Inter-twined (Black Thursday, Group 4)

[Cassandra]

She knew she should’ve stayed in.

Ever since returning from the Shadow Realm, Cassandra had kept herself safely between the walls of the Dusk Sanctum. It felt safer there; visitors were few and things were blessedly quiet. Still, she worried about her sudden and complete lack of desire for interaction with others, and eventually that worry got the best of her. She finally put her foot down and decided to force herself out of the sanctuary and into the public demesnes, one step at a time. She picked someplace small to start, the “Interwebz Café” – she’d logged in there a few times back before her powers started developing, though she was much more partial to the Honeymead Library. Still, it was a destination she felt she could manage, so she had tossed a coat across her shoulders and made her way through the portals to the outside world.

As soon as she’d stepped foot outside of the Crypt, a blast of wind had nearly taken the slight girl from them. The gusts were insidiousness frosted over – reaching a hand out to balance herself across a patch of ice that seemed to appear out of nowhere, her coat flapped open and arctic air sizzled across her skin with little regard for clothing. Regaining her footing, Cassandra had secured the coat tightly around her, zipping and buttoning it shut resolutely. The weather reports hadn’t mentioned anything close to the conditions that surrounded her, lines of snow dancing across the pavement like a monochromic aurora borealis. It was early in the evening, but she could tell the weather was only beginning to sink its claws into the night, so she hurried along to her destination.

The café was a cozy little building, boasting a small cluster of computers and what Cassandra remembered as some pretty tasty scones. (She hadn’t tasted them or any other normal food since shortly after her turning, but the things lost always seemed to burn the brightest in memory.) The coziness was one factor she hadn’t planned on favoring so heavily when she planned the outing, but her trip to the café had changed her mind pretty fast. She gratefully, wordlessly exchanged a couple of bills for a cup of steaming coffee and a passcard from the attendant, and took her place at one of the computers. The coffee wasn’t any more digestible than the scones, but it smelled delightful and people didn’t tend to pay as much attention to the level inside the cup as its presence.

She hadn’t spoken to anyone as she sat there, idly tapping and scrolling away at the compact desktop computer, only occasionally glancing up at her surroundings. Simply being there was the larger accomplishment, and the inane time-wasters on the screen were modest help at best. She barely noticed as most of the patrons made their way out into the storm, opting for someplace safer than a public café, nor the one or two lone figures that slipped in instead of out, finding refuge from the ever-worsening conditions outside.

What did capture her attention, and quickly, was a loud crack and sudden pitch blackness covering the room. The lights, the computer screens, even the gaudy neon sign advertising the café’s presence to the outside world - all had gone out. Ordinarily, the streetlights outside would have provided some measure of illumination to the café’s interior, but they had gone forebodingly dark as well.

Small noises generally aren’t obvious when they’re low-level background material, but when they’re suddenly absent, few things could be more conspicuous. The hum of the neon, the whir of CPU fans, the drip-drip-drip of the coffeemaker – these were all swallowed in complete and utter silence for a long moment, before something took their place. It could have been anything at first: a heavy breather, an SUV of some sort driving past, or even the wind abrading the commercial roof overhead. The wind was doing its own work and making its own sounds, though, and as the noise grew, it became obvious that this was a different animal.

The noise grew to a rumble, and became palpable beneath Cassandra’s tense feet. The word never graced her silent lips, but it flared brightly within her mind just before the vibrations became violent.

“Earthquake.”

It was the last thought that she had time for before chaos ensued. A cracking, crumbling sound surrounded her, the young girl was thrown head over feet like a rag doll, and the darkness became black.

[Prudence]

"Well, this ******* sucks." Prudence grumbled as she looked down at her cellphone that took a good beating when it fell from her coat pocket as she jumped from roof to roof in the more seedier parts of town. Guess Otterbox cases couldn't withstand some things after all.

