apocalypsehowcomm | Event

Entry tags:

Event - For Sport

For Sport

➥ Breaking It In

(cw: mentions of apparent mutilation of/violence against animals and animal death)

The conference room on the upper floors of ADI HQ is bright, airy, perhaps unnaturally so for the grim tidings that bring people here today. Those who have recently arrived will be ushered to the meeting by ADI employees or by Bonnie. It's not just the newest arrivals, but some other people who seem to be longer-term employees. The room is rather large and arranged like a lecture hall. Bonnie takes up a seat near the back, looking somewhat uncomfortable, but smiling at anyone who greets her.

At 9 AM sharp, a person steps into the room and heads to the front. They have curly hair and are wearing a gray business suit with a dark blue bow-tie. When they address the group at large, they speak in a calm, measured tone. "Good morning. I appreciate some of you may be here more reluctantly than others, but… there are matters of import to all of us to discuss. Some of you may have seen me already. I am Reyes Amador, assistant to Ms. Lehrer, the head of ADI. Earlier this week I sent out a message regarding some unusual activity at Coffin Beach. Thank you to those who investigated."

Their eyes seem to find the people who did, in fact, go looking, whether they found something or not.

"We have determined the creatures are shape-shifters. Some sort of, em... horse thing. In lieu of a term they might give themselves, we are referring to them as kelpies. Given the locations these were found, as well as other information into disappearances and deaths and mutilations of sea mammals in the area, we believe the kelpies are coming from the Essex Bay area to the north.

"For those willing to assist, we are mounting a reconnaissance mission. This is not intended to engage kelpies, just to find out where they are and how we might best approach an attack. All supplies, transportation, and monetary compensation will be provided. We will meet at ADI HQ in main lobby at 6 PM three days from now. Essex Bay is a remote site and conservation area, accessible only by boat, and not without a scientific permit. As you may guess, we will be traveling under cover of nightfall." Reyes smiles.

"I will be accepting questions about further details. I understand this is the first mission away for many of you, and you may have concerns. I will do my best to allay them. Bonnie also has some experience in these missions, if you would like first-hand accounts. Please also feel free to discuss amongst yourselves if this is a mission you think you are ready for. You will not be required to attend, nor penalized in any way if you do not. There is additional work to be done here, both with continuing examinations of the bodies we have and other efforts unrelated."

➥ Move the Goalposts

(cw: kidnapping, violence, sadism)

It happens away from the safety of ADI HQ one evening or so early in the morning, it's still dark, away from the potential for help, maybe. One moment, you (and possibly someone you're with) are walking, and the next, you will find someone has grabbed you and slammed you into the nearest surface. For those unable to fight back, a cloth will be held to their noses and mouths--chloroform, something to knock them out. For those able to fight or even to escape thanks to not actually being corporeal, they'll find that it is a trio of people who have attacked them. They wear jagged smiles and they're all much too sharp around the edges beneath their clothes. Those who saw the kelpies at Coffin Beach may recognize these people as something like them.

"Run, rabbit, run," one of the group says, voice rolling out like a gurgling tide.

Those who run will be chased and, if caught, chloroformed. Perhaps you're lucky, though. Perhaps you can race them back to safety. Or perhaps you'll find help along the way to protect you. Either way, the kelpies are relentless in their pursuit unless one of their number is injured or their prey can make it to ADI. The kelpies seem reluctant to actually enter ADI HQ or their housing, and will break off pursuit there, slinking back to the shadows.

➥ Curveball

(cw: kidnapping, violence/violence and mutilation against apparent animals, sadism, body horror, transformation, potential for claustrophobia)

For those unlucky enough to be caught, they'll find themselves waking amongst mud and bodies. Living, breathing bodies, thankfully. You have been tied up, but not gagged, and left with a group of other captives. A nearby fire casts light over everything, showing a large group of naked people with long, scraggly hair hauling a seal up out of the water. The animal fights them with a cunning that might seem odd, but the kelpies just laugh at it. They get it up near the fire, one raises a knife, and stabs into the seal, dragging the blade down its belly.

