deercountry | Are we not brave enough? [Closed]

[The scene is a gruesome one. The scent of fire, blood, and scorched flesh is thick in the air. At the center of the clearing, barely a few yards away from the Lamp, is a the remains of the ritual circle Dipper had crafted minutes before. One side is completely scorched over, like something had dropped a contained bomb and localized it to the space of a few feet. On the other side there is debris, the remains of a second circle, it's sigil partially intact.]

[A few feet away, miraculously intact, and hauntingly abandoned, is Dipper's journal.]

[One has to search to find any remains of Dipper. The smell of burning is an easy tell, or perhaps if you possess Twin ESP, Dipper can be found crumpled against a tree. The tree itself has sustained an impact enough to damage the bark, with a nasty smear of glimmering paleblood sliding downwards to where Dipper lay.]

[The origin of the smell of burning flesh becomes very clear. He's horribly burned up to his elbows, and across the right side of his face, the skin charred and blackened. Despite his state, he's still breathing, albeit shallowly. He's in awful shape.]

Edited 2021-12-09 12:30 (UTC)

[Mabel, as it happens, was already on her way. In part it's her vileblood making her paranoid and skittish, but there's a firm, solid truth underneath that -- she knows her brother better than anyone else, and he's been decidedly weird the past week, short tempered and impatient even with her. It's not the first time they've been snappy at one another and it certainly won't be the last. That's just how it is for siblings. But something just seems off, and after Dipper leaves for the day, Mabel doesn't last long before she gives in to the compulsive need to follow him.

With no idea where exactly he's gone, at first, she just follows her gut. Then his distress hits her at the same time as a sizable explosion happens a ways off. Unlike the last time her brother's fear entered her head, this time it abruptly stops, or at least slows to a trickle Mabel can barely detect.

The implication of that has her on her knees and breathless.

Somehow Mabel rallies, summoning her winged omen for a mount and aiming herself straight towards the explosion. All of the Pines are like this, when one of their own is in danger. And, like all the other Pines, Mabel pays no attention whatsoever to the danger of the awful beast nearby when she lands, tumbling from her omen to the ground with a force she doesn't notice and heading for her fallen brother in a mad scramble.]

Dipper!

[Dipper doesn't stir from his place against the tree. Not at first.]

[It's easy to see that whatever blast went off, Dipper was close to the epicenter of. His burns are devastating and gruesome, he probably shouldn't be alive. Silence hangs in the air that makes his breathing just audible enough until there's a wet snap, and Dipper's eyes fly open.]

[All seven of them.]

[With a choking gasp, Dipper's lungs rattle like he's been pulled out of a blaze, and he pushes away from the tree, away from Mabel, to vomit pure black with a strangled scream. That wet snapping sound continues, as the charred skin on his arms begin to give way to feathers.]

[Mabel hasn't seen worse than this, really, but she has seen enough, and it sends her scurrying right up to Dipper despite the way his body is warping itself. Her own teeth are yet fangs in her mouth and it was Dipper himself who kept her from going as far as this, she's pretty sure, so of course it's Mabel who has to do the same for him in return. Isn't she the one who has always patted his back when he barfs?]

B-brobro, hey! Hey!

[It comes out as a whine, but she bends down to put her hands on Dipper's shoulders, never mind the eyes. Never mind the feathers.]

Edited (you ever think one word in your head while writing a different one) 2021-12-10 13:55 (UTC)

[It is up there with realizing he’s stabbed out his own eye. The pain is indescribable. When he lost his eye, the pain was localized at least. This time it’s every thread that makes up the fabric of his being that feels like it’s been lit on fire. It’s pain he feels in the core of essence, it’s a pain that radiates from his sene of self. It’s maddening and terrible and yet, it’s not the worst of what’s happening right now.]

[The reigns have slipped. He’s fighting with every thing he has, but he’s sinking. His awareness is fading, his control is brittle and on the cusp of shattering. His vision is foggy, slow, and he can barely hear himself speak as he struggles to move them from thoughts to words.]

[But Mabel is right there, and he has to try. The fear and anguish that dragged him under to begin with is threatening to swallow him up for good, but he has to at least try-]

Mabel.

[It doesn’t sound like him. Something damaged his vocal cords in the blast and it sounds like he’s speaking through wet sand.]

I fucked up- I can’t stop it!

[He doubles over again, and the sounds get worse. Bones twist and break, warping his body further and further from human. He feels even farther away from her than before.]

Run.

What? Of course not, stupid!

[Her brother says and does dumb things all the time; this is a simple fact of living with Dipper. He's anxious, he overthinks, he invents catastrophes. It's undeniable that he's changing into some sort of monster right before her very eyes, but if he's helpless to it, that just makes her all the more certain that if he can't stop it, Mabel has to help him realize that he can. That's how it goes for bonds like the two of them have, right? If one of them falters, the other one picks up the slack.

Mabel's hands remain firmly on Dipper's shoulders and she barely resists shaking him, even as they shift in her grip and the threat of feathers writhes horribly under what's left of his shirt. She stares him down as only a twin sister can, in whichever of his ridiculous number of eyes seems like it most belongs there.]

You fixed me enough before! Come on, do the twin ESP thing! We'll go to Dipperland or something, we'll figure it out! We'll get you mushrooms!

Edited 2021-12-10 23:58 (UTC)

[She's being stubborn, of course she's being stubborn. He would be touched if he wasn't extremely frustrated and also scared out of his mind. It's too late. He knows it's too late, he's barely holding on. Everything has gone dark, and only the faintest sounds of her voice are left.]

[The darkness comes for him in a way that sleep does when he's been awake for two straight days. He has maybe moments left to do something, so he puts everything he has into this last attempt to protect her and hopes it's enough.]

[Dipper lashes out with a strength that he should not be capable of. He doesn't strike Mabel so much as he tries to fling her as far from him as possible. In the next moment, he screams like a wounded animal, convulsing on the ground as the change finally consumes him. What's left there in the aftermath isn't Dipper Pines anymore.]

[Mabel lets out a scream of her own as she's tossed, and when she hits the ground, she hits hard enough to bounce. That Dipper could throw her like that stuns her enough that she stays where she lands for a few long moments, but she isn't feeling any pain. Later, when she uncovers all the scrapes and bruises, she might be put together enough to wonder why that is. But for the moment, both her vileblood and her own corruption are keeping her from any real suffering, and that just leaves her plenty of room for anger and concern and fear to twist around inside her in a horrible emotional molotov cocktail.

Once she lifts her head and shoves her wild hair out of her face, she settles on anger, if only because the other ones make her feel too helpless. If this can be nothing more than a really twisted sibling fight, if it all comes back around to her brother being stupid --]

DIPPER! Stop being such a shit!

[She will scold him later for ruining her good behavior streak in regards to words she is not supposed to be using yet, which is arguably just as important as turning into a horrific feather duster with too many eyes when it's your twin. For the moment, she plants her hands on the ground and pushes herself to her feet, and heads right back to her brother.

It hasn't hit her in the slightest that Dipper might no longer be in there. Anyway, the last time Dipper was no longer in there it was Bill's fault and she proceeded to smash her brother's body in the face with the journal to get to the demon, so here we are.]

Edited 2021-12-11 04:55 (UTC)

[It's a shame he did not get the chance to hear her slip up and swear.]

[The creature that used to be Dipper raises to it's feet, hunching over with it's long wing-like arms braced into the ground in front of it. It screeches at Mabel, as she runs towards it, but stays right where it is.]

[And then, the world shifts. A split second of vertigo, and then the color of the world fades out into monotone. Mabel would rush to meet the creature head on, only to find it to be an illusion.]

[Instead it lashes it's massive whip-like tails at her from behind.]

-- huh?

[The way their surroundings suddenly desaturate has Mabel pausing, hesitating -- have they entered a dreamscape, can she help him here? -- just enough that she doesn't actually make it close enough to the illusion to find out that it isn't real. The slap from the tail would have been a surprise anyway, but as it is, Mabel has her feet on the ground one second and is flying off to the side the next, where she crashes unceremoniously into a wall.]

Augh! Hey, hey, what the heck --

[It does hurt this time, but in a weird way. Her shoulder caught the brunt of the hit, and as she tries to push herself to her feet, Mabel finds it doesn't quite want to move as it should. Dazed and breathing heavily, she glances around, looking for the thing that hit her. It's difficult to tell one thing from another in all the gray.]

[She wouldn't find anything immediately, even if she could sort out the grey of the dreamscape. The monster appears to be gone entirely.]

[It falls deathly quiet for a few moments, until:]

Mabel!

[Dipper's voice rings out. Where did that come from? Oh, no, look, there he is. He's running towards her, and he looks fine! No scratches, even! Definitely not the horrid burn victim he looked like moments ago. Where did he come from? Who can say. The world is a weird disjointed dreamscape right now, so she probably just missed him coming out of the woods or something, right?]

[Right?]

[Mabel isn't stupid -- she's dealt with a brother who wasn't her brother at all before, and even in such a stressful moment, she's on top of things enough to be keeping an eye out for tells like yellow eyes or a difference in the way her brother carries himself. But Mabel also isn't a paleblood, and can't tell the difference between her current surroundings, a proper dreamscape, reality, any of it without signs from Dipper. She's never been in Dipper's dreamscape before, so who's to say it isn't gray and awful compared to the neon of her own? Dipper has none of the injuries she saw with her own eyes now, but why would he, in his head? And didn't she tell him outright to make this happen, so she could try to help him the way he helped her just last month?

She falls for it. Scrambling up, she staggers to him without a second thought.]

Dipper! What happened? I heard the explosion, but I didn't see anything. How do I fix this?

[It will be one of the things Dipper will get flashes of, this moment. This moment where the monster was just clever enough to be terribly cruel to the person most important to him.]

[Mabel falls for it, and the beast holds the image until he is inches from her. In a flash, her brother is gone, and the creature with too many eyes lunges into her, dragging her down to the ground and sinking his claws deep into her shoulders.]

[The thing practically screams in her face, coming close enough to make it clear it could hurt her much worse if it wanted to, but isn't because it's a conniving, shithead of a monster that likes to play with it's food.]

[She screams too, but it's lost under the sound the monster is making. That she's been tricked hits Mabel much harder and faster than the realization that his claws are in her flesh now. It hurts, but in a negligible way, like the inevitable pinpricks you get when you're sewing -- annoying, but easily forgotten in the face of the task at hand. Grabbing the monster's wrists, she squirms underneath him, attempting to pull those clawed hands away even as she recoils from all the eyes.

It isn't until she registers the sensation of heat at her shoulders that she realizes she's bleeding, a lot. A hand drifting down to the claws confirms that.

Mabel isn't completely fearless. There are plenty of things in the world that terrify her and the current situation is certainly one of them. But she's also the sort of person who fights hard and fights dirty, and being terrified of a monster that is trying to kill you is just so obvious that it doesn't even slow her down. She's already done everything from slamming the fingers of a disembodied hand in a door to squirting a nightmare demon in the eye with a can of spray paint she just happened to have in her hand at the time, and just now, what she happens to have in her hand is a palm full of her own gross, acidic, poisonous vileblood.]

This! Is! My favorite! SHIRT!

[Wiggling more until she gets some leverage, Mabel takes her bloodied hand and slaps the monster smack across the face, on the side with all the eyes.]

[It fucking screams the moment Mabel's hand makes contact with it's face, and there's a nasty sound of something burning as it recoils away from her, hands going to it's assaulted eyes.]

[It scrubs and scratches, desperate to try and rid itself of the poisonous blood, screeching and whining like a terribly wounded animal. After a moment, it's anger wins out over the pain, and it turns back to face Mabel with dangerous intent, in spite of half of it's eyes being rendered injured and useless.]

[It goes for her again, with a snarl. It seems to be done playing around.]

