2020-08-27 - The Power Gauntlet (Phase Five)

Nova is confused and disoriented, given that her world is typically some drug induced form of neon, this is unexpected. Honestly she hadn't had too many dreams this dim since coming to Gray Harbor, this was totally a nightmare in the making. Reaching out with a teeny bit of her sparkle she senses other people near by, which is actually pretty new. The is probably one of those 'fuck you up' things that Rekani and Kip dealt with.

Trying to get to her feet if there were more light one would see a white tee with floral nipple coverings and a pair of short baby blue soffees. Her hair is curly and piled atop her head.

Just like any good horror victim with low awareness, Nova calls out to her compatriots in the dim light. "Hello? Anyone there?"

She had been preparing to take a shower after a swim in the ocean and a run around the park when the familiar, sick feeling of being transported from the world she loves to a Dream she will inevitably hate assails her senses. Once again crammed in a dark other, Isabella grits her teeth when she realizes she's back into it again. She uses so rarely, but then again, she had been opening doors lately in an effort to investigate what is happening on the other side.

"Oh, god damn it," she sighs, planting her hands on her hips and pursing her lips, squinting in the near-oppressive darkness. "...at least I'm not in my pajamas this time," comes the soft mutter.

She realizes, however, that she isn't alone. She can hear people breathing in the dark. "Hello?" she calls out. "You alright? I'm Isabella, who are you?"

There's a pause, and she eyeballs the growing sheen of sickly gray underneath her feet. "Where are you?" she asks, attempting to trace Nova's voice. "Stay close to me, for these things, usually it's best to stick together."

There's a third party here, a man from the sound of it, though his voice doesn't sound familiar to either women once he starts to speak. Initially, though, he doesn't speak, he coughs like he's going to retch, the nausea rooted in him from such a long and sickening pull into this... this... whatever this may be. The man is knelt on the floor like the other two initially with ungraceful appearance but he hears the two women and finally, after some thinking, outs himself and pushes to stand.

As the man comes closer, in the low light they can see he's still in shift-gear flannel and work pants from the lumber mill, no doubt. He's nice looking, kinda bristly in that clean cut way, and his arms are massively impressive. So basically he looks like a lumberjack. Maybe a man with formidable size means nothing in here, though. Isabella might actually find him familiar for some reason.

"... ladies. Sorry to meet under these circumstances. I'm Sawyer."

Of course his name is Sawyer, he looks like one. At least... as much as they can see. He states the obvious with a certain amount of resignation.

"This is not going to be good."

Nova waves as though Isabella has any way to possibly see the bubbly gesture. She had in fact been passed out on the couch while watching 'Elite', a Spanish teen murder drama on Netflix, after hitting a cannabis vape a few times. Luckily weed has anti-nausea properties. "Yo! 'Sup Isabella! Is lumberjack Jesus with you? I hear he likes these sort of parties?"

Eyeing the announced Sawyer with heavy approval, staring at his arms when he is close enough. Almost breathlessly she whispers too loudly at him, eyes wide. "Are you Lumberjack Jesus?!?"

A shiver runs down her spine with a visible chilled shake. She hasn't moved despite Isabella's promoting, mostly because with Nova there was always a chance she would get lost...always. Her attention seems to deviate from Sawyer for a split second as she ponders the noise. "Are we in a microwave?"

"....I know you."

Isabella pauses, and then she points, jaw dropping. "You were in that dance/off, stand/off during our girl's night!" Christ, the man put all of them to shame what is even happening?! "I should have known, you'd been yanked in one of these things before." With them. "Nice to meet you, I'm Isabella, and this is a nightmare. Only way out is through, though - do you guys hear that?"

And see that? Green and gold eyes slant a suspicious glance at the wisps of fog trailing around, and the sound of machinery humming all around them.

"No, that's definitely not the lumberjack Jesus I know." It's telling that she knows she means August Roen immediately after Nova says that. With a grimace, she starts to shuffle closer to her group. "Can any of you sense anything? I feel nothing but air, and you guys."

"Depends. Are you one of his angels?" Sawyer wonders of Nova in return, which sounds more obligatory than actually flirty considering exactly WHERE they are. His sober expression never changes as he peers out into the dark to visibly think. Then he looks over at Isabella as he's recognized and his mouth suddenly perks a little helplessly, vaguely sheepish sounding while he takes to digging in his workpants pockets, "... that was me. Hardest part was working up the nerve to embarrass myself. But you ladies needed help, so..." Oh boy, a hero-sort. Surely that bodes well for him in such a dark place with two other ladies.

