route666rp | MAY EVENT LOG

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MAY EVENT LOG

Out of the thorn brush, the land still looks twisted and broken. And it turns a lot more jagged as rocks burst up and out of the ground like teeth… And keep reaching upwards, in defiance of all the gravity that should be pulling them down. The further up the rock spires reach, the more they splinter until the stones are free floating. The same happens to the threadbare trees, their branches and leaves breaking off and hovering in empty air. The nature of this place becomes clear: reach too high, and eventually gravity gives up.

01: BATTLE GROUND

The ground grows rougher, pockmarked with craters and rents, like the landscape is scarred. A little further up the road is the source of those wounds. Curious Drifters will find a tangle of rock and metal reaching high up to the sky. It’s a snarl of wrecked vehicles, rock spires… And bodies.

Robotic hunters are half melted into the bones of a giant monster, and the lights have long since gone out of their lens eyes. Many of them still clutch weapons; swords, guns, and bullets by the bag-full. The hunters and weapons remain locked with the corpse of a horn crowned monster with arm length teeth, and it’s clear this tangle is the only thing that keeps the hunters or their weapons from floating off. Drifters can potentially loot the weapons… They just have to be careful about not floating off while they salvage equipment. The footing here is uneven, and the ground looks ready to break with a wrong step.

These hunters also carry prayer screen beads, but the data on them is horribly scrambled. Any attempts to tamper with them cause them to repeat a single message: “I STILL LIVE” before shorting out and shutting down.

02: HEALTH INVERSION 

A building grows out of the valley; a hospital that has been turned upside down, and its foundations reach for the sky like weird tree branches. The hallways inside are all sorts of twisted up, and the building can’t seem to decide if Drifters should walk on the ceiling or the floors.

Twisted as the building is, ruins gutted by time and overgrown with vegetation… There is salvage available. Medical supplies, healing potions, healing herbs, all of it is bountiful in the hospital. The hospital is also rife with Husks, but all of them are inert… Or have already been broken apart long ago.

Then there’s the matter of the hospital screens flickering on in the wake of the Drifters. Warning lights try to flicker on, as old electronics try to scan the Drifters. The machines give up flickers of data, declaring Drifters to be “infected.” The old restraining systems of the hospital are still active, as manacles and straps alike shoot out, trying to restrain Drifters. The bonds keep them inert until they can be sedated and enclosed in what look like holding pens for violent patients. Best hope there’s someone around to help break a Drifter out.

03: SHARED THOUGHTS

The valley is overgrown with strange plants that glow with eerie light. Sometimes in camp stray glowing tumbleweeds roll through… And any contact has interesting side effects. Drifters will find they’re more aware and capable of picking up on unsaid things. These powers can the month. Each glow confers different abilities:

Blue Glow: Makes Drifters more empathetic in a psychic sense. They can register the emotions of those nearby, and may start to feel those same emotions.
Green Glow: Makes Drifters capable of projecting their emotions to other people.
Purple Glow: Gives Drifters telepathy, to hear and send thoughts to others.
Orange Glow: Grants Drifters limited psychometry. (Object reading.) Using it in the hospital or the battleground will yield unique visions and messages. Please comment to the mod/NPC thread below if your character wishes to do so!

Drifters can stack these effects, but this can overload their minds and force transformations. Those with Swarm traits will find it easier to handle psionic abilities. Additionally, ALL DRIFTERS who experience psionics will find themselves susceptible to Events 4 and 5.

