trans_9 | Second Life -- Welcome to Fairplay [Stage 1]

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Second Life -- Welcome to Fairplay [Stage 1]

It had been the usual mission briefing, not that any of them remembered it. The crew knew they were gone and had no idea when they'd be back, and likely wouldn't attempt rescue for quite some time, especially with Stacy considering the mission "ongoing."

They had no idea when they'd be back, either, namely because they never remembered being on the ship in the first place.

It was home. It had always been home.

Welcome to Fairplay, Iowa, folks, happiest little town in the Midwest.

[ooc: Read this before tagging.]

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He'd dreamed of flying, of the wind sweeping through his hair, and the sky spread out before him, orange and cotton-candy pink, spread wide open like a new book with an ending he hadn't read yet.

The part he liked most was that he was never alone in these dreams. Someone was with him, a friend, flying with him, but he never saw them. He just knew they had to be there for him to be flying at all. Other times, there was a third person, sitting behind him, their strong, slender arms wrapped around his chest. It never mattered where he was going, it never mattered where he'd been, all that mattered was he was up in the sky and he was free, and at the same time, never alone, and somehow he knew there was someplace to go back to when he was done, someplace that felt like home.

It was a nice dream, but the problem with dreams was that he always had to wake up, and that's what he did, started awake in his bed. What had woken him up was the loud pounding on his bedroom door.

"Harold! Wake up." His father's curt voice was on the other side. "Harold! Only lazy asses sleep like this in the middle of the day! Wake up!"

"I'm awake! I'm awake," Hiccup--no, Harold Stenson muttered, pushing himself up in his bed, and kicking the blanket off with his foot. Reaching down, his hand scrambled around on the floor for one of his stump socks, until he found one.

The pounding continued. "Harold!"

"I said I'm up, dad." He didn't raise his voice. It was never a good idea to raise his voice at his father. "Don't have my leg on. You know it takes a minute."

That got him a reprieve, at least.

"Well, hurry it up and come downstairs. We're going to the Barber. You need to cut your damn hair--it's gotten too long."

He heard his father leave, and put his hand up to his hair, which was slightly mussy, and not really that long. It was at that perfect length where it was long, but didn't look like an emo haircut or anything.

It didn't matter, though. It never mattered what he liked or what he wanted.

Sighing quietly, Hiccup strapped his prosthetic on.

Damon Halestrom awoke at 4:38 in the morning. He was covered in sweat and his blankets had been tossed aside onto the floor. His pillow was straight across the room. His chest burned.

Damon pushed himself out of bed and staggered to the bathroom. Leaning onto the sink, he turned one of the knobs and cupped his hands under the ice cold water. He splashed his face with it until his heavy breathing came under control. But the pain in his chest was still there. He lifted his head to look at himself in the mirror and froze.

On his chest, emblazoned in fire, was an inverted pentacle inside a circle. But no sooner had he seen it than the image disappeared. He trailed his fingers over his chest but the skin was smooth- there wasn’t as much as a scratch on it.

He stood there, completely still, turning over the thoughts in his head. He was desperately trying to remember… something. His dreams, he supposed. Even in his sleep he could not escape his own demons.

“God give me strength.” He mumbled. To make it through another day.

Edited 2010-12-12 00:24 (UTC)

Corinne awoke, as she always did, precisely at 4:00 AM in preparation for the day. She would get ready, be out the door by 5, and begin her early-morning practice at 5:30. As the cheerleading squad's resident 'flying girl', thrown through the air in almost every stunt, she had to be sure everyone was prepared to catch her.

The odd thing, she thought as she sat on the side of the bed, was that she'd dreamed of flying for real. The surroundings weren't anything like this quiet winter land, not at all. There were vibrant cities, wide open skies, and people around her. They were laughing, and there was an odd rich quality to it that she hadn't heard in a long time. Genuine laughter.

It was just nerves, right? She mustn't allow herself to get distracted by silly games. The true goal was cheering for victory on the field! If she did that, she'd get the glory---and for a moment at least, there'd be smiles on the faces around her.

Time to go. Her family had already left for work, so all that was left was to clean up, warm up, and eat a granola bar on the run.

Nunnally Prince didn't want to wake up. She never did, but today especially. She'd been having the strangest dream -- piloting a giant robot, a battle raging in the midst of the big city, like something out of a cartoon.

But just as dreams always did, this one faded into darkness and the realization that she was at home, lying in bed, nowhere special, and her alarm was blaring to let her know it was time to get up. She opened her eyes and sighed, reaching over to turn the clock off. Her aunt was probably at work by now, she always was at this time of morning, so Nunnally could get away with rolling over and going back to sleep...

