RE: Grand Battle S3G1! (Round Four: City of the Dead)
01-19-2015, 07:03 AM
She'd been pounding the pavement for about an hour, and had gone from excited and elated to discouraged and confused by bits and pieces. The transition had been so gradual that she'd barely acknowledged it until her phone rang and jarred her roughly into the present. A chorus of xylophones told her what she already knew, and as much as she wanted to ignore the call, she couldn't really justify not talking to him. Not after how she'd left and how little she had to show for it.
"Hello?"
"Where are you, Siobhan?"
"Give me a second." She wasn't actually sure, and this late in the afternoon there weren't many pedestrians around to question or businesses to stop in to. There would be soon, as the sun started to set, but not yet. She scuttled towards an intersection. "Uh, looks like… corner of Manchineel and Granite."
There was a clicking of teeth at the other end of the line. "Well, if nothing else, you've made good time. Where are you headed, anyway?"
"Well, er…" It was a difficult question to answer, since she'd only been sort of following a gut feeling that she'd only been half-consciously aware of. One that was getting steadily harder to feel. "Wherever the scoop takes me, Jimmy."
"'The scoop'? Really? Look, I know you love the idea of playing investigative reporter, but you've got a job to do. You've got work assigned, and you've got deadlines."
In an instant, she went from sheepish to indignant. How dare he talk to her like that? He was an editor, not, like, a real manager. "Yeah, you know what? I do. And I also set my own hours and can do what I want if I get my assignments submitted on time. You're my editor, not my dad, and unless you're going to act like a coworker instead of a nanny, I'm about ready to get back to, you know, my job."
He quickly backed off, tone apologetic. "No, you're right, I'm not your dad. And I don't have to be your editor right now, either. I'm your friend, Siobhan, and I'm worried about you."
Annnd, now she felt bad. "You've been in a weird place lately, and… I don't know, this just seems…"
He trailed off, and for a while the only thing she could hear was the scuffing of her heels as she trudged along.
"Yeah, no, I get that. But this is real, Jim. Like, I can't really explain it, it's not something I've felt before, but I know this is important."
A fleshless sigh. "I guess I just have to trust you. Not a lot of weird, magic urges when you're a skeleton, you know."
"Yeah."
There was more silence. Siobahn turned a corner as Jimmy started talking again.
"Look, just, if you ever feel like you need–"
"Wait, wait, wait. I'm going to have to call you back."
For a moment he could hear her shuffling intensify to a thudding dash before the call ended.
---
Huebert glowered at the latest group of rotating doctors that had come to poke and prod at him. The place was obviously a hospital, but it was feeling a lot more like a laboratory the way these people were treating their ostensible patient. He'd had to remind them that he only had so much blood to draw, for one thing, and was only not being vivisected because his experience with the NSC had made him unhesitant to punch someone's head off when the scalpels had come out. The flow of doctors slowed to a trickle after that.
"Doctors" and "people" were the easiest words to use for these… things. They were accurate words, and they didn't remind him of the flaking skin and exposed bone and omnipresent stench that came with the things they represented. He hadn't really been thinking of what the Fool had told them when he had called for a medic, hadn't been thinking of what might respond. Hadn't been thinking of anything but TinTen and his own uselessness and the sort of things that could happen to a soldier with wounds like that left untreated. He wasn't sure yet if he regretted it; sure, the… people here looked like they might well end up killing him by accident in their excitement to learn about this mysterious "life disease", but it pretty much boiled down to hoping they could or would save TinTen or trying to hunt down Tengeri and hoping she knew enough about Meipi biology to stabilize him. What kind of doctor had she been, anyway?
Still, it was mercifully (perhaps) easy to shut down his meandering ruminating with the semiconstant threat of some hapless skeleton or overenthusiastic ghost pulling out his kidneys for science to worry about. It kept things refreshingly in the present, even if he had to occasionally strain to remember his first aid training to explain why exactly a tracheotomy wouldn't actually improve his respiration and why he needed to respire at all. A fair few of the assembled medicorpses were a bit suspicious of how he seemed to know so much about life and living, but that was largely ignored for the sakes of professionalism and curiosity. And so it continued, and so Huebert had a consistent situation to deal with and occupy his mind. Of course, no situation lasts forever.
