Bump for vomit-chan.

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Mado opens the door, and you step into her room.

The opposite wall is dominated by a wide sliding glass window, showing the ugly boxy shapes of rooftop AC units and the sickly glow of a sodium security lamp outside. A threadbare carpet with a chaotic, almost nauseating design covers hard, worn floorboards. To your left is a half-empty bookshelf with dusty tomes - encyclopedias and other hilariously dated reference books; no stories or entertainment. A rickety desk sits next to it, a sad-looking lamp with a broken shade guarding a few pens and a tattered notebook.

"Is it everything you expected?" Mado says sardonically.

You step into the center of the room and eyeball the single appliance - a TV so old it's got knobs on it. An NES - an actual fucking NES - sits near it with what looks like some bootleg Bomberman knockoff stuck in the cartridge slot.

You note the TV doesn't have an antenna.

"Is it everything you expected?" Madotsuki asks sarcastically.

>What say (specify)
>Turn on the TV
>Examine something further (specify)

>>33296975
>>What say (specify)
"To be honest... no. This doesn't look like a girl of your age's room at all. And these things... how old are these? I mean - a NES?"

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>>33297195

You shake your head as you frown at the whole display. "This is what it looks like in the real world?"

She shrugs. "More or less. Why?"

You poke your axe at the game console. "Remember when I made that crack about the day Goldeneye was released? I was twelve. That was an Nintendo 64 game, and this is a fucking NES. Hooked to a TV that's even older." You nod at the bookshelf. "Doubt you picked those out. No stuffed animals, no boy band posters-"

She snorts.

"-no skull trophy rack..." you shrug. "Doesn't look like the room of a girl your age at all."

It looks like a cell, is what you want to say, but even after all the trials you've faced together, you haven't known her that long, actually or metaphorically, so you keep that mum.

"You have kids?"

You shrug. "Can't remember, but I don't think so-"

"Yeah," she says rather dismissively, and strides away, flinging open the doorwall so hard it slams and rattles in its track. She strides across the roof to lean against the balcony, looking upwards into the night.

>Examine TV
>Examine desk
>Examine bed
>other?

>>33297432
>Examine desk
Damn it, got here a bit late, you updated just as I was about to post my response. I don't think bringing up the state of her room was a good idea. Especially the "doubt you picked those out" line. Given some of the theories about why Mado's dream world is the way it is, that could have been a really bad thing to say. Fits with her response, certainly.

Whatever, let's just take a look at the desk. I want to see what that notebook is. Maybe take a look at the encyclopedias, too. Given the nature of this place, I would be VERY surprised if they were actual reference texts.

>>33297432
>>Examine TV
Well I'm curious - what's the reception in Dreaming?

>>33297432
>Examine Desk

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>>33297534
>>33297527
>>33297514

You slide your eyes towards the balcony, but Mado is still staring into space, hips leaning against the railing, arms crossed, well, crossly over her chest. Leaning your axe and crowbar against the wall, you step to the little desk. Its worn and bare, like most things in the room, except for a few old pens (which bear the logo of some insurance company on them,) and a tattered spiral notebook, the kind you buy for ten cents apiece at Wal-Mart. A piece of masking tape has been applied to the cover, and the words DREAM DIARY written atop it.

You flip it open to the half-way point.

"-off the roof of the Mall. It was amazing. I could see the whole city underneath me, I was so high, so free.

Then I fell off the damn thing and woke up on the damn floor in this damn room damn damn damn-" the paper has been torn three pages deep by the pen at this point.

You glance over your shoulder to see Madotsuki still staring into space. You close the notebook and step away, thinking.

A dream diary... a good way to remember the dream, in the waking world. You wonder if it works in reverse; allowing you a better recollection of your waking world in the dream. Judging by the room, it does.

You kneel by the TV. If the theory holds true, then turning this on might give the last news report she saw, or something.

You flick the switch, and the screen explodes in a burst of static. You frown and adjust the tracking knob, bringing into focus a

"-FUCK!" you scream, scrambling away from the gigantic black-and-white eyeball that's appeared on the screen. It rolls around and around the screen until it seems to settle - on you. Your back hits the doorwall with a rattle.

"Seen enough?" Mado asks from outside.

>Yes
>No
>Fuck you, this isn't right

>>33297743
>>Fuck you, this isn't right

>>33297743
>>Fuck you, this isn't right
This place is bullshit, if it reflects the real world. But I guess Mado is unwilling to talk.

>>33297743
>Fuck you, this isn't right
"A room in disrepair, outside of which is a world of monsters? A dream diary full of dreams about being trapped in this room? This fucking EYE watching you? Who did this to you, Mado?"

>>33297743
>>Fuck you, this isn't right
Find her porn stash, there HAS to be one.

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>>33297881
>>33297876
>>33297810
>>33297810

You slide up the doorwall to stand, feeling shakey - and then MAD. You dart forward, vault over the TV and kick the cord out of the wall viciously. Your eyes go to the ceiling, where it meets the wall, searching, searching. Cobwebs, flaking paint, nothing.

Maybe there's no camera, in the dream or otherwise, but Mado's subconscious seems to disagree.

You stalk onto the "balcony," your heart racing and your mind spinning. "This is fucked up."

"Yeah, your head's a real peach too, what with fire dragons and leaps of death-"

"The *room,* Mado," you growl. "The *cell.*"

You see Madotsuki stiffen, and the air temperature drops about ten degrees.

Literally.

"You keep a dairy to remember the dreams. How much of the waking world do you remember down here? Probably a hell of a lot more than I do, right?"

"Stop talking," Madotsuki whispers. "Now."

>Like I need her input - survey the surroundings.
>Or what? You're going to murder me awake? Whuppity-fucking-doo.

>>33298054
>>Or what? You're going to murder me awake? Whuppity-fucking-doo.

>YN Quest thread
WHAT THE FUCKING SHIT ARE YOU THINKING

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>>33298148

COME BACK WHEN WE'RE TRIPPING BALLS AND ASK THAT QUESTION AGAIN

>>33298054
>Like I need her input - survey the surroundings.
Fine. We won't talk about it. Let's just go get the last effect. But before she wakes up we'll make her tell us her name. And then when we wake, we'll find her. We'll get her out of this place. We are Iron Man. We open the doors.

>>33298054

>>Or what? You're going to murder me awake? Whuppity-fucking-doo.

The direct approach works for Stark. He doesn't dance around the subject- he charges right the fuck in and rips it wide open. It is literally what he does.

>>33298054
>Or what? You're going to murder me awake? Whuppity-fucking-doo.

>>33298054
>>Or what? You're going to murder me awake? Whuppity-fucking-doo.

Let's see what the burning place is like now.

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>>33298102
>>33298346
>theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhIc6BuII64&list=PLU4ktq2pWONsZjNJfmbfMY4jAU3KyZ871&index=34

"Or what?" you say, your voice dripping with disdain. "Going to murder me awake? Maybe I'll make it to work on time, then."

"Might remove your psyche from the dream. Might send things back to the way they were. A lot easier." She's tapping her hand against her skirt pocket, the one with the effects.

And the Knife.

"Or I might reappear behind you and give you a swift kick in the ass," you say conversationally. "Again." You deliberately walk past her, over to the railing. Leaning over, you look down and see two, three, four windows below - and then mist, obscuring the ground. To your right the building's roof terminates one story above. It seems to be a five-story apartment made of red brick.

"Why do you even care? You won't remember half of this when you wake up," she says with disdain.

"Why?" you snap, rounding on her. "WHY? You're the only normal thing in this fucked-up circus you call a subconscious, and I was kind of hoping your room would be filled with stuffed animals and Sailor Moon posters and NORMAL shit and instead I get - THIS shit." You point at the doorwall.

She stares you down, arms still crossed. "Poor?"

You look down at your feet, then back up to her. "Penthouse of a five-story redstone? Stop blowing smoke up my ass."

>>33298671
... so are we suppposed to do something...

Or did you forget to prewrite your full response?

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>>33298671

"Or what?" she asks you. "You're going to kill *me* awake, tough guy? Why do you want me to be normal, so bad? Are you a coward? Are you scared?"

"Yes," you reply instantly.

She blinks.

"You say this is a dream," you tell her, turning your hands about before you, studying them, clapping them together. You turn to the iron railing and wring your hands on it, the rust rough under your skin. You inhale deeply and suck in a dusty, disused scent from the room behind you - and the wet, rotting smell familiar to swamps from the swirling mist below. The air's cold and damp against your skin. "It doesn't feel like a fucking dream, Mado. I've only got your word to go on, with that, and not even you know exactly what's going on with... all of this. Yes, I'm scared." You stare out into the darkness, as she was doing. "I'm scared shitless, Mado."

She turns away, looking at the room. You see her shoulders slump as the tension leaves her - a bit. "I'm sick," she says. "Can't leave. Have to sleep a lot, so not much need for furnishings."

"Oh," you say. "Okay." You wring the cold railing under your hands. "But the-"

"-borrowed room," she finishes. "Had to move, to be closer to the hospital. Can't leave, because I can't walk very far. Waiting for..." she sighs. "Can't remember, down here, but I'm waiting for something, all right. There. Now you know."

Madotsuki walks into her room, leaving you alone with the weak, anemic rattle of the rooftop ventilation units. She starts moving around the chamber, turning on another overhead lamp, then the desk lamp, then stripping the huge, fluffy comforter from the bed and piling it haphazardly in a corner.

"Bullshit," you whisper.

>>33298967
Posting responses in chunks usually leads to more discussion. There's not much reason not to.

>>33299032
I'd believe that backstory if I were him. It sounds reasonable.

>>33299155
I wouldn't. previous things so far don't fully add up.

If she was that sick, there'd be a lot more hinting to it.

We're a fireman. Fire keeps showing up all over the place where we're involved.

Where she's involved... it's birds and eyes... things one wouldn't associate with sickness.
She isn't defined by sickness.


Plus we have a dream journal as possible evidence of anything>>33299155
74

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>>33299032

Unless she moved into a fucking museum, that doesn't explain the ancient TV (with no antenna) and NES with the shitty game. As for walking, anyone who could afford medical tourism in a redstone penthouse would have a medical bed in there, not some wooden four-poster twin - to say nothing of a powered wheelchair. Even supermarkets have those. Or a powered exoskeleton - tethered ones are cheaper than a computer, these days.

