APPLICATION: Original - Thomas Evans
This application has been ACCEPTED.
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OC(Original Character) Application
PLAYER INFO
NAME: Fey
CURRENT CHARACTERS, if any: Sam Vimes/Stoneface (stonyfaced), Usopp/Sniper (longnosedliar) and Simon Bellamy (notamelonfucker)
CHARACTER INFO
CHARACTER NAME: Thom(as) Evans
PERSONALITY: The first thing you need to know about Thom is that he’s deeply manipulative. He always has been, and always will be. He lets people see only what he wants them to see, and prides himself on being deceptively disarming. That said, the main façade he presents is that of a charming young man with a contagious smile. He’s the type of crook people look at and label a lovable rascal instead of a dirty, double crossing criminal. He’s long since convinced himself that all he needs or wants is alcohol, women and money.
In reality, Thom is a coward and a cheat. His way of dealing with problems is to simply run away. He fears more intimate connections than the ones he makes to drink with and then con. He becomes personally affronted when those who have been alerted to his criminal tendencies accuse him of being evil. He’s terrified of intimate relationships that consist of more than one night stands and boozing and does nearly anything to prevent them from happening. He prides himself on not having to resort to actually harming people - it keeps his skin intact as well - but is vaguely aware of the fact that his livelihood robs others of theirs.
Despite this, he does have very real affection and compassion. He believes very firmly that it’s best to have more friends than enemies and dislikes being alone. Once somebody creeps underneath his skin, he has two options: run, or embrace it. In crisis, he can be slow acting if he must choose between saving his own skin and somebody else’s.
Still, this is the best way to sum him up: a cocky bastard with strong words and weak knees.
OC BACKGROUND: Thom was born in 1870 to middle class parents who longed to be wealthy. They consistently sacrificed more reasonable things in order to look wealthier than they were, and although Thom lived a fairly comfortable life, he found that he wanted more.
He also found he was immortal. The tale that had pervaded history across the years told him this much: there were others out there. 12 others, to be exact. It read that thirteen people were born at exactly the same time every decade to save the world from complete and utter destruction despair. Now, Thom quite liked his world, but found that he really didn’t feel like taking that large of a part in it and therefore vowed to keep his nose out of it.
He took advantage of his abilities of hoodwinking and disguise to con his way to fortune through the ages, never staying in the same place for more than a year or two. There were a few instances when he recalled the prophecy - both world wars and the cold war, to be exact - but was too fearful of them to do much else besides hide in the basement and silently thank whatever God was out there that he couldn’t die from starvation.
He only began his truly deplorable career choices in the 20’s, where he could find everything he wanted quite easily, including the flapper girls. Especially the flapper girls. Those were great years; people full of hope were hopelessly easy to trick. Then 1929 came, and everything was shot to hell. He never quite accepted the decline of the 20s, clinging onto old ideals. And old hats.
Year 1934, Thom found a woman. He stayed with her for five years and married her with a cheap ring and a filthy minister, but it was marriage. Then she got pregnant, and the war started really going, and Thom became afraid of consequences. The wrinkles on her face, the stretch marks on her belly, the thought that this family would soon be bombed to high hell. So he did what he was best at. He made sure that he had good insurance and one hell of a will, stepped in front of a speeding car and disappeared from her life forever. It was a pain running out of the autopsy room, all split lip and bloody face, but he managed it. He was immortal, wasn’t he?
He hid out for most of WWII, scared to death that the others like him would come and find him, force him into action. They didn’t.
Skip to year 1970, Seattle, where Thom was considering stealing a guy’s certificates and just running into Canada. Except they had no guns there. And they had funny accents. And they were cowardly bastards up there, but that meant he’d fit in just fine, right? Regardless, it was while he was contemplating making his move that he met Della. A waitress-slash-writer like every other talentless hack out there, all red hair and sunny smile. Thom liked her right away, but had a nasty realization after spending the night and finding out that he didn’t run off while she was still in that post-coital glow, that she was there, in bed with him, calling him sweetheart. Then she called him an asshole and revealed, quite unpleasantly, that she was like him. And that, incidentally, there were 11 of them congregated in Seattle right now, including Thom, who would most certainly help them, wouldn’t he?
As it turned out, they didn’t gather together because of a threat that they needed to save the world from, but because there was none. The last 13 that had been born couldn’t keep up with the times, he learned, and faded into obscurity, either drowning themselves so thoroughly that they actually managed to die, or still wandered the street in the fog of lunacy and madness. And, the group in front of him said, quite firmly, they didn’t want that to happen to them.
