[img]https://i.imgur.com/nZfRj9j.png[/img]
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As fired up as Goro felt moments before, the combination of isolation and dire surroundings threatened to squash his heroic spirit again. He moved at a decent clip despite the difficult path, but to say that the shapes looming out of the fog at him didn't slow him down would have been to lie. 'Eerie' and 'nerve-wracking' did not quite do these streets justice; 'oppressive' or, more viscerally, 'crushing' suited them better. He threw his light all over, probing alleyways, thresholds, and windows for any sign of victim or villain, keeping his ears as sharp as his eyes. All the while he made sure not to wander too freely from the main street, instead veering back toward it whenever he ventured down a branching path, to avoid becoming lost in the misty labyrinth of ruin.

Contrary to the confidence-shaking howling that could be heard from the starting zone, this place bore an eerie silence. Goro did not hear the suppressed gasps of the two adult dummies until his spotlight revealed them first. “Aha!” Hurrying over to the hapless mannequins, he examined the weight that pinned them and gave it an experimental heave. While it shifted a touch, he could not lift it up. “Oh,” he murmured, disappointed and a little frustrated. [i]My first find and I'm powerless to help.[/i] In the lull that followed, during which he busied himself thinking on how to approach this situation, he became aware of a whining cry off in the direction of a larger structure. Though muffled by the distance and the quality of the speaker that issued it, the sound could not be mistaken as anything but a weeping child.

With a start Goro realized that he had a major problem on his hands, one that could be constituted as a test of his judgment and rescue aptitude. The crying spoke of more dire need than these adult dummies' own noises did, and wasn't triage -the practice of prioritizing cases based on worse condition- common practice in emergencies? As callous as it might seem at first glance, he felt expected to leave these two and go seek out the child. Still, that meant leaving these dummies to the competition, and who knew how tight the scoring would be? Stuck in a quandary, Goro hesitated a moment longer standing above the trapped figures.

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[color=04ece9]"Y-you think we should f-f-follow him?"[/color]
Taro looked down to Umi, following the voice, where he caught her eye. He gave her a nod with a quiet ‘mmph’ through the fogged breath about his face. He took after her - after Goro. 

Goosebumps formed on the skin left between his horns, but the cold was the last thing on Taro’s mind. In fact, as he pressed through the streets, he hardly felt it at all. He was much too focused on what was at hand: desperately trying to follow the light in the dark and claustrophobic streets, all while keeping an eye on Umi and the surrounds both. Admittedly, the jogging did wonders to warm him up, but it didn’t stop the heat knotting in his chest as he pushed himself on. 

With the rattle of steel, Taro jumped onto a chain link fence and pulled himself over. He wasn’t far from Goro now, who stood over two pinned adults. 
[color=ed4485]"We’re students!"[/color] Taro called out as he hit the ground with a bit of a stumble. He looked back towards Umi for a moment, making sure they were still together, before he jogged over towards Goro. His eyes flicked over the two dummies before turning to the wider area, where he tossed over a loose bit of lead pipe - hitting the ground nearby with a rattle - before he started dragging over a blob of uprooted concrete. 

Alert to the sudden noise, Goro whipped around, but relaxed when he saw Taro. A familiar face in this almost nightmarish landscape was a welcome change. Behind the new arrival Goro spotted Umi, though neither of them could see his welcoming smile. “Ah! Hello.”

Taro rolled the uprooted concrete into positions besides the two dummies with a heave and a grunt. 
[color=ed4485]"We should probably get all of them, right?"[/color] he asked as he snatched up the pipe. He could have almost come across as rude: his indifferent voice and firm scowl accompanied with his presumptions. He flourished the pipe with a twirl besides him before he took it in both hands, where he wedged it between the fallen utility pole and the concrete blob. [color=ed4485]"That should be at least one for each of us. Help me out here…"[/color] With a strained wheeze, he pressed down on the pipe, attempting to lever the pole up even enough to just get the dummies out from underneath. 

[color=04ece9][i]’Wait, hold on. One for[/i] each[i]? But there’s three of…’[/i][/color] Umi was thinking aloud, but that’s when it hit her. There was still the sound of a child’s cry in the far yonder. She looked back at Taro for just a second, but he was preoccupied with his attempt to rescue the two dummies for himself and the brightly lit boy.

[color=04ece9]"I g-guess I’ve got the l-last one,"[/color] Umi decided, [color=04ece9]"I-I’ll be right b-back."[/color]

With that, she ran off ahead into the fog, hoping to find the source of the cry sooner rather than later.

If the horned student acted with rudeness, Goro did not seem to notice. He nodded vigorously at his new acquaintance’s suggestion. “Right, let’s do it.” Any thoughts of teamwork’s illegality faded for the moment as he leaned in to leverage his strength alongside Taro’s. As he did, he concentrated his light on Taro’s arm, sending revitalizing nutrients to be absorbed and put to use.

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Meanwhile, Umi had been fumbling around in the fog, trying her best to find where the sound of the cry was coming from. Eventually, she came across another life-sized dummy, this one being smaller than the two that Taro and the student they were following had been trying to rescue. Assuming they were all weighted to represent their human counterparts, this would also mean that this smaller would [i]thankfully[/i] be significantly lighter, as Umi wasn’t strong enough to lift a full-sized adult. Umi knelt, and collected the dummy off the ground and into her arms.

[color=04ece9]"I g-got you,"[/color] she said to the dummy, nerves still rattling in her system, [color=04ece9]"Y-you’re safe."[/color]

But still the dummy wouldn’t stop crying. Umi frantically tried to run back towards the others, but with the fog being as thick as it was, she lost her way with ease, and quickly grew concerned that she made one wrong turn too many and strayed too far for anyone to help her.

[color=04ece9]"G-guys?! A l-little help here, pl-please?"[/color] Umi called out in desperation.

She looked all over the place for some kind of sign. [i]Anything[/i] that could help her reunite with the others. She took in the sights while she was here, but they were not promising in the slightest…

Even if her soon-to-be classmates did not spy her form through the fog, however, her voice did reach them. Planning to give a signal the only way he knew how, Goro yelled, “Over here!” He then gave a nod to Taro and told him, “Close your eyes.” After doing the same, the boy let out a brief but very bright flash, turning a whole swath of the fog white. He had no doubt that Umi, wherever she was, could see it--though he also feared that other, unknown lurkers in the area might come also.