THE SKY WENT OFF-WHITE.

[wastemods]

WHO: Anyone and everyone.
WHAT: Our inaugural test drive meme.
WHERE: Anywhere in the world core.
WHEN: Whenever your character arrives.
NOTES: Expect surreal horror and possible violence. Please use common sense when warning for other content.

Art by Basile Godard

THE SUNLIGHT SPLINTERED.

You reach the end of the ash-gray hall at a run, hands fumbling for an antique door handle. And then you stumble, fall, tumble—any number of adjectives, depending on where, exactly, the door opened—into a radio station.

The equipment is old and dusty, but devoid of cobwebs to the observant eye. And it's dark, save for whatever light makes it through the windows. They display disjointed locations; perhaps one shows an upside-down tower, while its neighbors frame the crumbling pavement of a rotting car park and the stripped out interior of a sewer. Whatever the case, peering through one window reveals a landscape that impossibly doesn't connect to the next.

The door is still there, the only exit to this grubby room. It opens somewhere, anywhere else in this distorted world. And once you leave, it no longer leads back whence you came.

Where do you go?

THE LIGHT, DIVIDED.

A sun on one horizon, a full moon on the other. They're luminous but unreal, like they were plucked from a sky and pasted to a flat, starless backdrop. You can see only one, depending on which side you entered; it's essentially random. Both "sides" overlap like alternate dimensions and you can't see anyone who isn't on the same side as you. Light or dark, you walk in the light of a muted sun or an overbright moon. It never feels quite real.

Neither star nor satellite seem to move from their position. The passage of time is at a standstill.

Regardless of which side you're on, you'll find signs that you aren't alone. What someone does on one side affects the other, so moving an item or writing something down will translate to floating items and mysteriously appearing letters. Speech doesn't travel...unless there's a radio. Radios may turn on and off, with voices audible through the white noise. And if you walk past a mirror, the reflection isn't your own. Instead, it acts as a window to the other side.

In-character observations:

• Anyone sensitive to time, space, and related dimensional shenanigans will feel they're distorted. And it isn't something they can fix, at least not with powers.
• It's possible to cross dimensions if a character has related powers, but they'll suffer backlash and significant stress from the transition. Successive jumps aren't gonna fly.
• If a character is affected by the sun or moon, they'll find neither holds sway over them here; e.g., vampires can walk in daylight and werewolves won't shift in the full moon.

TL;DR: Whatever this is, it isn't natural.

THE SHADOW REALM.

Outdoors, there are shadows on the prowl.

Silent and eerily insubstantial, they trail after you like blind spots given form. Staring at them too long is unsettling but, for the most part, they're content to watch you back...if they can watch. They don't seem to have eyes.

When that isn't enough, however, they attack. Stealing the shape of monsters from other worlds, they may lack special powers, but that doesn't keep them from being dangerous. When in doubt, you're safest indoors.

But maybe that isn't good enough for you. Or maybe you just fucked up. Either/or.

RADIO WAVES.

If you aren't wondering how you got here, you're probably at least asking why. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be anyone around who can answer your questions. Everyone else is as clueless as you.

But, some time after you arrive—whether it's days, hours, minutes, or seconds—the dead air stirs. The atmospheric pressure drops and playhouse lightning arcs across the facsimile of a sky. It's a storm that warns of what's to come, as an earthquake shifts the ground beneath your feet. Around you, buildings flood, and water pours out in falls only half aware of gravity. Wind hurls debris at such high speeds, it turns into shrapnel. Rain pelts you from above and below as the temperature plummets. It starts to snow.

Somehow, the sun and moon remain visible through the turmoil. A collection of mirrors scattered through the world don't reflect their light; instead, it passes through them and illuminates the other side. These specific mirrors, all set in ash-gray frames that match the halls, are untouched in the unfolding natural disasters, and standing before them will shield you as well. Consider them havens in the chaos, proverbial eyes in the storm.

In the dark, a radio turns on of its own accord. Is someone—something—talking to you?

INTO ALL OUR DARKEST FEARS.

Welcome to THE WASTEYARD's first test drive! Some quick things to remember:

• Our TDMs tie into the game plot. As such, any applicants can keep their TDM threads as game canon.
• The network is exclusive to in-game characters. TDM characters can only use radios.
• There is a language barrier, so please mention what language your character speaks somewhere.
• We don't have a fixed day ratio; instead, you pace yourself at your discretion.
• Characters may face backlash when using any powers.
• Mark if your character is on the sun or moon side of the divide. The choice is yours as the player.
• If you have any questions, please direct them to our FAQ!

And that's all, folks. So take chances, make mistakes, and get messy!

NAVIGATION.

PREMISE
RULES
FAQ
ACTIVITY
APPLICATIONS

TAKEN
HIATUSES & DROPS
CANON UPDATES
REWARDS
TPC CLAIMS

WORLD
EXPLORATION
DEVICES
QUESTS
INFORMATION

CALENDAR
SUGGESTIONS
MOD CONTACT
SETTING INBOX
CODEBOOK

Comments

H̀҉È̛L̵͠͏̴Ļ̷̛͜O̴̧.̧́͜͠͠

[wastor]

[Here you can interact with the setting directly. You give us an action to show what your character is doing (e.g., "Bob throws the radio at the wall") and we respond with the results. An action may not always result in a reaction and specifics are better than vagueness. Keep it short and sweet.

Interacting with the setting this way is always optional! Even if it involves plot info, it'll get shared with the rest of the game one way or another.]

[wheatcake]

[You know what really stinks? Getting transported to another dimension while you're swinging through Concourse. Peter is waiting for the Fantasticar to show up and get him out of this nightmare, but until then, what can you do? There's plenty of walls to crawl, and that's the job description, right.]

[He stops to page through a book he found, which felt like it would be useful, lying on the side of a building like it was stuck there. Of course, it wasn't stuck; he picked it up like it was nothing. It just... defied gravity? Anyway, all the pages are empty, which is another weird thing... he hates this. Peter decides he absolutely hates this. He paces, standing at a right angle off the wall of a colorless building... feeling kind of dizzy.]

This is the worst the Bronx has looked in years. [He throws the book over his shoulder.]

peter parker | marvel 616 | night side | ota.

[wheatcake]

a. DOES WHATEVER A

[You know what's weird, like, creepy weird? Peter's life, so it's really not a big deal. Of course he somehow ends up in an underground cavern. There are stairs, but they're uneven and unsteady enough that Peter, luckily still in uniform when he showed up to this extradimensional mess, decided to just crawl up the sides. The dusty, earthy, falling-apart sides.]

[He emerges from a hole in the ground, heaving up coughs of dust and dirt.] What is this, sweeps week? Spider-Man's greatest hits!

b. MILLENIAL DROWNING

[After four hours (it sure feels like four hours!) of wandering around endless hallways, Peter gives up and crawls out the nearest window. He crouches on the side of the building, ignoring the slight sensation of vertigo (which is very new, and very unwelcome) so he can passive aggressively shoot web at the moon.]

Do I get a high score if I hit you, or just an extra life? I bet I can pull you down. You look like the Pixar lamp got big ideas.

[Yes, he's talking to the moon. Though he's also cradling a radio while he does it, unknowingly transmitting his voice to... wherever. He found it earlier, thought it was interesting, heard some weird sounds, and then... nothing. He's still fiddling while he shoots, getting bored of one and switching back to the other at random.]

c. IN STUDENT DEBT CAN.

[Eventually, everything goes completely nuts. Seems inevitable! Peter can't hang onto the walls with the windspeed this high, and honestly, being out there like that is making him more and more disoriented. He finds the nearest window and pops inside, only to find... flooding?]

This building is not up to code!

[Sooo, back to wall crawling. Indoor wall crawling. It still makes him woozy. While avoiding indoor tidal waves and jumping from chandeliers to gargoyles to-- is that a jukebox? Really?]

[Well. While doing that, he happens upon a large mirror in front of a wing-backed chair. The mirror and the chair in front of it are surprisingly, uh, you know, not soaked? The water moves around them, like it's avoiding them. He jumps down into the chair.]

This definitely doesn't feel like a trap. I'm so safe.

[He sits there for an anxious second.]

Mel Brooks is going to swim by any minute, isn't he?

d. WILDCARD

[Have a better idea? Go for it! The world's your oyster.]

[And for the record, Peter's only speaking in English!]

peter [B] parker

[wontgraham]

[ So Will's been in his abandoned bus/bus stop combo for...a while now. He's intermittently speaking into the radio and he's eaten one-third of the first piece of jerky he'd found, so the fact that he's hungry at all after everything that's already happened probably means he's been here...a while. Several hours.

Hard to tell time when his watch, after finally moving from its 2:35am reading, has now been stuck at...1:47am. Great.

But the next time he turns the bus' radio on, the crackle has something in it. Again. Will's been picking up just enough that he's been unwilling to leave the bus just yet. He leans in close over the tangled cord and the square, clunky piece of plastic, and waits, and...

...Is that voice talking about Pixar? Will presses the 'talk' button on his side. ]

Hello? Is someone there? [ He's said that enough times today that it barely feels like a sentence, at this point. ]

benedict dearborn | original character (academic, exorcist) | ota

[fumitory]

what a wonderful world — open [ arrival | sun dimension | shadow people ] english verbal

DANCE MAGIC DANCE (arrival, labyrinth) — open

( Benedict Dearborn had ended up in the labyrinth.

as a man of orderliness and cleanliness, it seemed momentarily like a joke. absolute silent mayhem, a dumping ground for where all that was unwanted and disposable was left to rot away. meaning has always merited substantial significance to Ben, through much of his life — but as much as it stood as a cornerstone to much of his existence, he never fully lost perspective of it stood against the larger picture, like a storming sky of absolute truth. it is all, in fact, in the end, chaos.

so then the sense shifted: not a joke, but significant, this chaos around himself, this utter nonsense.

he can scarcely recall what he had been doing prior to all of...this. wobbling in his tentative steps over and around giant pieces of waste — shattered steel beams, fragments of cars, concrete rubble — Ben tries to remember. what is there to remember? was there anything noteworthy out of the weeks, months — years of meandering through academic offices, lines in airport terminals, gilded intermittently with the occasional intervention, or more infrequently, exorcism?

he swears the detritus is growing clearer the further he moves out of the...radio station, was his guess. he'd only ever seen them in films, and the recognition feels mostly instinctual, not by rote memory. still, the area is painfully dim, and winding through and through with turns and stretches that feel never-ending. the longer he goes, the more the darkness feels magnetic, buzzing in his skin, the open dead air heavy and sharp. like a blade, the longer it seeps into him, the closer it feels to threatening.

