TEAM BUILDING EVENT #3

[synfluxmods]

TEAM BUILDING EVENT #3

CONTENT WARNINGS: medical content

▶ 001. WELL DESERVED REST.

With no sign of upcoming city-level threats, LILITH has made the decision to provide Outsiders with a well-deserved break: there will be no official missions for the month of December. Outsiders are free to roam the city, continue their usual civilian jobs or take a holiday to any of the locations available via data portal. During this period, LILITH leadership will also be taking time off and any attempts to contact them will be met with an ‘out of office’ return email unless it is an emergency. (Dr. Spim is still around, but … he is a cat and doesn’t answer anyway... unless he feels like it.)

That isn’t to say it’s going to be a completely quiet month, of course. Our players have kindly prepared several player plots that anyone is welcome to join. Please refer to the top level here for links to the relevant plots. An updated quest has also been listed here.

Additionally, the Outsiders Program has successfully finished its first year! LILITH will be giving all Outsiders old and new a thank you bonus of 500,000 KRYPTOS (approximately 3230 USD) to spend freely on their holiday. Try not to spend it all on pachinko!

▶ 002. LET IT SNOW.

Starting December 1st, the temperature in Neo Tokyo will take a dive as the country enters into winter. The first signs of snowfall will occur on December 1st, and as it continues, the city will be transformed into a winter wonderland. The shops and restaurants of Neo Tokyo are capitalizing on the approaching festivities, putting up Christmas lights, Christmas trees and decorations. Many stores are having sales on warm clothing and popular gifts. Isn’t it the perfect time to find some nice gifts for your friends?

While only a suggestion, it is encouraged to support the integration of the orphans from Transylvania by taking them out on a winter adventure.

Winter activities found in Neo Tokyo include:

- Christmas Winter Illuminations. Certain parts of the city will be lit up in Christmas lights and holographic, winter-themed illuminations. Stop by at the right time and there might even be a drone show to watch.
- Ice sculpture building. Artists have gathered in Yoyogi Park to showcase their latest ice sculpture creations. Outsiders may view the attraction or join in on the ice sculpture contest. Winners will get prize money.
- Ice-skating. The Yokohama Red Brick Ice Rink is open again and characters are free to go skating with their friends. As a part of its latest attraction, the ice has been fitted with microscopic nanobots that light up when touched, causing the ice to glow or showcase striking colors as people skate across it.
- Playing in the snow. Even under threat of kaiju, the people of Neo Tokyo take the time to have fun when they can. Through the streets, there are people making snow angels or pelting each other with snowballs.

Characters may visit Las Vegas, Kyoto or Okinawa using the data portals. Kyoto and Okinawa continue to be uninhabited, but they can camp there if they wish. They are free to book a hotel and enjoy their holiday in Las Vegas too, where the city will have its own brand of winter activities (winter illuminations, Christmas shows, ice-skating and holiday-themed Vegas shows). While the weather is still cold, it will be snowing in Kyoto but not in Okinawa or Las Vegas.

▶ 003. SNUGGLE UP.

All the lights and festivities happening in the city are putting some strain on the power grid, and this leads to occasional bouts of power failure during the month of December. These seem to be happening in the base and throughout the city of Neo Tokyo, and they last for a few hours each time. With hospital equipment running on back-up generators, it isn’t a huge cause for concern, but it certainly is an annoyance; especially with the weather so cold.

LILITH robots will be offering Outsiders on the base extra blankets (traditional and emergency foil blankets) along with heat packs to get through the cold. Starting a fire within the base will not be allowed since it is a hazard, so those who still need the extra warmth will need to find other creative ways to obtain it. A snuggle never hurt anyone, right? There is one operational fireplace in the Library, and Outsiders may notice an influx of small tables throughout the base with self-serve hot beverages on battery operated kettles, such as tea, hot cocoa & artificial coffee. As Outsiders congregate around the base, snuggled up in their new festive blankets, perhaps now would be a good time for some classic party games such as Never Have I Ever and Two Truths and a Lie.

