multiversallogs | plot } the creatures descend.

plot } the creatures descend.

Who: Everyone!
What: Creatures descend!
Where: All across the city, although attacks will be most fervent at its heart.
When: Friday/Veerdi evening and into the week.
Notes: Slow and back-tagging is, as always, permitted. If you are confused, look at these two posts for more information.
Warnings: Violence, creepiness, swearing knowing these characters.

On Veerdi, the presence of the creatures reaches a fever pitch. Something has provoked them into launching an all-out assault, though it is one that begins slowly. The pipe-crawlers, generally harmless though they may be, are seen across homes in Baedal, sneaking up through the pipes and into bathtub drains or sinks. They come by the dozens, and their keening makes most homeowners nauseated--but it's their appearance that leads to a number of distressed Network calls.

This is just the distraction for the rest.

The call of the crawlers draws in the armored, sickly creatures with the tiny primates carried inside of it. They are inelegantly lumbering, but much faster than one might expect, and certainly hostile. They trudge across the city, barreling over anyone who gets in their path and leaving them half-crushed in the street. They're certainly unsettling in their obvious unhealthiness, and the disease-ridden animals they carry are downright vicious, especially once they escape (messily, bloodily) from their fleshy cage.

It's the birds that are the worst, though; the cleverest, and the cruelest.

These strange black birds are resistant to typical attacks and flying in large groups. They descend on pedestrians, picking at their eyes and faces, ready to rapidly tear flesh from bone until there's nothing left but skeletal remains. They fly out of range when they can, only to divebomb anyone who might think they've escaped.

Threaded | Flat

The attacks begin to reach crescendo when Ilde is downriver; she spends the majority of her time in the water right now and intends to spend a solid amount of it there in the future, and as such she's making a significant effort to make herself known to the Gross Tar and the other creatures of it. (Partly to dissuade them from any foolish attempts on the territory in it that she's already marking out, partly because this is almost like the community she once pointed out she didn't have - it's interesting, appealing. A part of her is wary of a feeling that might begin tying her to a place she can't afford to stay.)

She watches from where she's sitting on the bank, at first, but she won't avoid attracting notice forever, and she slides back into the river (her tail forms and she pushes herself deep underwater) before she can do too much tempting of fate, kukri knife clenched in one hand as she begins to swim north toward Raven's Gate. She has things there to protect, and she'll need to catch Sonja, maybe some of those she knows here.

Periodically, she surfaces to see what the situation is above the water- the primates that wander nearest to her vantage point soon regret it.

When the attacks began (seriously began, that is), Mina was actually on her way to the Hellsing building. She wanted to discuss recent events with Integra. Strike that. Sir Integra. Who was Mina to cast aspersions about a woman taking on the title of a man? After all, she had been Mark for a number of years. She sometimes still was.

The creatures waylaid her plans.

Almost immediately, Mina heard screaming. It was just like the American Civil War again. And she knew there were going to be some serious injuries soon. Dropping her latest set of shopping bags, Mina slit her wrist with her fingernail, chanting softly to herself. She held up her palm, turning in a wide circle. Cruac was one of the few vampire magics with which she excelled and as she turned, a topiary wall of hawthorn formed around her, shaped in a circle, with a narrow passage opening the center up to the street. It wasn't much. It certainly wasn't impenetrable, but it would serve. Cutting her wrist again, she bolstered the hedge with a second spell, causing curling thorns to grow out of it in a thousand different directions.

Dipping her fingers into the remaining blood on her arm, Mina knelt down on the street, spelling out the words 'First Aid.' As an afterthought, she drew a cross as well.

She collected her shopping bags, tossing them against one of the hawthorn walls, all except for the smallest bag, which contained a few items that would serve as makeshift medical supplies. Mina pursed her lips, listening to the sounds on the other side of the hedge. What bothered her the most was her all-too-calm reaction to the sudden deluge. She was getting old, getting jaded.

With a sigh, she shook her head, taking out her CiD. This was an opportunity, she decided. An opportunity to prove her mettle.