Ben reaches into his blazer to procure a small metal cigarette case — but what he pulls out is one of a multitude of pale feathers. pearl in color, it shines without light to play off of it; almost as if...light might be reflecting from within every little thread that builds its soft shape. impossible, right?

Ben is very acclimated to the impossible.

it barely glows as bright as a match, but it's something — a focus object if nothing else, but the meager glow it gives is from size alone, not a lacking of strength. warm and pure, otherworldly, held like a talisman to protect him.

because that is exactly what it is.

through the looming, tense silence rounded around the echoes of his movements, Ben hears — a breath... he thinks? or radio static? short, soft, could be anything. it has him stopped still, his own sounds blotted out in the muted atmosphere, as he looks around intently. years of subjection to horror movies trains a person to know what to do, and what not to do, in precarious situations. logic suggests to keep oneself hidden, silent, and safe. )

—Is someone there?

( unfortunately, human beings are incredible at choosing what is possibly the dumbest option on the table, like calling out down a long, dark corridor, unknowing if something predatory lurks around in the darkness nearby. as soon as Ben's voice ripples down the erratic veins of this labyrinth, his face winces in, self-realization striking like a blunt object, and he hisses to himself, ) Bugger me.

HERE COMES THE SUN (sun + moon dimensions) — open

( the sun hangs low on the horizon, dim and haggard, unmoving. Ben finds it troubling — yes, yes, he knows this entire place is troubling — but there is something about it that he can't shake. it sits as if caught, left behind a sheer curtain, feeling more like a memory than a celestial body in the sky. he doesn't know how long it's been, now, because that damn sun never moves an inch, and his watch is currently working counter-clockwise. which is an improvement from having been at a full stop, before, on 9:17.

nines...nothing good ever happens with nines.

Ben knows what he needs — shelter. somewhere stable, which seems like a joke, at this point, given the upside-down architecture bending around his head over here. even something temporarily will do; Ben is a nest-builder at heart, and in this industrial fever-dream, he feels the visceral need to find somewhere that feels secure in some way. something, anything — the park bench he'd found along the way disintegrated under his touch, so he knows not to be greedy on this topic.

he strides into something enclosed, the doorway tilted 30 degrees off center, but the floor is mostly level. half of it feels like a lobby to a bank, or perhaps a hotel — once-polished tile floors and papered walls — and then it feels like something more private and lower down in the economy scale. a weathered and modest little kitchen table, an old recliner chair, a linoleum counter, a vanity...

with a mirror. Ben steps with a tired pace, not lumbering with weight, but striding softly. he looks across the warped pieces, some of them melded together — a desk with a children's bookcase that looks closer to a toy than furniture, for one — and feels he can't even squeeze out a thought in this moment. dazed, he simply looks around, blankly.

until hazel eyes fall upon a mirrored vanity, looking like something out of a Dali design, old-fashioned and impossible as it melts...upward, as if being stretched like a bit of taffy. what catches his attention is a dawning realization...

...that Ben confirms as he steps up to the mirror — no reflection. he squints, leaning in as if to inspect something much more minute. he sees an empty room, one that...could be a reflection of one he is in, or something else completely, it's impossible to say. it has Ben woefully looking down at himself — taking stock of his own hands first, which he then presses flat into his front against his button-up and tweed blazer. all seems to be accounted for, so why is it that he looks up, he sees—?

a shadow, of someone moving about the room, on the other side. Ben steps up close again, hands reaching for the twisted wood frame, trying to see around the surface of the glass. soundlessly from this other side — which appears to him, now, looks both dark and piercingly bright — someone might see this man peering in, mouth moving, saying something, unaware that he cannot he heard. )

WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS (shadow people encounter) — open

( once clear of the labyrinth, Ben finds an open landscape of...absolute fantasy. he stares openly at the landscape of bizarre architecture, tilted buildings, twisted landmarks, roads that lift up and stop midair. he sees town halls crushed into farmhouses, a hospital split apart like paper in a shredder, church gargoyles spilling through the walls of a house as if its surface was water, an office building bending into a spiral that makes Ben think, oh damn, being here means he is most certainly going to miss that chiropractic appointment he had gone through such lengths to get rescheduled...

Ben finds the fragments of a public courtyard, possibly a piece of a large garden — a guess more than an impression, given that all of the plants are bare skeletons, bases and branches and nothing else, in ominous hues of grey, brown, black. the bricks under his feet are cracked but smooth, and the fountain in the center flows with not a drop of water to speak of.

and that's when he sees movement, for the most brief of moments. a shift in his periphery, a winking of black that has Ben snapping around suddenly.

it doesn't move fast. in fact, the shadowy figure saunters without much care, to a point that Ben is nearly affronted at the lack of stealth he really would have expected from something like this.

Ben appears, quite understandably, a bit horrified. defense is clear throughout the extent of his body language — his stance as he leans in the opposite direction of it, his movements as he steps slowly, with care not to make any sound.

which is why Ben speaks aloud to himself with his breath soft, rumbling in whisper, to no one in particular— ) All right, of all of the batty things I've seen thus far...I like this bit the least.

( in the end, it doesn't matter, as the shadow person stops and turns its attention in his direction anyway. Ben swallows, almost comically — can he be blamed?

the shadow creature lingers, as if dazed, it may not have eyes that can be seen back in kind, but Ben gets a crawly-feeling in his skin, that he trusts to tell him that he is, in fact, being watched. said softer than ever, and with feeling: ) ...Shit.

Ben Dearborn is an original character made for topics of
religious fantasy, horror, existentialism, morality, + modern
supernatural fantasy. you can read all about him here!
however, there is a lot of information, so any questions
you might have I can answer over PM at this time.

shadows, what we do in them, etc.

[ascocarp]

[She's been watching this one for a while.]

[...Not the weird guy. He's... whatever. He wants to get killed? Whatever. But Ellie's been hiding behind an outcropping of grey, lifeless particleboard stuck into the earth cut in the shape of grass and flowers. Grey grass and flowers. It was a good vantage point to watch the shadows, study their movements, figure out a pattern, when some guy just waltzes the fuck out like he owns the place.]

[Shit, who knows. Maybe he does.]

[The shadows... they don't turn, exactly, but some instinctual part of her knows they see him, or hear him, something. They sense him. She knows, she knows. Leave him. But...]

[She lets out a low hissing whisper.] Hey. Dumbass. Frickin' hide. [And then she throws one of the many items she's been tossing into her spare pockets since she got here: a bunch of soda caps in a tin can. They make a clattering din when they hit the pavement on the other side of the shadows. Who freaking knows if that will actually work the way it's supposed to, though.]

will graham | nbc's hannibal [ night side ]

[wontgraham]

food ghost?? [interacting with the sun side]

[ Will hadn't been exploring more than an hour before he found what he knew he needed to find first: food. The rest of his existential panicking could happen after he'd proven that a completely man-made-looking landscape had anything resembling resources to pillage for food.

Maybe it was appropriate, then, that a place constructed entirely of metal and concrete and old rotting plywood came up with...jerky. More of it than Will would really like to use to subsist on for the next uncertain amount of time, but at least it's calorie-dense, right?

Will's just finished putting all of it in his pockets when he sees another one. Odd, since he's pretty sure he grabbed all of them, but then when he reaches for it - it shifts up on its own.

He's already seen one building leaning at an impossible angle, and he's heard of Inception, so please excuse him if his overworked imagination decides this means 'gravity is about to give up on him' and not 'ghosts'. His first instinct is to jerk back away from it and grab onto the nearest object, which turns out to be a desk.

The little jerky stick, clearly ignorant of Will's panic, then just...winks out of existence. Okay. Will's just straightening back up, heart still in his throat, as he pats his own pockets full of jerky back down...

Huh. That move-and-then-disappear routine almost was as if...someone Will couldn't see was shoving the food into its own pocket... Weird. A weird idea even for Will, and he takes a moment thinking it over and wondering if this is a useful insight or just a bad dream following him into waking hours.

Will can't resist testing the theory, no matter how ridiculous. He slowly takes one of the jerky sticks out of his own pocket - yes, he's curious enough to risk limited food over this, at least right now, taken in by the mystery. He puts it on the ground...and waits, crouched next to it, trying not to feel ridiculous. Whatever picked up the last bit of jerky...are you interested in this one, too? ]

bad dog. [shadow creature encounter]

[ After securing himself enough food that Will's no longer worried he'll starve to death before anything else dangerous gets a chance to try killing him, his explorations can change in tone a little bit. More specifically, he can root through buildings for more supplies than just 'can I eat this or use it to treat wounds?'

Which is probably how he ends up disturbing...whatever it is he disturbs.

Will's been outside during the majority of this exploration - however loose that term feels when there's nothing like woods or green spaces to be seen - and it turns out that was a bad call. Right now, he's crouched low to the ground, absolutely still and silent, swallowing against the pressure of his heart hammering too-high in his throat. In front of him is...

...He's not sure how to describe it. A shadow suspended in the air, or maybe instead of the air. Whatever he's seeing, it feels like not seeing it. It's a spot that's shaped by the space around it more than whatever's inside of it.

And it's shaped like a large, angry dog. (What did you expect? Will's home universe isn't known for real supernatural horrors, just metaphoric ones.)

Will hears a sound across from him, and he'd think it was this crouched, waiting dog if he wasn't already watching it for any tell-tale movements. Instead, he sees movement beyond the dog, and...

...It's a shame, because this is the first human Will's seen in person since he arrived here. So it's too bad the first emotion about that that he gets to have, after about half a second of relief, is absolute panic. Because it seems like they haven't spotted whatever the shadow-animal is, and they're making way too much noise. It's already turning towards them.

So Will does the only reasonable thing he can think of, and throws the nearest object - turns out to be the cushion of a long-broken stool - as hard as he can at the shadow-creature. ] Run!

radio gaga. [interacting with either side, via radio]

[ Will hasn't used a bus stop in years, but he'd ducked right under the shelter of one when he'd seen it. After the shadow creature encounter, he's eager for shelter, even if he's not too excited about the idea of being boxed in. But seeing as this bus stop merges abruptly with the bus itself, that at least means he's got plenty of windows to break and escape through, if the worst happens.

The bus has no indications of what route it used to take - in fact the longer Will plays with the steering wheel, checks over the pedals, and tries - unsuccessfully - to access the engine, the more he's convinced this was never a real, moving bus. He's not sure what to call whatever it actually is.