She had been on her way to meet up with a wraith guide, withstanding the shitty weather conditions, because, well she was a god damn vampire and a little cold and rain never killed a vampire. Not that she knew of. Her phone had fallen out and smacked the wet pavement three stories below, making her stop her pursuit of the wraith guide and check out how bad it was. And it was bad. Cracked screen made it impossible for her to swipe the screen to unlock it and access any ******* thing. Including the crownet. Prudence knew where the guide was supposed to be, but figured when she got closer, she would look again and take the quickest and best route to the guide.

She sighed, pocketed the phone and then looked, east and west. There was a cafe a few miles away, but she wasn't sure where without looking. The woman headed east once she named off the street signs by doing a complete circle in the rain, looking rather, well, odd she suspected.

The woman stuffed her hands in the coat pocket, started heading down an alley and then focused on the location of the cafe. It wasn't far from the saloon and she really should go there instead. It would make more sense to others, but to her that meant stopping to chat with her staff, checking in on things and doing some work. Wraith guides didn't sit on their asses forever! She started jogging towards the cafe, then took off in a full run before she was in front of the cafe in but a few seconds. "Ha!" Prudence said triumphantly before yanking open the cafe doors and entering. "Can I get a small coffee? Decaf?" Prudence asked at the desk, only because it was the cheapest and for appearance sake.

After the order was placed, the tall woman moved to a computer and started working on pulling up the Crownet. Beads of water drip, drip, dripped on the cheap, plastic desk under her wrists, falling from her coat sleeve. She went to the locations page and got the location again, this time she wrote it down on a piece of scrap paper that was in a cup with the cafe's name and logo and a pen, also with the cafe's name and logo. "Here's your cof-" A male said but was cut off when **** started getting crazy. The world rumbled under her feet, causing her chair to slid a few feet from the male and the desk, lights started swinging above her head and the heads of others, and the power went out in the cafe, consuming everyone within it in complete darkness.

[Trinity]

She waited until she heard the click of the door sliding into place before she rolled over, one arm carefully moving to block out the dim light of their bedroom. He always snuck out when he thought she was asleep, always with the same ******** warning about going out on her own. She knew he was trying to protect her, but she wasn’t someone that took orders very well. She hated that he was gone more often than not, hated that she hadn’t a damned clue where he was headed. He was always so secretive, something to do with the ‘faction’ he was a part of. Sometimes, she felt as if the faction held more importance to him that anything else. Gritting her teeth in frustration, the buxom blonde kicked the sheets from her body, the air cool against her bare skin. “In a minute, Othello,” she muttered as the dog began to bounce around, the sound of his paws against the floor like thunder to her ears.

She knew her boyfriend’s thoughts, almost more than she knew her own. She knew the dark turmoil that spun around in his mind, the voices that spoke to him on more than one occasion. She could tell someone his favorite color, but she couldn’t tell them where he went. She couldn’t tell them what he did, or who he was with. More often than night, his mind was filled with useless information to keep her out. At first, she thought it was to help her. He knew how painful it was for her to know everything that was on someone’s mind, but now she was beginning to wonder if he just didn’t trust her. It settled uneasily in her chest, and she’d had enough. She’d find her answers, even if she had to go into psycho girlfriend mode and follow him. With a resolve she didn’t know she had, she padded to the closet and pulled out the first thing she could find; a pair of white jeans and a black tank top. Slipping her feet into a pair of red peek-toe Louis Vuitton heels, she tossed her Skull Messenger bag over her shoulder and eyed the security camera above the apartment door.

The moment she stepped past it, it was going to go off and she would receive a message demanding to know where she thought she was going. It never failed. Brushing her fingers through her unkempt curls, the Telepath shook her head. What could be the harm, really, in teasing him? He left her without knowledge of his whereabouts on a daily basis, it was only fair that he received a taste of his own medicine. After all, she was the Daradasi Wild Child. With a soft laugh, she braced herself for the assault of sound that always came the moment she stepped passed the threshold of her soundproof apartment and into the real world. The world where no secret was safe – except for his.

Pushing the ‘down’ button on the elevator, she pulled her Skullcandy Headphones from her bag and slid them over her ears, fingers twisting the volume button on her iPod until 30h!3 was blaring, effortlessly drowning out as much of the world around her as possible. It didn’t keep the thoughts from filtering into her mind, but the lyrics helped her to maintain her focus. It was odd, how the fact that music was what gave her a sense of balance. Every other telepath she had encountered since she was turned swore off of it because the noise was too much for them. It was just another thing she managed to do differently. Anything to go against the mainstream, her sister would say. Perfect little Annabelle. As the numbers lit up during her descent, she rested her back against the cool metal wall and ignored the vibration of her phone in her back pocket as her mind connected with the wavelength.

I’ve got a date. I’ll see you later.

She knew she was testing boundaries by playing on his curse, but the wildfire of doubt he had created wasn’t giving her time to think clearly. To those that looked in on their relationship from the outside would say that it was toxic, that it didn’t make sense. Her own sire, though she liked Aksel well enough, didn’t trust him. Her jealousy and paranoia had a lot to do with it, but how he acted with her didn’t help, either. She didn’t bother to try and explain it, to ease the thoughts that filled their mind. She knew that they wouldn’t understand that for every toxic fight they had, that there was a moment of pure, undeniable love that made up for it. What else did they expect, pairing a hurricane with a volcano? They both had their proverbial skeletons in the closet – his, admittedly, more fucked up than hers – that no one else would understand. Their relationship might be hell, but she loved the sick son of a *****. It was something she never thought she’d be able to do, to feel.

That alone was enough to keep her with him.

It wasn’t until she boarded the transit that the first drop of rain fell. It landed on her hand a second before she stepped inside. It was if that one drop of rain was the key to the gates of Hell. Not long after, the rain was pouring down and drumming against the metal roof, heard easily over the sound of her music. The roar caused her to bow her head, fingers tightening in a white-knuckle grasp against the pole to hold herself upright. At once, the thoughts invaded her mind, the hysteria too much for her to handle. Each person in the car had gone into overdrive, worried about the weather reports, if they had left their dogs outside, or if they’d make it home safely. It was a storm, and yet people were acting like it was the end of days. It didn’t take her long to find the cord for an emergency stop, and the second the doors flew open, she dashed out, heels splashing into a puddle deep enough that it soaked her calves.

Quickly, she pulled her headphones off and tucked them into her bag to protect them from the water, the howl of the wind roaring in her ears as it nearly knocked her off her feet. “Damn,” the blonde muttered, arms crossing over her chest as if to act like a wall against nature. Her phone continued to vibrate against her ***, a constant reminder that she had someone out there freaking out over her. She knew his anger had dissipated by now, and she knew that he was more than likely about to tear the entire city apart to try and find her. She hadn’t counted on the storm in her little devious plan. Squinting to be able to see the signs through the rain, she grabbed her bag tighter and began to run. By the time she had found the door to the nearest building, rain had caused her clothing to stick to her skin and her hair was a mess. Thankfully, she wasn’t one to worry about appearance – aside from the fact she had chosen to wear white.

As the door to the café slammed shut behind her, she dropped her head back against the wood, her eyes closing. Her head felt as if someone was hammering against it, the world tilting off of its axis. The sound of the storm was loud for them, but to her, it was furious. The wave of voices and thoughts didn’t help, and she found herself sinking to her knees where she stood, her hands curling into her hair. “Miss? Miss, are you hurt?” The barista asked, and the sound of her heels against the floor stabbed through her brain like a knife. “I’m fine,” she growled under her breath. It brought the woman up short, shock entering the pale blues of her eyes before she stumbled back a step. “O-Of course. J-Just let me know if you need anything, I’ll be right over he---“ Her words were silenced by the lights flickering, before they were plunged into darkness. Above the sound of thunder, she heard the dull hum of electricity die out and the sound of the barista’s hand as it slid along the wall for the light switch. “It won’t help. The powers gone out across the block,” she muttered, ignoring her confused thoughts as she dropped to her *** and pressed her back against the wall. At least she didn’t have to worry about people seeing through her jeans anymore. Focusing on her boyfriend, she sent another telepathic message to him, the words jumbled as the pain tore through her skull.

