applesaucedream | Tender Lumplings Everywhere, Life's No Fun Without A Good Scare [Open to All]

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Tender Lumplings Everywhere, Life's No Fun Without A Good Scare [Open to All]

The woods are dark and deep, but not particularly lovely. If anything, they feel dangerous, as if something terrible might come lurching out from behind any given tree and tear into the nearest warm body. What that terrible thing might be is anyone's guess. A cat with hands? Slenderman? Stegosaurus? Actual cannibal Shia LaBeouf? All of the above in a horrible mob? It's anyone's guess. But every dreamer will be absolutely convinced that there is something unspeakable out there, and that it's after them.

The dreamers have two things on their side. The first is that there is actually nothing dangerous lurking in these woods (with the possible exception of other dreamers). The pervasive terror the dreamers are feeling is just that: a rift-given feeling, nothing more and nothing less. That snapping twig or rustle in the undergrowth is almost certainly just a squirrel or something else equally harmless.

The second is that no dreamer is alone. They all will be reunited with - or introduced to - their dæmons, a source of comfort in this dark, intimidating wilderness. However frightened the dreamers might be, at least they have someone with them who definitely doesn't want them dead.

[OOC: as ever, any and all are welcome! You don't have to be in the game to join the fun. Dreamers can remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion. And the party only stops when you want it to; feel free to backtag forever.]

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"There's gotta be other dreamers, at least," says Johnny. "This definitely isn't one of mine, and the group ones are usually like... big events. Tons of people have them at a time. But no, I haven't seen anyone else."

At least, he doesn't think so. He has a weird feeling that he has, but as usual that probably won't make any sense until he wakes up. Fuck, he hopes none of his encounters are fucking horrible.

"But trust me, bad shit can happen here. Even if there isn't actually anything after us. There are plenty of dreamers you don't want to meet."

"Can't be anything worse than -"

Incredibly, he breaks himself off. Whatever personal subconscious horrors his own mind has trapped him in before, he has complete confidence that an interdimensional wavelength can come up with something worse. Especially if it happens to be sentient, which is entirely possible.

"Is it possible we could run into other dreamers? Fuck, how would we know? It could just be our heads -" And again, Rush doesn't complete his sentence, abruptly falls silent halfway into it. Too many dark interspersions of thought gathering there, too many things a dream could harvest from his subconscious, too many ways for a Rift to unmake the tenuous grasp of calm he's managed to establish.

"I'm Nikolaos," he replies, ducking his head bashfully even as his tail continues to fan the air. He wants to say he's not half so lovely as her, but he can't quite bring himself to utter the words aloud.

Melanie leans into Aziraphale's hand a little, her smile softening. "We're okay. We saw Crowley and Bayan earlier, and we know it's just a dream." She looks over at Orisa, a little surprised at the way the snake just casually flows over Niko's head and wraps around his shoulders, instead. It's not at all unpleasant - the opposite, really - but it does make Melanie's eyes go wide, and Nikolaos's tail wags so hard that his entire rump swings from side to side as if he's doing a ridiculous sort of dance.

It seems only natural that Melanie should drift over to lean against Aziraphale's side and loop her arms around his waist. Feeling the need to say something on her companion's behalf, she adds, "Niko's been looking after me. He's taken all kinds of different animal shapes. We're not even sure what some of them are." Tilting her chin up, she asks, "What about you two?"

Modomnoc's hardly little by typical bee standards - he's about as long as Sunshine's thumb, and takes up most of Phonea's forearm - but that probably makes him a less enticing prospect as far as any potential poking goes. And at least he doesn't weigh much, so Phonea shouldn't find him difficult to support.

Sunshine looks around the improved clearing with an appreciative smile. It's not as dramatic a shift as she was expecting, but it's still a hell of a lot nicer than it was before Topher got to it, so she's not about to complain. "Nice," she says. Hey, there's even a place to sit that isn't damp and leaf-strewn; what a luxury. And there's enough light for Dom to actually see where in the hell he's going.

