110 flames | voice

[lolijesus]

All these people, I have to--

How many people in the pumpkin patch can hear me? If you can respond and need help, I'll try to find you as fast as I can.

Is everyone that got out all right? If you got out but need help getting to the hospital, I'll find you.


[ooc; you're welcome to say she helped you out wherever. All responses are assumed voice]

Comments

action; I guess so. If this isn't what you mean, I shall retry!

[neverendingbeat.livejournal.com]

"Yes. Mirrors. Everywhere."
The Master glared at his Network Device before shoving it back into his pocket. All around him, surrounding him where he stood, were mirrors. Jagged shards of treated glass that reflected him back to himself. He'd generally be quite a fan of this sort of thing only not quite so much if they were going to gradually close in and impale him. He wasn't even certain he'd be able to regenerate properly if he was crushed--he hated the idea of having to resort to that snake-thing again. And he'd be stuck like that; no Time Lords to give him another set of regenerations this time.
"It gave me instructions," he decided to say out loud, instead of thinking too much about the issue of regeneration. Not quite the time yet. "It told me that one of the mirror shards was my key out but that I'd have to face myself multiple times before escaping." He rolled his eyes. "What the hell is that supposed to mean? There's only about two metres square at this point; they can hardly expect me to fight a clone." He snickered, aware he was talking through his problems and planning out loud. Rassilon. He must be stressed. He hadn't done that so badly since the Tremas body.
"And there's nothing wrong with me. I like me."
On a whim, he turned around and yanked at a piece of mirror and then yelped as his fingers came away bloody. Instinctively, he put his fingers in his mouth, tasting the spark of artron energy. Looking ruefully at the bloodied piece of mirror, he blinked. Then, abruptly, he was once again eight, and staring into the Untempered Schism. It hurt every part of him that was attuned to time, even at such a young age, and yet...and yet he couldn't look away, and the pounding rose in his ears and his mind...
He came back to himself on the floor of the mirrored room, gasping for breath.
That wasn't the right shard, said the voice in his mind that had explained the rules earlier. You'd better keep looking, time is running out...
The Master tried to speak, to retort somehow but it came out as a strangled noise. He coughed, clearing his throat.
"Petty hypnotism," he said, trying to sound calm and dismissive. "If they really think they'll put me off with that, they have no idea who it is they're dealing with."

action; it works! also, orz, sorry this is a tad long for a tag.

[onlyteasing.livejournal.com]

The man didn’t strike him as much of a victim, and he certainly wasn’t the sort of person that Tyki would take an interest in by nature. Instead, then, it was curiosity about the trap that took Tyki through the pumpkin patch. He’d spent some time there already, of course, by the time the burning girl’s post had hit the network, but he hadn’t really been searching before.

There was no real estimation of how much time it took him to find the place – he was in no hurry. After all, it was only a mild sense of intrigue leading him. Still, he found it quickly enough for all of that – a glass room and a man trapped inside, looking for all the world as if he was ranting to himself in the closed space.

Well. That certainly sounded like the person who’d popped up on the network out of nowhere.

It wasn’t his trap, and the fact that the mirrors were something real helped him, too. Tyki chose not to let them touch him and so he passed through the glass like a ghost before growing abruptly solid inside the room, all gentlemanly vagueness in a suit. He glanced about once, across the walls and the shards closing in.

His mouth flicked into a sharp, wry grin.

When he looked at the mirrors, he thought that he could see teeth splitting open, bones cracked out of outstretched fingers, blood on scarred crosses—but this wasn’t meant to be his nightmare, was it? Tyki could look away from it all. He chose that, too, and looked back to the man for whom the trap had been meant.

“I’m not surprised they caught you, in this case,” he remarked in place of an actual greeting or introduction. He tucked his hands into his pockets and spoke wryly, as if they were meeting somewhere open instead of in a close room full of shards that nobody but a complete cheater could escape on his own. As if he hadn't just walked through the glass that the man had been trying to crack. “Did you spend all the time you should have used in running talking instead?”

action; YOURS is long? Look at MINE. XD I can't shut up!

[neverendingbeat.livejournal.com]

In the middle of trying to use his blood to manipulate the system (catch the hypnotisers out at their own game), the Master was vaguely surprised but not overly concerned to see the man walk through the wall. It wasn't as if he was a stranger to strangeness.
Well-presented, casual, official--the bastard had stolen his look, the Master thought to himself. He was potentially not as rational as he might have been, not after four more visions and trying, besides, to concentrate on basic blood-control.

Even if it had been his look the man had stolen, the Master barely looked the part right now: suit jacket torn from where he'd kept backing into the razor-sharp walls, the rest of his clothing tattered and filthy from rolling around in the bloody basement...
The least he could do was stop looking like the room was bothering him.

