bigapplesauce | Entries tagged with dropped: nicholas rush

[ooc: warning for violence, body horror, and mentions of gore; this thread will probably contain a lot of that]

He has required a cigarette, fucking required one, for hours, possibly days. The smoke burns thick and heavy in his throat, the tip a glowing point in the cool predawn dark.

He finds himself predisposed to noctivagant perambulations, particularly considering the nature of the latest dream into which the Rift had seen fit to deposit him. Rush hisses a low breath of smoke from between his teeth in an inaudible scoff. The alleged necessities of circadian rhythms mean fuck all to him. He has made this repeatedly and abundantly transparent to all relevant parties. Regardless of the time, he's run out of fucking coffee and that would necessitate an expedition to retrieve more.

Thank fuck for the nicotine. He feels better than he has in days. Sharp. Clean.

The low-pitched clatter of upended trashcans would not in any other instance be noteworthy, but he stops and regards the narrow slash of alleyway with trepidation.

"Hold still," whispers a voice, distorted beyond the how the limits of the human voice should sound. "I'm gonna - gonna make y'better. Gonna fix ya."

The words are rough, harsh, the low grind of stone over stone. He can catch, in the moonlight filtered between the dark blots of clouds, the hunched, distorted silhouette of a thing to which he is uninterested in ascribing a name. Something about it is not right. Fundamentally misshapen, or wrong in some way he does not care to define.

It does not concern him.

"Ya got pretty eyes," it coos. "Just lemme fix 'em. Lemme have a look, would ya please. Would ya HOLD STILL!"

There is a noise, doubtless that of the victim in question.

He discards his cigarette and extinguishes it with the press of heel to concrete and moves smoothly forward. There is a certain amount of debris scattered in a semi-circle around the scene shrouded in darkness, the byproduct of the apparent struggle, and he stoops to lift what appears to be a long fragment of pipe. He advances slowly, calmly, and if the thing hears the weighted scrape of metal over asphalt it does not question it. Its attention is fixed entirely on the poor bastard it seems rather intent on dismembering.

"I'm try'na fix ya!" the thing screeches, unholy and inhuman.

"Pardon," Rush interjects coolly, "but I don't believe your services will be required. Good day."

He smashes the pipe into the indistinct side of the thing's head.

Current Location: some alleyway
Current Date: October 8th, 2013, around 3am (forward-dated)

lottawork

He has it.

It had come together unprompted, without the click and slide of a solution slotting easily into place. There is never a click, a common misconception even in the highest echelons of academia - there is never a well-timed stroke of brilliance turned over by some new fragment of insight, simply the give of a problem folding beneath the fierce, continuous, brute force pressure of the uncontained mind. For weeks he has considered it, has become an expert in fields utterly beyond the scope of his specialties or his prolonged interest, and even with the minor distraction of Jackson's spontaneous return to the flesh, he has done little else but attack the set of circumstances without compromise.

The dog is asleep when he exits the building, and he locks his door upon departure, his movements streamlined by the fervent intent of intellectual energy, the strap of his bag taut over his chest as he commits himself to the grueling inadequacies of public transportation.

He knocks immediately upon building entry. He expects Asadi will be waiting for him.

Current Location: Greenwich Village, Iman's apartment
Current Date: October 6th, 2013, around 2am

0thingsonmymind

For a moment no one was there, there was just an empty space on the sidewalk near central park. There was no real reason for it to stand out, unless being empty counted. But it only remained this way for a moment as a young man clad in a tan hoodie and a black mask suddenly appeared to replace the empty space. He had been running, but once he noticed where he was he skidded to a stop. Normally, suddenly ending up in a different place wasn't all that odd, but something felt different about it this time. Maybe it was just that the city was unfamiliar and he hadn't expected to be in a city, or maybe it was something else. He's not sure, he just knows it feels off (many things were off and they were okay, but this was a different off) and he can't quite place why. And he's not happy about it.

He tenses, pressing himself against the nearest wall and peering at the city from behind his mask.
This is not right. This is not the hospital, or the school, or the woods. Or whatever world the Operator came from.
This was just...different. And he did not like it.

He tries to push the panic down, to at least keep it at a manageable level. He could (would) worry later, now he needed to figure a number of things out. His location was the most important; the name didn't matter, he needed to know how close to Rosswood he was. How close to Alex or Tim (hadn't Tim been chasing him? Where was he?). If he wasn't close enough to get back quickly he'd need somewhere to hide, somewhere to figure out his next move (somewhere with internet he could steal). This was different. This was WRONG. But he could deal with it.
Somehow (he had to).

