ArchivedLogs:Clearing the Way

Clearing the Way
Dramatis Personae Anole, Tian-shin
In Absentia	2013-11-19 Two wayfarers save each other.
Location <NYC> Lower East Side
Historically characterized by crime and immigrant families crammed into cramped tenement buildings, the Lower East Side is often identified with its working-class roots. Today, it plays host to many of New York's mutant poor, although even here they are still often forced into hiding. The number of dead roaming the streets of the city has been going down and not up, now that the medication is permeating the population and extermination efforts have picked up, but even so New York is /far/ from a safe place to be. Even without the zombies, desperation has turned many of the /living/ violent in their quests for food and the dead have nothing to them but aggression. At the moment there is a cluster of zombies gathered around a body in the street, too far eaten to discern who it may once have been. There's a boy slowly making his way down the street /past/ them -- not on the sidewalk but along the sides of the /buildings/, pressed flat to the brick as he crawls a story up off the ground. If he weren't moving he'd be hard to spot, skin and clothes faded into the dirty brick colour of the building he clings to, but part of the brick /moving/ tends to stand out more easily. Anole has paused, though, when he gets to the corner of the row of buildings; with the zombies down below there's no easy way from one building to the next without touching the street. He starts to inch downwards towards the ground, but darts back higher when the movement catches the eye of one of the dead; its rattling groan spooks him upwards a few feet as it starts to move towards the building, hands reaching futilely upwards for the teenager clinging out of reach. A sleek bicycle glides down a cross street. The rider wears a heavy black canvas jacket, black cargo pants, combat boots, a purple helmet, gloves, and goggles. She slows down as she approaches the corner and spots the lone zombie. Coasting to a quiet stop, she dismounts, draws the sword slung across her back--a Chinese long sword--and approaches the zombie. Though she walks softly and says nothing, she makes no attempt to stay out of its line of sight, either. Her eyes dart toward the building, as if trying to discern the zombie's likely target. The sword flashes in the sunlight when she lifts it into a guard position, her own stance dropping low as she enters striking range. The other zombies look up from their meal at the approaching figure -- four of them still gathered around the body with the fifth at the building, and they're getting up to approach Tian-shin even as the fifth one turns away from Anole. At first the teenager just scurries higher, but then his colours shift back to normal -- green skin, dirty grey Columbia University hoodie, equally filthy jeans, no shoes on his grimy feet. "Hey." He is looking nervously at the approaching cluster of zombies, starting to inch back downwards as they all turn towards Tian-shin. He turns around to climb headfirst down the wall, picking up the first thing that comes to hand -- it happens to be a broken length of /bone/ -- to throw at the head of one of the zombies. "Hey. Hey over here." Except actually succeeding in /drawing/ the zombies back towards him just makes his eyes widen huge. He backs right up the wall again -- though not as far this time, /just/ out of the reach of the tallest of the grasping hands. His eyes dart from the zombies to Tian-shin and then back. Tian-shin's brown eyes widen behind the tinted shield of her goggles when she realizes she is up against /five/ zombies instead of one. They widen even further when Anole makes himself known, though she does not have much time to marvel at his stealth. Neither does she question his aid, but for the moment she concentrates on the zombie right in front of her. The tip of her blade dips, then rises up between the zombie's outstretched arms, driving for its gaping maw. "Come on," Anole encourages the zombies; they're thankfully mindless enough that the loss of one of them doesn't give any sort of /alarm/ to the others, as Tian-shin's sword crunches up through its mouth. "Come on. Right here." He skitters to one side, and then the other, movement keeping the zombies distracted as they stumble into each other trying to grasp for him. The nervousness in his voice is almost palpable; he squeaks as one of the zombies' hands closes on his shirtsleeve, and yanks his hand quickly up to scoot a few inches higher on the wall. Yanking her sword free and darting out from beneath the doomed zombie as it collapses, Tian-shin darts after the next nearest one. Distracted by Anole, the corpse has presented its back to the threat on the ground. Tian-shin takes more careful aim this time. The brain stem is a tricky target, so she gives the zombie a solid kick in the rear after pulling her blade out this time. The dead do not have great balance even at their best, and if it knocked over another on its way down, so much the better. Finally, she is she able to spare a glance at the youth clinging desperately to the wall, though she only looks long enough to ensure he has pulled free of the zombie's grasp. She aims at the back of the next zombie's knees, her blade an arc of red and silver. One dying zombie topples into another, a third crumples when the sword cuts against its knees. Anole watches them go down with wide eyes, pressing himself flat against the wall to watch the glint of Tian-shin's sword. While one zombie tries to pull its way out from beneath the fallen corpse and another drags itself across the ground towards Tian-shin, the last still just scrabbles mindlessly at the wall. If it had bodily processes it would likely be drooling. Anole is just staring, faintly trembling and keeping a firm grip on the wall with hands and feet pressed to its cold brick surface. The last zombie standing gets stabbed unceremoniously in the back of the head. Tian-shin still has not said a word, but she looks rather concerned for someone who is doing so well in a fight. Turning to the crippled one, she puts one boot on its shoulder to hold it down for the coup de grace. She spares a quick glance at Anole before descending on the trapped zombie. "I can get you to safety." Her soprano is soft but tense. "Or you can go your own way. In either case, we should depart /soon/. These scuffles sometimes attract more of them." She crouches low and aims for the last zombie's mouth even as it manages to wriggle free. Anole stays frozen in place, still trembling as he watches down below. The last zombie pulls itself out from beneath its fallen companion, reaching out to grab at Tian-shin's leg with a sharp tug. Its fingers dig hard and clawing against her thigh as it pulls itself upwards, but its upward climb is arrested by the sword slicing down through its head. It slumps, hands still clenched hard against her leg. Only once there is no more movement from the corpses below does Anole slinks down along the wall, still eying the pile of bodies nervously once he tentatively sets foot back on the ground. "Safety." His voice is hushed, his arms trembling where they wrap around himself. "There's no safety left." Tian-shin winces and reaches down with her free hand to dislodge the dead fingers from her leg. Despite the chill, she is sweating profusely as she drags a rag across the blade of her sword and sheaths it. "I guess not." There is a weariness to this admission. She flexes her leg experimentally. "These days, Heroes for Hire HQ is safe enough for me. I'll see you to where you're going, though, if it's not too far." She starts heading toward her bike, leg evidently none the worse for wear. Pausing, she looks back. "I'd like to think it's not just because you risked your life to save mine. Or that you remind me of my brother, just a bit." "Don't have anywhere to go," Anole admits, very softly. But after this he just says: "I was just trying to --" He shakes his head quickly. "I'm not going far. I -- thank you. I'm not very good at. Those. Things." His arms are still trembling, curled tight around himself in a half-hug. "Is your brother --" But then he looks around the corpses on the street, and gives up on this particular line of inquiry. He just nods in acceptance, mumbles another quiet thanks. And hurries along again, before any more corpses can show.