damned_institute | Nightshift 49: Lake- Surrounding Area

Sweet lightning!

Even before she regained her bearings, Agatha was well aware that something had gone horribly wrong; a little wetness could be attributed to the rain, but not this. It was just fortunate she'd slipped the shirt-bag over her arm to allow for the knife in one hand and the flashlight in the other, or she'd probably have lost the toolbox. As it was, she dropped both of those in shock, managing to retrieve the knife because it sank so slowly, but losing the light almost immediately. Just as well, really; the water seemed to put it out before long.

It was clumsy, with the box-in-a-bag over her arm, but Zeetha had insisted on her learning and so Agatha was at least able to keep her head above water. While shouting.

"Get wound, you wretched building! There's not-!" -at this point her mouth filled with a foul, salty liquid which she spent some time spitting out before continuing- "not even a door out here! Start making some god-damned SENSE!"

Recluse made an angry, animalistic snarl, glaring up at where the door had been. This humiliation was absolutely unacceptable.

"Grab on to me unless you want to be lost out here," he just managed to not bellow angrily at the girl, waiting for Agatha to do as he indicated and then striking off for the nearest shore, swimming as fast as the weight he was carrying would allow, breaths interspersed with more inarticulate growls. Gods damn it all he was going to kill something for this.

It wasn't often that someone disrupted the peace of the mountain lake, and so the splashing and flailing and shouting shortly drew the attention of the residents thereof. One of them, a little more daring than the rest, swam close up to them, her silvery tail flashing as the mermaid reached out with a curious hand to touch the larger of the pair as he swam through the water.

[tiassa]

Agatha briefly considered insisting on making for shore under her own power, and she might have done so if not for one little detail, which was that she could not see a thing except in the brief lightning flashes.

The need for some sense of control led her to pay intense attention to everything she could see in those moments, though in her first glimpse of the tail she wasn't quite sure what she was seeing.

Recluse's head whipped around to focus on the thing that touched him, glowing red eyes picking out the thing in the water. Blast. He remembered these things from weeks ago, when one of them had gone after Riddick. He kept swimming, not slowing down. He was damn well not going to fight these things in their own element, if he had to at all.

"If they start singing, don't listen," he warned Agatha. "And if I stop, get me moving again any way that you can." Drowning was not high on his list of things to do this evening.

Where were they going in such a hurry? Emboldened by the lack of reaction to her presence, the mermaid moved into their path with a flick of her tail and lifted her head out of the water. She did keep swimming however, so she was not blocking their progress at the moment even if it would be a little slower than before.

Unlike her undine cousins, the mermaid looked much like any human woman in her upper half, dark-haired and pale-skinned. She showed no hostility or inclination toward violence, and simply watched the two humans with open curiosity.

Nothing looks in any way ordinary or harmless when illuminated only by lightning, viewed by someone very cold and displaced from anywhere they should rationally be and relying more than they'd prefer to on a frightening guide who seemed, himself, to be afraid of whatever lived here.

Shifting her knife to the hand that wasn't clinging to Recluse's clothing, Agatha extended the little blade. Just in case. "Got it," she said, more steadily than she really felt.

Recluse kept his eyes trained on the thing, wary and ready to grab for one of his knives if the thing made an aggressive move. He didn't trust anything, and he certainly wouldn't trust anything here, no matter how attractive it might currently appear.

"And don't let go, it will just get you lost." The lightning made him wince with every flash, the light itself painful to him, blinding and almost disorienting, but still, he could see their intended destination far better than Agatha.

He did his best to calm his expression and voice, despite his distrust of the thing currently swimming in front of them. And he'd had decades more time than most to become a very convincing actor. "Well?" He couldn't help but ask the thing. "What do you intend to do?"

The mermaid's dark eyes flicked from one to the other, then paused and narrowed upon the woman's hand -- the one holding the weapon. So they were hostile after all, then? She hesitated a moment longer, glancing away only briefly as the man spoke, then abruptly dove back under the water, the end of her tail flicking a spray of water at the two humans.

For a minute perhaps it seemed that she might have gone and left them alone, but then her hand grabbed at Agatha's ankle, trying to pull her down.

Agatha's limited swearing vocabulary proved thoroughly unequal to the task of addressing this new problem. Incoherent sounds had to rise to the occasion- not as a scream, but as a snarl. Agatha did not have time for this, and she sought to convey this impatience to her assailant by drawing up the leg that had been grabbed and kicking hard, if blindly, with her other foot.

