Tweak

InsaneJournal

Tweak says, ""Arg, me harties.""

Bellum Anon (bellum_anon) wrote in bellumlogs,
@ 2010-03-12 23:02:00

Entry tags:

Fables Plot Public Post!
Who: Public
What: The Open Post for Public Threading for the Epic Fable Plot
Where: Throughout the building.
When: 12:01
Warnings: Any number of crazy things could end up in here.
Notes: Alright! This post is for public threads only, and will be run party style. Anyone can jump into a thread at any time--just use your judgment! Feel free to hop around, go to different parts of the building, and mingle through the madness.

12:01. The beginning of a new day, just broken in, still fresh. Most of the building was sleeping, as decent people ought to be at such an hour.

The building, down at its foundations, was restless. A storm had been gathering for the past week, in its joints and its doorways, in its windows and its keyholes. 12:01, the storm broke over Bellum.

It was as if the building stretched, yawned, shook itself. There was a shudder in reality, as if the air itself was nothing more than a funhouse mirror. Faster than you could snap your fingers and the thing was done, set into motion before the darkest hours of the morning had yet come around.

A twitch, a snap, a static shock.

And then the changes started.

((OOC: Alright guys, go crazy! Feel free to post your location in the header of your comment so people can do a quick visual scan for the right comment and the right location. Mingle! Chat! Fight! Tackle one another!))

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takingsides
2010-03-14 05:01 am UTC (link)

Still nothing in sight, and yet something came out of nowhere to grip Aiden's lapel and assist him into balance at the top of the stair. Rick wasn't trying to break anyone's neck, after all. Just because he wasn't directly concerned with anyone else didn't mean he was particularly malicious. That was just what cats were like.

This cat was in a playful mood, however.

"Here."

And a head appeared a few inches from Aiden's face. It was Rick's face, lined with a beatific grin, but there wasn't a neck--or shoulders, or anything else. Just a floating head grinning at him over six feet off the ground. He kept his grip in case Aiden decided to flail down the stair again.

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arcere
2010-03-14 05:24 am UTC (link)

The invisible hand grabbing at his collar to keep him steady was both appreciated and ridiculously unnerving. Aiden kept his balance, but now that he knew someone was there - and someone invisible - he tried to figure out who the hell it might be. He didn't recognize the voice, but then again, he'd only moved in the week prior. He'd gotten caught in the elevator with Shane and only passed people very cursorily in the halls and on the stairwell, so it made sense that he wouldn't recognize a voice.

A face, though ... no. He didn't recognize the face, either. Possibly he would have recognized it attached to a body.

To his credit, Aiden didn't panic, though in his head was a totally different story - fumbling through the various forms of what the fuck and trying to figure out what kind of person appeared with only a head. There weren't many answers, and the whole ordeal just made his headache even worse, so he grimaced and glanced down at the spot where the body should have been.

"Very clever," he commented, his voice only slightly strained with the shock and pain. "I wonder how you do it."

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takingsides
2010-03-14 06:57 am UTC (link)

The invisible hand helped Aiden to a solid place on the landing before he was released and the bobbing, grinning head withdrew a little ways away. Rick looked, for a moment, unsure, rolling his eyes up into his head as he thought. His head slowly disappeared again, as a tide rises, chin first, then grin, then his nose, until finally it was only a pair of blue eyeballs rolling up into nothing.

"Are you sure it's me? You're the one seeing." The eyes disappeared too. "And now not."

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arcere
2010-03-14 07:10 am UTC (link)

Standing solid but on less secure mental footing, Aiden watched as the head started to disappear, until only the eyes were left. That was a sight he never wanted to be privy to again. He normally would have swept the question off the map immediately - oh, sure, he was the one seeing, but he wasn't insane - but curiosity overtook the anger. Even in the blinding determination to find that man and the pain of the headache, he stood there on the edge of the landing, fingers uncurling from around the pocketknife.

"If it were me, the whole world would be invisible," he mused, reaching out to see if there was a body there hiding - or if something was actually simply appearing out of the air. "This seems a little familiar." Somewhere in him he still felt the urgent hurry, the need to get upstairs and find who he was looking for, protect the ones that needed it, but for the moment a man who could appear and disappear at will held his attention.

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takingsides
2010-03-14 07:17 am UTC (link)

"If the whole world was invisible," Rick said, bemusedly, "then you'd be blind." He didn't move, willing to play the game for a moment, and Aiden's outstretched hand touched the fabric of Rick's shirt--thin jersey tee. Then he stepped back, and the carpet was too short to show his footsteps, and he had gone silent again.

