Event - Untimely

[apocalypsehowmods]

↬ Main Navigation

Untimely

➥ Reality Check

(cw: hypersomnia, coma, supernaturally induced metaphysical hunger, psychosomatic pain)

"We all dream," the representative from Copernicus explains, directing attention to a powerpoint slide projected onto the wall beside her. The seminar in one of the conference rooms is ADI's latest effort to combat Ava's influence and take the fight to their foe. If she's going to put them all to sleep, then so be it. Let their ranks be ready for battle there. "My boss, Zyrian Steel, is a big dreamer. Copernicus started as one. We-" She pauses as her eyes seem to catch on someone at the back of the room. "But that-that's another presentation! Suffice to say, Mr. Steel heard you were having some sleep troubles around the office and wanted to help.

"Hello, everyone. My name is Luna, and I'm here from Copernicus' Augmenting Reality group to talk to you about lucid dreaming. Now, I see some of us are here in our Halloween outfits." She smiles and poses in her 50's-style poodle skirt. "Some of you have very impressive make-up and prosthetics, I might add. I was told there might be some stiff competition for this mid-Halloween get-together. Glad to see they weren't having a little fun with me." Any non-human in the audience is given an appreciative nod. "I can see we have a few dreams brought to life here, but what about shaping the dreams we have while we're in them?"

"We're going to go through a few exercises today. The key tricks for inducing lucid dreaming include:

"One, assess your reality regularly. Even if you can't remember falling asleep, take a moment every few hours to test your reality. Dreams might look very familiar, but there will always be inconsistencies and distortions you can catch. This should help you to recognize when you're dreaming.

"Second, the MILD method or Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams. This is a method where you'll set an alarm for 5 hours after you go to sleep. Once awake, you'll tell yourself, 'The next time I'm dreaming, I will remember that I'm dreaming.' You'll also try to imagine yourself in a lucid dream as you go back to sleep. Silly as it sounds, just having that intentionality can be highly effective.

"Third, tell yourself when you go to sleep that you are going to have a lucid dream, that you will be shaping your reality, even if it seems outside of your control. Convince yourself. Convince others.

"And fourth…" Luna pulls out some high-tech looking eyemasks. "You can try one of our patented Lucidio Eye Masks. These devices help to unlock your mind and provide it with a few extra cues that you're dreaming once you enter REM sleep. We'll be handing out a limited number of samples, courtesy Mr. Steel. That's for the end of our presentation. Now, let's go through the stages of sleep…"

Whether you can stay away for the rest of the presentation, everyone will be chivved awake with increasingly harsh prods if they've fallen asleep during the presentation. There are more seminars throughout the next few days, always similar with Luna offering her guidance on lucid dreaming. Maybe it's enough. Maybe it isn't.

The music doesn't stop. As with last October, the haunting tunes extend their grasp from the graveyards and out toward the rest of Gloucester, ringing through ADI's halls, along with the Flophouse. The music induces intense sleepiness, and you might find your coworkers slumping down while they walk or you might fall victim to the music, yourself.

You awake… somewhere. It might be a place that's familiar, or one that's utterly alien. What you know is that there is something in this place that calls to you, sings in your blood and burns to be away from. And yet, you're terrified. There is something here that wants to consume every part of you, suck the marrow from your bones and leave you a husk of what you once were. You need it. You want it. You are hungry for it. For the fear it both brings and demands. This place seems to be some sort of pocket dimension, a personal hell built just for you and the things that sink their teeth into your bones and claw at the back of your mind. This is a terrifying place.

And you're not alone.

If you've been paying attention to the seminars, perhaps you'll be able to recognize this as a dream, something that isn't real. Sensations that aren't real. A world that isn't real. But with that realization comes a choice. You could try to break free of your personal hell, rip it to shreds, make it less horrific. Or… or there is something that calls to you in this place, a thing that sounds the death of who you once were, perhaps. You could call back, reshape this reality to terrorize the others trapped here with you. They'll never know if you were aware or not, will they? They don't need to know you did this to them consciously.

Just this once, what if you gave in? If someone dies in the dream, it's not like they die in real life. Right?

