THE THINGS I GAVE YOU.
» THE BANK — INTRODUCTORY NOTES
District 2 is open, bringing with it access to new and interesting locations—including the city's main bank branch. The bank is a large building with a stone exterior, wrought iron grating on the windows, and large, heavy metal doors that take surprisingly little effort to open, their hinges silent and well-oiled.
Early in the day on July 19, characters in the vicinity of the bank will hear first a low, metallic creaking sound from inside the building, like metal straining against metal. This is followed by the sharper noise of locks disengaging, and then the large, heavy doors on the front of the building swing open slightly, enough to let a person through.
Directly inside the doors is the bank lobby, and beyond that is the main banking floor, with elegant marble flooring and dimly lit chandeliers. It would appear that this was once the main commercial bank of the city, although it is now completely empty, with no tellers behind the counters and no cash in any of the drawers.
You may rifle through the tills and filing cabinets to your heart's content, but similar to the files in City Hall, there is no useful information to be found—all the papers are blank, or are empty forms without any personally identifying information. There are no monetary devices to be found either; this is, after all, not a city that operates on a cash system, so there are no coins or paper bills in any of the tills or, indeed, anywhere within the bank.
What you might be able to find, though, is a rack of delicate, burnished brass keys on a wall toward the back of the main banking hall. Each of these keys is attached to a stamped metal keychain bearing a name on one side and a number on the other. Some of these may be names you recognize, and some of them may not, but they are all names belonging to current residents of the city, and each key corresponds to a safety deposit box within the vault at the back of the building. Can you remember what you stored in that box for safekeeping? Maybe you had better go find out.
At the back of the main banking hall is a vault secured with a large circular metal door. The door is currently unlocked and propped open; it can be closed, but cannot be locked (intentionally, anyway) from either the inside or the outside. The vault contains row upon row of safety deposit boxes, each locked. Participating characters who are in possession of a key can open their own safety deposit box, but it is not currently possible to force open any safety deposit box that does not belong to them. After August 1, players will be able to use their safety deposit boxes to store their own belongings, and break-ins will become possible with prior player permission and appropriate consequences.
Below sections detail the safety deposit boxes for both choose-your-own-adventure players and randomized players! Please see the randomized matches for this event HERE.
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IT'S TRUE, PEOPLE TAKE THINGS BUT RARELY.
» SAFETY DEPOSIT BOXES — A SELF-GUIDED TOUR
For some of you, getting into your safety deposit box is quite straightforward.
You take your key from the rack behind the teller's counter and make your way back through the building and into the vault. It's cool inside, the temperature well-regulated and the air dry. On the walls are rows upon rows of safety deposit boxes, and it may take you a moment to find the one that corresponds to the number stamped on your key. Does that number mean anything to you? It may, or it may not.
When you find your box, it takes very little effort to open it. A slide of your key, a quick turn, and the safety deposit box's door springs open to reveal the metal container within. You remove the metal box from the wall and bring it over to the table in the center of the room, clearly placed there for this express purpose. Maybe there are others around, or maybe you're alone. Do you remember yet, what it was you put in here? Well, there's no time like the present to check.
You open the safety deposit box to find—something that shouldn't be there. It's yours, that much you're sure of, but you didn't bring it with you to the city. You reach into the box to pick it up, and the surge of memory is immediate, sending your mind back to your strongest memory associated with the item in your hand.
Then the vault door swings shut, trapping you inside with whoever else has the misfortune of sharing the vault with you right now. No matter what force you try, the door won't open again. There doesn't appear to even be a mechanism that unlocks the door from the inside, and from within several feet of metal and stone, no one on the outside will be able to hear you shout. It seems hopeless—how long can anyone last, trapped in a place like this?
Should you turn back to the open safety deposit box, you might notice a slip of paper resting on the bottom. The paper looks aged, like it's been in the box for quite some time, and in printed text it reads: "Nothing is yours. It is to use. It is to share. If you will not share it, you cannot use it."
Maybe it means you should let another hold the item you've retrieved from the box… or maybe it means you should share the weight of memory. Try to interpret the meaning in whatever way you can. But should you decide to unburden yourself, and share with someone else the weight of the item you're holding in your hands, you may find that there's a means of escape after all.
Once you free yourself from the vault, for the next several days you find yourself feeling rather honest, like you may not be able to stop yourself from confessing the truth about the item you now carry…
Characters who wish to participate in the event, but who do not wish to randomize the contents of their safety deposit boxes, can open their safety deposit boxes to find an emotionally significant item belonging to the character—player's choice as to what the item is. The only guidelines are that it should be small enough to fit reasonably in a pocket and may not have any magical or weapon properties. Similarly, players are able to choose the memories associated with the items in the safety deposit boxes. The vault door will remain closed until the characters in the vault explain to each other the significance of their items and the memory associated with them, at which point it the vault mechanisms will disengage and the door will swing open as if it had never closed to begin with. However, for the four days following the event, characters who carry their safety deposit box item on their person will feel oddly compelled to tell other characters about its significance and meaning.
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A CRASH-SITE IS SACRED, WE'RE FAITHFUL.
» SAFETY DEPOSIT BOXES — A JOINT VENTURE
For others of you, the contents of the safety deposit box may be considerably more disconcerting.
You also take your safety deposit box key from the rack behind the bank teller's counter and make your way back through the building and into the vault. It's cool inside, the temperature well-regulated and the air dry. On the walls are rows upon rows of safety deposit boxes, and it may take you a moment to find the one that corresponds to the number stamped on your key. Does that number mean anything to you? It may, or it may not.
When you find your box, it takes very little effort to open it. A slide of your key, a quick turn, and the safety deposit box's door springs open to reveal the metal container within. You remove the metal box from the wall and bring it over to the table in the center of the room, clearly placed there for this express purpose. Maybe there are others around, or maybe you're alone. Do you remember yet, what it was you put in here? Well, there's no time like the present to check.
You open the safety deposit box to find—wait, what is that? It certainly doesn't belong to you. Tucked inside the safety deposit box alongside the item is a slip of paper with another name on it, as well as a cryptic message: "Nothing is yours. It is to use. It is to share. If you will not share it, you cannot use it." The item isn't yours, but it does appear to belong to another resident of the city. Maybe your safety deposit boxes somehow got mixed up? It seems like it would be a good idea to find this person and return their property to them.
Whether you encounter the owner of the item in the vault or elsewhere in the city, when it comes time to hand the item over, two things happen. One—the doors are locked tight, refusing to allow either you or the item's owner out until you both understand what the item is and what it means to the other. To unburden your heart is the only way to free yourself.
And two—as the owner of the item explains its significance, you find yourself oddly captivated, resonating strongly with whatever emotion the item's owner most closely associates with it. You may not be able to see the memory that the other person describes, but you can certainly feel the emotions they felt—after all, the easiest way to unburden oneself is to share the load with another. Isn't that right?
Once you free yourself from your enthralled state, and once you have your own belongings returned to you, for the next several days you find yourself feeling rather honest, like you may not be able to stop yourself from confessing the truth about the item you now carry…
Characters who opted to randomize the contents of their safety deposit box during the plotting post, or who plotted a joint experience with another character, will open their safety deposit boxes to find a small, non-magical but emotionally significant item belonging to another player character in the city. They will need to find the owner of that item and return it to them—this can either be inside the bank vault or in another location within the city. Regardless of where the meeting takes place, the character holding the item will find themselves unable to leave until the character who owns the item explains its significance; as they do, the holder of the item will find themselves swept up in the emotional highs and lows of the memories associated with that item, allowing them to share all of the feelings, regrets, joys, griefs, and rages that the owner experiences in the telling. Additionally, for the four days following the event, characters who carry their safety deposit box item on their person will feel oddly compelled to tell other characters about its significance and meaning.
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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 "The Things" and "The Gatherer," two poems by Brendan Constantine. The text of the paper slip comes from Ursula K. LeGuin's The Dispossessed.
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citylogs2023-07-19 08:45 pm
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She isn't here. Don't bring her into it.
[ ah
so they've chosen Death. ]
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Oh, God forbid. [ Duo's eyes roll, and with his irritation at the entire situation lashed out for the moment, goes back to fiddling with the door. It's better than trying to force himself to talk about L2 and Sister Helen, at any rate, and so he will continue.
Maybe if they wait it out and start to lose oxygen they'll release them anyway. ]
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One he needs an answer to before he dies.
Wordlessly, he unfolds all his limbs and rises from the floor, heading towards the other safety deposit boxes with intent. Heading for the M's. ]
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[ Duo assumes that Heero's going off somewhere to blow off steam, perhaps losing himself in the boxes just to get away from him. It's fine, at least if he's over there he isn't here pissing him off with questions and dodges for anything involving Relena.
