You mean scary town right?biigoh said:
An Imago of Rust and Crimson (Worm crossover)
- Thread starter EarthScorpion
- Start date
Biigoh
Tanuki
- Location
- Tanukia
Ahh... close enough. :3Nightblade said:You mean scary town right?
1.04
An Imago of Rust and Crimson
Chapter 1.04
It was dark. I couldn't get out. I could taste the blood on my tongue and every inhalation made me want to vomit. I couldn't get out. The pain stabbed through my arm, and I screamed.
I couldn't ever get out.
I woke, gasping for air. My clammy skin was cold against the morning air. I smelt of fear, the hot, damp sweaty tang filling the room. Rolling onto my side, trying very hard not to bang my hands, I whimpered. I was exhausted. I just wanted to sleep. But I couldn't get a proper night's rest.
The nightmares were getting worse and worse. As they brought down the dose of the painkillers – something I had asked for – I was dreaming at night. Dreaming again and again of the locker.
Letting out a shuddering breath, I tried to think of something else. The clock on the bedside table was showing 07:39. It was only just light outside, and the world I could see through the crack in the curtains looked grey and dull.
Regular. Mundane.
Maybe I could ask for a night-light, to see if sleeping in a better-lit place would stop the dreams. Or I could ask for more painkillers. Maybe my body was associating the pain in my hands with being back there.
No. I couldn't let them know what I'd seen. I couldn't control what I said when I was on the medication, and I didn't want people to think I was crazy. I'd already let my dad know more than I wanted him to. I wasn't sure if he knew that it was Emma, Sophia and Madison who'd pushed me in there, but I'd heard him shouting on the phone outside. He wasn't letting the school handle things. He had taken things to the police. Someday soon, I'd have someone come in to take a formal witness statement.
Just the thought of that made my mouth feel dry. I painfully reached to the sports bottle on my side table, and found it empty.
Damn. My eyes went to the sink in the room. Over the past few days, I'd found just how painful trying to do anything was. My injured hands were torture in their own right. Not just because they hurt – though they did – but because they made me useless. There were so many things I couldn't do for myself. I could get out of bed and make my way to the sink. Unscrewing the lid of the bottle, filling it up, and then resealing it? I honestly didn't know if I could do it.
I was still going to try. I hated being useless.
Painfully, I levered my aching body out of bed, and stumbled over to the mirror above the sink. I looked exhausted. My lips were pale, and there were bags under my eyes. There were plasters down both cheeks, covering self-inflicted wounds. I tried not to look at them. Apparently they were shallow, didn't seem to be infected and might not scar. I was still vain enough to not want to think of what I might see when the dressings came off.
Holding the bottle in both hands, keeping it held up more through pressure than any grip on it, I managed to unscrew the cap with my teeth. I kept it gripped in my mouth, because I certainly wouldn't manage to pick it up again on my own. I managed to wedge the bottle under the faucet, and I thanked whoever had designed this hospital that the tap was a lever design.
There were flecks of rust in the water.
I screamed, spitting out the bottle cap, and leapt back. Of course, I fell back, landing heavily on my bottom, which joined the chorus of aches and pains. Much more prominent was the stabbing pain white-hot from my hands. I bit back another scream, eyes watering.
There was a clatter of feet from outside, and one of the nurses entered. "Taylor," asked the nurse, alarmed. "What happened?"
"I just fell," I lied. I put on a fake smile, trying to slow my breathing. I wiped my eyes on my shoulder. "I thought I could manage to refill the water bottle on my own. Looks like I wasn't as steady on my feet as I thought I was."
The woman tutted. "You should have just rung for help," she said, not unkindly. "I know it must be frustrating, not being able to do things for yourself, but you need to give yourself time to heal."
"I didn't want to be a bother," I said weakly.
"Look! You've gone and started bleeding again," she said, holding my hand out for me. I could see the dark stain spreading on the middle finger of my right hand, soaking through the dressing. "Young lady, forget 'not being a bother' and just ring if you want your water refilled. Your hands are infected. I don't want you making yourself any worse!"
My cheeks were flushed, from humiliation as well as pain, while she helped me back to bed. I would have been screaming from frustration, if I hadn't been terrified out of my wits by the sight of the rust in the water.
The nurse refilled the bottle, and made a note on the sheet at the end of my bed. With a stern 'Next time, call for help', she departed. The water was clear this time. There was no sign of rust. But of course there wouldn't be, because I'd run the tap.
I wasn't seeing things. Hopefully.
I cried myself to sleep, and I wasn't sure if the tears were coming from frustration, pain or fear.
