multiversallogs | the sky is falling.

Entry tags:

the sky is falling.

Who: Everyone.
What: Part two begins.
When: Evening, a few hours before the end of the 24-hour siege period.
Notes: Feel free to thread in comments here or make your own posts! NPC your own monsters, team up in locations anywhere you like, and feel free to plot things at the plotting post, which has the relevant details. Remember that this is city-wide, so you are free to do what you like with locations.

Just after dark, the air of Baedal seems to change. While it was tense before, with the stand-off in Mafaton, a new kind of electrical energy begins to spread through the city, leaking from the sky itself. The horizon is clear tonight, even starry where the city lights don't obscure the view, but soon enough it begins to blur with color, and at an alarmingly rapid pace. Bright streaks of pink and green begin to spiral across the sky, in an approximation of the auroras, though it is much nearer and brighter than any common demonstration of an aurora should be. The geomagnetic storm swirls and dances, initially beautiful, but its intensity is ominous.

It's also growing. Most geomagnetic storms stay to one corner, but this spreads across the entire sky, green-purple-pink-red illuminated and inching further into the dark, leaving the city of Baedal tinted with a dim, eerie glow. This continues for about a half an hour, until that tension reaches its breaking point.

The magical boundaries holding Mafaton crack and then completely shatter. It is audible, and the backlash sends flying many of the Candlelighters trying frantically to preserve the borders of their siege. A few of them are killed by the backlash of their spell's combustion, but more are simply shaken; having one's magic work so thoroughly broken is not a pleasant experience. The sound covers another tearing, this time a metaphysical one that rips the heavens open in places the common eye can't see. Those whose vision allows them to observe different layers of reality will notice, but others will only see the incoming flood of creatures from other universes.

One siege has ended, but another has just begun, and this time, it's not just Mafaton at risk.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[He just holds up his CiD, panning the camera, long enough to give a clear idea of what's happening, and then he shouts above the din:]

Your Highness.

I assume orders are to get in there and start turning these things back.

[It's not really a question, just him confirming before he starts punching things.]

By any means necessary, captain. Take full advantage of our resources.

Yes, ma'am.

[It's but two words but he knows he doesn't have to say the rest: he'll look after everyone as best he can, he'll take as many monsters out as he can, he'll coordinate (even if coordination breaks down in favor of just keeping a headcount going, in the fray of battle) as best he can, and he'll report in when he's able.]

Kirk out.

Even in the chaos erupting all over the city, the sudden presence of enormous robots is difficult to miss.

Especially to people who already know what they are.

Unfortunately, most of Baedal's xenian citizens don't -- and a lot of them die before they figure out how quickly they need to run. The Sentinels are shooting to kill, not capture, and they're targeting everyone nonhuman as if they were mutants.

X was already out on the beat, but she stopped dead and clapped her hands over her ears when the Candlelighter's spell shatters, the cracking and separate tearing amplified with her superhuman hearing. The first Sentinel she sees is a good distance away, but it's so tall it's clearly visible from where she's standing. She doesn't hesitate before hauling ass in that direction, barely slowed down by the various aggressive creatures in between her and it -- she plows right through them, leaving a trail of eviscerated monsters in her wake.

She sends one public message over the Network:

SENTINELS IN LUDMEAD

She has no time for any other warning as she's immediately slammed into by some kind of mutant dragon thing that doesn't die even when she stabs it in the brain. She's tangled up in that for a good three minutes, unable to get to the robot people are now fleeing from.

Ludmead is where John said he would be, and so he is, skulking a bit as is his wont, when things happen.

It's funny because for the last few months he's been doing pretty much nothing. There have been a few training sessions with Erik, a few bar fights, but mostly he's been writing his ass off. He's a pyrokinetic, not a pyromaniac; he's never really gotten that big a kick from setting things on fire for no good reason.

