The Magic Box - Friday (8/6) After the reserve meeting
"So do we have any idea what it is we're looking for?" Dru asked as they entered the shop and flicked on the lights. "Or is this a case of paging through books and hoping we get lucky?"
She waited until the other two girls had entered the store then shut and locked the door. There were enough weird things out there that she didn't want to take any chances of something following them into the store.
"Anything about how to close these rifts, magically or scientifically. Or what set it off," Scully said, hand on her gun as she walked in, scanning the areas immediately. "I wish I'd stopped in here sooner. If only to be familiar with this place."
"Portals and things," Karla seconded. "Anything that talks about moving things with magic. Openings in the space-time continuum, even."
She agreed with Scully about stopping by sooner. The trip the Reserves had taken to the Magic Box had not covered 'ingredients to close portals with.' Karla was going to have to take that up with Tara.
Later. Assuming they still had an island left.
"I'm here on Wednesdays," Dru said. "Feel free to stop by."
She moved through the shop, leading the way towards the bookshelves and the table. "I've been through a lot of the vampire lore, and I don't remember seeing anything portal related there." But there were still plenty of other books to go through.
Scully scanned the floor, the corners, and the ceiling. Because God knew she'd had enough thrown at her from above. "I'll probably do that," she said absently, focus still on her surroundings. "For other projects too." Like her own particular, personal problem.
...was that a noise?
It couldn't have been. Karla hadn't heard anything!
"There's a back room, right?" she asked. "I'm going to duck in there and see if there's anything useful I can spot in there."
"It's mostly storage. And coffee supplies. Maybe you should put on a pot," Dru suggested. "Just in case we're here a while."
Sadly Dru didn't know about Karla's kitchen abilities or lack there of.
Scully was silent, trying to hear what she'd heard before. Maybe it was her imagination?
She cocked her head, listening, and said softly, "How many entrances are there into this place?"
"Coffee's a damn good idea," Karla said with a nod. "It's not like we're going to be able to skip over to the Perk or anything."
She headed for the the door to the back room, slowly turning the knob. "Coffee and books? Almost like a normal day."
Without rifts and missing friends and creepy creatures pouring in...
"For a very specific and bizarre definition of normal," Dru muttered before addressing Scully's question. "Just two. The front and the one in the back."
Which they hadn't checked. Crap. Crap. Crap. Her father would kick her ass for such a stupid mistake.
The first thing Karla noticed was that there was an awful lot of light in here. "Dru? I think there's a door open--"
The second thing she noticed was a brilliant, searing pain in her side, roiling through her body. "Urk." she said, looking down in shock at the stinger protruding from her side.
And then she was noticing nothing, as her eyes rolled up and she was heading for the ground.
Dru looked up when Karla called out. There was no reason for the door to be open. She was certain Tara would never leave the story unlocked after her shift.
"Shut the door and get back here," she called, automatically reaching for the gun she'd tucked in her waistband. "Let's stay together while we search the place."
"Karla?"
Scully's gun was already out, and she was moving, her voice sharp. "Karla?" And when she didn't hear an immediate answer she turned to point back at Dru, putting a finger to her lips very briefly, listening, face going stark.
Damnit. She jerked her chin at Dru's gun, then slowly padded over to the door to the back room.
Dru reached for her own gun, still cursing herself for assuming the store was secure when all hell was breaking loose.
Following Scully's lead, and some day they were going to have to have a talk about exactly how Scully got to be so comfortable in a situation like this, Dru made her way over towards the door.
"Karla? Are you okay?
Karla was not okay. In fact, Karla was Very Not Okay. As a symptom of how Very Not Okay she was, Karla was writhing around on the floor as venom burned its way through her body, like someone had set fire to her very blood. Pardon her for a while. Answering was currently out of the picture as her vocal chords were currently capable of only making breathy little keening noises.
Her hand was pressed to her side, where her shirt was stained with a mix of blood and an odd greenish goo.
Mantling above her, its claws held high in the air, was a radscorpion. It had broken into the back room to hide from the burning daylight and had been enjoying its rest until a certain blonde witch had poked her nose into its new lair. Fortunately, it had methods for dealing with such intrusions. Like the sharp, poisonous stinger that gleamed wickedly in the light.
