((Kay Poultier continued from [Oceans]))
Fun facts about Kay while she was waiting for the inevitable #1 - She’d always wanted to walk along one of these things.
They were relatively commonplace in Wales, particularly in her neck of the woods. Long before her time, the country’s economy had been built off the back of its mining community - so she’d been told, countless times over. Coal mines, for the most part, helping to feed the extensive train network that sprawled across the north of Wales, but also gold mines here and there, once rich deposits that had turned into nothing but caves of quartz. She’d been to Dolaucothi a couple times before. Whacked her head on a stalactite, panned for tiny bits of gold, turned her headlamp off deep underground and imagined she was drifting through space. Pretty fun all around.
Anyway, she’d passed these hulking great conveyor belts a bunch of times in the past, 5-second glimpses out the passenger-side window, before they disappeared behind her and into the recesses of her mind. There was an abandoned railway line about a 40-minute drive south of Newcastle Emlyn, a row of hopper wagons and a bright yellow diesel engine left to rot and rust. There was a signal box behind them, with a single unbroken window. And behind that, most pertinently, the roof of some large brick warehouse peeking over the treetops, and the towering conveyor belt leading inside. It had always held an alluring sense of mystery to her, doubly so thanks to the numerous KEEP OUT signs plastered all over the shop nearby. She’d always told herself, someday she would stand on the very bottom of that thing, and cross it off of her bucket list. It hadn’t been much more than a nebulous pipe dream. Breaking and entering wasn’t really something in her wheelhouse, after all.
Well, now here she was. The good folk at Janus-Heyes had seen fit to put her down on one of the catwalks running alongside the belt, a healthy supply of rubble and debris sitting on the rubber behind her. To the left, her messenger bag and some unfamiliar duffel bag, straps tussling with each other in the breeze. To her right, a rather haphazard looking amalgamation, consisting of a metal frame, a fuel tank, a connecting pipe and nozzle, and a harness to keep it all together. She’d rapped her knuckles against the tank earlier. It had sounded almost completely full. You didn’t have to have much of an active imagination to work out what the contraption was supposed to be.
So here she was. Living that pipe dream. It wasn’t really as much fun as she’d been hoping for, but maybe that was due to the lingering feeling of dread hanging over her.
You know, she’d also wished for ages and ages to leave her home behind, to escape the country to someplace else, anywhere in the world, to start things over again, not to begin a new life but to rejig her existing one, cut and delete the bits of her existence that had sucked arse and work on improving the parts that didn’t. It was a year-old wish at this point, sure, and she had thought she’d started to achieve it at Cascadia, but hey, those were just minor details, right? That Dr. Sycamore bloke was just trying to give her everything she wanted. Really, she should be thankful.
“Balding-arse prick,” Kay muttered, and hurled a rock off the side of the conveyor belt.
She sighed, as the stone impacted with the snow, leaving a perfect little hole imprinted in the ground. She shivered a little, tugging her jumper tighter around herself. This wasn’t fair. This wasn’t fair at all.
There was the obvious lack of fairness, of course, which she really didn’t think she needed to elaborate further upon right now. But it ran deeper than that. She really thought she’d turned a corner in the past year. She really thought that things were guaranteed to get better thanks to the decisions she’d made. She’d come out to love and support and understanding. She’d picked a course that truly spoke to her, that she was engaged in, that she would (mostly) want to complete all her work for without any prompting or reminders. This trip had sounded utterly perfect, and for those four days on the ship, it had been practically nothing but bliss; surrounded by the ocean in every which way, entrancing her wherever she looked, a song pulling her in with no siren to be found.
And then, with just a little pill and a glass of water, her dreamscape had been snuffed out, a nightmare scenario unlike any other in its place.
It was still nearly impossible for her mind to accept what was going on, though. She knew this was all real, of course, her head was pounding enough for that to be certain, and it would be stupid to try pretend she was just dreaming everything otherwise (plus she’d pinched herself after she’d woken up, just for good measure). There was just so much to take in; the flamethrower sitting next to her, this entire abduction, the photos and Twitter posts under her name that she’d never made,everything they’d been asked to do in this village abandoned by God and man, the hulking great polar bear beast that had shredded people apart like paper. All of it was there, lurking in her mind, ready for the moment the numbness that had taken hold of her body wore off. It just wasn’t here yet, in her existence, in this little bubble of her life. It hadn’t manifested into something tangible, so it simply wasn’t possible for her to begin grappling with it.
The device on her arm, that was another thing. A PDA, Dickamore had called it, although Kay really couldn’t think of it as that. She’d messed around with it some. Took a look at the map, skimmed through the weapon manual; she’d learned a lot from the handy instruction not to set herself on fire with it. Most importantly, she’d pressed each and every button, multiple times, moving through screens to check whether she’d been assigned a number from 1-9, or if there was a way of checking her AB points. She’d pressed her wrists against the straps of the device, feeling out for whether there were tiny little pinpricks embedded in her skin.
She hadn’t found anything. But she still wasn’t wholly convinced she wouldn’t find a door with a blood-red number 4 painted on it, somewhere in the village.
None of that was helping her truly come to terms with the situation, though. And she knew she needed to. She knew it would hit her eventually. Better to face this hell head-on, than let it sneak up on her and rip her apart before she was ready.
She needed a smoke. God, god fucking damn did she need a smoke, to take the edge off, to give herself some warmth, to keep the demons at bay for a moment more. The packets were right there, in her bag, at arm’s reach. But then, so too was her flamethrower. And Kay was a lot of things. But she sure as hell wasn’t stupid enough to light up around a massive tank of flammable liquid. Nor did she think that abandoning her weapon, even for the briefest of moments, was a smart course of action.
So that was why she was hurling rocks. That was her nicotine patch for the time being. A little form of stress relief, reaching back, winding up, and launching them into the air, watching them arc down, and sink into the snow. Something to slowly release the tension trapped in her body.
It wasn’t working very well, to be completely honest.
I want a house on the hill by the ocean
This one's Open to all! CW: Suicidal thoughts
Moderator: SOTF U Staff
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Frozen Smoke
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Austin's head throbbed like it was one of those mornings where you swore you'd never drink again - a promise which tended to last precisely as long as there were days before the next weekend - but without the blotchy fun memories to go alongside it. He blindly groped towards the source of it, a raised ridge that stretched from just underneath his hairline, before disappearing around his right temple. He'd been like, 80% sure Iodine wasn't supposed to make you drowsy, and he'd tried to Google it from his bed, but the loading wheel had kept spinning and spinning - so he'd tried to get up. Even managed a few steps.
*Thwumpf*
Austin wasn't quite sure what he'd hit on the way down.
*Thwumpf*
Then had come the big speech, although he mostly remembered the struggle to not throw up over any specifics, and a video showing their professors and a random YouTuber getting fucking obliderated by something his brain couldn't properly process. The Chimera, they'd called it, but it looked more like what you saw when you tried to look behind you in one of those dreams where you were being chased. An analgamation of primal fears, flashes of all the creatures your ancestors had just about managed to avoid eating shit to.
