[A pale, worried face shows up on the screen. The young woman dressed in plain, grey clothes is sitting in her new room in the house of Hel and there’s nothing about it, she’s looking miserable. Close to tears, actually.]

Excuse me? Miss… ah, Miss Hel, madam? Or whoever else is listening? I’m very sorry to bother you and I don’t mean any disrespect, but someone has made a terrible mistake.

[She lowers her eyes and fiddles with the bracelet for a while.] I was told that I’m supposed to help save this world and fight a war, but I know nothing about saving anyone. I’m not even much of a witch and now I’m not a witch at all anymore. I reckon you’ve mistaken me for someone else.

Please, I would like to go back now if you don’t mind. Not that it isn’t flattering, it is! I feel very honoured. But… [She heaves a defeated sigh as she tucks a strand of lank hair behind her ear.] I can’t help you.

[ Live from Asgard's 'Great Library' this evening, a set of bookshelves taking up the majority of the background behind her, is a familiar, serious-looking face-- albeit one that's been lying pretty low outside her job at the hospital for the last little while. Despite the rather close set of the 'camera,' it's fairly obvious where she is... although for some reason she appears to be standing rather than sitting, and keeps glancing off and down at something she must be following some kind of directions off of.

Actually, she... seems to be wrapping her hands, using a long, dark red something, her slim fingers flashing into frame occasionally as she calmly addresses her bracelet- ]

How many of you are familiar with sparring, without the use of weapons?

[ ... Was it mentioned she was in the library during this? Yes? Well, hopefully she isn't bothering anyone too much, then. Eventually, she does take her leave of the place, heading over to where she fits in better instead: the arena, where she can be found frowning and outright attacking some hapless punching bag late into the night.

Perhaps someone forgot to tell her you're supposed to take it easy and primp the day before a party?? ]

[Well hello, everyone! At about noon, one of your Gods has appeared in front of you again, cheerfully addressing the network from a nicely furnished living room somewhere (the decor matches the castle, perhaps?) Loki is completely chill about this, nowhere near as uptight as Odin was.]

Hey there, Travellers! This is your captain speaking. One of them, anyway. The name's Loki.

Are you having a good time? How about a miserable one? Either way, we hope you're not bored. The whole point is to keep you going, isn't it? The more you laugh and cry, the better the city gets. Have you noticed yet? It's working. Some things are getting pretty colourful by now, so we really have to thank you a little.

Good thing it's a special time anyway. See, it's the first day of Spring, so for our little world of Yggdrasil, it's the beginning of a new year! Welcome to year 416 of the Last Era, everyone!

To celebrate, to get the year off on a good leg, and to thank you, we'll be allowing another little Q&A here. You can ask us whatever you want as long as you follow a few rules.

One, we don't have to answer repeat questions. We might, but if you're all asking us the same thing we aren't going to explain it over and over. That's boring, and I'm sure you're all perfectly intelligent enough to look at the answers we give other people.

Two, we don't have to answer stupid questions. Self-explanatory, right? If you're repeating a stupid question you're breaking two rules, so don't do that. You might end up regretting it.

Three, you're not entitled to answers we aren't ready to give you. If you can't handle hearing "no", we just won't argue with you.

Simple, right? Now for one last thing, here's a couple of questions you can answer for me, if you want to.

How would you like it if we socialized more? Would it make you more or less comfortable?

Also, what's the #1 thing you think this city is lacking?

Ready? Go.


[OOC NOTE: The mods will OOCly be following the gods' IC rules. This means that if your comment gets skipped we aren't mad at you, it's just that we are all people with limited time too. ;)

This is also the post that will trigger the proving a point plot. If your character was chosen (the list is below), they should comment here asking about their powers. If you don't have time to do so, you're welcome to handwave that they asked and it was ignored, but characters who didn't ask won't be punished. If you were chosen and changed your mind about participating at all, it's fine to just not do it (it doesn't have to be an exact 10 that die), but if you want us to find an alternate, PM us asap so we can do so.

