The Shimmer

[maskormods]

WHO: Everyone Interested
WHERE: De Chima
WHEN: July 20th - 27th
WHAT: The Shimmer modplot - OOC Info Here
WARNINGS: Body Horror, loss of control, disorientation, monsters/monstrosities, creepy shit in general. This is a horror plot based on the movie Annihilation, please continue at your own discretion.

DAY ONE

It happens like an explosion in slow motion. One moment, De Chima is peaceful, and quiet, the morning slowly chugging along at a leisurely pace. The next, bubbling broiling mass that looks like oil slick is suddenly expanding out wards, engulfing everything it touches. Those that are caught in the initial wave feel very little, despite how terrifying the actual moment might have been. There's no heat, no force. If feels like passing through air. After that, they remember nothing. Time passes with no memory, and by the time they are cognisant, they are so disoriented they have no idea where they are, or how to get out. Any time they get near the edge of the shimmer, they lose memory again, and later find themselves somewhere else.

Outside, the expansion of the shimmer slows down to a crawl once the radius of the bubble is around five blocks wide, the wall of shifting colour and gas arching high up into the sky. The city goes into lock down, the police in a panic, and a massive evacuation is declared around the edges. Emergency services send several teams into it - some in full hazmat suits - to rescue people inside, but none of them come back out again. No cell phone signals, no wireless, and no radio seems to penetrate the haze. Everything within seems to have been locked out from the rest of the world. Other than a couple garbled signals as heard, nothing escapes.


INTO THE SHIMMER

When you first step into the Shimmer, it looks like you're about to pass through a moving, shifting wall - only it doesn't block your way. It feels like nothing tougher than gas, despite the fact that you know even radio signals don't come out of it. The next moment, you don't know how far you've walked, or where you are - you've lost track of time completely. You check your communicator - no connection to the network outside the Shimmer, but there are strange posts from within. And it gives you a time. You've been here for a whole day. Why don't you remember it?

Within the Shimmer, the world is beautiful. What used to be drab grey buildings and streets are filled with vegetation that has grown far too fast for you to understand how it got there in the first place. The sunlight refracts into rainbows, all the buildings are overgrown, and the animals don't seem quite right.

Everything is growing too fast - if you stand and stare at one of the rapidly mutating plants for long enough, you'll actually see it grow in real time.

You're changing. Small things at first, but the longer you stay in the shimmer, the more you change. And you don't know how to stop it.


THE CENTRE OF THE SHIMMER

( ooc: Sign-ups now closed, chosen characters: Will Solace, Nico di Angelo, Ruka, Laurie, and Kirie. This thread will be partially GM'd. Please feel free to use the OOC post to make a plotting thread for this. )

It's hard to tell, now, what the building once was. A warehouse, maybe. Low, one storey, but now looks like the laws of physics have completely abandoned it. Tendrils snake out from the brick walls like stone branches, swirling in impossible shapes before they plunge into the ground. There are trees, here, only they are sprouted straight out of the surrounding tarmac and glisten like melted oil. The doors resemble doors, still, for the most part. Only around the door frame are large pointed spikes, somewhere between thorns and shark teeth. It is not an inviting place. For the five imPorts that somehow manage to survive long enough to reach this threshold, it is not an inviting sight.

However, there is a strange power that hums in the air. Almost throbbing with energy, like a heart beat that vibrates through the very stone of the Earth. There's something  here, deep within. Something that must be stopped. 
 

Comments

Frederick Chilton | July 24th - July 27th | ota

[slightlyoffchilt]

01 The Attempted Rescue | entering the Shimmer

He had been asked, personally, by De Chiman officials. Nearly begged, Chilton would recount, he was nearly begged to enter that bizarre, iridescent shimmering expanse so that he might help stabilize any highly traumatized survivors. Of course he would — Chilton smiled directly into the journalist’s camera filming him — of course he would venture within, of course he would act as a mental health expert. He was Doctor Frederick Chilton, famed ImPort psychiatrist.

Now at the edge of the Shimmer, now squinting as the rising surge of terror crawled upwards from the depth of his stomach, he was beginning to question his confidence. People have been missing, he reasoned. This was important. Highly publicized. A glance at the filming crew behind him, an awkward little wave, and then he stepped forward into the mythical, pastel shining abyss.

Hours, walking from the edge of the Shimmer’s parameter and into this uncanny snow globe. He had spent hours without seeing another human being — only what had perhaps been a fox, maybe, he couldn’t be sure with its mildewing fern-like tail…

A snap of twigs, and he whipped around. Dropped his backpack.

“Hello? Hello — I am here. To help you.”

02 Doctor Chilton, Mr. Hyde | deep within the Shimmer

Something was wrong with his eyes. His eye. His good eye. It took in too much light — he couldn’t know how the pupil had grown rounder, widened. How the iris had turned a golden brown. His teeth, too sharp. His ears pricked, pointed, alert — lain back, whenever he heard something behind him.

“Oh god, oh god, oh god, god, no.”

Thinner calves, too thin. Knees that could bend backwards now. Vocal chords that whined to a frequency he never could have heard before ever stepping foot into this shimmering damnation.

Chilton was running. Tearing at his own arms with strangely knife-like fingers. Fleeing, deeper. Tears blinding his good, inhuman eye.

“Oh god please!”

He needed to run, he needed to run, he needed to run.

01

[flightforfreedom]

Poe Dameron still mostly looked like himself. He didn't feel right, and he couldn't remember where he was or what had happened to Bodhi, but he still looked like himself.

BB-8, however, did not look like himself. The droid was no long rolling, instead was scuttling alongside Poe on two dozen tiny centipede-like legs, hissing like a cat at anything that wandered by the two of them, trying to protect Poe. Poe didn't seem that concerned about it, and looked more like he was wandering through the underbrush in a slow sort of daze.

He stopped dead when he heard the voice, turning his head a little too quickly to see Chilton. His eyes were a strange colour - clear and blue rather than their usual deep brown.

BB-8 scuttled in front of Poe's knees and hissed at Chilton, while the pilot blinked at him.

"Doc? That you?"

ruka | ota

[dragony]

She doesn't know how many days it's been.

It's a thought that strikes her like surfacing, like the dryness of air and the warmth of sunlight after being underwater, but before the lungs take in the first breath. It's a transition, superficial, without shock. She doesn't know how many days it's been. It's been days. Maybe? Since she crossed the barrier. Dropping out of a daydream and forgetting the passing fancy. She doesn't know how she got here, or how long it took. Where was she?

She was—

/////

↭
— shielding her face from the sunlight. It's too bright, and it breaks into pieces, and she's stepping over the coiling rose vines that rope off the doorway to a now-crumbling 7-Eleven, a height up past her knees. The street here used to be brick, she thinks, but through the lines of grout spring grasses and flowers, thin connected rows that erase the red beneath them. She throws a glance over her shoulder, looking back up at the business sign — it flickers with reserve electricity, as do the roses growing out of it. She looks again through the doorway — vines are climbing and coiling through the product shelves, and the refrigerator doors are all broken, and. When was the last time she's eaten? Or had something to drink? She doesn't know what day it is, or what time it is, with the sun so unreliable above her.

While she's here, it's better to stock up, right?

She hikes her legs up to cross back over the thorny barrier, heading back inside.

//////

↯
— staring at a bathroom sink. White porcelain, running water, and she's spitting out something that feels more solid than fluid, salty and coarse and uncomfortably heavy. It lands in the sink. Another couple of wracking coughs. Something too rigid to be phlegm hits the back of her throat. She spits that out, too. The white porcelain is splattered with black, thin veiny rivulets that break apart under the running water and wash away, but the sickly curls of brown and white mushroom-flesh remain, rippled the way paper burns.

Her hands, bare, are clutching the edges of the sink; one wipes at her mouth, but she doesn't taste blood. Her shoulders are shaking.

"What the fuck," she mutters, staring at the water, and the black not-ink, and whatever the fuck it is she just coughed out, and her voice rises without thought. "What the fuck?"

She doesn't look up, but she speaks automatically—"A little help, here!"—as though knowing someone can hear her.

Someone is here. Some thing.

//////

↺
— trying to calm her horse.

In retrospect, summoning a beast called Sunlight Unicorn into a realm where sunlight reacts strangely was a poor move. She doesn't remember doing it, but it must not have been that long ago (or maybe it was, and she's done it more than once, again and again as the day-hour-nights went by. Its poor fiery mane is a mess of not-mane, the hairs fused together into different proteins entirely, where once it seemed like fire is now strips and braids of wet skin, brown and green and peach and olive and dusky gray; the illusion of sunlight's glow beneath its coat refracts into little rainbows that skitter across its body like subdermal insects.

Her fingers comb into the skin-braids and she tugs, trying to get the beast to slow its run — even though she can hear, can feel the hearts of something pursuing, but she can feel a heart alight with fear. Someone else's.

With eyes closed she follows fear, twisting her hands in the unicorn's mane to get it to go the proper direction, until finally they both slow in the greater field of danger.

Here is your rescuer: a young woman with green hair, streaked with gray, eyes mismatched in her face with one a pale blue in the iris, the other baring a slitted pupil in searing yellow sclera. Her arms are bare, but covered in a hodgepodge of dozens of tattoos, brilliantly colored, a hundred little pieces of ink patched together like fractal scales. She rides a white horse, shimmering with refracted color, bluebells sprouting along the lengths of its legs. The horse—a unicorn, really—dances on its hooves, unwilling to stay still; on its back, Ruka tugs again at its flesh-braid hair.

"You alright?" There's something wrong with her voice, but it's hard to tell what. "It's dangerous here."

She can still feel it.

//////

—she was looking for answers.

Any other time, and she might have stayed home. Stayed safe. Ignored it, and hoped for the best, and maybe another world would be devoured by the ender of things, and Ruka doesn't want to regret inaction.

She has to get to the center of this.

↯

[prayercycles]

Luckily, compared to the things starting to emerge from this place, the person who emerges when Ruka calls out looks somewhat innocuous. He even appears to have an eye missing himself- his right is bandaged over, and his left looks strange, akin to a fish's eye. At the very least, he otherwise seems unmutated, minus some bloodstains on his clothes growing a bit of suspicious-looking moss.

Fortunato doesn't seem to notice. In fact, he seems largely listless, having been here since this begun. Why'd he walk in? He doesn't remember. Has he met someone yet? Has he seen anyone...?

It appears her yelling has scared him, somewhat, though he felt badly enough to move forward. He's giving her a nervous look, but he's holding something- medical supplies he stuffed in a bag when this ordeal began.

"Is..." He meant to ask if something's wrong, but of course it is. "A-are you hurt?"

Ash Starmer/Green Newman | ota | cw: extreme body horror

[subroutined]

He'd been exploring when it started. He doesn't sleep, so he often goes out at all hours of the night, walking around his city or others while the rest of the world is in bed. He'd found a bench on a hill in a park to sit and watch the sunrise. He'd stayed there through the morning, until suddenly there was a loud noise and the sun looked... Different. Like there was a kaleidoscope of colors around it.

Mentally, he checked the network, as he often does when calamity strikes. Something's clearly wrong, when he can't access the larger network outside of this area of De Chima. Something is even more wrong, when his clock function tells him he's been sat on this bench for over a day.

He wanders through the streets, in awe at the overgrown plants that have sprung up. Flowering vines with flowers of all different colors... He hears animal sounds coming from the wrong animals. The chirping of birds coming from rats in an alley. A sharp howl and the flutter of wings. His footsteps become erratic, like his body doesn't want to move. But that's wrong, too, because his body is moving... On the inside. He can feel his inner mechanisms shifting and churning, pressing against his now verdant colored skin.