*Thwumpf*
He'd been having those dreams a lot lately.
*Thw-crunk*
The light dusting of snow that had settled on his shoulders sprayed out in a cloud in front of him, the rude intrusion of arctic light making him squint as his hands scrabbled around him for a moment, before simply waving them above his head.
"HEY! WATCH WHERE THE FUCK YOU'RE THROWING SHIT!"
*Thwumpf*
Austin wasn't quite sure what he'd hit on the way down.
*Thwumpf*
Then had come the big speech, although he mostly remembered the struggle to not throw up over any specifics, and a video showing their professors and a random YouTuber getting fucking obliderated by something his brain couldn't properly process. The Chimera, they'd called it, but it looked more like what you saw when you tried to look behind you in one of those dreams where you were being chased. An analgamation of primal fears, flashes of all the creatures your ancestors had just about managed to avoid eating shit to.
*Thwumpf*
He'd been having those dreams a lot lately.
*Thw-crunk*
The light dusting of snow that had settled on his shoulders sprayed out in a cloud in front of him, the rude intrusion of arctic light making him squint as his hands scrabbled around him for a moment, before simply waving them above his head.
"HEY! WATCH WHERE THE FUCK YOU'RE THROWING SHIT!"
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Pippi
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She heard the furious yelling, rising up from somewhere in the iced earth beneath her, but the actual meaning and intent behind the words were totally lost on her. It was just another thing to add to the litany of sights, sounds, and sensations, all jostling for position inside of her mind, failing to register as fragments of one great big horrifying whole, preventing her from doing anything but staring vacantly and sitting idly on her arse.
Honestly, she thought it was being directed at somebody else at first. Another poor sod, down there in the tiny, motionless village, getting chewed out for hurling crap around, regardless of whatever reason they might have had for doing so. Maybe as some kinda stress relief, just like her. Maybe for more nefarious purposes. She didn’t know. It didn’t concern her yet.
Kay threw another rock.
Only then did the penny drop.
“Shit. Shite.”
She looked down, just in time to see her newly-flung handful of grit sail narrowly past the wriggling, snow-covered mass on the ground, still half-buried. With her hands pressed flat against the bone-chilling metal of the catwalk, she leaned forwards, trying to figure out if she recognised them or not. Deep voice, not as though that meant anything, and didn’t she know it. Still too caked in powder snow to glean anything more, though. And if she angled herself any further forward, she was likely to end up tumbling off the side of the conveyor, hurtling down to earth.
Would that be so bad? Land at the right angle and she might not even feel it very long. It had been a long, long while since this particularly intrusive thought had crossed her mind. She supposed it was unavoidable, thrust into a situation such as this.
She filtered it into the other restless thoughts swirling about in her head. For now.
“Um.”
She leaned back again, hands finding rubber, mind and mouth working in opposite directions, scrabbling for the right words to say.
“Heya.”
Her arm, working independently of her flailing brain, swung up, working its way to a half-throw before she realised what she was doing, the stone dropping harmlessly down, almost completely vertical.
“Shit, bollocks, sorry, sorry, autopilot, sorry. Sorry. Um. Sorry.”
Kay cleared her throat, one hand digging its way roughly into her unruly mass of hair, running through it, getting caught in yet another tangle. Her voice, hoarse and rough from her enforced slumber, sounded even deeper than usual. She hoped the figure on the ground could see her better than she could them. She hoped the figure on the ground could recognise her from accent alone.
“Did I. Um. Hit you?”
Her gaze slowly shifted to her bag, Benson & Hedges stowed safely within.
“I’m sorry if I hit you.”
Honestly, she thought it was being directed at somebody else at first. Another poor sod, down there in the tiny, motionless village, getting chewed out for hurling crap around, regardless of whatever reason they might have had for doing so. Maybe as some kinda stress relief, just like her. Maybe for more nefarious purposes. She didn’t know. It didn’t concern her yet.
Kay threw another rock.
Only then did the penny drop.
“Shit. Shite.”
She looked down, just in time to see her newly-flung handful of grit sail narrowly past the wriggling, snow-covered mass on the ground, still half-buried. With her hands pressed flat against the bone-chilling metal of the catwalk, she leaned forwards, trying to figure out if she recognised them or not. Deep voice, not as though that meant anything, and didn’t she know it. Still too caked in powder snow to glean anything more, though. And if she angled herself any further forward, she was likely to end up tumbling off the side of the conveyor, hurtling down to earth.
Would that be so bad? Land at the right angle and she might not even feel it very long. It had been a long, long while since this particularly intrusive thought had crossed her mind. She supposed it was unavoidable, thrust into a situation such as this.
She filtered it into the other restless thoughts swirling about in her head. For now.
“Um.”
She leaned back again, hands finding rubber, mind and mouth working in opposite directions, scrabbling for the right words to say.
“Heya.”
Her arm, working independently of her flailing brain, swung up, working its way to a half-throw before she realised what she was doing, the stone dropping harmlessly down, almost completely vertical.
“Shit, bollocks, sorry, sorry, autopilot, sorry. Sorry. Um. Sorry.”
Kay cleared her throat, one hand digging its way roughly into her unruly mass of hair, running through it, getting caught in yet another tangle. Her voice, hoarse and rough from her enforced slumber, sounded even deeper than usual. She hoped the figure on the ground could see her better than she could them. She hoped the figure on the ground could recognise her from accent alone.
“Did I. Um. Hit you?”
Her gaze slowly shifted to her bag, Benson & Hedges stowed safely within.
“I’m sorry if I hit you.”
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Frozen Smoke
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Austin collapsed back into the snow after his outburst, the sound of her words competing with the throb that every heartbeat sent through his skull, and the returning need to tense his stomach to stop it swirling uncontrollably. The cold underneath his fingers was at least somewhat comforting. He wished he had an ice pack or something. The self-pitying grimace that was cut into his face softened as the warble of the girl's voice repeated one sound, over and over, only broken up by the occasional punctuation of single simple words.
"It's okay, you - you didn't hit me." he said, voice drained of all the energy and indignation of the previous outburst, before point in a vague direction with his arm. "They did. The fucking, uh, the people who..." he trailed off, letting his burgandy covered arm collapse in the snow for dramatic effect.
"You know who I mean."
The sky was surprisingly pretty, honestly. Milky white mixing with lighter and darker greys as the various levels of cloud cover washed over one another, like marble except constantly moving. It was probably the first time he'd really looked at it since starting the trip for more than just a momentary glance out of a window, and now it filled his vision. But he couldn't let it do that forever. He'd feel better once he started moving, that was how things like this worked, you just had to get past them and ignore them until they went away.
He took a few deep breaths, and wrenched the horizon of his vision in line with the worlds once again, before it pitched forwards and to the side again as his legs shook underneath him. The stars popping in his vision mirrored the pins and needles he felt in the palm of his hand as it gripped onto the wet, cold rock that served briefly as his walking stick. He just about managed to grab a second of eye contact with the figure that strode atop the conveyor belt, before his stomach cramped again and his head tilted down once again.
"So... You got a plan?"
