ArchivedLogs:Vamonos

Vamonos
Dramatis Personae Dusk, Ion, Kay, Regan
In Absentia	2013-11-10 The Brotherhood... does like they do. (Part of Infected TP.)
Location <NYC> Gracie Mansion - Upper East Side
The Upper East Side is somewhat of a nightmare. Many of the posh stores around have been smashed in, here and there a few are on /fire/ -- which means intermittently some of the dead stumbling the streets are, as well. The Mayoral mansion is quiet. Shuttered up tight so as not to attract the notice of the dead outside with lights or movement. Or maybe so as not to attract the looters. Inside, there are minds to be felt -- Mayor Lovet is not asleep, currently engaged in a quiet telephone conversation about what likely spots might also be fortified as holdout shelters against the dead. There are other minds in there with him, a quartet of National Guardsmen stationed to defend the mayor. Currently engaged in a rousing game of poker. They've been here a while. It's been a long and dangerous task, to go rounding up a proper legion of walking dead. Kicking down doors of lower-income apartments, letting them loose from where they'd become trapped inside crashed buses and shouting up alleyways to draw them away from their shambling endeavors to fish wily rats out of dumpsters. Kay's behavior has been erratic - manic and then snarling, marching down the center of roads and screaming /invitations/ for battle at the growing numbers, walking backwards to face them with his hands outstretched, fingers gesturing inward in a universally understood gesture - come. Come on. The heat rippling out form his is enormous, loose debris and shreds of newspaper caught up in hard gusting mini-tornado thermals, spiraling pirouettes while their fringes seared down with a slow ribbon of glowing red. The mansion is still some ways away yet. But steadily, steadily, they come. Ion has traded in his noisy motorcycle for a /bike/. Good old manually pedalled -- still faster than the hordes of undead but more silent. Not that he's going for stealth, either. He is pedalling up a street set to intersect Kay's path en route to the mansion, and the ground behind him /lights up/ with a crackling blue current of lightning dancing across the ground like a brilliant /beacon/ for his entourage of undead to follow. Regan, for her part, is unmolested by the hungry undead. If she's even anywhere here, it's hard to /tell/; what comes bolting up the streets towards the mansion is a horde -- not of dead but of living. Sprinting, terrified. Carrying backpacks and pet carriers and small children, urging along some injured who hobble less quickly, it's like a flock of delicious /bait/ for the swarm that follows it up the street. "Which flocks /bigger/," Kay turns on Ion like he might, for one moment, tackle him off his bike, onto the ground, grip and shake and bite. Instead he lengthens his strides into a jog to catch up with Ion and his bike, turning around to up onto the back of the bike /with/ Ion. "Yours or mine?" His skin isn't too hot to touch - but it's far warmer than a human body should be. It sweats, smells of brimstone and cookfire, his lanky arms lock around Ion's, as the road ahead lays open before them. And finally down another side street the last of their merry band comes swooping in. Kind of literally, Dusk's enormous wings not lending all that much more /shadow/ to the nighttime but stirring up a quiet draft. He glides along, out of /reach/ of grasping hands but not out of sight, not out of /scent/ range, just enough to keep his throng maddened and hungry as he leads them down the street to join up with the others. "Fuck, I could hug you," he calls down as he comes in close enough to feel Kay's heat rippling down the street, "do you know how much heat I lose out of these damn things." For a moment he alights, stretching out his wings and then his shoulders with a grimace. Eying the distance between them and the oncoming /masses/ as he takes a short moment to /walk/. "Pfft it's totally mine you wanna count 'em?" Ion wavers on his bike as Kay hops aboard but then he swivels sharply like he's going to make /good/ on this threat and turn back towards the throng. This doesn't last, though. He's grinning savagely up at Dusk. "He's got heat to spare, vato, but we can save the hugs for later." He's pedalling faster as a few zombies pull out in front of the pack. << Not far now. >> Regan is still nowhere to be /seen/ but her voice slips in, oddly /calm/ for the ravening hordes around them. The panicked throng of the living moves in to place /behind/ her crew -- there's enough of them to give the rest of the Brotherhood more breathing room, given that the zombies tend to just throng towards the nearest available food source. Though they seem to oddly remain /just/ out of reach of the pack, no matter how hobbly the injured get, no matter how exhausted they look. << We'll want to remain back, somewhat. There's a cross street near enough to watch from and let the dead pass us by. Four guards in the mansion -- you don't want to get spotted. Kay, Ion, we might want some incendiary zombies by the next block up. >> "You nuts, bro?" Kay bites hard onto the back of Ion's shirt -- managing last minute to only catch the material and spare the /flesh/ underneath. Something to sink his teeth into, to grind down on, his body tangibly locked hard down and compacted through his lanky muscles. He worries hard at the fabric until the aggression subsides somewhat. His tone still sounds JOVIAL, if ragged and /unhinged/, "You can't even see the /end/ of my crowd. I got a whole unit of /construction/ workers." With one arm locked around Ion's waist, the other Mongrel's hair and clothes waft in the rise of dry heated air that pillows up into Dusk's open wings in a warm thermal. Kay might /kiss/ it off with a fist thrust up for Dusk to bump when he dives past, before catching that /elevator/. "Time to earn our keep," he rasps when Regan's mental voice finds them, giving Ion a nice /pat/ on the abdomen that warns him Kay is going to be twisting around in his seat. With a hand thrown out. One of his eyes is closed, his tongue compressed against the outside of his upper lip to take aim ... and... /fire/. A ribbon of flames rushes across the way and up the pantlegs of two of the shambling dead towards the front of their little collection. "Construction workers, man, they'll make up in muscle what your crowd's lacking in size," Dusk answers, his own grin a little sharp, a little manic, when he returns Kay's fistbump. He's actually hovering in place before Regan's crowd arrives -- his wings quiver like he wants to take off higher but instead he beats them back towards the approaching crowd, thumping a few zombies back into the others for, evidently, no reason but the relish of feeling the impact. Kay's thermal pushes him back higher again though, wings spread wide to coast on it, though now with one chomping teenager attached that he has to /shake/ off down to drop him into the pack below. And then reach around off his back to unhook a familiarly-shaped red gasoline tin and sprinkle it down around the pack. "I just ran by a few schools. Skipped a fucking daycare though, man, those dead children give me the /creeps/." Despite the heat, Ion shivers, though there's something tighter and less than happy in his tone that suggests creepiness is not the only distressing thing about a horde of undead children. "Woo, Darkwing, careful there we need you in one piece, yeah?" He pedals faster, speeding up to give them some additional leeway before stopping the bike to turn it backwards. He glances up to make sure Dusk is clear, thinking a strong mental caution for invisible-Regan wherever she may be before flickering fingers of lightning crackle out towards the horde, too. Singing where they touch and /igniting/ clothing where the gasoline all too eagerly eats up his bolts and Kay's flames. The pack of living slows -- enough for the zombies to reach out and /touch/ one or two before they're jerking away, running on further. Waiting for Kay and Ion to finish their CRISPING before thronging on forward -- towards the now-visible mansion. To /throw/ themselves upon its doors, banging and clamouring desperately for help from the people inside. Meanwhile, a very soft nudge to the others, illuminating a side street quite nearby: << Here. >> Once the fire takes, Kay needs not make any more - this is /his/ medium now, all he needs do is paint with it, crackling in demonic reflections across the wet surface of his open, focused eyes. It spreads with unnatural evenness, like wildfire, leaping like a strange living /thing/ across the distance from one shambling person to the next, putting up a growing orange glow against the night time darkness. Fire that marches, on moving dark bodies that do not feel pain. Licking up their dead faces where eyes don't blink, or close against it. Even when they sizzle and boil. Arms still locked around Ion. "... Jesus." It's soft and it might be horrified or might be awed. Dusk watches the dead ignite only for a moment, whisking himself now up and high out of their reach, high out of their /notice/ as he flies over buildings to light down on the side street. His dark-adapted eyes scan it carefully from the vantage point of a fire escape. Down at the mansion, minds there are taking note. First alarmed and readying their weapons at the banging, then slowly identifying it as /people/ and not the dead. Some brief conversation about what to do. About whether the door can take the pounding even if they decide not to