"We opened the door to the shadows...

[nightbeyondfire]

The man sat alone, back slumped against a wall as he stared down at the pistol in his hand, unloading and reloading it in silence. Over and over again. How long had he been here, ignoring the sounds of life around him and the chatter and racket from the communication device on the ground along with the discarded necklace? Days? Weeks? Months?

It didn't really matter. None of it did anymore.

Load. Unload. Reload.

"You look like crap."

The man looked up, staring upwards at his only companion for what felt like an eternity. Himself... only different, like seeing a photo negative version. The colors were all wrong and there were a few things off.

It had no eyes. He'd found that strange once before the feeling had been bled out of him.

Load. Unload.

It was this thing that had shown him the truth. It had started with whispers in his mind when he was alone and had grown from there, appearing in shadows, taking the place of his reflection and finally standing right there beside him exposing the plain, hopeless reality of where he'd found himself.

An ugly grin split the negative version's face.

"So, what's the hold up, jackass? You know what you have to do now."

Load.

Yeah, he did.

-------------------


In the early morning, it happened without warning. A shudder ran through the entire city and for just a moment it was almost as if reality itself... bent for a moment, warping out of shape before snapping out of place and one of the buildings of Genessia's skyline vanished into a rising cloud of smoke and dust.

The thing rose up out of the cloud, standing over the buildings around it. Misshapen, grotesque, it could only be called humanoid in the most generous of terms. Its body was colored in splotches of red and black, its limbs twisted with the right arm many times larger than the spindly left and it stood on legs that should have been bent and twisted too awkwardly to support it at all.

The head swiveled from side to side on a too-long twiglike neck, wide, blanket white eyes that seemed painted on searched the city and a toothless mouth opened wide in a low, groaning howl that rumbled over the city.

The creature’s body convulsed and with a chorus of sickening splits and cracks its body bristled with weapons, and they all fired as one, shearing the top floors off of the next several blocks and covering the rest of the town in burning debris.




Through the city, every communicator screamed out a deafening alert, which was followed by the voice of the AI.

“CORRUPTED ELEMENTS DETECTED. PLEASE ASSIST IN PURGING IN ORDER TO ENSURE THE CONTINUED SURVIVAL OF THE CITY AND ITS INHABITANTS”


[OOC: Subthreads are up. Post in them for combat, or go nuts with planning/reactions through the rest of the comments.]

Comments

[leekspins]

"Oh, you can see him!" Orihime's face lit up with delight. "That must mean you have spiritual powers too. Most people can't see him at all." She looked back at the spirit with pride, though she was surprised to see that he was taking plenty of initiative even without Orihime's hand to guide him.

"That's weird...usually I have to be the one to aim," she remarked thoughtfully.

But right, urgency and all. Looking back at Amelia, she shrugged. "I don't really know. I got a message from the computer asking for help, so I came. I've never seen anything like this before..."

[amelia_inglebert]

"Spiritual powers...?" That's strange, Amelia furrows her brow. "I... dunno about that. In my world we kinda fudged magic... But I guess everyone's got mana in them, just..." Well now she's on a little tangent, and not even paying attention to what's going on around her. At least, not for a little while before she realizes there're monsters barrelling for them.

"Whoa, hold up, Orihime, we need to get outta here! Those things are coming right at us!"

[leekspins]

Orihime nodded vigorously. She didn't know all that much about magic personally, but from what she'd experienced, anyone with any hint of supernatural ability would be able to perceive the source of Orihime's powers. Mana almost certainly counted in that respect!

But before she could respond further, she jerked around at the sight of the monsters slapping their limbs jerkily down the street in their direction. Instead of turning to run, Orihime took a step forward, hands balled into small fists at her sides.

"Be safe, Amelia-chan! I can fight them off, so you don't need to worry." It wasn't just brave martyrdom talking, she really did have the ability to defend and attack. With things like these, Orihime didn't need to hold back. And admittedly, she didn't really want to...

[amelia_inglebert]

"W... What?! No way!" Amelia shouts at Orihime as she stood her ground, pulling back the hammer on her gun as she hurried to stand at the girl's side. "I can't just leave you here, what if you get hurt you idiot?!" God, how many times was she going to say that in her lifetime anyway?

Reaching into her shouldered bag, she produced a grenade. A grenade. It was obviously home-made and seemed to have some kind of red, swirly powder inside of it.

Dust! How she got her hands on it was anyone's guess, but boy did it make for a good, solid, incendiary boom! Pulling the pin with her teeth, she tossed the bomb forwards under the feet of the lumbering monsters - and as expected...

BOOM!

[leekspins]

Orihime stared. That was a grenade.

A grenade.

A real live grenade just got thrown. It's kind of cool.

BOOM INDEED!

Her shield flared up protectively in front of both of them, just to ensure neither was struck by the fire and shrapnel shooting in all directions. At the very least, it protected them from horrible monster guts getting all over their clothes.

Orihime blinked, hands outstretched, and turned her head to look at Amelia. Then she promptly nerded out.

"THAT WAS AWESOME!"

[amelia_inglebert]

Amelia blinks when Orihime nerds out at her, and she snaps her attention to the girl. "O-Oh! That? I made a lot of bombs over in Forge - my home city I mean. I kinda kept them on me for whenever I'd go somewhere dangerous. I used this stuff that some guy was selling, he called it Dust..."

Wait, where did she get that? Didn't sound like she got it from the Dust Shops in Vale. And she didn't, because what do you do when you wanna push illegal Dust? Sell it at marked down prices in some shady back alley somewhere.

Darn that Moriarty. Or bless him. It really depends on how you look at it.

"A... Anyway, what now? What do we do?"

[leekspins]

Orihime knew nothing about Dust. Had she been better friends with one of the Beacon teams, then she'd probably know that this was information that she should be paying attention to, and consequently helping Amelia to stay far, far away from those Dust dealers.

But she was oblivious, and just thought the grenade was cool.

"Well...I guess we keep fighting," Orihime exhaled sharply. "Until all the monsters are gone. I don't know about you, but I don't think I could sleep even a little bit if one of those things escaped."