...if she wanted to put up with the lecture she would surely receive for skipping school. Even if she deleted the inevitable message from the answering machine, it would get out somehow. Finally, she managed to sit up and climb out of bed. Today was going to be another wonderful day.

"Go find Gloth," Kang ordered tersely, pointing ahead into the chaos. "He's in the fight somewhere. Tell him to take First Squadron and retreat with all speed back to Support Squadron. We'll fall back under their covering fire."

The soldier - did he have wings? - nodded and disappeared into the fray. He blinked; who the hell was Gloth, anyways?

He turned to issue more orders, and cursed at a hand on his shoulder -

He shook his head at the memory of the dream as he ate his breakfast. While it was common for him to dream of the war, he'd been having a lot of strange ones lately, involving names he didn't recognize, attached to blurry, non-human faces. Wings tended to show up often, too. Must be because of stress.

It was wearing on him, dealing with the kids at school who were bullied and nothing being done about it, and his parents getting on his case about nearly everything. He and his wife had made yet another visit to the doctor, and still didn't know why they'd so far been unable to have a child; of course, his parents' reaction had been to yet again lay the blame solely on the fact that he hadn't married a nice Korean girl like they'd always told him to.

The clicking of Felicia's heels on the floor brought him out of his thoughts. "I'm off to work. Are you sure you're alright?"

Kang nodded, smiling wanly, "I'm fine. Another dream, is all."

She frowned, but dropped it for the time being and gave him a quick kiss, "I'll see you later." He watched her leave, and got up to finish getting ready for work himself.

Edited 2010-12-12 02:28 (UTC)

Toothless rarely dreamed of much he remembered other than fish, Hic-- Harold wearing strange clothes and giving him fish, fish and sometimes that pretty little blonde girl Harold liked so much also giving him fish. ...It was clear the cat had little more than fish on his mind.

But periodically, he'd have strange dreams. Strange dreams that involved being entirely higher in the air than any cat should be without plausible fear that the phrase "cats always land on their feet" might be being sorely tested. Harold was always there-- Toothless was never sure where he was, but the feline always knew when the boy was around, and he was there. Sometimes, that same pretty little blonde girl was there, too. All in all Toothless tended to chalk the dreams up to a bad batch of tuna, ignore them, and go about his day.

One such dream was ended prematurely when the bane of his very existence, Harold's father, began his usual pounding on the door whenever Harold managed to sleep thirty seconds past when he was supposed to be up. With a huff from his curled position near Harold's foot, the cat stretched long and slender, parting his toes lazily before he rolled onto his stomach and got to his feet. While Harold put on his prosthetic limb, the cat saw fit to trill and walk directly into his boy's shoulder, nuzzling him affectionately.

Don't worry, Harold, he likes your hair long, too.

Good kitty.

After getting his leg all taken care of, and pulling down his pant leg, Harold turned to the head-butting cat with a small smile, and scritched his head affectionately, rubbing at the little spot behind his ear that usually drove him nuts with happiness.

"What do you think? I think it looks fine like this, don't you?"

Ah well. What mattered was his dad didn't agree.

His arms wrapped around the cat and he petted him more, brushing his bristled chin against the top of the cat's head, but eventually he let go and climbed to his feet, checking to make sure Toothless had enough food and water. The cat mostly had to stay in his room, to avoid his father's wrath, and while that meant the room reeked sometimes from the litterbox, it was a situation Harold could live with, if it meant he got to keep the affectionate feline.

The sad thing was, in a lot of ways, the damn cat was his best friend. He talked to him constantly, and somehow it almost seemed like Toothless actually listened. Harold knew that was pathetic, but see, they'd had a Moment. Harold didn't have many Moments in his life, where something important happened to him, where something went right, where someone liked him, but they'd had a Moment, in his backyard one day. That cat had been the bane of the neighborhood, howling all night and generally acting like a pest, but one afternoon, in his backyard, he'd lured him in with some food and some kindness, and they'd locked eyes, and somehow just knew that they could trust each other.

Other than the unfortunate incident where Harold accidentally closed the door on his tail (that Harold had nearly been in tears over and Toothless had fortunately forgiven him for), he had treated that cat like it was royalty, and in return, Toothless had rewarded him with what was pretty much an endless reserve of affection.

"Think dad'll let me get a mohawk, bud?" he joked to the cat.

The bane of the neighborhood, indeed. Toothless had always been a mouthy creature, since the day he had strayed too far from his mother and his litter's closely-knit companionship nearly forever ago (which was to say, Toothless had the short-term memory of a potato, he was barely two years old now, when he had wandered from his family he'd been maybe thirteen weeks). So when he had happened across Harold's neighborhood he had seen fit to sit atop gutters and roofs in order to shout out his search that way. No one ever found him, until Harold. All the other humans were too busy swatting at him or throwing their old newspapers and shoes at him.

