[color=gray][INDENT][INDENT][i] [/i][/INDENT][/INDENT][CENTER][COLOR=04cf3a][sup]________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________[/sup][/COLOR][img]https://i.imgur.com/QXDwaZX.jpeg[/img] [/CENTER][indent][sub][COLOR=04cf3a][B]Location:[/B][/COLOR] [I]The Augmented Reality Center - Pacific Royal Campus[/I][/sub][sup][right][COLOR=04cf3a][b]Dance Monkey #4.077:[/b][/COLOR] [color=white][I][b]Aren't you supposed to burn if you're a star?[/b][/I][/color][/right][/sup][/indent][COLOR=04cf3a][SUP][sub]____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________[/sub][/SUP][/COLOR][INDENT][sub][color=04cf3a][B]Interaction(s):[/B][/COLOR] [I]Haven [@Skai], Lorcán [@Lord Wraith], Amma [@Rockette], Gil [@Roman][/I][/sub][SUP][RIGHT][COLOR=04cf3a][b]Previously:[/b][/COLOR] [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/5561543][I]I Care What You Think[/I][/url][/right][/SUP] [INDENT] The second there was a loud thud on the ceiling of the ARC, every ounce of anxiety in Rory’s chest came flushing out of his awkward form. It was replaced by a sheer, animalistic urge to survive. He ripped off his suit jacket, tossing it to the side as the large stone beast cut through the roof. His eyes turned to Haven, whom he quickly stood in front of and tried to shield from loose debris raining down. He felt small cuts and tears form through his shirt, and that familiar sting of pain that came from small wounds. When he turned his gaze back to the beast, the words sent him reeling in confusion. The last he knew, Haven didn’t have a kid. And if she did… he did not want to know who the father of that monstrosity could be. Cass’s short lived attempt at heroics sent Rory’s mind spinning. That took out his first choice of power. His eyes turned up towards the hole in the ceiling. He looked back to Haven, ready to bark an order, before his eyes settled on her wings. She was still recovering. Flight wasn’t an option for her. [i]Shit.[/i] Rory scanned his friends in the crowd, able to piece them from the scared students with ease. Blackjack had been through enough in the past few weeks, he couldn’t be the only one to expect something like this. If it were daytime, Banjo’s skill set would be ideal. Sight probably wasn’t going to do much for him. Density probably wouldn’t do much for him here. Teleportation could get Haven out, but fire probably wouldn’t- [i]Wait, where the fuck did they go?[/i] Rory reached into his pocket, quickly opening his phone and hitting the phone app, managing to quickly call Lorcan and putting him on speaker before tossing the phone on the ground at Haven's feet. With any luck, he’d answer the phone. If not, it was a good thing improvising was Rory’s specialty. It only took a moment longer for Rory’s eyes to lock on to a certain force of destruction. He let out a small exhale, an inkling of a plan beginning to form in his head. Rory turned his head back to Haven, his expression grave. [Color=04cf3a]“When you’ve got an opening, I need you to run.”[/color] He held himself back from embracing her: he had to act. This wasn't goodbye. He turned towards Amma and Gil, and strode through the chaos towards them, giving the Tolkien-esque monster a wide berth. He was used to running through knotted paths in the forest paths on the island, and years of running and tripping made this a breeze. A rather cold breeze. The second he was within earshot of the former actor and resident enigma, Rory lowered his tone. [Color=04cf3a]“Alright… got any pointers, Addams family?”[/color] He lifted his hands, placing one onto each of their shoulders. [Color=04cf3a]“It’s not quite a dragon, but I think this is as close as we'll get.”[/color] Beneath his touch, Amma immediately flinched, eyes panned wide and wild and feral, pain smeared through her expression with minor lacerations donned over her bare shoulders and dotted over one of her arms. She nearly snagged her fingers around his wrist, a warning curling against the ridge of teeth bared in an alarming grimace; for Rory to approach her only addressed the severity of the situation. He, who perhaps above all, did not trust her in the least, bore her marks, faint scars that even now she acknowledged with only a smidgen of guilt to prevent her gestures from prying his palm away from her skin. [color=978184]“Yeah, get Haven out of here.”