lostcarnival | ⇨ DANGEROUS ENCOUNTERS

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⇨ DANGEROUS ENCOUNTERS

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.

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

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

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.

"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.

"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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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...

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.

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.

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..."

"I'll crush you!" Comes the voice that's more Lapis than Jasper at the moment, an angry snarl and Malachite lunges, arms extended to grab the Lady and squeeze the life right from her.

The Lady is grabbed by Malachite's massive hands, lifted up and throttled. She makes sickening choking noises, followed by death noises, followed by going completely limp.

This was... unexpected, to say the least, for both of Malachite's component parts. She blinks, the two pairs of eyes just slightly out of sync. Then she slams the limp form of the Lady of the Lake against the wall of the cavern, extremely hard, just to make sure. For her part Jasper is sure this was too easy, but also she very badly wants to have won.

And, much to Jaspers' probable dismay, another pair of hands reaches up to grab the thoroughly pasted fae.

And brings it right up to her awful mouth.

And plops the body right in there. And swallows. The Ringmaster is probably pleased somewhere.

Jasper does indeed register her disagreement with this course of action, but it's not a particularly strong disagreement. She really does not like the Lady of the Lake.

While Lapis is doing that, though, the pair of eyes that roughly correlates with Jasper most of the time is scanning the cavern for anything that might possibly constitute a way out, and not really... finding anything that looks promising...

This probably seems like a good idea for a whole of fifteen seconds, until it becomes obvious that Malachite has made a terrible, terrible mistake.

What starts as a sharp pain in here gullet will turn into a sharp pain in her everywhere... but somehow not enough to split her, or make her lose her form. She'll feel something moving inside her, something growing - like branches of a tree becoming bones through her body of light.

Bones she can't control.

Malachite loses control of her hands, and they lift to her neck, applying that same vicious pressure to her throat. It's like she's being puppeted from inside.

Edited 2018-05-20 03:17 (UTC)

The middle hands wrap around what passes for Malachite's upper stomach as pain spreads through her form, and she near doubles over on herself.

And then, without say from either Jasper or Lapis, her top hands wrap around her throat and squeeze, the lower pair move up as well to grasp at the top set, trying to pull them away.

"Stop that!"

Her body doesn't listen. Next, Malachite is thrown forward into the water, essentially forcing herself to drown in the equivalent of a puddle.

Even scrabbling to push herself upright is impossible. Her arms just won't do what she wants them to; all she can manage is a two-voiced roar of anger and pain.

The sensible thing to do might be to separate. Unfortunately, Jasper is holding on for dear life.

"Let me go!" Malachite roars with the voice that's mostly Lapis. Though it's probably clear in the mental space, it likely comes out more muffled considering the water.

At least Lapis does have the sensible idea to separate. Unfortunately, it seems like the literal tides have turned on Lapis this time, because Jasper is holding on way too strongly.

Edited (fixin stuff) 2018-05-20 04:06 (UTC)

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stompadour - 2018-05-20 04:12 (UTC) - Expand

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