The Demon Plot: DEATH OF GRINDING MADNESS [July Player Event]

[pillz]

Who: Ensemble production, all individuals who opted in to the plot
When: July 9-21
Where: Two inhabited planets around the Ingress
What: The demon plot kicks off, in which malevolent shadow beings, copies of existing characters, begin to materialize and harass the PCs across the worlds. Plotting post is here, and a network post will go up within the next 2 days from several PCs advising on how to end the plot.
Warnings: Violence, psychological themes, possibly past trauma, etc.

Death of Grinding Madness
The Demon Plot
(mild spoilers for The Raven Cycle)

On July 9, a demon begins to make its way through the Ingress, summoned through by a shitty teenager.

July 9-12
Harrying

It's innocuous in the beginning. A movement in the corner of your eye, a shadow through a curtain-- merely a tree. But then the shadow figures begin to emerge into full being. Black-eyed wraiths that look like enemies, friends with whom you've had past conflict, or even you yourself. At first, it's merely harrying, minor harassment. Threatening gestures, broken gestures, jump scares.

Pursue them, and they disappear-- you might even catch a glimpse of how. They melt down into black slime, racing away across floors, through sewer grates, up walls, impossible to follow. By now, the worst of the climate freeze is over, but residual ice does pose a needles extra obstacle.

July 12-15
The Violence Escalates

In the days that follow, the situation only gets worse.

Sporadic harassment turns into outright attacks. The targeting is unmistakable. The shadow beings who can speak tell cruel tales of animosity, spite, even hatred. They are as deadly with their hands or strange powers as their doppelgangers are, and worse, they're functionally indestructible. Rip off one's head and it merely reforms out of sticky black ink. Limbs regenerate just as easily. The being might dispell for a few hours, but no doubt— it'll be back, if not to hurt you then someone you know.

The Savrii begin to notice. It's hard not to. While there is hardly an epidemic of panic, the disruptions are hard to miss-- broken windows, screams, random violence. Soon, the authorities begin to open safehouse facilities at which characters can seek shelter.

July 15-18
The Golem

On July 17, something horrific begins to happen— several shadow beings merge to form a massive golem in Kauto R1. It is a grotesque, horrifying spectacle, of limbs and eyes and pulsating flesh. It reaches almost sixty feet in height. Combined together, this shadow creature is considerably less intelligent than the individual beings were. However, it is also immensely strong and regenerates just like the smaller ones did.

Within the mall, hundreds of daytime shoppers are trapped within. Luckily, they have food and climate control. Perhaps you're one of them-- or perhaps you're trying to get in to provide medical care.

In the meantime, the attacks from the individual shadow beings don't stop. Despite the intelligence exhibited by some, all of them seem mindlessly bent on tormenting their targets until they are killed.

July 18-21
The Sacrifice

On the 9th day, a network post goes up (link pending, will be OOCly forward-dated to July 10th latest) revealing how to remove the invincibility of the attackers.

And by the 21st, the remaining beings utterly vanish without explanation— unless you happen to bear witness to the events that take place at St. Monmouth.

Comments

Mei

[frostedplum]

{ july 9-12 }
The news about the shadow clones circulates quickly enough, and Mei is concerned she may have one herself. But where does one search for such a thing? For the first few days of the outbreak, Mei is frantically searching across Kauto, a water tank strapped to her back and her endothermic blaster at her side. She doesn't hesitate to ask others if they've seen her shadow self, and she even runs into her a few times to discover that a blast of ice does nothing against the creature and it takes off again. During this period, the shadow mainly seeks out the former members of Overwatch, passing the edges of their vision before slipping away with an eerie giggle.


{ july 12-15 }
It's been fun to dog their footsteps, giggling and whispering, but now that she has them looking over their shoulders, it's time to strike. Shadow Mei seeks out 76 above all others, because as the leader of Overwatch, he deserved the greatest part of the blame. Yet along the way, she looks for others in Overwatch because they're not without fault themselves. When she finds the source of her pain, the cause of her agony, and the subject of her revenge, her voice raises to a scream as she says, "You left me to die!" before lashing out at her victim.

