New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

12/08/13

Night Hero
I am walking home late at night. I am again completely non-lucid. My name is Rebecca. I am walking home from my job at a local diner. I am a waitress there. I really hate my job but I won't be able to get anything better until I finish school. I am in college studying Computer Science. I will soon be a Network Administrator. That will be much better. Right now I am tired and anxious to get home to bed. I had to work late because Gracie, the girl who was supposed to take over after my shift at the 24 hour diner, had been late. An hour late. So I am tired, I am pissed. Some people have no consideration for others.

I am passing an alley that could easily serve as a shortcut to get home. It would cut a good 15 minutes off of my walk. But it is a dark and creepy alley... It looks like bad things could happen there. No... I'm just being paranoid. This is a nice neighborhood. Nothing happens here. I decide I'm sure I can take the shortcut just this once and be safe. I'm 27 years old... I can manage to get home on my own! After briefly considering, I go down the alley at a fast walk. If I hurry I can shave even more than 15 minutes off of my time.

I am about halfway through the alley when I get the feeling I am being watched. I try to brush it off, I'm just being paranoid again. Still, I walk a bit faster. I am just passing an alley that branches off to the left when a dark figure emerges. A rather large and dirty man. He smells bad. He speaks as if he is talking to himself, he says, "Look what we have here!" I go to continue on my way. The man cuts me off and asks where I'm going, the fun has just started. I tell him I'm not interested. He moves faster than I thought he could and grabs my arm roughly. He pulls out a large knife and holds it at my neck. He pushes me down beside a dumpster and then the next thing I know he is on top of me. He is laughing and he smells horrible. He holds the knife at my neck again and says if I resist he'll kill me. He is holding both my wrists in one of his huge hands as he undoes his belt and zipper with the other. I fight to get free but he's too strong and he just laughs. I call for help, but there is no one to hear... no one to help me. I feel cold inside, I am about to get raped and there's nothing I can do about it. I scream and he tells me to shut up or he'll see how loud I can scream with a slit throat. He is ripping my shirt open and my skirt off...

And then he is off me. Someone has grabbed him and pulled him right off me. He curses loudly and grabs his knife as he is grabbed. He turns around and stabs the person that grabbed him. NO! This is worse than getting raped! Someone came to help me and now he might get killed for it! I try to scramble to my feet to do anything I can to keep my rescuer from being killed but I slip and fall back on my butt. My attacker is stabbing my rescuer over and over and over again, cursing loudly. "What the FUCK?! Why aren't you DYING?!" Then I realize my attacker is actually being held almost a foot off of the ground by the man who came to help me. He is stabbing violently and desperately but it doesn't seem to be doing anything. Then something skewers the man. Three razor sharp claws cut through my attacker like paper. The man's cursing changes to pained gurgles. The claws cut the man practically in two. Strange tendrils come from the other man and surround my attacker, ripping into him and literally EATING him until there's nothing left. The would-be rapist lets out some gargled screams as he is being eaten and then goes silent.

There is now just one figure standing over me. And he is not human. He is mostly human in appearance, but both of his hands are taloned claws that are still dripping with my attacker's blood. I realize who it is. I have seen news reports about this, warnings to stay away at all costs. The only sightings of this... man, if he can be called a man, was on the opposite side of New York, but here he is. I find I am looking at Alex Mercer himself, he just killed my would-be rapist, and I am next. I scramble backward, away from him, though I'm sure there is no way I can escape. His claws transform back into hands and he takes a step towards me. I am desperate to escape, I am wishing I could fit under the dumpster... but of course that's impossible. He stops and glares down at me. He looks pissed off. Great... I just met the infamous Alex Mercer and he's in a bad mood. He calls me pathetic and then turns and walks away down the alley my attacker had emerged from.

