aftr_ooc | A NEW WORLD COMING ( 024 )

A New World Coming

Hello, and welcome to LifeAftr! We're pleased that you're expressing an interest in the game. Here, you can test the waters, gauge how your character may fare in the world of LifeAftr, and even gain some in-game incentives, if you so choose.

In conjunction with our monthly Test Drive Meme, Reserves are now open! Applications will open on June 24th!

Two important notes:

1. LifeAftr's test drives take place on the island of Mu, which is always watching. Do not panic. Do not panic. Do not panic. Do not panic. Do not panic. Do not panic. Do not panic. Do not

2. Due to the nature of Mu, threads in our test drive can not only be accepted as thread samples in your application, but are the game. You cannot choose who you are in this world. You cannot change fate. You cannot change fate. You cannot change fate.

In the meantime, feel free to refer to our usual rules regarding the TDM. All prompts are miniature versions of events that have transpired in the past. You may visit any of the links provided if you're interested in additional information.

And It's Just Around The Bend
The whole world is ending.

Beneath you, the first rays of a new sun slink across the ice-coated ground, sending whirls of steam curling up into the air. Everything will eventually be reborn to the way it was, much like the sun itself. At the very edges of the island, shadowy creatures that appear to have crept out of the darkest recesses of your mind mill about on the ocean shores, eager to avoid the burning eyes of the sun.

Of course, that's all happening a very, very long way down. Miles below you, in fact. The ground below is still cast in perpetual dark, while the sky itself is sunlit and dazzling.

As fingers of new light creep out across the horizon and ignite the air with a soft, daylit warmth, you find yourself sky high on one of many floating islands that shift and change within your presence. The landscape of these islands is extremely malleable, and not just in a general sense. Each island you make contact with will begin to "mold" itself to you, attempting to reformat its landscape to appear as a place that you desire to see again. Somewhere important. Somewhere comforting. A memory. While it cannot recreate people or exact circumstances, it can imitate landscapes and buildings, or make the nearest attempt to do so.

"Attempt" being the operative word. With the rapid change of these islands comes one key weakness - their instability. If you stay too long in one place, the island will start to blacken and twist. No matter how hard it strained to recreate your memories before, those familiar places will start to curdle over, crumbling like sand beneath the weight of your desires...and the weight of you. Chunks of the land fall away, blistered black and simmering like fistfuls of embers, burned through with a dark volcanic corruption. The more people standing on one piece of land, the faster this change will occur, leaving you with very little time to enjoy the sights as you race ahead to the nearest mana pool, your only access to the ground below.

In short, you'd better run. Run, while there is still ground beneath your feet.

The world is ending around you - and if you're not fast enough, you'll end alongside it, namely by plunging a long, long way down earth. If the fall doesn't kill you, the hungry, burning eyes of the dark shadows lumped below very well may.

There's A New Voice Calling
The Trial of Orpheus is a very particular practice performed by one group of LifeAftr's inhabitants, residing on the draconian civilization settled on the island of Ai'tuoh. Enacted only upon those who break one of Ai'tuoh's many laws, it requires those convicted to pass into the Standing Water - a slumbering city of lost souls.

A city you've just arrived in.

The first thing you’ll likely feel is the crushing, biting, bone-deep chill, paired with the sensation of falling down some great, fathomless abyss. No jolt or sudden impact awaits you, however. Instead, your fall will slow, even out, as though your personal gravity is reorienting itself, and you’ll find yourself blinking awake in...Ai'tuoh.

Or rather, in a very strange version of it - what can only be described as a dark, colorless mirror of the city of Ai'tuoh. The buildings loom darkly overhead, their edges strangely irresolving, as though being peered at through ripples of water.

If there is a way out, you don't know it. The means and direction are lost to you. But leave you must, for the longer you remain, the more tired you become. Thoughts begin to drift as you become lost to the ebbing waves of time; the longer you remain untethered, the more likely you are to succumb to an endless repose.

