And so it begins...

Good day to you all, this is quite an honor I have been given by our esteemed Shade, a chance to take any and all willing on an adventure of grand proportions. This will not be some simple ‘hack and slash’ clash between you and some hired men, no, and neither will this be some simple gathering at a party where your given masks and asked to step into certain rooms. Heavens no, this is more of a test let us say, a .

Some who enter will walk away with rewards and prestige.

Some will find answers to long hidden questions.

And others will have their adventure end…not so nicely.

The chances are the same for all, what you get is what you find, and I do mean that word for word. The choices are yours, where to go and what to do. Maybe yours will not end up like this one.



The flyer stated the place had been around for a long time in small lettering at the top, a ‘mainstay’ here in the back city slums of Midgar. Still, it took him a few days to find it buried deep in a dark corner of a dead end street. Shamus had never seen or heard of the shop before and only discovered it when he picked up an old flyer he found floating down the drain by his ratty apartment. He asked about it with his co-workers at Shinra but they had never heard of the place either. He reached into his pocket and produced the worn flyer with its crumpled corners and torn edges. It was one of the old types, from a time long gone by with hand drawn pictures and thick white borders. Shamus looked up to see the sign above the shop’s darkened windows, the large board was caked with what looked like a hundred years of dirt but he made out the name and went to checking the old style lettering on the flyer which stated the shop was a magical place, a mystical wonderland of bewilderment to all.

No, it really did. The top line called out to the attentive eye in faded colors ‘T. Corneille’s House of the Amazing and Spectacular …’ drawn there by a bold swoosh which underlined this claim and at the bottom of the paper just at the edge of the border was another one liner stating ‘everything for sale and we mean ‘everything.’ The between was a side view of the shop, one of those panoramic type meant to make everything bigger and bolder, only the haggard flyer gave a true perspective of the shop. Shamus looked around noting there wasn’t a soul to be found around, the street was as bare as his cupboard at home, so he stood feeling like an idiot wondering just why he was there. Then a small shock made his fingers close round the old flyer crumpling the paper, a strange little sensation that triggered his muscles to spasm…maybe. He looked up from his hand to the store front and noticed a light was on now. A single small light that barely shone through the grimy window he stared at.

A bird called out with a shrill screech demanding attention or food or both but Shamus didn’t hear anything. He was lost now, drawn to the store and that light like a moth to a flame. He was off the street and through the door before he could think of anything else standing in the middle of what one might call a store, loosely. There were shelves which were meant to hold numerous items but at the moment only held the occasional few. Shamus looked to his right and saw a glass stand with a bowl on top, the kind meant to hold a cake maybe, that caught his attention because inside the protective dome was a single large black feather. Next to this stand was a second one, same style with a matching large black feather. As he walked up Shamus could swear he saw the two plumes move, slowly slide across their respective bases and into the glass walls of the dome. If it didn’t sound too weird he would have sworn the feathers were trying to get at each other, like they were mortal enemies. Under the dome of the first one was one word on a tarnished brass placard, ‘Sephiroth’ and on an exact copy of the placard under the second feather with the word ‘Genesis’.

Shamus stepped back whistling recognizing the names and feeling his stomach flop over. He heard a small click behind him then, the small almost inaudible snap of a latch for a door striking home. He spun quickly, almost too fast as his feet got a little tangled, to see a man standing in the center of the room just a few feet away. The man was dressed in an old suit, black with the exception of a white shirt with a collar so stained it was brown. He stood at least six foot seven and couldn’t weigh more than ninety pounds wet, if that, with sunken eyes and protruding cheek bones. He looked like a good stiff wind would blow him right over. He smiled at Shamus with a look that half scared half petrified him and spoke.

“Birds of a feather sometimes do not flock together…sometimes they just try and kill each other outright.”

Shamus swallowed hard and threw a thumb over his shoulder at the glass stand. “Are those from…I mean…ar-”

“Are they real? Quite so, came across them one day from a man looking to trade. I bartered well and luckily found myself possessing the feathers of the one winged angels. My name is T. Corneille , welcome to my humble emporium.” The man said now standing just a foot away from Shamus. He had crossed the floor without a single move it seemed like.

