Narciso Anasui (
disassemblies) wrote2024-04-23 02:27 pm
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ignore this
CW: grief, depression, bullying, parental neglect, isolation, hopelessness
A blue-black-gold crack in the world greets you, hovering ominously in Caleb's front yard. Several of the mochi cat creations lay in tower-pile nearby, crying out mournfully while a concerned Delcatty tries to calm them. Every so often, a strange almost-spark crackles from the entrance and sets them off again. Caleb's Dewott seems to be trying to guard it, or at least keep the creations out of it. He'll stand down when you approach, though. You, at least, aren't likely to end up so much squished mochi cat if you go in.
So. You go in. And maybe you want to go back out almost as soon as you step in, because the place before you is unsettling in the worst way. You now stand on a dilapidated and unsafe train station platform, looking out over what might be a black sun and the ruins of a space station. There are holes in the platform and it looks like it might give way at the slightest provocation. It is dead silent. There is not a soul around.
At the end of the platform stands a train that once upon a time might have been gorgeous. Now it's rusted and dingy, the lights broken and the doors sealed shut.
And then you approach. What lights aren't broken flicker to life and the doors start to slowly, painfully creak open. A recorded voice rings out: "The Astral Express is now boarding. All passengers, please make sure you have all of your belongings and step aboard." The recording crackles, and then repeats. And repeats. And repeats and repeats and repeats, each repetition more and more degraded. By the time you all step on board, it's barely words. It's barely a voice.
You step aboard. The doors creak shut. The train jerks, and then off the Astral Express goes.
The interior of the train is...somewhat better than the exterior. The interior is covered in trash with a narrow path going from one end of the car to the other, but the benches all seem perfectly safe to sit on. The lights in the parlor car all work, as well.
Unhinged laughter comes from the stairs leading up to the platform at the other end. There stands Caleb, tired and clearly not doing so hot, and...another Caleb? It looks a little like him, but instead of a shock of black hair and bright blue eyes like the real Caleb, this one has half-silver, half-black hair and glowing gold eyes. His clothes look like they were run through a shredder before he got them.
The Not-Caleb laughs again. "Oh, great," he says with a sigh. "Guests. And here I thought we'd have all the time in the world to break you down, Caleb! Eh, whatever." He opens the door, tugging Caleb (who you can now see is tied to this Not-Caleb) along after him. We'll just continue our conversation somewhere else while they rot. Toodles~"
"No, wait, lemme--" Caleb's pleas are silenced by the door slamming shut behind him.
He looked terrified.
A blue-black-gold crack in the world greets you, hovering ominously in Caleb's front yard. Several of the mochi cat creations lay in tower-pile nearby, crying out mournfully while a concerned Delcatty tries to calm them. Every so often, a strange almost-spark crackles from the entrance and sets them off again. Caleb's Dewott seems to be trying to guard it, or at least keep the creations out of it. He'll stand down when you approach, though. You, at least, aren't likely to end up so much squished mochi cat if you go in.
So. You go in. And maybe you want to go back out almost as soon as you step in, because the place before you is unsettling in the worst way. You now stand on a dilapidated and unsafe train station platform, looking out over what might be a black sun and the ruins of a space station. There are holes in the platform and it looks like it might give way at the slightest provocation. It is dead silent. There is not a soul around.
At the end of the platform stands a train that once upon a time might have been gorgeous. Now it's rusted and dingy, the lights broken and the doors sealed shut.
And then you approach. What lights aren't broken flicker to life and the doors start to slowly, painfully creak open. A recorded voice rings out: "The Astral Express is now boarding. All passengers, please make sure you have all of your belongings and step aboard." The recording crackles, and then repeats. And repeats. And repeats and repeats and repeats, each repetition more and more degraded. By the time you all step on board, it's barely words. It's barely a voice.
You step aboard. The doors creak shut. The train jerks, and then off the Astral Express goes.
The interior of the train is...somewhat better than the exterior. The interior is covered in trash with a narrow path going from one end of the car to the other, but the benches all seem perfectly safe to sit on. The lights in the parlor car all work, as well.
Unhinged laughter comes from the stairs leading up to the platform at the other end. There stands Caleb, tired and clearly not doing so hot, and...another Caleb? It looks a little like him, but instead of a shock of black hair and bright blue eyes like the real Caleb, this one has half-silver, half-black hair and glowing gold eyes. His clothes look like they were run through a shredder before he got them.
The Not-Caleb laughs again. "Oh, great," he says with a sigh. "Guests. And here I thought we'd have all the time in the world to break you down, Caleb! Eh, whatever." He opens the door, tugging Caleb (who you can now see is tied to this Not-Caleb) along after him. We'll just continue our conversation somewhere else while they rot. Toodles~"
"No, wait, lemme--" Caleb's pleas are silenced by the door slamming shut behind him.
