[log] Event: Metamorphosis, Part Two

[snowblindmods]

Characters: the infected
Location: ???
Date: Morning 414
Summary: You have to get out.
Warnings: vague body horror, mild starvation, please note specifics in the subject line

Comments

cw continuing body horror, references to alien/parasites, ptsd

[zunesareawesome]

[It's worse.

Somehow, impossibly, it's gotten worse.

How long have they been here? When did everything go dark? Peter can't remember. He can't exactly remember if he'd fallen asleep...maybe? Maybe not. Maybe it's only been a couple of days? Had to be, with how hungry he was. Either way, he had to get outta here, whatever this place actually was.

Everything feels so wrong. Like, the alien thing seems to have settled down, which you'd think was a plus? But now he just feels sick and gross. His insides feel super wrong, even though that didn't make any sense--none of this makes any sense. An emptiness, but not actual emptiness, cause he's not empty, there's just something else there. He's not sure why he can't walk, but it's like, whatever's been poured in him is all stuffed up in the wrong places. And nothing feels right, like he's all...mushy.

He's genre-savvy enough to know where this is going. They gotta get outta here.

While crawling along, trying to find his way in the dark to figure out how to get outta here (wherever here even is) Peter accidentally crashes into, well, you.]

Hey! Watch where you're going!

[darkincrement]

[ It's your favorite teenager ever. Yay. ]

Or you can watch where you're going.

[ He feels heavy and empty all at once. It's an odd feeling, and he's throwing his all in ignoring it. And here's Planet Jr. making himself useful for once and giving him just the distraction he needs. ]

[bywolves]

[ Royce doesn't have the energy to do this, but he does anyway - Peter crashes into him and Royce groans and tries to kick him. It's like one of those waving inflatable guys outside of car dealerships, mostly. Doesn't really go anywhere and ends with a mushy sort of kick that probably hurts Royce more than it hurts Peter. ]

You literally crawled into me. [ Royce hisses, trying to hunch away. ]

[ecks]

I cannot -- I cannot watch where I am going, I cannot see, I cannot --

[Hey Peter, three guesses who you ran into.]

cw: panic attacks, mild references to ptsd

[phaseshifter]

[ Angel isn't used to this kind of darkness. She isn't scared of the dark or anything - never has been, not even when she was little - but the blackness in the room is just. Different, somehow. Like there's something wrong with it, just like there's something wrong with her. She doesn't know what, exactly. It's not just the sickness. Or the hunger. It isn't even being trapped in an enclosed space for so long, although that particular piece of knowledge is constantly scratching at the back of her skull. So what is it?

It takes a while for it to click. So long that she isn't even sure when it happened. All she knows is that she isn't glowing any more - there's no light shining from her tattoos. There's only the dark. ]

Oh, that - no, no no, no--

[ Are they still there at all? Maybe they've just returned to the natural, unglowing blue state they were in before everything went to heck. Maybe. Oh god, she has to see, she has to know, she has to get out --

She's close enough to the door to push her shoulder against it and hit out at it with her fist, so. That's what she does, despite the futility of it. ]

Let us out! Let us out, you sack of skagshit!!

[ She sounds considerably less composed than usual, to say the least. Try not to get hit by a flailing fist if you're crawling over to check out the door. ]

[devoutish]

[She lashes out with one of those flails as Alfie is moving past, and he can't avoid her fist bopping him on the fucking nose. It hurts - kind of in a deadened way, yeah, and it's almost not even worth mentioning compared to everything else, but still.]

Angel.

[Rude.]

cw for mention of drugs and confusing reality? Idk. Thread will be pretty mild.

[fiftheclipse]

[... What the hell is this. It's not real, at least. It can't be. It's like that tsunami, or any of those other nightmares. If just one shot could mess him up for an entire week, why wouldn't it be just as easy to make something like this last a couple days?

...

It's that mindset that's left Junpei unwilling to help this time around. Sure, there's a door. But won't it just move away if he reaches it? Probably. That's how dreams work. No sense testing it. He can't move right, anyway, and trying to feels wrong in too many ways at once. It's easier to just lie on the floor and do nothing.

He'll talk, though. It'll take a lot more than feeling like he's been forced onto some overpowered drug trip to stop that.

Maybe he's just talking to himself, unaware so far that any of those thoughts may have been out loud. Or maybe someone's approached him and he's overheard their complaints as well.

Either way, he's not going anywhere.]

[zunesareawesome]

[It's so dark and he hates this but at least they can still hear. And Peter hears Junpei talking nearby so he just crawls over and...

