revivalproject | Storm (relatively speaking) One

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Storm (relatively speaking) One

WHO: Dustin and anyone
WHERE: Temba, various locations
WHAT: Dustin's first storm and he's having a Bad Time
WHEN: During the storm (October)
WARNINGS: Dustin's standard warnings, second prompt will have some medical gross, will edit with anything else as needed

1. Suddenly No Powers | OTA

For as many questions he's asked and poking around on the network he's done, Dustin still does not anticipate the storm. He'd been expecting something a little more...dramatic. Roiling black clouds and gusting winds, electrical storms, perhaps. Instead there's just overcast skies - the sort that he's familiar with seeing back home that come in during early fall and stay until mid-spring, bringing the cold with them. It feels normal.

Until, suddenly, he wakes up in the breakroom of his shop, unfurls himself from his nest of blankets and jackets, and sees the fog seeping through the cracks in the door and windows like soup through a broken bowl. It's so thick outside that the whole Temba landscape is obscured. Everything, except the distinctive silhouette of Rose Thatcher, peering in at him through the window.

Dustin's brain stutters for a few moments. Logically this doesn't make any sense and he knows it. But that ends up being a secondary thought; what he remembers instead is how he never told Rose about how he stole her research, never said he was leaving. She came home late from work that night and he pretended to be asleep. What was the last thing he even said to her?

He doesn't remember.

That realization hits him late, and by that point Dustin's already rushed out of the building and deep into the fog, chasing Rose's shadow down the pavement uneven from weathering and dead plants. He jogs to a stop. The back of Rose's head disappears into the storm miasma ahead.

"Rose? Mom?" Panic creeps into his voice; at this point Dustin knows that she's an illusion, but he can't help feeling like he needs to find her anyway. There's unfinished business, and also, he feels...very lost. Literally lost. There aren't any visible landmarks and he's not sure how long he's been running.

He can't remember.

The recognition that his powers are gone hits him like a ton of bricks. Dustin's head turns on a swivel. If I can just get a good landmark, I can determine my location and retrace my steps, then find the Hangar and--

But the fog is too thick, his memories of the map are too vague, and he can't remember what direction he came from to get here. Panic intensifies and his brain shuts off completely. Dustin picks a direction and runs, nearly slamming head-first into the building he finds, but any relief at seeing something solid is drowned by the fact that he can't tell what building it is. It's old and ruined, just like all the others. He circles it to the next building - same result. Desperate, Dustin reaches for his tablet that should be in his satchel - only to remember that he left it, and several layers of coats, back in his shop that he can't find. Now that he's not running, it's getting awfully cold out here.

Panic gives way to frustration. "Useless!" Dustin howls into the fog, feeling his face grow hot with rage and flustered tears. "Fucking useless!"

Then he spins on his heel, stomps into the closest building he's found and, exhausted from anger and chilled to the bone, slumps into a heap against the back wall.

2. Suddenly Too Much Powers (CW: brain injury) | OTA

It's a minor relief when Dustin wakes back up in the middle of the night and finds Temba looking relatively clear. He can even see stars outside through the window. Perhaps the storm has passed already? Wouldn't that be nice?

Well, no - his memory is still annoyingly fuzzy and the fog persists, albeit thinned to the point where Dustin's feeling a little more confident about finding a safer, hopefully warmer place to stay. The 'Welcome Center,' perhaps? Lauri-Ell had mentioned that it tends to stay untouched from storms. At least he remembers that much.

Stepping out of the ruined doorway, Dustin can't help but note how bright the night sky is. Must be a full moon. He glances up to check.

That...sure is a full moon. With a face. And a mouth, opening up to a scream.

Yet another one of those things Dustin had been warned about and not nearly prepared enough for. The moon's scream rattles him to the bone, bad enough that he can't even cover his ears. He grits his teeth and squeezes his eyes shut against the noise, waiting for it to pass and his ears to stop ringing, which thankfully it does after a minute or so. Dustin blinks his eyes open.

Wish Keith had given me a little more detail on that, he thinks ruefully. Maybe he did, and I just can't--wait a fucking second, I can!

Sure enough, the memory is right there waiting for him in perfect precision. Dustin can't help grinning as his eyes flicker, greedily going through everything he's wanted to recall over the last thirty hours. Temba map--perfect! I'm not too far from the Greenhouse. Just follow the street here, and...

A couple blissful minutes of skipping down the road pass before Dustin starts to realize something is wrong.

It starts with a headache, sharp like a spike directly through the center of his forehead. The pain stops him dead in his tracks. Then, shortly after, a powerful wave of nausea riding with it.

Oh fuck.

Dozens of possibilities for what could be happening flicker through his mind at once, some of them reasonable, most of them confused nonsense. He tastes blood. Smells blood? Or is that copper, like the metal, or the color? Dustin isn't sure when he vomits, but he does, staggering away on an instinct for somewhere to curl up and hide until the pain goes away.

