by the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes

[bythe_books]

Who: Sam Tyler, Stephanie Brown
What: Somebody has a hero complex. AND THAT SOMEBODY IS SAM TYLER.
Where: Somewhere between Mog Hill and Griss Twist
When: Shortly after Sam's arrival (which occurred at "some indeterminate time" so as to not clash with other events).
Notes: This is what he's encountering.
Warnings: Violence, probably.

This-- all of this?-- this is bullshit. He's dreaming. He's in a coma-within-a-coma. It's the drugs, that's what he tells himself. Just drugs messing with his entire subconscious, warping everything to this... this fantasy. People over the... radio or mobile or whatever it is... They can't be real. Wherever he is, it isn't like 1973. Time travel, for now, is definitely an explanation that's off the table.

A coma. That's all this is. His mind trying to keep him busy while the doctors try to wake him up.

He's looking over Burnworth's pamphlet again and again and again, losing count of how many times his eyes have scanned over the words until they're nothing but gibberish. He's trying to make sense of this, mostly, and a part of him wonders: will he ever see Annie again?

Sam's tense, his entire body wound up tight by the time a member of the staff comes by to open up the door. It's a woman, older, one who takes his barked out "Where am I?"s and "What the hell is going on here?"s with the resigned irritation of somebody who hears this sort of thing all the time.

He ignores her suggestion to stay inside. Fists clenching and unclenching, as though he expects to wake up each time his short nails press against his palms, Sam storms outside. This city-- Baedal?-- it looks older than he expected. Older and deserted. There's not a sign of life anywhere outside the inn. Sam looks up at the darkened sky, half-expecting a dragon from the way people made things sound.

Nope. Nothing flying about in the air. (Not right now, anyway.)

He picks a direction and he starts. It's like he's trying to find the end of the world again. It didn't work so well with 1973, but then, he considers, there were other reasons to stay there. Crimes to solve, Annie, his parents... None of that's here-- not to his knowledge, at any rate.

He has to escape this place if he ever wants to wake up from his coma.

Ten minutes pass. Fifteen. No people, and no flying death robots or monsters, but he has to give the voices in his mobile this: the city does looks like an abandoned war zone. Like maybe what they talked about could have been true, was true at some time.

He walks another five minutes before he hears it. This... sobbing. At first, he thinks it's a child, but as he follows the noise, he realises it's not. It's... a woman? As he approaches, all he can hear is his shoes on the cobblestone and this crying. It's relentless, a mourning wail, like she'd just experienced a deep loss.

Sam comes to a narrow alleyway, and he squints to get a look. There's a... dark blur of something further in, but he can't quite make it out. The sobbing's louder, however. He takes a few steps closer, holding out his communicator to shine a dim light on the figure.

Yes, a woman. Huddled over on the ground, curled up in her sadness as she continues to sob at nobody in particular. Her clothes are torn, from what he can tell. He resists the urge to quicken his pace-- he doesn't want to startle her too badly.

"Miss?" he says cautiously, his voice soft, losing the harshness he'd used when talking to the others on the Network. "Hey. It's-- you're gonna be all right. I'm a police--"

The dim light of the communicator shines on her more directly now-- there's a flash of red as it shines on her face, and just like that, the sobbing stops and the screaming begins. Impossibly loud, inhuman, nothing but rage in the woman's voice as she stands, shrieking, and launches herself at him.

"Oh-- Shit!"

Well. Time to run.

Comments

[controlledvariable]

Steph hears the sobbing too, but she's coming from the other direction, and she's up on the rooftop, which gives her a good view of the scene below as it unfolds. A quiet, terrified part of her had wondered if it was Dementor's lurking around, if they were causing the woman to cry like that, and she's almost relieved that it turns out to be some creepy zombie woman who's trying to eat the poor man who just approached.

That might be a bit terrible of Steph, but the strange relief doesn't stop her from acting. As soon as the woman screams, Steph has her grapple gun out, and she fires it across the building she's on to one that's just in front of Sam, hitting the exact right spot so she won't go smash against a wall when she jumps down. Which is exactly what she does; before the woman can get close to Sam, Steph comes swooping down, her cape fluttering behind her and her free arm wrapping tight around Sam's waist.

"Don't panic!" She says firmly, voice full of authority as the momentum from the swing takes them out of the alley and a fair distance away from the woman -- there wasn't the right opportunity to take them back up to a roof. The landing is fairly undignified, but Steph moves so she takes the brunt of it, her uniform helping absorb the impact. They've got maybe two minutes before the woman catches up to them.

I READ VERY WELL

[bythe_books]

Whatever Sam expects, it's not this. In all his years as a police officer, he can say, with certainty, that he's never been physically hauled off by a masked stranger in a cape before. This is new. This... may beat the time travel in terms of weirdness.

