vatheon | Monthly Mingle Log

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Monthly Mingle Log

Another month has passed and it is time for another oppertunity to mingle. Knowing of the curse that haunts the foreigners, Station Master has taken extra care to plan this party and the preparations only during the daylight hours. Wouldn't want to cause a giant panic, right?

Today, the little tucked away part of the plaza has been livened up with a host of spooky decorations, black cats and witches, skeletons and tomb stones, they have all been placed amongst the food tables, allowing for a casual halloween-ish mood. There are also a lot of pumpkins there, freshly prepared especially for this feast.

The tables of food are back too, filled to the brim with pumpkin pies, pumpkin squash, pumpkin cups cakes, honestly, you can put a pumpkin in and it is there. There are also large bowls of candy, free for the taking.

Naturally the two booths are there again, the one belonging to the welcoming committee, for any new (or old) character with a burning question, and the one belonging to the host club. Who knows what theme they have this week. Only way to find out is to check it out!

Finally, part of the plaza has been set up to allow for the talent contest that was to be held here, organized by a few of the foreigners themselves. Maybe it is time to check it out and see if there are any cool talents on display? Or maybe you have your own talent to display. If so, feel free to visit the show.

As every month, an invitation had gone out to all the foreigners in the day leading up to the party, reminding them of the party, the date, the times, and this time, attached had been an invitation to come dressed up. They might not be able to celebrate Halloween during the evening hours, but maybe a slightly late Halloween party would lift the spirits anyway? Station Master has certainly joined in himself too. For a day, he has exchanged his trusty cap for the scariest thing he could possible think of: a familiar white nurse's cap. 2spooky.

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[Karkat did not really expect to be here today in costume. Sure, he had a costume figured out since about midway into last month, but that was in expectation of some kind of party like last year's. Obviously the curse meant that couldn't happen - or at least, not the same way. Like everyone else he got the invite, and if food was going to be there, why not go? He'd probably visit the coral today anyhow, considering the first and the third would have him distracted with anniversaries.]

[In other words, that's why (after touching the coral) Karkat has wandered over to the food table in a monochrome version of this. At least it's not the Thresh Prince getup he wore last time.]

[But there's another thing about this time: it's the juncture between months, when the newcomers arrive. Sure, there aren't many left from his universe that aren't here, but there's always the chance someone could show up... like the owner of two horns he'd recognize anywhere.]

... Terezi?

[His hand hovers over a bowl, whatever candy he was going to grab forgotten.]

[There's a welcome and familiar voice.

Terezi turns her head in his direction and sniffs the air once, a smile stretching across her face. Awkward past discussions aside, there are very few others she wants to hear as much.]

Karkat!

It's about time. I hope you weren't going to leave me to fend for myself.

[She sounds more confident than she feels, but it's better to start off on a light note.]

[Awkward past discussions, huh. For all Karkat doesn't know the one she's talking about, he should smell about the same age as she saw him last. Somewhere around that range anyway. Can she smell that?]

You're the one who just showed up like this. And don't tell me I need to fend for you. It might be forever since I've seen you, but I have not come close to forgetting how hard you drub with your cane. If anything, it's about time you showed you cackling maw around here.

[He steps closer now, more within casual conversation range than oh-hey-you're-here-and-I-just-spotted-you distance.]

I'm going to take a guess that you don't remember your last time here since it's been nearly a year in earth time. Have you read up or asked around about this place or am I going to need to give you the info dump?

Is there an all of the above option?

[She frowns. Some of his answers are a little disheartening, considering some of the ones she's forming on her own.]

The pamphlet was yawn worthy. I much prefer your far more descriptive [and colorful] explanations.

[He snorts at that, but there's some amusement to the sound. For however disheartened she might be by one thing or another, he's just glad to be having an okay conversation with her at all, even if they aren't far into it. He's missed her, even if things were awkward when last he saw her in Vatheon.]

[He motions at her.]

Come on then, we're going to find a bench and sit our asses down, because as thorough as I am you'll probably ask more. That and I'll want you to tell me what's going on back in our universe. You look older than I remember, and even if I'm not actually there, I want to keep up on things.

[He turns and starts walking, trusting her to follow by sound and scent.]

First off, as the pamphlet surely told you, we're in Vatheon. It's a big bubble under the sea, where I don't know, but the planet's more like earth than anything else I've seen. I don't know the specifics of how they bring us here, but I do know that it's a group of scientists doing it. Sometimes they send us back, sometimes they keep us around for ages, and sometimes they pull us back and forth like an especially moronic game of cross-universal ping-pong. Time does not synch up between them; you can be gone here for a few days and only show up in your universe for a few hours, or vice versa, so how long someone is gone tells you nothing about how long has passed from their perspective. Just because someone shows up at the same time as you doesn't mean they're from the same time point, and someone coming after you doesn't necessarily mean they're from your comparative future.

