⇨ THE FANTASIA FESTIVAL

[ringleaders]

Who: Everyone who decides to come!
When: Day 12
Where: Wismuth's Fantasia Festival
What: CY-Ren's performance in Wismuth's biggest music festival finally arrives, and those willing to help Noa the Star Guardian show up to intervene.
Warnings: It doesn't go super well.

SONG OF THE CY-REN↴ CY-Ren's arena is the biggest stage in the festival by far, but it isn't the only one. Several big acts have assembled in the surrounding area, all with a lovely view of the ocean and with Wismuth's skyline in the background. Though she isn't explicitly the main attraction at the festival, everyone knows she's the real reason so many people have showed up. The amount of star power she has is overwhelming, and there are plenty of fans that would get violent on her behalf. ► GROUP UP: Noa will ask everyone to meet her in a park area near the festival stage, so that you can discuss plans briefly before putting them into action. The key is to try to stop the concert before CY-Ren's plans can come to fruition - whatever they may specifically be. How you go about this is up to you, but with how many people are present, it's bound to be a challenge. ► INFILTRATE: After speaking with Noa and determining what everyone will be doing, it will be time for everyone to break into the performance arena. No one has tickets for this, unless they've forged them, as they sold out a while ago. Any means of getting inside is fine, whether that be teleporting, passing through walls, or jumping in by wing. Once you've gotten into the crowd, it's up to you to get close enough to the stage to disrupt the proceedings. ► UNDER HER SPELL: It only takes her first song for things to start going wrong. The impact of the music will strike each individual differently - for most it will only feel strange, but for some it will be completely transfixing, like something that reaches deep into their soul. Those people, the ones slated to become Harbingers, will react to the the song strongly - upon hearing it, they will gradually completely lose their sense of agency, sluggishly moving towards the stage by whatever means available to them. If someone tries to stop them, they will go as far as physically, or even violently, resisting. "Blindsided by the beat Clapping your hands, stomping your feet You didn't know that you fell Now you've fallen under my spell" Obviously, if you want to participate in the Harbinger plot, you'll have to arrange it so that they manage to follow through with their hypnotized objectives. They will feel somehow empty during this time, as like they need to follow the music in order to achieve any chance at fulfillment. If you are not becoming a Harbinger, you can still have your character be affected by this to a lesser degree and then stopped by another carnival member, or as a feat of self control. ► BATTLE: By the time she switches to the next song, things will have started to get real. Any blatant, long distance attacks made early on will be mysteriously blocked by some kind of magical force field surrounding the stage, which will take some time to penetrate - at least until Noa gets involved. Body guards will storm anyone who tries to get onto the stage, and ostensibly said guards are not at all human. Instead, they appear to be horrible looking shadow amalgamation in suits, and while their attacks are mostly just physical, they can move with unnatural quickness, can't be pinned, and strike very hard. They can be NPC'd by anyone, and only have vaguely humanoid thought processes. "Me and you, you and me Why don't we see who is better? We don't have to be one and the same thing Oh, what's so wrong with a little competition? Are you afraid of failing the audition?" By the end of the second song, the hypnotized carnival members will have been snatched up by CY-Ren's void agents and disappeared. This can manifest as them being grabbed and escorted off, or possibly disappearing into shadows alongside one of the bodyguards. The guards will be trying to work stealthily, ideally sneaking away anyone being affected by the song without anyone around them noticing, but they won't let secrecy get in the way of their objectives, either. The audience will be able to realistically notice if things start exploding in their faces, but the song will distract them from anything less obvious.

Comments

[starseedling]

Steven has more or less pulled the same stunt - he just kind of jumped up the side of the arena and onto the top of the bleachers? Somehow, it doesn't seem like any of the people standing around are in a place to notice this. Maybe it helps that his glamour just has him looking like a little kid, and most people wouldn't assume some ten year old is just going to fly up into the stands.

Being surrounded by so many people with such intense levels of excitement is making him a bit dizzy, so after he arrives alongside Connie and Peridot, he just spends a few moments staring into space, looking stunned.

"I don't know if these guys would even hear a fire alarm..." he says, trailing off uncertainly.

[periphrasing]

Under the glamour, Peridot is swishing her tail anxiously. She keeps glancing over her shoulder, ears cocked high and listening sharp for any approaching security.

"Normally I'm not one to play the voice of skepticism, since that's really more Pearl's area of expertise, but I feel it necessary to reiterate how bad of an idea I still think this all is," she complains. "Based off the carnival's track record of interfering in these kinds of matters, there's a very high probability of this going very, very badly."

[sworntothesword]

"Then the fire system was not very well designed..." Connie murmurs, not appreciating her plan possibly not working and also disappointed in this stadium's fire preparedness.

"Well, this time the carnival isn't interfering, right? It's just a lot of free-minded individuals, banding together towards a common goal of justice and goodwill!"

[starseedling]

Steven smiles fondly at Connie's words, and tries to convince himself to go along with that line of thinking. He's worried about how all of this will go, too, but that doesn't mean they can just dwell on that, right?

