Atrophy

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

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_{@Surtr Inc}

The Reid Farmhouse - Mason Square

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Billy had fully intended to chew out his sister when he saw what she had done to his car—his baby—until he had noticed how beat up she looked. He felt a rare anger stir inside of him. He had already dealt with the grief of losing one sibling. He was ready to go through all of that again. Of course, he couldn’t talk to Penny about that; any conversation they had would inevitably turn into an argument, but a talk about their brother Henry would’ve instantly ratchet tensions up to ten. So instead they rode to John Reid’s house in utter silence outside of the hum of the motor and the burning inhale and exhale of Penny’s chain smoking, rows of trees blocking off stretches of farmland passing them by.

He turned down the drive of John Reid’s farm, thankful that his vehicle was not one of the first and that nobody seemed to be getting their brains bashed in by the monster that was, apparently, hunting them all. The sun was low, they had maybe an hour or two of daylight left, and it made the shadow of the mountain stretch over the barren farmland. Billy should’ve figured that their town would be the sight of some insane, doomsday, world-eater type of shit; what other small town has an entire mountain blocked off and forbidden entrance to with decades of myths and mysteries surrounding it? Besides most of Appalachia. Okay, all of Appalachia.

Billy killed his engine upon seeing Britney approach the gate and exited his car. His sister lingered behind for a moment but eventually followed, staying just far enough behind him to show that while she had come there with him, she was not with him. He was used to it by now. He had been surprised that she had even walked with him to the support group earlier that day.

“Man, I’d hate to mow this yard,” said Billy in response to Justin’s quip about Reid’s farming skills as he lazily looked around the area. It all seemed rather standard. Nothing about it screamed “secret sanctuary of the town guardian against unspeakable horrors” but then again it wouldn’t have been such a secret sanctuary if it did scream that. He paced around the grounds, not wandering to far from the group so that he could hear their brave leader come up with a plan to cover the buildings quickly.

“Ah, really dude? You had the perfect opportunity to say ‘Let’s split up, gang’ and you wasted it? Man,” said Billy with a wink. He looked over at his sister. She was already making herself comfortable outside. He knew he shouldn’t let her stay there, between the threat of Reese showing up again and the even more catastrophic scenario of Penny and Claire going at it again, but there was no way he could possibly make her budge. With a sigh of acceptance he shuffled over towards Kimberly and Jordan.

“Wanna hit up the garage, buddy?” he asked, mostly towards Kimberly. “We could find a sheet to make your friend into a ghost for a bit of b-roll. Personally, I’d love to witness the process of live movie magic. Plus it’s the smallest building, so, you know, easy mode.”

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_{@Surtr Inc}

The Reid Farmhouse - Mason Square

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While Billy was joking around with Kimberly, Rita had moved over to Britney. It was clear that she knew more than she was letting on, and if her Abstraction had struck a nerve earlier then certainly she was on the right path. In all fairness, this shouldn’t have been Rita’s fight. It wasn’t even her town. Still, she felt like she couldn’t run from this. Not that she didn’t want to run, oh, she absolutely wanted to run, but she doubted she would be faster than whatever the thing called the Glutton was or what it was capable of doing. And so, she wanted information. To learn what she could to escape it.

And the only one who seemed to have a modicum of knowledge on what the hell was happening was Britney.

“Would you mind if I came along with you?” asked Rita, making sure that her hand was fully obscured by her pocket as the sigil glowed. She was testing the waters, trying to see how uncomfortable the taller girl felt when questioned by her Abstraction. If there was no obvious tell, she would relentless pursue a line of questions once they were alone. If it was clear that Britney rather not have Rita around, she would be more careful in her interrogation.

Assuming, of course, that they got a minute alone.

Let's Go Save the Princess!

I'mma throw in my hat. Currently working on a character who (wrongfully) believes that they are the Chosen One and the main protagonist of everyone's story and the sole fact that they haven't saved the world yet and been revered as a genius is because life is totally completely unfair and their own ineptitude is clearly the work of some grand conspiracy to keep the prophesies from coming to pass.

So pretty much what would've happened if Boromir and Cloud had a crummy love child like the one in my fanfic.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

Also, I've declared that the official name for the group will be... The Support Group.