04: MONSTER SHIFT, HIVE-MIND

Worryingly, extra contact with the glowing plants can not only stack mind abilities, but also force Swarm traits. The more a Drifter is overwhelmed by psionics, the more likely this is. Drifters will have access to all Swarm traits for this event, and the following:
+Psi Hunger. A need to eat psychic energy in the form of dreams, psi-infused objects (like sage brush) or even psychic minds.
+Psi Senses: luckily, Drifters can glimpse heavy psychic energy in the brush through enhanced senses, and pick out strange brain monsters. These are good eating for Swarm monsters… And there’s an unnervingly high number of them.
+Group Mind: compelled to link thoughts with other Drifters, to share emotions, memories, and achieve cohesion.
+An increasing reliance on telepathy/empathy/etc in place of speech.
+Increasing collectivist mindset. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few; this becomes more evident during high stress situations.
+Compelled to spend more time in the wilds, absorbing power from plants and hunting prey in wilderness. May also be compelled to share this prey with others.
+Gravity Affinity: If possessing wings or the ability to wall climb, may freely hunt/traverse corrupted gravity areas.

05: WHAT DREAMS MAY COME

On several nights the wind picks up, and sage brush is uprooted and sent tumbling into camp. The plants trade their prior glow to something more baleful and crimson. With the wind whipping through the camp, it’s almost impossible to avoid unless a Drifter is already secure in the Convoy.

The effects aren’t immediately obvious, until the Convoy sleeps for the night… And that sleep is different. Namely the sleep is connected, showing both memories and dreams from other Drifters.

Memories from their pasts can blend together to form a strange dreamscape, that connected Drifters can travel through. But those dreams can easily turn into nightmares. Those who were exposed to the fear toxin in February will trend towards nightmares and may have their old fears make a reappearance.
If those nightmares are vivid and unsettling enough, they can force a transformation. (This may be either current monster traits, or a Swarm monster!) And then…

06: BRAIN ATTACK 

It happens just before dawn, during the blue hour… Or perhaps it might be more apt to call it the red hour, with how the sky is stained crimson. It’s just bright enough to distinguish something moving in the hills. Drifters can pick out a rustling in the brush; something that isn’t wind. There’s something moving, crawling on claw tipped legs… And looking less like sage brush and more like a brain.

The Intellect Devourers numbers in the hundreds. Their claws scour the ground as they race towards the Convoy and smash into the shield. Numbers start to overwhelm the generator, along with the chaos the brain brush has sown with their psychic echoes.

The psychic echoes increase as they swarm the campsite, trying to drive Drifters into a frenzy with nightmares, fears, and strange visions. The brains are also ready to use those long sharp claws to tear anyone disoriented enough into ribbons, and start feasting on them.

06-A: BRAIN BRAWL 

Hallucinations: The Intellect Devourers try to whip up more terrifying visions. Anything to disorient the entire Convoy, or drive the Drifters into a madness that leaves them transformed and too wild to easily counterattack. These hallucinations may be past trauma, or something a Drifter fears happening; the ultimate goal is to leave Drifters panicking, changed, and vulnerable.

Rally: Still, there’s one thing the Devourers didn’t anticipate: and that is how sharing a mental link has given the Drifters an anchor with each other. With all the psychic echoes spreading through the camp, any and all mental links from before can easily flare back up. Drifters who have shared dreams or some form of mental connection may still transform, but their mental link can keep their minds stable and coherent instead of growing feral.

Scars: Whether through brute force battles or mental link resistance, eventually the Convoy is able to shrug off the attack… But there is still some damage done. The shield generator has shorted out, and the Convoy itself has taken a few gashes and gouges. Not to mention any transformed Drifters will still need to be talked down. Luckily the mental links are still in place to help with that, and there’s a truck full of medical supplies to help with patching up any hurts.

MICRO ENCOUNTERS:

PLEASE NOTE! These are small bits of set dressing for players to include in threads if they wish, rather than full fledged prompts or events. You may handwave your exploration of these areas, or thread them out.

Disorientation: When wandering through the brush, Drifters may experience a swarm of disorientation: their thoughts suddenly scramble, they forget where they were going or what they were doing. They may also come to with a set of gashes along their legs, and a sense that they may have seen something in the sage brush move… Or maybe it was just the wind.

Float: Occasionally, parts of the road just give up their hold on the ground and go drifting skywards. Hopefully those chunks of road don’t take Drifters and their vehicles with them. Tough vehicles can likely survive the drop, while Fast vehicles can speed away before they float too far upwards. Drifters caught outside their vehicles will have to hope they have fast reflexes… Or are either good fliers or good jumpers for the leap back down.

