i'm gonna change you like a remix [open]

[hacker]

Who: SKYE and YOU
Where: The main lobby, mostly (available elsewhere).
When: February 16th
What: If you're freezing half to death and can't control your powers, clap your hands.
Notes: Anyone is free to have wandered into range and noticed some WEIRD QUAKING going on. Available in prose or commentspam.

Something is very wrong here.

The tremors come intermittently, usually joined with particularly bad shakes on her part. It's not the first time she's noticed it—the bulb in her room shattered on the first day, the bible fell off the night table. Truthfully, she'd hoped "haunted" was the answer. It'd fit with the rest of the creepy atmosphere.

But this is something else. Blankets bundled around her, Skye departs her room, thinking it'll get her away from whatever the hell is going on with it, but the quaking follows her. She huddles up under the concierge desk in the lobby, tucked away from view. The fireplace doesn't do a lot for heat, but it keeps the main floor at a slightly higher temperature than the rest of the hotel (or maybe that's just the placebo effect of hearing it crackling). That's enough for her.

Or she'd like to think. Showing up in a t-shirt just off of a mission in San Juan was really biting her in the ass now: she hadn't packed for just above freezing temperatures. As her shivers worsen, so too does the way her abilities shake the room around her. Ten feet in any direction, a low-scale earthquake sets in. The pen cup rattles. The table lamp pops a bulb and falls over before vibrating off the edge of the desk, dangling by its cord.

And the fact that it moved with her from her bedroom? Well that just makes it harder for her to calm down.

Her shoulders hunch around her ears, and she raises her hands to pull at her hair, muscles tight to conserve both her body heat and her sanity. Something's wrong. Whatever those crystals in the temple did, it followed her here. So her breath is short with muted panic, afraid of herself and unable to get away from it.

Comments

[cisskabob]

Cissie, like a lot of the others, had moved to the lobby for the warmth. The crowd of bodies and the fire made it slightly warmer than her lonely room, but she still wore almost every article of clothing she'd found in her suitcase and wrapped herself in her blanket.

Running up and down the stairs a few times helps warm her up a bit, so when she finishes a fourth lap and thinks her legs might go out from under her, she makes her way back to the lobby, blankets tight around her. She settles into a chair, ready to huddle in and people watch for a while, when suddenly her chair starts shaking under her. Next to her, she watches the pen cup on the desk rattle, and the lightbulb in the lamp pop just before the lamp goes skittering off the edge of the desk.

...So that's perfect--earthquakes on top of freezing temperatures in a hotel without doors where it never stops raining. Cissie jumps up, looking around and--no one is panicking. It looks like maybe she's the only one who noticed. She would wonder if she imagined it, if it weren't for the lamp.

Cissie goes to pick it up and put it on top of the desk again--which is when she spots something under the desk, some movement that catches her eye. She leans over, and spots Skye, hunched in on herself like a frightened animal.

So maybe she wasn't the only one to feel that. Cissie kneels on the floor next to the desk, careful not to touch her, but close enough.

"...Hey. Are you okay? I mean--are you hurt?"

[hacker]

Movement on the desk above her sparks Skye to attention, eyes darting upward to search the source of the sound. No. No, no, no; it's not safe. She's not safe, not like this. Something is wrong. So when it's a young girl—probably a teenager, there were enough of them around here—leaning over and checking in on her, Skye feels that much more compelled to get her out of there. To protect her.

"Get back!" She shouts readily, pushing herself out from under the desk and back against the wall. The desk itself jostles, rattles, creaks and rocks in place. The tremor travels up the wall, stronger now, rocking a picture frame off the wall and shattering the glass as it hits the ground. "Please. You need to get away from me."

She might not know what's happening, but she is sure that the problem is her.

[cisskabob]

"Whoa! Okay." Cissie falls back on her heels, holding her hands up in the universal gesture of 'I surrender.' Fortunately (or not) for Skye, Cissie's fairly used to being around people with extraordinary powers that they sometimes can't control or understand. Sure, it's been a while, but she'd been one of only two "normal" kids on their team. It doesn't take too much thinking to realize that the earthquakes had to do with this woman, and in her experience, intense fear was never good for uncontrolled powers.

"It's okay. Being scared--it's just going to make it worse. Take a deep breath. I'm okay, see?" She holds up her hands again, showing her that she's not hurt. "Just--try to calm down a little. It'll help, I promise. My name's Cissie. What's yours?"

[hacker]

God, it had to be the helpful, kind one. Skye squeezes her eyes shut. Of course, the least helpful thing to say to anyone having an anxiety attack about killing everyone in the hotel is 'just calm down,' so it only manages to rattle her further as she frantically tries to quell the tremors. If anything, they grow slightly more severe, maxing out just shy of structural damage—yet strangely, they do not journey beyond the ten-foot radius of where Skye's sitting.

"Cissie, I know you're just trying to help, but that's why you really need to go!" She lets out a shout as she finishes, grimacing as the lights overhead crack and shatter, raining glass down on them both. Doubling over, Skye grinds a frustrated noise out of the back of her throat.

[cisskabob]

....Well, that worked well. Cissie raises an arm to shield herself as the glass from the lights falls on them, but the more Skye protests, the more sure Cissie is that she shouldn't just leave. She does scoot back away from her a few feet, giving her some space.

"Yeah, sorry, but I'm not really one for running away when someone needs help," she says. "Besides, where am I going to go? No doors, remember? What's your name?"

[hacker]

"I know. I know, I tried to get away." Skye reiterates quickly, hands trembling as she clasps them in front of her, as if the quakes are somehow originating there. It does nothing to smother them, quashing that theory pretty effectively. "I thought it'd be better down here, but it's getting worse." Her name never comes out, too caught up in what's going on. In what's wrong with her. "Go upstairs. Get as far away as you can; I don't know what's gonna happen."