[]Empty Cathedral

Vertigo snarls, teeth bare and gleaming as if his jaw is pushing out of his skull. "Grimke!" he gnashes his teeth as he spits it out again. "Grimke, Grimke's a bastard, he's a bastard, he lied he's not dead at all," he is shaking with rage now, hands gripping the bear harder, kneading at

the soft

____________white soft white and______ dough like cheese ____________milk and you see the front it says front on it and,

He pulls at the arms of the bear, pushes it in. The eyes stare back. Glassy and black and wanting to know why, why, soft dark eye lashes asking why, why, why why why

why ____________why ____________why

I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, and here his lips starts to shape the words as they fly,

"Brother is sorry,

Brother is sooooooooo sorry,"

"Sir, yes sir, I know, sir, yes sir, sorry sir, next time I'll listen, sir, sorry, sir," but you would have died and i couldn't leave you, you -




He is standing now, and as he screams it, and the words seem to bounce off the high filthy ceiling, reach out over the cathedral like a curse, or an omen. Banshees have sounded saner.

There was a voice next to him; that of a girl. Simply by the sound of her voice he was able to tell; around 19 years old, young...young...Yet it was what she said that roused his attention. His lips curled into a smile, baring very white teeth, whiter than his shirt...

"Sir?" he questioned softly, "I've never been called sir before....". Rafael lifted his head, coming back to reality, his past visions being replaced by the world of now. The young girls face was coming into focus, young...young...smile spreading further up his face as he sat up straight. He looked straight in her eyes with a gaze that would have made any female uncomfortable...young, young....


The smile faded slightly as he gazed at her some more. He had the weird feeling that he had known her before; was she one of his - no. She would feel much more familiar than she actually was. The question bore a hole in his mind; where did he know her from? The thing on his arm burned with as much questioning as he felt.
"Who-..." Rafael frowned at her figure, squinting his eyes in thought. Her smell filled his nostrils, he needen't even breathe in, twisting his smile once again up his face. A sort of musky sent that one can detect if in stressful situations.
She was scared. Of him. He liked that.

"Start with introductions, no? My name is Rafael." he put out a hand. "And you are?"

..."BLEGHhhghhhughh." A warm, metallic-smelling liquid gushing past his upper lip and sliding unceremoniously down his chin was what greeted Merinski back to the world of the living. He wrinkled his pointy nose at the smell----GODS that just hurt the damn thing---in disgust, an action which quickly turned his response into a grimace and a pained, angry hiss. "What in the name of---?!" But whatever deity's name Merinski was about to take in vain had been wiped from his mind, so the sentence remained unfinished as he rolled from his stomach to his back, hands clawed pathetically in the air like a dog.

Rolling right into a pile of glass even. Undoubtedly once part of a lovely stained glass window but clearly no longer much of anything to Merinski except a stabbing pain in his back.

"FUCKING DAMMIT," he swears to himself, sitting up quickly and baring his mouthful of sharpened teeth in irritation at the whole situation. He hunches his skinny black leather-clad shoulders, grimacing as he reaches behind himself to pluck out a few of the more overzealous pieces still sticking stubbornly into his back. He sneers, his left eye giving a slight twitch as he mutters scathingly to no one in particular. "....absolutely intolerable, piles and piles of filth griming the earth, cannot find a moment's reprieve from this---this---FUCK." With a painful sounding tug, Merinski tore the last and largest chunk of glass from his back with a violent flinch. "Fuck. Life. Could use some coffee, FUCK. MY. Father, faceless bastard," he added as a rather incoherent afterthought, pale blue eyes narrowing as he contemplated...whatever it was that Merinski contemplated.

His nose. Merinski forcibly wiped his arm across it, the blood there having already started to dry. A streak of white appeared on his arm, contrasting with his black leather sleeve....oh. That's right. Make-up. Corpse-paint specifically. He wore that didn't he...why did he feel so confused about it all? His head felt horrible. Heavy and beat up. As if he'd been dragged by his hair face down across the entirety of the church floor to this stupid backroom filled with tattered old priest robes----

Church floor. Priest robes in this small room. Church. A.... church?

