[RP] Dark was the night, cold was the ground, I could barely make out the sound...

[uberboned]

All's quiet on Chicago streets. There's snow on the ground, ice clinging to places where the salt trucks can't get to, and at this hour most people are in bed like any sane person should be.

Sane is relative in Chicago, of course.

In front of the Empress Theater, a Rift springs to life and 5'7 worth of Biblical Archangel-slash-Trickster God practically rolls out of it, hits the curb, and then scrambles to his feet just as the damn thing closes again. There's a silver stiletto blade in his hands and there's blood on it, which probably had a lot to with the fact that on the other side of that particular Rift, there's a dead archangel.

Raphael never did fucking know when to quit.

"Your timing is fantastic," Gabriel, because he stopped calling himself the Trickster a long time ago, spits at where the Rift should be. He wobbles a bit. He's not hurt terribly bad for an angel, but for something that passes as human, he sort of looks like he got on the bad end of a really vicious fight.

Probably because he totally did.

Comments

[painhumbles.livejournal.com]

"Oh God, you're a tease," he groans melodramatically in her face when she pulls away. "Did I mention the part where if you die, I'll be soo pissed?"

He grimaces and stands up, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her closer, all while being far more consciously aware of her injuries than he'd want anyone to notice. "It is, by the way."

He snaps and falters when they hit the stage right in front of the Rift and he has to hold onto to Murphy's shoulder to involve sliding down into the hole. He takes a deep breath and then whistles again.

"Where's your cornball monster dialogue now, you sorry piece of closet-lurking shit?" He shouts, the snark and mockery coming to him even as he's hanging by the end of a thread right now. "I mean, c'mon. I've tussled with things that woulda had you stuffed and mounted on their fireplace if they ever got their teeth into you, so why don't you come over here and kiss my angelic ass."

He's still holding onto Murphy and praying that if Dad's listening, now would be the moment to really, really give him a break. He'll totally be a better son... Not cutting the sex out though. If anything, he actually deserves it, at this point.

[whateverthemess.livejournal.com]

She braces him up as best she can, her nerves spun tight enough to snap at any moment.

Please, God, she thinks. Let him be okay.

The skinwalker's head swivels around slowly. It's a bison, now, if a bison had claws, but even as they watch it changes, becoming something like a wolf and so very not like one at all. Its eyes are red, Murphy notices with a kind of chilly interest.

It leaps.

Nothing should be able to jump that far. From the middle of the auditorium to the edge of the stage with ease, too-long limbs folding tidily under it as it lands. It cants its head to one side, rumbling. Laughing again. Murphy grabs a fistful of Gabriel's shirt near the small of his back to steady herself, the other hand still holding the hilt of her curved blade.

"If we're going to die," she says to it, "we should at least get to know what's killing us."

It grins.

There are too many teeth. Way, way too many teeth. "Naagloshii."

It takes another leap.

[painhumbles.livejournal.com]

"Not today, bucko," Gabriel sneers, snapping just as soon as it leaps. He manages to get to the back of the auditorium and collapses in a heap, clearly spent, although he does manage to sit up enough to see the skinwalker come back out of the Rift as so much horrific monster puree.

That settled he collapses again, this time just from exhaustion and rolls over onto his back, staring up at the ceiling. "Here's an idea," he says pointedly. "Let's never do that ever again."

[whateverthemess.livejournal.com]

Murphy sits down, more by necessity than from desire. She's breathing heavily, shuddering from combined adrenaline, pain and fatigue.

She doesn't really believe it's dead. She's still ill at ease, still sure something is wrong.

"...We should move," she says.

Something shifts--she reaches for Gabriel's hand as her center of balance seems to do a one-eighty, dumping her on her side--but she's falling, still falling, because there's no floor where the floor should be.

She manages to fix Gabriel with one startled look, manages to think Oh for fuck's sake, before she tumbles into the alley beyond the rift that opened under her, hits her head against a dumpster and blacks out.

[painhumbles.livejournal.com]

Gabriel scrambles back into sitting position with enough speed to make his head spin, completely stunned into a lack of further movement by the sight of.... That. His kneejerk response is to go in after her and beat the tar out of whatever the hell thought that was a good idea, but it's closed just as he thinks about making a move.

And then all is quiet in the theater again and, for a moment, all he can do is stare.

And then he shouts at the ceiling with enough fervor to echo in the empty theater, "Son of a bitch."