Mei, on the other hand, is desperate to dispel her shadow. Once Kurt and Matthew provide the means to do so, she heads out, reaching for the first person she sees with normal eyes. "Please! I-- I have to get rid of my shadow! If I tell you why she's doing this, she'll stop."

Re: Mei

[warandpeace]

july 12-15.
Kaz made more of a point to go out in search for people after seeing what happened to Dorian. Mei was up there on his priority list, an urgent need to make sure she was okay, too. And it was when he was out hunting for her that he came across that thing that was hunting for someone else.]

But at first he mistook it for her.

"Mei! Over here."

He should have checked, he should really have checked. But instead, he went straight up to her and put his hand on her shoulder. "Are you alright?"

[frostedplum]

"Am I all right?" the shadow asks, whirling around. It's shaped like Mei in every conceivable way, from her hair pulled back and held with a hairstick, to her booted feet. Every way, that is, except for her eyes. Instead of Mei's chocolate brown, the whole of the shadow's eyes are an impenetrable black as they stare at his face, accessing who he is. Not Overwatch; just one of the people who will eventually let Mei down, because everyone does in the end.

"I'll be all right once I find who I'm looking for." Because then they'll pay.

[warandpeace]

Obviously, the answer here was "no, she's not." Kaz took a step back, a quick movement back.

The sad thing is that he believed that he probably would let her down. Were that voice, he'd not deny it.

"Not sure Mei would really want that," he said despite himself. These things had all the memories of their originals. He knew that there had to be some bitterness there. Kaz, for once, was glad that he'd always openly expressed his.

"Where is she? Is she alright?"

[frostedplum]

"Oh, she's around somewhere with her dumb little freeze blaster, trying to stop me. But I always come back." The shadow smiles in a way that's very different to Mei's usual expression. There's an undercurrent of smugness there, because the shadow knows she can't be defeated. Mei can't kill her or hide her away behind a locked door and pretend she's a good little girl who never gets angry with anyone. Mei had told Jack she forgave him for everything; that she understood how the position he was in meant he hadn't remembered her. How pathetic. Mei just lets people walk all over her and thinks they're her friends. Well, it's up to the shadow to do what Mei can't.

"Better stay out of my way," she adds, her voice almost amused as she turns away.

[warandpeace]

"What's she trying to stop you from doing?"

Hurting people seems like too obvious an answer. And if Dorian's shadow taught him anything- hell, if the 'villains' he'd encountered taught him anything -it's that there was a valuable amount of pontificating that came with damaging ambitions.

This time, though, if she came after him, he wouldn't hold back like he did before.

[frostedplum]

"What needs to be done. She's too meek to make them pay for abandoning her, but I'm not." So if Mei won't step up and do anything about it, her shadow will. Her shadow feels all the pain and loss that Mei does, but amplified to an extreme degree. Mei still hurts, but she doesn't want to lash out at others because of it. The shadow does.

[warandpeace]

"They shouldn't have abandoned her, no, but there was a war. Pharrah told me about it. They had to survive."

He didn't know the full story. He knew that the original Overwatch crew had, apparently, made a ton of mistakes and hurt a lot of people (this is the end of the story that he's heard). But he also knew that from what he did here, things were pretty complicated. Mothers, fathers, daughters were being split up.

"Look, I'm sorry they couldn't get to her, but she doesn't let them off the hook because she's meek."

At least, he didn't think she did.

[frostedplum]

The shadow scoffs. "There was a war that humans won. And a few battles after. But, no, Overwatch outstayed its usefulness and was shut down. And instead of recalling all their agents out in the field, they forgot about them." Overwatch's end was swift, set in motion by the explosion at headquarters that supposedly killed their leader. Messages were sent out to all agents on their computers or other devices, but that didn't work for the team at the bottom of the world, locked in cryo tubes with a broken signal tower, waiting for someone to notice they were no longer in touch with HQ. No one waited for confirmation that the Ecopoint: Antarctica team had gotten the message and were flying back to civilization.

"Doesn't she? She forgave Jack. The man who could have saved her if he wasn't busy hiding like a coward. But I'll find him. I'll show him that Mei should punish him."

[warandpeace]

Kaz realized fully that he wasn't going to reach the shadow self. He very well knew that. But what he could do, at least, was play distraction until Mei could show up and deal with her herself.

