Haz.
Mask? I wear no mask.
[NOTE: The roleplay is now GMed by
Veradana
and
CapRock
.]
“Let us agree to give up love
And root up the infernal grove.
Then we shall return and see
The worlds of happy Eternity.
And throughout all Eternity
I forgive you, you forgive me,
As I, dear Redeemer, said: —
This the wine and this the bread.”
- Excerpt from “Broken Love”, William Blake
7:13 PM
The red sun hung low.
A lurid blotch, a sickly blister in the Stygian sky, a bead of vermilion amid a canvas of black, endless black, looming overhead only at the mercy of the flimsy red wires which anchored it to earth. It bore down with tangerine lusterlessness, casting merely a dim gaslight glow unbefitting of a celestial, wrinkles of muscle contracting and dilating over its surface with a string of rhythmic “thu-thumps”, faintly audible like the distant drum of construction.
The city below gave way to this gangrene torch-- a high-line landscape quilled with strings of red innumerable, each ascending the atmosphere to tether the sun. The buildings, tall and rangy, strung together by those same scarlet threads, were of decrepit, brutalist masonry and rustic carbon alike, adhesive to the touch from some gelatinous substance - thick, spongy, vivid paint which percolated the walls, oozing out in streaks, as though the monochrome concrete was squeezed of neon pus.
Save for that starbound percussion and the whistle of wind coursing the puddled roads, the City of Sorrows stood deathly quiet. Where Shadows once trudged aimlessly upon shallow waters, there was now not a soul in sight or earshot, only the omnipresent judgement of the beating sun.
Then, a voice. Soft, soothing, wary. And, the gentle swash of rainpaint under footfall.
Ryota Katsuragawa eyed a Lilliputian child, vaguely boyish, draped in mud-soaked schmattes and utterly unresponsive at the far end of the street - his gaze trailed the figure’s idle sway, crossed in contemplation. He called out again, his tone beginning to show demur.
“H… Hello? Are you lost?”
No response. Only the downpour.
Naofumi Asado clenched the twine grip of his bo staff firmer, flanking his companion, wary of the vagrant child. Though Ryota shared in the unease, he drew closer in cautious strides, slowly discerning the boy’s muddled features. The drenched rags which hugged his pale, ethereal skin, he recognized quickly - the familiarity of that off-white cloth and those pinstripe slacks, that cherry ribbon and the silken vest, however torn and bleached time had worn them, each addressed him. The boy was a pupil of Nageku High, and though he couldn’t place his name, his age was telling of a first-year.
Mei Volkov and Yamato Shibata crept across the beaten pedway, brandishing their weapons.
“Ryota?”, the former called.
“Yeah?”
“Get back,” the latter commanded.
“It’s just a kid-”
Mei pressed. Her stony visage now seemed brittle, a hand held out to take his. “Please.”
Katsuragawa swallowed hard. The tension was saw-toothed, suffocating, almost paralytic. After a pause, he acquiesced.
The children moved swiftly, soundlessly. But then the crackle of static came afire, tumult in the acoustics of their thoughts, and they stopped - heads turned to meet in uncertainty. Naofumi tipped his chin and brought a finger to his ear.
“Isamu, do you read me?”
A deafening symphony. An anarchic tone. The handshake of a dial-up, hissing, seething, not in their ears but in their minds, almost head-splitting. Through the entropy of sound, they heard a warning--a telepathic plea--but it had come too late.
“Shit, there goes our navigation,” Asado murmured through grit teeth.
They heard a crack and a chew, like the snap of wood underfoot, and all eyes turned to the child, who jerked awake in spastic motions and bore an eyeless smile to the starless sky.
“Come out and play, Peter Pan.”
The block was consumed by a piercing flash and the miasma of gasoline. The boy fell limp, yet his smile persisted.
Then an arm tore loose from his back, thick and taloned, and his body, numb with transcendental agony, staggered feebly to its knees. Another member came undone from the shackles of his spine, and though the wound was noncorporeal, the pain was very, very real. The apparition clawed free, and set foot after quaking foot upon the asphalt which reflected its incandescence, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with its user.
It turned to glimpse the children, and through the rain its horror was mercifully bedimmed-- but not enough. It walked on digitigrade feet, tri-toed with nails that carved the road, and heels that twinkled with what fairy dust seeped from the seams in their wood-flesh. A tunic of foliage, riddled with wounds of decay and formed of only fragile clumps of frond, clung feebly to its festering physique. Its arms hung hunchback, shoulders freakishly low from the infantile face which mounted it all with skin of cracked, creased, wrinkled toy wax. Below its brow, there was a cloth, swaddled tight around its eyes and ears, so tight that its bulbs sunk against the damp yarn log which dragged and shifted restlessly across the bridge of its nose. So tight, even, that it seemed as though it wore the blindfold without choice.