He has to stop. He can't keep going like this. How long has he been walking? He doesn't know. He leans against a brick wall which has been overtaken by strange ivy-like moss. He's crying. He doesn't know how, but he's crying dewy sap from eyes that aren't working the way they used to.

By the time anyone comes near enough to hear his sobs, the bottom half of his body is gone. All that's left is a disembodied torso, connected to the wall with vines and wires. He's obviously delirious, a constant barrage of viscous tears streaming from his eyes. "De Chima was supposed to be safe," he says, voice shaking, "This isn't Maurtia Falls. I live here." Somehow, he's still living here. But it's a different sort of life, one he was never built for.

[drivesadesk]

Jonathan hears the pleading voice, and he goes toward it, wanting to see if there's any way he can help. As he approaches, however, he realizes with dawning horror that he has no idea what he can possibly do.

Jonathan's been heavily mutated by this point himself. His eyes are now deer eyes, there's a huge rack of antlers growing out of his head, and his long legs taper down into deer hooves. But he's lucky, he realizes. He can still move freely, even if his body is strange and unfamiliar to him.

"I..." he utters as he comes closer. "I'm sure there's a way to fix this."

They had always found a way to fix things when the world went crazy before, right?

ota prompts marked

[fauxmarth]

o1. arrival (ota)
He wasn't at the clinic, and the clinic wasn't here, but the ill omens from the seers on the Network drew her faster to this anomaly than was wise. Definitely unwise, she knew, even in passing through the oily colors that clouded the view ahead. She holds her breath, closes her eyes, and then steps forward.

Before she opens her eyes again, she hears the distant clopping of hooves on cobblestone. It's gone the moment she looks, and forgotten just as fast as the world around her takes her breath away.

"Gods...What sort of magic has done this?" It has to be magic -- the colors! And the overgrowth? Lucina carefully paces toward a vehicle, where curling tree roots have taken hold and clutched it tightly. She can see the colorful mosses crawling across the bark -- growing, fast. It gives her an ominous chill.

She ought to go back. Certain of that, she turns and nearly gasps aloud with the fright of seeing--

You?



o2. father (closed to poe)
The days cannot be counted, nor the time or place anymore. She's forgotten she can even fly -- which had been so useful in trying to seek Fortunato out. She's forgotten that cause, too, because in finding him? Something strange and wrong had happened. She can't recall it properly -- it's...mixed, garbled in her mind. A brother -- her family? Something had gone terribly wrong, they had escaped...something. The harder she thinks upon it the more difficult it becomes to piece together, and the longer she tries, the more the pieces change.

These overgrown streets are alien to her, she knows that. There's no reference for them in her memory to tell her where she is, or why. It's dreadfully frightening. Lonely. Quiet, save for the ambiance of a distorted nature, which only makes it more dreadful.

I know I shouldn't be here, she thinks. But I...I don't know where I should.

Rounding another mossy street corner, she squints out into the cascading, refracted light upon the street, shielding her eyes. The shape she sees is too brightly silhouetted by the light to discern a face -- she can only make tell of a taller man's posture, hastening toward her.

Her heart skips a beat. She's had a dream like this before, many times as a child. Is he finally home...?



o3. carapace (closed to jaime)
I shouldn't have left him. I shouldn't have left him. I shouldn't have left him.

It's the only consistent thought she's had in hours. Days? Weeks? It's unclear beyond I shouldn't have left him. The rest is maddening: she doesn't feel safe in her very skin. It's raw, red in the places she's clawed at it, when the insects came forth and skittered out -- the memory of that is enough to make her gag again, choking her between her sobbing coughs.

I shouldn't have left him!

She watched her father succumb to overgrowth and pain and was ordered to flee for her own life. What a disgrace. She shouldn't have left him! And now? Now, it-- There's just...

Lucina winces and hisses through her teeth, peeling off a gossamer flake of skin off her knuckles and shaking it off into the trickling water that's bubbled up between cracks of concrete on the floor of this overgrown warehouse. It's musty and moldy, dimly lit through the cracks of glass left to shed light between dense maple and oak leaves that have taken over. It still carries her hiccuping voice throughout, despite this.

I shouldn't have left him...!



o4. risen (ota)
Something that may have been a rat or a squirrel (or both? or more -- it has...molars) climbs down from a higher place, chittering with an unusual tone, and then hissing, like a snake. Before it can strike at your head, however, a sharp blade sings out and skewers it on the branch it had clung to, leaving it to writhe and squeal until the spine breaks, and it sags.

Lucina holds her sword firm, waiting until the last toe twitches before yanking it free, sending the carcass elsewhere. Her eyes aren't even on it, seeing past and through whatever's ahead of her. One isn't even her eye -- it's a ghostly green where soft blue ought to be, while the noble insignia that she's always borne in her left eye seems to glow as if to not be left out in being an unusual sight.

They're both ringed red from weeping, where the skin has dried and cracked into unusual patterns, flaking in places with a gossamer transparency. Her mouth, while drawn taut, has a pale discoloration that only highlights darker blemishes at the corners.

Parts of her body has hardened like a shell, patterned in places like an insect, gone rough at the joints with toothlike protrusions. Her hair has overgrown and dangles in forgotten tresses, colored odd when the light hits in particular ways. The same is true for her nails and parts of her remaining clothing, softly clinking like glass or metal. The only thing that seems right is Falchion -- the sword, blessed and unchanged.

All except the hilt: her hand, fused to it, soft as the leather it's clung to so fiercely.

"Be careful," she says, her voice a soft murmur. "Don't...expose your flesh to them."

1

[drivesadesk]

It's Jonathan. In fact, the clopping of hooves was also Jonathan, as his legs now taper into deer hooves, which went nicely with the rack of antlers he now had, as well as the large, brown deer eyes. He takes a step back when he hears her gasp, considering running off into the wilderness, but for the moment he just stares back at her with a strange, haunted expression.

Fortunato Medeiros | open prompts marked | cw: eye and body gore/horror

[prayercycles]

1, within the first day (open):

There's a voice coming from an alley near the O'Malley Clinic. Or, well, where it should be.

"...M-my cup overflows." A wet cough. "Surely your good...goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life..."

It's familiar to him. He's finishing something he started, a while ago. Some things you can't forget.

Fortunato hasn't been in this world long, and had barely left Heropa before now- but he was offered a chance to get first aid supplies here, and...you never know if your powers will stop working. You never know what can happen. He worries, if nothing else. His placement in De Chima when this disaster hit was nothing but pure bad luck, picking the wrong day out of any day he could have come by.

It hasn't been long, for him, but he could believe it's been months. Another dose of life in purgatory, imprisonment. And if it wasn't clear from the stained bandages around his eyes, recovered from the clinic and wrapped on in a panicked haze the moment he realized something was wrong- it's painful. Very painful. He'd hoped never to feel it again.

If you approach, you're likely to scare him. It's easy to tell he's shaking, and, well, it's not as if he can see you.

2. CLOSED to lucina:

It was around the time that the vines started to snare him in that he began moving. He wasn't sure where- the pain had dulled, strangely, in a way it shouldn't have, a way that a part of him knew was wrong. But he still couldn't see, and knew his clothes were likely soaked with blood, and so he'd moved, aimless, not experienced enough to find his way around without sight, shaking, feeling weak- until resting somewhere-

And then he found he could see, just a bit. Where was this? Maybe an aquarium once, part of a small exhibit. The fish no longer look like fish, but perhaps a part of him sees the mutated, strangely soft glass on the former tank still holding them and recognizes that's what it should be.

The fish's eyes have often stretched, warped. But one of his- the only one he has- is now how theirs should be, round with large pupils. Sensitive. Sensitive enough to notice something moving in the distance.

He's seen things move through brush before. The memory is hazy, but-

"...Sister?"

But that would be impossible, wouldn't it...?

3, later in the week (open):

This used to be a church. A nice one, too. Parts of it are still recognizable, stained glass windows spreading the sickeningly bright colors through the parts that still look like a building- but much of it is overgrown to the point of seeming like a forest, so that perhaps you could cut through it.

Which, if you run into him, is what Fortunato appears to be doing. He looks...better. That dried blood all over his clothes is just his own, don't worry, and don't worry about the moss growing off said blood, either. More importantly, he's got eyes- the left one those familiar with animals might recognize as fish-like, and another blue one with a strange symbol inside. He's even got a small bag, with some supplies. And he's holding a knife, to slice down plants as he goes.

You could call out to him, and it may take him a moment, but eventually he'll notice. Or if you get too close to one of the quickly-growing vines, he'll notice and brandish the weapon to help.

"I-I see it. Hold on."

2.

[fauxmarth]

Lucina's current logic is in swiftness: the faster she can move, the more she can avoid the greater oddities of this place, and the sooner she can find the one she's looking for.

There's a flaw, however. She doesn't know the face of the one she's looking for. Just his name. And even that's become harder to remember. Fortunado, Fortunado...she repeats it in her mind when she feels the itch of forgetfulness.

Having already watched a bee become something unholy, Lucina's now quite interested in leaving. But not without the one named Fortunado. So far the scant few, bewildered and coherent people about have not known the name. It's made her move faster, more frantic to get in and out of here, or...solve this riddle and spare all of them and herself this madness.

It's why the sound of a voice catches her so off-guard. Lucina stops short just as she's cleared the underbrush, eyes wide and searching until they've locked upon his...strange ones...

She gets another dreadful chill. Everything here is all wrong.

"What are you doing here? It's not safe..."

Alphonse Elric | OTA

[sonofgold]

1. Arrival

Alphonse knows it's probably a stupid idea to just go running into this... field that's suddenly appeared in De Chima, but he yields once he hears that people are trapped. He can't just ignore this- everything in him is screaming to help, and so on July 22nd, he plunges in. He tries using his alchemy at the edge of the barrier, but... nothing. He has no idea what it's made of, of course, and so deconstruction naturally wouldn't work.

He moves cautiously as he travels, stopping to make a weapon, not seeming to notice as he walks that the spear he fashions from a busted car is rusting in his hands. Any time he does craft a weapon, it crumbles, then reassembles, but as time goes on, Al's perceptions begin going haywire and he doesn't notice.


2. Healing

Whenever Alphonse comes across an injured person, he tries using his newfound healing ability, which doesn't seem to be quite the same as his alchemy. But will it work, or just cause further harm? [OOC note: I'm leaving this up to player discretion.]


3. Body horror

As time goes on and on- but does it, really? Alphonse isn't so sure any more- his desperation to do something to help rises, but his alchemy just isn't working right. At some points he can be found with scrap metal wrapped around his right arm and left leg, or lying on the ground sleeping and covered with vegetation, or followed by cats made of flowers. His awareness of this happening fades in and out as well.

2

[darkpants_warmfeeling]

When Alphonse comes to him, Jacob is sitting on a mossy lump that may have once been some kind of garbage receptacle. His head is in his hands, and he's breathing hard, exhausted. His left side is also patched with cuts, scrapes, and bruises from a bad landing, and his ankle is sprained.

He looks up and has to squint to recognize Alphonse, the new Aegis Force recruit. Alphonse may not recognize him- his face is the same, but his body has radically changed, a reverse Atlas process that has changed him from a six-pack soldier to a scrawny specimen with protruding bones.

"Alphonse...?"

Jonathan Walsh | OTA

[drivesadesk]

01 - Early on

He didn't know what happened. He didn't even know when he ended up here. Time seemed to be a blur. At some point he seemed to have set up a camp in this wilderness, but he couldn't remember doing it. Standing up, he started to have a look around, trying to orient himself, scratching his scalp as he walked. He couldn't figure out why, but his scalp wouldn't stop itching.

