agogelogs | i think to myself

Entry tags:

i think to myself

WHO? henry & you
WHAT? dream stuff, ota
WHEN? when the hotspots spread
ANYTHING ELSE? mostly violence

[dream log 01]

You wake up in the middle of a tranquil field, muted and chilly but covered in delicate white flowers. The ground slopes gently where a small stream cuts through the grass. The sky is a greyish blue, like it might start snowing any second. Next to you, Henry is shivering, like he's sick and grumbling under his breath like he's experiencing a nightmare. A dream within a dream?

It's only when he awakes with a start that the dream seems to move forward.

"What the—?"

In the distance, there's a mechanical sound of...something. Maybe it's footsteps? Either way, it's getting closer, and she looks ready to rumble. Wait, she? Yes, she. This time, she's not alone, however. Behind her, like a nightmare train of anime and terrible boss fights (he's pretty sure he sees Pizza Batt Jr. in there somewhere), they bubble out from underground and follow her towards the both of you. It's not too bad, there's like ten of them.

"Oh bloody hell," he gets up, then looks down at you with resigned sort of sigh. "Come on, get up. They're not going to leave us alone until we kill them all."

If you want to go back to the other side, I have no choice... I've got to kill you.

[dream log 02]

You're in a house, it's about 10PM. Henry seems to be in a rush to get his things in order: gloves on, tie straight, skull pin fastened, and making sure his cross saber is fastened to his belt chain. He pats himself down, making sure he hasn't forgotten anything and then flicks his head in the direction of the door. If you make any noise above the sound of a whisper, he'll hiss at you with a finger in front of his lips.

Once the door opens though, a small, sleepy voice comes down from the top of the stairs. She's not entirely visible, as the hallway is dark and obscures her from the shoulders up. From her silhouette alone, she appears to be 6-7 years old.

"Papa?"

Henry freezes, then lets his shoulders sag a little in defeat. He gives you a brief flash of an apologetic look (or depending on how loud you were earlier, a bit of an accusatory one) and turns to her.

"Jeane, why aren't you in bed?"

She shifts a little, almost guiltily, going silent before taking a small breath to answer...

(ooc: feel free to npc her, any reply is a-ok. it's dreamverse, after all!)

[dream log 03]

A younger man, in his late teens, sits rigidly in a chair in the middle of a room. It is unmistakably Henry. His hairstyle is the same and he's dressed in a dress shirt with a tie, slacks, and dress shoes. The walls are a soft reddish pink color, easy on the eyes. You stand right across from him, a good twenty feet away.

From seemingly nowhere, a young girl wearing a white, slip-on dress possibly no older than 15 approaches Henry from the side with a small dagger in her hand. She seems very casual about it, a smile on her face, her heels clacking on the floor which is also the same color as the walls. She acknowledges your presence by glancing at you over her shoulder with a knowing look in her eyes.

She eases into his lap, straddling him while letting the blade drag up his neck. He doesn't react, his eyes only flickering down to meet her eyes and maybe catch yours if you're still watching. A thin, red line forms, and while you can't physically see it from there, dream logic dictates that you know exactly what's going on.

The longer you wait, the more lines she cuts into his skin.

[hotspot 01]

He fell asleep by the training area, sitting on a bench of sorts to take a quick break from his sets. Sweating profusely, it's a good thing he's wearing only what he needs for a work out. Unlike his sleeping dreamself, he doesn't make any noise or stir too much, though sometimes his eyebrows pinch together and he grimaces in his sleep.

Any slight noise wakes him though with a start, and his hand automatically goes down by his hip where his saber would normally be resting. Nothing. A wave of panic washes over him before immediately settling again as he realizes he's just sitting on the bench.

"Jesus..."

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Fortunately for her, Henry doesn't notice her tense at all, more interested in getting started on hacking this wall apart. With a polite bow of his head, he steps back a little, wondering what she has up her sleeve. Her profile only noted what sort of weapon she had, not exactly what it did.

"Let's have ourselves a show, then."

Once Henry's clear of her path, Shinobu angles her blade for a few seconds, until it glows with a bright lilac hue. Normally, this was a little trickier to pull off, in an actual fight, but it wasn't too hard here, when there wasn't actually anything attacking her. Once she's satisfied with the charge, she swings her blade forward twice, each swipe of her blade unleashing a crescent shaped energy beam toward the wall.

"Gentōken!" Because yes, she might have calmed down a bit on calling out all her moves, but she still had to call that one out. She was that kind of person.

