The Luckiest Girl In The World

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! )

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]

In the wake of Josh's escape, the Mount looked like an anthill that had been kicked over. More soldiers were called to the top of the Big Wall, trying to keep a lookout in case he came back, or get a sense of which direction he ran in, or just to feel like they were doing something. The civilians weren't much different, trying to stare past the exes to see what the Thing in the Cellar had been. Everywhere there was a hubbub of noise and movement and confusion--except around each of the Heroes. They were still, calm, quiet--but then, they knew exactly what the Thing had been. Instead, their eyes were all on Stealth as she laid a hand on Captain Freedom's forearm and murmured something, her head giving a minute nod towards the Rodenberry Building.

So, a meeting then.

Kathy didn't know whether she had been intended to be included of if Stealth just didn't think it was worth kicking anybody out for. Either way, ten minutes after Stealth had left the Big Wall, she was ensconced in a chair high up on in the penthouse, with Raven as a big, black bird perching docilely on her shoulder. Kathy didn't realize it, but this was the same room her friends had gathered twenty-one months ago when Stealth had recruited them into the war against Rodney.

( In the room where it happens )

[Preplayed with the amazing-as-always tigerundercover and adapted from Chapter of Ex-Communication by Peter Clines. NFB, NFI, OOC welcomed. Previous post Next post]

Kathy was pacing again. She couldn't help it. She knew it was frustrating Max to no end, but she was finding it real hard to work up a single fuck about that. She was trapped here, in her worst nightmare come to fucking life, and it was all his fault. If he couldn't handle a little pacing, that was on him.

Okay, it was also bugging Nick, too. She could see the little twitch around his eye with every step of her shoes on the tile--especially since she was making sure to clack them firmly as part of her 'Fuck You Max Hale' plan. She felt a little bad about Nick's annoyance, but hey, it wasn't like she asked him to hover. After news had spread about Tori's death earlier in the evening, he hadn't let her alone. He'd appointed himself her guardian angel, so he was just going to have to deal with a little pacing.

Or a lot of pacing.

The clacking of her shoes was a lot better than the clacking of the teeth outside. Now there was a noise that could drive someone mad. Kathy knew; she could hear the chattering of teeth all night long. Earplugs and loud music didn't help; that just meant that if anything happened, she wouldn't be able to hear it. If Legion were smart, he'd send out just a few exes late at night with ladders to climb over. Not a lot, not a loud invasion, but a few. Just enough to sneak past sleepy guards. Just enough to bite and raise an army inside here. Kathy wasn't going to give him the chance to get smart and sneak up on her, oh no. Even if it meant not sleeping at night because of the constant clack clack clacking by her chamber wall.

Clack clack clack. Fifteen steps from one wall of this room to the other. Clack clack clack Fifteen steps back. Clack clack clack. Fifteen steps to the far wall again.

Kathy was aware she might be going a little crazy. That was fine, so long as she took people with her.

( Some surprises on all sides )


Later, Kathy would only remember the rest of the night in snapshots. Nick would catch her eyes and she'd stare back, helpless and unmoving, until he broke eye contact again. And then she would pass out immediately into a dark and dreamless sleep. She woke up several times as they sped across the rooftops of LA, Nick thrilled to be Gorgon once more, up however many tiers he could get from her. She was like cocaine, he told her once; a hit from her was the best and purest high he could imagine, shooting him up so many tiers it was hard to keep count. She put the 'speed' in 'speedball,' apparently. He needed three more hits from her to cross the distance between the Mount and his old apartment and she crashed out after each one. She didn't wake up from the fourth time he drained her until they were in his apartment, waking up in his dusty bed to the sound of him crashing to the floor, his legs giving out at the same time as the energy from his last hit wore away. She must have caught his eyes again, because the next thing she knew, the sky was lightening to the east and they were running again, his dead cellphone tucked away in the harness with her, both strapped tightly to his back.

But the run home wasn't as fun and carefree as the trip there. At some point, Max's spell must have run out because they weren't just running, they were fleeing, being chased by exes that were ringed with blue flame, mouths open wide to show rows of shark-like teeth and claws made only to rend and tear. And Nick was slowing, dropping from tier to tier and Cairax's exes gained ground. One time, one of them got close enough that she could feel the heat of the fire on her cheek, smell the scent of rot that rose from it before it missed a jump and plummeted between buildings. "Last time, baby," Nick said, turning around to drain her one more time. And as the world floated away again, Kathy realized she was glad that she was going under again, that if Nick slipped or tripped or just didn't go fast enough, she'd be unconscious when Cairax got his talons on them.

