trans_9 | Sweet Dreams Are Made of These

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Sweet Dreams Are Made of These

Nighttime.

Or, at least, what passed for nighttime on the meatship.

A time when most of the crew was already fast asleep, dreaming away pleasantly throughout the night.

...Or, perhaps not. For you see, tonight, something particularly strange is happening.

Now it is not all that unusual for someone to have a nightmare, especially not on the ship.

Yet tonight, no one will sleep easily, for the Nightmare King deems it so.

Everyone's dreams will have a tinge of horror to them. Nothing so out of the ordinary to rouse one's suspicions, but at the same time, no one is left out.

Pleasant nightmares, meatship.

[ooc: And thus begins the start of the Nightmare King's spree of insanity. He's starting out subtle, of course. The nightmares won't be anything more than your run of the mill bad dream, but he is giving them to everyone. Posting in isn't mandatory, but if you want to have fun with your character's nightmare, go right ahead.]

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Matt was sleeping fitfully that night. One moment he was walking along Meridian's streets and then the entire world went out of something like an Escher painting.

Groaning, he paused to catch his breath. "Will?" he called out. "Taranee? Cornelia! Irma! Hay Lin! Elyon? Caleb? ANYONE!"

"There is nothing here but weirdness," said a small green gremlin-like being that smelled bad. "Nothing but weirdness, darkness, and possibly pork sausages."

Matt paused at that. "Why pork sausages?"

"I like them. And you have to eat them before they eat you." replied the green smelly gremlin.

"Whu--?AUGH!"

And the pork sausage loomed overhead, preparing to eat Matt.

"Hayate? HAYATE! Mou..."

Rein floated down the hallways of the TSAB searching for Hayate. "Where could she be?"

Pushing a door open, she saw a familiar bob of brown hair. "Oh there you are desu~!"

"Oh hello Rein-chan," smiled Hayate from her position. "Want to join me?"

"Huh?! W-wait Hayate, you can't mean...!" And then Rein suddenly found herself at five foot nothing. "Wait, no, I'm not ready! Hayate! HAYATE! NOOOOOOOOO!"

In the real world, Rein moaned and turned over. "No Hayate-chan, I can't eat that much food... stop feeding me... nooooooo...."

"KP! You're here!" Ron called, spotting a a familiar head of red hair in the crew lounge.

And as the teen hero turned, Ron gibbered in horror. "Ron, you're the chef? Oh that's great! I could sure go for some banana creme pie..." she said. her monkey-like face fully revealed.

"AUGH!"

Rufus whimpered as the gorcery store clerk spoke. "There's no cheese. Anywhere. And there never will be ever again."

Arha trudged through the red sands, squinting into the sunset, the shimmer of the day's trapped heat sizzling around her. She was not dressed for this. The long cream colored gown whipped and snapped at her as she turned to glance behind her, far off into the distance where a glimmer of light reflected sharply.

She could not go back to the white dunes, that way was closed. With a slight frown, she slip-slid forward, her sandaled feet sinking into the sand, then deeper until she toppled forward and rolled down the embankment, the action careless and noisy. She could hear the way the earth shifted, rattling the dune beneath her as she struggled to her feet.

She had to run.

The sand pulled at her, licking at her thighs as if it were muck and when she looked down it was watery. She sank further and kept moving while the world shook and a roar split the air. A dark shape blotted out the dying sun and Arha looked...up.

Oct-o-pooze?

Her eyes widened as its arms twisted and curled into odd shapes, then dove straight at her, wrapping around her. Arha opened her mouth to say something.

HUNGRY!

What?

Oct-o-pooze rattled her and yelled again in a sort of weird warbling hum and then tried to bite off her head. She yelled back and the whole landscape shuddered...just as Oct-o-pooze started to melt.

Edited 2010-01-09 03:08 (UTC)

He was back in the village he and his regiment had built, in the valley between Mount Celebund and Mount Dashinak. The dwarves were raiding again; he could hear orders being shouted by the other officers, insults thrown back and forth in Common, and the occasional spell chanted by a bozak.

Kang slammed the hilt of his sword down on the back of the neck of the dwarf he was facing, knocking the hairy little bastard unconscious and taking the short breather to look around. Gloth had apparently been knocked out, slumped against a wall, and he watched as another dwarf, a runty, uglier-than-usual one, ran by laughing gleefully, clutching something it its hands. Squinting, he realized that something was his holy symbol, and growling, he chased after, shouting curses. "By the gods, Selquist, I'll have you gutted for this!"

Selquist merely laughed, dodging draconians as he headed for the village gate, "Only if you can catch me, lizard-brains!"

"Fulkth, close the damn gate!" Kang yelled, nearly tripping over another draco's tail. Instead of the usual wooden door being pulled shut, however, a rickety and rusty portcullis slammed down, and several sivaks, wearing the tabards of the Queen's Own, appeared outside. The medallion in Selquist's hand grew larger, encasing the dwarf's body in black armor decorated with symbols of death as his features shifted to that of a redheaded woman, laughing as she taunted the sivaks with her sword through the portcullis.

"Huzzad!" Kang stopped where he was, his heart practically in his throat, as she turned her head to look back at him and grin. The sivaks backed away, and he watched, paralyzed as one of them pointed a crossbow straight at his friend.

The crossbow twanged as it was fired.

Edited 2010-01-09 03:11 (UTC)

Fletcher was on the ship, of course. It was the only place he could be anymore. He wasn't sure where he was going, but he was making his way down the halls, walking briskly, almost running. There was a sense of urgency; he had to get... somewhere, he had to find something. If he didn't...

The halls had so many twists and turns and branching paths they might as well have belonged to a labyrinth. He didn't know which way to go, so he took each intersection randomly. There were doors to either side of him, but instinctively he knew there was no point to opening them. Whatever he was searching for wouldn't be inside.

This intersection was one he knew. He'd been to it before, he knew somehow. He slowed as he came to the middle and looked around; if it was possible, he was getting even more worried. Last time he'd gone left... So this time he went right. He didn't know how far he walked and how many more times he turned, but the further he went, the more the dread grew in him. It was inevitable; and he proved himself right with just one more turn. It was the same intersection again.

It was futile. No matter how many times he tried, or which turns he took, he kept winding up back there again. If there was one thing he new with absolute certainty, it was that he would never get out of this maze.

Green.

Billy's vision was filled entirely with green. The green pressed sharply against his cheeks, digging into him, providing an unsettling tingling sensation---oh, that was just the grass. Pushing himself unsteadly onto his hands and knees, he lifted his head and saw a most troubling sight.

The backs of Tommy, Kimberly, Rocky, Aisha, and Adam were before him, their clothing burned in several places. Wounds littered their arms and legs. Panicking, Billy jumped up and took his place beside Tommy. If Billy had paid attention, he might have noticed that he was suspiciously uninjured, or that the other Rangers never acknowledged him, but the sight the other Rangers were fixed on had completely consumed his attention.

Before them sat Angel Grove. Or, to be more precise, what remained of Angel Grove. The familiar park was completely consumed by flame, the school and Youth Center were reduced to rubble, and no sign remained that their homes had ever existed. Bits of twisted metal that he recognized as the remains of their Zords littered the streets.

"I don't believe it," whispered Tommy brokenly.

"I never thought this could happen again," mourned Kimberly.

Concerned, Billy tried to set a hand on his leader's arm. He found that his hand passed right through. Billy moved down the line of Rangers, calling their names and trying to touch them, but none responded. Finally, he stood silently at Adam's side while the apparent cause of this disaster arose from the ashes.

The five defeated Rangers glared at their conqueror, pain evident in their eyes. Billy glared too, but no amount of intense focus changed that he only saw a humanoid black shadow standing on the head of the fallen Tigerzord. That was odd, as they were in bright daylight.

"You're finished," hissed the shadow man in an oddly distorted voice. "Enjoy your miserable lives while you can, because I can assure you that they won't last much longer!" With a foreboding laugh, the shadow man vanished, his fist clenched around something that Billy couldn't see.

"This is it," Adam sighed mournfully.

"Game over," added Aisha.

"How could he do this?" pondered Rocky.

All throughout, Billy tried to scream. It's not over! I'll help you! This world still exists, we still have time to save it! But he'd learned from the past few minutes that attempts to interact with his friends were futile. He could only look helplessly on as his friends were consumed with despair. Who on earth could be responsible for this?

Elsewhere, in the world outside his head, Billy Cranston twisted on the bed in restless sleep.

Peter Parker sleeps fitfully, his frame sprawled face down and with a complete lack of grace across the breadth of his bead. He kicks like a dog chasing dream cats and the sound of mumbles and squeaks is muffled by his pillow.

On another plane entirely, he stands amid a street. It has the appearance of disrepair, as if there had been riots. The furtive voices of his companions talk of the undead and the apocalypse. Further down the road and devoid of any concern, a homeless man stands amid the bracken of a hedge, a shopping cart full of his findings sitting patiently next to him.

The people urge him to return to the safety of the house with them, but he refuses to go. I like my independence, he says. Without warning the zombies are upon them and arms must be taken. From the shopping cart he produces the robes of a priest and dons them, his demeanour and posture, his entire being transforming into something cold and unfeeling.

A pair of handguns appear from nowhere and he fights with passionless abandon for some time, before returning to the cart. Like Mr. Ben, it is as if each new costume provides him with a new voice and purpose. Next he is the rugged prisoner of war taking desperate vengeance upon his captors. Then he is a prim Wall Street Banker, eloquently extoling the virtues of Fore!, arguably Huey Lewis and the News' best work, as he takes to the shambling undead with a chainsaw. After that he is a Grecian fisherman, who proves rather useless and morose.

It is this disconcerting sight that finally rouses Spider-Man from his sleep, and he spasms his way onto his back, chest heaving as his eyes grope for something about the room to focus on.

What the hell was that?!

This was when the dreamscape just got weird. The sand was slowly melting, twisting, turning into a sludge of water and sand, and then just to water. This was, of course, when Wedge Antilles floated by on an inflatable X-wing, an equally inflatable astromech bobbing along next to him.

"Wedge?!" The Oct-o-pooze's arm was crumbling and she found herself dropping like a stone...only to bounce into the X-Wing. With a bit of effort, she pulled herself up and scrubbed at her now wet hair. "...are we not supposed to be flying?"

Confusion set in as the water level rose, the waters deep and red with a hint of whitecaps stirring up ahead as a gale started blow. There was way too much water. And now? There were clouds gathering.

"We should be flying!"

Edited 2010-01-09 03:40 (UTC)

Dream!Wedge turned his head to study Arha for a moment before he spoke, slowly, precisely.

"We have to learn to float first, before we can fly. Didn't you know that, Arha, Jed-eye Paddaone?" His gaze was cool, none of the real Wedge's warmth and spark there. His astromech burbled something, bubbling in the water. The waves were growing worse, the clouds gathering more menacingly. It seemed bad weather would be upon them soon.

Arha frowned, blinking at him for a long, long moment before prodding him with a forefinger determinedly. Stupid water. Stupid droid.

"I did not sign up to float! Fly. We are supposed to fly. We are supposed to fly back with Luke and Mara and to Obi-Wan...to the strange ship called Stacy. We are not supposed to float. I shall miss my lesson and become stupid. I do not wish to become stupid." Her scowl was not particularly dark as she pawed around in the inflatable cockpit. "I read about pre-flight! Make it go!"

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

((ooc: Warning! Long post is extremely long and full of wonderful character development! Having someone come wake him up is allowed and somewhat encouraged?))

Aeneas did not dream.

Okay, that’s a blatant lie. He actually dreamed a lot, and on a fairly regular basis; but the content of dreams, as programmed even in an alien’s brain, is to sift through memories, melding them together into a complex web of makeshift stories and scenarios as to prepare the host for the wildest of things.

Having a system completely dependant on memories, however, obviously poses some problems for someone with amnesia.

And so we come across the oddity that was Aeneas’s current dream.

He had fallen asleep, finally, inside the City. There was an old building with only two floors, the top one open to the air so that a pleasant (if not artificial) breeze circulated through at regular intervals. It was far more comfortable a place to settle down than even in one of the crew cabins, some of which Aeneas had stumbled upon during his casual walks around the meatship. Yet it was here, in the midst of ruin and decay, where he chose his new housing…

…Aeneas was far from the ship. He was far from Stacy, far from his new friends and acquaintances, safe in his own universe, perfectly safe and at ease. The regular gusts of air slowly melded together until it was all one sensation of gentle cooling; only then was he able to see around him.

He was in a room of sort. It was spacious yet quaint, distant if only because the walls were blurry and hard to distinguish from other possible landmarks, such as furniture. As a matter of fact it was mostly blank, possibly even empty; Aeneas felt that he was the only one there, completely alone, forgotten…

No, that wasn’t right. He was alone, yes, and he was feeling lonely, sure—but that would only come if he were expecting to be in the company of others. He was waiting for someone. But for the life of him he couldn’t remember…

And, all at once, someone was there. This one was…much larger than Aeneas, by at least a foot or so, and still they seemed thin, supple even, delicate and sweet and soft and wonderful. This one was, undoubtedly, female. A female of Aeneas’s species, no less.

Her name…what was her name? He knew she had a name—he knew she had a face, too, but even that was lost in the dream’s haziness. She was only a deep, royal blue blob upon the blank background, walking towards him slowly, seductively; after an indistinguishable amount of time she was next to him, gently pulling her webbed hand through his thick shoulder fur…

Aeneas was lying on his back, surrounded by his many tools and incomplete gadgets strewn about the cold floor. His back legs were in the air; one of them was twitching methodically, as if treading water. Needless to say, the creature was looking pretty happy with himself and his dream world (the clearest one he’d had in working memory)—for a nightmare, this definitely could be a lot worse.

Things were starting to clear up…

"Patience, paddyone." Dream!Wedge's only response. He seemed content to sit there amongst the waves, staring up at the darkening sky.

Loren was back at her home. As usual for dreams, this didn't seem to bother her.

"Mom?" She called.

"In here."

Loren walked in the direction of her mother's voice until she came to the living room. She found her mother sitting on a rocking chair knitting... something.

...Knitting?

"What are you doing?"

"I'm making a sweater for the baby." Her mother replied cheerfully.

Loren blinked. "Baby? What baby?"

"Oho don't be silly." Her mother laughed. "Your baby. He's due any day now, isn't he?"

"What?" Then Loren looked down and- and- dear God, she was huge! "What the- but I'm not preg-"

"Honey, I'm hoooome." And at that moment the boy from MacDonald with the horrible facial acne walked in the room. "Don't you have a kiss for your husband?"

"HUSBAND? What about- where's Elfangor?"

"Elfangor? You've been watching too much Star Trek again, haven't you?" Her 'husband' grinned. "Now come here."

Loren was saved by the loud, wailing cry of...

A baby?

Loren spun around to look at her mother. Instead of knitting a sweater she was now holding a baby swaddled in blankets. "Oh, he missed his daddy. Look at him," Her mother held up the baby so she could see his face, which was covered in pimples. "He looks just like his father!"

Loren awoke with a start. "Aah! Oh God!"

She was going to die from water. What did they call it? Drown? But no. She was on a floating X-Wing. And Wedge was not being helpful. At all.

"Now is not patience-time. Now is action time." But she did not have a lightsaber and she did not have an Obi-Wan or a Luke or a Mara or a proper X-Wing. "Fly, fly." She tried to pull them up with the Force but nothing happened and she frowned to the point where her expression was almost as black as the clouds that finally broke.

"DO YOU SEE WHAT YOU DID NOW? YOU MADE THE WATER FALL ON MY HEAD."

It was raining and that rain was just as red as the water. Arha flailed and fell the rest of the way into the cockpit...and came up with an umbrella.

"What." She shook it and made noises that would give Wedge's droid a run for its burble.

Edited 2010-01-09 04:07 (UTC)

It's the same dream as before (http://community.livejournal.com/trans_9/154557.html?thread=11686845#t11686845). Almost. There are a few changes now.

Instead of just the GTFO team watching him, the entire crew is. They're behind the glass, trying to get to him, pounding on it, but it's soundproof and can't be broken. They can only watch.

Only now they're trying to escape from something, too. Far off in the distance, but slowly closing in is a ravening horde of undead. The twisted, naked forms of the people in podsleep. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, children...

The innocents whose lives Jaime Reyes' mistake cost. They're staring too, across all that distance, as they close in, staring beyond their prey, through the glass, at him. Their cloudy eyes are somehow filled with judgment.

The crew is trapped on the other side of the glass with them, and Jaime knows, he knows his mistakes will cost more lives. He knows. The dead are waiting, they're waiting to let more dead join them, they're waiting for his mistakes.

He kneels on the floor in a blue and black jumpsuit, hands bound behind his back. In front of him, instead of the Negotiator, instead of Max Lord, instead of anyone else, there is a gun held to his head, but it's held by a retractable arm, attached to a great, glowing red eye, edged by sinister spikes of technology.

Hal9000.

You knew it would come to this, Reyes. You knew this is how it would end. Did you really think you could protect them? That you could protect anyone?

Paco stands behind the glass, just looking at him mournfully, the stump of his missing arm as visible as always.

"I thought I'd figured it all out. I thought--I thought I'd done it right."

At last, the X-wing began to rise from the water, with dream!Wedge still sitting in the cockpit, now a bit squished by Arha, but there none the less. He grinned.

"You see. We are flying, as you wished. Now we can fly." The craft rose higher and higher into the sky as thunder and lightning began to crash around them. The astromech burbled in alarm as one strike came particularly close to the snubfighter.

Like you thought the people of Vista Verde were safe? Like you thought Nadia was safe and left her there before leaving her alone to fly up into space?

He's silent.

"But there were...buttons," Arha began and accidentally pressed a button on her umbrella. It popped open, humming, and she realized it was a lightsaber. With a weird protective covering so the rain was not too bad. Except it was starting to burn through the fabric already. "Oh, this is far too silly."

She winced at the lightning.

"I wish to get out of this dream," because that's what it was. With lightsaber protective coverings and inflating odd X-Wings and a Wedge that was not a Wedge and would not teach her how to fly things. And about that time...she was pretty sure she could heard Leto II laughing among the rumble of thunder, and without warning, legions of her Mothers-Within were tumbling through the sky telling her to stop all this stupidity.

Which is when Arha woke up to find that she had rolled straight out of bed.

"Glop," she muttered. "No glop before bed."

Tony finds himself in Los Angeles. He's a wolf and he's running, running, running, a full moon blazing brightly overhead. All of the usual lights are gone. L.A. is strangely dark. Pavement past him, trash crunches and scatters under paw until he slowly comes to a stop. He's in an empty intersection, abandoned cars scattered around him. It's brightly lit, the silvery light cast by Luna flickering long shadows over the ground. Filled with the joy and glorious rage of Luna, he tilts his head back to howl in triumph. It catches in his throat as the sky darkens suddenly, clouds rolling over the moon. He whimpers, slowly dropping his tail and circling with a whine. He wants to go back to being human - it's what he feels safest as. Even Crinos would be better.

And then there's a hyena like cackle out of the shadows and darkness surrounding him. His fur bristles and he growls, whirling as his hackles rise. He's not alone here. He can feel it. Something clatters and then a trash-can rattles it's way out of the shadows and clangs into one of the cars. Tony - no, Plays. He's Plays-in-Traffic, always has been. Plays crouches for a leap, growl growing louder. That's when they step out of the darkness. At least three of them, all in Crinos, with sickly, matted, mangy fur and a crazy look in their eyes. Black Spiral Dancers. He has no pack at his pack and he mentally prepares himself for death, even as fear freezes him in place.

He wants to run, to move, to do something, but he can only watch as they creep closer, the cackling growing louder.

Plays-in-Traffic, Philodox of the Bone Gnawers.

The voice simply is.

Come with us. Join us, brother.

Unbidden, his paws skitter him forward a few feet, into the waiting embrace of the Black Spirals. Panic sets in and he wants to scream and yell and run Run until this is all behind him. The Spirals are strangle affectionate, prowling around him, herding him onwards through the dark and abandoned city streets, his body failing to obey him.

I'm not like you!

He screams in his own head.

I am Garou! I am of Gaia! GET AWAY FROM ME!

Echoing, hyena-like laughter again.

You didn't kill Wyrm during your first change. You're just like us. You're exactly like us. Join us.

The city morphs around him, falling into more decay, more corruption. Cracked streets and buildings falling apart. And he sees the Spiral. He knows where they're taking him.

He screams as he wakes up.

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Sweet Dreams Are Made of These

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With permission.

With permission. And awesome.

Re: With permission. And awesome.

Re: With permission. And awesome.

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Re: With permission. And awesome.

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Re: With permission. And awesome.

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Re: With permission. And awesome.

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Re: With permission. And awesome.

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