Raining Down: On occasion, gravity will flicker and warp oddly… And that means that other odd things can fall where they used to float; rocks, plants, not to mention the odd bit of hardware and buildings. Watch for falling objects of various shapes and sizes!

NAVIGATION

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[ It should be less of a shock, when it finally happens. Every time in these past weeks that Danse has been sharply awoken from uneasy dreams, he's been more wolf than he was when he went to sleep. Every time he speaks to someone from home now, he feels that grudging sense of for-better-or-worse kinship all the more strongly, as if maintaining pack harmony has to take precedence over any other feelings. His rifle has finally run down the last of its ammo back in the hospital--he has nothing left to keep him at a civilized distance from combat.

But he never truly was one for that, anyway. Power armor or no power armor, he's always been given over to losing himself in the red haze of battle, screaming things in his bloodlust that used to make even some of his Brotherhood comrades-in-arms look askance at him once the fight was over. He reaches for his tire iron as the convoy alarm sounds, but his hands won't grasp it, his grip suddenly far too large and sharp and clumsy and his spatial awareness shifting fast enough to give him vertigo.

It doesn't hurt like it might have. It should hurt, as fangs ten times the size of his existing ones force themselves through his jaw, and coarse fur tears through what's left of the skin that hasn't already grown it, bones and muscles all cracking and tearing and lengthening and reshaping--but it doesn't, and this makes a grim and perfect kind of sense to the part of his mind that can still process it. Pain of that severity would make him a less efficient killing machine. And that must be why he was brought here, after all. This is the end goal. This is what his captors want from him, the same thing anyone has ever wanted from him in as long as he can remember.

The Institute may have built him in the hopes of making him a courser, or they might have wanted him for gentler labor--he'll never know. But the Brotherhood would have to marvel at what he is right now, even if only for a moment before putting him down. What he is now wouldn't make it easy for them. They taught him violence well, and the moon warp has only put the finishing touches on the job. The creature that leaps down out of the truck is programmed to take fear and hysteria as its most brutally effective fuel, and the more the intellect devourers feed him, the more they only imperil themselves--but everyone who gets in the way of the beast's frenzy stands to become collateral damage, too. He's in the middle of the camp before anything other than blind rage underscored by terror is within range to pierce through the mist, but when something does, it's the presence of a single mind. The still-sane part of his own recognizes it by feel and reaches desperately out to snag it like a rope thrown from a boat. ]

--Doctor?

[ However much Arcade might prefer Danse not call him that, it's helpful at the moment in its near-comical overcorrection. It's decorum, deliberate respectful reserve. Some part of his mind is still somehow capable of giving a shit about etiquette, and it pauses the bestial rampage in its tracks. ]

[ It doesn't start slowly, some insidious threat creeping amongst them - not the way those glowing tumbleweeds of scrub brush gradually drifted in until they were practically unavoidable, around camp. It's a siege, and the only reason Arcade isn't caught completely unaware is that eerie red pre-dawn light, the glow that wakes him and keeps him up in those small hours, watching the hills and waiting for daylight to put the world back to some (relative) ease.

The sun doesn't come, though, not before those telltale rustlings in the brush become a full-bore avalanche, as the creatures pour down out of the hills toward them. The shields hold just long enough to brace for the impact, for him to drop what he's doing and grab a weapon, before their numbers begin to breach past the flickering, overloaded barrier.

The devourers are quicker and more agile than most of the monsters he's encountered, this far, and it's really all he can do to keep them at bay. Until, at least, the panic and the threat of being overwhelmed become too much, somewhere in the chaos. Then he isn't running, anymore, he's falling, stumbling over his own feet. He's unable to regain them because he has no feet, no legs, only that cumbersome tail lashing behind him. But the brain-things can't break the scales with their claws, and when he tries to kick at one of them, the end of his tail coils around it, instead, and with a fury that doesn't entirely feel like his own, he bears down on it and crushes it.

