[Danicka Musil] If she had any idea who or what she was working against right now, Danicka would likely be petrified. She does not quite grasp how difficult what she's doing should be, though she's rather sure she has a good handle on how dangerous it is. Whatever is going on here, she knows she does not want to be messing with people who cut up Garou and put blades where their claws should be, who stick them in vats, who... god only knows. Grow them from the start? Capture and clone them? Kidnap and break them?
And in an instant, it doesn't matter to her. She starts to yelp and claps a hand over her mouth before sound comes out: it's habit. And it's helpful, in this case. She breathes raggedly against her palm, closing her eyes for a moment, shuddering.
She starts doing calculus in her head. And goes towards the door.
[-unity-] Perhaps Danicka was expecting the doors to all lock down on her. Perhaps she thought for a fleeting instant that she might be trapped in here, a bug in a jar, that toxic smoke might start filling the room, that monsters might crawl out from between the server racks.
But the doorhandle -- which is a latching semicircle atop a disc -- opens easily. The door eases outward, slides sideways. It's soundless.
The hall outside is dazzlingly bright after the darkness of the machine room. Like the cell, the corners are all rounded, the floors and walls spotless, the ceiling one continuous panel of light.
There is a single door to her left; the 'locker room' she saw from above, and through it, the experimental suite. On either side of this doublet of doors, the corridor swings away. North and South wings. From the south comes distant, muted sounds of struggle.
From the north --
...iiiiIIIII KNOW WHERE YOU ARE. The voice in her mind hisses and crackles, as though through static. The volume fluctuates wildly, from barely present to thoughtcrushingly loud. What do you hope to accomplish? What do you think yourself capable of, human? Puny, weakminded surface CHAFF?
[Danicka Musil] She opens the door slowly. And she looks out the crack first. And then she slips out, clutching the bag of talens, heading towards the south. The floor is cool on her feet. Just like it was in the cell. She starts heading for the struggle, away from the voice, or where she thinks the voice is coming from, even though it's in her own damn head. Chaff. Just like --
Danicka shakes her head. Starts playing 'Prince Caspian' in her head. With stumps instead of feet. It is slightly more mature than yelling LALALALA NOT LISTENING back to the voice, but it's basically the same.
[-unity-] No. No no no. I don't think so.
Before Danicka has even begun to turn south -- the very instant the idea births in her mind -- the alien presence in her mind negates her. She has been grasp by hands far stronger than her own numerous times in her life. This is the same, and not the same: a sort of invisible grasp over her very psyche.
COME HERE.
(man in black: -1WP, psychic compulsion. resisted WP roll! Or, Danicka may spend 1 WP to resist.)
[-unity-] (psychic compulsion)
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Danicka Musil] [WP! Permanent for some reason. I think Damon just doesn't want Danicka to die.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Danicka Musil] Yes. Yes yes yes. I think so.
Danicka doesn't even screw up her face or furrow her brow or physically shake off what that Thing is trying to do. She just keeps going, and starts going faster.
FUCK YOU.
[Danicka Musil] [Wits!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 3, 5 (Failure at target 6)
[-unity-] There's a shriek of sheer outrage in her mind. Then the alien presence is simply gone. Or -- no. Not gone. Dormant.
Lying in wait.
She goes faster. She leaves the locker room behind, and the machine room. On the other way, she can see a portal: the elevator to the surface? And another door: the staircase down? It doesn't matter now. Danicka's walking fast, maybe running, and the long white hall streaks by, dizzyingly pristine, no contrast, no features, nothing at all for her visual cognition to process. Even the distance seems deceptive here.
And then she's at the turn in the hall. She can hear the altercation clearly now, but she's too distracted, or too pressed, or too something to think twice about
turning the corner.
And instantly, Danicka can see the source of the commotion. The altered female Garou is out of her tank. She's hairless even in Crinos, a hideous, naked creature still dripping with viscous pale fluid. She's struggling with Lukas -- or perhaps he should be called Wyrmbreaker -- who is grotesquely half-shifted, human head and neck and arms and upper chest on a black-pelted Crinos body. He's snarling terribly, snapping at her with human teeth. The altered Crinos makes no sound at all, nothing except the hiss and whir of the pistons and ball-joints in her cybernetic claws.
[Danicka Musil] [WP -3]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 5, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Danicka Musil] Danicka was born to outrage. Conceived in it, carried inside a mortal representation of it, nourished by it. She has never been apart from it, never been away from it except for two quiet years in a southern city before it was torn apart by a devastating hurricane. Every other moment of her life has felt the nearby pressure of the Garou, their rage, their violence, the threat that one day they might snap and then she won't be able to handle it.
Like now.
The first thing out of her mouth is a shriek she can't hold in, doesn't even try. She nearly drops the bag of talens but manages to cling to it, her hand clenching down rather than going limp. Lukas looks... grotesque. But he has his face. Even if it's snarling, snapping, horrific. She at least knows him for himself. The other...
...makes Danicka want to run. And hide. And cry. And there is no reason but sheer, unadulterated will that she does not run, but reaches into her bag of tricks and takes a hold of something long and slender. It's not a vial. It's a dart. She concentrates, and breathes out, and holds back a squeal before running forward to try and jab the dart in the female's flesh.
[-unity-] (I'm going to consider Lukas + hairless chick in a mutual clinch. Roll a jab, dex+ath or dex+melee, whichever's higher. Danicka can take -2 diff for clinched opponent, and additional diff mods if she's coming up from behind. Minimum diff 3, though.)
[Danicka Musil] [Dex + Ath: Eee! Gonna git the stabbity! // -2 Diff (Clinched opponent), -2 (Back attack)]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 4, 7, 8 (Success x 4 at target 3)
[-unity-] (dex+brawl +3 = 12 in crinos; -1 die b/c half-shifted. str = 8 in crinos; no additional damage mod due to half-shifted. total = 19 per hit, 4 hits!)
Dice Rolled:[ 19 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[-unity-]
Dice Rolled:[ 19 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[-unity-]
Dice Rolled:[ 19 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 9 at target 6)
[-unity-]
Dice Rolled:[ 19 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 8 at target 6)
[-unity-] (and now soaking!)
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 4, 7, 7, 7 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[-unity-]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 5, 5, 7, 10 (Failure at target 6)
[-unity-]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 5, 6, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[-unity-]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[-unity-] The pristine walls already bear smears of blood and clumps of fur; cracks from their bodies slamming to and fro. The floors are clawed, splintered. Either of the creatures could kill her with minimal effort. Every instinct she has screams at her to run, and if not run, then rage, attack, shred, tear at it with all the futility and feebleness her human skin can muster.
But she doesn't. She keeps her head. Danicka dashes in, utterly dwarfed by the two monstrosities wrestling in the hall, and the dart in her hand slips into hideously naked skin, discharges it venom in an eyeblink.
The female's lupine head arches back. Her eyes roll until nothing remains but white. She's shuddering all over, nerves firing, frying, seizing, and the intricate machinery of her cybernetic hands hiss and whirr and hum at fever pitch.
Lukas doesn't waste a second. He grabs the creature by the loose skin at the back of the neck. Slams her face into the wall.
And again.
And again.
And again.
She's unconscious by the second blow. Dead by the third. The last is just overkill, crushing her skull like an egg, leaving a red-grey blotch on the paint. The altered female slides to the ground. Errant nerve-impulses spark down her mechanical hands, cause them to twitch and jitter, and then finally fall motionless.
Lukas shakes his hand clean, snapping back to homid shape in a second. He's all but naked. All that remains of his white cottons is the torn collar around his neck, a scrap of the sleeve around his elbow. He shakes them off impatiently, reaches out, grabs Danicka by the shoulder and curls her into the crook of his elbow, keeping her close to the wall.