Was it wrong that she viewed an attack by monsters in such a positive light?

Max is wandering the streets of the city when the swarms begin, and has no reason to believe that anything is out of the ordinary (aside from everything, as she's only just arrived). Evening's just begun, and she's shrugged on a jacket, mostly out of habit, since the climate in Baedal is considerably warmer than the one in Seattle. For the first hour or so, her walk goes mostly undisturbed, and she makes her observances of the places and the citizens who walk the streets without incident.

Then the pipe crawlers start to make their move.

She's stopped at the corner of one of the streets, directly in front of a nondescript building, when she spots something - a nasty, slimy, crawling thing - crawling across her path. It looks harmless enough, but something about it reminds her of Manticore's creations, of the nomlies she let out. She focuses closer, notices the strange arms, but before she can make much more out, she is suddenly and violently sick to her stomach, badly enough that she begins to pitch forward as her knees buckle and she tries to keep bile from rising in the back of her throat.

"What the fuck," she mutters, reaching out and grabbing at the wall to stay upright. She manages to, but while the nausea ebbs a bit, it doesn't go away, and she wonders what the hell is going on.

Edited 2011-05-29 07:55 (UTC)

Nobody in this city is particularly close to Boromir, which is why no one has realised that the man has been in a tremendous amount of shock since his arrival. He hasn't interacted with anyone unless out of common courtesy, determined that he should come to terms with his death and abduction by himself.

The stern faced man of Gondor is a confident yet unapproachable figure to those who might have seen him about town. He eats and sleeps at the Valhalla Inn. He explores the city calmly; watchful and deep in thought.

(And sorry Baedel, but you are complete arse compared to Minas Tirith, in his very biased opinion.)

The mounting number of crows have been cause for concern and he can't help but think crebain, ducking into buildings and alleyways whenever he sees them in large numbers.

The pipe-crawlers had also been troubling him. After squishing one earlier, he was greatly disturbed when inspecting its appendages. Still, no one else seemed to be too alarmed beyond their initial disgust. And as more of them appear, the more Boromir starts to worry. Where are the guards of this city? Why aren't they protecting their people?

He keeps looking at the CiD, contemplating what to do, who to talk to, when there is a loud crash further up the street. A stalker has appeared, and crushed into a group of pedestrians. He swings into action, sword at the ready, ducking, swerving and finally beheading.

As he rolls it over for inspection, the first gruesome little primate bursts out, and he jumps back. It springs away in the opposite direction of him and attacks someone nearby. Then another, and another. They are quick, vicious, and he can't keep up.

"Get off the street! Run, you fools!" he yells to anyone willing to listen, and battles on.

Lex is usually highly observant, but since arriving to Baedal he's had a bit of tunnel vision. The gradual changes of the city go unnoticed as he buries himself in his work both personally and professionally, striving to make a name for himself as fast as he can at the office and then coming home to work on building renovations. It's all a long process but one he knows he'll be satisfied with later.

The other downside to busying himself in such a way is that Lex hadn't allowed himself much time to spend with his friend from back home. He is treating Clark to a meal at a restaurant with an outside patio when the swarms of birds begin. He dives under the table for cover and pulls out his knife instinctively, doing what he can to hack at the birds but he knows it's a poor defense for their current situation.

"We're not far from where I live," he calls to Clark over the swarm, "at the soonest opening we need to make a break for it."

Well, this is familiar.

In some contexts, these are the sort of creatures Sonja would enjoy--even command. Since they've been tampered with (like her), she's not so inclined to keep them around, especially when they attack her, though she's thus far had better luck than some with going down the streets. Theoretically, she supposes, she could summon the full force of her presence and bypass them entirely.

But that wouldn't be as fun.

She has her bow for the flying creatures, her sword for anything low-hanging--but she's observed that the birds respond best (or at least die easiest by) to magic. Since she's not so keen on outing herself to the general population, she's trying to work either with Ilde, who knows, or by herself, but run-ins are inevitable. She nets three of the birds with crushing telekinetic influence, invisible, but pinning them to the ground. One of them breaks free from the side and makes a desperate lunge toward the sky, one of its fuzzy barely-real wings sticking out at an angle, the other dribbling strange pearlescent black beads.