▶ 004. TAKE YOUR MEDICINE.

Dr. Spim takes regular cat naps anyway, so he doesn’t see the need to take a holiday. As a result, he has continued to work tirelessly on finetuning the cure for the vampiric disease. Throughout the month, he will make several requests for volunteers (those with and without the vampiric disease) to participate in the ongoing clinical trials.

The serum he is testing will not cause harm to the body, but it might result in any of the following side effects:

- Dizziness, fatigue and difficulty coordinating movement.
- Fever, chills and a desperate need for warmth.
- Mood changes, which can present as euphoric or depressed or both.
- Hallucinations or delusions.
- Increased hunger, thirst or other physical needs (interpret as you wish.)
- A ravenous need for blood (for vampires.)

Certain volunteers may encounter no side effects at all, while some may experience all of them. Luck of the draw, really. The side effects are not permanent and last for a few hours. As always, Dr. Spim will explain the possible side effects and get consent before administering the medicine.

By the end of the month, a stable cure will be finalized and LILITH robots will deliver it to all those affected by the vampiric disease (if your character was already a vampire, don't worry about it). It is highly encouraged to take the medicine! Dr. Spim has no time to chase down the people refusing to take their medicine, so he might pay some of their friends to do it for him. He is a cat. He has better things to do (such as knock this beaker off the table….)

As an OOC note, please do not let your character remain a vampire unless they are already a vampiric character. The vampire event in Transylvania was meant to only have temporary effect.

▶ 005. AFTERWORD.

Welcome to our third team building event! All tags on this log are worth 2 points and will count towards December AC.

We have a lot of player plots this month, and are using this log to encourage players to participate in the player plots since the event itself is light. As a reminder, the mod team will be taking a break during the month of December and will not be answering any questions at this time.

EVENT BREAKDOWN/RECAP (CLICK TO EXPAND)

1. WELL DESERVED REST: Outsiders enjoy a quiet month with no kaiju attacks, but are provided plenty of things to do (via player plots) and they are welcome to use the data portal to travel to Okinawa and Las Vegas at this time.

2. LET IT SNOW: Heavy snowfall turns Neo Tokyo into a winter wonderland with many snow related activities to participate in such as ice skating, ice sculpture making, etc. LILITH encourages the Outsiders to allow the misplaced orphans to participate in some of these activities.

3. SNUGGLE UP: The power outages strike again, this time from too many festive lights that overheat the generators. LILITH provides Outsiders with emergency blankets and hot beverages during times of outages.

4. TAKE YOUR MEDICINE: Dr. Spim trial runs an antidote for the vampiric disease that struck Outsiders during their mission in Brasov. He takes volunteers who are both vampires and not. Finally, a cure is made, and all Outsiders are asked to take it (please do not let your character remain a vampire unless they are already a vampiric character.)

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Comments

[gorb]

Someone has to find a way to claw their way out of the dirt.

( He leans his elbow against the bartop, cheek in his palm. At least now they're less in the open he seems to have relaxed a bit more, turned ever so slightly lazy. )

This place does make you think. There are so many worlds. And so many similar people with similar stories. It would be nice one day to find someone who managed it. I think I wouldn't mind it being you. ( A laugh, a grin. Silco is as human as they come, and Geto knows if they were from the same place then the man before him would be the cause of some monumental curses. In his world he would have hated him. But here? Here he doesn't have to care. ) Who would have thought it? Maybe I'm changing.

[zauneyete]

Hm.

[ He understands what he means. Before, he'd glimpsed so many of those worlds, and understood... There was a weakness in people. Mortal or immortal, human or inhuman, it didn't matter. So many of them were either failing at changing the state of things, or they even worse — accepted it. Men like he and Geto, trying to break things down so that they can be reconstructed — shattered to make something new from the pieces — it was the fate of men like them, who found it detestable to merely accept their fate in life.

It was their fate, because if they did not fight? What would they have? What would they be?

