Things to Run Away From Really Fast

02/25/10

I'm Alex and she's Nikita and – shit! I throw myself behind a set of crates as a blaze of gunfire lights up my trail.

"We have to take the south exit!" she shouts over the noise.

"They've anticipated your escape route," I shout back, "It's an ambush!"

"We don't have a choice!"

Splintering wood and conveniently placed explosives under piles of precariously stacked crates – we make a dash for the exit. Don't stop when you're in the open, I tell myself, sprinting across the lawn, It's when you're most vulnerable, and we dive into the river and Alex closes her eyes.

Caught in the slipstream, I nudge at Alex/Nikita. Don't hold your breath, I say. Breathe. It won't hurt you.

Alexandra. Scare Factor: 2.

★★★★☆

01/12/11

Darth Vader is quite literally on ice, lying frozen in the bathtub. All part of your regular Wednesday morning kidnapping attempt. The plan is to free Vader from the control of the Emporer, and to take our chances with a renegade Sith Lord. (Large-scale mayhem is the most likely outcome, but to Parker, that might just be the most interesting one.)

I'm stripping the Stormtrooper uniform off of some poor, dead bastard when a man in a black flight suit rounds the corner. He freezes for a moment, processing me, half dressed as a Stormtrooper and the body half undressed... I shoot him in the head with a blaster pistol.

"Everything okay in there, Nate?" says a voice crackling through the earpiece.

"Everything's fine, Eliot." I reply, putting a hand to my ear. I scowl at the second, inconvenient body for a moment before a new plan starts to form in my mind.

"Parker, are you in position?" I say, pulling on the gloves of my uniform.

"Nate?" says Sophie, concern in her transmitted voice, "What are you thinking?"

I smile as I slip the Stormtrooper helmet over my head. "We're going to steal a Death Star."

Leverage. Scare Factor: 2.

Kill them! Kill them all! BWAHAHAHA! Ooh, pretty flowers.

My partner and I are divvying up guns and ammunition from a trunk he brought with him. The pistols are old-style revolvers that take forever to load, so I grab two, stuffing one each down the front and back of my jeans. Which is probably a bad idea, but hey, we're in a hurry.

Our team is comprised of settlers - space explorers even. I think we've decided that we want the planet, and we're going to kill all the people in the compound ten feet away. I don't know; I haven't been paying much attention. I just want to fight.

Vicki hangs a flare gun over one of my shoulders, and I'm smoking a cigarette, for some reason. There's a fuse on the end of the flare, and I accidentally light it with my cigarette, which is now a lit match. Hurriedly, I aim over the wall of the compound and fire, starting off the battle.



A man inside the compound aims some kind of explosive firework at the rest of the team, but I'm not concerned, since I'm not part of the big group standing together like bowling pins. Morons. Things explode, and we rush the compound.

I'm behind the rest of my team, so I don't get to shoot many people. I'm a little nervous about it actually. By the time we've cleared most of the place out, most of my team members are down.

We're only shooting the people with guns, which happens to be the men, mostly. Men and women and children are all standing together, and if you would take cover, I wouldn't be shooting you! I'm holding dual pistols, sending twin shots into the chest of a man that just. won't. die. Never mind, he's down.

I get a message over the radio, saying that some kind of failsafe has been activated. Plant life is withering around the ship, and it's going to kill us, too. The ship is about to evacuate the planet, and I have to run if I don't want to be left behind.

I take off down a grassy path, trying to run as fast as I can. Quickly, I realize that I can pull in more speed, and my surroundings simultaneously blur and come into sharper focus. I was just talking about running really fast in dreams, with Puffin, and it really is the best feeling - wait a minute.

I'm lucid. I stop and look around, urgency of the Run Away task starting to dissipate. I look around at my surroundings, which are very green and very floral. It's beautiful, really.

I wander back to the landing site just because I can. The plants are dead all around the ship, and nothing's left but mud. Most of the crew are off to the side, away from the ship and avoiding whatever deadly contagion plagues the soil.

I walk right through, calling up plant life as I go. I want to talk to one of the DCs, but I'm being pulled back into the dream plot.

Suddenly, we're all peaceful and getting along with the inhabitants of the planet. I'm talking to Johanna, who's playing one of these people. I'm given a tour of the compound, and I make ivy spring up along the walls, which starts flowering immediately. It should start growing fruit within a few days (you know, since we destroyed their supplies and all).



***

Wandering around an RV, which seems to fit an entire house in it. Linkara's giving me a tour, and I'm still making flowering ivy grow along the walls. I wonder what it's feeding on.

***

My brother is driving the same car we crashed into the harbour last night. We're driving along a road that's made entirely of ice, and he's going way too fast. We're driving into an underground castle-like structure where his music lessons take place. There's a steep downward slope, and PEDESTRIANS! LOOK OUT! SLOW DOWN! And a sharp turn right after a quick ramp THAT SENDS US FLYING into the air and we're going to crash and I telekinetically shove the car back onto the road.

We come to a stop.

"Okay," says Ben, catching his breath. "Maybe I'll go a little slower next time."

Border Skirmishes. Scare Factor: 3.

New rule: DCs aren't allowed to drive. Ever.