Superior Skirmish

[ctu_savior]

WHO: Jack Bauer and Maggie Mui
WHERE: A 'Superior Purchase' electronics store in Manhattan, near the Bay and within a heavy concentration of Mist.
WHEN: Saturday morning.
WARNINGS: Violence
SUMMARY: Mutated by the magical Mist, animals have begun attacking people.
FORMAT: Paragraph

Comments

[origamiguardian]

Maggie had already had some bad luck this morning--she'd gone to feed pigeons down by the bay area and a scene from Hitchcock's "The Birds" had nearly been reenacted. It was especially disturbing as animals usually liked Maggie, even if wild. Obviously, this Mist Vivi talked about on the Network was getting more pervasive, and she thought she'd better get some supplies and figure out how she might be able to help.

Seeing the crowd and police lights by Superior Purchase that she approached, she realized she was not alone in her concern--and that she might need to help sooner rather than later. Her clothes shimmered, rustled, and shifted--paper clothes rearranged themselves to form her "battle uniform" of white jacket and blue kung fu pants, over the black suit of light kevlar under-armor she had decided to wear out today, just in case. She didn't have a gas mask, but she wrapped paper around her nose and mouth. Because she had to leave it porous to allow her to breathe (and she couldn't make it completely non-porous anyway), it wouldn't do much but it would still filter a little. She moved her way through the crowd, for once using her height and physical presence to her advantage, to see a masked familiar shape moving toward the store.

"Captain Bauer?"

[ctu_savior]

Maggie's timing was excellent, as Jack heard her just before he was about to storm in solo. He turned away from the store and peered at the partly-masked figure. "Maggie?"

One of the perimeter cops moved towards the interloper, but Bauer waved him back. Jack thought this private investigator was one of the trustworthy ones, at least as far as this crisis was concerned.

He moved to meet her. "We've got a serious situation here. Are you here to help?"

[origamiguardian]

Maggie nodded. Her voice was a little muffled by the paper mask, but it was clearly her voice coming out of there. "What's in there, and is everyone safely evacuated?"

[ctu_savior]

"We don't know yet. Multiple hostiles, large animals of some kind. Everyone got out okay, but some of them got bitten." He turned back to the door, peered through the glass. He saw nothing but an empty store, the floor cluttered with dropped bags and an overturned TV display.

"We need to clear this place out before those things get away and attack more people. Whatever they are, they've already hurt some of our officers pretty badly."

[origamiguardian]

Maggie nodded again, firmly. She was oddly relaxed even as she was growing more alert by the minute. All those weird, awkward social moments she endured? Those were terrifying to navigate, much as she longed to be better at them. This was infiltration and fighting, this is what she was made for, what she was trained to do.

Paper flew from her outstretched hand, forming into sort of a wolf-shaped creature with horns. She nodded towards Jack and the gun in his hand. "I'll go in beside you, cover you while you shoot." The "wolf" silently snapped its jaws to show its role in potential combat. She spoke matter-of-factly--not to tell him what to do, but to tell him how her abilities could be best used.

[ctu_savior]

Even after an eventful career in the City, Jack had to admit that seeing a wolf made out of paper was something he did not see every day. But whatever worked was the important thing- that thing could tangle with the enemies, keep them from sinking their teeth into the humans. He took the safety off his sidearm.

"Sounds good. All right, let's do it."

With that Jack moved over the threshold and into the store, the automatic systems opening the doors for him. Nothing greeted him except for the monotonous shriek of the fire alarm. He noted that the store's air system must have been shut down- the supernatural fog was lying low and heavy across the store floor. There was some broken glass on the floor- at least one window had been broken in the attack and subsequent evacuation- and he was careful to step around it. He stalked forward, then crouched beside a cash register and spoke to Maggie, voice soft and urgent.

"I've got movement. There's something down at the end of the printer aisle, I can't make it out." He took a small handheld scope out of his pocket and held it up, but between the extra layer added to his vision by the gas mask and the Mist drifting into the store through the broken window, he could make out nothing but an indistinct shape, low to the ground, partly hidden behind shelving.

[origamiguardian]

Maggie nodded once, then held a hand up to him to suggest he should stay still a moment while she tried something. She threw a handful of paper cards (from her sleeve, again--that's where it always came from) to quietly land on the floor down the aisle. Michelle was better at this trick than she was, but the idea was she could sense movement through the paper. Likewise if something jumped out, it would hit the paper first and she could trip it up.

Nothing happened. "There is something there. Big. But it's not moving at the moment."

