applesaucedream | This is My Island in the Sun [Open to All]

Current Music: Evening of September 6th/Morning of September 7th, 2013

This is My Island in the Sun [Open to All]

The Rift wouldn't say it's sorry for the fit it threw the other day, because the Rift never needs to apologize. It is (mostly) perfect, and all of its decisions are well reasoned and just. Obviously. But perhaps it has fallen into a bit of a post-tantrum sulk, because this dream is milder than one might expect. In fact, it's downright nice.

The dreamers will find themselves in an archipelago of small islands - most only a few acres in size - connected by narrow strips of sand or pebbles. The surrounding waters are calm. Little waves lap against the shorelines, and no rising tide will cut the islands off from one another. The islands themselves seem to have been lifted from every climate zone on Earth and several from beyond. Some are tropical, some colder and home to hardy conifers, some mossy and boulder-strewn, some covered in multicolored sand and odd, coral-like trees.

Most of the islands boast some kind of manmade or otherwise non-native structure, be it as small as a bench or as large as a pavilion, though there are no houses or shops to be seen. It's more like parkland, just civilized enough for a nice picnic. Some of the islands even have little grills, and a sufficiently motivated dreamer might be able to rustle up some hot dog or burger fixings if they poke around a bit.

And they'll have an extra pair of eyes to help with their searching, because their beloved dæmons have returned… again. Or perhaps they're being introduced for the first time. Regardless, it's the bi-annual dæmon dream party!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Mako is having difficulties formulating a plan. Hitoshi has latched onto the tentacle as well, sinking tiny claws into it and the beast shudders, but it does not release Johnny. Another tentacle whips around, wavering, as if preparing to strike, and Mako leaps nimbly back, Hitoshi scrambling away beside her.

They need a plan.

They need a weapon, and they need a plan.

A blunt piece of driftwood is overlooked; too heavy, too unwieldy. A fallen branch, however - this she grabs, and snaps deftly in half. She glances back at the commotion, the thrashing, many-limbed thing that has stirred the waters at the shore into a seething, muddied chaos.

"Now," whispers Hitoshi. "The longer we wait - "

"I know," says Mako tersely. And she hefts the makeshift spear over one shoulder, winds back, and delivers to where she best estimates the central part of the beast to be. The strike is wobbly, the balance of the weapon too skewed, but she holds her breath and hopes it will meet its mark.

Johnny lets out a strangled cry as it convulses around him again, she must have hurt it the way it's shaking, the horrendous noises it's making, how, why she would put herself in this kind of danger for a total stranger is beyond him, and it might just crush him to death if she keeps going like that - but he'd be dead already if she hadn't tried, and that, he supposes, is something.

Then the creature flails outward, snapping him down so sharply he almost gets whiplash, swinging him toward Mako hard and fast. He has a fraction of a second to realize he's a bludgeon now. Fanfuckingtastic.

The weapon connects, it must have, because the thing shrieks like an injured kaiju. Mako grimaces in the subtle thrill of victory, snatching up the second half of the branch in preparation to strike again, but -

"Move!" shrieks Hitoshi, and leaps at her with enough force to send her sprawling in the sand with a startled grunt. The knot of tentacles holding Johnny is swinging at her, and she has a split second's indecision before she rolls out of the way, but Hitoshi - Hitoshi doesn't.

He yelps when the mass of tentacles catches him in a glancing blow and Mako buckles, gasping, feeling as though she's the one who's just had the wind knocked out of her. She tries to continue rolling out of the but can't. She can't move for the dull, lingering agony of the blow.

"What the FUCK was that," demands Nova, at least one of them is still moderately unharmed, though she twitches and paws frantically enough that her little claws hurt a little whenever it squeezes him too hard.

"Hit her otter," he manages to rasp out. He wriggles, trying vainly to kick free, and the monster responds by slamming him into the ground, the blow mostly softened by the fleshy limbs still tangled around him, but then it starts to drag him through the sand, toward the water. Johnny struggles in renewed panic, half-choking on sand and saltwater, because he knows what's happening, it's like a fucking bear slapping a fish on a rock to kill it, or is it birds that do that, or humans, he can't fucking remember. It's trying to subdue him.

