applesaucedream | The Tropical Vacation of Your Dreams

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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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When Daine steps out into the meadow and sees the enormous bull triceratops, her vision blurs for a few moments. She fully expects the image before her to fade, revealing a prone, damaged skeleton lying in the ruins of the Emperor's palace… but then she blinks her tears away, and he's still there, basking in the sunlight. He's real.

Daine breaks into a run, then forces herself to slow down. She knows better than to approach a plant-eater at high speed, regardless of how large said plant-eater is… and for all her fondness for the creatures who helped her in Carthak, this isn't one of them.

Still, it doesn't take her long to befriend animals, and inside ten minutes, she's sprawled atop the triceratops's back, her head pillowed in the crook of her arm and her other hand tracing over the animal's pebbly skin.

If you find yourself in the Safari Lodge, you should know you'll be in the company of one very pissed off former drug lord armed with a sawn-off shotgun. If he looks dirtier and much more torn up than usual, it's because he's just been in a fight with a horde of velociraptors -- and won.

Gus is not in a good mood. His nice shirt is in tatters and he's got blood staining his shoes. He is out of patience and has no time for fear. He's holed up in the lobby, and he's ready.

Once again, the world has confirmed that Borrowers are 100% right to be afraid of everything. Aglet huddles behind the nightstand in a dingy hotel room, trembling as he calls on all his skill at silencing his breathing and pretending he's not there. It seems like hours before he hears the sounds of the monster he'd seen on the other side of the room moving away. He's pretty sure it didn't see him, since it didn't try to move the nightstand, but he waits a long time before he carefully and quietly shuffles over to where he can peek out.

Peter has just stepped in shit. He's not particularly concerned with what kind of shit (and how would he know, anyway?) so much as the strong smell it's imparted to his boot. Disgusted, he trudges up the steps to the Visitors' Center, pausing to scrap his foot on a step and get the bulk of it off. It doesn't look like anyone's been here in years, but hell if he's going to stand around in jungle heat if there's a chance he'll find shade and a respite from insects.

Oh, fuck.

Jodie vaults over a wall of a tree root and presses herself into the crevice between it and its neighbor. The air is thick and humid, and it feels like she isn't getting any oxygen - but she keeps her breathing quiet and steady. If she starts gasping, it might hear her.

There's a low rumble from behind the tree, and the ground shakes as the tyrannosaurus steps forward, head swinging from side to side as it seeks out its prey. She can't outrun it, and she can't climb this tree fast enough to get out of its reach.

Aiden, do something! she thinks desperately.

Aiden swoops around the dinosaur, frustrated at his lack of options. He can protect Jodie if the creature attacks her, but only for so long, and there's nothing here for him to throw - nothing large and heavy enough to do real damage. He presses in on the beast… and realizes with a jolt of surprise that its mind is open. Possessing people hasn't been an option for some time, but dinosaurs, it seems, are fair game.

The T-rex rears its head back as if it's been pushed. When it lowers its head, the eyes are milky white. Aiden, for the moment, is in control.

Jodie cautiously climbs out of her hiding spot and stares up at the dinosaur. "Okay," she breathes, still thrumming with adrenaline. "Thanks." It's still eerie as hell, but at least she's not in immediate danger of being devoured anymore. "Just, uh… stay in there, okay?" The dinosaur remains still, which she takes as a 'yes.' Pushing her hair off her forehead, she starts to pick her way through the jungle, the possessed T-rex lumbering along behind her.

There is a very confused young lady here. The dreaming is shielding her from most of the realisation that this makes absolutely no sense, but she's still pretty confused about how she got here. It's... very noticeably different from the middle of the desert or the flashy big city, and she can't remember planning a holiday.

She's just hanging around the inside of the rather dilapidated building, when she sees a familiar figure. A moment later, she also smells him, and she can't suppress a bit of a smirk.

"Trying out a new perfume?" she asks to get his attention.

Oh gods oh gods what kind of carthaginian place is this?! Sunshine squirms through a gap in the fence surrounding the Safari Lodge and nearly stumbles into the grotty pit that used to be a pool. The building ahead doesn't exactly scream 'secure,' but it does scream 'too small to fit the thing you just saw,' and for the moment, that is more than enough. She bolts for the front doors, her little knife clutched in her hand.

The doors opens with a bang and Gus whips around, shotgun cocked and hefted. What he sees is a woman -- which, right now, is all he cares about. Allegiances, loyalties, they don't matter here: all that matters is species.

He lowers the gun and hurries over to her. "Get in," he snaps, and moves to shut the door. "Did anything follow you?" As a quick afterthought, he holds out a hand to help her up.