He doesn't ask her if she's all right. He doesn't waste time hugging her, kissing her, feeling her to make sure she's unharmed. His eyes are everywhere, looking up and down the hallway, tense.
He's bleeding from the side. It leaves a warm red stain on Danicka's plain white shirt.
"Where's the other one? There were two. They came for me, and then all of a sudden the other one left."
[Danicka Musil] This is, in Danicka's mind, the worst place on earth.
There is no place to hide. There are no real corners. There is no darkness except what she found in that server room or up in the ventilation, where she was at least hidden. There's no safe place. And yet:
Danicka is curled up in a ball as soon as the dart takes effect, scrambling towards one wall and tucking herself in, her shoulder pressed to the wall and her hands on her knees and her eyes squeezing shut because one of them's going to kill her any second now even if it's Lukas he's going to snap he's going to lose it and it's going to be her and there'll be blood everywhere but she won't care she'll be in pieces then. She is sobbing as he's smashing the female's head in the wall over
and over
and over.
She doesn't watch. She shakes. She doesn't see Lukas shift instantly back to his birth form, the one she knows him in. And when he comes, there's no shadow due to the way the light floods the hall, and when he wraps around her, pulling her close, she screams.
Bites it back. She doesn't open her eyes. And she feels blood seep through her shirt and chokes on another squirming, helpless cry. "Já nevím! Nevím, prosím, ne --"
She doesn't get to what she is about to beg. She bites her lip. And takes in a shaky breath. And doesn't open her eyes. She can feel arms, and not fur. She can feel humanity under the rage. It only barely helps. "Use the blades on her to get the silver off. You need to get it off."
[-unity-] "Je to já," Lukas says instantly. He doesn't let go. He draws her head against his, presses her body close. "Je to Lukáš."
She doesn't open her eyes. She keeps her eyes closed, finds some semblance of sanity -- tells him what she does. She can feel him turning to look at the corpse. Then he presses his mouth to her temple, fiercely.
"Hned jsem zpátky."
If she doesn't open her eyes, all she has is sound. Scraping of metal on metal. Dull thud of dead flesh. And then the clink of one manacle to the ground. The other. A caught breath, straining -- and then the collar too, clattering to the floor in two pieces.
Lukas returns to her side a second later. "Come on." He reaches for her hand.
[Danicka Musil] Drawn closer, she yelps again, but it's not quite the scream from earlier, the horrified, bloodcurdling terror she'd unleashed when he first touched her. There are tears on her face, unconsciously shed, and she's shaking like a child. When he lets her go she gives a vicious shudder and clings to the wall but sucks in breath after breath as he gets the silver off his throat and off his wrists. She hears them clang to the ground as she's fighting to get her respirations under some kind of control, and she covers her face to open her eyes.
Her palm is okay. So she slowly lets it drop. And starts to unfurl from her tight knot of limbs on the floor, and looks at him. Her other hand still has the talens. "There was something talking in my head," she says, before she grabs the wall and gets herself up, gets herself standing. "I shut down power in the surgical chamber. And --"
Danicka glances down at the corpse of the female, shudders, and reaches for his hand finally. "Was the other one male? They weren't... done with him."
[-unity-] Lukas glances at Danicka briefly, a blaze of blue eyes. "He was male," he confirms. "I didn't get a good look before he was gone. Done with him how?" He looks around, down toward the dead end, up toward the turn in the corridor. "Which way?"
She leads him toward the central hallway. The elevator, presumably, up and out of here.
[Danicka Musil] "When I saw him he was on a table. The female was in a vat. They've been fucking with Garou -- maybe others -- for goddess knows how long, adding shit like those blades on her."
Danicka's still trembling as she starts walking, starts talking. She's got enough control not to break down sobbing again, or stay on the floor. That's about it. "There's an elevator this way. Presumably it goes up, and out of here."
[-unity-] They turn the corner. After the sudden violence in the hallway, one might expect someone -- dozens of someones -- to swarm them now. But there's nothing. No reaction. Everything is silent and still, and after they leave the south corridor behind, they're in a space as pristine and faceless as it ever was.
"Can we stop them? Is there a ... a plug to pull, something to break?"
[Danicka Musil] There's a long moment before she answers, as though she thinks if she can get him to take a few more steps forward, bare feet slapping on the ground, they can get out and he'll stop giving her the idea that it's not going to be this simple. Right now, she wants it to be simple. As simple as possible. Get in. Go up. Get out.
"Probably," she says levelly. "I was in the server room. And there's some...thing all in black that was in all the videos of surgeries. You could try killing him, if you really want to."
Her hand is tight in his. "I haven't seen anyone else."
[-unity-] "Danička," he tugs her to a stop, to turn to face him. They're a handful of steps from the elevator portal. "If you want to leave, let's get the hell out. I can come back with others."
[Danicka Musil] She's got his blood on her. And bare feet. And she winces at the sight of him, because she hasn't looked at him since he changed again. Her brow is furrowed. And she's considering it. Take what she can and run. She closes her eyes, exhales, clenches her much smaller hand around his.
"I don't know that we could get out if we tried," she says. "There are stairs that go down, and no stairs going up. We have to use the elevator. And they could make that not work."
If she could turn off the power in any room in this place with a few keystrokes, the people who have permissions could do more than that. She opens her eyes again. "It called me 'chaff'. That video game I played awhile ago, the Harvester? When it picked people up, it called them chaff."
[-unity-] His eyebrows flicker together, and his rage licks higher for a beat. It called her chaff. It's just words. Sticks and stones, and all that. It makes Lukas angry anyway, the way it had made Danicka angry, or at least defensive of him, when her brother called him pathetic all those long years ago.
There's a pause. Then:
"So what do you want to do?"
[Danicka Musil] "I don't know," she says, with some frustration, exhaling hard. "I could find out more about what they're doing if I went back to the server room, but when I turned off the power that voice in my head was really pissed off and tried to make me go that way."
She points North. Ish. "I want to go home but I don't see the point of climbing into a metal box of death if they're just going to stop it, or crash it, and then put silver back on you."
[-unity-] Lukas stares at Danicka for another second. Then he pulls her hand to his mouth, kisses her knuckles hard.
"Come on then. Let's go to this server room."
[Danicka Musil] She tenses slightly at the sudden pull, breathes carefully, looks at him in something like bewilderment as he kisses her hand like that. "Okay," she says, and starts heading back the direction she came from. "My mother was killed with silver."
A long pause, broken by the smack of bare feet on whatever this material is. "Lances, for fuck's sake."
[-unity-] "I'll be careful," he promises, though she hadn't asked him to. And she hadn't asked him to -- and he wouldn't -- promise not to die, either. "Give me a bandage. Do you still have yours on?"
[Danicka Musil] Without warning, and without trying to fight it -- and she has so little left to fight it with -- Danicka bursts into sudden tears. Only: it's never really a burst. Her eyes sting, and burn, and then water. Her chest caves in, and she feels Lukas's blood making the plain cotton top they put her in cling to her skin. She sniffs, and covers her face for a moment with her free hand, and wipes her cheek with her fingers.
"Je mi to líto." she says weakly, and fresh tears escape her eyes. "Je mi líto, Lukáš, jsem si ani pomyslet ..."
She shoves the bag towards him, sniffing again, wiping her face as she goes on walking.
[-unity-] "Danička," he follows her, catching her hand again to turn her around. She can see his eyes flick over her shoulder, to the side, a quick scan, every few seconds. Between that, they stay on her. "Why are you sorry? She's dead. We're fine. She's dead and we're fine because you hit her with a sense dep dart.
"You have nothing to be sorry for."
He pauses to remove a bandage. Apply it. It's different when he uses a bandage. His spiritual energy gathered like a silent implosion, a momentary dull muffling of the senses. Naked as he is, Danicka can literally see his wounds closing, his skin reknitting. A second one, then.
