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TOIL AND TROUBLE ❄ PART 2
TOIL AND TROUBLE ❄ PART 2
They say to never split the party but this Halloween, they absolutely need to. A quick flyby of the Sandersons' house shows it's empty - they're out trying to find the children that stole their magic book.
In the meantime, they have other problems. They are seriously outnumbered by the witches and there are still un-evacuated children in the town. They know that Sarah Sanderson will likely soon sing her song to lure children to wherever the Sandersons' intend to feed on them. There are also allies to try to gather, and other witch problems that have surfaced.
There is nothing else for it. The Guardians have to split up in the hopes the situation will get stable enough they can find Jamie's classmates who stole the book before the Sandersons do.
Or hope they can run down the clock until dawn, when they'll disappear in the light of day.
❅ Format: The mod will be using prose because multiple npcs may need to be written speaking but players can pick any format they want, including actionspam.
❅ NPCing: This part of the plot will have mod npcing. If you can, please try to tag at least about once a day to your respective threads so the mod can try to block out some semi-predictable time for npc tags.
❅ Status effects: There will be more dangerous witches here. Witches have magic and that means curses and other injuries the myth healing might not instantly fix. (Magical burns, etc.) You can play with this as you want. Spells and effects can either wear off in a short amount of time, wear off when the plot is over when day breaks, or need magical healing intervention at the Pole. Player choice.
❅ Long-term effects: Players who go with some kind of status effect for a character can optionally have long-term consequences from it if they like.
❅ Environment: Feel free to manipulate the environment in each setting location. You will often have whole setting areas to work with or even the whole open town. In some places, you absolutely can hotwire a car to run over a witch.
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She smiles, then turns back to look over her shoulder at Branch. "I've changed size before, too. Shrunk to the size of a mouse and back. I can't recall if my heart changed speed... but I do know it stayed strong, knowing I had friends on my side." She says it earnestly. To her, the bonds between hearts aren't simply ideals, but tangible forces that can be called upon. "We'll be that strength for you, too."
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But Aqua's right; their pack might not be here, but these three will have to do for now. It's not the same, but Rowan trusts them to do their part. Keeping Branch's head in the game is the first step, and they're already stepping up, both of them.
"You'd better be up for sharing that with the rest of us, and all, Puss." They chuckle, fingers still flying across the keyboard, as they link up the final speakers. "Branch, mate, I don't know fuck about what it's like for you normally, but I know my heart don't whirr, so I reckon you're good." Having held their heart in their hands days before they were brought here, they're very vividly aware of how it beats, even if they're not sure how the situation had affected it, or how being bigger or smaller might. The important thing is that they sound confident. "You just focus on that repeater and singing, and if we need to bugger off, I can carry you, okay? That ain't no issue." In hispo, it won't be, at least. Don't look at their noodle arms in homid.
Their eyes glance over the screen one more time before they straighten up. "Okay, give me a mic check; you should both be hooked up now." Their own voice echoes out from a speaker placed under the bench, but it's limited to that one for now. No point announcing their presence too much immediately.
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"Yeah, we are definitely getting the donkey story after this is over," he says to Puss.
Aqua being painfully sincere would be too much for some people as occasionally cynical as Branch but... honestly, it 100% rings true as to what people might say back home.
That's the thing about being the cynical one in a group of bleeding heart, sugar-encrusted people who hug once an hour. Maybe he's the skeptic and the worrier and the one that doubts the nature of some people but he's still nevertheless used to people who aren't like him, who are unwaveringly kind and supportive.
So he nods at Aqua, looking like it's helping him shake out the pre-show jitters a little.
By the time Rowan reassures him, he's calming down. He drops the hand from his chest. His heart gets even slower as he calms. He's just going to try to assume that's also normal.
"Okay. Okay. I'm ready." Mic check time. "Testing. Testing."
His voice echoes from absolutely everywhere through the network of linked speakers and it's synced well. Good sign.
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"Heh heh heh, now you want a story, eh?"
Branch's voice echoes through the night, nice and clear. Puss also tries, with a vocal warm up "-mi-mi-mi-MI-mi-mi-mi!-" and looks pleased at the way his voice carries.
"Well, amigos, are we ready?"
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"Use thy voice, Sarah! Fill the sky! Bring the little brats to die!"
A song starts to filter down on the wind, somehow reaching the whole town.
"Come little children..."
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Immediately they look up, hand tapping out the beats to the intro that they shortened, other hand held up with five fingers, ready to start counting Branch and Puss down. It comes quickly, five fingers to four, three, two, and they hit one with finger guns and a wide, encouraging grin. It's all down to their singers now, but Rowan knows they've got this.
