#& ⋰ haerin01.

[serialeclipse]

@moonsnitch / haerin

‘besides, i think there’s not really much point of overdoing it before the actual showcase–’ then all of a sudden it happens. the sound of static splits the perfect sky in half and a strange figure appears to exact its judgement. its voice seems to be coming at them from every angle, distorted and menacing. haerin forgets herself and her dad’s sermons flood her thoughts. he used to go blue in the lips whenever he spoke of a false prophet, flecks of spittle raining down upon the pulpit. it would lead haerin to wonder often if fear was necessary for the presence of passion. and then it’s gone. it couldn’t have been more than a minute but the time it takes for haerin to gather herself is tenfold. ‘i-i… huh?’ she looks over at domi, looks for any sort of sign. ‘you saw that, right?’

domi isn't a good poet, but she's always loved crafting a story. she gets that they're meant to be foils, shadow and archangel, and there's the thing about living and the dead between them, and she just knows that they'd make such a compelling story—if only she could make friends with the other. because they started out at roughly the same time, with obvious concepts that orbit pulled from the same hat, but domi's never really gotten in a word with the woman behind the archangel fighter, even with how often they've been matched up.

domi can't really argue against haerin; she doesn't know her well enough to. she'd love to continue, to work out a dramatic game, but they don't have a working relationship like that. they barely have one, actually, and domi doesn't know where she misstepped with her back when they both started out in the scene but the cordial state of things is an improvement already.

so she's about to agree when something cuts into their game, the terrain around them jittering into the arena itself. no—someone.

the voice goes through her, domi's form warping around the soundwaves as her controls disappear and her skill activates without warning. she phases through the floor and only hits ground when she can't go any further down,, the shock of it second to the booming sound that's shaking their whole game. its image is startlingly unreal, hitting the uncanny valley in a way that domi hadn't even known avatars could look like.

as quick as it happened, before she can process anything about it, the game stage is back to normal. domi's controls come back, slipping herself out of the floor and on top of it, hovering for a moment against the shadows. she blinks, fast and confused. "uh, yeah," is what she can eke out, nodding her head in lieu of elaboration, because how does she describe what that is?

she's never seen anything like it, in all the years she's been playing iron fist. domi knows more than she wants to about the possibility of glitches happening, though she doesn't voice that out loud. "do you think, maybe our game got caught up in some other one?"