Wherever he was, it was some sort of strange, beautiful wilderness, but it didn't seem right for Earth. Plants bloomed with flowers of varying colors on one plant, and the creatures seemed strange and unfamiliar. Similar to Earth animals, but with traits that seemed to belong to plants and other creatures.

Wondering if he was nabbed by some other universe Porter he continued walking, until he saw a familiar looking building, covered in vines and some strange, colorful mold. As he looked around, he suddenly realized where he was.

This was De Chima.

02 – Days later

The itching had given way to antlers, and he'd ripped off the mask of his skin suit days ago, since it wasn't fitting right with his new protrusions. Since he had no chance to pass as human, he decided to stop using the rest of his skin suit as well. He couldn't remember when. Now he could no longer be said to even look Reptilian. His eyes were now large, dark brown deer eyes, and his long legs now tapered down into delicate deer hooves.

As his hooves clopped over the pavement that had numerous cracks from the plants that had grown and burst forth from it, Jonathan's large brown eyes looked around with a sad, mournful look. As he caught glimpses of himself in reflective surfaces, seeing the massive rack of antlers reminded him of Ozzie. Or, more accurately, what Ozzie had started hallucinating after one of his abductions. He was supposed to have been programmed with a memory of hitting a deer to account for the lost time, but something went wrong, and he kept seeing deer everywhere, and people around him with deer heads.

The more his body seemed to mutate and change, the more he found himself dwelling on this fact.

03 – Toward the end

This guilt gnawed at him until he couldn't bring himself to face people anymore, and now Jonathan sulked through the thickest part of the wilderness, trying to blend remain out of sight. He had some advantages in hiding now, because while he looked much like he did through a lot of this strange event, Jonathan had changed further still, and now small green twigs seemed to be bursting forth through green scaly skin and were growing out of him. If anyone spotted him now he might try to flee, unless they were in some sort of danger, in which case he'd rush headlong into potential danger to save them, feeling he owed the human race that much.

03

[minorgod]

Yato's long lost track of how long he's been inside the Shimmer; all he knows is that he's exhausted, that things keep appearing that make him fight, only to discover there's nothing there at all. He hasn't been able to reliably tell what's real and what's not for what feels like days, but it could be much longer for all he knows. His form is distorted at its edges, blurring in and out like he keeps dissolving and only barely holding himself together.

Yato doesn't so much see as sense Jonathon's there, raising his sword in that direction.

"Show yourself."

Darth Jadus | OTA

[jadus]

[[ooc: Illustrations of Stage One through Final are available here. Zoom for detail. Warning for mild, tentacle-y body horror. All phases are capable of communication. Custom prompts are available.]]

01 Something Like Charity

The first day, he watched. Paced around the perimeter, listening to it. Feeding it small biomechanical constructs. They immediately departed his control, but moved too far into the field for him to see what had happened to them. He could sense nothing from within. Or what escaped was too distorted or abstract, even for him. When he approached it from city streets, he always saw more plants twining up the faces of buildings, cracking through the streets with slow, deliberative strength.

When the first scouts and rescuers stumble out, he is there. "I am a healer. You must be examined." Both statements are true, but unconnected. He needs to know.

02 Entering the Shimmer

They were changing. Mentally, some of them. Physically, all were affected. And each was different. Intricate. Fear gripped many.

And it was irresistible. By late into the first night, he had seen enough. He took a position in the street and stood, unmoving. It drew steadily closer, the air shivering with the sound of distant thunder without a storm to spawn it. Glimmering like oil-choked water.

In minutes, it would wash over him.

03 Stage One (cw: mild body horror)

The moment it passed through him, it felt... familiar. He could sense his surroundings within the field, but probing any deeper produced nothing but noise. His first years had felt like this. Overwhelmed by the world, and unable to comrprehend it. But he had learned, and he could do so again. All he knew for certain was that this thing should not be here. But then, neither should he.

He was staring at the rising sun refracted through the energy field, standing on a street he did not recognize. He did not remember moving. Perhaps he was still close to the edge, where rescuers had been dragging victims from. When he raised a hand to examine it in the dawn light, he saw no change. But he felt an odd pull from the armored fabric of his gloves. It was fusing to his skin.

"And now to wait," his helmet said. His mouth had not opened to speak.

04 Stage Two (cw: body horror, eye damage)

His eyes rarely saw the world. Often, he did not need them, but his helmet had optical sensors hidden within its blank face, and view screens within. Those systems were working. But his eyes... Muscles twitched fitfully, but could not move.

His eyes were gone.

He tried to blink and a convulsion of pain shot through him, a small, distorted sound escaping his helmet, fingers grasping uselessly at the smooth metal. Through his new skin, he could feel the lines change. They were shifting slowly between his fingers, curving inward to pierce him. It was not armor, not carapace, it was simply becoming inflexible patches of self. The lines had smoothed, melted, invaded inward. A doubt escaped his control, ran wild in his brain: would he not be changed, but further crippled? Add more and crueler frailty to the body he'd never wanted?

He was shaking.

04 Stage Three (cw: body horror)

His legs could no longer support him, and he sat crumpled against a tree. His bones were unraveling within him, and nowhere was this more prominent than his hand. One still held a human shape, but the other...

Through what was no longer a helmet, he watched his fingers unfurl into flattened tendrils, translucent, edged with red. A few thin veins throb within, a few thin patches of muscle twitch, but few signs of humanity remain.

The plates fused to his head flex and slide against each other with quiet sounds of metal gliding against metal. Is it even a head anymore? If he tore it off, would he fall? He didn't think so. He had no eyes. No mouth. He didn't need to eat. He might not need a brain to think.

Fingers on his still-human hand dug in beneath one of the plates, into the luminous red beneath. But he wouldn't tear it off. He wanted to know what it would become. The more his body dissolved, the more his mind was freed.

Slowly, he lifted himself into the air, supporting his weight with the Force alone.

05 Final Stage

He held the shape for some time. Almost. The five-fold symmetry made it only a clumsy approximation. It was habit only. Once he realized, he rejected it utterly. And for once, his body obeyed.

He split entirely, the mask of humanity gone in a beautiful moment of unraveling. He had many limbs, a circle of them four meters across around a core of curved spines and grasping fingers. He now swam sedately through the air, rising above the newly-grown and twisted trees, into the prismatic sunlight. Twisting, reaching, dancing. Free.

Something watched his passage. He had no eyes, but he could sense it. His limbs fanned out, silently drifting down towards it. He landed gently, splayed open on a vine-covered wall close to it, and extended a tendril in its direction. Close enough to touch.

[darkpants_warmfeeling]

"What is that?"

The man beneath the tendril shrinks away, visibly frightened. Jacob Taylor isn't a bold space marine right now. Robbed of his strength, his reflexes, his vision, his health, his form is now as imperfect and vulnerable as Jadus' is refined and elegant. His weakened eyes can hardly appreciate the glory of what Jadus has become- the vision is blurry, indistinct, and unreal.

He edges away further, defenseless.

"Stay back!"

DANGER & ROBOTEAM

[mortalweapon]

Stage 1 | Entering the Shimmer (Closed to K-2SO and Connor)

[ It was a logical choice. The organics were always more susceptible when it came to these sorts of things — radiation, disease, whatever it was that was hiding beyond the glittering barrier of the thing called "the Shimmer." Human researchers would have to carry shelter, food, water, and equipment. Maybe even weapons. The three of them required neither sustenence nor rest. They were weapons in and of themselves, and they could analyze in a number of ways simply by being what they are. Connor and K-2 are the ideal teammates. Their collective knowledge of science both terrestrial and extraterristral would be hard to match. They're resilient. Efficient.

They stand more chance than any group of flesh-and-bone scientists could ever hope for.

And it's almost time to test that. Almost time to enter. A few last readings, last attempts to establish some kind of signal. Danger lingers a few feet from the Shimmer itself, scanning for any sign of communication from within. It's likely they won't be able to reach anyone out here once they go inside. And who knows the state of those who entered before them. ]

Preparing to breach the perimeter.
Personal systems are operating optimally.
Connor, K-2 — please confirm your status.
Shall we proceed?


Stage 2 | Exploration and Assessment

[ They had fanned out to cover more ground — a move made with knowledge of the risks, but time was of the essence. Their human counterparts were vulnerable, and if they were to be effective on this rescue mission, a larger area needed to be covered with greater efficiency. The Network within the Shimmer appeared to have some limited function; they could reach each other via communicator, presumably — though nothing seemed to be exactly reliable in this place. Even them. Reliable machines that they are. Danger hasn't noticed any particular issues yet, but she's been constantly checking for some time now. If her systems are already somehow affected, it would be hard to self-diagnose. At the rendezvous point, she should ask K2 or Connor to run a scan for her.

But first, up ahead: What appears to be a small house. It's possible that one of her teammates has already explored it, or that some other ImPort may be taking refuge there. Or, perhaps more likely, that it contains some kind of threat. The flora and fauna here are... Unpredictable. And evolving so quickly. Repeated genetic analysis of the same specimen yields different results every time.

Danger tries her communicator, not knowing if her message will be received by her teammates or not. A brief text: ]

Approaching a structure with intention to enter.
Coordinates uncertain; area marked by remnants of a fence.
Building has distinct owl weathervane.

[ Message sent, she finally pushes open the door. ]


Stage 3 | Deeper Still

[ She doesn't know when she lost the others. It isn't like her — losing track of things like that. She knows she was with others before. But her system keeps glitching, as if large chunks of her memory banks have been corrupted. Or are inaccessible to her entirely. Why can't she pinpoint her own coordinates? Why can't she detect any signals around her? Why won't her algorithms autocorrect?

Danger reaches out to grasp the nearest solid object, steadying herself — a tree, mutated with large scattered thorns. She doesn't even notice when she cuts herself. She doesn't notice that she's started to bleed. Bleed — because she isn't in her mechanical body anymore. She's soft, all flesh and bone. Her lips are chapped. Vision blurry. Exhaustion? Lack of food and sleep? How long have her powers been malfunctioning? How long has she been organic?

Her own voice is barely recognizable to her. ]

Systems check. [ It's so bright here. So much stimulus. ] Systems check.

[ She sinks into the grass, eyes fluttering. ]

[determinans]

[ of the three of them, connor is aware that he stands out a little. he wears his human skin, he wears clothing. he's aware that he doesn't have to--the plain white frame that sits just beneath those things has no external sexual features--but it's a habit. he was meant to mimic humans, and so he does, even around his fellow AIs.

as it is, he joins danger by the barrier as she asks her question. he's still dressed in the same outfit he arrived in. he doesn't sweat, after all, and thus sees no reason to change until clothing becomes dirty or wrinkled or damaged. and as he doesn't need special protections the way a real human would, his clothing isn't any more or less suited to their mission than danger or kay's lack of clothing. ]

I'm currently operating at 98.622 percent efficiency. [ there is, of course, some small variation, given his potential future energy problem. he's already begun the process of adjusting for it. ] Well within parameters set. [ he lifts his hand, and the skin pulls back from it, leaving white plastic polymer behind. carefully, he touches the surface of the shimmer, watching as his fingertip passes through it, eyes fixed on the interaction. ] .. No residue that I can detect. Recording for analysis. [ a sideways glance, a small, crooked smile. ] I'm ready if the two of you are.

TK-622 | OTA

[loyal_soldier]

01 Heading In (open)

It wasn't a debate at all. As soon as De Chima got hit, he was gearing up to head in. No one knew quite what it was, but with the weird radio signals it was spitting out into his helmet comms, there might be radiation. That meant people in need of meds and evac.