"Alright, everyone out," came a voice from the crowded door. "I need to consult with the patient, and you all need to get decontaminated."
It was mere seconds before the room was empty save for two beings – the boss here apparently demanded rather a lot of respect or fear – and Huebert was left staring down the skeleton-woman who had called herself chief of staff and a lich, whatever that was. As she began speaking again, she closed the door and replaced the sheet of shimmering plastic that was apparently quarantining him from the rest of the building.
"Well, Mr. Henderson, I'm very happy to let you know that your friend's condition has stabilized. Things became much easier when we realized he wasn't completely alive, which would frankly have been very helpful information to have at the beginning. We've got him in stasis while we wait for one of our experts to arrive from his practice. You'll be happy to know Dr. Maniciewicz is one of the city's top demonologists, so he'll be in good claws while we sort things out."
Mr. Henderson felt like a response was being prompted by the lichdoc's vaguely-accusatory opening, but he had too many questions of his own being raised by "not quite alive" and "stasis" and "demonologist" to bite; he still wasn't sure what the status quo was here, and in the absence of knowing what kind of answer was going to turn him from a medical curiosity to a threat that needed purging, he settled for silence.
Dr. Octavius had spent far too long as an administrator and as a warlock to be derailed, and simply continued. "With him handled for the moment until our specialist arrives, our focus turns to you. To begin with, you're in a much better position than he was to tell us a little bit about how this happened to you. It would certainly help us develop a treatment plan if we knew what we were dealing with, or at least where it came from."
"Don't you run this place?" Huebert wasn't sure why he was being so antagonistic, or even really giving it much thought, but he felt he could be forgiven in the circumstances. "I feel like you have to have better things than keep me posted on everything."
"Well, yes, I suppose I do. And at the same time, no; I have to keep my employees safe, and I'd rather potentially expose myself to whatever is vivifying you than ask my subordinates to. But regardless, that's not why I'm here. Professional curiosity and caution aside, I'm here because I thought it would be best to let you know personally that my corporeologists have devised an experimental solution to the problem; as the most stable patient, we believe it would be best to allow you the opportunity to save yourself."
Huebert pulled back, too shocked to even make an effort not to seem horrified. "Hell no! I'm not letting a bunch of zombies cut me open until I'm dead, even if I'd still be walking around afterwards. And that's a big fucking if."
"I'd hoped you wouldn't see it that way. Or might at least make an effort to disguise your racism, I suppose; our zombie doctors are every bit as well trained as every other member of our staff, and attitudes like that do nothing but prevent everyone from receiving the best care they can."
"I don't care if it's a zombie or a haunted scalpel, I'm not consenting to anything."
"I'd been advised that the… virus, or whatever it is, might be affecting your cognition. Likely in an effort to save itself, or perhaps simply coincidentally. We'll know more as we treat you. Regardless, I do have to remind you that you are not, currently, undead."
"Yeah, that's why I'm here, but–"
"Which means," she continued slightly louder, cutting him off as she drew her wand, "that you do not actually have any rights."
Rules, Atlas supposed, were meant to be broken. And were primarily not for Chiefs of Staff in any case. Bands of force wove around the man's limbs as she broke her own magical strictures for the second time in one day.
"You have no more actual choice in the matter than the corpses we'll be using to replace your living parts with."
---
The sun glittered on the elegantly sculpted brow of Clarissa Kelly, Action Sixes News. She didn't particularly like being up at this hour, but breaking stories were breaking stories, and she did have to admit that the evening sun complemented the delicate layer of frost that paisleyed its way across her skin. It was a very camera-friendly effect. She liked camera-friendly.
She didn't like this ghost, particularly; he didn't seem to know much, and was of course a Wailer. Nobody liked interviewing them, or probably listening to interviews with them, but he'd been the only one still at the scene by the time she and her cameraghoul had made it. Which meant he was the only one who knew anything even if it wasn't much, which meant he was the only thing separating their story from being the kind of gossipy early-night non-news she had spent so long avoiding the trap of. Really, when the vague-answers-to-vapid-questions were interrupted by pounding boots and shouted objections, it was almost a relief.