The seal bellows and then goes limp, seeming to collapse in on itself. It isn't long before a woman is drawn from the skin, shaking, fighting, wild-eyed with terror as her captors shove her around the fire in their own game. A few others turn their attention to the captives who are just beginning to wake and move about. They approach, one grabbing the skin the woman had come out of, others grabbing more skins from a nearby pile.

"Hush, hush... you'll have your freedom soon... while you can swim." The words come just before the kelpie slices your bonds and throws the skin over you.

The skin grapples your body, twisting tight around you, encasing and restraining. Your body is different now, thick and round, ungainly in the mud. Your legs have fused together and your arms have shrunk to thin flippers. This is not your body, you can feel how foreign it is, how you're crammed into the too-small confines of it... but you have instincts to go with it. Water is freedom! Or it's an attempt at freedom. It's either swim for your lives as some mockery of a selkie or stay and see how it feels to be cut open. Luckily for you, you'll find yourself psychically linked to the other selkies around you. Maybe you can do something together? Best think fast because the kelpies are setting their sights on new prey to chase once they've finished with their latest victim.

➥ Below the Belt

(cw: violence/violence and mutilation against apparent animals, body horror, gore)

The journey to Essex Bay isn't a long one, but it's somewhat treacherous as a small group of powerboats make their way into the refuge. The mission is simple: find where the kelpies are and see if there are any strategic points of-

Was that a seal? There are, in fact, many seals that pop up once boats enter the bay. The animals might seem to have an unusual cunning about them. Will they lead you somewhere useful? Perhaps try to flop themselves into your boats? The point is, there are seals accosting you in the middle of the night, and that's weird. Perhaps they have something they want to communicate.

Or was that a horse? A crocodile? There's something that seems to have noticed you, and it's smart enough that it's going to try to tip you and anyone else in your boat into the water rather than trying to engage otherwise. Sit down, you'll rock the boat.

➥ Sticky Wicket

(cw: potential for severe burns/injury, pain)

ADI is engaged in far more than one mission at a time, and for those not dealing with Essex Bay, or even before that, there are pick-ups to handle. Artifacts, you've been told as you're paired with someone else, whether you like it or not. The mission is simple: go to the Docks, collect a package from a locker there, and return with it to ADI. You've been provided an exact location and a code for the combination lock. The section of the Docks you've entered seems to be one with a lot of empty warehouses covered in graffiti, but the locker is there, something heavily reinforced and designed to be virtually impossible to get into. There's evidence that people have tried to gain entry without success.

Your code works, though, and you have your prize! You've been given strict instructions not to open the box the artifact is in… but there's nothing technically stopping you now, and there is a strange pull toward it.

Those who can't help themselves will find they have just picked up… some piece of sports gear! It looks wholly innocuous. Touch even a finger to it, though, and a horrific, searing pain will consume your entire body as 3rd-degree burns bloom across the skin where you've touched your artifact.

Or maybe you have a will of iron and sense enough not to touch strange, supernatural objects. What should be an easy mission is quickly derailed by some young punk darting out of an alleyway to try to steal your package. Or, at the very least, knock it from your hands. The youth is not alone, either. You've found yourself on someone's 'turf,' and they want what you've got. Are you cruel enough to let them have it?

