Sleep Study | Backdated to like... June 2nd or something hahaha | Open

[bonomial]

June 2 - Waking - Telepathy/Action - Primarily for Peridot (but mun welcomes threadjacking)

[Yeah, so Dirk said that nobody should try to be a guinea pig.

Don's never been good with taking that kind of advice. Right now, the dreamscape's making him anxious. What he doesn't understand, he wants to. Normally, he would ask his brothers or his sensei to spot him, to try to reach him on the astral plane - or he'd have them volunteer to be analyzed in his stead, knowing Leo - but he doesn't have that option here.

He can't stay awake forever. He already is having trouble foregoing sleep without coffee.

However, he knows someone who doesn't have to sleep.

So a certain green Dorito is going to get a telepathic message, maybe poorly directed to her because this Turtle is tired:]

Hey, Peridot... can I ask a favour?

[She'll find him in the lab eventually, arranging his cot within range of what passes for their medical bay. Maybe someone else there might wanna know what the heck he's doing?]


June 3 - Sleeping - Action

[Comfortable in the knowledge that he's got someone watching his shell, Don can get to taking in the weirdness of the dreamscape. Everything seems to thrum with life, and on an instinctual level the Turtle feels more at home here than he has almost anywhere else. The ocean is welcoming him.

It feels as if his brothers and his master are with him too, in some capacity. He feels their voices reaching out to him, from the ocean's depths. Even knowing he's asleep, it comes off as achingly real.

If you're wandering around near the base in the dreamscape, you might notice Don floating near it, frowning deeply at the yawning scar left on the seabed.]

So this dream world, or whatever it is, has a smoking wreck where the base is supposed to be. What does that mean...?


June 3 - Waking - Audio

[Comfortable in the knowledge that what he learned about the effect of the dreamscape on their bodies means it's safe, Don makes an announcement.]

Hey, everybody, I've got some good news for anybody who's worried about this weird dream world. [That means you, Stork.] It doesn't seem like it affects our waking bodies any more than a dream normally would.

[A beat.]

It still feels like it's really happening, though, which basically makes it virtual reality. Even if it's not really going to hurt you, I wouldn't pick any fights with the Reapers unless you want a very convincing illusion of pain.

Comments

sleeping/action!

[voidkatini]

[ Or maybe it's not your family you hear so much as it is the snoring of a teenage girl having happy dreams while she floats through the vast void of the pitch-black ocean. The void might even appear to pass through her sometimes, her image flickering as she subconsciously activates her power to become intangible in her sleep.

She bumps into a column of titanium left over from the wreckage of the base and stays there, floating still, snorting loudly at the obstruction as if subconsciously aware of it. Her image flickers again before she goes invisible and and passes right through it, reappearing on the other side... Where she promptly bumps into another pillar in the same fashion. Lather rinse, repeat.

The sleepwalking Princess of Derse is especially classy when she's drooling. Won't someone be a bro and wake the poor girl before she drifts off into the abyss, never to be seen again? ]

[bonomial]

[Floating people smacking into horrific demon-pillars? Not cool. Don is still testing his range of abilities in the dreamscape, and 'grabbing people who can't seem to control themselves' is an ability he hasn't tested yet.]

Whoa, hold on! [The Turtle reaches out as best as he can, trying to catch the teenage girl before she smacks into yet another ominous pillar. He manages to push off of some of the seabed's rocks enough to hook his arm around Roxy's body.

... Whereupon they both bump into the pillar instead.]

Oof!

[voidkatini]

[ It's not the bumping into the pillar again that wakes her up, but the snort that comes after she's drooled a bit too much, causing her to choke herself awake.

Uhm.

Where is she. ]

Huh? [ Roxy's hot pink eyes crack open slowly, all squinty despite it being dark in underwater dreamland. She sees a green outline of the person holding onto her, and murmurs. ] Callie...?

[ She gasps wide awake with a start, breathing heavily as her eyes adjust and she realizes... no, it is not her friend. But instead of looking disappointed, her features soften as she smiles in relief.

Still groggy, her thick voice drawls, ] Ohhhhh, my hero. But don't you know you're supposed to wake sleepin' boot-- beauty-- with a kiss, not football tackle her into a thing?

[bonomial]

[Don doesn't get very long to ponder the fact he just grabbed a strange girl, or the name she says, before her next statement. Chagrined, he lets her go almost immediately.]

