Dream 03 → Fire Down Below

[irregular]

Warnings: Situations of peril. Spoilers for Ken's backstory, but nothing you don't know by Episode Four.
Dream Effects: INTERACTIVE.
Notes: Aside from Ken himself, the figures in this dream all resemble the same young Japanese man. Ken knows who this is, but he isn't saying. The men will not reply if spoken to and are quietly menacing, but not overtly aggressive. They just like stalking people.

This is how Ken dreams of fire.

He never knows how he came to be there - not in the dream, at least. Lying on concrete with the reek of petrol clinging to his clothes and his hair, he opens his eyes on flame.

The building is burning. Catwalks, gantries, machinery: all burns. Flame licks at the windows of the warehouse, at the very walls: he can feel the heat on his face, hot and oppressive as the air of a kiln, hear the roar of the fire in his ears. It deafens him, it leaves his head ringing. He can feel the heavy, heated air burning in his lungs - get out, damn it, got to get out of here before he chokes--! The smoke, thick and black, burns his sinuses; It gags him, blinds him with tears and sends sweat pearling up acrosss his brow, his back...

Ken springs to his feet, the breath catching in his chest; he can think of nothing but the need to flee, but he never runs for the doors. The doors are blocked, or blazing. There's only one place he can go and that's up.

Up.

He sprints for the nearest stairway just before a burning beam scythes down from somewhere above him and crashes to the ground where he had been lying. Ken looks back, then runs again, the treads of the stairs shuddering against his feet. Everything burns - flames lick at the gantry he runs across, and it yaws violently beneath his feet, chunks of debris rain from above, and that is burning too. The breath burns in his lungs.

After a time, he becomes aware that he is searching. Searching for something, or someone - the catwalk gives way beneath his feet, and the scream is choked off in his throat as he throws himself desperately forward, snatching at stairway or girder or anything that will arrest his fall-- Panting, he hangs from the broken walkway for a while, before pulling himself up and struggling on...

And, after a time, he becomes aware of the figures, looming through the choking smoke. Circling, and growing ever closer.

All he can do is keep moving. Keep moving forward because maybe, just maybe he will be faster.

Comments

[slantedcross.livejournal.com]

Smoke in his eyes; that would be what Youji registers first. Not the familiar scent of tobacco smoke. Actual, honest-to-goodness, are-there-batteries-in-the-fire-alarm? smoke. Something tickles the back of his mind, something about staying low to avoid the smoke, but he's too tall to be doing so comfortably.

He's not alone; that would be what Youji registers second. He squints, trying to make out what he sees, but isn't certain. Vaguely man-shaped, but nothing else.

And footsteps overhead. Within the circle he senses the other figures to be forming, senses from the way the hair stands up on the back of his neck.

The enemy of my enemy...

"Hello?" he calls. "Who's up there?"

[dimmed-shiner.livejournal.com]

Well now, this place continued to be entertaining. For all the places Mogget had walked, he couldn't say he'd ever walked through another person's dreams. The others he'd encountered had been plebeian at best, boring. What indeed did it say for the people of this odd world that their dreams were so commonplace?

This one was the first he'd stepped paw in that was somewhat diverting, aside from the whole novelty of walking through other's dreams, which had worn off rather quickly.

Perhaps he could...

Mogget smiled, an unnatural expression for a cat, his mouth split open wide and gaping dark as his muscles stretched unnaturally under skin suddenly fitting like a loose overcoat. Yes...

And his skin split down the back, the brilliant white fur revealing even more brilliant (almost blinding) white fire. His luminance faded enough to match that of the fire raging around, though his color--or lack of it--was unmistakable, as he approached the dreamer.