"Mako!" he screams just before it pulls him below the surface.

She rolls to her feet, automatic and reflexive, one hand wrapped around her midsection as she wheezes and tries not to stumble to the ground. Johnny yells, a barely audible plea and something in her chest wrenches.

No. Not again. Not again.

"Go," Hitoshi pants. He's heaving himself upright, dragging forward doggedly. Mako snaps her head around to stare at the thing in the water and tightens her grip on the branch, the hold that even in the shock of the impact she has not relinquished.

She charges. The tentacles are at an even level with her and she leaps, lands on one of the massive slithering things, the branch's sharpened end digging into mottled, sea-flecked flesh for a grip.

It does not halt the inevitable slide of the tentacle dragging into the water and Mako chokes when the spray of seawater washes into her mouth. She shuts her eyes against the rush of water, breath tight in her chest, and distantly she can register the faint splash of Hitoshi lurching into the waves behind her. She digs the branch in viciously, desperate to pry away the grip of its tentacles, but the monster does not release its hold.

He feels the thud of her landing almost on top of him just as acutely as he feels Nova struggling against him, the water is too churned up for him to see anything and the salt stings his eyes. He remembers drowning too well, held under by Zagreus, and the memory doesn't prepare him any better now as he gives in too easily to the urge to take a breath.

But then Mako stabs it, or something, and Johnny lurches back up, breaching the surface, back up into the air and the roaring, unbearable sound it makes. He coughs and chokes, shivering as it drags them upward, dangled high overhead, like maybe it's just gonna eat all of them.

Mako's still gripping on, still got her sharpened fucking branch, and he looks at her, still struggling to breathe even as he chokes out, "Why are you doing this? Just let me go!"

It's just a dream. This has happened before. It'll probably happen again.

Johnny says something and she can make out the thin slice of his panicked, desperate face between the cage of the monster's tentacles, but Mako has no answer other than to wrench her weapon out with a sickening, sucking pop and plunge it ruthlessly in again. The tentacle shudders and writhes beneath the assault, but it's become her only handhold on an impossibly slippery surface that has lifted itself so high above the water in a dizzying drop she does not dare look at.

She can think of nothing else to do but force the branch in deeper. The water echoes with a low, rebounding screech that sounds so wrong to her ears but she throws all of her weight onto it, driving it unrelentingly downward.

With another reverberating cry, the monster lurches, tentacles unraveling in a wild flail, and the harsh movement tears the branch from Mako's grip.

She realizes too late that her hands are sliding helplessly off the thing's slick exterior, and she glimpses the glittering crest of churned waves before she reaches the peak of gravity's arc and feels herself begin to fall.

He thinks, okay, this is it, she's agitating it and it's going to kill us both. It's got him practically cocooned now, he can't breathe against it, and it'll get her too and they'll each wake up somewhere else and maybe he'll never see her again, and that'll be fucking that.

And then it just unravels.

He still has his grip on Nova - and there's Mako beside him, and her otter beside her, all of them fucking plummeting downward, wind rushing loud in his ears, not loud enough to drown out the noise it's making, oh god, fuck - he can still see it towering up over them as he drops, he curls around Nova again, holding onto her as gently as he can.

And then they hit the water.

They sink in way, way too far down, he's already flailing to come back up, kicking frantically, Mako's got her arms and her otter knows what he's doing, there's that at least - but he can see it, it's still thrashing, seeking them out, and they're in its element now, there's no fucking escape.

He fights his way to the surface anyway, because that's what he does. A little snatch of a book he read when he was a kid flashes too-appropriately through his head: Whenever they catch you, they will kill you; but first, they must catch you.

This had been such a nice dream, too. Peaceful. And then a new presence had stained her mind with off-copper light and malice, and she and Coromotto had scrambled to their feet, memories of an ancient ship-killer suddenly as fresh as if the Pirate's Swoop siege had been broken just yesterday.

Then two wolves are running towards the commotion, off in the shallows a few islands away. Wings would be faster, but she can only go as speedily as her wolf-self can run. Their ears pick up the distant cries of two-leggers and their animal-selves, and Coromotto says, "Johnny," just as Daine's eyes - hawk-shaped for sharper vision - pick out the familiar face of the woman from the last dream, the one who had never seen a proper forest before. She's fighting it, the great beast in the water, but her weapons won't be enough.