Current Location: A street near central park
Current Date: October 5th, 2013

peacefulexplorer

He sheathes himself in intent and blinding resolve, gathering himself at the peak of all he is. He knows the form and shape of himself intimately, and that of the Rift nearly as much. He has no physical structure here, nothing but the transcendental construction of his being, spun from energy and enlightened matter.

He forms the configuration of his atoms into a point and launches himself toward the great barrier mantled over the city, driving himself into the obstruction with every high-vibrating strand of himself in an ineluctable quantum-entangled internecine of torquing chiral matter and shrieking electromagnetism, resolving into bright streak of light, and then nothing.

Electrostatic discharge bisects the sky in an erratic jolt, feathering into diverging points before realigning into a single incandescent bolt that slams into the ground with the low, juddering impact of two unrelenting forces colliding on a colossal, rising, universal scale.

Bones grind into the approximation of a human skeleton, molecules stitched together to form organs with the churning of heart and veins and brain and lungs, skin wrapped over the assemblage of physiological necessity, all done with the vibrant immediacy of interconversion of energy to matter between seconds.

The transduction of one phase of matter to another.

Energy becomes flesh.

Light becomes bone.

Daniel Jackson returns to earth.
---
He opens his eyes.

It is very dark.

There is a tightness in his chest, and belatedly he realizes it is because he needs to breathe.

He breathes.

He blinks, eyelashes scratching the air that is too crisp and frigid and sharp, prickling the sarcoline membrane of his skin. He opens his hands, pale, spidery blurs printed against the dark matte of cold sky.

He sits up. His sense howl against the sensation, the exertion of muscle, the grating pull and shift of bone, the sensation of grass tickling bare skin nothing short of a unique somatosensory hell.

Hell. That’s a concept that strikes him as vaguely familiar.

Unfortunately, nothing else about this does.

With nothing else to do and with the whole of him aching, as if only now realizing just how incredibly inconvenient and painful the burden of physical existence is, he makes a list of things that he knows.

He is in a field, broad and open and grassy. The trees are distant pinpricks in silhouette. There is the distant rush of objects hurtling laterally through space by way of paved roads. The sky is a canopy of bright-dotted lights, comprised of stars and a glittering, multicolored swathe of metropolitan luminescence. The field is wet, with dew or rain or both. The air is cool. He is breathless, nameless, clothesless.

Nameless?

That’s a bit worrying.

Or maybe he just knows it’s meant to be worrying. Right now, the only emotions he seems to be able to muster are those of budding distress and confusion.

Also, discomfort. He’s shivering, and he has to remind himself to blink and also to breathe, and something about that doesn’t seem quite right because it’s not spectacularly efficient to have to keep reminding himself of those faculties that really should be involuntary, he’s pretty sure, is he sure though, because he’s not entirely certain where all these preconceived notions about his physiology seem to be coming from, and also he would like some clothes.

The thought crystallizes into relief. That’s something he knows. Desire. He wants something. Namely, to be clothed. Kind of right now. Or just soon-ish. That would also work.

Standing is a trial, walking even more so. His body feels fragile, new, possibly newborn if that didn’t make no biological sense whatsoever. He stumbles forward like a poorly-coordinated child, his legs shuddering in protest with each creaking motion.

First, he needs to get out of here.

[ooc: After a month of glow-jellyfish shenanigans and an ill-advised attempt to bullrush the Rift into letting him go, Daniel has descended and is now human again. Rest assured, anyone who finds him WILL find him clothed, as he’ll have recovered some from a dumpster or something by the time he’s wandering the streets of Manhattan. ALSO word of warning - seeing as his brain’s been freshly scrambled, Daniel’s a wee bit amnesiac. Also slightly aphasiatic? He has no idea who he is and he’s not going to be capable of understanding or speaking English until his memories start trickling back.]

Current Location: Central Park, initially; later, down E 90th St
Current Date: October 4th, 2013 (slightly forward-dated)

lottawork

He is tired, but this is not atypical for him.

He has a headache. This is also not atypical for him.

Rush walks the dog and he thinks of physics and he thinks of electromagnetism and he thinks of the Rift and he does not think of Asadi or of her arm or of the Devil.

He thinks of the Rift. The Rift.

He is aware he has been avoiding Central Park since that unfortunate encounter, and whether this personal decision was made unconsciously or subconsciously or semi-consciously, he does not care to examine. He prefers anonymous streets. He does. He's fairly certain he should institute this as a policy of his, fair fucking soon.

He'd been fucking brilliant, hadn't he, with his brazen confrontation of Satan and his handling of the problem and Rush tightens his grip on the leash and he is walking slightly faster but his breathing is steady and his headache lingers but he often has a headache and he has established that this is a perfectly natural state of events for him.