"It's okay, you - you didn't hit me." he said, voice drained of all the energy and indignation of the previous outburst, before point in a vague direction with his arm. "They did. The fucking, uh, the people who..." he trailed off, letting his burgandy covered arm collapse in the snow for dramatic effect.
"You know who I mean."
The sky was surprisingly pretty, honestly. Milky white mixing with lighter and darker greys as the various levels of cloud cover washed over one another, like marble except constantly moving. It was probably the first time he'd really looked at it since starting the trip for more than just a momentary glance out of a window, and now it filled his vision. But he couldn't let it do that forever. He'd feel better once he started moving, that was how things like this worked, you just had to get past them and ignore them until they went away.
He took a few deep breaths, and wrenched the horizon of his vision in line with the worlds once again, before it pitched forwards and to the side again as his legs shook underneath him. The stars popping in his vision mirrored the pins and needles he felt in the palm of his hand as it gripped onto the wet, cold rock that served briefly as his walking stick. He just about managed to grab a second of eye contact with the figure that strode atop the conveyor belt, before his stomach cramped again and his head tilted down once again.
"So... You got a plan?"
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Pippi
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For a moment, a fraction of time that she should have normally considered heartstopping, she thought she’d actually committed the unthinkable, that she’d inadvertently done something serious and irreversible. The figure in the snow had collapsed backwards, half-engulfed by the white powder surrounding them, and even though she knew that the rock she’d just thrown half-arsed had landed somewhere below her feet, she couldn’t shake the idea that, somehow, she was to blame for it.
Delayed reaction from previously hitting them square on the skull, maybe? What would happen next, if that was the case? She wasn’t a doctor. Most she knew was how to warm up proper after a cold dip, and how to remove a fish hook from your foot. Not brain damage or internal bleeding. Even if she had chosen surgery over a love of the ocean (and wouldn’t mum have been happy if that had been the case), how long would it take her to grab her bag and flamethrower, secure them to herself, scuttle to the nearest ladder, climb down it and trudge over towards them? Long enough that she might as well not even bother.
She thought about what would happen if she left them there, lying in the snow, blood leaking into their skull. She thought, for the first time, about what that Sycamore guy had told them, about what their role in this little nothing village was supposed to be. It took a second or two longer than she would have liked for her heart to pick up the pace at what she might have done.
It was all a false alarm in the end. Her own personal snow angel started talking after a little while; maybe they’d just been exasperated with the barrage of ‘sorries’ she’d leveled at them. Wasn’t something she usually did, but hunting giant monsters with a flamethrower wasn’t in her daily schedule yet, either.
God. God, that was actually starting to take shape in her mind, now, she could feel it. Without the hit of nicotine to take the edge off, or even the tiny adrenaline rush of hurling gravel, the reality of the situation was rushing in through an open door, rather than merely creeping in through the gaps. It was near-impossible to believe that the thing on the projection was real, that it was roaming around alongside them somewhere in this wasteland, but it didn’t actually matter whether it was real, just some guys in a costume, or some horrifyingly impressive CGI. They had all been placed out here and abandoned. They’d all been given weapons. Props or not, some folks would try and use them at some stage.
Hook or crook, no more than one person would live to see somewhere in the sun.
The said a couple things, one that Kay could answer no sweat, the other… not so much. Sure, she knew exactly who had given this guy a tap on the head, who had lined them all up in that freezing cold airstrip, who had dragged their unconscious body into the snow and left them there. It was the old adage; if something seemed too good to be true, it almost certainly was. And she’d fallen for it, hook line and sinker. Real impressive job guys. She really didn’t think they needed this sort of fucked up experiment to deduce that she wasn’t the ‘Fittest’ by a country mile.
As for the actually spoken question…
“Me?” Kay uttered, letting out a snort-laugh from her perch. “Mate, I’ve just been sitting here flinging rocks since I woke up, does it look like I’ve got a plan? I dunno what to do against a giant monster or anything, I’ve never even held a gun before! Last night I was gonna play video games until 5am and then pass out, instead I’m stuck here with a sore arse and a growing migraine and…”
Kay sighed loudly, rubbing her forehead with one hand, rat-a-tat-tatting her other palm against the belt. Sure, she was getting assaulted by lurching dread, rising panic, and a whole torrent of thoughts she really wasn’t in any position to be considering, but this guy wasn’t who she needed to be directing that all towards. Short-term satisfaction, long-term enemy. Wasn’t worth it. It didn’t matter what she ended up doing, she didn’t need to go around being a dick to the other passengers on the boat.
“Ugh, sorry. Didn’t mean to be an arse, sorry. It’s been way too long since I’ve had a fag, I’m not doing so great, I’m, uh…”
She looked around. Looked down at the ground, at the figure still lying there. Looked around again, until she saw the closest escape ladder. Then, slowly, she pushed herself back from the edge of the conveyor, until she had more than enough room to stand without feeling like her legs were going to fall to pieces underneath her.
“I’m gonna come down from here now, okay? So we don’t have to keep. Uh. Yelling. Don’t shoot me while I’m climbing down, alright, cause. Um.”
She idly nudged a particularly large pile of grit with her toe.
“There’s gonna be a big tank of petrol and stuff on my back, so I think that’d go bad for both of us. Mostly me, but, um.”
Kay stopped talking, because she hadn’t planned anything further to say before she’d launched into speaking. She crouched down, grabbing her bag and throwing it roughly over her shoulders, yelling with her back to the stranger as she did so.
“Oh, right, yeah, you’ve got a name, right? That I can call you?”
Delayed reaction from previously hitting them square on the skull, maybe? What would happen next, if that was the case? She wasn’t a doctor. Most she knew was how to warm up proper after a cold dip, and how to remove a fish hook from your foot. Not brain damage or internal bleeding. Even if she had chosen surgery over a love of the ocean (and wouldn’t mum have been happy if that had been the case), how long would it take her to grab her bag and flamethrower, secure them to herself, scuttle to the nearest ladder, climb down it and trudge over towards them? Long enough that she might as well not even bother.
She thought about what would happen if she left them there, lying in the snow, blood leaking into their skull. She thought, for the first time, about what that Sycamore guy had told them, about what their role in this little nothing village was supposed to be. It took a second or two longer than she would have liked for her heart to pick up the pace at what she might have done.
It was all a false alarm in the end. Her own personal snow angel started talking after a little while; maybe they’d just been exasperated with the barrage of ‘sorries’ she’d leveled at them. Wasn’t something she usually did, but hunting giant monsters with a flamethrower wasn’t in her daily schedule yet, either.
God. God, that was actually starting to take shape in her mind, now, she could feel it. Without the hit of nicotine to take the edge off, or even the tiny adrenaline rush of hurling gravel, the reality of the situation was rushing in through an open door, rather than merely creeping in through the gaps. It was near-impossible to believe that the thing on the projection was real, that it was roaming around alongside them somewhere in this wasteland, but it didn’t actually matter whether it was real, just some guys in a costume, or some horrifyingly impressive CGI. They had all been placed out here and abandoned. They’d all been given weapons. Props or not, some folks would try and use them at some stage.
