Once Upon a Multiverse

Park

“Jules!”

The teacher had shown up. That made things better. Along with a few others. There were a lot more of them now, but Mob's new... friend? Acquaintance had suddenly run away. He didn't feel like he could blame him, it almost felt right, given the situation.

Maybe he should've run away too. He didn't exactly know what he could've done. Though he had had the strange urge to raise his hands towards them. That was weird.

He ignored it.

The thugs had scattered, but Mob couldn't tell if they were still angry or not. He wanted to go after Jules, but he wondered if that was even right. They were trying to stand up for that girl, but then again she'd essentially fought them off on their own. And Ms. Marina was looking scary too...

He supposed it was the sentiment that mattered. With that in mind he dropped his glare and turned his attention to the others—voice having become softer with concern.

“Is anyone hurt badly?”

Kaito observed the situation while still standing in his place. Jules had just fled after stopping a bat mid-air and then throwing it away. The kid was nervous and scared. A reasonable thought.

"I'm ok here, but what did just happen? And that boy, was he ok?"

"Also, why is everyone here? I'm here because a note said to go here at night."

Arianna

Having finished her last appointment for that day (Andrew Babbage had complained about knee pain; she's helped him determine he had arthritis and then set him up with some medication), Ariana decided to go for a stroll. Mostly to clear her head; keep her mind off that dream if at all possible.

Originally, she'd been headed for the library; Marian Booker had mentioned that a book she'd placed an order for had come in. However, something caught her eye on her way past the park.

The remains of what may have been a full-on brawl.

Taking her first-aid kit from her purse, she quickly rushed over towards the group of people. She seemed completely unaware of the streak of white hair behind her ear, even after catching a brief glimpse of herself in her compact mirror...

"Hey, Jules. Haven't seen you in a while, which I'm assuming is good news."

"Don't believe we've met," she says, glancing at a young woman who seemed to have taken quite a hit. "I'm Dr. Glace. You look a little roughed up. Anything I can do to help?"

Without waiting for a reply, she pulled an ice pack out of her first-aid kit....

Damn June. Stupid warm weather. Now the ice pack was more like "bagged water."

"You've got to be kidding me," Arianna muttered. With a sigh, she started to rifle through the first aid kit, not bothering to put the bagged water back in there...maybe some sort of topical medication could help...

Wait. Was the bagged water getting colder? No, that couldn't be right.

She looked down at her left hand, which held the bagged water. A layer of frost was creeping across the bag, and the liquid inside was turning hard and cold...

Kind of like in the dream. But how?

Edited by Spottedleaf on Apr 6th 2020 at 2:19:06 PM

"A-ah!" Jules skidded to a stop. "M-Ms. Glace! I'm..." What exactly was he supposed to say? "I'm hearing a voice in my head and I think it possessed me to do something creepy but still kinda awesome"? No, definitely not. "Y-yes...I'm fine."

With that, he looked at the ground, trying to piece together what had just happened. It'd been...odd. Like he was controlling himself, and not controlling himself at the same time.

"Who are you?" he whispered. He was met with silence.

Edited by LilyTheLitten on Apr 6th 2020 at 12:51:27 PM

Yui was somehow not surprised to see her gym teacher start yelling by her side. Even when she started challenging the punks and herself to fight, it was just what she'd expect from her.

At least the extras were smart enough to start running, even if one tried to take a swing at the mayor's son (what was his name again? James?). She almost ran over to protect him, but he ended up pulling off a move she wouldn't have expected from him.

Well, that guy was sufficiently scared off. Yui turned to her groaning pile of bodies and kicked at one of them. "Alright, I'm done entertaining you. Get the hell out of my spot."

The two lackeys didn't waste time jumping to their feet and running off, but the leader took the time to shoot her a glare. "We're gonna remember this, Ito," he threatened.

"Yeah, yeah, you'll come back to get your asses kicked again," she said casually, spitting some blood onto the grass. He simply growled and limped off.

As disinterested as she was in talking to anyone, especially with how sore her jaw was, being a bitch to someone with first-aid was probably a bad idea.

Yui snorted as she held up a bag of water, apparently having forgotten it was summer. "I'm fine," she said with a shrug, "it was just one punch." She was more interested in getting all of her stuff back from where they'd exploded after her trick with her backpack.

As she collected a few books, she couldn't help but replay her fight a bit. Throwing that guy over her head was a bit of an impressive move, even for her. When had she gotten that strong?

Kaito blinked. Did the "ice bag" the woman held just get colder? Solidify, just like it became ice mid-air? Freeze, like people touched by a yuki-onna? And most importantly, why did Dr. Glace just remind him of someone?

A man in red, with his head on fire and an unhumanish face. A woman in blue, with pearls in her head and white hair. One burning, the other frozen. "Killer Frost...", muttered the man in red.

Kaito shrugged off. He had zoned out for a while. For the first time, he noticed he was in the place of Samurai in the vision. He put his hands in his face. This was weird. When he took them off, he noticed something unusual.

Part of his forearm became invisible.

Going to sleep. I hope I don't miss anything too important.

Park

Marina laughed in a way that could not unreasonably be described as 'supervillainous' as the delinquents beat a hasty retreat. "Should give you my number Yui, so you can call me next time those losers come around, HA!"

She didn't speak more to the girl, being tended as she was by the doctor that had made a sudden appearance. Instead Marina turned her attention back to the two men, brow raising as Mr. Tanaka made reference to a note similar to the one she'd received. "So you got one too, Kaito? Guess I was right about it being a teach meeting... Sheesh, don't they know I was gonna be BUSY this week with a Baccano! marathon?!"

"But more importantly..." Marina approaches Kaito and the other man, attempting to pat them on the shoulders in a way that seemed friendly- up until her grip tightened and she started to shake them vigorously. "What the HELL was that?! You see a kid getting ganged up on like that and you just STARE like a DEAD FISH?! ARE YOU ADULTS OR NOT?!"

Undoubtedly Marina had more to say, but her attention was caught by the same thing that Kaito had seen- or rather, hadn't. "Eh?" Marina stared at where his arm seemed to be lacking, blinking a few times to see if that solved the problem.

Edited by whizzerd on Apr 6th 2020 at 9:27:25 AM

Ariana

"Wait, did you say something about a note?" She glances back and forth at Marina and Kaito. "This morning I found a strange note on my bedroom floor...Let me guess, did yours tell you to 'listen to what midnight tells you', too- WHAT THE HELL?!"

Kaito's arm seemed to have vanished. Which struck her as odd. She's pretty sure she'd remember if he'd been an amputee.

Something was very wrong in Summerside.

Jules didn't mean to go back to the park. Not entirely. But something drew him back. Maybe it was the voice, even though he couldn't hear it right now. Or maybe it was the note from earlier, which felt like an iron ball in his pocket.

Either way, he ended up turning around and heading back, though he kept a healthy distance from the others. He wasn't quite sure if he wanted to get involved in all this craziness. Not yet.

The Park

“I got a note too. My brother thought it was a stalker,” Mob mentioned quietly, relieved somewhat that no one was seriously injured. Even so Yui's admittance that she had gotten punched once earned a mildly worried gaze, before it flicked back again into unreadability like it had never even been there to begin with. “It said to meet as well, and to listen to midnight... maybe it's a prank...?”

The dull-seeming boy winced slightly as the teacher shook one of the other older ones by the shoulders and shouted at him, and he was just about to vocalize an excuse for his sake when he noticed his missing limb. He blinked once, a look of pure confusion crossing his features, and pointed to it with a single outstretched finger.

“His arm's missing,” he pointed out rather unhelpfully, but a slight tremor in his voice indicated that he was simply trying to rationalize it in his mind. “It wasn't before, was it...?”

