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 Posted: Sat Jul 11, 2015 9:03 pm
Gale sincerely hoped he wasn't about to make a mistake either, or whether he was just trying to make up for the stupid Rep and Lucky incident in a very roundabout way. But Jinhai's reassuring murmurs did help to at least alleviate some of his anxiety, Gale gritting his teeth together. He gave a little nod at Stormy's reminder, grateful, as always, that she was beside him.
He caught the flashlight and followed along with her towards the civilian.
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Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2015 8:06 pm
By the time they arrived it was already too late. They were simply late by the merest of seconds, as there was an unfortunate click, as the victim used their last bullet a turn prior. It was nothing like films, it was nothing like books or studies, horrible and vile and always visceral. The sound of someone screaming for help, desperation, terror, fear. They did not want to die.
A snap, like almost plastic breaking, and it ended quickly.
The remaining of the infected, feeding on the body now, left an opening for Gale and Stormy to the stairs at the end. They were preoccupied after all.
If Gale and Stormy took the stairs, they would notice all the doors were locked except for the very top, twentieth floor.
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Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2015 8:33 pm
The sound was a little more muted too. Not at all like most movies. Always a loud bang, a bright light, cues to lead your eyes. She ran and kept running when she saw the gun rise, ran faster even. It was a little funny almost: gunshots used to make her so nervous. This one only made her grateful they had less to worry about.
Once in the stairwell, she procured the flashlight back from Gale and jammed it into the lever. Not that it would do anything in the end save for buy them an extra few seconds if the infected came this way, but even a slight precaution made her feel better.
"Equipment still look good?" she asked him as she looked up and saw the sprawl of stairs above them. Stormy almost shuddered; it reminded her of the seven kings' tower.
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Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2015 10:46 am
They were too late. He heard the sound of the gun, heard the soft, sickening snap. Gale felt the bile rise in his throat but forced it down, focused on Stormy and on the equipment he still carried. He stumbled into the stairwell after her, his Death oriented mind already rearranging his thoughts towards a new goal.
"Still looks good," Gale said, and took a little breath as he stared up at the seemingly endless staircase in front of them. "That, however, doesn't."
The prospect of carting everything up there was unappealing and daunting, but the prospect of falling prey to the things currently feasting on their latest victim even less so. Gale turned and gave Stormy a little nod, already starting up the first staircase as he reached to give her hand a quick, reassuring squeeze before letting go (whether it was to reassure himself, or her, he wasn't quite certain).
"At least it's quieter in here," he said, somewhat breathlessly, sometime around the eighth floor. He'd tried repeated doorways along the way, none of them capable of being opened, even after Gale had kicked one or two. By the twelfth floor, his legs were starting to seriously ache, his back throbbing, and Gale wiped sweat from his brow, determination glinting in his amber eyes.
At the twentieth floor, he felt drained and exhausted, Gale blinking sweat out of his eyes.
"Bloody hell," he muttered through clenched teeth as he leaned against one of the walls, trying to regain some of his breath. "This bloody door better open."
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Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2015 6:28 pm
Her adrenaline was still pumping, and without being weighed down like Gale, was, she quickly took the lead as they made their way up the stairs. Even when seemingly alone, Stormy couldn't help but try to mask her footsteps, a quiet paranoia encroaching upon her as door after door remained locked to them. By the time they were hitting the last few turns on the staircase, she seriously considered just using one of her lock picks to force one open.
She leaned over her knees and caught her breath, not bothering to waste any to agree with Gale; it was obvious enough that she was ready to kick one open once it wouldn't wind her. Once both of them were good to go, Stormy eased her weight into the lever and tried to quietly open the door, just in case they needed to be stealthier.
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Posted: Sun Jul 19, 2015 10:23 pm
There was a strange sensation, an intense feeling of foreboding. It was as if something was physically repelling them away, instilling an unquenchable panic and fear. The door swung open, by it's own accord now, and there were thorns everywhere.
Immediately the thorns, the branches, closest to the two grabbed Stormy and Gale, the spines gouging their legs, almost crushing them. They couldn't move, forcefully pulled closer towards something that radiated terror and nausea.
At the center was an unrecognizable object - named so simply because a word, an image, a though could not be placed on it. It was and it wasn't. It couldn't merely be comprehended.
Too late, it pulsed, and the words hurt, they were images and letters and sounds all at once. Too late. You could have saved them all.
There was an arm on the ground, just a torn arm. The arm itself belonged to a Hunter, it had been severed, it looked familiar somehow, the cuff of the coat, the oddly ornate style something that Gale especially might have-
- "Watch it!"
The stampede of Mist Hunters running on a cart of pancakes nearly ran over Stormy, though one of them kindly handed her a pancake as a hasty apology. Another one gave one to Gale, who also narrowly missed Mark, a Mark that dropped a battery, leaned over to reach it, couldn't quite reach, and just ran off to the left wing of the main building they were at.
Meanwhile, at the top of the stairs, Oz continued to stare at Stormy.
