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✖ THE CARNIVAL

Ⅰ. ARRIVAL & THE TEMPLE
You can read all about your character's arrival in the game lore.
You can see the lights of the Ferris wheel from the water, and by the time you pull into port you can smell popcorn, cotton candy, grease, sawdust. Music drifts on the air, interspersed with screams from the rides.

The carnival is in town.

Not just any carnival, either - the carnival. The one to end all others. Every circus you ever read about or saw in a movie, with striped tents filled with acrobats and sideshows, midway games complete with carnival barkers in straw boater hats. But it's also every shitty fair that ever rolled through your hometown, with unreliable looking men with greasy mullets smoking as they jockey the Wild Mouse, the Gravitron, the Zipper, the Corkscrew. There's a constant stream of 80s hair metal playing underneath the roar of the rollercoaster tracks, blending somehow with the traditional piping organ of the carousel.

Experienced Travelers will know by now that every island has its own temple, and this one is no exception. It’s not in the carnival proper, though; if you step away from the lights of the midway and tents, you’ll notice dozens of old wooden circus trailers, arranged in a circle, growing tighter together the closer to the center you walk. The trailers are functional living places, with built in beds - sometimes one, sometimes two - and a small table and an old wood burning stove with a cooking top just big enough to boil a kettle on. There’s a toilet, but if you want a shower you’ll have to go outside and find a tent set up at the outskirts of the makeshift trailer park where there are tent showers set up, locker room style.

The clearing in the middle of the parked caravan is completely empty except for a solitary midway game: a towering high striker. It must be at least twenty feet tall, surmounted by a round, red bell. A wooden mallet is leaned against a sign next to the game that reads, predictably, TEST YOUR STRENGTH.

Step right up.

Notes:
1. Please remember to mark threads appropriately with Content Warnings when necessary.

2. These prompts are a jumping off point - how they affect your character and their development is up to you.

3. The island temple is accessible to all. The High Temple is only accessible to new characters this month - it will re-open to all others next month.

4. The Test your Strength game can be played by anyone. How well your character does is entirely up to you, but the game does not necessarily measure physical strength.

5. These residents of the island are normal humans. Killing them is possible and will affect the colour grading of your Scrywatch depending on the situation.

6. Any food found on the midway is safe to eat, and is consumable by non-human entities.

7. Have fun!

Ⅱ. HALL OF MIRRORS
When it comes to amusements, the Hall of Mirrors has always been second-fiddle to the Haunted House. But the line for the former was shorter, so here you are. The guy working the door has weasel eyes and is smoking. He gestures for you and whoever is behind you to enter together; "No singles. For safety."

The lights are a dull neon, cycling from deep blue to cyan to purple and back again. You find that your outstretched fingers will bump against smooth, clear glass as often as not. The mirrors reflect the maze back into itself over and over, disorienting and strange.

Some of the mirrors are convex, some concave, and as you pass them your reflection warps and bends alongside that of whoever you're stuck inside the maze with.

At some point you will realise that the reflection looking back at you isn't quite right. It's still you, sure, but it's not how you really look, not on the outside.

Looking back at you from the cold glass is how you perceive yourself. Perhaps that's stronger, perhaps uglier, perhaps as a sniveling child or an ancient hag. And this reflection is going to follow you from mirror to mirror as you desperately try to find your way out.

One of you spots an exit sign, bleeding red light. Only catch is that it's behind a pane of glass. And another. And another. You could break your way through all of them, certainly, but it's not as if there's anything laying around for you to use to do so. Just yourself, which might work in action movies but tends to cause a lot of physical damage in the real world.

Above the glass someone has placed a sticker that reads, “who are you really?” in black sharpie. Answer it, and the glass will swing open. Don't, and well...

Guess you'll have several years worth of bad luck.

Notes:
1. Yes, characters can bash their way out of the maze, but it is real glass and will cut anyone who isn’t invulnerable. There is a first aid station run by extremely unreliable carneys on the premises, so hopefully they can patch themselves up enough there.

