Rapture

[Quhanta]

Ez grabbed some vegetables, meat, and some water before sitting down in the chair nearest the door to the house. Mak looked as though he was almost asleep by the time she got there and everyone else was either there already or trudging up to the food. It was a productive day all around, it seemed. Arwen grabbed more vegetables than meat and sat cross-legged in the grass next to Mak's chair. He had kept her company all day, so she had grown more comfortable around him. She was tired, but the little girl looked all around her, keeping watch on everyone around her for some reason. Once Ez started to look more closely, Arwen didn't look tired, she looked frightened, but trying to hide it. She kept flicking her gaze about and nibbling on her food.

[Fangirl05]

Micah had been surprisingly gracious about Erin being asleep when he came back. Probably that whole "weaker sex" thing, but at least he hadn't made some stupid comment about her doing the laundry. Which of course she had, after finishing turning the soil and rinsing off her arms.

 

She hung everything up to dry in the back and headed back to the front to find some dinner. Most of the others had already helped themselves; she smiled at the sight of Arwen sitting next to a sleeping Mak.

 

She fixed herself a plate of pasta and took one of the bottles of cider before preparing a plate of a little of everything - plain, since she wasn't sure what he liked - and a bottle of soda for him and set it down beside the water he'd left out. Hopefully Arwen would be willing to shoo away the animals if they came looking for scraps.

 

She frowned at the girl's apparent nervousness, concerned. "Everything okay?"

[Quhanta]

Arwen flinched at Erin speaking to her. In response, she nodded once and then shook her head, changing her mind. The little girl stood up on her toes and pulled on Erin's arm to make her come down to her level. She wanted to whisper it into her ear. Once angled correctly, she spoke quietly.

"The monsters come at night, and they're going to get us, aren't they?" Arwen pulled away from Erin's head and sniffled.

 

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Ez watched the happenings between Erin and Arwen from her seat by the door, thinking about what the child was doing. It was getting dark, so she could be scared of that. She ate her food quietly and watched on, still observing the others' arrival.

[Fangirl05]

Erin frowned; she'd been expecting those things to come back tonight all day, so she felt more-or-less ready for a fight. It bothered her to see the girl so upset.

 

"Hey," she told her seriously, tilting her head up to make her look at her, "they didn't get anybody last night, and they're not gonna get anybody tonight."

 

She smirked at her. "And if all else fails, we can always throw James at them. I'm willing to bet he tastes as nasty as he acts."

[Fortune86]

By the time they had finished checking out the row of houses James was starting to feel tired. Apart from the pot farm they hadn't found anything out of the ordinary, just rooms and gardens in various stages of tidy, so he and Ez had decided to return back to HQ.

 

It looked like Mak had been hard at work, a picnic of sorts had been laid out in the garden, though the man himself had fallen asleep in a recliner. Well James wasn't going to disturb him. In fact he planned on getting some shut eye himself once he had eaten.

 

James grabbed a cider and a plate of food and found a chair in the corner of the garden. He was just settling down to eat when he picked up on Erin's conversation with Arwen. Taking advantage that the eight year old was facing away from him, James flashed the brunette a rude gesture with his right index finger. He had no time for her crap today.

 

He was about a third of the way through his plate of food when a familiar but uncomfortable feeling crept over him. With his mouth still full James looked up at the rest of the party, frowning. It was just like that other night, when he had woken up with the unmistakable feeling that something was off, that somehow...they weren't alone.

 

Normally he would just have tried to shake the feeling away, but considering that now he knew there was something unusual on the loose, it would be foolish. Swallowing his current mouthful James dropped the rest of his plate on the floor and stood up.

 

He knew he might be attracting some strange looks from the others, but right now he didn't care. James focused hard on the feeling, trying to pinpoint what was making him so damn apprehensive.

 

James could see everyone else, no matter where they stood, sat or lay. He walked down the garden several feet, still trying to concentrate, and for some reason he knew he would never be able to explain in words, reached out in front of him. For the briefest of moments he thought there was someone else there, right there, and if he had done it right then he would have been able to touch them.

 

He moved forward again and made another grab, feeling frustrated that his fingers closed on nothing. He scowled and cursed under his breath. What was going on?