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The shortened intro leads immediately into a falsetto chorus, meant to be high and loud to drown out her highest notes.
His voice explodes out of the speakers around town. From every hidden bush, from inside every shed. Every place they put one. It creates a cushion of sound, pushing back at her song.
We're talkin' away
I don't know what I'm to say
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Today is another day to find you
Shyin' away
Puss's voice rings out, deep and rich. His baritone backs up Branch's falsetto nicely and lends the song power and force. He's also good at singing and fighting at the same time. He tosses his rapier in his hand a few times to adjust the grip. Who knows what they're going to throw at them once they figure out their song is being thwarted.
cw: light cannibalism implication
Fortunately, it takes a little while for them to even be found. The speakers are everywhere, they're not exactly firing a laser light show into the sky from the point they're performing from. They're outside because inside, even with doors that can be used as chokepoints, is a bad place to hunker down when hiding. Empty buildings can be blown up or set on fire.
When they're spotted, they can fight to buy more time, but when time's up, and they can't hold their position any longer, an open space will let them more easily use their globes and ditch without, y'know, bending anything into a magical spacetime vortex.
It's not a bad plan and delaying the song spell buys the other groups time to finish their tasks, time the Sandersons won't be able to use to lure kids away.
But their time does still run out. They get spotted.
It is the typical witches that have been a problem so far, that they see start to swarm in first, a small group of about six flying in on brooms. This is not the end of the world. They're a pain, but they have a werewolf, a keyblade wielder, and a dashing doer of derring do who is gifted with a blade on their side.
Except... as the witches attack, they are being watched by someone else, a few figures passing slowly around them, staying invisible and unseen. They're letting the other witches be their cannon fodder. And several other things happen at the same time.
Near Aqua, where she may be preparing to fight, there is suddenly a shift in the landscape around her, the sky in her direct line of sight shifting to be lit with purplish light. The buildings in the distance warp. The ground starts to shift and fragment, chunks of it seeming to float into the air.
The landscape is drawing her in, trying to trundle her down a path into oblivion.
-
The others also have their eye drawn to something odd, all in different directions, like the cardinal directions on a compass.
Rowan will see a tree that wasn't there before, not just with a withered arm but a whole withered body having fallen out of it grotesquely, the wood twisted and charred unnaturally. Standing next to it is the same parent of the dryad they once killed.
"You did it again. You did it again. How could you? It was bad enough you were rewarded for it the first time."
-
Puss hears something shatter and when he looks, he'll see giant shards of egg shell. He has seen this before.
Or so he thinks.
Except last time, all he saw were the remains. Broken shell. The heart of gold he knew was deep down inside. He did not see his friend half shattered, trying to pull the pieces back to himself.
"How did I get here? Where are we? What's happening?" says Humpty, as more and more pieces fragment and start to fall off. He looks at his brother, scared and confused.
Is it possible he was brought here to this place at just the wrong time? From a different time? They've been told they can be brought from different times to this place.
Did he walk out of a time he was alive and instantly walk into his death?
-
For Branch it is far more subtle. There's a shnnk like a knife behind him being sharpened. Only once.
When he turns he won't find the world shifting into something surreal or a dying friend or a specter of guilt hearkening to him.
Or at least his specter of guilt takes a slightly different shape. Something far simpler. He'll see something on the ground just outside the edge of the bubble. Something very small, almost easy to miss.
A tiny little knit cardigan small enough to fit a doll. Red with pink edging. Warm and cozy and great at making hugs seem even warmer.
It's slashed and bloody like someone treated it almost like a skin to fillet a fish out of.
His grandmother had been so proud of how she managed to perfectly knit in the little pink hearts into the red parts.
-
It won't be easy for them to just dismiss this. They'll all be able to see each other's particular specters as if they're real. They can't shake each other and say nothing is there if they can all see it. And the main coterie of witches will be trying to attack the whole time.
...As their three actual tormentors circle around them invisibly, waiting to see how their little game plays out.
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"No..."
She falters and steps back, terrified at the possibility that this new world she'd found was suddenly falling to darkness. Perhaps she'd never truly left the Realm of Darkness at all; This whole adventure had been another trick of her mind, projecting what she wanted to see onto the world around her.
Yet through the panicked thoughts, she can still hear the world around her. Her friends are still singing, and the witches are still attacking.
Children are still in danger.
Aqua's resolve is shaken, but not gone — She tears her eyes away from the nightmare before her and sweeps her keyblade in a wide arc, locking onto attacking witches as she sees them and releasing a shotlock attack as an opening shot.