Of course, I didn't even get a proper amount of rest out it if. I got woken up by my dad, who told me that he'd got a sudden phone-call asking if they could take my statement today. Then came the humiliating bit where he fed me breakfast, because I couldn't hold cutlery myself. Somehow it was worse than when the nurses did it. There was just enough time after that for him to sponge down my face so I at least wasn't so sweaty, but I wasn't going to be winning any beauty pageants looking like this. Not that I would have won them anyway.
The policewoman was a somewhat-overweight motherly looking Hispanic woman. She was wearing lily-of-the-valley perfume, and had a red butterfly clip in her hair. Just the sort you'd want to be talking to an 'emotionally fragile' teenage girl, I thought cynically.
I wondered how many sad stories like mine she'd heard, and whether she really cared when she heard another one.
"So, Miss Hebert… or would you prefer me to call you Taylor?" she began, after pulling up a chair beside my bed.
"Taylor," I said.
"Okay, Taylor. You can call me Maria. I'm here to take a witness statement from you… have you ever done that before?"
I shook my head. "No."
"Well, okay. Basically, what's going to happen is that I'm going to ask you some questions, and I'm going to record the conversation. We can go at your own pace. All I want you to do is try to be honest and say everything you remember. Just stick to what you can remember, do you understand? Don't make guesses – just say if you don't remember something or if you're not sure. And if you lie, you can get in trouble, so don't do that, okay?"
I swallowed. "I understand," I said. I understood, but I still wasn't going to say everything.
"Now, you can have your dad in here, or I can ask him to leave. Which would you prefer, Taylor?"
I was in two minds about that. If he was here – he was my dad. And I was going to actually, possibly, really be getting the three who did this to me in serious trouble. When I put it like that, it was a scary idea. It felt better to have him here. But on the other hand, if I let things slip, I didn't want him to hear.
"I'd like to be alone," I said. I felt awful just from the way he looked at me when I said that. I tried to look apologetic at him, but I'm not sure if it worked. The cop cleared her throat, and I turned my attention back on her.
Something flickered in the background. No, that wasn't quite it. It was more like the background flickered. My dad and the woman stayed where they were sat, but the world around them changed. Just for a moment.
"Taylor?" the cop said kindly. She could obviously see my expression, and how my breathing had sped up. "Is something the matter?"
Was something the matter? No, of course nothing was the matter, officer. I mean, it wasn't as if I had just seen the walls around me as bare concrete, rust bleeding from the exposed beams in loops and swirls. It wasn't like the temperature had just dropped twenty degrees for a few seconds, and all the hair on my arms was standing on end. It wasn't like I had just heard the water in the pipes.
"My hands just hurt," I lied. It wasn't actually a lie, even. They were hurting more. "I bent them by accident," I added.
"Oh, I'm sorry," the cop said. "Do you want me to get some…"
"I'll be fine," I said quickly. "I just… well, I'm still on some painkillers, but not as much as I could have because I really don't like the way they make me feel. Some pain is better than the dizziness."
She tucked back a stray lock of hair. "Do you think you can go on?" she asked.
"I'll be fine," I assured her, ignoring the expression on my dad's face. I thought the staff might have told him that I had asked them to reduce the dosage of painkillers a bit, but apparently not. Yes, asking him to leave had been a good idea. I didn't want to think about what he'd say when he found out about all the bullying last term.
"Well, okay," she said, pulling out a recorder from her pocket, along with a few lapel mikes. "If Mr Hebert… sorry, but she's asked you to leave and…"
"I understand," he said slowly, pulling himself to his feet. "I'll… I'll just go get some food at the canteen, how about that?"
The door slammed behind him with a grating shriek of metal against metal. I bit down on my tongue to avoid yelping at that sound, and tried not to think of what the momentary flash had revealed to me.
I tried my very best to make it through the interview. Focusing on the questions and carefully working out my answers helped. As long as I was otherwise occupied, I didn't have to think of the burning figure who stalked out in place of my father, or the hollow-eyed porcelain doll which had replaced the cop who was listening to my every word.
I wasn't going mad. I was just stressed out and tired. That's what I told myself.
Chapter 1.04
It was dark. I couldn't get out. I could taste the blood on my tongue and every inhalation made me want to vomit. I couldn't get out. The pain stabbed through my arm, and I screamed.
I couldn't ever get out.
I woke, gasping for air. My clammy skin was cold against the morning air. I smelt of fear, the hot, damp sweaty tang filling the room. Rolling onto my side, trying very hard not to bang my hands, I whimpered. I was exhausted. I just wanted to sleep. But I couldn't get a proper night's rest.
