ArchivedLogs:Vector Snatch

Vector Snatch
Dramatis Personae Vector, Dusk, Kay, Malthus
In Absentia	2013-10-28 Shit goes down. Badly. (Part of Infected TP.)
Location
It's later into the evening, dark and chill both settled over the city. It's been a long day of surgery and the recovery period afterwards has not been nearly as long as it needs to be. Vector is bundled up again, warm, with bandages around his head, a black knit cap pulled down over them. As escort missions go he's so far been an easy one; he doesn't try to wander off, doesn't pick fights with random NPCs. Just kind of sits around WOOZILY in the car, sluggishly trying to recover his brain after the effects of the sedatives. It's not an enormously /long/ trip from the city out to the safehouse that Regan has offered up for his hiding; likely not his final destination but a quiet place away from tons of people to recuperate from surgery. "-- Think I'm going to puke," is actually the first coherent thing he has offered the whole trip. He's looking pretty close to it, a little greenish tinge to the pale skin beneath his freckles. "Ohgod." VrrmRMM... rrrrrrrmmnnrrrrrr... Roaring along behind the car, Kay follows on a motorcycle. It's not his first choice of style, a sporty little Japanese model with lime green flames, but it's compact and swift, and he leans forward comfortably over the handles with the lean nuscles in his forearms flexed. He weaves in and out of traffic, roaring on ahead for a half a block, then slowing down to cruise along drogue for a few miles. His hair tied back under a black bandana, sunglasses, fingerless gloves, he's woefully had to set aside his MC kutte. Best not to fly colors when trying to be inconspicuous; somewhere in the world, Ion has been instructed to defend it with his life. VrrmRRRM. Dusk has been a restless driver. Ceaseless fidgety gaze, ceaseless twitchy motion; it probably doesn't help that enormous wings don't make for the most comfortable /sitting/ in cars. It's maybe this uncomfortable restlessness -- or maybe the thought of what might be /released/ with a sick-Vector -- that makes him all too eager for even a brief stop. "-- Hang on just one second." The lights of his car flash once briefly at Kay, as he pulls over to the side of the road. He gets out to move over to the passenger side, open the door so that he can /steady/ Vector in a lean out of the car. At which point -- as the car begins to signal, pulling over -- something happens. A very inconspicuous something. Down the next street, an unmarked black van swoops in behind Kay, making a right to turn in behind him. When the car -- and, in all likelihood, Kay -- begins to slow down, the van proceeds to slow down too, as if trying to edge carefully around them without changing lanes. The left-hand turn signal immediately pops on, indicating they're thinking about turning over into the next lane to avoid the problem entirely. Perceptive people might notice the van's windows are heavily tinted -- making it the least suspicious thing /ever/. HRRRRRRRRRK. This is the sound of Vector after he leans out of the car, promptly disgorging the meagre contents of his stomach onto the shoulder of the road. He doesn't pay much attention to the rest of the scenery around them although he does make an effort to lean away from Dusk as much as possible. He unhooks his seatbelt afterwards, leaning down over his knees, partially out of the car, as he takes a moment to enjoy the beauty of /not moving/. "That's," he remarks tiredly, "the first time in years I've --" There's a pause as he draws in slower breaths, then another convusive shudder. /Hrrrrrrrrrrk/. Vwwrrrm-rrm-rrm-rrm-rrm, Kay's motorcycle slides in neatly behind the vehicle, the engine putt-putt-idling warmly and snarly against the autumn chill. "/Oh/ yeah," Kay's scratchy tenor is /built/ to talk over zooming highway traffic, grinning as though Vector made him PROUD. "Just let it flow, man. We all been there." Leaning forwards over the handlebars, he uses a thumb to lift up his sunglasses a few degrees to get a casual eyefull. Though still grinning, though still loose boned in denim with a leg propping up his bike, his eyes slide to the side - watching the van watchfully all the same. He'd treated two moving vans, a painter's vehicle and a graffitied Mystery Machine VW prior about the same. It happens fast. Lightning-fast, really -- the van that's starting to turn into the next lane to escape suddenly /floors/ it, swooping around with a screech of tires to swing out in front of their car -- leaving about three or four feet of space between it. That space is rapidly swallowed up, though, by the car coming up behind it -- a gold 96 Dodge Spirit with two drivers, blowing through a red-light to /ram/ the motorcycle Kay's driving from behind -- with the aim of hitting it and continuing to go forward, to slam it into the back of their vehicle and shove it into the space between it and the van -- which has just slammed on its emergency brakes. On the other side of the van, the door is already opening -- and men in HAMMER uniforms pouring out, guns at the ready, swarming like hornets to emerge from either side of the van -- guns out, ready to unleash hell. Inside