was there some sort of objectionable content in the part? i am trying to pin down what i can and cannot include. and i apologize for any difficulty i might cause.

I'm holding your latest episode for review by and consultation with other Admins. We need to decide about what's going on in this episode and what's going to be for sale.

Admin

ok, semi-important announcement! i'm out of town this weekend, and i'm also kind of dealing with some private issues, i guess. essentially, i will be not updating over this weekend. so prepare your command for my return! i love you all. (/p obviously)

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we're back!

i do need a command to proceed! but i'm feeling better.  

BRACE YOURSELF==>

You grit your teeth. You’re dangerously close to something approximating a breakdown. But that doesn't matter. Wren was right, this isn't cool, it's stressful. But you need to help your friends. You need to figure out what is going on.

ACCEPT==>

You quietly nod.

YOU: Show me.

Hastur: Promise you won’t freak out on me, kid?

YOU: Not sure I can promise. I’ll try.

Hastur: Okay, works for me!

He giddily pulls a remote out of a pocket in his robe, and pushes a button. A large screen appears on a wall beside you. You are confronted with a feed of a strange blackness, of a shade you cannot describe, and have never before seen.

It isn’t darkness, you realize. It’s pure nothingness. Suddenly, an eye opens in that nothingness. It is massive, and yellow, and you immediately know what it is.

Hastur: Apophis!

Hastur inputs a few more buttons on the remote, humming what sounds like the Battle Hymn of the Republic. The tubes containing Diana clones begin to glow. And then, a set of shackles emerges from the floor below you, clasping around your ankles.

YOU: Wha-

Hastur: There is a decent chance that you’re about to be very angry with me! I’m keeping myself safe! And uh.. To preface, I really wish there was another way to do this.

You feel your stomach sink as the tubes containing the Dianas begin to emit loud noises, and several Dianas are sucked down into them in sudden, quick blasts. You turn  to the screen, where white squares randomly begin to open in the void. They shoot Dianas out into the void. The Dianas seem to be wearing jetpacks of some sort, which appears to be the only reason they don’t fall. You watch in mute horror as they try to escape, only for the darkness to coalesce into black tendrils that lash out, pulling the Dianas into the darkness. You watch one Diana scream, and try to lunge back toward the area where the white squares open. She is somehow unable to get through. She is slammed into by a Diana flying out of the square, and it quickly closes.

Hastur: Yeah, they used to be able to get back in through the portals, which was problematic. Fixed that! 

You watch the same Diana be absorbed by black tentacles. The Dianas are trying to escape, and tendrils rocket out blindly, striking Dianas left and right. Apophis is attacking madly, without thinking, like a child breaking His toys. Except the toys are exact copies of one of your best friends.

YOU: What? Why are you doing this? They’re not even-

Hastur: Trying to fight back? I know. It’s a bummer. Most of them try to escape. But occasionally, they manage to try to fight back. I… Really would do this in a more humane way, like… Train them to fight or whatever. But the only way for a person to fully reach their “Mythic Potential,” or whatever, is… Essentially just heaps of trauma. So shooting them into a void to fight Apophis is really the best way to do this. 

You watch a trio of Dianas talk to one another, making a plan or something? The three of them charge toward Apophis. The dark tendrils emerge, slamming one of them backward into the dark. Another strikes the jetpack of one of them, and it explodes. That Diana falls into the void, and off-screen. The other freaks out, as a shadow eclipses her. The first evidently survived being struck, and is staring in abject, blank terror at her peers meeting their fates. She cries out, doubling over, and clutching her knees, entering the fetal position.

Hastur: Watch. That one is inheriting her Mythic Role.

She rockets forward suddenly, eyes widening, mouth open in a soundless scream of rage. Her eyes begin to glow green, and a strange aura of the same color begins to grow around her. A black tendril rushes toward her, and she somehow anticipates it, sending a bolt of green light at it. The tentacle melts away instantly, but about three more tendril lash out behind her. She turns abruptly, blasting them all. They vaporize instantly. 

YOU: What?

Hastur: Yeah, awakening has some real benefits. She isn’t going to survive of course. She’s hardly the first clone to awaken fighting Apophis! She pissed him off though!

It’s true. You watch the Eye widen, black pupil dilating in inexpressible, incoherent rage. A plethora of dark tendrils lash out, and she destroys them all. The eye begins to glow, however, and a wave of burning bright yellow energy blasts her, vaporizing her instantly.

Hastur: You get the general idea. An army of replaceable Diana Clones to aid your efforts. If Apophis loses, we all lose. Cool?

YOU: What?! Not cool, man! That’s… My best friend! You’re, like, sending her to her death, repeatedly! Like, genocide of her specifically. That isn't “Cool,” man.

Hastur: Well, let’s be civil! Come on, I just

He keeps talking, but you’re not focusing on that. Because Apophis is looking at you. Through the screen, somehow, He sees you. You don’t know how, but He is looking at you. At you specifically. He’s inside your mind. You hear a shrill, childlike voice screaming endless pejoratives. You feel a cold black wind. You feel boundless hate, from a being that can do nothing but hate. You feel cold, and in your mind’s eye, you watch the screen dissipate, and He’s looking at you now, and there is nothing to do but stare back.

SAM ABERDEEN. YOUR FATHER-

Whatever He was going to say is abruptly cut off, as you double over, vomiting. 

You open your eyes to find yourself back in the real world, also vomiting. Wren, Diana, and now Alex are watching you with great concern.

What do you do?

INFORM FRIENDS OF HORRIBLE EVENTS==>

You start to shiver. It's cold, very cold. Quietly, and reluctantly, you manage to inform your friends, and Alex, of the horrible events that had just transpired in your dream. Your encounter with Hastur, and your encounter with Apophis. You try to relay the tale of the Diana genocide in the most tactful manner possibly, although it isn't really a subject that can be addressed with much tact, is it?  You walk over to the sink, to get a drink of water, and also put some distance between yourself and Wren, who is growing very pale, and very angry as you recount the atrocities various clones of her girlfriend experienced. Diana, meanwhile, is watching with rapt attention, and Alex is staring with the cool gaze of the utterly desensitized. 

You drink from a glass of water. It's cold, and it feels like a breeze passing through the caverns of your body. A wind picks up outside, and the sound, as easily recognizable as it is, terrifies you utterly. 

Alex: Jeez. Alternate versions of us are just... dropping like flies, huh?

Diana: That all sounds very interesting. Of course, it is a little upsetting. I do not actually know what to do with this information.

Wren: How do you meet Hastur?

Diana: Generally I just fall asleep? Why?

Wren: I'd like to talk to him.

She's pale with barely repressed rage, and shaking slightly.

Diana: Wren, I do not think that is a good idea. Hastur obviously has resources, enough to create hundreds of clones with me, and equip them with jetpacks. I do not want you hurt.

Wren: OKAY YEAH COOL I DON'T WANT A POTENTIALLY INFINITE NUMBER OF YOU BEING MURDERED

Diana: Yeah, I do not either!

Alex: Look, we took out The Old Voice, yeah? We just... Find some way to all enter the same dream, and mess up Hastur, right?

Diana: We only managed to "take out" The Old Voice because Ten and Lillie helped us, and now they are busy at school. Also, saying we defeated It feels like an overstatement. We negotiated.

Alex: Hm, fair point.

Wren: I don't really care! I just want to hurt him, physically!

YOU: Seconded. 

Diana: Look, I understand completely, and it is very kind of all of you to be so defensive of me, but I am the only me currently present! I am fairly certain you need my consent to go on a vengeful crusade in my name! I will say this: Yes, we can certainly take vengeance upon Hastur, in the future, when we are better equipped. And when school is not three days away from starting. Also, as the resident Diana Zhu, I think I speak for my replicants when I say, I want you to be safe. So would they, I assume.

You nod. Again you are reminded of the One Hundred and Fifty-Two Aberdeen Family Tenets, the sixty-second one this time. "Respect your friend's wishes, even when they sound dumb-ish." And this wish is not even dumb. Wren agrees as well, begrudgingly. Alex just shrugs.

Alex: Eh, personally, I'd appreciate a crusade in my name. But, whatever.

The rest of the day is spent in idle chatter. You return home, and find the house empty.

For dinner, you eat a hot pocket.

~~

We are going to skip ahead timeline-wise, not much, but to the point of their first day of school! you could think of all this as a particularly plot-relevant prologue to part one. or not. actually, you can think of it as whatever you like, i have no dominion over your brains.

not yet.

but anyway you can pick which character you want to be next!

>Remain Sam?

>Be Wren?

>Be Diana?

>Be Alex? 

@Lyric, honestly, not that much of it is improvised? generally i loosely plan for the actions i think you guys are most likely to take, although you do suprise me sometimes! but i run a tabletop RPG fairly frequently, so i can improvise fairly easily. added benefit: everything i write is set in the same universe, continuity hellps me keep things on track. also, thank you so much!

and yes, updates are fairly frequent, but that is just what i'm comfortable with. i'm glad it makes reading it enjoyable! 

~~

BE WREN==>

It's a cool day. September has only begun, and yet the summer already seizes and sputters in the last throes against the coming fall and winter.  You are glancing out a car window at a towering tree line topped by a white sky.

You are in a car, being driven by Alex's mom. Diana is sitting in the seat beside you, and Alex is riding shotgun. You're going to school. Hurray. Also, your grandfather is still missing. Eh.

Not much has really happened in the past three days. Diana's parents have gone to work each day, except on Sunday where they instead went to Mass with Diana, and Alice has been busy searching for your grandfather. Sam has come by a couple times. You've been trying to sleep more often, to have a better chance of meeting Hastur, but all you've been getting are the normal nightmares. You're gonna keep trying.

Diana has slept a little, but the ungodly amount of Mountain Dew she's been consuming has partially hampered that. You're getting a little worried about her. 

Glancing out the window, you see a young boy on a skateboard, wearing a hat with bunny ears. Typical day here in Emerald Springs. It's seven-thirty, and the world is, in its cold way, coming alive. You are being driven down a gray, cracked asphalt street, passing a playground devoid of children, passing mobile homes and wire fences and dogs lolling near curbs. 

You pass what you and Diana call the Trans Pride House, due to it being painted pink white and blue. It's a beach house, one of the few built by the yuppies when they came to Emerald Springs. Those yuppies are long gone now. The surreal affect of seeing a ramshackle beach house painted like the trans flag cannot be understated, and you and Diana like to joke about living there someday. 

The school is built in unusual proximity to the Puget Sound, and has been closed a few times for flooding. It is a large, gray building, two stories high, and rectangular and box-like, more resembling an office building than a school. But school it is. Dogman High.  

The Parking lot is half-empty, and the school looks desolate as usual. There are plenty of teenagers in Emerald Springs, but a vast majority of them are "home-schooled," which more or less means they run wild, free, and unrestrained by the constraints of a conventional childhood.

This town is not a great place.

The car is slowing to a stop now, and approaching the front of the school.

Alice: Have great first day, Alex! Learn lots of stuff! You too, Diana and Wren.

Diana: Thank you.

YOU: You seem kinda tired, Deen.

Diana: I am... All right. I just need another mountain dew.

Alex: Dude, you have a serious problem. 

Diana: I gotta... Got to do the dew.  We...

She falls into an uncomfortable silence. You enter the front door of the school, entering a cafeteria lined with vending machines. Other people are milling around. Sam runs up to you, sunglasses on as usual. 

Sam: Hey guys. I was waiting for you to show up. Tracy and Ryan are both already here. Uh... Which one do you want to... (geez i dunno) Recruit? Recruit, first?

What do you do? 

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hey, its me again, it's me typing, and it feels so good.

first thing: i'm really glad to be here again. while we were all away, i dealt with something very heavy, possibly traumatic, but using that word always feels wrong. i'm glad to be able to have a place to talk about that if i choose to do so. you guys rock!

second: while the cb was down, i rewrote the entirety of act two thus far. i did this because i, in my hubris, only had about a third of it saved. i tried to rewrite using memory and what little i had. it's strange. it isn't in second person, for one. i will post it soon, but it'll likely be formatted strangely. you don't have to read it, but you can. i'm posting it for completion. and on one hand, it has better narrative flow, but on the other, it's missing some key parts. nothing important. both are basically canon.

thirdly: welcome back to emerald springs.

and finally: :>