He did a headcount from his contact list. Most were present and accounted for, but Poe and Green weren't responding. That sometimes happened with Poe, but Green never slept and was wired into the network on a level most weren't. And who knew how a highly energetic field would interact with his components? That meant one, maybe two friends in there. But they weren't priority, unless they could still help. This thing had touched down in the middle of a civilian area, the natives would get priority on triage.

Now he was standing on a street corner a couple blocks away from the slowly advancing wall of energy. First responders had gone in already by the time he got there, and he wasn't getting word on whether anyone had come out yet. Checking the seals on his armor was top priority, then. People walked in just fine, but something was keeping them from making it back out. Could be radiation, could be airborne contaminants, could be magic for how much sense this place made. Didn't matter. He was going in. It was the only way he could help.

Seals were holding. Once he got close he'd switch to air supply, do a thorough sweep of the first block and then turn back for fresh air. Shame there weren't more troopers here. But others who wanted to help knew the risks, and they were willing to make a sacrifice for it.

Best to make that count. "Anyone heading in: I've got a spare medkit. Anyone trained in crisis response is welcome to it."

02 Inside (open)

This wasn't Park Street. He'd started on Park, he'd intended to sweep Park up to the intersection with Deerfield Avenue. He was over on Hillside, somehow, halfway around the affected zone from where he'd started. Chrono said he'd been in for two hours.

And that meant his helmet had been unsealed for an hour and a half. That explained why he couldn't remember anything. He checked his comms: still nothing.

Last week should have taught him already: make notes so he'd remember. He switched on audio recording in his helmet. "At Hillside and Rose, 0830. Missing two hours," he said aloud to himself, getting his bearings. "Best guess is either retrograde amnesia or something about the wall fries you." He checked the charge on his rifle. "No shots fired." Good sign, at least. "Not seeing civvies. Lot of plant growth though."

Given the state of the area and the memory loss, heading out was a good idea. "Heading east on Hillside to get a vantage point and head for the edge of the zone. Once radio contact is reestablished, going to check in and submit to an exam."

Half a block down, he heard a noise. He kept his rifle at the ready, but nothing here had been hostile yet. As far as he knew.

"Search and rescue," he upped the volume on his mic slightly, though it made the speakers in his helmet crackle. "Make some noise if you can hear me."

03 Lost (closed to Poe)

"Branch and Pleasant, 1350. Missing five hours now." His boots scuffed on the uneven pavement. "The last recording breaks up after a while so I don't know what I did. Should have brought a notebook apparently."

"Trying again for the edge, going to see if I can make it or I lose more time again." It should just be a straight line. Easy. "Maybe I got out but it fried my memory again, I don't know. If I'm listening to this later: Don't go back. I'm not sure whether I've done any good in here or not."

"Going's slowly getting tougher too, plants are growing like crazy," he stepped around a tree that had started spitting out branches on all sides, covered in lumpy-looking leaves. "Still no one, though." And that was making him antsy. "It's not like--"

He stopped, utterly still. He'd heard something. "That's a clone's voice," he mumbled, trying to get a fix on the direction. "Could be Rex. Or Lucky-- but he's not old anymore." Stars, this planet. It was absolutely out of its collective mind.

Radio wasn't going to work, so yelling it was. "Trooper here! Heading to your position!"

04 Broken (open) (cw: body horror)

"Sitting in the parking garage on Gartner Road, probably 0600, but the chrono's crapped out," he almost laughed, though that might have been from the pain. "Don't know how it happened, but I think I've busted a rib or two. Feels swollen up, won't be able to tell anymore until I get this damn plate off." Which meant chest, belt, and torso plates had to come off. Helmet was off too for good measure, it wasn't helping him much anymore anyway.

Except for talking to it. He'd started doing that for a good reason, but he was pretty sure he was just doing it to feel less lonely. "Don't know what the hell's going on anymore." He set aside another armor plate next to the helmet. "Never did, honestly, and never do. But these things usually just last a few days, right? I just have to wander around in here for about a week, and not get killed while doing it. Should go fast, since I can't remember most of it anyway."

"Being alone is going to be the--I'm not built for it. It's not right," He muttered. "It's not supposed to happen. Even if I get out of this rainbow hell, I'm still the only stormtrooper on the planet. Not a good representative of the Corps either, I'm definitely losing my karking mind right now." A little knot of sick stress coiled up in his gut. He never talked this much, even to other people. Sure, he could think about a lof of things, but he never said them. And he felt raw, like his emotions were turned up too high, too hot. Just some memory loss and a broken rib, it's not--

"Fuck." Pulling open the bodyglove, he caught a glimpse of bone. How had he-- Wait. That wasn't bone. It was too shiny, even with the blood on it.

He reached down to touch it, and didn't feel anything. Not until he gave it an experimental tug, and hissed in pain. "Fuck. Okay. Piece of armor's stuck in between my ribs or something. No blood. No clue how it got there, don't know whose it is."

"Wish I had a medic here," he said shakily, "Because this is way out of my league."

cw: body horror

[flightforfreedom]

He'd been calling out after BB-8, plaintively trying to get the droid to come back, from wherever it was. Sure, BB-8 looked more like a monster than a droid, now, but BB-8 was a part of him. He needed him. Even if he'd started eating things. They could eat them together, surely?

He'd changed, too. His left arm was mechanical - gunmetal grey and rust - his eyes were bright blue and his skin was covered in tiny, iridescent scales, like those on the wing of a butterfly, made large. They shifted and trembled as he moved. Every time he called for his best friend, he could feel something moving, under his skin. He knew more changes were coming.

He knew he was going to die here.

But then he heard a voice back, and relief flooded him, because he recognised it.

"622?" He called out, only his voice sounded much more like the clone's than his own. He stood up, looking around for him. "That you?"

BLUE BEETLE | OTA

[khajidont]

[ NOTE: Want some of his gross spinebug characteristics? Please check out my comment HERE and contact me for further details if you want them! ]

A: THE BEGINNING

[ The Blue Beetle enters on the first day, of course. He's a hero. This is what he does. He knows that it's an oddity, certainly, but he has less self-preservation and fewer boundaries than he ought to; he's been here for so long that everything feels less dangerous, temporary, as though nothing can truly hurt him. Nothing has in so long. He'll be fine.

When he breaks through the Shimmer, he gazes around him in abstract wonder, momentarily stunned by the sight that greets him. ]

Well... it's pretty, [ he says out loud, fluttering along the pathway, choosing to fly though he's low enough to the ground that he may as well be walking. ] Hello? Is anyone there?

B: KHAJI DA EMERGES (very mild body horror)

[ Seeing the Blue Beetle talk to himself isn't at all unusual. He's known for it, in fact, the way he'll quietly mutter to himself in a strange patter nobody can quite understand, lost in his own little world, content in it. Most are only ever able to hear one half of the conversation.

Now, that's not the case. As the Blue Beetle makes his way through the forest, he doesn't seem to notice that the other half is speaking out loud - and that, in fact, there is a second mouth that's grown along the side of his face, hanging open and slack by his temple. When he speaks, the mouth speaks back, the voice immediately foreign and clearly robotic in nature. ]

Can't our systems analyze what's going on, or something? There has to be an explanation for this.

Negative. Our current situation does not match any scenarios in our database.

Not even the Reach's database? Nothing on the different planets that they've conquered, or --

Negative. We have been marching for < twenty-four hours >. It is time to rest.

Just a little longer. We're onto something. I can feel it.

C: HIDING OUT (a little more body horror)

[ Looking to hide away from all this or find some shelter? You're out of luck. This shack is occupied, thank you very much. Jaime found it along the outskirts, abandoned and overgrown, and has planted his ass down in the corner. He's still got a second mouth open alongside his temple, but other things have been growing as well; he's covered with short, jagged spikes, which are in turn covered in something white and visibly alive, a second pair of larger arms having emerged from his clavicles and the beginning of a second pair of eyes atop his forehead. It doesn't look as odd on him as it does on most humans, covered in his suit as he is, but he certainly looks alien.

He curls in on himself, the pair of arms he's in control of idly, fretfully picking at the white growths while the second pair of arms swat his hands away and curl protectively around him. ]

Stop. You will cause damage to yourself.

I need to get it --

[ And then the door opens. Are you looking for shelter? Or are you fleeing from something else? Either way, a voice rings out: ]

Trust me, you don't want to come near me right now!

[ Their voices are odd, garbled; there's a robotic bent to Jaime's voice dissimilar to the filter he generally uses and something oddly human about Khaji's. ]

D: WILDCARD

[ Have something else in mind? I'm totally open! Please let me know what you'd like or send a random starter my way and let's do the dang thing. ]

C

[fridgeflower]

Jaime?

[ It's a trick, isn't it? They'd entered The Shimmer together only for Laurie to wind up alone and disoriented a day later. Now it's dark, and who knows how much time has passed. There were two guidelines that kept her moving in this: Find something familiar. Find the solution. A certain note in the voices that had spoken to her... Is it familiarity, or is it the environment trying to appease her? If she's lulled into a moment of security, it will only gobble her up alive.

Oh well. She steps in and shuts the door, leaning back onto it as if blocking the entrance of something else. That quickly feels like a mistake, though. There's something she's made of now... She feels the pull and grip of gossamer-thin fibers, roots, reaching out for the door behind her. Wallflower. If she doesn't keep moving, she won't have much of a choice. She pulls free, and the Growing Thing in her recedes for the moment. ]

J-Jaime. Please, I-- Ohmigod! [ Once she gets a clear picture of him, she jerks back so fast that she stumbles and falls, curling up defensively on impulse. ] I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I--

[ Nothing's happening. Deep breath. You can't stay on the ground like this. ]

Who are you?

Finn Onaru | OTA

[fireandhoney]

Entering the Shimmer
Finn had kept his plans to himself for what he was about to do. He hadn't told his friends, not wanting to worry them. Nor had he told Lucien, knowing that the Speaker would talk him out of it, after their last little talk. But he couldn't ignore this.

The dunmer looked at the shimmering wall before him, wondering if it wasn't too late to turn back. Steeling himself, Finn stepped forward, into the Shimmer.

Exploration
Finn wasn't sure where he was. Nothing looked familiar, though he wondered if that was the Shroud playing tricks or just general unfamiliarity with the area. Either way, Finn could count himself lost.

The dunmer soon came upon a small house. Or maybe it was a large shack. Either way, it seemed that nobody was home. What was odd was that the place looked like it had been abandoned for years, and not a day or two. The place was overgrown with unfamiliar flowers.

Finn figured this was as good a place as any to take a break. He sat down on a nearby log and took out a strip of jerky.

That was when he heard rustling from nearby and his head jerked towards the sound. "Who's there?"

Fear (cw: body horror)
Finn wasn't counting how long he had been inside the Shimmer. It couldn't have been more than a few days.

The more worrying thing was what had been happening to him since he'd gone in. It had started out with itchy skin, and being more thirsty. Then patches of skin started to change color and get flaky, he saw odd growths on his arms and the sides of his shins. Like bits of thin bone were threatening to break the skin.

A day later, the patches had spread, and formed shiny scales with stripe patterns. The growths were now small fins.

Finn felt his neck. No gills, thankfully. But how long would that last?

"What's going on? What's happening to me!?"

Fear

[drivesadesk]

"That happens here," a voice behind him said. "This place changes you."

He might recognize the voice as Jonathan's. And if he turned, he might recognize the person as Jonathan, if he recognized him as a person at all. He was his green scaly self, but his body was wrong. His legs were long and narrow, ending in hooves, his head adorned with antlers, and his eyes were deer eyes. To make his appearance even more disturbing, it looked like there were a few green twigs growing out of Jonathan's body.