He is getting distracted.

He turns his mind back to centralized issue.

The Rift. Or the Devil, possibly.

One of the two. Possibly both.

He looks at the dog as it pants at him, flanks heaving, and stops. He kneels in front of it, scratching it behind its ears absently.

Its panting lapses into a low growl, muscles taut beneath his hand, and Rush sighs. The merits of dog ownership are becoming increasingly clear to him, most prominently in the fact that he will never get a fucking moment's peace when said dog is apparently acutely aware of sensing extraplanar beings.

Rising to his feet in a smooth, controlled shifting of weight, Rush wearily turns to face it.

Current Location: Somewhere down Park Ave
Current Date: October 1st, 2013

deadeyedchild

He can feel Tim leaving him, waking up, and he tries to follow. He doesn't know how. This is all new territory, following someone from one plane of existence to another. He tries to visualize himself holding onto Tim's hand. It's embarrassing but it works.

He thinks it works.

He feels different.

The world feels familiar - not the empty void he'd been inhabiting, but the world, solid and real, tangible. He's here. He's back.

He still feels like he's looking at it through glass, though. He looks down at his hands, which are - sort of there, at least, he knows they're there. He can almost see them. Except not quite.

"Oh come on," he mutters, and no sound comes out. He knows he's spoken but he can't quite hear it. He tries to lay a hand on his own arm and he feels a buzz of static as his fingers pass through himself. Oh, god.

He's a fucking ghost.

This is not quite what he had in mind. He knows it's not what Tim had in mind.

It's better than nothing.

He takes a moment to try and figure out where he is. He finds that he can move, not exactly by walking, but sort of drifting along the ground. He accidentally passes through someone, who shivers violently and looks thoroughly spooked for a few seconds. He is unable to get anyone's attention, or interact with anything.

He has to get to Tim somehow, but he can't really take a train, can he? He's not even sure what part of the city he's in.

So he rambles. After a while he finds it's easier to just move through walls than to try to go about things the normal way. Shortly after that revelation he starts picking up the very bizarre skill of moving up through a building, in and out of offices and apartments.

Travel is easy, but communication is nearly impossible.

He searches, having nothing else he can do, for someone he knows.

[[Jay is wandering all over kingdom come today so if you want your character to have a weird ghost encounter, pick a location and we'll see what happens. It's going to be super hard to notice him if you don't have any kind of telepathic/other helpful powers, but that's okay, we can do short shenanigan threads if you're into that. A quick little ghost encounter! Hey, maybe Jay can overhear some awkward dialogue or embarrassing secrets. Maybe he'll accidentally figure out how to knock something off a counter and then go nuts trying to do it again. The sky is the limit. Have fun!]]

UPDATE: as often happens with this kind of thing we have Jay on a pretty tight schedule now. The Balladeer meets him around lunchtime, and then the line of Rush/Iman - Daniel - Greta gets set into motion sometime after. Greta will be taking Jay back to his building in the late afternoon. If you want to meet him when he's out and about it'll now have to be prior to lunch or snuck in between lunch and his adventure through the former ROMAC apartments. There is still plenty of room in there for nonsense, it just won't be able to lead to Jay actually getting home. SHENANIGANS!

Current Location: anywhere!
Current Date: September 29th

andhiswife

Greta tries to put Rush's maddeningly vague texts from her mind once it becomes clear that he has no intention of giving her more than implicitly dire portents of things to come. It almost works, too. She has some baking-related messes to clean up in the kitchen; that ought to be distraction enough.

But her mind isn't on the work, as demonstrated by the fact that her hands complete it all in record time. Ugh. She surveys her gleaming kitchen with a sigh. Sometimes, this Rift Power is a dratted nuisance. Now what is she supposed to do between now and whenever Iman should arrive? Pace?

Well, she decides as she unties her apron with a few unnecessarily vicious tugs, if that's all she can do, then Rush can bloody well watch her do it. She was having a perfectly pleasant day until he decided to ruin it - as if she doesn't fret over Iman enough already - and she doesn't care if her company isn't convenient. What an insufferable man. She practically throws the apron at its hook - it's more an additional annoyance than a surprise when it lands perfectly - and grabs her phone and her keys before heading out.

At least it's a short walk. She doesn't bother to text him a warning, she just raps sharply on his door.

Current Date: September 27th, 2013

lottawork

The dog is in no way growing on him.

It has proved to be admittedly unobjectionable in its patient, unhurried treatment of its surroundings, largely content to dominate sections of Rush's floor with a leisurely sprawl. He may have been presumptuous to assume his work may progress unimpeded as of the moderately alarming moment where, upon his denotation of a particularly relevant equation scrawled in the lower corner of one wall, the dog evidently thought it prudent to rest its head in his lap with little warning aside from the preceding whisper of its paws over hardwood and a low, contented huff from its nose.