He makes it only a few feet before his feet go out from underneath him and he collapses, has a quick but violent seizure, and goes still.

3. Suddenly Shades | OTA

Dustin doesn't go outside at night after that. But he does still need to travel for food and supplies from the Hangar, which means he has to brave the storm at least a few more times before it passes. Considering his options, the wandering shadows of his adopted mother and his average memory are a perfectly acceptable tradeoff to almost dying in the middle of the road somewhere.

Except, Dustin doesn't factor in the fact that the storm has more tricks up its sleeve after the first day.

The visions find him. One minute he's pawing his way along the side of an old building, waiting for the turn in the road he expects to find soon (based on the crude Temba street map drawn on his forearm that he frequently references), the next minute a shock of crimson lightning strikes the fog and it coalesces rapidly into the swirling, hulking figure of a monster. It's easily nine feet tall in spite of the fact that it's arched forward to loom over Dustin's head, and mostly formless except for the vaguely humanoid features of a head, two spindly arms, and several pairs of beady, glowing eyes in places they shouldn't be.

Then it slips into the ground, disappearing into Dustin's shadow.

His feet are locked in place. The fear is so powerful that he doesn't even notice the rest of the fog billowing into other shapes: The outlines of an abandoned house, overturned furniture, a broken staircase leading to a collapsed upper floor. Dustin might remember it from a rerun of his favorite show growing up if he wasn't so fucking scared.

The glowing eyes of the Shade peer up at his back, waiting for him to move.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Dustin doesn't turn to look and see who's shouting at him. He recognizes the voice, so he should know, and yet the memory is fuzzy like so many others. Another face and name casually scrolled over that he took for granted.

Now he's here, and as far as Dustin is concerned, that means he's about to die with him.

"Don't!" The words come out in spite of the lump in his throat and the sheer terror locking every other muscle in his body. On the ground, the eyes of the Shade blink in slow sequence. Dustin can't see them but he knows, instinctively, that they're watching him. "Stay back! If your shadow touches mine, it'll jump to yours."

Well that's new. Gladio does stay a few steps back, and he frowns.

"Okay. Seems like you know the daemon or whatever. So how do I kill it?"

Because clearly he intends to kill it. That's just what a guy like him does.

Dustin's right there with him - with one problem.

"I-I dunno," he stammers. An odd tingling settles in over his fingers and toes, like they're all going numb simultaneously, at around the same time that smoky black tendrils start wrapping around his legs from his blinking shadow. Dustin breaks into a sweat. "I mean--I think I remember how it happens in the show, but--but I don't think it's right."

"Explain the show," Gladio insists, because man, if it's all they've got, they are going ot fucking work with it, okay? That's the only choice they have. The only one they are going to get.

Dustin doesn't answer that question immediately; he's too busy being mortified by the idea of explaining his favorite childhood show to someone else, regardless of the fact that he's about to have his soul ripped out by one of the primary antagonists. His face down to his neck flushes bright red.

"Um, uh--" Dustin squeezes his eyes shut as he furiously tries to work through a concise description, while also pushing away his embarrassment and the ominous tickling sensation at the back of his head. "--Jacob Silver, Paranormal Investigator. Ghost-hunting show that focused on tracking down Shades. A hunt would always end in uh--in a banishing, kind of. An exorcism?"

An exorcism. Apparently that's not a damn thing only from books apparently. Great.

"Alright, and how do you do an exorcism? How long do we have?"

Dustin starts shaking his head. "I dunno," he says, voice quiet and wavering. He does - or at least he did - but it was different for every episode, and he doesn't remember all of them anymore, and he always knew those exorcisms were bullshit anyway that were added for ratings, and he is really starting to panic. "I dunno, I dunno, I dunno..."

The dark tendrils of smoke sprouting from Dustin's shadow start to slowly wrap around his skull.

"Sing a happy song. Do jumping jacks. Recite some religious text. Don't just stand there doing nothing!" Gladio insists with a hiss. He hates this. He hates this a lot. Being helpless to help was miserable.

Gladio's slew of suggestions doesn't help directly, but it does make Dustin frustrated enough to snap away from the spiral he was spinning down.

"I can't--I can't move!" he yells back. "It'll kill me!"

"And if you don't, it will kill you," Gladio said.

If Inaction was as fatal as action, action at least might get you something.

And that's the trick, isn't it? Dustin's brain spins on that for a few seconds while he starts to hyperventilate. Something has to be done; even if he can't remember the specific episode this type of Shade was featured in and the exact steps taken to kill it, some kind of generalized combination of ritual components taken from the parts of the series he can remember is better than nothing.

"O-Okay--" Dustin squeezes his eyes shut, imagines himself mentally kicking away the pressure of the Shade's soul squeezing his mind like a grape. One of the shadowy tendrils around his head flinches, but Dustin doesn't notice. "--Need something to draw with. Chalk, salt, anything that will leave a trace on the floor."

