revivalproject | You're in My World Now

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You're in My World Now

WHO: Donnie et tu?
WHERE: Temb...a?
WHAT: Just when you thought you knew a place...
WHEN: During the earlier part of the storm
WARNINGS: Blood, things trying to eat people, grabby plants and all the potential danger that comes with the aforementioned

i. a little parlor trick
Ohhhh he had not meant to come here.

His curiosity about the strange vines had been his undoing, and before he knew it, Donnie had found himself being dragged through one of the creepy tears in whatever dimensional fabric there was.

It's concerning enough to see his breath freeze in front of him when he's hardly dressed for such a chill, but then he's almost choking as he finds out the hard way that this place hasn't the freshest of air. Thankfully the latter is one thing he does find himself prepared for as he pulls his breathing mask into place, one problem solved, but oh so much more to deal with. It's hard to focus when you're right on the verge of panicking.

His surroundings are familiar enough for him to figure out what's going on, or at least to construct some rough theories. An alternate space within Temba? But what did that have to do with a storm? For surely there was one, or at least he could only assume for the more obvious points, but those were all prior to...whatever this is.

...it is so cold here. Mind-numbingly so, and it makes him feel sluggish. The opening- right, he should probably try to find that and get out of here. Which way was it though..?

The flutter of wings grabs his attention if belatedly, and he cries out as several of the batlike creatures descend upon him. He smacks one with his hand, turning to run as adrenaline helps to get him moving again, but in his panic he forgets all about looking for the exit. He's got other priorities at the moment, especially as he catches a glimpse of something else moving in the dingy light. That's...not a human, is it...

ii. friends on the other side
Maybe you'd seen him duck in here some time earlier, maybe you just happen upon him by chance. A ruined building but it's got enough walls that Donnie feels fairly secure, and even then, barely.

He's practically wedged himself into a corner, hands locked around the length of his tech-bō, knees pulled in with his arms around them as though to make himself as small as possible. It's also an ill attempt at trying to stay warm as his hoodie isn't really doing it for him. Being cold-blooded sucks sometimes.

It might be easy to miss him, as still as he is, but in the quiet it's not hard to make out his breathing, quick and slightly amplified for the breathing mask he wears, sometimes just that, other times whispered words trying to psyche himself up, trying to keep himself awake.

Maybe you come upon the kid when he's threatening to doze off.

Or maybe you make enough noise that he jerks himself into alertness, an almost wild look in his eyes as he swings the pointed end of his staff in your direction with a gasp.

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Donnie did not have long to decide what he was doing before Tony was crashing into him. Entirely unprepared for Donnie to stop dead while being pursued by a teeth-monster, he didn't anticipate having to put on the brakes, and only grabbed Donnie by the back of the jacket to try to redirect the momentum, undecided if it should keep them running like Tony thought was the logical plan, or trust Donnie to spin them around and...do whatever he was doing. "What are you doing?!" The irritation was much more audible this time, now that Tony couldn't help but shout in his panic.

"Making sure if it's clear or not!" Donnie hissed back, trying to regain a grasp on his wits and whatever semblance of calm they might pretend to offer. Running in a panic wouldn't get them anywhere. The metal of his tech-bō was even colder to the touch but he still tightened his grip around it. If there was anything else around here, he wanted to be prepared!

But he was moving again, outside, not quite at a run, still scanning the streets. Ugh it was so cold.

"Where do we go?" he asked, at least doing better at stringing words together for sentences, but it was better to keep moving, the best way to keep the cold from really sinking into him.

Tony didn't know, and he wasn't about to admit how much he didn't know and make Donnie even more anxious, or maybe that was just his own fear drilling into his chest, sure the thing behind them was going to come crashing out of that building and have the freedom of the open road to charge them, or another one was waiting around the next corner. He muttered, "This way, this way," like he knew what he was doing at all, keeping Donnie ahead of him with one hand on his back, and glancing around at the hollow wall where they had left the creature behind. "In here," he encouraged at the next open doorway, where they could slip into the dark and trap any noise they were making, and maybe buy them a little time to orient themselves.

It was a better act then Donnie hoped to put up, and he was eager to trust that Tony had an idea of where to go so he went forward without too much urging. He was more concerned that he'd freeze in place if they stood there too long.

Having walls around them felt much safer than standing out in the open, or at least the thought of having something more defensible. Donnie ducked into the building at Tony's direction, stepping to the side to keep from blocking the man's own entry as he looked back out into the street in case anything had spotted them fleeing.

