ArchivedLogs:Searching

Searching
Dramatis Personae Peter, Shane	2014-02-04 Part of the Morpheus TP.
Location In a dream...
The water is remarkably warm; it travels in slow, languid waves that brush past long patches of vivid purple coral -- light flickering from above to cast them in irredescent shades of neon violet. Schools of small, colorful fish slip by, their silvery bodies flashing as they zig-zag through the underwater eddies -- and then there's Peter. Dark and chitinous, he is sleeping in a patch of emerald sea-weed, strands of it stretched out and wound around him as if it were a blanket; his chest rises and falls, his head tucked into his hands. Zzzz. Zzzz. With each breath, bubbles flicker up out of his nose and mouth. There are other brighter things in the water. Zipzipzip, a school of fish bright-ridiculous colours glittering past. A shark that comes with its own dun-dun-dun Jaws theme playing. An electric eel winding sinuous with its own sparks crackle-crackle-zzzzping bright and sparkling in the water -- this last on actually brushes by to startle-twitch-zap! at Peter where he lies. Poke! Zap! and then onward. An octopus, morphing myriad camouflage colours -- or, well, okay, it's really doing a poor job of camouflage given that it is zig-zaggy striping and apparently on its way over to snuggle up with Peter. Cuddlefish. Peter awakens, sharp and sudden, at the quick electric /zap/ that the eel gives him as it slips by; his eyes pop open at once -- head swishing this way and that, sluggishly, through the water. His hair sloshes back and forth as his first reaction is a slight panic, followed by a slow, lazy sort of calm; he doesn't seem to find it strange he can breathe here -- he doesn't even find it strange that there's an octopus on its way toward him. Instead, he just kicks and swerves, wriggling his way out of the grip of the seaweed, sending swirling clouds of dust up just as the octupus reaches him -- reaching out in turn to give the sea-creature a soft petting, followed by a squeeze. Peter swivels his head this way and that, taking in the landscape -- as if looking for something, even as the octopus swarms and squeezes and cuddles. The octopus turns out to be fuzzy-soft. Squishy-fuzzy-soft. And a sleepyhead; immediately upon reaching Peter it first adopts the same chitinous swirl of blue-black dark in colouration and promptly curls up to go right back to sleep. IN Peter's seaweed patch! Just as impertinent as if it had found the spot first. The dustcloud Peter kicks up glitters in bright purples and blues, shimmering and then spreading -- up through the water to tint the whole of it in the same glimmering shades, until all the water starts to sparkle bright. The fish that are swimming by are growing steadily more cartoony. A hammerhead with an actual hammer halfheartedly glued on. A skate that -- /is/ just a rollerskate? With fins. The stingray that goes by, though, is an actual stingray, /those/ are too awesome to cartoonify, flapping slow through the vivid water just above where Peter is searching. Peter snort-laughs as the octopus moves past him and proceeds to dig into his previous little sleeping-perch; the result is a spurt of bubbles that roll out of his mouth and nose. He blinks, then, as his head swivels this way and that, catching the unusually cartoonish fish that begin to appear around him -- his eyebrows slinging up, higher and higher, particularly at the sight of the... skate-fish. His face splits into a grin. But when he catches that dimming light overhead -- and turns up to see the sting-ray! -- his grin fades into something more focused, more intent. Peter swims up -- a kick of his feet sends him careening up toward the sting-ray! -- as he opens his mouth to speak. /Can/ he speak, down here? He's not sure, and yet he is, his voice emerging not as sound, but as a series of bubbles that somehow, impossibly, contain words -- words that 'pop' into existence as the bubbles swell up and burst. "(Hello! I'm looking for someone...)" The stingray slides on past Peter -- at first it seems like Peter is being ignored, the long whip of tail is just eeling past the boy's head. But then the fish turns back around, gliding back through. Her words thrum through the water, reverberating deep when she speaks. No bubbles, just a gentle hum that fills the water all around. "We're all looking for someone, I think. Are you looking hard enough?" Peter humphs as the stingray slips on by -- but when she returns, he immediately straightens, feet giving a little kick as he assumes a much more rigid, polite posture. The sound of her voice humming around him gives him a start, but the question sets him to thinking -- eyebrows grinding