World Tree MUSH

    The neighborhood was lined with family houses. The kind built en-masse when whole neighborhoods were added to the suburban streets. Not quite all the same but sharing the same architectural character; a lawn, two-car garage, paved driveway, two stories. Various shades of pastel colors. The neighborhood had gone to town in decorating for Halloween, with animated displays competing for attention. There's trick-or-treaters of all ages walking down the road. After all, why restrict cosplay to only conventions? Admittedly, the older Halloween revelers are taking pictures of decorations and costumes instead of gathering candy.

    There's a witch in the darkness! Talia is currently observing the traditions by walking down the street, sometimes waving and taking pictures with other revelers. Sadly her broom doesn't really fly, it does however glow with energy. It's really just a vibro-lance she had modified to resemble a witch's broom, as is normal for these sorts of worlds. It's curious, they're a good bit different from the witches she knows of, from Dathomir. She's only heard stories about the Nightsisters, but not one of them end well.

Benedicta's busy studying the diamond back at El Camino Del Atardecer and there's no way she's going out on Halloween, she doesn't want to get stuck in her Al-mir'aj form again.

 All the spiritual activity has attracted a visitor from off-world though. She's wearing an orange domino mask and her long red hair is tied back. She's wearing a orange sailor scout outfit with a short black skirt and orange long boots. She's also carrying a wand that has a pumpkin head on it. There are no ghosts with her though unless she's attracted the local ones.

    The thing about Serrah and Halloween is that she doesn't actually need to go to the trouble of buying a costume; all she needs to do is design it, and conjures it onto herself with her magic.

    The other thing is that where she's from, witches and ghosts and monsters are all real. And Serrah is the sort of person who wants to avoid being a caricature or anything like that.

    So now, she's wearing a black tuxedo with a bright red necktie, both of which look like they're made out of devastatingly-expensive silks, and with near-equally-expensive tailoring ... until she moves, revealing it's a trick of the light and shading. Her hair is less messy than usual, shoulder-length and straight and with her single red streak more pronounced.

    She strides over to Holly. "Good evening, my lady," she intones ... and then giggles. "Uh, looks like it's your day, eh, Holly? How's it going?" Beat. "... Is that Kyras?"

Misaki is cheating a little. She's dressed up like one of the characters from an anime she likes... coincidentally, the anime's school uniform is really close to her own. All she needed to really change is have a different color ribbon and put on a pink wig. She's also wielding a massive flashlight and going slow, so she hasn't noticed the others yet.

    There's some teens gathered around, phones taking video of a teddy bear walking down the sidewalk. There's chatter about how much the electronics must have cost to import from outworld sources. If one looks, one can see other childrens' toys ambling about the neighborhood. It isn't until a piggy bank looks up at a set of triplet kids dressed as three anthro ducks and asks for spare change that people start realizing something is extremly wrong. The triplets run screaming back to their parents.
    Some teenager glances over, walks up to the piggy bank. "What's so scary ab-" 
    "Got spare change, man?" The teen falls backwards on their butt and starts scrambling away from the piggy bank.
    Similar scenes start playing out as the toys start talking and behaving in lifelike ways.
    Aurelia looks around, pulling off a brown bob-cut wig and black-framed fake glasses, still wearing the rest of the costume. She sighs as she looks at the moderate chaos around here. "There's a definite increase of strangeness in my life."

"What give it away?" Holly looks a bit disappointed as Serrah instantly knows who she is. "It certainly is my day in more way than one!" She can't stay down for long though and laughs. "If only every day could be like this. Are you a stage magician?" She looks a bit confused about Serrah's outfit before seeing Talia, "Wow, I have to get an outfit like that! Is anyone else picking up a lot of spiritual activity I mean even for today?" She looks at the others curiously with that.

    Talia waves when she hears her name, recognizing Serrah after a moment. "Hello there! I'm just a witch tonight." She says with a little witchy cackle. "Someone saw my skin and said I looked like a wicked witch, so I decided I'd run with it tonight." She explains, twirling her 'broom'. She also spies Holly and Aurelia, and nods to them with a friendly smile.

