Abandoned Subway Tunnels, Los Angeles, Saturday Afternoon

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"Stealth said that this place is a kind of refuge for homeless people who didn't want to shelter up on the surface," Banzai said, leading the way through the subway tunnels. "They're really good at policing their own; making it safe for women and families to stay down here. No drugs, no violence, that kind of thing. Isn't perfect, but pretty damn good for people with nothing. But nobody's heard anything from anyone down here in awhile and she wants someone to check in with them. There was no indication that they've had contact with anyone infected, but the silence is weird. She's hoping they're just hunkered down and waiting for this to blow over."

Flickering lights overhead didn't do much to dispel the gloom, illuminating only the area around them and leaving the rest shrouded in darkness. There were sections where the lights were out entirely and that meant that they would have to travel for several yards in true darkness, at least until they reached the next, intact light. "We should be coming up on sentries soon. They might have weapons, so please let's try being nice first?"

[For those guys with her! And NFB]

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"Please, somebody, say something," Banzai begged softly. "This is a community of something like a hundred people, give or take. There are little kids here. Please, say something."

No words answered her. Just that chattering--and more of it.

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Rebellion cut through the sound, letting off a gleaming, impossibly sharp chime as Dante filled it up with energy without really thinking about it. "Yeah, I don't think anyone's listening," he said, stalking forward. "Hey, chatty Cathies!"

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Kathy pulled out her shéng biāo. It was the closest she had to a distance weapon. Wrapping that around her upper arm, she loosened her bokken in its sheath on her back. She had her knives, too, and would use them if she needed, but her bokken was strong enough to break bone. The knives, she'd have to go for softer, more vulnerable parts.

As Dante came forward, the three zombies shuffled over to meet him. They'd been standing by a closed door until they'd heard the approach. They raised their hands to grasp and clutch, their teeth chattering so hard they seemed likely to splinter.

Their gore-streaked teeth. They reached for them with grasping hands, nails blackened with tattered flesh beneath them. Their mouths were bloody and chunks of them were missing.

[rebelseekspizza]

Letting rip a drive felt like overkill, but frankly, Dante had had a shitty week and overkill was exactly what he was feeling like right now. He cut clean through the air, abruptly letting go of his tight control on the ambient energy running through the blade.

One cut. Two cuts. Three cuts.

He was still many feet away, but the zombies came apart as if Rebellion had cut through them physically. "Think it's time to let her rip, Kat."

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"I think you're right," Banzai said, nodding. She picked up speed blitzing through towards the door, not looking at the bits of zombie on the ground around it. "There still might be living people beyond this door. They might have been trapped here by the zombies here."

She was clinging to that hope, even as she banged on the door. "Hey!" she cried. "If there's anyone alive in there? We killed the zombies, you can come out now!" She paused, giving them time to respond. Willing them to respond. To say anything to let them know there were living people beyond that locked door.

This was supposed to be a safe community. Please, let it still be safe.

[rebelseekspizza]

Yeah, Dante wasn't putting a whole lot of chips on that bet. He put Rebellion back on his back and got the girls out, striding up by Kathy's - Banzai's - whoever's side.

He was keeping his eyes peeled.

"Not hearin' much."

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Banzai knelt down; the door was locked but she could open it easily enough. She pulled her lockpicks out of a pocket and set to work. "Listen," she urged both of them. "Put your goddamn ear to the door if you have to and listen."

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Dante rolled his eyes. He wasn't pressing his ear to any doors, but he was moving in a little closer.

He was listening.

Just... not for signs of life. He did not have an inch of Kathy's optimism.

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Through the door came the faint sounds of chattering. Or was that simply the sound of Banzai's picks, clattering against the tumblers and pins in the lock?

The lock clicked as the last pin got pushed. Banzai rose, and tried to open the door. It started to move, then got caught on something. "Did they build a barricade?" she asked. "Maybe that's why we can't hear anything."

She stepped aside next to Anders, figuring that Dante was the best chance to shoulder the door open. "We're coming in!" she called. "We're here to help!"

She was going to believe that everyone was okay until she had no other choice.

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"Yeah, sure, a barricade," Dante muttered. "You two get ready."

He didn't need his hands to do this, so he kept his guns out. Just banged his shoulder against that door real hard, and it went crashing open like nothing.

"... No barricade. Get your weapons up, we've got shamblers."

A whole fucking hall full of them. Great.

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"Fuck!" That was only the first word of Banzai's blue streak and it was the only one in English, but the entire diatribe was lengthy and fervent. She'd nearly finished when she saw what the door had gotten stuck on; a mostly-eaten body that had likely been trying to get the door open to flee. That wound her back up again, adding about another thirty seconds to her diatribe and a whole other language to the mix.

"If there are any survivors in hiding, stay there!" she called out. "We're here to help! We'll be securing the area and then we'll let you know if it's safe to come out!"

Odds were looking grim there was anyone left alive in that place to hear her. But on the off-chance there was, she was going to give them some hope, dammit. If there weren't, however, she'd just gotten every zombie's attention for nothing. Oops.

Whatever, she was blitzing inside at full-speed, already tracing out a trajectory in her own head. "Kindly don't shoot me!" she yelled. "Or hit me with magic!"

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"K-- Be careful!" Dante yelled after her, and hey, it was a damned miracle her name hadn't made it out again.

He was moving after her, fast but not that fast, both guns locking on the first thing that even moved at him. Was it chattering?

Yeah, it was chattering. Fuck it, he was shooting it in the head.

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Banzai sped through the room, angling towards a wall. So long as there was room for her to maneuver, she couldn't be touched--especially not by a bunch of dead things moving at, like, quarter speed. Her bokken was out and she let it slam into heads as she passed; she didn't even have to swing it, her speed gave it all the momentum it needed to crunch through bone.

