theianlogs | Welcome to Theia!

Who: Your mysterious caretakers and you
When: September 1st
Where: The Town Square
What: The welcome wagon has arrived!
Warnings: Minor gore, death

It's a white envelope that finds its way under every door, through every nook and cranny a day or two after your arrival. With the peculiar, bloodstained fingerprints lovingly applied as though they were a signature scrawled into its thin paper body, it doggedly persists--it will find you--until you open it and read the letter written ever so meticulously in fine script. It's a cordial invitation to a party hosted in your honor in the town square today. You should hurry, hurry, hurry! You wouldn't want to be late and keep your generous hosts waiting... or so says that oddly compelling feeling pressing into the back of your head. You make your way to the square, the urgent tugging feeling growing stronger the closer you get, and when you turn the corner to get a glimpse of the festivities, you find it's... not quite what you had been expecting.

The square is small, and looks rather out of general use. The fountain in the center is dusty and crumbling, and if there was ever any water in it it's long gone now. Most of the cobbled stones are broken and loose in the road. There are two long tables stocked with refreshments along either side of the walkway to the fountain, and what appears to be a small stage of some sort right in front of it, holding a large, ornate chair and a third table. The most unsettling thing, however, is the rest of the décor.

The theme is death, or so it would appear. Beside the food table to your left sits a bespectacled man wearing a scarf, but was the scarf always red, or is it only stained so because his head is hanging onto his neck by a thread? Against his lap rests a beautifully crafted cello, which appears to be missing its G-string... Oh. There it is--it's still stuck in the gashed man's neck. The poor bastard has been garrotted with the strings of his cello! Talk about hoisted by your own petard. Where his head lolls against the table, you may notice that behind those glasses, his eyes are missing.

Near the fountain is a large, wrought-iron statue of an archer, where... well, he's made his first kill, apparently. The body of a young girl with long dark hair is speared neatly through the chest by the archer's arrow, her little feet a good half a yard off the ground, now sticky with her blood. If you step closer to peer into the fountain, you'll find another body, this one a man with short dark hair, his face twisted into a mask of desperation and his gloved hands around his own throat as though he were gasping for air. Oddly, his lower jaw appears to be missing. Did he drown? There is no water in the fountain...

In the ornate chair on the platform is the body of another man, this one with his head completely removed from his shoulders. Oh... there it is, in his lap, his hands carefully arranged in his wild black hair. Wait, it seems there are too many hands, though! A second body dangles from a large tree that looms over the square, the rope frayed and dirty where it is wrapped around another man's neck, a strangely peaceful smile on his face, blue though it is. His hands rest atop the first man's, as though making certain the severed head remains still.

On the table in front of the chair rests a chest, its lid wide open and a glittering bounty inside.

If you peer inside, you will see a collection of eggs! Scaly, cool to the touch, and about the size of a football, they come in several colors. There is a note pinned to the inside of the trunk's lid--

Do you take an egg, as the note suggests? Dare you? (Dare you not?)

That pressing feeling in the back of your head has left you now, now that you are here to be welcomed to the city, now that you are here in the presence of your caretakers, but it is difficult to take comfort in the relief from the compulsion when surrounded by so much destruction. Who has done this to the faithful sentinels of the city? Who has killed the Watcher, the Interloper, the Guardian, the Nightingale, and the Keeper? Why have they been left here, at your welcoming home party?

Before you can turn to ask your neighbor, before you can wonder any further, a sound breaks the silence--a terrible, wet crunching noise like a sheet of ice breaking under your feet. You turn over your shoulder to see that it isn't anything so simple as ice. In the middle of the square is one final body, a body that wasn't there but a moment ago. She is small, thin, with dark hair and eerily pale eyes wide in terror. You know this girl, she met you on the elevator, expressed pleasure that you had been found (had you been lost?), and welcomed you home. Where did she come from? It's as though she simply... fell out of the sky! The Dreamer now dreams forever.

As you turn to survey the carnage all around you, a pleasant chiming sound seems to fill the air. It would seem that your mirror has a message for you! Upon inspection, you will find a new icon on the main viewscreen.

If you touch the icon, it will take you to a new application. Welcome to the Task Board! Here you will find a multitude of errands you can run for... whoever is running the city, now. Boy, what a way to announce things are under new management!

Welcome back to Theia, wayward children. Please enjoy the refreshments--watch out for the Nightingale's eyes, they may have fallen into the punch--get reacquainted with your friends and neighbors, and do take good care of those eggs. Or else...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Kamui blinked stupidly. Her answer was delivered so assuredly and to-the-point, as if she expected him to know what the hell that even meant. Was Supergirl her name, her species, her college feminism club? Maybe it was like Red Bull: Supergirl gives you wings.

