//TESTDRIVE.EXE

[reparator]

"I'm the reason half of you are drunk at the moment." (CEO-SAN, NO...) "I'm the reason half of you are drunk at the moment." (CEO-SAN, NO...)

//TESTDRIVE.EXE The lights flicker overhead, music blaring from the speakers as you step inside, every sound drowned out except for that hypnotic tune. The walls are painted in an array of hypnotic colors, saturated to the point where your attention doesn't know where to land, and all kinds of screens hang from each corner, showing flashing images of ads, gadget after gadget appearing in a second to show you the best of what Ceres has to offer. Dancing bodies flank each side of the large ballroom, bodies with eyes that look hollow and their faces too symmetrical. They'll occasionally glance at you and smile, maybe even engage and offer to take you to one of the private rooms in the back. However, their words are interrupted when the lights suddenly turn brighter and focus on the center where a raised platform sits. A man appears in the center, one hand raised to silence the music while the other holds a microphone. "It's been some time, hasn't it? As you may or may not know, I am the CEO and founder of CERES, Julius Vincere, and you can say, I'm the reason half of you are drunk at the moment." He chuckles lightly before continuing, "For a second there, I was worried we wouldn't make it, but I placed my confidence in all of you. I knew you'd surpass my expectations when I first brought you here, and you were able to utilize our tools to perfection. As you may have suspected by the gallons of champagne being passed around at my behest-" He pauses to reach out for a glass, snatching it from one of the wait staff passing by before raising it to the crowd. "We've finally obtained our first victory here on Cerealia. The colony is ours completely and will be fully functional from this day forward. Please enjoy all the luxurious amenities we have put together, and join me in journeying towards a new and better future. Together, we will expand our territory here and reach even further horizons. And by all means, don't be shy with the staff. They're also here for your entertainment." He gestures around the room, smiling before taking a sip of his champagne. Applause echoes from the crowd while Julius steps off the stage, handing the mic to one of the staff before pausing for pictures and interviews from reporters. You stand in the crowd as the lights dim once more, lost in a sea of people and wondering where to go next.

//SCENARIOS.EXE PHASE I [ 1801 ] The screens lining the walls inside even extend into the bathrooms and the back rooms, playing commercial after commercial, all CERES themed, as you mingle with the other guests, but occasionally, the image transforms into a flash of something else. It appears for a split-second. There's the face of a woman, lips parted in a soundless cry. She looks to be in pain, fingers pressed to the screen. It's so quick that most don't register it, barely even notice it's there unless they focus. The party continues without incident, otherwise. Because it's a pretty damn good party, isn't it? There's plenty of food, strong drinks - hey, no one under seventeen is allowed to drink - and many decorative people. Just ignore that feeling of being watched! You're just so good looking, after all. PHASE II [ ???? ] A room sits in the back with several helmets characters can wear to upload themselves into ViViD, a state of the art virtual reality game, and enter one of the game stages to participate in a team mission. They can sample a few minutes of gameplay as they enter a short battle with one of the NPC creatures. They'll quickly become familiar with the state-of-the-art technology as all pain and wounds experienced inside will feel real and will appear on each character's body. But what an awesome game it is. With amazing digital quality surround, it's a world like none other... but be careful not to fall too fast! (Those monsters even smell real, don't they?) Feel free to talk to Vidia, the game host, if you need help getting things going! PHASE III [ 2134 ] The evening is wearing on, the dance floor is becoming more crowded. The music seems oppressive by now. People are feeling charged with adrenaline, or feeling the intensity rise in the mood. Maybe a new partner is the right choice to go with- or maybe you can talk to a wallflower. But one thing is for certain... The loud vibrations disguise the fact that something is moving over the vents. You can hear it in the background, the rustling sound that agitates your ears. But hey, maybe it's nothing, right? After all, it's just a party... Maybe you'll want to go into the back rooms for a bit to... explore your new friends? The rooms (and your companions) are quite pretty and cozy, and can be adjusted with holograms to create a room for your desired mood. After all, it's a little too noisy when you're not alone, but the sudden silence might get oppressive too... [ Feel free to get intimate or just get out of the party and sleep off the drinks, but remember, anything above PG stuff must go into your own journals and under NO circumstances will unwanted propositioning be allowed or any non-consensual activity lest you want to be locked in a cold box on top of a huge ice cube for the rest of the night. Naked. Please use your own discretion, the minimum age for intimacy is 15-16. ] PHASE IV [ 0243 ] In the quieter corners of the party, it becomes more ever-present until something falls on your eye. It's red. Warm... As you gaze up, you see a dead body faced down, the half-sliced face lying against the ventilation screen. The body's eyes remain open, staring down at you. Screams and sounds of shock sound, and the party halts. As the security filters in to investigate the body, the rustling only grows louder. It's then that they suspect something is in the vents. It's crawling avidly across the ceiling, and lights fall one by one, exploding against the ground. There's barely a moment to register the chaos before the last knight of CERES appears. You can choose to run. You can choose to engage. The knight won't let you leave its sight alive. But you know you have to do something. Be it protecting the innocents there, or fighting off the creature that seems to only be there to harm you and your friends, old and new. And you do want to protect this place, because it's just been won... don't you? BONUS [ whyo'clock ] There's a ball pit hidden in one of the auxiliary rooms. All invited parties are given a maximum of one hour to have fun time in the ball pit. They must not exceed their one hour or they will be forcibly removed by the security droids. Please keep all food and alcohol out of the ball pit. Do not have any genital parties in the ball pit. The ball pit is sacred to CERES. [ The party will be long, so take your time enjoying each scenario... and dreading it. At the end of it all, things will be calmed down and you're free to enjoy the night as you please. Remember to keep things PG (the FAQ below elaborates!), and absolutely no forcing any R-rated things with anyone below 15-16 (so be sure to ask their age, right?) or the droids will have a little fun chasing you around! Do enjoy the pretty views of the gorgeous digital city though. Which seems strangely quiet, but at this late hour, why not, right? ]

