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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[MODERATED - Player Memory]
[CRITERIA: Defeat the NPC]
[RESERVE: Armani Addams]

The first thing that's apparent is how big everything seems. Like it was when you were a child. You're in a long hallway, dark wood panelling lined with morbid little curios that wouldn't be out of place in a haunted house. Old portraits of Victorian era elders, unmoving. A cuckoo clock chimes out nine and a small bird's skeleton pops out. It's miles up, relatively. Just a few feet ahead dances a small girl, about your height, pirouetting down the hallway. She's dressed in a leotard and black tutu, hair done up in a poor imitation of a bun that would bring great shame to an older Chanel. She's made a crown for herself, black feathers stuck into a tiara, doubtlessly scavenged from the latest roadkill she's tried to preserve. and she's waving a lot more around. (Did she kill a crow for this? Probably not.)

There's music coming from another, adjoining room. Something like a calliope in a minor key, which fits in well with the rest of this house. It's being piped from a distinctly old, but distinctly non-magical turntable, with a record whirring away. Peeking in, there's a little Armani. He's dancing, too, arms outstretched, twirling around. The little Chanel pauses in the doorway, a little smile growing on her face. And then her expression changes, goes stark white. Behind the door dances Armani and at least five porcelain dolls. They twirl and spin with him, not on strings, not controlled by anything other than the little boy himself. Her gasp, quiet though it was, seems to take up all the air in the room. She drops the feathers from her hand, and hot tears spring to her eyes, because she knows what this means.

Edited 2020-06-02 13:25 (UTC)

Tears spill from his eyes the moment he sees his home. This is Chanel's memory. He's finally found her. And he's going to get her out of here.

He's hot on her heels, all anxious energy, as he follows her through their hallway. He stands behind her in the doorway, hands hovering at her shoulders but too afraid to touch her, to set the memory off course, to trap her here, until the memory freezes and he pulls the frozen little girl into a hug.

"Your bun looks atrocious," he sobs at her with affection.

Eddy's response, though restrained, isn't any less heavy with feeling. Even if he hadn't been to this house before, he'd know it in an instant. Know this little girl who couldn't possibly be anyone else other than Chanel. His jaw clenches as he gives Armani's shoulder a squeeze. This is good. This is really good.

But.. also kind of weird. Eddy doesn't normally take full advantage of his height, but things still seem decidedly.. higher. Bigger.

He picks up some of the fallen feathers. (Had they already missed baby's first taxidermy?)

"What's.. happening?"

Edited (what do words mean) 2020-06-04 14:02 (UTC)

Hm. People are using real emotions. Uncomfortable. Mary Grace just wanted to commit some crimes after prom, not think long and hard about the people whose privacy they're invading.

"We're shrinking in our old age," Mary Grace suggests to Eddy, and she bumps a shoulder up against him. A finger runs along the wall and she wonders if either of these two would stop her if she just started grabbing things and tearing them off the wall in search of this memory's Glowy Thingy.

Well, only one way to find out. Mary Grace reaches up to yank down a picture of a Victorian Elder she doesn't know.

The picture curses Mary Grace forever, and she has to feel emotions for the rest of her days.

Jokes!

(Or is it)

Anyway, the Victorian Elder just continues to stare disapprovingly down. The little girl does not bend to Armani’s hug. Everything is static except the pervasive tick of the cuckoo clock, and a little whirring as the record changes tracks.

If Armani notices or cares about dear old Meriwether Addams being yanked off the wall, he doesn't acknowledge it. He pulls back from his statuesque sister and wipes his wet and snotty little face off on the sleeve of his robe. A few star sproingies catch in the fabric and are pulled free.

"Okay!" he says, standing upright again and pumping his fists. He's filled with determination! "Start touching everything you can. Let's set her free."

He takes his wand out first-- he's learned from Merlin's memory-- before darting into the room and smacking his hand against the record player. It's one of the two most conspicuous things in this freeze frame.

Eddy's a little slower to go immediately into fuck-shit-up mode. Thankfully there doesn't appear to be any pudding in sight, but he's also seen a cereal bowl turn out to be far more meaningful than expected. He gives little Chanel an awkward, apologetic pat on the head before working the crow feather crown out of her hair and making a further mess of her bun.

From here, he's also got a pretty clear view of what suddenly startled her. Eddy might look the part, and politely grimace through drinking blood wine, but he's really not into all this haunted house shit.

And right now there's a fucking horror scene hanging in the air around little Armani. "So. Uh. Just ignoring the creepy dolls?"

Edited 2020-06-04 17:19 (UTC)

"Ohh, I bet you have to dance with one of them," Mary Grace says, continuing to yank at pictures and knickknacks dotting the walls. Hm, that face is creepy, she doesn't trust it not to start ringing and melting.

"Knowing Chanel she won't let any of us go until we can all execute a flawless jeté." She stretches one leg out as she says this, demonstrating that Mary Grace neither knows nor probably cares what a jeté really is.

"Oh, yeah!" he chirps in response to Eddy, indifferent to the horror. The dolls are as unremarkable to him as decorative plates a grandma would collect. "Good idea, we should try touching them too."

He crouches down to pick up a doll, swaying side to side with it.

"Our dad collects haunted dolls," he explains. Because this probably requires explanation. "I was obsessed with them. Kept trying to get them to play with me. And they'd move, sometimes, only a little bit and only when we were alone. I knew I was a Bruja, I just couldn't prove it to anybody, so I kept practicing. This was the first big display of my magic. Chanel walked in while it was happening and screamed."

Edited 2020-06-04 18:09 (UTC)

Armani’s shoving of the record player bumped the song to a very appropriate, if scratchy, version of The Addams Family, right on time for his very lively dance.

While explaining, Armani definitely snapped his fingers when appropriate.

Edited 2020-06-04 18:15 (UTC)

Armani's explanation is.. so completely on brand that it makes Eddy smile.

He attempts to fix the mess he's made when the tiara doesn't glow, but he doesn't know fuck-all about doing hair and the tiara ends up hanging jauntily off the side of the bun's remains. Hopefully Chanel won't remember this. Preferably, any of this.

There is absolutely zero way for Eddy not to immediately recognize this song at this point. "Nice," he says, because the Addams family regularly playing this song in their home does not surprise him in the least.

He passes into the room now, too, and grabs a doll. Eddy does not know what a jeté is either, and really hopes that isn't the secret to this memory because they're definitely fucked if it is. Whatever shaking he's doing to innocent-but-totally-creepy doll right now would certainly not be described as dancing.

Edited 2020-06-04 18:58 (UTC)

Mary Grace remains in the hall, knocking on the wall. She shoves more pictures askew and stops directly in front of the cuckoo clock.

"Hey, y'all?" she calls out. "This bitch is still tickin'."

It is still ticking. First slow, once a second. The pace of a heartbeat. Steady thuds.

Almost imperceptibly at first, the seconds fly by faster, and with it, the music increases its tempo. The minute hand spins too, faster, the minutes a young girl may feel she needs to catch up, so she isn’t left behind, slipping through fingertips.

9:10.
9:15.
9:30.

As it reaches the next hour, the clock seems to grow, ready to burst.

It reads 9:45.

Edited 2020-06-04 19:26 (UTC)

Mary Grace helpfully tries to push the minute hand back to where it was.

Better watch your fingers, Mary Grace, or they’re going to be taken off. The clock’s hands keep moving.

Tick.

Tick.

10 am.

The clock’s little door springs out violently

Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo! sings out, but it’s hardly audible to Mary Grace, as a swarm of bugs bursts out of the little clock, right at her face.

Edited 2020-06-04 20:41 (UTC)

Cuckooing and buzzing. That's probably not a good sign. Armani rushes back out into the hallway, yells, and throws his doll at the clock in panic.

Oh right, he has a wand now.

"Glacius!"

Fuck.

Uh, Eddy doesn't have a wand so he just launches a backpack full of random heavy shit into the chaos.

"MotherFUCKER," Mary Grace spits out as bugs try to get in her fucking mouth. She yanks the rope coiled around her waist and just starts swinging it. A lasso ain't a lot of help around bugs but maybe she just wants to beat the shit out of this clock, fucking okay????

Bugs are perhaps immune to rope, or maybe she just did have a mouthful of protein snacks [Mary Grace rolled a 1!].

Meanwhile, Eddy's backpack smack a clump of the bugs to the wall, leaving guts dripping down [Eddy rolled a 9!]. Armani's spell blasts out, powerful. [Armani rolled a 10!] The ice shouldn't work as well as it does, but it traps dozens in individual ice coffins, and they clatter to the floor like so many marbles.

The bugs, significantly thinned, surround the trio, creating as much a whirlwind as they can, little legs and wings everywhere. [Bugs rolled below 8 all 3 times!] In the background, the record has conveniently skipped to Flight of the Bumblebee, for mood.

Armani can appreciate suitable mood music.

He stomps on the little ice cube bugs at his feet. "Glacius!" he tries again, deliberately this time because it worked so well before.

Edited 2020-06-04 22:45 (UTC)

And it does. The rest of the bugs fall into individual popsicles around Armani's feet. [Rolled an 8!]

They are gone. The cuckoo clock is absolutely broken, hinges and gears exposed, the little skeleton bird cuckooing out by a spring, on an angle.

The mystery of what record contains all this mood music will plague Eddy's mind for many late nights in the future, but for now he's saved the embarrassment of everyone realizing his next instinct was just to try punching these bugs.

The little skeleton bird sproings, the sole survivor of this memory mayhem, and this would be a lot easier if they weren't like four feet tall.

"Need a lift up?" he asks Mary Grace, hands clasped together as a makeshift step.

Edited 2020-06-04 23:02 (UTC)

Mary Grace spits on the floor, like a fucking lady. "You'd tell me if I had bugs in my teeth, right?" she asks, grinning wide to show them off, then hops up on his hands anyhow.

She's not entirely certain if this is what they need or not, but she knows damn well she fucking hates this clock, so when Mary Grace grabs for it, she tries to take the whole damn thing down.

Edited 2020-06-04 23:37 (UTC)

Nothing special happens.
But it does create a really good smash, if Mary Grace lets it fall.

MEMORY: Haunted House

MEMORY: Haunted House

MEMORY: Haunted House

MEMORY: Haunted House

MEMORY: Haunted House

MEMORY: Haunted House

MEMORY: Haunted House

MEMORY: Haunted House

MEMORY: Haunted House

MEMORY: Haunted House

MEMORY: Haunted House

MEMORY: Haunted House

MEMORY: Haunted House

MEMORY: Haunted House

MEMORY: Haunted House

MEMORY: Haunted House

Re: MEMORY: Haunted House

MEMORY: Haunted House

MEMORY: Haunted House

MEMORY: Haunted House

MEMORY: Haunted House

MEMORY: Haunted House

Re: MEMORY: Haunted House

MEMORY: Haunted House

MEMORY: Haunted House