A Nightmare on Luceti Street 2: The Reapening

[poppetry]

Who: poppetry, and her numerous victims: shadedsunlight, consultmybooks, perplex_me, cakeblocked, ofthediaphragm, magiconcehad, vanityunbcoming, and last but not least, a surprise appearance from skulljokelol.
What: Xion finds this mask in her room. How mysterious. But things start to go wrong after she's compelled to put it on.....
When: Afternoon through early night of the 23rd.
Where: Starting at KH house, then ranging all over the village.
Summary:

Comments

[perplex_me]

[After spending most of the morning in the library, Roxas finally decided that it was time to head home for lunch. As he enters House 14, he's a bit perturbed at how quiet it is. He shuts the front door, dropping his bag by the door as he starts to step further in.]

Hey guys? Anybody home? [As he stepped past the living room, he hears the sound of someone's boots clicking on the floor. He chooses to follow it to pinpoint who's home.]

Guys? [And it's only when he's about halfway down the hall that he sees...

...a. Very. Hideous face. He freezes in place, trying to figure out what's happening. The uniform he recognizes, and from the size of the figure this could only be one person.]

...Xion? [He's going to step a little closer, tilting his head curiously. He knew she'd been off for the last few weeks, but even this was kind of bizarre.] Hey, what's going on?

[poppetry]

[ Xion stops when she sees him. The movement isn't abrupt, or violent.... instead, she simply, instantly goes still. Like ripples on a pond being suddenly, unnaturally erased. As if there was never movement at all, as if time had been reversed.

There is something deeply surreal about it. ]

Roxas.

[ There is a flatness to her voice he'll only have heard once before. On a very dark day, up on a clock tower.

She moves towards him. Slowly, inexorably. ]

[perplex_me]

[...this. Is eeriely familiar. He's just going to stare at her for a moment, fixated on her eyes. He doesn't move quite yet, busy he's definitely on guard, ready to make a run for it. Something's wrong here.]

Xion, what are you doing?

[poppetry]

[ Oh, Roxas, Roxas. Why didn't you run when you had the chance? You could have lived.

Xion closes the distance between them and reaches out. It's a natural motion... so obviously normal that you oughtn't think twice about it. There's nothing strange about her hands reaching up to gently hold his face. There's nothing strange about how she will do this, all of this, before even replying. ]

What I'm supposed to do.

[ Do you feel that, Roxas? That numbing, awful cold spreading from her fingertips through your skin? It's like ice and darkness, clinging and clawing and burrowing. ]

[consultmybooks]

[This would be humiliating if Giles didn't know that he should probably be grateful to Ginia for letting him work tonight at all.

Having her walk him home, however, was. Needing her to walk him home was worse. But the light and the face of this new twisted moon was unnerving him, and his injuries were still making him slow and stilted. He knew he'd feel less anxious safe inside the boundaries of Building 7.

But for now, he sits outside the building that houses both the restaurant and the nightclub, staring up at the fierce moon, and waits for Ginia to join him.]

[shadedsunlight]

[Sometimes Ginia didn't know what to do with Giles. It was all the exasperation and frustration that came with loving a man prone to getting injured or having all sorts of other things happen to him, and she wouldn't have it any other way, but sometimes it was hard. She knew she should have put her foot down and ordered him back to bed for some proper rest, but she also knew how much being bedridden drove him crazy and she always enjoyed his company.

Though still careful, Ginia was quick in making sure everything in the nightclub was closed and secured before locking the door and leaving. She quickly raced down the stairs to meet Giles, casting a glance up at the moon and the disturbing form it'd taken. Her hand unconsciously drifts towards his for security and comfort before she looks at him, smile a little drawn.]

/Let's go home./

[poppetry]

[ Xion has flickered in an out of conscious awareness over the course of this night. Most of the time she has been riding along in her own body like an impartial, detached observer - she sees, she feels, but she does not experience. Except, perhaps, for very brief, painful moments when she has control -- when she can, for just an instant, care.

It is in such a moment that she sees Giles and Ginia outside of Seventh Heaven. ... had she known he was injured? When had it even happened? Who was that woman he was with? Why was she here? Why was this happening?

... why ... why did they have to walk out, just then? There is a cry in her soul for them to run, leave, go back inside, get away from her. But she does not voice it. And with a smooth, silent mental click, the mask reasserts its control

[consultmybooks]

Let's.

[He pulls himself upright and dusts himself off. He keeps a hold on her hand, however, because tonight is a night for reassurances. He's had his own bad encounters with the experiment already. As always, it's nice to be normal for a little while.]

Much as I hate to admit it, we'll both probably think more clearly under our own roofs again.

[But years of Sunnydale senses don't fade quickly, and even as he turns back towards Building 7, Giles goes still as his senses scream that they aren't alone.

He looks left, right, trying to make the movements as subtle as possible as he looks for the hidden presence.]

[cakeblocked]

[Luke had a lot of things to think about as well, none of them particularly happy. The different shape the moon took, because when do moons ever do that, the new Malnosso, the missions...

He's out on a walk to clear his head and give himself something to do. It's as he's on the pathway that he notices that slight glow of her eyes, just as something odd in his vision, and once he pays attention to it -

He stops in his tracks and widens his eyes. What... Wait, he knows that cloak. And that size and build, he knows that too...]

... Xion? [Out of all the faces she could wear, this is by far the creepiest. He takes a step forward, but that's about all he'll do. Maybe she'll explain what happened?] What happened?

[poppetry]

[ Oh, Luke.