I stare after Alex, at first I am just shocked that he is leaving me alive. He didn't lay a hand... or claw... on me. That doesn't fit what I've heard at all. The news reports, the warnings, all of them describing Alex Mercer as a psychopathic madman who would happily rip apart and consume anyone he comes across... This doesn't fit at all. Then I start feeling bad. Maybe the news reports and warnings aren't true. And if they aren't, that means Alex just showed up in the nick of time and saved me from being raped and possibly murdered, and I respond like he's some kind of monster. No... I won't let that stand. It's just not right. I get up, pulling my skirt back up quickly. I call after Alex, calling his name. I see him in the alley, silhouetted against the distant street lights. He doesn't respond. I feel the need to not let this go that way. I chase after Alex. As I approach him from behind he suddenly turns, probably because he hears me approaching. As he turns he forms his claws again as if he is expecting an attack. I'm almost to him, and he has his claws spread wide away from his body, so I keep going and put my arms around him, hugging him, thanking him, trying to make up for my strange behavior earlier with a show of gratitude now.

At first it seems Alex doesn't know how to respond. Then finally I feel his arms close around me, and it is his hands rather than his claws that I feel on my back. He finally asks if I am ok, am I hurt? I tell him I'm fine, thanks to him. He lets go of me and pushes me away a couple feet. He asks what happened to me being scared of him? He adds sarcastically that I'd better run away quick before the monster kills me. He still looks annoyed. I put my arms around him again and say I'm not worried about any monster. "You killed the monster back there. He won't hurt anyone ever again." I look into Alex's blue eyes. I am overcome with the thought, "Wow... He's hot! None of those news reports said he kills rapists, saves foolish young women, and he is sooooo hot!" I tell him I want to thank him properly... then I kiss him. He doesn't really respond. Ok, now I just feel awkward.

I want to disappear into a wall or the ground again, but for a totally different reason now. Of course I would be rescued by a hot guy and then make a fool of myself in multiple ways. I take a couple steps away from Alex, calling myself stupid under my breath. I stammer that I'm sorry and turn to run back down the alley. This crazy night can't end soon enough for my liking. As I am running away a strange tendril wraps around me just under my arms like a harness. It lifts me off my feet and pulls me back to Alex. My first thought is, "Oh, shit... I pissed him off!" But I know immediately when I look at him that he is not angry. He is smiling pleasantly. Maybe even amused by my awkwardness.

Alex carefully sets me down in front of him. He says there's nothing I have to be sorry for. And then he kisses me. We kiss for a bit and then separate. After a brief silence Alex says he'll walk me home, make sure nothing else happens to me. I am perfectly happy to have Alex walk me the rest of the way home.

We talk on the way home. It turns out that since the viral outbreak was stopped Alex had been using his abilities to help those in danger. But it seemed whenever he helped someone they always acted like I had initially, like he was some kind of monster. I tell him that's because of the news reports, which I am now seeing are full of lies. He says they're no doubt sponsored by Blackwatch. They haven't given up their obsession to track him down and kill him. But without the virus spreading they have lost their excuse to maintain a military presence in the city. They must be using civilians to try to track him. Making sure they would report him and not even consider trying to talk to him and hear his side of what's happened and is still happening.

We reach my house. I am again embarrassed that am living at home with my mother at my age. But I have an agreement with my mother that I can stay there rent free as long as I am attending classes and keeping my grades up. My job at the diner is enough for other expenses. My mother meets me at the door and is shocked by my appearance. I realize I'd forgotten that my shirt was torn in the attack. She asks what happened to me. Am I ok? She looks suspiciously at Alex and asks who he is. I don't want to tell her I almost got raped, she worries enough about me walking home at night. I tell her I'm fine. I just had a little accident on the way home. Alex here stopped to see that I was ok and walked me home. My mother looks at Alex for a bit and I worry that she'll recognize him as Alex Mercer. I silently curse at myself for calling him Alex instead of making a name up. She just thanks him for seeing me safely home. Alex asks me if I work tomorrow. I say yes. He says if I don't mind, maybe he'll see me later. He smiles and walks away. My mother says he seems nice... I am tired, so I excuse myself to go to bed. I undress and lie down, surprisingly falling asleep almost right away. I wake in my own bed.

