Val helped the newcomer into bed, covered him with a sheet and blanket, and put a bottle of water next to him. "I'm Vamp. I'll watch over everyone for as long as I'm able. For now I'm the only one not showing symptoms. Rest as best as you can," she told him before turning off the light.

She walked out at looked at Tailgate, passed out near Val. There was no way she was getting him into bed so she stretched him out, propped a pillow under his head and covered him with warm bedding. That done she turned to look at Nikola. "All right, your turn. Off to bed you go. Come on, I'll help you get there. And I mean it - you tell anyone I've been being nice to people and I'll bite your nose off or something worse. I must be having an off night, being so bloody soft to a group of complete tossers."

The truth was she was worried. Perhaps even a little frightened. Her crew and band were all she had and the thought of losing all of them left her feeling vulnerable in ways she did not fancy one bit. She sat down next to Val and placed a freshly cold compress on her head. "Are you even wearing knickers under that dress?" She asked, even though she knew Val was past the point of hearing her. All she could do now was keep an eye on everyone until she became too sick to do it so she propped her legs up and settled in for a night of...uncertainty.
This message was last edited by the player at 14:51, Sun 09 May 2021.

Hunter did his best to help Shin-Jin and the others get to bed as well, quietly helping Vamp where he thinks she'll need it.  When everyone besides them is covered he goes and sits on one of the other sofas leaning on the arm.  He looks tired but does not seem to have any overt or serious symptoms.

Meanwhile, in the bedroom



Kat raises herself on her elbow when Jai mentions Shin-Ji's entrance.  "They were shooting people with genius rounds? That doesn't make sense, it's way overkill," she says, letting her hair fall over and cover part of her face.  Vamp and Hunter help Shin-Ji soon after and deposit him in one of the bunks.
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:17, Sun 09 May 2021.

He nodded thanks as he settlee in. "I will remember this, 'Vamp'. My name is Shin-Ji Han. I honor my debts."

Did that sound threatening? He was aiming for serious.

This was hitting him fast!

Nikola thanked Vamp while getting in bed, "Don't worry i might not remember most of this after all, who knows what this thing is making to my brain"

She remained laying down in bed, not sleepy yet, but her body felt like in a rollercoaster, sometimes floating , being propelled upwards, then falling into bed and sinking in the matress, fusing her body with it and the feeling she used to have once in a while ,the vibration on her skin, the electricity in her body when she experienced sleep paralysis, she was used to it, but this time was different,

she would attempt to move her lips and say something , then started to think aloud, to say whatever crossed her mind, and hopefully some might listen ' If the ninja guy would have wanted to hurt us he would have already, what happened in the dojo and the obelisk leads me to think that they rather kill us all instead of having an outbreak that might kill older people, or give us paranormal abilities if we believe what many say"

"What she said, I guess. And they were taking down news drones, so they don't even have to answer the inconvenient questions that come with broadcasts of juves getting gunned down on the nine o'clock news. This is messed up."

Fatigue finally starting to sink in, Jai moved the pillow back to one of the ends of the bed and laid down.

"We might be out of commission for days. If there's footage or locational data of us at an outbreak... shit, I don't even want to think about it."

Kat sits up, though it looks like she is a bit dizzy, as Nikola joins the conversation.  "News black out is going to be hard to maintain, and missing people hard to explain," she says replying to Jai.  "Wait, you didn't come from the Obelisk?" she asks Shin-ji in the other bunk.  "So were they using genius guns at the Oblesik or was there another operation tonight?  My god, is it city-wide?"

This message was deleted by the player at 18:07, Sun 09 May 2021.

"We saw what was going on and tried to help. Our dojo is just across the street.

Thats when the genius guns came out on their side, and the monos came out on ours.

I don't think its city wide though.

Edit at ST's request. Sorry, I misunderstood what was supposed to have happened.

"oh," Kat says and falls back onto her back.  She lifts one knee and puts her arm across her forehead.  "still shitty, shooting people.  At least it was just the one place, but damn!"

nikola is stunned at shin's words 'wow, sorry to hear all of that, if it helps you, your partners died with honor, as heroes, we will try to avenge them.. btw, were you given this location by minerva? do you know anything about the ones providing us shelter?

Shin-Ji wasn't quite sure what to say to that. Honor and giri o
Once again felt hollow in the face of the carnage he'd just witnessed.

One part of him wanted to thank him, anotger wanted to scream about how meaningless that felt right now.

He settled on a blank stare.

"I.. yes. I heard from Minerva, but I know nothing of her or the origins of this place.

Apparently, all of them were in the dark.

9:00 AM, Saturday, June 5, 2027

In time all of the kids drift off to sleep; even the night owls among you feel exhausted - physically and emotionally- and are overcome with a need to sleep.  Unfortunately, sleep, though uninterrupted, is not pleasant for most of the night.

Between images of kids being shot and crowds panicking to incessant noises and other sensory hallucinations, sleep is not restful.  Sounds such as buzzing that ends abruptly or the noise of static on an old TV set; strange flashes of lights in kaleidoscope colors; itching sensation of skin crawling.  All these things come and go quickly, enough to be remembered, not enough to wake anyone up.  And they end during the night giving everyone a couple of hours at least.

