interstellar404 | ☆RESCUER TEST DRIVE: SOMETHING ABOUT US

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☆RESCUER TEST DRIVE: SOMETHING ABOUT US

☆WELCOME RESCUERS

"Daft Punk - Digital Love" (Watch on YouTube)

Welcome to Interstellar's second RESCUER TDM! A part of the Interstellar plot that first opened a couple months ago, this TDM cover the second round of recruitment for those approached by the lone space pilot Shep to join him on a mission to the planet Terra to rescue those held captive by Pride Records and Virgo Entertainment. Rescuers will not suffer any memory loss and will enter the game as they are, in contrast to the memory loss/force humanization of the musician half. Powers will be nerfed to a certain degree upon entering the game fully, but during recruitment they will remain at full power.

☆A DREAM ABOUT YOU
These prompts are designed to be game canon, for both rescuers and musicians both new and already in game. For those in game, they will start occurring around New Years in the form of dreams. The dreams will be very clear while happening, but after waking, they will swiftly fade away into something barely remembered. For rescuers, these dreams will occur very shortly before they are approached by Shep or other already recruited rebels to join the rescue squad and go save the people being held captive in Vista City. Rescuers will remember these dreams as clearly as something that actually happened in real life.

Both of these prompts take place in the dreamscape, ostensibly, and the surrounding will appear as whatever fits those taking part in a scene. It can shift and change as a thread goes along, as well, and may resemble things from a captive's home, the game setting, or anything else appropriate. Rescuers that are already in game can also end up in this dreamscape, and can run into both new musicians and new rescue team recruits.

►A1) FOR THE CAPTURED: The kidnapped musicians of Vista City will dream of being themselves - in a way more true than they have been for months now. They'll dream of themselves as they're meant to be, in physical form and manner of dress, and their personality will align more easily with their true nature, even as the confusing influences of their programming nag at their mind. It could alarm them, or it could feel somehow natural. Either way, their memories will still be gone, except for what they've recovered - but they feel somehow much closer to reach, like they may break through if only given the chance to dig just about deeper. They may dream of home, they may dream of Vista, but either way...when the morning comes, their memories of this experience will be all but wiped away. Including the memories of the strangers that promised that they would find them and take them home.

►A2) FOR THE RESCUERS: The dream is the first sign of something being wrong. You'll find yourself somewhere else - either a scene from your home, or someone else's, or an alien world you've never seen. In this dream, you'll find a person. Perhaps it's someone you recognize, someone you love dearly, but that doesn't remember you. Maybe it's a stranger, lost, confused, and desperate for help. Either way, you find yourself reaching out to them - but outside of this dream, you are helpless to save them. The dream will fade but stay with you in your memory, and may be a key component in you choosing to believe and join the other rescuers when they come to your door. Something has been taken, and you will take it back.

☆MAKE THESE DREAMS COME TRUE
These prompts are design to be kept as game canon after acceptance, and can be used as the official story of how your character entered the game. Importantly, the technology used to enter your timeline causes massive time distortions, which means that the outcome of this scenario will stagger and replay itself multiple times before settling on an outcome. This means that after the fact, you character may remember being encountered multiple ways, or going in more than one direction, before the timeline settled on a final path.

►B1) JUST SAY YES: Soon after these dreams, rescuers will find themselves in a strange situation. Time will abruptly stop for every part of the world except for them, and fade into a ghostly vision of its former self - just in time for them to be approached by some mysterious strangers. Whether your rescuer chooses to run, fight, or talk, eventually they'll be told the truth - people of the multiverse have been captured and taken to a universe far away to be harvested for their souls...in the form of forcing them to becoming rock stars. You heard it here first, folks.

The people recruiting you will mostly be other player rescuers that have already been recruited (regardless of whether or not that's been threaded out - you can assume your guy got recruited by someone if you want to recruit OTHER people.) The pilot and owner of the space ship doing this appears to be a blue man named Shep. He's the guy that's apparently in charge of this whole thing, but he's so busy with the dimension hopping that he's kind of hard to find and talk to. He presumably recruited some of the first members personally, but things have been sort of getting more complicated since then.

►B2) INTERSTELLAR DISCO: After you've agreed to come for whatever reason - to save you lover, friend, some guy, whatever - you're be taken upon the guitar shaped spaceship to wait out the tide of the temporal distortions picking you up has caused. It's a long journey back to Vista City, and you've got plenty of new comrades to get to know. This mission could take a while, so you better get comfy. You're in for the long haul now.

NOTE: If you want to see the interior of the spaceship (or if you want to see Shep dance) watch the music video posted up top. It's going to be a fair bit bigger in Interstellar to accommodate the big crew, but the essence is there.

