Ceasefire - The Way Out

[mockmods]

[And then you wake up.]

[The room is dimly lit and made of pitted, industrial metals. You sit up abruptly on- some sort of padded table or cart? There’s a caged structure of metal piping surrounding you like a low barrier, but it’s open on top. You might similarly have a moment of panic about the straps holding you down or the electrodes on your head, but they’re just velcro and lightly tacked on, respectively, and in no significant way prevent you from sitting bolt upright and getting onto your feet. A series of twenty one such tables ring the room at even intervals. All but one has an occupant.]

[However long it takes you to notice, there a twenty of you again. Patches, the Trusty, and Yaiba, the Legendary Bassist, are back among your number. Penny, unfortunately, seems to be missing. Whatever you were wearing to the trial, or at the time of your death, you are back in the clothing you wore when you initially arrived. If anyone checks, CAREFULLY PLEASE, they will find that any powers they may have been missing are back.]

[The room is lit well enough, and there are computer banks and monitors around all the walls, which look to have been monitoring your vitals until just this second. Wires and tubes lead from each table to the center of the room, where a low pool is filled with a thick, milky-looking liquid that looks incredibly disinviting to touch.]

[A door rests on each side of the room, a glowing hand-sized pad beside each.]

[Welcome back, Participants.]

[Now, what do you do?]

((One clarification - any active powers that require some kind of power source or connection from your home worlds will either be not active or severely weakened.))

Comments

[scratchitti]

[Just like the first day, Neku wakes up yelling. It's his Thing now. But once he calms down and realizes he's not exploded he gets up to explore with everyone else.

Well first he goes to check on Penny since he kinda exploded on her and also goes to retrieve his pins, MP3 Player/phones and phone from his... locker? But once all that's done (and he has said phones on playing music loud enough to kinda hear outside them) he goes to look at the giant... snot... pool.]

... so what, were we made of this... stuff?

[mockmods]

[It sure looks like a thicker version of the rapidly-disappearing stuff from the trial room, if he looked back in there.]

[And there are some wires and conduits leading to one thankfully-unexploded computer station that might be worth checking out.]

[scratchitti]

[Yeah he def saw it when he went in there to make sure Penny was okay. I would say he's reminded of the white blood androids have in the Alien movies but maybe best not to make refs when we're learning we're from a multiverse.

Instead, he follows the wires to the station Max didn't kaboom]

What do we have here...

[mockmods]

[This computer is actually active, for one thing.]

FLESH MONITORING
Active Gangers: 0
Ready Harnesses: 0

[And then a list of data on temperature and pH value that presumably link back to the vat of snot.]

[There's a line listing ambient electrical charge, currently registering as dangerously high but slowly ticking down.]

[scratchitti]

The Flesh... Gross.

[Michael mentioned the whole adding soul to the Flesh etcetc. Neku doesn't fully get it, but he's guessing the 'Gangers' might be them? Also thanks Electro, you do good work.

Anything else he can push for more info?]

[mockmods]

[There's a "harness status" option he can click through, which cycles through twenty-two diagrams and readouts for what look to be the tables you all woke up on, reading as varying degrees of inactive to fully inoperable (good work, Electro).]

[If the general scales indicated are accurate, there's twenty normal, human-sized harnesses, one sized to a giant crocodilian, and one that's more just a mini little endstand on which, theoretically, a small toy robot might have been meant to plug in had things not gone completely to shit.]

[scratchitti]

[Completely to shit indeed. So Hodgepode really was supposed to be part of this from the start... just not the way he did.

What else we got?]

[mockmods]

[Looks like that's it for now, unless you'd really like to know the proper pH balance for liquid Flesh.]

[in4apounding]

NEKU-!

[Yeah, you're getting hugged, she needs to make sure you're safe and not a puddle of snot.]

[scratchitti]

[Neku squeaks a little at the powerful robo hug]

H-hey, Penny.

[in4apounding]

You exploded.

[But she does seem to realize she's holding too tightly, because her deathgrip loosens a little.]

[scratchitti]

Is that what... that is?

[He kinda helpless wipes at all the goo on her]