Your only hope is the connections you make with others. Be it emotional or physical, positive or negative, this journey requires you to remain part of a pair, talking, hand-holding, even carrying each other through the city as you seek out the means to escape. The pervading sense of exhaustion that grips your bones almost seems core to the city itself, and the longer you remain, the more that lethargy will sink into you. There will be nothing more tempting than simply lying down and closing your eyes...but you have to keep moving. Do you understand? You have to keep moving, because if you don't, there really won't be any saving you.

The most definitive way out is a bright strand of color that winds through the abyss, vibrant red and almost threadlike, gradually ascending upward into a glimmer of light. Find someone to connect to, hold onto that guiding thread tightly, and whatever you do, do not let go.

Or you risk sinking into that endless slumber, possibly for good.

You Can Hear It If You Try
Of course, if you'd prefer to relax within your dreams, the white-picketed community of Ziziphus may be precisely what you're looking for. An idyllic town located on a fairly remote island of LifeAftr, Ziziphus comes with all your modern amenities - electricity, cars, showers. Here, you can spend your evenings watching the television, tucking in your kids or playing drinking games with your roommates. And in the morning, it's time to meet the day, whether work, study, or housework awaits you. Why, it's the perfect picture of textbook suburbia, from the neat squares of well-manicured lawns to the incontrovertibly cheerful sound of the newspaper thwacking against the doorstep each morning.

Sorry - you've never had this job before? You don't have kids, or even want them? Of course you have, silly - you've been here for the last five years. You've gone to the same school since you became old enough to study. In fact...you've been living here your whole life.

Is that wrong? Of course it isn't. There's nothing wrong here. There's nothing wrong here. There's nothing wrong here.

Right?

Ziziphus is no peaceful neighborhood, of course, but rather an island that traps its visitors in a dream that seeks to provide a constant state of euphoria. Hence, your tragic past is no more. You are no warrior, no hero. It's time for you to take up the role that suits the most ideal fantasy you have of a fulfilling life. A successful businessperson, a busy student, a completely normal individual in a completely normal life. There's nothing wrong here.

If you think too hard about this eerily cheerful life, about how you technically shouldn't even know what "electricity" is, or about any of the inconsistencies that run counter to the life you thought you had...well, don't think too hard about it. Don't think about the creeping scent of rot that swarms up into your nostrils should those awful thoughts ever cross your mind. Don't start asking questions, posing innocent queries to the perfect smiles perpetually stamped across the faces of your friends and neighbors and children who carry out their daily routines with all the soulless efficiency of wind-up toys. Don't start thinking about how, if you dwell too much on the uncanny nature of this neighborhood, it starts to feel like you can't...quite...breathe...

Oh, god. You have to get out of here. You - you have to not think about it. You have to not think about it, so don't. So don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it.

Everything, and everyone, is precisely as they should be.

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

around the bend;
[The world has made itself into the shape of what looks to be a dormitory. The room is decorated in traditional Japanese furnishing, and it gets Shouto to pause in the doorway. He’s surprised to see his UA dorm room here, just...disconnected from everything else, and it’s strange.

...And then the ground underneath him starts to turn black and crumble, and he’s got to get a move on. The process is slow enough he doesn’t feel the need to run, but he does hurry. He can’t quite figure out what’s happening. Is it somebody’s quirk? Or another trick of the islands? He remembers the strange islands that were the Storyteller’s dominion, even though they weren’t quite like this, but...maybe?

Either way, once he comes across somebody he slows down again, before casting a glance behind himself.]

...You don’t want to go that way.

you can hear it;
[He knows this place is wrong as soon as he gets up in the morning. The idyllic scene is just - it’s too idyllic. It’s too removed from reality.

It’s too impossible for the Todoroki family to be a happy, healthy family. For all of them to be together. Touya’s gone, his mother will never be out of the hospital, and Endeavor would never let himself be a family man. Not to mention the smooth blankness of his face, no distinctive marks or scars to be seen on it.

