#redacrespeaks

[opha]

“The shape is changing...”

by @boxcarbrats

[spiderswithtits]

and what’s a night without a little bit of shitposting feat. my wife @handarko

the harmonizer is the best mission and anyone who says otherwise is weak

[just-under-lucid]

I... I got one... Even with my yelling... Even with my doubt... I...

I don’t know how to feel. I feel like they gave it just to placate me... But could it be a sign they’re listening? Could it be a sign they actually care what I have to say? ... 

...What do I even do with this information...

[fight-for-humanity]

Alone, Pt 2

content warning: some violence

Metallic twanging filled my ears, rumbling my head and chest like the bass of a passing car. I groaned as I shifted on the hard surface I laid on, my hand reaching up to pull my pillow over my eyes. However, only empty space greeted me as I searched for that soft cushion that once cradled my head. Did it fall off the bed? 

Confused, I rewound what I could remember of the previous night. It was difficult, in my groggy state. It was dark. The stars were out and Mom had yet to leave the house. I remembered holding a little screwdriver in one hand and the metal skeleton of a makeshift drone in the other. I remembered putting one of the propellers in my pocket. Yes. I was laying on it. I could feel it sticking in to my side through my clothes. I must have fallen asleep without changing in to my pajamas, but I had managed to kick off my shoes before dozing off, at the very least. My eyes fluttered open as I sat up. I laid directly underneath a blinding light, in what appeared to be a dark tunnel lined with wooden support beams. 

A startled gasp escaped me as my eyes adjusted. A figure was crouched nearby at the corner of the light’s edge, their white jacket barely visible in the shadows. My heart threatened to jump through my chest as I instinctively scooted away with a quickened pace. Thoughts of abduction began to race through my head, but some little part of my mind demanded focus. Panicking would only lead to me getting murdered. Probably. 

It was difficult to identify the person. Their lower face was concealed by a black bandana, but as soon as I heard their voice, recognition hit me like a freight train.

“Are you alright?” That same voice, always blanketed in concern for everyone and everything. Aaron Costa. 

The white-jacketed figure stood and stepped into the light, pulling down the bandana and letting it rest loosely around his neck. With his identity properly revealed, my suspicion was confirmed.

“Wh-what...” I stammered past hastened breath, adrenaline still shooting through my body. “Where…” As I calmed, I realized where I was. The darkness. The smell. The eerie sound that shook my bones. I was in the Maze. “...How did I get here?”

“I caught a couple sleepers taking you down here,” he explained, extending his hand out to me to help me up to my feet. I waved dismissively towards his offer and stood up on my own. I don’t need help when I can so easily do it myself. Fortunately, he didn’t seem offended by it. 

“They were taking you to the red door,” Aaron said. “But, I got to you before they did. You are…” He hesitated for a moment, perhaps rolling the words around in his head before saying them. “....more fun to hang out with when you’re awake. I thought, maybe we could see eye to eye.”

I was silent, simply giving him a blank, perplexed look. My expression morphed into a disturbed confusion as his words settled in my befuddled mind. 

Aaron took that as a cue to continue. “They… wanted to help you. I know how much you’ve been hurting, and it doesn’t have to be like that. Speak-As-One will take care of you. You don’t have to feel alone anymore.” There was a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as he spoke. He...he wasn’t… There was no way he was one of them.

“Do you mean Chorus? The ones responsible for all this?” I countered. “You want me to help make our lives even more difficult? To...what, kidnap people? Snitch on the Club? Take away more parents and turn them into sleepers? Hurt more people?”

Aaron shook his head briskly. “No, we’re not hurting you. We’re trying to save you. I’m trying to keep you, and everyone else in Redacre safe. All that club is doing is putting people’s lives in danger and making people suffer. They will hurt your mom, or they will hurt you. If everybody followed the same Truth, your brother wouldn’t have been sent to die in some pointless war.”

At that moment, when my brother was used as an emotional bargaining chip, something snapped inside of me. I couldn’t quite pinpoint the exact emotion I felt. Perhaps sorrow, anger, disappointment, or betrayal. There were quite a few that were worthy candidates, but all I knew for certain, is that I saw red. 

My fists clenched and my body tensed. “Aaron. Are you serious? Do you hear yourself? Do you know how fucking crazy you sound?” I growled, my tone dripping with venom. I found myself taking a step forward, closing the distance between us until I was within arm's reach of him. Silver eyes shone in defiance. “No. I’m not joining your little cult. These people are not here to help us. They are here to enslave us. They tear apart families, spy on us, and kill us if we get too close to the truth. And you’re willing to do their dirty work for them. All of this... for your imaginary friend?”