Dead. At least for Silco. He does not know of Geto. (but i do) ]


Perhaps it will be. I aim to make it so, regardless of what Society decides of me. [ 🙃 maybe someday silco will learn ]

One of us should be able to make it happen. I've grown tired of seeing it repeated. It makes me want to dismantle the very order of the universe itself.

[ he'd tried. He'd thought he would make it there. He failed, by being pulled here instead. ]

[gorb]

High aspirations.

( He understands it. That desperate, sharp-edged desire to reshape things to be something better. It had been part of the reason why he had been so upset with Gojo in the end. All that power, the ability to do something, stagnant. He knows now that it wasn't exactly wasted in the way he had believed. His friend was forging a different path. But it had stung. To want so badly with none of the true skill to back it up. Swallowing more and more vile curses because what else could he have done? Letting humanity poison and change him beyond recognition, anger and bloodthirst and a ceaseless march forward. )

A lot of responsibility too, Silco-san. ( Another sip of soju, the corner of a mouth tugged upwards. ) You'd have to put it all back together again afterwards, no? Though I'm sure you have the image you'd make it in well solidified. I do hope you don't have to do it all alone, that's all. I was lucky, I had a family even beyond the girls, and still it felt monumental. You've only ever mentioned your Jinx.

[zauneyete]

[ That is a sore spot, isn't it? He says it idly, blithely. He had a family, and it still felt monumental. Who did Silco really have? Jinx, yes, he had always relied on Jinx. He knew Sevika would always be devoted to the nation of Zaun, but who else was there? The chembarons were opportunists at best, and he had a city drowning in Shimmer.

It needed him. He knew it did. There was nothing other than him holding it together. Just like...

His jaw tightened. A clench of something, like he was chewing a truth that he did not like. ]

I will be in charge of it. [ He said, with a tightness that said, very clearly, that this was not ideal. ] Any... family [ it is said with bile, like the toxins in his eye ] is either dead, or...

Well. Dead now. Because I killed them.

We are a hard people Geto. Betrayal and domination is baked into our very culture. We have had to become this.

[gorb]

( Killed them.

A strange light flashes in Geto's eyes, his body shifting towards the bartop, more weight leant against it, hand cradling the soju. ) Familicide? ( Faux scandalised for a second, two, and then he lets out a breath, humour edged. ) Tch, I imagine anyone who double-crossed you would fully deserve the teeth in their throat for being so foolish as to expect a different outcome. Besides, I'm hardly one to judge.

( The liquor spins in his cup, Geto lifting it to down in one neat swallow, holding his friend's gaze more solidly. )

I'm the one who murdered my parents after all. And they were very nice people. Their only crime was being something I hated. So I understand the need for a statement.

( Does he regret it? Sometimes. But instead of shying away he likes to press himself to the knife-edge of the things he has done. He smiles and it is the sly handshake of one monster to another. At least the rot gets aired out when these two are near each other. )

[zauneyete]

[ A wave of his hand. ] Not... truly family. Where I am from, family often dies before you're old enough to strike out on your own, so you do anyway.

[ He looked at Geto for a long moment, with new eyes. Killed his parents for a statement. He had no... fondness lingering for his own parents, but nor did he really think about them. Like most Zaunites, they'd worked themselves into early graves, deaths that were just one of many. Silco can't even really remember how old he'd been, when it happened.

Young. ]

Statements like that tend to ring, don't they? They send a message, that you are not to be trifled with. After all, if you can do that to them... Who knows what you can do to others, hm?

[ He thinks of Vander, of sliding his blade into the man. Once, so long ago, they'd been family, them along with Felicia. A found family, in the mines, they'd only had each other.

The moment one of them had been lost, they had no longer been family though, had they? ]

[gorb]

( Humming. )

Something like that.

( Truthfully, Geto does not think of it often. There is little space to. He committed the act, and then filed it away. He does not even remember the thought process. He'd had two little girls to take care of, and no way to turn away from the slaughter of their village. His parents were a casualty. He loved them once, surely, but the deeper into the black he went the less he felt for anyone that wasn't solely his. They didn't understand him, they couldn't, they were just filthy monkeys strangers to him in the end. )

I couldn't leave anything unfinished. My parents were non-shaman. And my choice had to be absolute.