So imagine his surprise when the radio speaker, wired into the bus itself...turns on when he presses the 'talk' button. Huh.

Well...considering what's already happened, how much worse could this get if he calls out to the scenery at large? Will hesitates with it held in one dust-smeared hand, staring at it. And then, ]

Hello? [ There's white noise from the radio whenever he's not depressing the button to speak into it. Will's never actually used old-fashioned radios like this, but he's seen enough movies to get the gist. One person talks at a time, right? He waits a moment and can't decide, amidst the crackle, if he hears anything yet. ]

Is anyone there?

ooc. {will's got an existing app in his journal that goes (at length) into his character if you're interested in background before tagging; likewise there's a permissions post there as well. feel free to tweak either prompt a bit to facilitate meeting your character! pm if you'd like to plot further. will is speaking english, altho i'm very happy to play with language barriers.}

radio gaga

[calculo]

[ the radio he'd found is old. there's burn damage to one end and the antenna's bent but it seems to work. it's been projecting straight white noise since he turned it on but that's better than nothing. it's better than the overarching silence he's been dealing with since he started walking.

it gives his mind something to focus on.

robbie almost jumps when someone's voice comes through the radio. it's tinny and jumpy but it's definitely a voice. he stares at it, contemplating answering. he doesn't know who this is, doesn't know what they want but it's the first sign of life he's had besides that shadow. ]

Yeah.

[ simple, to the point. ]

Someone's here.

robbie reyes. aos. ota

[calculo]

a. a moon, darkly

( he's never been here before. he's been to different realms, spent time in hell dimensions, but he's never been to this grey, monotonous place and he's not sure how he got here now. if there's an explanation, the other guy's not talking. he remembers before but it's fuzzy, like the memories are there but being muted somehow.

his head aches.

he can feel him there, as a simmering, curdling heat in his blood but he's staying below the surface for now.

he looks and he can see the stars. he blinks and they seem to shift, tilting and wobbling before recovering. everything feels off here. his skin feels like it's being stretched tight, pulled over and up and every step is difficult, like he's in some kind of low gravity environment when he's not.

the fact that there's breathable air tells him some things. he's not in space. he hasn't been blasted into the endless dark of that void yet. no one's tried that as a way to take him out so that's good, he supposes. it means he has a shot of getting out of here and getting back home. it means he's not dead. he's just...misplaced.

so, why's he not dead? )

Hello?

( his voice echoes, comes back to him sounding pitched and desperate. not good. he needs to get out of here or get indoors or get somewhere that doesn't make the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

the other guy should be roaring up but he's not. he's there but he's dormant. that, out of everything, is making him nervous. )

b. me and my shadow

( the first time robbie sees a shadow, he thinks it's another person. he barks something sharp, something spanish at them to try and get their attention and it's how they turn that tells him something's off.

it's almost gelatinous in movement, oozing and gliding in a way that robbie thinks should leave a slick spot behind him. but it doesn't. it moves towards him, faceless, and robbie backs up quickly. his first instinct is to fight but how do you fight something like this? he doesn't have his chain and this isn't like some otherworldly thing that he'd fought before.

this is something different.

robbie leaves it. he wants to know more about it before he does anything so he slips away, jogging up and down endless streets before ducking into what looks like a broken down convenience store.

a low buzzing comes from within, like electricity that's trying to power on but isn't quite succeeding. there's grass poking up from between the floor and a molded soda machine in the corner.

it looks empty. robbie moves towards the windows to try and catch another glimpse of the shadows but what he sees is a reflection: pale, long haired, and definitely not him.

he whips around, expecting to see someone but there's no one there. the convenience store is still just him and the soda machine. )

Losing my goddamned mind.

( robbie pushes away from the windows and starts to root around behind the counter. maybe there's money or a phone or some kind of weapon.

maybe there's a chocolate bar. maybe a way home. that last one's wishful thinking but he's gotta have something here. )

a.

[ascocarp]

[You find a safe place, and you settle in. The problem with that is, as soon as she finds a good spot, she gets up and leaves, and it's gone. She's lost plenty of stashes that way, and now she's just hoarding everything she can in a bag and sometimes the stuff in her bag is still there.]

[No bow. No arrows. No guns. No food. She's starting to get twitchy.]

[Which is why, when she hears a guy talking to nothing a few yards away from the children's playground she's crouched and hiding in, she reacts poorly. Not all people are threats, but you can't trust them unilaterally, and saying hello out into the nothing means you're looking for something, right? Somebody? Is she being hunted?]

[Ellie pokes her head out, rabbit-quick, before throwing a spare bottle in the opposite direction, hoping he won't see it and he'll be distracted by the clattering crash it makes on the far wall of a building in the other direction.]

prompto argentum | final fantasy xv | moon

[millimeter]

1 | WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE SNAKES;

[This is bad, this is so bad. Prompto isn't sure what he did or how he did it, but there's a massive shadow in the shape of a naga hot on his heels.]

Dude!

[He flails his arms for emphasis, really hoping the bridge holds beneath his feet...even if he isn't sure how the bridge is holding at all. It's kinda just hanging there, suspended by a single column, but considering the door he's trying to reach is upside-down to his relative location and the rest of the world makes no sense whatsoever, he's decided he has bigger concerns.]

Hold the door! [Please hold the door. Even if you can't understand a word out of his mouth.]

2 | PAPER CHASE;

[Prompto crouches to peer at the rows upon rows of shelves, all packed with...paper airplanes? He picks one up, turning it over in his hands. It's way neater than any of the planes he tried to fold as a kid; looks like it'll even fly more than a couple feet before nosediving into the ground. It inspires him to spin and find a target: the round face of an old-fashioned radio on the other side of the room.]

Peeerfecto! [He launches the plane, only for it to suddenly hit something invisible. Prompto freezes, hand outstretched to pick up another plane.]

Okaaay... That was weird. [This whole thing is weird. But that isn't going to stop him from chucking another plane at his invisible obstacle, to make sure he isn't seeing things.]

3 | MIRROR, MIRROR;

A | SUNNY SIDE UP;

[Prompto stares at a mirror, disturbed by his lack of reflection. He walks towards it, then takes a step back; hops out of view and then back into view.

So please forgive him when he sees a reflection that isn't his own and lets out a small shriek. If you're lucky, you can't hear a thing; if you're unlucky, you might've just gotten an earful through the white noise of a radio.]

B | MOON PIE ON THE SIDE;

[Alternatively, it takes him a minute to realize he is not, in fact, alone with the mirror and he turns with an awkward half-grin on his face.]

Swear I'm not a vampire.

[He laughs nervously. Stressed? Who's stressed?]

4 | CENTER OF GRAVITY;

[Prompto's seen his share of storms; hell, he survived Leviathan. But at least gravity wasn't, like, a subjective concept. He didn't have to worry about trying to pry open a door and fighting to keep his balance, only to fall because gravity shifted ninety degrees.

He lands in a snow drift with a muffled thump and finds himself staring at the door, now directly over his head.]

Oh, come on. [He sits up, rubbing his arms and shivering, before turning to the nearest person in a similar predicament. He has to shout to hear himself over the wind.] You wouldn't happen to have any other ideas?!

[He does not want to die out here.]

[OOC: FFXV is FFXV, but Lucian newspapers and magazines are in English and there's a lot of Japanese text in Insomnia (and other nations have associated real world languages), so let's just say Prompto can speak both. You can pick which he initially tries to use!]

1.

[ascocarp]

[Ellie doesn't need to know the language this weirdo is speaking to be able to understand the scene before her. She was minding her own business when she walked by an open door, only to see someone running toward it with a horrible monster on his heels.]

[Ellie stares wide-eyed for a second, two, before internally chastising herself for her hesitation.]

[She closes the door.]

octavia blake | the 100 | moon

[gonplei]

a | radios

[ If Octavia wasn't sure she believed in Hell before, she is now. It's the only explanation for a place like this, and she certainly isn't going upstairs when she dies. She's all alone in the dark, desperately trying to find answers and getting nothing in return. Even the damn food packets yield no information. It's ironic that the only piece of info she's found so far is the 'EUREKA' sign; she's not going to be exclaiming that any time soon by the looks of it.

The more she walks, the more it begins to feel like the walls and ceiling are closing in, cramping. And every time she leaves a building, it seems like the landscape has shifted and she's no longer where she was. She doesn't deal well with enclosed spaces, and even less well with frustration. Octavia has never been one for emotional regulation, perhaps because she never had to learn. Now that she's in the real world with no one to comfort her at every little upset, it's come back to bite her.

If you happen to be listening to the radio, you might pick up her own radio transmitting the sound of a frustrated ] Ugh! [ and a loud kick, followed by the sound of something knocking over and shattering. ]

b | shadows

[ The shadows take the form of men with shock batons. The sight makes her fingers curl and her blood rush in her ears. It should scare her... does scare her, deep down, but it also makes her angry. These are the men of her nightmares, her own personal bogeymen. Guards whose job was to protect everyone but one little girl whose only crime was being born. It makes her blood boil, even now.

Without thinking about the dangers of unknown, shadowy creatures — without thinking at all — she begins to slowly unsheathe her sword. It's not true vengeance, but it certainly won't make her feel bad to slash into them.

Before she gets the chance, though, she picks up on the sound of footsteps behind her. Reflexively, she whirls around, sword jutted out in a threatening manner. She's been wandering alone for so long now that the sight of another human being has her wary, to say the least, and she isn't particularly friendly even when she doesn't feel paranoid. ]

Stop there, [ she commands, confidently, like she's used to it. ] Identify yourself.

[ You might want to hurry. It looks like the shadows behind her are getting a bit agitated by all this excitement. ]

c | wildcard

[ Obligatory wildcard option! Octavia speaks English (and a canon conlang, but she defaults to English). Extra info about her can be found here if you're interested. You can contact me at birdlaw if you've got questions! ]

b. shadows

[calculo]

( this keeps up, robbie's gonna start getting jealous. first the kid with the shiv and now this girl with a sword. everyone's got a weapon but him even if he, technically, is a weapon. the rider's not doing a damn thing to help him though so it's him and his fists if this decides to go bad.

but, he doesn't want any trouble so he stops, holds his hands out to the sides, gloved palms face up. )

Robbie.

