May Event - All Too Familiar

[pumpkinhollow]

May Event - All Too Familiar

Content Warnings: Walking dead, character deaths, potential for gore | Special Thanks to Meghan and Kalineh

It was a fine spring day when mysterious letters began cropping up all over Pumpkin Hollow. Letters whose apparent senders do not remember writing them, whose recipients or discoverers were harmed by reading them. Eventually these mysteries, though still unsolved, come to a quiet halt as stealthily as they began, but not before a mail carrier in a cowboy hat trots out to Elsie’s tree with a letter in hand, unmarked aside from being addressed to her.

She gleefully rips open that letter, hoping it's another message from her father. It isn't and, at first, she's crushed. But only until she starts to actually read it.

Elsie,

River la Croix has been hiding something in her forge for a while now. It is called the Book of the Dead. In its pages are hundreds of spells from across time and space with the power to give life to those no longer with us.

Your father is doing his best to revive your mother. But this island’s barrier is blocking his will, resisting his magic. I can no longer watch you suffer in solitude when a solution exists. All you have to do is decipher the text, and its powers are yours. Your mother will be returned to you.

River does not want to part with it. She will become suspicious of you if you ask, and it will become harder to acquire it. You will have to take it without her notice by levitating it out of her forge. She, like many others, is fearful of the Book’s power. This fear isn’t entirely unwarranted for them, but for you, your connection to the Feywilds’ magic will be enough to grant you access to that otherworldly power.

Good luck, and all my love to your dear mother when she returns.

Fond regards,
A friend

Could this be it? Could this be the miracle she's been waiting for? Hope swells painfully in her chest as she clutches the note close. She mustn't celebrate too early. She still needs to get the book. At least her mysterious friend has already told her where to find it. Her jaw sets in a look of determination, and she speeds away into the dusk.

It doesn't take long to reach the forge. River has defended it well, but Elsie slips into her own shadow and sneaks beneath the door without so much as a whisper of sound. Only her hand extends from the puddle of shadow on the floor inside, like a disembodied arm hovering before the flames. Mustering her will, she reaches out to the ancient book and commands the winds to lift it. Sweat beads her shadowy brow while she concentrates, the flames flicker and dance around the slowly levitating book. Just a little more, a little more… There!

It's heavy in her hand, and remarkably cool to the touch despite having been pulled from the fire. She retracts her arm and the book back into her shadow and slips out the way she came. Her heart thumps in her chest as she races back to the safety of her tree. To her mother, who will soon be able to wrap flesh and blood arms around her like she once did. All that's left now is to read. Her friends have been teaching her how. Her mother will be so proud of her.

Carefully now, she opens the book, feeling her skin crawl as a sudden unease grips her very core. No, she will not be deterred. The language is unlike any she's ever seen. The letters, if indeed they can be called that, feel jagged and painful to her mind. Still, she will Not Give Up. She screws her eyes shut, thinks of her mother, and holds tight to her desperate hope to be reunited.

When her eyes reopen to behold the page before her, understanding strikes like lightning. Suddenly, she knows she can speak the words. As they escape her mouth, an unknown magic swells into the space around her, then beyond her. The ground shakes. The air turns foul. And as the trinkets in Elsie’s tree chime together in the unsettling breeze, ringing out with notes more sour than usual, it quickly becomes clear that the advice she received was not from any friend.

The forms of people begin to pry themselves loose from the ground all over town, as if emerging from water, leaving the ground unbroken as they lift themselves out of the ground. They bear horrid injuries, shambling along grotesquely, telling a story of death. However, these are not skeletons from the graveyard, housing the souls of long-dead locals. These are things of flesh and blood, however exposed they might be, wearing newer faces.

Much newer.

Since the barrier went up, many people have died, only to have their bodies vanish and replaced by a new one. Those bodies now walk the town, seeking to unleash a wrath brought on by the corrupted magic of the Necronomicon. Anyone who has died inside the barrier will have a violent, undead copy of themself representing each death wandering the island looking to increase their ranks. Which means that there will be many, many, many Yoricks.

Destroyed copies will remain destroyed for the standard overnight period of any other person. But there are too many of them to defeat this way, and their destruction is impermanent. Thankfully, help is on the way!