"Turn around for a moment," he tells her. "Close your eyes." For a few seconds the cadence of his breathing changes, becomes rough and guttural. Then it passes. "Okay."
When she turns back, his skin is faintly aglow. It's hard to tell in these brilliant white surroundings, but when they get into the server room it will be obvious. "If we get into a fight," he says, "I want you to stay behind me. Strike from around me if you can, but let me shield you." A brief pause. "Not because you're my mate, but because I can take it far, far better than you can. Okay?"
[-unity-] (gift activation!)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 7) [WP]
[Danicka Musil] "Because you're hurt and I had them and I didn't... I didn't..."
She's holding onto the leather bag when she brings both hands up to cover her face. At first when he says she's dead she isn't thinking about the hairless, blade-clawed monstrosity Lukas just killed. She's thinking about someone she sees an echo of in the mirror, shot through with silver-plated lances by creatures who wanted her to die slowly, and succeeded, and the story they were told about how she fought on, stabbed again and again, so that --
-- it's a good fucking story. It's an epic tale, and over the last fourteen years it's gotten embellished in the Nation's histories so that no one really remembers how many lances it actually was or how many fomori Night Warder took down before her wounds finally overtook her, or how long it took for her to actually crumple and fall because her Rage could no longer bring her back. Lukas knew before Danicka mentioned it tonight that Night Warder was killed by silver, and has heard plenty of songs about it.
He doesn't know the part about the teenage girl standing in front of that house in Ridgewood, wearing a rather plain cotton shift dress with a pink sweater tugged on over her thin arms. How long and curled and tangled her hair was then, how confused she looked, how furrowed her brow was as the fleet-footed, low-voiced messenger with tattoos of crows up and down his arms told her nearly a month after the fact how her mother had died. And he doesn't know the part about how she mistook her first cramps for grief and didn't cry until she was bleeding, and knew better than most adults realize that nobody is ever really crying for the dead.
Truthfully, he probably doesn't need to.
Danicka sniffs hard, and lets him be the one who looks around, looks over shoulders, is taut with watchfulness. She gets a hold of herself. She does not watch him heal. She recognizes the sensation of Gnosis being pulled and dispersed, sister of a Theurge as she is. She wipes her face again, frowns at the way he looks. "Do you really think I'd try to jump in front of you?" she asks, bewildered, as though he just said something utterly retarded. Nevermind how she'd reacted on the rooftop when they shot him. Nevermind the dart. She doesn't argue that they're not fine, that they're not fine because they're underground with people who want to chop him up and turn him into a hairless abomination, nevermind all that.
She looks at his dick. "Huh," she says, and walks to his side, tucking in against his ribs to walk the rest of the way.
[-unity-] -- except he doesn't let her bring her hands up to her face. Not both, anyway. The one he has, he holds fast, tugs close until her knuckles press to his stomach.
"Danička, I let us get kidnapped. I didn't stop them on the roof. They could've killed us, and I couldn't stop them." The corners of his jaw shift when he swallows. "If I haven't apologized, you should not have to."
It passes. She looks at his groin. Lukas can only summon up a faint huff of a laugh. Then she's against his side, and he puts his arm around her, and he lets her take them to the server room door.
He doesn't know about her mother. He knows what all Ahrouns of the tribe know: that Night Warder was mighty, that Night Warder was almost unstoppable, that Night Warder died a hero whose name would echo until Apocalypse and beyond. He doesn't know about Danicka waiting to know if, how, when. He has never asked.
She has never told him very much about her mother, except that when the boys hurt her, her mother scared them witless. Except that her mother tried to feed her and nurture her, and nearly starved her and her brother. Except that her mother tried to be a mother, and nearly destroyed them. Maybe did destroy Vladik, in a sense.
And he knows, now, that she died by silver, and Danicka knew.
"I may have to shift to Hispo," he says as he puts his hand on the doorhandle. "Can you manage?"
[Danicka Musil] Her hands are, for once, cool against his skin. Usually she's so warm. Right now she's drained, and dehydrated, and has been running around a near-sterile surface and ventilation shafts in bare feet. Her hair is all tangled and dirty, matted on one side. Her feet and hands are dirty from the vents and grate. Her outfit is nothing she would ever wear willingly. And it's bloody.
She touches his stomach. Unfurls her hands, lays her palm against him. It's a quiet gesture, and it may mean nothing but what it is: contact.
"I didn't apologize because I had to," she says, almost defiantly, then adds: "I'll try."
Which is what she said to Vladik, at the dinner table, when he asked if she could tolerate this man as her mate.
[-unity-] Lukas meets her eyes for a second. He nods.
And then he pulls the doorhandle.
The instant it begins to move, the door flies open in Lukas's face, slamming him back with a grunt. The incomplete creature is within, still bloody, his right prosthetic hanging unstably, jittering to and fro as though malfunctioning. He roars at them. It cuts off mid-snarl with a yelp. His head twists sharply to the side, once, twice, and then snaps back to the center.
He roars again. And lunges.
[Danicka Musil] [Reflexive: SCREAM LIKE A GIRL
1: Dodge. Lawl.]
[-unity-] (lukas:
go hispo, stay between dude and danicka!
4 bites, with rage!
dude:
1 - chomp SMALL BLONDE WOMAN
R1-3 - chomp BIG BLACK HISPO)
[-unity-] (chomp: diff +2 to get around lukas.)
[-unity-] (dude, chomp danicka! +2 diff for getting around roadblock.)
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 7)
[Danicka Musil] [stupid dude, you can't chomp shadow lords!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[-unity-] (lukas: i haz bettar idea. spur claws! +1diff)
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 8 at target 7) Re-rolls: 4
[-unity-] (damage! +7)
Dice Rolled:[ 15 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[-unity-] (dude soaks!)
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 5, 5, 6, 6, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[-unity-] (dude: chomp lukas, +2 for spur claws)
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 5, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 7)
[-unity-] (damage: +1)
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 4, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 8 at target 6)
[-unity-] (soak!)
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[-unity-] lukas: chomp again!
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 8 at target 5) Re-rolls: 2
[-unity-] (damage +7)
Dice Rolled:[ 15 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[-unity-] (soak!)
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[-unity-] -- and two seconds of hell break loose. The altered hispo lunges. The black hispo turns his body sideways, gets in the way. Teeth clap shut a millimeter from Danicka's skin, so close she can feel the spray of spittle.
After that it's over in an eyeblink. The two hispos collide, snapping, clawing, snarling. There isn't a single false move in there. Every bite is cataclysmic. Blood sprays. Bones crunch. The altered creature falls, torn open. Wyrmbreaker takes an uneven step back on three legs, his right forepaw, which is clawless now, mangled and red. His growls fill the half-dark. It's impossible to think that the other creature, the one in black, can be ignorant of all this.
Lukas shifts. Now he's crouched, hulking, inhuman, glabro. "Go," he says to Danicka. His voice is gravelly and growling. "Do what you have to. I'll watch your back."
[Danicka Musil] It is not natural for Danicka to get down and away like she does. Whatever instinct tells her to avoid that pain was conquered so long ago that she barely remembers what it feels like to move out of the way, and quickly, and not suffer more for it. She sucks in air that tastes sterile and has begun to smell like her own sweat and her lover's blood and hits the floor by the opposite wall of the hallway, palms slapping the ground and back bowing as she tucks in around her head, her throat, her soft underbelly.
Hispo she can tolerate, though with horror. Glabro she can endure, but with constant fear. The only forms that do not frighten her are the natural ones, the ones occurring outside of rage. Wolves and men are just that: wolves and men. They are more than reminders of how close, how many times, her family came close to be obliterated in the wake of her mother's wrath. Or her brother's.
She shudders, and looks up when it's quiet, and flinches at the sight of Lukas's paw. Her eyes close tight and she looks away, then back at him again. She moves fast, pushing herself up to her feet and darting past him, past the altered wretch. A bloody bandage drops onto Lukas's foot. She goes back to the console she was at before.
