[sermon ?] —if you wanna cry, use my heart

[asipofbride]

WHO: Nicholas D. Wolfwood and you.
WHERE: the Metaverse - Noman's Land
WHEN: the month of May
WHAT: sọ̸͒m̷̥̽ĕ̷̛̜̺t̶̐̃ͅ𝔱𝔦𝔪𝔢𝔰

the Eye of Michael and Nicholas D. Wolfwood, Pastor of the St. Michael's Church, do hereby enter into the following contract with respect to their work. the Pastor agrees to faithfully perform all duties as commanded in the Eye of Michael, effective ████ ███, █.█. ███, and to abide by all rules and regulations swearing in the name of the two Angels sent by God.

the Pastor agrees to receive immortal glory from the Priest ███████ through the Suffering of the Holy Angels.

in the event of abandonment of his duties, or in the event that the Executive Board determines that there is sufficient cause, the Pastor shall be permanently expelled from the Eye of Michael and St. Michael's Church, and the family members of the Pastor shall be Subject to the same punishment.

WARNINGS: medical experimentation, insects, body horror, needles, religious trauma, gore, death.

??? — NOMAN'S LAND — summaries and links

♫ HUNGRY!

Are you ever going to be fast enough to outrun everything, Judas?

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOPELAND;

The Dormitories and the Laboratories

Hopeland Orphanage, in its good and not so good days. Shadow Wolfwood will tell you to go the Laboratories; the Eye of Michael's enforcers wait to inject you with the drugs in Wolfwood's vials and make you better. Livio wants you to find the other children and bring them back to safey, but will eventually leave to find Wolfwood himself no matter how fast you go. Fight your way through the lab or save the children; both choices deliver you to the belly of the Eye.

CHILD OF BLESSING;

The Eye of Michael HQ

The Eye of Michael's training facilities and Plant storage. Once you're far enough in, you'll meet another Wolfwood who wants nothing more than to shoot you dead; you can either confront him or go around him. Going around him leads to a repeating looping of classrooms and expendable young Eye of Michael goons; going through him will be a battle to not get shot by a skittish, defensive little gunman who's very good at what he does. Both paths will lead to Legato Bluesummers and an older, enhanced Livio. Disabling or killing Legato and Livio will let you out into Julai in the middle of its last hour.

HIGH NOON AT JULY;

Julai

The city of Julai in its final day. You're emerging from ground zero of the Eye of Michael's weird cult tower and the city is being overrun by a giant plant organism that looks like Vash's mother. The military think you're part of it and will try and stop you, and the people of Julai are being menaced and mulched by the plants. Help them, or run. If you linger for too long, Millions Knives will find you and attempt to reduce you to fertilizer despite the best efforts of the Humanoid Typhoon that Wolfwood remembers. Eventually, the twins will go up--and everything will go white when they come back down.

HUMANITY;

In Kaisou

Trying to enter the Metaverse immediately after the July Incident is an exercise in futility. Wolfwood's space is just white static and the phantom feeling of coarse sand and unrelenting heat on your skin. You have been returned to Cathedral Hill for at least a night.

THE RUNNJING MAN;

THE the Outskirts of Julai;

Julai City is a hole that seems to span forever and all that's left are clouds of glimmering Worms and a rusted metallic scrapyard. In the center of the scrapyard, you'll find Nicholas D. Wolfwood at odds with Nicholas the Punisher. They're bound to the duty that they can't put down, the Cross Punisher standing like a tombstone in the middle of a sandy arena. The bigger, hungrier Worms will try their luck with bringing down all of you fresh hunks of meat. Save Wolfwood. End this.

Comments

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOPELAND;

[asipofbride]

♫ orphanage ♫

The sensation of overwhelming, stifling, omnipresent heat is the first thing that’ll register for most people–the air is dry and stifling, like there’s no hope of rain coming to life the oppressive, stale miasma that colors the surprisingly clean room that you’ve landed in. Looking out of the window gives a reason for the heat, given that the landscape is painted in the bright, unyielding orange of an endless desert, with square little buildings pressed up tight against the plateau that the grander, looming building you’re all currently in. Try as you might, the windows won’t open, break, or otherwise be moved.

The room itself is simple; stone walls and floors and tall glass windows that are closed despite the heat. There’s a long bed–or maybe it’s a series of beds–pushed together and taking up most of the room, with various piles of simple children’s clothing, threadbare toys, and appropriately child-sized dressers and furniture tucked along the sparsely decorated wall. There are crude-scribbled pictures hung up with yellowing tape and hope dotting the walls, depicting happy little stick figures with names that’re just this side of too smudged to read. There’s a door out of the room, and it’s papered over with many, many copies of a contract, all of them signed with an impeccable show of penmanship and marked with a seal that’s long since gone rust brown–and above the doorway, there’s a peculiar etching–as if hands or claws unfamiliar with the flowing intricacies of the written word were bound and determined to pass the message along, no matter how much time and energy it took.

The Punisher likes to kill friends best of all.

When you go to leave the room, you’ll find that you aren’t alone–or if you take your sweet time picking through every pile of laundry and heap of toys, the doors will be slammed open. A small, familiar boy has another boy in hand, grasping his brother tightly. He looks up at you with a flinty, golden-eyed expression, mouth twisted in the echo of familiar unhappy sneer.

