darkinferno | [narrations + overflow]

[Fog/nightmare logs.]

[[continued from here!]]

He shrugs before frowning, reaching into his pocket for his phone. "Well, we're still in the city, at least," he says, showing her that he still has phone service. "Maybe we should see about getting digital scans of those blueprints we found of the building. They'd come in handy right about now."

But there's little they can do at the moment except for continue down the hallway, their footsteps echoing in the eerily-silent corridor.

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[This is either going to be the stupidest thing he's ever done or one of the coolest, Dante really isn't sure which. Probably the stupidest, but his life has become strange enough already that really, there are worse ways to get hurt...

Dante gives a sharp nod, climbing onto the bike behind him. He still hasn't dismissed his Keyblade yet, and he keeps it safely away from Cloud, angled toward the ground for now.]

All you've gotta do is drive right beside it. I'll lean out and-- [He gestures with the blade, demonstrating a horizontal slice] --the bike and the Keyblade will do all the work for us.

Freya also frowns as she walks, keeping her eyes forward. "I thought someone took pictures of 'em. Figured that'd be good enough. Guess I can get a copy to Pen and she can do a real scan of the things sometime.

This was an impressive hallway. It must be carrying them out of the range of the building topside. How did a tunnel like this not interfere with any of the utilities?

"Pictures can only zoom in so far before they get blurry. If we scan them, that won't be as much of an issue."

Yeah, they're definitely outside of Retrospec's footprint now. "Wonder if this tunnel leads to one of those other buildings on the map?" he murmurs, trying to gauge how far they've come. He's not the best at judging distances, so he can't be positive, but when the white walls begin to give way to stone, the lights going from buzzy fluorescent to single incandescent bulbs hanging every so often, it's hard to think they're still in the same place they started out.

"What is this place...?"

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Sounds like a plan to me. Do you have any way of getting up there to hit it?

[He can certainly use his skills to get up to the giant's head, but if Ardyn's got some sort of plan, he doesn't want to rush in and spoil that. So instead he takes quick aim before hurling his sword at it, watching it spin end over end toward the daemon's head.]

[It better be the coolest, because the stupidest implies that they're going to end up snake food. That or fall and break something very important.

He waits for Dante to hop on, then revs the engine of his bike a little, trying to mentally prep himself for this insanity.]

Right. The... "Keyblade".

[He's not sure where he would've gotten such a strange-looking weapon, but there's no time for questions now. Cloud pushes his visor down, eyes narrowed at the snake. It's trying to coil upwards again, as if preparing for a strike, and his mind tells him to get going right now, before riding next to the snake becomes improbable.]

Hold on!

[In off they go, tearing up rubber on the way. Cloud accelerates quickly, and they're at the tail of the snake right now; he eases into a turn, trying to follow the creature's body.]

[He feels like he should have a way to, but he can't think why. What was it? How can he make his way up there?

He watches as the sword flies towards the giant's head, making a loud clanking noise as it connects. The creature takes a step back, the only sign of its recoiling. And then it looks as if it's going to lift its sword up and over its head, likely to slam it back down on the ground in their direction.

Well. That was one way, perhaps.]

Running up the sword too dangerous of a plan, you think?

[For some reason, he says it with a grin . He can't say why -- blame it on the adrenaline.]

Edited 2017-10-20 20:06 (UTC)

Freya's step slows by a fraction, and her bearing adopts something more cautious.

"You really that surprised?" Her tone seems just as casual, at least. "This seems about the right level of weird. Don't let your guard down."

The incandescent bulbs, honestly, weren't great. Freya could tell the path was starting to split ahead, but she couldn't see much more than that. "Got a preference?" She asked, gesturing vaguely to the tunnels.

[It can absolutely be both!

As Cloud takes off, Dante's holding on tight, but as he gets used to the feeling of acceleration he loosens his grip a little bit so that he can lean out to the side, sword at the ready... and lashes out as they reach the snake, the blade ripping into its body with no resistance at all. As Cloud directs the bike into their turn, Dante comes back a little bit so that his lean won't completely wreck their balance, but keeps the "teeth" of the Keyblade well within the snake's body.]

All right!

[The Keyblade comes spiraling back to him like a boomerang, and Dante plucks it out of the air with a practiced ease before giving Ardyn an incredulous glance. That's the sort of bad idea that would usually come from him, not the prof!

(The key phrase here: that Dante usually would have been the one to come up with this idea. So if you think he's about to shut it down...)

The incredulous glance only lasts a moment before Dante's grinning back.]

I won't tell Grell if you won't.

[In his dream Ardyn is the badass. It's him.]

