Despite the standard day and night cycle, some of you may notice this place still doesn’t feel quite right, a bit outside of time. That shouldn’t stop you from having fun! And should you need to go back to the Grove — or if you’re someone looking to get into Neo Eden in the first place — you need only to gaze into a mirror placed in each of your bedrooms or apartments and wish to go home… which may lead you to fall catastrophically through it to the other side. Try not to hit your chin on the ground.
Life goes on regardless. In this city, there’s a lot to do. You could go shopping at the strip mall near Mania Square, where Heimr and Ydalir have set up a temporary shop to continue to provide for everyone’s needs. They’ll still take shells, but there’s nothing much they can do if you run out of Credits — both will gently suggest you find work in Neo Eden. You guys own businesses back at the Grove, it can’t be that bad, can it?
The good news is, Mr. Bone-Jangles and his entourage of skeletons who you swear weren’t originally here 12 hours ago are happy to help you get a job, where the interview process involves simply “showing up and asking your holographic boss if you can be employed”. Starting your own business is more difficult — you’ll need a loan from the bank! — but not impossible. Any hologram humans that come in to buy things will ignore you, get what they want, and leave. The only time you can interact with your fellow neon-coloured humans is when they’re making a purchase, at which point their items will digitize and they’ll leave. All very odd, but at least the customers aren’t rude to you… or your skeletal coworkers who have joined you for back-breaking labour.
After work, perhaps you want to head to the amusement park — Thrill Point is an utterly massive one to the far northeast of the city past the river that cuts through the digital roadways. With drop towers, roller coasters, rides for little babies who hate heights and fun, and tons of food stalls to stop at, you could feasibly spend all night here and almost forget that you have to be at your next shift in the morning! If you seek a different thrill, Arcadia is a nightclub southwest of Mania Square, where the music plays all night, the liquor flows freely, and anyone under 21 who enters gets marked with an X on the back of their hand by a harmless laser beam. Just outside Arcadia is a small photo booth named “The Swap”, and if you enter with a partner, both of you hitting the “TAKE PHOTO” button will bodyswap you for 12 hours. It will also print out a funny photo of you as a keepsake. Enjoy being someone else for a while!
Head to the Rent-a-Ride, where you can rent any vehicle on wheels — electric scooters, cars, motorcycles, hoverbikes — as long as you can pay the expensive fee. Speeding will get you a ticket from your local robopolice; breaking standard civilian laws will get you arrested and thrown into the unmanned city jail. And try not to tailgate or crash your ride — not only will you be on the hook for vehicle damages, but you’ll be shafted with a ludicrous hospital fee. Seriously, people live like this?
But, if a calm walk through nature is more your style, City Park and its
digital trees to the north may suit your needs. The fish in the river here can be fished up by hopeful anglers, though all are wiggly, inedible robots. Hm.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sticksandbonesmods) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
sticksandbones2025-04-01 12:12 pm
no subject
God, what is he doing in there? That shit isn't even CLOSE.]
Are you seriously this stumped already? I thought I made it pretty easy, but I guess I should've aimed for a kindergarten skill level...
no subject
[He is 🤏 this close to dismantling the bed and trying to craft some kind of tool he can use to break himself out of here, he swears to fucking God.
He keeps working in dead silence for a while. He goes back to the sudoku because he doesn’t know what to do with any of the codes, and…he is kindof getting it. Not fast, mind, and he already has a few mistakes, but he’s kindof??? Figuring some of it out by sheer trial and error.]
no subject
[Wolfwood is back to ignoring him, so he tries to watch in silence for awhile... but this isn't even fun to watch anymore. This is just painful for both of them. He can SEE those wrong answers from here—]
Three eight nine five seven six four two one! There, now you have one line. Surely you can figure out the rest of the pattern by yourself.
no subject
He manages to deep breath his way away from that (therapy is working), but only just. His fingers are white-knuckled as he writes the numbers down.]
This is fucking stupid. [He grumbles, the pen scratching audibly as he works.] If what you want is for me too admit you’re smarter than me, or whatever, and just let me out of this god damn cell, that would save us both a lot of headache. Would that make you feel better?
no subject
But since you're too stupid to even manage that on your own... [he lets out a BIG, beleaguered sigh] Fine. It's not like I'm getting much amusement from your pathetic struggles.
I want to hear you beg sincerely from the bottom of your heart, then I'll open the door for you.
no subject
…
But instead, he folds his arms across his chest and offers:]
Before I do all’a that. I want you to give me one- [He holds up a finger.] -chance to try to break outta this cell with my own two hands. No puzzles, no tech shit. But you need to give me somethin’ that could feasibly get through the bars.
[He knows they’re electrocuted, but for some reason that doesn’t seem to be factoring in currently. Granted, he doesn’t know about the barrier beyond the bars, but it may not end up mattering either way if he can’t get through them.]
If I can’t do it, then I’ll say anything you want me to, no matter how shitty. Fair’s fair.
[He tilts his head up.]
So, Add. Do you wanna make that bet? Or are you afraid I might break your toy?
no subject
Ignoring the fact that, if this were a real enemy capture scenario, you wouldn't be able to just pluck whatever you want out from the other side of the bars... actually, your current scenario would be completely hopeless. I gave you all the tools you need for escape, and you haven't even tried to do anything with them. If you can't escape with training wheels on, I sincerely doubt you have even a fraction of a percent chance of success here.
And what do you even mean by "no tech shit"? The entire prison is made of tech, I'm not going to just shut off all my security so you can try and twist some bars open. What the fuck would that even prove?? Not that you could even if you tried, this shit's weapons grade! You'd need a fucking railgun to even put a dent in the metal.
Seriously, what do you think you could possibly sneak through the bars that could get you out of this? You're a delusional moron if you think you could pull that off, how dare you insult my work with such an idiotic fucking request?!
[...
so, like. what does he think could do it tho]
no subject
Are you done?
[He exhales slowly, because yeah, he definitely is insulting Add’s work to a degree by just refusing to interact with it. But this is Wolfwood, how long did he think he was going to seriously play along?]
You gave me all the tools for someone like you to escape, actually. You put these puzzles and shit in front of me, make fun of me for not knowing how to solve it, and then act offended when I wanna try a different way. And when I said “no tech shit” I meant I don’t want you to thrust a computer in my hands and be all like “okay smart guy try to hack into this and turn off the barriers, kukuku”.
[Yes, he IS mimicking Add’s stupid laugh as he says that.]
Now stop whining and give me a fuckin’ hammer or a file or something. Otherwise, I’ll just sit here until you either let me out or I die of starvation or whatever. Your pick.
no subject
[Oh boy, if he thought Add was mad before he's absolutely fuming on the other side of that screen now. He can actually see sparks lighting up the background.]
You want "brute force"? Fine! Try this on for size, punk!
[He punches a switch on his end, and one of the panels on the west wall starts to whir... then, the metal panel parts, and something emerges from within.
There's a fucking loaded machinegun in the wall. Hope you weren't standing in front of that, Wolfwood, it's coming in hot!!!!!!]
no subject
So, yeah. He is not expecting a fucking machine gun to come out and whirr to life, and because of that, he does not duck out of the way completely in time. He isn’t shot to death, but a few bullets whiz past his shoulder and clip through his blazer, grazing him with a hissed curse as he drops flat to the floor.]
What the FUCK!?!
no subject
Kekekekekekeke, how's that, huh?! Still not good enough for you?! I've got even more where that came from!!
[The bullets eventually run out, reduced to a rapid click as the barrel continues to spin... but Wolfwood should stay on the floor, because now another panel opens on the back wall to reveal the hissing nozzle of a flamethrower. Within seconds a blast of fire erupts from above his head, licking into the bars and the barrier beyond—it crackles and sparks loudly once the fire hits the electrified metal, turning the room into a hellish lightshow.]
cw: ptsd?? also reference to human experimentation im sorry
His eyes close to slivers to try to protect himself from being completely blinded by the lights, and for a moment he feels himself completely rooted to the floor in a way that feels all too familiar. Even when he tries to close his eyes to block it out, it just makes it worse. Other than the pain, he remembers the unbearable lights. The sound of electricity, machines humming, pumping him full of drugs to try to find out what might make someone immortal.
It didn’t work on him, obviously. He wasn’t the perfect weapon, he just happened to survive it.
Wolfwood keeps himself where he is as all of this is going on, turning his head down so his forehead presses against the relatively cool tile compared to the heat above, waiting for the deluge to end.]
1/2
Still stuck in there, are you? Kekekekekeke, that's fine, there's still one last trick up my sleeve...! Behold, this is the power of my unbeatable Nasod technology!
[The final panel whirs, the entire east wall rumbling from whatever is hidden behind it as a high-pitched whine starts to build and build and build...]
2/2
[And build...
And build...
And... actually, it seems to be the panel across from the machinegun, so it's already riddled with bullets. The panel vibrates and partially opens to some horrifying blue glow, but uh. It's stuck? Yeah, that thing isn't opening.
But it's still charging up, and it's not long before smoke starts to seep out from the cracks. Hmm!
Add abruptly stops cackling as some loud warning alarms can be heard blaring from his office.]
Khck— what?! What do you mean, severe malfunction?! That's impossible! Those walls can withstand ten, no, a hundred times that many bullets!! [except yknow maybe the thin little panels that are meant to pop open aren't quite as strong as the rest of the walls actually...]
no subject
Wolfwood has no way to get out of here, as what Add has sealed him into is essentially a glorified death trap. Like, sure, he wants people to not be able to escape, but this kind of thing kills people. It kills people Add!!
Watching as the dark smoke billows out thicker and thicker into the room, the high pitched whine growing in intensity, the only thing Wolfwood can think to do is stagger to his feet, using his good foot to kick the bed over onto its side. It’s not going to protect him much if the room literally blows up, but maybe he’ll be saved from having a limb blasted off if he throws himself behind it.
Only one way to find out!]
no subject
And then, with a final cough of black smoke, the thrum of machinery and malfunction congeals into a deafeningly loud boom
The entire wall explodes in a burst of light and sound, shrapnel shooting out in every direction. The toilet is shattered into hundreds of pieces. Tiles everywhere. Huge chunks of "near-indestructible" metal are sheared apart and embedded in the walls, slicing clean through the cell bars like butter. The bed is getting shredded and set on fire. The hole blows clean through to the next cell over, which is thankfully empty, and also sets that bed on fire. The power cuts out only moments later, leaving only the flames to illuminate the destroyed cell as smoke starts pouring into the hallways and through the thin gap above the fake-window which was actually hiding a real-window the entire time.
anyway, it takes a minute for Add to kick down his own door and make it over here to the cells. He just stands there and stares at this mess for a bit, jaw hanging open.]
... my security system...
cw: blood/some gore
What that will be remains to be seen, because Wolfwood is quite literally buried in rubble currently. From the shrapnel, to the tiles, to the chunks of the actual wall that fell over onto him and the bed he was shielding himself with, it’s by sheer luck that he didn’t end up getting any of his limbs lopped off by the blast. HOWEVER…
When Add comes into the cell, once he’s looked past all of the destruction and the fire, the flames licking up the walls and smoldering on various debris piles will light up the pool of slick crimson that’s spreading from the center of the floor outwards near where he’s standing. It’s coming from Wolfwood’s body, laying half underneath the toppled-over bed, his blazer torn open in places by the blast, smoking from the flames in others. Very little of his exposed skin was protected from getting lacerated to some degree, but the worst of all of it is where all of that blood’s coming from: Wolfwood’s side having been quite literally blasted open, a hole punched straight through from front to back. It’s almost poetic, that Add would stab him in the opposite side that Elsword stabbed him all those long months ago, resulting in his first death.
Even more ironic that Add would be the cause of the second, because he sure is not moving. Or breathing.]
no subject
Oh. Ohhhhh fuck.
He starts cursing under his breath, hastily tossing the rubble aside with his drones as he tries to assess the damage—the fire is ALSO not helping, this cell is NOT equipped with a proper fire extinguisher Great fucking El this is a shitshow. He settles for tossing the bed into the neighbouring cell, kneeling down in the pool of blood to get a better look at Wolfwood up close.
It does not look any fucking better up close.]
H...hey! Hey, come on! [reaching out to touch his shoulder, like maybe he might shake him awake from this ???? horribly fatal-looking wound, but common sense wins out enough to not actually start shaking his body. His grip on Wolfwood's shoulder is still tight.] Don't you dare pass out on me like this! If I have to call that idiot... you have any idea how upset he'll be, if he comes and finds you like this?! If I have to tell him I...
[He killed him. He didn't mean to, but who's going to believe that when they see what he's been working on? Ain's going to find out, and he'll hate him for it, and then everyone else here... they'll all turn on him, and then]
Fuck... fuck! Dynamo— [if Wolfwood isn't dead he should probably say something before Add starts trying to like. shock his heart back to life and sear his wounds shut with lasers because he has NO other plan to fall back on here, he is NOT equipped for sane medical treatments only the kind that makes you worse]
no subject
The vials do not heal instantly like they do back home. It will take a few minutes to fully stitch the wounds over, which is why he won’t waste time as he fades in and out of consciousness, weirdly grounded by the hand on his shoulder and Add’s shouting above him.
Huh. So the guy is capable of feeling remorse after all, if only for Ain’s sake and not his own.
Hm.
Wolfwood shifts under Add’s grasp, and with an absolutely Herculean effort, he manages to turn over enough to rip open the pouch on his hip, causing a couple glass vials to clatter out to the floor. He’ll worry about the others later as he manages to catch his shaking fingers on one, bringing the entire thing up to his mouth. He puts the glass between his teeth and bites down hard, the glass breaking with a sharp crack that releases the blue, almost glowing liquid so he can swallow it. Gasping, the glass falls empty to the floor by his head as he lays there as….smoke? Steam? SOMETHING rises up from the wounds on his body as the serum works, pumping frantic through his veins to heal him over faster than the grim reaper can pull him away.
It’s a familiar feeling.]
no subject
[... but he's also reaching for something. A vial? Medicine? Add hesitates, unsure if he should interfere. His attention is drawn instead to one of the vials on the floor, rolling lazily through the pool of blood... a dynamo floats down to investigate. Hmm.
It's a risk, but he decides to let this play out. Wolfwood is going to have five dynamos up in his business whenever he breaks out of the near-death haze, while Add merely watches with a curious expression. Maybe a little nervous, too, until the man starts to stabilize himself, but once the immediate danger has passed it's all very fascinating.]
... impressive for a potion. High energy readings, but I'm not familiar with this chemical structure... [he's picked up the second vial by now, twirling it between his fingers to stare at the liquid inside.]
no subject
Of course, he made a promise to himself and those that care about him that he wouldn’t overdo the serums anymore. Take more than one and you run the risk of exploding your heart. He’s specifically been engineered for the vials to work on him, so he doesn’t like to think about what would happen if a normal person tried to use one. They’d just get poisoned and die horribly, he imagines.]
Ain’t…a potion.
[Wolfwood finally manages to rasp, eyes glassy as he looks at Add with his gaze unfocused, not yet coherent enough to try to push Dynamo out of his face. Right before Add’s eyes as the seconds tick by, more steam billows up from Wolfwood’s body as his body repairs itself, the worst of the wounds sealing over completely in a matter of a few minutes. The only evidence he was ever hurt is all of the blood he lost, along with a scar that will remain there since the serum isn’t as effective in this world.
Yet, even though he’s laying there in a sea of his own blood, he can’t help but feel a sort of grim satisfaction over seeing Add fuck up for once. Mr. Perfect isn’t quite so Perfect all the time, Wolfwood thought as he was literally dying-]
no subject
[He probably shouldn't be acting so calm, but he is curious, and he can relax now that Wolfwood isn't bleeding out in front of him. And if Wolfwood was hoping Add might be apologetic for almost killing him he's gonna be disappointed. It's science time now.
There are two dynamos huddling around his new scar and another uncomfortably close to his neck. At least the other two will offer him help getting back up, if he needs it.]
Vitals are stabilized... I have to admit, it's impressive. Even Ain couldn't heal a wound like that so quickly. Just what are you...?
no subject
It only works on me.
[So! You know, more questions than answers, honestly.]
I’m a freak of nature, and you’re…damn lucky I am, too. That’s all you need t’know.
no subject
But also, uhhh it's probably a bad idea to lay down on the ground while there is an active fire in the room over and explosion damage all around...? Where are the robofirefighters, this city is going to fall apart. Add just sighs, standing up.]
Freak of nature, but still susceptible to damage. Kukuku, careful if you ever decide to cross me. Now that I know what your physical limits are...
[Despite that ominous threat, Dynamo converges around his body to gently wedge themselves underneath Wolfwood—hello, you are going to be air-lifted out of here. It probably feels weird as hell, but despite their size Dynamo is fully capable of lifting him effortlessly. Following behind Add as he steps over the rubble and heads down a hallway that isn't full of smoke...]
Try not to struggle too much, unless you want to drag yourself out of here on your hands and knees.
no subject
But anyway, he kindof…sighs, staring up at the ceiling with blood still swimming in his eyes as the pain dulls more and more the longer the serum stays in his system, though he knows he’s going to have a miserable headache later because that’s just the fucking way of it.]
You might wanna watch your mouth. If you ever try to pull this kind of shit on me again, I won’t be holdin’ back for Ain’s sake anymore.
(no subject)
(no subject)