[Rob]
At the safe house, Damien lies in bed thinking. It ocurrs to him that
this could very easily have been the most significant day of his entire
life to date... and that, even if he doesn't somehow manage to get himself
killed tomorrow as a result of what happened, this could remain his most
significant day for the rest of his life.
Damien finds himself tossing and turning, unable to get to sleep for
hours, as the events of the day go through his mind, and a whole host of
conflicting feelings, thoughts, and emotions vie for his attention. For
today was the day that he learned that the particular nasty hacker gang
he'd been chasing on the net was in fact not any mere mudnane gang, but in
fact real demons, actually and honestly from Hell. Damien thinks back
through his first meeting with Jezreel at the computer store, remembering
how he thought she was a particularly annoying and snotty little girl,
only to find out later that she was an *angel*.
And, try as he might, Damien cannot get out of his mind's eye the image of
his house, trashed by the demons, and his dog Goldie, almost killed by the
demons. And then healed, somehow miraculously, by Jezreel's mother Dodai.
Every so often, Damien can't suppress a sense of aniticpation, looking
forward to playing with that amazingly adavanced computer that Mike Neelon
gave to him and Jezreel. He remembers how dangerous it is what they are
supposed to do with it, but the thought of seeing some hardware that
advanced, probably stuff not even relased yet....
But he comes back to the sheer magnitude of it all, to the fact that he's
met real, honest, angels, and that they all looked and seemed like normal
people, flaws and all.
As these thoughts go through Damien's mind, finally, after a couple of
hours of tossing and turning, he manages to drift off to sleep.....
-----
Damien is back in his room, and his room is intact, as it was before it
was trashed by his demons. He's sitting at his computer, only his
computer now is a system just like the one he saw in Mike Neelon's office.
Damien starts to type on the keyboard, but he doesn't get far before there
is no longer a keyboard-- but, as is so often the case with dream logic,
Damien does not notice the discontinuity. No, instead of a keyboard,
Damien is now using a neural interface, communicating directly with the
computer, which is picking up his thoughts and doing exactly as he
commands it to do.
Damein cruises through the internet using this neural interface. The view
on the screen is of a landscape which Damien flies over, but within the
dream Damien understands that the landscape is a metaphor for the topology
of the global network. He has an unrgency-- an unrgency that a moment ago
wasn't there, but, again as is the case with dream-logic, is not sudden,
but is now as if it had always been. There is a tower, at the center of a
city, which he must get to.
Damien flies across the landscape-- and now, the dream has changed
seamlessly such that he is in fact flying across the pixelized computer
landscape himself, rather than viewing the flying on a screen; the context
of his bedroom is no longer in the dream. He flies across the landscape,
and can see the tower that is his goal in the distance. But he's losing
altitude. Before long, he touches the ground. He tries jumping up and
moving forward, but he seems to have lost the knack for flying.
Damien tries walking forward, desparate to reach the tower, but before
long, his feet start dragging, sinking into and getting caught in the
computer graphics that make up the landscape he is walking across. His
legs are moving slower, as through molasses, and he cannot get them to
move faster despite the strongest efforts of his will.
And, then, behind him, he hears an alto voice say, "Damien, help me."
Turning, Damien see his golden retreiver Goldie behind him. She is
standing, her tounge wagging, and generally looking happy... but her side
is split open, and a messy stew of intestines and other internal organs
hang out of her side, dripping blood which gets subsumed into the computer
graphic landscape as it hits.
"Damien, help me," Goldie says again.
Damien cries out, "Goldie, no!" He tries to go to her, but he cannot
move. His feet are rooted in place.
And then Goldie begins to change. She stands up on two legs. Her face
darkens and morphs until it looks more like the face of a wolf than a
golden retriever. Two long, gnarled horns sprout out of her head. Here
eyes beging to glow red. She grows tall, huge, towering over damien.
Greenish slobber hangs from her lower jaw.
In a growling, bass voice, the monstrosity that was so recently his dog
says, "You shouldn't have meddled where you weren't wanted, little boy!"
The entrials still hang out of the side of the standing demon-monstrosity.
It takes a step toward him.
Damien is rooted in place. He tries to back up, but cannot move. The
computer graphic landscape around him is no longer the fields and hills
that he was so recently flying over, but is a dark, stony landscape
straight out of the game Doom.
"No, leave me alone! I didn't mean...!" Damien cries, as the monstrosoty
takes another step towards him.....
