(no subject)
[OOC: This is the part of Harry's talk at the cookie meeting. It's essentially a summary of all the major plot points that have taken place in Daisychain thus far, with the occasional relevant link. It was ridiculously long, so I'm gonna stick it here and link to it in the actual thread, where the rest of Harry's speech is. Read it at your leisure.]
Harry poked his head out surreptitiously, scanning the crowd. Not everyone had come, but enough that he figured it would be worth getting started. They could potentially fill in the others later, but Harry didn’t want to keep everyone hanging for too long.
Making sure he had everything, the wizard took a deep breath, before striding out onto the small stage, doing his best to look like he knew what he was doing. Settling his slides down, he waited a minute or two for people to settle down. Clearing his throat and speaking loudly Harry said, “I’m not the best at this kind of thing, so you’ll have to forgive me if this is a bit more causal than you’re used to. I’ve asked you all here today for two reasons. The first is to bring you all up to speed on my investigation into the forces that have brought us to, and are keeping us here in Manhattan. The second is to discuss a plan I have formulated, based off the information I have gathered, to lean more about the people behind this. I cannot stress enough that what is said in this room, has to stay in this room, or at the very least, has to stay off the network, and only be shared among people you trust. Right now whoever is keeping us here holds all the cards, has every advantage, and has the ability to abduct us seemingly at will. Posting our plans, even in code or behind locks, is as sure to reveal them as shouting them from the rooftops. Surprise is our only possible advantage; we need to make it count.”
Harry futzed with the projector for a moment, before managing to convince it to fulfill its function and display a calendar of the year with a number of dates circled on the white screen. “Now then, what I’m trying to show here with my super advanced Jr. High technology, is a timeline of the strange events that have taken place in Manhattan since the monster Big Mommy first appeared. As near as I can determine, in the two weeks following the attack people from other parts of the world, and indeed other worlds entirely, found themselves pulled into Manhattan, with no recollection of how or why. Everyone who appears does so with only the clothes on their backs and any supernatural or superhuman abilities they posses severely weakened, there doesn’t seem to be a clear pattern of what they were doing before they were taken. This has continued on through today.”
He left the slide there for a moment, and consulted his journal for a second. “Now then, the next truly strange event that occurred took place eight weeks after the first attack. At least six people vanished without a trace for a full two days, before appearing again in seemingly random locations throughout the city with no memory of where they had been. Later investigation by several people showed that every person who was confirmed to have disappeared had suffered a crab bite before hand. This is when we began to suspect something was up. A pattern often denotes intelligence.”
Harry sighed and looked up, scanning the room. “One week after this, a third strange event occurred. The entire city went to sleep on Saturday night, and awoke on Monday morning with no recollection whatsoever of the Sunday in between. Every clock in the city indicated that an entire day had passed, yet not I talked to could remember it or could think of someone who remembered it. In the aftermath it seemed that everyone I spoke to suffered from a debilitating weakness that only gradually faded, and those with special abilities like myself were almost entirely unable to use them. In general the weakness seemed to last between three days and a week and a half. Also during this week there was an announcement that food shortages would go into effect, which will become important later.”
Harry paused to give people time to process. He knew this was a lot to take in, but a lot of these people were new, and needed more information to properly understand what they were dealing with. “I’m sorry, I know I’m kind of dumping this all on you, but if you’d like to consult my notes after I’ll be happy to share them with you. This is as basic a background as I can give. So moving on, thirteen weeks after Big Mommy’s first attack, and four weeks after rationing was implemented, the supply center’s scavenging teams found a supermarket fully stocked with food, none of which showed any signs of decay. I only got there after it was cleaned out,”
Here Harry switched out the calendar for a photo of an empty supermarket, “but my inspection didn’t suggest any supernatural influences on the food. The food itself was carefully inspected by multiple people, and no one could find anything unusual about it. At the time we just counted ourselves lucky to have fresh fruit and other foods, but later evidence would suggest there was more to it.”
Harry put the calendar back up and moved forward to the next date marked down. “Now then, one week after food was found, a failed attack on Big Mommy resulted in the loss of most of our food stores, raising fear of general hunger. Then, only two weeks after that, several individuals were able to find a huge stockpile of food located in Grand Central Station, enough to last two months. Like the supermarket, this was odd, but it was possible this was just where some survivors had stockpiled their food.”