There was a tense moment of silence between us. I expected him to argue back, mirror my anger, but there was no sign of hostility in his expression. His face sunk in to what I could only describe as a face of regret.

Aaron’s hand snapped forward and clasped my wrist. I had no time to react. He turned and started pulling me along with him down the tunnel. My eyes shot open, and I tried digging my heels into the dirt, but socks do not offer much traction.

“What are you doing?” I hissed, trying to pry his hand off of my wrist by digging my fingers under his palm.

“Saving you,” he responded, flatly.

As we rounded a corner, I understood what he meant. I saw a door illuminated in the light, with a white eye painted in to the red surface. The red door. He was taking me to the red door.

My stomach sank. “A-Aaron, that’s going to kill me.”

“No, it’s not,” he said with a soft sigh.

“It might as well!” Pulling away wasn’t working. If I didn’t think of something fast, I was going to be put to sleep. Forever. Wait… I got it. The drone propeller in my pocket.

Aaron twisted back around to face me, keeping his hold on me. “I don’t understand why you insist on being miserable. Why won’t you let me help you?”

Seizing the opportunity, I reached into my pocket using my free hand. My shaking fingers fumbled with the propeller, trying to get a good hold before pulling it back out. I couldn’t help but to close my eyes out of fear for what I was doing. Before he could react, I swiped it upwards like a blade towards him as fast as I could. I knew I made contact when he shouted in pain and released me. 

As soon as my wrist felt freedom, I spun around and bolted in the other direction. Before I turned the corner out of sight, I glanced behind, and saw Aaron clutching at the side of his face, blood seeping from between his fingers. There was no time to feel guilty. I had to get out of there. I ran until I thought my lungs would explode. My legs screamed for me to stop, but I continued.

I don’t know how I managed to get back home. Dumb luck perhaps, but as soon as my foot touched the cobblestone in front of my house, I knew one thing for certain.

I couldn’t stay here overnight anymore.

[redacrespeaks]

“I AM... LIKE A CONSTELLATION,”  he said.

A being, made of up of so many smaller pieces.  Pieces that were supposed to connect into the shape of an image inside her head, but this voice was broken.

“ONLY A FEW STARS YET BURN.  I REMEMBER THE NEAREST ONES.  THOSE GONE DARK, BUT CLOSE BY.  FURTHER OUT... NOTHING.”

She wondered what sort of god these lost stars had once formed.  She wondered if it was possible to add new stars to a constellation and have it remain the same as it once was.  Would they even want to?  Or could they build him into a new image?

Deep down, she knew, it was impossible to rebuild the same constellation with different stars.  There would always be an obvious change.  All they could do, was add the new stars in, and hope the image created was better than the last.

[museofdemons]

Look at her!!! This is literally within a couple weeks. I’m so proud of her. She’s GROWING!!!! 

This is what happens when you give SAO kids the ability to make their own decisions. They start glowing and running missions in a skirt. 

[tanith-winchester-cain]

Let's start off with the hottest topic we have among us:

HUNT-THE-STRONG

We all know---love him or hate him---that he can become worse news for Redacre, especially with our growing attachment and involvement with these "gods" that seem to be lining up as extra special energy bars for his maw. I want to implore that we shouldn't brush him off as this massively old, mysterious being that shouldn't be here. He's another of the same species as the rest of the voices, but one that will consume what we know. Is his message really bad, or is it a new perspective? Unfortunately the way he seems to share his message seems to be.. well, bloody. Lord knows we've cleaned up enough of it.

What are your thoughts on what his message means? What he stands for? What really motivates him?

Leave your thoughts below!

[radiodreadzone]

Pieces of You

WC: 2,316

TW: Death mentions (Fragments)

"C'mon...C'mon!" I hissed under my breath, shifting the pin in my hand carefully. I glanced up and around, keeping an eye out for any approaching Sleepers or Lucids that might happen upon me messing with the Daycare's locks. Learning to lock pick had been...interesting. Dax and Gwen had made sure it was a skill in every kid's arsenal. I'd picked it up fast, but on some nights, I still struggled with getting the tumblers to line up in the dark.

The lock finally gave, and the screwdriver twisted, the deadbolt sliding free with a tell-tale 'click'. I puffed out a sigh of relief and shouldered the doors open. Old Growth was the bane of my existence, requiring a lot of time and effort to move around in. My friends tended to think a boot was a better option for navigating it's classrooms. I was inclined to agree, so long as I had the foam to muffle the signs of my passing. But if I had the picks, I'd go with them every time. It kept...things from noticing I'd been here.

There was hearsay that there'd finally been sightings of fragments within the walls of Old Growth. Long ago, I'd heard rumors that Thee-I-Dare had told a few individuals that he'd once lost hosts here. Many hosts. It'd stood to reason that we'd come across them. Eventually.

