damned_institute | Nightshift 38: Recreational Field

[from here] (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/546382.html?thread=44898638#t44898638)

And behind Door #1 was... a big open grassy area with walls. Lame.

Junpei failed to see the girl hiding back in the shadows or he might have found Door #1 to be much more interesting. Instead, he walked out into the field and looked around, scratching the top of his head. There had to be something interes-- Hey, there was a building over there!

The wind blew, reminding him once again the tragedy that was his missing hat, as he ambled toward the building on the far side of the field. He never liked that poetry crap he had to do sometimes in school, but his missing hat was motivating him to perhaps construct a sonnet about it. At least, he thought a sonnet was what he meant.

There once was a man from someplace really cool.
He once had a totally rockin' hat of blue.
One night he fell asleep and started to drool.
Awakening to find without his hat, he didn't rule.

Nah. That sucked. So much for being a poet.

It had strayed briefly from the rest of the pack, but even as it moved to rejoin them the dog halted, lifting its muzzle to sniff briefly at the air. The breeze ruffling the human's hair brought his scent directly to the canine, who slunk out from behind the shed with its lips curling back in a silent growl.

The dog's fur had perhaps once been white, though what of it remained was matted and filthy, stained with blood and crusted with substances likely best not to contemplate. Most of its heritage was decidedly mixed and leaned toward lupine ancestry, but it still sported a peculiarly up-curled tail, though it was tattered and rotted as the rest of its body.

With eyes glowing red it paused to stare at Junpei for a brief fraction of a second, then abruptly snarled and lunged, froth spraying from its snapping jaws.

[tiassa]

When the dog first appeared from around the shed, Junpei caught a glimpse of it's silhouette. The familiar curl of the tail and general build made Junpei wave and call out to it.

"'Sup, Koro-chan? You get stuck in my weird-ass dre-- Yiiiieeeeaahh! What the hell?!?"

Seriously, just because he'd thought earlier about his subconscious throwing Koro-chan on mutated steroids at him wasn't an invitation for it to do exactly that. Junpei shrieked when the dog lunged at him and dove to the side.

"Woah, woah, woah! Stop it, Koro-chan! Bad dog! Bad dog!" He exclaimed, rolling to his feet. "Come on, it's me, Junpei! Sit!"

Clearly the undead dog-like creature either did not know or did not care to respond to any verbal commands (it obviously didn't understand the phrase "play dead," for one). Junpei's dive took him out of the way barely in time to avoid the dog's lunge, though its jaws snapped close enough to him to feel its breath.

It landed nimbly enough and turned, moving without pause to resume its attack on the noisy human, claws digging into the grassy soil as it surged toward Junpei again. There was no reaction at all to what he was saying, only mindless hunger driving it forward with a snarling bark.

Shit! Unholy Koro-chan from Hell wasn't listening to him. What was he going to do now?

"Damnit, Koro-chan! If you don't stop it this instant, it's my dream after all, I'm going to throw out all that awesome food Shinjiro-senpai had bought for you and make you eat Yuka-tan's cooking for the rest of the year!"

He jumped back from the next attack. He thought he was in the clear when his foot slipped on some mud or maybe the grass was wet. "Shit!" Junpei's feet went out from underneath him and he fell back on his butt.

He was so screwed.

The threat, though dire indeed, had no impact whatsoever on this creature. The only food it was interested in was warm and breathing and, currently, slipping and falling to the ground.

Now that the human was closer to its level this would be much easier. The dog lunged toward Junpei, jaws agape and slavering as it went for the throat.

"Ohshitohshitohshitohshit!"

Jumpei put his hands up and caught the dog on its chest, keeping the jaws barely from reaching his throat. Its fur was slimy and something oozed between his fingers. Eww... He had evil Koro-chan all over his hands. This was like something from a bad zombie flicks and he wasn't thrilled about being the hapless dork that gets eaten by man's best friend.

No, this wasn't Koro-chan. Even if his mind had created some kind of mutated, wanted to eat his face, version of the dog that lived with them, the threat about Yukari's cooking would have stopped him. Junpei wasn't sure what the hell he was dealing with, but he tried to get a foot underneath the beast so he could kick it away, flip it over or something to get the thing off him.

"Bad dog! No flesh for you!"

The dog snapped and snarled as it struggled to reach the living flesh that was so temptingly close, flecks of foam and saliva dripping from its jaws and joining the fluids oozing from its rotting flesh. Its claws scrabbled for purchase as it tried to struggle free from the hands holding it temporarily at bay, keeping it from sinking its fangs into Junpei's temptingly bare throat.

It was distracted enough by its hunger that it didn't notice a foot being planted on its underside, or at least realize the implications thereof, until it was abruptly kicked. The dog gave a sharp whine of pain as it was shoved to one side, for an instant both thrown off balance and distracted by this new injury.

Aw, man, that smell was never going to come out of his... smiley face shirt. Uh huh. Smiley face. He was not telling anyone ever that his subconscious put him in a freaking smiley face t-shirt.

