exsiliumlogs | TEMPORAL TURBULENCE: THE CITY SEIGED

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TEMPORAL TURBULENCE: THE CITY SEIGED

Date & Time: approx. 6/23-6/25
Location: All over the Hold & city surrounding
Characters: Several (tag yourselves in)
Sumamry: The civilians of the Exsilium city revolt
Warnings: Oodles of violence (notify Elle or Liz of anything else worthy of labeling)

The unrest had been mounting for days and days...With no answers or treatments to satisfy the ailing, the population was reaching a breaking point. Too much uncertainty, too much fear and suspicion...They wanted answers. They wanted results. What they were given was absolutely nothing in their eyes.

Many grew bold. They gathered weapons, formed plans and groups...They readied.

One more night of empty assurances, and things began to move in a bad way. Vandals sneaked into the Hold and tore up property in the living quarters before being discovered and chased out, escaping capture. Their valiant retelling was enough to spur the rest into motion.

Come early daylight, hundreds, maybe thousands, of civilians made war upon the Initiative.

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The words are garbled and unclear, but Kyouko recognizes the ribbons, recognizes the voice, and her expression goes stormy.

"Who gives a damn about orders?" Another rush of rioters attempts to go for the barrier again, but Kyouko swings down the butt of her spear in a vicious arc to clip a particularly brave (or stupid) man directly in the temple, and he crumples to the ground like paper in the wind. That makes the crowd shrink back for a moment, and it's just long enough for Kyouko to expand her netted shield, making it wider across. If questioned on it, she'd say it wasn't for Mami's sake -- the older girl is on her own, as far as Kyouko is concerned, and she didn't ask for her help besides.

"It's their damn fault we're in this mess, and I don't care about these idiots. Who just rushes in blindly like this anyway? Morons." She wonders, dimly, if that blow was enough to kill the man who'd rushed toward her, and decides she doesn't care all that much. The strong survived and the weak perished -- that was the way things worked. She doesn't think of Mami's disapproval, and she certainly doesn't think of Sayaka, how disappointed she would be. They were both stupid.

"I've got it covered here." The statement is clear: I don't need your help.

"Someone has to."

In contrast to Kyouko's open anger, Mami is nothing but calm. Nothing but cold, more machine than girl in ways she's long since acknowledged and accepted. She summons more ribbons to deal with the next wave of enemies, her movements graceful and efficient; they grab a few unfortunates from the crowd by the throat and toss them further back beyond the barrier Kyouko's conjured. And there is disapproval in her gaze when she sees the man struck down by Kyouko's spear, but Mami bites back her urge to scold.

It might rankle her battered sense of justice to admit it, but chiding the other girl wouldn't accomplish anything. There was no time for that particular illusion of heroism here, against not some unthinking and hungry monster but dozens and dozens of humans that cannot be regarded as such. That's why Mami binds the thwarted attacker by the wrists and ankles after she checks his pulse (he's alive, just out cold), why she toes him purposefully out of the way. He may be a human like her and Kyouko, but he was also an enemy, and thus afforded only so much mercy. She eyes Kyouko with a patience that somehow manages to almost be defiant, and remains right where she is.

"This area's too big for one person to defend on their own, no matter how capable they might be."

Her own meaning is equally clear, unmistakable no matter how much this place has screwed with both of their perceptions: I don't care, I'm not leaving.

"Go away, Tomoe." The response is blunt, irritated, the words bitten off. Another rush of inexperienced fighters slams into the barrier (stupid, worthless Kyouko thinks), and again they are held back. Any openings they find in her shield they quickly regret, because Kyouko swings hard and efficiently with her spear. The blade bites deep into a rioter's shoulder -- and as if brought to life by the taste of blood, the weapon gains some fluidity in Kyouko's hands. It's nowhere near the scorpion tail patterns she's used to creating, but some give is better than none at all, and even a shorter reach can sting if she hits accurately enough.