Suddenly there are many good reasons. And good reasons do make him feel good, even if people are screaming — some in fear, some like old time berserkers — and things are breaking. There's one tremble of adrenaline as he pulls his sleeve up but he remembers. He remembers fighting. Already things are on fire from other creatures/people/fights. Those that appear to be threatening other people, he puts out with just a glance.

He has to be careful. If he fucks up, Erik will find out. But even that thought disappears as he moves into action. He doesn't realize it's Laura who's busily stabbing that weird dragon thing, not that it matters, really, apart from the fact it'd confirm her scariness. The gout of flame that slams into the dragon is as wide as a truck and incredibly hot, and though it probably wouldn't faze Laura if it burnt her, it isn't. It's still hot, but the fire flows around and past her without making contact at all, not even with her clothing.

With a shrieking, burning mutant dragon thing flailing off her as it tries desperately to put itself out with its wings -- pointlessly, those burns go beyond third degree -- X-23 still doesn't stop, rising in one fluid motion. It wouldn't matter if he burned her down to her skeleton, she'd still be moving, but that he doesn't is awfully convenient. Even her healing factor takes time.

Her foot slams down on the dragon's neck, severing its head from its spine with one of her foot claws, ruthlessly efficient. She plans on being doubly sure everything that is killed stays dead.

Laura turns to look at him then, briefly assessing him with a sweeping glance. She doesn't know his level of training. He's Magneto's and he's obviously not inept, but those things are huge, faster than they look, and equipped to respond to specific mutant powers. The New X-Men spent a lot of their time in the Danger Room running simulations against them, and it was a long time before they consistently won.

In the end, she decides to ask, pointing in the distance at the Sentinel, which is just visible as it stands at least ten feet higher than the building it's behind. "Can you fight those?" Can he, not will he. If his answer is no, then she's going in alone.

The look he gives her is only a little incredulous. There are a lot of things to kill here, but she wants to go after that? Then again, it's not that surprising from someone who just beheaded a fucking dragon with their foot.

"Okay," he says, which is not what Laura asked. He doesn't look like much, and he hasn't had that kind of training. But he is calm, and he doesn't even smell afraid, mostly due to a lack of experience with fighting anything more unsettling than a particularly large or aggressive mutant. He doesn't know how bad this could get.

Somewhere in the back of his head, he's wondering about the claws, but it's just not important right now. He'll follow Laura's lead, and blast creatures out of their way.

Well, that will have to be good enough. She takes off in that direction and she's fast even if she's being mindful to not put too much distance between them. He can almost certainly take care of the other threats around here without her, but she needs backup. She's a super soldier, but she's not invincible and she's already anticipating their countermeasures. She would like someone more experienced -- Gambit or Wanda would be fantastic right now but they almost certainly are up to their ears in shit themselves, and there isn't time to wait for anyone else.

She pauses just outside its field of vision. "Aim for the head." Solid advice, generally speaking. Then she's moving again.

He has more range than she does and her plan is to focus its attention on her, which means getting up close and personal. If it mauls her, she can survive it; other people can't. She hurls herself at it like a small missile, climbing up its back where it can't reach to pull her off. She's too precise to be called berserker at the moment, but she has a feral rage that's an obvious throwback to her origins.

He has to work to keep up with her, which is a little embarrassing but not unexpected. She's gone before he can acknowledge her advice, and the way she leaves bears an unsettling similarity to the maneuver he once saw Peter and Logan pull off, to say nothing of the sheer bloody-mindedness involved in hurling yourself at a giant robot. John lifts his hand, and the column of fire that cannons toward the sentinel's head is smaller, car-sized, but more intense. It doesn't have the kinetic force that Scott's weirdo eye beams would, but it gets the sentinel's attention. The metal there has been melted, but not enough; it is still able to turn its head and get John in its sights, which is kind of mind-blowing to him, if he had time to examine it.