From his vantage point just behind the nightstand, Aglet may or may not hear a brief but loud clatter from the hallway outside the room, followed by the quiet twang of a quantum bow after the monster picks its way out of the room to hunt the noise, which is closely accompanied by what could perhaps be described as the whoomph and squeal of a velociraptor whose chest has been imploded by a techno arrow.

Croach steps over the tail of the creature to enter the room, another arrow nocked, but he senses no additional immediate danger. He can, however, sense pheromones indicative of fear, although their intensity (or lack thereof) makes it difficult to assess if the being excreting them has already left or was already found. Still, he knows that Sparks Nevada would not leave any being without aid.

"You are safe presently," he announces to the room, voice rising at the end. Then, "Please note that the pitch of my speech does not indicate uncertainty regarding your current safety, but rather of your presence."

Well, this is perfectly jolly. Nice island getaway, lovely tropical weather, miles of jungle to explore... and just LOOK at the size of this kitchen!

"There's got to be a liquor cabinet around here somewhere," declares Frank. "Sadie dear, be a love and help me find it? It's been almost FIVE MINUTES since our last drink!"

"Oh, fuck y--" The retort is halfway out of Peter's mouth before he even looks to see who's speaking. When he does, the information almost doesn't register in his brain, it's been so long since he saw either of the teenaged friends he absolutely cannot explain without sounding like a pedophile. Peter halts and blinks at her, letting out a little "hah" of resigned interest.

"You too, huh? I was wondering when it'd happen. Bring your boyfriend?"

And now there's a goddamn gun in her face. Sunshine backpedals, sneakers slipping on the dead vegetation covering the floor, and ends up sitting down hard. By some happy miracle, said spill doesn't result in her accidentally gouging herself anywhere with her knife.

But when he seems more inclined to help than shoot her, she quickly warms to the idea. That gun looks a hell of a lot more effective than the sad excuse for weaponry she's got. She accepts the hand-up with gratitude, if not much grace. "I don't think so," she says. "It didn't see me, and I don't think it could fit through that fence."

"Me too, what?" she asks, giving him a look. And that's a good question. Did she bring her boyfriend? "I guess so." If Peter's here, Charley probably is too, right? She hasn't really made it a habit of hanging out with Peter on her own. (For a while she wasn't sure whether to refer to him as Mr Vincent, but after they more or less became friends, or at least friendly, that seemed weirder, since Peter isn't exactly the image of maturity and authority.)

Maybe Charley organised a trip? Yeah, that seems reasonable. She's not lucid enough to realise that she should probably actually know this.

Footsteps send Aglet scuttling back into hiding, though they don't sound the same as before. And what was that noise that came through the door? It almost sounded like a fight, but he can't imagine any encounter with a monster like that would be so brief and involve only the one scream. He holds still again, listening as something -- something else? -- enters the room. When it speaks and turns out to be a person, he lets out a tiny sigh of relief. Even if it is a Bean, anything is better than something with all those teeth and claws.

He can stay here, he thinks, and probably hide, but this place doesn't have any hidden passages he knows about and there could be more of whatever that thing was. Cautiously, Aglet creeps to the end of the nightstand again and pokes his head out to look around. What he sees makes him take his first audible (if still mousey) gasp. It's blue! The Bean is blue!

Sadie steps into the kitchen, empty martini glass in hand, and wrinkles her nose. "There's scarcely a bottle to be seen," she laments indignantly. And at the moment, that's far more concerning than the overall state of the place, which is rather alarming. A resort ought to have a higher standard of cleanliness. After a moment, though, she brightens. "But just look at all these cabinets! Most of them are bound to have liquor in them." What else are cabinets for, after all?

She pries one open, then pouts when it reveals nothing but platters. "Boo," she declares before moving on to the next.

Edited 2014-02-22 23:50 (UTC)

Yuri finds himself on a road long overgrown with weeds and ferns, the asphalt cracked in so many places that no vehicle could traverse it even if any were present that could run at all. It's still easier than pushing his way through the jungle, but something about this whole situation makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. It's still a few days too early for him to be feeling this edgy just from the upcoming moon, and he pauses again and again on the road to listen, trying to pick out any threatening noises from the constant chatter of jungle birds and bugs, or to glimpse whoever -- or whatever -- he's not entirely sure he can feel watching him.

He's dreaming. He's dreaming.

"Oh no no no no," he whispers, crawling along the ground. He can hear some kind of animal nearby, hell knows what kind, but he's not waiting around to find out. "Goddammit not again, not this shit again."

