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

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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.

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The shove is enough for the machinery and the AI that powers it to reconsider what it's doing with its raised leg. It takes all of Steph's strength and momentum to bring about the movement, the heat streaming off the metal prickling at the backs of her fingers that are wrapped tight around the tire iron. But she succeeds, it's knife-taper leg slams down upon the concrete instead of human flesh, occupying its focus on not tipping over as four legs work to stay upright instead. The klaxons silence, leaving only a dull ringing in Steph's ears, the whrrr of robotics.

Then, quite suddenly, something goes bonk.

It's a rock, or more accurately, some chunk of concrete scooped out of urban decay debris, shattering into smaller pieces when it lands against the flank of the creature. Hopefully, it was not designed to attempt harm, because it would fail miserably in this department, but it does garner attention, those blue sensors writhing.

It helps, also, that Benji classifies as genetically Evo and thus triggers the robot's inner compass, standing with all the quivery temporariness of a moth landed on a leaf in the middle of the road, eyes wide at her own audacity. She fits in, sort of, in her combat boots, grey leggings beneath a skirt of approximately the same shade, a top of indecipherable pattern and colour in this light beneath a BDU jacket that looks like it's passed through many hands, and she is quite notably unarmed save for a second brick-size piece of cement she was going to use if the first one missed.

Regardless, she pitches it anyway, and looks towards Stephanie. Recognition is sudden, surprising, forces her to hesitate before she barks, "Go, I'll--" Be back soon? Be fine? Something. The robot is already moving to abandon its post, and she takes to darting towards the buildings for shelter or height both.

Find you, is what she means, and the thing about dreaming is that not all information need be spoken, Stephanie sensing meaning as if catching a scent.

She's already moving to make a second strike at the machine when she hears the bonk. Some concrete dust lands in her hair, and she scans the surrounding area quickly for the source, eyes widening when she sees Benji. There's recognition on her part also, and she wonders if this is Baedal, if maybe the gods never sewed the sky shut and this is what comes next. But it's a fleeting thought, because the robot is moving and Benji is telling Steph to go.

I'll find you, isn't very reassuring, and it goes against everything Steph is to stay where she is when the robot starts chasing after Benji. But the girl is still on the ground, and that problem has to come first, in case there are more of those things around. She slips the tire iron through a belt loop, letting it hang there as she scoops the girl up and, as gently as possible, puts her over Steph's shoulder in a fireman's carry.

She moves as quickly as she can to the nearest stable building. She has to kick the locked door open, but it's a small sacrifice to make for four walls and roof, and she can always move further into the building later. As soon as she's put the girl down and taken a look around she knows she won't. It's painfully familiar, even though it shouldn't be; this room shouldn't be in this city, Steph's not even sure if it should still be standing. The scar on her shoulder aches with the memory of herself kneeling here as Black Mask shot her. She knows if she goes deeper into the builing, she'll find a small, windowless room with manacles hanging from the ceiling and drain in the center of the floor.

It takes her a moment to fight down the threatening panic attack, but she does, because the girl is still here and still injured and it's something to focus on. Steph's hands are careful, and they only shake a little, as she checks for any internal injuries; there's nothing she can do about the burn right now.

The girl's face remains too difficult to focus on, and Stephanie can't even check her pupils as a result; or rather, she can and perhaps does, but the memory of their condition will fail to hold. She does, however, see a tear through the cloth of her shirt, fresh spotted blood of small small wound, and upon further investigation, there's bruising and a single puncture mark, as if someone had been especially vicious with a needle.

She is still warm, breathing.

"They didn't save her."

Benji's voice slots into the room rather naturally. It doesn't matter, how and when she got here, she's just here, now, moving to kneel on the other side. "It's what happens, a bit, bad decisions. Or, I mean. Good ones, but hard decisions. People that get left behind." The electric lamp doesn't get set down, right away. Benji dangles it from her fingers to cast the light around a little.

Observing this unfamiliar place with a little bit of puzzled interest.

That solves the mystery of whether or not the girl was drugged, and Steph keeps desperately wishing for a medical kit, but the dream doesn't seem to work like that so she does what little she can with what she has on hand. At least glad the girl isn't dead.

Her gaze snaps up at Benji's voice, watching her kneel down on the other side of the girl. The words manage to filter in despite her surprise, and her expression twists in a frown. She can't imagine leaving anyone behind, but she knows she can't judge others for doing it when she has no idea what their situation is like.