In the midst of the undead and their attack on the citizens of Pumpkin Hollow, tiny glimmers of hope appear in the form of folded paper birds. The little gold birds flit from fighter to fighter, small whispers promising that if enough enemies can be felled then the High Priestess can intervene. The necessary number is unknown, but if a bird alights upon someone, they will feel their weariness vanish for a short time, and perhaps, should she feel like it, they may receive a temporary boon to use against the undead.

Eventually the High Priestess will show herself, making good on the promises of the little birds. With a smile, her magic will wrap around the remaining undead, returning them to the unseen graves and binding them into Death once more, leaving the living to pick up the pieces.

Comments

Agent Carolina | Red vs. Blue | Closed + Wildcard

[cyansoldier]

'You're a real hero, Carolina.'

_{CW: Gore throughout.}

She wakes to the sound of feet claving earth and becomes suddenly estranged from the room around her. Paint-chipped, fisted walls and sheets strewn on floor melt away into a darkest hour, one that looms imperceptibly in the atmosphere, and Catherine Church– or Carolina, as most know her– snaps into focus.

This is war. She feels its hearty beat. Death’s breath wafting across her yard. In through her windows, and although the drumming of innumerable undead feet have not yet reached her property, she knows they’re coming. This is war. This is precisely what she’d been made for.

Carolina steps into panic with assertion. She pockets her sending stone. Slips on her boots. Throws her entire collection of ammunition into a backpack (stuffs her pockets full, too), grabs her choices of firearm and makes for the door. One is a large colt rifle. A heavy hitter. The other is a handgun appropriate to the time period. Neither satisfies her, nor will they do the job as well as she’d like. They’re secondary to herself. She is the weapon. Her quads and calves flex in anticipation of being put to proper use. Carolina was made for this. This is war.

I’m tingling, tingling, tingling | CLOSED to Gerry Keay

One shot– two shot– three– shoulder absorbing the shock of fire and metal like it were her own appendage. Tissue and fetid blood paint Carolina’s face. She moves on. This is war. No time to think, just act act act. But Carolina is thinking. Her mind is a well-oiled locomotive barreling forward on its fixed path to its fixed destination.

Gerry.

She sets out to find him first, anxieties cinching some deep channel inside her stomach. Her body explodes in a combination of muscle-movement and firing synapses, propelling her through the throng. She can only hope her scrawny friend is able to handle himself as adequately as he dances.

One shot. Reload. Gunpowder on her fingertips. Smoke in her throat. Bone and muscle erupt in a rotted cacophony. She doesn’t recognize any of these people. These things. Suppose it’s better that way.

She skids to a stop at his door and raps hard.

Open up… Open up.

Bodysnatcher | CLOSED to CT

Help is needed elsewhere– everywhere– and although it grates on her nerves, Carolina parts with Gerry to make herself useful.

The question now; where to go first?

She starts for the residential areas. Individuals who hole themselves up in their homes will find they’re inevitably trapped, and with no place to go they’ll leap senselessly out through their windows or succumb to the dirty, festering jaws of their neighbors. One shot– two shot– a hand on her shoulder.

Carolina turns, roundhouse kicks an undead in its temple. The force of her heel combined with its porous, rotten skull sends it collapsing inward onto itself. Brainmatter wets her shoe. She feels fantastic. This is war.

It's only fitting, then, that war presents her with a likely enemy.

Two shots. Two bodies collapse. Reload. Black cakes under her nails. Between her fingers. A groan behind her. Not baritone, like the man whose mess smashes into her shoe soles, but lighter—

Carolina turns. Her stomach drops into her feet.

There, CT greets her. Pale brown skin has turned gray, blood letted from a gash across her throat. Where soft fat forms curves and muscle, she now appears almost… deflated. An animal hung and drained. Dead eyes fix onto her. Jaw parts to spill out putrid black liquid.

And in a burst of speed, CT is on her. Sends her colt rifle flying out of her hands.

A low flying panic attack | CLOSED to Crichton

Crichton finds her in no fit state to fight, sitting on hands and knees above CT’s dead-undead corpse, neck-deep in the horror of having killed her twice. Once in the belly of a bunker, joined by Agent Texas who sent her two tomahawks flying, and now.

She can’t move.

Her rifle is kicked far away, her handgun stowed in her backpack.

Heavy footsteps fall around her. Jaws part. Nails scrape at the air in her direction, gaining, gaining, each step bringing her closer to death, but she can. Not. Move.