@Surtr Inc

Screw that. We're calling the support group Camp Console and there's nothing you can do about it.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

Okay updated the character list, NPC list, and relationships. Spoopy told me he will no longer be participating so Andrea is out.

Now, I think it's okay if I railroad the cast a bit to the next arc (where they visit John Reid's house) and do a few hour timeskip. It's gonna require a lot of off-screen explanations, but I'm certain that's okay.

@Surtr Inc

Choo choo, motherfucker! Leggo.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

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_{@Surtr Inc@Ciaran@Mike73@Zombiedude101}

Cafe Sucre.

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Her Abstraction wasn’t strong enough. She should’ve practiced more; she should’ve pushed through the headaches and nosebleeds. If she had learned how to control her aim and if she had learned her limits then perhaps she would’ve gone about this all a smarter way. Penny realized, as she tried scrambling back up to her feet, that her approach had been a little more than haphazardous—it had been goddamn suicidal. Her life didn’t flash before her eyes as the monster towered over her. The only thing she saw was Henry, her younger brother, her (likely dead) missing brother, her biggest failure. Tears burned in her eyes. No, she couldn’t give up on him yet. Reese was just another bump in the road...an eight-foot tall, roid-raging, nigh indestructible and likely unstoppable bump in the road.

And then he stopped, proving Penny wrong yet again. Out of her peripheries she could see one of the girls—Jasmine—that she had told to leave with her hand outstretched towards Reese. Penny wasted little time considering any other actions. She almost instantaneously jumped up to her feet, grabbed a fork from the countertop, and blasted it at Reese. It proved to be a mistake as he had began to move again, but it was one that didn’t come back to bite her in the ass. Within seconds Reese had fled, bolting from the Cafe and jumping to a distant rooftop. Penny dropped her pursuit once she had reached the street. There was no way she was catching up with him. Which, all things considered, was a good thing, because there was no way she would’ve been able to take him.

The world around her stilled. Penny walked to the street and half-sat, half-collapsed onto the curb. The other girls hadn’t even left yet, hell, the whole fight had lasted less than a minute, probably only even a handful of seconds, so they didn’t even have a chance. If Reese hadn’t have been spooked he likely could have bashed Penny’s brains in and still have time to make mincemeat out of the other four girls. She ran a hand through her hair and wiped the blood from her nose onto her wrist. Her head felt like a thousand hangovers had gotten together and decided to crash the pity party in her brain. She could feel the aches on her body; tomorrow she would be covered in the reds and blues of bruises.

Justin had arrived with Nate and...fuck, he had brought Claire with him. Penny remembered what the God-Child had said about everyone needing to work together, link hands, and yadda-yadda-yadda, and after fighting Reese she knew it wasn’t incorrect. She also remembered what she had said about Claire and felt a tinge of guilt, perhaps even sorry that she had been such an asshole and had let her mouth runaway like that. She hadn’t even really been mad at Claire, at least not at the start. Her beef had been with Britney for some pettiness from over a year ago. The thing was—Penny caught Claire’s look of disgust. The thing was, Penny would never be able to get along with Claire O’Sullivan. She returned the look, hopefully that looking like such a hot mess would only make it more withering.

“Are you okay? Sorry we couldn’t get here faster…”

“I couldn’t stop him,” she said, her voice strained with defeat, her lips tensing in anger. “Fuck, fuck!” She hit the ground twice with her palm to punctuate her curses, and then buried her head in her hands. She emitted a groan of frustration and then rustled her hair again, grabbing a cigarette and dragging it down as quickly as possible. She had felt herself about to boil over again. The cigarette helped keep the lid from flying off the pot. She light another cigarette with the glowing butt of her last one and then flicked the butt, repulsing it to who-knows-where.

“Like, I don’t know if I’m relieved that people even showed up or if I’m pissed that it was only so few,” she said before taking a deep breath and standing up, refusing any help that Justin likely would’ve offered. He was a good guy, really. She shouldn’t try to push him away like she did with everyone else. “To answer your question, I’m not too hurt. Most of this battering was my doing, anyway. I’m ready to go after him whenever you are or mastermind some great plan, but just…” She noticed Jasmine. “Just give me a second, okay?”

She walked over to Jasmine and gave her a sheepish look. They had mutual friends in Lynette and Aliana, but the two of them had never really talked outside of a few stilted conversations when one of the other girls had vanished and left them alone at a table somewhere. Yet, it was Jasmine who had stopped Reese, and Jasmine who had given Penny the second she needed to get up. Penny owed her and, well, Jasmine was likely very confused. For all the shit Penny had talked about the support group, it had cleared a few things up.

“Hey,” said Penny. “I just needed to thank you. I know we aren’t really close or anything, but...I think you know me well enough to know how difficult it was for me to say that.” She gave a little awkward half-smile. Expressing actual gratitude was difficult; she rather face down Reese anyday. “I know you might be freaking out right now and, like, you totally should be, I get it, but you should come with us. We sure as shit don’t know what the fuck we’re actually doing, but we can catch you up to speed on what we do know. Which...isn’t much, actually, but it’s better than nothing.”

With that she turned to join back up with Justin and the others.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

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_{@Surtr Inc@Ciaran@Mike73}

Cafe Sucre.

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Penny’s mind was a tornado of foul language and vivid descriptions of the awful things she would do to Reese’s mother as she noticed the monster swat away her projectile like it had been a paper ball and she had been the school bully trying to interrupt his class presentation. However, only a softly uttered “Shit” escaped from her lips before she unleashed the barrage of loose change, praying that perhaps she’d strike it lucky and lodge a few coins into those dead eyes of his. If her aim hit true, then it did nothing to stop his mad bull rush towards her at an impossible speed for a man so large. If she had been anyone else then perhaps she would not have seen it coming, and Penny would just be another tally mark on the growing list of Reese’s victims.

Fortunately, Penny had seen it coming, or rather, her Aura had sensed his movements. He was moving unnaturally fast, but she still had enough time to twist her body in such a way that his wicked blade would only cleave through the air. As she turned, Penny craned her neck to keep vision on Scott, the sigil on her chest burning with light as she tried to repulse two things. First, she reached out to blow his blade away. If she was lucky, perhaps she’d be able to blast it from his grip and send it across the kitchen. If she was really lucky, maybe the weapon would blow back into Reese himself, bringing about a wonderful karmic death as it split his skull in two.

And, since she doubted that luck was ever on her side, she also tried to repulse Reese’s entire body away. However, before she even witnessed him react she knew that her desired results of throwing the monster away from her likely wasn’t going to be successful. Normally, when she used her Abstraction, she felt no resistance, no push back. This time, however, it was as if she had put her entire body into the fruitless effort of trying to move a brick wall back even an inch. She felt fear flash through her body as her momentum from her dodge threw her into a tumble. With little grace she rolled on the dirty floor of the Sucre kitchen, grabbing whatever she could from her pockets and the lower shelves and blasting them towards Scott as she tried to get back up to her feet.

She told herself she wasn’t going to die yet. She couldn’t possibly die yet. There was still so much had to do, and it was only recently that she had been given the tools necessary to pull it off. She gritted her teeth, hard. She could feel the blood begin to flow from her nose. It hardly registered with her that she was screaming at Scott as she continued to struggle. It wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t be right. If she realized what she was thinking, Penny would’ve broken up into laughter: as if the right thing ever happened in Farmer Hill.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

<Snipped quote by Surtr Inc>

I don't know for certain, guys, but I'm pretty sure a door gets opened at some point here.

@Ciaran

Doors, man, doors. Two doors. The car door, and the tiny door inside the car door that transports all of us to Narnia. It's about time we got (more) talking animals and religious allegories in this RP.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

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_{@Surtr Inc}

Grand Ridge Academy - Conference Room.

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Penny watched in a mix of horror and rage as the world around her shifted from a possible future of death and destruction to the current present of Scott Reese prowling after another girl. She wasn’t just pissed at the vision the ghost kid had forced upon them; she was pissed that Claire had been right and pissed at herself for letting her own petty squabbles and curiosity lock her out of taking actions that she should’ve done. She should’ve been hunting after Reese. Now, that bastard had already killed another camper and was now going after yet another one of their peers, and she had been wasting her time fighting with Claire O’Sullivan. Would she stop them? Reese? The Glutton? It wasn’t even a question. Penny didn’t waste a second (for she felt as if she had already wasted so much now, in hindsight) when the bizarre being sent them back to their world. She twisted past Claire and stood in front of her brother, her arm extended out expectantly.

“Keys.”

“Penny, man, I don’t—”

Billy obviously didn’t understand that it wasn’t a question. Penny grabbed her brother by the shirt and pulled him down so that they were eye level. “Keys,” she repeated, her voice weighted with gravel. He couldn’t even argue. If she wanted to kill herself, so be it. He reached into his pocket and produced a pair of car keys which she promptly snapped from his hands and then bolted out the door, the pounding of her footfalls falling silent as she passed by Lynette and her friend before the door swung back on its hinge and closed with a slam. If the strange tint of the world and the lack of sound outside of the conference room had been noticed by Penny, it had not phased her.

Billy didn’t really know what to do or what the hell had just happened. He slowly walked back to a chair—it hadn’t been the one he had originally sat in, and he didn’t care—and dropped into it with a heavy sigh. The vision of the ball of light, the piles of dead bodies, all of it was a bit too hard to handle, a bit too much for the young man to process. He had seen them in the piles, his parents, his friends, and he knew that there was nothing he could do about it. He had one of those prison tats, and with that came an Abstraction. That was clear. What wasn’t clear was what his Abstraction was, or how he would come about it. Propping his elbows on the table, he slumped forward and caught his face in his hands, pushing up his glasses as his fingers pushed back his hair.

Rita walked back to the table, her right hand pressed against her chest. There had been things that she had wanted to ask the Child, but by the time she had found her tongue the boy had vanished and reality had come back. She could assume what the rude blonde girl, Penny, was intending to do, and a part of her wished that she had gone with to help. However, she knew that there really wasn’t anything she could do to the man to slow him down, and she doubted the information her Abstraction would’ve been able to pull out of him would benefit her at all after he had put that wicked blade of his through her chest. She remembered the last time she had been in the same area as Reese and how she had froze up. What’s to say the same thing wouldn’t happen this time? Britney, their de facto leader it seemed, spoke up about a newspaper that had appeared on the table.

“So does that even mean anything?” asked Rita, unintentionally looking up at Britney. At her side, her sigil glowed.

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_{@Surtr Inc@Ciaran@Mike73}

Cafe Sucre.

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Tires squealed as Penny slammed on the brakes, sending Billy’s car into a minor fishtail before it came to a stop partially on the curb and definitely dinged against a light post, although Penny neither noticed nor would’ve given a shit to see his junker’s paint get scratched. She emptied out the change sitting in a cup in front of the dash and stuffed it into her jacket before stepping out of the vehicle, not even bothering to take the keys out of the ignition. If things went to shit then it’d be nice to have a quick getaway, plus she was a bit focused on one thing and one thing only: stopping Scott Reese.

The little ding of the bell as she walked into the suspiciously empty cafe coincided with a loud thud coming from the backdoor. Penny rushed past the counter towards the kitchen as the sound of another thud, plus a voice yelling “Reese!” echoed from the back. Blinking, the world around her began to shimmer as her aura sensing kicked in. "Back to the front, back to the front!" she heard as she popped through the door in time to witness Jasmine gripping a pan. The girl began to chuck it as Penny got in to place and, no, it definitely wouldn't be going fast enough to do what they all wanted it to do. Fortunately, Penny knew a fix. She reached out with her hand as Jasmine let go and—bang!—the pan blasted away Jasmine quicker than any person could throw.

Penny wasn’t sure if it had hit Scott in his stupid mug, but it sure did make a satisfying sound. Either way, she was already fishing loose change with hopes of shredding the bastard the second he was through the door. She put herself between the group of girls and the backdoor, readied.

“Take the car outside,” she barked, eyes not leaving the door. “Hope one of you bitches know how to drive stick.”

She wouldn’t be joining. She wouldn’t leave until she was certain that Scott Reese would no longer be killing anymore of the assholes in her fucking town.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

I want to make a post, but I want to wrap up the "God-Child" scene with one more post, so I'll wait for Fern or Atrophy before I post.

EDIT: I'll definitely post tomorrow.

@Surtr Inc

You should. The earliest I will post will be late tomorrow night. The gist of it would be Penny being all "hell yeah we walk with boy god" while Billy and Rita would be a bit more uncertain.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

Just a heads up for y'all, but I will be tied up for much of this weekend and likely won't have a chance to post. So, uh, I'll catch up with the gang and our sweet baby God-Kid when I can.