He looked terrified.
Bitch At The Shadow
After a minute or two, the intercom system crackles to life. You hear a sigh. "You people just can't take a hint, can you? I told you to rot, not try and bang down my door! You're not gonna get him back, so go on, just give up. Maybe we'll let you off at the next stop or something."
He stops speaking, but notably you don't hear the intercom shut off. He'll probably respond, if you yell at him loud enough. Or you could ignore him and focus on the door again. There seems to be a star-shaped impression, but no stars anywhere to be seen. Maybe try throwing trash at it?
And wow, is there a lot of trash here. It's not piled too high, maybe about calf-deep, but there's still so much of it. At first glance, it looks to be only trash, but if you dig around (or even simply take the time to look at it more closely) you'll realize that for every empty bottle or broken television there's things that seem a bit more...sentimental. Report cards from kindergarten to graduation, souvenirs from theme parks, a kid's fishing rod, a complete box set of some book series--all of it in good condition. If you dig around, you might even find a map of Kaisou, though it's been scribbled out with bright red crayon.
Eventually, either from digging or just being really luck, you'll find a collection of stars-and-moons toys, like you might buy from a gachapon machine. They're all still in their capsules. It's just a matter of getting them open and finding the start that fits the door.
Continue?
There Goes The Data
Unlike the parlor car, there is no clean path from the door to...anywhere, be it the pallets, the shelves, or the door on the far end of this bizarre car. It's just trash, so much trash, piled knee high and almost impossible to walk through. You can do it, though, if you press on.
Eventually you might reach one of the shelves lining the wall here. It's all digitized, so there are no books. Any "spines" you touch will just bring up a projection of whatever text is in there, though you can "flip" the "pages" to read. Of course, you'll have to find a file that isn't corrupted. You won't be able to read "W37T Y@N6" or "A5TR1D 5H3R1D@N" or even "R3G15 C@M3R0N", but if you can find "Noctis Cameron", "Dan Heng", or any files with the names of people Caleb knows are on the app, you'll be able to read those.
Any file you read starts off normally. The first few pages talk about how Caleb knows the subject ("My cousin and best friend." "I think the other me knew him. He seems nice!" "Noct's old babysitter and the guy who sells me cool shit, even if it breaks. Might have known the other me." As you read, though, they get stranger and stranger. Sometimes the words will change right before your eyes ("I still have a scar from that stupid prank at the lake" glitches out and becomes "I can still sometimes smell the knock out grenade he used to take us to the Underworld" before correcting itself) or the pages themselves will suddenly go blank save for line after line of question marks. All of the files end with "At least, that's what I thought. I don't know anymore."
[Maybe offer an option to access the corrupted files and get information. It won't be much, most of it corrupted, but some snippets about how he feels about some of the people in there, namely his mom dad and uncle.]
Curious.
Maybe you want to focus on the door. It's going to take a long time to get there, but you can do it if you don't decide to just give up. It might be tempting, with the "beds" scattered around mostly in your direct path. If you press on, though, make sure you pick up the trash cans. You can probably put what you clear away inside them. They won't get full.
As you get closer to the door, a strange rumbling starts behind you. Nothing's there if you look, but the second you reach the door it turns into a trash can with legs and arms and promptly roundhouse kicks you in the face. "I cannot allow you to pass," it says. If you attempt to approach it, it'll just kick you again. On the third approach, something strange happens. The trash can sends you flying again and this time it seems to take a deep breath. Suddenly every single other trash can starts to hover and is pulled over to this main trash can, whirling around it in a bizarre trash can tornado It picks up the trash in the room as it grows and grows.
Eventually, it falls away. And you now stand before a ten foot tall trash can.
Fight?
Fight Trash Fight
"Hey guys! Sorry, they were really stubborn this time. Don't worry, I didn't say anything."
"Okay...and why are you talking to us?" This boy sounds mildly offended.
Caleb sounds confused. "I...thought you'd want to know? It's not like any of you meant to start that fire in the dumpster this time. So, yeah, I just thought I'd tell you guys?"
A girl speaks this time, laughing. It's cruel. "About what, how we got away with it? Again? God, you are so stupid Caleb." There's more laughter from other kids. "Come on, I think I'm tired of talking to him. See ya...not."
There's more laughter..
The memory fades out and over the intercom (you didn't forget about that, did you?), you can hear the real and current Caleb laugh a little weakly. "I remember those kids. I think I had a crush on Marissa..."
"And she thought you were stupid. And disgusting. You have real good taste in people, Caleb. No wonder they keep ditching you."
The intercom shuts off. Before you is the door to the next car as well as a strange mask. Half of it is laughing, half of it is crying, and it has "Caleb Sheridan" carved along the edge.
