logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: ENTER MR SANDMAN (DEFENDERS)

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EVENT LOG: ENTER MR SANDMAN (DEFENDERS)

EVENT LOG:
ENTER MR. SANDMAN (DEFENDERS)

characters: those who signed up as defenders for the event
location: all around Beacon
date/time: november 16-29
content: the defenders attempt to drive off a spirit invasion
warnings: lots of horror! body horror, psychological horror, gore, violence, etc.. please cw all threads where appropriate! mods will do the same

in your closet, in your head.

It all happens in a matter of moments. Your friends, your companions, and even some people you aren't all that fond of; everyone who took so much as a bite of the spirits' feast suddenly collapses into a comatose heap. Which is bad enough already, but the worst, by far, is yet to come.

Before anyone can really figure out what's happened to the sleepers, the woods surrounding the town come alive with sound. Rustling, screeching, clicking, howling, and under it all, the characteristic hoots and whistles of the forest spirit tongue. But these aren't the friendly creatures that set up the banquet in the first place, and they aren't the familiar faces (or masks) from around Beacon. As they begin to emerge, bursting forth from the trees, these spirits reveal themselves as a horrifying army of terrors. And sprinkled among them, distinguishable by the emerald glint in their sockets, are the infamous "green eyes", the dangerous spirits that appeared once before.

Attempting to talk to these spirits is a moot point, made obvious by their immediate assault on anyone they get close to. They attack with claws and teeth, with limbs far stronger than they have any right to be, and the green eyes, as they are wont to do, will try to get into your head. Somehow, they seem to know what it is that scares you most, and they don't seem too hesitant to use it. It's not clear what they want— are they here to eradicate you? To frighten you? To send a message?

Whatever the case, one thing is very clear: you and everyone else, sleeping or waking, are in serious danger. Are you ready to defend Beacon?

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"Spirit!"

Riku's keyblade appears in his hand with a flash or at least the impression of one, like everything else that isn't a celestial body or the bonfire, their lanterns, or the lighthouse, it casts no light. For a second, he hesitates, not out of fear for himself but because he's looking for options, what he can do to extract Prompto without one of those needle-like appendages from punching him full of bloody holes.

So far, it doesn't appear to have him by the body, just by its clothes.

Riku chooses this: to charge forward and crowd Prompto up against the broken barricade and shove his Keyblade through the opening in the window once, twice until he feels an impact run up the length of the blade and arm, until he hears an annoyed trill on the other side. The legs, or arms, or whatever they are, they loosen.

It's perhaps at the same time, when Riku backs away, intending to pull Prompto with him, and maybe Prompto has the exact same idea. He knows he would.

"Are you okay?" he demands.

[Despite his desperate hack and slash, Cao Pi has seen the weaknesses now and has an idea. As soon as the spirit backs off, he slides in shoulder-to-shoulder with Javert. The pincer worked for a while but now they need to go in head-first.]

Did you see? There is nothing below the shoulders, no vitals. Aim for the head.

[he rejoins the two swords into one and goes in swinging, trying to fend off the good hand and its nasty claws in order to drive in close. He's got very little stamina to use for sorcery but hey, might as well try - one small burst of freezing energy off the tip of the blade as soon as it gets near the spirit's neck]

[All the more reason to avoid any green pinpoints of light in the darkness. There's still no way to know how far away they have to be in order to still affect the minds of their victims.

Still, good to know, and he's going to be far less keen on jumping after every one of those shadowy snake-demons he sees that aren't really there.]

As long as I'm not needed to escort, I will stay close. I don't trust my vision right now.

[the teamwork is enough, Cao Pi is sure they've got this. He takes advantage of Vanitas holding it down to charge in and skewer the spirit. Any thoughts that they shouldn't go for a massacre like last time are long gone, it's clearly kill or be killed here and he's not the merciful type]

Finish it!

[because he has no idea if he can stab the shadows too, and the whole black on black motif is making it hard to know where to stab anyway. If he's wounded it with his blades, it should take one quick snap to finish off the spirit and allow them to focus on the next...and the next, and hoo boy there are a lot of them starting to pack in, straining through the trees and blundering into the square.]

We shall see, won't we?

