Mzzkc's Mind Games

02.07.2010

Dragon Slayer (DILD)

★★★★★

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

They're probably going to die.

I watch the dragons slowly descend upon two neighbors from inside my doorway. Fearing for my own safety, I shut the red metal door and casually step away.

"Hurry up and get over here." My brother states from his fancy wooden seat at the dining room table.

"There's dragons out there, man."

"Don't worry about that." He brushes me off, as I take a seat next to him. Plopping down in my chair, he starts talking about something in his usual way, but I can't help thinking about that horde of dragons, the ones from the LD I just had a few moments ago before my. . .

DEILD attempt! Right! This is a dream! I realize excitedly. Taking a look at my brother, I wonder if it's Burmes. "Hey, Burke." He looks at me as if I've got three heads. "Sorry, Burnes--Burmes right?"

"No, not exactly." He states coldly.

"Well, whoever you are, you're pretty convincing. You had me fooled for sure." I stand up and head to the door. I figured I'd help out those people in the court. Those dragons did refer to me as prey, after all.

"Where are you going? Hey! Get back here!" My brother shouts at me.

"I'm alright, thanks." I respond kindly, opening the front door to reveal a dragon hanging off the awning over my porch. Leaping out the door, I grab onto its head just as it begins to launch itself toward the center of the court, where those two people still were. Utilizing Super Strength, I break its neck, sending it hurdling onto my car-less, sloped, concrete driveway where it slides down a bit before stopping, dead in its tracks. The rest of the dragons were quick to notice.

One, two, three, four, five, six. . . and probably more just around the corner. Better get started, then. Taking to the air, I pull out a bow from behind my back, and grab an arrow from much the same place. With a burst of will, I light the tip of my arrow ablaze, draw my bow, and aim it at the heart of the nearest dragon, 50 meters away.

FWANG!

My shot is right on target, hitting its mark in the exact center of the dragon's chest. Stunned, the dragon looks down at the arrow protruding form its deep red and orange scaled body. It stumbles forward, but doesn't go all the way down. That's cause enough for me to switch to my Barret .50 Cal. Sniper Rifle. I take a quick shot without scoping, but it goes rather wide. Resigning myself to obscuring my vision for a short while, I peer through the scope, line up the dragon's head in the cross-hairs, and let off a round, which creates a rather large hole in the thing's forehead. Before it can hit the ground, and after dealing with gun's recoil, I put another bullet through its skull for good measure. Yeah, there's no way it's getting up from that.

Off a ways from all this, I see and hear a dragon howl ominously into the afternoon sky. The narrator in my head explains that this particular dragon was upset because his last living brother had just been killed. I was also informed that the dead dragon in question was the one whose neck I had snapped moments ago. They probably shouldn't have started screwing with my dream, if they didn't want me to fight back.

Dropping the gun, I pull out a weapon from a more civilized age (No, not that, you silly Star Wars fan, you). My steel Katana glints luminously in the slowly failing sunlight. The mass of dragons--plus one enraged ex-brother--smoothly move in my direction. I too move forward, as one of them takes out a missile launcher. Oookay? I think as he fires it, sending a missile careening toward me. . . very very slowly, I might add. Watching the missile sputter out halfway and drop to the ground, isn't too surprising. However, I don't expect the resulting explosion to be as large as it is. If I had been any lower in altitude, this could have ended badly. I need to deal with this before things get even more out of hand, and if there's anything I've learned about efficiently dealing with large groups of enemies from my HvZ exploits, it's that you should always rush them before they rush you.

Shouting ferociously, I fly at high speeds toward a dragon to my left. Raising my sword high above my head I scream, "Getsuga Tenshou!" tearing at the air before me in a dramatic swipe. A blue cyclical wall of energy erupts from my blade and flies forward, hitting the dragon and creating a huge gash along its entire body. Feeling confident that would be enough to put that one out of the fight, I turn my attentions to the others around me, just in time to block a claw from removing my head. I back off from my attacker, and start to fly around him, being sure to make a note of the positions of the other dragons. Right then, that asshole with the missile launcher tries his luck at blowing me out of the sky again, but my next maneuver will put me well out of range of the blast.

