Determination and Devotion moved in tandem, though the former hung back as Devotion stepped close enough to the doll to turn the ground to sludge just as the monster neared the two girls. The doll's weight pushed it further into the sludge and it flailed angrily at the viscous liquid the ground had turned into. To no avail.
Nestled up to its knees in Devotion's sludge, the doll was unable to retaliate as Kusari's rear attack cut a clean swath across the diagonal of its back, spilling the white blood everywhere. Spasming erratically in response to the attack, the doll tried signaling for help from the others, only to receive no response. Then Determination was in front of it, sinking into the sludge as well. The same slash that had obliterated the shadow puppet before now caught on the epaulet of Determination's new armor and the puppet put a fist through the doll's left eye with ease, embedding its arm deep into the doll's head. A sharp swing outwards with that same arm tore the head apart and the doll collapsed to the ground, dead.
Orders completed and target eliminated, the puppets took on a neutral stance, with Determination sliding sharply out of the ground the moment Devotion's power vanished.
Nearby, Hazel had already obliterated her target, clothes covered in the white fluid that spewed from the dead chainsaw doll.
The last doll struggled beneath Sander's grip as he pounded on its reinforced arm joint. Without a leg and unable to pull Sander with the wires on its right hand, the doll was fighting a losing battle.
As the joint cracked and weakened under the assault, the doll's mouth chattered loudly. On the fourth punch, its left arm broke apart at the shoulder, splashing Sander with white blood. The right arm continued pulling on the blood mage, but by now the conclusion of the fight was foregone.
Several meters away, Christmas's broken screams rang out as Lawrence tightened the tourniquet on his leg. Pale from blood loss and dazed from pain, he mumbled nonsense in response to Lawrence and closed his eyes, breaths shallow. The faint pulse of his power in effect drifted through him as the light cuts on Lawrence's hands healed slowly from contact with the healer's blood. Despite that, the glassy mist shimmering around Sander and Christmas did not extend to Lawrence.
Moving further from red team, the eye scorpion, still unable to see but no longer burdened by the effects of Lawrence's magic, spun around in several tight circles, trying to reorient itself. Before long, it shuffled towards the nearest batch of blurry movements, hunting for targets. By now, it had wandered to blue team.
β
The golem let Myla set up another series of cutting lines, showing little reaction as the attacks dissipated against its body. With what remained of her strength, Myla stepped back, keeping an eye on the rim of the pit as she slowly moved Genevieve away first before coming back for Eric. Ethan struggled to his feet as she worked, wobbling as he gathered his magic again. The glow was returning to his body, albeit slowly, but even the inexperienced could tell he was in no condition to fight much longer.
"How the fuck is it still alive?" he gasped as Myla took up position beside him.
"...It might be one of DC's," she muttered back, weakly drawing more neon lines in the air with tired swipes of her arm. Myla had stopped dancing, the thinness of her current lines almost laughably weak in damaging power.
"Fuck. ...I'll just be glad it doesn't seem as smart as the other ones we've seen," Ethan replied, trying to force an orb of light into sputtering existence.
"We can't damage it like this. Without Shane we don't have enough firepower to take on one of DC's. Maybe we should ask--"
"Can't risk the new kids against something we can't figure out. If it's happy standing in the hole for now, we'll take it as a fucking blessing and use the time to recover."
He shouted at the air, even though he was perfectly aware the ankle cuff could pick up his speech at normal volume. "I know you're paying attention, Director Zhang. This is a potential category three mixed in with the one's. You need to withdraw the new kids and send--"
The cuff on Ethan's left ankle beeped loudly in interruption.
"Commander Kardos speaking. Threat level updated. No changes in orders."
"All due respect, sir, are you insane? They can't fight this. Not now!"
"Do not question my authority again, Sonnino. No changes in orders. That is final."
"...Do we at least get backup? Or--wait, don't tell me--the new kids are the backup," Ethan laughed bitterly as he said it.
