Stairdweller

ZONES: -system offline-

Bobby and Nora

@ScarlettWaters16 @Twisted Fate

Bobby came to feeling almost exactly like he had gone out drinking, failed to pick up, and came home to pass out in his chair. Churning unease in his stomach, and an ache behind his eyes like the physical sensation of a mosquito's whine. Nearby, most of the other Zoners were already up and moving, while Henry, Miriam and a guy he didn't know were just waking up now, having left the Zone the same time he did. A few of the others looked paler and less steady on their feet than Bobby felt. Maybe they'd had rougher exits from the Red City than he did; or then again, since a lot of them were kids, maybe the weren't as practised at conquering a hangover as he was.

Bobby stood, stretched extensively, and took a bottle of water when it was offered to him. He drank conservatively, not sure how his stomach would handle it, and made his way out of the dream dungeon when he was dismissed with the others. The nausea was passing and Bobby was actually fairly hungry - but he felt like he ought to make sure his team-mates from the City were okay, given that one had vanished altogether and the other had voluntarily clocked out with a serious looking leg wound. He knew he could recognise Jazz, as he'd met her earlier that morning in the cafeteria. He had to hope that Jared looked relatively similar to his Nexus form - maybe a blonde, blue-eyed guy? Probably not transparent. He eventually picked Jazz out from the crowd, and approached her.

"Hey there," he said, patting her on the shoulder. "Thanks for your help with Heavy back there." He smiled, quite charmingly now that he didn't have horns and a mouth full of giant chompers. "Feelin' better now?" After a moment, he added, "Any idea who Twinkle is out here?"

---

@Jabking
Nora, meanwhile, had no particular desire to spend time bonding with her fellow Zoners - she'd left the subterranean chamber as soon as it seemed to be acceptable for her to do so. Half-empty bottle of water still in hand, the blonde made her way back up the various stairs to the cafeteria. There were a fair number of people milling around up here - most of the non-volunteers from this morning seemed to be cluttering up the place, and a few of her peers from below had made it up ahead of her by using the elevators. She milled about uncertainly before filling a small plate with unattended sandwich meat and sitting down to eat it one piece at a time, rolling it into little cylinders before popping each one into her mouth.

When she became bored of this, she abandoned the plate of miscellaneous salamis and looked around for something to interest her. A few tables over, there was a young man with shaggy dark hair writing or drawing in a notebook - which was somewhat peculiar, since as far as she knew they had all been abducted in the night in their jim-jams. Nora herself was fortunate to have kept her lucky bone, which had been in the breast pocket of her pyjama shirt. It was now safely tucked away in the pocket of her scrubs pants, where she could fiddle with it whenever she wanted.

Nora approached the man with the notebook, bending her tall form to look over his shoulder at what he was drawing. Was that a picture of the Ram? With her usual disregard for personal space, she spoke from only a few inches away from him, one hand on the back of his chair, the other in her pocket. "Which one are you?" She knew he wasn't one of the group of three that had tracked the Ram-helmeted Aggressor, but she hadn't paid much attention to the Zoners who must have gone on the other mission. "I don't recognise you from the brutal defeat."

Candlewick [CLOSED]

*excited*
Yay, an upcoming mod post!

Also, have I mentioned lately that I am living under your staircase?

ZONES: -system offline-

Next time Nora or Bobby are in Zone 3, he'll be on the prowl for some succulent asses.

@SepticGentleman

There's nothing I don't love about that sentence.

ZONES: -system offline-

E.A. "Bobby" Smith

@ScarlettWaters16

Bobby returned the side-hug, patting Jazz companionably on the opposite shoulder. "Nice teamwork," he said with an unnecessarily toothy grin. The danger seemed to have passed, at least in their immediate surroundings. There was still the sound of fighting from around the corner of the building, but he felt like the three of them - Bobby, Jazz and Jared - had earned a break.

"Uh, Bobby? Where's Jared?" Bobby turned to look at the place where he had left the collapsed Jared, and spotted the now abandoned gun lying in a small pile of dirt.