As soon as the zombie dog was off him, Junpei rolled over and scrambled away, crawling across the grass a few feet before he found his feet. Yeah, he could have given the thing a good kick to the head but... it looked like Koro-chan. An Evil Koro-chan, yes, but he couldn't just kick something that resembled the dog that kept him company that one night at the shrine.

Screw this. He was out of there! Junpei started running as fast as he could toward the building the dog had come out from behind, praying there weren't anymore hiding behind it, lying in wait for him to run right into their fangs.

The dog seemed to be slightly favoring one of its back legs as it scrambled to its feet again, but that didn't seem to deter it at all. It did take a second to re-orient itself, sniffing at the air before it turned its glowing red gaze toward the fleeing Junpei, before it charged off in pursuit again.

With Junpei's head start, though, combined with the way the dog's pace was slowed just a little, it seemed likely he'd be able to reach the building first.

It was chasing after him. IT WAS CHASING AFTER HIM!

Junpei ran, huffing and puffing as he got closer to the building, which looked more like a storage shed. He didn't care what it was; it wasn't going to have any evil zombie dogs in it. Well, it better not. Stupid nightmare with the ick and the creepy and the foreboding and the monsters running around outside the Dark Hour.

A glance behind him showed the zombie dog closer than he thought it'd been. He picked up his pace a little, unable to help the shriek that accompanied it.

"AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!"

When he got close enough, Junpei tucked the flashlight under his arm and lowered his shoulder, ramming it into the door with the full force of his charge. There was a creaking noise and a moment of resistance before the door burst open, Junpei losing his footing as his momentum carried him into the shed.

[to here] (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/553029.html)

This was definitely easier to do in real shoes than it was in slippers. Phoenix spared a glance from the corner of his eye, just enough to see that the dog was still chasing the other guy. It looked like he had enough of a lead that he'd get to the shed in time, though. Phoenix felt a little relief sink into him at that, especially as he neared the entrance to the next hall. Good. Neither one of them would be getting mauled by a monster dog.

He skidded to a stop in front of the door and, barely looking, fished his hand for the handle. It just missed, though, and he glanced in harried confusion at the door just in time to see a blur of painted white rushing at his face.

. . . not again.

He stumbled back, hand coming up to his head (practically the same spot, why did it have to be the same spot?!), hissing through his teeth.

Edited 2009-01-25 23:38 (UTC)

As Junpei burst through the door the dog seemed to recognize that his prey was about to reach shelter, for it put on an extra burst of speed and lunged forward - only to be forced to attempt a hasty stop as the door was slammed closed again from the inside.

It didn't quite manage to halt completely in time and struck the door, staggering back a step before turning a baleful glare at the barrier between it and Junpei. With a bark and a hungry growl it finally turned away, then paused, ears pricking, before it turned away and loped off into the darkness again.

[From here! (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/546382.html?thread=44968526#t44968526)]

Question. What sort of lawyer would be foolish enough to get hit in the face by a door?

Answer? Ha! As if that wasn't obvious. Godot might have said it was as obvious as a door hurtling towards a man's face, except that the lawyer in question hadn't seen it coming, had he? But what did he else could he expect of the one and (thankfully) only Phoenix Trite? Wearing the same dumbfounded look, and the same unfashionable suit. Even the smiley faces were more in style.

"Ha! Have you made a habit of running into doors, Trite?" Maybe he was trying to knock some sense into his own head. Godot would call it an admirable effort, if utterly futile. "Somehow I'm not surprised to run into you of all people in this little maze. Guess I really did walk right into a trap."

Godot was as smug as ever, despite having no idea what was going on. Perhaps part of it rested in the belief that whatever he didn't know, Trite was bound to have figured out even less. Yet he'd just been wanting a credible witness. For all his flaws, even Godot had to admit that Trite was nothing if not well-intentioned.

And just look where they'd ended up.

"I can tell you for certain that this place isn't Hell, though it's trying its damnedest to be." Godot narrowed his gaze at the lawyer in front of him. He hated relying on Phoenix Wright, even this much. The words that left his mouth were mocking, but left an unpalatable bitterness on his tongue all the same. "Should I bother asking if you have a clue as to what's really going on here?"

[From here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/546812.html?view=44971260#t44971260)]

Argilla burst out onto the recreation field and practically ran out into the centre of it, right out in full view of anything which might want to attack. That was pretty much the point. She raised her hair and sniffed at the air hungrily. Something had been here recently, a dog, she thought, although she didn't see it now. She just had to hope that it would come back.

