monsters and the kids who become them and the people who fight them

[theguideless]

Date & Time: 9/2 – 9/12, various times
Location: All throughout the city
Characters: See tags
Summary: A lot of people have to put up with an increasingly unstable kid
Warnings: Fightytimes violence, body horror, dead things



IN THE FAR-REACHING FUTURE OF AN ALT-EARTH, MONSTER-BASED ATTACKS ARE CONSIDERED ESPECIALLY RIDICULOUS. IN EXSILIUM, THE DEDICATED TRANSPORTS WHO ENDURE AND INVESTIGATE THESE VICIOUS HAPPENINGS ARE MEMBERS OF AN ELITE SQUAD KNOWN AS EXTRA-UNLUCKY BASTARDS.

THESE ARE THEIR STORIES.


The following threads coincide with the established timeline posted here and are arranged chronologically for participants' use if need/want be.

Comments

9/3, approx. 3AM [IONAE]

[theguideless]

[has_a_cult]

Ionae trudged along at 3 in the morning. It was an odd time to be about, but she liked not having to deal with hundreds of people all around her all the time. And if someone gave her trouble, well, she wasn't exactly unarmed.

She had found an all night grocery store for getting food from, and was on her way now. It was a welcome change being able to consistently afford food rather than having to steal it or root through garbage, so overall, Ionae was actually in a pretty good mood.

[theguideless]

Wrong, wrong, wrong...There was no feeling better about anything. Something was wrong. He didn't know where he was going or how he was where he was. It was wrong and his face and hands wouldn't stop throbbing. Everything hurt. His mouth–

"Norgh–!"

Leaving the alley was a mistake. He flinched, arms going to his eyes against the glare of a streetlight, a hot pulse of anger coursing through him anew. His feet shuffled for the retreat, finding only the back of a wall. Trapped.

Trapped. Hurt. Why are they hurting me? Gritting his teeth...it hurt. They were sharp, everything was sharp now. The heavy suck of breath was loud, almost loud enough to drown out the rattle of bagged food and soft footfalls.

[has_a_cult]

She stopped when she saw someone stagger out of an alley and into a pool of light. Frankly, the fellow looked to have too many problems of his own to worry about causing trouble for anyone else, but Ionae wasn't one to trust in luck.

She didn't reach for her rifle yet, but she backed up a bit, into the light of the previous streelamp a little bit behind.

"What are you doing? Don't try anything, I'm armed."

[theguideless]

No amount of patience was getting his eyes to adjust to the glow piercing past gaps in his arms; he could feel it through his eyelids. It was awful. Why was everything just so awful now? He just...All he wanted was just...

Martin swayed, making a frustrated sound. All that pent-up energy was demanding action; he shot a fast and painful glare at the light ahead, barely making out the silhouetted shape below it before swinging his arm forward and launching the over-sized lance high over head. Poorly aimed, it but scraped the metal close to the light before evaporating into a rain of dust, while the force of its escape sent Martin reeling back. Unsuccessful, he gave another cry, angry.

Again, another lance, lower.

[has_a_cult]

Ionae flinched at the first lance, then threw herself at the ground (smashing her groceries) as the second lance flew right through the space she had just been in. That settled it. This man was dangerous and violent.

When she stood back up she had her rifle out and was aiming. "Try that again, I dare you."

[theguideless]

"Gh–" Martin struggled against a thick feeling in his throat, giving out a frustrated howl to clear it. It broke off sharply short of a real end, his breath hitched in a gasp and a cough. There was the impulse there to do just that – make the bad stuff get out and go away, but it wouldn't happen. It hadn't happened for a long time. Dry, empty coughing, and a stomach never to be settled.

It was maddening.

And now what? Voices? His head snapped up, squinting in the light and finding the shape. He bristled, feeling a fresh, hot flash of anger. His lips drew back and bared uneven, still-growing teeth. Sharp.

"Oohstavi," he drawled, staggered in another rasp. "Oohst--lrrh...leave me...alone...! LEAVE ME ALONE!"

[has_a_cult]

"You're the one who showed up out of nowhere. You leave me alone."

It may not be the best of judgement to attempt to argue with someone in Martin's state, but Ionae never had good judgement.

[theguideless]

Under the glaring and relentless light, Martin's skin prickled uncomfortably. Against the sharp retort, something in his veins throbbed. When he whipped his head back around to the source, his eyes squinted, then widened in a defiant fury against the stinging light, clouding over with an unchecked fury.

But he was still for a painful length of seconds, because he heard it. The drumming again. Blood pumping in his ears – his own, certainly, but not alone.

Hers was loud. His lips drew back on sharp teeth, nose crinkling.

He flung his arm forward, and the lance followed with a loud sound of release and the searing whistle of speed as it cut through the short distance between them.

[has_a_cult]

Ionae let off a shot at the sudden flurry of motion, but her aim was off from being startled, and who knew what it hit. She tried to sidestep the lance, but wound up getting grazed anyway, hard enough that she lost her grip on her gun, sending it spinning off into the dark. Under attack, she frantically groped for the pistol on her belt, but couldn't seem to get a grip on it.

[theguideless]

And by then, Martin had raced ahead and cleared the distance, only grown more mindlessly angry the closer he got to the light. He wanted to stamp it out as much as he wanted to stop the drumming, hot noise in his throbbing ears. Already, his weapon was dust and forgotten, but not wholly missed; where fingernails had gone, he had bony claws. They raked the air in a near-blind search for the woman ahead of him.

[has_a_cult]

Her hand didn't find the pistol, but did find a small wax-paper packet of alchemical reagents. Contained within was a strange formula unknown to any human mind that held the secrets to summoning life from nothing.

It would have to do. Ionae threw two packets at the ground between her and the rapidly approaching madman. They erupted in flames and smoke, but instead of just burning, the tiny pyrotechnics gathered together to vague animate figures, recognizable as such only by the tiny coals that were their eyes. At Ionae's frantic shout of "STOP HIM!", they leapt at Martin and grabbed at his clothing. They could only stop even a normal human for a few seconds before the fragile processes that gave them life was expended, but maybe it would be enough...

[theguideless]

The smoke was irritating, but ignorable. The heat was frustrating, but he could endure. It was when those things began scrambling up and all over him like some horrible plague of insects that it became a problem. Martin was furious, his path forward faltered as he swiped and flailed blindly at the menaces.

"NO!"

Panic and rage. Had to be free, had to flee. He snatched and threw the creatures off, staggering forward bit by bit. Almost the last, his swinging arm found the awful witch or sorcerer or...or monster in his way, and he put extra force into it, shoving her aside to clear his path. Whether they were gone or not, he still felt the horrible sensation they were there, and he had to get away.

He conjured the lance behind him, blind to who or whatever was in its path, and sent himself bounding through the air for a great head start down the street. Tumbling to his feet, he ran.

And I think we're done here?

[has_a_cult]

Just as she thought it might work long enough for her to find her damn gun, the one holding his arm was thrown aside and splattered into ash on the street, freeing him to smash her upside the head with long claws. The force of the blow knocked her into the wall, dazing her as the madman fled.

Her scalp felt on fire, her head full of cotton, and she had blood in her eyes, but at least he was gone.