[log] DANCE MAGIC DANCE [closed]

[bookofnope]

Characters: Angel, Rhys, Beckett, Enoch, Stephen, Peter, and Rocket.
Location: High school (326)
Date: Night 307
Summary: Angel charges Peter's Zune with her brain while everyone else awkwards at each other.
Warnings: None particular planned beyond the Norfinbury usual.



326: A fairly large building labeled Norfinbury High School. All the windows are blacked out. The lights here work, but you wouldn't know at first--they only turn on when someone is in the hallway or in the room, but lack of attention means it can take anywhere between thirty seconds to a minute before they actually respond. The hallways seem to stretch, the shadows seem to shiver. Each door is decorated with a prophet symbol, and the walls are covered in graffiti honoring the prophet and talking about killing sinners. Sometimes the doors rattle as you pass, or someone knocks on the other side.

A couple of classrooms still look normal enough, except for the black and red prophet tapestries adorning the walls and covering the windows. Still, the desks are in order, there's a board at the front, and they look like you'd expect out of a high school classroom. The front office, too, looks normal, as if it was actually used for administration--though, of course, there's no sign of the computers that must have been there.

The nurse's office, meanwhile, seems to have been converted to a surgical unit. There's long-dried blood everywhere, as if no one ever bothered to clean up. Indeed, footprints can be seen scattered around, implying people just wandered through while the blood was still wet. It looks like some people were even barefoot. The cafeteria has had all its tables attached to the walls, some covering the windows. The chairs are scattered around, some knocked over and some sitting quietly. There's no food to be found here. The library has been emptied of books, and all the shelves turned to face the wall, with eye symbols drawn on their exposed backs. The gymnasium has had its floor cut into, with eye marks carved all over. There are bleachers, but they're stuck closed, so it would be difficult to open them.

As for the rest of the classrooms? They're filled with thick blackness. Going inside causes all the symptoms of suffocation, and any light shone or brought in is immediately swallowed up.

Comments

OTA!

[bookofnope]

Option A: Prophet Pinball

[They're back at the high school, and Beckett knows he should be searching, experimenting. But he's having a bad MN Flu day, aching, chilled, and weary, and he cannot stop thinking of what he's really like to be doing - which he very much cannot do. He will not walk into the classroom. He will not take the risk. He had promises to keep, even if they're difficult, even if in his current extra grumpy state, he chafes at them with every look he sends at the doors open into nothingness.

Well. The promises wouldn't mean much if they were easy.

Eventually he settles with his back to the wall between two classrooms, huddles under his blanket-cloak, and passes the time rolling marbles and beads into the darkness past the doorways. He already knows he won't learn anything from it, but it's something to do while he thinks. Or gathers his energy. Or just sulks.


Option B: Fight the Power

[Eventually, rolling marbles and snarking at passers-by is no longer enough to distract Beckett from either discomfort or frustration. For a while he resolves to pull himself together and at least do another proper round of the building. For a while he walks, recording macabre little observations into his tablet about people walking in blood and how much time and effort all these creepy tapestries must have taken and just imagine the cult's arts and crafts week, did they serve cupcakes with little eye decorations?

He pauses next to a tapestry that covers the window in one of the normal classrooms, puts a hand on it. It's heavy. It'd be nice and warm to sleep under. For some reason, just now, that makes him incredibly angry.

With a snarl, Beckett pulls at the tapestry, well vicious enough to tear despite how weak he is now. He knows it's an empty gesture, but by God if it doesn't make him feel better to deploy some symbolic violence.] To hell with all of this!

B

[phaseshifter]

[ While Angel has kept to herself throughout Beckett's sulkfest, ignoring the tapestry-rippage is another thing entirely. The sudden noise startles her enough for her to drop her tablet and let out a sound that isn't quite a yelp. Perhaps more of a yeep. Small, squeaky, and almost comically Rhyslike in its delivery.

Yeah. A yeep.

She makes a show of picking her tablet up again to buy herself a few seconds before she speaks. The time is necessary to remind herself that snarling Becketts are not a bad thing, that he's just a doofy old grumpire, and that fake memories don't even count for anything anyway. Lame. ]

Um... still having a bad day, huh? Unless you're just practicing for a new career as an interior decorator.