CW nausea/emeto
"Incoming!" It's more of a warning to Puss and Branch than to Aqua, since they know her full attention is on their surroundings. As their foot finally finds it's way to the wooden slats of the bench again they can hear the blood pumping in their ears, the familiar heat of their rage starting to simmer deep inside them. There's no fear here, they were born to fight evil and protect the world.
That doesn't stop a shiver of dread passing down their spine as something in the air changes, though. They forget the incoming witches as their attention narrows, focusing in sharply on the figure that's appeared, all too familiar. Guilt washes over them in the form of nausea, the taste of their own bile filling their mouth as they sway in place. So much has been happening, between trying to get home, trying to find the Costas, and then being sent off to Washington DC with Colin and facing the Flux Realm that they haven't really had a chance to process the damage they did. It might have been unknowing damage, but that doesn't undo it. Not only that, but ever since they've been putting people in harm's way; first the pack, then WD-40 and his pack, and now these three, if the witches have the fae on their side.
But wait - the fae? They're not Wyrm. Wyld, yes, chaos at it's most chaotic, but not evil for evil's sake. And Rowan faced their trial, even a fae with a bone to pick wouldn't be able to deny that. "A year and a day." They mutter under their breath. Thanks for that, Jabari. And after Rowan picked their words so carefully, too. "A year and a day, not now!" Instinctively they focus on their glabro form, trying to protect themself with a stronger form, but without that as an option they shift further. The bench creaks under the sudden increase in weight as their skinny figure is replaced with their hispo one. Their dire wolf form is almost as tall as they normally are, even on all fours, limbs and wicked claws elongated, like their maw full of sharp teeth. It's a nightmare of a wolf, the only remaining softness the grey of their fur and matching grey of their eyes, which are thankfully still close enough to their human ones to be familiar. Even with their eyes focused on the dryad, trying to figure out what's going on, any witch that gets too close is going to come face to face with a paw full of claws.
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It means the song can continue regardless of what happens next.
Branch notices the flash of color. It's so small when he's this size. Even 3 feet is more than 10 times his normal size, not counting the added length of his hair. The shift of perspective means he's been strangely conscious about what's underfoot, as if there's some strange instinctual fear of stepping on someone like himself, even though there aren't many others in the group like himself.
Still, he knows Tim can shrink and he'd never forgive himself if something odd happened, like him portalling in while small but getting knocked out, left vulnerable.
So he sees the cloth, the flash of color, just outside the bubble. He layers one more falsetto chorus loop to cover for things if he needs to take a breath. The closer he walks to the cloth, the more detail he sees, the more he feels drawn and repulsed at the same time.
It is the mounting dread of thinking you recognize something awful and wanting to run away, but knowing there is nothing else you can do but move forward. You are compelled by your own rising sense of horror.
He sees the colors. He sees the edging.
He sees the hearts with their tight tiny knit, so extremely small and neat he can't even see the detail at this size. But then, she'd been so proud of herself for her small stitches.
He sees the knife cuts and the blood.
The world spins. He is vaguely aware that he's screaming but a full awareness of it only comes slightly later, when he trips over the repeater and the screams are recorded in a loop, one that starts to echo along with the layers of music they've already recorded, pouring through the town over and over.
At least it's loud. At least it's shrill. That covers some more of Sarah's song, right? Even if it'll scare the crap out of the kids.
He collapses against the exact opposite side of the bubble and slides down, wrapping his arms around his knees, hyperventilating.
It can't be real. It can't be real. It's got to fake. She's not here. He knows people can be brought her from other times but it's too horrible. Too specific. Who would take her? Who would use a knife? Who would leave her cardigan?
"It's not real. It's not real."
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For not the first time in his life, Puss felt paralyzed, stepping back. His eyes darted to his friends, who were reacting to their own nightmares...
Nightmares. Was that what these were? Mere visions? Or did Humpty Dumpty cheat death for a moment to join him here? If he had cheated death -
That was it wasn't it? That was the rub. Puss had cheated Death once. He knew Death would stop at nothing to keep the order of things, how zealously he would fight to bring Humpty back. Humpty would be terrorized, and could not, for even an instant, hope to fight back. Puss reached a paw out to the cheek that was still clinging to the gold inside his brother.
"Go with Death, my friend. He is far kinder than he seems, I promise."
And then Puss stabs his sword into middle of Humpty's shell.
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Since the mutating landscape isn't phasing her as much was their tormentors hoped, there's suddenly another problem, meant to distract her while the other witch is firing at her.