He does have time to think "fuck" and scatter when it lifts its giant palm and shoots some kind of light at him. The stone street erupts behind him as he covers his head. Despite Laura's advice, the next thing he aims at is the hand, trying to destroy whatever it's using to shoot at him.

X-23 is close to the head when it turns to target John, close enough to get in one swipe at its neck before it starts blasting at him and her priority shifts. She uses her claw hooked into its back to swing her around to its front and drive her claws into one of its eyes, destroying its left-hand optic sensor and ruining its depth perception. Still dangerous, but its aim is less precise.

Its free hand flies to its face and swats at her. It's too close for her to dodge; her claws tear long gauges into its half-melted face as it pulls her off and hurls her into a building with enough force to break her spine. X falls and twitches.

In thirty seconds, she's hauling herself up. She should be a smear on the cobblestone street, but instead she's scaling the side of the building by her claws, looking irritated and trying to get high enough that she can drop directly on its head. If it's still firing at him, she may have to try cutting off its arms.

Having long since dropped the habit of screaming FUCK! whenever something terrible happens to someone, John only gapes for a second before he's moving again. There are a lot of mutants more physically powerful than him, and even if he's figured Laura has to be one of them, seeing someone flung into a building is simply not something he's used to. It's only thirty seconds of thinking he's on his own, but that is a long thirty seconds for him.

To his credit, he continues the fight. The entire Sentinel's head is wreathed in flame, a giant walking beacon. That doesn't stop it from knocking into buildings or firing indiscriminately, but John is on the move, and is able to defend himself from monsters on the ground simultaneously.

Fire won't melt her claws no matter how hot it gets, but it will sear her flesh and take forever to heal. She skips the head and drops onto its shoulder, her foot claws sinking into it to keep her holding on as she uses both hands to start sawing at the arm socket, severing it at the base; the arm drops and hits the ground, leaving a dent. That's one, but it's still got the other.

And it's caught on to her; after a moment it starts emitting a high-pitched whining, nearly too high for human ears to hear, but she hears it plain as day. Her hands clap over her ears as it keeps screeching (horribly distorted by virtue of the fact that its face is mostly melted off), the sound reverberating in her head. It's not high or loud enough to burst her eardrums and render her deaf, that would defeat the point, but just enough to disorient her.

She lets go and drops the ground, breaking both ankles on impact, but they heal almost immediately and she's running, putting distance between them until the noise stops. She's thinking they could really use a third backup. She finds him -- oh, good, he's not dead -- but spins immediately to look at the Sentinel. It's blinded and flailing, one-armed, its head burning and interfering with its ability to sense the world around it. They have a few minutes -- maybe a few seconds -- before it figures out which direction they're in. She needs to cut that damn head off, but getting closer is going to be a problem now that it's figured out a good strategy to disable her.

By the way, hi, John, she's still not dead, somehow.

Edited 2012-03-05 06:22 (UTC)

Though Laura hasn't been rendered completely unrecognizable by blood, there's still a second when she's heading toward him that his instincts jump and yammer to blast fire at her too. It's the sort of twitchiness that's saved him a few times already, but he manages not to set his best chance of staying alive on fire.

He's still trying to melt the head, but he's never actually encountered anything that has resisted this long, and he's starting to get that weird sort of hollow, burnt feeling inside already. It doesn't hurt him or affect his abilities, and as far as he knows it's not even an indicator he should stop or there'll be consequences. It's just weird.

If John were thinking better, or less afraid of Laura, he might ask her why she stopped attacking it, as he can barely hear the high pitch himself. But he's not and he is, so he just looks at her for direction.

The analysis of magical barrier is engrossing, to the point where Rodolphus does not take much notice of the sky — his narrow focus on the world and lack of awareness in regard to his surroundings (or lack of constant vigilance, as some people might put it) has always been a problem for him. The magic is not what he's accustomed to, either. That's what makes him so deeply concentrated.

