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

[johnny_truant]

"Wah!" Johnny staggers back as Jodie floats back down. "Whoa. Whoa. Jesus. That was cool."

Recovered, not wanting to look like a TOTAL idiot, he strikes off in the indicated direction. "What kinda something was it? Like a promising something, or a we'll-settle-for-anything something?"

[heysoulsister]

"Quicker than climbing," she says with a shrug. And every minute they spend out in the open is a risk, between the dinosaurs and the other dreamers.

As for the buildings she saw… "Maybe promising? It looked pretty sturdy from up there, but god only knows what kind of shape it's really in. I think it's a maintenance building or something, so it's… probably pretty well fortified." As compared to the more touristy spots.

[johnny_truant]

"Sounds good enough." And it probably will be. As long as it's not crawling with angry prehistoric monsters it'll probably be fine.

"So you really never saw this movie?" he says after several moments of awkward silence and walking.

[heysoulsister]

Jodie lets out a faint huff of amusement. "Well, when you grow up with an entity who tends to freak out and attack people when you're upset, they don't let you watch movies that might upset you." Of course, they hadn't seemed to mind her reading above her age level, so by the time she was old enough for the movie to be an option, she'd already finished the book years before and moved on.

[johnny_truant]

"Huh. Makes sense." And it does, for a second. "Wait. They? Who's they?" As much time as they've spent around each other, they haven't talked much about their respective pasts. "Did your parents know about it?"

[heysoulsister]

… Great. How in the fuck is she supposed to answer that? Aiden lets out a faint, irritable grumble, and Jodie presses her lips together for a few moments.

"Yeah," she finally says, her voice devoid of any humor. "They did." Emphasis on the past-tense.

[johnny_truant]

Well that's a pretty definitive shut down. Johnny recognizes the stiffness, the curt refusal to go into detail. To be fair, he's got more than a few things he'd rather avoid talking about.

Try again. "So, um." God damn. Small talk is so hard. This is why he never has friends. It's so much easier when you can just fuck somebody and never speak to them again. "What did you, uh, do? Before you came here?"

She mentioned the army, but that can't be everything, can it?

[heysoulsister]

Aiden doesn't bother grumbling this time; he just drifts over to Johnny in a vaguely menacing way. There are no mirrors he can write on, here, but if there were, the message would definitely be: SHUT UP.

Jodie gives Johnny an exasperated sidelong glance. It's not his fault her whole damn past is basically off-limits, for both of their sakes, but Christ, couldn't he pick another topic of conversation? "I don't really want to talk about it," she says bluntly. Not least of all because the last thing she did before she came through the rift was destroy a historic downtown district and take out most of a SWAT team.

[johnny_truant]

Jesus, Aiden. Johnny raises his hands placatingly, giving him an irritable glance. "Well, what DO you want to talk about," he says, somewaht coolly. "I am open to suggestions."

[heysoulsister]

Do they have to talk about anything? Hell, they probably should be keeping quiet in case another goddamn tyrannosaurus hears them talking and decides to investigate.

She's about to suggest as much when she hears someone else talking. "Did you hear that?" she asks in an undertone.