SOMETHING DEAD THAT DOESN'T KNOW IT'S DEAD.
» THE CITY — INTRODUCTORY NOTES
Now that Halloween is just around the corner, the city is starting to come alive with seasonal cheer. You start to spot decorations scattered around the city: plastic skeletons sitting on benches, jack-o-lanterns decorating front stoops, and even a few places in the park near City Hall where the trees themselves have been decorated. It's clear that the autumn season is in full swing and the city is making the most of it.
From the morning of October 19, you also start to notice flyers hung up around the city that advertise the local university's homecoming Halloween party. They're cheerfully decorated much the same as the newsletter that was delivered to residents earlier in the month, and they're hung from light poles, pinned to bulletin boards, and occasionally fluttering on front stoops of apartment buildings. There might even be one taped to your door when you open it in the morning.
The flyer announces that the Halloween party will begin on October 22 and will run through October 31. It runs every night from sunset to midnight, and residents are encouraged to attend in costume! If they have their own costume, perhaps found at the Halloween Superstore, that's perfect—if they don't have a costume, though, one will be provided to them by the party organizers. Doesn't that just sound like fun? And the flyers really are everywhere, and that makes it hard not to take notice—but once you take notice, you really can't stop noticing.
Indeed, once you read one of the flyers, you just can't help but read the flyer every time you encounter another one. And every time you read one, you find yourself feeling a little more curious about the party being advertised. Will it be anything like the Halloween I know? you may think. Or, I don't even know what Halloween is, I wonder what it'll be like. It's not quite enough to compel you to pay a visit to the address on the flyer, which is one of the dorm buildings on the university campus, but it's definitely enough to get you thinking about Halloween. Maybe you ought to go find a costume…
But Halloween parties and costumes are not all you're thinking about. It's easy enough to write off at first, as tricks of the light or a figment of your imagination: flickers of shadow at the corner of your eye, cold spots in your apartment, creaking footsteps in your empty living room. There's nothing there when you turn your head to look, nothing there when you flick on the lightswitch to see if someone's in your house—but somehow, that doesn't reassure you.
By the evening of October 21, every resident in the city has been visited by some sort of entity haunting their house, and every resident of the city has been left a gift: a dorm room key, each differently numbered. You may find the key in your pocket, or on your bedside table, or in your favorite coffee mug.
Should you decide to attend the party, it will be up to you to decide: Is this just the City getting in the spirit of the season? Or is it something more… malevolent?
The flyers will be strewn about the city in various locations beginning on October 19. Characters who read them will find themselves feeling oddly compelled to go check out the advertised Halloween party, which will run from October 22 to October 31 between sunset and midnight. For the most part this will just feel like a sense of curiosity about the party, and astute characters may be able to pick up on the fact that they're being emotionally manipulated a bit.
Characters who choose to go can wear a costume of their choosing from the Halloween Superstore, or the City will provide one if they don't have a costume of their own yet. (Read on for more information about how characters can get their hands on a costume!)
Lastly, every character will find a dorm room key somewhere on their person before the party starts on October 22. This key may or may not correspond to a room in the dorm where the party is being held—of course, characters are not obligated to use the key, but they may want to know what's hiding behind those closed doors.
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ALL THESE GHOSTS COME STREAMING DOWN.
» THE CITY — GETTING THE PARTY STARTED
On the morning of October 22, every device in the city starts to buzz.
The screen illuminates, displaying a white page not unlike the orientation survey that welcomed you into the city. Unlike the orientation survey, though, there are no questions—only a single phrase in bold, dark text. THE GOOD OF THE MANY, it says, with a single "OK" button below.
For a minute, nothing else happens. You try to turn the device off, but the screen stays lit; you try to reboot the device, but the screen stays lit. It seems that the only way to get rid of the screen is to press the button.
…Have you done this before? Or are you having déjà vu?
At sunset that same day, the Halloween party will open for the first time. The party's entrance is located on the ground level of a large three-story dorm building in the western half of the university campus. The double doors into the building are fully decorated with folded-paper bats and ghosts, cotton batting pulled apart to make spiderwebs, and a cut-out sign that says "HAUNTED HOUSE" in bright red, dripping-blood letters. The decor looks almost… corny, hokey in a way that can't possibly be threatening. Right?
