[semi-closed] All that you are is the end of a nightmare.

[rraidergirl]

Who: Lara and Friends and friends of friends
When: March 6-7th
Where: All around town the ship
What: A bad dream gets entierly out of hand.
Warnings: Needless dramatics, flashbacks of violence, possibly actual violence.


It goes like this: a desperate struggle to stop the transference of a thousand year old soul into the body of the person she loves most. A screaming corpse bursting into flames as the winds finally dissipate and sun breaks through heavy clouds. A long nightmare finally over.

Except now there's new nightmares. On Emiri, they're nudged awake. A little flutter, a terrified "What if it didn't work, what if I didn't save her." A delicate hand curling into a fist around the bloody memories of Yamatai. Keeping them in place, keeping them present. Know fear, know terror. Suffer for what you took from me. More memory then ghost until an opportunity presents itself: raw heart wrenching grief mixed with exhaustion. Memory turned ghost, a grinning skeleton, dripping blood and throwing carefully aimed barbs, always one step behind in the halls and corridors of the ship. Gently picking at the exposed wound, gently stripping away armor and defenses. Wither, waste away.

And then a set back: two men, equally powerful, equally talented. They give her armor and a path to follow out of the darkness. Away from the clutching hands and grinning skeletons. Never far, but it's a beginning, it's something. A fight as opposed to a massacre. And Lara fights every night, ceaselessly. It's difficult to say whether she's getting rest, but she's sleeping. Some days are better than others, but every night she follows the path built in her mind. And now, that she can hear Sans' voice again, that she can see him and know he isn't a hallucination is... It's something. Lara is very experienced in losing people, but no one has ever really come back before. The war doesn't end, but the balance has shifted and it's Roth's voice echoing in the dream: Just keep moving.

The scream that tears her out of sleep is hauntingly familiar. Not one from the other people who might be asleep in the room with her, but one that had belonged to a woman, long past dead, screaming her rage to a clouded sky. The room is illuminated, briefly blazing in blue-white light, the woman standing resplendent and terrifyingly beautiful, before the light curls itself into an orb and flies out of the room. Without thinking, Lara jumps up and tears out into the hall after it, running helter skelter even when it's vanished from view and all that's left is a vapor trail till that too vanishes.

Lara stands in the hall, breathing heavily, eyes wild. "Shit.

[ ooc: this is a little bitty plot that is mostly for Lara's established CR, but really "established" is "have you had a conversation with Lara at literally any point and want in on some free drama", there are basically no requirements to who is and is not involved. A supernaturally powered hallucination turned over powered ghost is going to be tearing around causing chaos for people, in the form of bad nightmares and brief hallucinations and taking on the characteristics (good or bad) of the people in those nightmares. I'm leaving it entierly up to players what those are and how effective they are-- if at all. Feel free to do closed threads for CR that is not Lara. Lara is mostly going to be tearing around the ship looking for her. The only rule is don't blow up anything. Plot is backdated to end on the 7th, when Sans and Lara fight Himiko. hmu @ thatoneblonde on plurk for questions/concerns. ]

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[skelepun]

The bones -- femurs, each of them an unnatural light blue in color -- rip through the floor towards them both. Feeding off Lara's intense, overpowering urge to move, Himiko registered the danger accordingly.

The bloody, twisted version of Sans growled angrily as he whipped around, attempting to dodge the wave of bones cresting towards him. If he were the real Sans, he would know immediately what blue bones meant. He would have spent a childhood training with them, learning how when you cast a blue attack like that, you could focus your magic on emitting a large, unmissable attack. The trade off, of course, being one very easy way to dodge it.

Moving. Or, in this case, remaining perfectly still. This parody of Sans didn't get that memo.

Sans' magic ripped through Himiko's bones, cracking them to dust with a physicality no pure hallucination possessed.

For Lara, they passed through her with nothing but a brush of wind.

[rraidergirl]

It was brutal, more than she had expected. The angry scream that tore from the shattered, bloody Sans was an echo from Yamatai and the breeze of the magic passing through her had her back there for a moment, snow falling and a chill creeping into her bones. Her grip tightened around the metal pipe in her hand reflectively.

The skull remained, fractured and howling, expression twisting with rage, shifting to something that wasn't quite Sans and wasn't quite Himiko. Lara moved without thinking, closing the distance in a few long steps, swinging the pipe over her head and bringing it crashing down with both hands. The pipe clanged loudly on the ship's floor, the sound of breaking bone nearly an illusion.

Like the blue magic, the vision of Himiko was gone. Lara looked up at Sans, the real one, and realized she was breathing hard, couldn't quite manage a smile when she said, "Well. Tonight's been very strange."

[skelepun]

Sans was a mirror of Lara -- a very short, squat, fleshless mirror -- as he breathed heavily, spent from the amount of magical exertion he'd put out. As his brother reminded him daily, he was in terrible shape. Never was Sans more aware of that than when he had to put effort into literally anything.

Not that there was even an ounce of regret in his fixed grin. If anything, he looked proud and relieved. Lara crushed her demons, literally, right before his eyes. If pride wasn't the right word, and Sans couldn't say it was, then something akin to it was responsible for just how warm his bones felt at this moment.

"Yeah." He panted, grin widening. "Glad to see you came out ahead."

[rraidergirl]

That knocks a laugh out of her, just on the edge of hysteria. Her fingers loosen on the pipe, letting it fall to the floor with a loud clang. She takes a few long, quick steps so she can stand in front of him. There's a strange feeling of elation that she can't put words to. Something close to closure that makes her want to scream at the same time. She leans down instead, presses a quick, soft kiss against the place she had the time before, where the ghost of a scar had sat.

"I had help."

[skelepun]

The sudden motion is enough to surprise Sans -- a rare expression on his face to be sure; Sans is hardly ever surprised -- and prompt a bright blue flush across his face. Laughing, he gives her a quick punch to the knee. Kids. Sappy as hell, really. Not that he isn't practically glowing with pride hot enough to ignite the oxygen in the room.

"You're gonna be the death of me, you know that?" Another light tap, this time turning into a quick one-armed hug. He shifts his gaze over to where Himiko once stood, his expression schooling into the closest thing to a frown Sans could manage. "Think it's over?"

[rraidergirl]

"I should hope not." She has been the death of plenty of people in recent history. Not all of them intentionally. And his question has her thinking of them even more. The rescue pilots she'd signaled. Grim, Alex, Roth. Reyes tightly restrained anger and grief. The relief and victory drains from Lara's face by small degrees until the smile she offers Sans is a wan ghost.

"I think this is the last we'll see of her." Which isn't exactly an answer.

[skelepun]

It's more of an answer than she knows. Or maybe she knows exactly. Either way, the corners around Sans' eye sockets soften imperceptibly.

He won't push it, not tonight.

"Let's get you to your room. You look like you could sit down."