the Dodge Spirit -- the passenger seat -- Malthus, pale as a ghost, watches with his single eye, his hand moving for his seatbelt -- and the door. Vector's shoulders are convulsing again, as all this happens. His face pales further, fingers curling in a tight grip -- against his knee, against Dusk's arm. "Water'd be -- Ohshit." His eyes are abruptly wide, though he doesn't look any less nauseated. "Oh, shit, I'm sorry --" CRUNCH. Car striking motorcycle makes an explosive RUMPLING shockwave, the bike lurching forward with a harsh yelp from Kay. The subconscious muscle memory in him had coiled up at the ominous sound of a car engine coming up behind him - survival instinct for a road warrior, this. And even then, he doesn't leap nimbly to safety so much as lurch off to the side to get a mouthful of dirt and then a few wild rolls into the ditch. "PWAH!" he lurches with the momentum to a swaying kneel, screaming, "DUSK!" Instantly, the scrub around him is ignites with a dry snarl. Instantly, without a lot of time to aim, he's making an underhanded /throwing/ motion, as though bowling. What rushes forward instead of a large black ball is a hard fiery shockwave, slamming into the van blocking the way of the car. Any soldier unfortunate enough to get in the way will find themselves plastered to the side of the vehicle. "Ffff. Sorry, buddy, you might want to hang on." Dusk ducks behind the open door of his car, standing as scant shielding between him and the HAMMER soldiers as he leans in to unbuckle Vector's seatbelt. "-- Are you fucking stupid, I don't think this is a guy you really want to /shoot/." He's eying the distance between the passenger side and the driver's side, when this shockwave erupts. He takes advantage of the sudden /explosion/ to unhook Vector's seatbelt, dragging the other man out of the car and into his arms. "-- Cover us," comes back to Kay in a short terse burst. The wall of heat and flame /hammers/ the van ahead of them; the walls buckle -- someone is heard screaming in the driver's seat. Two of the four emerging soldiers are thrown back, one of them hitting the man behind them; one soldier manages to slink around his fallen comrade and drop to a knee, proceeding to heft up the very large, very /frightening/ looking assault rifle -- and take aim, right at Dusk's head. Malthus, meanwhile, has stepped out into the sunlight -- grimacing once, his pale skin looking even /more/ pale -- as if he's in the process of blistering right in front of their eyes. In one hand, he holds a handgun; he's leveling it straight at Kay, arm swiveling up, eye narrowing -- BLAM, BLAM -- two shots squeezed off. One for the head, one for the chest. The driver, meanwhile, is ducking and rolling across the ground -- Sargeant Pointdexter, clad in armor but not a helmet, drawing his pistol as he uses the car's hood as shielding between him and Kay. "Don't kill Vector," Malthus speaks, though his voice is nary more than a shadowed whisper -- more like a chorus of whispers, emerging from him and the area around him. Wisps of shadow rise from his body and clothes -- like steam in the sun. Vector curls in against Dusk, eyes still wide and his arms curling against the other man when Dusk tells him to hang on. "Dusk --" He sounds still vaguely tired. Nauseated. A little shaken as he looks at the soldiers. At the one aiming towards Dusk's head. His lips press together, his nauseated expression growing. Growing, just as a series of painful lesions sprout across the man's arm and face. Nose. Eyes. The cartilage in his face is started to /rot/, the soldier's nose starting to /collapse/ in on itself agonizingly. "-- Go," whispers Vector unhappily. "On it," Kay's voice is /tight/ through his teeth, throwing his hands up over his head and SLAMMING them downwards. As Malthus draws a bead on him, as one soldier draws a bead on Dusk, as Poindexter draws his pistol, there's a single perfect moment of vacuum silence, a tangible /movement/ of air as it's sucked inwards. Then Kay's fists strike the ground and the world explodes outwards from his epicenter. The blackened shrubs evaporate, the windows of the car explode inward /while/ its wrenched off its wheels and rolls skidding into the street. Any soldiers standing too close will look as though their clothes were at first rippling in a breeze, save that it's also skin /rippling/ away as they're thrown back. Bullets fired during this time may maintain momentum, but thrown off course and warped by heat. One of them /zings/ past Kay's hair, singed and blackened at its ends, tearing loose a piece of his scalp. In the rumbling aftermath, debris still pitter-patting down to earth, there's a gentle snow of ash and glowing cinders, raining down softly like tiny comets. "Oh ho," Kay grins towards Malthus. "It's the freak wannabe." Dusk might not notice what Vector is doing but he does notice the guns. For a moment he drops down behind the door of the car but then he /springs/ upward, one high leap with huge wings eating up the air. He holds Vector tight against him, not seeming overly concerned with the additional weight in his arms. His eyes widen as the world /explodes/ just beneath his feet, the sudden blast shaking his flight path