mother_of_god | Waterworks (Nightmare World)

[Monsters: More roaches, clawfingers, and mantises.]

[Tasks:
-Pretty much just wandering through the sewers to get to the other end. As characters progress, the area seems to be falling apart, with gaping holes in the walls and floor and loud bangs. At one point, the only way across is walking over a bridge made of a corpse tied up with straps and barbed wire. The end is a ladder leading up from the water, surrounded by half-submerged parts of carousel horses.]

The waterworks here seem more colorful than usual, in that "bright colors mean I'm poison" sort of way. Long stone tunnels, punctuated by gibbets displaying life-sized statues in strange cloaks, lead to grated catwalks over murky water. The strange occult symbol is everywhere- burnt on the walls, twisted into the grating- and everything is in disrepair.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Jack takes the lead again (http://mark-of-samael.livejournal.com/9525.html?thread=1430837#t1430837), in the hop that maybe he could see something useful, and drops down lightly on to the walkway at the side of the water.

"Clear," he calls up, standing aside for Jo.

Jo came down after him. Quietly grateful for Jack.

She had to put her gun up to carry the pyramid and climb. But she takes it back out once she's down.

Turning around and looking at the wall across them, she spotted another of the strange sigil's, like the one from the tower. There was a frown for it. It looked familiar, but not right, not Sameal, and she couldn't place why.

"North and northerly as long as we can." Jo said, looking away and down the dark tunnel with it's strange colored water.

Jack has to close his eyes briefly to orient himself, but he nods. "that way, then. And watch the water: I suspect it's not for swimming."

"Rainbow bath not preferable," Jo replied pertly. Beat. "Unless you fall in."

Shortly after, there's a skittering noise and what looks like a shiny, jumbled, bumpy carpet of black headed for them.

Jack snorts. "Should I watch for treachery?" he begins, before being interrupted by what on closer inspection turn out to be a swarm of large armoured insects.

He shrugs, and leaps directly into the centre, leaving Jo to clear them from one side.

"Always a double cross-" Jo shoots the first one near her. "-in a horror movie."

But it doesn't stop them swarming around her, which leads to kicking one at the wall. Both stopping with little else needed.

That gets a huh look and she starts kicking more of them.

"Except the blonde usually wears-" shot goes off for the one that crawled up her leg. "-lingerie and investigates the crazy noise, without a weapon, so they can be seduced."

"Oh."

Jack pauses in his amusingly ridiculous stomping dance until roaches begin to reach the top of his boots, whereupon he kicks them ff into the water.

"Can we do that afterwards?"

That water idea. Jo likes that one.

"I'm better than sewers."

She's begun kicking them that way, narrowly missing Jack once.

"You best offer me your tattering shirt to lay on at least."

Enjoy this? Them?

Never.

Edited Date: 2008-06-22 07:56 pm (UTC)

Jack has a brain wave, and he uses the flat of a blade to sweep a number in at once.

"Oh aye, my shirt is yours to use as you'd wish."

Jack gets a flash-bright smirk, then Jo goes back to stomping the last three under her.

She reached a hand up, brushing back hair stuck to her cheeks by sweat. And everything else. Eyes still on the roaches in the water, screeching or floating legs up.

"Definitely not a rainbow bath."

"Let us not," Jack agrees, drawing back. But it amuses him to watch them suffer so, and he smirks.

"Be that all the sewer has to offer, we might wish to stay a while."

"It was my one and only dream vacation," Jo said, raising the gun hand to gesture to her chest. Her voice is mockingly syrup sweet, even as she takes steps backward in the direction they should be going. "How did you know?"

Jack grins, and sweeps a bow to her.

"Knowing things is what I'm good at."

Jo keeps her mocking smile.

But just at the edge of her awareness something (half formed, all ignored) tenses because of the reminder.

"Good thing you're on my side then. Onward?"

"With a smile like that? I would be on no other," Jack replies. "Aye, onward."

Beyond them, in the tunnel near by, there is a suddenly bang, crash, splash.

A huge chunk of the wall seems to have fallen down.

Jo gives it a look that says fuckin' disconcerting but keeps moving.

Jack startles at the noise, and exhales sharply, returning to amusement. He's rapidly growing sick of being taken by surprise.

The further they get the more things are looking like they've been falling apart.

There are missing sections to the walls and floor, making for interesting moving around without catching the poisoned water. There were statues that guarded grated cat walks, marked and twisted with the sign on the floors, giving them no option but to attempt them.

"Reminds me more and more of some of the ports we used to put in," Jack remarks, offering a hand to Jo to help her over a particularly obtrusive pile of rumble. Or maybe to steady himself, either way.

Jo's face reads whut?

But she does take his hand moving over.

"You put in to places like this?"

"Falling apart, no maintenance, foulest smell in the known world?" Jack winks.

"Could be any port in the Pelagoes."

Jo snorted.

And there was a smile.

"A dozen dozen run down dives I've seen too."

There's more sewer and more grates.

On the next grate there are statues, and the sigil and a shadow.

A large insect-looking shadow.

Jack was just about to reply to Jo when he sees it. He smirks, and swings quickly with a sword in the same moment. There's no longer any reason to assume anything is friendly.

The sword goes through the shadow.

And it moves right after he does-- jumping down on his head.

Jo's proper response. "Fuck!"

The gun is being aimed specifically, while she's doing her best to follow the large green mantis, to watch his head before trying to take a shot.

Jack's response is not a word in English, nor any language a Terran might recognise. But it's shouted - pitched high and panicked - in exactly the same vein as the word Fuck!

Cutlasses slice above his head in a scissor motion and he dives under the shadow. "Shoot!"

Which is a command, not a censored swearword. He won't be able to Read the bullet, but he'll risk Jo's aim for the kill.

Jo doesn't need to be told twice. Her hands are steady, and the release comes in a multiple.

The sharp hands are cutting around Jack's head, but they stop between cutlasses and bullets. Skittering off his head, on the ground hissing at them.

Jack stands slowly, and his mouth turns up. "Thank you."

"Sure."

Jo's looking at him.

Which, also, turns out to be a mistake.

When the mantis rolls back over, hissing, and runs for her.

Jack moves quickly, blade flashing towards its mid section. Why won't this thing stay dead?

Crazy exoskeleton of doom, narration replies helpfully!

Jo was no more of fan of things not staying dead here than he was.

Especially things that stood tall as a mans hip area.

Jack's latest cut seemed to have slowed it. Hit something important vital, but Jo kept firing in case.

Jack gives a frustrated, if still adrenline-positive snarl, and swings again, this time going for the limb joints. Exoskeleton has to have a weak spot, right?

Jo's thinks it should. Especially since bullets are only making it startle.

Whatever Jack's doing it seems to be working. The mantis movements get slower while it hisses angrily at them.

Hack hack hack hack hack hack hack.

Jack focuses on a spot between thorax and leg, hoping to cripple it at least enough to keep it slowed.

"Save your bullets," he suggests when they don't work, passing his second sword to Jo.

She's sure given long enough they might.

But she doesn't turn down a weapon to make that process faster.

Jo nowhere near fabulous with a sword, but she's good enough with a sharp trauma weapons used to smack the crap out of something that need to realize it should die.

Which given a few longer minutes, it begins shrieks and from there the job is much easier, and then it's a large smear of mashed up pieces between them.

Jack didn't laugh that time.

He wipes insect blood and sweat from his forehead and onto his shirt, which is becoming less and less funtional. Fortunately, he appears to be wearing an undershirt beneath it; or bandages, it's hard to tell.

"I say we up the pace."

"Yeah," Jo said looking at the green bug mass.

Then stepping around the crap. In a bit of it, too. She held the sword back to him. "Thanks."

Beyond the railway they stood on was more tunnel, but the next grate wasn't. It was a stretch of bones, tied with straps and bard wire. A bridge of corpses.

Jack nods in confirmation of the thanks, and wipes his sword on his trouserleg as he walks.

The bridge invokes a chinlift, and a scowl of disapproval.

"Take it for its practicality, not a message."

Jo looked at in a mixture of disgust and annoyance. Whether scare tactics or dedicated crazy people, she really wanted to kill someone who was related already.

Not more creepy crawly minions.

"It looks sound enough," she said dryly, stepping towards it and testing her weight on the first foot out.

"Aye," Jack agrees. "Lead on, I'll follow."

He's not going to risk the weight of two at once.

Jo took wary steps, her free hand not leaving the make shift rail.She glared death at the other side, hating how open to anything she was out there.

It shook and crunched every few steps, but it held.

She jumped off of it, restraining a shudder and looked back. "Your turn."

Jack pauses longer than he'd like to steel himself, but he walks acorss with his back straight and his balance good even when it shakes and he has to bend a knee to stay upright. He won't let his swords out of his hands.

"I hope there's another way out."

Jo's mouth stayed firm.

She was hoping something dared fuck with them right now.

"Might be. We haven't seen Sybil's body claiming floor space."

Yes. It was caustic and derisive. Her voice hard more than teasing now.

Jo walked onward through the tunnel, pulling her gun back out.

"Aye," Jack agrees, taking the observation at face value. He stays close behind Jo, alert and wary.

The path ended about as abruptly as it started, except with many more holes in the floor and walls and sigil's everywhere. And, apparently, disturbing in one those the fuck? fashion.

Where the pathway decided to end the water rose, and near a readily apparently ladder there were now half-sunken carousel horses.

"There's your way out."

Relative term that. Way out.

Out was far away to her. That was just more hell world on the topside.

Jack's thinking is on the same lines.He hates it here; it's like being scared of the dark

"Charmed," he mutters, and reaches for the ladder first. Jo will tell him if he's needed below.