The action has subsequently left Rush with an incomplete understanding as to how one would (a) rise without disrupting the ostensibly sleeping creature cradling its head in his lap, (b) purport to care very little for the animal's well-being despite his inexplicable inability to simply stand and dislodge the thing and be done with it, (c) in any way continue to maintain his reputation as a cold-hearted bastard.

Unhelpfully, this entire subsidiary of events has very likely fucked that sequential agenda truly, wholly, devotedly, and completely.

He is not, he thinks vehemently in the general direction of the continuously absent and probably totally indifferent Colonel Young, a completely cold-hearted bastard. This, if nothing else, would prove as much.

"Off," he commands the dog, raising a hand to point in a direction away from himself.

The dog yawns at him, perhaps pointedly. Rush glares at it.

"Off," he repeats.

The dog's eyes droop closed in drowsy recumbence. Rush's hand drops as he regards the recusant animal with disgust.

"You are insufferable," he informs the creature, who continues to doze on, in his lap of all places, utterly indifferent.

Rush sighs.

Current Location: Eastern apartments (Rush's apartment); Central Park
Current Date: September 27th, 2013

lottawork

His fingers skim the length of his laptop, tracing its edges as he watches the text on the monitor, promoting some sort of entry-level job access tutorial, blur into parallel streaks. Irritating as he had found ROMAC on principle, it had at least been a useful inlet into the Rift's center of activity with a conveniently, moderately high salary.

Thus far, he has found Manhattan's job market to be comparatively disappointing.

The laptop snaps shut in an abrupt, frustrated jerk of motion, prefacing the inevitable downward arch of Rush's shoulders as he buries his face in his hands and breathes out, worn and protracted. He is tired, or he is reasonably certain he is tired - the other potential explanations for the excess of mental fatigue seem unlikely, as he is relatively sure he would remember being drunk and he is equally unlikely to be experiencing some dissociative episode apropos of nothing and, clearly, it has been a sufficient amount of time since he has last slept as he cannot remember the time he last slept, which serves as an adequate proof of assumption in his mind.

Rush shuts his eyes and tries to recover some sort of celerity or clarity of thought.

Current Location: Eastern apartments (Rush's apartment)
Current Date: September 26th, 2013

lottawork

Waking is not, historically, what Rush would regard as a favored activity. He is where he always is after being unexpectedly beset upon by sleep's inevitable grasp. The floor is solid and bracing, forming an aching spandrel between that plane and the paralleled arch of shoulders and spine. His skull is no longer the fractured mess it was, in reality left smooth and whole.

The entirety of the Rift's irritating, interfering traversal through the less fondly remembered aspects of his own past is etched into the anterior of his mind, still frames printed behind closed lids. He grinds the heels of both palms into his eye sockets with a fierce, fervent energy, as if it would be possible to scrub away the echo of that experience through execution of pressure alone.

He wonders how much of the dream's content is plausibly dismissible, an idea whose own plausibility he dismisses. Asadi was always too smart for direct obfuscation; it was what he liked about her, what he has continued to appreciate and value about her, but intimacy with one's past as exposed by the Rift is the unfortunate lead-in to a conversation he is certain they will be required to have and would prefer not to have, with her or anyone.

He is also aware, however, that he has been left very little in the way of personal autonomy in relation to that choice. Particularly since his latest endeavor in becoming more deeply acquainted with neuroanatomy has ground to a lamentable standstill, and to best acquire a more extensive knowledge base he will have to be - considerably more hands-on.

Fuck.

The trip to Asadi's apartment passes in its own dull-edged, lateral blur, instructions snapped out briskly to an unlucky taxi driver until he arrives, disheveled and recently woken and completely uninvited. It does not occur to him until after he has rung for her repeatedly that this may be potentially construed as socially unnatural or unacceptable, but he has already set certain events in motion and must see them to their uncertain conclusion.

Current Location: Greenwich Village, Iman's apartment
Current Date: September 14th, 2013

etherthief

"All right kids, here's what it is," says Iman cheerfully. She's punchy today. Spent the last couple days helping Greta move into the formerly-ROMAC apartments, now just apartments - under whose maintenance, well, that's still a bit of a jumble but Greta has a home now, a good safe distance from the former Base, and moreover, it's a beautiful day for some science. She flexes her left hand and gestures demonstratively at the park's edge, the river beyond it, and more to the point, the Rift's border. Not that anyone she knows of has tried escaping Manhattan via the East River, but Satan's notes definitely helped her construct a solid map of its perimeter, and now that she's so close she can almost feel the crackle of energy, tingling a little in her fingers. Exciting stuff.

