November Event/tdm
11/08 - 11/13 Cultural Festival
The school campus opens its doors to the public early Monday morning, with family, friends, neighbors, and strangers arriving to fill up the halls, each visitor having eyes of gold and wallets full of cash. Festival events run from 8AM to 4PM, and pamphlets are handed out by students lining the locker area, which include a schedule and a map of the campus:
✽ The opening event on Monday is an idol performance in the auditorium by the twin star unit GEMINI, consisting of Natsume Sakasaki and Subaru Akehoshi. On Thursday afternoon, the music club will hold a performance in the auditorium, featuring the typical choir with piano accompaniment, a capella performances by smaller groups of members, as well as solos, with requests taken in between performances so members can switch off and take a break.
✽ The student store is open every day up until noon on Saturday, and while the absurdly high prices are still absurdly high, there is a sign up in front of the rock gacha that one of the prizes is an all day pass to any of the school's events for one day of the festival. The odds aren't worth the price, but it's not like the shopkeep reveals the odds.
✽ Class 1-B is hosting a themed cafe in their homeroom.
✽ Class 1-D has turned their homeroom and neighboring classrooms into escape rooms, which runs from Tuesday to Friday.
✽ The robotics/programing club and the gaming club have set up a variety of video games in 2-A, and are hosting a competition between visitors and their AI.
✽ Class 3-D is hosting a kissing booth in their homeroom.
✽ In the home ec cooking room, the cooking club is hosting a cooking contest, with student judges and prizes for the winners.
✽ The sewing club and the art club have put together a photo booth inside the home ec sewing room, featuring all sorts of props and costumes imaginable to try on and pose in front of a number of hand painted backgrounds. Photos are taken by an instant camera for visitors to take home a keepsake. In the art club room, the art club has a gallery set up, with paintings hanging from the walls and sculptures set up in front of them, and a strict no touching policy or one of the members threatens to scoop your eye out with a palette knife and she doesn't look like she's joking. There is a large open canvas, however, for visitors to try their hand at paints or charcoal or pastels on what will become a collaborative art piece done by an entire week's worth of visitors. Occasionally throughout the festival, an art club member will have a space off to the corner for portraits or face painting.
✽ The sewing club has also contributed plush toy prizes for various other class' game stalls throughout the school, where visitors can pay to play for a chance to win small prizes, and are able to trade up several smaller prizes for larger ones.
✽ Out past the courtyard, various sports teams host games throughout the week, including relay races and obstacle courses and tug o' war and """soccer""". Basically it's sports day, because there had been a sports day on the calendar but I never look at the calendar so it was already halfway through the month before I realized.
✽ The fourth floor hallway has been cleaned up and turned into the rest area, with rugs laid out across the ground and comfy chairs scattered around the room and little bags of cat treats for sale to entice the fluffy white cat into hanging out in this space all week. Even without treats, she is content to sit on people's laps and rub against their ankles and let them bury their faces in her stomach. Healing.
✽ In the evening on the final day, after all the visitors leave, a large bonfire is set up in a non-flammable area between the courtyard and pool building and left to burn late into the night for those students who choose to remain on campus until around 8PM, when the festival culminates in a small fireworks show that lights up the sky overhead in reds and golds, while on the ground, sparklers are passed around for a quiet moment appreciating the beauty, and transience, of life.
✽ The opening event on Monday is an idol performance in the auditorium by the twin star unit GEMINI, consisting of Natsume Sakasaki and Subaru Akehoshi. On Thursday afternoon, the music club will hold a performance in the auditorium, featuring the typical choir with piano accompaniment, a capella performances by smaller groups of members, as well as solos, with requests taken in between performances so members can switch off and take a break.
✽ The student store is open every day up until noon on Saturday, and while the absurdly high prices are still absurdly high, there is a sign up in front of the rock gacha that one of the prizes is an all day pass to any of the school's events for one day of the festival. The odds aren't worth the price, but it's not like the shopkeep reveals the odds.
✽ Class 1-B is hosting a themed cafe in their homeroom.
✽ Class 1-D has turned their homeroom and neighboring classrooms into escape rooms, which runs from Tuesday to Friday.
✽ The robotics/programing club and the gaming club have set up a variety of video games in 2-A, and are hosting a competition between visitors and their AI.
