Outside the Dorms, Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate Monday Night/Early Tuesday Morning

[glacial_queen]

Karla fled towards the dorms, running as if there were Hell-hounds flat on her heels. Just a little bit further, she thought. Just a little bit faster… She was flagging, and quickly, but she reached down deep in her reserves and dredged up enough energy for one last little burst of speed.

Too bad it was impossible to outrun one’s own fragmenting mind.

The last two days with Janelle had been wonderful. Freed of her nightmares, Jaenelle had begun eating again, putting on enough weight to make it possible to go downstairs again and see the family before Karla’s portal arrived to bring her back to Fandom. But as nice as it had been to spend time with Jaenelle, as good as it was to see her laughing and eating again, Karla had been keenly aware of how quickly the insulating cocoon she’d spun around Jaenelle’s memories had been unraveling. The last few hours in Dhemlan had been nerve-wracking, as the more she tried to buttress the threads, the faster it had seemed to unspool.

But the threads had held until she’d left Dhemlan behind. And now she was struggling to get back to the dorms and the safety of her room—or possibly the locked room on the sixth floor—before the safety net collapsed completely. Damn the portal for dropping her so far away! But there! She could see the lights from the windows, feel the outer edges of thoughts and emotions from the students therein, laughing, studying, watching the teevee…enjoying the blessed normalcy of everyday life. Sooo cloooose…

And the final thread snapped just as the dorm itself came into view.

Karla fell as the memories took hold. First came the gut-wrenching horror as she saw once again what happened to Marjane and Dannie and Rose. Then the fear as she was brought down to the ‘playpen’ and dosed with safframate, and dressed in a skimpy lace nighty by rough and uncaring hands. And then came the pain, the searing, tearing pain that had her biting her hands to keep from crying aloud. Except—she couldn’t bite her hands, could she? They were bound….

What was different this time, however, was the rage that followed. Perhaps a defense mechanism from her own mind, the icy, freezing cold fury allowed her to remember who and what she was. A wave of physical cold washed over and through her and her tears fell as ice chips to the ground.

It was a very different Karla who regarded the dorms. A predatory whirlwind of murderous fury. She stood up, took a step forward, and stopped. No. Not here. The part of her that still cared, could still feel wouldn’t let her continue on. She had friends there. Innocents. She would go elsewhere to hunt tonight. Somewhere where her youthful looks would be a beacon for bastards like the Briarwood uncles.

She wouldn’t spill blood in Fandom. But anywhere else was open game. She spun on her heel and was gone.

[ So starts the plot of Crazy! Open for reactions from anyone inside. Psychics, empaths, telepaths, people prone to odd dreams, random people up at stupid o’clock in the morning—anyone can react to the waves of emotion. Karla herself is not available for interaction. Further posts can be found here and then here. These posts are NFI, save for Plot-slaves Team Rescue! WARNING: MORE DARK THEMES AND CREEPINESS AHEAD. POTENTIALLY TRIGGERING. AFTERMATH OF VIOLENCE, PARTICULARLY SEXUAL AND AGAINST CHILDREN. I WARN BECAUSE I CARE.

Yes, my canon is MADE OF WRONG.]

Comments

[trigons_child]

The sudden shock of fury jolted Raven from her sleep. For a moment she was confused, trying to figure out where the feeling was coming from, and then she felt a familiarity with the source and realized she knew who it was. "Karla," she said, rising from her bed. Somewhere outside, but she needed a moment to contain the feeling and stop it from affecting her before she could find where she was. She pulled a cloak around herself and stepped out into the hallway.

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

Dinah was having a nightmare. Karla's nightmare. Karla's waking nightmare... and then she was awake, shuddering, cold cold cold Karla oh God--

She dressed as fast as she cold, grabbed her keys, and ran out the door, running down the hall and taking the stairs three steps at a time.

[furnaceface]

It wasn't easy for Jonothon to sleep at the best of times. Not with someone else sharing the room and a constant need to wrestle back the psionic flame that made up most of his very being. Being hammered with a wave of emotion while he was halfway to something resembling rest was not particularly helping.

Perhaps this was the one instance where it was fortunate that Jono was never going to get up the nerve to actually develop his psychic potential. The feeling hit him something like a battering ram and lingered there, but he had no idea what it really was, or where it had come from.

And so he grumbled something in the back of his mind that was entirely incoherent, threw a pillow at the wall in a sleep-fogged effort to show whatever it was who was boss, and rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.

[intraspective]

As it happened, Ino was sleeping but not particularly restfully—reliving what she'd done to Kinjo Sae over and over, a thousand times over, while her mind added new twists to the story each time; twists that alternately reveled in it—the control, the power, the power over life and death—and reviled what she'd done—a girl who'd watched her with trusting eyes, a man who'd expected his loving mistress.

No, Ino's sleep hadn't been restful for a while now, and she was already tossing and turning when unnamed--nameless rage/pain/fury/hunting--slammed into her shields already weakened by sleep and sent her spinning into worse nightmares, everything amplified, everything sharpened until even the most innocuous scenes bit into her mind, tore through the barriers and excuses and blocks she'd erected around her job, around her missions.

Ino woke up screaming, but completely unaware that her dreams had been influenced by an outside source. She sat, doubled over, clutching her head and breathing raggedly for a long while before all but falling over the edge of her bed and groping for painkillers in her nightstand.

They were from her world. They were stronger.

Dry swallowing two, she slumped, half on the floor, twisted around in a position only a teenager could maintain, and stared blankly up at her ceiling, struggling to find her equilibrium.

[momslilassassin]

Ben wasn't asleep--he was on his bed working on his experimental Thor hat for Jono--when Karla's emotions hit him with the force of a crashing landspeeder.

He curled into a ball, forgetting for a moment how to breathe.

[weetuskenraider]

If Tahiri felt anything at all, it was another roar in the distance, another unsettling and unfamiliar presence in the usual nightmare landscape. She stirred in her sleep, but that reaction wasn't distinguishable from the rest of her restless tossing.

Tahiri would have wanted to help, if she'd known. The only problem here was that at the moment, Tahiri wasn't in charge.

And Riina had other things to focus on.

[wantstodirect]

In Tony's dream, he was laying on the beach on a towel next to Henry and discussing the new, superstrong sunscreens. Lee, Dinah and Jack Priest were playing volleyball against a team of gremlins.

Then Karla's emotions hit and in his dream, a wave swept over the beach and tore him away from all that, from his friends and safety. The wave tossed him and spun him and he couldn't breathe; couldn't swim to safety because he couldn't even tell which way was up. Then the wave flung him out and he hit dry land but he was back on the streets of Toronto, cornered, frightened, with nowhere to run and no one to help him if he screamed...

He didn't wake until morning.

[justwantsquiet.livejournal.com]

Sookie was yanked out of a pleasant summertime dream, where a rosy glow tinged everything from her hair to the lemonade her grandmother gave her.

The second the emotions hit her from elsewhere, she was thrust into a chilled darkness, and she was seized with the same sort of little-girl terror she had experienced when her Uncle Bartlett came to visit.

She spent horrifying seconds in her dreamscape before gasping awake, eyes wide, and spent the next few hours quietly keeping her mind elsewhere as best she could.

[likethegun]

Sam was full from grabbing snacks with Andy after their radio broadcast, so he hadn't had any trouble falling asleep. When the rush of emotions hit the dorm though, he didn't have any trouble waking up either, and all he could do for a few minutes was lie in bed and try to figure out if that was his nightmare, or someone else's.

[walks-two-paths.livejournal.com]

Savannah had, surprisingly, been in a fairly calm sleep. Her dreams had been pleasant and in this particular one, she was with Johnny, dancing and playing on the beach of their island.

When the emotions tore into her dream, everything went dark and she could feel herself being yanked away from Johnny -- heard him yelling for her. Each direction she turned was darkness and all she could feel was a fear she had spent half of her life trying to hide from.

When she managed to wake herself up, she just lay there, shaking in her blankets until the sun came up.

[bitchy_smurf]

Illyria had been in the middle of a calm, restful--- ahahahaha.

Illyria had been in the middle of sitting on the roof listening to the plants not sing. When the wave of cold, murderous, frustrated rage washed over her, she glanced up briefly and rolled her eyes. "Amateur."

Then she went back to, you know. Sulking.

Just for youuuuuuuuu.