cestrumnocturnum: (Default)
benji ryans. ([personal profile] cestrumnocturnum) wrote in [community profile] multiversallogs2012-03-27 05:52 pm

you can't rely on bringing people downtown, you have to put them there.

Who: Benji Ryans and You?
What: A transdimensional kidnapping might give anyone restless dreams.
Where: In your head. Or her head. Something like that.
When: Various nights through the week.
Notes: Please see the OOC post. Beneath the cut is a general idea of the setting in which you can tag in, but let me know if you'd like me to threadstart!
Warnings: Possible violence, depictions of ruined New York City.


Of those that know a traditional and contemporary Earth, maybe you can see the eroded shadow of a New York skyline which has had such a hard twenty-first century. The buildings are reduced to the skeletons of giants, ribcages and spines and skulls with gapped teeth. Yellow tape lies like dead snakes and dust covered from where it had once cordoned off areas but now it's all the same corrosive danger, every block this way to Harlem and back. It's war wrecked from the black crater radioactive heart that had cut out the soul of the city some thirty years ago and change, through to the slow decay of street terrorism and citizen warfare.

Night and day casts grey both and presents different dangers. The bright lights of a rebuilt and prospering Staten Island seems like an eternity away, and fences that once defined and regulated spaces have been torn apart, cut open, climbed over. Abandoned attempts at construction are like a graveyard for hope. Unbelievably, some people still live here. Some people even live in the tunnels beneath the pavement of the intact buildings boarded closed. Hazard symbols are spraypainted on the faces of buildings.

They come out at night, the robotic hellhounds that breathes steam out their ribcages, whose eyes turn red when they sense you are near. Needles in their mouths, sharp feet, klaxon howls, seven hundred pounds of steel, and artificial intelligence networked between them that sees herself as a pawn and a herd at the same time but carries out her coded marching orders because she lacks a name.

Tanks in the streets, but these are rarely abandoned. A wind howls through the once crowded city streets. The dream is vivid enough to taste ash in the air.
gramarye: (☽ all the worlds from here must burn)

[personal profile] gramarye 2012-03-27 09:09 pm (UTC)(link)
Wolfgang stills when he sees that head coming around the corner, fear tightening his stomach into a hard ball. It doesn't make him question his surroundings at all, the impossibility of this -- very much the opposite, it's the sight of that machine-thing that convinces him this is real. It suddenly makes sense to him.

Because that thing, right there? It has Technocracy written all over it.

Identifying it is slightly less pressing than getting the hell away from it, though, and he immediately takes a few slow, cautious steps back, staying out of its green headlights. Can he outrun it? He's fast, but he has no idea if it's faster. Four legs, but made of metal, it looks like. If it's Technocracy, it might be Primium, which means magic might be useless. He won't know unless he tries it, but if he tries it, the backlash could --

Well. It won't be pleasant.

He glances behind him. Can it climb? (Can it fly?) If he can get up somewhere high where it can't follow, he has a better chance than trying to outrun or attack it. There, a few meters behind him, he can make out the skeletal remains of a fire escape, like the exposed spine of a building. It looks like it's barely hanging on and is definitely not safe but it's his best chance for getting somewhere defensible, so he starts slowly backing up in that direction, not wanting to run yet because doing so will almost certainly attract that thing's attention.
gramarye: (☽ and one pill makes you small)

[personal profile] gramarye 2012-03-28 02:57 am (UTC)(link)
He has enough time to say "oh, fuck!" before his feet catch up to his brain and then he's just running. He's fast. It's probably faster.

But it's all metal, not organic -- he should be able to stop it. Not while he's running, he can't focus on it long enough, but if he can get up out of its reach, he can break it down. It is easy to make anything man-made malfunction; improbable over impossible, that's what he does.

Assuming it's not made of Primium. Assuming there's no countermagic woven into it. Assuming it can't climb. There are a lot of assumptions he has to make here and he doesn't like any of them.

