Black Thrusday (Group 5)

[Mona McGee]

It was bitter cold and late Mona stumbled out of the Handlebar. It had been a late night and the bar was closing down " Damn " she muttered to no one in particular . She wasn't ready to go home yet. She was too drunk to ride her bike and not sober enough to walk she moved down the street cautiously That's when she saw It The Night Mode ... Cyber café and bar ... Not exactly her thing it was all neon green and punkish but any port in a storm maybe they would suffice . She entered the bar looking around . Dark black and Neon green flashed everywhere. She found her way to the bar.

The bartender actually had coffee She guessed that the group that usually kept the computers Occupied cyber geeks kept the demand for such things. She ordered hers black and strong looking about it was pretty vacant due to the late hour she cradled the coffee in her hands after he sat it in front of her glad for the warmth on her fingers. She never was much into video games and things growing up but then where she grew up it was just a task to survive than it was a game . She might be able to stomach the place long enough to get sober.

[Remington Rothfelder]

It had started out as a normal evening, a jog and then some time spent at Adrenaline, some more time spent at his dojo. He never really packed his schedule because there was always the chance that he would get that call; the one that said it was time to go on a hunt. Things had gone as normal, painfully as normal really, but maybe that was the draw back to a long life, those moments of tedious survival. And who really paid much attention at all to weather advisories and alerts anyway? He could look at one of those multi-coloured maps on the screen for hours and never once tell someone what exactly they meant.

Hell had opened its mouth and spewed out spite and venom onto Harper Rock. What nobody had anticipated was that to go along with the storm, there was also an earthquake. The land underneath shook with the brutality of an epileptic episode, doing extensive damage in some cases. Remington had been on the street at the time, hidden in shadows and silently making his way towards the nearest sewer entrance (where he normally did his hunting). Disaster hit hard and suddenly so that Remi was forced to duck into the nearest building lest he be stuck out in the elements. It was instinct really, a survival mechanism left over from his time as a human that had yet to resolve itself.

So he pushed his way into a local business without bothering to take a look at exactly what or where it was. What he was greeted with was…he didn’t even know how to describe it. Some kind of arcade or club? He didn’t really care, so long as it had a roof. The plan was to just wait until he could establish communication with his sire or wait out the storm. Hail and sleet pelted the building like a hammer, and he found himself looking for a television or computer so that he could find out exactly how extensive the damage was. Maybe there was somewhere less public he could get to, since the sun was going to be up in only a few hours.

[Reanna]

As a human, she’d never cared for taking precaution. It wasn’t in her blood to sit still and wait for the metaphorical – or in this case, literal – storm to pass. From the day her parents had died, she’d been trained to handle anything that came her way, even if it was a few inches of rain. She had a job to do, and it was that job that had taken her from the comfortable silence of her apartment and out into the city, where the rain was pouring down and the people were running in a panic to get in doors. “Cowards,” she muttered in distaste, her accent thick as she pulled a pack of cigarettes from the back pocket of her black jeans. There were acting like it was the mother ******* apocalypse. She would never comprehend the weakness of the human mind. Even when she was one, it had been lost on her.

”********, little sister. You are as weak as one of them.”

“That was before they took away the part of me that cared,” she whispered, her voice going unheard beneath the downfall. With a shrug of her shoulders, she pulled her leather jacket tighter around her and patted down the pockets for her lighter. Curving her hand over the filter of her cigarette, she flicked the zippo three times before the flame flared to life. Once it was lit, she dropped the lighter back into her pocket and tipped her head back, gaze moving skyward. Her brother remained at her side, his apparition taunting her with its mere presence. He never left her alone, never gave her a moment of peace. Instead, he opted to remind her of how she failed, how everything was her fault. He thought to bring her down, but his constant voice in her ear only strengthened her resolve. Shaking her head, she turned to blow the smoke away from him as her husband’s voice filtered into her thoughts.

Seek shelter. Now!

It was the panic in his voice that pushed her into action, a split second before the world went to ****. It was as if Harper Rock had taunted the fates and lost. The ground threatened to open up beneath her feet, the tremor nearly bringing her to her knees as the world broke into pieces. She watched as the building next to her began to crack open, her hand moving to grab the street-lamp for support. It didn’t offer much as it swayed beneath her touch, though it gave her enough that she could drop her bag to the ground. Quickly searching through it, she pulled out the leather-bound tome that lead her to the Eyrie, the wind causing her hair to whip across her face. “Come on, come on.” Her voice was drowned beneath a crack of thunder, and the tome remained lifeless in her hands. The usual power she felt emanating from it was gone, leaving her stranded in the middle of a freak storm.

Reanna, answer me. Are you alright?