"A little bit," Dante admits. "The most we've ever gotten before this was Maurice's 'office,' if you want to call it that. Weird things happen all the time, but they're usually pretty quiet on giving us info on the company itself or letting us explore."

He's definitely on his guard though, even as they continue and nothing happens. It's Retrospec; the moment they think they're safe is when something will happen.

Dante doesn't answer at first when Freya asks if he's got a presence. Instead, once they get to the junction, he looks down each path, trying to tap into these new powers to see if he can tell which one is more promising. "They both keep branching out," he says after a moment, glancing back to her. "No doors, just more paths. It's like some sort of maze."

Freya glances curiously over, then she shrugs. "Right, then."

Which she clearly means not in the directional sense, as she sticks out the Halligan bar in her left hand until it's touching the wall and proceeds down the left-most tunnel, dragging the tool along the way.

"Can't see all that well down here. I'm gonna be counting on you."

[Amazingly, it seems to have worked, because the snake is recoiling up with a hiss of pain. It twists its body, wound seeping, then tries to slam its fangs down into Cloud's motorcycle.]

Watch out!

[It's glad that Dante is leaning in one direction over the other, because Cloud needs his balance to practically careen the motorcycle between two massive fangs that are piercing into asphalt.

He can't believe he's doing this. His body is working on auto-pilot at this point, his heart racing. What the hell do they do now?]

Gonna loop back around! See if you can get it again! [Guess he's already decided for them.]

[Despite himself, he lets out a “ha!” at that. (Let’s be real, Grell would probably be very impressed, either way.)]

In that case, watch your head again!

[He dodges out of the way as the sword slams into the ground again, shaking the entirety of the throne room. The corpses above laugh, but he can’t hear it any longer over the sound of blood coursing through this body, his heart rushing. This is it, then, and via instinct he jumps up and lands on the edge of the blade — still wide enough for a grown man to run across — and rushes across up towards its arm, Ardyn’s own sword gleaming and ready to rend the flesh of a daemon.]

Join me!

When Dante wakes up inside the warehouse, arms and legs bound, it takes him a little while to realize what's happening. With all the nightmares he's had so far this month and how many other people's dreams he's ended up in, it takes a few minutes to realize that this isn't a dream, that this isn't some bastardization of the Family Feud nightmare that he's ended up in. It takes minutes more for him to remember what the last thing he'd seen before passing out was, to realize that Malik of all people had been able to get the jump on him and knock him out--Malik! He'd be offended, if not for the fact that he's too worried about that darkness he'd sensed in the other boy to care.

He's bound hand and foot and then again to one of the pillars, unable to summon his Keyblade even if he'd tried and unable to see to cut himself free if he could. So Dante waits, waits until Malik finally comes back.

When he does he's got others with him: James, Cleo, Ayano, another girl he doesn't know, Anya... Dante's startled to find out that there was another guy in the warehouse already, the two of them kept apart so that they couldn't scheme, but here and now they're brought together to balance each other out, counterweights in the first of many death traps Malik will create. He recognizes the irony in Malik's choice to suspend him upside down, but as the hours roll on and the blood rushes and settles in his head, he swears he'd do it again if he had the opportunity.

It only gets worse from there: screams echo through the warehouse, screams and whimpers and people yelling and cursing. Dante tries to get Malik's attention, to distract him from some of his other victims, but it doesn't work when Malik knows Dante's at his mercy, and all he can do sometimes is squeeze his eyes shut, heart hurting as he listens to the crying and begging for it to stop. Even he's not immune to it: when Malik comes for him, he can't keep his silence and Dante screams as his hands are crushed, a sob wrenching itself from his throat in spite of how hard he tries not to let it out. But he's hurt, goddammit; his entire body lights up with pain the moment he even tries to twitch a finger, and Dante knows that any "accidental" brushes against him or his hands are entirely intentional on Malik's part, born out of a sick desire to hear him scream again. "Stop," he's reduced to pleading, hating it even as the words come out of his mouth. "Please, just stop--"

But the words I give up never pass his lips, no matter how many times they cross his mind.

It's both the best and the worst part of it all, that he doesn't get any of those memories from Retrospec while he dangles, three feet up from the floor. On the one hand, Dante's glad: he doesn't want these memories, and he doesn't need any more of them popping up now. But on the other... on the other is a truth he's refused to admit to himself so far, how perhaps if his other self had gone through something like this... it might give him an insight on how to handle this, what to do. For the first time Dante realizes how much his other self's experiences guide his steps, and he hates himself for relying on that experience so much, and yet he can't (won't) vow to stop.

But for this, he's alone.

