[EVENT POST] I FEEL STUPID, AND CONTAGIOUS.

[dishearten]

CHARACTERS: Open to all!
DATE: 3/11-3/12, ICly
WARNINGS: Zombie attacks? Violence? Shopping???
SUMMARY: Lockdown at the mall! Grab your CDs and your soft pretzel, it's about to get bad.

LET'S GO TO THE MALL LOCKDOWN Business has been rough for Woodhurst Shopping Center ever since riots and unrest about the Bristol Virus have shunned most to their homes. Perhaps ill-advisedly, in attempts to draw a few more customers back into the polished halls of the grandest shopping experience Woodhurst has to offer, a weekend of big sales, great bargains, and fun family activities was widely advertised in the Woodhurst Watch. There was even a scheduled public concert, performed by the University Choir. The turnout was smaller than hoped, yet the air was quite optimistic. Shoppers enjoyed the day of activities and fun, and the sense of security was bolstered by the increased security detail. There was even some members of the press on hand to document this return to normality in a troubled time. Everything was going well, until a scene broke out in the food court. Security tried to quietly remove members of the choir that suddenly seemed to snap, plowing into one of the food stands and starting to feed on raw meat. However, a good handful of them escaped instant confinement, and while many of the visitors fled the mall as soon as they could, soon Police Detail arrived and put the entire building on lockdown. Nobody in and nobody out until the situation was resolved. 18:00 TO 23:00 HOURS Anyone unlucky enough to be trapped in the mall is left to their own devices, with very little knowledge to go on. This includes many civilians, as well as a small number of Audentes agents. This also includes a small number of infected, more than just the university choir. There's a voice over the loudspeaker imploring people to hide in stores, barricade doors, and stay put until help arrives. The majority of the infected seem to linger in the Food Court especially. Bad news for anyone trapped and starting to get hungry as the hours pass by, without any obvious assistance from the outside. The members of ALASTAIR have a choice, help protect or just do their best to avoid the infected themselves. Characters can get into the Security Office for a camera feed on what is happening in the mall, and potentially use it as a base of operations to work from. 00:00 TO 02:00 HOURS It becomes apparent that the number of infected in the mall are somehow increasing, despite the lockdown. It means that those that have squirreled away into stores and outlets are growing less and less safe as infected numbers multiply and they begin attacking barricades. To make matters worse, anyone that hasn't found cover will find the infected extremely reactive, and willing to give chase around the mall. The security feed indicates the infected seem to be coming in from the Parking Garage. Investigation will reveal a sewer outlet on the bottom floor. Characters will have to decide whether they should utilize the tunnel as a means of escape, or if sealing it off would ultimately leave the remaining hours of lockdown a little less violent. 04:00 TO 09:00 HOURS It's been an agonizing 12 hours, and with surprisingly little aide from the outside. With time to make preparations and put plans in place, now it's time to end this lockdown once and for all. Audentes is tasked with neutralizing the remaining infected as well as escorting any remaining civilians to safety, by any means they decide on. It is up to Audentes to decide how the end of this event plays out, be it removing or otherwise drawing away the lingering infected, or putting them down once and for all. There are plenty of civilians that have been bitten and attacked, leaving the question in the air as to whether they are infected as well. What should be done with those that could be bringing the virus back to their families? The team is going to have to decide on the answer to that.

Comments

[unholey]

[Giorno disappears. It's only for a moment. But for that horrifying, too-long moment, he is simply gone. Spirited away to a place in his head that Fugo can't reach no matter how far he strains to reach. He can't-- breathe. Bad air is caught in his throat and Giorno's fingers are so stiff and still in his hands. He's gone and all Fugo can do is hold onto him and wait for him to come back]

[One. Two. Three. Four. Five.]

[It takes so long. But Giorno does come back to them, with a smile that looks to Fugo like an open wound. He reacts. He lets go of Fugo with one hand and moves to push Jin's hand away half a heartbeat behind when Jin pulls away, the tightly wound tension in his shoulders going nowhere. He is still so afraid. Fugo doesn't think: he simply reacts, moving and shifting his grip so he can keep a hold of the one hand Giorno has left in his care between both of his.

Even if he could say it in front of Jin-- which he knows, for both of their sakes, that he can't-- he desperately wants to reaffirm the promise he made to Giorno on the bright, cold morning of October 24th and this is the only way he can think to do it.]

[He wants to be home. Home as in Napoli, in the room he barely had the chance to get used to thinking of his own. But he'd settle for the apartment with Sigma and Ramir, even though the couch has been torn apart and all the windows are closed up and boarded off and being in there for too long makes him feel like he's going to be sick.

But this is where they are right now: a closed down department store in a mall that is in the process of being locked in-- locked down, he viciously corrects himself-- with Kung Jin. Who ... needs to know. About Purple Haze. He shakes his head at Giorno's offer, mouth pressed into a thin, unhappy line.]

