A TRAIN COMES INTO THE STATION.
You wake up on a train.
Your phone is buzzing. It's in your pocket, in your hand, on the seat next to you. It's a normal phone, and you're on a normal train car. One of the lights flickers, a little further down. The world is very quiet. It feels like you're right where you're meant to be. On the phone's surface is a white screen and the words—
WELCOME TO THE CITY. BEGIN ORIENTATION?
▶ NO
Please take a moment to complete your orientation.
Once you're finished, the subway doors slide open to let you out onto the train platform. To your right, the platform continues on and eventually ends; to the left is a set of stairs that will lead you up into the station itself. The platform is quiet, clean, empty—there's no one else around, and the only sounds you can hear are your own footsteps, your own breaths, and the occasional faraway sound of a creaking pipe or rush of air. The train you disembarked will stay there as long as you do, its doors still open, until you finally decide to venture up into this new locale.
As you make your way up the stairs to your left, you find yourself in the belly of City Hall station. The station is large, a sprawling underground mini-metropolis of corridors and storefronts. Here, you may find others like you, freshly-arrived city residents from other realms (or even your own). There is also a subway map, which will give you an idea of the layout of the neighborhood, and ticketing machines, which can currently only be used to buy tickets to a handful of stations located on lines 1, 2, and 9.
If you're hungry or in need of any kind of supplies, there are plenty of storefronts inside the subway station as well—snack stands, convenience stores, restaurants, clothing stores, a pharmacy, and a variety of empty shops that may or may not have ever been in use. Everything is unlocked, and you can take whatever you need.
Characters may stay on the train platform indefinitely, and may re-board and re-disembark from the subway as many times as they like, but the train will not depart nor will the doors close. Once they go up the stairs into the train station, they may hear the train doors closing and the train departing. Another train will not arrive, no matter how long the character waits. Only once they come up the stairs into the station itself may characters encounter their fellow newly-arrived residents and take advantage of what the city has to offer.
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WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD.
The station is located in the city center. It has three major exits that lead to areas of interest in the district, but there are several other smaller exits that lead in other directions around the neighborhood. You are welcome to use any of them, but may find the north, southwest, and east exits to be the most welcoming.
TO THE NORTH
The northern entrance to the station leads up into the sunlight and puts you out in a brickwork plaza. There's a modest building in front of you, three or four stories of stone with a welcoming facade. There's a sign above the entryway—it says City Hall. You may be tempted to explore, if you're interested in learning more about the city and how it functions, but prepare to find yourself disappointed—the folders in the records rooms are full of empty, blank sheets of paper, and the logbooks and balance sheets are similarly devoid of information.
Immediately to the southwest of City Hall, you will find a small building that houses the tourist information kiosk. It looks welcoming, with an inviting glass facade and a sign above the entryway announcing it as the "TOURIST CENTER." It's a humble building with a receptionist's desk on the back wall opposite the entrance, empty magazine shelves lining the side walls, and a few spinning brochure racks full of blank pamphlets. Anyone is welcome to peruse the tourist literature, though they won't offer much information, being primarily filled with pictures of the surrounding area—City Hall, the park, a statue garden, and the surprisingly heavily-featured cemetery. There are a few sentences sprinkled throughout about basic offerings of the city, such as apartment complexes and office buildings, as well as a few maps with the same limited scope as the larger version on the wall behind the receptionist's desk.
The main feature of the tourist center is the interactive kiosk installed dead in the center, right in the middle of a few rows of uncomfortable chairs that fill the small room. It's noticeably in the way of any would-be foot traffic through the tourist center, and something about the technology seems a little more modern than the computer behind the desk or the landline phone on the wall. The kiosk is a tall silver rectangle, about average adult height, and the upper half is a screen welcoming visitors to touch it to activate the kiosk. If you were to touch it, the screen would come to life with simple dialogue inviting visitors to ask it their questions.
However, residents should note that the kiosk is only programmed to assist with exploration within the available areas of the city. It may not be able to answer every question, and tampering with the kiosk may result in unreliable or inaccurate answers!
