Night 47: Main Hallway, 2-West

[scientist_skye]

[from here]Once Ema and Agatha made their way upstairs, they were officially in unfamiliar territory. At least, it was unfamiliar to Ema; the girl had no idea where Agatha had and had not been. She figured it was time to check in with the other party. Even if there was an unspoken agreement that Agatha was the leader of the pair, Ema still

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[scientist_skye]

Agatha's answer was not the declaration of confidence that Ema was hoping for. The pair was wandering around the Institute armed with little more than a vague idea that their belongings were upstairs somewhere. Ema had to admit she was disappointed--not in Agatha specifically, but in the situation overall. Perhaps it had been too much to hope that escaping this place was going to be easy.

Movement caught Ema's eye, and she looked over to see three smallish creatures moving toward the pair while hugging the wall. By the time Ema managed to fish her flashlight out and turn it on, the creatures were underfoot. They were... oversized rat things. With claws. And sharp teeth. And a low, ominous noise that wasn't really the sort of noise that rats were supposed to make.

And they were pouncing.

Ema, a failure in all things physical even when not taken completely off-guard, flailed and swung her t-shirt-made-bag at the creature pouncing specifically at her. The jerking movement was enough to prevent the thing from sinking its teeth into her, but unfortunately the girl was not spared its claws; Ema yelped as they sliced down her pant leg, digging just deeply enough into the skin beneath to draw a bit of blood.

Instinctively, Ema stumbled back a few steps in a trembling panic. What kind of a place was this?! These things shouldn't even exist! Monsters like this weren't real! But, scientifically speaking, there was plenty of evidence to the contrary--not least of which being the pain that lingered in her right shin. The thought was both surreal and completely unsettling.

She forced herself to take a few deep breaths to keep herself from hyperventilating and hitting the floor; if she passed out, she was dead. Desperately, Ema turned to her roommate. "Agatha!" The cry was both to make sure the other girl was okay and to get some sort of answer, explanation, anything.

[mistressmadgirl]

Agatha herself was a lot calmer, having expected something- not necessarily this, and not right now, but in general- and having spent the past few months with her kolee Zeetha gleefully beating her senseless at every opportunity to teach her how to respond to a sudden attack. She was already stepping forward with a hand raised by the time she really registered the first aggressive movement, and while her mind was saying What's happening? Well, a couple of big rats seem to want to eat us. I've seen worse, her reflexes were bringing her flashlight down hard on where they expected her rat-thing's skull to be.

Ema didn't sound as if she was doing quite so well, and if there had been time Agatha might have wondered if she should have discussed the possibility of a fight with her before setting out. She had looked a little... sheltered. But at the moment, all there was time for was to yell "Just hit it!" Complicated things could come later.

[damned_monsters]

While the rats had been expecting the two females to be easy prey, due to their lack of weapons and their newness to the building (somehow, the creatures could smell that on them; they were fresh), that was only the case when it came to one of them. The rat that had gone after Ema let out that noise again as only its claws reached her. Its bulky weight had sent it sliding down her leg, ripping at skin and cloth before she backed away from it.

Agatha, on the other hand, managed to bean the second rat exactly where she meant to. It let out a much more pitiful sound as its body crumpled to the floor. The rat's bones were not made of the strongest stuff, and so the monster's brain was successfully crushed.

The third one had managed to assess the situation as much as its small mind was capable of doing, meaning that it had targeted Ema as the easier mark. It joined in with the first one as they both ran for her as a pair, each one launching itself at the girl's two legs, hoping to actually get bites in this time.

[scientist_skye]

There was a third one?! How had Ema missed that?

Unfortunately, that meant that Ema was now being attacked by two bloodthirsty little monsters instead of one--like any predatory animal, they had decided to target the weaker of the two. It didn't take much cognitive ability to figure out that it was a better idea to go after the bleeding girl over the one who had already killed one of them.

Agatha's shouted advice somehow registered through the fog of Ema's panic, and not a moment too soon. Ema gripped her flashlight with all the strength she could muster and wildly swung at the rat on her right (her dominant side). She missed at least once, hitting her own leg hard enough to bruise, but she kept swinging at it several times in hopes that something would connect.