Ⅲ. THE CAROUSEL
CW: childhood trauma
Old fashioned organ music and a million flashing lights draws you to the carousel. It's a vintage delight: huge, with ornate animals carved out of wood and lovingly hand painted. There are horses, of course, but also lions and leopards and birds and rabbits and wolves... any animal you could want! In fact, you'll see an animal that looks perfectly YOU. You just have to climb up on it for a ride.

Settled on your mount, the ride begins to move. To your surprise, it begins to move backwards. You can't seem to ungrip the pole you're hanging on to, so you're helpless to escape as the ride spins again and again.

When it stops and you step off, you will be younger. You will in fact be the same age you were when a formative event happened to you.

You're a kid at a carnival! How fun! Well, maybe you're not that young, and it's probably not very fun at all considering that now your trauma is fresh.

The only way to become your proper age again is to get on the carousel and get it to run forward. Depending on your age, you might not be able to figure any of that out, but surely one of the other Travelers can help you. You'll definitely need someone to man the carousel controls. Oh, and be careful not to knock it into overdrive...

Notes:
1. If your character does not get back on the carousel and ride it in reverse, they will revert to their actual ages at the end of the month.

2. Please be especially mindful of content warnings with underage characters. A reminder that the game does not allow explicit sexual content with minors.

3. You do not have to regress your character to childhood - if a very formative event happened at age 20 for example, you can choose that route instead.

4. Speeding up the carousel while it is moving forward will result in, you guessed it, aging your character UP. Obviously you can ride it backwards again to fix this, or again the aging will be reversed at the end of the month.

Ⅳ. COULROPHOBIA
CW: clowns, suffocation
Who can possibly resist the big top? Not you! You're ushered into the tent and you take a seat in the stands, where you have an excellent view of the huge ring before you. The excitement in the air is palpable, and even if you're the grouchy type you'll find yourself a little bit thrilled.

It's a little surprising when the lights go up to the sound of screaming guitars. Mist belches from hidden foggers, and flames shoot from near the center of the ring. The lights stutter red, blue, green. The whole thing is a lot more rock show than it is Ringling Brother's.

At any rate, even if the ringmaster looks like a reject from a trailer park metal band and the music is liable to burst some eardrums, it's still a circus. There are trained horses and riders, contortionists, and a score of talented trapeze artists. It's all sparkling and impressive and terrific fun.

The trapeze artists take their bows, clearly ready for a break. And if a break is needed at the circus? You know what happens next, don't you?

SEND IN THE CLOWNS!

The clowns spill into the ring, all sorts of them! There's Harlequin and Pierrot, Auguste and Tramp. There's Bozos and Ronalds and Clarabelles and Krustys. Hopefully no Gacys, but there's so many of them that it's hard to know for sure.

One of these clowns - the one you hate the most, of course - approaches you in the stands. With comically exaggerated movements, it leans close to you and whispers...

Well. It whispers horrible things to you, really. It recounts to you some instance in your life where you delighted in the suffering of another, a moment where you really and truly were happy that somebody else was hurt. It's not a moment to be proud of, for sure, but as the clown tells your own secret shameful joy to you, you start to laugh. Really laugh - soon you're bent over double, tears running down your face, absolutely howling with laughter.

Your stomach hurts, and you're running out of breath. Very soon you won't be able to breathe at all.

Eventually, one of your fellow travelers won't be able to resist asking you, "What's so funny?"

The only way to stop laughing is to tell them. Otherwise you're going to pass out right where you sit, a creepy clown leering over you the whole time. Maybe your fellow traveler will be nice enough to drag you out of there if that happens, because if you're left alone? Everybody knows clowns get so much scarier alone in the dark.

Notes:
1. What happens if you really do get ditched with the clowns? Great question. Maybe they make you one of them. Maybe they eat you. Maybe you just wake up in the Big Top dressing room and see all the clowns smoking cigars and taking their floppy shoes off to film Clown Foot Erotica.

It wouldn't be a party without some jams.

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"Every last one. You're welcome to as many as you would like," David suggested as he sets a kettle on. Then he goes to sit on the open bed.

"I'm sorta just really good at stuff," David answered with a shrug. "You name it, I'm probably good at it."

Jean-Paul's smirk turns saucy.