So they wanted to make their own threat. If they were saviours of the world, nobody out there could let them become like those. Right? All they needed was to find the two others. Seeing no other way out of it, Thom’s hand was forced-he had to agree.
The other two were quite insane - not to say that the others weren’t - and in Thom’s opinion, that made it a damn pain to track them down. Still, the group managed to lay their hands on them and get them to agree. And for all the effort Thom had put in to avoid this, he liked the guys now. Most of them.
The family he never knew he had melted down his cruel façade, right? It was too goddamn cliché. But no, he still liked being a con and tricking people and making a general nuisance out of himself, but he learned that wasn’t possible anymore, not after what he did.
When they did it, they did it too well. The world was sent into disarray (which, according to Thom, seemed a bit much for just the 13 of them) and they were left to deal with the aftermath. Every evening, when he closed his eyes to sleep, he wished none of it had happened, that the world stayed as it was, that he didn’t have to deal with it anymore.
Then he woke up in a giant fishbowl and found out that he didn’t.
After being greeted by Dumpling, Grift made his way into Edensphere and began to carve out a life for himself. He began as a bartender at Smoke’s and met a man named Chapel while looting from the Wilderness. At around the same time, he also struck up a friendship of sorts with Juliet. He existed peacefully and relatively happily until the great fire came about. Frightened that God was somehow trying to destroy them, Grift ended up pushing survivors out of his path in order to maintain his own survival and was able to ignore the guilt until he came upon the corpse of Chapel at which point he was startled by his own guilt.
Once Chapel came back, Grift was even more determined to keep up their friendship and they moved in together. Soon afterwards, when Smoke disappeared, Grift reluctantly took up the mantle of the bar. He didn’t particularly want to do something so permanent, but soon found that the job was almost perfectly tailored to him. He enjoyed the authority and the affluence that came with it and soon it became his home. He also enjoyed the company of the workers there, no matter who they may be, though he had a special soft spot for Kagerou.
He then gained a memory of his own shapeshifting and managed to puzzle out how his powers worked. From that moment on, he gained enjoyment from shapeshifting and spying and sleeping around. After hearing about Section 4 Housing, he tried out and managed to get a job as a greeter. During the next little while, he struck up several more friendships. He and Lyle bonded over guns, he and Sumi bonded over poetry and he and Nikki bonded at the bar. Just as it seemed as if Grift had become comfortable with his lot, he ran into the unpleasant surprise of Chapel disappearing on the one year anniversary of his birth here. Once again, Chapel managed to startle emotions out of Grift and he spent a night holding a wake for his dear friend and began to rethink his place in the world of Edensphere. While he grieved, Ambassador visited him and mocked him - awakening a corrosive relationship between the two - and Qi came to visit him and they chatted about philosophy.
Weary, Grift took action. First, he met up with Munnin who taunted him with hints of their existence. Afraid of death, Grift did not take the bite, but the damage had been done. His mental state was slowly deteriorating. His friends were slowly going quiet and he could feel the life he had developed slipping through his fingers as well as the fact that he was haunted by his past. When an hourglass was fastened around his neck, he went so far as to attempt to shoot it off.
After some time to ruminate to himself, Grift finally snapped after Munnin broke off contact and therefore broke off the tantalizing appeal of more information about the world he was in. He wrote an outright threat over the journals for someone to come and get him and Orca was all too happy to oblige. After being speared by his harpoon, Orca took note of Grift’s healing capabilities and made him an offer: join the CPA or perish. Grift chose the former, but he had his own thoughts on the matter.
Those thoughts being confronting Fugue. Once he confronted Fugue and tried to scare him into admitting the truth, he was startled by several branches spearing his body. As his radio memory played, Grift bled to death.
I wasn’t sure where to put this, but in lieu of losing a single important memory, I’d like for Grift to have several lost memories so that everything is just a bit spotty.
The list of those forgotten: Eternity, Veda, Medium, Spirit, Roswell, Lucy, Cheers, Lampwick, Thing, Aim, Goose, Rain, Ash, Sage, Prince, Peachblossom, Blackjack, Crow, Eagle, Fred and various NPCs.
