(no subject)

[thewrightidea]

Who: Phoenix Wright, anyone who happens to stumble by him
What: Phoenix eats a blue lollipops and has THE WORST TRIP OF LIFE: the movie
When: July 16th, 2012, during the day
Where: In the hall, outside, WHEREVER HE HAPPENS TO RUN OFF TO....
Warning: Don't do drugs, kids.

A few days ago, Phoenix had purchased a blue lollipop from Ai. Now, while he figured these were ordinary lollipops, he was more than happy to help pay for something that made Ai very happy: swimming lessons. Seeing her face beam as she spoke of how excited she was to learn how to swim was more than enough to get him to support that.

So, he sucked on the lollipop as he sat down at a bench outside, reading a newspaper. It was a lovely day, but this lollipop didn't seem to have a discernible flavor. It basically tasted like pure sugar on a stick, with a hint of... something else. Weird. But whatever, he just continued sucking it anyway, pretty absentmindedly.

A short while after he finished the lollipop, things started to get strange. The words on the paper were no longer black, actually. They were orange. And they were... bleeding? Phoenix would have found this strange in ordinary circumstances, but this time it actually fascinated him. He reached out and touched the paper, finding the orange ink dripping onto his fingers. Whoa. Trippy.

When he looked away from the newspaper, the sky seemed to emanate a bright pink color, and he soaked in the atmosphere, entranced by the purple grass and the... mass of spiders... crawling on his feet at this moment.

Oh god. Oh god oh god.

Phoenix screamed as the spiders crawled up him, assaulting him, and he was trying to shake them off. Oh my god did the people not see these spiders and why weren't they helping him?!

Some time later, hordes of gavels with wings began flying after him, chasing him down across the courtyard, through the black grass. He would hide behind this tree, but oh god it had eyes. Why did the tree have eyes? It was glaring at him, sucking away his soul... Everything was turning horrible and he had to get out. He had to get out.

So eventually, he found himself in a fetal position, huddling next to a dumpster. Anyone passing by would probably wonder why he was acting so weird, why he was shivering and mumbling about the gavels.

Comments

[icequeen_aran]

She was just getting ready to leave. She had barely made one leg over the seat of her bike. There was something to be said about the bounty hunter, even as cold as she could outwardly be--she had a very knee-jerk reaction to screams and cries for help.

Her boot scraped asphalt in her haste to kick the bike's stand down, and in a few seconds she sprinted across the parking lot towards the person in need.

For what little Samus knew of Phoenix, it didn't take more than a single glance to determine his current state was anything but ordinary. He was a well-composed man in her eyes, polite and careful of the impressions he made. He would, for example, never scream at terror at seemingly nothing. Her eyes followed his, and they showed her... nothing. Nothing but thin air. Was he seeing something she couldn't? A ghost? The nature of this academy made immediate assessments like this difficult... there was a faint possibility that might not of even been the real Phoenix.

"Phoenix?" But for all intents and purposes, she could only assume that. "Phoenix, what's wrong?"

[thewrightidea]

Fortunately, Phoenix recognized Samus. She hadn't turned into a strange creature or object or some sort of devil yet. But her form was twisting slightly, wavy and blurry, and very, very bright.

Her hair was much longer than usual, though, and it seemed to grow out in tendrils of yellow, moving toward his legs, wrapping around them...

Phoenix sputtered in response, pointing at the vines of hair, trying to form words of exclamation. After sputtering several consonants, he finally was able to vocalize, "Y-your hair!"

Then he started to get paranoid again, thinking that she was among them, the unknown force that was out to destroy him. He was frightened stiff, thinking that her hair was preventing him from running.

[icequeen_aran]

"My... hair?" She softly parroted, incredulously and confused. On the worst of days her hair was a bit of a nuisance, but nothing more. He was pointing at something she again couldn't see, apparently where her hair was. Something was very wrong here. There was a nameless fear in his (dilated?) eyes and she could see it well.

She'd seen something just like it before, in fact...