It hurts.
So much.
Where are you?
I should have listened…

[Asteria]

Green eyes stared intently at the screen before her as she huffed to herself, lips mouthing the words that continued to appear while occasionally trying to say them aloud beneath her breath. Since talking with Lancaster, she’d tried to improve her English to surprise him and to surprise Aidan. The woman had made her lazy, never speaking in English when at home and she’d not gone out enough to warrant practicing otherwise. So, to keep it a surprise, she’d wandered out to Interwebz for a little one-on-one time with the computer and her new “Babel” subscription.

“Nai, Nai I know that is ‘apple’,” the Greek sighed beneath her breath. “That is not the solution. Give me something more hard.”

As it would turn out, she was still in the noun stage, which had her increasingly more aggravated. She knew what a chair was. She knew what a door was. Why she needed to learn all of these before being taught to conjugate and actually form sentences was beyond her. Pushing back in her seat, more of her native tongue came tripping off of her lips as her eyes stared hard at the task set before her. Yet another noun was given and she let out a growl of frustration.

“Oxi! Not need this bit of sh-”

Her hand connected with the computer’s screen and everything went black. Wide eyes graced her features as she held still, her hand still connected with the computer as the darkness descended and near silence overwhelmed the room. “Oxi…oxi oxi oxi oxi…” Hitting it again, she prayed the lights would come back on and everything would be normal, but it only seemed to be emphasized as a rumbling started, building up from the floor and leaving her hugging the computer. “Sorry! Sorry! I am sorry I to have breaked the screen of compute!”

But the shaking only grew worse. Was this a mystic wreaking havoc? Releasing the computer from her near vice grip, she pulled out her phone to get a hold of Aidan, being met with static. A laundry-list of swears came next as her phone was shoved back in her pocket and her tome was brought out but she didn’t change location. There was no Den, no common room that she’d been expecting to see, just the dark of the café that yielded no familiar faces.

The shaking grew worse and worse as things began to crash around her. The computers were tipped off of tables, baristas were getting burned by the hot coffee they’d been attempting to deliver, chairs were being flipped. Crawling along the floor, she headed toward the counter, trying to get to those that had been working before everything went sideways, but she was just met with new obstacle after new obstacle, including one such coffee pot—albeit empty—that came crashing down on her hand. Glass tore through her skin as the glass shattered, but she pushed through.

“Is hurt, who all need much a lot the help??” she called out over the ruckus while holding herself up on the counter's edge, hoping her English was intelligible enough to be useful to someone.

[Cassandra]

Blurry shapes in coruscating shades of orange flickered in and out of Cassandra’s vision. Woozily, she reached one hand up to stop her eyelids from blinking, before realizing that the light itself was the reason for the flickering. Some indistinguishable piece of debris lay on the rough-hewn stone a couple of yards away. It was on fire, giving off an intermittent orange glow and an acrid electronic smell. If her eyes weren’t so accustomed to the dark from long hours in the Sanctum, it wouldn’t have been enough light to read by. As it was, Cassandra could make out some basic details of her surroundings.

The space she was in seemed much larger than the café. It extended nearly as long again toward what she estimated to be the south and the east, though it was irregular in shape. The floor was some sort of irregular cobblestone, and the walls were coated in what appeared to be a glazed white tile. The surfaces that must have once gleamed white and polished had gone rheumy with age. Many had cracked and fallen off of the wall, revealing old clay beneath. Some of the broken edges were dull with age, but others gleamed in the flame-light. They were scattered among large broken slabs of concrete laying on the cobblestones, some with shattered shards of rebar poking out of their sides.