[-unity-] (activate that thang!)
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 7) [WP]
[-unity-] Lukas's spirit is drained. The energy gathering this time is far more meager than it had been. It's as much will as spirit that drives the reknitting of his flesh this time -- not quite perfectly, bruises remaining along the epicenters of the bite.
Lukas remains in his Glabro form this time, his back to Danicka's, his eyes snapping from side to side, up to the vent, to the door, back. The heat he generates is a palpable force at her back. Between the two altered Garou, his rage is nearly spent. It's a half-forgotten throb at the back of the mind.
And then it's not. The Shadow Lord calls on his totem, whose might guided his every bite. All at once his rage flames higher, replenished from the storm god's reserve.
Meanwhile, Danicka approaches the console again. As close to the action as she was, it was impossible to avoid blood-spatter. Her forearms are speckled in red where they'd gone over her head; the back of her shirt, too. It was hot at first, hot and salty. Now the fluid is cooling, unpleasantly cold on her flesh.
Her fingers slip a little on the fiberglass surface. The symbols still respond to her, though, leaping to glowing life at her touch.
(for the record:
6 rage beginning
-3 rage in the fight with Sinead
+1 rage for injury
+1 rage for attacking danicka omgz!
-1 rage to hispo, -1 for spur claws, -3 for actions
+3 rage from Perun
--current rage, 3.
will post more when i figure out what danicka's up to!)
[-unity-] (danicka -- poking around)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 5 at target 4)
[-unity-] (danicka -- shut down surgical suite machinery)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 4)
[-unity-] (comput0r: encrypted! even stronger!)
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[-unity-] (danicka: hacking!)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 4)
[-unity-] (danicka: i can haz reformat?)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 5, 5, 5, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 4)
[-unity-] (comput0r: omfg, encryption!)
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[-unity-] (danicka: hacking!0
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 5, 5, 5, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 4)
[-unity-] So she searches. She delves back into the alien characters and runes that swarm across the screen, expand into free air, shift, morph. In doing so, ironically, Danicka finds herself back amongst the familiar. She may not be able to read the characters, nor fully understand the complexities of the text that scrawls across her field of vision, but she damn well knows how to get what she wants from a computer.
And it gives it up. She's looking for a way to shut this place down. Not by hacking apart the machinery and temporarily disabling the physical plant, which is surely a Garou's response, but by crippling the command line. By destroying data. By destroying not only what exists, but the ability to re-engineer it in the first place.
She delves into the history. She kills the power. She erases the programs and scripts and the figurative thinking mind of the apparatus that performs these ghastly procedures. She meets resistance, and this time it's stronger, rapidly shifting security lock that she has to fight to get across. Then she's through, and programs and parameters go down the drain.
Danicka isn't through yet. She looks for the data itself; not merely the video records of each procedure, but the data gleaned. The adjustments, the fine-tuning, the perfection of this ghastly method, the rationales and reasons of which yet remain a mystery to her.
Once, Lukas glances over his shoulder at what she's doing. Neither of them are commenting on what implicit trust there is for him to leave this entirely in her hands; to not bother discussing her course of action, to not insist on knowing the details, to not even ask what she's attempting, what's there in those humming banks of machinery, what's going on.
Neither of them are commenting. Neither of them are even thinking about that. He looks over his shoulder, he sees the alien characters that swarm the screen, and he sucks a breath through his teeth.
"Some of those are wyrm-glyphs," he says, low. "Most of them, I can't read."
He turns forward again, tense, ready for anything. She goes back to work. A few touches on the keyboard brings up the data vaults again. This time she doesn't sift through them; she destroys them wholesale. Built-in security kicks in, but Danicka's learned. She doesn't go head to head with it, trying to crack a constantly changing code. She moves elsewhere, sets up a script, masks it, creates pointers -- accesses the database sideways, circumvents the lock, crushes the defenses.
Data, programs, shells, file systems begin to self-delete.
(roll percep + computer!)
[-unity-] (While I'm at it, the talen bag currently contains --
6 arrow killers
4 bloody bandages
10 sense dep darts
7 soak talens
7 damage talens
8 trapdoor boons)
[Danicka Musil] "I suppose that's a good thing," she says absently, when he tells her that he can't read most of the wyrm-glyphs. It took very little time to work out the rather intuitive input -- or, really, the controls that to her seem more intuitive than a Qwerty keyboard -- but more effort to figure out how to get where she wanted to go and do what she wanted to do. She doesn't talk to Lukas about it. He's watching. She assumes he's listening, too, and even keeps her fingertaps quiet.
The thought of trying to get the thing in black to show its face -- since faces are quite emminently breakable -- occurs to her, but she focuses on this at the moment, sweeping through the archives like swiping her hand across a crumb-covered counter. She is not a terribly knowledgeable or experienced programmer, but she is... well, frankly, gifted. Everything she knows she has learned on her own thus far. Everything she knows, she's hobbled together on a spur of the moment, since she was a teenager. It's the same now.
She adapts. And hums, out of nowhere, Walkin' in a Winter Wonderland.
[perception + computer]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 4)
[-unity-] As data deletes, Danicka becomes aware of a flashing alert in the corner. When she accesses it -- it takes her a moment to understand. Then she gets it.
The elevator is descending.
[Danicka Musil] "The elevator's coming down," she says mildly, as though this is nothing to be concerned about. "That's where we were headed before we came back here.
She looks over her shoulder. "This will all go down on its own from here on out, I think. Unless you want to stay and wait for whatever's coming."
[-unity-] Lukas draws a short breath.
"Is the elevator the only way up?"
[Danicka Musil] She turns away from the console finally, bending over to pick up the leather bag that she set between her bare feet when she started tinkering away at the large LCD screen. As she rises, she looks over at Lukas and ignores the crawling sensation along her arms. "So far as I can tell."
[-unity-] Lukas looks at the screen for a second. Can make no sense of it. In this form, when he clenches his teeth his entire jaw shifts. The masseters bulge.
Then he releases.
"Okay. We'll fortify ourselves and meet them down here. Lay down lines of arrow killers and use an armor talen on yourself. Conserve your will. Can I pull these apart, or will it interrupt what you're doing?" He indicates the storage racks.
[-unity-] (also: based on current rate of descent, elevator looks like it'll arrive in about 3 rounds' time.)
[Danicka Musil] With a flick of her eyes, she looks from Lukas to the racks and back again. "Wait til its done. Just to make sure. Then... I guess it can't hurt..."
She digs around until she finds a small metal shield, a couple of small bags of earth. "I've never used this kind," she says, of the bags, as she wraps her hand around the shield. "
[WP/2]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[-unity-] Lukas's mouth quirks faintly. "Well, make it your first time."
He leaves the racks alone, exits the server room. Carefully. The hulking near-man looks up the hall, then down. "Only three down here that you saw, right? Those two," he points at the dead things, "and a third that's yet to make an appearance.
"Lay down the arrow killers like this," he toes a box around the portal to the elevator, extending six feet to either side and barring across the hall front and back. "I'll be right back. Shout if anything happens."
Lukas doesn't bother trying to fit glabro fingers into the door latch. He rears back and boots the door off its sliding track, sending it crashing into the room. Nothing leaps out at him, nothing attacks. Danicka looked in here and saw a locker room. Lukas, having little to no high school experience, thinks storage room. Then he reaches up and tears the lockers down, one by one, a quick and dirty job. When he has a few he drags them down the hall, barricading off the north and south wings.
Neither of them are watching the computer console. But they can both her the gradually escalating rumble of machinery, stark in the silence. The elevator is very near now, a handful of seconds away.
(roll a percep/alert!)