[in truth he's pretty average - not weak in any sense but not as strong as some of the supernatural beings around them or even your bog-standard musclebound bodyguard. What Zihuan is is skilled, and armed with a very pointy thing, which he uses to fend off the teeth for a bit.

...aha, there's a thought.]

Do you have a spell that can...speed me up? If I can get into the mouth before it closes on me...

[another good straight jab to show what he means - if he can get in there fast enough, a stab to the roof of the mouth should be enough, right? It's going to be stupid but if it works, yeet the emperor at it.]

Simply because I don't care about your life doesn't mean I'm inclined towards dealing with the fuss a death will cause. A cadaver would be rather enjoyable to have, but the others would likely raise objections.

[Why are you helping me is what she imagines he means, and she grits her teeth as she gets back to work. Shoving a broken bone back where it ought to go is both clumsy and unhelpful, but there's not much choice in a situation like this. Ideally, she'd cut open his leg further, gently guiding the bone back in place, but there's little chance of that now. Instead: she grips his calf and looks up at him.]

Lie down. Close your eyes. Bite on that towel.

With my berth of scientific supplies?

[Dry, even now.]

No. I suspect some kind of benzodiazepine locally administered. It's not difficult to send people to sleep-- artificial comas aren't unheard of, and if you care for the body, the mind can successfully thrive even while unconscious.

Perhaps that's what provokes Riku further, that M.K., for once, is so stone-faced and unaffected while Riku feels affronted, invaded, and judged for whatever he thinks he finds there. The truth is, it doesn't take much to fan the flames of Riku's temper. Once sparked, he has to work hard to rein himself in.

He's not, he says, his voice gentle in a way Riku's not used to, not from him, "Aren't you?"

Riku, who has sparred with him, who never - not once - intentionally put hands on M.K. in a way that wasn't harmless rough-housing, aims to push at him with both gloved palms, a shove he seeks to follow up immediately with another as his forward stride eats up any distance he creates.

"What did I do? Where did I go? I just said I didn't wanna talk about it!" This is galloping away on him like a chariot pulled by horses gone wild with fury or fear, and Riku, still working with the dregs when he spent up everything else just trying to survive the depths of his grief and despair, doesn't have enough to bother reining it in.

"A better reason. So who decides that for me, huh? Who decides what's best for me now! You? Oh, like that's fair!"

He allows the shove, and the one that comes after, setting his jaw and shifting his weight with each step back, because there's nothing Riku can do to him that's crueler than the things he's done, or say to him that's worse than the things he's said. Or lash out in ways any more selfish ways than all the ways he's lashed out. Or even make him the target of whatever had happened with his hallucinations with a harder head leading the charge.

He's done it all before, and some might arguer with spectacularly worse shows of restraint. Riku couldn't have picked a better opponent to square off with in a battle of heated wills.

But he doesn't heat. He stays almost flinty in his refusal to rise to the bait of an arguement, keeping his stare locked steadily on the other, almost as if the more Riku attemps to provoke him, the more he resists.

"No, you didn't," he counters in the same soft, matter-of-fact manner when Riku parrots his questions and displays them like some kind of nefarious evidence of him holding his secrets at knifepoint. "You haven't said anything in weeks, that's the point. You want an apology for the rest of us not being able to read your mind? Grow up."

He doesn't need to scream, or shout, or even be angry to use the facts to cut to the quick like a knife, even so. Maybe it's appropriate that it's him standing here--he can say what needs saying with the ring of hard truth that personal experience lends him.

"Stop acting like it's a burden they want to help you." He lowers his chin. "When you have no one left because they're dead or you pushed them away, come back and tell me how hard it was people cared enough to notice you went missing and set aside what those hallucinations did to them to check on you. How unfair it was they tried to get to know you. You're hurting, and maybe it feels like that'll never stop or get better, but you're not alone. That's not nothing--that's a lot."

[ It's too big of an ask in the end, even for as woozy as he feels, to lay back and pretend like this isn't happening. Vanitas doesn't look for the towel she's talking about, instead, he looks forward— down at the place her hand curls around his calf, and then into her face.

This is utter agony, but he refuses to back down. It's what Xehanort taught him— keep going, until he literally can't stand up anymore, until he can't keep consciousness. He doesn't have the energy to bare his teeth at her like he normally would, not around the way his body trembles and his breath is ragged. If he dies at her hands— well, it's only death. And beyond the fact he's sure he'll come back, it at least then he'll understand what their relationship will be like. ]

Stop— messing around.