"What if he was killed in this realm?! Does he die in real life too?! What if we just killed a man?!" Jazz appeared to be panicking. Bobby stepped back to her and patted her somewhat uncomfortably on the shoulder. He didn't want to seem too handsy, because A) Jazz was a giant murder-bird and B) she was way too young for him. Like, criminally too young.

"Nah, Twinkle's fine," Bobby reassured. "None of us are really here, remember? We're still sittin' back in that programmer's basement. He probably just got pulled out 'cause there's no use in him flopping around on the sidewalk over here." He bent down to pick up the abandoned gun, sliding out the magazine. It was completely empty - Jared had gone out shooting, at least. He showed the empty magazine to Jazz in hopes that it would make her feel a bit better.

Evidently, it didn't work. Jazz collapsed in an ungainly sprawl, her bleeding leg folding like a hide-a-bed. "I want to go home," she whimpered.

"Yeah, that sounds good," Bobby agreed, kneeling beside her. He raised his voice. "Eli?" he asked, "You hear that? Jazz here's down for the count, wanna wake her up?"

ZONES: -system offline-

Smiley never gets less creepy. *turns off signatures*

Diving into The Abyss - A Shattered World

Captain Vossef is just the kind of guy who would keep the cat but kick off the kid.

ZONES: -system offline-

Lenora Puglisevic

@Horrid@GingerBoi123@SepticGentleman

Nora lurched to her feet, both hands clawing at her chest, drawing in a harsh, gasping breath. She knew she was dead. She could remember with literally heart-stopping clarity the sensation of her sternum flexing inward past its breaking point, and sharp bone piercing her lungs as her ribs splintered. She knew with absolute certainty that this had happened. She had to be dead. She was mortally wounded. She could feel it, still. And yet at the same time, her brain was receiving signals from her limbs that she was whole, and healthy, and not in any immediate peril. The two realities warred in her mind as Nora struggled to breathe, fighting to convince herself that her ribs weren't broken and she could inhale without searing agony ripping through her thoracic cavity.

A wave of intense dizziness washed over her. Her vision narrowed to a silver-edged tunnel, her heartbeat drumming in her ears. Cold sweat beaded up on her skin and she was concerned for a moment that she was either going to vomit or crap her pants, possibly both. Fortunately, neither happened. The blonde sank to a half-kneeling crouch, both palms flat on the floor to keep her from collapsing completely, but slowly the attack - whatever it had been - passed, and she became aware of the Nexus room around her again. Huge, hot tears were running down her cheeks. Malcolm and Ursula didn't look any better - one was mopping up the evidence of his digestive mishap, while the other was retreating to a corner to presumably shed some superfluous alveoli.

"That was-" she began, panting, "that-" she sat down on the ground, legs sprawled out in front of her. "I didn't like that," she finally finished. She took another couple of breaths, then clumsily tapped her nose. "But I think I can track him by smell now. Does that help? I want that to be helpful."

---

E.A. Bobby Smith

@ScarlettWaters16@Twisted Fate

Jared didn't look so good. In fact, Jared didn't look good at all, now that his death-tornado had expended itself and he was collapsing on the ground. Bobby would have really liked to stay and defend his fallen ally, but Jazz was already beginning the assault on the larger, mini-gun armed Aggressor, and was probably in quite a bit more peril than Jared was at the moment.

"Here," he said, pressing his stolen gun into Jared's burned, nearly-unconscious hand. "So you can shoot anyone who gets near. Uh, if you're, you know, still alive." He smiled weakly, his enormous teeth pulling the expression into a slightly awful grimace.

Jazz was taunting the Aggressor and swooping through the air, dodging the stream of bullets from the revolving barrels of the Aggressor's gun. Bobby grabbed one of the sticks-with-nails from the fist pair of attackers and leapt into the fray. The aggressor was a few inches taller than him, but had more human-like proportions than gangle-legged Bobby. He didn't anticipate that being a serious problem. While his enemy was looking up, shooting at the be-winged and be-taloned aerial assaulter, Bobby swung his improvised hakapik at his foe's head. He spun with the strike, putting the torque from his torso into the blow. The Aggressor leaned away and under the blow, saving himself from a braining. At the same time, however, Bobby aimed a powerful cloven-hoofed kick at his nearest hand, the one supporting the barrel of the gun. The were's kick broke bones in the Aggressor's wrist, and the minigun slipped out of his spasming hand, swinging down to point at the ground where a spray of bullets shattered the pavement and sent up a cloud of stinging shards.