Scully toed the door open, gun pointed at the ground as she crouched low. She noted the open door and the sunlight, and heard distressed breathing from the left--
"Oh, shit," she breathed, sighted on the radscorpion, and aimed for the head.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Scully went low which meant Dru was going high. "Son of a bitch," she hissed when she caught sight of the scorpion.
Her finger tightened on the trigger as aimed at the body of the creature.
And she'd thought cockroach spirits were nasty looking.
Yeah, well, the radscorpian didn't like the look of the two of them, either.
The shots fired at it hurt, but much like the way the stingers of the blowflies hurt back home--sharp and needle-like, but not all that debilitating. Still the radscorpion wanted the needling to stop and struck out at the first of the bitey creatures with one large claw, just perfect for catching and cutting and squeezing its prey.
"Ah!" Scully rolled away, as fast as she could, and scuttled for cover behind a column of boxes. That claw had swooped way too close to her neck, and she called to Dru, "Do you know what this thing's weaknesses are?"
She was shooting. A giant. Scorpion. Somewhere, Mulder was saying Coooool.
Scully gave him a mental dopeslap, and re-loaded, wondering how hurt Karla was, and frantically trying to think of how to maximize their firepower.
The flamethrower. Dru would kill for her father's flamethrower. Or the AK-47. That would be useful in this case since the bullets from her 9-millimeter didn't seem to be doing anything more then pissing the thing off.
"No fucking clue!" Dru called out as she did some ducking and dodging of her own. "But I'd say avoiding the claws and the stinger would probably be a wise idea."
From her fetal position on the floor, Karla was agreeing with the 'avoid the stinger' part.
Or would be, if she were at all cognizant of anything other than agony.
One of the stinging, bitely things scored a good hit, raking down the radscorpion's side. It let out a squeal of mingled surprise and pain, and lashed out at the taller of the two invaders with its tail. Even if most of the venom had gone into the one on the ground, it was still sharp enough to hurt.
Its stinger burst through the pile of empty boxed its target had been using for cover, scattering them every which way at the same time a large claw closed through the air where the target had been mere seconds before.
Definitely still sharp enough to hurt, which was why Dru was doing her best to stay a moving target. Hopefully moving would a) keep the scorpion focused on her and not on poor not moving Karla and b) make her a harder target to catch.
But apparently she wasn't moving fast enough as the claw did manage to catch on her shirt for a brief moment before she pulled away.
"We need a better plan!"
"What?" Scully demanded, popping up to shoot at the monster again, trying to draw its attention from Dru so she could duck away, and aiming for the stinger. "Magic?"
Eyes. Stinger. Joints. Shoot to disable the thing, then try to figure out how to finish it off.... "Drop a piano on it?" Anything!
Bang!
The best part of being a Black Widow? Karla didn't actually have to consciously do anything to call upon her body's natural defenses against poison. Which meant she could lay there and focus on writhing while her body did the hard work.
Pain had slowed down time; every heartbeat was an eternity of suffering. The process of neutralizing the foreign venom was just as painful as the initial injection had been, as her body transmuted the toxin into something that could not harm Karla and forced it from her body.
Unaware of what else was going on, Karla rolled over to one side and retched, her body ridding itself of the sludge that had been poured into her.
The radscorpion paid the fallen invader no mind, used to the final seizures of creatures suffering from a fatal dose of its venom. Besides, there were still two unwounded invaders left and the stingers were beginning to cause it true pain.
A frenzy was building, where it would lash out with claw and leg and stinger again and again and again until the was nothing left to hurt it, nothing left moving.
Whirling around with a speed that belied its bulk, the radscorpion lunged for the first of the two invaders, striking out with claws in quick succession. If only it could get its claws around one...and squeeze...
No no no no-- Scully was running out of ammo, room, and hope, and then she stumbled over one of the boxes, arms windmilling as she fell over it. And she couldn't get to Karla, or help Dru--
The radscorpion's claws grazed her head, sending her flying into still more boxes, face smacking into the floor. Blood dripped from her lips and she shook herself, dazed and bruised, eyes temporarily seeing double.
Move! She scrabbled and crawled, eyes huge as she tried to get away.
Crap. Crap. Crap. Scully was down but Dru was relieved to see that she was still moving as she scrabbled away from the scorpion.
Dru fired her last two bullets towards then reached for her last clip. These last shots were going to have to count.
