THE WHEELS OF STEEL ARE TURNING

[capemods]

WHO: These lucky contestants
WHERE: Various boroughs of the City, and the demon dimension.
WHEN: Tuesday, August 21st, 11:54 am and onward.
WARNINGS: This post may contain graphic depictions of violence, psychological horror, and adult themes; it will definitely contain adult language. Viewer discretion advised.
SUMMARY: Vulcanus tries to blow up a collection of buses around the City in order to incite anti-imPort rioting; Lachesis mixes things up again. see here for details.
FORMAT: Go crazy, kids.

---

Each bus will have a labeled thread in the comments. To recap:

Bus W will explode. Lachesis will teleport these ImPorts to a location near the bus just after it explodes. Those who are assigned to this bus, you must be the heroes that the City demands. The damage will carve a hole in the street, and civilians are at risk for debris/fires/etc.

Bus X will yank imPorts inside of it and induce a week-long power switch. From 8/21 at 12 PM to the following Tuesday, 8/28 at 12 PM, characters will have their powers switched with another ImPort passenger. All characters on this bus have their new powers assigned.
Correction: this bus is located in Brooklyn.

Bus Y will yank imPorts inside of it for one minute, and then transport its imPorts to the demon dimension until midnight. Envision Dante's Inferno as the setting, but with the twist that ANYTHING CHARACTERS IMAGINE WILL MANIFEST IN THE WORST WAY POSSIBLE.

Bus Z will yank imPorts inside of it for one minute, and then with a LOUD SCREECHING NOISE, it will infect imPort minds with radio signals, songs, dialogue, AND IMPORTANT PLOT-RELATED INFORMATION THAT VULCANUS DOESN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW for the rest of that day. There is no way to turn this off for the entire day. ImPorts will be returned to their prior locations at the end of one minute. All characters on this bus have their unique mental broadcasts assigned.

Comments

BUS W - EXPLOSIONS

[capemods]

Wherever you were before, you're not there any longer. You catch the echo of a very big boom, and as you stumble to fit your footing you see it all happen like a slow-motion movie: orange flames leap up from the charred remains of a bus, rising from melted skeletons that gape in horror against metal cinders. You hear things, terrifying things. People screaming. People crying out, agonized. People running. Bus debris shoots upwards only to fall back down over the heads of civilians. There's a crater in the street. Parts of buildings, stone and steel, begin to fall.

You're in Midtown Manhattan, by the Rockefeller Center. And people are dying.

Black smoke scars the sky; it's thick and heavy and you can barely breathe, but you know you have to do something. There's no time to call in help, there's only you.

In the distance, a man begins to shout: "THEY DID THIS. IMPORTS DID THIS. THEY DID THIS TO US."

[reference: the sign-up roster]

[jailbrake]

[she was close by to begin with, which is really just her luck. she's thrown back by the blast, falling on her ass momentarily, and the first thing she hears isn't the agony--her ears are still ringing too hard for that. what she hears is her own words, played back in her head. thrown back in her face, more accurately.

oi, do i look like a hero? that ain't something i want to get into.

Michiko staggers forward as if drunk, the tips of her hair singed, a long scratch on her cheek from whatever shitty piece of shrapnel tore its way across it.

's not my business til they make it my business.]

Shit. [she can hear the screams now, and the thundering crash of debris hitting home. Michiko coughs raggedly, trying and failing to clear her lungs.] Shit!

[it's still not her business, she's thinking, there'll be someone else here with shitty powers and a dumbass matching outfit to help. she doesn't have to do shit. she can go away and not deal with it. and if Hatchin was there, she'd do it in a hot second--but she's not, and with her goes any personal illusion of selflessness. right now, running's not for anything but to cover her own ass.

beyond the reasoning process, however, is the all-eclipsing memory. there was a bus explosion before, eleven years ago. when she heard about it, she had fallen into real hopelessness, a black despair which only a Polaroid had been able to guide her out of. and even though Hiroshi hadn't died there after all, there had been other people who had--real people. funny, and fucked up, how she only thought about that now. she knows what the right thing to do is, even as she knows she doesn't always do the right thing, and...]

OI!! You better shut your damn mouth before the shit coming out of it makes us all sick. It's those Vulcanis bastards who did this! Everyone knows it, and if they fuck with us one more time I'm sending them on the express route straight to hell! It's a promise.

[it's to shout really loudly and obnoxiously as she makes a beeline for the remains of the bus.]

[motherfucked]

[Here is a short list of Things Jessica Jones Is Not:

a) the Louisiana to anybody's Mississippi
b) a child of the 1970s
c) a superhero

So the standing-around-in-the-flaming-wreckage feeling isn't familiar. It's just numb, really, numb and slackjawed and stupefying. How did anyone make themselves do this, day-in-day out? How did she think she could do this, once? She stands there, hearing somebody shouting in the distance, words falling out of her, but not loud enough for him to hear.]

What the fuck? I wasn't—

[kickpushbaby]

[ There's that weird, wildly disorienting moment right after the blast nearly sweeps her off her, screams filtering through the ringing in her ears, where Jesse's relieved she had her shoes on. She stumbles again, staring at the flames climbing higher. This is different. This isn't going in and getting shot at or stabbed at. There isn't an identifiable enemy here.

That doesn't stop the screaming. Well, fuck. She finds her footing and breaks out in a run towards the screams. ]

[liverletdie]

[ Tony'd been minding his own business, retrofitting his suit at that very time. Small changes, tweaks. Always more tweaks, but then there was the rush, the sudden shift in temperature, and the noise, the noise. He's suddenly glad he wasn't in the middle of something else.

Shifting, observing, not with just his visual cortex, but the satellites he had on the city zoomed right in on the area, but the data wasn't what was important. Not at this particular second. What was important were the people. The blame could be shifted later. He was in casuals, but he wouldn't be the only one there, Tony Stark counted for two people, when he wanted himself to.

And it was almost a minute, a long, agonizing minute where he dashed as fast as he could to the first person he could find, picking them up in his arms. First thing would be to get them to safety, he was already making the necessary flood to emergency staff, informing them through their routing information where there would be people, picking up the larger groups.

A resounding boom, boom, boom cracked over head, the suit hitting its brakes before careening down to do the same thing Tony was doing. Find people suppress fires, the suit could handle the more dangerous temperatures without sustaining injury. ]

[incendere]

(Roy was just turning a corner in his patrol car when he heard and felt the explosion a few blocks away. Even with the sirens going, it takes longer than Roy would have liked to get through the rest of the streets towards the scene. Weaving in and around other cars is easier done when there's actually some place to move. After honking too many times to get people out of the way, Roy hardly has the car completely parked before stepping out and examining the situation.

Flames rising higher and higher, skeletons the color of charcoal, their owner's faces contorted into their last moments while chaos reigns around them. These were not sights Roy was unused to, but that didn't mean it made it easier to accept. The smell was always the hardest to ignore.

A piece of falling debris ignites some screams near him, grabbing his attention. Roy raises his gloved hand and snaps in its direction, blowing it up before it can even get close to the civilians' heads. It was amazing how, even in times of crisis, some people were always curious to stick around and see what happened next rather than joining the others in running away.

The sound of nearing sirens gets louder, and as a few officers begin to show up, Roy starts addressing them, always keeping an eye out for any cascading debris.)

I want officers on crowd control immediately. Start evacuating these people and setting up a boundary--don't let anyone get within a six block radius. Anyone injured should be given medical attention, as much as we can do until the medical units arrive.

[insufferablysmug]

[ She felt an urge to track that man down and make him either shut up or help, but there wasn't time for that now. Victims everywhere - she assessed the situation as quickly as she could, determining where she would be of the most use.

In the middle of it, she decided almost immediately. There were others here who would be able to help people on the edges, but in the middle of the problem was someplace fewer would be able to go, and she was one of them. Her telepathy made looking for the possible victims under the wreckage simple, her strength made lifting the wreckage possible.

She set in to work, silent and furious. (Of course they're being blamed for this. Of course they are.) Once this was done - once she was done here, she was finding that shouting idiot and shutting him up. ]

[seeksherownsalvation]

[It's an ordinary Tuesday, which means that at 11:53am Kyouko is leaning on the concierge desk in the lobby of the Four Seasons, grilling a suspicious hotel employee about the details of room service while he debates whether to call the cops and ask them to investigate where she gets her money. She's about ready to ball up her empty bag of Cheetos and throw it at the guy behind the counter to show him what she thinks of his uncooperative attitude, but first she holds it up and peers inside to make sure there's nothing in it--

--and then it's 11:54am.

The bag drifts out of her orange-stained hands as she freezes, staring at the smoke and the flames, hearing the screams but not processing what the words in them are because she needs to focus for the translation power to kick in and why should she focus now? It's not like there's anything she'd need to hear in this awful chaos, anyway, like...someone screaming that she and everyone like her should be blamed for this. Probably nothing like that is going on.]

Hey...this ain't happening.

This isn't happening, right?

[This isn't her concern. She doesn't do anything for anyone who isn't her. That's the sort of person she is, right? The smart kind of person who looks out for number one?]

But I mean...it's not my problem...

[Someone is moving weakly under a half-shredded lump of metal.]

No--

[And Kyouko's moving at absurd speed, her clothes flashing out of existence in midair only to be replaced by a color-coordinated dress and a spear in her hand before anything indecent can be seen; she flips the debris off of the unfortunate soul beneath it with a flick of that spear and a single huff of effort.

Then she finally remembers her translation power.]

Why don't you get out of there already? C'mon, how stupid are you!

BUS X - POWER SWITCHES

[capemods]

You're pulled into a bus in the Bronx, against your will. There's nothing you can do about it, nothing you can say to make it stop. There's a warming sensation that grows steadily hotter and then -- FLASH! A bright, blinding blue light.

Enjoy your new powers, but please don't put your feet on the seats.

[reference: the sign-up roster]

[soulbonder]

Astral flies through a neighborhood, using it as a shortcut to the MAC. Invisible and intangible, so he can't bring attention to himself. He doesn't want to hear another human screech about modesty.

Then he's not in the outside, but somewhere else. It happens so quickly he can't quite register the difference yet in his surroundings. Then its hot? How weird—

A flash, a loud thud, and he's on floor. Now he can't breathe, because he can't remember how; even if he could, it burns. His diaphragm spasms from the sudden impact. He's panicking, crying, and breathing erratically. Rolling onto his side and curling up into a fetal position.

His new human body compensating for things he can't quite understand.

Everything is so red and so fuzzy it's hard to see. But he can hear, but it's so loud, too loud. And scary. There's nothing he can do; his chest will burst open, he will die; Yuma's heart is missing, he can't feel it, he's alone; he's cold but it burns— his chest burns.

It's quite a scene.

[unetrustworthy]

Her head hurt.

But it was a different kind of pain. Not the sensory overload that usually came with her accursed photographic memory, nor the migraine of being throw in the midst of too many emotions at one time. No, this time, her head felt...fuzzy. Unfocused. And, for the first time since her arrival in the City, Midii couldn't remember what was going on.

Hard. Cold. She was on the floor. Voices. There were people around her. Confusion.

"Ah..." her mouth tasted dry, like she had been breathing deeply through her mouth. A calming exercise, perhaps? But what was it that had her so anxious? And why couldn't she remember? She always remembered! "Qu'est-ce qui se passe?"

[wisecracked]

Kenzi had been in the middle of getting her breakfast, hey it was still before noon and therefore breakfast don't judge! She was just about to take a bite out of her muffin when--

She found herself on a bus.

"What the sh--" She didn't even have time to finish her sentence when everything started to get warmer and then the flash.

A few moments later she woke up on the floor of the bus, like most everyone else on it. She started to sit up on to stop at the sudden feeling of needles in her head. "Dude..." This was actually a sensation she was semi-familiar with. In her line of work she ended up knocked out more often than she'd like to admit.

Kenzi sat up slowly and felt around on her head for any bumps but didn't find anything. "Can someone explain what the fae just happened?"

So much for peaceful breakfast.

[invoking]

[ One moment, Gil is settled into the peace and quiet of one of the offices at work, leaving some signed papers on the desk and turning away to lock the door.

The next, his chest feels as if it's caught fire and he's vaguely aware he's no longer in the room. Bright lights and a buzzing noise in his head indicate he's somewhere outside now. Something moving. His shoulder bumps against something solid— a chair?

The hot sensation fades.

Then trickles upwards. Something reverberates in his ear— no, head— and it aches sharply. He can't focus or make out what it is. His own thoughts are suddenly too fast and painful to keep up with. He hunches over in his seat, gripping the sides of his head. ]

[futureleader]

[beep beep.]

Hey, I thought I was on the Brooklyn bus!

[Quentin had been traveling on a different bus before forcibly being teleported into the newer bus. He didn't have time to react because it all happened so fast. The burning sensation and the sudden bright light didn't seem to help.

But when it passed, he propped his feet up on the seats, suddenly come over with a sick feeling to his stomach. But it wasn't a vomit-inducing sickness, the kind you'd get from being suddenly teleported into a bus. Rather, it was a feeling of dread and doom.

A eerie emptiness in his mind echoed back at him. Nothing.]

What the hell...

[Quentin was not enjoying his new powers.]

OPEN

[daft_old_man]

There was a moment of stomach churning weightlessness, the sort Companions had complained about once or twice when the TARDIS acted up, which was completely strange as he was no where near the TARDIS. Today had been an 'explore the shops' day. Specifically an explore the bakery owned by the kind old woman who always gave him free samples in an effort to fatten him up. He always walked the half mile or so to the shop. Finding himself on a bus pulled a smile from him. "Well, isn't this a sur-"

Oh. That was a funny feeling. It was like suddenly traveling the Vortex without the aid of the TARDIS. He suddenly wasn't smiling anymore. In fact he was quite literally groaning where he -- floated? He raised his arms and hummed as he studied his glowing appendage. It was familiar. Eerily familiar. "Oh, I think someone is playing with the inhabitants again." He really hated being toyed with.

BUS Y - DEMON DIMENSION

[capemods]

What's that weird noise you hear? A bone-cold screeching, like the wails of the broken damned or a ravaging mob of Twimoms...

All aboard the Hell Bus! You'll pull teleported into this bus at Kew Gardens in Queens at Union Turnpike and Queens Boulevard at At 11:54 AM on Tuesday the 21st. At 11:55AM you'll be transported to the infamous demon dimension!

The demon dimension is fluid in nature and thrives on imagination, so try not to think bad thoughts! Because whatever thing you might think about will physically manifest in the worse way possible. And it will probably try to kill you. If you can survive this Dante's Inferno getaway until midnight, consider yourself victorious. Remember, any physical harm sustained in this dimension will still affect you when you return.

At least you still have your communicator.

[reference: the sign-up roster]

open;

[professorlionface]

[Hank, you are in hell. You're surrounded by civilians and other imPorts and you are in hell.

Today is clearly going to be the best day.

He eyes the line in the distance forming, pitchforks, torches, "DIE MUTANT SCUM" signs, and he whispers a mantra to himself over and over: Don't let it see your fear. Don't acknowledge it. It can't hurt you if you don't let it be real. ...Maybe. Thanks, magic. Thanks for all this.

He tries to find the best position to get everyone to hear him. They had no idea how long they'd be here if they didn't do something, and they had to find a way to get out. But first, that'd have to stay alive.]

We need to establish a perimeter! Civilians in the middle, the rest of us will need to keep them protected. Don't...don't acknowledge anything on the outskirts, not if it isn't presenting a direct threat to you.

[Of course, it's just then that his riot in the distance begins to charge.]

open;

[luckout]

[Vriska would probably prefer horror terrors over what she's actually seeing right now. Shit, now she's thinking about those too. To her left is a crying, screaming sprite that keeps exploding and reappearing, getting louder and more frantic with each reappearance. It bears a striking resemblance to Vriska and another troll for those who are familiar with them. It keeps screeching and stuttering about irreconcilable abominations and it somehow being Vriska's fault.

But that's the least of her worries, because there's a sea of dead, zombied trolls making their way towards her with a very large spider in tow. She can't be sure but she thinks she recognizes a few of them as trolls she fed to her lusus. A dead Tavros and Aradia are among them, along with Terezi and a dead John.]

You have to be kidding me. What the hell is this?

open;

[shiniest]

[Kaylee is not strong enough for this. Period, end of story.

She's trying to push anyone she can out of the way of the approaching horde, which consists largely of terrors from her home 'verse, still the scariest things she can imagine: rabid, semi-cognizant, mutilated space zombies, basically.

And on top of the other horrors around, well. This isn't the easiest situation.

She's trying not to cry, even though that seems like the best option right now, and she's screaming even if nobody listens.]

I -- I need a gun!

open;

[dragony]

[It had been looking to be an ordinary day, from the start. Ruka had errands to run: checks to mail, art supplies to restock, cat food to replenish, a half-dozen of other minor tasks to accomplish. She was standing in line at the post office, idle in both action and thought, when she felt the hook in her chest pulling her out of that time and that place.

Breath escaped her in a gasp, and her thoughts were quickly muddling upon one another. At least I'm not walking Pess, went one, that followed it with I hope this isn't another trip to Disney World with the Major. Somewhere in there, it followed with, I wonder if this is what Porting Out feels like?

Her thoughts were still on this path when she arrived on the city bus, disoriented. Her small stack of letters slipped from her hand as her body jolted backwards from sudden motion. She twisted and crouched to recollect them without initial thought, and it wasn't until they were back in hand that she wondered, why was she on a bus? The fact she still had her letters, and her eye patch still across her face with all that entailed, she couldn't possibly have been sent back to Neo Domino City.

