onepassingnight | (no subject)

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[New York City is all around him, a mixture of loud noise and constant movement. He's standing in the middle of the sidewalk, holding a piece of paper and scanning the crowd.

And there she is.]

Kate! [He starts running after her, pushing people aside as he goes.] Kate, wait!

[He runs faster and faster, following her through the streets, darting into alleys and making sharp turns but he can never quite reach her, no matter how fast he goes.

His lungs are burning, his legs ache but he keeps moving, taking another quick turn and nearly crashing into a brick wall.

A wall. A wall with no other exits in immediate view and too high to climb.]

...Kate?

[He looks around, expression momentarily helpless.]

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Even she was startled, visibly. That answered one thing, at least. The idea of illusions was starting to seem more likely. But the senshi had fought illusions before that had substance. A weaker one, then? Or something else?

And when she had no way to stop them and make them pay attention, how was she going to get those answers?

"A hologram?" she wondered aloud next, before shaking her head. This was ridiculous. She pulled out a small hand-held computer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP3uEdKGq8Y) and it beeped cheerfully as it analyzed the area. It had shown the truth of illusions before; and it should be able to pinpoint the source of this effect - if it had a direct source - or something about its nature.

"A hologram," he laughs. "You know what, I'm not saying no to anything at this point."

He watches her, taking a few steps closer and peering over her shoulder, prepared to stop if it looks like she's uncomfortable with it.

"What does it say," he questions curiously. He's not really sue it's going to help but right now, he'll go with anything.

She shook her head. "It can't pinpoint the source." A pause, and she corrected herself. "No, it's more like it says the source is everywhere." It was, after all, an effect made from the dream, and this whole world was the dream.

To Ami, it was disquieting. Metalia had created monsters from the very Earth. This couldn't be similar, could it? Yet the readings hadn't detected dark energy, and the phantasms, or whatever they were, didn't seem hostile.

"Oh, that's great." He looks around them, sidestepping a few people as they pass by. "Should we even be out here?"

This feeling of being out of his element is extremely uncomfortable to him and damnit, he would like to know what he's supposed to be doing.

"We can look for shelter." It might not be a bad idea. It was making her a bit unsettled to watch all this.

He's glad he's not thbe only one. All of this is just too bizarre for words.

"All right," he says gesturing for them to move forward. "Lets go."

He starts moving through the crowd, looking for a place to slip into but it seems like all the buildings are structures with no doors, just windows.

"Okay," he mutters more to himself than to Ami. "I wasn't planning to break into anywhere today but if I have to...."

A small shrug of a shoulder. She's not the one to stop him. Ami follows behind Neal as he continues, keeping an eye out for a promising building to make the attempt on.

"How about there? It was going to be up to Neal. She might be able to manipulate a lock (sealing a door wasn't hard), but with no door... better to fall back on more tangible methods.

He studies the building looking it up and down for a moment. "It's worth a try," he says with a nod of approval, starting to walk around the building, studying it carefully.

He tries a window and it doesn't open. He wasn't expecting it to but he thought he should try ti just in case. Then he proceeds towards the side, going for what appeared to be a basement entrance

He opens the door, surprised that they actually did what he wanted, and peers inside. "Who wants to go inside the dark and scary basement first," he teases,, already starting downwards, though he did make sure to keep the doors open so that at least some light might be cast into the room.

"I'm not afraid of the darkness." She says it with a faint smile on her lips rather than defensively, and heads carefully down the stairs to be sure of her footing. Unfortunately, she didn't have a flashlight in her purse.

She did have her teletia-s, her cell phone. She pulled it out and flipped the cover back, shedding a very tiny bit of light into the dark.

Neal smiles back, he really does think he could like her more if they were meeting under less unnerving circumstances and even with the oddness around them, she's proving herself pretty nice to be around.

Then again, this is Neal we're talking about, he enjoys most people on one level or another.

Grabbing his own phone from his pocket, he follows her example using it to cast a light into the basement. It doesn't look any different than any other basement, storage and shadows everywhere.

The shadows move though, shapeless things that shy away from the light. Neal blinks, trying to follow one with his phone.

"Hey," he calls out. "Hey c'mon, we're just looking for a place to hang out for a few minutes, don't mind us." But he knows he's not talking to a person, he's not sure how exactly but he's sure that whatever's down there, it isn't human

This is starting to look like it might get serious. Ami resists the urge to transform to fight - yet - but she stays carefully watchful. She has no intention of losing to whatever might be there if it makes itself an enemy.

This seems to be a place Neal should be more familiar with than her. On the other hand, those indistinct shadows remind her of lemures, nightmares, from her world. If they've gotten here through the nexus, perhaps...

"Do you know what that was?" she asks levelly.

"Do you think I know what that was?" he laughs taking one step back towards the light. "We shouldn't go in any further until we've got some kind of a plan. Or y'know, probably not go back in at all."

He's not ready for a fight, he's not really good at hand to hand combat and he doesn't have a gun. He's not even sure if a gun would do any good with...whatever it was that was there.

