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- ! event log,
- ! open,
- altered carbon: takeshi kovacs,
- btvs: buffy summers,
- cotar: rhysand,
- doctor who: clara oswald,
- doctor who: the doctor (11),
- fear street: ziggy berman,
- fullmetal alchemist: edward elric,
- grishaverse: alina starkov,
- grishaverse: the darkling,
- gundam seed destiny: athrun zala,
- gundam seed/destiny: yzak jule,
- mass effect: kaidan alenko,
- mcu: bucky barnes,
- mcu: daisy johnson,
- mcu: erik stevens,
- mcu: gamora,
- mcu: peter quill,
- mcu: sam wilson,
- mcu: shang-chi,
- mcu: yelena belova,
- old kingdom: sabriel,
- one piece: rosinante donquixote,
- pacific rim: newton geiszler,
- star trek aos: james t. kirk,
- star trek aos: leonard mccoy,
- star wars: finn,
- star wars: l3-37,
- star wars: r0-gr,
- stranger things: eleven,
- supernatural: dean winchester,
- the old guard: andromache,
- towards the terra: soldier blue,
- transformers: drift,
- transformers: megatron,
- twisted wonderland: deuce spade,
- yakuza: zhao tianyou
MISSION: THE SLEEPER
● ● ● M I S S I O N 3 . 1

It’ll be during the early hours in the morning when the communications device pings the Orbers in the midst of whatever you may be doing: whether it’s sleeping in, having a leisurely breakfast, or being deep into whatever task it is you’ve planned for the day. Viveca’s familiar voice filters through, a cheerful interruption.
Without any further fanfare, the comms go silent and you’re left with a new mission file and some rather concerning information within the report about a sleeping sickness. But instead of the immediate departure like you might be used to, you’ve been given the day to rest up and prepare for the trip down. So pack your things, grab the antidote, maybe enjoy a hot shower and a good night’s sleep … or if you’re not the sleeping kind, find a good song to jam to and get you motivated for what’s to come.
The next morning before most of your alarms will go off, the teleportation machine will hum to life, crackling with stored energy. Those who have been here for longer might notice this difference and what Viveca had meant when she said she didn’t think she “could delay it for more than a day”. As soon as you’ve been gathered together, you’ll feel the pull — and a tug that removes you from the station.
For what might seem like an agonizingly long moment, you simply hang there in stasis, white light surrounding you accompanied by a strange, ethereal chorus that whispers in your ear, informing you of the goal currently set before you and the cost to achieve it, as well as the exchange for its power —
But before you can venture to open your mouth and respond, the light around you materializes into a fog of cool, damp cloud cover. The moment your feet touch solid ground and the fog parts as you move through it, you’ll see a marble road ahead.
Welcome to the country of Kilnan, Orbers.

Around you, the courtyard of the Crystalline Palace opens up — white marble pavement, extravagant sculptures half-covered in moss, and fountains that have long since dried up — its splendor abandoned and left for time to neglect like a long forgotten secret.
If you look behind you, you’ll see nothing but clouds; and underneath you is mostly open sky. Faintly (if you really squint), you might be able to make out the grassy earth somewhere below the clouds but the distance seems a little treacherous to even consider taking your chance to get there. As such, the only way is forward — up the wide steps and through the imposing, but majestic, double doors of the castle.
1.0 Once inside, a seemingly empty castle greets you. There are no servants rushing to greet you, no hustle and bustle that you'd expect from a castle this size... just silence.
You’ll find yourself standing in the middle of a grand foyer. Daylight filters in through tall windows framed with long flowing curtains that seem to sway just a little, even though the casements are clearly shut. Further in, you’ll notice multiple staircases leading you to the upper floors, some of them straight, and some of them curved, while others wind upwards in a seemingly endless direction towards one of the towers. Most of these stairways will appear to be your regular run-of-the-mill means of egress, but the moment you turn away and look back to where you’d just come from, you might notice that the stairs have disappeared … only to be right in front of you when you glance back. Another set of stairs may take you in one direction, but try and retread your path and you’ll find the very same staircase you’d just used will take you somewhere completely different.
