peripheries: (fly me to the moon)
Kaworu Nagisa | 渚 カヲル | ᴛʜᴇ ғɪғᴛʜ ᴄʜɪʟᴅ ([personal profile] peripheries) wrote in [community profile] deercountry2023-04-02 09:03 pm

As above, so below - the Fated Leviathan returns

Who: Everyone in the Leviathan player plot. The plot is open! See the ooc post here
What: A mysterious call makes those return to the beach...
When: Early April.
Where: Throughout the trench but mostly the beach.

Content Warnings: Possession, hallucinations, being consumed by another, lack of control.


A Call From a Lost Beloved

Sleepers will start to hear the voice of someone they left behind urging them to come back. The voice (or voices, depending on the Sleeper and their connections) all repeat words along the same refrain, altered to fit however the Sleeper remembers those they left behind in their worlds:

They are missed. They are needed back home. The promise of freedom from time in the Trench is a lie. Return to the sea.

At first, the call is subtle. Sleepers can ignore it as a manifestation of their own subconscious regrets or anxieties, or treat it as another strange phenomenon of the sea. Over the course of a week or so, however, those being called will begin to suffer from inexplicable malaise, sapping their physical and mental strength to resist the call. At the same time, life in the Trench seems increasingly meaningless: nothing but a stop gap, purgatory.

Return Home

Sleepers will find themselves at the edge of the beach with no memory of walking there. Instinctual fear conflicts with a strange familiarity. They’re happier at the beach than anywhere else in the Trench.

It’s safe there. A place where they feel understood and accepted for any wrongdoings of their past.

If a Sleeper is pulled away from the beach, thoughts of returning will consume them. The more time they spend away from the beach the more exhausted they become, building on the first stage of compulsion. They hear the ocean and the call of their lost loved one beyond the sound of crashing waves. They dream of the ocean. Sometimes they even spit up seawater, the ocean forcing itself onto their lives on dry land.

Do you fight this alien feeling taking over? Or is it comforting? Does it soothe a secret ache that’s been buried? Or is it even alien? Is some of it… could most of it… just be… you?

Part 1: Quick Summary
  • Sleepers hear the call of their lost beloved which eventually grows to hallucinations

  • Life in the Trench feels increasingly meaningless. It keeps them from their loved ones

  • Sleepers may fight the feeling or find it comforting. They might even not feel it is alien, but a manifestation of their true feelings.


A Welcoming

As the call intensifies, those afflicted by it will start to not only hear their lost loved one, but to see them in crowded places. The lost loved will smile, frown, look confused, or otherwise express whatever the Sleeper would be most affected by before turning their backs and heading towards the Farther Shores.

But no one else seems to see them.

If a Sleeper resists the beckoning of their beloved, they will suffer an intensified version of the call’s strength sapping power. Those who succumb to the call will find their well-being returning to them with every step they come closer to the sea, and total relief will suffuse them if they step into the water. Every woe and worry that afflicted them, supernatural or not, fades away, leaving only a sense of peace and completeness.

This is the trap of the call sprung. Sleepers who surrender to the call of the Leviathan will be subsumed by it, turning into puppets for the Leviathan’s insistent compulsion to return to the shore.

Those who become puppets will cluster by the water’s edge and with each other. Contact between the afflicted comforts them, and these waylaid Sleepers will often be found huddled together, holding hands, or otherwise making contact. They will also attempt to lure any as yet unpossessed Sleepers closer, even going so far as to ambush and seize lone Sleepers to drag them into the water in an attempt to force them to give into the Leviathan’s call.

Unheimlich

Finally, the Leviathan’s ghost rises. In the Waking World, the borders between life, death, and other states of being can become blurred, and the remnants of the Leviathan carried in the memories and souls of those it affected boil back to the surface.

This manifestation is a pale shadow of the mighty Beast, but a pale shadow of such a monstrosity is still a terrible thing. Mutated, rotten echoes of the Leviathan’s amorphous form bubble up in the surf, writhing masses of tentacles, carapaces, teeth, and the seabed itself lashing out at any who approach them.

The possessed Sleepers join in its attacks on the living, now seeking to force Sleepers into one of the Leviathan’s many maws. Some may use violence to do this, while others will try persuasion of a less physical kind - but the majority will do both, if capable of it, beseeching their fellow Sleepers to give into the Leviathan’s pull even as they wrestle them towards their dire fate.

Further complicating the fight are the hallucinatory projections the Leviathan’s remnants force on to anyone who comes close. These projections take many forms: some appear as visions of the Sleepers’ lost homes as they left them, while others take the form of their worlds distorted and ruined by their absence, their plans laid to waste, disasters unaverted, and their loved ones suffering without them.