[And reaching the bench he was headed for, he takes a seat.]

Here, sit.

Anyhow, the one predictable thing about time is that the longer someone's gone after being in Vatheon, the less likely they are to remember the place when they return. There are some weird exceptions that crop up now and then, but that's the idea of it.

Now, as for why we're here, the scientists are running experiments. These they conduct through random events called curses which occur every so often, starting as Sunday turns into Monday by the human calendar. They last seven days, and their effects are completely random and unpredictable, despite the fact that some of them have repeated. There's one going on right now, and this is not going to be the greatest news, but you should know it ahead of time.

You smell that grey thing flying by me? That's a fairy. It's an artificial construct, and no you can't catch it. It might stick around after the week since there used to be ones that followed everyone, but I'm not sure yet. From what I gather, they were used to monitor us. Anyhow, the curse part is that at night, they melt and--and turn into these horrors, for lack of a better word.

[His tone becomes weaker as he goes on. This has not been an easy week to go through.]

They don't actually hurt you from what I've seen, but they're obviously based around whatever you fear most and represent that, even non-literally. And I am not going to detail mine, so don't ask. They follow you around, touch you when you aren't paying attention, shit like that. I have heard of one lucky jackass who hasn't seen them - his fairy melts and that's it - so, if the scientists decide you're special enough or some bullshit like that, maybe you won't have to deal with that.

... Normally they aren't so bad, though, but they can be a pain. The one before this, I got turned into a cat. Take it from someone who's been there: not having thumbs sucks heaving hoofbeast globesack.

But as you've surely gathered, the scientists are a bunch of nookbiters who get off on tormenting us. From what I've heard of info some other people got hold of a while ago, they're farming emotional energy from us, and I guess using that to experiment on the coral. The pamphlet probably mentioned that since the locals worship the thing as a fucking god, which is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The scientists are the one who even put it there. It's called the Lamufao. It is, however, useful: if you touch it, it relieves fatigue, helps aid healing, and I used it so I don't have to sleep here. Life's not actually that bad here compared to Sgrub or the Veil, but I do not want shit getting the drop on me because I was snoozing at the time.

Speaking of which, sometimes things invade. This happens a lot more rarely than the curses, and as such is even less predictable. While I've been here, there have in order been ghost pirates, dinosaurs, rotting fish monsters, a big tentacle monster called a kraken, and a big transforming ball of darkness. When that last one happened I got turned into an actual living, breathing god, by the way, which was fucking awesome.

If the scientists have anything to do with the invasions, though, I have no clue.

Now, the scientists can also screw with us via comas. Which is to say, sometimes people fall asleep and don't wake up for a week or longer for no apparent reason. They're harmless, though - you wake up eventually, fine as usual, and go on about your life. Mostly they're just annoying.

But onto the actual good part: stuff here is, for the most part, free of charge. Food, clothes, hives, whatever, so long as it's in one of the local stores, you flash your mark at an employee and it's yours.

[He holds his left hand out to her. There's a curling symbol on the back of it.]

Smell, but if you lick I swear to god I will shove you off the bench. That's the mark, and you can find your own later, because I'm not going to wait around while you sniff at yourself like a madwoman. But it's automatically there somewhere, and it's what distinguishes the foreigners, i.e. people like us from other universes, from the natives installed here.

Now, if you actually listened, you'll noticed I said most things are free. There's also an area called the Nostalgia Nook - their name, not mine, so don't blame me - which sells things from people's respective universes. GrubMart is the one for ours, and it has an alchemiter there along with whatever else from Alternia. Things there or in any other shop in the area cost Starfish Tokens. You should have a card with you that keeps track of them, and you can earn more by working a local job.

You should also have something called a Starfish Communicator. With that, you can connect to a network with all us foreigners, make posts in text, video, or voice, and generally babble whatever pointless bullshit you want at each other. It also has a list of everyone here, so if you can't get in contact with someone, check that. If they're off the list, they're gone from the bubble, and no manner of searching will make them turn up.

[Pause, breathe.]

And finally, as for who's here: Tavros, Sollux, Nepeta, Kanaya, Vriska - [He doesn't know she's gone yet.] - Equius, Gamzee, Eridan, Feferi, John, Jade, Rose, two humans from the post-Scratch version of earth called Roxy Lalonde and Dirk Strider, who yes is an annoying prick with some of Equius's disgusting hobbies tacked on, and a large handful of our ancestors. Yes, they're real, despite my nonbelief in the whole concept before. There's mine, Tavros's, Sollux's, Nepeta's, Equius's, Gamzee's - who should be avoided at all costs - and Eridan's, though every one of them has been here at one point or another, including yours, Aradia's who is death's goddamn Handmaid and no I'm not kidding, and also Her Imperious Condescension. Do not even ask how much stress I've had here.

For the record, the last thing I did when I was in the Veil was talking to John before he initiated the Scratch.

Any questions?

[Wow.

She'd expected a lot when she'd allowed Karkat to ramble on about things, but even then this exceeded her expectations.

And she's trying to keep up with all the information! She really is. But damn, there sure is a ton of it, and from just a few lines in a small sense of dread begins to build in the back of her mind. As a Seer, there's a certain viewpoint this scenario automatically makes her lean toward.

Sorry, Karkat.]

So we're all diverged timelines is what you're saying. We're all doomed players used for experimentation.

[It makes the most sense, really.]

Not quite, actually. Which actually reminds me of something I forgot among the rest, because holy shit this place is complicated if the obvious failed to reach you. If we die here, it's only because something else causes it unrelated to things like doomed timelines. And if you die, you come back five days later and more-or-less healed. It always happens, like clockwork, and I have seen more than enough examples to prove it.

But, if you do go back to your own universe, things continue like nothing happened. You don't remember Vatheon at all. No one says you were 'gone' or 'missing' or anything like that unless it was because of something else in your universe itself. You don't automatically die unless it was scheduled in the main timeline, so to speak. But even people who've died can come here - it's a lot like a second chance. Hell, not even like, it is one for a fair chunk of people. Even if they weren't dead, necessarily, but had shitty lives back home. It's not perfect by a long shot, and that's why a lot of us are trying to find some way to take control from the scientists, but there's plenty of us who would actually stay here given the choice.

[The fondness that has entered his voice is telling. He glances over at her, then back up, towards the dome covering the city.]

If you discount about five days when I was absent, and went back to go through a few more hours of shit on that meteor, I've been living here for almost two years by the human calendar. Nearly a sweep. I'm not the first one from our universe who showed up here, but I am the one who's been around longest.

Edited (added a little clarification) 2012-11-04 10:32 (UTC)

But how does that even make any sense?

[Terezi is still frowning, brows knit. It just doesn't work to say they're still part of the main timeline in this case. Perhaps they're some separated part of their original consciousness? That might allow for re-merging and dividing with their original selves, but...

This is way too confusing.]

Never mind. I'm going to give myself a headache. You've been here longer, so I'm just going to have to take your word for it!

[He's managed to use surprisingly coherent descriptions so far, after all.]

And that's the best you'll be getting with both time players gone. Not that they ever told me otherwise while they were around. I have, at least, seen people go back and forth a lot, so it's not like I'm farming my ass for answers to pull out.

[Honestly, he's long since given up on understanding the weirder points of this place. Timeline shenanigans seem pretty tame compared to some of it - hell, even something as frequent as curses outdo them on a regular basis.]

Is that all you want to ask for now, though? Because if it is I want a rundown of important stuff that's happened back on the meteor. I've heard a little about it here and there, but I don't think any of the trolls or humans are as far along as you from the looks of it.

[He squints a bit. Just how old is she know?]

["Both". So he wasn't counting the dancestors. And from his following comments it seems he isn't even aware of them.

Well, there's only one answer to that problem, of course. Though it's not because she's a seer that she's aware of these future events, she handles revealing them in a similar fashion.

She grins widely.]

Nope! Not telling you that.

What? Why?

[Suffice it to say that was not the answer he hoped for. He frowns pretty notably at that, and out come the irritable gestures to emphasize it.]

Everyone else here has told me things at one point or another. It's what I do - I tell them things about this place, and I get the info in return. And I'm the leader, aren't I? I need to know this shit so I can keep on top of the situation regarding my own team, and the human team by proxy.

What if there's some important that happened that I don't know about and don't know how to prepare myself for because some cagey broad won't tell me? I tell you what: things get screwed up! Even if I do know, I have long since learned that proper precautions are the line between things being handled and everything hitting the whirling device face-first, and we all get hit with the ugly fallout.

And seriously, unless my memory is that faulty, you look significantly older than I remember. You can't tell me that all that time there's been nothing important going on.

Because if everyone knows the future, then there aren't any surprises left! That's kind of cheating.

[She puts a finger to her lips.]

Besides. A sweep of passing through various dream bubbles and talking with other selves can be a lot of confusing information to pass on. Just think of the worst that could happen in preparation for that and you should be set, right?

[Karkat is outright scowling by now. He may have missed Terezi quite a bit, but one thing he didn't was this cryptobaffling mind game bullshit she pulls. He probably looks (or smells) ridiculous, shaking his fists through the air as he speaks.]