【 62% 】

“...Something feels wrong...” he eventually admitted, eyes lowering and hands fidgeting in front of him as he awkwardly began to voice his opinion. A rare event, in his case. “Even before the note, I mean. When I woke up... everything felt wrong. I keep wanting to say the wrong things. I forgot my name. My brother's not right. I don't–”

【 67% 】

He faltered, mouth going dry as he looked down at his palm. It was becoming clammy with anxiety, but that wasn't what he was focusing on. He could see– no, sense something. Very slightly. It felt colourful, alive. Warm. Belonging to him. He didn't know what it was.

But then it was gone again. Colourless as it always was.

Thinking hurt. His brain felt hazy. He brought a hand to his forehead, muttering something.

“...I-I want to go home...”

【 70% 】

Edited by Enirboreh on Apr 6th 2020 at 12:19:38 PM

Ivan stared at the fight as he saw how the kids managed to beat up the punks. Well, that certainly is a very interesting fight he just saw.

That goes into the list of weird things I just saw. Wait, why is that lady getting close to-

"GAH, FUCK, JESUS, DAMNIT!" Ivan started to scream as he was being shaken around by the lady with ridiculous amount of strength. Once she stopped, he grabbed his glasses that were dropped from the ground.

"The hell is your problem?! I was ready to call the police if things ended badly! Man , I should had stayed in Austria if I had to deal with this shit!"

I HAVE A DOCTORS DEGREE! I SHOULDN'T DEAL WITH THIS CRAP!

Before Ivan had a chance to argue further with Marina, that's when suddenly some...weird stuff started to happen. That guy's arm suddenly disappeared, the kids started to get all weird and say that they got the note from Johnny too.

Uh....I'm not sure what to think of these kids being drug addicts

"I don't kniw how you made your arm disappear unless you used a spectral cloak. That stuff just doesn't come cheap. How the hell did you managed to afford that?"

Edited by Darkomega245 on Apr 6th 2020 at 9:04:31 AM

The Park

And so the street brawl ends up being crashed almost as quickly as it started, to Yuu's relief. Curiously, the woman running up to them threatened not only the remaining mooks scrambling to get away, but the (her?) students caught up in the middle of it; upon which another arrives bearing medical aid. A doctor, maybe—he hadn't exactly seen her around before, though.

"Miss, please calm down," Yuu starts, seeing Marina decide to round on the older spectators beside him. "There's quite a lot you can do before hurting—" He stopped himself there; why it sounded as if he'd said that in the past, he didn't know, but it felt much more ominous than a mere sense of deja vu. And this "old geezer" was a teacher too? He certainly didn't look like one, but that wasn't really Yuu's concern. More importantly, his arm was...

"Gone." It was just there. He'd been looking right at it.

All he wanted to know now was where the explanation for this was—this group of people receiving notes telling them to follow what midnight told them—these limbs up and vanishing out of the blue.

The boy standing nearby began to clutch his forehead in apparent pain, shaking Yuu out of his temporary daze. "Are you okay?" he asks, taking a concerned step towards him, as he whimpers something or other about wanting to go home.

Only for an electric jolt to abruptly surge through his own skull.

Those emotions...such power.

You should stay away...

Yuu visibly flinches at that. A voice; crawling, but comforting. Intrinsically, he knew it was somehow part of him, but the makeshift hug it offered his confused mind seemed only to be lined with iron barbs.

That is, because he was beginning to feel it. To him, the slight influx of feeling coming off the boy he didn't even realise existed before was now almost overwhelming.

He stops dead.

Sorry, Vito. Joe wasn't part of our deal...

Victor Scaletta awoke from his nightmare once more breaking out in a cold sweat, his heart racing at a mile a minute. This was the third night in a row that he had these horrifying and vivid dreams that made him wake up in a mad panic.

