ArchivedLogs:Forest Fire

Forest Fire
Dramatis Personae Jackson, Jim, Spencer, Flicker
In Absentia	2014-03-18 (The aftermath of Friendly fire.)
Location <NYC> 303 {Lighthaus} - Village Lofts - East Village
This apartment is cheerful, in its way -- bright and airy, its floor plan open and a plethora of windows providing it with an abundance of light. The tiny entrance hall opens into a living room, small, though its sparse furniture and lack of clutter give it a more open feel. The decor is subdued and minimalist; black and white is the dominant theme, with occasional splashes of deep crimson to offset the monochrome, though of late myriad bright-coloured dragonflies swarm across the living room wall. The couch and armchair are upholstered in black corduroy, the low wide coffee table central is black wood and glass-topped, and a few large pillowy beanbags provide additional seating by the large windows that dominate the back wall. The living room and kitchen both hold a rather inordinate number of lamps in addition to the ceiling lights; standing lamps, small lamps on each counter, large sunlights in the corner. More often than not, they're largely all turned on, too. Towards the back, a couple of doors lead off into bedrooms and bathroom, and to the right, the kitchen's tile is separated from the living room's dark hardwood floors by black countertops. Above the bedroom to one side, there is higher space; a ladder climbs up to a lofted area looking down on the living room. Standing in front of the partition between living and cooking area is a large fish tank: one lone Betta, blood-red, swims regally among several species of black and silver fish. A hallway beyond the kitchen leads further into the apartment. Another bathroom stands just into the hall and the farthest door leads to the apartment's final bedroom, the door usually kept shut to hold in the acrid fumes of turpentine and paints from within. Outside the windows of the Lighthaus apartment, evening has begun to muscle its way into the sky. Cold and bitter outside, the indoors are mercifully heated. Outside the DOOR, Jim is knocking - that side-of-the-fist thumping that's for once trying to semi-restrain itself from sounding like an FBI raid and sound more just. Impatient. Does that count as improvement? Thumpthumpthump. It still sounds FROWNFUL. Inside, the apartment smells warmly of cinnamon and chocolate and raspberry; Jax is baking, unsurprisingly, in preparation for Game Night shortly. His cupcakes have come recently out of the oven and since cooled enough to frost -- he's still /holding/ a pastry bag full of cinnamon icing when he answers the door. He's bright as ever -- black and silver crushed-velvet skirt worn over red leggings, rainbow hoodie, red 'All my heroes have FBI files' t-shirt, bright mismatched socks, bright mismatched arm warmers. He pulls the door open, eye widening in startle-surprise to see Jim there; a bright smile flits across his face after. "Cinnamon?" He holds out the pastry bag towards Jim like -- he'll just SQUEEZE some sugar straight-up into Jim's mouth. "S'good," Spencer says from the living room floor behind, where he is very busily constructing some sort of enormous tower in K'nex. Jim's eyes faintly /constrict/ wider; he must have been standing with his nose practically against the wood, because when the door opens they are suddenly FACE TO FACE, and his chin draws up like he's trying to make himself look BIGGER. Just. On reflex. He does not open his mouth to be directly frosted -- but after a moment of what might be small brain aneurysm, he slowly lifts a finger. Where he will allow a /fingerful/ of frosting. "...what you buildin', kiddo." He kind of. Mutters. Jackson's smile twitches a little wider-amused at Jim's drawing upward; /he/ takes a step back to give a little more space before he squeezes the frosting out against Jim's finger, a small dollop of cinnamon-sugary icing delivered before he flits back over towards the kitchen. "I kinda overbaked but it's spring break for the pups /an'/ for Flicker so I figured there might be a /fair/ few extra folks turnin' up tonight." "Can I come?" Spencer sounds hopeful. "I'm building the Commons." "Spence that -- looks kinda like a --" Jax frowns over the kitchen wall. "Rocket -- tower." "Yup. It's going to be /our/ part of the Commons," Spencer informs the others with a cheerful amusement that suggests, okay, he's totally old enough to know the Commons isn't /actually/ going to be -- "-- it's a space station. Hive said our house could be /anything/." Jim follows Jackson into the apartment RIGHT on his heels, only cramming his finger into his mouth when the other isn't looking. The audible evidence of squeaky-licking it clean is less maskable, "Knowing Hivey, he could probably make it /look/ like a god damn space station." And, without change in tone, "Y'seen Anole." Kind-of question. Mostly grunt. While leaning over the array of half-frosted cupcakes like he's looking down into a piranha tank. Sniff-sniff. "Oh -- well, he's making the playground like a space station," Jackson says brightly, "so that's something, at least." His teeth drag against his lower