Zombiedude101

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

@FernStone I posted just after you did last night and only just saw, so I've edited my post.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

The Reid Farmhouse - Garage
_{@Surtr Inc@Atrophy@FernStone}

---

"It's a good chance," Kimberly seemed to be running along the same train of thought as Nate, or at least somewhere close, "But we also have to keep in mind that there's an equal chance that this could be someone's hitlist." Which was what he'd said, pretty much - why else would all the faces be crossed off with something like that written next to it?

"These photos are so old, that Reese wasn't even a thought when they were taken," Her friend, Jordan said to him, "He probably wasn't even swimming in his daddy's nutsack." Kimberly didn't seem to find it quite as funny, but Nate couldn't help but let loose a snort at that one - but her next point was equally unsettling as her last had been amusing. What if Scott Reese wasn't the first to go on a murder spree? What if there were others like him? And why would John keep this list? Just as Nate was about to make his own little pitch... "What if John was the one doing the killing?"

But then, he gave it a little more thought. "If this guy went around murdering all these people, how'd he end up dead when someone like Reese just tanks everything or runs? Why leave all that stuff behind for- shit!" Nate was jerked from finishing his line by a sudden boom outside. Before long, a few of the others had already gone out to investigate - he quickly joined them in time to see Claire wrestling with some kind of... tentacle? Justin lay unconscious on the ground, whilst a redhead he didn't know frantically dove out of a trashed minivan, only for her arm to get twisted at an angle that anyone could've figured for a break.

"Shit, shit - what do we do?" he asked, a question directed towards nobody in particular.

It looked like that thing was about to come down on all of them, only to Britney to step back into the spotlight and spear the ghost-thing straight through with a giant stake. When it dissipated, he felt a brief pang of relief - that thing had come straight out of one of the countless games he'd played, like a cleaner looking version ofs William Birkin's final stage, except this wasn't a game. This was real, so was that fight and so was that girl's broken arm - they could die in this. He could die. It was a sobering thought, one that proved difficult to dislodge - and soon that possibility was altogether removed. A low buzz in the distance, which had originally escaped Nate's concentration whilst he was thinking on these things, had grown lowder.

Insects. Flies, bees, wasps - anything that could fly, even bite and sting - masses of them were approaching from the air. Oh fuck. Nate gulped, reflexively yanking up his hood as they closed in, other voices speaking up. Over the cacophony, he could just about make out Britney's voice calling out to them.

"... She Awakened! She's sending a swarm towards us unconsciously!"

He didn't stop to ask questions, "Close the doors!" Jordan was with him, rushing back towards the garage - Nate might not have been in the best of shape, but his movement wasn't at a limp and he just about managed to overtake her after the first couple of strides. "Shit, shit - close it, fucking close it!" Once they were back in, he practically slammed the doors shut with all the might in his arms, desperate to seal out the coming swarm.

“Use this to jam the door closed.” Rien sounded off, “Someone help me move this, we can use it to properly block the door. Hopefully that’ll keep out the bugs and dog, with tentacle creature dealt with.” That looked like a better bet - but as their little group would find out as Nate joined them in pushing it towards the entrance, it wouldn't budge. "It's stuck!" He wheeled back around to the front, "Shit, why isn't-"

Great. Through the window, he could see that the handbrake was on. Obviously. He'd have to bust it to get inside - he reared an arm back, bracing for it, then slammed an elbow against the glass. "This is probably gonna break my-"

It harmlessly passed through as though it were water and instead of a thunk or a crack, Nate felt the colour bleeding from his vision. "Oh, right. Even better!" He leaned further into the truck, half his body past the shoulder sinking through the metal until he looked as though he'd merged with the cab, just in far enough that he could reach the handbrakd. Please work, please work...

Fingers felt rubber and plastic - a thumb found the buttton and depressed it, allowing him to release the lever. The truck began to roll forward. "Fuck yes!" Nate echoed in the cab, oblivious to the fact that his voice was muffled to the others by the enclosed space.

Colour seeped back into the world as the rest of his body began to pull free. "C'mon, keep pushing!"

