animus_network

[After a long month spent gathering information, pouring over the guide to the Tower he found, and generally just trying to gather his bearings, Mello decides to turn to the network at long last. He never did like the idea of a completely solitary investigation.]

How's it going, Tower? Everyone been having fun? Great. Down to business.

First off, let me say that you're just about the craziest bunch of kidnapping victims I've ever had the displeasure of living with.

I mean, come on. Weddings? Birthday celebrations? I know that people have an innate need to try and make unmanageable situations as normal as possible, but surely there are better things you all could be doing with your time.

Now, this might come as a shock, but I'm not content to sit here and leave myself to the mercy of my kidnappers. I've already read that guide that some of you have put together, so don't bother explaining how dangerous the place is to me, or how there's no way out, or blah, blah, blah. However, if anyone has info on hand that hasn't yet been added to the guide, feel free to cough it up. If our hosts have allowed you to write up that guide in the first place, I'm sure they won't mind my asking for a little more elaboration, right?

Information is key, especially in a place where nothing seems to make sense. I fully intend to make use of it and find a way out. You're free to join me, if any of you are up for it.

All right, now time for a question.

I've heard that we all come from different worlds. That isn't normally something I'd believe, but since I've arrived here, I've seen a ton of strange things, so I'll bite. In the interest of finding out which "universe" I'm from, give me an answer: have any of you heard of a mass murderer named Kira? He kills people - criminals - with heart attacks. Just in case any of you are from one of those "alternate timelines" and Kira hasn't yet reared his ugly head, have any of you heard of a detective named L?

Regards.

-M

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

there's five in total. you saw this yet? that's three of them. guy working with the computers is Riki, other is Dax, and that girl is Ruana.

the ones not on there are Jason - he's this smarmy jackass with a shaved head and a tie - and Zo, he's a kid.

Yeah, I saw it.

[He frowns, replaying the scene in his mind. Everything from the conversation to the... unorthodox ending left a bad taste in his mouth, and as much as he tries to keep an open mind about things, the video feed doesn't sit right with him. That woman, Ruana... He's not sure what her deal is, but he has a feeling that she's someone to watch out for.

Ruana is one matter, but "Jason" is a name he keeps hearing on endless repeat. He's never even seen the man, but he seems to be infamous. Mello snaps a piece of his chocolate bar off, fixing the screen with a focused glare.]

I've heard about everyone at least once before, but never anything in detail. If you can't tell me anything specific over the network, I understand. On that same note, I don't suppose you have any idea what sort of "project" Riki was working on?

it's better if I tell you here. even if we both get kicked out into the wastelands, we might still get someone halfway useful reading back through all this one day who could do do something with it.

case in point with you, right?

_{[Maybe she would've said 'yeah, let's be stealthy about this' a few months ago, but Sayaka's gained a blasé attitude. Oh, sure, let them punish her, or delete the posts. Like that even matters.]}

Riki's the one I can't quite figure out. he's in charge of spatial stuff, I guess? He makes the floors, decides what goes on them, and he seems to like doing everything in weird convoluted ways. so that's what Dax would think is so inefficient.

that time bullshit that just got over with was definitely the distraction, might've been a part of the project. I dunno why he felt like he needed to distract us. the only way down to where they are is that special first floor elevator, so maybe he did something that made it more vulnerable to get into, or there's a completely different door he's talking about.

Edited 2013-01-28 04:33 (UTC)

Fair enough.

[He rests his elbows on the terminal and puts his chin in his hands, the remaining bit of his chocolate bar dangling from between his lips. The first floor elevator... He'll have to look it over a little more closely the next time he's downstairs.

He takes hold of his chocolate, breaks off a particularly big bite (he'd been trying to eat slower than usual, but his brain needed a lot of sugar in the past month), and gets to typing in a long, almost stream-of-consciousness sort of way.]

