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.
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sticksandbones2025-04-01 12:12 pm
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Anyway, he’ll let Ain drag him over to the ride regardless, though it hasn’t yet dawned on him the fact that since they can cut infinitely in line, it means they could just go on this ride over and over ad nauseam if they wanted.]
Like an adrenaline rush for sure. You can hold onto me if you get scared, yeah?
[He smirks as he says this, even though their arms are already linked.]
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[That is untrue but to be fair: He doesn't get scared of rollercoaster rides. He gets scared of real things, like being abandoned/alone/all his friends dying/being forgotten.
When they're buckled in, the ride starts to rise and rise and rise, slowly but surely. It's pretty up here, Ain thinks; they can see all the city lights up here. He kicks his feet a little, excited, and then
the seat hits the top, there's a pause, and it goes careening toward the earth like a falling star.
Ain, super excited, throws his hands up and shout-laughs the whole way down.]
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The ride is rising, and Wolfwood is confident he’ll be fine. It’s whatever, it’s just a drop. What’s so bad about a sudden drop? It’s a little alarming at first, but then you get over it. They go up, and up, and up…
And then suddenly they plummet all at once, and honest to god the way he screams is involuntary. It is not quite the same laugh-screaming Ain is doing.
He is just screaming.]
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The ride comes to a screeching halt just before the seat sends them careening into the pavement and likely breaking their legs. Ain, giddy, undoes his buckle and lifts the shoulder bars off himself, stands up, and looks at Wolfwood with the biggest shit-eating grin.]
Were you scared?
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I was not.
[He fucking lied.]
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[he looks like blr wolfwood... not good.]
You were definitely at least a little scared~. [He says, grabbing Wolfwood by the hand and dragging him off through the ride exit.] Is it heights, or falling?
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Wolfwood is trying to play it off, but even he can’t stay the frantic beating of his heart as Ain drags him towards the exit, increasingly thankful that these holograms aren’t real people who can judge him for his reaction to this ride either way.]
I dunno. Don’t the feelin’ of droppin’ suddenly like that freak you out at all?
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[Ain is used to entire raid dungeons falling out underneath his feet and he also floats, so. ...no not really.]
I'm usually high up though, and I can float down safely. Getting to just fall but not splat on the ground is pretty fun to me~. It means I can loosen up.
[His wings flutter, he is dragging Wolfwood off to the (throws dart) pendulum ride. The one with the viking ship, you know the one.]
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But he sighs through his nose either way, his heartrate finally slowing down as in leads the way to…another terrifying looking ride, oh boy. This one drops AND swings, AND it goes up high!! Yay!!]
Good thing we didn’t eat first…
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[Remember he was inhaling cotton candy until y'all got on that ride? Yeah. Ain is wiggling over to the queue for this ride, momentarily forgetting that the holograms just Exist and they can go up to the front immediately. Of course, he wants to sit in the seats at the far back of the pendulum ride, where there's a large neon glowing viking shield kind of thing on the side of this boat. Ain does not know what vikings are or he'd comment on this.
The back of the ride is the scariest, though, as Wolfwood will certainly find out soon. For now, Ain is bouncing in his seat while it "queues" aka the hologram people slowly onboard it like robots and sit there completely stone-faced (pixel-faced???) and wait. It is otherwise intimidatingly silent save for the stock chatter sound effects that play sometimes.]
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[It’s not a real food, technically!
While Wolfwood debates himself over whether or not cotton candy would be enough to make him question riding this ride or not, he’ll follow Ain to the front of the line. He has to say, at least there’s no awful anticipation of waiting IN the line. They can just…go, and he can die. Simple!
But also oh my god Ain why did you pick the BACK of the boat it’s like you’re trying to kill your boyfriend here-]
Geez this thing is huge…
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Ain does not know fear, so he's snuggling up into Wolfwood's side like this is going to be such a Romantic boat ride and not, y'know. Murderdeathtrap ride.]
It'll be fine, it just swings back and forth.
[Ain says, because yeah that's technically true, and the first minute or two of it really is just a calm swinging pendulum ride... back and forth, zzz... but the more it pendulums, the higher it goes, until they're swinging at a sharply increasing speed and, at many points, completely vertical and staring down at the ground and the metal contraptions composing the base of the ride.
If they fell out of it for any reason they'd definitely die due to being crushed in the machinery.
Ain's tail wags.]
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Needless to say, Wolfwood is clinging onto Ain just as hard, and it’s not just for romantic date-having reasons. He is at least not screaming!
Yet.]
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Not that exciting. Unless you're Ain, who thinks most things are exciting.]
Wasn't that fun?
[Wolfwood looks white, babe. He looks like the way artists on twitter draw him.]
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Wolfwood climbs carefully off the boat and shakes his head a little to steady himself, only to remember Ain just asked him something. Hang on give him a sec-]
O-oh yeah, that was…somethin’.
[Why did it feel like it was going to fall apart the ENTIRE TIME-]
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Haha, you look like you're gonna pass out. Do you wanna take a small snack break with me? They were selling green funnel cakes with like... [He gestures like he's pouring syrup on something,] this glowing weird pink syrup stuff. I want to try it. I wonder what it tastes like?
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[Or at least he will be, he just needs a bit of a break first. Ough. Snacks aren't the best idea if they plan to ride anything else like that right away, but at this point Wolfwood is actually getting pretty hungry, so he won't mind the distraction.]
Sure, yeah, we can go eat. The syrup...glows, though? I knew you were an adventurous eater, but...
[Girl what if that gives you the Radiation]
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I think it's just a quirk from this place. I'm sure it's fine~. They wouldn't serve it if it could kill you!
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Yoooou'd be surprised.
[He would not be phased by anything a capitalistic society is willing to feed people for money but hey, given that this city is largely made up of holograms, he can believe it's more for the spectacle than to make a quick buck. It's not like there's a real economy or anything going here.
He thinks.
Either way he allows himself to be dragged, taking the time to calm down from the last ride as they go.]
So what do you think it's gonna taste like?
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Mm... hopefully strawberries or raspberries for the syrup. The green funnelcake... I think it might be dyed, so it probably tastes a bit artificial.
[These are his bets, he's locking in.
Anyway, they'll get to the food court and the stand selling the funnelcakes, and Ain will order one. Two, if Wolfwood wants one. He's having this before his actual dinner (because of course he is), and the menu doesn't exactly say what flavours are in it. That's fine, he's adventurous, and Ain will sit down on a nearby bench with his funnel cake and take a bite.
The dough is pistachio flavoured and the syrup tastes like sour Skittles.
Mm. Yeah, okay, Neo Eden food is Something.]
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Wolfwood opts to not order one just because he knows if he has a funnelcake he won't be able to eat dinner-food, but he will try a bite of Ain's. Funnily enough, he's never had pistachio so he can't clock the flavor at all...and the sour skittle flavor is a sharp, sour-sweet fruity thing. It's a VERY weird mix in his mouth.]
...it ain't...bad, but I wouldn't really call it good either.
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[You know a food isn't the best when Ain, notorious "eat whatever" guy, is making a face at the flavour profile. But he paid for this, dammit, he's going to eat it. Eat it he does, whether Wolfwood helps or not, and that leaves room for "real food" aka whatever junk restaurants the amusement park has here that's unhealthy but filling enough to keep people going.
There's a chicken place, a pizza place, and what Ain would call "classic Elrian" aka it's Korean food but there's also Chinese and Japanese and Vietnamese — it's a basic Asian restaurant that doesn't know what it wants to be, really. Ain just calls it the Elrian place. It's probably actually Something as far as Neo Eden is concerned, but.
Ain... wants a cursed street corndog, he thinks. And whatever horrid food "watermelon chicken" is supposed to be, which sounds like it was meant to be orange chicken but made by the devil himself.]
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And here Mr. "has never had a corndog" is, looking at it like he's not sure he should eat it.]
Is it burnt?
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[Ain has a fairly normal looking one, he asked for a potato one covered in spicy mayo, but uh. It looks more like a tater tot rather than one with fried potatoes, which yes essentially is the same thing but the texture is different, okay? That means there's no breading on it. It's a tater tot wrapped around cheese. The spicy mayo is neon orange instead of regular orange.
It tastes like a standard k-dog but with tater tot. Huh, okay. Not horrible, but Ain still isn't too sure about this one either.]
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It tastes fine, even though it looks like it shouldn't. What about yours?
[Ain's looks like it's glowing with that mayo sauce, holy SHIT.]
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