CAPTAIN REX | OTA

[ct_7567]

A: ARRIVAL

[ Rex arrives on the scene a few days after the chaos has descended. His typical instinct is to charge in to help people, guns blazing, but he's resisted for a short period of time; after everything that happened, he feels an obligation to stick with Martin and moreover, he's not apprised of everything that's going on.

But his brother's in there. So in he goes, decked out in full armour head to toe, features hidden underneath an unyielding helmet, armour battered and dirtied from constant use, a stylized symbol atop his visor and tally marks scattered across his helmet, gauntlets, and forearm and leg plates. A blaster in each hand, he pushes forward, trudging through the newly changed locale. Voice slightly muffled through his vocoder, he shouts out, ] If you're in need of assistance, please respond! I repeat, if you're in need of assistance, please respond!

B: CH-CH-CHANGES

[ Rex has lost track of how long he's been here for. He's used to treks that last a day or more but he usually has a steady internal clock, able to tell exactly how long he's been marching and what he ought to do. Now, it feels as though he's been wandering in circles and his skin feels pulled taut over his skull, itchy in a way that he can't recognize. He's loathe to take his helmet off, knowing that there may be something in the air he oughtn't be exposed to, but he's growing thirstier by the minute, his eyes beginning to ache.

Eventually, he gives into temptation and tears it off, groping for his canteen, then catches his reflection. The canteen tumbles to the ground almost immediately, a gasp choking out of him. His eyes are large and yellow, their pupils dilating in a steady rhythm and a third eyelid flickering restlessly over it, his skin sallow, blue veins standing out against his neck and jaw. ]

What in the blazes --

[ He picks up the canteen again, tentatively staring at his reflection once more. When he twists his head, he can see that the skin where his neck meets his bodyglove is pockmarked and even through his glove, its rough when he rubs his thumb over it. ]

C: ATTACK

[ Eventually, he jams his helmet back on and keeps marching forward. There's but a quick rustle of the undergrowth before he finds himself being tackled by some form of monstrous creature, a bobcat nearly as large as Rex himself is, eight glittering eyes upon its forehead, its limbs having gained two extra joints and its feet having been elongated into long, sharp talons. When it opens its mouth, a heaving roar escapes it, alongside a jarringly human voice: Stay away!

Rex doesn't stay away, nor does he seem particularly put off by the voice. As he hits the ground with a cry, he kicks it off of his chest with both feet before taking a running leap upon its back and unleashing blaster bolts into its skull without a moment's hesitation. He stays there, panting, watching as blood and viscera sinks into the ground.

And then he looks up and sees its mother. ]

b

[vanto]

[Eli Vanto is mostly unchanged except for sword that has clearly impaled and become part of him. It's not bleeding, it doesn't even hurt. It just seems to have become stuck and slowly fused, the grey-white material changing

He'd lost track of Noctis after coming in with him and now he's just stumbling in the figurative dark, trying to find his way. When he stumbles upon Rex, Eli freezes, unsure whether this is a person or a monster or what.

To run or not to run?]

ZOE HANGE! | 7/22-7/27 | ota | cw for body horror & potential cannibalism

[aberrant_type]

1. early on; 7/22-23

Hange's job at home is to explore dangerous areas, scout out routes and safe zones, fight and defeat what monsters she can while she's there. This strange transformed area is right up her alley, and so Hange enters the Shimmer armed with titan shifting ability, botanokinesis, and her tactical gear, which doesn't quite let her fly but almost pushes her to that point.

Hange's personality lends her to hyperfixation and deliriums of work, so for a long while after she's entered the change, she hardly notices how disoriented she's getting.

These city streets have become so beautiful. "It looks like humanity hasn't lived here for over a hundred years." Who is she speaking aloud to? Hange talks to herself sometimes. That could be it, or she could be thinking of lost comrades, or not lost, but safe at home.

"If only we could establish a safe outpost. A secure building with the water still running...? Or we could build over a site of running water. A river running through this area? Even a large enough fountain? No, it probably would have become still water by now... no good for drinking."

She explores the plant-choked streets, climbs to the tops of the tallest buildings she can, squints almost directly at the sun. Those distant from her might here her talking to herself, or occasionally singing, snatches of long and morbid ditties about soldiers fighting bravely and dying horribly. She feels good, here, in a way. It feels just a little like doing an expedition at home.

2. middle stretch; 7/23-25

There must have been a flower shop in this square of city blocks. Under the influence of the Shimmer, those flowers have burst back to life, hybridized, mutated, and Hange is so fascinated (and inspired! by this that she became utterly distracted from her mission and stopped there to inspect the plants and take samples.

The air around here shimmers itself, simmering with small nectar-drinking pollen carrying insects, and this is where Hange has set up 'camp,' a misleading phrase since it's not a camp at all. She took off the tactical gear and set it carefully behind what was once the front counter - lucid enough for that still - and took over her overshirt. She's still wearing her sports bra, which was snug and too much of a pain to remove. The exposed skin on her upper body and back has been thoroughly seeded and now Hange seems to have grown fur - green fur, clumps and patches of leaves colored a lurid green, leaves as small as a baby's pinkie fingernail, fluttering with bright orange blossoms here and there. Her back is slowly growing in plants with longer, thicker leaves, leaves as big as her palm, colored purple-black with veins of bright pink. Her face is growing in with flora too, but it itches there, and she scratches absentmindedly at the new growth - it itches. Where it's uprooted, little trickles of blood run down her face, though it looks strangely thin and has perhaps a slight greenish shine. She hasn't lost her glasses yet. Through all this she's cheerful.

"Hello!" She'll greet any creature passing by this front area happily, though she doesn't bother with nonsentients. "How are you doing? Have the front scouts secured any safe zones yet?"

And if you're human, she stares at you with special interest... observant people might notice a little extra dribbling of saliva. Hange doesn't usually slaver like this in casual conversation, but she's starting to feel strangely hungry.

[y'all humans or who began as humans: Hange might try to eat you if you present vulnerability or stick around too long.]

3. end; 7/26-27

Hange doesn't move much in these past couple days. Whatever she was wearing is now shredded and destroyed with the irrepressible growth of those plants, but she hardly looks human to seem indecent anymore. She spends most of the time sitting in the sunniest patch in front of the flower shop. A carpet of greenery has grown over her shoulders and torso and down her arms and legs; the orange flowers still pop out here and there, and seeded in that green fur are taller plants, fernlike, that stretch out and upwards towards the sun. If anyone touched them they'd find that the plants stalked curled up when contacted, stretching out again only when left alone. Her back almost appears armor-plated with those lurid, waxy, overlapping leaves; from her upper shoulders grow long pitcher shapes that are a pale, pretty pink at the tops, shading to deep blue near where they emerge from human flesh. A sweet, tempting scent hangs thick in the air around them. Long strands like glass mingle with Hange's hair; she still has hair, at least, but it's as much greenery as hair now, and tiny leaves and stripes of green mold stretch over her face.

Her most common motion is to reach up and rub and scratch at her eyes. Her glasses are long gone and without them her vision is absolute shit; her eyes probably aren't strictly human eyes anymore, but she's still going blind with the incursion of flora. Or perhaps she'll grow new eyes and see differently.

When she manages to stand now, long rootlets pull up out of the ground with her movement. What she reacts to most is motion.

"Hello? Is someone there?"

She still sounds calm and cheerful, maybe the tiniest bit excited. She drools away at humans, prepared to grab whatever mouthfuls she can of sustenance to support what's left of her human organs and flesh, as well as her leafy passengers.

"Hello? Hello? Rest here. There's water inside, it's a safe area. Can you tell me what's been found?"

[IF YOU REALLY WANT HANGE TO TRY AND EAT YOU AND ARE OF HUMAN ORIGIN (NO ALIENS SORRY) THIS IS A GOOD PLACE TO COME AND TRY THAT. SHE'LL ALSO TRY TO SEED ANYBODY AND EVERYBODY WITH SOME OF HER PLANT BUDDIES. THE SWEET NECTAR SCENT CAN SERVE AS A LURE IF YOU WANT TO USE IT TO ENTICE YOUR CHARACTER CLOSER.

if anybody would like to talk details I'm on discord Sushiflop#2330 and plurk]

7/26

[drivesadesk]

Jonathan, curious about the area with a strangely sweet scent and the beautiful yet bizarre flowers. When he first spots Hange, he doesn't even realize she's human. He just thinks he's looking at a mount of plants until she stands up and speaks. He's startled, but since Jonathan's legs taper down into green scaly deer legs complete with hooves, and he has antlers and deer eyes now, he knows he shouldn't have been surprised. He's just glad to have found a safe haven, and that Hange doesn't sound too distressed. He approaches her, feeling somewhat relieved.

"Hange, I'm glad to see you. You're holding up all right? I'm sorry I don't know much about what's been found so far. All I've seen are more mutated plants and animals. And people, of course."

blue sargent - open to all

[leyed]

entering the shimmer
[Cabeswater. That's what it had to be. At least that's what Blue assumed Ronan must have thought it was before he disappeared into it a day before. It wasn't anything like what she remembered of Cabeswater. The way it manifested, the way it came about... Then again, she wasn't there when Cabeswater first appeared (or was she?).

She stands outside of the Shimmer's 'wall' staring at it, as if by sheer will alone it might speak to her like Cabeswater always spoke to Adam. But there's no whisper in the trees and Adam isn't here to tell her that it isn't what she hopes and fears this is.

Maybe she should have waited for Gansey or Noah, maybe she shouldn't even be here because who knows what her power might do to this thing but she doesn't want to leave Ronan in there and she selfishly wants to feel the frightening power of Cabeswater run through her, even just for a moment.

The thing is, it's not Cabeswater or anything like it and when even as she feels the energy of it, senses the differences, Blue steps forward into the shimmer.]

Ronan? Ronan Lynch? [ she shouts his name before she shouts the small amount of latin she's picked up from the nerds she hangs out with.] Salve, Cabeswater?

changes | tw: slight body horror??

[ It takes a while but her muscles start to feel stiff. Like every step she takes further in is harder as she shouts for anyone who might hear her. She doesn't know how long she's been in or where she is going but it's when she feels the ground pulling at her feet that she starts to regret, starts to realize this isn't what she thought.

The ground pulls and pulls and when she looks down, she realizes it's not the ground, it's the roots beneath the ground that pull at her feet in an attempt to, well, root her to the ground. She tries to run but eventually the not-so-athletic girl from Henrietta stumbles to the ground with a scream of horror, the knife Mr. Gray gave her flying from her hands like a stupid horror movie she used to make fun of.] HELP ME! [ It's a nightmare, it's an omen, it's something she thinks any of the psychics she grew up with back home would have predicted for her next life.

She's being firmly planted in the ground, roots start to wrap around her legs, pulling her down, growing around her. The branches start to slice at her legs as they twist tighter and tighter, blood starts staining the ground, tears start staining her cheeks. She's turning into a tree just like her daddy and it isn't her doing... ]

Please, someone help me.

changes! lmk if this isn't cool c:

[nextsymbol]

[It's hard to navigate, within the shimmer, but it's the cry for help that draws his attention. He takes off toward it, finding himself faced with the scene of roots wrapping around Blue's legs. And so he cloaks himself in One For All's power, crackling with neon turquoise light as he throws an enhanced punch at the ground--aiming to free her with the accompanying wind pressure shockwave.]

--Detroit Smash!

[Unfortunately, it hadn't quite occurred to him that the roots were growing into her, becoming part of her body--if his plan works, he doesn't take into account how painful it might be to have the roots ripped from her body.]