The cuff beeped into silence as confirmation.
Ethan had to resist the urge to throw an unwavering "Fuck you" at the anklet. Myla spoke up before he could dwell on his frustration for long.
"What's the plan if it acts before the rest of them are finished? I think we've already lost a few of the new kids."
Ethan turned around sharply at that observation, catching sight of several still, bloody bodies in the distance. His jaw clenched until he was afraid he had locked it into position, but he refused to give in to that hot-headed anger that had cost Decker his life and nearly cost them Shane as well. "If it moves," he said slowly, measuring each word, "we tell the new kids to run. Then we throw everything we've got at it and just fucking pray."
Myla's grim face matched Ethan's as the words sank in. If they needed to stall for escape time in their current states, they would likely be the first ones to die.
"...What about Gen and Eric?" she asked quietly.
Ethan looked back at the unconscious forms of his teammates, recalling briefly a moment when there were far more than just the four of them. No one had ever been under any illusions about their fates.
As the custodian worked, the students watched warily, most of them holding their tongues while others whispered to nearby friends. Dissenting opinions weren't welcome at USARILN East when it came to management of less stable students and most were grateful the terrified staff hadn't accidentally called for summary execution of everyone in earshot of the cuffs. The damn things could pick up sounds from as far as 50 meters away for the express purpose of surveillance, though mass execution was a convenient bonus.
Jason had gone back to his desk in the dining hall lobby, pale but composed--the mark of someone who had seen the event enough times to push reactions aside and focus on doing his job first. There would be time enough to submit a report to Director Zhang later. More importantly, he had to maintain the veneer of order in a place bustling with hair-trigger subnaturals.
"Scared shitless" had become more natural than breathing for most of the staff in USARILN East, and they hid this to varying degrees. Jason adjusted his glasses, which had slipped down his nose again from the cold sweat breaking out across his face. He fumbled with the computer terminal attached to the lobby desk, fingers shaking as he double-clicked on the .pdf file for a standard incident report. The commotion had emptied out much of the first floor and the time of night meant there were few people who would be entering the dining hall.
It was just as he settled into the mindless groove of typing up the report that he realized someone had arrived and was standing in front of the desk. The fearful look on his two coworkers' faces meant two things: a subnatural about to lose their shit or the Director herself. Eddie and Gerald were both frozen in the middle of their hushed conversation, eyes fixed on the arrival.
Of course it had to be the Director.
"Mr. Moreau," she nodded at him, her usually immaculate business suit stained by small droplets of blood on her shoulder and upper arm, the specks dark red against the light grey wool. She sounded softer, lacking the usual projection in her voice, and Jason sure as hell wasn't about to ask her what had happened. "Mr. Crowther. Mr. Fraley," she greeted each of his coworkers in turn, who both mumbled back a quick and stammered "Director."
"Uh--Director! Good evening," Jason stood up to greet her, the other two following suit.
"My card, Mr. Moreau," she tapped the card on the marble countertop again, and only then did Jason realize he had tuned out the sound the first time in his frazzled state of mind.
With rapid apologies and harried fumbling, he scanned her through, watching as she caught the bloodstains on the floor and the scent in the air. He half-expected her to produce a gun from somewhere in her suit and shoot him, ridiculous though the thought was.
Instead, her shoulders seemed to slump, ever so slightly.
Without a word to anyone, she ascended the flight of stairs just inside the left set of double glass doors, heading to the third floor, towards the bar in the back. The students in her way quickly made themselves scarce while everyone else froze in place until she was gone, as if they were afraid of drawing even an iota of her attention. For her part, the Director ignored them all equally.
If you follow Zhang, she'll be at the bar counter in the back of the third floor, drinking a Last Word with mezcal while talking to someone on her phone.