Their eyes adjusted. It wasn’t a blindfold.
From its sockets and all the blisters in its skin, a parasitic wire, an arterial thread, a string of wool as red as blood itself probed the summon’s carcass. Where flesh tore, it emerged, and spun it stitches as though to hold the figure together. Where its eyes and ears peered into the outside world, the red string bundled and refused to budge, sheltering its innocent mind, which now found itself slowly crumbling.
“Oh, hell,” Naofumi hissed, breaking into a cold sweat.
Yamato knit his brow, unnerved but steadfast and ever stone-faced. He brought his great-axe to meet the stonework blade-first. “So the string’s taken to infecting Personas as well. How macabre.”
“Seems that way. Doesn’t look like we’re getting out of here without a fight-- brace yourselves.”
Ryota wanted to protest, to plead that the boy was harmless, but caught his tongue. He followed the red string that wound through wounds, that tapeworm of sanguineous yarn, with a solemn frown.
Mei placed a hand on his shoulder consolingly, her gaze empathetic but her grip on her tomahawk firm and unyielding.
“It’s okay,” she said. “We’ll free them. All of them.”
He nodded, drawing his crossbow reluctantly.
The stranger chattered incomprehensibly beneath his breath, seized in a maddened trance. Then his eyes arose, and gazes locked - his stare sullen, faded, devoid of any emotion, yet unnaturally wide, looking nowhere and everywhere all the same. His Persona shambled forward... then charged.
“We’ll be happy~,” he croaked, ”here in Neverland~.”
“... And for today’s story, five children have been reported missing - Asado Naofumi, Yoshida Isamu, Shibata Yamato, Volkov Mei and Katsuragawa Ryota were third-year students at Nageku High, last seen leaving their homes between 7~8 PM according to accounts from a first-year student who’d greeted them passing the school gate. Despite the gravity of the situation, the police have assured that there is little reason to worry. Kayatomi is one of the safest towns in Japan, after all, so it’s only a matter of time before this little hiccup is behind us. Further developments will be reported as the case develops."
“Let us agree to give up love
And root up the infernal grove.
Then we shall return and see
The worlds of happy Eternity.
And throughout all Eternity
I forgive you, you forgive me,
As I, dear Redeemer, said: —
This the wine and this the bread.”
- Excerpt from “Broken Love”, William Blake
7:13 PM
The red sun hung low.
A lurid blotch, a sickly blister in the Stygian sky, a bead of vermilion amid a canvas of black, endless black, looming overhead only at the mercy of the flimsy red wires which anchored it to earth. It bore down with tangerine lusterlessness, casting merely a dim gaslight glow unbefitting of a celestial, wrinkles of muscle contracting and dilating over its surface with a string of rhythmic “thu-thumps”, faintly audible like the distant drum of construction.
The city below gave way to this gangrene torch-- a high-line landscape quilled with strings of red innumerable, each ascending the atmosphere to tether the sun. The buildings, tall and rangy, strung together by those same scarlet threads, were of decrepit, brutalist masonry and rustic carbon alike, adhesive to the touch from some gelatinous substance - thick, spongy, vivid paint which percolated the walls, oozing out in streaks, as though the monochrome concrete was squeezed of neon pus.
Save for that starbound percussion and the whistle of wind coursing the puddled roads, the City of Sorrows stood deathly quiet. Where Shadows once trudged aimlessly upon shallow waters, there was now not a soul in sight or earshot, only the omnipresent judgement of the beating sun.
Then, a voice. Soft, soothing, wary. And, the gentle swash of rainpaint under footfall.
Ryota Katsuragawa eyed a Lilliputian child, vaguely boyish, draped in mud-soaked schmattes and utterly unresponsive at the far end of the street - his gaze trailed the figure’s idle sway, crossed in contemplation. He called out again, his tone beginning to show demur.
“H… Hello? Are you lost?”
No response. Only the downpour.
Naofumi Asado clenched the twine grip of his bo staff firmer, flanking his companion, wary of the vagrant child. Though Ryota shared in the unease, he drew closer in cautious strides, slowly discerning the boy’s muddled features. The drenched rags which hugged his pale, ethereal skin, he recognized quickly - the familiarity of that off-white cloth and those pinstripe slacks, that cherry ribbon and the silken vest, however torn and bleached time had worn them, each addressed him. The boy was a pupil of Nageku High, and though he couldn’t place his name, his age was telling of a first-year.