[Danicka Musil] "You're just waiting for me to make a virginity joke, I know it," Danicka says after a long moment. That long moment is spent focusing on the shield in her hand. She doesn't bother holding onto it; she feels the power leave the bit of metal, and she drops it. She is avoiding looking at Lukas, her backbone more plasma than steel right now, and though she's attempting humor of some kind, it falls flat. Nothing about this is funny to her.
Holding the bags of arrow killers, she follows Lukas carefully out of the semi-dark room, away from the lit-up screen, and nods. "It's in black. And tall. And very loud in my head."
She pays more attention to his partly clawed toe than to anything else, focuses on the line being drawn in the air rather than on the light black fur covering him, the snarl of his voice that is so repulsively unlike the way she is used to him sounding, the way she wants him to sound, the way she loves hearing him sound. She breathes in sharply when he tells her he'll be right back, and presses her lips together to keep from crying again as she starts laying out the lines of ash on the ground in the proposed box.
Danicka flinches when he rips the door off, shoves it inside. She doesn't watch what he's doing, and then hops over the line she's just made, out of the way, in the doorway of the server room.
[perception + alertness]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[-unity-] Lukas remembers a night when Danicka flung herself into his room, terrified. He learned later that Sam was in Glabro outside; that she'd seen him.
It was one of his first inklings that the woman he was falling in love with was deeply, intrinsically flawed in some way. That some part of her natural defense, her birthright as kin to the Garou, had been stripped from her. It wasn't until much later that he realized why, and how.
But the point is: some part of him is amazed at her resilience now. Some part of him is grateful for what help she can give him.
Most of him is simply grateful to have her there. With him. Alive.
While Lukas sets up barricades, Danicka riffles through the things that are falling out of the toppled lockers. She finds -- vacuum-sealed, neatly sorted and packed away -- what appears to be the various personal belongings of ... well, logic would suggest, of their predecessors here. She finds their clothes packed in amongst countless of other neat little plastic squares. She finds their wallets and watches and car keys and cell phones amongst dozens of their counterparts.
She finds her gun. She finds other people's guns, too. Not so many as wallets and cellphones, but a few. Mostly revolvers and handguns. Also a small submachinegun, matte black, mean.
And she tosses the other lockers too. She doesn't have a lot of time, and some of them are awkwardly wedged, unopenable. She finds one full of knives, some of them bloodstained. She finds another stocked with jewelry.
And she finds one, locked, the door banged half-open by impact. There's a single object inside. It's a smooth, cylindrical rod, perhaps a foot and a half long, an inch in diameter, smoothly tapering at each end. The surface is intricately and very faintly etched, black on black: all straight lines and oblique angles. Computer geek that Danicka is, untrained or not, she may think of the patterns found on circuit boards.
If she touches it, the surface is cool, pleasantly textured -- it feels like it may be titanium alloy, carbon fiber, something like that. Very light, very strong.
--
Whatever she chooses to take, she'll need to take it quickly. The elevator is very near now. Lukas throws a last locker to the south-end barricade, then jogs back to stand inside the box of fine ash, against the wall to the south of the elevator, across the hall from Danicka's spot in the doorway of the server room.
He looks over his bare shoulder at her for a moment, fierce-eyed, saying nothing. His eyes are still his. They're recognizable and unique, pale and blue as ice under a clear sky. She can see his shoulders move with a deep breath.
"I'm going to shift," he says to her. And also, "Miluji tě."
[Danicka Musil] She had no idea, that night, that Lukas was thinking I would when he asked if she thought he would protect her. From Sam. From any other Garou. From her family. From monsters, fomori, bloodsuckers, Constructs, muggers, loss, fear, heartache, loneliness. From himself. It took a long time and rainstorm for him to confess it, and she never realized how hard that was for him to say aloud, what she thought so simple.
Caring about someone, and wanting them to be safe. Wishing you could go back and undo the things that hurt them before you knew. Wishing you could stay with them, forever, and keep them whole and unharmed. He admitted this before he could admit that he loved her. He admitted it, and she accepted it so obviously he thought her dismissive, not realizing that she understood -- perfectly -- because she was already falling
(fallen)
in love with him.
Danicka still doesn't know what he was thinking that night. Or what he was thinking the night he said you are spring to himself, or the number of times he's promised to keep her warm in his mind without saying it aloud, or that right now he is grateful for her, amazed by her. She is perceptive. She is not, close as she may seem, able to read his thoughts. Even less when she can't stand to look at him for more than fleeting glances, because he looks like a mutation from a nightmare to her and not like her mate.
The sad truth is that she is doing what he says partly out of fear of him, as much as fear for their lives. The sad truth is that what makes her most sick is knowing, despite that instinctive revulsion and terror at the sight of him, that he's hers. That he's her love. That he's Lukášek. She cannot make sense of it. She is tired and dizzy and half-euphoric, half-reeling from the knowledge that she would not change this, or change what he is, or make him safer, or less frightening. It doesn't mean she can look at him for long. It does mean she rifles through lockers instead of crying again.
Another woman -- perhaps not a mortal woman, but one of her kind, Kin to monsters, mother or lover or daughter or sister to monsters -- might have been most excited by the submachinegun. Truth be told, Danicka knows strictly from first-person shooters what that particular piece of equipment is all about, and that is the beginning and end of her knowledge. She grabs their things and sets them in a corner, somewhere she can grab them quickly. She looks through the rest. Ignores the jewelry, ignores the wallets and the cellphones, ignores the car keys and the watches and the credit cards and knives.
She picks up the strange rod, holds it in her hand as though testing the weight, frowns at the markings, runs her hands all over it, trying to find out what it is other than a prettily decorated stick.
She takes everything that is theirs. She finds a .45, rips open the package its in and checks to see if it's loaded. She takes the submachine gun. Because why not. Because it looks pretty alongside the rod she is still holding. She has no idea if she's going to use it. If she even can.
Danicka glances at him when he speaks, hovering now in the doorway to the server room. He says what he says, and she flinches. Ashamed of it, she looks down, holding onto the doorframe. "What do you want me to do?"
[-unity-] The .45 is, indeed, loaded. Not a full clip, but nearly full -- 14 out of 15 bullets. The SMG is heavier than it looks. It has a strap that goes over her shoulder, just like in the movies. It bumps against her hip.
The rod does nothing, seems to be nothing. It was not neatly packed away like the rest of the things, however. And after a while, it seems to warm to body temperature -- not merely where she holds it, but all over.
When she asks what he wants her to do, Lukas doesn't pat her hand and tell her to just hide and let him take care of it. He doesn't patronize her, or demean her, or decrease their collective chances of survival like that.
They're Shadow Lords. Pragmatists to the core.
"Stay behind the arrowkillers as much as you can," Lukas says, beginning to change. He doesn't look at her again, to spare her the sight of those half-familiar, bestial near-man features twisting completely out of her recognition. "Shoot anyone that gets past that line nearest you. Remember it'll stop your bullets too. Heal me if you can. Heal yourself. Use the talens I gave you.
"And stay alive."
Wyrmbreaker hits the ground on all fours, change rippling down his body in a wave of black. A sudden silence falls -- the elevator machinery halting. They can hear steel doors sliding back. Footsteps, a solid lockstep, more than one running in unison.
Then the door across the hall opens.
There are four of them. Men with guns. And then a fifth, the man in black which is not a man at all, but a creature. Its hood is down. Its skin is palely purple, veined, like a rotting plum. It has no eyes; holes for ears, slits for nose. And a mouth that stretches halfway around its head on both sides, split into a hideous grin full of rows and rows of teeth.
In its hand -- long-fingered, too many fingers, too many joints -- is a rod just like the one Danicka holds. And as the men run forward, it raises it like a weapon.
--
(i'm gonna put all four humans (Al, Barry, Chad, Dan) after Danicka's init for simplicity. however, we should roll inits for MiB, Lukas and Danicka!)