[The beast that once was Dipper could try, but--

A tiny owl in mottled browns and whites swooped in from the shadows, claws reaching out and going for the creature's multiple uncanny eyes for a split second in hopes of making a distraction for the reinforcements that were closely following.

Oscar had gotten the memo, in the form of a splitting headache and surge of something that didn't feel quite right from the space in the ether where he had heard Dipper's call some months before. Whether it was through their bond, his new Paleblood powers, or something more, he didn't know.

He only had seconds to instruct Ruby as to where to go.

Dipper's secret lamp was well known to him, and Oscar knew that this was the place he needed to go. Heart racing, he merely acted on instinct. With no idea as to what had happened or the situation at hand, he had no choice.

Mere seconds was all he needed for his distraction-- and, in the blink of an eye, he was a person once more. He landed before Mabel in a combat stance, his cane weapon brandished before him in a position that could easily swing offensive or defensive]

Mabel, [He said quickly, breathlessly. Something felt off with his footing, but he had to hold out.]

That's not Dipper right now.

Run.

[It's the same word Dipper had said to her last -- the real Dipper, before he turned into whatever the heck he is now -- and hearing it a second time from Oscar only makes Mabel's temper flare further.]

No way! He's still in there! I'm not just leaving him!

[But by god she will slap him again if she has to. Multiple times! She staggers as she pushes herself to her feet, instinctively crossing her arms so that she can grab her own shoulders and try to staunch the bleeding. Mabel has just enough sense to let Oscar stay properly in front, aware that he comes from a world that has probably taught him how to fight way better than she can. But if there's going to be a fight, Mabel will fill in whatever cracks in Oscar's defenses she can, even if it just means flicking her gross poison blood on her brother some more.

She has it. Might as well use it.]

Edited 2021-12-22 23:54 (UTC)

[Oscar is lucky he did not get swatted out of the sky. Probably because the beast's already taken several gruesome attacks to its eyes. With a snarl is shakes off the attack and regards them both now with contempt.]

[Carefully, it begins to pace, never keeping it's eyes off of them.]

[Then, the world shifts again. Disjointed, and uneven, the skies become red, and the forest around them flashes in and out, trees giving way to tall, pointed, teeth-like structures.]

[If at any point the two take their eyes off the beast, they will find it gone, hidden within the flickering illusion.]

Mabel-- it's not a matter of abandoning him. it's a matter of--

[He didn't have a chance to finish before he realized that the world had shifted. The wintry pastoral scene around them had become darker and twisted, with the gnarled branches of the skeletal trees grasping towards a darkened sky with claw-like fingers and shadows that stretched deeper than their very souls. Oscar bit his lip hard-- and cast his hazel eyes about in worry.]

Oh no.

[He muttered, steeling his spine in his uncertainty. Then, softer:]

Oh fuck.

[The way the world warps itself so quickly into a proper nightmare -- it reminds her of Bill at his angriest, the coloring, the teeth -- finally knocks Mabel out of her anger and back into proper fear. Her instinct is to reach out and grab Oscar's sleeve, but she doesn't. For one thing, he will probably need to move. For another it's her brother's sleeve she should be grabbing, and that only adds to the feeling of wrongness.]

What...? Oscar, what is it? Do you know? [Her own voice is hushed, as though that matters. Whatever Dipper -- the monster? -- Dipper is up to, he obviously knows exactly where they are. He put them here.] Is he -- is he doing some sort of paleblood thing, or --

[An outheld arm further instructed Mabel to not interfere, although at this point Oscar was having doubts that running at all would be effective. He bit his lip nervously, wanting to look at Mabel but unwilling to take eyes off of the eerie scene before them.]

I've been reading things in the libraries in Gaze, [He admitted. A known bookworm, this wasn't unusual. However--] I've also been attending classes at the school to get a better idea of this place. [A sigh.]

Mabel-- This...

[He took a step backwards on his prosthesis and stumbled when the toes of his boot didn't meet the ground when he expected. This... wasn't good.]

It's advanced corruption. I think.