Almost because this was her job (and now she'd have to do another take with the Wailer, thank the below they weren't live), and almost because it turned out the source of the interruption was that dumpy banshee from the newspaper. Ugh. What a wannabe, a nobody. Probably had a crush on her, too. Gross. Right now she was waving her arms around, yelling about something stupid, getting between the camera and its rightful focus, Clarissa.
"Look, you can't broadcast this shit!"
The ghost looked a bit miffed at that; nobody likes having their fifteen minutes dangled in front of them then taken away. "Wh-wh-whoooo are yoooou to decide THAAAAAAT? Get ouuuuut of heeeere, this is biiiig stuuuuuuuuff!"
The banshee ignored him and glared at Clarissa instead. "You know you'll cause a panic if you put this stuff on the air. You might as well come out and say 'Living apocalypse now science fact; stay tuned for eight ways you can commit suicide before you get converted and slaughter your family' or whatever. There'll be riots, people will get hurt."
The ghoul gently shoved her out of the way but she went spectral and let his claws wave through her like mist. "Miss, wrr just hrr t' rprrt th' nws."
"And anyway," Clarissa finally deigned to interject, "I somehow doubt your noble intentions extend to not saying anything in that rag of yours. You're just mad we're breaking the story first."
"That rag of mine," she yelled, waving her notepad for emphasis, "actually does, like, literally any fact-checking before it shoves sensationalist crap down people's throats. You know full well the difference between my article and your "story" would be the difference between "mysterious ailment mimics life" and "BUY GOLD BONDS BEFORE THE LIVING EAT YOUR FLESH", so don't you act like this is a jealousy thing."
"I don't think it's jealousy. I think it's inadequacy."
"This is a-a-aaaall very unprofeeeesionaaaaaaal!"
"Shut up. And you can choke on an icicle, frosty. You know this is wrong."
"No, I know it's news. It's news, and in two hours, it's going to broadcast across the city just in time for everyone to have their breakfast and get on with their night. Informed and interested. Not panicking and crazy. You print types are so reactionary."
"You're either an idiot, or you know full well what you're about to do and don't care. I don't know which is worse."
"I don't have time for your childishness, I have an interview to conduct. You can either go report on someone's lost grimalkin somewhere else, or I can call the police.
"Hello?"
"Where are you, Siobhan?"
"Give me a second." She wasn't actually sure, and this late in the afternoon there weren't many pedestrians around to question or businesses to stop in to. There would be soon, as the sun started to set, but not yet. She scuttled towards an intersection. "Uh, looks like… corner of Manchineel and Granite."
There was a clicking of teeth at the other end of the line. "Well, if nothing else, you've made good time. Where are you headed, anyway?"
"Well, er…" It was a difficult question to answer, since she'd only been sort of following a gut feeling that she'd only been half-consciously aware of. One that was getting steadily harder to feel. "Wherever the scoop takes me, Jimmy."
"'The scoop'? Really? Look, I know you love the idea of playing investigative reporter, but you've got a job to do. You've got work assigned, and you've got deadlines."
In an instant, she went from sheepish to indignant. How dare he talk to her like that? He was an editor, not, like, a real manager. "Yeah, you know what? I do. And I also set my own hours and can do what I want if I get my assignments submitted on time. You're my editor, not my dad, and unless you're going to act like a coworker instead of a nanny, I'm about ready to get back to, you know, my job."
He quickly backed off, tone apologetic. "No, you're right, I'm not your dad. And I don't have to be your editor right now, either. I'm your friend, Siobhan, and I'm worried about you."
Annnd, now she felt bad. "You've been in a weird place lately, and… I don't know, this just seems…"
He trailed off, and for a while the only thing she could hear was the scuffing of her heels as she trudged along.
"Yeah, no, I get that. But this is real, Jim. Like, I can't really explain it, it's not something I've felt before, but I know this is important."
A fleshless sigh. "I guess I just have to trust you. Not a lot of weird, magic urges when you're a skeleton, you know."
"Yeah."
There was more silence. Siobahn turned a corner as Jimmy started talking again.
