etrayalogs | MISSION 005 (part 1)

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MISSION 005 (part 1)

WHO: Everyone!
WHEN: September 13th-September 27th
WHERE: Throughout Etraya
WHAT: Mission Log!
NOTES\WARNINGS: Horror elements, including fear-inducing landscapes, distorted environments, unseen predators, mental/emotional distress, potential body horror, corruption, possession, brainwashing, and compulsion.

⏵ reality bends ⏴
A strange anomaly has overtaken Etraya. The skies, once familiar, now shift unpredictably, cycling through hues of unnatural colors as an eerie hum fills the air. Tension crackles beneath the surface, leaving an unsettling heaviness across the land. Aurora’s mission announcement offers little clarity—more cryptic than comforting—and she remains unavailable for further explanation.

Reality begins to warp, twisting Etraya into a surreal, haunting reflection of its former self.

The hospital deteriorates into a decaying structure, its halls haunted by phantom patients, endless corridors leading to nowhere. Rooms morph into massive white padded cells where characters may find themselves imprisoned, alone with spectral figures who whisper of treatments yet to come. Some of these apparitions seek the attention of those roaming the hospital, warning them of a dire fate: failure in this mission means not just the death of their worlds, but their souls becoming trapped in this fractured reality, far from home, forever.

The forest transforms into a dark and twisted labyrinth. The trees close in, their branches twisting unnaturally as unseen predators howl from the shadows. Narrow pathways wind through the maze, and while some may navigate unscathed, others will be violently pulled into the depths by horrors lurking just out of sight. Within this twisted forest, a small cottage appears, its walls echoing eerie whispers: "little scorpion," "selfish bitch," and "by the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes."

The rivers, usually calm, have become a dangerous, volatile force. Their waters churn violently, and inky black tendrils rise from the depths, lashing out at anyone who strays too close. These dark appendages drag their victims beneath the surface, where those who resist must battle their way to freedom. But those who surrender will be drawn into an otherworldly dome beneath the water, surrounded by strange fish, far from where they should be. Inside, they will find an eerie stillness, but their earpieces still allow contact with the world above. A large mirror dominates the dome, offering an uncertain way back.

⏵ shadowy haunts ⏴
Those inside the zones come face to face with an echo of fear - a personalized manifestation of what scares them most. It could be an oppressive figure from their past, or something more abstract, such as the feeling of failure, or isolation. These echoes are relentless, feeding off their weaknesses and digging into what makes them most vulnerable.

The Im'mari hungers, and preying on characters' weaknesses appears to be its chosen way of feeding itself. While characters may become stuck in their nightmares by themselves, some of these nightmares are shared between companions. Characters may become trapped within their friends' fears, or strangers'. However, the emotional distress felt by the individual the nightmare belongs to will affect everyone within the nightmare. An emotional prison built to torment those whom it belongs to, these echoes of fears may test the bond between companions, forcing them to face truths they may have rather avoided touching on. Earpieces will still be functional and may prove to be crucial in assisting characters when it comes to escaping their nightmares.

⏵ contamination ⏴
Im'mari may be weaker than before, but it is slowly regaining power, and the creature’s influence is spreading. It infects the wolves, the plants, and even the very essence of Vanessa Ives (and in addition, Aelwyn Abernant), feeding off the deep-seated fears of those around it.

Im'mari thrives in the shadows of fear and darkness, growing stronger with every moment of doubt, pain, and despair. Its presence lingers beyond the edges of awareness, whispering to its victims, urging them to succumb. Through Vanessa and those she has infected, Im'mari extends its reach, turning once-familiar faces into agents of fear, pushing their companions to the brink.

For those who fall under its sway, the transformation is slow, at first nearly undetectable. Perhaps a friend acts off, says something out of character, or expresses sudden, unprovoked anger. But as Im'mari’s power grows, so does the darkness in its agents, until they are no longer themselves—twisted into something monstrous, compelled to spread fear and destruction.

Welcome to your nightmares. We hope you have a pleasant stay.

