Beyond the Walls of Sleep

[meatbabies]

Slowly but surely, the nightmares have been chipping away at the mental defenses of the crew.

Even those who attempt to stay awake to avoid the nightmares find themselves too on-edge to completely concentrate their defenses.

And the Nightmare King has not been idle during all this, no. He has been slowly feeding off the crew, gathering his strength

Comments

[dis_courageous]

Komali's life had never been particularly exciting, but since coming to Stacy's care, it had become so gray. Samus was gone, and the ship closed around him like a fist of damp, airless suffocation. He hated it here. Hated....hated the stillness. Komali couldn't sleep at night without the constant wave-sounds, the song of the wind through the rocks, or the call of birds.

Even then, the nightmares...

And so the bird-child wandered the halls with nothing to do but guard his treasure, head bowed and shoulders hunched. He'd never, ever learn to fly, not like this. Worthless waste of feathers, hardly a Rito at all. Hardly anything but dead weight.

[quark_assassin]

Dustin couldn’t dream. Not normally, at least-sometimes his mind might run through a memory or two, work out some equations or formulas to write down in the morning-not to mention his mental defenses were extremely powerful, powerful enough to even deter a small-scale attack by a shipbound god, if you can believe it.

The waking world, on the other hand, was proving to be far more difficult a realm to defend. The Nightmare King no longer had to rely so much on getting inside Dustin’s head as he did projecting outside of it, thereby rendering the genius’s maelstrom of thoughts and memories as just a means of fodder. Still images would appear out of the corner of Dustin’s vision, trailing him like wispy Shades on the prowl, only to disappear as soon as he turned around

[magictrkswwater]

Why was she on this ship? Why was she chosen? This wasn't how life was supposed to be, was it? She didn't have anything useful before, and she didn't have anything useful now!

She wasn't like those magical girls who helped protect her best friend's grandmother awhile back. THEY should have been here, not her.

"...what can I do to help here...?" Irma muttered, wandering the ship aimlessly.

[toariversodeep]

"You can help keep people from losing themselves," Roxie murmurs as she passes by, slipping through the half-dream like a passing ship in the night. "That's what we really need right now."

In her wake pieces of the waking nightmare crystallize and shatter, leaving Irma normal again, at least for the moment.

[magictrkswwater]

"Huh? What?" Irma stammered, coming to a stop. "What are you talking abou--" She stopped and began thinking. Something just wasn't right. Wasn't she complaining about how she wasn't helpful and...

"What the heck just happened?! Hey, come back here! Something happened here, didn't it?!"

[toariversodeep]

But just like that, she's gone.

[playsin_traffic]

His dream tonight is strange. And he can't even tell it's a dream. He's huddled under an overpass somewhere, tattered jacket wrapped tightly around him. The sound of traffic rolling by overhead fills his ears as she shivers. Its not just from the cold. He's alone and he seems stretched out and tired. Eyes gaunt, cheeks hollowed, he slowly rolls his sleeve up - the skin is pocked by scars and tracks. As he wraps a piece rubber tubing tightly around his forearm and pulls it taught with his teeth, he reflects on how he ended up like this.

What a miserable way to live.

[fiercerhyena]

Grim Eyes didn't like this ship, but that wasn't going to keep her from exploring. It was new territory, unfamiliar territory, and even though she smelled predators around every corner, there had to be a place she could stake out for herself.

She smelled a predator now.

He was male, that much her nose told her (too many males on the damn ship), but he wasn't hyena. He wasn't even related - he smelled more like wolf. No, not like wolf - like dog, like a mangy city dog. That also smelled like a wolf, bizarrely. She turned the corner and stopped.

That wasn't a dog. Wasn't a wolf either. That was a human man with a creepy ghostlight around him. In fact, the creepy ghostlight stretched out farther, and just as Grim Eyes was starting to decide that creepy ghostlights and people that smelled like mangy dogs but weren't shouldn't be approached, she was somewhere else.

"Hooves of the Antelope, what is this?!" she yelped, looking around her wildly, clutching her spear and jumping backward away from the traffic until she felt her back hit

[playsin_traffic]

Tony blinked, startled out of his reverie. He let the tubing drop as he stared at the half-hyena, half-woman thing standing in front of him. He blinked, trying to clear his head through the haze of drugs and dreams, trying to remember. He was something more then this. He ought to be anyway.

"...it's fuckin' Los Angeles," he retorted, "Why?"

She was a predator. Like him. She didn't have the rage though.

[fiercerhyena]

"Because not two seconds ago I was wandering around that damn ship, that's why!" Grim Eyes snapped. "And because you don't smell like a man!" She let out another small growl. "When a hunter starts losing her mind, it would be nice if she had a couple of signs first! Although I guess the giant living ship should have been my first clue!"

This was not a happy hyena.

[vision_ya]

Cassie did not love him. She probably never had. He was just a living -- ha! "living" -- echo of Nate to her. A consolation prize.

He should never have even tried.

[vision_ya]

"[Wha--]"

Jonas staggered sideways into the wall, blinking at the Scarlet Witch in startled confusion.

"[I...what...?]"

Had he fallen asleep? He did not even need sleep, technically. He chose to sleep sometimes, and there were benefits to it, but not when the Nightmare King was up to things.

"[What just happened?]"

[notsaintkaiser]

They couldn't take her. They were too much of a security risk for her to be with them. Even after Nanoha saved her from Jail's clutches, they couldn't be together. Vivio wasn't a Takamachi. She wasn't even ''a real girl''. Nanoha only saved her because she was told to.

Nanoha and Fate weren't her parents, never were, never will be. She was just a plain old child, trying to make it through life after what she was through.

And, in the waking world, as Vivio shivers and shakes in fear, her Device, Sacred Heart, watches on in worry and fear.

[earnmyplace]

There is a child shivering against the wall, a small device hovering near by her. Tali’s head tilts in concern as she diverts from her path, making her way over to the shimmering form. She crouches down next to the girl, close enough to be felt but not quite touching.

“What is wrong, child? Are you injured?”

[notsaintkaiser]

Vivio shook her head, still shivering. "N... No... My... My parentss, they're... they're not here, they're..."

She was still stuck in between the waking world and the dream she was stuck in. Though Nanoha and Fate were still here, she was still thinking that she was with her "normal" parents.

[earnmyplace]

"Who has been taking care of you?"

Tali reached out an arm, glancing at the nearby device to make sure there would be no attack, and gently placed a three-digit hand on the girl's arm. Her parents were not one of the ones awoken from the pods it seemed. Poor thing.

"Shall we find them?"