Note: Tonight I fell asleep with some very ambitious goals including checking to see if L will leave Asuka alone if she goes out, dream view a dream MoSh had quite a while ago where he was speaking with don Juan, sharing a DDO dream with Tigress, finding and doing another healing spell on Xildron, tasks of the year… the list of my goals just seems to go on and on… I fell asleep with my light / sound machine and successfully slipped into a WILD…

I found myself in a very familiar setting standing in the front yard of MoSh's house in his inner world. I went right up to the door without any hesitation, I wanted to get going on my goals. I knocked on the door and MoSh answered it. He was smiling when he saw me and he opened the door to let me in. When I looked around the room I saw Asuka sitting in the living room watching something on television. I walked over to Asuka and looked to see what she was watching, there was nothing actually on the television and I wondered why Asuka was staring at a blank screen. As if on cue, Asuka got up and came over to me, she said she was ready to go out and see that L had gotten the picture that he needs to leave her alone. I asked her where she wanted to go this time, it really should be somewhere she would be likely to go on her own. She said she knew of a mountain spring that was very relaxing. She said it was a place where she hoped to take MoSh someday so they could relax there and have some time to themselves. She said she was waiting until he started remembering her more consistently, though. After fusing with Asuka by using the fusion amulet she opened a portal and we went through it as one person.

The other side of the portal was a beautiful place. There was a crystal clear pool of water with colorful flowers growing on the surface of the water, numerous lily pads dotted the surface of the water as well. Colorful butterflies were flitting around near the shores of the pool, and there were even some butterflies out on the lily pads farther out in the pool.

It really was a very peaceful scene. I could see why Asuka would want to spend some time alone there with MoSh. I just let Asuka go where she wanted to go since she knew this place and liked it, and she waded into the water a bit. The water was very pleasant, and there were small fish tickling my feet. We spent quite a bit of time there wandering around the place, exploring all the hidden areas to find what wonders might be found there. We spent so much time there that I was beginning to wonder if the dream was going to end without L showing up… that would be a good sign that he had learned something from the last time he had kidnapped Asuka. After spending a bit longer there, Asuka said she was ready to go home… but first she wanted to go into the water in her own body, because the water here is so wonderfully refreshing and she couldn't feel it as well when fused with someone else. So we separated right there. Asuka swam out into the water still in her kimono which floated out beside her in an ethereal way. She sank beneath the surface of the water.

I had turned away from Asuka for only a short time to take a closer look at some of the beautiful flowers, to go over to them and smell them. The flowers were beautifully fragrant, and their fragrance was also very relaxing. I was smelling the flower when I heard some sounds from behind me. I turned around just in time to see there was a pair of tendrils were reaching through a portal and wrapped around Asuka, pulling her towards the portal. Wtf? I chased after her as she disappeared through the portal, jumping out over the pool of water and reaching to grab hold of Asuka's leg as she was disappearing through the portal. Then the portal was gone. I was yelling at an empty sky to give Asuka back right now, you yellow bellied bastard. My first thought was that L had come after Asuka again, well he would pay for that… I focused on opening a portal to follow Asuka to wherever she had been taken, then I flew through the portal ready to kick the ass of whoever I found on the other side.

I emerged from the portal in a world that looked like it was entirely made up of crystal formations. There was a sun shining brightly in the sky and rainbows were reflecting off of many of the crystal formations that made up the landscape. It was really a very beautiful place that I wouldn't have minded visiting if I hadn't been following after Asuka… Things being as they were, however, I didn't take time to notice the beauty of the place. I looked around for any sign of Asuka having had been through there recently. The fact was that I didn't see any sign of human life anywhere let alone Asuka… some very shiny butterflies were flitting around the crystal formations just as the ones near the mountain spring had been flitting around the flowers there. I called out to Asuka a couple of times, scanned for any trace of her, and I found nothing. I was in the wrong place! I wasn't sure how I had managed to get to the wrong place, but I tried the portal again.

