Stitches

Falling Skies: Reboot (Mecha, Space Opera)

You have one, maybe two extra players I can bring with me who have been looking for an RP to sink their teeth into if you're willing to get this rolling again, for sure

Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate

Abigail sat and stared at Ellen as she spoke, her expression set somewhere between incredulity, exasperation and resentment. As she went on about her lavish lifestyle and then swapped to her dead twin the girl lost herself in her own thoughts once more, chewing on a fingernail with her brows furrowed in consternation. She looked like she had one foot in a completely different world, balancing between what was going on around her and whatever noisy rubbish was clattering around the excess of her skull. Her gaze was set on the speaker of the time (this time zephyr, eyes squinted and curious) but she often lost focus and swam back into the conversation at random intervals. She fidgeted - a lot.

Talk of dead and estranged family members made Abigail rummage around in the recesses of her mind to figure out why there was a distinct indifference towards her grandparents. She couldn't quite place her finger on it until Cassar brought out the biscuit tin and started asking about their Awakenings. Now she was struck with a dilemma; these biscuits were an incentive to get people to open up. Abigail hadn't had a biscuit for a long time. Abigail knew she wouldn't get a biscuit without judgement - unless, of course, she participated in the conversation. However... whenever Abigail blinked, shut her eyes even for a moment, she lapsed back into her corner of the RV - the shrieking, the smell of burnt plastic, the sharp pain on impact as a hardcover Bible slammed corner first into her temple and the subsequent recoil into the metal frame holding the window...that ungodly purple light and heat and the peeling of her bubbling flesh, and the hollow chill of the footsteps out back as Pops went for the hunting rifle.

But that wasn't what came out of Abigail's mouth. She shot Ellen a wary look. She didn't know how long she'd be stuck in this repurposed office, but she had a better idea of what people wanted to hear and acted accordingly to avoid another interrogation. "Mine was smooth sailing," Abigail responded, already closing the gap to swipe a biscuit before scuttling away to the back of the room. "Brooks did most of the legwork. Had candy and water bottles in the car for me, the whole thing was planned out. We had a little trouble with the police but I just sat in the trunk and let Billy and Brooks deal with it." She scarfed down the biscuit, content with her answer. It wasn't lying if she just omitted some parts out of her story, right?

Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate

Abigail was slouched resplendently in the uncomfortable plastic chair. She looked like she was listening; she seemed attentive, brows furrowed in consternation as she...stared at the desk. She only glanced at Dr Cassar in passing before going back to looking at the mouldering altar throughout his tale. She was also restless, constantly fidgeting and moving around whenever her head dipped to her chest. She was chewing her tongue, her jaw working and gnawing and sometimes her fingers raked at the scabs and shimmering burnt skin around her wrists and forearms.

Funnily enough, it was the kid who was the first to break the silence. She cleared her throat and spoke quietly, solemnly - trying to mimic the composure of the doctor in vain - as she steepled her fingers and made a passable attempt at looking professional. “That must’ve been very frightening,” she acknowledged with a surprising tinge of empathy. “You’re clearly a very skilled doctor. I can’t imagine tryin’ ta do shit like, uh, operations n’ all that in a bouncy castle.”

The soldier woman in the background pinched the bridge of her nose, smiled and shook her shoulders as she held back the creeping fit of giggles under Brooks’ stern gaze.

Dr. Cassar's gaze turned to Abi as she started speaking, nodding along as she acknowledged his ordeal, and then turning a little, his eyebrows raised and eyes widening slightly, at the mention of a bouncy castle.

Then he frowned for a moment, and just as quickly began to beam with a big smile, and a hearty chuckle.

"Oh, no, no I'm sorry, I didn't explain that very well, I don't think. I would love to treat my patients in a bouncy castle, but unfortunately, even now I am still only learning, and I'm just not good enough for that yet. Our hospital was inflatable, but the floor was solid - it was mostly the walls, and some support for the ceilings and roof, that had inflatable parts." He nodded again as he finished, leaning towards Abi a little across the space they had between them in the circle.

"And thank you. I know I must seem like a real wimp, but I do still think about it, and it was very frightening at the time, you're right." He added, as his gaze drifted towards her hands, peeling and scabbed from her burns.

"Oh, that looks quite painful. Does this… happen a lot?"

Abigail looked at him blankly. For a moment, it looked like she wasn't going to answer at all; then she looked down at her hands and realised what he was on about.

"Huh. These? Heh, nah, this ain't shit." She raised her hand, rolling the wrist around in the light. "Even before the Violet Dawn I used to get burns all the goddamn time." For once, she smiled. "Back when I was, uh. When I was a kid. And the engine broke down - we lived in an RV out in Arizona. Anyway - when the engine broke down, nine times outta ten, that's a coolant issue. Dust in the head gasket or a crack in the hose. And my pawpaw, he, heheh, he used to turn 'round to me doin' homework and yell 'ABI YA USELESS PIECE'A'SHIT GET'CHER ASS OUT THERE'N FIX THE DAMN HOUSE'!"

Abigail was rambling. Unlike the few other times she'd talked at length, this felt confused. She kept tumbling from one point to another at random and she sounded like she was only partially aware of what she was saying. "Ain't got no clue why he called it a house cause it was a leaky ol' truck in the desert but cause I got small arms an' little hands it was on me. An' holy fuckin' shit. I got burnt all the time. Pop open the hood? Steam all the way up your arms. Try doin' a coolant flush with an engine y'all can cook an egg on. An' all that in an Arizona summer!"

She smiled and laughed, shaking her head. "I got burnt, I am burnt, and chances are I'm gonna burn."

Something about that last sentence gave her pause and kicked in a little realisation. She suddenly leant back and went quiet, glowering at her knees with shame and confusion. Just as quickly as it started, Abigail stopped talking and shut off with a clenched jaw and a newfound fascination with the desk.

Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate

"Howdy folk. Special delivery fer doctor...Cassar."

Abigail managed to make it halfway into the chapel before she really registered where she was and that wasn't remotely surprising; she looked rough. Sickly. Her skin was pale and her eyes sunken with deep dark shadows underneath them, the irises glassy and unfocused as they rolled from face to face and her jaw slowly worked at the tongue she was biting. In her arms was a thick stack of papers. She wore the same outfit she had worn in the outback. With an unsteady and fluttering gait she stumbled to the altar and dumped the papers down, stopping briefly to regard the wooden tabletop and mutter "helluvasturdy desk" to herself in quiet contemplation. She did a sloppy one-eighty, shot some finger guns with a click of her tongue and hastily squeezed past Billy to make a beeline for the door; almost exactly how she scurried out of the briefing just before the mission, too.

Or at least she would have, if Brooks hadn't very loudly cleared his throat once she got a few feet from the exit.

The effect was immediate. He might as well have yanked the collar of her shirt with how promptly she arrested her movement. The woman sat next to him sighed through her nostrils but seemed unfazed by the girl's behaviour whilst Brooks turned his head a fraction of an inch to stare her down and Abigail jutted her chin out to stare back. The exchange lasted a few seconds but conveyed more than any meaningless conversation could have managed. With great reluctance and a healthy dose of stroppiness, the kid collapsed into one of the chairs in a disruptive clatter and slouched back to glower at her lap - a 'pew' forward and to the left of the two fighters, closest to the aisle. "Sylvia's waitin' fer me, y'know. I ain't supposed to dawdle."

Dr. Cassar watched the progress of the juvenile insomnia-fiend with a mixture of concern, genuine interest, and understanding.

“Oh, Sylvia? I know Sylvia quite well actually - don’t worry, I can let her know that you were doing something important. Actually, it’s good you’re here, I wanted to thank all of you for the work you did recently - and I also wanted to maybe talk about it a little bit. I thought it might be helpful if we all sat down and talk a bit about ourselves, so that we don’t sit on the stress of it so long that we explode, you know?” He looked around the little circle, speaking softly and slowly, using his arms to gesticulate gently with each point in that practiced but genuine way that the very sincere are sometimes good at.

“I can go first, if you would prefer.” He added after a moment.

Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate

The debrief was a blur for most of you - after you left the outback, supplies in tow, most of you were too exhausted in one way or another to have much more input in affairs. The important details were that in doing what you did, you’d saved about thirty people who were going to run out of insulin in the next few days, and that the other medical supplies were all things there were major shortages of too; about ten litres of sterile saline, a whole bunch of little glass ampoules of various different drugs, a few packs of disposable syringes and cannulas, and an assortment of other things on top of that. For a hospital, or even just a clinic, it was a poor show of stock - but for a refugee camp of universal unpersons, it was a miracle. Not much else was said during the debrief - apart from one thing;

“The guy you found in the kitchen, Peter Williams, is in a critical condition - but he’s stable for now. Doc said he would’ve been a goner if it wasn’t for whatever one of you did with your magic that slowed the bleeding. Called it a miracle, actually.”

---

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Goodnight

7th February, 2020

---

---

"What the fuck, dude?” Came a furious shout, accompanied by the breaking of a plate and the spilling of food.

"Oh shit, I’m sorry-"

"We've all gotta eat you piece of shit!"

"I said I'm sorry, I don't know what else you-"

"No fuck you!" The other man lashed out, pushing the mage who’d knocked his food on the floor down into the very same mess he’d just made.

Food, the survivors noticed, was a sore spot in Goodnight's collective. Rationing was in place to make sure everyone got their share but it left everyone hungry - and hungry mages made for short tempered disasters. The violence happening in the cafeteria wasn’t a daily occurrence - but it wasn’t unusual either; arguments had suddenly become a guessing game of which destructive ability or unnatural powers might be unleashed if the wrong hair-trigger temper got pulled. People had gotten hurt before. Worse still, even though things had gotten better with the supplies recovered by your team, the medical department were still running on just barely more than fumes; every injury, every infection, every casualty, it was all a risk - more than ever before.

The violet underground were largely kept indoors unless explicitly allowed to go outside. This meant that various wings of the abandoned mall had naturally formed into haunts for particular people, with non-english cultures being the most common to sequester themselves away from everyone else. The mall was full. There wasn't a room that wasn't being lived in or used by the operatives for one reason or another. Illness was common, setting Goodnight to a backing track of coughing and weeping that was alleviated only by the occasional business of mealtimes and the odd class on magic by whichever operatives were around to do it.

One of these operatives was cutting through the crowd right now, flanked by one other figure. The aggressor raised his right hand at the man he’d pushed to the floor, and just as the tips of his fingers started to glow bright red, there was a low, dull, roar, and he recoiled.

"Enough," the newcomer, a tall, dark, military type barked. "No magic. No fighting." She continued, just as her comrade stopped focusing on the aggressive mage’s hand.

“What the- what did you do?”

“Shut you down. Like the lady said, no magic, no fighting.”

The Moroccan woman grabbed them both - the man who’d just been shoved down to the floor and the man who’d just tried and been denied casting a spell at him - and all but picked them up by their collars.

"But where the hell am I meant to get something to eat?!" Protested the stranger.

Not even the soldier had an answer. "Consider it your punishment for endangering the others. Now sit back down or go somewhere else. As for you…" she regarded the clutz with steely indifference. "... Don't let me catch you doing that again."

"This isn't fair! You keep us in here like animals and won't even feed us?!" The man was already being lifted to his feet and lead out of the room roughly. "At least make sure we have enough to go around, damnit!" His protests faded into the din of the crowd as she dragged him into the next room, presumably for a stern talking to. The other man tried to shy away from the sea of embittered, judgemental stares and back into the crowd.

Supper continued.

After a little while, Billy came up to the table where Ellen and Angie were sitting.

“Hey, uh, how you doin’ guys? Listen, I was just wonderin’ if y’all’d like to come to the chapel with me. It ain’t much of a chapel, actually, to tell the truth - but uh, a few of us are already there at just the moment, and we’re just plannin’ to talk about the last job we did. Y’know, just, get the words out. I was wonderin’ if you were interested?”

Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate

Abigail was fine - insofar as one could be after witnessing the death of a stranger six feet away from your face. She didn't say or do much until they returned to Goodnight. Then she was walking back from the toilets and stopped, turned to the nearest wall and crouched down. A few seconds of silence and she started lightly whacking her head with her fists, gently at first but with a fast increasing and feverish frequency.

“Hey!” Brooks bellowed. Trying to snap her out whatever reverie she was slipping into. A quiet, keening whine pushed past her clenched jaw as she grabbed fistfuls of her hair and held on for dear life. When Brooks approached, she was shaking. He squatted before her, grabbing her wrists and pulling them aside. "I said- hey! Snap out of it!”

Now getting a good look at Abigail's expression, Brooks could see that she wasn't breaking down - she was utterly consumed with anger. The muscles on her neck bulged with her clenched jaw and she was shaking with fury, not fear. Whatever had happened here had built up for a while. He sighed and sat down from his kneeling position. He clicked his tongue and looked around. Goodnight was always busy no matter where you went but little attention was paid to the girl sat in the corridor struggling with her own issues. Unfortunately, it was a common sight in the mouldering ruin of a mall.

Brooks stood up, dusting off his pants and planting his palms on his hips after. He waved a hand in an airy manner. “Come on then.” he said, exasperated. “Let’s take a hike.”

With herculean effort, Abigail pushed her anger back from whatever dark hole it had spilt out of. Her expression thunderous, her hands still shaking, she sloped after Brooks as he lead her further out of the mall. She didn't even look at the door guard nor register the brief exchange of words between him and the bootlegger. They crossed the cracking tarmac and into muddy woodland where clods of dirt and wet leaves stuck to her tattered trainers. The sharp chill in the air and the open sky had offset her temper for now - this was a rare luxury for the denizens of Goodnight, and not often handed out to strangers or new kids - but this was a temporary fix to a deep seated issue. She looked up at Brooks' back in silence after a good half hour of wandering.

“I can practically feel you staring.”

"I ain't tryna be subtle," Abigail retorted. "So what is this. You brought me out here to whoop me? That it?"

“The hell is wrong with you? No, I brought you out here because you looked like you were about to start screamin’ back in there. Can’t have that.”

"And why the hell not?" She skirted forward so they were walking side by side. "What's the worst that'll happen, I ruin the mood?"

“You’ll be seen as unstable. Crying and screamin’ about. You haven’t earned that yet.”

"So it's a privilege to get worked up now?" They went down a hill and within the bottom of the pit was an ancient fly tip, a junkyard of old furniture, broken vehicles and debris. "What is this?"

“A place for you to vent. Free of charge.”

Abigail looked down at the wreck, back up at Brooks and down at the wreck again.

It took her forty five minutes to get it all out of her system, which was an admittedly impressive time given the magic flung all over. By the time she was through the chassis of a car had been annealed and battered to within an inch of its life and the door of an old refrigerator had been torn off its hinges. Her screams had died down into hoarse little whimpers and she was soaked in sweat when Brooks carefully plodded into the junkyard to see her. She was shivering still but this time from the cold.

“All out?” he asked, standing besides her and looking over the wreck. Abigail croaked, nodded, then half turned and pressed her forehead against his stomach. A few wet sniffles escaped her nose, which she wiped with her grotty bandaged palm.

He knelt down beside her, gently placing a patting hand on her back. "Fuck mages," Abigail muttered thickly. "Terrorists n' foreigners. Threats to society. This…. insurgency shouldn't even fuckin' exist."

“Yeah.” he kept patting her back. “Well you’re one too now.”

"Gee, I sure didn't notice!" Abigail waved a hand at the scorch marks. "I just...I was meant to be better than this! I'm a goddamn American, I worked hard! I worked really, really fuckin' hard!" There were cracks in her voice. "It ain't easy out in the desert but that's okay, having to skip through like five schools on the road but I tried, didn't I? Ain't got no fuckin' friends or fancy smart phone or new sneakers but it ain't never about that, it's about, about trustin' the Lord and His judgement!" She looked up at Brooks with ruddy cheeks and fresh tears pooling in her eyes. "I skipped dinner on Fridays so Meemaw could have fun on Bingo night, I was the one who fixed the water filter 'stead of doing my homework. I was humble! I LOOKED AFTER MY OWN! So why did God do this to me?! Why does everyone hate me! Why is it so GOD DAMN HARD all the GOD DAMN TIME?!" Abigail shrieked with all the irrationality that her young mind could muster, face screwed up and smeared with tears and snot.