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

The Reid Farmhouse - Garage
_{@Surtr Inc@Atrophy@FernStone}

---

"That’s so cool, can you walk through walls like ghosts do in the movies? Wow.” For the first time, Nate was surprised to find someone at least somewhat impressed by his new trick, his 'abstraction' as it was supposed to be called. To what extent it lay, he wasn't too sure. "Probably," he gave a shrug towards RIen, "Though I'm not too sure on if I can float around and stick goo everywhere. Not sure people would take too kindly to that-"

"Ha ha," someone else remarked - Jordan, the dark-skinned girl who walked with a bit of a limp - maybe that was why she'd taken such a dull tone to his remark, with her own footing and all? "“I dunno dude, it looks a little fake. We should probably just stick with the sheet," at least Billy hadn't been such a killjoy about it - the guy even seemed a little amused by the suggestion, or maybe it was the fact he'd stuck his foot in the ground. "A sheet?" Nate shot back, laying the faux-incredulity thick, "Nah, c'mon - you gotta be really edgy these days, just throw on a clown mask or a bag with a GoPro stuck on top and you're good."

One of the others, Kimberly - dark-haired girl with glasses, took the initiative and went up ahead with her phone - prompting him to whip out his own device and use the flashlight app to get a better view as he followed suit with the others. A pickup that had seen better days... a muscle-wagon that had definitely seen better days, with both wheels and engine absent and about a dozen or more sets of rusty old tools left lying around that gave him the vibe of one of his old man's garage haunts from when he used to get dragged along on a business trip - Mister Ward was, after all, a fan of what he thought of as 'good cars', this kind counted among them. So was Quent, for that matter.

At any rate, Nate wasn't sure if this guy was going for a rustic backwoods vibe or was actually a genuine grease-monkey who'd left this stuff to rot. This whole 'guardian' thing by itself was a clusterfuck to make sense of. Kimberly made a fair suggestion on checking out the cars - maybe there was something in the glove compartment? Billy had quickly dove headfirst into the muscle car, in the process complaining about what a piece of shit it was and that the whole thing was stripped bare, finally catching what he could only assume was the release lever for the trunk. Huh. Guess these old cars don't need electronics to unlock.

Kimberly not-so-subtly urged them to get a move on - Nate idly wandered around with the torch, peering into the occasional nook or cranny here and there, trying to spy anything of use to no avail. They got into a conversation about this John Reid guy being one of those dads who liked to get their hands on cars - so he had a daughter? That would've sucked for her, coming back home to find out her old man was dead. Nate knew that feeling from the opposite side of the coin, near enough - nobody deserved it, not like that. Even if it was the other way around, Nate still wouldn't have wanted it, for all the problems he had with his dad...

"Guys, I got something!" He spun around, catching Kim and Jordan with a colletion of photographs in hand. Stepping in close, with his phone's light at the ready to help illuminate the scene, he leaned in to get a glimpse of his own.

A key, bundled with some old photographs - the kind that looked to date at least thirty years or more, all the way back to the 80s. A lot of them were of highschoolers by the looks of it - many of their faces had been crossed off with a red marker. Definitely a backwoods killer vibe.

THE PAST IS DEAD, AND SO ARE THEY

"What is this?

It was a line which they were all probably reading out in their heads.

“This is just a shot in the dark, but the weird god child said something about a previous generation of Awakened,” Rien pointed to the last photograph. “Do you think that’s them?”

"I guess, it could be," Nate nodded, inclined to agree with them, "But what's with the creepy serial killer vibe? If these guys - they were all like us, powers and shit, what happened to them? Why are they dead?" Truthfully, it made his gut sink just a little. "It looks too old for Cousin Reese's murder-spree to have happened, and that isn't the guy's style, right? He's all smash-smash stab-stab, but he stops to mark these guys off? No, this isn't right. Someone else has been doing this - maybe the same person who killed this John Reid guy?"

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

The Reid Farmhouse - Mason Square
_{@Surtr Inc@Atrophy}

---

Things had happened fast when they'd hit the Cafe, almost a blur. Nate had come along for the ride in Claire's truck, ostensibly to help out the others... somehow? It wasn't like going Casper the not-so-dead-but-not-particularly-friendly ghost on Reese would have really done much good, would it? He didn't know - he was still figuring this out, one step at a time.

