Logs:The Lonely Island

The Lonely Island
cn: some creepy corpses
Dramatis Personae Joshua, Kitty, Kyinha, Jax-cameo
In Absentia	2021-05-21 "I do like a pirate theme."
Location Pacific Ocean -- Between Kadavu Island and Lau, Fiji
From above, the mysterious island looks like just another speck of green in the deep blue ocean, indistinguishable from the over three hundred islands that make up Fiji. Of course, the other islands don’t move. This one does — slowly but steadily shifting through the waves. Two hours ago, the island was just off shore of Kadavu — now, as the Blackbird glides through the off-shore fog to land on its north shore, it’s migrated halfway to Lau. The crescent-shaped sand beach looks like a salvage yard — fishing boats and tour boats alike are beached above high water, in various states of rusting and disrepair. Tattered flags hang from tilting masts, bearing the colours of states that no longer exist. The beach goes on for another hundred meters or so before it gives way to dense tropical forest. There is a path through the vegetation, recently cleared by the look of the machete marks in the trees. There is sea breeze, the rattle of leaves and the buzz of insects. Birdsong, however, is notably absent. Kitty emerges out the side of the last abandoned ship, shaking her head. She’s in an X-Men uniform, primarily yellow instead of black in deference to the heat. Her hair is pulled up into a ponytail at the crown of her head, curls becoming limp in the humid air. “This one is empty, too. No sign of anything, like, normal happening.” She glances to the cleared path with apprehension. “Maybe everyone is having a party in the middle of the creepy island?” She does not sound particularly hopeful of this possibility. If Kyinha is bothered by the weather he sure doesn't show it, his jet black skin emitting steady waves of heat as he picks his way among the beached vessels. "None of this makes any sense." He sounds oddly at peace with this declaration, though his expression is more difficult to read, the features of his face invisible except for the fiery glow from his eyes and mouth -- and nostrils, for those short enough to see. "We should investigate." His gaze tracks appraisingly to the path. Then a sharp slice of a lopsided grin. "Maybe they will invite us to the party, yes?" Joshua has been not-there but just as abruptly now he's back, spliced neatly back into the scene as though he never vanished. His shaggy hair is alternately sticking limply to his forehead and sticking out in erratic muss from underneath his kippah; as does the lightweight fabric of his dark uniform is starting to cling to him as well. "If there's a party going on here they're keeping it real hush." He plucks idly at the front of his shirt, peering out towards the water. The furrow creasing his brows has settled there well before his squint from the sun's glare on the water. "Pirate-themed speakeasy in there somewhere. Maybe." "I do like a pirate theme," Kitty says, her tone very determinedly light. She runs her fingers over the hull of the last boat, frowning in the direction of the path. "Just as a theme, though." Her gaze lands on Kyinha, her lips twitching into an uneasy grin. "Onwards?" She doesn't wait for an answer, taking the lead into the forest. The canopy above them makes the path dark, though the shade provides little respite from the heat. Somewhere in the forest, there is movement -- fast, low to the ground, and swiftly gone. "A pity not to have brought Jax along, if that is so." Kyinha nods his assent to Kitty's proposal, starts toward the path. As they climb they slope of the beach he slows, his frown, at least, easy to discern. "The tide line is old, weathered. That...well, it is maybe not so surprising, hm?" Then he actually stops short, and turns toward a small cabin cruiser beached a ways from the others -- empty, when it had been searched earlier. "But that boat..." His eyes narrow as he diverts toward it, looking at the keel where it has dug into the sand. "See, this one came at the beach from a different direction than the others, and rode up bow-first, with speed." He kneels to touch the sand piled up parted by the prow. "I think she landed here on purpose." He stiffens at the glimpse of motion through the trees, then rises to follow Kitty, his steps faster than before. Joshua glances back toward the boat Kyinha indicates. His frown doesn't go anywhere, only deepening as the weight of thought pulls his mouth downward as well. "... rescue attempt?" he hazards, uncertain. He brings up the rear as the others start into the woods, unhurried in his pace but the sweep of his eyes a cautious-quick thing. The rustle of sound in the woods pulls him up short for a heartbeat. Disappears, brief, and reappears back beside the others. "Someone here," he allows, slowly. He's not actually looking toward the noise but off through the trees in another direction entirely, his tone a bit abstracted until he shakes his head. Looks back to his companions. "Not a party. Just a person." "We can hope --" Kitty falls silent, waiting for Joshua to return. "Just one?" Kitty's brows furrow, glancing ahead. The path narrows