By the time the police raid the warehouse, Dante's doing good just to still be breathing. He's out of it, struggling to keep his eyes open and to focus on voices, but he's awake as they drop him down to the floor, cutting the duct tape away, trying to at least make him comfortable as they wait for the EMTs to get inside. He's aware of voices--Togusa, Tatsuo, Fynn, Derek--and screaming--more screaming? Why is there more screaming? It should be over now; they've been rescued, there should be no more... no more of any of this.

They load him onto a stretcher for transport to the hospital. And when someone tells him that it's okay, he's safe, that he can rest... Dante finally sleeps.

(The hospital might be a different story, with blood transfusions, a surgery to place a tube for where Malik's stab with Ari's dagger had glanced off his sternum and into a lung, and another one to at least begin the long process of rebuilding his hands... but for now, Dante sleeps.)

Dante doesn't hesitate to follow her into that leftmost tunnel, keeping both his eyes and his senses sharp for anything out of the ordinary. "The other me could see even in the deepest darkness," he says by way of explanation. "When Retrospec sent me a blindfold, it tipped me off that maybe I could too."

A moment later he's coming to a stop, putting an arm out to stop Freya as well. "Hang on. There's something pretty big down that way. Can you see its eyes?"

Twin pairs of eyes, staring red at them out of the shadows.

[Dante doesn't even hesitate--as Cloud swerves, he draws back and slashes hard, the blade cutting straight through one of the fangs. They're through too quickly for him to get the other one, but it's just as well with how the snake rears back and up.

Luckily, Cloud seems to be getting the hang of going with the flow, and the two of them are setting up for another approach. Dante readies his blade again, looking up at their enemy.]

Got it! Whenever you're ready!

[Really, he doesn't need to run up the sword. He could just flowmotion from the ground to the rock pile, kick off the wall, and ride that wave all the way up to the giant's head.

But where's the fun in that?

With a laugh, Dante jumps up to the sword, following Ardyn up the blade's edge and arm.]

Together?

[Cloud's ready to make another go at it, but this time won't be quite as simple. The snake might be big and monstrous, but it isn't stupid. It senses a pattern, and it's angry; while the bike rushes towards its tail once more, so that Dante might cut into it, the serpent lashes its tail out, hard. It's like a whip, and it slams right into Cloud's bike, causing him to go careening off of it, hitting pavement and rolling away with the force.]

Shit-!

[He manages, before he actually hits the ground. He only hopes that Dante managed to leap off in time.]

[Together. Of course together; Dante may be able to make his way up to this awful creature's head without much fuss, without having to traverse a makeshift bridge via the giant's sword, but what fun would that be? Where's the solidarity in taking it down separately? There is none, so clearly this is the much better decision to have made.

Up they go, and Ardyn will drag his sword down against the giant's arm as they make their way to its head. Metallic skin screeches, and he only lifts his blade to make a vertical swing at the daemon's face.]

Now, Dante!

[hey how about a link strike with him, son]

Freya makes an amused sound in response, peering down the tunnel.

"Well, well. Looks like Sunshine's got a friend. We should go say hi, yeah?"

Shi--

[Dante doesn't have time to figure out how to shield the both of them from the snake's tail. When the bike is hit, he's sent flying as well, and there's not enough height for him to slow his fall or get his feet under him first. He can only cover his head as he hits the ground and rolls, Keyblade dropped and flashing out of sight.

Once he's come to a stop, Dante groans before dragging himself back up to his feet.]

All right, that didn't go so well... Are you all right?

[It feels right, the two of them in sync as Dante follows Ardyn up the arm. If Ardyn's dragging his sword through its arm as they run, Dante mirrors him, slicing a long gash on the opposite side, and when Ardyn prompts him Dante's ready to take the opportunity before them.]

Yeah!

[He has to jump from the daemon's arm in order to make an attack of his own, with Ardyn there. But Dante doesn't hesitate; he jumps up and over Ardyn, twisting so that as he comes back down he can make his own swing toward the giant, cleaving downward.

Link strike!!]

"Definitely. You take it from the front, and I'll attack from behind."

He doesn't wait more than a moment or two for a response, breaking into a sprint and pounding down the path toward the glowing eyes. His Keyblade flashes into hand, but just before he'd reach the beast that's still shrouded in the darkness, Dante slips into the shadows himself, his entire form disappearing from view as he slides through them to the back of the creature (the creature roars in some sort of mixed anger and confusion as its prey disappears, taking a step backwards and looking around). A moment later and he's emerging again behind it, springing up into the air to put his entire body's force into his attack.

"Now! Let's go!"

[narrations + overflow]

October 2017

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Cloud

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Ardyn

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10/13 - 10/15

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