[ Ellever shakes her head with a tiny, almost surprised laugh. ]

No, it's fine. You don't have to apologize, by any means. [ She has another bite of stew, shrugs. ] I live in Weird Central and always have, I'll get used to it. Whatever works for you, works for you.

As long as you're okay. What do you mean by Weird Central?

[It's an invitation for her to change the subject to something more comfortable for her (or so they'd guess), a means of distracting her from thinking about their own weirdness if she wants it, and curiosity.]

[ The Unversed pushes up over itself, finds a shape— it rises up on four short legs, a bulky mass like a rock given form, emblazoned with his symbol. Long red eyes curve down what must be the front of it, two slashes that seem to give it an expression of deep pain and sorrow, and it totters off toward the wall of the shed, where it curls up in the darkest corner. ]

I said can take it. I can take it.

[ He doesn't shout it, not the way he was yelling at Quentin minutes ago, his whole body alight with adrenalin and pain. He repeats it like a mantra, almost to himself. Some of it is wearing off now, the rapid hammer of his heart against his ribcage stuttering as it tries to find a new rhythm.

Vanitas has been run through, ripped apart. He's been beaten unconscious and had his heart shattered— but he can't measure this against any of those things. It hurts so badly that some parts of him have almost gone numb with it, this real flesh-and-blood body in these moments seems a far cry from the darkness-given-shape that he had been in his own universe.

Distantly, he can feel the thumb moving on the back of his neck through the solid shape of his armor. Some small, injured part of his heart longs for it to be more than just that— the piece of him that had fallen apart in the church in that spirit's hands and cried all over her until the pressure of her presence had knocked him out. He has always been without kindness in this life, but the buried part of him that knows what he was before he'd been split from Ventus aches for it. He doesn't reach for the vodka. His hand stays on Quentin's bare shoulder, but the bruising grip of it has given way to the tremor wracking his entire frame. ]

I can take it.

[Good thinking! If only magic worked like that... alas.]

Can't.

[Quentin gets out through clenched teeth, the mouth gaping open way too close to his own face for comfort and he throws his hands out, fingers twisting and maybe, maybe, maybe this works. He's not Eliot, he doesn't have the inherent skill of kinetic magic, but he's still a Physical kid. This kind of magic is still closer to his own brand of magic than anything else, and he's forcing the air to congeal around the spirit. Thick as molasses, magic pouring in to the empty space all around the spirit to slow it down.]

I can maybe slow it down! Stab it! Something!

Hi? Uh, yeah. I'm Quentin-- [a tiny pause before he gives a wry smile] I'm Super nerd on the network.

[He's almost done, the task of loading everything up isn't the hard part. The hard part is taking that first step away from the perceived safety in the Invincible. The crowd of people, that makes it seem like he isn't alone in this.

Frowning at the door, before he snaps his head back around to look at Liang.]

You said you'd help? Are you still-- do you still want to do that? Because I have more stuff, more things I'd like to take with me and I'm-- I can't really carry anything else.

There is, almost inevitably, a moment when Riku's temper results in a thrown punch. Usually it comes hot on the heels of a line being crossed and the delay, in this case, is because Riku does try to pull himself back, his knuckles white and fingernails pressing crescents into the heel of his gloved palm. What happens first is he grimaces, when he says when you have no one left, stung because that's something he trusted M.K. with, the graves on the hill and who he's lost.

He says because they're dead or you pushed them away and Riku feels like kicking him in the gut would've been kinder.

They say you hurt the ones you love. Riku's not sure he could say he more than likes M.K., there's an attachment there, a connection strong enough to share secrets with, not all of them. The potential to slot in besides friends he had to bury, but on the right side of the ground.

M.K. believes he is right, because his own experiences tell him there are certain inevitable truths about the world. They're similar in some areas, Riku and he, but they are not the same.

With him are a lot of experiences to reiterate bleak thoughts like that - that he's selfish, that he only hurts his friends, that he doesn't deserve the friends he still has - but he's grown. He's made great strides to accept his shortcomings and his strengths, to care about himself enough to stand his ground on the lines he draws for himself. That lesson was harder learned and harder to practice. Bruce had to tie him down, at first, just to make him rest.