( Look at him now, drinking with a human. It doesn't matter though. Geto will not allow it the space to stagnate. )

It was enough to make me irredeemable, I think. Which is what I needed. One specific act of cruelty and I'd be on the other side of things.

[zauneyete]

[ Truly, though, is Silco human?

Sure, biologically, yes. He is. But given that he doesn't blink his (only) eye, it's not likely that he thinks its so iredeemable a crime. After all, in Zaun, people did worse. They would never give up one of their own to topside, but that didn't mean they didn't mete out their own justice. It didn't mean that they wouldn't cannibalize each other if necessary. If it was needed.

For survival? They would do anything. ]

To who? The people who you were trying to oppose?

[ He asked it curiously, drawing his finger along the table.

Even he... wouldn't consider it iredeemable, to kill family. Hell, if it hadn't been for the deal, once, he'd even thought he could have forgiven the one who'd tried to kill him. That, after all, had been a hard-won lesson he'd needed to take to heart.

Ah, but the weakness after. ]

It's not something to regret. We must take what we must, without abandon, and without consideration. The ability to do what needs to be done, to take what is required, that is admirable.

[gorb]

Everyone.

( A shrug as he toys with his glass. ) Perhaps I could have come back from massacring the village. It is not unheard of for Jujutsu Sorcerers to be pushed to the brink of a mental break. Having to protect and defend people from the products of their own misery with no stopping, losing your friends and your loved ones and not being allowed the space nor time to mourn, because the war marches ever on? That takes its toil. We are not infallible. But I did not want to go back. I did not want to be beaten back into the shape I'd burst free from.

( A hum. )

I'd always been filial, you see. Respectful. I'd been the good one. What better message than to throw all that aside? It worked. No one tried to reach me. They decided quite quickly on my fate. Though I hear they've gotten prone to ordering executions since me. Maybe I set a trend! ( He laughs, a little sharp. ) I don't regret it. They didn't understand me anyway. Nobody did.

[zauneyete]

How could they?

[ He scoffed. ] If they were giving everything of themselves to defend against the ungrateful, then I cannot imagine that they looked on you favorably. It reminds them of what they could do, were they to simply walk away. What they've failed to do, by allowing people to use them like that.

[ Silco feels nothing but disdain for these other sorcerers. It is probably for the best that he doesn't meet any of them, or else they might find themselves manipulated into something truly terrible.

You know, to do his buddy pal Geto a solid. ]

Do you think it's better here? Excluding me, of course. There's a reason we get along.

[gorb]

I don't know if better is the word.

( Certainly there is less of a weight bearing him down. He cannot fulfil his purpose here, nor can he continue it back home. There is nothing. But is that better? Or has he been left with a void of nothingness, all his anger in the well of his guts and nowhere to place it? He eyes Silco up speculatively, chewing the inside of his lip a little before he sighs. )

The enclosure is nice. It looks like my home. But it is still a cage. And I am still pacing. ( He tries, because he cares about a select few here. Satoru, Itadori, they want him to be better. But he hasn't figured out where to place his anger. And it still sits, fermenting. ) Those people on the street that LILITH tasks us to protect? I wouldn't care if every single one of them died today. And you? Well, everyone has exceptions. You're not the kind of simpering monkey that would watch idly, that helps. But the rest is as much a part of me as my eyes, or my lungs. I don't have to consume curses here, yes. But I did. That stays.

[zauneyete]

Hm.

The rot remains.

[ He says, because he understands. This is a cage, and Silco was well-accustomed to cages that were ill fitting. That stifled, or led nowhere. Let them rage against the bars of the cage, but they were going nowhere. That cycle, endlessly repeated, over and over, and over. Without ending. Without stopping. ]

It is festering. It is lingering. Where do we direct it, when there is nothing worth our ire? We cannot take it out on other Outsiders, and these people...