( probably doesn't help much, does it? )

Are we gonna do introductions while there's a bunch of shadows behind you? ( doesn't seem very smart. )

Cordelia Moonstone > The Magic Order > Moon

[excaparre]

( a ) - ＡＲＲＩＶＡＬ

( it's not like she's scared of the dark

but like.

fuck man.

this isn't your normal every day darkness. this is advanced darkness. and okay, maybe she shouldn't be watching so many cartoons even as an adult, but if ever there's been an accurate quote about the fucked up situation she's found herself in it's the one from the yellow talking sponge apparently.

by the time Cordelia presses through the darkness, she slams herself against the door, gasping as panic threatens to overwhelm her. she stays for a long minute, feeling the cool metal of the door against her cheeks as she tries to calm the panic down. she opens one eye slowly, then another, then finally leans away from the door.

she's in a radio station. a pretty old one, too.

she rubs at her head, trying to rub memories back into her mind that might fill her in on what the fuck she did last night to end up in this situation, but nothing ever comes to her. ) Hello? ( she tries, but when no one says "hello" back- ) I'll just... I'm going to let myself out now, okay?

( she turns the handle on the door, still watching behind her as if the very room might come to life if she takes her eyes off it for a second, and steps through the door

and lands on her face as the door is apparently not directly connected to the ground below. )

Fuck! ( she exclaims, pulling herself up from the ground and rubbing at her thigh, which she hit the hardest. ) Please tell me no one saw that.

( b ) - ＬＩＧＨＴ  ＤＩＶＩＤＥＤ ( cw: body horror in subsequent threads )

( there's things about being a wizard that make life in this place downright annoying. everything feels wrong here. if she were home, the Magic Order would be having a field day trying to repair this place.

if she were home, of course.

she could try to go home, but the problem is she doesn't know where home is from here. it'd be like taking a blind leap from a flying helicopter and hoping you landed on the exact island you wanted and not the damn ocean. she knows better than to make that leap...


but this sun bears down on her, and the longer she walks she feels it. the places where reality feels thin. where she thinks she can just about reach through it...

she has to try. she has to do something.

she takes out her wand, passing it in front of her as she tries to tear through that thin veil and into the other side-

and there it is. a moon. )

One dimension down. ( she grins broadly to herself. ) Who knows how many mo-

( she falls to her knees, grabbing her stomach as pain erupts from her. she screams from the migraine that causes blood to drip from her nose. she looks on the verge of throwing up, bent over and nearly heaving as she holds her middle. ) Oh fuck, oh fuck. ( she's trembling, her eyes sharp with panic as pain wracks through her body. )

Help, please!

( c ) - ＷＩＬＤＣＡＲＤ

( open to any and all other prompts. pm me or pp at magickal if you have any questions! Cordelia speaks English. )

a.

[ascocarp]

[Someone did see that. Mostly because Cordelia landed right on top of them. A fourteen year old girl is immediately shoving her off, back, away, with a furious hurry that's a little more emphatic than normal distress warrants. Still, it's not lethal. She hasn't pulled out the homemade shiv in her pocket yet.]

Fuck off!

athena the gladiator / borderlands / sun

[badassassin]

[ athena is speaking 29th century english, which for all intents and purposes appears to be the same as modern english. here's more info if u would like it. ]

a. RADIO. (OTA.)

[Athena's located a few base station setups during her meandering search through halls and buildings, but she didn't really stop to pick anything up, more interested finding people in the flesh than anything else. But then that search winds up being fruitless, and when she tries to backtrack... well, that's just as fruitless. So the next time she finds a radio, she pounces on it, irritation clear in her voice.]

I have found broadcast equipment throughout this... place, so I can only assume there's someone here to man it. I'd like answers and I'd like them now. This is not a request.

[It's perhaps a little blunt, but she's really beyond feeling any need for niceties in this situation.]

b. SHADOWS. (FOR SUN SIDERS.)

[Sick of hiding indoors, Athena's decided to take her chances outside in the weird, dim sunlight. The motionless sun doesn't bother her too much, reminding her of the geostationary moon of Pandora to the point where it's easy enough to ignore it. Still, the long shadows it casts are unnerving and weird, and she keeps seeing something move out the corner of her eye.

She's momentarily distracted by something fluttering in a window higher up -- a person? A bird? A curtain? -- and while her back is turned, a shadow shaped vaguely humanoid with multiple hulking arms lunges. Athena barely manages to turn to face it before it knocks her off her feet, sending her flying back. She hits the ground hard.]

c. MIRRORS. (FOR MOON SIDERS.)

[So, it's back inside, then. It's impossible to tell how much time has passed, but Athena's body lets her know it's been too long without water.

After she moves through enough twisted hallways and uneven staircases, she finds what appears to be a bathroom. There's a mirror over the sink, which she ignores at first; instead, she tries the faucet, which mercifully works. Sipping from her hands, she glances up when she sees something move in the mirror -- and chokes on the water when it's not her face looking back at her.

She takes a surprised step back, grabbing an empty towel bar for support as she uncontrollably coughs.]

d. WILDCARD.

[ write me whatever, i'll roll with it ]

a.

[ascocarp]

[Ellie is kicking dirt and trying not to think when she finds it, the... radio. She's seen plenty of junk in her life, all of it nonfunctional, but this one is glowing. She knows about electricity, it comes from generators. Is there a working generator around here? She's got to look for it-]

[And then a voice comes out of it. It's clearly a recording, but it's funny. She listens and laughs. In a joking tone,] Oh, yeah? And what're you gonna do to me, huh?

carver hawke | dragon age | sun

[swordliest]

( ooc: carver has the fun double-whammy of speaking only Fantasy Bullshit and not knowing what a radio is or how one works. help a boy out. )

i. even in the shadows

[Here's the thing: he's basically made for gloomy, chilly, shifty places like this. That's been his life, for the past however many years; skittering shadows at the edges of his vision are the rule, not the exception. It's why he's dressed the way he is, in full plate with a heavy maul on his back, and why he's not bothered to be trying his luck outdoors.

That's the problem, maybe— treating this like just another jaunt in the Deep Roads.

It catches him off-guard. He sees the shadow, pinpoints it, and dismisses it as a trick of light and paranoia. He turns his back on it— and when he turns around again, it's practically on top of him.

It's shaped like a darkspawn. It lunges like a darkspawn, frenzied and mindless. It scrabbles at his armor, sword high and pointed teeth bared, and he— he didn't know it was there. There was nothing: no tremor of a threat at the back of his mind, no shared whisper, not even the sound of boots on stone.

The sword comes down, and his instincts kick in. He catches the flat of it against the plated edge of his gauntlet, and shoves hard enough to give himself breathing room. The thing stumbles, spits and hisses at him, and he knows it's not a darkspawn, can't be, but the resemblance is so perfect it barely even matters.

Killing it isn't any more difficult than killing a single darkspawn ever is; he catches it at the shoulder with his first clean swing, crushing it into the concrete. It splits and falls apart, like dust.

And then it comes back together again, like it never went down at all.]

That's just great, isn't it. [He readjusts his grip on the hilt of his weapon, letting the bladed head grind against the concrete. He shifts his weight back, and raises his voice at this— whatever it is.] Alright, then. Want to go another round? Come on!

[The shadows around him are shifting, sliding, solidifying. He can't tell how many there are.

He's gonna need a Plan B.]

ii. cause it's like you're my mirror

[Everything else is just... stupid.

Fake mirrors, floating books, shifting debris— it's magic, obviously enough (to him), but only the annoying kind, like a trick his brother used to play on him when they were children. By the third or fourth time he gets turned around purely because this place doesn't make sense, he's about done with the whole bloody thing.]

Shut up. [This to a mirror-that's-not-a-mirror, empty for now, like it personally is mocking him for all the time he's wasted. He's alone, so why should it matter?] Nobody asked you.

iii. wildcard

[got something else in mind? hit me!]

i.

[ascocarp]

[Ellie has been trained, over the last year and in no uncertain terms, to trust absolutely no one, especially at first glance. And yet. And yet.]

[He's like some goddamn knight or something. Like out of a comic book or a movie she's only seen posters of. He seems fake. And yet, he kills one of the shadow fuckers like it's nothing. She watches, totally enrapt, wide-eyed with the wonder of it, from the second-story window of a building.]

[He starts calling for help-- she doesn't understand his words, but she recognizes the tone-- and she scrambles to do it. It's like a unicorn. She has to save it. She knows she'd catch shit from Joel, but that's a distant concern. Where's he? She doesn't know. And this is a knight, in armor and everything!]

[She finds a ladder conveniently nearby. It wasn't there before.]

[Whatever?]

[She hauls it half out the window, using all her strength to keep it from falling. She'll hold it until he sees it, at the very least. Her voice is loud and clear.] Hey! Sir Punch-a-lot! Over here!

william | westworld (agoge crau) | sun

[omniavincit]

a. know I know it's true | either side

[ And it goes quiet.

That's the first thing William notices. Later—hours? days? not a month, he can't afford a month—wandering the jumble of buildings, opening and closing doors, he'll keep coming back to it. He doesn't remember exactly where he was before, but it must have been loud. And, judging by his clothes, muddy.

It's a while before he draws his knife. Curious, to begin with—examining the blade in the sickly light, intent on whatever there is to be glimpsed in it. Nothing, it turns out. Not a flicker of movement, not a flash of color.

Well, it was a thought.

William stands a moment—though this place doesn't seem to take kindly to that, to hesitation—then turns back to the door he emerged from. It's metal now, bolted shut. Like on a submarine. He almost laughs.

On the moon side, you may hear the not particularly pleasant scrape of metal, may see a scraggly “X” form on a surface near you. A few minutes later, there'll be another, and another. On the sun side, maybe you follow him. Maybe you sneak up on him as he drops to a knee and marks a step or trap door or scratches the paint off a cockeyed lamppost.

Or maybe you're minding your own business when a skinny guy holding a knife walks out of the door nearest to you. He doesn't look like much of a threat, but in this place, who knows? ]


b. from above this room | either, if you want to get creative

[ William's sitting on a couch.

Okay, not sitting on so much as desperately braced against, having heaved it up against the door. And “couch” is really...it looks like the cushions were put through a meat grinder, an intestinal mass that William, under any other circumstances, would be reluctant to touch.

His arms are spread wide. His breathing's heavy. ] Don't—don't. [ He'll say to whoever approaches, tensing up and throwing a look over his shoulder.

The door itself hasn't budged. ]


c. somebody's counting the hours | radio

Eureka. [ William says dryly. It's not his first try at the radio. He's starting to resent it, a little—his hopes answered with bursts of static. But the lack of human contact—the lack of anything living at all—is about to send him over the edge.