Other projections are smaller, once more appearing as their lost loved ones, but this time, as corpses or monsters - corpses that can be resurrected and monsters that can be restored if only the Sleeper gives in, or so they claim. The increased power of the Fated Beast means that the illusions are now visible to everyone.

Worse yet, some of these illusions are made of flesh, no less an extension of the Leviathan than its teeth and claws, and no less capable of doing real harm. A false friend may have the very real power to attack a Sleeper, or pull them into a cold but loving embrace, and the crumbled walls of a forgotten home may hem a Sleeper in and impede their progress.

Those who fall victim to the Leviathan (or those brave and foolish enough to seek to communicate with it) will be drawn into communion with the restless dead mind of the creature. They may catch glimpses of their own pasts and imagined futures while entombed in a digestive polyp or linked to a biting tendril at the base of their neck, and stranger still, they might catch glimpses of the Leviathan’s memories and feelings. There is no rhyme or reason in these visions, which are shaped by the Sleeper’s own mind as much as the Beast itself.

The Sleepers who resist the Leviathan will struggle with some or all of these aspects as they fight to return the Beast to its grave and retrieve the Sleepers it has already captured. Segments of the Beast can be destroyed with sufficient force, making it a battle of gradually whittling away parts of the Beast’s corpse. Concerted attacks, like in the original fight, will be more effective than individuals working alone.

Rescuing the taken Sleepers will take more than mere violence. The possessed Sleepers must be reminded of their ties to themselves and others within Trench by someone known to them, someone willing to reveal a vulnerability of their own - the depths of their feelings for the possessed Sleeper, a confession about other Sleeper no longer with them that they miss, or some other anchoring truth stronger than the Leviathan’s draw.

The strategy of revealing emotional truths will also help combat the Leviathan’s illusions in the rest of the fight, something Sleepers may discover when their words not only remind their possessed companions who they are, but dispel parts of the Leviathan’s power along with its control. Clever Sleepers can leverage this outside of freeing their fellows from possession, rebuking the Leviathan’s projections with affirmations of their selfhood and the things they care for in Trench.

Part 2 Summary
  • Those who have submitted to the Leviathan’s will are called to the beach. It is comforting to hold hands and be with others that are possessed. They will also attempt to drag non-possessed sleepers into the sea.

  • The corpse of the beast is resurrected. Its powers cause the walls of reality to start to break. Pockets of Sleepers homeworlds, as they are or destroyed in the Sleepers absence, start to appear as do corpses of loved ones (alive or dead).

  • Those eaten will have similar hallucinations or even see some of the Leviathan’s own memories

  • It is possible to fight off the corpse with coordinated attacks.

  • Rescuing a Sleeper from possession requires said Sleeper to be reminded of their ties to the Trench. Revealing emotional truths to a possessed Sleeper will weaken the Leviathan’s hold and confessing their own emotional truth will break them free and weaken the Leviathan’s power.

terriblepurpose: (015)

Paul Atreides | Part I

[personal profile] terriblepurpose 2023-04-03 04:47 am (UTC)(link)
Character Name: Paul Atreides
Called and/or Possessed By Leviathan?: Called
Character Actions: Paul is deeply troubled by the apparent return of the Fated Beast, and relentless in seeking out answers. With his prophetic vision disrupted and altered by his blood change from Paleblood to Darkblood, that's a more complicated issue than he'd prefer. He is especially agitated by the impacts on those he cares about, which he relies on as fuel to resist the growing malaise inflicted by the call.
What They May Have Been Seen Doing: Performing blood magic rituals on the beach, attempting to retrieve wayward Sleepers, researching at the Archives
lipochrome: (Default)

gideon nav / kiriona gaia | part one

[personal profile] lipochrome 2023-04-03 04:57 pm (UTC)(link)
Character Name: Gideon Nav / Kiriona Gaia
Called and/or Possessed By Leviathan?: Called
Character Actions: Gideon is less concerned about the return of the Beast as a threat to Trench, and more concerned about the Beast consuming her friends and loved ones. She'll heed the Leviathan's call willingly, and will stay on the beach throughout the duration of the event.
What They May Have Been Seen Doing: Initially, Gideon will spend her time checking in on others and trying to keep corruption at bay through relatively optimistic or humorous conversation. As the event continues, Gideon will begin to feel more and more possessed by the Leviathan, and the conversation will turn from humorous to downright dark or unsettling. Think of her jokes as getting worse and worse!
wannasmash: "You're kidding me." (oh no aah)

