2020-08-09 - The Power Gauntlet (Phase Two)

Itzhak and Ignacio were in fact together, eating Thai food and running their yaps. They're both very good at that, a lot of talking is going on between pad see ew and red curry. Then the world turns inside out and they're left on this sickly-lit floor. Itzhak, on his knees, goes, "urgh" and makes a valiant effort to not let the curry make a second appearance. One arm wrapped around his belly and one hand over his face, he needs a minute.

It was a rare night off, with a manager the bar can pretty much handle itself most nights, and she didn't have a shift at the station. Bennie can't bring herself to use the fancy bathtub that Easton had installed as her refuge, so instead she was washing out some delicates in it when the pull started. One moment she's hanging up her second hand Victoria's secret, and the next she's doubled up with nausea, hands wrapped over her stomach and back pedaling across the floor to get away from whatever is drawing her in and in and...

The black is all encompassing, but Bennie knows she's on her hands and knees. The mumu she'd deconstructed for the fabric and reassembled into a nightdress is bunched up beneath her kneel, the added lace no doubt leaving an imprint in her skin. Then the glow comes, she crawls forward in mild panic until she hears that there's someone else here with her. "Hello?"

Ignacio was busy running his mouth and now? Another dirt nap? Well at least all the brittle parts of his body are not screaming and on fire. There's that. He murmurs, "If I got hit with another fuckin bus... " His jaw tightens and he says, "I'm a write a strongly worded letter to Grayhound. They're gonna hear it." OH the bitchings man! Never piss off an author. Running his mouth, it's how he calms down. Gaining his breath he looks up "Zee, you ok, brother?" Looking over he frowns and very much . Hell he was hosting trivia at her place a while. "Bennie? Over here. It's me and, um, most of Itzhak. it's fine. He's fine..." He looks at Itzhak and murmurs, "You are okay, right?"

"I'm fine," Itzhak grits out through clenched teeth. He's a little green around the gills, but gets to his feet. "You okay? ...Bennie? That you?" He squints at her to make sure. The sound that rises along with the light makes him wince, raise a hand to his ear. "Okay. Let's figure this shit out." He's dressed for Gray Harbor summer, and his thin tank top isn't up to the challenge of this fog.

"Oh Iggy, thank god. And Itzhak!" The relief in her voice is apparent as Bennie scrambles forward, latching onto the first limb she comes into contact with, be it Itzhak's leg or Ignacio's arm or vice versa as her eyes adjust to the growing light. Stage four clinger mode, activated. "Where-where do you think we are? Can you see anything?" Her head cranes about, but the farthest reaches are just that deep, inky black.

Ignacio replies to Itzhak with a concerned look, "I can't feel half my leg-" He looks up to Itzhak jsut stopping that joke dead right there and he rolls off, "Which means status is... I think it's quo." He pushes himself to his feel trying hard to hide the concern and nervous tones of his voice, "This..." Deep breath. "This is not quo." Thanks Iggs. His hand reaches out to give Bennie an assist if she needs it. He holds on because sometimes just having a friendly hand makes a big difference. "Well.. Itz is... going to talk to the metal and we're going to see if anyone knows where weeee are at and then you can ask for directions." He blinks to Bennie sighing, "I'm genetically incapable o stopping and asking for directions. " Jokes now. Bad ones at that. he always delivers.

Itzhak can't detect anything; he mutters, "Whaddaya picking up, Nacio?" Meanwhile Bennie clings to his leg and he permits this, for a moment, idly stroking her hair, before he tries to pull her up. "C'mon, on ya feet, Oakes. We got work to do." The dark, he eyes like a rival gang member. The noise grates on his nerves. Of course, he does not want to wait. He wants to stride right into the dark and tell it to suck his dick.

Bennie has no issue with Itzhak helping her to her feet, that rising tide of panic in her throat aiding her to stand just as much as his arms. "Something. Something is getting closer. Closing in around us." Her stomach acid is making her voice sound raw, even though the initial nausea is subsiding. "One of you...one of you can do the lightening bolt thing, right? See if you can light this puppy up so we can see."

