15734/Where at, Hellcat

Where at, Hellcat
Date of Scene:	28 August 2023
Location:	Perilous pocket dimension
Synopsis:	Hellcat is abducted by Spiral for some perilous games in a pocket dimension. The promise of accumulated points suggests a prize. Hellcat excels at avoiding the worst hazards and traps. Was the game rigged in the end? Unconsciousness is the only prize so far at the end of this particular stage of what Spiral ultimately intends.
Cast of Characters:	Spiral, Patsy Walker

---

Spiral has posed:
Maybe all those people explaining their 'Missing time' has some legit concerns. There may be a similar feeling now if one was right in the middle of something. Unless someone had rested their head and closed their eyes. But even then, what the senses return, the environment is not at all what was experienced previously.

Now is a room, geodesic and perhaps 20 meters across. A room that's bereft of common sense. Paintings that one would find in a common motel 'curved' to fit the concave surface of the room. Light fixtures that bend inwards, as does the hideously mundane wallpaper. It's like a singularlity formed within some room, and drew everything in, and then stopped. A warping of reality that makes a mockery of 3-dimensional architecture.

The twisted light fixtures flare into brighter illumination, revealing blinds down a curved window to a void, and a closed door leading off to a washroom and presumably the hallway. A bent radio issues out a strangled pop song from a faded pop star. Scents in the room are strangely absent, as if this was completely unreal, though certainly real to the touch.

Patsy Walker has posed:
Someone stirs within the room, someone in a yellow costume with darker gloves, boots, and feline-leaning cowl. Hellcat.

What was she doing? Memory of that is fuzzy right now. Probably on patrol, given the attire. Or dealing with a problem? It's all confusing at the moment, but whatever had her 'napping' fades away enough for her to sit up slowly, rubbing a hand against the side of her head.

"Ugh, did someone get the license plate number of that..wait, what?" White slits for eyes, set into the cowl itself, shift side to side as she takes note of the room she's in. Something is very strange about it, and as she gets up unsteadily at first, she checks a set of blinds to see out into apparent nothingness. "This doesn't make any sense," she grumbles to herself, bypassing the door to the washroom or whatever it is, trying the handle instead that seems like it ought to lead out.

Spiral has posed:
The void stares back, sometimes backlit by the suggestion of far off lightning in far off clouds. The distances suggest something vertigo inducing. Something that would invite stomach-churning fears in regular mortals that haven't spent time in literal hells. A suggestion of infinite gulfs and vast distances.

The door to the hallway is unlocked, and at a touch swings easily inward, which is quite a trick given how weird the dimensions of the room are. The hallways outside is warped as well, but more...squashed. One would need to get on hands and knees to use it.

A voice floods in from the crappy little radio, flavoured with static and interference. "Good." The voice is female, and sounds like its passing quirked smiling lips. "Oh it doesn't need to make any sense here. Trust your own senses. Your own capabilities. Right? In the end, who can you rely on? Ultimately? Kitty-cat."

Patsy Walker has posed:
She'd been trying not to pay attention to the radio. It's a distraction. The strangeness of that and the empty nothing out there is unsettling enough, no doubts there, but Hellcat /is/ made of sterner stuff than most. She's been through some things.

That doesn't mean any of this is right. Something about it feels very wrong. "This better not be from that pasta earlier. I thought the sauce tasted off," she muses, shaking her head at the strangeness of it all. "Feels too real to be a dream. But not a nightmare, either."

And yet, the voice accompanies the view ahead. If she's surprised at the door being unlocked she doesn't show it. A glance is had toward the washroom but she leaves it behind. With a frown, she has no choice but to crawl forward almost like a cat getting through a tight space. "Oh, shut up," is all she has to say about the feminine voice.

Spiral has posed:
The voice of the radio is left behind, which offers a warm chuckle despite the terrible speaker.