➥ Knead Help

(cw: blood, unsanitary food, supernaturally-induced existential dread, supernaturally-induced suicidal thoughts, isolation, dissociation)

Deathbed Bread is off the market. Thanks to a timely tip, the Health Department has finally made a slightly less timely visit to Better Loaf than Never, and were forced to shut the storefront down when their inspectors were unable to gain entry to the kitchen. The lights are still on behind the boarded-up windows, though, the smell of sourdough still permeating the air as loaf after loaf is delivered through a slot from the kitchen through the day and night, bread piling up on the counter and floor behind the register. They come at regular intervals, still warm from the oven. ADI has taken over the little storefront now and set up a tiny field office there, the higher-ups having pulled enough strings for law enforcement to look the other way and not ask too many questions about the people coming and going as efforts to break into the kitchen intensify...and as ADI staff truck away loads of Deathbed Bread to incinerate back at headquarters.

Someone has a bright (or maybe desperate) idea: if they can't get in, maybe they can at least stop the bread from coming out. Boarding up the bread slot, by all accounts, works for perhaps an hour or two as those present can still hear more bread piling up on the other side. Then there's a soul-wrenching cry of anguish followed by a violent attack on the barrier from inside the kitchen that ends with an ADI agent injured by flying debris and a cascade of sourdough loaves stained with bloody handprints. It's enough, though. Whatever supernatural seal that made the kitchen blockade impenetrable has broken, and within the day ADI is able to break down the door.

A thick, unnatural fog is all that can be seen inside the doorway. Rather than the cool of an early morning, though, the damp air is hot and cloying; those who venture inside will soon find themselves drenched with a mix of sweat and humidity from the air. They will also soon find themselves alone, regardless of what companions they might have had with them when they entered. Did you have someone with you? You must have; it would be foolish to enter alone, and yet it rapidly becomes difficult to remember their face, their voice, the touch of their hand. Perhaps you imagined them. Perhaps you've always been alone.

Dark shapes in the fog resolve into tombstones as one nears--no, into huge, upright loaves of bread jutting up from where they've been sunk into the soft ground of this strange graveyard, dry and cracked and dead. There are names pressed into them, dates of death spanning the last few weeks…and the next few. Perhaps you'll spot your own name and today's date. And why shouldn't it be today? Everyone dies, and everyone dies alone. Any action other than laying down on the soft dough of your own grave and letting it swallow you up is only delaying the inevitable.

The spell of deathly quiet over this place isn't complete, though. Keep moving, keep trying, keep hanging on to thoughts of those you love and the clear sky beyond this little world, and you might find a friend who needs your help as much as you need theirs. One or both people encountering each other may feel as though they're in a dream, unable to see or hear the other–but with persistence, with feeling, it's possible to reforge the connection. Love and friendship may shine a light on what was invisible–but so will shared anger, joy, or disgust. Any strong, shared emotion beyond the fear and sadness that permeates this place renders would-be ghosts visible, solid, and real to one another, able to move forward or turn back to escape together–or to begin tearing up the tombstones in fierce denial of their portents.

This hellish graveyard is as far as most will go. Somewhere deeper in what was the kitchen, Bryn still labors and the bread still piles up. It will be up to those few lucky (or unfortunate) enough to stumble across him to put a final end to this.

➥ Never Sleep Again

(cw: child death, body horror, violence, potential injury or character death, nightmare dream logic)

Are you dreaming or are you awake? It becomes harder to tell as the music flows through halls and streets, rooms and parks. It’s dangerous out there, people falling asleep where they shouldn’t, or finding themselves face-to-face with what shouldn’t be when their eyes close unknowingly. Perhaps you planned it, your practice made perfect and your mind set to confrontation, maybe this time you sat down with the intention of stopping this. Or maybe it was simply an accident, but you’re here now. What else can you do but fight to survive?

The hellscape of your mind's torment might be familiar or maybe it’s a new flavor, but there’s something different this time. This time, there are seams; the dream around you is sewn together and you hold the scissors. Fight your way or will your way through, and you can pass between the swatches of your dreaming landscape. Maybe you find a friend or maybe you spot the retreating form of a little girl, turning a corner that isn’t there. Except you can see it now, the corridors of this place. You can follow her.