Hook or crook, no more than one person would live to see somewhere in the sun.
The said a couple things, one that Kay could answer no sweat, the other… not so much. Sure, she knew exactly who had given this guy a tap on the head, who had lined them all up in that freezing cold airstrip, who had dragged their unconscious body into the snow and left them there. It was the old adage; if something seemed too good to be true, it almost certainly was. And she’d fallen for it, hook line and sinker. Real impressive job guys. She really didn’t think they needed this sort of fucked up experiment to deduce that she wasn’t the ‘Fittest’ by a country mile.
As for the actually spoken question…
“Me?” Kay uttered, letting out a snort-laugh from her perch. “Mate, I’ve just been sitting here flinging rocks since I woke up, does it look like I’ve got a plan? I dunno what to do against a giant monster or anything, I’ve never even held a gun before! Last night I was gonna play video games until 5am and then pass out, instead I’m stuck here with a sore arse and a growing migraine and…”
Kay sighed loudly, rubbing her forehead with one hand, rat-a-tat-tatting her other palm against the belt. Sure, she was getting assaulted by lurching dread, rising panic, and a whole torrent of thoughts she really wasn’t in any position to be considering, but this guy wasn’t who she needed to be directing that all towards. Short-term satisfaction, long-term enemy. Wasn’t worth it. It didn’t matter what she ended up doing, she didn’t need to go around being a dick to the other passengers on the boat.
“Ugh, sorry. Didn’t mean to be an arse, sorry. It’s been way too long since I’ve had a fag, I’m not doing so great, I’m, uh…”
She looked around. Looked down at the ground, at the figure still lying there. Looked around again, until she saw the closest escape ladder. Then, slowly, she pushed herself back from the edge of the conveyor, until she had more than enough room to stand without feeling like her legs were going to fall to pieces underneath her.
“I’m gonna come down from here now, okay? So we don’t have to keep. Uh. Yelling. Don’t shoot me while I’m climbing down, alright, cause. Um.”
She idly nudged a particularly large pile of grit with her toe.
“There’s gonna be a big tank of petrol and stuff on my back, so I think that’d go bad for both of us. Mostly me, but, um.”
Kay stopped talking, because she hadn’t planned anything further to say before she’d launched into speaking. She crouched down, grabbing her bag and throwing it roughly over her shoulders, yelling with her back to the stranger as she did so.
“Oh, right, yeah, you’ve got a name, right? That I can call you?”
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Frozen Smoke
- Posts: 375
- Joined: Tue Aug 07, 2018 6:25 pm
What.
Austin blinked a couple of times as the penultimate sentence pierced his conciousness, already stretched thin by the rant she'd levelled at him just a few seconds before. Did this bitch just carry around an emotional support jerry can with her at all times or something?
"I.. Uh- Austin. Like the city." he stumbled, before letting out an elongated "Ohhhhhh!" of understanding as he saw the black and dulled chrome monstrosity strapped to her back. They were all supposed to be issued weapons, or at least the old man giving them a lecture had said something like that.
He trudged back over to the indent in the snow where his body had lain, before excitedly bounding forwards the last few steps as he noticed the brown bakelite contrasting with the white and black of the snow covered rocks.
"No fuckin' way..." he mumbled.
Austin let out a genuine laugh as he cradled the RPG in his arms, the deep peals of it scattering and bouncing off the shattered steel of their surroundings, just about resisting the temptation to lift it above his head in triumph. This wasn't just a weapon, it was a bonafide golden ticket. How the fuck was anyone going to beat an RPG? This was like bringing a knife to a supersoaker fight! He slowly turned around to look at his compatriot as she clambered down the ladder towards him.
"Bro, you are not gonna believe what they gave me" he said, the smile clear in his voice.
"I don't think we need any kinda plan to fuck shit up, the amount of firepower we got."
Austin blinked a couple of times as the penultimate sentence pierced his conciousness, already stretched thin by the rant she'd levelled at him just a few seconds before. Did this bitch just carry around an emotional support jerry can with her at all times or something?
"I.. Uh- Austin. Like the city." he stumbled, before letting out an elongated "Ohhhhhh!" of understanding as he saw the black and dulled chrome monstrosity strapped to her back. They were all supposed to be issued weapons, or at least the old man giving them a lecture had said something like that.
He trudged back over to the indent in the snow where his body had lain, before excitedly bounding forwards the last few steps as he noticed the brown bakelite contrasting with the white and black of the snow covered rocks.
"No fuckin' way..." he mumbled.
Austin let out a genuine laugh as he cradled the RPG in his arms, the deep peals of it scattering and bouncing off the shattered steel of their surroundings, just about resisting the temptation to lift it above his head in triumph. This wasn't just a weapon, it was a bonafide golden ticket. How the fuck was anyone going to beat an RPG? This was like bringing a knife to a supersoaker fight! He slowly turned around to look at his compatriot as she clambered down the ladder towards him.
"Bro, you are not gonna believe what they gave me" he said, the smile clear in his voice.
"I don't think we need any kinda plan to fuck shit up, the amount of firepower we got."
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Pippi
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It was a good thing that her back was facing Austin Like-The-City as the word ‘Bro’ left his lips and hit her ears. She froze to a halt, stranded a quarter of the way down the ladder for a moment, closing her eyes and letting out a resigned sigh. The word was like poison to her, slowly creeping through her body, highlighting every section of it that drove her into a cocoon of shapeless hoodies and sweatpants and facemasks, anything to prevent the world at large to clock her at a moment’s notice. Her towering frame. The cuts and slashes speckling her chin and neck. Her utterly flat chest, given form by bundles of socks - Christ, she would need to remove those at some point, wouldn’t she, lest they spill out from the bottom of her shirt while she was running somewhere and she was forced to explain something she really couldn’t face doing right now - and padded bras.
He hadn’t done it intentionally to harm her, Kay knew that, she really did. It was just part of his lexicon that he’d never had a reason to alter before now; she was pretty damn certain this guy wouldn’t have encountered another girl who’d react in the same way that she did until this very moment. Still though. That only helped a fraction. Didn’t stop her from feeling like she’d been kicked from the ladder and that she was hurtling through space right now.
Another moment passed, and then she slowly started moving again, rung by rung, making sure each foot was flat and secure before trying for the next one. There were more important things to worry about, weren’t there? Frostbite and flamethrowers and giant eldritch demon bears. She could take a little bit of accidental misgendering. She was a big girl. Besides, if she spent any longer clinging to this thing, unmoving, she was gonna take a tumble anyway; the metal of the ladder bit into the exposed flesh of her hands, making her wince with each steady step.
She took the last few steps at a jump, landing with a thud and a grunt of exertion, the added weight from the bags and the flamethrower - no, it didn’t get any less surreal, the more she thought about it - causing her to land heavily, kicking up a spray of snow. She gave her possessions a quick once-over to make sure everything was safe and sound. No leaking fuel tank. No banged up fuel-nozzle-whatchamacallit. No tears in her duffel bag. Ignore the sudden realisation that the flamethower harness, designed for adult men no doubt, fit her perfectly. She turned around, and started trudging through the snow towards her new companion.