When he gets bounty from his work pants, he comes up with a multifunction swiss army knife and a small flashlight. Immediately, he tries to shine the latter around in the darkness but it's not penetrating. It lights up their immediate space in the haze of the floor, but slowly, like the batters are being leeched of energy, it dies out. When that happens he sets his jaw for composure, tucks it away, then decides to flip his multitool straight to knife.

"Does... sound like a microwave. We're probably about to get... cooked in some way. Just stay real close."

He's not being a perv, he's encouraging them to trio back to back the way he's shifting away from the dark to stand with them. It's hard to tell if it's closing in or not.

"Oh snap! That club throws the best fiesta's! Ya? Good to see you Mamí! I have nightmares sometimes but usually not with friends, this is dope!" Nova dabs into the darkness because dabbing made everything feel less serious. "I tried to see if anything else was around, but nada, could mean I just don't feel it though. Like a shit hookup?" She seems to ponder Sawyer a moment longer, her big eyes sweeping to Isabella. "Not that either of you would know, you're both too pretty." In Nova's mind there were now two lumberjack Jesus'. She had never met August and only heard about his appearance in dreams, so there must in fact be two. She winks at Sawyer's remark.

"Oh Shit Papi is smooth! I'll stay close to you!" Nova whistles, flirting back in the entirely inappropriate situation. You gotta meet people where you can right? This did not by any means indicate that Nova was immune to the growing black hole inside her. Simply, using people as a way to fill the void had been her coping mechanism for over a decade. As Sawyer warns of danger, her iris' dart to the floor and she looks on a little more seriously, suddenly a little less coy.

At the other woman's flirting, her mouth opens, and then shuts with a click. She's about to tell Nova that Sawyer bats for the other team - but she doesn't because it's funnier this way.

Listen, she's probably trapped in a deadly nightmare here - at this point she's lost track of how many she's actually survived in the year since she returned to her hometown - she'll take whatever levity she can get. So as those big eyes swing to her, Isabella sighs. "Thanks, let's hope we all stay pretty after this is over," she tells her with a sheepish grin, before she narrows her eyes to the floor and takes a few steps back.

"Get ready," she murmurs to her companions, tension winding over her shoulders in readiness to move once the danger has shown itself.

Sawyer starts to shift on his feet in that ready to move and pivot form that men use before they're about to steal a base on the sportsball field, just more slowly, like a pace version of that. He continues to grip his swiss multitool knife, but after a look downward at it, his mouth sets with grim cast at how paltry it really looks against... what? The Unknown.

Then, because he's with ladies and it's all he has to say for assurances, he decides, "We should all stay pretty, yeah." The man's eyes can't help looking at the dark furtively even while he's waiting for something to burst through the floor. The humming rise seems to be from there now and they all hear it.

Snakes.

Why did it have to be snakes?

"Oh sh-- " And the rest of the epithet dwindles into a bloodcurdling scream from Dr. Isabella Reede, intrepid archaeologist, as she tossed upwards in the air before the thing attempts to swallow her whole. She lands in the viscous interior of the gigantic maw, feeling its contractions attempt to push her deeper into the scarlet-lit underbellies of the reptile that's ensnared her. She attempts to brace herself to keep from sliding down, to wedge her feet into either sides of the thing and withdrawing her pistol from the small of her back.

"Should...start...bringing my god damn....hatchet..." she says through gritted teeth as she attempts to fire bullets into the snake's insides, and the red light flooding her vision.

Oh god, I can't die like this. I'm not even that tasty!

Nova probably would not have noticed Sawyer's sexuality, nor cared unless he asked her to stop out of discomfort. She flirted with her brother's straight girlfriend all the time, and anyone else she thought was attractive. Frisky talk was just 'hello' in Nova.

Speaking of frisky, this weird-ass shadow snake that they had received a not quite strong enough warning about was a bit too friendly. Nova cartwheels out of the way as the serpent lunges forth, laughing manically until... ¡Ay, joder! The attractive long haired brunette had been swallowed up. This sucked on more than one level because Nova was not a maker of plans. "Uhhhh Lumberjack? Any good ideas here? Can you like manhandle it if I can distract it?"

