hfm_logs | Gather Up Your Loved Ones, Gather Up Your Friends

Warnings: Nox. So many Nox. All of the Nox. And also violence.
Location: All over the city
Characters: Everyone, and also so many Nox. Did we mention Nox?
When: Not long after the repairs on the sinkhole start
Summary: People getting kidnapped by Nox. Yikes.

The repairs on the sinkhole have been going well, but somehow, the city hasn't been the same. There's a heaviness in the air, like a thunderstorm building on the horizon. The normal sounds of a city night have given way to hoots and howls of creatures. The Nox are restless at night and quiet during the day. The local people are opting to stay inside when they don't absolutely have to go out.

Something is coming. Something big.

Then it happens, on a unseasonably warm fall day. High noon and the streets start rumbling, the violent rattling of the manhole covers loud enough to drown out thought. Then, shadowy tentacles burst out the street from every underground entrance, blindly grabbing for whoever they can snatch, overpowering their unlucky victims and bodily dragging them into the nearest available manhole or sewer entrance. If you’re lucky, you get away. If not...enjoy your private tour of the unending blackness and horrifying whispers that is the sewers.

[OOC: Feel free to play out your character's kidnapping or reactions to the chaos however you want in this log! If you want an NPC Nox to react to, just let a mod know!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

For the record-

Not how York thought he'd be spending his day. Getting people where they need to be, clearing out more debris, that kinda shit? Yeah. that's how his days tend to go lately. Air all tense and thick like something is about to happen? He remembers how that feels from back in the project. How usually something went FUBAR shortly afterward. He's got half a mind to wear his suit down to the sinkhole. Argues with himself about it for a good half hour before deciding, no, today it won't kill him to try to work as normal.

He'll kick himself for that later.

But man, if Wash is happy walking around without the armor? He can too. See? Not paranoid, not losing sleep, not twitching and waiting for something to go wrong. It's noon so they should be safe? Just. Two guys, walking to grab lunch. No biggie.

"Anyway so I get the guy there, right on the dot, where we need to be and everything and he's a little dizzy but that's normal and I warn them about that before we start jumping and he wants a discount. For distress or something like that and I tell him 'look, I gave you a heads up, you knew about this going in, you don't get a discount because you got a little dizzy' and he starts puffing up like-" Like he's some kind of big badass or something, is what he was going to say but can't because.

Shit.

Tentacles.

"Oh fuck me-" He gets one hand on Wash and half of himself ready to get them the hell out of there, thinking of the apartment, the night safe apartment when his legs go out from under him like a chump. Rookie mistake. At least he knows enough to let Wash go before they both get dragged down, kicking at the thing around his ankle, scrabbling with it until it starts dragging him down and no, fuck no, HELL no- He ports himself somewhere else, out of the grip, ten feet up the street and sprinting- "RUN!"

Wash has spent all day twitchier than normal, and for Wash, that's saying something. He's seen this sort of thing, had that uncomfortable pressure on the back of his neck, too many times for him to mistake it for anything other than what it is: a warning. Something's coming, and it isn't good. He almost pulls his armor out and puts it on - almost - before a horrifyingly vivid memory of his own death stays his hand, and he leaves it in the closet. It's essentially useless against the Nox - there's no reason to bother with it. Whether it makes him feel safer is a moot point.

(It does. He left it behind anyway.)

He's trying to tune out the feeling, act like everything is normal, smirk at York's story like it's any other day (like it's the old days, when being a team meant something and the leaderboard was a side effect of missions and not their be-all and end-all, before it all went straight to hell), and maybe think up a good comment about York putting a taxi stripe on his armor when hell itself decides to come writhing out of the subway. His first reaction, despite all his best efforts as of late, is still to go for a gun that isn't there, that hasn't been there for weeks. By the time he's corrected course, York is being dragged away, and the tentacles are reaching for him now-

"Dammit!" He lashes out with a gust of air, razor sharp, shearing through the darkness coming for him and prompting a bellow of rage and agony from down below. He doesn't care about that; York has disappeared in the blink of an eye and reappeared further away and Wash does not need to be told twice right now, taking off as fast as he can behind York. "Find high ground!"