Izuku "Deku" Midoriya | Part I

[personal profile] wannasmash 2023-04-05 04:59 am (UTC)(link)
Character Name: Izuku "Deku" Midoriya
Called and/or Possessed By Leviathan?: called
Character Actions: refusing the call, worrying a lot about others, camping on the beach
What They May Have Been Seen Doing: beach cleanup very early on, being tempted by the hallucination of his Mom at the beach, shepherding wayward people
schoolingfish: (Um...actually human)

[personal profile] schoolingfish 2023-04-07 02:25 pm (UTC)(link)
Character Name: Luca Paguro
Called and/or Possessed By Leviathan?: He will be called and possessed by the Leviathan.
Character Actions: Luca will be hearing the voices of loved ones calling out to him.
What They May Have Been Seen Doing: He might be seen suddenly looking around and calling out to friends when he hears them.
poorlittlesange: (just kill him)

part 1 character action summary!

[personal profile] poorlittlesange 2023-04-10 03:26 am (UTC)(link)
Character Name: Jin Guangyao
Called and/or Possessed By Leviathan?: Called
Character Actions: largely struggling to ignore the call throughout the month, but ultimately surrenders to it long enough to flounder out into the ocean convinced he's seen his mother calling for him.
What They May Have Been Seen Doing: jgy is not the sort of character who daydreams or gets so distracted by or lost in his thoughts that he forgets what he's doing. so when he starts doing exactly these things, his closest CR will probably note that something is amiss.
terriblepurpose: (031)

Paul Atreides | Part II

[personal profile] terriblepurpose 2023-04-03 05:00 am (UTC)(link)
Character Name: Paul Atreides
Called and/or Possessed By Leviathan?: Called
Character Actions/Emotional Confession: Paul arrives early to the clustering of the possessed, but manages to resist succumbing. Instead, he redoubles his efforts to drag people away from the shoreline, with minimal success due to being heavily outnumbered and simultaneously trying to avoid capture.

When the Leviathan begins to manifests, Paul responds with determined violence. He resorts to his new Darkblood time looping powers early in the confrontation, and uses them recklessly as more and more of his loved ones are pulled into harm's way.

[Emotional confessions to be edited in as they occur.]
What They May Have Been Seen Doing: Almost comical if not so dire efforts to rescue waiting possessed Sleepers, two knives worth of anti-Leviathan violence, growing increasingly sickly and Corrupted as the fight wears on
lipochrome: (25)

gideon nav / kiriona gaia | part two

[personal profile] lipochrome 2023-04-03 06:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Character Name: Gideon Nav / Kiriona Gaia
Called and/or Possessed By Leviathan?: Mostly called, somewhat possessed

Character Actions/Emotional Confession: Gideon will be "called" to the shoreline by three figures: Jeannemary Chatur, a teenager who Gideon failed to save; Ortus Nigenad, her brother and brother-in-arms, who has been lost to sea; and Cytherea the First, a Lyctor of the Nine Houses. She will resist their call primarily thanks to the strength of the bonds she has made with her CR in Trench. This will facilitate any emotional confessions she has.

Gideon will experience the "Morning" memory fragment. Following that, she will participate in the battle as a fighter, using her two-handed sword to cut down whatever part of the Beast she can. Meanwhile, as the battle rages on, the call will grow stronger, and Gideon will come to empathize with the Leviathan. She will walk into the sea, believing that she'll be able to take a piece of the Beast along with her.

What They May Have Been Seen Doing: Fighting the Leviathan, becoming increasingly distraught over visions, confessing with her CR, walking into the sea.
facultative: (Default)

anakin skywalker

[personal profile] facultative 2023-04-03 10:26 pm (UTC)(link)
Character Name: anakin skywalker
Called and/or Possessed By Leviathan?: both
Character Actions/Emotional Confession:
anakin will be called and possessed early on and with his darkblood powers and the leviathan's own reality warping powers it'll manifest the darth vader suit around him.

cracking open the mask will reveal anakin as he is now, not the burnt husk he'll become.
What They May Have Been Seen Doing:
darth vader will be seen dragging characters kicking and screaming into the water and interfering in any attempts to save others. the cold presence normally associated with him will be absent, but it doesn't make him any less deadly.
wannasmash: Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie (tired ragged mouth)

Izuku "Deku" Midoriya | Part II

[personal profile] wannasmash 2023-04-05 05:39 am (UTC)(link)
Character Name: Izuku "Deku" Midoriya
Called and/or Possessed By Leviathan?: called very aggressively
Character Actions/Emotional Confession: beset by hallucinations of loved ones, trapped in a polyp, trying to talk people out of possession, fighting with superpowers and a can-do berserker attitude, time-looped by Paul, trying to talk to the Leviathan, stabbed by Leviathan!Kaworu, bleeding on the ground before passing out and requiring medical attention
What They May Have Been Seen Doing: crying along with any of the above, heavily Corrupted post-polyp
schoolingfish: (Sad hug)

