\ Haven:Mist and Shadow Encounterlogs/Lucs Odd Encounter Sr Lauren 240326
Encounterlogs

Lucs Odd Encounter Sr Lauren 240326

Luc finds himself in a perplexing and hazardous situation, awakening inside a barrel in a dimly lit, archaic stone room, filled with various items and surrounded by other barrels. He quickly takes action, arming himself with a knife and pistol, and attempting to communicate with any potential allies contained within adjacent barrels. His efforts are met with silence, and tension escalates as heavy footsteps approach. A large, mud-colored figure reveals itself, displaying inhuman strength as it effortlessly tears open a barrel and drags away an unconscious girl. Fueled by courage and a sense of justice, Luc confronts this formidable opponent, discovering it to be a golem rather than a man. A violent struggle ensues, Luc's attempts at physical harm only revealing the creature's clay-like composition. As the encounter escalates, Luc calls to the newly awakened girl for assistance, urging her to fight alongside him against their captor.

The girl, shaken but determined, aids Luc, employing improvised weapons against the golem. Together, they manage to inflict enough damage to topple the creature over, incapacitating it. Seizing the opportunity, Luc directs the girl to free another captive, who turns out to be her friend. With all human adversaries vanquished, Luc synthesizes a plan for escape, leading the two high school girls away from the ominous storage room and eventually, out of the ominous building into the safety of the forest. The trio navigates their way back to civilization, sharing their contact information for future correspondence. Despite the dirt and disarray marking their escape, Luc, the teen girls, and their newfound bond of survival carry them through to safety, leaving the reader to ponder the mysteries behind their bizarre and dangerous ordeal.
(Luc's odd encounter(SRLauren):SRLauren)

[Mon Mar 25 2024]

In room 102
A lone sleigh bed entices visitors to rest, complete with fluffed white
pillows and a soft cream comforter. The petite room boasts simplicity at
it's finest. Caramel curtains cascade over two arched windows, matching a
study desk set to the side which gives renters a convenient workspace. A
single closet provides space for clothes, standing beside a door which leads
into a complete bathroom.

It is morning, about 27F(-2C) degrees, and the sky is covered by dark grey stormclouds. It's snowing outside.

He's picked a good time to begin. Back and forth and back and forth and crash goes wood against stone when Luc finally lets the built momentum topple him over. He was in a barrel, he can see that now for certain. There's two others to the left of his, already opened - one of them has a scrap of cloth torn off against a nail that was holding it together, bright red in hue - and another two to the right that are yet to be opened.

The rest of the room is more interesting: it seems like a storage compartment of some sort, made entirely of stone like in ye olden times, windowless with just one door on the far end of the room. Apart from the barrels, there's a few scattered belongings on a table a distance away: a few phones, not just his alone, his knife, a pistol or two with no ammo, a couple of pens, a woman's purse and a few wallets, all piled up on it to be dealt with later. The only light source is a flickering bulb above, and a few other boxes in the room hold not people, but what looks like lab materials if Luc cares to snoop closely enough: glass vials of different sizes, packets of odd-smelling herbs, syringes, anything a creepy laboratory could ask for, really.

And then, footsteps, again.

Well, fuck that - Luc rushes over to collect his knife and pistol, breathing out a contented sigh once the latter is once more fastened upon his hip. It was a lot easier to feel safe with a gun on you. "Oi," he hisses, barrel-wards. "Any of you awake in there? Wobble if you can't say anything. They're coming. I can let you out if you'll help me deal with this." Regardless, he does pick a hiding spot behind the barrels that're left and shrinks up beneath them. Even if someone found him, they'd probably have their hands full of barrel, and he'd have his hands full of knife. A favourable equation. He keeps the pistol holstered, for now. Who knew whether a gunshot would bring unwanted attention or not?

No wobbles are forthcoming. Whoever's in those barrels must be knocked out cold. Closer and closer, the footsteps approach until whoever's behind it is pushing the door open and making their way into the room with heavy, thudding footsteps, and over to the barrels. The entire room appears to darken with the presence, the light from the dim bulb being blocked out. There's a pause in front of his recently-abandoned prison, maybe mildly confused at best, and then they simply... move on. Onto the next one, and those are mud-colored hands, larger than any he's likely seen, that reach for the barrel and simply rip the wood open without any specialized tools required. If Luc's going to try getting into a closeup fight, he'd better pray to every god he believes in and then some.

He can catch a glimpse of black hair spilling out upon the floor, catch a whiff of a feminine perfume, and then the newest acquisition is being dragged away as well across the floor, one-handedly by her blouse, leaving just Luc and the last barrel in the room. Now would be the time to follow behind the giant figure and find himself a way out, if Luc feels so emboldened.

Well... Luc's heart flutters in his chest, faster and faster, pumping all that mortal adrenaline through his body until it's convinced itself he's a god in disguise. He couldn't just let the girl be dragged off. He still had a heart. So he flings himself up onto the huge man's back, hardening his soul as he whips the steel blade of his knife towards the goon's neck. It didn't matter right then whether the guy was doing this willingly or not - that was a question for later, with a psych in attendance. Now was the time for killing. "Cocksucker," he hisses.