Brooks waited until she was tuckered out before holding down her hands and hugging her.

They stood there in the dirt and the chill, listening to the pops and groans as the metal on the car started to cool. It took a long time for Abigail to stop standing there and slump into the hug. She shut her eyes and exhaled. "I'm tired," she whispered.

There was another long moment of the wind whistling around them.

"I may be dumb but I ain't stupid," Abigail inhaled sharply. "What do those spell-flingin' maniacs wanna see from me. What do I... what've I gotta do to keep 'em from tossing me in a hut off in the middle of nowhere."

“Don’t start fights. Show you’re reliable. Show you’re trustworthy. You’re going to need a serious attitude adjustment. Most of you do.”

"Fine. Fine." Abigail rubbed her face clean on her jumper.

"Now I'm gonna take you back in. We're gonna head to that office, get our debrief and whatever trouble you're in for cussing someone out on the job you're gonna take without complaint. Understand?" Brooks let Abigail go long enough to watch her expression. The girl nodded but couldn't meet his gaze. "No, you look at me and say 'I understand'. This ain't middle school. You answer someone politely when you're asked a question, 'cause we ain't fucking around. Do you understand?" Brooks jabbed a finger into her shoulder, scowling.

Abigail squared her shoulders and stood up straight. "I understand," she responded.

Brooks stared at her for a long moment, nodded, and brought her back into the mall.

Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate

Abigail was getting used to the wretched, clunking monstrosity that was their only form of transportation. The stench of stale cigarettes, body odour, food and Christ knows what else had become a background irritation that she'd gotten used to. She also claimed her seats - plural. The back left corner of the bus was her domain and she had bled all over it, which was a handy deterrent for any potential seat-stealers. She strode to the back of the bus and settled into her spot with anxious laziness, both trying to relax and straining for the gunshots.

Angeline had returned to the van once the plan was in motion, opting not to watch whatever may happen. She had spent much more of her energy steeling herself for the worst, she glanced over at the greasy kid, somehow looking relaxed sprawled out across the litany of blood-stained seats. “Um… How’s the hand?” She proposed. It wasn’t exactly a good atmosphere for chit-chat but she’d rather that than to listen to the fight going on outside.

"Itchy," Abigail muttered. She twitched her fingers. "I'm gonna have to get somebody who knows what they're doing to take these bandages off, I dunno what happened last time but I stuck to 'em."

“Um, you mean like the blood or something stuck to the bandages?” Angie was no professional so she wasn’t about to offer her services, whatever what weeping out of that ugly wound would eventually dry up and stick to the bandages regardless. “Well let’s hope you’re the only person here I have to patch up, I suppose…” she eyed the girl, she was hardly the most easiest person to get along with in the group… “Oh, I heard about what happened, with the girl? I mean… Putting a random group of people together will always result in some unsavoury clashes I suppose.”

Abigail sighed through her nostrils in a big wheeze. "I melted those things into my hand, she grabbed my wrist, I told her to get off me n' she didn't like that I called her a gyppo." She scratched her wrist just under the bandages, where the skin was irritated and flakey from the heat. "Then I went to...get help for my hand, get out of the shed, whatever, n' she cornered me, and threatened the shit outta me in the back of the bus."

Angie flinched a bit “Oh yikes that wasn’t very nice.” she paused “From both of you.” she then added. “It’s not very polite to call people names like that, though I don’t suppose she handled being insulted very well either.” she sort of danced around the topic, she didn’t want to set the kid off but it wasn’t exactly acceptable. From either parties. And it didn’t seem like anyone else wanted to take on the role of disciplining her.