➥ Mod Notes

BREAKING IT IN (21 July): Both Reyes and Bonnie will be available to answer questions that characters might have or listen to their complaints. Please put "NPC Requested" somewhere in your top-level response if you would like a mod response. For characters who can access their supernatural abilities and have some measure of supernatural spidey sense, both Bonnie and Reyes will register as off, but in different ways. Characters are welcome to attempt to use whatever powers they believe will work on the NPCs. There are potential IC consequences for this.
MOVE THE GOALPOSTS (23-24 July): Characters are welcome to capture or kill the kelpies. The only information they will be capable of providing to those who capture them and attempt to compel them for information is that they consider the entirety of the Massachusetts coast as their 'hunting grounds.' Whether that's true or not, it's what they believe.
CURVEBALL (23-24 July): Kidnapped characters will become seals! Sort of. Psychic seals who are extremely ill-fitted to the skins they're in. The only way to escape their current state is to be cut open and pulled out. As soon as they start to flee, the kelpies will chase them. Those who are captured will be cut out, toyed with, and shoved back into a skin again and again to continue the chase until they simply can't go on anymore.
BELOW THE BELT (24 July - night): Characters may encounter their selkie-fied comrades! Unfortunately, while the selkies can communicate with each other psychically, they are incapable of human speech. They are also being actively hunted by the kelpies. Characters may kill any kelpies they come across. Capture will not be possible in this case while they're in their horse forms. If PCs do not eradicate the kelpie threat that night, NPCs who have joined the mission will do so. Unfortunately, reconnaissance has become engagement, whether they like it or not.
STICKY WICKET (21 July - 5 August): You may select any piece of sporting gear you'd like for your character to pick up as long as it can fit in a reasonably-sized box. The pain associated with the burning will last only as long as a character is touching the object. Holding onto it for more than a minute will likely result in coming very close to death. Characters with inorganic appendages will find that the artifact will start to melt that appendage, whatever it is made of and it will still, somehow, hurt while it does it.
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There's a pair of kelpies homing in on the struggling seal, easily visible to the attentive Soldier. Vicious, ruthless, they're swiftly approaching with no regard yet for the Soldier himself.

The seal that is definitely Meredith Idlewild, however, it's trying to move closer to the thing that is definitely not James Buchanan Barnes, hoping that another ADI agent might, just might be able to keep it safe.

They probably won't ignore him for long. He tracks for a beat, then fires, a noisy round echoing over the water-- hitting one kelpie in the temple. He's not going to miss when he has no distractions, after all. Then he's sighting on the second, lining up another shot, anticipating it turning away from the seal to charge him, instead. Eye shot maybe, or into an open mouth.

The seal ducks, both times the gun is fired, but the Soldier's aim is true and the water of the bay is stained darker with kelpie blood as the seal struggles its way toward him.

She's not sure if being shot would get the sealskin off, or if he's going to see her as a monster, but she hopes she can communicate to him that she's a person and needs help.

...by barking. And booping his leg with her nose.

He flinches back, gun coming down, but she's really too close for a rifle, and anyway, she's... a seal. And not hurting him. And the kelpies had been chasing her, so she's probably not actually a threat here.

He doesn't, however, have any idea what to do with her. So after staring at her a moment in consternation, he pulls the gun's barrel back up, eyes her a moment, and starts wading again. Maybe Meredith ought to follow a little and keep up the booping...

Both the booping and the barking, clearly very insistent and demanding of his attention. She flops along behind him, awkward in her aquatic body.

It's definitely not the behavior of a normal seal, or even a Navy SEAL.

He stops and glares down at her in confusion. Is she some kind of pet? Can seals be pets? He has no idea what animals people keep these days, to be honest. The idea of a seal being a person has definitely not occurred to him. He'll get there, though.

After a moment of trying to figure out the right thing to say, what he says is a weirdly stoic: "Shoo."

The response is a single indignant bark, that doesn't quite sound like 'no', but it clearly bears the same meaning, as she continues to stick right against his legs.

You know what, he's shooting alligator-horse things that can turn into humans. Why not seals that want something from him?

Which leads to the obvious question: "What do you want."

Well, it's useful to be asked, but she doesn't know how to convey the answer usefully. She can try to indicate one of the knives he has on him, sure, but it's really hard to express "I'm an ADI employee and need to be sliced out of the sealskin so I can get back home and have a panic attack about this later."

Doesn't mean she doesn't try, booping the sheath of the knife with her nose repeatedly.

The seal wants his... knife? It's in a sheath against the small of his back, so he can only twist to half-see her, but he can feel where she's poking. He puts a hand on it, unlocks it from the sheath, and twirls it into place in his hand. "It's a knife." He's not sure if the seal in question knows that. She's a seal. What would she need with a knife, anyway?