“How did the man come across the feathers?” Shamus asked genuinely curious.

The man only shook his head and raised a single long finger, the nail blackened. “Oh I never ask someone how they obtain an item, the how and why is of no consequence. I only need to know if it is a true feather from Sephiroth, not how it came into that person’s possession. Do you need to know why you stopped here in my shop exactly, or is it enough to just know you are here?”

Well, Shamus wasn’t sure what the explanation meant. He had to admit he got lost in the first few words. He wasn’t the smartest tool in the shed. “Yeah, sure, well it was nice to see this place and all. Maybe I’ll stop by again later.”

“Leaving all ready Shamus, when all my true amazing items remain hidden in the back store room? Willing to leave without seeing the grand artifacts of my collection? I am disappointed.”

“How do you know my name?”Shamus asked with a small whisper.

The man just waved a hand and was across the room again in a blink. “Its on the jacket your wearing my friend, one of those labels just above the heart.”

Shamus looked down and noticed he was wearing his uniform still from his job at Shinra. He gave a small laugh as the man only smiled that cold grin and stared at him. “Forgot I still had it on.”

“And that my friend is the real problem with this world, that things like forgetting what your wearing slip by because your too busy rushing from one thing to another everyday of every week, just rushing and rushing…when do you have time to just stop and think and enjoy this world. Never I say, except to lament during those few free minutes on how it all might be different if you had just made a different decision at some important time on your life.”

Shamus just shrugged his shoulders still not quite following along as the man continued on. “Do you know what might be breathtaking, life saving you even might call it? What if you could go back and see how your life would be if you decided differently? What if you could see if the grass is truly greener on the other side of the mountain?”

The small shop fell quiet at that point. Shamus didn’t have a stellar educational record which is probably why he worked the mechanical shift on the lower generators at Shinra. He swallowed hard because even with his lack of knowledge from text books and school Shamus more than understood what the man was offering. A chance to go back and see what a simple decision like saying yes when you really meant no would have on your life. A window to watch through and see if that idea to make a million Gil would have really worked or if saying yes to going to lunch with that pretty girl from the loading dock would have led to a family and blissful happiness. “You can do that, show us what would have happened if we chose differently? How can you do that?”

“Oh I’m afraid the device is way too complicated to explain,” the man said crossing the room again in a blink to stand by Shamus almost nudging his right shoulder, “and even if I could I am bound by certain legal precedents to never divulge how the machine does what it does. You see, what occurs in your session with the device is private and as such is not common knowledge to me or anyone else. ”

That’s when the odd feeling came back running right down Shamus’s spine, that weird scary feeling he used to get when he was eight and his older brother Lenn would look at him so mean he’d almost wet himself cause he knew the boy was going to hurt him. It was a feeling that told him to just get the hells out of there in a bolt, only Shamus couldn’t, he just couldn’t. Lenn, hell he’d forgotten about his sick in the head sibling after they put the son-of-a-whore in the ground in a metal box. Oh how Shamus wanted to look inside that box just once and spit in Lenn’s face, only it was locked closed. Why was he thinking about that cold abusive hume now? Shamus still carried the psychological bruises after the physical ones had gone. He still had nightmares of all the times his brother had…had…but what if Lenn never existed? What if Shamus had grown up differently, without fear cowering in a corner? The temptation to see how he lived and thrived started to creep in and take hold pushing the feeling of fear away.

“This machine, it won’t hurt me will it?” Shamus asked with a quiver in his voice. The decision was made it seems and the feeling had little say in it.

The smile that scared Shamus just a second before shifted to a purse as the man shook his head. “The device has no physical attachment and works through the wondrous application of specialized magic. All you need my friend is the courage to see what would have been…see into a parallel time line and a new world.”

Another hard swallow as Shamus looked to, was pulled, toward a door that he hadn’t noticed when he first entered the shop. That feeling of fleeing still screamed for him to leave but it had no chance against the curiosity, not a chance at all. His brother Lenn had beaten, desecrated, and all but set his path here in Midgar. It was a beating that hurt Shamus’s head so he didn’t learn as well as other kids. The time Lenn almost drowned him in the tub at home with that mean smile has him so scared still he barely took baths or showers. All the abuse had left Shamus a shell and here he stood, living in squalor because he was too afraid and too stupid to do anything else. All these years blaming Lenn for his sad life, all this time suffering looking for a reason why nothing went right, it could all be justified with one look in this machine. Shamus ignored that feeling to run, shoved it right into the dark closet of his mind and nodded to the tall man while staring at the door.

“How much does it cost to see what it would be like without Lenn?”

Shamus never saw the smile grow a bit bigger, never saw the brown teeth of Mr. T. Corneille and the receded gum line. It was like a shark and there was blood in the water. “We can discuss costs later Mr. Shamus, depending on the outcome of your session with the machine.”

“Outcome?” Shamus asked like a zombie, his voice sounding far off and not really interested in hearing an answer. His eyes never moved from the door, never moved and never blinked once.

“Yes, there is no guarantee as to what the machine will show you Mr. Shamus and according to certain legalities I have to inform you there is no returns or refunds of your session. What you see, as they say, is what you get.” T. Corneille said as his smile grew a little more.

The shop was quiet, but only for a second as Shamus just nodded still staring at the door. “Yeah…okay…I’m good with that.”

T. Corneille closed his eyes and then with a long skinny arm he guided Shamus through the door to the back of the shop. As the door closed from the pair passing through the two feathers in the glass stands went back to fighting to reach one another. A week later Shamus missed his starting time at work, which wasn’t much to worry about except Shamus never missed work and there was the fact he had been acting so strange the days before going missing. He looked scare, panicked, like something was coming for him and he was trying to catch it before it got to him. When he didn’t show for his shift his manager and co-worker called the local constabulary who went to the old apartment building where Shamus lived to check on him.

When the policemen broke into his place, which they had to do because the door was barricaded with almost every piece of furniture in the place, they found a makeshift fortress. All the windows were boarded up which went along with all the hammering the neighbors had heard over the last week. The doors to every room had been nailed shut too. The only room available was the small living room, which looked lived in with a bed roll on the floor and scraps of food and empty cups scattered everywhere. Yet that was it, just a bunch of nails and broken furniture and an old bed roll. There was no Shamus and no sign of anything else. No one had come and gone with the exception of Shamus over the last few days the neighbors said and then yesterday he stopped after going inside one last time. The neighbor heard all the furniture being moved and then that was it…nothing else. It was as quiet as a morgue.

The Policemen just took down all the statements in their notepads and got ready to leave when something caught one of their eyes. The man walked back into the apartment and picked up a small piece of paper that spun in circles on the floor in the breeze. He opened up the crumpled paper and stared at the scribbled writing on what looked like a torn corner from the phone book.

Lenn wasn’t in the box….he wasn’t in the box…he wasn’t in the box.

He crumpled the paper back up and put it in his pocket. The constables gave a meager search for Shamus, put in the token all points bulletin, but no one ever came forward. It seemed old Shamus just disappeared right off the planet and soon his apartment was cleaned up somewhat and rented out once again. His spot on the maintenance team was filled by a man named Royson, hell better with a wrench than Shamus had ever been and he took baths like a man should which was an upside. Down at T. Corneille the odd man just hummed and waited for the next person to shuttle through his doors. His flyers were set round town, the old ones and the new ones and the ones in between. It was just a matter of time and the machine would be put to use again.



Ah, Mr. Shamus, his adventure was not so nice I think.

Will this happen to you? I do not know… the ending of your adventure can only be determined by you. I can assure you of two things, which is what the machine shows you is for you alone and to be ready for anything. As you see, some sessions can be hazardous.

If you wish to interact with the machine then by all means send a private message to me and I will start the session for you. Be prepared though, be courageous, for what comes next may be not what you wanted to see…