⏵ NOTES ⏴

For all questions relating to this mission, please refer to the plotting post. We will be utilizing this post throughout the mission - including when we process the next round of applications, so please keep an eye out for new comments! All other questions can be directed to the FAQ.

⏵FULL NAVIGATION⏴

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Everything has gone to shit in Etraya. Again. Yelena was already in a bad headspace and the creeping eerie mess sprawling across the city isn’t helping. She keeps her arms folded across her chest as she moves through the city, not entirely sure what she should be doing.

In her meandering, she keeps feeling watched or followed, and it’s got her hackles raised. Only a spy of her particular caliber could make the sharp glances she makes seem so damn casual.

Wrr-wo-wrr.

The strange warbling noise makes her head snap around to find the source, but there’s nothing.

No one

Except… there is something, a flicker or a flash, barely visible but definitely there. Enough to register to Yelena’s eyes that it isn’t completely empty air she’s squinting at.

“This isn’t funny, you know.” She’s sure this isn’t some prank being played on her, but she doesn’t know what else to say. Something. Anything. Just to try to get a reaction of some kind from her present company.

But she doesn’t even have to wait for that, because the next flicker is, briefly, a little bit stronger, though somehow even less controlled than the last. “Ava?” She gasps out the name she’s hardly used even since being handed it in that cafe.

Edited 2024-09-15 11:08 (UTC)

Without ears to translate the vibrations into comprehensible sound, what's left of her awareness can't quite hear. But there's a shift of energy, that tries to pull closer to the presence of something that feels almost familiar.

The air warps into flickering formless hands that grasp blindly at Yelena, at her face, at her arm. And just as quickly retreats, as if burned.

Something sounds like distant whirring screaming, and yet there's nothing in the audible range at all.

She feels the strange ghost of not-quite-sensation against her cheek, her arm, her wrist. It’s strange and not really anything at all. But she swears she felt it. Felt something.

“Ava!” She doesn’t doubt it now, because no one else she knows of can do anything even close to that. She squints at empty air, trying to find that trace of something that didn’t quite fit with the rest of the surrounding scene.

“Follow my voice,” she says, clicking her communicator back onto a call with Ava. She doesn’t know if it’s even worked, she’s spent days trying to reach her to no avail. But this is the first hint of something there’s been in over a week. “You have to fight it, okay? Come slap me for calling you a bitch,” she says it on a huff of a laugh, no humor found in the sound or in her voice.

When she sees that strange flicker of light, or motion, or whatever it is or isn’t in the air again, it comes with sound attached. A distant, shrieking whirl of white noise. “Focus. Find me again. I’m here,” she is determined to reach for the strange feeling against her skin this time. Try to ground her, force her back here.

Mild irritation is the first feeling she can pull together, out of the long stretch of terror that's taken over her mind. Irritation that itches at her as it tries to focus on the source, manages to make her aware that there is something else, somebody else, outside of her. Which means there is a her left somewhere in the gaps between scattered particles.

Ava.

That irritation twists into some sort of shame, because maybe she doesn't want to be that after all. There's not a whole lot of good associations her fragmented memory can make, with being Ava.

But as negative as they are, the spike in emotions provides her just enough energy to lash out at Yelena, a rough shove right through her. There's the faintest shape of a woman, before vanishing again.

“ебать!” She shouts as that sensation passes through her, but this time it’s a whole body experience and leaves her feeling oddly in the wake of her attempt at grabbing Yelena.

Okay. If anger gets a reaction, that’s an angle she can work with.

“Come on, Ava. You can do better than that!”

Edited 2024-09-17 02:12 (UTC)

Overcoming all her crushing self-doubts and loathing to properly fight back against the existential terror has been an absolute losing battle, trapped in a nightmare far too real to identify as not. There's nothing she can do to convince herself that she's worth more than the nothing she's caught within. That there is anything in her life to go back to other than the unending pain. It becomes increasingly impossible to remember what it's like to feel anything else, be anything else. There's no glimmer of hope to hang onto.

