peckenpaugh | HE IS HERE

Entry tags:

! ic/ooc,
* endgame

HE IS HERE

the vines have run wild

it's over Everything is in shambles. Walls and floors torn and broken from roots and branches sprouting through. They block doors and crowd passages and pulse with sick life. The Thing sits in the center of it all, angry and starving, its trunk both still and moving in ways you catch only when it is in the corner of your vision. Branches that look less like bark and more like skin stretch in every direction, lush with shadowy leaves and dotted with bits of glowing blue. The ruined floor is littered with those little twinkling dots. Seeds. Everywhere, seeds. They hang on boughs, and rest on banisters in the upper levels. The one thing in this nightmare that doesn't radiate that awful, pervasive hunger.

The roof is gone, replaced with a writhing canopy of shadow and muck. Some parts of it are complex spiderwebs of tendrilly shapes, others solid formless movement. The only consistent thing about it is that it is terrible to behold, faintly nauseating to look at for too long. Ash rains down between gaps in its branches, and what glimpses of sky are visible are nothing but swirling gray clouds. What stars still shine are magic, man-made, floated between balconies by prom committee before the dance.

Those remaining begin to stir. Each one of you has heard Pocket's words, "Find the roots." And if you want to save your friends, your family, the holler — hell, maybe even the world — that's exactly what you're going to do.

You climb from protective cocoons of dying moss, push your way past walls of solid ice, emerging into utter destruction. Things move and make noise at the edge of your vision, but for now, at least, all is calm. What to do? Where to start?

it's ruined Among the twinkling maple seeds are the dropped possessions of students and staff, lost when they were pulled away. A compact mirror, a cell phone, a pair of glasses, cups of punch spilling across the floor. A single red heel sits at the edge of the jagged pit that peers down into the Sorting Path. The air here is hot. Too hot. If you jump, you'll surely be boiled alive.

Though locked when everyone tried to flee, vines and roots have torn the doors to the auditorium off their hinges. The splintered remains of heavy oak doors litter the entrance halls and stairwell alcoves, leaving an open path outside. Not that you'd want to flee, by the looks of it.

A cool night breeze is the only relief from the growing heat of the auditorium, yes, but even that is tainted by the heavy scent of flowers. Outside, vines and purple flowers have exploded over every surface. They climb up lamp posts, engulf buildings whole, hang from trees. It would be beautiful if it weren't horrifying. Campus is unrecognizable.

there is no hope Roots and vines clog the way to the Sorting Path, and most stairwells are completely obstructed by the growths of that horrible tree. Up above, something buzzes and wails, a mockery of a cicada's cry, and beyond that the twittering of birds nesting in the tree's highest branches.

Pouch coalesces in the middle of it all, a one-winged magimagicicada, weak and weary but undaunted. Resolute, if not reinvigorated. He bends down to touch a seed, and the moment his obsidian fingers light on it, a blue-white portal to somewhere else rips right through reality. A memory begins to play. Somehow, the bug seems to know what he's seeing.

She gave us what we need, the one who ran says to the gathered students, his voice in their heads as much as the air. Let's all not let her down, huh?

Find your friends. Find my siblings. It's time to fight.

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"What the shit?" Mary Grace's eloquent reply hangs there as everything stops. Well, as that one fucking guy she doesn't even know stops, after completely ignoring that clanging ring echoing through this comically small kitchen.

She takes a step forward, sticking one toe of her boot out tap the floor, making sure everything is actually solid before she just goes leaping on out there.

Okay, the floors are solid. But how about the cabinets?

While something keeps ringing all around her (maybe that's normal in these weird little portal places?? she doesn't know, she's never been here before), Mary Grace kicks at the nearest cabinet.

The incessant ringing bothers Fiona. She looks around and quickly locates the phone, which seems to be the only thing not frozen. Having grown up in a wizarding village, Fiona's not too familiar with Muggle technology - especially not old Muggle technology. But she's seen enough movies to have a basic idea of how it works. She picks up the receiver and lifts it to her ear. For a second she worries that she shouldn't do this, that it's intruding on someone's privacy. But they're already intruding in Winter's memory, right? "Hello?" she says into the phone.

The cabinet unlucky enough to receive Mary Grace's wrath springs open. This one is only half full of beans. The rest is boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese and Zatarain's.

One of the cans falls out and rolls across the floor.

Meanwhile, the person on the other end of the line answers. Winter Carmichael's voice. "Hello? Hello? Who is this?"

Fiona recognizes the voice and glances to where Winter is frozen in space with her head cocked to the side. Weird. If Winter is right here, how can she also be on the other side of the phone in her memory? And where is Winter calling from? "Um, this is Fiona," she says, feeling slightly silly.

Well this is just fucking weird. Not the kitchen. Which is kind of familiar in a way. Size-wise, anyway. But the whole seed portal thing and actually being inside someone's memory? Yeah, that's definitely weird shit. But relatively minor in the grand scheme of things right now.

He swats at one of the hanging vines, not feeling particularly generous towards any greenery right now, and picks up the can as it rolls near his feet. As he moves to put it back (because his Mama fetched him up right), he nods his head towards Fiona, and the frozen Winter standing by her. "..Do we just grab her?" he asks, recalling Pouch's words about finding their friends. "Seems.. young."

"Who's on the phone?" Mary Grace calls over her shoulder and tugs on Winter's sleeve, as if she's gonna just wake this girl up and walk on home, no problem.

"Maybe she gets a second chance," she shrugs at Eddy. "Who doesn't wanna redo freshman year?" The look on her face suggests that the answer is abso-fuckin'-lutely nobody.

Eddy grimaces in agreement. "Best year of my life." Or not.