[personal profile] schoolingfish 2023-04-07 02:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Character Name: Luca Paguro
Called and/or Possessed By Leviathan?: Yes to both.
Character Actions/Emotional Confession: Honestly, he won't be able to even try to resist the call and he'll be possessed pretty quickly. Since his family and Alberto are all sea monsters, hearing their voices coming from the sea will just make too much sense to him and he'll just go and get possessed pretty much immediately.
What They May Have Been Seen Doing: People might see him on the beach going out to sea. They also might end up fighting him as he defends the Leviathan.
terriblepurpose: (030)

Paul Atreides | OTA

[personal profile] terriblepurpose 2023-04-03 07:55 pm (UTC)(link)
part I - bloody beach
[cw: ritual self-harm, psychological distress]
A year ago, this part of the beach had finally been washed clean of the gory residue of a terrible battle. Nothing remains of the camp that once stood here save a scattering of buried minor artifacts - a metal spoon, bent and lost, the buckle of a boot torn off unnoticed, a fragment of glass already dulled to harmlessly by the polish of the waves - and the memories of those who, for a brief span of time, occupied it.

Paul can still see the tents, if he tries. The training rings and the engineering yards, the roughed out communal square, the flags and their emblems unfurling in the wind. He can see the faces of the people who came to answer the call to arms, so many of them gone, and he can hear their voices in the water.

That's why he came back. That's why, where there was nothing, there now stands a black line of fire-cured driftwood carved thin and murderous, jutting out of the sand as the scaffolding for pale threads strung with a confusion of esoteric charms and sigils. They form a jagged spiralling guide, not quite a circle, and at its terminus Paul kneels, facing out towards the sea.

His eyes are half-lidded and vacant, flicking this way and that as he breathes in a deep, dredging rhythm, his fingers twitching where they're folded on top of his thighs. A cone of incense burns at his left hand side, and on his right a thin fish-knife whose blade is worn down to almost impossible seeming narrowness rests on a plain red cloth. The wind drags his unkempt hair across his pallid forehead in fits, as unnoticed as the approach of any nearing footsteps.

Those who might come across this strange tableau have a choice: interrupt, or observe.

part I - intervention
[cw: mind influence, mind control]
Other times, the spiral lies empty.

Anyone who comes to this stretch of beach has a chance of encountering Paul sitting on the sand or a jutting piece of natural scenery, legs crossed and cradling his knife sharpening kit as he works on one of two wickedly sharp, long knives, the pair of swords strapped to his back apparently in need of new companions. He raises his hand to catch the attention of newcomers, and if they heed it, he waits for them to come to him. If they don't, he levers himself up and makes his way to them with short, cutting strides, a set of determination over his sharply drawn features. He doesn't look like he's been sleeping well.

Whether you come to him or he goes to you, his words are the same.

"What are you doing out here?" He asks, softly, with an odd burr of roughness in his usually so well-tempered voice. It's not anger, or fear, or anything so easily intelligible.

His knives hang from his hands over his knees or at his sides like he's forgotten they're there, a child's careless dangling of their toys.

part II - echo
[cw: body horror, oceanic horror, corpses, psychological distress]
It's funny how so many things come in cycles. Paul said it himself.

The beach is churned up by the claws and flippers of monsters, littered with bodies and wreckage. The water froths with blood in all its colours. Paul fights on light, sure feet over the sand, his long twin knives weaving death with uncanny swiftness, his eyes flat and murderous above the bridge of his protective mask.

The image could be a remnant of the past, dragged forward into the future by the strange tides of saltwater time, if not for the stranger who trails Paul across the beach wielding the swords whose sheaths hang empty at Paul's hips. He fights like a demon, and he nearly looks like one, too, his hair strung through with kelp and the warmth of his complexion lost to the mottled pallor of a drowned corpse. His armour is pierced and rent in a dozen places, but he does not bleed, and he does not falter in his pursuit.

Whenever Paul is staggered, whenever he is on the cusp of being overwhelmed, the stranger strikes. He does not have Paul's speed, but he makes up for it with strength, hewing through defences and forcing back his opponent with ferocious might and skill.

A blow comes down. Paul stumbles in the surf, going down to one knee, and he raises his knives above his head in a desperate attempt to block a crushing strike. It's useless. The stranger, for once, moves faster.

The distorted crab's claw is sheered off into the water, and the stranger finishes it with a hewing chop that cracks its shell like a gunshot. He kicks it away from Paul and turns to him, his hands outstretched, blades held up and away in pacification. His mouth moves, words lost in the tumult of battle.