Now for the 10 victims, we chose 5 with more mental powers and 5 with more physical, and tried to pull from the biggest variety of canons as possible. The characters chosen to die are as follows:

Dying from physical powers: Buffy Summers, Cheriour, Dante, Rin Okumura, & Ririchiyo Shirakiin

Dying from mental powers: Charles Xavier, Kainé, Rose Lalonde, Shiki Ryougi, & Sweden

Characters chosen can die anywhere from now til March 31. It honestly doesn't matter if it all happens in the next few hours or if they're all at once on March 31, so don't agonize too much over timing. Just have with it. Check the linked plot info for more details! :)]

[The video feed opens on a man with black hair and very bright blue eyes. His coloration is nowhere near as remarkable as the facts that his clothes are torn, and that he's covered in blood. He looks as if he's made some attempt to wipe it away, so the blood on his face is smeared, and the areas around his eyes and mouth are more or less clear. With that much blood, someone must have gotten seriously hurt.

In spite of this, Zack's smiling, but there's an intensity to his gaze. He knows what he wants to say already, and he says it.]

Cloud, you there?

[He's aware that there are others here. He did listen to the maid, got his briefing. He's used to taking in large amounts of information quickly. That's what SOLDIERs do. But Cloud's his first priority. He has to see if he's here, make sure he's unhurt.]

Cloud? You'd better be all right, okay? I'm counting on you.

[The slight teasing note in his voice masks a deeper seriousness that anyone paying close attention might pick up on.

He almost asks for Angeal--he thinks he saw Angeal right before he got here, but maybe that was a hallucination brought on by... well, dying. Maybe this is a hallucination. He can't be sure. If Angeal's here, he'll say something, but that might be too much to hope for. His first order of business is out of the way. Even if Cloud doesn't answer back, he is going to go out and look for him, until he either finds him or is satisfied that he isn't here.]

Everyone else, I'm Zack Fair, SOLDIER, First Class. [Name and rank come to his lips automatically, and he stops himself. He must be much more out of it than he'd realized (after all, he is addressing everyone covered in blood). His rank doesn't mean anything anymore. The company left him behind. He'll do the same. He amends the statement.] Ex SOLDIER. For what it's worth.

[He almost sounds like he's joking, a bit of self-depreciating humor. No sense being too serious, right? Right.]

I'm in-- [What was it again?] --Heimdall, so I hope you're ready for a new roommate over there. Don't worry, I clean up my own messes. If I know you, I'll get your back in a fight, and I don't bite. Nice to meet you.

[Somehow, if this isn't all a last minute illusion, he's still alive. He might not know how that could be possible, but he's going to try to roll with it. In spite of everything, it feels good, to be alive. Now, if he can just find Cloud...]

[someone does not look like they're having the best of times. He's got books scattered about the table, all flipped open and dumped on eachother haphazardly and a good look might tell you he's not been having the best sleep for a while.

That's not what he's here to talk about today, though. He rubs the bridge of his nose and sighs]

Think I've seen this kind of thing get mentioned before, but I was just thinking-- have we got any kind of system for dealing with these attacks? First responders, field medics. People to lead district evacs if shit gets too hairy. That kind of thing.

'Cause I wouldn't doubt this kind of thing is gonna happen again, far as I can tell we did alright with the [...] fairies. But whatever comes next is probably gonna be harder to fight off.

Can't help thinking we'd only benefit if most of us were on the same page with this. [shrug]


[Filtered to Cloud]

If you've got a minute, I wanna talk to you.

[it's not really a request so much as a demand for your time, Cloud]

Hello, everyone.

[This is almost an awkward pause before he continues. ]

My name is Credo. I am ... in charge of a young man named Nero. If he has done anything needing apologies, I am sorry. If he does anything requiring apologies, please send the complaints to me as I can assure you that he will not accept or appreciate them from anyone else.

Thank you.

-- lot of fucking nerve...

[Hey folks! Say hello to Reno's face. Reno's face is looking a little worse for wear, with flecks of blood and soot and, well. Some people would argue that looking as angry as he does is really not attractive in the least.

He pulls a face once he notes the video's working - he hadn't really given much thought beyond "make sure you know how this thing works," and so now he's not actually sure what to say. He knows enough to know screaming and shouting demands isn't going to get him anywhere (fuck if he doesn't want to, though.) The smart thing to do - check for allies. Regroup.]

[SIGH. Soundin' mighty hostile about having to do this too.] Just in case it's of any interest to... anyone, this is Reno-- of the Turks. [...] If there's any Shin-Ra personnel around, I'd appreciate it if you just happened to feel like saying 'hi'.