons and down at Romeo, shrugging.

"... They're not really here." Grenn paused with a frown, wondering how to explain. And wasn't it strange to have a proper hologram inside a computer simulation? "At least not that one. Think of it as something like hidden mirrors reflecting the image of the weapon to where we are." She wasn't sure that was a good enough explanation, but it was the best she could do under the circumstances.

Grenn straightened and looked around again, to see if there was anything she'd missed, and where the stairs were, considering there ought to be more to the tower, unless it was smaller inside than it appeared on the outside, since they hadn't been walking that far on the stairs to have gotten to the top.

"Not really here?" That didn't make any sense because Romeo could see them. How could they not really be here. He frowned, not understanding how mirrors could make things be where they were not. Because even though mirrors made two of objects you still needed the object in the first place.

Romeo had also had the same thought about the fact they hadn't climbed many stairs, when he had climbed the outside of the tower it had taken a long time. He walked back to the stairs and saw that even though they had gone into this room here the stairs continued upwards. "Hey were not at the top yet!"

"I'm coming over soon," Grenn called over to Romeo, because there didn't seem to be anything else in this room than this bewildering collection of weapons, like a badly (and respectless) organized armoury. Just to satisfy her curiosity, Grenn walked over to one of the other piles, which didn't have any weapons she recognized at all as belonging to any current or previous student, and reached out.

She brushed her fingers against the handle of a strange weapon with two impressively long, curved blades sticking out from one end each of the handle, green runes running down each blade. The weapon, whatever it was supposed to be (it looked rather wicked, truly) flickered out of existence and reappeared on another pile, alongside another that looked just like it.

So they couldn't be touched. With a shrug, Grenn walked slowly over to where Romeo stood at the doorway, giving the room another good once-over, to be sure they hadn't missed anything before they continued upwards. There was now a faint circle of moisture on her pants at the height where her thighs connected to her prostethics, and Grenn wasn't sure if it was sweat, or condensation from the heat. What she did know, was that an added layer of background pain had wormed itself in; the heat wasn't deadly, or too much to handle, but the artificial nerves were picking up on it.

"Seems to be nothing else in here..."

Romeo looked around, Grenn was right apart from the piles of weapons that she insisted wern't really there the room was empty. He bit his lip and continued up the stairs until they came to another door, just like the last one the door was open and to the side but the stairs continued upward.

Romeo poked his head through the door, "This one's the same!" Of course it wasn't the same room, but again there were piles of weapons.

Grenn looked in over Romeo's head, since she was, with the legs, tall enough to do this, and nodded. Gave a curious once-over over the room and the piles of weapons, even with how alike it looked from the first one, and thought she spied a plasma lance, which was curious, but since she was here, and she was using weapons that came from her dimension/future, why not a plasma lance?

With a metaphorical shrug, Grenn pointed up the stairs.

"Let's go on up then, check each room as we pass by, but if these two floors are the same, I'd wager the others are too... But..." Grenn paused to rest against the wall between the second floor and the third as she thought. The heat was getting to her.
"What's with all the weapons... we haven't been this many people here..." It was mostly a rethorical question phrased aloud, since Romeo would hardly be able to answer.

Romeo nodded, it seemed like a good plan. He bounded up the next set of stairs, this would be the fourth floor, he counted on his fingers. He wasn't sure how many floors there were, but he thought they must be near the top soon. "I don't know... maybe there were people here before, maybe they all disapeared..."

That thought was scary, would it mean they would disapear too?

He peeked into the room on the fourth floor, "Same again? Shall we keep going up?"

"I don't think so..." Grenn shook her head as she took herself off the wall and they continued upwards. "In Round Zero... She implied that had been a 'test run'... the first, if you will. But... there's all those weapons..." Grenn grimaced and then looked into the next room as they came to the fourth floor, leaning thoughtfully against the frame.

It looked precisely like the other two rooms above the entrance, and Grenn wondered if the last floor would contain a room like this, too, or... considering the tiger head decoration, something else.

She wasn't sure which she preferred.

"We'll go up. If anything, we can check the rooms on the way down again..." Grenn cast a last look into the 'armoury room' of floor four and then, with a sigh, went for the stairs again. She didn't like weather. And she didn't like non-climate-controlled buildings either.

You shouldn't have to sweat inside, unless you were actually aiming for that, in a bathing house!

Romeo grimaced at the thought of Round Zero. Maybe the tiger had lived somewhere else before, maybe these were the weapons of all the people he had eaten. Maybe the people chosen battle each other were the lucky ones. Maybe other people were kidnapped or signed contracts and became tiger food. Perhaps, and at this Romeo gave an involuntary squeak, perhaps the people who disapeared had been chosen as tasty enough for the tiger.

He started to tremble, what if his friends had become tiger food! What if Rapunzel and miss Reiko had been eaten!

He shook his head, "It was just a dream." He muttered as he arrived at the fifth floor. More weapons! He looked upwards, "Up again, we must nearly be at the top miss Grenn!"

Grenn heard the squeak and gave Romeo a concerned frown, wondering what the frag he was thinking about that would make him squeak? But he didn't say anything immediately, and when he voiced the opinion of it 'only' having been a 'dream', Grenn decided it was better to let the boy think that it had been.

Better (and easier) that, than trying to explain, and frankly, there was no harm in letting Romeo think it had been a dream.

"Yeah... I hope so. This place is way too hot," Grenn grumbled and heaved a sigh, giving the stairs a baleful glare. Though it was only her own fault and drive that kept her here and kept her climbing upwards.