She leads you on a chase, her laugh a ricocheting titter of joy for the game. If you listen closely, however, there’s more to hear. The further you chase her, the more snatches of sound and sensation follow you as well. Grim melodies and snatches of song, searing heat, the taste of ash in your mouth, the sound of screaming that isn’t quite familiar. Your parents? Someone’s parents. Whispered voices. Snatches of words. ‘Amber.’ yelled, called, pleaded. Hide and seek was always fun.‘Ren’ a name that holds fondness, a feeling of a hundred tiny legs across skin- Stop! A command like a pick through your mind filled with anger and fear. Maybe it isn’t just your nightmares in here…

If you catch her, when you catch her, the game is over. Cornered and angry, Ava skitters up the wall, and across the ceiling to hang above you, neck at an impossible angle and clearly broken for it. “What’s wrong? Not having fun?”.

➥ Mod Notes

• GENERAL - Bryn and Ava will both be available for NPC interaction and threading. Players who want to talk to ask Luna anything should respond to the Questions section of the OOC post. The mods will provide her answers to specific questions. Characters who die in the dreams will not die in real life, but they will experience severe fatigue and pain, and may retain scarring in the waking world from whatever killed them in the nightmares. Characters who die in real life… well, they're dead. Please bear this in mind as the game does not have an easy resurrection mechanic.
  
  
• REALITY CHECK (16-25 October) - Everyone will be encouraged (but not technically required) to attend the lucid dreaming seminar. There will be a few of them over the course of three days. Characters can also pick up one of the Ludicio Eye Mask devices that will assist them in being able to enter a lucid state while dreaming. They don't always help, of course; they're mainly augmenting someone's abilities, provided they're following the guidance provided about how to enhance your lucid dreaming capabilities. Luna is clearly unaware that any non-humans are actually non-humans. She believes everyone is just really into Halloween around here.
  
  The nightmares this go around seem to be specifically focused on the Entities that your characters fear most and/or the ones they might be drawn to. You are welcome to make up a personalized hellscape for your character with anything you'd like in it. These are dreams! Go wild! Characters will fall randomly in and out of each other's dreams and personalized hellscapes. Those who have mastered lucid dreaming will be able to traverse dreams with more purpose, aiming to go to specific people's dreams or get themselves out of ones they don't want to be in. Lucid dream experts will also be able to shape the dreams that are meant for them. In their own nightmares, characters will feel a definitive pull toward one (or more over different nights) Entity and experience an intense fear of that Entity along with the desire to feed it, even if you want away from it.
  
  Feeding the Entities in the dreams and using the dreams to torment others will not necessarily lead to an Entity alignment… but it can do. Or it can set a character down a particularly destructive path in that vein. We would just ask that players remember that ADI is very anti-magic/Entities and anyone who is caught displaying powers/Entity alignment is liable to be mistrusted, watched, and potentially killed by the NPCs if they make themselves too much of an overt problem.
  
  
• KNEAD HELP (18-25 October) - Characters may find bread gravestones with their own names, the names of people they have lost, and people they fear losing, as well as names of locals who have been confirmed dead due to eating Deathbed Bread. Some gravestones will bear the names and correct dates for people who are actually dead; others will refer to people who are still alive. Gravestone engravings may include characters back home in player characters' worlds, as well as player characters that have been dropped from the game. OOCly, the appearance of a person's bread gravestone is not a reliable indication of whether that person is actually dead or going to die. ICly, characters may or may not realize this fact at players' discretion.
  
  
• NEVER SLEEP AGAIN (20-25 October) - As characters begin to gain control over their dreaming, they will find they can begin to track down Ava the Lullaby Girl. Confrontation can occur within the dream or, with enough willpower, a character can pull a piece of Ava into the waking world to try and kill her. Upon bringing her to the waking world, characters will find themselves faced with a teenaged version of the girl they were following, Ava’s actual body. She's not a little girl at all, but someone who's just entering into adulthood. Fights are likely to result in injuries ranging from mild to severe and can include death, please keep the setting’s death rules in mind for this. Threads with Ava can start in the dreams or already mid-fight in the waking world! It will take a concerted group effort to actually kill Ava. No one person will be able to do it themselves. Only a piece of her is pulled through or fought in the dreams that any person encounters.
  