“Alright, alright, boyo, what’s the big excitement abouuuuuoh, oh, shit, okay.”
It hadn’t really occurred to Kay just how often the weapon cradled in Austin’s arms liked to make its presence known until this very moment. It cropped up in video games of all stripes, and in every shitty action film and TV show under the sun. It struck her, now that she was all up close to one, just how many details folks got wrong about it; the colouration of it, for a start. It was a subtle thing, sure, but she’d seen enough variants of this weapon of destruction that each imperfection was notable when faced with - she presumed - the real deal. The position of the trigger and the sights and other doodads on top; those were all ever so slightly different to how the big screen portrayed them. It was all just fine margins in the end - even with reality being, once more, two steps away from fiction, you didn’t need to be a gun nut to recognise an RPG when you saw one.
“Jesus. Is that, um. Real?”
She leaned in, halfway through the motions of rapping her knuckles against the thing to check whether it was proper metal or just some really nicely structured plastic. Best to avoid doing that, though, she realised. She doubted Austin would be best pleased at her getting her disgusting human fingers all over his nice, shiny new toy. And, probably more importantly, if she had to hazard a guess, ‘Don’t try and grab another dude’s gun’ was pretty high up there in terms of weapon safety rules.
“Well, shit. You’re right. They’re really not um. Holding back with the literal big guns, are they?”
She gave the fuel tank strapped to her back a rat-a-tat-tat for emphasis.
“Almost like they want us to…”
She thought back to the words of their dear friend Dr. Dickamore. He’d tried to present taking on the things that he’d unleashed as a real Sophie’s Choice; keep everyone in danger, including yourself, or make your next few days a little more stress-free, alongside all the people you were trying to outlast. But people could be talked to. People could discuss things. People could be stopped. That creature on the screen, that had been a wild force of nature. A beast set to survive on only its most innate instincts. You couldn’t reason with a hurricane, you couldn’t tell a firestorm to turn around and go home. You couldn’t talk down a giant, mutated polar bear.
But maybe, with the weapons they’d been gifted, you could take it on instead. Maybe they could guarantee this place would be a little more safer. And maybe, just maybe, that little extra wiggle room would be exactly what she needed in order to figure out exactly how she wanted this all to end.
“Oh, um. Right.”
She realised she’d been staring off into space, glassy eyed and unfocused on anything in front of her. She shook her head, looking back across at Austin.
”You gave me your name so it’s only fair I give you mine. I’m Kay. Um, Kay Poultier. Kay Luna Maya Poultier. You don’t, um. Have to call me all of that. I mean, you can, if you want. They’re my names, so I won’t stop you, but you don’t. Um.”
She scuffed her foot into the snow, kicking up a cloud of powder. She looked down at her feet, pulling a face, feeling her tongue tie itself into knots, wishing it would leap out of her mouth so that she could stop talking out of her fucking arse. Then, after a moment, she looked back up at Austin.
“How do you feel about fighting monsters? I’m Welsh. Dragons are a doddle to us.”
He hadn’t done it intentionally to harm her, Kay knew that, she really did. It was just part of his lexicon that he’d never had a reason to alter before now; she was pretty damn certain this guy wouldn’t have encountered another girl who’d react in the same way that she did until this very moment. Still though. That only helped a fraction. Didn’t stop her from feeling like she’d been kicked from the ladder and that she was hurtling through space right now.
Another moment passed, and then she slowly started moving again, rung by rung, making sure each foot was flat and secure before trying for the next one. There were more important things to worry about, weren’t there? Frostbite and flamethrowers and giant eldritch demon bears. She could take a little bit of accidental misgendering. She was a big girl. Besides, if she spent any longer clinging to this thing, unmoving, she was gonna take a tumble anyway; the metal of the ladder bit into the exposed flesh of her hands, making her wince with each steady step.
She took the last few steps at a jump, landing with a thud and a grunt of exertion, the added weight from the bags and the flamethrower - no, it didn’t get any less surreal, the more she thought about it - causing her to land heavily, kicking up a spray of snow. She gave her possessions a quick once-over to make sure everything was safe and sound. No leaking fuel tank. No banged up fuel-nozzle-whatchamacallit. No tears in her duffel bag. Ignore the sudden realisation that the flamethower harness, designed for adult men no doubt, fit her perfectly. She turned around, and started trudging through the snow towards her new companion.
“Alright, alright, boyo, what’s the big excitement abouuuuuoh, oh, shit, okay.”
It hadn’t really occurred to Kay just how often the weapon cradled in Austin’s arms liked to make its presence known until this very moment. It cropped up in video games of all stripes, and in every shitty action film and TV show under the sun. It struck her, now that she was all up close to one, just how many details folks got wrong about it; the colouration of it, for a start. It was a subtle thing, sure, but she’d seen enough variants of this weapon of destruction that each imperfection was notable when faced with - she presumed - the real deal. The position of the trigger and the sights and other doodads on top; those were all ever so slightly different to how the big screen portrayed them. It was all just fine margins in the end - even with reality being, once more, two steps away from fiction, you didn’t need to be a gun nut to recognise an RPG when you saw one.
“Jesus. Is that, um. Real?”
She leaned in, halfway through the motions of rapping her knuckles against the thing to check whether it was proper metal or just some really nicely structured plastic. Best to avoid doing that, though, she realised. She doubted Austin would be best pleased at her getting her disgusting human fingers all over his nice, shiny new toy. And, probably more importantly, if she had to hazard a guess, ‘Don’t try and grab another dude’s gun’ was pretty high up there in terms of weapon safety rules.
“Well, shit. You’re right. They’re really not um. Holding back with the literal big guns, are they?”
She gave the fuel tank strapped to her back a rat-a-tat-tat for emphasis.
“Almost like they want us to…”
She thought back to the words of their dear friend Dr. Dickamore. He’d tried to present taking on the things that he’d unleashed as a real Sophie’s Choice; keep everyone in danger, including yourself, or make your next few days a little more stress-free, alongside all the people you were trying to outlast. But people could be talked to. People could discuss things. People could be stopped. That creature on the screen, that had been a wild force of nature. A beast set to survive on only its most innate instincts. You couldn’t reason with a hurricane, you couldn’t tell a firestorm to turn around and go home. You couldn’t talk down a giant, mutated polar bear.
But maybe, with the weapons they’d been gifted, you could take it on instead. Maybe they could guarantee this place would be a little more safer. And maybe, just maybe, that little extra wiggle room would be exactly what she needed in order to figure out exactly how she wanted this all to end.
“Oh, um. Right.”
She realised she’d been staring off into space, glassy eyed and unfocused on anything in front of her. She shook her head, looking back across at Austin.
”You gave me your name so it’s only fair I give you mine. I’m Kay. Um, Kay Poultier. Kay Luna Maya Poultier. You don’t, um. Have to call me all of that. I mean, you can, if you want. They’re my names, so I won’t stop you, but you don’t. Um.”
