Welcome to Gaia! ::

Halloween was always a bad time for Noctua. The ever-present threat of something terrible lurking around the corner made her already elusive grasp on sleep that much more tenuous. The first few days were the worst of it, dragging three seconds behind everyone else in both body and mind. Once that was over, however, her body and brain adjusted and she was able to cope. Not well but... hey. Coping was coping, right? It was easy enough to ignore the way the shapes in the corners of her eyes changed when she peeked at them in her peripherals. They always slid back into their natural states when she looked at them dead on.

It made her want to be alone. All alone. Perfectly and totally alone with her thoughts and her hallucinations. At least, she reasoned, if she knew that they were not real, then she wouldn't be totally crazy.

A glimpse of something to her side caught her eye. She had relegated herself to the empty business district, dead and barren this late at night. No one was supposed to be there at all. She figured that it was a dutiful worker burning the midnight oil and was prepared to ignore it until she noticed the ethereal quality of her garments. Noctua turned bodily to her, expecting this vision like all the others to melt back into the wall that she came from, but she did not. Odd. Usually, her mirages didn't take quite so recognizable a shape. Hang on was she... screaming? The woman's face was contorted in fear, and yet not a sound escaped her throat like some invisible force had stolen her voice.

She ran.

Noctua followed, her softly-slippered feet nearly as quiet as the woman's soundless steps. Why she was following this woman, she would never know, but perhaps it was because she needed answers. Never had she projected such a realistic and ghostly image into the world. She needed to know why, and somehow following this woman around corners and up alley's would tell her. Except for that when she finally came to a dead end the woman had vanished and the only thing that was left was a supernatural chill that ran over her arms and left goosebumps in their wake. Noctua pressed her hands to the cold bricks before her, trying to find some trick door or perhaps a hidden alley leading somewhere else. She found nothing. Just as she was about to leave, sensation slammed into her like a freight train, toppling her forward with it's force and chilling her to the bone.

This had been a trap. A White Moon trap meant to destroy her.

It took Noctua a moment to catch her breath, and she spent it glowering at the pavement under her hands. So it had been a white moon trick. She shivered with the force of the chill that still wracked her body and directed her punishing glare at the senshi who had come upon her. He was low level, like she was, probably newer if she had any guess. He wouldn't be difficult to dispatch by any means... if only she had the damned energy. Her heavy breathing didn't dissipate with time, only increased with the force of her fury as her expression twisted deeper and deeper into its scowl. She took one shaking step towards the senshi and then another, holding herself against the chill with two bone-thin arms hiding in an oversized fuku.

"You did this to me," she hissed through chattering teeth. "What do you want?"
It was a question that she constantly asked but never got an answer to. Even when she asked those of her own faction they spouted some drivel about this theology or that philosophy. Never a real answer. She had no doubt that this would be no different... if she even got an answer.

Noctua called her magic to her lips, it's power crackling on the sensitive skin as she searched for the senshi's eyes in preparation. He would attack her... just like all the rest did. He would attack her and she would hit back, buying herself just enough time to flee... but god alive she wanted to fight back in earnest. She was so tired of running. Tired of being frightened and fleeing at the first sign of danger...

Noctua didn't hear him. She couldn't. The sudden blast of whatever it was that had robbed her of all of her senses had decimated her defenses and all around her, nightmares began to come to life. Shadows seethed around her, growing wicked eyes and terrible, clawing fingers. Her breathing picked up as her eyes darted from corner to corner, trying to watch every single demon clawing its way out of her terror at the same time. She tried to back away from the things tearing the brings around her to dust, but only found herself backed into the very same wall that they were shrieking to be free from. Noctua covered her ears with a sudden, terrified sound somewhere between the whimper and a scream that got choked in her throat. Before her, the senshi stood, unchanged, unfazed. The single calm island in the sea of horrors awakening around them.

So this was his magic then? To make her see terrible nightmares? He hadn't even spoken the name of an attack... did he not need to? What that another white moon trick? Was that the price of her freedom? Of her power? That she must give away her gambit and the others did not have to?

He was talking... why couldn't she hear him? Was it the mask keeping her from understanding what he was trying to tell her? But wait... was it a mask? It looked like he was wearing some kind of surgical mask but... as Noctua narrowed her eyes to try and focus her panic-stricken mind on one thing, she realized that mask was actually a sickly green patch of flesh, folded over on itself like rotten flesh. As she watched, the putrid skin began to split, at first only seeming to lift on its own accord but then a nearly invisible hairline fracture began to appear within the soft skin. Further and further it spread, the skin ripping with a wet sound until it reached from ear to ear. Noctua all but screamed in horror as the senshi before her now stood with his head split nearly completely in two.

She called the name of her magic before she was able to think. If nothing else, the fatigue from her attack would slow him down enough to lose the grip that he had on his own magic, whatever it was, and release Noctua from this nightmare.

The other senshi hit the ground and Noctua didn't waste any time. Her legs moved before her brain was fully functioning. She needed to be home. She needed to huddle under the covers and hide from what just happened and forget what she'd seen. But the road before her was long and she was so... so tired. she looked back over her shoulder at the monster she had incapacitated and instantly regretted it. the thing lay on the cold concrete, long snake-like tongue lolling out of his ripped and gaping jaw. the tip flicked up and down, searching for something though she knew not what. It caused her to pause in her retreat, which tangled her legs up in themselves. She collided with the earth, heaving forth a broken, frustrated sound. Before her, the monster's eyes rolled down, locking on her as his too-wide smile seemed to laugh at her.

Behind her, Noctua felt the chill of shadows on her shoulders. Fear propelled her back to her feet and sent her skidding on her way, down back allies and deserted streets. Whatever that trick was... whatever the trap that had been laid was meant to accomplish, she had escaped it.

She remembered, distantly, the life of the child that she had snuffed out one a lonely evening in the woods... where was that strength now? Where was that power? Hiding deep within her, she supposed, weak from sleeplessness and weary from fear. When she had rested and the anxiety had drained from her muscles, she might wonder why and how she had come to the point of no return to long ago and yet floundered so weakly now, but for this moment, Noctua ran and ran hard. She ran under her skeleton legs burned and then she kept going until she slipped into the window of her bedroom, let the magic creep quietly from her bones, and lay her weary self down to rest.