No other choice. It'll catch up to him if he tries to run much farther, and he's really not keen on figuring out what that needle is for. He hits the sidewalk from the street and uses the momentum and the wall to leap for the lowest rung of the ladder. He catches it, thank God, and the whole thing creaks dangerously as he pulls himself upwards. He suspects that it can't support his weight for very long but he's got long legs and long arms and if he can make it all the way to the top he can probably reach the roof.

Please don't be able to fly, he's thinking fervently.

While he's climbing, he makes one offensive move -- attempting to disable it or slow it down. It's giving off steam, which means heat; it's easy enough to flip one force for another. Cold, he's thinking and it's concentrated straight at that thing, his willpower focused on this one act. He knows he can channel his will to alter reality; that's not a dream thing, that's a real life thing. It's as instinctive to him as breathing.
gramarye: (☽ goodnight i'm burning star iv)

[personal profile] gramarye 2012-03-28 09:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Something's fired at him but it misses, so he ignores it. He can hear it thrashing down there, disoriented apparently, which is good -- he hopes. Then hands grasping him and pulling him upwards and he's not going to fight that -- he grips back and does the best he can to help haul himself upwards.

He doesn't weigh as much as he should.

He can still hear it banging around down there. It can jump high enough to reach the fire escape, but can it climb? He doesn't know, but he's not going to give it a chance to find out; as soon as he's on solid ground, breaking the thing shouldn't be too much trouble. He just needs to get out of the way.

One last burst of momentum and he's solidly on the rooftop, scrambling as far from the edge as he can before his arms give up on him and he falls on his back, breathing hard -- from that sprint to get here, yes, but also from fear.

His eyes are watering from whatever that gas was, but the stinging is only annoying, not painfully incapacitating. It's not tear gas, which he has experienced and which seems like it would have been more effective. He coughs a few times and it helps.

"Thank you," he says in English when he manages to catch his breath.
gramarye: (☽ and the nightmare stops)

[personal profile] gramarye 2012-03-29 05:06 am (UTC)(link)
Wolfgang has to work on breathing properly for a few more moments, then he sees her heading towards the edge and -- no, that's unsafe, they should be. Going. Away from there. In the opposite direction. On the other side of the planet, maybe, that would be helpful. It takes too long for his mind to catch up with the rest of him and when he remembers what it is she's looking for, the first words out of his mouth then are, "I can stop that." It sounds wondering at first, as if he's surprised with himself. I can?

"I can stop that," he says again, this time with more conviction because he knows -- yes, of course he can stop it. He pushes himself upward and pauses only a moment while everything spins (real or not real?) and he's thinking, fuck, I'm tired. He wasn't so tired a few moments ago.

But this is easy. That thing down there is all metal and whatever is powering it, both in terms of bodily design and its AI, is obviously incredibly complicated -- and the more complicated something is, the easier it is to break, you just have to make a single essential function fail. There are a million things he can do to stop it that are well within his power.

He lurches over towards the edge of the building once his vision steadies. Thread. What he needs is thread. Lacking that or a loose seam in his clothes -- which would be convenient and annoying at the same time -- he reaches up and plucks a strand of hair. (His hair is also convenient and annoying at the same time.) He studies the thing's movements for a while before he ties a series of knots in his hair -- and when he does the creature jerks and trembles and then just --

Collapses in on itself. Like it's imploding.

(That was not actually what he had been trying to do, but he'll take it, thank you.)

He doesn't have time to be pleased with himself because of the way the entire building suddenly shakes as if there's an earthquake, but -- no, it's just this building. Something hit it with enough force to shake its foundation, and Wolfgang looks alarmed. "That was not me."

The HIT Mark looks just like a man. A tall, muscular blonde man in jeans and a leather jacket, walking around the corner from the opposite street and just coming into view, casual as you please. He stops when he sees the rickety fire escape and looks first at the collapsed dog-like metal creature with an expression of mild surprise and puzzlement. Then his gaze slowly travels upwards until he sees the both of them.

His left eye emits a red light. The parallel is unintentional but unmistakable.

Wolfgang is not inclined to touch people without their permission, generally, but when a surge of recognition slams him straight in the gut his arm shoots out to grab the woman by the shirt and pull her down with him just before a hail of bullets flies where they had been one second before.
gramarye: (☽ i was out of my head)

[personal profile] gramarye 2012-03-29 04:23 pm (UTC)(link)
Wolfgang shakes his head. "Not who. What." That's a terrible thing to say about something that looks so human -- but it really isn't. None of them are; they have enough AI to pass as human to Sleepers, but no true sentience. All they do, all they are programmed to do, is kill.

The last time he saw one, he was ten.

He had been a child still, yes, but one with a decade of slowly amassing power behind him; they wouldn't have won in a fair fight. So they brought out the big guns, because removing his one source of power made him as helpless as any other child. At least an adult could have fought back -- could have used a weapon. He wouldn't have won then if not for something else's intervention.

"I can't fight that." There's fear in his voice. Everything scares him but he's willing to face it anyway, but this is something he knows if he goes up against directly, he will lose. And it won't be trying just to take him now; it'll be programmed to kill.

His eyes follow hers to the next building and he worries his lip as he considers it. It looks too far to jump, to him. Then again, falling and breaking his neck on the ground below is also probably a much kinder death than whatever that robot down there has to offer -- the robot that has stopped firing and is looking to climb up where they are. The blades in its hand make scaling the side of a building child's play. The whole thing shakes again as if a giant fist hit it.

Okay, so they have to move.

They can get from one building to another, that can't be as hard as it looks. After all, gravity is a force.

He's done it before, he remembers -- he was six and he took Safiya flying until Hassan saw them and freaked out. It hadn't been real flying anyway, more of a wobbly floating in air with the imprecision expected of a young child still developing motor control, but Hassan was a fun-ruiner who worried too much and neither of them wanted to hear him screaming at them from the ground, so they'd come down.

If he could just remember how he'd done it. It can't be as simple as just stepping off the ledge and relying on faith, trust and pixie dust.
gramarye: (☽ go ask alice i think she'll know)

[personal profile] gramarye 2012-03-30 06:23 pm (UTC)(link)
Looking back at her are two children, roughly the same age -- maybe nine or ten, although they're both so skinny they might be a bit older. The blonde one is him, the resemblance is clear and it feels as if he's looked this way the entire time; the other is unknown, genderless and nearly colourless as well, like an outline with a single wash of watercolour that no one remembered to finish. They're simultaneously absolutely distinct and the same person.

And at the same time as that he is also Uri, the adult, with the scarred hand and tired eyes.

The children are arguing; the second one says jump, the blonde says no. He's afraid to leave her behind. She says she'll follow, but he's afraid because how will he know?

A hand breaks from over the edge on the other side of the building; a head, with that glowing red eye, emerges a second later. He-she-they turn all at once and then he-she-they is/are making that jump -- no other choice.

Is he falling or flying? He can't tell the difference. He's definitely upside down, but Wolfgang's perception of reality is... skewed in the waking world; in dreams, he has even less of a grasp over the distinction. It would at least be nice if he could tell if he's supposed to be panicking or not. Still, he finds himself on the other roof, where he pauses to wonder briefly how he got there before moving again. This time it's him leaning over the edge, offering her a hand to pull her up. He's still all three people, all at once, which gives it the added element of surreality that a child somehow has the reach and strength to pull that off.

If they both made the jump, the HIT Mark almost certainly can. That is exactly what it's attempting to do, in fact.
gramarye: (☽ and one pill makes you small)

[personal profile] gramarye 2012-03-31 05:26 am (UTC)(link)
The transition makes sense to him for reasons he will be unable to articulate later, but right now, of course this is where they end up. It is, at least, relatively safe.

Relatively. Wolfgang doesn't like being trapped in small, enclosed spaces -- not because he's claustrophobic but because they're not very defensible. Not much room to fight. And they're unarmed, and he hates this -- how helpless he feels in a fight without a weapon he can actually use. With a gun, he can defend himself and other people; without one, what does he have? Magic?