But Old Growth had remained empty. Whatever ghosts had haunted its halls had remained out of sight, as if fearful of the new eyes and feet that tread here.

But when we'd started to find them...it'd been in droves.

The numbers were astounding. Someone reported three in one building, and another at the lonely gardener's shed up the road. It'd been some time since I'd come across any of his fragments myself, and I'd thought, perhaps, this would be the best time to begin looking again.

I told myself it wasn't for lack of trying to find them. It really wasn't...but there was also something to be said for the weight of it, when I picked up fragments. Especially so many in a short amount of time. They took a toll, in some small way. But the method and manner was...hard to describe.

I slipped quietly through the light and shadow of the daycare, my eyes sharp on the windows for the figures of Lucids outside. Every now and then, I let my attention slip away, looking for the places I'd been told to seek out fragments.

They weren't there.

I muttered a low expletive under my breath, turning away from the last known location of the wing, ducking back into the first floor. I'd seen some supply crates, and knew it was time to stock back up again. I had other places still to dig through before the end of the night and I called the mission ended. My mind wandered as I saw myself through the far corners of the classroom and then upwards towards the bathrooms that faced the sonic fence and trees outside.

Sometimes in a mission, I don't quite...blackout..so much as I set myself on an autopilot. In that moment, it felt something like that. Except instead of my usual path, I changed directions. In retrospect, maybe I was drawn. Or maybe it was just dumb luck.

Rather than leaving through the door I came in, as would be easiest, I cut across the broad swathe of windows, glancing at both windows and stalls as I passed. Only to stop dead at the wisp of something against the wall in the back of the stall.

A fragment.

What a terrible place to die.

It was the first ludicrous thought to drift through my head, quickly followed by the realization that I hadn't heard anything about this one. Dread and sorrow coiled up in my gut.

Thee-I-Dare was frequently asked stories about his fallen Hosts. They seemed...to take a toll on him when they were brought up. The weight of grief. It was a familiar one. Even now I stared at the name fragment in trepidation, both afraid of what it meant and of what it would do.

I had told myself I would never ask Thee-I-Dare about his Hosts. Not the fallen ones. I didn't want to probe at old wounds, fresh or scarred. Curiosity did not forgive callousness. But I had given myself one stipulation.

If no one else had ever found them, if I was the first to find the end of their story, I would let him know they'd been found. Would let him know that they were here, and that they had been recovered. It seemed the least that I could do. My hands clenched at my side a moment, one slowly sliding into my coat pocket to pull out my phone.

"Hi..." My words were soft as I studied the wisp against the wall. A part of me felt a touch ridiculous for talking to it. But the majority of me didn't care. This was all that was left of a person, someone who had passed here.  If people could talk to gravestones, I could talk to a fragment. "I'm sorry." I murmured, pulling up my flashlight and closing my eyes.

Braced myself.

For the sheer number of name fragments that we know of, for the amount of people that are lost across Hoadly and the Maze, the stories of those we do know are sparse and far between. But the sensations that come with them are always similar, save a few outliers. As important as it was to me to continue to help Thee-I-Dare...despite things that happened, there was a reason that I took breaks in my fragment hunting.

One never quite got used to the sensation.

Hot and cold, heavy and light. Ephemeral and ineffable. It was the sensation of holding onto something that was Not Meant For Me. A part of something bigger, greater. Ancient. And yet like an undercurrent it rang with things all too familiar. Human.

They were memories. They had been just like me once.

Panic. Grief. Anger. Relief. Any one or even all of them had been expressed by fragments collected in the past. I tried to focus past it, to see the silhouette that burned against the back of my eyes, the impression of this person before they faded and I took them in for safekeeping. Reaching, grasping for something.

I opened my eyes, a hand fisted in my shirt against my chest. I was shaking a bit as I tried to steady my breathing against the tide that slowly stemmed, quieted. It was unsettling every time.

"I'm sorry." I said again to the space it had been.

Sometime between one blink and the next I found myself in the boxcar again. A Light was in my hand as I stared uncertainly at the mirror.

We still hadn't spoken.

Well...I had. But the silence was ringing again. I tried not to let it bother me. The hard questions still sat in my chest, waiting to be unknotted. Waiting for the doubt and uncertainty to be allowed to give way. Waiting to stop...being afraid. A long exhale of a sigh out of my nose, and I sent the Light.

I let him know that I had found them.

A report and nothing more. My silent war with myself kept off the table.