[ Jokes. Always a good start. ]

[bookofnope]

[Under any other circumstances, Beckett might have been pleased to hear a yeep uttered in relation to his dumb temper tantrum. Because he is a scary vampire and it is gratifying sometimes to be reminded of such. Angel, though, is not his yeeper of choice. No. When she drops the tablet he almost flinches himself.

They should probably talk. He'd talked to Rhys first in hopes of figuring out the words, how exactly to accomplish this feat. But he's none the wiser. It's all... difficult.]

If only that were a career choice in the seventeen-hundreds. Who knows what might have been? [One joke to another. He peers at her from over the rims of his tinted glasses, trying for a comforting exchange of wry looks.] Just frustrated. We've all been there, I'm sure, repeatedly.

A.

[zunesareawesome]

[Peter comes hobbling by, wanting to get another good look at the creepy darkness. It was just so weird and they didn't learn anything other than It's Weird. He holds onto the wall for stability, too busy looking at The Nothing, and yelping when he sees the huddled figure on the ground a bit ahead of him down the hallway actually move a little.]

THE HELL--

[He doubles over a second, trying to catch his breath.]

The hell are you doing lurking there all creepy-like?

[bookofnope]

[This is the best reaction, thinks Beckett the asshole vampire. Sometimes he likes to scare people, and sometimes is maybe often, and Quill is by far the best candidate in the building for it. The figure in the dark cloak raises a blank pale face toward Peter, eyes all but invisible behind dark red lenses, fangs showing just slightly, just enough, in a smirk.

Then he sneezes. The effect is instantly ruined. Instantly.]

Ugh. [Undone, defeated, humiliated. Beckett makes a face, rubbing his nose on a sleeve.] What do you want?

A

[thewarningafter]

[The little clicking sounds of the marbles and beads catches Stephen's attention long before he can see what's making the sounds or why they cut off so abruptly after the initial impact. It's what has him coming round the corner of the hallway just to stop and stare.]

What's that you have there?

[bookofnope]

[Admittedly it is a spectacle to stare at. The tattered vampire pinging marbles is already a curiosity, but the way the little bits of glass just vanish, swallowed without a trace, is the real mesmerizing part. It just doesn't make any physical sense, and Beckett finds that entrancing. Things that don't make physical sense are something of an expertise of his.

He glances up at Stephen, and distractedly offers his half-empty bag of marbles.] Here, give it a try.

A

[warriorscribe]

[Enoch wanders, between bouts of destroying the eyes, shard of hard plastic gripped in a hand rubbed raw by its unforgiving edge. Its blunted tip is still coated in flakes of red paint. Try as he might to make his prayer for sanctuary as nonspecific as possible, they were still stabbed. To say nothing of the attempt to destroy another eye... And now they're here again, where the walls are covered in reminders of their intrusion into everything he is.

He flops beside Beckett, leans back against the wall, and sits in silence, tremors in his fingertips and color drained from his face. It's a bad day for both of them.]

[bookofnope]

[Beckett would offer some attempt at, a distracting remark at least if not a soothing one, but he's not up to it. Part of it is plain physical raggedness - sitting close, his breathing is audibly laboured - but the greater part is that he is trying very hard not to say something else. Something he damn well knows better than to say. I need to...

No.

Instead of speaking, he quietly reaches over, and works to pry the shard from Enoch's hand. Gentle yet efficient. Very clearly not his first time getting something dangerous out of someone's convulsing hand.]

OTA

[phaseshifter]

1 - CHAAAAAAAARGE

[ Angel is sitting in a nest of coats and blankets and trying to look as boring as possible. It isn't a difficult task, as far as she's concerned. There is absolutely nothing even mildly interesting about being able to charge things with her brain. A child could do it! Assuming that child had a wire duct-taped to their custom headports, anyway. Obviously.

The ports are something of a sore spot. Literally at the moment, what with the mild headache she gets while charging, but also because of the circumstances behind their installation. Sure, it's nice that they can be useful, but she can't help but feel a little uncomfortable about people expressing interest in them. So if she catches anyone staring, she's quick to speak up: ]

Nothing's going to happen, you know. No explosions or flashing lights.