Flash Stepping into striking range, I unleash a flurry of slashes on my attacker, before Flash Stepping to the other combatants and doing the same. I finish just in time to feel the shock-wave of the explosion behind me. Unfortunately, my strikes barely break through the dragons' skin, and I'm forced backward yet again in order to avoid being cleaved in half. I let off another Getsuga, but this one is deflect by. . . A dragon with two gigantic sabers? Fuck me.

I strafe aerially in a wide arc, carefully watching not only this new threat, but all those still in the fight. It's then I notice the second blade in my off hand. How'd that get there? I wonder for a moment before realizing how unimportant that information is. All I know is that now I should be able to take on that monstrosity slightly below me.

Changing my flight path, I dart diagonally toward the dragon with the giant twin blades. "Getsuga Tenshou!" I yell, but my blade fails to perform the technique. Ignoring my seeming lack of control, I engage her in direct combat. Yet, as it turns out, fighting with two swords is a lot harder than you'd think, even when acting on instinct. Despite my best efforts, each attack I make, no matter how complex, is subsequently parried and met by a counter. What's worse is some of my opponent's attacks actually manage to nick me a bit. What gets me is that here's this target five times my size, I can't even land a single blow, but she manages to make contact with my skin on several occasions!

"Come on!" she taunts me, "Is this the best you've got?!"

"No, actually." I state as coolly as I can in my agitation.

"Well, then bring it!"

Jumping backward, I warn her, "Remember, you asked for it." Then, throwing my arms out to the side, I proclaim, "Ban--kai!"

FWWOOOOM!

The energy deep within me bursts forth in a remarkable fashion, violently throwing about the air around me. My dual blades are now wider, more ornate in design, and encased entirely in glowing, bright, yellow energy. But that isn't the only new thing I have to show off. Moving toward her, my speed is so great that the world blurs around me and she herself seems to be stuck in time. I circle her, once, twice, three times, four times in less than a second, with each pass I cut into her with a volley of slices faster than even I can make out.

"I'm not quite done, yet." I comment with a grin as I slow down enough for her to register where I am. "Reverse Bankai. . . Resurrection!"

At that, my body is covered in white light as I immediately transform. I switch to the third person to get a good look at my new form. I'm completely shirtless, with smooth pale skin, flared white sleeves sporting two lavender and orange squares overlaid on top, and white bone-like gloves. My shorts are also pure white, and my feet and lower legs are fitted in a bone-like material as well; they too bear the colored squares. My medium length green and blue hair spikes out to the side, flowing subtly in the warm twilight air. A metal loop is affixed to my stomach, from which a thick silver chain is passed through. On the end of that chain is my new weapon: a pair of red marble nun-chucks with gold plated tips.

"But that's still not all I've got lined up." The dragon's eyes are visibly wider now as they continue struggling to follow my movements. Reaching my hand to my face, I rip down my Vizard mask. I feel a cold wave flow out from the center of my being; my desire to utterly destroy this creature rises as the numbing current overtakes me. Allowing myself to act on the impulse, I Flash Step in front of the target of these urges, bringing my weapon down hard across her head.

BOOOM!

The explosion from my strike sends overpowering vibrations throughout my neighborhood. Standing behind my opponent now, I slow down time for the both of us and explain to her why she's missing half her face and falling to the ground, while I'm completely unharmed.

"It seems every time this weapon makes an impact with something, it lets out a fairly powerful blast. I'd say the actual force is around ten times as strong as what those missiles your friend was shooting could produce. Luckily for me, this new form has a built in perk that protects me from attacks below a certain level. Unfortunately for you, its limit is high enough to let me use something that devastating as my main attack. I don't think you're body will be able to handle it like mine can. Let's find out, shall we?"

Resuming the flow of the battle, I move back in front of her and begin my assault--and what an assault it is. Every blow from my viciously spinning nun-chucks is coupled with an enormous explosion. Smoke, fire, and smoldering flesh flies around me as I continue my attack, each strike taking a good sized piece of her body with it. She drops her blades, but I'm not just going to let such massive weapons go to waste. Snatching them from the air, I use a bit of chain from my stomach to bind the sabers together, creating a pair of sword-chucks three times the size of my body. Expertly utilizing both weapons, it's only a short time before all that's left of the dragon is an unrecognizable husk of meat and bone.