[ A scoff. ] They fall to me, and I have never been one for physical combat.

[gorb]

Sometimes I wonder what LILITH was thinking. So many of us don't lend ourselves to militarised obedience. Brimstone is a powder keg. What does bringing us do? We're not reliable. Though then I decide that it must just entertain them. The floundering.

( Every so often it's a little like drowning. He'll stand in the halls, or by the cafeteria, or smoking on the rooftop, and he'll feel so irrationally and helplessly angry that his hands shake. Putting him here, forcing him into a role like this, it makes him want to claw his way out from beneath his skin, a vicious beast. And yet he can do nothing. )

Once I was told that there was another way to save everyone. Teach the humans how to control their cursed energy and there'd be no more reliance on sorcerers. The same could be said for here. These people should be able to protect themselves. But a better man than me would need to take on that task, I think. I've already proven myself to be too destructive.

[zauneyete]

[ This more than anything is why Silco and Geto get along. They are a matched pair of terrible men, monsters struggling against the bars of the cage that is too small, and too ill fitting. They ask for people to willingly save them, and yet they bring in men like Geto and Silco, who would rather maim and take than save.

Geto, who'd contributed to plenty of deaths, and Silco, who would poison his own people for a shred of recognition and respect.

And yet. Here they are. ]

You know I agree. [ He hates these people. Their inability to fight. ] If I could, I would give them the tools to begin to do more, but it is an impossible task to ask for as much shimmer as they would need.

[ A scoff. ] No, Geto, I think we best leave that task to the idealogical fools they keep bringing in, hm?

[gorb]

Watch from the side-lines as it all falls apart around them? ( He smiles, tilts his glass a little, amusement evident in his expression. ) Well, at least the company will be interesting. Let's hope no one tries to rope us in to anything, mm?

( Silco at least reminds him of his bitchier family members in that he certainly has someone at his side to make disparaging noises with. They're both as petty as they are monstrous. )

Let them hang themselves instead.

[zauneyete]

As if they could.

[ A scoff. ] And if they start to use our implants, well.

[ He eyed him up and down over his drink, before he took a sip. ] I think you and I both know what malicious compliance is. I think they would regret the decision.

[gorb]

Ha.

( A wide sliding grin, a knife through skin. )

Oh. They'd regret it all right. So would every other person here, I think. But ah, for now at least the water remains calm. We just have to wait and see what LILITH might be hiding below the surface.

[zauneyete]

Who knows...

[ he said with a small shrug, but a matching sharp smile. ]

Maybe we'll be the only ones left, if they show their true colors. I can imagine a world in which the rest of them find it...unpalatable.

[gorb]

( He actively pulls a face at that, a scrunching up of his nose, childish. )

Oh, the heroes are going to be so noisy.

[zauneyete]

Oh, quite.

[ His sneer says it all. ]

Won't it be ironic, when we're the only ones left complying? They will be doomed.

[gorb]

Once again I find I want to be there when it does happen. I'm sure you're tenacious when there is something to be bargained for.

( There are sharp teeth in Silco. He's wily like that. Like a half-starved fox in the underbrush. Geto has no doubt he already knows where to bite down in the end. )

They won't know what hit them.

[zauneyete]

Ah, if we could be so lucky that I am given the opportunity.

[ He would take it, its true. LILITH may be amoral and shady, but Silco doesn't quite mind that. What he minds, is that this world is asking of him what his city should have the right to. That's it. That's all it is in a nutshell. That he wants people to fight his war, and he's not gotten it.

So why should they? ]

Who knows, I'm even reasonable. They may find my terms acceptable.

[gorb]

And if they don't, well.

( A grin, once more feral edged. )

Another drink? Before I have to face the hoards again.

🎀 THIS LOOKS LIKE A GOOD POINT TO CLOSE ON

[zauneyete]

Oh, we might as well, hm?

At least give us more warmth before the cold as well.

I ought to pay you back, regardless.