Players:
Summary: Kai tries to be the good guy and fight off some stone gargoyles intent on taking Jill.
Date: February 23, 2012
Log Title: A Song of Ice and Slime
Rating: PG-13
This log immediately follows Double Double Agent and precedes Overprotective.
The sun has gone down and dusk has fallen over the east coast, though the sky is still tinted with rose and purple hues. The walk from the Westchester Mall all the way back to the Xavier Mansion is, all told, not a long one. Jill certainly isn't going to run the whole way, though. Even after getting the school's urgent text message, a few minutes isn't going to make a world of difference. Dressed in blue jeans, a black Gorillaz t-shirt, and swinging a Hot Topic bag from her left wrist, she looks inconspicuous enough. Just a blonde-haired, blue-eyed teenager walking home from an eventful afternoon at the mall. Except that she isn't, on the first two counts anyway. Her progress is further slowed by the fact that she's trying to send a text message while walking. "Send to… Summers, Scott…" she narrates her actions to herself.
The road gets more and more deserted as Jill gets closer to the school as not many folks come out this way. Along the side of the road, shadowed in the dusk sky, are a few oddly shaped lumps, two sitting on each side of the road. Ahead, in the middle of the road, a fifth lump can be seen in the distance. A dark hunched looking shape no more than four feet tall.
The girl stops under a handy streetlamp to use both hands to thumb-type the message. "Boy I met, Kai Oaken, might have doppelganger." She pauses, chewing on her bottom lip, then continues to type. "Maybe alien or evil clone. Don't know. Will explain in person." Satisfied, she hits Send and drops the phone into her pocket. Thinking of Kai, she feels through the bottom of her shopping bag. It's still there, the odd thing he gave her, like a knife carved out of ice for some fancy party's punch bowl. She draws it out carefully and frowns at it. It's melting, obviously, but why'd he give it to her in the first place? With a soft 'tsk' sound, she tosses it away before it can melt all over her purchases.
As the ice knife hits the ground a crackling sound can be heard as it starts to spread as a sharp cold fills the area quickly, and unexpectedly. An ice starts to form on the surface of the ground and over the grass. From one of the figures on the right side of the road, a set of wings can be seen, and heard, flapping, and it sounds like grinding stone. A whisper of a voice can be heard on the wind ever so softly. "Jiiiiiiiiiiiiiiill."
Jill stops mid-stride in a quick stutter step. She's just on the edge of the pool of light cast by the streetlamp, stopping suddenly as if she'd hit an invisible wall. Turning slightly in place, she glances behind her then around at the deserted road. The impulse to call out "Hello?" is bitten back. No, just a cold wind. Winter isn't quite over yet, right? She's just being paranoid, that's all. Though even with the rationalization, the teenager stays right where she is. It's just that the last step that will take her out of the circle of light feels… No. This is stupid. Werewolves and doppelgangers either don't exist, or wouldn't want anything to do with her.
The spreading ice starts to cover the pavement as the cold grows more intense. The sound of grinding stone grows louder as one of the figures on the left stands up. With a whooosh something about the size of a baseball flies through the air and hits the street lamp above Jill. There's a shattering noise as light goes out and the glass and plastic comes crashing down. At the same time as the lamp is broken the five figures rise up and wings unfold as they take to the air.
Okay, that clears that up. With a shriek, the girl's first reaction is to duck and cover her head, pellets of glass and shards of plastic raining down on her. The sudden darkness is jarring, disorienting. Panic keeps Jill stationary, but not for long. The soles of her shoes grit and grind the broken fragments of the lamp into the sidewalk pavement as she starts to move, a low ducking crab-walk at first. Fear does many wonderful, terrible things, but one thing it does quite well is remind people how to run. So Jill runs.
The grinding stone gets louder and louder as the figures reveal themselves to be gargoyles and they fly towards Jill. Two manage to get on either side of her, one behind and two in front and they land to keep her in the middle of a circle. "Jiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiill Cooooooooome with Ussssssssssssssssssssssssss." The five gargoyles hiss out simultaneously.
Having only followed Jill part way Kai figured she should be safe to get home so was on his way back to the Salem center when he begins to feel the cold growing and hears Jill's shriek. He running back down the road he left her on he catches the sight of her and the gargoyle further down the road, he fights the temptation to stop at the sight of fire, "Run!"
Jill skids to a halt so she doesn't run into the… things that just landed in front of her. She jukes right, but there's another one. Left, another one. Behind her? Yup. "Oh, you have *got* to be shitting me!" Werewolves, doppelgangers, and now friggin' gargoyles? They sure look like 'em, though. She shuffles in place, trying not to show her back to any of them. This is, unfortunately, impossible and she's herded into roughly the middle of the ring of five creatures. Her head twitches in the direction of a non-hissing voice shouting at her. "Over here! Help!"
One of the gargoyles leaps forward right at Jill to try to grab her as the other ones stay surrounding her. "We have been ssssssssssent to gather you." One of the gargoyles says. As Kai calls to her to run, one of the stone figures looks back at him with his animalistic face. "Leave usssssss, we do not need you."
Still running Kai starts forming a spear of ice in his right hand, frowning at the voice from the gargoyles he throws the spear aiming for the one trying to grab Jill, already forming another spear he stops a couple of meters away from the gargoyle looking at him, "Don't really care if I’m needed, let her go, who sent you here?"
"You?!" It's the second time the girl has said that to Kai today, but the tone this time is more astonished, less accusing. It doesn't last long. "Run, you idiot! Get help!" That the creature catches Jill is, truthfully, her own fault. Though her self-defense training from the school is paying off, weaving sideways to avoid the grab, the Hot Topic bag around her left wrist certainly isn't. Claws catch the bag and jerk the girl off balance. She tries to let it go, to let it simply slip off but the stupid thing is caught on her image inducer watch! She pulls back harder until with a soft zzzzip sound… her hand simply comes off at the wrist. The hologram around her pixelates, distorts, smears like a badly streamed internet video, then vanishes entirely to reveal Jill, the real Jill, in all her translucent blue glory.
The ice spear hits the gargoyle and shatters, but not without taking a small chunk of stone out of it, and also helps in it missing her. As for the Kai, the ice spear wielder, two of the gargoyles turn and fly at him, both aiming at him from each side to try to grab at him. As for Jill, the other three haven't given up and the fact that she's now blue doesn't seem to phase them. One goes to punch her with a stone fist while the other two try to dive in and grab her.
"From who?!, we're in the middle of nowhere!", Kai frowns as he knocks a chunk of stone out of the gargoyle, the things are actually made of stone, that makes things harder, his first thought is to take out his attackers with large balls of ice but with Jill's transformation momentarily distracting him he runs out of time, attempting to avoid them he waits until they're fairly close he hits the deck!
"I don't know! Improvise!" Down by one hand, one bag, and one image inducer, Jill is still trying valiantly to bob and weave, fist and oozing stump raised defensively. She looks like she's actually going to try punching one of the stone monsters. Float like a butterfly, sting like- "Ah!" She cries out when she gets stung first, a heavy stone fist landing squarely on her cheekbone, or where that bone should be. Staggering sideways, she all but falls straight into the arms of another of the creatures diving in toward her.
As Kai hits the two gargoyles dog pile him, heavy stone statues landing right on him and trying to hold him down. As for Jill, as she falls into the arms of the gargoyle it grabs onto her tight and takes off into the air with the Blue girl, the other two flying up with her. The last two gargoyles make sure to keep as much pressure as they can on Kai to keep him down, not caring if they hurt him.
As his ribs start cracking under the weight of the stone monsters on top of him Kai mentally kicks himself for his stupid move, if it can fly it almost definitely can land. While his enhanced strength allows him to lift up to a ton on a normal day, it's harder to lift something when you're pinned face down underneath it, still he keeps struggling the get them off him in the hope he can launch one final attack to help the girl.
Coming to her senses quickly, Jill struggles against the hold on her, kicking her feet, squirming, trying to free her arms. "Let me go! Let go!" In a moment of sudden clarity, she remembers who she is. More importantly, she remembers *what* she is. "Oh, you think you can hold onto me, huh?" she spits up at the thing's face. Such a simple trick to release that imaginary tensed muscle that keeps her in a human shape, slip through his arms, then… Then she looks down. The ground is only getting further and further away. Could she survive the fall? There is doubt, but self-preservation instincts die hard and usually win. "Okay, okay!" she relents, terror a hard edge in her tone. "Don't let go! Please don't let go!"
"We wooooooon't let gooooo." The gargoyles say to Jill as once she's about twenty five feet off the ground the other two gargoyles push off of Kai and fly up to meet the others and their captive. The four not holding Jill start to fly around her in a circle, moving faster and faster until their a blur. Jill would feel a tugging sensation before blacking out as the five gargoyles and Jill turn wispy and vanish.
Finding it difficult to move on arm and with his ribs aching Kai tries to quickly get to his feet and launches a large ball of ice with all the strength he can muster at… the space where Jill and the gargoyles were. "They got her", putting a hand to his ribs he looks around wondering if he should look for her school and tell someone there that she was taken.