into a skittery erratic /veer/ before he stabilizes himself enough to start climbing higher. "--shit," is all Sargeant Pointdexter manages to get off before the world detonates in hot-white fire. And then the car is torn asunder and thrown as if it was nothing more than a tumbleweed caught in a stiff, harsh breeze -- as heat and flame rush out in a circle to meet the men. Malthus' shots miss; he steps back as the heat rushes across him -- and for a moment, he seems to blur, growing dark and insubstantial, falling in a crouch to the ground. When the fire and heat pass through him, he rises again -- burn marks scouring his skin, his coat torn and tattered, his gun dropped to the ground. The soldiers at the van have retreated back in the wake of the destruction, pulling their wounded back -- the one Vector affected is now on the ground, screaming and clawing at his helmet. "Fuck this," Sargeant Pointdexter whispers, swiveling -- and with incalculably clear aim that dwarfs even his superior officer's -- proceeds to fire off two shots of his own. Straight at Dusk. BLAM. BLAM. "No--" Malthus manages, the sound strangled, emerging like a dozen or more shrieking whispers around the still-smoldering circle of burnt fire. "Fff --" Vector cringes in against Dusk's chest as they take off and the world explodes around them. He turns his head, looking back towards the ground -- his eyes fix on Pointdexter below, but then he just grimaces and turns his face in towards Dusk again. Too far a distance, apparently. He holds on tighter. Panting raggedly, his hair singed and clothes smoldering under the ragged remains of his bandana, Kay is going through a visible process of rapidly recovering from terrible angry burns that twist and snarl up the outsides of his arms. Red skin sloughs off with a rupture of blisters, bright fresh pink skin beneath leaps in to fill the voids as the dead skin burns away in shreds of husk. He /shakes/ one of his hands rapidly to put out a still burning fingerless glove, still striding towards Malthus - Until that ominous 'no' rises up from the ashes. He turns to see Poindexter taking aim, hisses. His arms move a little /slower/ now, turning away from Malthus to project a weaker wall of dry heat and searing /white/ glow. For a moment, Poindexter's shadow is painted stark against the pavement as though it were broad daylight. "/No/ --" Dusk echoes this along with Malthus, his own words harsh and ending in a sudden pained cry. His flight path veers erratic once more, arms tightening around Vector as he /drops/ abruptly, has to pump his way back into flight. He leaves behind a spattering of blood, sprinkled down like rain on Kay and Malthus below. "Fuck." His teeth clench, and he holds his cargo tight as his dark wings pump, carrying him higher to vanish into the dark of the night. "Nngh--" The armor that Pointdexter is wearing underneath his head is high-end; it can handle direct exposure to flame for over ten seconds before he'll start suffering serious burns. But there's really very little protection against /flashfires/, and that's what he's facing -- his hand lifts just in time to maybe save his eyes, but then there's a blast of white hot heat, like a lance of living fire, and he's being /thrown/ backward by the sheer pressure that assails him. When he hits the ground, his clothing is smoldering -- he's screaming, his face covered in second degree burns, except for the long strip which he covered with his arm -- his hair on fire as he rolls. Malthus watches as Dusk leaves, eye narrowed. When the blood hits him -- splatting against his forehead -- he grimaces, reaching up toward it... his brow crumpling. As if oblivious to Pointdexter's screaming. He turns, then, toward Kay -- as if only noticing him /now/. And reaches into his coat for his secondary firearm -- just as his men, who have pulled their wounded back and surrounded the van, proceed to level their assault rifles at Kay and open fire -- two assault rifles blaring out lead, careful not to hit Malthus or Pointdexter. FWOOM. Kay less plunges his hands to the ground than he half collapses into a kneel, the surrounding explosion around him smaller, shorter in range, throws gravel and bits of broken road plinking against the wreckage of the destroyed cars. His burns are healing slower now, and some of the bullets, while thrown off course, have been torn apart without fully losing their momentum. The shrapnel pelts into the side of his face and body. He isn't waiting for them to recover - through the blood pouring from a head wound, staining his teeth, glowing coals raining down behind him to backlight his face in demonic red - he peels back his lips and /grins/, darting for Malthus to throw himself full-on into him. "Nnrgh--" Malthus doesn't manage to get a shot off; the explosion of shrapnel and flame is sufficient to distract him, sending him reeling backward, the gun lifted to shield himself -- his form once again shimmering, /blistering/ beneath the light. By the time he's recovering, Kay is hitting him hard -- and they're both going toward the ground, crumpling in a heap, the gun clattering out of Malthus' hand. But as they drop, Malthus' arm falls underneath the smoking, damaged car -- and at once, it /vanishes/ into the void of shadow there -- spreading outward, long whip-like cords snaking from that place to snare around Kay's shoulder and hip -- trying to drag him with a horrible strength /beneath/ the car, into that near-complete shadow. Malthus' entire form shimmers again, as if blurring into the darkness. "...rrrhhh--" "Ngh!" Kay is dragged over like a badly scruffed cat onto his side and partly under the car, fingernails dragging against the ground as he sparks and fizzles for something around him to catch on fire - that prehistoric battle of man burning his candles against the great black night. His palms burnt ruin, the oily ripples of heat roiling off him ignite, snarl up in heat that eats over his clothes, filling the realm beneath the car with lashing orange glow. He thrashes, in it, on fire /himself/, trying to roll clear on the far side where there are no soldiers while making a kind of coyote keening with each breath. Perhaps strangely, it isn't the heat that hurts Malthus so much as that /glow/. He groans beneath the orange light that swells underneath the car, sparking and flashing -- and for a moment, the constricting grip of shadows relinquishes their grasp on Kay, giving him enough time to roll out the /other/ side of the car. But the moment that orange glow retreats, Malthus is entirely in the shadows. And then, as Kay scrambles to his feet, he might hear another type of keening -- something like a hundred or more voices emerging from beneath the car -- within it -- around it -- as the shadows become crisp and impenetrable, like a void of darkness... ...right before the car is /flipped/ toward Kay -- a sea of shadowed tentacles emerging, as large as a van, writhing and twisting with a pale-skinned Malthus at its center -- half engulfed by the very shadows he barely commands. His expression remains frighteningly serene, even as the shadows around him begin to swallow up half of his face -- leaving only the ruined pit of that sightless eye. The squeal of metal as the car's weight rises up off its wheels gives Kay barely enough time to roll clear. And he keeps rolling, throwing his long legs over his head to come up in a crouch with the same movement, long arm dropped to press his hand against the ground. Though pained, bloody and speared with soot, there's a settling calm here as well, as the twisting abyssal menace takes shape. His smile is oddly, fiercely /warm/. Not kind. But warm. And he shakes his head slowly, "Couldn't stop til you were one of us, could you." His clothes are shreds, singed and hanging off. Denim jacket has faired alright, jeans as well save the ruined knees, a hole burnt out at the ass to show off his tidy whities. But the tshirt beneath is melted and hanging, a black sleeveless sort of undershirt worn beneath. And he glows. The fire lazily burning on his jacket sleeves steadily licks up his arms, where the skin burns and cooks. "Don't like it do you. The light." The calmness, the cavalier /friendliness/ in his voice makes the casual movement forward of his hand feel so benign - save that it /flares/ a gout of flames in Malthus's direction. "Zzzt--" Malthus hisses, drawing back at that sudden swell of flame, his ruined eye narrowing -- though the serenity never falters. The tentacles draw back, though, as if Kay were parting the sea -- and Malthus crawls, with surprising quickness, back toward the van. "--no," Malthus admits, his voice emerging in a sussurus of whispers. "But I know something /you/ don't like." Right on cue, the two men who had been driven back behind the van emerge -- hesitantly picking their way forward to aim their assault rifles at Kay. "Bullets." The night is filled with the steady crackle of gunfire. And how true it is. Though he tries, Kay's explosive shields do not rise in time, and his shoulder jerks back, first the left, then the right, then his hip, each with choked off cries. The glowing bonfire brightness surrounding him abruptly drops, plunging the road into dim. And, zigging around the side of the ruined car Dusk had been driving, bullets winging off the singed side of it, he's running. Malthus' men move to follow -- albeit slowly, picking their way with obvious fear around the horror of the shadow monster that looms above them. But as they move, Malthus rumbles, his voice whispering around them like an eclipsing sheathe: "No. The wounded -- check our men. Some of them need immediate medical care." And then he's slinking back, into the pleasant, numbing darkness of the van. With the road blistered, the paint peeled away, the surrounding scrub grass blisters and crackles with glowing red embers in the ascending quiet. A small merry fire is burning in the back seat of one of the cars, belching out cushions of black smoke into the starry autumn sky while twisted scrap metal wings and glitters in the moving flashlights that search for survivors amongst the wreckage. Some will not be so lucky, black and unrecognizable as charcoal briquettes, save for the pearly white teeth in the middle and the guns cooked into their seared skeletal hands. The staggering sound of thudding feet vanish into the dark of the surrounding landscape, a trail of blood trailing behind.