Post-apocalyptic setting

[miltia]

Your character's world has ended and purgatory awaits them, a wasteland full of ruined buildings. The surrounding desert constantly wears down the buildings with a neverending wind. There aren't any monsters to worry about, no zombies or demons, but your characters are haunted by the ghosts of people they once knew and there's only one escape from

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[thatdamnedninja]

"I'm not eating Reno," was the immediate protest. "He tastes gross." Pause, backtrack. "Not that I'd know that, I mean, I'm just guessing. Ew. I won't eat you, either, Elena; your hair goes duck-butt in the morning and obviously that means you're unfit for human consumption." God, she was so tired. Her stomach felt like it was eating itself, or like it'd crawl up and out to devour whatever it fell on first.

Yuffie hunted around with her foot, found another rock. Kicked it so hard that it knocked down the dilapidated remains of a wall, about ten paces away. They'd been out for hours, hunting for another place to sleep since the last one had sorta collapsed all over them. Story of their lives, these days; everything destroyed, one thing crumbling after another. Food was still around but finding something good was almost impossible, and Reno wouldn't be gourmet to anybody except a really, really desperate hooker.

She was an optimist, though. Sort of. She wasn't dead, that was for sure, which was always a plus. She also wasn't totally cuckoo, which was several shades of a complete miracle; Reno and Elena had bumped into her a few days after she'd started talking to Nanaki's ghost.

"Whatever. If we don't find something soon, I'm gonna start eating myself. I know that you both seriously adore me and couldn't bear the guilt of that happening, so let's get going already, okay? Okay, c'mon!" She took off at a run just to prove that--hunger aside--she was still as vigorous and impressive as always, the ghost of RedXIII loping at her heels.

[rookieism]

Elena snorted softly. "Well, thanks for the vote of confidence there." Kisaragi was an odd one sometimes, but she wasn't exactly bad company. Plus, there was something about being tied to a giant stone stone...thing in Wutai with someone that endeared to to them, just a bit. Don Corneo victim solidarity, maybe. Not that there was a Wutai anymore, of course. And Reno and Rude had seen about Don Corneo long before everything had been wiped cleanly off the map.

The (former?) Turk reached for the bag with their food. The convenience store they'd found a few days back had yielded a few untainted bottles of water (worth their weight in gold-dipped diamonds dusted with crack, lately) and some of those packaged snack cakes that everyone had joked about a few years ago. The ones with enough preservatives in them to survive the apocalypse.

Elena tossed one at Yuffie's head. Her aim was, as always, perfect. "We're running out, so that's your sugar ration for the next couple of days. Make it last."

It was amazing what the human body could take, really. She couldn't even remember the last time she'd gotten more than two or three hours of sleep a night or been full or even eaten something with enough vitamin C in it that she wouldn't die of scurvy. She was even still limping after taking a bad fall on their third or fourth day out. And yet, somehow, she was still here. All three of them were.

Somehow.

Elena watched Yuffie start off without them. "Hey, not so fast. Reno, can I get a hand up? Leg's gone kinda stiff." She laughed. "My God, I'm an old lady at twenty-one."

[offduty]

"I taste awesome," Reno replied airily, watching Yuffie run off ahead while the package of compacted sugar sailed after her. He could've run after her, but while Reno was not exactly uncompetitive, that streak was often in contention with his laziness and right now, laziness was winning. Probably had to do with the whole, "I could eat a chocobo and the poor bastard riding on it" thing.

He eyed the remaining snack cakes, but shrugged it off for now. He did have some restraint. Maybe if it'd been spiked with a shot of whiskey, he'd have downed it right away, but as it was, he was willing to ration things out.

"I ain't giving you a piggyback," he said, as he reached down to help her up. "I mean." His lips curved into a smirk. "Unless you really wanna be riding on me."

[thatdamnedninja]

Just before the snack collided with the back of her head, Yuffie whipped around and snatched it out of the air. "Thanks!" She called back, hopping nimbly on top of what was left of a car; she didn't recognize the make, it might have been black at some point but now it was mostly just rust. She bounded from perch to perch, car to car, rubble to rubble. They were getting closer to downtown now. Or, rather, closer to sorry excuse for what was left of downtown.

Here, she skidded to a stop, waiting for the others to catch up. It wasn't like the downtown and its dead bodies littering the sidewalks made her nervous, it was just that the Turks were being way slow; she didn't want them to leave them behind. Yeah. That was it. You get used to bodies after a while, she said to herself. "C'mon!" She hollered again. The wind caught her voice, carried it. Sort of ominously, when the streets were so quiet. "I'm gonna die of boredom before you guys catch up, I swear."