Abigail lifted her head a little to take a good look at Angie's face. "Lady," she started slowly, "we're in the middle of buttfuck nowhere. In a couple minutes, about five people are getting shot to death - for gunnin' down people just like us earlier today." She paused for a moment, looking confused. "I ain't sure any of us are havin' the best of days...weeks...but Jesus Christ. If I had t'pick between snappin' at a stranger who was blockin' the only exit and grabbin' me or sticking around t'see what crazy shit she was gonna do to my hand, I'd have called her something way worse n' given a good kick to the shin to boot!" She flopped back onto the seats. "I'll apologize when I'm fuckin' positive she ain't gonna stalk to my sleeping bag n' smother me to death," she decided.

Angeline allowed the kid to go off on her, taking it relatively calm. Her instructors have said worse things about her ten times over. “My name’s Angeline.” She corrected, firstly. “I support you’re right in some sense.” She adjusted her sitting position and smoothed down her hair, noting the blood still under her fingernails grimly. “It’s a… Unique situation we find ourselves in. But we’re all in the same situation and I don’t know about you, but I’d rather find myself surrounded with friends than enemies.” she eyed the kid slowly, she looked tense and uncomfortable. “Even if that lady made you uncomfortable your choice of words was gyppo, specifically. You understand? You didn’t decide to call her...” she snorted a laugh “I dunno… A creep or a pervert or whatever for ‘trapping’ a young girl in a shed, so I wonder why your mind went to ‘gyppo’ first. I don’t want to sound condescending but do you know what that means?”

"Yeah it's like…" Abi wafted a hand. "The brown fellas who don't have a home and go 'round taking all your copper, right?"

Angie takes a good, hot second to let that sink in, both for Abigail and for Angeline. “Um, not-... Quite accurate, the ‘brown fellas’ are Romanian, which I suppose are the people you’re referring to, there’s also Irish Travellers, who are also subject to being called ‘gypsies’ but they’re white, like you. Oh, and they do have homes… What kind of house did you live in? If that’s not too prying a question, I suppose? I can go first and say that I lived in a flat?” She offered.

"What kinda weird ass question…" Abigail trailed off, looking away from Angeline and at a crusty stain in one of the seat cushions. "Ain't never had a house," she mumbled.

“Oh, okay, where did you stay then? Because travellers often live in caravan parks and trailer parks, so they have homes, and they don’t like to be called gypsies because it’s synonymous with the stereotype you brought up. The wrong doings of the few should not represent the many, right?” Angeline had no idea if she was getting anywhere as Abi entertained herself with a crusty seat. “Otherwise… Every white American teen is a school shooter, and every underprivileged youth is a drug dealer, or swept up in gang activities. I can’t imagine either of those things represent you, right? So calling someone a ‘gyppo’ would be just as insulting as me calling you like… A drug addled school shooter or something.”

"Is it worth threatening to kill someone over?" Abi asked, pulling a face as she gingerly rolled onto her belly to peer up at Angie. "How bad can it really be, huh? I been called worse before. Ain't so sure what's got everyone all riled up - in the middle of a mission, no less."

“Well, no it’s not worth threatening to kill someone over. That’s why I said that both you and her had handled the situation poorly. It is, I suppose, accentuated by the fact that she was an ethnic minority and probably has to deal with insults and harassment and stereotypes just like what you’d said for all her life. Consider, perhaps, if it were merely the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’ instead of it just being related to your one insult.” She leaned back in her seat, exhaling as she did so, trying to get somewhat comfortable. “Plus I would imagine a mission is where it’s most likely to get people riled up. Everyone’s tense, we’re being relied on by many people right now and it’s lot’s of pressure. All it takes is one crack for it all to blow up so I can see why it got such a reaction.” Angeline looked out the window past Abigail. “I can’t understand how, in this kind of situation that we’re in, surrounded by confusion and negativity, it would be beneficial to anyone to bring up more negativity like discrimination on top of everything we’ve got to deal with…” She sat up and looked at Abigail again “After all, what’s a “gyppo” to a white person when we’re all mages now?” She eyed Abigail carefully “Aren’t we all going to be discriminated against now? May as well try and get along with the one’s on ‘our side’ right?”

Angeline watched as Abigail went blank, then nervous, then angry in the scope of her speech. “Don’t think that using fancy words makes you right,” she muttered. Humiliation crept into her voice. She immediately went on the defensive, starting to push herself up onto her elbows. “You sound like the goddamn counsellors. I don’t need my life picked apart by some-”

Then the gunshots rang out.