She heads for the swing, Modomnoc launching himself off of Phonea's arm to follow her. "So, were you here for the last one with these guys?" she asks as she flops onto the cushioned seat. Her bee lands on her outstretched palm, and she clarifies, "The whole talking spirit animal thing." Dom lets out a faintly condescending snort.

"Apparently," he says, while Rahab stays draped across his shoulders and doesn't deign to speak for itself. It is not so much a mythological horrorterror as it is a lazy mass of dark scales and wings, black except for where the light hits it just right to give an iridescent sheen. A very handsome little dragon, if nothing else, but poorly tempered.

"You could best think of them as manifestations of the soul. I'm sure you've felt the connection already. Of course," he reaches up to stroke his fingers across the dragon's smooth head, "only humans and monsters have souls, so it's very curious that I've gotten one as well."

"Oh, good!" Aziraphale smiles, though he wonders, distractedly, where Crowley's got to. Weren't they together not very long ago? He brushes the confusion aside; some bizarre effect of the dream, no doubt. He smiles indulgently and rests his arm around Melanie's shoulder as she pulls closer.

"We're all right," Orisa volunteers. Aziraphale can sense her eagerness to pass over that question quickly - just as they remember meeting Crowley, they can remember at least two other encounters, with beings they do not want Melanie knowing about, and vice versa. The serpent is quick to change the subject, asking Nikolaos, "You can change? I'm fairly certain I can't change. Can we ssssee?"

"Oh. Yes." Nikolaos looks a little embarrassed at being suddenly put on the spot, but he obliges by changing back to the brindled lion shape he was in before. He doesn't want to make too drastic a shift lest he upset his passenger. "I don't always know exactly what I am," he admits. "I've just been trying to stay big in case something scary actually does come along."

"But we haven't seen anything," Melanie hastens to add, so Aziraphale won't worry.

Niko changes again, then shuffles one of his paws through the leaves. "Is this a panda?" he wonders aloud. "I feel like I might be a panda."

"Oh!" Orisa slithers and shifts her position slightly to adjust for Niko's transformation. "Mossst impresssive," she chuckles.

"That's fascinating," murmurs Aziraphale, just as Niko changes into a 'panda'.

"Ahh..." Orisa peers down at him, studying his odd and rather unnerving feet.

"Not exactly," says Aziraphale delicately. "I suppose you've never seen a proper panda before, have you?"

"Doesn't matter, at any rate. This shape'll properly scare off any missscreants," says Orisa. She starts crawling back toward Aziraphale, who extends his arms again to help her up. She loops back around him and settles there, loose and lazy.

"I believe they're our souls," says Aziraphale, regarding Orisa a bit dubiously as he says so. He's still not quite ready to accept that his soul is apparently beffiting the body of a serpent. Some sort of cosmic joke, must be. "I wonder if yours is able to change shape because of your - condition?"

"Perhapsss," says Orisa thoughtfully. "Because you've got more than one lifeform living in you. Can fungusss have a soul?"

"Search me," says Aziraphale, shrugging and jostling Orisa a bit, causing her to hiss in his ear. "But nor do angels, really. Certainly not souls that look like you."

"Oh, get over yourself," sighs Orisa.

Definitely not with the touching, then. Bees are lovely, spiders are lovely, lots of insect and insect-like creatures are lovely, useful, important creatures. That doesn't mean Topher wants to pet or poke them. But that goes many if not most mammals and other animals as well. He is simply not much of an animal person. Which was fine, living and working at the Dollhouse, because it was never an issue. Animals were a very much random element in their controlled environment, and therefore unwanted. But living in New York, it was a different matter. Still, he'd gotten pretty used to it while he was out and about a lot, but now it seems he's gotten un-used to it again. However, talking animals with human intelligence? Whole different ballgame.

"I wasn't, no", he answers, following along after them and taking up a seat next to Sunshine, relaxing back and putting his arms on the back of the swing, Phonea climbing off his shoulder to find a comfortable seat on a pillow. He's a lot less nervous about physical proximity here than in the waking world, especially with Sunshine who he's become rather comfortable with.

"But I heard about it, so I wasn't that surprised by this one turning up," he says, nodding at Phonea, who gives him an unimpressed look at being referred to as 'this one'.