Luc's knife against the 'goon's neck meets a resistance unlike what he'd likely have been expecting - there's no blood to be spilled here, only a faint, brittle crack and a chunk of hardened clay falling to the ground with a thump. There's a pause, mildly confused again, and then the unconscious girl's being let go - her head smacks against the floor, barely cushioned by her hair - and the man - who turns out to not be a man at all - is turning around to face Luc. Up close now, there's the smell of wet dirt that surrounds it, and those mud-colored hands may just be actual mud, hardened. Aside from the vague, man-like shape, if bigger than most men, and the clothes that it dons, there's little to indicate this is an actual person. No, rather, this might just be a golem - or what Luc would recognize as a golem had he the knowledge of such things - dressed as a man, with little thoughts in its empty head to figure out if it's doing this willingly or not. Good news for Luc's wallet, which shan't have to empty itself over psych fees. Bad news for Luc, who's got that giant hand reaching for /him/ now, trying to grab him and drag him along instead.

"Jesus Christ," Luc swears, throwing himself backwards and out of the inexorable reach of the muddy fellow. "What the hell did they dose me with?" Doesn't matter; he's probably taken stronger while on duty. A hot sweat starts to build on his brow as he tries to run /around/ the slow-moving golem rather than through it, hoping to land a boot in its back that should send the fucking thing careening forward under its own weight. That's assuming, of course, it couldn't move faster than its current lumber, and that it wasn't so heavy that the human soldier wouldn't simply launch himself off its back instead of imparting some momentum of his own. "Girl!" he yells, abandoning subtlety in the face of whatever drug he was tripping on. "Wake the fuck up!"

Some more good news: the pain of having her head smacked against the floor /does/ rouse the girl. The accompanying bad news, of course, is that she's groggy and disoriented and only stares blankly out at Luc instead of doing whatever he's trying to accomplish by making her wake up. The golem, on the other hand, is slow enough that the soldier does manage to dodge him easily, but there's only a faint stagger and some more crumbling dust falling to the ground from the kick. It may have ended up hurting Luc's foot more than it hurt the golem, if such a thing is even capable of feeling pain at all.

Finally, there's a rumbling, a little noise of annoyance that erupts forth from the golem's form as it turns back around to face both Luc and the girl: it's not happy, and it's going to take them /both/ to wherever it was going, by force if they're going to be stubborn. A fist comes smashing down on Luc, as if in slow-mo.

Luc had just not wanted the girl to get her head stood on and squashed like a melon from underfoot the man and the monster. "MOVE!" he yells at her - hopefully that should pierce through the stupor. There's not a lot he can do to deter a big-ass punch like that, though - he can apply some martial artist tricks about diverting force, but who knew how well that kind of thing worked against something this heavy? So he throws his weight to one side, hoping for the punch to glance off - but he's not wearing armour, and his ribs are only so bouncy. Oof. He can't even make this a trade - there's just to swinging that knife with any force after a blow like that.

Luc's yell is followed by a shrill scream that cuts through the air and echoes off the stone walls - she's awake, that's for certain. The girl's eyes are wide as she watches the golem's fist fall slowly upon Luc, and instead of letting him take the hit, she scrambles to her feet and leaps at the man, sending both of them crashing to the ground only a couple feet away right as the giant fist smashes against the wall instead. There's some more cracking of mud from the impact and the resulting self-inflicted injury, crumbly bits of dirt landing upon the floor, and the girl's climbing back up to her feet and clutching at Luc. "Wh-what- who are you? Who is that? Where am I?!" she asks, frightened, now attempting to hide herself behind Luc. "I- what's going on?!"

"No fucking idea!" Luc responds, a little shrilly and not too action-heroey. Oh, well. It was the thought that counts. "Just stand back until we get this thing to stop moving, alright? We don't know what's out there yet." Then he's jumping up onto the fucking thing again to attempt the most daring armlock of all time, throwing his entire bodyweight into it as he wraps his legs around the thing's arms and shoulder while his arms wrap around the thing's bicep and heave backwards. It leaves him wide open to the golem's other hand, given the size disparity, but if this manoeuvre could dislocate a human shoulder, what might it do to mud-man flesh? He'd seen the thing crackling apart already. Hopefully his trip would follow a pattern of internal consistency, here.

The girl screams again as though it's /her/ and not the golem that's being jumped on, but there's no objections forthcoming to Luc's masterful plan: she's going to be standing back and watching with a worried, horror-filled gaze as he pounces upon the thing and does his best to dislocate man-made mud-flesh. "Be careful!" she calls out.

