⇨ THE MATRIX: Plot Finale

[ringleaders]

Who: EVERYONE! Especially Tamaki, Carly, and Childermass.
When: S1:D40 - the first day of the second performance week.
Where: The carnival, while the gateway to the Matrix is open.
What: Agents find the carnival. They don't like it. Neither does the Ringmaster.
Warnings: Body horror for some people, gun violence for others. Also, a pissed off Ringmaster.

MATRIX: RESOLUTIONS↴ The days following the kidnappings and attacks are tense. The performances go smoothly enough, but are delayed by those that have been bedridden or captured - only for the vanished workers to return a few days after the initial attacks. Bad things have been done to them, clearly, but the specifics are unclear, as is why they seem to have been released without a fight. Maybe the machines just had no further use for them, as unlikely as it seems. Regular humans from the Matrix come and go. They experience the carnival, balk at the possible unreality of their lives, and then go home. What it accomplishes is ambiguous and perhaps unsatisfactory to some. All the while, the threat of something more ominous lurks. The sensible thing to do in this situation would be to pack up and leave, but even if it is broached to the Ringmaster, she will be resistant. She spends much of the Off Week mulling over the idea, only casually recommending that people might want to stay out of the Matrix for the time being, but not enforcing it. When the next week rolls around, she makes the somewhat unpopular decision to declare that the carnival is opening its gates to the Matrix again. Workers are directed to prepare for another week of performances. This turns out to be an irresponsible choice. ► AGENTS ATTACK: Mere hours after the carnival gates open, theoretical threats assertively make themselves a reality. It may not be entirely clear what happened to all observers, but the generalities appear something like this: the gates open and performances start, humans enslaved within the Matrix start to come in, just as before, and then... chaos breaks out. Suddenly Agents are there, something the Ringmaster had assured wouldn't happen. The numbers of Agents present seem to multiple within a short time period, but with some luck you may spot the original source - it's the three captures carnival workers, Tamaki, Carly, and Childermass. ► THE BUGGED: For Tamaki, Carly, and Childermass, this is sure to be an unpleasant experience. How much they experience or remember of this will vary, but what will essentially happen to them is that three Agents are going to use their implanted bodies in an attempt to import themselves into the carnival's reality - that is to say, they are going to try to upload themselves into their bodies through the implanted bugs, and overwrite them as they do with the Matrix natives. (For an example of how this usually, watch the helicopter be overwritten by an Agent about ten seconds into this clip.) This won't really work like how they intended, given that the carnival's reality is a mixture of code, magic, and matter at the moment. How exactly this pans out with your character is up to you - you can have them completely turn into an middle aged white man with a gun (or a different middle aged white man if they already are one) but have the Agent's control falter after a short while, or they can only partially change and partially take over. Or, they can just try to possess your characters body for a while, with no physical changes. Motivation wise, the Agents are pretty simple. They discovered the anomaly of the carnival and wanted to know what the fuck was going on, but what happens after arriving isn't really what they were expecting. They will be attacking primarily out of reflex and out of a lack of better ideas. They are machines, programmed for a purpose, and will do their best to accomplish that - right now, that is eliminating a threat. The bugged characters can be saved by being taken down/knocked out/restrained enough that the Agents will make the jump into another nearby Matrix native. From there, they will multiply, for a short time. ► KICKBANNED: After the Agents enter through the three bugged characters, more Agents will appear by overwritting some of the nearby Matrix natives. Overall we are talking about 6 Agents spread out around the carnival at any given moment, but if you kill or injure their host they will be able to jump to a new human and take them over. The attack will be short, but unpleasant. After about 15 minutes the Ringmaster will realize what is happening, and put a swift end to it. If any of the possessed characters haven't been knocked out/saved by then she will literally and figuratively rip the Agents out of them, returning them to normal. After that she will tear apart the coding/consciousnesses of the remaining Agents and kick all of the remaining visitors out, slamming the gates behind them. She will be very pissed, and it will be scary to watch. Then, she will declare that they are packing their figurative bags and moving the fuck on, thank you very much. OOC GUIDELINES: The carnage here should not get excessive, though people are welcome to get hurt if they want to. The fight will be short, and ultimately the Agents will be too confused to be super effective - however, it's more than enough to provoke the Ringmaster into being done with this shit. Any Agents killed will revert to the dead body of whatever human they were possessing. These bodies will also disappear when the Ringmaster kicks everyone out. If they jump from a live host, the host will be left with whatever injuries they sustained. The bugged characters will have to get their implants removed by the Doctor. Overall, this isn't meant to be a total bloodbath, and the carnival workers will have a good shot at handling the Agents on their own turf. It's mostly the fact that they keep coming back that is the problem. Character's abilities function as normal inside the carnival, and they may possess a small portion of their One powers for the duration of the fight, too. OOC questions can be directed to the original plot post. If you are one of the three possessed people and really don't want to do this plot, we can figure a way to minimalize it for you, but I'm hoping this is something the plot volunteers find exciting.