[ Unless you count the light coming from her SICK GLOWY TATTOOS, but that's more of a soft pulsing than anything else. Definitely not flashing. So there. ]

 

2 - CAAAAAAAARDS

[ After she's done with the whole Zune-charging business, Angel resumes working on the pet project she's been working on for the last day or two. She's been coding a card game app to give herself something to do, but:

1) she has to draw all the card assets by herself in the tablet's version of mspaint and that's boring

2) she only knows the rules to two card games.

As a result, she's more than happy to break off from her work to talk to people. Any people. At the first available opportunity. ]

Hey! Would you mind helping me for a second? I'm in need of some additional input.

1

[zunesareawesome]

I really, REALLY hope there won't be any explosions.

[Peter solemnly looks over at his Zune, standing next to her and holding onto the wall for stability.]

This is important. It's not just about the music. Well, it's a lot about the music. But someone important gave this to me.

[phaseshifter]

Really? Who?

[ She squints at him for a second, then shuffles to one side to make room on the blanket-pillow amalgamation in case he'd like to sit. It has to beat prpping himself against the wall like that. ]

Uh, assuming that isn't too personal a question.

2

[warriorscribe]

[Good, because his current choice of distraction is his usual destruction of Prophet eyes and it's really best he do something else. It's a good thing Angel caught him roaming the hallways instead of actually working at the eyes. It's a much less unsettling sight. He smiles weakly, but at least he smiles.]

Of course, Angel. What sort of input?

[phaseshifter]

That depends. Do you know any card games? I've kinda exhausted my own knowledge of them already.

...All two of them. Blackjack and solitaire, if those mean anything to you?

[ She's already wondering if card games are even a concept that Enoch knows, because so many of the things she takes for granted are so alien to him. BUT NOT CARDS, RIGHT. SURELY. ]

1

[procyon_lotor]

[ Rocket doesn't say much from where he's standing. He just watches for whenever Peter gives her his Zune — and from that moment, his eyes are pretty much glued to everything she does, including however it is that she attaches an electricity-sucking device directly into a port in the back of her head.

Yeah. That's ... brilliant. ]

So do those tattoos only go off when you're charging people's music, or are they like that all the time?

[ Because he can't not bring that up. ]

[phaseshifter]

[ Angel, on the other hand, is trying very hard not to stare right back at Rocket. Spending most of her life locked in a bunker with no access to anything cute and fluffy means that she tends to get gushy and goo-goo-eyed over anything fuzzy, but she's pretty sure that kind of reaction won't go down well with anything of human levels of intelligence.

So. She'll just squeal internally. And not stare. ]

No, they glow all the time. Now, anyway. They only used to glow under certain circumstances, but they got stuck like this a little while before I came here.

It's kinda handy. Like a portable nightlight!

ota

[headjacked]

1

[ Usually Rhys keeps his shoulder covered, insulated, and... ignored as long as he reasonably can. He’s afraid of peeling the fabric layers back and finding his skin succumbing to late stage frostbite. Leaving the tissue to sit and sweat, though? That’s not helping either.

So here he stands, not particularly secluded, jacket/cardigan/vest/random scraps of kitty fabric off. Teal undershirt half-off as he massages the painfully red skin where his mechanical shoulder joins his organic bits. ]

Ah... shit.

A few rotations of his shoulder later he notices the movement behind him, looks back, and jumps. ]

— SHITSHIT, woah, way to sneak up on a guy! Were you planning to announce your presence any time soon??

[ Rhys glares in his usual highly over dramatic fashion, shivering as he awkwardly attempts to rebutton his shirt. ]

2

Knock it off.

[ When he’s not stripping, he’s keeping a close eye on Dumpy, less he lose the tiny screaming robot to one of the dark airless abysses. Something Dumpy seems unnaturally attracted to.

The blue hologram sitting atop the floating drone is coaxing this behavior. Because of course he is. Rhys snatches Dumpy away from where Jack is pointing. ]

I’m talking to you, Jack! I’ll seriously take you out! ...for real this time!

2!

[phaseshifter]

[ There are two guaranteed ways to summon Angel to your side. The first is by arranging pop-tarts into a makeshift summoning circle and placing a fluffy puppy in the centre. The second is a simple matter of threatening Handsome Jack.

Angel is there. Instantly. Life is good. ]

Would you like to borrow a hairclip? You can probably pry him out pretty easily with it.

[ SMILE SMILE ]

1

[zunesareawesome]

[And it's Peter, looking alarmed and holding a hand up.]