I exited this portal to find myself about five feet in the air over a pool of rancid water. I wasn't ready to be in the air, so I fell right into the disgusting water which reminded me of sewer water. It was disgusting! It smelled bad, it was covered with a thick layer of slime, although the area around it didn't look contaminated or anything. It was just a typical stagnant pool of water. I paid about as much attention to the foul water as I had to the beautiful crystals, I flew back out of the pool and scanned the area for Asuka, for any trace of Asuka. Once again I could not find any sign that Asuka was there or that she had ever been there, at least not recently. Whoever had taken Asuka, I was on a wild goose chase, somehow they were making it so my portals weren't getting me to her! I was getting pissed at ending in the wrong places. I landed on dry land, felt like I was going to wake up when I didn't want to, so I dilated time. Something was keeping me from tracking down Asuka, and the first person on my list of suspects was still L, so instead of focusing my portal to follow Asuka I focused it on going to L's inner world. There was a bit of resistance when I tried opening the portal but it was nothing I couldn't easily overcome.

This time when I exited the portal I was in L's inner world, near his pool where I usually appear. I scanned the area for Asuka again, and I knew right away I had found the place she had been taken. I approached the house to see if they were in there, Asuka's energy frequency was still around the place from her last visit so it was a bit harder to tell which signals were more recent. When I headed for the house, however, Kanmuri came from around the corner of the house and pointed towards a building I hadn't noticed before. She said if I was looking for Asuka, L had taken her in there and insisted on being left alone, and when she had just peeked in out of curiosity L had gotten so pissed off at her… she said she didn't know what was going on in there. That was clearly where I had to go next, though.

I followed a path to the building which appeared to be a guest house, and though the path was very pleasant and beautiful with trees and flowers around it, now it seemed like a path descending into a nightmare. I didn't want anyone to see my approach so I used the song Of Wolf and Man by Metallica to change my form into a small blue bird since there were many similar birds around the area. I flew over to the guest house and landed on a window sill. I looked in through the window and I saw both Asuka and L, and I immediately wanted to kill L slowly and painfully. Asuka was sitting on a couch with no restraints or anything to keep her from leaving, but she was staring off into space with a blank expression on her face. She was also quite bruised and she was crying.

L was sitting beside her with his arm around her, had he been the one who had beaten her? He had wanted to take Asuka with him so he could beat her? Or had he done that out of anger over the torturing she (I) had given him last night? An unforeseen backlash of that tactic, making L want to get revenge for the pain she (I) had put him through.

I no longer cared about being unnoticed, instead I changed back to my normal form, my Assassin form, and kicked the front door of the guest house open, it slammed open with a loud crash that made L jump about three feet in surprise. Asuka didn't respond. I used telekinesis to slam L against the wall hard enough to put cracks in it, I asked him what the fuck he had done to Asuka, why was she like that, what had happened. He sniffed the air and said someone sure stank… I said it was him who stank even though I was pretty sure he was referring to the stink of the rancid water that was still on me. I demanded again to know what he had done to Asuka. He said he had just been playing games with her, those games that she seemed to like so well, it seemed she didn't like them anymore. He was laughing the whole time he said that, so I pounded the laughter out of him by slamming him around the room some more using telekinesis and I ended up slamming him right through one of the interior walls into the bathroom where I made sure his face landed in the toilet, actually he hit the toilet hard enough to crack the bowl… the icing on the cake was when raw sewage backed up from the pipe below and washed over L…

I looked over at Asuka, who had still not responded to anything that had happened. She seemed to have not noticed L getting thrown around the room, she hadn't noticed me yelling at him, she hadn't noticed him going through the wall or getting covered with sewage… I went over to Asuka, who didn't respond to my presence, but when I went to help her stand up she was very compliant to that. I focused on healing her injuries, I would do more healing on her once I had her somewhere safe. If she would snap out of this strange trance for anyone, that person would be MoSh. I opened a portal to get to MoSh's inner world and led Asuka through it.