“I cannot deal with you right now, Kirill,” she muttered, dropping the tome back into her bag and slinging it over her shoulder. She tried to move to her feet, but another shock caused her to fall back, gaze lifting to the sky. It was like a scene straight from a nightmare, black and treacherous. She wanted to believe she could trust it to stay that way, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to. She had to seek shelter somewhere closer than her apartment. Shaking her head, she tightened her grip on her bag and quickly made her way across the street. Ducking into the nearest building, she slumped back against the door as it closed, dulling (albeit barely) the sound of howling wind. With a quick run of her fingers through her hair, she shook some of the rain out as she did a quick survey of the building. She knew its design, though she’d hardly spent a lot of time there. She had hoped for a place without anyone, a place where she could be alone, but it seemed she wasn’t going to be lucky at all. Already, her muscles began to tense, her green eyes darkening as they landed on the woman at the bar. Swallowing back a growl, she continued her recon as she dropped her bag to her feet once more. It only took her a moment to find a familiar face, and as she pulled out her iPad to e-mail her husband, she made her way to him.

‘Remington,’ she greeted, her device speaking for her while she took a spot next to him, her irritation evident at the close proximity they had found themselves tucked away in.

[Mike Barone (DELETED 2047)]

Mike left the lab way late, losing track of time even though most of the campus was empty by now. Tala had been tugging at his pant leg for the past hour, trying to get him to leave.

Tala growled at him as they hit the rain outside.

"I'm sorry but I had to do my homework." Mike said, great. He was going to catch a cold at this rate as the rain quickly soaked through his clothes as he tried to head towards his apartment. He didn't weigh that much so he kept getting knocked around by the wind. He got knocked over, Tala pushed on him. She seemed anxious, even being a strange zombie like wolf, she was still an animal and animals knew things people didn't.

"It's going to get worse isn't it?" Mike asked, Tala whimpered, tugging on his sleeve to get up and get moving. Mike got up and tried to hurry on his way. It was getting worse alright. He couldn't even tell where he was now. "Tala...where is home?" he asked.

Tala howled, the ground started to shake, cracking. The earth was opening up. Mike ran after Tala, trusting her to know where to go. His foot caught on the uneven ground and he tumbled forward. He winced, looking up. He saw he wasn't the only one who was out when they shouldn't be. A tree cracked and started to fall right on a couple of people. Mike used a Sirocco Blast on the tree, giving them more time to run and miss being hit.

Tala barked at him, Mike got up and ran. He caught sight of a building. "Tala in here." he said, opening the door. Tala dashed in and Mike followed after her. Tala shook herself off from the water on her fur.

"Tala.." Mike grumbled, "Already wet as it is." he muttered as he went inside further. He looked around, "At least we ended up here.." he added, might be some other geeks to talk to and wait out the storm. Storm, Earthquake, what was going on?

"Hey, no animals allowed!"

That startled Mike, "It's not fit for man nor beast. Come on." Mike snapped. He made his way to find a spot to sit down, Tala trotted after him and sat at his feet while he got something warm to drink.

[Mona McGee]

Mona sat there for awhile drinking her coffee nursing it taking her time not wanting to go back out into the cold.
The blips and beeps of the video games were quite annoying . Quite suddenly the building started to shake the bottles on the bar rattled together creating a awful symphony of glass and some flying and smashing to the floor. The lights started to flicker Mona grabbed the bar so tight her knuckles were going white . She thought she had left her days of ******* earthquakes behind her in California. "Just my luck damn storm on top of a earthquake She could hear crashing and a few Sirens start to fill the night air. The door opened a few people had stated to straggle in for shelter. She was glad she had started to sober up .

She glared at the first one that had made his way through the door he seemed a smug son of a *****. She was glad he had taken a seat far from her . Then as the quake seemed to go on a woman came in she seemed to know the fellow across the way and shortly after a kid and his dog stumbled in . Mona liked dogs they were always seemed to take to her as well . The lights flickered again as the boy Talked the barman into letting the dog stay . " **** ' she mumbled under her breath Some might mistake it for nerves at the disaster that was going around . It was more like she didn't want t get stuck in the dark not the total dark not in this city.
Not with any of them .

[Remington Rothfelder]

“Reanna.” A single word greeting, a name to acknowledge that the two of them were acquainted. In Remington’s case, it said that he accepted the woman in his immediate proximity. It had likely been clear to others who had taken note of his entrance, that he was not looking for conversation, which was exactly why he had intentionally stayed out of the way of the gathering crowd. Reanna was, it seemed, the exception to this rule. In truth, her being a member of the same gang he belonged to made him a thousand times more friendly with her than anyone else. Considering the brevity of their exchange, at a surface level, that difference might have appeared nominal. Remington was just not a talkative man. Some people felt the need to speak to express themselves, and he was a creature who lived by the rule that actions spoke louder than words.

