Nightshift 42: Tasty Burger Rooftop
[ Bamf'd from here!In a puff of sulfuric smoke, Kurt and Peter's friend touched down on the roof of the Tasty Burger. Kurt had made an attempt to shift his body underneath the injured boy's, but after teleporting he felt as though he'd been run through the dryer. His knees wobbled and the two of them went crashing to the ground, Kurt clearly out
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With Kurt and Peter gone, Brainiac 5 suddenly felt less certain about remaining here, on the roof and in the open, on his own. While he knew logically that it was incredibly unlikely that Grell or Luxord would find him up here - but hadn't he told himself that before and been wrong? - and that the area was open enough that he could keep an eye on his surroundings, he still would have felt somewhat... safer to have a wall or something to his back. It would help rid him of the pricking sensation at the back of his neck at any rate.
It wasn't easy, but he managed to draw himself up, balancing with difficulty on his uninjured foot and trying to keep the weight off the other as much as possible. He managed a couple of limping, not-quite steps towards the air-conditioning unit Kurt had pointed out earlier before he slipped and went down with a muffled yelp.
Brainiac 5 lay still for a moment, gritting his teeth at the pain and pointedly telling himself that he was not, under any circumstances, feeling the prickle of tears at his eyes. He was in control of this. He was.
He had started to work at getting back up, despite the pain in his shoulder, back, and side, when the hitherto unnoticed door leading down into the building scraped open with a shriek of stiff hinges. Brainiac 5 froze, his breath hitching slightly as he wondered frantically if he'd be wrong once more, and that by some sort of sick twist of fate, Grell and Luxord were coming to this very rooftop as well.
There was a whimpering noise that wasn't him - it couldn't be, he had more control than that - as the door swung open wider and one of the creatures lurched out into the night air.
It had been female before, and was wearing a uniform in the same colours that dominated the rest of the building. But while a distant, tiny part of his mind might have noted objectively that it made sense for the thing to find its way up here, driven by instinct and no doubt being in the storage areas of the store at the time, the rest of his mind focused on the long red hair hanging in scraggly knots from the zombie's head.
He didn't even think beyond that. A gasped shriek of terror tore free from his throat and Brainiac 5 scrabbled away from the creature, panic overriding pain and keeping him moving until his back came up hard against the air conditioning unit and he was forced to realise there was nowhere else to run.
Not that it would have done much anyway, as his shriek and desperate attempt to get away from the zombie had only drawn its attention and it bore down on him, blocking the door that was the only method of escape.
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His struggle was interrupted by a shriek that drew his attention towards the air condition unit in the roof. It seemed that fate once again had a cruel sense of humor. Aside from having him to deal with the undead for the night, he was now having an inconvenient and unpleasant run-in with one of his least favorite patients thus far.
Oh yes, he remembered the boy quite well. Whiny and sniveling seemed to sum him up rather simply along with the phrases "headache-inducing" and "definitely belongs in a mental institution."
Nonetheless, Ciel had no intention of letting the boy be harmed. He was just as much of a victim of the terrors of Landel's as they all were. There was no cause for him to die here at the hands of such disgusting creatures.
"Sebastian, don't let it eat that boy," he ordered before his face scrunched up in a petulant expression, "and put me down already!"
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A scream sounded, and Sebastian's eyes fell on a short, blond-haired boy with a thin frame and numerous wrapped injuries. He hardly seemed mobile, but none of that was Sebastian's concern until Ciel commanded. In a manner of speaking, his master's orders had been to first keep the boy from being eaten, and then put Master Ciel down...but Sebastian would give him the benefit of the doubt. It was unlikely that Master Ciel would look favorably upon being drenched in undead slime again, no matter how careful Sebastian was while making his blows to avoid it.
The butler set the noble down with a gentle but brisk motion of the arm before leaping into the air again, this time aiming with his heel. The boot's bottom came down with a loud crack on the red-haired zombie's skull, and Sebastian for a moment balanced with one leg, perfectly still, upon the cradle of that crushed and concave shell of bone. A blink, and then Sebastian had leapt off, kicking again across the width of the corpse's torso, shattering the spinal cord.