It's dawn, almost no one's out yet, and at least one of her companions doesn't look too pleased with the choice of hour, but he never looks pleased, so it's moot.

"This is the Rift's edge," she says with a mostly mocking long-buried academic air. "Runs all around the waterfront keeping us boxed in. The rumors tell us that its recent, what do we want to call it, tantrum was immediately preceded by two rifties breaching the border, if not physically, then some other way. We don't know how they did it but we know it can be done." She gives Greta a little smile. They know now that the escapees were Andrew Noble, his husband, and their children, the very same Greta had been looking after - and she knows Andrew had been her first friend here. But the escape has left them with something very important: a proverbial jumping-off point.

"What I'm gonna do is feel it out with this baby." She gives them a little wave with her left hand. "This is what I do back home, and this is possibly the first and last time I'll ever be presented with so clearly delineated a membrane. So if I can't breach it, I can at the very least interact with it, study it, get some idea how far it might bend under the right circumstances. And that's what I'm gonna do."

Well, she's excited anyway. Rush knows he's more or less here to spot her in case something goes horribly wrong, an eventuality she's assured him won't happen, she'll be careful, she promises. Greta, she invited for a little clean fun showing off, and because, well, she wants Greta to know if there's hope of getting home. Much as that eventuality pains her to think about.

Anyway. She cracks her knuckles unnecessarily and gives them a big grin.

"Ready?"

Current Location: Carl Schurz Park on the East River (Rift's edge)
Current Date: September 10th (forward-dated)

applesaucemod

Protecting the city from the rifties -- and the rifties from the city -- is a full time job. That's never been more true than it is today, when there are metaphorical (and sometimes physical) fires to put out all over Manhattan. It's been a rough time at ROMAC in general; most of the organization's people are unfamiliar with the specifics of the recent animal attack, but even those who don't know that a number of ~~prisoners~~ guests of ROMAC have gone missing in the last few days (or that the computer system is still compromised) know that something has thrown the organization into disarray.

Unfortunately for ROMAC and fortunately for certain other people, ROMAC's resources are spread thin by whatever's put the Rift in a tizzy. As large as the organization is, though, there's surely nothing to worry about from the handful of malcontents at large in the city.

Surely.

[OOC: And here's the thread for taking down ROMAC! There will be a couple of player characters on ROMAC's side (check to see whether their threads are open to all before tagging in, as they may have limited availability due to prior plans), and anyone in need of 'enemies' to tag against can request an NPC from the mods. Have at!]

Current Date: September 4

applesaucemod

All is right in Manhattan this week.

It is a week like any other. The little creatures that dot the surface of the land scuttle to and fro about their business, each amusingly convinced of its own importance. A number of them relocate themselves with an unusual degree of difficulty. Some die. Some do not die. One or two new ones, the special kind, arrive.

And then…and then something is not right in Manhattan. Something is, in fact, wrong, incorrect, and unacceptable. Two -- no, four -- no, two of the little scuttling things --

-- THEY HAVE NO RIGHT --

-- WHY CAN'T IT --

-- CAN'T CLOSE, CAN'T STOP THEM --

GONE!

Gone!! The Rift claps furiously closed, but too late. Too late! They're gone, they've left, and they had no right! It did not permit them! Two they took with them only even existed thanks to the Rift, and those -- THOSE UPSTARTS --

It can't reach the ones who caused the superficial injury that's already healing (that's scarring over, it will NEVER AGAIN ALLOW THIS), and so the Rift lashes out at the ones who remain in their place. It can feel the little pets that remain, all of them, and it will remind them who owns them.

[OOC: Right! Andrew and James have escaped from New York ~~just like Snake Plissken~~ and the Rift is having a shitfit over it. Tag into this post for general Rift-related shenanigans; there will be a separate post for characters who want to attack ROMAC.

The Rift will inflict a wide variety of little inconveniences and torments on the people it considers its own, and players can choose what their characters will face. These should be things that could more or less go unnoticed by the population at large (so no city-wide effects, and please be careful to avoid anything that would effectively godmode other people's characters). Anything that's happened in a past Rift event is fair game, as are personal rainclouds, randomly appearing objects and animals, involuntary transformations, and just about anything else on the personal level. On a somewhat broader level, expect to find random acres of the Ramble transformed into jungle, redwood forest, wintery pines, and various other types of Incorrect Wilderness.]