These stairs might be playing tricks on you, or maybe you need to get your eyes checked.
From the foyer, hallways appear to sprawl in all directions of the wind, some of them lined with paintings from a very deft hand (or hands). Walk along and peer at one of these incredibly detailed depictions of vibrant rich cities, lush idyllic countrysides, alluring, well-manicured gardens and find that all of them seem so incredibly lifelike — almost uncannily so. If you study one for too long, you’ll find yourself losing focus of the world around you, only seeing the painting that beckons you forward … and helpless to resist, you take a step forward and wind up within the world of the painting. Is it as beautiful as it seemed from its frame? Of course it is. Just look at that colour! Feel that breeze! Take a deep breath of the air around you. But remember that you probably can’t stay here forever; you have to get back. And the way to the castle is … somewhere here. You just have to find it.
2.0 Inside the castle, your task is clear: find the orb.. and for some of you, perhaps try and look for the people sent to the castle before you. To do that, you’ll need to search through the different rooms and accompanying towers… but the moment that you try to, it becomes apparent that this is no ordinary castle and the rooms are not exactly just rooms either. Some have stark differences in scale: in one room you enter, all the furniture within appears to be made for giants; while in another room, everything has been shrunk down to its miniature.
Further still, another room will appear to be deceptively normal… but the moment you step past the threshold, the door will lock shut behind you and then fade into the wall like it’d never been there at all. You only have one clear objective then: search through the room for a way to get out… or make yourself a way out.
3.0 When you enter this next room, you find yourself having to pause to take it all in, it’s so incredible that you can barely believe your eyes: whatever this room holds within seems to cater specifically to your individual interests and desires like it sees into your soul. It might offer rare books to those interested in knowledge, the best entertainment for those who seek self-indulgence, decadent foods you’ve always wanted to try for those with a discerning palate. What a wonderful time! So wonderful, in fact, that it’s too easy for you to forget the passing of time … what was it you were doing before? Nothing important, surely. Right?
4.0 There are rooms that don’t even seem like rooms at all once you’ve entered them: you open a green painted door and instead of the marble floors, you step right into a hedge maze. When you turn to glance over your shoulder, you’ll find that the door has vanished, and your hand lingering on the door knob is now clutching at a cluster of prickly foliage. With nowhere else to go but to brave the labyrinth, you move forward. The path you take will twist and wind until you realize that the best-case scenario here is coming face-to-face with a deadend rather than the other delights that the maze holds in store. One end greets you with a particularly angry tree, hell-bent on wiping you off the face of this plane; at another turn, a creature that looks suspiciously like a Sphinx, sitting on her hind legs and blocking the way, might ask you a riddle in exchange for passage; and there is always a chance that the right-hook you take will pull you through a cloud of deceptively beautiful fluttering dots of lights that whisper to you with the voices of people long-dead before you.
5.0 Another room will pull you — quite literally — into the eye of a storm. Hail and rain pours down, drenching you immediately, while lightning flashes in the open sky — it almost looks like the countryside you saw beneath the castle, but that couldn’t be, right? You don’t remember leaving the castle… And more importantly — the rain really is coming down, and that lightning is striking dangerously close. It might be wise to find some temporary shelter, perhaps a little cottage to hide in, or at the very least, get to that overturned hay cart and hide beneath it — and wait for a chance to find your way back to the exit door … wherever (or whenever) it may appear.
6.0 Not all of the castle will be entirely strange, however; there, too, are regular, non-eventful rooms scattered within. A large dining room with the table set for one, a thin layer of dust collecting over the silverware, for instance; a library filled with old tomes and scrolls that don’t appear to have been touched in years; a storage room full of strange items; and, if you make it into the cellar, you’ll find the kitchen, its food storage still robust despite the fact that some of the meat has begun to gather mold, and some of the vegetables have darkened and gone a little mushy. On the layer of dust settled over the floor, there is exactly one set of footprints, perhaps smaller than you’d think, but even those seem at least a number of weeks old.