When morning comes everyone wakes up from a natural sleep, at their own pace, all sensation of illness gone for now.

Kat is curled up on her bunk.  Hunter is still sitting on the floor, leaning over onto the side of the sofas.

Valeriya was asleep, and then she was not.

She was staring at a strange, unknown ceiling like she had never done anything else in her life. She blinked (it was hard, her eyes were dry and the eyelids felt gummy), and rolled, and then she saw an equally unknown living room. Then things trickled back to her brain like rainwater down a drainpipe. The Obelisk, the cops, the panic, the bike, the alley, the safehouse, the fever. All of it was gone, it seemed - except for the house, naturally. She pulled her legs under her and got up slowly.

Her legs weren't shaking, her head wasn't swimming. Surprisingly. She felt mostly OK, just parched, just a little bit hungover. It was probably morning, and at that hour, she felt very undressed in her party dress. She was barefoot too, but her only option was the high heels lying by the sofa she had slept on, and they felt even more ludicrous by daylight.

Tip-toeing so she didn't wake anyone up, she went to the bathroom for a glass of water.

When Shin-Ji awoke, he stared at his hands, at first hoping this whole thing was some kind of nightmare. However, the nightmare wouls not end.

Reviewing what had happened last(??) Night briefly in his head, he took quick mental stock before rising. He stood and stretched. No light headedness, though he was very thirsty and hungry.

He wasn't going to die of the carbon plague.

So what next?

First a drink, food if possible. Then shower and change to an outfit that wasn't ripped and blood stained.

Then.. who knew. Vengence, probably. Against every faceless goon? Could he pick them out of a crowd? What about the people who ordered them.

He gave a brief nod to Valeriya, Kat and Hunter (and any others awake) before heading to the living room where thrg could talk without waking people(and maybe he could find some food).

Val drank a glass of water, tentatively. When she didn't throw up, she downed another one quickly, and then half of a third. She was parched, and the liquid was very welcome. Only then she did dare take a look in the mirror.

"Oh Val... Not exactly coverpic material, are we today," she told her reflection. She didn't look great, but at least it wasn't as bad as she had felt. Her eyes were still gunmetal grey from the contacts, the makeup was smeared in dramatic ways away from her eyelashes and her upper cheeks. A bit too much to count as edgy-dramatic, crying-beauty-queen-chic. But it could have been worse.

She propped her right leg over the toilet to inspect the wound from the bike accident the night before. There was a reddish-black scab, not the nicest thing, but at least it didn't hurt any more beyond a little irritating itch.

It was like that, leg up, glass in hand, that she looked up and saw the samuraiboy going around. She frowned.

"Hey! And you are..." she said, just as he disappeared towards the living room.

Had he not introduced himself? His memories of last night... no, the night before last, were incredibly hazy.

He felt embarrassed... and slightly awkward talking to someone as attractive as her, even if she looked like hell right now.

"Sorry, I was... not myself last night. I am Shin-Ji Han." He went for a hand shake, then thought better of it after realizing he had a fair chunk of sweat and congealed blood.

He thought for a moment.

"I think I can lend you a shirt later once I use the shower. I still have my street clothes in my backpack. My GI is water washable and stainproof."

He'd have to rip off the sleeves. Others in the Dojo had done that, but he'd thought it looked really, gonk.

A sudden hunger pang ripped through him and took his mind of fashion.

"Right now though, I'm going to find some food if I have to tear this place up with my bare hands. I could eat unflavored kibble right now."

Normally he carried a bottle of Refresh, but he'd guzzled it sometime last night in a daze. He didn't have a single protein bar on him though.

There is ping from the dataterm signaling an incoming call.  Hunter groans, half asleep swatting an alarm clock that isn't there and tipping over on his side with the action.  He opens his eyes and groans again.  "Not a nightmare..." he says to himself.

Kat wakes up at the pinging sound as well, shaking with a start as though startled awake, then she relaxes and sits up.

Tailgate felt like he'd been in a head-on collision with a truck after a night of hard drinking. His mouth was bone dry. His eyes felt like they were stuck closed and had to be rubbed to get open. There was a tiny group of imps banging on drums inside his head. His ears rang for a short while as he came more fully to consciousness.

He muttered to himself but it was barely a hoarse whisper, "i know...i'm not dead...cause dyin' wouldn't suck this much..."

It took a while before he was able to rouse himself and make it to a sitting position and later to a hunched but standing position. He stumbled to the bathroom once it was empty and relieved himself, washed his hands, scrubbed his face with water - drank some of the tap water like a man dying of thirst! - and then walked slowly in to the living room.

"ugh. hey. what's that sound?"

Jai awoke with a start, mostly glad that what he was feeling was morning drowsiness and not the static-y, dizzy feeling that had put him down the day before. Not sure how else to contribute, he was about to head into the kitchen when he heard the familiar tone of a dataterm notification. With everyone else waking up or still sleepy enough to be confused about it, he headed over and picked up the call.

"Morning. I think."

His eyes darted to the corner of the terminal where the time (just after 9, it seemed) was displayed.