But Yelena's encouragement in the form of aggressive fighting words gives her something else to fight back against, because if nothing else Ava has always thrived and survived out of pure spite to prove everything else wrong. Gives her the energy to act against something, defiant.

The flickering becomes more erratic. More solid as Ava claws at Yelena because she's the only tangible thing to anchor herself to and she desperately needs to hold onto and push away, claws her way back into reality even as it tries to reclaim her.

She howls against the pain of particles struggling to form molecules trying to build cells to make up functioning organs and skin and all the essential parts that define the body of Ava. But with each tug and swipe and grasp and shove, a bit more of her manages to stitch back into place.

With newly formed lungs, sound finally pierces through the air. And Ava tumbles, whole and alive, out of the nightmare.

She hits the floor, hard. And doesn't move.

It’s staticky, every time Ava reaches, grabs, and claws at Yelena, and the Widow can feel the desperation in every missed attempt. Like somehow she’s pushing some of that annoyance into the air itself.

“Come on,” she growls, fingers grasping nothing as Ava flickers in and out of sight. “Fight me, dammit!”

This time, there’s something much less like smoke slipping through her fingers, more like a wrist to yank on, and Yelena lets out a guttural growl as she tries to pull her from whatever hellscape she had been stuck in.

Ava is screaming, and there is so much pain and torment built into the sound that it hurts Yelena in turn to hear— a sharp, deep feeling in the center of her chest. The momentum catches up with both of them once Ava is solid again and Yelena tucks into herself before rolling to a stop.

“Ava?” she scrambles onto her knees and crawls across the ground toward her, “Hey!” she shouts, shaking the other woman by the shoulders. “No, you don’t get to do this, not now!” The desperate sound to her words is unmistakable. “Wake up!” She screams at the still unmoving body of her friend.

“Please, please, please…” she crumbles against her frame, “Don’t do this to me…” she mumbles into her friend’s shoulder.

She whimpers, weak and pained, in protest against the flood of reality rushing back in. It's all too much. Feeling. Hearing. The awareness of having legs and arms and a heart that's pounding far too fast. She feels dizzy, doesn't want to open her eyes and face the world, eyes screwing shut tighter until tears streak down her cheeks.

Everything hurts. But she's alive. And. And. "Ye-" it's barely a puff through cracked lips, her throat is dry, she whimpers again and tries to will herself to move, tries to remember where her fingers and toes are even located. It's all still scrambled in her brain, and her brain is overwhelmed with trying to figure out what's going on.

The only context is Yelena, who sounds so sad and broken. She manages to move her hand just enough to find hers in attempt to comfort, fingers trembling with the rush of relief of being able to make contact with something real and tangible again. "Yelena," she finally manages to get out, swallowing roughly against the scratchiness of her throat. "You're... so loud."

There’s a shift in her breaths and Yelena slowly lifts her head to find her friend awake now. “There you are,” she murmurs softly. “Hey, it’s okay, it’s over. You’re safe now.” That feels like the most important part to point out right now.

“Hey…” She squeezes Ava’s hand gently in return. She huffs out a soft laugh at that, “I am allowed to be when you are doing too convincing impressions of a dying woman,” she laughs again and dips her chin toward her chest. "Don't ever do that to me again." As if Ava had a choice in the matter.

Still.
She means it.

Safe. She's safe... and she allows herself to believe it, from Yelena's voice that pierces straight through the silence she had grown so accustomed to that it nearly aches in her skull. Her eyes remain tightly closed, still reeling from the overload of her senses coming back online.

But she's so grateful for it too, becoming aware of her own harsh breathing, hitching into a broken sob as she holds so tightly to Yelena's hand that her fingers slip through just for a moment. A horrible moment of lost connection, that she struggles until they're safely entwined again. "Am..." she trembles, afraid to fully voice her question, afraid of the answer. "Am I real?"

Yelena can’t imagine how it feels for Ava right now, to be broken down into the tiniest sense of herself possible, to being suddenly existing after spending days simply… not. Not in any recognizable, corporeal or human way, anyway. It brings with it thoughts of the years she lost in seconds in Ana’s house that day. Those seconds that somehow spanned 5 years… and this is different still than that. She had no knowledge or awareness while she was gone, Ava did. To some incomprehensible degree that probably can’t even fully be quantified.

