tushanshu_logs | Event | Landfall

Event | Landfall | Dreaming

Characters: Any and every!
Date: August 10th - 31, 2013
Location: The realm of Dreaming as accessed via Sinbrilee
Situation: Dreaming is but one of the three realms and here characters are subject to their fanciful thoughts.
Warnings/Rating: Please place content warnings in subject headers!

Sinbrilee | Dreaming | Death

Life. Dreaming. Death. Three realms overlaid upon one another and yet each distinctly their own. They dwell in Life and do so live upon the back of the great turtle as those of Sinbrilee did upon the shell of his sister. However, there stand numerous arches of marble throughout the ruined city that are inlaid with runes beyond understanding. Those that live and breathe which step through those whose runes glow with faint, iridescent light tread instead into the realm of Dreaming.

Here, there exists no single defining characteristic beyond the visitor's imagination. The landscape sculpts to their individual thoughts, the events to their dreams. From a drab gray nothing to the most brilliant of displays, the senses perceive all that they wish to perceive for all that nothing here truly exists. This far from Tu Vishan, the ability to shape their surroundings is all they have, for Sinbrilee's Dreaming does not have the energy to sustain powers, only the bodies of those that dwell here.

Should two parties near, then the Mesh begins. Dreams, you see, not only can be shared, but they strive to be. These visions sculpted into reality reach out for one another and blend. They begin an exchange akin to a linking of the minds, within which one visitor can learn the other's deepest thoughts. Their limitation is but compatibility, for two minds that cannot flow upon the same current cannot hold the Mesh.

Happiness or loss, the landscape and events play out memories and fancies with a most convincing air. The mood rises and falls with the tide of the visitor's mind, detached as they are from the soothing influence of a great turtle's mind. Nothing here, however, is real; 'constructs' simply fade if taken through the archways and even the greatest scientific minds or tools will reveal nothing of its source. This is an ancient magic of an ancient realm, long practised in concealing itself from any prying.

Note: Due to the fluid and highly individual nature of Dreaming, no official subheaders will be provided in the comments of this post. Feel free to post and thread however you like, so long as the rules of Dreaming are adhered to.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

[She takes a seat where she stands, not attempting to get any closer to him. But that look just breaks her heart in about ten places, and she tenses up as she begins to speak. No more secrets, no more lies.] When the Thanagarians came to Earth, they said it was because the Gordanians had their sights set on Earth for invasion. We-- they were there to help. Hro Talak [She points to the Thanagarian in front of the cells.] told the world I was actually an lieutenant in the army, sent ahead as an advance scout to prepare for their arrival. I'd been lying to them all this time. [Some still hated her, but she bore with it.]

The Thanagarian army told everyone they wanted to build a force field. The League saw no reason to doubt them, so they helped. Batman inspected the Gordanian ship that crashed onto Earth, the one the Thanagarians shot down, and told the others they'd been dead for ages. Then they took the League prisoner. [She scoffs bitterly at the memory.]

I looked John in the eye, lied to him, and used his love for me to get his guard down and take him prisoner. [Still kicking herself for that one.]

It's with shocking clarity that Olivia understands the consequences of invading someone else's mind, especially in light of her recently departed alternate self. Somehow when she had visitors in her own mind it wasn't the same as this. This feels invasive somehow. Doors are closed because something behind it isn't meant to be seen, so she isn't willing to open them when they exist in someone else's mind.

So she wanders, looking for a way out, some sort of blinking sign to guide her way. Instead, she finds a door that swings open on her fourth pass. Olivia takes a few steps toward it, thinking such a sudden thing could only be the sign she was looking for, but stops short of entering.

There's darkness inside, and a stench that kicks her brain into a different gear. Deliberately she takes a few steps forward, stopping just outside the room and not a bit closer. The screams ring out and some part of her mind plunges into the darkness to try and save whoever it is, but experience as a Fringe agent keeps her feet steady. She's not afraid of this sort of thing, that's a feeling both she and her counterpart lost a long time ago, but she is cautious and that's what holds her back.

Quietly, she draws her pistol and flicks the safety off before clasping the gun and her hands behind her back. Planting her feet and squaring her shoulders, she calls out into the darkness. "Hello?"

Meanwhile, Dick is struggling to stay upright.