"Geez, this is some boring company." She fishes for something one handed, and eventually comes up with a lollipop, wasting no time in popping the sweet into her mouth. Another rush comes, and she swings again -- harder this time. "I'm real tired of you punks," she says, loud, over the rush, but the tone is lazy, bored -- a casual and unconcerned threat. And therein lies the danger of it -- it shows her complete lack of concern for their safety, or their lives. "You all need to go home, or else you're gonna regret it."

"You're wasting your breath."

It's unclear whether Mami's referring to Kyouko's demand that she leave or the taunts she directs at the rioters, and no clarification seems forthcoming. There's only those words, delivered with an icy sort of indifference - the only tangible sign of Mami's ire, an anger she's quick to rein in and shelve. She knew that Kyouko was going to behave like this from the start, so there was no point in being annoyed about it. No, the only point to be found in any of this was in fighting off these crowds, as they had been instructed. As Mami plans to do until she can't anymore, no matter how much her head might ache or her gorge might rise from this relentless bombardment of accelerated motion and sound.

Her ribbons lash out with merciless accuracy: at times smacking foes right between the eyes hard enough to drop them where they stand, at other times snaking around their ankles, up their legs or looping around their flailing fists and tossing them away once more. The air is thick with tension and danger, the murderous intent of the rioters - the very human rioters, violent as they are - nearly palpable. It makes the fine hairs on the back of Mami's neck stand up on end, and for the first time, she's grateful to be lacking the full explosive power of her muskets. There was nothing even tangentially merciful about the suppression of gunfire. As calloused as Mami's become, even she would be uneasy about having to turn living, breathing bodies into swiss cheese.

That comment flows in and out of Kyouko's ears like water, difficult to grasp even if they weren't in the midst of a battle. It will likely look as if Kyouko is simply ignoring Mami, which wouldn't be outside of the realm of possibility, but the true reason is far more dangerous. She barely follows orders and commands as is, and this fight will drag out for much longer if she can't even understand them.

Her own weapon works with a clear, efficient ruthlessness. It arcs out like a snakebite to catch a rioter in the back, another right below the knee. She is trying, in an idle, lazy way, not to hit them lethally, but the crowd grows, and she begins to get annoyed. How many were there anyway? There seemed to be ten to every one that she and Mami took down or threw back. If this kept up they were going to get overwhelmed, and she couldn't keep up her shield indefinitely.

The mob was growing discouraged with the efficiency it faced, yet many were stubborn to the last.

One wild-eyed, desperate man raised his arm, screaming at the top of his lungs for his friends to clear out as he pressed the detonator on the makeshift bomb he was carrying. Many recoiled, barreling in each other to try and get out of the way before—

KRA-KOOOOOOM!

There were just too many enemies. That's what it boiled down to, a cruel little fact that seemed happy to spit in the face of all their effort, no matter how efficient: there were too many, and sooner or later, enough would break through to disrupt their rhythm and so overwhelm them. The lone, crazed attacker seems proof of that and nothing more at first....until Mami sees the bomb in his arms, the thumb already moving to press down on the detonator.

"-!! Kyouko, look ou-"

The rest of Mami's desperate words - there was no time for the usual formalities, for honorifics, for any such ultimately pointless and trivial thing - are swallowed up by the deafening explosion; the force of the blast sends her tumbling back head over heels with all the grace of a doll chucked down a flight of stairs. Limbs flailing, body bouncing and skidding along the ground, the neat and tidy pigtails torn away into a loose mess of shining gold. Mami rolls to a halt in a crumpled heap, and for a long few minutes is deathly still.

Suddenly, there's chaos, nothing but cacaphonous sound and motion. Kyouko's shield breaks as soon as her concentration does, and she barely has time to react before she's thrown back, hard, from the force of the blast. She lands on an awkward, twisted angle, and she too is still for a few long moments.

