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| Somewhere thats Green; Callie's Challenge | |
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| Topic Started: August 11, 2015, 6:37 pm (179 Views) | |
| Storyteller | August 11, 2015, 6:37 pm Post #1 |
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Date: March 14 Time: Evening Place: Callie’s room of Murderworld ![]() ![]() The door marked for Callie opened into a green house. The room was 50 feet by 10 feet and made out of metal supports and large frosted glass panels. Light poured through the glass, strong as midday and the color of sunlight, but it still felt wrong. Instead of coming from one point like it would from the sun, it was an evenly distributed along all the glass panels. The room was pleasantly warm, around 75 degrees Fahrenheit and humid. Tables ran from end to end along the outside walls and on them was a vast assortment of tropical plants. From huge palm like fronds to flowering orchids and creeping vines, the room was stuffed with flora. Once inside the door closed behind her and latched shut. On the far end of the room, a screen on another door lit up to show Arcade sitting on his throne. The waves of red hair bounced around as he looked about as if he was trying to find Callie. “My dear girl, please come over here, I have something important to tell you.” He waited until she approached the screen. “Ah, aren’t you just a pink vision, like one of these tropical flowers?” He smiled, but it was wicked instead of good natured. “I supposed I should tell you how you can escape from this room. Well the rule is simple. The door will open when there is only one living thing left in this room. I’ll give you ten minutes to accomplish this. If by the end of that time there is still more than one life form still alive, the door will be locked and you’ll be trapped here forever. Buona fortuna, bella.” With that the screen turned black except for red numbers counting down from “10:00”. Besides plants, the room contained many of the normal items one would expect to find in a green house. Under the tables were stacks of pots, both ceramic and plastic. Two watering cans were stuck in amongst the plants near the door she entered. A pair of leather gloves was folded over the edge of a pot half filed with dirt and on the table next to it was a pair of garden shears. Tag: Dryad |
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| Alison | August 12, 2015, 8:56 am Post #2 |
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Character: Dryad Date: March 14 Time: Evening Place: Murderworld Room As she opened the door very tentatively, Callie cracked it enough to poke an eye through the gap but not wide enough that movement might set off any booby-traps or bombs. If a whole building could simply disappear into somewhere else, who knows what else might be around? Adjusting her stance so she could see, her eye widened as she saw…plants. Pushing the door open fully, she checked for any trip wires and then swept into the room. Standing inside the middle of the space, she let the overwhelming sensations of plants wash over her as she closed her eyes. It was like that feeling you got as a child when your mother would wrap you in a warm towel. Comforting. Soothing. Full of love and warmth. Raising her hands at her side, she revelled in the voices calling to her, begging her to come closer. To soothe their fear and their pain and entertain them. This was what heaven must feel like, she decided. Sadly, everything came crashing down as a voice dragged her back to reality. Opening her eyes, her hands dropped to the side as she moved forward to stare at the screen and the man talking to her. Staring at Arcade as he talked, she studied the man through eyes that narrowed the more he talked. This must be the source of the strange happenings. She wondered what was going on in his head to cause all…this. As the news trickled through to her brain, her eyes widened and her face fell as the enormity of what she was expected to do sunk in. Kill the plants?! Staring at the numbers on the screen, she swallowed and then crossed herself. Turning away from those horrible numbers, all the joy was gone as happiness was replaced with sadness. Reaching out a hand to touch a fern, she slowly made a complete circle through the room, touching them and feeling their terror. These were her babies too, these were the living things that usually made her feel like the most luckiest girl in the world. How could she murder such gorgeous things, for nothing more than being in the room? What had these blameless beings done wrong? Slowly, tears started to swell as she came to a stop in front of a beautiful rose bush and forlornly brushed the petals. She could feel the plants around the room reacting to her sadness, as if they knew what she was expected to do to them. Closing her eyes, she let the tears fall as they spilled down her cheeks and watered the roses. Digging her nails into the soft flesh of her palms as blood started to trickle down her hands, she sank to her knees as the voices of plants began to sound from all around her. ~Save us….protect us, mother…don’t hurt us…the bad man wants to hurt us…you can save us…we love you…save us…~ Pressing hands against her temples, she moaned as they continued to batter against her mind. ~Protect us…save us…help us…~ Screaming both mentally and audibly, Callie pressed her hands harder against her temples as she tried to block out the mingled emotions of anger, terror and fear. Tags: Storyteller |
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| Storyteller | August 19, 2015, 10:30 am Post #3 |