[-unity-] (MiB +6)
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Danicka Musil] [+6]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4
[-unity-] (A: running forward to get a better shot
B: two shots at Danicka
C: two shots at Danicka
D: omfging and shooting at Lukas, twice)
[Danicka Musil] There is now a pile of weaponry and goods near Danicka. She sets the SMG aside, sets the .45 down, picks up the nine millimeter she's most familiar with. She usually fires with both hands on the gun. She does not let go of the rod, though, keeping it in her left and holding the pistol in her right. She looks down at the ground instead of at Lukas as he answers... and as he changes. She whimpers slightly, and pulls back, where she can easily duck behind the cover of the server room door if necessary.
[1a: 3RB at C
1b: Dodge, lulz]
[Danicka Musil] [HAHAHAHA WTF NO.
1. Try to figure out the goddamn rod]
[-unity-] (MiB: a) activating the Mystery Rod of Doom -- Danicka can make an Intel or Percep (whichever's higher) + Enigmas or Science (whichever's highest) roll to watch and figure it out
b) Mindwrack Lukas: 1 Gnosis, roll Wits + Enigmas, succ /2 = subtracted dice from all actions
Lukas:
1: tear D to shreds!
R1: and C!
R2: and A!
R3: and back up behind the arrowkiller line)
[-unity-] (Lukas: tear Dan to shreds!)
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 6, 6, 7, 7, 9, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 8 at target 5) Re-rolls: 5
[-unity-] (damage +7)
Dice Rolled:[ 16 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[-unity-] (no agg soak. Dan's incap.
MiB: a) activates! go ahead and roll to figure it out!)
[Danicka Musil] [Perception + Enigmas]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 6, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[-unity-] With almost preternatural awareness, Danicka watches the tall, ghastly creature manipulate its device. She sees how those long, manyjointed fingers dance along the patterns and lines etched into the rod, how glimmering sparks seem to follow its touch. All of a sudden the rod is no longer a rod. It literally comes apart at its seams, detaching outward into arcs and crescents, jags, filaments. The pieces defy gravity, hovering around the creature's hand and forearm in a loose and motile mosaic.
A diffuse, indistinct glow begins to gather between the three asymmetrical prongs at the tip, as though it were charging to fire a blast.
[-unity-] b) mindwrack, -3 dice.
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 5, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[-unity-] (Lukas: -2 dice from all actions)
[-unity-] (A: running
B, C: fires! uselessly! WTF!
D: incap.
Lukas, R1: rar, chad!)
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 5) Re-rolls: 2
[-unity-]
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[-unity-] (R2: rar, Al!)
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 7, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 5) Re-rolls: 1
[-unity-] (damage!)
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[-unity-] R3: screw it, FINISH HIM! +1 diff
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[-unity-] (damage!)
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[-unity-] In seconds, the hallway is awash in blood.
The instant the inner door opens, the Ahroun lunges forward. Danicka has seen him tear the leg off a leech once, but that was different. The creature was already dead. There was no blood, no heartbeat, nothing but ashen organs falling to the ground, and then nothing but ashes.
This man is alive. He bleeds. He screams. But not for very long.
Then the tall creature is activating its weapon. And Danicka is watching, watching, remembering. And then it does something, turns its hideous blind head toward Wyrmbreaker and does something that makes the great black beast bow its head and bow its back and let out a long, wavering snarl.
The men, meanwhile, raise their weapons and shoot. Some of them are still aiming for Danicka. Some of them are aiming for the werewolf now. All of them are yelling -- in anger, in shock, in fear, something. It doesn't matter. None of it does any good. Bullets flash out of muzzles and smash into invisible walls; land on the ground, bent and smashed. More silver.
Then the black direwolf is lunging again. He tears another man open in one bite; kills the third with two.
There's blood everywhere.
[-unity-] (Sumup:
Lukas - 1agg
MiB - OK
Danicka - OK, +3
A - dead
B - unharmed
C - incap
D - incap)
[-unity-] B: a) dodge!
b) shoot lukas!
[Danicka Musil] [I can totally activate this thing. -1WP if necessary]
[-unity-] (MiB, reflexive: Subjugation
-2WP, -2Gn. Locks up all mental/psychic abilities until contest is over. However, target enters into resisted contest with MiB: WP vs diff 6, must accumulate opponent's Intel x2. As with facedown, WP can be burnt to continue contest. If MiB loses, target cannot be subjugated again for rest of scene. If target loses, becomes pawn of MiB.
Action: zap Danicka!
Lukas: gain 1 rage from seeing silver
1a) chomp B!
b) again!
R1) chomp MiB!)
[-unity-] (chomp! -2 mindwrack, -2 split.)
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 8 at target 5) Re-rolls: 3
[-unity-] (damage)
Dice Rolled:[ 16 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 9 at target 6)
[-unity-] b) changing actions: BITE THAT HAND WITH STIK OFF.
+1 diff changing, +2 targeting.
-2, -3
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 4, 4, 5, 6, 9, 9 (Failure at target 8)
[-unity-] (MiB: first subjugation roll. need 6 succ.)
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[-unity-] (Lukas: resist! need 12 succ.)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[-unity-] MiB: Zap!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[-unity-] Damage +2, agg
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8 (Failure at target 6)
[-unity-] (Danicka: roll wits+firearms or science, whichever is higher, diff 10-(previous succ) = 6)
[-unity-] (oo - i forgot dude's dodge. but... i'm not gonna go back because:
1) i seriously doubt he woulda survived two bites, even if he dodged the first one
2) lukas's attempt to bite hand off was useless anyway. NO HARM DONE. *slams gavel, moves on*)
[Danicka Musil] [Wits + Firearms]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 6, 6, 6, 7 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[-unity-] A troop of men with silver-loaded weaponry, and the results would be laughable if they weren't so damn violent. The black warbeast doesn't back up, doesn't retreat behind the line. He plans. He lays down strategies and fortifications. He builds defenses. And then the moment hits, the battle erupts, and the chains come off; the violence is intoxicating.
He tears the last man asunder in one bite. Maybe two. It's hard to tell; it's all so fast.
Then the creature in black reaches out its empty, terrible, too-dexterous hand. Its fingers splay out like a pale spider. It grabs Wyrmbreaker by his broad, lupine brow, and Danicka can see its fingertips flex into the fur.
And amazingly, the Ahroun does not instantly snap its hand off.
Wyrmbreaker stops moving altogether. He stands stock-still, body quivering ever so slightly as though electricity ran through his body. His eyes are fixed and unblinking. He no longer seems to be in the moment.
The creature in black seems to suffer no such difficulty. Its lips peel back from its teeth, a hideous rictus-grin. Its head rotates slowly, as though seeking -- teeth snapping at air. That's the only sound Danicka has heard it make thus far. When it finds her, by scent or by sound or by some other, fell sense that she can't even begin to comprehend, the weapon in -- on -- around its hand comes alive, fires a single, silent, white-hot pulse of energy that cuts a clean hole through Danicka's sleeve, but misses her body.
A tendril of smoke rises from the cotton. And in Danicka's hand, in response to her mimicked gestures, her own rod suddenly comes alive, rearranging itself into a shell of shards and arcs that rotate and hover around her hand, her wrist.
[-unity-] +6!
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2 (Failure at target 6)
[Danicka Musil] 6
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 10
[-unity-] MiB:
Maintain Subjugation!
Action: ZAP!
[Danicka Musil] Distracted as she is -- by trying to figure out this piece of complex machinery in her hand -- Danicka has less energy to focus on what is going on with Lukas. She tries to ignore it, but theyr'e in a small space and these are not leeches. These are not monsters. They look human. So she's shaking as she watches the tall one in black, the one she knows is a monster, and she gives all of her attention to what he's doing. What it's doing.
And she copycats. When the bolt flies through the fold of her shirt, she looks down quickly, then back up across the arrowkiller line. That answers that question.
[No no no no. -I- ZAP.]