ABILITIES:
Immortality: Thom is extremely hard to kill. He can’t die of starvation, and his wounds heal at an accelerated rate. If he gets badly enough hurt, he will die, but it must consist of a constant, aggressive barrage, being held underwater for an extensive period, being impaled straight in the heart, etc. It takes more persistence than anything else.
Magic: The way he uses magic is in very small, insignificant ways.
Moving objects: Provided the objects are close to each other, he can swap their places or move them slightly. This is used for magic tricks, or in the case of the fire, pushing obstacles slightly out of the way.
Fire: He can create fire (this skill has not yet been unlocked) but again it is insignificant-he can only make a tiny ball in his hand. It’s akin to having a very good lighter, but flashier.
Shapeshifting: This is the big one. Provided his hand touches that area of his body, he can change shape, colour and his size. He cannot completely replicate another, failing at minute details, but knows enough to disguise himself from day to do. This is the one he used the most often. I forgot to add this on last time, but I’ll add it on now: he can change back to his own form at any time, but he has to start all over again to take on a different form.
GAME INFO
EDENSPHERE NAME: Grift
BIRTHDAY LOG: Sure!
DREAM:
There is a curtain of blood falling from him, he can see. He is just where he left off, sharp branches impaling what feels like every part of him. It is painful, terribly painful, but he belatedly realizes that he cannot scream, for one of the branches is embedded in his throat. Perhaps screaming would not help his situation, but having the option would be appreciated. Stress relief, he thinks with what would have been a hollow laugh if he could only muster a sound. Unlike the way he died in real life, however, there is no city. There is only miles and miles of bleak nothingness, a desert and a clear blue sky. Is this what hell looks like? Perhaps solitude is hell, he realizes. Even worse than the pain is the despair he can feel welling up in his chest and weighing down every inch of his body. He does not think he has ever felt such a thing so profoundly before, and he tips his head further back. The wretched smell of his own blood and bile crawls up his nostrils and curls in his skull.
He stares up at the sky, questioning what he did to deserve such agony, and realizes that he can feel the sun bright on his face, unhindered by the glass of the sphere. He is in immeasurable amounts of pain, but he is free. A gurgle escapes him, though he suspects it’s just the sound of blood trickling through an air pocket in his throat, which is split wide open. He heals over the wounds, but they’re just pressed wider and wider. He is sabotaging himself, but he is a free man. If he could, he would smile.
Then suddenly, he’s in control of his limbs again. He takes a deep breath, and rips his neck away from the offending branch first. Then his hands, then his legs and feet, then his torso. The tearing of flesh and muscle and bone is an awful sound, but he soldiers on. By the end of it, he is lying heaving on the dirt and watching in morbid fascination as the rips in his body slowly restore themselves. He opens his hand, stretches it, closes it again. Open, close. Open, close. His smile is wooden, but real. His cradle of branches remains, spattered with his blood and bile. He notes that there were bugs crawling all over it that he never managed to notice, wonders if there are any trapped within him now. He can't help but think that if they were, he would feel it; he can keenly feel the sewing of his muscles, the blood warming his cold body, so why not a bug?
Dream-like, he rises to his feet and staggers across the wasteland until he comes across a house. He throws the door open, and sees a rich mahogany desk. A fat man sits behind it, a cigar clenched in his yellowing teeth, and he is handed a hat and a gun. He takes both and saunters out the door, only to be greeted with what can only be called an old fashioned gun-fight. He takes part in it gleefully, adrenaline shooting through his veins, and cares not for his own safety; why be afraid when he is a man that can come back from the dead? The skies above are grey with pollution, and the buildings are tall and bleak, but it feels so much realer than anything he has known before.
He hoists his gun and begins to shoot, but somehow, all sound fades away and is replaced with a thundering piano. As sound slips away, so does colour. There is nothing but the feel of the gun, warm under his hands and jerking with every shot and the vision of life sliding away from these men’s bodies. Once the fight has been completed, he brushes off his comrades and goes strolling down the street. His life is still in black and white, devoid of colour, and now he can hardly see the horizon. The pavement turns to nothing but simple lines underneath him, but he forges on, whistling along to the music under his breath.
He turns a corner, and sees Cross Punisher laying on the pavement beneath him. After a moment, he picks it up, and then looks up only to see Chapel standing in front of him, congenial smile on his face, but he notices that his clothes are still ragged from the fire, and there is a burn covering half of his face. The music fades away.
“I believe that’s mine,” Chapel says.
