Nightshift 28: Bus 2

[misterprince]

Sanji was blinking furiously, trying to figure out why he still felt awake though everything was dark. The sedatives, just recently injected into his system, were working full force and he was having difficulty figuring out which way was up and down. All the sounds were reminiscent of something out of a nightmare. Was that what this was

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[at_patera]

While he had been silent for most of the bus ride back, allowing Farfarello and Schuldig their time together, Crawford had felt a strange sense of foreboding since setting foot on the bus. It wasn't an unfamiliar sensation, as being able to see the future had granted him dominion over it, but this was not the foreboding that came with a vision. It was the foreboding that came with realizing something bad was bound to happen.

The sun was setting, he realized halfway back. They were never going to make it back to the institute before the sun set.

His suspicions were confirmed when everything went black and the screaming started. His instincts reacting immediately to the realization that they were now trapped on the bus with the demons that normally plagued the institute, Crawford stood up and narrowed his eyes in the darkness.

"Schuldig. Farfarello." The chaos that was ensuing around him, both in front and in back, was giving him opportunities to think. "We can either stay and fight, or get off the bus and get back into the institute ... or try to find a way around it." Fighting in an enclosed space like this was not a good idea, but if they wanted to stay, he'd try to coordinate from where he was.

But he was unarmed, damn it. The pipes were back in his room.

[k4t4str0ph4l]

Schuldig was getting the exact same chaotic input from several dozen different minds, all at once - things had gone to hell. The confusion was so immediate, so disorienting even inside the minds it belonged to, that Schuldig had to rest his forehead on the back of the seat in front of him, however briefly and however dangerously open this left him to attack, simply to focus enough to prevent himself from being overwhelmed.

It would have been roughly like seeing a few dozen jumbled jigsaw puzzles through other people's eyes, except that usually jigsaw puzzles didn't involve cramped buses, lots of screaming, and monsters trying to kill you. Too bad; that might almost make jigsaw puzzles interesting.

Once he'd recovered from the initial shock, the sound of Crawford's voice penetrated - their leader wasn't yelling, but he was the sort of man who didn't have to yell to be heard, no matter what the noise level. The things he said simply found their way to the ears they were meant for, regardless of the ambient noise level they had to wade through. He slid out of his seat and was by Crawford's side the next moment.

"No sense staying in here," he remarked, gaze sliding over the chaos of the bus until they landed on the hole in the side. "Not when there's already a way out. We can fight outside, if we have to, but I don't think even Farfarello wants to fight in a bus aisle. As for what we do once we're off...you're the leader, Crawford." This was said surprisingly directly; when crunch time came, Schuldig was surprisingly willing to acknowledge Crawford's authority...or, at least, it was surprising to anyone who wasn't familiar with the Schwarz dynamic and who'd only seen Schuldig at his snarky, uncooperative, independent worst best.

[jei]

"Yeah, fuck this. Like fish in a barrel, no fun at all." Farfarello joined Schuldig and Crawford, putting himself in the lead position out of habit--he was the team tank, after all, and in the front was where he'd absorb the most damage. "You got the rear, bossman?" What went without saying was that in these cramped quarters full of panicky people, Schuldig was the one most vulnerable and therefore the one needing the protection of the middle position.

Without waiting for an answer, as the question had been largely rhetorical anyway, Farfarello started pushing his way towards the big hole in the bus wall. He was by no means gentle--using elbows, fists and even the occasional kick if someone was in his way. He wanted himself and Schuldig out of this mess as soon as possible.

[at_patera]

Crawford nodded. Good. The hole in the side of the bus was ... well, he wasn't entirely sure how it got there, but it was enough for him. It was a way out. Without another word, he fell into the rear, keeping Schuldig between himself and Farfarello as they made their way through the chaos to the hole.

The second they got there, first Farfarello and then Schuldig slipped through, vanishing into the darkness outside. Crawford didn't hesitate to look around and see if anything was happening around him; he pushed his way through the gaping hole in the bus and joined the other two outside.

((Tumbling to here.))