eyemind | event } take me down to paradise city (part one)

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event } take me down to paradise city (part one)

WHO: All passengers signed up to skate on over to Xanadu.
WHAT: Ya (fake) dead. Enjoy your (fake) afterlife!
WHERE: Anywhere in the city!
WHEN: First week of the event (Feb. 20-27).
WARNINGS: Add these to your comment subject lines as needed! Please don’t get yourself killed right away but if you can’t resist please make sure to fill out the death page.

You return to consciousness bathed in pleasantly glowing light and find yourself seated in a comfortable chair in the center of an arena. There’s soft, dreamy pop music playing quietly, and you feel calm, entirely at peace despite your strange surroundings. You feel no reason to stir from your chair or investigate what’s happening - probably because you’ve been drugged into a docile state. Don’t worry, it’ll wear off eventually. For now, you feel content to sit and wait for what happens next.

While you wait, if you look around, you’ll see the stadium seats are packed with people, their chatter a quiet hum behind the music. There is a raised platform in front of you where three people of ambiguous gender dressed in regal robes are seated in high-backed chairs, and above them, some kind of hovering screen displays a generic welcome message in stark lettering. You’ll also discover that you are one of several people seated in the center of the arena. Again, you may wonder where you are and why you’re here, since you don’t remember arriving, but you do not feel any initiative to find the answers to those questions. All will be answered in time.

A triumphant fanfare sounds, and the arena goes quiet, still except for the person on the platform seated in the middle, who stands and steps forward. They give a hearty welcome to the crowd gathered, and an extra special welcome to the small group on the ground, then introduce themself and the other two as the City Council, a group appointed to ensure everything here is kept in smooth running order. This city, they explain, is called Xanadu, and it is a place of perfect bliss that is home to only the most exemplary individuals who have moved to the next stage of their existence - in other words, the afterlife. Yes, you are all dead, but you have been given a place in paradise for the rest of eternity. Isn’t that nice?

The crowd in the stadium breaks into a wave of thunderous applause, soon quieted by the Council member speaking with a wave of their hand. They continue, explaining that you’ll be shown to your new homes and introduced to your soulmates, a partner who has been determined as perfectly compatible with each individual’s essence. A small group of volunteers has gathered at the base of the podium, ready to guide each pair to their new home as they’re called forward, one by one:

Julia Bellamy and Lady
Near and Matt
Mammon and Alex Reagan
Juuzou Suzuya and Kankri Vantas
Murmur and Jonathan Sims

Congratulations, and again, welcome to Xanadu!

Volunteers lead each pair of soulmates to one of the small, pastel-colored houses situated in a cul-de-sac in one of the nearby neighborhoods. Furnishings and the shag carpeting inside are plain and beige, but the volunteer-guide explains that they can be personalized to the inhabitants’ liking by making requests from the magic closet. These closets will instantly produce clothing and whatever other items you’d like. Likewise, whatever foods you most desire will be found in the fridge or cooking in the oven whenever you ask for it. Both the closets and the kitchens run on technology that is new to Xanadu, and some of the kinks still need to be worked out, so requested items may not be exactly as you asked for. But hey, you’re in paradise! You’ll be fine.

The guide goes on to explain that there isn’t much in the way of technology to be found anywhere in the city - no phones, no computers, and none of the stresses that come as part of the package, and requests for such items from the closets will encounter errors. This is all for the common good, of course. But who needs electronic devices when you have a beautiful city to explore? The city itself is massive, designed in a glitzy late 70s-early 80s roller disco aesthetic, enclosed in a shimmering golden dome, full of glittering skyscrapers and lush public gardens. Soft rock music floats through the air via hidden speakers to set the mood. The weather here is always pleasantly perfect early summer, and the atmosphere is pristine - not a single trace of smog or other pollution. That’s because there are no manufacturing plants or vehicles to be found anywhere in the city. Modes of transportation in Xanadu are pedal bicycles, your own two feet, and roller skates. Strap on a pair and roll around the neighborhoods, or to cover longer distances, head down to an electric rail station, where you will strap in and be pulled along to your destination on your skates at high speed.

