Who said anything about being missing in action?

[secondcity_npc]

Characters: NPCs and you!
Time: Wednesday, after sunset
Location: Oriental Theatre (Ford Center for the Performing Arts), ANYWHERE ELSE YOU WANT Jump into one of the later threads if you want a vamp attack!
Content: Remember those missing people? Maybe you can find them!
Format: Whichever you prefer
Warnings: Vampires.

Comments

[secondcity_npc]

The young woman stopped at the sound and looked up at the two men approaching. Her hand fell to her side, and something soft and furry dropped noiselessly to the ground. "I'm hungry," she whimpered through dry, loose lips.

[johntaylor_pi]

Dammit. It really sucked not having his reputation here. Back home they'd be more likely to go with him than worry about something else...or at least run away screaming. John sighed, he didn't have it in him to walk away. Maybe the kid was right and the woman needed help. John had a feeling that wasn't the case, women who smelled like blood and needed help tended to scream. This one wasn't doing that.

He didn't like this at all. While Mr. Helpful ran over to check on her, John noticed something drop from her hand to the ground. It looked like fur. John wondered why a woman was just carrying that around. He approached her cautiously, hands in his pockets and ready for things to go south (call him paranoid, go ahead). "We were just going to grab something. Want to join us?" He tried to get closer so that he could put himself between the kid and the woman. After all, he was pretty sure the kid didn't have a protective coat and minor healing abilities.

[outtabubblegum]

Harry really hated having to rely on electronics to figure out what was going on in this insane city. Checking the phone every day was far from first nature for him, and so it seemed he was constantly playing catch up.

Staff in hand, he headed into the theater looking for the crowd that had trundled off at the first sign of a mystery. Honestly, did no one look before they leaped anymore? Wait, there was one of the groups now. Two men he vaguely recognized, and a young girl who seemed upset, which instantly set off all sorts of bells in Harry's head. "Is everyone alright here? Seems I'm a little late to the party."

[secondcity_npc]

He stopped within a few feet of her, slowing to more cautious pace. Slowly, his eyes fell to the ground to where the woman had dropped... something. He kept on looking as the... thing quivered slightly - it was a rat. And despite its coarse fur, there were some very apparent marking by its neck.

As if someone had attempted to take a bite out of it.

He looked up at the woman in alarm. "Um..."

[crossgrave]

He'd come looking to find the loss person, treading cautiously through the theater. It was as alien as the rest of Chicago. Nothing was as he remembered it to be last time he'd come here on a mission. ...the device at least meant he wasn't getting lost anytime soon. That did him little good when he rounded the corner to be slammed with the scent of rot. The scene before him with the three men and the woman made him feel wary when he approached with a polite nod.

He paused a reasonable distance of the woman, he left hand held out just enough in case he needed to use claw or sword form of his weapon. His eye couldn't detect the danger, but that didn't mean it wasn't there. "Evening." He spoke quietly and fixed the alarmed man with a smile that didn't reach him eyes. "Sir, I think you might want to step back away from her."

[secondcity_npc]

Up close, it was obvious that something was wrong with the young woman. Her skin seemed eerily slack, with a deathly pallor and the scent of rotting meet. She tensed at the small crowd that had gathered around her, her nostrils flaring as she scented blood. With a wordless cry she sprang with lightning speed towards the one closest to her, teeth bared.

[johntaylor_pi]

Well, this was turning into a real party. John hadn't expected tag-a-longs but it looked like he was getting them in the form of a tall bloke in a duster and a younger man with white hair and a strange marking on his face. Right, these were people from the network. He recognized them as Harry and Allen. Well, at least they had experience (or so they claimed).

Just as he was about to tell them both that he had this under control the woman made her move. John acted on instinct, shoving the man with the 50's hairdo out of the way and pulling from his pocket a bag of pepper that he threw in the woman's face as he also moved out of the way. Hey, it might not be holy water, but he was pretty sure even a vampire was going to have an issue with a nose, mouth, and eyes full of pepper. Plus, it'd by him time to find more things in his pockets since the pepper had been the first thing he found. "I told you we should have just gone to get a drink," he shouted at the young 50s man.

[outtabubblegum]

Too slow, too damn slow.