She woke in the Mount, curled up on the box spring in her apartment - her first night in the Mount, she'd put the mattress on the floor in front of the door as an easy barricade - Nick's phone plugged into a charger and attached to the wall. Bleary-eyed but smiling for the first time since she'd gotten to Los Angeles, Kathy opened up Nick's contacts to see who on the island she could call.

[NFI, NFB, all the love to OOC. Previous Post. Next Posts here and here.]

Kathy didn't know why she was here. It was a question she couldn't answer for herself, never mind anyone else who might ask. But no matter how many times she tried to end up somewhere else, her feet had brought her here, right in front of the West Gate. Something about the conversation with Todd yesterday and the hungry look in the eyes of all those people, clustered outside the office. She'd sworn up and down that she didn't have the ability to talk to exes, but was she actually sure?

Wait a minute. Of course she was. This was stupid.

Once more, Kathy turned away, heading back towards town proper. Except then she thought about Todd's genuine grief and, once more, she found herself spinning back around and heading towards the gate again.

Fuck, she hated this place. It was turning her inside out over bullshit. But - fine. She'd go, she'd try to talk to a fucking zombie, she'd prove to herself for the last time that she didn't have any non-bouncy powers, and then she'd go back to her place and try to catnap for a few hours.

West Gate was on Vine and directly across from it was the guard station. She knocked, ducking her head inside to make sure if wouldn't interfere with the people patrolling the Wall if she just kind of...hung out there for awhile. The guy in camo - probably another Unbreakable, judging from his sheer size - seemed pretty unfazed by the question. A lot of people came to the gates, she realized, probably looking for familiar faces; the After Death folks especially. He pointed to a bright line painted on the ground in front of the gate, telling her to stay at least a yard behind it. So long as she did that, none of the exes would be able to touch her.

Giving him an appreciative nod, Kathy went out to the designated location and just stared through the bars for a moment. These were spaced a lot wider than the bars that made up the East Wall, wide enough that she was able to get a full view of the street beyond it. She'd...pretty much been avoiding doing that very thing since she arrived and yet, here she was now, doing that exact thing.

( Fuck, this was stupid. )

[Adapted from Chapter 18 of Ex-Communication, by Peter Clines. NFI, NFB, OOC is nice to get. Previous Post Next Post]

A week. She'd been here a week already. And as much as Kathy wanted to sit in her room all day and sulk at the unfairness of the universe for sticking her here, she was really, really bad and doing nothing. Just ask Raven! Or Dante! Or Anders! You know, if they were here. She was especially bad at doing nothing when just outside her window were several hundred exes all chattering their teeth at the guards on the walls above them.

So, as an accredited EMT in a place where trained medical professionals were few and far between, Kathy had volunteered to work in the clinic for a few hours every day, in part to spell Dr. Connolly and give the poor woman a break, and part to keep herself busy so she didn't run screaming mad watching every minute tick by that she was stuck here.

Boredom mixed very oddly with hypervigilance.

Today, though, even this place was slow. With regular scavenging runs currently on break due to demonic activity in the neighborhood, fewer people were getting hurt. The last patient--Deborah Jenkins, 33, sliced her arm on a rusted railing--had been discharged this morning. Kathy had remade the bed, cleaned up the patient area, taken stock of equipment and supplies, folded bandages, thrown a load of sheets in the washing machine...and now was stationed behind the desk reading the treatment of thrush, an outcropping of oral yeast. Not really her thing, but it was that or Connolly's notes on the ex-virus, and of the two...

( Yeah. Oral yeast outcroppings it was. )

[Adapted and mangled from Chapter 16 of Ex-Communication by Peter Clines and, oops, I made myself sad with this one. NFI, NFB, OOC is great though. Previous Post Next Post]

Dante's phone laid on the kitchen counter, haphazardly discarded. Its warning light flashed a flickering red, advertising its dying battery.

Dante himself was nowhere to be found.

( This bodes well. )

[NFI, but OOC & broadcast okay! Preplayed with the wonderful not_every_mage and follows this.]

