Character Lounge

[Mel Dragonkitty]

"Something happened?" Mel looked through the doors and everything seemed calm in the main room, even the game had gone quiet. "What do you think happened? I don't see anything."

[Aisha deCabre]

While she was above the water, the panther was grinning in triumph as she had snuck up on Gareeku.  Her laugh was one of playfulness and life, still almost unfamiliar of her if anyone else she knew had seen, but something that she was quickly getting used to; especially with the one she recently discovered she loved.

Caught by surprise again upon feeling a grip on her leg, she quickly took a deep breath as her head descended the barrier of air and water again.  Meeting the wolf's playful grin, she snorted, half with laughter and half with the water having gone in her nose.  Aisha gave him a look that said, "You silly..." before moving close and sneaking in a kiss of her own.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that her tail ring had given a brief and very slight flash, just enough to cause a stint of curiosity, followed by having noticed that Stygian had disappeared...

[Joat]

May’s stomach begins to growl and she heads toward the kitchen.

A moment after she leaves, Sylver begins to talk in his sleep. “You’re wrong. I am real. My essence is real… No! I won’t believe you.”



Sylver’s dream

“You cannot hide from the truth, machine! You will find this out the hard way!” I say.

Suddenly, Sylver rose into the air involuntarily.

“All your love…” I begin. Suddenly, Sylver feels himself losing the ability to love. He felt himself hating the world.

“…all your goodwill…” I continue. Sylver feels the good flowing out of him, until only malice remains.

“… all your emotions…” I continue. Sylver no longer feels anything. He is nobody now.

“They were all lies. And now you know the truth,” I finish.

“That’s enough, imposter! Get away from my best friend!” Sylver hears from behind. He, without thought or emotion, looks at the source of the noise. He sees me. But if I am behind him, who is in front of him? It did not compute.

“Wha… what has he done to you?” I (the one who just arrived) say, “Snap out of it, Sylver! I know you can!”

“I can?” Sylver asks. He then pauses a bit, a look of realization upon his face. “I can!” He can feel his emotions, his self, returning. He remembers that he is not just a robot. He is Sylver.

Suddenly, the version of myself that tried to convince Sylver that he was just a robot fades away and disappears, leaving only the real me.

“So, how do you feel?” I ask.

“I feel like myself again, thanks to you. But how did you get here?” Sylver says.

“I went through a door that appeared mysteriously in my lab. It took me directly here.”

“I’m glad it did. You saved me from quite a nightmare.”

A look of realization appears on my face. “Wait a second. I remember falling asleep. This was a nightmare. I’m dreaming.”

Sylver seems to realize it as well. “Wait a second, this is my dream, not yours. I can tell.”

“Wait a second. It might just be our dream. Cubi can travel into peoples’s dreams, right?”

“So that means that you’re really you and not just dream you? But how did you do it without training?”

“I dunno. You know what time it is?”

“No idea.”

“It’s lucid team dream time!”

Sylver’s face lights up with excitement.

*OOC: IC Joat learns a new ability, though I think he’s using it a tad bit differently that how most cubi do.*

[e_voyager]

Boogey simply nodded once. "Find E. Make him get over himself. Get him out of his own subconcious if I have to drag him out by his metaphorical hair. Got it. Lead the way."

Erebus nodded and suddenly there were in E's mind. Erebus and Boogey stood on the brink of a mighty chasm and next to them was a thin bridge that looks almost as if it were made of gossamer.  i have crossed this bridge before but on the other side before i reached the end  there loomed up before me a wall i could not surmount.. it was neither light nor darkness. It was odd in ways that I do not yet comprehend. DGE referred to it as a firewall but flames had nothing to do with it.. Erebus shook his head dismayed.  When I asked hit to breach the wall for me he said he could not reach is as he could not travel on the bridge. It seems that for each of us know residents their is a barrier that we can not pass but you are not known by him the same way we are. I believe you can find ways around our limitations. Erebus stood aside and let boogey surmise how he would enter E's  partitioned off mind.  Had the ways not prevented more then one traveler at a time then he fet the he ant the others could have worked together to enter E's  hidden place.

[Joat]

*OOC: This dream of theirs doesn’t affect any of your characters, I know. However, I hope you’re having as much fun reading it as I am writing it.*

May goes back to Super Smash Brothers, failing to realize that the mental ward that she placed on me has dissipated.

The lucid dream

Sylver and I are now in each-others’ bodies.

“This feels quite akward,” I say.

“How do you walk like this?” Sylver says, trying desperately to keep his balance.