It’s almost too easy to become distracted by all of the strange happenings within the castle, easy enough to forget about the sickness you’ve been warned about — and perhaps, with so far there having been no sight of anyone actually affected by it, it’s easy enough to think that there might have been a mistake or a misunderstanding. But the longer you spend within these beautiful white stone walls, you become aware of a whisper: quiet at first, the barely-there breath of a language you know you understand and yet you still can’t quite grasp it, the meaning frustratingly close to the edge of your consciousness. And the more you try to touch those not-words and too-light-whispers, you feel a little dizzy before the world around you suddenly changes.
7.0 At first you think you’ve simply fallen into another room, just another hidden trap-door or painting you’d stepped into. So perhaps you don’t even realize that you’ve fallen under a spell at all when everything around you is just … dark. Beneath your feet, if you focus your gaze, is a still surface of a black lake glinting — and yet you are not sinking. Every step that you take forward creates a little ripple across the glassy surface. As your eyes adjust, so do your surroundings begin to take shape. It will be different for everyone, this dreamscape morphing and melding into a scene (an island, a meadow, a small patch of forest, or will it remain the lake?) or setting that reflects you — it’s where your soul feels most at ease … for now.
8.0 As expected, the dreamscape does not stay still for long. The more time you spend here, the more it seems to draw inspiration from your memories. Suddenly you find everything around you materializing into solid form, the experience being dragged from the depths of your mind into manifesting a vivid study in touch and sight and smell and sound. It’s something you’ve already been through before, but whether you like it or not, this memory is being replayed around you and now you’re the observer … you and the lucky (or unlucky) person who has entered this memory with you.
Do you stay, or do you try to run from it?
9.0 The stronger the memory, the stronger its effect on you: the heaviest memories, whether they’re happy ones or sad ones, may latch onto your subconscious so tightly that it pulls you right into the memory itself.
Just as these dreams often do, it’s hard to tell whether this is made up or reality itself — perhaps you remember that this has happened before and you’ll try to change the course of events. Or perhaps you think you’re living this memory for the first time. Whatever it might be, you find yourself fully convinced of its authenticity … but the power of belief is a dangerous thing. Beware that the injuries sustained in this state will become real, visible to those who might be observing this — and observing you — from the outside. (You know the line: if you die in the game, you die in real life.)
10.0 Once you become aware of these memories, you may push them away or will them to stop. The moment that you do, the dreamscape will immediately shift to become its unaltered state once more. The other way to escape these memories is to leave. At the edge of your dreamscape, you will find that the air shifts and shimmers just a little differently than the rest of this space … and once you get close enough, the doorway will open to let you out of your dreamscape and into someone else’s like a chain of several small links. If your dreams are more akin to nightmares, perhaps you enter the door willingly. But just as likely, you might simply get too close and are sucked into the passageway.
And you never know just whose dream you end up in next …
The only way to leave the dreamscape is by being woken up by someone administering the antidote to you, and it will only work once. So if you fall back asleep, remember — if it takes you in again, you will remain under this sleeping spell, unable to wake … at least until the cause of the sickness has been found.
F Y I
• If you have questions about any of the prompts or the mission in general, please direct them HERE.
• To submit a search request regarding exploring a specific place during any of the prompts, please do so HERE.
• Voting for how the characters will get the orb will go up November 22. Though voting will be done in an OOC post, it is an IC vote in the sense that you should pick a choice your character would ICly make. What the characters choose to do will determine the conclusion of the mission.
• And finally, have a soundtrack for this log! ♪ ♪ ♪
no subject
it's the only word that could describe the faraway glaze in his eyes, the worn look of men digging up the corpses of their past. the numb loss in the gazes of so many first army's soldiers, witness to too much death and destruction to return from the war with their heart intact. alina swallows on the grief thick in the air, throat bobbing as her expression crumbles with the weight of a sorrow that isn't her own to bear — but one she still carries in this moment, all the same.
her head shakes, with all of the willful, stubborn hope of a woman who wants to believe there had been more to this. a better future than what kovacs claims. ]
You were a child. [ for all that her eyes have gone fawn-eyed in their softness, there's a fierce bite to her voice, righteously furious on his behalf. on rei's behalf. but that's always how these stories go for children in ravka, too, isn't it? the unwanted, the forgotten — they make survivors of themselves, with no one and nothing to rely upon but each other. the way she and mal had been, once. ] It was his job to protect his family, and he chose to be cruel. That's not on you.