Paul wrenches himself to his feet and jerks back, bringing his knives up in a defensive ward. His shoulders shake, the once, his head tilting down like a bull at bay, everything in him aligned on the cusp of something terrible, irrevocable.

He twists himself away, and he keeps moving.

Ezra Bridger

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Peter Graham

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cw: dissociation

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lipochrome: (25)

echo

[personal profile] lipochrome 2023-04-03 09:44 pm (UTC)(link)
Gideon fights in tandem with Paul, when she's able. It keeps her focused on something other than the young girl and young-for-the-Ninth man, who stand arm-in-arm behind the beast and wave. If she cuts down the creature, they'll go away. (If she cuts down the creature, she can reach them again.)

God once called Kiriona the final expression of the art of the Nine Houses, and for once, he wasn't lying. She fights even more dangerously this time, now that she cannot tire, or hurt, or bleed.

She ignores Paul's stranger, too. It's only fair. She has a suspicion as to who he is, but to say his name aloud would cut worse than any knife, and Kiriona needs Paul alive, especially since she can't be.

The stranger offers Paul a hand. Behind them both stands a frail woman, in a dress that matches the color of the churning sea. She points at the corpse of Paul's cavalier and winks.

Gideon doesn't know it, but she screams.

"No!"

And Kiriona lunges, hoping that her punch makes direct contact with the dead man's face.

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strikefirster: (Untitled-18)

Echo

[personal profile] strikefirster 2023-04-04 02:28 am (UTC)(link)
[The last time the Leviathan reared it's ugly head in Trench. It had taken the life of someone Johnny Lawrence cared about deeply. He had been too slow, to weak to do anything about it. That hadn't really changed over the last year, but he had a better idea of what he was doing now.

Which is why the sound of an engine roaring can be heard from across the beach. Johnny's in his 2009 Charger ripping across the sand in Paul's direction. The speaker's belting out a classic tune from his childhood.]


Oh
We're headin' for Venus (Venus)
And still we stand tall
'Cause maybe they've seen us
And welcome us all, yeah
With so many light years to go
And things to be found (to be found)
I'm sure that we all miss her so


[Crab carcasses and what ever other monstrosities Johnny comes across fly over crumple and fly past his bumper as he continues down the path.]

It's the final countdown
The final countdown
The final countdown (final countdown)
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Oh!


[Another crab goes flying through the air as the Charger comes to a skidding stop. Sand kicking up all over the place as it tries to come to a steady stop. When it does, Johnny let's his head and arm pop out the window.]

Paul.

You're not doing this without me.

Not this time.
Edited 2023-04-04 02:28 (UTC)

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justoscar: (tired)

Intervention

[personal profile] justoscar 2023-04-04 03:09 am (UTC)(link)
[There was a buzzing tension at the edges of Oscar's awareness that needled at him with the incessant intensity of a mosquito in the summer. It was a constant, interminable drone of anguish and loneliness that overwhelmed the senses and was enough to drive Oscar into the space of feeling uncomfortable in his own skin. He could feel his bones-- and feel it in his marrow that this was a trial that had come for the town before.

It was inevitable that Oscar made his way to the beach, driven by curiosity and a need to make good on his promise to make Trench better for everyone. Even a creature from beyond the shores and beyond ordinary comprehension. He came only as himself, with Diggs at his side-- and it was impossible to not spot Paul in a quiet alcove along the surf.]


...How can I not be here?

[Oscar asked in reply to Paul's address, holding his own arms as if he were attempting to give himself a hug.]

It won't stop crying. I can't concentrate on anything.

[And, looking up, he regarded Paul and firmly stood his ground.]

...We're a team, aren't we?

I'm here to help, if you'll have it.

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hearthebell: will credit if found (They're talking in tongues)

1. Bloody Beach

[personal profile] hearthebell 2023-04-05 06:09 am (UTC)(link)
[Bonded individuals have certain privileges, that are not privy to others. In spite of his predilection for painful excursions, L does not believe that he has forsaken his right to these, especially now, as he makes his hurried way to the beach.

As usual, he has not dressed warmly enough, or eaten enough to keep a substantial amount of flesh on his bones. There's an impression, as he passes along the sand, that only removing his shoes would be enough to keep his feet clear from any footprint.

Still, he persists, until he has found the reason he came here for.]


Paul?

[He reaches out a long, thin hand to touch the boy's shoulder. Something about their bond is different; he can't put his finger on it. It's as though a glass full of clear light has been tipped aside or tainted.

He reaches to move the fish knife aside.]


Paul? How can I help you?

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bloody beach!