"...too easy," he says, and clears a spot on the stuffy covered bed. "So what do you like being best at?"

David catches the look and was blushing again. Really man?

"I liked being the best at figure skating. I wanted to go to the Olympics. But that's not really possible for me anymore."

For a number of reasons.

"Non? Missed your window, hn? Pity." He smirks impishly. "I dated a figure skater. Wonderful lover."

Yep, and now his face feels like it's burning up.

"No, it... There's a number of reasons. Mutants aren't allowed to compete anymore. We have an 'unfair advantage'."

Which, in the defense of some organizers, David absolutely had an unfair advantage.

Jean-Paul looks at David curiously. "Oh we DO, do we? I don't see what business it is of theirs what mutants can do."

Edited 2021-09-19 04:01 (UTC)

"The Olympics is about being the best that a human can achieve, right? The argument is that we aren't human. That you go faster than anyone could do all on your own, and are they SURE you weren't using your powers. And me? I get the skills of those around me. Put me in the room with the best figure skaters in the world and I can't be anything but better."

Or so he'd feared when he had come into his powers.

"I haven't gone skating in almost two years now. Before that, not for a lot longer. So I guess it doesn't matter."

Jean-Paul snorts derisively. "That's stupid," he says, blissfully unaware of the future that awaits him. "Just don't tell them, then."

He studies David curiously. "Why not? Hurt too much?"

"I'm sort of a known quantity back home," David countered with a smile. Which was weird to think. He'd never have expected it as a kid.

With the water on to boil he turned back to look at Jean-Paul and smiled sadly.

"I can't. I literally don't possess the skill anymore. Memories, yes. But you ever hear of the three Greek Fates? I sacrificed all of my skill and knowledge about how to figure skate to them to save innocent lives. It had to be something of value, you see, to trade for their lives."

Jean-Paul's expression doesn't change much, but for someone who knows him - someone like David - the softness in his eyes is obvious.

"So we'll re-teach you," he says.

Teach him? David frowns. His hands itch at his side, trying to figure out what Jean-Paul means, wanting to reach out and touch him and see if the man really knew how to teach him. Or was it something he'd have to do by trail and error again?

Could he ever be that good again? And oh, why did his heart ache to think of it.

Because of Damian, of course. Beautiful, cunning, indulgent Damian, who had given him back his passion for that shining moment in time. For all that he'd let the man go the memory of him in the moment was so powerful that David couldn't hold back the way the tears made his eyes shine. Worse, without his glasses, he couldn't hide them either. Just him there, vulnerable and missing so much that he didn't have words for.

"Can you even skate?" he managed to ask the other, though he had to fight to keep his voice from cracking.

Jean-Paul is watching David very, very closely. It only takes him half a second to be at the other man's side, peering at him with a mixture of curiosity and sympathy.

"I can," he says. "Not as well as my ex, but I can. You're very sad, aren't you?"

Well at least Jean-Paul was a lot more direct at this age. The directness even earned a brief smirk.

"Quite. You're reminding me of a man I once loved. Actually, two men now that I think about it."

Jean-Paul was, in a strange way, a mixture between the charm and money and poise of Damian, and the speed, daring, and fuck the word before it can fuck me mentality of Tommy. What a thought to have.

"But it's also... imagine waking up one morning and you can't remember how to ski. There you are, once the best in the world, and now you can name all the parts but you know if you strapped on a pair of skis you would eat it every single time. Greener than grass at your passion. It's always going to make you sad, right? It makes me sad."

And this moment was making him feel lonely.

"May I... May I touch you? Just to feel what it's like to have the knowledge again? It won't stay, none of anything would stay. My brain is like a sieve for this stuff now. But a second would mean that for a minute, I could remember the parts my body should know and my imagination could fill in the rest."

Jean-Paul's clear blue eyes are, for a wonder, perfectly understanding. He may not have the imagination to clearly picture what David is describing, but he understands sadness intimately. He's had a lot of it in his life, especially recently.

"But of course," he says softly, and slips his arms around David's neck.