"R-Right!" he agrees, forcing a bit of enthusiasm. "Even if things go wrong, we can still try! Because we want to, not because the carnival says so..."

That's gotta be worth something, right? He's energized himself a bit by focusing on the positive, so he takes Connie's hand and starts moving towards the stairs.

"Come on, we gotta hurry and get closer before anything starts happening!"

[periphrasing]

Peridot looks kind of dumbstruck for a second, and watches them get a little ways ahead. Her eye kind of twitches a little.

"That's-- Hey-- THAT IS FLIMSY LOGIC AT BEST--!" she squawks, and scrambles to catch up with them. Not that she expects them to listen. The best he can do for now is just trail along and keep an ear out for danger.

[sworntothesword]

They've finally moving out of the 'building' part, but it looks like there's another line of security leading to the stands, checking tickets, mostly directly people to make sure they're going to the right seats.

"Dangit, I thought we were past the human elements of security! Truly the most dangerous animal..."

[starseedling]

Sorry Peridot, sometimes you've just gotta roll with whatever feels good. Thinking about it optimistically feels way better than dwelling on the carnival's past of horrible failures (usually followed with sort of acceptable victories.)

Though Steven jumps at the sight of the security guard. Darn it! He'd assumed they blew that challenge out of the water by climbing up the walls. They are close enough to the lurking security guards that it's hard to just run in the opposite direction without it sticking out. Particularly because two children (and Peridot) running around probably doesn't look particularly legit.

"Uh-hum," Steven blurts out, pointing into the crowd. "OUR MOM HAS OUR TICKETS!"

His mom? All of their mom? Who knows.

[drrdrrdrr]

Steven jumping is actually enough to wake a shapeshifted Amethyst up from the nap she's been taking in Steven's pocket -- just in time to hear the excuse he makes.

Ah hah.

Hopefully the security guard will be looking in the direction Steven pointed so they won't see the mouse scurrying down his pant leg and off across the floor to disappear into the crowd. The only problem is that Amethyst didn't see which way he was pointing, so when she walks back over, looking ostensibly human and also a few feet taller than usual, it's from somewhere else entirely.

Still. She's definitely taller than Steven and Connie and Peridot right now, even if she doesn't look much different than usual otherwise. Human aging is kind of complicated? This is fine.

"Yep," she says, putting her hand on top of Steven's head like people do when they are related to someone, probably, "I'm their mom and I've got their tickets."

She holds them out. Hopefully the security guard won't need to actually take it out of her hand, because that's literally impossible, because she has shapeshifted them out of her skin.

[periphrasing]

In the background, Peridot just makes this face. That's it. That's all the reaction she can muster at the moment.

[sworntothesword]

"Yes, this is definitely our mom. Our mother. For both- all three of us. Three siblings. Because it's our mom." Yes, nailed it. "Thanks for bringing our tickets, mom! We'll go get the seats!"

Pulling Steven behind her by their joined hands, she charged around the guard, counting on him being too preoccupied with Amythest to worry about them.

[starseedling]

As it turns out, that's exactly how things go down. It's not a huge deal as far as the ticket checkers are concerned, anyway - these people already went through the doors, right? Besides, the concert is already starting.

As CY-Ren enters the stage, Steven is dashing down the arena steps, hand in hand with Connie, wondering how much time they have before she pulls whatever she's going to pull. Maybe they should have come sooner? Is there something else they can do?

He doesn't even really get the chance to process what any of the other carnival vigilantes are doing, though, because he finds himself oddly entrenched in the music - like a song he's known forever, even though this has to be the first time he's heard it. His pace slows as he stares forward at the lights of the stage, something in his heart sinking and freezing.

Why did they come here again? What were they even hoping to accomplish? He isn't sure...

"Connie..." he starts, sounding frail and confused. "What do we do...?"

[sworntothesword]

"Um, we need to..." Something something manual pull station. She can worry about that in a second, this song is really good.

"It's beautiful..." Connie says, forgetting what she was looking for, and slowly heading down the stairs towards the stage.

[drrdrrdrr]

Amethyst cups her other hand, the one that doesn't gave tickets sprouting out of it, to her mouth and yells, "Hey, don't run off, kids!"

She takes off jogging after them, though, holding the backwards baseball cap she's got on in this shape for some reason down as she catches up.

"Hey, what's..."

Oh. Hm. This is...

She tucks some of her hair out of her face, so that she can take in the stage with both eyes.

"... Whoah ..."

[periphrasing]

Peridot's ears twitch, the sound of CY-ren's music momentarily dulling all her other senses, leaving her hyper fixated on the stage. By the time she realizes something is wrong, and she manages to shake it off, Connie is already walking away.

She makes a surprised noise and shouts after her: "Connie? HEY!! Where the heck are you going!?!"

[sworntothesword]

"I can't hear it-" Connie tries to explain. She needed... to be closer. To feel it.

She'd completely abandoned looking for fire systems or anything like that. She was walking deliberately towards the stage in plain view.