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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[broken_exorcist]

Allen had been staring in wide-eyed wonder as the nurses and orderlies changed from the sweet people who'd fed him dinner into horrible monstrosities. They resembled Akuma, but they weren't. Not so far as he could tell. How could something like that still be human?! It took Renji grabbing him by the collar to shake him from his stupor.

Tear a hole in the bus. He could do that. "R-right!" he replied, regaining his senses as quickly as possible. "Innocence, activate!" he shouted as he focused his concentration on his left arm. With an explosion of greenish and silver light, his Innocence took shape, morphing his hand into a massive white claw. It was cramped, but he tore into the metal on the side of the bus, feeling the glass crunch beneath his warped fingers. It wasn't long before the hole was large enough to fit a man through, but he didn't stop there. Allen pushed at the metal and glass around it, widening the hole as much as he could.

"Over here!" he shouted to anyone that would listen. "Hurry!"

[misterprince]

So much yelling. Sanji dragged himself back to the edge of the seat just to make room for others to get by. He'd already been nearly run over more than once. He didn't need to add bruising to his current list of woes.

The chef knew he had to be out of it when his eyes finally focused on someone tearing apart the wall of the bus. A kid no less, from what it looked like. Most of the fighting going on around him still wasn't registering, but that show of strength right there was pretty hard to ignore.

Staggering slowly towards the newly made exit, Sanji waved half-heartedly with one hand to try and get the kid's attention. "Hey. Hey. What's... goin' on?"

[broken_exorcist]

It took Allen a moment to realize there was someone waving at him. He turned from his work, a worried, but determined expression on his face. How did this man not realize what was happening? Was he new? Was he ill? Maybe he'd been drugged?

"Please sir, you have to hurry and exit the bus!" he said politely, trying to keep the impatience from his voice. "Do you need help getting down, or can you manage from here?"

[misterprince]

"I dunneed help," Sanji immediately responded without even thinking about it. He didn't, did he? He could move perfectly fine on his own. For the most part. The seats helped quite a bit, admittedly. "I'll b'right there."

So it was night time now. When had that happened? Had he fallen asleep? He thought he might have dozed off for a few minutes or so, but he couldn't recall. Stopping at the edge of the hole to peer out, the distance to the ground at once made him dizzy. He covered his eyes with one hand, swaying where he stood.

"All righ'... jus' shove me."

[forgot_it_all]

The buses screeched to a halt and Ritsuka got ready to deal with his annoying nurse again, when he realized something was horribly amiss. The sun was sinking faster than it should have and he froze as the scream pierced the air. He knew he shouldn't look forward, but he turned anyway and was treated to the sight of the nurses and orderlies morphing into...

He didn't know what those things were.

His mind blanked out and he blanched, shrinking back against the seat as if it would protect him. Things landed on the roof and suddenly a hole was in the side of the bus. So much chaos erupted around him and he found himself completely frozen as he stared at two men attacking what used to be his nurse. He knew Soubi was right next to him, but these things weren't anything like what they'd fought before. They were people. He couldn't order Soubi to hurt people! He couldn't-- The busybody had needles and dead flesh rather than her usual cheerfulness on her face - rotting, decaying, bloody, horrid

[qui_gonjinn]

Qui-Gon materialized behind the screaming patient. It was difficult to make out any details when so much was going on inside the cramped quarters of the bus, but he could tell that the other patient was young and appeared unarmed, and far too close to the nurses - or what was left of them, because they were only humanoid in appearances. There was no time for introductions as Qui-Gon bent down next to him and clapped a guiding hand on his shoulder:

"Come on!" he said.

He hadn't actually seen whoever was responsible for blowing out the side of the bus, but that was the closest - and probably best bet - to escaping. He had no idea what was outside, but at least they would have room to move around instead of being trapped inside the confines of the buses with these warped creatures and no means of defense on hand. If they moved quickly, they should be able to make the exit, he thought, glancing toward the hole.

[forgot_it_all]

He didn't know what was going on and when someone grabbed him, he assumed it was Soubi. In the confusion and his fear, he'd stumbled out of his seat, trying to run to the back. He'd thought he had grabbed Soubi's hand, but now there he was behind him - pulling him toward a hole in the bus. Where had the hole come from?

He turned back in time to see green blood spurting from his nurse and he felt numb and sick at the same time. He wanted to throw up, but he couldn't - not in front of---

This man wasn't Soubi. Ritsuka found himself looking up at a stranger and panicked again. Who was this person? Were they going to hurt him? "Who are you?! What are you do--"

Ritsuka struggled against the older man as he realized that they were going to have to move toward the front of the bus to get out the hole. He didn't want to go near his nur-- the monsters, but the things were everywhere. What the hell was going on?!

[beloved_less]

Everything happened at once. And none of it mattered when he saw that Ritsuka was gone. Ignoring everything around him, he went after the boy, pushing and pulling his way through the throngs of people.

He latched onto the strangers sleeve and pulled himself closer before swinging a fist at him.
"Release him!"

[qui_gonjinn]

The thing that hit Qui-Gon like a physical blow wasn't the lights or the screech of the buses as they came to a halt. It wasn't the screaming from the Facility

[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

[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

[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.))

[myopic_mousse]

Mousse's jaw dropped. Did fear and chaos descend upon this place whenever darkness fell?

The Amazon hopped to his feet and looked for a route of escape amidst the ambush. It would do no good for him to try and take on the attacking forces alone and it's appeared as if waves of patients already had that under control. If one should give him a reason to fight, he hopped he would be able to defeat the former human staff, though bare fisted fighting was not his specialty (and certianly not with an arm in a sling). Now, however, was the time to make a quick exit and look for something to arm himself.

He directed his attention toward an empty seat and began wailing away on it with a flurry of kicks. If only he could still turn into a duck, he would have slipped through no problem! As was, the glass began to crack, but it would still be a matter of time before he could make an opening large enough to escape from the bus.

[myopic_mousse]

It sure was drafty in this bus, the Amazon mused.

Wait a minute...

He turned around and noticed that there was, in fact, already a hole in the side of the bus. Mentally slapping himself on the forehead for being an idiot and overlooking it, he darted for the opening.

[To here]