Universal Remote [Open to All]

[applesaucemod]

Here's an interesting scene: the dreamers of Manhattan are on a pirate ship. Or perhaps they're standing in a busy ER, wearing scrubs and holding a scalpel they may or may not know how to use. Or perhaps they've found themselves in the middle of a world cup championship game, or an old-fashioned highway robbery, or an interstellar dogfight, or a dramatic, 'unscripted' showdown between arguably attractive people they've never seen before in their lives.

Whatever the situation, rest assured: it probably won't last long.

Maybe the Rift is bored. That might explain why the dream keeps changing, as if someone were idly flicking through the channels and switching up the genre. The poor dreamers are just along for the ride, the only constant amidst a shifting array of scenery, clothing, and overall mood. Perhaps, if things are sufficiently interesting, the dream might settle a little to see how things play out. But given the Rift's definition of 'interesting,' that might not be a good thing for whoever is providing the entertainment.

[OOC: the usual dream party rules apply. All are welcome, regardless of whether they're in the game or not. Dreamers can remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion. Dreamers' clothes may change to reflect whatever scene they're in, but their memories and personalities will remain intact... though the overall mood of the setting might influence their mood, as well. Feel free to throw NPCs into whatever scene you find yourself in, with bonus points added if said characters treat the dreamers as if they're established parts of the 'canon.']

Comments

[biscuit_powered]

The air is thin and cold at the turret of this weather-beaten castle, which sits at a dizzying height atop a mountain pass. The sounds of infantry fighting below have ended, the enemy's forces either killed our routed, but up here the open air crackles with the dark magic that keeps three of the figures on the rooftop ensnared. The fourth figure gloats as the life force drains from the fiend on one side and the haloed woman on the other into the winged child at the center of the ritual. The mage responsible is speaking to the half-angel. "My minions are making short work of your friends as we speak," he gloats. "In just a few moments --"

The sound of beating wings interrupts him, and all four turn to look on in incredulity as a tyrannosaurus rex laboriously hauls itself upward through the air on undersized wings that sprout from its shoulders, a gaggle of bruised and bloodied adventurers clinging to its back. The half-angel on the roof bursts into whoops of triumphant laughter as the man nearest the front of the dinosaur climbs to his feet, a rifle in his hand, and takes a running leap up the t-rex's spine to spring from its nose. Time seems to slow as he hauls back his arm to throw the rifle in midair, the half-angel outstretching her hand as the weapon hurtles end over end toward her --

[CLICK-BZZT]

And then Asmodia is very abruptly not clinging to the tyrannosaur's hips, and she's not watching her friends locked in mortal combat and trying to work up the courage to follow Stig's lead now that her flight spell has worn off and she has rather a long way to fall if she misses the jump.

She is, in fact, sitting on the end of a rather comfortable couch under a glaring array of lights. Ahead of her is a mob -- no, a crowd sitting in relative dark, all staring at her as they guffaw and applaud. Tensing, she looks around quickly to discover a small, currently silent musical band off to one side of the -- stage, it's a stage she's on -- and beside her a desk with a person on it, looking little less bewildered than herself. She leaps to her feet, hands raised in readiness and teeth bared as she demands of the world in general, "What in the abyss is happening here?!"

[andhiswife]

"... And this is where we add the blueberries," Greta explains as she upends the little bowl of fruit into the batter. Narrating her baking is a new habit, intended more to teach Lilly new words than to actually teach her how to make anything. Half the time, the child gets bored or distracted midway through the process and stops paying any particular attention. But Greta figures some part of her is still listening, so it can't hurt to keep talking.

"Then we give this a stir, and..." Greta glances over to see if Lilly's actively listening, and stills mid-stir when she realizes the child isn't even there. Neither is the rest of her living room, for that matter. She lifts her head, squinting against the lights - and where did they come from? - and into the large, dark space beyond, which is... oh, goodness, it's filled with people. And they're all just staring at her!

The spoon clacks against the rim of the mixing bowl as Greta gapes out at the crowd: dozens, if not hundreds, of people sitting in neat rows and watching her attentively. A few of the ones in the frontmost rows are beginning to look confused. And there are three or four great, boxy contraptions aimed her way, each operated by a bored-looking individual - the only people not staring at her.