Harold had been the odd one out, as he seemed to be in so many aspects of his life. He had left food and water out for the cat (in some of his mother's very nice bowls, Toothless had later heard), and continually waited to make sure the cat was eating it. Naturally, Toothless had been wary and aloof like a cat was meant to be, and waited until the boy wasn't looking to eat the food.

And when it became a trend, and the weather had started to get cold, when Harold had come out with the bowls full one early winter afternoon, Toothless had waited in hiding until the boy was headed back inside and gone to follow him.

His tail had paid the price, as had the eardrums of all within a three-mile radius and the flesh on the back of Harold's good leg. So his tail hung kind of funny now, gimped and flopping uselessly to the left where one of the vertebrae had been shattered beyond repair (and with Harold's parents not liking the cat to begin with, obviously no one had been able to get him to a vet to have it fixed). Toothless liked to view it as they matched. Harold had his strange prosthetic, and Toothless had his gimped tail. They were a pair, if nothing else.

Once the scritches began, Toothless had started to purr and ooze into a sort of sated heap of feline, which Harold promptly picked up and cuddled with, and the cat halfheartedly swatted a paw (claws retracted, of course) at his face. He didn't appreciate the faint bristles poking their way out of the boy's chin, they were scratchy and Harold paid entirely too much attention to them periodically. Before he was released back onto the bed, Toothless grabbed hold of the boy's wrist and pointedly gummed at his fingertip where his front teeth were missing (thus his namesake). It was a sort of affectionate ritual Toothless had gotten into the habit of.

He rolled back onto his side and watched the teenager lazily, chirping in an oddly amused fashion to his question. Yeah, that'd be the day.

Tavros woke early, before his alarm went off. He lay in bed for a moment, trying to piece together the shattered remnants of dreams already being pushed out of his conscious thought in favor of naggy reminders -- get up, get dressed, get moving, if you miss the bus one more time I'll be so disappointed...

He pushed the covers off, then reached down and threw them off his legs as well. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of his hands and frowned a little. He distinctly remembered that part of the dream. At several points he'd seen his own hands, corpse-grey and ending in discolored fingernails. Weird. Eerie. The early morning light made him look maybe a little too pale, but at least he was back to Caucasian.

All right, Martin, no more candy before bed.

He barely even paid attention to the pushy inner monologue. With his dad always out, someone had to be the one to lay down the law around here. Might as well be Rufio.

Too old for imaginary friends? Definitely. He recognized this awhile ago and eventually reached the point where he no longer openly spoke to him. But in his mind, he still pretends the big guy is looking out for him, giving advice, nodding proudly when he does the right thing and forgiving him when he doesn't.

Loneliness will do that to you.

Tavros pulls his wheelchair closer to the bed, thankful it didn't roll back down the... ramp?

Why the hell would he need a ramp to get into bed?

Whatever.

Enough lollygagging, let's get moving!

The rest of his morning follows the usual routine. Clothes on, teeth brushed, face washed, bowl of cereal, bookbag, and go. He hates the school, but he has no choice. He wants to do the right thing, and right now that thing happens to be school.

"May, you need to get up! They need me early at the library!" Both the yell and the scent of strong coffee cut through the haze of her dreams and had her sitting up in bed, both hands raised to her face.

Why she would have repetitive dreams of armor and a sword...she had no idea. Maybe it was trying to tell her something.

"Stop reading fantasy books before bed?" she quipped to herself as she rose and prepared to start the day. She heard the door slam on her way to the shower. That just meant that she'd need to check the dining room table--her mother tended to leave her notes there to spell out things that May would have to do while Ava was at the library.

Between the shower and breakfast, she just had time to skim over the note before rushing out the door.

Seemed she'd be heading to the library after school today.

Kate or Lizzy how she liked to be called, yawned as her radio alarm went off, about . She made sure to set it just enough to get cleaned up, have Esperenza's breakfast, and then head in to school. Her dad was already getting ready to head to work, and barely would say five words to her. Whatever, she'd hear about details in the evening sometime anyway. At least the local paper was still holding, even if readership had been dropping with the current economy. What a yawn that was, not that she cared.

"Miss Bishop, please! Your food will get cold," The maid remarked as she walked in with a robe for her and slippers. "The shower is all ready for you."

She nodded her thanks, and put the robe on so she could walk down the hall to the bathroom to get ready. Trying to put the odd dream out of her head. Her in tight purple? Puh-lease!