Oh, Reckoner / Take me with ya | CLOSED to Valdis

The farmlands. It seems to her like the most sensible place to lead panicked townsfolk. Far from the crux of action, where they can take shelter in the yawning farmhouses there. She'll post herself up outside, a turret-woman taking out undead with exact precision, ensuring that no strays cross over the unmarked barrier. This is what she was made for. A hunter, soldier, weapon.

And so, so tired.

But just when fatigue seems imminent– when she’s certain she’ll fall to her knees and succumb to the ever-active hoard before she can enact her plan– a paper bird touches down against her shoulder. A woman’s whisper on a rotten wind. Do not stop.

She hadn’t planned on it.

Nor does she plan to run face-first into the snout of a wolf larger than she’s ever seen. It appears like a black shadow in front of her, its neck fur plumed out, its tail high.

Carolina’s pupils expand. She stumbles, reaches for her gun, hot animal breath wafting against her face.

“You’ve got to be kidding me–”

A monster I’d like to know | CLOSED to Nimona

Fields sprawl with intruding bodies– more than Carolina can count. It’d take a miracle to see that Baker Ranch goes untouched; that its inhabitants– those who cannot or will not fight– won’t be ripped to pieces between the teeth of the undead. Yes, a miracle. A strength she isn’t capable of, no matter how many golden birds touch down upon her. No, what she needs is backup.

And by god she’s just found it.

“Hey, you! Pink! We need you over here!”

Wildcard:
Have something else in mind? Hit me!

Oh Reckoner

[redlightgreenlight]

Valdis didn't expect to stumble upon Carolina here, indeed she's been out searching for herself to no avail. She takes a step back as Carolina reaches for her gun, the last thing she needs is to be shot and waste energy healing at a time like this.

Stand down.

Her recognizable voice sounds in the woman's head.

[cyansoldier]

It takes her a minute, but...

"Valdis?"

Carolina lowers her gun. "Okay— standing down. ...Wow. You really know how to turn a look."

No time for jokes, not even the dry kind. Not when there's an armada of Dead surrounding them. Carolina cocks her gun, looking left and right. "I'm not one of your enforcers, but— I want to help."

[redlightgreenlight]

Valdis smiles a wolfish smile. her Hound isn't something she tries to hide anymore, but it's always fun to surprise people with it.

Luckily, yes. Though I suspect there is another me running around and I have no desire to face her at this moment.

She drops to her belly without hesitation.

If you want to help, then get on, we'll be faster if you ride.

Hopefully the woman isn't a newbie, but even if she is, Valdis is swift and agile enough to not let her fall.

[cyansoldier]

A grimace rolling down her shoulders. If her corpse is anything like she's seeing her now— armed with teeth and claws and a bite-force that parts men in two— she doesn't envy Valdis in the slightest, nor anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves clamped between undead jaws.

She hesitates for a moment, then grabs onto thick black scruff and throws herself over Valdis's back. Slots four hefty bullet's into her rifle chamber once she's steadied herself.

The wolf's ribs inflate and compress beneath her, power in each tremendous breath.

"What's the plan, ma'am?"

[redlightgreenlight]

Valdis waits until she feels that Carolina is secure before rising. The weight on her back isn't unfamiliar, she's carried others before, but like this...into war, well, it would be the first time she's done it like this.

The plan is to kill as many as possible. That's what the paper birds told me and for some reason I believe we can trust what they say. Just don't shoot me in the head by accident, we don't need two of me wreaking havoc.

She starts at a walk, then rolls into a ground covering trot, testing the woman's balance.

bodysnatcher

[liesdontfindyou]

It's a death that the CT still out there, living, body renewed, has tried very hard to pretend didn't bother her. Bleeding out, again. Slow and painful and aware of every moment, trying her damnedest to at least remember what she was seeing as it happened. A chance taken that she doesn't regret, but one that still lingers at at the back of her mind, sometimes.

This CT doesn't care about any of that. This CT doesn't care about much at all, emptied out as much of soul as of blood and heat. There's only single-minded violence and an utter disregard for her own 'life' in the pursuit of it.

Cold, dead fingers dig and claw at Carolina's arm where she grabs and wrenches it, throwing the weapon in her grip to the ground. She does not let go.