Everything came at once -- the voice, the taunt, the ember glow of red. Phoenix supposed he shouldn't have expected anything else. A good percentage of the time, Godot was less an individual than he was an experience. He straightened, wincing only partially because of the dull throbbing that had returned to his head. Trite. That wasn't a name he'd ever expected to hear again, not since-

His train of thought stopped at the sight of the dim light from the glasses shining off the edges of neat black sutures, thread pulling thin the red line of a cut running from the edge of one high cheekbone to the other, and it only took the second between when Phoenix saw the wound and realized what it symbolized for his gut to sink. Whenever he was from, specifically, it was sometime during the Iris case. This wasn't Diego Armando, with his unflinching honesty and sober self-recrimination, a man Phoenix knew he'd never be able to defend and still wanted to more than he ever would have imagined. This was Godot the prosecutor, with all of the smirking, mocking, condescending animosity that name implied. It was Godot at his most righteous, his most decisive, right at the peak of the event that outlined every reason he had to hate and wish suffering upon Phoenix. And, without a handful of hours a courtroom that would never even exist in this world, there was little chance that his convictions would ever change.

A sensible man would have probably given up then. But when people were asked to give three adjectives describing Phoenix Wright, 'sensible' usually wasn't one of them.

"A clue?" He recovered his tongue at the question, expression of subtly dreading recognition giving way to direct answer. "Yes. Not many answers, yet, but definitely clues." He looked over his shoulder, finding that the dog seemed to have wandered off. He didn't feel like waiting around to see if it planned on coming back, though. "Can we go back inside, first?"

The dog that had been there hadn't gone very far, and the sight of another standing alone in the middle of the field was far too tempting for it to pass up.

Its lighter fur gave it away quickly as it charged out of the shadows into the field toward Argilla - but just behind it came one of its packmates, an inky black wolflike creature who seemed no less fierce or hungry.

[tiassa]

The demon smiled when it heard the sound of approaching feet and the stench of the dogs rotting flesh. She turned to face them, moving into a crouch, her expression every bit as intent and hungry as the dogs. Every line of her body screamed predator, her lips drawn back over her teeth in a snarl.

Before the dogs could get any closer, Argilla was running, charging towards them with the pickaxe pulled back ready for a swing containing all of her weight. She wasn't prey to wait around to be hunted.

The two dogs weren't the most intelligent of creatures, existing mostly by the hunger that propelled their rotting flesh into motion, and so the fact that their prey was approaching them only meant that they wouldn't have to go quite so far to reach it.

One of them was unlucky enough to have made a leap directly at the woman just as Argilla swung her pickaxe, however, and the blade drove directly into the black dog's midsection just behind its foreleg. Its snarl turned into a yelp of sudden pain, and it flew sideways to land heavily on the grass.

Its packmate shied to one side, startled by the sudden attack, and scrambled to circle around behind the woman, away from the weapon it now realized she held.

A hiss of pleasure escaped Argilla's lips when the pickaxe struck, punching it's way through flesh and bone and sending it flying over to one side. She kept her eyes on the other dog as she moved towards it's fallen companion, watching it with hungry yellow eyes. She stood over the injured dog and then, without remorse, swung the pickaxe down towards it's head, intending to smash it's skull and kill it as quickly and efficiently as possible. She didn't have time for theatrics and fancy work.

Though the wounded dog struggled to rise to its feet again, standing was difficult when a good-sized section of its middle had just been ripped open. It snarled angrily at Argilla despite the pain, though, even as its paws scrabbled vainly against the grass, the sound only cut off when the pickaxe descended and drove what remnant of life remained in its body.

The other dog lunged at the same time as the strike, judging its prey to be distracted enough then. Its wounded hind leg might have taken some of the force out of its leap, but its teeth were still sharp and jaws still powerful as it went for the woman's neck.

The sudden cessation of the sound make a cold smile curl across Argilla's lips and it was an effort not to lean down there and then and begin to feed on it while it was still warm. But there was another dog waiting and she'd never been one to ignore threats in favour of mindless devouring.

It leapt for her and she hissed in irritation, raising an arm to ward it away from her throat. And if the arm that was raised was longer than it should have been, and blood red, and too thin to get a good mouthful out of, then what of it?

An icy mist began to spread across the recreation field to surround the two men in the doorway, dropping visibility to just a couple of feet.

Hopefully that would be enough to deter them from venturing further into the field where she stood.

The dog gave a sharp yelp as it wrenched itself out of the way, realizing that something was certainly not...right. It landed somewhat awkwardly on the ground again, its leg giving way for half a second under the impact before it straightened again.

It scrambled back slightly, half-crouched as it growled at the woman, saliva dribbling in long strings from its bared teeth. Hunger throbbed within at every heartbeat, pushing it forward despite the danger posed by this woman; all it could think of was the blood it could smell coursing under her skin.

And so after that moment's hesitation it charged again, more obviously favoring its hind leg as it made one last attack, this time driving toward a leg. It intended to knock her down, drag her to the ground where it could deal with her more easily.

Argilla watched dispassionately as the dog twisted and fell, recognising the way that it avoiding using one leg, the way that it yelped as it fell. A weakness that she could exploit if she needed to. Good to know.

In the moment that it took the dog to move, Argilla lashed out, the whip arm of Prithvi extending lightning fat to try and wrap around the dog's throat, the sharp spikes on her hand giving it a deadly grip so that she could draw it in or choke the life out of it.

Nightshift 38: Recreational Field

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