    The weirdness has definitely been apparent all night. Nodding to Holly, she makes a hard to read expression. "I had an interesting discussion with a weasel earlier tonight, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't in costume." She muses.

    Serrah gestures to Holly's hair and staff. "Your hair's the same color. Plus that pumpkin thing." She grins. "Me? I'm dressed up as someone who actually has her life together," she says, "and if 'scary' is what we're going for, then if the idea of me having my life together doesn't scare you, I dunno what will." She shakes her head. "... And to think almost a year ago, I was getting resurrected after you helped me get away from Vincent. Hey, Kyras!" She nods in greeting to Talia as she approaches.

    Her voice trails off as the excitement begins. "I can't detect spirits myself," she says, "but there's sure as heck something going on here." She waves to Aurelia once she spots her.

Misaki hadn't noticed anything odd until the a small group of green aliens in a flying saucer land on her shoulder, from a direction in which she wasn't looking. At that point, there's a terrified scream as she accidentally drops her flashlight and it goes out. Soon enough, the aliens move on, mentioning something about going home.

    One can't help but notice that the animate toys are all worn to one degree or another. The ones that move the most life-like appear to be the most worn; faded colors, peeling or torn stickers, paint rubbed away. The scene is surreal, something straight out of a film like Gremlins or Small Soldiers.
    A toddler dressed as a dalmatian in a firefighter outfit runs screaming as a stuffed unicorn chases after, demanding to know why the child no longer loves it. Two toy mice scale down from a window, bickering over their plans. A cheap dollar store T-rex is grappling with a platoon of green plastic army men.
    Aurelia looks at Holly. "Uh, I can't sense spiritual stuff, but there's definitely something going on." She hops to one side as a beat-up Tonka dump truck goes rolling down the sidewalk. She stuffs the fake glasses and wig into a hip pouch. She turns to Talia, Serrah, Misaki, and Holly, a wry smile on her face as she straightens out the orange sweater and smoothes the red skirt. "Guess it's up to us meddling kids to figure out what's up?" She picks up Misaki's flashlight and returns it to the other girl.

"I'm not the only one with red hair and it's Halloween! There are pumpkins everywhere!" She points to Misaki. Then again the witch has about half a foot on the girl and has purple eyes. "There's not much that actually scares me..."

 Holly turns her head a bit before seeing a plush rabbit and duck moving around on their own behind her.

 "Oh Hecate, please don't eat me!" She takes cover behind Talia trying to avoid being noticed by the duo.

    Living toys? Jinkies.

    Talia raises an eyebrow as a spaceman darts around her, trying to get his jetpack to work to no avail. She can't help but see the confusing affairs. "What on earth is going on?" She wonders aloud, as Holly ducks behind her, staring at the plush rabbit and duck.

    Serrah turns when Aurelia hands the flashlight over. "Oh! Hey, Misaki." She smirks faintly. "Well ... if it's helping you guys out, I guess."

    She peers at Holly. "Well, I mean ..." She shrugs. "Your hair and eyes are pretty distinctive. Not usually that exact shade, uh ..." She glances around. "That's what I wanna know, Kyras. ... Crap, I didn't bring my baseballs." She manifests fingerless white leather gloves on her hands (not that this will be much use; her conjured-up clothing is invariably less effective at form than function), and puts up her dukes, gingerly moving to Holly's other side.

"... hello, miss Argent, miss Holly, miss Kyras and miss Delany." Misaki sounds really deflated and awkard as she turns the flashlight back in, "I'd also kind of like to know what's going on." She whispers, that flashlight moving around erratically as though she's jumping at shadows. "... I knew I should've stayed home tonight."