There was a short moment where Merinski's electric eyes seemed to soften and rationally ponder his new and unusual situation; wondering why and how he got to be where he was, why he was aching everywhere, even why his memory seemed to be having some uncharacteristic leaps. However. Quietly pondering was never one of Merinski's strongest suits, and thus this sane, rational breath of calm didn't last long.

"Where. In the name---the name---the name of---oh, FUCK, I CAN'T EVEN--WHERE THE FUCK AM I?!!" he hisses loudly, throwing his clawed hands in the air in a maddening, almost comedic little gesture of frustration and anger. "SOMEONE IS GOING TO GET---stepped on," he growls with a twitch, frowning deeply. "Boots. With spikes."

"So many...fucking....spikes."

She held his gaze as firmly as he held hers. Oh? Perhaps a challenge? A
test to how he was daring? He raised a brow. She was holding her ground.
Instinctively he sat up slightly straighter and a more confident pose.
The young man wanted to make it clear that the situation was under
control, his own of course, not wanting to alarm her. The collar of his
shirt seemed to curl in interest, along with his smile.

There was a rummaging in his brain as he thought about what she had
said. "Heh..." was all he seemed able to
reply, closing his eyes to concentrate on the smell of fear. He saw it
in her face that she was not interested in anything to do with him, but
that she would put up with him for the time being. He knew that she
wouldn't be able to keep away for long; there was something inside him
guaranteeing this fact. As she gives her hand (which was not so soft,
like she worked), she shifts the leg chair to the other; his eyes
follow, trying to think of a way to rid of it. It can wait; in a place
like this, there was time....

"Nice to meet you Hailey Silver." he replied, even more friendly
than herself. The air cackled around him again, and he looked around
furiously. There was angry growls from outside, perhaps raccoons,
vicious buggers. In a flash he stood, still holding onto the young
woman's hands. There were laughs again, he needed out.

"Shall we?" he asked, beginning to walk, dragging her along.

Robert Dahl was curled up in a loose ball on the floor, snoozing pleasantly as the chaos of various unfortunate victims was enacted throughout the church. Finally a few muddled screams of various emotions penetrated the thick stones and bounced back and fourth, echoing weakly. Bob's eyes fluttered back and fourth for a second behind his eyelids. He took a sharp breath, uncurling and stretching... before rolling back over to his other side to go back to sleep. However, the new stone was not yet warmed and as his cheek touched the frigid surface he snorted quietly and then finally opened his eyes.

Bob distinctly had a lack of memory of going to bed on a hard stone floor, and why was it so dark? Was it still night perhaps? He came to the gentle conclusion that he had probably been drinking a bit too much free beer after work last night and simply had no memory of it... he wasn't usually a black-out drunk though. Bob sat up calmly however, and stretched his arms upward, squinting into the darkness to try to discern his surroundings. From the stone floors and the damp coldness around him unusual for the usual temperate heat he was use to, Bob guessed he was in some sort of basement or cellar. Something bugged Bob as he stretched up, on his right arm it felt like there was a patch of extremely taught skin that was painfully threatening to burst. Bob relaxed his arms and lifted the loose sleeve of his Hawaiian shirt up to look at his upper arm. In the darkness he could see an unnatural bulge in his arm, and he just barely caught the glint of metal on the meatiest part of his arm. His arm was throbbing lightly in the area of the thing. Bob blinked, replaced his sleeve to its original position covering the anomaly, lifted up and looked at it again, and then finally dropped the sleeve and got to his feet.

"Whelp, lets see if I can't try to ignore that while I look for someone to explain things to me..." Bob said to himself with only a slight vocal hint of uneasiness. He patted his loose shorts to attempt to dust them off as he stood up, cracked his aching back, and then set about looking for some sort of exit. It was hard in the darkness, there wasn't a window or light anywhere, and Bob seemed to keep stumbling over the uneven floor and various debris that were scattered about the floor for no apparent reason. Putting his hand against the wall he could tell the place was indeed an underground room and was in quite the state of disrepair, feeling cracks, exposed wood, and even the occasional crumbles of dirt on the wall. Bob pursed his lips in thought, but didn't get a chance to make any conclusions as his hands felt and object that was definitely in the vicinity of ladder shaped.

Bob beamed at his success happily. He immediately began climbing the wooden ladder, which creaked due to the combination of old wood and Bob's weight. As he climbed he made out a thin outline of light in the shape of a rectangle above him. Ah! This must be an old trapdoor leading to the cellar of wherever he was! Bob could even hear some sort of angry muttering coming from above him, perhaps another unfortunate drunk like he was(?). Bob reached up and pressed his hand against the rough wood and pushed up, ready to emerge into the light... The door in the floor lifted about two inches before Bob couldn't push anymore and let it drop back down suddenly. There was a resounding thunk as the trap door fell back in place. Bob paused and then a look of realization crossed his face.

The angry mutterings (Bob thought he could make out the word spikes?) were coming from above him, directly above him. Someone was unwittingly, or perhaps wittingly, sitting on the door in the floor above.

Bob cleared his throat, once again pressing against the door above him. "Excuse me! You seem to be sitting on my only exit! I would appreciate it if ya could move a little bit so I could climb out! If I did something last night to offend you I assure you I must've been very drunk as I do not remember anything!" Bob said in a jovial and slightly hopeful voice, wiggling the door as best as he could beneath the muttering person above.

Whatever the girl was saying at the moment slips by Jask entirely, mostly because something is now scratching at the already cracked frosted glass of the bathroom window. This place is wrong. So wrong.

He makes a hiss, completely inhuman but seemingly heartfelt, right at the window. He steps in front of the girl, turns, rattles his chains as something even more inhuman busts through the glass with its tusklike fangs... with no regard for its face. Blood and saliva pour down the wall.

Had she said something about monsters?

Jaso-- No, he was Jask now-- believed that she had. Given his rathers he'd much rather it not be their bones covered in blood and saliva, so he turns again, cradles the girl in his chains and makes for the door.

Cyrus stopped in his tracks at Nior's question. "Right, I guess that's a good place to start," he said running his hand through his hair, ruffling the gray part along the middle. He took a deep breath, still trying to calm his nerves. "Where isn't exactly a question I can answer. No one you will find will be able to point this place out on a map. We here call it The Pit. I call it the fucking trash heap 'cause that's what it is," Cyrus snarled a bit, "It's a run down city with infinity on one side and the ocean on the other. No one's found a way out, yet and you can be pretty sure no one ever will... except through ways I wouldn't advise..." Cyrus appeared to attempt a bitter smile, but he managed even less than that and mostly just grimaced. He looked to the side and blinked his eyes, absentmindedly leaving them open once again.

There was a sudden slam against the wooden doors Cyrus had come in through. Cyrus gave a large jump and whirled around again, thin limbs twitching into a defensive posture in front of his chest. The dogs howled outside and the sounds grew more fierce. Cyrus's mind jumped to the still fresh feeling of Paige being ripped from his grip and the dogs biting at him. Cyrus blinked hard, if there was one thing he had learned in the Pit, it was that there was no room for sentimentality in survival.

"We really ought to get moving. The first thing you need to know is that the roofs equal safe and that the ground equals dogs if you could call them that," Cyrus said quickly, "Wereallyshouldbefindingourwaytosomeroofsnow..." He began walking, brushing past Nior, and attempting to subtly feel his way around without looking like he was doing it, muttering under his breath.

A slightly muffled albeit cheerful-sounding voice interrupted Merinski's demented monologue. He hunched his shoulders up again, long, bony fingers clawed in aggressive defense in front of him. The man snapped his head, looking about sharply, pale blue eyes scrutinizing every corner of the still unfamiliar room. "Who's there? Show yourself, I DEMAND that you show yoursel---ARGHH?!" Merinski barked in surprise, feeling the ground beneath his seat shift a little. He sat there for a split-second in disbelief as if trying to reason why, but quickly coming to his senses, immediately jumps to his feet as a look of indignation crosses his unpleasant face.

"WHAT IN THE NAME OF---?!! THE NAME---errrugghhh!!" Once again, to Merinski's avid displeasure, it was a name he could not seem to recall. Much to the posseser of the kindly voice's misfortune, this would only contribute to the man's already foul mood and unsavory disposition. Merinski scowled at the place on the ground where he had been sitting only a moment before; there seemed to be some curious grooves in the floor, and upon further inspection, what appeared to be small handle. The black-clad man frowns at his discovery, narrowing his eyes. "I can't have but a moment of peace can I, oh no, not once, not even fucking once," he mutters under his breath.

Blindly not even considering the possibility of danger, Merinski strides back over to the trapdoor and unceremoniously wrenches it open, revealing beneath the floor a darkened chamber, that seemed to lead to a cellar of sorts. However, once realizing what was in there and what he was looking at---or rather, what was looking back at him---Merinski blinked in mild surprise. Whatever it was that he had expected to find here, surely this wasn't it.

A large, tanned man with fluffy golden hair and a colorfully patterned Hawaiian shirt was teetering on a ladder and contentedly gazing up at him. Merinski inadvertently made a quick look of disgust. "What on Earth----who are YOU?!" he demands rudely, his tone devoid of any sort of social niceties or decorum.

Just as Epic started to pull on Jask's arm, she encountered resistance- why was he just standing there? As he began to hiss, she let go. Uh oh, something was wrong. His gaze was fixed on the window- scratching? Why was there noise coming from - If only I'd found a weapon sooner.

The next series of events happened in an instant, but fear and adrenaline made every detail of it sharpened in her mind. She saw some kind of beast burst through the window, small shards encrusted into its own face. Other pieces of glass flew a short way, hit the floor and shattered again across it. Small beams of light reflected from all these scattered a faint web of light through the room, and the loud rattling of Jask's chains pressed upon her eardrums- but the feral, hungry shine of the monster's eyes and the polish of its teeth were the most distracting at the moment. Her weird new acquaintance temporarily blocked her vision of it as he positioned himself in front of her to face the threat, snapping her out of the pure shock. Thoughts began to race through her head at lightning speed, while the wolf paced a step to the side, evaluating its new enemy. Yeah, he's REALLY tall- hope that puts a hole in your confidence.

With Jask blocking the monster's way, she should've run- but she didn't like the thought of losing sight of something that could track her down by scent and sneak attack her. Her life was in danger. Jask's life was also in danger. ...well then it wasn't fair for the monster to be the only one whose life isn't in danger, right? So they had to fight together. Monster, I decree that your life is now in danger.

The resolution was interrupted by Jask's chains who promptly swept her up into a cradle. Epic exclaimed "WARGH-!" because it's hard not to when your feet lose contact with the floor unannounced, and why were they running she thought they were going to fight- but she established eye contact with the monster thing almost immediately again and it had leapt into chase and snapped its never-before-seen weirdo jaw in their general direction and thoughts of fighting it were quickly replaced by agreement that they could run for a little while and hope that its glass wounds would bleed it into further clumsiness before it catches up. Unfortunately it didn't have a big distance to catch up on. "Jask, I hope your powers of tallness make you run REALLY fast!" She said, eyes darting everywhere as he ran to help find something helpful while keeping an eye on the wolf.

Salan flinches at the yelling, something behind his eyes exploding with pain at the high decibel (oh, there’s the headache now. He had been waiting for its grand entrance). He resists the urge to put his hands back over his ears until the echoing stops. He grits his teeth, closes his eyes.

He opens one eye to stare at this…Spidereye, he said, wasn’t it? Salan figures he would never get used to calling someone that. Not that he intends on calling him anything. He falters momentarily, clearing his throat and taking one tiny step back.

“You’re right, total bastard,” Salan agrees, forcing some cheer into his voice. “Entirely a douchebag and he may not be dead but hey, that’s no concern of yours, right? Just, uh, forget about him. I guess. Say you’re sorry again and then, uh, move on.”

He takes another step back, even though something behind the pain in his head is coaxing him not to leave, telling him he can’t just leave this (crazy, insane, entirely disturbed) person alone. Salan isn’t sure which is instinct and which one is logic, to stay or to go, to take part in flight or…well, he doesn’t want to fight, and this Spidereye fellow seems more frightening than a threat. For now. Anyone who carries around a teddy bear can’t be that bad. Salan glowers at the teddy bear anyway. There could be a grenade in it.

Vertigo directs a small huff at the man, as if disappointed. Stands up straight, properly.

Bear held to his chest.

Head at an angle.

What was the line?

They couldn't hit an elephant at this distan- Right?

That was another world ago, though, a story that only lived on paper anymore, and only some paper, handed down like a talisman from one sniper to the other. Breathe in as you squeeze the trigger, and never assume that you are out of range.

"He'll miss us if he doesn't calm down. Or he'll waste energy killing us," he tells the bear, clearly.

Vertigo tugs his hood off, back. "And it's rude to wear a hat around ladies," he adds, looking at the bear.

Tiber glances over when Sarky moves to the next window, and frowns when he leans up to see through. All he's been able to make out so far are translucent silhouettes rummaging around. He's almost curious now, especially with the noises getting louder. Sarky's reaction doesn't help any.

Decidedly resisting the urge to pluck at his sleeves like an impatient child, Tiber instead meanders over to the toppled pulpit, wondering if he could be nonchalant about using it as a stepladder. "What're you talkin' about--they cats or something? Sure sounds like dogs." He kicks experimentally at the wood; his foot sinks in. Rotted. Useless. More seriously, he asks, "Wolves, maybe?" as he leans over to examine his handiwork.

To be honest, Tiber's not too worried about what's out there. He's still half-singing at the fact he's found another person in this whatever-infested city at all--it'd looked awfully empty from the bell tower. Anyway, one person means more people, and that means people who'll know what's going on. Hell, Sarky himself seems fine enough to follow around, even if he doesn't know shit about this place either. So Tiber's not particularly concerned with whatever Sarky's seen out there--so long as they stay out there.

Tiber kinda likes dogs, anyway.

The wood yields easily to his fingers--sickeningly so. A large chunk breaks straight off and he considers keeping it as a sort of tool or weapon, should he need it, but even the sharp end is pathetically blunt. A beetle scuttles out from the underside and he brushes it away before dropping his find onto the ground. Nothing too useful inside, either--couple of books, two linen stoles, and a quarter-bag of wafers, long since unrecognizable as food.

Tiber stands up again and makes a sour face, kneading at a sore spot on his neck and leaving faint, bloody fingerprints on his jaw. He wanders back over to the window Sarky'd used, figuring it couldn't hurt to try--he's reaching up for the pane divider as a sort of handhold when he's distracted by a tiny pat.

A drop of blood has fallen on the sill. Tiber grimaces at the reminder and steps back, tugging at his shirtsleeve and glancing dourly in Sarky's direction. "Hey, uh--Sarky, yeah. D'you think you could--help?" he asks, gesturing at his mangled arm. "I think you just gotta, uh, tie somethin' around it. Stop the bleeding. I'd do it myself--I mean, I think I can, but--ah, shit. Ever get the feeling you're missing something? Y'know, like. In your head?"

Tiber scowls at the ceiling, not looking at his outstretched arm. "Fuck it. Don't answer that."

Well, Athan can't do anything but frown at that. "Aban--I've never been skiing, thank you--abandoned, really?" He twists around to stare down the hallway, as if expecting someone to pop out from behind a door and scold the boy for lying. All he sees, though, is a dim, wrecked mess of a corridor, stretching eerily on in either direction. He shivers--and then frowns. (He doesn't feel cold. Hm.) "How curious," he murmurs, tugging absently at a lock of his hair.

Displeased perplexity slides easily back into insouciance as he turns round again. "I suppose that means you haven't any more idea than I do where we are, Mister--? Oh dear, I'm afraid we've been quite rude." There's something delicious about being so incongruously decorous, standing as he is in a stack of old papers, amnesic and in desperate need of a good bath. "I won't tell anyone, but we'd better get it over with before we're cast out of good society altogether. I'm--" he pauses, and his eyebrows contract minutely. He doesn't suppose he's ever had to grasp to finish this sentence before. "--Athan," he concludes, only a second or so late. "Short for Athanasios--ghastly! 'Athan' will do just fine."

He begins to offer a hand for a shake, but to his chagrin some of that nasty slime is still clinging to it. He half-bows instead, almost joking. "And...?" He glances up through his bangs and smiles mildly.

Salan chews on the inside of his mouth, holding back his own huffy sigh. The bear was starting to creep him out. Maybe a little bit. Children’s toys should not be carried around by grown men. Ever. Especially if they talk to said toy. He almost comments on that with something potentially witty and sharp but falters.

Okay. Just got called a lady by a crazy guy. There’s only a few courses of actions to go from that. Salan grits his teeth momentarily.

“Listen, buddy,” Salan says with heavy implication that they are quite the opposite of buddies as of this moment. “I don’t know if you’re just seeing things now, which come to think of it is probably very likely, but I ain’t no lady. And never have been in case you were wondering. So--” He punctuates by extending his arm to flick the other in the forehead. “—Knock off with the crazy talk because it’s not getting us anywhere. ‘Kay?”

As ungodly tall as the strange, chained man is, getting up the stairs with a bundle of extra, flailing weight is incredibly awkward. The second he's up them he hears crashing below and only takes a seconds to look both ways for a route and to make sure he wasn't holding the girl too tightly.

He makes a nervous hiss and runs to his right.... and then back again to his left and keeps moving that way. There are other voices and other dogs and Jask can't tell which could be dangerous and which were safe.

Worry about the dog first. The thing first. Hope you don't get mistaken for a monster. Find a shirt.

He doesn't know why the last one wound up on his priorities list but he feels terribly vulnerable even amongst his determination, and this leaks out into the air around him tangibly. Tangibly?

He tried to withdraw his mental state from the air and instead draws his chains in closer.

This is going to be a long day.

Spoiler:

Vertigo sways in time with the

and here his mind crackles, words jumbled up to describe

demon ____________ monster____________foxyloxy foxyloxy ____________Snake, snake, ____________bump in the night,

tan skin, darker than his own flesh only under his own flesh was red and sticky everywhere not a drop to drink and surely FoxyLoxy would bleed like a corpse but you couldn't run.

Some things are important. Front towards enemy.

”You talk a lot, sir,” Vertigo says, teeth baring in a blazingly bright smile. He squeezes the bear's head, hard, things inside go snap and crackle and even pop. He crushes a kiss to its forehead, and lobs it at the sound of--

Twisted on his heel and RAN.

Run run run as fast as you can, run run run, as fast as,

as fast as the wind. As fast as you can. Like a burning leaf.

Fast as you can.

Inside the bear,
a crushed mechanism triggers an electrical charge,
which sets off a detonator,
which causes almost three pounds of C-4 to go boom.

Which totally ruins Salan's day.

“I'm the gingerbread man!”

Spoiler:

The smile in itself was unnerving, because Salan had never quite seen anyone smile like that, mostly because people aren’t supposed to smile like that with so much madness stuck away in their head. But shortly after that, the smile wasn’t really important.

It takes him a few seconds (and a few seconds too many) to register that the crazy guy hurled that teddy bear (that was a minor, yay it’s gone, which very quickly turned into nothing close to rejoicing) and now he was running away and usually when people throw things and then start running it’s a good thing to, maybe, run as well.Or duck.

His mind apparently can’t decide which one it would rather do, run or duck, so it settles with giving his legs mixed messages which result in a few good sprints before a total trip-and-fall-on-his-face move which he tries to recover from which just turns into a continual fall-run-fall-run pattern. He isn’t sure if he is screaming all the curse words that are coming into his head or just screaming in general. Somewhere in the mix his mind is telling him just to quit. Today is, indeed, a very bad day. (He never liked gingerbread, either.)

He hopes to God he didn’t get hit with any sort of shrapnel or that he hasn’t actually died (his legs are shaking, he never had seen an explosion up close he thinks, not like that and definitely never meant for him) before he decides that maybe he should give chase, even if lying on the ground and just crying for a long time and then taking a nap feels like it would do better. Crying and naps are for ladies, anyway.

In summary, Salan has finds himself running screaming and swearing after someone who may or may not have tried to kill him and violently hating his life.

Spoiler:

Laughter rushes out of Vertigo like an arterial spurt. It colours the air.

His long steps are erratic, leaps and bounds as if he is lost in a game of hop scotch with too many pebbles on the playground.

His goal, at least, is obvious. The bike, with its duct taped rubber tubes and it's rag wrapped seat, is balanced upright, rear wheel between two cracked slabs.

He jumps onto it, right foot hitting the higher pedal, hands gripping rusting metal pipes. It hurtles forward, his left foot finds traction on what is barely a metal peg, and he tucks his head down and rides hard. It was a quarter mile of rubble, then freeway to his lodgings in the city. Dead cars are only, obstacles on a bicycle, after all. Not road blocks. And he could always pop up onto the wide concrete median.

In the bone and wire cradle strapped to the handlebars, a porcelain doll smiles blindly back at him.

Leaving the confines of the cathedral. He never once looks back.

Vertigo is trusting the man to read his mind and follow him. If he doesn't, there will be consequences.

Once Salan gets decent control back over his legs again, he still finds running not to be the easiest feat ever. Sure, terror (and rage, to an extent) propelled him enough after the person he only knew as Spidereye but perhaps one cigarette too many inhibited his ability to take in enough air. That didn’t stop him from trying, however, and he never slowed down. Even if he did want to take a second to remove his own lungs.

But his hopes of catching up got slightly dashed. A bike? Honestly? At least, it looked like it was supposed to be a bicycle. He could feel the frustrated replacing most of what he was feeling. Forget the withdrawal that he had been going through, that was just a distant memory at this time. This was significantly more important. Why chase those who seemed like they were trying to kill you? He doesn’t have the slightest clue why. Maybe just to hit him once or twice for pay back, or push him off a cliff. Either would satisfy him.

He almost falters when he figures out that they will be leaving the cathedral – he didn’t know what was out there any more than he knew what was inside. But the total nutjob seemed to know where he was going, not as if that was supposed to be any consolation. It was someone to follow, though, and follow Salan would try.


_{CONTINUED HERE}

Cyrus straightened up as Noir spoke in a movement that looked eerily like looking up at her. He made a beeline for her voice. He trotted more confidently than a blind man had any right to, even beginning a skittering run as there was a another resounding thump on the door and a resounding crack. He managed to avoid stumbling into anything until he hit the bottom of the stairs, not expecting the rubble. His foot hit the first chunk of stairs and he immediately fell forward onto the rest of the pile, arms splayed in front of him as he fell onto the splintered wood and stone.

"Fuck!" he pushed himself up wiping a stream of blood that was now streaming down his chin. At this the barking outside seemed to reach its crescendo and Cyrus jumped and managed to scramble up the rubble almost as fast as Noir had, feet and hands seemingly automatically finding holds. Cyrus didn't need his eyes to seemingly know the steadiness of his handholds, having literally years of practice at it. With one big heave, he pulled himself up onto the stairs after Noir. "Shit woman, you could've fucking warned me!" Cyrus growled, straightening and pressing a hand against his chin. From the doors Cyrus heard a sudden crack and the splintering of wood as a heavy paw managed to break a sizable hole through the door. Excited maws thrust through it slobbering and barking excitedly.

"Okaytimetogonow," Cyrus said, beginning to run up the steps. It took a few steps for the blind man to gauge the size of each step, but once that was done he was bounding up the stairs by twos and threes.

Spotting a door in the wall she recognized from when she was entering rooms in search of Jask earlier, she had the cool idea to lock themselves into that room, make a plan, and then let the monster in. The door was thick and heavy enough. Jask's chains could keep it closed. Just as she was about to suggest, the big man ran in another direction. Oh crap. "NottheSTAIRS-!" Epic tried to shout when she saw where he was headed, stairs were the worst ever the dog could catch up because people went up those slow- but nope, he cleared it in bounds and it is the monster, not he, who met misfortune at the staircase. She saw it rush into it headfirst and crash, hopefully adding to its list of wounds. Man, that thing was stupid. This is why Epic didn't like dogs. "Bleeeh~" She stuck a tongue out at it as the distance between them grew larger.

A quick series of sharp turns, jostling the Epic-bundle around. She was beginning to wonder if baby kangaroos ever got as dizzy as she was right now. Next in the ride was a wave of worry and feelings of vulnerability. It didn't take much for Epic to recognize that this was not her own. She found herself staring at Jask's face, who seemed to reflect these feelings perfectly. The mental presence disappeared just as the chains shifted a bit again. She didn't know what to think of it. There was no time to think, anyways. Except for one matter.

"If you run too much you'll be too tired to fight." Epic said, not sure if he was listening.

Bob waited patiently with a growing curiosity as he heard more screeching coming from above. When the door above him finally opened, Bob shielded his eyes a bit as the trap door above him spilled new light onto his dark adjusted eyes. Bob was nearly as surprised as Merinski was when he found himself face to face with an angry man-boy wearing copious amounts of black and white make-up. He then proceeded to practically scream at Bob and stare him down in a most unpleasant manner, Bob swore he could make out a subtle eye twitch.

"Eh, well hello to you too," he said raising his eyebrows up in amusement. He quickly went up the last couple of steps on the ladder so he could successfully pull himself out of the pit of darkness and onto what constituted the ledge of the trap door. He gave a huff of breath in accomplishment, dusted of his hands, and then offered one to the stranger dressed in all black. "To answer your question, the name's Robert, but most people call me Rob or Bob..." Looking up at the standing man, Bob offered a smile along with his large outstretched hand, rubbing the back of his head as a headache seemed to crop up with the onset of sunlight.

"Listen do you happen to know how I got here because I swear I don't remember drinking a thing last night but I also don't remember how I- oh hey we're in a church!" Bob said finally looking around the room to see the stained glass and priest robes in the closet. The windows above the small closet were broken, which brought Bob's attention to the pieces of stained glass on the floor. He blinked there was some scattered blood drops and a few pieces of glass that looked like they had been sticking in someone recently. Bob looked back over at the guy in the corpse paint, seeing the nicks in the man's skin red with fresh blood.

"You have glass in you!" Bob exclaimed standing up as he saw this. He mad a move towards the man, hands reaching to brush glass off his clothes and inspect the cuts and gouges the man had picked up in his stained glass adventure.