Current Date: September 4th, 2013 (backdated)

etherthief

Rush's dream collapses and Iman lies awake, breathing too hard, staring at her ceiling. Her blood is up from his dumbshit attitude and his mottled, fucked up arm - she needs to break something. It's too early to go to Wilmot's but what the fuck is the point of sleeping, anyway.

She gets out of bed, paces for a few minutes, and ends up hurling an innocent coffee mug across the room, finding intense, relieving satisfaction in the sound of it shattering. That's better.

She'll clean that up later. She gets into the shower and turns it on cold. This is happening today. It'll just be her and Daine and Rush, who had better still fucking be alive.

There will be blood if he's not.

She brushes her teeth furiously, gets dressed and spends undue attention making herself look clean. There will be time aplenty for her to get wrecked today.

She checks the clock. Still at least an hour before even the stickiest barfly would be out and about. But if she stays here she'll end up breaking more things from the inactivity. She goes out.

She walks for a while. Wilmot's is close, so she ends up just circling that area, remembering vaguely better times when she fielded a weird meeting between Daniel and the Devil, and later when the Devil crashed through a wall. She'd take that shit over this, probably.

Finally, when time enough has passed, she walks into Wilmot's End, sits at the bar, orders "The tallest Tom Collins you can give me", and waits.

Current Location: Wilmot's End, ROMAC Base, Hell's Kitchen
Current Date: September 1st, very early morning

lottawork

[ooc: this thread will likely be...very unsettling. It will involve interrogation, and probably torture. Tag-specific trigger warnings to follow.]

He has not slept in days. Presumably. The uniform nature of the lighting has made it difficult to determine, and he has never excelled at temporal sequencing. He has paced and scrutinized every corner, restless hands skimming the walls of his prison and curling around the edges of his arms and pushing through the tangling disarray of his hair to press back the sensation of something crawling and skittering and itching and hypodermic that has burrowed beneath, rooted below skin and below bone.

The pressure of palms against walls cannot tether him, and the drag of nails over his own skin does little but lend tiny, convulsive tics of his head to his nervous repertoire. Exhaustion has been seeded into every shift of his gaze, every weary, protracted blink. His eyes rake the air in scattered repetition. Prolonged tension is difficult to sustain over a period of days; even more difficult when sustained in conjunction with the grating mindlessness of fearful anticipation.

He trusts Fring will not keep him waiting for much longer.

The accuracy of this prediction is not a comfort.

The rasping scrape of metal over metal as the bolt slides back is the exchange of one form of relief for another form of mounting panic. Any efforts to appear dull-eyed and lifeless would be utterly worthless - he would not insult Fring with an obvious act, not when he has made no previous attempts to disguise his agitation.

In the absence of all other comforts, Rush may at least take solace in the warped form of release.

It is poor consolation.

The door swings inward in a heavy, gliding arc.

Current Location: ROMAC Base
Current Date: August 29th

lottawork

The lights are not kept on a circadian rhythm schedule, nor any schedule. They simply glare continuously, irradiating and fluorescent, blazing into every corner of the square-walled concrete room, illuminating the stark, hard-angled edges. Rush has prowled every spotless, unremarkable inch, the cot deadbolted firmly to the wall opposite the door, the camera riveted in the upper corner, too far beyond the reach of straining fingertips.

His confinement is, as suspected, impenetrable.

Fring does not tolerate failure.

He does not tolerate incompetence.

They have that in common.

It is a slight, minor victory that of the two of them, Rush was the one caught, and not Asadi, she of the highly advanced prosthetic and ability to form interpersonal relations, bearing the phone of another registrant whom ROMAC doubtless would have been forcibly involved regardless of situational relevance. No, no; far better it was Rush. Fewer connections. No leverage. ROMAC may boast advanced technology, but he doubts, largely, that they are capable of doing anything to him that has not already been done.

Rush amputates that thought. He twitches with nervous energy, darkened and bereft. He has not slept or ate for some time, for a duration unknown to him, but it is insignificant.

He paces. He rubs his wrists, the dark, reddened grooves deep enough to scar. He cannot sit, nor sleep, nor consider either of those possibilities to pass the time as Fring settles upon what method of interrogation he wishes to implement. Rush can only circle his prison's perimeter with tense, ironclad anxiety, and wait for the cold click and slide of a bolt that will herald his fate.

Current Location: ROMAC Base
Current Date: August 28th, 2013

etherthief

[Iman and Rush are going turn the day's general chaos and Rush's curse of being trapped in reflective surfaces to their advantage and do some snooping in ROMAC's labs. Their goal is to see if ROMAC knows what's going on with this curse event and perhaps could have warned people or prevented it - they may find that, or something even worse. ETA: j/k this WILL be serving as a prelude to faction dissolution, stay tuned.]