    Aurelia ughs. "Me too, Misaki." She peers around, then throws up her hands. "I can't sense magic or spiritual stuff. How about you guys?"
    The commotion has quieted down as houses lock their doors and turn off porch lights to very clearly tell trick-or-treaters that the people at home are just done given all the nonsense going on. Many of the people who had been walking the street have left, leaving the eerie sight of toys milling around. The sharp-eyed might notice they appear to be meandering towards one place. The spiritually attuned would sense something going on in about the same direction.

Thankfully for Holly's sanity, the plush rabbit and duck seem to go on their way with the other toys. "Someone's ruining Halloween! We have to stop this!" Holly's an expert on magic and the supernatural. She follows behind the growing line of toys doing her best to try and figure out where they're going. Still, she keeps some distance after all the rabbit is still with the group. She wouldn't be heartbroken if someone took it out.

    Serrah smiles faintly at Misaki, but ... it looks like she isn't entirely sure what to say. Hmm ...

    Okay, looks like the civilians are getting out of the way. And Holly seems to have as good an idea for which way to go as anyone else, so Serrah nods, then takes off and glides after her a few inches above the ground.

    "I can sense changes in the Force, but magic is...it's different. And frustrating, when people do call us Jedi sorcerers." Talia says. She rests her broom across her shoulders. "Think I heard something." She says, before she follows the toys'lead, keeping her distance for now.

Misaki decides it's time to transform, and after doing so, she makes sure to flood the environment surrounding her in light. Everything is less scary when it's well lit, "Let's go take care of this."

    The house the toys mill about has no cars in the driveway and it appears the family has been away for a bit. There's a faint light in the attic window.
    Here, the toys are more aggressive. A whole mess of inch-high plastic figures, kin to green army men, point fanciful plastic guns at the approaching group. "Halt. Identify yourselves!"
    The guns don't *look* like they do anything, but with the weirdness, Aurelia's not sure. She squints for a moment, realizing there's no metal in them to simply swat them away safely. "I'm Aurelia and these are my friends."
    The toy soldiers whisper among themselves. "What's the password?!"
    Aurelia ummmmmms, scratching her head. "Teddybear?"
    The toys part to let the group through, shouting at somebody inside. The deadbolt clicks, allowing Aurelia to open the door.
    There's a lot of the toy soldiers scattered all over a living room, moving stiffly. There's a kitchen past the living room and stairs going upstairs. Action figures from the late 1990s are chatting with the plastic gaming figures of more recent vintage. Glances are thrown at the human(ish) people entering.

"Where do the people that live here go?" Holly's hoping they just went out for the night and not that toys took over. "Whoever did this must be really powerful!" She would have trouble bring all these toys to life. "Or is that spiritual activity, I'm picking up? It's generally heighten during Halloween after all." She wasn't quite sure what the source that brought the toys to life is.

    Serrah nods in approval when Misaki transforms, looking relieved that she at least doesn't look like she's about to panic anymore. She moves a bit closer to Talia, since she's the one with the great big sword. And broom.

    Serrah ... stares at the toy soldiers. She looks like she's about to interject, when Aurelia provides a password. Okay, cool. When Holly raises the question of whether it's an external force or just Halloween-ness, Serrah promptly says, "Could go either way."

    There's some clattering as the toys scatter away from the stairs, shouting about how the thing upstairs is attacking again. Bounding down the stairs is...
    ...a darkness that envelops the room except for Misaki's own light...
    ... a grotesque mockery of Serrah as some kind of shambling corpse, the light of life extinguished in the eyes...
    ... a clacking-clattering cockroach-mantis thing the size of a person... 
    ... a rabbit with a fake plastic skull mask and eyes that reflect in the dim light...
    ... a vision of Aurelia in Metallia Noctis' strange inky metal armor...

    Clearly whatever this is, each person is seeing some variant of their personal fears manifested, coming down the stairs.

"Stop doing that!" Misaki yells at the darkness, and she clads herself in light, glowing to a degree that's deeply unpleasant to look at in an attempt to banish the darkness.

    Talia sticks her broom over her back and produces her lightsaber, hidden in a holster on her thigh-high boot. She creeps through the house, and once they're inside...they see those things. Talia's skin shudders as she sees the horrifying bug creature, biting back a shriek when it scuttles past her.

