applesaucedream | ACT NOW! [Open to All]

Current Music: Evening of August 22nd/Morning of August 23rd, 2013

ACT NOW! [Open to All]

Has this ever happened to you?

All you're trying to do is have an uneventful night's sleep, but you find yourself in a sprawling labyrinth of interconnected rooms, each one a transplant from a bland, suburban home. You search and search for an exit, but just can't seem to find one! And even if you could - where did you park your car?

Oh, no! You're trapped in another dream event!

No matter what you do, everything just seems to turn out wrong. Open a cabinet - tupperware avalanche! Attempt to pour yourself a drink - disaster! No bowl of cheetos is safe from your sudden, embarrassing clumsiness! It's as if you can't do any simple task without it going horribly awry! What a mess!

That's right, dreamers: you're stuck in the desaturated Before Times of every terrible infomercial you've ever seen, and life is a sisyphean struggle.

photo anigif_enhanced-buzz-31658-1352416027-1_zps41t0zihg.gif

[OOC: Standard dream party rules apply: all are welcome regardless of their membership in the game, and characters can remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion. Backtag forever.]

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"Ohhh, good." He vaguely remembered another dream where he'd encountered multiple others - and Teddy Roosevelt, best thing ever - but that had been mere days after he first showed up. Frankly he'd just chalked it up as a one-time occurrence.

Carefully, the Balladeer follows Daniel, keeping a hand first on the counter and then the wall to try and counteract whatever strange force is making him feel like slipping every other step. His companion reaches the door first, but he's making it there too!

...aaaaaaaaaand the door is not opening.

"Really." He doesn't sound surprised. He really oughtn't to be. "Here - " he wades over. " - let me try?" It's not that he honestly thinks he'll succeed where Daniel failed, but it's worth a shot.

Daniel tries again, his firm twists of the knob quickly devolving into somewhat more frantic jerks. He sighs quietly, shaking his head, and prepares himself to shift back and let the Balladeer try, though he's also pretty convinced that it's not going to do any good.

"Yeah, okay." He gives the knob one last scowling, rueful shudder, and - it snaps cleanly off in his hand, unbalancing him and nearly sending him arcing back into the water again. A well-placed grab at the counter steadies him, but Daniel pays for it with a painful bruise against his hip when he knocks into the other surface anyway.

He casts the knob a long, dry look, then lets it drop into the water, faintly disgusted.

"Great."

"Oh, good."

The Balladeer smiles rather desperately down at the knob in Daniel's hand, before turning to push against the door with his shoulder anyway, as if that might work. Predictably, it does not. His feet slide in the water, and he catches at the wood to keep upright.

"We could try the windows," he suggests doubtfully, looking over to the opposite wall where those all are. "If we really feel like adding broken glass to this. Don't suppose you can wake yourself up?"

"We do seem to be awfully talented when it comes to breaking everything." It probably wouldn't take much to shatter the windows, though now that's got Daniel wondering if intent has anything to do with it. If they have the very marked, deliberate intention of breaking the windows, would the dream make that particular task more difficult by tossing random obstacles in their path? Is he overthinking this? He's probably overthinking this.

Daniel glances at the other man with a partial smile, a wry and rueful twist to one side of his mouth, and shakes his head. "Still haven't figured out how. At least not willingly." The only surefire method he knows is death, and while that wouldn't be a new experience for a guy who's spent a lot more time dying than the average archaeologist, it's not a pleasant ordeal and not one he usually suggests lightly. "Anyway, where'd that leave you? Don't think this is my head, so you might not even wake up."

Still, he notes somewhat dismally, if the oven fire starts spreading or worse, they might not have much choice in who may or may not die in the possibly impending inferno.

"I was hoping you'd pass it along before you went." Normally he's a little better at getting out of places anyway - though considering the circumstances, maybe it's for the best that his first try didn't do anything at all. The Balladeer is not certain of how stepping into another time and place could go wildly wrong (it's always been very reliable) but he's willing to bet it could get catastrophic very quickly.

Trying not to move too much, he cranes his neck to try and see what's going on with the oven. The water level is still rising, slowly, but from the looks of things there is definitely still a fire in the oven. If something doesn't short out in all this water and electrocute them both first.

Sighing, he starts slowly sloshing his way over to the nearest window. "Well, it's worth - " He slips and just barely catches himself on the edge of the sink, wincing and favoring one leg for a moment. " - worth a shot."

Daniel jerks a hand up when the Balladeer looks like he might pitch over again, but thankfully the man steadies out well enough on his own. The oven also earns a concerned, brow-furrowed glance, because Daniel really, really does not want to be around that thing if and when it chooses to self-destruct or shock them both or something.

Of course, that would wake them up. Probably.

Daniel is going to not think about that.

"All right." He cocks his head and studies the windows thoughtfully. They look entirely normal, as far as windows go, overlooking some idyllic, painfully suburban strip of road and sidewalk and cheery identical houses. He gives it one last evaluative look, then nods decisively and shoots the Balladeer a warning look. "Maybe cover your eyes."

Without further ado and with much less motor coordination than he's come to expect, Daniel grabs a heavy rolling pin from the countertop and wings it directly at the glass.

The Balladeer lifts a hand to shield his eyes and turns away as the rolling pin flies, and actually successfully manages to hit the window!

Well, the window frame, where it bounces off and promptly cracks the Balladeer in the side of the head. This time he does go down, dropping like a stone into the water. To add insult to injury, he also smacks against the edge of the sink on his way. So apparently, yes - intent matters more than just breaking things here. What an excellent discovery!

For a beautiful minute Daniel thinks it worked -

And then everything predictably backfires.

Immediately he drops to the Balladeer's side with a marked lack of grace, and his awkward attempt to keep him from hitting water just sends them both careening into the mess. He emerges with a gasp and a splutter, and quickly fists one hand into the front of the Balladeer's shirt to pull him out of it as well.

"Oh god," he pants, plainly dismayed. "God, I'm sorry."

The Balladeer sputters and wheezes as he's dragged upwards, and can't quite speak at first, having inhaled a lungful of water. "God - no no, it's fine," he corrects quickly, because while it hurts badly, it really isn't Daniel's fault. Is he bleeding? Oh, man, he is bleeding a lot. Scalp wounds, right?

"This always happens during these dreams," he mutters bitterly, pressing a hand against the wound.

"You too, huh?" Daniel offers a sympathetic wince, then shoots a murderous look at the window. He can't break something when he wants to but everything else, naturally, practically crumbles at the touch. Perfect. Truly.

Still, he's supremely grateful this is just a dream and he didn't actually succeed in braining the Balladeer with a rolling pin. He is bleeding and it doesn't look great, but at least here it isn't lethal and Daniel can't believe he's progressed to that level of morbid thought already. God.

"Here, come on." He tugs one of the Balladeer's arms over his shoulder and carefully eases him upright again, mercifully only slipping a few times before succeeding. And for good measure, he adds firmly, "we're getting a way out of here."

The Balladeer accepts the help up, though he did fully intend to stand on his own power once he was upright again. This proves to be a wild overestimation of his abilities; he sways and leans back against Daniel with a wince. Oh, good. This will make being accident-prone much better.

"It's worse than home." The indignant tone kinda implies that he expects danger at home, but he doesn't pause to elaborate. "Okay, let's do this. Try opening the window, that might break it." He shifts his weight to brace himself on a countertop instead, not wanting to get in the way. They may as well cut down the number of things that could possibly go wrong.

That does sort of imply the Balladeer is used to being more or less tumbled about, which raises a couple questions. Then again, Daniel comes from a universe where frequent dying is practically his claim to fame, so he's really not one to judge.

He gives the other a man a cautious look to make sure he's situated, then nods. Okay. This should work better, if they're not trying to deliberately break it. And hopefully he won't injure one or both of them horribly this time. Daniel still feels a little guilty about that.

"Okay." Quick breath, then he sets at it. Well. He tries to. Fumbling with the latch snaps it neatly from the window, and trying to simply hook his fingers beneath and pry it open by force sends his forehead clunking into the glass by some twist of physics he is not even going to begin to examine. Ignoring the sting, Daniel grits his teeth and tries again, with slightly more success.

And by 'slightly more success,' he means that he slips, slams his elbows onto the countertop, and one hand flies out to steady himself -

- and punches neatly through the apparently incredibly flimsy glass.

The Balladeer winces at the various continuing injuries, but focuses on keeping himself stable and upright. No need to get himself hurt any worse than he already is, that won't be helpful in the least.

At least, until Daniel punches his way directly through the glass.

"Are you alright?" Thoughts of this being just a dream fly out of his head entirely, and he lurches forward to catch himself on the next closest surface. Are the water levels rising? That actually makes it easier not to fall...though really, the main thing that he's thinking about is the panic over hand injuries experienced only by those whose entire livelihoods depend on their instrumental abilities.

"Ahh," says Daniel, increasingly alarmed by this entire situation but managing to simply sound vaguely inconvenienced. "Um. Probably."

Not a helpful answer. He gingerly withdraws his arm and winces a bit at the obviously bloodied knuckles, but considering how damaging punching glass out usually is, he probably got off lucky. "Well. At least the window's out. Er, kind of."

And the Balladeer probably shouldn't be moving around, especially not while he's wobbling the way he is. Daniel's eyebrows mash down into another concerned frown and he waves his good hand to indicate the other man stay where he is. Daniel can clear the glass out. It'll be fine. It'll be good. Really.