His attention turned back to the screen his eyes had been glued to when she’d entered and moved to sit beside him. There was some live coverage crew trying to catalogue exactly what had happened in the aftermath of the earthquake. Apparently, they had been on the scene, filming some kind of family ice skating day on the river when the tremors had hit. The ice had cracked and there had already been several major injuries, and at least one confirmed casualty. The water itself had risen up and flooded the river’s banks, washing down the streets where it caused complete chaos. On another quadrant of the screen there were images of winds nearly ripping trees out of the ground. In the third, footage of power lines going down. It seemed to have all happened at once, in one great powerful flex of nature’s hand.

He turned away from the images in disgust. Not because he could not handle them, but because they did not interest him. Nothing about them told him how he might be able to get through the wreckage of the city, get back to the Eyrie.

It was about that time a young man happened through the door with what appeared to be…that was a wolf. A dead wolf. Remington knew the power of the dead, unnatural magic. Necromancy. He knew a corpse when he saw it as well. So what in the **** was the guy doing in a public place with it? Was he trying to draw unwanted attention to himself? Even if someone hadn’t found the presence of a wolf odd, the surely would have noticed…nevermind. He had other things to worry about. The attention he had paid, had been brief, and his expression as stony, and inscrutable as ever. If anyone might have noted the disdain, it would have been Reanna.

“We should devise a means of getting out of here. Only a few hours until the sun is up.” And Remington would slaughter every human in the building before being caught in vampiric torpor out in public. A few extra casualties during a catastrophic event that would likely already have a high death toll? Well. Time would tell. He wasn’t about to act without thinking, but that was certainly an option that danced at the very back of his mind. “I can’t get into contact with anyone, so I think we are effectively isolated and having a room full of people limits our options as well.” He recited in a tone low enough that, with the clamor of voices, creaking structure, breaking bottles, shouting, and the storm outside – only Reanna could hear.

[Reanna]

The leather of her gloves creaked as she curled and uncurled her fingers, the act something that was supposed to help calm the hostility brimming beneath the surface. It wasn’t doing a damned thing for her. Instead, each time her fingers bent and pressed into her palms, she imagined the feeling of bones cracking beneath the strength. When she uncurled them, she saw bits of blood and gore slipping from her fingers. It was taking every ounce of strength she had not to lash out at anyone who stepped too close – especially when the door swung open a second time, revealing a boy and his dog. How ******* quaint, she thought, jade eyes locked on the sorcerer as he made his way across the bar, despite the growl of the attendant. It was if he actually favored the monstrosity. She knew the power that they wielded, but she hadn’t a damned clue that they created the beasts for pets.

He’d be an easy kill. You’ve got power, little sister. Just a bullet between the eyes.

She had to get out of there, and soon. Any and everyone was at risk – everyone except Remington. He was one of the few that didn’t send her into a homicidal rage when he was near. Slowly swallowing past the burn in her throat, the Russian turned her piercing gaze towards her faction mate and minimized the volume of her iPad to where only he would hear. ‘I am at a loss. I have tried to tome, but it is was dead in hand. Useless. I have thought to teleport, but I do not know what is safe and what is not.’ A lot of people found it eerie when the monotone voice spoke for her, but she had no other means of communication. Much like her husband, her accent made it next to impossible to be able to understand her, but it was also the fact that she hadn’t grasped the English language to its full extent. At least, not enough to speak it freely. Brushing her fingers along the face of her iPad, she furrowed her brows as her predatory glare swept the room.

Kill. Them. All.

‘I cannot control them. I could blind them, but it would only last a short time. It would do us no good.’ Her fingers tapped the final word for her device to speak, before her arms crossed over her chest. As much as she hated to admit it, her brother had a valid thought. It would be easier to simply kill them. She doubted they’d have much of a choice if the storm continued to rage for too much longer. The sun was going to rise soon, leaving both her and her faction mate at risk, especially if someone noticed that they weren't simply sleeping. Gritting her teeth together, she bowed her head for a moment and pressed her fingers to her temples. Her husband had gone quiet since her e-mail, leaving her with the ability to think and process - but she found herself drawing a blank.

I have told you what to do. One by one, they all fall down. Kill them as you killed me.

"Dostatochno." She snapped in Russian, her gaze fixed past Remington to where the apparition casually rested against the wall. Clearing her throat, she ran a hand over her face and shook her head. She was at a loss. When another quake caused the building to tremble, she reached out a hand and pressed it to the wall behind her, eyes closing. She was beginning to have a low tolerance for earthquakes. Waiting until it passed, she pressed her hand back to her iPad. ‘I do not know what we are to do, Remington. We could kill them.’ Her face remained emotionless as she typed out the words, a cold glint flashing in her eyes. With their options limited, she had no problem taking out those that could risk her - or her faction.