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Posted: Mon Jul 20, 2015 11:21 am
He couldn't quite the feeling that something was off. Gale shook his head slightly as though to clear it, his brows furrowing, stomach twisting anxiously - and fear coiled inside of him, thick and cloying. There shouldn't have been a reason for it - he was a Hunter, he knew how to handle himself -
- the vines came so quickly he hardly had time to register them. Gale gave a gasp and a yell that was lost, dropping whatever was in his arms, and he caught a glimpse of Stormy beside him, the pair of them engulfed in thorns and branches and -
- what was that what was happening -
- he saw - he didn't know what he saw -
- who was that, that was someone, that arm was familiar, he should know who it was, he should -
Gale staggered backwards, a hand reaching out automatically to grasp at Stormy's arm. Something was pushed into his fingers - a pancake? and Gale stared at it as though it was something akin to a bomb, something he couldn't quite decipher.
"What," he said slowly, and looked left, then right, then left again and then right again, mouth slightly open.
"What?"
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Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2015 8:07 am
Pulled in suddenly, inexorably, painfully, the last thought Stormy had in the midst of non-sourced panic, her thrashes and instinctive struggles weakening, was finally, finally--
And then in less than the blink of an eye, they were standing again at Deus. Unharmed, dry, clean. Not so clean, she amended, the dying thought from before still lingering with her. She was too stunned to move or say anything until Gale's second what, at which point she blinked back to reality, shuddered, and dropped her pancake.
"Time turners," she said distantly. "We didn't save Sirius and Buckbeak in time." A slight frown. "A do over? But what could..." Time. An idea was forming, but now wasn't the time either. There was one good thing about having a scattered brain, and that was that it was easy to dismiss thoughts until later. If she remembered how to find them, at least.
In a split second it was Stormy gripping Gale's arm. "We have to move," she told him, breaking into almost a straight up run after Mark.
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Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2015 1:43 pm
For someone who had no clue what he was doing most of the time, Mark sure moved fast, bobbing and weaving through clusters of pancakes, random objects on the ground, dropping a couple more batteries left and right.
It wasn't until he was about a third of the way to the lighthouse that he spotted Stormy and Gale. "Uh," he scratched his head, carrying a very heavy looking object that looked like a hybrid between an old radio and a walkie-talkie, "did they cancel the thing?" He sounded hopeful.
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Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 1:40 pm
He caught the reference and it would have made him smile, under any normal circumstance. But this was not normal, and he was too on edge to do anything more than stand there beside her, his heart in his throat, his chest tight, and his own pancake fell uselessly - and a little pathetically - to the floor.
A do-over. Gale only had a few seconds time to process this thought before he was being pulled after Stormy, feet moving rapidly to catch up with her and Mark.
He opened his mouth and then shut it again, confusion clouding his mind.
"The thing?" Gale echoed, eyes narrowing. "The mission, you mean?"
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Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 6:56 pm
"Yes," Stormy said to Gale, and then to Mark, "No." It might have been slightly confusing. "We need to do this right."
Peeling her hand off of his arm (leaving a pale imprint from where she had nearly cut off Gale's circulation), Stormy moved to help the Death assistant. Maybe getting him there faster would avoid the hold up from earlier.
"What's this thing anyway?"
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Posted: Wed Oct 14, 2015 7:38 pm
"Oh," Mark shook it, "my radio device. It's missing some AAA batteries, you wouldn't have seen any would you? They have to be perfectly calibrated, or it'll I dunno, probably blow up again." Note the again.
There was a small barrage of Sun Hunters doing their routine inside the main HQ run up the stairs jog, and before either could ask any more questions, Mark was already making a slow but steady beeline towards the lighthouse, a few aggravating steps away, fiddling with the radio the entire time.
At the lighthouse there was another Death Hunter still yawning. "Mornin'. His majesty already left and said something about some headsets and rendezvous with him at the center. Oh and he said and I quote him, 'don't touch anything, Gale'." He looked at the wrong person again, and then proceeded to ignore the portal that said return calibration unstable - immediate attention needed.
Mark was at the portal too, still shaking the radio angrily, which did not seem to be about working any time soon. "This always happens I swear, look, can one of you two go into the portal and hold it up so I can test if it's working, it's just a few minutes I promise."
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Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2016 10:59 am
"Er," said Gale, staring at Mark with an expression of immense confusion on his face. "No. I mean, I have batteries - wait, here - "
He pulled one out of his pocket and had started to offer it to the division assistant before he turned and walked away. Gale cast a glance at Stormy and then hastily followed, all the way to the lighthouse, still clutching the batteries in his hand and wondering if they were just going on some sort of wild goose chase."
The hunter at the lighthouse was given a confused look that changed rapidly into an exasperated one at the warning. "I'm not touching - "
Gale's eyes flickered towards the portal, then to Stormy, then to Mark and the warning sign behind it. "I'll go," he said, in some resignation. "Don't do anything stupid, Mark, please, I'm begging you, just - fix the portal, okay?"
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