sheets all on the floor just like an ocean ...

[headandhand]

WHO: All y’all!
WHAT: Your regularly scheduled NAPs event for the month
WHERE: Fort Pillowtown
WHEN: Oct. 7-10
WARNINGS: Please use these if applicable!


Look at all of these bright, shining new faces! There’s even a few less bright, less shining faces - maybe even a few folks without faces - but hey, this city welcomes all types. Chances are, if you’ve just arrived, you're seeing some pretty crazy things, unless you're used to an eye-blinding amount of neon, robots, weird-ass technology, magic, and an omnipresent police force...and hey, if you are, congrats, you're gonna settle in juuuuust fine. But for the rest of you, the Head knows this has gotta be pretty overwhelming, right?

Well, since your quaint individual processing units are probably having a hard time, why not link up with another one? By which the Head means...

Hello, new citizens of Dualis,
and welcome to your monthly Network Adjacency Protocol~!

NAPs are a monthly community networking event similar to the Earth concept of speed dating! Two citizens (new arrivals and old hands alike) are placed at a table together with a handy cue card of queries to help break the proverbial ice. Ask queries and receive results, or ignore the card and yeet yourself straight into a brand new friendship! But don't be too shy, you've only got ten minutes together, and if you just sit in silence for the whole ten, the Network Admins are likely to come supervise and try to repair the uplink through a mild shock to the ol' central nervous system. You might find yourself saying all sorts of unintended facts about yourself if that happens...probably better to just make friends, right? Who doesn’t like friends?!

This month’s event is held at a new, super-comfy all-ages establishment called Fort Pillowtown. As the name suggests, it’s a large indoor space filled wall to wall with permanent pillowforts. There are a variety of sizes, shapes, and colors, with each individual fort constructed of gauzy hanging sheets, strings of soft lights, warm blankets, plush toys, a mini television with on-screen menu for choosing movies to watch and video games to play, and yes, lots and lots of pillows. Snacks and drinks of all sorts are available for purchase, as are whimsical onesies and comfy slippers to wear. Board and card game sets are also available to borrow or buy. Sounds like a dream, right?

So pull up a pillow pile, get to know your new neighbors, and enjoy a well-earned and comfy chill-out session. And hey, if you end up napping at NAPs, rest assured that it’s absolutely allowed.

Comments

[le_chevalier]

"Aliens? Like John Carter of Mars?" He had read those books while Saya was in her first great sleep before she woke up in the great war. He never ventured much for modern alien movies and books. Still, he enjoyed the old pulps to kill time. "A fine reason to, if any." He replued after a second.

"Sadly no." He admitted with a small sigh that spoke volumes to an eternally tired soul. He was so done, but he had to keep going. "Even those who employ me and my mistress are under our protection. Every death that happens under my watch is on my hands... I try my best but, it is often not enough. I wish I could avoid it, but Saya get's quite cross as well when casulties happen on the battlefield." He used to fancy himself more of a lover than a fighter, but a century of battle made that questionable.

His steel blue eyes following the coin as the other moved it.

[be_notorious]

"I've actually been to Mars, you know? There aren't any natives, though. Just damned dicks."

Drifter gives the coin another pass before he flashes an empty hand at Haji.

"Who's the mistress?"

He can enjoy a good story. Seems like he thinks real high of her.

[le_chevalier]

"... What is it like?" He asked curious about all of it. Much like Drifter he liked a good story, anything to fill the countless endless hours.

A small smile flashed across his face at the empty coin, gone as fast as it appeared.

"Her name is Saya," He began, "She is very important to the battle against the Chiropterans, her blood is all that can stop the beasts." It didn't matter that both himself and her were also Chiropterans, but they still had to always fight. "We have been separated for a few months... but I assume she is back in her hibernation..." Look this dudes talking about Aliens so Haji feels less weird talking about his mistress who goes into 30 year naps.

[be_notorious]

Drifter scratches his beard as he thinks about it.

"It's cold." He decides on. "Somethin' made it livable, a long time ago. But all the plants it grew, all the tech that fueled makin' it beautiful? It's gone now. It's just a chilly desert, anymore. You can breathe there, but you ain't gonna feel comfortable. An' when you make it to the cities, they're all broken down, invaders everywhere scrappin' for golden age tech and holdin' up in trashed buildings.

"Venus, though... Venus was pretty. The reef can be, too. Sure, lots of crashes there, but you get into places the Awoken built? An' it's a paradise. Shinin' like castles, glowin' butterflies, glowin' mists. The whole nine yards, ya dig?"

But he listens to Haji's story. No clue what the Chiropterans were. Other than it sounded like his lady was the good kinda poison.