The crawl down the hallway provides just enough for an agile vigilante to prowl, the doors to other rooms squashed down in dimension to resemble nothing so much as...doors to morgue storage. There's a light at the end of the hallway coming from beneath an exit door, perhaps a good 60 meters of distorted dimensions away. To the left and right, random doors suddenly shake and rattle.

"Oh no." The voice is thin and barely audible behind Hellcat. "Is it that time already? Surely not checkout time. And we've only just started kitten!"

The short doors to the left and the right, some buckle as if hit by some titanic force behind their mundane facades. Some are pierced through by sudden long spikes of silver-bright metal. They come, chaotic and sudden. They come for Hellcat.

Patsy Walker has posed:
It's for the best that Hellcat's had to squeeze through some tight spots before. Crawling nimbly on hands and feet is no real trouble for her, and those claws at each finger and toe can work as a deterrent to anyone thinking about trouble. Such as, perhaps, that taunting voice calling her 'kitten.'

Her upper lip curls beneath the facade of the cowl, but the words herald an initial sort of danger in the form of the doors getting struck by something. The spikes of metal encourage her to pick up her pace, which she does with a brief swear under her breath. She, so far, is far enough ahead and quick enough that they don't jeopardize her progress much. Yet.

Spiral has posed:
With Hellcat clearing the perils suddenly presented, there's not much real estate to cross before that exit is before her, and flung open, as if by a helpful ally. The cramped hallway for midgets and monsters is left behind, with doors sounding like they're ready to explode off their hinges. Truely, behind Hellcat is a ludicrious amount of steel spears making the hallway a practically impassible crawlspace. More and more of the spears blast through the doors to create an insane cellblock of criss-cross skewering shafts.

And beyond the exit...

Empty space. After the confining crawlspace, it's a stupidly vast chamber. Chandliers of baroque design descend from a ceiling hard to make out as if the light fixtures are supported by a hazy mist. Below is the void seen outside the warped motel window. One must make a grab for these chandliers or fall forever. "Roses are Red. Violets are blue. I'd grab something. If I were yooooou."

Patsy Walker has posed:
Hellcat reaches for that door, but it opens as if automatically. Fine. Getting through that, she has a moment to glance behind her as the hallway is left unpassable - and deadly to anyone too slow for the challenge. It only makes her frown more deeply as she rises back to her full height, being unremarkable as it is.

Nothing below, or at least a chasm deep enough that she can't see where it ends. Perhaps to empty out into that void. "I'm really not amused," she speaks aloud, this time intending for it to be heard. If it can be. With no way back and no other way forward, she braces herself and reaches back to come into contact with the wall, then springs forward and deftly uses the chandeliers to traverse the distance. It's clear to see she's good at this sort of thing.

Spiral has posed:
That voice sizzles down from the obscuring haze, commenting. "That's not the goal." There's something...more than a little mystical about all this. It probably isn't a dream. But this obstacle course, there's magical means being deployed alongside the more physical aspects. Not a happy marriage of technology and magic, but a driven one. "I'm so glad you didn't fall. Not yet. You're scoring all sorts of points. Believe me, racking up points is in your favour. You want to impress me. Oh look at you go go go!"

"Silly of me to take it easy on someone I've been watching for so long." the voice drawls. And the temperature drops, the air becoming much colder until a kind of frost pattern is spreading across the chandliers, making exhaled breath appear. "Brrrrrr! Don't slip up! Oops!" Those light fixtures do make fabulous little waypoints along this room, glinting quite visible, no problem spotting the assortment ahead, and beyond yet another exit. Except...oops. One just dropped. Preceeded by a sound like a lightning cracking down from heaven, their lengths sliced clean through by a whipping quick sound. As if by a sword with a monomolecular blade. "I'd love to hear you laaaaaaaaaugh." Swooosh-SNIK. "Maybe a giggle?" SSsSssssh-SHIK. "A shriek. A screeeeeam!"