What are you doing here? You don’t belong here–go that way, and you’ll find Miss Melanie and she can help you go wherever you’re supposed to be. Livio, go to bed. You’re being an annoying little crybaby.

He’ll point to the right of the hallway that he just came out of, and while he might hang around for a question or two, he does not have the patience for you, and will leave Livio sitting on the edge of the bed, sniffling quietly to himself.

It takes Livio a moment to compose himself, but when he does, he’ll look to you all, wet-eyed and uncertain, playing with the edges of his shirt.

That’s not Nico. Big Brother Nico’s never that mean to me–they took him away and left that boy here instead. He keeps taking the other kids away and I don’t know where they go. Can you help me find them?

⇉ follow Wolfwood's advice. cw: body horror, needles, medical experimentation, hallucinations

♫ human subject ♫

In retrospect, Wolfwood gave the best advice he could for getting out of Hopeland–it was the way that he got out of the orphanage, after all.

At first the trek to follow Wolfwood’s indicated path is fairly straight forward, but an observant eye will notice that things start getting more… mechanical as you go deeper into the orphanage. The cracks on the walls reveal themselves to not just be the spidering signs of an old building falling into disrepair, but the cracks of stone that can no longer contain what’s growing beneath it. Wires and tubing seem to run through the walls, the stone giving way to metallic, clinically white walls and flooring, and eventually you’ll find yourself passing through as pair of automatic doors that open with a wooshing flourish to reveal what can only be described as a medical laboratory. Another automatic door framed by a pair of dark-paned observation windows sits across the theater.

A collection of obnoxiously cross-shaped operating tables with metal cuff restraints are thronged by all sorts of ominous monitors and devices, waiting to receive you. The men and women of the Eye of Michael that had been standing there, still as stone, will turn to face you when the doors come whooshing open. It’s nice that you’re complying for your procedure.

The Eye of Michael personnel will try to grapple you and drag you to a table–and the tables themselves will snake out coils of wires to trip you up, to ensnare you and draw you closer. Even if they can’t get ahold of you, different wire tendrils with needles on the ends will also writhe and lurch for you as you pass through their range.

If you are strapped down, or if you are otherwise injected with the drug, everything inside of you will burn so badly that death will seem like a pretty okay side option. The drug–glowing bright green-blue–will heal any other aches or pains that you’ve picked up, but your organs will feel like they’re burning to cinders inside of you as your mind races with bright, incomprehensible hallucinatory imagery. The people that you’ve loved best and cared for the most will call to you, joyful, waving and pulsing behind your eyes, crying for you to save them in the space of one heartbeat to the next as it feels like years drag by–but the high will wear off within a minute or so once you’ve been freed.

Don’t you feel like you’ve been remade as something better? Shouldn’t you stay until the work on you is done? The Eye’s people are relentless, but they’re just faceless nobodies–nothing like you, or like Wolfwood.

(He’ll be one of the visions you can see during your rebirth–and he’ll smile even as he levels the gun in his hand with your eyes and sends you screaming back to painful, bloody sobriety.)

The door will open without a fuss when you reach the other side, and the Eye’s people will not follow you away from their duty station. The rooms on the other side of the windows are empty.

⇉ help Livio.

We were playing hide and seek with everyone before Nico got mad and sent me to bed. Can you find them before Nico does?

Livio is an anxious little thing with soft gold eyes, but he wants so badly to be helpful. He'll describe the other children of the orphanage–little boys and girls with names that seem to come out as static whenever he offers them up to you. If you head to the left of the dormitory, you’ll find the front door of the orphanage is chained up and locked with a heavy iron padlock. The courtyard outside shows itself to be dusty and empty through the windows, though there is a pen with a collection of tiny blue birds pecking at the dust in the shade on one side.

Looking for the children is a fairly straightforward task, as long as you’re thinking like a child–they like to secret themselves under things, or inside of cabinets, ducking behind furniture and hiding with their feet sticking out from behind the occasional age-worn, holey curtain. The orphanage is not a luxurious place, but it was comfortable. Worn and doing the best it could, but a place of comfort and care for the little creatures that it was meant to cultivate.

Some of the children will run, turning hide and seek into a merry game of tag as they run through corridors and in and out of rooms that make no particular logical sense, the building seeming to bend around their needs to run and run and run–and when they’re found or caught or otherwise secured, the children are just. Children.

They don’t really have faces–like their features have been scribbled out in order to censor them, to black out who they were and what they meant–but they’re just ordinary children, and once you’ve bested them at some sort of youthful game, they’ll follow you happily back to Livio and the dormitory.

Livio, meanwhile, is doing his level best to seem happy that you’re finding his friends and bringing them back to him, but each new child makes the light in his eyes a little dimmer, the shadows around him a little heavier. By the fifth or sixth child, Livio won’t be in the dormitory anymore–instead, a heavy metal key that matches the padlock on the front door will be sitting where he’d been perched.

The young Wolfwood gives you a critical, unhappy look from down the hall when you go to leave, ready to bolt after his parting shot.

If you had gone to the right place, Livio wouldn’t have had to. It’s all your fault for not being good enough. I hope you can live with that.

Whether you battle your way through the laboratories or find the key to the front door, it seems that both doors lead to the same place.

[whiteshroud]

[It's damn hot in this labyrinth. Even if his Shroud was enchanted to not be nearly as hot as it appears, he could feel himself sweating. Or at least, he keeps focusing on that- and trying really hard not to focus on how much this place reminds him of his own childhood.