Mitchell Hundred | July 20th ➡ END | OTA

[viced]

DAY ONE

The day started out normally. Up at a very normal 3 AM, in which the Senator planned to spend a great deal of time out and about in De Chima, stumping for a plethora of local politicians. It looked good for both the import community, as well as for the locals, when they could be seen shaking hands with each other in public around the cameras. This was the kind of thing that he didn't mind -- out in the mid-morning sun, grinning for the morning news --

Until the news stopped recording -- or rather, the signal, something that Mitchell could ear like a whisper in his ear, intimate and familiar, like a soft downbeat to compliment the up-beat of everyday life. He heard the moment the signal stopped working more than he'd noticed the slick dome spread out, or the way light seemed to refract differently, and he looked around wildly, trying to pick out where the sound was going, the cameras, the microphones, they were screaming, reaching out with a signal that didn't get through anymore -- mostly -- and when it did, he could hear the distortion in that same green-tinged sound that gave him a headache, when he pressed his hands to his ears, and squeezed his eyes shut, and tried to block out the signals that already sounded wrong -- and he wasn't sure why, how, or what to do.

Day 2-6

Without the familiar, constant tick tick tick in his ear to remind him of the seconds, Mitchell couldn't tell how long it had been. It feels like both his phone and his comm died ages ago, the sound that immortalized beat out seconds like a percussive rhythm to his all-too-human heartbeat, the presence of time something Mitchell could never forget. Or something he thought he couldn't. In here, without the ever-present sound next to him, time slowed, stretched, he felt like it had been ages, and even his brain was not able to come up with logical reasons as to why it hadn't been.

Early on, he tried, talking to radios or walkie-talkies that he found, his voice a crooning green, trying to seek out the most familiar sounds he could find, especially because to him, it was so quiet. The grounds around him had long-ago overgrown. They'd long ago stopped looking like buildings, and instead looked like trellises for the plants. At first, Mitchell barely noticed the changes. He couldn't see his face, after all, the way his false skin over the circuits on his left side split and peeled away, more circuits and glowing green muscle showed through the ripped and tore skin, like the mechanics inside couldn't be bothered to be restrained, like the circuits bubbled and grew out, a more complex machine peeling through his skin.

The first time he saw it, in his reflection in water, he screamed -- loud. It was tinged with green -- and sounded like the color green -- and his own phone burst and popped in his pocket -- he'd expected it to burn the entire way down, but it just sent a shock of electricity down his right side, his skin split, and although his pants didn't split, they didn't need to -- he knew what his leg looked at, the way his skin stretched too tight over it, and his heart pounded in his chest, like each pump was less blood and more battery acid, and he could feel the creep of his own circuits, his own body over-growing -- growing over him.

Like his whole body would be a machine, if he wasn't careful.

You may find him with a knife, poised over his hand, fingers shaking, considering the option to cut off his hand, as if he could stop his body from changing by just removing parts.

Do you find him later, his shirt-sleeves rolled up enough to show that under his pale skin there are dark marks, like he doesn't have veins anymore, but dark swaths, like thin rubber tubes have replaced his veins -- or do you see the cuts splitting open to show muscle fiber that glows green?

Or do you catch him at night, trying to haul himself up a tree, the sound of howling animals closing in, panic in his eyes, while he tries to scramble up and out their reach desperately clinging to a half-life.

[ Go nuts with anything! If you would like a starter, please contact me on plurk at hundreds

who knows, what is time - but earlier rather than later

[flightforfreedom]

Mitch was talking to walkie-talkies, but it wasn't those that spoke back. Instead there were two voices, and they both sounded green, though if Mitch went towards them he'd see only one of them was mechanical.

So far, at least.

It was Poe Dameron, talking to BB-8, in a language that they didn't even realize belonged only to machines. Poe was sitting on a rock, looking mostly like himself, though he was scratching at his arm. And everywhere he scratched, flakes of skin were coming off, leaving metal underneath. He didn't seem to notice, focused on the droid that had nearly two dozen insect-like legs, and was plaintively speaking to him.

"You aren't thinking straight, Poe. You've been disoriented for several hou- for several day- for several wee- for several ye-- for several. For several."

"Doesn't sound like I'm the only one, buddy."

John Murphy (+ brain!ronan??) | OTA

[rekt]

[[ ooc; basically as soon as they step into the Shimmer, Ronan's dream form ability goofs, dissolves his body, puts him in Murphy's head for the entirety of the time they're in the Shimmer. As the days progress, their minds are melding together more and more, so by day 5 - 7 Murphy will be saying "we" instead of "I". ]]

ENTERING; [CLOSED to Ronan + Kavinsky]

[ it comes only days after Atropos was spotted through whatever magic crap the people on the network saw, and it's too close to be coincidence, so Murphy's intent on investigating. What he didn't intend for was Ronan and Kavinsky both following him in. Apparently this is what happens when people give a shit about you, who knew? After bickering and shouting, Murphy settles with the fact he can't tell them to fuck off, and they pack supplies before heading for the Shimmer.

It's with the groups of others marching in to do their hero thing that they warily pace towards the creepy rainbow wall, Murphy's eyes skimming the others, all puffed up to battle something and, you know, be heroes, and he feels only minorly bad for deciding on this primarily for information gathering. Whoops, what are sound morals again? They step through the mist like wall, and then... nothing.

Murphy wakes up on the group, bones aching like he'd been lying there for hours, and blinks around blearily - there's the lump of kavinsky's body nearby, wrapped up in a sleeping bag, a tent set, a fire pit, some of the rations from the backpacks opened and eaten. And yet, he has no memory of doing any of this. Fear starts to rise in him, and panic, as he sits up, trying to get a grasp on reality, and make sure that this is actually it. ]

The hell? But when did we... [ As he gets a good look at the rest of the camp, one other thing is clearly missing. A hand goes out, roughly shaking Kavinsky's shoulder. ] K. Wake up. Where's Ronan?

TREE PPL (cw: mild body horror);

[ perhaps the most disturbing thing, after housing his closest friend in this world inside his skull with him, are the plants shaped like people. it seems more like an environmentalist making an public art installation, but after Murphy hovers around them for a long time, longer than he should, longer than is probably healthy, it's almost like he can hear them. Make out faces. See the path the mutation took.

It's beyond chilling, but none the less, he reaches out with a gloved hand to break a small branch piece from one (hoping he's not actually removing a piece of someone's skin), and drops it into a sealed plastic bag. He's here to find something, anything, linking this phenomenon to the three sister-goddesses. Part of Ronan's powers, that are now part of Murphy's powers, has keyed them in that this is not supposed to be here. His mind flashes with complex DNA sequences and biology neither he or Ronan have the academic training to understand, but he knows, something is deeply wrong.

More than that, they're changing, not just Ronan and him fused together (which is a terrifying prospect - what if they can't undo this?), but him and Kavinsky. A few hours ago, he noticed traces of tattoo ink under his skin on his knuckles, and since has been reaching for K's hand a little less than he'd been so far. But there's no choice but to travel further in. They've been sticking close to another group of imPorts so far, for the sake of strength in numbers, and Murphy lifts his eyes when another wanders by. ]

We find anyone with a superpower that works to fix this? [ he supposes he and ronan might be able to dream something, but that's likely more dangerous than anything else right now. ] Preferably before the entire imPort population ends up an apple orchard.

STRANGE CH-CH-CHANGES (cw: more body horror);

[ Murphy's adaptation power hates the Shimmer, and whatever in it that keeps trying to morph them into their environment has been butting heads with that part of him endlessly for the last few days. it shows up as a rapid shifting of his skin - from human, to chitinous armor plating, to metal, his arm once transforming into some kind of vague, gaseous thing at one point that had Murphy nearly screaming before it shifted back.

Today, one side of his neck has been fluctuating between something like metal and some kind of inky black substance, and his back has been itching like crazy. eventually, it gets to be too much, and Murphy halts, dropping his pack and jerking his jacket and shirt off like they're covered in ants. ] It's driving me freaking nuts, gimme a second. [ he tells whoever's walking with him now, but once the fabric is off, it's clear what's been bothering him.

where he'd had clear, relatively unmarked (aside from a nice collection of scars) skin, there's now the entire span of Ronan Lynch's tattoo, but altered, and seeming like it's still growing, the lines not standing still. Parts start to look like the skulls from Kavinsky's ink, and the feathers have started to grow into actual feathers, half attached to his skin and half fully formed, compacted under his jacket but now free. At this point, it's difficult to tell what part of his mutations are the Shimmer and what is his adaptation power. ]

HIVEMINDING (cw: still body horror);

[ John Murphy would've liked to tell the others that he's sorry he ever brought them in here, but John Murphy doesn't live here anymore.

He's quieter now than he's been the last several days, and the mutations have spread, the inky black feathers growing down over his shoulders, his skin turned to something leathery on his neck and forearms, with something like plates of part bone, part metal covering his body elsewhere. the adaptation power seems to have failed to keep him from changing, but now it just seems focused on keeping his vitals active. The intelligence housed inside the body that was once John Murphy is fairly sure parts of his insides are inorganic now. ]

It's like we can hear the clicking inside our head... [ he speaks, and that's been the new staple - "we", "our". he sometimes forgets to respond to 'murphy' or 'ronan', seems confused when they're spoken about as separate entities. their memories are fleeting as well, forgetting some faces or blurring them into others. sometimes they calls blue 'raven', or kavinsky 'emori', or names of people from henrietta. the adaptation power may be saving him from dying, but it's doing nothing for his mind.

but, at some point before he started to completely bleed into ronan's mind, it seems murphy took a marker to his hands, and wrote the word "survive" in each of his palms. the ink bled in, and the Shimmer absorbed it into his skin - insta tattoo. the new hivemind murphy is now seems to have taken the words as religion, thankfully, and kept their group constantly on the move, finding secure places to make camp and staying up to keep watch. he pauses by someone who might be having some difficulty with their mutations, putting a hand on their shoulder. ] Are you okay? Can you breathe?

entering

[nightmarist]

[Ronan stopped being Ronan some time ago, although he has no sense how long ago that was, now. When he becomes aware of himself as a consciousness again, he also realizes he no longer has a body. A few moments after (for lack of a better term) "waking", he feels like he is everywhere, spread throughout the Shimmer and pulsing with the heartbeat of wrong, wrong, wrong.

Amid all the noise, he finds a familiar glimmer of something he recognizes as love. Ronan makes his home there as soon as he finds it, settling into a body that's almost like his own, but isn't. Someone else inside the body says his name. He answers:]

I'm here.

[It's an idea more than a statement, a direct unspoken input into this mind that normally belongs only to Murphy.]

I can't find my body.

[Normally he can summon it into existence, but that connection's severed now. It's unfortunate that he and Murphy are sharing a mind now, because Ronan can't conceal the knowledge that this probably means he's dead. In his world, at least, the body dies when the spirit wanders too far for too long.]

[onlydoubts]

dawn of the first day | closed to poe dameron

He'd been flying with Poe and BB-8, sitting back on the carpet, watching De Chima from above. It'd been pleasant.

Of course it didn't last.

It's sudden, the formation of the Shimmer - one minute the three of them are in the air, the next, he grabs Poe's shoulder tightly as a shadow passes over them and ...

... the next Bodhi groans, stirring. His head hurts for some odd reason, and he's on the ground. Had they landed? No, no - not landed. Odd enough that he can't remember, but Poe hasn't crashed before. That must've been what happened.

"The hell kind of landing was that--" Sitting up, he glances upwards to the sky.

Only there is no sky.

"Poe? Tell me you're seeing this."

23rd-25th - within - mild body horror

The passage of time is difficult to track. Days or hours, Bodhi doesn't know. Just like he doesn't know where Poe is. He's alone, and that scares him. The park is eerily quiet. Above him, in the trees, something chirps and he startles.

"I hate this place." his voice is quiet, breath coming quickly.