Mei Volkov and Yamato Shibata crept across the beaten pedway, brandishing their weapons.
“Ryota?”, the former called.
“Yeah?”
“Get back,” the latter commanded.
“It’s just a kid-”
Mei pressed. Her stony visage now seemed brittle, a hand held out to take his. “Please.”
Katsuragawa swallowed hard. The tension was saw-toothed, suffocating, almost paralytic. After a pause, he acquiesced.
The children moved swiftly, soundlessly. But then the crackle of static came afire, tumult in the acoustics of their thoughts, and they stopped - heads turned to meet in uncertainty. Naofumi tipped his chin and brought a finger to his ear.
“Isamu, do you read me?”
A deafening symphony. An anarchic tone. The handshake of a dial-up, hissing, seething, not in their ears but in their minds, almost head-splitting. Through the entropy of sound, they heard a warning--a telepathic plea--but it had come too late.
“Shit, there goes our navigation,” Asado murmured through grit teeth.
They heard a crack and a chew, like the snap of wood underfoot, and all eyes turned to the child, who jerked awake in spastic motions and bore an eyeless smile to the starless sky.
“Come out and play, Peter Pan.”
The block was consumed by a piercing flash and the miasma of gasoline. The boy fell limp, yet his smile persisted.
Then an arm tore loose from his back, thick and taloned, and his body, numb with transcendental agony, staggered feebly to its knees. Another member came undone from the shackles of his spine, and though the wound was noncorporeal, the pain was very, very real. The apparition clawed free, and set foot after quaking foot upon the asphalt which reflected its incandescence, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with its user.
It turned to glimpse the children, and through the rain its horror was mercifully bedimmed-- but not enough. It walked on digitigrade feet, tri-toed with nails that carved the road, and heels that twinkled with what fairy dust seeped from the seams in their wood-flesh. A tunic of foliage, riddled with wounds of decay and formed of only fragile clumps of frond, clung feebly to its festering physique. Its arms hung hunchback, shoulders freakishly low from the infantile face which mounted it all with skin of cracked, creased, wrinkled toy wax. Below its brow, there was a cloth, swaddled tight around its eyes and ears, so tight that its bulbs sunk against the damp yarn log which dragged and shifted restlessly across the bridge of its nose. So tight, even, that it seemed as though it wore the blindfold without choice.
Their eyes adjusted. It wasn’t a blindfold.
From its sockets and all the blisters in its skin, a parasitic wire, an arterial thread, a string of wool as red as blood itself probed the summon’s carcass. Where flesh tore, it emerged, and spun it stitches as though to hold the figure together. Where its eyes and ears peered into the outside world, the red string bundled and refused to budge, sheltering its innocent mind, which now found itself slowly crumbling.
“Oh, hell,” Naofumi hissed, breaking into a cold sweat.
Yamato knit his brow, unnerved but steadfast and ever stone-faced. He brought his great-axe to meet the stonework blade-first. “So the string’s taken to infecting Personas as well. How macabre.”
“Seems that way. Doesn’t look like we’re getting out of here without a fight-- brace yourselves.”
Ryota wanted to protest, to plead that the boy was harmless, but caught his tongue. He followed the red string that wound through wounds, that tapeworm of sanguineous yarn, with a solemn frown.
Mei placed a hand on his shoulder consolingly, her gaze empathetic but her grip on her tomahawk firm and unyielding.
“It’s okay,” she said. “We’ll free them. All of them.”
He nodded, drawing his crossbow reluctantly.
The stranger chattered incomprehensibly beneath his breath, seized in a maddened trance. Then his eyes arose, and gazes locked - his stare sullen, faded, devoid of any emotion, yet unnaturally wide, looking nowhere and everywhere all the same. His Persona shambled forward... then charged.
“We’ll be happy~,” he croaked, ”here in Neverland~.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“... And for today’s story, five children have been reported missing - Asado Naofumi, Yoshida Isamu, Shibata Yamato, Volkov Mei and Katsuragawa Ryota were third-year students at Nageku High, last seen leaving their homes between 7~8 PM according to accounts from a first-year student who’d greeted them passing the school gate. Despite the gravity of the situation, the police have assured that there is little reason to worry. Kayatomi is one of the safest towns in Japan, after all, so it’s only a matter of time before this little hiccup is behind us. Further developments will be reported as the case develops."
Last edited: