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!
JUMP TO TOP ↑ | ↓ JUMP TO COMMENTS
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
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[ It's not a condemnation. It's just the truth.
It must be so strange for Neil to look at him now. Neil was the the eldest Meister, the mentor of the group. He was always watching over Setsuna. There was so much that Setsuna was only able to appreciate in hindsight.
And all that time, Neil was as tormented as the rest of them, keeping it all to himself until he couldn't any longer, and it destroyed him.
Neil helped everyone, but no one was able to help Neil.
Now, no longer a child in need of guidance, but as someone who was able to change where Neil couldn't...
Maybe now Setsuna can now pay back all Neil has done for him. ]
Are you ready to hear the rest?
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'Ready' is an overstatement.
[ Part of him really wishes he could push the eject button on this conversation, walk off and pretend that this future which has nothing to do with him isn't real at all. But he won't allow himself to be coward enough for that. ]
But go on. I want to hear it.
[ There is nothing casual left in his tone. ]
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The Innovators were made up of artificial humans called Innovades. Innovades were meant to walk alongside humanity, but the Innovators saw themselves as superior, and wanted to rule us instead.
Ribbons wanted this most of all. He believed that he was God himself. It was our meeting all those years ago, the look of worship I gave his Gundam, which ignited that belief.
Ribbons couldn't be reasoned with, and I killed him in battle.
We recovered Veda, and the A-LAWS' crimes were revealed to the world. A new government has since formed, and Celestial Being has remained in the shadows for the past two years, allowing the world to rebuild itself, and only intervening where absolutely necessary.
...Two years ago, I became a true Innovator. The new kind of human anticipated by Aeolia Schenberg, capable of using powerful quantum brainwaves. My existence as an Innovator is necessary for the dialogues to come... and the time for those dialogues has arrived sooner than anyone expected.
Several months ago, humanity came into contact with an alien species we dubbed ELS: Extraterrestrial Livingmetal Shapeshifters. They've been fusing with humans, killing them in the process. However, I don't believe it's their intention. With my Gundam, and the abilities granted to me as an Innovator, I tried to communicate with them. I remember... an overflow of information. I thought my head was going to split apart. And then it all went dark.
Eventually, I met you in my dreams. You told me I was still alive... and I woke up here.
[ Setsuna's food has gotten cold by now. He hasn't taken a bite.
He exhales. ]
That's the abridged version. I'll answer any questions you have.
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After Setsuna finally finishes, Neil finally picks up his untouched burger and takes a very decisive bite out of it. He chews for a moment, and then swallows. ]
Okay, question one: what the fuck?
[ He knows that Setsuna would never mess with him, but it's still a rather unbelievably tale. ]
If I actually ask every question this raises, then we'll be here until sunrise.
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[ And he's never been the best at explaining things, either.
Setsuna was able to roll with the punches as they happened, but he doesn't even know how he'd feel if their positions were reversed and all of this was being dumped on him at once. ]
I can tell you how everyone's been these past few years.
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Yeah. Sounds like a good start.
[ Everything else is not immediately relevant anyway... He's curious and he wants to know, but unless that Ribbons guy or the ELS aliens show up in the city, he doesn't strictly need to know about any of this. ]
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Lyle adopted the codename Lockon Stratos. At first, his allegiance was purely with Katharon; his involvement with Celestial Being allowed him to provide them with information. Now, he's chosen to live his life as a Gundam Meister.
He fell in love with an Innovade woman named Anew Returner, who'd been planted on Ptolemy as a sleeper agent. ...I think he might have known the truth before any of us. Even Anew herself. If he did, he never said anything. He was probably afraid of what would happen to her if we knew. In the end, she "woke up" and turned on us... but she still loved him. And he loved her too much to fight her.
I had to kill her to keep him alive.
I'd be surprised if he's really forgiven me, but he doesn't hold a grudge, either. That's the kind of person Lyle Dylandy is. Someone who looks to the future, and not the past. He influenced me, as well.
[ ...He needs to be careful explaining this next part. He takes a moment to figure out how best to word it. ]
Lyle's the one that ended up killing Ali al-Saachez.
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"Lyle's the one that ended up killing Ali al-Saachez."
Turns out there is something worse than dying in vain. It's dying to the active detriment of everyone you ever loved. Appearing to Setsuna in dreams or whatever, that's just... It's not enough. ]
... I see.
[ He'd been talking big game about accepting his punishment at the end of it all, but even being conscious feels like too much punishment to bear right now. ]
That's my brother for you.
[ It feels like his voice is on autopilot. He doesn't think he's really looking at anything right now, doesn't think that he can. His hands are shaking, so he keeps them under the table. ]
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No one can hear all this and be alright. Neil deserves to know, and Setsuna won't, cannot lie to him.
But all at once?
No. Setsuna's not doing Neil any favors.
He's not good at this. ]
We can stop, for now.