She scuffed her foot into the snow, kicking up a cloud of powder. She looked down at her feet, pulling a face, feeling her tongue tie itself into knots, wishing it would leap out of her mouth so that she could stop talking out of her fucking arse. Then, after a moment, she looked back up at Austin.
“How do you feel about fighting monsters? I’m Welsh. Dragons are a doddle to us.”
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Frozen Smoke
- Posts: 375
- Joined: Tue Aug 07, 2018 6:25 pm
If both of Austin’s hands hadn’t been otherwise occupied, he wasn’t sure if he’d have been able to resist waving his hand in front of flamethrower girl’s face as she stared away over his shoulder, clearly having lost her mental footing as the avalanche of words crashed past them both. Hopefully she’d be able to keep hold of her balance a little better than her train of thought. Still, his lips turned upwards, forming what was his first smile of the day.
“Right on - I don’t plan on going out as Willing Test Subject number Whatever.” He said, as he awkwardly hoisted his prize up onto one shoulder. “I’m all for making this fuckin’ experiment as expensive and… Failure-y as possible”
He shook his left leg absent-mindedly, removing the dusting of snow Kay had scattered over his boot as he tried to get the combination of backpack, metal tube and barely functional inner ear to line up in a way that felt even remotely comfortable. The weight of it at least helped to crush the seed of doubt she’d planted as to whether they were real or not – no way could a fake be this cumbersome.
“I guess we could find a place with a good view and see where people are running away from, and then head there, right? – Wait, no – That could be murderers too.” Austin’s face contorted with annoyance as he spoke, his own train of thinking running over what had seemed like a perfect simple plan.
He chewed on his lip as he thought some more, eyes finally skipping away from the nervous gray gaze that occasionally landed back in his direction and landing on her glasses for a moment, before trickling down the navy blue of her jumper’s shoulder. Some part of his brain noted that she’d need some clothing better suited to keeping her dry if the dark grey clouds above fulfilled their promise, an observation which was wholly unhelpful to the question at hand.
“Fuck it, some information is better than none, right?” he ventured, trying to make the question sound more rhetorical than it was as he turned around to face in the direction that looked closest to ‘up’ the hillside, as one hand uneasily tugged the straps of his bag tighter.
“Onwards and upwards” he proclaimed – or, well, more mumbled – as the rocks crunched underneath the weight of a tentative step towards that nebulous goal.
“Right on - I don’t plan on going out as Willing Test Subject number Whatever.” He said, as he awkwardly hoisted his prize up onto one shoulder. “I’m all for making this fuckin’ experiment as expensive and… Failure-y as possible”
He shook his left leg absent-mindedly, removing the dusting of snow Kay had scattered over his boot as he tried to get the combination of backpack, metal tube and barely functional inner ear to line up in a way that felt even remotely comfortable. The weight of it at least helped to crush the seed of doubt she’d planted as to whether they were real or not – no way could a fake be this cumbersome.
“I guess we could find a place with a good view and see where people are running away from, and then head there, right? – Wait, no – That could be murderers too.” Austin’s face contorted with annoyance as he spoke, his own train of thinking running over what had seemed like a perfect simple plan.
He chewed on his lip as he thought some more, eyes finally skipping away from the nervous gray gaze that occasionally landed back in his direction and landing on her glasses for a moment, before trickling down the navy blue of her jumper’s shoulder. Some part of his brain noted that she’d need some clothing better suited to keeping her dry if the dark grey clouds above fulfilled their promise, an observation which was wholly unhelpful to the question at hand.
“Fuck it, some information is better than none, right?” he ventured, trying to make the question sound more rhetorical than it was as he turned around to face in the direction that looked closest to ‘up’ the hillside, as one hand uneasily tugged the straps of his bag tighter.
“Onwards and upwards” he proclaimed – or, well, more mumbled – as the rocks crunched underneath the weight of a tentative step towards that nebulous goal.
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Pippi
- Posts: 1118
- Joined: Tue Aug 07, 2018 6:32 pm
- Location: I'm Pip!
- Team Affiliation: Stephanie's Buccaneers
She didn’t think that Austin would ever be able to understand just how much she agreed with him. Or, for that matter, exactly which parts she agreed with.
Revenge? Yeah, she could roll with that. It could carry her a fair way; spite was an excellent motivator, after all, and if wiping some of Janus-Hayes’ hellscape creations off the face of the planet would piss off the boffins running this thing, then she wasn’t going to pass that opportunity up. But it wouldn’t be her main motivator. And, as she’d been about to suggest before her mind had wandered away from her, she really didn’t think they’d be all that upset anyway.
Murderers? Perhaps. She had barely recognised anyone else on board the ship, not even gifted the vague recollection of someone she had passed by while on campus, so she had to assume that was the same deal for everyone else. For all intents and purposes, this was a town full of complete strangers; no shared history, no lingering relationships, no unbreakable bonds. So, yeah, odds were there’d be one or two folks who’d look at the goal of being last man standing and take matters into their own hands. But the way Austin described it, he sounded like he was under the impression that the killers would be in the majority. And Kay really didn’t think that was likely either.
It was the first thing he’d said that had struck a major chord with her. That he wasn’t prepared for his lasting memory to be a number on a spreadsheet. And in that regard, they were totally in sync. She had no doubt that their respective reasons for wanting that fate differed wildly from one another, but the bottom line was thus; she needed to die as herself.
Of course, living as herself would be an even more preferable outcome than that. One that she was gonna miss out on if she didn’t get her head outta the clouds, her arse in gear, and her legs into motion to follow after her brand new ally.
“Whoa, hey, hey, wait up!”
Forcing herself out of her zoned-out-state - second time in as many minutes, and yet still not close to her own personal best - Kay trudged up the hill after Austin, already beginning to feel the toll of the full litre of fuel strapped to her back and surrounding her like some cut price Saw trap. Her legs were already aching. The piercing cold, their lack of use after the drugs had knocked her out flat, and the rapid descent down the ladder hadn’t done them any sort of favour at all. She stopped for a moment, taking a deep breath to prepare herself for the journey ahead, wherever they were planning on wandering off to. She looked over her shoulder, at a slightly higher elevation than she’d been at before.
She saw the sea. And she’d looked out at it before, atop her perch on the conveyor belt. But it hadn’t registered to her what she’d been looking at, her brain too full of stuff to truly take in her environment. They were on the coast. They couldn’t have been more than a mile or two from the water’s edge. The slate grey ocean beckoned to her. Called out to her. A siren song without equal.
It made her heart ache.
“Where, um,” Kay said, forcing herself to look up at Austin’s back, making the words that spilled from her mouth form into a sentence divorced from her one true love. “Where do you think they’ll. Um. Release those bastards? Probably need um. Someplace outta the way of that. Thingummy barricade, if they’re doing it remotely. Or like, um. A big enough room in one of those buildings. So they can stuff it in there and let it uh. Wake up. On its own.”
She paused, and blinked. Her glasses were filthy. She was surprised she could even see her own two damn feet, there was so much snow and dust and grit caked onto the lenses.