[Fangirl05]

Erin raised an eyebrow at James' weird gestures. Maybe Jaune had rubbed off on him after all?

 

"'Scuse me a second" she held a finger up to Arwen and nodded at the plate she'd left for Mak, "D'you mind keeping an eye on that, in case the dogs or kittens come sniffing?"

 

She returned to the table under the pretense of taking a place for herself and raised an eyebrow at James. "What's the problem?"

[Fortune86]

James was so focused on trying to locate whatever it was that he didn't notice Erin approach him. Busy trying to pinpoint the source of the strangeness it wasn't until she spoke that he realised she was there.

 

For a brief moment he was annoyed that she was putting him off, especially since she was asking what was wrong it probably meant she couldn't sense it as well. However, considering all the strangeness that had occured over the last few days he figured Erin would give him the benefit of the doubt that maybe he was onto something.

 

"I'm not sure" he said in a low voice. "But there's something wrong. I feel like there is something here, just here, but I can't find them."

 

James counldn't keep the frustration out of his voice. Every time he thought he was getting close it felt more like he wasn't having any progress as all. He spun around on the spot and glared around him. If only he could get a hold of it, touch something tangiable, then even if it bit his fingers he'd feel a lot better.

[Quhanta]

Ez heard something. No, she felt like she could hear something. There was no sound, but there was something that she could sense that was near her. Her eyes flicked over to look at James, who had stood up, looking as confused and frustrated as she felt. He was feeling it too. Erin moved to ask him how he was, but Ez understood why he couldn’t quite explain it. The feeling that you’re being more than watched, that something or someone was within arms’ reach, but there appears as though there’s nothing there. From where she was sitting, Ez raised her hand in front of her sternum and extended forward with her hand open. She grasped through the air, finding nothing, but her uncomfortable feeling didn’t go away. Ez stood, handed Arwen her food and the plate that was next to her on the ground, and spoke seriously.

 

“I need you to go inside, dear.” She tried to smile at the little girl before she followed the directions given to her. Redirecting her attention to speak to both Cujo and Whisperlee, she yelled, “Cujo! Come here?” It was an instruction for the dog, but a question to his owner. The dog could probably sense what she and James were, so Arwen would be safe with him.

[Fangirl05]

Erin narrowed her eyes in the direction James had been looking, one of those "get off my property" kind of glares.

 

"Guess that means it's time to lock up, then" she decided. She gathered her plate and turned her attention to Arwen.

 

"Come inside" she nodded at the door to her, "I need to talk to you."

[Avialae]

After both the hard day's labor and the poor night's sleep the night before, Micah was very tired, and his back hurt from constantly bending over to turn the soil. He was faintly glad to see that no one else had disappeared during the day, but that was about all the emotion he could muster. As everyone began to take what they wanted for dinner he put some vegetables and meat on a plate along with a soda, hoping the carbonated beverage would help wake him up. Heading over to find a seat, Micah was a bit surprised to find a group of three adults plus Arwen standing together for no clear reason. They seemed visibly tense even to Micah's tired senses, and they didn't seem to be talking to one another. "Hey," he called out. "What's going on?"

[Quhanta]

Ez saw Erin help to usher Arwen inside. The child agreed with a weak smile, but the tension of the adults was only scaring her more. Micah yelled over from the table. She turned to look for a moment and then shouted for him to get inside.

 

"I don't think it's safe out here. Take the table of food inside as well." Her words were clear and she spoke as she walked over to James. She stood near enough to him that he would be able to see her, but she didn't get very close to him. Remaining vigilant, she spoke quietly, just loud enough for him to hear her, but no one else.

 

"Do you think it's them?" Ez asked in her serious tone of voice.

[Kestra15]

Mak's eyes sprang open.

 

The table heaved under a sudden weight, bottles of sauce being sent spinning out to the sides as the large bowl of pasta was tipped unceremoniously to the grass. The table itself simply gave under the weight, the simultaneous snap of four plastic legs cracking out like a whip across the garden. Mak was already clambering up out of the recliner with a surprising fluidity given his aches and pains, coming to his bare feet and facing the source of the disturbance.