"Guess there are worse places to be than hibernation. Guess that means y'all have been around for a while."

[le_chevalier]

"It sounds to me... that perhaps our times are quiet different, Drifter." He spoke quietly. "Travel beyond the moon is rare in last I knew of." He didn't exactly keep up, he just remembers seeing the moon landing on a tv through a window once in his long Paris walks.... Not to long before Saya attacked him by mistake.

"It sounds breath taking." He replied to the 'ya, dig' which had the slightest amused look for a moment. What a lovely image, and the man himself seemed quiet fascinating. His lady was the best kind of poison.

"I wouldn't know, but she seems to enjoy it." A touch of envy, god to sleep again would be heavenly. "Quite, indeed. I became what I am in 1883, I was twenty one." Which is why he looks young.

[be_notorious]

"Possibly. I ain't heard of what you mentioned. But I'd probably be ahead anyway. There was a long dark age after some big disaster. They call it 'the Collapse'."

And Drifter? Drifter was 'born' not long after that. A man jolted back to life, confused about who and where he was, pursued by an enthusiastic drone that tried to tell him all about his new self only to find it's new partner flee. 'Partner'. Not really. As far as he was concerned, ghosts were parasites.

He doesn't offer that up. What Haji is sounds more interesting.

"What are ya? What changed ya?"

[le_chevalier]

"It would seem so, but I would like to hear about it, if it is all the same." He spoke in the same calm almost unreadable tone. He had long since learned to be unreadable to protect himself. He had always been a lover more than a fighter, but Saya didn't need a lover, so he tried to bury that side of himself to be the fighter she needed and wanted.

What a strange life Drifter had to have.

Haji looked down at his bandaged hand a moment, a memento of his great failure. Not of his death.

"I am a chevalier... a higher level of Chiropteran. Something akin to the modern vampire myths, but also not. It is a rather long story... but the summery is that I was a servant to my mistress from boyhood, and on the day of her father's birthday I was killed and she wouldn't allow that...she gave me her blood and time stopped for me."

[be_notorious]

"Eh, I wasn't there for it." That much is true. He came from after. Not long after, but after. "That's the funny thing. Ain't a lotta people that survived cared to pass down what did it. Sorta just stayed a mystery. A bright golden age and then like that?"

He snaps his fingers, but in the process of snapping his fingers flips the coin back between them.

"It was gone."

And then back to playing with it, done with that dramatic description because it was half true. Drifter didn't know what caused it besides 'the Darkness', he wasn't there for it, but he knew that same force was returning, en masse. That they'd not stop this time.

"So what happens if somethin' happens to her. You stay what you are but alone? Or do you end, too?"

A harsh question, but he's thinking of Orin. Of how heartbroken he'd been when that now crazy, creepy fool walked away from him. Seems like Haji loves his Saya a might more than Drifter loved Orin, but he had actually loved her.

[le_chevalier]

"...Strange." What else could Haji say? Truthfully it was curious but he also knew when answers wouldn't come that pushing didnt help. After all, he was usually the one being pushed.

His eyes following the coin with ease. What a fun trick.

"The same thing that happens if nothing happens, I live on forever. The one who could kill me is dead. I will be alone as I am now." It sounded said when he said it. "I do not think anything could end me short of starvation at this point." And he doubted even that would stick, something tells him if he got that hungry he'd go berserk until he fed.

[be_notorious]

It did sound sad, and Drifter's had a lot of experience with loneliness. But he's still feeling a little cagey on it. "Just don't get to the point ya drag around bits of her clothing for centuries. There are immortals back home that have done that kinda thing. Find a more honorable way to remember her."

Not being able to die at all doesn't sound like it's all that implausible to him.

"Better question." Not exactly less depressing, but a less personal thought exercise. "You got the choice to wish an asshole outa existence. Now, I know we probably got a different line-up of disreputables so lets give some general qualifiers. You got a tyrant who controls everyone in his country, allows only marriage based on tradition rather than love, burns books that go against him, murders anyone that speaks out against him, but everybody stays fed. Warm houses for everybody. Everybody's healthy. You got a warlord who obliterated thousands. Did a genocidal sweep of different countries. But if he hadn't? All the laws that happened after him that helped people, all the cures he came up with from his terrible research? The literature he spread under his rule? That wouldn't be around no more. Or a serial killer? Nothin' good can come of him. He's killed a buncha people based on 'em not bein' able to fight back. Acted like a sicko. But his top count is like, twenty. You spend this chance on him? You're gonna miss the chances to get rid of one of the other two.

"You can only pick one. Now wipe 'em out. Every breath they ever took."