At the first crack, however, he has just enough time to jerk back. He's not even fast enough to warn whatever Hellsing employees have stuck with him before the boundaries shatter. Though he's not as tied to it as some of the Candlelighters, something that probably saves him, he actually blacks out for a second, though he catches himself before he falls over. As secretly proud as he is of the effort, it is immediately negated by a roughly four-foot tall frog creature landing on him. This appears to have been by accident instead of design, though there are more coming behind the initial scout. It and the others are armed, but seem confused and disoriented for the moment.

Agent Dunham, responsible person that she is, is feeding live video of the sudden light show in the sky to Agent Farnsworth back at Hellsing HQ. "Hey Astrid!" she calls over the sounds of impending chaos, "What was the probability of this happening?" It isn't really a time for jokes, but it's a coping mechanism. She isn't as awe-struck as she could be, either. Her first thought is to put the amber protocol into effect, and her second thought is a reminder that that's not an option here in Baedal.

It's all fun and games until frogs start raining from the sky. Then it's a sign of the apocalypse. She happens to capture perfect footage of the descent of the one that falls on top of Rodolphus. "Oh shit!" The device is dropped entirely in favour of going for her gun instead. "Lestrange, stay down!" she barks, just in case he was intending to climb to his feet.

Shoot first, and fuck the questions. Olivia blows the first creature away before she scrambles over to help the wizard to his feet.

In three thousand or so years of fucking with humans, Balthazar knows from experience that people who have never before encountered anything the slightest bit supernatural, and even some who have, often start experiencing a sort of animal-like existentialism. They are reduced to clutching their faces and whimpering, why is this happening to me? What's going on?

Since his rebirth in fire, Balthazar hasn't wondered that. He knew. He was allowed to see the inner workings of the universe, and became one of the terrible cogs in it. He was a thing that happened to other people. There were most definitely many higher powers, and no one could claim to understand God, but he knew. He understood. He was the magician's assistant who disappeared or drowned or had knives thrown at them but was in on the secret.

Not for the first time since arriving in Baedal but now in a most unpleasant way, he's forced to confront the fact he no longer knows or understands anything. It's possible he can see more than your average Baedal citizen, but seeing no longer brings any answers. Why is the sky glowing and whirling? Why is it ripping open and allowing creatures from other places — some more dark than he's ever seen, and he has seen darkness — and giving him a blinding headache? At first he hides. He has been a general in Hell's army but he has never been a soldier. That wasn't the fucking point of him.

And then he can feel them, the seplavites. They are calling out in their mindless way, confused at their arrival, sniffing around for a leader the same way he sniffed around too his first day here. They know he's here, but in his absence, they just do what they do, which is hunt.

He could get out there and command them. It's his birthright. They must do as he says. That's their birthright. He could save people, or command them to attack either of the two House Ecumenal churches, just because.

After a long hesitation, he begins walking toward Mafaton, a mere shadow to anyone unable to see past his illusions: scentless, soundless, barely there at all. The seplavites join him in trickles, unable to resist his presence. And they can't hide themselves at all, curiously well-behaved despite being slavering, brainless corpses.

Unaware of Balthazar's illusion, Benevenuta's first concern, when she catches sight of the surreal procession, is how creatures like that identify prey. Her second thought is that they're moving in a direction generally more 'towards' than 'away from' the original chaos-- but if patterns hold, soon that initial source won't matter worth a damn. Her third thought, after she's swung around behind a building (not into an alley, Christ, she's not stupid), is that since she hasn't engaged them and she has this quiet moment here--

--well, she's already fishing her CiD out of her coat pocket. The footage she takes around the corner is necessarily brief before she tucks it away again and tries to choose a direction, assesses whether or not she can get away with crossing behind the way they're moving.

During the day, she dreams of violence, a confused mingling of images: the Candlelighter she'd killed the night before dies over and over again. Sometimes she is coursing him through an old forest, and he dies to the teeth of her hounds: Kindred dreams respond violently to violence, and the mixing in of the Huntress hasn't helped.

