The Lurking Fear - Group 3

[meatbabies]

Nightmare becomes reality....

[roster: Leader: Nightwing, Ava Ballantyne, Jamie Hemeros, Spider-Man, Œthel, Toph]

Comments

[withanethel]

She didn't know what she was doing here. She didn't even really know what was going on. Œthel couldn't make out a coherent scene, she just knew she was somewhere, and she had to do something, and it was all up to her. She had one chance

[sonotasuperhero]

After a couple of minutes of walking, Ava finds herself in what appears to be some sort of futuristic control room. She obviously doesn't fit in dressed the way she is, but after she hears the computerized warning she rushes over to the only real-seeming person in the room.

"... uh. We should probably leave." she says to Ethel, pointing the thumb of her free hand at the door. Her other hand is still clinging tightly to her rebar, because there's no way in hell she'll give up her only weapon in these dreams.

[withanethel]

Œthel just stares blankly at the control panel in front of herself until the strange voice snaps her out of her daze. She looks over, still completely at a loss.

"We'll never get to the escape pods in time." Her voice wavers like a good starship captain's never should.

[sonotasuperhero]

Ava heaves a sigh, then gives Œthel a slightly exasperated look. She didn't plan on having to give pep talks during this whole fiasco, but... "Okay, look. None of this is real."

[goddamnwingman]

The fall had been a bad one. One that probably should have killed Dick instead of breaking nearly every bone on the left side of his body. He'd never gotten the entire story on what the doctors were told about how it happened. Whenever anybody asked him, he just told the truth. He didn't remember. There'd been enough head trauma that nobody questioned it

[sonotaang]

There's something wrong about this alleyway.

Ava's back home, back in Manhattan. She can't feel the wind calling to her, making her instantly assume that the past few weeks, even the past year and a half, had all been some sort of... hallucination, just a bad dream from which she'd finally awakened. A dark-haired boy, slightly shorter than Ava, stands smiling near her. The glint of orange in his eyes and the suggestion of a pair above and below where human eyes should normally be are enough to instantly put Ava back on her guard. She scrambles for something, anything to use as a weapon and comes up with a decent-sized piece of rebar, clearly left over from some recent construction project.

"C'mon, Ava, let's go home." the boy says, holding out one hand. Her suspicions magnify as she gives the offered hand a skeptical look-- and shoves the rebar forwards. she knows she's right when she feels her makeshift sword go through one of his eyes. The creature abruptly fades back to its usual horribly fluid, shadowy gray form, then collapses

[metalbent]

Toph's strange dreams had always been rather vague and disjoint. Katara had told her to expect nightmares; to be on her guard and in the end, there was nothing really she had to worry about.

She'd wake up a few times a night, but would otherwise roll over and go back to sleep.

Except now... now things were different. She knew she was awake, and she knew that it wasn't necessarily real, these weird visions of masked soldiers, of being suspended from a great height and then falling, falling down into an abyss --

Everyone probably thought that, being blind, all of this would have been easier for her to process. But for her, she was all too acutely aware of air rushing past her, of the smell of burning forests, the twang-twang-twang of metal cables snapping as she fell

[goddamnwingman]

Dick was searching the immediate area, looking for other people caught up in their dreams. So he was already on guard when he heard someone calling out. At least they didn't sound like they were in pain or much danger.

He turned in the direction of the voice, escrima sticks at the ready in case there was trouble. "Hello?" he called back. "My name is Nightwing. I'm with security on the ship?"

[metalbent]

Toph turned; hearing the other voice call out. Her feet picked up a vaguely humanoid shape through all the murk.

"Hi!" she called. "I'm Toph. I just ... live here?"

That was a good enough explanation.

"What's going on?"

[goddamnwingman]

"Nightmare King seems to be making his big bid for freedom. Or, at least, the last one he's likely to get." He stepped forward, hand out. She wasn't one of the kids he'd met yet. "I'm gathering up people in the immediate area. Safety in numbers sort of thing."

[riseupnchargem]

- and they're mobbing all around him every one of them aiming for him guns blazing missiles screaming scorch marks and shrapnel marring his Zoid's armor as it shrieks in pain and in the flickering strobe-light chaos of his mind he can feel him scrabbling for control a presence like hands grabbing reaching clawing and he is terrified of what is happening around him and terrified of succumbing to him because he fears that when he takes control again there won't be any of himself left -

There's a lurch and then blackness, and Jamie fears for a moment that he's trapped in his mind with him in control, but he wills his hand to move and it does, and he draws it shaking over his face and through sweat-damp hair, and he's so relieved to find that his body is his own that he can almost tolerate the pitch-darkness, but then when he starts to think about it it worries him, and he stands to try to find his bearings, back pressed to the wall and his heart still hammering, hammering, hammering and his nerves stretched taut

[goddamnwingman]

Although the other three had been out of their dreams before Dick found them, he's been taking point. It's not that he doesn't trust their abilities to stay out of the dreams they run into, but more that he's certain about his own fighting abilities.

He's just come around a corner when he hears footstep pelting toward him. Dick puts one escima stick back in the holster, waiting until he can see the person. The look on the kid's face is one he's seen enough times to know NOT to grab him without some warning. "Hey," Dick says, moving to stand in front of him. "Slow down there, kiddo. You're going to get hurt."

[riseupnchargem]

The man's sudden appearance takes Jamie by surprise and he flails as he skids to a halt, trying to avoid colliding with him. His head snaps back and forth from Dick to the pitch blackness he's just come from. Why is he even running, anyway? The thing with its wolf-face and horrible laughter will find him no matter where he goes, and -

Because you run from EVERYTHING, you pathetic whining little cocksnot, fucking MOVE if you're gonna keep actin' like a little pussy and LET ME -

- and the other thing is inside his head where he can't run from it anyway. One hand jerks up as though to swat at something unseen before Jamie redirects the gesture, if somewhat awkwardly, to rake a hand through his hair.

"Th - ahhhh. Where, um, where'd you come from?" he asks, casting more paranoid glances around them.

[goddamnwingman]

"Around the corner." He thinks about crouching for a moment, so that he can see the boy more on his level, but probably a very bad idea at the moment. "My name's Nightwing. I'm with security." It's the best he has at the moment.