capeandcowllogs | Where your eyes don't go a part of you is hovering

Where your eyes don't go a part of you is hovering

WHO: Everyone who's signed up for the Shadow Märchen plot and the people who get involved with them.
WHERE: All over the City.
WHEN: February 1st through February 9th. Specify the dates when you tag in.
WARNINGS: Probably a lot, since this is a festival of dark sides.
SUMMARY: The City plays host to a twisted theater of the mind as numerous imPorts become darkened, monstrous versions of themselves.
FORMAT: To be chosen by the thread-starters.

The start of a new month shouldn't mean anything special for the City--but this time, it does. Even if it's only because of an accident.

The pull of despair within each victim might come from nowhere, or it might seem like the most natural extension in the world of their current circumstances. However it manifests, the results come quickly: one living shadow all too eager to broadcast its nature far and wide, attached to a monstrous witch that warps the world around it in order to feel at home.

Where once there was an ordinary building, there now might lurk the entrance to a distorted dimension controlled by one of those witches. Where once there was a friend, there's probably now a monster. Can't find the friend that's become this monster? Don't worry too much about missing the chance--the familiars of their witch roam the streets looking for those who can be dragged into the labyrinth.

But take heart: what's within is still the same familiar person...in its own way.

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"No." The word was more of a growl than a response. Nepeta's face was hard and just daring the empress shadow to try and make them obey. Maybe it wasn't the wisest course of acion, but she didn't care - she was too angry.

"Whatever you are, you aren't what Feferi's supposed to be. You're awful and wrong. And if we have to tear you apart to save her then we will."

And again that voice sounded - younger, more familiar, and not coming out of the Shadow's mouth but more the very air around them. No! Stop it! Leave them alone!

You're not me!

With that, the shadow began to laugh - and laugh, and laugh. "No, no, no, I'm not you; I'm not her! I'm me now, and I'm so much more than that pathetic cuttlefish could ever hope to be!" She cackled, striking the water with her trident - and it exploded up in a waterspout, obscuring her from vision and washing over the girls. Stay upright, you guys!

Once the other voice broke in, Kanaya had heard enough. This wasn't Feferi, only some monster holding her captive. Her chainsaw's motor roared to life, and the moment the trident was raised, she sprang for the attack, just in time to be caught up in the waterspout and flung across the room.

"Kanaya!"

Nepeta took a step back, heels digging into the ground of the pillar to keep herself from being swept away in the sudden wave. Her claws flashed at her side, ready to use, as she squinted into the column of water. She wanted to strike but wasn't willing to move until she could ascertain where everyone was and just what the hell was going to happen now. This seemed to be a day of unpleasant surprises, after all.

A laugh - a long, low laugh that was darker, lower, more resonant than before. When the waterspout faded, the empress was gone - in her place was a grotesque half-battleship half-troll, golden cages hanging from the tentacles in her hair.

Stay with me, precious little wigglers. Stay with me for eternity.

After bouncing off the wall, Kanaya had to pull herself back up to the surface. There was no fighting her coughing anymore, she had to get the water out, be ready on her feet, prepared to face that... What the hell is that thing?

"Oh my god," Nepeta mumbled lowly, briefly awestruck by the colossus floating before her. It was nothing compared to the Black King they'd faced, of course, but that battle had been waged after days of preparation with more than one other person to rely on in the fight. This was going to be a hell of a lot more difficult.

But there was no going back now, no desire to retreat. They'd come here to bring Feferi back, and if they had to fell this monster to do that then that's all there was to it. Gritting her teeth, she steeled herself and charged forward with claws extended. Time to test for weak spots.

A deep resonating laugh, dark and monstrous, that didn't come from the Shadow so much as from all around. I am a Shadow, the True Self. Face me, little wigglers. You'll be staying here for eternity.

As Nepeta dove in for her, one of the golden cages came in, swinging around at the end of a tentacle - its door was open, and it clearly meant to capture her.

Hacking out the last of the water, Kanaya began hopping across the pillars to close the distance, returning her weapon to her hand.

"You say that so often, but never give a thought to the actual truth of the words within! Namely, their lack, as the lie therein will be proven by the time we're done!"

Given the cord a strong tug, the chainsaw roared to life as Kanaya dropped into one of her portals. She had them staggered, one going far in the air and dropped her a ways into the next, which used the momentum from her fall to launch her into an attack at the witch's underside.

Nepeta didn't have much to say to the Shadow - the time for conversation with it was over and she'd never been particularly skilled at pithy battle cries. Instead she focused on the battle at hand, gripping onto the open cage door and using it to swing herself up on top of it. Her peripherals briefly registered a flash as Kanaya began her own assault; to facilitate that she began running up the tentacle attached to the cage, claws digging into the appendage as she moves. Even if she doesn't manage to deal significant damage this time, she hoped to provide a distraction for Kanaya.

Nepeta's claws drew tyrian purple blood from the tentacle, and the witch shrieked - not a sound that came from the figure in front of them, but a sound that came from the very walls around them. The tentacle recoiled with Nepeta on it, trying to fling her off into the air - hold on tight!

As for Kanaya's strike, when her chainsaw struck home underwater, it would find that the belly of the witch was as hard as an actual ship's hull - and metal would spark on metal as she tried to cut through it. She might have been making some progress, but it was very slow going.

And there were tentacles reaching under the boat for her now, too.

The blowback from Kanaya's initial knocked her away. She had to swim against her own momentum to move in for a repeated, futile swipe, and so she'd only made her third by the time the tentacles came down to voice their own protests. Her attention is wrested away by having to knock away the cages that kept trying to trap her. She wasn't going to get very far at this rate.

Seeing herself stuck in a stalemate, she pulled her weapon back into its specibus and kicked off the bottom of the hull, swimming around one of the cages and grabbing onto the tentacle behind it, sinking in her fangs.

The sudden flight into the air wasn't entirely unexpected - what else would a tentacle do when it wanted something off? - but it still made Nepeta's stomach lurch unpleasantly at the sudden motion. She twisted a hand to dig one of her claws deeper into the witch's flesh to secure her position as they went flying, the other claw flashing as she stabbed indiscriminately at the tentacle. It was easier to try and make this activity too painful for the witch to continue than to get a foolproof position during all of the undulations, although she was certainly attempting to wrap her legs around it whenever the opportunity was presented.

Tyrian blood billowed out into the water from the puncture wounds made by Kanaya's fangs; the tentacle began to pull back from under the boat, trying to take her with it out of the water.

Meanwhile, the other tentacle, the one currently the target of Nepeta's predations, was thrashing wildly, shrieks emanating from the very walls around them as it tried to fling her as high as possible into the air.

The tentacle broke the surface with Kanaya still attached, and though it writhed through the air and beat her against the hull, she didn't let go. The blood pouring out of the wound she'd opened had already filled her throat, and it's been over two years since she'd last tasted something like it. It wasn't the flavor she remembered so much as what it was like that first time, her first feeding, and how vital it made her, like a dead body filling with the lost life of her friend.

This wasn't that time again, but something in the sensation was still overwhelming, distracting, and she couldn't help but drink as deeply as the tendril would flow, any strike she suffered repairing not long after from that same meal.

Although she was managing to hold onto the frantic tentacle well enough for the moment, Nepeta knew that she wouldn't be able to manage it forever. Expending her energy on a single tendril isn't practical and so her eyes began to rove around, searching for some way to move this fight onto another piece of the shadow that would do some real damage. As she's jerked upwards once more an idea strikes her; hopefully it was a good one.

As the tentacle hit the zenith of its upward arc Nepeta pulled the claw anchoring her to the appendage out, hurling her upwards several feet more before she began to fall at a startling pace. She shifted her body as the wind rushed past her face, moving herself so that she was aimed for the shadow's head. Time to force a little more action.

And the witch continued to flail and shriek at every wound, long tentacles trying to lash at Nepeta as the troll latched onto the body's "head," long tentacles trying to shake Kanaya off, but it wasn't having much effect.

So in front of Nepeta, the head opened a mouth, previously unseen - and hideously large for its size - and she made a sound.

She glubbed.