"Phoenix, you have to calm down." She tried, keeping her voice as comforting as she could manage... which was poor, at best. Samus most often dealt with problems by putting a bullet through them, but there was no adversary to shoot here. So she shot Phoenix the end. Her ability to easily intimidate (drugs aside) was a double-bladed sword; often (and frustratingly) her very presence served to only further frighten whoever she was trying to help.

"Calm down, and tell me what you're seeing." But damn it if she wouldn't try.

[thewrightidea]

He could barely process what Samus was saying, unfortunately. Her calm voice only served to heighten his paranoia, making him think that she was trying to capture him. Her words just came out as a slew of rhythmic syllables,

"Let me go!" he shouted, as he stumbled backwards, freeing himself from those yellow tendrils.

Everyone was going to hurt him. All the people here weren't even people. They were horrible aliens or zombies or some sort of otherworldly beings, out to drag him down. Samus wasn't Samus - it was an imposter, trying to deceive him.

"You're not real!" he cried, pointing his index finger exactly like he would if he was shouting "OBJECTION!" toward the imposter, before he tried to stumble away, breaking into a half-run. But he wasn't succeeding in running very far, because the world was swirling around, and he was so dizzy...

[icequeen_aran]

Well then. She stood there for a moment, not giving chase, silently evaluating if she should waste her efforts on a man no more than a co-worker. Co-worker or not, he was in an obviously dire state. He'd hurt himself eventually, this she was sure of as he could barely run on his own two feet.

Unfortunately, she had no idea how to fix him short of dragging him to her gunship--something she had to do for Falcon, and a privileged reserved only for Falcon and a select other few. She wasn't so eager to let the Political Science teacher know she was actually an ex-cop bounty hunter genetically-half-alien woman from space. Perhaps Rhys would be a suitable, more down-to-earth alternative instead...

With a bit a sigh, she finally gave chase and hunted after Phoenix--she kept her gait slow in hopes of not scaring him off, hoping it wouldn't do just the opposite.

"Phoenix, let's talk."

[thewrightidea]

Clearly his running was not carrying him very far. Phoenix knew he was dizzy, but he also felt that some unknown force was preventing him from running far, probably that damned hair.

He didn't want to talk. He knew that it was just a ploy to capture him.

"No! Get away from me! Let me go!"

He tried to run more, but then he stumbled and fell flat on his face. Ouch.

[icequeen_aran]

She'd take advantage of that. Very swiftly, Samus descended upon his fallen form, planting one knee on the ground near the crook of his arm pit and the other gently pressed between his shoulder blades.

...Gently being a mutable term, since she was doing this with the intent to keep him down. If he resisted, she would subsequently increase the pressure. She wasn't a heavy woman by any means, but she was strong.

"Phoenix, you're safe." Just stay down, or you'll hurt yourself...

The blonde leaned down towards his ear, and lowered her voice.

"Tell me what's going on."

[thewrightidea]

Now Phoenix found he couldn't move. He tried to struggle, but the pressure only increased from there. He was caught. He was a dead man, now. Everyone had been out to kill him and he couldn't escape.

"Please don't kill me," he whimpered, recalling the frightened days of his youth. That's all he could tell her. Obviously she knew what was going on, so what was the use in telling her? She and everyone else was out for his blood.

But he had stopped struggling, merely giving up.

[icequeen_aran]

samus ripped off his pants and assumed the position

That was not at all a helpful answer. She had mostly given up the idea by now of having an intelligent conversation with him, but at least he was somewhere safe... even if that somewhere happened to be under her knee.

Samus gripped the back of his spikey head and said "ow", exerting only enough force to make him turn his head sideways. It was just enough to see his eyes, his big, fearful, dilated eyes. You're definitely on something. She let go, and kept her knee planted on his back, mulling over her options again.

For all she knew Phoenix could be like this for hours, and those were hours she didn't necessarily want want to spend sitting on top of one of her co-workers. Dragging him to nurses office, again, seemed like the only option unless she wanted to bring the gunship into play. Samus was absolutely boggled how to otherwise deal with this... gently.