[Perry]
The monster grins evilly, reaches out with inhuman speed takes wicked
hold of Damien's arm. A pain, like fire, speeds through Damien,
a sinking fear fills him, as well as the solid knowledge that there
is no escape.
"That's right," growls the beast, spitting on Damien's face. "There
is no escape. There is never any escape, not here, not in your
dreams. You humans are so weak, with your need for sleep, and it
is in your sleep, at your weakest moment, that you are most
vulnerable."
Memories of Nightmare on Elm Street rush to Damien's mind. In some
still rational part of his mind, he realizes that perhaps the movies
weren't so fantasy after all. But could a dream kill him in real life?
"Demons are everywhere Damien. In your schools, in your churches, and
in your dreams. Oh, we don't usually kill you in your sleep, oh, no,"
the voice rumbles.
Damien's eyes widen as he watches, and feels, the skin on his arm where
the monster is touching him begins to be diseased, pussy and black.
He tries desperately to move his feet, looks down and realizes that
think gooy black liquid is rising out of the ground and is holding him
in place.
"No, we torture you, Damien. We infect your mind like a virus, Damien.
Fill you with fear and let it fester until you drive yourself insane.
Call it the ultimate hack. Why kill the body when destroying the mind
is so much more fun?"
The skin on Damien's arm begins to peel away violently and painfully
as the disease spreads down to his shoulder. His stomach is
wracked with pain and his chest begins to feel cold and breathing
is becoming difficult.
"Your friends cannot help you here, Damien." The beast's foul breath
falls into Damien face as its maw draws closer. "Here there is only me,
and you."
Damien trembles with fear. He's heard the monster tell him that it's a
dream, but somehow this doesn't register on the boy. Like so many in
dreams, he still thinks he's in reality. (And, indeed, that is probably
more comforting than would be facing the full truth of the straight
interpretation of what the demon has said, that they can find him in his
dreams and beset him there.)
Damien is frozen. He doesn't know how to respond. He wants to turn, he
wants to run, but he can't. He watches in horror as his body begins to
fall apart. After a few moments, a cry of "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!" bursts out of
the boy, at the top of his lungs.
Suddenly, a fierce wind comes out of nowhere and begins to buffet
Damien and the wolf-monster about like dolls. A huge storm has
risen around Damien and his attacker and he finds himself now
atop a tall mountain, the clouds black, thundering, and he
can feel anger surrounding him, like electricity, a crackling
rage.
(OOC: cue "Night on Bald Mountain")
The monster screams and howls in pain lightning reaches down
from the sky and strikes it, forcing it to let go of Damien's
arm, taking most of the skin with it.
A presence enters into Damien's mind. He feels, knows, that this
storm is somehow borne of his father. "We will need to work together
to defeat it," Damien feels it seems to communicate to him without words.
Damien's first instinct, realizing that the storm is somehow his father,
is to run, and hide, for his father is surely stronger, and more able, and
better able to deal with any of this than he is. If Dad is here, then all
must be well.
But the true horror of the situation reasserts itself in Damien's mind.
Suddnely, Damien is filled with the certainty that the creature has found
his father's office, and that his father only got here just barely in
time before the creature found him *there* and killed him. (No, this is
not logical; it's dream-logic. It doesn't really make sense, but Damien
finds himself "knowing" it to be the case.) And Damien realizes that
these are the demons, the demons that he unleashed from the internet with
his careless hacking.
His father can help him, but he knows that there is a limit to it. He
cries, "Jezreel! Dodai!"
And then Damien realizes that he is supposed to be a "Soldier", whatever
that is... and that therefore he should be able to stand against the
demon. He tries to stand taller. He tries to stand with solidarity with
the storm cloud that is borne of his father. He shouts at the monster, in
a commanding a voice as he can muster, "Go back! Go away! You don't
belong here!"
As the words escape his lips, he feels the force of the storm somehow channel through him, through his feet and hands, up his chest, out his mouth and at the Demon. Lightning (symbolic of the power he wields as a hacker) pours forth from his mouth is rippling streams of golden and white light, controlled by Damien's force of will.
It's almost as though the lightning itself is a form of code that is changing the very structure of reality of the Demon, altering for the worst, a destructive program in the form of pure reality.
The monsterous wolf screams in pain and fear, pawing desperately at the electricity burning through its body. Howling pitiously it drops to all fours and falls to the ground, then fades from existance.
Shaking and drenched with sweat, Damien falls to the ground. He feels
exhausted, spent.