✽ Class 3-D is hosting a kissing booth in their homeroom.
✽ In the home ec cooking room, the cooking club is hosting a cooking contest, with student judges and prizes for the winners.
✽ The sewing club and the art club have put together a photo booth inside the home ec sewing room, featuring all sorts of props and costumes imaginable to try on and pose in front of a number of hand painted backgrounds. Photos are taken by an instant camera for visitors to take home a keepsake. In the art club room, the art club has a gallery set up, with paintings hanging from the walls and sculptures set up in front of them, and a strict no touching policy or one of the members threatens to scoop your eye out with a palette knife and she doesn't look like she's joking. There is a large open canvas, however, for visitors to try their hand at paints or charcoal or pastels on what will become a collaborative art piece done by an entire week's worth of visitors. Occasionally throughout the festival, an art club member will have a space off to the corner for portraits or face painting.
✽ The sewing club has also contributed plush toy prizes for various other class' game stalls throughout the school, where visitors can pay to play for a chance to win small prizes, and are able to trade up several smaller prizes for larger ones.
✽ Out past the courtyard, various sports teams host games throughout the week, including relay races and obstacle courses and tug o' war and """soccer""". Basically it's sports day, because there had been a sports day on the calendar but I never look at the calendar so it was already halfway through the month before I realized.
✽ The fourth floor hallway has been cleaned up and turned into the rest area, with rugs laid out across the ground and comfy chairs scattered around the room and little bags of cat treats for sale to entice the fluffy white cat into hanging out in this space all week. Even without treats, she is content to sit on people's laps and rub against their ankles and let them bury their faces in her stomach. Healing.
✽ In the evening on the final day, after all the visitors leave, a large bonfire is set up in a non-flammable area between the courtyard and pool building and left to burn late into the night for those students who choose to remain on campus until around 8PM, when the festival culminates in a small fireworks show that lights up the sky overhead in reds and golds, while on the ground, sparklers are passed around for a quiet moment appreciating the beauty, and transience, of life.
OOC
✽ Throughout the school year, merit points have occasionally been earned through interactions between students involving strong emotion, whether positive or negative. This month, characters may notice that this happens much more frequently, and the amount of merit points earned is also sometimes more than the typical one point. Please report threads of strong emotion below, as this will minorly affect December.
✽ On 11/23, Yogen sees its first snow of the year, a light dusting across campus that does not stick when the sun rises again the next morning, but it will snow on and off until the end of the month.
✽ This event log doubles as a TDM, with new characters experiencing the recurring feeling of drifting in (school life) and out (canon life) of sleep up until they "open their eyes," after which they will have full awareness and come to their senses.
✽ On 11/23, Yogen sees its first snow of the year, a light dusting across campus that does not stick when the sun rises again the next morning, but it will snow on and off until the end of the month.
✽ This event log doubles as a TDM, with new characters experiencing the recurring feeling of drifting in (school life) and out (canon life) of sleep up until they "open their eyes," after which they will have full awareness and come to their senses.
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They have no pen on them, but what they have is Amami's stupid expensive cellphone that really should not be anywhere near sand but it's getting set on top of the sand while npckun opens up a notepad app and taps out
01100001 01100100 01100001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 01101100 01100001 01100011 01100101
... ]
Sou! [ okokok ] Do you know binary?
pretend i didn't straight up cease to exist for two days
I'm going to pretend he's been futilely and fully occupied and focused with his scarf hunched up over his ears taking the mp3 out of the boombox and scrolling through it for literally anything else before what was initially a bop turns into All I Want For Christmas Is You and this is why he didn't answer any questions breakfast related or otherwise, sorry Keigo.
It's the movement in the corner of his vision that makes him look up and put it back down, heading over the short distance from the noise to see what they've found. Why are you typing on sand, isn't that harder than just putting it on one of the deck chairs? Also I'm crying he's assuming the ludicrously expensive phone is the direct result of Keigo's ludicrously expensive prices, and he's just... getting sand in it. The bourgeoisie...]
Huh? Who even uses binary these days... Let's have a look.
[He at least has refreshed his memory a bit frantically going over the basics for his classes out of nervous impostor syndrome but. Give him a second. He'll move the phone up onto the aforementioned nearby deck chair for a better view and take out his own less expensive free with every death game phone, making a fresh notes page (hurriedly going past the one already there) to tap out letter by letter, glancing back and forth, a-d-a-space-l-o-v-e-l-a-c-e.]
