Framing A Moose

The Dead Don't Die.

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Waverley Watts

Location: Beyond the Veil
Skills:

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As their group discussed supplies, Waverley felt a buzzing in her pocket. She quickly slipped her phone out, her attention immediately shifting to it. It was Riley. She quickly opened it, firing a text back, fingers practically blurring as she typed on the keyboard. 'At Beyond the Veil. Can you get here within an hour? Or do you need me to come get you?' Waverley kept the phone in hand, anxiously eyeing the screen, waiting for it to light up with another text. Absentmindedly - and with a practiced hand - she reached behind her to turn on her radio at Ameer's request. She kept her phone in hand even as she stepped out of the back area and over to the bar, placing her backpack between Stacy and Kaitlyn.

"We should start packing up - and arm ourselves too. As a group, I think we've got two guns, but these things seem to respond to sound, so...we might want to be careful. NYC has enough noise pollution for now that we might be safe, but we don't want to risk it. I've got this-" Waverley pulled the bench arm rest from her bag, something she was now looking at as a slightly stubby improvised weapon rather than a piece of evidence of her own vandalizing. "If zombie movies are to be believed, blunt weapons with relatively long range should work best for close quarters combat."

As Stacy began gearing up to head outside, Waverley straightened up. She glanced once more down at her phone, chewing the inside of her lip. On one hand, she needed to make sure Riley was okay. But on the other, someone needed to help save the guy outside. With a sigh, she slipped her phone into her pocket, following behind Stacy with her arm rest in one hand and the gun in the other. Passing Juniper, she nodded towards Kaitlyn.

"Kait said she knew somewhere we might be able to hunker down - the fewer the people, the better."

The Dead Don't Die.

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Waverley Watts

Location: Beyond the Veil
Skills:

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A sense of unease immediately took root in Waverley's mind at the mention of leaving, causing her stomach to twist into knots. Riley was probably safe - or at least, she had a higher likelihood of being safe than the average teenager. Still, the idea of leaving Manhattan without being sure...it plagued Waverley. That said, there was the safety of her friends, new and old, that she also had to worry about.

"What kind of supplies do we have here? If we're gonna be setting out, we'll need to pack up the essentials, and anything that'll give us an edge," she said, before looking over to her radio. "I'm also going to wanna make a broadcast - tell everyone what we've learned so far. The sick...they're able to keep going when they should be dead." After a beat, she declared, "Zombies. They're zombies."

The Dead Don't Die.

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Waverley Watts

Location: Beyond the Veil
Skills:

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"Looks like we're in luck - not only is someone home, but they've already started fortifying the bar," Waverley stated as soon as her phone pinged with the incoming message telling her to come around back. She didn't waste any time, slipping out of the car and directing the others to the back of the bar. A grin stretched across Waverley's face as the door opened to reveal Ameer. She quickly hurried in, and once everyone was safe, she locked the back door.

"As soon as I realized something was going down, I started looking for Riley - couldn't leave without her," Waverley glanced behind her, gesturing with her shoulder to Kaitlyn and Juniper. "Given that she's missing from the roster here, the search obviously wasn't successful, but I ended up meeting these two. Kaitlyn, Juniper, meet Ameer and Stacy. Aaaaaand, our most gorgeous and underrated employee..." Waverley's eyes slid from her actual human friends to the dingy little ham radio that sat intelligently in the backroom of the bar. She casually plopped on the table it sat on like she'd done it a hundred times before, placing a hand on the radio. "I call her Amy - because FMy doesn't quite have the same ring to it."

The Dead Don't Die.

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Waverley Watts

Location: Road -> Beyond the Veil
Skills:

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"Nothing, just...seems like more stations are down than usual is all," Waverley replied when asked about her suspicious radio-activity. 'I have a pirate radio station I plan on hopping on ASAP even as the world falls apart around us,' didn't seem like it'd start the kind of conversation Waverley wanted to have. Plus, lying about the Manhattan Underground had long since become instinctual.

"Yeah - right over there." Waverley nodded towards a narrow brick building on the corner. A sign dangled out in front of the front door with words stacked on top of one another: Pierce the Veil. In dark purple neon, a pair of slanted, cartoonish eyes straddled the sign's 'the.' Other than a fair amount of graffiti on the outside walls, the place was otherwise unmarked - no windows either. "It's, uh, bigger on the inside. I swear." With that, Waverley's hand lowered back to her phone, pulling up the bar's group chat. 'Weird shit's going down - brought a few strays home. Who all is still at the bar?'

The Dead Don't Die.

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Waverley Watts

Location: Garage
Skills:

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Waveley's eyes were glued on the radio as Kaitlyn leaned over to cycle through channels, starting with music, only to then skip over a few dead channels to instead get to a news station. Waverley chewed the inside of her cheek, waiting for some sort of useful tidbit to come from the news, but they got nothing. Waverley let it go for a few more seconds, before leaning in herself.

"Mind if I just..." Waverley's words trailed off as she reached her hand to the dial, flicking back to one of the dead channels. The sound of static filled the air as she eyed the frequency. She pulled out her phone, balancing it on her leg as she tapped in the number into her phone, lips subtly mouthing '102.2' as she typed it in in her phone. It'd be useful to have - she didn't want to have to waste precious time searching for an open frequency once she had her radio equipment. The quicker she could tell her listeners everything she knew about what was happening, the better. With a explantionless, "Sorry," she turned the dial back to the music that'd been playing before.

The Dead Don't Die.

