ic Dream of You(IC)

[Supercape]

Despair Squid...it is as good a name as any!

 

We must find the head, then, if it has any...where it is strongest, and yet most vulnerable. Such things do not exist in a vacuum, but in thoughts, dreams, and visions...

 

Finding the thing was more complicated than saying one should find it. The worlds of dreams were mercurial beyond any comparison with the concrete world of wakefulness. 

 

If you can enter minds, like mine own, then mayhap you can travel up the tentacle...or tentacles? Where else has the virus of hopelessness spread? Perhaps if we think of it like an infection, tracing backwards through tears and gloom, we can find out where the source lies, the...how does one say it....the typhoid Mary!

 

What say you? Can you do it?

[Tiffany Korta]

Daphne stood and thought for a few seconds before an idea popped into her head.

 

“How about we defeat the squid with it’s opposite, but I’ll need to borrow your brain again.†she paused to allow Rene to think it through before continue

 

“I should be able to transmit anothers feeling through the squid to everyone in the network. We might be able to defeat the squid with the power of love†she beamed a huge smile.

[Supercape]

"Ze power of love?" said Rene, brightened. 

 

"Amour! Oui! A poison to despair! Ah, when one hold a lover in ones arms, embraced and safe, then ze world melts away, and time becomes infinite!" he said, some sadness in his joy. He was recalling his past loves, and their passing. 

 

"Oui! Oui! So, we need a wedding!" he pronounced. 

 

"Although weddings can be a bitter affair. We must choose carefully! Something small, but powerful, not ostentatious, Non! The trappings of the wedding can mask the lack of romance. Non!"

 

"Can you fly? We must make haste! Your head-thing...can you find a wedding?"

[Ari]

GM

City Center Courthouse

It didn't take Miss Grue long(unlike the writer of this) for her to find her object. A passel of a couple dozen well-dressed people were heading up the formidable flight of steps, surrounding a pair of young men in white who were both grinning awkwardly and walking hand in hand. At the summit, before the colonnade and towering front doors, the tall, willowy judge Naomi Wallace was waiting for them in a brown suit. Shaking the couples' hands warmly and listening attentively as they explained something, Naomi nodded and led them inside.

Following them inside was easy, as was finding a good place to hover as the brief ceremony was conducted. The friends and family of the affianced, who kept a respectful silence punctuated by enthusiastic shouts, positively vibrated with excitement as the judge's strong voice filled the cramped office. As for the grooms, they were entirely silent until their turn came to speak, only rarely looking away from each other.

This close, the party looked a little more unusual than it had from the air. Most of the clothes were either old and long out of style formal wear, or obviously rented. Even with her limited experience with human phenotypes and culture Daphne could tell that the wellwishers and relations were West Enders, a motley group of black and Hispanic faces lit up fondly at the pair standing before Judge Wallace's desk. Many of them had faces even more lined and aged than Naomi's, brawny limbs and powerful shoulders the norm for most of the men, while most of the women resembled pillars. Besides the clothes, hardly anyone had any kind of finery, but all eyes shone, and even without her inner sight Miss Grue could feel the joy and hope brimming in the air, and the bond of fiery iron already in place between the two young men.

"By the power vestd in me," Judge Wallace concluded, putting the slim pages down and smiling at her two charges "I pronounce you married, Samuel and Yusuf. You may now kiss."

The words were hardly out of ber mouth before the slighter of the two had his arm flung around the neck of his more athletic newlywed and, after a moment's pause and locking of eyes, guided the man's lips to his own.

All at once, the crowd leaped to its feet, laughing and crying rushing to congratulate tbe pair still locked in their embrace, the emotion in the room like a furnace of joy.

Edited November 18, 2014 by Arichamus

[Supercape]

"Bravo! Bravo!" clapped Rene. 

 

His mystic ink had painted both he and Ms Grue as ushers, giving him a youthful, vital appearance. 

 

But the tear down his cheek...the croak in his voice....the tremble in his hand. 

 

He had been born more than two centuries ago. He knew early on that he loved men, and not in the platonic sense. As enlightened as France would become, he was born in days of religious doctrine, and persecution. The loves he had had, would not dare speak its name. Always in the shadows, different, excluded, despised, feared. Never accepted. 

 

And now, two men could marry. 

 

If any further force of joy and optimism was needed, Rene supplied a flood of it. 

[Tiffany Korta]

Daphne would normally had to filter out such strong emotion but now she let it flow through her her link into the mind of the poor victim and toward her despair squid. It all took seconds but it would take a while before the effects would been seen.

 

“Oh I love weddings they make for great special episodes. I’m not quite sure what happens next but I’m beginning to get the idea.†she gave a little grin that suggested she knew a lot more than she was letting on.

[Ari]

GM

Through Daphne's psychic conduit the wedding's channeled love and hope careened, a torrent of emotion that struck the crouching black mass harder than the hand of Horus itself. The waves of despair fell back, and their maker was forced to break its grip on its many victims to save itself from instant obliteration.

All through Freedom City, people who'd been under a cloud all day, not knowing why, felt it lift from them like a physical weight.

Despite the lack of any even remotely human characteristics, Daphne felt the monster looking at...well not her, at her mind, at the calm sea of her thoughts and emotions, at her optimism and good cheer in the face of near-total isolation on an alien world. Rene felt something hover beside him. All the years of his long life, all the disappointments, pain and regret flashing through his mind, with all the preserverence and hope and wonder,ent following like a stream of clear, cold water.

'You stop me for but a season. All over the universe, thinking life falls to despair sooner or later. I am immutable'

Daphne and Rene felt the presence fade and wither under the fire of love, for a moment the two felt connected to something with roots as deep and old as galaxies.

'I...I cannot...I am...alone...'

The demon collapsed and vanished, scattered into the gestalt of thought and emotion, melding with the creatures it had sought to control. The newlyweds left the courthouse with their friends and family, politely left alone to spend the rest of the day together. The blaze of emotion faded, though it didn't entirely disspiate from the minds of the two young men.

At last, everything on the plane of dreams was quiet again. It wouldn't last, but it didn't have to. All over the city, as the morning wore on, life in Freedom began to ease back into its steady groove. Outside the convention hall, Abby started, blinking at nothing for a second in confusion, then a faint smile spread across her dry, cracked lips. Glancing at Stronghold she remarked "You know, that really does make me feel better. I don't know why, but when you said that it just...it made it all fit. Even though it wasn't a physical thing, it was real to me. I really felt that, I really did that." She squeezed the younger woman's shoulder awkwardly, "Thanks, Haukea, for everything. I better get back to work. Can't hang around and wonder if dreams are real, there's still real stuff to do..."

---

Meanwhile, in West End

Carlos Espinoza curled deeper into his bed, glad to be rid of the monster dogs, and happy that he'd found other dream-people to bring him back home. They probably hadn't been real, but it was nice of them to help.