  The morning after the last pieces are killed, Ava’s mangled corpse will be found on ADI’s grounds shortly after dawn, clutching a bloody, stuffed lamb in one hand.

↬ Main Navigation

Comments

[easilyamused]

"He was able to detonate the barrier when he realized the loaves weren't getting out. It probably won't be quite as easy as just slinging him over your shoulder when he objects."

He pauses, brow knitting as he studies the ovens. "--The scale is wrong. This is a small bakery, with one baker. He shouldn't need this many ovens."

He heads towards the nearest one, circling wide around Bryn, and surveys it more closely, looking for a manufacturer's name and year - or for anything visibly out of place.

[lesbeau]

Honestly, a lot of this is going too slow for Beau's taste, but her curiosity is enough to keep her looking and not yet leaping. But the fact there's nothing really there to begin the process is... odd. Sure, there's a suggestion of a starter, but not one she can actually find.

"I say we just take it from him, or take him. Because right now it doesn't matter if we're here or not. The system won't stop until it gets broken somehow." Okay, maybe she's a little impatient. "Say the word and I step in. Or I do it anyway if it looks like we might die."

[edalyn]

"Well, let's just... start with shutting this stuff down. If he doesn't or can't see us right now let's see how long that lasts."

As much as she wants to get him away form the kitchen, grabbing might start a fight sooner than seeing how much they can do before he notices. With that she heads towards one of the ovens.

She's intending to shut the oven off and look inside it, but then the 'starter' container on the counter catches her eye instead. It looks pretty empty, but she still goes to try and take a closer look inside for traces of anything interesting, and if she gets the chance she'll pick the container up and sniff at it.

cw altered mental states; suicidal ideation

[apocalypsehownpcs]

The ovens seem nondescript and ordinary from across the kitchen. Up close, though, they...feel wrong. There aren't any visible manufacturer's marks on the ovens themselves, but inside are several stone grave markers, laid flat with bread baking on top. There's some sort of mark or name chiseled into the bottom edge of each stone, difficult to make out through the glass of the oven door.

The oven wants to be opened. Methos, close to it, will see a mental image of himself opening the oven, crawling inside to lay down on those stones, and shutting the door behind him. The despair of the thought is much the same as the crushing weight of the inevitability of death that threatened to consume each of them out in the bread graveyard.

The "starter" container under Eda's examination has traces of some sort of thick, pasty substance. It has a pleasant, yeasty smell overlaying its own bone-deep feeling of loss and despair.

Bryn, finished shaping his loaves, steps around Beau without a glance in her direction to crouch in front of a cluttered shelf of empty bags for flour and other bulk ingredients. "Please, please, just one more," he mutters to himself, his face wet with tears as he casts aside one empty bag after another.

cw suicidal ideation; self-harm

[easilyamused]

"He must have uprooted an entire graveyard," Methos says, but his tone is a little distracted, a little dull. Weary, in a way that his Adam Pierson guise can't quite explain. Not that it needs to, with the amount of mind-twisting magic being thrown around.

It would be so easy to lie down, to stop, to let these foolish children fight their stupid little crusade to save a world that doesn't care, has never cared.

He reaches out with his scarred hand, and presses his palm flat against the glass on the door. Flesh sizzles and blisters, and he jerks back with a hiss, the sudden jolt of adrenaline bringing with it the metallic taste of anger at the back of his throat. The animal urge to lash out at the source of pain carries him for a few seconds, long enough to attempt to twist the dial to turn off the oven with his unburnt hand. For what little good that might do.

[lesbeau]

Alright, everything is now going to shit. She frowns towards Methos as he goes and snaps out once he pulls back. "Hey! Can you try not to fuck yourself up here, come on--"

But of course, there's also more pressing matters, such as the everything. Methos seems capable of trying to turn off the ovens, and so instead she's going to handle the guy literally three inches from her. She crouches down and presses a hand against Bryn's shoulder, trying to pull him back to face her. "Hey. Talk to me, man. What the fuck is going on here?"

[edalyn]

As someone who does most of her own cooking, Eda recognizes that the sourdough starter smells like, well, sourdough starter. But also like... the concept of sadness somehow?