Patsy Walker has posed:
In hell, things didn't get very cold, really. Different story here. That voice still coming through sounds like it ought to be familiar, but it isn't quite registering. Not so far. "Points? You can take your points and--"

No time to finish that one, as the target Hellcat's just leaping toward..goes. Crap. As she begins to descend, she reacts on instinct. A claw-like appendage is fired off from a wrist, with a line trailing behind it as it finds a target: one of the other chandeliers further ahead. It catches and holds, giving her the chance to swing closer and bypass an extra hazard or two.

Not looking down means she doesn't have to see whatever it is that happened to what fell. What that voice gets from her? Silence.

She's near to getting past this challenge.

Spiral has posed:
It's not a great vantage, but it's a handhold. That clever use of grappling to another place to perch gets a small enthusiastic gasp from your Host. "Don't DO that to me. Such risky stunts."

It's good that Hellcat doesn't look down. As chandliers drop, and drop, and drop, there is no crash of them hitting something solid. But there is a series of howls of things disturbed by their intrusion in the lightless depths.

Not so lightless.

Crescents of glowing light. Becoming wider, swelling. Eyes. A whine like whalesong but too alien. Snuffling, moaning, grunting and shoving as huge things are roused and all look...up. They look up at the treat crossing the room far above.

The exit is just a few things to leapfrog and pounce, using the chandliers as something to push off. Or, one ~could~ try a leap of faith, which is faster but entail more risk. "My previous guests, because I have my eyes always open to welcome them in when I'm in a mood, previous guests had to stay. They could never leave. It was like the hotel California. First I stabbed at them with steely knives...you remember those? Well, I'm never one to waste anything. Not like Mojo.

There's a purr as if the voice is stretching out before some athletics. "No, those that don't leave stay and become ~the help~. They don't want to leave anyways, not after how I help them. It's their own fault for not scoring enough points."

Patsy Walker has posed:
Mojo..Mojo. That's another name. But familiar with it? Maybe not for Hellcat. She's fought her way out of hordes of demons and other types of hellspawn. This /should/ be a piece of cake in comparison. Child's play, practically. Still, a few blanks begin to fill in courtesy of the talkative 'host.'

Growing tired of this - her lack of chatter could be a source of frustration for someone else - she sends the claw out again after it retracts, and with a considerable amount of momentum behind her she makes that leap to reach the exit. This time, she can't help but look behind and down, spotting what's staring back up at her. Best not to have fallen into that.

What mysteries await in the next section, however? Some of the 'help?'

Spiral has posed:
The next room, just beyond the door, is a literal sandpit. Or a sandbox perhaps. The entire floor circular, arena seating above, protected by a bubble of glass. An amplitheatre to watch a contestant cross such an innocent looking sandy beach.

It is hella humid in here, compared to the frigid room left behind. Like the very dessert. "Come in, come in." the voice beckons.

With the previous room beaten, the entrance yawns open with the gibbering horde below promising something terrible.

"This room is easy for such a clever girl." the voice suggests, and issues forth from not just an invisible source...but a figure standing atop the observation dome. Hands on her hips, looking down on Hellcat. "All you have to do is find the key. There's a lock in the exit door, just on the opposite wall. But I'm afraid kitty is going to have to paw through her sandbox to find it. It's there though, just below the sand. Just inside this hourglass."

The sand itself is a very fine powder, and disruptions to it release a scent of perfume and spices, exotic and cloying.

Patsy Walker has posed:
An oversized hourglass, filled with sand? With a key inside, buried somewhere within? "You know, I think we're taking the 'cat' thing a little far by now," she says of the setting. At least it's not a litter box.

Then some recognition shows as Hellcat makes out Spiral up above. "Oh, it's you," the costumed woman adds, the reaction a mixture of surprise and sudden annoyance. "If you dragged me into all of this.." she warns, but the door across the way isn't going to cooperate without the right offering, evidently.

So, she half-heartedly digs around until she closes her hand around something...coming up with a toy mouse she glowers at and casts aside. "Very funny."