'Through some improvised experimentation, the following facts about Rush's condition have been posited or ascertained:

1.) Base observation: Rush is confined within reflective surfaces not limited to but most prevalently mirrors.

2.) He is unable to breach these surfaces but he can communicate with those outside them.

3.) In spite of immense scientific improbability, he is not currently comprised of light, but solid matter. Jury's still out on how that works.

4.) The reflected world around him, however, cannot be interacted with normally. He is limited to electrical/light-based interactions - the sending of text messages, though they are garbled - and there is potential for other electrical interference.

5.) He can move adjacently out of each reflected zone. He is automatically displaced to the nearest adjacent reflective surface. If there is a closed reflective circuit he cannot move outside it. Caution required to avoid entrapment.'

Iman finishes reading these notes and glances at Rush, currently contained within her homemade hand mirror, for approval. She's brought him back to the Base and is now waiting for the elevator to arrive and take them down toward where they aren't supposed to be. Her favorite place.

Current Location: ROMAC Base
Current Date: August 27th (late afternoon/evening)

etherthief

Iman is mostly glad she chose not to move herself to the ROMAC Base. She likes her little ill-gotten Greenwich Village studio and the knowledge that even if Satan drops in on her occasionally, she's not directly under the thumb and possibly well-hidden eye of her sketchy employers. There is not much to be said for the distance, however. It takes her an unacceptably long time to reach the building, where she's SUPPOSED to be anyway for work, but instead she heads straight up to the apartment level, moving right to Greta's door. By this time no amount of frantically checking her stupid traitorous piece of shit little phone has rewarded her with any responses. Greta MUST be up by now, so either she hasn't managed to notice the texts yet, or... Well, she doesn't even want to think about that.

She takes a deep breath and knocks.

She waits, listening. Knocks again.

"Greta?" she says softly, nervously. "It's me. Can... can I come in? Can we talk?"

Nothing. Not even movement. Iman's frown tightens. This doesn't seem normal. Greta doesn't seem the type of avoid a problem like this, anyway.

She weighs her options. Should she check inside? She doesn't like the idea of just walking away, especially when she's not sure where Greta is.

Slowly she reaches out and puts her hand on the knob.

She really, really, really hopes Greta isn't in there. If she breaks in while Greta's in there, she - she doesn't even know.

Whatever. She breathes out and-

-the door is... open? No casual transmutaion required. That's... weird.

She steps inside and looks around. Everything looks fine. Clean. The bed looks slept in and unmade, which is unusual, Greta is so incredibly tidy all the time, and...

Oh thank FUCKING FUCK her phone is on the bedside table.

"Ohhhmygodyes," she whispers to the divine mercy of whatever coincidence allowed this to happen. She grabs Greta's phone, which prompts her for a passcode, good, so someone showed her how to do that.

Unfortunately Iman is really good at breaking passcodes. That's kind of her thing.

"Sorry, Greta," she murmurs under her breath, hacks the code, slides open the phone. Greta has an absurd number of horrifying notifications, ugh ugh ugh. She feverishly opens up her text and deletes the entire record.

Okay. That's done. She is officially the luckiest bastard ever.

She sets the phone aside gingerly and breathes out. With that distress averted, she now takes the time to look around. Where is Greta? Why would she have left the bed unmade - her phone her - her door unlocked? Iman can see her keys hanging on a little hook by the door, chews her lip looking at them. Perhaps she's doing laundry? Shit, that would be incredibly awkward, if she came back up to find Iman here. But no, there's the hamper there with a few things in it.

Shit. Iman stands up sharply. Shit, shit. Where is she? What happened to her?

Is she gone? Was she sent home? Did something happen?

She thinks about Rashad essentially breaking into Rush's apartment the other day - and she thinks about how fucking weird this morning is, Daniel floating, Seth a cat, her phone... Something definitely could have happened, maybe something bad, and she has no idea how to track Greta down.

She paces in a tight circle, not sure what she should do. Well, okay, she knows she should probably calm down, but this morning has been TOO EVENTFUL by half for that to happen. That ship has gone to sea. She is full tilt frantic right now. She has to do something but she has no idea where to even start.

Well. There are plenty of people who might.

Shit.

She pulls out her phone. She really, really doesn't want to do this.

She sends a text.

Current Location: ROMAC Base, ROMAC apartments
Current Date: August 27th

applesaucemod

photo beauty and the beast stained glass rose-NZWR_sm_zpsadnbeqxz.png

The twenty-seventh of August dawns bright and clear, but when your characters wake up, they will immediately notice something wrong. They've woken up the wrong size, or species, or age. Or perhaps everything seems normal until they take a bite of their apple-flavored toaster strudel, or attempt to speak, or wander into the woods, or bump into that old crone in the subway and fail to adequately apologize. However it happens, there's no getting around it: your characters are cursed, like an unfortunate out of a fairy tale.

