Why'd You Kill the Merchant?!

[sansseraph]

Who: ALL O' Y'ALL
Broadcast: If you want
Action: FRICK YEAH PARTY AT THE JUNKYARD...I mean, Waystation. Junkstation.
When: 10/07 - Event End

It looks more like a junk heap than a waystation, but luckily there aren't any math fetishists to add you to the pile (hopefully). Talk to the scavengers and heed their warnings...if you want. Or perhaps you'll approach a shady individual for purchasing or selling stuff.

"Welcome, stranger!"

Comments

C

[survivalistcookbook]

[It hasn't been long since Eugene lost track of the shopping group he trailed into the waystation with. Long enough, though, that his skin's started to prickle and crawl. Long enough that his muscles are itching to walk faster and his brain is telling them sternly to shut the hell up, because his limp is twice as obvious when he tries to move fast. Long enough that the echoing of steps along the corridors, impossible to place, is starting to drive him a little crazy. It's too familiar, like those abandoned buildings with too many open doors, and every step in quiet he's just more ready for the lunge, the shout, the snap.

So at the first flashing glimpse past a stand of something lurching along, ragged and bloody and crooked-limbed? He starts back, catches himself on the wall to keep-upright-step-turn-steady-run and he's halfway through the movement, still staring back in naked fear, before his brain completely places that face.

He freezes, because it feels like he might be seeing things. And he can't tell where the clenching of fading panic ends and nauseated dread begins, when she keeps walking forward, mechanical.]

Wrath? [He gets his legs back under himself, and forces them to step closer, voice rising.] Wrath, what the hell-

[pain_train]

[It takes her a little longer to recognize Eugene than it should; her brain is still a bit fuzzed, though not terribly much. It's mostly just everything feels like it's at a great distance.]

Eugene.

[Her tone is flat, expression still blank.]

Can't find my shuttle. What's your status?

[survivalistcookbook]

Uh, fine? [He's spent years in a reasonably fair military dictatorship, but a military dictatorship nontheless. He's used enough to radioing with the nearest RAF base. Responding to a question that direct, that dispassionate, comes almost automatically. But he can't scrub the uneasy, jittery, panicky concern out of his voice, and he doesn't even try to keep it from bleeding into the same annoyed brusqueness that his fear so often crystallizes into, closing the distance and then hesitating. He can't quite look at her arm, so he settles on the rest of her, which seems . . . okay enough. Functional.] Freaked the hell out, Wrath, what happened?

[pain_train]

[She glances down at her left arm dispassionately. The fingers spasm, then still.] Something really stupid.

[She looks back up at Eugene.] I'd rather my CO didn't hear about this. [Or Winter. If he ever wakes up. Or Charles. But she doubts Eugene would rat her out like that.]

[survivalistcookbook]

As long as there's someone who's not your CO who is a doctor? Fine, no problem.

[He was already nervy before this started, and the flat calm that's settled over Wrath like a shadow isn't helping. It's something he recognizes a little too well. Something that stirs up memories, ragged coughing and gun barrels set between teeth, until they're sour at the back of his throat like bile. He swallows. It doesn't help, so he reaches for her hand - the one that maybe works.]

Come on. Let's get out of here.

[pain_train]

I need an engineer, not a doctor.

[She's only got one functioning hand, and she's not going to let him take it in case something happens. She's feeling highly paranoid.

She moves so he can grab her sleeve instead if he wants.]

Lead the way.