My brother comes up to me, his mannerisms completely different from before. "Well, if that doesn't scare them off, I don't know what will."

Nodding to whom may have been Burmes, I turn to the rest of the dragons. Staring them down, shock splayed against their collective faces, I instruct them, "Run, while you still can."

The dream fades as I watch these beasts who once thought of me as prey vacate the area with a hurried purpose.

12.02.2010

The End (Non-lucid)

★★★★☆

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

VRRRRRRMMMM--VVVRRRRRRR! My father and I were speeding home after just narrowly escaping from a zombie filled corporate building. "Something's not right." He says, as we screech around a corner.

"What's wrong?" I ask.

"I don't know, the controls are all weird. Bleh! Hold on!" He guns the sleek black car down the straightaway to our house and whips the back around. His expert driving parks us right in front of our neighbor's mailbox in a flurry of smoke and burning rubber. He gets out of the car hurriedly and goes inside their house. Out of nowhere, a friend of mine jumps into the driver seat and turns the engine back on.

"The hell are you doing?!" I exclaim in protest.

"What's it look like I'm doing?" She rolls her eyes at me and takes the car back out into the main street outside my court. "Huh, that's weird." She is all over the road and seems to have absolutely no control over the car.

Frustrated, I shout at her "Get out of the way!" moving her to the side I take the wheel. To my surprise, the turning was, indeed, quite f-ed up. Spinning the wheel in any given direction would cause the car to drift off to the opposite side. It only takes me a moment to get the hang of it, though, and before we know it I've maneuvered my way back into the previous parking position. I get out of the car and look up to the smoky orange sky. What I see only confirms my fears. It's the end of the world.

Large clusters of missiles and bombs are being shot high into the sky and scattered all around the area. I turn toward the house and see my dad motioning for me to hurry my ass inside. I don't hesitate for a moment. Leaving my friend behind, I rush inside the house only to have one of the falling pieces of ordinance crash through the roof and violently pass through my leg. Surprisingly, I feel no pain. My dad takes one look at the small brown and red blinking object on the floor and his eyes go wide. "Quick! Downstairs now!"

As we close the door behind us an explosion rocks the house. My father pulls out a shotgun and explains we would have to hold out here for the time being. I understand completely.

Time lapses, and it turns out the world had been taken over by sentient robots. I'm watching a scene where two of them, who look exactly like me (apparently the thing that passed through my leg collected a DNA sample), discuss breaking into our stronghold. They conclude that if they both go they would lose only one robot life in exchange for the two humans residing below. "Acceptable losses," they called it.

Meanwhile, the rest of the invasion force is searching for the last hope humanity has for survival: The Avatar (think more 'last airbender' not the popular movie). Long story short, they find her, and end her life in a most spectacular fashion. All hope is officially lost. . .

09.10.2009

Yellow (Non-lucid)

★★★★★

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

What a great night for dreaming. No lucids, but almost every non-lucid was quite a lot of fun.

I was taking the role of Static Shock, and had just finished a rather interesting fight with two DCs. While they had the ability to use the others' powers, the most interesting part was how they fought: using fancy moves, bright colors, and lots of light effects. I don't remember who won the battle; regardless, I was now inside a store. In this store were several "Hoodies" signified by their wool caps. Turns out Hoodies and un-capped mutants like myself had been in a constant war with each other that was taking its toll on the community.

I was making progress to ease tensions between the groups, befriending many of the Hoodies after bouts. I found this out while explaining it to some random person who asked, flying on my collapsible manhole cover, citing the lack of merchandise in the store. It was at about the time I finished talking that the girl from my fight earlier came into the store and approached me. She wanted me to accompany her to train, so she could learn to use my power. I said sure, and she jumped on my cover and off we went, in search of a training ground.

This part was incredibly vivid.

