Shepherd's Haven Event: Devil's Night

[devils_shadow]

Who: Damon the doppelganger and OPEN TO ANY IN SHEPHERD'S HAVEN
What: Devil has an announcement to make in the form of arson and violence. Aforementioned player plot shenanigans.
Where: Shepherd's Haven
When: Forward dated to the night of October 30th, and probably into the morning of the 31st. Devil's night, in other words.
Status: Open with some closed-ish subthreads!
Warnings: Arson and violence?

No night had ever been so aptly named.

Shepherd's Haven wasn't anywhere near Michigan, but that didn't mean the festivities of Devil's Night couldn't be spread to far and wide locales. It was the perfect night, in fact, for the creature known as a demon to remind the sleepy little haven of precisely why it was unwise to prod the beast. Perhaps the one who called him there had forgotten, or perhaps he simply thought the devil had more bark than bite.

Oh, how wrong he was.

It began with fire. Several fires, to be precise. Small at first but fed with whatever accelerant Damon could find on hand. Fuel left unguarded, dry hay or straw. Did you know compost burns very well? It does, oh how it burns. And each fire set at different locations across the town, so quickly and so close to simultaneous one might almost think that they were set by several people at once.

Or one that could move very, very quickly.

The cherry on top was a door with a fading red "X" painted on it, ripped from its hinges and set ablaze, then left on the steps in front of the town hall.

[[OOC: Leaving this fairly open for anyone to react to and have their own threads/etc. of what's happening. Separate threads will go up for some more planned stages of the event, but if anyone wants to be unfortunate enough to run across Damon while he pursues his arsonist rampage through SH go ahead and put up a toplevel and just toss in the comment header that you want me.

Have fun dealing with those fires and rampaging demon, guys!]]

Comments

[numberedshepherd]

The situation was dire before, but now it is nothing short of an absolute nightmare. Lazarus is here running secondhand hopeless damage control on something that Damon perceived as an unforgivable insult, and he's just barely holding on as it is. For Misa to appear and sling unambiguous scraps and slurs in his direction only guarantees to make everything far worse. He'd taken comfort in thinking that he'd saved Misa, but now she's actively dooming both of them, and Damon must be having a field day with the spectacle.

For a second, he's as frozen as the sword, jaw dropping at her audacity. He's already grey, but he blanches further as Damon states his newest intentions. As the knife is knocked from her hand, Lazarus moves to push her out of the way; though he was doing a fine job of wearing a brave face before, the added variable of the tiny woman he's dating being thrown into the mix has him scrambling to keep her out of harm's way.

This is why he wanted to do this alone...

He freezes the ground at Damon's feet; it's cheap and will likely infuriate him further, but it might at least trip him up for a second and give them that much extra time.

"Misa, you have to get out of here...!"

[lovesickkiller]

"Kya-!" Misa yelps as the knife is knocked from her hand with enough force to leave her hand numb. She stares at Damon with a mixture of fear and defiance as she cradles one hand in the other. She didn't even see the attack, not that it would have mattered if she did. Misa has never been a fighter. What could she have possibly done to defend herself even if she had the chance?

"Hey!" she objects as Lazarus pushes her, immediately pushing back and generally resisting his attempts to get her out of harm's way. Him she at least stands some sort of chance against. "No! You want me to leave you alone to die here, that's your plan?! I'm not going anywhere without you!"

She has no power to protect him, but that does nothing to dull her determination not to let Lazarus die a martyr while she hides away. Too many people she loves have died for her to passively allow it to happen again. Even if she can do nothing to stop it, she can at least be present.

[devils_shadow]

Misa's mouth effectively cost Lazarus any chance he had in potentially swaying Damon. That chance was extremely slim and unlikely, mind you, but now it's impossible. However, the spectacle is hilarious. Where mentions of being "fake" and "a pile of feathers" might insult Ryuzaki, but Damon doesn't care. He knows what he is and who he is, he also feels that he's superior. So, there's that.

Ice encases his feet and up his shins, sticking him annoyingly to the ground. It won't last long, but they're already fleeing. Well, that won't do at all. Another surge of that red-black energy crackles along the sword, but this time he launches it after the two, a blade of pure energy shearing and tearing the ground in its wake.

It's not as powerful as it could be, he has to tone it back to avoid obliterating his own weapon, but against a couple of people made out of paper it really doesn't need to be full power.

You are both very stupid. Let him fix that for you.

[numberedshepherd]

The "chance" was always more about stalling than anything, the idea that the longer Lazarus could talk to Damon, the more damage to property and people he could curtail. But the grace period's ended as he seizes Misa by the arm and drags her away from the ice-bound monster. The teleporter is the idea he has, if he can shove her through maybe he can still salvage this...

He hears it coming before he feels it. Even if Damon's reigning back, the force of the wave is still enough to knock him off his feet, and even the thick layer of ice he tries to shield them with doesn't protect them entirely. He flings what he can at the impending force as swiftly as he can react, and then they're on the broken, torn ground, the earth turned as if for their graves as their breath comes in ragged gasps and their eyes are dazed as they try to make sense of what happened too fast for a mere human to process.