She wakes at dusk; some part of her feels the rending in the magic of reality, and it rips her from sleep. Or maybe it was just the noise.

Deacon's bar had been a good enough shelter for the day, but she isn't about to stay there now. She's in the process of heading out of Mafaton when she sees the procession.

Part of her reels back in disgust (the worst part, she thinks, is how they look as though they really might have once been human, if they weren't so horrible -- and how did they see), but there's another part of her mind doing the equivalent of of pricking up its ears. Well, there are monsters falling from the sky, now: some things are so much easier when her mind is True Fae. This is a time for letting the Huntress ease to the forefront. And isn't that all this is? A kind of endless hunt? -- and she does so love a challenge.

There's a man leading the strange misshapen things (they're a bit charming, really, in their obedience to him), she notices now. No, not a man, with his rotted face; something else, and powerful. But not Fae.

Things just keep getting more interesting, don't they?

"What are your hounds called?" she asks, something like politely. She's approaching now, smiling with bright teeth.

Jay had been in his apartment when things took a turn for the more chaotic, lounging around in partial snake form, his lower half a tail and his upper half almost entirely snake-like itself, but with a human head and arms so he could hear anything that came up on his CiD and type in messages. When Jay heard the noises, he shifted his upper body to human and looked out the window and, seeing a giant skeletal dragon thing flying around in the sky and giant monsters in the street, decided to head back into his apartment, away from the window, and check his CiD. Unfortunately, the dragon had seen him at the window and dove toward it. At first, Jay didn't even register the dragon, only the flying glass, and he screamed, his upper body instinctively covering itself with scales which helped to protect him from more severe cuts than the scrapes he received and his hands covering his eyes.

Then he looked up and saw the dragon.

"Oh, shit."

Turning, he slithered back into his apartment, clutching his CiD in his hand as he raced through the rooms. He knew that he was going away from the door, but he'd have had to go closer to the dragon to get out and he didn't want to do that. Besides, there was a window in his room, and he was only on the second floor, so he figured he could jump out and be fine. Of course, he'd never jumped from that nigh before, but it seemed like it should be low enough that it should be fine.

However, when he reached his room and threw open the window, he hesitated a moment, staring down. It looked awfully high when he was actually considering jumping...

However, he quickly made up his mind when he heard a loud crash of a dragon racing down the hall, its wings smashing against everything as it went, and, closing his eyes, jumped out the window. Then he hit the ground. It was jarring and uncomfortable, but he was fine, so he darted out of the alley he'd landed in and slithered down the street rapidly, trying to find somewhere that might be safe, CiD still clutched in his hand. He knew it might be a bad idea to go out like this, but it was too late to go back now and get pants, and at least covered in scales it would be less likely for anyone to recognize him.

Jay was starting to feel like he was doing fairly well when a large, apparent zombie composed of multiple corpses sewn together stepped out in front of him. Jay recoiled and hissed, letting his fangs drop into place despite knowing that he wasn't about to sink his fangs into that thing.

It's been a long time since Laura's been able to let go like this. The last few years, she's had to worry about annoying concerns like is this person dying the only way to solve this problem -- generally the answer is no, necessitating another course of action -- but there's no questioning it now. These things are dangerous and vicious and aiming to kill, and nobody has time to subdue.

It means that she's a lot faster.

She just slaughters everything in her way, aiming for spines and heads -- it's a good rule of thumb that most things die permanently when you behead them -- and nothing slows her down, not being bitten or clawed or stabbed. There's a hole in her abdomen the size of a golf ball, but it isn't stopping her from dropping from above and landing on the shoulders of this ragged zombie thing. Her claws sink deep into its brain first, but it's still moving even after that, not that she's too surprised. The abdead ones are the worst, because often they don't die even if you pull off the head, but she's making good headway.