Continue?
A Lot of Things Unto Death
The light from the lamps is barely enough to see by, as if they can't pierce the darkness by themselves, and there's something blocking your direct path, so you have to take a winding roundabout way if you want to get close to one. (All magical light is about as effective as the lamps.) When you do, you'll find a "Brightness" button; press it and the lamp gets...a little brighter, but more notably you suddenly have little starry orbs floating around you.
And even more notably, you are suddenly on a wall. Well then. You can walk around at least, and hopefully find the cluster of sparkles at the edge where the wall meets the floor (or perhaps another wall). If you get close, one of the orbs floating around you will attach itself to the wall, making a ramp that will allow you to return to ground level. Another starry lamp is right in front of you.
As you turn on the lamps, navigate the walls and floor, and eventually make your way up to the ceiling, you'll hear something moving around in the darkness. It never gets close to the lamps or any source of light, so you can never get a good look at it. As you light more and more lamps, it gets louder and louder, almost desperate, until it stops completely as you approach the moon lamp on the ceiling. The moon lamp flickers and then turns on, lighting up the entire car.
Maybe it shouldn't have, though, as now it's easy to see you've been navigating a massive graveyard of trash this entire time. There's gravestones everywhere, most of them broken or damaged so the names are hard to read. You might be able to make out "My Life", "Kaisou", or "Everything", but it's hard to be certain. There's one gravestone that's intact, however, blocking the door. This one reads "Regis Cameron. Beloved Uncle." Beneath his name "Earthquake" has been crossed out and "Yokai?" is carved beneath it.
Fight Start
As terrifying as this thing looks, it's not too complicated a creature. Attack the gravestones, and the person trapped in them will be freed. Attack the creature itself, and while every so often it will lock someone else in a gravestone, it doesn't seem to have any particularly dangerous abilities. It just hits hard, hits fast, and is hard to hit.
Fight End
"H-hey, mom? Dad? Can I...show you guys something? I did something really cool in my game--"
"Caleb." The woman--his mother--sighs and doesn't even look up at her son. "What have I told you about when Duncan and I are working?"
Caleb, already small, somehow gets smaller. "To...not interrupt."
"Are we working?"
"..." Caleb doesn't respond and turns away as the memory ends. As it fades, the intercom once again sparks to life.
"That was the last time you ever tried to show them anything, wasn't it?" The Shadow's voice sounds almost sickeningly sympathetic and fake.
"...and?" Caleb himself sounds so tired. "You can stop showing me these memories, they're my memories, I think I know them."
"Our memories, dear Caleb~ Don't be so greedy now."
The intercom shuts off. The door to the next car stands before you.
Continue?
Maze of Misery
All that meets you is an ice cold freezer of a room, filled with strange walls of ice and frozen trash. A maze, of some sort. There's no sound except for your own footsteps and voices; if you yell, try to break the quiet, the room just seems to swallow it up. There is nothing in here but you and the cold.
The only way forward is to clear the maze. It's long, and cold, and every so often you run into weird, shadowy blobs that are half-frozen over. They attack if you get too close; when you defeat them, for a moment you'll hear laughter and the sounds of people having fun. It's distant and faint, though, like you're hearing it through a window or locked door, and it vanishes just like every sound in this bizarre, icy maze.
[Oh, and if you're observant? You might recognize the shadowy blobs, at least a little. They look an awful lot like inverted versions of the two people Caleb called "Mom" and "Dad", of his uncle Regis, and of some teenagers. THIS PART MIGHT BE SAVED FOR COMMENTS] And the more you fight, the more blobs you seem to find. It's nothing to worry about, surely.
End of Maze
Before groaning and just collapsing, freezing over solid without a fight at all and shattering the maze behind it. As it does, one final memory plays out on the ice on the walls by the door. It's the most recent of the ones you've seen today, probably taking place just days ago. Caleb stands in a thrift store with an elderly person, clearly helping them get things they can't reach. It's surprisingly happy, all things considered, with Caleb laughing and talking to the elder like they're his grandparent.
As he helps them load things into their rideshare, the elder smiles. "What did you say your name was, dear?"
"Oh, Caleb."
"Caleb. And you said you do...the doordashing?"
"Yep!" He smiles. "Doesn't pay all that well, but hey, it's a job!"
"It is!" They laugh. "But surely there's something else you'd rather be doing? You're such a nice man, and so smart. You could do so much more than that!"
Ah. The smile stays, but whatever Caleb says to the elder is lost to what is clearly his inner thoughts. "You can't even see the raccoon tail. Tomorrow I might be a freakin' walking black hole, or I might not even be here, or who the hell knows? There's no point. I'll just stick to the gigs. It's fine. Really!"
There's no intercom interruption this time.
Continue?
