[It's Santa's sleigh. They were chased by a bunch of monsters that were from...old Earth films maybe? And now they're near the sleigh of an old figure from folklore. Except it's a roller coaster with lots of cars.]
[The mix of horror and whimsy he's dealt with today would be too much even if he hadn't just had his life ruined.]
[Outside the Multi-plex, he looks...bad. Really bad. The damage to his uniform is more obvious outside of the darkness of the theater. There are cuts and slashes, a few places were some small glass fragments are caught in the fabric. And he's filthy. He'd washed most of the blood from the creepy possessed monsters out of his hair and off his face but there's still some dried blood there. And it was harder to wash it out of his uniform, which has brown stains all over. It doesn't look like it seeped from a cut somewhere, it looks...splattered.]
[The nanites are working fast. Over time the Borg have gotten better and better at assimilation and in the place they were taken from, they'd managed to assimilate a solid chunk of the Enterprise crew within a few hours.]
[Even as he's supported over to the sleigh, he cries out as a metallic implant burrows out of the skin of his cheek and splays itself in a star shape there, in the middle of the spiral of blood vessels that look like they're blackened with poison.]
[Boimler is completely out of it as he winds up sliding down to sit with his back against one of the weird roller coaster-like cars of the sleigh. He's starting to get pal and clammy, his breathing coming harder.]
[He's also silent. Not panicking like he normally would over something alarming.]
[Boimler, like Mariner, is rarely ever silent. He may not be the most outgoing of the four of them, he's definitely the most reserved, but their whole group of friends is pretty talkative and rambunctious.]
[Cringing slightly in pain, with the discomfort of what's burning through his veins, he knocks his head backwards against the sleigh, muscles involuntarily jerking as some of them are altered, as his spine starts to feel like the nerves are being twanged like the strings of a banjo. He draws his knees up to his chest to try to still the involuntary jerking.]
[Then he stares straight ahead.]
[This is a fear almost all Starfleet officers have. They all know about how horrible the Borg are, have heard the reports of whole ships gone missing. He doesn't know how this will work if the Borg were...constructs or something, but the nanites in his blood feel very real. Even if there is no collective locally it won't stop them from rewriting his brain.]
[That might even be worse, being rewritten to be a Borg but one that's aimless. Forever trying to reach out for other voices that aren't there. Remade into something that isn't a person, that's a cog in a machine that he can't even snap into place with. Just a...part that can't suffer existing alone in its own head anymore.]
[But that also can't feel actual love or acceptance or the kind of belonging that's real. That isn't forced. The kind he knows he has. One thing he can be secure in is the knowledge of how this will affect the people that love him. Especially his friends.]
[Knowing what it will do to them makes all this worse.]
closed to Mariner, cw: body horror
[The mix of horror and whimsy he's dealt with today would be too much even if he hadn't just had his life ruined.]
[Outside the Multi-plex, he looks...bad. Really bad. The damage to his uniform is more obvious outside of the darkness of the theater. There are cuts and slashes, a few places were some small glass fragments are caught in the fabric. And he's filthy. He'd washed most of the blood from the creepy possessed monsters out of his hair and off his face but there's still some dried blood there. And it was harder to wash it out of his uniform, which has brown stains all over. It doesn't look like it seeped from a cut somewhere, it looks...splattered.]
[The nanites are working fast. Over time the Borg have gotten better and better at assimilation and in the place they were taken from, they'd managed to assimilate a solid chunk of the Enterprise crew within a few hours.]
[Even as he's supported over to the sleigh, he cries out as a metallic implant burrows out of the skin of his cheek and splays itself in a star shape there, in the middle of the spiral of blood vessels that look like they're blackened with poison.]
[Boimler is completely out of it as he winds up sliding down to sit with his back against one of the weird roller coaster-like cars of the sleigh. He's starting to get pal and clammy, his breathing coming harder.]
[He's also silent. Not panicking like he normally would over something alarming.]
[Boimler, like Mariner, is rarely ever silent. He may not be the most outgoing of the four of them, he's definitely the most reserved, but their whole group of friends is pretty talkative and rambunctious.]
[Cringing slightly in pain, with the discomfort of what's burning through his veins, he knocks his head backwards against the sleigh, muscles involuntarily jerking as some of them are altered, as his spine starts to feel like the nerves are being twanged like the strings of a banjo. He draws his knees up to his chest to try to still the involuntary jerking.]
[Then he stares straight ahead.]
[This is a fear almost all Starfleet officers have. They all know about how horrible the Borg are, have heard the reports of whole ships gone missing. He doesn't know how this will work if the Borg were...constructs or something, but the nanites in his blood feel very real. Even if there is no collective locally it won't stop them from rewriting his brain.]
[That might even be worse, being rewritten to be a Borg but one that's aimless. Forever trying to reach out for other voices that aren't there. Remade into something that isn't a person, that's a cog in a machine that he can't even snap into place with. Just a...part that can't suffer existing alone in its own head anymore.]
[But that also can't feel actual love or acceptance or the kind of belonging that's real. That isn't forced. The kind he knows he has. One thing he can be secure in is the knowledge of how this will affect the people that love him. Especially his friends.]
[Knowing what it will do to them makes all this worse.]