[img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/909715047918497815/1037211200871731300/Umbri_banner6.png[/img] Umbri pushed into the unreality, intent to explore this world, new scents, new feelings, new [Sight]. The face stretched against Jemma’s skin. She wanted to cast the shroud from her eyes and see the things she sensed. [i][See.][/i] It felt like talons curled over her head, penetrated her forehead then YANKED, pulling her out of her body, as her consciousness was overridden by one much stronger than her, pulling her out of the black unreality and into something that felt real. She was thrust into grimy sneakers, a parka, and a body that hadn’t cleaned itself in days. Umbri looked up from beside the dumpster in the memory that had been haunting her all day. But it wasn’t a memory, and it wasn’t a dream, either, she was here. Here looking up at the billboard of a dancing, naked woman that projected her future, only she didn’t know that was what she was looking at then. All she saw was the body of a woman, which she didn’t have. The bundle in her arms squirmed. She looked down at her, at - [b][HELPLESS-PAIN-LOVE].[/b] This wasn’t how she [Saw] then. [color=#A4303F][b]“I’m sorry,”[/b][/color] she uttered, the voice seeping out the dream from the face on Jemma’s back. She moved to hold the baby to her chest, but the talons were back, ripping into her psyche and dragging her out of the memory. She was pulled by the hair by the hijacker but [b][FEAR-RAGE-DANGER-LOVE][/b] threw her down. The stink of the old apartment was even stronger than the pain of the bruises. Instantly she was twelve again. The baby cried in the next room. The animal dragging her back up by the head wouldn’t listen to anything she said, nothing unless it was - [color=#A4303F][b]“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry-”[/b][/color] The intruder’s talons had her again. Pierced through the front of her brain, wrapped around her waist. Her world titled as they forced her back to slam on the apartment floor, through the floor, onto a dirty street. An almost unrecognizable figure straddled her. Umbri’s arms flung up to defend herself against a horrible shard of metal, slashing against her forearms and palms. [i]"Get the fuck off of me! Stop! Stop! STOP!"[/i] [b][CRAVE-DANGER-[i]LOVELOVELOVE][/i][/b] screeched as she hacked at Umbri's chest. If she'd tried it earlier, she would've succeeded. But Umbri was bigger now. Even if under her, she felt so small. Her hand grasped the metal shard edging towards her chest, the sharp pain of it biting into her [i]nothing[/i] compared to the burn in her throat from all her screaming. The monster's arms were so thin and frail now, it was almost sad. Her other hand edged towards the garbage they struggled beside. The talons plunged through her chest and took the heart the monster coveted. Umbri's consciousness was thrown away from her memories into the dark. She had a moment to breath. A glow started to fill the empty void. Red and neon green. Rising up behind her. Umbri slowly looked over her shoulder, up at the Thresher, flaring its fins at her in a proud show of territory, before a spark of yellow burst from it and Lockdown severed her in two. Umbri screamed. She was on the street watching Lockdown brutalize [b][SCARED-DESPERATE-DYING][/b], trapped in time, with her own trophy weighing down her pocket. Her mind flashed violently between holding the axe, feeling the writhe of life beneath her and the shock up her arms as it went dead, and the monster, plunging that shard of metal at her chest. Umbri was vaguely aware of the rushing in her ears and veins. That she was being unpeeled, and the shining figures she could sense before were open to her. But it was obvious, in the glazed look in her eyes and blank expression, that she wasn't present. The images she was assaulted by in her memory were crumbling apart. There was a roar around her as she was forced out. The hijacker on her back was [i]angry.[/i] It was like an earthquake in her head. She curled up, protecting herself from the shadows ripping at her. Jemma was shouting. [color=#A4303F][b]"I'm sorry,"[/b][/color] she whispered, from her mouth within and outside the dream, intercutting the shapeshifter's rants ever so often. Quiet. The shaking stopped. Shadows ceased pulling at her. Umbri lifted her head. She was on a floor of cracked glass, seated on a hundred reflections of herself, each slightly off and wrong. She was unable to find a single [i]her[/i] among them. Above her and all around, was a haze like a galaxy. Electricity crackled in it, shooting from clouds across sinew, across... brain matter. And tangled in it all, was her hijacker. A dripping, inky octopus, with far more than eight tentacles all tangled up in the astral tissue Umbri now recognized as a part of her. [color=#A4303F][i]"Hey! Hey no! You’re okay! You’re not gonna die. It’s okay."