TOIL AND TROUBLE ❄ PART 2

[nightmods]

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.

OOC DETAILS
❅ 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.

Comments

[onegrownup]

With a graceful cartwheel, Aqua dodges the fireballs.

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.

[rallieshearts]

Branch's scream taxes Rowan's already divided attention. Not that they can do anything about it in this form: even if they could use their phone without hands, it's currently a part of them, like everything else they were carried that's dedicated to their form. They make another swipe at the witch in front of them, trying to deal with one of these problems at least, a low, irritated growl echoing out as she blocks them again.

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?

[branchifer]

There are many things he could've fought against, things he could've overpowered. Fears and anxieties he could've pushed past. If it was Poppy's scream he could tell himself there's no way she's there.

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."