“You’ve seen me do it a million times. Now it’s your turn.”

Sylver puts forward his right foot, then his left. “Look! I’m doing it!”

“See? It isn’t that hard.”

“This is pretty cool. And these ‘arms’, I can grab things with, right?”

“Yep.”

“I wonder how I would do with your sword.” Sylver unsheathes the sword, though not quickly or easily due to his lack of dexterity. Once it is unsheathed, the tip of the sword immediately hits the floor because Sylver is too unskilled with his newly acquired hands to wield it.

[Boog]

Boogey nodded, surveying his surroundings.
"One of the reasons I don't like electronic minds; they start off knowing most of how they work in terms of overall mechanics, so they don't explore their own psyche much. Usually I get into a machine's head I'm just wandering through hallways of unmarked Generic Material. In a normal mind the owner's blundering through it all the time coping with problems or filing away memories, it leaves a sort of groove or wall carvings or whathaveyou, adds personality. Basically, E's going to have few of the usual mental defenses like Acceptable Insanities or Role Models or things like that, but I'm probably going to be dodging freaking firewalls and vaccines and all that sort of idiot savant, cant-be-reasoned-with-or-convinced-I'm-not-edible crap. You really know how to pick 'em Erubis." Boogey murmered, eyes locked on a point about halfway across the bridge, "The fancy bridge is too elegant for a usual mechanical mind though, so maybe I'm lucky. You can't get further than the firewall? At what point does it spring up? Have you been to the areas beyond it before?" He queried in rapid succession, "What else can I expect in here?"

[e_voyager]

we bypassed many of the deference to get here. it was a bit of help form DGE he called it a hot link and said that i could only use it a few times before it broke as for the firewall it  balks me about three quarters of the way in.. as for the antivirus and so forth i don't know but I can tell you the hazards I passed to reach this point all of them seemed passives though. there were the  abyss which stopped a few of them but not me the dragons or DGE or the new guy Esure. Then I passed a frozen tundra in space which stopped the dragons Eliander and Eliander which is odd because the elder Eliander controls both fire and ice though he is more comfortable in fire Esure was there as well with some kind of bubbles  trying to protect the two dragons. As I reached them the winked out and I continued on.  The as I led the tundra I encountered light so bright it felt like reliving creation. As I adjusted to it  hiding in the less visible spectrums of light I found before me was a field of stars. i'm guessing that was meant to stop me but i used the shadows form one star to the next to get through. I met DGE  here at this chasm. He told me he had become various digital enmities to get past the other defenses but the he was stopped he for reasons he could not understand. He had become every thing could think of  to reach this point but he exhausted his power and his options doing so. As I reached him he told he that he felt that he was being pushed away and then thon he could not past this point he could help me return to it  with the help of a save point and a hot link. Erebus holds up what looks like a fairly dented piece of wire the looked like it was ready to give way. I first tired to bring the dragons here but I failed and then I thought it best to seek external help. Be warned though that as orderly as his mind seems his defenses are some times counter intuitive almost as he is to out of touch with himself to deal with us in the normal matter. Erebus regards the gossamer bridge again wonder how it stopped DGE the first to attempt to reach the secluded E. he wondered that and this how this huge Chasm was and hot it stopped a self proclaimed digital god. Was there some kind of logic trap? Even infinite feedback loops were manageable for DGE so what stopped him?

[Stygian]

From below, a shadow began to move up through the water, circling the panthress and the wolf. Aisha couldn't see what it was. But it was big.

   Sathariel's face seemed very worried.
   "I lost my trace on them!" she exclaimed. "He's not here anymore either! They just... dissappeared!" She jumped up, and took a step, but then stopped, and looked at Mel. She seemed torn between staying where it was safe and with Mel who had turned out to be nicer than expected, and looking for the others.

[Mel Dragonkitty]

Mel realized Sathariel was getting agitated. "Please talk to me in complete sentences. Who is missing?"

[Stygian]

"The others! The wolf, the panthress, the odd one and the monster!" Sathariel whined. "They're not in the house!" She was clasping her hands and tucking her white wings tight.

[Gareeku]

Upon being kissed, Gareeku smiled and returned it with his tail wagging, albeit a bit slow due to the friction of the water. It was then he too noticed the glowing of Aisha's tail ring. Raising an eyebrow at it, he then looked at the panthress, pointing a finger upwards in the suggestion that they go above the surface to prehaps discuss what the glowing meant, aside from that fact that something strange was going on and no good would come of it. It was also in that moment, however, that the wolf also noticed the absence of Stygian...