[/i][/color] Umbri heard her voice being used by the hijacker from outside the dream reach her in a strange echo. She didn't want to listen to it - she [b]did[/b] hurt her. She wasn't okay. But she kept listening, and Jemma's voice took over, alive with empathy, and then... she heard that word again. [Promise.] Umbri got off the floor. The hijacker weaved one of its tentacles towards light blooming from an electrical storm, far off in the distance. Umbri sucked a breath in for four counts, held it in for a count of seven, and breathed out for eight. Then she crouched down, slid her foot across the glass, and launched into a run. She maintained the breathing pattern as she sprinted across the glass. It cracked under her heels, shooting out from under her feet like the lightning bursting over her head. As Umbri ran, time fixed itself into a line, there was a before behind her and her after was uncertain. The hijacker left her back, its massive shadow fading from her sky. The light grew brighter. Unspoken knowledge that overwhelmed her was fading away in every step. [i]Let! Me! [/i] [h3][i][b]GO![/b][/i][/h3] [hr] Umbri's eyes fluttered. Her knees hit the ground as Jemma unlatched from her. The glow of emotion lingered over the figures in the room for a moment, then in a couple blinks, went away. Swiftly fading light spots. Her vision remained blurry. Umbri lifted shaky hands and turned them over as she inspected them. The neon veins that had reached all the way to her fingertips before were gone. [i]The shapeshifter did it.[/i] She touched the wetness running down her cheek, and her fingers came back stained with ink. A sudden clench of her stomach was her fleeting warning before she curled over convulsing and spewing up an entire bucket of the black stuff. [b]"What th-"[/b] The workshop's sliding door was pushed open and a disgruntled balding man with feathers stuck to his coat stared at the unfortunate scene. [b]"......... Well, nobody had Freya's number - the young miss Ako told me to tell you Aegis, if you'd given her Raudd's number already, she'd be able to pass the message along - so I've been shouting at BIRDS, [i]hopefully[/i] one of them was the right messenger - [i]the state of medicine in today's age -[/i] I have the materials for a cast in the meantime and WHAT IS GOING ON?!"[/b] Umbri lifted her head, black dribbling down her chin. [color=#A4303F][b]"I'm cured,"[/b][/color] she answered him weakly, and threw up a second time. She waved an arm in gesture, spitting up the last bits of inky sludge. [color=#A4303F][b]"I have a... Half a sandwich in the bedroom, somebody... please."[/b][/color] She kept her head down. It was hot. She was too vulnerable and embarrassed to look at anyone. She didn't know what had manifested beyond the dream she'd been trapped in and how much these people, the majority of them strangers, witnessed. [i]Especially [/i]Jemma. The woman had been on her back the entire time, a voyeur to Umbri's life and pain. Pain that had [i]passed.[/i] It was [i]over.[/i] Time was back in place and the past wasn't hurting her anymore. Jemma knew? Who CARED! She was alive, she was alive, she was [i][b]ALIVE![/b][/i] Umbri laughed. [color=#A4303F][b]"Seriously,"[/b][/color] she pushed through the laughter, coming up to a sit and wiping a mixture of inky and watery tears from her face to smile, [color=#A4303F][b]"I'm so hungry."[/b][/color] [hr][hr][hr] [hider=Umbri and the Dumpster (optional reading)] Umbri stormed down the alley on a mission, passing shadowy figures and bony hands that swiped at her ankles looking for a fix. The baby shrieked the entire while and spurred her onwards. This [b]thing [/b]that Mother had abandoned with her was going to kill her. That line of thought carried her all the way to the foot of a dumpster. She lifted the baby up by its underarms and didn’t hesitate. But she was [i]distracted.[/i] A flashing billboard came alight across the street, from outside one of those ‘gentleman’s clubs.’ There was nothing gentlemanly about the woman dancing over it. Some lechers whooped and cheered when the dancer took her top off, but Umbri stared at her body for a different reason. … Ah. Umbri pulled the baby back into her parka and rushed home. The door slammed back open as she trampled in and ran into the forbidden room - her Mother’s. She ignored everything on the floor and went straight to the dresser, pulled out the first bra she found - red and lacey - then bolted for scissors. She sat on the ground by the baby to do her craft project, its screams urging her hands to work fast. She sliced holes in the cups and inserted a pouch of formula. [i]That looks close…[/i] Umbri hung it over her own chest and grabbed the baby to hold it against her. She trembled. She felt like an imposter. She was a scrawny kid wearing her mother’s bra, like she could be any substitute, the thing would smell her and know she wasn’t real, it wouldn’t latch and - And… was it quiet? For the first time in days, the atmosphere wasn’t clogged with needless screeching. Umbri looked down in a daze. She’d latched. She was feeding. It actually worked. Umbri’s gasp came out shuddering. Her eyes widened, tears building in them. She wept in relief, stroking the downy felt on her baby sister’s head. Then her breath quickened, and the happy tears morphed into cries of horror and sorrow as the reality of what she tried to do [b]hit.[/b] [color=#A4303F][b]“I’m sorry,”[/b][/color] she blubbered, just a baby herself. [color=#A4303F][b]“I’m sorry. I won’t throw you away. I’m so sorry. We can do this.”[/b][/color] She held the baby against her heart. [i]Ba-thump. Ba-thump. Ba-thumb.[/i] That was the moment, bound in [Love] and [Guilt], that Umbri gave up her whole body for her sister. [/hider]