But was it still the City?

By the time she stood, her eye was catching on the familiar tells of other imPorts -- Hank McCoy was easy to spot, and the orange of horns (not Eridan, not Gamzee, her mind supplies before it registers troll) -- and her chest was filling with muted dread. Being dragged from one place to another, being dragged from a place with no imPorts to a place with a group of imPorts...

Panic flared and died within her, pushed down, smothered by habit, leaving Ruka with only the mildest form of disdain and irritation. Whatever was coming, she wasn't going to like it.

The minute hand changed, and once more Ruka felt that pull. Her arm was burning, glowing bright before the tugging had even ceased, and she had no time to get her bearings before the world had even solidified around her.]

... Well.

At least it's not Disney World.

[Naturally, that wouldn't be true for long.]

open;

[linsanity]

[Lin's been doing pretty well in the melee so far, all things considered. However, the masked, hooded man has finally completed his slow, methodical walk to the embattled group, sliding through the waves of Equalists to approach Lin. She grits her teeth, realizing that she probably doesn't stand much of a chance against Amon, and especially not with an army of Equalists behind him. Still, she has to try something.]

I wasn't afraid of you before, and I'm not afraid of you now!

[She punches forward and her cable begins to shoot toward him, but stops in mid-air. "It's time for you to be equalized," he says as the sound of bone and tissue twisting unnaturally fills the air and Lin's arm begins to turn. She sneers and grunts in pain as Amon's bloodbending turns her body against her. Her only chance now is if someone can get the drop on him while he's occupied with her.]

open, four hours after initial arrival

[heal_or_execute]

[Mordin still hasn't been able to figure out just what they have to do to get out of here. This is a world of magic, and he is a scientist. His omni-tool is utterly confounded by whatever the Hell is around them.]

[What they have to do to stay alive is much more clear: stay together, coordinate, protect the most vulnerable members of the group. All of which is easier said than done in an environment this chaotic and nonsensical.]

[Case in point: despite his best efforts to the contrary, Mordin finds himself separated from the group without quite knowing how or why. He looks around at what appears to be a much larger version of an old laboratory of his, sterile, high-tech, and sinister. There's a chill in the air like that of a morgue. It probably has something to do with the hundreds and hundreds of shrouded, still forms lying on cold tables all around him, stretching off far into the distance. Inhuman forms, alien forms, dead bodies of sentient beings who never got the chance to be.]

[Mordin recognizes his old handiwork and inhales deeply.]

...Problematic.

OPEN. jesus fucking christ i wrote a novel

[crab]

Karkat hadn't been doing anything of particular import - browsing the network, looking for people to get annoyed with - when that sound split his ears and sent an inexplicable chill down his spine, pooling in his stomach and coagulating with a deep sense of unease. In the next breath he drew he found himself seated on a bus. He'd never been on one before, not having had the money, but his indignation at the abrupt change in scenery overrode that. He was in the midst of loudly demanding an explanation from his fellows when the previous unsettling sensation came over him a second time, and he realized he had to be asleep, because where he found himself next could only be described as a nightmare. The air was too warm, stifling, and smelt of sulfur, blood and decay. Wails not unlike the one he'd first heard split the air. The scenery was twisted and foreboding; a macabre landscape of black stone, grey metal, and glowing magma.

"Oh god. Oh god, oh god, what the fuck--"

He wasn't alone. Everyone who had been on that bus came with him, it appeared. He was made immediately aware of their own fear, confusion and anger in response to their situation, and it compounded with his own, pushing him toward near-hysteria. He stumbled backwards and away from the group, a steady stream of curses falling from his mouth, attempting to put some distance between himself and them in order to try and sort his emotions out from theirs. Several people had begun to scream, and-- as Karkat watched, things began to manifest. And attack. It was surreal. It was terrifying. It had to be a nightmare, he had to have passed out at some point, but it didn't feel like one of his nightmares; for one, there wasn't any blood, nor were his friends here to--

The instant both thoughts crossed his mind, Karkat felt something warm and wet trickle down the back of his neck, then his arms, then his legs, and so on. His breath caught. His heart raced. He didn't want to look, he didn't have to look, he knew what he would find. Steeling himself for it as best he could, he looked.

"Oh my god."