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Waverley Watts

Location: Garage
Skills:

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As soon as this new stranger got into the car, Waverley followed suit - and this time, she got to stay in the car. She immediately propped her foot onto the dashboard in what seemed to be her natural passenger seat position. She took Kaitlyn's phone as it was offered to her, flicking her way over to her maps app. Her fingers tapped on the screen for a few seconds, before the GPS' automated voice came on over the speakers, announcing its destination as, Beyond the Veil.

"Here's the other thing," Waverley began as soon as they were all in the car. "If we decide they're zombies, we're pretty much saying that at some point, we're going to have to kill them. So, we need to be one hundred percent sure. But, Kaitlyn brings up a good point: a lot of them seem like they'd be dead if they weren't zombies, so..." Waverley pulled her backpack up from the ground, unzipping it. She pulled out a hunk of metal the size of a short sword - it appeared to be the armrest, unscrewed and stolen from a park bench by some vandal. Some punkish, purple-haired vandal, most likely. "If we do need to kill some zombies, I have this." Then, offhandedly, she added, "Oh, and the handgun in my pants."

The Dead Don't Die.

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Waverley Watts

Location: Garage
Skills:

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"Awesome, let's go!" With a light tap of the car's roof, Waverley slipped inside, settling comfortably into her place in the passenger seat. She grabbed a soda from the box with the intention of opening it (rather than tossing it at another fasc-mobile), but before she could, her eyes drifted out the window to see the stranger beginning to walk away. She hopped back out, her chin popping back up over the roof of the car. She did her best to add some amount of understanding or approachability to her 'where the fuck are you going, get in the car before that zombie sick person grows a brain' face, but a woman can only do so much.

When he finally turned back around, Waverley nodded, satisfied, and slipped back inside. Her butt had barely touched the seat before the man decided to ask a question, she'd been really trying her darndest to avoid. With a sigh - for the third time - her face popped back up into view, chin jutting out in a huff.

"I'd been trying to avoid that possibility. Zombies usually imply zombie apocalypses, which..." she trailed off, her eyes drifting away from the man. She found herself once again looking at the shambling maybe-zombie still clawing at the Cybertruck's stainless steel. After a moment, she shook her head. "Zombie or not, no point in sticking around. Let's all get in the car and get outta here before it realizes there's not a nice, juicy techbro in there for it to sink its teeth into."

The Dead Don't Die.

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Waverley Watts

Location: Garage
Skills:

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Waverley watched from the passenger seat as Kaitlyn fumbled with her keys, only for them to fall through her fingers and clatter on the asphalt beneath. Waverley didn't need direction, popping open her car door as soon as Kaitlyn got to the ground and started searching. Perfectly gung-ho to give her failed vandalism attempt another go, she pushed herself up, perching her elbows on the roof of Kaitlyn's car. She grabbed a soda from where she'd placed the box on the dashboard and launched it once again at the Cybertruck.

The sound of shattering glass rang out, followed by the car's alarm. Waverley's lips curled into a smug, self-satisfied grin as she pumped a fist into the air. With her mission completed, she lowered her gaze to meet the man now behind Kaitlyn. She pulled out another can, ready to lob it at his head, but shook off her protective instincts when she realized he wasn't sick like the others.

"Shit's kinda going down all over the city, so we're headed to a bar. Hoping to skip town from there. Always room for one more, though." She slapped her palm against the roof of the car to indicate the backseat - light enough to hopefully not draw the attention of the 'stumbledy fellow.' Her smile wavered for a moment, her eyes drifting back up to the Cybertruck. "Unless that's your car, in which case you might want to see if there are any auto repair shops still open."

Primality: Act 1

Hey y’all! Been thinking about joining up with you guys - have a potential character concept in mind who I like, so I’ll likely end up working on her a bit tonight. Is there/will there be a Discord server or anything for OOC discussion?

The Dead Don't Die.

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Waverley Watts

Location: Garage
Skills: Perception

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Waverley followed Kaitlyn into her apartment complex's spacious garage, eyes immediately scanning the scene. As they marched behind the line of parked cars, an annoyingly familiar sight caught her eye: the ugly stainless-steel looming over the both of them, coming together in jagged, unpleasant angles. As the pair passed, Waverley offered up a middle finger to the so-called cybertruck, silently cursing whatever wannabe tech bro had parked it there. She turned her attention back forward to find Kaitlyn fiddling with her keys in front of what Waverley figured must be her car.

"Hey, nice ride," she complimented, eyes gliding along its side. They stopped at the rearview mirror, narrowing at what she saw in the reflection - a half-dead looking figure shambling through the darkness towards them. Whoever they were, they looked the same as the guy they'd encountered back at the school. Waverley backed up a little, in doing so bumping her heel into a twelve-pack of soda, sitting next to the car next to them's closed trunk. Probably forgotten by someone after a grocery run...

"Don't freak out, but we've got one of those sick people coming up on us..." Waverley subtly glanced at the figure, wary to leave her eyes on it for too long. She chewed the inside of her lip, before glancing to the cybertruck they'd past along the way. An idea began to form - a loud one, and one that filled Waverley to no end with satisfaction. She hoisted up the forgotten box of Coke, pulling it open and grabbing a can from inside. She stepped away from Kaitlyn's car, and she aimed for a moment, can held high, before launching it at the overpriced rustbucket. She chucked it as hard as she could at the car - only for it to bounce off the back bumper and into the floor. Waverley was about to grab another can when she noticed the sick guy's attention pulled away from her and instead to the hissing can spraying coke onto the cybertruck's tire. Waverley quickly through open the car door, sliding into the passenger seat, keeping the soda on her lap. "We should go - I don't know how long that soda's gonna keep him distracted." There was an undercurrent of disappointment in Waverley's voice, clearly having wanted to give the owner of that truck a little more than a sticky tire to worry about.