    She can only think back to when she'd fallen into a bugs' nest as a Padawan, with insects the size of small dogs covering her as she let out screams for her master to come find her.

    She was only ten then, and the memory's stuck with her since. It was only when she began to channel the Force that she was able to fight through her fear of the bugs. Taking long deep breathes, Talia focuses. "I am one with the Force and the Force is with me, I am one with the Force and the Force is with me..." She murmurs to herself over and over, before Holly's voice breaks Talia's trance.

    "I think...I think our fears are being put in front of us." SHe says softly.

    Serrah's biggest fear? Losing herself. Losing who she is, the most important thing to her. Death isn't the only thing that can cause this; it's merely one of the more straightforward ways it can happen.

    The dhampir growls. "... Yeah right," she snarls. "Like I don't see that every day of my life whenever I can't get to sleep and -- whoa!" She recoils from Misaki's sudden brightness.

    She glances between Mi-- she doesn't glance at Misaki and instead glances between Talia and Holly. "Damn," she says. "Well. I guess this is one time I can face my fears by doing ... this!"

    And then she's suddenly right in front of what she sees as a shambling version of herself, fist swinging like a freight train, a loud androgynous yell already escaping her throat.

    And if that fist hits? It's going to be joined by a lot of other punches, multiple times per second. "AAAAAAPOWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOW --"

>> GAME >> Serrah Delany spends an Edge for: THE WORLD! MUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDA

The skull mask actually makes the rabbit a lot less scary for Holly. The ears twitching make her a bit nervous but the face being covered mostly hides the fact it looks like a rabbit. The shambling Serrah zombie bits actually bother her more. Not because it's a zombie but because it's Serrah. She then looks back at the real Serrah and is more confused then anything else. "What's going on?" She sounds more unsure than anything else.

    The bogey man, much like how it is depicted in other worlds, is fundamentally a bully. When Misaki, Holly, and Serrah demonstrate that they aren't really afraid of what it was showing them (and especially when Serrah beats the snot out of it and Misaki goes day-star), the illusions vanish and the formless spirit oozes away like an oily shadow into the steps of the stairs.
    Aurelia takes a moment to realize things have changed, taking a shuddering breath. "Thanks for that." Unwilling to risk being ambushed like that again, she summons the crystal shortsword and cautiously tromps up the stairs into the attic.

    The attic is full of old family belongings and dust. Sitting by the window is a well-worn stuffed animal, possibly a cat judging by the pointed ears and a tail that's been resewn on. It glows with an inner light, the tail swishing lightly, watching out the attic window. A small voice comes from it. "I-I'm sorry, I was lonely and just wanted friends like me. The Boy left me here with the others and then there was this light..." Around the attic are signs that the toys downstairs were once packed away up here in the attic.

"It's okay! The only people around when I was growing up were my parents and the ghosts!" Holly can understand what's it's like to be lonely. She can't get up set at the doll, besides all it did was scare people. She hadn't seen anyone hurt outside. "I'm sure we can find somewhere with other living toys for you to hang around with!" The witch picks up the stuffed cat and gives it a gentle hug.

    Serrah pats Aurelia's shoulder. She's still clearly a bit rattled herself -- and kind of winded from the exertion she just spent.

    She stares at the stuffed cat. "Eh," she says softly. She shrugs. "You probably should be more careful about who you hang out with." ... Kind of an awkward thing to say, but she isn't sure what else to say about that bogeyman.

    The stuffed cat purrs as Holly hugs it. "That was the closet monster The Boy was scared of when he was little. His mother gave me to him and said I was his protector. The monster got bigger when the light appeared."
    Outside, the toys seem to be 'winding down'. The stuffed cat wriggles a little in Holly's grasp. "I'm sure the Boy will be fine without me now. Meeting toys like me sounds exciting too." 
    Aurelia scratches her head. "I know some people who would love to have you around. Let me tell you about Lizzie on the way."