Just focus on the mission, he keeps telling himself.

He listens silently to the two children. When they say their piece and separate, Jun finds a feeling of dread forming in the pit of his stomach. He knows what happens when one follows instructions in places like this. Nothing good. It's never good.]

I'll go after "Nico". The rest of you should help Livio.

[He's volunteering himself, an attempt to spare the others. He survived through the hells that the Orden and Krusnik put him through, surely he can do it again.

Focus on the mission. Do what must be done.]

[jackdawvision]

[He’s still pissed at Shroud for telling Zulius and Lapis, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to let him do something dangerous on his own. Call it vengeance, he supposes—if Edward can’t do the stupid plan alone then Shroud doesn’t get to do it either. So:]

Oh, no, mate, I’m coming with you. [As much as he wants to help Livio and the other children…the others have it well in hand by now. He’ll watch Shroud’s back, he’s got a Shadow forcefield and a Persona. Surely this will go just fine.

Surely.

…he’s going to check all four guns just in case.]

[whiteshroud]

No.

[He visibly stiffens, shoulders tensing at the idea of having company for this. If what he suspects is this way, bringing others into it---]

... I'm sure I'll survive whatever's there. I can't say the same for you.

CHILD OF BLESSING;

[asipofbride]

♫ Looming Crisis ♫

When the ark fell from the sky all those years ago, we sinners were cast upon this desolate planet. Now, brothers and sisters of the faith, join me in prayer as we ask God to send his Angel of Salvation our way. Praise the Angel. Honor the Angel. become the Angel's eyes in this world. May the Lord bless you, o Faithful One.

When the twin Angels descend upon us, a bridge of light will cross the sky. that's when we sinners shall be redeemed, and the Lord will lead us into His kingdom—

An unseen loudspeaker drones on overhead. Every line of the sermon is laced with a sense of fatalistic despair, and a promise that death is a reward. A gift. A blessing. The people of No Man’s Land deserve nothing less than perdition, but God in His infinite love will forgive, will wipe the slate clean and use the blood of the unworthy to grow the garden anew. Paradise is close enough to touch, if only for a little sacrifice from you selfish monsters for once--

Don’t listen to the preaching for too long. It’ll start to make sense if you aren’t careful. It’s hateful dreck, meant to worm its way into your ears and make you weak, make you compliant, make you stand still.

The Eye of Michael’s facility stands in stark contrast to the ramshackle, well-worn orphanage, all sleek and metal and too white and chrome for comfort, and peeking into the doors that dot the winding hallways will reveal what can only be described as classrooms–rows upon rows of small chairs and small desks and whiteboards scrawled with equal parts perverted religious tenets (‘thou shalt kneel before the Angels, thou shalt see Their work done, thou shalt give thine life in pursuit of Eden’) and practical lessons about the best places to put a bullet through a man to snuff them out. If you try the doors, they're unlocked, but the rooms remain empty.

Continuing on, there's a definitive line between the purposes of the facility–the hallway terminates, the walls coming to an abrupt stop in favor of a sudden transition to a metallic catwalk. The room opens up, and catwalks crisscross the room with no particular rhyme or reason as to where they come from or where they go; but if you can see through the low light, you can see that the walls are absolutely covered in rows upon rows of blood red pods with odd white seeds floating in the middle of them.

There's an electric hum in the air.

If you can speak with plants.

The sisters in the pods are begging for the pain to end. They feel like they're falling apart, like they're crumbling, save them, save them, save them-

Once you've hit the midway point of the biggest catwalk, the lights will kick on to reveal that the room is lined with the blood-red seed pods, cut through with the tangle of catwalks and odd clusters of tubes and wires that dangle down and lace through the catwalks as if they're veins winding through a grander body, and that Nicholas D. Wolfwood is looking down on you from a layer above with the same flinty-eyed, unhappy moue.

He's cradling a sniper rifle in his arms.

Oi, oi. You don’t belong here and orders are orders. Stay still.

Do not stay still. He aims for the head and he’s a very, very good shot.

There's another large door on the same level as Wolfwood that he seems to be loosely guarding, fifteen feet up and backlit blue.

You could also decide not to deal with any of that and try your luck with the classrooms-they were unlocked, after all.

⇉ head straight through Wolfwood.

A few of the catwalks have ladders dangling off of them, and the wire clusters will support the weight of most people–but Wolfwood is very good at what he does, aiming relentlessly for hands and heads alike to keep you down, to drop you dead. He’s definitely playing at being a man of few words, but just like his older self, he’s not impervious to running his mouth. He’s also hesitant to aim anywhere near the Plant jars that ring the room. In the end, the mission is simple; climb up however you can. Throw things in the way, shoot him first, or tank the shots–Wolfwood has to reload, and when you reach the same platform as him, he’ll withdraw to the door and flee through it.

He can’t afford to die yet, no matter how much he wishes he could. The door will bring you into another sterile white room. There's no sign of Wolfwood there, but you will be reunited with the friends that chose going around instead of through... as well as a pair of new figures, one of which might strike you as terribly familiar if you spent any time at all considering Livio.

There are consequences for every mistake you make, after all. Hope you can live with that.

⇉ navigate the classrooms.

If you weren't the climbing rope kid in gym class, maybe it's time to say 'fuck all of that' to trying to out obstacle course a child sniper–the classrooms are unlocked, and upon returning to them, you’ll find that they’re as messily intertwined as the rooms in the orphanage had been.

