Welcome to Ryslig's test drive meme! If you're considering apping here, this is where you can try your characters out in the game's setting. A few things to note:
You can only app ONE character per round so choose wisely.
We now have a Quick Game Facts that simplifies the basic information about the game. Good if you want to see what the game is at a glance!
Lots of people have asked good questions on the FAQ, so do take a look.
Test drive meme threads can be used for your roleplay sample!
NEW! Players with characters already in the game can earn up to a maximum of 3 coins per bonus coin group (so 6 total) by replying to potential character threads! You will need to have your normal 20 comment AC in the game. You cannot use this to go over the bonus 20 coins per month total, but you can use it if you are missing some threads to reach that coin total. Same rules as normal bonuses apply.
Sample scenarios:
SCENARIO ONE: So you've just arrived, fresh out of the hospital, and already the natives are trying to get on your good side. Offers of food, shelter and other luxuries in return for hoping you don't eat them. They even have some helpful pamphlets to share with you. "How To Deal With Changes", "Alternatives to Human Flesh", "What to Expect When You're Expecting (to turn into a monster)" are all great pamphlets. There's even some detailing certain monsters, and the changes they go through. Some of these seem to have been passed down from one monster to the next.
Among these however, are some... not so helpful ones. "Bunnyipyips And You", "Axe Thief Axehounds," and "So you're becoming a Fur Bearing Trout" among others. Sometimes they have marks on them from previous people who had them saying they are lies, or pointing out good "jokes."
SCENARIO TWO: You've become hopelessly lost in Lager Woods. Paths don't seem to lead where you remember them leading, and you feel as if you're going around in circles. Childlike giggling can be heard from no direction in particular. Suddenly, you stumble upon another character, who seems to be just as lost as you! Perhaps you can find a way out together. Or maybe they want you for lunch...
SCENARIO THREE: You've heard about the fog, but you've never seen it before. Now, the mist surrounds you. Barely able to see before you, you need to get home - and fast. It's far too dangerous in this situation.
SCENARIO FOUR: The time has come and you've found yourself becoming a monster. Is the change instant, or gradual? Are you familiar enough with monsters to know what's happening, or is it a complete shock? NOTE: Feel free to pick any monster type for this prompt, but note that you may not get the same one in game.
[Kurumi pulls her jacket over her injured arm. There's other scratches and bruises than that particular injury but she can ignore those. She feels light without the constant weight of her shovel on her back. That? That makes her anxious and so does the fact that there were so many people around. So many. Alive and not infected.
It makes her grit her teeth and try to ignore the pain in her arm. Miki had gotten her the medicine. She should be fine. Kurumi blinked at the sky. Wait. Where were they? Miki, Yuki, Yuuri?
Kurumi pushes aside the natives. This wasn't a part of the fever, was it? She hadn't... No. She wouldn't believe it. Something must have happened. There's a sudden burst of anger as she grabs someone handing her a pamphlet.] You! Yeah, you. I'm looking-- [She realizes what she's doing at the last second and lets the poor Vandare native run away as she shakes her head. She's crying but there's no sobs.]
Scenario 2
[She's gotten a shovel. Kurumi has to find the others now. So they all could be together. Unless... No. She couldn't think like that. There's blood now staining her upper arm as she wanders the woods. Something about that laughter bothers her. It's almost like Yuki. Was it her? Maybe if she could find the source then she'd find the others.
She smacks a tree with her shovel.] Hey! Come out already. I'm not going to wait around all day for you!
Scenario 3
[The fog. She's heard about it by now and she doesn't like it. She should head for shelter. Staying out in this sort of weather would be like wandering across the school courtyard banging pots and pans. Though, now? She was feeling braver. If she was going to turn into a monster anyway...
Kurumi has a heavy garden shovel in her hands as she runs down the streets of Vandare. She was hunting for monsters. If the other members of the School Life club were here, they needed to be protected. If they weren't?
If they weren't, well. She at least could try to save as many people as she could, right? That's what she 'did'. Kurumi didn't want a repeat of what happened to their city.
[Oh hey, there's someone else here with him! Good. Mikazuki was starting to get bored with wandering around with only disembodied giggles to keep him company.
He steps obediently from behind the tree, the girl a casual, easy going smile. He doesn't seem the least bit bothered about being lost in the woods, or the way Kurumi wielding that shovel.]
Hi! [He waves.] I didn't realize you were waiting for me!
[Here's the thing about alternative dimensions that you're sure are a joke of the senior partners. No matter the circumstances you're going to at least try a magic spell.
That's Lindsey McDonald's logic. The only people who can summon fire around here are the fucking demons (and isn't that a kick in the teeth?) though so getting through the fog is...an adventure in and of itself. He's got wards and amulets and nothing that corresponds to anything that might matter.
Except if these books are right that's not entirely a problem.
He's got books in his arms, carrying them tucked away from the library and at the small of his back he's got a knife that he's prepared to draw at any moment - slash and run. No point in trying to be a big fish in a small pond if you get pulled out before you can make a name for yourself.
Which is probably why when someone passes too close to him he might nearly drop his precious cargo and slash at them]
Don't come any closer!
[But he'll apologize as long as there's no further violence offered.]
This shit's worse then London.
4. minotaur
[It started with a gradual swelling in his limbs. A tightening, then bulking out. Everything's bulkier and given some of the entanglements that he's had recently with people who can throw around fireballs Lindsey can't be more pleased. Things crossing in front of his path have been making him mad lately and...
You know what this is.
Bulking out? Every muscle carved from stone? The way he's suddenly knowing how to navigate Bavan?
It's a monster but he can't worry about that now, how the one shirt he's procured barely fits, how it's sitting there in the fog straining at the seams with tufts of light brown hair as he plays...music.
[Fetch is minding her own business, which is her damn near favorite thing to do, when Lindsey slashes out at her with a knife. She pinwheels backwards and clenches her her fists, if she'd had her powers, she would have blown him away.
Of course, since she doesn't have them, Fetch just looks like she's going to reenact King Kong.]
Jesus -- Relax!
I'm not gonna take your freaking ... books, or whatever. Chill.
[Though she has yet to take her own advice. And won't until Lindsey puts the knife away.]
What a kind welcome from the native people of this mysterious land! And such kidders; is it already so close to Halloween? Tamaki shows interest in their literature, like the gentleman that he is, noting the rich mythology of their culture with pleasant interest before asking: "I'm sorry, but would someone terribly mind directing me to a telephone...?"
2
There's no helping it. Tamaki is lost in the woods like a boy in a fairy tale. Hearing the childlike giggling... well, of course he ought to go toward it, oughtn't he? It wouldn't be right to leave a poor, sweet child alone in the woods! Never minding that he, technically speaking, is exactly that himself.
"Hello?" he calls out, hoping to rescue or be rescued and not even considering the idea that maybe it would be best not to be heard. "Is anybody there?"
Kurumi hears him calling. She steps out from behind a tree with an irritated look on her face as she switches from holding her shovel with both hands to just one. She uses her free hand to make a shushing gesture.
"You're going to attract everything within a kilometer!"
Never mind the fact that she was just banging trees with her shovel a while ago in anger. It's time for her to keep someone from doing something stupid again.
[The last thing that Daniel Prozec remembers is falling to his knees just in time for Dagny to point a gun in his direction. Megan was congealing on the floor, blood spread across his face and hands and he knows - he knows he's sick but then wham bam thank you ma'am he's here with a stack of god knows what pamphlets that look like something neutralization tried to hand out during the early days of the plague. So your loved one is about to die.
Something in his chest clenched at that and he tossed the pamphlets to the side heedless of who he might throw them at.]
...You realize it's all bullshit right? There's nothing that's going to save you from becoming one of them. And then you're going to die. Because it's the biggest wad of bullshit to ever be shit by a bull.
[Be gentle on the man? He's got blood still plastered across his front.]
[ Jay catches one of the pamphlet, though it's a clumsy movement he has to make. He flips through it, wondering why the heck a fish would have fur in the first place, then glances up at the man who threw the thing his way, head cocked to one side and eyes narrowed. His eyes no longer glow now that he's human, but they're still astonishingly blue. ]
Die of what precisely, darling? Monstrosity itself isn't, ah, deadly. Except to bystanders.
[ He should know. He's mortal now, but he'd been a changeling before he woke up here. A changeling isn't always a monster, of course, but sometimes it felt close. ]
[Nothing to be alarmed about, just a big kid in a weird police uniform with a strange star pinned to his collar trying to tug on your shoulder - get someone's attention, anyone's attention. When he speaks he speaks with a slight Texas twang.]
Excuse me can you tell me how I can get to a phone?
[Ryslig. That's german right?]
Pay phone? I think I dropped mine in the water? Or the police station? hello? Hello-
four: wendigo ~
[He's been drilled in the signs of potential infection ever since the academy. Subject becomes ill, subject becomes pallid, subject loses all feeling in limbs. They brought in volunteers- people who wanted to help the cause to decay before the very eyes of young and eager recruits. Subject begins to crave human flesh.
Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, schoolchildren, teachers, doctors - Disease. He can hear Captain Anders's gravel voice in his head The great equalizer.
And buried deep in the back of his mind he can see his father pawing at the glass while his mother sobbed and whacked at him with a wooden rolling pin in an almost hilarious caricature...
The hunger and the pain in his head are getting worse. He's collapsed by the side of the road fingers dug into the dirt resisting the urge to shove it into his mouth.]
Kill me.
[The words are moaned.]
I'm not gonna turn.
[It had to be some of Megan Prozec's blood in the end because none of the monsters that people were supposed to become fit with this.]
[It's not particularly alarming, but it is somewhat annoying to suddenly have his shoulder tugged on while trying to organize the seemingly endless array of pamphlets that have been shoved on him since waking up.
The accent, to Sephiroth, sounds more in the direction of Rocket Town than Texas. He regards Kyle steadily for several moments, as if he hadn't even heard the question - then raises a hand and points down the street.]
I spotted a pay phone down that way about three hundred meters. It uses local currency only.
[Haurchefant is also looking at the sky. The stars are all wrong. He would know, the stars were something every school age boy was taught to study. Maybe a familiar star would be just a bit further back away from the covered horizon of trees? He takes a wide step back, not looking at where he was going at all, bumbling directly into her path.]
[ Jay is delighted by the pamphlets. He's sitting on a park bench, holding a whole pile of them in his lap and flicking through the one on Wendigos, grinning. He doesn't believe a word of what's written down, of course, but the concept of turning doesn't frighten him in the slightest.
And he doesn't really believe it'll happen to him. He's always been exceptional, after all and his vanity wins over his pessimism this time. The vodka he had not fifteen minutes ago is helping, too.
He comes across a sentence he finds particularly amusing and bursts out laughing, a sound as shrill as a harpy's cackle. Waving a delicate, long-fingered hand, he reads out the offending sentence. ]
"Do not attempt to eat grass, as the digestive track of a Wendigo is unsuited to breaking down plant matter. You will vomit."
Oh my. Deer that can't handle grass. What next? Hydrophobic fish?
[ He's got an awfully strong accent. It sounds Russian and Yiddish at the same time, full of rolled Rs and harsh consonants and open vowels. His voice is lilting, a touch nasal and astonishingly flamboyant. ]
[His laughter is what catches her attention first, next the stench of vodka when she really takes a breath near the man.
Her low tolerance for the stuff makes the brunette wrinkle her nose uncomfortably. Still, he's interesting and Elizabeth is a naturally curious kind of person.]
It is... rather ironic, when you put it into perspective.
[Everything is wrong. From the moment she woke up in the hospital she knew everything was wrong -- the hospital, of all places, as if she needed it, and from the scratches and bruises all over, it was almost like she did. She did need it, because something is seriously wrong with her. Because you could cut her and it would draw blood.
Her limbs creak and she was pulled from the ocean and she needs to get back there, but it's too late now, isn't it? Jasper is free and Lapis failed. Something pulled her away and ruined everything.
And the people -- they're treating her so strangely, and she doesn't particularly want to talk to these humans about anything because they wouldn't understand and the things they are saying to her make no sense at all. Nothing makes sense to her and everything feels hopeless and she just wants to fly away but she can't even do that. She feels like her gem is cracked all over again, only worse, because now the water doesn't respond to her at all.
She doesn't read the pamphlets she's been given. She's at the docks again, folding the paper into misshapen boats, and dropping them into the sea to float away. She feels the weight of her failure in every groan of her bones -- the bones she now has -- and she's been warned against walking straight into the ocean again but how she wants to.
At least the little pamphlet boats can go free.]
4.
[She's out when she notices. Webbing between her fingers, like something out of Earth's ocean, and she instantly pulls at it, wanting to tear it off and she pulls and it starts to tear and then it hurts. It hurts a lot and she grasps her fingers tightly in pain and no, she can't actually tear it all out, there's a rip in it now but she can't do more than that.
She looks down at her bare feet and sees there's webbing in her toes, too; she curls them and presses down on one foot with the other like that's going to make it go away.
She ducks into an alleyway and hides from prying eyes, when really she just wants to hide from herself.
She hasn't even noticed the gills on her neck yet.]
[After getting a shovel from one of the frightened locals (who luckily owned a garden and preferred to lose a shovel than their life--not that she was interested in that), Kurumi was wandering the area. Having one of her preferred weapons in her possession again made her bolder. Even if it didn't push away the guilt she felt of abandoning the Club. Hadn't they already been abandoned enough by people they looked up to?
That's when she sees someone dropping boats into the water. Faintly, it reminded her of the messages they had sent off by balloon.]
What's in those notes you're sending off?
[She was at a distance so she didn't notice they were just the pamphlets.]
[It's funny - like, bad funny, not good funny - but Delsin had only had his powers for a few days and it's only now that they're completely gone that he's starting to realize just how much they'd changed things for him. Changed him. Even when he'd just caught up with Eugene and none of the new powers had kicked in, he'd still felt stronger, lighter on his feet, been able to be grazed by a bullet and have the cut heal over completely within an hour.
Now he just feels tired and slow even though he knows this is pretty close to what used to be his 'normal'. He rolls his shoulders again experimentally, and they still click and pop and ache like they did ten minutes ago, and ten minutes before that, and all the times he checked since getting here. Man, out of all his powers, right now fast healing is the one he misses the most. Or maybe gliding, since maybe he could use that to get out of this place, but given he can't even figure out where 'this place' is, beyond 'probably somewhere in Europe' he's not actually sure how helpful that'd be.
He folds the pamphlet he's only been half-paying attention to and turns to the person closest to him.]
So. Do you think all this monster stuff everyone keeps talking about is real, or...?
4. (Wendigo)
[Okay, Delsin really regrets doubting for a second that all the monster stuff was real because there is a not-so-small part of him that's pretty sure at least some of what's happening to him now is some kind of sick cosmic "I told you so". Yeah, it was going to happen anyway, he gets that, but can it really be this awful for everyone?
It started out just waking up feeling like he had a summer flu, all drenched in cold sweat and sore, but then the headache started - the worst he's ever had, even back when he was just starting out tagging and used to breathe in a little too much paint every time - and he can hear his pulse in his ears and feel his heart struggling like it's trying to pump molasses instead of blood which might actually be what's happening because his fingers are starting to go numb and blue from lack of circulation and oh god he's dying, this has to be what dying feels like because he seriously cannot imagine anything worse.
That is, until he feels the hard spurs of bone start to push slowly and insistently out through his skin. That makes it worse.]
[ Lana hadn't even bothered with the pamphlets; they were ridiculous. At best, some sort of sick joke. At worst... well, she didn't want to think about the "at worst" part.
She rolls her eyes when the guy next to her asks her opinion. ]
Of course it's not real. How could it be real? There's no such thing as monsters. [ Mutants, sure. Science experiments gone wrong, hell, she was one. But monsters? No way. ]
ONE [ This was bullshit. Pamphlet after pamphlet about turning into a monster... it had to be a joke, right?
Except as soon as Lana stepped outside, she could tell it was no joke. There were people with wings and scales and all sorts of fucking crazy shit walking around. Stunned, she stands stock still on the street until someone literally bumps into her. ]
Oh, uh. Sorry. [ The fact that she's apologizing when they bumped into her is a sign of how freaked out she is. ]
TWO/THREE [ She was lost. Lana was a New York City girl, used to streets laid out in gridlines, not winding paths through a forest bigger than Central Park! And what's worse, there's this fog rolling in that's thicker than any fog Lana's ever seen before.
She tries to blast off into the air, get over it, but then finds herself making ridiculous hand gestures at the ground with absolutely no explosions coming out. ] Great. My fucking powers are gone.
[ The fog is coming in fast, and soon Lana can barely see the trees surrounding her. In desperation, she calls out, ] Hello! Can anyone hear me?
FOUR: DEMON [ Okay, so Lana had a filthy mouth. And she was never particularly religious, going to church or temple or anything. But turning into a fucking demon was just unfair! Especially the way it happened.
She woke up because she smelled smoke. As soon as she opened her eyes she sat bolt upright because HER FUCKING BED WAS ON FIRE. Panicking, she leapt out of bed, tripping over something long and rope-like, only to discover she had a tail? Pretty soon the fire became a nonissue because Lana was doubled over in pain as gashes ripped open in her back and a pair of bony wings began to poke out from underneath. Clawlike fingernails tore gashes in the sheets, the floor, whatever she could get her hands on. It hurt so much she couldn't see. She was probably screaming, she didn't even know at this point. All she knew was pain and heat and fire and blood. ]
[The fog's hitting Lindsey hard, and it's mostly been with an unfurling - nay a buzzing in his brain. His body's been swelling and he's had dreams. Dreams of wandering the forest looking for something at the center.
Camping feels good though. Brings back memories of his family, of his mom who did her best damn it. If he's going to wonder out into the forest may as well get to know it.
Get to know it he does and did. Which is probably why there's an unusually muscular man wearing a very tight fitting flannel shirt with a guitar slung over his shoulder]
[Nope, uh-uh. He took the pamphlets out of morbid curiosity, but as soon as he got a good look at the covers and titles, he flung them into the air, watching them float down to the ground. He'd been through enough fucked up shit without whatever the hell was going on here.
He'd never been kidnapped before, but he didn't think this was the way it was supposed to go. Shouldn't he be locked up somewhere while someone demanded a ransom?]
This is bullshit. Ridiculous bullshit.
[Dyme tried to kick one of the fallen pamphlets out of the way and almost slipped on it instead. That was bullshit too, and he swore louder.]
Fucking hell.
Two
[He was a city boy, he'd never been in the forest before in his life. Nothing was familiar, he didn't know where he was going or which way he'd come from. He couldn't even call anyone for help because he didn't have his phone, either. He didn't have anything, and-
Suddenly he realized there was someone or something else there, and he let out a highly undignified shriek.]
Shit. Fuck! Sorry?
[Was this something you apologized to, did it matter?]
Four - demon
[He'd heard about it, people turning into monsters, but he'd been stubborn and scared and kept trying to put it out of his mind. He didn't want to think about turning into something else, he was perfectly fine and dandy being human, thank you very much.
And then the pain set in. It felt like his skull was splitting open, and he might have screamed as he crumpled to the ground. He was too busy being distracted by pain as a pair of horns started to rip their way out of his skull, above his ears. With that and the blood soaking through his hair, he didn't even notice his fingernails turning into claws.]
[There's the faintest sound of Music. His efforts to try and find a way out of this godforsaken hellhole have gotten nowhere.
Not to mention the growing interest in his own changes. He's bigger, bulkier and his hands have darkened in color, his fingers thicker but surprisingly - deft?
Still he's out there in the forest playing his music. Did it matter?
Not when the music flowed pure and sweet Right until the boy blundered into the clearing where he'd come to play.
There's the faintest flash of yellow from his gaze.]
...My dad used to say that you interrupt a man when he's playing - you owed him a drink.
No gun. No ARI. No weapons. At all. Except a baseball bat he'd snagged from a punk on the street. Gotten a few bruises for that, but it'd been worth it to have something he could use if he needed to.
Especially since... he's lost.
And that giggling? Is fucking creepy. It's unsettling. Sends a chill right down the back of his neck. It sounds like something right out of a horror movie. Which. Okay. Really. This whole goddamn forest fits that.
Still, bat in hand, he's ready.
Or he'll pretend he's ready.
4) gargoyle
[Norman has accepted the 'stone by day' part of the deal. He even found an old building that has its own marble gargoyles and (after checking to make sure that they didn't come to life at night) conveniently shoved one off then picked up the pieces. So, he blends in to the architecture.
He's tried, really he has. Tried to keep from killing humans. But the alley he's been perched above for weeks is in the seedy part of town. Where gangs roam and people go to buy illicit drugs. Or to get high off their stash. Which is just what one young man has done.
So, Norman waits. Waits until the high sets in. Which is when he swoops down, lifts him up, and drops him so his spine shatters on the rooftop across from the one he's claimed. Then, it's easy to rip into his chest with his nails and begin devouring the meat.]
[It's not really intentional that he ends up falling in with a local gang - a small one mind you but he's got plans for some aggressive expansion. Still apart from a small career as a country singer (a country singing ...cow?) Lindsey's not feeling it. There's no passion in his music - a lack of feeling means a lack of soul and no soul in a song is not a song at all.
But the fact that he's finished his transformation into a minotaur means playing in Bavan and he's not some kind of sideshow freak.
So he takes and robs a bit and he's gathered a small but loyal following of people who expect him to go after their friend when he's picked up and dropped onto the roof.
Stairs, are harder to navigate for one. That and the higher up he goes the more he has to shoulder his way through doors until finally by the time he gets to the top he shoves his way through the doorframe and kicks bits of wood out of the way just in time to get hit with the smell.
Is that what Darla felt? Every time she drank? He eats (hell he can pack it away if the situation calls for it) but nothing, nothing has ever smelled as good as...that. Corpse.
The bull man shakes his head, trying to clear his nostrils of the scent. He's smelled death but this...]
...I was coming up here to have words with you but I can see Sean's not going to be walking out of this.
[ Okay. Waking up in a strange town? Not the weirdest thing to happen to her. Waking up with random cuts, scrapes and bruises? Also not the weirdest thing to happen to her. Random strangers sucking up to her and offering her free food, board and pamphlets about turning into a monster? ...Still not the weirdest, but now she's interested. ]
All newcomers turn into monsters, huh? Sounds like a job worth looking into. Too bad Re isn't here, I could use her insight...
[ Haruka has sat down on a bench, looking it over. Hrm. So. This is a thing. And she's going to have to figure it out. ]
Well. Least I'll be busy. Should probably try to find some kind of assistant while I'm here. Maybe set up a temporary agency? ...But will I be able to get a gun and holy water...?
[ She doesn't believe this crap about other worlds. It doesn't make sense. Not to her. ]
[ Subfile 2: Forest ]
This is more familiar, yeah.
[ Getting hopelessly lost in magical woods is a walk in the park for her. She doesn't mind it. It's familiar and thus actually kind of relaxing. Danger in the air, the laughter of possibly demonic children around her. Yes, this? This is the kind of stuff sh's cut out for. ]
I can handle this.
[ Subfile 3: Fog ]
Shit, shit, shit...!
[ Haruka normally doesn't curse. Not like this. She's already running as fast as she can. She feels out of shape not chasing down vampires and demons and all sorts of stuff on a daily basis. But hey, it's nice to feel her lungs burning again. Still, when she's running away from danger... Then it has to be bad. ]
Where did it come from so fast!?
[ Subfile 4: Nymph ]
[ This is a new thing. Nymphs? Aren't exactly native to her area of North America, so to become one means she knows nothing about it besides what the pamphlets say. But this especially sucks since she always, always liked fired the most out of the elements and she figures this will dampen their relationship. ]
Come on, this isn't fair!
[ ...Not to mention all the green. Green is nowhere near her favorite color! Geez. And don't talk to her about the leaves and stuff growing in on her. She'd had to already change her way of dressing... Stupid plants. She's a city girl! What the hell is this!? She has work to do...! ]
[Dyme happened to overhear, and invited himself into the conversation, because at least he wasn't the only one who didn't know what the hell was going on here.]
It sounds like crap, is what it sounds like. What do you mean agency?
1. [Abigail is pretty sure she's just having some kind of vivid fever dream. Maybe the chowder she had for dinner was bad? She couldn't really come up with another reason why this was so...realistic. But regardless of the fact, she was sort of absorbed in the pamphlets. She had collected a pile of them so far, but her favorites by far were:
'Breath Holding Techniques for Selkie-Victims'
'Shedding your Summer Coat: Sponsored by the Were-Creatures Coalition'
'A Wendigo Ate my Baby & other True Stories'
and
'Goblins Gobbling'
She sits curled up around herself in a chair, snickering at the informative reading material.]
These are hysterical.
2.
[Okay, so maybe this wasn't a dream. After spending a week here, she's come to accept that she's stuck here...with no powers. That was not settling in well with her. But she'd managed not to freak out yet.
Yet.
The forest was quickly bringing her record for 'longest time without panic-attack' to the breaking point. She couldn't see far because the trees were so goddamn thick and those creepy Stepford child giggles weren't helping. Like, at all.
Her breathing was kicking up and she could feel her vice grip on her calm slipping quick.
And then she bumped into, well, you. And flew three feet back in shock and fear screaming:]
Holy shit!