Ultimately, she decided she wouldn't. Her hand slid up her thigh and rested on the gun holster and the weapon it contained.

"Don't worry." Cold steel pressed up against the back of his skull. Point blank with this gun wouldn't do any damage, maybe leave him with a lingering headache when he woke up at worst, but he'd be lights-out long enough to get him where he needed to be.

"I'm just putting you out of your misery." She pulled the trigger.

[thewrightidea]

No...

He was going to die. He heard the gun come out and he heard all the other sounds associated with it, even if half of those sounds wouldn't make sense to someone who wasn't hallucinating. Either way, his brain interpreted it as a gun pointed at him, going to kill him.

His eyes were shut, dreading what was going to come next, and a small tear flowed down his cheek. This was it.

And then he was gone.

/vomits all over this end tag

[icequeen_aran]

A bang... or more like a loud zap. A bolt of bright pink, paralyzing energy coursed from the end of her gun and into Phoenix's body. Point blank like that should knock him out temporarily, and as she removed the gun it seemed to do just that. He was still. Warm. Breathing. Otherwise unresponsive.

Samus holstered her gun and rolled him over, supporting his head and neck under her hand. His face was... wet. Only a little, but enough to glisten in the sun.

"..." She wiped her thumb across his cheek and furrowed her brow. Whatever was making him act this way wasn't something to be underestimated. With little more than a grunt, she hefted his limp body over her shoulder, and paraded him all the way into the infirmary with no more delusional running or screaming in terror. She could only hope his unconscious mind was not continuing what she hoped to cease.

In the infirmary, Phoenix was deposited carefully on an empty bed. She took inventory of the room and saw no Rhys. Perhaps she had just missed him or maybe he would return soon... as concerned as she was, she was only so close to Phoenix and didn't particularly feel like waiting around for the Paralyzer's effects to wear off, or for Rhys to return... whichever happened first.

...Maybe she could wait just a few minutes. Given the freedom, Samus did what came naturally to her and curiously explored the room; she poked in and out of shelves, duly noted the equipment and tools, bottles of medicine, all the books, the probably-confiscated items from students tucked away in the lower drawers... who knows how long some of these have been here. There was an old match box under some magazines. She took it, briskly flipping it between her fingers, then found herself a wheeled chair and claimed it for her own.

She sat in it backwards with one elbow resting on the back of the chair while her other hand patted down the inside of her jacket. Her boobs were unfortunately in the way. Inside pocket; a single cigar. She knew she shouldn't light up, especially in a room full of medical equipment and a smoke alarm that could be set off, but she decided she didn't care.

"I usually don't have the luxury to smoke." A long drag came with that admittance--so long since she had done it last that her lungs pleasantly burned until they remembered what the sensation felt like. Not a single cough with it.

"It's a dirty, disgusting habit anyway." She idly rolled the stick between her finger tips as she watched the wisps of smoke rise. "Goroh got me these, over a year's worth, in fact... I don't think you'll find them this side of the galaxy. If you keep just one on you, it's usually for a reason." A final smoke.

Samus took another drag, aware she was talking to a sleeping body, aware whatever she was saying probably wouldn't be heard.

"You probably think you're dead right now."

As he lay there, would he dream of her talking, or of horror and death?

"To be honest, if you were hostile there's a chance you might be dead. That's another luxury I usually don't have. I can unfortunately recall many incidents where my gun was used in a lethal manner to solve situations like this." Space cancer corruption was a little bit more dramatic than whatever thing Phoenix was on, but her point...

...the point of her cigar was slowly burning to it's end, almost right to her lips.

"I didn't have the luxury of a choice."

Silence and smoke filled the air for a few moments until she stood and snubbed out what little was left of the cigar on the stand right next to Phoenix. Samus would bid him with parting words before she went on her way.

"For your sake, I hope whatever choice you made that landed you here doesn't happen again."