She was still moving, studying the scorpion in search of a weak point, when she heard the ruffle of wings from over her shoulder. The owl swooped in, turning tightly in the confines of room, and struck at the scorpion's eyes.
The radscorpion made a high-pitched screeching noise and reared back on its hindmost legs, striking out blindly for the newest attacker. Its claws slammed into stacks of boxes and inventory, while its tail slammed into the back wall. It was getting very close to a frenzy now, the pain goading it on.
After a quick glance to double check that Scully wasn't in the line of fire, Dru pointed the gun and let off three shots in quick succession. Hopefully that would slow the damn thing down.
The owl made a sharp turn over Dru's head and dove back into the fight.
"Did you get it?"
Scully listened, re-loading, and the skittering seemed to have stopped. At least for the moment. So she started crawling around the boxes, over to where she remembered Karla being last.
Karla hadn't moved much, even with the radscorpion stampeding around. She was pretty much stuck in place until her body had completely rid itself of the foreign poison.
Fortunately for her, radscorpion venom was close enough to her own that she could neutralize it and fight it off.
"What--" she coughed wetly. "Was?"
The radscorpion withdrew silently to a far corner, trying to hide its bulk behind more boxes. Most of its legs were dragging uselessly and it couldn't raise one of its claws.
It was dying, that couldn't be denied. Whether it was withdrawing to conserve energy for one last attack or to simply die in peace was the read question.
The question was answered when Dru crossed the room an additional three bullets into it at extremely close range.
As the scorpion crumpled up, she became aware of how quickly her heart was beating, could feel the adrenaline surging through her body. At some point her hair had come loose from her clip and was now hanging in her face. Dru watched as blonde streaks slid through her curls. They stretched out, longer and looser, sleek waves instead of her normal frizz. Then the gold retreated and her hair was dark once more.
"You guys okay?" she asked her eyes still on the scorpion.
"Yeah," Scully said, voice ragged but calm. She was checking Karla's pulse and had her hand against her forehead, trying to gauge her temperature. "Bruises. Cuts for me. Karla vomited what looks like venom. How are you feeling?" she asked Karla, concerned.
"Like crap," Karla admitted. "You're bleeding." She blearily looked up at Scully's face. "You got to watch Black Widow metabolism in action," she wheezed.
Finally satisfied that the scorpion was dead, Dru turned towards the other girls.
Her heart, which had been slowing down as the adrenaline wore off, suddenly started to race once more as the smell hit her still heightened senses.
Blood - copper, hot, and good.
It smashed into a spot in the back of her throat, a place she never knew existed before, right next to the spot that normal people didn't have. The one that warned her when something weird was going to happen. The red coppery smell reached all the way down and ripped the world apart.
A cry, harsh and desperate broke from her throat as Dru realized what she wanted to do.
She wanted to drink.
"Bit a chunk out of my lip when I fell on my face," Scully admitted, studying Karla with worry. "Stay still." Getting rid of the venom was good, but that scorpion was huge, and Karla really needed to be at the Clinic--
Then Dru's voice rose, and Scully's head whipped toward her, startled.
Karla was rapidly improving, for all that she still had a nasty cut on her side. She whirled around to face where that cry had come from--had that really been Dru?--and gasped, her hand flying to her side.
Still, that sharp flare of pain wasn't enough to draw her attention away from her friend.
A roaring thirst crawled out from the middle of Dru's throat and spread through her body. She dry, cracking and burning and the only thing that could quench the fire was the sweet, red fluid she could smell all over. It tapped inside her head, whispered and cajoled and Dru felt her teeth turn achingly sensitive. She could almost feel them lengthening, sharp tickling over the enamel. Her hair tingled and every inch of her was awake, the sleeplessness of last night's vigil forgotten, replaced with a high crackling energy.
Focused only on her desire for the blood on Scully's face, Dru launched herself forward.
"Dru, don't--!"
Something was really wrong with Dru, and the way she was looking at her. Scully's first instinct was to point her gun at the other girl-- but a split second later she realized that could be a huge mistake.
And that gave Scully only another second to throw herself to the side, hoping to keep Karla out of Dru's path as she desperately tried to avoid that seemingly-supernatural leap.
"Dru!" Karla yelled, "Stop!"