With a pat to Donnie's shoulder to keep their backs covered, Tony stepped through on careful toes to try to get a sense of what they had just run into before anything had the chance to surprise them. The vines had taken over here, too, spread like wires across the floor and climbing up the walls, keeping some of the bricks held together where the plaster had crumbled away. What he didn't see was any movement, even when he risked plucking up a pebble from the cracked floor and tossing it into the darkness beyond the next arch. He could hear it land and clatter away, without any response of beating wings.

His alertness was going to last as long as his adrenaline was, so as Tony checked things out inside, Donnie kept an eye out on the streets.

The noise from within had him swing a look back inside, mask fogging with the sigh as nothing else followed. He slunk over to where Tony was, tugging the scarf off to offer him. He'd need it more than him of the air was still choked with whatever foreign substances there might be fluttering around.

"...think we're clear for now," he said after the silence had once again settled around them.

There was no guaranteeing how long their peace would last, that thing was still close and hunting, and Tony could smell the fire he had lit from here. He cast a suspicious glance toward the door while still giving a brief nod of acceptance, and moved carefully further into the room and away from where their voices might carry out into the open street. With the scarf back, his voice was muffled further as he wrapped it back around his head, carefully with one hand as the other shoulder protested when he tried to raise it.

"I don't think they can see very well," he reported. "As long as we stay quiet, we should be fine. I told you, nothing sexy. Haven't even seen a cool beard on a single one of them." Maybe Donnie only got kung fu movies in the sewer and didn't even know what Star Trek was, and Tony should move on. He cleared his throat and continued, "Whatever kind of EMP shield they've got up back on the other side, it doesn't seem to extend here--the power grid is out, but I can get stuff working." To demonstrate, he shifted his sweater up to display his tool belt, hung with more grenades but also a flashlight and a drill, which would have been useless weight before he came through the strange crack in the wall.

"Not much of a face for one," Donnie felt he had to point out. No, no Star Trek but they had better, they had Jupiter Jim!

He rubbed at his arms in a futile attempt to warm himself, then moved to pull out a familiar first aid kit from his bag, holding it out to Tony in quiet suggestion. It took him way too long to parse what the man was talking about, but he finally blinked.

"Wait, so tech will work here?" he asked, holding up his bo.

There was an obvious question in Tony's expression as he primly took the kit, looking like he might delicately hold it long enough to placate Donnie instead of put it to use, though at first he only answered, "As far as I can tell. I was heading for the power plant, to see if I could turn over the engine, maybe lighting the place up would spook them. I believe there's one of those doors there, like the one you came through, but..." If there wasn't, then the creatures were congregating there for some other reason, and bringing Donnie along would just be leading him into a death trap. Which brought Tony back to his question, holding up the first aid kit, and eyes flicking down across Donnie's mask, so he could have meant either as he pressed, "You just carry this with you now?" No, that wasn't the question. Tony revised, "Are you always prepared for the worst?" It sounded critical to his own ears, though he didn't think he meant it that way.

"What? No, I made this for my Sh'Ka excursions. The ash was really bad over there," Donnie explained, perhaps a bit defensively but could he be blamed? His expression pinched and he pointed at the kit. "And you know the reason for that."

Solutions to to problems that had already presented themselves, nothing more. It'd be foolish of him not to be prepared. He just wished it didn't prove as necessary as it had been.

He jabbed a finger towards the first aid kit again. "You let that thing bite you," he said, perhaps a bit accusatory himself, but after being previously blamed for playing with vampires he felt entirely justified. "How long have you been on this side and what happens if they get a nibble? Do they have like...some kind of man-eating plant rabies??" Please don't turn into a person-eating plant, don't leave me alone here.

There was that strange ash in the air here, the total, dehydrated death of the plants, water gone like it had been burnt out, and the cracks through the walls where the foundation had been shaken; was all of this just some strange fallout from the volcano? This theory would need some work before Tony figured out how the beasts figured into it, all blind and hungry like--like they had been living underground. Maybe Donnie wasn't so far off, thinking there was an infection in those creatures. Still looking distracted by all of the ways this whole thing might have been his fault, Tony held his arm closer against his chest defensively, and started to argue, "I didn't let it do anything, I was--I had a plan." And he was used to being wrapped securely in the armor for that kind of plan to be effective. What he had now was just the nanoweb, which he drew back reluctantly to check the damage to his hand. The blood fairly coated it, the gold just replaced by red that quickly oxidized and dried dark as the air reached it, and Tony grimaced as he gave his fingers an experimental flex to see the wounds open and drip down his wrist. "I think..." he said, trailing off as something else snagged in his brain, a pattern he couldn't quite place, an uncoupled fragment that still made him sure he could say, "I think I'll be fine." A shriek echoed through the dark streets from high above them.