By the time the orientation is over and the guide has departed, leaving you to get to know your soulmate and settle in to the comforts of eternal paradise, that drug you’d been given will have worn off. So, newlydeads, what will you do next?

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There didn't seem to be a thought behind the boy's eyes. Even with whatever drug that he and the crowd of strangers had been exposed to out of his system, Juuzou still seemed dazed. He hadn't even passed the threshold of his new house, or introduced himself to his soul mate; he had spun on his heel and wandered back outside with wide, teetering strides. He didn't know what to think of this, and so was opting not to think of much at all.

The asphalt of the cul-de-sac's road was warm and felt soothing against his cheek by the time he had lowered himself down onto his stomach. Sprawling on the ground out in the open seemed to be the most natural thing in the world to him.

Juuzou walked two fingers of his left hand over to a nearby crack in the road where a colony of ants were busying themselves in and out of their hide. Whenever one dared to wander close enough, he pressed down upon their chitinous little heads until they popped beneath the pressure of his ruby painted fingernails. This would be a good way to spend his time whilst he struggled to wrap his head around the whole 'death' situation.

Really, Kankri had better things to do in his death and with the last time he died? This wasn't anything like being dead. He already knew what it was like to be dead and this wasn't it. So then what was it? A dream bubble, probably, someone playing an elaborate trick or even something more sinister. The fight that he had been participating in wasn't exactly going to make the world around him more stable.

No use in mulling it over too hard. He was here and, from what he understood, bonded in some human terminology to a human. This part of it wasn't acceptable. He wouldn't be thrown into a quadrant he didn't know the other participant of and he certainly wouldn't be tied down to anyone. Not again and not anymore. That gave him some time to himself when his arranged soul-marriage wandered out of the house. That suited him fine until it didn't and he simply decided it wasn't going to work out, that the best way to confront this was head on.

That found him standing around with his mouth lightly agape at why the young man who might very well be a Strider-affiliate had been walking his fingers along. "You don't have to kill them. With all of us dead, you really should value life a little longer. Or maybe they're dead ants and they don't need a re-education in what it was to likely die in the same manner they ended up here. Then again maybe it was frost? Sometimes frost. That aside, if you'd stop your extremely sluggish and unnecessary genocide, I'd like to speak with you on a personal level."

The sound of feet against the road and how they faded louder the closer they got was noted, but not paid any mind to. Juuzou was aware that someone was approaching him but until he was addressed he didn't so much as glance Kankri's way.

But, the moment he heard the strange creature's voice, he slowly raised his head to stare at the troll with wide, attentive eyes. "Oh, you're my room mate... Hello." Soulmate, not room mate. Juuzou didn't bother to correct himself. "So, how did you die? Do you know?" He only paid half attention to what Kankri was saying. He heard him loud and clear but wasn't interested in addressing everything that he had been told or asked.

"Ah, I wonder what happens when they die..?" Juuzou mused aloud. He pursed his lips and turned his attention back to the bugs weaving and skittering around his fingers. "If they're already dead, where do they go now..? They're just bugs anyway, so I don't think they should be here..."

Edited 2021-02-22 01:12 (UTC)

"Hello." he replied, standing with his arms loosely crossed. "Room mate is much more appropriate." They could agree on that, specifically. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad. There at least was an understanding that this wasn't some sort of actual arrangement Kankri was interested in past having to live with som-- "Yes, I know how I died."

Alright, maybe not as well as he thought it would go but he listened anyway. "Everything has a right to life, humans do, and bugs do. It's what both of your species do to one another as exemplified in your actions that make the difference. They have just as much right to be here as both of us do. Do you really find their life that insignificant when the rest of their colony depends on them? If they're dead or not doesn't mean they're not likely to feel pain or suffering. Likely all they do is lay there in agony in the form you've given them if they can't die again. Can you imagine living in agony for eternity?"

Alright, so all of that shit was fucked up. Matt would like to think if he died, and he hadn't that he remembered, that he would have at least ended up in a paradise that wasn't hell. He was, apparently, soul-married to Near, who had also died? Right in front of Mello's salad for that matter. On top of all of it, there was nothing that even remotely felt like this was paradise for exemplary people. Sure, ask Matt, putting up with all the shit he had, he felt exemplary. Anything else? None of the three of them at least were.