[Mel Dragonkitty]

Mel froze for a second, then took a deep breath. They couldn't be gone gone. The last time that combination had fought something off they had literally removed the roof from the house. Sathariel must have just lost track of them. "When I lost something my mother always made me go back to the last place I saw it. We know they were going to the gym so let's go look for them in the gym."

Mel regretfully shook the snow off her wings and folded them up before starting around the building to the entrance she had found earlier. The gym had been quite warm when she'd been there before and she was going to miss the snow. When she had a quiet moment she needed to check the heat resistance spell in her ring, it didn't seem to be working very well.

[Stygian]

With a powerful stroke upwards, a huge black thing threw itself up from the water behind Aisha and Gareeku. It was oblong, streamlined and slick, with fins and a long sharp tail. Watching it, one might think it would be some sort of monstrous crossbreed between a shark and an orca, with perhaps a bit of giant squid thrown in from a few tentacles that trailed its shape too. It didn't linger in the air though, and when it came down on the other side of them it made a huge splash that threw them through the water.

   Sathariel followed closely behind Mel like a kid running around its mother's legs. And once they had passed through the gloomy corridors into the only a bit more enlightened gym, she seemed even more so, because she immediately squeaked when they entered and hid behind Mel's back.
   "There!" she said, and pointed at the other side of the room, to the large open space with the black mat under it that was the gymnastics and sparring area. There was nothing there. Still, Mel could feel something like an oddness, a disturbance around the place.

[Mel Dragonkitty]

Mel looked at the disturbance magically. "An illusion trap? No, that's not right. But it's not wrong either. Maybe the bastard second cousin to an illusion trap. Whatever it is it's drawing a lot of power." She turned to Sathariel, "Illusion traps that I'm accustomed to affect the mind. If you break them at the wrong moment you can kill the person you're trying to free."

She walked around to the other side of it. "Of course if it's a killer illusion doing nothing has the same result. Not that I could break something drawing this much power anyway." She walked the rest of the way around to rejoin Sathariel. "The second option is to voluntarily enter the trap and try to convince the person that it's not real. I've never seen that work out. The final option is to wait it out."

Mel stared at the non-thing. Something wasn't right. How did a trap that relatively small get four people at once? Had one been caught and the others attempted rescue? "Did everyone disappear from your view at once or did they disappear one at a time?"

[Joat]

The lucid dream

“Don’t worry about the sword for now. I’m surprised you’re adapting so quickly,” I say.

“And how are you adapting?” Sylver asks.

“Don’t know. I haven’t really tried moving yet.” I move my left forepaw and right hindpaw forward, then move my left hindpaw and right forepaw forward. “You know, this is actually pretty easy.”

“Yeah, it doesn’t take long to learn. You guys need to learn to crawl before you walk. We just go straight to walking.”

“Another cliché saying defeated.”

[KarlOmega1]

(OOC: How can there be nobody there if it's a freaking Holographic area?!)

[Joat]

*OOC: By the way, are there any of your cubi characters still in the room with my characters?*

[Aisha deCabre]

((Good question, Karl o.O;  But then again with Stygian (as it seems) having part of the house's control there's bound to be a bit of a twist.    ))

Taking Gareeku's signal, Aisha's feet kicked madly back up to the surface, and the glow from her tail ring seemed to grow a little more intense when shown back in the light.  She only paused to glimpse at the huge shadow circling around them, and that only made her break the surface with a more intense force, so much so that she forgot to take a breath for a second.

"I knew there was a reason that I still didn't like the water as much," the panther muttered as soon as she made sure Gareeku was there too.  When walking, running, and fighting on land, one always knew where their feet were, and they had as much control as gravity and their own bodies would allow.

Water was something else entirely.  There was no gravity...but you were constrained to the limits of the liquid.  You aren't moving in three dimensions, you are moving in many.  You can't even control breathing in water unless you had gills.  Control is taken out of your hands--save for preparation and good swimming skills--and given in the hands of the element itself.

Plus, things tended to lurk in very deep places, as it seemed the case now.

When the thing finally made itself known, Aisha gaped at the monstrosity with an open mouth.  "Por favor, tell me that's just Stygian," she said before trying to swim back over to the platform, only to be caught and thrown back in the wave...