The boy was safe, and on top of that, unmarred by flecks of dead flesh or bone. Sebastian'd aimed the blows away from the stranger in an act of simple courtesy.
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But something about the shambling thing coming for him with its long red hair just... broke that control effortlessly. Like it hadn't even meant anything to begin with. He couldn't even think beyond his own terror, and almost missed a familiar voice saying something behind the creature.
And then, before he even really had time to process what was happening, the zombie collapsed, its head shattering with a sickening noise under the boot of another man. Another swift, brutal kick ended it, and Brainiac 5 blinked in shock at the corpse then up at his rescuer.
"I- thank you..."
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Ciel's eye fell back on Brainiac 5 as he approached him, visibly checking for any outside wounds. He appeared to have survived relatively unscathed thus far, something he couldn't even say for himself, even with Sebastian's help.
There were still more resounding groans from the ground below, confirming his suspicion that they would have more visitors soon, but moving would probably not be any safer than remaining here when all the buildings were invaded by these creatures. They would just have to stay awake and vigilant and fight them off until the end of the night ...unless this nightmare chose to persist longer.
"What are you doing here alone?" Ciel snapped at Brainiac, "Do you intend to get yourself killed?"
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While not evident from his words alone, the butler knew his master well enough to sense the indelicate irritation that could only be provoked by prior acquaintance. He wasn't surprised; there was an aura of familiarity around the boy that Sebastian was beginning to recognize. A mark, if the term could be used so loosely...a mark that suddenly clicked into place with all the Sebastian had read on the bulletin but yesterday.
...ah. The corpse's hair was red.
That would explain the terror.
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That voice was all too familiar. His head jerked up and any vulnerability in his expression was quickly gone, replaced by an irritated look that matched the one of the boy facing him.
"Of course not," he shot back. "My roommate believed that leaving me here would be... safer." He hated having to admit that he needed protecting, but considering his current appearance, it would have been pointless to pretend otherwise.
"It would seem he was mistaken in that assumption. What are you doing here? And more importantly, how did you get here?" he asked, and while the question was directed at the other boy, his eyes were fixed on the stranger. He was beginning to wonder exactly how many metahumans, aliens, and others had been keeping their abilities secret here.
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Not that he'd particularly blame whoever was unfortunate to have inherited Brainiac 5 as a roommate. Ciel himself couldn't imagine having to wake up to that voice whining at him every morning. He was fairly sure it would drive any normal person insane.
Luckily, that wasn't the case, and as much as Ciel wasn't fond of him, this boy still had a lot of unfortunate connections to Grell Sutcliff. He'd have to continue to keep an eye on him if he hoped to prevent him from dying at the death god's hands. It was also very apparent that he had no combat skills whatsoever and could do little more against those creatures than scream in terror.
"And this-" Ciel continued, direction his gaze to Sebastian, "is an acquaintance of mine I met on the bus this morning. Dorian Gray... was it?"
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It was the only cue Sebastian needed. The butler caught his master's gaze and responded with a faint, amused smile, the lines of his shoulders shifting so quickly that even the most attentive of observers could not be sure whether his form had been truly altered.
"At your service," Sebastian replied smoothly, making a short, almost playful bow in Brainiac 5's direction. The same words, but used in a different context and tone; he had a sense Master Ciel would not appreciate it.
"This must be a sort of fate, to have run into each other twice on our day of meeting. Fortunate, as well."
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"Not that I object to the... assistance," he added, though it was clearly directed at Dorian. "But it's unusual, especially considering how you..."
He glanced back down at the corpse as though he'd only just remembered how close at hand it was and recoiled slightly. His position - sitting in a sort of heap on the ground near the thing, his clothing splattered with blood and who knew what else - also struck him at that moment and his face flushed slightly. It was bad enough that Christian had been there when he'd needed help, but being seen like this afterwards managed to make it worse somehow.