Steph suddenly feels too vulnerable and exposed, when she notices Benji looking around. No one should see this, not when she feels like she'll still find all the tools in the torture room covered in her blood.

"It's not safe here," is what she eventually answers. Because there's still those shadows that were following her and they can't be here if - when - he gets back.

"Safe isn't for this city," Benji agrees, dropping her gaze from the walls to the flame, then back on the woman who died in another life time and dimension. "The fences are too high, too sharp, and they'd take one look at us and know that we don't fit in where it's safe." When she talks without really thinking it through first, her natural habitat, her voice is almost whimsical in its patterns, melodic without music.

She ducks her head to blow on the candle, but gently, too gently to eliminate the flame; it just throws light and shadow around wildly. As reality shifts aside as if the room were made of silk curtains shifting in the wind, it pulls apart, Stephanie bearing witness to her own fears that keep pressing in, trying to get footholds in this particular dreamscape.

The room, the manacles, the drain, and even the shape of a man that on paper bears no resemblance to anything specific but still snags familiar at her consciousness. All of these dance between the shadows that flicker along with the candlelight.

Steph's eyes dart around the room almost wildly, trying to make sense of the way the room changes and shifts with the flickering light. What Benji said sounds like lines from a poem or song, and it makes Steph wonder if the other woman is really here or if she's off in her own little world. She's scared, in a way she hasn't been for a long time and it pulls on her subconscious, almost making her forget that she isn't actually back there, waiting for Black Mask to return, her wrists broken and her suit sticky with blood.

"You--" don't understand, is what she wants to say, but it seems pointless to try to explain, there isn't enough time, "He's going to come back, we have to get out of here." It feels like she's begging, and in a way, she is. She just hopes that's enough to get them moving. She'd go on her own if she could, but Benji seems more familiar with this city, and there's still the injured girl to look after.

Edited 2012-04-06 09:39 (UTC)

No one ever identifies the robots as any sort of gendered pronoun (and in truth, they happen to be female, if one considers the being that drives them), and so it must be something else. Something Benji doesn't know about, and she puzzles a look across at the other woman before obediently moving into action by pinching out the flame with quick fingertips. Hands emptied, she goes to pick up the arm of the injured woman, and she moves compliant, in expected ways-- her head bows, hair curtaining her face, but her legs work beneath her when Benji goes to stand to help her up, arm across her shoulders.

Steph will be on the other side, and they'll move. Ahead of them, predawn has made the sky grey. Were they always outside? The hard cement floor of the room of Steph's memory gives way to less steady rubble and dirt and urban broken ground, and a wind harshly cold from the morning smarts their faces.

The Hudson river is a stagnant, gunmetal grey thing ahead of them. The geography may not be so familiar to Stephanie, or else it might be an inconsistency, moving towards the coast of Brooklyn instead of in the midst of Manhattan's midtown. There are docks and warehouses, a ghost town, and across the river, there's Staten Island, which is no longer the quiet, boring little suburban town it once was in more contemporary times. Stephanie sees a city, one in progress of being built, something new.

"Who is 'he'?" Benji asks, fine steam hitting the air on the exhale.

Thank god, she thinks, although she almost expects something to leap out at them, but nothing does and she's soon standing and supporting the injured woman. The unsteady rubble is both reassuring and annoying, she's just glad that she's strong enough to easily support the woman's weight, and that Benji seems to be doing a good job of it as well.

The river, even changed as it is, helps her recognize exactly where they are and her brow creases in confusiom. How did she get to New York? And what the hell happened to the city? On the plus side, it seems to help dispell some of the intrusions from Steph's subconsciousness; Black Mask and her father should both be in Gotham, they can't get her here.

Her gaze snaps up to Benji at the question, almost surprised, "Black Mask. I can't- I can't let him get me again." It's hard to even say that much to a stranger, but she needs to explain why she's so scared, why it was so important that they get far away from that room.

There's always the danger of possible threat, but they seem to currently be alone. Benji is searching the river to see if any patrols are on the water, but there is nothing, no lights nor movement. One of the boats tied off must be one of the Ferry's, or else she wouldn't have come here, wouldn't have. Invented.

"Black Mask?" she queries, mouth working out of sync with common sense for a moment, but then immediately; "No, I understand, don't explain."

Everyone has demons.