But, the sand is getting disturbed. Her nose wrinkles.

Spiral has posed:
Spiral crosses a pair of arms under her chest while she cocks a hip. Another pair of hands goes to the top of her head to use her fingers to pantomime some cat ears. "And yet I haven't heard that laugh yet." she tuts and clucks her tongue. "Keep trying. And hurry, get those kitty paws moving."

The more one digs, the more dislodged the fine particulate. So easy to inhale and draw into the lungs. It's terribly good at lingering in the air. It's a heady mixture of scent by smell alone. But there's a little something extra in there. Is that why this area is sealed off by the glass ceiling?

What is dug up next is something that feels remarkably ~like~ the handle of a key. It's a metal shaft, smooth and has some weight.

~CLANK~ A metallic clamp tries to close over Hellcat's wrist. A trap sprung by proximity or touch!

Patsy Walker has posed:
"Maybe I'll laugh when I get out of here and ruin your little game," Hellcat calls up, and as she begins to feel a little something strange around her, it can be seen that the sand itself appears to be the culprit. Something is sticking around, growing more apparent, but it's hard to determine exactly what that is. "Aha."

She grabs at the handle, but there is a split second to react when the trap is literally sprung - and she does! Still enough in her to hop to one side, though a foot sinks into the sand before she frees it up again. Right now, it's a matter of putting distance in to get away from the trap and the worst of the disturbed sand. Maybe..she can catch a breath. That could still be dangerous. Eyes sweep side to side, searching. She'll have to try another spot.

Spiral has posed:
The air of the room is getting worse in terms of regular mundane oxygen. The disturbed particulate of sweet and exotic stuff. But that's okay, right? It's only a light-headed feeling. But Hellcat must dig again, and again after first the novelty toy and then the nefarious grabby trap. "I knew you had good reflexes, but I never knew they were ~that~ good." And Spiral sounds more than pleased, rather than upset Hellcat can keep her hand.

Spiral crouches on her haunches, shifting to watch Hellcat move about, the sand stirred up into the air making visibility not as great, but still fine. "You deserve to keep your hand. Though...I promise I would have given you a better one had that one been pulled off. Or is that something you'd like as a prize? A set of lovely new hands and feet, with built in claws and tricks..." she muses. "Still, there's something to be said about keeping all of one's original parts. It's easy to change some things, but really, what's inside is sometimes the greater change."

The more one digs, breathes, disturbs the sand, the effects become stronger. It's now in the bloodstream surely, the toxins mixing with the air. Double-vision, triple-vision, seeing through time-vision. It's a kind of high that offers a dopey kind of peace. Not great for the agility but great if someone needed dental surgery.

Hellcat finds the key on the next try. It may look like there are five of them, but it's mostly substantial in her hands. Spiral's voice echoes, "I think-ink-ink-ink...You need a small break. You've-ve-ve-ve gotten a lot of pointsssss though."

Patsy Walker has posed:
This is getting to be troublesome. The effects are hitting Hellcat more than she was ready for. She might have to consider carrying a rebreather or something like that. "Don't..need any changes," she answers, and there's a little 'ah' as she comes up with the key. Or two. Or three? Five?

Rubbing the side of her head, she continues to breathe in the tainted air and it's too late to avoid that. At least..she gets over to the door. It takes a few tries to unlock it, at which point she stumbles her way through. Yes, a break may be just what the cat needs.

Spiral has posed:
There's literal applause. It's like a studio audience is all rising to clap at some cameo guest appearance on Cheers or something. Hellcat goes through that door after managing to unlock it, and there's the roar and she's welcomed into the embrace of dozens upon dozens of goblin-like cyber-minions. The munchkins from the Wizard of too-odd-for-Oz all helpfully pulling her in and dragging her towards a place comfy to rest her head. Unconsciousnes is promised as the toxin breathed in works through the bloodstream.

"And when you wake, it'll have seemed fake. Something you ate. But you did great. Just a simple dream...give into the..."