The Tropical Vacation of Your Dreams

[applesaucemod]

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.]

Comments

[bluesuit_hoofy]

"The what?" Andrew gapes as suddenly the hulking shape off behind them he'd taken for jungle foliage and odd shadows resolves itself into a dinosaur. "What?" he asks again, brain looping around to what seems to be a vital question. Just for good measure, he asks it a third time, voice dropping an octave as he looks between the two of them and tries to fathom how a pair of giggling humans got hold of a triceratops named Penelope. "What."

That it's named Penelope he doesn't question. He once named a vortisaur Margaret, after all.

[sadie_doyle]

"I think he agrees!" Sadie concludes with no small amount of boozy exuberance. She starts to lift her glass in a toast, notes its emptiness, and pouts. "Boo! Frank, be a dear and refill my glass?"

To Andrew, she adds, "What about you, darling? Drink?" After a beat's consideration: "Though I don't suppose you could manage a glass with those little hooves, could you? Perhaps - ooh!" She leans forward a little, eyes dancing. "You could drink straight from the bottle like a lamb! Shall I hold it for you?" After a moment's rummaging in her bag of liquor, she proffers a bottle of gin and gives it an enticing little waggle.

[bluesuit_hoofy]

Yes, continue trampling his dignity, by all means. "You've got a triceratops!" he blurts, refusing to dignify the offer with a response. "Where did you get a triceratops?!"

[frank_doyle]

"Oh, you know... around." Frank shrugs. "There's an awful lot of them around here! Dinosaurs, that is. Are you some sort of dinosaur? Because, forgive my ignorance, but you look rather like a small blue horse, and not any brand of dinosaur I've seen."

[sadie_doyle]

"We called for a cab, and Penelope was gracious enough to assist us," Sadie says, as if it's the most natural thing in the world. Why wouldn't a dinosaur choose to befriend a human or two?

She nods in agreement with her husband's assessment. "And I don't believe they had charming little pinstripe jackets in the Cretaceous."

[bluesuit_hoofy]

"I'm a pony," replies Andrew, regaining some of his composure. "At the moment. Obviously. The question is, why aren't you? Or Penelope, for that matter."

[frank_doyle]

What a strange and alarming question! Frank has never considered this before, and he frowns intently at his gin.

"I... I don't know WHY I'm not a pony," he admits. He pulls himself together slightly and adds, "I suppose I can't much help it. We are the way we are. And I can't speak to Penelope. Or rather she can't speak to me. So my speaking to her would only do one of us any good."

[sadie_doyle]

Oh, dear. Frank's getting that look he gets when he starts to doubt some fundamental aspect of his existence. Sadie drifts over to place a comforting hand on his arm and frowns as well, though hers is distinctly less introspective.

"Why should we be ponies?" she asks the diminutive blue horse. "We've never been ponies before, have we, Frank?"

[bluesuit_hoofy]

"Most people who come to Equestria turn into ponies," supplies Andrew. Frowning, he adds thoughtfully, "This is starting to feel familiar. You haven't fallen through any interdimensional rifts lately, have you?"

[frank_doyle]

"Possible!" declares Frank. "Hmm, we did arrive here rather abruptly, didn't we, Sadie?" He turns his attention with equivalent abruptness back to the man-pony. "Is this Equestria then? Because the last people we met claimed it was called 'Jurassic Park'."

[sadie_doyle]

"We certainly did - and in that dreadful, liquor-less kitchen!" She shudders at the horrible memory, which is surely as upsetting to Frank as it is to her. "I shouldn't have spoken of it; forgive me, darling."

On the other hand, she quite likes the sound of 'Equestria.' She repeats the word with no small amount of relish: "Equestriaaahhh! Oh, Frank, it's such fun to say!" Metaphorically sobering a little, she adds, "But could this really be Equestria and Jurassic Park and a dream? Two out of three seems a bit more reasonable."

[bluesuit_hoofy]

"What." Oh, look, a broken record. Andrew suddenly looks round, that feeling of 'shouldn't be here' coming back full force. "Did you just say Jurassic Park?"

Obviously they did, because they said it twice. He just likes to be dramatic.

[frank_doyle]

"Yes," says Frank. "Twice. Just now."

[sadie_doyle]

"Keep up, tiny pony!" Sadie says encouragingly. Then, "Do you have a name? Shall we give you one?"

[bluesuit_hoofy]

"Andrew," supplies Andrew promptly, thrilled neither at the prospect of being given a new name nor at the one of continuing to be called 'tiny pony.' "My name is Andrew. And if this is a dream, that would explain rather a lot."

[frank_doyle]

"Andrew!" repeats Frank, delighted. "Curious name for a small talking blue horse with clothes and hair. I'd have expected something more along the lines of..." He gives it a good think. Then a good drink. "Hmmm. Bartholomew. Yes, that sounds like just the thing. What if we call you Bartholomew, little fellow?"

[bluesuit_hoofy]

"Most horses have some sort of hair," points out Andrew testily, deliberately misunderstanding. "And most of them tend to be called things like Twilight Sparkle -- don't call me that. It's a girl's name and it belongs to someone else."

[sadie_doyle]

"Well, Bartholomew is quite a step up from Twilight Sparkle," Sadie agrees, taking a pensive sip of her whiskey. "And we could call you Barty for short! Bartholomew it is!" A cheery toast settles it. Sorry, Andrew: Bartholomew is your name, now.

[frank_doyle]

"Very good!" Frank clinks his glass lightly against Sadie's, then takes a nice full swig. "So, Bartholomew - Barty - I seem to notice you favoring a leg. Are you entirely all right?" He waggles the vodka bottle, the very BEST medicine, after all.

[bluesuit_hoofy]

"I broke it after Christmas," he replies, looking bewildered at being suddenly renamed. "My name's Andrew," he reiterates, sounding lost.

[sadie_doyle]

"Poor little Barty," Sadie croons sympathetically. "I think you need a drink!" After a beat, she adds, "I think I need a drink!" She refills her whiskey and cheerfully glugs it down.

[frank_doyle]

"That won't do at all!" Frank announces. "Come, Barty, let old Frank take a look. I've bandaged a few wounds in my time!" He crouches down and pats his knee as though he expects Andrew Bartholomew to sit on it. "Sadie, the sterilizer!"

[bluesuit_hoofy]

"It's healed now," he replies impatiently, giving the proffered knee a bemused look. "Aren't you forgetting something important? You said this was Jurassic Park. If Penelope's loose, she's probably not the only one."

[sadie_doyle]

Sadie, caught mid-brandishment of a bottle of vodka, looks disappointed. Watching her darling Frank perform miraculous feats with his thrillingly adept hands would have been such a treat.

Glancing back at Penelope, she says, "Well, of course not, darling. We bagged a tyrannosaur earlier."

[bluesuit_hoofy]

Congratulations, Sadie, you just broke Andrew. He sits down heavily on his haunches, staring at her. "What?" he asks.