But I've never even been in a dream bubble! How am I supposed to have the slightest fraction of a clue what to prepare for? And a sweep worth of that? What about what's happening the rest of the time? What are you all even doing? What's future me doing? I want to keep on top of this shit, not be stuck in an increasingly widening gap of ignorance that grows with time to resemble reality's own heinous asscrack.

Considering we're still on the asteroid, there's not exactly many other places to go besides the dream bubbles!

Does it help if I say we're on a three year (in human time) journey to meet up with the rest of the humans we've been talking to all this time? Will this sate your curiosity any?

No, it doesn't, because that lies well within the realm of what I've already been told. Dave and Rose hit god tier and are there with what's left of our team, and John and Jade - also god tier - are off a different way. The only reason I don't know anything further is because they aren't from any further than the start of the journey.

And don't you try to bullshit me into thinking nothing big happened, either. It's a long length of time! Shit, as a transuniversal rule, has a tendency to go down. I don't expect a rundown of every five minutes either, but if you could at least have the basic goddamn decency to hit the big points, maybe I'd stop haranguing you for things you should have told me in the first place.

Hey, I didn't know what you did or didn't know!

[She sighs.]

You're really not making this easy on me. People aren't supposed to be aware of their futures, you know! This whole place is really taking a huge shit on the timeline.

But just in case there's some possibility of them showing up, I guess you should know that we ran into our ancestors slash descendants. Our "dancestors" if you will. The pre-scratch versions of our ancestors. Their ghosts are in the dream bubbles too. [You know, the Dirks to our Daves.] We've basically just been spending a lot of time hanging around with them. Or avoiding them, depending.

Edited 2012-11-08 02:00 (UTC)

[Not making it easy is arguably part of the point by now. He goes to say more, but--oh hey, actual explanation. His mouth snaps shut, and it's not long before his eyebrows have drawn together at what she says.]

What? Pre-scratch versions of our...? Are you saying there's more timeline stuff to keep track of?

And second off, I already said people don't remember anything from Vatheon when they return to their worlds. You telling me all this isn't going to screw things up. If it was, timelines would be doomed a hundred times over by now, and it's not like you keeping me from the info would prevent anyone else from around your point showing up.

There's always more time stuff to keep track of, Karkat! We just thankfully aren't always aware of it.

You'll have to excuse me for trying to be careful.

[Luckily this is big enough news that certain other details can be left out for now.]

Wonderful.

[He rubs his hand over his face fully now. Things he'd glad he didn't get saddled with: being the time player. He messed up enough without having to keep that straight.]

But yeah, I guess I can let it pass for that reason. Better than "I'm being a frustrating nookwipe because I can be."

[Which he wouldn't put past her, at least some of the time.]

But if you're calling these other versions pre-scratch, that means there had to be another one before, right? What happened there? Because if there's another thing I have no totally had enough of already, it's dipshits failing to play a game right and fucking people over because of it.

There was a scratch for us. We are the post-scratch - the more successful group. There was just a lot of drama with them, it looks like. The annoying kind, not the kind involving multiple murders.

I don't know if it's entirely their fault? Their world didn't prepare them for the game as well as ours did. It took them something like a couple sweeps.

When they realized they had to scratch their session, one of them decided to kill off the whole group so that their ghosts would continue to 'live' in dream bubbles and they wouldn't be wiped from existence entirely.

No kidding we were, if that's how long it took them and they failed anyway. Spare me any details on how exactly they fucked up unless it's important to us.

How many of them have you met, though? Because I've spoken to every one of our ancestors at one point or another, but never any version of them before the scratch.

All twelve! Well, they're all there. I haven't really talked with all of them, but I've seen them around.

It's really weird how they all came together just as we came onto the scene, though, considering some of them had been separated in the bubbles for millions of sweeps worth of time.

Millions of sweeps? How does that even work?

[He knows there are weird time-space shenanigans going on there, given the plan about the Green Sun (for however much that went different than planned), but he still raises his eyebrow at something that extreme.]

But if anything the coincidence is probably on purpose by whatever pan-churning rules of reality govern our lives.

Dream bubbles don't operate under the same rules of time as everything else, Karkat! Two people could die at the same time. One might spend an eternity in one dream bubble, only to cross paths with the other person later and find that to them they'd only just kicked it!

I definitely agree, though. When something is this much of a coincidence, it often isn't really a coincidence at all!

So, time shenanigans, round smash-me-with-a-hammer-so-I-don't-have-to-deal-with-this.

Shoving the mechanics far, far away, what about the people themselves? Anything I need to know about them specifically in case they show up? And if not, any other events or plans you can think of that would be important to know ahead of time here?

Monthly Mingle Log

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I am so sorry

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that was so not the icon I wanted to use, and nor was the second one

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