...Ada Lovelace?
[Tilting it so Keigo can see.]
She was the world's first computer programmer... I wonder.
[He's going to take the computer related blueprints out of his inventory and also spread them out on the chair and see if knowing this makes any heads or tails out of them, and then belatedly remembers:]
Ah, good work...
[Help, he still doesn't know their name.]
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You too! I'm super lucky to have a smart partner!
[ As opposed to other partners, whose gut reaction to solving puzzles is to pull out a gun and/or make things explode.
...As opposed to them, who is now at a loss as to what more they'd be able to contribute. A landline telephone was peak technology as far as they're concerned; they don't know anything about computers, or of programming. Hmmmmmmmm... They're going to sit down next to Shin and nibble on a sandwich while they watch him think. ]
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Congradulations.
Ada Lovelace? Wonder what that's about! As Shin pulls out the blueprints, spreading them out on the chair, he'll see what he saw before, some pages talking about technology, and others having magic circles, and an unknown language. As he looks them over one by one, he'll find that he doesn't see anything notable about them, everything appears to look the same? White and black text written on green and blue paper as far as the eyes can see, words pressed together that make no sense to him, well, perhaps the technology papers do, but there's nothing that his eyes would be able to make note of!
As for Keigo, enjoy your ham sandwich, kiddo, you deserved it for working so hard!
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you can feel the support...it's a little buff for the two of them to keep going.]
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[Is this what's going to be on loop from now on? Help. He'll try fiddle with the mp3 again to get the other song back and then try to turn the boombox itself off, but it's probably safe to say he's doomed to suffer. The buff... it does help though.]
Ahaha, well...
[The mutual praise... This is a little too blinding, he has to look away and he's also flashing back to losing all his money. Catch Shin thinking every one of Keigo's given nicknames is an entirely different person until he gets enough description it clicks.]
Where'd you find this, anyway?
[He can see the sand-covered envelope, but missed it's acquisition.]
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Under that chair. There's all this sand everywhere, and few places to hide things.
[ There's the two sand craters that they'll wander over towards and sift through with the toe of their shoe, the floaties that they'll lift above their heads to see if there's anything inside, making another round weaving in and out of the chairs to see if anything's on the underside of the umbrellas. The puffins... looks concernedly at the puffins... they hope they're not supposed to be cut open. ]
Tell me more about Ada Lovelace?
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He does tell Keigo about Ada Lovelace as he conducts his own poking around, lifting up those inflatable bed things the name of which escapes me in case there's anything underneath... What he remembers, at least, through the fog of that one year of uni and the more recent stuff he's been cramming on, so it's the basic knowledge and then whatever rabbit holes of interest he went on, with corresponding slight increase in animation.]
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Helenaaaaaa... I don't know what to do next. Can we have a hint? Are you hungry? Do you want a sandwich?
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[tapping her chin, she grins.]
The diagrams hold more answers. You've got to really feel them out - have you gone to take them in?
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...
They give Helena the sandwich she didn't ask for and goes over to Shin to look at those blueprints again, laying them flat, blowing the sand off, feeling them. Are they bumpy. ]
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Smooth smooth, smooth smooth, the sand accommodating the bumpiness until smacked away, but because Keigo is using their personal skills, they'll come across something interesting...
Something like...
⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠚ ⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠚⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠚⠼⠚ ⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠚⠼⠚⠼⠁ ⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠁ ⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠚⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠚⠼⠁ ⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠁ ⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠚⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠚⠼⠚ ⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠚⠼⠁ ⠼⠚⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠚⠼⠚⠼⠚⠼⠚⠼⠚ ⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠁ ⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠁ ⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠚⠼⠚⠼⠁ ⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠚⠼⠚ ⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠁⠼⠚⠼⠚⠼⠁⠼⠁
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01101110 01100100 01101001 01101111 01100101 01101111 01100100 01110101 00100000 01110111 01110111 01101001 01110100 01110011
They look back at the previous code, trying to match what numbers Sou's already converted and it's something like
_ D _ O E O _ _ (space) _ _ _ _ _
Something like the toughest game of hangman they've ever seen, because what word has "oeo" in it... Another foreign person's name, maybe. Shin gets interrupted by a tug on his sleeve and a stupidly expensive smartphone held out to him to convert once more. ]
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You're picking this up fast!