You glance around the room - the worn, bare furnishings, the ancient, out-of-place appliances, the entire dead, spartan air - and frown as something bitter and dark flows through you. You smell a rat.

And for some reason, under your fear, you feel a touch of patient, brooding intent.

Mado, finished with tossing the room, steps to the window. "C'mere."

You obligingly c'mere. Mado's lit the room as well as it can be, the tiny closet open to shed the extra light of a bare bulb. The bed's been stripped down to the bottom sheet, the pillows piled up with the comforter.

"So what do you do, tie a belt to the headboard and whip it like a horse?" you ask.

Madotsuki gives you a jaundiced look. "You sleep on it."

>Initial, foremost reaction:
>"... how does that work in a dream?"
>"... wait, with - oh hell no wtf"
>"... and I'm going to do that with the lights on and the bed stripped... how?"

>>33299227
>>"... wait, with - oh hell no wtf"

>>33299208
Also, though Stark hasn't seen it yet (he will soon, though), there is a LOT of sexual imagery in her dream. You can make a very strong case for her being the victim of rape. Combined with her being locked up like this...well, it doesn't imply anything good.

>>33298967

Character limit is suffering.

Also, I write all of this as we go along - I write fast. (Everything is plotted out in a notebook beforehand though.)

>>33299227
>"... how does that work in a dream?"
We have to go deeper.

>>33299227
>>"... wait, with - oh hell no wtf"

>>33299227
>inquire
"So you want me to dream in a dream?"

>>33299227
>>"... how does that work in a dream?"
>>33299274
DEEPER!

>>33299227
>"... how does that work in a dream?"

>>33299227
>"... how does that work in a dream?"

Really. What the fuck dreams? I'm not used to this yet.

>>33299227

>"... and I'm going to do that with the lights on and the bed stripped... how?"

Questioning dream logic gets us no where, and I don't think Stark is going to get too worked up over sharing a bed, given that Mado is a child. But the whole set-up is... odd.

Also, I'm not too clear on what some of the theories are regarding Mado's room. Kidnapping victim? Abusive parents?

>>33299369
http://yumenikki.wikia.com/wiki/Theories

>>33296275
Hey cool it's YNQ.

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>>33299369
read the wiki if you don't play the game.

But if you don't play the gaem you're a chicken

>>33299369
Abusive parents, including possible sexual abuse on the part of the father. There is significant sexual imagery in some areas. Most notably is that of KyuKyu, an elongated tube creature that can be found in a stairway accessed through a door shaped like a zipper. Upon reaching the top of the stairs there is an extremely disturbing full scene even referred to as FACE. Definitely indicating trauma. The reason I think it's the parents and not a kidnapper is because of Poniko and Uboa. Poniko is a woman who normally spends her time completely ignoring Madotsuki. But if Mado flicks the lights in the room on and off, there is a chance she'll be replaced by a strange monster called Uboa. Said creature, if it touches Madotsuki, traps her in a strange world filled with images of violence and sex. Possibly it represents the mother, usually just regularly neglectful , but who occasionally becomes accomplice to Mado's abuse by standing by while the father does the actual act.

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"... we're already asleep," you say, absolutely puzzled.

Mado shakes her head. "We're still conscious, on one level. Pinch your cheek, you wake up - even if only for a second. If you sleep again, you go... deeper," she says, searching for words. "The deeper you go, the darker things get... and the harder it becomes to wake up and escape them."

"So it's not a one-way ticket?" you ask.

She shrugs. "Kind of. The bed sends you one-way, you can't really wake up in the dream bed, but you can get down to where we're going by just taking doors, if you want. This is a lot faster, though. And I've got a feeling we're running out of time."

You stifle a sneeze; the dusty air was well churned by Mado's labors. "Does stripping the bed make it easier?"

She shrugs.

>>33299538
youtube.com/watch?v=g9-cebTMpVE

sometimes you just gotta FACE your fears

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>>33299550

"Sorry, I don't speak schitzo asshole. What does-" you shrug "-mean?"

Madotsuki looks up into your eyes, her expression cold iron. "Get in the fucking bed, Stark."

"All we need now is a pair of handcuffs, salt and a bone saw and it could be a date with Margret Thatcher," you mutter, flopping onto the almost-bare mattress and falling back to stare at the cracked ceiling.

"Was that supposed to be funny?" Madotsuki asks, her voice thin and quiet.

You sigh gustily, flinging an arm over your eyes to block the light, out of energy to reply. The bare bed, lack of pillows and brightly-lit room aren't what you'd call comfortable, but after the insane trials of the past... how long has it been? In a dream, does time even have meaning, like that? In any case you've been wrung out emotionally and mentally, and its still nice to relax your body and close your eyes for even a moment.

The bedsprings creak slightly as they take on Mado's slight weight. She slowly, slooooowly uncoils to lie down, but then all motion in the bed springs cease, as if she's lying there stiff as a board.