[cyansoldier]

The claws are human, of course— it's Connie, Jesus, it's Connie— but become inhuman in their animal-tearing through what clothes Carolina wears. Thin linen sleeves. Nothing like the specialized armor that'd become a second skin to them. Her. It. She can't think how to properly differentiate this corpse between the CT she knows is alive somewhere, probably doing the exact same thing she's doing now. Can't think much of anything apart from: not again.

In her resoluteness, she refuses to die. And by refusing to die, she must kill CT a second time.

Carolina's back hits the ground, topped by the corpse who still holds firmly onto her forearm. They struggle like this, Carolina's hand splayed across her sternum, pushing her away while she, exercising inhuman strength, attempts to maim her face with nails and teeth, until she's able to tuck her knee in and kick the corpse away in one swift movement.

The gun.

She lunges for it.

[liesdontfindyou]

Her body hits the ground and rolls once before it hits the ground like a sack, dead weight even as it's manipulated by forces unseen. With no wind to be ripped from its lungs there is no moment of gasping for breath and clutching her stomach as she tries to inhale, to flood her system with oxygen. There is only a sickening gurgle and sudden movement, body scrambling on hands and knees to spring once more toward Carolina, putting itself between her and the weapon she needs.

(If your enemy has a weapon, your quickest route to victory is to make sure they stop having it. Some tactics are ingrained.)

[cyansoldier]

There's no expertise to the corpse's movement. It falls dumbly, rolls itself onto hands and knees like some smaller, more ravenous thing incased in dragging weight is trying to break itself out. The parasitic infection, life, or flux, maybe, affixes onto moldered nerves and draws CT to standing. It's uncanny. Wrong.

Clumsy and uncoordinated, too. She can use that.

(Ignore the wrongness. Ignore how like a violation it feels to be fighting her. It. Familiar body taken as host to fulfill a singular, violent purpose. A thief. Not her. Wrong for CT to move without grace. Wrong to see her unthinking.)

Carolina dives into a low roll, springs on CT's right and delivers two hard kicks to her torso. Her heel hits dead flesh like a sandbag. She shutters amidst her momentum. Wrong.

[liesdontfindyou]

Something beneath the flesh cracks and splinters, ribs unable to withstand the full force of Carolina's kicks—and yet what do broken ribs mean to something like this? They've all fought through broken bones even in the field, even when they can feel the pain, even when it's hard to breathe. And this CT, dead and empty, it cares no more about pain than it does about air.

It stumbles, barely catches itself, but it does not go down again and it does not clear Carolina's path to her firearm. It throws a kick of its own, lacking her characteristic grace but throwing all of its strength behind it, aimed at Carolina's head.

Tingling, tingling

[skeletonkeay]

"What's the password?"

The voice is sharp with stress but undeniably his. Whatever he's talking about, however, is unclear. If he established any kind of password, it wasn't with Carolina.

[cyansoldier]

"Wh— It's Carolina, you idiot. Open the door!"

Punctuated by her gunstock striking solidly— one, two, three— against wood.

[skeletonkeay]

"That's the password! Well done!" Gerry yanks the door open sharply, leaving just enough room for her. "C'mon in."

[cyansoldier]

Carolina slides through the door and slams it closed behind her. Immediately she's on him, closing the gap in one long stride to bat her fist against his shoulder. Not hard, but not particular soft, either. The Catherine Church equivalent to a reunion kiss.

"You think you're funny? Things are falling apart out there and you're concerned with a password?"

Alert eyes scan Gerry for damage. Nothing, not yet.

"People around town are establishing safe-zones. You should go."

[skeletonkeay]

Gerry rolls his eyes. "There wasn't actually a damn password. I had to make sure you weren't one of the fakes. They seem to be only people who've died since getting here but I'm not sure yet."

His nose wrinkles. "You want me to go to to a safehouse? Me? The Monster Manual with all-seeing eyes? Fuck that, I'm an asset. I'm going with you."

a monster i'd like to know

[yournewsidekick]

"Not what I'm called!" yells Nimona, but whatever, she lets Purple get away with it all the time, and more arguing now means fewer skulls smashed later. She zips over lightning-quick -- kinda literally, with the way she blurs into a streak of pink light en route from one side of the ranch to the other -- and pops next to Carolina as a kangaroo, rearing back to kick a zombie square in the chest before laying out another one with a haymaker of a left hook.

