logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: BURY A FRIEND

EVENT LOG: BURY A FRIEND

characters: everyone.
location: around town.
date/time: october 9-17.
content: the hallucinations begin...
warnings: psychological horror. please cw tags appropriately.

it's probably something that shouldn't be said out loud

October 9 feels like a normal day at first, save for the red lighthouse beam cutting through the darkness overhead. You know by now—or you've heard—that the lighthouse is only active during ferry arrivals and events... And there's definitely no ferry docked at the, er. Beach. The town is quiet, the forest spirits behave business-as-usual, Rastus doesn't know what's up. Whatever's going on, you'll have to figure it out for yourself.

And you will, though the hallucinations are subtle at first: objects moving when they shouldn't, people's proportions looking just a bit off, voices in an empty room, and so on. Is it just your mind playing tricks in the darkness? Might be! Will did warn you all about the effects of living without a sun and a proper day/night cycle.

As the days go on, the hallucinations are harder to ignore, no matter how much you may wish to wave them off as flukes. What's wrong with everyone's faces? When did all the howling start? Who do you hold onto when the world drops out from under you? And those hands...

While you might know it can't be real, it certainly feels real. But at least it can't last forever!

...Right?

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Pacing. All Kuai wants to do now that he's convinced himself to leave his room, is keep moving because if he doesn't stay in one place the hands start to fade - the hallucinations unable to take true form if he doesn't look at them for that long. He can still hear things just out of range, familiar voices calling out.

But he can ignore it, because it's not real. A mantra he keeps muttering to himself in Mandarin as he paces, hoping at some point he'll actually believe it.

He only glances at the people he passes, their faces morphing into those long dead, shadowy hands on their shoulders and puppeting their movements. But when he looks over at the Soldier he can actually see the pain on his face, the frozen expression as he concentrates on something that isn't there. That might be happening internally.

He's seen that before.

"Are you alright?" he asks even though he's sure the answer is no.

The Sergeant squints over at the guy through the bouncing echo of that Word. Who is that... wait, the ice-guy, right? He absolutely doesn't remember his name. Shit. "Could be better," he says, bringing the flesh hand up to rub at the side of his head.

(You okay in there?) The Soldier doesn't respond, just a shivery presence in the back of his mind.

"Could be worse, though," the Sergeant adds. He doesn't sound the same as he did the day by the lake, accent changed, voice more relaxed, even if a little pained. And also a little better with social niceties, like coming back with: "What about you? How you holdin' up?"

"Honestly I do not know." He does notice the difference in him, which is all the more alarming. After Rosinante fishing up a clone of himself that evaporated into foam, and the visions of people being puppetted, it's leading Kuai to start to believe that no one was really themselves anymore.

If everyone had been replaced with clones how would he be able to tell?

"Something seems off with.. everything. The place. The people. But I can't find the source."

"Yeah, you and me both, pal. All those things that aren't really there." What had other people said. What had the Soldier guy been seeing? "Hands, right? And other shit, but it sounds like everybody's got the hands." And that fuckin' Word in-- what language even was that, Russian? There's been two so far, and each time he heard it, it hurt in a weird way.

He shakes his head. "I don't know what's goin' on, but at least we're all seeing it. Maybe there's a drug somewhere being pumped into the air. That could make everyone hallucinate, right?" Or, you know, magic. Which sounds insane, but apparently the Soldier guy is living with a demon and an angel, and the Sergeant's talking to a living cryofreeze creator, so, you know, everything's kind of insane around here.

"Hands everywhere, looking as if they're puppeting people. I'm not sure if it's better that it affects everyone rather than just myself. Reassuring that I'm not losing my mind, but far worse implications." He's still not ruling out the possibility of going crazy. He'd been through so much trauma in his life it would make sense that he'd eventually snap.

"A drug would make the most sense. But other than having us avoid each other, what would be the point?"

Everything has a reason.

