guestservices | CYOA week 5: cloud, sebastian, bradley, jason

Whoa.

[ he looks around the void with wide eyes. ]

Is this—

[ and then he's cut off by the fiend tackling him again i guess!! ]

[ okay, well. they're in some kind of white void with a river, which he can accept. all important mythical things are river, see the lifestream. this must be where they needed to go.

anyway, his ankle is ouch owie but it's fine, what if he just hits the fiend on top of sebastian with his sword to try to send it into the river. surely this won't disrupt the flow of time in a negative fashion, right. ]

[It gets bopped into the river.

... Unfortunately, it's a shallow river and not particularly strong, so now the fiend is just wet but still there. But as punishment, although I suppose this might not be a punishment to Cloud: for a split-second, Sebastian and Cloud will experience a piercing headache.

Anyway, the fiend is lunging out of the river and at Cloud.]

Ow—!

[ his head?? ugh.

okay well. uh. what if he just lets cloud deal with that for a second since he doesn't have a weapon himself and he tries to find out where they're supposed to go instead!! is it just a single river here or are there more? does it have branches or anything? what's out there if you try to to look ahead to where it ends? ]

[ i have so many icons for the head hurty thing.

cloud's got a piercing headache while the fiend is lunging at him so the lunging lands :( down he goes :( but luckily for some reason cloud's attachment to this sword can only be broken in very cinematic cutscenes of visual importance, and we're too early in for that, so he's on the ground with his sword in one hand still. it's okay! he has a solution!

kickies!!!! because it's really hard to swing a sword that is six feet long at something that is literally on top of you. so anyway he will attempt to kick the fiend off him, trying to protect his general face and whatever with his non-sword arm.

hey sebastian how's the plot finding going ]

[It's just a single river! From where Sebastian is standing, it doesn't branch out and just continues out into more... void. That's all Sebastian can see. Pure emptiness.

Anyway, you've been fighting these fiends for so long, so Cloud may kick the fiend off of him. It's sent flying to the ground (?), where it attempts to get back up.]

[ no!!! why! ]

Ugh! Why is it just one river? Am I missing something?!

[ looks down into the river, is there anything in there that could potentially be helpful? or is it just river rocks or void: underwater edition? ]

[ there will be no getting back up because jan is tired of us fighting this fiend and so am i, so cloud jumps back to his feet (regrets it because he forgot his ankle was fucked up and he winces) and then he goes over it so he can use his big sword to stab it through. die, fiend, die.

anyway, plot! ]

... Maybe we have to keep walking further along. [ he says, probably with a sword sticking into both a fiend and the ground. ]

[In the river is just... more void.

It truly is just a vast world of nothingness, so they can stay here with this dead fiend—or, well, it eventually shatters into dust—or start walking in any direction, really.]

I guess... ?

[ every direction looks the same though.......

he finally sighs and just starts walking toward... uh... the void. ]

[ he will follow sebastian down ... the void! and put his sword back on his back where it belongs. the world's stupid accessory. ]

Maybe we walk long enough, we'll find an exit to another time. [ that's the spirit! what is there around as they keep walking! is it still just the river. does it look like it changes at all. ]

[Sebastian and Cloud walk into the void. It's still just the river. Nothing appears to be changing. All they hear is the sound of their own voice and trickling water.

...

In fact, at some point, it'll feel as though they've been walking for a long, long time in this void. Could be days, weeks, months, even years. Just endless walking... On the bright side, while they might get tired, it doesn't seem as though they're suffering from hydration or starvation.]

[ i'm just picturing this but less happy and in a white void ]

Do you think we're getting closer... to anything...?

[ what if they finally reached the end and it was just a fucking wall ]

... I don't know. Feels like we've been walking forever.

[ he has a faint thought thinking about how this feels oddly... like climbing up 59 flights of stairs... but he doesn't quite remember why he has that thought...

he sounds exhausted, and it's partially mental. it's so white. ]

It's not like we can turn around at this point. There's got to be an end sometime.

[ RIGHT????? RIGHT?????? this is the rest of the cyoa just them walking. if he had anything to throw in the river he'd kick it in out of spite. ]

[yeah that's accurate eric

The good news is that eventually, finally, something changes. Ahead of them, the river goes through... some kind of glowing archway? It's hard to tell how anything could be glowing when everything is just fuckin white, but Sebastian and Cloud will get the impression it's glowing.]

...!! Hey, look!

[ IMMEDIATELY RUNS FOR THE ARCHWAY BECAUSE HE'S SO FUCKING BORED HE'LL TAKE ANYTHING can't wait for him to somehow run into the year 31XX by accident and it's just a postapocalyptic hellscape ]

Sebastian, wait!

[ well it's too late to test if this archway is dangerous he has to follow, so he breaks into a run after him. wheeeeeeee into mistakes they gooo ]

[They go through the archway! Everything in their vision goes white(r than usual), but when the light fades, they'll find themselves... standing on the outskirts of a village. It's a little more old-fashioned than what they'd be used to, but it's still standing, which is also more than what they can say hailing from the apocalypse. It's surrounded by forests, but not the ominous kind of forest they were in some nebulous time ago.

Congrats, it's not a postapocalyptic hellscape! It's not, like, completely idyllic, but it seems peaceful enough... Well, minus the red tinging the edges of the sky, in the distance.

Also, now that they're out of the Time Channels, they will suddenly be hit with a wave of dehydration and starvation.]

...Did we— [ he looks around, cautiously optimistic! ] We made it?

[ and then oh man all of that hits him and he feels terrible and kind of doubles over. ]

Oh jeez... can we stop and get some food and stuff before we— wait, are they going to accept our money here?

[ does he have to go look sad and cute and beg for money, which he is apparently good at in this reality... ]

[ yeah excuse him while he stumbles when they get back out, because it's so much harder to hold up a sword on a maybe still lightly nommed ankle when you are also suffering from dehydration and starvation! wow! it is also hard even if his ankle isn't nommed. it's a big sword.

he's got a hand to his head and he tries not to pant too much. wow! this fucking sucks! time travel is the WORST ]

... Won't know until we try. C'mon.

[ it takes him a second but he'll lead them into the village, sure! this is a great plan! villages LOVE helping strangers who look weird and probably don't have money!! ]

[Yeah, it's now time to play out 10 tag rounds of Sebastian being cute at people.

No, thankfully, he doesn't have to do that. People give them suspicious looks as the two walk in, because like. Who are you??? Where did you come from????

But eventually, while the others are sort of giving them a wide berth, they'll be approached by a young girl—younger than Sebastian, at least—with dark hair and perhaps oddly glassy eyes. She looks a little distressed, because yikes, you two look bad.]

Are you two okay?

[She looks at Cloud's nommed ankle.]

You're hurt...

[ honestly he's probably loopy enough right now that he doesn't notice anything weird about the eyes. seems like a nice kid.

the upside of looking like crap right now is that he probably just has instant pity factor without even trying. ]

O-oh, um. We've just been traveling for a long time, and... [ also glances at cloud's ankle. ] ...yeah, he's hurt, and we haven't had food or water. Do you know any place we could go?

[ cloud has learned from a lot of experience that talking to strangers will net him absolutely zero points, he is terrible at playing nice to get free shit, and that if he opens his mouth right now he will probably say something inadvertently rude. or on purpose rude.

so he doesn't, looking at sebastian and letting him do the talking, trying to look less wary of this random girl and more like he is exhausted and hurt. and you know what! he is, so it's easy for that part! yay! ]

[Glad Sebastian and Cloud don't even need to try and fake it.

The girl nods.]

We... don't have an inn anymore, since this village doesn't get travelers now. We've isolated ourselves from the rest of the world, to try and survive the fiends... Or, at the very least, avoid ████████'s attention.

[So, unfortunately, it sounds as though Sebastian and Cloud haven't gone back in time far enough—████████ has already reached the peak of their power, maybe. But they probably have bigger priorities right now, like not dying.]

So you can stay at my place for now! I'm... um, I'm not a very good cook! But I'll try, and I have water, and beds for you two...

[ SHOULD HE NOT HAVE RUN THROUGH THE ARCH.... sigh

but yeah he's too hungry to worry about that right now. and bless this girl. ]

Really? [ this almost seems too easy, but. ] Thanks, that's really nice of you! And, uh, we won't need anything too fancy.

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