The roofs of Fandom, Wednesday

[thishouseishaunted]

So Mae had gotten to beat some people up with a stick yesterday.

"Gotten to". "Had to"? A mentally healthy person probably would go with "had to".

. . .

Mae had gotten to beat some people up with a stick yesterday. And come to learn today, those people were actual vampires. She had not spent endless hours of her youth fighting digital monsters to miss out on her chance to go out and beat up more real ones.

So she was out and about, running around on rooftops, as was her usual habit. Only today she also had a bat.

"In the age of blood," she muttered, as she skulked from roof to roof, peering over into the streets for vampires. "A pale one will rise. Wielding naught but a simple blade. Who dares to climb the steps of . . . DeMoNtOwEr!"

What could possibly go wrong?

[open, for ferals and non-ferals alike!]

Comments

[hashtag_chocobro]

Prompto was not in a good state right now, not after everything that had gone down yesterday, and, really, he probably shouldn't even be out right now, but he didn't know what else to do. He had to do something. This was....kind of all his fault.

Well, his and Normans, but...whatever. He felt it was the least he could do to at least try to find Vette and Sidon, especially after radio said they'd been bitten, and how in the world was it so hard to find a giant red shark dude and a blue girl on a tiny island that just happened to be maybe a little invaded with feral vampires?

Needless to say, he had his guns with him, and one was ready to go, and he maybe was a little jumpy when he saw something jumping around up on the roof tops.

Oh, gods, this was a bad idea.

This was a terrible idea...

But he maybe felt a little bit better once he realized that the thing moving on the roof had cat ears.

After a second of debating whether he should say anything or not, he tried to call out to her as quietly as he could. "Mae!" he sort-of whispered, sort-of hissed, and then maybe a little louder, looking quickly down the street to make sure he wasn't catching unwanted attention. "Hey! Mae!"

And if she heard him and noticed him and thought he maybe looked a bit...sparkly, it was not just a trick of her eyes.

[thishouseishaunted]

Mae was maybe more than a little convinced they were both characters in a video game, so while she did notice him being a bit sparkly, she figured it was par for the freaking course.

(Oh god. What if they were all actually just characters, and their fates and even actions and speech were being dictated by astonishing, unknowable, capricious beings who manipulated them like playthings?)

"Hi Prompto," she said.

It wasn't like any of these sorts of thoughts were that new to her by this point, after all.

[hashtag_chocobro]

"What are you doing out here?" Prompto whisper-called back up at her. "It's, like, super dangerous!"

Pot, meet kettle.

But for Prompto, it was different. If there was anyone on this island right now who deserved to be made into a tasty snack for bloodsuckers, it was him.

And, well, maybe Norman...

...but mostly him!!

[thishouseishaunted]

"Beating on vampires," Mae said, as though this should be perfectly obvious. Danger and violence were how video games worked.

Self-flagellation, meet dissociation! These were clearly two very together students, here.

"Haven't seen any yet, though. Which is weird, since yesterday they were everywhere."

[hashtag_chocobro]

And that was super-unsettling, too. Where had they all gone? Had they gotten all of them yesterday? Or was something bigger waiting for them...

...probably once the sun went down.

Oh, gods, seriously, vampires, just come out now and get it over with already.

He bit his lip almost hard enough to draw his own blood. "What about....have you seen Vette or Sidon, by any chance?"

He was a giant red shark guy! She was blue! They should not be this hard to find, and the thought that there might be a giant red shark dude vampire out there right now was easily the most nightmare fuel thing he could think of and he came from a world where daemons were said to just pop out of the ground like, all the time.

[solarhippie]

Someone was even higher up than Mae. Karolina, in all her glowing and shifting pastel glory, was flying around and surveying the island from above for signs of further trouble. But so far, she hadn't spotted anything in particular except for one figure on a rooftop. With a bat.

"Hey, you okay down there?"

She was well aware of the capabilities of the Fandom student body, but she would also have been a pretty bad counselor by her own standards if she hadn't checked in anyway.

[thishouseishaunted]

This was not going to help Mae's growing sense that none of this was real at all.

"I mean, I can't glow or fly, but otherwise I'm good." She looked down at her bat, then back up at Karolina. "Now I really wish I could glow and fly, though."

[solarhippie]

Karolina's old codename abbreviated to 'LSD', so at least it was fitting. She would've been very apologetic about being disorienting if she'd known, though.

