event: portal six | the wasteland

[mayfield_mods]

If you had thought that a charred nuclear hellscape couldn't possibly get any worse, turns out you thought wrong.

The sixth portal is located just a few yards across from the entrance to the Mayfield Dairy. The door to the Dairy is, as always, locked, but those of you who stare long enough at the drawn curtains might notice them fluttering slightly every once in a while- as if there's movement behind them. As if someone is watching.

Even just by glancing at the portal from the Mayfield side, you can tell it makes the desert portal look like a tropical vacation by comparison. The portal opens up to the interior of a ruined schoolhouse, its walls and floor caked with dust and ash. The hallways are bare and desolate, save for the occasional scorch mark. Inside the classrooms you can see small skeletons beneath the desks, curled up as if for warmth.

The world outside the schoolhouse is no better. Not only are the old hazards still here- pockets of intense radiation, air clouded by ash and smoke -but things have apparently deteriorated since your last visit. There are glitch pockets, as expected, but they're not sitting in place anymore: they're moving, slowly at times, quickly at others. And they're not moving at random, either: they'll come straight for you, as if they're hunting...

But glitch pockets aren't the only ones out for your blood. The roaming gangs of cannibal survivors are still here, but they appear to have been as changed as the landscape. Many of them bear the same deformities as the drones of the carnival- multiple or lacking limbs, two bodies fused together, mutated growths spreading up and down their limbs. Many of them are wearing scorched hazmat suits, patched together haphazardly. All of them are armed. None of them are friendly.

The sun hangs high in the sky, but you can barely see it through the thick brown clouds. This is a dead world, and unless you find that memento fast, you're about to become a permanent resident.

Comments

[achromous]

[Hilda, of course, has already made up her mind to go through. She finally has her Pokemon with her in a way she can really help, and if jumping through one of these portals will save everyone faster, she's not going to back down.

Of course, she'd kind of hoped she could get through it before Holland came out to try to stop her.]

I'll be okay, promise.

[gezellig]

The only way you're definitely okay is if you're staying here with me.

[He looks pretty stern about it too.]

[achromous]

[Hilda frowns at him, placing her hands on her hips.] I can't just stay here. I have to help if I can.

[gezellig]

I thought the same thing, but nothing I've done here has really helped anybody.

[Even if he's not quite sure about that, he will say just about anything to get her to, just this once, stay out of danger.]

[achromous]

You've helped me out plenty of times. [Hilda shakes her head.] Even if I don't get anything done at all, I have to try.

[gezellig]

But we've seen that place before. I died there; those things killed me without even hesitating.

[For once, he really almost looks like he's willing to physically stop her. At the same time, he looks pretty concerned, like he's not just asking, but pleading a little.]

[achromous]

[Reshiram shifts, watching Holland. Hilda frowns, looking down at the ground.]

I know--that's part of why I have to do something now. I want to help.

[gezellig]

[Maybe he'd just become jaded; he'd spent too long in Mayfield without really being able to make things better for the people he cared about. Now that he had both Hilda and Canada back, he really didn't want to let them go, not to something like this. He'd tried hard to enjoy the time in this town much more since Canada had come back.

Combined with what he'd had to deal with after the last time he'd died in the town, he didn't know what could happen. Not anymore. ]

It might just not be worth it anymore.

[It's pretty bitter, the way he says it.]

[achromous]

Of course it is! [Hilda is insistent enough she finds her voice rising, even though she's trying to keep calm.] I don't want the people in charge of Mayfield to keep torturing everyone forever. And what if everything breaks before that? This is like what happened in December but worse. I'd never be able to forgive myself if people really got hurt or killed and I didn't even try.

[gezellig]

I just don't want you to go, Hilda.