As the four little bodies are slammed into the water's surface, Daine and Coromotto arrive. She's human-shaped again, slogging into the cool salt water until it's past her knees. Her magic flares, kindled by the waves. Beside her, Coromotto snarls. But her face is calm, almost impassive, as she shuts her eyes and sends herself out, copper-threaded awareness rocketing through the seething waves and straight into the alien body of the kraken.

Alien-ish. Not alien enough to resist her.

"STOP!" she orders. Her shout is nothing against the howls of the beast and the roiling of the water, but it's her magic that matters. It doesn't want to listen, it's hurt, it's furious - but her friends are hurt, and she is furious, too. She sinks to her knees, immersing her body to the chin. Coromotto presses himself against her side, a steady growl rumbling in his chest.

She didn't have to get rid of the last kraken. She wasn't sure if she could.

Well, she'll just have to get rid of this one. There are no other mages to do it for her. Gritting her teeth, Daine clamps down on the beast.

It shrieks. Tentacles twitch as it fights her control, struggling as if she's thrown a net over it. Leave be, she says - scolds, almost, as if it's a dog in the rubbish bin. I won't ask so nicely again.

Mako hits water.

The wet, stinging crack of four bodies against the water's surface is almost as disorienting as the icy plunge beneath the surface itself, silver bubbles streaming from her and Hitoshi's mouths as she reels from the impact that forced nearly all the air from her lungs. The water is dark and frothing, the great thing sending the water heaving and carrying Mako in a dark, inescapable current. Hitoshi ducks beside her, moving through the water despite the tumultuous waves, swift and streamlined, and Mako surges upward with a renewed burst of energy.

Her head breaks water with a staggering gasp. She can see Johnny, not far from her and almost lurches to swim toward him, but - but -

But they are not alone anymore. She can see a woman, a woman and something inexplicably canine beside her, and she cannot tell what they are doing, only that whatever it is, it's sending the monster's horrible vibrating cries shuddering through the water. Holding it back.

She needs to move, and quickly. Hitoshi is a purposeful streak beside her as she strikes out toward Johnny. She can get him out of this, out of the water and away from the beach, if only she can get to him first.

If the sudden increase in churning is any indication, there is something happening to the creature. Surely it would have scooped them both back up by now if now. Johnny continues furiously kicking his way to the surface and finally breaks it, treading water and sucking in air. Nova scrambles up onto his shoulder, clinging awkwardly. He can barely keep them afloat, but across the water, standing beneath the beast, he sees Daine. Not even in any big imposing shape, just herself, her wolf at her side.

"Holy shit," he says before he dips halfway under water again. He's exhausted, his body still reacting to the fuckton of trauma it just went through.

"Johnny!" Nova protests, struggling to stay on top of him and out of the water. She sees Mako coming and lifts up her head. "Over here!"

Its mind is the most alien thing about it, really. It's all anger and hate and violence, with no root she can discern. No mage-collar forces it to behave this way. Johnny and the other woman caused no direct offense, nor offered harm before it came after them. It just attacked because it could - attacked them, in particular, because they were there and it was easy. She wants to reason with it, but how can she when there isn't any?

Daine exhales, slow and steady. She pushes away the cries of Johnny and his rabbit, the louder rumblings of the beast. This won't work if she can't focus completely. Even Coromotto's growl fades into the background as she takes her magic into the beast again. It's a more precise invasion this time. The creature is too big for her to hold all of it, so she'll just have to find a smaller part that matters enough. A faint line appears between her brows as she insinuates her magic into the musculature of its great, beating heart.

It feels the invasion and gathers itself to rail against it, but before it can lash out at her or anyone else, Daine squeezes, slow and pitiless. A lack of pity - that's something it can understand, and it shudders beneath the internal assault, drawing its tentacles in around itself.

Now, you listen, she says, confident that she has its full attention. You can leave if you like. Go out to sea. Don't come back. But if you so much as think of touching someone, you will be stopped. She tightens her grip, stilling its heart for three beats of her own, heedless of the terrible moan it makes. As if she hasn't already killed hundreds of monsters she'd rather not have fought in the first place. Easing back, allowing its heart to resume a strained beat, she asks, Do you understand?