"I was doing a tour of the pumpkin patch," he said, looking almost bored, his eyes hooded. "I didn't assume there'd be anything to run from in particular and if there was, I'd have no problem defending myself against it." He shrugged, smiling slightly. "Obviously, I was caught off guard." His eyes flicked to the side of the man, almost against his will and his smile faltered. Five visions weak, he was almost sucked back into the easy hypnotism of the walls of the room before he caught himself and brought his eyes back to look at the man, and the look of nonchalance back onto his face. "I could get out of here but I'd rather not have to, it's really rather annoying." He raised his eyebrows. "Are you here to point out 'what I'm doing wrong' or are you actually going to help me get out?"

action; ... point. nothing wrong with length, I guess!

[onlyteasing.livejournal.com]

“Could you?” This suggestion was greeted with an ironic smile. There was a fair amount of blood around, after all, and that generally didn’t suggest control. Neither did the stranger’s general appearance, which made him look as if he’d walked through one of those gadgets Tyki had glimpsed in a store once – what had they called it? A shredder.

The Master’s suggestion brought to mind an echo of someone else, someone entirely different – who’d said she’d save everyone.

I don’t want to see anyone suffer.

Tyki considered the thought for a fleeting moment. He could help the man, of course. Or he could bring the burning girl to help him – she’d appreciate that, someone to save after all the friends she’d run through and failed in turn. Except… there was still that sense that it wasn’t quite enough, to make someone smile simply because Tyki liked them. To relieve them and reassure them that they still held some use in this world by giving them a task to complete. He liked that sort of person – liked her, the saving type – and there was a better way to express that liking than giving her what she wanted.

He tilted his head. “I suppose I can get you out,” he admitted easily. There would be a certain loss of the surprise factor, what with the man having seen him walk through the glass. The stranger’s expression had barely flickered anyway; he might have some powers of his own. But that was only incentive. Since this would be the means and not the end, Tyki minded the thought a little less. “One way or another.”

His tone was no longer wholly sane at that moment; there was an edge, a sharpness that should have warned. But his smile still showed sharp and wide and lucid, and there was nowhere for the Master to run, anyway. Casually, Tyki reached out – almost as if he were about to shake his hand.

Except if the Master didn’t scoot away, now, that hand would keep sliding up in the air – and into his chest.

action; Our wordiness is clearly just demonstrative of our intelligence. Obviously. XD

[neverendingbeat.livejournal.com]

The Master hated--HATED having to rely on other people. Controlling them, well, that was all right. But in this situation, how could he possibly be the one in control? He was weak, trapped and...bollocks...he needed help.

But this man... The Master didn't trust him at all. He knew what a malicious bastard was like, being as he was one himself, and whoever this man was, he completely fit the description.

Without taking a step back, he could sense the shards just behind him. Nowhere to go, nowhere to run (like the song; he could feel it slip, unbidden, into his mind, and he nearly giggled at the juxtaposition). He might have been able to get out, left to himself but this newcomer was crowding him, taking up his space and time and he didn't really have a choice but to take whatever "help" the man was offering.

Suspiciously, his eyes darted between the man's face, and his gradually outstretching hand. 'One way or another'... "And what way is that?"

action; let me know if anything in this tag doesn't work for you! \o

[onlyteasing.livejournal.com]

So he didn’t flinch. Tyki liked him for that much, at least. One bastard to another, he could acknowledge that. Still, his smile stayed all teeth – because there was a certain showmanship to these things that you just had to obey.

“An entertaining one, I’d hope,” He answered, and this really was the last chance for the Master to back away. But there wasn’t much leeway for him, after all. One beat, another, and his hand slipped past flesh, through ribs, into…

His brows twitched and lifted. The hand through him wouldn’t be painful until Tyki wanted it to be; they wouldn’t touch unless he let them. Still, whatever this system was… “So you’re not human,” Tyki murmured, briefly distracted in his new fascination. “I suppose it would be something like that.” Thoughts of the burning girl grew slowly submerged. Regardless of what else he could call it, this was something new – and it had been a while since he could call anything that. He picked an organ at random – was it a liver? it was in the spot where a liver would be if this person were human, but this was something else – and tugged on it thoughtfully, an eye on the other man’s features.

action; Haha, I totally copped out. It's too late to invent new biology.

[neverendingbeat.livejournal.com]

It took all of the Master's centuries of experience to defy his most basic instincts and bolt. Not only was he trapped against a razor-sharp wall of mirrors but it would be idiotic to run away when someone was mucking about with his innards.

He stayed completely still, a blank look on his face...well, at least until the man started plucking at his liver. At that, he was unable to stop his eyes from widening slightly. He hadn't felt anything else up to that point, though, the man was clearly fishing for a reaction.