//RUN.EXE Welcome to CEREALIA's first test drive! Please forgive our appearance as we are going through the final stages game completion. While most pages are under development and/or hidden from the public eye, please don't feel discouraged, since knowing everything doesn't always make the experience. Your characters will know as little as you. For your convenience, we have compiled a mini-FAQ - please read it thoroughly before playing. Thank you! FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS HOW DID MY CHARACTER GET HERE? You may have been just been doing their day-to-day activities - be it swimming or fighting demons - but the next moment, a crack and blinding light - now you're here, in your best attire, celebrating. The memories of your at-home activities fade away like a fleeting dream, and it's replaced with the feeling of happiness. ( You haven't forgotten your past, just that anything you were doing seems far too distant to be important. ) Must be something in the air. You can't remember clearly fighting for CERES, and whatever this Julius Vincere is telling you might be complete bullshit for all you know, but something influences you to play along anyway - if you think about it long enough, perhaps you had fought for CERES after all...? WHO/WHAT IS CERES? WHAT IS CEREALIA? You mean... you don't remember? After all the help you gave it? WHAT FORMAT CAN WE USE FOR THIS TESTDRIVE? Action (brackets/prose), video/voice, and texting are all available via your CEREVICE at this moment. Most functions are currently undergoing a system update, but as long as it is still connected to the Auralia Network, it will be available for communicative uses. WHAT IS ViVID? An amazing VR game! The demo version of ViViD will be here to play, aren't you excited? It's played with headsets that immediately allow you to experience full-body simulation, without having to move out of your seat! You can enjoy the demo world, design your own, play alone, play with a team, but remember, the boss must be beaten! Please check the phase ii thread for details and interactions! SO... PHASE III? Sexy things can happen, you're getting hot and heavy on the dance floor, and there are rooms in the back that can be decorated to your mood, after all. REMEMBER, the age of consent is 15-16, please use your own discretion and don't upset people. For the test drive, any situation that goes above PG (beyond kissing/grinding/light making out... We're lenient) must go into threads in your own journals. Any creeper behavior or unwanted advances will get an IC boot into the Frozen Locker with "Let it Go" on repeat. POWER LIMITATIONS? Actually, no, the characters don't have any of their abilities locked or otherwise suppressed. More info will be i the official FAQ, but so long as you don't destroy the entire game ( and we trust you can use your powers responsibly— as does CERES! ), limitations are nonexistent. OKAY, WHAT ABOUT PREVIOUS GAME MEMORIES? It's completely acceptable to bring a character that has been in a previous game to Cerealia! THE NAME LOOKS FAMILIAR. . . Yes, a loosely related setting concept with a place called CEREALIA was pitched for an ExitVoid phase before the moderators decided to close the game for good. A few of us got together with the original pitchers of the idea since we thought it really awesome and with a lot of potential and decided to try our own thing with it! ARE THE GAMES RELATED? Nope. Not at all, it's been rehashed from the ground up and built to stand on its own as an original place and game. We'll keep coming back to this, so don't worry.

Comments

[unathletic]

[ He wants to scream out more than anything. Because of his leg, because of the pain, sure.. but also since it feels like he's trying to kick his way through a wall here. He knows what Nam Soon must be feeling like, there's a reason Heung Soo doesn't want to worry about himself, after all - because if he does, then it gets frightening. Then he can't get the "what if" scenarios about his leg out of his mind, then he overthinks things again and again for no reason whatsoever other. Because there's nothing he can do to help himself right now. Nam Soon is the one helping him, carrying him to help, so then the least he can do in return is worry about the other guy.