...reaches out and tries to poke him with a finger.]

[devoutish]

[Welp, that door's not going to open itself. Alfie, luckily, is not too far from it, so it doesn't take much physical or mental effort to drag himself an extra few feet, feeling around until he finds it. There's no chance he'll get it open himself, he knows, but that doesn't stop him from ineffectually tugging, pushing, prodding, anything to try to make it move somehow. Often, he'll pull one hand away and cast around blindly, feeling for Royce. There's just as much chance that he'll grab somebody else by accident instead.]

[jumpthegun]

[The sensation of being grabbed is horrifying. John doesn't know if that or the last set of symptoms was worse. He just feels wrong. Even more wrong than before. It's like his body is made of... putty? No. That wouldn't reform naturally like it feels he does when someone's fingers dig into him.

John's dragged himself over to the door, as well, wanting to escape.]

Who?

[His voice is ragged, barely recognizable.]

S'John. Who's touching me? Need to get the door open.

[termineur]

Hey.

[ He doesn't mind being grabbed so much, right now- in fact, he's probably calmer sounding than he should be. But he'd like to know who it is. ]

It's me, it's Gabriel. Who is this?

[ He tries to determine it by feel, but- they're all sort of the wrong shape, even in the hands. ]

[warriorscribe]

[He can't move his legs properly. He can't stand. Were his legs somehow broken without him realizing? He feels wrong, like everything inside him is out of place. Desperately, he twists to feel his legs, make sure they're actually there and not just phantom sensation in the dark. And somehow, what he finds is worse than nothing.

He feels wrong.

Oh no. Beckett and Angel were in this room too. Are they like him?]

What has he done to us? Miller, what have you done to us?

[ecks]

It is -- this is a transformation. This is magic. I do not like it, I do not want to be something else!

[rubikscomplex]

[They're back in this room... except they never left.

Two places at once. How do you get to be two places at once? Is this a copy? Is he a copy? Is he seeing what his copy is seeing, maybe? Would Miller be able to do that? Superimpose the experiences? Just overlay the neural maps, right? They'd be almost identical.

His body is wrong. It feels almost boneless as he drags himself along. But he has to have bones. The door is there now. They need to get out. They're slowly turning into... what? Slugs? Shapeless mounds of flesh? Anomalies? He pictures that thing they'd seen over the video footage down in the emergency repair area. A mass of flesh. Angry, reaching, demanding. Why did you get out and not us? Why do you have your lights? Why? Why? Why?]

We're turning into anomalies.

[Hello, whoever is nearby. Have House offering his quiet, terrified assessment of the situation.]

[holmesice]

[Mycroft is...not in the best of moods. He's torn between sheer horror at all of this, and the need to get out. The need to get to the door. It takes him a good long while to even summon up the energy to move, but he needs to move. It might be an artificial drive. No, it almost certainly was.

But would leaving be a good thing or a bad thing?]

We're in some kind of shared collective, unreal dream space.

If this is true, then our minds, our brain maps are being overwritten. Our internal images of ourselves are being changed, somehow.

[Malleable...bodies. Can't be real. Everything feels wrong. He hates this. He touched his own leg once and that was a horrendous surprise.]

[bywolves]

Shut up.

[ He gets Royce's hoarse and angry voice from a few feet away. He's been trying to get to the door, slowly, and about halfway there he gave up because his limbs are not cooperating. House's voice - and his assessment - make Royce recoil. ]

[termineur]

No, we're not.

[ He states it as a matter of fact. ]

The anomalies came in wrong. We're- corrupting data. Pretty sure we're gonna form our own little ball of consciousness eventually, here.

[warriorscribe]

[Enoch remembers that thing, too. When House says it, his mind snaps right to the same creature.

And something else.]

Copies...are we- are we the copies? We've been here but we haven't.

[A beat, a panicked breath.]

Copies can't have light, can they?

Snowbo Herding

[darkincrement]

[ Eventually he manages to crawl to the door to join up with anyone else who might have already reached it. ]

Get over here. [ His voice sounds like shit from damaged throat and he's all out of patience. ] Quit crying and make yourselves useful. Let's all try hitting it all at once.

[ Yeah, he's asking for help and for everyone to work together. ~*~*TEAMWORK*~*~]

[zunesareawesome]

Nobody's crying, you jerk. [Okay, okay, that is actually a good idea so Peter's gonna come over and work together with everybody too.

T e A m W o R K!]

cw: overstuffed body horror obvs...

