[Open] [Event] Hold On, Dreamaway

[amos_moses]

Who: Amos Kamiya and YOU
What: An oddball collection of dreams. Welcome to Amos's world.
When: The Dreamwalker Event!
Warnings: Violence, dead bodies, ect.

The Oracle, Secret of Mana soundtrack Fear: The Indian forest was thick and lush, wild and rampant with life. Amos could hear so many wild voices all around him. The forest was also full of death: the trampled-dirt road had turned into ruddy mud, slushy and thick with blood. The bodies of six mercenaries lay downed in the road, flesh slashed and torn. Before them, guarding the way to the abandoned and dilapidated temple, the nagini waved her curved sword and hissed through her needle-like fangs. Amos snapped his new magazine home and raised the muzzle of his AK-47, sweating profusely under his tactical vest but very glad for its protection: he’d ended up too close to that wicked sword. He didn’t look away from the female naga, and asked of the shorter man beside him: “This adventure enough, Kat?”

Kat - who had earlier been complaining that fetching old manuscripts and temple furnishings was no adventure - grinned and declared, a little shortly, “Certainly.” He had lost his gun, but he was not bothering to fetch one from their fallen comrades, his gloved hands splayed and his stance wide, his long dark ponytail askew.

A good hunt whispered along the edges of Amos’s mind, a very feline-feeling brush so very close by, and Amos said, carefully, “Kat, I can hear you thinking again.”

It was never a good sign when he could hear that.

“Then maybe you should stand back, mouse-man,” Kat returned, and now Amos did look away from the nagini, heart starting to race. He knew very well who had just become the bigger threat, the apex predator to end this standoff.

Kat was still grinning; his usually-normal teeth had elongated to needle-like feline canines, and his dark sloe eyes were now slit-pupiled. The leaf litter beneath his feet was beginning to hiss and crackle as pale blue ghost-flames flickered into existence. In the wan light Kat’s grin widened further still, all of Hell’s unholy glee in his eyes.

Amos swallowed, and moved a slow step back: unease shudder-walked down his spine and dried his mouth. The demon possessing Kat was a powerful nekomata, and its presence caused palpable discomfort. The nagini looked less murderous than she had a moment ago, her eyes wider now and her lipless mouth gaping, forked tongue tasting the change in the air. The taste of fear, metallic and bitter, began to fill the air: the taste of ashes and the hot smell of flames. Amos eased another step back, watching as Kat walked forward with a cat’s careless nonchalance, right towards the hissing nagini.

With each stride Kat deliberately stepped over the dead bodies. Ghost-fire flickered up around him, and the flames became strong enough to burn the driest leaves into white smudges of ash.

Behind Kat, the dead rose.

Amos shuddered in revulsion, skin crawling, as he watched the dead-eyed mercenaries climb to their feet and ready their guns. So recently dead their muscle-memory was nearly perfect, but there was still something wrong about how they moved, animated again by magic and demonic energy. Holy God in Heaven it was enough to make anyone believe in evil, Amos thought, as the dead men set their sights on the nagini. Amos slid another step back, and a twig crackled underfoot, a shockingly loud sound in the sudden echoing silence.

Two of the dead men whirled, guns firing, but Amos was already bolting for safety.

Kat cared if Amos survived. The nekomata? Not so much.

Prey was prey and Amos ran as well as any mouse: he shot up the branches of the nearest tree in an adrenaline-fueled scramble, damp bark flaking up under his gloved fingers and sliding out from under his boots as bullets splintered the trunk below him. Every second he expected to feel the punch and burn of gunshots, feel a fatal wound inflicted, and every nerve was electrified with fear. He hauled himself over a large branch and lay there belly-down, panting for breath and trying to fight down the rising panic, his heart thumping in his chest.

Kat and the nagini were tangled together in a snarling ball of supernatural strength and ferocity. The nagini had already demonstrated her ability to rip a man limb-from-limb, but when Kat threw her into a tree, it felled both the mature tree and the snake-woman. Not for long, though: she rose again even as Kat pounced, and bullets from his dead firing squad tore up the earth and foliage around them.

Amos held very, very still in his tree, lips silently shaping the first words of a prayer. Ave Maria, gratia plena….

A dead man looked up from the foot of the tree, eyes blind and gun raised.

If Amos made it out of this jungle alive, it’d be a good day.

I Never Told You What I Do For A Living, My Chemical Romance Delight: The air conditioning in the car was cool, but not quite cool enough for a full suit. Amos straightened his coat cuffs, and then bowed his head as he felt Kameko’s hand on the nape of his neck. The older woman traced a nail first over the tiny tattoo of a star, nearly hidden in his hairline, then over the small sakura flower behind his left ear. It was a possessive touch, a familiar touch: these marks that Amos had not chosen, these marks that Kameko had decided he would bear as proof of her ownership. Even after all these years, he was hers, bought and sold in modern-day slavery.

But he smiled, because he was grateful, because she had been so kind to him. She’d given him a very good life, and he could never repay her for that. He smiled at her, in her cream dress suit with the red-velvet-cake-crimson blouse, her long legs folded tidily with her fancy pumps discarded in the car’s footwell. Her bracelets jangled at she lowered her hand, and her hair pins chimed sweet notes from the sleek curve of her no-nonsense bun. She was the very model of a prim Japanese businesswoman. “You were perfect today. You always know just what to say to keep me from losing my temper and making a scene I’d regret.”