On the bright side, many curses can be broken. Unfortunately, none of them come with user manuals, so how they might be broken isn't clear. Perhaps true love's kiss will do it, or a heroically sacrificial act, or some serious reflection followed by revelatory insight into your own soul. Or, y'know, whatever. But it's far more likely that your character will just be stuck with whatever it is until sunset, when any and all remaining curses will be broken.

[OOC: Feel free to use this post for initial reactions to whatever curse your character has found themselves suffering. Any additional posts for more specified shenanigans can go up under the 'events: curses' tag. Sunset is a little after 7:30 PM. Backdating and backtagging are the best and you should do both of those things if necessary.]

Current Date: August 27th, 2013

lottawork

The days without his laptop were not pleasant or painless ones, nor was it particularly easy to make any notable progress in any work-related or personal or significant areas while deprived of that rather key resource, but since Rush's series of, for lack of a better term, decommissions, he has had very few opportunities to return to the TARDIS to obtain it.

He was extremely grateful, to say in the least, to receive an explicit request to do so, and coupled with an invitation to understand the TARDIS in a more hands-on and constructive manner; neither were opportunities he could think to refuse.

He leaves after his return from work. He leaves his apartment with its darkened spill of equations across walls and the thickening heat and the shattered head it does not represent, does not in any way represent, and locks the door firmly behind him. The confinement of the physical becomes infinitely more escapable when one habitually surrounds oneself in the theoretical, in the unquestionably conceptual, in what can only be captured in the lines and curves of numbers against an unmarked expanse.

The TARDIS defies all these conventions. Infinite potential contained in theoretically finite space, brought to a point on an axis unquantifiable.

It is an unspoken relief to vacate the contained, arid hell of his apartment, and an even greater one to at last make out the blue outline of the TARDIS between the trees, the release from the park's numberless haze. He draws even with the door and knocks, even and controlled, and shifts back one pace, unconsciously redistributing his weight in vague curiosity as to who will answer: the TARDIS, or her pilot.

He knows without question which he prefers.

Current Location: The Ramble
Current Date: August 24th, late afternoon (forward-dated)

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The Big Applesauce

Page Summary

lottawork - fueled by paranoia and the shadows in the corner of my eye [closed]
lottawork - things have gotten closer to the sun [closed]
0thingsonmymind - A misstep in time and space [Open to All]
peacefulexplorer - a little resurrection every time I fall [open]
lottawork - I hope you blink before I do [closed]
deadeyedchild - and on this casket's back sits a little lonely ghost [open to multiple]
andhiswife - Io venni in loco d'ogne luce muto [closed]
lottawork - compile: newSubroutine designate: unwantedHouseguest [closed]
lottawork - bone canis [closed]
lottawork - what's mistaken for closeness is just a case for mitosis [closed]
etherthief - Don't Believe Me Just Watch
applesaucemod - We Care for Your Safety
applesaucemod - Shitfit!
etherthief - so enough about the backfires; this time we fire back
lottawork - it won't give up, it wants me dead; goddamn this noise inside my head [closed]
lottawork - don't place faith in human beings; human beings are unreliable things [closed]
etherthief - through the looking glass & right up into ur shit [closed]
etherthief - BUT THEN [closed]
applesaucemod - Event: Curses!
lottawork - tell me doctor, can you quantify? he just wants to know the reason, the reason why [closed]

Page generated May. 30th, 2025 10:25 am

The Big Applesauce

Entries tagged with dropped: nicholas rush

fueled by paranoia and the shadows in the corner of my eye [closed]

things have gotten closer to the sun [closed]

A misstep in time and space [Open to All]

a little resurrection every time I fall [open]

I hope you blink before I do [closed]

and on this casket's back sits a little lonely ghost [open to multiple]

Io venni in loco d'ogne luce muto [closed]

compile: newSubroutine designate: unwantedHouseguest [closed]

bone canis [closed]

what's mistaken for closeness is just a case for mitosis [closed]

Don't Believe Me Just Watch

We Care for Your Safety

Shitfit!

so enough about the backfires; this time we fire back

it won't give up, it wants me dead; goddamn this noise inside my head [closed]

don't place faith in human beings; human beings are unreliable things [closed]

through the looking glass & right up into ur shit [closed]

BUT THEN [closed]

Event: Curses!

tell me doctor, can you quantify? he just wants to know the reason, the reason why [closed]

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