>peek
>don't peek

>>33299742
>look dramatically

>>33299742
>don't peek
Mythology is full of people who were doomed because they looked. We don't look.

>>33299742
>don't peek

>>33299742
>don't peek
She's just sleeping. What are we planning to look at, anyway?

>>33299742
Ask to hold her hand?

Not out of lewdness, but in the hope it keeps us from getting seperated

>>33299798
I'd look in an instant if it wasn't super-awkward. Mado a cute.

>stripping the bed and turning on lights

... is Madotsuki trying to make it less intimate?

>>33299742
>>don't peek

>>33299830
well shiieeeettttt

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>>33299829
Although I agree, now's not really the time.

Being trapped in a burning building isn't a good place to start fondling the ambiguously-aged young female.

>>33299830
All that "island of sanity" talk Stalk spouts about her goes both ways.

>>33299742
Roll over on top of her. BEAR ATTACK HAHAHAHA!

>>33299775
Support
Inb4 she put on that headless thingy on.

>>33299742
>don't peek

She... she's showing a lot of signs of distrust in penises.

Lets not give her reason to shank us again.

>>33299742
Start snoring, hard. Shake the bed with the noise.

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>>33299979
HER EYES ARE OPEN.
BURN THE FAKE!

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As you try to push extraneous thoughts out of your mind and slip into (deeper) dreamland, an image rises unbidden - Madotsuki lying rigid next to you, the long, wicked blade of her butcher knife gleaming in one hand, watching you for the slightest move or sign of indiscretion. You're sorely tempted to crack an eyelid and check...

... but when you said it didn't matter if she shanked you, you meant it. Its not like she can kill you.

Well, not until you go Deeper, where thinks are Darker, and its Harder To Wake Up, like she said. Yeah, that's the way to get to sleep, Stark - keep thinking cheerful fucking thoughts. You struggle mightily to untense again and keep your breathing steady, but that image won't leave - Mado watching you, those brown eyes flat and dusty, the knife shining brightly under the bare bulbs.

It still doesn't matter. Trust has to start somewhere, and every time you've fallen, she's-

"Did you know that parachute thing was going to happen?" she asks suddenly. "Before you jumped out the window?"

"Not a goddamn clue," you murmur.

"... then why the hell did you jump out that window? WITH me?"

"Muh. Didn't know how far the drop was. Good chance it wasn't too far. 'Specially in a dream."

"But you didn't *know,* and you jumped out. With. ME."

You make a shrugging motion. "Yeah, so, figured the patch might do something."

"And if it didn't?"

"I'd break your fall, at least."

>>33299947
I don't trust 'em either. Too many trannies and homos on the webs nowadays.

>>33300038
I believed I could fly, and I'd show you the world,

>>33300038
Uh, Mado? There was an explosion. Did you forget about the explosion?

I haven't misremembered that part, have I?

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>>33300038

She's silent for a few seconds.

"If you're so desperate to get out of my fucked-up head, why don't you just off yourself?" she almost growls and you feel a cold tingle of steel just brush the side of your neck, big *fucking* surprise there, right? "Instead of risking my ass jumping out of windows?"

"Who says I'm going to wake up?" you reply. "Why can't I stay awake, when I do? What if I wake up somewhere I really don't want to be? Or with a knife in my chest, or missing my legs? Or maybe I've taken brain damage and if I die in the dream I just wander forever in limbo, alone in *my* own fucked up head? Can you tell me for sure I won't?"

She ponders that. "So why aren't you scared of-"

"Who said I wasn't?" you interject. "If the parachute hadn't appeared we would've survived by landing in a pile of my own shit twenty feet high."

Something cold tickles your neck again. "So what, you're a fucking hero or something-"

"-would a hero tell you that you're going to look awful funny with that knife sticking out of your ass?"

Mado jerks away to her side of the bed rather abruptly.

"What knife?"

>>33300245
THE ONE FROM MY CROTCH!

Okay, I just read the Yume Nikki manga while waiting in between updates. It's not long, only took me fifteen minutes or so. But damn is it trippy. I don't know if faggot has read it or if he has whether he incorporated any of it into the quest. But damn, if Seccom Masada-sensei shows up, I suggest we go straight for our axe. Fucker is not getting the chance to talk to us.

>>33300405
Mango is fanfiction at best, just like the thread

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>>33300245
IT'S HAPPENING

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>>33300245

You snort rudely. "Besides, I had the Patch. Had a feeling it'd do something. I knew the person that gave it to me, from somewhere, and he seemed to wish me the best." You rub your sleeve against your forehead, where the dead man had traced a cross, in ash. "Didn't want to test my luck, but with that dragon about to blow, I didn't have a choice."

"You could've-"

"-sat there pondering my options till we were blown to - er, around hell," you sigh. "Sometimes you've just got to jump and trust that someone else is holding the net."

"And what if they're not?" she says, her voice dark and bitter. "What if nobody's waiting to catch you, at the bottom?"

"Then it sucks to be me, but it's your last chance tonight, right? I'll probably wake up fine anyways, already did it twice, just gotta-" you yawn as your brain rebels against any more pondering or twisty-turny mindfuck bullshit, sick and tired of it already "-sack up and take the risk...."