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Date: March 14 Time: Evening Place: Callie’s room of Murderworld On his multitude of screens, Arcade was watching all the mutants as the realities of their first rooms sank in. It seemed that his prerecorded first messages had produced the desired amount of fear most of the targets. One in particular stood out as he heard a scream peel out from the monitor that showed the pink plant girl. He had been a little skeptical when Ms. Coriander told him that this girl's greatest weakness was watching plants die, but he had already devised her challenge by the time Ms. Coriander had finished explaining that from what she had gleaned, the girl felt a maternal connection with all plant life. Arcade had to let out a large breath to steady himself enough to speak without a tremor of excitement and then pressed a button on his controls, sending his voice into the greenhouse room. "Awe it must be hard, bringing yourself to destroy all of them. But they are already dead my dear sweet ragazza. How many days will any of them live without water? Or you for that matter?" He cut the feed for a moment while he giggled. That room had been a particular challenge to engineer. Miss Locke had spent a lot of time getting the lights on the outside to give the proper sunlight color and Mr. Chambers had to find and connect air ventilation shafts so that moist air would be pumped out of the greenhouse and dry air back in, otherwise the water would just condense and drip back to the plants. Of course the shafts had to be small enough that Callie couldn't fit through them and Ms. Coriander and assured him Callie had no ability to shrink, that she was aware of. "You've only got 8 minutes left, you had better hurry." Tag: Dryad Translation: ragazza is Italian for girl |
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| Alison | August 30, 2015, 7:16 am Post #4 |
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Character: Dryad Date: March 14 Time: Evening Place: Murderworld Room “please….stop…” Callie moaned in agony, pressing her forehead against the floor. Her fingers continued to press into the sides of her skull in an attempt to alleviate the mental anguish, to no avail. Resting on her knees, tears streamed from tightly closed eyes as she tried to fight against the sensory overload. It hadn’t been this bad for a while, since before she had arrived at Utopia. It wasn’t just the voices though that was driving her towards insanity; it was the emotion being bombarded at her. The plants here knew to be scared and she was the only one who could hear them or connect with them, so they focused all their energy on that. Plants didn’t have any other way of getting the message across. Keening in pain, blood slowly started to drip from Callie’s nostrils onto the floor as blood vessels ruptured under the strain. “…stop…stop…stop…stop…” she whimpered, repeating it over and over again. Throat dry, head pounding, eyes glassy, sick to her stomach. Falling onto her side, her head hit the floor with a dull thud. Laying there on the ground, she curled painfully into the fetal position. “…cant…” she murmured around the gulps of tears. “…cant make it….stop. Why won’t…it stop? Papa…why can’t you make it…stop?” Clutching herself, she cried until the tears would no longer come. Curled up on the floor, she would have passed out and simply forgotten about it all but something made her struggle to force her eyes open. The voices were still pounding away in her head, pressing against her mind and causing ripples of pain to strike her head but there was something…else buried inside the droning noise of hundreds of trees, flowers and seedlings. Anger. Closing her eyes to concentrate, Callie forced herself to pull herself up into sitting position and rested her chin on her knees. Breathing in deeply, her mind sought for that thread of anger in the droning plant voices, forcing herself to ignore the other emotions. Seeking it, she finally found it simmering in the mind of one of the taller palm trees. Reaching out to it, her mind hooked it and began to draw it out through the mass of jumbled sensations. Clutching that anger, she breathed out as her head continued to rest against her knee and then began to project through the mental landscape. Babies… The voices continued to scream at her. Babies, listen to me. They continued to cry and beg and scream at her. LISTEN! At her raised tone, they settled down slowly until she could hear silence once more. That monster on the TV, that monster who wants me to kill you, he is not all powerful. He is a human and humans can be hurt. We can hurt him. We can make him pay. But I can’t do it without you, babies. Will you help me make him pay? The room continued to be silent. Please? After a few painfully long seconds of silence, Callie felt the uprush of masses of plant voices in her mind. There was no screaming this time, though, no disordered anguish. Now, the voices coalesced into one, repeating the same words over and over again. MAKE. HIM. PAY! Callie’s eyes snapped open, eyes fading into solid green. Dragging her aching head and body upright, her long hair spilled across her shoulders and down her back as she raised both hands into the air. Around her, every single plant rippled to life. Seedlings on the table began to slide down the legs and around her ankles, vines fell from their pots attached to the ceiling hooks and rested around her shoulders and neck, orchids bloomed as she walked past. Taking a lap around the room to check for its weaknesses, Callie stalked the room before she faced the television screen. “The man from the screen,” she spoke. Her voice was filled with darkness, thousands of plant voices echoing from her lips. “You like to watch, yes? Please, watch.” Pointing a hand at the screen, Callie directed the vegetation to hit against the windows surrounding the room. Again and again they smashed against their prison cell, from the smallest seedling to the mightiest specimen. Tags: The ST |
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| Storyteller | September 5, 2015, 3:48 pm Post #5 |