"No," he said in response to the man's...well, his obviously rhetorical question. Talking would help mask the fact that his breathing had become slightly deeper, trying to calm himself. "I'm not. I'm a Time Lord." He glanced down at where the man's hand disappeared into his chest and felt somewhat fascinated despite himself. "That is still my liver, by the way. In case you were wondering. The basic biology of Time Lords and humans isn't actually that different." Almost lazily, he slowly looked back up at the man and was unable to resist adding, "Only with certain superiorities of function, obviously."

action; ffff, it reaaally is. I'll respond tomorrow?

[onlyteasing.livejournal.com]

Tyki’s eyes lifted briefly. “A Time Lord,” he repeated, the words dry with amusement and unfamiliar in the way they put it together. “Well. I can’t say I don’t appreciate the lesson, though I doubt I’ll ever need it again.”

A last poke. Then his hands traveled upwards, slow and easy, his eyes still fixed on the Master’s face. There hadn’t been much in the way of reactions so far, but it couldn’t hurt – well, it couldn’t hurt him, at any rate. It was beginning to get a little hard to think clearly. He wasn’t human, this stranger. This death wouldn’t matter, was hardly real in the way that the Noah counted things, and yet Tyki couldn’t seem to put a heel on his instincts to keep looking around.

Then his fingers curled lightly around another organ, higher this time. Tyki smiled.

“Two hearts,” he remarked, as if it were the sort of wonder you could see at a sideshow. “I take it this is an exception. Humans generally don’t have a second one, after all.” Tyki pulled one hand free – because really, he only needed one hand to hold onto the heart – and sighed at the wet, gleaming mess he’d made of his glove. With no maids here to save him from having his laundry gone through, his brother was likely to ask horrible questions about what he’d been touching, and Road would probably want to know why he hadn’t taken her. Such fuss.

action; Good bloody plan. -___-

[neverendingbeat.livejournal.com]

His lips tightened into a line as the Master tried to control his reactions because he was damned if he was going to give this man what he wanted. This was hard even besides the hands prodding at his internal organs; the Master in his current regenerated form was not one for keeping his emotions hidden. He wanted to yell, to kill something, to even glare at the man but he could read the amusement in his eyes, knew it would turn easily to mockery and he couldn't take that. Not now. Not after the hallucinations and the broken state this room had him in.
Some fun this curse was.

And then he felt hands close around his right heart and his eyes really did go wide this time, his mouth opening slightly as he gasped involuntarily. Fuck superior Time Lord senses. It would be quite nice, in this one instance, to be like a human and not be totally attuned to everything in his bloody body. It felt wrong--incredibly so--and from the way the bastard's eyes lit up, it could only possibly get worse. Finally panicking, the Master tried desperately to draw on his generally powerful ability for mind control, and found it still completely sapped by the room.

"I did say," he said, at least managing to keep the utter horror out of his voice. "Superior biology. Binary vascular systems are stronger than systems with just the one heart."

action;

[onlyteasing.livejournal.com]

All that talk about binary vascular systems and biology fell on ignorant ears. Tyki knew practical anatomy – i.e. where organs were, and the sounds that people tended to make if you, for example, set a golem inside to eat its way out until it drowned. The words for it were completely beyond him. He did understand enough of it, though, to let that smile linger in a particularly thoughtful way.

“Then I suppose you won’t mind testing the idea,” he remarked. He’d never seen someone survive this sort of operation – it’d be interesting to try, at least.

It went quick – they could say that much. Efficient – almost clean, the movement.

The severance of all connections to the heart was instant. He simply dragged and his hand slid out: wrist to knuckle to fingertips clenched tight about an organ that thudded wetly one last time before falling still. The glove was completely ruined, of course. Tyki’s expression was almost wry as he examined it – well, it certainly looked human enough. Then he turned his glance back to the stranger, waiting to see how long those eyes would stay open without it. He wasn’t human, but then a lot of people in the City could say that. Inhumanity didn’t necessarily add up to strength.

action; Long post is long.

[neverendingbeat.livejournal.com]

Testing..?
Oh no.
NO.

There was pain, intense pain, and rather uselessly, the Master's mind went automatically through pretty much every swearword in every language he knew. He was on some really obscure Ancient Gallifreyan ones by the time he pulled himself together. He had no time.

Face contorted with pain and shock, he could vaguely sense himself falling backwards into the mirrors, which sliced into his back. No time to pay any attention to that either. To give himself a little bit more, he briefly stopped his one remaining heart. At least it wasn't going to pump out all of his blood uselessly into the new, gaping hole in his body.

Then again, now his heart was stopped. He really wished that he'd paid a little more attention in his Biology classes at the Academy. Maybe he would know how to make this hurt less if he had. The Master appeared to stare blankly ahead as in actuality, he was essentially looking inward at this new problem. Right. Look at it like a problem, a problematic machine, and then fix it.

