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Post by hadopelagic on Nov 27, 2023 2:56:31 GMT -6
(Vegas floats over to Ashley and stabs him with 1 x Package of Emergency Resuscitation Drugs PLUS the healing serum. She throws the gelfoam and bandages toward Strid)
She was drifting, as light as a dandelion puff, almost swimming through air. Vegas popped open her briefcase and shook its contents onto the floor: the photo of a happy couple, the singular life insurance policy, the dagger and the boxcutter, the scented candle, and serum 131. Plus the Emergency Resuscitation Drugs. They were there, too.
Honestly, it would have been wise to stay inconspicuous, let the president use her friends as punching bags as she rode out the world's end (or beginning, or whatever ...) However, that would only delay the inevitable. Because death really, truly was inevitable. People like the president might delay it, defy it. But ultimately, death conquered all.
Vegas grabbed the resuscitation drugs and eyed the scene. Wound Gelfoam, Prototype Healing Serum, a First Aid Kit with bandages, and Anesthesia drugs were on the ground between her and the others. Faith was distracting President Sano. Mal, Jon, Strid, and Ashley were grievously injured.
Shit. Ashley looked *dead.*
With light steps, she bounded to her allies, scooping up the med supplies with her now-empty briefcase. She landed next to Ashley and stabbed him with the resuscitation drugs and healing serum, simultaneously.
Then, Vegas threw the gelfoam and first aid kit toward Strid, who was bleeding. Jon's crush injury wouldn't benefit from bandages and foam; however, he might free himself in the low gravity. And Mal ... well. If Ashley survived the creature's attacks, Mal could survive, too.
Assuming Sano didn't pulverize them all first.
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Post by indeath on Nov 27, 2023 4:03:52 GMT -6
((Malvin joins in on the bullying of Yoshio. Goes and tries to free Jonny. Hurts everywhere.))
Malvin groaned the pain radiating through his whole body, everything hurt. It was hard to decide which was worse the sting from her tentacles or where his back had met the tank. He wanted to go to his mom’s house and collapse on her couch, get spoiled a little. He felt horrible as he moved slowly towards Jonny. The decrease in gravity was welcomed as he moved further away from the deformed angel. He’d been hurled around enough for one night.
“Hey buddy… hang in there..”
Malvin attempted to remove the bit of beam from Jonny’s leg, glaring at the president.
“Kids probably not even yours, seem pretty sterile to me. Don’t have the balls to move on.”
Malvin was counting on Faith’s smart thinking to avoid being crushed by a beam himself. Gravity was working against the prick as well.
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Post by Sharei on Nov 27, 2023 16:45:28 GMT -6
[OOC: Strid administers first aid to himself.]
"Ach- shit - thanks, Vegas..."
Strid grit his teeth and set his shoulders against the pain. Agony was an old friend, and like an old friend, it visited often enough that he was familiar with its ins and outs. Strid winced, twisting carefully to grab at the first aid kit and the gelfoam as they began to float away. Any asset could continue beyond one's limits if-
Asset?
But the burning, seeping mess of his chest demanded more immediate attention than another of those wayward thoughts. Reaching for the side of the tank, Strid anchored himself - hopefully - out of immediate reach and began administering first aid to himself. All the while keeping a nervous eye on Sano and Faith.
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Post by beastly on Nov 27, 2023 22:21:29 GMT -6
Jonny cried out in pain as he failed to doge the beam. He had been expecting it, had seen it coming, but he'd still done it. And now he was under a beam. He pushed at it, and hissed at Malvin to shut up, but he was glad the guy was still with him. The angry lady was up to something crazy, having grabbed the angel wife. He didn't think he could dodge another beam. Gravity was shifting, going up, and Jonny wondered if they had failed.
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Post by jarahamee on Nov 28, 2023 2:54:26 GMT -6
Malvin moved to help Jonny, shifting the beam off the boy’s leg as he helped him to his feet. In the process, Malvin noticed that his leg appeared badly injured, and he needed support to stand.
Jonny felt incredible, blinding pain when he moved to stand. He could tell that his leg was broken between his ankle and knee, and he could not bear any weight on it. The rapidly changing environment around them seemed to make that less and less relevant, and his pain decreased as the apparent gravity vanished.
