The nightmare world of Deerington is one Peter would really not like to be in. His own nightmares are bad enough, but being trapped in an ongoing nightmare of some little monster girl? Jeez, no thanks.

So he searches desperately for the tear in the Nexus that will send him either home or somewhere else.

It's October in Deerington, and that means the streets are flooded with blood. There is nowhere to go that isn't just gross and bloody. So Peter uses his spider powers, such as they are (sometimes they don't work right, whoops!), to help keep himself off the streets and on the buildings. It's like the grossest game of the floor being lava. If he finds someone struggling, running from a new torrent of blood rushing down a street, he's quick to grab them with a web and pull them up to where he is. He doesn't have his costume here, just his web shooters, so…well, so much for the secret identity thing.

"You okay? That stuff just comes on quick, huh?"

Or is it January in Deerington? Does time even matter anymore?

But this isn't Deerington, not exactly. It's…an underwater city called Rapture. Powers still aren't working right (especially Peter's technomancy, which seems to be missing entirely for now). People are taking weird drugs (Peter would never, thanks).

There are strange strings attached to a couple of Peter's fingers. Maybe one will lead back to the Nexus? Haha, just kidding! It actually leads to another person here in Rapture. The red string is a double-edged sword; not being near the person on the other end causes a sense of anxiety or panic. They need to find each other, to be together. When they are together, though, especially if they're touching, they feel right and brave and unstoppable. Phew!

The gold string creates a strong empathic connection that allows the other person to feel Peter's feelings — and vice versa. It gets tricky knowing which feeling is whose, but that's…probably fine? Though they may start to act like each other or think of themselves as each other. Tricky.

The threads will eventually go away, but they can't be cut.

Going back to Deerington from Rapture is just like waking up in the hotel, groggy, without strings, just emotionally wrung out. There are others waking up here too, sleepers like Peter.

He sits up and rubs his head. "This Inception dream within a dream thing is getting to be too much," he says to no one in particular. "I've got to get back to Excelsior, like, yesterday."

[ Deerington is all horror all the time, but I gave us two settings here: regular Deerington, a small freaky town (covered in blood) in Maine, and Rapture, the Bioshock setting, a messed up city underwater. Feel free to wild card prompt either of these settings.

And again, handwaving introductions is fine and you can assume your character knows Peter from Deerington or from Meta. ]

Arrival in Noctium was a harrowing experience, being stuck out in the wasteland, then there was a space station, an explanation of the situation. None of the questions Peter asked seemed adequate enough, and along with it, he got yet another set of new powers, this time tied to the purple gemstone embedded in his chest, right under where his Spider-Man suit emblem sat. The symbolism isn't lost on him, but he has other things to worry about.

It's been a month and change here in Noctium, the vast world presenting too much to explore. There's also one little hiccup: gembonded turn into monsters sometimes.

Now, coming up on the week of everyone becoming monsters, Peter hopes he's ready for it. But how do you get ready for something like this? Last month he had the whole dragon thing. This month, he gets something more humanoid: a peri. This transformation gives him large feathered wings, some sort of pheromone that encourages nostalgia in others, and the capability of his voice being calming to those he speaks to (if they're receptive to that).

The wings take some getting used to, but once he does, man, is he having fun. Catch him flying around and coming to a surprisingly graceful landing nearby.

Maybe you'd like to train some of your gem powers with him? He's down for that, too.

But also, all of this running around takes a lot of Manna energy, which means he needs to get some Synchrony up in here. He's awkward about asking, but eventually he works up the courage and asks someone if they'd like to arrange some mutual touch. Not that kind! (…unless?)

He's also pretty talkative; it's easy to get him to talk about the world he'd come through before. He's still trying to get back, but he hasn't yet found the break in the Nexus that will send him home. Have a conversation about that if you like, help him look, or tell him you might have found it!

Finally, he's happy to help the new arrivals, rescuing them from the waste and taking them to the space station. (He's just himself when he does this, not a peri monster.)

[ Peter's gem is amethyst. He can use wind powers, including being capable of flight or controlling wind currents. He has not lost any of his other powers here.

Noctium requires something called Synchrony in order for characters to continue living, basically, and the best way to get symphony is through touch with another person that you have some emotional connection to.

Please feel free to assume CR here so we don't need to go through the introductions thing. ]

Despite it having been literally months in other worlds under mostly harrowing circumstances, not much time has passed back in Excelsior. Peter slips through the Nexus right back where he started: at the apartment.

Something is wrong, though. He can feel his spider sense thing going absolutely off the charts. Great, so whatever caused this is still going? Of course. Just his luck.

After having a weird fight with the electronic lock system, he gets out and goes outside to see what has changed, and…it's a whole damn mess. The technology here is going nuts and he can sense or feel a lot of that with his once again functional techno powers.

"What the hell happened to all these machines?" he wonders aloud, definitely loud enough to be heard.

From then on, Peter can be found trying to deal with haywire machines. He's never Spider-Man for this, only Peter, but he might be having a hard time of this all on his own. He also looks like hell, having gone through a bunch of shit before coming home. When was the last time he slept? Ate a meal? He can't think about that right now. Too much else is happening.

Peter's plotting comment is here, or as always I'm on plurk at boywonder.