lip with the question, head dipping in a nod as he dots cinnamon icing onto the cupcakes. "Oh -- yeah. I've seen him. I can't -- even imagine who -- I should talk to you 'bout what you even saw there cuz if these people are still /out/ there /hurting/ kids -- why would they cut off --" He squeezes his pastry bag a little too hard, a huge large /gloop/ of icing smooshing out onto his current cupcake. He glances over at Spencer, cutting himself off in his words. "-- I jus' can't imagine why --" It's about then that his words get abruptly cut off. The explosion from just about the hall is, at this range, not just loud but deafening; it comes with a sudden inward BLAST, the wall of the apartment torn away and in its place only an expanding wall of flame and smoke and debris. Somewhere, someone is screaming, but more prevalent is the shattering of glass, the creaking-groaning of collapsing wood, the thunder-roar of flames. "Need more than to talk." Jim is mid-way into dipping a finger into the frosting for seconds. "This isn't gonna stand, it's not like there's any cops-" And then his hair flies sideways, his shirt rips open at the buttons, flies abruptly sideways off his body like a flag off a pole, his cupcake disintegrates like dust in a wind and then he's slammed with a blistering wave of heat TOWARDS Jax, a few hundred pounds of wall fragments and beams and plaster and furniture and burning canvas and burst beanbag following him. Jackson is thrown back by the force of the blast, too, clothing tearing and tattering as he's slammed up against his counter. Too little, too late, there's a flicker-wall of shielding going up -- at this point it does nothing but trap them /in/ a fiery bubble and it drops as soon as it's started. Beneath the combined force of Jim and wall and debris and /erupting/ flame, Jackson crumples back against the counter, erratic bright flicker-flashes of light blossoming but nearly lost in the flame. "N -- nngh --" He's struggling to push himself away from the counter, but slumping back. "Spe -- spen --" There's no noise from Spencer, at least -- the boy has simply vanished from the burning room. It's impossible to hear it, over the thin eerily silent whine whistling through the ears, over the continued roar of ceiling caving in, of fire leaping high. But deep in Jim is a rapid snap-crackle-and pop of wood burning, then /healing/ then burning AGAIN. This is not the instant, almost magical healing to restore a body as it once was - it's growth and new cell generation, burning black and regenerating again, bubbling and rupturing outward from his back where the heat lays down its thick waves. His body is still crushed into Jax's, a paltry shelter so that everywhere his shadow does not fall on the illusionist /burns/. And he throws his arms around Jax. Or tries to. And seeks to crumple the both of them over. Outer bark layers of his back exposed to the open fire singe black, squeal and sizzle, then split open to expose sapling-green new growth beneath that strains like a muscle, swelling out to replace the matter burned away. Each new layer that grows is another layer that is growing around Jax, swallowing him in, in, into a sheltered green thicket. Jax does not put up much resistance to this -- at /first/ he does, struggling-clawing to try and find the living room, find his /son/, but -- but. There's a lot of smoke and a /lot/ of blood and the meaty roasting smell of burning flesh. And /Jackson/ is starting to burn, too, the temperature /in/ his body starting to climb fierce and out of control -- and then his struggling subsides. The rising heat in him subsides as the /outside/ heat grows, and the growth that envelops him finds a body slackened-limp against the thicket-growth. It's hard in the blind chaos, the smoke and ash and tornadoing embers, to tell what movements are accidental, what movements are wild and flailing. Or in Jim's case, what movements there are at all. His growth is not skin, not bones, there are no joints nor elasticity nor flexing of muscle. Where he expands, stays exactly where it is; a prison of green wood. It traps Jackson in this dark primal place when he tries to claw free and keeps him trapped as he goes loose, enveloping more, more, in an outpour of roots that /sizzle/ and squeal, runnels of sap boiling out of deep cracks. An eerily steady, inexorable invasion, and his last human movement is to duck down his head and cover it with his arms. From the outside, it's indiscernible as a pair of men; some twisted massive stump, blackened with ribbons of red embers burning down stunted branches. And then the green growth begins to slow. And shortly, stop. From the outside, it's indiscernible as a pair of men, but somewhere /inside/ there are still minds. Hurt-bloody-unconscious minds, deep-rooted-tree minds, but /minds/, and minds that are possibly more familiar to Hive than even his own. And so when Flicker appears in the blazing inferno, eyes /closed/ but guided psionically to minds in need of help, he flits to them like a beacon. The blaze and smoke and ash blip-blip-blip away, left far behind them to let the flames consume a now-empty shell of a home.