"I'm... Nothing Itzhak." Ignacio blinks looking faintly dismayed, eyes closing for a moment and reaching out, beyond, and out out. It's a quiet confirmation, resigned, like accepting the death of a friend. Always too soon. Thanks PTSD. This is going to be fun fun fun. There is stillness and the Spaniard , "Nada, zilch, bupkus. There's... there isn't." Eyes flashing open he critiques, loudly, "LAST time there was nothing they gave us snow." He's not saying he's just saying.

Looking to Bennie he pats her shoulder and murmurs, "Yeah um... Itzhak start talking shit about mi mama. That... that usually works." He gives Itzhak a brief glance to Itzhak he holds on that offering, "Yeah you got a flashlight app on you? My phone was left on the table. I mean if it's got electric then... then we'll see. Rather try that first in case there's like a switch. Let's... let's not overdo things."

"De Santos, the day I talk shit about your ma is the day your entire family puts me in the ground." Itzhak isn't insensible to his friend's distress, though, looking back at him with mouth twisted. "Light, this I can do." And he does. At least, he tries, with a quick tough-guy beckoning of his fingers, like he's inviting someone over to fight him.

Light flashes and in that pair of heartbeats, shimmering webs drop towards Itzhak. He whips out of the way before he can blink, before he can think, and the web drops by him harmlessly. Ignacio isn't so lucky--Itzhak barks "NAISHKA!" and lunges at the swallowing darkness, reaching for the webbing. And grabbing it too, latching on in the grip of his Song and pulling a bundle of de Santos back towards the floor.

Everything happens so fast. Bennie's eyes squint against the sudden influx of light, only for it to be drawn away like smoke through a cigarette filter, wisps pulled away into the lungs of the giant hum creating machine. The brief spark is enough to illuminate the metallic webbing that drops down from above, and Bennie manages to crouch with her arm above her head just in time, dropped on but not drawn away like Ignacio just yet. (Madame Giry says always keep your hand at the level of your eyes, amirite?) There is a squeak of surprise as Ignacio gets pulled into the darkness and Bennie struggles to free herself of her own metal tendrils but the sunshiny warmth is no match for the cold, shifting metal.

Ignacio looks around and finds just a hint of something and lights up "Yes!" and then there's a shift in the floor. The guy that ate a city bus only a few months ago is not back up to what one would call 'stealthy or agile'. "Nooooo....!" The sound is cut out as he tumbles into the abyss...again.... fucking void man, mother fucker!!! His heart doing flips and his dread? Moreso. He's seemed to maybe halt momentum. Did he stop? Is he moving? Will he eternally go woosh forever? Find out next time on- oh that's the sound of Itzhak yelling. All hope is not lost! He reaches out with mental though trying to land message on Itzhak and Bennie, "I'm okay... maybe... dunno how long. Not hurt. I dunno where I am. The Abyss or...Gary Indiana. hard to tell the difference."

Itzhak gets Ignacio back, YES! He growls something victorious in Yiddish, and dashes aside from the next attempt at webbing him, like a fucking boss. When the webbing all rushes to Ignacio, though, and wraps him up, just like the dwarves in The Hobbit...Itzhak has second thoughts about how well this is going. He looks at Bennie, wild-eyed. "Get him outta there."

Bennie has to free herself before she'll be any use to the others, but there is that empty feeling of uselessness when there doesn't seem to be any known rhyme or reason in the structure that she can rend apart. It does, however, give her a little breathing room so that when the web tries again, Bennie can slip away from its grasp. "HA! Not today, Satan!" But the celebration is short-lived, broken by Itzhak's yell. "Oh shootstain." The blonde skitters over, hands hovering above the cocoon. "I can t-try." And so she musters her shine again with a deep breath and focus.

