WHO: Molly Hayes & Rufus WHEN: Afternoon, October 6th WHERE: A spooky hotel~ WHAT: Rufus goes into a spooky hotel, so Molly has to go in after him. TRIGGERS: Mentions of character death, lots of sadness and bad vibes.
"We weren't even near this place," was Molly's first complaint when the forest shifted without notice. She'd seen the posts about not walking through the forest and she'd told Dan she wasn't going to go near it and that she could handle herself, but he was probably right about the stupid Hotel. Psychic creatures were in high demand and Rufus was the one. So now they were separated and who knew what was going to happen to him. Which meant Molly Hayes was going in after her cat. No one took her cat and got away with it. Not even a dangerous, spooky Hotel that screamed "come in, you'll love death".
"GIVE. HIM. BACK. You're not even pretty. You're the tackiest thing I've seen since Cyclope's khaki pants collection!" Which was maybe not the thing to shout at a building as you stalked toward it with a stick that was hardly big enough to do any actual damage. But she could probably poke someone in the eye if necessary. She looked at her phone for a minute, considering a message in case she didn't come back out. Someone would come, though. And she didn't want someone else in danger because she was in danger. Letting out a huff, she stomped inside the hotel after kicking the doors open probably more forcefully than necessary.
"Khakis wish they could be so offensive," she muttered as she looked around at the decor. "RUFUS?!" She heard a meow, both in the hotel and in her head. She stepped in further, but everything around her changed and she was back at her grandma's house. Only this time, all her Pokemon cards were bent and corners were torn off. The cats had gotten into them. She stared in horror at the cards scattered around the room and the decapitated TsumTsums. The only ones not destroyed were two of Captain America and Iron Man that she knew she never had. She groaned in frustration, trying to tear them apart HERSELF, but they kept fixing themselves over and over and each time she tried again, they just got bigger and bigger until they were taking up most of the room. "UGH! I hate them even more now!" But this was the hotel and she knew it. She frowned, looking around at her cool hats just scattered and torn. "They're just things," she said to herself. You can get new ones. It's not even real." It didn't stop the sadness all the same. She put her hands on her hips and screamed, "IS THIS THE BEST YOU GOT, KHAKI WANNABE HOTEL?!"
That was apparently the wrong thing to say. The room shifted again, but this time they were in the Marine Vivarium: a place she hadn't been since she was eleven. She stopped in her tracks, looking around. She saw her friends on the ground, Nico was trying different spells with the Staff of One to bring Karolina back and Chase and Gert were lying on the ground, but she could see the blood around them. She looked over to see Alex standing there. The explosion still happened, but this time it was all of her friends and their parents were still there. Alive, fine. It was both happy and sad. Her parents came over, their faces didn't look right and they were so much scarier somehow. She backed up, briefly, the desire to run was high, but she was here for a reason and that reason was Rufus. If she couldn't be brave for him, she couldn't be brave for anyone. She started mentally shout-singing It's a Small World After All before placing her feet and doing the only thing she could do: fighting her parents because they weren't really her parents even though they looked and sounded like it the more she tried to fight back and the scary parts disappeared as she started to fight back. But then the thing she really feared the most about this situation was closer to the end. "We never loved you. You were nothing more than a means to an end and all you were worth was a sacrifice so we could get somewhere better."
Her face fell and she stopped her mental protections. Her brows furrowed and she could hear that man's voice in her head - the one that kidnapped her and Wolverine that one time. How he'd told her that her parents never loved anything, not even her. But Wolverine told her...that that was wrong. That that man didn't know her parents. That they had to have loved her because she turned out to be such a good kid. She grasped onto Wolverine's words and held on as tight as she could possibly manage. She started her shout-singing again before outwardly shouting. "YOU'RE NOT MY MOM AND DAD! THEY LOVE ME AND THIS IS JUST A DUMB HOTEL! YOU CAN'T SCARE ME! I HOPE YOU CHOKE ON THOSE TSUMTSUMS!"
That being said, she punched both of her fake!parents in the stomach as hard as she could before running forward. She came her for Rufus and she was gonna come out with him.
Luckily, she didn't have to go that far as he materialized next to her, rubbing against her legs. "Are you the real you? Not just some weird version of you?" There was a soft meow and mental images of her grandma's experiments coupled with her disappearing and him being alone. Her face crumpled and she leaned over to pick him up, tears starting to form as she did. "I'm me, too. Promise. Come on, Rufus. Let's get out of here."