[IC] The New Mythos: Trials and Tribulations

[jmucchiello]

"I could step into her dreams," Foxy says nonchalantly. "Not sure if it will work on someone rendered unconscious as opposed to just being asleep."

Mind Reading: Cumulative Mind Reading 8 - Extras: Cumulative, Sensory Link; Flaws: Distracting, Limited: Subject must be asleep

[Doctor Malsyn]

Predator and Prey

Cold. Clammy. Rain pours heavy upon your broken body. It was a good fight, really. You'd done all that could be reasonably expected of a woman your age. Most would've crumpled within the first blow entirely unaware of the threat that loomed above them. It's only reasonable that you would fall in the end, but it was your hope that you'd have taken the beast down with you too. At least you made it work for its meal.

The rain stops falling onto your face, and you blinked the wetness from your eyes as you tried to focus. Shielding you from the elements was the thing itself. All muscle and fur, a head packed to the brim with teeth sharp enough to saw through bone. You should know, seeing as it was already chewing on what remained of your legs.

If it would just get a little bit closer, maybe you'd be able to take advantage of that space between its chest where the muscles linking its arms knotted together. A creature like this grew unnaturally, leaving many such vulnerabilities a skilled fighter could exploit. The leg is swallowed, and again its gaze boors into your own. Hot musky breath beats down upon your face, and you know then you've only seconds left to live. The fingers on your right-hand twitch, hoping, searching for the hidden blade only- to find nothing. Gone.

Teeth fill your vision.

Faith's body twitches, the woman groaning softly as she fights to regain consciousness. Weakened as she is she only manages to turn her head before slipping back under.

GM: All are free to read the dream if they'd like.

[Arkrite]

Felix Ian Xavier - Mr. FIX I.T.
Status: Injured 1, Fatigued
HP: 0

Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, Felix started up the Herkimer Battle Jitney and started it up the road towards them.

After that he sent at text to Haru.

Felix> We found Ahanah.
Felix> She's okay, but she's had a rough couple of days. Would prefer it if we could get you and her together soon, she's sleeping now but she's going to need you.
Felix> And some clean clothes. And maybe something to eat.

[jmucchiello]

"Odd. She feels as though she's being eaten alive by a furry monster of some kind. Lots of teeth." Kira says. "Not sure what it all means though."

(OOC: Can I try to dig deeper? Mind Reading is an opposed roll apparently. So I'm going to roll to see if I can get to a motivation.)
Mind Reading: 1D20+8 = [5]+8 = 13 Hero point
Mind Reading (Hero point spent): 1D10+18 = [6]+18 = 24

[catsi563]

Cheyenne
HP: 2; Condition: Huntress

"Odd. She feels as though she's being eaten alive by a furry monster of some kind. Lots of teeth." Kira says. "Not sure what it all means though."

"Show me." she said as she knelt near Foxy and Faith

thats a 34 with the HP reroll

[jmucchiello]

thats a 34 with the HP reroll

No, I rolled 1d10+10+ranks. It's just a 24. I don't have 18 ranks in mind reading.

[Doctor Malsyn]

Faith tossed and turned the deeper Foxy pushed, her face contorting with silent pain. Edmund was helpless to intervene in the face of you all and could only stand by and watch as his grandaughter's dreams were invaded in full.

Glimpses

Cackling from the distance, but the garden itself was empty. She was here somewhere, she was supposed to be here. Every day, tending the flowers, but today she was gone. Except for the cackling. The house- She was in the house. A school bus came and left, but nobody got on. Too late-

Roaring, bones cracking as you're slammed into the ground. More man than beast he loomed with snarling teeth and wicked claws. No gun in your hands. No silver in the chamber. This was the end-

Crimson eyes glinted in the strobing lights of the abandoned ambulance, a homeless man stumbled forward with a sway. His mouth was freshly stained, and there was a body lying in the vehicle behind him. Poorly timed. A freshly fed vampire was dangerous. That's what the books said. You had to be careful. One wrong move and-

Tick - Tock - Tick - Tock

Hospitals were always so quiet. Cold. Sterile. You'd been sitting in the chair for an hour now with only outdated magazines and a woman passed out on the far side for company. It was just meant to be a quick trip to the lake, so you could take some time to relax in the face of all this recent insanity. Escape from it all. Nothing was meant to happen. Nothing was meant to be there.

But then there was that thing. A monster that wore the shape of a horse, just standing there next to the shore. There were no wild horses out this far north, but maybe it was a stray he'd thought. Grandpa had wanted to try calming it down, perhaps we could've worked to find its owner. It was so placid, that it had to have been domesticated. Then he places his hands on its neck only for his fingers to sink in, and suddenly everything was wrong. The struggle as you jumped in to save him, trying to pull him loose even as it pulled him deeper into the water, and then- your mother's necklace. A silver cross.