(((ooc: one thing I always mean to ask--do you want full control of any NPCs/monsters you create, or we just each add on to the story and alter what a given creature does/is as what seems like fun?)))

[ctu_savior]

Jack didn't understand what Maggie had just done, but he was willing to trust that it had been worth a shot. "Okay, I'm going to check it out. Cover me."

He moved with his weapon raised into the printer aisle. Some of the boxes had been knocked from the shelves in the evacuation, and he made sure not to kick them with his steps. As he got closer, he could get a better look at the thing, and began to hear something over the incessant wail of the fire alarm. A wretched, distorting squeaking or squealing, mixed with the sound of eating...

A mangy sewer rat almost the size of a Great Dane was devouring a bag of fried chicken some shopper had dropped in their flight. Jack was glad for his gas mask- he could practically see the diseased stench roiling off the thing, garbage and pus and parasites and decay. Warped yet powerful muscles were bunched beneath its tattered fur, and Jack could see places where its skin had split open to reveal growths of some kind protruding from its body. Sores oozed on its long pink tail. Its massive incisors jutted from its jaws, and its long claws clicked against the floor. There was blood on them- this was one of the things that had bitten officers and shoppers. Jack raised his pistol to put the mutated creature out of its misery.

With greater speed than he could have imagined, the thing looked up from its scavenging, bared its teeth and Jack, and jumped straight at him. Jack only got a single shot off before he was tackled to the ground by the vicious rodent. It pinned him beneath its foul bulk and immediately began gnawing at his mask, trying to get at his face, squeaking horribly all the while. Jack could hear answering squeaks from elsewhere in the store, and the sound of oversized scurrying beginning to converge on him. Jack cried out.

"Maggie!"

[We'll each add on. Control them however you like!]

[origamiguardian]

As soon as the rodent tackled Jack, Maggie's wolf rippled, the paper merging with the paper on the floor and reformed beside Jack. It tore into the rat with jaws as strong as a real wolf's, tearing it away from it (and unfortunately spattering Jack with the rat's blood in the process). The rat, already wounded by Jack, was quickly if gorily dispatched by the wolf, its "face" disintegrating as the rat's blood saturated the paper.

With a wave of her arms, paper from Maggie's sleeves and the remains of the wolf and supplemented by cardboard packaging and price tags flew upwards into the air, forming a half-circle wall around Jack--and Maggie, as she ran toward him. She offered him a hand up.

Squeaks grew louder as other rats charged the wall--and there was a nasty sound of gnawing as they attempted to chew through it. The wall was nearly as strong as steel but it was, well, paper thin, and enough of these mutated beasts with concentrated effort would begin to get through it. Other scratches and dents in the wall suggested others had begun to climb. Damn warehouse-like Superior Purchase stores--the ceiling was too high to make a wall that went all the way up with what paper Maggie had available to her.

[ctu_savior]

"Damn it!" Jack allowed himself to be pulled up by Maggie with one hand, while taking the ruined gas mask off with the other. The rat's powerful jaws had chewed up the plastic and rubber and even cracked the goggles. Jack let the mangled equipment drop the floor, and almost gagged from the mingled smell of the Mist mixed with the putrid mutant rat blood staining his clothing.

He ignored it, focused on what had to be done. Jack aimed his pistol at the protective wall where a series of claw marks were working their way upwards as the rats climbed. "Maggie, can you give me a hole to shoot through?"

[origamiguardian]

Maggie nodded."I will. But hold still first," she said. If he allowed it, paper snaked toward him and wrapped around his face, giving him a mask like her own. It wouldn't last very long because she had too much else to concentrate on, but it was at least a stopgap.

She then turned, outstretching her hands and creating a small hole at a bottleneck point between aisles. More paper flew around and toward the wall to keep it intact and as strong as possible outside the hole, to further draw the creatures toward the weak point. One overzealous rat already began clawing its way through the hole, practically propelling itself toward them.

[ctu_savior]

Jack took a breath through his strange but welcome new air filter, then shot the most eager mutant three times in the head. It squealed, twitched, and went limp halfway through the wall. Yet even as it took its last breath it was being hauled backwards, pulled away from the hole by its fellows in their frenzy to get at their enemies. Another rat immediately took its place, lunging towards the ragged, clawmarked opening. Jack shot it twice in the eye. It uttered a horrible cry as it died.

