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

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.

"Grab the bird out of it?" Armani suggests. He wants his sister back.

Mary Grace, who doesn't like men telling her what to do, looks right at Armani and then gestures at the clock. She doesn't say a word, but her face is asking when his hands broke.

"I was trying not to do your job for you," he snaps, dropping the facade of being a sweet and innocent little flower he tries to portray himself as as he snatches the clock away to grab the dead bird inside.

It does snap off but it does not glow.

At least the record has shifted back into the Addams Family again, as though Chanel, somewhere, is cheering Armani on.
Or just cheering a fight on.
Who can tell.

Armani drops both the bird and the clock as soon as they're no longer useful to him. "Is it me?" he asks, taking the change in music as a Sign From Above. "Can people be roots?"

Time go to touch... himself. Child self.

Edited 2020-06-05 00:35 (UTC)

Eddy sighs heavily, gives the clock a strong kick and goes to grab this damn record to figure out why it doesn't make any sense.

Edited 2020-06-05 00:40 (UTC)

Mary Grace dusts off her thoroughly trashed skirt and just starts trying doorknobs.

As Eddy touches the record, it glows golden. The scene starts to play again.

The little girl wipes her face and pushes her way into the room, resolutely looking happy for her twin. "You did it!" She coos, and rockets her way into the room, twirling a few times to make herself presentable. "Armani, you're a real witch!" With careful fingers, she reaches for one of the dolls (pink dress) in awe and wonder, yelping and giggling when it kicks its little heels into her wrist. Chanel links her arm through Armani's to watch the spectacle. Somehow, somehow, that goddamn cuckoo clock, in its dilapidated state on the floor, springs out just one more time. Instead of the missing small skeleton bird, part of the wall falls away, revealing an opening to the auditorium.

[YOU HAVE DEFEATED THE NPC AND COMPLETED THE MEMORY! And found the linchpin. Please exit or stay to play thank you for freeing 1 useless child]

Edited 2020-06-05 01:28 (UTC)

"Oh," Eddy says, turning the glowing record over in his hand. Guess that explains that mystery. He hands it to Armani, figuring he ought to have it. He watches the rest of the memory play out silently. It makes him realize how much he misses her. "Let's go."

MEMORY: Haunted House

MEMORY: Haunted House

MEMORY: Haunted House

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MEMORY: Haunted House

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MEMORY: Haunted House

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MEMORY: Haunted House-COMPLETE!

MEMORY: Haunted House-COMPLETE!