"As soon as I read the invite, I felt like I had to come. But I already did that. I don't see why I can't leave now." He shrugged as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, but seeing as he couldn't even identify which world this was, his tone didn't carry much weight. He was still here, after all.

"All Supergirls can fly then?"

Kara frowns at him. She hopes they can all leave. The mental tug that seemed to drive everyone else here hasn't affected her, sure, but she doesn't want to get violent if she doesn't have to. And she doesn't know how forceful that tug might be if it starts encouraging people to stay. This is so far out of her wheelhouse it's not even funny, geez.

"There's only the one," she says, confusion written all over her face. Okay, so maybe this dimension, or the dimension this guy is from if they've all been brought from other Earths, potentially, doesn't have Kryptonians.

That could be a blessing, given most of her family.

Funny enough, if she just explained she was an alien, he'd totally relate. He was one too. He'd never heard of Krypton, sure, but she'd probably never heard of Rakuyou. The universe was a big place.

Her bemused clarification earned her a nod of understanding. Kamui's lips formed an intrigued, little O before settling back into their default grin. "Only one Supergirl. Got it. There's only one me too. I'm Kamui." That sly addition at the end carried more weight to it than a simple greeting. He was intentionally isolating them from the crowd that surrounded them. Just to hammer that notion home, he then raised a hand, pointing past his parasol to the sky. "I want you to fly me over the square."

Kara narrows her eyes, a little suspicious. Only one of him? Doppelgangers aside, she figures there's only one of any person, really. But, in her situation, there was only one Kryptonian superhero who was also a girl. There's just... more to it than just being, say, the only Kara Danvers. So, which way could he mean that?

She doesn't have much time to dwell on it, though, before hearing his command. Her eyebrows rise, and she scoffs before she can help it. Something about this guy is... off, pinging her radar for bad guys and bullies in a weird way. But, he could be being sincere. It's possible.

"Why? Did you... see something there?"

His pointer finger dropped, but his smile didn't. In the shade of his parasol, his expression looked every bit as devious as her radar pinged him as. Only, someone who was actually devious would have fed her a calculated lie here. Kamui? Not so much.

"No, I want to see you fly."

Kara huffs out a disbelieving laugh. "Is now really the time for that?" she asks. She gestures to the bodies on display for them. "These people brought us here, and now someone has killed them. We're on our own to find out answers and a way home." She shakes her head. "I'm sorry to point out the obvious here, but shouldn't that be your priority, not what I can do?"

"Why should it be?" He cocked his head, eyeing her like she was the one with backwards priorities. "They're dead. There's nothing they can do for me now. I'm a lot more interested in you."

Holy crap. Kara's met some selfish people, but this guy really takes the cake. "Oh-kay," Kara says. Time to appeal to his interests, which is... himself. And apparently her ability to fly. Great.

"These people are dead, but the people who killed them are still here, somewhere. Do you want to be next? We need to stick together and help each other figure things out so that none of us are left like... like this."

He'd eat the whole cake by himself too. Kamui was beyond just selfish. He only cared about two things: his frustrating family and his own ability to grow stronger. His feisty little sister and surly old man weren't here to stress test their ties at present. That left one very singular goal.

Unfortunately for Kara, that goal didn't include his safety or anyone else's either.

"If they're still here, they're taking their sweet time introducing themselves! The sooner they show their faces, the sooner I can kill them." He leans in dangerously close, smiling like a madman. "Then again, maybe they're hiding in the sky!"

Kara smiles, polite but obviously strained, right back at him. "I don't think they're hiding in the sky," she says, lip curling in just a bit of disgust. "But if you really want to look, there's some towers around the place you can climb all you want."

"Ah, I get it."

Kamui pulled back, his grin flickering with resignation.

"Your chest isn't the only thing that's flat; your archetype is too! You're so much of a cardboard cut-out hero that you can't show off your powers."

Kara inhales sharply, her eyes narrowing into slits as she glares at him. Composure. She has to gain her composure. Maybe this guy is in high school, wherever he's from, to say something as disrespectful as that.

"Unlike some people, I want to be respectful - of the dead, of the people lost her like us. Most everyone else is scared and confused, and the people who brought us here are super dead. Besides, I have friends I show off my powers for. You're not one of them, and you're not going to become one."

With that, Kara stalks off, moving closer to the other, more mangled bodies to try and see any clues that could be evident amidst the gore.

Well, Kamui wasn't in high school, but his humor was about on the same level, and he certainly had no desire to be respectful. He didn't bother following the one and only Supergirl.

If they were meant to meet again, they would. Maybe then she'd be in a better mood.

Welcome to Theia!

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