At least with the radio on, he's not technically talking to himself. ] If anyone hearing this has any idea what the fuck, um. Do tell.

Anyone else out there [ he falters, the remoteness of this possibility hitting him anew ] is there something this reminds you of?


d. wildcard

[ awww yeahhhhhhhh ]


ooc: William speaks English, though he will...eventually attempt high school French on the radio, if you'd like to make him suffer. He is a CRAU, but that mostly means he was once eaten by a spider (long story). In the unlikely event he has a prior history with your char, I'll definitely get in touch before springing any bullshit on you!

Oh and despite the icons, he does not have his cowboy hat :(

a.

[ascocarp]

What the fuuuuuuck?

[All the dangers in Ellie's life are very real, very tangible. So this nebulous strangeness, this haunting feeling, means little to her. She's more fascinated than scared, when an X begins to draw itself into the ground beneath her feet.]

[She shuffles quickly out of the way, and stares at the X for a moment, before pulling out her own knife, a well cared for switchblade. Maybe it's a puzzle? Next to the X, she draws a big, crooked Y.]

Ivar "The Boneless" Ragnarsson | Vikings

[ragnarsson]

[Keep in mind Ivar only speaks Old Norse and Old English. Both have Germanic roots, so your character can pick out words, but only one in every five used or so, moreso in Old English the Old Norse. The links provide good examples of what it sounds like. TW: the second link has some gore in the form of a severed head halfway through it.]

I. The Sunlight Splintered

[Ivar's not sure where he's ended up or how he got here. Everything seems to be a bit of a blur in his head. But when he ends up in the radio room, the equipment is first what draws his attention. He runs his fingers lightly over the dust-covered switches and buttons. Figuring they might do something, he pushes a few, but when nothing happens, he's disappointed.

It's only then that he looks up and discovers the bizarre outside world that is through the glass. One side shows a dam holding back more water then he's seen anywhere besides the ocean, but the next one over shows a deserted city street with rusty cars dotting the sides and debris all over the place. None of it looks familiar to the Viking. He curses for a moment under his breath. Whatever he's saying in Old Norse is easy to figure out: 'What the fuck...? If he encounters anyone in here, he'll be at the most amiable he's likely to get.

Never one to let fear hold him back, and realizing he can't stay in here forever, he eventually gets over his shock enough that he decides to head through the door. He ends up on the other side amidst some ramshackle buildings that look like they haven't had human inhabitants for about the past one hundred years or so. He'll be limping through them, a tall figure hunched over. His legs are unable to be used, so he's getting around using a pair of very archaic leg braces and a hand crutch. Don't let that fool you into complacency though: he comes from a warrior culture and is a Viking through and through.]

II. The Light Divided

[This place is strange and it's put the Viking on edge. The eternal night seems far too much like how Ragnarok is supposed to go in his world, where everything just devolves into death and chaos until the whole world is consumed. The mirrors absolutely fascinate him, considering that glass is too rare and precious in his world to be used for something with such a flippant purpose. If you're on the other side in the light, you might notice the teen with the startlingly bright blue eyes and archaic leg braces staring intently through the mirror. If he sees someone, he'll look surprised, but try to get their attention.

When he finally finds someone in the nighttime with him, don't be surprised to find Ivar aiming an axe right at your head. No, don't run, he can throw that thing with accuracy in under a second even if he can't run after you. Just listen and wonder whether he always has an expression on his face like he wants to murder everyone around him. (He does.)]

Ær eru yðr? Hvat ir iord-rīke?

['Who are you? What is this place (lit. this world)?' He demands. At least he'll wait for a response before deciding to attack.]

III. The Shadow Realm

[One of Ivar's weaknesses is that he has very little in the way of fear. He's used to so often pushing his limitations that he never knows when to stop or when's the time to start being afraid of something. He's seen a few of the shadows before, but they haven't attacked up until now. But there's now one that's in a shape rather vaguely like a giant snake trying to attack him.

It's not like he could escape even if he wanted to, considering he has to use a pair of leg braces and a crutch to help him get around, but he doesn't even try. Instead, he pulls out a knife and starts to fight back against the monster. It's soon clear he's in over his head here, but it's too late to back out. Looks like he's up against something he has no idea how to defeat. Well, he's never run from a battle before, and he's not about to start now. He's quite stubborn like that.

A little help would be greatly appreciated right about now.]

IV. Wildcard

[Poke me if you'd like something else at Light_shade]

II.

[sorrypardonyesthankyou]

No. Sorry, pardon-- I don't understand.

[Ruth knows many things: the past, the future, how they twist and spiral. But right now, they're knotting, and her skull's stabbed with every effort she makes to unravel what's going on. Just seeing--if that's what it can be called when one doesn't have eyes--is an effort, one that leaves her with a drop of blood sliding down from one nostril. But she can use her powers enough to get a sense of him: run through with tension, a strength carrying through his voice and stance, eyes that say don't test me.

She wouldn't have reason to even if she thought she could. Instead, she raises her hands, open and empty, and waits.]

ruth aldine | x-men

[sorrypardonyesthankyou]

nb: reference to suicide

Her gift is seeing the future. Her curse is missing this one.

Ruth says goodbye to Mr. Logan--her old teacher, her old headmaster, and now just old--and goes upstairs to die. The plant is watered. The front door is closed. And when she opens the bathroom door, her bathroom isn't there. She's running before she realizes it, and then she's throwing herself against the door at the end of the hall, breathing against it when it shuts behind her again.

Nothing is familiar, and as she gets the sense of the room, everything begins to hurt. A hand at her temple, just over her white blindfold, and another fumbling for the doorknob--she'll go back the way she came, she'll give Cyclops his warning--

But she doesn't return to Brooklyn when she pushes back through the door that brought her here. Instead, there's a dusty ballroom that looks like it was abandoned mid-wedding sometime a decade ago. And catching the details of chiffon bows and petrified cake, feeling the people there in the room with her, overwhelms her with nausea.

She retches up bile into the punchbowl, her hair falling around her face.

[ooc: Ruth speaks English! She's also...not doing great atm:

1. Her canonpoint is one in which she's actively suicidal. If you want to avoid any reference to that, just let me know!
2. Since she's used to using psychic powers 24/7 as a sort of assistive technology for her blindness, she's basically ignoring the accompanying pain and nosebleeds so she can keep herself from walking off a cliff.]

rusty af

[namelessgod]

He's tinkering with a receiver, a radio with knobs to tune to a station but no screen to say where exactly the tuning has landed you. The radio sits, hissing about its low battery at the prince, on a corner of the room opposite of Ruth. It sits prettily on a champagne-color covered seat. Between white noise that sounds not unlike the din of whitewater in a too-quiet woods, the phantom voices (garbled or cut, but understandable and there), and the single-minded
desperation of having just witnessed slaughter and now being in a hall of festivities--

Ashitaka barely has the presence of mind to scan the room for intrusion every other breath.

A terrible thing for a man fighting a war.

But spellbound he isn't, and the noise of sickness has him turn sharply to face the lady-- standing and reaching for his blade and letting that cursed hand lose its grip of the thing all in one go. What had been instinctive suspicion gave way easily to concern and (radio and ghostly voices be damned) the young man (tired, tattered) chances several steps towards the girl, hand hesitantly (gently) outstretched.

"You're bleeding," he says. It's the first words he speaks in this world. He doesn't know they'll sound like an old, dead tongue to this blind company. His voice is-- he tries for it to be soft, but this isn't a child he's talking to and so it isn't overly so, it's-- it's authentic, the way he frowns at the lack of source for the blood (no open wounds, not that he can see or guess at). "Are you hurt in any way, have you a poison in you we can heal?"

(The radio keeps cutting in and out with conversations being held Elsewhere, oblivious. )

denji | chainsaw man

[chainsawman]

a. radio station
[ You shouldn't be here. If how he felt could be put into words, that would have been accurate. Denji's been running for longer than he cares to count, and he still hasn't reached the end of the tunnel. There's nothing chasing after him, but that's all the more frightening to him - he can't get a grip on himself.

Just before he thinks he'll die of exhaustion, he stops short of slamming straight into what looks to be some sort of old computer terminal about waist high. It occurs to him that he can finally catch his breath, but not before doubling over and heaving. He's completely gassed. ]

Haa, ha...

[ He falls to his knees, quickly turns around, and sits with his back against the desks, staring back into the abyss from which he arrived. It didn't look nearly as lengthy as he thought it was. ]

b. shadows die a few times
[ Denji is no stranger to creatures like these. But he isn't used to them taking such a uniform palette. The devils he had spent his youth hunting and ripping apart were usually more colorful than this - and more tangible. Though he didn't try anything to begin with, he must've gotten on their bad side - a pair of shadows, shaped liked rats the size of dogs, skittered towards him, and even a solid kick went straight through them. ]

Argh, shit! What's with these things?!

[ Another kick sends his shoe flying down the street. Serves him right for not tying the damn things, ever. ]

c. intruder alert
[ A door slams open, and from the outside world comes Denji, practically flying through the doorway. He doesn't take long to slam it shut at precisely the same speed at which he opened it, and in a moment of panic, he holds it shut with the whole weight of his body against it. He looks a little worse for wear, but not so bad that you'd worry he's in mortal peril. ]

Whoa! [ He seems really surprised to see someone else (You). ] This place is crazy! Seriously crazy! What's going on?!

[ He's a bit concerned. Maybe more than a bit. ]

notes: ( Denji speaks Japanese and is borderline illiterate. He probably won't be able to read anything written down and put through a mirror, and even text messages will be a trial for him since he's dumb as a box of rocks. He's also in really bad shape despite how energetic he is. Feel free to PM me or plurk me at bondrewd for anything. )

c.

[badassassin]

[Athena had just been sitting there minding her own business, so when someone comes barreling through the door, she jerks upright, ready to fight. This entire experience has kept her on edge, her adrenaline pumping at all times, but she forces herself to relax somewhat when she sees it's just a person. Anything that isn't a shadow seems to be relatively safe, so far.

It takes her a second to realize that he's not speaking English, and she slowly sits back down.]

Uh... I don't understand you, [she says slowly, like that will help, shaking her head and shrugging to better get the point across.] English?

madi / the 100 / moon

[louwoda]

[ madi speaks english and a canon-specific language, so yee-haw, let's tag ]

a. RADIO (OTA).

[There's a few short bursts of hesitant static spaced several seconds apart, like someone is pressing the PTT button without saying anything, stopping, then trying again.

Eventually, a voice comes over: it's a girl. She sounds like she's trying very hard to sound important.]

