Board Thread:Role Plays/@comment-5999656-20190205035159/@comment-26571677-20190518133909

The world seemed to stand still.

But a moment ago, Hazel had been sprinting through rubble and skirting around the outskirts of battle; watching the different skirmishes with dulled interest.

She had paused for a minute; watching a far away battle between the law and its antithesis with interest; the leaders of vast spiderwebs of crime and their instruments of countless demises doing battle with a police force seemingly discontent from letting even one poor fool escape. Those interesting figures of untold importance to the very roots that held much of the former Valian criminal underworld were fighting for their lives, and even Hazel could not help but watch.

The Stalker had been perched atop a small monument of rebar and broken up concrete as she watched. Hazel’s form was such like a raven in that regard; a herald of madness not so much unlike the poems and gothic countenance of long past tales.

And then her vision had turned red, and she knew that whatever herald for madness she was; the horrors that the newfound light beckoned forth were tenfold anything she could offer.

The previously bright white lights flickered out entirely before slowly transitioning into dark red.

She knew what it meant.

Knew, yet could not move.

The gunfire faded. The clash of swords dulled. The yells and screams and cries and whimpers and unabated cheers for victory and loss died a whimpering death into nothing.

The world stood still; ungulfed in its bloodied state; a prim and leering reminder of what was to come.

Then the alarms began to blare; the high pitched screams a sound that all people knew, regardless of birth or raising. A sound to fear, a sound for eyes to widen and for differences to be cast aside in favour of living to see another day, whether in bondage or freedom.

Monsters came for them.

Monsters came from the deep; accompanied by all the leviathan terrors that the unexplored depths implied. The dead of night outside surrounded the makeshift raft, as if the very abyss threatened to embrace them all in its rotten, drowned bosom.

She ran. Ran like her and her brothers’ life depended on it.

Because they did.

She was so close. So close to the control room.

The screams had already begun.

Both him and the robot stood still; the screens in the remains of the control room disappearing, only to be replaced by the same, flashing warning. Even those that were cracked and barely flickering; the same black letters spelling out their imminent doom; mockingly flashing red at dreading expressions and the icy clutch of fear around pumping soul.

Barely perceptible, his fingers loaded a shell into place; replacing the one that had been spent in the kerfuffle leading up to the warning. His foot tapped on the ground and his fingers twitched; mouth smoking an imaginary cigar. His aura was already damaged; not heavily, but enough to be concerning.

A flood of sea-based Grimm at night with prisoners to protect? He doubted anyone would be able to perform such a feat, much less a band of hunters and tired policemen.

Dust turned back towards where his robot enemy-turned-friend had been standing; only to find a light breeze and a lizard shaped hole in what had remained of the control room window.

With a roll of the eyes, he walked to the edge and looked through; out towards the battle scarred and damaged landscape that had once been a proud and bustling marketplace, no reduced to torn canvas and smashed wood, bathed in artificial red light.

He saw someone; someone very familiar, and a name grazed his lips.

“…Hazel…”

She was just standing there; looking up at him, no gun drawn, no blade in her hands. Mask upturned and just…staring.

It looked like she just wanted to see him; like she had no intention for him to actually join her.

What would have been the point anyway?

Why bother jumping down? Why bother talking, just to be disappointed?

Might as well stay up here; take a perch and watch the carnage unfold, there was nothing he could do about it.

Why worry?

Why care?