Given that last bit, she wonders if there's any chance it's literal in another sense, that whatever's going on started in there.

But then again, why is she bothering to try and figure it out? Why is she bothering with any of this? She's so tired.

And then the man burns himself and it snaps her back to the moment, concerned. She puts down the container and moves back towards the ovens... which start to nag. She can guess what just happened.

"Focus on... people you care about. That sort of thing," she tells Methos. After that she starts trying to turn off some ovens herself, doing her best not to look at any of them more than she has to.

[apocalypsehownpcs]

Click goes the dial under Methos's hand, the oven falling immediately silent and dark with the half-baked bread still inside. How easy it is to snuff something out! The heat that had radiated from the oven dissipates shockingly quickly despite there being no sound of a fan to cool the oven now that it's been turned off.

Bryn turns easily enough under Beau's hand, but his eyes stare through her. "They'll be the last," he says, voice suddenly clear, as though the words were drawn from him in response to her question despite his apparent unawareness of her presence. "That's going to be the last batch."

His face crumples and he lets out a sob even as he's already wiping at his face and moving to climb to his feet. Then click - click - click go the other dials under Eda's fingers, all the ovens falling silent. Their closed doors are still hungry, but a chill sweeps through the overheated kitchen. Bryn whips his head to see what just happened, then surges to his feet with a howl of rage and terror.

"No! I'm not done yet! That's not fair, I still have more time!"

Unless he's stopped, he's immediately taking off in the direction of the ovens.

[easilyamused]

"I know what I'm doing," Methos assures - Eda, mostly, because Beau is occupied with Bryn - with a wry twist of his mouth that doesn't look even a little bit like a smile. "Pain is remarkably focusing."

And incredibly brief. He keeps his hand tucked close to his side to hide the fact that the blisters are already gone. Someone has been naughty. All things considered, he's probably in good company.

He tenses at Bryn's anguished howl, but turns only enough so that he can see the man in his peripheral vision, and not be caught off guard should he manage to get past Beau. Bracing himself against the near-certainty of a renewed onslaught of despair - and it's easy enough to call up thoughts of MacLeod, whose fault his presence in this kitchen, if not in this world, almost certainly is - Methos pulls the door of the now-cooled oven open, and crouches down to get a better look at those inscriptions on the gravestones. They have to be, if not the key to this, then at least a significant piece of the puzzle.

[lesbeau]

Well, good news for the team but bad news for Bryn- Beau is very specifically good at stopping people from getting away from her, and responds on a hair trigger. Bryn starts to run and Beau all but clotheslines him, using his momentum against him to swing him around and back between her and the cabinet. It's not meant to be painful, but it's nothing gentle.

"Hey! Come on, talk to me man, what's happening? We're here to help you!" Now she's effectively playing goalie to keep him here and maybe communicating- hopefully Methos and Eda can hold down the fort over there.

[edalyn]

Eda gives Methos an equally grim little smile and a nod. He seems alright, so she'll leave the whole thing at that.

Although soon enough she's thoroughly distracted either way. On the one hand, that certainly got a response. On the other, she wonders if it was the wrong move. She wants the chance to talk to Bryn, if they can, and doesn't want to hurt him if they don't have to. She didn't necessarily want to do anything final.

There's only a brief pause before she twists the dial of one oven back to where it was, though she stays hovering near it. Maybe she has a bargaining chip, if there's still time for that. And if he actually acknowledges them. "More time for... what? What do you need these on for? We're not here to hurt you. Can you hear me?"

cw character struggling to breathe; sudden medical emergency

[apocalypsehownpcs]

Maybe it's because he's braced for it, or maybe it's because he's robbed the oven of its power in a very literal fashion, but when Methos opens the oven there's only the slightest sad whisper in his mind. Inside, the bread is steaming but the oven is much too cool already. The stones on which the bread sits likely have some epitaph or another inscribed on their faces, but the marks he spotted earlier are on the bottom edge of each stone where they'd be hidden were the stones planted in the ground. The matches all mark: they're a blocky pair of initials spelling GM. The stones are in remarkably good condition, with no visible weathering.