One little piece of action he had seen was Reese going full-hulkmode, practically leaping into the air like he was only halfway tethered to the laws of gravity and landing on an adjacent rooftop. Claire, of all people, had responded to this retreat by shouting at the mass-murderer for being a coward, all-too-comfortable with that crimson hue that surrounded her frame. If Reese had thought 'fuck it', turned around and gone straight for her? He figured she'd have had less of a hard time dealing with it than the other, but still... dumb idea.

Nate, for one had not complained. When he'd climbed out of that truck cab, he'd found their group had grown just a little with a few faces he didn't quite recognise. And, having took off straight after the God-Kid had showed up, Penny now looked like she'd run a mile on a train track and was nursing a cigarette. She too seemed pissed off about the situation, but at least in her case she had gone up against Reese with her tampon-shooting abstraction and maybe part of that was the reason why the guy bugged out.

Figured this was a fight he couldn't win?

It didn't matter - they were, more or less, alive - particularly himself. Claire began to explain the situation to the new faces, a circumstance where if Nate hadn't seen for himself with his own eyes would've called it out as bullshit. Soon enough, more of them turned out to be the 'Awakened' that the God-Kid and the dream had spoken about, complete with the wierd brands. It reminded Nate of his own awkward situation and how Viv and Quent had yet to find it and, now that he knew this, never would.

Britney had quickly takenthe reigns again, steering their group down towards a lead she'd mentioned before - this John Reid guy, the one who'd written a diary about the whole situation which, somehow, conveniently explained most of it for them. Bullshit in any other situation, but witnessing the day's events alone had eaten away at his skepticism on such a matter. This time, they'd be going to the guy's farmhouse - wasn't that criminal tresspass? Not to mention a whole slew of other things that could potentially get them into shit - breaking and entering, possession of a deadly weapon (what else would you call something that could shoot out tampons at a deadly speed) and so forth. Quent would've really loved him for that.

Yet all the same, Nate went along with it. First, he dropped by his home, grabbed a quick change of clothes and picked up a few other things that would probably come in handy (his multi-tool included) and set off for the Farmhouse on-foot, having no car, bike or easy pickup option to hitchhike around on.

Getting onto the property was easy enough - their already-assembled group had found that the gate hadn't been locked and, stepping onto the property, found the place to be almost a cliche in its own right, down to the enormous red barn or the pristine-white coat of paint across the planks that formed the exterior of the house. All this space... Justin had made a pretty good point - there were no crops, no animals - not even that lingering smell of shit you'd sometimes get out in the open driving past cattle farms.

To the topic at hand... Nate was more than content to go with the flow and walk alongside whoever needed him. And, at least Britney hadn't outright said 'let's split up and look for clues' - that would have been inviting trouble, one way or another. No, it was Billy's movie-making suggestion that finally elicited a brief chuckle from him and prompted him to break the silence.

"I mean hey, if you're looking for a ghost..." Nate took a step forward, the tip of his shoe sinking into the softened mud. He subtly gestured to himself with a tilted nod at that same shoe.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

Grand Ridge - Conference Room - ???
_{@Surtr Inc@Atrophy}

---

Perhaps to Nate's slight disappointment, Penny hadn't taken the bait, only further serving to piss off half the room as she dug her hole. In fact, the only one he'd seen yet that hadn't outright laid into her was a skinny little blonde girl with some kind of Eurotown accent, who'd cut into the argument with a cold demand that she leave. And then - oh shit - Claire's temper flared. It wasn't wasn't even a metaphor - the space around her form had literally transitioned to a crimson flare, right at the point where somehow, this girl had managed to break off the edges of the table with her bare fucking hands.

Her abstraction?

Either way, he almost (or, maybe really) felt himself slipping a foot halfway through the damned floor when she lunged forth, restrained only by Justin at her shoulders. The guy was trying to talk her out of it but she wasn't buying it - the fuse had been lit. With what she could do... Nate dreaded to think, having just seen her handiwork on that table. Then Justin got pushed aside and Claire looked set to tear Penny a new asshole (she'd definitely need those tampons then) as she set into her rant, which raised another point - Nate himself had seen her abstraction in action, what if she decided to pick up a chair or table or something and toss that at her? No doubt they'd all go the same way he went when Lynn had nearly smashed his head in with her little graffiti trick - only they didn't have the luxury of being able to phase through shit. Maybe he didn't, this time - maybe it wouldn't work and he'd get fucked just like the rest of them.

