trans_9 | The Lurking Fear

The Nightmare King had done some stupid stuff to Irma since her arrival. Making her think that she wasn't a Guardian, nearly getting her crushed. But, this? This was the stupidest.

She was facing down herself. (http://s693.photobucket.com/albums/vv296/mc217xx/issue79/W7900b217.jpg) Or at version of herself. Her Guardian uniform was different and most of all, this Irma was older, a bit more gracefuller, and a bit more... bustier.

"And you are...?" Irma said, crossing her arms.

I'm you. I'm all you'll never be. the other Irma said. The real Irma scoffed and crossed her arms under her chest.

"Really, now?" she said. "You sound more like Corny than me."

Maybe, but I'm much more successful than you'll never be. the other Irma said. This is your future. Rather, the you from Will's world. I'm stronger, independent, and most of all? Happy.

"Happy? What do you mean? I'm always happy!" Irma shouted.

Oh, really? You say you are, but I know, deep inside, you're jealous. Jealous of Will, jealous of Taranee, of Cornelia, or Hay Lin. They have people who'd love them, while you? You keep shoving everyone away... the other Irma said, smirking.

"That's just Martin, you IDIOT! He's a friend, nothing more!" Irma shouted.

Come now, Irma, you don't think you can lie yourself out of this, do you? the other Irma said, smirking. As if as a response, the real Irma found herself starting to be frozen from the feet up.

"H-Hey! What are you doing?! Let me go!" Irma shouted. The other Irma chuckled and approached the real one.

Now, really. Should I just let you go that easily? she said, laying a hand on Irma's cheek. The real one just brushed it off. I'm hurt...! I thought you like that kind of touch!

"S-Shut up!" Irma shouted, summoning a geyser to attack the fake, only to have it dispersed. "N-Not good...!"

You already forget who you're dealing with? the fake Irma said, laying her hands on Irma's cheeks. Since you seem to be frozen to others, let's be frozen together, hmm? Irma's eyes went wide as the fake's lips pressed against hers, the fake one's body turning into ice and joining with the rising ice tomb to freeze the girl entirely.

It's another double that finds the two girls, frozen together. The cold doesn't bother her, though it might have the original Angie. Cold metal against skin isn't comfortable. Cold metal all the way through isn't so bad.

"I'm pretty sure you're still in there," she started, moving toward them. "I don't know who you are, but this isn't real. None of it is. The Nightmare King is just playing with your head."

"The Nightmare..." Irma uttered, before realizing what's going on. Now? She was angry. Conned again by this creep! Now, using ice wasn't part of her power set, but seeing as ice was still water?

The next thing Angie would see was Irma breaking free, using her control of water to blow her cage and the fake Irma away. As she recovered, she ended up getting another second wind of sorts as she transformed Somewhere on the ship, Will had transformed. And now? So had she. (http://community.livejournal.com/trans_9/305091.html?thread=23115715#t23115715) The young teen was replaced with a slightly older version of herself wearing green and pink tights and skirt, a pair of fairy wings on her back.

"Alright, missy, why don't you tell your boss next time to do something a bit more smarter than trying to doubt me!" Irma said. The duplicate sound found itself pulverized with a magical geyser of water.

Dusting her hands off, Irma turned to Angie and smirked. "Okay, I'm good to go. And, uh, I'll explain the get up later."

She couldn't help but grin and look down at herself. "I'm pretty sure I don't have anywhere from which to speak." Of course, this one wasn't human, but who cared? It was true.

"Okay, so, we're even..." Irma said, grinning. "Name's Irma. Don't think I've seen you around before. Then again, I just woke up..."

"I've been exploring, mostly," she agreed, offering her hand. "Mine's Angie, though I answer to the Engineer, too, if necessary. I just woke up this past...whatever it was myself."

"You made a mistake again, Jaime," says his father, down the hall. "And because of it, you've killed us all."

"What do you mean?" Jaime asks.

"You know what he means," scowls Paco, his robotic arm gleaming.

His mother, father, and sister stand there with Paco and Brenda and Yuri, in plantsuits, now on the ship, and then suddenly he remembers. They had fought the Nightmare King and he'd tried to use one of the artifacts in Weapons and Possessions to stop him. But it had powered down the scarab and done...something to the people in the Pod Caverns. Just like before.