From there, things get a little blurry. He's wounded, still; the transformation doesn't absolve him of that. Still fighting in a blind frenzy as more of those things breach the failing shields and flood toward the Convoy. Until a voice breaks through the furious rush of adrenaline, the things he can't quite see clearly looming at the edges of his vision— ]

Danse?

[ He almost wonders why that name should matter, who it is he's trying to reach back toward, for a split second, before he can latch on enough to the errant thought to drag himself out of that paralyzing daze. ]

Where are you?

[ The link between their minds is hazy still, things bleeding through it that aren't words, but neither are they fully-formed realizations--understandable, when their minds are still barely and tenuously their own again. What Danse can understand on some level is that neither of them is exactly himself right now, though he's not even quite sure what that entails for him, let alone for Arcade.

He can feel pain through the adrenaline, recognize it as a wound, but he doesn't know which of them it belongs to. A brain leaps toward him with claws outstretched, and he swats it away with one massive paw, hard enough to splatter it against the side of someone else's van. He feels in some ways spatially disoriented, still getting his bearings with a different height and center of mass and bizarrely-enhanced senses, but not so much that he can't answer the question. ]

Nearby, I think--

[ He can feel the proximity, home in on it like following a sound to its source, but cutting a path through the brains is rough work when the things are trying to slash at his tendons. He can spear them with his own claws, throw them, kick them away when they get too bold, but he's not armored with scales, or best equipped to fight them on his own. But they haven't incapacitated him yet. ]

Are you hurt?

[ He asks it before Arcade is quite in view, but he's nearly there. ]

[ Nearby? Arcade twists again, lashing out at the swarming creatures around him. He manages to clear a rough swath, buying himself enough time to struggle up off the ground.

It isn't like standing, and he hasn't had the time yet to acclimate to moving like this - he's only ever barely managed, before. But somehow he pulls himself together enough to accomplish a half-hearted slither, rising up above the fray on tenuous balance. He can pull himself up high enough to peer over the roofs of nearby vehicles, at least, and it keeps him clear of the devourers' seeking claws, which scrape more or less harmlessly off his scales. ]

I'm fine. More or less.

[ The few slices the brains have managed to find purchase with between patches of scales are not a priority; he isn't going to bleed out. What does suddenly feel important, though, is finding Danse. There are shapes out there in the murky, red pre-dawn light, others moving desperately, violently through the chaos. But Arcade can't tell any of them apart, for the frenzy, the confusion still loosely gripping his mind. It's going to take hold again, if he doesn't move—

He swings at a lunging devourer with the ripper gripped in one of his hands, and the guttural, mechanical roar of it fills his mind as he presses down on the trigger again. There are just too many of them. ]

[ Danse will take Arcade at his word about this for now; the pain could still just as easily be his own, the fur on his legs slightly matted now with blood. It looks worse than it is, though, and he realizes as the brains attempt to encircle him that these newly-digitigrade legs are much better designed to escape them than they were before.

He overleaps a few of the skittering things, climbs onto the hood of a car--he has the advantage over Arcade of still being bipedal, at least, with less to adjust to in the way he moves. And now that he has one more little boost of height above what the transformation has already granted him, he can see Arcade fighting off the devourers, without even needing to follow the sound of the chainsaw.

Were his mind still human (or as human as it ever was), he'd be hard-pressed not to be alarmed by the sight, wouldn't even know what to do with it. Now, though, it would almost make him smile, if he still had a mouth to do it with instead of a muzzle. The part of his mind still trying to tug away and slip back into the darkness grins at the thought of another, equally effective beast-weapon on the loose--but the tactician in him, the part only able to think with clarity now as he draws closer, sees more strategic possibility in those crushing coils.

He uses the roofs and hoods of the cars to travel, finding it easier up here to fling away any stray brains that follow him, and not really registering that he'll probably owe an apology to anyone whose vehicle he's denting.]

--You're using the wrong weapon.