She didn't know what was going on, didn't understand anything about Dru's other nature, but she recognized a predator's leap when she saw one.
Her options were limited, especially since this was a friend so Karla did the only thing she could think of: she reached out a hand and plucked Dru out of the air with Craft. Her fingers clenched around nothing even as her power wrapped Dru in a vise-like grip, suspending her in midair.
"Scully what's wrong with her?" Karla gasped, face going pale with strain.
Her eyes golden and frustrated in her attack, Dru opened her mouth and screamed revealing elongated and pointed canines.
She wanted to lick the stuff off Scully's face and put her teeth in the other girl's throat.
She wanted to drink.
"No idea," Scully said, managing to scramble to her feet, back to one wall, and she unholstered her gun again, but kept it pointed at the floor. She gulped for breath, and steeled herself, studying Dru in amazement. "Some kind of--transformation? Maybe she got stung too, and this...?" She shook her head, completely at sea. "Can you hold her for very long?"
Karla was hurt. Dru was still writhing like a mad thing. Oh, God, let her not have to shoot at her.
"Sure, no problem," Karla said, even as sweat beaded along her hairline and dripped down her face. Her arm trembled with the strain of keeping Dru aloft and her other hand was pressed tightly against her wound.
She could hold Dru up for awhile with Craft, that much she wasn't lying about. It would just hurt. A lot.
Fortunately she wouldn't have to hold her for long. The wave of hunger finally crested and began to retreat. As she felt herself regain control again, Dru began to cry.
"Dru?" Scully said softly, then holstered her weapon, edging closer. "Dru, it's okay. It's over." She glanced over at Karla, fast, and seeing the sweat beading her face said a shade more sharply than she meant to, "Put her down now, Karla, before you pass out again."
"You're not th'boss of me," Karla mumbled because she got extra-mature when she was exhausted and over-exerting herself.
She did bring her arm down, setting Dru gently on her feet, much to the relief of her aching muscles. But she didn't open her hand. Not right away.
"Dru?" she asked, leaning against the wall for support.
Dru didn't blame Karla for being cautious. Not given what she'd tried to do. She swallowed hard, past the lump in her throat. "It's okay. I'm sorry. So damn sorry."
Scully stared at Dru, at a loss, then took a breath. "Are you hurt? Did you get stung by that thing?" Then more gently, "You don't need to apologize to me. It didn't seem like you were in control there." She glanced back at the slumped Karla, whose reaction to the radscorpion hadn't been anything like that. What to ask, what to ask-- "Can we do something to help?"
After another long moment, Karla let Dru go--but not before erecting shields them. If this was a ruse, Karla wasn't going to get caught again.
Maybe it was just that she was still mentally reeling from the venom. Maybe she was just paranoid, with all the uncanny parallels between this Fandom and the other. But there had been a moment when she'd read Dru's psychic scent and gotten back
Vampire.
"Yes, Dru," Karla said quietly. "Do tell. What happened?"
Maybe she was just hurt and tired and seeing things that weren't there. But the shields were staying.
"I wasn't stung. I lost control," she explained, swallowing hard past the lump in her throat. "I didn't expect it. It's never happened before. There's stuff...Let's just say it's a long story and I'm not really in any shape to tell it right now."
Not when every nerve felt rubbed raw.
Not when she could smell the blood in the air.
"I will tell you. I just need a little time."
Something was going on here, something Scully definitely didn't understand, and it looked like Karla had her suspicions... but if they pushed, Dru might break down again. She edged over to join Karla by the wall, and considered. "Okay. For now. Dru? Are you safe to help us get Karla back? Karla, can you walk if we help?" She drew a breath. "Or do you both need more time?"
Any second, another one of those things might come back, and they were in much worse shape now. Go go go go was pounding in her head.
"I can walk!" Karla protested and took a few steps away from the wall. She didn't topple, but it was a close thing. "With help," she amended. "But we should go. More things might get in the way that one did and I don't really need another workout like that."
She threw an arm across Scully's shoulders, not looking at the puddles of sludge on the floor. "Let's go. We'll make due with what we find in the regular library."
Dru had no problem with that plan.
Being careful not to get too close to the other girls, she kept watch for any other creatures that might attack as they made their way back to the school.
