Things to Run Away From Really Fast

Notes: I'm mad at my cat because he woke me up. I was chaining those challenges like woah.

My three-step goal for the Sensei Comp is to Reality Check, use Elemental Manipulation and Teleport. I shortened that to "Check, Fire, Port" so I could memorize it yesterday, or I never would have been able to carry that list into a dream.

Onto the dreams.

---

I'm driving through, across, around a series of nicely winding roads. There are some problems with traffic, but it happens. I'm just enjoying the ability to slalom through the roads and enjoy the drive.

There's something about me dating a woman.

Then I'm Tony Stark, and I've just managed to get the arc reactor removed. Apparently I was dying immediately beforehand, because I get a phone call that goes immediately to voicemail, and I hear my voicemail playing morosely -

I rush to to the old-style landline and pick it up like a hot potato. "Pepper!" I say, "I was just going to call you!"

So Pepper's here, along with the other woman I was dating. At this point, I'm no longer Tony Stark, but I am some rich guy who needs to have kids to... um... leave things to. (It made sense at the time; let's just say that if I was playing as myself, this idea would really freak me out.)

Neither of the two women that I am now dating want to have kids, so I'm talking to a third woman who my family had an arranged marriage thing going on with. All four of us are sitting in a guest bedroom, hashing out legal details. The arranged marriage woman thinks that I should actually get married to one of the other two women because I'm romantically involved with them, but Pepper points out that marriage is actually a protection for the kids.

---

(I wake up briefly and attempt to WILD. It doesn't work, but the dream goes lucid later on.)

My point of view is following a sky train car suspended from cables over a vast forest. Inside the train car are dozens of sloths, and they're crawling all over the inside and outside of the suspended car.

Now I'm inside a building in a downtown area, stone and brick and lots of windows. My hands are sore because I've been climbing the indoor jungle gym using only my index fingers... because that's what sloths do?

There are fireworks outside and I hurry over to a window to watch them with the three people I'm here with: my mom, a girl from my childhood who died a few years ago, and her mom as well. The fireworks aren't super extravagant, but they're inside the city over the square, so it's pretty cool to see.

Back inside the building on the lower floor, there's a grocery store. A villain—possessed Harry Dresden?—is threatening the people there.

I've wandered back inside, and while the grocery store is on the ground floor, I'm on the second floor despite having just walked in from the square. I remember the Sensei Comp, and think about how I've always had trouble phasing through a floor, even though walls aren't that hard.

I drop to all fours and focus on pushing my hands through the hardwood floor. Three inches down, four inches down.

I remember that in order to earn points, we do have to be lucid. OK, I think. I know I'm dreaming, I'm lucid, I'm lucid. I chant it as a mantra as I start to feel my knees sinking through the floor. I'm lucid, I'm lucid.

The floor has almost enveloped my torso and I blink -

I fly through the air and land on the floor below, coming face to face with Not Dresden. He turns from threatening the people in the store and looks at me with a wide grin. I ignore him.

Fire, fire is definitely a thing, I think to myself. Ah, reality check first. Then fire, then teleport.

"One, two three four five six," I count on my fingers. "Reality check done."

Then I throw a wall of fire at Not Dresden. He jerks back and dissipates the flame, but it's a close thing. The look on his face is something.

Also, apparently sending flames at your enemies counts as flirting.

I'm baaack.

Originally Posted by #1. First Appearances

It's dark, and I'm surrounded by beautiful, frightening living statues made of shadow... twisted, slender, lethal. I want to remember them when I wake up, because they're mine.

08/26/10



The Monster of the Week gets in over its head.

This dream takes place in my old apartment building in Ixburg. The suite is a floor down from where I actually used to live, and it's been refitted with giant windows. It has a balcony with a fire exit, and the place is spacious and airy. Which is fortunate, because I live there with a group of people, and we're all sleeping together.

I'm alone in the bedroom when I see it. A presence has been on the edges of my consciousness for a while now, and it finally coalesces into a physical form. It's a black statue, shiny and carved out of something like obsidian or onyx. It's vaguely humanoid, but it's a simplified form. It has a somewhat bulbous head, but the rest of it is sleek, almost liquid.

Time speeds up, and I watch life continue in fast-forward. The other people in the apartment don't notice the statue at all. I have the feeling that it's been there for some time, and the fact that I can see it now means nothing good.

Ignoring the others going about their day, I stand up from the bed and walk over to the statue. It's immobile, but I can feel a dark presence.

It's moving. The statue bends an arm back, quick as lightening, and stabs forward. My mouth falls open in an involuntary gasp, and I see myself being impaled on the thing's arm, its hand reaching out through my lower back. I come to the sudden, horrible realization that I'm a sacrifice, and the only person who lives here that meets the requirements. Golden white light streams into my vision, claiming everything, and I feel myself fall back, completely detached from my physical form.

It's like being in the blue-white light from previous dreams, but this feels more like home, more a part of myself. I'm searching for something, cataloguing information that my conscious mind can't comprehend. And I feel it.

The "statue" exists before me as an infinitesimal dark speck, a mote of dust. The thing before me, the spirit inside the statue, I reach out - no, I don't even have to reach out. Just by existing in this state, I snuff out its tiny little black soul.

The light falls away, and I'm left standing in the apartment, completely intact. The dark presence is gone, and I allow myself a glimmer of satisfaction.

There's a reason they call me the Lightbringer.

Mugging the Monster. Scare Factor: 2.