Log:Broken Dolls: Alonso Dreams

Broken Dolls: Alonso Dreams
So he defies the whole exercise of labyrinths and mazes.
Participants Alonso, Gisa as ST	30 July, 2017 In which the The Internationale becomes a song of dream defiance. Part of Broken Dolls.
Location Dreams
Alonso is, given his druthers, nocturnal. Comes from being a darkling. So on weekends, or at least where possible, he tends to stay up into the wee hours of the morning, and then doze off when the skies start looking more dark blue than black. Four? Five? Somewhere in between, probably. He takes a nice hot shower to prepare himself for sleep, then crawls in between the covers to scooch on over towards the brick furnace that is Gisa. No worries about being too cold with a fire filled clay person in your bed. He lets out an expansive yawn, drapes an arm around Gisa, and deposits his head on the pillow. He's one of those people that falls asleep more or less immediately. Having had a helmet for a pillow for as many years as he's had, sleeping when you're able has become a skill. The warmth of the golem, the softness of the bed, the clean, crisp sheets and soft blankets: Alonso is asleep in moments, and deep asleep within a breath or two after that. And then suddenly, he's awake again. Having grown used to sleeping with a helmet for a pillow, he's also got a keen ability to wake up when danger's afoot. He's awake. Suddenly sitting up in bed without remembering the act of sitting up in bed, and not sure why. Just this sense that something is not right. Moonlight streams in through the window, which -- wait, didn't he go to bed after moonset? -- wait. -> >> Alonso to Here << <-============================================ Rolled 5 Successes for an exceptional success. < 3 4 6 8 8 9 9 9 > ===============================-> >> Wits + Composure No Flags << <- Sitting bolt upright is something you also learn not to do when you're used to using your helmet for a pillow. That's a good way to get your head blown off. Instead, he rolls over and off the bed, down to a knee right in front of the bed side table. He carefully draws it open, claims his pistol, and slides the drawer shut again. He muffles the weapon with his pillow to flip off the safety and chamber a round, then pushes up to a crouch to creep around the bed and check on Gisa. The absence of flame in her shin, the fact that her clay skin is cool to the touch, all of this is processed grimly. Along with the moon that should not be in the sky. Edging away from the bed, he creeps up to the window's edge to peer out onto the street, down along the wall, and up towards the sky. You don't just wake up to something like this without something having woke you. Crackle, crackle, pop! Sizzle, sizzle, click! There's some sort of ... fiery? Electrical? Sound... in the walls, maybe. It doesn't sound like natural electricity, the sort with which the Levinquick is all too familiar. It doesn't sound like fire, either, not exactly. It sounds like... something. Something that Alonso can't place. The golem lies on her back in their shared bed, still and cold in every sense of the word, but there's some sort of movement over by the bed as soon as he turns toward the window. He catches it out of the corner of his eye. And from that bed, from where he was just sleeping? Comes a wailing little sob from a lump under the blankets which until just a moment ago were covering the Darkling. And still, Gisa doesn't move. "Herbert? If that is you, crab, shut up. Now." Alonso pulls the sheets back, his patience understandable thin what with the prospect of a dead girlfriend and firetricity crackling through his walls when the moon isn't where it ought to be. Perhaps a gun pointed at its eyestalks will get the crab's attetion. If it is, indeed, the crab. It is not the crab. It is far too large to be the crab, and Herbert is -- oddly enough -- nowhere to be seen, or, even more oddly, nowhere to be heard. Gisa's cold and the hermit crab isn't complaining about anything, and this is... It looks like a slightly de-rezzed Sim toddler sitting on his bed, as if someone's computer froze halfway through rendering the thing, and then it somehow got smashed together with a sickly puppy and a pile of spare machinery. The thing -- because there's no other word for it -- whimpers when it's got a gun pointed at it, and clutches its seven-fingered hands together in front of its chest; its ribs are cracked open and Alonso can see its mechanoid heart pumping, its papery bellows lungs expanding and contracting inside the wire framework with which its ribs have been replaced. Its six legs curl up underneath its backside, a mix of sprockets and bones, and blood's smeared across the bedclothes. "Mmmmmmaaaaaaa," it stutters, the single syllable broken up as if its audio file is slow to load. "Mmmm-m-m-maaaa?" That is decidedly not Herbert. It takes Alonso about half a second of fight or flight debate to lean towards the more natural response. The cathartic response, too, come to that. His finger squeezes off first one round, then another, followed by the entirety of the magazine in quick succession. What with all the noise and flashing from the muzzle, one might miss the scream that rises out of his throat, and the way the lightning in his eyes gets particularly bright. The nice things about dreams, is that when you forget to police your brass, the weapon just keeps on firing. Whatever that thing is, it's apparently being made to pay for more or less everything. Ever. Whatever that thing was? It splatters really really well. It splashes across the sheets, across the walls, all over