This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?

[notathreat]

WHO: Ellie + OPEN (Grab me if you want a custom starter, even if they haven't interacted yet!)
WHERE: Dreamscape!
WHEN: September 22-25 2512
WHAT: Ellie's managed to keep y'all out of her head until now, but everything's got a breaking point.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Violence, death, torture, body horror (zombie-type), violence towards a teenager.

Radio Nowhere

Comments

[evasives]

Cassian has taken many tumbles in his life, the worst of them quite literally broke his back; so when he falls through the floor and lands with a thunk, when the pain is in his leg and not his spine, he's pretty grateful. His wrist might be damaged too, fortunately not in his dominant arm. Still, with - whatever happened above, he doesn't move for a moment, just listening - for who he thinks is Ellie, or one of the strange moving beings he's noticed in the shadows with awful screams.

It helps that he realizes shortly into the experience, following Ellie through the trains with a gun in his hand that he does not possess on Earth, that this must be a dream.

He rolls over, testing weight on his limbs, but stays seated on the ground, blinking into the dark as best he can through the gas mask. Judging the creatures far enough away (he hopes), he dares to quietly ask out loud: "Are you here?"

She must be nearby - that's simply how these dreams tend to work.

[notathreat]

"M'here," Ellie says with a rough breath, moving slowly. The screams are still distant, but she stays quiet anyway, breathing as softly as she can, pushing away the debris and taking stock of the damage. Bruised, shaken, but hopefully nothing permanent.

The light flashes, swings, and she gets to a crouch, moving towards him, reaching for his shoulder. She thinks she recognizes him, but can't be sure.

"You hurt?" she asks, and this close the spiderwebs of the shattered visor are visible, covering most of her face, obviously impeding her vision.

Spores, visible in the air, swirl around them.

"Keep your mask on, okay?"

[evasives]

He hears her moving towards him first, looking over as she gets closer. One of the first things he notices is her cracked mask, and upon her advice to keep his on, Cassian can feel concern swelling, but he doesn't jump at it immediately.

"Leg and wrist, but it does not seem to be completely incapacitating." Which honestly doesn't say much, given his bar for incapacitation is abnormally high now.

"Yours is broken," he says, more calmly and matter-of-factly than anything else, even in the face of whatever is floating in the air. "Do you have another? Are you hurt?"

[notathreat]

"I'm immune," Ellie says, her voice low and grim but just as matter-of-fact. It was just a matter of time, and if they're lucky, it won't ever mean anything at all, here in the world she met him in.

"If the spores could hurt me I'd already be dead."

This is a dream. She knows, because she's been here before.

Right now, though -- if he's too hurt, she won't be able to carry him outright. There'll be no horse waiting for them outside.

But he has a point about her mask, so she reaches up, tugs it off. The spores swirl in the stark light of the flashlight; she discards the mask on the ground, and reaches out to slip her hand under his elbow, prepared to help.

"Bruised, but I'm good. Can you walk? Need to lean on me?"

[evasives]

He doesn't quite know what she's immune to, doesn't know what the spores themselves do, but it sounds like... a good thing? Though without knowing how she herself feels about, he'll refrain from making any 'lucky' remarks. It'll be a question for later.

"I think can walk." He hasn't even tested the weight, but he assumes it possible because this is a dream and he has managed movement with a broken spine - just a leg? Much easier. He hopes. "Where do we need to go from here?"

Cassian shifts, putting all the pressure on his good leg, and then uses her as a balance to help get himself upright and standing. His leg is broken, he will not be able to move fast, but it's... doable. Maybe his 1-10 pain scale is skewed.