She notices he is injured and doesn't wait for a response, he's busy. Can snakes vomit? Ehhh, not a solid plan, she would need to google that and she doubted there would be reception in her nightmare. Perhaps she could try to reach out to whatever created it? Was that even a thing? Uhhhh, she had cheated in almost every science class...

Nova really hoped Isabella was as tough as she seemed, because the only thing she could come up with was trying to zap the thing, she targets the red glowing bit, hoping it wouldn't fry the bella Bella.

"Yep. On it. Just back up when--" The man has to dodge another snake while talking, but what he doesn't have to do is manhandle Isabella free once Nova has lashed electricity with power and focus into the creature. The pulsing is vaguely visible from the outside too, it makes a great target for a bolt and all of that liquid metal that's shifting with energy and seems to be animating these giant Shadowsnakes. He watches Nova essentially short the creature out and Isabella is hacked right onto the floor as a result.

Sooooo, he goes for one of the snakes that has crept up on Nova when she's distracted with focus and just barely breaks the jaw to make it retreat long enough to no doubt reform.

"Got your back. Grab her and let's get--" Where? Doesn't matter. He doesn't even get to finish his sentence. He gets gulped up after some punching flails on the way down, but in the end, the Shadowcreature snakes straight into the flooring with the man captive inside. He might have done Nova a solid, but it was at his own expense.

Bye Sawyer. We hardly knew ye. He may not be dead given the fact Isabella got hacked right out, but this time, there was no chance for such things.

She doesn't know what's happening outside of her cramped, tube-formed world, but the world suddenly lurches around her in a fit as lightning arcs through the snake's body. It regurgitates her into a messy, slimy bundle on the ground. "Ugh," Isabella wheezes, coughing as she attempts to struggle upwards and shove her gun into a more secured position on her person - and this is until Sawyer is eaten by the snake.

"NO!" she cries out, and she's about to fire again, but the large shadow coils around her and there's another gurgling scream when she's snatched up again by the snake. She disappears in its gullet, to be dragged off to god-knows-where. Somewhere in the thing's throat, she's struggling and grasping at anything she can reach to prevent herself from sliding deeper into the dark, writhing tunnel.

Nova almost fist pumps as Isabella is released...what a short lived victory that was...and Sawyer? Oh, Poor Sawyer. She was appreciative for his snackrifice. She turns back to ask Isabella what they should do when...Are you serious?

Anger is supposed to be a stage of grief, but when you take away the one thing between Nova and a constant emptiness, there is only depression. More than anything she hated to be alone. As the darkness closes in on her, she lets out a pained scream, attempting to shock the loneliness and fear away from her.

The red light surges through her as she struggles and attempts to push herself out of the snake. Isabella's eyes widen, and then everything grows dark....

When the archaeologist opens her eyes again, she's in another room, and she jolts up right away as if waking from a terrible nightmare. There's a faint grimace as she looks around, easing up to a standing position as she wanders over to the portal-sized windows overlooking Nova's present struggles. Instead of bashing a fist through the glass - are they glass - she grits her teeth, narrowing her eyes as she attempts to examine the frames, to see if there's a hinge. Using a pen that she slips out of her pocket, because an academic always carries one, she tests the material of the 'glass'.

"I am not getting trapped in here ever again," she murmurs, before taking several steps back. Narrowing her eyes, she attempts to feel around the room with her mind - there might be something here that she isn't seeing.

There was anger, and fear, then a presence...It wanted her to be that way? If giving in to things she typically fought off made it come closer, maybe she could make whatever sadistic being was at the core of this apple come closer still. If it focused on her enough, could she try to detect it again? While not the academic like the archaeologist, Nova had seen enough bugs drawn into light on many a hot summer evening. If her sorrow was the bulb, she would shine as bright as she could for this mothra.

Nova closes her eyes and lets the darkness wash over her with it's comfort, teasing it. The cold touch was the monstrous version of her loving madre's lulling her in. So she allowed it to...just a little. Nova gives the loneliness enough to chew on. Would she always be left this way? With nothing but her darkness to comfort her?

She was teetering, was it too much for her? Dancing for the shadows?

She doesn't just find one thing but two - each that might lead to freedom to at least get to her companions and try to find their way out together, or further to her doom.