Even as Harry conversed with the other men his mind had already begun to put the pieces of the puzzle together, to take the various seemingly unconnected details of the environment and people and see what they were trying to tell him.

There was something wrong with the girl, that was clear. Sickness possibly, but then what was she doing here? And why did the air smell faintly of death? Now that he could focus on her, Harry noticed the way her skin was starting to sag, the lack of breath, the cracking of her lips, as if her body had simply begun to cease functioning, yet continue to move. Now he understood the warning bells the girl had set off had not been from chivalry, they had been his senses trying to tell him something was very very wrong with this girl.

No, she wasn't a girl anymore.

Fear shot through the wizard, and even as the rat hit the floor he was moving, trying to warn the others they needed to get back now, but he was too thrice damned slow to head off the vampire's strike. The good news was that John was closer and faster than he was. The bad news was that the other man's action was about as effective as using a squirt gun on a tank.

After all, vampires didn't need to breath.

"Get back!" he roared, thrusting his staff out and pumping too much of his meager reserves into a spell as he yelled, "Forzare!" sending a blast of force slamming into the girl. Stars and stones, she couldn't be older than twenty...

No, not her, it! He couldn't forget what this thing was, because if he did then every single person here was dead. If his guess was correct, then there was no way his spell would do more to this monster than slow it down. They needed to move fast, because running or hesitating would get them very dead. "Does anyone have a holy symbol or garlic?"

[secondcity_npc]

He didn't react quickly when the girl lurched at him, and would have most definitely been dead if John hadn't abruptly shoved him out the way - he stumbled onto the road, blinking in surprise. Catching himself, he turned to see not just pepper go flying but a gust of wind strong enough to send him stumbling back a few more steps.

It seemed to take him a minute to grasp Harry's words, but he began digging through his pockets, searching for something, anything that could be useful against the vampire.

[crossgrave]

Allen was in motion the moment the vampire was, his left hand not yet invoked into the deadly weapon it could be. He dropped down when the pepper was flung and cursed the drop in his speed. He wouldn't have made it in time to prevent the woman from doing something horrid to the innocent man. His arm changed before Harry was finished attacking.

His sword would be too slow despite how quickly he could move. The boy rolled on his feet, coming up with Crowned clown's cloak settling around him. He darted toward the dead with Innocence enhanced speed (yet it felt less than it should be). The claw came upward in a smooth arc. The Edge End attack seared out holy energy in his slashing motion. A girl's corpse used like that, it made his teeth grit.

Putting too much power into the slash could cost him when he might need the energy most. Regardless of the vamp's response he was hopping back out of the way, charging energy in his claws for another attack and circling cautiously.

[secondcity_npc]

The faceful of pepper did nothing to deter the young vampire, who only snarled with mindless hunger as Jamie was shoved unceremoniously out of her reach. Seemingly by instinct, she dove for John, the motion ungainly and clumsy, as if she were unused to moving her body, but still inhumanly fast, her drying lips peeled back from her teeth.

If she had been standing still, the blast of magic would have taken her in the chest, sending her flying back into the wall, but she had been moving, and the blow caught the young vampire's on the shoulder, throwing her off-balance. Her dark hair, lank and already beginning to come out in chunks, fell over her face as she spun wildly from the magical blow, her opposite side pierced by holy power at Allen's swing. "I'm hungry!" It would have been pitiable, how those words were whimpered in such a lost tone of voice, if the vampire wasn't already struggling back to its feet, reaching for them, its left arm torn to shreds by their attack.

[johntaylor_pi]

John looked up in time to see he was about to get a face-full of vampire when suddenly she was blasted away by the combined strength of Allen and Harry. Well, that was helpful. He wasn't sure what sort of holy symbols he'd have on him, that wasn't really John's thing. He didn't like to show favorites on the Street of the Gods after all. He thought he might have something along the lines of garlic though. He was glad Harry had said something, John hadn't known what kind of vampire they were dealing with or if it even was a vampire. That was the confusing thing about alternate realities he supposed.

To anyone else the woman rotting before their eyes might have seemed disturbing but for John it wasn't much. He worked with Dead Boy on a regular basis and compared to him this woman might actually win a beauty contest. Dead Boy would probably kill hate him for thinking that though.