"Look, just, if you ever feel like you need–"
"Wait, wait, wait. I'm going to have to call you back."
For a moment he could hear her shuffling intensify to a thudding dash before the call ended.
---
Huebert glowered at the latest group of rotating doctors that had come to poke and prod at him. The place was obviously a hospital, but it was feeling a lot more like a laboratory the way these people were treating their ostensible patient. He'd had to remind them that he only had so much blood to draw, for one thing, and was only not being vivisected because his experience with the NSC had made him unhesitant to punch someone's head off when the scalpels had come out. The flow of doctors slowed to a trickle after that.
"Doctors" and "people" were the easiest words to use for these… things. They were accurate words, and they didn't remind him of the flaking skin and exposed bone and omnipresent stench that came with the things they represented. He hadn't really been thinking of what the Fool had told them when he had called for a medic, hadn't been thinking of what might respond. Hadn't been thinking of anything but TinTen and his own uselessness and the sort of things that could happen to a soldier with wounds like that left untreated. He wasn't sure yet if he regretted it; sure, the… people here looked like they might well end up killing him by accident in their excitement to learn about this mysterious "life disease", but it pretty much boiled down to hoping they could or would save TinTen or trying to hunt down Tengeri and hoping she knew enough about Meipi biology to stabilize him. What kind of doctor had she been, anyway?
Still, it was mercifully (perhaps) easy to shut down his meandering ruminating with the semiconstant threat of some hapless skeleton or overenthusiastic ghost pulling out his kidneys for science to worry about. It kept things refreshingly in the present, even if he had to occasionally strain to remember his first aid training to explain why exactly a tracheotomy wouldn't actually improve his respiration and why he needed to respire at all. A fair few of the assembled medicorpses were a bit suspicious of how he seemed to know so much about life and living, but that was largely ignored for the sakes of professionalism and curiosity. And so it continued, and so Huebert had a consistent situation to deal with and occupy his mind. Of course, no situation lasts forever.
"Alright, everyone out," came a voice from the crowded door. "I need to consult with the patient, and you all need to get decontaminated."
It was mere seconds before the room was empty save for two beings – the boss here apparently demanded rather a lot of respect or fear – and Huebert was left staring down the skeleton-woman who had called herself chief of staff and a lich, whatever that was. As she began speaking again, she closed the door and replaced the sheet of shimmering plastic that was apparently quarantining him from the rest of the building.
"Well, Mr. Henderson, I'm very happy to let you know that your friend's condition has stabilized. Things became much easier when we realized he wasn't completely alive, which would frankly have been very helpful information to have at the beginning. We've got him in stasis while we wait for one of our experts to arrive from his practice. You'll be happy to know Dr. Maniciewicz is one of the city's top demonologists, so he'll be in good claws while we sort things out."
Mr. Henderson felt like a response was being prompted by the lichdoc's vaguely-accusatory opening, but he had too many questions of his own being raised by "not quite alive" and "stasis" and "demonologist" to bite; he still wasn't sure what the status quo was here, and in the absence of knowing what kind of answer was going to turn him from a medical curiosity to a threat that needed purging, he settled for silence.
Dr. Octavius had spent far too long as an administrator and as a warlock to be derailed, and simply continued. "With him handled for the moment until our specialist arrives, our focus turns to you. To begin with, you're in a much better position than he was to tell us a little bit about how this happened to you. It would certainly help us develop a treatment plan if we knew what we were dealing with, or at least where it came from."
"Don't you run this place?" Huebert wasn't sure why he was being so antagonistic, or even really giving it much thought, but he felt he could be forgiven in the circumstances. "I feel like you have to have better things than keep me posted on everything."
"Well, yes, I suppose I do. And at the same time, no; I have to keep my employees safe, and I'd rather potentially expose myself to whatever is vivifying you than ask my subordinates to. But regardless, that's not why I'm here. Professional curiosity and caution aside, I'm here because I thought it would be best to let you know personally that my corporeologists have devised an experimental solution to the problem; as the most stable patient, we believe it would be best to allow you the opportunity to save yourself."
