lostcarnival | ⇨ THE GAME CUBE

Who: Everyone who gets caught in the game.
When: Day 97
Where: Hellbound Hallows, the game inside of a cube inside of a city inside of a computer.
What: On Day 97, a massive Game Cube drops on the city of Mainframe, forcing those caught inside to fight against the User for their lives. This log is 100% Hellbound Hallows gameplay. Plotting deets are here.
Warnings: Diablo-esque violence, characters dying, and edgy video game aesthetic gore.

HELLBOUND HALLOWS↴
The Game Cube drops close to the entrance of the carnival - so much so that it will end up pulling a lot of people from it in, out of sheer terrible luck. Alternatively, your character may have seen it coming down and understood what allowing the programs to fail would mean, dashing in to be caught beneath it out of sheer heroism. Maybe you entered the game for some reason in between.

Either way, once the walls of the Cube have passed you, you'll find yourself in a new reality. You find yourself somewhere in the levels of a dungeon crawling game with a dark aesthetic. Some binomes and sprites from the city have been pulled in with you, and all oft them know what to do. It's time to Reboot.

Use the icon button the Ringmaster gave each of you. Tap it twice and say "Reboot", and you'll be able to assume your new form. Maybe it's useful, maybe it's not, but it's probably better than nothing. Probably.

Now, figure out where you fit in to the structure of setting, and wait for the Game to begin.

► LEVEL ONE: Level one is where the Users will enter. With a cold blue aesthetic, it appears to be some manner of underground fortress, filled with many hallways and grand archeways. In a standard game, the enemies here would be theoretically the easiest to defeat, but you are under no obligation to follow those rules. Level one is ruled over by Sora, rebooted into the form of a vampiric overlord. He must be defeated in order for the Users to gain access to level two.

► LEVEL TWO: The colour pallet shifts to purple here, the corridors becoming darker and only lit with scattered braziers and the occasional stream of lava. Banners and tapestries depicting some hellish god line the walls. The traps here are primarily fire based, with lava traps or geysers of flame becoming more common. Level two is ruled over by Yamato, who has rebooted into the form of a fiery hellbeast. He must be defeated to access level three.

► LEVEL THREE: As the colours shift into a sickly green, the Users will reach the final level. The architecture is shaped based on the screaming faces of the damned, and the rooms are large and dramatic, filled with vast obelisks and deep chasms. Subterranean plant life haunts the floors and shadows of this place, and poison traps become deadly and common. Level three is ruled over by the man Gongenzaka, the final boss of of the game. If he is defeated, the Users have won. Do not let this happen.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Lapis might be currently incapable of purring, but she does rub her own cheek against him in return. It's comforting? But then again, Steven is really good at that, isn't he?

Eventually, she does pull away so she can face him. "Until we win?" Win what? Why can't they just leave? "What do we have to do to win? I don't really get this place..."

He has to drop down onto all fours then, but that's okay. They probably can't afford to spent all day cuddling, as nice as that would be. Especially when he realizes he's in for the big task of explaining what a video game is to Lapis.

"It's like we're in a video game," he explains. "Which is kind of like a TV show, except you can control the character you're playing, and the other characters react to the stuff you do? Except in this case, they're trying to fight us. So we have to fight them back until they don't want to fight anymore!"

He pauses, and rubs his paw on his face.

"Which, come to think of it... is pretty much what real life is like."

"... But what if we don't want to fight?" Steven doesn't want to fight, right? He doesn't like fighting, if Lapis remembers correctly, and Lapis is absolutely sure she does. "We can just run away, right?"

If not... Well, Lapis can protect Steven, right? He won't have to worry about anything if she's around, and he won't have to fight either.

She's super correct on that one. Not only does he not want to fight, but the primarily offensive angle of his current power set has left him completely confused. Fire breathing and poison is far from his ideal, and so far it feels like everything he does is just a bunch of flailing nonsense.

He swallows, because he doesn't know what to tell her.