ahead of the X-Men. Kitty's foot phases through some errant roots as going forward. Looks to the slashmarks on the trees with distaste before tensing her body. There's more evidence of life on the branches and vines here -- threads and torn clothing. Intersecting with Kitty's intangible feet, a length of vine is wrapped around a rubber boot, almost like a hand grasping at the ankle. Kyinha moves through the partially cleared undergrowth with almost uncanny ease. Here in the shade the faint halo of yellow light around his body is more visible. His flame-colored eyes scan the forest, locating the source of the sound but not quickly enough to catch sight of its movement. At Joshua's words his eyes widen just slightly, though it's hard to tell what the rest of his face is doing. "Well, they know we are here, I think," he says. Then calls out, "Do not be afraid, we are here to --" A different length of vine than that which Kitty just phased through rears up to seize Kyinha's very tangible leg, wrapping firmly around his calf and sweeping him painfully off his feet. Whatever he was going to claim they were there to do, it terminates in a startled yip. "S'already afraid," Joshua is muttering under his breath, "I think something --" His words cut off with Kyinha's yip, his mouth clamping shut. His soft, "huh," doesn't quite match with the widening of his eyes or the jolt of tension that tightens his shoulders. "-- happened to his crew." He's at Kyinha's side in the next breath. Stooping, touching his hand to Kyinha's shoulder; the both of them blip back in space, away from the suddenly grasping vine that Joshua is regarding still with a now ever so mildly accusatory narrowing of eyes. "Nu?" Equally somewhat accusatory, this seems to be an affronted demand from the vine itself before he verifies with his teammates: "... that's unusual, yeah? If someone's controlling it, I can't --" Just a shrug. His head has tilted, listening carefully, eyes tracking back down in the direction the sound had run off. Kitty turns around, eyes wide, staring across the Kyinha-sized gap between her and the others. Glaces down at the vine, which tightens around itself for a moment before uncoiling. "Not telepathic?" She looks down, phasing her foot in and out of the vine beneath her experimentally. "Not electronic." There's new rustling now, not from the expedited retreat of the mystery person. Ahead of Kitty, behind Kyinha and Joshua, and now melting out of the space between them, twisted humanoid shapes are emerging from the shadows. They're mostly made of vines, too, with sharp thorny finger-like claws coming from long, drooping arm analogues. At the top, where a head should be, flowers and climbing plants have twisted together in the shape of skulls. Kyinha steadies himself against Joshua, getting his feet firmly under him and lowering his stance. "I have seen many vines," he says, his voice just a touch higher than usual, "this is very unsual." He seems to relax a little, watching Kitty's experimentation phasing through the vine. "It is maybe a thigmonastic movement, like a venus --" He seems cursed to not finish sentences, because right then the vine-people emerge. "That is not thigmonasty!" His right hand clenches into a fist, flames licking out from between his fingers. "Do you understand us?" The two figures lunge at Joshua and Kyinha respectively, spiny hands grasping as their jaws opening wide -- they would unhinge if they had hinges to begin with -- revealing cavities filled with thorns. Their movements are almost noiseless but for a faint rustle form the constant writhing of their constituent vines. Kyinha sidesteps the charge to his right, putting his back to Joshua and carrying through the motion to strike the vine-person in the back at close range with a tightly controlled blast of white-hot fire. "Not robot vines, not puppet vines, not thigmojiggys. Maybe -- fuck." Joshua's eyes skip from Kitty up to the twisting shape of the growing plant-figures, the skulls atop them. His arm lifts instinctively to protect his face as one vine whips out toward him; though sharp thorns snags for a second in his shirt, in the next moment the writhing tendril is gone, sheared off of the larger body and simply vanished. The gasp he lets out is disproportionate to his lack of injury. Though his face has gone a shade paler he's looking -- almost through the nightmare maws, rather than at them. << How did I miss that? >> echoes in the others' minds. Whatever has caught his attention, though, he doesn't get a chance to explain further before another barbed thick limb has lashed itself around his arm, hard and fast enough that something pops audibly when it jerks him up towards a thorntoothed mouth. Kitty spots the vine people a moment after Kyinha does, when one thorny arm whips around her torso and hauls her into the air. She yelps, hanging in the air for a moment before falling through the vine's grasp back to the forest floor. "Bad nightmare vine, bad," she says weakly, then, "They definitely don't like us!" It takes her a moment to find her footing, another to dash back to the others, arm outstretched for Joshua's uninjured hand