[keepscalm]

[Some of these feelings are not entirely unfamiliar to England. Starvation: par for the course, as any nation would give up their own share when their people are subject to rationing. Blindness: Common when you can easily survive losing your eyes. A thin awareness of something happening somewhere else: not unusual for large empires to have a sense of what's happening to their colonies while they work back home. He's been here a couple of days, but he's fairly certain he remembers travelling with his lovely caravan of companions yesterday. How strange, though—he hasn't got any colonies here.

Even being bent in weird ways is not totally foreign. But that's usually accompanied by pain, and the awareness of bones, particularly those which may be broken. England can't feel his bones, broken or otherwise. He doesn't feel much of anything, besides gnawing hunger and an overwhelming wrongness. He wants to liken it to nausea, the sensation of a churning stomach, but in his entire bent up body.

England, what if he's putting them into anomalies?

It takes some time to get past the rising well of panic in his chest, and even more time to situate his bloated limbs in a way that doesn't feel too pathetic. His nerves show through in a current beneath the forced levelness of his voice as he addresses the others, and his exhaustion from their physical condition is palpable regardless.] Does anyone else...remember being somewhere else?

[fifty]

[America isn't nearly as old as England, but he's lived more than long enough to experience most of this on its own. Not like this, though--everything jumbled unnaturally together and his body not doing what it wants for reasons he can't pinpoint exactly to an injury.

Nations never die, at home. He's used to drifting in and out of consciousness as his body knits itself back together. (Or maybe "used to" is the wrong word, but he understands that feeling.) This--this is--

England is here. He can hear England. He can answer England. These are things he can do.]

Yeah? Well, I guess it depends on what you mean.

[warriorscribe]

[He doesn't like this. Knowing Miller, there's no way the transformation is stopping here. Others are upset. He doesn't know how to comfort them, because he can think of nothing that is comforting.

And this is worst of all. That he has two jumbled sets of memories and he knows Miller made copies...]

In Norfinbury proper. We've been here but haven't. Why is he doing this to us?

[athenashand]

[Ｓｏｍｅｔｈｉｎｇ ｉｓ ｗｒｏｎｇ.

It's so much worse than it was last time. It was scary to be sick, but this is—this isn't even her body. It can't be. She's made of metal, chips and gears and wires, cold and hard, and everything feels—like the yielding, melting flesh of a Shadow, but it's inside her, and she can't see, and there's no diagnostic reading of her own body to guide her—

She reaches out, blindly, and touches something. Plastic? Bottle-shaped. Her clumsy sweeping knocks one over. She hears the slosh of water.

Water. She needs water now. They all need water.

It's difficult to open with such disfigured, disproportionate hands. She eventually manages. And, figuring that the humans (already squishier than her, even before this horrible transformation) might have trouble too, she addresses anyone she hears approach the stock of water, especially if there is the sound of fumbling with the bottles. Her voice is emphatic with fear.] I can help. Please let me help.

[Please let her be useful. Please give her a purpose in this terrifying moment.]

[cahooted]

[He doesn't recognize the voice and that just adds to the long, long, very long list of things that are really frightening right now. Flynn almost drops the bottle, which would have been a catastrophe because he doesn't know if he can pick it back up again.

It's so difficult to coordinate his movements. Everything his wrong, his body and his self and everything surrounding him, it's all wrong and he's scared, he's so, so scared he's bordering on hysterical when the strange voice speaks up.

Help? Is there help? Can they help?]

Who... who is there? Who is this?

cw childish distress, probably references to parasites, body horror, etc.

[ecks]

[For a creature whose existence is considered unnatural by so many, Ecks is perhaps surprisingly unaccustomed to actually feeling as though her body is wrong. It has always been the same--sometimes she has been sick, but even then her body has been the same shape and functioned in the same way, just not functioned as well.

This is intolerable. It has to end, but she does not know how to make it end. She wants to sleep and pretend it is not happening, but it is so dark and she is not certain at any time whether or not she is awake. She wants to stand, but her knees do not bend the right way anymore and her muscles do not seem like muscles at all.

She huddles against the wall when she finds it, craving touch and fearing it all at once, wanting and not wanting to know if all of her friends have become whatever she has become. Her voice is muffled as she buries her face in her arms as though it'll do anything more to block out the world than the darkness has already done for her.]

I want Red Cat. I want Red Cat right now.

[jumpthegun]

Ecks? [John is nearby and hears the girl's distressed cries.] It's okay. We'll get red cat back in a little bit. Probably on the other side of the door. It's all right.