☆HELPFUL INFO
► Follow the mod plurk for updates: interstellar5555
► Check out the game NAVIGATION
► Check out the MUSICIAN TDM
► Ask the mods some QUESTIONS
► Reserves open on February 27th at 12:01AM EDT
► Applications open on March 4th at 12:01AM EDT

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"...no, I've always been Eleanor, I just parade myself around with a borrowed name because nobody listens to Eleanor Rigby. That's how that song goes."

Luci rubs her face with a hand, then rests her chin in it before squinting down at Amaterasu again. "Are you saying Santiago took this from me? And I could get it back if I just... what?"

She sounds lost, maybe scared-- too human for Persephone's comfort perhaps. "I've had this same dream three times now, and I don't know what you're trying to tell me anymore. You say I'm Lucifer, you say I can stop the world, but that's insane."

The vulnerability is wrong. Even when she was beaten down by the others in the pantheon she was still confident. She never wavered even as she walked out and into her death. It makes Persephone want to burn whoever did this down. At the very least it'll be good practice for Ananke.

She wants to argue. Wants to shake her until she knows who she is. Instead she speaks, carefully and with a certain level of ceremony to it.

"You are of the Pantheon. You will be loved. You will be hated. You will be brilliant." Persephone is solemn as she looks up at Luci, sitting on the balcony. "Within two years you will be dead."

Boots scrape concrete as she climbs up onto the low balcony wall. The feeling of plasma boiling under her skin rises and she can't help grinning as she holds out a hand to Luci. "Do you want to see a miracle?"

"--Within two years you will be dead." Luci's had that dream too, and it scares the fuck out of her every time. But the words just come out when she realizes what No-Longer-Laura is saying, because it's familiar and it feels like a foundation.

Luci looks up at the offered hand and frowns. But she takes it. "This feels backwards," she observes as she stands up.

"That's because you were the one with the miracles," And the lies. She's over it. Mostly. It's hard to hold a grudge when Luci can't even remember. They'll just have to have a long talk about demon-teasing desperate teens later.

She counts under her breath. 1-2-3-4 as the plasma pounds against her skull until with a sharp snap of her fingers the entire arena bursts to life with flowered vines. The dream of Amaterasu keeps singing even as her light nourishes Persephone's vines.

"My name is Persephone," She says. "And I'm telling you, you're a god."

The sudden explosion of life in the previously empty arena startles her, though there's no place for her to take a step back to so she at least doesn't do that. But Luci does look around in awe at the vines, and leaves, and flowers bringing a familiarity and warmth to the place that hadn't ever been there. Even with Amaterasu.

"Aren't you the oh-so-special one..." she smiles as a hurricane of petals blows across the cheap seats and carpets the benches in soft red. Luci looks back at Persephone like she's seeing the most beautiful thing in the world for the first time, and then her smile gets a little more self-conscious, sadder.

"If I'm a god--" She snaps her fingers, her thumb lighting with its usual tiny flame. "--I'm a piss poor one. I can't do... this," she says, holding her hands wide.

"You will, though." There isn't a speck of doubt in her on that. Luci isn't someone that can be kept down. Lord of the Pit, Patron Saint of Lies. The girl she was, the one who worshipped all the gods and loved them in their own way is still inside her.

And even after all this time, all the anger and hurt she's carrying. Persephone wants to see Luci smile properly again.

"It's because they have you in chains. They did it back home, too. You're never your best when something's holding you back."

"That's the first thing you've said that makes sense," Luci says with a barking laugh, running her fingers through her hair in frustration. "Santiago has me on a fucking leash. I sing or I disappear off the face of the planet. Somebody I care about fucks up, or she gets stressed out and--"

Something very foreign flickers across her face, but the expression is clear enough. Fear, shame, disgust. "I'm the one she drags to her office to fix it.

"I don't want this anymore!" she shouts, turning away and pacing down the balcony. "But she killed someone with her bare hands in front of me, I can't do anything against that. And everything feels wrong except when I'm singing, and if I stop that to get away..." Luci turns back to Persephone. "What's the point?"

"You'll still be able to sing," She says, dropping back to the floor of the balcony. She remembers Luci in prison, admitting that there's no point to her if she wasn't on stage performing for her believers. It was the painful truth of it. They all existed to inspire and for that they needed all eyes on them.

"The pantheon is supposed to inspire humanity. They need you."

And then there is a look of painful honesty on her face, a remnant of the girl she was before Ananke took her head off.

"I need you."

"I need you." Luci crouches down until she can sit on the edge of the balcony with her legs facing the seats. Folding her hands as though praying, she looks up at Persephone with such conflict and hesitation. The situation is untenable, she's just prolonging her inevitable death at Lesedi's hands, and more and more of her fellow musicians are choosing life away from the stage and disappearing. There's no saving the situation now.

