Welcome to Gaia! ::

The card leads you to the store in question, the same one you’d noticed before on the outskirts of the shopping district. As twilight has passed and the sun has set, the large letters of the sign Perniciousa are finally lit up, burning an ominous, fiery color. Below it, an equally concerning sign stating Grand Opening hangs underneath; you’re not sure how exactly the sign is being suspended but the door below the signage is open, the front of the store illuminated with what appears to be candle light and only candle light.

Others are filing in to the building and the ominous aura that surrounds the location only grows stronger as the number of guests grow larger. You step inside and find yourself walking down a path guided by candles; clearly someone went to a great amount of trouble to set up this “grand” opening and the number of people in front and behind you has you being pushed towards the staircase leading to the basement, whether or not you want to end up there.

Once downstairs, the only thing lighting the room is a strange, runic pattern on the floor. Its pattern is indiscernible as to the origin but the large circle on the old, creaky wooden floor seems to beckon everyone to stand around it, compelling you to move away if you were to stand atop any of its glowing lines.

What on Earth could any of this mean?

As you and the others gather in the large, eerie basement, the glowing cards illuminating in everyone’s hands suddenly catch fire. Keeping hold of it will result in singed fingertips, so you drop the card and watch as the community of flickers light up the wooden floorboard.

The glowing rune laps up the fire, igniting the symbol. Heat rises and smoke begins to swirl - the door to the basement slams shut and a burst of wind (where could it have come from?) collects the smoke, wiping the fire out.

A low, gravelly hiss echoes through the room as you are left in the darkness and smoke.

Seren was exhausted, sick of feeling sick, and just about ready to call it quits on life, practically. The urge to never get out of bed again was strong, but at the same time, what good would it do her? She was not able to SLEEP anymore, it felt like, so why bother being in bed? She hated the sores, the constant itching, the greenish pallor, and the way her hair fell out if she scratched her scalp had her in a near tizzy of panic. That was her hair, the part of her that made her feel beautiful, and it took her so much work and she spent so much on it, too! To loose it might break something inside of her. She sighed, and began to move, when a glowing light caught her eyes.

She blinked, looking around... And spotted her cute little ceramic Jack o'Lantern on her window. IT wasn't glowing, but the glow seemed to be coming from... halfway under it, and halfway next to it. She frowned deeply and walked over, wondering what the hell was going on. She stared down at it... And saw the business card that had come with it. "Didn't I throw you out...? And how in the hell are you glowing?" Her tone was irritable. And then the line at the end of the name of the business moved. "WHAT. THE. ********." She tried to convince herself to get rid of it, but the part of her that was morbidly fascinated by this insisted on turning it over in the direction the line had moved. And watching it make a map. "No. No way in hell am I going where a crazy map that suddenly, magically, appeared on a business card leads! No!"

She was panicking, because instead of doing what she had decided, she found herself putting on her shoes, grabbing her purse, and GOING. She walked and walked, exhausted but unable to do much about it. When she ended up at the store, she glowered at it. This was all suspicious, and terrifying, and she wished Nate were here, and maybe some of her friends. But no, as far as she knew, no one she knew was here. And now she was basically being pushed inside, because... others were here. This place was creepy, with the candle lined path to the basement... And the ********' circle that looked like a cult's ritual site. "I just want to go home... Go home and SLEEP..." She whispered, trying not to cry. And then the door slammed, and a tear definitely escaped the terrified girl's eyes.

Xanthus Growled into his palm in exhausted annoyance as he dragged a hand down his face as though he could aggressively wipe away the gluey, scratchy feeling of too little sleep and too much... too much something something pumpkin zombie bullshit.

The last few nights had been -miserable-, and he was about ready to feed someone the decorative, smiling pumpkin that, god help him, he was starting to suspect was more of that special, Destiny City flavored Trouble, and god help him... if the negaverse was behind them he was going to gift wrap them and mail them to Ca...

... No he wasn't that far yet. Give it another night or two of not sleeping and carnivorous diet and he might be ready to hand people to an organ ripping warmonger and his make believe army, but he wasn't -quite- there yet. He was determined not to be there yet.

He didn't like FEELING like this regardless, and wasn't sure what exactly it was. It didn't feel like having had his energy drained, not the 'normal' way anyway, it was more ....

He didn't know. But emotionally he hadn't felt this constantly -angry- since he'd been Realgar, and he was determined to see it out one way or another before he did something that neither Xanthus Goldman or Kairatos couldn't take back.

All that -without- the creepy rash or whatever that didn't seem to be going away, which at least didn't seem to have been passed to the cats but was it's own special hell.

"....So what do you think, hon?" He asked, on another long, tired exhale as he tried to get a handle on the deliciously angry fantasy that involved slugging the next person that bumped into him in the kidneys.

GOD he just wanted to -sleep-. Maybe after finding whoever was behind this shitty ghost hunting show s**t and shoving their head in a b.... .... bowl of candy corn. Yeah. Candy corn.

Normally he'd have appreciated the set up, the candles, the hissing, the slamming doors... but he was tired, confused, and trying to decide if the ominous feeling was real and he should be prepared to throw actual punches, or if he just needed a nap.




----

Tarik Rashid sort of had to appreciate the person who was loudly complaining that this had better not be some sort of cult... not that he'd have been shouting that himself. Too undignified. Not enough coffee.

Not that he wasn't used to long hours and grueling schedules, but between performance schedules, agent work (ugh), and then the sleep and the problem skin (which he was afraid to even consider putting concealer and had better clear up before he had to be on stage no matter how many appointments he had to make... this took the absolute cake.

He'd almost wondered if this was some sort of odd joke from one of the higher ranked officers (He refused to call them 'superiors' if he could possibly avoid it...) with the curious little appearing map and the candles and this rather brilliantly executed little display.