The boy jogged up to Gregory, finally noticing that his victim had been scared out of the building. His parka rustled loudly with the crinkling of candy wrappers stashed somewhere deep in the pockets and his cold-flushed face grinned eagerly, the ruddy cheeks complimenting his emerald-green eyes.
"Did I scare you?" he asked, giddy with giggles. In true childish fashion, he didn't wait for an answer, rummaging around in his pockets for a piece of candy that he hadn't already eaten. His brow furrowed with irritation before finally settling with a relieved sigh. He pulled out a round candy the size of a quarter, wrapped in wax paper meticulously decorated with pastel-colored art of a little girl in a blue frock following a pink rabbit.
"Have a candy! They're caramel and super good. You can only get them from the stalls on Wednesdays--and I spend a bunch of my allowance on them. Oh, but Rosa told me not to ever buy it all out because the other students like them, too, so I always just buy 20 each week."
He stopped suddenly with a pout.
"But give me back the wrapper, okay? I like them most."
Collab post with me if Gregory's going to do more than just take the candy and run. But if he wants to assault the smol child and then take the candy and run, you don't need to collab with me. 8D
Christmas quickly reevaluated his relief at being here when the sharp wires cut deep into his left leg, the lacerations wrapping up to mid-thigh. Then the wires tightened. And pulled.
His nerves screamed with him.
The lines slit flesh and muscle apart the harder he struggled.
A fuzzy awareness in the midst of the pain noticed Sander was caught in wires as well, but beyond that his body was acting on pure instinct, hands clawing at the ground for purchase as the doll reeled him in.
When the coiling pressure slicing into his wounds abruptly subsided, his mind hardly processed it.
The mental overload pared his thoughts down to the bare minimum, focused only on breathing, breathing, breathing as he fought the blurriness in his vision that was tempting him to close his eyes.
The shotgun blast hammered into the witch's already wounded torso, spattering white blood across the eye scorpion's back. She wobbled from the shot, screeching weakly before keeling to the side and falling off the scorpion's body with a thump. If she wasn't dead, she was at least incapacitated.
Meanwhile the eye scorpion, glowing with the effects of Lawrence's power, blinked repeatedly, trying to both comprehend what it was feeling and attempting to clean the coffee off its cornea. Emotions were concepts the creatures had never known. What it felt, then, was as indecipherable to its limited intelligence as Dreamcatcher was to the rest of the world. The creature froze in place, green cast dissipating as it parsed through its new sensations of worthlessness, self-loathing, and fear. But the original directive, the one that trumped all else, was simply "distract." Confusion aside, the order remained.
In an attempt to shake off the emotion, the monster thrashed about briefly before beginning to shuffle forward, still somewhat blind. In its tantrum, one of its legs crushed the witch. It didn't seem to notice and likely wouldn't have cared either way.
Just then, a thin gash appeared across the creature's front right leg, cutting down into the finger leg's cuticle and nail bed. Hazel's attack. It reared up in pain, the combination of Lawrence's magic and Hazel's attack now thoroughly hampering its basic decision-making process. Who was the target? Where had the attack come from? In it's blind rage and confusion bolstered by Lawrence's magic, it began to flail wildly at the air, skittering haphazardly across the battlefield. Left to its own devices, the eye scorpion's trajectory would take it straight towards blue team.
As the eye scorpion charged blindly, the doll near Hazel held back, waiting for a better opportunity to strike. Finding one just as Hazel's scream caught its attention, it dashed in, the movement almost acrobatically smooth for something that looked so ungainly. It swung its chainsaw arm vertically at Hazel, the momentum of its sprint preventing it from dodging any potential retaliation, but sending it close to Hazel at breakneck speed.
A short distance away, Emma's command, as firm as it was, left too much room for deviation. Devotion charged at the doll first, running headlong into the doll's casual backhand and dissipating almost instantly. Determination, finally processing the order, followed up with a low dash and punch aimed for the doll's feet. Uncannily fast, the doll jumped aside, swiping at the air with its other hand. Light gleamed off long, narrow blades that extended from its fingertips midswipe, catching Determination across the torso and tearing the shadow puppet apart.