together. "...I don't know," he admits, after a moment of silence -- his own voice emerges now not as bubbles, but just as a vibration -- mimicking the sting-ray's method. "I want to find him," he adds, and now his head is sweeping about, looking behind him, around him. "--I miss him," Peter says. "But -- there's a lot of ocean..." "And not a lot of you," the stingray agrees, a little sadly; it doesn't sound mocking. Just a little regretful about this difficulty. She glides down lower towards the ocean floor, whipping her tail through some of the (glittering blue-purple) sand to unearth a very shiny-shiny silver circular object. Small enough to fit in the palm of Peter's hand, though heavier than it looks, a heavy circular metal piece with a clasp holding its two locket-like halves together; once this is unearthed, she turns without another word to swim off. Peter doesn't respond to this statement; instead, his shoulders merely sink, his weight starting to pull him back down. A mood of melancholy seems to settle over him as he drifts down; the stingray's retreat is largely unnoticed as he drifts back toward the ocean's floor -- not catching sight of that silver flash until he's beside it, settled on his feet and backside -- catching it only as his palm settles atop of it. His hand squeezes the object, pulling it out of the sand, slowly manipulating it in his fingers as he tries to ferret out its size, shape, and purpose. The weight of the metal settles heavy in Peter's palm, solid and cool in contrast to the warm water around. The clasp pops open easily when touched, inside -- a compass, whirling and spinning hectically with, at first, no apparent sense of anchor or direction. It settles down soon, though, needle click-whirring into place. The compass locks itself down against Peter's palm when it does, fastening there as if glued. There's a sudden strong magnetic /pull/, dragging Peter up and through the water in the direction the arrow is suddenly pointing in a sudden seamless glide. The sight of the spinning compass within the silver clasp gives Peter pause; his eyebrows spring up again as he investigates it closer -- when it locks into place, though, he is startled -- more so when it begins to /pull/ him through water, his arm lifting upward as he feels his feet leave the sandy floor. "Nngh--!" At first, he resists, intuitively pulling his arm back -- but then, he eases his grip, letting it drag him through the water, in the direction it bides. And then, as he feels himself slipping farther, his feet begin to kick -- slow and languid, at first, but soon picking up speed -- /helping/ the instrument push him along the direction indicated by the steadily pointing arrow. The pull of the compass increases; the speed Peter travels at becomes blindingly fast -- there is a rush of bubbles as the colors grow softer, a pervasive glow emerging from below. As the pull begins to lag in speed, Peter finds himself faced with an enormous crater ahead, from which tilted, ancient skyscrapers seem to spring -- the silent remnants of New York City's skyline, now long sunken, reduced to a sprawling, underwater metropolis -- long-rusted out cars engulfed in seaweed and coral; offices visible through glass, dark and shadowed and yet in a remarkable state of repair. The compass' pull slows down; the sight of New York submerged doesn't seem to phase Peter -- indeed, it seems perfectly natural. Schools of fish swim and sweep through what was once a bus stop, flittering past a long-illegible advertisement poster. Something blue and sleek and humanoid slips past a now-halted bus, swimming through one window and ferreting his way through the various seats, sniffing and searching for interesting things. Peter immediately springs forward, kicking and swimming, even as the compass stirs to life; he seizes hold of the dilapidated bus' doors and begins to wrench them open. That blue shape eels his way int the bus, disappearing off into the driver's seat. Chug-chug-purr, the motor turns over and kicks to life. "-- You coming?" asks a familiar voice from the front. A very familiar toothy grin beams sharkily into the rear-view mirror. "We have a /whole/ fucking lot of ocean to cover, dude. And I'm goddamn starving." The bus engine lets out a stream of bubbles as it roars to life, glittering purple-blue behind them as the bus pulls off -- out into the wide ocean beyond. There is, still, for a moment upon waking, the oddly /effervescent/ feeling off weightlessness. Bubbly. /Sparkling/, almost. And then it fades, leaving behind only the contrastingly /heavy/ metal feel of the small palm-sized compass. It never seems to point north, though. Per/haps/ it is broken. Per -- haps?