But the decorated double doors aren't the only way that residents may enter the party. Of course, the organizers would prefer that you use the front doors, but if you'd prefer not to, they have other ways of getting you inside.
After the party begins on October 22, any door in the city that you walk through has the potential to become a door into the first level of the dorm building. You may exit your apartment and find yourself standing in the darkened lobby; you may walk out of the bathroom and run right into a handful of cotton spiderwebbing. Unfortunately, there's nothing to indicate whether or not a door might lead to the party until you're through it—and once you're through it, there's no turning around. The only way out, as they say, is deeper in.
Were you wearing a costume in preparation for the party? Fantastic, you'll keep that costume on! But if you weren't wearing a costume, don't worry—the party's organizers have you covered. You look down and find that no matter what you were wearing before, you are now wearing a costume of some kind. Maybe it's one you would have chosen for yourself, or maybe it's totally not to your taste. If you truly hate it, you can try to take it off… although you may not find it easy to remove.
Once the party begins on October 22, as stated above, any door in the city has the potential to become a door that leads directly to the first level of the haunted house. Characters will not be able to tell by any means whether a door is pointed there or not; only once they're fully through the door will they realize that they're actually standing in the lobby of the decorated dorm building and not in whatever room they intended to enter. Once characters are inside, there's unfortunately no way to get out, not without making their way through the haunted house itself.
Whether a character enters the haunted house via the main double doors or through another door somewhere else in the city, they'll need to come in costume. (Their own canon clothes do not count!) If they're already wearing a costume, they can keep it on arrival; however, those who enter the haunted house costumeless will be assigned a costume at random by the city. The actual costume is up to the player's choice. It may end up being something that suits the character, or it may end up being something totally embarrassing—that's completely up to the player.
Regardless, characters will have a difficult (but not impossible) time removing the costume until they have exited the haunted house. This includes both physical difficulty (feeling as though the costume is fused to their skin, feeling physical resistance to undoing zippers/buttons, etc.) and mental difficulty (an overwhelming sense of dread or vulnerability). Characters are able to overcome both of these difficulties to remove the costume if they're dedicated enough; the clothes they were originally wearing may be still on under the costume or might be awaiting them at home when they return.
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THEY GO TO GROUND AND ROT.
» THE HAUNTED HOUSE — LEVEL 1
CONTENT WARNINGS: One image containing fake spiders, mention of spidery feelings; mention of zombies (but no images)
The ground floor of the dorm is decorated much how one might expect a haunted house at a university to be decorated. The entrance to the haunted house proper is through a tunnel of cotton spiderwebs filled with little plastic spiders, so narrow that it forces you to hunch down and squish together to get through. Although it feels claustrophobic, and you may imagine the sensation of little spider legs crawling over your body, once you make it through the tunnel it becomes clear that the spiders never actually moved. Whew!
The tunnel lets out into the first-floor dorm, a long (too long?) stretch of hallway with doors leading to rooms on either side. Some of the doors are closed and locked, but many are open, allowing you a glimpse as you pass. As you walk down the hallway, you make sure to peer into each of the rooms. Some of the doors lead to total blackness; others lead to rooms decorated like an elaborate Victorian haunted mansion, and yet others even lead to perfectly normal dorm rooms, like someone forgot to get around to decorating. And sometimes—not every time, but often enough—when you peer into one of the rooms, there's something peering back.
Most of the frights you get on the first floor come in the form of animatronics, realistic-looking ones that jump out at you as you pass and give you a fright. There's a man with a bloody knife, or a zombie with flesh hanging from its teeth, or a clown with sharp, venomous-looking fangs—they leap out of the doorways with a startling quickness, but never come close enough to touch. They just brandish their weapons, then retreat back into the room they came from as if satisfied with the scare they've given.
There are also a handful of real scare actors on the first floor as well, perhaps even some faces you recognize. They lurk in the darkened rooms and leap out with growls or shrieks, then chase you a few meters down the hall before leaving you to run away. Just like the animatronics, though, they never get close enough to touch or harm you—they just want to get your blood racing.
The rest of the scares come from paintings that abruptly change form to show a ghost's face, or candles that swoop down across your path and then move back up. And behind it all are the spooky sounds of groans and screams and tearful begging, a solemn soundtrack to your trip through the haunted house.
Oddly, you never do see a speaker. And even more oddly still, none of the rooms on the first floor match the number of the key you're holding…
The first level of the haunted house consists of fairly cheap scares, mostly relying on animatronics, voiceover tracks, and tricks of the light or optical illusions to deliver scares to the residents. Players should feel free to use their imaginations to come up with potential scares or animatronics—think something moderately more scary than Haunted Mansion but less than Halloween Horror Nights. The animatronics may feature enemies or monsters from characters' home worlds, or may be simply generic creatures you would find at a Halloween store.
In addition, the first level is also populated by characters working as scare actors. These characters may be those who attended Robby and Tsuruno's house party, or may simply be characters with a sense of humor who enjoy making other characters jump and shriek a little. Either way, these scares are harmless and non-contact. The scare actors won't harm anyone going through the haunted house, even if they do a little chasing down the hall.
Although the hallway looks oddly long and is perhaps a bit more winding than it ought to be, there doesn't seem to be anything particularly odd about the dorm building itself. Characters may, however, find that the trip through the haunted house feels shorter when they're accompanied by another.
For characters who don't wish to venture up the stairs to the second level, there is a well-hidden emergency exit tucked out of sight behind the staircase that leads upward. This is the opt-out for players who don't wish to engage with the events in the second and third levels of the dorm.
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WE WILL NOT REMAIN UNSCATHED.
» THE HAUNTED HOUSE — LEVEL 2
CONTENT WARNINGS: Generally spooky images including some ghostly ones; mention of hanging. Prompts include violence (such as mutilation) potentially leading to serious injury or death. As always, please warn appropriately!
It's once you reach the second level that you realize something has shifted.
The metal door at the end of the hallway swings shut behind you, and you immediately realize it's far too dark and far too cold. Even with your eyes wide, you can barely make out the shapes of the decorations around you; they are lit mostly by the flickering orange of electric candles and the glow of the emergency exit sign above your head. Your breath condenses into steam as you exhale, and although you rub your hands together, you can't quite seem to gain any warmth. You feel a little bit dizzy and off-kilter, and from the distance you can hear the sound of a voice murmuring in quiet, urgent tones, interrupted by brief bouts of sobbing. You try the door behind you, but it doesn't give: you are stuck here, and must make it out.
The hallway is decorated, but even the same decorations that felt corny downstairs now give this floor an air of discomfort and desperation. As you make your way down the hall, you notice that many more of the doors on this level are open, and in the sickly, dim light cast by the fake candles, you're able to catch glimpses of what's inside: shadowy figures moving in the blackness. These are creatures that seem made of the dark itself, congealed into something more or less resembling a person. There's one sitting at the desk like a good student, its too-long fingernails rasping over the surface as it scratches something into the wood. There's one sitting on the windowsill, its too-long limbs hanging out into the night. There's one hanging from the ceiling, its feet at eye level, swaying slightly in an unfelt breeze. There's one standing dead in the middle of the room and staring straight at you, its eyes two embers in its featureless head.
You lock eyes briefly and the creature starts to move: this ghost is coming after you, and this one means it. There's no animatronic rigging to stop it and pull it back into the darkness of the room, and it's no scare actor that will stop after a few meters of pursuit—no, its hands reach for you, for your hair, your throat, fingers clutching and grasping. You turn and run, but it pursues, and that voice you heard murmuring earlier is now a fever pitch of syllables behind you, half-whispered, half-screamed in a language you can't understand. The noise of it draws more ghosts out from their rooms, and they follow as you sprint down the too long, twisting length of the hallway. You can see the glow of the exit sign at the end lf the hallway, drawing closer as you madly dash for it—
And then you trip. Or maybe you're pushed, you're not sure. You hit the carpet hard and then the ghost is on you, its hands scrabbling at your throat, fingers prodding at your eyes. Of course you fight back—if you don't, you're going to die—but as you fumble blindly for something with which to beat the ghost off, you realize that this ghost has weight to it, that the fingers trying to tear out your throat aren't incorporeal and ghostly but rather the fingers of a pair of very human hands. As you blink, eyes straining in the darkness, the features of the ghost begin to resolve into those of a person.
