Nightmare becomes reality....

_{[roster: Leader - Batman, Brainiac 5, Duncan Idaho, Invisible Kid, Brenda Del Vecchio, Hellion]}

Nightmare becomes reality....

_{[roster: Leader - Angie / The Engineer, Irma, Jaime Reyes, Rose Wilson / Ravager, Wendy Watson]}

Nightmare becomes reality....

_{[roster: Leader - Dr. McNinja, Fate, Lex Luthor, Lois Lane, Miku, Steve Burnside, Superboy]}

Nightmare becomes reality....

_{[roster: Leader - Iron Fist, Erwin, Goliath, Lash, Robert Donovan, Seeley Booth]}

Nightmare becomes reality....

_{[roster: Leader - Cameron Mitchell, Daja, Kazami, Lister, Tony Stark]}

Nightmare becomes reality....

_{[roster: Leader - Luke Skywalker, Haku, Han Solo, Hisk, Mulan]}

Nightmare becomes reality....

_{[roster: Leader - Caelestine, Fletcher, Sherry, Vega, Doc, Asuka]}

Nightmare becomes reality....

_{[roster: Leader - Plays-in-traffic, Jaina Solo, Miriam, One-Leaf Ear, Stature]}

Nightmare becomes reality....

_{[roster: Leader - Echo, Adam Park, Billy Cranston, Cissie King-Jones, Jamie McCrimmon]}

Nightmare becomes reality....

_{[roster: Leader - Garrus, Gwen MacKenzie, Jack Spicer, Jokimru, Paco, Chris Ramirez]}

Nightmare becomes reality....

_{[roster: Leader-Samus, Dustin, Hellcat, Wyn Callahan, Xander Harris, Yoshimi]}

Deadly phantoms are attacking the ship, nightmares are turning into daymares, and people are being caught by the Nightmare King's traps even when they're awake. The captain has put the ship on red alert and called together the Magical Department, the Security teams, and the bridge crew.

The Daligig have directed the crew towards two archives that have information that could help them--but will it be enough to stop the Nightmare King before it's full onslaught.

||These two Sensoriums have been configured to allow you visual navigation of my information archives. I have highlighted the path to the archives. However, navigation could be dangerous as in this state, safety protocols are not active due to security measures in my systems. Please take caution as you obtain the information.||

[ooc: One thread for each team, folks. After everyone has posted in, post in the same order to stay organized.]

The message is brief, but vitally important. The bridge crew receives it.

||I am currently in dimensional nexus in Macrospace. Extending Talus Array. Extradimensional Communications link...initiated. Connecting...||

||Data transfer initiated. Encrypted security codes sent and received... ALERT: Incoming message from Daligig Command, marked: VITAL. ALERT: Incoming message from Daligig Command, marked: VITAL. ALERT...||

There is a traitor in your midst, meatship. A crew member working for the Nightmare King, enacting his will subtly on the crew.

This person has access to all the Nightmare King knows about their crewmates, and there's plenty the horrible being can glean from their dreams.

Today, it's time to act, to try to cripple all they can, to bring the fears of their crewmates to the forefront to make them easier prey. Today they revel in their cruelty, their soul twisting and writhing in the grips of their cruel master.

[ooc: This is your cue! Each of you, tag in making a new subthread, and set up the setting of where your character is, like you'd do for an post to the comm in general. In the OOC post please lay out the fears and insecurities you plan to exploit in your character's final nightmare to help with the messin'--they'd be bringing those fears to the forefront with their comments, to make it easier for the Nightmare King to act on them]

The crew will see them slinking off, disappearing around hallways--shifting shadow shapes and the backs of heads ducking around corners. They're always people they think they know. Dead loved ones, perhaps, or loved ones they're not sure are dead or alive. They lead crew members into dangerous places, sudden drops, parts of Stacy where things can go wrong.

And they do go wrong. Floors drop out. Ducts become damaged somehow, invisibly, and suddenly spew hot steam. Around the children, items slam into walls--poltergeist activity.

Whether these are really those lost souls, or just illusions, is hard to tell. Either way, those that are part-ghost or have supernatural powers will have a helluva workout. The upside is the presence of the ghosts might disrupt the Waking Dreams to allow people to escape them more easily.

Which is good because the dreams will start to cause injuries now. Real ones.

And refusing to go to sleep doesn't save you when the dreams can happen while you're awake.

[ooc: Waking dreams will continue--and start causing injuries. Furthermore, ghostly apparitions will start to cause poltergeist activity and lead the crew into danger. Start to raise the alarm, meatship. It's starting.]

There’s a large alien being carted into Medbay.

Aeneas was lying on his side, reflexively curled on the gurney, eyes shut tight with pain. Matt’s numbing spells only did so much, and only lasted so long—though the preliminary healing ones kept him from bleeding out, that was a plus. Odd bald patches exposed red-tinged skin where the worst cuts had sealed; others were still open, and oozing florescent blood. Basic dribble had scrubbed the pelt off the back of his neck and shoulders, showing fang marks nearly an inch in diameter cutting clean through. One of his weaker back legs was awkwardly supported on the edge of the cart, obviously broken.

Needless to say, if Aeneas was human, he’d be very dead right now. As it stood, he rather wished he were.

Slowly but surely, the nightmares have been chipping away at the mental defenses of the crew.

Even those who attempt to stay awake to avoid the nightmares find themselves too on-edge to completely concentrate their defenses.

And the Nightmare King has not been idle during all this, no. He has been slowly feeding off the crew, gathering his strength so that he may yet break free from his prison.