Pirouetting on one leg, it turned to face Emma and Kusari, blades extending from the fingertips of its other hand as well. Noting the lack of counteroffensive, the doll began skipping towards the two of them.
The last doll, targeting Christmas, saw Sander coming. It saw him readying and it saw him moving. But for all its speed in attempting to dodge, Sander was just that much faster and that much stronger. His kick smashed through its leg, breaking off the entire lower portion right at the knee joint and sending the doll toppling forward with a loud chatter of its mouth.
Instead of turning around, thin wires shot from the fingers of its left hand, wrapping around Christmas's leg and slicing gashes into his exposed skin. As the boy screamed, the doll's wires began retracting, pulling him towards itself for the finishing blow. The monster was determined to kill what seemed like the easiest of the nearby targets. It shot wires from its right hand back towards Sander, the thin, sharp lines catching Sander's right arm and leg and cutting through his clothes. The blood mage's damage resistance was heightened now, though, and the wires failed to break skin even as they tightened.
β
He couldn't charge up the attack anymore without completely losing control. With a cry of exertion, Ethan dropped the orb into the small corral of creatures Myla had set up for him.
The blast detonated in a narrow, skyscraper-high pillar of light, blinding almost everyone in the vicinity as it briefly whitened the battlefield.
When it finally faded, the only monster left standing in the 18-meter depression in the ground was the obsidian golem, large portions of its body shattered by the attack. The creature didn't seem fazed by the loss of the entire left section of its torso and head, nor did it seem fazed by the cracks marring its entire body.
Ethan was on all fours, gasping for breath as sweat rolled down his face. Genevieve and Eric were out cold, the younger girl having tapped Eric's power to its limit only for her barrier to nearly shatter in the face of Ethan's attack. She had held on just long enough to ensure the fading vestiges of the attack didn't hurt the others, even as she had screamed in pain from the impact.
Now only Myla remained standing, facing a golem that had survived the strongest Ethan had to offer. Luckily, the creature didn't seem interested in fighting. It stood there in the new pit, unmoving and calm, almost like it was content.
Myla breathed heavily as she struggled to stay on her feet. Could she afford to ignore it and move the others to safety? Could she even hurt it? Whatever it was doing, standing there quietly, she was afraid to turn her back on it. With a pained gasp, she stepped towards the edge of the hole and began casting another cutting field, her arms and legs trembling with exhaustion.
Clark stumbled as he reached the elevators at the end of the hall, his legs weaker than they had been a few days ago. God, he was falling apart, figuratively and literally. He was exempt from the facsimile of education USARILN East boasted, but that was because he had to be hooked up to an IV 95% of the time. His body couldn't digest anything properly anymore. A few years ago, he had been the picture of health. Then the fucking streak had appeared across his temple and suddenly he couldn't eat normally anymore.
A bitter chuckle escaped his lips as he shoved himself into the elevator beside a young nurse who was busy checking her pager. The control panel in the elevator revealed where she was headed. Making sure she wasn't looking, Clark pressed two buttons with one hand, holding it for three seconds before letting go and tapping a third button. No button lit up when he was done, looking for all the world like he had just boarded an elevator with no exit in mind.
The nurse looked at him oddly when she finally noticed that only the button for her floor was lit up despite her certainty that the other occupant had definitely pressed something.
Clark grinned at her, revealing his deformed mouth, reminiscent of a crocodile.
She recoiled instinctively.
"Just headed down," he said, voice smooth and soft. He had worked hard on that voice, realizing that with everything else out of his control, he could at least sound as pleasant as he wanted to look. It would only drive the pain deeper when his vocal cords inevitably failed, too, but for now his voice was untouched by everything else going wrong with his body.
The nurse departed very quickly when the elevator doors opened on the first floor.