Reaching into the pile, Harry slid in a picture of a street wall, with the words, ‘NO FOOD, NO HOPE, TWO MONTHS AND COUNTING,’ written on it with spray paint. “This was also found written all around Madison Square Garden that week, and proves to be disturbingly prophetic.”
He then switched the picture of the graffiti for one of a crumpled piece of paper . “The next event happened a week after this, when a second larger group of people were abducted. This incident differed from the previous one for three reasons. One, among the abducted was everyone in the city at that time with supernatural healing abilities.” Here was the only part of his talk where Harry stretched the truth. Sora had asked him to keep the information about how only certain people could heal crab bites a secret, and Harry didn’t want to betray the boy’s trust. “Two, they were taken for a much longer period of time, only returning halfway through the next week. Finally, the third and most important difference was that this time one of the people taken returned with the slip of paper I’ve posted a picture of up there. This was the first solid clue we had, and gives significant evidence to the idea that there is an organized intelligence behind everything that has happened in the city.”
He took the note off the projector, and replaced it with a second one that read:
‘THIS MESSAGE IS CLASSIFIED
UNIT H85244
SPECIAL SECTION CFP-TCI
PRIORITY ONE REQUEST COORDINATES/STATUS RE:
CV-102
CV-108
CV-109
TRANSMISSION IN THE BLINDZONE: I.D. REQUIRED
REQUEST IMMEDIATE RESPONSE
END TRANSMISSION’
“This note was broadcast on all computers, shortly followed by the same message in Morse code. The repetition of the number CV-108 prompted myself and several others to look into the USS Intrepid, an aircraft carrier that was serving as a museum, on the basis of its designation CV-11. A group of us started exploring the craft, including two individuals who had been abducted previously. We were unfortunately unable to find any hard evidence before Big Mommy sank the boat, but in the time we were there, the two previous abductees reported feeling vaguely like they had been there before.”
Harry paused and pulled a small water bottle from under the podium, taking a sip before moving forward. “One week after this occurred, a group of people gathered fish killed by the Intrepid, and using a super potent poison used them as bate to lure in and kill Big Mommy. The monster was dead for at least a full day, allowing several people myself included to take samples, before we once again awoke to discover we had missed an entire day, and that the monster had been either revived, or its corpse disposed of and replaced with another. One other important detail here is that I used an ability called the Sight, which were I come from allows a wizard to see the world as it truly is. It can be very hard to interpret, but can reveal things nothing else can. I know some of you are probably skeptical about magic, but for the sake of completion I’ll share what I saw.
Closing his eyes, Harry called up the image of Clover’s corpse, as fresh in his memory as when he first gazed upon it. He proceeded to describe the image exactly how he remembered it.
That done, he opened his eyes again and said, “I’m sure most of you are getting antsy at this point, and tempted to throw fruit, but I promise we’re almost at the home stretch. Also, we don’t have any fruit. Now, the weekend after Big Mommy’s death and resurrection, we awoke to find we had missed Sunday, which marks the third time this has happened, and the second time that week. Worse, all of our food stores were gone, and the heat and water had been cut off. Seeing as by that point we were at the beginning of December that was very bad news.”
Harry reached to one side and grabbed another sheet to put on the projector. “It was a week before the heat and power came back on, but we were still almost out of food. Furthermore, there were strange noised coming from underground. Deciding to investigate, several teams went into the subways to see what they could find. One of these teams discovered This letter in a cleared out space.”
Harry replaced the letter with photos taken of the room in which it was found, before returning to the letter. “Afterward, several individuals, including myself and Hitsugaya Toshiro, noticed patterns in the note that seems to suggest it is a list of locations. These patterns are why I have called you here today.”
Taking a deep breath, Harry pressed forward. “I’m sure most of you know the rest. On Christmas day we discovered several large crates of supplies left in Times Square, then a third set of disappearances occurred the week after Christmas. At least one of the people abducted had strange marks on their wrist, and I can’t be positive, but I suspect they were experiencing lowered inhibitions.” Harry showed a picture of the marks on Yellow’s wrists, blown up so that no one could identify whose arm that was. “If anyone else was among those abducted or know someone who was, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know if anyone else experienced these symptoms.”