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Date: March 14 Time: Evening Place: Murderworld: Callie's Room His crew were unique and their unique combination was what had allowed Murderworld to happen. Ms. Coriander was the most intriguing to him. Sure Mr. Chambers and Miss Locke and even his own powers had to be used to keep people contained and provide the needed physical challenge, but the best part of his game was the mental fighting and it was all Ms. Coriander that figured that one out. How deliciously wonderful that a phrase as simple as 'kill all these plants or die' would leave a woman sobbing on the ground, bleeding from her nose. He hadn't done anything. Really, she could have been in an unlocked greenhouse not trapped in a pocket dimension and it would have happened. There was a hope that this might kill her outright, that the stress would be too much and she would succumb to it. He watched as she entered that crucible and eagerly awaited her either burning away or being refined into something new. The latter seemed to be the case as she rose and in a very Uma-Thermin-becomes-Poison-Ivy sort of way wrapped vines around herself and started smashing the room apart. It was beautiful to see such a pure expression of an emotion. The hatred was primal, but in a very... plant sort of way, not like a wild animal, but like a forest slowly reclaiming an abandoned castle. As she flailed about, her efforts would indeed break the glass pains of the green house and even rip aside the lighting panels that were just beyond them. But when those fell, she would find nothing, absolute nothingness. A void so complete that it didn't even contain empty space. Any attempt to pass that barrier, by plant, human, or inanimate object, would fail entirely. Even the doors in and out had the dimensional barrier closed until she completed her task. Arcade's voice played in the room, though it contained a fuzziness because of some damaged speakers. "Oh quite impressive piccola principessa. However you don't break out of these rooms by force, I made absolutely sure of that." He grinned wickedly on the screen. "However I was very impressed by that display. I honestly didn't think you'd survive; I expected the stress to kill you. The fact still remains that you only have four minutes to kill them all or you are trapped here forever. I take it you won't be doing that, so, as a reward for that impressive display of resolve, I will seal you off in this room. It will not dry out and the lights will come on and off like the rise and fall of the sun. You can spend the rest of your life with your beloved plants." Of course she'd likely starve. He'd made sure not to put any plants edible by humans into the room. Ms. Coriander hadn't been able to figure out if Callie could survive without food, but she didn't look plantish enough to rely on photosynthesis alone. Tag: Dryad |
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| Alison | September 11, 2015, 5:22 am Post #6 |
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Character: Dryad Date: March 14 Time: Evening Place: Murderworld: Callie’s Room Her chest heaved, plants recoiling at the void and snaking back to seek refuge behind their ‘mother.’ Turning her head to study the darkness, Callie approached the vacuum and stared into it. Reaching out a hand to touch it, she drew it back as she felt…pure nothing. Her lips compressed tightly as she studied her hand for any effects, finding nothing wrong with it. Turning her back haughtily on the void, she made her way back to the screen as the horrid man from before appeared again and she stared him down with every fibre of Italian pride she could muster. Her chin raised itself to its highest angle, green eyes narrowed and lips pursed tightly in disdain. Around her, plant tendrils rested across her shoulders and around her arms as she listened to the words. Seemingly ignoring him, she let one of the vines play with her hand like a cat and twirled her fingers so it could dart back and forth between the digits. While she seemed almost dismissive, she was in fact listening very intently to every word he spouted. Turning her back on him eventually, she gave a shrug. “We will see,” she murmured. Standing near one of the rose bushes, she fondled the stems lovingly and in the process nicked her left index finger on one of the sharp prickles. Studying the drop of blood sitting on her finger, Callie stared down at the liquid and then raised the wound to her lips. Sucking on the injury, she let her eyes dilate back to normal and all the anger leak out of her body. Standing there, her shoulders started to shake from the exertion. “What now?” she asked herself. Turning her head to study the dark TV screen, Callie let out a long sigh and then sat down on the greenhouse floor. Resting her head on her knees, she half closed her eyes as she thought about her predicament. This man seemed almost Faust-like and from what she remembered of Faustian literature, there was always a loophole in the deal with the devil. What was the loophole here? Sure, he had said that she could live here with her plants forever. But there were people out there who were her teammates, maybe stuck in rooms like this. Like YoYo. What had that horrible man done to YoYo? And Jean and Scott and Teon and Kay and all the others? Studying her hands, Callie hit upon an idea. Just because a bulbed plant seemed to die off in the winter doesn’t mean that it actually died. It just hibernated and would rebloom the next spring. With her own powers, she could regrow them as soon as she got back to Utopia and they could…what was the word…hibernate?! Eyes blazing, Callie rose and raced for the trowel and garden tools. Digging in one of the garden beds, she dug back the dirt and fertiliser to reveal the white flesh of the bulbs. Staring down at the plant, she reached to drag it up and stopped with her hand inches from it. Warring within herself as to whether she could still do it, she chewed her bottom lip enough to draw blood. “I don’t want to hurt you…” she murmured. “But what about the others out there? What if they need me?” Steeling herself, she reached down to snip off the foliage. Her hand trembled badly, forcing Callie to drop the cutting tools until she could control herself. The shears lay on the garden bed, taunting and teasing her. Tags: The ST |
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3:20 AM Jul 11