[ her fingers squeeze around his, adamant. whatever damage takeshi's father had wrought — the blame for those sin's is not for takeshi to shoulder, no matter what he believes. ]
no subject
she's right, of course; no one else could be blamed for all of this except his father, he and all the law enforcement that had refused to believe him about what was done to his mother. accusing him of lying, that she had run away. jakub kovacs had been an abuser, a killer, and he deserved to get his stack blown apart. but even with his death, the effect he had lasted further beyond that night. ]
Yeah. [ he breathes out the reply quietly, but there's a dreariness in his voice that doesn't sound convinced, at least not on those remaining words. ] But then it became my job. I was supposed to keep her safe. I left Rei alone.
no subject
[ she knows the answer before it comes. the evidence of it is already splattered across his sister's cheek in a bloody smear when alina's eyes fall to the shell-shocked girl, remembering that whispered promise shared in their dark safe place. we stick together, rei.
still, alina's blood chills to sludge all the same, dreading the confirmation from his mouth. ]
I can't believe you would have left her if you had a say in it.
[ the same way she never would have abandoned mal, if the choice hadn't been stolen from her. the same protective loyalty is written all over takeshi's memory, etched into his mournful confessions and the tortured look in his eyes — the very face of a man willing to bleed for the sister he had loved. ]
What happened?
[ it's quietly spoken, afraid to shatter the delicate grief encasing them, as though the gentleness in her voice might somehow soften the painful blow remembering brings. ]
no subject
but alina seems to grasp just how important rei is to him, even despite his guilt in all that came after, in a mistake he'd come to make without even realizing the fate he brought down on her at the time.
the quietness of the conversation helps to shut everything else out, stillness found in the remnants of an old home he'd left and never came back to, save for a memory. ]
They told me they found a home for her. With a good family. They ... recruited me to be a CTAC soldier. Put me in a man's body the next day to start training me. [ a twelve-year old one day, an adult the next. ] Said the only way I could protect her was to never see her again. But ...
[ his hand shakes, lip snarling in remembering. ]
Jaeger lied. They dumped her in an orphanage. Sold her to the Yakuza. Made her a killer. It was nearly three decades before I found out. She waited for me and I left her there.
no subject
it's instinctive, the way her fingers begin to tighten around his — not only an anchor to hold him here, but keep herself from drifting off, sinking into her own greatest shame. ]
You couldn't have known.
[ is what she offers absolution to takeshi's own guilt, or a justification for how easily she had been fooled by a similar lie? maybe it doesn't matter, in the end, when it changes nothing. she had allowed herself to be led like a slaughtered lamb, and the same deceptive wool had been pulled over his eyes. she knows well what it means, to carry that regret on her bones — to feel used, stupid for ever believing the words and promises that had been fed to her to keep her complacent.
to be unable to forgive yourself for it. she swallows thickly, despite how it feels like choking down shards of glass. ]
You couldn't have known, [ she echoes, a hoarse whisper. ] Even if you had known it was a lie, they could have done worse if you had gone looking for her. It's not fair. It's not how things were supposed to be, but sometimes ...
Sometimes there are no good choices. Sometimes — [ she trails off, pensive with her own sympathetic grief. ] Those choices are taken from us, and there's no getting them back. I'm sorry for what they took from you both. For what they turned you and Rei into.
no subject
he knows alina is looking to console him, feels it in the tighter grip of her fingers, but he's told her of monsters; he's been surrounded by them all of his life and eventually, they made him into one too.
slowly, he gives a slow shake of his head, peering away. ]
I was always gonna turn into this. Every time I ... whenever I'd try to get away from it, I always come right back.
[ trying to get rid of his father, joining ctac, losing the envoys, something was always going to turn him back into a killer. maybe it was just in his blood, a portion of his father always carried with him, or maybe it's just him. ]
I wanted better for her. For both of us. But ... all it did was get her killed in the end and it kept me alive. I shouldn't be.
no subject
[ maybe he's right — maybe he shouldn't be. maybe he's only a specter existing on borrowed time, a ghost that hasn't yet made peace with his fate, a phantom haunting the living — but he won't find any rest like this, trapped between should and shouldn't be. ]
You don't get to run from that. None of us do. Even if I wish we could.
[ she doesn't get to run from that. there is only so far your feet can carry you, she's found, when they're bound by invisible chains, when you're carrying burdens without anywhere to set them down. her fingers flatten against his cheek, a whisper of a touch — tentative, as though she always expects to be bitten for her efforts. gently, they curl around the slant of his jaw, trying to encourage his gaze to lock to her. ]
Nothing will bring her back. [ except — the whispered chorus in their ears, promising to wipe the slate clean. a mistake, erased. for a moment, she wonders if rei is his — if guilt has guided him here, trying to uphold a promise he had broken. ] But there are other people who are going to need your protection. We always have a chance to do better, don't we? To make up for the things we couldn't do before?
[ it's a question that's slithered through her head too often in the dark of the night, strainng against her chest — where her hope lives. where hope sometimes turns to hopelessness, carving a void through her, once she's struck again and again by the mantle fate has woven together for her. the uphill battle that waits for her, over the horizon, demanding too much of her. ]
Find someone you can save, Tak. For Rei.
no subject
in his mind, even with different choices, this is where he was always meant to end up. what would be the point of changing a regret if his fate is only going to always end up in the same place?
alina's right. no, he doesn't get to run from that. he had told the doctor the same thing. all the ash, all the blood, all the nightmares that haunt him every day, even when he's awake, they'll never stop.
find someone you can save, tak.
those words strike like electricity through his body, like a jolt to restart his heart, his eyes lifting to look at her as she grazes his cheek. her words take him to the memory of different fingers pressed to his skin, of different tears falling from pleading eyes. for a moment, all he can think of is clara sobbing in his arms, terrified of her fate, wanting to live and scared of the cost, and how he'd confronted viveca with the conviction to save her.
clara needs him right now. and he'd do anything to keep her safe.
he exhales a held breath, heavy in an exhausted sigh, and he nods slowly, eyes focusing back on alina. he brings his fingers over her hand, a silent appreciation for the reminder, for shaking him from the weight of his doubts. ]
I ... I have someone to save. [ his throat feels dry, scratched throughout, eyes red, but he feels the strength return to him. ] I need to live for her.
no subject
You will. You will save her. [ for all that her faith in herself is a cracking foundation, splintered by self-doubt, that conviction comes easily. a surety that sounds as knowing and certain as declaring, the sky is blue, and the grass is green, when it leaves alina's mouth. if nothing else, it's a prophecy she intends to make come true. ] And when you forget what you're living for ...
[ giving up is too easy, too peaceful, but fighting when you want to lay down — want the pain, the fear, to fade into empty silence until you're free from the crushing weight caving in your chest — is the true challenge. whoever he's determined to save, alina won't allow the world to extinguish that one last hope kovacs has for himself — a martyr in his own right, mistaking himself as one of the monsters lurking in the dark. ]
I'll be there to remind you. [ a promise given without hesitation. her thumb skirts beneath his eye, as though it could erase the red-rimmed lines that must be mirrored in the shine of her own, glimmering with unshed tears. questing, her eyes dart between his own. ] Do you believe me?
[ maybe the greater, unspoken question is this: can you believe me? ]
no subject
so often, he'd had the conviction of making sure to abide by it, to prevent death, but the doubt has been in his mind in quell's voice — that would be a change for you, she'd said, simply voicing his own subconscious thoughts — and even now, there's so much he doesn't know about whether his price will even be enough to keep clara alive.
but alina looks at him without a faltered stare, and the strangest thing he finds is the trust he holds for those words — you will — how he knows she isn't saying it simply for the sake of flowery comfort. maybe it's because he knows they won't lie to one another; that conversation in his bedroom was a testament to that, to looking beyond the filter he so often wears as a curtain through hazy smoke, and understanding the scars they both hold as reminders to stay strong.
for a moment, he simply stares to her, unguarded in his own eyes, hinted with the weight of his losses, of his shadows, but brightened by the light of her promise.
slowly, he leans forward, his forehead touching about hers gently, silent vulnerability in a simple gesture. so often withholding himself, he grants her access to a different corner of himself just in that shared touch, whispering as he closes his eyes. ] I believe you.