"W-We can't, because... if we let the Users get to the end boss, and they beat him... we'll all get turned into those slug guys from back in the city." He looks up at her, pleading. "We've gotta stop them Lapis."

Her eyes go wide when Steven explains, and her tail behind her betrays her nervousness with the way it swishes back and forth nervously. "Then how do we beat them?" She won't tell Steven that she can't exactly use her water powers here, because that might make him a little nervous?

It makes Lapis a lot nervous, though.

"Can't we just let someone else do it?"

Aw geez, as if it's ever worked that way for him. His face falls, and he feels extra jittery as he curls his stinger tail around his feet.

"I can't... if... if we just let them win, and everyone gets nulled... it'll be all my fault."

"What? Why would it be your fault? Steven you can't- you can't do everything on your own!" Lapis unfortunately seems to pick up on his emotions, and it makes her feel antsy, makes her want to pace or fly off somewhere or do something for him.

"This place doesn't have anything to do with you! We can just leave it! It's not our problem!"

Edited (IM GETTIN REAL TIRED OF DW THROWING THE DEFAULT ICON ON FOR NO REASON) 2017-05-12 00:10 (UTC)

"I wanted to help them, but I don't know what I'm doing," he says, the stress evident in his voice. He doesn't think they even can run away, even if they were the right thing to do, and if it was... why did he come here in the first place?

"I couldn't stand the idea of just letting the people in the Game get hurt, but now we're stuck, and..."

He trails off, because he doesn't even know what the 'and' is supposed to lead to. Hope isn't lost yet, but he still feels so sad, anyway - and the new form of his body is leaving him to feel even more alien and strange. He can't even gesture like he normally would.

He slumps down onto his haunches.

"I'm sorry."

Lapis sort of squats down on her new haunches so that shes at Steven's level. It's going to be an issue getting back up again, but Steven is more important than that right now.

"It's not your fault. You're not responsible for this- for any of it! Come on, lets fine a way out of here before we get hurt." Lapis isn't familiar with games or how they work, but there has to be a way out, right? There's no reason for there not to be.

Steven looks up at her, and then wipes his eyes with the back of his paw. She's right. He knows he didn't cause this... he just wanted to help. That's it. He was just letting himself get crazy about it.

"You're right."

He shakes off the feeling, trying to pull himself together. Most of these emotions aren't really about the actual game, are they?

"I... I don't think it works like that, but... we can try." He doesn't actually know for sure that there isn't. There's no reason not to look, right? "But we gotta make sure the Users can't get us or the others first, okay?"

Lapis doesn't like the fact that he wants to help others first before trying to find a way out, but it's Steven, so she'll relent. "Alright. How do we do that? Is there some sort of spot that's safe for everyone?"

She stands, kind of shaky at first since her legs are unfortunately new and hard to use. "Do we know where those... Users even are?"

"I know they started at the beginning, which is up on level one... so they have to be coming from the entrance of level two. If they're even down here right now."

He has to think about this.

"The safest place would probably be at the end of level three because there's stuff in between... but if we all run down there nobody will be left to guard the hallways!"

"... What if we all grouped up on them at the end of level three?" It sounds like a reasonable thing for them all to do. With so many people attacking at once, there's no way they'd actually survive, right?

It's underhanded, but to Lapis it sounds like a great idea.

If this was any kind of game where fairness was applicable Steven might have an issue with it, but from his understanding their lives are on the line and the Users' aren't. Which means... let's cheeseball it up.

"Hey, that's a great idea! That's way harder to deal with in a game than fighting them all separately!" He considers it for a moment. "Do you think you could get around enough to tell some people to do that?"

"I think so." She gives her wings a test flap. These wings can't carry her as fast as she'd normally be able to go, but they're not slow either. But then there's still the problem of Steven. "What about you? Are you going to do the same thing?" Lapis hopes not. She doesn't like the thought of him running off alone when there's people out there who want to kill them.

⇨ THE GAME CUBE

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