The nightmares were getting worse and worse. As they brought down the dose of the painkillers – something I had asked for – I was dreaming at night. Dreaming again and again of the locker.
Letting out a shuddering breath, I tried to think of something else. The clock on the bedside table was showing 07:39. It was only just light outside, and the world I could see through the crack in the curtains looked grey and dull.
Regular. Mundane.
Maybe I could ask for a night-light, to see if sleeping in a better-lit place would stop the dreams. Or I could ask for more painkillers. Maybe my body was associating the pain in my hands with being back there.
No. I couldn't let them know what I'd seen. I couldn't control what I said when I was on the medication, and I didn't want people to think I was crazy. I'd already let my dad know more than I wanted him to. I wasn't sure if he knew that it was Emma, Sophia and Madison who'd pushed me in there, but I'd heard him shouting on the phone outside. He wasn't letting the school handle things. He had taken things to the police. Someday soon, I'd have someone come in to take a formal witness statement.
Just the thought of that made my mouth feel dry. I painfully reached to the sports bottle on my side table, and found it empty.
Damn. My eyes went to the sink in the room. Over the past few days, I'd found just how painful trying to do anything was. My injured hands were torture in their own right. Not just because they hurt – though they did – but because they made me useless. There were so many things I couldn't do for myself. I could get out of bed and make my way to the sink. Unscrewing the lid of the bottle, filling it up, and then resealing it? I honestly didn't know if I could do it.
I was still going to try. I hated being useless.
Painfully, I levered my aching body out of bed, and stumbled over to the mirror above the sink. I looked exhausted. My lips were pale, and there were bags under my eyes. There were plasters down both cheeks, covering self-inflicted wounds. I tried not to look at them. Apparently they were shallow, didn't seem to be infected and might not scar. I was still vain enough to not want to think of what I might see when the dressings came off.
Holding the bottle in both hands, keeping it held up more through pressure than any grip on it, I managed to unscrew the cap with my teeth. I kept it gripped in my mouth, because I certainly wouldn't manage to pick it up again on my own. I managed to wedge the bottle under the faucet, and I thanked whoever had designed this hospital that the tap was a lever design.
There were flecks of rust in the water.
I screamed, spitting out the bottle cap, and leapt back. Of course, I fell back, landing heavily on my bottom, which joined the chorus of aches and pains. Much more prominent was the stabbing pain white-hot from my hands. I bit back another scream, eyes watering.
There was a clatter of feet from outside, and one of the nurses entered. "Taylor," asked the nurse, alarmed. "What happened?"
"I just fell," I lied. I put on a fake smile, trying to slow my breathing. I wiped my eyes on my shoulder. "I thought I could manage to refill the water bottle on my own. Looks like I wasn't as steady on my feet as I thought I was."
The woman tutted. "You should have just rung for help," she said, not unkindly. "I know it must be frustrating, not being able to do things for yourself, but you need to give yourself time to heal."
"I didn't want to be a bother," I said weakly.
"Look! You've gone and started bleeding again," she said, holding my hand out for me. I could see the dark stain spreading on the middle finger of my right hand, soaking through the dressing. "Young lady, forget 'not being a bother' and just ring if you want your water refilled. Your hands are infected. I don't want you making yourself any worse!"
My cheeks were flushed, from humiliation as well as pain, while she helped me back to bed. I would have been screaming from frustration, if I hadn't been terrified out of my wits by the sight of the rust in the water.
The nurse refilled the bottle, and made a note on the sheet at the end of my bed. With a stern 'Next time, call for help', she departed. The water was clear this time. There was no sign of rust. But of course there wouldn't be, because I'd run the tap.
I wasn't seeing things. Hopefully.
I cried myself to sleep, and I wasn't sure if the tears were coming from frustration, pain or fear.
Of course, I didn't even get a proper amount of rest out it if. I got woken up by my dad, who told me that he'd got a sudden phone-call asking if they could take my statement today. Then came the humiliating bit where he fed me breakfast, because I couldn't hold cutlery myself. Somehow it was worse than when the nurses did it. There was just enough time after that for him to sponge down my face so I at least wasn't so sweaty, but I wasn't going to be winning any beauty pageants looking like this. Not that I would have won them anyway.
The policewoman was a somewhat-overweight motherly looking Hispanic woman. She was wearing lily-of-the-valley perfume, and had a red butterfly clip in her hair. Just the sort you'd want to be talking to an 'emotionally fragile' teenage girl, I thought cynically.
I wondered how many sad stories like mine she'd heard, and whether she really cared when she heard another one.