[rookieism]

"Time and place, Reno," Elena replied sweetly, taking his hand and hauling herself up. "I am armed." Sort of. She only had half a clip left, and she still hadn't been able to find more bullets. She might never find more, at this rate.

One of the almost-good things about all the sand and the wind was that the bodies didn't really bloat and rot as much as they would have normally. The desert-like conditions tended to...mummify them. Which sure helped with the stink. Some days it didn't even smell like death.

Unfortunately, today was not one of those days. Elena made sure to breathe through her mouth as she stepped over what might have once been a man; age was impossible to determine with his face all sunk in like that. And that made it easier, in a way. They stopped being human and became objects, like something you might see in a natural history museum.

If those still existed anymore.

She deliberately strolled as slowly as she could towards the waiting ninja. Spending all this time with Reno was rubbing off on her, she could tell.

"Good, then I can eat your cupcake."

[offduty]

When you basically killed people for a living, corpses became common, but those bodies weren't left to rot. Say what you would about Shin-Ra, but they knew how to clean up their messes. There was a difference between putting a bullet in someone (or a few someones, as the case sometimes was) and walking away, and being surrounded by an entire fucking field of dead bodies that'd been picked at by circling vultures and whatever the hell else. Even Reno couldn't deny he was sort of a little bit disturbed by it.

But after awhile, you did kinda get used to sidestepping 'em. What else was there to do? Staring at them wasn't going to make them come alive and frankly, that'd just be a really bad thing at that.

"You would never waste a bullet on me," he announced, confidently despite the fact that he was insulting himself.

He strolled just as slowly beside Elena. Why hurry? There was jack-shit to hurry to. Yuffie could wait.

"I call dibs on eating her," he added, gaze flicking to his left to check for anyone coming at them. Nope. Just Rude, as usual.

Fucker.

[thatdamnedninja]

Damnit, they were doing this on purpose. Yuffie frowned, cramming the cupcake into her mouth because, hey, Elena was threatening--in a roundabout way--to requisition it. From her dead body. Not gonna happen. And Reno, he was threatening to eat her. What was she supposed to say to that, huh? She chewed. Chewed some more. Then swallowed; she was too hungry to actually savour the morsel.

"I'd be too hot for you," was her eventual retort. Unable to stay still for more than a few minutes at a time, she hopped down from what used to be something, but was no longer much of anything. "You could never handle me, not even in your wildest dreams. And Elena wouldn't let you try. Right, 'Lena?" She hop-skipped-jumped (dodged bodies) until she was close enough to circle around them once, reminiscent of her own boomerang-like weapons.

There had to be some place where they could crash for the night. Maybe they'd even be able to find a wrecked convenience store again, or some café or restaurant. Brushing past Reno, she aimed to elbow him lightly in retribution.

[rookieism]

A flash of white caught Elena's eye and she turned toward it without even really meaning to. Huh, well that was new. She hadn't seen Rufus Shin-Ra in...a while. Weeks, probably. She'd even started thinking that the President had given up on haunting his surviving Turks and had found someone else to bother.

No such luck, apparently.

Tseng joined the apparition, hovering over Rufus in death just like he would have in life. As recently as a few days ago the sight might have gotten a reaction, but now she was doing her best to ignore it. Elena figured that she probably ought to mourn them, especially Tseng, but she'd moved beyond that a long time ago. Grief required energy, energy she needed to stay alive.

"You can take her," she said lightly, turning away from the ghosts. "Wutai food gives me heartburn anyway. I'll stick with the cupcakes. Oh, and Kisaragi?" Elena gave Yuffie a not-so-nice smile, but it was all in good fun. Right? "Only Reno's allowed to call me that."

[offduty]

Reno picked up the pace just a bit, if only because lingering wasn't too great of an idea, either. He chewed absently on a fingernail, wishing really damn hard he had a smoke. But that stuff was hard to come by and matches or lighters were better saved for lighting actual fires so their toes didn't fall off from frostbite or whatever.

Maybe not frostbite. It hadn't gotten that cold so far. Yet.

"Nah." He didn't track her movements as she circled them, just kept walking straight ahead. "S'true. You're probably spicy and unsettling."

He shoved his hands in his pockets. He thought about smacking Elena's ass for the hell of it, but she'd probably take off his hand and he needed his hand. So he bumped shoulders with her instead. At least those two weren't biting each other's heads off anymore the way they were at first. Christ, that had been a bitch.