---

I found more as the nights stretched by. More within the walls of Old Growth. In the places that people had told me of. It was as if the floodgates had opened in the finding of that one lost soul. One here in a room with an instrument and closed feed television. Another in the counselor's office. A third in the main classroom pressed against the wall. All carrying the weight and emotions of their last moments, leaving me shivering under the passing weight.

I let my own stay buried, deep down where I'd left them. Behind that door I'd locked and barred.

A time and a place, Sparrow. Not here. Not now.

Instead, I allowed myself instead to focus on the fact that I'd managed to make headway after months of standstill. That I'd finally started to pick up the pieces of Thee-I-Dare's name once again. Progress was progress, even if it came with the cost of knocking me loose from a more stable balance.

Stable. Right.

I tried not to scoff at myself. Thriving and stability weren't words I would use. Surviving, ironically, worked well. Exhaustion clung. The daylight hours dragged into the night. The conflicts raged on as tempers grew short on lack of sleep. I tried to rest where I could. But it wasn't sustainable. I knew it. The others knew it. We could see it in each other, running like a fearful undercurrent in all of us.

No one talked about it.

I continued to run the Maze. I kept finding sad stories.

Dream Therapy...I'm not sure if I'll ever say that I like any part of the Maze. But that place...it's interesting. I'll give it that. It had plenty of places to use as a vantage point. Shadows and light. The twisted, organic forms of false trees. Aside from the fact that you could lose a favorite boot to a few of the nooks and crannies, I found it a preferable and quiet spot to be. The low, green light reminded me of long mornings spent on the back trails. I could almost let the images superimpose if I let myself.

But that was too close. Too close to letting the illusion of the Maze creep over reality. It was a waking nightmare buried beneath our feet. It needed to stay here. If not be sealed away forever.

A time and a place. I repeated to myself.

I eased down one of the false trees of Dream Therapy, eyes casting from the ground to the distance for anything nearby that would hear my drop to the planks below.

Just like before, it was a complete accident that I even saw it at all. I thought it was a trick of the light.

In the yawning chasm that the facsimile of a forest in Dream Therapy oversaw, a yellow pipe stretched across the gap. It was a treacherous crossing, but it was a quick and easy way to avoid the grasp of Lucids and even the Shape if you were careful and fast. They knew better than to tread upon it, both for fear of it giving way, and for the lethal slip into the abyss below.

It was at the bend of that yellow pipe that I thought I saw something from across the distance. The low light made it hard to tell. Curiosity ate at me, and I slipped through the shadows to get closer. Across the planked floor, onto the catwalk. I crept carefully past the red door, my eyes firmly glued to it, watching and waiting in case something decided to come forth. It remained immobile, the warding eye staring balefully back.

From the edge of the catwalk, I could already feel my stomach clench at the tell tale sign of the wafting mist. Another one. One I'd never even seen or heard of before.

Another tally for your list, kid.

I crept out onto the pipe, being careful of my footing. It didn't take a genius to figure out what had happened to this one. The chasm below me, the location at the edge of the pipe. It all spoke for itself.

I slipped carefully down from my feet to a sitting position, straddling the pipe. "Found you." The words were sad, even as I gave it a small, tired smile. "You poor thing." I trailed off on a long sigh. Up came my phone, on came the light. I hesitated only a moment before I closed my eyes.

Panic.

Raw, and sheer like the cutting edge of stone. It hit me in the chest and made me gasp before it was gone.

I shuddered, gripping the pipe tighter. A silhouette, tipped forward over the abyss.

They fell.

I stared at the wall where the fragment had been, shivering even in my dad's jacket. I stayed there for a long time, staring at the wall, afraid to move. My  hands were grasped tightly on the rivets of metal in the pipe. If anything came and went, I was too lost to the aftershocks of the experience to notice them.

It was the buzz of my phone that finally drew me out of my stupor.

A part of me cringed in fear of seeing an unknown number on my home screen. But no, it was the group text with Kyle and Muse. They were wondering where I was. I had to get up and I had to move again.

I shifted, carefully sliding myself back in the direction of the catwalk. I didn't fully trust my legs in that moment. I didn't want to try to stand until there was a buffer between me and swift end. Even then, I sat in the shadows for several long minutes, trying to just breathe.

Another Light to send. I would have to do it when I got back to the boxcar.

I could barely concentrate. I was glad that I'd already finished my objectives by the time I'd found this one. I don't think I would have been able to actively do things without drawing forth unwanted attention. I crept quietly and carefully out of the Maze, wishing not for the first time that I had a grappling hook, just so I could leave through the broken path up the cliff rather than risk the deep belly of the Maze.

The journey back to the boxcar, the Light, me going home. All of it a blur. A wash of light, color, and vague memories. A silent night muddled by circumstance.

I curled up in my bed at home buried under the blankets.

That's enough Fragments for a while.