hadriel_logs | Event Log: Dreamwalker

Entry tags:

Event Log: Dreamwalker

Who: Everyone!
What: The Dreamwalker event
Where: In your comfy bed and your sleepy head.
When: May 16th-26th
Warnings: Good dreams, weird dreams, bad dreams, straight-up nightmares. Please remember to tag for warnings in the header if things are going to be bad!

Have you been having trouble getting a good night's sleep? Tossing and turning, unable to rest those tired eyes? Or maybe you don't sleep at all, and never have. Not to worry! For a little while, you'll have no trouble at all falling asleep - in fact, as night falls, you'll find yourself overwhelmed with exhaustion whether you want to sleep or not. Lay down and rest your weary head, friends. Everyone could use a little extra sleep.

But what will your dreams bring? Something happy, images of a perfect day? Something hopeful, something you've wanted for a long time? Maybe you'll dream of anger, of the face of your worst enemy. Or maybe - just maybe - you'll have a horrific nightmare, and wake screaming, covered in cold sweat.

Not before others have time to see it, though. As you sleep, as you dream, the other residents of Hadriel, friends and enemies and people you've only met once, might find their way into your dreams. Or you might find your way into theirs - and then have to deal with someone's else's nightmares, or hopes, or anger. For the next ten nights, you'll find yourself either a host or a visitor, and no matter how you try you won't be able to stay awake once night falls.

Sweet dreams, Hadriel. Don't let the asshole fear gods bite.

► This log covers May 16th-26th.
► Feel free to make your own logs as well!
► Please tag headers of threads with content warnings where they apply
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!
► You can't die in the dreams, but if you somehow manage to trip and fall and kill yourself getting out of bed, please report it on the death post.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Very well. To be fair, she would very much dislike being told to step aside while others do her job for her, when she is just as well capable on her own.

Mostly.

She slips down onto the tracks, motioning for Firo to stay on the platform and keep going his own way. Her speed and efficiency in her quick step that make her a sufficient killer go to work, as she makes her way around one side of the train. Slipping past four cars of cargo, she finds the two workers at the checkpoint station, conversing. One of them is likely a guard, while the other is the driver of the train. Their shapes are formless, like moving shadows despite the human voices coming from them...

"--head of security's called to get more sentries at the gate."

"How long 'til they get here?"

"'Bout five minutes or so."

Time, as they say, is not on their side. Rather than taking them both out, or relying on Firo to be capable of doing that, she decides on a different idea.

Ripping off the sleeves of her shirt, she squeezes the pieces of rumbled up cloth into one hand. Her fingers clench around the fabrics, until they catch flame.

With that, she tosses them ahead of the train. Fire bursts in front of them and, somehow, starts spreading across the tracks. Suddenly the two staff stop talking and start yelling.

"What the hell?"

"Shit!"

"Put it out!"

They jump from the checkpoint platform and onto the tracks, leaving the train unattended.

Firo’s still slinking along when Rey sacrifices her sleeves to the greater good.

He looks over at her and cocks his head to one side. Okay, he supposes that works too. And he thinks that even an idiot like him can figure out where this is going, so he moves for the train instead. If he can find her, he’ll whisper her way, “So what now? We take this thing and bust outta here? You know, I’ve heard of people stealin’ from trains but never actually stealin’ the whole train.”

Might be kind of cool, if they don’t get killed.

Satisfied that they don't have to engage with the enemies, she shifts course. She can't tell how adept either of them are in combat. Either way, neither of them had anything to do with her, and are just as blameless in all of this as Firo is.

While the two workers are preoccupied trying to put out the quickly rising flames, she slides into the conductor's cabin, where she meets back up with Firo. Judging by his question, she wagers that he probably doesn't know how to work this thing.

Seeing how she had only bought them a few minutes at best before those two outside figure things out, she veers her focus to the controls.

"How hard can it be?"

Famous last words? Perhaps.

In any case, she takes a quick once over at the controls. For some reason, there is something familiar about these panels. She knows exactly which switches to lift and the right button to press before twisting a key to activate the engines.

The train hums to life and jerks forward, towards the two workers. The fire is still going but poses no threat to the train. The workers, however, are quick to remove their attention from the flames to the train behind them. As the light shines on them, they appear as nothing more than dark blurs, as they stand there like deer gawking at headlights.

They disperse, in the end. Dodging the train as it bolts past them.

She sighs, taking a moment to look at Firo out the corner of her eye.

"That was a little too easy," she says with the faintest hint of a smile.

"We're screwed, aren't we?" He cuts the joking, though, when he sees her nimbly moving over the control panel. He thinks--he hopes--that she really does know how to get this thing moving.