Clark continued further down, his input combination one that only the Director, those higher than her, and certain staff members knew. He adjusted the sketchbook he had picked up earlier, making sure it was tucked firmly against his body. It'd be something to look through when he was stuck on the IV drip again.
He could eat one thing, as much as he preferred not to. With a mage at her side who could identify powers, Clark had been unable to pretend otherwise. And the ever-efficient Director had put him to good use.
The elevator doors opened into a reinforced hallway, the strange, transparent material familiar to Clark by now. Hephaestus's work. The crafter mage--arguably one of the most powerful mages in the world given how widespread and effective his mass-produced equipment was. Of course, no one could actually produce any of the material without him, but what he did send out was mysteriously malleable enough to shape using normal methods of metalworking, even if the material itself was nothing at all metallic.
Clark strolled down the magically fortified hallway, noting the unusual presence of far more soldiers than normal. Had to be the emergency. They were afraid Menagerie was after the students contained in the underground chambers.
He had a hard time believing the Precursor known to be a soft-hearted, all-around good guy would turn on the group the guy had claimed was "like family" to him in an old interview. Either insanity came in all shapes and sizes or there was more to this than he knew. Frankly, both options seemed viable at this point.
The sudden movement of the nearby soldiers stopped him in his tracks. They were calling to each other and communicating over their respective devices, jargon and codes flying over his head as he turned fearfully towards the direction of the movement. Someone in a long, olive-green coat and a balaclava was rounding the corner at the far end of the hallway, having entered the underground sector from some other entrance. It wasn't Menagerie, but the monsters drawing themselves forth from thin air certainly resembled Menagerie's power. There was a finesse they lacked, though, like the creator wasn't quite sure how to put things together the way Menagerie could. Another group of bloody creatures stepped in front of the figure, taking a hail of bullets for him with minimal damage. Wasn't hard to guess the fate of the soldiers down that hallway. Clark stepped backward, turning around to run towards the elevator, only for a nearby soldier to grab his shoulder.
Nick, a new guy. He had hung out with Clark during the few moments of free time Clark had before and after a feeding.
"Get inside one of the rooms. The Director just locked down the entrances here so you can't use the elevator back up. You'll be safest inside anyway."
"You're going to stay out here?" Clark whispered, fear cutting his breathing down to shallow gasps.
"Have to," Nick gave him a weak grin. They both knew what Menagerie's creations were capable of. People called him the weakest of the Precursors due to the inherent instability of his creations, but that didn't exactly make them harmless. It just made them relatively weaker than Dreamcatcher's refined creations. The difference wouldn't matter to a regular person.
"You could come inside, too," Clark tried protesting. "To--to make sure the person inside doesn't hurt me or something."
"Sorry, kiddo," Nick scanned his security card against the door, the green light and pneumatic hiss the signal of either salvation or death. "Stay inside."
He shoved Clark through, closing the door quickly after. Without an outside access command, that door would never open. To add to it, the heavily warded room was vibration-proof, and Clark knew he wouldn't be able to feel or hear anything that went on outside. He hated being stuck in the room, but with his power he would have been completely useless in a fight anyway.
The large room held one occupant: a shaggy-haired blonde girl in a straitjacket. She was taller than him and would have made an imposing figure if she wasn't slumped against the wall, drugged beyond belief.
Clark sat down against the wall opposite her. He had eaten from her just the month before, hoping he had made a difference. Didn't look like it. Black lines stretched in erratic patterns across the room, the lines existing in straight lengths punctuated by sharp changes in direction, extending into the walls, far past where Clark could see. Geometric art on a 3-D plane.
He looked away, focusing on the pages of the book in his hands. The sketchbook and its delicately drawn still life images helped him think about something else as he waited for help to come. An exquisite pencil sketch of a glass of water caught his attention for a long time as he marveled at the artist's talent. The soft lines from human hands were far more preferable to the terrifying mass of straight-edged lines he saw on every Aberration. Far more preferable to the explosion of lines that was currently blanketing the cavernous room, emerging from the black X on the girl's throat.
