Once upon a time, in a land not so far away...
You wake to the feeling of being watched. Of a set of unfamiliar eyes, of warm breath on the back of your neck. A jolt back to the land of the living, and it's gone. No matter how quick you are, how sneaky, the source of the disruption has long since disappeared, so you have no choice but to try and ignore it. To continue on with your day and try to set that moment of strangeness aside.
You eat, drink, speak with others. Perhaps you explore a little. Whatever it is you choose to do for the day, that feeling from the morning won't return. And by the time the sun sets and the moon glows brightly above, you've likely set those moments of strangeness aside. It's not like it's anything new, after all.
It's the same again for the next few days. No better, no worse. Something best ignored, right?
A speck of blood on the doorframe. That wasn't there before, was it?
A snap of twigs in the distance. A crunch of leaves.
Claw marks gouged deeply into the door.
Into the wall above your bed.
Scraps of red fabric, turned darker with blood. Pieces of fur. Of flesh.
Do you run and hide? Do you fight? Whatever you choose, it's definitely time to make sure your body parts aren't scattered next...
...what a horribly big mouth you have.
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Since first waking up on the island, characters have been stuck with that feeling of being watched. It isn't a constant. Isn't more than a few seconds at a time, dotted throughout the day. Investigation has never turned up much, and there's never been any sightings of the cause of it all.
Until now.
Throughout the first half of the week, characters will find themselves suffering from that feeling of being watched on a far more constant basis. Rather than it being a one-off, few seconds occurrence each day, that feeling will last for minutes at a time, and on multiple occasions.
However, it isn't until the fifth day that they'll start stumbling across physical signs of their monitoring. There are claw marks on doors. Spots of blood on the paths outside. A crack of twigs in the forests, or the imprint of bloodied paws in the snow.
Ten days in and those signs start finding their way indoors. Wet footprints, tinged with red. Claw marks in the walls, the floor. Torn sheets and the smell of wet...something. Whatever it is that's been watching you, its finally decided to come and say hello.
Two weeks in and characters will begin to have sightings of the creature, its fur dark and its eyes a glowing yellow. At times it looks like a wolf, prowling in the distance. At other times, it's walking on its hind legs, almost human were it not for the muzzle full of gleaming sharp teeth. Get too close, and it slips away like a shadow, gone between one blink and the next. It decides when to reach out to characters, not the other way round.
It's after characters finally get a good look at the creature that it starts leaving...gifts. Characters will start to find familiar items from their home worlds amidst the mess. The remains of a childhood pet, perhaps. Photographs of loved ones, faces torn almost beyond recognition. It's only once it delivers its final gift that the creature retreats to the trees again: a blood-splattered item of clothing that clearly belongs to the person the character misses the most at the time, alive or dead.
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Toph Bei Fong | Avatar: The Last Airbender | OTA
Toph startled awake as if from a particularly bad nightmare. Upon waking, Toph realized right away that something was very wrong. This isn't where she went to sleep last night. Instead of the upside-down stone structures of the Western Air Temple, Toph found herself to be in some kind of tunnel. Not only that, but there was no sign of Aang, Katara, or Sokka anywhere. She quickly got herself to her feet and kicked the ground, sending the pack that had been her pillow into the air with her earthbending so she could catch it...
...except that it wasn't her pack. She rooted through it, finding familiar-feeling clothes as if it was hers, but it was also full of stuff she didn't recognize, like the leather pouch with something smooth, like glass, and another pouch filled with wooden coins of some sort.
Toph suddenly dropped the pack, the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end. It felt like someone, or something was watching her, but she couldn't feel anyone else nearby. "Twinkle-toes, if that's you, you better stop your little airbending dance and get back on the ground." It was almost overwhelming. She hadn't felt this creeped out since the gaang's run-in with Hama and the screaming she had heard under that mountain where that crazed waterbender kept her victims. Receiving no response, Toph raised the ground in front of her to make a wall, then sent it rushing forward to the entrance of the tunnel. If it hit something, she would feel the vibrations through the ground, and those would tell her what it was that was stalking her.
Except that it didn't hit anything, but the feeling that she was being watched faded away. She frowned, but picked up the pack she woke up with and headed out of the tunnel. She wasn't going to find out what was going on by hiding. She wasn't one to hide from anything anyway. Stomping the ground hard, she tried to see if there were any clues that would tell her which way she should go to find out what was going on. Luckily, there seemed to be some kind of town nearby. She headed towards it, hoping that she'd at least be able to find her friends.
II. Wishing Well
Displeased with her lack of success of finding anyone among the houses along the large lake, Toph eventually came upon a well. Why a well was so close to such a large source of water, she didn't know, but it was there. She wasn't going to pay it any mind, except that as she was walking past it, she felt something. It wasn't a physical something, but rather some odd sixth sense, similar to how she felt when she had first arrived and felt like she was being watched, but this wasn't a threatening feeling. She couldn't place it, but whatever it was, it was telling her that something was up with this well. She approached it and dropped a pebble into it's depths, hearing the small plunk as it fell into the water. Nothing happened. But then, why would anything happen? Weird feelings or not, it was just a well. Shrugging, she pulled herself away and continued her walk around the lake to see what or who she could find.
III. Something Wicked This Way Comes
Toph was getting pretty sick of the seemingly random feelings of being watched. As the days went on, they became more frequent, but her feet continued to feel nothing that would give her any clue as to what it was that was making her feel so on edge. The only thing she could guess was that it was something that was flying, since she couldn't "see" anything that wasn't on the ground.
This morning however, there was a clue left for her. She got up from her bed and stepped in a puddle of...something. "Awww, gross!" It wasn't water. It was thicker than that, and it had a bad odor to it. "Is that blood?!" It certainly smelled that way. Toph wasn't easily disgusted, but stepping in bodily fluids, especially those not belonging to her, was pretty gross no matter who you were. She hopped back on the bed and used the sheets to wipe the bottom of her feet off. That feeling came creeping back. The hair rising on the back of her neck, the chill down her spine, like someone's eyes were trying to dig into her back, and this time, some evidence to show that she wasn't just imagining things. Even the sounds of the other occupants of the island didn't seem to comfort her, and she used her bending to bust the wall down and jump out into the street where she wouldn't be caught by whatever it was that was stalking her.
IV. Wildcard
I'm open to pretty much anything. If you've got something you wanna play out, toss it here.
wishing well
"Hey, kid! Are you new around here?"
no subject
"Yeah. Are you?"
It seemed that the man had forgotten about his treat. Toph kicked the ground, using her earthbending to bump the orange towards her and catching it in her hand. She brushes some dirt off before taking the rest of the peel off. Gotta eat it now before it bruises you know.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
She took another section of orange then tossed the fruit back at the man. "So, who are you and what kind of rock did you crawl out of? Never met anyone who didn't know what bending was." And she had thought that she had been sheltered. "I'm Toph."
no subject
"I get it, my friends can also be annoying," Peter says with his mouth full. But he loves them, of course. They're his family. "I'm from Missouri." It's bright, like that explains everything. "But my dad was from space. I'm Pete—Starlord. I'm Starlord.
no subject
'Starlord's' heartbeat didn't change when he mentioned his dad coming from space, so either he was a really good liar, or he thought that was actually true.
"So you're an alien?" Her voice was full of skepticism. "You seem like a normal person to me."
[OoC: Not sure if Toph would be able to feel anything out of the ordinary from Starlord. Let me know if I should edit anything.]