To his credit, the plan /does/ work; there's hardened mud crumbling beneath Luc's hands as he wrenches backwards, the entire limb splitting from the torso in ways that would be nauseatingly visceral if this were any more human. As it stands, there's no recognition of pain, no sense of hurt, only a desire to do its duty well as the golem stumbles back, trying to grab hold of Luc. A smack of its other hand wouldn't quite send Luc flying off, with how securely he's wrapped himself around it, so it has to resort to measures like slapping at him like a particularly annoying fly, and pulling at his hoodie until it can detach the man from itself - along with its entire, dislocated arm.

A few good smacks should just about do it, without any armour to protect him. Luc goes from constrictor python to limp noodle as he's hauled off the golem's frame, and getting a better look at the thing's face does not make him any happier. "What the fuck /are you/?!" he questions with a less-than-calm voice, then tries to plant a kick right in the thing's face. Take that, you soily fuck. Get your nose squashed. "Take out its leg!"

Irrecoverable damage would indeed have been caused if the thing /had/ a nose to speak of. It doesn't. There's no mouth either, for that matter. "Huh- wha- what does take out mean!?" The girl isn't /quite/ as trained as Luc is in matters of the military, and there's a panicked scramble to find something useful for her to do. While Luc is busy kicking at its face, she rushes over to the broken barrels and grabs herself a large slab of wood. It comes smashing down onto the golem's leg while its attention is upon Luc, the process repeated until she goes from 'able to be ignored' levels to 'annoying gnat' levels, at which point there's another low, angry grumble from somewhere within the creature's form.

It lifts its attention away from Luc and takes a step towards the girl, heavy, threatening... and then the weakened mud of its leg crumbles further with movement until it topples over and smashes to the floor with a crash loud enough to wake the dead, an arm and a leg useless. It could crawl with one arm now, but that's the most it can do to catch up to Luc and the girl, if they want to make a run for it now.

Let no tap go undoubled, or something to that effect. Luc leaps, yet again, onto the thing's back, only this time he's hooking both arms around the golem's chin, planing a knee between its shoulders, and heaving. He's going to rip its head off; neutralise the threat. "Good," he hisses over to the kneecap-hating girl. "Grab a knife from the table. Get the others freed. We'll get out of here once I have..." He grunts, redoubling the effort to crumble the shitty golem into so much soil. "...This thing down. Fuck me, it's heavy."

"O-ok! I'll try..." It doesn't take long for the girl to figure out where the last person is held, considering the broken wood all over, and she manages to get the last barrel open and topped over with some effort; there's another girl inside it, and the first one lets out a loud gasp that likely means it's someone familiar. "Ann! Ann, wake up!" she shakes the girl, and Ann, looking to be in her late teens as well, groggily cracks her eyes open eventually, to more confusion. She's handed a knife as well, and given a scant explanation by the first girl - Luc should really ask for her name at some point. "We should go... I don't like this place..." the black-haired, kneecap-hating one tells Luc after she's grabbed a couple more phones - theirs, presumably - and a bag from the table, though she keeps a large distance from the golem that Luc's trying to smash to smithereens in the middle of the room, and slowly but surely, all that's left is a pile of unmoving mud and clay, vaguely shaped like a man.
line The storage room is at the end of a corridor. If they emerge from there, there's plenty of windows that can be used to climb out of the building, or a straight path that leads outside - although with a few detours along the way, if Luc wants to risk peeking into any of the rooms along the way.

Nope, no detouring for Luc. Instead, he collects his own phone and takes a photo of the clothed piled of mud and soil, the room around them, the shattered barrels, the girls - Ann and Kneecap Destroyer, no further naming needed. "Good job," he breathes, absolutely covered in dirt. There'd be no joyous hugging for their heroic rescuer, most likely. "Okay, girls. My name's Luke, spelled with a C. I was in one of these barrels, same as you." He jerks a thumb over his shoulder at his destroyed prison. "That one. I have no fucking idea what's going on, so we're just going to get home as soon as we can, alright? I'll give you two my number when we get back to town and we can figure this out. Don't worry, I know how to hotwire a car if necessary." He checks his gun, now that he has the town, and lets out a groan when he sees it's unloaded. "Okay. No bullets. That's okay." He lifts his knife up in a trained CQC stance, beckons the girls over, and then he's sneaking his way forwards, looking for one of those windows to smash his way out of.

Smoosh, smash, crash, and they're out! Or, alternatively, Luc can just open the window from the inside like a normal person. It's up to him though. Whatever the case is, he's going to be out of there and find himself in the forest a little ways away from town, with the lighthouse in the far distance that he and the girls can follow to reach civilized, non-mud-people society again. The girls turn out to be two high-schoolers who'd been picked up while spending the night in the abandoned psych ward outside of town, because teenagers dare each other to do questionable things like that as a past time all the time, and they exchange numbers before departing on their way to the clinic for a quick checkup just to be sure, each giving a big hug to Luc. And yes, Luc does earn himself many odd looks from passersby with all the dirt that covers him, but at least he's alive and safe, and maybe he's learned a lesson about sleeping in places he didn't pay for.