They’re also not as empty as they seemed to be at first glance.

The masked members of the Eye of Michael are pointedly smaller that the ones from the first section. Where their larger counterparts could pose a threat, the smaller ones seem to be more concerned with swarming en masse, with trying to drag people down and overwhelm them. They ‘die’ in a good hit or two, crumpling into piles of empty clothes and unseeing mask-glass eyes. It’s a bit of blur, moving from one room to the next, going through the motions over and over and over again, cutting down all of the faceless nobodies that stand between you and your goal, everything playing on repeat as if everyone here trying to stop you from reaching the next checkpoint is expendable, forgettable–as if Wolfwood’s tried very hard not to remember the children he left behind, that he surpassed.

The writings on the board get more and more unhinged until it’s just violent scrawling about how worthless humanity is, with crude childish drawings of the dead and dismembered filling the spaces between. Eventually, when the rooms are at their most shattered and ramshackle, an oddly out of place metallic door will sit pretty and pristine against the far wall. The note on the last whiteboard is neatly written and purposeful.

If you had fallen in line sooner, it would not have had to come to this.
Stepping through the door will bring you back to the fools who braved the sniper, as well as a new pair of friends who don’t intend to let you go much further.

The Wire Spider and the One You Failed to Protect

An unsightly infestation of vermin in the Master's house? You will be dealt with quickly.

It is offensive to Legato Bluesummers that you’re here, in this white-on-white version of the chapel that the Midnight Channel held its mass in, stain-glass windows depicting the avenging angels coming down to reap the mankind’s sinful in order to build a new garden of Eden. It’s priority one for him to make you very aware of that fact. He’ll stay back towards the door at the front of the church and reach out towards you, into you, digging into your limbs with what feels like thin wires and take you for his own–and then he’ll turn you on your friends since he can’t just snap you in half like all of the ones that had come before… not that it will stop him from trying. He’s incredibly persistent… but he’s only human, no matter how he might present himself.

Livio on the other hand doesn’t have much to say, but he’s as vicious as his brother was, charging you with a pair of cross-shaped guns that he intends to empty into you or beat you with, whichever one makes you stop moving first. Unlike Legato, who’ll go down if you hit him hard enough or in the correct spaces, Livio will just keep getting back up, tanking through the punishment and working to silently keep you away from Legato, from the exit to the rest of Wolfwood’s own personal hell… but he’s also only human. Hit him in the right spot and he’ll stay down.

… or there’s a familiar silver lighter and a pack of cigarettes sitting in one of the pews, if you want to try the gentler route. It’s Wolfwood’s brother, after all. He did all of this to protect him, as futile as it was in the end.

Disabling or destroying Legato and Livio will leave the door to beautiful, sprawling Julai city wide open.

[aslowburn]

[Persephone pays the sermon no mind. She has seen countless faiths spring up and die through human existence. None of it truly matters- belief can last for millennia or it can burn out in a few centuries. Belief keeps her existence turning, and in that she supposes it plays its part. But humanity always find something else to tie themselves to, to try and understand how the planet still turns.

None of this matters to her. She's trying to locate Nicholas. She strides through it all- eyes forward, determined and unbending. She left Cerberus behind for this, a fact she is glad for with all the clambering around that must be done.

The plants do give her pause. She cannot speak to them, but plants are always deeply connected to her. It's part of her very nature. So she stops, looking at them, brow furrowed. She understands Vash has... something to do with this. Which is why he is... well, how he is. But she doesn't have all the pieces. It does not matter. She walks on.

And then she hears Nicholas. She eyes the gun. She eyes the classrooms. She huffs out a breath, vines grow around her feet, conjured from nothing, ready to shield her from the bullets. ]

No. I don't think I will, actually.

[She looks over at you.]

Be ready to move.

[sassery]

[From the start, he's felt that this entire place is wrong, and the further he goes in with others, the more and more uneasy he gets. He's journeyed alongside Persephone as a precaution for her (even though he knows she can take care of herself, he's seen her around), and also to make sure he isn't going by himself here.

And then he sees the younger Nicholas, hand grabbing his own revolver in retaliation. Shit. He can't shoot a kid, but he sure as shit isn't gonna take being shot at either.

At the warning though, his feet spread apart slightly, and he nods.]

Yeah, got it. I'll keep my eyes peeled.

[ornamentals]

[kni has experienced the midnight channel only once before, an experience he was keen on never repeating. yet this time when the tv screen flickered and changed with its beckoning light, kni felt exhilarated.

with the turtle shell backpack vergil has passed along to him slung over his shoulders, kni does his damn best navigating the halls of wolfwood's childhood home. from well-worn stone and heat that made his skin prickle with sweat to sleek silver that reminds him of his first home. did they use materials from the wreckage to build this?

but his attention is immediately stolen from the empty classrooms and graffitied chalkboards when he hears it. breaking out into a run, he follows the pained voices of his sisters until his shoes hit metal gridding, and he sees them.]

What is this...?

[the lights kick on and kni is forced to look away from his dying sisters to the teenager pointing a gun at him.]

Wolfwood!

[playtag]

[Eve wasn't far behind Kni, leaping into the TV shortly after him. Once it was made clear that Kni would be going, hell or high water, that only solidified her resolve to go after Wolfwood.]