He stares at the other man, voiceless. Behind him is the Sphere, and it is loud and colourful, and its leaves and grass are not green, but red, red, red. He can see faces behind Chapel, drifting like ghosts-Nikki, Sumi, Kagerou, Lyle…
“Well?” Chapel asks. “Aren’t you going to return it?”
Grift stares behind him, then looks at Chapel. “I don’t want to go back,” he whispers. “Allow me to hold onto this. I want to stay here.”
“You need to return it. Grift, what is behind you is not real. It’s not even there anymore.”
Grift’s brow wrinkles, and he places one hand on his breast, where he can still feel the ache of the branch. “Ah, my friend,” he says quietly. “But it is my nothingness. What is behind you?”
“A life.”
“Not my life. Will you not even permit me to die?”
“No rest for the wicked, right?” Chapel says, and his arms cross the threshold between them to grab onto the Cross Punisher, and before he knows it, Grift is falling down, down, down, into those wretched leaves of red. Soon, all he can see is red, and then he sees nothing at all.
JOURNAL SAMPLE: [For those that still remember Grift’s handwriting, it’s just a bit shakier and slanted than ever, though it seems he’s making a concentrated effort to keep his script as graceful as always.]
It seems that this place feels the need to return the crucified back to life. A pointless endeavor, if you were to ask me, though no one did. It does rather ruin the shock of death if you’re only to pop back to life again, though stumbling out of a cocoon naked isn’t my idea of a good time. Bleeding to death is dreadful, by the by, I really don’t recommend it.
Ah, but now I should be on to introductions, for I do not expect that there are many that recall my writing. I was here once before by the name of Grift, bartender and greeter extraordinaire, though it seems I will be starting from scratch once more. I fear that my memory is a bit [there’s a thoughtful tap here] spotty. We shall see what I do and do not remember.
Would it be rude to ask if anyone happened to hold onto one of my hats for me? I’m asking anyway. I don’t feel properly dressed without one. A hat on my head and a stiff drink will do the trick for today.
-Grift
ASPIRATIONS: I’d like to just enjoy the rest of the game! Grift has progressed to something far more intense and crazy than he was when I first brought him in, so it’s also a nice way of experimenting with how this place could change people to such an extent. Plus, Chapel. Rad bromance, yo.
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OC(Original Character) Application
PLAYER INFO
NAME: Fey
CURRENT CHARACTERS, if any: Sam Vimes/Stoneface (stonyfaced), Usopp/Sniper (longnosedliar) and Simon Bellamy (notamelonfucker)
CHARACTER INFO
CHARACTER NAME: Thom(as) Evans
PERSONALITY: The first thing you need to know about Thom is that he’s deeply manipulative. He always has been, and always will be. He lets people see only what he wants them to see, and prides himself on being deceptively disarming. That said, the main façade he presents is that of a charming young man with a contagious smile. He’s the type of crook people look at and label a lovable rascal instead of a dirty, double crossing criminal. He’s long since convinced himself that all he needs or wants is alcohol, women and money.
In reality, Thom is a coward and a cheat. His way of dealing with problems is to simply run away. He fears more intimate connections than the ones he makes to drink with and then con. He becomes personally affronted when those who have been alerted to his criminal tendencies accuse him of being evil. He’s terrified of intimate relationships that consist of more than one night stands and boozing and does nearly anything to prevent them from happening. He prides himself on not having to resort to actually harming people - it keeps his skin intact as well - but is vaguely aware of the fact that his livelihood robs others of theirs.
Despite this, he does have very real affection and compassion. He believes very firmly that it’s best to have more friends than enemies and dislikes being alone. Once somebody creeps underneath his skin, he has two options: run, or embrace it. In crisis, he can be slow acting if he must choose between saving his own skin and somebody else’s.
Still, this is the best way to sum him up: a cocky bastard with strong words and weak knees.
OC BACKGROUND: Thom was born in 1870 to middle class parents who longed to be wealthy. They consistently sacrificed more reasonable things in order to look wealthier than they were, and although Thom lived a fairly comfortable life, he found that he wanted more.
He also found he was immortal. The tale that had pervaded history across the years told him this much: there were others out there. 12 others, to be exact. It read that thirteen people were born at exactly the same time every decade to save the world from complete and utter destruction despair. Now, Thom quite liked his world, but found that he really didn’t feel like taking that large of a part in it and therefore vowed to keep his nose out of it.
