HEARTGAME DRESS REHEARSAL

[finalbows]

thank u rah u hero

tracking sheet
 

[ ..somewhere in the pasture, Angel Devil falls down.
His clothes have twisted away into bone-white rags, leaving a body covered over with only thick swathes of red fur, and downy feathers. His long tail is curled into a tense arc, banded fur standing on end.

The air wavers like he’s a heat mirage, not a man. He’s boiling away with absolutely stupid amounts of arcane power… and, most frighteningly, he does not seem in control of the fact that it is there and being brought to bear. It’s impossible to get any closer to him.


When he speaks, it’s quite timid. ]

Ah,
I thought… I had a little more time.

[ (and in a blinding flash of light, there is the sound of something breaking.) ]

~KRRSHHK~

[any observers will see, strangely see-through and superimposed on the scene, some kind of vast tree, illusionary roots twisting over and around to frame a door.  the door itself is wrought of opaque stained glass in blacks and whites and greys; a stylized rendition of Angie in that strangely ragged, feathered form, curled in on himself, eyes closed.  Angie himself is nowhere to be seen. ]

instead, a shadow . . . steps into view from behind the door.  for a moment it looks like nothing so much as a second genome – then it turns, gaining features and definition with the movement.  The monkey tail separates into three plumes; a ponytail unfurls into wings that lift up from the sides of the head.  

Teleute(?) is here, dressed in her customary black, but there is colour in her skin, and her hair and eyes are blue.  she’s frowning.]

. . . well.  This is the least I can do before I go, in exchange for the safe harbor.

[she lifts her head, nodding to any observers, and gestures at the door.]

You’ll want to head in there now if you don’t wish to lose your flockmate, I think.  Even the false-death of this place won’t be much help to him, if his soul is left to finish pulling itself apart.

My sisters and I can maintain the way into and out of it for you, but we were not made to knit such wounds by ourselves.  Have a care.

Comments

[wants_the_phd]

[She catches sight of her mask in the mirror and startles a bit.]


[...She smooths her hands over the mask. What's this for...?]

[Can she take it off?]

[finalbows]

[ yes.
the lights around the mirror blink, and grow dimmer, but that seems to be all the protest she's currently going to recieve. ]

[wants_the_phd]

...

[what if she puts it back on?]

[finalbows]

[ the lost glow renews.

sure, it looks and feels like a regular mask...

...but masks are at their core symbols, right? ]

[wants_the_phd]

[....]

[Alright. She'll keep it on for now, she guesses. Whatever.]

[She looks around, trying to orient herself. Are there any hints on which direction to travel?]

[finalbows]

[ sounds of activity, objects being moved and re-arranged. there are people out there. or, at least, things with hands. ]

[wants_the_phd]

[eeuugh. That's the opposite of what she was hoping to find.]

[But it's a direction, anyway. She will cautiously proceed toward the sounds, moving quietly, and sniffing the air for hints about what they are.]

1/2

[finalbows]

[ notes of monkey and Mist. but maybe that's from the big cloud of it she just waded her way through. ]

2/2 - BACKSTAGE

[finalbows]

[ following the noise and your nose, you find yourself backstage of a theatre. the indefinite murmur of a crowd waits beyond the big, closed curtains. but back here there is only raw potential, meaningless junk, and the tentative bones of stories to come.

and the tree roots, of course. mind that you don't trip. one of the stagehands passing your shadowy corner of the room just did, though the other one that was walking beside them keeps trudging on, completely ignoring the clumsy, collapsed doll on the ground.]

[wants_the_phd]

[A black mage... Is that what the ones from his home look like? And the other one must be a genome, like the ones she's seen in his dreams.]

[She keeps to the shadows as much as possible, trying to stay out of sight. She knows Angie's soul is broken and she's supposed to fix it, but she doesn't have the faintest idea about how, or what she's supposed to be looking for. So for now she's going to creep along behind the genome, to see where they might be going. She'll keep a lookout for anything that looks broken, in the meantime.]

[finalbows]

[ this is a wonderful place for sneaking. lots of piles of odds and ends that cut into line of sight, and blot the reach of the lights hanging high above. no windows, to the point she could almost pretend she's underground.

in terms of broken things, there are quite a lot. it is almost as if the playhouse in his soul is one big collection of the discarded: coils of rope too frayed to rely on, crates with gaping holes in their sides, scraps of fabric off of long discarded costumes... I could keep rattling this kind of stuff off but you get the picture.

But none of them feel like the wretched festering wound that is killing her flockmate. None of them feel like they could be the source of the rotten material that he has enterprisingly used to his own designs, time and again, that clever, stupid craftsman--

until the Genome leads her by a closed metal(?) gate, and she inhales lungfuls of Mist again.

there is something broken in there.
something sick. ]

[wants_the_phd]

[damn. for someone so fussy, prissy, and devoted to presentation, he sure has a lot of garbage in his heart. You gotta clean up in here, bud.]