This time its body was left hanging in the hole. The next rat jumped on it as a step, sprang up on to the wall, and scurried upward. Jack could see its malformed feet marking the paper. He raised his pistol and cried out, but before he could do anything the mutant vermin was over the top of the wall and plunging towards them with its teeth bared.

[origamiguardian]

There was a lot happening at once, and the observer--quietly sitting in the back of Maggie's mind while she focused on fueling paper into her constructs--noted she was rusty. And obviously not used to working with people other than her sisters, who could be doing far more damage than one man with a gun, as obviously gifted as Jack was. She made a mental note: if survive, ask to train with police officers.

As the rodent plummeted toward them, Maggie slid toward Jack to physically block him from attack. She worked with snipers (well, Michelle) enough to provide cover without blocking a shot. She couldn't do much more in the way of paper summoning if she was to maintain the wall that kept the bottleneck. The one thing she could do: one more card slid into her hand. It hardened and shone, as if it were metallic and very sharp. It was indeed the latter. She slashed out at the rat in its aerial charge, being sure it could not get from her to Jack. It knocked into her, its claws scrambling for leverage--and gouging into her arms and legs painfully. It thrashed and bit into her shoulder even as she continued to slice into it with the blade. She made a strangled gasp, never fully allowing herself to scream out. Swallow the pain, accept it, keep moving. It shuttered and died at last. Anita she was not. Not that she'd ever want Anita in this kind of situation.

The paper wall shuddered, a few sheets drifting off as she struggled and pushed herself to her knees, but it remained intact. But the wall was only so good a strategy. They needed more offensive power.

If Anita were here...

"Jack," she gasped to him. Her mask had come off and she had not noticed. "Can you ride? One of my familiars?"

[ctu_savior]

"I sure as hell can learn!" Jack put two more shots into the body of the rat that had bitten Maggie, just to be safe. He then took a precious moment to yell into his radio, to tell the ordinary officers outside who were probably wondering about all the shots and crashes not to come in. He and Maggie were having enough trouble without beat cops getting thrown into the mix. Instead, he told them to stand by and be ready to shoot any mutant that came out of the store. If he and Maggie couldn't take all the rats down by themselves, Jack would settle for leading or driving them into a hail of bullets outside.

Once he was done yelling, he looked at Maggie's unmasked face and bleeding shoulder. "Are you all right?:

[origamiguardian]

The answer was automatic. "I'm fine." She stood and held out one hand toward the wall, as if she were holding it up even though it was about 20 feet away. She raised her other hand, palm out, toward Jack. She looked at him. Despite the pain and the absolute disgusting part of being covered in rat blood and her own, there was a glint in her eyes, almost as if she were about to smile. "Hold on."

Paper from the ground, from the magazine section two aisles over, from scattered video game cheat guides on the floor, from everywhere possible, flew toward Maggie and Jack--and then between his legs, lifting him up into the air. "I can't do both at once so..."

She swung her first hand sharply toward her second, the wall suddenly collapsing, some of the paper flying toward the entity forming underneath Jack whilst the rest entangled some of the rats. Beneath Jack was a large form of her earlier wolf creature. "Go!" She shouted, waving her hands like a puppeteer. Whether Jack was ready or not, the wolf charged the crowd of rats, knocking some underneath. Others were falling out of the air from where they had been climbing the well, like clay pigeons ripe for the shooting.

[ctu_savior]

Jack had never experienced anything like this before, but he was nothing if not adaptable. One hand clutched at the folded-up Gamepro guide that formed the scruff of the familiar's neck. The other hand did the shooting, firing with lethal accuracy through the fog and the movement of his ride. One, two, three rats he shot, two in mid-air as they tumbled down from the disintegrating wall, one at point-blank range as the wolf barged through the enemies.

Yet their corrupted and swollen flesh was more resilient than something so diseased had any right to be. One of his targets limped onwards after its prey, another kept squirming and snapping on the floor even as it bled from a fatal wound. Jack fired off the last rounds in his weapon, then took his hand off the wolf to reload, holding on to the charging construct with his legs long enough to slam a new clip home into his warm gun.

Mist swirled around the wolf's product manual feet as it ran. The rats were swarming after him- all of them, as far as he could tell. Their vile reek and piercing squeaks surrounded him as they followed close behind the paper wolf. At least six rats lay dead or dying in the store, yet there were still many more, more than he wanted to deal with.

"Maggie, guide me towards the front!" He yelled, trying to make himself heard through the paper mask on his face and over the pack's squealing "I'm going to draw them outside!" Towards the other officers, who if Jack's message had been obeyed, should have their guns drawn and waiting.