The days blended together, as they always did. Hell had no sense of keeping time, beyond the coming and going of demons. In this little isolated corner of it, there was even less to go by. The jailer demon was there, and not-there, sometimes terrorizing her, sometimes content to leave her to stew in the sheer emptiness and despair of this place.

It had been the latter for some time. She drifted through Hell, fighting off lesser demons here and there, but mostly just... wandering. Aimlessly.

She did not realize she was bound for the divide until she saw it, shimmering before her. Purgatory, just out of her reach. She stared at it.

Also for a time.( Two dead women have a chat )

[Preplayed with the delightful rebelseekspizza. NFI, NFB, OOC is love]

Hours had passed and there was still no sign of Regenerator. One of the National Guardswomen said that she thought she'd heard that he's been transported somewhere else, another said that there had been an outbreak on one of the upper floors and that the hero was dealing with that. Hearing that bit of rumor, Kathy'd tried to get out of bed and go help out, but her legs had crumpled under her and she'd ended up sprawled on the floor. Raven had helped her back into bed and one of the volunteer nurses had shooed the Guards away. They could speculate somewhere else, where a hero with more heart than sense couldn't overhear. So long as they got Regenerator here immediately whenever he showed back up, they could go be useless anywhere else.

The convulsions were getting worse. Of everything, that was the most frightening thing to watch. Her fever was spiking; sometimes burning so hot that they could feel the heat radiating off her skin. They gave her drugs to bring her fever down, drugs to help with the pain, but she kept blazing through them. They'd given her seven doses in a matter of hours and it barely seemed to dent. She was sleeping now, fitful and restless, often moaning in pain.

Most of the recent bite victims made it to about twelve to fourteen hours before they succumbed to the virus and turned. Kathy didn't look like she was going to make it to eight.

( Who lives, who dies, who tells your story... )

[WARNING FOR CHARACTER DEATH. NFB, NFI, OOC is just going to involve me ugly sobbing, so there's that. Preplayed with the magnificent tigerundercover, who along with rebelseekspizza and not_every_mage have been my goddamn ROCK, both ICly and OOCly. Thank you so much for being with me through this, I couldn't have done it without you and certainly not as stylishly.]

Banzai looked around, eyebrows practically up to her hairline. Gorgon hadn't been kidding when he'd said that Stealth had called in every hero in LA for this meeting. Most, she recognized, by reputation if not by sight. Midknight was the man in the replica armor who could bring a crushing darkness no light could penetrate and a cold that could give frostbite. Blockbuster, who could knock down entire buildings with enough momentum. The Mighty Dragon, of course. Gorgon. Regenerator, looking drawn and exhausted. About nine or ten others she was able to put names to. There were others she didn't know, like the black guy in the wheelchair and the scrawny guy wearing a giant necklace. At first, Banzai had thought that he was wearing a clock on his chest, like some oily, white Flava-Flav, but closer inspection proved it to be--some kind of medallion? Either way, it was hard to look at properly, like staring into the sun.

And then their host, the woman who could only be Stealth. She was sitting at the head of the water-stained conference table, conferring with the guy in the chair. The guy looked very grave; Stealth's mask gave no clue what she was feeling. Kathy's hope that this was going to be some kind of committee meeting where they decided to create the Super Justice Pals of LA withered and died at the guy's expression. No one looked like that without a damn good reason.

At precisely 11, Stealth broke off her conversation and stood up. "Thank you for attending," she said in a crisp, no-nonsense voice. "I can imagine it was difficult for some of you to take leave for superhero business during regular civilian hours. I assure you, I would never make such a request lightly. The situation is urgent. If not responded to quickly, it will be dire. It is possible that I miscalculated by waiting the additional week to contact you. Please be seated and we can begin the briefing."

Stealth remained standing, the guy she'd been talking to wheeling close to the table on her left and the Mighty Dragon taking a seat to her right. Everyone else made their way to the table, some (including Banzai), carrying plates of refreshments that Stealth had provided. The chairs were mismatched and most were not of a height to have been intended to be used with this table, but Stealth had procured exactly enough for all of them. Banzai sat, sandwiched between Gorgon and the guy with the bling, across the table from Regenerator. When the last hero had taken his seat (Blockbuster, moving with a great deal of care), Stealth spoke up again. Unlike the Mighty Dragon, she had no problems speaking through a full facemask without her voice being muffles.

"Heroes of Los Angeles, I'm here to discuss with you our ( zombie problem )

[NFB, NFI, OOC is loved.]