4. (Harpy)
[Fetch didn't think this would ever actually happen. But she'd be lying if she said she couldn't feel something looming all day in her brain right behind her eyes.
And then it hits like a migraine and makes her shudder down into a crouched position on the ground, balancing on the toes of her boots while snapping her eyes shut and clutching her skull.]
Ah- Shit!
[Fetch groaned, feeling pain all over. Her first honest to god thought was that it was just that time of the month. But she'd never gotten headaches before, and somehow she knew this was a lot different, and a lot worse than that.]
My eyes hurt!
[What she wasn't seeing - couldn't see - was the gooseflesh spreading out over her back, showing where the shafts of the feathers were starting to push against the inside of her skin.]
[ Fortunately for Fetch, the werewolf she'd so blithely smacked into wasn't particularly hungry nor one of the more vicious subtypes, having already snacked on a few unfortunate hikers earlier in the week anyway.
Cousland was more startled by the scream than the accidental collision - there she'd been, strolling along and minding her own innocent beastie business, when someone had the brass balls to give her a shove and a shriek that left her sensitive ears ringing. Hella rude, man. ]
Well that was unnecessary.
[ Her tone was reproving, but aside from giving Fetch a thoroughly annoyed look, she didn't move to shove back. ]
You can't very well hog the forest trail, can you? It's public property.
[All the people trying to hand him shit went from weird to irritating real, real fast.
If you head by the neighborhood of the hospital today, odds are you'll notice the trail of helpful, concerned natives keeping pace with an angry man no matter how quick he walks or how lou he snarls,]
Will you all fuck off? I told you, I'm not gonna join the Jehovah's goddamn Witnesses!
2
[This is why Blake hates nature. All the paths and trees look the same. Blake has been wandering for over an hour, and all he can tell you is he isn't getting anywhere, and that old Boy Scout thing about the moss being on the north side of the tree is horseshit.
And he's not alone.
He knows he hears something. Finally he whirls around and yells,]
All right, come the fuck out, now!
4 - Demon
[Blake first noticed it when he wrecked his toothbrush.
He hadn't done thing weird, but the thing he rinsed off was a ragged mess. He looked at himself in the mirror and opened his mouth. He closed it again.
It was his imagination.
Lucky for him he doesn't have much in the way of that, so he shaved and forgot about it.
He went and got a new one. While he was at it, he got a nail file, too. He'd been getting lazy about keeping them clipped. He'd seen hookers with shorter ones.
People in the drugstore gave him funny looks, and scurried off when he may the reasonable question of what the hell their problem was. Sure, maybe he was a little gruff, but he was in a lousy mood. His back was itchy.
That afternoon, his forehead had two hard black bumps.
The file worked fine on his nails. It didn't do jack shit for the things on his head. He pressed as hard as he can, and it snapped in half. Cheap piece of crap.
That's why now he's here in the hardware store, with a coat on so you can barely see the lumps on his back, and a hat pulled down low. He's grabbing the kind of rasp you use for metal an heading for the counter with a speed that you might call panic.]
[Lindsey's not here to fix his horns - they're not fully grown yet but they're obvious. He's just brushed his growing hair over his horns. The problem is bulk. He's officially passed human levels of comfort and human levels of size and his tail makes the problem worse. It swishes and knocks things off shelves.
He's literally a bull in a china shop. Or at least a bull in a hardware store. All he'd really wanted was a secondary heat source for his shitty apartment. Luckily he'd found a poncho with a hood that could wear in public heedless of the looks he's getting.
He's just found a can of wood polish however which has drawn his attention until the speed draws his attention.
[This was all very alarming. One moment he'd been falling to certain death in the mountains, the next he'd woken up in a hospital. That part, and his injuries, made at least a little bit of sense. The rest did not. His Dragon Corps uniform had survived mostly intact at least, and he didn't bother to remove his thick riding gloves. He might have still smelled a little like ash and dragonmetal.
People had pushed a bunch of pamphlets into his hands and, despite his irritation and confusion, he sat down on a bench to flip through them. Quickly, he came to the conclusion that the pamphlets were a waste of time, and set them aside in a neat little stack before getting up.]
Excuse me, [Said to the first person whose attention he could get, his Volstovic accent (more or less a blend of Russian and French) heavy but understandable.] do you know a way back to Thremedon from here?
Two
[Amery was not, in his own opinion, in any way prone to getting lost. He had a good sense of direction, but these woods were new and unfamiliar. They weren't in any way like the ones that had been by his childhood house. Nothing was familiar, there were no landmarks, and worst of all, he had the feeling he wasn't alone.
That might not have been so bad, if he'd had a way to defend himself. He would have given anything to have had Anastasia by his side. Together, they could have flown out of this place and returned to the Airmen.
He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and managed to not sound as alarmed as he really was.] You'd best show yourself.
[--Oh, this one was interesting. He smelled of dragons. That was more than enough reason to pay him some attention, even if Iskierka didn't have the slightest idea of what he was going on about. She gives him an experimental sniff and stretches, talons scraping across the pavement as she considered.]
I cannot say I have heard of this place, but perhaps we might find a way back to our homes together. Unless you might know a way to England already.
Hal Emmerich is a shy, indoor person; all the human interaction stuff was difficult for him while presenting research and forming his NGO group. However, that never garnered this much attention, in his life... ever. It was overwhelming, these strangers all crowding around him, being overly nice. Were they being held mysteriously captive, too? He just awkwardly kept nodding and accepting anything handed to him, wanting them to leave him alone already so he could get his bearing straight.
Of course, this mean discarding a majority of the strange pamphlets (some of it being downright creepy, and he didn't want to be cursed or drawn into some weird cults). But after cautiously accepting a light snack from one of the residents (considering he was a little hungry but never a big eater), he now had some time to go over the materials.
"... uhm, is this a religious thing? I really don't have time for this."
[ 4 ]
Nothing could have prepared him for this. Sure, he read the information, but hadn't taken it seriously. Vampires? Werewolves? Fairies? Really? But when his skin started to tingle and hurt in the sunlight, and he thought he caught his eyes beginning to almost glow, it was time to perhaps do some rereading of the materials.
Of course, after the fog had left, he realized he had slept all day. Awakening to his hand having a wisp-like quality - like shadow - made his stomach go cold and his entire body freeze up. He needed answers and he needed them now. He couldn't go back like this - they were doing something weird to him! It had been naive to even THINK the people here were genuinely concerned!
The poor fledgling shade had major issues keeping a solid form; he would change from a mass of swirling shadow with glowing, white glasses - just like in my animes - to semi-solid. It was obvious Otacon was freaking out, changing rapidly from a shadow creeping along the ground to a humanoid shape. The white eyes looked pleadingly at the citizens, but none of them offered answers.
The time after the fog was always disorienting. Joan's skin itched as more and more scales covered her body. The crystalline antlers sprouting out from beneath her hair spiralled higher every day. And lately her there was a foreboding tingle between her shoulder blades. She had been told that being out in the sun would be dangerous, if not fatal at this point. So she had taken to night-time strolls. Anything to avoid sitting in her apartment, wondering if Sherlock had arrived, if he'd noticed her absence, if he was still buried underground...
At the sight of the shade oscillating back and forth between solid and shadow shape, Joan stops. She's familiar with shades; friends with more than a few. This one is obviously new and in distress.
[Three] Descriptions have really not done it justice. She knows about the fog, of course, and what it means -- what it brings about. But what no one told her, or maybe could possibly hope to describe just how unnerving the experience would be. It rolls in, dense and even though Jemma hasn't felt the cold in awhile now, she shivers when it hits her. She thought it might pass, but if anything she feels worse.
I have to leave. Now. She starts for home, and is it her imagination or does it curl around her ankles and wrists?
She breaks into a run.
[Four - Faerie] She already feels wretched, giving in to the hunger that had wracked her -- humans, gone, so she could eat. But knowing that a change is coming, and not even what sort, somehow makes it worse, and not just because she hates not knowing things.
The immediate change is not so bad: she's grown. Or at least her arms and legs have, the jeans no longer fit, hem now hovering inches over her ankles, knees not in their usual place at the bend. Her arms and fingers are longer too, freakishly spindly things now that she looks at with horrified fascination. They don't even feel like hers. Her skin is hardening, little by little.
The one that breaks her though, is the antenna. Everything else she could have lived with. Sure, her arms and legs and fingers and skin are changing but they were at least things that she had before. The antenna sprout seemingly over night and it throws her, ironically, off balance. They are giving her stimuli she doesn't know what to do with, information she doesn't know how to decode which is making her angry because she knows there's no reason she should know what the antenna are telling her about the world around her, but the fact that it does makes it even worse.
She gingerly reaches up to where they sit, about ten inches above her head. She can sense her hand disturbing the air flow around her head, and waves one finger in its general area, not touching it.
"I look bloody ridiculous," she said, but jumped when someone answered.
It's said sternly from the side and a little in front as soon as Jemma begins hurrying away. Not even he, trained from childhood to fight other people's battles, is immune to the nagging sense that he needs to find somewhere safe before the lurking things get him too - but he knows not to run.
Hopefully she'll listen; if not Sephiroth will make only one attempt to grab her by the arm or shoulder and slow her down (but not stop her entirely). It's all he'll have time for when someone's looking to run.
Hopefully nothing will take the opportunity to spring in the meantime.
[One of the new arrivals is something of a mess of contradictions at first sight... Grey streaks in his hair and a gruesome facial scar mars an otherwise youthful appearance. He sits with his back squarely to the wall of the hospital in a caged, closed posture, but grins amiably and quickly at anyone who approaches. He seems at ease enough around a plate of cookies offered to him, and a nearly full collection of informational guides... but he also seems to have somehow gotten out of the hospital with a part of an IV pole for a makeshift weapon, settled across his lap.]
So this one's pretty great but...
[He holds up the "My Little Kelpie: Pinky's Pie" pamphlet to one of the overly helpful mortals.]
Funny thing, these aren't mentioning any monster's weaknesses...
2 or 3
[The horrible thing about mist this deep is that it shaves the edges off of everything. Trees become the skeletal hands of giants... craggy hillsides, normally welcoming for their cover are now the maws of beasts, slavering in the wet, cloudy air. Where it can distort the mythological into the familiar in broad daylight, at night it can set the mind racing with a thousand what-ifs, each one worse than the last.
If there wasn't an oppressive sense of danger or the soft, out-of-place sounds seeking to disorient anyone stumbling over root and rock, the scenery alone would put nerves at edge.
Which is possibly why, when you see someone else stumbling through the fog, he doesn't bother to check if you are friend or foe.
A glitter of steel and the whistle of wind are the only warnings as Luke swings a newly-liberated IV pole at your face.]
((OOC NOTE: Those of the monsterly persuasion may or may not find Luke to smell kind of EXTRA DELICIOUS. Like fresh roasted coffee in the morning delicious. Like a steak on the grill delicious. Like the way baking cookies smell delicious. You get the idea.
Being a half-blood (for as long as that lasts) kind of has more cons than perks, really.))
Thin enough to be worrying, the chill air doesn't help Chrome stay warm as she exits the hospital. A shiver, wrapping arms around herself, and she quickly scurries from the entranceway to a less attention-grabbing corner. Her pulse beats like a rabbit, breath coming quick.
Pulse, and breath. She smooths her shirt over her stomach, the movement carefully casual even though she wants to grab and examine herself again. Two lungs, a uterus, a stomach and kidneys, even a liver that is so much larger than the scrap she had left. All without illusions from her or master Mukuro. It would be unbelievable if she was anyone but who she is.
Winding her courage around her, she pulls up what illusion she has left to her as a shield. Acting might be poor comparison to flame, but she is still Mist. Wavering, changing, deceptive, perfect and imperfect Mist.
Stumbling slightly, a shy clumsy nervous girl tries to gain information, fumbling with pamphlets and attempting grateful smiles.
Monster, Monster, Shade of Myself
Her body shifts and warps around her, becoming insubstantial. Fangs grow and vanish, a tail flicks around one leg for a moment before it too disappears into the ether of her substance.
She is not frightened. Fear seems distant and vaporous as her body is becoming, something almost laughable. And why should she be afraid of becoming what she always knew she was inside? Mist.
A low, ghostly sigh, and she fades into the fog, almost invisible. Perhaps someone out there will be able to explain what she has become. Gaining their attention might take some effort, though. A ghostly touch along a shoulder, fog curling against the wind. A pair of glowing eyes in the dark.
Trey had learned the trick of waking up a little early before sundown, but he didn't realize how close he was cutting leaving the hospital before his changes set in until he got out the door and saw the sun low on the horizon; there was already the prickling feeling of everything building towards it, and he was distracted enough to almost not notice until he'd run into the younger girl.