The blast, at that range, would've likely killed her if she were not a Puella Magi, if she didn't have the gift and curse of a Soul Gem. As it is, she's alive, but that isn't saying much. It takes her eyes what seems like forever to open, to adjust, to process what just happened. Her ears are ringing loudly, and when she takes a breath, a spasm of pain shoots through her chest. A rib broken, then, maybe more than one. She thinks if she's lucky, she's missed knicking a lung, but then again, luck has never been in her favor much. Her body is already knitting itself back together (slowly, in bits and pieces), and that knowledge is what gives her the strength to sit up.

She realizes at last that she's alone, that Mami isn't with her.

"-- Mami?" When she catches sight of that prone figure, she scrambles forward on hands and knees, ignoring the way her head rattles with every slight movement, the way her ears ring and agony lances through her chest and one of her legs. "Mami!"

Wrapped so tightly in her shroud of unconsciousness, Mami doesn't stir. Everything is dark, silent - and in a way, it's peaceful like this. There's nothing to be afraid of here. In this void, this abyss that's almost death, there's nothing that can hurt her. No flurry of garbled, booming sound to eclipse her thoughts. No rush of color and shapes crowding in to make her feel dizzy enough to vomit. And, too, there's no more struggling. No more forcing herself forward, no more need to bear the weight of a hundred unspoken burdens, no more bitterness, no more no more no more. There is nothing but nothing, and so is Mami finally, blissfully free.

But this solace is only temporary. It's not yet time for Mami to die again.

She awakens to pain, bright and hot and everywhere. Her head is pounding; the world is blurry, snowy at the edges. Even shifting just slightly makes her wince, and she groans as she sits up, dishelved hair tumbling down her shoulders in a golden wave. There are bruises already blooming on her face - one eye is nearly swollen shut, her nose is bleeding up a storm. A long, long pause where there's nothing but the taste of blood and a ringing in her ears.....and then those smooth and lightly calloused fingers, always so delicate-looking, attempt to curl into fists. Mami wiggles her toes inside her shoes. Her mind manages to assesses the situation through this hazy cloud of pain: she's banged up and badly shaken, but nothing's broken.

Small miracles.

A moment to let the world tilt back into focus, and Mami looks over at the other girl. "Kyouko? What..." Her voice is breathless and thin. Mami's good eye flutters closed, and she grits her teeth - agony flares up inside her skull, but she concentrates on breathing, just breathing and nothing more, and it abates.

Edited 2012-06-27 03:42 (UTC)

Those few moments of watching Mami, the waiting -- they seem to drag, compress into one awful, endless span of time. It was true enough that their paths had split after Kyouko's family died, that things had gone to a dark, terrible place, but Kyouko had never wanted Mami to be harmed. It would be her fault if she died here, hers...the same as before. That's the truth of it, how she feels about Mami's untimely death -- had she been there, if she hadn't abandoned her, then maybe...maybe things would have turned out differently. The smoke from the explosion hasn't cleared yet, and they've both been flung a distance away from the rioters, but the crowd will not be idle for long, she knows. Still, she waits, kneeling near Mami's side and holding her breath. When her eyes finally open, the usual guarded, angry expression Kyouko has when she's around Mami is gone -- all that's left is a desperate, weary sort of relief.

"Ah -- we gotta get out of here." She tries to stand on her own, winces, and throws a look over her shoulder. She can still hear the crowd; it won't be long. Another struggling attempt to stand ends in failure, and she grits her teeth as if to bite down on the pain, push it to some place where she can ignore it. "Can you move?"

Edited 2012-06-29 00:49 (UTC)

Mami stares blankly at Kyouko for a moment until those words can sink in and be sorted into known, graspable shapes within her mind rather than a meaningless blur of sound. Then she swallows thickly, shifts her weight in a cautious, experimental way, and gives a hesitant nod. There was still a great deal of pain, but it was bearable now. Nothing was broken, sprained or torn - only bruised, and thus able to be lived with. Mami couldn't discern the extent of Kyouko's injuries, but it seemed apparent enough that the other girl was worse off.