[None of this scenery was as familiar to her, but that did not matter. What mattered was Kni and also Nico.]

[She sneaks through the labs with a clenched stomach, following closely to not be noticed. But then farther along, Kni suddenly breaks out into a run.]

Wait up, Kni!!

[BUDDY SYSTEM, BROTHER! She chases, quickly matching pace until they enter a room with thousands of glass tubes. These... are Plants? Of course.]

Your sisters...?

[But then her attention gets drawn to the threat. Eve is quick to put herself between the Dark Little Nick and Kni, shield at the ready with an emblem of wings.]

Above!

[jackdawvision]

[While the rest of the crew is contending with a teenaged sniper, Edward has split off from the rest with a promise to catch up later—he wants to check out the empty classrooms first. He’s still shaken from the table and the serum, and right now he needs—a bit of time to himself. Nito’s company is a surprise, but not an entirely unwelcome one.]

—but, you know, you’ve seen one dream where they’re giving a presentation with their bits just dangling in the air, you’ve seen them all, aye? [This he says while he’s pushing open the doors.] You first. I’ll watch your back, just in case.

Seems empty, though—ah. [Oh those are. Very small. Oh boy.]

[end_singer]

[When all's said and done, Nito's choice to accompany Edward can be boiled down to the fact that firstly, he is from a time when you'd be dodging knights' arrows on narrow rooftops rather than a hunter's bullets in city streets, and second, he is just fully not built for dodging without the use of shapeshifting. It helps that Edward is decent company.

He doesn't imagine he'll be able to say the same of the little ones in front of him. Unfortunate, that.]

Hm. Not so empty after all.

[He lets himself grow to fill as much space as he can without risking bumping into the ceiling and begins moving forward like an elephant through the brush.]

HIGH NOON AT JULY;

[asipofbride]

♫ Human or Plant? ♫

Julai looks like any other bustling metropolis, with its towering skyscraper buildings and its bright neon lights–the bones of the ideal modern city are here, stretching upwards and packed tight, with the sort of well-worn grunge that you’d expect out of a steampunk period piece. If not for the ever present, unyielding heat, it’d be easy to mistake Julai for someone’s gritty pastiche of sci-fi western New York.

The massive black tendrils of plant matter slowly enveloping the Eye of Michael’s tower that you’re currently standing in front of probably help to break the illusion–as do the building sounds of human panic, distant cries of ‘what is that?’ and ‘someone call the military’ and other jostled, garbled sounds of the frightened masses being dragged into a fight they’re not ready for are coloring the air. Sirens blare and Nicholas D. Wolfwood, fully grown and as surly as ever, stands with the Cross Punisher over his shoulder, looking back on the tower with his eyes firmly hidden behind his sunglasses. Plant matter stretches and blooms as it snakes through the city streets, beginning to climb up buildings and burst through windows, and the massive, femininely-shaped stem of the plant begins to blot out the night sky as she grows higher and higher out of the tower.

Wolfwood watches it all unfold with a sort of casual disinterest, and then looks to you.

Work’s done. This ain’t our problem anymore, pal. Get out while the getting’s good and enjoy what time you have left.

A woman darts from an alleyway tucked between a pair of shopfronts nearby and screams as an offshoot tendril from one of the thicker vines snakes around her, dragging her across the pavement. Wolfwood looks at her as if she’s the remnants of a newspaper blowing down the street, lighting the cigarette in his mouth with a free hand, and then he turns and begins to walk away as if the world isn’t melting down around him.

The people of Julai, meanwhile, act somewhat more appropriately–if one can call dumb animal panic appropriate when your world is being swallowed by vines and purple flowers. Kaisou’s Wolfwood might have believed in miracles enough to try helping, but the Punisher does not.

There’s an overwhelming sense that everything’s out of your hands, but you could try to help. Or you could take the path that Wolfwood’s always taken–because his whole life has been focused on a singular purpose, carted along on a rail that he dares not jump off of, tugged from scene to scene by puppet strings by monsters bigger than he is.

⇉ help the citizens of Julai.

As much as it makes him sound like some ancient prepper crockpot, Wolfwood has never been particularly attached to his pride–really, he’s always been of the mind that you do what you have to do to see the next day and get closer to your goals, no matter who it hurts or what you leave behind.

Maybe he wished he could save people. Maybe he was too dead inside to care. Maybe it’s your chance to change the narrative and fight back–because all of this is about lancing through the festering regrets that keep you down and hold you back, right? The people of Julai are as faceless and nameless as the other children of the Orphanage, but their fear is palpable and with a little convincing, they can be saved. You might have to cut through a thick vine made of some incomprehensible, black organic material, or you might have to heard them like the scared sheep they are, but they can be reasoned with and brought to safety.

You cannot, however, reason with monsters, and maybe there are good reasons to let people die in order to preserve yourself.

Millions Knives will do his level best to convince you of that particular philosophy when he comes bursting out of the upper part of the Eye of Michael’s tower with a man who looks eerily like the Vash you know and likely love. It’s not that Knives is gunning for you–no more than a tsunami means to swallow a coastal village, anyway. There’s an argument to be made about serendipity and karma and the arrogance of humanity when it comes to doing stupid shit like building villages next to oceans, but the narrative digresses. He’s tall and broad and angelic white, and the knife-blade wings that writhe around him and cleave through metal-and-stone buildings and flesh-and-bone people like they’re paper.

