come_sailaway | I get the feeling any minute I could break [OPEN & CLOSED]

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I get the feeling any minute I could break [OPEN & CLOSED]

Who: Daisy Tonner & you!
What: Daisy fucking snaps and gives into the Hunt
When: Closed prompts on February 16th, opens either side
Where: Many places on the ship
Warnings: Graphic violence, people being hunted, death, possible references to police brutality, themes of (supernatural) addiction, (metaphysical) starvation etc.
Notes: Hunt Sense Permissions, what does your character smell like? Feel free to flip me to brackets I am comfortable with either style.

1. I don't wanna need it [OPEN, windjammers, decks, library]

Daisy doesn't go to the carnival.

There's a handful of reasons, ranging from still not trusting excursions not to end in bloodshed to the one person she thinks actually likes her being busy with her girlfriends to just feeling generally like shit. She's so weak these days. Eighteen months without really feeding the Hunt, eight buried alive and six at the Institute and another four on the boat, and she truly feels like she's wasting away. And the worse she feels, the worse her attitude is.

Most of this time she's holed up in her room, but she can still be found ducking out to get food from Windjammers, or wandering the decks to get some fresh air, or dropping by the library to get a book she probably won't even read.

She won't bite if you bother her. But she might glare.

2. But I just can't leave it [CLOSED, headers in comments]

The thing is, of course, that in the end something was always going to have to give. Eighteen months is a long time to starve, even if that starvation is technically metaphysical. Eighteen months is a long time to fight back what is essentially an addiction with no actual treatment. Eighteen months is a long time to spend telling yourself that this is for the best whilst also feeling worse and worse every. Single. Day that goes by without giving in.

Eighteen months is how long it takes for Daisy to finally snap.

There's no one thing that does it. No final push. Nothing besides the gnawing sensation of need and the sound of blood pumping in her ears, in the depths of her mind, in the air all around her.

It's all but out of her hands, after that.

3. I know I went and got complacent [OPEN, cabin 122]

When all is said and done, Daisy feels worse than ever.

Not physically, no. Physically, at least once whatever Valdis did to her wears off, Daisy feels better than she has since before she went into the Buried. She even looks better, no longer so scrawny that she looks malnourished and instead appearing a healthy weight. But mentally?

She feels like the monster that she is. Angry at herself for losing it and hurting people. Disgusted at herself for the way a part of her wants to get right back out there and do it all again. Horrified by her own capacity for violence and harm. Ashamed of being so weak she couldn't stop herself. Exhausted at the idea of going back to letting herself starve. Terrified of the idea of facing the rest of the ship after she gave such a display of Old Cruise Pride. Hopeless in the face of a life she barely even wants to keep living. Absolutely certain that she will never be anything but a monster, because that's all people will see her as.

She's not going anywhere. Erin's probably not going to let you kill her, but she's not going to stop you talking to her. And Daisy doesn't have it in her to tell people to go away, not really.

If you have something to say, come say it.

4. But I know that I can save this [wildcard]

Find me at

bluecitrine or at artisticblueteam#5757/in the discord.

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Even a single successful hunt has Daisy feeling more alive than she has in months. She feels stronger, sharper, faster—and the sound of pounding blood is only louder, now that she's dared to indulge it. So she listens.

It's still early. Much of the boat is still quiet. But the tug pulls her towards deck six, has her jumping from the sports deck down to the open pool deck below rather than bother with stairs.

Pretty, floral stained with blood just as starkly as her claws, Daisy follows the tug across the deck. Windjammer will be serving breakfast.

Wilson is at one of the tables in Windjammer going to town on a plate of bacon and eggs, knees tucked up to his chest to avoid the red-orange liquid sloshing across the floor. He does glance up long enough to notice a furious-looking blonde woman in the aisle who is, herself, splattered with red. It's all over her hands, her shirt, a bit on her face.

"Did you fall in?" He's puzzled and concerned, but not wholly unsympathetic.

The only words out of her mouth comes as a growl, and there's a sense of effort to even manage that, even a simple, "No. I didn't," a strain on whatever lingering control she has left of herself.

She cracks her neck. Tilts her head. Curls her lip back, revealing sharp teeth too big to naturally fit in her skull.

It's hard to say which part of her speaks up next, "Run."

The thought what's her problem? flits across the back of Wilson's mind, followed by the observation - unhelpfully belated - that the red on her isn't quite the same colour as the stuff on the floor. It's darker, less orange.

Those teeth are an alarming sight. He can tell she's trying to scare him, and it's working, but honestly it seems like a good idea to run while he still has a chance to get out of mauling range instead of stand here and fight to the death over half an egg. Wilson grabs his enchanted walking cane out of thin air and leaps off his perch on the chair, knocking it over as he dashes for the exit. Through eight inches of runny tomato soup that drags at his footsteps and seeps into his socks. What is wrong with this ship?!

God how she loves it when they run.

She's moving before he's even on his feet, faster than anyone her size, than anyone who at a glance would pass as an ordinary human being, should be able to move. And there's something wrong, something uncanny about how she moves; despite her human shape every little motion is intrinsically animalistic. It is not the way a person moves. It's the way a predator stalks, and chases, and attacks.