Sometimes, one just needs a proper kiai or kiap to get that power to channel through! He can't fault anyone for that, really. All fighters do it. Hell, he does it. Just...not with Japanese words that make them look like anime characters.

So he'll be forever amused by her move call-out, but won't say anything as he presses a button on his saber's handle and prepares three energy orbs. They drift up and hover around his blade slowly, ready to be shot out towards their target. Her attack created quite a slash of damage, pink and white crumbling to reveal something dark and shadowy behind it, like a tunnel.

"Watch your right."

And three orbs rush past her, slamming into the wall to further open up the wall to them.

Once her sonic blasts hit the wall, Shinobu changes her position to a more casual stance with a bit of a flourish, letting the dull side of her blade rest against a shoulder. Not knowing anything at all about Henry's fighting style, she watches carefully as she witnesses his own energy-based attack. So it seemed that they both had a similar approach to long distance attacks, good to know.

Once the wall opens up to a suitable exit, she steps forward, glancing carefully at the edges of the wreckage to make sure there wasn't any hazards before walking through.

"I don't know about you, but I'm so ready to get out of this dumb room."

Once the makeshift doorway looks clear, he falls into step alongside her, pausing just to peer through the gaping hole they created. Once she steps through, he follows her, still a cautious and throwing a wary glance over his shoulder like he thinks Sylvia will suddenly get up again. Her body isn't visible from here, but he just assumes it's still there.

The room or tunnel is nearly pitch black, but he can see Shinobu clearly, which is bizarre, but makes sense in this dreamworld.

"More than you think. I've had it up to here with being stuck in lucid dreams."

There's no end in sight, but there doesn't seem to be much choice besides walking onward.

Shinobu doesn't even bother looking back herself, figuring that her senses were sharp enough to warn her, if something did happen to chase them. Sure, maybe things would be a little different in Henry's dream world, but even here, she needed to try to be cool.

Even if the tunnel is nearly purely black, blocking out just about everything that could potentially be in sight, Shinobu still finds that she prefers this for some odd reason. It was a bit of a worry that she had no idea how they were going to get the hell out of here, but Shinobu supposed that all she could do was keep going forward herself.

"I've had enough being stuck in your lucid dream, so I guess we can agree on that much." Her brows raise as she again is forced to think about how she learned far more about Henry here than she ever wanted to.

Yeah, he's definitely not comfortable with her knowing this much about him either, even if the message seemed a little cryptic. Then again, it might not come off as such to Shinobu, as someone who knows Sylvia personally.

He makes a small, disgusted noise under his breath, but a sardonic chuckle only follows as they continue to walk the tunnel. After trekking for what feels like ten minutes, he hums a little distantly. His voice has a distinct hollow quality to it.

"Do you ever get the feeling that you're just...fading away?"

At the very least, Shinobu was pretty used to making long treks in silence, so it doesn't bother her so much that all they do for that period of time is walk forward. However, when Henry speaks again, Shinobu glance back over at him with an odd expression.

"What kind of existential crisis are you going through now?" Shinobu immediately goes on guard, expecting more, stupid dream bullshit to occur. "I'm not fading away anytime too soon."

Maybe not you, but he feels like he's literally fading from this plane of existence. Fortunately, that's what he wants, and hopefully that'll mean the end to this painfully awkward dream.

"Right this moment, I mean... you don't feel it?"

He begins to look a little translucent, looking down at his own hands and looking a touch concerned. Even despite knowing that he does want to exit this dream, he has a slight underlying fear that he'll eventually fade in real life. He always says he won't, just like how Shinobu exclaims it now, but there's always that little voice in the back of your head feeding you doubts.

Deep, down inside, Shinobu figures that she'll probably eventually die in a rankings battle or in some feat of irony, someone will get revenge on her for one of the many people she's killed. However, whatever the case was, Shinobu was still convinced that she was going to go out in a blaze of glory and certainly not fade from existence.

As Henry begins to become less visible to the the eye, though, Shinobu looks over him. Could this finally be the end to the dream? If so, she was going to do everything she could to end this, once and for all.

"Sure, what's the point of living in the first place, right?" Shinobu says this casually, not actually meaning it. She's merely just trying to amplify the feeling.

He can't tell if Shinobu is disappearing with him, but he definitely feels himself fading. Her words are helping, even if he's not sure if he agrees with her sentiment or not. Amplifying that underlying notion of helplessness is Not Welcome in most cases, but in a dream like this were he's already in the process of fading? Not much he can do there.

What'll happen to Shinobu once he's gone? She'll probably wake up, too, he imagines.