Whoa. Got lost, wrong place. Didn't know this was the changing place.

Maybe you wanna change in a little less public place.

OTA | cw drug use and drug obsession

[thewarningafter]

[This is the third time today Stephen has counted his pills.

He's come up with a system for it by now. First he digs out each of the bottles: amoxicillin, lithium, haloperidol, lamotrigine, the bottle with two sad little doses of pregabalin rattling around...and the vicodin.

The last of those grows less full by the day.

Sometimes just pulling out the bottles, reading the numbers, and tucking them away again is enough. More and more often, though, it's not -- more and more often he does as he does now, tipping the contents of one bottle out onto a handkerchief spread on the floor so he can painstakingly count them back into the bottle. Once one is finished, he goes on to the next, and then the next.

He knows this isn't healthy. There's no reason to do this, no expectation that someone will have spirited some of the supply out of his pockets in the night. He's done his best not to do this in front of anyone, but it's getting harder and harder to resist the urge. He's found an abandoned classroom that isn't full of darkness and tucked himself inside for this, but he's lost enough in what he's doing that it won't be that hard to come upon him before he has a chance to tuck it all out of sight.]

cw drug use and drug obsession

[zunesareawesome]

[Peter's using the cane this time, he's completely out of steam on his knee. The pain was a little more tolerable with the assistance, but still, between the cold and putting even more strain on it, he was in a grumbly mood. Only the bright spot of getting his Zune recharged was keeping him from being totally snappish with everyone.

Ordinarily he would have settled down, but that weird feeling that someone--or something had been watching him was too much to shake off, especially in a creepy place like this. He'd always wanted to see what a Real High School was like, but he figured most American high schools didn't have classrooms filled with Absolute Nothingness.

Or maybe they did?

He stops occasionally down the hallways, swearing that someone was following him. A random shadow he swore he saw at the corner of his vision would make him stop. He'd turn around only to find nothing there. Growing more and more spooked, he eventually runs into a random classroom, thinking he can get the drop on whatever it was, when he turns around and sees Stephen.

And yes, it does do him a scare.]

THE HELL IS THAT--oh, it's you.

[Don't mind him, he's just going to slide down on the floor, possibly in cardiac arrest. It's cool.]

What are you doing, anyway?

[Looked like counting pills.]

[headjacked]

[ Dry mouth.

Quick pulse.

Clenched jaw, as Rhys watches Stephen, acutely aware of every nerve in his body, feeling torn and aflame.

He tries and succeeds at keeping himself from desperation, but every now and then it pokes through. Rhys doesn't mean to startle the guy, to sound interested, but he can't help himself. ]

What do you got??

OTA he's still destroying the eyes, nothing to see here

[warriorscribe]

[The false memories had shown him just how badly it could have hurt, in the end. The wound the tower had left was perpetually raw in the first place, refusing to heal. He'd been reflexively scraping off the eyes on the walls less and less, however, which was a good sign.

But now? Now, when he's not talking to someone else, when he's not wandering the halls, tense and pale, he's returned to the eyes, the plastic shard he'd been using to deface them rendered dull by all that it had done. He has proper blades. But he doesn't use them. It can't be metal, when he does this.

He's consumed with the task, until there isn't enough left of the eye to form a complete icon anymore. This takes him a while, with his poor choice of implement, and he sinks to his knees to catch his breath, glaring at the next eye on the wall as he flexes his cramped fingers.]

[zunesareawesome]

[Peter's wandering down the hallway getting chased by his imagination, hobbling on the cane he's borrowed from Stephen, when he turns a corner and jumps when he sees someone's there. This is like the third time he's terrified himself in too short a time, he was going to get a complex, honestly...]

Hey? You okay there?

[Peter looks pretty rough, he doesn't quite have a yeti-beard yet, though his was getting there. He seems actually a little more cheerful than he'd been before, now that Rocket was here.]

[headjacked]

[ Approaching Enoch is still uncomfortable.

Approaching Enoch with even the dullest of implements, skin-crawlingly awful.

He still comes near, fiddling with a roll of macaroni-print tape. Peeling a strip off. Ripping, tearing... slapping it over one of the eyes. ]

Take that.

[ He smiles, apprehensive and tense, at Enoch. ]