Wonderful. Something had set them off. Recluse struggled to keep his head above water, swimming harder now that he had the very immediate impetus of hostile mermaids.

If it had not been impossible, he would think this place was going to be the death of him. The very embarrassing death of him. How much bloody further to the shore can it be?!

It wasn't hard to see the kick coming, and the mermaid released Agatha's ankle just in time to avoid it. Water was her element after all, and she could move with near-effortless ease within it. There was only so much of it between them and the shore, though, and she wasn't terribly interested in letting hostile humans wander free to terrorize the beasts who lived there.

She flipped over deftly, moving to wrap her tail around both of the woman's legs at once. The man hadn't offered any overt threat, so she ignored him for the moment, focusing only on Agatha.

If the mermaid wanted humans not to be hostile, it was going about this the wrong way. Even before Agatha had learned to fight properly, she'd never been much of one for backing down in the face of an assailant. She fought back with whatever she had- ideally, a labful of devices, but just as determinedly with a wrench or a coffeepot. Or, in this case, with the boxcutter in her free hand.

And she didn't need to see to find it now, not with it wrapped around her, she could just bring down the little blade right there.

Recluse struggled to keep his head above water as Agatha was grabbed by the mermaid, the extra weight he was trying to drag making swimming difficult. He was tiring, but he was not going to act like an idiot and fight the damned thing in its natural environment, no matter how much he'd love to kill the thing and taste its blood in the water.

The boxcutter hardly seemed to make any impact on the tough scales on the mermaid's tail, and in fact, the attack only made the mermaid pull all the harder. The shore was getting closer and the water more shallow, and she was determined not to let her captive reach it.

It was difficult to say in the driving rain, but it appeared that several more of the mermaid's companions were surfacing farther out in the water, watching the proceedings with some interest.

Agatha wasn't exactly used to working on things she couldn't see, but she did know how to visualize them, making plans in the absence of all the parts, or sometimes any at all. Her knuckles scraped across the scales after the blade glanced off, making it obvious why that first blow had failed. The hand that had touched her first hadn't been scaled. There was somewhere on this thing that she could hurt, and even a shallow cut might make it back off.

Her eyes had been closed for a while now, since she was getting dunked with each of Recluse's downstrokes and this lakewater stung the eyes. If the tail was wrapped around her, it wasn't being used to swim. The arms were. That end of the body had some bare skin. So, said her logic, in what sounded a little like Zeetha's voice, strike further in the direction of the tug, as far as your arm will reach.

Recluse grabbed onto Agatha's other arm as he started to feel the harder tug, face locked into a furious snarl with the effort of trying to keep moving forward, having to just concentrate on each breath, each stroke. Something Agatha had done had set the thing off, not him. If he had, they'd still be out in deeper water, getting drowned by this thing.

There was indeed somewhere that could be hurt, but it certainly didn't make the mermaid back off. The box cutter's blade again glanced across tough scales before catching in softer flesh, but as soon as it did the tail's grip squeezed tighter, bruisingly tight. And now made even more angry, the mermaid snapped a hand up to grab the wrist of the hand that held the blade.

Ow. Ow. Ow.

Okay, now it was hard to move anything. At least her face seemed to be spending a little more time above the surface than below; maybe her attacker was running low on limbs with which to grip and swim at the same time?

The shore was close, and that mermaid was only being a hinderence. He turned his head with his next stroke to see it, lashing out with a foot. The water would weaken the blow, but whenever he hit, he hit hard. If he could just get the thing off, then they could get to the shore.

The mermaid's fingers dug into Agatha's wrist, seeking to force the woman to let go of the blade she held. In the midst of her efforts, though, she noticed the man attempting to join in the struggle; she quickly twisted about, yanking on the woman's arm to pull it in front of her. Hopefully the man could then kick his companion and accomplish what the mermaid wanted.

Fine control, however, would prove to be difficult for the mermaid; after months as Zeetha's Zumil, Agatha was stronger than she looked and well aware that an enemy trying to move bits of you around was never a good thing for you.

Her knife hand was really starting to hurt, almost as much from her desperate deathgrip as from the mermaid's efforts- fortunately the blade didn't offer that much in the way of water resistance, or she might have lost it as she pulled with as much force as she could muster away from where this being wanted her to go.

"Let go, you blasted fish!" she sputtered; a little water splashed into her mouth, but nothing like as much as before, and certainly not enough to make her feel she was drowning.