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lipochrome: (28)

gideon nav / kiriona gaia | open

[personal profile] lipochrome 2023-04-04 11:54 pm (UTC)(link)
i. wake from your sleep (open)
[ Gideon is one of the first to arrive on the beach, and much like the last time, she doesn't leave. Thankfully, she's not overworking herself this time. Instead, she tends to hover around Kaworu, her brow knitted in concern when she thinks no one is looking.

But she can't hover all the time. When she's not trying to nudge her friends or family into conversation, she's down at the shoreline, looking out at the waves. Her cloudy-gold eyes seem to be focused on something, which is strange, because there's nothing there. It's as if she's waiting for something, and if asked, she'll say she's waiting for you.

The closer you get to the water's edge, the more likely it is she'll snap to attention, turning that watchful gaze on you, instead. ]


You should back off. It's fucked up out there.

ii. the drying of your tears (open; cw: grief, self-harm)
[ Just inside the horizon, there is a skull-painted man and a teenage girl with a bejeweled sword, and both of them are just out of reach.

It doesn't matter how much of the Beast Kiriona cuts down, and she cuts down plenty. Once it makes landfall, she does not stop moving. In her flurry of speed and strength and technique, she looks as alive as her corpse-cooled pallor will allow. Kiriona fights silently, and ruthlessly, and endlessly. She could do this forever, and maybe that would be for the best. Maybe that's what she's meant to do, why she's here.

As the battle wears on, Kiriona grows reckless. A barbed tentacle twists around her ankle; she stumbles and keeps going. The creature throws ink in her face; she wipes it off and presses on. To anyone who tries to get her attention, let alone urge her to stop, she will turn to them, and say in a hollow voice that is both hers and not her own: ]


I'm sorry. I couldn't save them. I'm sorry.

iii. today we escape (closed to close cr; cw: self-sacrifice)
[ Someone must have pulled Gideon to shore. She doesn't remember. She recalls something else, instead.

There is no battle. That is a lie. There is always a battle coming. You are a child of war, and you have known this since you were small. But in the morning, there is someone beside you, and they do not slip a knife through your ribs. You hold them close, and you do not hold them like a spoil of battle, for this is something far holier. Maybe one day, you'll give the holy thing a name.

Gideon kneels on the sand, back to the sea, and she smiles. ]


Step one. Preserve the soul. [ She shakes her head and laughs a little, low and only for herself. ] Obviously.

[ Bless the love that lasts forever and ever, amen. ]

I get it. [ She rises. ] I know this is gonna be really, really messed up, but someone's got to take one for the team.
strikefirster: (Untitled-18)

[personal profile] strikefirster 2023-04-06 03:32 am (UTC)(link)
[Johnny's standing on the beach nearby. Did he drag her to shore? Who knows. He's not going to take credit for anything like that anyways. Still, he looks over when Gideon pulls herself into a sit and then finally rises up again.

He steps over and gives her a little bunch on the arm.]


You do what you have to do, kid.

I've got your back.

But before you go doing any sort of doom and gloom shit you gotta remember two things.

First off, there is no defeat in this dojo.

And second-

Eagle Fang Always Flies.

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for kaworu

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I

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wannasmash: "Let's go." (frown determined fight)

Izuku "Deku" Midoriya | MHA spoilers for his canon point

[personal profile] wannasmash 2023-04-05 04:05 am (UTC)(link)
Part 1a (optional) - A Call From a Lost Beloved: Nature Is Healing
cw: mention of teenager's corpse
Midoriya likes the beach and volunteers to clean it regularly, but he shuns a particular stretch of it. It's where the blood flowed most, where he laid Paul's ruined body down on a rocky outcrop and then lost all memory of the rest of his bloody part in the battle. He became terrifying, a scared young man in pain.

He stands at the water's edge in a warm hoodie jacket. His green eyes are wide, but not as wide as they were a year ago, and they regard the surf. He removes his shoes and socks and wades ankle deep, shivering in his jean shorts. He bows and speaks (to the waves?).

"I'm sorry I didn't come here sooner. I know it's not your fault, what happened here. I'm going to clean this place up like the rest of the beach."

Part 1b - A Call From a Lost Beloved (cont.): Mom?
cw: hallucinations, grief
He looks up. Is that a handkerchief in the waves? His? Midoriya moves towards it as if tugged by a string, his subconscious knowing while his mind plays catch-up. He was always prone to forgetting it, and the only person who took the trouble to remind him to carry it was--

"I miss you, Izuku. I'm so sorry I ever let you go. Please, come back to me like you promised. Time is running out. Come to the sea. Come home."

Izuku Midoriya takes off running into the waves towards the short, soft woman with tearful green eyes like his.