Ignacio lands and it's... well it's alright. It's brighter. The strands of the webbing are kinda nice. That's not bad. For a moment he sits still and meditates. He tries to reach out to...Itzhak? Bennie?? Find spiders? Somewhere Finch too. What was it Alexander said? Something about focusing and taking a second to react, not respond. Right. breathe. Something is happening because something wants something. Well... spiderwebs in a ball... are bad. Good job, Ignacio.

Sigh

Can he find it and give it a different priority? Maybe... like the truth of it is this is terrifying but he's kinda wanting to invest in a papizan if he ever when he makes it home.

Itzhak can't reach across the kythe to Ignacio. The cocoon is like a Faraday cage. "Fuck," he whispers, voice trembling--then he roars it. "FUCK!" Then he grips his hair in both hands and yanks. Do not lose your shit, Rosencrantz, do fucking not. He pulls until he grunts in pain and can let go, breathing hard.

"More light," he murmurs. "There's gotta be more light." His kingdom for his fiddle...but he can make do. Itzhak wets his lips, takes in a breath, straightens up. He snaps his fingers, laying down a tempo, eyes sinking closed. And then he sings.

Lonely shadows following me
Lonely ghosts come a-calling
Lonely voices talking to me
Now I'm gone, now I'm gone, now I'm gone
And my mother told me son let it be
Sold my soul to the calling
Sold my soul to a sweet melody
Now I'm gone, now I'm gone, now I'm gone
Oh gimme that fire!

Bennie gives a little shake of head to Itzhak after her last attempt. It's not working. Her mind flashes back to the Asylum, the rage and the fury she felt thinking Easton might be in there, stuck. And now it's Ignacio that's locked away. Her fists ball at her side, twisting into gaudy floral fabric. "Itzhak...you ever see a trailer in a tornado? Maybe I can rip it from its base. Let's Toto-I-Don't-Think-I'm-in-Kansas-Anymore this beotch."

Ignacio presses his hand to the walls and tries to reach out. Ignacio's not a fighter, at all; he's a lover. He's not Don Juan, he's de Santos. He cares and it is his greatest weakness, empathy. He watches in that Leeloo learning about war moment all his own. The despair of being broken on life's wheel over and over, his bones, his spirit, his dreams repeatedly. His heart feels pulled in on itself.

The funny thing about a void is sometimes you don't realize you are screaming, and it's not until the hot saline is stinging his cheeks that he realizes it. He sinks to his knees which hurts to do. Every ugly thing people do to one another, themselves? It's all so ugly. Like John Coffey said Hoss, I dunno why people gotta be so ugly to one another. And it's an image he catches; first Finch, scared and alone and asleep in a hospital chair in February, terrified and the memory distorted.

He sniffs and he reasons with the shadows, "yeah... but she stayed. That... that's not about someone being mad and hitting me with a... with a bus, it's about coming together, not my body falling apart. She could have made it so much uglier, but she didn't. The world is a scary place. It will bring out the worst but it gives opportunity for us to get off our ass and... do something when we are scared. For others. For us. We're working on it... And I'm sorry."

And to that point in the calmest part of his trembling heart he believes it. "The brightest lights cast the darkest shadows. There's going to be both but there is good in it. Why else would we be working together. What do you Need? We didn't come to hurt you."

Empathy is also his fucking super power. Goddamn he's got to get out of here and call his editor and start writing again. "I didn't fight so hard to walk again...again..." he sighs and murmurs, "again to not walk out of here. So let's work something out here."

Itzhak pushes and pushes, singing, Singing, channeling his power through his voice and his very soul. Light answers him. It swells and leaps at his command, gathers, pushes back against the shadow...except Itzhak himself is being swallowed up in shadow. Darkness seeps into him as he makes the trade, shadow for light, his pain defiantly against the dark. Does he hesitate? Does he stop? Not on ya life, pal. He doesn't stop, not as the dark blooms in his bones like ink, not as his light is siphoned away.