It would be nice if they could figure out how to capture some of the effect from the candles for a stage preformance, but he couldn't quite put a finger on how it worked for being exhausted. Wires and electric candles he supposed, those were... more realistic these days and less likely to cause an accident....

The slam of the door made him jump, which did, admittedly, make him feel more awake, albeit in a 'run like a small primal ancestral creature' sort of way. That same small primitive part of his brain suggested that small dark spaces would make an excellent spot to curl up and catch a few winks while he waited to find out of there were knife wielding hood wearing movie styled serial killers waiting in the wings.

Get tired enough and you almost stopped carrying about that too, save for an fatigued, fed up feeling at the pure inconvenience of potentially being murdered. Who cared anyway, he'd already had his -soul- manhandled. How much worse could it be?

Mass murdering cultists could at -least- be nice and give them a cup of coffee first, poisoned or otherwise. He'd even worn his best Halloween socks for the occasion, with tiny little pumpkins and bats. Not that you could see much of them under the cuffs of his comparatively immaculate suit.

Exhaustion and magical Hogwarts style maps were not an excuse to dress poorly.

Zac Bantock

He’d have punched things, but he was too tired, and too sore and itchy to do that. At least when he was in uniform he could hide most of the sores.
But, he couldn’t spend all of his time in uniform, at least, he kept telling himself that.

It was the glow that sparked him into further movement. Eyes narrowing he fumbled through his pockets till he pulled it out. Hadn’t he gotten rid of this thing? He hadn’t been that interested in the shop, the only reason he’d held onto the pumpkin was because he didn’t want accused of not doing anything for halloween, and now, this damn card was drawing… a map.

His jaw worked, and he closed his eyes taking in as deep a breath as he could stand before exhaling slowly.

At least he wasn’t the only one who was here, he wasn’t sure if that was interesting or frustrating. The fact this was on a larger scale and he didn’t immediately recognize any of the other faces, didn’t mean a great deal. He’d been gone for 5 something years. But strange things? that was just another day in the history of Destiny City.

Paris Gallo

“Someone needs to wipe this city off the face of the Earth,” Paris grumbled.

She didn’t mean it. Not really. (Okay, maybe she meant it a little.) Destiny City was her home. She’d lived here her entire life. It had to be worth saving. Most of the time, anyway. If it wasn’t, what the hell had she been doing these last… however many years? Eight? God, had it really been eight years? Where did all that time go? She was too young to have committed eight years of her life to the BS that often occurred in this city.

Yet there she was, at some weird shop because of some other weird object that was probably magical or contaminated with some dark force or whatever. Totally normal for Destiny City. She still remembered that Snowglobe incident back in 2010. What an awful night that was.

Honestly, she should have known better than to keep something she got in the mail with no explanation and no return address. She even looked this place up online and didn’t find anything. What kind of idiot was she that she still kept the pumpkin and the business card after that? Something was obviously going on. She didn’t usually have trouble sleeping, at least not like she had recently. Then there was all the itchiness and the scratching, and the sores up and down her arms and legs from the scratching. At least she managed not to scratch her scalp too much. She’d be miserable if she lost too much of her hair.

Worse, though, was that she’d been snapping at her kids and her husband. Those poor, innocent babies and her sweet, sweet Pooh Bear. That was just… not who she was. Sure, she was a b***h as a Senshi, but that was different. Almost everyone was a b***h as a Senshi. She was generally a sweet person otherwise.

“Seriously, whatever’s hissing needs to come out so I can kick its a**,” she said, hating the dark and the smoke and everything about the situation.

Peter Gallo

There was something magical stupid about this business card. The whole store was creepy. They were probably keeping youma down in the basement and were going to feed all the people who went in there to them.

Okay, the potential youma being in the basement was kind of cool, and would obviously have to be let out, but he wasn’t really wanting to see anyone get eaten.

Which was why Peter, annoyed from lack of sleep and against his better judgement, followed everyone down to the creepy basement. No youma immediately appeared, which was both disappointing and a relief. Maybe this was just some kind of elaborate Halloween hoax?

“Now is the part where some dude in a mask comes out with an unbladed chainsaw to scare us,” Peter said out loud, hands shoved into his coat pockets. He should have just powered up and gone looking for youma instead of letting his curiosity get the better of him.

Then again… Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back!

Quote:

Peter is open for interaction! Rhiannon, too! :>

Toby had been having an off week.

Sleep had not been coming to him, and for a while, he was afraid he was turning into a frog somehow. He was looking a bit green, he thought, which is very...froggy.

But then the sores and things came up, and...

...Honestly, the weird card suddenly glowing out a map for him was almost a relief. Now he had a destination to shout his annoyance and anger at this whole mess at. Stupid pumpkin. Why was it so pretty? How dare it?

Kind of forgot to smash it as he left to follow that map.

Soon enough, the destination arrived (or something), and he found his way in, with other grouchy, sickly-looking people. Normally very cheery and ready to talk to everybody, Toby found he didn't really want to talk with anybody...not yet, anyway.

Still. He found himself swept up into the throng, and down in the basement. Gazing at the runes and such, he muttered, "Woah, spooky..." before snorting in annoyed derision at it.

Of course, the derision evaporated with a lot of other feelings, and he found himself gazing at a big, angry monster. "Uh-oh..."

In a snap decision, Toby decided to dash to some shelves, where he grabbed a likely looking dark potion bottle, and lobbed it as best he could toward the..ghost thing's head.

"Bad doggy!" he shouted. "No eating people!" Okay, so it didn't really look like a dog. But he wasn't rested well enough to come up with better things to shout at giant, angry, scary-looking maybe-Youmas.