Shouto feels sick to his stomach, and whether that’s because of what he’s seen or because of the heavy scent of rotting plants, he doesn’t know. He grits his teeth and forces himself to leave the house, to run away, and find whatever it is that’s causing this. This wouldn’t happen for no reason, and he’s determined to make things right. This is some kind of trick, and he doesn’t want to be caught in it.

When he sees someone, he heads over to them, bracing himself.]

Do you smell it too?

[Or are you another recreation like the happy family he left behind?

[Shouto may not have intended to call out to Ammy, but she turns to look at him regardless, a pristine white wolf walking about the bustling streets that are identical to one another. People mowing their laws, tending their gardens...it all seems almost robotic with how absolutely normal everything is. Honestly, it makes the wolf stand out all the more, despite how the world is trying, almost desperately, to fit her into this idyllic, perfect, normal world. There seems like a slight distortion around the air about her, like that of a hot road on a summer's day, or a mirage in the desert...and yet she remains unchanged.

What Shouto says makes her lips curl over her sharp teeth, a low growl rumbling in her throat, as she stares at a massive wall-like hedge, cut to perfection and seeming to almost...box them all in. Looking about, the same hedge spans for miles and miles, encompassing the whole of this false community. Ammy turns back to it, snarling. Oh, she knows what this is, what's going on...and she eels almost sick to her stomach, but not because o the smell. She remembers all of it, having to put down that god that became corrupt, the memorial held for them, and the suffering they caused, in their madness. This is...too much. It's too much to bring all that back. Let the dead sleep, and let their mistakes be forgotten to time.

This is cruel not only to the newcomers, but to those that suffered, and those that died, or lost...someone they knew. Someone different than what they turned into.]

[That wolf's not supposed to be here. It sticks out like a sore thumb, something dangerous, something wild, that can't be tamed by the idealized world that's been created for him.

Somehow, seeing it is a relief. It settles the feeling of wrongness, and makes him feel more at ease. It's proof that this world is wrong, that it's fake, that his intuition was right and he can move on from this place.

Somehow.

He's not sure how he'll manage it.

He lets out a breath, turning to look at the hedge the wolf snarls at. His family home never had hedges like that.]

What do we do about this...

[Wild, yes. Dangerous? Perhaps to some, but not to any of the people here that have even a speck of good in their hearts. Ammy glances over at the boy as he approaches, and even still the world tries its damnedest to try and force the wolf out. Because she's a threat, a threat to this made up world, and a threat to the one creating it. Even the memory of the god o Bliss seems to know, and that's why the world blurs to Shouto's eyes for a moment, trying to distort and churn and glitch her out of the reality it's creating.

Just a dog. A stray, dog. Not important. No, worse. It's sick, it's dirty. Don't approach it, it could bite. Just walk away. Just ignore it. It's not even there--...what was? Nothing. Nothing at all, everything's fine. Everything as it should be. Ignore it. Ignore it. IGNORE IT. IGNORE--

Veyr suddenly, the world seems to shift, like the scratch of a record, and the putrid smell becomes unbearable, like its everywhere, all round, all at once. Shouto can feel something around him, encasing him, like a cocoon...tightening, smothering, choking...and the glimmer of white as a beast emblazoned with red marks struggles wildly against gnarled and twisting vines, a powerful looking sapphire blade held in its teeth.

But the vision blinks out, back to the perfect suburban paradise all over again. No sign of the dog, but the distant bark...bark....b-barrrrrkkhhhhh--

I G N O R E. I T.]

[Varian slows his pace, before coming to a halt completely, not expecting that. He'd been a bit distracted, looking at the strange environment, trying to figure it out. But... not that way?

Okay...]

Uh, what-- Why not?

[Shouto turns to look behind himself, before turning back to Varian.]

The ground is crumbling.

[And obviously that's not a good thing.]

A NEW WORLD COMING ( 024 )

shouto todoroki | my hero academia

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around the bend

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