animus_network | GOING ON A JUNGLE ADVENTURE, TO SEE WHAT WE CAN SEE

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GOING ON A JUNGLE ADVENTURE, TO SEE WHAT WE CAN SEE

EB: hey everybody!
so i guess we're all stuck here for a little while?
according to that letter i got, anyway. did anyone else get a letter like that?
i guess you all must be from the new session. there sure are a lot of you, though...
in any case, hi! i'm john!
i created you, kind of.
not really.
i actually kind of don't know!
but i guess this place is pretty cool.

oh yeah, also!
if you see anyone named:
dave strider
rose lalonde
or jade harley

then can you tell me?
it's really important!
thank you!

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Library, got it. I will see you there and then the customary tour can commence.

[Several minutes later there's a twenty-something year old redhead poking around the library looking for him, dressed in nice, if rather hippie-ish, clothes.]

Hello? [she calls out.] John?

[WOW IT'S A WILLOW!]

[Somehow he thought she'd be... younger. He's still not used to meeting people in real life after he's talked to the over the Internet, ha ha. But anyway, he jumps up and bounds over to the woman who he guesses is her.] Willow? That you?

That's me!

[And she thought he'd be older, which is what leads to her blurting out,] And gosh, aren't you just a cutie patootie. Do you have to work at being this cute? [Welp, hopefully he didn't find that too embarrassing.]

Uhh... nope? [Oh gosh! Wow. He's never been called cute before, he doesn't think. Except by family but that doesn't count.]

So anyway! [Boing.] Where are we gonna start the tour?

[Just a little bundle of energy, this guy. Thankfully Willow has experience babysitting Dawnie at that age and is unphased.]

How about right here? Or is librarying still uncool at your age? Well, I guess it's uncool at every age, now that I'm thinking about this. It was pretty much just my high school that came complete with demonology texts and one stereotypically English guide to the occult.

Your school had demonology classes? Wow, I have a friend who would love to go there. She knows all about that stuff. ...But sure, I guess this floor is as good a place as any! Lead the way. [n_n]

It had regular classes, it just had a secret portal to hell under the library, [she clarifies.] Very secret, very dangerous. A lot like Sméagol, complete with ring.

Thankfully this library seems to have skipped the free demons in every cereal box giveaway. [heading over to the central stairwell as she talks...]

Woooow! [He's pretty legitimately impressed with your demonic school, Willow! It reminds him of this one Canadian show he used to watch on TV (actually the heroine of that show looks a lot like her), but he's not going to mention it. He's just going to follow along. Like a puppy.] Well, you never know! Maybe these demons are just better at hiding.

[But everyone knows that he's just kidding. There's no way there could be demons here. Obviously they don't exist.]

Most of the demons I've met are not so much with the hiding. They're more... raaawr, I want to eat your entrails, and also babies.

[They stop at the landing to the stairs, and she tries to refocus herself away from tangents (which is not an easy task for Willow).] Okay, tour. So this is library number one, also known as generic library, or level three. Regular books like you might expect live here. Like fiction and... medieval history... and sparing you the Dewey decimal recitation now. This floor's pretty basic.

Hmm. I have something kind of like that, but they're more like imps than real demons... oh well.

Is there another library? [John is confuse.] What makes this one different?

Imps totally count, [she assures him.] What kind of imps?

There's one way up top that's more research-oriented. Kind of like the big brother of this one, if the big brother were musty and unwieldy.

Black ones that wear clown outfits. [Yup.]

...Huh. What else is there?

[Seems legit.] Sounds creepy. And maybe my friend Xander's worst nightmare. He hates clowns.

Oh, lots of stuff, [she says cheerfully, heading up the stairs.] There's twenty floors in total. The next one is actually my favorite.

Xander, huh? Cool name! [John doesn't know anyone named Xander. He doesn't even know anyone whose name has an X in it, except for maybe one of those trolls, he's not quite sure.]

[He's SO EXCITED to see her favorite floor.] Really? What's on the next floor.

It's short for Alexander, but he's not exactly an Alex kind of guy. Xander fits him a lot better.

[He's just so excitable. It makes her smile as they reach the landing and peek out onto the level. The walls are entirely glass in 360 degrees from the central stairwell, and they give a completely unobstructed view of clouds, or maybe fog, roiling by slow and steady. Plush couches and chairs are strewn throughout the floor.] This is, [she announces.] It's a good place to talk and watch the clouds.

...Whoa.

[That sums it up pretty well. John slowly walks over to one of the glass windows, raps it with his knuckle, and then looks down over the side. He's completely enamored with the thing. He waits there for a few moments before speaking.] ...Can you even see the ground from here?

[She follows him over, understanding the reaction completely. Several of the floors do that to her-- immediate, instinctual reaction to reach out and touch.]

I think maybe sometimes? I don't usually watch too closely. It's all very zen.

I guess it's too high up. [He backs away from the window a bit, enough to be considered normal, and then turns back to Willow and the rest of the room; if he looked thoughtful before, it's gone now, and he's pretty eager to explore further.] So cool... [He continues poking around the room a bit, sitting down and bouncing lightly on the seats and so on, before he thinks of something and looks up again.] Who made this place? It's crazy. And that's only two floors...

You haven't seen anything yet if you think this is crazy, [she assures him.] We shouldn't actually be high enough to see clouds from this level, but there it is. This is like... the tip of the iceberg of strange.

I don't think anyone here knows who made the tower-- at least not yet. [Because Willow isn't about to give up looking for answers, herself. That aside, she gives him another smile.] Ready for the next?

Yeah! Let's go on to the next floor. [John pulls on his hoodie a bit to straighten it out, then heads for the spiral staircase.]

[Doop doop up the stairs to the fifth floor, which has some NPCs working at security terminals doggedly.]

This one's not too interesting. Around the outer wall there's devices that will show you what's supposedly your ruined wasteland of a home, but I personally don't buy any of that.

Ruined wasteland of a-- wait, that was real? [...Aaaand a moment later he hears Willow say she didn't believe it, and since he's got nothing better to go by, he's sticking with her.] ...Wow. Eerie. [He peers in to the red-collared drones, clattering away.] Who are those people?

Illusions aren't terribly complicated, at least where I'm from, and I've seen the tower use illusions for other things for sure. Not to mention-- someone tries to destroy my Earth on a pretty much yearly basis. I find it hard to believe someone succeeded this time.

[She just can't believe that Earth is gone; it literally won't compute in her brain to think that all of her friends are dead, all of them, without it necessitating a breakdown. So she's staying with her disbelief.]

Um, anyway, they're some of the people that take care of the tower. They don't really... talk very much. Or at all, that I've seen.

GOING ON A JUNGLE ADVENTURE, TO SEE WHAT WE CAN SEE

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action!!

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ALL THE QUESTIONS

fffff Willow can turn into an exposition machine if you aren't careful ...

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