"Fiona? L—listen. I don't know wh—what's going on here, but that little girl? That's not me. Y—you have to find me. I'm stuck. Somewhere d—dark." says the Winter Carmichael on the phone.

The preteen Winter bends a bit when poked. She does not seem to have any opinions about doing freshman year again.

Somewhere in this little kitchen, something else starts to ring. Faintly. Like a bell. It sounds kind of like it's coming from Eddy.

"Okay. Just hang on. We're coming," Fiona says over the phone, trying to sound more certain than she feels. She turns away from the phone and toward Eddy and Mary Grace. "It's Winter. She says the girl here isn't her. And she says she's stuck somewhere dark." She hears the bell ringing. "Eddy, do you have a bell with you or something?"

Mary Grace starts kicking at cabinets, all down the line, not even waiting to see if they pop open or if the real mushroom girl is stuck in them. "C'mout, c'mout wherever you are!" she calls out, unsure if this is the right thing to do but willing to do it with all her confidence.

She stops next to Mr. Carmichael and tries to bump him out of the way.

All the cabinets are full of food, some labels blurry, vague impressions of brand names, others obvious. There are no sixteen-year-olds hidden inside any of them.

A bit of cereal splashes over the side, all over Steve Carmichael's clothes. The bowl is just resting in his hands, free to grab.

"Just keep looking!!" urges the Winter Carmichael on the phone as the ringing from Eddy grows louder.

Fiona puts down the phone and paces across the kitchen. She grabs the bowl from Mr. Carmichael and joins Mary Grace in trying to shove him out of the way, hoping to look in the stove. She hopes he isn't feeling this.

"No, n—n—n—" the tinny voice on the phone cries out.

Fiona grabs for the bowl, and she certainly takes one, but it also leaves an identical bowl behind. This one securely in Steve Carmichael's hands.

The bowl Fiona's acquired shimmers gold. She has found the memory's linchpin! Better hang on to that thing.

Steve Carmichael won't budge, but behind the two of them, that rotary phone starts to change. Starts to melt. Into a thick gray goop.

Eddy's got an absurd amount of chains hanging from his waist that clatter as he moves, but there's only one bell on him. "Uh, yea–" he starts to fish the small talisman from his back pocket as Mary Grace and Fiona comb over their surroundings with various degrees of care. His words cut off abruptly when the phone.. begins to melt.

Shit fuck. That's definitely not supposed to be happening. After the rotten spaghetti monster, Eddy's not taking any chances and he grabs the can he'd just put back and chucks it across the room at the phone. Maybe Mary Grace has the right idea after all.

Edited 2020-06-02 01:46 (UTC)

(ROLLED 5) The melting phone beeennndds just enough to dodge the can lobbed its way.

"Wait! No!" the gray sludge begs in a voice that sounds almost like Winter Carmichael. Winter Carmichael with lungs full of water. It bubbles and pops. "It's me! It's me!"

Edited 2020-06-02 01:53 (UTC)

Fiona doesn't trust this thing. While cradling the bowl against her side, she picks up the knife from the block and slashes at the grey sludge.

Eddy grabs another can, but hesitates when he hears Winter's voice. Ms. Guzenhauser had warned him to be on his guard. That it could become what it consumed, almost flawlessly. Had it consumed their friends?

"Uh? How?" It's not the most articulate series of questions, and maybe-goop-Winter isn't given a chance to answer.

Mary Grace tries to punch the thirteen-year-old Winter, just in case she's a melting monster too.

Thirteen-year-old Winter takes the fist like a real champ, but the goopy phone is not quite so sturdy. Fiona slashes just as Eddy's getting his question out, (ROLLED 9) and chops the phone neatly in two.

It hisses and squeals, sublimating into a quickly disappearing fog. And as the last of the gray goes, the Carmichaels spring back to life, moving as though they hadn't been disturbed at all.

"Well, honey. It's uh—" Steve Carmichael stammers, then falters and drops his cereal bowl. Cornflakes and sugary milk splatter across the floor. "Augh, damn." He fetches the dish towel from its place draped over the kitchen faucet and tosses it on the mess. "Grab some paper towels, would you?"

"Can't we just...magic that up?" Winter asks.

"Oh," her father pauses, withdraws his wand from his back pocket. "Yeah we can!"

As he gingerly steps over the splattered cereal to vanish it up, the oven door falls open behind him. Within is a portal back to Peckenpaugh's auditorium.

[MEMORY COMPLETE! Muck defeated. Linchpin located. You may continue to thread here or move back to Peckenpaugh through the portal.]

The blob fizzles into nonexistence and Eddy awkwardly lowers the can he's holding as Winter and her father come back to life. Yep. Really helped out on that one.

He peers into the now-open oven, and then back at the girls, looking incredulous at the implication here. "..So.. do we take her?"

"This bitch hurt my hand," Mary Grace says, shaking her hand out. An unstoppable force met an immovable object, and now it's offended. "I don't think she's going anywhere."

She nods to the oven. You first, possum husband.

Edited 2020-06-02 03:39 (UTC)

Cool. Cool. Okay. His butt jingle's gone silent, so, yeah. Guess that's that. Hopefully the real Winter is somewhere on the other side of this weird Hansel & Gretel scenario.

He tests the stability of the oven door and lets out a long sigh before crawling in and disappearing through the portal. Looks like possum chivalry isn't dead after all.

Edited 2020-06-02 04:05 (UTC)

Eddy, Fiona and Mary Grace completed Winter Carmichael's memory!

Upon emerging from the memory out into the auditorium, the portal snapped shut behind them.

At The Foot of the Tree, Winter Carmichael was freed.

Eddy, Fiona and Mary Grace received 5 Tokens for completing a memory!

They each received 2 Tokens for defeating a Muck!

You can check your token totals in Pouch's shop here, and maybe see if there's anything worth grabbing while you're there!

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