allow the refugees. But they do decide to allow them, if only until morning to transport them to shelter. Pulling the door open to beckon them /hurriedly/ inside. Ion just lets Kay do his /thing/, once the first flames are ignited. He turns to speed up in front of the throng (both illusioned-living and real-dead), veering off down the side street to move a bit down the way, close enough to see -- somewhat -- but one foot on the pedal to be able to take /off/ if part of the horde starts getting interested in going this way. Now he doesn't speak, just watching the scene at the mansion with eyes oddly bright-lit by the catching flames nearby. Kay watches from over Ion's shoulder, throwing his arms excited around the other Mongrel's neck from behind in an excited semi-headlock. It might /slightly/ bounce. His amber eyes are also locked on the flaming procession, the heat rippling off the bodies in a stinking inferno that sends their combined thrashing shadow long and stretched out down the street behind them. A few of the zombies do start to turn down the alley -- but as soon as they do they're met with new /living/, appearing out of thin air to /shove/ at them, draw their notice, stagger warm and fleshy-enticing back towards the huge throng headed towards the mansion. Thankfully, dead minds are not largely prone to /disbelief/. At the front door there's been a small gap between the living and the dead, at least in their approach -- but as soon as the door opens that gap seems to close /remarkably/ quickly. Under a /tide/ of oncoming dead that wash in to grab at the apparent aid-seekers, yank them back to /disappear/ into the general crowd. A few of them meet a quick end at the muzzles of the guardsmen as they try to pull the doors back closed, but it's a somewhat futile effort -- with the zombies surging in, some of them on /fire/, even the door is in danger of catching. The two guardsmen still in the house make a beeline for the mayor even as their comrades are dragged out of the house. And through this sudden incoming enflamed tide, Regan's voice just whispers out cool-calm as ever. << Should have brought popcorn. Unfortunate that the walls hide the view, though. >> Dusk drops down from the fire escape as the throng passes by, landing with a ripple of wings nearby the others. Close to Kay perhaps to bask in his /heat/, his wings are starting to shiver. "Oh, fuck." Soft and breathless as he watches the scene at the mansion. He's not really /still/ once he's landed, fingers curling and uncurling, teeth clenched hard. His teeth gleam in the dancing firelight, bared in perma-snarl as the horde passes by. "... don't think he's walking out of that one." "Oh," Ion is a little breathless as well, watching the flames lick at the door to the mansion with lips slightly parted, face slightly flushed. He pushes himself and Kay backwards on the bike at the intermittent stragglers turning down their way, but mostly just -- watches. "You'll know when it's done?" "If he does walk out," Kay's heat is radiant to share with Dusk, his feet loose and dragging along the ground as Ion wheels them back. His eyes are bright with a fierce joy that periodically slips in and out of a blank sightlessness. The fire climbing up the sides of the mansion are /astoundingly/ successful at gaining purchase, licking in satiny yellow sheets up the side of the structure. And rushing inside, up the walls that are briefly visible. "He's char." Regan is just quiet, though now she's reappeared, leaning up against the side of a building once the tail end of the horde has passed through to the fiery mansion. She has a bike of her own, though hers /is/ a motorcycle. Not one that belongs to her, who /knows/ where she's picked it up, there are abandoned vehicles in plenty, many of them still with keys from their owners' untimely demise while /on/ the road. It's switched off at the moment, as she keeps silent watch. Listens, through more bursts of gunfire now from an upper floor of the mansion. And then no gunfire at all. Her eyes close, her smile curling wider in the warm glow of climbing flames. "It's done." Dusk exhales a slow, slow breath. His wings curl out wide to span the street they stand in, and then press gently against the backs of the others nearby. Touching to Regan's shoulder, pressing to Kay's overheated back as he claps a hand down on Ion's shoulder. And pulls his wings back in, wordlessly. Ion's not wordless. Grinning /fierce/ and bright, with a low chuckle of laughter shaking through his shoulders under Dusk's hand. "Don't know about you all, but I saw some /fine/ looking stores on the way up here." He's pulling his bike back upright again, taking a moment to watch the mansion burn before turning his bike the other way down the street. "Vamonos, hermanos."