"Letting it bite you was still part of the plan." Donnie had seen the results to know it wasn't an accident. He looked thoroughly disturbed now that they had a better look at the damage, although it was difficult to really tell, save for all the blood. And then he doubled down on his frown of disapproval.

There wasn't a chance for a rebuttal, not when something was screeching outside. It had Donnie looking towards the doorway again, annoyance traded for that familiar panic, but he seemed to have a slightly better handle on it this time around. Not that he cared to see whatever might be out there, but if anything was going to find them again, he wanted to be ready. He thumbed the switch on his tech-bō and it sprung to full length in his hand.

They must have gotten lax and started talking too loudly, Tony thought, and was quickly putting a cautioning touch to Donnie's shoulder, where he tapped to get eye contact before raising the first aid kit to his lips, quiet, then his temple with a wink of one eye, blind. They would be fine if they shrank back into the darkness just a little further at Tony's beckoning, where he could crouch to try to minimize the sound of his rifling through the kit with it set on the ground.

Donnie glanced at Tony before nodding, gesturing for him to go first. The turtle would back off after, still keeping an eye on their clearest entrance until he felt confident enough to turn and slink silently, deeper into the building.

His feet felt numb from the cold so he moved slower than usual, not wanting to accidentally trip over anything. He'd be a poor ninja for it!

Maybe choosing a location where neither party could see wasn't ideal, especially as Tony tried to feel around for bandages without disturbing anything else enough to make a sound. Doing this at all wasn't ideal, it was a distraction when they should have been focused on getting Donnie out of here, but so far Tony's plans had only drawn blood and gotten them as far as a few measly feet, and he would have snarled at himself for thinking he deserved to flinch when he snatched a bandage too tightly around his hand if he wasn't already biting his tongue. He must have made a noise despite himself, because that increasingly familiar flapping had swooped closer, close enough that it echoed around the barren walls of the of the empty building. It wasn't just recursion that he was hearing, though--all of that noise, that was plenty of wings, all struggling to navigate around each other.

Donnie eased himself into a crouch, feeling all sorts of stiff and hating every step of the short distance he crabwalked to get beside Tony. While the man worked on his bandages, the turtle rubbed at the bare skin between his purple kneepads and anklewraps, but cold hands made little difference in warming him up.

He froze at the sounds, eyes flicking back towards the way they'd come and anxiously towards the shadowy ceiling. Did those things find them?

Whatever Tony had done to his hand was going to have to be good enough, and he'd find out what it was when it mattered and they were back in the light. Donnie was a shadow, ringed with the softest light from the glow of the moon that managed to creep this far into the building, the edge of him watery and flickering as the bats swarmed around the doorway. Still feeling his way around, Tony had to reach for him to get his attention, only for his hand to immediately spring away when it finally touched Donnie's, thinking he had been misdirected in the moving shadows and felt some new, unfamiliar threat in the dead cold of it. He leaned in closer, feeling through the dark to find the kid's arm this time, and search his way down to that unnervingly numb skin to reorient himself, then squeeze, hard and demanding with a question he couldn't vocalize.

Donnie's gasp sounded much too loud in his own ears, probably only because of the way it seemed to echo within his mask, cutting through the silence. It was like he'd just remembered to breathe, just barely feeling Tony's hand around his. He turned his head back towards Tony before daring to scoot a little closer, trying to keep his teeth together to keep them from chattering as he listened for further movement from the bats.

Hiding was all well and good but it was like sitting in a meat locker, and not moving was doing him no favors.

It was very easy to forget that Donnie was a turtle with some human attributes, and not the other way around. One of the attributes he did not adopt was that mammalian circulatory system, which was barely keeping Tony warm in these conditions. It was fine, just another problem to solve, just as soon as Tony bought them some time by blindly grabbing from the first aid kit still on the ground and chucking whatever he found back the way they had come, to send a flurry of bats chasing after the sound. Meanwhile, he felt his way back up Donnie's arm to coax his head closer, tucking it into the warm crook of his neck, trying to at least keep Donnie's brain warm with a restless patting while his eyes darted in the dark like he could spot the obvious solution. The only thing that caught his focus was the doorway, now cleared of bats, revealing a larger, lower creature slinking in between them and the moonlight, facing them with such a clear intent that Tony's pulse must have been a trill by Donnie's ear.

It was little better than sitting by himself, that was for sure. Donnie shivered slightly, tucking against Tony as though to absorb whatever warmth he could. Unfortunately it wasn't doing much to dissuade him from wanting to just nap, but the lingering threats kept his attention just enough. He watched as the entryway became less cluttered with moving, flapping bodies, but the only thing suggesting that he wasn't merely imagining movement beyond was the heartbeat that was definitely drumming faster than his own. It helped pick his own pace up a bit, his eyes widening.