Mado falls silent at last, and you fall asleep.

>>33300484
Oh, I know it's not canon or anything like that. I'm just saying, Seccom Masada has now taken on an all new level of creepiness to me.

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>>33300496
>theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap_xYZLyCp0

"Hey."

Someone is slapping you lightly on the cheeks.

"Hey, dickbutt. Wake up."

You blink, irritated, to find Madotsuki standing over you, frowning. "Took you long enough. We're here."

You take a deep breath before turning to see what "here" entails. A thin, narrow blue staircase is suspended in (you guessed it) a vast, black void, and reaching out of the darkness, on all sides, are long, wavy arms that terminate in ephemeral hands around the height of the staircase. They wave and undulate gently, like kelp fronds underwater. The air is musty and moist, much like the air in Madotsuki's room with the doorwall open.

"Come on," Mado says, starting down the staircase. "We're running out of time." The clop-clop of her Mary Janes seems strangely muffled, like they're wrapped in quilts. You bring your sneaker down hard on the staircase, hoping for a different effect, but receive the same cloth-battened sound.

You proceed down the staircase for some time, long enough for the gently undulating hands to fade into the background. Your thoughts turn to Madotsuki's odd room, the strange sense of disquiet it gave you, and her odd behavior. What was the point of stripping the bed? Why does she get so pissed when you ask about anything relating to her waking world?

And why is she consistently amazed that you'd defend or assist your only guide and anchor of sanity in kookooville?

A ghostly hand waves before you and you wave at it irritably. Another waves before Mado, and she begins to walk faster. "Hurry up."

>>33300845
Got to go fast

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>>33300845

Now you look around and find the hands are bending and waving and waggling their way closer to you. You reach for the crowbar in your belt only to pat your shirt - and promptly trip over something on the stairway, almost falling down the staircase on your face. Looking behind you, you find the axe/crowbar combo, wired together, lying on the staircase behind you. You snatch it up hastily and take the stairs two at a time to catch up with Mado. "What the fuck!?"

"Just hurry up," she says, strain in her voice as the ghostly hands converge on her. They seem a little more solid now, and somewhere - no, everywhere - you hear the cloth-muffled sound of respiration, breathing, murmuring, *things.* A hand wanders too close to her back and you strike at it, making it recoil hastily.

"Just ignore them and hurry the fuck up!" she shouts. A hand slides down the staircase behind her on its impossibly long "arm" and grabs at her ankle before sliding up her calf. She twists and slashes, parting it neatly and letting it flop on the stair, pooling purple blood. "HURRY!"

You sprint after her, taking the stairs two at a time, swinging at hands as they close on her back. Mado's knife takes care of the front, leaving you a growing pile of twitching, hacked up hands and long, tendril-like "arms" lying across the stairs to trip you up. The staircase is infinite, impossibly long, and in the darkness you've no way to know how long you've been at this. Risking a glance over your shoulder you see a trail of severed "limbs" all the way up the stair till it dwindles into a dot high above. Your strength is starting to wane, the heavy, moist air thick in your lungs.

Well, that's new. Maybe you are getting somewhere. You swing away with renewed vigor -

- and smash your chin into the steps as a hand grabs *your* ankle.

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>>33300942

"Stark?" Mado is running up towards you, her voice sluggish and filed off 'round the edges, like she's underwater. The Hands are already all over you, grasping weakly then sliding away, beseeching you with reaching, empty grasps as they slowly sink into the darkness. New ones rise to take their place, waving weakly as if panicked, before catching at your hands and sliding back into the darkness, trailing wetness across your skin and on the stair-edge before vanishing again.

"... Stark?" Madotsuki asks.

You stagger to your feet, brushing at the hands as they beseech you. "The hell?"

"Its changed again," she says quietly, before resuming the descent. You follow her deeper into the darkness, brushing away the hands as they appear with the head of the axe.

>>33301031
Lucid dream, goddamit, create wings and fly.

>>33301174
Firefighters don't have wings, they have fire trucks.

>>33301174
If only it worked that way. But it doesn't. Though Mado does have a magic broom she's not using.

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>>33301031

"Kind of glad they're attracted to someone else, for a change," Madotsuki says with disgust, stomping on a stray hand as it slides up the staircase towards you. "Finally. Almost there." She points with her knife at a distant dot - the staircase terminus.

As you approach it, Mado seems to tense, until you can both make it out clearly.

"That's not right," she whispers.

Ahead of you, hovering in the darkness, is a door - a car door. From the other side seems to be the source of the muffled voice - now, it sounds muffled by water, not cloth, and it seems to be screaming.

*toom toom*

Your heart leaps into your chest as the hollow sound raps against the car door window, like someone tapping on an aquarium.

"Someone's in there-"

"It's just your dream, Stark!" Mado cautions. "Don't-"

You've already taken a step forward, axe in hand. "Axes are for opening doors," you tell her, your eyes fixed on the target.

*toom toom toom*

You leap forward, axe already rising - you want off this staircase and you want off it NOW and axes are for opening god damned doors. Madotsuki grabs your arm and lifts her feet off the floor, dangling from your elbow with her whole body weight.