On the open secret that was the "Death and Taxes" forum, the mages there referred to the personal torment the Aberrations had to constantly suffer as a "Stigma." Clark supposed the branching, constellation-like patterns he saw sprouting from the throat marks of all Aberrations was the physical form of that--or maybe just his power's interpretation of the Stigma.
He ran his eyes over the infinitesimally splitting black lines emerging from the girl's X. A map, a tree, a madman's game of connect the dots. He saw something different for each person. Hers looked like a claw, whlie others looked like open fields, or clouds, or parakeets. Something that probably meant something to them. But they all had one thing in common: no matter what shape that impossibly complex constellation of black lines took, they always had a core "noose" of sorts. It was a simple black ribbon, or sash, or thick cord--something and nothing of that nature-- wrapped loosely around the throats of every Aberration, the rest of the line stretching upwards to apparently nowhere. The lengths of that cord varied between Aberrations and Clark had come to the conclusion that the worst ones had the longest cords. If he could see things through television screens, he'd have been morbidly curious how long the cords were for the members of Cat's Cradle.
Even as he feared the sight, Clark followed one of the lines as it stretched in a deranged zigzag towards what became the tip of a clawed finger that bent on too many joints. Logically, with the basis of his human mind, he knew there was no conceivable way to decipher the shape. But his power imparted a miniscule bit of understanding that stretched beyond him. He shuddered as he watched another line draw itself into existence despite the girl's unnatural slumber. This was what the Director needed him for. He couldn't alter the core's length, but he could at least mitigate--to some degree--the demands of the Stigma.
"...Who are you? You're not Mommy," the girl's rasping voice surprised him before terror set in. She wasn't supposed to be awake. None of them were. He'd have to tell the Director that the girl in containment chamber five needed stronger sedatives. If he survived the night.
"...Nidhogg," he whispered the nickname Director Zhang had given him. The monster that gnawed on the roots of the world tree.
The girl's breath hitched in her throat and her body twitched. She was conscious and her Stigma hadn't been sated in months.
Clark dropped the sketchbook and scrambled towards her, his power welling up inside him and bursting into a white, glimmering half-mask of an animal jaw across his mouth, the edges frayed and jagged like it had been torn from the face of something else. He pulled back his hood, revealing short, black hair that tapered slowly down the back of his neck, multiple piercings in his ears, the white Arbiter mark across his right temple, and the full extent of his crocodilian jaw, which had split his face almost to his ear. The white jaw overlayed on his mouth moved with the motions of his own jaw as he pressed his teeth against the black X on the girl's neck.
His power snapped shut across a thick congestion of black lines, shattering them like glass, the resulting chain reaction destroying entire networks of the constellations that stretched far above and behind him.
The girl went still, her breathing calmer as Clark continued tearing at the superficial cravings of her Stigma.
By the time he was done, the branches of her Stigma's call had been pruned down to thin meshes of black lines and Clark could barely read the image she formed.
Without the overwhelming urge of the Stigma waking her, the girl fell under the sway of the drugs again.
Finished, Clark's power dissipated and he collapsed to the side, lying beside her as he threw up repeatedly until he was only dry heaving. He felt full--he felt like he had eaten an entire three-course meal--but his body fell apart a little more every time he fed. He wasn't even sure "falling apart" was the right word. Changing. It was changing, even as his natural instincts kicked in and his body attempted to make use of every biological rejection mechanism to prevent that change.
"I don't want this..." he whispered at the wall, his voice so thin he could barely hear himself.
As if the wall had ears, the door hissed and slid open, a thin layer of blood seeping inside slowly as Director Zhang's heels tracked more through the doorway. She held a black semi-automatic in her hands, the white stag mark on its barrel the signature of the gun's creator. She nearly stepped on Kusari's sketchbook just inside the door, now stained partially red from the blood. The Director stopped just in time, picking up the sketchbook and pausing to look at it, then handing it to someone outside.