[she's putting a pin in that thought for now, though, and turning to her attention toward the smell of rot. What does this gate look like?]

[finalbows]

[ what do they say? "Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon?"

the gate looks like this, ftr.

peering through the gaps between bars into the room beyond, there are two humanoid silhouettes wearing masks she can't quite make out the details yet. one of them is seated in a rather foreboding throne. the other is... messing with the seated figure, somehow. tying things to it?

and muttering to himself. the voice, at least, sounds masculine. and, if i'm being honest, gives off an aura of danger.

but hey what fucking doesn't ]

[wants_the_phd]

[She elects to keep to a shadow and watch for a while, to see if one or both of them leave. She really really really really doesn't want to have to fight if she can avoid it.]

1/2

[finalbows]

[ over the minutes of close scrutiny, the shades seem to... load in, almost. it isn't her eyes adjusting, but it is--

...why has she been using mana?
this fizzy feeling...
it's the one she only just learned to notice, and harness, the mark of herself doing magic...! ]

[ ...borrowing from the innate knowledge of magic that absolutely inundates Angie's soul,
Azdaja has cast Scan. ]

[ the results... ]

2/2

[finalbows]

[ the shade slumped unconscious in the chair is now obviously Angel Devil, face covered by a blue mask full of holes.

he's in a bad way. it's exactly as dire a situation as she knew in her gut.

the other one, in a horned, red mask, is a stranger to the pasture: a man dressed in a jester's motley.

after the Scan is done, his grumbling has abruptly gotten louder. ]



C'mon, c'mon, COME ONNNN, ALREADY! Wake up and smell the burning roses! You and I, So-Called Mister Angel, have so much MORE left to DESTROY! Don't MAKE me replace all your strings with barbed wire! Or would you like that too much? Huh?

[ he pokes him directly in the throat like, three times. ]

WaaAAAAke UP! Get up and dance, you stupid puppet!

[ ...he's been tying strings to the body. ]

[wants_the_phd]

[sweats]

[that guy doesn't look like he's going to be going away any time soon. And if he can't wake Angie up, what is she going to be able to do? and if she walks straight in there and gets her ass kicked, that's not going to help him OR her.]

[...]

[Okay. her plan is: she's going to leave the clown there to continue trying to rouse angie, and meanwhile she's going to backtrack back to the stage and see if she can find any surprise tools that will help us later.]

[finalbows]

[ solid plan. and good work, stealthing your way to the boss arena early!

retracing your footsteps while cycling through some new hiding spots, you find your way back near the stage easily.

before heading right out there, you take a look beyond the curtain...]

[ It's a full house out! Every single seat is occupied by strange objects that look a bit like a nautilus, that you instinctively recognize as-- caskets? beds? places of rest and preservation for dead souls.


They are all waiting for the hosts to put on a good show. ]

[wants_the_phd]

[...]

[She slips into the audience to check out the caskets.]

[finalbows]

[ a seamless meld of natural and intentional design, housing one single, perfectly preserved, departed life. all of who they are rests within the spiral of the shell. gooey threads attach it to the seat. occasionally, the threads undulate like an inching worm. who knows what THAT'S doing.


if she touches one, it feels like a crystal, in that it's either trying to commune with her or she's trying to commune with it, but... absolutely no information from or about either of them is able to pierce the safe, secure confines of its eternal prison.

it is a person. but it is as good as a mere display piece.
they are all people, in their neat little rows. ]

[wants_the_phd]

[There they are. The original Terrans. Sleeping painlessly in their eternal sleep.]

[They've slept this long. Maybe it's not so bad if they just sleep forever.]


[She walks through the aisle toward the back of a theater, looking for... a doorway, a stairway, some kind of passage to the rest of Angie's heart. This one theater can't be the whole thing. It may be messy, but he's way messier than even this.]

[finalbows]

[ > there has to be more than this.

is there?
is there, really?


your hand finds the handle of the door, but you realize your mask of cruelty feels, so, terribly, heavy. your head is forced to bow before the door.

it seems, to pass beyond these walls, you may have to doff that mask. perhaps it won't be impossible, to keep carrying it with you...
...but what worth is there in it? out there, exposed to the unknown, won't it just be holding you down? ]

[wants_the_phd]

[She still has no idea what this thing does...]

[She experimentally takes it off, to see if the room changes around her.]

[finalbows]

[ everything has gone eerily silent.

the sound of the stagehands still working behind the curtain-- gone.
the soft strains of piano that have accompanied her all through her journey into quetzalcoatl's heart-- gone.


but in their absence, they do leave room for one thing:

a distant roll of thunder, the promise of a soothing, oncoming rain. ]

[wants_the_phd]

[She really wishes she had absolutely any idea what was going on, but leaving her at a complete loss with no easy explanation seems completely in line with his personality. Angie, you bastard.]

[She attempts to pass through the door while holding the mask, but not wearing it.]