 

What it was, to his utter surprise, was a person. A man, maybe in his forties, a slender build with dirty blonde hair in a pair of maroon pyjama bottoms and a plain dark-blue t-shirt, was crumpled in a heap on top of the circular plastic table-top. The pyjamas were dirty, clearly lived in for a few days with splashes of mud up around the ankles and water stains all over them. His t-shirt seemed fine from the back, but as the man groaned and rolled onto his back three ragged wounds had shredded the front, as if by talons. Mak could see they were deep, thick blood pouring out of them, and they were surprisingly fresh too. Other small cuts and scratches covered the man's bare arms and face, the tips of his purple fingers a disturbing black.

 

James and Ez stood to Mak's right, as close to the man as he was, and he moved just as they did. Mak stepped over and knelt next to the man, who was now disturbingly quiet as his chest heaved and shuddered. Putting a hand to the man's wrist Mak was taken aback by how cold the stranger was, skin like ice and a mottled purple in colour. It was clear that it wasn't just his fingertips but also the tip of his nose that was blackened, and while he was bleeding heavily there was a sluggishness to the wounds.

 

Grabbing one of the tea-towels Mak had brought out to cover the food he pushed one against the first wound, a ragged deep tear several inches long that had not only took a good deal of surface skin away but also torn down to the muscles beneath, and he thought for a moment he'd seen a gleam of rib-bone. One hand making a vain attempt to staunch the bleeding Mak grabbed for the next towel, yanking it out from under man's stained trouser-leg to try and plug the next bleed, all three wounds just as deep and running in parallel to each other.

Edited February 13, 2016 by Kestra15

[Quhanta]

A man that no one seemed to know smashed down upon their table, apparently out of nowhere, bloody gashes covering his chest. She ran over to him and crouched down next to him and Mak, who had already started to try and help him with tea towels. Ez pointed to Micah, who was closest to her, and gained eye contact.

"Get me a sewing kit, antiseptic or alcohol, blankets, rubber gloves, if you can find them, and meet us in the living room. NOW!" She yelled the last word and collected the rest of the tea towels that were out of Mak's reach.

"We need to get him inside," Ez spoke calmly to Mak. "Whatever did this could still be out here, so however uncomfortable it will be, we have to move him."

[Fangirl05]

"I got his arms" Erin declared, sliding her hands under the man's armpits and pulling him back a bit so that the back of his head pressed against her chest.

 

"Arwen," she called to her, hoping it might calm her down if she thought she was helping, "Do you think you can get some towels out of the bathroom? Just bring them down to the couch in the living room. It'd be a huge help right now."

 

She was glad for the stranger's apparent frostbite; it might help to stall him bleeding out.

 

"Should we boil some water or something?" she asked, wanting to warm his fingers back to life but unsure how good an idea it was to handle frostbitten digits by hand.

[Quhanta]

Arwen was frozen with fear, her mind fuzzed and her hearing nothing but the increasing rhythm of her heart. A man that she did not know had collapsed in front of everyone, bleeding everywhere, and the first thing she wanted to do was help. She didn’t know this man, but still, she wanted him to be safe and feel better. Kindness was in her nature, her young eyes having shielded her from the coldness of the world. She saw only what she thought was there, entirely unlike peering through world-wise adult eyes that she was yet to possess. What lay in front of her was nothing that she could have ever imagined. The stranger had purple fingers and the point of his nose was of the same pigment. Arwen thought he was dying, and so stood paralyzed just outside the back door of the house.

 

Someone called her name. Her ears began to function again to realize it was Erin who called to her. ‘Towels from the bathroom.’ She thought. The shellshock turned to adrenaline as she turned to sprint into the house and up the stairs. The young girl flung the bathroom door wide open and stood in the middle of the room.

 

“Towels. Towels.” She muttered frantically, no towel in her immediate sight. Arwen panicked and started flinging open cupboard doors. The third door she reached held a large stack of hand towels and face clothes. Her little arms as full as she could get them, Arwen ran back downstairs and into the living room, placing her findings on the floor near the couch. She then curled up on the reclining chair and covered her eyes, fear taking over again.

 

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Ez nodded to Erin as she moved between his legs to lock her arms around his knees. They lifted as together as they could and moved him onto the couch in the living room. (Sorry if I can’t do that.)