Recluse lashed out again with a foot, still swimming. If the water could just get shallow enough for him to stand, then he could drag Agatha and the mermaid to a place where he could simply gut the thing with a knife. And oh, how he wanted to by now. Nothing caused him this much trouble and got away unscathed.

Time and distance were both running out, and the mermaid's efforts were becoming even more frantic than before. She could have dragged the woman off to drown, or attacked the man with him, but instead she remained fixated on that weapon. The woman simply couldn't be allowed to keep it.

Her tail finally slid free of Agatha's legs as the mermaid made one last effort, lunging forward with mouth wide to try to sink her teeth into the woman's arm.

The sudden release filled Agatha with elation, but it would have been better if it had been complete. She'd still have worried, of course, with the fish-thing still out there who knew where, but with the freedom of movement she'd certainly be more able to deal with it or, better yet, help get to shore. Having to cling to Recluse's outfit just to not drown was kind of embarrassing.

She still couldn't see, but something in the movement of the water hinted- the way the movement of the air hints that something is looming over you- that something rather bigger than a hand was coming at that arm. Her instinct was to try to withdraw... so she didn't, but lashed out in its direction instead, turning her hand with as much range of motion as her assailant's grip allowed and hoping desperately to stick something that would make it let go.

It was finally shallow enough for him to stand, setting his feet down on the bottom and dragging Agatha further, enough so that his upper torso was finally out of the water, the weight of his weapons helping him keep his feet planted securely.

He turned just in time to see the mermaid withdraw to strike and reacted solely on instinct, throwing a crushingly strong right hook to the thing's jaw. He only didn't have a knife in his hand by virtue of having no time to take it from his belt. Still, this was often how he preferred a fight. No weapons beyond whatever his body had given him.

The mermaid still refused to release Agatha's wrist, even if the woman's hasty movement jolted her enough that her teeth closed on empty water. She shifted her hold, scrabbling at the boxcutter Agatha was holding, trying to pull it out of her hand, and was so focused on it that she just barely noticed the incoming attack in time to turn away. The man's blow was still sufficient to force the creature to let go completely, however, and send her back through the water with a silent cry.

But all around them the shallow water flashed with silver tails, as all the mermaids who had up until been simply watching surrounded the pair. One by one they surfaced, eyes fixed on the invaders with distinctly unfriendly expressions, and a few of them bared sharp teeth in an angry hiss.

Agatha still held on like grim death, determined not to lose the closest thing to a real weapon she had, until she was finally released. Finally. She could have sobbed with relief as they came to rest, except that she knew she still couldn't afford to stop. She could let go of her guide's clothing and find that her feet reached the bottom, and that sense of control was amazing.

But, though she dimly perceived the shoreline, it was still out of reach, with those menacing figures splashing around between it and them. She raised the knife one more time.

"I don't want to hurt you-" she gasped, "-but we are leaving. You don't-- want to make trouble for us."

[All actions related to Agatha pre-approved by the mun!]

Recluse didn't need to turn to know that the blasted things were surrounding them, he could hear them well enough. This could still be more dangerous than they could afford, and slow them down far more than he could allow. Either they would have to make a push through the things, or...

Wait. The thing had only attacked Agatha, and only after a certain point. He hadn't seen what had caused the change in behavior, but it specifically had gone after her weapon arm... "Agatha. Drop the knife," he said urgently, trying to be careful with his wording in case these things actually understood what was being said. "It's what set off the first one. If it doesn't work, then I have something you can use on my belt. I can compensate you later."

For a moment, he was wondering whether he'd just have to knock the thing out of her hand, but she complied, grumbling as she did so. He held his own empty hands out to show that he was currently unarmed. "Will you let us pass now?" If not, he was still ready to move, and move quickly.

The tension in the surrounding mermaids vanished almost immediately once the knife dropped beneath the surface of the water, and the display of open hands seemed to be enough to mollify them. One by one they began to disappear beneath the surface of the rainswept lake, leaving the path to the shore completely clear.

[From here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/909048.html?thread=69817080#t69817080).]

"So, tell me, do you believe in—" ventured Howl, but his words began to falter as he felt the ground beneath go liquid, and the atmosphere chill all around him. He only had a fraction of a second to register the new kind of darkness and the shapes of trees against a cloudy black sky, before floor rippled and was unable to support his weight. For there was no floor at all anymore, and only a lake.

