You're at the reintro. You're at the heartgame. You're at the combination reintro/heartgame.

[idolpro]

Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.
- Pablo Neruda

✦

bought a bubblegum scented sword so the last thing
my enemies realise is how fun and cute i am
- wolfpupy

Comments

CHANCEL BAD END=DEAD END

[idolpro]

Welcome to BAD END=DEAD END! Wow!!!

It is exactly as you remember it: industrial, with graffitied and paint-splattered walls, but earnestly lived in, with its modern-vintage sofas and high latticed windows. There’s the faint smell of something cooking wafting on the air, and an assortment of random plush tsum tsums (of unit members past and present) scattered over the couch.

(Wait... do you remember this? The cooking... have you ever actually had that recipe?)

........Oh, and twining around the legs of furniture, twisting over exposed industrial pipes, climbing up the windows—there are the briars of wild roses. The dorm’s main living room also now features a tiny stream, winding across the floor and around the couch, which occasionally widens into small pools of water, from which grow tall stems of lotus.

CHARACTER ROOMS

[idolpro]

If you head towards the bedrooms, it seems the hallway is distinctly longer than it ought to be—and upon closer examination, it’s easy to see why: there are not only doors for a number of both current and past BAD END members (each with a name carved on it in katakana, though you can read it easily regardless of your own native language), but also doors for some people who were never members at all.

The full list of names on bedroom doors is as follows:

Silk
Lumen
Ordine
Sashay Silfda Eistria Dagger AAA Absolute Zero Slaughtervodka
Jack
Serenity
ATTACK AND DETHRONE GOD Hope
Hardcore
Jason
Scythe
Pink
Sabre
Kohime
Nero
Harpy

…and a final door at the end of the hallway, which has some kind of floral crest in addition to the name “Hellfire.”

Re: CHARACTER ROOMS

[gravitydefier]

[going to....go down to the final door at the end of the hallway, then.]

Re: CHARACTER ROOMS

[ninuanni]

Up close, you can see that there is quite a bit of extra detail on and around this door. In fact, the whole doorframe is surrounded with photos and knickknacks, like some kind of magpie’s scrapbook: there are various photos of BAD END members, of pep!pep! at the beach, of the garden at ☆ZRAEL; there are snack wrappers from the conbini; a dangling tsum tsum of of a red-headed boy in WILD CITY clothes; a neat-looking leaf from the park; a handprint in what looks like old blood.

Beneath the name “HELLFIRE” (the katakana are enthusiastically oversized) are many other names:
“Kiri,” “Cut Through All Foes,” “Khrysaor, Temptation of Angels,” and—written like an addendum to that last one—a fourth, which is not in katakana but rather some strange script that makes your vision blur at the edges: “Khysael.”

Most prominent of all, though, is the carved crest on the door: a detailed lotus and aconite, twining together into one whole. And you understand, intuitively, that this is as much a name as all the others.

Re: CHARACTER ROOMS

[gravitydefier]

[he's going to examine the crest more closely then. and definitely pays attention to all these names.]

Re: CHARACTER ROOMS

[ninuanni]

You study the names—Hellfire, and Kiri, and Cut Through All Foes, and Khrysaor, Temptation of Angels—and note how perfectly clean the cuts were that carved them in the door—parting the industrial hardwood with the ease of soft butter.

Studying the name Khysael—that name in some λ-language—gives you a strange sort of feeling. Like you have to somehow unfocus your eyes to read it properly. If you λ-look at it long enough, the shape of the letters begins to feel almost like a poem, or a tiny fragment of one:

Thousand-cutting soul;
a thousand ways of ending

Finally, you run your fingers over the grooves of the floral crest, and with that comes with a kind of certainty: that these are your (her) flowers, as much a part of you as your cutting edge:

Lotus, Key of the Descending Angel.
Aconite, Key of Rage.

There are wild roses climbing over the walls of the hallway, but none involved in this door's motifs, nor any peeking out from under the doorframe (as you can see they, and other flowers, seem to from some of the rooms).

Re: CHARACTER ROOMS

[gravitydefier]

[a name is a name, an encapsulation of nature. (a protection). hmmm. if those are her flowers...then what do the wild roses mean?

and going to go touch the nearest roses.]

[carrionmywaywardsun]

[hmmm

opening the first door he gets to, whoever's that is, or at least trying to open it.]

[ninuanni]

A few wild roses poke out from underneath the door to this bedroom, which is carved with a name that has been carefully etched into the hardwood: "Silk."


...It is locked. But as you lay your hand on the doorknob, there’s a feeling of protection; of being watched over. The longer you let your hand rest there, the warmer and more certain the feeling becomes. It is intermingled with the pleasure of a hot dish of curry (ah, so that's what you were trying to make), as well as a slightly distant kind of respect—as if towards a guardian.

[carrionmywaywardsun]

[.....is this whole ?dream? going to be feeling random feelings, because he does not like it.

let's just skip to the end, the door with the floral crest labeled "Hellfire."]

[ninuanni]

Look bub, you're in the Foyer of Feelings, what do you expect.