As we flew over rooftops, I felt a strange connection to this character. Similar to the one I felt when I first spent time with my first DG. People were outside on top of their houses, taking pictures of each other in the starry night sky. We passed over a miniature golf course where I spotted a friend who didn't notice me. Soon, the urban town was growing more old timely. I mentioned that I had always liked this part of town. She questioned me, asking why I would like such a creepy place. I had no answer.

As the environment did indeed get much creepier, we came across a large caged dome, which apparently housed political prisoners. There was a large forest inside. Perfect for training. The Warden was nearby, luckily, so I asked him if we could use the area to train in order to help fight crime better or some such nonsense. He warily agreed and showed us inside. We found a nice clearing and that's when the fun started. She explained that you could use any ability if you had had it used upon you at all. Thrilled at the prospect we began to spar.

She was using some kind of yellow light that could explode, lash out, and do a multitude of other things. I was using standard purple electricity. After a short while we overheard the Warden saying that now that I was trapped here it was just enough time for them to destroy the town. At this point a large being emerged inside of town, and my perspective cut away to it. It grew until it was fully formed. It was a Hollow, but not a real Hollow. Sure enough, a copy of the monster, with glowing red eyes and bone white mask came out of the ground before it. The first beast questioned it, wondering who it was. The second one responded, calling it an idiot and promptly absorbing the first.

As it stood up, a large indent in the street was created, freaking out all the nearby DCs. Then, as it reached out it's hands, large bolts of blue electricity shot down from its fingers onto the streets and buildings. I had to stop it. Unfortunately, the Warden's henchmen, large, fat, round, fleshy, golem like creatures started to attack us. We went to work. I discovered that if I charge a blast with one finger, and direct the needle thin line of electricity at them, then I could use the yellow light to make them explode from the inside out. I did this to several of them, to spectacular results. It looked like we were thinning their number, but suddenly Menos started to materialize all around us. My new friend set up some kind of barrier of yellow light that slowly dissolved them as they appeared, but they were too resilient for it. For some reason, it made sense to draw my sword. I put my back against hers and released my Bankai. As energy swirled around us, and Menos made their way through the barrier of yellow light, I shouted: "Getsuga Tenshou!" a yellow stream of tornadoes shot out of my blade and started cutting through the Menos. As I sustained my ability, the girl beside me used her yellow light to slice through the Menos. We turned in one wide arc, together, cutting down our enemies in a wondrous fashion. When it was over, I took a look at my blade. A short silver blade with a large, black, blocky hilt that came around the front of the blade into a swept point. I wondered why it wasn't black.

This led into a weird tangent that involved my WoW playing suitemate explaining that I needed to play WoW and collect "evil orbs" to change the stylizing of my character. Yeah. . .

I don't think I did that dream justice.

05.08.2009

Boom! (DILD)

★★★★★

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I didn't sleep at all two nights ago, which explains my lack of any entry for that day.

I was running for my life. A friend had just overheated the new temporal computer we had built, out of spite. We were using it to store the consciousnesses of a large group of people in order to make an animated film using real actors. However, people weren't following the carefully laid schedule and plan I had set out and were freaking out over the logistics. Hence the reason my colleague decided to overheat the system, which would cause it to explode. . .

Anyways, there I am, running through the halls of this school, and a little voice pops in my head. It tells me not to worry, since this is just a dream.

Nice. I thought as I burst through the front doors. I rubbed my hands to stabilize. I figured I'd try the finger through the hand RC since I've never done one of those before. I was pretty weird, not something I think I'm going to make a habit of doing though. Anywho, I took to the air, trying out various flight positions in order to find out what worked the best for me.

Soon, I thought, Oh, right. That building is going to explode. Better get to a safe distance. I flew off and up, and then down again, getting caught in some telephone wires, but pushing through them as if they were rubber bands. At that point, I heard a loud booming and I looked behind me in time to see licks of flame and debris shooting around the large building I had gotten behind for safety.

