Something Wicked This Way Comes

[stretchy_girl]

WHO: THE SUBWAY MONSTERS Gemini & YOU (Open)
WHERE: The Maurtia Falls Subway Tunnels
WHEN: Throughout October
WHAT: You've seen the news, there could be monsters in the tunnels! Is your character bold enough to investigate for themselves?
WARNINGS: Grizzly creatures, terror, violence.

[The Maurtia Falls Subway Blue Line, a system still under construction according to official announcements, but in practice abandoned for years after the funds mysteriously dried up. Recently the city has started to route telecoms cables through the tunnels and that's when the trouble started.

Access is via an old metal door at street level, the old rusty padlock and police tape little obstacle to anyone who really wants to get in. When you descend to platform level you'll find metal-lined tunnel walls with dusty concrete floors, the odd stagnant puddle of oily water splattering at your feet, your footsteps otherwise echoing eerily amid the quiet. As you wander deeper, heading along the dusty tracks, construction equipment starts to litter the tunnels, some of it old, some of it new, and in places still running; a sole spotlight casting it's beam up to the tunnel ceiling from where it's fallen. Someone or something knocked it over, the workers perhaps as they fled?

After awhile in the dark you start to feel it, the hairs on the back of your neck standing on end, that telltale feeling that you’re being watched. But the tunnels are empty, the drip-drip of leaking water through a distant hole the only sound...

Something somewhere in the shadows is moving, the faintest of slithers echoing through the dark, following you as you move. Whatever is making it is CLOSE. You can’t pinpoint where, for every time you swing your torch around there’s no sign of anyone or anything. But one thing’s for sure; you’re not alone down here.]

[ooc: If you'd like your character terrorised by a specific creature please put it in your top-level reply title. Other than that I'll use my imagination, and images from this page.]

Comments

[pummelgranite]

[ Torch? Who needs a torch when the Underground is your kingdom? Persephone walks through the utter blackness unperturbed, and honestly mostly looking at her phone screen. It's not that she's down here looking, so much as she just happens to be taking a non-euclidian shortcut through this particular section of Blue Line. The scrambling in the dark doesn't bother her- rat, monster, vagrant- all citizens of the underground. If she senses a little predatory hostility, it's about as much of a concern as a sock puppet account giving her shit on Bwitter.

She keeps walking. ]

[stretchy_girl]

[This is now the third such encounter Gemini has had, but this one is different. Gemini herself can't see in the pitch darkness, only navigating the pitch-black tunnels thanks to the map she's memorised and a number of trips taken with her own flashlight. But now here is a woman who not only seems to be able to see perfectly, but also is obviously completely unafraid of the dark. Not only that but she seemed familair somehow, but where had she seen this woman before?

Turning that over in what passed for her head, given that she was currently spiraling along some of the cabling lining the tunnel walls, no thicker than a cable herself so that she could freeze and blend with the others whenever the woman looked her way, Gemini went over her options, eventually deciding on a test.

She diverts into a side tunnel, racing ahead and then re-emerging into the tunnel well ahead of the woman. The rubbery snake of goo that was Gemini expands, stretching out into a sheet to block the tunnel passage, gaining thickness and consistency, and when Persephone arrives she'll find a grimy old concrete wall barring the tunnel path. The stranger seems to know exactly where she's going, so why not put that to the test?

[pummelgranite]

[ At the wall she does stop. Then looks behind her, to check her path, then comes back to the wall. ]


One-Two-Three-Four


[ She clicks her fingers and a couple dozen magical god-vines are busting out of the ground to level that wall. ]

[prostheticbody]

[The Major usually avoids rumors of monsters and the like, not because she doubts their veracity (nothing is beyond belief in a world of imPorts, after all), but because it's generally outside her wheelhouse. But in Maurtia Falls, it wouldn't be long before the criminal element decided to use these nameless fears to their advantage. Best to root out the truth before things get out of hand.

The subway is certainly an eerie locale, but the Major isn't easily frightened. She walks along, her flashlight illuminating the path ahead of her. When she comes to the disturbed equipment, she assumes a more cautious stance, her flashlight in one hand and a drawn pistol in the other. It's probably nothing, but she can't deny the feeling that she isn't alone in the dark tunnels.]

[stretchy_girl]

[The whole point of driving the maintenance team away had been to keep people out of the tunnels, but there were always a few fools who needed to have the lesson drilled into them, and apparently this woman is one of them.

The flashlight beam passes over a panel of tunnel cladding much like any other, but once the Major has passed it starts to bulge unnaturally, the viscous blob of rusty metal slowly and silently conforming into another shape entirely as it begins to move after the Major.

Towering the height of the tunnel, the now fully-formed creature slithers nearer, huge clawed hands raising to strike as it darts forward, letting out a bestial roar.

[prostheticbody]

[Well shit. It looks like the rumors have more than a little truth to them. She backs up, unsure how effective she's going to be against the giant monstrosity. Still, she shows a remarkable amount of poise, even in the face of a terror beyond her ken.

Still, if it bleeds, we can kill it. She fires off a few shots from her pistol aimed at the creature's head. And she's still got a few surprises left for it if this doesn't work.]

[darkpants_warmfeeling]

[Someone has to investigate whatever nasty things have been reported in the subway, and today that someone is Jacob. He's been an imPort too long to doubt the reports of the workers, and he's been a soldier too long to doubt what his instincts tell him as he descends deeper into the gloom of the tunnels. He's being watched.

Jacob is carrying a gun, and decked out in his superhero armour, but he still feels vulnerable as he turns and shines a flashlight around the damp floor, looking for the source of that slither. He won't let that stop him, though.]

[stretchy_girl]

[That slither follows Jacob for a good five minutes before stopping abruptly when Jacob is in exactly the right spot to attack. Gemini knows exactly who this is and doesn't want any RISE rats in her tunnels, she'll enjoy making an example of this one.

In the darkness something big begins to emerge, a shadow growing within the wider darkness to fill the height of the tunnel. Muscles, razor sharp claws, a maw of huge teeth, fur, and worst of all a deep hellish growl as the creature moves forward, claws generating sparks and an awful screech as it draws them along the metal walls.]

[darkpants_warmfeeling]

[Jacob sees it. His jaw clenches, and he mutters beneath his breath. He half-crouches, bracing his legs.]

Oh hell no...

[He draws his gun, but doesn't aim it yet. He's dealt with werewolves before, and knows most of them are just people when they're not attacking people.]

I don't know if you can understand me, but if you can, you gotta step back. Right now.

[beneathbluerafters]

[ Klarion strides through the abandoned tunnels like anyone else would walk through the cereal aisle of a grocery store. He grew up underground, and is used to the dark and the damp, and between himself and Teekl, he's absolutely, bulldozingly confident that there's nothing down here that could possibly be scarier or more dangerous than he is, no matter what sort of stories pop up in the news.

Besides, he likes subways. When he'd escaped from his hometown, his pursuers had been hit by a subway train, and coming up the stairs of the subway station to an entirely new world had been a major turning point in his life. ]

All I'm saying is that it's rude to speak with your mouth full, even when you aren't speaking verbally. [ He's arguing with Teekl, who is wandering ahead in search of rats. ] It's the principle of the thing, how am I supposed to listen to you when you have half a pigeon sticking out of your mouth?