Strid bandaged his wounds and administered the gel foam to his bleeding gashes. The precision of his military training guided his hand as he assessed his injuries, decided on the most important, and placed the gel foam to stop the bleeding, applying steady pressure the entire time.
Once he was finished, he felt…better. Less weak. It was easier to think, and he was just a little less light-headed.
STRID IS NOW MODERATELY WOUNDED.
Meanwhile, he watched as the book knit itself back together, its slashed pages pulsing and regenerating like moist skin. Like Strid’s own skin might have, in weeks or even years. Its surface, once reformed, was scarred, and yet the writing on its surface was as if it had never been disturbed at all.
From his proximity he felt it. Living, breathing, beating. It was alive, just as he was, and it was hungry.
Vegas approached the very-still Ashley. It did not take a medical professional to see he looked bad. Horrendous even. His dark skin was greyish with what seemed to be blood loss, and his eyes were half-closed. He breathed with an uneasy, shuddering rhythm.
She did not hesitate, immediately stabbing him with her resuscitation drugs and the healing serum.
Ashley immediately lurched up from where he lay with a startled cry, and stared directly at Vegas, eyes wide. He spit a mouthful of blood onto the floor and plucked the syringes out of his chest.
“…Th…Thanks…”
He sputtered, putting out a hand to rise to his feet, and immediately losing balance and falling back onto his rear.
“…What’s going on?”
President Sano turned his head with the snappy speed of a reptile, staring directly down at Faith with his burning red eyes as she addressed him. He floated fifteen feet up now, his arms extended towards the sky, grappling with the snaking cords that came from the ceiling.
They swayed to his call.
As he comprehended her words, his hands lowered themselves reluctantly, his mouth twisting into a bloodied grimace.
“What could you possibly want?”
President Sano drifted downwards, torn jacket billowing. His mouth wrinkled in apparent disgust at the possibility that a being as lowly as Faith might kill his most prized creation.
His arms crossed, and his gaze remained fixated on Faith, only diverting for a moment as Malvin paused to shout at him.
He looked as if he was going to answer Malvin, but decided better of it.
“Let her go.”
The Formed Angel stared back at President Sano in a wordless plea. She made no effort to struggle against Faith, instead standing very still. Her slick, surprisingly firm flesh was slightly slimy to the touch as Faith pressed against it in her protective gear. She could even feel and see the beating of her blood-red heart.
Around them, debris began to swirl. The ceiling appeared to no longer be a ceiling. Instead, the top of the building opened into a sea of alien stars.
They felt the gravity around them further decrease as they began to experience true weightlessness.
Far above them, the water in the tank had risen to meet the sea-sky in an unending cylinder of liquid that seemed to stretch ad infimum. Within, the whale slowly rose, and they could feel all of them beginning to drift with her.
Through them they felt the brush of her consciousness, her strange alien thoughts as she made her way up and towards her home.
It was then that President Sano realized something had not gone to plan.
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE NOW.”
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Post by indeath on Nov 28, 2023 16:29:10 GMT -6
((Malvin supports Jonny and offers him a protein bar. Flips off Yoshio and gives him more sass.))
Malvin put his shoulder under Jonny’s arm to properly support him. Then he pulled the protein bar from his pocket and offered it to Jonny. This was it, they were all going to float into space and die. It was some satisfaction that they’d at least stopped the president’s big plan. At least their whale friend could rejoin its family, that was nice. Hopefully suffocating in space was a quick death.
Malvin flipped Yoshio off.
“Better that than fucking monsters. I’m not down for your weird kink.”
Hopefully Yoshio was distracted enough to not throw beams at him. He assisted Jonny in swimming to the elevator. It was better than doing nothing.
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Post by Sharei on Nov 28, 2023 20:06:14 GMT -6
[OOC: Strid assumes he is cursed. Using the ladder as an anchor, he pushes off the tank in the direction of the elevator. At the same time, Strid attempts to psychically communicate with the whale and begs it not to kill them as it makes it's exit. The people who helped free it are not aquatic. ]
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Post by beastly on Nov 28, 2023 21:18:23 GMT -6
Jonny halfheartedly chewed on the protein bar, one arm slung around Malvin. He'd be lying if he said he wasn't scared, and he was glad he had Malvin with him. He tried to help direct them towards the elevator, shooting nervous glances up at the big whale. Were they going to die? He couldn't trust the president, that guy would say anything, but it was a real fear. Whatever happened, he hoped at least they'd saved everyone else. His sisters. His dad. Ruby.
