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((Just in the domes.))

And a small wind followed through the once more empty hovels as everyone left.

((For the sake of an IC post))

((From the Frozen Residence...))

"Ick! I hate slums," Iris complained as she and Afro-sama made their way up to the hovels. Abandoned, just like the last place, and it seems they missed whoever had come here before them.

"Picking up anything?" Afro asked.

"Just the same field I've been scanning since we got here, sir," she said, "and multiple life signs, but none of them Frostchildian. Probably other teams wandering around."

There was no point hanging around here.

"Let's keep going. There's gotta be houses for the rich and important people to live in, and they're usually more messy than poor folk."

"Where to next?"

"Got a map on that thing?"

"Of course!"

Afro looked over Iris' shoulder to see the map she pulled up on her Blackberry-scanner-device. It showed a basic layout of the frozen city, and the quickest route to where they wanted to go was...

"Echo Woods."

"Woods give me the creeps."

"Don't worry, baby. I'll protect you."

Where there were woods, there was danger. At least, that's how Afro-sama always experienced it. He had never stepped into a woods where he didn't come out without having to fight at least twenty things trying to eat him, rob him, con him, or kill him. Over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house - isn't that how the song goes? Maybe grandmother can help them out with some clues.

((...to the Echo Woods.))

Throughout the city, the people of Frostschild were coming home. Men, women, and children, knocked out of reality by a magical punch no one saw coming, were being nudged back into existence by the very same force. Eating, sleeping, shopping, working, they had been going about their lives, and to them no time had passed at all. Still, something was not right.

They were changed.

Metal. Jagged. Screaming and shrieking with inhuman voices, they returned skeletons of their former selves, grim visages of decayed bodies animated through the fusion of magic and robotics. They would go about their daily lives, clumsy brutal mockeries of what they once were, but lacking in human comprehension or understanding.

That is, until they saw someone alive, someone unchanged, someone who was still human. They turned on these people, watched them. Approached slowly, cautiously, sizing up the strange being. They would clang their metal teeth together threateningly, stretch out their claw-like fingers, and then...

...they would attack.

"s**t. s**t, s**t, s**t."

Kael went on under his breath, adjusting himself up against Sam. Once they transferred from the thick snow outside to what scant snow had begun to settle inside, and slow, he'd let go of Sam with his one vacated arm and make one good swipe at his hair to try and knock as much snow out of it as possible.

Standing as soon as they were stopped, he unhooked his legs and put them to the ground, following by sawing through the rope with a portion of his sword that had been dulled and made slightly ragged by smashing of metallic zombies. The makeshift teeth would tear it apart fast enough and he'd stand, moving to the front and sawing her free of the machine, all in a hushed growl as he tried to keep an eye open for the other zombies that he knew would show up around soon enough. If she was slow getting up, he'd offer her a hand.

You'd think there'd be some serious reaction to zombies, or heartiness about the victory, some sort of reaction of a survivor or proud hero. Instead, Kael just seemed a touch skiddish, looking about for more zombies, and trying to figure out how they'd quickly and safely negotiate a whole city of these.

As a whole though, Kael seemed unharmed. Which was more than he could say for Sam.

"We need to keep moving," he put in a hushed tone, steadying her- regardless of whether she needed it or not with a hand on either shoulder, bending to level his face to hers.

"Are you alright Sammy?"

He'd try and wipe the blood away from her eye with a sleeve. He could have tried to stifle it with bandages, but he didn't have time to securely try and wrap her head up, and he had no adhesives.

She smiled weakly and looked up at him, her green eyes just a little dazed with shock and pain now that the immediate danger was over.

"Uh..I..uh yeah.." She wrapped her own arms around her body, and then remembered that was stupid, and began rubbing her chest to get the circulation going. Where had she put that coat?

"Just cold."

But the quiet was creepy, too creepy for Sam's preference. "Let's go." And pushed herself upright, and reached into her bags for her ammo, and then her backpack which had been slung to the bike when they'd been about to leave. Between that and her purse, she figured they were set for the moment.

And around the corner the boots came, and with it, a person. He seemed hardly dressed for the winter. He wore cloth pants that looked a bit light and loose, leather boots, a wide black belt with sabre scabbard and holding aforementioned sabre. A light blue shirt, black vest. He was pale, breathing hard, his brown hair flying around as he flailed his arms, legs, and head as fast as he could, running down the street, and towards the two Heroes.

His blue eyes went big as he saw them both, his left hand came out, waving towards them, "HELP ME!" he cried, as pitiful as that was.

His mouth opened partly, half way between closed and gaping, and he worked it for a moment, before he closed his eyes, squeezing them shut hard for a moment.

"Samantha."

Kael put a hand to his hilt and started a step toward the man running toward them.

"We're taking him."

The low, serious voice picked up as he started striding faster toward the guy, pulling his sword out of the scabbard, and pointing behind him at Sam. From a low, grimly serious tone to a shout broadcast to each of them.

"You two get back to where the others are holed up as fast as you can. If I fall behind, you cover each other. I've handled myself in this kind of s**t before, I find my way soon enough."

He'd seen how this worked in movies. There was s**t coming behind the guy.

Kael had no intention of making the heroic last stand movies said he was supposed to, but if one or two were close enough in following that he had to hold them off, he wanted to be ready.