 

“Boiling water will hurt him. A bowl of room-temperature water would work better because it’s still warmer than his hands, but not by so much that it’ll hurt him more.” In her experience, people had lost many a finger to frostbite and no doctors, but they didn’t really need to know that right now.

 

[Fangirl05]

Erin nodded and turned back to Arwen. Probably best to keep her occupied so she didn't panic quite as much.

 

"Arwen," she tried to get her attention, "can you go into the kitchen and fill up some bowls with water? One for each of his hands and feet, please."

 

As she spoke, she grabbed one of the bigger towels from the pile and pressed it to one of the stranger's worse gashes, leaning her full weight on it and trying to pinch it together.

[Avialae]

Micah could only stare dumbly as the strange man seemed to explode into existence on top of the picnic table nearby, unable to process what had happened; it wasn't until he heard the comparatively normal sounds of Ez's voice shrieking at him to get first aid supplies that things snapped back into place again. He silently made his way into the house through the back door, trying to avoid slipping on the pieces of pasta that had splattered everywhere when the bowl had gotten knocked over (it hadn't seemed to be a very popular that night, so the bowl was still mostly full) and retrieved one of the police first aid kits he'd taken from the station a few days ago. On the way back to the living room he retrieved a bottle of rubbing alcohol from the bathroom.

 

Heading inside, Micah saw Ez, Erin and Mak putting the strange man down on the couch. "Here are some things that might help," he told them. "Do you have any idea where there might be a sewing kit in this house? I'm clueless." Micah at least knew what Ez wanted it for - to use the thread and needle as makeshift stitches - he just had no idea where one might be. As a man, he generally didn't concern himself with that type of thing.

 

OOC: Edited to fix the mistake Quhanta pointed out.

Edited February 15, 2016 by Avialae

[Quhanta]

(Ez told him to get all of that stuff, not Erin.)

 

Arwen trembled and blubbered, but did as she was told, going off to the kitchen to fetch four bowls of water. She brought them over one at a time, each time shuffling across the floor so as not to spill it.

 

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Ez snatched the first aid kit away from Micah with a quick thanks. Ripping it open, she put on a pair of gloves and then found the scissors, moved the towels off of him, and cut his shirt up the front. The sticky red that was everywhere plastered his shirt to him, but she peeled it away. The worse gash was covered again by a fresh towel, still mostly folded for soak-ability.

 

"Erin, please put pressure on this." She spoke quickly and let go of the towel. The top gash was close to the biggest one in the middle, so the towel covered both. The bottom one wasn't bleeding as much, so she put her knee across his pelvis to hold him down.

 

"Do not let him move." A few seconds after the words were out, she poured some rubbing alcohol over it. Holding him down as best she could, Ez used a face cloth to clear away most of the blood and the alcohol that didn't go into the wound.

 

"I need that sewing kit! Check the bathroom and the master bedroom. Those are likely places." She yelled to Micah over her shoulder. "Arwen, honey, I need a big bucket of warm water, please." The cowering girl listened and ran to grab the giant mixing bowl from under the counter. She filled it as best she could and shuffled slowly back over to the mess on the couch.

 

"Thank you, dear." Ez said, giving the child a quick smile.

[Fangirl05]

"Thanks, Arwen" Erin smiled at the girl when the last bowl had been brought out and put a hand on her shoulder, "Don't worry, alright? Everything's gonna be okay."

 

She turned back to the man and compressed the requested gusher. Again, she was weirdly glad for this guy's frostbite; not only would it slow his bleeding, but hopefully it had left him dead enough to the world that he wouldn't feel any of the upcoming battlefield surgery. Of course, there was always the chance that he would...

 

"You might wanna hold his shoulders down" she suggested to Mak, then turned back to Arwen.

 

"Why don't you go upstairs?" she suggested, "Find Dingo, try to relax. I'll come up and let you know how he's doing when we're done here."