"Would all of you..." Britney's voice rose, "fucking stop?!"

Another blackout slammed into them. Same thing again? Nate felt his stomach threatening to turn over nonetheless, disoriented by the sudden sensory deprivation - but the luminescent glow that returned to them [i]definitely[i] left him feeling a knot in his insides. What? Where? Those two thoughts came to mind - there was no sense of time or place here, just... space. The surface on which they stood was transparent, as were others in the group who could spot each other through the crowd. Even Nate himself could just about look through his arm - which was an experience he'd admittedly hoped he'd never have to go through if he could do anything about it. Some things were too weird for people to process.

Definitely unlike the blackout, though - this place hadn't disappeared and gone back to normal in the blink of an eye. They were still here - and the others were equally confused as he was, by the looks of things. How had they even ended up here? Nate's thoughts drifted with Aliana, towards Britney having a clue to that - but as she quickly explained, that was a dead end. Figures.

Then the space they were in - the luminescent blue haze which surrounded them - faded away into another blackout, before transitioning to a more familiar sight. Market Square. Only, this wasn't a picture show - this was a snuff film, showing a guy getting pulled into an alleyway by Scott Reese and brutally murdering him with a bladed weapon. Though he'd seen it in media countless times, perhaps even seen it from a distance at the camp and snuck past the bodies - there wasn't quite something as sobering as watching a guy, the same kind of guy at his age, minding his own business, get pulled into an alleyway and butchered alive, his body twitching for a couple of moments after. And the guy he killed had a brand on him - almost like the one he'd found on the back of his own neck - like the others, too.

Abstraction. Awakened. Right.

It struck home the point that had been raised about Reese being a danger to this whole town. To people like them, to people like his Uncle Quent - just dying pointlessly to this asshole who had picked up a thing for burning off their brands, somehow. It left much to stew in the depths of his own mind.

"Nate?" A familiar voice whispered behind him.

The almost picturesque snuff scene faded into dust, transitioning to a view that struck him as something out of a post-apocalyptic film rather than Farmer's Hill, Montana. It took him a moment, no - a few moments - to process it. Market Square again, but halfway along to being torn down, with buildings falling apart or outright destroyed. The sky was a crimson hue, clogged with thick, darkened clouds. That wasn't the worst of it though.

No, the worst of it came in the form of bodies piled onto the streets, hundreds upon potentially thousand of them to form a literal floorspace of dead meat - some bodies of still writhing before finding relief in death. And for him, lined in a neat row... he recognised three of the bodies. Even as beat-up and mangled as they were, there was no mistaking them.

Quent? Viv? Dad? Nate blinked and, for a moment, thought he saw Mom, too - but the body slumped in a heap on the ground had a face which he definitely didn't recognise. Now you're just crazy. Quent's body was practically draped over Viv's, the overturned husk of a police cruiser resting close by. Protecting her, at least. He figured that's what he'd have done, what he would do if it came to it. As for his Dad, well - that perhaps was a little surprise given how little often he was around, though he didn't take seeing the old man dead on the ground in such a good light. Nobody should - or should have died. Was this even real? Part of him wanted to rush up to the bodies, to shake them back to life, but...

Nate sucked in a breath through his teeth, blinked, almost felt himself reaching into a space which was outside the realm of physical touch, the colour bleeding from his vision as his feet sank a few inches into the ground. At the foot of each body was a humanoid silhouette, faceless, almost formless. At the bodies of the people he recognised - his family, they seemed to stare straight at him, though they never wore eyes nor anything to suggest or hint at expression. Were these ghosts? Claire didn't seem to think so, running over towards the lifeless body of girl with a gaping hole in her torso, one who looked as though she'd been speared. Others didn't seem far off that line of thinking either, but they didn't see the silhouettes - the shadows of the dead as he saw them.