A huge zombie stepped in her way, easily as big as Josh. From where she was standing, it seemed almost as big as Blockbuster, who was eight feet tall and almost seven feet wide. She didn't let it stop her, though. Instead, she just ran up it, flipping backwards off its face to deliver a hammer kick to the zombie running up behind her, and then slamming her foot up into the giant zombie's face.

Both zombies dropped, the smaller one with its neck broken, the larger with its nose broken and shoved into its brain. She followed up with another slam to the smaller zombie's temple, just to make sure it was out as well as down, then kept running.

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Well, at least she wasn't getting her ass kicked as hard as it could be kicked. Dante stopped watching after the first few kicks. He had his own problems to think about.

Ebony and Ivory were fast, and they could cover distance, but the bullets were like little stings. Fine on a regular person, who'd respond to pain almost immediately, but if he had to shoot every individual zombie in the face, he'd still be here tomorrow.

He shoved the girls back into their holsters and grabbed Rebellion-- and immediately had to vault over a crowd of zombies, generating an invisible platform under his feet without really being conscious of it, bouncing off, sliding along the wall, and winding up neatly on his feet behind them. The sword slung over his shoulder. "Too slow!"

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Pfft, she wasn't getting her ass kicked at all, but thanks for that new vote of confidence, Dante!

Swing. Launch. Bounce. Flip kick. Snap.

Banzai breathed slowly, forcing herself to take deep breaths, reminding herself that they were already dead, that there was no helping them now. That the best thing that she could do for them and for the city was to continue to put them down as quickly as possible.

It was the best chance for any survivors here, too.

So she kept moving, a blur of rainbows and brilliant white, leaving broken necks and smashed skulls in her wake.

Vault. Flip. Split kick. Bounce. Snap. Bounce. Snap. Bounce. Snap.

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante didn't have neat sound effects. Not now he was so close to the zombies: there wasn't much point to charging Rebellion. But he'd always been death on two legs when it came down to it, slamming into several zombies at once with strong blows of the sword that only staggered sometimes when he overreached, or a zombie came apart too quickly, and he went stumbling forward.

It still had a weird habit of looking like it was almost meant that way, or like he was some kind of talented baby ballet dancer who just occasionally had to snatch his balance back.

He was keeping an eye on Kathy as much as he could, until the zombies became too many, and he decided she didn't need it.

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But was he calling out his attacks like a magical girl?

Thank you. Banzai would be gratified to know that she'd proven herself capable of taking down the slow, shambling undead without a babysitter. That had been her point yesterday, after all.

She'd kept her distance, for the most part, not wanting to accidentally get to close to the whirling blur that was Rebellion in his hands. But she spotted another zombie reaching for what looked like Dante's unprotected flank and she went flying to intercept it, landing on the zombie and riding it to the ground where she yanked out one of her knives and stabbed it in the ear.

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Wasn't about taking on the shambling undead this once, though. Or the next time. Or even the time after that. But that was something Dante was apparently never going to get through her skull.

He had bigger things to worry about right now.

The sudden movement to his side had him moving, twisting in place, but by the time he was facing the threat she was there. He didn't linger. He jumped, touching a foot to the back of a zombie's head. Struck down, cleaving it in two. "That's what you get for giving me side-eye!"

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Especially not while she was nursing her hurt and injured pride, nope! Her entire outlook was colored by the phrase Saturday morning cartoon and the look on his face when he'd said it.

Though listening to Dante quipping made her wish she were more in the mood for it. There were so many puns she could be making and she just didn't have the heart for any of them. Instead, she just pulled her knife out of one zombie's temple and shoved it into the eye of another, then unwound her shéng biāo and flung it around the throat of a third, yanking it backwards until it was in range to kill.

"Three more to your left!" she called, then did a doubletake. Fuck. They were children. Three little kids, probably no more than ten when they'd--turned.

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"Got it--"

Dante twisted 'round on top of the zombie corpse, coat flapping around behind him, and did a double take of his own. "Aw, fuck."

There was a mental image of dead-eyed children waiting for their turn at the orphanage, shooting through his head in one split second. He ignored it.

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"Do you have it?" Banzai asked, bouncing to his side. "Because if you don't-- I can--"

They were children. Just children. And they hadn't deserved what happened to them. But now, she could help them rest. Make sure they never hurt anyone. It would hurt so much, but she could do it.

It's what a hero would do.

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"Don't."

That wasn't about the last couple of days, or them, or anything related to any of it. Just. Don't.

Dante drew Rebellion again, but it was his foot that struck the first child in the face, knocking her down to the ground. The blow was a simple one, separating head from torso.

Don't cut him out of his memory. He could see demons here, as he cut their heads from their bodies and left the rest of them intact.

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Banzai didn't. She didn't know what was going on in his head, but she could do as he asked. She left him to his task, which he was completing with what looked like single-minded precision, and guarded his back instead, lashing out with foot, fist, and bokken to keep the zombies off of him while he put the dead children down.

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There'd be screams clawed into words on the walls all over in Limbo here. Dante was certain of it. As he yanked his sword out of the last ch-- zombie's body, he looked up into the crowd, and for a split second he could swear he could see them.

Black, flickering ghosts, bent over in torment. Some stuck between the zombies, some covering 'em.

He winced, wrenching his gaze as far out of Limbo as he could without actually knowing what the fuck he was doing anyway.

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"Hey, you okay?" Banzai asked, seeing him wince. She didn't know what he'd done or what he'd seen, but he'd just been face to face with three dead children. That was enough to knock anyone off their game.