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--- sessions:003 [2014/10/25 17:20] – Today's stuff~ pinkgothic
+++ sessions:003 [2020/03/07 18:34] (current) – pinkgothic
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 <fc #008888>And then it is pointing at the ground and that is somewhat better but her instincts are still screaming "Enemy enemy! Danger!" as her hand presses over her chest as if to re-enforce her ribs and stop her hammering heart escaping. A swallow, a second one, tongue run across dry lips and finally [[characters:Delaney]] manages to respond: "We have no idea what is going on, which way is safety?"</fc>
-[[character:Robert]]'s reaction is one of silence - his gaze sweeps through the landscape one more time to be sure that no immediate other threat is lingering nearby, coming out of the woodwork now that a sound had roused it, then he glances back at the two passersby and raises his left arm, sans gun, to wave them over, taking a step back through the punctured entrance of the mall.
+[[characters:Robert]]'s reaction is one of silence - his gaze sweeps through the landscape one more time to be sure that no immediate other threat is lingering nearby, coming out of the woodwork now that a sound had roused it, then he glances back at the two passersby and raises his left arm, sans gun, to wave them over, taking a step back through the punctured entrance of the mall.
 There's something about the way he's moving and about the circumstance that inspires Keneh to trust he's not about to turn psychopath on them once they're inside. After all, if he wanted to harm them, there was no one else around right now and he could easily riddle them with bullet holes from a distance. No, everything about him had the markings of someone similarly wary of the turn of events from a little over an hour ago as they were.
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 <fc #008888>"Is the internet saying anything helpful about what people should be doing, then?" Presumably 'stay indoors' and 'avoid this area' but she'll take what they can get. And at least an area to avoid gives a direction to flee in.</fc>
-Was it doing that? Not really. What was it saying? It was full of fragmented facts and dithered between opinions that none of it was real and that the end of the world was near. "Eh," he comments, syllable the carrier for a tone meant to convey that the two shouldn't get their hopes up. They've turned into a side-path by now and he's unlocking a door to a narrow flight of stairs, then holding it open by mostly leaning against it with his back. His lips press together, cheeks puffing out ever so slightly in subdued frustration. "Let's take a look at the data together, shall we?" he offers, tone still remarkably neutral for someone whose designated mall now had a hole in it.
+Was it doing that? Not really. What **was** it saying? It was full of fragmented facts and dithered between opinions that none of it was real and that the end of the world was near. "Eh," he comments, syllable the carrier for a tone meant to convey that the two shouldn't get their hopes up. They've turned into a side-path by now and he's unlocking a door to a narrow flight of stairs, then holding it open by mostly leaning against it with his back. His lips press together, cheeks puffing out ever so slightly in subdued frustration. "Let's take a look at the data together, shall we?" he offers, tone still remarkably neutral for someone whose designated mall now had a hole in it.
 <fc #008888>Great. That meant it was probably 4 parts panic, 5 parts conspiracy theories and 1 part wrong directions. Why couldn't this have been a flood or a bushfire or a cyclone or something natural that they at least had some idea how to cope with? I mean there wasn't anything you could do to stop a natural disaster and you just had to ride it out, which on the surface seemed worse than a man-made disaster that you could shoot and be done with, but all natural disasters had plans and she really wanted a plan.</fc>
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 The uncovered human's instinct evidently guides him into the other direction. A plume of fire, disconnected, cuts his attempt to flee short. Then the presumed author steps into the reach of the camera, gait neither lazy nor in haste. The soundless video reveals that the trapped man's shouting something, but obviously not what - only to cringe down as a shallow circle of fire, open only to the approaching figure, fences him in.
-The approaching figure seems entirely unfazed by the display. Its gaze shifts down to its hands, where it's picking at something - a close-combat wound, perhaps, a slash from a knife, it's hard to see any details. Then the fire extinguishes and something grips the hapless human by the torso, visibly compressing his shirt against his skin, sliding his back a few inches up the wall immediately next to the entrance, just enough to deny his feet any purchase on the ground. <c>
+The approaching figure seems entirely unfazed by the display. Its gaze shifts down to its hands, where it's picking at something - a close-combat wound, perhaps, a slash from a knife, it's hard to see any details. Then the fire extinguishes and something grips the hapless human by the torso, visibly compressing his shirt against his skin, sliding his back a few inches up the wall immediately next to the entrance, just enough to deny his feet any purchase on the ground.
 It takes another arduous minute of only minimal visible motion on the victim's part for the stranger to approach him, reaching up with both hands, physically grasping at his jaw with the one. The motion of the other is hard to make out in clarity from the video, but it ends with the hand clasped over his mouth. Then long seconds of nothing - and an abrupt stepping away. The human crumples, half curling in on himself. It doesn't need a soundtrack to be a harrowing, obvious sob.
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 Robert drags the position marker on the video back to before the video zoomed in and pauses. A moment later, he's tapping at the screen lightly with the tip of a pen. "That'll be a view near Melrose or Cutheringa Park, I think," he postulates, then drops a streetview icon onto a road just west of the first mentioned park and takes a moment to orient the view to show that the shape of the ridge of the mountain in the video fits the one in the video quite well.
+<fc #008888>There were several long moments of silence. "I'm going to try to convince myself that the filmer made it out of there," Delaney offered at last. That was far nicer than the alternative. Clearly they taken the film, been spooked, run away, and //then// uploaded it. And weren't around because they were sensibly fleeing and didn't have wifi.</fc>
-**✘ IN PROGRESS**
+<fc #008888>At least now they had locations and a few rough times. They could work out which direction the demons were moving and pick a path perpendicular to them. That way they wouldn't be running into them and hopefully not moving slow enough to be caught up with.</fc>
+<fc #008888>Delaney paused in those thoughts and turned to Keneh. "Um. I'm bad with geography, but isn't Melrose sort of putting them on a arc with the apex at the bridge?"</fc>
+In a way, it was what Keneh would have expected a recording on youtube to look like, right down to the grim punchline. The sharp-tipped silhouette of Castle Hill was surreal in it, though - like it had been pasted in from a different reality, one where spontaneous fires had plausible sources.
+Either way, this was clearly on this side of their bridge. That made it being bent out of shape much stranger - if anything could be cordoned off by mangling the bridges, it was South Townsville and the Railway Estate, not West End. So what did that mean? That it hadn't been twisted to prevent passage, but just as... what? A casual display of power? That wasn't exactly a soothing train of thought, but at least had the benefit of adding even more surreality to their current situation. More surreality was good for her psyche, it prevented these strange occurrences from reaching her emotionally for the time being, at least full force.
+The motion of her head is awkwardly slow at first, but culminates in a single nod. Yes, if the mutants were travelling together and the timestamps were any indicator - ignoring the isolated case near where they'd first gotten and then left their late night groceries - then that was the... very implausible path.
+Robert saves her from having to say anything about it. "Not much of a path," he comments, shaking his head slightly. "That's the incident closest to us that I can determine. The furthest is down near the river bend between Douglas and Cranbrook..." - he zooms out of the map with one hand and indicates the curve he means with his pen - "...though it could also be one further west, I'm not that familiar with the buildings over there." The pen taps at it. Then he's zooming out a little more, tracing the rough lines of Townsville with a frustrated exhale. "Nothing from the edges of town yet - but unfortunately that might as well be the time of day more than anything else."
+<fc #008888>"Okay. So, random distribution, multiple individuals, and no clear path?" Delaney clarified. She did not like that at all. Maybe that was the plan with the bridge, to ensure that any attempts to leave were going to be scattered and uncoordinated because nobody knew where the fuck they were supposed to go. Out of the city, apparently. Somehow. A car would be nice right now, even pyrokinetic demons may stagger at a tonne of high velocity metal slamming into them and the triple benefits of crumple zones, fire resistance and speed looked really good right now. From what happened to the bridge a stationary car wouldn't //stop// them but anything that slowed them down and enabled running like hell was good. Better than squishy weak flesh.</fc>
+<fc #008888>Current plan: try to work out a path, steal someone's car keys and break lots of speed limits escaping, and if anyone threw fire at them run them over should it be reasonably practical. Did it count as a plan if it was something out of Grand Theft Auto?</fc>
+<fc #008888>Plans with quite so much lawbreaking weren't comfortable but surely this was extenuating circumstances, and if she didn't try to think logically and work out what they were doing that would be worse. Because those two videos had shown that if they were found freezing was the worst possible response. The only thing to do was to run. To ignore the fire, to ignore burns and injuries, to bolt as far and fast as possible and pray to... she was going to go with Hermes, he was fast, to pray to Hermes that being awkward annoying prey was enough to make those things give up on the hunt.</fc>
+"Pretty much," Robert nods, bringing up his left hand to rub at the back of his neck. The fatalistic nature of his calm is probably most apparent at that moment, with his mild grimace speaking volumes. He stares at the open tabs, wondering if they should continue with the clip verification, then shrugs one shoulder, angle of his posture practically hiding the motion and glances over to the pack of soda cans. Then he gestures across to them again, a misplaced glance of concern flitting across his expression. Then he's sliding himself down into a sit with his spine against a leg of the table. "For what it's worth, this is probably a reasonably safe fort. Not the rest of the mall, but this room in particular. I've got a car, though, and I'd be happy to give you two a ride if you want to disappear, but I can tell you now that I'm not leaving here until five. My shift ends at six. I don't know how long Townsville is going to have the privilege of electricity and internet, but I want to make the most of it. Start a wikia, perhaps; drop in links to the youtube clips, make a collaborative map, give other folks a fighting chance. Also hopefully get more information that way."
+<fc #008888>A wiki. The city was in peril and Robert wanted to stay here and write a wiki. Instead of go somewhere else and write it. Delaney couldn't object to the idea itself, but the circumstances were surreal. But maybe this was how he was keeping himself from panicking. Information was good, putting information into useful forms was also good, and if you had it you may as well share it.</fc>
+<fc #008888>"If the things are going all xenomorph on their victims giving them hours to spread might make getting out harder," she felt she had to point out. Giving them time to decide this area had been picked clean may make things safer for the time being, but they still had the issue of getting clear afterwards. "Unless someone finds out they're deathly allergic to olive oil or something, that would be really nice." If movie aliens could be allergic to water and dogs could be allergic to chocolate and mammals hated capsaicin but birds love it then that wasn't so far fetched. It was entirely possible for these creatures to have a bad reaction to something innoculous to humans.</fc>
+<fc #008888>She just didn't want to be the one dumping the assorted contents of a supermarket onto one to figure out //what//.</fc>
+<fc #008888>Still, previous plan could work. Rob had a car and that was so much easier than stealing one because she doubted Keneh knew how to hotwire something either. (Unless she'd had a much more adventurous youth than had been shared, which probably wouldn't surprise her all that much.) Sit tight, hope for news, then take a path out of Townsville with no bridges unless otherwise informed. That was workable. Delaney hugged her friend's arm tighter.</fc>
+<fc #008888>That was workable. Delaney hugged her friend's arm tighter. Now she just had to stay calmish.</fc>