xp_logs | Reality Coming Down

Sue and Gabriel's teams merge, relieving some of the pressure on Emma's team.

The fight was going well, but not well enough. It turned out zombies were surprisingly hardy, which meant at this point - even with not-Johnny down and his own undead twin on the ropes - Gabriel was exhausted. And he could tell from scanning the faces of his allies that they were feeling the same way too.

The other thing he was beginning to realize was that pausing to assess the situation might have been a mistake. "Incoming!"

Miles fell and rolled to the left to avoid the speedy zombie's attack, but that left him open to his own zombie alt, who roughly pulled him up and flung him into the wall. Literally into the wall, as in he left a good Miles-shaped hole in it. He crawled out in time to avoid another mean punch that sent up an obscuring cloud of dust and plaster when it went through the wall, and frog-leaped over his twin to get to Gabriel's. He managed to get a finger on the demon speedster before he moved out of the way, but that was all Miles needed.

"Three, two, one, zap," Miles said, smirking as his venom blast surged through zombie Gabriel, bringing him to his knees.

Following up on Miles' attack, Sarah lunged forward with her sword, its sharp point penetrating the zombie's skull through one of its eyes with a sickening squish. There wasn't much resistance as it was a rotting zombie, after all, but still, the very nature of the action caused Sarah to shudder and almost throw up as she quickly withdrew the blade.

"Ohmygosh, that's so gross." She shook it in an attempt to get some of the viscera off of it before remembering they were still kinda busy, then she raised it up and took on a defensive posture once more.

Johnny stared, transfixed, as zombie Gabriel head staggered around, blind, its mouth moving and hands scrabbling at the wall, most of its head gone. If you got too close , it would probably try to grab hold, automatically. It fell over, hands now clawing at the carpet and he looked down, noticing the maggots on his shoulder and shirt. He made a strangled "nrrrrrrgh!" sound and slapped at them before being drawn back into the fight, swinging the baseball bat down into what was left of its head. "We have to get out of here. We have to run. We're pinned down up here."

Gabriel glanced around. The other two zombie doppelgangers had watched their comrade fall. Now they looked on the group with a renewed bloodlust and hunger in their eyes.

"You're right." He pulled a pocketknife out of his jeans and glanced at the group. "Downstairs." He pulled out the blade. "Find Sue - she's toward the back. Girl's got a forcefield, so that can't hurt."

The young man looked toward the mutant zombies, who seemed to be having a conference of their own, albeit a more muted one with head nods and hand gestures. "Go. I'll keep these guys busy so you can get a head start. Ought to be a piece of cake." He started to run the blade across his palm, using his powers to speed up as he went.

After a few seconds, he'd drawn what he hoped would be enough blood to keep the zombies interested. "I'll catch up."

"Teach..." What Gabriel was asking was literally the first DON'T DO THIS rule of every zombie movie. Every instinct demanded that Miles stay and help. But since when did a last stand ever turn out well for the group, either? Dammit. They had to find Sue fast to have a chance of breaking the cliches. "No mueres, comprendes?"

***

The interdimensional interlopers were proving to be a handful. With opponents who knew every weakness you had, getting the advantage was a little tough.

A momentary break in the fight with her double allowed Topaz to double over, hands resting on her knees as she gasped for breath. Unfortunately the alternate her had jumped in early, grabbing everyone she could and draining them. Topaz had, at least, managed to make sure she hadn't gotten to Sue, Meggan, or Hope, but that still left her at a disadvantage. She was torn between stopping the other her from draining them and stopping the other her from killing her.

God, her powers were a pain.

"What's wrong?" The other Topaz taunted, smirking down at her exhausted opponent. "Are you done already? How boring."

Topaz gritted her teeth as she picked herself up again, energy sparking between her fingers. "Just keep talkin'," she snapped. "That'll give me all the power I need."

And she dove in again.

Sue stood barely a handspan away from her doppelganger, unmoving as she stared across the blank space at the other girl. A trail of blood flowed down from the blonde's nose as she focused all her attention on her opponent, the space between them filled with the clash of two forcefields. Back and forth, needles and daggers flashed out, seeking a weakness in someone's shields, back and forth lashing out with any implement the girl's fertile imagination could come up with. The tide of battle swept forward and backwards, neither girl yielding, neither girl gaining an advantage.

There wasn’t much Meggan could do against her other self aside from defending against an aerial attack... but the same could be said of her double. A few attacks to each other had resulted in the same kickboxing move painfully connecting. Meggan had a black eye and a few scrapes to her cheek as a result. She ducked her duplicate’s next attempt to strike out at her, and flew higher briefly to evade her hair getting ripped out – until she, too, did the same. It was an even match, but she still lashed out to successfully land a punch to her evil twin's nose before bouncing out of the way.