He doesn't really know how to control that and it terrifies him. Even here, of all places, he is absolutely certain that magic is something wild and dangerous and not fully within his control.

But he gets the clear sense that they are no longer being pursued, even though it seems like logically the HIT Mark should still be hot on their heels. He has the strong sense that as long as they're in this room, it can't find them, ignoring completely that those things have heat-sensitive vision. The dream has transitioned to something else, like chapters in a book. The last chapter is closed firmly behind them.

Wolfgang glances around, not that there's much to see. "Now what?" he asks. If there's another way out than the one they just came in, he can't see it, and likely neither of them wants to try coming out the same way since he gets an equally strong impression that something very bad is on the other side of it, though he can't say what.

What were they even doing? He can't remember...
Edited 2012-03-31 05:27 (UTC)
gramarye: (☽ you snakes and ladders)

[personal profile] gramarye 2012-04-02 04:44 am (UTC)(link)
"Baedal?"

It takes him too long to recognise the name, which is funny because not too long ago -- and how long has it been? He can't tell -- he was convinced that was where he is. His eyes have a slightly unfocused quality as he's looking vaguely at nothing just beyond her left shoulder. It feels like he should know, but then he's confused because that steam-powered creature and the presence of the HIT Mark read to him as Technocracy (Bad Suits, as he knows them) and they don't have a foothold in Baedal. He shouldn't have a presence there, either, then.

But he does. But this is.

But it isn't.

No, of course he's from Baedal. Of course this is Baedal, then it all makes sense -- danger and monsters and fighting. Right. That's where he is. The change in her attire seems utterly mundane, as if that, too, is just something that happens here. This has to be real because it's happening to him, and if you can't trust your eyes or your ears or how your lungs burn when you're running for your life, what can you trust? He already knows memory is a liar.

"Yes," he says, but he furrows his brow in confusion. "Aren't you?" Aren't we there? is the question unasked there.

(That he apparently doesn't find it odd that there are things like that creature from before in Baedal is telling and also rather worrying, even with allowance made for dream logic.)
Edited 2012-04-02 04:47 (UTC)
gramarye: (☽ the poetry that i be)

[personal profile] gramarye 2012-04-02 08:35 pm (UTC)(link)
Anywhere something isn't actively trying to kill them is an improvement. It's increasingly difficult to sort through his memories when so much of them are tainted by tragedy and danger and fear, though; bad things that can, will and have followed him from one place to the next such that even a transdimensional kidnapping is no relief. All his best memories share that same taint.

Most of them, he's not sure are real.

What he remembers is the beach. Hilton Beach in the height of summer; in July, it's 32°C, and the heat has a weight to it that drives people in droves towards the sea. The air smells like barbecue and the tang of sea foam, and tinny music wafts from stereos and pipes out of shops along the promenade, overshadowed in places by the joyous barking of dogs as they hurl themselves into the surf. The sunlight reflecting off the water hurts his eyes, but that he's dressed for the weather in Baedal in March appears to make no difference.

In high school his friends spent most of their time here. It's the most popular surfing destination in the city, in the country, really, and nobody cares if they hold each other's hands; no one says anything about any easy displays of affection, if they mean anything or not. No one calls them homos except each other and then it's just teasing.

It's all the normal teenager things he can remember without dragging something bad in with them -- it's the loitering at the mall, sneaking into gay bars along Dizengoff Street, pushing each other along the beach and into the water, smoking weed in the park at midnight when all the kids are gone, flirting without really meaning it, making fun of tourists. The faces of his friends are more like an amorphous blur, just like the crowds of people are present without actually being there, but even without picking out their facial features it's clear that they're happy and ignorant of the greater forces at work following them like a shadow, the ones he still feels like weights on his shoulders even while sleeping.

These are dreams he doesn't have, dreams about things that really happened when he was sleeping. Euphemisms make that sound more confusing than it is.
Edited 2012-04-02 20:37 (UTC)