"Punishment?" the Sergeant shrugs, at a first guess. He has others, too, mostly taken from the Soldier's patchy memories. "Experimentation? The fun of watching somebody suffer? Trying to find out more about us in a really shitty way by monitoring what we see somehow? Could be a lot of things. I'm really not sure how we'd even figure out which one." Honestly, the why of it doesn't matter a whole lot to either of them: the Soldier is absolutely used to torture happening for no obvious reason. He's pretty sure it's not just that he's lost it. He already lost it when he started talking to himself, literally.

"Maybe."

He shakes his head, eyes drifting over to the edge of the forest. He keeps seeing shadows, as if the hands are actually dragging something out of the forest or from the ground. He's positive they're not.. and yet...

"Precursor to something worse perhaps. When all these hands are actually able to grab onto something. Or worse someone."

"So maybe it's more like a really fucked up warning?" the Sergeant takes away from that, brows going up a little. "Beware the hands, before they start actually grabbing you and your stuff?"

He could almost even see that, somehow. If it didn't come with a giant helping of "fuck your brain, here's some personal history you never wanted to remember".

Speaking of, there's another flare of blue light from somewhere off to his left, and for a moment Kuai actually, literally disintegrates in front of the Sergeant. He makes a futile gesture to grab the floating, glowing bits left-- except Kuai is still there, and probably gets poked in the shoulder or chest by a metal arm attached to a startled supersoldier.

"Giving us time to prepare before the real attack commences? I'm not sure, all I have are conjectures and ..." He's about to say more when the other man suddenly reaches out his expression changing to surprise.

Kuai backpedals, unsure what's happening or what he's seeing. As far as he can tell nothing has changed, but what if this time he's not seeing it and someone else is?

"What is it?"

There he is: solid, not disintegrated, alive, looking at the Sergeant like he's insane. "Shit. Sorry. I saw-- you exploded. HYDRA weapon, somethin' from-- from the war I came from. Jesus." He steps back once, himself, and scrubs a hand down his face. "You're fine. Right?"

"Exploded?" Well that's a new one for him. He's not sure what HYDRA is but he can guess the rest of it given the context of war and explosions.

"I am not exploded, however; fine may be an overstatement." He looks around, wondering if he'll be seeing something that's not there next. Everything seems the same: ominous hands and shadows at the periphery of his vision. "There must be some way to make these stop."

"Yeah, if we could find out what's causing it, maybe. Not all of us are human, so it can't be a gas or poison, can it? There's a fuckin'-- robot guy. How would somethin' that affects you affect him?" The Sergeant looks around, a little twitchily in the aftermath of seeing a guy disintegrate in front of him, but not as bad as he could be. (Not real. None of it's fuckin' real.) "And I've got some kinda stupidly-high metabolism, I can't even get drunk and I'm hungry all the damn time. They'd have to pump three or four times any drug they tried into me compared to most of the people here. So it can't possibly be somethin' ambient, or I wouldn't be as fucked up as the rest of you."

Which basically leaves: magic. The Sergeant hates that idea. There's not a damn thing he can do about magic.

"No if it were some airborne poison it would affect us all differently. Same if the food was tainted; some I've met do not need to eat. It must be a sorcery of some kind. Though to what end..."

He doesn't like that idea either, it's familiar to him, but the kind of magic that would manipulate their senses like this is powerful and alarming, "A magic to make us see things from our past? What makes us uneasy amplified? If it's specifically tailored to each person, given the population, that is a powerful spell. I know little of sorcery but I would imagine that would take some time."

Unless there's a whole bunch of sorcerers which is a terrifying thought.

"Shit, I can't even remember most of my past, so whoever or whatever is behind this, they've got more idea of what to scare me with than me." The Sergeant shrugs helplessly. "You're right. It's gotta be magic somehow. I don't know jack shit about magic except that you can probably shoot whoever's making it and it'll stop. Maybe."

"Beheading them is always a viable option." And in his experience a good way to get them to never cast more spells ever again. Though it didn't do much for the ones already cast. "It's worth a try should we find who's behind this. If I was a sorcerer I would want to see my work, so they can't be terribly far away."

"We ain't heard about any-- sorcerers," the Sergeant says, looking around as of they might see them right now. All he sees are hands trying to dig themselves out of the dirt, quite possibly to drag bodies after them, who the fuck knows. "Would the Keeper person have warned us if there was somebody like that around? Or d'you think it might be the spirits." He hoped not. The Soldier really liked them. "Or, shit, that Keeper person herself?"