"Holy Shit. I think I need some fresh air or something..." he whispered to himself under his breath before getting out of bed and showering as he did every morning.

"Maybe I should go for a walk in the park or something. The fresh air should probably clear my head and help me relax." the young man said as he got dressed for the day and had a glass of cool water for the morning. Victor lived alone and would occasionally talk to himself when it was just him in the house. Now, he didn't talk to himself in the "crazy person hearing voices" sort of way, it was more like thinking out loud for him and he generally kept quiet if anyone else was around, finding it embarrassing if someone saw him talk to himself. Despite his outwardly snarky and cynical demeanor, Scaletta was often very self-conscious about how others thought of him.

The young man donned his shades and leather jacket before heading out to the park just a few short blocks from his house and decided he would walk the whole way.

He wasn't sure what the fuck was going on, but by the time he got to the park, Scaletta had noticed there were signs of a brawl earlier and there was a teenage boy seemingly frozen up or passed out or something in the park while a group of people had gathered around. He immediately rushed over to check things out...

"Hey kid, you okay? Do you need to go the doctor or something?" asked the weary and now panicked man as he tried to get the boy's attention and make sure he was okay. The kid looked like he was still in high school and he wore a mask, presumably due to illness or allergies.

"Does anybody know this kid? Can anyone tell me what the hell's going on?"

Edited by NinjaGoth on Apr 6th 2020 at 11:46:47 AM

Kaito repeatedly grabbed his vanishing arm. It was still there, but was invisible. He remembered the dreams. "Tomei Ningen!" Didn't that mean "invisible man"?

In any case, he had more important stuff to tender to. Ichirō didn't feel so well. The weird man had been saying weird stuff. Everyone said that they also had a note. Miss Guerreiro had been right with the standing there thing. The boy nearby had just paralyzed.

He turned his head while still grabbing his arm when he heard someone ask about what happened.

"We got a note saying to meet here at night, and when I arrived I saw this girl fighting five punks. A boy stopped a bat mid-air, and then ran away. And this kid just pretty much paralyzed right now. And don't stare at my arm. I swear it's ok."

"It was not ok." He thought.

The Park

Ichirō was leaking. That was the only way he could describe what was happening.

It was a slow leak, admittedly. As it continued he realised he could push back against it somewhat. Push it back in, out of the way. But for a moment or two it could be felt—a mass of confused feelings and something utterly hateful that got shoved down quicker than anything else. Eventually he brought his hand away from his head and drew in a breath, seeming to have composed himself a little.

“...I think I'm okay.”

【 68% 】

The boy who'd asked after him had now frozen up, and for a good moment Mob stared at him with equal blankness. Only to realise that there was something wrong with the former, and to glance quickly and anxiously towards the adults in the area. They seemed confused to. Had he done this?

It felt like he had, but he was never good at reading the atmosphere. A gnawing guilt threatened to crawl up and out of his throat, but he pushed it back down. It'd be bad if it got out.

He still didn't know why.

“Are you okay? I didn't mean to scare you if I made you upset,” he began somewhat tentatively, frowning a little as he tried to peer through the mask on the other boy's face. As if faces weren't hard enough. “Just sick, that's all. It's gone now, I think.”

Wait, should I wear a mask then...?

“...Ms. Marina,” he murmured—a little taken aback at his own addressal to her before he remembered himself and shook it off. He found her one of the easiest to talk to of all of the teachers. Mainly because she did enough talking to cover for him in a conversation anyway, but also because it felt weirdly... familiar to talk to her. “Isn't it bad that we all got a note saying we should meet up somewhere in the dark? And weird things are happening only today?”

...Is it... only today, though...?

Edited by Enirboreh on Apr 7th 2020 at 5:04:50 PM

Yui did her best to block out the conversations around her. She'd come here to think before the whole midnight thing, now everyone and their mother just had to come to her secret spot to start jabbering at each other.