"So, Miss Hebert… or would you prefer me to call you Taylor?" she began, after pulling up a chair beside my bed.
"Taylor," I said.
"Okay, Taylor. You can call me Maria. I'm here to take a witness statement from you… have you ever done that before?"
I shook my head. "No."
"Well, okay. Basically, what's going to happen is that I'm going to ask you some questions, and I'm going to record the conversation. We can go at your own pace. All I want you to do is try to be honest and say everything you remember. Just stick to what you can remember, do you understand? Don't make guesses – just say if you don't remember something or if you're not sure. And if you lie, you can get in trouble, so don't do that, okay?"
I swallowed. "I understand," I said. I understood, but I still wasn't going to say everything.
"Now, you can have your dad in here, or I can ask him to leave. Which would you prefer, Taylor?"
I was in two minds about that. If he was here – he was my dad. And I was going to actually, possibly, really be getting the three who did this to me in serious trouble. When I put it like that, it was a scary idea. It felt better to have him here. But on the other hand, if I let things slip, I didn't want him to hear.
"I'd like to be alone," I said. I felt awful just from the way he looked at me when I said that. I tried to look apologetic at him, but I'm not sure if it worked. The cop cleared her throat, and I turned my attention back on her.
Something flickered in the background. No, that wasn't quite it. It was more like the background flickered. My dad and the woman stayed where they were sat, but the world around them changed. Just for a moment.
"Taylor?" the cop said kindly. She could obviously see my expression, and how my breathing had sped up. "Is something the matter?"
Was something the matter? No, of course nothing was the matter, officer. I mean, it wasn't as if I had just seen the walls around me as bare concrete, rust bleeding from the exposed beams in loops and swirls. It wasn't like the temperature had just dropped twenty degrees for a few seconds, and all the hair on my arms was standing on end. It wasn't like I had just heard the water in the pipes.
"My hands just hurt," I lied. It wasn't actually a lie, even. They were hurting more. "I bent them by accident," I added.
"Oh, I'm sorry," the cop said. "Do you want me to get some…"
"I'll be fine," I said quickly. "I just… well, I'm still on some painkillers, but not as much as I could have because I really don't like the way they make me feel. Some pain is better than the dizziness."
She tucked back a stray lock of hair. "Do you think you can go on?" she asked.
"I'll be fine," I assured her, ignoring the expression on my dad's face. I thought the staff might have told him that I had asked them to reduce the dosage of painkillers a bit, but apparently not. Yes, asking him to leave had been a good idea. I didn't want to think about what he'd say when he found out about all the bullying last term.
"Well, okay," she said, pulling out a recorder from her pocket, along with a few lapel mikes. "If Mr Hebert… sorry, but she's asked you to leave and…"
"I understand," he said slowly, pulling himself to his feet. "I'll… I'll just go get some food at the canteen, how about that?"
The door slammed behind him with a grating shriek of metal against metal. I bit down on my tongue to avoid yelping at that sound, and tried not to think of what the momentary flash had revealed to me.
I tried my very best to make it through the interview. Focusing on the questions and carefully working out my answers helped. As long as I was otherwise occupied, I didn't have to think of the burning figure who stalked out in place of my father, or the hollow-eyed porcelain doll which had replaced the cop who was listening to my every word.
I wasn't going mad. I was just stressed out and tired. That's what I told myself.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Denial is the first stage of... erm, what is this?
XD
I dunno, blatant hallucinations are a bit much to chalk up to stress...
XD
I dunno, blatant hallucinations are a bit much to chalk up to stress...
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Of course they're not hallucinations.Satori said:
Hallucinations are when you see something that isn't really there.
Yeah. This is mage.
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Something tells me Taylor might be seeing a shrink, free of charge.
The imagery for Danny is interesting. A 'burning figure' probably fits his emotional state well- he's a bottle of rage pretty much just waiting to go off in canon, and the way things have gone in this fic I suspect he'll take more direct action. If that is accurate, it implies some nasty things about this police officer- a 'hollow eyed porcelain doll'.EarthScorpion said:
Given the way things have gone so far, this may be a clue that the police officer is under someone else's influence, be it Coil or some agent of the PRT who is essentially co-opting any possibility of this woman doing her job correctly.
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
Hmm, assuming things are sort of the same as canon...
A dangerous...
Very dangerous...
Suicidlally dangerous assumption...
... the PRT is going to try and make Taylor's charges against Sophia disappears. They don't actually like her, but they suspect that she can hurt an Endbringer. It turns out she can't, and the protection disappears later on, leading to her latter destruction.