"If she wanted our help she might have warned us. If the goal truly is the defeat of these world eaters. But there is so much knowledge that she has that she won't share, I'm dubious that she has our best intentions at heart." Kuai is ever polite, but he doesn't trust her one bit and she can go fuck herself for all he cares. Someone should go take what she knows by force.

"It may be the spirits, not all of them are friendly - but there are enough that are I would think they may have showed up to warn us. Or at least be around. The Keeper seems more likely."

"Some of 'em are," the Sergeant says with a sudden frown. "Friendly. There's one it-- there's one I met. This guy with an owl head and feathery arms and a kinda musty suit. Knows Morse Code, so we could kinda talk. He warned us about other spirits that would want to-- well." He gives a grim little smile. "He said 'chit chat then chomp chomp'. Not quite like this, but still dangerous. So maybe it is the spirits doing this."

"If they enjoy the darkness and we are trying to bring back the light that could be catastrophic to them. I cannot blame them for fighting." Strange that he'd never considered that before now. The spirits were able to navigate the forest, and could apparently see in the dark. If they were adapted to the world as it is now, they may not want any of that to change.

"I have talked to a few, they didn't seem like they had any sort of powers. And if they did why strike now? It would have been easier to dispatch us all when there were much fewer of us."

He sighs, everything just brings more questions with no answers, "I'm not sure whats to be done. Especially when we cannot trust what we see."

"This ain't killing us," the Sergeant reminds him. "If they wanted to do that, they know how. They killed a whole bunch before we got here. This is somethin' else. Still think it's some kinda test or fucked up message."

He shakes his head. "We're just talkin' in circles. And I'm gettin' antsy standin' still." He peers into the trees. "C'mon. You got magic, right? Maybe if we make a circuit you can find some more. If we stick together, we can tell each other when shit ain't real, right?"

"It's not.." He cuts himself off, now is not the time to argue that cryomancy isn't magic. When it basically is, as much as he hates to admit it.

"A solid plan. Assuming we don't both start seeing the same things." That's uncharacteristically pessimistic of him and he pauses before continuing, "No, this is a better option than being on our own. Besides, should we be attacked we'll be able to defend with the two of us instead of alone."

He eyes that metal arm, "I assume you can fight hand to hand?"

What kind of a question is that? The Sergeant dredges up his best wolfish grin, and produces a knife from one of the many hidden pockets and sheathes stashed about his person, flipping it in his hand, catching the hilt each flip. "Can I fight hand to hand. Jesus, look at me. I'm a goddamn tank." It sounds almost sour, on top of the flippancy. His few memories of before HYDRA make him think he used to be more slender, more of a dancer's build, but it's obvious what he's made for, now. "Can you?"

He shrugs, from what little he knows of him he looked military and what he knows of special forces is that they prefer guns over more traditional combat. And he hasn't seen too many guns here. Or a place to get more ammo. "Looks can be deceiving."

But he does look like he can take care of himself which is reassuring. "I have some experience in that, yes," says the Grandmaster of an entire assassin clan.

At least they're on even ground as they make their patrol.

He is pretty fond of his guns, even has three of them, but he's always been good at both. He's pretty sure he has, anyway. And yeah, conserving ammunition is absolutely gonna be a thing. "Good. Guess we'll watch each other's back, yeah?"

He slips the knife away again, and picks up on the Soldier's usual patrol again. "I do this every day, anyway. Ain't like it's a problem doing it with company."

"I am starting to realize that many of us make the same patrols without each other's knowledge. We are likely covering the same ground repeatedly." He went on daily patrols as well, as had Hanzo, and he's fairly certain that he's seen others doing the same thing. It might be in their best interest to coordinate those. Maybe a discussion for when there aren't shadowy hands threatening to drag them all into the forest.

Hands that he is repeatedly reminding himself aren't real.

There's silence for a while as he tries to figure out how to ask the next question in a way that isn't... well.. strange, "You sound different than when we last talked."

More talkative for one, but also.. different.

III.

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