I HOLD TRUTH LIKE A TORCH-- SHADOWS FLICKER BEFORE ME.
Who: Heather Mason and ANYONE IN GOLDENROD CITY. Anyone.
Where: Goldenrod City
When: In the thick of the Missingo glitching.
Summary: "And this glitch? Basically, the end of the world."
So, weird shit happens in Johto. That much has come to be expected. But everything else at least had an explanation Heather could buy. The Unown and their crystal flood? Crazy haunted stuff from those old Ruins. The nightmarish fog? Turns out ghosts are jerks no matter what world you're in.
This? According to Otacon, it's just the end of the line.
Well, Heather's stopped the end of the world once. Might not be her place to do so again if that's what this is, but at the very least, she doesn't want to go down without a fight. So she's taking to the pixelated streets both in search of others who didn't wind up pixelated monstrosities, AND in search of the missing numbers that caused this.
And guess what? She found a steel pipe.
Rating: PG-13 for language and pixelated violence.
Log:
There was one bonus to this scenario that Heather could think of. It wasn't much, but it was something, and in times like these, somethings were important to keep in mind. They stopped you from going into that disaster mindset where you just curled up in a fetal position somewhere and waited for something to eat you.
That something was that at least this time, she knew where she was, and knew she hadn't gone crazy.
That? Was a comfort.
Unlike on the wet pavement of Silent Hill, where she'd been mentally transported just over a month ago when the delusion-inducing fog had crept across eastern Johto, here Heather's boots made almost no sound against the new floor of the city, which was smooth as tile and covered in bright little squares (pixels?) of light that blinked as they moved soundlessly. It was similar enough to the creeping clotlike things that coated the walls of the Otherworld that it sent little prickles of discomfort through Heather's skin when she thought about it too much, but different enough that it didn't sent that heavy, cloying sense of pure dread that the delusions from a month ago had.
The warped cityscape with its permanent redorangepurple sky seemed almost empty, though that probably had to do with the fact that its usual clamoring crowds and busy population had been turned into still, silent pillars of pixel. Heather... was just trying not to look at them as she walked briskly through the desolate streets. Those gave her the wig way more than the pixels that skittered across the ground like digital mice. In all honesty, the place might have been disturbing but oddly peaceful, if it weren't for the hideously warped music and the far-off screams of the beasts she now knew were drifting around the city. Ghosts and skeletons. Boy, this place really knew how to show its citizens a good weekend.
She'd gone in to work today expecting yet another long, drudging shift of ringing up Pokeballs and pretending to be interested in helping women with way too much time on their hands choose which Pokemon plush to get for their collection. What had happened instead was pretty much the eldritch, computerized equivalent of walking into a classroom, seeing something different and thinking you walked into the wrong room, ashamedly ducking out again while everyone stares at you, and then realizing you were actually in the RIGHT room halfway down the hallway.
The pixel people had kind of thrown her off.
An hour and a half later?
She'd been educated on the Missing Number and told a few unsettling things.
She felt like she should have been shocked by this information-- that this world might well be ending.
But it wasn't the first time she'd had the apocalypse sprung on her like a bad surprise party.
And, well, in rough times, they do say to do what you know.
And the last time this had happened? She'd gone into the heart of the storm.
Fought through the obstacles.
Found the source.
Killed it.
Her Pokemon were back in the hotel room-- no point in going back. This was her kind of situation now-- not the time to conform to this place's weird animal-fighting culture. She'd feel safer fighting for herself, anyway. No uncertainty. You made every move yourself and there was no doubt.
She'd found a chunk of pipe.
It was pixelated like everything else, to the point where when she touched it, she almost expected it to feel fuzzy, like a piece of moldy wood. But it felt like rusted metal to her palms and that was good enough for her. She'd just... avoid looking at it whenever she had to use it and pretend like it looked like the real thing.
Her chances? Probably weren't too good, but... hey. No point in just sitting around, right? She'd rather go down swingin' than just stand and watch the place go all low-res like a cheap jpg. image until it finally just went dark. Or whatever it was that was gonna happen.
It was probably disturbing just how easily she found herself slipping back into the same mindset she'd had the last time she was faced with the end of the world, but she'd just... consider the implications of that later.
If there was a later.