As it stands, he's still fiddling with the door, now muttering darkly to himself about why the hell he's ended up here, trapped with Heero of all people in this situation. ]
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When he pulls the box from the stacks and gives it a gentle shake, he can tell there's something inside.
So he's not being targeted specifically. They are. Good? It's something. ]
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[ The shake of the box is what finally draws Duo's attention away from his useless fiddling with the back of the door. For a moment he thinks to turn away, who the hell knows why Heero is going around shaking random boxes, after all. But then the slow realization hits, and he knows exactly who's box that is in Heero Yuy's smarmy little hands.
Duo pauses for all of a moment in what he's doing before demanding, tone dark: ]
Put it back.
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We have to share, Duo.
[ He sets the box on the table, beside his emptied one. Then he dangles the key between his thumb and forefinger. Duo can choose the easy way, or the hard way. ]
Or we're going to die in here.
[ People have already disappeared from the city. Who's to say this isn't how they go? ]
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I don't do sharing. [ Heero should know that by how annoyed he still is about Heero stealing the parts off of Deathscythe all those years ago now. Despite the Gundams now even being non-existent he's still miffed about the theft of his parts.
The same way he's very much miffed at Heero dangling that key in front of him as he is, staring at his comrade hard in that way that suggests he's trying to resist just punching him at the moment.
Spite has always been a great driver for Duo Maxwell in particular. ]
Then get ready to lay down and die, Yuy.
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He suspects, deep down inside, that Duo probably doesn't want to die. At this point in time Heero doesn't care one way or the other about his own survival, but he doesn't want Duo to die either. So here they are.
He huffs and lowers the keys. Fine. He's going to unlock the box. ]
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Leave it alone. [ Duo commands it in that same gravelly tone, knowing exactly what Heero is about to do next. They've worked together for far too long for Duo not to know that the offering of the keys had simply been Heero's way of asking him before he did it anyway.
And even though he's telling him not to, Heero will do it anyway, he knows, but it doesn't stop him from asserting it anyway.
... Mostly, he just doesn't want to see whatever the hell is in there. ]
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It isn't like Duo is too afraid to rush him or knock him out, Heero knows. Anyway, it's too late to stop him now; he's damn well convinced this has to happen to get them both out of this vault. Which means their feelings about the process are irrelevant. Heero's and Duo's both.
It isn't like he enjoys the prospect of throwing Duo's trauma in his face. He just knows when he has to pull a trigger.
Heero doesn't intend to even touch the contents of the box, anyway. All he's going to do is dump it all out onto the table so they can both see for sure what this damn city is trying to do to them - and that's faster, too. ]
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Yuy - [ Finally, Duo is moving to stand. He's perhaps too used to not standing a chance physically against Heero, but in the moment he's too pissed off at him plowing on despite his wishes. This may get him punched, but damn it he's going to try, approaching to attempt to grab a fist full of Heero's shirt, to yank him away from what he's going to do. ]
I said leave it the fuck alone.
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contents, letter, and box go flying from his hands without any care for their trajectory as Heero stumbles back, the all-too-familiar scent of char hitting his nose. no wonder they were both trapped in here to suffer through this together.
he wouldn't throw a punch. he won't duck one from Duo, either. he's already done what he needed to do. ]
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You mother- [ Duo barely manages to pull himself back, the damage already done. Beyond that, it doesn't really suit them to have them come out of this stupid little thing looking like they've come out of a street brawl. And at this point it changes nothing, as the faint smell of char meets their noses.
It's a visceral thing to smell, a memory that he hadn't wanted to chase any time soon, especially after everything with Don Quixote.
Duo's jaw works for a moment, again pressing down the urge to just start punching, pointedly not looking down at whatever burnt thing is don't here on the table. ]
Why can't you just leave things the fuck alone?
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You know why.
[ Because he wasn't made to leave things alone. And because he can't watch Duo give up here and choose to rot.
Heero still doesn't make any move away from the threat of Duo's clenched fists, but Duo should know from the way Heero's handled his conflicts in the past that a brawl here would make them even (no arguments). ]
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You're a fucking pain in the ass. [ That's the truth that doesn't need to be spoken, if they're honest with themselves, but here they are anyway. Duo hasn't even looked down, but by the burnt smell he can guess from when in his life this little relic has appeared from.
