Hit the Ground Running

[phaineofcatz]

Suddenly everything is dark and sideways.

She can’t see but she can hear, and there are voices. Male voices. Not boys, but full grown men, and lots of them. Shouting in the shadows all around her. Flashes and beams of light start up, and one man’s voice is commanding above the others, getting them organized, telling them to get light onto ‘the platform’ wherever that is.

The beams cast around and seem to be converging…here! Whatever the platform is, she’s standing on it!

She leaps further back into darkness, but not fast enough to keep the light from giving away her presence. “There is something on the platform! I need it at all costs! Get more light in here! Blasted power outage!”

Who even talks like that? ‘Blasted’ what is this a cartoon?

Her eyes are starting to adjust to the dark now and the flashlights are making the ‘platform’ she’s stumbling around on more visible. Oh boy, she sure hoped this is some sort of prank, because the platform is a mess of wires, smoking circuits, and runes she doesn’t have time to read. Whatever they spell, “get the hell off this thing” is what she was getting out of the situation.

The men are closing in on her now. Looming shapes in the dark with beams of light approaching more quickly than she’s comfortable with. And she’s stuck out in the middle of open darkness without much of a clue where to go.

Well, one clue where to go...

There seem to be fewer voices to her left, so left is a good start. And only just a bit more than a start as she quickly finds a wall, only just barely with her shoulder instead of her face.

A wall means no people, but it also means not a direction she can travel. Well, not unless she’s willing to out herself in an unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar people, and she’d like to hold that off for when she’s sure it’s life threatening…

But walls sometimes have holes in them, like doors and windows, so she keeps moving along the wall as fast as she can, hoping no one heard her scramble and thud over all the shouting.

She makes it about twice as far along the wall as it was to run into it in the first place before she encounters the downside of that whole wall thing. She is spotted by one of the figures in the darkness, already too close up on her if she’s being honest with herself.

“Hey! It’s over here!” and then light beams start finding their focus on her. The man nearest her is briefly highlighted in such a beam, and she has the good luck that this blonde haired tank of a dude is blinded by it momentarily so she can bolt passed him. “Ah, shit, watch it”

She could really use one of those doors about now…

Lights are closing in on her, and so are the men, she hears one shouting, “it’s some kid” and she knows she’s been properly seen at this point. But with more light comes more vision, and while she hasn’t found a door, she did just spot the other kind of hole walls have not far ahead. She just has to get passed the two men standing in front of it with their arms out.

They’re only twice her size…at least twice her size…for a brief moment she wonders again if this is a prank and a football team is getting revenge for her calling them something especially derogatory at a game. But these guys would have to be at least college football age, and high school girls only matter to college guys for reasons that she does not need to think about right now cause there is a window she needs to get through and she has to do it the hard way.

At least they’re slow. Probably not football then, even on the worst teams footballers are built for speed. She runs toward the center of them faking like she plans to try and slip passed, but once they group up she spins to the left and bounces off the wall they just abandoned.

Now, with a clear shot of the window, she puts in every bit of speed she’s able to and dives for it! Reaching her hands as far ahead of her as she can to touch it and cheat just a little. As her fingers make contact the glass turns black. She has a brief moment to realize she couldn’t see out the window even before it was enveloped in her shade. Barely a breath later and she slams into it full force, curling into a ball to fit through as the glass breaks in one large black chunk surrounded by a rain of tiny clear fragments.

She falls…

What, like, two feet?

OH, FIRE ESCAPE! Oh wow was that lucky, cause that looks like at least four floors down and there is nothing but concrete and debris as far as the eye can see.

She’s in a city, a really dirty city from the looks of it. And there aren’t any lights for blocks around. Okay, but she does see lights in the distance, did someone say something about a power outage?

Arms reach through the window after her and she realizes that figuring out where she is might need to wait a bit longer. She spins away from their grasp and throws the chunk of glass back at them, not waiting to watch as color quickly floods back into it and it shatters against the frame. Instead, she takes the moment of confusion it bought her to reverse vault over the edge of the fire escape and drop to the next floor. Okay, that was dumb, but she cheats a little to catch her balance, if no one notices the thing with the glass, no one will notice her black boots looking a little shady in the moonlight. Well, the smog-light? Can’t really see much moon here.

She drops again doing a slightly more convincing job of balancing her landing on the next rail and working her way to the ground. She could probably stick the landing from about two floors up, she’s been dropped further before, but it doesn’t look natural and she’s already kind of pushing it.

Up above, the confusion has given way to men climbing out the window, but they can’t fit through more than one at a time, and slowly at that. HA! Serves you right for not being a teenage girl instead of…line backers? Dock workers? Whatever, really big dudes.

Apparently someone inside is a little more put together though, cause she hears yelling to take the stairs and the elevator. She hits the ground cleanly on both feet, ready to run, but not knowing where to. She’s only been to a city this big maybe three times, and she didn’t get long to look, but she doesn’t think this is DC or New York. DC is kinda flatter, with some pretty obvious landmarks from even just a few floors up, and New York is tighter, restricted by the water that surrounds it. She does smell water. Okay, she smells sewage. Ick! What a time to have an oversensitive nose.

The shouting is getting closer. She bought some time with her drop, but not enough to dawdle. Both ends of the alley she’s in look like they open up, but the left one looks like it has branches in it, which means options. Uncle Lenoir always said to keep your options open in a fight, so left it is once more.

She makes it about three yards before hearing a strange series of clicks and the streets are suddenly bright.

Okay, bright might be overselling it, this city is kind of a wreck, maybe it’s Detroit? But there are lights on, so the power must be back. Unfortunately, that means she has less cover of darkness to slip away into, and when a door slams open to her left and several men start pouring out they immediately spot her and start coming her way. Well, that branch in the alley is looking better and better.

She swings a right into the branch and does her best to keep her footing as she runs on the uneven and slippery debris. All those practices doing laps out in the field are paying off, shame she’s wearing somewhat more fashionable and punky boots instead of running shoes. Fortunately the branch does seem to pass through and does even more branching up ahead. She doesn’t expect she can lose these guys in a straight shot, but some twists and turns might give her a chance to slip away.

First alley on the left is a dead end, no dice.

A little ways down an alley on the right opens into a courtyard, so she takes it.

And that courtyard has no exit. Shit.

She looks for doors and sees a few, but the first is locked. Quickly moving to the second she finds it gracefully unlocked and swings it open to…A Brick wall? Seriously? Briefly wondering yet again if she’s fallen into a Saturday morning cartoon she runs toward the third door only to find it locked as well. The men have reached the turn and can now see her so she bolts for some large loading doors across the courtyard begging them to be unlocked.

Bang!

A pile of debris in front of her churns up, causing her to skid to a stop. Ice drips through her veins as she dives behind a solid looking dumpster nearby. She feels like she’s falling backwards even as her shoulders rest against the steel of the container. Another gunshot rings through the metal behind her and everything starts to feel distant…quiet…the men are still there and shouting, but it’s like she’s experiencing the world through a fuzzy TV screen, not there in person.

With calm, vague disinterest she watches, as if from miles away, while her hand reaches out and touches a shredded tarp lying on the ground. Shade spreads out slowly from where her fingers press against it, and the now black sheet floats up to move along with her…

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