"Stark, stop! You don't want to open that, trust me! You don't want that. Not on a staircase, not here, not -" she gasps for air, her voice rattling and weak. "Don't do it, Stark, don't do it!"

>Do it.
>Don't do it.

>>33301284
"Will you stop being such a little shit if I leave it alone?"

>>33301284
Believe in the AXE, DO IT!

>>33301284
>dangling from your elbow with her whole body weight.

Damn, we buff. That's gotta be at least 80 pounds and we're still making to swing our axe through a car door.

In other news, Don't do it.

>>33301284
>Don't do it.
Right. Sorry, Mado, we don't know what came over us. Whatever is in there can't be good. Just because it's screaming doesn't mean it's screaming for help.

>>33301284
DO EET

>>33301284
DO IT

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>ties

>>33301284
>Do it.

>>33301284
Listen to Mado, fuck.

>>33301415
You stay out of this, Madoka! You have your own mindfuck story. Get off our turf before I call Incubator on you.

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>>33301478

... anyways, calling it for DO IT.

You poor bastards.

>>33301284
She's physically trying to stop us, that should tell you that this is a really fucking bad idea.

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>>33301550
OH GOD IT'S THE FACE

NOT THE FACE

>>33301550
huehuehue
YOLO

>>33301550
SANAE I WILL MOLEST YOU.

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The terror and pleading in Mado's voice gives you pause. You stare at the car door again, a cold feeling creeping up your spine. There's something about it - something off. A black, greasy film covers the window, and -

- and hands are smearing around in it, and *toom toom tooming* against the interior.

Something swells in your chest, horrific and painful, a mad scream of despair that rips your throat asunder as you charge in, Mado falling away like so much chaff as you charge in and bring the axe-head down on the window.

And then the fucking thing EXPLO

Next update will be a little longer, grabbing dinner real quick. (10 minutes)

>>33301638
You guys could have prevented this. You could have listened to the little girl who knows more about dreams than us.

>>33301680
Hey, I voted against it. I don't know why everyone else wanted to see the FACE.

>>33301680

Hey, I agree.

This vote basically amounted to

DO YOU PUSH THE BUTTON THAT SAYS "DO NOT PUSH"?!

The hive doesn't have the neural capability to cope with that kind of decision.

>>33301638
and nothing of value was lost

>>33301638
oh look. is car rape.

captcha: tuysday dartlife

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>>33301638

Your limbs are moving on their own.

An unseen puppetmaster's strings are tugging at your joints. Your foot comes down on the unseen floorboards with a heavy, muffled *tump* as your arms swing to keep your balance.

You can't see the ceiling, and this is bad, but

*tump*

you're leaving, and that's good

*tump*

the doorway's in front of you, so hazy and indistinct through the pain flooding your skull oh god, the pain, you cracked it good didn't you, but

*CRACK!*

falling

into

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>>33301939
CHEEK PINCH

CHEEEEEKKK PINCH

>>33302035
Pretty sure we are awake right now. We were in the same room as this when Mado tried to wake us. I think we're stumbling through the smoke of the fire towards an exit, only for the floor to collapse beneath us. The sense of not being in control is probably just the disconnect brought about by our brain being starved of oxygen. That's not unheard of.

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>>33301939

Fire.

Your mind and body and soul are torn apart by the scream, your spine arching as your lungs empty themselves out. Your skin sizzles and boils, the snap-crackle-POP of your blackened flesh trailing the heat, the searing, unbelievable heat as it eats deeper, towards your bones, the pain losing sharpness but gaining horrific, omnipotent presence as it consumes your body whole. Your eyeballs shriek and sizzle and stab lances of pain clear through your head right before they pop like sausages and

>>33301939
To recap, the other two times Stark woke up, he could see the ceiling and knew this meant he was fine. He's in a burning building that's gone fully involved, which is fireman slang for EVERYTHING IS ON FUCKING FIRE. That Stark can see the ceiling means that the room he is physically in isn't full of smoke yet, which means he has time before the fire kills him. He can't see the ceiling any more because the room is full of smoke, the fire's closer. He's in deep shit and running out of time, as Mado and the dreamworld keep reminding him.

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>>33302101

you wake up screaming, flailing, clutching at your eyes YOUR EYES popped like sausages you're burning to death the flames gutting your marrow YOU'RE DEAD YOU'RE DEAD YOU'RE BURNING TO DEATH YOU CAN'T SEE YOU CAN'T SEE YOU'RE DEAD YOU'RE BURNING TO DEATH YOU CAN'T SEE THE CEILING THE HEAT ITS FLASHOVER YOU'RE OVER over over over it stings it stings someone's slapping you and it

stings

*SLAP*

a lot, really

why's this so soft, under your hands, soft and warm

you can feel it and it doesn't hurt

anymore

>>33302187
Madotsuki's going to be real fucking angry at us. We finally went and did something completely fucking batshit crazy. I'm sure Stark has some sort of deep-seated trauma that lead him to act so impulsively. In fact, I'm going to go on to speculate that this trauma is directly related to why he became a firefighter in the first place.

Is us burning helplessly to death our counterpart to FACE or something?