Especially when it comes so naturally, especially when it's what he's been doing for so long, being the guidance that Nam Soon never had in his life, being the one to care for him, show him that there's something more to life always..

He's always been doing that, so how can he stop now when they both need it the most?

So the fact that Nam Soon is deflecting every attempt at it is more frustrating than his leg hurts, threatening a headache strong enough to split his head apart. ]

O-.. of course I'm.. nn--nngh, gonna worry, you punk.. [ There's a growl in his voice. Partially from the pain he has to endure, but also since he just wants to get this through to his best friend's thick dumb skull already, his grip tightening marginally. ]

Telling me to.. n-not hold back.. a.. and then doing the same... [ He sucks in a sharp breath, a hiss. ] Did you think Iii-- I'd not notice?!

[unpresidential]

Shut up...

[he says the words, glowering... but the truth of the matter is that it only pisses him off because he knows how badly heung soo has to be hurting right now. why can't this bastard ever just think about himself? can't he be selfish and focus on his own problem instead of being the mother hen and worrying about his idiot bastard of a friend?

it's not like he can even find a way to articulate the things he wants to say. nam soon is so, so bad at this, especially when his head is spinning from how overwhelmed he is. he keeps his jaw clenched as tears spill; he holds back every sob, but by the time heung soo will be able to see nam soon's face again, his eyes will be undoubtedly red and puffy while his cheeks will be tear stained. it likely doesn't help that the strain of carrying another person is there, as much as he's even more resistant to making that apparent.]

Shut up and think about yourself, you dumb bastard! [he can only hold back for so long though... he's still got those traces of tsunami within him, and when he can't cope with something emotionally, he's like a volcano. but even though he's yelling, it's obvious that he isn't really angry at heung soo. he's upset, and he's crying, but his yelling seems to be more a guttural reaction than anything else.] Don't... don't worry about me so much.

["i don't deserve it," he believes, especially when he is the cause of this all to begin with.]

[unathletic]

[ At least the yelling doesn't really cut him. He already knows it. Knows it from having seen it so many times, then experiencing it a few times before they made up too - even dishing it out himself a few times, too. Because sometimes there's just nothing else you can do, when you feel so helpless and don't know what else to do. Heung Soo's never been quite on the same level as Nam Soon when it comes to emotionally lashing out, but it's not like he hasn't done it either.

Instead he's just quiet for a moment. Maybe since Nam Soon yelling is actually what keeps him grounded this time, or maybe it's that the pain in his leg is so heavy and numbing and distracting that he doesn't really have enough energy to yell anyway.

His answer is actually pretty quiet, although there's something incredibly tired about it too. It's already taking a lot of him to just stay conscious with the pain running through him, but he's already told himself he has to hang in there until they find a hospital. Nam Soon isn't giving up on walking either, so he has to stay conscious, stay aware, even when the pain makes it so tempting to just slip away for a moment. ]

.. if I don't do it.. then who's g-gonna, bastard..?

[ It's not like Heung Soo has anyone other than Nam Soon to worry over him either. Here, at least. But his sister is waiting for him, and she would doubtlessly have tried to help him in any way possible in this situation too.

But Nam Soon doesn't have anyone like that. His dad is alive, sure, but he's hardly around, and it's just not family in the same way Heung Soo's older sister is his family. Nam Soon's only family, the only person who cares for him - it's Heung Soo. It's him.

So he has to do it, even now. Or maybe especially now, when it's a good distraction from his own misery, and when he knows they're both at their lowest points anyway. ]

[unpresidential]

Save it... just save it.

[it's all he can say right now, isn't it? nam soon knows that there's no way to make his friend stop worrying; that sentiment is one they share eternally, after all. they always worry about one another when the situations become trying, and now isn't any different. but still, nam soon wants him to just shut the hell up.

everything is such a mess, and they have no idea how they even landed in a situation like this. adding in the pain he knows his friend is feeling, and his own feelings of self-deprecation, and it leads to nam soon wishing they could just stew in silence until they find somewhere to take care things. maybe it's because they're both at their lowest that nam soon should be relying on the fact that his friend is trying... but he doesn't want it. not right now. right now, all nam soon wants to do is help in all the ways he should have three years ago. heung soo may be trying to hold on, but nam soon wants him to just listen to his body's cues. hell, if he passed out, at least he'd be spared the hassle of being awake through the excruciating pain.

...it's not like he wants to hear the suffering in his best friend's voice, after all. it just makes everything worse, rather than better. how is he supposed to hold back, or keep his composure when the pain he's the root cause of drips from heung soo's tone?]