They were much louder and more jarring at close range, punching through the conversation and letting the light and air in. Abigail’s initial reaction was a flinch so hard it looked like a spasm - she fell off the bench in the process, losing all her bravado in an instant as she covered her head with the back of her hands and huddled on the floor.

Angeline sighed a little to herself as Abigail reverted to defensiveness. As the gunshots came she paled and instinctively covered her ears, a large wave of nausea hitting her like a greasy, smelly, combi-bus thing. They were over before she knew it with a final, single shot and when she opened her eyes she saw the kid curled up on the floor. A weird mix of sympathy and discomfort hit her. “You can get up now, I think it’s over. You alright?” She tried to pretend she wasn’t as affected as she was, for the sake of the girl.

Abigail looked up and saw Angie largely unaffected by the gunshots. She went red with embarrassment, making her even more ashamed as she miserably picked herself up off the floor. "It's uh. Louder up close, ain't it?" She huffed, trying to save face. The facade was pointless; she was frightened, and angry with herself for getting frightened.

Angeline nodded “Yeah. I don’t like guns. I thought with you being American you’d be a little more accustomed?” She tried to draw away the subject so Abi would feel less embarrassed “Never been to a shooting range or something with your family?” She got up and dusted her butt down of whatever grossness had stuck to it and opened the door and stepped out. Eventually, she would have to face the facts and see if there were any injuries to take care of.

About a second after she stepped out, Angie heard footsteps, rushing at her from behind.

“Who the fuck do you work for?!” screamed a man as he barreled into her and brought her to the ground on the last word, hands scrambling for her throat.

Angeline coughed as her back hit the floor too winded to say much except a wheezed “Help…”

“You fucking bitch! Who the fuck do you work for? Who’s fuckin’ payin’ you!?”

After a moment's hesitation that went on for what felt like an eternity, something hot and bright and tinged purple shot out of the open bus door, aiming indiscriminately above Angie and the final bandit in a searing burst of magic.

The bandit jerked backwards and off of Angie, jumping reflexively away from the burning heat as it struck him in the space of the joint between his neck and shoulder.

“Fuck!” he yelped, before realising in more conscious detail what had happened, and where the fire had come from, as he reached to start patting the fire out and it just disappeared. He gave a low, tense scream through his clenched teeth, and looked up at Abi.

“What the fuck?” the man, tall and slim, thought aloud, as he reached behind himself for something in the waist of his jeans.

Angeline coughed roughly as the crispy man got off her, though as she saw him reach for the gun she instinctively ran at him and hunkered low, jumping with her shoulder and arm extended for his chest to try and knock him down.

As her body - smaller than his, but strong from years of ballet, and graced with deceptively powerful control of her balance - made its impact, he budged, and his shoes left a little streak behind in the sand as he slid for a bit before adjusting his own balance to counter Angie’s, leaving them in a deadly stalemate - as he produced the pistol.

It wasn’t a small thing, but not as big in his hand as Abi imagined it would have been in hers, as the top slide of the weapon gave a dull glint, catching the warmth and light of the sun as the criminal in front of her adjusted his footing once again - and delivered a swift, brutal kick straight to Angie’s chest, knocking her back to the floor, winded.

The bandit backed up from them both as he released the safety and pulled the slide on the pistol, a faint click inside the weapon registering the chambering of a round, like a long-dreaded knock on the door. He glanced between the two of them - ballerina and teenager - his eyes alive with an unpleasant mixture of fury, triumph, and intelligence, even as the flesh on his shoulder still smouldered and the patchwork of his jacket began to fell away in ashes around it.

“I won’t fuckin’ ask again.” He held the pistol up, taking his time to line up a shot. “Who, the fuck, do you fuckin’ bastards, fuckin’ work f-”

Just as he began to bring the gun down, while it was still aimed up and above them both, a shot rang out. He jerked like a puppet being struck abruptly with a stick, tiny dots of blood suddenly colouring the air behind him, and the gun went off in his hand as his fist clenched reflexively.

