A Bitter Pill To Swallow

As the four of you run up to the massive shape Eva spotted, it quickly becomes clear to all of you that the place it's occupying is the epicenter of the wave of dread that is not only pushing at all of your minds but also at those of the other passersby you encounter. Dave realizes one more thing. This epicenter, it's the apartment building where Anna and Brock live.

Around your group, others are running, fleeing from the near-building-sized creature, or cowering in fear. The dread emanating from it gets stronger the closer you are, but knowing that the emotion isn't real, that it is psychically forced into your minds helps in overcoming the fear.

Augusta is flabbergasted. Every fear of her own self image is on display. Bigger than life as opposed to her normally svelte shape, naked instead of fashionably dressed, excluding fear instead of adoration. Yes, this creature was the exact opposite kind of influencer than she cultivated in herself.

"Is that what you see?" she howls up at the being. At herself? Is this her, somehow? Her future, or her just her own fear of that made manifest?

And yet there is something primally satisfying too. Unabashedly savage, gargantuan in size and appetites. There was no shame in her, this godlike version of herself, no fucks given.

"She can't be let to hurt anyone!" But what could she do? Scratch it's ankles?

"Wait. Wait..." Dave urged. "I don't think we're seeing the same thing. Anna pulls your fears out of your mind and puts them on display. I don't think we're all seeing the same thing. It shouldn't be 'real' either but I've never seen her effect this strong." Melissa and Augusta are within earshot, Eva was too far ahead at this point and probably wouldn't hear him even if he yelled. "I wonder if Tanya slipped her some pills too or if she finally caught Brock in bed with someone else?" he wondered aloud as he too ran for the heart of the effect.

Out front, Eva's sprint slows to a run, then a jog, and finally a slower but still purposeful walk as she approaches the... thing. Her skin crawls at the sight of it. The hairs on the back of her neck stand up; she remembers. The injections, the incisions, the invasive procedures.

"What are you?!" she shouts up at the monster as she comes within fifty feet of it. "What do you want?!"

As she yells this, the woman's muscles are wound coils, ready to explode if she needs to move, to dodge, to strike.

"She?" Melissa croaks at Augusta. At this point, Dave has his answer and all Melissa can do is stare at the creature while the vile smell makes her stomach roil and rise as she tries to catch her breath.

"What in hell is that thing?" she asks no one in particular. "What do we do?" she wonders while not taking her eyes off the abomination.

"Whoa, hey, right here!" Eva shouts with a wave of her arms when the monster's attention settles on Augusta for a moment. "That's right, I'm -- oh shit!"

The woman's taunt is interrupted as the giant draws back a massive fist and swings it at her! Eva has fought a lot in her young life, but never anything like this. As the titanic limb swoops in towards her, the hyper-fit blonde runs straight at it before hurling herself into a no-hands cartwheel, hoping to clear the blow entirely with one powerful vault...

Eva narrowly avoids the attack of the large being's limb, dodging it narrowly. Eva can feel the woosh of air propelled by the sweeping motion of the limb, proving that the creature seemingly guarding Brock's and Anna's home is real. Or at least, real to her. Because at the same time, your mismatched group realizes that the limb moves cleanly through parked cars and lampposts without affecting or damaging them.
Maybe one or two of you also realize that Eva's last second dodge doesn't line up perfectly with the attack they're seeing, lending further credibility to Dave's suggestion that you might not all be seeing the same thing.

"Augusta, can you and Melissa make it into the building and get into Anna's apartment, 11C, while Eva and I distract her and whatever she's manifesting out here?" he looked to the two women beside him. "A little 'love tap' to put her unconscious might stop all this before something serious happens."
The practical plan he laid out as calmly as he could belied the roiling turmoil inside the big man. Anna's mental force pushed in on him forcing him to relive one of the most desperate times he'd ever lived through. The yawning, lightless, laurentian cold pushed in on him complete with the hallucinogenic phantasmagoria of creatures beyond reason juxtaposed with the mundane sights and sounds of city streets. The admixture of completely opposite worlds churned Dave's normally iron stomach. The only thing keeping him from sinking into madness and despair was the clamor of panicked pedestrians and the knowledge that Augusta and Eva and Melissa were nearby and possibly in danger. The crushing alien depths, mind numbing cold and nightmarishly bizarre life at the bottom of the Marianas Trench he could manage...it was the feeling of utter isolation and aloneness that really peeled him to his core.

Augusta nods quietly, and takes Melissa's hand, "Let's go. I'll shift when we're inside, then stay behind me."

She dashes toward the building, trying to not get squatted by the huge -- her -- and focusses on what she knows. That's not me, it's a trick, and illusion. 11C. Love tap to Anna.

Melissa lets Augusta lead her, breathlessly answering, "Yeah, yeah let's go. That thing, it's not real. Everything is out of whack with its space. Like a bad copy and paste into a movie or something."