The illusion built by the fog conveniently provides in case Gladio doesn't happen to have something on-hand already: The bottom floor of the house includes a fireplace, snuffed out many years ago, but still piled high with charcoal scraps.

"Got nothing," he said, and nwo he's very annoyed that he doesn't keep a blade on himself. Which means he might need to talk to Tony again. For now he considers.

"I could scratch on the ground with a stone?"

"Sure, whatever, just--fuck!"

Directly in front of him, Dustin watches as a pillar of shadow lunges up from the floor and takes a swipe at his face with massive, clawed hands. Naturally only Dustin can see it - this is the Shade taking offense at him mentally prodding it moments ago and, consequently, directly interfering with his mind to make him flip the fuck out. He ducks and spins, takes two steps in a mad dash for the door of the illusory house--

--and runs into another wall of shadow that both him and Gladio can see. Dustin goes nose-first into it with a crunch and rebounds, hands flailing for his face.

Well now Gladio can't just stand back. He runs after the kid.

"Lay down. It will minimize your shadow."

It's the best idea he's got, but he needs to look at that nose.

Gladio barely gets through telling Dustin to lie down when he trips over his own stumbling feet and falls backwards, landing hard on his ass. He doesn't follow the instructions directly, too dazed to do anything but sit upright and gasp through the sudden, blinding pain in the center of his face, but the Shade's tendrils and eyes are notably absent from Dustin's shadow after he lands.

Not that he knows this. "--Stop," Dustin pleads, holding out the hand that isn't clutching his nose. The other one is already caked in blood. "Fucking meat-headed idiot!"

"I'm not an idiot, kid. I'm a protector," he answered as he knelt by the kid. This was a bit of a mess, and he had to take care of him the best he could.

"You know I'm going to try and protect you, right?"

Dustin should have known that resistance was futile. He tries to scoot away, desperate to keep their shadows separated, but Gladio is obviously faster on his feet than Dustin is on his ass and one hand and catches up to him. His shoulders sag in defeat.

"Then we're both dead," he mumbles into his palm, and, alarmingly, tastes blood. Eyes watering, Dustin pulls his hand away and finds it absolutely coated in the stuff, which is also freely flowing from his nose and dribbling off his chin. His already scarred and crooked nose is noticeably crinkled and swelling up quickly. "Motherfucker, that hurts."

"Ain't died from something far more dangerous than a shadow yet," Gladio corrected as he took a towel out of his pocket and pressed it to the kid's nose.

"Pain will pass. Always does."

Gladio presses that towel to his face faster than Dustin can react; the resulting flash of pain is like a firecracker set off in his nose. He sucks in a sharp breath and his whole body locks up, shuddering as he bites back a scream.

Meanwhile, the Shade has hopped its way into the shadow of the main hallway's elaborate, spiderweb-covered chandelier, and is quickly extending its wispy tendrils of smoke vertical to grasp onto its unlit candles. This is happening behind the pair, and Dustin is entirely too preoccupied with his broken nose, so he doesn't notice.

"It could pass fucking faster," he wheezes, squeezing his eyes shut. One hand reaches up to try and grab the towel away from Gladio. "Where'd it go? I-I don't--I don't feel it anymore."

"That isn't how it works. It's a teacher in its own right," he said, letting the kid take the towel.

"I don't know. Was focused on you."

Dustin presses the towel more delicately against his nose, still wincing from how tender it is. "Can't lose sight of it," he pants. "Could've traveled to any other shadow. It's not in yours?"

As if to announce how wrong he is, the Shade's tendrils angle the chandelier gently towards them, then pull. It comes loose with a cacophony of noise that doesn't match the fog construct it's made of and goes hurtling to the ground.

"I wouldn't know how to tell," Gladio said, only to see the shadow start to move.

Which is enough for Gladio to not hesitate as he threw his body over the boy's to protect him.

Dustin doesn't know what's happening - one moment they're talking, the next moment he is smooshed between Gladio and the floor. He's too shocked to even cry out or fight back.

Then, moments later, the chandelier lands and crushes them both instantly.

...Except it doesn't. Like a punch pulled at the last second, the construct puffs into the fog it's made of on contact, dissipating harmlessly into the rest of the mist. Their surroundings begin to fade.

Dustin, completely unaware of this and having gotten over his surprise, starts to struggle. "Get--off--!"

Well, that was unexpected. Gladio pushes himself up and looks around. What the fuck is going on?

"You're welcome, brat."

Dustin scrabbles to his feet, looking around furiously over the towel still pressed to his face. "--The fuck just happened?" he sputters, mirroring Gladio's thoughts and cleanly ignoring what he just said. It's just them and the fog, now. "No way that was a hallucination. Everything was too solid, I could feel--why'd you tackle me?!"

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