Interesting. She pauses in her assault to advance and examine this more closely, toeing her booted foot at one of the dying birds.

Dean huddles in a doorway, eyes up, tracking the movements of the crows. Every so often a few try to divebomb him, or one of the other entrances. "Everyone keep back!" he calls over his shoulder, to the people gathered inside. "They can't get you if you stay away from the doors!"

...He hopes. So far, however, so good.

But the flock of crows is growing darker. He knows that means they're growing in number. He's held them off with a few warning shots from his handgun but something seems to have shifted in the way they're circling the station. Dean has the decided sense they're plotting.

A knot of them slowly breaks off from the rest of the group. Dean swiftly switches out for his sawed-off shotgun and blasts them as they divebomb as one, trying to get in the door. He gets a few and the rest scatter, but he knows it's just a matter of time before they try again.

Integra's on her way. Maybe between the two of them they can make a bigger dent in these crows, get these people to better shelter.

The front doors fly open and Rachel, who has been keeping watch through a window, calls out to someone trying to dodge some of the crows. "Come on," she urges, "in here, quickly!"

The poor man's a bit overwhelmed. Rachel hesitates in the doorway for a moment and then she ducks out, closing the door behind herself, grabbing a handful of the man's coat. "It's okay, come on."

They battle their way back to the entrance, Rachel using her grasp on the man's clothing to haul him to safety. She opens the door and stuffs him through. She has to fend off one last crow; she realizes, once she's slammed the doors against it, that it's gouged her arm pretty good with its claws. That's all though--otherwise she's fine.

The man seems reasonably okay. He can walk. "There's first aid back that way, go, have them check you out." She watches him go and she resumes her watch through the window.

She knows nothing about first aid or fighting. She figures this is the way she can best be useful. She watches the crows but from time to time her attention is pulled away by movement and sounds within the inn itself.

If anyone's taking misdirected glee in the presence of these creatures, it's Alucard. It shows plain on his features - or at least, what of them can be glimpsed as he moves through the streets of Brock Marsh. The vampire himself is hardly visible between his own rapid movements and the descent of what crows he's tempted into attacking him. The growing assault is probably valid cause for alarm - in these numbers, the birds would have no trouble maiming a man and picking his skeleton clean.

Fortunately, Alucard is a different case. It isn't obvious at first glance, that he has a plan - one that's working quite well, considering the circumstances. Anyone who pauses to pay attention for more than a moment will be able to tell that the monster under assault is at little personal risk.

Guttural, almost otherworldly sounds punctuate the crows' neverending shrieks. There are glimpses, however brief, of glowing, red eyes - more than just two, far more, but what they belong to is difficult to discern under cover of darkness and the avians alike. The occasional flash of yellow-white teeth shows through the blackness, and careful observation will reveal something that makes the crows appear downright cuddly.

What used to be Alucard's arm has shed its form, taking on one of sheer darkness, black dotted with red that extends far further than anyone should be able to reach. There isn't any appendage to be seen. Instead, it's the head of a giant dog - one that looks as if it might be a descendent of Cerberus itself - made visible with each successive gnash of fangs, if only briefly before the crows again block it from view. The sound of the creature's teeth interlocking is paired with a sickening crunch, and almost immediately, what's happening is wholly evident.

He's eating them.

This was not the weirdest thing Mabel had ever taken a baseball bat to, or even the scariest, but it was not fucking easy.

The Brock Marsh street she had been walking down exploded with claws and feathers, to the horror of her and everyone else. She'd dragged two boys into the closest shop - a bookstore with the world's most unfortunately large windows - and had them and the shopkeeper brace shelving against those windows as much as they could. The birds furled against the windows like an angry cloud; at the sight of the first crack, Mabel had banished the other three to the windowless thick door of the storeroom in the back. She'd barricade them in, if she had to.