I carefully helped Asuka out of the portal into the front yard of MoSh's house. I led her up to the front door with ease, she was offering no resistance, but she was also not reacting to the change in location. What the fuck had that asshole done to her to make her this unresponsive? We reached the front door and I opened it to find MoSh was right inside, he had been about to open the door. He asked what had happened, what was wrong with Asuka, who had done that to her, what had they done to her… I said I didn't know what had been done to her, but it was L who had done it. I told MoSh that L had shown up and kidnapped Asuka to take her… MoSh interrupted, asking how could I just let L have Asuka? I continued to tell MoSh that she had been taken, I had tracked her down to L's inner world and when I got to her she had been like this, worse in fact, it looked like L had been beating her. MoSh said something about a picture being real, and it had happened because I had let L take Asuka… what picture? He took Asuka into his arms and said something about so many men… so many men? I had only seen L… I told MoSh that Asuka needed healing, and he said any fool could see that. I said I would help him heal her, but he just glared over at me, he said Asuka didn't need any more of my help, I had clearly 'helped' her more than enough. He said they didn't need that kind of help. He slammed the door before I could say anything else.

I paused, I wanted to go inside and try to explain things to MoSh, but he was right… I was supposed to have been protecting Asuka, not just letting L walk off with her to do whatever he wanted to her… if I'd just been more careful she wouldn't have gotten taken, L wouldn't have done whatever it was he did to her… Maybe I should send Basara back over to do some healing on Asuka, who clearly needed it. How was she doing now that she was with MoSh? I walked around to the side of the house and peeked in through a window to see if I could find the two of them. First I saw Asuka's clothes tossed carelessly aside in the room. Then I saw Asuka was sitting naked in a corner of the room and I could see MoSh trying to get her to come out. Asuka wasn't responding to him, she had her knees pulled up to her chest, making herself as small as possible, and she was crying. That was because of what L had done to her, whatever he had done it must have been pretty awful to leave her in such a state. Seeing her like that made me want to hurt L, and hurt him bad, really bad.

So now it was time for L to pay, and the price was high. I opened a portal back to L's inner world and went through it looking to draw some blood. Kanmuri was standing near my portal when I got there, I asked her where L was, where was that foul piece of shit hiding, because I had some business to discuss with him… Kanmuri asked what was going on, she asked what had been wrong with Asuka when I had brought her out from the guest house? She had figured L was in there trying to coax Asuka into bed with him and probably epic failing at that, he wouldn't have hurt her, would he? I scanned the area for L and found him in the main house, I headed straight for him with Kanmuri following after me. She wouldn't shut up. L didn't hurt Asuka, did he? She said she knows he can be an ass sometimes, but she couldn't see him actually doing anything to hurt Asuka… he's too crazy about her… I told Kanmuri, focusing a bit too much of my anger on her, that I didn't know what L had done to Asuka, but he had definitely hurt her, and he'd hurt her bad. Kanmuri stopped and had a shocked look on her face as she watched me go into the house.

I found L in the living room kicked back on the couch as if nothing was wrong in the world, and that just pissed me off more. He looked up at me and smiled, he said it was so nice to see me again. He said if I wanted him all to myself, he could have said so instead of coming in and stealing Asuka. That was it, I was much too pissed off for words. All I could feel inside was unstable dark energy, but I didn't make any effort to control it, I just let it do what it wanted. The shadows in one corner of the room came to life as a swarm of scarab beetles each the size of a golf ball.

I used telekinesis to hold L still long enough for the bugs to get on him. The scarabs didn't stay still long enough for L to get them off, they immediately burrowed their way into L's skin, tunneling through his flesh as he was screaming in pain. I could see the moving bumps of the scarabs underneath L's skin, and he was apparently desparate to get rid of them as he tore through his own skin to get to one of the scarabs and pull it out. He threw the bug on the floor and stomped on it. So he had gotten rid of one of about ten bugs that were now tunneling through his flesh… several of which were in places he could not hope to reach. He was yelling at me or someone else to get those things out of him, get them OUT! While L was writhing on the floor in pain I was kicking him as hard as I could, anything to make him pay for what he had done… I'm not sure how long he was writhing and trying to reach the scarabs under his skin, how long I was kicking him before he was finally still, there was blood coming out of his mouth… and finally I woke, not really wanting to remember the events of this dream…