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>>33302187

Until she slaps you again.

"WAKE UP!"

*SLAP!*

"WAKE UP!"

You open your mouth to-

*SLAP!"

"BLAAAH!" you cry, clutching at your head. "Oh FUCK my ow everything-"

*SLAP!"

"WHYYYY!?" you wail, scrunching up on your side to avoid the next blow. "Oh, g-g-od, f-f-fuuuhhhh...." your body is shaking like a leaf, your mind twitching and shattered. Someone's shaking you violently, calling your name, but for a minute all you can do is writhe in the memory of

arms popping like sausages POP POP eyeballs POP the smell of pork your own pork your own body scorching and smoking and charring

burning to death.

At last, the cries come in miserable wheezes, and the violent shaking stops.

"YOU IDIOT! YOU FUCKING IDIOT! I TOLD YOU! I TOLD YOU!"

You struggle to rise, and a slender arm loops around your shoulders, helping you upright. Below, on the stairs, a car door lies open, the staircase before it smouldering and scorched.

"... what?"

"It exploded the instant you hit it, you stupid *fuck,*" Mado snarls. "You went flying off the staircase, on fire."

"I... I b-burned," you stammer.

"I'm quick, but equipping an Effect still takes time," she says, slapping you upside your aching head again. "You fuck. You fuck. You FUCK!"

"Mado?"

"FUCK!"

You block the next slap weakly, staring at her wide-eyed. "Why are you dressed like a witch?"

"Because this," she says, reaching out and picking up a broomstick lying next to her. "I can fly with it. And I can also BEAT YOU FOR BEING A STUPID STUPID SS-S-STUPID F-F-FUCK!" She begins thrashing you with the bristles end; she's not very strong but the olde fashioned straw broom is rather abrasive and dusty, and you're soon flailing up the stairs to escape it.

>>33302361
It's better than the alternative of us actually burning and being a weird dream ghost now.

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>>33302361
>>33302339

>>33302416
well that'd take away our invulnerability then...

Wonder if the manga is semi-canon here...

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>>33302427
And YOU! THE ANSWERS! WHERE ARE THE ANSWERS?!!?

>>33302452
We ourselves are the answers, anon.

>>33302413
perhaps we should git gud

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>>33302413

"I told you. I TOLD you!" she snarls, bitterness ringing clear in her voice. "But you had to charge in anyways, didn't you, you goddamn idiot! Why? Even when I warned you - WHY!?"

"Its... just... what I... do," you breathe through ragged respiration.

"Your patch didn't protect you from the fire. It didn't make you a parachute!" She flings the broom away, and her witchy hat and cloak seem to melt like ink and flow away, leaving her normal clothes underneath. She plants a foot near your arm and buries her hands in your shirt, hoisting you an inch or two off the floor to scream in your face. "I told you! I told you! I told you how it'd end!"

You smile at her weakly, and let your head fall back, too exhausted by your torture to do any more. "Sometimes... you gotta... trust... someone... gonna catch you..."

She drops you like you're (still) on fire, a long, shaking gasp rattling her slender frame. She leaps over you and sprints up the steps a ways, and as she flees you think you hear her sob.

>>33302597
But she didn't tell us what would happen. She just said it would be bad. And in our defense, that applies to literally everything here. Besides, it made sense to Stark. Dream logic and what not. If she can get away with instructing us to cut off her head, we can be excused for thinking opening the door was the right call.

>>33302597
"Does that happen every time?"

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>>33302597

Some minutes later, she interrupts your pondering with a kick to the shoulder.

"Hey!" you cry, turning to look at her, standing a few risers higher than where you're sitting. "The hell's wrong with you?"

"Spent enough time contemplating your massive stupidity? We need to get going."

"No argument there," you say, rising with a sigh and picking up your axe. "I think things aren't going too well for me, up there."

"How so?"

"I was... not walking. Moving like a puppet. And then I think I fell through the floor."

"Sleepwalking. You tripped. Good job."

You frown. "Maybe."

Recovered and newly humbled, you follow Madotsuki through the blasted remains of the car door. You shudder a little as you pass through the portal. Behind you, in the darkness, something whickers softly.

You glance over your shoulder, but nothing's there - not even the hands.

"Come on, dweeb," Mado chides you. Shrugging, you follow her.

The inside of the portal is just a dark room with blue tile flooring. Ahead of you is a small metal post supporting two chains that rope off a drop. Mado beckons you closer, unsnapping the chains and tossing them aside - and stepping off the edge. You almost lurch for her instinctively, but she descends exactly four inches, then stops.

Beneath the floor, something ponderous and mechanical stirs to life.

>theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQgcFsr2kQA

"Okay, crybaby, this place should be nice and distressingly normal," Mado says as she descends down and away. Her voice floats up to you. "Get on already, idiot."

You step to the edge, look down, and recognize it as an escalator.

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>>33302887
>theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW3WDPTOJ9w

Mado's waiting for you at the bottom. As you step off and look around, she waves her arm grandly. "Welcome to The Mall."