Somehow, you knew exactly what you had to do. Stab the creature in the eye, and it'd let go. It worked in the end.

Grandpa still hasn't woken up. If only- if only you'd noticed the signs. If only you stopped him. If only that creature wasn't there. If only someone had put down that monster before someone got hurt.

You gripped your hands tighter. If only.

[catsi563]

,,

[jmucchiello]

Foxy lets Faith go. "That was odd," she says looking at Edmund. "I'll show you all what I saw." She generates an illusion with sight and sounds of the dream. When it ends she says to Edmund, "Was that you with the horse?"

[Doctor Malsyn]

Some of the affect is lost as Foxy tries to translate the medium of a first hand emotional experience to something more on the level of a go-pro recounting. Thoughts and feelings can't translate into the medium of sights and sounds, but a that she witnessed was still there.

Edmund takes everything that happens with some mixed degree of both horror and awe. To bare witness to these experiences whether real, imagined or exaggerated. The man hardly knew what to make of most of it, except for one. " The water horse. Yes, that was... It wasn't that long into all this mess. People changing was already commonly known, but animals? Never crossed my mind."

He rubbed his right hand hand unconsciously, the same one which first touched the beast. "I don't remember much about what happened. Drowned, might've actually been dead for a momment. Was left in a coma for months. Doctors said I'm still not fully recovered, but I'm old.."

[catsi563]

Cheyenne
HP: 2; Condition: Huntress

Foxy lets Faith go. "That was odd," she says looking at Edmund. "I'll show you all what I saw." She generates an illusion with sight and sounds of the dream.

She saw the fear saw the pain saw the danger as the visions washed over her. She felt them and felt them again because shed felt those same fears before, In training, In the field on missions, in that hospital bed, in the times after her change, when the world changed, and she started hunting monsters.

When it ends she says to Edmund, "Was that you with the horse?"[

She was brought out of her thoughts by Kiras question and waited for edmunds reply

Edmund takes everything that happens with some mixed degree of both horror and awe. To bare witness to these experiences whether real, imagined or exaggerated. The man hardly knew what to make of most of it, except for one. " The water horse. Yes, that was... It wasn't that long into all this mess. People changing was already commonly known, but animals? Never crossed my mind."

He ruined his right hand hand unconsciously, the same one which first touched the beast. "I don't remember much about what happened. Drowned, might've actually been dead for a momment. Was left in a coma for months. Doctors said I'm still not fully recovered, but I'm old.."

"Nothing but her own fears then, monsters of her own creation driven by the one real one she saw."

She shook her head and sighed ruefully. People confronted fear in different ways some control it, Some--she looked at Felix--embraced it. Everyone lived with it even her.

Faith had let hers consumer her as surely as the monster in her dreams. and it had led her to murder those who were different all to assuage her fear only it would never do so because there would always be another someone who was different some other that would trigger that fear again.

[Arkrite]

Felix Ian Xavier - Mr. FIX I.T.
Status: Injured 1, Fatigued
HP: 0

"I died too, once. I think," Uncertainty lingered in his voice as he raised his left hand in front of his face and slowly closed and opened it, "Saved by the kindness of strangers. But it leaves a mark on you, doesn't it?"

He lowered his robot arm, and looked over at the man, opening himself to the magic in the world to see if any lingering touch from the water horse was still on the man.

"I've got our ride coming. Would you like to ride with us?"

OOC: Perception check on magic around Edmund: 1d20+5 25

[Doctor Malsyn]

Magically, there doesn't appear to be anything amiss surrounding Edmund. He even registers as a normal human, same as Faith for that matter.

[Doctor Malsyn]

"Drive by Night" - Moerthal

- Where ARe you -

Texting back and forth with Haru, Felix is eventually able to convince the young Kappa to meet them just outside the forest propper rather than having him risk an accident driving on slick muddied roads. It still takes the mage a few more minutes to remotely pilot the team's vehicle through the woodland paths. It's not nearly as difficult as he'd think it ought to be, the HBJ seemingly moving on its own accord to avoid potential potholes or fallen tree debris. Things Felix wouldn't have been able to spot in time on his own.

- What the hell have you people been doing out there? Do you have any idea the paperwork I have to do?

Nearby, Cheyenne finishes up a dialogue with Detective Nolan regarding their captured killer. On the surface, he seems utterly pissed with her for taking matters into her own hands like some reckless vigilante. Yet he doesn't say anything to stop the woman from doing it again either, the same way he's responded every time he'd had to work with her.

