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This message was last edited by the GM at 22:33, Wed 23 Oct 2019.

When Dean had died, as strange as that sounds, he had fallen directly adjacent to the little pick up counter, his cold and waxy taco salad still sitting there on a red tray amid the rest of the destruction.   When his aorta had been bisected from the front, liters of blood had been pumped down his middle and onto the floor in mere seconds. It was hard to say if he was even conscious when he had collapsed backwards, landing first on his backside, before his center of gravity had carried him rearwards to strike the back of his skull on the floor with a bony thud.

To add insult to injury of course, his attacker had been draped over him like some kind of grisly shawl.

It was in this generous puddle of coagulating blood that Dean had awoken, and both his eyes shot wide open as if his mind had suddenly remembered that it had urgent work to do. Kind of like pressing play on an action movie in the middle of a good scene, he sprang to action.

Everything he had been trying to do when he collapsed, he resume with sudden vigor. He sat up violently, and sort of crab walked backwards, leaving gigantic tennis shoes prints in the dark, thickening blood and then scrambled up, backwards, until his back collided violently with one of the clear cooler doors.

Wide eyed, and obviously terrified and confused, he had backed himself into a corner and now stood there looking like he might bolt at the drop of a pin, looking around and taking great breaths through his mouth and nose. His eyes flicked from one thing to the next ever quarter second or so as his mind reeled.

Tom's eyes flickered open. Where was he? He seemed to be face down in a drink cooler of all things. Like lightning, the events of the previous--hour?--hit him: stopping for gas, the attack on the diner, the vampires and werewolves. He remembered being shoved toward the cooler, the dagger of glass eviscerating him. But now--

He scrambled out of the cooler and stood, looking around the room. Raising his shirt, he looked for the gaping cut that should be there. Then he looked around the diner and saw Dean, Jack, and a stranger who looked somehow familiar. Had Tom seen him in a movie before? Abe was nowhere to be seen.

"Who the hell are you?" he asked the stranger, guardedly, not keen to be gutted for the second time in a day. "And what did you do with our buddy?" Tom glanced around the room. Where were all the bodies that had fallen? He was sure at least some of what couldn't have been vampires and werewolves had been killed in the fight, but he didn't see any of them now.

"This is so weird," he mumbled. "It's like I can feel you three somehow. Two of you are cold--and one of you feels like laughter. Bizarrre."

Tom at least, seemed familiar, and Dean latched on to his words like a mental life raft.

"Tom...I" he licked his lips. "Tom, what the hell just happened man? I..." his right hand almost subconsciously drew to where he had been opened up, and his expression turned to horror once more as he looked down at the blood soaked and shredded remains of his shirt. "Ohhhh...no, no..." his hand hesitantly pressed through the mess, only to find his stomach unharmed beneath. he pressed and prodded before he looked up.

"I need to go to the hospital guys, like..." he paused, and looked to Tom. "Cold?" he asked "What do you mean?"

"What do you mean?" Abe asked, suddenly concerned.  He turned quickly to look around for his own body, fearing that perhaps something horrible had happened.  As he turned, something pulled on his head and then smacked him in the face when he stopped turning.  He reached up to get it off of him and found himself pulling his own hair. "What the crap?"

He picked up a surviving shard of a mirror and looked at himself.  "What the crap, what the crap, what the crap."  He touched his face to confirm that it was still his face.

He then pulled out his phone to check date and time.  How long must he have been passed out for his hair to grow that far beyond regulation?  And for his companions to apparently fully heal?  "I'm me.  Abe.  The last one standing that made the portal... I know this will sound weird, but after tonight maybe it's believeable... cast some kind of spell on me.  Theoretically might have made me more like people were meant to be?"

Abe checked his phone.

"What the...?  I guess not the weirdest thing that happened last night."  Abe commented as he considered hitting 'send' to call Thomas back.  "Guys, we cannot be here if and when authorities come around asking questions.  I'll get you all some clean clothes from the truck, and you can change.  Anything you are wearing with blood on it gets burned before we leave."

Abe looked around for any evidence of recording equipment, then headed out to get them clean clothes as promised.  As he went out, he called Thomas.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 04:27, Thu 24 Oct 2019.

Abe made a call as he went outside.

Abe frowned when he heard the voice on the other end.  "I am, as far as I know.  Is there a reason you'd expect that I'm not okay?"

GM passing a message.

Abe was relatively surprised by the call.  He had assumed there was an emergency on campus... or perhaps something on the news.  He answered, "No, I think we're okay... do you often have premonitions like this?  And do you know where the crash is supposed to have happened?  I'd like to avoid it just in case."

GM passing a message.

Abe nodded even though Thomas couldn't see him.  "Yeah, Tom's here and seems alright.  Assuming we don't die in a car crash, we'll have to talk later, Tom.  I've got my hands full here at the moment."

When he got to the truck, he grabbed people's bags and brought them in to them.  He then set about cleaning up after the group - removing any traces he could find that would point to them having been there.

Abe returned to the diner with everyone's bags. And as best as he could, he started cleaning up after the group. To make sure he took care of any evidence of their presence.
This message was last edited by the GM at 01:43, Sat 26 Oct 2019.

Dean was, more or less, in shock as he followed Abe's lead. He focused on the mop and bucket, and cleaning up the abundance of blood that he and the others had spilled.

Tired and cast in the harsh white florescent of the station lighting, he mopped quickly, taking buckets of bloody water back to the toilet and leaving the caustic scent of bleach in his wake.

Thankfully he had brought extra clothing, extra shoes even although they were cleats.

He has his reservations, obviously, but the more he remembered what had happened, he more he realized that his account of things would never be believed. He himself barely did believe it and he had been there.

As he mopped he asked "Abe", who sure did not look like Abe what had happened, in detail, twice.

Tom shook his head. "It's just a feeling, Dean. I can't explain it. I can't even tell which of you guys gives off which feeling." He looked in bewilderment around at the scene. This couldn't be a dream - it seemed too real, too stable.

Could they go up to the Naval station? Instinctively, Tom felt like this would be a place of safety, but would the four even be allowed inside? Unlikely.

Gratefully, Tom accepted his backpack from Abe and began peeling off his bloody clothes. He pitched in to clean up the mess in the diner as best as he was able to.

"Okay, so now what? Continue on as if nothing had happened? I don't know about you guys, but I'm ready to get out of this place."

Abe checked for other cleaning agents to use in removing - or at least denaturing - the blood of his companions.  He hated to obfuscate things, but figured that no law enforcement office would be able to deal with actually finding a group of vampires and werewolves, and besides: each group had already killed the other, so there wasn't really any justice left to be meted out.

Abe gave the others some guidance in what to do, then checked over the work himself and cleaned the tools they used for cleaning last.  As he cleaned, he let his mind wander to the mote of magic he found within himself, and he attempted to figure anything about it he could.

GM passing a message.
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:03, Thu 24 Oct 2019.

Dean had only paused in his mopping to inspect the spot on his stomach where he remembered being eviscerated. He did remember than, the pain, the "claws". There had been claws right? On his attacker which had no vanished? or was he completely delusional?

Part of him was too embarrassed to even bring it up, it was so fantastical, and so he finished his mopping and then rallied with the others.

"Yeah, I guess we just go...hopefully this all just turns out to be, a bad dream or something." he said, as he changed clothing.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:32, Thu 24 Oct 2019.

Jack struggled to get back up, shaking his head.

"I don't know what's going on, but I definitely got hurt," he said, tugging at the shreds of his shirt. "Except I'm not, for some reason. I just feel kind of... hungry. Don't know why."

Abe reconsidered starting a fire when they didn't have time to sit around and make sure it finished its work before being discovered.  Instead after talking to Dean, he grabbed garbage bags for each person to wrap their dirty clothes in and pack them away in their own luggage.  He recommended thoroughly rinsing them with bleach and then water before bagging.

When they finished their work, Abe looked over everyone making sure they weren't walking out with red flags on them.  Noting Dean's shoes, he said, "Dean, we'll stop at a thrift shop down the road a little and one of us will pick something up for you.  What size are you?"

Abe raised an eyebrow at Jack.  "You weren't hurt.  You were dead.  D-E-D dead.... apparently you got better."

He thought for a second, then added, "Oh, and speaking of nightmares:  Thomas from NROTC at Croatan was calling me all night.  As in every half an hour from 12:30 am on.  He apparently had an incredibly vivid dream where we all died in a car crash.  He thought Tom was especially deader than the rest of us.  I'm not sure if it's a coincidence or not, but if anyone wanted to get out a mile or two down the road and call for a cab, I'd understand."

GM passing a message.
This message was last edited by the GM at 08:30, Fri 25 Oct 2019.

Dean stripped off the blood soaked tennies and stood in his socks for the moment. Dean was far from any great mind, but even he could figure out that the presence of cleats at a murder scene would be noticed immediately.

"Uh, sixteens, they can be kind of hard to find, so...don't worry about it. I'll pick some up when I get home"
even the word "home" was some small comfort at the moment.

In his new clothes, a short sleeve gray T-shirt and black shorts, he looked far better than he had, if still a little unsteady on his feet.

At Abe's news Dean shook his head, then glanced to his smart watch. "How long were we out then?" He asked, clearly making ready to head back to the truck. "Was there, ah, video or anything? Cameras? Do we still need fuel?"

You looked around, but you couldn't see any video surveillance.

[OOC: You have filled the tank every six hours for the duration of the trip. Not because the tank was empty, but more as a convenience. Refueling the car while you refueled your bodies. There is enough fuel to get you home.]

Dean checked his watch as he headed out of the Jade Dragon with his bag. The rest of you not far behind with yours. The diner, now hopefully without any of your compromising DNA evidence. Or, at least, no longer identifiable as yours. Your bloody clothes were packed away in your bags.

As soon as the sunlight touched Dean and Jack, they burned! And Dean collapsed to the ground.


[Dean and Jack suffered 12 hp of burning damage each!]

[OOC: The dice wasn't with us on this one.]
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:59, Sat 26 Oct 2019.