Apocalypse RP #3: The Vanishing

[Philote]

"I only remember seeing the one" Nix explains. "She had some sort of invisible wire wrapped around the kid and another that killed your bird."

Nix goes on to give a better physical description of the two.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

"So that's it. Wire? String? Doesn't matter in the end, s'basically the same thing. Still, strong concept. Dangerous." She starts off, and as she moves you realize shes dropped her cane and is walking forward without it. beneath the hem of he dress you see the wrinkled old skin of her legs has become dark and leathery, and wicked claws cling along the pavement as she heads toward the road.

[Philote]

Concept? Nix files that away to ask about later.

With no time to lose on more planning, Nix follows after the elderly woman to see exactly how her strategy would unfold.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

The first thing she does is throw out her arm and, in a burst of feathers, and falcon shoots out of her arm before ascending quickly into the sky. The old woman closes her eyes and slows for a moment. "Looks like he's strung up directly to the brickwork. Probably string going through.  If you go 'round the back back, do you think you you could cut that boy down with your arms?"

[Philote]

"Yeah, yeah. I can do that" Nix says, happy to have some definitive direction instead of wasting more time. Nix goes around and through the park, avoiding areas that would easily expose him to the location he saw the group in before, and sneaking as best he can if an open space is unavoidable.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

Tyler looks up from fiddling with the supplies in his backpack, as he smells the slight burn of something that would have been delicious. His face is troubled again, and he decides he had better make himself useful.

He goes in, to speak to Conner, "Hey, um, where did Nix and the old woman go?"

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

Conner, looking extremely out of place trying to flip a ancake, yelps as Tyler steps up behind him and the burned flapjack ends up on the ground. "Th-th-the Army of One. That cult got ahold of Sebastion while he was going to check the shore." He points off down the street. "Out there. Out there they've got him strung up. Your friend went off with Abigale to save him."

His eyes flick back and forth from you to the road, like he's trying to say something without saying. "Sebastion is important. Without his power we can't live here."

----

Meanwhile Nix has already made his way across that street and into one of the shops lining it, stepping through the broken glass door of a gas station that has been completely looted and ravaged by the elements. Shelves are tipped and piled in the corner while the only merchandise left to the place is a pile of broken sunglasses scattered next to there standee on the floor. A banner hangs limply from above the old coolers, where drinks would be stored, inviting everyone to beat the Marley heat with an ice cold slush drink. Impossible, as that particular machine has been stolen.

Abigale catches his attention from the street and calls out. "He's tied up on a sport shop. Don't cut his free til I signal you. God speed son, and I'm sorry." With that she starts walking down the street toward her grandson and his captors, slowly, confidently, with the tapping of her talons on the road echoing down the street and away into the city.

[Philote]

Nix scrambles through the store, relatively sure that he wouldn't be discovered by those outside while inside the building opposite of them. He arrives at where his imagination places Sebastion to be on the other side. Then he stops and ponders for a moment. "It would have been smart for me to ask her what the signal was before I left"

Settling in, Nix goes about solving how he'll be able to know where to act on the other side of the wall. Pressing his fingerstip against the back wall, he phases it through until he feels the back of Sebastion's shirt or his fingertip just barely pokes out. He does this a couple times until he hopefully finds the right spot and then begins to wait the time out for what he expects to be a bird flying passed.

(I wrote this and then I realized that I'm not 100% sure on what the terrain is. What I'm picturing is that Sebastion is tied up against a solid wall or something similar and I'm poking through from the store opposite the wall.)

[Zaleramancer]

Sascha blinks and feels a moment of incredible disorientation, like she's suddenly lost a lot of time.

Her mind flashes vague corruption errors. Bah. System clock must have shifted by itself and confused everything. She took a moment to clear her thoughts and then looked around again.

There was some old woman and Nix- wait were those claws? This bore investigation and so Sascha followed.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

(They split up, who do you keep following?)

[Zaleramancer]

(Nix as following strange old women with claws strike Sascha as being rather suicidal.)

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

Sascha finds herself sliding up behind Nix in a thoroughly ransacked sports supply story lit only by the light shining in through the front window.. Equipment lay strewn across the floor, bats, tennis rackets, balls of every size that could easily trip you up in the dark interior if you aren't careful.

