[h1]Injae Park[/h1]
[@Mr Allen J][@Valhalla]
[hr]
Ratchet tensed in surprise as Jennifer hugged her, as if Ratchet had flown to Europe for a year and returned or something. [i]"Thank you, I wanted to hear that..."[/i] Jennifer said to her. Ratchet, unsure of what to do, patted her good hand on Jen's back. Jennifer then realized that this gesture of friendship was pretty awkward, considering the extenuating circumstances of bloody dismemberment and grotesque bodily deformity.

Jennifer agreed with Ratchet, and then dashed back to where they originally had taken off. This time, Ratchet made sure to keep Jennifer in her sights, coasting a little more slowly as to not pass the shorter girl. She screeched to the halt when the Verthaven Police Department officer told them to turn around since the evacuation was the other way. Ratchet pondered this for a bit. "Oh, crap! I sent Winnie and Kate on a bus in that direction!" she cursed. "Geez, I hope they'll be okay..."

Ratchet turned around and followed Jen in the direction at which the VPD officer pointed. She skated alongside Jen, eyeing the bridge, until--

"Look out, what's that?!"

Ratchet, startled, screeched to a halt and nearly upended herself. She instinctively dropped her left arm to the ground to form a solid base before she went flying, and awkwardly saved herself from taking another spill. She looked up. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the blue, milky mist [i]rather quickly[/i] covering the district. The haze, like a violent tidal wave, swamped over the fleeing citizens.

Ratchet heard in the distance the [i]somewhat unsettling[/i] moans of reanimated corpses/unconscious people, before the gunshots began. Ratchet had the sense to drop to the ground, though she didn't know how that would help her if she's got these fellows taking potshots into the air. Gravity is a thing, and Ratchet would prefer not to experience the harsher, more violent properties of force and motion.

She heard an uncomfortably close gunshot upon Jenny's call. Ratchet couldn't tell where anyone or anything was; the sound seemed lost in the fog. But Ratchet did hear an unmistakable thump. "[i]Je[/i]sus, Jennifer, are you alright?!" Ratchet called. She then heard some disconcerting shooting noises within her vicinity; thankfully, none of them followed with pain in any vital areas of Ratchet's body. Ratchet could see Jennifer's fallen body on the ground, yet... she still moved and breathed. Ratchet crawled closer to Jennifer; upon closer inspection, she could see that Jen had begun to bleed. At the same time, though, the pool of blood had also begun to slow in expansion.

"Jen, can you hear me?" Ratchet called.

Ratchet heard Jennifer talking to someone else, but she couldn't tell who it was. She waited for Jennifer to finish her conversation (hot-headed as Ratchet was, she also had a grasp of the concept of courtesy).

The fog dissipated, and Jen stood up, calling for her companions. Ratchet struggled to her feet. "Present and accounted for," she hollered. Ratchet, upon looking at Jennifer once more, saw that although whatever hit Jen had punched a bleeding hole clear through her shirt, Jen herself had nary a scratch, let alone a gaping wound in her abdominal cavity, upon her pale skin. (Other than a bit of relative pastiness on the newly-formed hole.)

This led Ratchet to question whether Jen had been shot at all, though that doubt would beg the question of how Jen had gotten two parallel holes drilled into her shirt exactly where the awfully-bullet-hole-shaped pasty spots on both sides of her body were.

"Are you OK?" Ratchet asked. "I mean, besides..." She gestured with her palm to the blood on the floor. "I heard some shots."

Ratchet's surroundings worried her. The acrid smell of bodies in the first stages of decay, festering in pools of blood and grime and dirt... Collateral damage and dust, polluting the ground... Generally some unpleasant imagery.