He’ll look at you as if you’re a spider perched on the petals of a flower he was trying to enjoy, and then he’ll try and cut you to pieces for daring to be so terribly human near him.

You aren’t alone in whatever you choose to do–fight, or flee–as a man who looks uncannily like Vash the Stampede, burnt black like he were a shadow of Kaisou’s own Humanoid Typhoon will try to drive his twin away, slamming into him to drive him through windows and dragging him up to the rooftops in a whirling dance of violent chaos. Run, keep trying to save people–either way, the avalanche is coming in your direction and isn’t particularly concerned if it takes you down or not.

It gets quiet very quickly–and that’s usually when it’s time to start worrying, isn’t it?

⇉ run.

You realize you just pranced out of the big sketchy cult tower that the plant-woman pillar is growing out of, right?

Stop! By the authority of the Julai Military Police, what the hell did you do?!

Men in black-and-gray combat gear with guns try to look braver than the feel as they point rifles at you. Julai's military needs answers, and they need them approximately ten minutes ago because things have quickly gone to hell in a hand basket. You can try and reason with them or you can try to run through them, nonviolently or otherwise. Being the biggest city on this shithole of a planet has given them weapons and technology beyond most everywhere else, and they'll try to bring that to bear against you and the vines that aren't really trying to help you. They just happen to be advancing in the same direction as you, so it kind of feels like your fault, you know?

Hell, it probably is your fault.

The plant vines will prove to be as much of a hindrance as the military; the difference is that while they aren't chasing you specifically, they're not above trying to spear you through the guts and drag you back to be consumed. The people of Julai that are smart enough to flee are also a bit of a problem; Julai's only got so many elevators down, but if you go further towards the edge of the odd structure that the city seems to be sitting on, there are questionably maintained flights of seemingly endless stairs that snake down the structure that you could take your chances with.

Move quickly, though. The tendrils will grow through the stairwells like the wires in the Plant room grew through the catwalks; nature can always reclaim its due even if it's lightyears away from its origin point.

Whether you fought god or ran for your life, it ends the only way it can end–what goes up must come down. Whether you’re still in the city or outside of it in the desert below, the Twins travel until they’re a distant purple glimmer… and then the glimmer flares up, bright and terrible and beautiful and begins to come streaking back down. The world goes purple and white and silent when they hit Julai, and when you next open your eyes you’ll be on Cathedral Hill. Attempting to re-enter the portal will bring you back to white, ringing static until the next instance of the Dark Hour.

help the citizens

[bebest]

[Zulius hates the dungeons. He hated them last year and he hates them this year. He loves tea, but there's something deeply wrong about digging through your loved one's psyche and watching it be pulled apart before your eyes. That is decidedly not fetch.

So he watches the chaos with a soft frown, one that only depends as Wolfwood-but-not says that to him. He turns to watch the running and screaming, people trying to escape this absolute horror come to tear their world apart. It reminds him too much of the Nowhere King- how twice he tried to destroy his past life's world simply because the centaurs had the audacity to exist. Because the Nowhere King's self-loathing turned outwards against his own kind.

It would be smart to take Wolfwood's advice and book it out of here. But it would have also been smart not to try to fight against the Nowhere King and his nigh-on unbeatable forces. Zulius didn't pick the smart option then, and it's not looking good that he'll do that now. ]

...Yeah, no. I'm not doing that.

[He runs off to one of the panicked people, catching their arm, then pointing the way Wolfwood ran.]

Hey Sweetie, you need to get going that way, okay?

[asipofbride]

[ that soft, pretty heart is gonna get you hurt, Mama Zu.

not-Wolfwood continues on his powerwalk out of this nonsense and the world devolves into chaos in his wake; but instead of knights and monsters and magic there's the sounds of bullets and shattering glass and raw human terror as nature takes its due, hundreds of years belayed.

the person that Zulius comes across looks at him, fearful, but the zebrataur is confident enough that they give him a nod. ]

T-thank you!

[ and they start to run in that direction, very bravely--only screaming their head off when one of the plant tentacles goes snaking just behind them (12), just barely missing catching them up by their ankles. where one goes, so do more follow, stepping high over the tentacles as they continue to clog the streets and twine through the buildings as a larger, heavier shattering sound manages to pierce the general chaos

part of the cause of it will make himself very apparent as Vash comes crashing to the ground after skidding along one of the buildings, a singular wing made of some sort of rippling, uncanny dark matter falling over him like a shroud. he coughs, gripping a purple cube in his hand--and while he's Vash, he's not Vash; there's no recognition in his eyes for Zulius.

there's only fear. ]

You need to run! Now! You aren't safe here!

Help the citizens

[playtag]

[Logically she knows that these are not real people but memories, figments of Wolfwood's mind. That does not stop Eve from darting away from her group when the woman screams.]

That's not what a bounty hunter does!

[What kind of bounty hunters does she know??]

[She's quick to cut the woman free, a sickle-like blade protruding from her arm to slice down through the vines. However, there are so many more coming and that's not the worst of it.]

[Whether you were with Eve before or just noticed, someone should probably pull her back before the proverbial roof comes crashing down.]

HUMANITY;

[asipofbride]

♫ NICHOLAS THE PUNISHER ♫

Maybe you made it to the desert. Maybe you stood your ground as the light got closer and closer, as the raw heat got even more unbearable, as hundreds of thousands of voices raised around you to cry to a God that wasn't listening to begin with--

As quickly as it comes, it goes silent. When you open your eyes, you'll find that you're back in Kaisou, outside of the cemetery on Cathedral Hill. If you try to re-enter No Man's Land during the same Dark Hour where you witnessed the end, you'll find that you can't. Everything is white static and the feeling of sand rasping over your skin, hot and dry and empty.

Time to regroup. Try again tomorrow night, if you still think there's something left to save.

[doubledollar]

[ ...he didn't miss being on Noman's land. He'd almost forgotten how much he hated the sand, the worms, the overbearing heat, and worst of all

the reminders

of what he did.

When they're kicked out of the gate for the night, Vash is immediately distant. Going quiet, not a word coming out of his usually very chatty mouth, and he has a long and distant look on his face.

He doesn't want to be seen right now.
And yet,

And yet.

He can feel that every single eye in the room is on him.

All he can hope is
that he can quietly start walking towards the exit
without anyone stopping him. ]

We'll come back tomorrow.

[ he says so quietly

it's a strain to hear it. ]

[advivo]

[ dante had been one of the first to try and force his way back in, only to be met nothing but white static and hot sand against his skin. he tried to find his way, to find something sort of sign of wolfwood or anything only to end up not actually moving at all and leaving as empty handed as he went in.

by the time he finally emerges dante feels drained, exhausted, covered from head to toe in a sand determined to burrow deep underneath his skin. he honestly expected vash to be gone by now, leaving dante to make his way home on his own but... well. it seemed the others hadn't quiet let the humanoid typhon leave just yet.

or maybe what felt like hours back inside that gate was mere seconds out here?

whatever, it doesn't matter. he doesn't want to be here anymore.

silently the devil hunter walks up beside vash, reaching out to take his hand like he had done earlier tonight before resting his head against the plant's shoulder. ]

Let go home, yeah?

[whiteshroud]

[To say this was a rough night would be an understatement. All of Jun hurt. From living through experiments, to getting shot, and all to cap it off with watching a disaster that was just like the Twilight Disaster. The devastation, the countless lives snuffed out by an apostle that wasn't supposed to be in this world- it was just like that day.

Except this time.... he knew the Apostle. He had broken bread with him. Had vouched for him, again and again, even to the god of contracts-

And now, he was trying to slip away without any attempts to check on anyone who just went through hell. Somehow, that angered him more than anything. ]

Wait.

[His body wants nothing more than to lie down and not move for while, but he forces himself to stand. ]

At the very least, tell us it won't happen again. What we saw in there.

[Tell him... he hadn't been wrong to put faith in Vash. That he hadn't damned his home by going against his training and giving Vash a chance. ]

THE RUNNING MAN;

[asipofbride]

♫ WORMS NETWORK ♫

The next time you come to the Dark Hour, things are completely, blessedly different.

You cannot go back to the Orphanage, the Eye of Michael’s tower, or Julai. There’s only one direction to go, one place to access.

On the bright side, it’s not hot anymore. As is the way of deserts, now that the sun is down, everything is ice cold. The orange sand seems almost navy blue in the moonlight–and the massive crater that you’re standing next to is pitch black and incomprehensibly deep. The Grand Canyon can eat its heart out–who needs nature to wear down stone over thousands of years when you can drop an energy bomb on something and get an even greater effect in less than two hours?

To one side of you, there’s a hole, and to the other side, there’s what can best be described as a machine graveyard. Not-so-distant green lights glitter around and above the shells of long abandoned automobiles and some sort of massive steamer ship that’s been flipped on its side. Everything else is just sand dunes for miles and miles–if you’d like to give a shot at walking into the desert, you can, but it just stretches on forever because there’s no choice. Choice was only ever an illusion, and you would end up doing what you were told to do by the wires under your skin and the knife to your neck in due time. Maybe that was your actual choice, in the end–whether to be late or whether to be on time.

The Worms regard you with hungry curiosity as bugs often do–especially when they’re large enough to do something about it. They chitter and sing to each other as an electric hivemind, seeming to watch your every movement as you wade through the sand and the warped piles of metal and junk, coming up a slope that eventually drops off into a fitting arena-like bowl.

Nicholas D. Wolfwood (looking ravishing in what amounts to an orange prison jumpsuit) and Nicholas the Punisher (looking more like a priest than ever with his wide, white lapels and stark black suit) are very, very tired of one another. The Cross Punisher sits between them, planted in the middle of the arena. A thick coil of iron-black chain is wound around the covered gun, and the ends of the chain terminates at each Wolfwood, both men bound by a collar to the cross, to one another–and then the Punisher takes advantage of Wolfwood’s surprise to see all of you to grab the chain and yank, pulling the other self off of his feet and dragging him closer to the Cross Punisher.

The gun reaches out with writhing tendrils of its own, back to wires instead of plants, and digs them into Wolfwood’s arm as it tries to reel him in closer. Sand is a shitty surface to try and backpedal on, but Wolfwood manages it like a pro, cursing up a storm as he grabs the wires and rips them back out of his arm, reaching for a little green vial in the depths of his grubby orange jumpsuit.

“I can handle it, guys. Just head on back home, I’ll be done soon.”

You should be more grateful they bothered to show up after everything you’ve done–or haven’t done in most cases. Make up your mind, Nico; you won’t put the cross down so why are you fighting not to hang on it now?