In the meantime, her left leg was left largely unguarded, allowing the third rat to sink its teeth in. In pain and in panic, Ema screamed.

[mistressmadgirl]

"Hah!" Agatha exulted as she felt the thing's bone give way. From the way everyone had talked about the monsters, she'd expected them to be tough, but there were scarier things than that in her own kitchen. Much scarier, actually, given that her kitchen was part of Castle Heterodyne, but that was beside the point.

The sense of triumph drained away rather quickly, though, at the pained scream that reached her ears next. Ema really wasn't doing well.

Agatha raised her light again, this time with her left hand, in order to see better; kinesthesia had helped with her own assailant, but it wouldn't with Ema's. The thing was dimmer now, whether because she'd jarred something loose by fighting with it or just because it was dirty now with blood and hair, but she could see well enough to spot that there were two of the ugly beasts.

Ema was already going after one of them with commendable enthusiasm, if not technique, so Agatha reached for the other in hopes of pulling it off her. The angle wasn't really the best for clubbing this one right away.

[damned_monsters]

While Ema's swings weren't nearly as precise as Agatha's, eventually one of her strikes did hit. It got the rat in the belly, tossing it up into the air and away from her until it finally hit the floor on its side. While some of its internal organs were likely ruptured, she hadn't instantly killed this one. It slowly, painfully started to drag itself back up to its feet, hungering for flesh above all else.

The other rat had happily been biting whatever bit of flesh it could get at, using its claws to try and climb up Ema's leg to her meatier thigh. Just as it was about to sink its teeth in there, however, a hand seized it. It squeaked (a sound more befitting of a rat this time) in surprise and flailed in the girl's hand, swiping with its claws and gnashing its teeth as it tried to get out of her grip.

[scientist_skye]

Almost as soon as the creatures were on her they were off. Ema's strikes had managed to knock one of the rats away, and Agatha had managed to pry off the second. Even if she was wounded and bleeding from both legs now, the immediate threat had been curtailed for the moment.

Ema was practically running on instinct at this point. There would be no Neil Marshall to come save them, no convenient flash of lightning to illuminate the dark hallway so she could see exactly what was going on. Ema was wounded and the two girls were left to fight this battle on their own. This was officially worse than that night in the office with Joe Darke...

No. Ema couldn't waste her time thinking about that now. Curling up and crying out her trauma could wait; currently Ema had to worry about making sure the rats went down for the count and stayed there. Survival had to come first, for everyone else's sake as well as her own.

She shined her flashlight on the creature she had managed to knock away. It was still moving, but slowly--Ema had successfully wounded it. Good. Moving with a limp and gritting her teeth in pain, she slowly approached the creature and hoped that it was injured enough not to pounce. Once she was close enough for it to matter, Ema hoisted her flashlight above her head with both arms and brought it down hard, aiming for the rat's head.

[mistressmadgirl]

Agatha's was thrashing with impressive strength for its size, and it actually managed to inflict a stinging scratch on her fingers, but she only gripped it tighter and went to bash it against the nearest wall.

She wanted to see to Ema, and make sure yet another person hadn't been hurt- or, since she thought she'd seen blood, not badly hurt- because she'd followed her, but of course doing that with a big rat-thing in her hand would probably be counterproductive at the very least.

[damned_monsters]

The injured rat had only just gotten back to its feet when it found itself assaulted by the brightness of the girl's flashlight. Light was one thing that these rodents despised, and it let out a panicked screech as it tried to get out of the way. That instinct to flee meant that it was able to dodge the hit from the girl's flashlight, and yet its body was growing weaker by the minute from the internal bleeding due to that first strike.

It chose to instead run for Agatha, who was distracted by the other rat, coming up behind her and latching onto her calf, hoping to dig in with claws and teeth if possible.

The one in the girl's hand took the hit to the wall, letting out another pained noise as it continued to scratch and bite at her hand with all the desperation of a cornered animal. Its body was also weakened now, but eventually it wrenched free of Agatha's grip and fell to the floor.

That one, at least, was smart enough to run away, escaping into the shadows for now.