TO THE SOUTHWEST
The western exit of the station takes you up into a city park, lush and green with a very light fog still hanging about the trees. There are lampposts on the walkways and benches where you could rest, and plenty of flora, although you can neither see nor hear any signs of animal life. You walk the paths that meander idly through the verdant grass and you feel a sense of peace, some of your unease about this place easing into a pleasant calm. The air smells fresh, like it's recently rained, and you'll find the grass ever so slightly damp should you decide to take a seat.
As you make your way deeper into the park, the trees grow denser and the smell of soil and plant life grows stronger. This is the older part of the park, very nearly a forest, with ivy climbing the trunks of the trees and plants and shrubs growing riotously around their bases. As you turn a corner, you find yourself first in the statue garden, although the statues are harder to see now, choked as they are with ivy. There are many statues, some partially obscured, some fully—very few of them still stand free of the vines and clinging roots. (It doesn't feel quite as peaceful here.) If a statue's face looks a little bit familiar, you may not want to look at it too long.
Continue down the path and you will find yourself in a graveyard, one that seems centuries old. Most of the headstones are worn away by time and covered in moss, rendering them impossible to read. The few that are free of moss are blank, or bear only suggestions of names too faint to be understood. (Was that the name of—no, it couldn't have been. Could it?) Many of the headstones stand at an angle or are toppled over completely, having been subjected to either strong winds or the roots of the trees that grow up from some of the graves, spreading branches toward the sky.
TO THE EAST
The final exit of the station, to the east, puts you out on a quiet surface street. Are you hungry? Or are you paralyzed by choice? There are plenty of restaurants, offering options of almost any food you can imagine. You could try a convenience store—it's well stocked, and the items there seem free for the taking. How about a restaurant? There's no one to take your order, but when you look in the kitchen, there's something on the stove, and it's just what you've been craving. Imagine that.
A few blocks down, you come in through the lobby of a tall building and find yourself in a corporate office. The fluorescent lights are steady and unforgiving, and the cubicles and offices are empty. There are a few pieces of paper on desks, a few folders left in organizers, but everything is perfectly blank. Despite how empty and quiet the office is, it nonetheless gives you the feeling that just a few minutes ago, this place was bustling with workers going about their daily business.
You enter another building and find yourself in the lobby of an apartment complex—finally, a place to rest. The first door you try opens easily into a completely empty living room, freshly vacuumed but without a single piece of furniture. It's a nice apartment, quiet, but with a little too much echo for your taste, maybe. Still, and perhaps oddly, you have no trouble envisioning what life here would be like.
The second door you open leads to an apartment that feels lived-in. Why does it feel lived-in? It's fully furnished with items that seem to go together perfectly, true, but the feeling is more than that—the room feels like someone was just here, maybe standing right in the kitchen only moments before you swung the door open. The air is a perfectly comfortable temperature, and it somehow smells like home despite that you've never once set foot here before. The refrigerator is stocked, and the cabinets are full of spices and flatware and kitchen utensils.
As you look around the living room, you find that there are pictures in frames on the walls and some of the flat surfaces—a seascape, a field, a shot of a city park bench. In each of the photos there's something just slightly wrong with the angle, as though the photographer were aiming for a subject that can no longer be seen.
Characters are welcome to explore the district around the City Hall subway station to their heart's content. The City Hall building itself contains several floors of offices and file rooms, but none of them contain any particularly interesting information. Nonetheless, characters may wish to team up with other newcomers and try to find some hints about the nature of the city. They can also spend a while in the park, the statue garden, or the graveyard. In the blocks surrounding the station there are plenty of options for food and housing, as well as office buildings, storefronts, and alleyways to look around. There are no workers in any of the buildings, and there does not seem to be an honor system for payment, nor any consequences for taking food from the stores or setting up camp in an apartment or office building.
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SO A TURKEY WALKS INTO A BOWLING ALLEY...
There's a bowling alley open in the newly-accessible district, and you're invited to come test your mettle!
Walking into the lobby, you're struck by a peculiar combination of scents—shoe polish, floor wax, pretzels and nachos, and something pungent and a little oily. On the wall behind the desk is a shelf full of pair after pair of shoes, in every size you could possibly imagine, and there's a low rack filled with brightly-colored, heavy bowling balls that are ready for the taking. You can also hear the low hum of machinery and the rattle of pins being reset every time someone knocks them down, the bowling alley a well-oiled machine despite the fact that no one seems to be manning it.
You can bowl alone, start a match play (1-v-1), or bowl as a team, but you'll quickly find that bowling is much more fun (and somehow easier) when you're playing with others. Maybe it's because being around other people raises your spirits, but you feel more confident when you step up to bowl, and you find that when you're playing as part of a team, the bowling ball travels faster and in a straighter line, and you seem to be making strikes and spares with much greater frequency. Teamwork really does make the dream work!
If you occasionally see what you think might be the shadow of someone passing behind the machinery at the far end of the lane, don't worry about it—that's probably just your imagination.
If you stop by the bowling alley at night, you will find the place totally transformed. There's a disco ball hanging from the ceiling and brightly-colored lights flashing and dancing around the floor and walls. Any white parts of your clothing glow a delightful blueish color, and you find that you're illuminated in all kinds of interesting shades by the blacklight bulbs glowing in the ceiling. This is cosmic bowling, truly not for the faint of heart!
When you've finished bowling, you may want to stop by the snack area for a pretzel or hot dog, a soda, or—if you're there for cosmic bowling—maybe even a more adult beverage from the food counter on the far end of the building.
There isn't anything especially spooky about the bowling alley—except, of course, being forced to wear shoes that have been worn by a hundred strangers before. Characters are welcome to find their shoe size, grab a bowling ball, and go to town! Characters who come during the day will encounter a normal bowling alley, but they can always come back at night to get the full cosmic bowling experience. There will always be shoes in their sizes, the pins will reset themselves, and the balls will always be returned. Just be careful, those ball chutes can crush your fingers if you're not careful!
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WILDCARD.
The city is by no means small, and there are plenty of things for you to see. There's no rush in exploring, so feel free to take your time looking around and peering into various nooks and crannies and alleyways—and don't worry, you're not very likely to find anything peering back.
If none of the above prompts appeal, feel free to check out the Locations and Maps pages and write your own freestyle prompt using one or many of the available locations.
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citycenter) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
citylogs2023-07-01 11:00 am
SASHISU!! SASHISU!!!!!!!! hewwo, comfort pls
[ so he'd followed her like a hellhound and, even now, he isn't making any secret of it, sneakers crunching on sunlight-dappled grass until he stops in front of her and her little picnic. what's changed? his casual way of dressing as a result of foraging, the one empty sleeve as a result of failure, her long hair and tired eyes and the smokeless air that surrounds her. better to burn incense in a place like this, after all. ]
Shouko! Yo.
[ his upbeat friendliness wears like an old skin. they hadn't spoken much, had they? during a reunion that was more like a war where she only saw part of the end. and yet he'd found her first all those years ago, just by knowing her haunts, relying on her reliability. she's the most responsible ghost he's ever known, and how wonderful for them all, she's still alive — ]
[ and not sitting next to her own epitaph: "Shouko Ieiri, Beloved Healer and Heavyweight" ]
You look well.
lovingly elbows my way in.. move i'm gay
and, in the middle of all that death, sits ieiri shouko, as always, tending to her lunch with little care for the overwhelming shadow of it all around her.
it makes sense, in that moment. suguru must have felt a pull towards her the same way they feel a pull towards each other, and though he doesn't move in just yet, hovering at the edge of the path, it does relieve him to see that shouko looks just as she always does. he remembers this version of her: she looks like the one he knows, not pulled from some other strange point in their lives, like suguru. the overwhelming relief in seeing her is nearly palpable, though he won't acknowledge it--when was the last time they had a moment, just the two of them? they'd sat in companionable silence when suguru left, when suguru attacked, when suguru died. he should have been a better friend to her, but drowning in his own selfish feelings, he hadn't done anything at all.
is this some sort of redemption, then? hands slung down into the pockets of his uniform pants, he echoes suguru's voice with a loud, pleasant turn of his own: )
She does, doesn't she? Let's keep it that way. ( as if suguru would hurt her. there's a grin across his features, but he moves in closer, angling himself near one of shouko's sides. ) ...You didn't buy any cream bread?