The blood didn't appear to come from any discernible source; not from within Karkat himself. Rather, it seemed to flow from nowhere, viscous and smelling of death, causing his clothes to stick to his body and bile to rise in the back of his throat. The flow was strongest from the soles of his feet, a sizable puddle having already accumulated, and from the the area over the scar on his chest and back. It was red, obscenely so, perhaps even brighter than Karkat's. He felt sick, he wanted to throw up, he was covered in it and was so preoccupied with it that he didn't notice what else had materialized until it was almost upon him, until he heard his name called, and whipped around to face--

Eleven trolls, plus four humans stood in a line in front of him. All carried some manner of fatal wound. Gamzee Makara: gruesome, numerous injuries that were the clear work of a chainsaw. Terezi Pyrope: stabbed through the torso. Eridan Ampora: a line of purple blood around his waist, clumsily stitched and held together. Kanaya Maryam: a gaping, bleeding jade hole through her torso. Nepeta Leijon: brutally beaten and disfigured, her skull clearly crushed. Vriska Serket: a single stab wound through her front. Equius Zahhak: an arrow through his knee, and a ring of bruising around his throat indicating strangulation. Aradia Megido: burned and bloody. Feferi Peixes: a hole burned directly through her chest. Sollux Captor: blood oozing profusely from his eyes, nose, ears and mouth. Tavros Nitram: a ragged impalement wound. John Egbert: stabbed in the chest, red showing up stark against blue. Jade Harley: severely burned, blood leaking from her ears. Dave Strider: riddled with bullet holes. Rose Lalonde: stabbed directly through the heart.

All their eyes were white.

"No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!" He couldn't breathe. His heart beat so fast it was painful, his chest so tight that every inhalation he took was little more than a tiny gasp. He was so afraid he wondered if it were possible to die of it. He was frozen to the spot, blood still pouring down his form, pouring from nowhere, and it had to be a fucking nightmare, there was no way it could be real, no matter how solid, how vivid it was, he had to wake up soon, wake up--

"What all up and seems to be the motherfuckin' problem, best friend?" Gamzee- dead Gamzee leered, taking a step forward. "Ain't a brother enjoying the sight of his good work?"

"Oh god, oh fucking hell, Gamzee--"

Dead Terezi grinned at him, teal bubbling in between her razor teeth, and she let out a hysterical cackle; "This is all your fault, you know, Karkat!"

"Seriously, not cool man. Why'd you have to go and fuck us all over so badly?" Dead John asked him accusingly.

"Shut up, stop, stop, no, no, no, this isn't real, you're not real, oh god, oh god, oh god, oh man, oh god!"

They continued to throw accusation after accusation and blame after blame at him, swelling into a cacophony of you're a failure, you're an aberration, you led us to our deaths and it wasn't until they began to move toward him, faces twisted with hatred and unmistakable vengeance that the horrified trance that had held Karkat in place broke, and he turned to run. He didn't care that it was a dream. He didn't care that he could be running into worse horrors. He didn't care about anything at all, at that stage, beyond his fear, and escape. He'd never been more terrified in his life. Not of Gamzee, not of death; this was fear beyond comprehension. Fear beyond sanity.

open; a few hours in

[hacktivist]

Ghost had, largely through observation, begun to learn the way this dimension operated, based on the manifestations of the imPorts suffering around him. He remained intangible, moving among them and writing programs in his head to attempt to keep his thoughts clear of tangibles. Clear and linear and predictable forays into logic, even as fear scratched quietly outside the door to his mind, whining to be let in.

And then he stepped around a large, craggy rock and came face to face with a red and gold apparition, and briefly wondered at the unplumbed depths of his own mind.

"We are not enemies."

But the billionaire industrialist in the gleaming armor with those cruel glowing eyes surging forward at him appeared to believe otherwise.

BUS Z - BRAIN RADIO

[capemods]

When you're pulled into a bus in the Bronx, you're only there for a minute. Just a minute. You know you're among other imPorts, but you don't know why. Then just as you're about to protest this sudden inconvenience, you hear an incredibly painful SCREEEEEEEEEECCCHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

And then you're back where you were, that moment before. Weird.

[reference: the sign-up roster]

[conquerorking]

[Situation assessment: Was drinking a bottle of whiskey in the park. Then he was suddenly somewhere else, crowded with a bunch of people, there was a loud screech, and now he's back in the park and there are voices in his head.

Conclusion: what the fuck is in this whiskey.

Rider eyes his mostly-empty bottle and decides to just hurl it away as hard as he can. Just in case.]