Isabella stares at the switch at the corner of the room, and then the push-hatch with the giant red button. "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!" The snap floods in a flare of white-heat through her skull, blossoming like an angry rose and she nearly throws her pen to the side in fury. "Why the hell is this room making me CHOOSE?!" Had there someone who knew her accompanying her, the loss of temper would be...well, not all that uncharacteristic really, but she isn't prone to raging against a variety of options. She's more likely to do that when she has none.

With a frustrated yell, she slams her palm down on the red button, making her choice - as always a decisive creature, at least. She doesn't overthink it, and she takes several steps back with her gun, eyes narrowed and safety disengaged in readiness.

The problem with opening oneself up to being hurt is that you pretty much always got just that. Whether it be a relationship or aching darkness, you were probably going to get your heart ripped right out of your chest. The latch felt far more physical than she expected, but physical she could deal with. Emotional pain was much stronger for her, letting the hurt she kept buried rise to the surface. Nova did feel connected to this darkness now more tangibly than before. Gritting her teeth, the Latina closes her eyes and tries to trace the voices and the gripping wound to a source, reaching out with everything she has.

This mierda thought it was tough? Well, Nova Nazario was leading this dance and there was a pace to be kept.

There's so much blood that it's worrisome and she hears a familiar voice; whatever terror she feels is washed away by the sound of the man yelling. Sawyer is alive.

Gritting her teeth and swallowing both rage and fear, Isabella launches herself past the bloodied shattered saw that has fallen into her space. "Sawyer!" she yells up at the upstairs chasm. "Hang on!" Anything could happen, really - but what other choice does she have? She reaches out to grab the lever and yank it down in hopes that it'll open something up in the room so she can get to him.

Of all the things to try to get into the head of, she had to choose the craziest. Honestly, she was thankful that was as far as it went, the concept of a funneled torture chamber into a harm inducing consciousness did not seem like something she wanted to do more than speed date. In that direction lives a Hatter...Nova thought bitterly to herself as the options are revealed. FUCK her chest hurt. The chink in the armor was almost certainly a way out...she could just take it...

Nova wasn't sure she could morally do that though considering she was pretty sure Isabella and Sawyer were still here somewhere. She had to show them the way out. God would never forgive her if she left two people to suffer, and she's pretty sure she would not forgive herself. If all the options sucked you just have to pick one and deal. Towards the Lego house it was. Nova wasn't going to be able to listen to Ed Sheeran for a while.

DO NOT COME IN HERE!

Isabella's expression flattens; Sawyer can't be blamed, he doesn't really know her that well, but she does dodge and weave through the spill of rocks that slowly start to fill the room. At some point, she ducks behind a rock before she's smashed by another, but soon the rockslide that piles into her room paves the road to freedom - or at least, an avenue in which to get to Sawyer. Squinting in the darkness above, she reaches out to start clambering up the sloping pile, carefully stepping - the last thing she needs is to get her ankle caught, and break it here.

"I said hold on!" she says, her heart in her throat. She hears saws somewhere above her, knows it for what it is due to some very disturbing dreams due to her Baxter blood. But she keeps pressing forward. She has two people to try and get to, she's trying to get to the one most accessible first, and then hopefully they'll be able to work together to get to Nova and get out of here.

Nova could get lost going from her bedroom to the fridge, so for her, finding vague shapes in the darkness is damn near impossible. It was over here right? No the other way...This was worse than doing a corn maze while drunk, which she had done. Just as it seems she will never reach the structure, she's right in front of it. Seeing inside, she didn't care if it was the real Isabella or not. It either was or it was a trap and everything here was a trap, so why not stay thirsty my friends. The windows were made of that sickening material of human suffering, good thing Nova was sufficiently irritated enough at the circumstances that lightening was now the first option she went with. A neon pink zap hits the 'window' and Nova stands there, clutching her chest. If she could get the thing shattered there was a bottle of oxy at home with her name on it. Well...not her name, someone named 'Mavis', but she had bought it fair and square. Nova made a note to cross out Mavis and write her own name, if only to currently distract herself from how much pain she was in.

She feels it - tendrils of inky shadow winding up her arm and she grits her teeth. With a grunt, Isabella shoves the hatch back, letting light and blood to spill before she grabs the top with both hands and hurls herself through the opening, rolling onto the floor. The first thing she does is yank a bandanna out of the back of her shorts pocket, to fashion a tourniquet around the creeping darkness clambering up her arm. She's seen this before - like an infection, Alexander said, so she attempts to stay it by tightening the grip of the cloth over the spot where the black creeps, securing it with a knot. It might only delay and not halt the spread, but she's going to try.