“Fuck you, and don’t call me that. Only people I like can get away with calling me that.”

I’m a part of you, Nico.

“Then you ain’t deaf, now are you?”

And as usually happens with the comedy routine of Wolfwood’s life, it immediately erupts into violence between them again as they start trying to pull one another to the Cross Punisher.

At the same time, the Worms have decided they like their chances, and they’re going to start swooping you, trying to sting you with their sedative-laden tails and taking delicious little chunks out of your still alive body. Cut Wolfwood free, stack the tug-of-war in his favor, push his Shadow into the cross, try to swat the goddamn bugs–whatever you want to do to tip the scales, do it now. This is the last struggle, the last set of wires.

Time for everyone to put on one final show.

[whiteshroud]

[Jun hadn't gotten very much sleep during their time away from the realm. Too many things on his mind. At least he'd managed to meditate enough to make sure his wounds had recovered, so he'd be able to fight.

The scene they walked in on was.... not unexpected by what Jun thought it'd be, but harrowing all the same. He has to shove away the thoughts of his past to focus on the mission. Retrieving Wolfwood. Based on previous things he's heard, as long as they get him to accept his shad-

-- Oh. Shit. They're fighting. Of course they're fighting. Wolfwood can't even call POKEGO about a pokemon question without causing a fight. This was inevitable.

And unfortunately, he still very much remembers the promise he gave to Persephone about no harming any iteration of Wolfwood. And Jun knew better than to go back on his word with a god.

The Worms swooping in at the same time is almost a welcomed mercy. Large as they are, they aren't anything Jun hasn't faced before. Good, a way out of this conundrum.]

I'll handle the bugs. You guys save Wolfwood!

[And THERE he goes, zooming off to go try to take out some bugs]

[aslowburn]

[Of course, Persephone returned here. She had meant what she had said about saving what she could of Wolfwood's soul and she would not go back on that for anything. Much like she absolutely would not go back on her agreement with Jun. Words spoken aloud matter, after all.

She watches the tug of war between Wolfwoods with a frown, only brought out of it by the attacking worms. She nods, once. Firm. She does understand what he's doing and it is, genuinely, appreciated. She steps forward, towards the real Woflwood. She reaches out to grasp the chain, twisting it around her wrist and giving it a solid tug.]

I do not have an intention to harm you. [That's to the other Wolfwood.] And yes. We came. A person is made up of more than the sum of their worst acts.

[jackdawvision]

[Bang.]

I'll back Shroud! The rest of you go save Wolfwood! [He dodges into a roll as the Worms try to swoop down on him, the other three guns barking in quick succession as he fires shots at the Worms. Fuck's sake. If this was a couple years ago he'd want a very good reward at the end of this, he never thought the desert could get this dangerous.

Then again, he's a sailor, he's used to different dangers.]

Where'd these bugs come from, the pits of hell itself?!

Nat 20 time

[whiteshroud]

[Shroud's running across the sand to get himself far enough away from the folks facing wolfwood, letting his sword glow as he does so to try to lure the bug towards him.

It seems to work, and it also attracts an Edward, but... hey. As long as he doesn't get caught in the blast radius, it should be fine.

He's aware the bugs are trying to lure him in and surround him, able to sense the presence close behind him. He'll pretend to fall for it, only to unleash a strong light attack that sends out a shockwave in all directions around him.]

No man's Land! [He'll answer Ed] Before humans arrived, the planet was entirely populated by bugs!

[See Wolfwood? He DOES listen to your boomer talk]

TO A NEW WORLD;

[asipofbride]

"You guys are so goddamn stupid.."

For a moment, it's like all of the... oomph is out of Wolfwood, as he flops back the minute that chain goes slack--as if the back and forth between himself and the Punisher were the only thing keeping him up, keeping him going. He's laying in the sand, limp, arms over his face as if everything's gone away because he can't see it--because he just needs a minute to breathe, to smell the ichor of the dying Worms around him, to grimace over the smear of blood and sand on his tongue.

But nothing can last for ever--and even Wolfwood at his most exhausted, his most wrung out, his most vulnerable and exposed can't stay still for long. He digs his elbows into the sand so that he can push himself up, looking over the mess of his body--the blood and bruises, the tracks of where the wires had strung themselves alongside his veins, the horrid orange of what he's wearing, and he just... stares at it. As if he can't process what it is or make sense of it, as if he's not buying himself time to put his thoughts together and to face all these people who've rammed themselves through however many layers of hell it took to get to the center of the rotten Tootsie-Pop.

Especially because he doesn't have his damn sunglasses.

His face is so much more vulnerable without his sunglasses--he looks so much younger, tired and worn and frail, and then he takes in a hard breath and continues to try and drag himself up to his knees.

"I would like a cigarette, one of my vials, and..." Another breath, rattling and slow. His ribs hurt. Some of them are probably cracked.

Another long moment where he stares at his hands, working through his words, his list of demands, and only manages to look up when he reaches his conclusion.

"... to thank you. Just."

Thank you for coming for me.

No one had ever come for him before. Rescues were for the stories you told the little ones, and lies you told yourself to make the time pass just a little faster in between experiments. Saving people happened for others because Wolfwood was usually the one doing the saving, and yet.

"Thanks." He looks at his hands, as if they belong to someone else, a dozen other things mingling with the grit on his tongue as he lets his hair fall into his face and keeps his head down. Just gonna. Wait for that cigarette.