He took advantage of his abilities of hoodwinking and disguise to con his way to fortune through the ages, never staying in the same place for more than a year or two. There were a few instances when he recalled the prophecy - both world wars and the cold war, to be exact - but was too fearful of them to do much else besides hide in the basement and silently thank whatever God was out there that he couldn’t die from starvation.
He only began his truly deplorable career choices in the 20’s, where he could find everything he wanted quite easily, including the flapper girls. Especially the flapper girls. Those were great years; people full of hope were hopelessly easy to trick. Then 1929 came, and everything was shot to hell. He never quite accepted the decline of the 20s, clinging onto old ideals. And old hats.
Year 1934, Thom found a woman. He stayed with her for five years and married her with a cheap ring and a filthy minister, but it was marriage. Then she got pregnant, and the war started really going, and Thom became afraid of consequences. The wrinkles on her face, the stretch marks on her belly, the thought that this family would soon be bombed to high hell. So he did what he was best at. He made sure that he had good insurance and one hell of a will, stepped in front of a speeding car and disappeared from her life forever. It was a pain running out of the autopsy room, all split lip and bloody face, but he managed it. He was immortal, wasn’t he?
He hid out for most of WWII, scared to death that the others like him would come and find him, force him into action. They didn’t.
Skip to year 1970, Seattle, where Thom was considering stealing a guy’s certificates and just running into Canada. Except they had no guns there. And they had funny accents. And they were cowardly bastards up there, but that meant he’d fit in just fine, right? Regardless, it was while he was contemplating making his move that he met Della. A waitress-slash-writer like every other talentless hack out there, all red hair and sunny smile. Thom liked her right away, but had a nasty realization after spending the night and finding out that he didn’t run off while she was still in that post-coital glow, that she was there, in bed with him, calling him sweetheart. Then she called him an asshole and revealed, quite unpleasantly, that she was like him. And that, incidentally, there were 11 of them congregated in Seattle right now, including Thom, who would most certainly help them, wouldn’t he?
As it turned out, they didn’t gather together because of a threat that they needed to save the world from, but because there was none. The last 13 that had been born couldn’t keep up with the times, he learned, and faded into obscurity, either drowning themselves so thoroughly that they actually managed to die, or still wandered the street in the fog of lunacy and madness. And, the group in front of him said, quite firmly, they didn’t want that to happen to them.
So they wanted to make their own threat. If they were saviours of the world, nobody out there could let them become like those. Right? All they needed was to find the two others. Seeing no other way out of it, Thom’s hand was forced-he had to agree.
The other two were quite insane - not to say that the others weren’t - and in Thom’s opinion, that made it a damn pain to track them down. Still, the group managed to lay their hands on them and get them to agree. And for all the effort Thom had put in to avoid this, he liked the guys now. Most of them.
The family he never knew he had melted down his cruel façade, right? It was too goddamn cliché. But no, he still liked being a con and tricking people and making a general nuisance out of himself, but he learned that wasn’t possible anymore, not after what he did.
When they did it, they did it too well. The world was sent into disarray (which, according to Thom, seemed a bit much for just the 13 of them) and they were left to deal with the aftermath. Every evening, when he closed his eyes to sleep, he wished none of it had happened, that the world stayed as it was, that he didn’t have to deal with it anymore.
Then he woke up in a giant fishbowl and found out that he didn’t.
After being greeted by Dumpling, Grift made his way into Edensphere and began to carve out a life for himself. He began as a bartender at Smoke’s and met a man named Chapel while looting from the Wilderness. At around the same time, he also struck up a friendship of sorts with Juliet. He existed peacefully and relatively happily until the great fire came about. Frightened that God was somehow trying to destroy them, Grift ended up pushing survivors out of his path in order to maintain his own survival and was able to ignore the guilt until he came upon the corpse of Chapel at which point he was startled by his own guilt.
Once Chapel came back, Grift was even more determined to keep up their friendship and they moved in together. Soon afterwards, when Smoke disappeared, Grift reluctantly took up the mantle of the bar. He didn’t particularly want to do something so permanent, but soon found that the job was almost perfectly tailored to him. He enjoyed the authority and the affluence that came with it and soon it became his home. He also enjoyed the company of the workers there, no matter who they may be, though he had a special soft spot for Kagerou.