[A horrible chill runs through her. This feels worse than the wounds on her shoulders. Corruption was her own problem last month, and they didn't realize it until she sprouted fangs through her old braces. A mushroom was found to fix it -- a mushroom they lost Ford, for a while, in the process of finding. But the effects didn't last long, and the fangs are already back in her mouth.]

...when...when it gets bad, it turns you into...a real monster...?

[Unconsciously, she brings one of her hands to cover her own mouth, heedless of the blood, as though she can keep her teeth contained.]

[Oscar took his eyes off of his surroundings for a split second to regard Mabel's growing horror. His hands shook around his weapon, and his heart was pounding so loudly he was certain that the beast that once was Dipper could probably hear it, but he knew what he had to do.

He had to be strong.]

Not always, but that's only what someone wrote about. You Pines are crazy lucky and crazy capable. If there was anyone who could find a way to beat this? I'm sure it's someone in your family.

[What Oscar is getting wrong here is that the Pines do not work independently. They are crazy lucky and crazy capable -- when they act together. Mabel, too, is absolutely confident that if this were a grunkle problem, or perhaps even an Oscar problem or one of their other friends, she and her brother could figure something out together. But as it stands, Mabel's other half is the immediate problem, and she has no idea how to help Dipper without Dipper when the tried and true method of bashing him in the face did not work and he isn't actually around in the flesh for her to exploit any of his other known weaknesses.

With this realization, the last of her earlier bravery leaks out of her.]

Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford aren't here! How do we help Dipper now?!

[With the landscape so twisted, he's certainly still around, probably waiting to do something beasthood-class petty out of spite for the strike to his eyes. They don't have time.]

[He is still around, hiding beneath the illusion like a shithead.]

[That's fine, they don't need to find him. Instead, for their wait, the illusion will move, finally, and out of seemingly no where, a huge imposing figure rushes up to them, screaming and swinging his huge fists right at Oscar.]

[It's and illusion of course, but under it is the Beast, who has taken the opportunity to slam it's whip-like tail into the boy while focused on the illusion. Hazel "Strikes" from above, while the beast strikes below, aiming to take out Oscar's prosthetic.]

Edited 2021-12-27 06:33 (UTC)

[Any words Oscar had to give Mabel about trust and faith in the people he chose to surround himself with and call 'family' died on his lips the fraction of a second he registered the unrelenting behemoth that was Hazel Rainhart. With Mabel behind him, he didn't dare try to dodge-- not that he could.

He was frozen, ensnared in his own abject terror memories of painful beatdowns that not even Ozpin seizing control of his body could fully match. The lessons Ford had learned the hard way were lessons Oscar had learned by the same method, for both good and ill.

There was no Ozpin in the back of his mind to jolt him into action this time.

Instead, it was Mabel's terror.]

Run!

[He bit out through gritted teeth, already preparing for the worst as he reached out to strike the image of the rampaging berserker above them. He moved into an active stance--

And fell into the dirt. His prosthetic leg, ripped asunder at the joint, arced in the air above them as the very breath was knocked from his chest by the collision.

He couldn't fall. Not yet. He needed to buy more time...]

[At this third order to run, Mabel almost, almost obeys. Oscar falls in the corner of her eye before she makes any real distance, though, and she's certainly not going to leave him. Dipper has to be responsible for this, and her brother will never forgive himself for hurting his boyfriend, no more than he'll forgive himself for the wounds still bleeding sluggishly at Mabel's shoulders.

Anyway, Oscar's her friend these days, too.

The illusion of Hazel bears down on them, ready to smash Oscar again, and properly this time. Mabel's trusty grappling hook flies out to meet him, beaning him -- and thus the beast hiding within -- smack in the face. She smashes the button to draw the hook back to its gun immediately after, looking around for convenient trees or branches or anything else she can fire at.

If she can get an arm around Oscar and get the grappling hook wrapped around something sturdy, she can use it to pull the both of them away. It's supported both herself and her brother in the past and it might buy them a little time. What they really need, though, is help.]

