HALLOWEEN MINI-EVENT 2014 ▒ MEDICAL

[fugax]

CHARACTERS: Charlotte Daniau & anyone in medical!
LOCATION: Medbay
WARNINGS: Discussion of past violence, updated as needed.
SUMMARY: Charlotte has a strong reaction to some aspects of the Halloween mini-event.
NOTES: This post has had no prior plotting and is entirely open to any characters in medical! There will only be one thread, but players are free to tag team in. If you're uncertain, please feel free to PM this or the mod journal with questions! Charlotte (and other NPCs)'s general availability for interaction will be covered in our announcement on November 1st.

[ The network went entirely dark only a day ago, and already Charlotte finds herself missing the steady chatter of the passengers. It's different, to how it used to be, the things they talk about. She doesn't respond often, feels alien amongst them, keeps herself isolated bar from work in the back rooms of Medical. It's some small attempt to help, to feel useful, but it still washes up as too little when the ship starts twisting again.

She can't help this time. She doesn't know anything about Communications, about any of the ship's systems. She doesn't know how her brother's voice could have been dragged up to echo out at her, taunting her. Just a nurse. Why was she here, with these people? Why her out of anyone?

There are murals all over the medbay walls. She's been ignoring them, forcefully, but without distraction they seem to loom, to move on the walls. There's one that seems to haunt her, always at the corner of her eye when she turns. Looking at it makes it feel as though the heat will start pressing down her spine again; that the tapping will start, the quiet tick-tick-tick in the walls.

She doesn't want to go back there. She still isn't sure she really left.

There's a scalpel in her hand, when she turns to the wall. The blade is just a tiny sliver of metal, but she wedges it in under a layer of the thick paint, pries a flake of black and red to flutter to the floor. Underneath is just more paint, but she tries again. Again, and again, hands growing frantic in trying to destroy the image. ]

Comments

[dogbane]

Charlotte, have you got any clue if we've got more scalpels, [William's voice precedes him.] Keller's last set are still in the sssso not what I expected to find somehow. Charlotte, love?

[He's walked in by then, having already come up just short of harassing Natasi while she was 'in the zone'; he'd turned right around, having decided that the possibility of impairing the survival of others was not more important than the certainty of sacrificing his own to their resident hacker. He scuffs to a halt just a few steps inside the Medical Bay doors, stares at the woman for a long moment. Not for the first time, he thinks: I thought she was getting better. They really need a specialist for insane person referrals, whatever that encompasses aboard the ship.

He spends the duration of two or three eye-blinks gawking, then shoots a look over his shoulder through the door. Gestures at whoever happens to be there. Please come.

(They really need codes just for the Tranquility. Code Black is still relevant, but maybe one for bizarre painting facility.) He cranes his head to try to look at the painting, staying out of scalpel range this go-around.] What've you got there?

[spellmight]

Will, hey, I was wondering if— ( sam pauses, the smile she'd worn on her face at having found william disappearing upon sighting charlotte. the haste of her movements hints to desperation, and fear. among other things; things sam knows a little about. just a little. she glances at william briefly, her gaze serious and quiet, before she shakes her head and swings her attention back to the woman scraping away at the wall. )

I don't think that's going to work, miss. If these painting bother you, we'll cover them up. Your comfort is more important than someone's need to express themself this way.

( she steps forward cautiously, more for the sake of william and charlotte than her own. she can handle herself. eventually, she stands calmly at charlotte's back, and reaches out to put a hand on her shoulder, as if to share her sense of ease and serenity with her. )

Here, can you pass me that knife? It's going to be all taken care of. Promise. ( and they're going to need this scalpel in future, preferably not dulled to the point of uselessness. sam meets william's gaze again, and smiles encouragingly. )

[fugax]

[The presence of other people in the room doesn't seem to do anything to deter Charlotte in her continued attack on the paint. It isn't any lack of awareness that they're there, though, only a solid determination that only has pause for a moment as she glances back over her shoulder briefly.]

You can't cover it up. You can't cover any of them.

[They're everywhere, all over the walls in the medbay, the corridors, the kitchens. Even if one was covered, another would appear on another wall - and Charlotte's fairly certain that they would evade covering. That they were moving.

She turns back to the wall, digging the scalpel into a long slice of the painting: a fallen figure, laid on its side, a ring of hands reaching towards it.]

It's following me.

[dogbane]

I don't think you can carve them up either.

[William shoots Sam a worried glance, approaches the nurse-turned-vandal all the same. He looks past her at the painting she's chipping at. Red and black, but aren't they all. Impossible to destroy-- he hadn't even bothered to try, but he'd suspected, keeping the murals in his periphery as he worked, knowing deep in his gut it's fucking with his mind no matter where he points his eyes.] You're going to bloody exhaust yourself when we need as many hands as we can. Please, love.

[If she stabs him anywhere other than a major artery, William knows he'll be all right. Even if she does, Samara's here with her gift-- so he's bold, a little, about reaching out to touch the woman's shoulder, the side corresponding to the one handling the scalpel. Maybe Sam will be able to take it from her then. He isn't sure how wanton the other healer is about courting danger, but it's all they can try; he'll try to stop her if the cutting edge takes a swing at his fellow medical officer. Somehow, though, he doesn't think so.]

Is it the thing that killed Joe?