Alma Heart Game

[imaginemeandyuu]

You fall into mud. It is sticky and sucking and cloying and whether you stay still and try to remain calm or struggle and try to get out, you're sucked downward. You can't breathe, you can't (of course) see, and you can feel the crushing weight of earth on you. When the blackness becomes overwhelming, you find yourself somewhere else...

Comments

STARTING ROOM

[imaginemeandyuu]

You find yourselves in cylindrical room. It is short, so anyone over five and a half feet definitely has to stoop, as if it was designed for a child, but it's still maybe twenty feet wide. There are no visible doors or windows, but everything is mirrors.

Literally.

The ceiling is made of mirrors -- largely rectangular ones, though in the dead center is a circular one. The floor matches it, made of mostly rectangular mirrors with a circular one in the center. All the walls, ringing the room, are covered from floor to ceiling in mirrors. You reflect into infinity in every direction and it has the unnerving feeling like one of your hundreds of reflections might suddenly do something different from the others.

The mirrors aren't all in the same condition, however. The tops of the walls, and the mirrors on the ceiling, are tarnished and gross, showing age spots, discoloration, handprints. Things are smeared on them, dark fluids and dirt. The circular mirror in the center is chipped, including a large sharp-seeming chip toward one edge which leaves a small black peephole into -- what, exactly?

The floor and the lower parts of the walls seem, in comparison, glitteringly clean, but these are the ones where you can see your reflections best, where, as you turn and glance around, you have the biggest sense that something turned in the wrong direction, a hand moved where it shouldn't, the wrong color for your clothes or hair or eyes was briefly glimpsed. The circular mirror in the center is also the brightest and cleanest of these mirrors, so much so it seems almost to be glowing.

Floating in the center of the room, exactly halfway between the two circular mirrors, is a bowl. It is currently empty and despite floating in space doesn't seem to be movable from its current location.

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[appleofhiseye]

[eying the bowl for a moment before moving closer to take a look]

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[imaginemeandyuu]

[It has PARTS written on its side. It's empty.]

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[karlsefni]

- what's it say?

[reading is hard. . .]

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[seaside_cherry]

[That sinking feeling is really unpleasantly familiar from another heart game I was in a while back, taking a moment to recover from mud suffocation - aaaaand this isn't creepy at all]

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[yourewaitingforagate]

[crouched and rubbing his head from where he smacked it on the ceiling :(]

Melody. You're here too?

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[hallucinogenetic]

. . . hey.

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[yourewaitingforagate]

[how about breathing first, breathing is good]

—they've gotta work on the entry with these things.

[getting up and immediately smacking his head on the ceiling]

—Ow!

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[hallucinogenetic]

You.

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[hallucinogenetic]

[crouched, looking wary and tense]

. . . shit.

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[emomachine]

[turning this way and that, watching his reflections move]

What is all this. . .?

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[seaside_cherry]

It's Pumpkin's heart.

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[yourewaitingforagate]

Melody's got the gist of it. Just be careful. Pumpkin's memories are in here too, and the past he's seen hasn't always been pretty.

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[highflyin]

[ Trisha's practically on his hands and knees here, being over six foot is a negative trait right now.

He's going to move towards that peephole to see if he can't look through it. ]

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[hallucinogenetic]

Oi. Trisha.

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[imaginemeandyuu]

[The peephole is dark on the other side. It's about two inches wide and perfectly round.]

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[supersensitive]

[ughhh rubbing at his eyes after looking around at the mirrors for a moment, this is disorienting?? before... approaching one of the lower wall mirrors, checking out the edges]

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[imaginemeandyuu]

[Your eyes look back. Of course, you're reflected onto infinity with that curve.]

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[soldieronwards]

[Gasping after the mud, but trying to stay calm--even if this is kind of creepy.]

Kanda? Where's your guy? He's here, right?

[Turns around uneasily, a little stooped--and after a moment, tentatively reaches out to try to rub at some of the discoloration and smears on the nearest mirrors with his sleeve.]

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[imaginemeandyuu]

[It doesn't come off on your sleeve - but you can push it around on the mirrors, smudgy.]

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[hallucinogenetic]

He's everywhere. This is him.

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[highflyin]

I don't know how much a cleaning party's gonna help us out here, sweetcheeks.

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[karlsefni]

[trying not to let himself get too distracted by the mirrors, hands in pockets so he doesn't hold a knife :( that entry didn't exactly help him to not be nervous]

A RETURN

[imaginemeandyuu]

At least one group is heading back! Other than a way being broken to go Down nothing has changed here from before.

PATH TO THE TRUE HEART

[imaginemeandyuu]

Once everyone has gathered and the last body part is put in...

Suddenly, the bowl inverts and becomes stairs, leading from one edge of the hole into the lower part up to -- well. The thing that is forming.

It takes the general outline of a person, using the body parts you placed in, but it's all wrong. Most of the body is missing, of course, and floating in place with everything behind it visible. From the top, you have a mask-like face with a single eye and a mouth attached to it, with the brain tucked away in a skull hanging behind it. No torso, but you can see the core floating slightly in front of the heart, and a womb some distance below that. No arms, but a right hand, and a single finger from the left hand. A tail hanging shortly below the womb. A single foot.

Then there's the fact that it's all mismatched in size, colors, sexes -- at least, the parts that don't just look like generic organs. But the heart is too small for an adult body, as is the right hand; the other floating finger is long and elegant, the eye isn't Alma's normal eye color... and so on.

It hovers there, in that strange, grotesque amalgamation of parts, then abruptly slams together, flattens, broadens, changes color and tone and material: changes into a door.

"WHO AM I" is carved into the wood.

((Everyone can answer individually to enter))