Ava’s sob wrenches through her chest, too, and she grips her fingers tighter around the other woman’s when they become solid again from the slip. “Hey… it’s okay. I’ve got you, I’m not going to let you go.”

That question hits like a dark of bricks dropping in her gut. She barely manages to keep the tears at the edge of her eyes from falling, “Of course you are,” she reaches with her free hand, not currently curled as tight as possible between Ava’s own fingers, and traces her fingers, and then her palm, across Ava’s cheek. “Couldn’t feel that if you weren’t real, could you? Or this-” she reached to pinch Ava’s arm. Silly tactic, maybe, but… hopefully effective.

Pain. Anger. They were sometimes the two most powerful things that someone could have.

Right. Feeling is proof enough of existence for now. She turns her face into the comforting brush of fingers, and then scowls and swats at Yelena's hand at the unexpected pinch. "Hey!" It's enough of a jolt to jerk her the rest of the way into awareness, eyes opening to glare at the blurry shape until her friend(???) comes into focus. She aggressively blinks the tears from her eyes, hates being seen like this.

"Fuck..." she breathes out, lifting her head and slowly making sense of her surroundings, trying to back into what she remembers. "How long was I...?"

A little titter of sound escapes her at Ava's shout of objection to the pinch. Hey, at least it worked. "Now you're paying attention," she says lightly, the tiniest of sad smirks on her face.

She leans back on her heels, but doesn't go any further than that, only enough to give Ava space to sit up if she feels like it. Yelena's fingers are still wrapped up with Ava's, continuing to ground her the best she can.

"Days," she answers first, "More than a week...less than two." She couldn't be entirely sure a specific number, but that range is enough of a reference at any rate. "I tried to call you... I thought- maybe you were gone, but... still connected..." she frowns a little, "Did you hear any of them, while you were stuck in there? They said people could hear from the earpieces, but..."

But Ava never answered.

She does attempt to push herself up, an uncoordinated sort of movement as her limbs can't seem to figure out where they ought to be. When she manages, Ava leans heavily against Yelena, her head spinning. She feels sick, and if it's true that she's been out that long... that means she's gone without eating for even longer.

But the idea of stomaching anything right now gets quickly shoved down as she swallows against the rising bile. "I... I don't know," she replies, uncertain how to even explain how even if there was sound, she was too far gone to even register it as words. Give meaning to them. It wasn't until Yelena was there with her that she was able to sense anything at all.

"You came for me," she whispers, almost in disbelief as she stares down at their hands. Why would anyone?

She shushes her and doesn’t pull away when Ava leans so heavily into her. Instead, she tugs her closer, slides her fingers through her hair in a steady, smooth motion, muttering soft assurances into her hair.

“It’s okay,”
“You’re all right,”

“I’ve gotchu,”

“I’m right here,”

and other similar things, murmured softly against Ava’s ear. Another grounding technique, the quietness of her voice forces her to take slow, deep breaths to calm herself down, makes her focus on the words instead of her own thoughts, swirling dangerously in her mind; Yelena would hold her like this for as long as she needed or wanted it.

“Just promise me you’ll listen to them later,” she mutters softly. It doesn’t have to be tonight or even next week. Just eventually.

She laughs through her words, “Of course I did,” she leans her forehead against Ava’s. Distractedly, absently really, she presses a kiss against the knuckles of Ava’s hand, which is still tangled among Yelena’s own. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Comfort is something that's always been denied to her. First by the scientists that saw her more as a test subject than a person and SHIELD agents that didn't want to raise her to be weak. And then by herself, under the ingrained belief that she didn't need it to get by.

She accepts it now from Yelena, too exhausted to protest, and despite everything she's told herself she does actually crave being treated with such gentleness.