And it is a person. It's a person you may even know, a friend of yours, a fellow resident of the City. Not a mannequin facsimile, but someone real, someone who fights you with everything in them as you struggle to break free.
Your grasping hand grips something firm, maybe a flashlight or a fire extinguisher, and you swing it as hard as you can at their head. You don't want to, this is your friend, but what choice do you have? After all—it's either them or you.
Once characters enter the second level of the haunted house, those attuned to energy flow will immediately be able to recognize this as a place full of negative ghostly energy. Characters may sneak extremely carefully and quietly through the hallways, avoiding every single ghost; they may be pursued by ghosts, but ultimately make it to the exit, beyond which the ghosts will not pursue; or they may be caught by a ghost (or "ghost") and be forced to fight for their lives.
Not all of the "ghosts" on the second level are truly ghosts. Players may opt to have their characters participate in the event as the considerably more deadly "scare actors" of the second level. Only they won't be acting: to these characters, anyone who passes by in the second-floor hallway (the "partygoer") is an absolute threat that must be dealt with immediately. Scare actor characters will be possessed by an irrepressible need to hunt down and attempt to injure or kill any partygoer or other scare actor they encounter, and can only be stopped by either death (of either the partygoer or the scare actor) or being knocked out and removed from the hallway.
These characters may also be those who attended Robby and Tsuruno's Halloween house party and ended up getting a little too in-character in a negative way (see their plotting post for more information). However, characters do not have to attend the house party in order to participate in this mechanic. Any character who enters the haunted house can become a second-floor ghost if the player so desires.
Either the scare actor or partygoer may be seriously injured or even die. If this happens to the partygoer, the haze of bloodlust will immediately lift from the scare actor and reveal to them what they've done. (If the scare actor is knocked out or dead, obviously this realization will take place after they've returned or regained consciousness.) Killing and death as a part of the October event is not subject to murder or death consequences.
If a character chooses to sneak through the second floor and avoid the ghosts, and does so by entering any of the decorated dorm rooms, they may find shorthand messages scratched into the desks, closets, or doors. These messages might just be names, familiar ones belonging to people from home, or might say things like HELP ME or ITERATION 4█ or LOOK BEHIND THE APOCALYPSES. Characters may also find small, non-magical, recognizable personal effects belonging to people from their home worlds, tucked into drawers or kicked under the bed or in some otherwise unobtrusive location, easily overlooked.
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WHEN YOU HAVE NOTHING TO SAY, SET SOMETHING ON FIRE.
» THE HAUNTED HOUSE — LEVEL 3 AND CONCLUSION
After the second level of the haunted house, the only way to go is up… assuming you survived, that is. Exhausted and battered, you make your way up the stairs—perhaps alone, perhaps with a friend, or perhaps dragging the unconscious body of your assailant-friend—and let yourself into the third-floor common area.
This is where the Halloween party is taking place! Congratulations, you made it! There's a bass-heavy soundtrack throbbing in the background, and the room is decorated once again in the cheesy Halloween decor of the entryway. A large casket full of ice holds beers and sodas, and a table in the middle of the room bears all sorts of spooky snacks: peeled-grape "eyeballs," candy corn "teeth," sour gummy worms in brownie dirt, and any other kind of snack one might imagine.
If you made it through the haunted house with a friend, you will find a letterman jacket in your favorite colors, with your name embroidered on the back, hanging on a peg on the far wall of the room. You can take it with you now, or when you go home, or you can leave it on the peg forever—it's your choice, but it is a symbol of having survived the haunted house, so it might be nice to have. Don't you think?
You may have to do this again, you realize. Now that the doors in the city occasionally open straight into the haunted house, there's no telling how many times you'll have to survive this before the Halloween party draws to its close. Maybe you do need a beer after all…
Oh, and you still don't know what dorm room that key goes to. Maybe you had better just hang onto it for now.
The topmost floor of the dorm building, the third floor, is where the "party" part of the Halloween party is taking place! The food and drink is abundant and, of course, free. There's just about any type of drink or Halloween-themed snack imaginable, so characters can help themselves. When they're through partying, there's an outside staircase that leads directly from the common room back down to ground level.
Characters who survive the haunted house in a group of two or more will find that that there is a custom-made letterman jacket with their name on the back, perfectly their size, hanging on a coat rack on the far side of the room. While wearing this jacket, characters will be less susceptible to the scares in the haunted house, and the ghosts of the second floor will not pursue them as intently (although it has no effect on scare actor characters). To any characters who are particularly sensitive to this sort of thing, the jackets do have a moderate protective effect against various negative status effects, so to speak; this effect does not diminish after the event is over. Characters can only get one jacket, their first time through the haunted house; subsequent trips through will not result in additional jackets.
The dorm room key is not a usable item during the October 2023 event, but will become usable in November and December, so characters are advised to not lose them.
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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.
This month's event headers come from "Landscape with Fruit Rot and Millipede," a poem by Richard Siken.
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citylogs2023-10-19 09:00 pm
Lan Xichen | MDZS
[ Lan Xichen had been intending on visiting the pool. It wasn't meant to be a long trip, but he was fascinated by how large the two pools were, and he had maybe planned on at least trying out the sauna, but fate had other plans. When Lan Xichen walks through the door, he expects the smell of chemicals and distant steam. Instead he finds himself facing a tunnel of stringy white cotton and plastic accents, dimly lit and clearly aimed at being a handmade cave. Worse, his pristine white robes have been replaced by a cloth that seems like it might have been someone's discarded bedsheet creatively painted to a mottled rusty brown with added "stitching" for effect. His jade flute has similarly been swapped for a clearly overly-large blade... one that appears to be plastic and hollow inside. His top half is completely, mortifyingly bare. Lan Xichen only registers this because of the lack of weight on his skin--he can't actually see himself through the giant red cardboard helmet taped into an awkward pyramid that completes the costume. At least someone was kind enough to provide a mesh-covered hole in the front for him to peer out of.
He's so stunned at first that he makes his confused way down the hall extra slowly, still processing where he is. ]
What... How can this be happening? [ Oh. ] Where is the door?
ii. Level Two - I'm not afraid of no ghosts,
[ This can play out in two different ways. Either a, the ghosts on level two have singled out the slower moving man with his cumbersome costume and are completely unimpressed by the fake Great Knife. It might be the way the prop squeaks whenever it smacks against something, but that doesn't stop Lan Xichen from trying to rescue others in his attempt to avoid his own brutal death.
Or b, if someone is unlucky enough, they may be pursued by a silent figure dragging an oversized blade, although they might also notice the object isn't grinding with any sort of metallic whine if they let him get close enough. Of course, they would have to let him get close first, and he's steady, but slow in the heavy costume head. May or may not resort in real danger depending on the thread, and I will play to volunteer's preference. Trip him up and drag him out or have a violent fight. ]
iii. Level Three - Thanks, I hate it.
[ Once he finally, one way or another, gets through the dorm building to the last floor, Lan Xichen is not having fun. In fact, he is sulking, despite the music and snacks, he's sitting at one side of the room, legs crossed and lips downturned in a very disapproving frown. At least he's managed to take that costume helmet off! The pyramid is sitting next to him, along with his appointed squeaky knife, and in true cultivator fashion he's determined that the only way to avoid any more trouble is to stubbornly refuse to go through any more doors. Even the potential exit. Fuck doors. ]
iv. Wildcard
[ If none of the above ideas work, feel free to add a spin or drag Lan Xichen into any other scenario or room that you'd like! After one round in the dorm, he's going to be increasingly salty so I'd happy to make it his third or tenth walk through the haunted house rooms or outside afterward, not wanting to go anywhere ever again. ]
iib
Daniel was already worried enough on the first level of this place - not scared by anything he was seeing, sure, since he's not really a scaredy cat, but worried about the kids he left behind when he was suddenly sent straight into whatever the hell kind of haunted house this party is - but the second level tops it.
Especially when the mood shifts so much. Nothing seems as comical and harmless up here as it did down there, and Daniel feels a chill run through his spine as he tries to make his way through the level, still wearing the costume this place deemed fit to force onto him.
The man is moving so carefully, making sure to be on guard, to pay attention to any kind of small sound.
.. you know, like the sound of something being dragged across the ground.
Daniel turns, only to see the rather odd costume. The helmet may have some mesh in it, but the figure is too far away for Daniel to be able to make out a face, so he just stands there - staring, frozen. ]
Are you-- Are you also stuck here?