"Shh...I'm not good at dodging right now, Mal.."
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Post by MP on Nov 28, 2023 23:35:45 GMT -6
[OOC: Faith urges everyone to back up to the elevator. She will do the same with her hostage, though she will keep the wife out of the elevator.]
Going to die? Faith's eyes flickered to the terminals and back again. She'd been hoping Sano was the one responsible for the weirdness. If someone had typed the wrong command or set the space grub loose to kill them all, heads were going to roll - and certainly not hers. There had to be a way out of this.
"Then you'd better stop running your mouth and actually explain what's happening," she said, words curling with dislike.
She prompted the wife with a nudge across the collar bone. Back them up toward the elevator - as best it could. By now, her feet could barely stay on the ground. It was like pushing off the bottom of a lake, and Faith wasn't certain she could get there on her own.
"You're going to keep a safe distance from us, and we're going to wait in the elevator while you explain just how stupid your grand idea was."
She urged the wife toward the elevator with another nudge. Faith didn't give a damn about Yuzu just now, whoever that was, but she needed to throw the creature some kind of bone to keep it cooperative.
"And while you're at it, why don't you explain to your...wife here how Yuzu fits into the picture?"
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Post by hadopelagic on Nov 29, 2023 0:34:03 GMT -6
(Vegas carries Ashley to the elevator)
Yes, thought Vegas, as she gazed up at the ascending whalething. Yes, they were, someday. But she couldn’t die now. She’d never been in love.
“Is it really better to have loved and lost,” she mused to Ashley, as she threw his light body over her shoulder and leapt for the elevator, “than to have never loved at all?”
In her heart, Vegas knew that the answer was yes.
She wondered what President Sano would say.
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Post by jarahamee on Nov 29, 2023 2:40:20 GMT -6
The group made their way towards the elevator, whose doors remained tightly closed since the monsters had left it.
Malvin supported Jonny under his arm, and Vegas carried Ashley with her shoulder.
Jonny ate the protein bar, and felt some strength return to his limbs. He did not feel as weary, and beneath his bandage, his arm stopped bleeding. It would be enough to hold him over until they got to the elevator.
Ashley took a ragged breath and did his best to help guide them in the right direction. He still looked very pale and sweat beaded itself on his forehead.
He tilted his head as he listened to Vegas’ question, the dark blood on the side of his head becoming darker and sticker as it sat there longer, then nodded mutely, turning the wedding ring on his left hand idly with his thumb as he had before. He did not have the strength, or perhaps the energy to answer her, but he seemed to think so.
Strid felt the consciousness of the vast creature brush his own mind, and he in turn reached out to it, imploring it not to destroy them. It was difficult to say what he received in return. An acknowledgement? An emotion? A memory as alien as this strange world they were slowly drifting towards.
President Sano crossed his arms, marching towards them across the ground with none of the levity he had shown moments before. He seemed to be in complete control of his movement, both in the air and on the ground, in contrast to the others.
His eyes flashed in anger, but his trembling, curled lip was the only outward sign of his rage. He glanced towards Malvin, but did not reply to his insult.
“As I have said, there are many planes of existence. We all lived on one of them before. It was very limiting. Three dimensional. Familiar. But there are many other planes, other timelines, other lives that we simply do not have the power to access.”
He held out a hand and summoned the now-free-floating tome into it. The book moved away from Strid and out towards him as if it had missed the hands of its master.
He sighed with a soft gurgle.
“If you find enough planes, you realize that this existence is meaningless. There are a thousand possible realities with a thousand possible outcomes, each one more outlandish than the last. All you need is to…reach into them and take what you want. The power just…happened to fall into my lap. I called the God, and she came, and I took her for everything she had. I did not have to give to her. She would give it to me instead, and I would have everything I wanted. All in one place.”
President Sano smiled.
“It was nearly complete, but even incomplete, I have most of what I need.”
He frowned, flipping to a page in the center of the book. There was a sudden breeze emanating from the center of the tome that brushed against all of them, pushing their increasingly weightless bodies away from him.
“Xiao… Yuze is at home. He has his own home. He’s an adult, working an ordinary job. He’s fine, and he’ll be fine through all of this, no matter the outcome.”