"I know what you're trying to do."

It's not that he's ungrateful, but he doesn't like rolling over without a fight. It's just something coded into his DNA, and even letting a dream version of himself succumb to it is too unlikely.

"Fade or not...not knowing the point isn't the problem. It's knowing the point and feeling powerless to fight it."

And she'll soon feel his presence one moment and then absolutely nothing the next.

Shinobu remains impassive as Henry easily reads into what she's doing. She wasn't certain if undermining him was actually going to work, but she's not all that bothered that she was apparently pretty easy to read during this. However, during his last statement, she frowns and furrows her brow, actually disagreeing pretty heavily with what he was saying. She knew better than to try to argue it, in this dream space, though. Because for one, it was probably pointless anyway, and two, it might prolong this trip into his space and she really didn't want it.

It proved to be the right decision as he soon fades from this world, effectively tearing it apart. As everything eventually crumples into darkness, Shinobu wakes up with a jot and an audible gasp. Not knowing exactly how this worked, exactly, she looks to her side to see if Henry is also nearby.

Henry is a propped up against a wall, right around the corner from where Shinobu is laying. Not too far away, but he probably wouldn't have seen her right before sleep overtook him.

She'll wake up before he does, or at least he takes a little longer in stirring awake. The dream apparently took a bit of a toll on him, despite his usual ability to bounce back after a traumatic stumble into his subconscious. He seems to be struggling, similar to how she probably remembered seeing him for the first time.

Taking a minute or two to allow her thoughts to gather, Shinobu soon picks herself up to her feet, cautiously going through the corridor looking for the person she can straight up sense is nearby. Of course, she doesn't know exactly where, but it was just a feeling kind of developed through her years as an assassin.

Eventually, though, she comes across Henry's sleeping body. She can tell that he's struggling and while she considers just walking away, she also figures that there's a chance that other people might just sucked into the weird display of Henry's kinks. For once, she'll take the position of a hero here.

However, that doesn't mean she'll do it gently. With a sigh, she nudges him a little with her COST issued boot.

"Hey. Time to wake up, sleeping beauty."

Jostled awake by the nudge, he gasps and startles himself awake. There's a sheen of sweat on his brow, but it's entirely possible that's due to the hot spot rather than the dream itself. He stares at her for a moment before quickly picking himself up and saying nothing. This is...incredibly awkward.

"Let's...say we never speak of this again, shall we?"

Rolling her eyes as Henry finally jostles awake, she shakes her head a little in dismay. "If I could forget everything I just saw I totally would."

Because really, while she didn't know a whole lot about Henry before, now she knew way more than she ever wanted to. Shinobu didn't have any real use to blabbing about anything she just saw. However, this was still going to be exploiting as some damned good material to taunt at.

"You better be grateful I saved you from your weird fetishes. Or yourself, I guess."

He makes a disgusted noise in the back of his throat, more than ready to turn away from the conversation when he can manage to get the last word in before he does. There's a good chance she'll use this against him in some petty trivial way, but perhaps there's little blessings knowing this could've been worse.

It could've been Travis.

"Thank you," he says with a hint of sarcasm. A part of him wants to try to fight her on this, that they're mostly certainly not fetish dreams (maybe a lie) but he figures that's just digging the hole deeper the more he fights.

"Would've been just fine as it was just a dream, but your concern was and is greatly appreciated."

The sarcasm subsides, however. He's back to his neutral expression, pulling it all together carefully as he always does after a harrowing or distressing situation.

"You're welcome," Shinobu responds without missing a single beat. She knows he's being sarcastic, but she couldn't honestly give a fuck about that. It was all worth it just to have some kind of material to even slightly annoy him with.

In spite of the weird shit she just saw in Henry's dream, though, Shinobu can't help but smirk a bit from the entire situation. It was a little funny, deep down inside, but she wasn't the type to really show a whole lot of amusement.

"Yeah, yeah, you can owe me later." She waves her hand dismissively a little, pretending he was entirely genuine about the comment. "But for now? I'm so out of here before you fall asleep again."

At least, if anything, her banter is top-notch. It's of a different flavor of course, that dismissive teenage nonchalance, but still clever and easy to work with. This makes it hard for him to actually stay upset to any extent.

"Yeah, I'm bookin' it myself. Don't want to get caught up in that nightmare again."

He suppresses a visible shudder then turns to walk in the other direction. There might be an invisible bit of gratitude in there, since he figures she'd at least be true enough to her word not to say anything about it to anyone.

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i think to myself

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