[KarlOmega1]

*OOC: By the way, are there any of your cubi characters still in the room with my characters?*

(OOC: Shivara...no doubt trying to find a guy to hit on...hehe)

[Joat]

*OOC: Since I don’t think there are any potential targets left in the room, I’ll take that as a no. Where is the other one, her sister, by the way? Anywhere nearby? As my characters have stated before, another cubi might be able to teach IC Joat how not to get dragged around by his own tendrils.*

[Stygian]

The thing turned around with speed that seemed to defy its shape, and swam straight for Aisha. Its jaws, the upper one singular but the lower divided into two, like an insect's, opened and revealed another set of similar ones that seemed to move inside the outer ones on their own.

   "They just... vanished, all together," Sathariel said. She stood just at the edge of the mat, slightly hunched and a bit afraid at being away from the dragon. She seemed assured though that the thing would stay in place. But her eyes were still very suspicious.
   "I don't think it's magic..." she then said. She made an apologetic face to Mel. "I'm sorry, but I heard a bit of your thoughts as well. Just a bit." Her look then became more grave. "I think I know what it does. Just a little though."

[Mel Dragonkitty]

"I'm glad you know what it is, even just a little, because I don't." Mel tucked her hands behind her to resist the urge to poke the thing. There was a good reason her brothers had turned out overprotective around her, the very reason she was a good Gatherer, she was a curious creature most of the time. "I know you can't help hearing things that escape shielding. No one can. The trick is to act like you didn't. A polite omission to let the other save face and feel comfortable. Now what do you think this power-hungry monster is?"

[Aisha deCabre]

On instinct when being caught by the monster's powerful shock wave, Aisha held her breath, her head bobbing in and out of the water while her limbs worked feverishly to keep her afloat, hopefully without giving her a cramp.  She could barely keep her eyes open, the water relentlessly attempting to flood the panther's eyelids at almost every turn.

Floundering, Aisha finally managed to calm down for a second to see what was going on...only to end up almost gasping the water when the leviathan came around towards her.  Madre santa! (Holy mother!) she exclaimed in her head when she saw the menacing-looking jaws.

As if on a whim, she dove under the thing, barely escaping it's reach as she swam half the length of its belly and resurfaced again, gasping for air as the panther reached to grab the edge of the platform.  That CAN'T be Stygian, can it?  Surely it has to be, then this is one interesting joke...

Catching her second wind while trying not to get sucked under, she looked around for the others...Karl was nowhere to be seen, and that was a thankful thing, for he no doubt proved resourceful enough.  Then her wide eyes scanned the surface for any sign of Gareeku.

[Joat]

*OOC: And where are my characters in all this? Sleeping, playing video games, and pretty much wasting time. I gotta fix that.*

May’s stomach growls again and she makes a second attempt to find the kitchen. In her wandering through the house, she finds Mel and Sathariel. “Hi, guys!”

[Stygian]

"I... I think it's like... a bend in reality. But it's a continuous reaction. I... think we can step into it, actually," Sathariel said, after having looked at May for a quick second as she came in. "But I don't know what will be in there," she then admitted.

   The black thing had actually crossed under Aisha and then gone up on the other side, knocking the wolf into the air and flinging him some dozens of feet before he tumbled into the water again. When the thing had come up, Aisha had heard a deap, roaring gurgle that was only a bit reminiscent of a voice exclaim;
   "Yay! Bathing toys!"

[Joat]

“What?” May asks, “A bend in reality? Sounds like an adventure. Can I come?”

[Mel Dragonkitty]

"I find that stepping into things is seldom a problem. Do you have any idea of the ease of stepping out? As to what we'll find inside, my first guess is Aisha, Gareeku, Stygian, and Karl. May, what are Boogey and E up to? In case there is trouble stepping out."

[Boog]

"Right, dragons and tundras..." Boogey winced, "Damn. Usually the metaphor for this stuff is a lot of hallways. Not as open, but at least you're warm," With that, he set one foot on the bridge to see the reaction, "These other mentalities you've run into, are they full blown personalities or merely fragments of E's psyche?"

[Gareeku]

Surfacing as Aisha did, Gareeku growled loudly as he observed the shadow.
"I sure as hell hope so." the wolf said with a slight snarl. The next thing he knew, he wa being flung away, crying out in surprise as his body splashed back into the water.
If that is Stygian, I don't know what the hell he's playing at! Gareeku thought to himself, anger flowing through him as he attempted to swim back to Aisha.

[Joat]

“Boogey’s just helping E get out of his own subconscious or something like that. Basically, Boogey’s busy and E’s mind isn’t here. Hey, I know! Maybe a certain mad scientist we know could help. He’s bound to know about reality bends and that other sciency mumbo-jumbo,” May says.