Chased by some kind of... violent monster woman (that brief glimpse he got of her hands-- those claws... She wasn't human. Couldn't be.) and then rescued by a girl in a cape.

To his credit, though, Sam doesn't panic. He got all of that out of his system back at the inn.

Sam lands with a grunt, but although he's shaken, he's up on his feet as quickly as possibly. New as he is to the city, he's been in enough tense situations to know that they don't have time to dawdle. He hurries to offer the girl a hand, even if she doesn't need it.

"Thanks, uh. For the lift. You okay?" he asks quickly, throwing a glance over his shoulder to search for the woman. He can hear her shrieking, but he doesn't see her just yet. Still, that's enough of a signal to keep moving.

"C'mon." He sprints across the street towards a nearby building, hoping to god the door's unlocked.

[controlledvariable]

"You're welcome," her voice is wry as she picks herself up - she's fine without the help - because it's nice when people say thank you and she doesn't hear it enough, "I'm fine, you're not the first cop I've had to carry around." The best part is that this is totally true, Batgirl has the best fun.

She follows without hesitation, although when they get to the door, she shakes her head, "I've gotta kill that thing." Whatever it is. She doesn't even know if it can be killed, but she'll try, and running ino a building is kind of counterproductive, in her opinion.

[bythe_books]

Sam gives the door a quick try-- locked, of course. He pounds a fist against the door once, in frustration, and faces the vigilante. "Kill it? D'you even know what it-- what that thing's capable of?" Because he sure as hell doesn't. Right now, the shrieking woman's a completely unknown variable. Maybe she really is a monster, or maybe she could be... sick, for all he knows. The thought turns his stomach.

Of course, Sam might feel a lot less conflicted once he realizes just how much of a danger the creature poses to innocent people.

[controlledvariable]

"No fucking clue," she replies with a grin that's more just a show of teeth than anything with any joy behind it, "But if I don't try, it's going to get someone else, and I'm not standing around and lettting that happen."

You're a cop she thinks, almost a little angry at him for wanting to get away. She knows it's not fair; he's brand new and he came in at the worst possible time, not to mention he's just a baseline human as far as she knows, and without the training that Steph has.

[bythe_books]

He doesn't like the idea of just up and killing the creature. The way she resembles a human being, it makes it difficult for him to get on board. Subduing her, trying to figure out if there's anything else they can do to stop her, that sits more right with him. Sam's rarely the type to go in guns blazing-- and it doesn't help that he actually has no gun to go 'blazing' with right now.

Still, he doesn't want to leave the masked vigilante to face the monstrous woman alone. If anything happens to her, he won't forgive himself. Sam looks around, scanning the area for anything he can use to keep the monster at bay.

"You wouldn't happen to have an extra gun on you, right?" he asks wryly. He's not exactly expecting a 'yes,' but it doesn't hurt to ask. It's that or pick up a piece of wood and ask if she's got a light.

What? He's seen enough movies to know that most monsters hate fire.

[controlledvariable]

Over the past two weeks Steph has shut down the part of her brain that asks questions like that, because pausing to wonder if they can help the monster usually ends up in someone else dying. She'll feel bad about it later, but that's later, and now is time to get things done.

She hands the gun over to Sam, glad he'll be backing her up, "It's got a hell of a kick, so brace yourself when you shoot. And I want it back when we're done." This is potentially a bad idea, but she figures she can beat him up too, if he tries to run off with her gun. She has very few batarangs left, so she just extends her staff. And then raises an eyebrow at Sam.

"Ready?"

[bythe_books]

Sam looks over the gun. It's different from what he's used to, looks kind of weird and... sci-fi. But he'll take what he can get, and as long as it does what it's supposed to when he aims and fires, then he has no problems. He can't afford to be picky right now.

"As I'll ever be," he murmurs, giving her a resolute nod. Sam's not backing down now that he's committed to this. He readies the gun, keeping a firm grip on it as the screaming-- she's still screaming-- draws nearer. Looks like their time is up. Not knowing how far the range is on this gun, he's planning on waiting until she gets within a reasonable distance before he fires.

[controlledvariable]

"And don't shoot me," Steph adds as the witch gets close. The screaming is really fucking offputting, and Steph wishes she had her communication device in her ears, because she can change them to work as noise cancelling devices, but she hadn't bothered with them, considering she can't actually get communication in any way that isn't her CiD.

She'll just have to ignore it, which is what she does as she runs at the wtich. When she's in range of the claws, Steph turns the run into a slide, holding out her staff to trip up the witch. As soon as the witch goes down, Steph jumps back up with practiced ease, swinging her staff like a bat, aimed at the witches head.