The windows were tougher than they looked. The small window on the front door was another story, those black furious balls trying to squeeze through the break in it all at once. They manage it one by one, only to be bashed into submission by Mabel wielding the shopkeeper's bat. The cracks in the larger windows were getting bigger and the crows weren't going down without a fight.

Her arms are starting to bleed.

On horseback, Integra has taken to skirting the Brock Marsh district, occasionally darting in to kill something or another, sometimes directing fleeing civilians up towards Raven's Gate - no use trying to fight bridges over the river, now. At least the birds have decided she's too much of a hassle, between her sharp-shooting and the enchantment-stitched explosive flares she's carrying with her, though every so often she still sees one, or a pair, watching her from the eave of some building.

The rest of the plague isn't so easily deterred. More than once she passes a gang of monkeys, bodies soaked in blood and gore, still hopping and chewing in the fresh remains of a corpse. While perhaps disturbing, it seems hardly evil, but panicked, over-excited and out of control. Typical wild animals. One gets too close, hissing in an attempt to protect its territory - Integra's horse half-startles at first, but it becomes clear that it's only out of irritation, because it stomps on it in the next moment, crushing it to death instantly. The rest of the lot make an enormous torrent of noise, but clear off.

Up ahead, she sees the shifting, jagged-edges of the birds; true murders of crows, now, looming over buildings and homes. She sees smoke, too, and hears sirens of the Militia. Useless bastards. With determination, Integra kicks up her horse, and sets off into the heart of the district.

Jysiri deeply regrets not having stayed home, today. He was out shopping, and now he's caught out in the middle of all this mess, and with only a little magic. A ring that produces a happy, whistling song really isn't going to be much of any help, here.

His bird form can fly, and his first plan was to book it on the wing, but peacocks aren't exactly the best long-distance flyers. Instead of hiding in his flat, he is now backed into a corner by a number of disgusting monkeys.

He isn't helpless, though. His bird form grows and wavers a bit, with a blue glow. Then, he's grown to the size of a dog. His fan of long, eyed feathers have diminished and flattened along his back, and an actual tail has grown, rigid and as long again as the rest of his body, with a smaller crest at the tip. Long, clawed fingers poke out from the feathers of his wings, and his head, still feathered, is saurian now, and his mouth is fanged. And the sharp, sickle claws on his feet will help him against his attackers, and maybe give him a chance to run for safety before he's overwhelmed.

He leaves one monkey dead, eviscerated, and leaps over another. He lands badly, one foot twisted, and he squeaks. He can run and leap and fight, but his legs are not good, and he will pay for this, later.

The report of the monsters had come so suddenly, and before Anna was even fully certain of the full extent of what she had just agreed to do she found herself sent towards Brock Marsh district, where the attacks were worst. She isn't sure yet how she feels about an alliance with Hellsing itself, but for now Nuala at least has earned her trust, and furthermore she certainly isn't going to let this city, too, be overtaken by malevolent inhuman...things.

She sprints easily ahead to her destination, already tapping into the Fae part of herself that means she can access this speed without any expenditure of Vitae; she tells herself it is a matter of practicality, preserving the blood to heal herself, but it is so, so easy to want this, to thrill to the possibility of the hunt. Without thinking, she lets the glamour peel away, so that the lightning crackles like streamers through her dark hair, sparks of light show on her skin, and the smell of ozone clings to her like mist.

What greets her at Brock Marsh is beautiful chaos. Many of the civilians have already fled, which is fortunate: it takes a conscious exertion of will to keep herself from hunting down the ones who run by like prey. Instead, she concentrates on what she tells herself will be a far more satisfying chase: the shadowy crows that swarm the sky.

Her arm extends before her, forming a vertical arc that coalesces into a longbow. She pulls an arrow of lightning seemingly from nowhere; aims; fires into the swarm and watches as her arrow shoots through two of the birds, which collapse into pearlescent black beads.

The Huntress laughs with delight.

After his adventures with Mabel, Hellboy made a quick trip to the guild hall to check in, drop off more crow pearls, possibly replace his coat again, etc., then went back out into the city. Once he arrives in Brock Marsh again, a wailing sound draws him off onto a street where a giant armadillo lurches along, sending scared civilians running.