[And for the second time tonight help would arrive. Except this time it wasn't the beating wings of a owl but the crack of gunfire as an icy bullet rips through the air to strike at "Hazel's" foot. If it makes contact with the creature it'll coat the area in ice and pin it to the ground temporarily. Ruby may not know what's actually attacking her friends but she knows Hazel can take a pounding and that disabling him was probably the best way to get them to safety. Even if it wouldn't last long.]

Leave them alone.

[And she keeps Crescent Rose raised as she quickly tries to place herself between Mabel, Oscar and the illusion. Continuing to fire to hopefully give Mabel time to grapple them out of danger.]

[What Ruby gets is a horrible screech that does not sound like Hazel. The shot hits its mark, and the illusion shutters and flickers, giving way to the woods again.]

[Hazel vanishes, too, leaving the beast in it's place. It's leg is trapped in ice while it beats is wings to try and get free. It's angry and frantic, but doesn't seem strong enough to immediately break the ice.]

[He didn't have time to think, just react.

Oscar gladly accepted Mabel's assistance with the grappling hook, already familiar with it's weight capacity from previous adventures with Dipper, and heaved a sigh of relief when Ruby swept onto the scene.]

Ruby, that's Dipper!

[Oscar called, raising his voice above the chaos to be heard.]

Something happened to him-- Mabel doesn't even know what!

He told me to run! Before this happened!

[It's all she has to contribute here -- her brother was scared enough to tell her to run away, before he turned into whatever he's become. Mabel obviously didn't listen, and she isn't sorry about that, and won't be sorry about it later, either. But there isn't time to think about all the implications. Spotting a good target at last, she gets her arm around Oscar and fires off the grappling hook again, letting it wrap around a tree that is probably actually a lamppost and hauling them both away.

It is not a pleasant ride. Regardless of Dipper's illusions, they are still in Gaze, and they wind up bouncing all over the pavement. The pull of Oscar's weight on the one arm and the grappling hook on the other agitates Mabel's wounds enough that she cries out, and hopefully Oscar manages to avoid coming into direct contact with any of her blood, because it'll sting like hell if he does. They also end up leaving the fallen prosthetic behind, unfortunately. But they do get away, far enough to be out of range of any direct attacks, safe enough to catch their breath.

Ruby is now Dipper's primary problem.]

[Ruby has a bit of time to take in what Oscar and Mabel's words as she skids to a stop between them and the corrupted Dipper. She feels a pit in her stomach form as she realizes just who she's up against and that she doesn't know if it's even possible to take bring him back from this state.

She a glance back for just a second to Oscar and Mabel.]

It's okay. Just stay clear. I've got this.

[She keeps her voice calm and collected despite the fact she doesn't exactly know what she's going to do. She only got a passing glance at their injuries but they had looked serious enough to know that this thing wasn't playing around. She briefly thinks back to her time as The Hound and the pain she had caused. Glitch's death, Oscar's leg. She knew Dipper would never forgive himself if he caused pain like she had. And she wasn't about to let him do that.

She takes aim with Crescent Rose once again and tries to fire off another blast of ice to trap it further.]

[You know, it's annoying as heck when the prey you were playing with actually gets away. It's even more so when the thing that enabled this also has your trapped in ice. Yes, Ruby has successfully gotten the Beasts attention. It seems while it is sly, it is also enough a grudge holder to shift its attention to the new immediate problem.]

[That said, it will not come as easily as Ruby probably hopes, and just before the second shot, the beast uses it's tail to break the ice trapping it's leg and manages to shoot into the air just shy of being hit again. It lands with an aggressive thud on it's feet, and regards Ruby threateningly, tail lashing.]

[It begins to circle Ruby. Waiting.]

[He was grateful for Mabel's assist. Her wounds would be tended to as soon as they had a little space-- but, more importantly was Ruby in that instant. Oscar trusted her with everything, and keenly understood how hard this was going to be for everyone involved.]

Do what you've gotta, Ruby.

[He called, holding onto Mabel so that they could support each other.]

Don't let him do anything that you would hate to do in that position.

Are we not brave enough? [Closed]

cw: graphic burn injuries, blood, body horror, eye horror

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cw: emeto

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