The young girl stirred. She lay on her side on the floor, legs curled beneath her. A quick mental checkup was reassuring – she could feel her legs and toes, though they had that tingling feeling which seemed to remain shortly after her vampiric abilities had healed minor wounds. She propped herself up on one elbow, and felt bone grate against bone. That’s where most of the impact from the fall must have gone, some analytical portion of her enhanced mind told her, as her features screwed up into a wince.

Wait…the fall?

She rolled onto her back, shoulders thudding against the floor. The sub-basement had high, vaulted ceilings that – at points – were as tall as the room was wide. At the arch’s apex, faint ambient light outlined a ragged hole in the structure, leading to the café above. The section above her had obviously fallen in, and Cassandra with it. Next to the hole, spiderweb cracks outlined what must have been the rest of the café’s floor, and they were spreading. Concrete dust cascaded down from the underside, and it was obvious it wasn’t going to last more than a moment or two. She’d been lucky – even though vampires could take quite a beating and heal quite fast, a big enough chunk of that concrete could send the fastest healer back to the Shadow Realm, Vambrace or not.

Cassandra’s mind raced. She hadn’t been able to speak normally for months, since her last death and return. She could manipulate wireless technology, but it was pretty obvious the power was either out to the whole building, or fried internally. She could broadcast a mental message to everyone above, but there could be humans above. Tipping them off to anything supernatural would be a gross violation of one of the basic tenets of her faith, so it was unthinkable. The same went for any of her other powers. There was one other option – one she wasn’t very keen on, but would be the most explainable while at least giving any of her kind above a chance of survival.

Cassandra’s eyes closed, and pale lips peeled back from diminutive fangs barely bigger than human canines. Her back arched away from the masonry floor as breath surged into lungs that saw less use as the days went by. Her jaw dropped open, and using everything within her, Cassandra screamed.

The sound wasn’t deafening, but nobody would ever mistake it for human. A cacophony of electronic warbles, screeches, and static overlaid each other in an ear-piercing symphony, moments before the remnants of the floor above collapsed. Ceasing her otherworldly howl, the girl lurched to her feet, clutching her wounded shoulder, and dashed toward a sheltered corner of the room as the pieces fell.

[Prudence]

When the darkness came, it seemed a domino effect happened. The earth started moving; actually ripping apart and sent items and people all over the cafe. Even through the cafe windows. "Holy shi-" She was cut off by the ground opening more and threatening to swallow her down in it. **** THAT.

She reacted, without much thought. It was chaotic and she hoped that people would be focused on themselves and what was going on around them, rather than some stranger they didn't know. Plus, with it being dark, the chances of seeing what she was doing were probably slim to none. Long claws ripped through her skin as Prudence grabbed on to the tile flooring beneath her that was giving away, to hold on to any part of it that would withstand the earthquake? Was that what this was? In Canada? No way. Some vampire asshat had to be doing this **** for whatever reason.

Using one hand at a time, Prudence crawled her way to some stable ground, ripping into the tile flooring until she was lying against a wall, back and heels tight to it. She figured it was the safest place to be should another tremor happen.

People were starting to move past the earthquake and focus on themselves. People were groaning and moaning in pain, someone was speaking in broken English and a woman was screaming from, somewhere? Down below? She waited until Prudence felt 'safe.' Or that the bulk of the worse was over with before focusing on retracting her claws. "Mother ****!" She spat out as they went back in, always leaving her with a stinging sensation when she did that.

"Uhhh, helloooo?" Prudence peeked over the large hole as she called down in to it, but then moved back from it as if she had been slapped with a ton of bricks as a thought entered her mind. A thought that wasn't her own. It wasn't Mordie's or Lori's either. "Who in the ****?" She asked out of surprise and slight disdain. Prudence wasn't a fan of people invading her thoughts, because she was never sure how much they saw, or why they were there to begin with. Who else would be checking in on her if not those two?