The woman also noticed Dave's face turning a pale shade of scared and that motivated her even more.

Inspecting herself briefly as she rolls to her feet after her spectacular aerial, Eva happily notes that none of the vile needles, blades, scalpels or worse have pierced her skin. The thing is a walking nightmare, though, and she shudders to think what will happen if the monster seizes some innocent, soft-bodied citizen off the street. She has to keep it's attention -- especially since it seems like Dave and the girls are brewing up some plan.

"Hey!" she says, waving her arms and shouting at the giant. "Hey! Over here, ugly!

Eva and Dave working together manage to keep the attention of on themselves. It's attacks are intimidating, but slow enough that evading them is despite their size at least possible.

Meanwhile, Augusta and Melissa manage to get into the house. Finding apartment 11C isn't a problem, but once they reach it, the two women find the door closed and locked, and pulsating with an aura of fear. The closer they get to the apartment, the more the dread pushes into their minds. They have to enter if they want to end this situation, to make sure Eva and Dave don't get hurt while they fight out there to buy them time, but this door... There is something lurking behind it. Something so much more horrific than that creature outside.

"I don't like this feeling I'm getting, Augusta. It's wrong. Something horrific is on the other side of that door. Can you feel it too? I think I can look through it. As long as my emotions are high and they sure as shit are, I probably can. The question is, should I? I might see something I can't unsee."

Melissa turns to Augusta, looking for what, she isn't sure. Encouragement, discouragement, some kind of help? Fear is very apparent in Melissa's eyes and demeanor.

Dave joins Eva in trying to attract as much of the phantasmic attention as possible in an attempt to distract Anna from the covert attack from Augusta and Melissa. He wasn't sure what would happen if Anna's phantasms hit him but knew he had to give the girls every advantage he could so they could help end the threat.

Augusta had shed her human form as they entered the apartment, her goblin body now revealed. She feels the savage intensity her willingness to just wreak uncontrolled havoc, but tries to focus.

"Yesssss," she hisses, and backs up against the wall, bunching up for a charge, as ready to face the fear as she ever will be. "Look, then I'll break it down."

Dave and Eva dance around the creature's attacks for a while but after Melissa and Augusta have already long disappeared into the building, Dave suddenly misreads the intention of . It slams into his chest, driving the air from his lungs. He's not used to an attack, even a solid hit, hurting like this. Of course, part of him is aware that this pain is only in his head. It's not a real injury, which is why it so easily bypassed his invulnerability. But it still hurts right now.With her powers driven by high emotions, it's easy for Melissa to access her x-ray vision right now. As terrified as she is of the idea to peek into the apartment, she forces herself to do it, encouraged by the hissed words of the next to her. At first glance, the apartment looks rather empty. Then she spots one person, a man, crouched in the corner of what looks like a small bedroom. And then, next to him, in the bed, Melissa spots the most terrifying sight she's ever seen in her life.

Not as agile or fast as Eva and used to decades of just 'tanking' hits didn't set Dave up to avoid the writhing abyssal tentacles of Anna's phantasms. Snagged by an ankle and dragged into a morass of eerily bioluminescent biomass, Dave disappeared from the street and found himself sinking beneath the waves. The brightness of the surface diminishing with alarming quickness, the surface world receding from him as he fell in slow motion seemingly forever into the icy cold embrace of the laurentian deep. The fact that he knew it was all in his mind, an effect of Anna's powers run rampant, did exactly nothing to quell the flashbacks being dragged from his mind. Images of the weird life that survives in the alien landscapes fed into his brain; blind monsters of translucent flesh and flashes of otherworldly bioluminescence, biology that would give Lovecraft or Giger inspiration all swam about his memories an, thanks to Anna, out into the surface world. Those things didn't scare him but it was what Anna's powers chose to manifest to remind him of the feeling of being utterly alienated from everything and everyone he'd ever known. Three years of complete isolation lost in a lightless, alien abyss with only your own thoughts...that was Dave's personal hell.

In the distance sirens are starting to become audible. The response time in Graybridge is again unreasonably slow, but it seems that soon, the police will be here. And if they believed any of the calls they must have received, it's likely a special response team from the TANC will be with them, like there was one picking up Danvers at the department store.

"Ok." Melissa thinks about the asshole that Brian Floyd is and as her anger rises, she sees through the door, the other side blurry at first, but then it sharpens.

"Doesn't look like anyone is home...oh ... wait ...there's a woman. She's lying on the bed and a guy ... yeah ... he's crouched in the corner."

Melissa's pulse starts to race. She's suddenly terrified. Why is the guy crouched like that?

"The woman on the bed ... she looks like an ordinary person but she's not. Oh my God, I'm feeling a whole helluva lot of panic right now."