"Oh, boy," he mutters to himself. The creature perks up one ear at the ringing metallic sound of Hellboy drawing his sword, but its attention isn't fully drawn until he calls out, "Hey! Ugly!"

Something about either his weapon, his aggression, or possibly even just his size sparks something in what passes for the creature's mind. Its keening picks up into a higher pitch, and it charges Hellboy, rearing up when it reaches him with the intent of crushing him. Hellboy, however, had set himself for the charge, his hooves dug into the street, and thrust Excalibur into the underbelly exposed by the crushing attempt. The beast was heavy, but Hellboy was strong enough, once he brought his large stone Right Hand in to support where the sword went in, to flip it over on its side instead. He drew the sword out, then thrust it in again, at an angle better planned to take out the creature's brain.

"There. That's all for you."

But that wasn't all. With the beast dead, its burden went wild, tearing themselves out of its innards by expanding the hole created by Hellboy's first sword thrust. The first monkey to come out was dressed in a wetsuit, and the absurdity of it froze him for a moment in a stunned flashback to the Bromhead/Guarino case of 1999.

"Hey," Hellboy asked. "What's that in the corner?"

Hellboy's partner, Abe Sapien, asked, "Is that a monkey?"

The monkey came more fully into view, and as he saw what it was carrying, he cried out, "He's got a gun!"

With surprisingly good aim, the monkey let off three shots with its revolver, all hitting Abe, before it threw the gun up and started running.

Behind the first monkey, a couple dozen more boil up out of the tear, and Hellboy only barely has time to utter an aggrieved, "Aw, crap," before they swarm upon him.

Jo has perfect timing. Not really.

She's only recently arrived in Baedal, and she's already looking to be in the middle of things. It helps that it'd require hunting skills, since that's what she's been developing for the past year or so. It's what she's been gearing herself up for her whole life.

Because everything has literally hit the fan, there's no time for real greetings. She tells Dean she's in the city, he briefly gives her the rundown, and they agree to meet so she can be back-up.

An hour later, she's meeting Dean in the nearest train station as promised.

As new arrivals go, some are better-prepared for the city's current state of chaos than others. Marie-Sixtine is...not really one of them. She understands (tentatively--so tentatively) that she's been taken to another place, but somehow she wasn't warned about what waited for her outside the Inn's doors, and in her dress and high-heeled boots she is an impossibly old-fashioned little thing--not a princess, despite what people at home said about her, she rejects the nickname or title instinctively--not quite on board for combat. She can be brave, but this...this is so outside the realm of her experiences.

But one of the crows lands near her, its eyes too intelligent. It stares at her.

It does not move to attack her as long as she doesn't move, and she is very still, watching it in return. More of its companions join it, assembling in a smudgy unreal-crow flock. They watch her in unison. She doesn't know if this is the norm or not (distinctly not, so distinctly not), but it's not the first time something supernatural has been drawn toward her, even if she only now recognizes it as supernatural.

Why are they just...staring at her?

At some point, Six realizes, she's going to have to leave and escape. She half-hopes something (not a person, she'd never wish that on a person) distracts the crows so she can do so.

Once freed from the arrival room -- which, as a watcher of American late-night TV, he will probably always call "the green room" -- Mike quickly sets up shop, augmenting the Valhalla first aid station with his equipment and field surgeon skills. Although he's itching to go out and take the fight to the creatures he's been hearing so much about, he has to maintain his cover. Some visitors to the station are a little surprised by his appearance, because he's still wearing his backpack, body armor, and helmet, his rifle slung over one shoulder and other wicked-looking weaponry on his belt. But this is how you do it when you're doing battlefield triage, and he can reach pretty much everything he needs with a fair degree of ease this way.

Within minutes he's just... completely horrified by some of the injuries he's seeing. People are coming in mangled, many of them sporting wounds he doesn't think they'll survive. All he can do for them is get them as comfortable as possible, and then move on to the people he can actually help.