Remembering the last time he used code to shut down something of the
demons, a grip of panic takes hold in his chest. For last time, the
demons retaliated in an extreme manner. Damien struggles to lift his
weary head to look around the dream landscape, searching for further signs
of demons.
Before he can lift his head, he closes his eyes, for he is afraid of what
he may see. This gives him enough time separated from the immediate
events to realize that this may indeed be a dream. Thinking it to be a
dream, Damien tries to wake up ... he tries to open his eyes, pull himself
out of the dreamland that he's in. [*1]
[*1] OOC: I've actually done this in personal experience-- been in a
dream, which I lated realized was a dream, and then tried to wake up.
Sometimes, I make my Will roll :) But, I've also had the experience in my
dream where I feel like I'm pulling at my eyelids, but I cannot wake up,
and I remain stuck in the dream.
[OOGM: Whoo-hoo Will roll!! Well, this is an example of one of those
instances where it would make MORE sense for humans to have a higher will...
So, I'll pull a GURPS. Intelligence Roll!! 1,4, CD3. Well, lookee there,
he succeeds. :]
Damien struggles to open his eyes, it feels painfully slow. Although at
first he think he's still dreaming, he remembers that he doesn't recognize
his surroundings because he's not at home!
A quick glace at his watch tells him its about 4:00 in the morning. The
room is dark with the city lights streaming in from the window.
Damien takes a few moments to realize that reality has shifted, that that
was in fact a dream, and that he's OK now. The feeling of relief that all
of that was in fact just a dream floods through him, when....
He can see a someone sitting on a chair leaning against the door.
Damien sucks in a sudden breath, startled and scared. He feels the chill
of fear run down from his scalp to his tailbone, as he sees somebody
watching them. "Who..." he starts, but the word comes out as a squeak.
Taking a brief moment to try (unsuccesfully) to regain his composure,
Damien speaks again, tenatively: "Who's there?"
The figure moves its head, apparently in his direction. "Just me," comes
a feminine voice. Damien recognizes the voice as Darla, the lady-cop who was
staying with them in the safe house.
Damien listens as the pounding of his heart subsides. The shadows in the
room seem to subside, as normality returns to Damien's room.
"Oh," he says meekly, not sure what else to say.
Damien looks around the room, still half-expecting to see the monster from
his dream. He finds himself wanting to go find Goldie, and make sure that
she is still OK after the horrible dream he just had, but he feels
embarassed about admitting this in front of Darla.
Instead, he talks to Darla. "Uh, is everything OK?"
"You were mumbling something in your sleep there for a while there, but other than that, nothing's doing." She sits up in her chair a bit, "You want a drink of water or something?"
"Oh," Damien says meekly. "Just had a nightmare," he says, trying to
sound very nonchalant and brave about it. "A drink of water would be
nice, thank you."
Her face comes a bit into the light from the window, and Damien can't help but be reminded of what few memories he still has of his mom.
Seeing the resemblance, Damien finds himself feeling wistful, wishing that
he did have a real mother he could go to who would protect him and tell
him that everything is all right and is going to be all right. In this
mood, he says something which is perhaps a little ill-advised and
inappropriate, given the events of the previous day. Inadvetently quoting
the yet-to-be-released Episode I of Star Wars, he asks the officer, "Are
you an angel?"
[OOGM: *groan* :]
She's comes over to him and kneels before him, glass of water in hand in offering. "No, I'm human," she says smiling. "A Saint, actually."
GMs Note: Darla is a Saint of Zadkiel
"Oh," Damien says, smiling meekly, thinking that she is either joking, or
speaking metaphorically. Reminding himself that the last time somebody
told him that she was an angel, she *wasn't* saying anything but the
direct truth, Damien then wonders if perhaps what she is saying perhaps
really is true. "But," he says, pausing, "I thought you had to be dead to
be a saint."
She smiles knowingly, "Not exactly. That's saints according to the Catholics. I'm a Saint in the sense that I did die, entered Heaven, and then came back to do more good. I protect people."
Damien remains silent for more than a minute. Finally, he says, "I guess
it's going to take me a very long time to understand this new world.
Angels, and Demons, and Saints, and they're all real and walking around,
and look just like normal people. I don't know how you guys keep it all
straight and tell them all apart."
"Its okay, maybe I can teach how to guess if people are supernormal ssometime." She smiles kindly, "right now, though, you should probably get some sleep."
Damien lays back down, and, despite still being a little shaken from his
dream, tries to go back to sleep.
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