"... This is what the Glutton will do to this town," A voice spoke from behind the entirety of the group, almost childlike in its nature, but at the same time resonant - as though it were speaking with a hundred mouths at the exact same time so that they melded to form a single, unified voice. A kid, by the look of their shape - though kids didn't usually have an all-white, straight white appearance. Something else to throw into it all. He wasn't a believer in a God, nevermind the God - but this guy... thing, fit the bill. "This is what what he wants you to do; fight each other instead of him." Even sounds like it.

"You must reconsider your actions, and connect with one another. Or he'll win. Each day, he grows more powerful, and hungrier for your Gift. So tell me... will you stop him? For me? For everyone here?" For a moment, this God-kid appeared to be staring straight at him, which put the thought in his head - the thoughts he'd had before. He? Scott Reese could do all that? Not just the people he'd murdered already, but the whole town? More?

The prospect of it scared him, but the alternative - the idea of losing people, losing more people he cared about was scarier. Terrifying. Impossible. Viv, Quent... those two more than anything were the only real family he had around anymore. But what could he do?

"I... look, you uh..." Nate found himself at a stumbling block, addressing the God-kid, "God-kid, okay? That's all I can think to call you - how can we stop him? This uh - this awakening crap, it doesn't come with instructions, okay? We can't just say 'by the power of jesus' and just expect something to work, connecting like you said." Could he even handle the job? He wasn't exactly in great shape like some of these other guys were. Was he even worth this thing's time?

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

@Atrophy I updated my post to account for yours you got in just before me.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

Grand Ridge - Conference Room
_{@Surtr Inc@Atrophy}

---

Nate struggled to follow the multitude of conversations going on in this room, though he was able to pick up a few names here and there. Much of it looked to have descended into a dick-measuring content when in came the presence of a real, live fucking bat in the room - flying straight out of the ass of some blue haired guy who, who in turn couldn't necessarily be pinned down as a guy or a girl. As far as Nate was concerned, they were androgynous

In fact, judging by the silence on his part, he'd taken this better than the others had - and who could blame them? None of this shit was normal in any sense, even-

"Quiet!" All light in the room disappeared. Not faded, not seeped out - disappeared, as though it was never there or as though they were covered in a shroud of dark. It was an almost terrifying experience and would've been even moreso for Nate had he not already been through his own self-discovery of powers and the wonderful things to be done with them. Not helping to tarnish the intimidating visage once the lights were back on was the owner of that voice that had told them all to shut the fuck up, a shorter, skinny guy - one whom Nate had already pushed aside in his mind as yet another face in their crowded group.

More bickering followed. Billy, the guy who'd been the earlier bat's original target slunk back into his chair whilst Penny, who he did know (if only by their earlier acquaintance and her 'bumblebutt' monicker) laid into another girl, Claire for laying into him. Yeah, this was a clusterfuck - and for a change he didn't stick his hand into the grinder. Not least because he too was pondering on the implications of it all - thank you for raising that, Penny - then the other girl, Britney, started giving her own explanations for it all.

At least she had a rough idea of what it was they dealing with. Perhaps too much, though he'd never quite put two-and-two together in this instance... at least until she presented to the collective group this diary of hers which at one point had been signed and scrawled by a John Reid. The same John Reid who rang absolutely no bells with him but, as Britney would explain, was the kid they'd seen under attack in their dreams. Now he was dead dead, for-real dead.

And worse yet, all the shit he'd seen and consumed in years' worth of video games and other media... this whole thing was a clusterfuck to take in. He was an 'awakened'? Something like that usually came out of a game, like a character class in one of those crazy JRPGs or a monicker given to the protagonist by some oracle types. Hell, there was even a fucking word for his phasing-through-shit power, it was an 'abstraction' - with all the burdens and responsibilities that entailed. So he'd be expected by this dead guy to be a 'Guardian' for this town? The same town in which he'd spent a tiny fraction of his life in contrast to Bellevue, where he was still the loner, the lost new face.

Claire raised that point before considered doing so, thankfully at first, though he felt a quick pang of shame when Penny laid straight back into her for her 'cowardice', pointing out that Scott Reese (who, yes, also had an 'abstraction' - one that turned him into Bruce Banner's backwoods cousin) was still out there and ready to do more harm to them. Or, for that matter, to other people - what about his Uncle Quent - would he be able to handle that if he ran into him on the job? Especially without even knowing what he was getting into?

