[log] IT'S A MONSTER PARTY [closed]

[devoutish]

Characters: Alfie Solomons, Ecks, Fiona, Francel de Haillenarte, Haurchefant Greystone, John Watson, Tifa Lockhart, Royce Melborn
Location around U4/V4, and then in various houses
Date: evening of 138 through morning of 139
Summary: various merry traveling bands are set upon and scattered by a RUDE AS FUCK anomaly
Warnings: n/a; will edit if anything comes up

Catch-all for EVERYTHING - running from the anomaly, settling in various houses, etc. Top-level and tag as you see fit.

Comments

[jumpthegun]

"I think that word might have different meanings for us, Ecks. A ghost just means a spirit where I'm from. They can be good and friendly or bad and vengeful, but they're all just ghosts." If you believe in that. John's not sure what to believe with this place. He's not exactly into the paranormal - Sherlock would have laughed himself silly, and John has a healthy dose of skepticism in him already - but he'd believed in the demon hound. Perhaps hopped up on hallucinogenics and fear, but he'd believed it.

"What are ghosts where you're from?"

The spinning anomaly is gaining on them, less than half a minute behind. The wind whips up the snow stings their faces with hard, icy shards.

[ecks]

It is easy enough to remember the definition, and Ecks pauses for hardly a second to cast her mind back to the days of lessons underground.

"A ghost is a type of incorporeal undead," she recites. "It is a naturally occurring undead that retains some --"

The faint sound that had previously escaped Ecks's notice quite suddenly registers with the realization that it has been growing louder for the last several seconds. She turns, reaching for the shovel on her pack, but never unhooks it.

"Run," she says, forgetting to give the word any inflection or change in volume as she lurches forward through the snow, reaching out to shove Doctor Watson along in front of her, remembering what he threatened promised he would do if this happened.

[jumpthegun]

"What?" He's suddenly being shoved. "Ecks! What are you-"

John's instinct is to resist, but then he catches a glimpse of the thing and...

"Fuck!" He struggles for a moment, off-balance from Ecks' push, but then tries to grab for her wrist behind him to drag her along - to throw her in front of him if he can.

The anomaly begins to wail, disjointed screams coming from a hundred different places.

"C'mon, Ecks. C'mon! Not far. Half a mile. Not far." That's to the next building where they'll meet Alfie and Fiona and... well, they're going to be none-too-pleased by the anomaly, but there isn't much John can do about that. He'd turn back, but the anomaly is now squarely in that direction.

[ecks]

"Run," she repeats, the apparent calm of her voice belying her near panic. They are out in the open and she does not need to look back again to know that the anomaly is coming on fast. She feels his hand close around her wrist, but twists her own hand to grab at him instead and push or pull him along, frantic as she breaks into a sprint.

[jumpthegun]

John's a quick runner, but he's also on the small side and Ecks has a longer gait than he does. He's more pulled along, which is fine. But what's not fine is the sound of the thing continuing to gain on them. The doctor just focuses on his feet, on not tripping or slowing her down.

That thing when he looks back is closer, though. It's going to be on top of them in another few seconds.

"Ecks, let go of me and keep running. Don't look back."

[ecks]

Her hand convulses in response to the command, and her grip on him is gone in an instant. She knows, though, she knows what he means to do.

"Nuh!"

The sound that comes out of her isn't even a word. Ecks reaches again, trying to yank at his sleeve and propel him forward before she veers away at a dead run. If they are apart at least one of them will live, but she will not let him choose to be killed when she believes they both have a chance.

She has not turned and seen, though, does not know just how close behind them the creature is, does not know that she is veering into its path. The wailing fills her ears as a great weight impacts against her, and then there is nothing.

[jumpthegun]

Unfortunately for John, he's too late to stop her. The golem's jerk throws him off-kilter again and he stumbles into a snowbank, falling sideways. "Ecks, no! Stop! Ecks!" Too late. It's always too late. It will always be too late.

John tries to push himself up as the thing swallows Ecks whole, towers over him with a thousand eyes and thousand voices.

"Fix me. Fix me! Fix me! Fix me!"

John Watson is not an easy man to scare, not when it's him facing down his own death. Not when it's him taking the fall, matching the enemy, looking down the barrel of a gun and not blinking. He's absolutely, bone-chillingly terrified in that moment. The anguish in those voices and the visceral horror the thing's presence and words invoke have John just frozen and staring.

And then, as his nose begins to bleed, it rolls back the way it came, gathering speed all the while. John holds where he is for three or four seconds, and then gasps, his legs give out, he's shaking all over. No. No. No. God no. He pushes himself up again, hand going into his pocket to pull out his little fruit knife, his best weapon. He manages a few staggering steps, then a run, trying to chase the anomaly before it's swallowed up in the snow, until the trail ends and there's nothing. No anomaly, no Ecks, only him, the snow, and his knife.

Everything he's been holding back wells up in a scream that catches on the wind and doesn't even have the decency to echo. There's no satisfaction in it. Nothing to show. He screams again as tears sting his eyes, and he drops to his knees again, this time to shove the knife in his pocket and dig and dig and dig deep. By the time he's a foot into the snow, John realizes that he's sobbing, that this is pointless, that she's gone and he's not going to reach the anomaly.

Two of them. Two dead under his watch in less than six hours. It's not supposed to be like this. He stays hunched over in the snow for the next several minutes, breath hitching, mind screaming with impotent rage, frustration, guilt, fear.

But John is, ultimately, a practical man, a military man. And when he's had his cry, when he's dragged himself up, he begins walking slowly, purposefully toward the house where Fiona and Alfie are.

Time stops for no man and no golem.

The clock keeps ticking.