PLAYER PLOT: fear is the mind-killer

[fullmoon]

CHARACTERS: You and all your least favorite things.
LOCATION: Shipwide.
WARNINGS: Violence, gore, monsters, psych trauma. (Please warn for any potential triggers—e.g. medical horror, eye stuff, recollection of past sexual trauma—in your subject lines.)
SUMMARY: Boggarts. See the plot post for a full timeline if you want to forward-date; otherwise, watch this space for updates.
NOTES: Whatever happens, however this ends, remember that it's Draco Malfoy's fault.

JAN 22

If you've been paying attention, you should already be on edge. Ward and Resnik have returned without many answers. There's the dead pirate again. The Tranquility is being pursued. People are talking about violent confrontation like it's inevitable, any cycle now. Any day. And now Morgoth is back, somewhere in the corridors.

If you keep an eye out, you won't find him. But you might find something else.

JAN 23

Never mind about Morgoth.

JAN 24

Despite very well-intended claims to the contrary (see above), the mounting evidence suggests that boggarts can be killed. Also, there's probably more than one. Sorry about that.

Comments

Locked to Robin (peckish4action) | cw: violence, general horror

[50000volts]

The walk back from Comms is generally an uneventful one. At this hour, there's hardly anybody up and about, and usually Darcy likes it this way. Today, however, her footsteps seem to ring out a little too sharply in the halls and feel like a beacon for unwanted attention. She slows her pace, tries to step quietly. It doesn't seem to help. Feeling incredibly uneasy then, she stops in mid-step.

The next bootfall sounds anyway.

No. Not boots. Maybe heels?

Darcy is petrified for what seems like forever, until finally she wills herself to look over her shoulder. It's nothing, she tells herself. There's probably just someone down the hall, coming toward her. Just because she's often the only person around doesn't mean it's always true. There's no one there, but that doesn't mean they aren't just around one of the bends. Sound carries, after all. That's just science. Taking a deep breath, she starts walking again.

The rhythm no longer matches her own steps. In fact, it's not a rhythm at all now. Darcy begins walking faster. The lift isn't much further. She'll be there before long, and then once she's safe inside, she can laugh at herself for being so paranoid. Paranoia may serve her, though. Especially now. But even as she's making her quick clip through the corridor, the footsteps get louder. ...No. Those aren't footsteps. What is it? What is that...

Tapping.

With a sharp gasp, Darcy takes off on a sprint. Fuck this place, fuck this place, fuck this place... "Please, no," she whispers to nothing – but something – in particular. "Not this again."

Rounding the corner send her colliding with something solid. No, someone. Darcy screams and goes scrambling back, a flurry of windmill slaps as she tries to put distance between herself and her attacker. – No, that isn't right. She isn't being attacked, is she? A familiar voice reaches through her terror as if she were underwater, someone calling to her from the surface.

"Darcy," it – no – he says, "Darcy, calm down. It's me. It's--"

She recognizes the voice, and it draws her back to the here and now, makes everything clearer and sharper. But it's not the name she should have heard. Why did he give her that name?

"Ryuuzaki?"

His hands on her shoulders hold her steady, keep her from stumbling backward again. She doesn't hear the tapping anymore. Was it all in her head? Is this it? Is she finally losing her mind?

"Is something wrong?" His voice is dry as ever, making concern sound perfunctory at best. It's a comfort in its own way. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

Darcy laughs at her own expense, chin dipping down and eyes shutting as she shakes off the lingering vestiges of fear making her feel too heavy to stand on her own. "More like heard one. Are you on your way to-" When she brings her eyes up to him again, his face is wrong. Like it's distorted beneath a film of oil, erasing and contorting. "No. Oh, no. No no no no. Not you. Please not this."

Fingers like claws sink into the skin of her arms and Darcy shrieks, pulling away with a tear of fabric.

Again, she begins running, though this time back the way she came. She doesn't think she can dodge past this... thing that wears Ryuuzaki like a grotesque costume. If she can get back to Comms--

But what if it has Ryuuzaki's nanites? Will she even be safe in there?

Her lungs burn already from the exertion, she still hasn't regained her strength fully since her return from the halls. A glance over her shoulder shows not-Ryuuzaki down on all fours now, loping after her and growing more monstrous with each passing moment. A manticore. Don't look back, she begs herself. Looking back only slows you down. It doesn't matter. A clawed hand finds her ankle.

Darcy screams as she goes down.

[peckish4action]

Robin heard the scream and slipped out of Comms, eskrima sticks at the ready. From his point of view, the creature didn't even look very much like Ryuuzaki, so he didn't register the possibility. He just saw Darcy being chased - the thing catching up to her, and launched himself towards them, more going by the walls and partly the ceiling than the floor.