In fact, they're shambling this way right now.

The rest of his family had podpopped during all this madness.

"'Berto!" screams his mother as he's dragged into the crowd, fighting them off with his cane, trying to protect his wife and children. That scream of his mother's turns to one of agony as blood spurts, as an arm is ripped away.

"DAD!" Jaime screams, tears running down his face, and he runs, he tries to run to his family, even without powers, just so he can do something, anything, even if all he can do is die with them. But it's as if the hallways lengthens out as he runs, so that he can never reach them.

Paco and Brenda scream as they disappear in a mass of hands, and Paco's new robotic arm falls away from the crowd, disgarded.

"Nii-san!" cries Yuri, the borg savagely ripped from her head, and then she's gone too.

His mother picks up his sister Milagro, who's crying and screaming, but she's dragged back by her hair and the two disappear into the crowd. There's more screaming, screaming that turns to gurgling, and then to silence, and Jaime stops running, too late, too late, and just stands there, facing the horde, shaking and crying, gasping, trying to catch his breath back.

It's his fault all these people are the shambling undead. Again.

It's his fault his family is dead, and he can't--he can't even accept that yet, what he's just seen. Something inside him has just shut down and shut off. And now he wants to die, he wants to join his family, but he still doesn't want to die like this, he doesn't want to turn into one of them and have his last earthly act be hurting someone else--he's already killed too many, he already has too much blood on his hands.

So he runs, even though his vision is too blurred by tears for him to see where he's going. Tears and snot pour down his face.

He runs and they chase him, and he manages to close up and lock off Stacy's doors, to block the crowd, and then he's safe. He's safe.

...Or so he thinks, because as he stands there, panting and sobbing, listening to them pound on the doors, the one that got in, that he didn't see, jumps him from behind. It's only Peacemaker's training that saves him, has him instinctually tossing the thing over his shoulder.

"Get off! Get--"

It's a much smaller zombie than the others, slavering and wild, fresh--bite marks all over her arms, her throat torn out only minutes before...

And when he sees her face, he lets out a scream of anguish, and he knows, he knows he should kill her, he knows--but all he can do is stagger away, try to escape. Eventually he finds a caged-off space, near the flight deck, and locks himself inside, crawling to the back, near the wall.

Tiny hands reach through the bars, fingertips just brushing against his back, but that's as far as they'll go. Tiny fingers, tiny hands that he'd held when taking her down the street for ice cream, that'd clutched at his fingers when he held her the first time in the hospital back when those hands had been even tinier, he feels them brush against him.

She tries to shove her head through the bars, bloody froth dripping from her mouth, but even though one of her pigtails has been ripped off, she can't fit her head through.

He has to kill her to put her out of her misery, but he can't. He can't.

"Lo siento. Lo siento. Lo siento. Lo siento. Lo siento."

He rocks slightly in place, curled in a ball. He wants to die now, he wants to die with his family, but he can't die until he ends her, and he can't end her. Even though he's the one that got her killed.

"Lo siento. Lo siento. Lo siento. Lo siento," he sobs, curled in on himself, shaking.

He can't kill her even though she needs to die...

...Even with her like this, he can't hurt his baby sister.

"Milagro. Milagro, princesa, lo siento. Lo siento. Lo siento. Lo siento. Lo siento. Lo siento. Lo siento. Lo siento..."

It becomes a mantra, said over and over, and then he just can't deal with it all anymore and his mind just...goes somewhere else, leaving him curled there, rocking and shaking, his eyes empty, as tiny fingers brush against his back, never quite getting a solid grip.

There is silence, broken only by the slavering and growling that never stops.

It's easier to cover a large area when you split up. In Angie's case, it's pretty literal. Splitting her mind three or four ways is nothing.

The murmured Spanish catches the ear of one double before the sound of the slavering and growling. Though the slavering and growling could be anybody's nightmare. The Spanish seems special, especially combined with the crying, so she hurries that direction.

"No, seriously. Night of the Living Dead?" They were human, yes, but they were dead. Long dead, from the looks of some of them. "Well, I guess I can't really say anything. This is definitely nightmare fuel."

She started walking through the zombies, paying little attention to them. This was the wrong Angie if they wanted to nom on some brains, after all, so she just ignores them in favor of that voice.