She can see the dark, wet blot of Johnny's head staying afloat, and the even smaller form of his rabbit latched onto him like a limpet, and she is grateful Pentecost taught her to swim at such a young age - the skill is invaluable now. This feels like no dream she can ever remember. It is more like the Drift, bright and vibrant and pulsing and real, and it scares her.

Hitoshi reaches him first, ducking beneath his chin in an effort to keep him above the water, but the contact elicits a sensation so peculiar and that he recoils instantly with a startled squeak. Mako feels it too, something odd and invasive, and her shiver has nothing to do with the water's cold shock.

She glances behind her again. The woman has not moved and neither has her animal, but the monstrous thing has ceased pursuing them. Whatever it is she is doing, it looks like it is working. Mako desperately hopes it is.

Her teeth are chattering slightly when she reaches Johnny properly, still trying to shrug away the rippling discomfort triggered by Hitoshi's fleeting contact with the man.

"Are you okay?" she asks between gasps.

"Yeah," he murmurs, soft and weak, automatically reaching out and grasping onto her like a lifeline. "Just - just can't-" His head almost goes under again and Nova baps him roughly to keep him moving. He's so fucking tired, starting to come apart, residual panic and the cold of the water making him tremble all over. They're close, if she can just help him, pull him out - the monster is still subdued, whatever Daine's doing, it's probably insanely badass, knowing her - they're almost, absurdly, improbably, safe.

"He's okay, he just needs help swimming to the beach," says Nova somewhat frantically. "Please."

It understands. It doesn't like it. It's not happy. But it understands the bargain she's forcing it to take, and beneath its impotent rage, it's willing. Daine thinks, distant and rueful, that it'd be short work to remove the improvised spears from its body if it would just let her. But it wouldn't. She's got a good enough sense of this beastie to know that letting it live is all the mercy it can stomach - and probably all the mercy it deserves.

She doesn't release it, though; not yet. Not until she hears Coromotto's tense whisper: "They're ashore."

Go. Daine punctuates the order with a sharp magical prod, and the the beast retreats with a furious roar and a wild flailing of tentacles. A wave of seawater and sand swamps her and her wolf. They both come up gasping, but Daine can feel the beast's retreat. Once she's scraped her hair out of her eyes, they confirm it. The water's still troubled, but the creature is out of sight, its presence in her mind fading fast.

Ugh.

Daine gets to her feet, and she and Coromotto slog to shore. They pause once they're on the sand, him to shake himself off and her to wring out her curls. Then they approach Johnny and the woman and their respective animals. "Are you all right?" Daine asks, rubbing her forehead.

Edited 2015-05-08 03:42 (UTC)

Mako does not say anything, simply supports Johnny with one arm while treading water furiously with the other. Hitoshi circles around them anxiously, unwilling to touch Johnny again but equally unwilling to venture more than a few feet from them.

"Hurry," he urges.

She kicks out, steering the three of them slowly but inevitably toward the shore despite the troubled waters lapping at their chins, and eventually her feet touch sand. They are away. They are ashore.

No sooner has she dragged herself and Johnny from the water, clothes sodden and heavy and her hair clinging to her face, then a fresh wave breaks out and floods nearly to her waist before fading back into the sea's regular, gentle rhythm.

Mako drops onto all fours, trembling with exhaustion, but soon turns to sit upright and swipe the hair from her face. Johnny seems rattled, but he looks like he will live. They will both live. They survived.

She breathes out, slow and bracing, and watches their unexpected rescuers come to shore with them.

"I think so," she offers, shooting Johnny a questioning look despite herself. He only looked unhurt at first glance, and it had him for longer. She looks back at the girl. "Thank you."

Johnny allows himself to be dragged, Nova alternately clinging on and paddling awkwardly, until finally they're pulled back ashore - the wave that comes over him next wakes him back up, is he drowning again, fuck, fuck, what's happening - but it's just recoil, it recedes, and the monster is gone, Daine's coming toward them, he's okay. He's alive.

How extremely novel.

