Meteors Becoming Crashed Into Us

[Timber Wright]

 It had been a long day - and by long, Timber meant loooooooooong. It was the kind of day where training had been an absolute mess, and she was not looking forward to going to see her family afterwards because the bruises still had not begun to heal properly. With Christian temporarily down due to a family emergency (his younger brother and his unceasing need for trouble), Axel and Capricia had taken up joint guild-duty to ensure that Diamond didn't come and just rearrange fucking everything like they tended to want to do. That meant that Timber had been temporarily moved from a Level 5 to a Level 6, and she was helping to train other people.

She was outside of her norm for the day, officially turning into an FTO of sorts, and she had to postpone her actual daily plans of going to the shooting range and then checking the back-files to see what paperwork she was due up. She ended up doing physical training all day, and most of it was with people that she was sure wouldn't even make the cut. She probably handed out more beatings than she took, but there were a few prospects for Frost that she was sure she'd see again in the future - a pretty vampire, for one (which was odd when you thought about it, but Patryk was a vampire, too), who brought in some hard hits that caused most of Timber's anguish later in the day. Despite being an Avian and having quick healing, vampires still punched like they were hulking out. The shit still hurt, in the end.

She was finally on her way downtown, probably to Bonne Chance if she knew Felicia and Zeke right. They wanted to go somewhere where they could all do what they wanted (they meaning the entire NYPD SWAT team - minus Wesley, who had been ousted for the time being as the group tried to decide if they liked Nikolai more - Timber wasn't really up to speed there, just yet), and that was hard to do with a bunch of men who acted about as adult as thirteen year old girls in line for tickets to a Justin Beiber concert. As she thought of the doll incident she'd helped lend a hand in, she smirked a little, coming to a stop at a light just a few minutes shy of her apartment. She could go home, shower, change, then just fly over. It would make for fun flying home drunk.

Just as the light turned green, Timber lifted her foot off of the brake, once again wishing the AMG came in a manual transmission as she phantom-clutched (too much time spent driving Patryk's new Boss Mustang, she wagered), and began to move forward. She was tired, so she wasn't trying to gumball every light in town, and in the end, that's what probably made the accident so much worse. A black Ford Expedition with windows tinted to near-black hole depths slammed into the back of her 200-thousand plus grand car at easily seventy miles per hour, effectively pushing her car through the intersection and into oncoming traffic. The car was impacted again on the side as Timber tried to get control of anything, this time by random traffic that ended up an innocent but very deadly pawn in the game of crash.

Timber had no idea of how much time had passed as she heard the chaos around her start, because she was having major issues keeping her eyes open. She managed to reach into her glove compartment and pull out her gun, knowing full well and good that whatever hit her did it on purpose. When you did guild work as long as she had, you just knew when there was violence directed at you. She tried in vain to get her door open, but it was crushed in so far she was effectively pinned in the car. She wriggled around enough to get a leg free and began trying to kick the rest of her windshield out, blindly ignoring the pain in favour of shock, but she began feeling dizzy, and so did what any normal person would do: stuffed the massive weapon into the holster in her jacket with the arm that still bent properly, and zipped it up just enough so that the gun didn't expose itself. They'd pull her out to finish the job, and hopefully, she'd wake up in time.

The last thing she saw was something coming up over the hood of her car.

[Cory O'Malley]

Stop and go, rinse and repeat.  It was the pure monotony of traffic in this city that made Darrell pine for the flat, open roads of the Texas panhandle, or the deserts of Arizona and Nevada.  Long stretches of two lane black top, a hundred miles between a city.  The tangy perfume of Turbo Blue, 110 octane, the howl of sport-radials struggling for purchase against steaming asphalt, the pure adrenaline of each second dragging out into minutes.  Darrell Tuscadero was a wheelman at heart, and was not unheard of among the amateur racing communities of the Southwest.  In the Northeast, however, things couldn’t be more different.  Here he was just another redneck driving an antique car which should be consigned to a scrap yard, else taxed for its toll on the environment.  The man simply didn’t care.  If you weren’t driving American, or at the bare minimum, driving something blindingly, screamingly fast, you weren’t going to say anything to Darrell that he was going to take to heart.

On certain days, he felt as though the city conspired against him, as he watched every green light turn yellow early enough to where all the torque in the world wouldn’t save him from a ticket for running a red.  On certain days though, if he sacrificed just the briefest hesitation, he could time every change from red to green, without the need to decelerate remotely, if at all.  With a bit of hesitation, and the blaring of a car horn behind him, he steadied his nerves and felt the fiery chill of the moment splash into his veins.  The 429 cubic inch Super Cobra growled its low, throaty note as the throttle was pinched, and the clutch released, sending the Torino barreling towards the red light.  The tachometer needle flirted with 4 before convulsing and falling just below 3.  The knuckles of his left hand were pale with tension; his right held the shifter, eager to shove down into low gear.

His eyes widened as the AMG lurched into the middle of the intersection.  His teeth gritted, and he knew that there would be no way to avoid the accident about to unfold.  Clutch, shift, release, break.  The chrome bumper of the Torino nearly kissed the road as the car attempted to lumber to a stop.  Darrell massaged the brake with his foot out of habit; there was no ABS equipped in this mean machine.  It did little good, and attempting to avoid T-boning the several hundred thousand dollar car in his comparative Sherman tank was like attempting to stop on a dime, it wasn’t going to happen.  He braced himself for impact and with a thick crunch, careened into the side of the AMG.  The wide footprint of his front grill spread the damage out, but hit like a ton of bricks.  He pushed the car through the intersection with the squalling of tires before pinning it against a light-pole.

Safe within his battered Ford, Darrell didn’t hesitate ripping out of his seatbelt and tearing open the door.  Whoever he had hit, he had nailed them, and, sport as the AMG was, they attempted to save weight by trading side-airbags for racing buckets.  Darrell wasn’t sure, but hoped, for the driver, that the car had been installed with five point harnesses.  He saw little, if any, movement from within, but did see the doors to the Ford Expedition that started this whole mess begin to open.  “Good, glad to see you are okay, now get over here and help!” he screamed at them, hearing small impacts within the mangled Mercedes.  Bounding onto the hood of the wreck, he saw a female, hand inside her jacket, face turned to the side, bleeding from her left ear.  He saw her briefly look up at him, focus for a moment, and then drift.  Traffic could already be heard honking from several red-lights away, and who knew how long it would take the police to get there.  He could smell the faint hint of gasoline, in the air, and knew then that the impact may have knocked loose the fuel cell of the Merc.

“I’m not about to be cooked alive, and you aren’t either,” he growled as he stood, lifting his thick-soled boot into the air and bringing it down toward the windshield, aiming for the crack that had splintered along the passenger side. His foot fell right through the spiderwebbed glass, and pulling his leg back to him, he gritted his teeth as the small bits of glass tore little, fine scratches into his calf.  Removing his jacket and attempting to place it in he void he had kicked, he began to pull at the flexible glass, peeling a hole big enough for them to fit through as he leaned into the car and slid his hands beneath her underarms.  Carefully adjusting her, he lifted her body back through the shattered remains of the windshield, keeping her head and torso lifted high enough as to not drag them through shards of glass.  Her left arm twisted in an odd fashion, and a small, but steady drip of crimson fell from her wrist to the ground.  Without care for his own health or safety, he pulled the girl as far away from the Mercedes as he could, applying pressure to the wound on her arm.  It was at that point that he noticed what appeared to be some sort of SMG tucked into her coat.  He looked from her wound, to her coat, to the small group of people moving towards them from behind the wreckage.