But right now, she just descended a little closer to the roof. "I'm not from around here," she said, like that explained the glowing and the flying. "Have you run into any trouble today?"

[thishouseishaunted]

It wasn't really Karolina's fault. Mae just had funky brain chemistry that was as of yet not properly diagnosed or treated.

Mae shrugged. "Not yet. I guess all the vampires got taken out yesterday."

And none of the newly feral folks had wandered into the post past just yet.

[solarhippie]

Fair point, but that kind of logic had never stopped Karolina from apologizing to people.

She considered Mae and her bat for a beat. Then, despite having a pretty solid guess as to how her suggestion was going to go, she asked, "Have you considered going back to the dorms? It's usually completely safe back there."

[notallbluemonks]

Unlike her girlfriend, Beau couldn't fly, but she did have a lot of practice with parkour and a nearly nonexistent sense of her own mortality, so she was out doing a little reconnaissance from the rooftops herself. All that alliteration was accidental, I swear.

Not so much looking out for the students as looking out for something she could fight, granted, because that was her big thing. (Look, eventually she was going to drop down into an alley at night, scare the crap out of some kids, and yell at them to stay in school. Batman would have been proud.)

Especially since she'd caught the broadcast this morning and found out about Liam. Sure, she could have volunteered to go with the scouting team, but now she was pissed, which did nothing for her already short supply of patience. She'd much rather beat the shit out of something than go gather intel.

She nodded toward the kid -- not that she'd met that many tabaxi, but this kid was the shortest tabaxi she'd ever seen.

"Any more of those fuckers creeping around?"

[thishouseishaunted]

Mae didn't know what a tabaxi was, but she would definitely be in favor of them if she did.

"Nope." Mae idly whacked a nearby A/C exhaust duct with her bat. "I think we scared them off yesterday. Or possibly they're full."

They'd managed to bite a not insignificant number of people, after all. One of whom was a giant shark man.

[notallbluemonks]

They were cat people, basically, which was why Beau hadn't so much as done a double-take upon spotting Mae. Or maybe part of that had to do with how her perception was at disadvantage in the dark, but shh.

"They did kinda feed on a bunch of people," she muttered. One of which had been Amaya, she realized, and if that wasn't a good reason to put some of her new throwing weapons into a few vampires, what was, really? And Sidon was probably a good several meals, what with that whole giant shark man situation he had going on. Still. "Maybe. Assuming that will probably just bite us in the ass, though."

[thishouseishaunted]

"Well sure," Mae said. "That's why I have the bat."

[notallbluemonks]

"Smart," Beau told her. "Whaling on assholes with a big ol' stick is kind of a favorite for me too."

Maybe she'd sharpen the ends of her staff or something. Should've thought about that before she went out. Oh well.

[geniuswithasmartphone]

There weren't only conscientious adults and guilty students lurking on the roof. There were...others.

And they hungered.

[whoisalicewhite]

Mind you, they were lurking up high just for the fun of it, too. But that didn't negate the bloodthirstiness.

"Snack?"

[vdistinctive]

Eliot grunted, heading around the perimeter of the roof in a manner not unlike a wild predator.

"Tiny," he noted.

This one would hardly feed all three of them.

[thishouseishaunted]

Mae's ear twitched. She tightened her hands on her bat, turning slowly.

"Hello?"

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Fun," Hardison hissed. He grabbed some pebbles and tossed them onto the roof, far away from where they crouched.

[vdistinctive]

So the cat girl meal wouldn't hadn't worked out. That happened. He'd've just gotten fur stuck in his teeth, anyway.

Eliot was still hungry. And there were other, larger prey out here, somewhere.

[in case anyone else wants to fight a feral hitter!]

[notallbluemonks]

A little larger, maybe. Beau wasn't that big.

But she was dropping down dramatically in front of him with her staff in hand, looking a little too pleased at the prospect of a fight.

"'sup," she said, with an upward jerk of her chin toward him. "Bored?"

[vdistinctive]

Eliot gave a little huff of a grunt, looking Beau over.

"Meat."

Classy, Eliot.

[notallbluemonks]

"Really not my type," Beau said so quickly you knew it had to be at least partially reflexive. "I know that's, like, a disappointment but you'll live. Sort of."

Someday she might learn to not just be a smartass to everyone she tried to fight. Maybe.

[vdistinctive]

In his right mind, Eliot might even have advice about that.

Right now, what she was saying was pretty much just pure, unimportant noise.

He lunged.