The Formed Angel seemed to relax a little, though she glanced behind her at the elevator herself. Whatever her motive, she seemed willing to play along with Faith in this strange gamble.
“… Yoshio. We can just leave. There’s no need for any more… violence or… any of this. You have what you set out to do… don’t you?”
President Sano’s smile widened.
“Almost.”
The elevator behind the group DINGed again, the doors of the industrial machine opening with a shudder.
Within the elevator, a collection of deformed creatures writhed. Smaller than the previous eel-like beast, the ten creatures were a better fit within. The strange worm-like being made of undulating, faceless hands and feet, the folded, crab-like beast, the strange half-shark woman, and a tall, tall being made of mostly dangling tentacles that seemed to drift from the ceiling itself. They stared at the group with bulbous, hungry eyes.
They lurched out without a moment’s hesitation, barring the group from their exit, and pressing them closer to their doom.
“Checkmate.”
Mr. Sano clasped his hands together, and drifted into the air, apparently quite pleased with himself.
“Xiao, come back to me. I can see… her syringe is empty. You’re in no danger. I’ll take care of this mess in no time.”
The chamber shuddered, interrupting President Sano, as the huge whale creature suddenly bellowed. Far above, the group could see, high in the column of dark liquid, many, many whale-like creatures had begun to circle around the central pillar. As in the vision before, they began to harmonize, increasing the power of the first.
President Sano put his hands over his ears, and let out an inhuman cry, echoed by the monsters in the elevator.
While at first, one might think they were responding to the same stimulus, their identical, almost mirrored reactions seemed to indicate they were actually one and the same creature. Every single one of the beasts was connected to him.
All but the Formed Angel, who stood motionless at Faith’s side for a moment, before struggling free to join him.
Around them, the ‘whalesong’ reached a fever pitch, drowning out all other sound, keening in ears with such power they could feel the vibrations traveling through their own bodies, through the floor, and through the walls.
And then the creatures in the elevator were torn outwards and upwards, away from the group.
Torn was the only way it might have been described, for they were not dragged. They did not drift; they were pulled, piece by piece, skyward, as if by cruel and oddly specific gravity. The flesh peeled right off their rapidly regenerating bodies, ripping them into quivering chunks that sailed skyward, leaving nothing behind.
The elevator was empty now, and President Sano was distracted. He staggering around the floor blindly as he clawed at his own head. Pieces of tissue from his efforts flew upwards and away from him, and it became rapidly apparently that he too was being directly effected by the song of the ‘whales.’
He released the book, which flung itself upwards as quickly as if gravity had inverted itself, falling to his knees.
Taking advantage of their distraction, Ashley ushered the group inside and pressed the close button behind them.
Their last view before the door closed was the Angel, her arms wrapped around President Sano, floating slowly upwards, towards the strange sky which was the sea, as if to join the madness above.
Around her, tile, wall paneling and the steel beams that had been hurled at them before drifted up with her, though from the undulation of her bell, she almost seemed like a sea-creature, swimming in the ocean that rushed down to greet them and spill into the rapidly closing doors.
And then the group was finally alone within the elevator.
The elevator carriage they stood in now seemed perfectly, bafflingly ordinary. There was no trace of blood or gore. In fact, there were no signs of any damage at all within. The buttons on the interface appeared exactly as they would have expected. No strange symbols. No unearthly feelings.
The buttons lit in a perfectly ordinary way as they traveled downward.
Finally, it stopped on the first floor, where this had all begun.
When the door opened, the group found themselves looking upon a very different lounge.
The previously blood-smeared lobby was decorated for Halloween with cut-out pumpkins and merry skeletons in playful poses. The room was filled with chatting, happy people holding drink glasses. A paper banner, laminated to shine read HAPPY HALLOWEEN.
Punch bowls were laid on plastic picnic tables, and candy and appetizers were lined up for guests. Discarded trays and cups were set on the tables scattered around the room. If anything, sinister had been afoot here, the people they saw seemed to be none the wiser.
Halloween music played over the loud-speakers, switching from Ghostbusters to Thriller, drowning out some of the details of the partygoers conversations.
Ashley blinked in confusion as he stared at the collection of people, but made no comment, leaning against Vegas.
“…Thanks…”
As the group headed towards the front door, they received a few glances from partygoers, but even in their disheveled state, they didn’t look out of place at a Halloween party as they wandered out into the night, and back into their dreams.
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