"Clark," her voice echoed in the large room, still imposing and steady despite how tired she sounded.
He barely had the breath to wheeze out a sound so she knew he was alive.
Of all the people in the Institute, Director Zhang was the last person he expected to have a motherly touch, but her warm hand on his head was more soothing than anything he could have hoped for in the moment. He had completely forgotten that Director Zhang was stronger than she looked when she picked up his malnourished body with some effort and headed outside, the door closing immediately behind her.
Clark was losing consciousness as the Director handed him off to someone else, but he couldn't help his immense relief when he heard Nick's distorted voice talking somewhere above his head.
An gangly Aberration flipped over a table on the first floor of the dining hall, sending drinks and food scattering across the white marble floor. His brown eyes were wild beneath his unwashed and unkempt shock of black hair as he screamed something unintelligible, arms clawing at his body. Swirling blue lines began drawing themselves across his arms and legs, spreading into the floor as he continued mumbling rapidly to no one in particular. The usual bulk of soldiers on hand to handle situations like that were elsewhere at the moment and only regular staff remained to manage it.
A man in the fearful crowd pointed at the student and shouted, "D-danger level: high! High! Stop him!"
The ankle cuffs of all nearby students blinked briefly with several lights before turning off, the only shining cuff left targeting the unstable Aberration. Were it as simple as a taze, the issue might have resolved itself there, but the cuff only knew how to respond to orders and its priority was not to spare lives. Once the pinhole camera had confirmed which student the staff member was pointing at, it executed the command.
A 300 mA current ran through the student, charring the skin on his ankle and knocking him out as his body convulsed violently. The spell he had been casting dissipated immediately. Without a stop order, it continued tazing him, increasing the current by 100 mA every time. The cuff had already tazed him twice more before someone else in the crowd stammered out a reedy "Threat--uh--threat n-neutralized!"
The cuff beeped twice in acknowledgement before the blinking light on it turned off.
The skin around his ankle had split, bleeding profusely while the rest of his body continued twitching and spasming, blood running from his nose as he practically frothed at the mouth.
Terrified, most of the staff began clearing out while others threw up. None of them moved to help the boy or check if he was still alive.
Jason, coming in from the lobby desk to see what the commotion was about, stopped at the sight of the potentially dead student. He swallowed and walked over, checking for a pulse. At the same time, he pulled out his phone, calling for the paramedics team. His hands shook as he followed procedure and a cold sweat had his rectangular glasses slipping down his nose. While the phone rang, he hastily shoved his glasses back up his face.
"Hey--yeah--need a-need a t-team over at Building D," he took a breath and continued, steadier, "first floor. Got a tazed X. He's--uh--not looking good."
Within moments, a team of paramedics from one of the hospital buildings had arrived to take the Aberration away and Jason ran a hand through his sandy hair, mussing up the slicked-back look in his agitation at the event. Before too long, though, he headed into one of the staff entrances of the dining hall, returning with a janitor who quietly began to clean up both food and blood without comment. The tension on his face coming in indicated the graying, old custodian might have already been briefed on the situation as they walked.
Any students nearby had already moved elsewhere, faces grim and food generally untouched as they watched the janitor work. Some of them poked at their food half-heartedly while others ate with their heads bowed.
It was common knowledge that the student body handled its own issues without much staff intervention, but incidents that happened so close to jumpy regulars usually led to an extreme that even the harshest of the students wouldn't advocate. Problems that involved Aberrations losing control also tended to end in that same manner and no one tried to lighten the mood as the minutes passed. Things that people couldn't control and fear for their lives were factors the kids all knew too well. The Aberration that had been taken away was either permanently injured or dead, barring an ability that could save him from those fates. It wasn't his fault, but it had to be done.