[Danicka Musil] [Dex + Firearms]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Danicka Musil] [LAZ0RZ! WHEE!]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[-unity-] soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 5, 6, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[-unity-] (counterzap! -1 owie.)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 6, 6, 9 (Failure at target 6)
[-unity-] (oh wait, subjugation! -1, owie)
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[-unity-] Lukas: -1WP resist. counter!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 5, 6, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[-unity-] When the weapon fires, the sensation is quite unlike that of firing a gun. There's no kick. No bang. Just a transient, warm numbness -- and then pure energy lances out from Danicka's fingertips.
The pulse pierces the creature right through the chest. It doesn't make a sound. Its head drops for a second. Rises again. It has no lips; it's simply skin that peels back from its teeth, back and back and back, until gums as black as tar are showing.
A moment later, a slow ooze of -- something, not blood but some pale, opaque, luminescent bioplasm -- begins to drip from its chest wound.
MiB: -3, 8 succ vs Lukas
Lukas: OK, 6 succ vs MiB, 3WP remaining
Danicka: OK +3
[-unity-] (reinit! +6)
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2 (Failure at target 6)
[Danicka Musil] [+6]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[-unity-] (MiB: ZAPPING. REALLY.)
[Danicka Musil] [YEAH TRY IT. (Zapping with WP)]
[Danicka Musil] [Zot!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 5, 5, 6, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6) [WP]
[Danicka Musil] [ZIG!]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 7, 7, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[-unity-] (soak!)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 7 (Failure at target 6)
[-unity-] Danicka preempts the thing again. A thin beam of blindingly white energy appears for a fraction of a second. It seems like such a harmless thing -- like a glorified laser pointer. It makes a tiny hole in the creature's heavy robes. A miniscule curl of smoke rises. It doesn't even bother to look down this time. And it doesn't scream. And it doesn't flail.
For a second, Danicka might think she hasn't done any damage at all.
Then it releases its grip on the Ahroun. Its arachnoid fingers slide off Wyrmbreaker's face, bump bonelessly into his muzzle. The weapon drops off its other hand in pieces, clattering to the ground, reassembling there and fusing to become a single, solid ingot again.
The thing's mouth opens wide. Ninety degrees. One twenty. Obscenely, impossibly wide. Bioplasm vomits up in a burst. Then in great heaving gouts, spilling over its teeth, staining its robes, flooding down. The mouth is still opening, still widening, until the creature seems to at once dissolve and turn inside out and --
all that remains, in the end, is a piece of sodden black fabric.
And teeth.
[Danicka Musil] "Oh, god--"
The destroyed mouth of the thing in black is not the only thing that's suddenly, violently vomiting. Danicka manages to hold onto the bizarre weapon, manages to all but slam the still-safetied firearm in her other hand on the ground as she turns and scrambles into the server room, manages to hold most of her hair back, but she does not manage to steel herself against the jarring combination of instinctive panic, situational fear, and utter revulsion. She doesn't have it in her right now.
Having not eaten in twenty-four hours, Danicka has almost nothing in her. She dry heaves, and then vomits bile, and does so on her knees next to the interior wall of the dark server room, shuddering when it's over.
[-unity-] That's what Lukas comes back to: the sound of Danicka vomiting up the last contents of her stomach, bringing up nothing but emptiness and acid and bile.
He's snarling the instant he returns to himself; realizes the thing is dead, dead, not merely dead but fucking gone, only seconds later. Whirls on his haunches. Snaps at air, growls on every exhale, bristles, calms by slow degree.
Nothing left. Just them now. And a short hallway to what can only be the elevator, waiting.
The low, rough panting of the Hispo reverts to the smoother breathing of a human. He follows Danicka into the server room at a run, sliding to a stop on his knees, putting his hand on her shoulder if she'll let him. His mouth, his neck, his upper chest is awash in blood. It's dripping slowly down his body in freakish streaks of red. It's still warm.
[Danicka Musil] She really has nothing in her anymore to keep her from doing as she does and crying now, wiping her mouth with her sleeve and weeping. A part of her expects to be leapt upon from behind, not by a warm and familiar touch but something with fur and teeth. So when Lukas, smelling not of his sweat and satisfaction but blood, lays a hand on her, Danicka shrieks suddenly, bites back the rest, gasps raggedly.
Exhales shakily.
She has her eyes closed as she tries to stop crying, hiccuping slightly from all the air she's been trying to keep pulling into her lungs despite the need to throw up, the need to bawl. She shudders and refuses to pull away, but does not respond to his touch. It's enough right now -- it's more than she can really fathom herself doing, even -- that she doesn't flinch away.
"That was so gross."
[-unity-] There's a pause.
"I didn't see it," Lukas says then, quietly. And a moment later, "I'm sorry, Danička." She can almost hear the wince. "Já--"
He breaks off. Somehow, apologizing now seems selfish. His hand leaves her shoulder, mops down his face. He wipes it on his thigh, thoughtlessly, and then sits back on his heels. Looks around. Finds the little packs of clothing, of their personal effects.
Which Danicka found. Just like she shot the thing dead. Just like she shut the computers down. Just like she figured this place out in the first place, and escaped from their cell in the first place, when all Lukas really did was --
fail to protect her.
He picks up the first pack of clothing and tears it open. It's her shirt, and he holds it out to her. "Let's get out of here," he says quietly.
[Danicka Musil] "Silver and goo bullets and those surgeries and it's skin..."
She almost throws up again, shuddering where she kneels. He's seen her this exhausted before, seen her so tired she couldn't help but cry at the slightest provocation, but... this is far more than the slighest provocation. Danicka spits, and wipes her mouth again, and uses her other hand, other arm, to wipe her mouth. She glances athe rod in her left hand still, and then -- finally -- processes his voice roughly fifteen seconds after the fact.
"Why didn't you see it?" she asks, bewildered, then: "What are you -- "
He's holding her shirt out to her. She's twisted around at some point while talking, looked up at him, and now he's holding her shirt out to her and she's got vomit and blood on the one she's wearing. The shirt he's holding her is the overpriced cream-colored camisole she was wearing when all this started, the brown leather jacket she had on over it. Danicka exhales again, and shivers, grabbing onto the wall to pull herself up.
"Get your stuff," she murmurs, and looks at the elevator, then back into the server room, then out again, then up at him. "Is it okay to leave?"
[-unity-] He doesn't answer her first question for a moment, going instead to the second. "Yeah," he says. "I think so. Stay alert -- just in case."
He's tearing open the other bags now. He finds his shirt, bloody, but no bloodier than he is. He finds his pants, his wallet, his belt. Quickly and efficiently, he dresses, one eye on the door at all times.
Behind them, on the console, the self-delete finishes. The screen goes dark. A second later everything powers down, and in the sudden silence the quiet huff of the ventilation system can be heard again.
Lukas hands Danicka's gun back to her, holds his hand out for hers when she's done dressing. "I ... lost time," he explains, then. "I was getting rid of the humans, and then I was resisting something, and then -- it was dead and I could hear you in here."
[Danicka Musil] There is no dressing to be finished. Danicka hugs her bag of effects close to her chest but does not strip out of the blood-and-vomit stained top or the loose pants that she woke up in. She takes her gun when he holds it out to her and she holds onto the strange weapon she used and she crosses her arms over the bag but she doesn't so much as dig her sneakers out of the bag to put them on.
Her skin's cold. Not freezing, but chilled. She takes a couple of steps towards the elevator, her jaw clenching. "Oh."
[-unity-] ('oh?')
