applesaucedream | The Tropical Vacation of Your Dreams

Current Music: May 20th, 2013

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The Tropical Vacation of Your Dreams

The communal dreams of Manhattan have been downright pleasant lately, haven't they? Here's another sunny day for dreamers to enjoy in their sleep, though of course the tropical climate may prove just a little uncomfortable for northerners. The verdant jungle has its own sort of charm, though, teeming as it is with all sorts of exotic animals.

Make that very exotic animals.

Those who arrive close by any of the old buildings or fences will see that it's been a long time since the humans that made them disappeared. Everything here was once sleek, shiny, and state of the art. Now formerly electric fences stand bent and torn, automated SUVs sit rusting on their tracks or lie smashed to pieces where they were thrown by some enormous creature, and the jungle slowly works to reclaim a mildewy hotel and visitors' center.

Whether one finds oneself in the formless jungle that was once paddocks, in the aviary that would have housed a luxury resort, or even in the halls of what should by all rights be the most heavily fortified hotel in the world, one is always in danger here. The barriers that once separated human from dinosaur have long since fallen. Here dinosaurs have eked out a new ecosystem, the carnivores not particularly bothered about eating herbivores from entirely different epochs…or, for that matter, the funny little hairless apes that have appeared here on occasion. Here one is always in danger of running afoul of hungry tyrannosaurs, stampeding triceratops, or cunning ~~deinonychus~~ velociraptors (they're totally velociraptors, yup). Enjoy the eye-searing venom of that ~~strangely undersized~~ dilophosaurus, by the way, as well as the toxic bite of the swarms of compsognathus. Or maybe the dreamers will luck out, and the worst they'll encounter is an indifferent, bumbling brachiosaurus or an unassuming microceratops. Who here is ever that lucky, though?

Welcome to Jurassic Park.

[Mod note: Same drill as always. All players and characters are welcome, current members or no. Characters will remember or forget any and all dream events at players' discretion. Death in the dream does not result in real death.]

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Gus is not prepared for what appears at the top of the stairs. It's not a dinosaur, but it's not human either. He doesn't know WHAT it is, but he's not going to wait around to find out. He raises the shotgun to his shoulder and fires.

The shotgun is LOUD -- he didn't think to warn Sunshine about that -- and the kickback is intense; firing it on the stairs is different from being on the floor, and he topples back slightly. But he sees the creature drop, some sort of fluid ooze spurting upward, splattering across the walls.

Sunshine only catches a brief glimpse of the person atop the stairs before Gus fires. She registers blue skin and dark eyes and for a moment thinks, Pat? Then the explosive report of the gun makes her jump half out of her skin - she comes perilously close to falling back down the stairs - and there's blood or - or something decorating the walls, and oh gods no.

"What was that?!" she snaps, too terrified to sound properly indignant. Forgetting that Gus might be from a universe without partbloods (and forgetting that there are plenty of people back home who might be inclined to shoot an obvious demon cross on sight), she scrambles up the stairs toward the prone figure at the top. She makes herself look past the horrific wound in the guy's torso, and… it's not Pat. But it's not a fucking dinosaur, either - he's wearing clothes - and she claps a hand over her mouth, horrified.

That was Croach, and he places you under onus for his being shot in the chest. He staggers back with the force of the impact with a soundless cry and hits the wall behind him, cracking the plaster before he falls.

The pain is - very painful - and distinctly unlike the clean sear of a laser pistol. This is burning, viscera, and blood, as the sacred Nah Nohtek within him attempts to purge the jagged shrapnel in his chest. It drops out slowly, falling muffledly to the floor, and he groans a warbling, "ow", through his repairing speech cluster, shooting a resentful look in the direction the shot came from.

"What are you doing?!" Gus snaps as the woman darts past him. He makes a grab for her arm but misses by inches. "Get away from that! You don't know what it--"

It says something.

It says.... ow.

"What the..." Gus steps up slowly behind Sunshine, gun still smoking, staring, frozen at the mess. The creature is, ridiculously, still alive. And it's moving. Its glistening viscera, its whorl of exploded innards, are squirming and crawling back into place. There's a heavy odor rising up from it all.

This is... this is disgusting. This is the most disgusting thing Gus has ever seen. He's not really sure how to cope with how disgusting it is. Wow. Oh god. Wow.

"Madre de dios," he breathes, feeling the sudden rise of bile in his throat. Should he shoot it again? Would that only make it worse?

He reaches limply for Sunshine's shoulder. "Get. Away. From it."

Edited 2014-02-23 04:21 (UTC)

Sunshine does step back - but not for the reason Gus thinks. She bolts into one of the hotel rooms, hoping for a bathroom, or at least a closet. Somewhere she can not be observed for a few seconds.

There is a bathroom, and she manages to refrain from vomiting until she reaches the toilet. She's still coughing when she hears another carthaginian gunshot from the hall, but the only protest she can manage is a loud groan. She casts a bleary-eyed look at the sink, decides she wouldn't trust the water even if the plumbing did turn out to be working, and wipes her mouth on her sleeve. Ugh.

She starts back toward the hallway, sees the fresh splatter on the wall, and stops dead, forcing herself to breathe for a moment. Then, in a voice that still manages to be loud and clear despite its raggedness, she snaps, "Stop shooting him! He's a person!" The 'you goddamn idiot' is unspoken (because he's still holding a gun) but heavily implied.

Croach shields himself when he sees the stranger move to fire again, and this time his arm and shoulder take the brunt of the damage. His cry of pain is garbled by his damaged speech cluster and he struggles to hold his arm in place - that is, attached to his shoulder - to facilitate its healing.

"He is designated Croach the Tracker, and--" He grits his teeth as further shrapnel works its way out from his arm, slicing his flesh again. The sacred Nah Nohtek is working swiftly, but it is little comfort. With a groan, he persists. "And I too would prefer you cease firing. Oh-- this is the second most painful sensation I have ever experienced."

"If it is a PERSON, it should be DEAD RIGHT NOW," Gus snaps right back, struggling to reload, because it had enough life left in it to raise its arm for the second shot, and it's still moving and making noises. "Christ, what the hell ARE you?!"

Croach is already answering him, or more responding to the girl, and it doesn't help much. Gus lowers the gun, finally feeling defeated, staring in shock and horror and imminent regurgitation at the display.

"I ... I don't ..." He drops the gun entirely. "I don't understand."

Distantly, he hears voices downstairs, high-pitched, drunken laughter, which he ignores because it makes little sense, and there is no more room in him for things that don't make sense.

Sunshine ventures over to the doorway, drawn by the sound of Croach talking. It's not the fact that he can talk that shocks her so much as the fact that he's in any shape to. But a quick, squeamish glance at his chest confirms that he's just… healing. Rapidly. Vampire-rapidly, though he's obviously not a sucker.

"Yeah, well," she says weakly as she watches Croach's body repair itself, "not all people look completely human."

"I do not see why I should look human, as I am not," Croach retorts, sounding reasonably offended. "In fact, very few people 'look' human, as you comprise an exceedingly small majority of the denizens of the known universe." So there! Yeah! Humans. Rude. Croach sits up carefully, keeping an eye on the armed human and testing the mobility of his shoulder. He will not be able to defend himself with his quantum bow for several additional short units of time. He will attempt peace instead.

"The sacred Nah Nohtek residing within me," - which is not gross - he explains, "has already begun the healing process. Any further attempts to injure me shall place you under further onus, which you have already accrued by shooting me."

Gus can't keep up with this at all. He's barely even trying anymore. He watches Croach's healing process with a dull stare, unable to look away.

"I..." he says slowly, "apologize... for shooting you. Twice." He draws a breath, attempting to steady his nerves. His fingers are twitching, away from the trigger, fortunately for everyone.

"I've never seen anything like you before," he murmurs, starting to get used to the idea. He kneels down, studying Croach with a more clinical eye. Disgusting. But utterly fascinating.

His fascination is interrupted by the familiar, terrifying rattling and growling, the sound he's already face enough for one day. He doesn't move apart from his eyes, drifting up to face the velociraptor -- or whatever the hell it is. The creature from Jurassic Park.

"Girl," he says under his breath, and he knows she won't like being called that, but he also knows she's seen it too. "Get back in the room. Very. Slowly."

Without moving his eyes from the dinosaur, he finishes reloading the gun. The velociraptor is less interested in him, and more in the wounded alien, whose guts are already spread around for it to smell. It slinks closer, its horrible claw tearing through the carpet.

"Croach," murmurs Gus. "Don't move."

It's close enough now that it's snuffling around Croach's antennae. Gus exhales slowly, then swings the gun up so the barrel is almost inside the creature's maw. He fires twice, and it shudders back and collapses, twitching, onto the floor.

What's the blue guy snapping at her for? She's pretty sure she hasn't said anything half as offensive as multiple gunshot wounds to the chest. But before she can attempt to defend herself, another carthaginian dinosaur appears. Gods and friggin angels, there's no end to them.

She gives the back of Gus's head a pointed glare when he refers to her as 'girl.' She doesn't need him to tell her to get back into the relative safety of the hotel room, either, but this isn't the time for anything but a silent retreat. She clamps her hands over her ears as Gus swings up the gun, but the report still makes her wince.

Lowering her hands, she lets several moments of ringing silence drag by before venturing, "Everything okay out there?"

Croach bristles at being referred to as an anything, but before he can express his displeasure with the term, he senses the approach of a predator. He becomes distinctly aware of the smell of his blood and the current accessibility of his organs. The armed stranger notices it as well, thankfully, and Croach sits in the greatest quantity of stillness - resisting a shiver at the creature's uncomfortable proximity to his antennae - until it is safe to move again, and he releases the breath he was holding.

"Onus reduced," he mumbles into the silence that follows, and then calls out to the female stranger. "We are sound." Generally speaking. "It is safe." Ish. All the same, he reaches with his functioning arm to take his bow and an arrow from his holster, laying them across his lap.

Gus is relieved, he supposes, to have reduced his onus. This seems dreadfully important to the creature, and it is not uninteresting. He sighs, wipes his brow, and sits back to watch the continued process of reconstruction occurring before him.

"My name is Gus," he says finally, having nothing else to say.

She stops in the doorway and cringes at the substantial increase in the mess in the hall. Well, at least he limited his shooting to the real threat this time.

"Sunshine," she says, rounding out the introductions. So she'll thank you to not refer to her as 'girl' again, Gus. She turns her attention to Croach, who still appears to be healing and is still presumably in pain, and winces. "Um. Is there some way we can, uh… help?" It doesn't really look like he needs anything more than some time, but she can't just not offer.

Croach shakes his head. "I will heal unaided. You should not remain here, however. The body of this creature will lure additional predators. It would be... of relative safety to defend yourselves from within one of the rooms." He holds his bow and arrow in his semi-working hand and pulls himself to standing with the other arm braced against the wall. His wounds are superficial now, still glistening and weaving new strands of skin, but they impair him no longer. "I shall defend the domicile until you awaken."

"Until we awaken?" says Gus incredulously. "You think we're going to sleep?"

He hasn't had a moment to breathe, much less to think about how he came to be in this place. That this is a dream has utterly escaped him -- he's still not particularly used to the idea even in better circumstances.

"In any case, absolutely not," he says. "You can't fend them off alone. Not with that."

"I'm not napping," Sunshine says, in complete agreement with Gus on this one. Even if she felt remotely safe (which she doesn't, really, despite the sudden proliferation of weapon-wielding hardasses in her immediate vicinity), it's going to be a long damn time before she's able to sleep.

It hasn't even occurred to her that she's dreaming. Maybe because since she came through the rift, this brand of carthaginian madness has started seeming a lot more plausible. Vampires who can pass, rabbits out of nowhere, why the hell shouldn't there be dinosaurs? Ugh.

Croach looks between Gus and Sunshine, trying to ascertain if he is the object of some strange human joke. "My quantum bow and techno arrows will be more than sufficient against these creatures, and even were they not, I - you - you do not sense that?" Their incredulousness seems genuine. Apparently they do not. Humans. So lame, right? "We are experiencing what you humans would inaccurately designate a 'dream'. Truly, you are unaware?"

Gus casts a suspicious glance at the weaponry. It looks ordinary enough to him. The other staement is one he cannot qualify, and does not care to try. It's easier to dismiss it than to argue.

"Regardless," he says. "You cannot disagree that the two of us is a better defense than just one. I agree we should stay put, but I'm not going to just sit idly by."

Sunshine is all for qualifying that particular statement. "Wait, we're dreaming?" Hell, if that's true, shouldn't dying be on the top of the to-do list? You always wake up before you die in a dream, right?

Well. Some dreams work that way. This might not be one of them, though, considering that Croach took all that damage and didn't go anywhere. Shiva wept.

Fine. If she's stuck here, she's going to do something useful. She turns to Gus and asks, "How are you for ammo?"

Sunshine finds this dreaming theory plausible. Her name is Sunshine and she didn't have hardly any trouble accepting this blue insect-faced creature as a "person" before it had even spoken in sentences. But then again, he remembers being told that the last time he'd found himself somewhere strange... it's foggy now. That was how he met Cecil.

Very well. A dream. A shared dream, about dinosaurs.

"I'm going to assume our lives are still very much in danger," says Gus coolly. He checks his pockets. "I have enough rounds left for a few more, but I'd have to make the shots count. What did you have in mind?"

"I can transmute small objects," she says bluntly, lifting a shoulder in a half-shrug. "If I can see what one of your bullets looks like, I can probably make more out of other stuff." Maybe. She's sort of counting on this whole dream business canceling out the real-world logistical difficulties of transmuting worked metal (not to mention the whole not-changing-them-back thing, which is sort of frowned upon). On the bright side, there's no shortage of dead electronics in the hotel room that she could pull apart for scrap, and there's a respectable beam of sunlight shining through the grimy window. It would be better still if she could break it, assuming that doing so wouldn't endanger all their lives.

At this, Gus lowers his shotgun, shifts his weight to one leg so that his hip and head are cocked. It is the sassiest he's ever looked.

"Excuse me?" he intones. "You can what?"

Croach, who has been observing the exchange with one side of his brow raised significantly higher than the other, trying silently to decide if all humans are unfamiliar with the nature of dreams, helpfully speaks up. "She possesses the ability to alter the shape and composition of a small object to resemble those of another small object. It is a simple concept." And presumably one granted by dreams, right? Those silly human dreams. Oh, humans. "Human designated Sunshine, I would be under onus to you, were you to... 'transmute' a number of techno arrows for my use as well." He deftly removes an arrow from his holster, clutching it hopefully.

Thank you, Croach. Well, okay, she could forgive some skepticism on Gus's part (since he's apparently from some universe where magic handling isn't a thing), but still. They've teamed up with a Martian to fight dinosaurs in a dream, and transmutation is where he's drawing the line?

She's a bit less sure of her ability to transmute arrows, as they're well outside the realm of what would fit between her cupped palms… but again, dream mechanics. "They might be too big," she admits, in the interests of full disclosure. "But I can try." She holds out a hand, eyebrows raised. "Mind if I look at it?"

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The Tropical Vacation of Your Dreams

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