The arms are around him and David considers it for a moment. Considers ducking out of the touch, pulling away, being free of it. Considers how much easier it would be to just take his hand or something. Instead he lets a hand come up to touch Jean-Paul's cheek just to have an anchor point he controls. And then he let his outermost shields open, to feel the man's mind and not everything else.

A second for a minute. A second wouldn't be nearly enough for him. Instead he lets the touch linger, lets himself linger. Two seconds as he pushes aside the things he doesn't care about. Three seconds to give him time to feel the glide of the ice, to know what it is to do the jumps. He can feel it in his legs, in his arms, in his body. Knows the balance. Keeps touching because he needs more.

The tears that had stung at his eyes finally fell, rolling down his cheeks. ANd he can't find it in himself to let go.

David's touch is warm, and comforting in a way that is frankly a little unusual. It's almost as if this strange man DOES know him as he claims to. So Jean-Paul stays in his arms, and when David's tears begin to fall he kisses them lightly away.

"Shhh," he soothes. "You are more than what you were."

The gentleness is unexpected. And in a strange way, familiar. Not to Jean-Paul in particular, but to the men the man reminds him of.

"I know that," he whispers, eyes still closed, fingers still on the man's face. "But I can still miss the parts of me I lost, can't I?"

"Ouais," Jean-Paul agrees. "In fact, I would say that you must mourn them." He falls silent, grappling with a grief that is (to him as he is now) very fresh.

"Mourn them, and miss them sometimes, but lay them to rest."

"I know," he whispered, more to himself than to Jean-Paul. "Trust me, I know."

And with that he let his head come forward to rest against Jean-Paul's.

"Fuck I hope you don't remember all of this later, when you're fully you again. Because you're shouldering too much of my grief for me these days, Jean-Paul."

Jean-Paul smirks. "I've very strong shoulders," he says, and then tilts his face so he can kiss David on the lips.

Well, the man wasn't wrong about that at all. They were. As for David... He had always been the sort of person to take comfort from physical affection, from contact, from the softness another person might offer him. And the kiss definitely counted.

Damn him for the moment of weakness, and for the need to feel comforted. It had gotten him in trouble before, far too many times. But he did it anyway. He let Jean-Paul kiss him, his own hands curling in the fabric of the other's shirt to almost draw him closer.

Jean-Paul is above all things a very physical creature. His powers, his hobbies, his lifestyle... it's all a celebration of the body. There's a reason he wears silk robes, and it's not JUST because it's expensive. It feels good.

He wraps his arms around David tighter and opens his mouth, tongue playfully insistent. Gently, he tugs David toward that little bed.

Feeling good would be so good right about now, even with the way David's mind was still lost in the cascade of all Jean-Paul knew. Strangely enough, so little of it was different from what the man would know, and his mind was juggling the strange sensation that came when knowledge fit itself back alongside where it had rested before in his mind. So much of it just fit, knowing where it went in the box in his mind that was 'Jean-Paul', and it was weird, shuffling it around to try and find room for the skating again.

But that would be gone later, so why bother? Why bother with anything beyond meeting Jean-Paul's openness with his own, his tongue pressing forward to explore and taste and frankly take control while he could. So much of him was fully aware that in the long run with a speedster the control you had over a situation was always and only what they ceded to you, so he intended to enjoy it while it was given.

And he didn't stop Jean-Paul from pulling him toward the bed. He could regret his mistake later. There was no denying that there was clearly enthusiastic consent now.

Jean-Paul falls onto the bed and pulls David along with him. Perhaps he can sense, in some dim way, that David needs a measure of control here. He kisses him openly and warmly, fast hands slipping up under David's shirt to feel his chest.

Jean-Paul loops a long leg around David's thigh and rolls his hips up. "You are alright?" he asks, voice low and amused.

Good news: it's definitely a damn toned chest. Dude works out, though not so much that he's got an unhealthy amount of muscle definition, because you had to take care of yourself.

"Never get used to how fast speedster hands are," he noted as he tried to settle over the other. Except there was an equally quick leg around him and that roll of hips that gave just enough friction for him to bite his lips against making a noise from the sensation.

"I'm given to understand that in this field, I'm better than alright."

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