Up close, you can see that there is quite a bit of extra detail on and around this door. In fact, the whole doorframe is surrounded with photos and knickknacks, like some kind of magpie’s scrapbook: there are various photos of BAD END members, of pep!pep! at the beach, of the garden at ☆ZRAEL; there are snack wrappers from the conbini; a dangling tsum tsum of a red-headed boy in WILD CITY clothes; a neat-looking leaf from the park; a handprint in what looks like old blood.

Beneath the name “HELLFIRE” (the katakana are enthusiastically oversized) are many other names:
“Kiri,” “Cut Through All Foes,” “Khrysaor, Temptation of Angels,” and—written like an addendum to that last one—a fourth, which is not in katakana but rather some strange script that makes your vision blur at the edges: Khysael.
Something about looking at that ?language? gives a feeling of almost vertigo, or vast emptiness, or—something that feels both unnameable yet viscerally familiar.

Most prominent of all, though, is the carved crest on the door: a detailed lotus and aconite, twining together into one whole. And you understand, intuitively, that this is as much a name as all the others.

[carrionmywaywardsun]

[Hope's souldreamthing wasn't full of feelings! Just boring old books.

Valor will peruse the knickknacks with some interest, spending a long moment--maybe too long?--staring at the fourth name. It feels familiar, in a way that reminds him of the occasional hollow ache inside him, a reminder of where something should be but isn't.

...Anyway, moving on. He figures the way forward is going to mean experiencing more ~feelings~ so--touching first the lotus carving, then the aconite.]

[carrionmywaywardsun]

[taking a moment to get his bearings and get over the disappointment that yet again, nothing here knows how to die properly, end the way they should

ok, moment done.

running a hand over one of the lotus flowers, curious.]

[ninuanni]

Welcome home(?).

The stream with its lotuses looks honestly extremely well-established: these look like plants that have been growing for years (never mind that that's longer than BAD END itself has existed), with lush leaves and a proliferation of pink-veined flowers on tall, gently swaying stems.

In contrast, the wild roses seem much newer: sure, they're growing wildly, but on closer inspection you can see places where they've recently ripped through upholstery and even overturned a table lamp in what must have been an explosion of new growth.

When your fingers brush against the lotus petals, you feel something: you are powerful, and transcendent; your presence shapes the world.

[carrionmywaywardsun]

[okay, that was pretty nice.

let's see what touching the roses gets him]

[ninuanni]

You cup a small bloom in your hand, and—

You are different—something that has never fit in. But has anyone here in this new Familia really fit in? You wouldn't be Familia BAD END if you had.

So why is that now you feel.... longing?

There's still that distance between you and them, after all—and for the first time, you have reason to wonder at what you have been missing…

[carrionmywaywardsun]

[trying to follow the wild roses back to where they come from. are they rooted in anything in particular?]

Re: CHANCEL BAD END=DEAD END

[gravitydefier]

[somewhat...confused. this is...not quite right, though he's only a recent arrival to bad end.

but going to examine that stream, then.]

Re: CHANCEL BAD END=DEAD END

[ninuanni]

And yet the scent feels as though it should be familiar; like the smell of these spices has drifted from the kitchen dozens of times.

Approaching the stream, you see that it is... remarkably well-established, in fact. These look like plants that have been growing for years (never mind that that's longer than BAD END itself has existed), with lush leaves and a proliferation of pink-veined flowers on tall, gently swaying stems.

(In contrast, the wild roses seem much newer: sure, they're growing wildly, but on closer inspection you can see places where they've recently ripped through upholstery and even overturned a table lamp in what must have been an explosion of new growth. Still, they're no less lovely, in their way.)

Re: CHANCEL BAD END=DEAD END

[gravitydefier]

[hmmm.

hmmm. going to follow the roses and see where they lead, then.]

Re: CHANCEL BAD END=DEAD END

[ninuanni]

They're rooted... all over the dorm, actually—twining around furniture, climbing up the walls, and down the hallways. Some of them sprout around clusters of scattered tsum tsums, almost as if they were seeds.

But the briars seem to grow most densely in the direction of the dorm's kitchen, and down the hallway that holds everyone's bedrooms.

Re: CHANCEL BAD END=DEAD END

[gravitydefier]

[he is going to go check out that hallway, then.]

/2

[irregular]

Fuck--!!

[Yeah, sorry, that was a lot all of a sudden and he's not - he's okay? what the Hell - K is a bit surprised to be anywhere right now, never mind back at the dorms he still can't quite think of as his and also they're flooding?]

Re: /2

[irregular]

[Well, there's a stream.

[Okay. Now he's finished being surprised he's not dead and why is it he's still not used to that? K decides that since on the floor anyway he might as well stick his hand in it. In this house we make only good decisions.]

[ninuanni]

Welcome home!!!
You stick your hand directly into the water and—



—It's not bad, actually? There's something about it that feels deeply natural, even. Both stream and lotuses look honestly extremely well-established: these seem like plants that have been growing for years (never mind that that's longer than BAD END itself has existed), with lush leaves and a proliferation of pink-veined flowers on tall, gently swaying stems.

In contrast, the wild roses twining around the dorm seem much newer: sure, they're growing wildly, but on closer inspection you can see places where they've recently ripped through upholstery and even overturned a table lamp in what must have been an explosion of new growth.
But hey, they're rather lovely, all the same.