Huebert pulled back, too shocked to even make an effort not to seem horrified. "Hell no! I'm not letting a bunch of zombies cut me open until I'm dead, even if I'd still be walking around afterwards. And that's a big fucking if."
"I'd hoped you wouldn't see it that way. Or might at least make an effort to disguise your racism, I suppose; our zombie doctors are every bit as well trained as every other member of our staff, and attitudes like that do nothing but prevent everyone from receiving the best care they can."
"I don't care if it's a zombie or a haunted scalpel, I'm not consenting to anything."
"I'd been advised that the… virus, or whatever it is, might be affecting your cognition. Likely in an effort to save itself, or perhaps simply coincidentally. We'll know more as we treat you. Regardless, I do have to remind you that you are not, currently, undead."
"Yeah, that's why I'm here, but–"
"Which means," she continued slightly louder, cutting him off as she drew her wand, "that you do not actually have any rights."
Rules, Atlas supposed, were meant to be broken. And were primarily not for Chiefs of Staff in any case. Bands of force wove around the man's limbs as she broke her own magical strictures for the second time in one day.
"You have no more actual choice in the matter than the corpses we'll be using to replace your living parts with."
---
The sun glittered on the elegantly sculpted brow of Clarissa Kelly, Action Sixes News. She didn't particularly like being up at this hour, but breaking stories were breaking stories, and she did have to admit that the evening sun complemented the delicate layer of frost that paisleyed its way across her skin. It was a very camera-friendly effect. She liked camera-friendly.
She didn't like this ghost, particularly; he didn't seem to know much, and was of course a Wailer. Nobody liked interviewing them, or probably listening to interviews with them, but he'd been the only one still at the scene by the time she and her cameraghoul had made it. Which meant he was the only one who knew anything even if it wasn't much, which meant he was the only thing separating their story from being the kind of gossipy early-night non-news she had spent so long avoiding the trap of. Really, when the vague-answers-to-vapid-questions were interrupted by pounding boots and shouted objections, it was almost a relief.
Almost because this was her job (and now she'd have to do another take with the Wailer, thank the below they weren't live), and almost because it turned out the source of the interruption was that dumpy banshee from the newspaper. Ugh. What a wannabe, a nobody. Probably had a crush on her, too. Gross. Right now she was waving her arms around, yelling about something stupid, getting between the camera and its rightful focus, Clarissa.
"Look, you can't broadcast this shit!"
The ghost looked a bit miffed at that; nobody likes having their fifteen minutes dangled in front of them then taken away. "Wh-wh-whoooo are yoooou to decide THAAAAAAT? Get ouuuuut of heeeere, this is biiiig stuuuuuuuuff!"
The banshee ignored him and glared at Clarissa instead. "You know you'll cause a panic if you put this stuff on the air. You might as well come out and say 'Living apocalypse now science fact; stay tuned for eight ways you can commit suicide before you get converted and slaughter your family' or whatever. There'll be riots, people will get hurt."
The ghoul gently shoved her out of the way but she went spectral and let his claws wave through her like mist. "Miss, wrr just hrr t' rprrt th' nws."
"And anyway," Clarissa finally deigned to interject, "I somehow doubt your noble intentions extend to not saying anything in that rag of yours. You're just mad we're breaking the story first."
"That rag of mine," she yelled, waving her notepad for emphasis, "actually does, like, literally any fact-checking before it shoves sensationalist crap down people's throats. You know full well the difference between my article and your "story" would be the difference between "mysterious ailment mimics life" and "BUY GOLD BONDS BEFORE THE LIVING EAT YOUR FLESH", so don't you act like this is a jealousy thing."
"I don't think it's jealousy. I think it's inadequacy."
"This is a-a-aaaall very unprofeeeesionaaaaaaal!"
"Shut up. And you can choke on an icicle, frosty. You know this is wrong."
"No, I know it's news. It's news, and in two hours, it's going to broadcast across the city just in time for everyone to have their breakfast and get on with their night. Informed and interested. Not panicking and crazy. You print types are so reactionary."
"You're either an idiot, or you know full well what you're about to do and don't care. I don't know which is worse."
"I don't have time for your childishness, I have an interview to conduct. You can either go report on someone's lost grimalkin somewhere else, or I can call the police.