He then gained a memory of his own shapeshifting and managed to puzzle out how his powers worked. From that moment on, he gained enjoyment from shapeshifting and spying and sleeping around. After hearing about Section 4 Housing, he tried out and managed to get a job as a greeter. During the next little while, he struck up several more friendships. He and Lyle bonded over guns, he and Sumi bonded over poetry and he and Nikki bonded at the bar. Just as it seemed as if Grift had become comfortable with his lot, he ran into the unpleasant surprise of Chapel disappearing on the one year anniversary of his birth here. Once again, Chapel managed to startle emotions out of Grift and he spent a night holding a wake for his dear friend and began to rethink his place in the world of Edensphere. While he grieved, Ambassador visited him and mocked him - awakening a corrosive relationship between the two - and Qi came to visit him and they chatted about philosophy.
Weary, Grift took action. First, he met up with Munnin who taunted him with hints of their existence. Afraid of death, Grift did not take the bite, but the damage had been done. His mental state was slowly deteriorating. His friends were slowly going quiet and he could feel the life he had developed slipping through his fingers as well as the fact that he was haunted by his past. When an hourglass was fastened around his neck, he went so far as to attempt to shoot it off.
After some time to ruminate to himself, Grift finally snapped after Munnin broke off contact and therefore broke off the tantalizing appeal of more information about the world he was in. He wrote an outright threat over the journals for someone to come and get him and Orca was all too happy to oblige. After being speared by his harpoon, Orca took note of Grift’s healing capabilities and made him an offer: join the CPA or perish. Grift chose the former, but he had his own thoughts on the matter.
Those thoughts being confronting Fugue. Once he confronted Fugue and tried to scare him into admitting the truth, he was startled by several branches spearing his body. As his radio memory played, Grift bled to death.
I wasn’t sure where to put this, but in lieu of losing a single important memory, I’d like for Grift to have several lost memories so that everything is just a bit spotty.
The list of those forgotten: Eternity, Veda, Medium, Spirit, Roswell, Lucy, Cheers, Lampwick, Thing, Aim, Goose, Rain, Ash, Sage, Prince, Peachblossom, Blackjack, Crow, Eagle, Fred and various NPCs.
ABILITIES:
Immortality: Thom is extremely hard to kill. He can’t die of starvation, and his wounds heal at an accelerated rate. If he gets badly enough hurt, he will die, but it must consist of a constant, aggressive barrage, being held underwater for an extensive period, being impaled straight in the heart, etc. It takes more persistence than anything else.
Magic: The way he uses magic is in very small, insignificant ways.
Moving objects: Provided the objects are close to each other, he can swap their places or move them slightly. This is used for magic tricks, or in the case of the fire, pushing obstacles slightly out of the way.
Fire: He can create fire (this skill has not yet been unlocked) but again it is insignificant-he can only make a tiny ball in his hand. It’s akin to having a very good lighter, but flashier.
Shapeshifting: This is the big one. Provided his hand touches that area of his body, he can change shape, colour and his size. He cannot completely replicate another, failing at minute details, but knows enough to disguise himself from day to do. This is the one he used the most often. I forgot to add this on last time, but I’ll add it on now: he can change back to his own form at any time, but he has to start all over again to take on a different form.
GAME INFO
EDENSPHERE NAME: Grift
BIRTHDAY LOG: Sure!
DREAM:
There is a curtain of blood falling from him, he can see. He is just where he left off, sharp branches impaling what feels like every part of him. It is painful, terribly painful, but he belatedly realizes that he cannot scream, for one of the branches is embedded in his throat. Perhaps screaming would not help his situation, but having the option would be appreciated. Stress relief, he thinks with what would have been a hollow laugh if he could only muster a sound. Unlike the way he died in real life, however, there is no city. There is only miles and miles of bleak nothingness, a desert and a clear blue sky. Is this what hell looks like? Perhaps solitude is hell, he realizes. Even worse than the pain is the despair he can feel welling up in his chest and weighing down every inch of his body. He does not think he has ever felt such a thing so profoundly before, and he tips his head further back. The wretched smell of his own blood and bile crawls up his nostrils and curls in his skull.
He stares up at the sky, questioning what he did to deserve such agony, and realizes that he can feel the sun bright on his face, unhindered by the glass of the sphere. He is in immeasurable amounts of pain, but he is free. A gurgle escapes him, though he suspects it’s just the sound of blood trickling through an air pocket in his throat, which is split wide open. He heals over the wounds, but they’re just pressed wider and wider. He is sabotaging himself, but he is a free man. If he could, he would smile.