Hello? Does anyone... [Another burst of static.] Can you hear me? Are you there?

b. RADIO WAVES (MOON).

[Everything is going wrong.

The sky is alight and the ground rumbles and there's rain and it feels like the world is ending. Madi runs through the streets, puddles splashing in her wake, trying to find shelter from the sudden, freezing storm. Water cascades down the awning she darts under, and once she manages to wrench the door open, she's met with stairs butting right up against the entryway, more water pouring down like a ton of miniature waterfalls.

She slams the door shut, and the water pours out from under it, rising up to her ankles quickly.

Then she sees someone else running by, and a primal part of her brain tells her that there's safety with someone else -- anyone else -- and she darts after them, trying to shield her head from the rain with her hands.] Wait! Wait up --!

c. WILDCARD (OTA).

[ write me whatever and i'll roll with it ]

b.

[coleader]

[ Clarke doesn't think it's really Madi at first. Any little girl will sound like Madi, look like Madi; it's all she can ever think about when they're separated. Is Madi OK? Is she doing everything I taught her to stay safe? That doesn't make it real.

When she turns, she stops in her tracks and blinks a few times. Dark braids. A face so stupidly adorable you just want to squish it. ]

Madi?

[ She takes a tentative step forward, water rippling by her feet. Then she's sprinting to meet her halfway, the rainwater splashing everywhere from the force of her steps. ]

Oh, my god. Madi.

Coraline Li | OC | OTA

[primordialerebus]

Arrival

In. Out. In. Out.

That was the mantra repeating in Coraline’s mind as she clutched her head, forcing herself to take deep breaths that seemed to do nothing against the onslaught of sensations slamming into her mind. She wasn’t fucking looking, and yet, she could still feel everything. The walls, the old equipment, the wires inside the machinery, the dark spaces in-between that seem to shift and solidify as she focuses on them. She presses herself even closer to the wall, doing her best to bring herself back to here and now. The only reprieve was the blankness that seemed to match with the shafts of light breaking through the windows, except reprieve was an overstatement because such null was unsettling.

As if sensing her distress, the darkness started to close around her. At that, she finally found the strength to run, bolting out the door and away from the too comforting terrifying shadows that followed after her.

--

Sometime later.

--

So those shadowy figures weren’t friendly. That was good to know.

Quickly weighing the pros and cons of staying outside: where there was pain and shadow monsters vs. inside: where it was Dark… well. Both sucked honestly, but she needed to put a wall or something between her and the thing that was chasing after her. So inside it was.

Ducking under a… building? That jutted out sidewise from the wall, she threw herself into the nearest door, slamming it closed. Hopefully, this would be enough to either lose it, or make it lose interest. As she held the door closed, she quickly realized she wasn’t alone in the room.

“… I am so sorry.” She said quietly, unaware of her own inhuman appearance and the knife that was still in her chest.

Radio Waves

Sitting in front of the mirror, she squinted into the light, watching as the… storm buffeted the landscape. Anything to distract from the reality of her new situation really. One where she could barely feel the debris cutting into her and the water soaking into her bones while she was out there. One where she couldn’t feel the cold. One where she hadn’t noticed a fucking knife in her chest.

One where she clearly wasn’t human anymore.

This was hell wasn’t it? It had to be.

As if by providence, the walkie talkie laying nearby suddenly came to life with harsh static. She scooped up the device, waving away the shadows that had started to coalesce around her in the process.

“Hello? Is anyone there?????”

Wildcard
[OOC: Fuck me up tbh]

radio waves

[sorrypardonyesthankyou]

"Yes yes, yes, sorry, yes--" Ruth's voice is heavy, a little more mumbly than usual. She's been sleeping fitfully, curled up on a velveteen loveseat with a child's sleeping bag thrown over her, but the crackle of the walkie talkie next to her rouses her. "Who is it?"

Any new voice feels rare and precious. She doesn't want to miss it.

logan / wolverine | marvel 616 | night side | ota

[snikthatch]

i. not in kansas - arrival - moonside

[ OK, this is weird. But he's seen weirder. Hell, not long ago he was dead. And that hadn't even been the first time.

So, weird. Thing is, weird usually has something at the end of it, crouched and waiting and full of teeth. So he's not about to stick around and wait for it. He heads out, lip curling back from his teeth as he pulls in a breath full of the stink of old dust, old stone, old world. The strange light doesn't phase him, nor does the lack of people. He's searching for answers and he's damn sure gonna find them.

He keeps his claws out, just in case.

A sound, a scuff. He whirls around, snarling.]

ii. watch out dorothy - either

[ The stink of the air is getting to him. Or maybe it's just the weirdness that fills the place. Or maybe it's something else.

He's prowling from structure to structure, searching. Hunting for anything to make this place make sense. He's pulled his cowl back; his skin is damp with sweat. Fever. Body rejecting something.

He stops, hand against a wall, dizzy. ]

Ok, this ain't fun. [ He straightens up. Shakes his head a little. ] There had better be beer around here.

[ A door nearby. He doesn't hesitate, kicks it open. ]


( ooc: Logan speaks English, Arabic, Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Cheyenne, Lakota, Spanish, and Mandarin and has some knowledge of French, German, Thai, Vietnamese, Farsi and Portuguese. Boy has been around, yo~ )

ii.

[ascocarp]

[Ellie is walking down an endless staircase (god, it's getting boring) and nibbling on a piece of jerky. She's also holding a stiletto in her free hand, because you never know, man.]

[And then, of course, you do. The staircase ends in a corridor, and she can hear the shaky breathing of another human. She swallows the rest of her jerky in a single gulp, and waits behind a corner, crouched low, listening.]

[He's talking about beer? Ellie rolls her eyes, and begins to back slowly up the staircase, only to discover it's gone. She bumps up against a wall, and swears under her breath.]

klaus hargreeves ☂ the umbrella academy (sun side, also: cw for drugs)

[channellings]

splintered sunlight;

[fingers grasping the old doorknob, he twists, strains to push— and ends up falling flat on his face when the damn door swings with more momentum than he's anticipating.] Sonuvabitch, [he's muttering into the floor, wincing and hissing as he draws himself up onto his elbows, raises his head to scan the area.

is this. a radio station? he flutters his eyelashes, inhales sharply then sneezes immediately afterward.] Shit, when's the last time someone called the maid?

[now that klaus's sitting on his knees, he raises both hands and begins wafting some of the lingering dust away, holding his breath as he does, praying it won't make him sneeze a second time. mercifully, it doesn't. while he's moving to stand, hands lowering to brush off his coat, army vest, and leather pants, he notices something particular: it's eerily quiet for a radio station. like, unnervingly so, and it has him feeling even edgier than usual.

despite his blatant hesitance, he considers his options, decides he likes the sun side a bit better, takes the chance—]


divided light;

[and ends up regretting it anyway when the disorientation hits him like a freight train. equilibrium thrown, he stumbles forward a couple steps, reaches to catch himself on the side of a dilapidated building and hopes his shaky knees don't drop him on his ass another time.

it's not unlike time-jumping with his brother or briefcase-traveling, minus the dull ache of feeling as if his head's been stuffed full of cotton. he takes a minute to gather his bearings, inhales deep and holds – one, two, three – then exhales slowly.] Keep it together, [he scolds himself quietly, forcing his eyes open as he straightens back up.

the white noise of static urges him forward; he picks up a few food items, knowing they'll come in handy at some point, even if some of them disappear before he has a chance to get them. whatever this place is, it has to be fucking with him, right? things don't just disappear for no reason.

so, he waits nearby a rusted old car, watches where stuff starts vanishing and scribbles a messy 'hello' onto the windshield.]


shadow realm;

[seeing ghosts isn't ever enough, is it? oh no, never enough, naturally. the shadows are somehow more distressing than his usual spirit floating here or there; at least he'd had narcotics to fight those off but here? it's drier than the sahara desert and he doubts pills are going to be easy to find amongst all the debris.

he finds that watching them only makes his anxiety worse, so klaus forces himself to stare at his sneakers, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his coat. seems to work out fine, until one of them abruptly appears in front of him, sprouting tentacles and a gaping maw, some love craftian cthulu-style monster. his own mouth opens, although no sound comes out-- he's just standing there, gaping like a fish outta water, frightened tears beginning to prick the corners of his eyes.

ben momentarily flashes through his mind, an utterly panicked shriek comes tumbling out of his mouth and he puts all his energy into self-preservation, backpedaling away as fast as he can because jesus christ, that is not the horror he's familiar with.

which ends up being the smartest idea he's had since his arrival here, more than likely. he spins on his toe and sprints in the opposite direction, floundering through nonexistent resistance, muttering unintelligible nonsense while he flees toward the nearest shelter. please, god, let one of these doors open, then aloud,] Dear, Karma: whatever I did to deserve this? I'm sorry!

video killed the radio star;

[the moment the sky opens up and begins dumping down ice-cold snowflakes, klaus is suddenly a lot more grateful for his fur-lined coat, huddling down into its collar while tucking the flaps in tight against his narrow torso. he's shivering regardless of the extra warmth though, teeth chattering, hands clasped together and tucked beneath his chin against the hollow of his throat.

at least they've got the mirrors to use for protection. klaus's huddling nearby one the moment he notices this, hunkering down in preparation for waiting out the bizarre storm that's come out of nowhere. to be honest, he shouldn't be surprised by it-- whatever this place is, it's proven to be unstable the entire time so far, what would make now any different? there's a heavy sigh then he drops into a sit, arms tucked between his chest and thighs, lips pressing tight for the barest minute before he huffs again.

what the hell is that noise?]

Do you hear something?


wildcard;

[ooc: if none of these are doing it for you, hit me with your best shot! ayyy fingerguns]

divided light.

[itselbitch]

[ eliot's been trying to get his own bearings of this place, trying to map out what he can manage to only to find that every turn is a little bit different. in fact, when he turns down a street he thought he'd already been through, it turns into an alleyway. down the way sits a rusted car, and the magician is surprised to find he's not alone.

the man leans over the hood of the car, looking at the windshield. eliot squints, approaching as he does, to try and make out what exactly is so interesting about it. the letters appear as the man moves back to the side of the car -- ]

...hello, [ he reads aloud flatly, then furrows his brow, realizing the man was clearly just goofing off. ] That's one way to leave your mark, I guess.

luna-terra ♁ heaven will be mine | ota!