to pull him away. "Miss what?" The vine monster tangling with Kyinha twists and shudders at the flame blast, but new vines almost immediately start to replace the singed and shriveled ones. His "Miss what?" comes almost exactly in time with Kitty's. The lightly flambéed vine monster suddenly reverses the direction of its arms, head rotates 180 degrees so that it's abruptly facing Kyinha again and he dodges another swing of its arm. "Plants do not have --" This cuts off into a sharp hiss of pain as the neck of the monster stretches out like a striking snake, thorny maw latching onto his trailing arm. The blood(?) that wells out of his wound glows like lava, but does not seem to hurt his assailant. His next flame blast is not nearly so well-aimed. Joshua's teeth are gritted, one arm curled a little stiff against his chest as his other grasps at Kitty's. His chin tips in a silent thanks for her save once his feet are back on the -- several feet farther away than they ought to have landed, a quick blip pulling them farther out of the reach of the plantmonsters. He's returned a moment later to clap a hand (with a further tightening of jaw) on Kyinha's shoulder, yanking him abruptly back to join Kitty. His head just shakes, slow, uncertain though a hard focus is settling into his expression. Ghosting across both his teammates' minds is an echo of feeling -- not his mind, not any coherent mental voice at all, really. The psionic transmission comes in a faint patter at first, its thready pulse hard to catch over the more vulgar trumpet of Joshua's own pain (<< dislocated, >>) he's noting somewhere in the back of his mind, (<< not an emergency >> / << will be if you need that arm >> ) -- hard, also, for him to hold onto, grasping somewhat desperately to something. Vast and alien. melting out of the space between them -- if this is the person who was fleeing earlier, it doesn't feel much like any person Kitty and Kyinha might have chanced to telepathically encounter before. But as much as it can be felt in Joshua's tenuous ability to pinpoint them, they do feel afraid. Kitty focuses, trying to hold onto the new psionic signal before it floats away, drowned out by Joshua's own signal. She clenches her teeth, reaching out both hands to hold her teammates shoulders. "Weird," she said, eyes focused on the lumbering plantforms swinging towards them. "Is that - what, the trees?" Ahead of them, as if to contradict her, the soil opens up, a crescent shaped gash shaped almost like a smile. Abruptly rescued from the sharp grip of the vine creature, Kyinha gasps in pain. "Orbigado," comes out with the very next breath. He tucks his bleeding forearm against his side, careful to keep it away from his teammates. His other hand lifts, then drops as he tilts his head, focusing on what Joshua is trying to show them -- trying, himself, to pin down. The narrowing of his eyes is probably in concentration, now. "If it is someone controlling the trees, that should feel more -- human?" If he planned to speculate further, the movement of the earth before them sweeps it from his mind. His arm drops to his side, blood flowing in bright rivulets down to drip from his fingertips. "Nanã Buruku!" he sputters, eyes going so wide they seem to burn brighter. Even to Joshua the words are murky, as difficult to pin down as the vast maybe-mind all around them, several things all at once. The smell of rich, damp soil. Every deep place where still waters gather. A ponderous and graceful dance. That quiet between decay and new life. Joshua's breath catches sharp. A ripple of fear gashes its way across his mind, too. No answering smile, only a blink, his hand briefly dropping to brush fingertips just under the hem of his shirt. "Not here to hurt anyone," he ventures, aloud. "Just --" <<... don't want to get swallowed by the fucking earth? >> His eyes have locked on the rift-mouth smiling up at them from the ground. In the yawning expanse of -- whatever blips his mind keeps catching hold of, reflecting back to his teammates, a curiosity is blooming alongside the fear. "... trying to help." His typically flat voice is maybe something of a blessing, here, far steadier aloud than the jangling cacophony of nerves his teammates can feel in his mind. Kitty's eyes are wide open, blinking fast as she looks from the the gash in the earth to the trees to her teammates to the vine-constructs that are still lumbering towards them. Her breathing is short and fast, matched with racing thoughts trying to put it all together. "Island's... alive. More so than other islands." <<And not friendly.