Just Outside the Rodenberry Building. The Mount, Ex-Los Angeles, Saturday Evening

There were a lot of preparations to be made and slightly less than ten hours in which to make them, if all of Max's calculations were correct. There were spells to cast and rituals to devise and worst-case scenarios to prep for, which meant this was the absolute worst time to be interrupted for nonsense.

Which was, of course, why a crowd chose that moment to flow around the south corner of Gower Street. There were about three dozen of them, including children holding hands with parents. At the front of the crowd was Christan Nguyen. She was talking with a few people around her, and every several steps she'd raise the Bible in her hand a little higher for emphasis. When she saw the heroes, she waved and the crowd shift in their direction.

Kathy took an uneasy step backwards. Ms. Nguyen had been perfectly pleasant every time they'd spoken, but she still left Kathy vaguely uncomfortable, like she was a plucked chicken at the butcher's and Ms. Nguyen was waiting for the price to go down just the right amount.

( A chance meeting... )

[Preplayed with the darling not_every_mage and adapted from Chapter Twenty-Three of Ex-Communication by Peter Clines. NFB and NFI. Previous post next post]

Kathy's Apartment, The Mount, Ex-Los Angeles, Sunday Before Dawn

False dawn stained the sky as the Fandom contingent woke up and started getting ready. Today was the day of reckoning; the final battle against Cairax and then home, leaving this place behind them for good. Everyone was quiet as they readied themselves, tired, perhaps, or deep in thought. It was going to be a long, grueling day and a general feeling of unease hung over the entire Mount, like a dark fog had settled over the whole area.

The only person who hadn't gotten up with the rest was Kathy; her closet door had remained firmly shut as everyone else got dressed and ate a little if they could. She'd been quiet the night before, still angry over the decision to stay and fight maybe, or unsettled by the run-in with Christian's people. Either way, she'd retreated to her closet as soon as they'd returned, closing the doors firmly behind her in an unspoken command to leave her alone.

Which was all well and good then, but today they needed to get ready and no amount of brooding or hurt feelings would stand in the way of that. So when everyone was just about to leave, it was Eliot who went and tapped on the closet door to have her come out. And it was Eliot, a few minutes of silence later, who opened the door and discovered that Kathy was gone.

Again.

[And so begins the last day! Everyone modded with gracious permission from my team of rockstars. Previous post]

After Death Fellowship Building, The Mount, Ex-Lost Angeles, Dawn Sunday Morning

Breaking into the small building that the 'After Death Fellowship' had taken for their own was child's play for anyone with a lockpick and a reason to get inside. Anders and Ezra had both. The unassuming exterior was matched by the interior as well; the front door opening to small entryway and the entryway led to a pair of double doors at the back. The building had been used as cheap seminar space, back when the Mount had still been Paramount Studios and things like 'seminars' still existed.

The doors at the back were slightly ajar, showing a large, open room that was not quite big enough for the hundred metal folding chairs crammed inside of it. The chairs were lined in ten rows of ten with only a narrow space down the middle to serve as an aisle, all of them facing away from the doors and towards the back of the room where the floor was raised about four or so feet up to make a little 'stage'. On that stage stood a podium, from which Christian Ngyuyen was addressing the congregation.

"When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth," she said, delivering that line with all the fervor of a Southern Baptist preacher delivering some fire and brimstone to the damned, rather than quoting lines from Daybreak of the Dead. From the scattered clapping and calls of "Amen!" and "Preach," she had apparently found a willing audience.

The whole thing would be absurd, if it wasn't for two key details. The first was Kathy, standing in a white nightgown, roughly two sizes too big for her, staring past Christian's right shoulder in horror.

The other was the zombie, handcuffed to a radiator, its jaws clacking continuously in a sermon of its own.

( Zombies. Why did it have to be zombies? )

[Finale 1 of 2! Many thanks to the amazing team of not_every_mage and smilestopscars for all their hard work and compelling writing for this. <3 I can't fangirl everyone in this plot enough, omg. NFB, NFI. Previous post Next Post]

The Streets of ex-Los Angeles, Sunday Morning

Making their way through the city looked ridiculous, but still beat trying to fight their way past all the exes clamoring at the gate. St. George was flying, carrying Eliot in a makeshift sling. Max clung to his back, bitching about how stupid they probably looked and pointedly ignoring any and all questions about the possibility of levitation. Dante was using some complicated series of jumps and a grappling hook...chain...thing. Max had been fascinated by it from the moment Dante had pulled it out and St. George was doing his best not to wonder where it had been hiding and why it sometimes changed color.

And, a goodly distance behind then fluttered a small, unobtrusive bird that just happened to be flying in the same direction.

As stupid as they all looked - and, in fairness, it was a little stupid - they were making decent time through the city, searching for Josh to hopefully find him and convince him to return to the Mount before Cairax finished worming his way inside the former hero and the possession was complete.

Many of those exes from the gate staggered after them, like paupers to a banquet, their arms raised in a futile attempt to grab and snatch at the heroes passing overhead. They crowd only grew as they flew back and forth across the neighborhood. Some fell behind, but there were always more to join the chase. By the time true dawn broke, there were sixty or seventy exes trailing behind them in a loose fan. They shuffled between cars, dragging against the sides, and added that scraping noise to the sound of their clicking teeth.

They'd been out for well over an hour, but still no sign of Josh.

( This is it! )