Part 2 - Unheimlich Maneuver
cw: hallucination zombies, being subsumed into a digestive polyp, potential violence
Fear, you learn, is an absence. It is anathema. It is a beloved rescued at last, but the body no longer houses the person in it. Paul once again lies with his limbs at odd angles and paleblood pouring out of his solar plexus. Kaworu is slim and irreparably crumpled, and his darkblood scatters too fast for the sand to soak...

Midoriya is no longer the bereaved conqueror in the memory, nor is he the fallen beloved. Midoriya is here in the present fully kitted out in his Hero gear. He is silent but for a small strangled noise of surprise out of his gulping mouth. He shivers uncontrollably. He is possessed, not by the Leviathan, but by a drive to save others that eclipses all common understanding.

Midoriya moves without thinking, heedless of the inconsistencies of the Leviathan's illusion. His hands automatically go to staunch Paul's wound, and he presses against flesh, and the two bodies sit up and gently wrap him in their frigid lovers' arms. Danger Sense cleaves his head in two, but Midoriya is too close to react in time.

He is encased in flesh, and the bodies and the beach were never there. The shape of his face and hands frantically scrabble beneath the thick translucent surface of a round, slimy growth ringed with defensive tentacles. He still can't stop as he tries to resuscitate and embrace all at once.

He screams.

Part 2 - Unheimlich... 2!
cw: violence
He clutches his right arm because, once again, he overdid it with his Quirk. The fabric there was blasted away by his own power and revealed a large dark brown splotch of a scar on his upper arm. Will he ever learn? Midoriya's eyes have lost their green to Corruption, iris and pupil both clouded over like a dead fish's. His fangs gasp for air between pallid lips.

But he can still move. He trudges, one step at a time, through the blood and water on this beach of death. He wades deeper through the murky red with a new determination born of understanding. The Leviathan lost someone beloved, and Midoriya refuses to let that happen again.

Harmless sparks of his Quirk's energy billow off him. Midoriya whirls with super strength and speed to dodge a time-defying stinger with almost prescient accuracy belied by his beastlike movements and hellion snarls. Though others on the beach may falter at the solid hallucinations, Midoriya's Danger Sense reveals them for what they are.

He looks like a monster, but he comes in kindness for others and for the Leviathan. He extends his clawed hand...
Edited (link) 2023-04-06 00:11 (UTC)
terriblepurpose: (066)

Unheimlich Maneuver (violence, gore)

[personal profile] terriblepurpose 2023-04-06 08:11 pm (UTC)(link)
Paul has long thought one of the mercies of dying is that the dead so rarely have to reckon with the things they leave behind, their fragile mortal shells and the brute labour of burial and grief.

When he sees Midoriya fall to his knees to staunch a hole in a dead and lying thing, Paul has an answer to a question he never wanted to ask, an answer that he didn't need. (He's always been able to imagine it; he's always been sorry, and never known how to say it.)

Midoriya screams. Paul doesn't. He needs his breath to propel him across the beach and to drive the terrible efficiency of his knives, carving open a path to the stricken Hero through the rotten dead and screaming shades.

(He isn't fighting alone. He doesn't look at the dead man on his left. They still work in perfect synchronicity, the rust of lost time scraped away so much faster than Paul thinks he can bear.

He bears it anyway.)

Paul puts a knife through the side of his double's head and twists at it like he's dislodging any other kind of sucking parasite, bracing his foot against the fusing lips of the mass enclosing Midoriya. A larger hand snakes around his side and seizes the doppelganger by the hair, levering it back, and Paul tells himself he doesn't feel the closeness of the cold at his back.

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1b

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justoscar: (glance)

Oscar Pine | OTA

[personal profile] justoscar 2023-04-06 03:16 am (UTC)(link)
Calling Home

[He could feel it's call, rather than actually hear it.

The agonized keening from the unknown depths was almost like a ceaseless buzz, but the frequencies it hit were of the sort that made bones rattle and the very marrow in his body all but turn to ice. Oscar was reminded of the swarms of bees bereft of a Queen that he had helped rehome in the untamed valleys of Mistral, with the untethered buzz sounding as ill defined and without direction as radio static. It's grief and sense of being utterly unanchored was overwhelming in it's sheer sorrow--

But, it also reminded him of The Whale.

Oscar, unable to drown out the ceaseless call, ventured to the beach in search of one thing: answers. He gulped, and tried to not let his own fears or memories take over. It had been well over a year since he had been captured by the Witch of Remnant and tortured on her orders in the belly of a flying whale.

That pain was far behind-- and kept bubbling to the surface whenever he started to drop his guard.

He couldn't just sit back and do nothing. Not this time.]


...Fighting didn't work last time,

[He'd explain whenever someone asked what he was doing, staring out beyond the shore with furrowed brows.]

We need to find a different way.