A moment later he appeared whole at the bottom of the next stair, sitting. He appeared slowly, from invisibility to transparency and then slowly into grounded solidity. He was watching his outstretched arm as he did it. "Isn't that interesting," he mused, watching his fingers. "I wonder if..." Still staring at his fingers, Rick watched the skin on the tips of his fingers disappear, then the nerves, then slowly what looked like blue pulsing blood, then it was only white bone-tips moving slowly at the end of his fingers. He was in no pain; he still looked bemused.

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arcere
2010-03-14 07:27 am UTC (link)

There was something there - it was just invisibility. Very curious invisibility, and something to take note of, but invisibility in any case. Aiden lowered his hand when the man moved away and he simply watched as the reappearing act on the lower stair carried itself out. He came a little closer, intending to bypass the man and keep going up - there was a reason for his progression - but the man's next actions stopped him.

First fingers, then meat and muscle, then blood vessels and bone - and then just bone. The impossibility of it twisted his mind and his stomach. It was one thing to see a skeleton's hand long after its owner had passed on. To see it moving under the owner's full control? Somewhat disconcerting.

"Nicht zu fassen!" he murmured, then realized a moment later he'd spoken in German (and for all he knew of the language, he'd never been very good at it, or any other language - so why now?). "That can't be real."

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takingsides
2010-03-14 07:31 am UTC (link)

"Oh, we're real," Rick said, lowering his hand as everything slowly disappeared again. He wore jeans and no shoes, and though there was a slight chill in the air, he seemed unconcerned. He shifted as Aiden neared, and then he turned his head to look up at him from his position on the stair.

His eyes were odd. It hadn't been quite so obvious when he'd been flickering in and out of reality, and when you're only looking at eyeballs, well, it's hard to see anything but the fact that they're bare eyeballs. But now, with them firmly in his head and the dim light just so, they flashed and widened. Cat's pupils, green eyes, oil in water. "Or real enough, for fiction."

He stood. "Have you decided where you are going? Or are you still stuck on what you are?"

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arcere
2010-03-14 07:38 am UTC (link)

We?

Aiden stared for a long moment at those eyes as they flickered in the stairwell light, pupils thin and sharp, irises practically the color of poison, and a name flashed through his mind so fast he couldn't catch it.

Real enough for fiction. That wasn't right. Actually, at the moment, nothing was right. This wasn't how he normally acted, this building wasn't quite the same, and now a man had all the qualities of a cat drawn from a world fantastic. The name was on this tip of his tongue, but his headache pounded every time he tried to grab it, so he gave up.

"Still up," he said, but his voice was just the slightest bit uncertain. "I need to find someone. I heard he lived in the third penthouse." His notebook said vampire and that was all he needed, even if it was a rumor. Rumors could easily be quashed or confirmed. "I know what I am. I'm ... " He faltered briefly but pulled himself back together physically. "Human, at the very least."

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takingsides
2010-03-14 08:21 am UTC (link)

"Dracula?" Rick leaned forward, staring at him with his eerie feline eyes, and then he rocked backward and laughed. "Oh! You're the new Hellsing. Be damned." He sounded a little New York, did this ginger cat. "Wouldn't want your job. So you're going up to see if he's got fangs?" Rick grinned, displaying his teeth again, and as he moved up the stairs with the other man, he vanished again. All except the grinning teeth.

...at least they weren't fanged.

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arcere
2010-03-14 08:31 am UTC (link)

Lights flicked on in his head, but given the headache, they only made everything worse. Dracula. Well, that made sense, in a ridiculous and distorted sort of way. The new Helsing? That made sense, too, in the way that each individual word meant something and formed a sentence, but the sentence itself was just beyond his grasp. He fought the urge to ask questions to his new disappearing, feline-eyed, but part of him wanted to figure all this out for himself. He wanted to have that much for himself, at least.

But if he could kill that man ...

"New?" Aiden asked as they climbed up the stairs, presumably together if those floating teeth were any indication. "There was another?" Then he shook his head, trying to dislodge the pain and any extra thoughts that came with it. "And I know he has fangs. I intend to put a stop to them." Protect the young lady and her man, as he hadn't before -- no, that was wrong, it was ... how did it go again? He wanted to kill him, yes? For more reasons than someone needed protection. Someone had ... died. Yes. Someone or several someones.

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takingsides
2010-03-14 08:34 am UTC (link)

"Another you?" said the disembodied voice, teeth moving up and down, ah-n-oth-er, open close open. "Never. There can only be one you. Unless you're admitting you're not you. Which you're not." He seemed serious now, not mocking, but he hadn't made anything else appear except the teeth--maybe he'd forgotten. They bobbed up and down as he climbed the stairs. It was like being haunted by one of those horrible wind-up toys that chatter.

