⇨ DANGEROUS ENCOUNTERS

[ringleaders]

Who: Anyone out in the library.
When: Day 59
Where: The Athenaeum
What: Towards the end of the visit, we are visited by a series of worrisome NPCs, who may or may not be illusions. There will be at least 5 NPC toplevels posted overall, all happening in a similar time period ICly (in rough chronological order), so not everyone needs to be in every thread.
Warnings: Possibility of very real danger to anyone who participates. Remember that Sans has told everyone to travel in groups, so if you aren't, you'll probably get a scolding later.

TURNING THE PAGE↴ As the carnival continues to explore the Athenaeum in the pursuit of more information about the legendary Miracles, the tension is thick with the knowledge that the Summer Court could be in pursuit any day now. On Day 59, a series of threatening encounters will begin manifesting - but are they real, or an illusion?

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[stompadour]

Jasper sits up gasping, her hair spattering water around the room and onto Lapis and the Lady.

"What," she rasps, struggling to her feet, unsteady, "what was that, what--"

[mirrortide]

Unlike Jasper, when Lapis sits up, she's hacking and coughing, wheezing for air once more like she had done originally.

Unlike Jasper, she's quiet, and she's very clearly eyeing The Lady warily.

[npcarnival]

The Lady of the Lake doesn't directly answer the question, but she does lay back in the water, letting her hair flow outward as she muses.

"When you're immortal... you don't spend a lot of time thinking about death, do you? You don't feel it the same way," she says. "But... now you have. Now you understand, the feeling of life slipping out of your hands."

She smiles.

"I gave that to you. It's a gift."

[stompadour]

Jasper is panting and sputtering; there are bags under her eyes when she lifts her head and looks at the Lady of the Lake through bedraggled hair.

"You can keep it," she growls. "I didn't need it."

[mirrortide]

Lapis, helpfully, sits exactly where she is and stays quiet once she's finished hacking up the water left in her system out of some inane reflex that Gems really have no business having.

Maybe if she's quiet, she'll be ignored.

[npcarnival]

The Lady smiles and stands up, droplets of water running down her body. She looks at Jasper, beaming.

"Now it's your turn," she says. She gestures to Lapis. "Hold her down."

[stompadour]

It takes a moment for Jasper to realise what she means; to retrieve the context from before the incomprehensible experience of drowning, that before that she was asking Lapis to keep restraining her, and Lapis wouldn't --

She looks between them again, uncertain, uneasy.

"Why..."

[mirrortide]

At the command, Lapis looks at Jasper nervously.

She wouldn't blame her if she did. There's no reason for her not to. And with that Fae here, There's nothing she could do to stop Jasper. She's not a Quartz, she wasn't made for fighting.

[npcarnival]

The Lady looks surprised, but then smiles again. She crawls back down into the water and moves closer to Jasper, looking at her over the ripples.

"All this time," she says. "She's been the one holding you down. Months, she held you down, smothered you. Don't you wonder what it's like?"

She whispers it like its a secret.

"Except, it will be better. Worse than she could ever do to you. Isn't that exciting?"

[stompadour]

Jasper stares at her. She stares at Lapis. That isn't...

It's not that she doesn't want to hurt Lapis, is the thing. She does. But it -- not if she doesn't think Lapis will be able to fight back. To retaliate. More than anything else, she wants to provoke her.

"... No," she says warily. She's still looking at Lapis.

[mirrortide]

"What." Is the only response Lapis can give, and she certainly looks more shocked than anything else.

[npcarnival]

"Why not?" the Lady asks sedately, watching Jasper as she watched Lapis.

[stompadour]

Jasper hesitates. She... isn't sure how to justify this gut reaction in a way that she feels comfortable saying out loud.

"... I haven't earned it," she says at last. It's the best she can do.

[npcarnival]

"I want you to do it anyway," she says, just as serenely. "I give that to you."

She slips closer to Jasper in the water.

[stompadour]

"That's not..." Jasper is looking more and more uncomfortable. She can sense the authority that the Lady has over her, and that obeying would be in her best interests, but..

"I don't want it," she says, as though this might make any difference at all.

[npcarnival]

She slips onto Jasper's body, leaning in to whisper in her ear.

"Hold her down," she breathes. "For me?"

She kisses Jasper on the cheek, and on the neck. A certain inevitability will overcome her - the inevitability of following through with this request. She doesn't have to like it, but its an order from her Lady. It's her duty.

[stompadour]

Jasper shudders at the touch of the Lady's lips. And that's it: she has to. With some trepidation, she wades towards Lapis.

[mirrortide]

All it takes is for Jasper to take those few steps towards her before Lapis is up. Quite literally, she goes from zero to sixty, as far as the roof goes with her wings in an attempt to get away from Jasper.

[stompadour]

She can see Lapis trying to summon her wings and failing, and it makes this feel so much worse. It's not like Jasper has never taken something out on a defenseless victim -- it's not like she's never done that and enjoyed it. She enjoys a fair fight more, but she is also, frankly, a bully, and she isn't at all above kicking people who are down when she needs to feel better about herself.

This isn't like that, though. Whether she's attacking Lapis or grovelling at her feet, it's because she wants to be with her, or for her to lash out in a way that might feel the way their fusion did. If Lapis can't push back against her, turn all the water in the room on her -- what's the point?

But the Lady of the Lake has compelled her, and so she has no choice but to advance on Lapis and seize her while she's still trying to deal with not being able to use her wings. Without her powers Lapis is all but helpless, and Jasper only needs to use one hand to seize her and plunge her underneath the water.

[mirrortide]

It's not hard to grab her, because it doesn't even register that she could use her feet to run since she's always been so quick to fly. Which means that when her wings fail, it's not hard to grab her, though having wings hasn't stopped Jasper from grabbing her in the past either.

Smartly, she thinks to take a deep breath before her heads submerged beneath the water, and she bangs her fists on Jasper's arm and kicks her legs and thrashes her tail with loud splashes.

Her gem hits the ground underneath the water, and she jolts hard, and the air that she'd tried to suck in is exhaled sharply in a cloud of bubbles.

[npcarnival]

"There," the Lady says, clapping her hands and watching with great interest. "Isn't it amazing?"

Some part of her anticipates that Jasper will say no, but she doesn't really care. She thinks it's amazing.

[stompadour]

Jasper just grunts. She's staring down at Lapis, trying to meet her eye -- seeking her cooperation. She wants to fight back, but it's clear that separately they can't...

[mirrortide]

Lapis can't catch Jaspers' eye like this. Not while she's flailing beneath the surface of the water, trying to claw and catch and swat the other Gem away feebly.

It's only after desperate seconds pass that Lapis' strength ebbs enough that she's still enough to really get a good enough look at Jasper from beneath the ripples of the water.

She knows the look.

Lapis doesn't want to. She told Steven that it wasn't going to ever happen again.

In the end though, her fear takes over, and she gives a slight nod of her head to Jasper.

Her gems glowing adds to the already luminescent water.

[stompadour]

She'll be able to see Jasper's triumphant grin illuminated by the glow of her gem for just a second before that light engulfs them both, subsuming their forms and expanding, reshaping into something much bigger and more monstrous than both of them combined.

As the light fades, Malachite churns the water with her lashing tail and four huge lower hands, opens her mouth four ways, and roars.

[npcarnival]

The Lady of the Lake screams. Unfortunately, it's with delight.

With the size of the room, Malachite's mere presence is enough to cause the water level to rise, and the lady is washed to one side of the cavern, looking up at the beast with her hands cupped together.

This isn't what she wanted, but she'll take it.

"It's you!" she says. "I saw you in their memories..."