>> The maw of earth isn’t a smile still, but still clearly a mouth — it shifts, earth rumbling under their feet, to something more like Joshua’s expression. Then in a moment, it’s gone — along with the soil under Joshua’s feet, and then Joshua himself as he falls. Kitty, swearing under her breath, drops her hand from Kyinha’s shoulder to around his wrist. She hisses a little between her teeth as she tightens her grip. “Deep breath,” Kitty offers as a warning, about half a second before the two of them become intangible and sink through the dark soil. Kyinha is trying to split his attention between the most immediate threats, his abrupt conviction they might actually be dealing with a god, and interpreting what Joshua's telepathy relays to them. << But why would Nanã Buruku be afraid of us? >> And then suddenly Joshua is gone. He is just turning to Kitty, still wide-eyed, when she grips his wrist. No time to speak -- no time to even nod. He sucks in a long breath and holds it through their descent. Down through soil laced with roots, down through sand and shells, down through broken volcanic rock... ...into a yawning cavern lit only by Kyinha's faint solar aura and the weak eerie glow of bioluminescent fungi outlining fissures in the stone as well as other, more organic shapes. He lifts his uninjured arm, fingers splayed to diffuse the firelight better as his hand bursts into flame. Kyinha's fireglow illuminates Joshua, statue-still and eyes wide where he has landed kind of unfortunately, on his injured arm on the rocks. Even more unfortunate is the rest of their surroundings suddenly cast into stark relief in the flames. A number of corpses in various states of integrity -- half a skeleton here, a person there only half-decomposed, a conglomeration of limbs and clothing tangled semi-recognizably in a corner. Not far from Joshua there's a pile of several human-ish shapes; quite recently deceased, from what can be seen of them. The creeping bioluminescent growth that limns the walls and mounds of decomposing bodies has overtaken most of their forms as well, though enough of one face near him is still exposed that their twisted look of anguish is clear enough. Joshua's mental communications have stopped, his hangdog expression as stony as ever. His mouth works open. Closes. His eyes don't leave the contorted face visible through the fungal glow. "Found the party." They land gently on the stony cavern floor. It takes Kitty a second to adjust to Kyinha’s flickering firelight and the general eerie glow. When she finally spots the mound of carcasses, her face goes sheet-white. “Thanks, I hate it.” Kitty lets go of Kyinha’s wrist as she becomes solid, sucking in a deep breath of stale air and fungal spores. They aren’t so far from Joshua — she goes to help him to his feet. Kitty is distracted, though, by the haunted face close by, thin threads of glowing mycelium encroaching over the remaining skin. << I hate it I hate it I hate it >> The jaw of that face drops, suddenly, hinges back into a closed position, then opens again to emit a grating groan of sound, like nails on a chalkboard. Kitty yelps, slaps a hand over her mouth to stifle her surprise. "Not exactly pirate themed." Kyinha turns a slow circle as he trails behind Kitty, reluctant to stray far from the teammates who could actually get out of this charnel pit. "Unless there is a chest of doubloons in here somewhere." His eyes land on the mostly intact corpse and his hand flares yet brighter when the thing moves. "Th-that fungus --" he stammers, his halo wavering rapidly. "The cavern would be full of its spores." Perhaps he meant to continue this horrifying science lesson, but just then the corpse lifts one decomposing arm, its index finger extended and the rest clumsily tucked, pointing unsteadily at the three X-Men. Another groan issues from its mouth, sickly glowing tongue flexing experimentally to modulate the noise. "Are we looking at the same thing?" Joshua mutters this as he grasps Kitty's hand, struggling to his feet. "This is definitely --" He closes his mouth firmly again after Kyinha says spores, looking back at the bodies on the ground. There's a tightness around his eyes, a stillness to him as even his breathing stops -- -- then lets out again in a sharp exhale at the groan. Whatever the corpse is unhinging its jaw to say, they never find out. One hand clasps Kitty's shoulder, the other -- despite the sharp gasp of pain that results -- reaches stiffly for Kyinha's wrist. The cave vanishes, the world briefly shifting and just as quickly replaced with the cosy familiarity of the teacher's lounge. Joshua is a little unsteady on his feet, kippah askew, arm held stiff at his side, his sweat-damp uniform scuffed and torn in a few places, two knotted white tassles dangling loose beneath his shirt where they've come untucked. He's making a beeline towards the liquor cabinet to get out a bottle of rum, his brows lifting in question to the others even as he announces, dry: "Island's haunted." In contrast to the grotesque scene the X-Team just left, in here it's all warmth and comfort. Citrus cookies on the counter and upbeat music (Carly Rae Jepsen's "Curiosity") playing in time with a flutter of twinkling lights that disperse as the others land. Jax sits up straighter on the couch where he's been slowly working his way through a sheaf of vivid pastel drawings, glancing away from the notes he's been typing into his laptop with a wide-eyed expression. "What?" Kitty looks better than the rest of the team, but just as freaked out. She walks straight through the couch, sweaty arm moving through Jax’s shoulder on her path to the liquor cabinet. Shrugs as she reaches around and through Joshua for the vodka. “Island’s haunted!”