It was the top floor! There were no more stairs and so he entered the room, fully expecting more weapons. What he saw instead made him almost cry out. He pressed his hands to his mouth quickly to stifle the sound and moved to the door to get between Grenn and the very huge, very real, very blue Tiger.

It was huge and blue and sleeping, curled up it took up the entire room and though it's eyes were closed it was facing the door. Romeo stood at the doorway, his arms apart as if he could protect Grenn. But he knew he couldn't because in the dream, if it had been a dream at all, he hadn't been able to help miss Reiko.

He shook his head slowly as if by doing so the monster would disapear.

Grenn had one hand on the doorframe, staring. She hadn't actually been 'there' when the tiger appeared, 'remembering' that last part in disjointed piecemeal bits. But, what struck her first... the tower hadn't been extremely huge. The tiger, she thought, ought to be too big to fit inside of it.

"So... okay. Boss dungeon..." Grenn uttered, and flinched at her own loud voice. She hadn't thought it would be so strong and clear, especially not with what they were staring at. Well, boss or 'admin'? Mental shrug. And if that thing woke up? Well, besides the futility (she thought, she couldn't actually remember much of what those who'd still been alive to face it had done) of attacking it, neither Grenn now Romeo were Players this Round, or, even if they'd been, a woved Weapon to the other.

There was no defense.

Even through his fear Romeo blinked in confusion. Boss Dungeon? They were at the top of a tower! Not a dungeon. He didn't ask though, didn't want to make any unecessary noise, because this was the tiger from the dream. The dream that was probably no longer a dream.

That of course meant that the weapons could belong to people who the tiger had eaten. It was his tower after all.

He wasn't sure what they should do, apart from escape but he was too scared to move in case the tiger woke up. He looked up to Grenn to see if she had any ideas.

Grenn, on her end, knew they should move. Should back away slowly and carefully and make as little noise as possible, but... But. But what? She wasn't sure. Was there even any answers to be getting from this, except to... what, collect all Players either next Round or another Round down the road and do a proper 'boss dungeon run'? But there was no guarantee there'd be any 'ressurrections' handed out if they did that... Or any resetting of their 'player data', or whatever.

"... Does this mean the other towers have some out-of-proportional, huge creatures as well?" Grenn muttered thoughtfully. And if so, what were they, in this system? Within game terms, Grenn was comfortable with likening the tiger to a 'boss', if they ever got there, and if that even was a good term, but what of the simulation's data overall?

Actual avatars of the ultimate admins? Or just moderators? Or what?

Romeo was all for getting out of the tower. From what he remembered of his dream that was not a dream then there was no way they could even try and protect themselves from the tiger. He was trying to be quiet but Grenn's words made him gasp.

"You mean there might be more!" Romeo turned to her wide eyed. What he did not see from behind him was the tiger begin to yawn.

The tiger yawned and its eyes opened, it blinked to look at them. "The first seal has been broken I see, impressive."

It smiled, "But are you prepared?"

Grenn probably ought to attempt to calm, or reassure Romeo, but when the tiger actually woke up... She stared. Feeling something flutter in her chest. Were they? Who knew? What did it even mean for them to be prepared?

"... I-- eh... Uh. Probably... not? I--- Suppose that would depend on what 'prepared' entails wouldn't it?" Grenn swallowed, surprised at the words that had come out, stuttering and unplanned, but come out. What she really wanted to ask had more to do with 'are there more of you'? And 'what are you, to the system'? Or something like that, but after that, right now her brain was empty and her mouth (metaphorically) opened and closed on no words at all.

Romeo span back round again to face the tiger, arms outstretching in an almost instinctive attempt to protect Grenn. The tiger was awake!

It didn't seem angry though, but Romeo thought they better leave, now before it did get angry.

"Miss Grenn I don't think we should talk to it..." He wished they could just leave, but he wasn't going anywhere without Grenn.

The beast's tail flicked, lashing against the wall with a solid, rhythmic thud. It seemed relaxed, almost friendly.

"I see that you are not. Very well, I will let you leave."

Its head tilted, its blue fur rippled. "Unless you have something to say?"

The tail slapping into the wall made her jump, definitely, but with her legs it was more like a jerk of her body from thighs and up. Grenn tapped her fingers against the doorframe she was clutching, noticing there had been no actual answer to her earlier question. Of course things couldn't be that 'easy'.

Grenn opened her mouth and then, after a good few seconds, snapped it closed. It'd asked if they had something 'to say'. Not 'ask'. Questions would probably be ignored, or lose them the 'affableness' they were currently being favoured with.

And considering she had a child here right with her, she should probably not potentially antagonise it.

"Uh... No, um. I guess not. Sorry for... er, waking you?" Grenn wasn't sure if the expression that briefly appeared on her face was a smile or a grimace, but she took a step back, one hand on Romeo's shoulder, and gently pulled.

She wanted answers, but there would probably not be any give here and now, so it was probably better to actually just leave.

Romeo looked back at the tiger with wide eyes as it spoke again, he had nothing to say. He just wanted to make sure Miss Grenn was alright, but the tiger didn't seem angry, and he told them they could leave.

Maybe he wasn't hungry, maybe he had just eaten and thats why he was sleeping. Romeo let himself be pulled backwards and followed Grenn down the stairs, looking backwards every now and again to make sure the tiger hadn't decided to change his mind and eat them anyways.

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[backdated to round 4 rest day] Tower exploration [open to all]

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