+ Your imagination can't hurt you! +

[vitaelamorte]

Who: YOU!
Where: The Mindscape
When: starting November 11th
Rating: may be up to R for character deaths
Summary: Navigate challenges to learn valuable lessons about nonviolence, cooperation, and self-sacrifice! Release your inner animal! Read more about the event here, and on the bulletin board.
The Story:




"If you know yourself, you have nothing to fear."
"Working together is the only way."
"Deaths are a necessary part of life, but not all deaths are necessary."
"The needs of the many outweigh the life of just one."

Comments

[catinthemask]

[Zacharie breathes until he feels slightly calmer and, ha, guess he can feel some measure of fear. But he pushes away because it doesn't matter so there's no need to make it worse. At the very least the NPC can't transform into a Burnt. Don't have to worry about adding an impromptu boss fight here.

He straightens up and drops his hands before turning to their work.]

Perhaps! However at least it appears we are on the right track. The sequence reset after you pressed the confirm button so there are indeed one to two numbers missing.

[Any more math they can toss at this?]

[postictal]

[It's usually six numbers, he'd said. So they can do six numbers. Six-two-five-one, that took them farther than they've been getting thus far. If they can keep going, if they can find the last two numbers, then they can get out of here before something - happens.

Before something really, really bad happens.]

Maybe the numbers that didn't appear as often. Which ones appeared the most after those four?

[He's grasping at straws, but he's got nothing else to make a grab for.]

[catinthemask]

[Grasping at straws still meant there was something to grab. The NPC turns to that particular bit of writing, running a finger down the markings on the eerily pristine wall. Let's see here...]

Six, two, five and one are the first. For the rest, in order from highest to lowest, are nine, four, three and eight.

[So they had four more numbers to play around with before they run out of chances and that thing comes and does....whatever it is the Operator likes doing. Joy.]

[postictal]

And - nine and eight are too high. Right?

[Fuck. There's too many choices, and not enough time. If It comes, there's no guarantee they'll make it out alive. And he's not - he's not stupid, all right, he knows It's always been inside him and will continue to be, even if he's a world away, but he's got, patently, no goddamn clue what It would or even could do here.]

[catinthemask]

Correct. That leaves us with four and three.

[He writes it down to give him something to do, writing a script for him to follow. Easier that way. But anyways...

6 2 5 1 4/3]

1/2

[postictal]

Okay. So we...two more tries, right? Just give us two more tries.

[He fires the last words in the vague direction of the television screen, though at this point he's not sure anything can really hear him. Maybe it's pointless. Reasoning with the thing was always pointless.

Maybe it'll give Zacharie a bit of hope, right? The guy's pretty damn near unflappable most days. Now that he's not, Tim's decided that he's - more than a little worried.

He moves out across the spread of cubes, tapping the same order out as before. Six. Two. Five. One.

He hesitates, torn between the two choices. Four and three, or three and four?

He picks three.]

[postictal]

[ w̳͛ͅr̲ͪͅo͏͐̚ń͉̫ğ̣᷾ c̢͆̾h͔̼̓o̼ͭ̕i̺᷈ͮc̷̃ͤḙ̕͞.͏̖̝ ]

[catinthemask]

[Again, he's about to comment on it when he's cut off by the screech of static that blends in with the whisper of those voices. Right then Zacharie knows something is wrong. It suddenly feels like something is clawing its way out of his throat. It's--]

A̶̡h̴.͘

[In his voice. Scratchy. Terrible. Impur--no. Being a living video game character was probably isn't helping the NPC's case and he wants to yank off his mask and get to that itch down his throat. But he can't. Not here, not with Tim around. When he's alone. With Sugar. Not here.

Not safe. They were going to die here. And Zacharie...ahhaha, well. He already was dead, wasn't he? It didn't matter. It didn't matter. It did͞n'͟t ̕matt͞e̡r.͘ ̷It d҉idn't͢ ma̴ttȩr̸.͏

HELP

The merchant doubles over from a sudden coughing fit. Zacharie can't see it right now, but he knows that thing was there, something black and impossibly tall tainting the pure space. This was it, wasn't it? Game Over and all that.

And all Zacharie can find within himself is to laugh. Here we go!]

[postictal]

[It's here.

He doesn't need to see It to know It's there. It's the familiar pressure on his brain, the wail and blaze of a continuous tone cutting unevenly through the air, the way he starts to cough, thick and heavy. It feels more and more like something's about to get dislodged in his chest.

He ends up on his knees.

He ends up -

He can see It. It's like a sliver of a nightmare made manifest, black and white and faceless and staring at the both of them, and he can't -

It doesn't have eyes It doesn't have eyes but It doesn't need eyes It doesn't need them to w͖aͪt̚c̭h̑ h̥̙ͮͯͩ᷃͢i̢̟͈̰̭͘͞m̡͇̭̩ͥͮ͜.]

P-please.

[Please.

Please just - end it.

That's when his consciousness plunges into blackness with a high, bright, severing snap.]

[catinthemask]

[Zacharie can't hear Tim's pitiful request because he's laughing too hard, because that's what he defaults to all the way until the end. He has that moment to morn and think that nothing mattered when Sugar dies because at that moment it really didn't. More so than usual.

But we needn't dwell on what the merchant thinks. Eventually he stops laughing and coughing and falls to the ground. There's nothing to be seen here. He can't focus - or just simply didn't want to - on the thing before them. Instead Zacharie just lets go, riding out whatever bit of consciousness left by staring at nothing until it all went black.

...but...whoever wakes up first will find a little prize waiting for them. The door's open. Well, it makes sense, doesn't it? Even that monster could lie and those puzzles didn't kill people.

It's just a game, after all.]