Lazarus plants his left leg under him to push himself up, reaching for Misa's hand so he can do the same for her without even thinking to look at how badly she's hurt. He starts forward again, but his right leg won't support him and brings him down again, where he stays, having no other choice. A cursory examination shows him a serious burn, with pieces of his black denim pants melted into the wound. It won't support weight, certainly not to run, and therefore, this is where he stays.

He can't look at Misa. He's afraid of what he'll see if he does, if she's charred and blackened and unrecognizable. He doesn't want it to be the last thing he sees. If she's not, though, and she can still run...

"Go! You have to go..." he begs, pulling desperately at her hand.

It's all I want for my birthday, now.

[lovesickkiller]

Misa doesn't feel the attack as it scorches her legs; all she is aware of is a sudden pressure as the ground rips up behind her and suddenly she is being thrown down by a magical force. It knocks the wind out of her, and at first all that registers is the pain shooting through her palms where she tried to catch herself. Gravel embedded in the skin, maybe a sprain. Mild wounds.

Lazarus is quicker to recover than she is, attempting to scramble up before she has completely registered what has happened. Self-preservation finally kicks in and she grabs his hand back, attempting to pull them both up. If Lazarus is too hurt to run she'll just have to—

Her legs don't respond, sending her toppling back to the ground the moment that she attempts to put any pressure on them. Misa glances back sharply, and her eyes go wide at the blackened wounds burned deep into bare calves.

A sense of body dysmorphia fills her as her vision goes fuzzy around the edges. That's... her? This must be happening to someone else, she feels no connection to the grisly sight before her even as she can see that those legs are indeed connected to her body.

Misa doesn't respond to Lazarus, she screams.

[brotimaeus]

The nauseating and all-too-recognisable smell of scorched flesh hits him a moment after he appears, as if from nowhere, on the tail end of a flash-step. Somewhere along the line he lost his shades, but it hardly seems to matter.

"Damon!" he snarls out over the sound of Misa's screaming, already scuffed and bruised from an earlier tussle with the doppelganger but now all the more determined to see him off in any way he can. "Why don't you try pickin' on someone who presents more of a challenge?"

Most of it, really, is him trying to give L and Misa a chance to run, or get away from here any way they can. He has to present a more interesting target than they do, and if he doesn't.. he can definitely make more of a nuisance of himself than this. For now he places himself between Damon and the two injured people on the ground, eyes narrowed on their attacker.

He's only sorry that he didn't get there sooner.

"You an' me, we got some unfinished business."

[devils_shadow]

There was something satisfying about watching the two would-be heroes go sprawling like a pair of knocked over toys. It would be even more satisfying to leave their broken and battered corpses on the street as a warning to anyone else. But roughing them up a little so that they can remember fear is an acceptable outcome as well.

He's charging another Drive when Richard appears on the scene, and while it was meant for the pitiful martyr and his screeching counterpart instead he launches it in Richard's direction. So many people eager to die tonight, what a joyous occasion!

"Oh, are you disappointed I left you alive the first time? Very well, I'll be sure to fix that."

But first this stupid ice needs to go. He starts to wrench against it, already weakening and cracking away from his feet.

[numberedshepherd]

It's simultaneously very horrifying and very logical that there's not any pain to speak of. The injured leg is there, of course, visible and sickening and singed, and that means it warrants alarm, but the shock of the injury and certain nerve damage makes it difficult to register beyond what's visible. Starting above Lazarus' ankle where his boots offered more or less adequate protection and extending a couple inches above his knee, one side of his right leg is in pretty rough shape.

Working to even out his quick, frantic, catching breaths, he finally looks at Misa when she screams. She's not covered, didn't even have the cursory protection of normal garments, and her bare legs largely took the brunt of the attack. His first instinct is to use the dropped stave, just a foot away and within easy reach, to encase them in soothing ice. If they were going to live through this, that would carry dangers and risks of complication: frostbite, of course, as well as intensifying hypothermia as the body loses heat faster through burned flesh.

But they're not going to live. That much, by now, seems abundantly clear, and instead of reaching for the stave, he wraps his arms around her, holding her tightly, offering his body as a paltry shield because it's all he has. A few seconds of pain, and then perhaps they'll meet again in the next life.

As the sound and charged air announce the beginning of the attack that will likely finish them off, though, a familiar voice causes Lazarus to lift his head and his gaze. "Richard..." he murmurs under his breath, maybe loudly enough for Misa to hear if she's stopped screaming. His eyes widen as he recognizes what this is: a chance, if nothing else, to actually get away, offered by someone far better equipped to face Damon and live.

"Misa, come on...!" he turns, shifting his weight experimentally. He doesn't have the strength of most men, but all the honest labor around Shepherd's Haven has improved the wasted physique of a former addict with hangups about food significantly. He does his best to position their bodies in a way that promises the most efficient distribution of their weights, and then he seizes the ice stave, using it to create a solid makeshift harness that can hold her in place against his back. It's not perfect, but it's the best he can do in a single desperate second.

Two deep breaths. Bracing on his good leg and leaning the rest of their combined weights on the stave, he manages to pull them upright. Even though he's shaking from adrenaline and shock and his injured leg is infuriatingly useless as it drags alongside the load-bearing stave, he makes clumsy but steady progress away from the battle with Misa in tow.