Last Car + Ambrosial Graveyard
And you didn't think it'd be that easy, did you? This isn't the next car at all. Turn around to try and return to where you came from and you'll see that the "car" you were in was just a strange little box, a fake car to lure you in a sense of false security and hope that you were almost done. All around is a shore somewhere, with odd walls of water on either side. The sky looks a bit broken, like there are pieces missing, but otherwise it seems fine. At least there seems to be a clear path to the other end.
As you start walking to the other end, you find yourself climbing an odd tree. Some of its branches seem broken, but as you climb more and more of them are in one piece. As you climb, more and more of them have gravestones hanging from them, like twisted holiday ornaments. It's easy to touch the ones hanging from higher branches, especially since it seems like they want to be touched. If you do, you'll start to hear voices.
The first one is Noctis, telling him that Regis died and that it was a freak earthquake, only for another Noctis to start speaking over the first and say that it wasn't an earthquake, but yokai. The next stone you touch adds Sam's voice, younger, talking about video games overlaid with Sam's voice, older and somehow sleezier, trying to sell Caleb something, further overlaid with Sam's voice admitting he didn't die. Wei Wuxian and Argenti can be heard at the next stone, saying one thing that's overridden by them saying another. Dan Heng and even Regis's voices join the cacophony, though at this point you can't hear what anyone is saying.
It doesn't stop until you get to the actual door to the next car, at the top of the tree, and Caleb's own voice sounds out, tired.
I don't know what's going on anymore.
The silence after is deafening. You are left with only a giant, chained door.
The chains are about the size of an adult man, long and heavy and pure solid metal. They can't be melted or broken, but there are two rather obvious locks on the chains with a keyhole between them. One lock looks like a mask. The other is just an orb, but the stars engraved on the outside make the key obvious.
As you slot the mask and astrolabe in, the tree begins to rumble and shake. The branches around you crumble away into the sea and more of the sky starts to fall. You'd best take cover, as it will last for a while.
The mask and astrolabe slot in. The chains fall away. The keyhole is revealed.
Continue?
Boss Fight
Okay, so you're not back in the real world.
Stepping into the house is like stepping into a cavern. It's dark, the only light coming from the galaxies rushing pass the windows and a room down the hall, and your steps echo to a deafening degree. Nothing approaches you, at least, meaning the walk from the front door to the room with light is safe.
The room you eventually find your way too turns out to be Caleb's bedroom. There, Caleb and his Shadow sit on his bed, still tied together. Caleb looks tired and as if he's been crying. The Shadow looks somehow both gleeful and bored as he turns to look at you.
"You really, seriously came all this way? For him?" He jerks a thumb at Caleb. As he does, the floor breaks in front of him, leaving nothing but a massive endless canyon between you and them. You people never know when you give up, do you? What, do you need me to spell it out for you?"
The Shadow stands. The rope keeping him tied to Caleb melts away and a glass wall shoots up between the bed and the Shadow. The Shadow warp-steps over the canyon. "Caleb isn't leaving. He doesn't deserve to leave. He doesn't want to leave. Everything makes sense here, after all! No one's lying to him, nothing's changing, he can just stay here and never worry again! All he needs to do is admit it...but it won't. Because of you morons." The Shadow starts to grow and change. His hair lengthens, still a black-silver mess, and strange gold ichor starts to seep from his eyes. He laughs. "So I guess it's up to me to take out the trash!"
Fight!
[Each form will have a sub-starter, written as needed in case there's things I need to react to in the thread.
The start is a Nanook Form: this is a DPS check they just have to beat the shit out of. One attack is the Shadow hitting a baseball at them. Zelda Tennis it back to eventually move on to the next phase. Shadow yells about how no one understands what he's going through, no one else has had all of this happen to them in such rapid succession, fuck you, stop fighting him, Caleb belongs here with the Shadow.
Aha Form: gravity bullshit like from Something Unto Death's car. Weird gravestones like that fight as well, destroy one to adjust the gravity and eventually send Aha Shadow flying into the walls enough time (in between beating the shit out of it) to move on to the third phase. Shadow laughs about how it's fine, really, he'll be fine if they just let him stay here where things make sense! He's safe, so stop fighting!
IX Form: cold, so cold, and the Shadow just lies there in a shadowy blob crying about how he doesn't understand it all. Everything's changed, he's trying to adjust, but he can't, he just can't. He can't talk to anyone about this--Noct is dealing with way worse and everyone else was more Noct's friend than his and he doesn't want to bother Dan Heng or Blade or Jing Yuan. Just let it all stop. Maybe have the players roll to see if they feel that despair. Either way, the way to defeat the boss is to just walk up to him and help him to his feet.]
Things I Can't Edit Because Comments
Something Unto Death and gravestone
WWX is getting nabbed by Something Unto Death