Beau will find that Bryn's skin is shockingly cold to the touch. He struggles in panic against a force he can't see, heart fluttering widly as he gasps for breath. His struggles are weak and rapidly growing weaker as his eyes lose their focus and his lips turn blue; Beau will soon find herself taking more of his weight as his knees give out.

Then click goes a lone oven, heat coming back on and the smell of bread filling the room again. Bryn's erratic breathing doesn't exactly calm, but his frantic gasps seem to be getting him enough air now and the corpsish look of a moment ago has retreated. His eyes roll frantically in his head, blindly looking through and past them.

Again, though, something seems to have registered if only unconsciously. "Help me..." he chokes out, grabbing clumsily at the nearby shelves.

[easilyamused]

His hands itch for a camera, a solid one, and not the flimsy things built into their phones. He contents himself with pulling a notepad and a pencil from his pocket, and taking a quick impression of one of the gravestones.

The initials are useful. Having a copy of the appearance will allow him to compare them to something else.

"Ask him when he found out he was dying," he says, voice low, not quite looking at Bryn save out of the very corner of his eye.

[lesbeau]

"Wha-- it-- woah!" She's not a raw strength person- very much one who's strength is in being slippery and agile-- so there is a struggle as Bryn starts to go down to hook her arms under and keep him from hitting the floor like a sack of shit. She looks over her shoulder to yell back to turn an oven back on, but thankfully Eda has it handled, so she can return her attention to Bryn, and then Methos.

"He can't fucking hear us. I don't even know how my ass is holding him right now if I am at all! There's no-- fucking answers, we have to--" Ugh, what do they have to do. She looks back towards Eda at the ovens. "Can you like, yell at the oven or something, because I'm pretty sure that's part of the problem here!"

[edalyn]

When that seems to stabilize Bryn somewhat, Eda turns a second oven back on for the moment. She's curious if the number matters, or just having them on at all.

"I could try yelling at the oven," Eda muses, watching Beau and Bryn. But it seems like something registered, a bit. He asked someone for help at any rate.

"But... I think this is like out there. Where we could get through to each other it was just--just hard." And then she remembers what seemed to work for her, and a conversation with Cortana.

"Hey, you're the one who had the thing when you were a kid, right? Where no one could see you? Could you tell us about that? Or about... finding your friends again?" She's not sure if any of that will get through, but she figures it could be worth a shot.

[apocalypsehownpcs]

The gravestone is cool to the touch. Taking an impression from it exposes Methos to a repeat of the mental image of climbing atop it to lay down to die, but it's less immediate and overwhelming now.

With two ovens on again, Bryn seems stable for the moment...but he doesn't seem to be improving or likely to get back on his feet. With the process interrupted, whatever reserves of energy were keeping him moving are lost. There's still the unbaked loaves waiting to go into an oven, still half-baked loaves to be taken out and cooled, and the three of them will feel a draw (albeit a weak one) to continue that process, to see it through to its end. For now, keeping a few ovens on, keeping the loaves in them baking, seems to be keeping things in a sort of stasis.

Up close, Bryn grimaces in irritation at Beau's frustrated voice in his ear and tries ineffectually to slap her away. "No one found me," he says, suddenly angry. It fades quickly, though, despair filling his voice. "I'm going to die here."

[easilyamused]

Methos grits his teeth against the intrusive image and the draw to take up the work that has been consuming Bryn and straightens, tucking the notepad back into his pocket. The baker seems, if not precisely well in hand, not actively dying, and not likely to pose an immediate obstacle. And so he keeps his attention on the other elements of this macabre little farce, scanning the kitchen for the tools that must have been used to board up the windows.

[lesbeau]

Oh hey, wait, maybe he can hear her. Beau grimaces, but if she's good at anything it's making someone angry, so she squeezes a bit more around his middle and shakes him as much as she can.

"We're right here, idiot! You can break out of this! C'mon, fuckin'--" She almost headbutts him, and then decides that might actually knock him out again, so she just jams her head near his ear. "Let's go man! Rescue party has arrived! All you have to do is walk out the door!"

[edalyn]

Well, she doesn't seem to be getting through, but at least one of them is and that's better than they were doing before. He does seem more present when he's angry, so maybe they can work with that.

