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goneawayworld2021-06-28 07:23 pm
goneawaymod) wrote in goneawayworld2021-06-28 07:23 pm
FROM DUST TO DUST - Plot Post 1
FROM DUST TO DUST
LINKS
WORLD INFO/WORKSHOPPING
BRIEFING
They're briefed on the situation. It's a full-scale incursion, where it's not a section overlapping the Gone-Away worl, the incursion zone allows access to an entire alternate universe. Full-scale incursions like this need to be resolved before reality breaks down entirely due to the two worlds overlapping.
They're told that Jorgmund has determined the objective is to gain something useful from this world, and that a simple diplomatic mission will procure it. They must make contact with the upper crust and some members of the clergy, who are fascinated by the prospect of their world folding into another. These aristocrats have a relationship with the Church, who has a powerful artifact in their possession. The New Hires will receive a special knife in exchange for some mingling, one that might be able to close up some of the holes in the reality of the Gone-Away World.
Their sponsors in this world are going to give them a few nights in a very classy hotel, and take them on a shopping trip to treat them to glamorous clothes and finery for the gala they're expected to go to.
That's it, that's the mission. Or so they've been tol.
The New Hires are also told about daemons. That everyone in this world has one. That there are different interpretations of what they are: the human soul externalized, or maybe something else, something alien and bad. Jorgmund tells them that they'll likely stick out, due to not having daemons.
This is a lie, of course. They suspect that the mechanics of this universe will rectify the lack of daemons the second they enter.
EQUIPMENT
- The New Hires will be sent over wearing clothing appropriate to the world they're entering, though for now it's plain and casual. (They'll be taken shopping later by their guides for their formal evening wear.)
- They'll only be allowed weapons and gear appropriate to the world, so most of their technology will be gone. The only guns they'll be allowed are revolvers and bolt-action rifles. They'll all have been given substitute weapons, for those that carry them.
- They'll be allowed a more stealthy version of their comms, that look like bracelets or leather cuffs. These have all the functions of normal comms. They project small holographic screens and holographic keyboards, instead of having physical ones.
- They will still have their powers, but will be warned to keep them under wraps, as no one in this world has any.
- Non-humans or people with other-than-baseline physical traits will get holographic image inducers styled as discreet world-appropriate jewelry. Or other accessories to hide what makes them look different.
CROSSING THE BARRIER
They cross over the shimmering barrier between worlds, and walk into a small park that's been cleared of people by their sponsors. All the buildings nearby are in an Edwardian style, with light brick, slightly baroque masonry, and arched openings. In the distance, they can see a college that seems to have even older architecture.
For a half second after they walk through the shimmering barrier they seem fine.
And then there is pain, like an iron hand gripping their insides and pulling something out between their ribs. For a moment, it feels like something vital is spilling out of them, like a big enough hole as been made for their heart and lungs and organs to spill onto the ground. It feels like something secret and private is being dragged into the open, where it doesn't want to be.
And yet, there is a sense of relief, like they've all suddenly had a splinter deep in their bodies that's worked itself out. There is no sense of emptiness left behind. It's not that they've lost something, it's that it's separated out - but remained connected. By some kind of invisible umbilical cord.
It's been externalized, not ripped away.
They're suddenly all there beside them, forming out of the ether. Daemons. Each New Hire can immediately sense which is their own. When they start talking, the daemons are sure in their knowledge that they were always there all along, just hidden away, and are delighted to interact with their other halves more directly.
no subject
It takes no time at all to identify Bunny - somehow, despite seeing a muscular nude woman, Dan sees Bunny, can tell immediately that it's Bunny, like the sort of logic one has in a dream looking at a face and yet knowing it's someone else - and Dan lurches in between the stomping woman and the barrier.
"Whoa, whoa, easy, Bunny," Dan says, while the black-footed ferret Virginia, crawling along his shoulders and ruffling through Dan's hair, yelps "no good that way!"