You two can check the scene. If you want. Though no one will be saying much. Continuing to eat/interact with each other is also an option. If your character was nearby, the ankle cuff flashed for them, too, before settling on the correct target.
A pale, spidery hand slammed against Gregory's window, spanning the width of the frame.
Something tall, lanky, and wearing a long, featureless black dress leaned in to look at his room, its height far higher than any human should be, especially since Gregory was on the third floor. When its door-sized face came into view, there was no doubt that it was a monster.
The creature had only a vertical slit across the length of a face framed by long, stringy white hair. That slit soon opened to reveal a mouth like a lamprey, and the thing pressed its face-maw against his window with a guttural moan.
Outside, a young, brown-haired boy in a red parka and dark jeans giggled loudly at the spectacle, a black X across his neck.
I don't know if Gregory would panic at this, but if he does, feel free to autohit the thing (though it won't take damage from any attacks) and break the window in the process. Otherwise, running away works, too.
If you break the window, that thin mist that clings to the walls of both dorm buildings will start slowly repairing the structural damage. The walls can't be completely broken, though. Should something happen and the walls take severe damage, the plasterboard and concrete sheeting would break away to reveal the material beneath--which is the same transparent material the trucks were made out of.
Any students nearby do not seem at all concerned about this.
I will eventually stop reminding people that the deadline has passed, but for now I'll continue noting that anyone who hasn't posted should hold all posts until the update.
Refer to the current countdown timer (which conveniently starts counting up after the deadline passes) to see how long your GMs are taking to pump out updates! 8D
Metal bars across the inside of the window--as if he would have even tried escaping from the second floor. The bars just made it harder for him to plug up the gaps in the window frame; spring allergies.
Grass and dirt rubbed against his face, nicking at his scrapes and cuts. The uncomfortable feeling of prickly leaves and clinging dirt particles shuffled his memories elsewhere even as Christmas knew--knew, knew, knew--that he needed to focus on something more important at the moment. He just couldn't identify what. It was like he was groping in the dark for his own mind.
"Holy shit. Alan wasn't fucking kidding about you, Snowflake. You really don't get angry."
"Guess that means I don't have to worry."
His left hand twitched, sending a sharp spasm of pain up his arm and into his shoulder.
I'm here. I'm here. I'm here.
The puzzle pieces were supposed to match up, but Christmas just shoved it all together into a messy pile. Even a facsimile of repair was fine. It probably all looked the same from a distance anyway.
I'm here. I'm here. I'm here.
Thoughts formed at the pace of molasses and Christmas watched almost absentmindedly as his vision blurred, focused, blurred, focused--he almost got lost in that hypnotic pattern again.
I'm here. I'm here. I'm here.
He balled his left hand into a fist, triggering another shot of pain through his system. Here. Like he had just stumbled onto the section of his mind that made sense.
And everything was hurting and stinging and he was shivering in the cold night air while thin trickles of warm blood dripping into the grass below reminded him that this was a battlefield and that he was going to die like this if he didn't move. It was silly, then, that his mind proceeded to check if his ribbon was still intact. The tail end of the cornflower blue ribbon fluttered against his temple. Still there.
A moment more and Christmas finally recalled the combination of terror and mental frailty that had obliterated what little fortitude he had mustered up. Weight on his body, fear for his life, pain.
And Alvin would be waiting around the corner.
Thinking straight was a skill Christmas had yet to master as he slammed his right hand onto his bandaged wrist. It hurt so much he couldn't even breathe for a few seconds, a long, soundless scream the best he could manage until tears and shuddering noises of agony finally pulled him back to where adrenaline could grab ahold of him.
His wrist throbbed and the spreading pain felt like he had set his entire arm on fire. This was no triumphant return to awareness. Just a weak, wounded crawl. But pain-addled and here was always better than being there.
Christmas finally rolled onto his back, just in time to catch a blur of movement as Sander dashed towards one of the dolls that had made its way closer to the two of them.
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