Secrecy above all else. Being a cold hearted ***** helped, too.

[Mike Barone (DELETED 2047)]

Mike shivered, taking in more of the hot liquid he was given. He was going to end up with a cold no doubt. That was thing that couldn't be healed, one just had to wait it out which was a shame when he sees little kids suffering from a bad flu.

He looked down at Tala who was keeping an watchful eye on those around them. His patchwork to make her look more alive and like a real animal had been completely ruined by their run in the storm. Great, someone was going to think she looks diseased or something. Maybe he should try to dog sweaters.

He had never seen such bad weather before, besides snow storms. He wished he had made it back to his apartment but he might freeze there if the power was out there. He looked at the time, if the sun was coming up, then there would be vampires who would be in trouble. He hoped the ones he knew were okay.

Mike then looked around, he should be more worried about himself right now. Not all vampires could be trusted, just like any humans. He didn't want to become a food supply but there wasn't anywhere to run to. He would go back into the storm before that happened.

[Mona McGee]

Mona was glad the earth had stopped moving but the relentless howling of wind still filled the air and now she could hear the faint sounds of sirens ,the lights kept up their flickering threatening to exhaust their sickening green glow. She eyed the man and woman that had taken up residence across the room .. They were nervous.
It wasn't the Oh my god im going to die type of nervous either. It was the type of nervous that one wore when they had something to hide .

Mona knew about hiding things she knew trouble when she saw it too and these two were trouble if she had ever seen it. She slipped off the bar stool and moved back to a alcove where she wasn't in their direct. Line of sight but she could still keep a eye on them. "****, **** ,**** " she whispered under her breath she was glad she had both her shoulder holsters on under the heavy leather jacket she wore and the long knife in her boot. Not to mention the brass knuckles in her pocket amongst other things .

Maybe she was wrong... maybe it was the not quite sober yet booze talking ... but why did she suddenly feel totally sober. Why was there this hyper sense of self preservation tingling through her body ... Maybe its the storm and ******* earthquake she thought this place isn't so bad out of shape but I bet its a mess out there that's it Mona get it under control girl its just nerves' she thought to herself . "Blondie and Super Jerk over there are just Nervous cause its a storm and ******* earthquake just like you are girl . " The thought no sooner hit her head than "Yeah right and im a ******* flying unicorn" chased it right out .

[Remington Rothfelder]

That was something of a problem facing both he and Reanna. The two of them needed a very clear line of escape. He had yet to master the ability to teleport, so that was off of the table. If he could reach out to Vel, he could probably have requested that she summon him, but with his cell service seemingly out due to the storm, that was also a no-go. No tome meant they could not easily get back to the Eyrie. He had another option in front of him, but he didn’t want to take it unless he had no other choice in the matter. Mainly, he didn’t want to leave her stranded alone. No. He couldn’t allow that to happen, it wasn’t even a discussion with him. He had spent so long as a loner, and the last thing he wanted to do was abandon someone who belonged to that small group he considered family.

“I have abilities from the shadow, summoner, and fadewalker paths.” He commented, his tone deliberately low enough that only she would be able to hear it. He began to look around then, as if searching for a way out. But the problem was not getting out of the building altogether; it was what they had to do when they got into the storm. “Could you tunnel into the sewers?” No. That didn’t make much sense. Leaving a huge hole in the ground seemed exceptionally dangerous. And. Well it seemed very conspicuous. The sewers were probably flooded as well with all the water going into them, probably freezing in pipes. It was honestly only nominally more safe than being on the surface at daybreak.

A last resort he supposed.

“I think you might be right.” Killing all of the humans was probably the way to go. They could just break their necks or something, and barricade the doors until the next evening. It wouldn’t be hard to trash the place after that, make it look like the storm had totally ripped through the place and caused several casualties. If the storm and quake were as bad as Remington suspected, chances were that the local paramedics and other first responders were going to be swamped with other locations for a while before they ever even got to Nightmode.

So. Plan in mind, he moved to stand. He was careful not to give away what he was. He didn’t even reach for his weapon. The zombie wolf told him that there was at least one person there that had some kind of funky powers, and he wasn’t about to underestimate anyone. So he approached Mike casually, intent on shoving his blade into the man’s chest as soon as he got close enough. But before he could do that, another tremor hit, and it hit hard. One moment, he was walking, and the next it was absolute chaos. The ceiling began to fall down on top of them, as it seemed almost like the building was beginning to crumble.