Her claws are capable of cutting through steel; they go through dead flesh like paper. She detaches one of its arms and sends it flying out into the street, where it lands still twitching.

It's hard to say whether she thinks Jay is a civilian -- a giant snake looks an awful lot like some of the monsters coming in through reality's holes -- or if she's just targeting everything that looks aggressive.

Jay was relieved when he saw the girl tear into the monster with it's claws. He'd been pretty sure an undead thing like that wouldn't be stopped by a bit of venom, no matter how toxic, and Jay's bite was pretty much the entirety of his arsenal. However, a worried twinge on his mind reminded him that while he was clearly a living thing, he hadn't done anything to identify himself as definitely not being a monster himself yet. Fortunately, when shifting to escape he'd retained enough human characteristics to speak normally.

"Thanks!" he called, which thanking her should identify him as a civilian, and it was probably best to express gratitude when someone saved your life, anyway. However, he'd noticed the hole in her abdomen when she'd dropped down, and was concerned as well. "Are you sure you can keep going with that?" He nodded toward her abdomen. She seemed to be fine despite that, however. Still, he hoped his savior and hopefully protector wasn't about to drop dead.

When she's done ripping it into pieces -- if that doesn't kill it, it at least renders it effectively harmless unless anyone trips over it and lands in its mouth -- she's covered in some awful looking and smelling combination of mutant pus and congealed blood. It's gotten in her bloodstream, too, but her healing factor's already fighting that off. Whatever this is, it's no Legacy.

Well, he's lucid and he's not attacking. It's more likely he's a citizen than not, then, but Laura's social skills are pretty poor under the best of circumstances, so she ignores the question. "Are there more?"

When the woman doesn't answer, Jay assumes she's close enough to fine, and then he notices the wound closing. Well, that explains why she wasn't more concerned about it. As for her social graces, he wasn't really concerned about them. He wasn't the best socially himself, and his sister had never been any better than this woman was at social skills, either. At the moment, he cares more about survival than having all his questions answered. He glances around.

"I don't see any at the moment, but it's only a matter of time. There's this skeleton dragon thing crashing around in my apartment, which is right over--" Suddenly the window of a nearby apartment, one which happened to be Jay's, was smashed by said skeletal dragon, shards of glass flying everywhere. "--there."

Laura whips around at the sound of breaking glass, her feet spreading to balance her weight out more evenly as she assesses the situation. Skeleton anything is bad news; if they're lucky it can be killed by beheading, but that's no guarantee. Things reanimated that way have a tendency to be able to reassemble themselves.

Well, there's one way to find out.

She glances briefly at Jay. "Hide." Then she's taking off in the direction of his apartment, launching herself up the side of the building. She's completely fearless about drawing attention to herself -- as long as things are focused on her, they're not attacking other people, and she's much harder to kill than the average citizen. Bone isn't much harder to slice up than meat, really.

Edited 2012-03-03 04:47 (UTC)

Hiding was something he could and would do very, very willingly. He knew he couldn't fight any of these things, after all, and he didn't want to die. He wasn't the noble hero die in battle type. If he'd legitimately thought he could add something he would if something happened to pose a danger to him as well, at least in his mind, but that was the extent of his heroism. Slithering away quickly, Jay shifted away the last of his human remnants to better streamline his body before beginning to cram himself behind a dumpster.

The smell was terrible and he nearly gagged, and he couldn't due to the strength of the smell catch the scent of anything beyond the garbage, but it was a tight place that these creatures would probably not expect to find a civilian crammed in the tiny space between the dumpster and the wall. In this form, he couldn't hear what was going on out there, but curiosity would lead him to poke his head out every so often before pulling it back in to remain out of sight.

The dragon lunges at her and nearly takes a chunk out of her torso, but she twists just enough for it to miss, its jaw snapping shut bare centimeters from her skin. Her arms wrap around its head as she clamps down on it and it screams -- how, exactly, she's not sure, since it has no vocal chords -- and flails, trying to shake her off. She's clawing at its spine, trying to sever it at the base, which becomes enormously difficult when it takes off flying. With her attached.