[proto]

I— i could promise you the moon brought down with a lasso
( the hallway feels unreal. it feels wrong. a sharp fragment of a memory from a life lived a full lifetime ago. luna-terra has been in space far too long, living in dwellings and vessels and piloting a Ship-Self made out of metals and plastics. they had always felt like toys, models and figurines meant to give the feeling of playing house and of fighting without the harsh reality of it. since when has she seen wood splinter and metal rust like this? it's been decades. it only looks like this under the oppressive weight of earth's gravity, and yet it isn't. it's off. it's wrong. she doesn't know. she can only do what she only ever does: soldier on. keep moving, keep acting, until something makes sense. or until it doesn't, or she can't.

what she can and does do is spill through the door and into the darkened radio station, landing on hands and knees. the floorboards skin her palms; physical damage is sharp and electric at the same time, a frightening thrill after years of metaphorical fighting against a fake threat and then play-fighting against other toy soldiers. she stands, taking note of everything in the room, eyes scanning the monitors with wariness mingling with confusion. it has to be earth. doesn't it? it looks alien to her, and having spent two decades in space, the only place that might look that way to her now would be earth itself.

there aren't any answers in here. only questions. so she does what is natural to her: act without thinking, exiting the room and into the moon-bleached streets of a reality cut in two. )

a | ( on the moon side of the bifurcated reality, luna-terra is caught in the contradiction. there's no way a place like this could exist in space — there was too much implied history in all of these disparate buildings, piled into mountains of debris. but the gravity is wrong. she might not be able to read the narration of a place, of a person, of a conversation or of an altercation like pluto or saturn might, but she's felt the nagging tug of earth's gravity enough to know what it feels like. this place is twisted in a way that can only remind her of when she has felt spacetime twist. when you can't figure out when or where you are — when "up" is "then" and "here" is something that either is, was, about to be, or will be in a thousand years.

it's unsettling, and it crawls up the nape of her neck like a slow shudder. she's on edge. and so when she hears the clatter and clamor of someone — or something else — she disappears. luna-terra is known as the "ghost" for a reason; she's very good at making herself unseen when she needs to be, waiting until the ideal moment.

but the air hangs thick, tense, and heavy as the stranger approaches where she lies in wait. in a place where there doesn't appear to be anything living nearby, there is the distinct feeling of eyes, keenly trained upon each move. )

b | ( someone on the sun side might not be able to see luna-terra, but her presence can be sensed in other ways. ripples through a split in spacetime, manifesting as a ghost might. even though she felt as though she had entered a building tall as a skyscraper, she might as well be standing in a room more like a small and cramped convenience store. the shelves are crowded with goods either rotted or rusted or falling apart, and luna-terra rifles through them now. items on the shelves on the sun side appear to pick themselves up, turn themselves over, and then toss themselves to the floor, cracking and scattering across grimy, broken tiles.

somewhere nearby, a radio crackles. ) It'd be too much to ask for anything useful, huh? ( behind the counter, glass inset to several cabinets might have held more valuable items. here, they reflect like mirrors, and in those mirrors the tall woman can be seen, tossing several crumbling magazines over her shoulder. ) Figures.

II— true dark.
( what she wouldn't give for a firearm. even if it was a real one, one that fired shards of lead at lethal velocity instead of bullets of hard light at an imagined one, it would be better than feeling completely exposed. as it is, luna-terra has equipped herself with a long, rusted length of pipe. it's close enough to the mare crisium's spear, give or take almost everything about it, and even though she's used to moving the body of her Ship-Self with the careful orchestration of its controls, she still knows the movements as if she had done them herself.

so she feels at least half-formidable, but when she turns down a long, winding avenue and finds herself face-to-face with — a shadow. it pulses, shifting and formless, and though that might not mean much to anyone else, luna-terra's eyes widen with shock and confusion as it brings back memories of fighting a war against an enemy that might or might not have actually existed.

well, this threat certainly exists, and it might not be just existential.

a mass which appears to be its head fixates on her, and then it lurches forward, lumbering on two pillar-like limbs. she holds the pipe out to her side like a polearm, but she's realizing just how foolish this decision was to begin with and just how fragile she really is, separated from her ship-self.

were she in her ship-self faced off against the existential threat, she would have done something stupid. but she's not. so she does something vaguely smart: she runs — and the creature chases. )

III— imagined voices creak and crack.
( outside, rainwater which had pooled into the streets after a sudden and violent deluge now begins to swirl and eddy up, reaching back into the sky like it was remembering the feeling of weightlessness before condensation and precipitation had brought it tumbling down in the grip of gravity. sometimes the wind picks up again and sends water and pieces of debris tumbling through the streets like they were an acceleration tunnel. inside this small room, which seems only equipped for people to wait in (crowded with long benches and chairs and nothing else), luna-terra sighs. moving forward in this situation is the only thing that keeps her sane. having to stay still like this is torture.

the natural-yet-unnatural sound of the odd weather outside is broken up by the sibilant crackle and sigh of a radio nearby. it's attached to the wall, and though it's more like something they'd give to the scouts back on earth, luna-terra is bored enough to try anything. she approaches, inspecting it, and then decides to just give it a shot. )

Hello? Europa. Do you read me, out there? ( there's only the crackle of static, so luna-terra adds to it, sighing into the speaker. ) You know, I do listen. Even when I don't follow your advice. Because I figure, if I do the wise thing, it wouldn't really be me. And even then, you guide me with the inverse of your words, just like you always have.

( it's lonely here. lonelier even than the depths of space. at least there, her ship-self let her communicate with the void, with the total lack of gravity and culture. but without that, here, with nothing but herself and this radio... it's almost suffocating.

well. it's a junkyard. luna-terra should've figured she'd end up in a place like that one day. )

IV— wildcard
( anything else! feel free to contact me at lycanthropic. also, I will conform to whatever tag style one chooses. )

sun side

[primordialerebus]

Coraline wasn’t hungry, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t ever be hungry again. So. Food. Food was important. Just in case she wasn’t actually dead. Food would mean she survival and that maybe, she’d be able to find her way back home. Back to her best friend and family.

Also, having something to barter with would be helpful considering what she looked like.

She had been rifling through a box of what was supposed to Slim Jims (except instead of jerky in the packaging, there was Styrofoam) when things suddenly started going flying the next shelf over. She screamed, slamming herself against the wall in fear. Oh god did a shadow thing get in here without her noticing??? Except… she couldn’t feel anyone else in this strange room. No other… shadows other than her own and those of inanimate objects. Weird.

She crept forward, peeking down the aisle to see what looked like poltergeist activity, except there was clearly a figure reflected in the glass of the cabinets on the other side. As she stares, she barely registers the radio crackling to life.

“What the fuck…”

Tokidoki Rikugou | Amatsuki | OTA;

[yokeye]

[notes: language is Japanese / he's on the sun side]

1. SPLINTERED

[The hallway itself seems to lurch as he runs; he doesn't want to look back. There's a sinking feeling of fear in his chest. It's not of demons or monsters, but something primal and unseen. The hallway somehow inciting more terror than the hell gate had. The lingering scent isn't blood and rot, but merely stale; the absence of anything distinguishable. Almost-whispers reach his ears as the walls shift. Once seemingly infinite, the hallway ends abruptly ahead, a door, a way out. The door itself is as dull and faded as the colors in the hallway, muted and somewhat surreal, though it's tangible. He grasps the door handle without pause and pulls it open, exiting the hallway into darkness. His feet find nothing to stand on and he falls, screaming.

The descent is short, a few feet, and he lands on an uneven surface. The room is gloomy and shadowed, light streaming in mutely from the windows to dully illuminate antique electronic equipment of some kind. From hundreds of years go, it looks like. He's never been good with history; but these things are from his own past and from the future of the last place he'd been in. He ignores them in favor of looking out the window. Buildings are strangely situated and some appear to be constructed in the ways of impossible architecture; stairways that have no end and curve back in on themselves, upside-down balconies, half-standing structures disjointed in a way that he can't tell what they are, or what they used to be.

Toki turns back to the room, but there's nowhere to go except through the door again. It's still open. He's unsure if this is real, or he's dreaming, or hallucinating, but it doesn't matter. The door is the only way out and he'll try it. It doesn't lead him to the hallway again, it's instead a large room with a glass wall looking out to the street. Maybe it's an abandoned hotel lobby or a retail store. He doesn't explore the building, but heads directly through the front doors to the street. He's shouting as soon as he's outside.]

Hello!? Is anyone here!? What's happening!?

[Toki may be a tiny bit panicked, afraid he's accidentally reset the universe again or something like that.]


2. DIVIDED

[Toki has been wandering around the same area for hours, but every time he looks at the sun, it's in the same position. He'd just come from a place where the sun and sky were the way to tell time; he'd gotten used to it, and now it's highly disturbing to see everything at a stand still. He has no idea how long he's been here, or if time is broken somehow. He's seen no one around, but things have... changed. Like someone's there, only invisible. A piece of rubble skittering a few feet, like someone had kicked it; only no one's there and there's no breeze to have moved it. A crackling of something, voices, tinny and lost quickly into nothing and he hasn't been able to find a source.

Exploring one strangely tilted building, he finally comes across something oddly interesting. A mirror, cracked and tilted, barely attached to the wall. The reflection is not him, but a room somewhere else. Not the one he's in. Touching the mirror does nothing; it's not some weird portal. He yanks it off the wall, some plaster falling to the floor as the nail comes loose easily. He'll continue to wander, keeping the mirror to look through; hoping for something to show in it that will give him more a sense of what this place is.

For a moment, he thinks he sees a person in the mirror, looking away from it. Shadowed and features unrecognizable. He positions the mirror to keep the figure in view, moving closer to it, closer in the mirror's reflection, but towards nothing in particular in his own space. He taps on the mirror, thinking maybe it might somehow get their attention and they'd turn around. Does it work both ways?]


3. SHADOW

[It took Toki a while to notice them. The dark things. It started with a feeling of being watched, similar to walking along the ghost road - and like that, he assumes they can't hurt him if he doesn't look. Before long, the fear of not knowing what they are rises to the point he has to know. The shadow looms, skeletal fingers reaching out from a distinctly inhuman-shaped body. A centipede, with a set of human arms. As he steps closer, there's a noticeable drop in temperature and it makes his spine tingle. Still, he needs to know what they are, and he will ask the thing point blank.]

Hey! Are you a demon!? Why are you following me!?

[The shadows shifts, insect legs moving slowly. It doesn't answer.]

I'm talking to you! I know you can hear me, demon! What is this place; am I still... there? Don't ignore me!


