[center][h3]Kirsty Ramaswamy[/h3][/center]

Swimming in her own frenzied embrace and blind to the world, Kirsty got one hell of a shock when a large figure slammed into the ground behind her. She shrieked, popping into the air and nearly cracking her own head against the wall she had propped herself against. No sooner did she land, however, and her eyes register that the mass come face-to-face with the concrete was a human, than she forget completely about the painful weight upon her. “Oh my God! I'm sorry!” she apologized, her face metamorphosed from one of despair to one of panic. She scooted forward onto her shins and knees, hesitating a moment before laying her hands on the young man's back and shaking him. “Are you o...oh, of course you're not okay, I'm sorry. Are...I mean, look, can you hear me? Say something! Please?”

Instead, a voice from behind her mumbled a wry comment. Kirsty thought it sounded familiar, but she could only put it to a face when she whirled around to look. [i]The depressed girl from this morning.[/i] “Oh uh, hi. And, um, no. It's...something else.” For a moment Kirsty was stunned by how nonplussed her unwilling acquaintance seemed to be—this poor guy could be seriously hurt, and there she stood complaining about it. [i]Nonono, that's not quite right. She's going through a rough patch right now...'every person you meet is fighting a battle you don't know anything about', or something like that.[/i] Then again, she herself could be overreacting. Kirsty turned back to the fallen body of Tate as Alina poked him and with just a touch of squeamish reluctance started feeling for broken bones. While someone in the nursing program would be able to tell a lot better, she figured she could at least try to determine if he was safe to move. 

His arms seemed fine, and it seemed like he had used them to break his fall, so if anything would be damaged it'd be them. No pool of blood beneath his head or teeth scattered across the pavement...always a good sign. Using what little strength she commanded Kirsty turned Tate over onto his back. No visible injuries. “Phew,” she breathed in relief, knowing full well he could be hemorrhaging internally for all she knew, but hey, she couldn't do anything about that no matter how bad she felt about it. Pretty sure her conduct would get any paramedic sued for malpractice, she poked at Tate's face. To her knowledge unconsciousness didn't come as easily or stick around as long as it did in movies and games and such, at least not without a good chance of lasting brain damage. “Um, hello? Are you okay?” she questioned, annoyed that she couldn't think of anything more productive to say. She looked up at the street for the first time. “Hey, does anyone know anything about...about...huh?”

There was nobody there. No cars, no pedestrians, no shoppers, no commuters, not so much as a single student from the school that let out its last period just a few minutes ago. Puzzled enough to leave her mouth agape, Kirsty looked up the street, then down it. Not a single soul. The only movement she found lay in the swirling of the thick fog that filled the desolate place. The hairs on the back of the girl's neck began to rise. “Where is everyone?” she wondered aloud, more to fill the oppressive silence she'd just now become keenly aware of than to actually get an answer. Her eyes settled on the surface of the buildings, and how they didn't seem quite right without identifiable signs or interiors visible through the windows. Panning upward revealed that the buildings' facades extended quite a ways, and not in normal ways, either. She could see the skyline, jagged, emotive, and unnatural. An alien sky peered down on the unfamiliar contours of a labyrinthine foreign city, awash in the sort of fog that clustered too perfectly and distorted shapes too readily. It was the kind of horror movie special-effects fog engineered for maximum mystery and discomfort, and it was working like a charm.

Kirsty shivered, her breath unsteady. Was this a dream? Did she, in a breathtaking display of despair-induced clumsiness, knock herself out on the way to Navarro's? Plod unconsciously to her dorm and pass out in her bed? Maybe she did get drugged, as the sad girl suggested. Was she then a figment of Kirsty's imagination? Two people, if drugged, couldn't possibly see the same visions after all. A hint of movement in the shadows at the corner of Kirsty's vision flushed her internal dialogue straight out of her head, replacing it with a healthy dose of fear. “This can't be happening,” she insisted, thinking of everything in her life that hinged upon the loathsome events of tonight going exactly as scheduled. But if reality appreciated her sticking up for it, reality gave no sign. Kirsty stood and glanced behind Alina, through the gate through which she came back at the university. Fog obscured the view; it didn't seem like she could just walk out of this the way she came. There was no way out. "No..." She put a hand against the wall for support, feeling cold and queasy, and stared into the fog down the street as if it would divulge answers.