I, uh... it was a reflex?

You were... sleepwalking. While asleep. Which doesn't make any sense, but I don't think much of this is making sense...

[Focus, Donatello.] The point is that I didn't want you touching... that. [By 'that' he means the scary base pillar, which really does not look healthy to touch at all.]

june 3.

[forsage]

Oh. Really?

[ roderic on the audio feed sounds surprised to hear that.

also relieved? or, perhaps, even happy? (shocking concept for this grump of a man, he knows.) it's hard to tell since roderic nosily pushes his chair back while he speaks, most likely to either get out of it or to check on something near him. ] Not gonna lie: Nearly shitted myself a brick house first time I found myself... there.

You doin' alright though? Sounds like you got some firsthand experience to know this stuff.

[bonomial]

Don't worry. All it took was a minor sleep study. [And trying out random actions while asleep, including katas to see whether that muscle soreness carried over to his waking body.] It was worth it to figure out exactly what was going on.

I still don't know what's causing it, though, and since everybody seems to be having the same dream... [Yeah, that's still the freaky part that Don can't understand. He's been part of shared dreams before, but this is much bigger, and more encompassing.]

[forsage]

Same dream?

[ he sounds a little apprehensive at that piece of news. he's genuinely glad don is safe but that really caught his attention because... because oh god dammit.

a loud sigh can be heard and he sets something, a tool of some sort for sure, to probably rub his temples to clear a budding headache he felt coming. ] Does this dream involve finding yourself in the ocean? With lights everywhere and hearing the sea creatures talk?

[ because if that's the case then yeah roderic was part of that weird mess for a hot second. ]

sleeping/action

[princessia]

[ Elize is near the base, holding a pink and purple doll in her arms. If the doll is more closely observed, its ears are noticeably twitching like it's alive. She's about to take off to find the Reefbacks, until she hears Don's voice. It sounds remarkably like Jude's.

She might have seen the turtle around the base beforehand. The current crew is small after all. But up until now, she has never made any attempt to speak with him. ]

...Jude?

[bonomial]

[Normally, a little kid might not get much attention from Don, but the dreamscape is weird and he's overly-aware of everything, in full ninja-analysis mode. So naturally, what she says gets his attention.

... Except that's not his name.]

Excuse me?

[princessia]

Y-you're not...?

[ So, he's not Jude? The voice sounds exactly like his, but coming from a large turtle. Lifting up her stuffed doll, she partially covers her face from both embarrassment and for the doll to serve as her mouthpiece.

She can't bring herself to form words at the moment, allowing Teepo to talk for her. The purple and pink doll's mouth gapes open, speaking: ]

Wah-hey! It's like Jude's voice is coming out of a turtle suit!

6/3 waking

[tentaculled]

[ he's been piecing together that this "dream world" is a real thing affecting all of them - moreover, it's a real place, with consistent locations and interactions that each individual can remember. This sort of thing is beyond even his knowledge. It's good that someone's been looking into it. ]

In other words, it's just like a regular dream - the exception being that it's a lucid one we're all sharing. I wonder if there's something in this planet's atmosphere affecting us.

[bonomial]

I've thought about it. It doesn't really seem likely, though; I mean, wouldn't that be something that affected us when awake too? It's only happening when we're asleep... I hope.

[Cue uncertainty. He's ruled out dream-damage seeming to affect the waking body, but who's to say something is happening he hasn't even been able to notice?

... Maybe certain green people's paranoia is rubbing off on him.]

[tentaculled]

Not necessarily. There are plenty of substances on Earth that cause unusual dreams. [ hmmm. ] Coupled with other effects while awake, of course. The dreams may only be one symptom. You haven't experienced any changes?

[ because... he has, but he's not keen on talking about it. ]

June 3 (Sleeping)

[splinten]

I feel like I said something at some point about being a guinea pig.

[He is full, monotonous mom mode on you, Don.]

Thanks for sharing the results. But how reckless were you finding out?

Is this while Don is sleeping still or is the audio post later? /not sure

[bonomial]

[HE'S SORRY... well, no, not really, because he learned something from it.]

It's not like I went chasing down anything especially dangerous... I did test whether pain would carry over, but that was with regular katas. Fighting the Reapers while I was awake was enough for me. I had Peridot monitor me with instructions to administer a stimulant if something went wrong, and tested my vitals before and after. [So don't worry too much about him, bromom.]