The two of them are grappling in the air, her trying to cut off its head while it writhes in the air, trying to throw her off its back. It can't bite her and its front claws can't reach her, but it twists itself upside down and swipes at her with its back legs just as her claws slice through the base of one of its wings. They plummet to the ground, crashing into a nearby window.

There's a split second of silence before the dragon comes flailing out again, screeching, and then Laura leaps out after it. Holding her severed arm.

Her scream isn't out of pain, but a fierce, feral anger -- and rather than dropping her arm, she uses it as a club. Her claws are still out, it's more or less the same as using a sword, and it gives her twice the range. Her claws slice through the thing's vertebrae as she spins, her foot slamming into the bottom of its jaw, her outstretched foot claw piercing the bone and embedding itself deeply into its "brain". The dragon convulses and lets out one long, hideous death rattle, then stops moving entirely.

She shoves the severed arm back in its socket and holds it there, waiting for the flesh to knit together. It'll be a few minutes at the most.

It also gives her a moment to catch her breath and restore some of the blood she's lost.

Jay watched the bloody fight in awe and horror, amazed by the ferocity of the skeleton creature and glad that he hadn't tried to face it himself, as he doubted he'd have survived such an attack, but also surprised by the ferocity of his savior, and her incredible ability to recover from things that would have probably killed him. Like the loss of an arm.

His stomach knotted up when he saw the blood drip to the ground, certain she was going to die, and he was going to be left relying on the skeletal dragon's inability to notice him for his survival, but she didn't. Not only didn't she die, she managed to destroy the dragon, then put herself back together.

In awe, he slithered out, shifting at that point so his upper half was somewhat human, though his lower half remained entirely serpentine.

"Those abilities must be amazingly useful! I'd likely have died if I'd tried to fight that thing. There's not much I can do against the undead."

Laura glances over at him supremely calmly in the face of the fact that one of her arms is severed and she's talking to a half-snake-man. Welcome to Baedal, shit's weird. "Remove the head." That's her best advice, yes. Beheading tends to kill everything. Tends to, because some of these damn things are doggedly persistent and keep reanimating. She's starting to learn when it's wise to go fetch a magic-user. "Can you use a sword?"

No, Laura, most people don't just happen to know how to use deadly weapons.

Looking at her severed arm was disturbing, but after what he'd seen with the healing hole before, he wasn't too worried about it since he was sure it would heal, especially since she seemed so calm about the whole situation.

"I'm not sure I can remove the head, and I know I can't use a sword."

The only way he knew how to fight was to strike and bite, like a snake. It was only by his serpentine instincts and venom that he could do anything against any opponent at all, since learning to fight had never been necessary in his life.

For the most part, Lyla's actions here in the chaos have been defensive. She will rescue anyone obviously in trouble and in her way, but her job has been to keep one person safe, and she's taken it pretty seriously. (It helps that in all this mess she hasn't used in a while; that certainly does do something for one's mental clarity, even if her resulting irritability is being taken out on the monsters.)

It's the huge, hulking, mutated cannibals (from one of those apocalypse worlds, not that Lyla knows that yet) that catch her eye in Canker Wedge, though. They have surrounded a small wooden house towards the outskirts of the canton and are banging on the doors while its inhabitants scream and try to beat them off with household weapons like kitchen knives or frying pans.

Lyla hesitates, and then starts marching toward the house.

Steph is there because Babs sent her. One of the inhabitants has a friend who'd made it to the safe house, and had frantically been calling to ask for help. Help is a nineteen year old human in purple body armour, but beggers can't be choosers.

She's picked a spot in a nearby house to do an extremely quick bit of recon, when she sees Lyla walk past through one of the windows. In a flash, she's run to the front door and pulled it open.