A loud cry rang out from one of the alleys. It was one of those things, all right. Those ratcheting, computerized noises that sounded sort of like a Pac Man game mixed with somebody talking into a fan. It wasn't the same kind of hair-raising noise she was used to that made her skin crawl, but it was unsettling enough for her to know good and well that she didn't like it.
"C'mon out, you creep..." she muttered under her breath, hefting her pixel-pipe and stepping towards the mouth of the alley. Briefly it occurred to her that every time shit like this happened, it usually involved her going into alleyways, but she put that out of her mind. The world had turned into a computer crash personified and she was looking to kick a little ass on account of it.
The mouth of the alley was lit in bars and speckles, which twinkled off into the darkness ahead like little fireflies as she stepped in.
.... And there it was.
Pixels fell from its body like dust as it turned its massive head towards her and regarded her with empty eyesockets, its legs and wings splayed out across the alley to keep it suspended between the two narrow walls. Speckles of color flickered all around its skeletal frame like a bad greenscreen effect.
Heather swallowed.
".... Well, uh. You don't look so tough."
A few white pixels trickled down over its lower jaw and hit the smooth ground with gentle plops. They kind of looked like bird poop to Heather but it was easy enough to tell what they were supposed to be.
She took a step back.
"Tell you what, my friend, if you make even one move to eat me, you are BONED."
Apparently Missingnos did not appreciate witty one-liners. It lunged.
Heather swung.
The not-pipe connected with the creature's thick lower jaw with an impact that was real enough-- she could feel it vibrate up her arm painfully-- but instead of the sharp CHING of metal on bone, there was nothing but a rather flat, 8-bit DONK noise.
"Oh, come ON..." Talk about anticlimactic...
She didn't have time to be disappointed, though, because the thing had come down to rest on the floor with a jingle and was now staring at her in a way that distinctly said, despite its empty eyesockets, that it was pissed off.
Suddenly the pipe didn't seem like such a great weapon in such an enclosed space like this anymore.
.... Nnnnkay, time for plan B.
"Hope you can run, bitch!"
~*~TIME FOR A BRISK JOG AROUND THE CITY~*~
[ooc: Others can encounter her being chased, encounter her actually FIGHTING one or more of these things, or-- pretty much anything. Feel free to help her out, distract her, yell at her for being reckless, fight her yourself (if that's how you roll), whatever. LET'S PLAY.]
Where: Goldenrod City
When: In the thick of the Missingo glitching.
Summary: "And this glitch? Basically, the end of the world."
So, weird shit happens in Johto. That much has come to be expected. But everything else at least had an explanation Heather could buy. The Unown and their crystal flood? Crazy haunted stuff from those old Ruins. The nightmarish fog? Turns out ghosts are jerks no matter what world you're in.
This? According to Otacon, it's just the end of the line.
Well, Heather's stopped the end of the world once. Might not be her place to do so again if that's what this is, but at the very least, she doesn't want to go down without a fight. So she's taking to the pixelated streets both in search of others who didn't wind up pixelated monstrosities, AND in search of the missing numbers that caused this.
And guess what? She found a steel pipe.
Rating: PG-13 for language and pixelated violence.
Log:
There was one bonus to this scenario that Heather could think of. It wasn't much, but it was something, and in times like these, somethings were important to keep in mind. They stopped you from going into that disaster mindset where you just curled up in a fetal position somewhere and waited for something to eat you.
That something was that at least this time, she knew where she was, and knew she hadn't gone crazy.
That? Was a comfort.
Unlike on the wet pavement of Silent Hill, where she'd been mentally transported just over a month ago when the delusion-inducing fog had crept across eastern Johto, here Heather's boots made almost no sound against the new floor of the city, which was smooth as tile and covered in bright little squares (pixels?) of light that blinked as they moved soundlessly. It was similar enough to the creeping clotlike things that coated the walls of the Otherworld that it sent little prickles of discomfort through Heather's skin when she thought about it too much, but different enough that it didn't sent that heavy, cloying sense of pure dread that the delusions from a month ago had.
The warped cityscape with its permanent redorangepurple sky seemed almost empty, though that probably had to do with the fact that its usual clamoring crowds and busy population had been turned into still, silent pillars of pixel. Heather... was just trying not to look at them as she walked briskly through the desolate streets. Those gave her the wig way more than the pixels that skittered across the ground like digital mice. In all honesty, the place might have been disturbing but oddly peaceful, if it weren't for the hideously warped music and the far-off screams of the beasts she now knew were drifting around the city. Ghosts and skeletons. Boy, this place really knew how to show its citizens a good weekend.