He rolls onto his side, curling up, coughing out a stream of water and shuddering uncontrollably. Nova looks like a drowned rat, but he's glad to see her okay, and she presses close to him again, burrowing into his waterlogged shirt.

He hoists himself up partway, looks up at Daine, standing there against the sun.

"Daine," he murmurs in quiet awe. "What did you-" He breaks off to cough more, his body convulsing - he's still worn and weathered but he's starting to come back to himself now that he's sitting in the sun at least, relatively unmolested. "That was amazing. How did you do that?"

Without waiting for an answer he looks back to Mako, reaches out and braces a hand on her shoulder. "You," he says, "are fucking crazy. Thank you."

And that comes from the bottom of his heart.

"You're welcome." Daine sits down on the sand, Coromotto flopping beside her. "And I bargained with it," she adds flatly. She doesn't want to think about it too hard. It hadn't been fair - it hadn't let her be fair - and now she feels as if she needs a bath for reasons that have nothing to do with her soaking in the ocean.

As Coromotto stretches his head to sniff in the general direction of Johnny's rabbit, Daine turns her focus to the woman. "It was a nasty piece of work," she says with a pensive - and rather impressed - frown. "Have you fought things like it before?"

Johnny looks as if he may have swallowed half the ocean if his ragged coughing is any indication, but he is alive, and so is his rabbit. Mako does not know what may have happened had the rabbit not lived, but upon glancing at Hitoshi and imagining what might happen should anything happen to him - the hollowness in her heart leads her to believe she may guess.

She thinks that what Johnny has just said is intended to be a compliment. It reminds her of Raleigh and that wild, informal edge he lends to everything he says and does. Her mouth pulls upward in a faint, perplexed smile, but the girl's question catches her attention before she can respond.

"I have," she admits, eyes downcast. Johnny said that he has never seen a kaiju, let alone had to deal with one up close, and she thinks for this girl it may be the same. "Though not quite like that. They are usually bigger."

"Bargained with it," he echoes quietly, dubious, mostly to himself. Mako's response is more prevalent, and he turns back to her sharply. "Bigger?" Here he'd been operating under the assumption that this was one of her kaiju, but apparently not, apparently it was just some fuckin thing? a little present from the rift? Wow, awesome.

"How do you even fight them, then?" he asks, eyes wide. Wait, wait, missing a step. Basic interaction, right. "Uh - um, this is Daine. Daine, this is Mako. And... friends." He looks from wolf to otter in mild curiosity. He's feeling sort of punchy, having actually survived severe dream peril for the first time in a while.

"Coromotto," says her wolf, damp tail thumping the sand a few times in a weary but friendly enough wag as he looks from the rabbit to the otter and back.

"Mako." Daine nods politely. "We've met before. I was a bird at the time, though. I think I startled you." 'Startled' is a mild term for it, but after watching the other woman attempt to fend off a kraken with nothing but a branch and a great deal of courage, it'd sound fair silly to say she'd frightened her.

"I've never had to send off a kraken before," she continues, "but I did call one, once. It was bigger than that," she adds with a nod towards the monster-free waters, "but I think it was a bit more sensible." She leans forward, intrigued. "How did you fight your monsters? Do you have magic in your realm?"

"You were...a bird," she repeats with a polite, uncertain disbelief. She seems so sincere about it, but it sounds like something absurd. How does one become a bird? The suggestion of 'magic' does not help, though Mako begins to recall that earlier, other dream. It had been tame compared to this one.

"I'm you," Hitoshi says, nudging her gently. "A lot is possible, especially in dreams." Mako looks down at him and frowns. She supposes that is true. But there is so much context that falls beyond her level of insight, and it does not help that Johnny and this other person, Daine, already have a familiarity that suggests they know each other.

"We have jaegers." Johnny had said they have never encountered real kaiju before; it is doubtful the word will have much meaning to them. So she explains further: "Great war machines, driven by two pilots. Rangers."

"She's a bird a lot of the time," says Johnny, like no big. Not really a good sign, probably, that Mako's popped up in more than one of these, and so close together. Not a good sign for her, anyway.

"So like... giant robots," he says slowly. "You fly a giant robot that fights aliens."

Is he literally talked to an anime character right now? He supposes weirder shit has happened.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This is My Island in the Sun [Open to All]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject