synopsychic | Dream Diver (closed to close cr)

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sara smith

Dream Diver (closed to close cr)

She's walking through her dreams, fully lucid, looking through the ruins in her usual armored wetsuit deal, seeing a bit of Ancient Greece over in the distance that way, a rock festival in the forest that way, a desert planet in the sky that she could probably fly to in her armor.

She's probably mostly going to be looking through her personal effects in her room, though, which mostly have visual representations of her memories - pictures the people she's met here, which are vibrantly colored and in blue frames, and pictures of the folks back home in gunmetal grey frames and sepia tones. A tall, lean, confident kid with dark skin features in a lot of them, with one particular picture of Sara and him kissing. Her dungeon rescuers will recognize him as Keenan.

She may be Dream Communicating unconsciously, inviting her friends into her dreams. She's going to wake up exhausted.

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Casper is here, confused as he looks around the room that he's found himself in.

But Sara is here, and he's been a little worried about her since her dungeon, so he approaches her, trying to not touch anything even though he's intensely curious. "Sara?"

She turns, as confused as Casper. "What are you - I thought I was dreaming," she said. "This is what my dorm looked like back at the base, and I've... been putting my memories in order," she says, taking the sepia-toned pictures. Each of the four kids from the dream feature heavily, but so do some other unfamiliar faces and events from before she started travelling.

"... If you are, you dragged me in, because I can't do anything with dreams other than have them as far as I know." Then again, he did sort of drag Malin into his. Or maybe she dragged him into hers? He's not sure. "... Are you doing okay since... the dungeon?"

"...a lot better," she says, sitting down. The gold frames of the color photos gleam in reflected light, and she starts putting new pictures into frames from a place on a corkboard, mostly of the desert planet. Short term to long term memory.

"Kind of pissed at Don Orlea, but a lot better. I normally dream lucid, that's not new. Having guests... that's new."

"I don't, that's not my thing, but... yeah. Are you... I'm glad you're better." He moves over so he can look a little more carefully at what she's doing. Huh.

"Are you... it seems like you went through a lot at home. I know we're not particularly close, but if you ever want to talk about it... I'm around."

Sara lets out a very long, visibly deflating sigh.

"I knew there was a reason that Gabriel - that the Gabriel I dreamed up," she says, and she finds this very amusing, "called you over. You would make a fantastic Anchor. And now I should probably explain what that means, or... or you can tell me where to start. There's a lot wrong with home."

".. Yeah, you probably should explain what that means. And the thing you were in looked like it was from some kind of anime? I have no idea, I don't really watch anime." He's seen a bit with Thorne, but... yeah, no.

She laughs. "Funny," she said, "I said the same thing to Gil, about my world being way too damn anime. I can still use it, here, but uh. It's not been useful yet. It would have been really out of place everywhere but Dragon Planet, and I was kind of. Not myself there?"

She shakes her head. Hey, there are chairs here, now; she sits down and pulls out one for Casper.

"It's called the ANIMa. We used it to fight things from somewhere else. Sometimes we called then the Invaders, cause they were. Sometimes we called them Nightmares, for the same reason. And, um." She looks at the floor, a little sad now, trying to keep smiling. "My overlay's parents were turned to stone in Achaea and just not around on Jiangwa for a reason, and the Nightmares are it."

He sits down, posture a little too stiff to be really comfortable, but it's... habit, with people he's not quite as relaxed around. "I... yeah. It's... I'm sorry. That... that really sucks."

He shakes his head. He has more questions to ask, but... he wants her to move at her own pace. He knows anyone bringing up dead parents tends to need a minute... at least from what he's seen. But then again, most of what he's seen has been in a funeral home.

She takes that minute. She reaches out a hand for Casper to take, if he's comfortable doing that.

"...it's funny that the worlds we went to knew," she says. "They never die. There's... there's even stories about turning gorgon victims back from turning to stone. Like we were hoping we could wake up the Blissed, for a while."

She shakes her head, and the braids bounce. "There's always an excuse in those shows for why teenagers are the pilots, yeah? That's ours. All of them Blissed Out. We had one adult around." She frowns. "And frankly, fuck him."

This may be the first time Casper has ever heard Sara swear with real venom.

Edited (dw is not tabletop, address the characters not the players) 2017-10-03 05:47 (UTC)

He takes her hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. He's here. He'll let her take the time that she needs. After all, they're in a dream. What's time even mean here?

"Blissed is like... in a coma?" If she thought they could wake them up... it's got to be something like that. Not... permanently dead.

She nods, confirming it. "Still dreaming," she said. "Everything had to do with dreams. They were dreams. They were living ideas."

She laughs with tears starting in the corner of her eyes. "I thought that the Fool was the same species as the Nightmares when I first showed up in his space and I was shocked that he bothered to talk to me at first," she says. "I... I have some big questions for him, now that I have the rest of my memories back."

He nods, and covers her hand with his other hand, lacing his fingers together around her hand. "I got pretty startled by Moon myself, but... nothing like that. Hopefully you can talk to him soon, though." Fool's not a bad concept as far as he knows. A bit naive, but not awful.

For a moment, all her attention on her own misery changes to a shudder at Casper's. "Moon. Oog. And... and I figured if I have the symbols right there isn't anything the Fool would like more than to answer noob questions, the noobier the better."

She squeezes Casper's hand once, then looks up at him with the first real smile since she started really talking about her world.

"Like 'what's an Anchor,'" she says. "An anchor is someone who... well, does this. Takes a Pilot aside and listens. Helps them deal with stuff getting to be too much. They also ran the Wake-side of the machinery that made the ANIMa go, back home, but... well..."

She shows off palm, and the Mark on it: a stick-figure fool dancing off a numeral zero. So far, that's worked as an Anchor to liminal space for her; it wouldn't be the first time she's mentioned that.

Edited (knew I forgot something) 2017-10-04 04:33 (UTC)

"... Can't help much with the machinery part, unless what's needed is to kick it, but I can help with this." He smiles, before his gaze grows a bit distant as he remembers things from years back. Conversations, visits... he'd done a lot.

"I kind of... did stuff like that a lot. Took ghosts aside, took the living aside... everyone needs someone to talk to. And I was just this... weird looking, scrawny kid. Inoffensive and non-threatening." Not like a lot of the ghosts had a choice. There weren't many people around they could talk to. "I think... even before I knew my mother was a death goddess, I knew I had to help people move on."

Okay then.

Not where he was expecting to wake up.

Spotting Sara helps with that, and he's darting over to her a bit faster than is strictly necessary, leaves swishing and hooves clicking as he walks. He's not aware that Sara might be able to hear the latter one too. "So should I be concerned here, or...?"

She's not bothered by Gil's weirdness, and having Casper come by earlier helped. She rolls her eyes and turns to Gil outside her room.

"I don't think so," she says. "Once I figure out how to do this on purpose this will even be useful. But it's gonna be kind of a pain until I wake up."

"So that means it's not a you skill." He stands up taller to try and look over her shoulder into her room. "You weren't on the Jaunt, were you? That had so much dream bullshit."

"Dragon planet," she said. "I could have done. So much good with the bullshit dreams and I missed it. You... saw what I was up against, talking to the Anna I dreamed up," she said.

She takes a picture of the real halloween party, featuring Anna as a flapper with the other girl, Meredith, as a gangster - both goofing around. Then hangs it on the wall.

"Dream dragon planet was the thing hanging in my sky. That's... that's not a home thing. Just the one moon like Earth. We're pretty sure that's where the alien base is."

"Yeah, you've gone through some tough shit." The kind he gets, as well, which is what drives him to step into the room, and tempts him to put a hand on her upper back. "Dream dragon planet looks sick up there, though. Way cooler than alien moon base."

She grins. "I think the more I travel the more cool places I can visit. This is... kind of where I put my memories. And it was a mess," she adds, laughing. "I don't keep my real room that messy and I'm cleaning up now."

Were there chairs and a desk in this room? Well, there are now, and a little plastic model of Sara's mech is on the desk in various stages of assembly. "You wanted to know what you gave me?" She asks, slotting the extra sensory helmet from Kohaku onto the figurine.

"Still better than mine. It's kind of turned into a pillowy troll cave." Hope the other rooms didn't mind their pillows going missing.

The suddenly appearing desk doesn't phase him at all, but the tiny mecha gets his ears twitching up immediately. "Oh my god, yes?" And he's rushing forward to get a closer look. He can feel his tail perking up just looking at it. "That looks so fucking cool just as is."

She snaps on something... biological, made of bony plates and bulbous sacs in vivid blue.

"This is the opposite of a flamethrower," she says. "It fires a spray that freezes things and also it sounds like it's screaming when it fires."

She demonstrates. This model is just that, a model, a toy; it's a way to safely show off. But underneath that weird warble in pitch... is that a Wilhelm Scream?

"Am I allowed to be vaguely offended by how gross that looks?" Because if that's meant to be an indication of what their friendship looks like... that's gross, man.

But the weapon in action makes a pretty sick noise. One that makes his ears flick up with interest. "Wait, do it again? Holy shit."

"Go for it, but that's probably more your whole fear thing. It looks like an alien weapon because fear. Fear is why."

She does it again. That's definitely poor Wilhelm.

Welp. "Fear is a pretty ugly thing, yeah."

But then he grins excitedly. "Holy shit it is Wilhelm. Your weapon gave me the fucking stock horror movie scream." He is delighted.