[ he wants to. he so desperately wants to. and he trusts in her not to lie. ]
no subject
she recognizes the significance of it, too, for a man that seems to be built as weapons are. observing others like he's peering down the barrel of a rifle, waiting for the moment they make an enemy of him, waiting for the monsters to rear their head in dark corners. it means more than she can possibly express that he hasn't mistaken her for one, something unexpected and inexplicable throbbing in her chest, like a distantly buried worry has slowly begun to unknot itself at his reassurance.
the reciprocated nudge of her forehead to his is more starved than she would care to admit, beholden to an existence without much affection. without the ease of setting down her burdens and allowing herself vulnerability. she hasn't forgotten her lessons from the orphanage as her eyes close — preserve your emotional breakdowns for private, always. a watery burn rises to her eyes, anyway, torn between the acceptance of his faith and the overwhelming paranoia that she'll inevitably disappoint him until he's revoked it, one day.
her hands drift from cupping his face to pressing upon the back of his head, on her tiptoes to ease his need to lean down to meet her, as she guides him into the crook of her shoulder — gently, as to not disturb the bits of protruding antler hidden beneath the collar in jagged slashes. thank you, she doesn't say, but the gratitude is undeniable in how tightly her other arm bends over his neck to embrace him. to clutch at the fabric between his shoulder blades, wordless.
maybe it's thanks enough, to hide him away in her throat after all that he's had to witness, a little alcove to escape into. she breathes in, shaky, the scent of nicotine and blood clinging to the air — ignoring the trickling tear that splashes against the crown of his head, before she briskly wipes it away, as though it had never existed at all. ]
Are you ready to go?
[ a whisper, lost in the press of her mouth to the top of his head, ruffling through the strands there. he must know what she's asking, she tells herself, spoken between the lines of what she doesn't say — are you ready to say goodbye to your sister a second time? ]
no subject
he knows nothing of her past and yet, he knows the weight she upon these shoulders, of the antlers tucked along her chest. and when she cradles him down to her, he doesn't feel the horrors that she wears; he has many of his own, even if they don't protrude out from his skin, all worn in the scars along his body and the ghosts that display themselves openly in this room. they share both fear and strength in all of this, in everything that seems to haunt them, as they fight to simply survive through their respective nightmares.
what's left unspoken is his own promise, in not just relying on her willingness to hold him up, but in his conviction in doing the same, in making sure the terrors never catch up to her. even if he's let down so many in the past, including rei in this very room, he'll make the promise all the same.
right now, he finds himself safe in her embrace and it isn't until she speaks that he even considers the idea that he's meant to leave it.
for a moment, he doesn't move at all, reluctant to answer, but with a long sigh, nose brushing slight against her collar, he draws himself slowly back, peering to her eyes briefly before he turns, gaze falling to the young girl in the corner of the room.
his voice is a dry rasp when he speaks like a sighed breath. ] Yeah.
no subject
Okay. Let's get out of here.
[ it's his choice to make, in the end. alina won't press him to commune with his ghosts, won't force him to continue digging up history that is long gone and buried, only ever resurfacing to haunt him. she nods once, twice — soft and decisive, gaze lingering on rei's form for a moment longer. ]
Bye, Rei.
[ it won't make a difference — she's only a figment, but alina vainly wonders if it will lay his sister to rest in his memories, if not temporarily lend her peace in the constructs of his dreams. fingers lacing through takeshi's, she gently guides him along to the new door that has freshly carved itself into the wall — bright, like a beacon urging them to go through. like a simple promise had summoned it into existence.
with a turn of the knob, she steps through. ]