( now his lower lip is jutted out in disappointment. )
spoilers for anime onlys? also shoko should've just camped out on the train istg
Maybe opening that box really did send us all straight to Hell...
They appear like a hydra. Geto first, with his cool gaze and a strange silhouette; it takes her thoughts a beat to catch up with her eyes, recognizing the emptiness of a sleeve for what it is first and what it means second. (That certainly is something she can't fix.) And then, as if on cue, there's Gojo, and maybe she imagines a look of surprise between them, independent of the one they give her. They hadn't come together, just arrived together, it seemed, but then that wasn't quite so different from the way things were. Still, with her mouth full of an over-large bite of rice and savory salmon, she looks between the two of them as if they are themselves the ghosts come to haunt her for eating over their graves.
She swallows, and her appetite is all but gone. If Gojo is here, too, then...Hell it must be. ]
If I had known you would be here... [ Said indelicately, to both of them, with a reach for the bag to close it before Gojo starts helping himself. ] I didn't buy an of it, so I take it you two just got here too.
[ She doesn't invite them to sit. She's fairly sure they will anyway. And she wouldn't be mad either way. ]
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[ you'd think they'd hold him in greater contempt than they do. Gojou is wild and unpredictable around him now, a feral cat who isn't sure he wants to trust again, and Shouko... no one's better at looking down on either one of them than her. rightly so. even so, he doesn't feel uninvited to the warm patch of grass at her side. ]
[ he watches Satoru cross the distance, content to watch them interact with an expression relaxing into a fond, if tired, smile. it isn't just the healing of his body that's left him drained and sluggish, the wounds repaired beyond what their — ]
Weeks. Maybe a month now. [ worth of living in this strange city would suggest. there's already been some intervention there, judging from his full mobility and lack of redness, lack of pain, flesh fully healed over. Getou's always had a certain charisma that netted the attention of others, powerful or otherwise. acclimatizing to the loss, however... he sits with his arm between them and himself, fingers reaching over to peel back the bag's plastic to get a better idea of her goods. ]
It's a wonder who'll show up next. [ hello re-wrapped salmon onigiri, can he divest you from your previous owner... with an amused scoff: ] Yaga?
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frowning, slightly, he tilts his head and unceremoniously dumps himself on the ground at her other side. one leg stretched out in front of him, wet grass be damned, he bends the other leg at the knee, hooking his arm over it while his other hand is a balance behind him, letting him lean his frame closer to shouko's side. he gets a good look at suguru, this way--and the way he's pawing through the plastic bag like some sort of raccoon.
with a groan, he reaches across shouko's lap so that he can pull at the side of the bag, making it harder for suguru to get anything out of it. )
No, I banned him from coming. ( his voice is warm and matter-of-fact, even with the cautious expression on his face. ) ...But there was someone else.
( 'was'. he wants shouko to know, but what good would it be for suguru to know? he weighs the odds and decides to go forward with it anyway. ) Megumi. He was here, briefly.