Some guy wanted her to text him to let him know that she was alright. She went through a list of males she knew and came to one conclusion. If it wasn't Mordie, then it had to be Azraeth. She almost smiled, but realized there was **** to do before there was really a reason to smile. Prudence wasn't the sort to let someone, even if she didn't know them, be stranded in a shitty situation. And if some woman was stuck down below, that was probably as shitty as things could get. She could drown if a water line broke and the streets got flooded, or be crushed by debris. And since she had no working phone anyways, there wasn't much Prudence could do to get in touch with Azraeth. "I'm coming." Prudence said as she snapped to it, not sure where she was really going to and how bad it was down there before she just jumped right down in the large hole in the ground.

[Trinity]

She could hear the ground as it tore apart, the crack moving from one end to the next, creeping along as it swallowed everything in its path. There was no end in sight, and it was coming straight for her. With a groan, she threw out her hand, fingers curling into the barista’s sweater as she took a step back. She watched in slow motion as the crack widened beneath the human’s heel. She heard the fabric of her sweater rip, the emerald green cloth bunched up in her trembling fist as the brunette went head over heels into the pit. She heard her skull as it cracked against the ground below, the sound causing her stomach to twist into knots. “Oh ******* god,” she whimpered, the sound weak as she scrambled to her feet. Quickly dropping the remains of the sweater, she grabbed the nearest thing she could hold onto as the café continued to toss and turn on its foundation.

The rumbling continued in her mind, the sound of the earth as it was torn asunder drowning out practically everything else, until the sound of someone’s broken English began to break through. Her voice was soft, calm – and Trinity tried to latch onto that. She tried to use it as a thread to bring herself back to reality, but she couldn’t. One minute, there was a blissful silence, the next her senses were being violated by a scream so animalistic, so inhuman, it brought her back to her knees. She nearly lost her balance as she clasped her hands over her ears. It didn’t help – it never helped. She still heard it as loud as day, the sounds mixing together in her mind. The pull of the café, the cracking of the brunette’s skull, the broken English – and the earsplitting scream.

Vaguely, she saw a flash of red enter the crevice as the howl began to fade, her fingers relaxing against her head. Her skin was pale, body trembling as she tried to focus her eyes on the room around her to take stock of the situation she found herself in. Chaos. Destruction. Disaster. It was all she saw. “Help her,” she choked out, her hand waving towards the direction the redhead had disappeared into. She wasn't sure who she had lead to the hole, she wasn't sure if the woman even understood what she had said. She just knew she wasn't going to be any help. She could hardly remember her own name, let alone help a complete stranger. Trying to steady the pulse in her mind, she let her lashes flutter closed. The entire ordeal was detrimental to her safety, as well as the safety of others.

Turning, she gripped the edge of the broken counter and lifted herself unsteadily back to her feet as the scent of blood filled her senses. Vampire? Human? She couldn’t tell the difference and it did nothing for her, at least... not yet. She had never been in a situation like this since being turned, having easily been able to sustain herself on her boyfriend's blood - or if he wasn't around, her lineage. She'd not been crammed in a place with complete strangers while Canada decided to throw a temper tantrum like no other. She was more concerned about the one thing that was bound to actually set her off. The thoughts swirling around in her head, the very primitive, chaotic, destructive thoughts of those trapped inside and out. Her mind was filled with people screaming, frantic, searching for their loved ones. They took over her thoughts as they let the natural disaster breathe fear into their very existence. She couldn't get them to shut up. They invaded her brain like the plague and made themselves at home as they continued to breed. There was only one voice she wanted in her mind, one voice that could silence all the rest, and he was a silent as death. Curling her fingers into a fist, she slammed it down against the counter, the wood cracking even more as she bowed her head.

She couldn’t do this.
She couldn’t be in the open.
She couldn’t be with them.
Why wouldn’t they shut up?!