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

2/2

[finalbows]

[ CLOWN JUMPSCARE RIGHT IN HER FACE ]

"Uhh-uhhhh, not YET, you don't!"

[ DOI-OI-OINNNG!

azdaja feels a tug from the seat of her pants, and abruptly bounces back through soul-space to get flung out of the hole on the rotten tree she'd found Angie's Ending in.


it's dried out like the rest of the Sunset Coast's landscape now, at least. that's something she'll know once she's done doing a cool roll through the dirt. ]

1/3

[wants_the_phd]

!!!

2/5 actually

[wants_the_phd]

[The fuck was that?? Where the fuck was she? Where the fuck is she now??]

[wants_the_phd]

[Wait, that was the room of the Final Angie, wasn't it?? The place where she was gonna go back to in the end?]

[wants_the_phd]

[WELL NOW SHE'S GOTTA WALK ALL THE WAY BACK THERE, GOD DAMMIT]

[wants_the_phd]

[At least she knows her way around by now. She dusts herself off and starts making her way downtown, walking fast, this one's last and she's clown-bound.]

[Oh, but first a quick detour back to the barn because she forgot something.]

[finalbows]

[ pretty harp strumming noises of a song she's heard already 🎵 🎵 🎵

after all this healing that's been done, the barn's looking even better than it did before. there's a fire lit in the firepit. did you remember we have a really nice firepit? sometimes i forget. anyway, someone's put some apples to bake by the side of it. ]

[wants_the_phd]

[Cute. She's not into apples but maybe Muffin will enjoy them when he gets here. The real muffin, not the cube asleep on Angie's bed.]

[Speaking of Angie's room, that's where she's heading now.]

[finalbows]

[ the rain's stopped, so the vibe is subtly different. the muffin cube seems like he's been tossing and turning a bit on the bed; there's a bit more disarray around him. ]

1/2

[wants_the_phd]

[Huh. Who knows what that could mean. Maybe Real Muffin will figure it out.]

[Azdaja is going through his notebooks again, but this time she's opening to a blank page. On it she writes:]

Okay but consider:

[A sketch of angie with a huge dick. There's an arrow pointing to it that says "limbus"]

Re: 1/2

[finalbows]

[wants_the_phd]

[Her work here is done. Bye Muffincube.]

[She is going back to the theater now.]

[finalbows]

[ the exterior of the theatre wasn't much notice to her before because there was cooler shit to go do. now i get to describe it.

a view right up on the eternal midnight of the Treno waterfront... dark, dirty city waters, threateningly close to spilling out over intricate bricks. A beautiful facade, with intricate, twining details, and a Rose vine-lock that has replaced the immovable stone thorns of Iifa that had repelled her before.

Flower beds.

Those are new.
There weren't any of these sparse twin pairs of flowers, before.]

[wants_the_phd]

[Did you know the scientific name of twinflower is Linnaea borealis?]

[She pauses to smile at them for a moment.]

[The rose-vine lock is a good reminder to put something on her face before proceeding. So she once again dons the Mask of the Rose and wills the vines to part for her.]

im really enjoying getting to bring back some songs from earlier on The Return

[finalbows]

[ :3 ]

[ the theatre opens up before her.
the interior, too, has changed a bit.

the curtains are open. the show has came and went. on the back wall, there's a mural: Cosmos and Chaos, two sides standing in conflict. blood runs from Cosmos' eyes like tears. blood runs from Chaos' hands like an offering.

the nautilus-casket audience has all been cracked open, each and every crushed of any future, like so many of the Nova Dragon's eggs. ]

[wants_the_phd]

[She has FINISHED!!! the TUTORIAL LEVELS!!! and is now back in the theater at last.]

Oho! So you really did it!

Your days of performing roles that have been written for you are behind you, aren't they. Now's your turn to be the playwright. Good for you!

[She's retracing her steps back to the weird throne room, unless there's something different along the way that she should inspect.]

[finalbows]

[ her path is unimpeded.


...on the way, she will find that only the Genome stagehands still live. the clumsy dolls have all fallen down, lifeless, after too-short a time.

many broken things in this playhouse have found a mending. but there are some sins too late to be fixed.

...she's made it to the gate outside the throne room. ]

[wants_the_phd]

[She looks in through the gate. What's the situation in there?]

[finalbows]

[ angie's body language is like he wants so so so so bad to kill something and can't. he is a colorful duct tape mummy. he has an entire scarf's worth of rainbow gradient yarn haphazardly hanging off of him. there are paper party streamers. ]


[ the clown is humming happily about doom doom doom DOOM destruction~~~ as he adds more streamers. ]

[wants_the_phd]

[okay but... this angie is awake?]

[finalbows]

[ YUP, STILL CONSCIOUS, and still wearing the mask of Radical Acceptance


he does not currently look like he's Accepting his circumstances very well but he's new to this ]

[wants_the_phd]

[Note to self: talk to Angie later about when is and is not an appropriate time for radical acceptance. This would be an example of an Inappropriate Time.]

[Well. She's as ready for this as she's going to be. Can she open the gate?]

[If not, is there space to go over it?

[finalbows]

[ she can wrench the gate apart like it's made of tin foil with her ROSE VINES BASS-BOOSTED


or feel around the weird murmuring biomachines until one of them feels suitably lever-like ]

[wants_the_phd]

[Tempting though that may be, she is not the type to fling herself, guns blazing, into an unknown situation against a person who almost certainly can crush her. Sucks, but there it is.]

[She just opens the gate like a normal person and steps inside, calling out to make her presence known. We do not show our fear to strangers in this house.]

Greetings!

I hear you're one of Révérence's former comrades-in-arms.

[finalbows]

"Yeah? And what are you? Clean up crew?" Well,


"GOOD JOB!"


"This monkey's almost back to ship-shape! At this rate, I could have him out there and ripping out throats by tomorrow morning! End~less~ de~spair and~ car~nage~"