The soup on the floor doesn't seem to bother her at all. If it comes to it she'll shed her shoes without so much as a thought. But for now, she just chases, soup splashing around her ankles as she does.

The cane lends him speed, and he's not slow without it, but she's catching up anyway with terrifying and unnatural velocity. The coffee cultivar that grows in the Constant could have done that; he wishes he had some now. He can hear her getting closer behind him. He doesn't have to stop running to slip on his pigskin helmet in the space between blinks, but he does catch a glimpse of her charging at him as he clears the soup-encrusted threshold of the buffet.

If Wilson thinks he's going to make it to the stairwell— well, Daisy has other ideas. She wants a chase but she doesn't want it at the expense of getting caught too soon, having someone stop her. No, she's not so far gone she has no instincts left on that front.

Which means that as soon as she's close enough, she lunges. Leaps, really. For someone so short and still so scrawny looking she clears an impressive distance, slamming into him to knock him to the ground with a snarl.

He tries to dodge, throwing himself to the side like he would for an angry tropical pigman or a clockwork rook charging at him, but she's faster than both of those; the tackle is off-center but enough to slam him to the floor. He still has an arm free, and he swaps the cane for his primary weapon, a baseball-bat-sized length of purple cartilage with sharp spikes on the end, all that remains of a swamp tentacle somewhere in the Constant. Wilson swings the tentacle spike at the crazed wolf-woman, going for her back or her side or really anything he can reach from the floor.

You know what's probably not reassuring? The fact Daisy barely even seems to care enough about his attempted retaliation to try and dodge. She jerks away just enough to make sure he can't get in a lucky killing blow but when the spikes imbed in her ribs, there's little but a bark of pain and a fresh splattering of blood. It doesn't stop her. No, she's immediately lunging forward again and pinning the arm wielding the weapon to the floor, claws and all.

Blood stairs her shirt around the fresh tears, but the wounds beneath it are already healed by the time she's over him.

It's not reassuring but it's also not surprising; only a few of the creatures of the Constant retreat or try harder to stop his blows from landing when they're hurt.

She pins him with impossible strength, claws piercing into the flesh of his arm, and there's an electric jolt of fear through his body – flavored like the Buried, in addition to the Hunt – as he simultaneously remembers the bonds of the Nightmare Throne, every single time he's ever been trapped in a wad of gluey Ewecus snot with no help in sight as it slowly kicked him to death, every time a shadow hand twice his size grabbed him in its fist when he tried to run away from a portal. He can't get free, he can't hit her again, he can't reach his log suit; he can flail and squirm and kick at her, but he has very little experience and even less training in fighting on the ground, and her grip is like iron.

There's a sound just a little too animal to be a laugh, but it seems amused all the same. Sadistic predator, she'd once called herself. She hadn't been wrong. The Hunter is already questioning why she ever gave this up, watching her prey cower and try to fight back, tasting that fear.

"Trapped. Aren't you?" Every syllable a little less human, a little more like it's effort to push the words out.

The claws dig in harder. She grabs the other arm and pins it down, too.

'You insolent, pitiful, insignificant ant!'

Wilson yelps in pain as her claws dig into his arms, blood seeping from the left one as he tries to wriggle out of her grip. He snarls at her, baring his own smaller fangs, pushing down insensate terror with fury. "I'm gonna mow you down!"

He can't follow through on his daisy-themed threat while pinned to the floor by both arms, and his heart is pounding in his ears because he knows that he can't get away.

Now Daisy really does laugh, the sound breaking through the bestial nature that's so clearly in charge right now. Really? She can hear his heart pounding, she can still taste the fear, she knows he's not going anywhere unless she lets him.

Which is tempting. This area's a bit too trafficked to leave a body.

But for now she just drags her claws through his flesh and thinks about how much damage she can do and still let him run, if she wants another chase.

This is not the context where he wanted his puns to get a laugh.

"Augh!" Her claws rake across his chest and cut deep into his other arm, blood welling up around them; she's still leaning heavily on the one that's straining to hit her with the tentacle spike again, and if she let up the pressure it'd be suddenly-released tension as much as violent intent that buried it in her hide. What he can do is pull his shoulder up from the floor when she lets go to claw at him and bite her forearm as hard as he can, having exhausted everything else he can throw at her.

The bite makes her yank her arm away, but the retaliation for that minor annoyance is her slamming her arm down against his throat, not with enough strength to crush his windpipe outright but certainly enough to threaten it.

"Pitiful."

And then all at once she's pulling her arm away and giving him just enough room to pull himself free, if he tries. She doesn't care if she gets hit for her troubles. She'll heal.

And she'll catch him again, once they're just a little more out of the way.

He makes a small squawking noise as he simultaneously tries to yelp in pain and has the air driven out of his throat, and then she lets her arm up and the tentacle spike comes with it, as if she'd been holding down a spring. It's not a deep puncture, considering the awkward angle, but would it have made a difference if it was?

