trans_9 | (no subject)

Billy slept, but no nightmares disturbed him this night.

A bell might have sounded in his mind just as he drifted off, but he honestly couldn't confirm that. All he knew was a pleasant feeling of warmth washing over him, and then---

He lay on his back in a lush green park, gazing up at a blue sky littered with cumulus clouds, puffed up in a manner that resembled cotton candy. As his friends would probably say, they were the perfect clouds to play the 'shape guessing game' with.

One looked like a bucket, another looked like a sheep---and then, strangely, one looked like a hand.

As Jamie settled down for the night, he thought that he saw the briefest flicker of red just there, out of the corner of his eye. For a moment, he thought that maybe he should go track it down, but the bed was so warm and comfy...

The waves crashed upon the the shores of the rocky beach, lapping at his feet. Some sort of sea foam was piled at the edges, making the ocean look like a giant bubble bath in places.

Jamie reached down to test the water, cautiously. Surprisingly, it was warm to the touch. Happily, he removed his shoes and socks and waded in. A distinctly feminine laugh caught his attention, and he looked over to see a girl a short ways down the shore. Laughing, he chased after her.

The two play in the surf. Sometimes, the girl has Victoria's face. Other times, she has Claudia's. Jamie doesn't seem to care either way - he's just having fun.

A sweet, peaceful smile appeared on Jamie's face as he slept.

The very faintest hint of a bell -

And the scene changes - a bloody battlefield becoming a field, breeze rustling the long grasses, the sky vivid blue and dotted with clouds above. The air is filled with the heady scents of sunlight on grass and hidden flowers and a fragrant smoke from the little campfire set on a grass-free area.

Sheik looks up at her, smiling, then his gaze flickers to the young man in green sitting beside him. "Come and sit," he calls out to her gently, "Lunch is almost ready."

Zelda glances across to where she heard the bell, mouths a, 'Thank you', and goes to take a seat with her boys.

It's Zelda's dream, but even in sleep, Sheik is smiling.

Matt was bedding down for the night in the new Bus and closed his eyes, barely missing the flicker --

He was back home, strumming on his guitar like he usually did. But this time the dream was different. It was a calmer, simpler time when he loved music, and was allowed to be the dorky dweeb he loved to be. Will sat at his feet, looking up adoring at him. And her friends were there.

Taranee paged through a book. Hay Lin seemed to drift with each note listening to additional chimes of music. Irma leaned against Cornelia, trying to get the skinny girl to eat and Cornelia was fussing with her hair. And We was bundled up in Will's lap, napping happily. In all, a peaceful picturesque scene.

For once, Matt's dream felt comforting since he arrived.

Fate might have heard a bell chiming, but paid it no mind as she drifted off to sleep.

It wasn't exactly a dream... more like a replaying of Fate's most treasured memory.

She was nine years old again, standing on a bridge with the faint sounds of the ocean around her. In her hand was a pair of hair ribbons: long, strips of pink fabric, which had, just moments ago, belonged to her new best friend.

She wasn't alone; next to her was a nine year old Nanoha, smiling with tears in her eyes. She, too, was holding a pair of ribbons. Like Fate, the thin black ribbons had belonged to the girl standing in front of her.

Yes, this was Fate's dearest and most beloved memory. The day her and Nanoha had finally become friends.

And so, for the first night since the nightmares started, Fate was content.

"Aw."

She looked down at the sleeping girl beside her, curled up in the blankets with a soft smile on her face, and Nanoha brushed some blonde hair from her face. "You're really cute when you sleep sometimes, you know that?"

She wasn't awake to hear it, but Nanoha felt like saying it anyway.

Lyle stretches his arms above his head, trying to get the knots out of his muscles and the stiffness out of his joints. The day was saved, he'd celebrated with the Legion and woke up late. But he has another family to check in with, one he hasn't seen in far too long.

It's not very far to their apartment. His old place is empty now, his biological parents having given up the pretense of living in one place.

