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

[cestrumnocturnum]

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.

Comments

[wontturntofoam]

Shrieky twists on his heels, his attention torn between that thing (That sentry, a voice in the back of his mind whispers) and the brief flash of yellow torchlight off to the side.

He wants to run, away from the sentry and towards the light, but his feet feel hot with pain, and he knows that if it pursues him he stands no chance of outstripping it. For the moment it seems to be holding still, he doesn't know if it has any reason to try and hurt him, and he certainly doesn't want to give it one.

Swallowing hard, the idea crosses his mind that he can befriend it. It's just like a horse, only metal and swelteringly hot and sharp and terrifying, but he likes horses, so perhaps if he can communicate to it that he doesn't mean it any harm, and hasn't done anything wrong, perhaps it'll just pass him by?

He lifts both hands, in a gesture of peace and surrender, then opens his mouth to speak. At first, nothing comes out at all. It's like the words stick in his throat, and he can't exhale hard enough to make them come. Then he pushes, and what comes out is a creaking, clicking noise that can't be deciphered.

Shrieky stops, briefly, then tries again. He focuses on forming the words, but what comes out is the same, a strangled, broken string of shrieking noises. Realization dawns, and he claps a hand over his mouth, suddenly aghast. He can't speak. He's forgotten how. The words are still there, the sentences he wants to make fresh in his mind, but somehow they won't come. Fear of the sentry is secondary now, even if it doesn't kill him, the thought of losing his connection to the rest of the world petrifies him.

[cestrumnocturnum]

The robot is largely apathetic and unmoving to the strange, disjointed shrieks that fly from the Mermaid's mouth, although confusion and-- what is that, pity?-- seem to vibrate empathetic through the fabric of the world, if emotions could be sensed through the soles of your cut up feet, through the ash-tasting air that presses in from all sides.

And then, there is noise, as if the robot were in direct competition with Shrieky. A howl of klaxon siren suddenly rises for the sky, loud enough to make bones ache, as well as get attention. At the same time--

At the same time, enough control is wrangled, just enough to help. The air suddenly smells like river beneath the ash, like morning, and the ground smooths and softens into grass, although this does not extend beneath the sharp feet of the robot, as if welcoming it onto this place of safety, even if its just the earth and nothing more, the gutted city still risen above them, is too alarming to compensate.

An expulsion of yellow vapour, one that stings at eyes and mouth once in contact although its true function-- ability negation-- does not actually hinder Shrieky in any way, suddenly floods out the sides of the robot, one leg lifting to lurch forward, when a hand is gripping Shrieky's wrist. The supreme noise of the klaxon cancels out, for the moment, whether it matters if Shrieky can speak English or even understand it - Benji is silenced in contrast.

But she can, silently, urge Shrieky away.

[wontturntofoam]

The sound and the vapour are encouragement enough. Shrieky turns toward the woman who seems to have materialized at his side, and upon her urging, he moves. He tries not to flat out run, not wanting to lose her hand on his wrist, but the desire to escape from the sentry, and the klaxton, and the floor that wasn't soft and grassy beneath his feet? That is a considerable one, and it spurs him on.

He can't tell if he's still in Baedal or not. The buildings all seem too tall, now, the shifting of the floor beneath their feet seems unlike something that would happen in the city, where the streets are all mapped out and have been for centuries. Perhaps this is what happens when the sky falls? The streets disintegrate and the grass grows through where they once were.

Perhaps the smell of the river is the Gross Tar, and if they keep running, perhaps they'll reach it, and from there, find a boat, and from there, find their way to somewhere where the sentry can not follow them.

Shrieky steals a glance across at the woman with her hand on his wrist, then twists to look over his shoulder, to see if they're being pursued.

[cestrumnocturnum]

Benji may berate herself later, that the only way she could think in the moment to help is to make the ground kinder to the stranger's feet. But regardless, they run, and she permits Shrieky back his wrist by the time she is sure they are running together.

The sentry bot lurches forward, but it does not possess the speed of its smaller counterparts, and Benji and Shrieky can easily outmatch its distance as red eyes fade smaller, the hazy cloud of yellow dwindling, losing its opacity. "Keep going," she urges, in case the distance my persuade Shrieky to slow. "Others will come." Still, the sentry does continue its pursuit in an inevitable pace, all mechanical endurance and progress.

She's abandoned her flashlight as they run through the steadily transforming city. She wears a coat, boots, a woolen wrap-around dress of grey beneath the former, and a jangling pendant of silver from her neck. There is no question, in dreaming, that Benji is a woman. Markers that may signify otherwise simply do not connote as such as they might in the waking world.

It's a downhill lope, then, towards where there are wooden docks, and a cigarette boat tied up that is as familiar to her as someone's car or bicycle might be. There is fog that rolls on the water and patches of ice recently broken making patterns, although the coldness of the setting hasn't really caught up with the rest of it.

"Over there," she says, slowing, pointing. Across the river, down the width rather than the length, which stretches for miles, is an island body, and upon it, a partially crumbled castle.

[wontturntofoam]

Shrieky doesn't slow or falter as the sentry falls behind them, he does however, take advantage of the change in pace to glance across at the woman running at his side. She was pretty, her face all soft edges and clear skin, and she was wearing a dress which couldn't have been efficient for fleeing through a destroyed city. Shrieky tried to tell her this, but the appearance of grass and the river, had apparently not brought with them the memory of speech. What came instead was a sound not unlike the cawing of a crow, and Shrieky snapped his mouth shut again quickly, irritated by the disobedience of his voice.

Thus silenced, he presses on, relieved by the sight of the water and the castle. Although he may not have had exclusively positive memories of castles and bodies of water, there was still something comforting in the familiarity of them.

He stops as they reach the side of the river, and glances to the girl with him, waiting for her to get into the boat first. The faint, insect buzzing has returned, in the farthest reaches of his hearing, and Shrieky glanced back again, searching the sky for either their pursuers or the source of the sound.

[cestrumnocturnum]

The cawing is confusing, and Benji doesn't think to decipher its meaning by way of will; she, too, is caught in the reality of the dream, but her expression when she glances at him is one of polite sympathy. He would be right, of course; she is not dressed well for the urban wreckage of her home city, but she does seem to match the setting laying ahead of them.

Understanding hesitation, she moves to climb into the boat, holding out a hand in offer of help before she's untying it as well, her movements quick and efficient, although a tremor of nervousness trembles in her fingers. She doesn't want to lead them directly into her sanctuary, even if they catch up by the time she and Shrieky are in the water. The boat is nosed away from the land.

And then that noise again, which she ignores, at first, but then can't. It's more invasive than summer crickets in the bushes, or the bees milling around wildflowers at spring.

[wontturntofoam]

Shrieky climbs across into the boat with Benji's help, and carefully sits himself down into the body of the boat while she unties it and casts them off. He looks over his shoulder, once, to try and see if they're still being pursued, before turning his attention to the water. He dipped his fingers into it, then his whole hand, undeterred by the coldness. There were probably fish here. Maybe he could catch some for her, to say thank you for rescuing him...

The buzzing is loud enough to be all around them now, and Shrieky becomes aware of a tickling on the back of his neck. He reaches up to smack the insect away, only to find one crawling up the length of his arm. A few more buzz around them. Not enough to be making so loud a noise, but enough to set his teeth on edge. He shoots Benji an apologetic glance. For reasons he's not entirely certain of, he is certain that they're here because of him, rather than her.

[cestrumnocturnum]

"Ow."

She brushes a bee off her calf, remembering a memory that doesn't belong to her about an actress and her talents when it came to insect kind and the choking terror that came from the girl who remembered her-- it's complicated, a bit, how Benji's head works. But here it works to their benefit. A black bird with its bright orange beak suddenly descends, shooting like an arrow between mermaid and dreamwalker, taking out a bee before it can wander in its trajectory for Shrieky's face.

His certainty and the apology in his glance has Benji hesitating, some reassurance in the shake of her head. She feels like she should try to communicate without talking, too, because it seems polite, but instead she sort of awkwardly explains-- "My aunt."

The bird, apparently. Or birds. Despite the speed of the boat jetting for the castle's island, another one, a sparrow, darts in to snag another insect out of the air, although the one-by-one nature of the attack probably isn't going to help against a potential swarm... unless it's a flock.