Something is moving under his skin, ripples of movement all down his arms. Pain like wildfire spreads as the writing movements become stronger. Strong enough to break through to reveal living vines --

"No no no get out, get out - "

26th- 27th - even more body horror

He's more plant than person. Arms are long, leafy vines that drag across the ground with each staggering step. The right side of his body his covered in moss, more flowers and vines grown through him. Bodhi doesn't know where he's going, or why. When every step is draining as it is, the urge to lie down on the grass is strong but he can't.

It's not just how tired he is, though. The leafy vines fused to the grassy floor under him, keeping him there. "Nngh." With a grunt, Bodhi tries to pull himself free, to little avail.

"Hel---" the cry of help is cut off by a shout of pain as something flares in his head, behind his right eye causing his vision to dim as he loses sight in that eye. Were he able to look and see, or raise his hands to his face, he'd find that a sunflower had bloomed there. But he can't manage either of those things, or much else beyond falling to the ground with barely an audible sound.

[flightforfreedom]

Poe had already been awake.

He couldn't remember it, exactly, but he'd been awake - could feel that he had been. His legs were sore, as if he'd been walking a long time, and BB-8 was nowhere to be seen. He almost started, when he heard Bodhi speak, and then offered the man an apologetic look.

"Yeah, I'm seeing it. Sorry, bud. It happened so fast I couldn't pull up in time." He looked up at the shimmering, bright sky. "I don't know if we crashed or not. I don't know how long we've been here."

Jacob Taylor | OTA

[darkpants_warmfeeling]

Pre-Crash, De Chima Porter Base, the 21st

"It's beautiful! It's beautiful! Oh god, it's so beautiful!"

Almost no communications have come out of the Shimmer for hours. What Jacob just heard- blasting across a government distress frequency in a voice loud with horrified ecstacy- makes him think that may be a good thing, however difficult it's making rescue operations. Things are happening to people in there. Bad things. And he can't find it in himself to hang around the safety of the Porter Base any longer, not when the evacuation beyond the Shimmer is proceeding smoothly (as much as it can be under these circumstances, at least) and others are already going in on their brave, doomed heroic missions.

He turns to the people next to him, a mixture of soldiers and emergency workers (and you, maybe). "I'm going in for a quick recon," he says, his voice tight as he takes the collapsible foot glider off his back and preps it for a flight. "Just past the border, pick up whoever I find, then back out. It should be all right."

Spoilers: it will not be all right.


Post-Crash, the ?͍̩̝̬͚̻̜?͙͓̠͎̬͍̀?̵̩͚͙̱

For most of his adult life, Jacob Taylor has done three hundred stomach crunches on a regular basis. He has done two hundred and fifty leg lifts on a regular basis. He has done six hundred half sit-ups on a regular basis. All this so he can be the best soldier and protector he can be: so his body can run, climb, punch, absorb recoil, absorb injuries, function and endure under the most demanding circumstances.

That was before the Shimmer. Now, Jacob looks like a limp, overcooked noodle of a man. He pulls himself up onto an abandoned vehicle that has been overgrown with vines, breathing heavily. When he stands up, his shoulders slump. When he looks around, he has to squint to see more than a few feet. His limbs feel weak. He is weak- and in pain, as well. When his glider went down, he lost consciousness for what felt like years but which must have just been a few minutes. He woke up shorter, thinner, sicker, and with bruises and cuts all down the left side of his body, along with a smouldering, jarring ankle that doesn't support his weight very well right now.

"I think..." he breathes, and points to an office building that looks like it's been abandoned for years, but which was the center of a successful insurance company just a few days ago. "I think that's where the glider crashed after I fell off. If we can get up there, get it working..." he pauses to take a breath, wincing from pain. "We could get out of here."

The city around them is desolate and feels ancient. A kind of soft pollen drifts through the air around them, like snow. The Sun overhead is bright, but- wrong, somehow.

A boy hops up on the car next to him, graceful, sure-footed. He's ten years old, but carries himself like an older creature, something born and bred to navigate this environment. White mould grows around his fingernails, unheeded. There's a brightness in his eyes and in his voice. "I can see it. It's in one piece. It looks really cool!" He looks to Jacob, dubious admiration on his face. "Are you really the Protector?"

Jacob looks down at himself, wearing a saggy dark jumpsuit that his frame doesn't fill out. His armour, his costume, his gear- all abandoned back where he woke up, before he met the boy. Ill-fitting or not functioning, cutting-edge custom-made equipment turned dead weight by the Shimmer. "Usually, yeah."

A meowing noise comes from around the corner, getting closer. The boy- Rudiger, fourth grade, who ordinarily would be on his computer checking imPort fansites- perks up. "A kitty!"

The kitty comes into view. The kitty is nine feet tall and has eight clawed, spidery legs surrounding a body that is mostly mouth and teeth. Its black fur is sleek and shiny. It's beautiful, in its way. A single large green eye focuses on the interlopers, and it meows again.

"Run!"

They flee. The kitty follows.


Post-Rescue, the ?̵̻͙?̡̲̲̼̦̘̺͖?̸̲͓͘

Someone had come to help them, and taken them to the edge of the Shimmer. They had walked forward, to freedom and safety, happy it was over. They are still walking now. They have been walking a long time.

The boy stops, looks around. To their right, a convenience store filled with glowing grey mushrooms, growing on the shelves and counters. To their left, a barbershop currently hosting a family of feathered raccoons. "We're going the wrong way. And there are more animals near here."

Jacob looks around too, but sees little. Everything is blurry and indistinct. It's getting harder to focus, to think. "How do you know?"

"I just know." The boy speaks as though he's the adult here. Like he belongs here. The mould on his hands has spread over the back of his palms, like a fuzzy white hair. "I know lots of things now. Is this what it's like to be an imPort? To have powers?"

The imPort regards Rudiger carefully. Is this so different from being Ported? Being taken to another world, having your body changed?

"No," he says after a long moment. "It's nothing like this."


Wildcard, anytime, anywhere

Time and space are illusions, especially in the Shimmer!

Post-Crash

[drivesadesk]

Jonathan is skulking about in the thick wilderness nearby when he sees Jacob and the boy. At first, he didn't want to emerge. He'd changed, and he isn't sure if he wants Jacob to see him like this. His eyes are large, brown deer eyes, his legs, while still scaled, tapered, becoming incredibly narrow until they each end in a hoof. A large rack of antlers grow from his head. And so he stays there, just out of sight...until the 'kitty' emerges, chasing them.

Leaping from the bushes, Jonathan rushes to the rescue, his long, deer-like gait allowing him to quickly build momentum before he rams his antlers into the 'kitty', sending it staggering back.

kirie goshima ( july 20th - july 27th ) ota

[hairswirls]

➸ into the shimmer

What started off as a goodwill mission to help others ended in disaster for Kirie, as everything always seemed to end. She had begun to gain control of her powers and was ready to dive into the world of heroism but in between here and there she had lost account of everything- from her memories to the days that went by. She had tried reaching out to others through her communicator, but failed miserably. It wasn't until she was further in that began to be overwhelmed by a sense of panic, of hopelessness. That was when the buzzing began.

Whoever was unfortunate enough to be around Kirie during her moment of weakness would witness a swarm of mosquitoes rushing to the girl. At first they simply swarmed by, but when she began to nervously fall onto the flood of the forest, they began to attack her, eager to suck up her blood.

➸further in (cw: body horror)

It had been hours, days since Kirie had wandered into the forest and with each passing moment she continued to lose her mind and ability to control her powers. At this point all of her body was covered up in red bumps and bites, blood and pus weeping from the wounds. Her hair had been growing and retracting wildly, causing her to fear it with time. Was it going to try and kill her like it did back home? Hopefully not.

As she made her way further in, her body eventually began to change and become warped. Her left arm began to grow out, twisting and curling into a spiral, one that reminded her of the curse back home. With very little energy, she began to scream in panic, hoping somebody out there would hear her.

"Help me! I don't know what's happening, help!"

➸wild card

first prompt

[darkpants_warmfeeling]

"Hey! Hey!"

Jacob can't help people much right now. He's got no gear, no weapons, no powers, and his injured body currently has the strength of the child's. But this, he can help with. He's still strong enough to swat at bugs, at least.

So he runs up to the girl, waving his arms, trying to disperse the mosquitoes, shouting at them as though they could hear him, as though they could care. He does so without caring that they might find him a more appetizing target- there's already blood oozing from him, after all.

[ambasciatore]

first stop-- walking through a rainbow (closed: Will Solace)

This isn't the most surreal thing I've seen he thinks at first as he pushes past the barrier. He almost expected it to be toxic (which is exactly why his hand is outstretched before him, as if pushing open a door), but was thankful when that seemed to not be the case. Once on the other side, he drew his sword, prepared for the worst -- but not this.

"Woah." Okay he takes it back. This is super weird. "Will, look at this shit."

He takes a few steps ahead, jaw dropped in amazement. Was De Chiima always this bright? And green?

"Okay. Now what?"

Lost -- (OTA)

Time was not his ally here. He felt like he was walking in circles, passing by familiar trees with cars as roots, scratching at his arms. Nico had to mutter to himself, remind himself that this wasn't like Tartarus, he was fine. He was fine. He. Was. Fine. But He was out of water, of food: it was disorienting. He shudders at the thought of being trapped in this haze forever, chewing on his lower lip, eyes staring ahead.

It took him by surprise -- tripped over an uprooted vine, falling towards the nearest tree and directly into a shadow. Did Will scream? Was he okay? How long had they been apart?

"Come on... come on. Don't be the same tree again." He stops, looking up at the looming presence. "Please, please don't be the same."

He hated being lost.


uproot -- body horror (ota)

Translucent skin was one thing, he had been there before. The slight brown tinge was another. His skin had started to flake off the more he scratched at it, his hair hanging in his face more and more, trying to offer him shade from the sun. His body felt like it was weighing him down, begging to stop and take a break to just stop and rest for a moment.

But the moment he did he was scared he'd never move again.

The scars he carried on his arms were more prominent, burned into his skin like knife wounds in bark -- a reminder of his past he normally could cover up. Small, twisted branches were extending from his shoulder blades, rising towards the sky ready to soak in the sunlight.

"Great." He mutters. "I'm Daphne."

At least he remembers that much, desperate to keep track of his humanity while he was clearly becoming a tree. He stopped looking at his reflection, not willing to accept that this was his fate.

It was not Divine Intervention -- it was a horrible perversion of it.

Wildcard

Uproot

[topmeup]

Max had gone in to look for anyone who needed help. He couldn't stand aside while people were trapped in the weird shimmering field and not know if they were going to be okay. What news had made its way out wasn't good. So he'd had to go in. But this place was a complete trip. He's never done full on narcotics, but maybe this is what LSD is like. An insane twisting and swirling of reality where you aren't sure how real anything is or what will happen the longer you stay.

He hears the sound of something moving not too far away and moves toward it. Careful, yeah, just in case, but if it's someone who needs help, he wants them to know they aren't alone.

"Anyone out there need help?" he calls out. "I can get you out of here."

Kylo Ren • OTA • prompts from fairly co-operative and lucid to combative to force of unnature

[photophobic]

i.
Kylo has always been curious- and at first, the Shimmer is nothing more than a particularly fascinating diversion. He can't seem to hold his thoughts in place sufficiently enough to remember how he found himself here or indeed how long ago it was that the world was different. But it was different, he knows that much.
The eerie beauty works on his mind in a way he would never care to admit- he watches as some kind of bird made from petals and rusted metal bursts out of a tangled cluster of vines, reaches out to touch a rock that seems to be bleeding something oilslick slow and iridescent- but it's smooth and solid, like the wing-casing of an oversized beetle.

