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Finding no rope, his shoulders slumped as his spirits dampened. He sighed as Mercy told him to hide the shade, and he unseathed one of his curved swords and walked back to the hallway, not even trying to keep out of the murky water due to the fact that the attempt would have been futile. He thrust down and its tip sank into the body with a squelch and a splurt of ichor, and after readjusting his hold on the hilt, he dragged it to the door that led outside to the stairs. He wiped the blood off of the blade on the wall and put it back in its place. He walked tiredly down the hallway to the window and watched as Mercy was waving happily towards something. "What the hell are you doing? I think the Shade might find it rude that you're waving at them and they can't give you a nice big hug." He sighed yet again and walked over, sticking his head out past Mercy. He saw a girl not to far away and he raised an eyebrow in curiosity. "Oh, you have a playmate, how nice. Hello." He waved non-enthusiastically, bored with how slow everything had been going.

"Hey there Sunshine." Trice smiled at the grumpy man who had arrived. "Can you look a little less bored? After all, this is the apocalypse." With that said, she winked slyly at him [not that she meant anything by it, people could just be fun to mess with] and swung down to join the other woman on the balcony below.

"Hey, d'you guys need any help getting out? Because if - wait, what was that?" she had thought she heard Sarah's voice from somewhere not close but not far. And just before that, a really loud call of - something."s**t."

Sarah's legs and lungs started to burn terribly once she made it onto the cement of side walk and into the alley between buildings of darkness. Now, that wasn't very smart with the Shade about, was it? But there were none and the only thing going through the woman's mind was: Run!

She cried out, hitting the ground hard as she tripped and rolled to face the thing after her. Ugly and twisted, it crouched at the beginning of the alley with its nose high in the air. She tasted blood and wondered what the thing was waiting for...

{Hmm, I might not be able to post again for awhile. >,<}

A little ways down the street from Sarah, Kiyoshi sat on the edge of a car's hood, his elbows resting casually on his knees. He watched the Shade hesitate with mild bemusement. What was it doing? The woman was right there for the taking, and yet it stood there, smelling the air. Kiyoshi's eyes narrowed. He'd never seen a Shade call the others over to feed with it before. Impossible. Those things were mindless monsters.

"Or are they?" Kiyoshi murmured. He made a decision. He wasn't being hired to rescue any damsels in distress, but he couldn't know if the girl was a target until he questioned her himself - and he couldn't do that if she was dead. Kiyoshi flicked a hand towards the Shade when it tried to step towards the woman. The surprise as it hit an invisible wall was worth the effort. Kiyoshi smirked at the thing's enraged clawing of the air and pulled out his crossbow. Even if the woman got up and ran, it wasn't like he couldn't go after her. He took his time and snapped on a fresh bow as the Shade let out another howl of puzzled outrage.

Sarah opened her mouth, accidentally letting all the spit and blood pour out all over her chin. Whatever had bled was already healed and she spat out the gross taste. The Shade-- if it was one with such an unusual yellow color and legs-- hit something and it was stopped as if by air. It cried out, not knowing what it was without eyes and all. After it realized its attempts to break through weren't working, it crouched back to the ground with its disgustingly crooked nose to sniff at the new strange scent. Confusion crossed her face and pain tingled throughout her body, she tried to move away from it. The back of her shirt was torn and her knees hurt from her fall. Perhaps if she could get into her tight pants at the pocket knife, if that would do any good at all against the thing. Why weren't there any other Shade getting at her?

Sarah jumped, surprised as the odd Shade was brought down by arrows. She let escape a whimper as a true Shade got a little close. Fortunately, it was cut away by a man. This man ordered her rather coldly and this Sarah obeyed. Or at least tried to. "She pushed herself up on her wobbly feet to follow before running pale hands across her back where she had been struck before. Nothing.

The Shade that laid dead was left untouched by the others that had started to gather a good few feet away, strangely aware and not crazed with the scent of humans. A blueish goo oozed from the wound in the neck of the dead yellow thing. She turned her gaze back to the man, looking at what she could of him in the dark. "Who are you?" she asked, grabbing hold of a strap on her bag.

Kiyoshi's lips twisted in a strange smile. "Capricorn," he replied, before glancing at the gathered Shades. They were puzzling, for sure. He was not, however, going to take a chance and make heartfelt introductions this close to danger. He saw the woman's hand move to her bag and was suddenly there in front of her, the edge of his scimitar very close to her neck and his free hand reaching out to grab her wrist in a vise-like grip.

"Get up," he repeated. Kiyoshi's voice was lowered to almost a growl. He was going to have to carry her, wasn't he? "Or if you can't, let go of the bag and don't struggle."

OoC;; Don't worry about it; Link... I know how you feel. Finals are coming up this week, and I doubt I'll be able to post much either.

She made it to the last baloney before the jump, that booming noise still ringing in her ears. Her nerves were tense already, what with the sun going down, but hearing that call plus her new friend's little swear made her feel less confident. But she was close to finishing the job. Mercy dexterously tied her makeshift blanket rope to a rung and scanned the street for any signs of the Shade. Seeing none, she threw the other end of her rope over the rail. It stopped six feet short of the ground, a considerably more survivable distance than twenty two.

The question was, how much weight would it hold? She wasn't worried about herself, but Jekyll and Loyd were both taller and muscular. Okay, maybe not so much Loyd, that skinny pretty boy. He was the brains and Jek was the brawn and Mercy was... well, she didn't really know. What the hell was she anyway? The heart?

So due to the rope's limited use, she figured she might still have to push the dumpster across the street and situate it underneath the balcony, but that would definitely leave her vulnerable to surprise attacks from the Shade. Ah, whatever, hopefully the last person was at least three-fourths down the rope before it broke. Rather than go down right away, she leaned over the railing and looked up, to try and catch the eye of either the boys in the apartment or the nimble redheaded woman they‘d recently encountered. She spotted the woman and called out, "Will you tell them to get down here, please?"

Mercedes armed herself with her bow and simply waited in the balcony, serving as a rather annoyed sentry. The rope dangling below gave away her position, but she was in no mood to be rational. Jekyll and Loyd had better GET THEIR ASSES DOWN or they wouldn't have time to even run, much less find a safe place to wait the night.