The Balladeer obliges, stopping where he is and drawing his hand back to check it again. "Great. Wow, this is a lot of blood." He isn't allowing himself to sound alarmed, but this is obviously, at this point, an extremely forced optimism. Between the two of them, they still might kill themselves before leaving this room.

He puts pressure back on his head, ignoring the warm stickiness of his hair. "How - what's even out there?" To be honest, what with everything, he hasn't had the opportunity to look outside. There's probably all sorts of really dangerous things out there - like bushes and curbs. Ten to one someone's gonna scrape themselves up on the pavement once they get out of here.

Daniel occupies himself with carefully examining the supposed outside before the Balladeer's concerns really register, at which point he wrenches his head back in to stare at him in alarm

"Oh god." It really is quite a lot of blood. Does it matter if it's a dream? Daniel remembers too well being impaled, and that had been excruciating even if he'd woken up fine afterwards. But here, in a room with a menacingly smoking oven, broken glass, and a steadily rising water level, there simply aren't a lot of medical resources at their disposal. He yanks a paper towel off a nearby roll - tipping the rest of the roll into the knee-deep water in the process - and hands it to the other man

"Uh," he says shakily, glancing at the window and back again. "Well. 'Out there' turns out to mean 'exact same room'." Sure enough, through the little staggered circle of glass Daniel managed to inadvertently slam his fist through, a little patch of a perfectly normal, suburban, undamaged copy of their kitchen is barely visible.

"You should clean up your - " The Balladeer takes the paper towel, folding it and holding it to his head as he mournfully watches the waterlogged paper towel roll float past. "Nevermind." The way this has been going, he personally would not want that water on an open wound.

Supporting himself carefully, he sloshes forward and peers through the window as well, looking...actually less than surprised. "Huh," he comments flatly. "At least it isn't on fire. Maybe it's just a past version of this one?" Time loops are a totally common thing, right? He reaches out as if to try to break more of the glass away, then thinks better of it. "Okay. Okay, let's try to...let's try to fix the window?"

This is more for the benefit of whatever dream power is making all their intentions go awry, of course.

If this is a time loop, it wouldn't even be the first time for Daniel - or, well, as far as he can tell. It's awfully hard to tell when one isn't included in the awareness reset. But dreams have that odd logic to them, and this one is simply no exception. With any luck, the Balladeer's head wound will reset if they manage to climb through.

"All right," he says with a pensive nod, tracking that line of reasoning and deciding there's nothing else for it. Fixing the window, right. One absolutely needs to crawl onto the countertop and bruise their hip on a toaster (a toaster? Really.) to fix the window, definitely. Daniel just needs to hook his fingers underneath the thing and try to jimmy it open, avoiding the hole and its wicked-looking shards of protruding glass, and -

- in all honesty, he's not quite sure what happens next. He just knows that once the flurry of movement has subsided, he's lying on his back with a fragment of glass buried in one palm, blinking at the ceiling of a room that is in all ways indistinguishable from the last one, except it happens to be mercifully not filling up with water.

The Balladeer isn't precisely sure what just happened either. One minute, Daniel was whacking himself against the toaster, and the next he was - just sort of gone. Is that what it looks like when he goes?

Quickly, he sloshes closer and peers through the window. Yep, there's Daniel. And - oh, lord. The Balladeer shudders at the look of his hand. "Hold on!" he calls. "I'm coming through!" Then he tosses the paper towel to one side, braces himself on the countertop, and tries to hoist himself up despite the slickness of blood on his right palm.

Predictably, he slips.

Somewhat less predictably, somewhere between his face flying towards the glass and the next second he opens his eyes, he smacks down onto a mercifully dry linoleum floor. There's a moment of shocked silence, then he lets out a bark of slightly-hysterical laughter. "Right. Okay. Let me see - Daniel?"

He sits up and looks around. No Daniel. He stands up without incident and peers back through the window. No flooded kitchen, and still no Daniel. The Balladeer frowns and turns around, calling out louder. "Daniel...? Are you still here?"

(Daniel may hear his voice from behind the door of the kitchen he's in.)

Daniel's a little too dizzy to entirely work out the particulars of his current situation. He assembles a small checklist: on his back. Ceiling. Kitchen ceiling? Yes. Gash on his hand. That is - blood. That is a rapidly swelling amount of blood.

He blanches and tries rolling over. He can hear the Balladeer distantly, but can't pinpoint the origin of his voice exactly. Perhaps if he tries standing -

It's a mild shock to his system to snap awake on a bed and not a kitchen floor, and it takes Daniel even longer to place himself and realize he must have awoken.

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ACT NOW! [Open to All]

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