[OOC: NFI, OOC=AOK! Much love to showmetheproof and glacial_witch for playing along. Certain parts of the narrative were adapted from the Lili St. Crow novel Betrayals.]
She waited until the other two girls had entered the store then shut and locked the door. There were enough weird things out there that she didn't want to take any chances of something following them into the store.
"Anything about how to close these rifts, magically or scientifically. Or what set it off," Scully said, hand on her gun as she walked in, scanning the areas immediately. "I wish I'd stopped in here sooner. If only to be familiar with this place."
"Portals and things," Karla seconded. "Anything that talks about moving things with magic. Openings in the space-time continuum, even."
She agreed with Scully about stopping by sooner. The trip the Reserves had taken to the Magic Box had not covered 'ingredients to close portals with.' Karla was going to have to take that up with Tara.
Later. Assuming they still had an island left.
"I'm here on Wednesdays," Dru said. "Feel free to stop by."
She moved through the shop, leading the way towards the bookshelves and the table. "I've been through a lot of the vampire lore, and I don't remember seeing anything portal related there." But there were still plenty of other books to go through.
Scully scanned the floor, the corners, and the ceiling. Because God knew she'd had enough thrown at her from above. "I'll probably do that," she said absently, focus still on her surroundings. "For other projects too." Like her own particular, personal problem.
...was that a noise?
It couldn't have been. Karla hadn't heard anything!
"There's a back room, right?" she asked. "I'm going to duck in there and see if there's anything useful I can spot in there."
"It's mostly storage. And coffee supplies. Maybe you should put on a pot," Dru suggested. "Just in case we're here a while."
Sadly Dru didn't know about Karla's kitchen abilities or lack there of.
Scully was silent, trying to hear what she'd heard before. Maybe it was her imagination?
She cocked her head, listening, and said softly, "How many entrances are there into this place?"
"Coffee's a damn good idea," Karla said with a nod. "It's not like we're going to be able to skip over to the Perk or anything."
She headed for the the door to the back room, slowly turning the knob. "Coffee and books? Almost like a normal day."
Without rifts and missing friends and creepy creatures pouring in...
"For a very specific and bizarre definition of normal," Dru muttered before addressing Scully's question. "Just two. The front and the one in the back."
Which they hadn't checked. Crap. Crap. Crap. Her father would kick her ass for such a stupid mistake.
The first thing Karla noticed was that there was an awful lot of light in here. "Dru? I think there's a door open--"
The second thing she noticed was a brilliant, searing pain in her side, roiling through her body. "Urk." she said, looking down in shock at the stinger protruding from her side.
And then she was noticing nothing, as her eyes rolled up and she was heading for the ground.
Dru looked up when Karla called out. There was no reason for the door to be open. She was certain Tara would never leave the story unlocked after her shift.
"Shut the door and get back here," she called, automatically reaching for the gun she'd tucked in her waistband. "Let's stay together while we search the place."
"Karla?"
Scully's gun was already out, and she was moving, her voice sharp. "Karla?" And when she didn't hear an immediate answer she turned to point back at Dru, putting a finger to her lips very briefly, listening, face going stark.
Damnit. She jerked her chin at Dru's gun, then slowly padded over to the door to the back room.
Dru reached for her own gun, still cursing herself for assuming the store was secure when all hell was breaking loose.
Following Scully's lead, and some day they were going to have to have a talk about exactly how Scully got to be so comfortable in a situation like this, Dru made her way over towards the door.
"Karla? Are you okay?
Karla was not okay. In fact, Karla was Very Not Okay. As a symptom of how Very Not Okay she was, Karla was writhing around on the floor as venom burned its way through her body, like someone had set fire to her very blood. Pardon her for a while. Answering was currently out of the picture as her vocal chords were currently capable of only making breathy little keening noises.
Her hand was pressed to her side, where her shirt was stained with a mix of blood and an odd greenish goo.
Mantling above her, its claws held high in the air, was a radscorpion. It had broken into the back room to hide from the burning daylight and had been enjoying its rest until a certain blonde witch had poked her nose into its new lair. Fortunately, it had methods for dealing with such intrusions. Like the sharp, poisonous stinger that gleamed wickedly in the light.
Scully toed the door open, gun pointed at the ground as she crouched low. She noted the open door and the sunlight, and heard distressed breathing from the left--
"Oh, shit," she breathed, sighted on the radscorpion, and aimed for the head.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Scully went low which meant Dru was going high. "Son of a bitch," she hissed when she caught sight of the scorpion.