Focused entirely on trying to pull veins to fit into each other, hotwiring his cardiovascular system into some sort of wretched parody of that of a human's, he was unable to prevent himself from wincing or from making various pained noises. He wasn't even aware of what he was doing outwardly, or he would have been disgusted at himself.

At the end of his quick-patch job (which had taken about half a minute to complete), he realised, panting, that the mirror-wall was embedded in him and he didn't have the energy to pull himself off of it. Besides that, he wasn't certain how long the fix would last...in perhaps a vain hope, he hadn't solidified any of the sutures so that he'd be able to pull them apart if he got his heart back. This measure had, unfortunately, left his veins delicate, and prone to potential splitting under enough stress. It was unfortunate that he was too weak to even snatch his heart back and besides that, he didn't have any way to get it back in.

He settled instead for the useless tactic of glaring at the man. Ineffectual, yes, but at least a little bit satisfying.

action; late post is late!

[onlyteasing.livejournal.com]

All the talk of superior biology and so on fell on ignorant ears. Tyki had taken anatomy lessons in practicalities – he knew what made people spit blood, what would fill their lungs with fluid and drown them in minutes. And really, all in all, this was nowhere as bad as it could have been – no screaming, and hardly any blood. Just what was leaking out of the heart and seeping into the fabric of the glove – and that really was a nuisance; his mouth twitched down and Tyki rejected the blood with a slight flick, a red spatter across the glass-gritty ground. The glare didn't trouble him - it was interesting. He was conscious enough, despite having his heart removed. The other heart was a decent replacement after all.

“So you survived it. That does put you a little above humans.” Of course, his tone curved into irony at the words: surviving would only make it more painful. He would have been luckier if he’d died – but he was dying now, wasn’t he?

Leisurely, Tyki glanced across the walls again. The space was narrower than it had been when he’d first come in; this or the heart injury would take care of him quickly enough. “Ah, well. I have a visit to make,” he went on, casually. “I’ll see you when you come back, then.” The heart he weighed in a sticky, gloved hand before letting his arm fall to his side.

With his free hand, he touched his hat brim, careful not to let the bloody parts stain it. “Don’t hold on too long,” Tyki added, as a sort of farewell. His mouth crooked. “I can’t imagine that being impaled on all sides will be very pleasant..”

Then he was walking away, slipping through the wall and gone with a soft laugh.

action; SORRY I'M LATE GUYS, THIS PUMPKIN PATCH IS HUGE

[redstrength.livejournal.com]

Hikaru had been walking everywhere, getting lost and finding her way again repeatedly, helping people along the way. She couldn't not help them, but she'd told someone on the network that she would find him. He was stuck in a trap, of all things-- She knew them too well and her chances of finding him at all were slim, but she had to try.

So further into the patch she delved with her eyes straining into the darkness. Nothing a little fire in her hand couldn't solve, really. But with the way this curse seemed, she was apprehensive of doing anything that could inadvertently cause harm. She'd gotten to a place where she couldn't see nor hear anyone.

"Hello?"

action;

[onlyteasing.livejournal.com]

Pausing outside the house, Tyki lit a cigarette. The heart vanished into the usual space where he kept his glasses in White form, and he took advantage of this to strip off his gloves and dig out a cigarette. Casually, he starte to walk. That had been an interesting trip – worth it after all.

He’d left no lights for himself, either – but the one nice thing about choosing (well, one of many nice things) was that it didn’t leave much room to stumble. The voice, however, caught his attention, and he advanced automatically, keeping slow in case someone should walk into him. It had sounded rather familiar… and as Tyki closed in, he realized why. So the stranger’s message had reached someone on the Network, and, of course, she’d come to save him.

“Looking for someone?” he called, and struck a match.

action;

[redstrength.livejournal.com]

The voice caught her attention and she instantly looked around for it. Oh, it was... that person from a few nights ago. She still hadn't completely connected the dots yet; she got to her feet and looked up to him.

"There was someone that asked for help out here. I tried to follow his directions but I haven't found anything. You haven't seen anyone in trouble, have you?" The expression she wore was not quite desperate but not calm either.

action; Ah, but it exists, and that's what really matters. Whoa, flip, he needs a Hikaru. XD

[neverendingbeat.livejournal.com]

The Master watched, helpless, as the man left the way he had entered, only with the addition of one Time Lord heart. He couldn't help but wonder what the man intended to do with it...probably take it apart. Or maybe keep it as some sort of trophy.

Worse, now that there was nobody blocking his line of view, the Master looked straight into the opposite wall of mirrors again. It hit him instantly with an amalgam of voices, sounds, images, people and events he'd tried to leave behind him. This, added to the blood-loss, was finally too much, and his legs collapsed underneath him, dragging his back in a bloody line down the wall, shredding it.
He screamed, then, not caring any more.

Also, it fucking hurt.