A second later he was scrambling to get his own footing back and check on her, worried and plainly tight-wound.
"Ah - my apologies - are you quite alright? I wasn't watching where I was going very well..."
1. [ This situation would be bad and confusing enough without people trying to crowd him. While Kristoff's relationship with humanity in general has improved considerably, he still isn't at a point where random offers of kindness seem perfectly reasonable. They feel suspicious, and these people are pushy.
The pamphlets mean next to nothing to him. He's not exactly one to clamor for reading material, and he's sure none of the words therein will contain any information that's even remotely helpful. They're junk. This whole situation is junk.
At some point, he fails to push an offering hand aside in time, and it's a picture, not a word, that catches his attention. A mountainous beast, not particularly like his kin but unmistakable for what it's meant to be, sits printed on the paper in his hand. A troll.
He rounds sharply on the person who'd handed him the pamphlet, though he can't pick out the singular individual from the clutter of people around him. He speak's to whoever's paying attention, then, probably the largest address he's ever delivered. ] What is this? How did you know about this?!
2.
[ The woods had been a natural choice for him, really. Kristoff had somehow decided, with no logical thought involved, that he'd simply walk into one side of the woods and out the other, and that would at least put him closer to Arendelle. He knows that likely isn't how it works, but he'd been feeling more bullheaded than defeatist.
These aren't his woods at all, though. The flora and the sounds around him are foreign, and they're... They're beyond unfamiliar. They're strange. He's having a difficult time finding his bearings. He'll pick a direction and then be certain within the next half-hour that he's somehow been turned around (even though he'd made no turns). There are parts that are too quiet and parts that are too noisy.
And that's not even mentioning the laughter that he can hear now and again, all without an apparent source.
So he's a little unsettled when he hears the snap of a twig breaking too nearby for comfort. It might be an animal. It might be a man. It might be something else entirely. He takes a deep breath and steels himself for the potentially-damaging possibilities before he calls out. ] Who's there?
[Honestly Sephiroth didn't really intend to interrupt, he's busy collecting his own troll pamphlet. There's dozens of these things and if he wants the whole set it's going to take effort.
Probably effort best spent elsewhere but this absurd trick was worth humoring for a little while wasn't it?
It's while he's trying to make some sense of the rock-monster that they've labeled 'troll' that Kristoff yells at the tangle of people desperate to make nice with the new fledgling monsters.]
If you're familiar with the image, read what's written on the inside and see if it still lines up.
[Helpful advice? Maybe. Maybe it'll just agitate the poor man further.]
Oh, well, this isn't the weirdest place Fry's woken up. Or, uh, the drunkest, either. Maybe there's a bar here somewhere? There doesn't look like there's spaceships or robots, which is a huge downer, but eh, beer is beer. He's starting to miss the owls already, anyway, as he walks down the street. People try to hand him stuff -- huh, pamphlets?-- and he takes a couple of them and starts talking.
"This isn't a pyramid scheme to give me gills, is it? 'Cause I already fell for that one once...."
2:
It's just some dumb forest. No UFOs trying to park above him, or Bigfoots to track down or-- you know, anything fun. Those kids are really annoying him, though, and eventually he stops on whatever the hell path he's on to yell at them.
"Hey! Don't you kids have school to pretend to go to tomorrow or something?!" Jeez, back where he was from, he'd have fallen asleep/passed out on the couch by now.
The kids keep giggling, and if they're gonna hang around, they might as well help him out, right? "Do any of you know which way... uh, anything that isn't trees is?"
Can he just make all the pine trees go away? He's getting sick of them already.
[Man, what is all that racket down there? Sure, there’s usually people out and about in the Lager Woods, but most of them don’t announce their presence quite so loudly as whoever’s down below right now.
Gauzy wings come to a standstill as she alights on a low branch and she regards the young man below with an expression somewhere between irritation and curiosity. He looks human as far as she can tell, which gives him even less of a reason to call so much attention to himself. And there doesn’t seem to be anybody around to answer him...]
( one — sad puppy ) [ As far as afterlives go, an out-dated, American-esque (or so he assumes) port town isn't what Twelve expected, but the surprise isn't unpleasant. An anxious part of him (that he avoids evaluating too deeply) is relieved, actually, to still exist in some capacity because the idea of simply ceasing to be doesn't play nice with his stomach.
Neither does the possibility of being forgotten, but he's got faith in Lisa to soothe that particular fear... so long as the sniper responsible for the blotches of red on his shirt doesn't turn their sight on her. And he doesn't know -- can't tell himself with any iota of conviction that they won't drag her down with them. Those adults with immense power and prestige are so eager to sweep under the rug anything that might tarnish their reputations.
So he hangs around the hospital keeping watch for a girl and a boy, neither of whom he wishes to see here but one he half-expects. The detective, too. He needs to remain with the living; he needs to finish exposing their story. But as the sun sinks below the horizon and the chill of night permeates the streets, he recognizes no faces. When the natives -- other dead people, he thinks -- scurry off to their homes and the nurses lock the doors, that's when it settles in.
Loneliness.
For the first time in over a decade, he doesn't have Nine and Nine doesn't have him. It's a peculiar sensation, and not one he knows how to deal with, so he doesn't. Not immediately. Instead, he pulls his knees up on the bench outside of the hospital and wraps his arms around and rests his chin upon them. He watches the main entrance, dimly lit by an old streetlamp, as if the nurses may, at any moment, release one, final castaway who'd simply required more rest than the others.
Words of caution about the dangers haunting Ryslig's nights go unheeded. ]
( three — grand theft auto: vandare ) [ He's working on a car facing some engine trouble when the fog rolls in. His "client", a boy close in age, had gladly accepted his curious offer of assistance (with monetary compensation, natch) in no small part because the vehicle belongs to his father, who's out of town on business and forbade him from using it for the duration -- and also because Twelve's price is considerably lower than any legitimate mechanic.
With good reason, too. He's never worked on an antique before.
But the fog. It entices him to wiggle out from under the car only when it begins to obscure his view, and by then, everyone's rushed indoors and bolted everything they can find. Twelve glances around, fingers idly scratching the place on his chest where he'd been shot, before returning his attention to the car.
Well, if the guy is willing to leave Twelve with the car and its keys...