[/color] She stressed, taking a step back. Her eyes fled over and into the distance where Torres lay, a shattering of loss compounded by the trembling wrought through her fingers, burdened by small wreaths of red that sputtered and fell, likened to drops of blood. Amma searched through Gil’s gaze, held there, words unspoken woven between, an unknown flicker that plummeted through her eyes, something she had never known before, something that could not be placed. Worry and fear. Concern dotted her lashes and the crease of her brow before she touched her forehead to his briefly and offered her attention back to Rory; a conviction blossomed there and wound through her annunciation with only a slight quiver in her voice to be found. [color=978184]“That thing can’t take her, you know that, I know that. I’ll be fine. Get her out, get them out.”[/color] She flung out her arm, gesturing abroad, breath fogging white past her lips from the frigid cold that suddenly enveloped them. A flicker of understanding flashed over Rory's face as he observed Amma and Gil, only to give way to a slight frown. He looked about the A.R.C., shaking his head. [Color=04cf3a]“I'd love to just grab Dove and duck out, but that didn't work for everyone else, did it?”[/color] Rory held on to Gil's shoulder tighter, turning his direction to the former star. His eyes were pleading, but his voice was steady. [Color=04cf3a]“No offense, Gil, but most of our heavy hitters are off-island, MIA, or can't be trusted.”[/color] He paused for only a moment, realizing the slip up in his words too late to retract them. But he just gripped Gil’s shoulder tighter and refocused, trying desperately to ignore the shake in his hands from the cold. [Color=04cf3a]“We don’t have time to wait for Jim and HELP. We need heat, and we need Haven out… with or without Lor and Ror. I’m sure the others are thinking the same thing.”[/color] Rory turned his attention back to Amma, his voice betraying his strong words. [Color=04cf3a]“We don't do sacrifice plays here, Am, and I wasn't asking for advice on getting everyone out.”[/color] Rory took a breath, the creeping dread of the scene sinking in. The injured forms of Torres and Cass sent a shock down his spine. He glanced towards Haven, and his expression hardened with determination. When his eyes shifted back, any lingering doubts he had were gone. [Color=04cf3a]“I was asking for tips on being the dragon.”[/color] Even he had gotten the hint that Amma wasn’t the type for a reassuring hug or pat on the back. At this distance, he was close enough to get what he needed. It didn’t stop him from lifting a fist up and gently tapping her on the shoulder. This time, she did lash out, hand turned in and manacled around his wrist, held tight with a tremor that shook up her entire arm. [color=978184]“You don’t know what you’re asking,”[/color] Amma warned, voice turned low and writhing, a warning, a curse, a spell of the damned as she shook her head and tried to keep him from those energy particles that constantly fell to her influence and scoured through the world on the conceptual ties of the unknown. She knew the nature of his powers, and she felt the pull that seized her shoulder; the shuddering HZEs felt within and without suddenly rose as tides of crimson particles that amalgamated through her body, down the slender lines of her frame and sluiced betwixt flesh and bone. Silver and red wove as an intricate pattern, a coil of ebony that threaded through the center and poised there as a serpent ready to maim. The creature, monster, a manifestation akin to what lurked within the void – something Made. Something of the in-between. A growl of impatience sundered, a deeply seeded warning, a predator before prey that threatened to strike, and Amma regarded the Chernobog, those claws, and the hand proffered and said: [color=978184]“It’s not a sacrifice. It won’t kill me.”[/color] She shook with adrenaline or fear; she knew naught which. [color=978184]“It’s here for me – for her – and –”[/color] Amma wavered, lashes lifted high and wide and eyes bright and shining where coils of red slid and snapped, a ring of hellfire within that burned. She looked at Haven, Harper, and even Banjo. She met Gil’s eyes for a long second. She looked unto Blackjack, noted those there and those not, and met Rory’s glare once again. He had already made up his mind. [color=978184]“It’ll hurt. It’ll be a pain you’ve never known: rage, hate, everything that is and could be and ever was. It’s death and destruction, to make something into nothing, to tear apart from within or to decay and rot.”[/color] From her palm, crackling energy sputtered and groaned, an esoteric resonation that cleaved through the world and surrounded the two of them in swathes of crimson tendrils, ribbons of black and silver that came up and over as the reaper stood there, a smile of bone and blood, blackened smiles shorn over a heart that wept– wrapped in chains. [color=978184]“And whatever you do, don’t look into the void.”[/color] [/INDENT][/INDENT][/color] [hr] [center][img]https://i.imgur.com/DxXCQ1u.jpg[/img][/center] [hr]