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arcere
2010-03-14 08:42 am UTC (link)

Right. He was himself. The new could have meant anything - some other role, some other person acting. The confusion swept aside (there were answers to be found later), he followed the staircase, focused determination taking away some of the headache. He knew where he was going now, and he would get there. The young woman needed his help. No more would be lost to that bastard, that -- that creature.

"What do you know of him?" he asked, fingers touching the hastily-made stake in his pocket as they slowly ascended. If the teeth unnerved him before, it seemed to have faded now - probably because he wasn't looking directly at them. The curiosity came back in bits and pieces but again, the sooner he reached the penthouse suites, the sooner this nightmare was finished once and for all.

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takingsides
2010-03-14 08:48 am UTC (link)

"Who? You? Only what you just said. We only just met. You ask a lot of silly questions," Rick observed, maddeningly calm. (This calm, by the way, was Rick all the time. The rest of it, it was safe to say, was probably more Cat.) "'Who am I,' 'Where are you,' 'What do you know'... It's very frustrating. Are you always so vague?" The teeth paused, clicked together, then added, "Unless you mean P3. In which case..." he paused, as if to think, then: "No, nothing about him either."

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arcere
2010-03-14 06:45 pm UTC (link)

Aiden smiled very faintly at that - unusual for him, but then again, maybe not. The typical sharp words faded before they reached his throat and he glanced over at the floating teeth - ah. Probably best not to do that again.

"Unfortunate. Strange that he hasn't made a nuisance of himself." A nuisance ... what a paltry word for the dangers caused and crimes committed by that man. Presumably the fading man would know if there had been any suspicious deaths attributed, any injured people left to waste away with bloody wounds. Perhaps the monster was hiding. No matter. He knew where it hid, and even though the stairs seemed to go on forever, there was only so far up anyone could go.

And his presence was unknown to the vampire. They had spoken only briefly. There had been no indications of his role in all this, giving him the advantage. The Lord had blessed him tonight.

"Then, friend," Aiden - the doctor? - said, avoiding looking at those teeth again, "who are you? If you can guess me so easily, then perhaps you could share your own name."

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takingsides
2010-03-15 06:28 am UTC (link)

A pair of feet ascended the stairs next to him, cut off at the ankle but just as assuredly walking upward. He seemed to have no difficulty including his clothes in the endeavor; he also seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. "A lot of things are strange," the invisible man agreed, as his feet came to the next landing and paused to watch Aiden continue upward.

"That's not the question you're supposed to be asking me," he said, from a frown, by the sound of it. "Mine has to do with where you're going. But no matter. You're all turned around, anyway."

"Ah ah ah," he said, losing his concern and shaking an abruptly visible finger in the air in front of his face. "You haven't said your name, so why should I tell you mine?"

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arcere
2010-03-15 07:33 am UTC (link)

Aiden was on the first step of the next stair when he realized the voice had stopped moving, and turned slightly to watch -- well. Those teeth. There was hardly a man there to see. The all turned around bit didn't much faze him, since he was quite sure he was going the right direction, and when the concern vanished in the next second he knew there had been no reason to worry.

Of course. Introductions. How could he be that lax? All the information that had passed was 'the new Helsing', and that hardly sufficed for a name. Er ... though it was his name. Right? His last name, anyway. And his first ... it started with an A, that much was certain.

"Aiden," he said after a moment of existential doubt. Even if he was wrong, it was short, and convenient, and anyway he didn't know if he could trust a man who spoke in circles and didn't seem to much care for materialization. "And as you said, Van Helsing."

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takingsides
2010-03-15 10:40 pm UTC (link)

"It's good you're both," the man said, moving into visibility again, this time limb by limb, leg then arm then torso then a head to fit the teeth into. It was best not to look where the joints joined absolutely nothing at all during the process. "I'm Rick. Or near enough for the present, anyway." He had stopped at the landing. There was a lot of noise above, but none he concerned himself with. "This is where you're on your own, as long as you remember where you're going." Long, slow grin. "And who you are."

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arcere
2010-03-15 11:50 pm UTC (link)

Both. A curious way to put it.

"I have my goal," Aiden said, watching Rick with careful eyes. "And there's hardly any doubt to who I am. My thanks for accompanying me this far. I suggest you stay to the lower floors - the danger above is too great to risk anyone else's life in." Anyone who ventured too high was in danger, though this man was likely to survive longer due to his state of being and his invisibility.

Aiden turned and headed up the stairs again, moving slightly faster now that he was alone. They were at the sixth floor; the penthouses were another six flights up. There was no time to lose.

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