Serra swallowed, or tried to. Her throat was dry. When had she last had something to drink? This morning? She hadn't had time to fill up the plastic water bottle she'd carried with her today since then. Had to find her brothers, after all.
"Ahntt...kah, Aunt Meche? Are...are you okay? Have you seen them?" she asks, stepping closer. "It's Serra, Meche. Have you seen my brothers? Everyone else...everyone stopped looking..."
Approaching Aunt Meche a mite closer, you ask after her health and business. Her features soften for a moment, seemingly more in confusion than recognition.
"Serra?" she parrots. "Serra, baby? How'd you find..." she starts to ask, but pauses, then glances at the front door of the house, licking her lips nervously. She thinks for a moment, furrowing her brow, then meets your gaze again, looking equal parts fearful and incredulous. "How'd you find me? Were you walkin' through here, baby? This ain't a good place to be walkin'," she rattles off. "Bad people live around here. Real bad people," she then adds, getting up. She's a good head taller than you and about two thirds the weight.
"I better take you to the bus, baby. It's no good for you to be walkin' here," she says hollowly after looking back at the door. As she steps toward you, what is unmistakably a gunshot comes from the house, giving the woman a good start. She looks at the door, then at you desperately, scanning you for a moment. "I... oh god," she half-mutters, then makes a beeline for the door, pulling it open swiftly, then disappearing inside as she slams the door and locks it.
Kyle lets out a dark chuckle. He knows exactly how to deal with these fools. Let's start with the one that needs the least amount of work. A quick bit of dust on that open wound and he'll be in more than enough pain to be considered punished. Steve gets a stabbing in the back for his good effort. Crazy Joe gets sent to eat the pavement, probably eat some teeth when Kyle kicks them in as well. Tubby... eh, his being fat and most likely dying of a heart attack before his prime is punishment enough. Otis eh, he can just get knocked the fuck out. Much more important stuff to deal with.
You kick a bit of dust at Lawry as you chuckle. He's not amused, but he's not going anywhere either, so might as well make his last few days as painful as possible. You then step swiftly over to Stevie, who hasn't had time to retreat even though he's obviously trying to, and drive your wristblade into his back, probably collapsing his lung. You anticipate he'll have a fun time soon enough. Turning toward the other three with a soft whirr you notice that Tubby, fat bastard or no, does appear to have taken both a hint and very good advantage of his position, and you catch only the door shutting after him as he runs for his life. Otis is much the same way, but less fortunate in this regard - him you just tackle, then slam into a nearby brick wall hard enough for him to think twice about running before you're done with him.
You then look at Crazy Joe, and note that your sister appears to be doing a very good job kicking him in the face already, so you leave her to it as you look at your mom, who seems very concerned about the way your dad is bleeding to death on the ground. You think you can sense quite a few iterations of him that aren't presently doing that, to the point where it almost feels like you can see them. Would be kind of nice for the powers to come with an interface, you'd think, but it's probably just the drugs. The exceedingly good drugs, you do not hesitate to note again.
Alex was now pretty sure he was just sold some party drugs. He would take a casual stroll, while completely disappointed.
You consider the fact that you don't appear to have gotten any powers out of this deal, at which point you stop feeling quite as excited about this whole proposition, a light in your brain suddenly turning off. The night starts to feel a bit cold, and you are keenly aware that you forgot to put on anything warm before you sprinted away from your house like a dumbass. You're not entirely certain you've got your house key on you, actually, which will probably lead to you banging on your dad's window and asking him to let you in, which'd be all kinds of suspicious.
You sigh contemplatively as you ponder what to do now.
Lacie for a moment stood there stunned, she staggered upwards and began to take a step forwards slightly mystified by her sudden change of body material. The fact that she couldn't feel the bone sticking out of her leg was the most disturbing, eventually she managed to centre herself and began to run as fast as she could towards where she guessed the exit would be. She could figure all of this out later she just needed to escape right now.