The Mall is a maze of dark blue walls covered with protruding, shallow pyramid-shapes, like the sound-dampening structures inside a recording studio. The floors are polished white tile, the kind you automatically associate with "Mall," smooth and bright, but the walls seem to soak up their luminance without effect. Strange creatures bustle to and fro, blobby indistinct "people" in smudgy reds and browns, and the occasional needle-eyed being you recognize from that odd "village," but attired in short sleeves and shorts. Further down the hall you espy a little ring of benches around spiky, dead foliage, and a gaunt-looking blobby person slouching on it, wearing shorts, but no shirt.

"... yeah, it's a Mall, all right," you say, looking around uneasily.

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>>33303052

The Mall is crowded, but the dreamworld denizens move too fast, appearing from one doorway and vanishing inside another with speedy, single-minded purpose. They stare at you and Mado as they past, sometimes twisting their heads 270 degrees to keep tracking you even as they rush away and down an escalator, or into an unlit storefront. There seem to be no lights in the ceiling at all, just the strange, ineffective luminance of the polished white tile. Mado leads you under a second-story balcony, a skyway that links the balcony-aisles above. Creatures are leaping from it to scurry into other doorways.

It's busy, like a Mall, but it feels more like a hive than anything spontaneous and safely commercial.

You notice a small security camera tracking your progress - and then it blinks. You start a bit, then peer closer - and discern a wide, bloodshot eyeball lurking just behind the thin plate of the darkened lens. You note five more as Mado leads you through the crowd with ease; the denizens simply scurry away from you rather than challenge your passage.

Everywhere you look are the trappings of simple, boring normalcy... and every one of them is twisted. EXIT signs abound, but they're all dark - and by the time you espy the fourth one, you realize their arrows all point at one another in a grand, pointless circle. Fire alarms dot every support pillar, but they're warped, the T-handle drooping and melted so it looks a little like a weeping face - and stuck to its casing, so its impossible to pull, as you tried. Sprinkler heads dot the ceiling, their little tines long and wickedly sharp like cowboy spurs.

And of course, there's the Art.

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>>33303217

Near the little seating areas and "you are HERE!" maps, where most malls hang all sorts of awful landscapes or prints of that Monet with the yellow flowers or whatever, hang distorted, abstract images of... things. One looks like a person having their skin ripped off, unraveling from their body like a long bandage being pulled on. Another looks like a lance piercing someone through and through, complete with dark, blobby splatter. And there's many others that make no immediate sense at all, but are vaguely disturbing nonetheless.

Mado seems to be meandering, searching for something. You think to ask her what, when your eye's caught by the slow motion of something leaking down the wall. It proves to be some reddish substance... flowing from what looks like a gigantic zipper embedded in the wall. Above it, a little sign says MAINT. EMPLOYEE ONLY!

Glancing behind you, you see another bleeding zipper labeled CUSTODIAL.

Before you can remark much on it, Madotsuki throws the security gate of a shuttered store upwards, and vanishes inside.

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Inside the dimly-lit room is a chair, more "art," a pool of bubbling blood, and the second-strangest goddamn thing you've seen in Mado's head, second only to Master Stream. Capering about the room, near the pool of bubbling blood, is a long rectangle-ish thing with legs and eyes. There's a hole in its top, and from it spills blood - definitely blood, from the sharp coppery scent in the air. In one corner of the room are two short sections of pipe, neatly cut off and emitting a hollow droning noise, like wind over an empty bottle.

"All the doors are different," Mado says, glaring at the thing.

You glare at the capering, bleeding pipe-thing. For some reason you can't name, it pisses you off. You take a step forward and kick it violently, sending it flying into the wall. Its little legs kick comically in air as blood spurts and gushes from its top, flowing into the wide pool of bubbling red liquid.

"I don't like that thing either," Mado says with approval. "Come on."

>>33303500
I'm with Mado. That thing's creepy.

Maybe we can check one of the maps? I doubt they'd have accurate information, but it's better than nothing.

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As soon as you're in the hall again, you tug at your companion's sweatshirt. "Mado, what are we looking for?"

"Another escalator. It's usually easy to find, but..." she shrugs. "Must be hidden pretty well, this time. Your brain's fucking up everything in here."

As you formulate a witty reply, something frantic and wild comes skirling through the air, sharp, high notes that shriek and yelp their way through the halls.

"... O-Man?" Madotsuki breathes in disbelief.

Another burst of twisted notes comes barreling and riffing through the air, echoing strangely around the hallways.

"He's got the Flute!" Mado says, grabbing your wrist and dragging you into a jog. "The Effect I couldn't remember! The Flute! We've got to get it back!"

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>>33303612

I'm calling it here for the night, because I was up at 4:30 AM for work today, and its really starting to tell. Any further and the writing's going to nosedive straight into Suck, and the next Big Deal is coming up soon.

We will resume on SATURDAY, 6PM to the wee AM hours, if my usual self-discipline with keeping a regular sleep cycle is in evidence (it will be.) Sorry I couldn't go longer tonight!

>>33303660
Are you going to archive it?

>>33303660
That's fine. As always, thanks for running. This was fun. See you next time.

>>33303660
It's good to know the quest didn't die. I was worried about it when you didn't show on Sunday, nice to see it's still going. As always, this all is damn good stuff and I love it.