He tucked his hands into both pockets as if to further shield them from the cold and managed to open a voice channel to Mei. Then held it, hand thoroughly muffling the speaker but microphone end left uncovered.

"Do you know that for sure? That they forgot, or could they have mistakenly assumed that everyone managed to get out of the field?"

[frostedplum]

"They forgot!" She sounds sure enough of that. "They didn't value us at all! They should have looked into it! Should have come for us! They're all to blame. Every last one who knew we were trapped down there." And when she finds all the ones here who knew, she's going to make them feel the pain she felt. Hers was lodged in her heart, but she'll rip them limb from limb. Pain is pain, after all.

The real Mei is a few streets away, scrolling through her TAB to find a way to read where Kaz is based on his signal. She's heard her shadow say such things already and she hates that it's coming out in her own voice. She hates that her sorrow has been twisted into anger and revenge. Mei would never do this. Not if Jack Morrison was dangling off a cliff and all she had to do was watch. He'd been betrayed and hurt, and was trying to survive long enough to find out who had destroyed Overwatch. She'd forgiven him, but this shadow is something wicked and wrong, and it can never be reasoned with.

Not knowing the speaker is covered, she stays silent, but starts jogging over to where her shadow is. Hopefully it doesn't find a reason to turn on her friend.

[warandpeace]

It was actually a little bit funny how many of these shadows were constructed of anger and revenge. But that's what Kaz has been made of for ten years. A shadow of a happy, smiling and sunny soul who walked sandy beaches and loved sunsets. These shadows are him.

But these shadows aren't their originals. Mei especially, since she's been nothing but pleasant.

"I'm sorry. Someone should have come for you. Someone should have waited for you. But no one was probably expecting to have a war. Losing everything sorta takes some of your concentration."

Come to think of it, how many of the soldiers lost to the sea have people waiting on them?

[frostedplum]

"You're not sorry! You don't care! No one cares about naive little Mei, or they would have remembered she existed!" The shadow doesn't want sympathy. She wants revenge. And it's only now after several minutes of talking that she realizes Kazuhira is distracting her from her goal of finding Jack and the others. With a growl of frustration, she points an angry finger at him.

"Stop it! Stop talking! It's not you I need to confront."

[warandpeace]

This was such a strange argument to make. He'd been so angry at Big Boss for so long for what he did to him; even if they'd made peace in a way, finding out truths about each other aboard the ship, often he still is. Just the idea of being abandoned to die by anyone is depressing, demeaning.

He can see now that, at least, there had to be something more weighty there that he didn't see before.

"You don't need to confront anyone! If you really feel that you didn't matter to them, then they shouldn't matter to you." So he said. So he said. Kaz has been a little good at hypocrisy. But he also held Mei to a better standard than he did himself.

[frostedplum]

It's honestly a good argument, but it only works to rile up the shadow even more. She's consumed with the need for revenge. She can't quit now and let them all off the hook. Mei was forgettable to them. Well, she's going to make sure her face is the last thing they all see!

"So they can walk free continuing to forget me? NO! They'll pay! And so will you!" The shadow flings herself forward, wrapping her hands around his neck and squeezing. She may be Mei's short stature, but her strength is far beyond that of the tiny climatologist. Kaz isn't one of those who abandoned her, but he's against her. He's trying to stop what needs to be done, so the shadow will get him out of her way. What's one more body in the quest for revenge? Sometimes you have to scorch the earth to reach your target. Sometimes you have to cut a bloody path through. He's just collateral damage.

july 12 -15

[mylawn]

Jack is fairly preoccupied at this point--he hasn't run into his own doppleganger yet and doesn't even know if he has one, but he's also sure he can't be that lucky. It means he's out and about and armed to the teeth, ready to find it and take it out as soon as he can manage. Locating it, however, proves to be the difficult part, and it takes him across Kauto to the center of activity, where he's bound to run into other things.

For a moment he thinks it's Mei, but very quickly he's corrected, and put on the defensive. It doesn't take him very long to realize what he's dealing with.

Her sentiment is not one he necessarily disagrees with. If they were to sit down and have this talk, she'd likely find that Jack would have no arguments. Now, however, she opens the encounter by lashing out at him, and his first instinct is to defend himself. Too taken off-guard to get his pulse rifle in a position to fire, the best he can do is bring it up to block her assault, putting the broad plane of the gun between them and pushing back.