"No, you don't!"

The stick slams into the creature's skull a moment after Darcy goes down, with all the weight that a leaping bound can deliver, and Robin lands firmly on the creature's elbow and wrist, forcing him to release Darcy's ankle. Then he flips over her, grinning widely even though his eyes - behind the white-out lenses - are definitely on the monster.

"May I lend you hand, here?" In an exaggerated chivalrous offer to help her up. "Elevators. I'll cover you."

And he makes a mental note to nanites-code a room for himself closer to the elevators on SOME of the levels, one of these days, in such cases. But that's for later. Now? Helping Darcy up, and spinning behind her to face the creature again.

"Did you get hurt by the fall?"

[50000volts]

The wind is knocked from Darcy's lungs when she hits the floor with a loud grunt of pain. Tears sting in her eyes and spill down her cheeks, but she doesn't fall apart. Instead, she grabs Robin's hand like a drowning victim reaching for a lifeguard and scrambles to her feet. Blood is soaking slowly into her sleeves and one sock from where she claws tore at her skin. It's nothing serious, but it looks painful.

The monster is dazed long enough for Robin to lay out the plan and Darcy to only think about beginning to object. He's equipped to deal with this, and she isn't. "Don't get killed," she demands firmly, but also with a sharp edge of desperation. "I will be so mad at you if you die."

The hiss between Darcy's teeth as she starts to move again - slower than before; her leg just burns - is drowned out entirely by the snarling manticore, who seems to cast off the lingering stupor with a shake of its head. Furiously, it lunges at the young hero, all sharp fangs and claws.

[peckish4action]

"Oh, don't you worry about me. I've faced much worse." Killer Croc, for one of the animal-based one... Man-Bat was also kid of. Well, never mind.

As the thing rears, Robin darts in and hits its leg, which gets him swiped at - it gets a shallow cut on his lower arm, above the glove. "O, none of this, now. You're not getting any of my uniform torn up-- wait. Darce? The face of this thing look sorta familiar to you? No, don't turn back, just keep going."

Ryuuzaki it might have started as, but it's now changed enough to only have passing similarity.

To look at Robin (not that Darcy is encouraged to look, nu-huh) one would thin that he's missed fighting monsters face to face... and, in a way, he really has. He's darting in and out of he creature's reach, slowing it, keeping it in check to give Darcy time to get away. But the grin on his face? Afraid?

Who's afraid? Not him.

"It's kinda fast, too, but." One of his sticks lands a decent blow on its nose. "How do you think it'll like getting tased, huh?"

It's not exactly a question, but if she wants to answer...

[50000volts]

"Still worried!" Not enough to look over her shoulder when she tells him, though. When he asks her about the face, she does almost look again, however. "Yeah, it looks the boss! I am not okay with this!" As evidenced by just how angry she is when she shouts.

Darcy almost skids to a stop. Why doesn't she just carry her taser everywhere at this point? What the actual hell is wrong with her? Her legs are screaming at her, and her pace slows unbidden. Robin is... Well, she knew he had to be good at this. The kid could be an Avenger or something! But seeing him in action beyond simply all but literally climbing the walls in Comms is something else entirely. She's concerned by that, but also incredibly in awe.

[peckish4action]

Robin pauses for just a moment, head tilted to one side. "Oh, yeah, it sorta does, doesn't it? Except he'd never snarl like this. Well, then. Stay whelmed, time to give him something to snarl about!"

Annnd tase!

Which might, Robin thinks, make the thing madder. It's had that effect on some of the things he's fought. But it might make it back off, and a little bit of an opening would be a good thing.

Except the monster backs off and scurries back, as though the electricity burns it hand, making sounds of pain, its face twisting even harder in hatred. Now that it's stopped, and Robin can observe it for a moment, it really is pretty horrifying. Not the worst he's fought, but pretty horrifying.

"Well, now we know. This actually works." He allows himself a glance back, though he makes sure to keep the thing in the peripheral pickup of the lenses. "How're you holding up?"

[50000volts]

No, Ryuuzaki is not the snarling type. But his bite stings just about as much.

"I feel like my leg's going to fall off." That's dramatic, but Darcy's good at dramatic and not good at dealing with pain. Favoring her left side, coupled with frequent glances back, have left her off-kilter and she goes stumbling, falling against the wall - leading with one injured shoulder - with a loud grunt and a creative expletive muffled only by virtue of her face being half-pressed to the smooth corridor.