She's shifted her weight, he can thrash free and scramble to his feet and run a few paces in the direction of the stairs, throwing his backpack aside for his log suit- what now, though? She can easily catch him again before he can lose her, she's the one who told him to run in the first place. He switches his tentacle spike for his ice staff and fires off two quick blasts, the frost clinging to her only half of what he needs to freeze her solid.

She's not going to let him get in that other half, that's for certain. She's shaking what frost tries to cling to her off and charging after him again before he can even try, and with how fast she is his choices are to waste time trying to hit a moving target who now knows what to try and dodge, or focus on running before she can just pin him down here again.

And she's damn well determined to make it the latter, driving him towards the stairs.

This is really starting to feel like one of those times he'd unwittingly trespassed into a monster's den and didn't realise the magnitude of the error he'd committed until a giant shark with legs bodyslammed him into a watery grave for looking at its babies in a funny way or a lava-spewing house-sized fly ripped him apart for interrupting its dinner. The bite mark on her arm is already gone, and running away is an obvious trap.

Two shots is as much as Wilson can fire off while backing away in a vaguely stairward direction, and then he almost manages to leap out of the way of her charge but she grabs him by the leg and he lands hard on the floor with her claws digging into his ankle. He flips over as she drags him toward her and swings the tentacle spike at her face before she can pin his arms again.

She turns her head with the strike so the spikes glance across her face and skull, rather than embedding in it, then grabs the wrist and slams it hard down against the ground to get him to let go of the damn thing. "Let. Go. Or I— tear. It. Off."

She drags him under her not just by his wrist, but by digging her claws into his side when he's close enough.

Hello darkness my old friend. How much of the blood on the floor at this point is his? Probably enough to be medically concerning, although even more of it is hers.

"What happens if I do?!" If he sounds a bit hysterical it's because he is in fact more than a bit hysterical, pinned down again with sharp claws biting into his flesh, but he doesn't really believe that she's going to let him go without stabbing him with it if he obediently drops his weapon. He certainly hasn't let go of it yet, even though it feels like something cracked when she bashed his arm against the floor.

Edited 2023-02-25 14:39 (UTC)

Daisy starts slowly, slowly pulling at that arm, enough to put strain on the joint and muscles but not to actually follow through on that threat yet. "Don't know. Yet. But. This?"

She tugs just hard enough to make a point, to threaten to pop the joint, to drag her claws hard through flesh again.

"Hurts." Believe her. She knows that from experience, thanks to Erin. Is she really giving him a choice or just messing with him, though? Guess he'll have to find out.

He may be used to pain, but that doesn't translate into taking it stoically; he cries out when she yanks on his left arm, his cracked wrist and strained shoulder joint and fresh new oozing claw wounds all coming together to vehemently declare that they don't want any more of this treatment. It does hurt, in several ways all up and down his arm. His right arm isn't exactly thrilled to be here either, with the slashes she's already put into it, and his blood is sticking his log suit to his shirt and waistcoat.

Despite that, he's still not letting go of the tentacle spike. "That just means you're gonna kill me slower, or freak me out until They come to finish me off!"

No, he hasn't seen a shadow creature in the last two months, but he's not thinking that clearly at this exact moment.

He's not wrong, of course—well, except about this they he's talking about, but not about her killing him slower. Just look at poor Peter Smith, left battered and broken and bleeding. She could take her time with Wilson if she wanted. She'd even know better than to accidentally end the Hunt too soon, this time, as she slowly gets a hang of her full strength again.

But she's also not one to make a threat she isn't willing to follow through on. And it sure sounds to her like Wilson's made a choice. So she tilts her head at him, shrugs a shoulder and says in a voice that's increasingly inhuman, "Alright."

And with no real fanfare, no flourish, she tugs harder, and harder, and harder at that arm until something has to give and then yanks with all her unnatural strength.

He screams, the searing pain building and building as his elbow comes loose in the socket and bones and flesh tear free, sensation in his hand and wrist replaced with nothing but agony and arterial blood spraying all over both of them. The fingers of his severed hand still cling to the tentacle spike as it falls the last few inches to the floor.

He tries to wrap his right hand around his backup weapon but his movements are clumsy; it takes multiple tries before the Morning Star appears in his hand, and for a moment it looks wicked and spiked and glowing with electricity before he drops it on the floor and the blue glow goes out. It's followed by absolutely everything else in his inventory, rocks and grass and twigs and a tartan hat and the ice staff and cane and a hammer, as he lets out a noise halfway between a scream and a groan and goes limp on the floor.

...well, that's new.

The interest in Wilson dissipates as quickly as her interest in 6 did, once the Hunt was over, but even in this state she has to pause in confusion for a moment at the sheer amount of stuff that just popped out of the guy.

But it doesn't last long. Wilson's body gets dragged just a little further out of the way so that no one coming out of Windjammer will see yet, and then she's going to head for the stairwell.

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takethatnature - 2023-02-27 20:35 (UTC) - Expand

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I get the feeling any minute I could break [OPEN & CLOSED]

for Wilson

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the dice said no kiting you get a 12. can't abscond, bro!

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the dice still says no kiting

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cw gore/dismemberment and death

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