He curls up at the base of an enormous tree and takes a minute to breathe. Okay. He's gonna be okay. As long as Zagreus isn't anywhere near him, he can just ride this one out and wake up like normal, right?? Maybe if he just stays absolutely still and doesn't think about anything, Zagreus won't find him.

There's still some rustling going on around him. He stays as still as possible, holding his breath. Whatever it is, it'll be out of the brush and onto the path soon enough, and it'll see him, and then he will die, or he won't. He wonders what happens if he dies in a dream. Will he wake up or will he just die?

Then it shows itself, and his heart drops deep down into his stomach, and for a moment he can't breathe at all.

"Oh god no NO NO NO." Fuck stayng still. Fuck Zagreus. Zagreus is the least of his problems. He gets up, his feet scrambling in the dirt. It is unlikely that he can outrun whatever the hell kind of fucking DINOSAUR this is, but the entire rational part of his brain is totally gone. He runs. He runs like hell.

He's not in any amount of shape and the thing is pursuing him and he knows it'll catch him any second now--

--which ends up not mattering, because when he sees what's up ahead he skids right to a stop and falls down.

"Hhhhhhhhhh," he says shrilly, staring up at it, its immensity, its complete towering dominance over him. It's a t-rex. It's real.

His smaller pursuer has changed its mind, naturally, but that's only a tiny blessing, because the monster has already turned, already seen him.

Croach drops to one knee to look under the Earthen bed, attempting to ascertain the source of the inhalation. There is nothing beneath - nothing living, anyway. Is there a hidden youngling, perhaps? He remains crouched, returning his bow and arrow to their holster. "I am here to assist you," he assures the room, adopting a tone which he intends to give comfort. "Are you unharmed?"

"You too here." Peter gives her a puzzled look, foggy brain not quite getting what the source of her confusion is despite him having realized he's dreaming. He's been getting better at that, but not at other brain things. "You did notice I've been gone for months, did you?"

"Well this is shaping up to be a rather sorry excuse for a kitchen after all!" declares Frank, searching the cabinets on the other side of the room. "Darling, you keep searching in here. I'm going to check the lobby for a bar."

He wanders out into the brightly lit domed area and is treated to skeletons instead.

"I say!" he says. "Not much out here either! Except for all the dinosaurs." He glances out a window. "Oh, look! Dinosaurs outside, too! Alive dinosaurs." He strums his moustache. "Any luck?"

"All right, darling," she agrees, sparing her husband a fond glance before her expression crumples back into a little frown of concentration. Five cabinets down, and she's yet to come across anything but serving dishes. What sort of a place is this? Sadie sets down her martini glass so she can rummage with both hands, but to no avail. Even a set of pint glasses would have been an encouraging sign, but the closest thing she finds is a shelf of dusty wine glasses. Ugh.

Retrieving her glass, empty as it is, she glides out to the lobby. "No luck at all," she says, draping one arm over her husband's shoulder as she peers out the window. "Ooh!" she exclaims, momentarily diverted from their current plight. "Do you think we might bag one? It would make a sterling conversation starter!"

"Aunt," Aly says, her voice an absolute deadpan. "There's something very strange afoot."

She's made her way through by sneaking and waiting, not having the gifts that Daine possesses when it comes to animals. Luckily, her darking friends gave her a point in the right direction and she's not at all surprised that Daine's in a fine mood.

"I would not be sure about that," mutters Gus. He glances out the window, but so far the way seems more or less clear. "Back this way," he says, steering her away from the entrance, toward the cluster of upended furniture that he's turned into a makeshift fort. "This place is in no way secure. You any good with a gun?" There's a few extras in the locker he broke into, and while he's not thrilled about arming strangers, the situation more or less calls for it. He'll be damned if he gets a group together and he's the only one with a weapon.

Amy gives him a look right back.

"Pretty sure I just saw you a few days ago," she answers, in a way that suggests she assumes he's drunk. Which... usually doesn't lead to him saying stuff like that, but it's the most likely explanation.

Jodie glances back when Aiden stops, worried that they're being pursued. She's looking for something big, so it takes her a moment to spot Johnny sprawled in the dirt. Her shoulders slump in relief, and she trots around the T-rex, giving it a wide berth so she doesn't risk touching it accidentally and forcing Aiden out.

"It's okay," she calls, raising a hand to get Johnny's attention. "Aiden's controlling it." She offers him a hand up, glancing around to make sure nothing else is about to come thundering out of the underbrush.

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The Tropical Vacation of Your Dreams

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