trans_9 | What dreams may come [Open, bendytimed to before GTFO plot]

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What dreams may come [Open, bendytimed to before GTFO plot]

In her sealed, silent, sensory-deprived meditation room, Roxie is sleeping. It's a special sleep: for all dreams are connected, she knows, and by spinning her mind out along the web of thought, she might step into others...

[Roxie is dream-hopping, getting a look at the subconsciousnesses of the other people on the ship. So, how it works - if you're interested, go ahead and post with a dream your character is having, and Roxie will slip into it, subtle at first but more obvious as she tries to satisfy her curiosity. Just her being around will make the dreamer more lucid and more likely to remember the whole thing when they wake up.

Also, feel free to ask any OOC questions in a thread here, or poke me on AIM at 'anagramarye'.]

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"Fear, huh? Fear is..."

The sky closes in. It becomes blocky and off white. The sun buzzes, elongates and is encased in clear plastic. They are in a school hallway.

Two other girls (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v438/Hedgehogey/alien-nine-episode-3-3.jpg) stand blank eyed and immobile with their borgs on: A tall, stoic looking girl and a cheerful blond with pigtails.

Another Yuri is there too. Her eyes are set, cold. Her borg is different (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v438/Hedgehogey/alien9manga_vol3_02.jpg) though. Petal-like appendages replace the wings, and the froggy, ugly-cute face is replaced with...something else.

"Why don't you kill them, Yuri? We know you can do it. You're the best!" The new Borg tells her in a needling, nasal voice.

And memory-Yuri nods her assent. She is unafraid.

And the dream freezes.

"...Fear means i'm human." Says dreamer-Yuri.

Roxie moves forward into the frozen tableaux, reaching to slowly, carefully pry the borg off the head of the girl with pigtails. She turns it over in her hands, examining it.

"But that doesn't mean you have to let the fear control you."

Yuri frowned again. "I wish I were brave like you or Vega-kun."

The borg is dumb and enresponsive, though it's warm and pulses just like the plantsuits. It's only a dream image of a borg.

It isn't quite alive, but it still has all the little traces of thought that Yuri's mind put into it.

"Not like me," Roxie says bluntly. "And Vega's a bad example too. You can be brave without being stupid. You just need to know when you can handle something and when you can't." Wait, did she just call herself stupid?

She puts the borg on her head and closes her eyes, concentrating.

"At least you don't cry or run away. You can handle gross stuff no problem and take on scary things on their own terms." Yuri's aware of her own flaws. She reaches out to stop Roxie from putting the Borg on. Case in point.

"Uh, be careful with those. They're not real but they might try to fuse with you anyway."

"...I run away," Roxie admits. "When I know I can't handle something. It just has to be scary enough."

Her hands grip tightly on the borg. Touch against the thought of it... She half-flickers, and as her thoughts fragment, pressing into the shell, the borg's eyes open, the little wings spreading open.

"Whatever would cause Roxie-chan to run away would have to be incredibly scary..." Or maybe it'd be something the exact opposite, like an adorable baby animal. Yuri is momentarily amused by the thought of Roxie running away from a mewling kitten.

The borg goes "HhNG!" and opens up its underparts to allow itself to be worn.

Roxie quickly pulls the imaginary borg onto her head, before she can lose her focus. It's—it doesn't quite hurt to force the dream like this, to make fragments do things in remembrance of their full selves, but it's hard enough to strain her unpleasantly.

Liminal flaps close on the top of her head. Roxie is suddenly wearing an alien fighter's unform: Long shirt with "Sixth Grade, Sakura Class" in a patch on the front, bike shorts, knee and elbow pads, club and dart gun in each hand, rollerblades on the feet.

Yuri too is back in her old digs.

The school alarm sounds, a shrill wail. Over the loud speakers, a young, deceptively nurturing sounding woman's voice: "All Alien Fighters move out. There are aliens in the halls, repeat there are aliens in the halls!"

And indeed, rounding the corner, an ushigata (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v438/Hedgehogey/USHIGATA.gif), snorting, bullike, roaring eyelessly.

Yuri squeaks and flinches.

Roxie is different in more than just the outfit—shorter, darker hair, an Asian rather than Caucasian cast to her features... but her icy demeanor is just the same.

She raises the dart gun and fires—

but there's a problem. You see, Roxie has always had pretty wobbly aim with small ranged weapons.

The ushigata keeps barreling on, emitting its sightless, mouthless roar. When it gets to her it raises its great club fists...

Yuri's own volley is a moment too late.

The ushigata's slam rains in on Roxie—

and the borg on her head has awakened to spread its wings around her just barely in time, though without being properly anchored she's knocked backwards almost head over heels.

She lets out a cry of pain. It seems that she's a bit more delicate, in this guise, than she normally is.

Yuri skates into action (Borg is suddenly on her head). "Roxie-chan!"

A drilltacle reaches to snare the creature's rear leg, sending it tumbling like a calf being roped at a rodeo.

As it faces up to her, she realizes it does have a face after all. The face is that of a clown she used to watch on TV when she was smaller.

The beast thrashes with the drilltacle around its leg. Yuri screams too as she is slammed into the wall which is papered with her old math homework.

Roxie stumbles to her feet, trembling, and fires at the ushigata again with the dart gun. Her aim is a little better this time—at least one of the shots is likely to hit, though she's emptied the cartridge now.

But just in case, drilltacles shoot forward from her borg to try and catch the alien's other legs.

Head swimming with old homework pasted to her back, Yuri manages to fire her last dart. The creature flows away into congealed kool-aid.

Yuri is trembling. "Th-that's the easiest that's ever been..."

Roxie struggles back a sniffle, looking down at herself. It looks like she managed to scrape her leg in that tumble–and here sunk into the rules of Yuri's dream like she's let herself be, it hurts.

Still panting with exertion and adrenaline, muscles suddenly limp ropes, Yuri kneels next to Roxie and pats her on the shoulder. "It's ok, Roxie-chan. It's only a scratch. I bet there's something for it in Ms. Hisakawa's office..."

And there she appeared looming over them (http://img33.imageshack.us/i/scan0909042240.jpg/) in her tracksuit, hair a menacingly prehensile corona. "That's not true. You can't rely on us all the time, Yuri. And you shouldn't pass on that weakness to the new girl either."

"That's a horrible way to build self-confidence," Roxie says, still peering gingerly at the scrape on her leg. "You should start off with support and then level it off as an inverse with competence, not refuse to provide any altogether. Or at least provide secondary avenues that require some demonstration of skill. All you'll do this way is promote unnescessary resentfulness."

Roxie likes to use big words on adults, apparently.

"Yuri is not the resentful type...unlike you. There is no place for anger here, Miss Shuraiba. You perform your duty, that is all." Miss Hisakawa's words are punctuated with the real threat of ostracism. Here, in the dream, they are powerful threats.

Yuri tries to object but her tongue is dry stone, flaking chips of dust.

"What happens if I don't?" Roxie asks. Her tone is dry, lighter–theoretical.

Dark figures gather the edges of the dream, shadowed cutouts with no faces. They whisper to each other in voices like pages of rust.

Did you hear that?

...rotten girl. Such a rotten girl.

She's not doing it. Not doing it right.

Face the monsters. We're all aliens. All of us.

Hisakawa is the tallest and most terrible of them all.

Yuri spits out the ashes of burned books and wobbles to her feet. She puts a hand on Roxie's shoulder.

"Leave her alone."

Eyeless sights snap to her.

"L...Le..."

"Don't worry about me," Roxie says, her voice as cold as usual. "I'm used to people not liking me."

She stands to up to the figures without as much as flinching, despite how quickly that leg scrape started to discombobulate her earlier.

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What dreams may come [Open, bendytimed to before GTFO plot]

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