"That's twice this has happened. You've really gotta do something about this dreaming thing."

Kohaku stood behind Sara as she rooted around in her room, hands in her pockets. "Are you all out of whack again? Do I have to go on another dream journey?"

"I'm pretty sure this time is just me tripping over psychic stuff from..."

She grabs at the air, annoyed, as she grabs at the word.

"Travelling," she decides. "When I'm awake I'll ask the veterans if reaching out to friends in dreams is a me thing or a new thing. We didn't do it on purpose at home, anyway."

Looking for anything in particular, Kohaku? There are a lot of memories. One in particular of her and Joshua involves a firing range. There's also a pot with a Greek-style picture of what is almost certainly Kohaku, sword drawn, barring entry to a temple from Arke: look around it and it's part of a tableux of events Sarai relayed to a goddess at that same temple.

"Some time," Kohaku said. "I'm gonna have to sit you down and get a complete run down on what the fuck is going on in your universe."

She wasn't looking for anything in particular, since she hadn't planned on coming here in the first place. She did notice the pot, which made that whole thing with Arke look about 10 times more dramatic than it actually was.

"This isn't a bad time as long as you're here... and if I knew how to shut this off right now, I would. I'm sorry," she says.

She looks at that pot and then rolls her eyes.

"God, where do I start?" she asks.

Kohaku found something to sit on, a chair or bed or whatever, and sat on it.

"How about with why you're all kids. I don't think I saw anyone in your dream older than me."

"Because our parents are - not dead but gone," she says. "All but Josh's dad. Did you run into any sleepers? The Blissed?"

She laughs, more for the tension than any humor in the situation. "Sarai's parents were gorgon victims instead of proper dead for a reason," she says. "Binehran from Dragon Planet was abandoned instead of having dead parents. Even the Jaunts can tell. Thanks, Jaunts."

She sits down further up on the bed, balled up with a hand under her knee. "The alien invaders took the adults out first, accidentally or on purpose," she says. "I'm not sure which would be worse."

Edited (phone why this ) 2017-10-03 18:45 (UTC)

"You mean all those people sleeping in cars? I just chalked that up to dreams being weird."

She took a moment to wonder what HER parents were up to. She'd always been the responsible one, compared to Ako. They must be worried sick.

It probably wasn't the best time to bring that up, though.

"No, that was... that was one of the least dreamy parts of my dream," she said. "We don't know why Josh's dad didn't fall asleep too. Josh figured he never slept before the war, so why start now."

A weak smile at her attempt to be funny. "But he started getting kids together, trying to see if there was something we could do to... to not just roll over and die." She shakes her head. "There was. You saw me flying in it."

"So they just...made all the grownups fall asleep somehow, and then you used robots made out of psychic energy to fight back?"

She THINKS she gets it, but it's still damn weird.

"We stole the way to call them from the aliens, but yeah."

She sighs. "What makes it hard is... have you ever built a machine or grown food or done all the stuff that happens in the background of a real society?" She shakes her head. "We had to learn fast. Lucking out and finding a trade school for a base helped. And there's also why the robot needs to be psychic. It's made... it's made of relationships. How I feel about people and how they feel about me."

She folds her arms. "You gave me the extra sensors on my helmet. You don't miss a thing, and thanks to you, neither will I."

"Wait really? Your thing has a new system in it because of me?"

That's actually kind of cool.

"Yeah," she says, smiling again. "From a few people, actually. Haven't had the chance to use all of them yet. There's a reason people compared my thing to Kanji and Souji's thing."

She pauses, and adds, "The first sociopath who tried to make a bunch of 'friends' to get a more powerful mech blew up pretty impressively. The ANIMa doesn't like it when Pilots try to trick people, or it."

Because that's a topic that comes up a lot when people hear about a relationship-powered weapon.

"I'll keep that as an important safety tip if I turn into a sociopath and end up in one of these things."

She laughs at that. "Well if you need to get in one of these you're probably screwed anyway... nah. Nah, you'd make it if the Bliss happened. You made it when your weirdness happened," she says more to herself.

"Look, I'm... glad you know all of this. Everyone Gabby let into my dungeon deserved to be there. Even if this whole thing is bullshit I'm glad I met you," she says.

Kohaku's bad habits are rubbing off on her, it seems. She's now A Person Sara Swears In Front Of.

"I guess our 'weirdness' happened like fifteen years before I was born so...It really just seemed pretty normal to me until I had other versions of Earth to compare it to."

And then it got all sappy. Kohaku gave Sara friendly type shoulder punch. "Fuck, dude. You're gonna make me all blushy over here."

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Dream Diver (closed to close cr)

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the moment we've all been waiting for

Awwwwwww yeeeeeeeeeah

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