It was hardly the Vast Glub that wiped a race out in the blink of an eye, but the sound that passed over the two was a powerful psychic shockwave in its own right.

It was probably lucky that neither of them were psychic. That didn't make it easy by any means, but how much worse it would be if either was particularly sensitive to it is probably best not to think about.

As the sound tore through Kanaya's mind, her reflexes decided on her first response for her. She bit down. As the part of the tentacle she was latched onto tore off in her mouth, and her hands moved to clutch at her temples, there was nowhere for her to go but down, landing with a thud against the hull and trying to get a handle on her thoughts.

Nepeta may have been more mentally hardy than some of her friends, but that hardly offered her much protection when she was so close to the wave's point of origin. She let out an involuntary hiss as the noise seemed to echo through her very bones, losing her hard-fought grip on the shadow's head and sliding down into the mass of tentacles below. Somewhere through the haze of pain her mind pushed the rest of her body into acting, albeit too late; a clawed hand shot out to slow her descent, but she was already in a more precarious position than before as the pain ebbed from her head. Shit.

And the Shadow laughed, once more echoing out through the walls. You poor pathetic little grassbloods, coming so close and yet so far. You'll stay with me, pets. You'll stay with me forever.

Those definitely were cages swinging on tentacles towards the two of them, doors open and ready to clang shut if they weren't quick enough to dodge.

Kanaya tried dragging herself back to her feet, but she felt light-headed, like parts of her head were stitching themselves back together and weren't quite finished yet. She looks up at the face of the witch, seeing Nepeta hang and the tentacles coming toward her. She had to stop it.

But it was too late, the cage had already closed around Kanaya herself. She grabbed the bars, shaking them, forcing them, doing whatever she could to try to bend or break them. It was no good. She'd be no better off than the guards they saw posted at the gate if she couldn't get out of here.

The commotion below caught Nepeta's attention just in time, shaking enough of the mental haze away to allow her to dodge the cage swinging in towards her - well, almost. The barred door swung shut on her hand as she rolled away, flesh and metal meeting with a dull thump. She grunted in pain but willed the rest of her body to move through it, swinging her free hand up to grip onto the cage as she worked to extricate herself in one piece.

"Kanaya! Are you all right?" she called down anxiously, sparing a glance to see if her friend had made any progress with her own difficulties. There was nothing she could do until she'd finished dealing with her own situation, something which didn't sit well at all.

Luckily for them, as the cage gates swung shut the Shadow seemed more content just to cackle madly. Kanaya and Nepeta were stuck on the opposite sides of the golden birdcage; its door seemed to lock without any appreciable mechanism to hold it shut, and its bars were just close enough to not be able to squeeze through.

It swayed back and forth as she laughed, paying no attention to the little trolls before her.

Edited 2013-04-08 04:25 (UTC)

It took Kanaya a moment to catch her bearings, to recover fully from the psychic barrage, but once she had, she found a better clarity to meet her situation with. She knew what was still important here.

"Keep moving!" she shouted to Nepeta. "Don't let yourself be caught!" Taking in her surroundings in that small cage, she was relieved to find that it hadn't sprung any nastier surprises on her. At least not yet. She didn't intend to stick around to see if that might change, she had ideas than the shadow's insistence that her imprisonment would be eternal.

Opening a portal beneath her, she dropped through the cage's floor and down onto the deck of the battleship that made of the shadow's body. As she made a rapid charge toward the torso's base, she drew her weapon once more. Maybe she could chop the whole thing down, if she cut deep enough.

"Right!" Nepeta shot back with a nod, grimacing slightly as she finally freed her hand from its painful position. The dull throb was something of a blessing, the constant ache reminding her just why she was here and clearing out the remnants of the mental fog the glub had ushered in. It was time for her to go on the attack again.

Kanaya seemed to be sharing the same sentiments from the looks of things, making Nepeta's own decisions a relatively easy one - scrambling up the slick sides of the cage she began clambering through the sea of tentacles to begin her assault on the shadow's head anew. It was about to sorely regret ignoring their presence; now it would have to deal with a double assault.

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Where your eyes don't go a part of you is hovering

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