4. RADIO

[At the first crack of weird lightning and the rumbling underfoot, Toki takes shelter in the nearest building. It might not be a good idea with an earthquake or whatever was happening, but the downpour of rain and the wind that follows it proves otherwise. Water pours down the stairs, yet the first floor isn't flooded. How did it start above? Physics don't seem to apply to the weather, much like the structures.

There's a noise from the next room, a static-y hiss and then music cutting in and out. Inside the room, there's a radio or some sort on a low table. It's foreign to him, a rectangular box with knobs and dials. Connected by a curled wire is a speaker-like thing with one button. A crackly voice comes out of it, garbled and inter-cut with static. He picks up the speaker, clicks the button and starts to say something, but there's a horrible feedback screech and he drops the device. It dangles off the table. Picking it up again, he pulls the cord further away from the box. Clicking the button results in minimal feedback this time, but the static is still there. He doesn't know what to say, but rambles into it anyway.]

Does this thing work? If you can hear me, there's like this weird sun that doesn't move and I think the universe is exploding or something!!


5. WILDCARD
Anything goes.

2;

[millimeter]

[Prompto is shuffling through a shelf, baffled as he pulls out book after book of nothing but blank pages. Some of them look like they should be titles he knows, whether storybooks from childhood or one of his friends' novels, but nope, nothing. It's weirdly disconcerting.

He's so absorbed in leafing through the pages that he jumps at the sound of tapping. He wheels around—not towards a mirror, but the radio across from it. Prompto eyes it, suspicious, before he slowly reshelves his current book. He unclips the walkie-talkie on his belt, before awkwardly speaking into it.]

Heyyyyyy. [That was unnecessarily long and awkward.] Is someone there? 'Cause I'll tell you, creepy unexplained tapping is not great for my nerves.

[He hasn't noticed the mirror. Yet.]

raven reyes | the 100 | ota

[rpms]

A. THE SUNLIGHT SPLINTERED.

[ She needs a break, her hip is throbbing so when Raven shoulders the door open, she collapses. Balled up fists hit the floor in frustrations but mostly because half of her body feels like it has caught on fire. Running isn't her forte, it hasn't been since Murphy put a bullet in her spine. The only keeping her upright and mobile is that brace that's latched onto her right leg. It almost looks as mismatched as everything else around her, built off parts she could get her hands on.

Raven takes a moment to herself, leaning against a wall. Her cheeks puff out when she lets out a sigh. ] Get yourself together, Raven. [ , she tells herself, bumping the back of her head against the wall. Some time passes, Raven doesn't know how long, but after a while she peels herself off the ground. Her leg hasn't felt any better but she is going to have to ignore it, ignore it as best as she can.

Looking out the window doesn't help, it just leads to more confusion and Raven has more than enough of that. There is only one door and it's the same one she burst in from but now it leads to another place.

Out she goes into this world, in another place.

On her way out, she almost collides with someone or something. Raven isn't too sure but she swings a fist in either case. ] Fuck off!

b. THE LIGHT, DIVIDED.

[ Raven has been following letters, four letters specifically. H-E-L-P. Help who? There's no one around her. She checks every time another letter appears, watches it float aimlessly above her head, just out of reach. It doesn't matter if she can, they dissipate after awhile.

There are mirrors she passes along the way, broken and sharp. When she looks into them, she's surprised that what she sees isn't her reflection but someplace else, another place. She isn't quite sure what to make of it, or what to make of anything. As she passes the next mirror, she almost thinks she sees another person, but they are gone when she looks again.

And then something else catches her attention, there is someone else. She holds up a rusted pipe, something she's found along her journey. Holds it like a baseball bat, ready to swing if need be. ] Who are you and how long have you been following me?

c. WILDCARD

[ Go buckwild honestly. ]

b.

[ascocarp]

[Ellie is... tired. She's tired of people who can't seem to figure out how to surprise. She's tired of the knowledge of fights she can win. The lady grabs a rusty pipe. Ellie holds out a molotov cocktail and a book of matches. Unlit. Let's not get hasty.]

I could care less about stalking you, lady.

john murphy | the 100 | ota

[mofi]

a. THE SHADOW REALM.

Josephine, you bitch [ , Murphy yells out into the nothingness. It doesn't do much, the yelling, just releases a little amount of irritation that's been building up inside of him the moment he literally blinked here. No one responds to him, of course. There doesn't seem to be anyone around him. That's the disconcerting part. That and everything is just a little too quiet, very eerie.

But -- he is finding out really quick he isn't exactly alone.

The silhouette of a very familiar figure reaches out to him, fingers extending out to look more like claws than anything else. He reels back, almost falling right on his ass. ] What the hell [ , he breathes out, raggedly. He continues to stumble, the shadowy figure bleeding into another shadow.

It's gone now but he knows it's following him. The paranoia is eating away at him, making his skin crawl. ]

You're okay. You're okay. [ Murphy reassures himself. The reassurance only goes so far when you feel like you are absolutely alone while shadows of your past are sneaking up on you.

The building that he goes in, as dilapidated as it is, proves to be a smart idea. No shadow figures are emerging from the walls. He freezes when the sounds of footsteps hit his ears and ducks behind a desk that's been tipped over. ]

Who's out there? I got a gun so don't do anything stupid. [ No, Murphy does not have a gun but who knows that? ]

b. RADIO WAVES.

[ He rushes out of a building the moment the ground starts to shake beneath his feet because like hell is a building going to collapse on him. Outside isn't any better.

The wind has picked up so much that a piece of paper has turned into a weapon and cuts him across his cheek. If he could stop and laugh at himself, he would. But paper cut jokes will have to be set aside for later if he hasn't died by then.

He runs around with his jacket over his head, keeping him safe for who knows how long. Murphy can't even see where exactly he is going, he's just trying to look for a safe place to hole up in.

At least his cheek is warm from his own blood. That's an upside, right?

He goes into another building because he can take wading through water. Another person has decided to seek shelter, or something, in the same building as him. ] I'm not in the mood [ , Murphy lets out a ragged breath. ] I got a paper cut and that's all I can handle right now.

c. RADIO.

[ Your radio comes to life, annoying static before you hear a voice. Soft and crackled. ] Testing, testing. One, two. One, two, three. Anyone out there? Do you copy?

d. WILDCARD.

[ If you have something else in mind, go for it! Or, if you want, hit me up at gaybird ]

a

[broadaxes]

[Johanna's footsteps sound heavier than she is. Her boots weigh about as half as much as her. She comes down the steps of the fucked up house and ducks down.]

Whoa, a gun?

[She holds her hands up, just in case.]

I'm not going to loot or steal from you. [Lies.] I don't know what's going on either.

peter parker | mcu | ota

[webslingers]

a. RADIO

[ Peter is lost, so very lost. Every time he thinks he's caught his barrings, everything changes. He swears he saw a waterfall flow upwards instead of down. He tells himself that it's probably an after effect at staring something for too long. Whatever, Peter can handle that.

He was in space, after all. On some planet, off saving the world. And maybe he is still there, except for the fact that he's not.

And not to mention his powers have gone haywire. His usual tingling precognition has turned into something sharper, like a drill going through his skull. They are hiccups, thankfully. It has happened enough times that he's wishing he could will his powers away.

They haven't been exactly helping him all too much, not his spidey-senses anyway.

Peter has tucked himself in what used to be a radio station. Everything inside seems to be broken. When it seems like it's a good idea to head out, a radio crackles to life. ]

Hello! Anyone there?

b. SHADOWS

[ Thwip.

It takes a few tries to get the stream of webbing to hit where he wants it to go. Somehow he's been missing the mark and sometimes his web shooters just don't work at all. He can't rely on them now so he stops using them.

Every time a shadow is close, his head feels like someone has screeched in his ears. His vision wobbles and statics. He makes it to the closest building for refuge. They don't seem to be lurking in any of the buildings he has gone in.

A few seconds in, Peter hears something. Footsteps! He waits for whoever to round the corner. ]

c. WILDCARD

[ I will accept anything. Please and thank you. ]

b

[devilcomplex]

[Matt hears a heartbeat. He... thinks it's a heartbeat. His senses are all out of whack here, things aren't making sense. He's hearing things he normally wouldn't hear, voices from long past. Sounds that don't belong here. But he hears the heartbeat and goes for it.]

Hello? My name is Matt, I'm not a threat!

Matt Murdock (MCU)

[devilcomplex]

SHADOWS.

[Matt can't hear them. He obviously can't see them. He can't smell them. There's no way to tell one is coming after him. He fights off shadow after shadow until he hears the sound of neon nearby. He runs for it.

It's what seems to be a diner, and from what he can feel, it's super dirty.]

Hello?


THE SUNLIGHT SPLINTERED.

[Matt can feel how dirty this place is, roaming his hands over everything. He feels a mic, but doesn't feel any electricity coming from it. Nothing seems to be on, and the only thing that seems to be "talking" to him is the Door.

He goes to it, and swings it open.]


WILDCARD.

SHADOWS

[snikthatch]

[ The shadows don't bother Logan until they're right on his heels, snapping at him with teeth that aren't there. He turns and swings at them with his claws; catches sight of something that looks like Creed's shoulders bunching, Deathstrike grasping at him.

The claws don't do anything, but it makes him feel a little better as he stalks away, heading for the only refuge he can see: a diner that looks like it's been hit by a hurricane. Dust and trash covers the floors and booths, but he figures there might be something useful under the counters or hidden in the back.

He's halfway through searching the place when a voice and a familiar scent makes him raise his head. ]

Murdock?

Johanna Mason (The Hunger Games)

[broadaxes]

THE LIGHT, DIVIDED.
(dark side)
[Johanna was a smart cookie. It didn't take her long to figure out that there was another side just like this one. Okay, maybe she peered through a mirror for too long and realized she could see others. Then there was experimenting with moving items around. She didn't think to try to turn on the radio. But the radio turned itself on. It spoke to her.]

THE SHADOW REALM.

[Johanna walked along in the dark, hearing birds flutter above. When she looked, they were nothing but shadows. They perched in the trees, flat and black. They mimicked the voices of her family, telling her she got them killed. Johanna started to run to escape the birds, but they followed.

She kept running, looking up at the sky, until she ran into someone.]

WILDCARD.

[rpms]

[ The radio on her end doesn't seem to be connected to anything, not that Raven was aware of. The wires were cut off, splayed at the ends. It crackles to life just when she had become disinterested.

Well, that caught her attention real quick.

She picks up the microphone and presses the talk bar. ] Can anyone here this?