Hope's astral form swooped to the side, quickly evading the arcs of electricity that shot forth from her strange-looking copy's astral form. This one's ability was clearly very different from her punk copy, and she was fairly certain that taking the situation to the astral plane was not going to help her here. Another arc lanced forward, and she caught something glistening from the corner of her eyes...

Defense. It was all Topaz could manage. She and her doppelganger had the same powers, but the other Topaz was clearly faster. Another blast of energy slammed into her shield, and she staggered back. Her head was spinning, breathing heavy - she wasn't sure how much longer she was going to be upright.

Her head snapped up when she realized she felt people moving toward them - fast. God please be friendly people, she begged silently. She wasn't sure they'd be able to handle more enemies.

Similar thoughts were going through Sarah's mind as she charged ahead, sword at the ready. Her eyes went wide when she saw other people, got softer when she recognized them as friendly, and then widened once again as she realized there were two of them.

"Um, what the hell?" Not that she could say much, what with the whole zombie thing, but still.

Miles didn't know these people all that well, but he'd seen them around enough to at least be able to recognize who was good and who was a bad Stargate ripoff. "At least they're not zombies," he said to his partners before he turned to the other students. "RPG tactics, we all focus on one at a time to take them out quick. Yeah?"

"Topaz," Johnny said. "She can drain us - ours can. Why would that one be different? Evil Sue could probably like, smother us with her forcefields or use them to cut our heads off, but Topaz is going to think we're like ... batteries or some bullshit like that. Maybe we should go for her first."

"You better be talkin' about her," Topaz said over her shoulder, hearing her name as she blocked another attack. Damn it. She growled under her breath as she lashed out with her mind, forcing her way past the other her's shields. "Time to share," she snapped as drained off just a bit of power before she was thrown out. The distraction was enough for her to finally get a real attack in though, firing off a blast of energy.

"All yours," she told the trio as she stepped back. "I'll keep you shielded so she can't drain you or get attacks off." Hopefully.

"Oh, um, ok." Sarah wasn't sure how to start the attack, because, well. It was a doppelganger, and it was apparently evil, but it was still human, wasn't it? Killing it wasn't like killing a zombie, which was already dead to start with, or something. How did they handle such a situation?

She took up a position to try and corner the other Topaz, her sword raised and ready to defend if need be, but Sarah hesitated to do anything more than that, looking to her fellow mutants to take the lead.

Miles had slipped into camo mode after he volunteered his strategy. It wasn't invisibility but he felt confident that the crazy fake witch was paying too much attention to the others to keep an eye on him. It was enough to let him creep up behind her and poke her on the shoulder.

"Gonna warn you now that that's really gonna hurt in about tres segundos. Sorry not sorry." True to Miles's word, the venom blast erupted after the brief delay and briefly illuminated the room with green lightning.

Johnny jumped and whirled, slamming a spinning kick into into alt-Topaz' head. She fell and he kicked her again as she went down, feeling a touch of guilt at that.

"Awesome, one down," Sue acknowledged from her position, before wincing as her opponent took advantage of her momentary distraction and slammed an attack through her defenses that drove the petite blonde to her knees. "Owww, a little help here guys?"

'Sorry, can't really help you there!' Hope projected as she evaded yet another arc. 'Even better, could some keep her busy for a bit!' Because yes, it had been scissors she had seen glinting near to where her body was...

"Incoming, incoming, incoming!" The blur that was Gabriel came into focus as he moved down the stairs. "Not to add to whatever the fuck is happening here," he added, his words perhaps moving as fast as he had just been, "but we've got two zombies trudging their way down the stairs. I couldn't take them out."

Actually, the undead had held their own. Gabriel's lip was bleeding, and there was blood trickling from his hand. "Yeah, uh, also, I could probably use a band—oh!" As he surveyed the battlefield - or, really, what had once been a very lovely corner of the estate - he spotted not-Hope's multi-skirted body on the ground. "Never mind."

He powered up and sped over toward the unoccupied intruder's body. "Hope, hon, not such a bad look for you." He started ripping away the fabric from a floral skirt. "If we live, you ought to consider it."

Seeing her chance, Hope slipped back into her own body and shook of the disorientation quickly. Sitting up, she quickly reached over for the scissors and palmed them. Another arc of lightning arced in her direction and she rolled. "Thank you, Shielda." She muttered almost unconsciously, remembering the endless ducking and rolling that had been hammered into her.

Sitting up on her heels, she spotted her alternate's body and shuffled her way there. One heave and it was shielding her own body, and with a shaking hand, she held the scissors to the girl's throat. "Get back in here, or I will hurt you..." She called out loudly, using every trick she knew to keep her voice from shaking as much as her hand.

As much as she hated dealing with zombies, Sarah kept her eye out for them, as she'd much rather be fighting them than any of the doppelgangers. She'd rather not be fighting anyone or anything, if she had her choice, but clearly she nor any of her friends had any say at all in the matter, sadly. Keeping her sword raised and her back to the wall, she kept an eye out for a zombie to fend off and tried to stay out of everyone else's way.