"The HELL do you think I'm doing?!" Up. He needed to get up, he needed to get Wash up- like hell he's leaving the kid (not a kid, not anymore and that still feels five kinds of weird but he's not leaving him behind for anything) for the tentacles to grab. He darts left and ports right, hand extended for Wash to grab. "I can get us to the roof come on-"

Wash's priorities are exactly the opposite: his magic lets him fight the Nox, whereas York can't do anything but run, so he needs to hold the line until York can get out of here. Right now, it looks like they might be able to accomplish both, and he runs for York, reaching for his hand-

And stopping just short as a tentacle he'd missed snakes around his ankle and holds tight, sending him sprawling hard on the pavement, stunned. It's a moment before he can get his thoughts back in order, and another before he can focus enough to bring his magic to bear; unfortunately, that's more than enough time for the darkness to tighten around his ankle and crawl up his leg. Shit.

He tears at it with another gust of wind and struggles to get to his feet. "Get out of here!"

He's got him. He's almost got him, fingers skating against Wash's palm as he stretches to grab him, get him out-

Yanked down and caught and no. Fuck that. Fuck. That.

He'd left him once without thinking forever ago and everything went wrong and he should've looked harder. He should have tried to find him before blowing up the ship and this isn't then, this isn't that, but it's close enough that he sprints for it and makes a grab for him. That he takes the first solid port to get them further down the street. "Go- go go, jesus christ- go-"

"Not without you-"

Teleportation is disorienting as hell, but he still gets to his feet, shaking quickly dissipating darkness tentacle bits off his leg and grabbing for York's wrist, taking off in the general direction of the park. They'd be safer there - no manholes.

"Shut it and run!" Damnit only ONE of them is allowed to play the 'take the bullet for the team' card at a time and he called DIBS! He can freaking teleport, Wash does not need to stick around and help him out, he can get himself out of there all on his own.

Another port, further, higher- five feet up instead of even but he's twitchy and panicked and pushing Wash forward even as he hits the ground to keep going-

They might make it. Jesus christ, they might actually make it-

And of course that's when a gigantic fucking trunk of a tentacle hooks around his middle and yanks him backward. "Sonovabi-"

Wash hits the ground running and goes, keeping an eye on York all the while - this much teleporting can't be easy for him, and he's not about to leave York behind-

Which is when something the size of a fucking kraken snags York. Wash turns on a dime, already gathering magic and hurling wind at the tentacle. It slices into the appendage, leaving it bleeding darkness, but it's not enough - Wash isn't focused enough, the Nox is too big, and York is getting further away by the second-

"York!"

"-tch!" He couldn't get away. Couldn't untangle himself, couldn't twist free, couldn't even port- even panicked, stuttering attempts only managed a few inches before there was another tentacle- another tendril, another fucking SOMETHING dragging him down to the nearest manhole.

"RUN!" Damnit- fine. FUCKING fine. If he can't get away he'll keep the damn thing too busy to try to grab wash- flickering from limb to limb in a (futile) effort to get free and only gathering more and more of those fucking shadows till he's at the lip of a manhole and-

This is going to suck.

Wash isn't giving up, throwing wind and fury and whatever he can muster at the darkness clinging to York, but-

But it's not enough. He's unfocused; he doesn't have the precision he needs; and there are just too many tentacles grabbing at York, dragging him back to a manhole, and- no, the underground nearly destroyed Bones, he can't let that happen to York-

He hurls everything he has at the Nox, praying it will be enough.

This would be the ideal time for some sort of witty one liner but York can't think of a damn thing, scrambling and porting no more than a foot in any one direction at any given time, bound up in shadows and pressure and darkness and fuck fuck fuck it's like what happened after Tex and he can't deal-

Wash is spared watching him have a panic attack only by his being hauled down by those damn tentacles, lost to shadow.

Gather Up Your Loved Ones, Gather Up Your Friends

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