yumemigaoka | ★ wanna crack the code, her spell is so mysterious

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★ wanna crack the code, her spell is so mysterious

⭐ Who: Ai and you!
⭐ When: End of July through August
⭐ Where: Various prompts around Yumemigaoka and the Dream Sphere
⭐ What: August Ai catchall! With things in the Dream Sphere officially getting Weird, Ai's doing her best to investigate like a good Experienced Dreamer while keeping up with her duties as a Mentor and as an idol. I'm also down for doing closed/private prompts so hit me up on Discord if you'd like to plan something!

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Tell me about it. But the Department's most concerned about the whole 'suddenly non-Dreamers in the Dream Sphere' thing, and the Department's my job, after all. Closest thing we've ever gotten to proof that we CAN pass stuff into there, so it's got everyone in a stir.

[Including Zeke, but -- amazingly -- he's taking this a bit seriously, meaning he isn't practically vibrating out of his skin.]

Nobody's had any success with working out exactly what happened, though, right? I can see why they'd be so worried about it. Even over here it sounds like nobody's been able to crack it.

[ She's heard some buzz about the whole thing around the DU and while she's picked up enough over the years to mostly follow those sorts of conversations, the really technical stuff sometimes flies over her head. It's funny that she could have been a Dreamer for so long and yet, there's still things in the Dream Sphere she isn't even close to wrapping her head around. ]

By the sounds of things, though, nobody got hurt. But... that's a little strange in its own right, I think. Usually when somebody crosses over like that, it's so they can protect themselves.

Worried, nothing! Save that for the other departments. This is the closest thing to a breakthrough we've had at actually getting supplies and resources over to the Dream Sphere!

[And that does excite him! Self-sufficient though Dreamers might be, he still hopes for the opportunity to arm and supply them better. Even if a lot of it might boil down to psychological and placebo effects, those are nonetheless incredibly valuable in their own right for Dreamers.]

Still... one has to wonder, yeah? Figuring out what caused it one way or the other is the best thing we can do.

[ She huffs out a laugh, rubbing the back of her neck as she does so. ]

I should've guessed you'd be getting hyped about it... this sort of thing is kind of your bread and butter, though, huh?

[ She says it with a weary sort of smile, on the fonder side of long suffering. You work with a guy like Zeke for long enough and you just sort of end up learning to appreciate his energy out of sheer necessity. ]

The closest I've been able to guess so far is that the big tree in the middle was some sort of unique Nightmare... but if it was, it didn't make any sort of move to hurt anyone, even though there were so many people ripe for the picking.

So call it the opposite of a Nightmare. Figure that the quiet Figments of everyone there got woken up enough to tip people over. Wouldn't that make it a Daydream?

[Zeke makes a mental note to make this the official term as soon as possible. Which is actually not such an outrageous thought when one can shove the term into government reports and discussions.]

Like a sort of... hyper-lucid dream?

[ She puts a hand to her chin, her expression turning thoughtful. There's always been a connection between lucid dreaming and Awakening and really, isn't what the Dreamers themsevles do a sort of magically assisted hyper real lucid dreaming? But for that to happen and for nobody she's heard of to Awaken as a result... ]

Daydream is as good a word for it as any, I guess. It's not quite the same as what we do, but it's close enough...

[ Oh, now she looks like she's getting an Idea. ]

Do you think we could do something to make it happen again?

To answer that, we need to know why it hasn't happened before.

[Zeke puts a finger to his chin, which of course involves far more circling of his arms than it really should.]

If we're assuming that it was collective good wishes, and that makes sense considering the 'achieve your dreams' angle to it all that got terribly literal... Tanabata's happened before without that sort of thing going off. So what's the difference this year? My first guess is we've hit some sort of... call it 'critical mass' of Dreamers or Dream Sphere connections...

[And then he yanks his hand away to snap his fingers.]

The stabilizers!

... You know, you might be on to something.

[ Ai's expression eases into something a little more seriously thoughtful. She's gotten so good at playing the role of the frivolous DU idol who doesn't take a single thing seriously, but if anyone still working here would know exactly how deeply she worries about all this, it'd be Zeke. The narrowing of her eyes and her furrowed brow might not exactly match pretty and perfect Dreamer Ai-Doll, but somehow, it suits Hoshino Ai. ]

They're the only new element that wasn't here last year... and we have been going through a lot of them. Could it be that Nightmares have some kind of stabilizing effect when they start pulling people through – could those two processes actually be the same thing?

[Hey, if anyone knows about being more serious that one appears, it's Zeke. Of course, in his case, he isn't trying to hide it -- everyone just remembers the high-volume energy and stunts, and never the actual competence and insight.]

My first thought was that there's a limited amount of stability out there. The more places we lock down into being there twenty-four-seven, the thinner the barrier between dreams and waking gets. Damn. I didn't think to try to show up in the celebration awake, or we might have known if a Dreamer could have shifted there without needing to sleep first.

[ She huffs a sigh. ]

You'd think this would be the sort of thing they'd experiment with and clear before they just started handing the things out willy nilly...

[ Well, they were handing the things out to DO research in the first place, so she can understand them not having the whole thing entirely worked out out. But still...! ]

Do you think it's worth asking people not to be so gung-ho about stabilizing every place they come across? At least until we have a better idea of what's going on?

[Believe it or not, Zeke did not become Director of a government subagency that wants to supply material aid to the Dream Sphere by showing up to the interview in a skirt and shouting "BRINGER OF CHAOS!" till they hired him to shut him up.]

It's just a hypothesis, and there's potential other reasons too. We should try to see if we can reproduce it somehow even on a local scale, first.

We'd have to get some volunteers... and permission. But I probably don't need to tell you that, right?

[ this is zeke of the "please instate some safety regulations i am on my knees i am on my hands and knees" institute, after all. they probably have several entire dossiers of exactly how to handle a situation like this just in case. ]

We could focus on Dreamers to start with, just to make sure they can defend themselves if anything goes wrong in the process and then expand from there once we've seen things are safe. How does that sound?

It's a good start for sure. I'd guess, and it is just a guess, that a few Dreamers could weaken the barrier just as well as many more normal people. At the very least that's a good starting hypothesis, yeah?

[Applying any sort of science to the Dream Sphere might be counterproductive, but you gotta go about figuring this out somehow, right? Even if 'we can't figure it out' turns out to be the answer, that at least tells you a lot of things it DOESN'T seem to be.]

It sure sounds like one to me.

[ She gives one last Big, Dramatic Stretch just to shake off the last of the weariness in her limbs then sets her hands on her hips and gives Zeke a grin. ]

Alright! Why don't you leave things with me here and I'll start putting words into people's ears about getting this organized? That'll give you time to work out things on your side so by the time you're ready to formally propose it, people should already be warmed up to the idea and they'll be quicker to get on board!

Right. I'll have to shake my trees and see if we can get this funded and sponsored and all that crap. [He's already running through the paperwork and proposals in his head, along with the perils of going that route instead of just getting a bunch of people together and taking a shot. But it's so relevant to their mission...] Luckily I'm authorized to use myself as Dreamer support, defense, and backup!

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★ wanna crack the code, her spell is so mysterious

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