“Actually we’ll probably be able to hear where they are when it’s feeding time, right?”
Revenge? Yeah, she could roll with that. It could carry her a fair way; spite was an excellent motivator, after all, and if wiping some of Janus-Hayes’ hellscape creations off the face of the planet would piss off the boffins running this thing, then she wasn’t going to pass that opportunity up. But it wouldn’t be her main motivator. And, as she’d been about to suggest before her mind had wandered away from her, she really didn’t think they’d be all that upset anyway.
Murderers? Perhaps. She had barely recognised anyone else on board the ship, not even gifted the vague recollection of someone she had passed by while on campus, so she had to assume that was the same deal for everyone else. For all intents and purposes, this was a town full of complete strangers; no shared history, no lingering relationships, no unbreakable bonds. So, yeah, odds were there’d be one or two folks who’d look at the goal of being last man standing and take matters into their own hands. But the way Austin described it, he sounded like he was under the impression that the killers would be in the majority. And Kay really didn’t think that was likely either.
It was the first thing he’d said that had struck a major chord with her. That he wasn’t prepared for his lasting memory to be a number on a spreadsheet. And in that regard, they were totally in sync. She had no doubt that their respective reasons for wanting that fate differed wildly from one another, but the bottom line was thus; she needed to die as herself.
Of course, living as herself would be an even more preferable outcome than that. One that she was gonna miss out on if she didn’t get her head outta the clouds, her arse in gear, and her legs into motion to follow after her brand new ally.
“Whoa, hey, hey, wait up!”
Forcing herself out of her zoned-out-state - second time in as many minutes, and yet still not close to her own personal best - Kay trudged up the hill after Austin, already beginning to feel the toll of the full litre of fuel strapped to her back and surrounding her like some cut price Saw trap. Her legs were already aching. The piercing cold, their lack of use after the drugs had knocked her out flat, and the rapid descent down the ladder hadn’t done them any sort of favour at all. She stopped for a moment, taking a deep breath to prepare herself for the journey ahead, wherever they were planning on wandering off to. She looked over her shoulder, at a slightly higher elevation than she’d been at before.
She saw the sea. And she’d looked out at it before, atop her perch on the conveyor belt. But it hadn’t registered to her what she’d been looking at, her brain too full of stuff to truly take in her environment. They were on the coast. They couldn’t have been more than a mile or two from the water’s edge. The slate grey ocean beckoned to her. Called out to her. A siren song without equal.
It made her heart ache.
“Where, um,” Kay said, forcing herself to look up at Austin’s back, making the words that spilled from her mouth form into a sentence divorced from her one true love. “Where do you think they’ll. Um. Release those bastards? Probably need um. Someplace outta the way of that. Thingummy barricade, if they’re doing it remotely. Or like, um. A big enough room in one of those buildings. So they can stuff it in there and let it uh. Wake up. On its own.”
She paused, and blinked. Her glasses were filthy. She was surprised she could even see her own two damn feet, there was so much snow and dust and grit caked onto the lenses.
“Actually we’ll probably be able to hear where they are when it’s feeding time, right?”
tap-tap-tappey-tap-tap.
Its fingers drummed against the belt, making some sort of nondescript pattern. Everything *sucked.* It hurt, immensely, in a multitude of ways, what she'd done and what she recieved in return.
Shame carved a path here, far from where the journey began. Shame led her to behind the two, with dirty shoes and icey lashes.
It's cold. It's really, really cold. Tess never really... had the displeasure of being in a place this cold before. There really wasn't any good way to compare it. It would be a lie, or at least an inaccurate statement, to say something dramatic that usually came with The Cold's descriptors, something like "She was chilled to the bone," or "The ice felt like daggers against her skin." It was a flurry of odd sensations that she had felt before, all combined together. Snow on her cheek. Ice in her shoe. The goosebumps. The chattering teeth. Snow, to her, was something passing and temporary and not to be bothered with. There would be the initial excitement, looking out the window at the white flakes, and then annoyance as she cancelled whatever plans there were that needed driving that day, and within half a week, it'll be gone. The fact that it'll be gone was something that felt infallible. It's snow. Of course it'll melt. But not here.
Here, it wasn't a part of the environment as much as the entire stage.
Alright, no more robbing people.
He wasn't sure of the time. He was too spiteful to check whatever shit pieces of tech that was given to him by the """scientists""" and to be entirely honest, maybe it was best not to know. But it was somewhere between "right after" and "a while later" that he finally spotted the two figures ahead of him, a bit above, and even later that he actually registered them.
"Hey," the mouth opened with, a bit croacked. "You know what the fuck is going on?"
Its fingers drummed against the belt, making some sort of nondescript pattern. Everything *sucked.* It hurt, immensely, in a multitude of ways, what she'd done and what she recieved in return.
Shame carved a path here, far from where the journey began. Shame led her to behind the two, with dirty shoes and icey lashes.
It's cold. It's really, really cold. Tess never really... had the displeasure of being in a place this cold before. There really wasn't any good way to compare it. It would be a lie, or at least an inaccurate statement, to say something dramatic that usually came with The Cold's descriptors, something like "She was chilled to the bone," or "The ice felt like daggers against her skin." It was a flurry of odd sensations that she had felt before, all combined together. Snow on her cheek. Ice in her shoe. The goosebumps. The chattering teeth. Snow, to her, was something passing and temporary and not to be bothered with. There would be the initial excitement, looking out the window at the white flakes, and then annoyance as she cancelled whatever plans there were that needed driving that day, and within half a week, it'll be gone. The fact that it'll be gone was something that felt infallible. It's snow. Of course it'll melt. But not here.
Here, it wasn't a part of the environment as much as the entire stage.
Alright, no more robbing people.
He wasn't sure of the time. He was too spiteful to check whatever shit pieces of tech that was given to him by the """scientists""" and to be entirely honest, maybe it was best not to know. But it was somewhere between "right after" and "a while later" that he finally spotted the two figures ahead of him, a bit above, and even later that he actually registered them.
"Hey," the mouth opened with, a bit croacked. "You know what the fuck is going on?"
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Frozen Smoke
- Posts: 375
- Joined: Tue Aug 07, 2018 6:25 pm
Austin tilted his head slightly and shrugged as he turned back to her in answer, but with something approaching a relaxed expression on his face. The monster they'd seen didn't exactly look subtle, but for all the two of they knew it could have some Predator-ass bullshit camoflauge - though he wasn't about to speak that into existence.
"Not like we got a time limit, really. Just gotta hope we find it, rather than the other way around, y'know." he noted, before a flicker of concern passed across his face as he noticed Kay was falling behind, and slowed his pace to match hers wordlessly.
His free hand fumbled with the hood on his jacket as the wind whipped off the conveyor belt behind them, making the structure hum and whine as it rushed through the rust-bored holes, almost sounding like it was talking to them as it burnt his ears.
"Fuck this wind though, seriously..."
((Austin continued elsewhere))
"Not like we got a time limit, really. Just gotta hope we find it, rather than the other way around, y'know." he noted, before a flicker of concern passed across his face as he noticed Kay was falling behind, and slowed his pace to match hers wordlessly.