"WOO! Yeah! Who wants some?!"

[cyansoldier]

"What are you called, then?" Carolina hollers over the wet, rattling growl of the undead accosting her— some man she doesn't recognize, nor does she care to. She rears back her gunstock and jams it into the thing's mouth, splitting the jaw at its hinge and sending teeth scattering like dominos. A kick to the groin sends it staggering backward, out of her way.

Okay, this pink kangaroo's energy is kind of infectious. She feels her adrenaline renewed. Maybe that's just the residual shock of teaming up with a talking animal. Person? Animal-person?

A mangled arm swings at her. She ducks, rolls, shoves the corpse in her pink teammate's direction like passing a kickball. "Heads up!"

[yournewsidekick]

"I'm Nimona! Who're you?"

Without missing a beat, Nimona catches the zombie, pummeling it like a punching bag so fast that her little kangaroo fists blur. With another whoop, she finishes by lunging straight at it -- and changing to a shark mid-jump, snapping her jaws shut on its entire upper torso.

"Plegh! Zombie mouth," she says, spitting a couple of over-dramatic ptooey-ptooeys as the now half-a-zombie collapses. Immediately brightening, "Oooh, dibs on the blonde one!"

And she dives straight into the ground to charge at the zombie with only her fin sticking up through the dirt.

[cyansoldier]

"Carolina!" her voice cuts through the din. Dead weight drags itself on gutted belly across the grass, and she almost pities it for how cumbersome it looks. How invested it is in sinking fetid claws into her ankles, oblivious to its own fool's errand. She kicks upward, breaking its softened nasal cartilage. Old blood sprays in an arch. She catches it by the shoulders and crashes her knee into its face to finish the job, like stomping an old pumpkin.

The whrrr of fin splicing dirt seizes Carolina's attention. She whirls around, spots the halved remains of the Great Pink's leftovers and awes at it.

"That's quite the fighting style. Surf and turf, I like it."

cw: dismemberment

[yournewsidekick]

Oh, Carolina, just you wait. As soon as Sharkmona reaches the feet of the zombie, she pops out of the dirt like the most terrifying groundhog in existence and chews her way right up the zombie's whole body. Think woodchipper. Think industrial cross-cut shredder. Just with so much more blood. The zombie howls, but there's no escaping those buzzsaw teeth.

At the very top, instead of falling back to the ground, she shifts into a hawk and lets out an earsplitting belch. "Sky, too!" she says cheerfully. "Heads up!"

She banks around Carolina to aim for a zombie right behind and to the left, talons aimed for the eyes.

cw: zombie gore/decapitation

[ss_buttcrack]

"Carolina!" Here comes the savior she least wants.

He sprints to reach her before the next wave of undead does. As his eyes skate over the corpse at her knees, his lips pull into a tight frown. Frell... it had to be CT. He can't exactly fault Carolina for coming unglued, but now is really not the time.

"Come on, we gotta go." He jams his hand under her armpit in a bid to try hauling her up to her feet, while also aiming his pistol one-handed at the nearest zombie head and blowing it clean off. "Unless you want to join them."

[cyansoldier]

Get up.

Get up.

_{Come on.}

It's like her head's been forced underwater. Crichton's voice hits her ears as unintelligible liquid babel and is decimated by the blood roaring there. For all she knows, he's another walking corpse. For all she knows, the hand under her arm lifts her swiftly and mercilessly to meet death.

_{Unless you want to join them.}

The gunshot rattles her skull, clears oppressive noise. She sets herself back into motion.

"My rifle—" quiet at first. Then, an urgent bark. "My rifle!"

Carolina breaks away and lunges for it.

"Cover me!"

[ss_buttcrack]

"What's it look like I'm doing?"

He is, in fact, popping the zombies at her heels like he's winning first prize in a carnival shooting gallery. He doesn't miss once. They can't afford to waste the ammunition when only head shots can do any meaningful damage.

"We need higher ground. There's too many!"

[cyansoldier]

Carolina grips her rifle stock in one hand and shakes out the other in a quick flutter of fingers. Think, damnit. She sets her path for the market; a hub of activity, no doubt, but she's got an idea.

Behind them, the raucous of zombie foot traffic.

"We'll climb the market stalls, make it to a roof. It's our best option." Only option.