And he now uses that new found power, reaching out to affect the minds of the crew even in the waking world. Even those avoiding sleep will find themselves drifting in and out of their nightmares, bringing everyone a taste of despair.

After all, no one can escape the grasp of the King of Nightmares.

No one.

[ooc: OH NOEZ. As you can guess, the Nightmare King is getting stronger. As such, the crew will start experiencing waking dreams. These are much more subtle than the normal nightmares, however, and are more so depressing and surreal than actually brain-breaking. Mostly they would be miserable versions of the character's normal life, or perhaps even their life on the ship.]

The crew dreams.

As they have been for the past while, their dreams are being tampered with, but tonight it's different. Roxie, one of the crew members has done rituals to try to give the crew good dreams. However, the power of the Nightmare King can't easily be overcome, as a result, rather than pleasant or nightmarish, people's dreams are instead taking a turn for the surreal tonight.

Get ready to go down the rabbit hole, Meatship.

The jovial extra terrestrial sporadically giggled at the sight of the imaginary synthetic meat by-product. Exuberance!

Curiouser and curiouser.

Asuka dreamed again. The Nightmare King aside, she has disturbing, surrealistic dreams and nightmares on her own. Usually they weren't that bad and only half-remembered the following morning. She can typically remember her mother. It's not something she talks about with anyone ever. However, tonight was different. Tonight was horrifically, terribly visceral and real to her. It was almost as if she was standing in that corridor again, staring at the door (except she's not a child anymore, but her grown self).

She didn't want to turn the knob. She didn't want to go inside that room. She knew what was beyond it, what lay in wait for her. Her mother was dead. Her mother had hung herself and hung her. Asuka. The doll her mother had treated like her daughter instead of the flesh and blood being. Her hand rose of its own accord - despite her silent screams and the will she threw behind the gesture, despite the rising horror and dread. She turned the door knob and the door flew open, sending a long rectangle of light into the darkened room beyond.

She choked back a sob and slid back against the corridor wall, siding down until she was huddled against the floor, staring. She was reliving it all over again. Her mother's corpse hanging from the ceiling. As if that weren't bad enough the doll - that horrible, wretched doll, with it's yarn hair and button eyes slowly swung around, almost like it had a mind of it's own, and seemed to stare at her.

Die with me.

A whispered voice on the edge of her hearing.

"No! I don't- I want to live...!"

Her voice was a thin, reedy wail as she began to claw at the wall behind her, searching for a way out of this nightmare. The doll twitched. Then again as the rope holding it snapped and it dropped to the floor to lie in a little heap.

She was trying not to scream again as she half-crawled away from the doorway. Not again. Not again.

It was following her. The doll was following her. Dragging itself along on it's arms, scuttling impossibly fast after her. This wasn't happening. It couldn't be happening.

Title: I Am Neither
Location: Stacy; The City
Rating / Warning: Strong PG-13, very possibly bordering almost-R. This could get seriously creepy and/or otherwise disturbing.






The ballroom stretched for miles.

It was a strange place that was always the same and always changed. The floor was at once an oak tavern floor soaked in blood, a plain of skulls smoothed over by time and a sand powder-fine. Dust rose up as fire-rain came down.
He danced in it to a pounding thunder.

Everything fell. Everything twisted, turned and came inside-out, undone. And sometimes, the ghosts danced with him.
One man came in and out, passing like a wind with blond hair and a warm, cheery grin. He was ephemeral but stable, laughing when the world around him wept. Another danced more permanently but he too left the floor. Bullets surrounded him, piercing through a hollow and empty chest. He spoke few words. He brought with him the thunder.

When he walked off of the dance floor, the thunder went with him and the pounding drums silenced.

He didn't stop dancing.

Even when the tears spilled from his eyes, he didn't stop dancing. Words left his voice and in this ballroom that was sand-and-bone-and-blood, the rain fell. He knew the rain and knew what it meant. Unbidden, his hand found the old, crusted remains of a spent bullet shell.
The dock was there; he knew it by heart. The building was there in the deception of early spring. It was there but it was empty. It was empty and dark and no one had been there aside from him in months.
-Where are you? 'Chee said you shall not come back. Part of me does not believe this. I still smell your Sumatra in the kitchen.-

His dance faltered.

Amber-gold panic flooded through and from him. He kept on dancing as the room around him seemed to expand. He danced over stairs turned on end, under a tavern bar and through a forest made of stone. Sails somewhere snapped in a gale. A yardarm cracked into two. The winds picked up and he felt himself partially Transcend. Solidity half-dissolved into the metallic, churning flow of Time.
The blood-rain came down again. The skull-floor reasserted itself and as he kept on dancing, the drums bade him to sing. He didn't want to. He cried, howling against the whisperings that all at once sounded like a roar. Rain drenched and wind whipped, sending blood and dust and bullets into mad flight. Stairs faded under him, reversed and hung over his head. The spires of native buildings pierced like arrows into a sky that was a ceiling that was the sea upside down.
-Ffyniant.-

Renne screamed himself awake but the things around him didn't go anywhere. The bullet shell remained in his hand. His movements grew steadily more and more violent and the blood-fire-rain didn't stop.
He kept on dancing, undulating with the thundering beat. He tasted the metallic tang and felt the deceptive, almost silky there/not-there of Time. Tail and wings and hands and feet kicked up dust and blood below. Above, the rain turned to fire. His terror intensified when he realised two things.
Renne was still partially Transcended.
The deadly ballroom was expanding.

I did not do it.