And it's superstition, in real life, to imagine they might step out of the shadows just because their names are whispered, but rather a real danger when it comes to this place. There's a thrum of anxiety from Benji, one that reverberates through the fabric of the reality she and Steph have made together, and it's then that things start to become undone. The ground beneath their feet seems to flow by beneath their trudging steps out of proportion with the pace they've set. Ice cold water floods up Stephanie's ankles as the shore is suddenly there and her feet sink into loose earth, and Benji is gone so the injured woman they held between them suddenly twists to pitch downwards, legs fishtailed out beneath her.

Stephanie is dragged with, a sort of unstoppable force bending her, hands caught in the gravity of this fallen victim. But instead of finding the woman, or even the shallow of the river shore, her palms land upon soft earth, freshly churned. There are trees around, now. A wooden cross erected nearby, with dead flowers bound to its centre from long ago, longer than the dirt beneath her was dug into. There are other patches like this, in the clearing, in various states of age, grass growing in.

The morning is brighter. Nicer. There is no trace of the city, here, east coast woodlands surrounding, but the smell of nearby river lingers. "This was the first place I thought," would be Benji. She's seated on a curve of tree that seems to grow twisted and horizontal from the ground, and possibly more aware of herself, shedding the pragmatic fabrics of wool, pocketed coats, general shabbiness, in exchange for a white dress that clings and drapes from her lanky frame, as long as her ankles. She's adorned otherwise with just a pendant that hangs off her neck, almost a religious icon.

She nervously digs her bare heels against the soft grass. "We were rescuing a phantom, I didn't-- think it was very fair for you. You were trying so hard."

"What--?" She's not even sure when she starts to speak, sometime between the cold water around her ankles and the drag of gravity, but the sentence never gets finished, only get's followed with a confused, "Hey!" Crying out indignantly at whatever, whoever, is doing this.

As soon as her hands touch the ground she's up again, an almost painful alertness that shows in the tension of her shoulders and the way her arms rest in front of her body, ready to block or throw a punch. She looks around at the trees warily, expecting something to jump out at her - or she's looking for either of the women she'd been with seconds ago.

Benji's voice makes her jump, and Steph turns to face her, eyes wide but she listens to the explanation and relaxes just slightly, "You did this?"

She's not sure she understands; there's too many explanations for what this could be and sometimes she wishes her life were more simple. At least the shadows aren't stalking her anymore.

The coward in her would like to say no, but she can sense something of Steph's relaxing, how confusing everything has to be, how much like a lifeline truth explanation can present itself as. She wilts a little beneath the attention, and presses a rueful smile at the other woman, silent confirmation.

"I'd say it was an accident, but that doesn't mean much. Like a car accident is a collision, people get wrecked, which I guess is what this is, a collision. We're dreaming together, but we're only doing that because of me. I'm not doing very well behind the wheel right now."

She stands up and brushes off her skirt a little, fabric white like a sail. "I know it seems very real, but it isn't. We're meant to be in Baedal, do you remember that?"

"Oh," and that's all there is in response for a moment, after having listened carefully to Benji and now she's deciding whether that all makes sense; she thinks it does, "Benji, right?"

Her expression is clearer now, and she returns the smile, almost as rueful, "It's alright. I mean--" It's not, in some ways, because she feels way too vulnerable after what she's said to Benji, after what Benji saw, but she can understand accidents, "This kind of sucks, but I'm not mad or anything. Shit happens. And I'm sorry about, you know, bringing my own mess in here." Wherever here is; are they in her head? Or Benji's? Or some sort of astral plane - okay, it doesn't matter right now, Brown. Focus.

"I'm sorry too. I mean-- you know. There are a lot of things I know about people that I shouldn't, and we've only just met. You're Stephanie," is sort of a confirmation that she is, indeed, Benji.

A hand travels up to fidget with her pendant, clearly a little nervous about this situation she's created. "But you'll wake up soon-- I don't know the time-- and it will be over, and no one will be after you. If you like, I can send you back now," is an open offer, a hand up like Stephanie could take it, but it's also a gesture, palm turned for the sky, fingers lax.

"Doesn't matter, what you saw, it's never been a secret, at least not back home," Barbara showed Misfit the photos Leslie took of Steph's injuries, Bruce held her up as the way not to be a superhero, Black Mask bragged about what he did to her. She doesn't even really know how much Benji picked up on and this isn't even the worst her dreams have been.

Steph shrugs, her smile less rueful and more gentle, "I don't mind. If you want to - I don't know - do you get to talk about this much?" It's a vague question, and a vague offer, but Steph feels the need to say it anyway. Maybe she can help?

Benji's demeanour flickers, from cool apology and control to something a little less secure. It's always a bit difficult to hide what she's thinking, even in the waking world; here, even more so. "Back home," she says, after a moment, on the topic of whether she gets to talk about it. "Not all of us had gifts, but it was understood that most did. My mother did what I can do. I haven't had problems with it for years."

These are disjointed thoughts, they could almost be assembled in bullet points. "If you have questions, I can answer them. I don't think I need to lie here."

"Baedal tends to mess with people like that," In reference to the fact Benji seems to be having trouble with it now. She remembers Jay having trouble in Bonetown with his shapeshifting powers and she's heard other things, both from their cohort and people who've been here longer.

"I-- hm," She was going to say she didn't have any, but something occurs to her, "The things in the dream, they couldn't really have hurt us, could they?"

She's thinking of the heat from the robot.

"Then I'm glad for the company."

It's a good question, also, and she knows the answer; she just gives a moment's consideration to how to answer it. "No," Benji decides upon. "You'll wake up whole and healthy and barely even remember the pain at all, even if the images keep dancing in your eyes. But the illusion-- well, it's quite vivid, isn't it."

The wind, the grass, the smells from a nearby river they can't even see; everything could fool them into thinking they were standing in a real woodland clearing. "Pain can happen. I'm sorry if--" She cuts herself off, there, because she's already apologised, and let's out a sigh through her nose, frustration at being careless.

Steph smiles, warm and easy. It's not too hard for her to push thoughts of Black Mask away, she's been doing it for years, and while she knows it's not the perfect coping strategy, it works. She sits down on the grass, cross legged with her arms stretched out behind herself.

The answer is pretty much what she guessed it would be; she thinks it'd take very strong magic to hurt someone in a dream and have it carry to the waking world, "Vivid enough to fool me." There's no anger in her tone, more just a wry sort of amusement and she waves off the apology.

"It's okay, really. There's no harm done and hey, at least this dream ended in a nice spot. Most of my nightmares don't," There is a silver lining here, see!

Edited (/sadcat) 2012-04-15 16:27 (UTC)

She hesitates before she ducks down along with Stephanie, sitting with knees together and tilted aside. It being a dream, one she is now in control of, she doesn't have to worry about grass stains on her skirt, as white as it happens to be. Benji is largely fine with her power seeming harmless. In comparison to others, it is. With exception to an invasion of privacy, she would have been ranked low on the government mandated tiering system had she ever been legal in the first place.

"There are nice spots, here," she says, with a crooked smile. "I don't live in the city, anyway. We're a little upstate, along the Hudson. Left to our own devices, I suppose."

"I haven't been to New York much, but it seems nice," Not so much the post apocalyptic version she just saw in Benji's dream, but she figures that should be fairly clear.

"Can I ask what happened?" To the city. She won't press if Benji doesn't want to discuss it, but she's definitely curious about what could have caused so much damage and why nothing's been done about it.

"You could. It's healthy, caring."

But Benji doesn't evade by way of being coy. She's only just starting to meet people who don't know what is as common as World War II to others, except this one's at her doorstep. "A series of unfortunate events happened. In 2006, an individual destroyed a large part of the city with his powers - radioactivity. It was how we came out to the world, so I guess we kind of got off the wrong foot.

"After that, there was a rush to control us. It started with Registration, but--" She waves a hand, a flippant sort of gesture compared to the anger she is keeping under ice, barely transparent. "It would never end there, not with all the fighting. World war, for a while, but that ended about six years ago. Most of the damage you saw was the result of local terrorism."

A small shrug, not to dismiss, but to signify that that's all she has to say. "I'm from 2040. It takes that long for a place like New York City to fall, I suppose."

Steph's expression shifts into a frown as she listens to Benji. It's partly disapproval for the entire situation, and partly recognition; she heard similar things from Kaitlyn when she was here. And registration has been something Tatiana, Kiden and Megan have talked about.

"I had a friend who was from your world, I think." She's not sure if it's the right thing to say, but she can't take it back now anyway, "I didn't realize it was that bad, and I know it doesn't mean anything, but I'm sorry."

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

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