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She gives in to that last urge faster than she intended to, laying a hand on either of theirs to get them to stop before opening it up and doling out its contents. Fruit sandwich for Gojo (had she grabbed it subconsciously? she never would have eaten it). Fresh, salmon onigiri for Geto, which she hesitates on before unwrapping without asking—about the arm or whether he wants the help. She covets the beer for herself, but offers the canned coffee to them both; there will be other stores, other coffee, other food. Maybe even other moments like this. ]
Just Megumi? [ The question is thoughtful, but as heavy as the atmosphere. Because Gojo is unconcerned, she believes that it was well and truly Megumi, but his use of the past tense is troubling—for many reasons. ] Did you just lose track of him or does it seem like he... [
changed] ...managed to find a way out?[ Escaping this strange city is perhaps not as close to the forefront of her thoughts as it should be, considering the last thing she remembers. But they'd all be fools not to take an opportunity if and when it arises. Although she worries, a little, about inviting Geto to come back with them. ]
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[ that same consideration to know when to keep out of a conversation, peeling back the plastic on the riceball with teeth. ]
[ Megumi. he knows the name. the whole name. not from the careful whispers that make it back to him from Jujutsu Tech, though he has no doubt that's where he would've been— is— was heading in the next year for his freshman year, a cockroach in the shadow of Okkotsu Yuuta. ]
[ no, it's an old history painted in magnificent swaths of scarlet: the son of the man who killed Gojou Satoru and introduced him to remaking himself, remaking the world, remaking them. a bond thought inseparable until a monkey came pulling at a loose thread — not the one holding them together, but the one inside his mind, and that was enough. it was enough. Fushiguro Megumi may be the only sorcerer in the world Suguru would rather see dead: the exception that proves the rule. ]
[ of course Gojou had to ingratiate himself there. of course he had to make him his first student. he may be able to perceive everything to the point of near-precognition, but Gojou Satoru has been walking through life backwards so that he never has to look away from the past. Suguru, with his hands as guilty as they are, can't stop him. ]
[ he says nothing, preoccupying himself with rice and brine and the forest hedge. ]
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is he remembering their past, or wondering about a future that no longer includes him? does megumi bother him, or is it something to do with their connection, rather, that becomes the problem? he watches suguru slightly, beyond shouko's sharp profile, and concedes to slowly unwrapping the fruit sandwich from its plastic packaging, his lips fit into one of the first frowns he's offered in this place, outright.
of course, it's not at the sandwich. had shouko picked it up without thinking? she would never eat this thing, with all its cream stuffed in around soggy, sweet bread and carefully cut strawberries; he immediately stuffs it into his mouth, taking a neat little bite at one triangle end. the coffee he tucks in between his thighs.
naturally, without manners, speaking with his mouth full: ) I didn't lose track of him.
( does he sound a little affronted? maybe. )
He just...disappeared. Maybe I'm going crazy and he was never there to begin with, but he...seemed real. All the blood seemed real. The wounds. I'd never seen him like that before.
( there's another bite of the sandwich--cream oozes out the other side, getting onto his fingers, which he immediately swings towards shouko, teasing. as if she'd lick it off for him, get real. )
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About whether Gojo is certain, unequivocally, that it was Megumi and not something else that he saw.
A bit of daydrinking sounds just right now, and she takes the last, large bite of her onigiri, chewing slowly as she cracks the can open. It will keep the question down, crushed beneath fish and rice and nori. But she knows the suppression is temporary, in a way that she hopes their tenure here is, too. After all, if one of the students can get out, shouldn't the three of them be able to? ]
Send him my way, if he turns up again. [ Matter-of-fact, with a bit of lingering food in her own mouth. She very pointedly ignores the offered cream and averts her gaze directly to Geto—or, more specifically, the emptiness of his sleeve as he calmly, though noticeably pensive, eats. ]
And now that I'm here, you should let me look at that, too. [ She gestures with her can, brazen but not impolite, at the way Geto's shoulder simply stops. Even if she hadn't been looking for injuries—a simple habit developed from years of evaluations—the fact that Geto didn't shirk her help with the wrapper and hasn't shown anything but his left hand this whole time wasn't going to go unnoticed forever. She doesn't know why he didn't say anything, but she does wonder if either of them will explain it. ]
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Mm? [ ...a reluctant roll of both shoulders, the one severed displaying less range of movement. the flesh might be patched over, the abrasions and wounds Rika had left behind once weeping crimson from temple to pelvis, but there's something to be said about the road of recovery when it comes to traumatic wounds. the muscles are still sorting themselves out, nerves dulled. ] It's not so bad, I ran into a healer when I first arrived.
[ if there's concern there, he thinks it's only what he perceives of it. this wound isn't undeserved, a loss is a loss — and the best of triage nurses are on the battlefield's aftermath, helping regardless of the colors. still, a lingering look seeks to determine her commitment to the subject, and he folds quickly: ] ...I'll send you the address of where I'm staying.
[ for later. an open-air plan, for whenever it is that Gojou feels comfortable leaving them alone — or Shouko ignores his concerns and comes on her own anyway. that thread of commonality: none of them have ever listened to anyone. then, there's his own reason for it anyway, and even a hint of it will send that fluffy white rabbit scurrying back into the forest. ]
[ the lull in conversation that follows is tense. after all, getting out isn't the same thing as getting home — and even if it was, that isn't an option for him anymore. more than his arm, he wonders if Shouko just wants to inspect a dead man. again. he would've wound up on her table at the Jujutsu Tech morgue anyway, right? she wouldn't be alone in needing to touch to confirm the reality of him, that where the warmth of his thigh brushing her knee isn't a trick of the sunlight. ]
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instead, thoroughly ignored by the both of them, he stuffs more of the sandwich into his mouth; his other hand is sticky, now, and since shouko isn't going to help him, he has to turn to one person he knows will. petulant, he stretches his long arm across shouko's lap, draping it on her thighs--his hand, palm up, wriggles his fingertips like a spider, showing off the sticky white tufts of whipped cream left there, and the back of his hand thumps against suguru's chest pointedly.
no, he doesn't forgive him, doesn't trust him, doesn't know what to do: but it seems having suguru get rid of his mess is still practiced behavior. )
...Where are you staying? ( with a slight tilt of his head towards suguru, before blindfolded eyes swing to shouko. ) Where are you staying? Let's stay together and have a sleepover.
( it feels strange to stay in the place where megumi used to sleep and no longer does, anymore; then again, he can go a day or two without sleep, what does it matter? he hasn't been back there since last night. )
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Silence that is also broken by Gojo, though with far less petulant insistence than genuine curiosity. And the question highlights something Shoko hasn't even really begun to consider, though perhaps she should. ]
I got a little tour of the southern parts of the city when I arrived. [ She doesn't dare let that hang long enough for either of them to ask questions about her tour guide. ]
I'll probably look elsewhere later, though. Maybe for a change of pace. [ The suggestion is punctuated with a small laugh, maybe self-deprecating, maybe genuinely amused, even she isn't quite sure. ] You're welcome to bounce between them if that's what you want. But, for my own sanity, I want my own place.
[ A beat, a bite of onigiri, a bit of beer, and she looks to Geto. ] Are we supposed to check in with City Hall or anything, or is it a free-for-all like the stores seem to be?
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[ which becomes relevant again as he answers Gojou's question, leaning far too into their shared space, practically crushing Ieiri between two broad shoulders until he twists in and points east. with it being evening, the sun casts setting gold light on the building face, shadows growing long; his finger is aimed quite literally at the very top corner. ]
The penthouse there. [ bougie. predictable. he's always had a craving for the finer things in life, always felt like he deserved them. if humans have made one good contribution to the world, it's luxury, and he relishes in robbing them of it; this has just been his most recent opportunity. now convinced Gojou's undergone enough sticky-handed punishment, he stuffs the remains of his riceball into his mouth, cheeks inflating as he chews, a singular grain of rice clinging to his cheek like a dimple. he begins using the singular napkin wrapped up in the packaging to scrub fluffy cream from long, pale fingers; dutiful, the effort is earnest, resting his forearm on Gojou's on Ieiri's lap like she's some kind of table. ]
[ a hypocrite in possession of great audacity, he then begins criticizing Gojou's eating habits with his own mouth way too stuffed full of grains and salmon: ]
'Atodu, when will you learn do ead? [ ..."eat", that is. ]