"You've helped me before, Persephone, I remember moments where you were the only one who would come near me. Please... help me. I can't do this alone, I'm not--" she shakes her head. "They're holding me too tightly."

"I'm going to," It's pure impulse that drives her to pull Luci into a hug and hold her tight. She's going to tear the place the made her so afraid apart brick by brick. If Ananke was going to name her Destroyer then she's going to get in some practice at it.

"Just wait for me, I'll come for you."

Putting her arms around Persephone is natural, and internally she's surprised that the impulse to crank the contact up a notch doesn't cross her mind in the moment. Holding her feels good enough, so good, like she's been waiting years to do it. Luci combs her fingers through the other god's thick blue mane and inhales her scent. She smells like smoke. Her smoke.

"Don't make me wait too long-- I've already missed you without knowing you. Now..." she pulls back and smirks lightly, brushing her fingers under Persephone's chin. "Waiting for spring's end will be agony."

Edited 2016-04-29 02:54 (UTC)

Once upon a time she would have killed for this attention, all that focus directed at her and her alone. It still sets her heart pounding of course. She's not dead. The change is internal, that quiet knowing that when she gets Lucifer back it won't be fangirl and god. They're equals.

She still would, though. If she asked.

So hard.

"It won't be so long." And if Luci forgot Amaterasu when she woke up, she'd probably forget Persephone as well. "Then you'll be free."

"If you know me, you know I've waited too long already." Luci rests her forehead against Persephone's. That promise of freedom is so good that it's catching her up on the impulse to rev some engines.

"If you're not fucking with me, if I really did give Heaven the finger and walk out, you must know that not being able to do that now is killing me."

"There's too much to explain, but you are Lucifer." How could you even explain the recurrence to a god who had lost her memories and most of the stuff that made her divine?

Persephone puts her hands on Luci's cheeks. "This is just the moment before everything collapses. I'll help you give them a show they'll never forget before we get out of here."

And it would be one hell of a show. The Devil's farewell performance. "Then we'll go home and start the real work."

"...yeah that's what all these broken memories and dreams tell me, but... you can't deny that without this kind of demonstration it's hard to believe. Even as self-absorbed and obsessed with rebellion as I am. It's a... chicken-and-the-egg thing. Which came first: Eleanor or Lucifer?"

She rests her hands in the crooks of Persephone's elbows and leans into her hands like the dream was about to end and she wanted the contact to last. "Fuck yes, I want to turn Santiago inside out for what she's done to me. I feel like I could do it, right here, in this moment. Because you're here.

"Then, whatever you need me to do darling, I'll be yours."

It was hard to explain even after being awoken as Persephone. "Eleanor was waiting to become Lucifer. We all were were waiting to become what we really were deep down." It felt like it was what she'd been waiting for her entire life.

The offer makes her grin. This is the Luci she's wanted, the one who broke out of prison and laid waste. She wasn't aimed properly back then. This time they'll have a target. She leans in like she might kiss her, lips close enough to touch before Persephone pulls back. It won't be that easy.

"I'm going to hold you to it this time. I'm not taking a cigarette as payment again."

"So I was Eleanor before, too? Can't get away from starting out quiet and boring, can I?" She lets a beat go by. "I knew there was something wrong when I couldn't remember why I picked 'Lucifer'. Someone asked if I picked it because it made me seem 'scary' or 'tough', and I just laughed because the answer was there but-- not. Would be so much easier if I could just believe what my gut is telling me."

For a moment, Luci is sure she's about to get some dream-some, and she's sure it's going to be great-- until Persephone pulls away and she's left hanging. Now she's certain this isn't a dream, everyone in her dreams can't wait to play tonsil hockey with her.

"...I'm sure it was a great cigarette."

...probably not.

"We were all somebody before we became gods," She had always been so shocked, when one of the Pantheon told her some snippet of their lives before they were gods. How Luci had smoked the same brand as her mum to avoid getting caught, how Inanna had seen her at Ragnarok. The fact that Dionysus had been at Morrigan and Baphomet's show, Cassandra as the last 'official' god of the recurrence.

It's like they all call to each other even before they're awakened.

A quick shake of her head dispels that theory. "It wasn't worth it compared to what I lost,"

Persephone says softly. Down below in the vine choked arena, Amaterasu continues to sing her heart out for a crowd that's absent.

"This was where I met you for the first time."

Luci thinks she hears what Persephone just said, and she tilts her head and frowns. She can't remember what happened, obviously, what Persephone lost in exchange for a dumb cigarette-- plenty of things weren't worth a cigarette, how is she supposed to know?

But she's looking at Amaterasu again with Persephone, the flowers and vines illuminated in the sun and looking so... magical. And it's just the two of them.

"What happened?" she asks after a beat, feeling only slightly embarrassed that she has to ask.

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☆RESCUER TEST DRIVE: SOMETHING ABOUT US

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