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 8 (Failure at target 6)
[-unity-] (SHADOW LORDS DON'T FAIL.)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 5, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 7)
[Danicka Musil] [She's reacting to the 'getting rid of the humans' statement, in part. She's not angry or afraid of it, just... profoundly disturbed. Also, kind of embarrassed about him hearing her vomit. And generally just freaked out, upset that they're in here, willpower nearly drained sort of stuff. She does NOT want to undress down here, which may strike him as unusual since Danicka doesn't normally seem to feel more vulnerable when naked.]
to -unity-
[-unity-] Lukas glances at Danicka when she says 'Oh.' His eyes linger a moment. Then he follows her out of the dark server room, across the bloody, bloody hall.
Red is splashed over the walls in gouts and streaks. Red pools on the ground in slow-spreading lakes, vivid and opaque. Red cools slowly on the floor, and slower still on their skin.
Where the creature in black once stood is only a gradually spreading stain, yellowish, gel-like.
They step over the bodies. Through the door is a short hall, and then the waiting elevator -- if such a thing can be called an elevator. It's a glass bubble with a perforated steel platform mounted within. There are no discernible buttons or controls, but after they get in, the doors slip shut soundlessly.
The elevator shaft is dimly lit in rings of light, one every few dozen feet or so. Through the glass walls, they can see just how far underground they are. The tunnel extends upward almost indefinitely. When the elevator starts to rise, the acceleration is breathtaking, pushing them downward.
Lukas's face is turned up, lit in pulsing flashes from the passing lights. After a time, he looks at Danicka.
"I'm sorry about what I said," he says, "about the humans." A faint, wry exhale. "I was trying to blunt my words to make them easier to hear."
Another short pause.
"Why don't you want to change?" he asks then, quieter.
[Danicka Musil] You are better than them.
Than humans. Than mere mortals. Than those without the blood of heroes in their veins, the pointless wretches whose wombs and bloodlines will never know more glory than a big house, a nice car, six figures, the newest gadget.
She was raised with that drumming in the back of her mind like a second heartbeat, that awareness that as low as she was, as brutalized, as miserable as her existence might get because of who she was born to, it was better than being human. Danicka had very few human friends as a child. Danicka grew apart from them the older she got and the more secrets she had to keep. It was so much easier to just stay with her own kind, even if they were of other tribes, even if she still had to lie to them all.
Still.
She always knew it was cold. And cruel. She wept when she saw what Katrina did to the city she fell in love with and then longed for after leaving it. She wept for the people there. She wept when she heard about the shooting spree at Virginia Tech. She is not going to cry for the men who pointed guns at her and her lover tonight and on the rooftops. She is not sad they are dead. She is taut with something like revulsion at the coldness with which Lukas can speak of it, though, for some reason.
Maybe because of the deja vu. Maybe because she is just. So. Tired. That it is hard not to be disturbed by everything she sees, by the very existence of the bodies littering the hallway.
She hugs the bag of her belongings to her chest, looks at the elevator as they approach, and stands right beside Lukas, closing her eyes briefly the way she did when their flight from New York to Chicago took off. They open a moment later, just before he speaks.
"Honestly, and counter-intuitively, sharp hurts less than blunt. Sort of like how hot hurts less than cold."
Categories of torture.
She stares at the wall, the glass, the tunnel. "I don't want to be naked right now." Her voice is quiet.
[-unity-] "I know that now," he replies quietly. "I should've known before, because I know you."
A pause.
"A little, anyway."
She doesn't want to be naked right now. He looks at her. The lights are faintly blue, faintly violet; they give his skin a strange, alien tone, and they glitter in his eyes as they streak past. It's hard to say how fast they're going. Fast. The lab below drops away, perhaps destroyed, perhaps not. Right now, Lukas doesn't care if he never finds out.
"Okay," he says quietly.
[Danicka Musil] One of her arms unfolds from the bag she's holding tight to her chest, filled with her clothes, her gun stowed inside again, the rod shoved in next to her jeans and her jacket. She reaches across the few inches of air between them as though crossing through piled snow, as though moving through gel, and wraps her hand around his, sliding fingertips between his thumb and forefinger, wrapping around him there. Somehow, it makes her seem so much smaller than him. Somehow, it makes her seem a great deal older than him than she is. Somehow, it feels like comforting.
"Only a little?" she asks, barely above a whisper. The question is wistful, and she so rarely sounds like that when she isn't faking it for the sake of someone else's precious perception of her.
Never sounds quite like this, unless they seem to be alone and she believes it.
[-unity-] Lukas's hand wraps around Danicka's. Closes. And then closes a little tight, a little firmer. Now no one can take you from me, says his hand on hers, which is not quite the truth, though he would like it to be.
"A little more every time," he replies, quietly.
[Danicka Musil] She has thought it so many times, almost never says it aloud, but the truth is: lying is easy. Lying is the simplest thing on earth once you figure out what someone wants most, what they would like to be true. No one buys into something because it runs counter to their sensibilities or their deepest desires and beliefs. They trust in a lie because it tells them what they already think.
Shadow Lord Kin are useful, sometimes beautiful, obedient because they know better, not to be trusted, easily cowed.
What they already want to be true, even if their reasons for wanting it are mad, even if on another level it is the exact opposite of what they would like reality to be.
She doesn't love me. She never did. She makes me weak. She is weak. She was a mistake. It's a mistake to stay.
People believe what they want to believe. It's the oldest, and perhaps only, real magic.
I am hers, and she is mine, and we will never be apart.
Because if you believe it, it's true. And if you believe in it strongly enough, you make it so.
We're safe.
Sometimes.
Danicka holds his hand as they ascend, stays right where she is, in bare feet and bloodstains, her palms and soles dirty, her hair askew and strands covering her cheeks, her skin cold. She turns away, looks straight ahead again. She doesn't say anything for awhile, though she doesn't let go of his hand, either. It isn't until shortly before they start to slow that she says:
"That was really scary."
[-unity-] Lukas's hand tightens again, suddenly. He leans into her, his shoulder to hers, his arm entwining hers, and kisses her temple.
"We're all right," he says, low.
The elevator slows smoothly but rapidly. When it stops, they're still a good ten feet from the surface. The top slides away. The platform rises alone, surpassing the glass walls. Lukas tenses unconsciously, ready for anything -- but nothing lies in wait.
For the first time in days, they can smell things other than one another, their enemies, and blood. They can hear things other than ventilation, and machine-hum, and one another's voices. One another's breathing.
The wet, dark scent of earth. The crisp smell of pines. The cleanness of night air, because it's night out there -- or early, early morning. The sound of wind through the trees. The rustle of plant life, animal life in the undergrowth.
There are stars overhead. And as the platform they're standing on rises to lie flat with the ground, they can see that they're in the woods, far, far from the roads. As soon as they step off, the elevator descends again. Dark as it is, it's out of sight in seconds. Silently, a hatch slides closed. Try as they might -- though it's debatable either of them will try very hard right now -- it does not open to them again.
--
Lukas calls a cab. It takes one nearly forty minutes to arrive, and the cabbie is grouchy, but only until Lukas's rage hits him.
Danicka changes in the interim, one hopes. They bury their soiled clothing or they burn it. They leave it behind. The taxi takes them back to the city. The cabbie doesn't ask question, and they wouldn't have answered anyway. All the way back, Lukas holds Danicka's hand, looks out the window. He's silent and solemn, a warm, breathing presence in the darkened backseat.
They're dropped off in front of 520 Kingsbury. Lukas follows Danicka up to her apartment, walks her to her door, follows her inside only long enough to tell her he can't stay.
He has to go to the caern. He has to tell the Sept what happened, so they know. So they can help him make sense of it. He doesn't know when he'll be finished.
He does know he'll call her, or contact her, as soon as he is.
Parting at her door, he tells her to get some rest. When he steps back and she starts to close the door, he suddenly reaches for her. He takes her face between his hands. He kisses her suddenly, blindly, hungrily, desperately. It's an effort to pull away.
Pull away he does.
The sun is beginning to rise as Lukas leaves her building, and Danicka goes to shower. Or sleep. Or both.
celebration.
9 years ago