Oh, no, no. Not Luke. Please, please, just not Luke too, she can't...

Well. Of course she can. The mask wants what it wants. What it needs. Death. Suffering. That beautiful look on the faces of the reaped, the dawning horror as they realize what is happening to them, a thing they cannot stop or fight or get away from. Inevitable as all things...

Death, dressed as Xion, smiles warm and wide and does not stop walking. She moves towards him, the double rows of teeth - in the mask, in her face - fashioning a macabre grin. ]

Luke. [ Her voice is completely flat. ] Nothing. Nothing happened. Everything is fine.

[cakeblocked]

[... Oooooooookay then. This is the first time he's felt kind of freaked out by something she's done.

He glances away and shifts in his place. But it's not like he's ever run from anything scary before. Maybe before he cut his hair, when he was a coward... But not anymore. He could run up to the Behemoth for all he cared, and this... was just creepy. Besides, it was Xion. Something was obviously wrong.]

You're sure not acting fine. What are you doing with that thing on? [It's definitely a mask. Maybe that's the thing that's making her act like this?]

[poppetry]

I found it. [ She keeps advancing. ] On my bed.

[ She is before him. It's almost like there's a skip in reality between her movement and the cessation thereof; as if a second was sliced out of time. One instant she is in motion, the next she is not, so utterly and perfectly still it's as if she was never moving at all.

Xion reaches up to touch his face. The motion is smooth and steady and slow, and her fingers slide gently across his skin, moving until her hands cup his cheeks. Her touch will feel like ice, and a bizarre sensation of numbness will slowly begin to spread through his skin. If he tries to move his head away, he will find, suddenly, that he cannot.

And for an instant, in her eyes, there is a flash of terrified panic -- a widening, a moment where the glow flickers out and it's just her, and she's so scared.

But then it's gone. If Luke so much as blinked, he will have missed it. Her smile is serene, and utterly, hungrily seductive. ]

I wanted to wear it.

[skulljokelol]

[It's late when Brook steps out of the house for some fresh air, humming a tune as he wanders the village. He's not even a little bit tired; indeed, all the strangeness going about has just stirred him up. He needs to move, needs to sing; he's wound up and feels about ready to burst with it.

Perhaps a stroll is what he needs to settle his bones.]

And what of you, Moon-san? [On his way back to the house, Brook stops his humming and sits by the bridge.] Are you as restless as I am?

[poppetry]

[ It is late, now. Late, and the furious moon beats down on her back as if in judgment. Its hateful face seems to condemn her for her sins. And she cannot stand to look at it.

She stalks, now, her movements far less fluid than they have been the rest of this horrible evening. Restless anger, hopeless terror, waves of panic beat against the back of her mind, but the mask is not done yet.

Brook's voice reaches her before the sight of him does. It's too much. Too many of her own friends have fallen, whatever that really means, to her touch today. It seems like Brook will be the next.

It is with a painful splinter of awareness lodged behind her eyes that Xion advances on him, her head bowed, her eyes still aglow. ]

Brook.

[skulljokelol]

[Flat as it is, Brook recognizes her voice - being a musician, he has an ear for tone and pitch, you see, even if he hasn't any ears - before he turns to see her.]

Oh, Xion-san! What are you doing out so la-AAGH!

[Yup. Now he sees here. A face like that gives him a shock, considering it was the last thing he was expecting with the picture of the sweet girl he attaches to her name in mind. He stumbles backwards on his bottom, or rather the lack of it.]

Xion-san, you shouldn't frighten people like that!

[poppetry]

[ Ah. Well with him sitting like that, she can reach his face easily. How convenient. ]

I'm just wandering.

[ She sounds very tired. But there is a flatness to her voice, still, an eerie lack of humanity that speaks of darkness and ill tidings. ]

Can I ask you something?

[magiconcehad]

[It's late afternoon, with Lindsay sitting near the edge of the river near Community Housing 2, Thylos beside her, her journal behind her, and a small, normal notebook in her lap that she's absentmindedly doodling in. She's really going to need to get a hobby soon, isn't she? Normally at home she'd just... hang out with friends, but she's still getting to know a lot of people here, really. Maybe she'd call Luke or Ven or one of the others she'd started talking to lately over the journals... though with all this weird stuff that was going on...

Absentmindedly she reaches over to pet Thylos a little, mostly oblivious to the world around her. ]

[poppetry]

[ Lindsay may hear soft footsteps approaching from behind. By the time she looks up, there will already be a girl kneeling by her other side, a smile dressing her mouth and laughter on her lips, though her voice could not be more different: leaden, flat, utterly emotionless.

She leans forward, just a little, and in the glow in her eyes there is a fierce, primal happiness. ]

Hello.

[magiconcehad]

[... okay that is legit creepy. The face, the eyes, the way whoever this might be is smiling like that and talking so... so... Not to mention why was she even even here...?

It's creepy. There's no doubt about that. But it's not enough to make her want to run or anything. Yet.]

Uh... hi?

[poppetry]

[ Without warning, Xion will reach out with both hands to hold Lindsay's face. There's something so natural, so unassuming about the motion .... it almost comes off as perfectly normal.

Which is strange in itself, isn't it? There's nothing normal at all about a girl wearing a skull grabbing your face in her hands. No, it's not normal at all.

But it's too late now. Lindsay will abruptly start to feel cold. Very cold. And the cold is emanating specifically from Xion's fingers on her skin. ]

What's your name?

[ Try to move, Lindsay. You will find you are unable to break free of the Grim Reaper's grip. ]