And then he was falling, but even that was over far too quickly, replaced by icy water rapidly embracing him, even as he fought the inevitable. He heard the din of the storm and the rain all around him, but only until gravity forced him beneath the surface, and then not a single noise reached him. The cold was bitter, and before he could stop himself he had gasped, welcoming in foul water to placed it was not supposed to be. Effortlessly, it penetrated his suit and all he knew was a powerful need to escape, to breathe, to force the water from his lungs. He kicked his long limbs in a way that was awkward with cold, but he had not gone far underneath. One, two pushes and the noise of angry rain returned to him.

He gasped and coughed for several seconds that seemed too long. Taking in breath hurt, and seemed to be too much of a task to balance alongside staying afloat. His long, blond hair was plastered to his head, strings of it over his eyes and mouth, but he soon forgot about it and remembered the girl he had been accompanying. Rita! Fear icy enough to rival the water rushed into the space where his heart ought to have been.

"Rita!" he croaked, although he could barely even hear himself. He whipped his head, searching for any sign of her, cursing himself for having followed her at all. With him, she was as good as dead, for all the help he was. "Rita!"

Edited 2010-06-02 04:44 (UTC)

Having decided on which route she'd try next, Rita stuffed the maps back in her pocket. They'd backtrack a little, and then they could head north. It wouldn't take too long.

But then the ground disappeared.

When she suddenly felt herself falling, Rita uttered a gasp. Involuntary as it was, she quickly regretted it, as the next thing she knew, she had sucked in a mouthful of water. The rest of her body stung from the coldness she suddenly found herself surrounded by.

She couldn't breathe. Alarm bells were ringing inside her head, and Rita's body reacted, her limps flailing and shoving against the water. It felt like an eternity before her head broke through the water's surface, and she immediately began coughing and sputtering, trying to regain her breath.

Somewhere, over the sounds of the rain pounding on the surface and her own coughing, she heard her name being called.

"Here!" she called back, but she barely got the word out before she started coughing again. Once she felt that her airway was clear, the girl took a few gasping breaths before shouting again. "I'm over here!"

Was that Howl calling for her? It was too dark to see anything more than a few shadows bobbing along in the water. Come to think of it, she could signal him with that light-emitting device... or not. Rita hadn't even realized it in her panic, but at some point she had dropped it. Looking around, she couldn't even see its light in the water below. She was going to have to rely on her own senses to get her bearings.

It was unusual to have anyone shatter the peace of the lake, but two groups in one night? That was definitely enough to rouse the curiosity of anyone, much less the creatures who dwelled under the water, and a lone mermaid drifted over to investigate.

The pair of humans seemed in some distress, which wasn't terribly surprising given how poorly adapted they were for swimming. The mermaid swished her own silvery tail through the water, briefly admiring the way it moved, then recalled her errand. A few strokes of the tail brought her to the surface and she lifted her head above the water, blinking curiously at the female.

[tiassa]

Relief washed over Howl in a much more pleasant way than the lake water had. He would have hated to have stayed in this lake any longer, searching for some girl he barely knew who might not have gotten dumped here at all! She seemed far too cross with the world to think to thank him for the effort he might have had to put out for her. It would have been easier for both of them if she had not come with him at all, but here they were, and there he was, swimming towards her in a most ungraceful way. His clothing was not ideal for taking a dip in, all heavy cloth, long sleeves and tails. He could feel the seething frustration over the ruined outfit beginning to take root and bloom. The one good thing in this torturous prison!

A flash of lightning, and he could see the silhouette of Rita's head bobbing in the water. The cold was unrelenting, and that inspired him to move quickly despite stiffness in his limbs. He felt brittle all over, and ready to shatter. Comparatively, Rita seemed at ease, floating effortlessly, looking elsewhere. Howl might have noticed, if his brain were not slowly beginning to freeze, until he couldn't quite manage to construct any thoughts that contained more than three of four words. Get Rita. Get to shore. Warm up.

"I-I've got you," he stuttered against his chattering teeth. He reached out one hand for her shoulder, waiting to feel the cloth of her shirt to grab onto. Instead, his fingers discovered smooth, bare skin. Flawless, like glass. It was clear he had made a mistake, but he was not entirely sure what it was.

Rita was whipping her head around, desperately trying to figure out where this was, where they came from, and how they were going to get out. They were clearly outdoors, and the water was salty, so... did they get dumped in the ocean somehow?

No; as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she realized she could see trees and rocky cliffs all around. That was some small relief, as it meant they weren't floating miles away from land. In this freezing water, they weren't going to have a lot of time to swim for shore before hypothermia set in. They needed to regroup and get out, fast.