Deciding that at the very least he could prove he was capable of standing on his own, Brainiac 5 forced himself up and away from the remains of the zombie, all the while trying not to seem too dependent on his surroundings for support.
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He didn't bother pointing out that it was under his orders. He didn't want Brainiac 5 to get any ideas that Ciel might actually have even a modicum of concern for him.
The blood on Brainiac 5's person didn't faze him. He wasn't in a better state himself, though thankfully most of it wasn't his own. If he was injured, he'd just have to deal with it until morning since it was rather unlikely that they would be able to find any medical supplies at the moment.
He hadn't seen any clinics while walking around, and the nurses all seemed to have disappeared, something he had taken note of the previous night shift. Considering they'd kept such a close eye on all of the patients during the day, their absence proved unusual. Had they been killed or where they orchestrating these events? The latter option was his best bet. If they'd been the ones unleashing the monsters while they were in the institution, what would stop them from doing so outside of it?
"Do you know anything about the likely causes of this invasion?"
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Brainiac 5...the one so eager to deny the existence of gods. There was nothing interesting about the inflexibility of his mind, nor the persistent ignorance he seemed almost to take pride in. For all his claims of superiority, his flaws were strikingly human. Even had his world no gods, whatever creator that had made him clearly shared commonalities with theirs. Sebastian wondered just how much Ciel knew of the boy's past, and how long his master's generosity would last. While naive, Brainiac 5's intelligence was clearly on a different level from most human beings', and already the boy was shooting suspicious glances at Sebastian as if he desired to drain from the butler secrets of biology.
The expression on the butler's face went unchanged, but he kept Ciel Phantomhive at the center of his gaze. There were still corpses present, after all, and Sebastian would venture a guess that without his assistance, their interruptions would be both frequent and noisy.
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Again, while the question was directed to Christian, Brainiac 5 was more interested in Dorian. He was likely a metahuman, which normally wouldn't have gotten much attention or interest from him, but the fact that the other man was largely silent the entire time, leaving Christian to do most of the talking seemed unusual.
There was a chance he was simply not interesting in the conversation, but...
His gaze flicked over to Christian for a moment at the question. "Beyond what can be understood from typical horror movies?"
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Being that Ciel was only supposed to have met Sebastian that morning as Christian, he wouldn't know much about the source of his powers or what he was capable of entirely, so he'd have to feign ignorance in this regard. His eye once again glanced in Sebastian's direction.
"I'm not entirely sure what happened... or how we had managed to get up here..."
He fixed a clueless expression on his face as if he himself didn't understand exactly what was going on here. He knew he could count on Sebastian to come up with a reasonable explanation.
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There was a loud, piercing creak of a noise from behind him. As if by fate, one more corpse had come up directly behind the butler, arms stretched out in what was vaguely reminiscent of a desirous embrace. Sebastian's eyes glowed faintly as it approached.
"I studied boxing when I was younger," Sebastian replied without interrupting the flow or tone of conversation. In the second before the corpse bit down, the butler turned, kicked his leg up in a straight 180-degree angle, and brought his foot down on the corpses's head. When he was done, Sebastian was standing with one leg propped upon a veritable puddle-mess of rotting remains, but otherwise with the same relaxed stance as before.
"As for how we came onto the roof, the ladder should be with the group near the Grocer's now. Unless some other patient took it."
He shot an openly amused look to Ciel now, eyes teasing.
"You mustn't think ill of me for carrying you with me, Christian. As a gentleman, I would have done the same for any lady or child that had fainted."
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But all the same, he was almost one hundred percent certain he'd seen Dorian's eyes glowing a moment ago, much like Grell's had...
Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to keep an eye on him, just to be certain.
"My apologies," he said eventually. "It seems that with what's been happening tonight, I got a little too... suspicious." He managed a small smile. "I am grateful for your assistance, however."
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