Thank God Sam's already taking care of the clothing issue, because Bunny's daemon is taller than Dan is and has biceps about three times as thick. Dan throws Sam a very appreciative smile.
"Here, I got you," Dan holds his hands out so Bunny can be with a loved one while the human daemon dresses, then glances back at Sam. "You sure got on your feet fast, Skip."
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It's similar to the way the human daemon is somehow clearly, despite her external appearance, not a real human. It's hard to nail down just why, looking at her - maybe the whites of her eyes are too perfectly white, no shadows of blue veins where her skin should be thin enough for those to faintly show, little missing markers of being an organic creature that are hard to pick out, but not impossible to detect with true human senses. Maybe it's even that she looks a little too perfectly human, that looking at her, it's immediately clear what a human animal is - an apex pursuit predator, comparatively inexhaustible, adaptable to almost any terrain. To humans who haven't thought of themselves as such an animal, her presence may be strange.
The human daemon has a very clear personal bubble, but Sam is allowed in that bubble just enough for her to very gingerly take the offered coat, careful not to touch his skin. That just makes it all the more obvious to their hosts, though, when she hands Bunny rather carelessly over to Dan, their hands brushing as she turns her person over. The daemon doesn't react, but Bunny clocks the way their handlers turn suddenly away looking wide-eyed and appalled by the implications of her non-reaction.
Well there's already more information out than he likes from that, and he waits antsy and furious in Dan's arms for his daemon to finish buttoning up her coat.
"This isn't a good idea. We're too vulnerable this way," he objects, while his daemon nods furiously before holding her hands back out for him. "We have to sit this one out if it's gonna split us like this."
"No argument here," the human daemon agrees. "People are not going to like it when I defend my person against them."
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Which is true. And, considering they all know the kind of pain that they all just went through, indicative of things that he has not talked to people about.
Avoiding touch is easy enough for Sam and Acacia, and he withdraws his hand quickly to give her more space while imposing himself between their hosts and the human-shaped daemon. More for their sake than Acacia's.
"If you can get back to the other side of the barrier, that might be best for your sake. And the sake of our hosts. I think they're going to do themselves an injury the way they're staring."
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"Don't like that," he says, glancing over at how the handlers are reacting to him handling Bunny. He hands Bunny back, aware that likely the only place Bunny feels more secure than in his hands is in Acacia's.
"Nuh uh," Virginia says, voice brittle and scratchy like stale bread being sawed into.
Dan gets on tip-toe to look around Sam at the hosts, still eyeing them. He figures that Acacia has a very one-track mind in terms of how to defend Bunny. "Shouldn't be no need for anyone to do any defending and escalating if I can handle the hosts right."
"You know us, smooth talkers," Virginia says.
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"Dan, you know I believe in you completely, but you also know how these things tend to go," he says, looking around for the gear he shed when he split into two people. "Hey, put those on," he says to his daemon, patting her on the arm and pointing to his gauntlets, his holsters and boomerangs.
"I can't use them," she mutters, wiggling her fingers. "Muscle memory's not there."
"You can still hit something with them if you need to," Bunny reassures her as she picks them up anyway.
"It's not nothing," she agrees, the banter between them a chummy exchange of shared complaints. To Virginia, though, she adds "if I have to put a person in a chokehold I'm not going to like it. They're not going to like it. You wouldn't be thrilled if your only option for protecting Dan was to bite people's throats instead of tussling with their daemons, would you?" She shudders at the idea, a full bodied shiver of horror. She is a soul made flesh, and now the flesh she's made out of is incredibly, terribly vulnerable.
"You're gonna need a name," Bunny says, barely finishing the sentence before - "Acacia," he suggests, in a firm, figured-it-out tone.
Acacia, again, has no argument with him, nodding at the appropriateness. "Acacia," she agrees. Then - "You're gonna need a name, too, you know. People are gonna think you're the daemon, not me."
"Strewth," Bunny groans, as he realizes, despite Acacia's distinct daemonic appearance, she's probably right. Fortunately for them, anything their handlers could glean from this exchange are overshadowed by KREB screaming "mad with power!" over and over, soaking up attention. Bunny looks at Sam and Dan. "I'm taking suggestions."
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Leg sweeps and the like are always useful, after all.
He glances over at the shout of "mad with power!" as Eileen makes a sound of quiet annoyance above them. "Ah...honestly, not good with names for...sentients," he admits, changing from his first thought of 'pets' because Bunny isn't a pet at all.
"That's the truth," Eileen admits. "He had a dog for two weeks he named Bones. While driving his brother out of his mind."
Sam glances up with narrowed eyes. "Can we not?"
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"You can just go with Warren again, maybe?" Virginia asks, climbing down Dan's arm so he can manhandle her in a way that looks alarming and unpleasant, but that she's also clearly enjoying, being swapped hand to hand, jerked around, juggled, that she doesn't even have to ask Dan to do for her because he knows she likes it.
"Bones is a great name for a dog," Dan says with a shrug, flipping Virginia upside down and then back again. "Don't know why your brother didn't take to it."
Dan's fond, peripherally, of Dean Winchester, having heard about him from Sam and having seen him in Sam's memories. But he can tell that Dean's got a more restricted sense of humor than Dan does.
"Just, if anyone says anything," Dan says, glancing back at their handlers, who have shifted their attention to KREB's theatrics, "let me talk before anyone starts throwing punches, alright?"
no subject
She says it like a threat, and like their lives are already in question, regardless of where their handlers attention is directed.
Bunny chuckles at the hawk daemon's jokes, meanwhile, and agrees. "What's wrong with Bones? Did not enough people tell your brother he's a stick in the mud?" To Virginia, he responds, "good enough" at the same time as Acacia does. There doesn't seem to be much disagreement between him and his innermost soul, as the direct pretty matched nods to Dan, acknowledging his and Virginia's powers of persuasion.
"Thanks for the coat," Acacia mutters to Sam, fluffing up her shoulders inside it as if resenting having to wear it at all. "It's cold, existing without a fur coat."
"Are you two gonna introduce your other halves, or what?" Bunny asks, of Virginia and Eileen, still grumpy about his reduction and eager to direct attention other than at him and Acacia, who is cuddling him defensively, scratching his cheek without him having to suggest she do that.
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Finally, Eileen ruffles her feathers. "Dean wasn't there. Somebody ran away from home."
Which makes Sam huff and roll his eyes, before shaking himself in a very similar way and turning his attention to Acacia. "And yeah, it's definitely colder than the Rig has been, so most of us aren't that mad about it, I don't think. But we have a lot less insulation."
The hawk takes some unknown clue and takes off, wheeling around for a moment before coming down to rest on Sam's shoulder. He takes the weight as if it has always been there. "Bunny, Acacia, Dan. This is Eileen."
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"Pleasure, Eileen." Dan, who cannot sing worth a damn, quite skillfully whistles the riff of Come On Eileen through his teeth appreciatively, then switches to Train's Meet Virginia as he tosses Virginia lazily in front of him and then catches her with the other hand. "This is Virginia, because we don't got enough folks named after states on this mission. And because yes, Virginia..."
"...there is a Santa Claus and an Easter Bunny," Virginia says, climbing up Dan's arm and around his shoulder to check Acacia out.
"And it's cold as shit," Dan gripes, pulling Virginia back into his hands less to control her and more because she's a warm, fuzzy stole of a creature, and Dan's a chronic smoker whose hands turn white and pink at any temperature below seventy.
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But Bunny is momentarily stricken at Dan being cold and not being able to offer a warm arm for him to stand under. But he can keep his feelings off his face a little better than Acacia, so he sighs and waves a paw to Eileen. "G'day Eileen."
"I still don't like this," Acacia grumbles, even though she's about pulled Virginia out of Dan's hands to cuddle.