[ It's how his mind chooses to phrase it at this distance, not particularly clear or detailed in his explanation, but he feels like he could elaborate once he finally jumps back down to the ground a few yards away, his sheer mass distracting some of the swarming devourers as it makes the ground shake.]

[ Some part of Arcade still recoils from the beast that lunges into the clearing too near him, even though he recognizes it at the same time as Danse. Maybe it's because of his new appearance, or maybe it's because Arcade simply isn't used to not thinking of him as some potential threat, in any form. But the uneasy, reflexive rattle of his tail is cut short, anyway, by another devourer that he swats away with it on the same instinct.

Ironically, perhaps, he still doesn't catch Danse's meaning, swinging the ripper at another brain before it can swipe at him. ]

I only have the one!

[ And it's working - well, somewhat well enough to justify. ]

[ Danse backs away a step at that rattle, equally instinctive, because no matter how dangerous a thing he might be right now--now or always, and usually proud of it, too--he wouldn't be a match for Arcade if the other man actually wanted to fight him now. Not like this, with no resistance to any of the weapons currently at Arcade's disposal. It's a damn good thing they finally are on the same side. ]

You're going to get nowhere trying to fight them off individually! Neither of us can.

[ Already, the devourers are beginning to prove his point, trying to rush his feet again in a group. He lets out a snarl of frustration at them that sounds far too bestial for his own comfort now that he can actually hear himself think, flinging three away at once with a sweep of his arm and coming away with another bleeding gash for the trouble. ]

I know this may sound counterproductive, but get out of that defensive position. Stretch your body out. Make it a more obvious target.

Make myself a target!?

[ He rounds on Danse, briefly, annoyance flaring in his harried glare. But the last thing he wants to do is put himself in a position to get even more attacked. The devourers are already doing their best, seeing their grip on his mind slipping away, but their claws mostly just slide off his scales, and when they do find purchase, Arcade angrily rolls them off the coils of his tail.

He can see how they're swarming Danse; he isn't eager to put himself in that position, too. It doesn't exactly look like the tactical move, from where he's not-standing. ]

Look at them! They can't get through the scales! You might as well be in power armor, and you're the only one who is. You have to draw their fire.

[ There's envy bleeding through their link along with the curt, stern words, a clear yearning for that to be him instead, helpless frustration at not being able to fight the way that comes so easily to him after so many long years of practice, but he has to push it aside. ]

You need to lure them so you can crush them in groups, not one by one. Hell, I can round them up for you--but you have to be open to it. Do you trust me or not?

[ This is nothing like being in power armor, Arcade wants to argue, frantic and irritable and still fighting just to think straight. But somewhere in Danse's horrible suggestion, there's a kernel of truth. And maybe a halfway decent plan. A completely suicidal one, but still. Arcade doesn't have much better.

There's a simmer of resentment in the look he shoots him, but he carefully (reluctantly) starts to lower himself back toward the ground, fighting to resist the urge to bat away another couple of devourers as they scramble over the end of his tail. ]

Fine. Just - be quick about it.

[ The resentment gets met with the mental equivalent of the impassive steel wall that Danse is still pissed he can't physically be right now. He doesn't want or intend to let the devourers do much more than bash themselves against Arcade's tail while gathering for the slaughter, just wants Arcade to be in a position to catch as many of them as possible when he constricts, but as the little bastards do seem unfortunately to be a bit too smart for that, Danse will do his part too.

As much reassurance as he'd taken earlier in being still capable of walking upright, still at least vaguely humanoid-shaped, he's on all fours before he even realizes what he's doing, his brain instinctively telling him it's the way to run faster. He slashes out again at the brains making a beeline for Arcade, trying to make himself the threat they should want to neutralize, but the ones that do turn and come for him seem more to be doing it because they see potential for corruption in the way he's dropped down into that fully-animal stance.

Let them, then. He drives the nearest ones like a herding dog, runs through a pack of them to draw their attention, gathers them by being a nuisance and a treat for them at the same time, managing for now to stay mostly ahead of them--but his legs both fore and hind are shining with blood now, and it's beginning to slow him.

