Welcome to Gaia! ::

Hvergelmir got to her feet as quickly as she could. There was time enough to run -- not much of it, but a few seconds. She could get a head-start, maybe be back in public view before Ate could reach her and had to give up.

Or she could press her advantage, try to incapacitate her attacker longer -- not something she'd ever done, but she'd fought quite a few youma; she could at least try. That is, if she could bring herself to try and take a swing at a human being.

Or.

Hvergelmir hiked up her skirts and made a run for it. Not to the street, but in the other direction: deeper into the alleyway. There wasn't much back there that she could use as a weapon, if she had to, but she crouched down next to the unconscious man with the battered face and began to shake him by the shoulders. "Wake up! Please wake up!"

There was no response.

Ate was preparing to attack. Hvergelmir didn't know what she might be capable of, but it was a sure bet that the page was better equipped to handle it than the injured man. She wrapped her arms around him in the seconds she had, trying to make as much of a shield of herself as possible.

The sludge was first. It fell in globs from the sky, the stench filling Hvergelmir's nose as it splattered all over her. Then the smoke swamped in, filling her lungs, and she coughed, starting to get distressed when he couldn't catch her breath -- and then the trash all began to fall.

If someone had just been standing a few feet away, pelting her with soda cans and half-rotted napkins, it might've been unpleasant. It had been unpleasant, in fact, when that had happened to Hvergelmir and Sarras during a youma fight and a crowd of people had gotten disastrously involved. But this wasn't unpleasant. This was beer bottles and worn-out shoes and someone's broken toaster and a massive amount of other junk falling from high up in the sky. It fell hard, it fell all at once, and it hurt.

Something hard and heavy clocked Hvergelmir in the back of the head, and she let out a harsh cry of pain: Hvergelmir guessed it was music to Ate's ears, if Ate could manage to hear it over the sound of crashing pollution everywhere. A few sharper things hit her in the back, though she couldn't see to identify them, but her dress offered her almost no protection from the damage. It was agonizing, and it lasted for a few long seconds: when the fall stopped, she was covered under a small layer of trash, somewhat bloody, and she was still struggling for breath, couched in heavy smoke.

Hvergelmir flailed her arms outward, trying to clear away some of the trash and force the smoke to disperse before she passed out. She was wheezing hard, hacking out harsh coughs, but it was no use. She couldn't catch her breath.

She could feel something damp trickling slowly down the side of her face. Blood, maybe -- she didn't know. She only knew she had to get free, get to air --

Hvergelmir started throwing things, trying frantically to get clear. She was dizzy and frantic; she just hoped Ate was unfortunate enough to get caught in the fallout of her own attack too, and not standing around waiting to snap Hvergelmir's neck if smoke inhalation failed to take her out.

Hvergelmir did, in her blind flailing, find a knife. Unfortunately, she found it by the wrong end -- cutting her palm before dropping it abruptly and trying to move on to the next thing. The air was starting to clear, and she'd covered her mouth and nose with the long fabric at the bottom of her dress, but it was still hard to breathe and harder to see.

She could hear, though. Through the assaults on all her other senses, Hvergelmir had no trouble making out Ate's words. It felt like a fresh round of slime coating her skin. I could almost regret killing you. I would have kept you as my b***h. She reminded herself that most people who said those kinds of things didn't really mean them -- it was just for shock value, just to scare -- but that was difficult to convince herself of. Sailor Ate was terror in heels, an unreasonable, uncompromising woman bent on power and pain. If Chaos ate away at the heart of a person, it must have finished making a meal of Sailor Ate long ago.

Hvergelmir threw several more large objects away from herself as she continued to try and unbury her lower body enough to get loose, working around her aching head and her bleeding hand, now. After one of the things she threw, she heard an ugly thud from far-off -- then a second noise like something heavy falling to the ground.

"Uh -- hello?" she called. Sailor Ate was silent.

She worked herself free of the debris, still coughing every few seconds to try and clear the soot from her throat -- and when the air was clearer, she could see heaps of scattered trash, and settled upon one pile, the collapsed body of Sailor Ate, all clad in black. One of Hvergelmir's throws must've accidentally clipped her in the head or something. Was she . . . ?

Hvergelmir approached with caution, bending to check her enemy's throat for a pulse, and smearing a little of her own blood on the corrupted senshi in the process.

She had a pulse. She was just unconscious. Hvergelmir wiped her forehead with the back of a hand, relieved that she hadn't engaged in accidental manslaughter, then stepped back.

Who knew how much longer Ate would be out for. They had to hurry.

Hvergelmir scrambled back to where she'd left the unconscious man that Sailor Ate had victimized, hopping and climbing hurriedly over piles of waste to get to where he lay. Her head was swimming, and she wanted to stop for a while to regain her bearings, maybe -- but there wasn't time. She had to get the man and they had to get out of here.

"Alright, please wake up," she intoned sharply, giving him a rough shake in hopes of bringing him round. "We've gotta get going right now, please -- or I can try and carry you -- "

His battered head lolled forward limply onto her shoulder. Too limply.

Something was wrong.

"No," she whispered, leaning him back and pressing a shaking hand under his jawline to try and find a pulse. "No, no, no, no, no, please -- "

Nothing. She tried again. Maybe she was bad at finding a pulse on someone else. Maybe -- maybe her fingers were on the wrong part of his neck. She poked around again, trying elsewhere on his throat, desperate to find the soft, sure beat of a heart pumping blood.

There wasn't anything.

What had she done wrong? She'd stayed with him, hadn't she? Kept him covered, took most of the hits -- it didn't look like he'd gotten any new injuries. Hvergelmir coughed again, her throat closing up with tears this time. Was it the smoke? Had he died of smoke inhalation, because she'd covered her own mouth but not his? Why wasn't he just alive?

Hvergelmir thought she heard a noise behind her. Ate was stirring, maybe, or someone else was walking down the nearby street, going on with their day unaware that a man had just died for no purpose.

There was no time left to stay here, and no reason. What was left for Hvergelmir to do? She'd already failed at everything, absolutely everything.

She'd done no good here at all.

She ran.