In one of the floating sections of street not far from her there's a sudden scream. It's a familiar voice. Initially blocked by another section of floating street, Terra can be seen getting knocked over the edge of the crumbling street by a witch on a broom. Ventus dives for him, struggling to keep him from falling.
Aqua?!
Ventus looks surprised to see her, like he's just walked into this mess, only to find her here.
Aqua, help! I can't pull him up on my own. The edge keeps crumbling, making it so all he can do is just hold on. Every attempt to use Ventus' help to push himself up leads to more of it crumbling.
Helping them would take her farther away from the others if she decides to do it.
-
Rowan makes quick work of two of the other witches, a third creating a shield of Earth spring up every time they go in for the attack.
The Dryad continues to rage.
"It has been a year and a day!" cries out the Dryad. "Maybe not to you, but it has been in our world."
There's an imperious raise of a chin.
"That's why Jabari has been made to pay a price for you."
Whether this sounds close to the truth or remotely possible or not, doesn't matter. Their attackers don't exactly have time to dig too deeply into the memories they see, but all they really need is distraction.
-
When Puss stabs Humpty, the shock on his face is obvious.
"Brother? I thought - I thought we were -"
And the rest of him shatters like tempered glass, leaving behind the golden egg.
A woman's voice calls out frantically. "Humpty, where are you? I thought I saw you drop here, oh please be -"
She walks out between two cars before Puss withdraws his sword. Sobs, holding a hand to her mouth. When she pulls it away to talk, tears are pouring down her face.
"Puss...how could you?"
How could you let down your mother like this, Puss? How could you disappoint her so?
Imelda drops to her knees in the street, looking for all the world the way a mother would when seeing her son kill her other son.
-
When Branch starts to rally, dragging himself off the ground to go over to the repeater again, back turned on the cardigan, still breathing too fast, the illusion escalates.
Music starts to play. The others had visual illusions or audio-visual. His is just audio. Yes, the music will cover the sound of Sarah's attempts at singing even more - but that's temporary. The goal is to stop the Guardians so all the sound can ultimately be silenced.
It's a song he can tolerate but never sings and very much doesn't like to listen to. An instrumental version of "Total Eclipse of the Heart." It clashes with "Take On Me" but starts to blast even louder, even if it's not close enough to any of the mics to be louder anywhere else but locally.
It starts to play from nowhere. From everywhere.
After he has just long enough to dread the start of the song, an old woman's voice calls out. From nowhere. From everywhere.
The only words he heard of her warning right as she shoved him out of the way.
"Watch out, Branch!" Then there's a shrill and terrible scream. It isn't just a scream of alarm or fear. It sounds like someone dying or being dragged off to their death. It is a "Jason Voorhees just kicked open the door to the canoe shed and started dragging someone by the hair so they're close enough to stab" kind of scream.
Like one of the tracks on the repeater pedal, it repeats. Over and Over.
"Watch out, Branch!" Her scream.
"Watch out, Branch!" Her scream.
"Watch out, Branch!" Her scream.
All while "Total Eclipse of the Heart" still plays, a strange and terrible backing to it.
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Then, the sound of Ven's voice takes Aqua's full attention. She zeroes in on the source — She needs to protect the singers... but if she helps Terra and Ven, that's two more on their side to help protect Branch and Puss.
Aqua starts running.
She's not sure how Ven got here, but so excited to see them. Her heart's pounding, just as it was when she'd spotted Terra and Ven on the horizon in the Realm of Darkness, even though ♥
She stops.
Aqua's already put a few meters of distance between her and the fray, but she starts inching backward, away from her old friends. Ven is awake and alert. Terra's hair is still dark, and he still looks like himself.
"But... how did you leave the Chamber of Waking?" She says it quietly, more to herself than to Ven, as she tries to puzzle this out. She's been tricked by the darkness before, using the faces of her loved ones as bait. "How did you get here?"
She whirls, looking behind her to check on those she was meant to protect... and sees chaos. Everyone seems distracted by something now.
Just as she was distracted, too.
As if on cue, she's hit by a fireball, shaking her from her thoughts. She cries out in pain, but stays on her feet.
Her mind made up, Aqua keeps her back to the illusion of her friends and steels herself against Ventus' cries for help. She races back into the fray, brandishing her keyblade with a look of fury on her face. She raises it above her head and bellows out a simple spell:
"THUNDER!"
Pillars of lightning scatter across the ground randomly, some reaching high enough to knock some of the witches off their brooms. Before the spell's even finished, she charges toward the witch who had cast fireball, her keyblade poised to strike and glowing with power.
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As they step forward to try again, the dryad's words catch them off guard, and they almost trip over their paws. No! Jabari! The heat of their rage floods them, fur standing on end and eyes going unfocused for a moment as they have to hold themself together. A frenzy now, with non-pack allies around and no one to stop them, would be deadly. They can't allow that - they won't.
But they do use the rage, letting it guide their form as they move with lightning speed. Quicker than any mortal eye they dart around the earthen shield that's been thwarting them; knocking the witch to the floor and bounding over her to roar their fury at the dryad.
A roar is all it is, though, and they take off again with a long, graceful leap, landing smoothly in homid form and skidding to a halt with their back against the dome that Aqua put up to defend Puss and Branch. "If we need to move, you say when." They shout at her, already pulling their phone out and activating Plug and Play. No more distractions, it's time to get a hold on this situation, before anyone else gets hurt. There'll be time to deal with worrying about Jabari later (their connection to him changed, they knew it, both they and Colin felt it while they were in Washington and Chico wouldn't tell them why, why did she know if it wasn't the truth?), now they need to focus on what they can do.
They can't cut Branch's scream out. And the second song cutting through is clashing and they can't see it on their network. Magic? They can only connect to electronics, so they can't block it. But at least they can keep Branch's scream from scaring kids all over town any more than it already has. "Puss, I'm cutting your mics. Shout when you're good to go again." He'll have to deal with Branch, Rowan's not sure if they can get through the shield.
Trusting Aqua to keep any witches off their back, grey eyes are fixed on their phone as they disconnect Branch's repeater and cut the song entirely. They haven't saved a copy for a while, but that's fine. A couple of layers is better than nothing, and they'll fill in the gaps until Puss and or Branch are ready to come back in or they have to get the fuck out of here.
cw: panic attacks, parental death, and ptsd-ishness I guess?
But they went right between the ribs with this one.
The hyperventilating gets worse. Tears pour down his face as he pulls his long ears down, trying to hold them to shut out the sound. All of the music is too loud. His own repeating scream is gone thankfully, but his grandma's scream isn't part of the recording, it's echoing around them.
"Stop it!"
His heart pounds, his palms sweat, he keeps hyperventilating.
It's been a long time since he reacted to stress this way. It used to be a lot of things could set it off. Other troll-lings screaming too shrilly while playing. Certain songs in a similar register to "Total Eclipse of the Heart." Large animals with footfalls that sounded too much like the thundering steps of the Bergens. Thunder rumbling in the distance, when he was caught unawares topside, when it took just the right pitch to sound like the picks and shovels when they'd caved holes into the escape tunnels as the trolls all ran for their lives.
He'd gotten better over the years.
Well, not better better, but he'd paved over the rough edges with routine, then with things that were healthier. Even before he got his color back, he'd wound up on edge and paranoid but not in a way where it felt like his brain was a live wire, ready electrocute him with bad feelings and panic and flashing memories at a moment's notice. It's why he was able to go into Bergentown with Poppy. Why going into the tunnels again hadn't reduced him to a panic. Why he could be stuck there in a pot with the others as they lost hope and gently sing to Poppy to try to help her - and them - get it back.
Something about the bad feelings had dimmed long before he went on that adventure with Poppy. It was only in moments like when he'd told Poppy and the others what happened for the first time that he got a little lost in his own head again.
This is too direct. It bypasses all the progress he's made, all the defense mechanisms that built up in crusty but functional layers. Time hadn't soothed all wounds but had smoothed over some of the worst of the damage. Even though he was gray and miserable in his twenties, it wasn't the same as when he'd been in his teens and scrawling his nightmares on the walls of the bunker, or when he was 12, anxiously and methodically burrowing down through the bottom of an abandoned burrow with a shovel, sometimes ripping out roots with his bare hands after breaking through them, until his palms were raw. (It took a while before the blisters turned to callouses after all.)
After lots of healing, hearing it all again is one of very few things that could still trip him off this badly.
"Watch out, Branch!" Her scream.
(And he is suddenly back near the Troll Tree and he is falling and screaming as the looming nightmare-shape takes her away, thundering footsteps receding.
"Grandmaaa!"
And he's kneeling there in the grass, realizing what he's done, ears drooping, color fading away. It's his fault. He shouldn't have been singing, shouldn't have been so careless in his joy. He'd been happy and now she was dead. His singing had caused it.
His happiness had caused it.
He killed her.)
His color hasn't faded for real. All of what he's seeing isn't part of an illusion. What he's really doing is sitting there, hyperventilating, gazing off into the middle distance.
His voice is far more dull and distant the next time he says, "Stop."