The Fifteen Strangers Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
strangerpeople) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
notasstrange2023-07-29 07:39 pm
strangerpeople) wrote in notasstrange2023-07-29 07:39 pm
SHIFT Meme
WELCOME! There's been a lot of SHIFTing in this round, hasn't there? What if you were SHIFTed into another round, or another version of this round, or even one of the rounds in R7's backstory? Or....maybe somewhere else entirely??
Look no further than here! So sit back, tap into the morphogenetic field, and come on down! Your characters are the next contestants on...on wherever they end up! Oh boy!
| 1. The Ship of Blood Well, this one is familiar at least! But...who are all these people with you? Is that one of the Spardas? Wait-who's that guy with the fedora? You mean there are timelines where there are more rounds!? BOOOOOOOO! 2. The Home of Happiness and Horror Oh great, you're in Denton, Aka a soundstage where you are forced to kill one another in front of a live worldwide audience. Oh, and said audience gets a vote in who dies. Oh, and in some timelines, you randomly start singing! Or...wear full body costumes. It's weird. 3. ??? The Meme is ever-present. The Meme will not be contained. The multiversal clusters are vast and infinite. Perhaps you SHIFT into a previous game. Perhaps you SHIFT into a game as yet known. Or perhaps it is happening right now. Who knows, now...and what fate awaits you...? |
Kitchen I.e. I'm so sorry to anyone who just wanted to make breakfast
[That comes from the enigmatic old man who'd been pleasant enough at first - coming in idly and putting a kettle on to boil. He doesn't look at Edward, but his intent is enough, as he also never had the reaction the vampire expected from other humans from the start.]
It's just the same as we humans eating the flesh of dead animals, is it not? Merely something our biological processes need in order to continue. Hiding it away hardly suits a Dead Apostle such as yourself.
[And there's that weird term for vampires, as he leans against the counter casually.]
no subject
Still, though.
His eyes flashed up to the old man as he spoke and he, briefly, froze--not as a human would have been able to freeze, but completely, as though he had been transformed into a sculpture. He catches himself the barest moment later, at least, and it isn't as if humans are never still. He shakes his head a little and pulls himself back into the act, puts on a friendly smile, keeps a safe distance away. His voice is almost honeyed, warm and pleasant. Edward knows how to charm.]
It's true enough that there doesn't seem much point in trying to hide anything here. Not with as many cameras as they have around. But I suppose that old habits, as they say, die hard, don't they?
I'm not familiar with that term, though I'll admit it's an odd one. Is it meant to be some kind of metaphor?
no subject
He smiles back all the same, allowing Edward to maintain that safe distance, his own tone just as warm and pleasant as he speaks - in fact, it's practically just as honed and charming, also born from long experience.]
Yes, that is true. I suppose that was a bit insensitive of me - someone like yourself would have to fear hunters, after all - such as the Church, though that is in my world.
[He doesn't blink when he's asked about the name, shrugging.]
It's hardly one I came up with myself - the Church calls those who were once human and became a vampire through whatever means a Dead Apostle. I suppose it's to separate them from the True Ancestors - those beings born as vampires, though 'Vampire' is hardly the correct term for a being that functions as Gaia's sense of touch.
[
Enjoy making sense out of that, Edward.]
no subject
First of all it makes no sense at all.
But he tenses, almost imperceptibly, under that word: 'vampire'. But it was probably inevitable, wasn't it? That in such close quarters as these, others would notice that he was a monster?
It was the rest of what he said that didn't make sense. After a moment Edward forces a low chuckle.]
I doubt the Church ever killed a single vampire, personally. They certainly managed to burn any number of innocent men and women, however.
no subject
[Since it's been quite obvious they come from different places, what with a little conversation.]
But seeing as we all seem to be from different worlds, that's hardly surprising. The Church in mine is a force to be reckoned with, as many clergymen are also trained hunters of Dead Apostles and other forces that threaten the Human Order.
no subject
[Something in his voice sounds slightly amused. A private joke, perhaps?]
Many have even been clergymen and the like, though that sort of thing has fallen out of fashion for the past several hundred years.
It just seems unlikely to me that any of them have ever killed a vampire.
[And then a pause.]
Though, it seems, you think I am one.
no subject
[That is simply said, without any preamble - and he continues on without stopping, raising a finger with each fact he rattles off.]
They were a shade of pale gold when you arrived, yet now they are a much darker red color - one that is associated with vampires in my world. That, along with your habit of coming to the kitchen only when you feel that no one will catch you would be enough to raise suspicion.
But there is also that, at times, you forget to move in the same way humans do - at the beginning of our little talk here, you froze so completely that it almost seemed as if you were stone. That either takes an incomparable amount of training for a human...or that your natural instinct entirely removes the need for the small, unconscious movements living beings make. And the number of blood bags within the kitchen are always one less after your visitations, thus - you are a vampire, or at the very least, a Phantasmal Being that relies on human blood in order to survive.
[He shrugs, quietly.]
Your defensive response to being called one, along with the deflection, leads me to believe I was correct in my first assumption. Nothing more, nothing less.
no subject
Not many humans look close enough to notice that.
I suppose it was a lost cause from the start, wasn't it? There's a decided advantage in keeping such things hidden when most of humanity has collectively decided that you don't really exist. After all, it's so much more comfortable at night when nightmares aren't real.
no subject
Regardless, I have a....knack, one might say. To see the smaller details ones would normally miss, though anyone could learn how to do so with enough time and patience.
[He does lapse into silence a bit, tilting his head while seemingly in thought.]
You see yourself as a nightmare, then? A monster that can only exist within night's embrace?
no subject
no subject
[There's a bit of joviality to him, though he shrugs at the comment.]
Just because you drink blood? Given that your eyes were a different color before now, I assume you primarily fed from non-human sources. Not a trait of the vampires I am familiar with, but similar enough to some Phantasmal Beings.
Still, I'd hardly call that a nightmare. Humanity alone contains enough monsters within it, even without supernatural powers - those who would twist even the most innocent to their own desires and whims, or slake their bloodlust upon those.
No, for one to be a nightmare creature, a devil - you would have to be something much more...Evil.
no subject
[He flashes a wry smile, one that still doesn't expose his teeth. The comment about eye color is wholly unexpected this time.]
Incredible.
Yes.
You were wrong earlier, you see. I don't need human blood to survive. Human is merely the most... satisfying. I....
[A pause, then a sigh.]
My whole family, we... try to abstain. We're... we're usually very good at what we do. Most of my kind don't bother. We are all of us the perfect killer, and so they kill, and they kill, and they kill.
I've done it myself. I'd say that qualifies, don't you?
no subject
He laughs. Not his villainous cackle, but more as if he's laughing at a private joke.]
Oh, is that all? Is the act of killing all that quantifies you as a monster? Honestly, I'm a bit disappointed!
[He shakes his head, still chuckling.]
Many heroes of ages past - and, indeed, many leaders - bear the blood of countless lives on their hands. Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Genghis Khan...All of them have killed hundreds, or thousands. And what of the ancient heroes of myth? Herkules killed his own family in a fit of madness, and many others during his 12 labors - yet, he is considered one of the great heroes. Was not he a 'perfect killer' by his very birth?
No, shedding blood alone does not make it such - as the act of killing another human has only the morality imposed on it by others, and nothing to do with the act itself. Such as, say, how one could find it abhorrent to feed upon a child or someone truly innocent.
...And you do not strike me as a man who has done that, given your own admission to abstaining from human blood. Unless you've adopted that out of repentance from past sins?