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

[gramarye]

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.

[cestrumnocturnum]

It's both confusing and yet makes perfect sense, no question in Benji reaching to accept the help and climbing her way onto the neighouring building, although now she keeps a hand on this trio of people just for a moment as she dares a look back. Towards where it is setting a boot against the rooftop ledge, a second from launching himself in pursuit.

Panic. Her other hand reaches and grips the handle of the door, the one that's just there, that slots seamlessly into reality just as the rebar and the concrete and the dusty sheets of plastic do. It's in vivid detail, as well, slats of wood painted white to match the walls that aren't there, brass fixtures, but plain because cupboard doors aren't elaborate, and she plunges into the darkness as swift as a rabbit disappearing into its warren, Wolfgang dragged along not only thanks to the hand at his-their wrist, but also a sort of unstoppable, invisible current that directs him in her wake.

She's hidden here before.

It's pretty dark, save for soft light coming in beneath the door that gets slammed closed to seal off one reality from the other. Small, not quite space adequate enough to be called a room, but fits people comfortably, with an angled ceiling that speaks of the staircase it's slotted in beneath. The smell of ash is gone; just dust, timber, the distant scent of a river.

Benji presses her back against the door, letting out a measured exhale, a hand briefly pressing to her chest as if she could will her blood pressure to a normal pace. And she looks around. Oh.

"Oh," is echoed, out loud.

[gramarye]

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...

[cestrumnocturnum]

Of course there is something bad on the other side. The rest of the world tends to qualify, and it pressing in around them like the dark is merely what keeps it at bay, but that just may be Benji's secondhand impression of this place. Painting it vivid, along with the texture of the flood, the dust in the air. It's almost a spell in itself, the powerful childhood belief that this hiding place could stop even the HIT Mark's rain of gunfire; it isn't even heard outside.

"Now..."

Benji supposes that that's a fair question, and one she can answer. She changes without actually changing, losing the urban, dust-tracked practically of wool, replaced with silk and cotton, ruching, stockings, shiny pumps, but as if this were a natural sort of transformation, settling comfortably into self-awareness. "You're from Baedal, aren't you?" she asks.

She isn't even sure if that word will mean anything to Wolfgang, but she doesn't like to snap people into instant lucidity; things can get dangerous for her that way. But the subconscious mind isn't always any better, either, considering the latest few moments.

[gramarye]

"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.)

[cestrumnocturnum]

"Operative word being 'from', I suppose, but-- yes. I am, too."

Because they all are. America has immigrants too, so why shouldn't Baedal be the same way, even if Benji has only tasted it for a short while. She also doesn't miss it, Wolfgang's ideas of what Baedal can allow, and a hand drifts up to worry the pedant on her chain. The unasked portion of the question hangs between them like the dust in the air, and she nods a little. They might as well be.

Because if Baedal is not a sort of cluster of people's ideas and pasts and prejudices brought together to make something new, Benji isn't sure what is. "We can go somewhere else," she invites, after a hesitant moment. A hand goes back, hooking two fingers against the more rudimentary latch that levers the door open from the inside.

She has to put this one back where he belongs, but she may as well not throw him just anywhere, after what they've both just been through. "Anywhere you remember is nice."

[gramarye]

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.

[cestrumnocturnum]

She hasn't really been anywhere like this, herself, but has experienced it like this, from the white and blue beaches of Sicily to the chalk cliff faces in Sussex, England, looming over the bright ocean.

But this particular the beach, down to the last details weaving together out of the memories one can only find in their most subconscious moments, is Wolfgang's. Benji lingers a moment, her inappropriate footware sinking pleasantly into the soft sand and raising both her hands to shield the sun out of her eyes, head tilted, before she allows herself to disintegrate, to conform in the crash of briny seawater on the shore and the movements of the people that populate this man's memories.

She considers remaining like that, too, to bask a little in someone else's pleasant dream, but only does so long enough to make sure the setting holds. Then she will go away, like a slinking guilty shadow.