He was working underneath the elevator, so I doubt the cables would have been weakened... Maybe something to do with the system that keeps the elevator running? It'd be easier to come up with a working theory if I knew more about the technology here, but it all seems like it was pulled straight out of a science fiction comic.

We can't rule out the possibility of another door. I wouldn't put it past them to hide it in plain sight, or to have technology that renders the door nearly invisible. It's worth keeping an eye out for.

No one up here can go any lower than the cafeteria, right? The lower levels are their domain, so I'm hoping their little project isn't something that'll end up making life harder for all of us... Probably an empty hope, though, from what I've been hearing.

Does this sort of construction happen often?

yeah, we're pretty much trapped in a trashy sci-fi doujin, with an artist who likes drawing people getting mauled way too much. The best explanations we've got are 'because souls' and 'because psionics.'

another door that's hidden... wait a tic.

[She'd nearly forgotten about that, but - there was something about a door before, wasn't there? When Ruana had talked to them for about a billion posts. She'd gotten a distracted from the detail by Jin freaking out and the surplus of stuff to wade through.]

I think you're right about that other door.

[Souls and psionics? That was something he'd heard nothing about. He doesn't want to jump to any conclusions, but his mind starts buzzing with half-formed thoughts and ideas anyway. Some sort of purgatory, a place where supernatural abilities of the mind can make the impossible seem possible, a hallucination, a divine prank-

He's snapped out of his reverie when he skims over that last line.]

Oh yeah? Fill me in on the souls and psionics if you can, but first, tell me about the door.

...I need to look through my notes again. A while back a two audio files were posted on the network that got deleted later. Old recordings of Ruana. People called her out and she started answering questions, but eventually the whole post got took down.

Someone asked how she got here, since she said she wasn't from another world. That's when I remember the door got mentioned. She said she locked it, but

she does take naps.

Anyway, I don't know shit about psionics other than that Ruana has them! But souls! I can talk about souls for sure!
This place is even named after some bullshit word for soul. 'Animus.'

You've got a collar 'round your neck same as everybody else - if that comes off, you start to feel like you're getting torn apart, and then you drop dead. The reason is because whatever that fancy gook in it is, it keeps you stable, and only that certain collar of gook can do that for you.

It's also the reason you're even here. It's kind of like a leash keeping you in, you dig?

[There's a long stretch of silence before Mello begins sending messages again. It's a lot of information to take in, especially with this new knowledge of an interaction between administrators and residents that he wasn't able to access. If all of this important info was contained within that post, who knew how much else there was before everything got purged? Damn. If only he'd been there to question Ruana himself...]

Okay, let me think.

We've got a locked door somewhere around here. No door is locked forever, so there has to be something we can do to get out. It's just a matter of finding the door, and finding out what it's like.

Psionics are supposed to be a form of mental magic that can affect physical objects. Think telekinesis. They don't exist in my world, as far as I know, so everything I can say about them is only speculation. If this Ruana has psionics, then that makes this even more difficult, unless we know the scale of her powers. Every ability has a set of guidelines, so to speak, and I bet you that if we find out what those guidelines are, we can find her weaknesses.

And then there's "Animus." It's Latin. Sort of gives me hope that we're still on a familiar planet, but I'll save those theories for later.

I doubt this place is some kind of purgatory. If it was run by the divine, we wouldn't need these collars to keep us stable. But then, that begs the question, how are they keeping us stable in the first place? It's a stretch, but I'm starting to think the collars serve as an anchor, keeping our souls tied to our bodies.

This is pretty tricky, because I've never taken the time to consider that souls are actually real.

But if we treat souls as a physical thing, something that's capable of moving from one place to another, something capable of being contained... Different collar colors, different souls, different forms and functions...

Damn it. I wanna say this is all helpful stuff, but I'm at a loss right now. Is there anything else useful that you learned from Ruana before her post got deleted?

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argh i keep messing up the html on my first try

haha it's okay, I do that all the time

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2/2 okay yeah had to rewrite this one

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