[He'll get the rest for them - filling it out to 'ndioeodu wwits'. Which explains why it's the worst hangman game. He sets the phone down in view of them both, scratching his head with one hand, pushing his beanie back a little and fluffing up his hair as he thinks.]
An anagram, maybe? Or a cipher...
[He'll give Inaba's one a quick go, but that just spits out an equal amount of gibberish. It was worth a shot.]
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WINDOW SUIT DUE
WINDOW DUTIES U
WIDOW UNSUITED
...Oh. ]
Um...
[ How to break the news that they have to kill a married man?
...
They start by connecting the widow pieces together and flipping the papers over to see if the backside makes any more sense. ]
I'm not getting it... Maybe we'll missing something else that goes along with this? What haven't we looked at yet?
[ looks up at god, how much of the room are we missing ]
completely missed that that was addressed to god, anyway go on
Right... could be just one piece of the puzzle. We've got 'Ada Lovelace' and this so far...
[He's still mentally stuck on ciphers, and wondering if the name itself is a cipher key... but it's still a good idea to check for other things first, lifting his head and scanning the room a bit, mentally checking off everything they've interacted with... that doesn't leave a lot (although several of that's in the other thread).]
...There wasn't any braille on the magic blueprints, right? Wonder what they're for... Do you know anything about it?
[Magic, he means. He wouldn't be surprised if they do, mysterious shopkeeper schtick and all means it comes with the territory right?]
cue god waking up from her nap
90% of this room is done!
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Right... I don't know. The magic I'm used to doesn't have to be drawn out like this, so I don't get it at all.
[ Magic... is too much faith for somebody who has none. All they can ever do is take what they have and make do, to close their eyes and systematically go through every little thing that could possibly help. They're the sort of person who, in playing a point-and-click game, will click on everything, right to left, up to down, and then a second pass just in case clicking on something triggers a change in something else.
A hall of darkness. The tap tap of Helena's cane. Something had come out of the door before they had entered, a noise up in the ceiling— they open their eyes and look up now, as if expecting something to come falling down through cracked tile.
...
Nothing. But they shuffle a little closer to Shin, just in case. ]
I don't get it, but... we just need to get out of the room, right? It doesn't have to be through the doors.
[ ... ]
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So we've come to the crossroads...
[her cane is more like a scepter, the way she holds it now, and if she wasn't wearing kitty ears and an oversize coat, it might even look like...plotting?]
The way I perceive it, you have two options right now. My path may lead to testing your limits. The price of hacking your way to success. Or, you can still try to make your own.
[that, and...yes. there's that clicking again.]
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His eyes flick to the windows and back up... they're on the fourth floor and Subaru's been teaching him parkour but he's definitely not up to that, and NPC-kun probably isn't either. Especially if something'd be chasing them.]
Y-yeah... but we need a plan either way. I'm thinking...
[A run for it's probably not going to work, and the crawlspaces are evidently out as well, but they're also stuck on the puzzle. He's thinking furiously but there's a certain amount of wheel-spinning and rubber smoke to it, because also added on top is the calculus; if they go ahead with Helena's option, would that give them the time to find an alternative route out or would it just be stepping further into the cage? How much time do they have to decide, how long can they stall? What's waiting up ahead? Is that thing actually going to break in, or is it a warning?
He nudges NPC-kun with an elbow, just slightly. It's a little pointier than he realises, sorry.]
Let's go with Helena's path.
[It's said with eyes closed and hand on beanie, the artificial picture of unconcerned. He's hoping NPC-kun can and will pick up on the unspoken 'for now' tacked on onto the end.]
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[ "For now"... aka all of two seconds before npckun turns their eyes up at the ceiling again. The way to escape would be easy from up there, if not for whatever(whoever?) it is inside, and there's no way Sou would have enough space to move and fight or run. And it's going to be Sou up there because npckun can't do dark places. Godspeed.
...
Quick glance at Sou. His eyes are closed; good. That means he won't be able to stop them from picking up a puffin and hurling it at the ceiling tile where they last heard that skittering: if they can bring whatever it is down here, Sou would have a fighting chance to get rid of it. ]