His free hand fumbled with the hood on his jacket as the wind whipped off the conveyor belt behind them, making the structure hum and whine as it rushed through the rust-bored holes, almost sounding like it was talking to them as it burnt his ears.
"Fuck this wind though, seriously..."
((Austin continued elsewhere))
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Pippi
- Posts: 1118
- Joined: Tue Aug 07, 2018 6:32 pm
- Location: I'm Pip!
- Team Affiliation: Stephanie's Buccaneers
“Eh.”
Kay shrugged, then instantly regretted it, as the metal frame wrapped around her arms dug into her shoulders at the motion. She hissed and flinched, and almost slid backwards to the ladder again. Would’ve done too, if she hadn’t stamped her foot down and stood her ground, jarring her knee in the process, another little noise like a leaking fuel canister (aw, bollocks, don’t think about stuff like that) escaping her mouth in the process.
Good start. Great preparation for tracking down and hunting monsters, this. Failing to walk up a small hill. What, was she gonna suddenly develop a crippling fear of the dark as well, the moment the sun dipped over the horizon?
She sighed, then started trudging back up towards Austin, all too well aware that he’d almost stopped moving entirely in order to let her catch up. Getting thoughts like that stuck in her brain before the fight had even started weren’t helpful in the slightest; it was chucking away the gauntlet - or, uh, flamethrower in her case - at the beginning of the journey. It wasn’t easy to stop them from intruding at the first glimpse of failure, though, she knew that all too well. And it was even more difficult to dislodge them once they’d wormed their way inside her brain, telling her it was better to give up than to try and press forwards and fuck everything up even further.
Better to focus on the positives. Like the fact that the flamethrower wasn’t as much of a perfect fit as she’d first thought. That or she just hadn’t properly secured it around herself, or that the petrol tank was weighing the whole thing down, but it was way nicer to pretend that her girlish figure had slipped through the piping instead.
“No worries if, um,” Kay said, as soon as she was closer to Austin again, continuing from her previously interrupted thought. “It, um. You know. Finds us instead. We’ve-”
Shit the bed, she could barely hear herself speak. The wind had picked up something nasty since she’d clambered down off of the conveyor belt, and the giant creeping structure, laid to rest along the mountainside like the rusting skeleton of some ancient mechanical serpent, groaned as if it was about to collapse underneath its own immense weight. Yeah, definitely a good idea that she’d gotten down from there before now. Sounded almost like someone was yelling at them. Considerate of the conveyor to tell them to get a shift on, really. Crushed and speared with a ton of jagged shards of metal? Not the way she was planning on going out.
“-Um!”
She raised her voice, desperately trying to finish a sentence as she trudged onwards.
“We’ve got more than enough firepower to, um. Take it on. Let it come to us! We’ll um! Teach it not to mess. With us!”
Rousing speech it sure wasn’t. And, honesty hours, she’d really rather if that thing didn’t stumble upon them while they were trying to make camp for the night.
Yeah. Maybe. Yeah.
((Kay Poultier continued in Personal Risk Tolerance))
Kay shrugged, then instantly regretted it, as the metal frame wrapped around her arms dug into her shoulders at the motion. She hissed and flinched, and almost slid backwards to the ladder again. Would’ve done too, if she hadn’t stamped her foot down and stood her ground, jarring her knee in the process, another little noise like a leaking fuel canister (aw, bollocks, don’t think about stuff like that) escaping her mouth in the process.
Good start. Great preparation for tracking down and hunting monsters, this. Failing to walk up a small hill. What, was she gonna suddenly develop a crippling fear of the dark as well, the moment the sun dipped over the horizon?
She sighed, then started trudging back up towards Austin, all too well aware that he’d almost stopped moving entirely in order to let her catch up. Getting thoughts like that stuck in her brain before the fight had even started weren’t helpful in the slightest; it was chucking away the gauntlet - or, uh, flamethrower in her case - at the beginning of the journey. It wasn’t easy to stop them from intruding at the first glimpse of failure, though, she knew that all too well. And it was even more difficult to dislodge them once they’d wormed their way inside her brain, telling her it was better to give up than to try and press forwards and fuck everything up even further.
Better to focus on the positives. Like the fact that the flamethrower wasn’t as much of a perfect fit as she’d first thought. That or she just hadn’t properly secured it around herself, or that the petrol tank was weighing the whole thing down, but it was way nicer to pretend that her girlish figure had slipped through the piping instead.
“No worries if, um,” Kay said, as soon as she was closer to Austin again, continuing from her previously interrupted thought. “It, um. You know. Finds us instead. We’ve-”
Shit the bed, she could barely hear herself speak. The wind had picked up something nasty since she’d clambered down off of the conveyor belt, and the giant creeping structure, laid to rest along the mountainside like the rusting skeleton of some ancient mechanical serpent, groaned as if it was about to collapse underneath its own immense weight. Yeah, definitely a good idea that she’d gotten down from there before now. Sounded almost like someone was yelling at them. Considerate of the conveyor to tell them to get a shift on, really. Crushed and speared with a ton of jagged shards of metal? Not the way she was planning on going out.
“-Um!”
She raised her voice, desperately trying to finish a sentence as she trudged onwards.
“We’ve got more than enough firepower to, um. Take it on. Let it come to us! We’ll um! Teach it not to mess. With us!”
Rousing speech it sure wasn’t. And, honesty hours, she’d really rather if that thing didn’t stumble upon them while they were trying to make camp for the night.
Yeah. Maybe. Yeah.
((Kay Poultier continued in Personal Risk Tolerance))
You frown, a little annoyed at being unacknowledged, but understanding of the fact that it was probably for the best. Generally speaking, this is an insanely stressful situation. You remind yourself that it's not really because of you that they left, probably, and just because it felt a bit insulting to you doesn't mean that it was anything personal, that sometimes, you suck a lot less than the circumstances themselves.
Snow blew into your face. Your ears hurt, and the general pain and discomfort is so pervasive that, luckily and/or unluckily, you find yourself incapable of even focusing on one particular source or area that tried especially hard to murder you in the past few hours.
She tugged at the hood of her jacket to cover her face.
Maybe it was better for them to be left alone, considering what happened with the last duo that she met. If she didn't get close to anyone, she wouldn't have the urge to just rob and murder them. Which was, wow, a morbid thought alright, but the whole situation was morbid and Tess never really claimed she was a good person.
(((And there wasn't anything here to do but to go somewhere else, anyways--->))
Snow blew into your face. Your ears hurt, and the general pain and discomfort is so pervasive that, luckily and/or unluckily, you find yourself incapable of even focusing on one particular source or area that tried especially hard to murder you in the past few hours.
She tugged at the hood of her jacket to cover her face.
Maybe it was better for them to be left alone, considering what happened with the last duo that she met. If she didn't get close to anyone, she wouldn't have the urge to just rob and murder them. Which was, wow, a morbid thought alright, but the whole situation was morbid and Tess never really claimed she was a good person.
(((And there wasn't anything here to do but to go somewhere else, anyways--->))