Oh, a thousand faces staring at me
Thousand times I've fallen
Thousand voices dead at my feet
Now I'm gone, now I'm gone, now I'm gone
And my mother told me son let it be
Sold my soul to the calling
Sold my soul to a sweet melody
Now I'm gone, now I'm gone, now I'm--*

...he doesn't stop until he collapses in a long-limbed heap, wheezing for breath, his veins running with ink instead of blood.

Bennie can feel the snap, so unlike bones. More like rubber bands that finally reach the end of their tensile strength as she breaks through the covalent bonds keeping the very compounds of the webbing cocoon structured. When the whips of web start to recede into the darkness, Bennie calls out to Ignacio. "Can you stand can you m-" The sound of Itzhak hitting the ground near her draws her words short, "Itzhak!" Cried in panic as she moves to him, falling to her knees besides his crumpled form. A warm trickle ekes out of one of her nostrils, rolling into the valley of her philtrum and touching her lip with a wet, metallic tang. She knows it's blood before she even makes a swipe of irritation at the nose bleed, smearing red across her cheek on the back of her hand unnoticed as she checks Itzhak for a pulse. "Don't worry, sugar, I got you." Where moments ago she was breaking, now she is seeking to heal.

You know Ignacio's never been so happy to do therapy once a week for PTSD before. The chaos stills and while he wants to retreat from it? Well that's the problem; separation, abandonment, fear, rejecting what is difficult. He soaks it in and holds on to it emotionally until he can still it, care for this broken thing that is the world amplified. Working with it stills the chaos.

When the egg falls a chrysalis did take place, though not a physical one. Ignacio is shaking, and his face turns up to Itzhak's invisible sun casting its heat to every one of them. He soaks it in as he tries to breathe. And then there's Itzhak straining in all his varicose vein sith lord rebuking of darkness falling. Emotions beaten to utter brittle fragility and being left desiccated of 'spoons' he can only murmur, "Itzhak no. Brother get up."

Bennie looks to him and the answer she receives from the sassy Spaniard is an emphatic pointing to Itzhak. She's mobile, he's not. Itzhak needs help pronto. "I'll be fine. go go"

Itzhak groans, stirring. The healing lifts him up, but the tar in his veins wants to stick him to the floor. "Aw fuck," he rasps, realizing what happened; Bennie tried to heal him and as a result she's taking on some of his darkness. "Goddammit, Oakes." And they are losing the light, and--there's escape! He can climb to his feet and stagger to Ignacio, grasping his wrist with a hand gone pale, the veins in his wrist gone purple and black. Stylin'. "C'mon, we gotta get to the fuckin' door, boychik, quit layin' down on the job."

"You didn't think I was going to let you go through this alone, did you?" Bennie sinks back on her haunches away from Itzhak, a bit breathless from the searing pain that makes it feel like razors are in her veins and her muscles are being torn away from their ligaments. Tears have sprung to the corner of her eyes as she bites back a cry, one spilling loose and bumping over her cheek. As Itzhak rouses to go grab at Ignacio, she too musters the energy to stand, pressing her hands into her knees and rolling up, trying to ignore the worst varicose veins ever that spider web down her calves. She reaches for Ignacio's other hand so the trio can make a break for it together.

Ignacio looks to Bennie and is tired, and that's not enough to make him quit. "Bennie, Bennie be careful. We are all going home today." Looking up, around he looks to the door and the shadows creeping in on the light and the door. The chiding draws the faintest of lopsided smiles.

Idea.

He pulls himself toward the door as efficiently as he can. His hands go up trying to abate the darkness like the shadow whisperer. "Shhhh s ssh sshhh It's gonna be okay. He' snot trying to hurt you. He's scared. Trying to protect me, and- and her. He's trying ." He adds, "Bennie, Itz, follow my voice in case it gets- in case you can't see, keep following my voice. I got you guys." Addressing the- (who the hell is he talking to?) the shadows he tries to buy time like they did in the egg, "Look, I'm sorry, for... the things. All the things. Please let us go back and things can change. Gotta give people the chance to.... okay let's GTFO, youse guys." Because Ignacio is a man of faith; not in God, but in people, but oh the New Yorkiness of it!