"There's no reason to take unnecessary risks, soldier," he's told every recruit and every contracted mercenary who ever wanted to try a bait maneuver--but that was when the risks were unnecessary. What else are they going to do now? The further he gets from Arcade, the fewer options he thinks there ever were to begin with here. The mental tether is beginning to strain. He turns, finally, kiting a small pack of them, to head back. Any further and he likely wouldn't have remembered to. ]

When I lead them to you, wait for my signal and then squeeze.

[ The devourers race away from him, but Arcade doesn't feel the least bit comforted by it. Watching them gradually amass behind Danse's wild, running form only fills him with a sense of impending dread, as if he should've stopped him, vetoed this whole idea, and not only because he doesn't think it's especially wise. There's a moment, brief and unpleasant, in which he's almost convinced Danse isn't going to return - that he's too far gone to, as another couple of devourers race right past him where he's practically sitting in the dirt, now, tail spread out in a loose loop before him. The creatures don't so much as skim his already scratched and bloodied sides, where he heavy scales briefly end, as they pass.

This is a bad idea.

He doesn't think it at Danse; this isn't part of the conversation. And maybe it's wrong. There's certainly a part of him that hopes so, bolstered some small amount when Danse finally does turn and begin bounding back toward him, looking far more feral than he is.

He doesn't really need a signal, when they're this clustered together, but he waits for it, anyway. And then lunges, twisting hard to the side to land on his hands as his tail cinches like a snare, tripping and crowding the gathered devourers trapped in its coil roughly together. A part of him is sickened by the feeling of their claws scraping over his scales, catching and failing to break through as they scramble to escape before being crushed. But there's a stronger sense of vindication beneath it, of justified outrage as their scrabbling stops in fits and their too-soft bodies burst beneath the pressure. ]

That's what I'm talking about! Nicely done!

[ Danse can't feel the sensation of crushing the things, exactly, though there's strangely something a bit like an echo of it, but he can feel the emotions that go along with it, and no small amount of righteous jubilation of his own to see that many enemies taken out in one stroke. ]

Feels good, doesn't it?

[ His voice might still have that same wolfish relish to it even if he were speaking aloud right now, in his own form. But for as much of that vindication as he absorbs, as much vicarious satisfaction as he already feels on his own, he soaks in some of that civilizing influence too, the unfamiliar perspective of someone who doesn't ordinarily take pleasure in fighting. It's strange, to be on a battlefield and have his mind so vividly linked to that of a pacifist.

It pulls him back, makes him look out over the camp with a more restrained tactician's eye again. The enemy's numbers have definitely, visibly thinned now; the other drifters have been just as busy, but he and Arcade have certainly taken out a respectable chunk between the two of them, and the energy of the devourers' deaths is giving a much-needed second wind when he would ordinarily be exhausted and limping too heavily to run. ]

You think you're up for one more round?

[ He's shifted away from that instinct to bark orders, and certainly from being feral enough to just take off running again. ]

Good isn't the word I'd use.

[ Not even with the echo of Danse's fierce approval in the back of his mind, and the feedback from his sigil, as the few devourers that simply dissolve upon death bleed their energy into it. Angry vindication doesn't leave him feeling any brighter or cleaner than the crush of those devourers left behind, broken limbs and deflated, brain-like bodies shaken roughly away from the coils of his tail as he lashes it sharply to rid himself of the mess.

Still, though, as he raises himself up again to take the same kind of measured, cautious survey of their surroundings, he doesn't shy away from the prospect of ridding them of more of those things. With a terse nod, Arcade shoots him a glance, noting the blood painting his limbs. He can worry about that a little later, though. ]

Just make it quick.

[ He'll understand that distaste more when he thinks about it later, feel far less envious and more grimly sympathetic that Arcade had to be the one to do the dirty work. Even when Danse kills things at close range, it's only in these past couple months here that he hasn't been insulated from the gore by a suit of power armor, and even here, he's got a tire iron--he hasn't had to do it with his own body.