Considering that there doesn't seem to be any physical damage to me, though, I'm concluding it isn't possible to be injured by stuff that happens to the dream body. [This is still more tentative than he'd like to be, though.]

SORRY AUDIO

[splinten]

Let me know if you do anything like that again. I can spot from both sides.

[It's like, there's no sternness in his voice, and yet somehow the sense of it comes across anyway? Magic.]

Those were good safe-guards, though. And it's good information for us all to know.

[...So that Dirk can go run off and fight Reapers while asleep I MEAN WHAT]

sleeping/action

[transited]

[ neil had been floating aimlessly when he he spots don. even though the ocean is suffocating when he's awake, in the dreamscape it's... nice. calming, even, in a way he can't really describe it. it's the kind of feeling that sort of makes you want to just stay asleep, even when you know it's a dream.

still. neil also knows that's a stupid idea, so he snaps out of his daze and swims on over to the turtle. which he is still getting used to? he has spent 19 years not being around giant talking animal people, so this is still weird. ]

Hopefully it's not prophetic.

[bonomial]

[Glad that Neil's not nearly as worried about the ocean in the dreamscape, because normally Don is shocking in the best of situations. He won't take being weirded out personally, at least?

The comment makes the Turtle smirk, in a frustrated sort of way.] Knowing my life? It's probably going to be.

[He jabs a finger at some of the gnarled, twisted ruin in front of them both.] I've made contact with this, so I know it's not dangerous... but it looks so much as if it should be, and this is definitely where our base is when we're awake...

[transited]

[ neil turns his attention towards the ruin, a small frown betraying the usual neutrality of his expression. ]

Are there any other areas that are affected like this? I haven't looked around yet.

[ if so, then maybe... neil has no idea what it'll mean, actually. ]

Waking!

[logdate]

[ Peridot is a bit surprised when she gets a telepathic nudge from Don. She's been working on her own projects, so she's not really sure what the weird turtle person could possibly want. She replies with a hint of a wariness about her. ]

I suppose. What do you want?

[ She's starting to walk, though. Not like the base is that big. There are only a few places he could be, after all. ]

[bonomial]

You don't sleep, right?

[That sounds like a non-sequitur, but it's totally getting to the point.]

When I fell asleep for awhile before, I had... dreams. Completely nuts. I need to figure out what's going on and I don't trust whatever these dreams are. So I want someone awake to watch out for me.

[logdate]

I don't need sleep... Nor do I really feel a need to. Why-?

[ Oh, that's why. She slows for a moment, brow furrowed in concentration as she considers the problem. ]

Well.. If you really need someone to watch you sleep, I guess I can handle that. How hard could it be?

June 3 - Waking - You rang?

[adaywithoutsandcakes]

[The message, subtle shout-out and all, immediately grabs Stork's attention. He's already skeptical of this "good news" even before Don gets to the point, but he'll at least hear it out -- and it does turn out to be not-as-bad-as-it-could-be news, he'll grant you that.

He sends a reply right away, his tone just a bit gloomier than usual. No, he hasn't slept since that first night.]

Not to question your scientific method or anything, but don't you think it's a little early to make that call? We still don't know about the... long-term effects.

[If you've paid attention to his mannerisms, you can practically hear where he stares hauntedly into space, his left eye twitching.]

I did indeed ring B)

[bonomial]

[Don's mind easily fills in the exhausted, haunted image of the merb he's sure exists on the other end of the communicator. For once, he has little to offer Stork in the way of soothing words.]

Honestly? You're right. I really don't know. [His voice is slightly bitter over this fact; he's been dwelling on it ever since his conversation with Korosensei.] So far, I don't have any reasons to think anyone is in danger, though, and I do know that not sleeping can be a medical problem.

[You sound tired, Stork.]

[adaywithoutsandcakes]

Oh, believe me, I know. [Yes, Don, he is tired. He also sounds just slightly defensive. Don't you start preaching at him now, Mr. Workaholic.] I know all about sleep deprivation.

[That's just the thing. Better the devil you know than the devil you don't, right? Of course, in this case, the devil he knows will kill him eventually, and the devil he doesn't... might not? So maybe that idiom doesn't really... fit here...]

I'll sleep when I need to.