Even then, what could Nate do? Penny's argument was poisoned with her last comment - the one about Claire's friend in the coma. That, of all things, managed to strike a personal chord with him and for that, he had to get some kind of retort out, even if it was a poorly humoured one that went back to their earlier conversation, "Hey, you should probably put those used tampons away before they start flying around the room again and hit someone in the face like the bat hit your uh - friend, there." He was, referring to Billy sat next to her. They looked familiar, maybe they were actually... whatever.

Either way, it was a bitch move, even if she was right about the rest of it all.

Investigation into a murder was another matter, though... one he'd still have sooner left to the likes of his Uncle Quent - the man was a veteran cop of the West Coast's biggest city, after all. For emphasis, Britney decided to drop another bombshell on them. Great.

"Threats?" Nate finally threw his arms up, "You mean like that cannibal-monster thing that tried to make your not-dead friend dead before he could go on to die just now?" It was a legitimate question - the idea of a thing like that coming after him freaked him out. Even if he could just let it pass through him, just having something like that... no. "Would guns even work on them?" Shit. That was a thought he'd spoken aloud, though now he'd said it - he meant it. This was Montana, right? And people like Quent had all kinds of stuff on hand for shooting - probably even some of these guys, too.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

Grand Ridge - Conference Room
_{@Surtr Inc@Prosaic@Atrophy}

---

As he was prone to do from time to time, Nate had almost slipped up on attending this little group meeting on account of being distracted with his thoughts on recent events. It was only a prompt from his phone (thank god he'd set an alarm) that he'd kicked into gear, stepping up the pace to arrive.

When he finally hit the door however, he felt a pause overcome him. What did he hope to achieve by showing up here? Understanding? Direction? Friends? Perhaps at least - if there were others like 'them', that would be something. As far as talking about his powers stood, the trio of girls had been the only others to discover the truth about his power and even that was because they'd seen it in action. Nobody else would or even could understand, there was no talking about it either - not even to Quent or Viv. Last night, he'd tried to picture how that conversation would go.

'Hey, guess what? I can walk through walls now!'

At best they'd think he was bullshitting them for the fun of it. At worst? That the pressure from what happened with Mom was finally catching up - and treat him like some kind of mental case.

Nope to that, Nate decided - besides, Quent and Viv already had enough shit on their plate without him throwing more onto it. Biting the bullet, Nate stepped inside just as the conversation was already ongoing, allowing him to catch the tail end of one discussion.

"-luminati dude was like ‘He’s an Awakened’ and then I woke up, which is pretty crazy timing, if you think about it, right?” The speaker in question was a tall, almost lanky guy with thick black glasses. Then an asian girl spoke up affirm what he'd heard last, "I also had that nightmare,"

So that dream did mean something?

Eyes flickering across the room was quick to recognise Lynn, Aliana and Penny, all sat close by one another. As for the rest, most of the faces here he could vaguely recognise and perhaps even put a couple of names to at a stretch, but it was only the trio who'd been showboating their powers to one another that he felt any real sense of familiarity. He quietly slipped past the others, aiming to take a seat beside them.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

Mfw my character's relationship table reflects my real social life.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

Grand Ridge - Outside
_{@Surtr Inc@Prosaic@Atrophy}

---

Stalking wasn't exactly Nate's forte but the girls seemeed preoccupied with whatever it was they were focused on, probably . Lynn seemed to be leading the trio, taking them on a path which led towards the edge of the academy - out of the way of others, in other words. Once or twice he had to duck down behind a trash can or tuck into a space in the wall - and he was surprised even so they didn't catch his fat ass behind it. Eventually they came up to where the collective campus' trash was dropped for collection... and Lynn was drawing a symbol on the wall? What? Was this some kind of satanic ritual thing that the weird girls around this place did?

Before he could continue down that line of thinking, the symbol began to glow. And then-

What?!