Mrs. Foccart meets him at the door with a wide smile and a hug. Jacques and his sister are competing at a game in the living room. It seems Jacques is falling behind, and he drops the game when he sees Lyle, much to his sister's annoyance. She is grown herself, now.

Jacques wraps an arm around Lyle, runs his hand through Lyle's hair and pushes his head down playfully. "You've got the devil's luck, mon ami." says Jacques.

"Borrowed it from you," Lyle replies.

Mr. Foccart is bringing out dinner and dodging his daughter as she takes her seat.

"Lyle will have to tell us all about his adventures." says Mrs. Foccart.

"No, no," says Lyle, "I'd rather hear about the new boyfriend."

"Who told you?!"

He laughs, and Jacques says, "Because you're obvious!" There's squabbling and good food, and it feels a lot like home.

Miku counted backwards into sleep, feeling her body become heavy-but-weightless as it usually did before she drifted off was somehow comforting.

She is watching herself at six years old again, in a room decorated in seventies pink and white, while her mother sat beside her futon. Miyuki smoothed out her long, dark hair across the pillow and sang (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q28LZgrqAmY) softly to her. Miku sang with her quietly, from her place in the corner.

Miyuki waited until the younger Miku's eyes had finally drifted shut, and pushed herself back up onto her feet in a delicate swaying manner of a woman well-used to the kimono she wore. She kept humming the soft melody of the sad lullaby to both Mikus as she walked out and slid the door shut behind her. There were only the sounds of cicadas after.

Miku smiled, though it seemed a little sad, and turned over to face Tess in her sleep, the half-murmured melody on her lips.

Steve always got hot while he slept, so he was usually half-tangled in the strange blanket within minutes of actually getting to sleep. His face crunched up and he reached up to wipe his forehead--

And someone else's hand brushed his hair back. "Steve, you need to rest when you're sick," said his mother. She placed one hand on his shoulder and the other touched his forehead. "You're so warm I could fry an egg on your head."

This was his own house, the kitchen. She was smiling and beautiful and alive, she smelled like fabric softener and the perfume they bought her for Mother's Day last year. "You've been working so hard," she said. "You can't forget to take care of yourself, honey."

"There's lots of work to be done," a low, warm voice spoke behind him, and another hand clasped down on each of Steve's shoulders. "There's no time to give up yet." Steve turned to the side in time for his father to throw an arm over his shoulder and pull both he and his mother into an embrace. There he was, squished between his parents, with their voices speaking calm and gently into his ears.

"We're both so proud of you," said his mother. "Everything's going to be okay."

The clock on the wall ticked, the TV was playing in the other room and cars drove by on the streets outside. Everything was normal. Everything was going to be okay.

He rolled over on his bed and pulled the blanket back over, looking far more peaceful than his usual fitful dreams.

Training. Finally starting to be good at it. She glows with the sense of having proved herself, having rendered an impossible climb possible through a simple application of smarts, and her body is getting stronger. She can run farther, and faster. She can spar with Shang and she can catch him off-guard.

She is doing that now, no fear that a misplaced strike will reveal her charade anymore. She has been here - not SO long, for they are low on time with a war soon to fight - but long enough to know by now if doubts will be raised about her masculinity. They have, but only through the jeering insinuations of competing men who are becoming friends. She has friends now. She's good at this. And when she lands a firm kick on Shang's (gorgeous chiseled work of art of a) jaw, he is not angry, but proud. She has made him proud. A captain of the Chinese army is proud of her.

He says, "Again." But he's smiling.

For anyone else, it'd be hard to distinguish between Gauron's good dreams and his nightmares. The ambush might definitely have counted as the latter, to anyone else; the rest of the Soviet platoon was traveling with had been massacred by a well-placed Mujahideen ambush, but he'd been well-prepared enough to escape. He knew how they operated, after all; before the Soviets had bought him off, after all, he'd been a training instructor for the guerrillas.

He'd had to take the long way around to the defense outpost they'd been traveling toward, but he knew the area pretty well - and even if he didn't, he had a map, a compass, and a full tank of gas in the jeep.

When he arrives at the outpost and presents his papers to the guards, they're suitably impressed - the Soviets were generous with the rank they decided to give him - and it's not long before he's inside the mess hall, out of the heat. As he pours himself a glass of iced peppermint tea, he notices some of the soldiers flirting with a few girls over in the other corner - probably locals, and having them on the base is a direct violation of safety protocols, but it's not like he gives a damn. He'll just have to move on before nightfall.

One of the girls in particular is getting a fair bit of attention—tall, slim, and quietly reserved, in her late teens, with an exotic cast to her features that suggests at some degree of directly European ancestry. She's smoothly deflected the come-ons so far, though as she notices Gauron, she slides to her feet, shoots down another bit of flirting from one of the soldiers, and pads her way over towards him, moving with the grace of a cat.

There's something oddly familiar in her face, despite the mix of ethnicities...

It's not as much the face that tips him off as it is the dream suddenly seeming a lot more lucid - she may have gone a little overboard with the wish fulfillment. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, unless she should happen to find the slight predatory cast to his smile unnerving. "Looking good, kiddo." He hasn't drunk from his glass yet, so he offers it to her instead. "Tea?"

"No, thank you," the girl says quietly, and slides to sit across from him, folding her hands across her lap. Her body language is fluid, demure, and rather attractive—part of the role she's still playing into, apparently, seeing as it's an extraordinary contrast from how stiff and offputting she is in the real world. It's curious, though—if she can manage it like this, why doesn't she ever loosen up some normally?

"I'm sorry I didn't have the chance to answer your call before," she adds after a moment. "I was very busy at the time."

He shrugs slightly, takes a sip of his tea - ordinarily, things in dreams don't have much scent or taste, but her presence seems to make it more real. "I can see why. The Nightmare King's really full of itself, isn't it?" And there are doubtless a lot of the crew who had it worse than him - being as sensible as he is, Gauron's hard to unnerve. "I wouldn't have called you if I hadn't thought there might be more to my nightmare than just that thing trying to make me paranoid, though. I think it might be trying to actively control me for its purposes - and there's a chance it's infected Stacy, too." He relates the events of his nightmare. (http://community.livejournal.com/trans_9/236692.html?thread=18799252#t18799252) "You can understand why I wanted you to have a look."

"I believe that the chaos in the oneiromantic world of the ship has served something of a useful purpose. There are no clear-cut ways to easily manipulate the functions of the ship from within." It's all a reflection of the ship's systems—competent in sections, perhaps, but overall built on piles and piles of spaghetti code, new sub-systems spliced in alongside ancient ones, completely foreign codebases written in in their entirety simply for a handful of functions... Even in the spiritual world, trying to hack any substantial portionsof it would be like trying to bail out a cruise liner with a bucket. "However, I don't doubt that its influence will soon start to reach more strongly into the individual members of the crew."

"As much damage as the pirates did to this ship, I'm not so certain there might not be a few vulnerabilities the Nightmare King can exploit - but I don't think it's smart enough to have figured how to do anything substantial with them." A clever strategist knows enough to try to disguise their strengths as weaknesses and their weaknesses as strengths; however, a brilliant strategist laying plans against a brilliant and cautious strategist will know enough to let their strong points appear strong and their weaknesses appear weak, to psych their opponent into falling into their trap anyway. "In the meantime, is there any way you'd recommend to fight it for as long as possible?"

"There are prayers to my god that can help, but the 'captain' has refused to entertain the possibility of encouraging the others on the ship to learn them. To stay in a clear state of mind would help. A degree of pharmaceutical dosing may help that, if the ship's infirmary has the drugs to enforce that without incapacitating side effects."

Of course - the prayers. He should've remembered them when this first started, though it had all come on pretty suddenly. "I'll stop by the Medbay and see what they have in stock. In the meantime, run me through that prayer again?"

"Of course." Roxie bows her head slightly and starts running through one of the prayers, leaving just enough in the way of gaps for Gauron to try and follow along. The foreignness doesn't help—the ancient Sumerian is gibberish to just about anybody—but she's got smooth-enough pronunciation and a solid enough grip on the phrases to try and help him along.