the blankets, all over Alonso himself. Sprockets and brain and bones and metallic bits just... explode. They explode far more than even pumping... whatever that thing is... full of bullets should do. They're everywhere. And when his vision has been entirely obscured by blood and guts and he can no longer see what he is shooting, when he has shot a hole through the mattress, he becomes aware that there is no longer the wood floor of their shared studio apartment under his feet. There's dry, crackling grass, and sandy, loamy earth. His eyes are obscured by blood and guts, but that he knows. And he's still firing... into what? Presuming he clears the gunk from his eyes -- which takes a moment -- the room is gone, his bed is gone, and the sleeping -- or dead -- golem is gone. The corpse of whatever the fuck that is? Also gone. He's standing on the top of a hill in the center of a Hedge maze. There are two routes down from the hill on which he finds himself -- left and right. The sky overhead crackles with lightning that spans the sky like a sparking spiderweb. -> >> Alonso to Here << <-============================================ Rolled 4 Successes < 5 8 8 9 9 > ==============================-> >> Wits + Occult - 3 No Flags << <- When the scenery changes-- or when he becomes aware of the scenery change --he lowers the weapon in his right hand and wipes the gore from his eyes with his left. That he knows, indeed. Once he's taken time to orient his bearings, and spit out the ichor he'd coated himself in, his sour mood only darkens further. He's not a fellow that enjoys being toyed with. No Changeling is, of course. But his overdeveloped sense of personal freedom is even more overdeveloped than most. So he defies the whole exercise of labyrinths and mazes. He is, after all, a zephyr. Wind and lightning. The scouring of a desert gale. And when confronted with a maze he can't possibly fathom, he simply ceases to be in one place and in a swirl of wind, appears in another. The walls are no barrier to him. The pregnant skies and breezes only aid him. He pops out of being in one place, only to swirl into being in another. Boof. Boof. Boof. Boof. -> >> Gisa to Here << <-============================================== Rolled 0 Success < 2 > ==============================================-> >> 1 No Flags << <- Pop. Pop. Pop. And then he pops into being through one of the walls? And to his right is an open area, or at least, semi-open, for being in a maze. Standing in neat rows through that open area, with sun glinting on the metal in their bodies? Hundreds. Of. Them. Hundreds. Of mismatched Things, with their ever-so-many legs and too-many fingers. Some have no eyes at all and pointed, translucent ears as big in comparison to their heads as a fennec fox's, some have noses more pronounced than an alt-right-drawn antisemitic caricature, some have eyes quite literally as big as saucers set in their pale faces, held into place with rivets ringing their scleras. He pops into being, and one head turns toward him, its mouth falling open as if the hinge on its jaw just failed. "Mmmm---mmmmm---mmmaaaaa," it wails, stretching telescoping metal arms three times as long as its body toward him. Its legs roll beneath him like a centipede's legs, and as one turns? The rest, too, turn and follow, taking up the irregular, bleating cry. Reaching for him. "Mmmmmaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.... mmmmaaaaaaa.... " -> >> Alonso to Here << <-============================================ Rolled 3 Successes < 2 2 3 3 4 5 5 6 6 7 7 7 9 10 10 > ======================-> >> Wits + Empathy + Wyrd + 3 No Flags << <- GAME: Alonso spends 1 Glamour GAME: Alonso spends 1 Willpower When Alonso 'bamfs' into the clearing filled with these hideous homonculi, he is of course taken aback. At least momentarily. He backpedals away from the reaching arms of the creature and skids to a halt. Gone are his sleep clothes. He is quite suddenly dressed in a fine olive uniform, a red star featured prominently on his cap, a rifle in his hands. His polished belt and boots a fine match to the sharp cut of his hair and beard, the uncanny symmetry of his features. The bayonette on the end of his rifle gleams in the low light. But he does not lift it to fire. Instead he lifts his chin and begins to sing, clear and bright. And as he does, the dream itself rebels against the interlopers. The hedge which surrounds them transforms into a horde of communist rebels. Each with a rifle of their own. And THEY lift their weapons to fire-- a fussilade of deafening thunder that briefly fills the clearing with the light of a noon day sun. And should anyone be on the other end of this dream, they're going to be waking up with a rather profound headache. Alonso doesn't stay to watch. He turns his back on the carnage and begins marching towards the bright light issuing from the door that leads to wakefullness. "Do not come here again," he warns over the continuing crackle of gunfire, before passing through the portal to consciousness. And when he wakes up? The room is just as he left it. Gisa is asleep next to him; the shin on her forehead glows with a ruddy, deep orange light, flickering gently in time with her breathing and heartbeat. Her lungs expand and contract. There's no moon in the sky; it set long ago. The early morning birds have started twittering outside the window, and as Alonso awakes with the hymn of the Fourth International on his lips, Gisa rolls over onto her side and flings one radiantly warm arm over his waist. "Go back to sleep, motek," she mutters in Hebrew. If only she knew.