She'd gone in to work today expecting yet another long, drudging shift of ringing up Pokeballs and pretending to be interested in helping women with way too much time on their hands choose which Pokemon plush to get for their collection. What had happened instead was pretty much the eldritch, computerized equivalent of walking into a classroom, seeing something different and thinking you walked into the wrong room, ashamedly ducking out again while everyone stares at you, and then realizing you were actually in the RIGHT room halfway down the hallway.
The pixel people had kind of thrown her off.
An hour and a half later?
She'd been educated on the Missing Number and told a few unsettling things.
She felt like she should have been shocked by this information-- that this world might well be ending.
But it wasn't the first time she'd had the apocalypse sprung on her like a bad surprise party.
And, well, in rough times, they do say to do what you know.
And the last time this had happened? She'd gone into the heart of the storm.
Fought through the obstacles.
Found the source.
Killed it.
Her Pokemon were back in the hotel room-- no point in going back. This was her kind of situation now-- not the time to conform to this place's weird animal-fighting culture. She'd feel safer fighting for herself, anyway. No uncertainty. You made every move yourself and there was no doubt.
She'd found a chunk of pipe.
It was pixelated like everything else, to the point where when she touched it, she almost expected it to feel fuzzy, like a piece of moldy wood. But it felt like rusted metal to her palms and that was good enough for her. She'd just... avoid looking at it whenever she had to use it and pretend like it looked like the real thing.
Her chances? Probably weren't too good, but... hey. No point in just sitting around, right? She'd rather go down swingin' than just stand and watch the place go all low-res like a cheap jpg. image until it finally just went dark. Or whatever it was that was gonna happen.
It was probably disturbing just how easily she found herself slipping back into the same mindset she'd had the last time she was faced with the end of the world, but she'd just... consider the implications of that later.
If there was a later.
A loud cry rang out from one of the alleys. It was one of those things, all right. Those ratcheting, computerized noises that sounded sort of like a Pac Man game mixed with somebody talking into a fan. It wasn't the same kind of hair-raising noise she was used to that made her skin crawl, but it was unsettling enough for her to know good and well that she didn't like it.
"C'mon out, you creep..." she muttered under her breath, hefting her pixel-pipe and stepping towards the mouth of the alley. Briefly it occurred to her that every time shit like this happened, it usually involved her going into alleyways, but she put that out of her mind. The world had turned into a computer crash personified and she was looking to kick a little ass on account of it.
The mouth of the alley was lit in bars and speckles, which twinkled off into the darkness ahead like little fireflies as she stepped in.
.... And there it was.
Pixels fell from its body like dust as it turned its massive head towards her and regarded her with empty eyesockets, its legs and wings splayed out across the alley to keep it suspended between the two narrow walls. Speckles of color flickered all around its skeletal frame like a bad greenscreen effect.
Heather swallowed.
".... Well, uh. You don't look so tough."
A few white pixels trickled down over its lower jaw and hit the smooth ground with gentle plops. They kind of looked like bird poop to Heather but it was easy enough to tell what they were supposed to be.
She took a step back.
"Tell you what, my friend, if you make even one move to eat me, you are BONED."
Apparently Missingnos did not appreciate witty one-liners. It lunged.
Heather swung.
The not-pipe connected with the creature's thick lower jaw with an impact that was real enough-- she could feel it vibrate up her arm painfully-- but instead of the sharp CHING of metal on bone, there was nothing but a rather flat, 8-bit DONK noise.
"Oh, come ON..." Talk about anticlimactic...
She didn't have time to be disappointed, though, because the thing had come down to rest on the floor with a jingle and was now staring at her in a way that distinctly said, despite its empty eyesockets, that it was pissed off.
Suddenly the pipe didn't seem like such a great weapon in such an enclosed space like this anymore.
.... Nnnnkay, time for plan B.
"Hope you can run, bitch!"
~*~TIME FOR A BRISK JOG AROUND THE CITY~*~
[ooc: Others can encounter her being chased, encounter her actually FIGHTING one or more of these things, or-- pretty much anything. Feel free to help her out, distract her, yell at her for being reckless, fight her yourself (if that's how you roll), whatever. LET'S PLAY.]