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As much as Neil wants to push through and rip off the bandaid, if he hears any more than this, he might lose control of his mood and... he doesn't really know what. Storm off? Break something? What's the point of all that, even?
He once told Sumeragi that he gets why she drinks herself half to death, and he really does. ]
... yeah. I mean.. from where I'm standing, I died like 10 hours ago.
[ He's barely had time to come to terms with his own passing. ]
1/2
Setsuna's been an Innovator for two whole years and he's still struggling with it.
Neil was ripped right out of the afterlife he'd only just entered. Forget about a soul finding peace. ]
...Sorry.
[ Sorry, I don't know what to say. I haven't known what to say for two years.
Sorry I couldn't make it in time six years ago.
Sorry I let your family die seventeen years ago. ]
2/2
You're going to need someplace to sleep. I've been staying in one of the apartments. Come with me.
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So you really just move into one of those ghost places, huh? Well, can't say it's not convenient.
[ He feels like absolute shit right now, but feigning normalcy is something he's good at. ]
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[ Before leaving the diner, Setsuna opts to wrap up his meal and take it with him. There's no shortage of things to eat here, but wasting perfectly good food still doesn't sit right with him.
"You're the same as ever," Setsuna had said earlier, but was Neil always like this? Burying something dark and miserable beneath a casual veneer?
It's not all that long of a walk to the apartments, but it feels like one. Setsuna can't make small talk to save his life, least of all now.
He opens the door to the apartment he arbitrarily chose as his own. It's on a higher floor, providing a decent vantage point.
It's neither especially small nor large. The furnishings are nondescript. Beyond the handful of clothes he's procured hanging in a closet, there's nothing in here unique to Setsuna; no way to distinguish it from any other apartment in the complex. It hardly looks like anyone even lives here. ]
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Right now, he has absolutely nothing to say. His head feels like it's made of lead. He hasn't hated himself this much since the days right after the attack.
So they walk in silence, and enter the room in silence. It's spooky, not because of how little Setsuna has personalized it but because of the faint remnants of personalization that existed before him. ]
Cozy. More furniture than the rooms on the Ptolemy for sure.
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Yeah.
[ There's a couch in the main room, but Setsuna stays standing, unsure of what to do with himself. ]
Lockon, I...
[ He wants to say something, but he's at such a loss.
Abort, try again. ]
What are you thinking, right now?
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Setsuna wants to know what he's thinking and he doesn't know how to answer. His relationship with Celestial Being is steeped in so many white lies, but this is not as simple to brush over. He needs to decide if he wants to cross out the 'white' and just plain lie, or...
He shrugs. ]
Nothing worthwhile, that's for sure.
[ Neither a lie, nor helpful. He wills himself to glance back at Setsuna, looking at him like a concerned puppy. Setsuna, former child soldier... ]
Well, maybe if it's you, you can understand the feeling of everything you've lived for turning out to amount to nothing. Or maybe worse than nothing, depending on who you ask.
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But Ali lived. Lyle found himself entangled in conflict. The world twisted itself further and further.
Neil died for nothing.
Setsuna remembered how it felt to realize he'd been fighting for a God that didn't exist.
That he'd slaughtered his parents for nothing.
It was a slow, creeping realization until it wasn't; the truth clicking into place and bearing down on him like a sledgehammer. A scar he carries now, and forever.
He remembers, too, what he thought during the mission that heralded Team Trinity, as Ali al-Saachez was moments away from snuffing out his life: the fear and disbelief of dying without accomplishing anything at all.
A life wasted. ]
I understand.
[ Quiet, solemn.
There's nothing he can say to console Neil that wouldn't be hollow. That understanding is the most he can offer. ]
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Neil wishes he could make amends but there's nothing. He's just here now.
Running out of objects in the room to stare right through, he finally settles on the couch. ]
Lyle's always hated me. The absolute last thing he wanted was to be thought of in the same breath. To think he's 'Lockon Stratos' now...
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The only problem is that this will bring its own kind of pain. ]
He doesn't hate you. He regretted not meeting you while you were alive.
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[ Well, it is far easier to like somebody in theory, when they're a distant concept you'll never have to encounter again. If that's what it took for Lyle to think of him halfway fondly, he'll still take it. ]
I really wanted a better life for him than this.
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But to Setsuna, who knows Lyle as a Katharon agent and a Gundam Meister, Neil's sorrow is misplaced. ]
This is the life he chose for himself.
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[ All of them at Celestial Being are fools of some variety, no exceptions. That's always been okay, but Lyle... he should have at least turned out to be a different kind of dumbass. That'd have been nice. ]
If anything happens to him, I am haunting your ass until you're ready to call the exorcist.
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I know one thing for sure. Everyone on Ptolemy is striving for the future. They're gonna make it through alive to the tomorrow they're building.
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Mhm. What was it... change in the place of me, who couldn't? Good that you're all sticking to that.
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