No. I can do it. No one should have to do it but me.

[He doesn't move to push his hair back into place, even though it's fallen in his eyes. He falls quiet. He doesn't even know where to begin, because he can't recall exactly how much Jin knows about Gold Experience and what he can do. But, eventually, he finds a way to start that is simple, direct, and at the heart of everything.]

I'm poison. [Conium maculatum, colloquially known as poison hemlock. In ancient Greece, it was given to prisoners condemned to death. Once he starts there, the rest comes easily.] I can create an airborne flesh-eating virus. The average time of death post-infection for adult males is thirty seconds. It's weak to any form of light.

My range is five meters. I can't control who gets infected. It reacts to my emotions. First anger. Then fear.

[digiorno]

[No one should have to, Fugo says, and Giorno flinches. Even with his hand caught up in Fugo's, he feels struck. And then again, something hits him in the gut: I'm poison.]

[He hates it. It's just too real, too familiar. It's ugly, and every time he sees hemlock on the network it makes him want to scream or be sick or disappear.]

[He doesn't do either. His mouth forms a tight, taut line, trying to hold back not anger but hurt. He isn't angry with Fugo, he just--doesn't understand why he jabs at himself like this. Or maybe he does understand, and that makes it worse.]

Don't say it like that, [he hisses, his lips barely parting. The look in his eyes isn't one of a man giving an order, though; he's a boy pleading, please don't, Fugo, please don't, not anymore.] You know that's--not accurate.

[Not precisely. An exaggeration. Albeit perhaps an emotionally apt one, from Fugo's perspective.]

[Giorno's jaw tightens. He looks at Jin, bright and present in himself again as he begs in a different direction.]

It's his Stand. It's an ability his Stand has. It's something that needs to be factored into our tactics going forward. You needed to know--so you understand what we have to do to get out of here.

[pummelling]

[He's poison?

He'd been expecting something dangerous, but nothing to the extent of Purple Haze. Thirty seconds to die... It's hardly enough time to register that one is dying at all, if one doesn't account for the sensation of your flesh being eaten away.

Jin won't ask just how much Purple Haze destroys. How much its touch obliterates, whether the body is simply left in pieces or destroyed completely by the end of those thirty grueling seconds. But he wonders in the absence of detail. That, alone, is enough.]

Your ability makes it. That's all. [echoes Jin decisively, not that he'd been asked. (He doesn't know how innate those abilities are to Pannacotta Fugo, and yet-- he knows that a boy who carries too many books and grabs the hem of his coat, anxious, in a crisis cannot be simple poison. No one should be. Not based on what they couldn't change; what they'd always had within them.)

Everything makes a little more sense now, set in the frame of Purple Haze. Anger. Then fear.
Jin cranes his neck over his shoulder at the closed door behind them, the muffled voices and footsteps of the other mallgoers.

If they're all going to stay safe, it's the first priority, isn't it? Keeping Fugo safe, and level-headed. He can't simply fight their way out the door without risking undue stress to the boy...

Back to what he was doing before, he supposes.]

Just tell me what you need from me. I'll do whatever I can.

[For their sake, and that of the others in this space.]

You said it was weak to light, didn't you? Would it help if we stuck to bright areas, in case... you know...

[unholey]

[Don't. That's all Giorno needs to say to make Fugo catch himself and just-- stop. He doesn't argue with Giorno or Jin, even though it's almost hilarious how wrong he is. Jin doesn't know anything about Stands; where they're come from, how they're born, exactly how connected they are to the people who wield them.

He doesn't say anything else about Purple Haze. His expression doesn't change at all; he doesn't take comfort in what Jin says, or is particularly hurt by the implication that he can't control his own Stand. Because that's just the truth.]

I can't go out there until the crowd is gone. [That's what he needs the most, more than anything. Because he can't quite meet Giorno's eyes anymore, Fugo looks down at their joined hands and wishes that he didn't have to say anything about Purple Haze.] We can wait it out in a brighter area of the store.

[digiorno]

[Giorno wants to cry. Giorno wants to fall to his knees at Jin's feet, to press his face against Jin's stupid huge legs and sob until he's got no water left in him; he wants to pummel Jin with his fists because he's grateful, and because Jin said something so unbearably stupid, which he knows Fugo has already dismissed because of its phrasing.]

[He just wants someone to hold him. God, just for a minute. He doesn't want to have to be strong right now, but he has to, because Fugo is fracturing and falling away in pieces, and Jin has no idea how to handle this situation. No idea how to handle Fugo.]

[He has to fix it. He always has to fucking fix it.]

[With a long, measured exhale, he collects himself. It's okay, he tells himself, lying.]

That would be the best idea, yes.

[His voice sounds so strong. What an incredible liar I am, he thinks.]

The more open and the brighter a space is, the safer we'll be. Fortunately, this mall has skylights. [Ha ha.]