Comments

[mossbuds]

With Steven's pitiful response, Lars's fear forks and also amplifies, visibly breaking out into a sweat. There's fucking bullets flying everywhere, and his resident OP alien hybrid child friend is, he's decided, injured, and Lars is just a noodley young man who could probably be out-benched by every girl he knew. Somewhat frantically, Lars hits his palms on the surface of the bubble.

"Steven!"

He's not sure what he should do. He's not sure what he can do. The bubble rolls a little from Lars's panicked, ill-thought out gesture, and he makes a shrill little yelp, managing to catch the bubble on either side with his hands and roll it back towards him. It was only an inch or so, but it was enough to scare the shit out of him. He frantically looks around, and a table catches his eye—a long one, set up with some supplies, likely for the performers.

"Crud," he concludes elegantly, dashing away from Steven—while trying to remain mostly in range of its shielding properties. He ducks and winces a couple of times, flinching hard reflexively when bullets fly by two feet of him, and he pushes all the stuff off the table frantically. Once its surface is cleared, he hauls it forward (it's thankfully rather cheap and light-weight). Once close enough to Steven, he tosses the table clumsily onto its side, not having enough hope to lift it over Steven. He quickly and frantically grabs hold of the bubble after stepping around the table, rolling it behind the table.

Once they're both behind the table (somewhat safely), Lars collapses onto his ass, jittery hands closing around his ears as he drops his head between his bony knees, breath coming out in scattered, uneven bursts between his clenched teeth.

He's emitting terror, both for himself and for Steven, because what the fuck can he do? Either way, for someone who's just awakened with full blown psychic empathy, it's probably definitely not helping steven's situation. The table occasionally bounces from gunshots, and Lars's posture tightens inwards. He's desperately trying to clear his mind enough to think of what to do, but as a generally anxious and flighty person, he's apparently gotta at least relent to his panic first.

[starseedling]

The thumping and rolling beckons for his attention, as hard as it is to make any room for it. He feels like he did when him and Peridot went down to the cluster - like there were so many other sensations screaming in his head that he couldn't keep his sights on Peridot, who had been calling for him the whole time. Except, there isn't another side to this. There isn't a quiet mindspace to emerge to on the other side, and the feeling seem to change ever other moment, all with the flow of the violence that's suddenly sprung itself on the carnival grounds.

Eventually, the gunfire seems to move from the Big Top itself - maybe someone took out the Agents that had been firing, or they simply had lost track of targets to focus on. For the first time in about ten minutes, flashes of the interior of his pink cocoon come into sight, only to seemingly lose them short after.

One of his hand reaches out to press against the interior of his bubble, the motion seeming to take herculean effort. His eyes crack open, but they are distant and overwhelmed, and he finds himself having a hard time separating the fear he can see in Lars and the panic he is feeling himself.

Lars will find himself capable of blocking it out of he tries, but he may feel Steven's feelings of suffocation reflecting back at him.

"Wh -?" he whines, struggling to voice his own confusion. "I can't..."

Tears are freely rolling down his cheeks, somehow disconnected from the rest of his expression.