All that growth doesn't mean the guilt has disappeared - it's still manifest in the way he can't move on from the friends he's lost, the countless sleepless nights, the sense of misguided responsibility that leads him to spend himself up for others without a thought to himself, the very thing he dropped off the figurative grid to address. It isn't fair to expect M.K. to understand because he hasn't told him everything, but it isn't fair what he's doing, either. To demand he relinquish his own privacy and lay it down for all of them to see - M.K. and everyone else, even a young child - to call it selfish and immature not to.

"Got it all figured out, don't you?" he shouts. Riku hates how wheezy his voice sounds, not caring if his swing hit, and how could it have? His eyes shimmer in the lantern light, they burn, he can barely see, "Screw you!"

That'll be a nice change of pace? I don't think I left a corpse behind last time I died, and well-- the time before that I was like eighty years old, and not very pretty.

[But it's a moot point, because they're not going to die out here. They're going to kick the ass of whatever monster might jump out at them and live to laugh about it later. It'll be a funny anecdote. Nothing more.

Right?

Right.]

[The thing on the ground moves, undulates against the grimy floor before tottering off to a dark corner, the unreal face of it a mask of pain and Quentin really wants to ask questions about that. So many questions.

But they'll have to wait until the prospect of maybe having to do this all over again isn't as imminent and before he loses whatever kind of courage he's managed to find between the bottle and Vanitas yellow eyes.

Vanitas fingers are a dull kind of sensation, the living wood transmitting nothing but the pressure of his hand. There's not heat except for where Vanitas fingers slip and brush against the skin on his cold arm or just above the joint, where his own flesh starts. Startlingly hot, even if Quentin is way past feeling the cold of the room, since he's covered in a thin film of cold sweat and anxiety.]

Okay. That's, yeah. Okay. You're doing so great-- just. Keep breathing.

[It's barely louder than Vanitas own low mutterings, and it's mostly said to himself. A way to keep himself grounded and not bolt out of the room and away from having to inflict pain on someone else. He pats Vanitas awkwardly on the shoulder as he pulls his hand away from his neck.

He can't fix the broken bones, but he can use a spell to seal of most of the wound, a combination of minor mending and a second year healing spell that Lipson had to use on him, that one time. So, careful as anything, Quentin peels the t-shirt off of the leg, watching with rising dread as the arteries pulse and bulge at the edges of the wound, the way the flesh is still protruding from the gaping gash and the torn clothes.

He cups his hands around the edges, careful not to touch anything and hums the spell, willing his magic in to Vanitas, reminding his skin of what it used to be. It's harder with skin and flesh than with objects. Objects always want to wake up. They want to remember what they used to be and people rarely did.

But he's still gentling his magic over the wound, letting the skin and torn muscles remember on its own what it wants to be. What it used to be. Letting the magic flow freely from his own hands and in to Vanitas.]

Oh, I'm sure you still had some good qualities even that old. Probably still had your hair, right?

( that hadn't all fallen out, had it? )

"Neither are," Riku unfolds his palm and looks into it. There's dirt that has crept into the creases between his joints and into the texture of his fingerprints, yet his gloves remain pristine as the day he pulled them from the suitcase Master Yen Sid gave him. Enchanted clothes, custom-made for him by the three good fairies, they never wear out except under the darkest onslaughts.

If only their bodies and lanterns were so durable.

"We can come back," he adds, "It's not guaranteed. They need to find your body and your lantern. I think it's both. That's why they say to keep yours close and safe. It's your life."

Quentin says he'll get water, and Riku is after him in a second. After everything, it's a surprise he has that much energy. Not so surprising to Riku himself - when it came to stuff like this, he kept finding ways to draw up a little more to keep him going. To keep fighting and to survive so that he can protect the ones who matter to him the most, and keep a promise made.

"I'll go with you."

I even had a beard. And the hair. Jesus, I'd look so stupid bald.

[He had looked worse, but focusing on superficial crap like facial hair, is better than thinking about what's out there.

He narrows his eyes at Ambrose.]

Maybe you should grow a beard. You're almost as old as Dumbledore, and ancient wizards need beards.