Her finger tightened on the trigger as aimed at the body of the creature.
And she'd thought cockroach spirits were nasty looking.
Yeah, well, the radscorpian didn't like the look of the two of them, either.
The shots fired at it hurt, but much like the way the stingers of the blowflies hurt back home--sharp and needle-like, but not all that debilitating. Still the radscorpion wanted the needling to stop and struck out at the first of the bitey creatures with one large claw, just perfect for catching and cutting and squeezing its prey.
"Ah!" Scully rolled away, as fast as she could, and scuttled for cover behind a column of boxes. That claw had swooped way too close to her neck, and she called to Dru, "Do you know what this thing's weaknesses are?"
She was shooting. A giant. Scorpion. Somewhere, Mulder was saying Coooool.
Scully gave him a mental dopeslap, and re-loaded, wondering how hurt Karla was, and frantically trying to think of how to maximize their firepower.
The flamethrower. Dru would kill for her father's flamethrower. Or the AK-47. That would be useful in this case since the bullets from her 9-millimeter didn't seem to be doing anything more then pissing the thing off.
"No fucking clue!" Dru called out as she did some ducking and dodging of her own. "But I'd say avoiding the claws and the stinger would probably be a wise idea."
From her fetal position on the floor, Karla was agreeing with the 'avoid the stinger' part.
Or would be, if she were at all cognizant of anything other than agony.
One of the stinging, bitely things scored a good hit, raking down the radscorpion's side. It let out a squeal of mingled surprise and pain, and lashed out at the taller of the two invaders with its tail. Even if most of the venom had gone into the one on the ground, it was still sharp enough to hurt.
Its stinger burst through the pile of empty boxed its target had been using for cover, scattering them every which way at the same time a large claw closed through the air where the target had been mere seconds before.
Definitely still sharp enough to hurt, which was why Dru was doing her best to stay a moving target. Hopefully moving would a) keep the scorpion focused on her and not on poor not moving Karla and b) make her a harder target to catch.
But apparently she wasn't moving fast enough as the claw did manage to catch on her shirt for a brief moment before she pulled away.
"We need a better plan!"
"What?" Scully demanded, popping up to shoot at the monster again, trying to draw its attention from Dru so she could duck away, and aiming for the stinger. "Magic?"
Eyes. Stinger. Joints. Shoot to disable the thing, then try to figure out how to finish it off.... "Drop a piano on it?" Anything!
Bang!
The best part of being a Black Widow? Karla didn't actually have to consciously do anything to call upon her body's natural defenses against poison. Which meant she could lay there and focus on writhing while her body did the hard work.
Pain had slowed down time; every heartbeat was an eternity of suffering. The process of neutralizing the foreign venom was just as painful as the initial injection had been, as her body transmuted the toxin into something that could not harm Karla and forced it from her body.
Unaware of what else was going on, Karla rolled over to one side and retched, her body ridding itself of the sludge that had been poured into her.
The radscorpion paid the fallen invader no mind, used to the final seizures of creatures suffering from a fatal dose of its venom. Besides, there were still two unwounded invaders left and the stingers were beginning to cause it true pain.
A frenzy was building, where it would lash out with claw and leg and stinger again and again and again until the was nothing left to hurt it, nothing left moving.
Whirling around with a speed that belied its bulk, the radscorpion lunged for the first of the two invaders, striking out with claws in quick succession. If only it could get its claws around one...and squeeze...
No no no no-- Scully was running out of ammo, room, and hope, and then she stumbled over one of the boxes, arms windmilling as she fell over it. And she couldn't get to Karla, or help Dru--
The radscorpion's claws grazed her head, sending her flying into still more boxes, face smacking into the floor. Blood dripped from her lips and she shook herself, dazed and bruised, eyes temporarily seeing double.
Move! She scrabbled and crawled, eyes huge as she tried to get away.
Crap. Crap. Crap. Scully was down but Dru was relieved to see that she was still moving as she scrabbled away from the scorpion.
Dru fired her last two bullets towards then reached for her last clip. These last shots were going to have to count.