The policewomen being a doll is very evocative to me - she's dead inside, not actually listening to Taylor or trying to help. She'll try and kill the charges here, rather then report something that could let them stick.
Taylor's using Mind Based Mage Sight, seeing her true character. The rust she's seeing on the building is probobly resonance built up through neglect and despair.
A dangerous...
Very dangerous...
Suicidlally dangerous assumption...
... the PRT is going to try and make Taylor's charges against Sophia disappears. They don't actually like her, but they suspect that she can hurt an Endbringer. It turns out she can't, and the protection disappears later on, leading to her latter destruction.
The policewomen being a doll is very evocative to me - she's dead inside, not actually listening to Taylor or trying to help. She'll try and kill the charges here, rather then report something that could let them stick.
Taylor's using Mind Based Mage Sight, seeing her true character. The rust she's seeing on the building is probobly resonance built up through neglect and despair.
Jiopaba
Eat Lightning; Crap Success.
Finbar
Generic Minion #314
- Location
- Sydney
Actually, Redcaps from Changeling can eat anything.
Sure, Steel is fine. Or how about a nice glass of Arsenic? It's a delicate flavour.
Or your Confidence? How about your Self Esteem?
The very idea of someone who can eat a local concept and it needs mystic healing to recover......is kinda scary.
Sure, Steel is fine. Or how about a nice glass of Arsenic? It's a delicate flavour.
Or your Confidence? How about your Self Esteem?
The very idea of someone who can eat a local concept and it needs mystic healing to recover......is kinda scary.
Now there is a cape with serious fridge-horror potential.Jiopaba said:
Matter Eater Lad, is that you?
Jiopaba
Eat Lightning; Crap Success.
Conceptually defined devouring abilities sounds about infinity times cooler than Matter Eater Lad.Finbar said:
True, but it's not fridge horror by any means. The Redcap is horrifying right on the face of it.Jiopaba said:
Jiopaba
Eat Lightning; Crap Success.
I suppose it could be Fridge More-Horror depending on how much you actually think about something like that while reading it.Rathmun said:
It might not occur to you until you walk off to get a snack that someone like that could eat something like your identity, leaving you wandering around not even sure who you are, horrified and in tears, with a wallet full of blank identification, unable to speak or even remember your own name, until you die alone in an alley whispering 'who am I' and get cremated and buried in an unmarked grave without anyone ever knowing who you were.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
No, Taylor turned the tap on and saw rust in the water, hence the scream that drew the nurse in. There was no rust in the second bottle of water, but that could have been because Taylor had already run the tap once and thus washed it out - like how the water is cold after you turn the hot tap on at first, because it was sitting in the pipe, but then heats up after the stuff that was just sitting there is run out.Goat said:
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
Heh, you would need to fall down several chessboards before you got shit that weird, and that doesn't usually happen the first time - you're on chessboard one or two usually. The three headed demon was chess board three shit.Sol Zagato said:
Very interesting crossover, whatever it's crossed with.
If it's Mage the Awakening I certainly find interesting the lack of Imago(for the uninitiated: an Imago is the mental representation of simbols from the supernal that make up a spell) when casting what I presume would be Unveiling or Knowing spells. Awakened Magic is usually a very deliverate matter, a trascendent act of will. Finding that aspect absent from her inner monologue makes me wonder if this is really a Mage crossover, althrough I suppose it could be like when you have a wound you can't see and you can´t help but touch it all the time just to know how it goes. She may be casting because she doesn't know what it is she can do and is subconciously gattering information.
If it's Mage the Awakening I certainly find interesting the lack of Imago(for the uninitiated: an Imago is the mental representation of simbols from the supernal that make up a spell) when casting what I presume would be Unveiling or Knowing spells. Awakened Magic is usually a very deliverate matter, a trascendent act of will. Finding that aspect absent from her inner monologue makes me wonder if this is really a Mage crossover, althrough I suppose it could be like when you have a wound you can't see and you can´t help but touch it all the time just to know how it goes. She may be casting because she doesn't know what it is she can do and is subconciously gattering information.
Delusionist
Seeker of Truth
- Location
- Land of the Fruits and Nuts
You don't get Abyssal incursions from Paradox until you've thrown a whole bunch of vulgar magic, particularly from a low Gnosis mage. It's statistically absurd to get Manifestation as one's first Paradox if you don't know about it. Backfiring spells is the first thing that typically happens, and that's generally enough to get a mage to be more careful.Alasnuyo said:
Besides, unless Scion is an Abyssal manifestation of vast potency, he would likely destroy any of them that he senses. Abyssals are bad for the experiment.
In that case, there is no hope of beating him, pretty much.