- cold ~ dark ~ musky ~ where? ~ bad food ~ bad food ~ bones ~ -

It's tough work for Philip to interpret the non-word thoughts supplied by his rats into something more comprehensive. After some time searching, however, he's able to uncover the shallow grave of what might've ostensibly been something humanoid, if you ignored the way its skull was distinctly canine in nature. The cause of death is easy enough to determine, a bullet wound in its face with an exit wound at the top of its skull. A strange angle, Faith likely would've had to have fired from the ground.

A tingle in his mind. There were others still.

- "That damn horse... If only I hadn't been so stupid, I could've been there for her." -

The images brought forth by Kira's illusions have clearly left the elder upset and distressed. A part of him seemed ready to dismiss it all out of hand, but it's clear he'd noticed something was wrong with Faith for a while. Any arguments he could present are weak and crumble before the kitsune and Neko's words, leaving him with the bitter truth about his grandaughter's descent into madness. Head pressed against his steering wheel, he wonders aloud just what he was going to tell Faith's parents once they inevitably found out.

--------

The drive through the woods is quiet save for the faint pitter of a dwindling rain. After some logistics, it was determined one of the team would drive Edmund's Jeep with Ahanah in the back, while Faith was kept secured in the HBJ. A way to mitigate any panic or confrontation between the two, even though both women were largely unresponsive during the drive. Faith didn't stay unconscious during the whole journey, which meant little more than she was able to sit up on her own if even permitted. Anything said to her was flatly ignored, the killer staring a hole into whatever was directly across from her.

Everyone was greeted by red and blue strobing lights as they came around the final bend. It seems that Nolan had come through, and he's brought along friends in the form of several squad cars and an ambulance. A police line had been strung up further back to block off the smattering of locales drawn out of their homes by the commotion. There were no TV reporters, but the team could feel that their days of relative anonymity were soon behind them.

Faith was unloaded first, the woman only offering a token level of resistance as she was frog-marched into MU-PD custody. Nolan was there of course though he was all business for a change, telling the team they needed to stay behind for some questioning. Whether or not they actually followed through on the request was out of his control. As the killer is shoved into the back of a paddy wagon, her eyes were not on the team. Instead, they were focused solely on the Wendigo girl being carefully laid out on a stretcher by EMT. It was hard to read her expression at that moment, face neutral and eyes just as cold as they were throughout the entire encounter. Faith looked away before her victim was even fully out of sight.

A commotion was taking place over at the police line, Haru straining against an officer as he called out to Ahanah as she was loaded up. Nolan sighed and pinched his brow, and as the senior officer on scene allowed the kappa through. He was in tears by the time he'd reached her, his hand finding hers as they shared words. It didn't take long until the as of now still blinded woman started crying too. As they loaded her up, he joined her in the back while EMT checked her over.

Later that night, Felix would receive a simple two-word text message.

~ Thank you ~

End of Chapter 4: Predator and Prey

[Arkrite]

Felix Ian Xavier - Mr. FIX I.T.
Status: Injured 1, Fatigued
HP: 0

Felix went through the events after the fight in an exhausted funk.

The Herkimer Battle Jitney felt like it was driving itself as it rolled up the road to him. A warm comforting presence, strong, dependable, confidant. He stood silently as everybody readied to go.

A vague memory of discomfort at having Faith locked in with them, instead of tied to the roof. Technically the argument had been valid, it would be impossible for her to get away while locked inside an armored personnel carrier. He just wasn't as excited about being locked in with her.

When the police arrived he remained mostly silent. It was only when they were moving Ahanah that he moved to be nearby. Knowing Cheyenne she'd be standing next to the girl, looking ready to wreak violence upon any who tried to hurt her, and he needed to be nearby to sober second opinion.

Except, as he thought back, wasn't Cheyenne busy talking to her friend(?) detective Nolan? Was it Phillip? Felix scratched his head. No that didn't track, the man was a professional EMT, he'd have been too focused on his job, plus he was more personable than that. So it must have been Kira.
No, wait, he noticed she was missing shortly after they spotted the cops.
Mimi? That didn't seem right.

Wait, had he been the one who was standing next to the girl, looking ready to wreak violence upon any who tried to hurt her?

He grimaced as his body felt a flash of discomfort and pain.

That had been a while ago now.

Now he was home. He was too tired to do anything useful, but still to high strung to sleep. His mantle hung behind him waiting for maintenance, his staff was leaning against his chair. His arm was laid out on the table in front of him, half pulled apart to rebuild back into a new, better version. But he just sat in the ratty old recliner, a beer in his good hand, staring at the wall.

His gear was in need of repair. His body was battered and burnt. His magic drained. His mind in a fog. They'd risked their lives and exposed themselves to the public, to the police, and for what? What reward could have possibly been worth all of that?

His phone pinged and a small message popped up on his Mirror Shades. Two small words.

~ Thank you ~

With a wry grin he raised his beer in silent salute, "That'll do."





"That'll do."