Fighting the urge to sigh in relief, Harry said, “That pretty much brings us up to today, aside from the appearance of the second monster and the fourth set of disappearances that I’m sure everyone knows about. Now, why don’t you stretch your legs for a few minutes and finish any doodles you might have started in your notebooks, and I can go into what I think we should do next.”
Harry poked his head out surreptitiously, scanning the crowd. Not everyone had come, but enough that he figured it would be worth getting started. They could potentially fill in the others later, but Harry didn’t want to keep everyone hanging for too long.
Making sure he had everything, the wizard took a deep breath, before striding out onto the small stage, doing his best to look like he knew what he was doing. Settling his slides down, he waited a minute or two for people to settle down. Clearing his throat and speaking loudly Harry said, “I’m not the best at this kind of thing, so you’ll have to forgive me if this is a bit more causal than you’re used to. I’ve asked you all here today for two reasons. The first is to bring you all up to speed on my investigation into the forces that have brought us to, and are keeping us here in Manhattan. The second is to discuss a plan I have formulated, based off the information I have gathered, to lean more about the people behind this. I cannot stress enough that what is said in this room, has to stay in this room, or at the very least, has to stay off the network, and only be shared among people you trust. Right now whoever is keeping us here holds all the cards, has every advantage, and has the ability to abduct us seemingly at will. Posting our plans, even in code or behind locks, is as sure to reveal them as shouting them from the rooftops. Surprise is our only possible advantage; we need to make it count.”
Harry futzed with the projector for a moment, before managing to convince it to fulfill its function and display a calendar of the year with a number of dates circled on the white screen. “Now then, what I’m trying to show here with my super advanced Jr. High technology, is a timeline of the strange events that have taken place in Manhattan since the monster Big Mommy first appeared. As near as I can determine, in the two weeks following the attack people from other parts of the world, and indeed other worlds entirely, found themselves pulled into Manhattan, with no recollection of how or why. Everyone who appears does so with only the clothes on their backs and any supernatural or superhuman abilities they posses severely weakened, there doesn’t seem to be a clear pattern of what they were doing before they were taken. This has continued on through today.”
He left the slide there for a moment, and consulted his journal for a second. “Now then, the next truly strange event that occurred took place eight weeks after the first attack. At least six people vanished without a trace for a full two days, before appearing again in seemingly random locations throughout the city with no memory of where they had been. Later investigation by several people showed that every person who was confirmed to have disappeared had suffered a crab bite before hand. This is when we began to suspect something was up. A pattern often denotes intelligence.”
Harry sighed and looked up, scanning the room. “One week after this, a third strange event occurred. The entire city went to sleep on Saturday night, and awoke on Monday morning with no recollection whatsoever of the Sunday in between. Every clock in the city indicated that an entire day had passed, yet not I talked to could remember it or could think of someone who remembered it. In the aftermath it seemed that everyone I spoke to suffered from a debilitating weakness that only gradually faded, and those with special abilities like myself were almost entirely unable to use them. In general the weakness seemed to last between three days and a week and a half. Also during this week there was an announcement that food shortages would go into effect, which will become important later.”
Harry paused to give people time to process. He knew this was a lot to take in, but a lot of these people were new, and needed more information to properly understand what they were dealing with. “I’m sorry, I know I’m kind of dumping this all on you, but if you’d like to consult my notes after I’ll be happy to share them with you. This is as basic a background as I can give. So moving on, thirteen weeks after Big Mommy’s first attack, and four weeks after rationing was implemented, the supply center’s scavenging teams found a supermarket fully stocked with food, none of which showed any signs of decay. I only got there after it was cleaned out,”
Here Harry switched out the calendar for a photo of an empty supermarket, “but my inspection didn’t suggest any supernatural influences on the food. The food itself was carefully inspected by multiple people, and no one could find anything unusual about it. At the time we just counted ourselves lucky to have fresh fruit and other foods, but later evidence would suggest there was more to it.”
Harry put the calendar back up and moved forward to the next date marked down. “Now then, one week after food was found, a failed attack on Big Mommy resulted in the loss of most of our food stores, raising fear of general hunger. Then, only two weeks after that, several individuals were able to find a huge stockpile of food located in Grand Central Station, enough to last two months. Like the supermarket, this was odd, but it was possible this was just where some survivors had stockpiled their food.”
Reaching into the pile, Harry slid in a picture of a street wall, with the words, ‘NO FOOD, NO HOPE, TWO MONTHS AND COUNTING,’ written on it with spray paint. “This was also found written all around Madison Square Garden that week, and proves to be disturbingly prophetic.”
He then switched the picture of the graffiti for one of a crumpled piece of paper . “The next event happened a week after this, when a second larger group of people were abducted. This incident differed from the previous one for three reasons. One, among the abducted was everyone in the city at that time with supernatural healing abilities.” Here was the only part of his talk where Harry stretched the truth. Sora had asked him to keep the information about how only certain people could heal crab bites a secret, and Harry didn’t want to betray the boy’s trust. “Two, they were taken for a much longer period of time, only returning halfway through the next week. Finally, the third and most important difference was that this time one of the people taken returned with the slip of paper I’ve posted a picture of up there. This was the first solid clue we had, and gives significant evidence to the idea that there is an organized intelligence behind everything that has happened in the city.”
He took the note off the projector, and replaced it with a second one that read:
‘THIS MESSAGE IS CLASSIFIED
UNIT H85244
SPECIAL SECTION CFP-TCI
PRIORITY ONE REQUEST COORDINATES/STATUS RE:
CV-102
CV-108
CV-109
TRANSMISSION IN THE BLINDZONE: I.D. REQUIRED
REQUEST IMMEDIATE RESPONSE
END TRANSMISSION’
“This note was broadcast on all computers, shortly followed by the same message in Morse code. The repetition of the number CV-108 prompted myself and several others to look into the USS Intrepid, an aircraft carrier that was serving as a museum, on the basis of its designation CV-11. A group of us started exploring the craft, including two individuals who had been abducted previously. We were unfortunately unable to find any hard evidence before Big Mommy sank the boat, but in the time we were there, the two previous abductees reported feeling vaguely like they had been there before.”
Harry paused and pulled a small water bottle from under the podium, taking a sip before moving forward. “One week after this occurred, a group of people gathered fish killed by the Intrepid, and using a super potent poison used them as bate to lure in and kill Big Mommy. The monster was dead for at least a full day, allowing several people myself included to take samples, before we once again awoke to discover we had missed an entire day, and that the monster had been either revived, or its corpse disposed of and replaced with another. One other important detail here is that I used an ability called the Sight, which were I come from allows a wizard to see the world as it truly is. It can be very hard to interpret, but can reveal things nothing else can. I know some of you are probably skeptical about magic, but for the sake of completion I’ll share what I saw.
Closing his eyes, Harry called up the image of Clover’s corpse, as fresh in his memory as when he first gazed upon it. He proceeded to describe the image exactly how he remembered it.
That done, he opened his eyes again and said, “I’m sure most of you are getting antsy at this point, and tempted to throw fruit, but I promise we’re almost at the home stretch. Also, we don’t have any fruit. Now, the weekend after Big Mommy’s death and resurrection, we awoke to find we had missed Sunday, which marks the third time this has happened, and the second time that week. Worse, all of our food stores were gone, and the heat and water had been cut off. Seeing as by that point we were at the beginning of December that was very bad news.”
Harry reached to one side and grabbed another sheet to put on the projector. “It was a week before the heat and power came back on, but we were still almost out of food. Furthermore, there were strange noised coming from underground. Deciding to investigate, several teams went into the subways to see what they could find. One of these teams discovered This letter in a cleared out space.”
Harry replaced the letter with photos taken of the room in which it was found, before returning to the letter. “Afterward, several individuals, including myself and Hitsugaya Toshiro, noticed patterns in the note that seems to suggest it is a list of locations. These patterns are why I have called you here today.”
Taking a deep breath, Harry pressed forward. “I’m sure most of you know the rest. On Christmas day we discovered several large crates of supplies left in Times Square, then a third set of disappearances occurred the week after Christmas. At least one of the people abducted had strange marks on their wrist, and I can’t be positive, but I suspect they were experiencing lowered inhibitions.” Harry showed a picture of the marks on Yellow’s wrists, blown up so that no one could identify whose arm that was. “If anyone else was among those abducted or know someone who was, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know if anyone else experienced these symptoms.”
Fighting the urge to sigh in relief, Harry said, “That pretty much brings us up to today, aside from the appearance of the second monster and the fourth set of disappearances that I’m sure everyone knows about. Now, why don’t you stretch your legs for a few minutes and finish any doodles you might have started in your notebooks, and I can go into what I think we should do next.”