I went to investigate to find the building had indeed blown up. Most of the outside walls were intact, albeit on fire, but everything inside the school, and the roof, were totally destroyed. Hey, that reminds me. Wasn't one of my old goals to set off a suitcase nuke? So, I got right on it, dropping down to the fountain in front of the school. I reached down in the crevasse where the fountain met the ground, and sure enough, out came a suitcase nuke. I opened it up, people around me going about their usual business. And I hit a few random buttons up in the corner, since I had no idea how to work this thing.

Sure enough, the console on the thing booted up and I was presented with a nice graphic of a missile station receiving my coordinates and orders. A pretty accurate 3D model showed me the nuke taking off. I knew it was only a short matter of time before it hit. So, I sat down, in meditative pose, and waited.

In moments, the missile hit, and the nuke went off. It enveloped me, burning my skin through my invulnerability. I could smell and feel the radiation around me. I could hear the sonic boom. The resonating frequencies of every possible wavelength ripped at my ears. And I saw nothing but an orange glow, rushing over me, trying to uproot and destroy me. It was marvelous, yet terrifying.

When it was done, however, nothing around me except the fountain was really gone. I didn't pay it much mind at the time, but it would have been cool if there was nothing left behind, except a wasteland. Regardless, I went about the lucid, flying about in the air. I noticed some people from TO, my old SG. I went over to say hello to everyone, but no one knew who I was anymore. All the old members had moved on.

I did a bit more airborne exploration before the dream finally started to fade. I let myself wake up so I could hurry up and write all of this down.

13.07.2009

Ka-Blammerz! (DILD)

★★★★★

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

This is a long one, so I'll cut out the unimportant bits.

We're on a bus heading out to a lodge somewhere. There are some douche bags on the bus, some antics ensue, not really that important. We're in Florida and heading through some of the sketchier parts. We've been on the bus for awhile, when the driver finally decides to pull over, stating he will not be going through that section of town. Instead, we're going to be walking around it since there's no other route. We get out and start making our way to a swampy area. A car pulls around and the Bus Driver hangs back. Turns out a drug deal or something is going down, and the bus driver gets killed. By now I'm in the swamp, but I can't move very quickly through the slush. On top of that, the people who just offed the bus driver are coming for us now. This triggers that handy dream reflex of mine and in an instant, I'm Flying away.

The best part is I gained lucidity doing it. Sweet, finally, a legit DILD. I stabilized for a moment, rubbing my hands, before deciding to get right on the Task of the Month. I had it all planned out, I was going to activate the Self Destruct power from CoH. I "clicked" on the power (this is really abstract and hard to explain) and started through the animations. The red 10, 9, 8, started counting down over my head. I crossed my arms and hunched over, there was no electricity shooting off my body like in the game animation, but when the countdown hit 0 I released. It was one of the weirdest and coolest sensations ever. I could feel the blast engulfing and vaporizing my pursuers and the classmates around me. I saw pixelated specks of red and puffs of orange as my body became nothingness. I was gone and so were many of the things around me. I floated like that for a moment, in that serene state, before reconstructing my body.

That part wasn't too tricky, it just involved realizing my physical body was in my bed, and emulating what I felt outside the dream. That destabilized it a bit though, and I had to stabilize again. After that, I went into the nearby house and interacted with a few DCs, my lucidity waning, but still there. Most of them were people from the bus I hadn't seen before. The house was filled with old nerf guns and this one guy had a mini uzi that shot needles. I told him to shoot me with it, he did, and I stopped the projectiles a la Neo. After a short time chatting with them, I figured I'd attempt to locate my DG. It had been awhile since I had talked with her, and our last conversation was very insightful. So I casually asked the group if anyone knew where she was.

Surprisingly, they told me she was just up ahead, and sure enough, she came out from the other room. This conversation proved to be almost as insightful as the last one. We talked about the nature of reality, death, and she told me about a few drugs I should look into. I hadn't remembered hearing about these drugs before, but some of them turned out to be real, which was odd. One was Pepp, a hangover relief thingy (I don't drink, so this was weird), and one was Melox, or Meloxicam, an anti-inflammatory. The other one was Persep or something like that, I couldn't find anything on that upon waking. I knew the dream was ending soon, because my stabilization techniques weren't working well. So I said my goodbyes, went over the drugs once more to memorize their names, and woke up.