"Yeah, come on. If you're mad no one found you then don't die here. Pull yourself together out of spite if you have to."

But since Beau seems to be doing her best with Bryn, Eda goes back to poking around the kitchen, trying to spot anything weird she missed before. The draw to take the bread out to cool pulls her back towards the ovens, and she peers into the one that's open, taking a closer look at the gravestones herself.

"Find anything interesting?" she asks Methos, since he seemed to have been taking the time to copy something down.

[apocalypsehownpcs]

It will take a bit of rifling around for Methos to find any tools, but after a moment he'll come across a sloppily stowed box with a hammer and a paper bag of nails that look new--there's even a crumpled receipt from a local hardware store.

Not much else stands out about the kitchen--aside from the extra ovens and the strangely pristine gravestones inside them, it just looks like a small commercial kitchen that's been worked hard.

Bryn lets out a confused, pained grunt as Beau manhandles him, and starts struggling in earnest now. "What the fuck--" he objects, anger rising again. His gaze finally seems to focus as he looks at the ovens, then Eda, then Beau. "I have to--you turned them off?! I have to finish--I have to keep going--"

[easilyamused]

"A maker's mark," Methos replies to Eda. "Or something like it. GM, if that means anything to you aside from the car manufacturer."

Or perhaps 'Gloucester, Massachusetts', which would, if anything, be even more useless. They already know the city's a hotbed of horrors.

His search proves not entirely fruitless - not ideal, but workable - and he idly tests the weight of the hammer before returning to the open oven, flipping it in his hand to strike with the claw on the back in lieu of anything that could be easily used as a chisel before swinging it in a clean arc at the initials on the bottom of one of the gravestones.

They all match. Might as well see what happens if one doesn't any more.

heck I'm sorry this got buried in my inbox

[lesbeau]

"Of course we turned them off, you look like you're gonna fucking die!" Okay, no, she needs to stop yelling at him because that's not actually helping anything. She sucks in a breath through her nose and tries to level him out to actually look at her.

"Listen. Hey. We're here to try and save you, because right now you're working yourself to pieces and apparently if we turn all of these off you're also gonna die. So tell us what's happening so we can help you or you're gonna choke on yourself in like, five goddamn minutes."

[edalyn]

"I dunno. Grave marker? Gloucester? ...grand master?" Eda's just sort of spitballing. The last one probably isn't anything, and the first two wouldn't really tell them something new. She tries to remember if she's heard or read anything about someone with those initials here.

She's curious if damaging the gravestones will cause anything new, but then Bryn gets her attention again. At least he's talking, even if he's not happy.

"Yeah, that and they really wanted us to crawl into 'em. And they've been turning out bread that hurts people. Not loving the cursed ovens, if I'm honest."

At least, the oven was definitely making her try to crawl into it, and she's guessing that was the case in general. And that they're some kind of cursed. She considers opening more of them, but she doesn't want to set Bryn possibly dying again. For now she just tries to peer inside to make sure they're all much the same.

[apocalypsehownpcs]

It'll take Methos a few swings to chip off the engraved letters, and the blow that does it sends a crack running through the length of the stone. When that happens there's no explosion, no sudden change...but there is the feeling of relief, like a little bit of pressure has been taken off. There's no longer a draw to crawl into that particular oven and die there. The other ovens are still calling, though.

"You...you came to save me?" Bryn locks eyes with Beau and doesn't look away or past her now. It's a little awkwardly intense, actually. His hands latch onto her arms, holding on like he's afraid she'll disappear.

"I--when I run out--it's all going to end, I have to--I have to--"

He finally tears his gaze away, looking wildly at the ovens. "The last loaf..." he says in a daze.

[easilyamused]

The cracking of the stone reverberates along Methos's arm, and he draws a slightly-shaky breath, rolling his shoulders, before moving on to the next oven. He checks to make sure it's off before wrenching it open, and looks over at Eda.

"It's the grave markers," he says. "She's got him. Help me with them, or we're just going to be stuck in a loop."

Suiting action to words, he applies the hammer to the mark on this oven's stone. How many before the balance tips in their favour?

(How many before something gets angry?)