She was still moving, studying the scorpion in search of a weak point, when she heard the ruffle of wings from over her shoulder. The owl swooped in, turning tightly in the confines of room, and struck at the scorpion's eyes.
The radscorpion made a high-pitched screeching noise and reared back on its hindmost legs, striking out blindly for the newest attacker. Its claws slammed into stacks of boxes and inventory, while its tail slammed into the back wall. It was getting very close to a frenzy now, the pain goading it on.
After a quick glance to double check that Scully wasn't in the line of fire, Dru pointed the gun and let off three shots in quick succession. Hopefully that would slow the damn thing down.
The owl made a sharp turn over Dru's head and dove back into the fight.
"Did you get it?"
Scully listened, re-loading, and the skittering seemed to have stopped. At least for the moment. So she started crawling around the boxes, over to where she remembered Karla being last.
Karla hadn't moved much, even with the radscorpion stampeding around. She was pretty much stuck in place until her body had completely rid itself of the foreign poison.
Fortunately for her, radscorpion venom was close enough to her own that she could neutralize it and fight it off.
"What--" she coughed wetly. "Was?"
The radscorpion withdrew silently to a far corner, trying to hide its bulk behind more boxes. Most of its legs were dragging uselessly and it couldn't raise one of its claws.
It was dying, that couldn't be denied. Whether it was withdrawing to conserve energy for one last attack or to simply die in peace was the read question.
The question was answered when Dru crossed the room an additional three bullets into it at extremely close range.
As the scorpion crumpled up, she became aware of how quickly her heart was beating, could feel the adrenaline surging through her body. At some point her hair had come loose from her clip and was now hanging in her face. Dru watched as blonde streaks slid through her curls. They stretched out, longer and looser, sleek waves instead of her normal frizz. Then the gold retreated and her hair was dark once more.
"You guys okay?" she asked her eyes still on the scorpion.
"Yeah," Scully said, voice ragged but calm. She was checking Karla's pulse and had her hand against her forehead, trying to gauge her temperature. "Bruises. Cuts for me. Karla vomited what looks like venom. How are you feeling?" she asked Karla, concerned.
"Like crap," Karla admitted. "You're bleeding." She blearily looked up at Scully's face. "You got to watch Black Widow metabolism in action," she wheezed.
Finally satisfied that the scorpion was dead, Dru turned towards the other girls.
Her heart, which had been slowing down as the adrenaline wore off, suddenly started to race once more as the smell hit her still heightened senses.
Blood - copper, hot, and good.
It smashed into a spot in the back of her throat, a place she never knew existed before, right next to the spot that normal people didn't have. The one that warned her when something weird was going to happen. The red coppery smell reached all the way down and ripped the world apart.
A cry, harsh and desperate broke from her throat as Dru realized what she wanted to do.
She wanted to drink.
"Bit a chunk out of my lip when I fell on my face," Scully admitted, studying Karla with worry. "Stay still." Getting rid of the venom was good, but that scorpion was huge, and Karla really needed to be at the Clinic--
Then Dru's voice rose, and Scully's head whipped toward her, startled.
Karla was rapidly improving, for all that she still had a nasty cut on her side. She whirled around to face where that cry had come from--had that really been Dru?--and gasped, her hand flying to her side.
Still, that sharp flare of pain wasn't enough to draw her attention away from her friend.
A roaring thirst crawled out from the middle of Dru's throat and spread through her body. She dry, cracking and burning and the only thing that could quench the fire was the sweet, red fluid she could smell all over. It tapped inside her head, whispered and cajoled and Dru felt her teeth turn achingly sensitive. She could almost feel them lengthening, sharp tickling over the enamel. Her hair tingled and every inch of her was awake, the sleeplessness of last night's vigil forgotten, replaced with a high crackling energy.
Focused only on her desire for the blood on Scully's face, Dru launched herself forward.
"Dru, don't--!"
Something was really wrong with Dru, and the way she was looking at her. Scully's first instinct was to point her gun at the other girl-- but a split second later she realized that could be a huge mistake.
And that gave Scully only another second to throw herself to the side, hoping to keep Karla out of Dru's path as she desperately tried to avoid that seemingly-supernatural leap.
"Dru!" Karla yelled, "Stop!"
She didn't know what was going on, didn't understand anything about Dru's other nature, but she recognized a predator's leap when she saw one.