[ They're going to be swarmed in minutes. This spirit might be taking up all their attention but they'll be severely outnumbered soon. The number of citizens in Beacon didn't match up with what lived in the woods. Vanitas' first foray out into the forest told him that point-blank. His gaze cuts briefly to the side, to the swell of creatures coming in to the square.

Vanitas grits his teeth and surges forward, banking on their combined efforts that the spirit won't be able to grab him backwards when he pushes Darkness into his blade and brings it down in one big cleave. Maybe he's lucky, but he comes down hard on the spirit and the shadows holding it down undulate when his weapon comes down. The shockwave that reaches out from the impact ripples out, almost invisible in the low light, though the blow-back from it rustles Cao Pi's hair and clothing.

The spirit goes still, but if Vantias is honest— he doesn't know if that means it's dead.

Vanitas doesn't step off the body, but instead pushes away, back flipping over himself to reset to his original position and turning his helmet toward the oncoming swarm. ]

These things shouldn't be here.

They're hard words for a hard truth for a hard lesson he hopes the other never has to learn at the bottom of this slippery slope--and Riku has every right to take offense at them. No matter how necessary, he has his thumb on a bruise as he shoves an unkind and uncomfortable reality back at him. Riku is already hurting and he's hurting him that much more.

To that end, M.K. can forgive what he's wrought. The blow does land, glancing off his cheekbone--mostly because he keeps on holding his torch aloft and doesn't do a thing to prevent it from finding his face. It may not be at full force, but the punch is no love tap, either; his step backward is longer and slightly off-center from the force. For a moment the world condenses to jangling white noise in his ears. He shakes his head slightly to relieve it, straightening without a word. He can take pain; that's no problem. Becoming the focus of Riku's rage and heartache is a small price to pay.

If it helps purge the poison, takes the edge off some of that darkness by making him the outlet instead of the other boy turning it inward, it's a small price to pay indeed.

"Not even a little bit," he confesses, glancing back over as he rubs the side of his jaw. "But that's why I'm saying this. Because I think you can do better than me."

Seeing him cutting himself on the pieces he's putting back together is the hardest part of all of this, and sadness slips through him for his role in summoning up someone of that pain to reflect in the sheen in his eyes and the stone of grief in his throat. Maybe it had solidified when Riku had talked about his darkness, but it had started before that: the other boy had begun to matter to him.

That hasn't changed, even now suspecting one day he'll walk away without a word again just like this because that's just who he is and what he needs to do. M.K. will forgive that, too. He knows it already.

"I'm sorry you have to be here in this place," he says very quietly, scarcely above a murmur. "I'm sorry for what it's doing to you. For what it's taken from you." He reaches out his hand to touch the arm that had landed the blow, returning the gesture Riku had made taking his shoulder. "If I could take your pain away, I would."

[ He should be able to do this himself, he thinks at a bit of a distance. Now that the bone is gone, it doesn't look like anything but a gory, gaping hole— and he could deal with something like that. But he feels a little disconnected from his body, like the sensation of floating in darkness. There, but not completely. Aware, but at arm's length.

Some part of him expects more pain. The last person to use magic to heal him had been Eldin, and the strength of his light had scorched him from the inside out. Vanitas is a creature of darkness, and while the spell worked, it had still hurt like anything. He has the star-shaped scar under his breastplate as a reminder of it. Quentin's magic isn't like that. It isn't familiar, like his own Darkness, but it doesn't burn, like Light. It feels more like— everything else. Like sitting in a pool of water.

He's still shaking, adrenalin giving way to shock and dissociation, but Vanitas keeps his eyes on what's happening with his leg with a sort of morbid fascination. His body doesn't reject it, but it's not exactly a clean heal, either. Whether that's because of what Vanitas is himself or because of Quentin's novice ability, it isn't like Vanitas would be able to tell the difference. He isn't crying anymore, but his breath still shudders on every inhale and exhale. ]

[Crowley hasn't the faintest idea what kind of drug she's referencing, it's something way out of his wheelhouse. But she has some kind of an answer, which is miles better than anyone else in the town has had so far.]

So how would we get them out of this? Is there an anti-benzodizewhatever you said? Demonic magic doesn't budge this sleep.

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EVENT LOG: ENTER MR SANDMAN (DEFENDERS)

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