Bigger than the bat things, not quite the same as...Seymour. Donnie moved his head a little, trying to get feeling back in his limbs.

Donnie was clearly incapable of functioning, and maybe he hadn't even noticed exactly how much danger they were staring down, so all Tony had to do was get them out of here and they could focus on the heat problem. Easy. He would come up with a good excuse later for the abrupt way his hold around the kid shifted, arms around him so Tony was poised to heft him up against his shoulder at the first twitch of muscle from the thing in the doorway. Then there could be no more hesitation; the creature leapt, and Tony was throwing himself forward, as much to get out of the way as it was to get back onto his feet, a clatter ringing behind him where something struck what was left of the first aid kit. The creature landed; the bats burst into the air. Tony was running blindly back toward the door, trying to keep Donnie as close as possible with his head down under Tony's arm so none of the flying things could get a claw into him. Tony's shoulder struck the doorframe, making him bounce and stumble his last few steps before the grenade he had dropped for the snarling creature to pounce on was erupting in flame.

Hardly in a position to argue about Tony's sudden clinginess, Donnie had absolutely no idea what the man's plan was here, already mentally falling several steps behind. That he offered no complaint at suddenly being hauled about for a rough retreat was surely no good sign. The easiest thing to respond to was being that this close to Tony made him a little less chilled.

The sounds around them were not at all promising, probably more terrible for what they implied, but they could have been happening miles away.

Was Donnie already dead? Had Tony not noticed that he was freezing to death for long enough that he was already sprinting down the street carrying a body? The creatures poured out of the building in his wake, half of them on fire and screeching against their deaths as they were rapidly consumed, the others shoving those aside coldly to continue their pursuit. Tony just had to get behind a closed door, he just needed some space, one of these buildings had to be intact enough for him to put a wall between himself and finding out what it was like to be eaten by bats.

That's where he knew that pattern from, he knew someone that had been eaten by bats.

Not the time. Tony threw his already bleeding, now bruised shoulder into the next door that he saw, whirling around to kick it closed and brace the weight of himself and whatever was left of Donnie against it, only to hear glass shatter as the bats flung themselves carelessly through the windows.

Processing, processing- it was a fine line between shutting down and waking up. The only thing that had been keeping him from staving off whatever sort of brumation mutant turtles might succumb ever since he'd gotten pulled into this weird alter-Temba was to keep on the move, but it hadn't gotten any warmer, and resting had just seemed the more natural response than anything else. Somewhere in the back of his mind, his teenager self wanted to rebel.

The bloom of heat behind them was almost welcoming, prompting a weak hand to reach out after it, but it was getting farther away again, and he retracted it back to where he could try grasping onto Tony's shirt. Donnie opened his eyes (when had he closed them?), the angry screeching behind them demanding attention. It took so much effort to claw himself out of that mental darkness, and while reality was not inviting in the least, the more he managed to focus on, the better grip he had on consciousness. That all too familiar, sharp, coppery scent, the staccato breaths that likely matched Tony's rapid pulse, breaking glass-

He sucked in a ragged breath of air as though he'd just come up from under water, pushing weakly against Tony as he dragged his head up. His movements were stiff, he felt like his blood had frozen in his veins but it didn't stop him from trying to get his feet under him, barely able to feel the floor beneath his toes. For the most part he was still relying on Tony heavily for support as he brought his staff around, his fingers having more or less locked around it.

That feeling when just waking from a nap? This was it but several times worse because you had absolutely no idea what was going on and were reacting blearily out of panic because suddenly there are things with teeth flying at you. Turns out, when one was feeling half-frozen and still trying to wake up, they aren't the best at using a staff to its full potential. High-grade titanium was still pretty effective when it hit something, but it was also at the moment about the same as waving a stick at mosquitos.

Oh, thank god, he wasn't dead, although a celebration would have to wait and letting him down was probably a mistake. Tony kept one arm around his chest, fairly dragging him across the open ground just as something heavy collided with the door behind them. Deeper into the building, more layers, more armor between them and the animals in pursuit, there had to be another door to hide behind, far enough away that they couldn't be heard anymore, and Donnie was safe. The door that Tony approached had already rotted, or been torn from its hinges, but it wasn't entirely useless; Tony warned, "Hang on!," as though he wasn't already squeezing Donnie to his side and giving him very little choice when Tony flung them down onto the door itself, sending it sliding across the ground and tipping over the first step into the yawning darkness below.

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