[frostedplum]

The shadow is forced back, waving her arms to maintain her balance. She lets out a short grunt too, but soon collects herself, lip curled in disgust.

"How do you live with yourself?" she asks. "Knowing you failed everyone?" To Mei, the real Mei, what happened to her was an unfortunate accident and she can't blame someone who was in hiding and running for his life so whoever blew up HQ couldn't finish the job. But the shadow is that piece of Mei that's been in the depths of despair, forced to wait beside those cryo tubes that held the dead bodies of her friends as she awaited rescue. She couldn't leave them. So she'd kept a quiet vigil.

The shadow, however, plans on the question distracting 76 enough that she can take another swing at him.

[mylawn]

Of course this is what the shadow harps on, but Jack has more than come to terms with the simple fact that he let everyone down in the worst possible way, and continues to do so every time he puts his mission above everything else. He can tell himself it's for his people all he wants, that this is the way he'll atone for everything that went wrong, but that doesn't change the fact that at heart, it's his own personal quest for revenge.

He reminds himself that the real Mei doesn't think this--or at least, doesn't say it to his face, but of course she has every right to. There's something even satisfying in hearing it from a convincing doppleganger, because there's still a part of him who wants them all to be angry with him.

"Well, I don't."

Jack deserves it, but he isn't going to let himself get killed, ducking under the incoming blow and pivoting out of the maneuver to raise his rifle at her.

"Is that what you want to hear?"

[frostedplum]

"Don't you?" she asks with narrowed black eyes staring at his gun. "That won't stop me. Nothing will. Not until you feel the pain I do." The shadow will come back; will always come back until he's broken apart at the seams, wishing for death. She wants him to feel completely helpless and alone, just the way she did at the bottom of the world.

With a growl, she swings her arm at his rifle. If he shoots her, she'll reform. She'll keep coming back until she's satisfied.

[mylawn]

Jack is pretty certain he already feels it, but that's not an argument he really wants to entertain. He's dealt with enough of these things so far to know that trying to kill it without the specialized methods will only slow it down--but there's nothing he can do about a shadow that isn't is.

He takes a few quick steps backward, rifle still raised between them with the hope it'll keep that distance intact. In the interest of keeping her at bay, he unleashes a quick burst of pulse fire. Even if he can't destroy her, he can still extricate himself from the situation.

[frostedplum]

The shadow lets out a shout when he fires, but isn't deterred. If she takes enough damage, she'll simply deform into a black puddle and reform again, whole.

"That's so typical of you. Just shoot your problems until they go away, right?"

[mylawn]

"Pretty much."

He's perfectly willing to admit his own failings, though he imagines Mei's shadow doesn't exactly find his sense of humor funny. Jack knows he shouldn't spend his ammunition on this thing, which means that he should be looking for an escape route--all he has to do is distract her.

"You really want to waste your time doing this? I'm just gonna agree with you."

[frostedplum]

"Making you suffer isn't wasted time," she says, pausing to crack her knuckles. "I'm going to come at you again and again, beating you down into the dirt until you die alone." There's an excited gleam in the inky darkness of her eyes. Only once Jack is dead will she feel satisfied, and her revenge will be complete.

[mylawn]

“You’re doing a pretty good job.”

But Jack’s tone of voice is as dry as ever, so it comes out more as mocking than anything else. With little in the way of defense (without the real Mei here, anyway), there’s not much he can do but buy himself time, look for an escape, and maybe aggravate her to the point of getting sloppy.

“I think you almost hit me that time.”

[frostedplum]

He's doing a good job keeping the shadow furious at him. He caused her so much pain and now he mocks her? If only he'd been there in that cryo tube, waking up to the world that Mei did. The real Mei suffered, but she put on a brave face and continued on; continued with her work. If she wallowed in her hurt forever, she'd never accomplish anything, and her work meant too much to her to do that. Not just to her, either. To those who died. She kept going for herself and her work as much as for them. But the shadow is the part of Mei that will always wake up back there at her lowest point, unable to move forward anymore.

And so the shadow continues on, stuck in this loop of revenge. She launches a kick straight for his shin. See if this hits!