"Wait," she's trying to be quiet, not wanting to draw the attention of those creatures before she's ready to fight them. She tries not to make a judgement of Lyla yet - not all people are what they seem - but Steph's almost instinctive worry has kicked in anyway.

Of all the places to encounter something like this, it had to be Badside. No, really. Could this have been any more cliche? However, sarcastically analyzing the situation is far far from Bucky's mind. Before getting deployed to Germany, heck up until he knew what HYDRA was, he'd flip his wig over something like this. Combating humans were one thing, but monsters? This was a whole other ballgame. And then again, even HYDRA didn't hit this level of crazy.

Right now? Bucky's positioned himself on top of a beat-up old apartment building. He's close to the edge, and part of him is wondering if it's gonna give way any minute. He's taking his chances though.

Steady hands, steady breathing. He peers through the scope of his rifle, fixing his cross-hairs on this loon. He's not shooting yet, just keeping the creature in his sights as it shambles through the dank nighttime streets of Badside. He needs to get a good shot, 'cuz he's got a feeling this thing ain't gonna go down easy.

Here goes.

BANG!

The shot echoes throughout the streets and there's pained roar, but it doesn't go down. A shot to the head and it doesn't go down. So now, this... whatever it is has spun around and is staring right at him.

Slow exhale. Then, to himself, "Why do I got a feeling that this ain't gonna end well?"

The sky is falling

Writers in the Romantic era used to speak about the breathtaking splendour of nature, its innate beauty and terror—

the sky is falling

—they called it the sublime. It's something that Charles Xavier has only a moment to reflect upon as he looks up and thinks how small everything is in the scheme of things—

the sky is falling is falling

—how small he is, how small this canton is, how small this city, how small how small—

is falling is falling the sky is

—and he hears a shout and turns, eyes full of sorrow, because he can already feel what’s coming for them, coming for him, and he has to go while all around him hundreds, thousands, millions of minds scream out

the sky is falling the sky is falling the sky is falling

- - -

They try to tear at his mind with teeth that don't exist in the sense that they're not really teeth but there is sharp pain that isn't pain because it's not attached to his body.

They take the forms of things more terrible than humanity could ever dream of, these things that come from the darkness between stars, and twist and become something worse. They are coming for him and he feels his mind burning like it never has before. Although he's not only holding them off and it’s not for survival alone —other citizens who can access the astral plane are present and they are doing the same as he is. Quite apart from the city, they fight an invisible battle that few will see. Some succumb to the vicious attacks to their psyche and, somewhere else, their bodies become cold and lifeless.

Abstractly, he remembers Remy once said something about the attraction of certain creatures to the brightness of minds like his. But if they are the juiciest morsels, they are also the first line of defense.

What will stop them once they’re gone?

And so he battles on trying not to let the people he might never see again, the things he might never do or accomplish, distract him from his task. And in his weariest moments he thinks about nothing but them.

- - -

Later, when the fighting is done but he is too exhausted to try and pull himself back into his body, he drifts. That's when he senses it again —the unceasing, mindless hunger that he encountered when he first explored the fog.

Seeing it is worse. It’s nothing. An absence in existence, something that the human mind isn't meant to comprehend. It fills him with as much dread now as it did then, and even though he's far away, he feels a need to flee further, even though he knows there is no further.

So he does the next best thing and reaches out to the minds around him, as if they were guiding lights pointing the way home. But they're not; they're humans and xenians alike and he can feel them. Their pain and distress, their cries for help, their screaming need to survive.

Many of them fade out completely. Others simply stop.

He keeps going.

Edited 2012-04-21 22:32 (UTC)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

the sky is falling.

[video; addressed to Nuala but on the Hellsing lock]

→ video • hellsing channel

→ video • hellsing channel

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NOW WITH FIRST PARAGRAPH I'M THE BEST RPER

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BACKTAGGING WHOOOO

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lyla & steph

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[closed narrative]