[Avialae]

Micah nodded, and checked the downstairs bathroom and then the upstairs bathroom for the sewing kit. He found nothing in either one, so then went in the master bedroom. Fortunately, he managed to find the sewing kit without too much searching inside a drawer in one of the nightstands beside the bed. Holding the sewing kit tightly in his arms, Micah rushed downstairs into the living room where he offered it to Ez. "Here," he said. Once Ez had taken it, Micah headed back upstairs to get some sheets and blankets, noticing nobody had done that yet.

[Quhanta]

Arwen nodded in response to everything that Erin had said to her, too afraid to speak. When told to go upstairs, she didn't wait too long before running upstairs to the far back room and crawled under the bed. Dingo and her kittens, along with the ferret, were all camping under there. After a moment of fright on all parts, Arwen was accepted in and cuddled up with the animals.

 

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Ez nodded and half smiled to Erin in thanks for her kindness to Arwen. She didn't really fully understand how to do it, so she was grateful for Erin's expertise. After Arwen had run away, Micah returned with the sewing kit. She muttered another quick thanks and took it from him. Rummaging through, she found the longest, thin needle she could, and started bending it into a 'C' curve. Once complete, she picked out the darkest thread, looped it onto the needle, and disinfected all of it with the rubbing alcohol. After disinfecting the shallow wound again, she began to stitch him up. The first gash didn't take very long and it looked alright, so she switched sides with Erin, so she was closer to his head than his feet, and repeated the process of the first one. The last gash was much deeper than the other two.

 

"Let me see." She asked Erin, who was still holding down on the gash.

[Fangirl05]

Erin slid her hands as far away from the man's wound as she dared to let Ez do her work. While that happened, she started dipping his hand and one of his feet in the bowls of water; no reason to let the frostbite get worse. She wasn't quite as sure what to do for his nose, though.

 

Boy was he gonna be unhappy when he woke up.

 

"I don't suppose anyone has any Icy - Hot lying around?" she asked of the general area.

Edited February 15, 2016 by Fangirl05

[Quhanta]

Ez poured rubbing alcohol into the last open gash. The twitch from the man's nervous system was strong, but she recovered quickly. It was deep enough to see some ribs, but all of the organs looked intact, as far as she could tell. The stitching on this gash took much longer, but she got through it. The man began to gasp for air, but she wasn't sure why. Ez looked at him in confusion before checking his neck. The left side was distended, meaning that his left lung had collapsed. She searched frantically through the first aid kit before she came to what she was looking for. She removed the plunger from the empty needle and lined herself up on his chest. In hindsight, she should have warned someone what she was doing, but Ez had to move quickly. She stabbed the needle, hard, through two of his ribs and you could hear the air escaping through it.

 

"His lung had collapsed." Ez said to Ein, slightly out of breath. "After I had him sewn up, there was still too much air and fluid inside, so his lung gave out." She placed a towel by the syringe to collect the blood that was now leaking out of the needle. "In a couple of minutes, we can take that out, and he should be fine." Ez turned to Erin and gave a small smile.

[Fangirl05]

Erin made a noise that sounded like "Wha?!" when Ez stabbed the guy in the side of his chest after sewing him shut, but at least she gave her an explanation.

 

"Alright then" she accepted her diagnosis, "I'll head up and let Arwen know when that's been done."

 

She dipped his last foot in the last of the bowls Arwen had brought and tucked her cardigan around his torso. Nobody had answered her about the Icy - Hot, so she was just going to have to hope that his nose warmed up with his digits.

[Fortune86]

When Ez approached him and asked if he thought it was the gremlins, he could only shrug in response. He had absolutely no idea what was causing this strange feeling, which was one of the reason it was so frustrating. However, before he could put any of this into words, a loud crash distracted him.

 

As James spun around his very first thought was to reach for his gun, but he managed to override that reaction when he saw the source of the commotion. A man had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and smacked straight into the table, breaking it in the process.

 

Mak, Ez and Erin leapt into action, running over to the heavily injured newcomer. James looked upwards, just in case there was anybody else arriving, before moving closer to see what was happening.

 

The man was covered in blood and obviously in a lot of pain. Micah and Arwen hurried off to get supplies while Ez and Erin carried the man into the house. James stayed outside, figuring it would be best if he stayed out of the way. He looked over Mak.

 

"I think it would be best if I checked around. See if anyone else has appeared nearby."