You awkwardly start to run, and the sound of stone hitting laminate does not grow much quieter, nor do the approaching footsteps grow more distant. It's a bit slow, moving with a leg as misshapen as yours, and you get to the door, grabbing the handle as you try to open it - however, it seems to be locked. This gives you a moment's pause, just long enough for the guards to reach another, apparently open door, through which they begin to burst in. The opening of the door startles you, and you find yourself losing shape again, your body surging forward and down into the cold metal of the door handle without so much as a telltale sound.
The door handle feels very cramped, though you don't think you have any dimensions presently, which is certainly an odd thing to notice. You are a point in a small volume of substance, and your eyes are all over its inner surface, through which you see the guards bust in, hoping to catch you at last. They seem almost disappointed when you're not there, and start searching the living room for anything more than the nasty cracks and bits of gravely debris you seem to have left on the lovely floor.
Pleasingly enough you can see the other side of the door as well. And wonderfully enough you do appear to have found an exit - makes sense, given that it's locked. On the other side of this door you see a well-tended garden filled with geraniums of a wildly varying number of colors.
For the first time in years, Rachel starts to actually panic. Where is she? What was that fluid? Why the restraints? What is wrong with her arm? Why hasn't her father come yet? The feeling is quickly squashed down as her more logical side takes over. Those questions can be answered later, when she's in a better position to ask them. For now, she focuses on escaping the restraints fully.
You start to try to bend and twist along the restraints, but it proves entirely unnecessary, as your flesh seems to bend around them freely, flowing like glycerol around them and around your hospital gown - you leave both it and the restraints behind as you slide out of the bed, projecting your feet beneath you and standing up straight for the first time in ages. You feel absolutely nothing physically, almost like you're about to float off into the air, almost as if...
... you look back at the bed right quick, and don't see your body there, just the slightly crumpled hospital gown. Still not dead, you guess, even if it does feel like it. Now, though, you seem to have the considerable issue of trying to get out of this room. You don't suppose shouting a lot would help, would it?
Yvonne gets her phone, and tries to form an image of it, that is sharper, that can kill. She then starts to search the science lab quickly.
Your phone... well, the active stuff is what you need your phone for anyway. You could actually combine it with anything as long as you had some elementary tools. It'd be pretty medieval, though, at least for the thing you're currently developing an appreciative taste for. Not duct tape and chewing gum technology by any means, but very much doable... though you don't think you'd get more than one good swing out of anything you could build here, though a swing could indeed bring many red feelings out if you aim it right...
You step over to a workbench purposefully and set your phone down. You just need a wire, the phone, some appropriate tools... yes, yes... you do can feel victory in your gut, lifting you higher. Screaming and crying no more, you run to the storage room, nearing your face to the door... mm, inside are the tools you need, you sense. You move your head one way, then the other. Yes indeed. The fields you need can be found there... expecting failure, you turn the doorknob. You are very surprised when the door opens. Shuffling inside, still covered in the curtain, you fish out some odds and ends, nothing you can't find after a minute's search, and run back to the workbench.
Ah... your phone will be fried if you try this. But you must try. If you do not, you will die here today. In school. What a depressing way to die that would be. Steeled by the impending troubles, you work in small, but very important strokes, opening up your phone, attaching a few things, the motions coming incredibly naturally to you like you've done this a thousand times before. It's a brutal job, and you close your eyes as you wire the components in a way you probably shouldn't, in a way you know you shouldn't, but you think you can get a new phone later. When you're not about to get shot, of course.
When it's done, it looks much the same, but a little goofier and slightly messed up, and there is a wire sticking out of it. You chose a longer distance and a longer wire - it should reach for about the length of the science lab... you could kill anyone here with a single swing of this thing, you think as red reflects in your eyes unnervingly. But with this you should be safe... somewhat safe, yes.
"Well that's certainly something you dont see every day." says steven after the mans knee finishes knitting back together.
"Im the guy that explodes." replies Steven with a slight shrug "what was this status report?"
"That the stuff is working," Kim says, looking at Z. "Now get all the stuff and get out of here. And go talk to Bubbles later."