It was pretty clear that she was a little huffy as she stuffed various objects into her bag, until she suddenly stopped. Her fingers lightly touched a familiar object that seemed too familiar.

Carefully, she picked up the pair of scissors that she used at her job a lot. They were needed to cut the fabric at work often, and it wasn't uncommon for her to accidentally stuff them into her bag at the end of the day.

Now that it was in her hands, she trailed a finger across the back of one, her mind going back to that dream. The blade in her dad... the dad in her dream's stomach. This looked exactly like it, but smaller.

"What the hell?" she muttered under her breath, then followed it up with a louder, more aggressive, "what the hell?!" when she spotted one of her teachers and his vanishing arm.

"Whoever this midnight asshole is, they better have a damn good explanation for all of this!" she announced, holding the tiny pair of scissors like a sword.

Edited by Skooter910 on Apr 7th 2020 at 8:28:45 AM

The Park

Why don't you let me take over?

You'll only get hurt, Akatsuki.

Akatsuki? Who was that?

There was a discomforting closeness in the way it spoke to him, but with all the eyes on him in the moment, Yuu didn't exactly have the presence of mind to space out wondering about it.

"A-Ah, no, I'm fine. Really." Thankfully, the grip of those cruelly luring tones fades when his attention darts towards the new arrival; a biker-looking man seeing the disastrous scene for the first time.
"It was probably just my imagination," he adds...aaand immediately realises how that sounded. Hopefully they weren't under the impression he was a lunatic.

Though to be fair, he didn't know what other explanation there was for suddenly hearing things in your head.

Lowering his mask slightly to catch his breath, Yuu directs a weak, but kind smile at Mob; albeit noticeably not moving any closer. "You sure about that? You shouldn't push yourself." Perhaps a flash of something—no, someone else could be caught in that brief gaze, but the change dissipates as soon as it comes, and it quickly seems like he's back to how he was before.

"...On the other hand, what were you two saying just now? So it's true we all got notes saying to meet up here?" The boy casts a glance over Kaito and Yui. This situation was nearly familiar to him, yet he brushes that feeling aside, turning to meet the rest of the milling crowd.

"But why us?"

His intrigued words don't quite match his tone; Yuu seems to be growing more amused at the predicament than anything.

Jules's eyes widened. They got the notes too? Something was definitely off about all this. Slowly, he left his spot under the tree and started walking back to the rest of the group. "H-hi," he said shyly, waving his hand. "I don't mean to intrude, b-but...I got that note too. And..." He swallowed, hard. "I think we're going crazy," he whispered.

He didn't have much evidence outside the voice in his own head, but things were so confusing right now he really wouldn't be surprised if that were the case.

Wait...is that guy intentionally ignoring me? Wow, what a asshole. Now I will never know the secret to portable invisibility cloaks. Some people just want to be special snowflakes.

That's when Ivan noticed these weirdos speak about how they got these notes too, and some reacting very badly to it. Now that he thought about it, maybe this wasn't a letter from Johnny, but some kind of cult initiation. Next thing he knows if goes there at night, this midnight person will brainwash him, force him to adore some kind of obscure god, and make him waste all his money on privileges!

Yeah...I don't care about this.

Ivan would slowly start to back away from the group. "Yeah, I'm just...going to leave now. You guys have fun...with your thing. Yeah." That's when he turned his back from the group and walked away at a slight faster pace.

Okay, just turn back, and don't make eye contact. Don't make eye contact to make sure they don't follow you. Don't turn around...don't turn around..

Paging Dr. Glace...

It suddenly occurs to Ariana that there may be more than just the note as a commonality between them. Both she and Kaito had just done...something that all medical science told her was impossible, and something about Ichiro seemed...off.

She began to wonder if the third odd occurrence she'd had recently was connected.

All that was left now was to listen to what midnight said, whatever that meant. Unbeknownst to her, another lock of her hair went white.

"Did any of you have strange dreams last night?" she asks, all the threads beginning to seem more and more connected.