Seth shakes his head a little at the question, they raises his eyebrows at the information that... this cat thing is supposed to be his soul? Well, then. Suppose he could've gotten a much worse manifestation of his soul. It's basically a somewhat large, light-footed cat, not all that impressive, but then, cats are pretty all right. (Except for that zombie cat, that one time in his home universe. That was a nasty cat.)

And the news that Johnny's soul is apparently a tiny, adorable, fluffy thing makes Seth feel even more protective of Johnny than he already was, even if he's sure Johnny could take care of himself much better than this rabbit gives the impression of.

He snorts at the comment about Peter. "Well, that's Sephronia," he answers, nodding at the margay. Bit florid name for his (their?) tastes actually, perhaps they ought to find a shorter variant of it. Then again, Seth isn't much of a nick-name person either, so it feels odd to change it.

"He's called a friend of mine Rabbit Man 2.0, actually. I think it's become a thing with him," he adds. But then who can fathom the mind of Peter, really. He doesn't seem to need rational reasons.

Oh, okay, so Daine's a wolf this time. Fair enough. Why not? Can she do this in the waking world too? Because Seth knows about the talking to animals bit, that's why he called on her after all, but is turning into animals a thing she actually does?

Seems she's not actually able to answer that at the moment, though he smiles a little at her behavior. Suddenly she looks a lot more like a friendly dog that a dangerous predator, that is reassuring. And the presence of two wolves on their side seems to make this forest marginally less threatening.

"Nothing we can scent or see," Sephronia answers. Implying, of course, that there well might be something anyway, because there certainly feels like there is.

"We're all right, though," Seth adds.

"Look at your feet!" Melanie says with a grin, letting go of Aziraphale so she can crouch in front of Nikolaos and heft one of his oversized forepaws in her hands. He dips his head to nuzzle her hair fondly, then sighs as Orisa crawls back over to Aziraphale.

Their theory about Niko's shape changing abilities makes her frown a little. Not that she has any better ideas. Maybe they should be asking why Orisa can't change into other animals.

But it's Niko who responds, and with a surprising amount of force. "No," he says firmly, shifting into a more recognizable lion shape, his tail twitching uneasily. "I'm not the hungry part. I'm the Melanie part." He butts the crown of his head against Melanie's chest, and she puts her arms around his neck, both flattered and embarrassed by the outburst.

"I think he's right," she says, giving his neck a comforting scritch. "If the cordyceps had a soul, so would all the trees and things, right? So would that," she points out a moss-covered rock, which is conspicuously short any talking animals.

"No problem," Topher replies with a practiced smile. It really is no problem for him, to that to one person's mind while he is interacting with them. At least when it's something as simple as just blocking interference from the Rift, not actively influencing them in any particular direction. It would be impossible to try to do it to everyone here however, just like he can't do anything about the setting in more than the immediate area surrounding them. The dreamscape is too big for that, he'd need someone to boost his power. He knows this because he has actually done that once, and it had been very useful.

"Yeah, just dreams. I don't go fiddling with people's minds, certainly not without asking their permission first," he answers. Hah. As if he's never done that before. It is true though, he has most definitely put those days behind him, as interesting and exciting as it was to do. Given that ninety seven percent chance of apocalypse involved, he does not intend to give this universe the imprinting technology or information.

He does sort of do it in the dreaming, but he tries to keep it, you know, ethical and positive. Actually helping people. And respecting their boundaries when they don't want him to, like with Sunshine, one of the few people he goes to see in the waking world instead.

"It's my Rift-given superpower," he says, materialising four balls and starting to juggle with them, then turning them into apples mid-air, then making them disappear entirely. Phonea may be preening and strutting a little throughout this display. "Dream walking, dreamspace manipulation, and falling asleep and waking up at any given time," he explains, grinning a bit. "Mind you, I know people who could do the same thing in here because they can actually do it while they're awake, but that's different."

