ArchivedLogs:Vignette - Focus

Vignette - Focus
Dramatis Personae Sebastian
In Absentia	2013-11-10 Warning: morbid and creepifying.
Location In the city. City. City. City. City.
The first test runs have been problematic, at best. TonyStark came back a mess of bruises, armor dented, very faint red burns on his hands where the insulation couldn't handle the propulsors. Somewhere across the city his brother is battling hordes to get food back to the apartments. Somewhere across the city his fathers are shut into a basement getting poked full of needles in an effort to cure this disease. And here, up near the top of Stark Tower, Bastian is writing new specs into a virtual keyboard. Letting the robots handle fabrication. He's just here to light things on fire and hope for the best. Even across the enormous workshop he can still smell the faintly singed flesh. The thin lines of blood where the armor buckled in. His gills quiver, and he turns his attention back to his work. New input. Set a new process to run. "Need food," he announces as he moves away from the table he's been at, the holagraphic images in front of him not of a full suit of armor but various disembodied pieces of it. "Want I should grab anything?" He checks his wrist straps, tightens them. Tucks a long Bowie knife into a sheath at his side, straps a crowbar across the back of his backpack. He heads out the window to make the long trip down -- even to reach other /rooftops/ it takes quite a descent, from this height. From there he moves quickly. Above the city, there is little to obstruct him. Down below the sounds of shuffling, the rattling rasps, the occasional tearing of flesh -- screams -- shattering windows -- these are acutely loud to his keen ears. He slings his way faster. Rooftop to rooftop, even the few he finds with dead still on them are not much /problem/; he's faster than most people when alive, he's certainly faster than most people when dead. Above the city he doesn't attract much /notice/, either; when he drops down to one house or another, one market or another, picking off here and there what looters haven't already made off with to add food to his pack, it's rare that he's picked up much of a trail. The couple times he does, they meet a quick end. Glue, crowbar, done. There's not nearly enough meat for the taking. With electricity still functioning here and there there are frozen selections that haven't been taken but most of the fresh, if not spoiling, has already found its way into the guts of the dead who come through. Meat is meat, to them. To Bastian, too, really, and his appetite for it rivals theirs even on his best of days. When his pack is full -- beans and canned fruits and vegetables, chips and salsa, a lot of Red Bull. Not enough meat -- he starts to head back. Over the rooftops, once more. The noises from down below are still clear to him. Shuffling. Shattering glass. A scream. He drops down, here, to help -- glue, crowbar (crowbar, crowbar, crowbar), done -- dispenses a few cans of food from his pack, wishes luck. Heads back to the roof. But screams are all too frequent these days. He's stopped for a breather on a rooftop when the next one comes. It takes him a moment for even his dark-adapted eyes to pick the shapes out in the alley below. A teenager climbing out a window who didn't notice the four biters behind the dumpster. His gills flutter. The scent of blood in the air is sharp. He readies his crowbar again, stretching out a wrist. Then dropping his hand back to his side with a slow close of his eyes. The scream below quiets. And soon after the ragged breathing does, too. Only now does he swing himself down. No glue this time, just a ferocious frenzy of claws and crowbar to leave shattered skulls in his wake. The boy beneath them has had several chunks taken from it already. But the zombies didn't have all that long to go at it. And there's a lot of meat on a mostly-grown body. By the time he returns to Stark Tower, he's ready to get back to work again.