"And if Kate's here?" Heh. Bonds of so-called friendship never do extend to actually being there for someone, do they?

Or maybe that was just her experience.

he tenses, it's not that he had forgotten about her exactly but well his mind had become distracted with whatever has been going on.

He doesn't answer her, just walks down into the darkness without even thinking, holding up his cell phone light and looking around.

The basement looks vaguely familiar, like so many he's broken into before. The shadows though, he keeps seeing the shadows as they shift and form into impossible shapes.

"What the hell," he mutters under his breath but he keeps walking.

"Kate?" He calls out hoping that maybe she's here, maybe she'll call back to him. "Kate, are you in here?"

The shadows shift to a female form and it's all he can do to lunge after it. "Kate," he calls. "Come out, it's okay. I'm here now."

Ami is not unused to illusions. And for whatever reason, for however short-lived she expects it to be because she's never trusted friendship or help or comradeship easily, right now she and Neal are going through this together. She reaches put to pull him back.

"That isn't Kate." She's sure of. Those were the shadows moving.

Edited 2011-03-08 22:43 (UTC)

He looks down at her, then towards the shadow on the wall. It stirs again making a gesture for him to come closer.

He's not sure what to do, what to believe. If it's Kate, why doesn't she come out or say something? But if it is, why is he just standing there.

He takes a few steps forward into the darkness but doesn't approach further. "Kate..." And there's raw longing in his voice, a need to find her, have her back.

"Please, just come here. Just come here and I'll know it's you."

But the shadow only moves to beckon him closer and he takes in a sharp breath, turning to Ami , an almost helpless expression on his face. He doesn't know what to do.

That fool. (Thus speaks the mind of a girl who'd also want to approach if it was the right person. But it's much easier to wipe that emotional consideration out the way she should, when it involves someone else instead.)

Ami settles for letting her fingers fly over the mini-computer keyboard again, locking on to the area where the shadows seem thickest and especially the one portraying itself as 'Kate'.

(ooc: and what will it show? cause she'll pretty much attack right away in her next tag if it's definitely an illusion/shadow/dangerous in some obvious way but hold off if it's human or definitely kate)

he's fully aware that most people seem to think that his judgment is somewhat lacking when it comes to Kate-related affairs but he doesn't care. The fact that he3's close, or rather possibly close, is enough to make him think that moving forward is a good idea.

But he's watching Ami now instead, concentrating on her instead of the shadows that approach carefully avoiding the light of their phones. He shouldn't let his guard down but he does, just for a few moments as he watches her and tries to dissuade his mind from going after the shadow-Kate.

((OOC: If I were a nicer person, it would be Kate. However I like making him miserable. Illusions it is!))

An illusion! Her sword flickers into her hand. She strikes against the air, and it sends a powerful blast straight for the illusions. Right now, it doesn't seem odd that the sword responded while she wasn't even transformed; it's something she'll reflect on and try once she wakes up.

She can't be sure what it'll do against an enemy she knows so little about for now; but it makes a rather forceful statement: get away from the illusion, Neal.

(ooc: i love cruel muns. and to ami's credit, she DOES realize and attack the enemy illusion of the guy she liked in anime canon XD she's just still an emotional sort trying not to be who'd understand neal better if she'd get off her high horse ~~and stop pretending she doesn't~~.)

Neal jumps back at the sight of the sword because well, sword. It's a perfectly reasonable reaction. Not only that but it's a sword that came out of virtually nowhere and how else is he supposed to react?

He watches as the energy barrels towards the shadow and it spills over the energy sucked into the blackness but the blackness dissolving away into nothing.

He's just going to stand there now, staring at the spot and once again, wondering what in hell is going on here and why can't he just wake up?

((OOC: Aww Ami. *pats her even though I doubt she'd appreciate that*))

"Watch out for yourself next time. Putting yourself in danger jeopardizes what we're doing, too." It's inefficient. Reckless. One might say illogical, and it wouldn't be the first time the senshi of knowledge had been compared to Spock in certain moods.

Ami keeps herself alert and her guard up, and glances at Neal after the lecture. "Are we going on?"

Neal nods, remaining where he stands. He needs a moment to process everything that just happened. Once he has that second, he'll be good again, or at least mostly good, but well.

"I'm torn," he says his tone almost try. "We could go back up and face a crowd of clones or we could go further into...that>" He gestures at the darkness before them. "And see what happens with creepy living shadows."

He pauses, looking at her. "You're taking all of this really well. Is this on par with your usual day?"

"I've fought monsters like this before." Not precisely, but close enough. She'd fought creatures corrupted by a demon, humans turned into monsters with genetic experiments, beings made of snow and their queen of ice, and these shadows remind her of lemures, dead nightmares.

"Huh, okay then." What the hell, he'll go with it and question the logistics of all this later. Besides, dream logic rarely obeys real world logic and he is firmly set in the belief that all of this is some kind of very odd dream.

"So," he says, peering down at the darkness. "You're the one who's done this before. What do we do?"

"If she's here, she's past the shadows. They're gone for the time being. This is our chance, don't you think?"