A person's head rose out of the water nearby, and Rita turned to see. For a moment she thought it had to be Howl, but a good look at the stranger proved that assumption wrong. It was a woman, floating calmly, almost as though she didn't notice the cold. And... was she not wearing a shirt?

"Hey... are you okay?" Treading water awkwardly, Rita drew a little closer to the woman. Normally she wasn't one to worry much about strangers, but swimming around in ice water was a good way to die, and this person didn't even look worried! It was possible she'd already been out long enough for her senses to grow numb, so maybe she didn't even realize the danger she was in.

Rita could hear Howl's voice, closer this time, and so she turned to look for him. The man said he 'got' her, so she thought he'd be nearby, but she didn't see him right away. When she turned back, however, she finally spotted him - grabbing that woman by the shoulder. The mistake might have been understandable in the dark and the cold, but Rita still wouldn't let it slide without saying something. "And just who do you think you've 'got' there, genius?" she barked at the man, though her voice came out a bit strained.

The female seemed curious, perhaps a little concerned, and the mermaid blinked again and tilted her head slightly. That was interesting, but before she could consider the situation any further the male swam over and took hold of her shoulder.

Had there been any hostile intention apparent in the gesture the mermaid have reacted rather poorly to being touched like that, but since it was rather obvious that he had none as yet... well. Instead she glanced over at the man and giggled softly, reaching out to slide her arm under his, snaking her hand about his torso to provide him support in the water. Was that what he needed?

"Well, I'm not imagining her, am I?" Howl snapped at the real Rita. The venom in his voice was weak and half-hearted, and even it seemed to be shivering. A touch around his body pulled his attention back to the face before him. It had only been a moment or two in which he had not noticed the girl, but now that he spared her some of his focus, he was astounded it had taken him so long.

She was beautiful. The unforgiving night, the storm, the cold, all of it only seemed to make her more lovely by comparison. Her shoulders were bare, he realized, but she was smiling. He heard her laugh, soft and quiet under the sound of the water. Unsure of what else one was supposed to do when faced with a beautiful, naked woman in the middle of a freezing lake who seemed to be a significantly better swimmer than himself, Howl smiled. If he had been warm and dry, it would have been a smile to light up the room. One that he hoped girls remembered, long after he had left. This situation had stripped him of all that, though, and he smiled the grateful smile of the uncomfortable young man he had been before Ingary.

"We all need to get to shore," Howl said unnecessarily. The undressed young lady holding onto him had apparently made his mind even duller. "If you're more eager to get out of the water than be cross with me, I'd like your hand," he called to Rita as he reached out to her.

When the unclothed woman started reaching her arms around Howl, Rita fought the urge to groan. Did this really seem like a good time for flirting? Really? If Howl knew what was good for him, he'd watch where he put his hands. If this woman was too out-of-it to punish him for doing anything inappropriate, Rita would gladly do the honors.

"I can swim just fine by myself," Rita retorted, turning her nose up at Howl's offered arm. "Besides, you look like you've got your hands full already."

Not only was Howl wearing a heavy suit, but he had a strange, possibly delirious woman hanging on him. If he was going to worry about someone, he needed to worry about himself.

Besides, now that her shock had begun to wear off, Rita's ego couldn't possibly allow her to accept Howl's help.

Fortunately, Rita was a decent swimmer - at least, considering she'd only ever swam once in her life - so she was able to back up her words with a few kicks that pushed her farther from the center of the lake. With the darkness and the pounding rain making it difficult to judge the distance to shore, the girl decided she'd just pick a direction and go for it. Her fingers already felt stiff from the cold, and she needed to move before that feeling took hold of her arms and legs.

She stopped a moment to give Howl and the stranger another glance, then continued paddling toward the edge of the lake, keeping her head above the surface as she did.

Get to the shore? Something as simple as that? The mermaid glanced to the female, but she seemed uninterested in any help. Very well, then, and all the better for her.

All of the mermaid's attention then focused on the young man she'd discovered, and she reached out to capture his hand in her own and draw him closer. With a small smile curving her lips (which parted ever so slightly, giving just a hint of bright white teeth behind them) she shifted her hold to wrap both arms around him, her cheek resting lightly against his shoulder as with a stroke of her tail she sent both of them gliding through the water. It took but a moment to catch up with the other, who insisted on swimming by herself, but even then the mermaid didn't deign to acknowledge her presence.

Nightshift 49: Lake- Surrounding Area

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