[mossbuds]

Lars does feel it, but he can't handle it, overwhelmed as he is; he pushes it out, and manages to get his focus when he hears Steven's voice.

He whips his head up, sniffling once—his nose is running a little and the corners of his eyes are have heavily hanging tears. And Steven looks—weird. Lars thinks for sure he must be hurt, because of his unresponsiveness and spaced out expression juxtaposed against his tears. He springs onto his knees, placing his hands flat against the bubble again. Lars wipes his eyes on his arm. He'll try this again.

"Steven, are you alright?! You hurt? What's goin' on? Help me out, man."

[starseedling]

"I'm scared," he manages to choke out, and the words are left to hang there on their own. Realizing that Lars's hand is so close, he curls up against the interior of the bubble closest to it, wanting to be close to someone but unable to let go of his terror enough to control himself or his powers. His shoulders shake with a quieter sob, closing his eyes as he tries desperately to stop drowning.

"I can't... I can't stop," he manages to force out. Normally he wouldn't look for comfort from Lars of all people, but when it feels like it's just him and Lars in a void of terror and violence, he can't consider any other options.

[mossbuds]

It helps that Lars is also really scared and vulnerable, or else he might be less receptive—but he's also never seen Steven like this, which is also scary to see.

"Can't stop what, the bubble?" His palms still flat against the weird glassy surface of the bubble, his eyes wander over the sphere as he leans up a little bit. He remembers Sadie both trying to wack this thing with a hammer to no avail, and breaking a chair over it, thus destroying the chair. Between that and how the bubble saved him from certain, toothy death at the hands of a giant, angry demon mouth, Lars is pretty confident that if Steven can't do it, no one can.

While Lars's limbs are still trembling, and his voice wavers, he at least seems to be centering due to his concern being distracting.

[starseedling]

Steven nods, shakily - the bubble is half the problem, at any rate. But he doesn't understand enough about what's happening in his head to fully know how much it has to do with him. He knows it feels like communicating with the cluster, but different and more frightening than he can comprehend.

He hasn't had this problem with his bubble since he was a kid - which, really, was only a couple years ago. At the same time, though, it feels like an incredibly long time, and he feels like a very different person than he was then.

Maybe that's the person Lars usually thinks of him as.

"I'm too scared," he says. He can't remember if Lars heard about what happened to him, but...

[mossbuds]

It definitely is—the image that Lars has of Steven is rooted in the Steven he saw with annoying frequency starting a few years ago. He's noticed that there's less and less visits from Steven over all, but hasn't been super concerned about it. But it hasn't occurred to him that Steven could be changing—that the parts of Steven that Lars defines him through are changing. Lars knows that the missions of the Crystal Gems are dangerous, as he bitches about the collateral damage as if it's his job, but being something of a narrow minded kid himself, all in all, he hasn't considered the grander scope of things.

He knew shit was getting real when Beach City had to be evacuated, and in the back of his mind, he did distantly wonder about Steven's involvement somewhat grimly. But tenacious, chipper Steven always bounced right back; Lars may not even realize he basically thinks Steven is invincible.

So what the hell can he do, right now?

"Scared?" Lars's puzzlement is born of all of the described. He straightens up. He supposes that, as he felt earlier, guns and..."human" violence are the type of violence that Beach City residents aren't used to. "Did you get hit?" Why else would he be frightened, right? This bubble was serious business.

As Lars asks this, he squints, peeking around the bubble, obviously frustrated he can't see too well because of the color tint and depth perception.

[starseedling]

"I don't know," Steven murmurs, shaking his head. He doesn't think he was? Yet, at the same time, he feels so much shock and the occasional stab of empathic pain that its hard to tell. His gem is aching in a way that is hard to describe, to the degree he somewhat hysterically has wondered if it's going to crack.

But it hasn't. He still has to keep trying here, and he knows that so many people are in danger, but he still can't seem to move.

"I'm sorry," he says, his voice tight, as he curls into himself defensively. He feels like the fact that he can't get himself together and help protect Lars right now is completely his fault.