"Sorry lady but we're not giving any hand outs today," John retorted, reaching in the right pocket and pulling out a small canister. It looked like it belonged on a spice rack and it probably did...since it was powdered garlic. "I did bring some seasonings though, probably used too much pepper so we'll have to fix that," John was mostly talking to himself. His friends often accused him of talking too much. John popped off the lid, dumped a nice amount of powder in his hands, then made sure to give the vampire bitch a face full.

[outtabubblegum]

That whimper cut into Harry's heart, and he knew he would never forget this girl's face, placing the image of her final moments alongside all the other innocents he had failed. It wasn't this girl's fault that she had stumbled across a monster, and been remade into one, losing all the life she still should have had ahead of her. Yet, all the pity and compassion in the world could not change what had been done to her, and could not turn her back to what she once was. All he could do now was give her peace, before she lost what little humanity she had left to the hunger inside her.

'And what makes her different from Thomas?'

That was a good question, but one he could not afford to ask right now, not if anyone wanted to get out of this fight alive. So he did what he had to, he damned himself once again, and threw himself into the fight.

"I'm not even going to ask why your coat has a spice rack in it," he quipped, using humor to cover his fear and pain. "Everyone back up!" He didn't have enough power for a full on fire spell, and even if he did without his blasting rod he risked just setting everyone on fire, so instead he did something a little different. Instead of just channeling the flame into a raw blast, he instead gathered the power into his hand like a collection of embers, each one a potential blaze, but not possessing enough power to turn into the inferno of his usual spell. Then, once the spell was gathered, he wound back his hand and hurled the gathered flicks of flame forward like a ball of ashes right into the vampire's path, anchoring his spell with the words, "favilla fuego!"

The magic would not be enough to set the vampire on fire, but it might catch on her clothes and distract and confuse her. Maybe that could buy them some breathing room.

[secondcity_npc]

He watched the goings-on, wide-eyed, his search for something helpful having come to a halt. A look of sadness crossed his face at the vampire's pitiful whimper, and he shook his head sadly, as if arguing to himself about a conclusion already forgone.

At Harry's shout, he backed up a few more steps even as fire lanced through the air, some of the burning embers falling to the ground as it sped towards the unfortunate vampire.

Something strange happened. Somewhere along the way between the magic leaving Harry's hand and its final target, specks of silvery motes wove through the magic, strengthening it to a force that Harry himself would not have been able to conjure. It caused the red and gold and yellow sparks to burn to a dazzling white right before the magic finally found its target.

[crossgrave]

I'm hungry. Allen had heard those words spoken so many times since he swore to follow the path of an Exorcist. It used to tear at his heart, to a degree it still did. It was similar to the souls chained within the bodies of their loved ones, crying tears of love and sorrow. Both were sorrowful beings that he would use his weapon to save. Yet the woman, the creature she had become - were dead, bound to a unlife she would not have wanted. He couldn't give her back her life. Like an Akuma...he could only give her liberation from pain through destruction. The woman she could have been before she was killed, was gone. All he could do for her was this to save her from further misery.

He understood that as he hopped back, activating his cursed eye. He'd leave the man speaking words and casting power out to the creature. He wanted to make sure nothing got the drop on them. He hadn't encountered a battle this easy in a long time. Naturally, he didn't trust things to go from mild to near insurmountably bad. But he hadn't counted on it coming from the power the caster used.

His eyes widened when the flickers strengthened and put himself between that power and the other two men. He kept a reasonable distance from it reminded of his friend Lavi's flame seal (hopefully the gentleman didn't have the perchance for property damage Lavi and his massive hammer did). He tensed and waited to see the results. It all depended on if the attack would just take out the vampire or spread out. Or was this spell naturally strengthened by the caster? He wasn't sure. Thus he waited, and defended the other two.

[secondcity_npc]

Embers became the very fires of creation as they raced towards the hungry vampire, flames licking the dead flesh, cleansing and sanctifying whatever was left of the girl days dead. The only thing that remained of her time in Chicago was the echo of her dying shriek as she was consumed.

That and a few smoldering ashes.