Go Into The Water

[Anyone who knew Oscar would know one thing for certain: He did not have any confidence or comfort in swimming in deep water, especially alone.

But, Oscar was done waiting for the problems to just find him-- especially when the untethered seaweed banks and bioluminescent algae that gleamed with the crashing of the waves reminded him of certain conversations he had recently had. Discussions of underground neural networks of mycellium would have seemed completely unrelated to most people. The sea destroyed all; why would a fungal network survive, or even thrive?

It was the discussions with a shapeshifter of a man that meditated in the form of a bonfire that had sparked his curiosity. Even though he was lacking in gills, he wanted to try.

With his Omen left standing watch on the beach, with its head held high and the feathers on its tiny wings flared in alarm, Oscar activated his Aura and took to the water. The green gleam of his Aura's protection flickered as it let the harmless waves of the tide pass through and Oscar adjusted his focus on only warding off actual threats. At waist deep, he took a breath--

And submerged.]
schoolingfish: (Cringe)

Luca Paguro | OTA

[personal profile] schoolingfish 2023-04-08 01:00 am (UTC)(link)
[Around the Trench – Open]
It keeps happening. It doesn't seem to matter where he is, whether he's out getting something to eat, shopping around at the market or studying at the gaze, he keeps hearing voices. Luca looks up every time, desperately hoping the friends and family he's hearing will have shown up in the Trench and will be standing right there.

People might even hear him uttering a surprised, "Mom?" or "Alberto?" before realizing it was all in his head and glancing around, hoping no one noticed. He knows at this point he should probably ignore it, that they're probably not there, but hearing their voices makes him miss them so much and makes him ache and long for them all the more, and he just can't find it within himself to give up hope.

[The Beach – Open]

After a while it's not just voices. He'll see his parents, or his grandmother, or Alberto or Giulia or someone he cares about from back home that he thought he'd never see again, but he never quite seems to be able to reach them. The aching loneliness becomes too much after a while. He no longer can think of or even care about all he'd be leaving behind, not if it means seeing the people from his home again. And honestly, who could blame him? So many of the people he grew closest to had turned back into squids, and of those that remained, it was only a matter of time before they turned into squids, too.

He wants to go back to be with those from the life he had before. Where yes, even with them life could still separate them, but it still feels like if it does, it would be through an understandable chain of events, not some whim of squidiness.

Soon, he finds himself on the beach and he knows exactly what he needs to do. He hears his mother calling out to him and without pausing, without hesitating, Luca walks out into the water, his feet shifting into their sea monster form before the transformation slowly works its way up his legs as he goes farther and farther into the sea. After all, who can really say it's not her? Where else would she be if she did show up here other than the water? His mother had never had any interest in land, after all.

[Possessed – Open]

The Leviathan either made a good choice or was lucky when it decided to possess Luca, who had all too eagerly gone to sea when he heard his mother's voice. Which, of course, why wouldn't he? Unlike other people hearing the voices of loved ones out at sea, that's exactly where he'd expect his family to be.

Of course, as people who fought for the Leviathan went, Luca's not particularly strong or great at fighting. He can move through the water much more easily than the others possessed by Leviathan, of course, and he can spit venom, but that's not the real advantage he has in all of this either. The real strategy in having Luca fighting people here is the fact that they have to deal with the fact that they're fighting a child, and Luca has no such issues to keep him from going all out as he attacks. He can just go after them, unhesitating and unrestrained.

That's exactly what he does, too. When Luca spots someone trying to attack Leviathan, he simply quietly sinks below the waves and takes off toward them. No hesitation, no sound, he just sees the target and goes. If they're lucky, they might spot him before he grabs their ankle and attempts to pull them under.

Re: The beach

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Possessed (mha spoilers)

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facultative: (future imperial march)

anakin skywalker | part 2 only

[personal profile] facultative 2023-04-10 11:16 am (UTC)(link)
[There's a black armoured figure standing on the beach. It stands motionless almost like a statue until approached and then the wheezing of machines can be heard from it. Its face is covered with a mask, but somehow characters will know it watches them.

When a character comes too close, it'll draw its weapon, a red lightsaber.]


Run while you still can.

[And then Darth Vader is stalking closer.]
terriblepurpose: (025)

[personal profile] terriblepurpose 2023-04-12 11:54 pm (UTC)(link)
[ A narrow teenage boy pivots to fully face the stalking black silhouette he had skirted too close to on his way up the beach. He's almost fully sheathed in the colour himself, except for his hard, blue eyes shining out over the protective half-mask covering his nose and mouth.

All he has in his hands are two long knives, sharp and mundane. ]


No.

[ He inverts his grip on one of them, and draws one foot back to place it behind the other. ]

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