I'm not always like this; it's something I've become.... [Signless; Terezi; OTA Catch-All]

[lovelyassistant]

Who| Charlie and Signless; Charlie and Terezi; Charlie and OPEN
What| The monster isn't locked up anymore...and it's getting awfully dark.
Where| In the abandoned parts of the space station.
When| Week 1
Warnings/Notes| Violence, gore, potential nightmare fuel and body horror. Watch this space for additional warnings. Actually open to positive CR, believe it or not, for monster!Charlie if a fight isn't your bag! Just ask!

[For Signless]

This is...even further removed from the island than the mall was.

The initial trip through outer space had been more than a little jarring for a girl of the nineteen-tens like Charlie, and honestly, she's mostly just surprised that she made it onto the space station at all. Like the last arena, she's trying to lay low - meaning to spend as much time as possible simply avoiding a fight with anyone else. Exploration. Survival. That's what's important, and she clings to it.

She's found her way into the bowels of the ship, creaking and deserted - a familiar concept - and she scavenges as quickly and quietly as she can. Something feels wrong, but she can't quite place it, throwing her focus instead to the important task of making a spear. You can always make a spear. A rod, something sharp, something to lash them together. Tried and true, and useful for hunting and defense both.

Peering into a dark room from a corridor lit by flickering bulbs, she spots a glint off of a long, sharp shred of scrap metal - likely a shelf that had broken over time (or, god forbid, had been broken by something) - and she carefully crosses through the twitching electronic door, stepping into the shadows.

Just inside the grip of the shadows, she halts.

"...No."

Instantly she recognizes her mistake - recognizes the sensation of pressure, of cold, of something inside her threatening to force its way out. Charlie tries to move, tries to turn to the light...but it's too late.

She falls to her knees, her scream echoing down the hallways and through the abandoned rooms before she claps both hands tight over her mouth.




[For Terezi]

The beast has found a little time to get her bearings again. She's slowed by stagnancy, to be certain, but she's gaining her strength back...keeping to the shadows, making her way through the station in hopes of finding something to eat. She comes upon some horrible thing, an inside-out mass of organs and teeth, and only pauses a moment - gathering her energy.

A roar echos off of the walls, and it doesn't belong to the mutant. It rears, squelching, launching itself at the lumbering figure.

With a sickening snap, the creature is dispatched.

Now she stands over it, clawing at it with massive talons, trying to find meat somewhere in the mess of offal. She's not paying any attention to her surroundings, crouched there in her pitch-black corner...she can only see that she's not going to get any food out of this.

She's not happy about it.



[Open to All]

Throughout the abandoned parts of the space station, a low, rumbling growl can be heard. Something is skulking in the darkness, out of sight, but by no means avoiding your attention. No...not avoiding you.

Something is stalking you. Something is interested, watching you from the shadows. Something is hissing, crawling, roiling her way along, waiting for you to step for just an instant out of the light.

Something hungry.

Comments

[69problems]

For the second time in as many weeks Signless hears a scream in the dark lower levels of the station, and for the second time he has a fast and fierce debate over whether he should investigate. He does still have his pocket knife and his taser so theoretically he should be fine and on that logic he presses forward toward where the voice came from.

A form takes shape beyond a stuttering doorway and his pulse quickens when he realizes who it is. Is she hurt? Did a monster get to her? He knows they wander down here and he knows that while she can protect herself, she isn't a particularly violent person. It's not unreasonable to think she may have been caught off-guard.

"Charlie! Are you alright?" he says in a loud whisper, moving as though he intends to kneel next to her.

[lovelyassistant]

In her mind's eye, Charlie is drowning, falling. It's cold, so cold in this space where the room has fallen away, where there's no sight and no sound above the low thrum and growl of beings so much older than herself. The dark is swallowing her up, consuming her alive, dragging her mind down into the depths of oblivion...but she can hear, just beyond it all, a familiar voice. She reaches, she reaches out to him, trying to call out...but the moment she opens her mouth, it isn't sound that comes out.

In Signless's view, the small, trembling figure turns toward him, weakly dragging her hand up to try to make contact - but the hand is wrong, the arm is wrong. Petite hands are stretching out, the very bones and flesh blackening and becoming claws. Big, doe eyes are glassing over, the tiny veins within bursting with black and spreading it across the scleras. She opens her mouth as if to speak; before sound can work its way out, something much worse does.

She doubles over, now-too-large hands bracing against the ground as something black and billowing pours from her open lips, rushing upward and pooling in the darkness along the ceiling. It's only a moment before the same shadows burst from her nose, her eyes, every orifice.

Please...run.

[69problems]

It says a lot about exactly how long he's been in Panem and how many arenas he's been through and how much complete bullshit he's seen that the Signless doesn't scream. He takes several steps back and his heartbeat quickens to a deafening pace but he doesn't scream and he doesn't run. Charlie is still his friend, and while what she's doing scares the hell out of him it also makes him worried for her.

Is this what she spoke about in the last arena? Is this the monster she told him she had the misfortune of holding inside herself? It doesn't look like anything else he's seen in this arena thus-far and given what she's already told him...

Is he going to die?

"Charlie, if you can hear me, this isn't your fault. Anything the monster does -- I won't blame you."

He at least wants the last thing she hears as herself to be something reassuring.

[lovelyassistant]

The words reach her - but she cannot react to them, cannot stop the change as everything goes completely dark within. Charlie is - for all intents and purposes - gone; likely for the better as her tiny human frame starts to warp into something distinctly inhuman.

Black, billowing tendrils continue to force their way out of her, wrapping around to obscure her skin like some manner of cocoon. Her size doubles, triples - soon she's pulling herself up, towering over the shelves and ruined equipment. Her massive claws unfurl and then curl inwards again, a gradual stretching of muscles long-pent-up.

When her eyes open, it's not Charlie's doe gaze fixed on Signless - it's a pair of shining, feral pinpricks in the shadows. She snarls, opening a mouth full of wicked black teeth and tossing back the messy mane of hair that now curtains her shoulders.

The red flower that Charlie so covets falls to the ground, unpinned, and a massive clawed foot stomps on it.

This is, unfortunately for Signless, a really poor time for the airlock to malfunction and crash shut, locking him in the room in pure darkness.

[69problems]

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. He flattens himself back against the shut door, light-sensitive eyes allowing him to see just a little even in the pitch-black. The form before him is monstrous, unlike anything he'd imagined and yet worse than all of it combined. Charlie is in there somewhere, he's sure, but he has no way of reaching her and no way of escaping.

He keeps his eyes on the barely-there outline of her claws, body tense, prepared to dodge should she decide to attack.

[lovelyassistant]

The creature does not remove her attentions from Signless for even a moment - as the door slams shut and what little light was coming in from the hallway is cut off, it only encourages her to move forward.

She roars and bounds forward, aiming to catch him; the movement is clumsy, like a newborn deer trying to walk.

She's been pent up for too long without stretching her legs.

[69problems]

He throws himself sideways in an attempt to keep out of range of those claws. Maybe if he can just lead her around the room, keeping to the edges, until the door opens again... he doesn't see what other choice he has but to keep running and dodging if he wants to live. At least it will be entertaining for the viewers.