"Sawyer!" she cries out, looking around at the chaos, tension straining sleek muscle, ready to act when necessary. She ties off the bandanna with her teeth, and attempts to rise.

Nova had probably never chased a girl as hard as this Isabella chick, who had an incredible knack for vanishing just as soon as Nova caught up to her. Was it raining blood? It was probably better not to actually ask that question. From the window to the wall! Through sawblades she would crawl? Good thing she was flexible...

She does her best to climb into the window and up into whatever horror Isabella had just plunged into. "Wait for me pretty people!"

"Come on," Isabella breathes once she's secured the bandanna in an attempt to keep the infection from spreading through her arm, reaching out with her free one in an attempt to snare Nova's hand and pull her up to the upper level, and when she looks around...

...she nearly wretches. Bile rises from the pit of her stomach, threatening to burn her throat and sick up on the rest of the landscape. With Sawyer wounded and him in imminent danger, she's about to say something else when saw blades come up as if wielded by imaginary forces and she grits her teeth, already bracing herself to move. And when they launch, she yells out a warning for Nova before she attempts to dive away. A cut opens up her shoulder, spraying blood across the nearby wall - but it isn't as deep.

It will kill me, Sawyer had said.

"Well, let's try to kill this first and then get out of here and reassess," she hisses, blazing, furious eyes turning anger and fury towards the expended blade. Reaching with her mind, she grips the blade, and hurls it spinning in a deadly arc towards the Sawblade Monster's face.

"Lightning," she tells Nova as she keeps the blade in the thing's face, grinding her teeth together in an attempt to keep it spinning and basically start sawing the bastard from the head down. But the thing's full of metal and she's not a practiced enough mentalist to use that to her advantage.

Nova had not been this beat up since she crashed a car in Miami while street racing. She takes Isabella's hand and ends up in the extra parts room of Sawyer's personal hell. She was really going to hope this was an illusion. Nova had seen violence given that she had a fair amount of ex's that ran with gangs, but not brutality of this level, this amount of disrespect for the dead...

Knowing nothing about how to treat an injury, or really able to process much beyond that they needed to get out of here, she puts a finger to her nose to check that there is indeed blood above her lip. These things fed on power and misery, the only way to beat it was power, but she was not going to give this place another second of her pain she didn't have to. She turns clenched teeth into a smile, despite her aching head.

Hearing Isabella's call for lightning, Nova looks back with a tense sideways grin to Sawyer. "Do me a favor and carry me outta here if I pass out alright?" She gives him another wink before turning back to the thing that was trying to kill them. Then, she power slides and shoots finger guns with zaps of lightening at each of the sawblades on the creature...because you could defeat anything with dancing right?

There's no satisfaction in her when the monster is felled. All she does is reach down to snag Sawyer's meaty arm in an attempt to sling it over her shoulder, skirting clear of the one with the saw blade still embedded in it. She bends her knees, rocks on her heel in an attempt to pull him up. "C'mon, big guy. Almost through," she tells him softly and turning her eyes towards Nova to gauge her condition. She's alive - she's going to have to content herself with that for now.

She grits her teeth. "Time to make our best guess I suppose," she murmurs. One door to push, one door to pull. Earlier, she had pushed a button, and pulled a lever, then pushed the hatch over to enter this room. Next in sequence?

The archaeologist decides; she reaches out for the door with the magnetic pull.

Nova’s condition involved a severe concussion, not that most people would notice given how she acted. She goes to help Isabella with Sawyer, the other hand going to her forehead in a salute to the felled creature. “You shoulda saw that coming.”

Nova had in fact in her mind just claimed another victory with the power of dance. Someone really needed to get her a reality check or some mental help. Coping mechanisms and delusions were strong with this one.

Sawyer falls onto the pavement of the lumber mill parking lot next to his car. His keys are still where they dropped when he got sick and snared into Something Terrible. It was far from his first time, he's lived here all his life. There's blood and pain at his shoulder, his skin feels on fire, all through his body, his veins in so many places are battered and black to cause bruising, he looks awful.

He's alive. He's alive. Again, and again, and again, he keeps living. He's tired of giving them what they want. He remembers what happened last time there was a Feeding.

Curling up on his side, Sawyer Bertrand chokes back a sob and lies in silence on the pavement in the dark for a while.

Not again.