"Yeah..." Jules blinked, eyes widening to dinner plate size. "Yeah, I have been." He gasped, suddenly realizing something. "Wait! Has anyone else been hearing a voice? Like, in your head?"

"Nothing like that...at least not yet. You miiight want to see Dr. Fuhl about that. She's a bit odd, but she does her job well. Excellent shrink."

Suddenly, her head begins pounding. Spoke too soon....

"Killer Frost! Finish him!"

Ariana stands over the man's unconscious body, his black hair disheveled from the fight, his red cape torn. The hunger in her is overwhelming, the weight in her brain more and more perilous...

Do it, she tells herself. The Wall will kill you if you don't.

For a split second she hesitates. The symbol on his chest means so much to everyone, including her. But she can't risk her life for him.

Placing her hands on his temples, she begins siphoning his life force...

"NO!"

Ariana did not consider herself a comic book fan by any stretch of the imagination. But she knew that symbol anywhere.

Why on earth had she just seen Superman? Her first dream was strange enough, but this had happened in the middle of the day. And Superman was a fictional character...so why had it seemed so real?

Edited by Spottedleaf on Apr 7th 2020 at 1:10:22 PM

Jules gasped. "M-Ms. Glace?!" What was happening to her? Why were they having these dreams? Who'd sent the note in the first place? Argh, nothing was making sense! Maybe they really were going crazy-

Library.

The voice cut in, though it wasn't nearly as clear as it had been. It sounded worn and tired now, like a dying man forcing out his breaths. Library. It's there. Find it.

Jules poked the side of his head. "I-it's talking again. It's saying we...or maybe just me...should go to the library."

Park

Marina's hands had slid off the two men and came down to cross her chest. She hummed loudly to herself, trying to make sense of the whole situation while the others around her oscillated between panic and confusion. Thing was, though, that she wouldn't call herself the smartest egg in the carton, especially not while stuck in a vortex of questions without answers.

"...NGAAAH! I can't THINK with everyone talking at once!!" With that proclamation ringing everyone's ears, Marina set out to action, starting first with nonchalantly reaching out a hand to grab the clothed nape of the retreating man with glasses. "ALRIGHT, everyone calm down and listen- that means you Yui, put the damn scissors away!"

For some reason, Marina's head rang with an unfamiliar yet nostalgic tune as she punctured them all with her sharp sentences. "Ichirō's right, the letters and all this other weird stuff? It's giving me BAD VIBES. So here's what we're gonna do about it: us ADULTS-" she shook glasses man's collar for emphasis, "-are gonna scope out this night-time meeting! I won't tell any of you kids not to come, cause hell, I ain't your parent! But you gotta be prepared if you do!! None of this squawking like headless chickens nonsense."

"Until THEN, we're gonna follow Jules here and see if we can't find some answers at the librarby!" Wait, that's not how it was pronounced, was it? Whatever, it felt right on her tongue. "And if anyone's got head voices or weird-lookin' arms in the meantime, you can bring it up with the screaming doctor lady over there!"

Marina pumped her spare arm enthusiastically. "Did you all GET THAT?!?"

"Strange dreams? I've been having them for like, a week or so. They all had the same man, yelling stuff and so. I dozed off a few minutes before and had a vision. I was in his place that time. And I have to confess, it looked like someone like you was there. Weird ice stuff. Her name was Killer Frost."

He turned around, facing Jules. "There were no voices though, just some weird old-fashioned superhero stuff."

Then Marina started to yell again about actually being responsible adults, and as always, she was right and loud.

"Okay! I'm not too sure about the schedh, scheld, ugh, whatever, timetable! But isn't the library going to close in ten minutes?"

Aren't we at night now? Some people said stuff like "broad daylight" but I'm pretty sure this is night or something. If not, some libraries close at noon.

Edited by JTTWlover on Apr 7th 2020 at 9:35:19 PM