Nate fell backwards, almost knocking over one of the trash cans he'd been knelt behind to watch this little scene. A pillar of flames had erupted from the symbol, scorching the ground and plants around it - Nate could almost smell it, if only for a second. The girls almost seemed surprised by it too, just a little - or at least like they were enjoying the show. Which confirmed that feeling in Nate's gut - what was going on? The curly haired blonde seemed excited for sure, then she followed up with a trick of her own - blasting a bunch of pens into the wall like the birdshot from the twelve gauge Quent got him to try out at the range that one time.

At least that time Nate didn't end up nearly knocking over the cans and catching their attention when he saw that - but it was still mindblowing to watch. The collective memory of all eighteen years' worth of video games he'd run through couldn't hold a candle to seeing something like this.

Finally, the third girl - the other east-coaster with wild hair - stepped forward, looking to show off what he could only guess was a third trick? It had to be - Nate could see a glow emanating from her wrist, then... nothing? Literally, nothing - she disappeared. Then, so did Lynn - leaving only the curly blonde to watch. It didn't last long - both reappeared in the span of a couple of seconds, but hell - that made three things that Nate hadn't expected to see today, nevermind one.

Only thing that he couldn't help but notice was, like him, they took it in stride. Most people would've freaked at that - Nate? Maybe not so much, at least after the first couple times - but here they were, laughing, joking and showing off - Lynn scrawled another sigil on the wall and watched as a gust of wind blew from out of nowhere, scattering loose trash all over the place.

Again, the curly blonde started talking about it - how great it was, then dropped a name for the other east-coaster - Aliana. She made some good points, too - it wasn't like people wouldn't notice if they went ham on the place, throwing pens and chairs around or blowing up a classroom. What would he do if he was invisible? Peek on the answers for a test? Check. Sneak inside of a bank vault? Check, sorry Quent. Hang out in the boys' showers? Well, seeing as he didn't need to be invisible to do that already, it was kind of a moot point - though, genders swapped, no - that was a line he wouldn't have crossed. What would Mom have said to that? Jesus.

Tossing her bag at the wall in a surprising change of tone, she started calling herself out, then... calling them out. She made the point he'd thought up just a couple moments back about not freaking out, then pointed out that after what happened at the camp, this couldn't have been just a coincidence. Right. It all made sense now - a few people had said Reese had turned into Bruce Banner's redneck cousin, complete with Hulk rage and the like - even a car slamming into him hadn't stopped him for long. So he had a 'power'? Maybe it had made him crazy?

A sharp sinking sensation hit him in the gut when he realised what the implication of that line was - he was still wanted, after all. If someone saw him around here, no doubt there was a good chance Quent could've been one of the first-responders to that call. And he'd be going up against that. Nevermind more people going crazy like Reese.

After that thought had been planted in their heads, the conversation seemed to take on more of a serious tone. Nate watched as Lynn stepped back over towards the wall again and began to draw yet another symbol. Moments after she was done, it began to glow blue, then it tore away from the wall and...

"Shit!"

Nate fell back against one of the trash cans, knocking it over and reflexively drew his arms up to shield himself from the incoming chunk of debris - it loomed in overhead, about to crush his head and...

What the fuck?

Colour had bled from his vision, leaving a mass of light and dark patches which encompassed the space around him - a mass of gray overtaking the blended brickwork and metal colours of the building. When he tried to find some measure of stability, pressing a palm into the stone ground, he instead felt his entire mass lurch inwards as it sank through the stone and beyond, his arm being absorbed all the way up to his elbow. Mouthing a silent yelp, he stopped - tried to take a second to breath, then pulled back upwards, the sensation like passing through water - albeit without any damp to it.

Was he dead?

Am I a fucking ghost? He recalled the rushing sensation where that chunk of the wall should have smashed him square in the face, like he'd stuck his head on the front of a rollercoaster. Maybe it had and, hell, there was something on the other side, but... no. No, he wasn't dead. He couldn't be...

It clicked just then, this was just like the trio and their powers. Blinking, Nate shifted his weight forward, drove a palm into his knee to force himself to stand - because at least his feet hadn't sunk into the ground - then pressed the other palm into the stone to give himself the needed push. This time, he felt solid ground beneath his feet - and the sensation of being immersed in water dissipated, colour seeping back into view.

Only then he realised that the trio had been watching. Somehow, something in the sense of words poured from his mouth as he adressed them in deadpan, "What, you never saw a guy fisting the ground?"