He supposed it didn't matter. Instead taking a tool around the neighbourhood either inhabited or uninhabited homes to look around from the front and sometimes traverse into the yards seemed a good way to start this. Also a good way to just get some distance from all the sneaking suspicions. Considering he came here with a knife he had no knowledge of ever owning, he would have put a bet on that suspicion if he had anything he remembered in his pockets at all. Why take his money and his smokes, but heaven was going to give him a knife? Was that to tease him when he had to live in a world without advanced gaming systems? Probably. This was probably hell is what.

Find him skulking around, looking in uninhabited windows or poking around yards and objects just to see if there was going to be a tear in the Matrix he could find. Maybe a black cat he could see twice, anything. For once he was out detecting, taking it upon himself. Because let him face it a little bit, something wasn't right in paradise.

There are so many things wrong with this picture. Mello is dead, that much is true, but an afterlife? This afterlife? Mello has no illusions that he was a good enough person to warrant an eternity in paradise. (He wasn’t even good enough to beat Near to solving the Kira case. Ha. Haha.) Mello became a criminal by design, and murderers - even if those murders were committed out of necessity - don’t get to reap eternal rewards.

Seeing Matt and Near both here, Mello thinks he must’ve fucked up - no, he knows Matt’s death is his fault, he saw his friend’s death reported on the news shortly before his own life expired. But Near was supposed to live. And if he’s dead too, that means Mello failed in yet another way.

He tries to convince himself that he doesn’t care about the nonsense with soulmates. He tries to convince himself that he doesn’t care that Matt and Near are paired up while he’s alone - not unusual, he was reassured, but not terribly common, either. So what if he doesn’t have a soulmate - Mello’s better off alone anyway. Maybe if he’d left Matt and gone to draw out Kira on his own, maybe if he hadn’t stayed, Matt would still be alive.

Mello doesn’t search Matt out - he’s not sure he can face his friend right now, and he knows he can’t deal with Near. Better to sit on the porch, sprawled in a stupid rocking chair, and glare at this stupid neighborhood behind sunglasses provided by the magic closet. If Matt happens to wander by in his investigations, that’s probably fine.

As if Matt wouldn't have made his way over to Mello. Mello knew it and that was all in a day's work of sitting on a porch instead of locked in a basement. Mind you, Matt knew how to pick a lock with the best of them, but that didn't mean that seeing Mello lounging around after a good tour around the neighbourhood wasn't a welcome sight. In fact it was very welcoming to think that Mello had stayed out like that and pretend that it was to make it easier for Matt to find him.

Now, was it easy to face Mello after being angel married to Near? No. But he hadn't had a say in that either. If he didn't face Mello he was worried of the consequences in that action, too. That would have made Matt feel like he wasn't wanted if the shoe was on the other foot. "Damn, Mello." he started as he walked up the steps, stopping a respectful distance. "You need to shine that halo before they see you."

Mello figured Matt would turn up eventually, or else he’d get over his anxiety and track the redhead down himself. The words that come out of his mouth sound like a bad pick-up line, and Mello pulls his sunglasses down his nose enough so he can level a flat, unimpressed stare at his friend. That expression only holds for a moment before it softens around the edges - with sadness, maybe, or worry, or guilt, or all three. Mello looks away and pushes the glasses back up his nose.

“I thought you better than anyone would know I lost my halo years ago.”

If he ever had one in the first place. Maybe when his mother was still alive - she loved her little Mihael without reservation, and he did everything he could to be worthy of her love, not that she ever required him to earn it. Certainly not after her death - the sisters at the first orphanage were fond of telling him how wicked he was, and Wammy’s House only measured goodness by a single metric, and it wasn’t a sense of morality.

Whatever. He made his choices. Being effective was more important than being virtuous, and Mello has no regrets about the things he’s done, save one - Matt’s death. He kicks a foot up onto the porch railing, scuffing the pristine white paint with the sole of his boot. Good.

“What do you make of all this?”

cw: bug killing / ota

RUDE you can't just kill bugs

🐜👌

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Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty.

are the girls as pretty as mello though

No girls are as pretty as Mello.

damn right

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Murmur | OTA

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Mammon | OTA

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Six years later

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