[scientist_skye]

Not only did Ema manage to completely miss the rat and smash her flashlight to pieces against the floor, but the force of the swing was enough to cause the girl to tumble forward. The loss of balance wasn't helped at all by her injuries, and Ema fell practically face-first into the floor. That hurt.

Ema scrambled to sit up, tears of pain and frustration stinging in her eyes. She looked back at her companion and saw one rat scampering off into the darkness down the hall while the other was pouncing.

"Agatha!" Screaming a warning was the only thing Ema could manage, given the circumstances.

[mistressmadgirl]

Ema's shout just about coincided with the first tickle of rat-thing whiskers, and together they constituted just enough warning for Agatha to stop trying to track the progress of the one she'd dropped (not much point, anyway; if it had decided they were more trouble than they were worth, that was good enough for her) and draw that leg quickly forward, hoping to deny it purchase long enough to stomp it.

Inwardly, she cursed the idiot footwear they'd been provided. Her own boots weren't exactly armor, but they'd have given a rat a bit more pause and a lot less traction than these lightweight things.

[damned_monsters]

The rat managed to claw out at the girl's ankle, but only reached that much before her leg was pulled out of the way. It fell to the floor, suffering from its earlier wounds, and was no longer agile enough to step out of the way when Agatha's foot came down onto it.

Pinned to the floor, it squeaked and scrabbled with its claws, desperately trying to get away.

[scientist_skye]

It was a good thing Agatha managed to get the creature pinned, since Ema was officially useless as a battle partner.

The girl was aware of things like pain and blood loss, but her top priority was to calm down and regulate her breathing while Agatha finished the last of the three rats off. If she hyperventilated, she would faint. If she fainted, she would be leaving Agatha alone. If she left Agatha alone, all sorts of terrible things might happen that Ema couldn't help with.

Not that she had been any good with this.

But for now, the pair of them were alive. Bleeding--Ema moreso than Agatha--but alive. Ema clung to that thought. It was the only thing she could hold onto, and it did in fact help keep her mind away from other, darker things.

[mistressmadgirl]

As Agatha ground her heel down till the rat stopped moving, she was also making quick flashlight scan of the area. It didn't reveal any more immediate unpleasantness, so once the thing was still she hurried over to Ema.

"Are you all right?" she asked, with a businesslike demeanor that took some effort to put on. She should have asked if the girl knew how to defend herself before inviting her along. Failing that, she should have kept a better eye on her.

Failing both of those, she was going to make sure Ema came out of this all right.

[scientist_skye]

Ema wiped at one of her eyes with the heel of her hand. Her tears weren't coming in racking sobs, but they were still a bothersome development; it was bad enough that Ema had shown herself to be completely useless. She didn't need the embarrassment of crying on top of all that. Agatha's down-to-business demeanor was, amazingly enough, a big help. It forced Ema to focus, and it wasn't so coldly delivered that Ema felt uncared for.

Doing her best to remain composed--and still comforting herself with the thought that neither girl was dead--Ema shook her head a little. "The first one got a pretty good slash down my right leg, and the second bit me and scratched my leg up when it climbed my pants. I... I don't know how bad it is, but it really hurts." Her cadence was only occasionally interrupted with choking noises and sniffles. It wasn't ideal, but it was better than being completely out of her mind with hysterics.

"You... you said there was a bathroom downstairs?" There was no point in drawing conclusions without proper data. Ema needed to get a better look at her injuries before deciding if she was in danger from them or not.

[mistressmadgirl]

Under other circumstances, Agatha might have found weepiness to be annoying, but Ema was so clearly doing her best to be helpful that that reaction didn't even cross her mind. She just nodded at the question, then wondered if that gesture would be recognized in the low light and added "Yes. I didn't get a good look at it, but at least there were definitely sinks."

She didn't have to wonder what Ema had brought it up for, not after her close call with the Resplendent Immolation. If you had to name an animal that could leave a filthy wound, the rat would be high on the list. "You can walk there, right?" Agatha added; she was pretty confident of her ability to carry Ema, or to handle more of the same kind of assailants, but not both at once.