"Because I..." Ava hesitates, struggling to connect her thoughts to who she is and what got her here in the first place. But with Yelena's face so close to her own, everything suddenly feels so much more real again, tangible. She blinks through her haze at the soft kiss, unable to identify how it makes her feel. "Didn't think anyone would care enough to notice me gone." Nobody's fault but her own, she's pushed everyone away with such purpose to go forgotten.

Yelena understands how strange and difficult it is to accept the kind of comfort she’s giving Ava right now. Neither of them grew up in spaces that allowed for it much. She’s not always very good at it herself, but she likes it when it comes around. It feels nice for someone to just be soft with you and give a damn sometimes.

Yelena can feel that pause echoed in her own chest, the sharp stop as she tries to sort out how to explain what she’s thinking, how she’s feeling. “Well, too bad for you: I notice. I care. You are stuck with me forever now, I hope you know.” It’s easier to slide into the familiar back-and-forth, but it doesn’t make any difference to the weight of her words; Yelena means every single one of them.

There's no such thing as forever, Ava doesn't say. There's no promise of even tomorrow. Not in their line of work. And especially not in a world like this, where people go missing without warning, without explanation.

It had seemed safer not to get attached. Wasn't that her rule? Yet somehow it had snuck up on her anyway, she can't even pinpoint the moment. But she knows this one solidifies it, that maybe there is no forever, but at least there's as long as possible for them.

She doesn't want to let go, hand still trembling in Yelena's. "Okay," she agrees softly.

"... But can we get out of here?" She wobbles unsteadily as she gets up, thrown off by how heavy she feels, to have feet solid on the ground again. To balance, to coordinate limbs into movement. She continues to lean against the shorter woman, an arm draped over her shoulders.

If she knew what the other woman was thinking, Yelena would be glad she chose not to voice it. Sure, it may be true, but it serves nothing in this moment, except perhaps to bring it down. Neither of them are interested in doing that, it seems.

"Yeah, 'course," She smiles and grasping Ava's hand tighter in her own, grabbing her other one with her free hand, Yelena pulls her up with her, keeping her steady while Ava finds her balance. She slides one arm around Ava's middle and starts the trek to... "Where d'you wanna go, anyway?" She wants the other woman comfortable, so if she has a preference of where to go, she sees no reason not to go there.

Pessimism is hard to shake when all you know is misery. But for once she wants to be hopeful. Grateful. Despite everything she thought she knew, she mattered enough to somebody, to Yelena, to save her from the nightmare. That's far more important of a truth.

"I don't know," Ava admits. There's her place at the apartments, but Ava holds no special attachment to it. It feels temporary, devoid of anything that she considers her own. Just a space to occupy to sleep. But she trusts Yelena to take her somewhere safe.

"That's okay," she says casually, "you just come to my place instead." If she isn't mistaken, the compound is probably closer than the apartments anyway, so in a way, it all works out for the best in the end, right?

Yelena lets Ava choose the pace of their walk, but doesn't ever rush her or stray away from her side the whole way there. Eventually, it's impossible not to see the Avengers Compound in the distance.

She nods, and allows Yelena to guide the way. Luckily it doesn't take too long for her to figure out her own legs again, only stumbling a few times as her coordination lapses. But keeping her focus on the present is the difficult part, blanking out for a few short seconds before jerking herself out of it again. Ava swallows down the panic before it can fully take over, squeezing at Yelena to remind herself that she's still there.

The sight of the Avengers Compound at least provides a distraction, though she's not sure a welcome one. Ava groans with annoyance. "I hate those showoffs."

She is glad that Ava is just letting her lead, it would be a lot harder if she was fighting her in any way. Her body fighting her is a completely different story. Yelena can't really help much with that, other than keeping her grip on Ava's arm as they wend their way. When she squeezes Yelena to ground herself, she gently pinches Ava's wrist, or flicks her ear, or does something equally annoying and obnoxious to make her stop flickering in and out.

"I know, right? And they are never even around when you actually need them," she scoffs softly and shakes her head. "But they are not here, so their... дом – house? is mine now," she shrugs as she leads the way inside.

She won't let go unless Ava makes it seem like that's what she wants.

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MISSION 005 (part 1)

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