Then suddenly, he’s in control of his limbs again. He takes a deep breath, and rips his neck away from the offending branch first. Then his hands, then his legs and feet, then his torso. The tearing of flesh and muscle and bone is an awful sound, but he soldiers on. By the end of it, he is lying heaving on the dirt and watching in morbid fascination as the rips in his body slowly restore themselves. He opens his hand, stretches it, closes it again. Open, close. Open, close. His smile is wooden, but real. His cradle of branches remains, spattered with his blood and bile. He notes that there were bugs crawling all over it that he never managed to notice, wonders if there are any trapped within him now. He can't help but think that if they were, he would feel it; he can keenly feel the sewing of his muscles, the blood warming his cold body, so why not a bug?
Dream-like, he rises to his feet and staggers across the wasteland until he comes across a house. He throws the door open, and sees a rich mahogany desk. A fat man sits behind it, a cigar clenched in his yellowing teeth, and he is handed a hat and a gun. He takes both and saunters out the door, only to be greeted with what can only be called an old fashioned gun-fight. He takes part in it gleefully, adrenaline shooting through his veins, and cares not for his own safety; why be afraid when he is a man that can come back from the dead? The skies above are grey with pollution, and the buildings are tall and bleak, but it feels so much realer than anything he has known before.
He hoists his gun and begins to shoot, but somehow, all sound fades away and is replaced with a thundering piano. As sound slips away, so does colour. There is nothing but the feel of the gun, warm under his hands and jerking with every shot and the vision of life sliding away from these men’s bodies. Once the fight has been completed, he brushes off his comrades and goes strolling down the street. His life is still in black and white, devoid of colour, and now he can hardly see the horizon. The pavement turns to nothing but simple lines underneath him, but he forges on, whistling along to the music under his breath.
He turns a corner, and sees Cross Punisher laying on the pavement beneath him. After a moment, he picks it up, and then looks up only to see Chapel standing in front of him, congenial smile on his face, but he notices that his clothes are still ragged from the fire, and there is a burn covering half of his face. The music fades away.
“I believe that’s mine,” Chapel says.
He stares at the other man, voiceless. Behind him is the Sphere, and it is loud and colourful, and its leaves and grass are not green, but red, red, red. He can see faces behind Chapel, drifting like ghosts-Nikki, Sumi, Kagerou, Lyle…
“Well?” Chapel asks. “Aren’t you going to return it?”
Grift stares behind him, then looks at Chapel. “I don’t want to go back,” he whispers. “Allow me to hold onto this. I want to stay here.”
“You need to return it. Grift, what is behind you is not real. It’s not even there anymore.”
Grift’s brow wrinkles, and he places one hand on his breast, where he can still feel the ache of the branch. “Ah, my friend,” he says quietly. “But it is my nothingness. What is behind you?”
“A life.”
“Not my life. Will you not even permit me to die?”
“No rest for the wicked, right?” Chapel says, and his arms cross the threshold between them to grab onto the Cross Punisher, and before he knows it, Grift is falling down, down, down, into those wretched leaves of red. Soon, all he can see is red, and then he sees nothing at all.
JOURNAL SAMPLE: [For those that still remember Grift’s handwriting, it’s just a bit shakier and slanted than ever, though it seems he’s making a concentrated effort to keep his script as graceful as always.]
It seems that this place feels the need to return the crucified back to life. A pointless endeavor, if you were to ask me, though no one did. It does rather ruin the shock of death if you’re only to pop back to life again, though stumbling out of a cocoon naked isn’t my idea of a good time. Bleeding to death is dreadful, by the by, I really don’t recommend it.
Ah, but now I should be on to introductions, for I do not expect that there are many that recall my writing. I was here once before by the name of Grift, bartender and greeter extraordinaire, though it seems I will be starting from scratch once more. I fear that my memory is a bit [there’s a thoughtful tap here] spotty. We shall see what I do and do not remember.
Would it be rude to ask if anyone happened to hold onto one of my hats for me? I’m asking anyway. I don’t feel properly dressed without one. A hat on my head and a stiff drink will do the trick for today.
-Grift
ASPIRATIONS: I’d like to just enjoy the rest of the game! Grift has progressed to something far more intense and crazy than he was when I first brought him in, so it’s also a nice way of experimenting with how this place could change people to such an extent. Plus, Chapel. Rad bromance, yo.