And she does. Thank goodness, considering Firo knows he probably didn't have a prayer of doing it.

Firo smiles back, pleased with both their luck and the look on her face. "Sometimes you get lucky. Tell me, how much farther do you think we gotta go? There could still be time for this to get screwed up."

Knowing her luck, there is always time for things to get screwed up (and more likely she is the one who causes it to get that way). She figures that it's only a matter of time before all of this goes downhill.

For now, they're headed up, towards the surface of the underground city. Her focus stays on the controls in the event that something occurs that needs to be tended to.

"We should have about ten minutes or so. Perhaps less. Should be smooth sailing unless they send someone after us, which is possible."

Also famous last words.

Firo turns his attention to the train around them, as well as any windows he can see. If she's working on keeping this thing moving and on track, he'll do his part by keeping watch on everything else.

"Someone who's tougher than those guys we just ran into?"

He's not looking forward to running into those weapons she mentioned, not at all. Maybe this someone she has in mind is even worse. For every bit of good luck on the road, there's always some bad.

Usually more bad.

"Possibly. Don't know what they've been cooking up while I've been... gone."

Several months is plenty of time for some of the other weapons departments to concoct plenty of somethings. She had heard from people about some of the projects they were working on. Not to her directly, but it's interesting what someone will reveal around you when they don't think you understand what they're saying. Such as the discussions amongst each other, believing that no one else is listening, not even the dummy-doll behind glass walls.

She squints out the window, at the passage in front of them. They're not going particularly fast, are they?

Just then, the sound of something moving in one of the compartments behind them heads their way.

Glancing over her shoulder to Firo, she sends him a querying look. "That can't be good."

What a shock. Firo sighs, "Great. Somebody else wants to join the party."

And he imagines they want to spice things up considerably.

Firo instinctively goes for his knife, but finds it isn't there anymore. No time to think about why that might be; it's not like he needs it to be effective.

"I don't know how to drive this thing, so I'll take care of that." He tries to peer back into the train to see if he can catch a glimpse of anything.

Acknowledging Firo's response, she just nods. If anything happens, it's better to have someone behind the helm, just in case.

What he finds deeper into the train are a series of empty cargo boxes, lit only by a couple of dim lights attached to either sides of the ceiling. This rig was on its way out of the AUC, so most of the supplies had already been delivered. It's like a maze in the train car.

There is an odd sort of movement in the corner of the area. A sort of rippling in the air, like a mirror or a reflection on the surface of water. Firo may not recognize the cloaking technology, but something hidden is not fully unseen as it silently stalks near.

Firo keeps his eyes open and searching as he makes his way around the cargo. “Cheery place,” he mumbles to himself.

And about to get cheerier, he imagines, when that rippling and waving catches the corner of his eye. He almost thinks it’s smoke or steam at first, but there’s nothing visible that could be causing that. Especially as it moves closer.

One way to find out what’s going on.

Firo shifts so that his left side is forward, presenting a smaller target to the thing and putting his left arm in a position to grab something coming his way while his right arm blocks.

Super cheery.

Metallic footsteps trudge across the floor, following the shimmering ripple in the air. As Firo forms a more offensive stance, it shifts. Lunges forward.

What's taking a swipe at Firo's head isn't something that could be human, as it is anything but. It's tall, standing at about nine feet. Lanky. Metal in place of flesh and bone aim to knock its quarry to the ground upon impact.

It does not breathe. Instead, what Firo will hear is the automated whir of a machine.

Firo ducks low and throws himself to the side to avoid the attack.

"What the hell is this thing?!"

Metal? Something he probably can't take on without a weapon, that's for sure. He's not even sure how to begin with it.

...But he can at least try to keep it from this lady. He doesn't glance back to where she stands at the controls; he just tries to dash off in the opposite direction.

"Hey, you! Over here!" He doesn't know if the thing can understand speech, but trying to bait it has to be worth a shot.

The machine is fast, but Firo is fast enough to successfully evade its attack.

It turns and moves to follow him. It can't feel pain or frustration or exertion. All it processes is that Firo is a target that needs to be eliminated, and that it'll have to deal with the asset next.

While it's swift and somewhat invisible, it's also large. Ambling through the maze of iron cargo boxes, its movement sends them sliding and giving away its position. It wasn't made for combat in small quarters, as its 'head' scrapes the ceiling.

Some of the boxes Firo runs towards could be big and strong enough to contain it. If he can get it cornered into one, that is.

Despite the situation, Firo almost laughs when he sees the boxes getting kicked around.

"They really didn't think this through when they put you in charge here, huh?"