Her options were limited, especially since this was a friend so Karla did the only thing she could think of: she reached out a hand and plucked Dru out of the air with Craft. Her fingers clenched around nothing even as her power wrapped Dru in a vise-like grip, suspending her in midair.
"Scully what's wrong with her?" Karla gasped, face going pale with strain.
Her eyes golden and frustrated in her attack, Dru opened her mouth and screamed revealing elongated and pointed canines.
She wanted to lick the stuff off Scully's face and put her teeth in the other girl's throat.
She wanted to drink.
"No idea," Scully said, managing to scramble to her feet, back to one wall, and she unholstered her gun again, but kept it pointed at the floor. She gulped for breath, and steeled herself, studying Dru in amazement. "Some kind of--transformation? Maybe she got stung too, and this...?" She shook her head, completely at sea. "Can you hold her for very long?"
Karla was hurt. Dru was still writhing like a mad thing. Oh, God, let her not have to shoot at her.
"Sure, no problem," Karla said, even as sweat beaded along her hairline and dripped down her face. Her arm trembled with the strain of keeping Dru aloft and her other hand was pressed tightly against her wound.
She could hold Dru up for awhile with Craft, that much she wasn't lying about. It would just hurt. A lot.
Fortunately she wouldn't have to hold her for long. The wave of hunger finally crested and began to retreat. As she felt herself regain control again, Dru began to cry.
"Dru?" Scully said softly, then holstered her weapon, edging closer. "Dru, it's okay. It's over." She glanced over at Karla, fast, and seeing the sweat beading her face said a shade more sharply than she meant to, "Put her down now, Karla, before you pass out again."
"You're not th'boss of me," Karla mumbled because she got extra-mature when she was exhausted and over-exerting herself.
She did bring her arm down, setting Dru gently on her feet, much to the relief of her aching muscles. But she didn't open her hand. Not right away.
"Dru?" she asked, leaning against the wall for support.
Dru didn't blame Karla for being cautious. Not given what she'd tried to do. She swallowed hard, past the lump in her throat. "It's okay. I'm sorry. So damn sorry."
Scully stared at Dru, at a loss, then took a breath. "Are you hurt? Did you get stung by that thing?" Then more gently, "You don't need to apologize to me. It didn't seem like you were in control there." She glanced back at the slumped Karla, whose reaction to the radscorpion hadn't been anything like that. What to ask, what to ask-- "Can we do something to help?"
After another long moment, Karla let Dru go--but not before erecting shields them. If this was a ruse, Karla wasn't going to get caught again.
Maybe it was just that she was still mentally reeling from the venom. Maybe she was just paranoid, with all the uncanny parallels between this Fandom and the other. But there had been a moment when she'd read Dru's psychic scent and gotten back
Vampire.
"Yes, Dru," Karla said quietly. "Do tell. What happened?"
Maybe she was just hurt and tired and seeing things that weren't there. But the shields were staying.
"I wasn't stung. I lost control," she explained, swallowing hard past the lump in her throat. "I didn't expect it. It's never happened before. There's stuff...Let's just say it's a long story and I'm not really in any shape to tell it right now."
Not when every nerve felt rubbed raw.
Not when she could smell the blood in the air.
"I will tell you. I just need a little time."
Something was going on here, something Scully definitely didn't understand, and it looked like Karla had her suspicions... but if they pushed, Dru might break down again. She edged over to join Karla by the wall, and considered. "Okay. For now. Dru? Are you safe to help us get Karla back? Karla, can you walk if we help?" She drew a breath. "Or do you both need more time?"
Any second, another one of those things might come back, and they were in much worse shape now. Go go go go was pounding in her head.
"I can walk!" Karla protested and took a few steps away from the wall. She didn't topple, but it was a close thing. "With help," she amended. "But we should go. More things might get in the way that one did and I don't really need another workout like that."
She threw an arm across Scully's shoulders, not looking at the puddles of sludge on the floor. "Let's go. We'll make due with what we find in the regular library."
Dru had no problem with that plan.
Being careful not to get too close to the other girls, she kept watch for any other creatures that might attack as they made their way back to the school.
[OOC: NFI, OOC=AOK! Much love to showmetheproof and glacial_witch for playing along. Certain parts of the narrative were adapted from the Lili St. Crow novel Betrayals.]