Protip: never come between two women.

"Can I call you cupcake? Pumpkin pie?"

[thatdamnedninja]

Her circle complete, Yuffie settled into walking backwards in front of the two Turks, her arms swinging casually by her sides. Only her impeccable balance--amongst other hella useful ninja skills--kept her from tripping or planting her feet in semi-mummified corpses or decayed things.

"And you guys," she retorted with one jabbed and wagging finger, no longer so bothered by the casual racism, "you're probably ninety-five percent plastic by now, right? You'd be all chewy and gross and you'd get stuck in my throat."

Some Eastern food was pretty good, she'd easily admit. A deep-pan Midgar style pizza with five toppings sounded like heaven on a golden plate. The rest, though, ugh; she could do without some of the other crap that got churned out over there. … Could've done. Now, she wasn't so sure. So she stuck her tongue out at Elena and echoed Reno. "Sweetcheeks? Honey-Muffin?"

[rookieism]

"Nope, sorry," Elena said blithely. "The plastic was all Scarlet. That woman had enough silicone in her breasts that they could be seen from space." There was a fine line (more like a brick wall) between 'generously endowed' and 'my God what are those things,' and Scarlet had crossed it roughly around the time of Elena's birth. Maybe even Reno's.

The Turk responded to Reno and Yuffie's teasing by lifting her t-shirt (not her uniform blouse; that had disintegrated a while ago) far enough to expose the gun stuffed into the waistband of her jeans. "I can hurt you," she reminded them with a nauseatingly sweet smile. She edged closer to Reno and added in her best 'sexy voice,' "I would totally waste a bullet on you, baby."

As if on cue, there was a bang and something whizzed by dangerously close to her ear. Someone else was wasting bullets.

"Shit! Get down!"

[offduty]

Reno snorted. Well, okay, that much was true. But they were nice breasts to look at. Brought a little something special to those so-called Shin-Ra fundraisers that were mostly stuffed with boring people. Scarlet was a bitch from hell, but he couldn't call her dull.

He flashed a grin at her and started to respond, but a shot rang out and that was that.

"Fuck." Goddamn mood killer.

The upside to being in the middle of a flattened city (and he should know; this wasn't the first time a city had gotten completely flattened on his watch) was that there was a really nice bunch of concrete and metal and other shit that you could use for cover. He dropped behind a pile of crisscrossing steel beams and the remnants of a school bus, keeping an eye out for Elena and Yuffie where he could, but generally paying most of his attention about his own ass. Wasn't like they couldn't handle themselves; diverting his attention for no reason was just gonna get them all six feet under.

This usually wouldn't even be a problem--most of these attackers were just punks who didn't know better, easy targets if anything--but they had Elena's gun between the three of them and his knife. Yeah, they were armed to the fucking teeth.

These days, their best shot was taking out only who they had to and booking it the hell outta there when they could, avoid wasting excess ammo. It had to be done.

Didn't mean he still didn't think it sucked complete balls, though. Way easier just to blow holes in everyone. Old habits died hard and Turks didn't make a habit of leaving witnesses. Even when they were forced to cut and run, someone always came back the next day.

[thatdamnedninja]

Who needed ammo and conventional weapons, when you had a ninja who used to kill things with a paper crane? Yuffie wasted no time in slipping behind the tattered remains of an SUV, marking Elena and Reno's positions as she went. Goddamnit. These stupid jerks, these little punks -- they couldn’t be any younger than her! And their aim, gawd, did they even know what they were doing?

Probably not, she thought, snatching the flattest and sharpest bit of suitable metal she could find off the ground. They were young and stupid and desperate, and that didn't make a bit of difference anymore. Yuffie had to survive. The Turks had to survive. Somebody was gonna lose out, here.

A bullet ricocheted two feet to her left. Yuffie didn't wait for another second; she hefted the scrap--all sharp edges, rust, no telling what it might have been at one point--and weighted it, before snapping her wrist around and letting it fly. The path it cut through the air was surprisingly even, and faster than should've been possible for a heavy piece of junk. The attackers were making enough of a racket that she didn't even need to see them to calculate the trajectory.

She didn't want to kill them. Soldiers, yeah, she'd killed them in the past; monsters too, and Leviathan knew what and who else, because the soldiers at least knew exactly what they were getting into. It was their job.

The world didn't work like that anymore, though. Even she understood that.