"Mm, I think I can. Here...." Mami eases herself into a crouch, still sounding like all the air had been knocked out of her lungs, and gingerly edges closer to Kyouko. "Put your arm around my shoulder, okay?" A quick glance around at their surroundings, the eye not swollen shut bright with the alert awareness of a hunted animal. "I'll help you up, then we'll go." It's said weakly, yet in a tone that nonetheless brooked no arguments....laced as it is with the unspoken warning that now was not the time to squabble or protest.

The rioters are beginning to reassemble, but slowly. The air is thick with the cries and moans of those who had failed to escape the bomber's range.

It's still difficult to understand the words Mami is saying — even moreso now, with her ears ringing and her head throbbing in pain — but she can grasp the meaning of her body language well enough. She drapes her arm over the other girl's shoulder — carefully, so as not to jostle her — and settles into a crouching position herself. The time for petty arguments and old fights is temporarily over, it seems. For now, Kyouko is more interested in staying alive, and keeping Mami alive as well, than maintaining the distance she'd deliberately created between them.

She hears the rioters too, and her jaw sets, her mouth thins into an angry line. That man that threw the bomb...he didn't give a damn about the others caught in the crossfire, it seemed. Maybe he didn't even care about himself. It put her on edge. It was one thing for these people to be angry at them, but the unpredictable and volatile nature of this battle had finally sunk in. She would have to be less reckless, from now on.

"Let's get going." She braces herself against Mami when she stands, and has to bite down on a sharp cry when another jolt of pain shoots through her injured leg. It's enough to make her dizzy, but she hides this well.

When Mami tries to stand, supporting both of their weights, her legs tremble and a shudder of pain rocks her body - but worse than that, more dangerous than that, is how the world suddenly torpedoes. How all the colors begin to pulse in and out to the rhythm of a feverish heartbeat, how the corners of Mami's vision begin to fill with snow again. There is a long, awful moment where the possibility that she'll fall, taking Kyouko with her, to then crumple in a useless heap of limbs for the rioters to do with as they pleased, seems to hover on the very edge of reality. Just a step, just a breath away from becoming true.

No.

Please, no.

I can't fail her again.

This is the thought that throws itself against the forefront of her mind. This is the thought that taps into some deep wellspring of strength with all the gentleness of a fist to the face. This is the thought that makes it so that while Mami sways, she does not fall. Her voice when she speaks again is still breathless, but not as weak as before.

"All right. I'll cover us, you just focus on walking."

She curls and uncurls her fingers reflexively, resisting the urge to summon a ribbon or ten for now; in this state, she has to conserve her energy for an emergency, like that of the rioters catching up to them. A brief pause where Mami reaches up to make sure her Soul Gem is still tucked into her hair (it is) and then she lets out a shaky breath. Then another, then three, then Mami is slowly moving forward with Kyouko - her body coiled like a wire, that head of shimmering gold hair craning this way and that like clockwork to make sure they can't be caught unawares.

There was a time, a time now that seems like ages ago, where Kyouko depended on Mami like this. She had been the more capable teacher out of the both of them; she had been a friend. It's that time that Kyouko's dimly reminded of now, as she forces herself to move. Every slight movement of her leg makes her nearly reel with pain, and there is a brief, frightening moment where her vision gets spotty, but she too calls on some inner reserve of strength to keep herself balanced. If she passes out, if she stops moving...then she's as good as dead, and Mami has never been the sort to leave anyone behind. She's counting on her to stay awake too. With that, she uses her spear to brace her other side. The weapon drags, the metal sound discordant and high-pitched among the softer, fainter noises of the suffering people behind them.

"Okay." The response is weak; it lacks any attempts at bravado or arrogance. She certainly isn't in a state to protest now. She moves slowly, laboriously — but she too is alert, tensed and prepared for any new attacks.

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TEMPORAL TURBULENCE: THE CITY SEIGED

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