So that's how, fifteen minutes later, going ten through Vandare's foggy streets in a stolen vehicle with headlights that don't show him shit, Twelve sees the silhouette of something moving a few feet ahead and slams on the brakes with a choked noise of surprise. Just because he's dead and thinks everyone else is, too, doesn't mean he's cool with people pancakes...! ]
[Ever since her accident, Chrome has had an eagle eye for cars and situations she might be around them. Thus, despite the fog, she's mostly out of Twelve's way and only needs a hurried jump to land her completely clear of the car as it comes into view.
She hurries to the door of the car, her eyes convincingly wide with shock, apologies burbling from her lips as she comes close enough.]
I-I'm sorry to make you brake like that, I didn't expect anyone to be driving in this weather. I-I apologise.
[She bows to complete the show, peering worriedly into the car's interior. Small and slight, she looks like nothing dangerous at all. Appearances are as deceptive as the mist they're in.]
Her hands are definitely shaking, and as she moves down the street she tries to clasp them together to still them, so that no one who looks at her can tell that she is confused and afraid. It doesn't do a hell of a lot of good, given the concern she can't wipe from her mouth or the touch of stifled fear in her big green eyes.
This is not her world. And there is nothing okay about that.
She's used to crims, to murderers and rapists and drug dealers. She's even used to sharks and crocs. They're fairly par for the course for a Sydney police officer. But in this place, monster has a completely different meaning. She tries to cling to denial, to thinking (or hoping) that is is all a very strange dream, but the people on the street, their words and the papers they push into her shaking hands, all seem to scream otherwise.
She looks down at the small collection of papers in her tightly clasped fingers and the words all seem like as much of a blur as the road beneath her feet as she keeps walking. It is all too much to take in and she can't wrap her brain around any of it. Her distraction and confusion are so great, that she doesn't notice the other person walking down the street until she has already collided with them.
It brings her back to reality at least, and she is instantly collecting the papers that fell from her hands and anything that might have been dropped by the victim of her loss of focus. "Excuse me, I am so sorry. I wasn't thinking."
Scenario Two
Why did she even come into these woods in the first place? Tayler can only imagine that some kind of insanity had gripped her for a few minutes and by the time she came out of it she was deep enough into the woods that she could no longer find her way out. She's not a stranger to wilderness, and she knows how easy it can be to get lost when you aren't familiar with the trees and the plants and the bloody planet, so she can't imagine she was in her right mind when she first wandered in.
That isn't the scariest part, though. The scariest part is that she is alone in the darkness of the branches and there are sounds, very disconcerting sounds coming from every shadow. It isn't just the rustle of branches, the hum of the breeze, but a faint sound of laughter that has the pit of her stomach filling with dread. But she tries to be brave, to overcome fear. Fear is weakness and a place like this eats weakness for breakfast, so she calls out in her most booming police officer voice every time she hears that laugh. "Who's there? Please come out!" She doesn't have a gun so she can hardly tell them to come out with their hands up, but the sentiment is perhaps implied in the level seriousness of her tone.
one! (We'll just ignore his whole zombie thing for now and start fresh)
Norman recovers quickly, straightening the suit he's exchanged for the prison suit he arrived in. "Mm. Arriving here can be quite a shock." It's not hard to guess, not with the pamphlets about monsters and such that are now scattered on ground surrounding him. He's already been though the whole process, appearing in this place a few hours ago. Long enough to get a much needed change of clothes and to already hate everything about this new scenario. He should be making his triumphant return and flaunting his escape before the senate, not somehow transported to ...here.
He stoops to pick up a few of her papers as well. As much as he'd like to take out his anger on someone, anyone, it won't do. So far he's the only one from his world that he knows of so is presented with a unique chance to start over. At least until he can find a way to harness the power of this place and go home. At least that's the loose plan for now, he'll change it as needed. Handing them to her he says with a slight sarcastic tone, "Welcome to Ryslig, land of displaced people and monsters of all kinds."
While passing the papers he notes the top one. "Bunnyipyips and you. Hm, didn't get this one." He makes a face. "What's a bunnyipyip?"
[Sadie understandably has not received her welcome very warmly. Through her stammering, frazzled inquiries, she's just been handed pamphlets, which she's read with shaking hands—and she's beginning to lose her patience already. It can't be real, right? It's a joke! But it's true she was pulled out of a lake, with scrapes on her extremities and seaweed in her hair. The staff tending to her has since nervously began to bring her food and drinks, and Sadie—reaching her boiling point, stiffens and bristles, clenching her teeth together as she snaps at the poor staffer bringing her a tray.]
Aaaugh, no! Get that away from me! I don't want food! J-just—get me out of here!!
✘ scenario two
[Okay, so maybe flipping her lid and running out from the town wasn't such a good idea. She knew it wasn't, but she was just too freaked out—no one was being forward enough with her for her liking, and she had to see what was around her. But now, the cold has settled in on her skin, whereupon her hair stands on edge.
Sadie nervously holds her forearms in her own palms as she slowly backs up, noting, with dread, the same gnarled, strange tree she must have seen twenty minutes ago—for the second time. This time, it's the third. She hears the faintest trill of a child's laughter, and her eyes widen, blood running cold. She glances over her shoulders nervously.
Hell no. She's seen way too many horror movies to not know how this goes...
Hesitantly, she calls out an experimental and echoing] Uh... Hello?
[That probably wasn't the best idea... She swallows nervously as the realization dawns.]
two!! sorry for writing a novel i swear this was not intended
[Sometimes you gotta just get away from civilization and the many, many eyes of strangers around, and just have some time to yourself. With the newcomers arriving, that was just more strangers and more people to take care of and Lars just wasn't up for any of that, so he took off from Vandare and wandered around until he came across the woods. It was nice, plenty of trees to hide him from the sun and if anyone was looking for him, they'd probably give up before he was actually found.
Perfect.]
[So now, he was in the woods-- lost, but not worried. He liked walking with no idea where he was actually going, it was proving to be a very nice stress reliever and he was actually considering taking a nap, with the quietness of the forest. But that was before he heard the sound of someone calling nearby.
His first instinct was to ignore them, they probably weren't anyone he knew so therefore; Not his problem. But he couldn't actually just leave them be... he knew that if Steven heard that Lars didn't help someone in need he'd be pretty pissed, and he didn't need the kid even more angry at him than he was now. And if anything he was curious about who called out, especially since they sounded female.
So he quietly slinks through the trees until he gets a glimpse at who it was -- and he stops dead in his tracks. His eyes widen and his face turns pale, he looked like he was about to pass out but he uses a hand to lean on a tree, to prevent that from happening.]
S..Sadie....?
[He quietly calls out, not really sure if he was just mistaking her for someone else.]
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