Just another day of oh so boring classes. But at least she can find out the latest gossip. The other popular girls were tolerable, but Maggy so had the best stories.

Music blared out from the alarm clock next to Jamie's bed, and a hand groped out from under the covers to hit the snooze button before withdrawing and pulling the covers back over his head. Jamie didn't want to get up. It wasn't unusual - he couldn't remember the last time he had actually looked forward to getting out of bed. Today was especially hard, though. He had a dream about traveling in some strange blue box, with a man with dark hair who seemed so familiar, somehow. Someone...important to him. He had felt happy. He couldn't remember the last time he felt that way, either.

It was so tempting to try and slip back into sleep, see if he could go back into the dream, but he could feel it slipping away. He knew even if he tried, it would elude him...and the longer he stayed in bed, the less chance there would be of him getting anything for breakfast other than cold cereal. His father was quite strict about mealtimes. If you weren't there when everyone else ate, you were out of luck.

With a sigh, Jamie pushed the covers off and sat up, running his hand through his hair before leaning over to turn off the alarm clock completely. After a few moments, he reluctantly got out of bed and headed downstairs, resigned to the fact that today was going to be a day like all the others.

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She gasped, exhaling a puff of warm breath; the chill in the winter air and a passing breeze sharply roused her from her deep thoughts and daydream.

Upon looking around, Astrid relaxed and gradually came to awareness again that she was inside her car, parked outside her home. The wind had leaked in through the open window, but there was nothing abnormal beyond that.

How long she had been stalling was anyones guess. On spacing out periodically, her friends chalked it to her possibly exhausted from the long summer of her club activities. Today, it likely could be she was burnt out after her party last night.

Party...

Then, she suddenly remembered it was her birthday yesterday. She is eighteen now, huh.

Astrid blinked and pressed a gloved hand to her forehead, straining to remember something. Now that she thinks about it, she had a hard time recalling yesterday, let alone a party in celebration for her birthday. It was so hazy. Damn it. Her memory really has been on the fritz lately. Mark that up along with awkward feelings, strange dreams and--

She sighed, frowning as she felt a headache coming on and just cranked up the car, pulling out of the driveway. It's another school day and she's wasted enough time.

The nightmares were getting worse.

Jono never had nightmares before the brain issues took hold. He had dreams of being a professional musician, of touring the world with his band and playing to the crowds. Then his brain turned against him and now he was stuck in the 'burbs.

The nightmares had changed recently, though. Before, he'd relived the fear and terror of that first night, when it felt like the stage had been ripped out from under him. Now, they were similar, but where before he had fainted, there was now pain and fire.

Jono woke from a sound sleep, gasping for air. It felt like he couldn't breathe for a few moments until he felt a nudge under his chin. Siouxie, the kitten that had adopted him, butted up against his chin again before sitting up on his chest and looking imperiously down at him.

"What is it, moggie?" She meowed. More of a squeak, but it got the message across. "Roight. Bit hungry, are you?" Another meow, purring as he reached up to scratch at her ears before pushing her off his chest. The lack of the slight weight made it a bit easier to breathe. Groaning, he rubbed his hands over his face, pausing for a moment at the feel of his chin and the stubble before shaking his head and grabbing for his cane. One leg had been iffy this week. Wouldn't do to fall in his own home because of pride, after all.

When the alarm clock by his bed started buzzing, Axl was fast enough to smack it into snooze mode on the first tone, as always -- but not fast enough to get it before it ruined any thoughts of getting back to sleep. As always.

He yawned, rolled over, and yanked the covers over his head. Waking up was such a drag. He'd had that awesome dream again. The one with robots and explosions and plasma cannons firing everywhere, the one where he somehow managed to scale a two-hundred foot wall just by jump-kicking off it, then dropped into midair, shooting the hell out of everything in sight, catching himself in a hover just before he actually hit the ground --

-- getting up just couldn't compare. At the best, he might get the excitement of getting yelled at if he decided to blow off track practice again.

And then came the yell from downstairs. As always. "Alex! Get up!"

Ugh. "Five more minutes!"

Not that five minutes was going to make a difference by now. He wouldn't be able to drift back off even if he had five more hours.

Natasha - sorry, Sister Mary Benedict - woke up at the crack of dawn. Her hair felt matted to her skull with sweat, and the dream she'd had was enough to start her prayers for peace and serenity. Dreaming she was some kind of demon, how absurd!

Wouldn't Father Carl love to hear that awful thing? Well, "hear", through Damon or one of the other Sisters. She pulled one of her habits from the closet and started to dress. It was her turn to take care of meals this morning, before she tried to "balance" the books.

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Second Life -- Welcome to Fairplay [Stage 1]

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