It's probably a good thing Daniel is distracted, because at the mention of archaeology, the Doctor looks politely interested at best, and definitely unimpressed. Unless it's Indiana Jones style archaeology. Which is usually isn't. There are only a few people whose style of archaeology actually interests him - which hey, he wonders how Benny's doing these days. It's been a while since he's bumped into her. Probably because she's been hanging out with the Doctor's brother, and while he loves to meet up with Brax every now and then, he'd prefer to know very little of his actual affairs. Actually, when was the last time he met Benny? The Christmas party at his brother's collection? Probably.

The next two on the list grabs his attention a bit more, however. Philology is definitely an interesting subject, especially when you can go back in time and visit the people speaking whichever language. No such thing as a dead language then. And anthropology, well, that's the Doctor's life in a nutshell, isn't it? Certainly a solid portion of it.

"Oh, all of those," he says, in reply to the 'what'. "And a few more to start. And just 'the Doctor' will do. Do like Theta's shape? It's quite an appreciable blend of creatures, isn't it? I've appeared that way a few times myself. Of course, she is me, so that's hardly surprising. We had something quite like them on my planet, though not exactly, of course. A bit like myself, naturally." A main difference being of course that while Theta's shape is peculiar, it's still reasonably mundane in appearance, unlike what is contained inside.

"Well that's...wow, that's actually useful." He can already think of a situation or three where a power like that would have been exceptionally helpful, mostly with the preventing of suffering or having to watch his friends suffer in dreams. That would have been nice.

The confirmation that Topher won't go rifling through anyone's subconscious mind is a welcome thing to hear, though Daniel has no idea if that will even matter in his own case, seeing as Topher has evidently been getting extended glimpses into his life for some time. He trusts the man's assertion, however. He's been given no reason not to, and Topher's marked lack of hostility feels like a good verification that he means well.

"If only I could be so lucky." Daniel finally sits beside him. Now that he knows the dream isn't actively going to harm him, there's little reason to remain standing and tensed to run at any minute. He closes one hand in a fist and concentrates for a moment to demonstrate. It opens with a small pile of staples on his palm, which he shakes his head at in mild disgust.

"All of...all of those?" He raises an eyebrow, entirely uncertain of how he should be interpreting the man's reluctance to give him a definitive name. It doesn't seem to be of malicious intent so much as just something practiced, habitual. He looks human enough but, well, Daniel of all people would know that physical appearances are hardly a basis for species differentiation. He also does a deft job of redirecting Daniel's attention back to Theta, but then his next string of sentences answers a small portion of Daniel's questions for him as easily as it raises a dozen more.

"I take it you're not human," he says carefully, not worded as a question so much as a safe assessment. It's reasonably deducible from his phrasing alone: the mention of an ambiguous planet of origin and perhaps an ability to alter his appearance? Daniel can't help but wonder if he's being purposefully unclear, though he wouldn't exactly blame him if this turned out to be the case; Daniel's a frequent employer of the same tactic.

Topher looks curiously down at Daniel's hand, then blinks a bit at the pile of staplers.

"Well, that's... anti-climactic," he says honestly. "Can you make other things?" Because otherwise it is a bit useless, yeah. Then again, based on evidence, does Daniel really need a superpower? Doesn't he already kind of have one? Maybe the Rift just figured he was awesome enough as he is.

"Not a bit," the Doctor replies, glad Daniel is taking that in stride. He doesn't realise that Daniel's assuming he can actually become an animal like Theta in the real, physical world. Which would've been a lot of fun, he's pretty sure, but sadly no. Then again, it's not until that he can alter his appearance, so the assumption isn't so wrong after all.

"And yes, all of those, anthropology, philology.. I suppose you could also say I'm an archaeologist, in that I study human, and non-human of course, activity in the past, and the future, but not by digging up artifacts or anything like that. Well, it's happened, but it's not something I strive towards. Love a good museum, though," he goes on.

"It's pretty much limited to office supplies," he replies as he pockets the staples ruefully. "Those were supposed to be paperclips, but I'm still working out the details of how it, um. Works." So far his understanding of the power is little more than the general rule of how the bigger and more complex the object, the more concentration and accuracy required in the visualization prior to materialization. So far Daniel hasn't purposefully managed anything more impressive than a ballpoint pen.

"Control of a dreamspace sounds much more helpful." He shakes his head, gnawing on his lip. "These dreams are, well. They can get pretty intense, and I'm still hammering out a definitive way to separate reality from the Dreaming. Getting better at that, at least."

Well, that settles that. He doesn't want to give Daniel a name but he's all too happy to announce his status as a non-terrestrial. This is...new.

His somewhat looser definition of archaeology evokes a faint flutter of excitement, and Daniel can't help but brighten a little.

"Really," he says eagerly. The term "non-human" is promising and implies an experience with other planets, something Daniel is always willing to engage in excitable discourse about. "I mean, I, I'm an archaeologist in the sense that I...more or less apply the term in a, uh, broader, more intergalactic sense. I'm an explorer. Um, sort of. Traveling to other worlds?"

Well... Office supplies. Suppose it could be worse. It's not actively working against Daniel, at least, even if it's not overly impressive or useful. But a little bit useful is better than a little bit or a lot harmful.

"Yeah, the Rift loves messing with us. But like you said, one does get better at it with practice, if you have the aptitude for it. It often varies how easy it is to tell, though. Some Rift-given dreams make it so difficult even I have trouble telling for a moment." That had been some pretty impressive telepathic trickery. Which had annoyed, impressed, frightened and delighted Topher, all at the same time. "You can also control the dreamspace yourself, to a certain extent, with practice, though that also depends on the dream. This one isn't very friendly to being changed, for example. And it's often easier to change how you yourself appear in the dream, like changing your clothes. And sometimes you change the dream without even noticing, like if you assume something is there, then it might suddenly be."

"So one of these days I might be able to imagine myself a P-90," Daniel mutters, one hand automatically dropping to the place where his sidearm would be if the dream had been nice enough to provide him with one. Self-defense seems to be a mixed bag based on what the dream decides to throw at him, but over the years he's found the heft of even a potentially useless firearm to be an uncomfortably reassuring familiarity. He glances sideways at Topher in sharpened interest.

"What about waking yourself up? Is that, can one learn to do that with, with practice?"

Because Daniel would like to be able to wake up in a way that doesn't entail the shock of watching a friend die. That would be nice.

He did give Daniel a name! Honestly, humans...

"Really!" the Doctor responds, more excitedly now. "Well, how wonderful to meet another intergalactic explorer. Hold on, you are human, correct? What time are you from?" Humans of course have plenty of intergalactic explorers (again, Benny comes to mind) once they get on a little bit, but time frame would tell him a lot about what planets would be available to Daniel and what current events were like. Well, probably. Or possibly their universes are completely different. In which case the Doctor will learn something else.

"Human, yes. Well okay, mostly. Kind of. I'm - it's a bit of a confusing situation." He winces a little, prickled by the faint sense of déjà vu over the last time he was asked that question. Still, it's nice to be able to share the enthusiasm of interplanetary experience, even if it happens to be in a creepy forest with a doctor of ambiguous title and a red cat-thing with wings. "2005 was, was where - er, when I was. What, uh, what about you?"

"Well, I mean you can do that even without Rift interference. It's probably harder with shared dreams than just regular ones, though. But, yeah, probably?" he answers, with a half shrug. It came to him so naturally, it was difficult not to do, really, if he wanted to. Then it suddenly became an issue of trying not to suddenly fall asleep or wake up upon wanting to do so, but actually be able to resist the instinct.

"What's a P-90?" he asks, and then creates one in his hand, letting Daniel's imagination fill it out. This is probably one of the easiest ways to manipulate a dream, especially when he's in someone's head. Just prompt something, facilitate the change, and let their minds fill it out.

Of course, the moment he realises what he has in his hand, he reacts with distaste, jumping a little. "Ew, one of those, no thanks," he says, disapproving, and with that it disappears again. There are very, very few circumstances where Topher will willingly use a gun, and things have to be pretty desperate and intense for that to happen. Usually he just tries to avoid the situations where it would be even slightly necessary.

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Page 16 of 30

Tender Lumplings Everywhere, Life's No Fun Without A Good Scare [Open to All]

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