"I don't know who you are," she says, raising her voice above the sounds of the zombies, funneling the sound toward where the boy's voice came from. "My name is Angie Spica. I'm real. I'm not part of this nightmare. But you really need to wake up now."

What am I saying? This isn't me..not anymore! "No! I won't be your side kick again you psychotic freak!"

"No.." Her scream turned to a whine, then a whimper. Ravager, the stone cold bitch cried like a child and fell to her knees.

Edited 2010-02-25 01:53 (UTC)

Angie turned, ears pricking at the scream and motioned to Irma. They'd traded names while searching, of course. "This way. That definitely sounded like someone in more trouble."

"Ooh, yeah. And that's not a good scream at all..." Irma said, following Angie. One thought crossed Irma's mind, though: Why aren't my wings working? Don't tell me this is one of that Nightmare King's crap he can do...

"Once this is over with, I'm very tempted to find this creep and really give him a piece of my mind...!"

"There are good screams?" Angie shook her head, turning toward where the scream came from. "Better be ready for anything." Which was good advice, given who they were up against.

Who they were up against was very bad indeed, one fully trained and as of that injection, slightly psychotic assassin.

For Rose reality and dream were blurring, somewhere deep inside her mind she fought the reality of the nightmare. That small bit of her rebelled knowing there was no way Slade was there and Static would never let him take Rose and turn her into his lapdog again.

Still while that tiny echo held on to rational thought, the rest of her gave in to the fear that knew exactly how to strike her. Loss of control, being a puppet...killing. The serum had made her abandon all inhibitions about violence, any restraint she might have had around others was gone.

The two walking down the halls to find her were greeted by the soft whisper of steel, twin blades released from their sheaths. She waited in the shadows, disturbing grin etched across her lips. "Come out come out whereever you are."

Psychotic assassin? Well, there's one way to deal with that.

The Angie-double looks to Irma, then back out there. "I think you should probably let me take the lead here." Since, at the end of the day, there wasn't a lot that could be done to her like this.

The halls seemed to flicker in and out of reality as Angie walked them, sometimes the moist, warm organic walls of Stacy and other times the more sterile, metal of the Carrier. The Carrier was starting to win out, though, which made Angie try to pull her mind together more, fighting the intrusion.

Once it seemed like she had it under control, she heard someone clearing their throat behind her. Turning, she put her hand against her hip and raised an eyebrow at herself. "Oh no. This isn't cliche at all. My greatest nightmare is myself? Please."

"Isn't it?" the double asked, mirroring her stance. "Look at yourself. Is it really worth it, what's happened to you? All that metal and machinery. Are you even really human anymore? It's not like anybody appreciates what you do anyway. So you've become this...this monster for..." The double trailed off when Angie started laughing.

She sobered a little, still grinning. "All right. I haven't been awake all that long, so I'll give you a pass. But you've really got the wrong girl." Angie shook her head. "I work with people who have been born with strange abilities that would knock you into next week. Others who have been augmented by some of the best at heavy costs. Others that...well, aliens did it is the nicest thing you can say about it.

"This?" She waved to herself, raising an eyebrow. "This is me. I created the nanotech I use. I had help, yes, but nobody forced me to use it this way. This was my choice. It's not always awesome, no, but the good that has come from it? So very much worth it."

Her hand shifted, becoming a rather large laser. "You have no idea who you're facing here, buster. I'm the Goddamn Engineer."

A few moments later, when the double was slagged and the dreamscape fading around her, Angie spared a moment for a wide grin. "I always wanted to say that," she said to herself. Then she started pulling together a few doubles. There were people nearby. Other crew members. If they weren't out of their dreams on their own, she could help. That's what she did, after all.

Wendy Watson was someone who wasn't quite prone to nightmares.

She was too laid back and too accepting of the world around her for anything to really terrify her all that much.

But there were others having nightmares, and she was doing what she could to help out.

Lucky Wendy, getting...well, it's the real Angie. Not that she looks all that different from the other Angies, but it was just easier to split up like this.

"Greetings, Starfighter." She raised her hand, smiling slightly. "You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada."

It made sense to her. But Angie WAS a massive geek.

The Lurking Fear - Lucky 13

Lucky 13. Really? XD

It's lucky! Really!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

1/2

2/2

Re: 2/2

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject