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anthropwashere · 4 years

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Phic Phight: over and outside and under

Prompt from @ectopal: After the accident, Danny is stuck on the wrong side of the now broken portal. What does he do to try to get home?

@currentlylurking @phicphight

Word count: 5,498

Danny wakes up.

Considering just how hard he got pitched out of consciousness before this, it’s kind of a relief.

The first thing he's aware of is being sore, more sore than he can ever remember being in his life. Breathing hurts. The instinctive curling up in wordless protest to this whole 'being awake' thing hurts more. He doesn't know what he's laying on but at least it doesn't feel like the cold tile floor of the lab. He stills, takes shallow breaths, reluctantly cracks his eyes open.

All he sees is broad, smeary strokes of greens, unnaturally bright on a gloaming backdrop deepening to blacks and violets. He blinks to clear his vision. His vision remains uselessly blurred. He swallows, grimacing at the dry click of his throat and the way his chapped lips stick when he opens his mouth. "Sam...? Tucker?"

His voice comes out in a low croak; weird to his ears in a way he doesn't know what to think of, so he doesn't. He's more concerned about how there's no answer anyway.

He tries to brace himself despite his soreness, to sit up and rub the bleariness out of his eyes, but he sort of—wobbles, instead. There's nothing under him to brace against.

There's... nothing under him...?

He squints around harder, trying to make sense of all this too-bright green and backlit black. Perspective is virtually non-existent. All he can tell for sure is that he's floating in empty space.

"Uh," he says intelligently.

"Uh," he repeats with more appropriate panic.

"What—augh—AAA—!" And other similarly useful comments sputter out of him while he flails around like a drowning man for a while, clawing around in a blind panic and catching purchase on a big heaping pile of zilch. Where is he, where is this, what is this, he's falling, is he falling, he can't tell if he's falling—

Something catches his eye, weird enough to slow his scrambling. His glove, to be exact. He's still wearing his embarrassingly tacky jumpsuit, but... its colors have inverted? Black gloves are now a white so bright to make his eyes hurt if he looks too closely; the white of his upper arm is now a black so dark it seems to suck the diffuse white light coming from—his gloves? Are his gloves glowing?

He peers closer at the hem of his glove to the body of the suit, compares it to collar, belt, and boots, all of which are the same eye-wateringly bright white. Yup. That is a noticeable, low-level glow. Aura. Something. Why the fuck is he glowing?

He notices something beyond his immediate focus, something that wasn't there before. Or he got turned around while panicking about this whole 'is he falling or isn't he' insanity. Who cares. There's something a lot closer than all this freaky, acrylic paint-like smears of color all around him. There's the Portal. He's never been happier to see it in his life, and starts dog-paddling towards it even as he belatedly registers something's different about it. He can't make it out at this distance; he's maybe... 20 yards from it? 30? Perspective is still out the window even with something solid to focus on. It's farther away than it looks from the foot of the stairs down to the lab, anyway.

It takes roughly an eternity to paddle to it, though really it's probably only a couple minutes. Everything around him—and above, and below—remains terrifyingly empty and impossible the whole way over. It's so quiet. Dead of night quiet. He pushes that observation away to deal with later as his gloved hands make a satisfying smack against the Portal's riveted steel frame. He's—floating, ugh—near the top of it, giving him a bizarre top-down angle that makes it seem alien simply for having never seen it this way before. It's still the most normal thing around by a country mile.

Maybe literally.

Maybe he shouldn't think about that.

He hooks his fingers on the edge of the frame to keep from drifting beyond it, only noticing then that there's nothing past it. Empty swirling void continuing ad nauseum, sure, okay, that's still obviously, weirdly, a thing. But the Portal itself isn't just a big frame slapped up against the lab's wall, it's got a tunnel going back about 12 feet. It's what he was standing in when the whole world went electric-white and vanished on him.

And the tunnel’s not here now.

There's just the octagonal frame with the red alarm light flickering weakly a few feet from him, its black-and-yellow striped doors half shut on empty space. There's only the frame.

Carefully—and with no small amount of growing dread—he leverages himself down along the frame for a closer look. Confirmation that this really is all there is. A big, useless hunk of steel to cling to in an otherwise empty stretch of who-knows-what. He swallows, fighting panic. There's an on/off switch next to the Portal back home—is this that Portal? A copy? Where's the rest of it?—but there's nothing next to this one. He pulls himself back up to tap his fingers on the alarm light; it flickers a little more urgently, but nothing else. Nothing useful.

"Okay," he whispers shakily. "Okay. This. Don't freak out. There's gotta be a way back—"

His voice fails him as he realizes the extent of what's happened to him. He's not in his parents' lab. He's not in his house, not in Amity Park, not on Earth. Nowhere real looks this—this weird. This impossible. This is impossible, but here he is all the same.

His parents were right. Their Portal worked. It tore a hole right in reality and dumped him out....

He has to focus very, very hard on keeping his breath even, his heart hammering in his chest in a way that feels—off in a way he wouldn't know how to explain if there were anyone else here to ask. He scans his surroundings with fresh eyes, taking in again the smearing, dripping neon colors splashed across a swallowing darkness as far as he can see in every direction. Far, far away, impossible to even hazard a guess how far, he can make out vague green lumps clustered together. In another direction he can see dots of purple in a sort of uneven stripe. In a third there's something blocky colored a bone-white; at this distance it seems to twinkle like a star.

This is the Ghost Zone. The Portal turned on somehow while he was standing inside it, and it shunted him into the Ghost Zone.

He's in a parallel dimension where ghosts are real.

"Okay," he chatters. "It's fine. I'm okay. There's nothing around me—literally! Ha ha, ha, hngh. Nobody around. There's no—no ghosts. No Sam or Tucker either. They must've been too far away to get—zapped, or whatever. So. Just me here! Alone!" He smacks the Portal again for reassurance. The gesture fails spectacularly. "Just me and this busted Portal. No way to get home—"

No way home.

He has no way to get home. No way to tell Sam and Tucker he's here. No way to tell his parents they were right after all, but can they save the celebration for after they've rescued him?

They're not even going to know he needs rescuing. How could they? From Sam and Tucker's view he just vanished. Blinked out of existence. Literally, ha ha ha.

...Right?

He lets go of the Portal to look at his too-bright white gloves again. Definitely glowing. Definitely not the same color configuration as when he put the stupid jumpsuit on.

...is he dead?

Did he die?

He can't help the deflating balloon squeak that slips out him, immediately backtracking. No way. No no no no, ha ha, absolutely not. He's not dead, he can't be dead. He can't. There's got to be a more logical explanation for ending up in the world's biggest lava lamp. Right?

Okay, okay.

So.

He huddles in on himself, floating in a tense knot as he goes back over—whatever it was, exactly, that happened to land him here in the fucking Ghost Zone.

Sam wanted to sneak into his parents' lab while they were out to take a bunch of pictures, because her grandmother had somehow gotten her hooked on scrapbooking. Danny figured, whatever, they always took a million years grocery shopping, so what was the harm of going down to the lab for ten minutes? Then Tucker'd found the jumpsuit rack and made fun of Danny for having a custom ghost hunting jumpsuit, which was fair. For all that Danny'd never asked his parents to make him one, he still had one. Jazz did too, for that matter, but she wasn't home for Tucker to make fun of her too, and if she had been she would've blown a gasket at Danny for going in the lab without their parents. Then Sam got the bright idea to get Danny to put the stupid thing on and pose around the lab. Tucker salvaged his best friend cred by agreeing with Danny that that was stupid, but there's never been any talking Sam out of an idea once her eyes light up that eagerly. So, into the suit he got, zipping it up over his clothes and fidgeting when it bunched his jeans up uncomfortably—

He's not uncomfortable now.

Well, aside from the whole-body soreness and near-overwhelming panic, that is. Point is, the jumpsuit feels fine now. He fumbles for the zipper at his throat and tugs it down enough to see if—

Yyyyup, he can unhappily confirm he's not wearing a shirt under this stupid jumpsuit anymore, which likely means the rest of his clothes are... gone. Apparently.

Where the fuck would his clothes go if he's still wearing the stupid jumpsuit?

He takes a shaky breath. Right. Getting off track. So. He put the jumpsuit on, posed around the lab feeling like an idiot and increasingly worried his parents would come back home in time to see him looking like he cared about whatever craziness they did down here. Then they ended up in front of the Portal, and they talked about it. His parents have been trying to make a functioning hole in reality since they were in college, something like 20 years ago now, with no luck. The three of them talked about what it would be like if his parents did get this thing working one day, how cool it would be to have a portal to another world full of creatures straight out of horror movies. Sam had taken a shot of him alone outside the Portal, then goaded him into the tunnel itself. He'd reluctantly gone in and, mindful of all the thick cables tangled up on the ground, kept one hand on the tunnel wall for balance.

But.

But he'd heard something click, felt something shift under his fingers, right before the world dissolved in white-hot blast of pain.

Well.

Okay.

That explains the soreness. And also the maybe-deadness.

Fuck.

"I really hope I'm not dead," he half-jokes to himself, intending to make a self-deprecating crack that he'd make a really boring ghost, but at that exact moment there's a harsh flash! of white light that leaves him blinking green afterimages at his suddenly bare hands.

Then he's falling.

Like, for sure this time.

He doesn't scream so much as make a tortured shriek like an abused dog toy as everything around him becomes a dizzying and flashing stream of bright and dark, bright and dark. Mostly shades of neon green and too-dark black, interspersed with purples and blues and one startlingly huge red thing that makes a sound like a jet engine as he plummets by it. He sees chunks of earth that look like they'd been scooped up from somewhere Earth-adjacent and dumped here to float in empty space, stained deep blues and maroons and almost-normal shades of green. He glimpses a few crumbling ruins, big wandering shapes of stone blocks and wood and polished metals. He chokes out a mangled cry for help once, twice, three times, and still he's falling. Still he's alone.

He hits a chunk of earth about the size of his mattress and it falls apart to smoke, only slowing his momentum for the moment of painful impact. He can't tell if he broke anything, but it sure did knock the wind out of him. He spends a terrible eternity gasping for air, clawing at the green patches of mist and praying to grab something solid.

No such luck.

He falls.

It occurs to him, once he's gotten his breath back, that he wasn't falling before. In fact, he was doing a bang up job of floating just fine. So what changed?

Doing his best—admittedly an all-time low, but his current circumstances are, to put it frankly, pretty fucking sub-optimal—to ignore his horrible situation, he looks at his hands. Definitely not wearing gloves anymore, somehow, and also definitely not glowing for that matter. He looks down at the rest of himself nervously—then sighs with relief. Oh good, not naked. He's back in his jeans and T-shirt, and not a scrap of him is glowing.

So he needs to be glowing to float here? Maybe? Sure. Why not. Okay, so how does he start glowing again? Why did he stop glowing?

"I really hope I'm not dead," he repeats, though he's falling so fast his words are torn away before he can hear them. "Okay, sure, why not. I hope I am dead?"

Nope.

"Jumpsuit. Jumpsuit. I want my stupid jumpsuit!"

Nope.

"I'D LIKE TO STOP FALLING PLEASE!"

Nope.

"FLYING! FLOATING! I'M DEAD! GHOSTS FLY! STOP FALLING! CHANGE BACK! CHANGE CHANGE CHA—"

Another harsh flash!

Now he's falling, but in a stupid glowing jumpsuit.

For fuck's sake.

He scrunches his eyes closed and imagines as hard as he can that he's no longer falling, feeling like a complete idiot but well on his way of trying the Peter Pan route of scrounging up as many happy thoughts as he can if that's what it'll take to save his probably-dead idiot ass from double-dying on any of the chunks of land hurtling up at him at what feels like Mach 7.

Come on.

There's a hard, choking yank that whips him around like the farthest a bungee rope can strain before snapping. His limbs go flailing, his neck pops painfully, but the horrible whistle of wind in his ears stops abruptly. When he dares to open his eyes he's gratified to find himself looking at a patch of ground thick with overgrowth he'd barely managed to hit not ten feet below him. "Ha! Haha! Yes! I did it! I—whoa—!"

His recovered floating ability bails on him again, and he goes crashing face first into a very thorny bush. Hot lines ignite all over his exposed head and scalp. Even while yelping and trying to shake himself free he's grateful for the stupid jumpsuit. It's thick enough to keep the three-inch long brambles safely away from his skin, and dead or not he's apparently something enough to still feel pain.

Eventually he pulls free of the death-bush, falling on his ass with an undignified but thoroughly relieved, "Oof!"

He decides sitting there for a while is an excellent idea. At least until the world, or zone, or whatever, stops spinning so dramatically. It sure feels like his heart's going all out in his chest, which is an important tally in the Not Dead column. He drags one shaking hand across his face and ends up with neon green smeared all across his palm instead of blood from where the brambles scratched him, which is an unhappy tally in the Fuck I AM Dead column. Glowing and floating probably belongs in that column too. Things look grim.

It's at that moment the death-bush snarls.

He looks at it, already leaning away in case of—something, and yelps when a skeletal arm shoots out and grabs his ankle.

"No," he tells it firmly. "Absolutely not. Off."

"Graaakhhhhugh," says the death-bush, or the ambulatory skeleton lurking inside, or maybe it's some sort of horrible plant-skeleton-ghost combination. Who cares, Danny wants nothing to do with it.

"I—said—get—off!" He punctuates each word with a wild kick of his leg, then yelps again in disgust as the arm falls apart at its green-limned joints. Bits of bone float to the reddish earth too slowly, like they're underwater, or on the moon, or in a dimension where gravity's some kind of optional. That little middle finger to physics is maybe the most upsetting thing Danny's seen so far.

A pair of red lights flash deeper in the depths of the bush, which all in all seems like fair warning of things wanting to go from bad to worse. He's back in his jumpsuit so floating's an option again. No way he's staying on this hunk of rock with whatever's growling at him. He throws a mock-salute in farewell at the death-bush, firmly stomps all over the instinctual 'don't jump you absolute moron' his brain-stomach-heart all pitch at him, and jumps off the little island.

Naturally, he goes plummeting.

He's torn between screaming and sighing, and ends up making another prolonged deflating balloon squeak all the way down a few hundred feet before he figures out floating again. God, but he's lucky he's dead or dead-enough that whiplash isn't something he needs to worry about, apparently. He definitely would've broken his neck by now otherwise.

Ha ha, look at him, trying to find a positive spin on 'death by lab accident.' And Jazz always says he's got a negative outlook on life. Joke's on her!

Ugh.

Splayed out like a cat being held by an idiot and just as certain he's going to fall to his impending death, he very carefully cranes his head to look back the way he came. He can't even see the Portal anymore. It's a lava lamp hellscape as far as the eye can see. Great.

Okay.

Hovering, he's figuring out. Falling, he's already an old pro at. Maybe flying's on the table? Some semblance of control, some way of going any direction other than 'straight down.' He'd be happy with some good old-fashioned 'falling with style' at this rate. Buzz Lightyear, don't fail him now.

He moves at a snail's pace, eventually angling himself vertical again. Up, he thinks as an experiment.

Incredibly, it works.

Of course, he's so surprised by this unexpected achievement he stops thinking in a vaguely upward momentum and so of course goes hurtling downward another hundred or so feet—right into another earthen island.

He lays there awhile, blinking stars out of his eyes.

"Ow," he says eventually.

"HHHHHHHRRRRRRGRAAAAAAAAUGH," something very, very big says.

Danny would very much like to wake up from this bullshit nightmare now. Alas.

This island is a lot larger than the previous one, so it's something like thirty seconds before he finds an edge to throw himself off of. All the while the very, very big something knocks trees the size of redwoods aside like they're so many dominoes, the purple-ish ground shaking like an Etch-a-Sketch. It's all Danny can do to keep his feet under him. He manages one look over his shoulder and immediately wishes he hadn't; those were some teeth.

He jumps. He falls. He keeps falling until the horrible garbage disposal-esque roaring of whatever-that-was fades, then catches himself again. It's less painful this time, so maybe he's getting the hang of it? Sure, why not.

He takes a minute to catch his breath again and get a look at his new surroundings. Neon green on a black backdrop. Cool, cool, loving the variety. Details, details, anything unusual, anything that might try to eat him, apparently—

There's another stretch of island beneath him, maybe about fifty feet below. This one's big enough that its edges disappear into the distant green fog in a way that feels just a touch too Silent Hill for comfort. Not that he's had an abundance of comfort since he woke up here, but still. If anything remotely like the four-legged mannequin monster starts wriggling around down there he is out.

He eases himself down at a far slower pace than he's failed to manage before this, pleased even as he tenses in case of whatever might charge out at him to defend its territory or whatever.

When he touches down something crunches underfoot. He can't help the full-body flinch, bracing for a blow even as all his aching muscles protest.

Nothing happens.

No growling, no snarling, no earth-shaking stomping. Nothing.

Warily he looks out between his forearms, raised to protect his head. No sign of movement. This island's a lot darker than the others he landed on, as well as all the others he hurtled past. Unlike the others this island is entirely barren, just rolling hills of jutting dark green stones in every direction he looks as he lands in a narrow clearing.

A narrow clearing which happens to be full of bones.

He swallows, wincing when his other foot crunches on something despite his care as he steps down fully. Nothing reacts. It's just him in what is, essentially, some kind of ghost ossuary. So that's fun.

Oh. Oh that is definitely a human skull. Time to go.

He takes one step and hears a growl directly behind him. Before he can panic and bolt up the nearest rocky hillside, a woman's voice says, "Hold."

He stays put, shaking. He looks around, seeing nothing but green rocks, green rocks, green rocks, red—

A sphinx roughly the size of a school bus looms over the hillside he fully intended to flee toward, never mind that its—her?—voice sounded like it had come from behind him. It—she? yup, she is definitely a she because those are definitely breasts he definitely shouldn't be staring at. He hastily focuses on her face and instantly wishes he could look elsewhere, because everything about her face screams uncanny valley. Every inch of her is shades of neon red, garish to the point where it hurts his eyes to look at her directly. She has a human face stretched terribly across a lion's skull; her mouth far too wide, her almond-shaped eyes unblinking, her nose a flat arrowhead shape, her cheekbones and jaw jutting harshly. She's bald, or at least doesn't have any more hair—fur—on her head compared to the rest of her. Her shoulders have a distinctive human hunch to them, at war with her lion body and overlong neck. Her wings are the darkest shade of red on her, and even folded Danny can tell her wingspan is ludicrous. All of her is, really, but he's too busy reeling at the toothsome smile she's baring at him to think of the rest of her details.

"Little ghost," she says. He knows she's speaking, but her mouth doesn't move a centimeter. Her voice is low, slow, like the unhurried rumble of a thunderstorm in summer. "Little ghost, you are trespassing."

He breathes.

His heart—or something like it—hammers in his chest.

"I'm sorry," he stammers out. "I—I'm new—here. In this place, I mean. I'm still trying to figure out—everything, really. I keep falling. I fell here. I wasn't trying to come here. I swear."

She considers him with eyes the size of dinner plates. Her irises are the same bright green as the not-blood drying on his palm. Her round pupils are the same shade of red as a human's in a badly timed photograph. "Even so," she says. "You have trespassed on my domain, and so you must answer my riddle."

Oh, great. Danny's never been any great shake with Classical mythology, but he does remember the gist of this one. If ghost sphinxes work anything like the mythological ones, then he's got three options: answer correctly and proceed (to where is a big ol' question mark, but whatever), answer incorrectly and be eaten alive (which explains all the bones), or walk away. Considering he's not trying to go anywhere on this island, and in fact has zero interest in exploring it further, he is A-OK taking the coward's route.

But considering how easy it must be for ghosts—or, ghosts that know what the hell they're doing, unlike him—it must be incredibly easy to skip her riddle entirely and just fly off. And considering just how many bones there are here, he's missing something. He's missing something very, very important.

"I don't get to walk away without answering you, do I?" He asks quietly.

The sphinx makes an even deeper rumbling sound that settles in Danny's diaphragm. It takes him a moment to realize she's purring. "You are wiser than you look."

Considering the size of her fangs, he bites down the snarky retort on the tip of his tongue and shrugs sheepishly instead. "Any chance you'll give a new guy an easy riddle?"

The purring stops.

Fuck.

Her head cocks, birdlike, as she leans forward to appraise him. He tries not to shake, really, but she's enormous. She could swallow him whole if she were so inclined. Considered the cracked heap of bones he's standing ankle-deep in, she is. And he kind of doubts she’ll make quick work of him. She'll kill him slow.

Double-kill him. Whatever. Who cares. He really doesn't want to be eaten by a giant monster lady.

He exhales slowly, dropping his gaze to her huge paws. Though she has something roughly akin to thumbs, her nails are feline enough to retract wholly. He can only stand there and imagine what they look like, how they'd feel tearing him open. "Okay," he says.

Another bassy purr. Then she asks him, "What disappears as soon as you say its name?"

Well, shit. And here he was hoping she'd ask him the riddle from the myth. So much for blurting out, "Man!" then bailing as fast as humanly—ghostly?—possible. He rocks back on his heels—wincing when more bones crunch—racking his brain. Math is honestly his strong point. English is something he gets, sure, but all the wacky linguistic tricks that can accompany it are just... not something that comes up in his day-to-day, so he can easily ignore it. Riddles and word problems are things he's always been able to wave off as not worth his time.

Well, today's just chalk full of firsts, isn't it? Make or break time. Or, more accurately, answer correctly or be eaten time.

Nngh.

"Is there a time limit to answering?" He asks nervously.

The sphinx shakes her great head, and takes his question as cue to sit. Her stretched face doesn't twitch an inch from its beatific grin, but her lion's tail does lash irritably. So that's technically a 'no,' sure, but definitely not one he should try to take advantage of.

So. Crunch time.

Maybe don't think of that too literally.

Disappears as soon as you say its name....

Disappears if you speak it.

Disappears if you say it?

Disappears if you speak?

He swallows, looking back up at her large, large eyes. "Um. Is it silence?"

There are three terrible seconds where she only looks at him, as unreadable as a marble statue. Then her eyes wink shut, and she purrs, and Danny just about goes to jelly with relief.

Scratch that. He does go to jelly, at least under the belt. His legs have fucking melted to a twitching black streak of semi-transparent smoke. He makes a very undignified shriek and flails around, only succeeding in losing whatever subconscious grasp on hovering he'd had and landing in a painful heap of well-chewed bones.

The sphinx leans far, far over to peer at him curiously. The grin on her freaky face has shrunk to something that Danny's sure is amusement at his expense. "You are new."

His traitorous legs reappear with a small pop! He glowers at them rather than meet her eyes. She's still sitting on the edge of the bone clearing, and sure she's big, but not big enough to explain how she's stretched out so far that her face is only two scant feet from his.

"What gave it away?" He grumbles, shaking his arm out of a rib cage that is, thankfully, not human-shaped. It's also a lovely shade of pale purple, or his eyes are playing tricks on him.

"How long since your arrival?"

"Uh. Hard to say." He gets to feet, patting he doesn't-wanna-know off his stupid jumpsuit. "Twenty minutes? Half hour, tops."

Her stretched-out mouth gains an unmistakable pitying curl. Great. That's his cue to leave before she decides to put him out of his misery. With her enormous teeth. He clears his throat, drums up a happy thought—not being here, oh, if only—and manages a wobbly hover. "Right. Um. Thank you. For not eating me."

She sits back and this time Danny's looking to see that yup, she was stretched out like a length of taffy. She stretches again, this time more like a normal cat-shaped thing should. Her hooked claws drag deep white furrows in the rock; her yawning mouth—also neon green—is lined with at least twice as many teeth as any cat-shaped thing should have.

Well. That was only mildly horrifying.

She settles back into a stiff sitting position, lion's tail curling over her paws as she looks down her nose at him. "You would be wise to take greater care than this," she cautions. "I am not so terrible as what slumbers in the deep places."

Danny shivers, more than a little dismayed to be fed a line straight out of a cheesy fantasy novel. By a sphinx, no less. But mostly he feels like he's in dire need of a magic sword or something to deal with whatever other horrible monster he comes across that might not be as chill as this one. Or Gandalf. If sphinxes are real here maybe he'll get lucky and come across a ghost wizard on the next island he crash-lands on. Hopefully it won't want to kill him too, though with how things are going so far his hopes are pretty low.

He musters up a weak smile. "Right. I'll try my best. Um, actually, now that you mention it? I'm kinda having a hard time going any direction but down. Any advice?"

As answer she unfolds her wings, confirming that her wingspan is, in fact, ludicrous. It's not especially helpful though.

"Uh, that's... they're very nice. Very pretty. But I don't have wings, so—"

The rest of his stammering is mercifully cut short when he's sent ass over tea kettle by the heavy downwash of her wings as she takes off, so much faster than something her size should be capable of. By the time Danny's figured out which way is up again—a feat in itself, considering how everything everywhere looks like technicolor vomit—she's a red blip in the distance.

Well, damn. If she expects him to follow her she better not hold her breath—

The heretofore now perfectly solid ground chooses at that moment to flicker out of existence. Once again, Danny falls. This time he has the delightful addition of several hundred bone bits falling along with him.

"Grrrngh," one of the skulls complains, a single pale light bouncing around its crunched-in sockets.

Danny sighs and musters up the effort to halt himself again. After wincing through a small deluge of dubiously sentient people and animal bones, he's entirely alone again. There's another floating island not too far from, maybe fifty yards above him and a full football field's length off. It'd be a great test of figuring how this flying without wings work, if not for the waterfall of something that's definitely not water careening off one edge. It's a dark red, and thick, and Danny's not sure if he wants to get close enough to confirm whether or not that island is bleeding.

Well. Nowhere to go but up, right?

Well, no. There's still a lot of down under his feet—nope, back to a creepy ghost tail again. Cool. Great. Excellent. Whatever. He peers down into the dark below him, swallowing nervously. It gets a lot darker down than in any other direction. There are streaks and dots of light down there sure, but a lot fewer, and clustered together like they're nervous of what might be down there with them—

And a long, long gray tentacle is swimming up out of the mist. Coming straight for him, no less.

Flash!

Aaaand check it out, there goes his magic glowing jumpsuit and his ability to float with it. Great.

#danny phantom #my writing #phic phight 2020 #aka the one where danny has a panic attack while falling for half an hour

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vision-sky · 5 years

Photo

Taser reference sheet

this is my spidersona! ive had her before the movie even came out lol

info:

Name: Katlyn Alex Rhodera (pronounced road-era) Gender: Female Sexuality: Straight Dimension: Earth-42

About her suit: Her suit is completely black, apart from the glowing patterns on it. The patterns tend to pulse in a dull glow, that becomes brighter when she uses her powers, she can make it turn off. It glows brightest around the eyes and the centre of the spider pattern on her chest. Her suit is also water proof, and is made up of hundreds of thousands of little hexagon patterned material, it's not bullet proof. There is also no A.I inside the suit, as most of them don't anyway, only the current Tom Holland Spider-Man. Her lightning is often seen dancing around the glowing patterns on her suit, she does this for fun. her suit is also equiped with a "wing suit" which has blue transparent "wings" that fold out from the side, this allows her to glide. About her powers: She can jump very high, heaps higher that all the other spider people, on the odd occasion she can miscalculate where she is going to land, as its kind of difficult. Her stick ability is very strong, she can stick and unstick on will, and if something tried to pull her off what she was sticking too while she was sticking, it would be very difficult as she can stick pretty good if she wants. Her lightning ability is very strong, she can shoot multiple blasts of lightning from most areas of her body, the most powerful being from her hands. It takes her time to charge up for a super powerful blast, and less time for a weaker blast. Her lightning has many different variants and ways of shooting it. Chain lightning: a very powerful blast of lightning is shot, it can bounce from person to person, hitting multiple people standing near, jumping from one person to the next until it dies down, it takes time to recharge. It can easily take out a largish group of enemies. It is her most powerful weapon apart from the lightning beam. Lightning beam: a powerful blast of lightning, shot in a beam like fashion from hands, it doesn't bounce from person to person like chain lightning however, but it's still very powerful and has a long distance range. Close up zaps: a close combat move, it is short and quick and can't be shot, it only works if her hands touch the target. Her hands are suddenly covered by lightning and any contact with them for a few short moments will be very painful. She often does this to electrify her hits and punches. Rapid fire: multiple quick blasts of lightning shot, also very bright to look at. Taser: a small blast of lightning hits the target, and like a grenade it goes off, electrocuting its target to the ground. Other kinds of lightning: she has your regular lighting bolts, they don't take long to recharge and have average strength. She often has lightning dancing around her body if she wills it, or trailing out behind her when jumping, running or even walking. She can shoot powerful blasts from her hands to give herself a boost whilst jumping. spider sense: allows her to detect things just before they happen Transport: her way of getting around is very different to everyone in the spider verse. Instead of swinging from place to place, she jumps. If she tries very hard, she can jump higher than some skyscrapers, small ones but. She will then stick to the side of the wall and be able to jump upwards from there (often trailing electricity as she goes) it can sometimes be a slower way of travel, but very useful. Note: she cannot jump as high as the hulk can. she actually does have web shooters (the black bands around her wrists) but she rarely uses them. her webs also glow (blue)

As a normal human: Katlin is a 17 year old girl who is in grade 11 at school, her parents don't really have many restrictions on her, so she can just go out and help stop crime and what not. She is also a bit of a rebel. She is into art, and music, often seen with a set of headphones and an iPod (her iPod happens to be the same colours as her suit. her headphones are black with a blue and white pulse pattern on them.) she has several piercings on on ear, often wears some form of studs in them. She has long black (or very dark brown hair) with blue/grey eyes. Her fingernails are often painted black. She has several silver rings on her hands and a necklace that she pretty much never removes, as well as a bracelet or two (she doesn't often wear all this stuff at once of course, she doesn't like to overdo it) she is mostly quiet and can be a bit edgy, but she is kinda popular at school and can be quite friendly at times, but she is more of an introvert, and doesn't really socialise much. She doesn't wear heavy makeup and too much black, even though it's her favourite colour, she often wears a black leather jacket with silver zips and bits, as well as a white or colourful t-shirt with denim jeans and black boots. She is also fond of hoodies. her design is kind of based off the cobalt blue tarantula and a black widow spider.

that's about it so far :)

#spidersona #into the spider verse #taser #Katlyn Rhodera #wallwalker #the lightning spider

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itsbenedict · 5 years

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Kingdoms and Koopas: Ep. 4

K&K is a Fate Accelerated campaign set in the Mario universe, which I’m running for three players:

Bee @thebeeskneesocks, playing Kandace Koopa

Jovian @jovian12, playing Cozmo Naut

Malky @sleepdepravity, playing Dr. Chevy Chain

Last time | Archive | Next time

Previously on Kingdoms and Koopas, the party fell down a hill. Currently on Kingdoms and Koopas, the party is continuing to fall down that hill. Funny how that works. I’m sure it’s no one’s fault in particular.

Chapter 2: The Bonds of Friendship

So, the party- plus also Zip Toad and Party Guy- are rolling downhill in a big tangled ball of cartoon dustcloud, knocked down there by the geology of Plumber’s Folly starting to shift violently.

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So, Plumber’s Folly- that’s one of them World 9 levels that’s really treacherous and punishing to get through when you’re not careening through it uncontrollably. Finding a way to come to a stop is pretty important, so... well, Chevy takes the initiative here. She whips out her chain for the others to grab, and tries to chomp down on the nearest obstacle. There’s like, a big stalagmite sticking out of the ground, and she manages to sort of clothesline herself on it. Cozmo and Kandace manage to grab hold, but Party Guy and Zip Toad don’t quite make it- they continue plummeting into the darkness.

Speaking of darkness, it’s suddenly less dark: one of those spinny bars of fire orbs, you know the ones, is emerging from the wall of this cavern. Sort of... uh... actually, this was hard to describe in the session, too. Let me scribble something down:

So that’s coming up towards them along the floor, and they need to get out the way, get out the way, kids, get out the way. Cozmo does a sweet flip and jumps up onto the stalagmite... but, uh, lands on the pointy end, getting poked somewhat. Hurts less than the fire would’ve, anyway.

Kandace and Chevy, not so armed with Cool Stunts, have to deal with this another way. What Kandace does is she casts a spell on the hub of the fire bar, freezing it in time. The downside of her time-freeze spell is that... a), it doesn’t last very long, and b) it acts kind of like Stasis from Breath of the Wild but more, in that whatever was stopped builds up energy according to how it would’ve kept moving if it weren’t frozen. Which means... if they don’t get out of there fast, it’s going to break out of the freeze and start moving much faster.

So, with no particular way back up, Chevy- followed by the other two shortly thereafter- lets go and begins rolling downhill.

On the way downhill, they encounter various fun and harmless objects- which is a lie, and what they actually encounter is swinging buzzsaws on poles, giant swinging axe blades, more fire, and- oh, a swarm of Fuzzies. “Mee-ork”, they say, while attacking a bunch. “MEE-ORK!!”, they say, as Cozmo launches fireworks and Kandace hits them with... I forget which spell exactly, it’s been over a week, uh... I think the make-things-heavier-and-Katamari-ish one? Either way, they only manage to get a couple little hits in before being driven off by the party’s violence skills.

Following this encounter, there stops being ground below them as they reach the bottom of the slope, which ends in an even steeper slope. A ninety-degree one. Which is to say, a cliff. Not a big cliff, though- they land pretty quick, and find- barely conscious and severely injured- Party Guy and Zip Toad, lying on the rocks of this cavern floor.

Now, Chevy is a doctor, and so she sees injured people and decides that she ought to help with that. Problem is, it’s dark in this dark cave that has no light, so... it’s hard to do medical things to people. It imposes a penalty on her roll, and she fails it pretty bad, really messing up poor Party Guy, who wasn’t doing great to begin with.

But hey, no worries! We’ve established that Kandace has a spell for summoning fireflies, so creating light shouldn’t be an issue.

Shouldn’t be. But is. Because, of course, when Chevy orders Kandace to magically light things up, Kandace insists that Chevy should say please.

Chevy does not say please. Kandace does not immediately solve the problem. They get into a big fight over just who exactly is being totally unreasonable here, while a couple of injured people lie moaning on a bed of rocks. Cozmo is unable to defuse the tension between the two hardest-headed people here (and he literally has a skull made of crystal!), so the three of them continue- bickering the whole way- down the tunnel that seems to lead to some light and heat.

Oh, and they find some light and heat!

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They make it through the tunnel and into a somewhat wider and more open area. Unfortunately, this wider and more open area is a lake of magma, which is for several reasons not ideal. However, all is not lost: dotting the surface of the lake are various objects of the sort commonly found in lakes of magma. You've got your standard floating-chunks-of-unmelted-rock-that-sink-if-you-stand-on-them-too-long, and you've got some weird stone face things hanging around.

Kandace and Chevy succeed on their Clever roll to recognize these things: Flomps. Flomps are a heat-loving subspecies of Thwomp that like to hang out in subterranean magma caverns like these. They're... not exactly unfriendly, when you're not a plumber they've been ordered to destroy, but they're not terribly social. They mostly just find a nice magma bed to hover directly over, and soak up the heat. The beach bums of Thwomps, essentially.

Anyway, the ceiling of this magma lake is... well, they're not sure if it's low or not, because it's so smoky that you can't see past the first eight feet or so. It's probably not that high, though, because the tips of stalactites break the smoke layer.

On the other side of this lake is a lavishly ornamented staircase leading down. That seems like the only exit, so...

Well, first, Chevy goes back and collects her patients, now that a wide-open and well-lit room is present to be used for operating. She manages to get Zip Toad and Party Guy back on their feet, barely- no thanks to Kandace. It would’ve been thanks to Kandace, though, if Chevy had just said please! Fight fight fight fight.

Okay, but... they gotta cross this lake of lava. Magma. Fuck. I keep fucking it up. They’re underground, it’s magma. Flying is a little risky, with the low ceilings and plumes of fire everywhere, so Kandace instead uses her second new spell: a generic ice blast, which blasts ice and freezes patches of magma to make the rock-to-rock jumping a lot easier. Zip Toad almost falls in, but Cozmo is able to stunt his way into rescuing him.

They manage to accomplish their goal in this platforming challenge without stepping on any Flomps- which one Flomp notices and appreciates, shaking and revealing an invisible ? block on the far shore. They hit it, and... oh, sweet! 1-ups pop out! Five of them, to be exact. Chevy gets one, Kandace gets one, and... Zip Toad and Party Guy try to get one each, but Cozmo gets greedy, and manages to snap up three of them. And hey- he needs ‘em! He gets fatally injured a lot.

So... it’s down further into the caverns, which are now more... temple-like. They end up in a big hallway, with chandeliers and floating platforms and banners with a really old Bowser logo hanging from the ceiling. Oh, and a bottomless pit. That’s... a thing to navigate. There’s also a suspicious humming that keeps changing in pitch every so often.

Chevy goes first, and with a high Clever roll, manages to notice the pattern in the humming. The humming determines which colors of floating platform are currently electrified with super-deadly electricity. Cool! So... Zip Toad and Party Guy take on the platforming gauntlet, getting a little zapped (and Party Guy loses a life falling in the bottomless pit, I think- or, no, wait, I think Chevy saved him? I forget.)

Kandace decides to grab Cozmo and just fly across, because screw this. Unfortunately, this was accounted for- those chandeliers are actually giant Van de Graaff generators, and they get super zapped. They manage to power through, flying through the zappy fields as quickly as possible- though getting a little more singed than they might like.

At the end of the gauntlet is yet another ? block with 1-ups, which are this time distributed more equitably. Chevy, being a doctor, gives hers to an injured Zip Toad.

So, they make it to the end of this hallway, and find themselves in front of some huge red stone doors. And out of those doors comes... someone to greet them!

It’s... some kind of magical fairy?

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The fairy introduces herself as Jojora, the buddy of the cousin of the descendant of the spirit who once guarded some other place, but don't worry about it. She’s guarding this place as a favor to one of her friends, for whom this is a summer home. She invites the party in for tea, which they... accept, because why not?

They go inside, and find that this place is like... a huge tall temple, an underground tower sort of thing that goes up and up and up. Also, a huge cracked stone gear on the floor. There’s a huge door on the ground floor that they’re not allowed inside- Jojora tells them that another friend, but not that close a friend, asked her to store something important in there and not let anyone inside. (Kandace’s magic tells her that the Music Key is back there.) They’re ushered away, though.

Before they follow her to the tearoom, though, Cozmo says that he needs to go to the bathroom. Jojora is kind of confused about what this “bathroom” thing is, but after a bathroom is described in vague terms, she’s pretty sure she knows what he means.

So she takes him through a kitchen, and through there into a room that’s just... sort of a sauna? It’s a big room with ankle-high hot water flowing in and all over the floor, with benches along the edges. Sitting on those benches are, like... little animate fire people, who seem to be... lethargic, or sick, or something. It’s not clear what they’re doing here, but... hey, room with running water, that counts as a bathroom, right?

So, business is concluded in there in ways we declined to explore, and Cozmo returns to the group- telling them about these weird flame spirits. Jojora tells them that those are the guards of this temple, and that they got sick when she tried to feed them some tea, which was apparently... bad for fire spirits, somehow? They start heading up some stairs, around this central... elevator shaft-looking dealie, in the center of the room? On their way up, Chevy decides that she needs to go to the bathroom, and splits off from the party to head down that way.

She gets... lost. She finds a room with the floor totally covered in rough and uneven rock, which seems to cover the floor in a trail from that room to the elevator shaft. And she finds a tall room with a central spire, on top of which is a bonfire-type thing flanked by a pair of giant bellows- bellows which seem to be covered in some kind of sticky, spongy substance, and are inoperable. And eventually she finds the “bathroom” with the fire spirits.

She diagnoses them with being sick, a serious medical condition. She’s worked with podobos before, and if these are anything like those, they’re probably running low on internal heat due to being drenched in liquid. Probably tea. As a curative measure, she... rears back, and then smashes one of the walls, cracking it and causing, whoops, magma to come seeping in. This magma, though, is a source of heat for the fire spirits, who congregate around it and seem to be getting some of their strength back. Mission complete?

Meanwhile, the rest of the party has been led up to Jojora’s tearoom. There’s a bit where the path there was missing, a gap in the floor that they couldn’t walk across- but Kandace has her broom, so they’re able to get across with little effort, which seems to vaguely annoy Jojora.

But... yeah, they get to the tearoom.

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Jojora and her four unspeaking friends- Oholina, Chucklissa, Teeheena, and Hoohoolia- are seated around a large table, where cake and tea are served. Because everyone here is friends! You’re friends, right? Hooray, friendship!

So... the party sits down for tea, sans Chevy who’s downstairs. First, tea is served- which they’re suspicious of. They make Sneaky rolls, and succeed! Kandace surreptitiously throws her tea in the fire, and Cozmo pretends to drink his while secretly pouring it into one of his secret X-Naut science flasks he keeps in his scarf. Tea Get! (Zip Toad and Party Guy just drink the stuff- it makes them giggle a bit for no clear reason, but they’re fine.) Jojora gets suspicious, though, because the magical Comed-Tea is supposed to make them laugh. They pick up on this quickly enough and fake laughter, though.

And then cake is served! Hooray! Some is put in a flask, but as the Shady Guy reps suffer no ill effects from eating it, they end up chowing down on that too. It’s good!

So... having successfully used the power of friendship to survive a tea party, the party is doing fine. Jojora then asks them, because they’re friends... what do friends do?

“Help each other out?” Kandace suggests- and Jojora lights up. Of course! That’s exactly what she was going to say! And... if they help her out, maybe they’ll be even better friends, better friends than the guy who had her store the thing behind the door. And then maybe she’ll let them in there!

Kandace agrees, and Jojora takes them around and shows them the things she needs help with. See, she was having so much fun with friends and friendship, that she kind of... well, the party got a little out of hand. The giant column of lava that powers all the traps in the dungeons got, uh, stopped up. And the puzzle where you have to use bellows to stoke a fire fell prey to a cake fight. And some lava accidentally spilled on a floor that had the solution to a puzzle on its tiles. And a giant important gear thing got knocked down. And there’s a tunnel full of magic junk that needs to be cleaned out. And the fire spirit guardians got sick from the tea.

So, hey, if they help her out with, say, four of those problems, maybe they’ll be good enough friends to get to go behind that big door! Awesome, right? Power of friendship? Totally.

So, next time on Kingdoms and Koopas: janitorial services????

WAIT HANG ON A SEC it’s not time for the power of friendship quite yet! It’s time for the power of Chevy showing up again with an idea in her head. The idea is- hey, why the heck are we believing that Jojora is even actually the rightful owner of this place? Why are we believing that she even can open the big door? It’s pretty fishy that the place specifically has a bunch of guards who all seem to have been recently poisoned.

To demonstrate her rightful ownership- without letting anyone inside- Jojora waves her wand and the big door very quickly opens a crack and then closes again. That’s not enough, though, and Chevy presses her on the subject for a while- until the recently-cured flame spirits start filing out of the sauna room and taking up their posts, entirely failing to consider Jojora an intruder. It... seems like she’s legit? Maybe?

But yeah NEXT TIME JANITORIAL SERVICES PROBABLY.

Last time | Archive | Next time

#kingdoms and koopas

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fae713 · 5 years

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Two Worlds

Air gently moved in and out, her heartbeat matched it, faster with every inhalation, slower with exhalation. Blood coursed through her veins, fast then slow then fast again with every beat of her heart. Electricity zapped along her nerves causing muscles to pull, push, and shift in nearly imperceptible movements.

“You’re doing it again, Tanya,” a quiet voice pulled her out of her meditation. She started, knocking the book on her lap to the floor where it landed with a muffled thud. “I don’t understand how you do that,” Diane whispered, as she placed her own books on the hardwood table and sat down on the mismatched chair next to Tanya. “It’s like you go into a trance or something. You’re here but no one is home.”

“It’s called meditation, you should try it sometime,” Tanya mumbled as she attempted to cover a yawn with a hand while arching her back and stretching out ridiculously long legs and arms.  She hadn’t realized she had been waiting in the still library long enough for her to fall so deeply into her subconscious mind and body. “You’re late.”

“Yep,” Diane said then pulled two large travel mugs from her bag, “the line at the café was ridiculously long.”

“You brought coffee? All is forgiven!” Tanya grabbed at one of them and popped open the sealed top. “Mmm, hazelnut,” she took a long drink and sighed. “Okay,” Tanya glanced at her watch, “I have to leave in about six hours, so do you wanna focus on bio or lit?”

“Bio, we’ve got that test on tomorrow. Your work hours have gotten weird, what do you even do there?”

“I switched to working the street rather than stare at a screen so it’s just wandering around and telling off people for trespassing.” Diane gave Tanya a long skeptical look then sighed and then flipped open a heavy textbook to a chapter near the middle.

“What’s the pain pathway and how does it work in the nervous system?”

Tanya stepped carefully into the alleyway. She should have waited for Dan but she had felt something that didn’t belong in the concrete jungle of the city. She was still a journeyman, not even an acolyte yet, working without a teacher was dangerous, but people had been hurt by things they couldn’t describe and this was what he was training her to do.

The only warning she had was a small huff followed by something furry and dense ramming into her side. Tanya flew through the air and hit the brick wall with her shoulder. “That’s going to bruise something fierce,” she muttered to herself and used the wall to climb back to her feet. In the poor alleyway light she could barely see the outline of a large canine. It growled then launched itself at her again. Not taken completely by surprise this time she spun to the left and reached out to grab the fur on its shoulders, pulling herself onto its back so she was straddling it. The canine shook itself so wildly that any thought of reaching for her knives was dismissed. “Whelp, here goes nothing,” she struggled to dig her hands deeper into its fur while using her legs to keep herself on its back and away from its snapping jaw or sharp claws. The fur was thick, dirty, and matted so that catching even a fingertip against the skin would have been near impossible in the best of circumstances. “Come on!” she grunted in pain as the beast threw itself against the wall, crushing her leg with its heavy body. Her hands began to feel hot as the hair on her arms and head stood on end. The creature’s fur was too tangled to respond readily but it tried, giving her a few millimeters of extra space to work with. A faint ozone smell gathered around them and the air crackled. She felt the leg of her jeans shredding as it was rubbed against the bricks just before she felt the sharp sting of hundreds of jagged edges grate and tear at her skin. She clenched her jaw tight, not now, focus! Finally, her fingers brushed against something more solid than fur and she channeled all the electric energy she could into the canine’s nervous system. It roared once then crumpled.

Tanya fell from its back, rolling several times before finally coming to rest on her back, her breath coming in quick, deep gasps. Muscles twitched and trembled all along her body in response to the left-over static that seemed to jump and sizzle across all her nerves. She felt like she had been hit by a bus. Using that much energy at once shocked her system almost as much as the thing she channeled it into. She closed her eyes to focus on her breathing, bringing it back down to a normal rhythm and calming her heart and her frazzled nerves.

She was still lying on her back when she heard gravel crunching under boots. They stopped right next to her torso and she resisted the urge to open her eyes immediately.

“You look a mess, Tanya. What the hell happened?” A deep, masculine voice asked from six feet above her. She waved in what she assumed was the direction of the still creature, wincing as the movement pulled at her injured shoulder. A silent moment then, “ah. I see.”  Concern touched the edge of his voice, “can you stand?” he asked from much closer to her head. She cracked open one eye. He was kneeling over her, his long face hardly more than shadows in the faint light filtering down the alley. It didn’t take much imagination for her to see the deep lines in forehead or worry in his brown eyes. She sighed before reaching her uninjured arm up for him to grab and help her sit up.

“Hey, Dan, you missed the fun,” she told him. She saw him looking at her leg, and answered the obvious question, “my leg’s a bit torn up.” She twisted to get a better look at the outside of her left leg. She moved her foot around in circles, fascinated by the way the muscles pulled and shifted. It hurt, but no more than her shoulder did. She used her good arm and leg to push herself up. “Right shoulder, left leg, at least I’m even.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” he mused. “Sorry, I lost track of time.” She waved his apology away. They both knew it wouldn’t have mattered much. He was much better at tracking and doing things from a distance, the glass cannon type. She was the tank.

“I left early anyway. Felt that thing nearby and didn’t want to let it get too far.” She gingerly put some of her weight on her left leg, wincing again at the pain, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been even a minute ago. One of the benefits of her talent with the energy that zipped through nerves and muscles was she could turn some of those nerves off and on. Most of it was subconscious, but her control was better now that she was using the ability daily. Small adjustments in the nerve pathways meant she could ignore it. For a time at least.

Dan held out an arm for her to lean on then led her over to the large creature against the wall. “What is it?” She asked. He pulled out a small flashlight and kneeled next to the creature. The light focused on its face. It looked like a dog in general shape, but its snout was much longer and broader than any normal canine. Its fur was a dark gray, mottled with spots of bare skin along its muzzle and side. Everything about it was exaggerated, like a caricature artist had drawn a demon dog and it somehow came to life.

“I’m not sure, I haven’t seen anything like it in real life,” he answered, while she slowly moved closer to it, “or smelled anything like it either.” He covered his mouth and nose with the collar of his shirt. looked down at her shirt then and noted the dirt and greasy smears ground into the fabric. She brought it close to her face to inspect the damage and began gagging at the strong smell of dirty, greasy, wet dog. Nothing was going to get that out. “Another outfit gone. That’s the fourth one this month.”

Dan continued to inspect the beast, “it may be of the Wild Hunt… or a pooka?” he mumbled to himself. “What do you know of pookas?” He moved the flashlight so it was focused on her rather than the smelly… pooka. The stains and bloody leg looked worse in the harsh, white light. The thoughtful frown changed to one of concern when he got a better look at the damage to her leg.

“’Tis only a flesh wound,” she joked as he pulled out a roll of gauze and tossed it to her. The gauze wouldn’t do much more than keep additional debris out, but it was better than nothing. Better first aid with ice packs and bandages would come after they finished tonight. She quickly wrapped her leg as best she could, tied a knot in the gauze, then gestured at the creature, “had enough time with the to be able to track it?”

“Yeah, I’ve got it,” he stood up, stretching and rolling his shoulders. “You sure you want to do this tonight?” he looked at her leg then up to her face. “If your leg-”

“If we wait this thing’s fellows may move off or attack someone else,” She didn’t add that she’d be lucky if she could move at all tomorrow. Her muscles were already complaining and she knew from experience it would only get worse.

“If you’re sure,” he sighed when he saw her nod. He took a deep breath then did something she couldn’t understand. Like her, he could do things most people considered impossible. A faint, purple mist gathered around his body, then with a gesture he directed it toward the dead creature. The mist seemed to sink into the dead pooka for a few heartbeats before it lifted away and stretched out into the night as a narrow ribbon. Dan set out slowly, giving her the opportunity to take the lead and set their pace.

Using Dan’s tracking mist they followed the route the monster had taken. It avoided main roads, sticking to roads or alleys with few lights and little traffic. After two miles the ribbon started to grow thicker and turn opaque. “I think we found its territory,” Dan whispered. The mist spread out to cover nearly the entire street, a smudge of smoke making the already rundown neighborhood they were in look like a horror movie set. Decrepit buildings and homes were separated by empty lots of land. All the yards were nearly uniform with bare dirt visible between clumps of weeds and detritus that the residents hadn’t bothered to put in the trash. It was an ideal place for things that didn’t belong but still needed to be near a source of food, humans.

Her turn. She took a deep breath before stretching out her senses. Her perspective shifted, as though she was viewing the environment from a few feet above her head in 360 degrees. The new view didn’t provide much more information than what her eyes had already seen, but at least she was less likely to be ambushed this time. Her hearing sharpened so that she could hear not only her heartbeat but also Dan’s and a few dozen small animals. Her mind automatically identified and dismissed irrelevant creatures too small to be another large creature like the pooka. Finally, her other sense, the one that felt for living things lifted away from her skin and slowly expanded in every direction. It confirmed the life she had already heard and dismissed, but just at the edge of what she could feel there was a large clump of things that didn’t fit anything she had encountered before tonight. She tapped Dan on the shoulder then pointed toward the source of energy. He nodded and took the lead as they carefully approached a large shed with broken windows and caving in walls on the far corner of a large plot of land. The house and shed had been abandoned long ago by the feel of the place.

Dan pulled what looked like a grenade from a pouch on the holsters crossing his chest. She gave him a questioning look, “new design,” he mouthed to her before tossing it into the center of the shed. His aim, as always, was spot on. “New design for what?” she whispered. Dan had a bad habit of testing new devices in the field. Sometimes they even worked that first use.

A soft hissing emanated from inside the building shortly followed by snuffling and huffing from several large mammals. The shed began to glow with a soft, ephemeral light, brightest near the center and weaker at the far edges. “Anything I should know before I charge in?” she asked as she pulled two knives from her belt. They were composed of a single piece of steel and veins of pure silver and iron along the length from the butt of the hilt to the tapering edges by way of a talented, magical, and expensive smith. They were worth every dollar. She needed silver and iron because she never knew what she was going to run into and some things from fairy tales were true, steel because there were things in the world even fairy tales couldn’t mention.

“Don’t breathe in the mist. It’s heavier than air so just try to stay on your feet,” he told her as he unslung a long rifle from his shoulder. She nodded sharply then dashed forward to jump through the window closest to them and hope there wasn’t anything sharp or painful for her to land on.

It had taken months of practice to move around without throwing up with her vision split in two.  Running, jumping, leaping, fighting, all that had taken thousands more hours of practice to keep from falling flat on her face. She leaped up, grabbed the top edge of the window frame to swing her legs through and released, controlling her fall. Her sky-view vision shifted inside with her, allowing her to see everything in the room. There were three pookas circling around each other, snarling and snapping in a sloppy drunk sort of way. The largest, seemed the most coordinated and broke off from the other two when she crashed through the window. It locked eyes with her for the barest of seconds before it ran headlong for her.

Tanya pivoted on her right foot, using the injured leg to push off the wall next to her and leap over the creature. She twisted midair while jabbing her knives into the pooka’s skin and channeling a sharp jolt of energy through them and directly into nerves along the its spine. It dropped to the floor with muscles still twitching. Not dead, but that pooka appeared to be down for the moment. Which was good since she was using far more of her energy tonight than she had on any other mission. She pulled her knives from its hide, wiped them on its fur and turned to face the other two. The smallest one dropped with a heavy thud at the same time that the sharp echoing retort of Dan’s rifle reached Tanya’s enhanced ears, making them ring loudly. Another monster was out of the fight. That left her with the last one until he reloaded.

She stalked forward, approaching the drunken pooka straight on, and took her first steps into the mist from Dan’s grenade. The gauze did little to protect the injured left leg from the mist and it began to burn like she had dumped a full bottle of antiseptic on it. The sudden change in pain made her breath hiss through her teeth and her eyes begin watering. I’m gonna punch him. Hard. First, she needed to punch the pooka in front of her.  Tanya closed her eyes to use only her clear, overhead vision which she shifted so that it focused forward on the creature in front of her. She turned her attention to her leg just long enough to turn off most of the pain receptors, she couldn’t afford the distraction. She struck at the pooka. It fell back on its haunches but whether from trying to move away from her or attack she didn’t know. She edged her way to its side, deeper into the painful mist, silvered knives weaved in front of her, as a warning that lunging at her would be painful. Two more steps into the mist and her left knee gave out without warning, sending her sprawling alongside the pooka, knocking the air from her lungs, and plunging her entirely into the mist. The knife in her left hand skittered away but she had gripped the other tightly. Without thought she lashed out. The knife found flesh and she weakly pushed energy through, hopefully enough to knock the creature out.

Her lungs ached, and he was forced to inhale. Immediately she felt her careful control of her mind break apart, her vision splintered into a thousand pieces, she lost track of what was happening. She was tired. Some small part of her mind told her she couldn’t fall asleep. Something bad would happen. Her thoughts drifted, disjointed. Dan. Dan would have to clean up. He was good at that. She heard another loud retort, distorted as though it was traveling through water, and felt something heavy fall on her already damaged leg. She screamed. Her mind fractured and then she was falling down down down into a black oblivion.

The shock of freezing cold brought Tanya out of her unconsciousness. She tried to stand up only to have her legs slip beneath her on a smooth surface. Her head dipped into icy water. A bathtub. She sat up, moving slower this time. Water streamed down her face and neck and sparks jumped along water and her exposed skin while she tried to place where she was. The walls and lighting were familiar. Her bathroom. Her bathtub. Filled with water and ice. She turned to the open doorway knowing she would find Dan nearby. He stood in the hallway with the bottom half of his legs soaked and wearing rubber boots and gloves. Hasty safety measures when dealing with someone who lashed out with electricity, not a bad idea. She glanced down and noted he had tossed her in fully dressed and the water was already turning a distinctly unpleasant shade of gray with swirls of bright red blood near her feet.

“Ice? Really?” She sank deeper into the bath, not bothering to fight the shivering and reveling in the numbing sensation edging its way along her bruised and bruising skin and tense muscles.

“You like ice packs, this seemed more efficient,” he hesitantly stepped toward the doorway, but stopped when she raised her hand, not sure what she was going to do.

“I’m still angry at you,” he merely nodded, expecting that from her, “a little better warning next time?” He shrugged and nodded again. He would remember for a week. Maybe two. They both knew it, but he would try. “Any chance there could be warm towels and PJs after this?” she gestured to the water.

“As you wish,” he said then laughed when a bar of soap bounced off the door jamb next to his head. The door shut as he moved away from her bathroom and she heard the dryer turn on a minute later. After what seemed like an hour later, but was probably only twenty minutes she was dry, warm, and tending to her leg. A quick glance at a clock told her it was nearly 6am. On Thursday. She had that bio test in four hours. Shit. Dan saw her shoulders slump and took a guess, “Test today?” She nodded sullenly, finishing up with the ace wrap. “You’re young, but you’ll need to choose soon, Tanya. You can’t continue to live two different lives.”

“I know. I just… I don’t know yet, Dan.”

Tanya hissed when she felt something connect hard with her leg. Her left leg. Her still shredded left leg. She looked to the side where Diane was glaring at her. “What was that for?” she mouthed silently. “You fell asleep. Again,” she hissed. Tanya just sighed then looked back at her test. She had just started the long answer questions and only had fifteen minutes left. Right. She could do this. What is nociception? Describe its pathway and process using as much detail as possible. She giggled to herself, if there was something she was intimately aware of at this moment, it was the perception of pain. Putting pencil to paper she began to write, the motions of her hand matching time to the throbbing in her leg.

#creative writing #creative fiction class #action #fantasy #urban fantasy #magic #short story #one shot #i think it's a one shot #who knows i may expand it later

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