He pushes on one end of a crate experimentally. If they weren't metal, maybe he could push it quickly, but he doubts he can with this one. Too bad, they'd make a nice barricade. As it is, he positions himself behind a few to make the path nice and difficult for this invisible guard.

He waits for it to come at him, intending to jump up on one of the boxes and run when it gets close.

The machine is just that. It can't be baited into intimidation or taunting. Not that it needs to be, with it's primary objective right before it.

The ground thumps. The air blurs. It charges, silent save for the footfalls under its heavy mass, drowned out by the sounds of the train moving.

Firo has only a small window of opportunity to jump. While it may be big and brutish under its cloaking capabilities, it's also fast.

Fortunately, Firo happens to be faster. When it crashes into the wall, the smoke and mirrors that made it mostly invisible flickers. Sputtering like a live wire, before it reveals itself to be a gangly, mechanical mess of wires and metal. Nothing sophisticated. It's more of a combat prototype than anything fit for a real battlefield.

Close. The thing is faster than he thought it would be, and he’s hardly out of the way when it hits the wall. He doesn’t think about how close a call that was, only that it was enough.

He hops down from his new vantage point and keeps looking over his shoulder as he moves back to the front of the car. “Hey, Fiona! Everything all right up there?”

Is it down for the count? It looks pretty bad, but Firo’s not sure; he doesn’t know much about these things. It could be a trick, too, if these things know how to do stuff like that.

While it isn't out cold, the machine remains unresponsive as it attempts to reboot its systems. Sparks and live wires spit around its unmoving chassis.

From the front of the car, Fiona glances over her shoulder.

"We're almost there," she calls back.

"Good. We've got company back here, but I'm not sure what's goin' on with it. I think it's down..."

He casts another wary glance back at it.

"You familiar with these huge, invisible tin can things? Like robots from those kids' comics."

"What..."

She doesn't expect him to try and describe it further, and instead pokes her head in from the front of the train to get a better look at what he's talking about.

Upon seeing the sparking machine on the opposite end of the train car, her eyes widen. "Firo, get back in here. I'm going to have to try something."

Probably the best move--Firo's pretty sure he doesn't have the technological knowledge or the vocabulary to describe that thing.

The look on her face, if anything, convinces him to listen. He jogs back in and turns to stare at the robot. From her expression, he'd think that something is about to go pretty badly wrong; of course, he has no idea what.

"What? What're you gonna do?"

Once Firo is through, she shuts the door and returns to the controls.

"The weight of the other cars is slowing us down," she says as she flips over some of the controls at her disposal.

With a few switches, the train gives a jerk. She clasps a bar on the side of the window to maintain her equilibrium.

"Hang on." A bit of a late warning, as the train jolts along the bumpy tracks, and gains momentum.

If Firo can manage it, he'll find through the window between the control car and the cargo to be fully disconnected now. Everything linking to the front unit, including the car containing the machine, is now slipping back downhill into the tunnels behind them.

Perhaps it's something she should have done before letting him investigate the noise. Oh well.

Firo braces himself against the wall with one arm and watches through the window as the train splits.

He turns to Rey, "You coulda' done that this whole time?" But then he thinks a little more and offers offhandedly "Thanks for not doin' that while I was back there.

She shrugs. "It wasn't like there was a 'disconnect all cars' button or anything."

Though it sort of looked that way from Firo's perspective, probably. She is a quick learner, though. It doesn't take much for her to pick up on new things.

"Of course. Can't just leave you there to die." If anyone deserves that fate, it'd be her. For Firo, however, she doesn't speak her mind.

The train picks up. The light at the end of the tunnel doesn't reveal much in the ways of civilization or a world beyond these caves, but there's no stopping now.

Firo’s only disagreement—that she could very well have left him to die and that she chose not to—is purely semantic. So he just laughs and repeats, “Thanks.”

“Where to now? Are we goin’ aboveground..?” He shades his eyes with one hand and tries to peer into the light, but he can’t discern any details.

"Suppose we are."

She should be happy, but there is something off about her forced smile. Rather than expressing happiness and gratitude over the prospect of her freedom, the true emotion that remains is sadness. Resigned to the outcome that really awaits her in that light.

Brows knitted together, she turns her head to Firo and says something to him, but static drowns out her words. If he could read lips, however, she mouths the words Thank you, and that is all.

The train draws closer to the light, blinding them both. A voice resonates in the void.

State your designation.

Before an answer can be heard, the connection ends.

...

Rey wakes up on the floor in her bedroom, no less resigned than the woman in her dreams. Because they're the same, as they've always been.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Event Log: Dreamwalker

let me know if this is too much!

It's perfect, thanks!

eggselent. :|b

:D

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