"Oh, hi Shin-Ji. I'm - well, you know," she said, gesturing in the general direction of her thigh, the black-and-red logos visible, it's faint pulsing glimmer not that evident in the morning light. She wasn't really feeling all that much like her on-stage persona, but that made her remember herself - and she stood a litle higher, shrugging it off, like yeah, who isn't skulking around a strange safehouse dressed in last night's dress and looking divine all the same?

"A shirt, heh. Good one, very rim," she said with a smile, lightly stabbing a long-nailed finger as she passed him, as if he had said something very clever and maybe even a little bit flirty. She had already dressed in Vamp's leather coat the previous night, because it had been an emergency, no way she was going to be wearing men's clothes around a strange house, like somebody's girlfriend. She'd rather stay half-naked in the party dress - not ideal, but much more her brand.

And talking about Vamp's trench coat - the yoganger was still there when Val returned to her sofa to check her purse. She blinked twice, only noticing her then. Somehow she had skipped over her automatically when she had gotten up to go to the toilet, somehow not registering the facts.

And the fact were all over the place - Vamp sleeping at the foot of the sofa, curled around a cushion, a half-empty glass of water on a table close by, and a washcloth. Val took it between two fingers. It was moist, and it smelled faintly of sweat... and Chic Fatale, Val's very own designer parfum, famously made from a custom mixture of jasmine and her own pheromones.

For a wild second she thought about moving on and pretending nothing had happened, then something made her stop, try to crouch, then think better of it, and slowly, carefully, kneel and then sit, her legs to the side, none of those steps made any easier by the chrome-hexagon dress.

"Hey," she said quietly, poking Vamp with a shy finger first, and softly shaking her shoulder when she didn't immediately wake up. "You OK, yogirl?"

 There was a lot about people he didn't quite get, and this was evidently one of those moments. It was like there was this whole other level of conversation and rules that he just didn't see. He blinked as she brushed by him and paused for a second before heading to the living room.

He stopped as the dataterm rung.

(OOC, going to switch to red for dialogue in the future if that's ok, should not be using the same color as Val)

The dataterm sound made Nikola suddenly wake up from her deep sleep state, jumping right out of her bed while screaming "Nooo! Nooo! The beanstalk vines!" like not realizing where she was.. she grabed Kat out of her feet , like trying to pull her out of bed " They are crawling and glowing! get out get out!"she continued like crazy.. then she stopped and realized that her mind was playings trick on her... she looked all around at her partners and the room, what happened?, this was odd, was she awake for real? she did a reality check, counted her fingers, bit her tongue and recalled how she got there, it was not a lucid dream, "Sorry! wait ... my parents! i need to contact them!" Then she realized there was a incoming call

Jai answers the call and Minvera comes back on the screen.  She looks tired as though she didn't sleep last night, but smiles when she recognizes Jai.  "Hi, and good morning," she says.  "I've been chatting with my yo's about last night and I think you need to move.  If you are infected, and I think you are, then in about 12 more hours you will enter the last phase.  That can be dangerous for any adults around.  Also, you may have noticed that place is a hideaway but not very secure," she adds.

"My suggestion, and you don't have to take it:  use the next few hours to set up an alibi for the following two days or so, make sure people think they know where you will be, and that it will be some place you will be hard to reach.  Valeriya and Kat need to make public appearance, they need to be seen, so that it will allay suspicion.  If you can make your way to the New Harbor mall, I can get you some scratch to spend and the more secure hiding place you can go to ride out the plague is close to there.  Does that work?"

Hunter, now standing and looking over Jai's shoulder laughs a little.  "You're going to fund a shopping trip for us?"

Vamp was tired. No, scratch that, she bloody exhausted. She had stayed up last night taking care of Val and the others until she felt her own fever and chills coming on. After a very impressive litany of curses in Japanese she made her slow, wobbly way to the couch, wrapped herself in a blanket, curled up around a pillow and feel deeply asleep.

Deep, not restful. Once again she had the nightmare of the terrible night. The night her family was murdered, she was shot, and was so close to death she felt like she could see him coming for him.

And she dreamed of the mon the attackers displayed which, and this made her very, very angry, she had had zero luck tracking down. But she would and they would pay.

She owed them in blood and bullets.

So it was she wasn't quite sure of her surroundings and situation when Val woke her up. She looked at through sleep fogged eyes and took a moment to process things and try top remember what the bloody hell what was going on which came back to rather more quickly than expected.

She blinked a few times a sat down. "Aside from this massive crick in my neck I'm all right. How are you? You're doing a lot better than last night and judging by the sounds, so is everyone else"

Shin-Ji gave a nod. "Ready to fight." A low growl from his stomach occurred at this point. "Once I eat."

While normally he frowned on spending extra money on junk food, he was prepared to take a very big exception if it involved going to a Hot'za right now.

"And maybe five minutes in the 'fresher."

He'd use his mono tanto to cut off his other sleeve before he left as well.

The bare arms thing was the stupid sort of poser look that made his sensei roll his eyes, but it looked better than having one dangling sleeve like some kind of weird RPG character.