Diving into The Abyss - A Shattered World

All ships should have cats. Isn't that a thing?

ZONES: -system offline-

E.A. Bobby Smith

@Twisted Fate @ScarlettWaters16

Having the dead weight of the dead Aggressor off his arm was a huge relief. Alright, no more eye gouges, he thought ruefully. "Thanks!" he shouted to the air-elemental, who was currently in the process of lifting the other attacker into the air, before dropping him onto the pavement. Bobby gave the enemy's neck a solid stomping as Jared landed. He could see that his fighting partner looked pretty singed from the encounter with the flaming Aggressor, but he couldn't think of any way to offer assistance.

"Sorry 'bout that," he said sheepishly, "From now on, you oughtta skip any more hand to hand. Blowin' things around is good, thou-" he was interrupted by the arrival of the avian, who introduced herself as Jazz and proceeded to battle a new wave of advancing, gun toting aggressors on their behalf. Which was kind of funny, as Bobby had been planning to save her.

She got surrounded awfully quickly, going down with a knife-wound to one leg. Bobby dived back into the action, this time sticking to throat-slashing claw strikes and full-power hoof kicks that snapped bones and occasionally slashed through soft flesh. They were able to take down enough of the enemy that both sides temporarily fell back - Bobby guiding Jazz back behind the pile of overturned benches and the Aggressors retreating behind a line of k-rails to open fire.

He eyed the deep wound on her leg, the blood-soaked feathers sticking damply to it, and started ripping clothing off one of the nearby dead aggressors. In the process, he revealed a nice looking hand gun in a shoulder holster and grabbed it for later use. He turned back to Jazz, holding up handfuls of ripped cloth. "It's been a few years since my last first aid refresher, but I oughtta try to bandage that."

Candlewick [CLOSED]

Observatory

Zosime lacked the frame of reference to understand that the brass-ball device was a model of the solar system - in Zosime's world, the universe was a series of spheres with the Earth another globe at its centre. But... made of aeres? Air? She shook her head. Innocent had an unusual accent, not at all like her Roman tutors. He must have meant the metal, brass. She approached cautiously, and reached out her right hand to touch the one different globe, the one in the third orbit with the smaller sphere circling it. Her finger had just made contact when the ship gave a significant lurch, and the Egyptian stumbled away, tripping over the fringe on her ankle-length chiton and falling to her hands and knees. More of the little leaves and shoots snapped off under her hands, releasing a sweet scent that Zosime had never encountered before, but found pleasant.

"Potens Sekhmet, quid istum accidit?" Mighty Sekhmet, what was that? She rose unsteadily, more aware than ever of the rocking of the room and the ominous creaking of the floor and walls. Across the room, Christopher appeared to be fighting with the bookshelf, and Zosime watched in interest as the rectangular objects on the shelves turned out to be many thin sheets of incredibly fine papyrus cosseted between layers of stiff leather. She'd never seen anything like them. Were they like scrolls, filled with knowledge? What a strange way to store pages!

Her lurch across the room had placed her closer to the pillar. She wanted to lean on it, but her dignity forced her to remain ramrod straight and upright. "Fortasse, nolite itaque amittere obiecta?" Maybe you shouldn't be throwing things? she directed at Christopher.

The scribe turned back to the pillar. She could hear voices from below, and knew that meant there were other people around. But at the moment, she had no idea if they were friend or foe, captor or fellow prisoner. So she decided to deal with them, whoever they might be, later.

The pillar looked like it had been carved, once; she was very familiar with carvings, though she didn't work with stone herself. It looked like the bark had grown over the carved surface like sea weeds over sunken statues. She wondered if the carvings would be clearer if she could somehow remove the bark, but the bald woman had no tool with which to attempt such a feat.

Circling the pillar, she eventually came to the recessed hand-print. Unable to resist her curiosity, Zosime raised her left hand, her dominant hand, the one that she had touched the leaves when he first awoke, and pressed it against the matching marking on the pillar.