When he states it's a knife, she very clearly nods. Yes, that's a knife, she's a seal, and application of one to the other could make her life a whole lot better. Please, scary soldier man. Please, metal-armed friend, slice her out of this phocine hellscape?

The nod throws him for a second. Does that mean the seal understood him? His world (as far as he knows) has no magic, and while he's getting used to it being here, his knowledge of folklore is pretty much nonexistant. He stares at her for a long minute, then flips it to hold the blade and offers the hilt to her, as if a seal could hold a knife.

We're getting there. Maybe another hint or two and he'll get the picture?

Unfortunately, the seal can't take the knife and open itself up. The closest she can get is to roll over belly up and excitedly slap her midsection. Knife here, please! Yes, it's time to do the stabbing and slicing!

What the fuck. He stares from her to the knife and back again, then crouches in the water to put the blade where the flipper smacked. And there he pauses, looking from her muzzle to the knife and back again. "You want me to kill you?"

It actually sounds like a question this time.

You know, if that's what he needs to think in order to shove that knife into her...she goes still, with the knife against her belly, looking him in the eyes for a lingering moment before closing them.

That's clear enough permission given, right? Right?

He looks between her and the knife again but, well, it's what he's for. It's what he's best at. If the weird magic seal wants to die, he can make it quick and clean. It's still really fucking weird that she's asking for it, though.

So he neatly slices across where he's pretty sure her jugular should be, even though seals have weird contracting throats.

As the sealskin splits, what's underneath, that slowly becomes exposed, is pink human flesh. Squirming slowly, trying to push their way out of the prison of skin they're still entangled in. That slit at the throat isn't quite enough to pull their way out from.

A voice, muffled and desperate. "Help! Get me out of here, please. I can't breathe!"

What the hell. Alarmed, he sheaths the knife immediately, digs his fingers into the sealskin, and pulls the slice he made wide open, tearing the seal-head right off if he has to, until at least her head is free.

Gasping, she eventually pulls free of the skin and into the shallow water, shivering and crying, arms wrapped around herself as if trying to keep pieces of a shattered vase reassembled without glue from falling apart.

"Th-th-thank you. I...you're with ADI, right?" She doesn't try to stand up yet, looking up at the Soldier uncertainly.

He crouches in the dirty water staring at-- well, at her left shoulder, because eye contact is not a thing he does. There was a person in there. He helped a person climb out of a seal's shape somehow. And now she's crying and he has no idea what to do.

"Yes," he says finally, because it's a question, and he can at least answer that. Then, because she clearly should not be sitting in the water shivering, he suggests tentatively, "There are boats." To get her out of the water, to get her back out of kelpie territory, to get her into the care of someone who is not him.

"Boats. Good. Where?" Now, now she tries to get onto her feet, but she's shaking like a newborn giraffe on stilts, between the wet rocks beneath her feet and her existing health concerns. She's very clearly a mess and needs more help.

He rises much more smoothly and points, still completely unsure what he should be doing. He's a murder machine, he's not supposed to deal with civilians except, occasionally, to shoot them too. (I know what you're gonna say, B-- No.)

He finds himself with the metal hand under her arm, supporting, like it's only natural. Being this close to anyone without violence is weird, but he just clawed her out of a seal body, he's not going to kill her now.

The metal arm startles her, but there's no questions here--not his name, not why his arm's metal. No, in this moment, she just puts her trust in him, allows him to support her on the way to the boats.

"Thank you."

That's all she has the strength to offer right now, and she offers it freely.

He's never been thanked before, in his memory. Which isn't exactly saying much, but it still feels so unexpected that what comes out isn't the standard "you're welcome" but a more awkward, "Okay." They have to wade to get to the boats, but he'll keep close to get her there, even if it's uncomfortable.

The awkwardness is noted and filed away. Meredith doesn't say anything else, but takes the help. There's a moment where she stumbles, rolling an ankle, but she accepts the Soldier's help when it happens. Once they're at the boats, she clambors ineffectively into one, and then turns to look back at him.

Event - For Sport

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