Amos chuckled, smiling at her easily. “Well, not always. But we do need Yoshimitsu’s alliance. Aside from the illegal weapons trade, their security company is--” He didn’t get to finish his thought. Glass cracked and the car swerved, the driver slumping in the seat. Distant pops: gunshots, and both Amos and Kameko ducked into the floorboards.

“Oh, hells, I bet it’s our rivals,” Kameko sighed. “Trying to make a point again.”

And sure enough, from the sounds of it, a man on a bullhorn. “Inoue Kameko! Usurper and honorless traitor! Come out and die like the worthless woman you are!”

Kameko turned towards Amos, and her smile showed the fine lines on her face were from forty years of grinning like a fool, not worrying or grieving. “Shall we go teach them a lesson?” Already she was pulling on the no-nonsense sneakers she’d hidden under the seat (a trick she’d learned from Amos and it made him grin, heart swelling with affection for this wild woman he served). She shrugged out of her suit jacket: the blouse was sleeveless and revealed her tattoos. Not many yakuza got the full body suit of tattoos in these modern days, as it was a dead giveaway, but Kameko was very traditional in some ways, and very proud of her ruling throne in organized crime.

Amos pulled his gun from the hidden holster at his waist. “Sure,” he said, and even as he agreed, he reached out. This was familiar territory. The animals here knew him. Like suddenly paying attention to a radio playing in the background, Amos switched mental frequencies and announced: Bullets, fight, dead.

He could hear the responses, feel them coming closer: one, two, five ravens wheeling on the wingtip to come to his call. Pigeons that crouched low on windowsills and the powerlines, waiting to be told if it was safe to move. Stray dogs, four individuals coming together as a pack. A stray cat, a squirrel on the side of an awning, a falcon gliding overhead. They knew his call, his warnings so they’d stay safe, and when he promised them the dead, he promised them fresh kills for feasting. Amos nodded to Kameko, then reached up and opened the door to the car.

A flock of pigeons flushed, the squirrel ran across the awning, and not one of the toughs was looking when Amos simply stood up out of the car and took aim. Two shots from his handgun, one guy took it in the face, and he and Kameko bolted for the cover of some construction equipment just to the side of the street. Breathless, grinning, jittery with adrenaline: it was like being teenagers again, wild and reckless as Kameko rose to power in the yakuza.

“You can’t kill me!” Kameko crowed, the gun in her hands steady as her voice. “I’m the Empress of the Inagawa-kai!”

“We’ll kill you and your worthless cur of a bodyguard too!”

Kameko laughed and Amos didn’t think he could love her more, this vibrant vivid woman he served. “How cute. Sic ‘em, puppy.”

“As you wish, princess,” Amos answered her, cheekily, and called on his hungry animal friends. The dogs lunged, the stray cat howled like an air-raid siren, and the crows stooped with wild calls of glee: Amos ran across the street and straight into the first man. With the shobo in his hand Amos stabbed the man in his eye, set the gun to his chest and shot him in the heart. He dropped and Amos moved to the next, shooting him before he could shoot the snarling dog with its teeth clamped deep into his thigh. Kameko was providing cover fire from behind the bulldozer, laughing as she always did in a crisis, and Amos kept killing for her.

Glad You Came, The Wanted Hope/Delight: The dream started in Hadriel, in the dark and the silence. It was wrong, oh it was wrong, he couldn’t hear anything, it was too quiet!

“Daddy, you’re not listening loud enough.”

Amos blinked, and turned: the apartment in Hadriel dreamshifted slowly into his apartment in Maizuru, Japan. His daughter stood behind him, twelve years old and the very image of her native mother until she smiled. That smile was all Amos, bright cheer and all the goodwill in the world. She reached out and pulled a set of headphones off Amos’s ears.

Like flipping a switch he could hear it all again, the thousands of tiny busy lives playing out around him, a constant hum of noise in the back of his head. Animals everywhere, from the mice in the walls to the pets in the apartment complex to the strays on the street and the birds in the sky overhead. So many distant little voices even in the heart of the city, all so tightly packed into the half-mile radius he could hear. Amos basked in it again, the comforting static in the back of his head: it was like living all day with the radio on in the background. A conversation in another room, in a different language you knew: he could understand but it took a moment of concentration to interpret the familiar rhythm and cadence.

His daughter laughed at him. “Silly daddy!” she chided, and with a bouncing step moved went out the front door, her long raven ponytail swinging. Amos followed and the dream changed again: he stepped through the door and out into the brightly-lit streets of New Orleans. Lights everywhere: neon signs and streetlamps and lights strung on windows and poles in the velvet purple evening. Colours so bright and vivid and hyper-real, the smell of magnolias sweet against the sourness of the bayous. Music swinging and bright, laughter in the streets. A street festival, Mardi Gras, a party celebrating life lived so abundantly and Amos laughed long and free.

He turned and held out his hand to his companion, not knowing or caring when they had joined him. “Hey, c’mon, I promised I’d show you a good time.”

Want a different starter? I'll write you one! Title from the chorus of Hate This Place, by The Goo Goo Dolls