Kyle looks around satisfied with a hard days work. Wait, that's not quite right... ah yes, the more correct term is dazed and confused about everything that went down. There is no less than two people that are very much alive despite what their previous circumstances would have said, several very nearly dead men with one of their group running to do something... Shit, that's a bad thing. Should probably run really fast.
"Guys, I love to explain what happened but one of the church boys escaped and is probably going to cause us some problems if we don't get going right now."
You don't think Tubby has many friends he could call upon, but nevertheless you'd say it's a good idea to make sure your family's not anywhere near a hypothetical concentration of armed gangbangers regardless. They definitely see your point on that end as well, and together you vacate the premises. You're out in just a few moments, your family close by on your tail and...
... wait. You look to the left, just past some crates, and you see your dear friend Tubby, currently curled up and trying to make himself as unseen as possible, evidently having counted on you being in a bit too much of a rush to pay much mind to him. While a noble effort on his part, you must admit that his hiding spot could use some work. You and your family stand there moment looking at the cowering fellow, and he fails to pretend that he isn't there for a good few moments, after which he meets your gaze.
"Uh... uh... I surrender?" he stammers out, looking scared out of his mind.
Lacie let out a sigh as she reached the edge of the business district, it was very tempting to head down into it and she stood there for a long while considering the possibility. Eventually she made up her mind, she began to make her detour around the district. It was going to be a long night but it was better than someone seeing her injury or her body as it was, she didn't want to end up in a cell tonight.
Your night isn't terribly brilliant in any respect, since you're not delighted to have to skulk around in your metallic form. It's still probably a good idea to keep out of sight, you'd say, even if being made of metal and having a broken leg aren't really something you can imprison a person for, and you're not certain anyone's likely to have gotten a good visual of you back at the house. It's very early morning when you get back home. You're not really unseen, of course, but you do manage to keep enough of a distance that nobody can pinpoint
exactly what the matter with you might be.
You eventually come to your apartment door, and start to check your pockets for a key when it becomes terribly apparent to you that your pockets as well as your clothes seem to now form a uniform block of metal, and you can't really get anything out of them, whatever you even had in there in the first place. Not that you can't meld through the door anyway, of course, but it's the principle of the thing.
Silence. Blessed silence. And as Serra saw something change behind the eyes of the man who looked at her, it was shattered.
A scream of rage and pain and fear. Primal, born of despair and love and exhaustion. A sound of denial - no, of refusal; denial implies that somewhere, you know it is true, but would never admit it. In this, even that compromise is not given.
Serra's whole mind and being focused on one thing. That man would not kill her brother. It would not happen. She refused to let it, even if she could do nothing but rage and lurch forward to start moving. It would have felt pointless, except that she wouldn't have cared, if she even noticed. Her mind was united, even in the fugue of the last few days, towards that goal.
And the guttural, half-coughed roar that ripped from her throat? An afterthought. Less.
"NO!"
You lurch forward toward Paulie and Lucian, no thoughts beyond a singular refusal in your mind, a rejection of the inevitable. Meche moves to try and stop you feebly. Not that either of you can stop Paulie. If he is indeed thinking at the moment, it is clear he has made up his addled mind. He squeezes the trigger, and in that moment a great field of impossibility opens before you. There is an instant in which a path out becomes clearly visible, and you try to seize it, but in the same instant it disappears forever, and you are left grasping wildly and incoherently, looking for something, anything amid the small range of things that remain. The fact you cannot change. But the meaning can be refused.
All this you realize in a blinding instant as sound is drowned out by the gunshot, the bullet entering your little brother's head and soon enough flying out the other side, his skull peeling open to allow it passage. Your heart has gone still, your rage draining from you as you project it ineffably forward, setting it on an inconceivable task. Lucian tenses up as death comes for him... and yet he moves. He moves decisively, in the blink of an eye, his hands tearing free of their bonds, muscles and bones contorting under stress. One of his hands moves to grab Paulie's arm, his entire body twisting unnaturally to intercept the man's movements, and the other grabs onto the corresponding shoulder. And then with an elementary, intuitive movement he twists, the torsion tearing muscle and shattering bone, a mere second of application turning the man's arm into so much useless meat. The gun falls out of his hand as Paulie screams - he manages a moment of this before the child's hands move to his throat, beginning to crush it effortlessly as he hangs off the man, freeing his legs and standing up on the chair, looking the man in the eye as he forces the life out of him, blood mixed with loose and slippery bits of brain matter still dripping out of the little boy's head wound.
And there are you, uncannily conscious of Lucian's every movement, his mind an open book to you, intense fear pushed to the deepest, darkest corner of his fading psyche as you kindle a primal urge for destruction. Dominic is screaming on the chair next to Lucian's, you think - everybody in the room is deafened by the gunshot.
Alex would knock on the door, still mildly upset.
You spy your father through the upstairs window, looking down at you in puzzlement. There is something different about him, you think as he disappears from sight. It takes a bit before he comes downstairs and opens the door for you, looking lightly dazed from the rude awakening you seem to have given him. But you also notice something else which seems highly odd, a certain shadow behind his eyes. He feels... darkened to you somehow, extinguished.
There's an ember in him somewhere, you think, very dull and lacking in glow. You squint your eyes at him, pondering where this impression is coming from. You can't
see it, exactly, but it's definitely there. Your dad stares at you in return for a bit, probably pondering if you're high or something - that would be a bit unlike you, but a parent must always worry. And as you continue to look at him, the ember becomes all that much more striking, to the point where you think you could just reach out... and kindle it somehow.
Probably a good idea to grab some water and food. Muscle spasms take a lot of energy.
Look around for something that could be used as a cane and attempt to get upstairs.
Another thing you could really use down here - a mini-fridge.
You do happen to have a stick around here, a shinai you got during a momentary aspiration to learn kendo (that you abandoned just as quickly, mind you). It makes for a pretty good cane, you find, and you manage to get upstairs after some doing and fix yourself a glass of water and a sandwich, both of which you manage to get exactly how you like it (a fact that makes you wonder if it wouldn't be worthwhile to look into making your own food - it'd be a bother, true, but possibly worth it). Sitting down at the table, you have a good pre-breakfast, and feel quite a bit better already.
You are, however, mildly annoyed when your mother, a light sleeper herself, takes a gander into the kitchen as well, presumably having heard your movement. She seems vaguely perplexed at your presence here.
"Yeah, I can understand that." replies steven calmly, tucking the dart into his jacket pocket and opening the door for Kim in a gentlemany fashion.
"Now onto more important matters, what flavor are those donuts?"
"Glazed mostly, no sprinkles, no jelly. Didn't want to get too crazy, you understand," Kim smiles as you proceed back to the living room, where you sit down, Kim helping herself to the donut she left behind previously. "Might have some coconut on some of them, though, if you're into that kind of thing."
You are about to enjoy yourself a donut as well, but at the moment you move to grab one Z wanders back into the room, and you are very much aware of his enduring nakedness. He stares at you this time, though, not at Kim.
"New guy. You said you explode, right?" he asks with an air of boredom, then moves on without waiting for a reply. "There's some stuff in the basement. Would you kindly clear it out for me?"
"Clear it out yourself, Z," Kim replies with annoyance, and Z glances at her for a bit before his gaze is drawn to his gun.
"I tried," he says, then raising his eyes to meet yours. "Didn't work."
Yvonne felt something slip away, somehow. Anger, rage? Regardless, she still felt something was gone. She then looked at the man? She wasn't sure if you could still call him that. She decided to look away, for she could not stand the grisly sight. She then started off for an exit, a new future, even if she was not sure what that future would be like.
You sail on green winds of freedom through the halls, knowing them to be safe once more, and make your way back to the school foyer along familiar tracks. The path feels intuitive and nearly instantaneous, the lightness of your being and the relieving taste of sweet air being something you could enjoy forever.
As you glide into the first floor, almost having gotten into the foyer, however, you come face to face with a woman. She's wearing quite a bit of body armor, and her helmet obscures her features behind a dark visor. The color scheme, however - dark blue and black, arranged in angular stripes, a simple circular arrow emblazoned on the chest plate... this is One-Eighty, dressed for combat, a blue aura around her signifying great importance. You've seen her before in Edtown, though not in quite as well-armed a state.
"You alright, girl?" she asks, her words solidly resonating in your mind as she studies you from head to foot. "Anyone else still in there?"