He hasn't always been alone here, he realises. Someone else was here beside him, just moments ago- he should find them. If he could only remember who it was and where they might have gone...

ii.
The pain is unbearable. He screams, convulsing, his hands flying out wildly to grasp-- something, anything-- fire is shooting through his nerves in relentless shudders. He can see it- in the moments where he can hold himself lucid enough to process the madness- the familiar red burst of igniting plasma beneath his skin, tearing through him--
The agony leaves him delirious, staggering blind and helpless through the ever-changing landscape of the Shimmer. He seems oblivious to the sharp sparks that seem to discharge from the tips of his fingers as he gasps out a writhing mass of words in languages he doesn't understand, pleas for help and demands that anyone who can hear and understand him stay back tumbling over each other as they spill from his mouth.

iii.
He has been changed. He knows it, vaguely, but it no longer seems to matter. Kylo stares at his arm, mesmerised by the sharply crackling energy sparking under his skin- it isn't pain he feels, now. It is power. He breathes it, feeling the potential gather and build. It isn't joy, exactly, or fear-- but it is freedom in a way he has never felt before. There is no guilt. No shame. No conflict or regret. He laughs- a wild exhilaration rushing through him as the electricity arcs up from his skin- and turns back towards the overgrown remnants of clustered buildings, intent on unrestrained and unrelenting destruction. Let the distorted creatures come. He will devour them all.

iv.
There's nothing left to reason with. The man who took the name Kylo Ren to purge himself of the boy he had once been has in turn been subsumed by the crackling, wild energy of his own dangerously overpowered lightsaber... or perhaps the chaotic fury of a lightning bolt in barely-contained corporeal form. Howling with an inhumanly hollow, desperate hunger that can never be satisfied, he tears through the Shimmer leaving the earth behind him scorched with beautifully intricate lichtenberg figure marks, searing and tearing his way through anything in his path.

v.
Wildcard!

iii.

[therewillbeorder]

When a few nights without any texts or calls to either him or Anakin, Hux had to admit that he was concerned. While Ren often went off to do what he wanted to it wasn't like him to just vanish without a trace for such a long time.

It had to be the Shimmer. He had heard that any who went in didn't come out. There was no communication from the inside. It would explain why he hadn't heard from Ren. The thing had been growing slowly, there seemed to be no explanation as to what it was, where it came from but that wasn't going to stop him.

He left behind his datapad, only tucking his phone away securely to see if he could contact Ren from inside. But as soon as he stepped into the Shimmer itself he paused, breathing in warm air. He wrinkled his nose as he looked ahead- tromping through nature wasn't exactly ideal. He hated nature. He hated the outdoors. It was humid, it was stifling, and already he could feel himself getting sweaty. He was just hoping that he would be able to find Ren quickly and get out of here.

But that didn't work. The more time he spent here, the warmer he felt. It felt as if it was coming from inside of him and suddenly he noticed that the veins on his arms were turning red. Pale at first but getting darker with each passing moment. He refused to strip down but it did become necessary to take his boots off, his feet leaving behind charred ground.

For some reason, he was not afraid. It seems to be natural almost- he's always been the Destroyer of Worlds, bringer of death and destruction. Starkiller. Now he's the weapon and he wasn't afraid of the power even as if it still felt as if his blood burned inside of him.

It was so easy to get caught up in the pain and exhilaration- his eyes glowed a bright red as he left behind destruction with only a brush of his fingertips. He almost missed Ren in front of him but he instantly saw the crackle of lightning around him. It drew him in and there was no hesitation, no fear as he held out a hand towards Ren.

Nothing could hurt him. Nothing could stop Starkiller.

Utena Tenjou | July 22nd - July 27th

[andtherevolution]

01. Your Uber has Arrived

Birds cry out in strange, garbled voices as something pushes its way through the foliage. Light reflects against patches of something bright and pink and shiny as it crashes through the trees and the vines, and finally it frees itself and lunges out into the open. It's a strange thing, something that blurs the line between monster and machine, and its elegantly curved head is nearly as large as a car. It rests for only a moment, supported four pairs of long, spindly black legs, before it charges towards the first person it sees. However, instead of trampling them or goring them with its beak, it stops and lowers itself as close to the ground as it can, and opens its mouth, wider, and wider, until the top swings back completely.

There is no tongue or teeth, though jagged hints of the latter can be seen along the rim. Instead there are two car seats, covered in something smooth, pink, and with the same supple, firm give as a hunk of meat. A steering wheel can be seen, too, though there's a sword shoved where the stick should be. It may not be the most comfortable ride, but it is available to anyone bold enough to step inside. And if they aren't... well, they might not have a choice.

02. ...or not

The mechanical creature isn't just content to shuttle people to and fro. It's an important job, certainly, but there are dangers in every corner. The people here are so weak, so defenseless. They'll need protection. Somebody to fight on their behalf.

So it charges forward again, off towards some unnamed threat. Woe be to anyone in its path... or anyone who happens to be its target.

03. Wildcard

OOC: Want to do something that doesn't fit neatly into those two options? Let me know and we'll work something out. OOC info on what's going on can be found here.

2. i hope this works!

[rexabcrystallo]

Trying to deescalate a confrontation with a man-bear when they just don't want to talk is no small feat, and Noctis isn't pulling it off very well right now. The main thing stopping him from getting mauled is the shield he's holding between them, holding the monster off as he futilely continues trying to talk through its howls and roars.

"I know you're in pain, and I want to help! We can find a way out of here together, but first you have to stop!"

Their struggle finds them taking a tumble down a hill, just in time to be right in the path of some huge, scuttling, pink thing. Thinking quickly, Noctis kicks the man-bear off of him, out of the way. But before he can throw his shield and warp away, it's too late. The scuttling pink thing's already on him.

Matthew Lynch | ota

[dreamkid]

I. INTO THE SHIMMER

[ Matthew is no hero, no adventurer. Normally he'd leave the exploring of a mysterious five-block oily-looking bubble to more clever, capable, and daring souls.

The thing is, he's certain Ronan's inside. It's been nearly a whole day since Matthew tried to text his brother and received the first of many errors: MESSAGE FAILED. Nearly a whole day, and he can't sit around at the Meadows any longer, waiting for Ronan to come home like he always does. The decision makes itself, really. Matthew is going to go to him.

Once darkness falls, he leaves the house, makes his usual drive to De Chima, and parks his bright yellow Mini Cooper parked about fifty feet from the edge of the shimmer, which looks especially eerie in the dark. There's no question of him running away, but he's nervous as he approaches the barrier, and he's nervous as he walks through, clutching his phone and holding his breath.

Time passes. He knows that much because now the sun is out, light refracting into beautiful rainbows as it passes through the overgrown plant life that seemed to burst into existence overnight. Matthew doesn't remember the sunrise, or anything that happened after he stepped through the shimmery wall, which startles him at first. He scrambles to his feet (when did he even lie down?), swatting leaves out of his hair and turning around, trying to find something or someone recognizable. ]

Hello? Ronan? [ He cups his hands around his mouth, shouting: ] Ronan!

II. WELCOME HOME (body horror thread)

[ This is a dream place. Like Cabeswater. Matthew's almost certain of it now, after being here a while. No place could be so beautiful without magic, so warm and ethereal and be a normal part of the real world.

He feels well and truly safe, especially now that he's found a companion to share the experience with. Maybe they've been together for a whole day now, maybe they bumped into each other five minutes ago. Maybe they knew each other before the shimmer, maybe they're just meeting for the first time. It doesn't really matter. (Maybe you, after spending time with Matthew, are starting to lose a little bit of yourself, to adopt his carefree and dreamlike nature as this place slowly breaks you both down and mixes up the pieces. Maybe you too are starting to think you might belong here.) ]

Hey, look at this, [ Matthew laughs and tromps closer, holding out his hand. In it is a half-opened flower, a light yellow rose, sitting on his palm like he just plucked the bud from a bush. Except that can't be right, because the petals are still opening, slowly blooming right before your eyes. ]

III. WILDCARD!

I

[tenofswords]

[The second he heard about the Shimmer, Mr. Gray took time off work and drove down to De Chima. He'll load everybody into his car and drive them to Maurita Falls or Heropa if he has to. He doesn't know what the Shimmer is, but he can bet that it's nothing good. It's never anything good.

Mr. Gray pulls up to the farmhouse, the Shimmer just a short ways away. Before he can approach the house, he sees someone at the edge of the Shimmer. Matthew. Before the Gray Man can call to him, the boy goes through the wall. Swearing to himself, the Gray Man grabs his gun and runs towards the Shimmer.

He hesitates at the edge of the Shimmer. He doesn't know what's in there. He takes a deep breath and passes through the Shimmer.

Mr. Gray doesn't remember sleeping, or when the sun rose. He doesn't even remember sleeping. He's afraid that he lost Matthew along with time. But thankfully the boy isn't hard to track down. He's not exactly good at covering his tracks.]

Matthew!

The CENTRE OF THE SHIMMER | Laurie, Kirie, Ruka, Will, and Nico

[fridgeflower]

[ As disorienting as it is in this place, remade as it is by the Shimmer, reaching its center had become a singular focus. The borders had become unreachable once they'd crossed them, and now... Is something calling them here with intent? Is what waits at the center a solution, or another horror?

Either way, it must be designed that way, and Laurie can't see another way out. Whether they escape or perish, it's better to end it here. She repeats that idea over and over to herself so that she can't run away.

She crests a hill, and there it is. The low building… blackened and overgrown, more looming than any larger structure could be. She takes a deep breath, swallows, and glances back to Kirie. (But only for the briefest moment. Kirie's… Well. Laurie's sure she's not much to look at, herself. Woman and Scarab and Mushroom.) ]

I have to go in. Do you want to come with me?

[ Just to be clear, too. ] I don’t know if we’ll come back out again.

[ An answer may have to wait, though. Laurie jerks her head up at a movement in her peripheral vision; three more figures have emerged across the building's surrounding lot.

It might be good of her to think before she acts, but she doesn't. She throws her arms in the air to wave and flag down the other party. ]

Hey! Hey!

ROLLS IN WHAT'S A TAG ORDER

[dragony]

[ Ruka doesn't fully remember how she got this far, but for all the excuses she gives to the frailty of her body, she's got foolish stubbornness to spare. There's answers at the center, and she's determined to find them — a bitter resolution in her heart that tells her that if she doesn't find them herself, she'll never know, and perhaps the answer will be lost.

She's not sure if the sense of danger she feels is real, or a trick of the air and of the dangerous light, but it's that sense of walking into hell that's led them this far. She hasn't said as much, but she's glad to have found these two to travel with, to anchor herself to in the moment — it's made it easier, it seems, to come back from the blackness of lost memory, and better justifies burying what agony she feels from the wrack and ravage of transformation. (She's had to wind a scarf around her neck, and the lower half of her face, and her bad eye, just to keep herself from picking at different things growing there, and she's stolen what other clothes she can to cover up the rest.)

With a hand held up to block out the shimmering sunlight, Ruka was looking the building over in silence, trying to determine the safest way in — because this had to be it, right, his was where it started? She doesn't see the motion of Laurie's arms trying to catch her attention, but she hears her voice call across the distance. Her head snaps up, spotting the two coming up to the same place. The same conclusion.

Five in all; the number alone tamps the suspicion she might have felt otherwise, and Ruka's shielding hand becomes a waving arm in return. ]

Hey!

[ Five in all. In a place like this, the divine familiarity of that alone is enough to set her moving, and without waiting for the boys to come to their own conclusions, Ruka takes off in a short jog towards the other group to meet them halfway.

It's time to end this madness. ]