"So he's the new guy," Z replies, nodding sedately. "I think I will stay here a while."
"You won't, actually," says Kim. "I have work to do here."
"Yeah, no rush, I'll knock around for a while," Z goes on. "I kind of left something in the basement. That was," he looks at his wrist for a good two seconds, seeing no watch on it. "That was a while ago. I should go and check."
Z stands up, ignoring Kim as he gets a rather large pistol from the nearby end table, checking if it's loaded, which it is. He then walks gingerly out of the door and into the hall, still naked throughout, taking a left and heading off for presumably the basement, that case under his bed in one hand, the gun in the other.
"I hope he's not going to be here all day," Kim tells you. "A friend of ours and some of her associates will be coming over a little later, and I'm going to need your help for a thing," she says, rooting around in her purse a moment, then producing what looks like some kind of small dart. "It's a bit sharp, so be careful. Easy to poke yourself with these by accident. Don't touch the pointy end."
She hands the dart to you.
"There's some kind of parlor thing on the second floor, which is where our friend will meet us. She's a mite unstable, so I'm going to need you to be there just for safety's sake. You'll stand behind a screen and there'll be a, and I know this probably sounds stupid, a small tube there. You're going to use it as a blowgun, with that dart, right on her and not the guys with her if there's any kind of trouble. Maybe use your power if things get hairy. Think of it as a rite of passage."
(Sorry for my delay. I couldn't get access to a computer for awhile.)
Arnie, struggling to breath, stared at his fallen captors. He was free. As his rage subsided, a realization struck. What did he do to them? How?
Wow, he killed them all. It was so violent. Classic Arnie.
"N-No, they're still alive! I didn't kill them! They're still breathing! And it wasn't me! It was the snake! It controlled me! It wasn't me! I couldn't stop it! I didn't kill them! They're still alive! Still alive! Still alive! Still alive. Still alive...." Arnie spoke rapidly, his speech almost incomprehensible. Tears of guilt started streaming down Arnie's face.
Don't blame Arnie. It wasn't his fault. They had it coming. These people are the villains.
"Yeah...It was them. They did it to themselves. I didn't do nothin. I would never hurt anyone. I..."
In fact, they're not people at all. They're monsters. They shouldn't have hurt Arnie. They should die.
"They should...die?" Arnie walked toward his captors. They laid there, mocking him. He could hear their cruel laughs within his mind. He began to grit his teeth in anger. "...they are the monsters. Not me. They are the ones who hurt people. Not me. They are the ones who deserve to die..."
Arnie stood over the woman and her lackeys. His fist was clenched.
"...Not me."
If there is a pistol or weapon nearby, grab it. Kill the woman and her lackeys.
Simultaneously you tighten your iron grip around the throats of all the people in the room, another pair of hands sliding through their possessions. You find one pistol held by a particular lackey, a Japanese-looking dagger in a holster on the snake-woman, fits the snake infiltrator pattern to a tee, and some kind of modified tazer on the last lackey. Not to waste any time, you let go of the woman's throat and in the same instant draw the dagger deeply along it, allowing her to fall to the floor, and then stab it into the hearts of the lackeys one at a time for betraying humanity in such a horrific way. Now armed with no less than three weapons at the ready, you pause for a moment, your presence sloshing around the room, pushing at the edges, trying to get out.
You may have been victorious against the snake, retaining your free will, but it seems your soul has gotten the better of your body, as it does with all those who are enlightened. Will your fellows come to you now, whispering secret things through the medium of thought, inviting you to rule the world with an invisible hand? Or is this but the first step of becoming one of them?
Massive apologies, good people. My free time collided with a college textbook, shattering its sixth toe and bruising its pelvis. In this momentary abatement of things to do, let there be updates. They will always be more frequent Friday-Sunday, as a side note.
((Bump. Also, is it possible for our characters to gain additional powers via triggers/vials/experiments?))
There's one good way to find out if you don't mind snakes in your belly and ignoring instructions.