There is only one scenario where he's had a traumatic event involving fire, after all.
Finally, he gathers himself enough to look down and see what, exactly, this hell has brought for him. The black cover is generally nondescript, at least until a worn, but still slightly gilded cross glints in the low light of the vault, and Duo lets out a low, long breath in an attempt to control the rising urge to just peg Heero Yuy straight between the eyes with it. ]
For fuck's sake.
no subject
Is there a spacer alive whose stomach doesn't lurch at the smell or sight of fire? When it's just a few layers of steel separating yourself from the vacuum of space for most of your life, it isn't difficult to develop some amount of paranoia around anything that would threaten the integrity of that steel.
But Duo's reaction isn't that. ]
You're angry.
[ obviously, but Heero doesn't really mean at him. ]
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Wow, Heero, incredibly astute. [ The sarcasm could drip venom, at this point. They’re stuck here between two very obvious signifiers of trauma, two events that had led these two very different young men to Operation Meteor and, eventually, each other’s begrudging company.
Duo reaches out to take the small book in hand, after a moment, the soot immediately leaving black on his fingers. It settles in his hand like a brick, despite how light it is, and how fragile a state it’s in.
The braided pilot is boiling inside. He is still, and probably will always be, furious about how the Maxwell Church came to an end. At once he wants this away from him, and soon the Bible leaves his hand to thud and skid along the table top (leaving a trail of burnt bits and soot in its wake) to Heero. ]
You wanted it so damn bad. [ Is all he explains before turning heel and heading in to the stacks of boxes. It’s a small walk, but he needs to pull himself back together, somehow.
Who knew that one book would be all it took to have Duo ready to explode. ]
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(That's what he thinks of the fury coming off Duo in waves: an uncooperative mood.)
He didn't really want the Bible, so Heero makes no move to pick it up. And the item isn't his to talk about, so he isn't sure what else to do.
The old fallback it is, then: make it a test of how long it takes for Duo to hold out in silence. Heero's arms fold over his chest. ]
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[ Duo… does his best to remain patient.
Maybe the vault will get bored with them and their tense silence and fighting and release them, decide it isn’t worth it to hear one more sob story. Exasperation applies to an inanimate and locked object, doesn’t it? It does not, of course, and Duo is rapidly growing impatient with this entire episode. Impatient and itching to have more space to move. He paces an aisle of boxes quietly for a good period of time, turning methodically every seven steps on his heel to make the return lap.
His stomach begins to gnaw at him next, hunger feeding in to his irritation about this entire episode. He wants (unrealistically and foolishly) to outlast Heero Yuy’s iron clad silence and will, of course, but with his stomach growling and the walls of the small space closing in on him, Duo quickly loses motivation to stay in this stupid box any longer than he has to.
New motivation obtained, he treads back to the table, glaring at Heero as if he’s insulted everything about him by existing, and spits out: ]
Fine. My “mom” - [ yes, those are finger quotes he’s using because he figures they have to share something similar, and he does not tend to refer to Sister Helen in that context otherwise. ] - died too. The Maxwell church massacre on L2.
[ A gesture to the burned bible, of course, as much as he wishes that could go back to hell where it belonged. ]
I only made it out because I wasn’t there.
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The fury still doesn't bother him. Maybe it should. He isn't as put off by the thought of making Duo want to punch him as he should be, but Heero can't help that. ]
Why don't you want to talk about it?
[ Because it strikes him as strange that Duo wouldn't want to talk at all - not even under threat of death. Not even to get Heero off his case with a cavalier shrug (a little too exaggerated, as Duo does) and a dark joke.
Is that what the vault wants him to know about Duo?
Or is this about Duo's reaction to him. ]
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Why don’t you want to talk about it before getting your hands on that stupid Leo? [ yes, this draws out their time here in the vault, but Duo feels that the question has a very obvious answer.
The why hurts even all these years later, the reminder of it all threatens to make him want to find a reason to blow this entire place to the moon just as it made him want to destroy every possible soldier that he could during the war.
All the time he’s spent trying to bury that violent, angry child down since comes to a crashing end at the smell of the soot alone. Duo’s jaw sets, very narrowly resisting the urge to get it as far away from him as possible. ]
You like reliving losing everything or something?