Worry about me later. ["don't worry about me at all, i don't deserve it."] Worry about yourself now.

[unathletic]

[ Heung Soo sucks in a deep and shakey breath, but he doesn't say anything. There's nothing he can say anymore, after all. There's an odd comfort in the middle of the pain for him in worrying about Nam Soon or making sure he's at least relatively more okay than he could be in this situation or even just wallowing in his presence - because the last time he had been like this, that hadn't been there for him. He hadn't gotten the possibility to do so to begin with, because Nam Soon had turned and ran away.

But even though his best friend isn't turning and running away this time, even though he's carrying him.. he still knows he won't be anywhere further with this. It's like he's meeting a brick wall headfirst, and although he's stubborn enough to at least try a little more than just one attempt, he knows this is just it. Nam Soon's not going to accept his worry right now (and although he can understand why, it's just much more convenient to let his mind wander to the other's wellbeing rather than think about his own leg and about how much it hurts and about how much he hates being stuck with it and all the connotations behind it that come up every time it starts hurting).

His grip on the other tightens a little, and his head moves to rest against Nam Soon. His eyes close, but he's not passing out or going to sleep at all.. he doesn't want to do that, he doesn't want to be the one to abandon his friend in that way this time. Especially when it isn't sure if they'll even find a hospital and when everything is this weird.. he'll endure every single part of the pain if he has to, no matter how unbearable it feels, and how red shoots behind his eyes with every single stab of pain.

Like this he can only hear the other's breath better (and how it hitches just a little) and feel Nam Soon's heart pound like his own, wildly and quickly in panic.

He's not so sure anymore whether he's clinging that tightly for his own comfort or for the other's.

Probably a bit of both. ]

[unpresidential]

[there is a strange sense of comfort that comes from heung soo's motions; maybe it's just what he needs right now. he knows that his friend hasn't yet passed out, but he's not arguing or verbalizing his concerns, and the closer proximity gives him a slightly better sense of just what heung soo is feeling right now. words have never been good at conveying those things, after all. not between them—for them, everything was always spoken through the silences.

nam soon knows how much pain he's in. he knows it probably doesn't compare to the original injury, and he also knows that he can't even truly fathom just how much physical pain that really is. he just knows that heung soo is in a lot of pain, and even if only tangentially, he's the cause of it. but still, he understands it while it's weighing on him heavily, the feeling of being leaned on, on being relied on somehow makes it slightly less daunting. the panic hasn't left his body so easily, of course, but it doesn't change the fact that this is a strange and silent turning point in their friendship. it's something they hadn't been able to do in these last three years, because nam soon had run away.

but heung soo is putting enough trust in him now, so no matter how heavy it gets (both physically and emotionally), he'll press on.]

It's okay... It's okay... [he hums the words softly. nam soon doesn't know if it can or will bring any sort of comfort at all, but even through his own tears, they both need to keep reminded of that. somehow, it'll be okay. they're together, they haven't given up... they can't stop now, so it has to be okay.]

[unathletic]

[ In his current position, there's hardly anything else he can sense. The pain he can feel, sure, but anything beyond that.. it's all lost in the distance. He can't see a thing with his eyes closed, of course, but even the sounds of the city, the wind that may be blowing.. he can't even feel it. The only way to even combat the pain a little bit, to keep himself together, is to instead try to intensely focus on everything else he feels closer to him rather than the unfamiliar city all around him. Focus on Nam Soon's warmth, the way his body sometimes trembles the slightest bit during one step..

.. the soft mumbling that Heung Soo couldn't possibly miss.

This bastard.. it took him a while to figure out just how Nam Soon became the way he did, that it wasn't all just some act to mess around with him. But now, even if he doesn't know the full extent of it.. he knows that Nam Soon's the type who keeps all his troubles to himself, who just tries to bear it all. Just like this. How many times did you tell yourself that like this in the past, bastard..? Is it what he told himself that night when he ran away from the hospital, the complete opposite of this moment here?

Heung Soo's never told himself it. Mostly since he knew it wouldn't be okay, and he didn't want to delude himself. When Nam Soon ran away and didn't show up again, he knew it wouldn't be okay. When the doctors told him about his leg, he knew it wouldn't be okay. When he went to Nam Soon's house in the hope of maybe still making amends and found nothing there anymore.. he knew it wouldn't be okay. So he never told himself it would be.

This is different though. This time, Nam Soon is right there. Carrying him, not leaving him behind, trying to stay strong through it all just as much as Heung Soo is.

It's soft on his part too, but.. ]

.. it's okay..

[ It's the first time he's said it like that - it almost synchronizes with one of Nam Soon's repeats of his mumbling. ]