Nix has found Sebastien on the other side of a rack far from the window which was, judging by the advertisement hanging above it, formerly for surfboards. What happened to these surfboards is a mystery, because not one of them is left in the store. As Nix moves his hands through the wall he occasionally feels his arm get caught on something within it. It feels like a spiders thread and as he carefully feels around it's obvious that it's whats binding the boy to the wall.

You can hear mumbled voices coming from the other side of the wall, but they don't sound urgent. It seems Abigale has given you plenty of time before you're forced to act.

[Philote]

Nix sits at the wall oblivious to the return of his old friend. He carefully traces out exactly where he will need to break the strands to free Sebastien as he awaits Abigale's signal.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

Without his power, the lot of them couldn't live there. That settled it. He excused himself past Conner, and began rummaging through drawers left and right, until he found himself a few suitable utensils. A butcher knife, a two-pronged fork, a meat cleaver and a rolling pin. As new as the feeling was for him, Tyler's expression was one of building fierceness. Nix had the right idea.

He turned back to Conner, as he stuffed the utensils into a pack he'd found, "I'm going out after them. If Sebastian's life is at stake, and Nix's life is at stake, then we're all at stake. I'm not much good without them. So, don't worry, if all goes well, I'll be back."

Before Conner could utter a whimper in response, Tyler was out of the kitchen, and on his way.

[Zaleramancer]

Sascha very carefully begins memorizing the positions of the debris of sports on the floor- tripping would be really embarrassing. She does, however, look for something heavy and bat-sized just in case it was really necessary to smack something in the head. Or heads, as applicable.

She quietly attempts to alert Nix of her presence in a way that won't end up with her getting punched in the face accidentally.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

There are plenty of bat and bat shaped bludgeoning instruments scattered around the floor, most of them aluminum.

------

Sasca makes his way outside in time to catch sight of Abigale strolling down the road toward, does he follow?

[Celadon's Penultimate]

(Sascha is a girl)

[Celadon's Penultimate]

Instinct led Tyler to duck and keep low, but it did nothing to improve his sense of direction. He had no clue where Nix had gone, nor where he might find this Army of One, where they were holding Sebastian. He hoped a voice or a noise might give away their location. In the meantime, he would have to keep skulking, keep checking for clues, keep fumbling unaware.

Tyler counted himself fortunate that, at least, his fumbling would not be entirely defenseless.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

A steady clink, clink, clink, draws Tyler down the street until it suddenly stops. Hurrying to play catch up, he stumbles upon the scene of Sebastian's situation and the tail end of a conversation.

"-the height of selfishness, old woman." The girl entreats to your elderly host. "That you would stand there and judge while half of our number has suddenly vanished is deplorable. Don't you want the human race to be saved? We must all cooperate to ascend, but you will not even offer the paltry cooperation necessary to find out why half the city is gone?"

The big guy, looming silently over the proceeding like a waiting executioner, seems to see something in the old woman's face and shakes his head, patting his hand on his partners shoulder. She sighs deeply at this, looking truly regretful, and slowly nods at him. The large man raise one of his arms toward Abigale.

Then, with a flurry of wingbeats, Abigale seems to explode into a flock of of birds. It's as though a tear has opened up, a tear to where all the birds have gone, as they flow out like water under pressure. All manner of birds, large, small, in every manner of color. The only sound that isn't covered up by the beating of their wings is myriad cries as they engulf that section of the street and completely obscure anything that happens in their shirking, circling cloud.

In the sport store a large, black headed gull smashes its way through the remarkably unbroken window. The bird is badly mangled, wings broken, beak cracked, but with its last moment of life it looks up, locks eyes with Nix, and gives an urgent, plaintive caw.

[Philote]

Nix looks back from the wall, startled to see both the bird and Sacha behind him. The bird's frantic caws draws his attention back to the task at hand though. He reaches through the wall and begins plucking at the strings tying Sebastian in place.

"I'm not sure how you made it back, Sascha, but come use that big brain of yours to help me figure out how to get out of this alive."