His ears are still ringing -- just a little -- from the missile explosion that disabled his helicopter back in Afghanistan. Maybe that's why he doesn't hear the crawler at first. Washing his hands after performing an emergency amputation, he just thinks the nausea is the cumulative effect of the sights and smells of triage. He doesn't see the hideous creature hauling itself out of the drain in the other sink basin. Not yet.

He keeps moving north, headed for the worst of the fray. There are people to save, monsters to kill. He feels more in his element than he has in half a year.

On a side street north of Mog Hill, though, he crumples to his knees. Nausea, sudden and overwhelming. He holds his shotgun against his body, his other hand going to the pavement for balance. He's vaguely aware of something moving nearby, near a sewer grate. He raises the gun with an unsteady hand but he can't focus his eyes well enough to fire, just yet.

It's moving closer. He has to fire. He tries to will his eyes to focus but another wave of disorientation crashes through him.

Nazca's been avoiding the birds as best she can. They deeply unnerve her, for more reasons than the obvious.

On the other hand, having a goal, something to fight, is giving her an outlet for some restless anger she didn't know she had. Nazca's found a rhythm, and she's been using a combination of well-placed knives, tactical maneuvering, and retreat when necessary.

Everything else is to be killed on sight, she'd said. I want every last one of these damn things exterminated. And a great joy had thundered in his heart.

It isn't like Kriv really needs an excuse to vent his bad mood on every hostile lifeform he can find, but even the faintest air of proper well-ordered military violence appeals to his sensibilities far more than simply tearing apart anything that bleeds.

He hardly stops to sleep or eat for days, the old ritual boasts still ringing proudly in his ears - the blood of Io may live on battle alone! - and true enough to the ancient words he hardly feels himself tire. Later, perhaps, but that is later. Now he is here, exploding from thin air in a rush of smoke and fire, scattering a cloud of crows from their bloody victim; now he is there, brawling with an armor-beast like he was born to do it, glaive alight with eldritch fire. The crows eventually start to scatter at the sound of his falcon's hunting cry, though Kriv only curses them for cowards and openly dares them to come back. (It does make saving people easier, but what the hell good is an easy battle anyway.)

True to his word he is very, very thorough: wounded beasts are pursued for a dozen city blocks if necessary to finish the job. If a few windows get broken or bloodied in the process...well, such is the nature of battle.

The forests of Sobek Croix are a natural nesting ground for those great, horrible crows. The monkeys even like the densely wooded areas--it's not the jungle climate they should be in, but at least it provides opportunity to hide, and it allows them to pick off pedestrians. The crows like to hide in the trees and wait until someone walks or runs by, and then descend, attacking eyes and soft flesh with fervor.

Lyla sits on the lawn of someone else's little cottage, cross-legged. Her palms are bleeding. Up above, the trees begin to rustle, but it's not because of the crows.

She can feel them (hear their hearts beating, magical though they may be), and she knows where they are. The trees' branches begin to shift and crack, and one by one, there are indignant squawks of crows being crushed to death by the magical influence Lyla demonstrates over the plants and trees. Their bodies drop in twos and threes on the lawn, several yards in front of Lyla, and disintegrate into Baedalite.

Lyla smokes a blood-stained cigarette, and feels a little sorry for them.

It's not necessary for Adrian to do much more than step outside his front door to enter into the fight, although in an attempt to keep his identity hidden at least for now, he leaves the building in secret and makes his way through the neighborhood. He has no weapons, has never picked one up and doesn't intend to now, but speed and strength have always served him well. The costume he's wearing can withstand the force of a bullet, making him at least well-protected in that regard (he'll just have to be wary of protecting his head and face), and that comes in handy when he encounters a group of things that look disturbingly like primates, and that attack with a ferocity that almost makes him wish for the Comedian and his ridiculous flame-thrower.

[ooc: Please for the sake of secret identity preservation, let's pretend that the typical superhero trope of "an eyemask is an awesome disguise" holds true here?]

Threaded | Flat

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Mina's First Aid Station

( open to everyone, taking place early on in the attacks )

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