Act 1, Scene 1: CEO ☆ S2FpYmE=

[opening_act]

[ A notification on your phone goes off, letting you know the purchase of your meeting with Exael has gone through.

There is an attachment. Where are you, when you open it? ]

Comments

[opening_act]

[ B has sent you another picture.

The picture is of a building not in your Shinjuku. The second story up, it is covered in fragmentary display screens, between stained glass. The scene looks like a giant game, a board set up according to rules you don't know— and some of this glass is clear, not stained with color. Maybe fifty uncolored orbs, surround panels made to look like doors, little windows into the games you've played!

It's a movie theater. There's a lot of figures around it, it seems pretty popular. ]

[bluescreenwhitedragon]

That didn't answer my question.

And yes, first and foremost I want a meeting with you. But I figured you might also enjoy spending time with one of your own.

Who are the train people? More staff?

[To B:

Negotiating. Don't wait.]

[opening_act]

《 That isn't one of my own~

Audience. 》

1/2

[bluescreenwhitedragon]

. . .!!!

[bluescreenwhitedragon]

Damn, really? I had you pegged as an AlcheME! Are you not a graduate?

[Pulling out some paper and starting to write something down really quick]

[opening_act]

[ The train arrives at the station ]

This round is different from the last round, and the round before that, and the round before that!

[opening_act]

[ A message from B:

go straight to exael or secuirty will come for you lol oops I'm fine ]

[bluescreenwhitedragon]

. . .

[Well shit. Thanks, B. He stuffs the letter he was going write to the audience in his pockets and just waits for the train doors to open.]

[To B:

Idiot! Don't do anything that is going to put yourself in danger! Understand?!]

[And to Exael:]

So you played in the games before you became an actor?

[opening_act]

《 Do you really want to spend all this time on my past, rather than talking about your future? 》

[opening_act]

[ The train doors open to let him out. The station is not lit, persay. But the quality of darkness is interrupted by solid quantities of hue in the darkness, visible the same way the train was. A spiral stair climbs up from the abyssal Shinjuku station, to the way above ground. ]

[opening_act]

[ Message from B:

alcheme life (*「･ω･)ﾝ？ ]

[bluescreenwhitedragon]

[Taking another quick picture of the people on the train and sending it to B with a caption:

Say hi to the audience.

Takes one picture of the station once he gets off the train before heading toward the spiral staircase]

Is that your way of saying you won't answer the question?

You're a host. I want to become a host or a graduate or an actor or whatever else you want to fucking call it. Your past is my future.

[opening_act]

[ The spiral staircase is easier to follow than the stairwell he took to get down here probably, since he can see it. ]

Hm~ Well, you can get that.


You got it right! Congratulations. ]

[bluescreenwhitedragon]

[Up we go]

How'd you do it?

[opening_act]

[ He emerges into the light.

He is in Shinjuku, still. A Shinjuku busier, brighter, controrted. Shinjuku as you've never known it. Everything glows, every last window blazing with kaledescopic light, wrought iron and stained glass in all the windows. In the shadows cast from the light, the street is still filled with those who aren't quite occupying the same space as him-- black outlines that jostle you with their heat as they go past, like walking past a furnace but without tangibility you can reach out and touch. Their silhouettes are something like people. The same as the train. The sky shudders with stars-- none of them still in their celestial orbits. His stomach will lurch if he looks up, to look at any of it.

There is a television on, somewhere. He can hear singing, and a broadcasting of what sounds like a bit of the last game. ]

《 You get a big choice~ It's the most important part of graduation, because it decides the rest of it. 》

[bluescreenwhitedragon]

[His first instinct is to look up and oh God, yes that doesn't feel good. Doesn't feel good at all. Bringing a hand to his mouth, he turns to watch the screen and the game. Fuck, this was some uncanny valley bullshit.

Intensity steps out into the street, ignoring the audience for the most part and trying to get a few good shots of the city.

Just where the fuck was he supposed to go?]

What were your options?

[opening_act]

[ There aren't any screens within sight, though he knows from the picture B sent that he can find them if he looks around.

According to the map, the building he's supposed to meet Exael at is across the station. He can see the doors are open. He can just stroll right on in, if he likes. ]

《 Heaven or Hell, let's rock! 》

[bluescreenwhitedragon]

[Then that's the building he's headed for]

Satisfied with your choice?

[opening_act]

[ An elevator is waiting for him in the lobby, which takes him up to a fully furnished floor, judging by the halls. If he follows his map to Exael's door, he'll find her apartment unlocked. It's cavernous, which isn't a descriptor you'd expect to apply to any apartment in any Tokyo, but there you go. She has her ceiling tented with fabric and the walls, alternating wide pastel stripes, a trapeze (why), a wall that's pink neon signs and lava lamps, and out her window is a view of the place you were just at before— those spires and stars are distinctive.

She's hanging upside-down from her trapeze, phone in one hand.

He can see she looks a little worse for wear. She's got a bloody lip, gold ichor crusted at the side, and her skin seems kind of see-through luminescent in places. Maybe they're bruises and she waves at him with the hand holding the phone ]

And so our guest arrives!

[bluescreenwhitedragon]

So I have. Hello, Exael.

[Walks until he is standing directly underneath her]

You going to come down or do you prefer to be up there?

[opening_act]

Will you catch me if I fall?

[bluescreenwhitedragon]

Of course.

[opening_act]

[ drops off her trapeze! ]

[bluescreenwhitedragon]

[And catching!

More to get a closer look to see if she's human than anything]

[opening_act]

[ mmmostly? do humans usually bleed gold ichor.

if you're going to stare at her like that tho, after a moment you feel her form in your arms changing. her limbs lengthen, and. . . those aren't eyelashes, huh? they're feathers. Her eyes are all full of stars, the same as the ones out the window. ]

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