But it is what it is, and even though he's beginning to feel the pain--he's beaten and clawed enough of them himself to reap some benefits, but not as many--he can steel himself for one more pass. There are far fewer of them left to chase him now, a mercy, but when he leads them back to Arcade and leaps over his tail to leave the brains corralled within it, he staggers a little on the landing.

It's enough. The enemy seems, finally, to be retreating. His relieved laugh is out loud now, a coarse snarling bark that he hates to hear coming from his own throat, and he collapses back against the nearest truck to support himself, more fatigue than injury, finally feeling that battle-adrenaline beginning to wear off. ]

I don't want to imagine how ugly that could have gotten if you weren't here, Doc--

[ Still reflexive, but the cutoff and prompt mental correction, too, is tangible through the still-existing mental thread. Danse may still have his hangups about the intimacy of first-name terms, but it doesn't really get much more intimate in its way than "telepathically linked and the only thing keeping each other sane," so this seems like as good a time as any to let that go. ]

--Arcade.

[ The longer he's stuck like this, the easier it is to maneuver, and for once Arcade is grateful for that. Slithering so that he can clean the mess from his scales as he goes, washing it away through the hard-packed dirt, alleviates some of the grotesque discomfort of it all, after that last round. Even if they were still being overrun, he isn't sure he could do that a third time, with or without his sanity intact.

He slumps into a loose coil, as close as he can get to sitting down, and drops the ripper beside him, patting down his sides and the few patches of skin he has left to feel for the scrapes and gashes the devourers left on him. Nothing serious, at least. ]

It was ugly enough.

[ A pang of irritable pain accompanies the thought, as he finds the worst of the cuts, just above the scales banding his midsection, putting a bit of pressure on it with one of his extraneous arms. ...But that testiness subsides just as quickly.

He clears his throat, opting to speak aloud, this time. ]

Thanks. That... definitely could've gone worse for both of us.

[ Danse doesn't know how the hell to go about ceasing to be a twelve-foot-tall monster with teeth the length of ballpoint pens, now that the form is less useful and more "how do I get in a car like this if it doesn't wear off."

Now that the danger has passed, though, and his heart rate has slowed, and he's able to actually think about these things rather than focusing on the heat of battle, his body seems to have mercy on him. He shrinks, gradually, the transformation as inherently painless as it was before, though it doesn't make his limbs less clawed-up. His clothing is more astonishingly intact than the laws of physics would seem to allow, save for some new bloodstains and a zipper that's given up the ghost. His stomach feels like he hasn't eaten anything for a solid week.

He slides down against the truck now that his form is more convenient for it, sitting down on the ground and pushing his sweaty hair back from his face. ]

No need for thanks. We all benefited.

[ His voice is hoarse, oddly rusty-sounding, as if it's been longer since he's spoken aloud than it actually has, but at least it's his again. He tilts his head to scan over Arcade's injuries, predictably ignoring his own. ]

You got those?

[ Looks like it, but it seems worth asking anyway. They've all been lucky enough so far not to have to find out what happens when the sole physician can't heal himself, and he'd like that streak to continue. ]

[ He should probably be more alarmed than he is, by the sight of that enormous, terrifying wolf-creature gradually turning back into Danse. Instead, it's fleeting jealousy he feels, as simply stuck in this form as he is. He has no idea when he'll be abruptly changed back, and, unfortunately, he values his life just enough not to risk rifling through all the weird new remedies the infirmary is stocked up with in hopes of forcing it. ]

I'm fine. It could be worse.

[ The injuries he sustained just before and mid-transformation aren't all that bad. He's been hurt worse, in recent months, and survived that, too.

The skeptical look he turns toward Danse's still bloodied limbs is equally predictable, sharp and disapproving (if exhausted). ]

Those need to be cleaned and disinfected, though.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

MAY EVENT LOG

brain brawl (closed to Arcade, cw for mildly graphic monster transformation)

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