Another shot. Identifiably from just at the top of the little gully they’d left the van in. Again, the man jerked, his eyes widening as the pain hit him properly and he realised what was happening. His own gun didn’t go off again - it had been too fast for him to have released the trigger, and both shots had hit him in the center of his chest.
Probably right in the heart.

A pause, just long enough for him to groan, and start the long lurch backwards into the dirt, when the third and final gunshot rang out like a clarion bell, and every sin he’d ever committed was blown clean out of the right side of his temple.

When he hit the dirt the gun went off again, sending his last mistake flying off well away from his two hostages, far out into the outback.

At the top of the hill, still aiming his own weapon down at the recently neutralised hostile as he made his way down towards the van, calm as ever, was Brooks.

After that, it really was all over.

Modern Fantasy With Lots of Explosions

This looks interesting! Also, it's a lovely layout.

Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate

Abigail trailed after Brooks and shuffled into the back of the bus. The arrival of Hans and Mark meant little to her; they were nameless gunmen sent to make their lives a little easier. She avoided the pointed looks at her return. Her hand throbbed and itched. She was tired. As everyone else filed into the bus and hunkered down for a long ride, Abigail shut her eyes and lay down across multiple seats to-

Don't sleep.

Abigail opened her eyes, grimacing. You don't know what happens if you're woken up in the middle of one of those weird dreams, her hindbrain muttered. Don't know what'll happen if you die while dreaming either. Don't risk it. She wearily sat up and stared out of the window instead as the engine sputtered to life and sent the bus trundling down the road and then out into the brush.

Boredom and hunger quickly settled in. A five hour trip wasn't alien to the kid, but she usually had her whole bedroom travelling with her. All she had to entertain herself with were strangers twice her age, most of whom had split into their own conversations and didn't give the injured brat in the back much acknowledgement - save for the glances. The whispering. A ripple of indignation flowed through her but it was softened by a thick blanket of shame, alienation, awkwardness. Again, Abigail was painfully aware that she didn't belong here. She was too young and out of place. She flitted between having something to prove and wanting to be left alone. The excess of attention to a kid who never received enough in her early years, was nauseating. It eventually congealed into resentment of these strange heathens and their disgusting magic, hiding like rats in a sewer drain; this quickly turned into self loathing. The unavoidable truth that she was also an affront to God, riding a greasy bus to find and kill the fuckers that crossed these degenerates, lingered in her mind like a bad stench.

And yet...the heat of the day was starting to swell. By god, Abigail was hungry. This wasn't peckishness - it was full blown 'Meemaw lost her EBT card after one too many cans of Busch and now we have to drive around churches and food banks and hope for the best' hungry. Gut-pinching, back-hunching, hand-shaking hunger. For many, these sensations of discomfort would have only exacerbated the wretched mood they were in but Abigail was hit with a wave of nostalgia. With it came the optimism and self-assurances. How many of these fancy-pants 'tenants' and 'homeowners' could teeter on the border of famished with a fucked up hand in sweltering ninety-something degree heat and feel like they were back home? This was her element. This was why she was here.

During those five hours - particularly when they all had to shuffle off the bus in order to let it roll up a hill - Abigail had to stand out in the baking hot sun. One hand pointed back the way they came, the other (injured) hand stabilising it at the wrist, a quick check to make sure nobody was in the way then a searing burst of purple fire, high enough to avoid skirting the brush, low enough to avoid giving away their position. Like clockwork. The kid made it look as mundane as brushing one's teeth. It was easy to deduce what her magic entailed from her practical demonstrations. Consequentially when Ellen concocted a plan, she seemed a little thrown off by her role in all of it. "You mean...I get to cover you and run back to tell the others when you find the coolbox?" She asked. "Then it's just, stay in the bus, right?" Abigail blinked, nodded to herself, the brief flit of a smile twitching on her lips as she agreed with a gentle "Cool. Ready when you are."

Empire of the Dead

Since I've been struggling to find an 'in' for this RP, a friend of mine will be making a sheet in the upcoming weeks to be a Revenant Major. We both don't have the post length that you guys have but I'm looking forward to getting started!