What on earth is happening to her? Where's her apartment? Where's Lilly?

"Um." Greta takes a step back from the counter, hands raised in supplication and general defense. "I, um."

"Make the muffins!" shouts a male voice from the crowd. She's not sure if it's intended to be a jeer or actual encouragement, but she suspects the former and narrows her eyes accordingly. She might not know what's going on, but she's certain she didn't volunteer to bake in front of this lot.

"No," she says, feeling absurd, hands moving to smooth her skirt and finding a pair of jeans, instead. What is she wearing? She spares an incredulous glance for her clothing, then raises her chin, her cheeks prickling with embarrassment. "I don't want to."

There are general murmurs of discontent from the crowd, and she takes another step backwards, fetching up against the fridge. This is bad. Whatever it is, it is undoubtedly very bad.

[singthesong]

That's about when the Balladeer sidesteps onto stage, grinning wide. Cameras are new, but this is his element.

"And then we pour it into the pan!" He picks up the bowl full of batter and starts pouring some into each section of the muffin pan. His voice and manner are confident, though not because he really knows what's going on. He only just found himself here, standing offstage and watching an increasingly distressed Greta. But he's used to performing for crowds; why not take over? "There we go, just like that. Doesn't that look good? These are gonna be delicious. Then put it in the oven for - " He darts a glance at Greta " - twenty minutes! Now, when we get back, we're going to sample the finished ones!"

He smiles again, drying his hands on a nearby dishcloth simply to keep them busy. The eyes on him don't make him nervous, but what he wouldn't give for an instrument! He looks first at one camera, then at another. How is he supposed to know if they actually DID cut to commercial?

[andhiswife]

And now the Balladeer is here. She's not sure if she ought to be pleased by the familiar face, grateful for the assistance, or mortified that he's witnessed this. He even seems to understand what's going on, which only serves to make her feel more foolish. She tears her eyes away from the Balladeer to look back where he came from, but all there is to see is more darkness - and someone with a clipboard making emphatic but indecipherable gestures at her.

Greta gives her head a little shake of incomprehension, then steps up to the Balladeer and takes his arm. "I don't know what's happening," she says in a nervous undertone, "and I--I don't know where Lilly's got to." And she really wishes that would stop happening. Aziraphale's going to think her incompetent and take the child back for her own safety at the rate things are going. "And--"

And then everything changes.

The audience is gone. She's in a dress again, though not the sort she's used to, and the Balladeer's outfit has changed as well. A short distance away, there's a table with five men huddled around it. One of them, she realizes with a little jolt, looks familiar.

A slurred, female voice is earnestly saying, "... so he's, like--at first he and his confederate buddies are like, let's kidnap the president." One of the men - the familiar-looking one - mouths the words along with the woman, though Greta can't actually see the speaker anywhere. "But then they were like, no," the mystery woman continues, and the man lifts his hand, as if struck with a brilliant idea, "let's kill the president."

[absentconstellation]

"Don't forget to breathe."

This was probably meant to be encouraging. Coming from a purple eyed black cat who sparkles with the slightest hint of the night sky, it might not be exactly what she needs right now. He appears quite naturally on the counter next to her work as though he has always been there. The crowd doesn't seem to have noticed him.

[andhiswife]

And now there's a talking cat. Greta does a respectable double-take. It doesn't look like the other talking cats she's seen - those horrific, enormous ones with the glowing eyes - but how many different kinds of talking cat can there be? Perhaps the Rift is just trying on a slightly different sort of shape.

Wait, does this mean she's dreaming? She must be. That would explain everything. Some of the panicked tension leaves her shoulders, but not all of it. This may be a dream, but there's still a talking Rift-cat to contend with.

Did it just come here to gloat?

"What do you want?" she asks it, eyeing it warily as the audience grows even more restive. She ignores them - they probably aren't even real - though she does flap a hand in their general direction. "I suppose this is your doing."

[wildmage_daine]

Now, this is a nice dream. The sun overhead is nice and hot compared to the autumnal chill starting to settle over Manhattan, and Daine's surrounded by a warm sense of family. It's a bit like Pack-feeling, but not quite the same. These aren't predators, and most are too big to be prey.

"I know," Daine says cheerfully as a very young elephant curls its trunk around her comparative nubbin of a nose. "I've no trunk at all." The elephant expresses bewilderment and sympathy at that, and Daine lifts a hand to scratch behind its ear. "That's what two-leggers have hands for," she explains in a conspiratorial hush, "to make up for our little noses."

The baby elephant is midway through a dubious exploration of her fingers when Daine hears a sound that doesn't belong out here at all. It's faint, but unmistakably mechanical. She twists around to look for the source, and her jaw drops when she finally spots it. It appears, at first glance, as if a pile of droppings has decided to take itself for a walk. But then it rotates, and the wink of a glass lens appears. It's some sort of camera. And it's pointed right at them!

"What in Mithros' name..." Daine mutters, getting to her feet and taking a few cautious steps toward the thing. It stills, as if startled, and Daine glances back at the nearest adult elephant. Have you seen this before?

The elephant waves its trunk in the equivalent of a shrug. It's harmless.

Is it? It's a two-legger thing, Daine says - warns, really, because humans are about the only predators elephants really have to worry about. It doesn't look like a weapon, but what else could it be for? Are folk just spying on the elephants with these?

Daine drops to her hands and knees and peers into the lens with a tight frown. "What's this about, then?" she asks, giving the false casing a light rap with one of her knuckles. "Who do you belong to?"

[shorterinperson]

"It isn't magical," Alanna notes, one hand on the ember hanging around her neck. If the thing were magical she would see the color of the magic - she sees only the strange carapace. She has no idea how she came to be in the middle of a parade of elephants, but she's rolled with stranger punches. One hand stays firmly on the hilt of her sword, ready for any manner of attack.

perfect pb is perfect

[wildmage_daine]

Daine glances up sharply at the familiar voice, and when she sees who it belongs to, she comes close to losing her balance and toppling right onto her seat.

"Lioness?" She scrambles inelegantly to her feet, then stands poleaxed. Part of her wants to rush in for a frantic hug, but she knows enough of how this sort of thing works to hold herself back. Alanna might not even remember her, and even if she does, it's all but certain that she doesn't know Daine's been gone for the better part of a year.

The baby elephant has no such reservations, and it ambles up to the knight with its trunk outstretched in curiosity. That jolts Daine out of her stupor, and she gives her head a brisk little shake to finish the job. She shouldn't say she's been missing, and she probably shouldn't even let on that she knows who Alanna is, really - though she supposes just about anyone back home would recognize the lady knight if they saw her. That doesn't leave her with many options, so she looks back down at the camera with a sigh.

"No, it's--it's a camera. A sort of machine that folk make to take pictures of things."

tw: car accidents and blood

[peacefulexplorer]

He's driving.

That's the first thing he discovers.

The next is the fact that someone is perched on the passenger seat and grinding the nozzel of a gun into his temple.

"Keep drivin'," pants the nameless, angry, very much armed man, one of his eyes screwed shut and half of his face red, blood painted slick and dark. "You get us outta the woods, you got that? You're drivin', that makes you an accomplice. Their blood's on your hands."

"Um," says Daniel, now more than vaguely concerned over his sense of personal dissonance and confusion over what's happening.

"Left," says the other man.

"What?"

"Left!"

Daniel's head snaps to the road a fraction of a second too late. Horns blare, headlights blur into lateral streaks across his vision, and the unmistakable jarring crunch of one car impacting another launches him directly into the windshield - no, through the windshield, which doesn't hurt nearly as much as he'd expect it to.

Daniel shuts his eyes against the pinwheeling glass, his stomach in knots. When he straightens, the scene of the crash is splayed out under a glare of red and blue. The door to the nearest police car opens with a soft clunk, heralding the arrival of a mustachioed cop, who promptly claps Daniel on the shoulder.

"Good work, detective," he says solemnly.

"Um," says Daniel, completely at a loss.

[fucking_ebay]

Why is he in handcuffs? And why the hell is he wearing a dirty wifebeater? Peter squints through the barred window of a police car at a scene awash in flashing lights, eyes roving over the wrecked car and the dark shape inside it on the passenger side. Nearby are several standing figures, but it takes a few flashes of the light before a particular befuddled face solidifies in his memory. "Hey!" he yaps, rattling his handcuffs as he surges forward to thump his shoulder on the door. He can't hear what they're saying through the door, but he shouts loud enough to probably carry. "You! The hell is this?!"

[peacefulexplorer]

Why is he at a crime scene. And why isn't he, at the very least, bleeding? Didn't he just crash through a windshield?

The cop's saying something about undercover missions and a string of robberies and, honestly, it's all coming out as a bit of a garble. Daniel stammers a hasty excuse and gets an insistence to just wait for the ambulance, sir, but ducks around the back of one of the cars the minute the other man turns his back.

He takes a moment to close his eyes and breathe and try to get his heartrate down from its terrified patter, but the thud of someone inside the police car apparently ramming themselves against the door promptly makes him jump.

He shoots a furtive look over his shoulder. Everyone seems preoccupied with retrieving the armed man from the crashed car. He tries the door, but it's locked. Well, of course.

Detective, the cop said. That's a strange thought. But he slips his hand into his pocket and, sure enough, is rewarded with the bright clink of keys.

He puts the first one he sees into the door, and it opens with a soft clunk. Huh.

"Wh - um, do I, uh, do I know you?" he says weakly.

[all_the_gifts]

It takes some time for Melanie to get her bearings. The world is in motion, and she is restrained. For a moment she feels comforted by this, as if everything following the attack on the base was a weird dream, and things are back to normal. But that little fantasy is gone in an instant; she's not bound to her chair - or to anything but her own self. Her wrists are pressed together by a tight coil of rope, and her ankles have been given similar treatment. It's dark, and she's in some sort of compartment - large enough that she can move around a little, but too small for her to stretch out.

There are voices. They're muffled, but she doesn't think she recognizes either of them. Melanie frowns. Who are they? Where are they taking her?

She didn't ask to be bound, and for all that she knows it's safer this way, she finds herself resenting it. Whoever they are, they've taken her from where she wants to be. Maybe she shouldn't care about their safety.

She can still move her fingers, and whoever tied her wasn't smart enough to put her hands behind her back. It's not hard for her to reach the rope around her ankles and pick at the knot until it loosens. Once her legs are free, she lifts her wrists to her mouth and starts to work on those ropes with her teeth, her feet braced against the walls of her prison.

The knot is close to giving way when there's a sharp jolt and the sound of shattering glass and crumpling metal. Melanie fetches up against one wall, head spinning for several moments after everything comes to a halt. Then she scoots away from the wall with a few soft grunts of effort and tries kicking at the roof. There's a faint line of sky visible, and she kicks again - loud enough for those outside to hear the telltale thuds from the trunk of the car.

[peacefulexplorer]

The cop says something else, something about having 'finally caught the bastard that did it' but Daniel seizes the opportunity when the other man's attention turns away from him to shuffle back, inching discreetly away until he backs right into the trunk of one of the smoking cars.

Thunk.

Daniel springs away from the vehicle in alarm as the trunk vibrates with an impact - an impact from inside? Any sense of confusion or doubt snaps into fervent motion as he scrabbles for the trunk's catch and tears it open. It doesn't matter if he's a detective or not - for all he knows, he could be. But if someone's in there, someone has to help.

"Oh, god," he says, eyes widening. Who keeps a little girl in a car trunk. "God - are you okay?"

[lottawork]

"Fuck off," snarls Rush, divesting himself of blue gloves and white coat and depositing them in a disordered cairn of insufferable spotlessness upon the floor.

"Doctor," says the woman opposite him, arms folded, sharp blue eyes disconcertingly similar to those of Chloe Armstrong's, which is not a requisite or particularly useful association, and so he dismisses it on principle. "We need your expertise. The virus is spreading. Already, over fifty percent of Earth's population is - "

"Shite," says Rush, one side of his mouth curving downward in crisp distaste. "Pure shite. That is not biology. That's not even basic statistical analysis. You can take your lack of a control group and lack of fundamental, requisite safety protocols, and fuck off."

He pivots neatly on one heel and opens the door that will remove him from the vicinity of this unbearably, hopelessly inaccurate facsimile of a laboratory, presumably designed by some creativity-deficient architect who has only heard of laboratories by rough description, and comes face-to-immediate-face with a slavering, snapping, decaying gray thing of vaguely humanoid construction.

"No," Rush tells it firmly, and closes the door and braces his forehead against it and closes his eyes and this is, by his estimation, a dream or some otherwise manufactured event, and he could be wrong about that estimation but he doubts it.

He pinches the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger and sighs.

"Doctor," says the woman again, her tone barely shy of petulant in its insistence.

He ignores her.

He will not be participating in some poorly-defined, poorly-conceived, poorly-executed display of pseudoscientific pursuits. He will be waking up. Very shortly, he will be waking up. He is certain. He will not accept any other outcome.

[singthesong]

Another door wooshes open, and the Balladeer enters. He looks harried, and no wonder - there's small colorful animals of all sorts crowding around his feet, clinging to his arms and legs, and even in a few cases riding upon his shoulders. They must not be very heavy, but he's still having a lot of difficulty moving.

The change in atmosphere is immediately obvious, and as he looks up his faintly desperate eyes immediately lock on to Rush. Unfortunately, so do all the animals.

"Look!" a bright yellow bear cries. "New friends to cheer up!"

http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m806evMGlX1qef4fuo1_250.gif

[lottawork]

Rush twists to face the intrusion, then immediately performs a flawless about-face, frustration ceding to something approaching panicked horror.

No.

No.

He tears the door open. The subject of whatever nonsensical epidemic his ill-prepared colleague recently attempted to expound in his general direction howls as though it had never been interrupted. Rush slams an elbow into its lower jaw, which dislodges with a sickening crack as its owner slides laterally to the floor.

He does not have a mind to dispense any superfluous commentary at the present time.

He has nothing to say.

Between a contingent of anthropomorphized multicolored ursine and a poorly-defined virulent illness capable of reanimating the dead, he finds the variety of shriveled corpses preferable.

[singthesong]

The victim was found lying face-down in his home, in a pool of his own blood. The medical examiner says he probably got shot sometime last night. They're still looking him over, not quite ready to take him back to the morgue just yet. A uniformed officer is crouching nearby, camera in hand, documenting the crime scene.

"It was his girlfriend."

She looks up at her partner's words. He's leaning over her to look at the body, but even as he speaks he turns away from it again. Not to make any actual effort at investigating; he just wanders over to look at the fancy knick-knacks on the mantle, one hand fiddling with the tools at his belt as he does. "She found out he was cheating on her. With - oooh, wow, multiple people." He tsks, shaking his head. "Not that it's any better because of that. Can you take this?"

He offers her his gun, still dangling in its holster. She gapes first at it, then at him. "You can't possibly know that. We've only been here for ten minutes."

"Have we?" He smiles politely and sets the gun down on the victim's sofa. "I'm just saying, it was her. Did you want a song and dance?" Somehow, the question isn't at all sarcastic.

"Your gut instinct isn't admissible in court - wait, where are you going?" She stands and scoops the holster off the couch as he starts to leave. "We've got a job to do! And you can't just leave your gun lying around!"

"I solved it!" he calls back, throwing up his arms as he saunters out the front door. "Episode's over!"

[driftseeker]

Mako fiddles with a fraying thread on the sleeve of her uniform and tempers a low sigh. Plodding through the emails of the victim of a domestic murder is not what she had planned for herself when she embarked on a career in computer forensics. The victim is - was, she must still correct herself mentally with a faint pang of guilt - sloppy, doing little more besides trash some incriminating emails to cover up his illicit affairs with one, two, three other women.

She leans back in their dead victim's chair and gestures at his computer screen and its damning content with blue-gloved hands.

"Wow, really?" One of the forensics guys blinks at her in surprise. "Seriously, Mori, how d'you do that so quick?"

Mako shrugs and stands and retrieves her jacket from the back of the chair, peeling away her gloves as she goes.

"Wait, you can't - are you just going"? he calls after her.

She does not answer. She is so intent on not answering, in fact, that she nearly crashes into one of the detectives as he's leaving. She makes a tiny noise of alarm and steps back to let him pass.

"Pardon," she says politely, but cannot resist frowning at his apparent parting words. "Episode?"

[singthesong]

"Oh, you know, with the dead guy." The Balladeer shrugs, a little dismissively, and scrutinizes the woman for a moment. Sound goes all funny in dreams, but he reckons he can still tell the difference between a real person and a character sprung from someone's subconscious.

Yes...yes, she's real. He pauses on the threshold, posture shifting; he's not going to just run off on an actual person, as little as the cop role suits him. "I don't watch a ton of TV, but you pick things up." Especially when you're so concerned with narrative to begin with. He smiles, glancing past her at the other forensics folks for a moment. "What are you supposed to be doing, forensics? They've really gotten better at that..."

[shynotstupid]

"I arrest you," Beka declares exhausted as she ties the thief's hands together, "in the King's name." Around her people burst into cheers and the young woman looks up like a startled deer. Turning back to her quarry, she finds that even the young man covered in the filth of the lower city is clapping, using every bit of space afforded by his binds. 'Bloodhound,' they all cheer, 'bloodhound!'

Beka turns a pasty shade of white. In that moment she realizes she's wearing only a breastband and loincloth.

Please feel free to kill her now.

[biscuit_powered]

There's one woman in the crowd who isn't clapping -- who is, in fact, glaring at this 'Bloodhound' and shaking her head slowly from side to side in stark disapproval. Alright, so maybe the guy did something bad, and maybe he should be taken off the streets for all Asmodia knows, but public arrests and punishments are just...gross. All that 'making an example of him' stuff is exactly how totalitarian regimes are perpetuated.

And why do it in your underwear? That's just weird.

[shynotstupid]

Beka glances from face to face, part of her recording in memory each person present, part of her looking for someone to rescue her. She spots the woman easily enough - she's the only face in the crowd that doesn't slip away like a half-remembered dream. She tries not to look pleading.

When she opens her mouth to speak all that comes out in a squeak. She clears her throat and manages to sound professional.

"Clear- clear the area, please. All of you, about your business!"

[singthesong]

One person, at least, doesn't seem overly thrilled by all this.

The Balladeer's been taking the dream shifts in stride, and he doesn't mind crowds. Cheering crowds, though? Finding himself in one of those without explanation puts him off a little. What exactly are they clapping for? This doesn't seem the right setting for an execution, but he slips through the press of people anyway, murmuring half-apologies until he can get a good view of the object of attention.

This turns out to be a mostly-nude and very unhappy-looking woman.

He winces in sympathy. It quickly turns to disgust as he pushes his way through the rest of the crowd. Look, he's met some lynch mobs he could get behind, but this? Honestly! "Okay, move along!" he calls, projecting his voice easily over the noise. "I know it's hard to act like decent people sometimes, but I believe in you!"

[grabme]

This is not okay. He just showed up, he just wanted a quick look around, honestly, honestly, and now he's surrounded by humans and they all smell and someone's tied his hands together.

"Wait!" yelps Wheatley, wriggling against his binds with all the efficiency of attempting to saw through a steel beam with a toothpick. "Wait, wait, I'm just - can you, just, just clarify, possibly, what is it you're arresting me for and just what might be your reasoning here? Because, well it's, it's a funny story - not 'ha ha' funny, maybe, or I guess depending on your sense of humor, maybe - anyway, it's funny, but I'm, I'm a bit lost. Just a little. Just a bit. And if this might be your, your general - greeting ceremony, or whatever it is you humans do, I'd like it to stop now, please, if you - "

What's she turning all white about? That seems a fairly egregious error in programming, though he can't be sure - he's never seen anyone spontaneously change color like that, nor alter physical appearance right in the middle of everything.

"That's odd," says Wheatley, blessed as he is with a supreme lack of a filter of any kind. "That's very odd. Is that normal with you humans, then? Is this - are you sick, possibly?" he adds, somewhat hopefully. "Not that I'd really know - don't really know much about umm, about human, human physiology. Sickness. And the like."