When the lights flicker he realizes he's slipping in blood and surrounded by bodies. Just the brief glimpse seared itself into his memory. They died in pain. He can feel the oppressive atmosphere get worse. His panic is starting to rise, and he's actually afraid.

Can you be scared to death?

He looks up at the impurity. Kyle is in there somewhere, and he'd be fighting. If he could fight, so can Dick. As scared as he is, he raises his head defiantly.

"I think you're going to regret every single life you've taken when Kyle breaks free."

'Breaks free.' It speaks quietly, and somehow that is more piercing and vicious than if it screamed, or laughed. It is utterly certain, secure in its own position. Stepping forward, the pools of blood ripple, noiseless, and it circles Dick, examining him.

'I am fear itself, boy. No one is free of me.' Gesturing to the bodies, one of whom Dick will recognise. It's John, eyes open and staring at the ceiling.

'You have no hope against me.' Another wide sweep. 'Neither did they, and they were Lanterns. Supposedly fearless! Laid low by what?'

A statue appears, of Hal Jordan, dressed in the green and white, smiling like the whole world is his. The plaque reads: HERO. Then, TRAITOR. And then, NEVER FORGET.

Parallax laughs, again.

Dick couldn't run even if he wanted to. Fear has taken over, and he's on his hands and knees in a river of blood. Lanterns' blood. Something freezes him straight down to his bones when he sees John.

"No," he says shakily.

But then Parallax laughs. Dares to laugh in Kyle's voice, and something stirs in Dick again. No, it's not going to end this way. Dick won't let Kyle lose. He might not have an amazing power, but he does have a lot of loyalty.

"There... " It's getting hard to breathe. "Are other things... stronger than... f-fear."

He feels something on his left middle finger. There's a spark, more felt than seen, and suddenly Dick can breathe again.

[A Lantern is drawn to dark places. It's hardly a survival instinct - most of them do it for duty, and it becomes so deeply ingrained that it's automatic. They're no stranger to mazes, to misleading corridors, and no strangers to fear, either. Once again he's through the archway, somewhere (and sometime) he doesn't recognise, again, an intruder in someone else's mind. He takes the form of a hooded figure, in a green cloak, carrying a small lantern, with a steady green flame. I'm a friend, it says, softly, to the gathering shadows. Let me pass, I will leave everything undisturbed. He hears laughter and smiles, but doesn't look. It's not his. He ignores the shapes, too, as much as he can. The demons aren't his, either. He'll fight if they attack, but otherwise, he won't be the one to dredge them up.]

[As he hurries onwards, Kyle stops to look briefly at the mirrors, confused that a few of them are blank, and he ends up bumping into Tony.]

We should leave.

[He doesn't look at who he's walked into, preferring to see that there's nothing following them. His voice is terse, and steady, as his hands are, even if the rest of him is beginning to feel the effects of the nightmare.]

A streak of blue surrounds Dick, a strong, warm feeling. All will be well, says a voice in his ear, Kyle's voice. Look to the stars, for hope burns bright.

Parallax hisses, retreating from the light. One of his clawed hands twitches uncontrollably, like something else is trying to move it. 'There is not. Hope is useless!'

There's nothing here but the sand and the sky. Kyle walks, steadily, for several minutes before he looks down at his companion, and pulls down the hood so that the boy can see the light in his eyes and his smile.

'We're on the frontier,' he says, looking up. 'That's the entire known universe. Fit to paint, don't you think? Like we could ever capture it.'

He moves his fingers, like playing an instrument, an unknown tune, and Damian is wearing a green ring.

Just like that, the spell is broken. He looks down at the ring-- a blue version of Kyle's-- and surrenders himself to its warmth. He floats off the ground, out of the blood. His Robin costume has become blue and black instead of red and black. Under normal circumstances, he would've tried flying or experimenting with his powers. But Kyle needs him now.

"Doesn't look like it from where I'm sitting."

He's not quite sure how to do this, but he gives it a try. He holds a hand out and closes his eyes, shutting out the visions of bodies and blood. He concentrates on the warmth, imagines it wrapping around Kyle the way it did around him.

'All will be well.'

[He watches the distortions with some interest, but doesn't scrutinise them too hard. He doesn't know where he is, exactly, and he needs to focus on that.]

Huh. Again.

[He sits down at the desk, and picks up the crayon, doodling on one of the discarded papers.]

Where are we?

The boy's eyes widen as he glances down at his hand, and... of all things, he cradles it in the other protectively, of all things. Probably the single most vulnerable gesture that Damian has willingly made in the last... whatever. At least as long as Kyle has known him.

"Frontier," he says only, instead. "But you know what's everywhere, do you not."

Not quite a question.

It has been what humans do. Push the frontiers, push the limits. Discover what's beyond the next mountain. He's not sure about alien races, but he suspects many of them are that way.

But Rayner... Rayner is something else. Has been. Is, here?

WILLPOWER DETECTED, says the blue ring, so that only Dick can hear. OFFENSIVE CAPABILITIES ENGAGED.

From the other side, green light blazes. Parallax screams, and fights it, with yellow. The whole room is engulfed, and begins to shake. Dust falls from the ceiling, the walls crack. The floor falls away and they're in space, clashing.

He frowns. A misstep? And then he brushes the thought away. If it bothers Damian, he will speak. That's what their understanding - their friendship - means. Brutal honesty, an easy kind, that lets them both detach themselves from feeling the barbs too acutely. They've both been made unbreakable, and twisted out of shape along the way.

'Almost everywhere,' he answers. 'I haven't been beyond the Source Wall.' And it's foolishness to try. Not even willpower like mine could survive that.

"Offensive... ?"

The green light is sudden and bright, but not unexpected. Dick knew (believed) that Kyle could do it. All it took was a little boost.

Dick has no idea how to use the ring-- he's running on instinct-- but he does know he needs to help Kyle. Okay, GLs will their rings to do something so Dick...

Hope. The answer is hope. He concentrates, channeling his hope into the ring. 'We're going to win this. We're stronger than fear.'

He sends out a set of construct bolas, in hopes that it'll bind the yellow entity. Limit its mobility.

[He puts a hand on the glass, fingers splayed and looks at John. That's my brother, you hurt him is written all over his face and body, so loud he might as well be screaming it. I'll hurt you back.]

When they came. Did you know? Or did they use you, too?

[He can't meet her eyes, not wanting her to see the hatred that courses through him when one of his own is down for the count. She didn't just kill John - that would have been easier. The man in the cell is broken. His will is gone, and that hurts worse than anything anyone could ever do to Kyle.]

[Good thing Hannibal knows how to clean bloodstains.]

I'm a therapist. It's a bit of a habit, I suppose. [And he just really likes getting into other people's business.]

Power. He can feel the awareness of it thrum through him, ready, ready to do anything. Everything. It's so easy, so available, so much.

Destroy suns? Level continents? He can do that, inside and out, now. It is easy, so easy.

NO!

Slowly, he wills it to subside, to back down. To be ready, but only that.

Then, he turns his attention back to the Lantern. The real Lantern.

"Does anybody live there?" Anybody, not anything. All life.

What does it shield against? He should know that, and he doesn't. The shame of his ignorance burns through him, a Shield Wall would be his responsibility with this new power, ever if a part of him knows this is but a dream; it still burns.

[She can't hold any of his anger or pain or hatred against him. This all happened months ago, but she still can't blame anyone for hating her. Not after something this severe. She looks away, not to the cells, to a random spot on the wall for her to focus on. It hurts too much to look at anyone.] I knew. Almost everything the Thanagarians were doing, I knew about.

Almost?

[His voice is small, plaintive. He so rarely begs - even if he's not proud - and there's a flicker of light surrounding him, bright blue. Hope.]

[The soft blue surrounding him is another question Shayera marks down to ask later, when she's not about to break inside. One thing at a time.] They didn't come to Earth to build a force field generator. They were going to build a hyperspace bypass, to go directly to the Gordanian home world. But it would've destroyed Earth in the process once activated. No one bothered to tell me about it.

[She could've stopped so much hurt if she'd known about it from the start. Patched up relationships better, made fewer lies and secrets.]

[He's trying to avoid the sides. Not only is he keeping his gaze ahead of him (or to the floor or the non-existent ceiling), Tony has moved as far to the center of the hallway as he can. He avoids the mirrors the way some people avoid spiders or crawling insects. And maybe appropriately, because there seem to be clusters of them gathering around the edges of each mirror pane, although they don't resemble anything familiar.]

So much for exploration.

[Tony offers Richard a smile as he moves closer, but it's a forced one. He's ready to leave the realm and say screw investigating.]

Let's go... back that way?

The world sweeps into darkness, and he remembers nothing from before it happened. Startled, Leonardo automatically reaches for his face to right his mask over his eyes, but he finds that the eye holes cut into blue cloth are still in their correct position. How strange, he thinks, hand lowering slowly back down to his side.

Stranger still is the world around him. His reptile skin is appreciative of the warm sun, and the soft earth between his toes reminds him of days spent playing with his brothers in the cool mud that gathered in the runoff junctions of the sewers. But he can't be in New York City - the sunlight feels too warm for him to be in the sewers, and he wouldn't be out in broad daylight. No; he hears nature-sounds, insects and water. They must at Casey's old farmhouse in Northampton.

But why can't he see? A training exercise? Yes, that makes sense. He's starting to see things in ways that he never has before - it's not even sight, really, but the feeling of presence and life echoed back into his body. He isn't sure when he learned this, but it's incredible; he concentrates harder and feels the world take concrete shape around him. Things nearly imperceptible to the eyes flow into him as though drawn by a magnetic pull.

Yet it's still surprising when the strongest shape of all is a small human nearby. He turns to her without thinking, his mind expecting sight when his eyes have none to give him. She's doing something odd with the mud, but his thoughts are more concentrated on the fact that there's a little girl here at the farmhouse. Where did she come from?

[Weird is something Tony is familiar with. He's friends with a demigod, after all. And he knows mutants. He's seen alien technology and dimensions that humans aren't supposed to visit. He's a superhero.

He stares at the two Asbels--though one of them is not Asbel--and takes in the fact that this dream is more than just a dream.]

Right. It's so obvious. How did I miss that?

[Tony manages the quip, but he's still looking between the two. It's less amazement and more surprise from stumbling onto something he's not sure he was supposed to find out.]

Has he- Have you been here this whole time?

[scenario a]

[The New York skyline expands forever in the night. Urban mountains with pinpricks of multicolored lights; neon red and blue and white, flashing from wide video monitors in the yellow-hazed streets. Tall, black buildings seem to melt into oceans of thick shadows made of concrete and steel. Sirens and screeching tires echo through the night, interrupted occasionally by the frenzied tempos of garbled music bursting forth from street cars and the thump thump of drum beats vibrating in the club underfoot.]

[Underfoot, because they're on the rooftop. A humanoid turtle wearing a blue mask and crossed swords on his back, and three others like him - each wearing a different color. Purple, orange, and red. The former two splayed out on the flat rooftop, each gesturing vividly to a blurry map unrolled on the concrete and buzzing excitedly with unintelligible words. Sometimes they point to the city lights. The turtles wearing red and blue are each off on opposite edges of the roof, bent quietly over the streets as they watch the city move around them.]

[Red and Blue don't look at one another, or even at their other companions, but the way they're both poised as though expecting a fight should be enough to understand. They're protecting the other two, whether they had been asked to or not. (And the way Purple briefly looks up to call something sarcastic-sounding at Red, chances are that they had in fact been explicitly asked the opposite.)]

[scenario b]

[This one is relatively simple. A dark room with a rust-colored floor bathed orange by candlelight. Dozens of white candles, lined up in a large circle; a halo of warm light that staves off the blackness pressing in at the circle's edge. Melted candle wax pools on concrete, glinting softly at the wicks of fire above.]

[Leonardo is in its center, performing a kata with his swords. Blades slash at the air with power, speed; but the disappointed frustration in his eyes never wavers. Several times he trips up, and snarls softly into the quiet air. Otherwise, complete silence. Slash, parry, block. The kata always ends with a wide, sweeping slash of both swords, out at his sides as they arc cleanly through the candle flames.]

[None of them go out. Leo draws back to the center, panting slightly, his eyes darting across the flickering wicks. He breathes slowly, drops back into stance.]

[Then he starts from the top.]

[He nods in affirmation and keeps his eyes away from the mirrors, flanking Tony's right so he can move easily to guard him. But with all of this setting on edge, the dreams of his that start taking their place in the hall of mirrors are not positive ones.]

Perhaps we should discuss some happy dreams and memories of yours. [In his self-depreciating laugh, he doesn't let his discomfort show. It sounds ridiculous said aloud, but this truly is an instance of mind over matter.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 14 of 95

Event | Landfall | Dreaming

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

B

It's like getting two for one!

ota

no subject