( ooc: hey! for the ending, i'd prefer xichen getting knocked out by daniel, but i'm totally fine with daniel getting a light injury in the process if you want anything like that. just let me know. c: )
no subject
[The ghost possessing Lan Xichen's mind is furious at the intrusions. So many people charging through its home, stomping along its halls. Daniel is another troublesome invader, guaranteed to endanger its lair and items. Xichen himself doesn't even realize what he's doing, stalking after Daniel like a hungry animal trying to sneak up on his prey. It would help if he weren't so loud, but he apparently thinks the knife will make up the difference.]
You aren't allowed to be out at night.
[A second voice echoes through Lan Xichen's, pushing through his words.]
Good children go to bed early.
no subject
Even if Daniel isn't able to see the face underneath that makeshift helmet - or whatever it is, considering its very odd shape - but he knows that voice. Well enough that he doesn't even have to see the face to know who this is. ]
Xichen..?
[ He's pretty sure that's the other's voice. And he can excuse the weird costume due to the fact that Daniel himself was also very much forced into one - he would not voluntarily cosplay from Saturday Night Fever, okay. (Probably.)
But the words he's saying? There's no easy excuse or reason for that.
Daniel is frozen to the spot for now, but considering the distance that still exists between the two and the other's rather slow movement speed, it thankfully shouldn't be a problem.. for now, anyway. ]
What are you saying? That's-- You don't have to play along with whatever kind of weird thing is going on here, you know.
no subject
You think this is a game? Is that why you came here? You'll ruin everything.
no subject
[ The words come out a little more emotional, almost defensive in nature. If not just because they're true, and because Daniel was already kind of startled and annoyed about suddenly having walked through a random door right into this place. This is the last place he wants to be, thanks!
But after the instinctive response leaves his throat, he realises how odd this is. How Xichen still doesn't sound like himself, how he's still approaching with that awful-looking weapon.
Daniel takes a step backwards. ]
Didn't the same thing happen to you?
no subject
You're all intruders. Trying to take my home. Contaminating it. I won't let you get away with that!
[ It swings again, dragging the great knife with lumbering effort as it tries to catch Daniel with the edge. ]
cw: blood
If only just to dodge the weapon. With the way Xichen seems to have trouble even moving the thing, like it's too heavy, or like his body is somehow too clumsy, it's not too hard to keep dodging the blade with each strike..
.. until the man feels his back hitting the wall, realising he backed himself right up against it. He mutters a curse underneath his breath, and a moment later he feels the edge of the blade reaching him, only barely slashing against his shoulder. Not deep enough to cause the full damage it could have, but enough to cut open Daniel's jacket there, drawing a thin line of blood out of tan skin.
Daniel gasps, because even if it wasn't too much damage, it still hurts. He clutches the shoulder with one hand, and then quickly moves out of the way by the time the next strike is aimed at him. ]
Xichen!
[ At least he can move out of the reach of the blade again now, even as he can feel hot blood welling up from the wound underneath the palm of his hand. ]
You have to snap out of it! [ Because this can't be Xichen. Daniel refuses to believe that. Sure, it's his body, but-- he got messed with, in some way.
He can't imagine the good-natured man who helped him selflessly even way back when he hardly knew Daniel doing something like this otherwise, after all. ]
I don't know what they did to you, but you have to make it stop..!
no subject
Intruders must be slain.
[ It's commanding, but who the voice is talking to is unclear. The words come out just as clumsily as the blade when he swings again, aiming to catch Daniel with a half-blind horizontal swing that catches the wall when he tries to slice into Daniel. Maybe it's luck, or maybe it's another case of the other mind not understanding Xichen's body. But then Xichen follows up the attempt by reaching over the knife to shove Daniel back, with both hands, helmet wobbling to the side as he lunges forward. ]
Traitors should be punished.
no subject
And Daniel wants to help with that. He really does, but he has no clue what will stop whatever has taken over Xichen, or what will force it to release its control over the other man. This isn't Daniel's expertise in the slightest, and even if the wound on his shoulder isn't huge, the blood loss is still enough to make his mind feel a little woozy. Just enough to make thinking even harder.
.. he has to stop Xichen, he decides. If he can't stop the control itself, he has to stop that body before it'll do even more that Xichen doesn't actually want.
So Daniel sucks in a breath, tries to focus despite the dull pain in his shoulder. When the body reaches over to him to push rather than to slash, Daniel knows what to do.
It's just like Chozen told him before. If an enemy insists on war, then you take away their ability to wage it.
His hand moves forward, striking against a pressure point on the lower side of Xichen's left arm, and then he quickly moves to do the same against the right one - leaving Xichen - temporarily - without the ability to do much of anything with his arms other than let them hang uselessly by his sides. ]
.. look. [ Daniel says, his breathing a little heavier with the wound and the exhaustion of the fight. ] I'm sorry.
[ For having to do this in the first place. ]
But I hope you'll get it.
[ Not whatever is controlling Xichen. But Xichen himself. ]
no subject
I'm sorry, he tries to say, but he doesn't know who it is for. The ghost doesn't respond anyway, determined to get rid of the enemy in front of it. Lan Xichen's body continues to try forcing an attack through. It doesn't seem to feel the paralysis in Xichen's arms as much as notice it no longer as control of them. After a few unsuccessful jerks of the torso, it snarls through Xichen's teeth, lashing out against the disconnect. When it can't grasp the knife again, the body settles for hurling itself at Daniel, writhing with blind frustration in an aimless frenzy, letting Lan Xichen's body take as much damage as necessary to simply get at Daniel like a rabid animal.
It's only after he has hit the wall and flung himself at the other man several times that Lan Xichen himself finds some focus. ]
Stop it... [ He can only protest and try to keep his body from moving on its own. Small, incoherent noises escape between his actual words. ] Don't hurt anyone.
no subject
It aches in his heart. Even more so when Xichen speaks, when Daniel realises that these words are Xichen, not whatever was talking to him a moment ago.
And while Daniel can easily dodge the attacks now, with the body just haphazardly throwing itself around like that, he knows this won't do. If he keeps dodging, or even if he outright escapes, Xichen's body will continue to hurt itself as long as Xichen isn't in control.
So.. ]
Xichen.
[ His voice is a little softer, desperately calling out for the person inside. Maybe Xichen can't fully take over again, but if he can speak, maybe he can at least tell Daniel this much.
Because doing it without Xichen's own permission-- That's too much. That idea hurts too. ]
I'll knock you out. Okay? [ And then, hurriedly, like Daniel also isn't the most coherent after all this fighting: ] Are you okay with that?
[ It seems like the only way to protect the other from himself. ]
iii
But even when he's at his limit, Molly can't help but worry a little. So he takes it upon himself to invade Xichen's tiny oasis of forced calm, holding out a cup to him with a faint smile. ]
Here, darling, you look like you could use this.
[ It's no good to just sit and brood, and Molly is here to jostle him out of it by any means necessary. ]
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What happened?
[ His question is still subdued, but at least he's actually trying to engage with someone else. ]
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It pulls a soft laugh out of him as Molly settles down across from him, oddly ungraceful for how he usually holds himself. ]
Oh, got into a few scrapes here and there. Don't worry about me, darling I'm tougher than I look. [ The dozens upon dozens of scars decorating his more visible than usual skin probably say volumes on the subject. ] How are you?
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You look like you were injured... Did someone attack you?
[ His complexion is whiter than normal, strained by a feeling of tight disgust. ]
Was it someone here? [ The words come out dry, despite having just downed a full glass. ] One of us?
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But he huffs out something like a laugh and shakes his head. ]
Did you not encounter all those ghosts on the second floor? I envy you.
[ It's a direct answer and also a sidestep, and Molly is a little too tired to hope that it will suffice. ]
Honestly, did you know that people apparently put these things together for fun?
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Lan Xichen makes a grumbling noise as he clears his throat. ]
What sort of fun is that? Who could consider such awful things enjoyable? We aren't demons!
[ He grips his glass tightly, which of course crushes it and makes him even more upset. ]
A-ah... Who dared to build such a terrible place? Are they trying to punish us? I won't allow it!
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As I understand it, they're not usually this...hm. Intense.
[ To say the least. But who's surprised that the city apparently delights in taking everything to extremes. ]
And I may be at least partially devil, but I take your point. [ He smiles faintly, if dryly at the admission. ] Deep breaths, dear. we made it through.