"Would you freakin' bring her back?" Cap's voice managed to boom around the chamber. In response to the moose-like aural assault Qaro grimaced. "I am trying, child. You will be silent!" The worried one's good eye was wide, and wild, with concern as he watched Yus flail around in the goo. The frail-looking girl was gasping and seemed horribly frightened. Her increasingly erratic movements put her in danger of inhaling the curious purple substance if someone didn't step in soon. Cap stared desperately at Qaro. "Can I at least hold'r steady?" He currently felt pathetic, useless, weak, stupid, impotent to help her. (And Cap never felt pathetic, useless, weak, stupid or impotent... Unless he was paying skeezy back alley folk to induce such experiences.) His frustratingly plodding thoughts hit an ironic stone on the sidewalk; we-ell okay perhaps stupid then, in some ways at least, but he got round that one with his savvy in other areas. Snapping him back from his self-fuelled contrail, Yus lurched and arched her back in a most unnatural posture as if racked with excruciating pain. A yelp of worry fled Cap's person. "Qaro! This is not okay!" The elder snorted, and Cap couldn't tell if it was a snort of derision or some kind of crude concern. "Hm, it is normally advisable to avoid blocking a Thread's path - this mean no physical contact." A sigh. "But as the child's current movements may cause her to drown yes it could be recommends." Sweet little Yus drowning in this weird gloop? Not on my watch, baby! At the horrible image of a pruney purple-plunged Yus, the fuddled part-man part-machine immediately moved himself through the thick liquid and wrapped his arms around her. A tiny unreadable moan escaped the girl's pale lips. "It's okay honey," the 'borg reassured in warm mumbled tones, "I'm here." He had no idea if she could hear him or not but he thought it might help. Perhaps on some subconscious level she was able to take it in. Funny, he thought with a bitter twist of his lips, his words had echoed hers in his own Thread. It hadn't been intentional. With a sickening jolt it became crystal to him that he was more worried for sweet Yus's safety than he'd ever been for his own. Which was kinda strange, because he was generally more than a little fond of himself. He rocked her gently against himself and begged Qaro to release her from whatever influence she was under, but he was only told to zip it again. It was not at all reassuring to glance up to see the elder wild-eyed and sweating. He also didn't much care for being told to shut up, and treated Qaro to one of his most contemptuous sneers. "I don't care what gender you are, or aren't..." he groused. "... You're a dick." "Silence!" Qaro snapped. "I cannot concentrate with your mithering!" Yus let out a sob. Cap began to feel like his cyb eye and his good eye were glowing, powered by a steaming red rage. "Bring. Her. Back." His voice sounded almost demonic, even to himself. Qaro flinched. Unfortunately this wasn't the reaction he'd been hoping for and it reassured him even less. It was the first time this strange person hadn't seemed entirely self assured. Qaro wiped more sweat away from long wavy locks. "I TOLD you young one, I am doing what I can." "Not good enough." Cap growled through gritted teeth. "Get her back, then we're gettin' out of here." Clearly unimpressed, Qaro appeared on the verge of mockingly demanding "Oh really? To where?" but Yus interrupted matters by convulsing and twisting wildly into Cap's bad arm, the pain causing him to momentarily let go, allowing her to slip into the goo... Concurrently: The house was packed full of folk. Young, old, everything in between. It was quite wonderful. Yus adored admiring their strange costumes, just being able to. While she knew she was back in reality now, she couldn't shake off the feeling of having been blind for many years. Troubling as that false memory was, it also had the glorious effect of making everything appear fresh, and beautiful. She danced merrily with Duncan, and Jyce - oh how glorious it was to see Jyce again alive and well. She had not shared the fact that in her dream, or hallucination, or drug-fuelled flight of fancy - whatever it had been - Jyce and a curiously bouncy-haired and loveable man named Jim had died horribly, along with thousands of innocent crew and passengers in a space-cruiser accident. Accident? Had it been an accident? Or were they shot down? She couldn't quite remember. What she did remember was the terrible groaning sound as the ship had torn itself apart, and the awful, empty, numbing feeling of being profoundly shocked. Chalkboard-scraping nails descended her shoulder blades, causing an involuntary shiver. The air... She blinked. Why was there so much smoke in the air? Was it from the smoke machines? She squinted, trying to see the source. No, it wasn't smoke, it was... Liquid. What? She began to cough. There was liquid in the air, and it was slipping uncontrollably into her lungs. She folded to the floor, gasping for breath now. She saw Jyce run towards her and in a strangely resonant moment she reached out a desperate hand, Yus tried to take it but it was too late... She was... Slipping. Slipping away, into darkness into... A man's arms. ... "YUS!" screamed Cap, rather shrilly for him, yanking her spasming head immediately from the goo and slapping her gently on the back. Vomit issued from her mouth causing a mini waterfall effect. Purple into purple. He pulled her to him and held her strongly, not caring that his arm was throbbing harder than Jim's temple would during a particularly successful tease-fest. Yus blinked. "Why is it so dark?" She pulled back a little and looked around, but couldn't see anything. She coughed a little more, removing the last vestiges of gloop. "Where am I?" Cap kissed the top of her head, a tiny part of him noting that her hair was beginning to dread itself into purple-edged orange whips. "Thank Gods you're allright." She tried to wriggle further from the man's tight grasp. "Where's Jyce!?" she demanded. "And why is it so dark? I can't... Can't see... Please turn the light on." Realising in a millisecond what her Thread must have contained, Cap shot Qaro a look so loaded with hatred that he actually felt full of evil. He turned his attention back to Yus and gently addressed the Jyce issue. "Sweetheart, she's... gone. There was an... Incident..." He was saying more, but Yus did not take it in. Emotion filtered his voice down to a low muffle. The truth was like an abrupt ice-fisted punch to the face. Oh Gods, this was reality, the party had been the dream. The hue of Yus's cheeks transformed pale pinkish to a horrible ashen grey, the sort of skin-tone that wouldn't have looked out of place 'pon one of the Hovering Zombies of Hranth. She released a single extended syllable. Howled it with so much volume and anguish that had Cap's audio receptors been functioning properly they would have surely blown. Even Qaro cringed to the floor as the wail of pure despair resounded around the chamber, and stalactites fell. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" To be continued...
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Imagining hilarious, beautiful
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