[Uriah Jones]

"Well, my dear, I feel this day will be very fruitful indeed," Uriah said to his auburn-haired counterpart. He looked at her from the driver's seat of the massive black SUV, a slow smile creeping over his pale features. "I present to you, the little red-haired bird that we were sent to handle." He shifted in the seat, debating on how they were going to handle the situation. He enjoyed conflict, very much so - so much so, in fact, he felt he was an avenging angel of sorts, but he didn't relish getting out of the car and simply walking up to her window. It felt too anticlimactic.

His sister seemed to know what he was thinking, and gave a little nod to the traffic ahead. "Why don't you hit her?" she suggested.

"The idea, my dear Virginia, is not to hurt ourselves in the process," he said, his soft drawl betraying their Southern origins. He glanced to her again, and she was staring at him critically in return. "What?" he asked, sensing something he'd missed.

"God will protect us," she assured him. "Just ask Him to. Don't you know anything? We are righteous, His hand extended to this plane. We are acting His orders to the best of our ability - why would He not protect us in our time of need?" she asked, her eyebrows lofting as her green eyes focused on his own.

"I believe, Virginia, that you are correct," he ceded. "Would you do me the honors?" he asked, stopping at the light while he waited for his opportunity.

"Certainly, brother," she agreed. She pulled her worn, leather-bound bible from the back seat and placed it in her lap, opening it to a page that felt right to her. Virginia had a gift, she knew, for choosing the Lord's words through that book. She cleared her throat and began, saying a basic prayer, and then pausing.

"Take off your seatbelt, sister. I don't want you to get tangled up." Uriah did the same, and rolled his foot across the throttle. He had slowed enough to create a gap in traffic, and he saw their prey up ahead, trapped by the New York light system. A wicked smile spread across his face, and he adjusted his glasses.

"Before the LORD: for He cometh, for He cometh to judge the earth: He shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people with His truth!" Virginia proclaimed, her voice raising to almost a shout - and then, of course, there was the impact. The two rattlesnakes were much more hardened to the crash than their quarry, and had opportunity to shift. On the floorboard slithered two very in-tact Diamondbacks, tongues flicking against the sudden smell of gas and transmission fluid and all the other assorted scents of the accident.

As the smoke of the wreckage began to plume, Uriah returned to his human form and reached into the back of the SUV. Thankfully, the bolts for the rack had held, and the shotgun was still in tact. He crawled into the back of the SUV, where the doors were still in tact, plucking the shotgun from its position as he did so. With no particular amount of flourish, he kicked the door open and stepped out, his comfortable cowboy boots making clicks against the pavement.

"Sister, would you mind covering me?" he called over his shoulder, hearing the sound of Virginia scraping across the seat to climb out after him.

"I would be happy to, Uriah," she purred. She rolled her thumb across the hammer of the comically large gun in her hand. Every little girl should have a revolver, she insisted, and hers was no toy. The barrel was elongated to the point of ridiculousness, the telltale sign of a rather archaic but well-known piece that had its arguments about practicality from time to time. Of course, Virginia was well-matched: Timber's Desert Eagle had met the same arguments.

"Sir, I would suggest that you step away from the wreckage," Uriah called out. The shotgun was almost a thing of disbelief, and hard to see through the fumes that stung the eyes. That Uriah had not racked it was probably a good thing, but he didn't need to: the shells were already chambered, and today, they were special. Despite the soft lilting accent to his voice, which was only as loud as it needed to be (almost apprehensive in sound), there was a certain hiss to it, one that suggested he was warning the bystanders away for a reason.

[Cory O'Malley]

Darrell wondered the moment that he saw the H&K resting against her chest underneath the partially zipped jacket, what in the world had he just stepped into.  He was being ordered away from the car by someone, though through the carnage and steam caused by the wreck, he couldn't quite make out who.  All he heard was a voice that sounded as though it belonged on a porch some where sipping tea and playing solitaire.  He released his hand from the wound at the girls arm.  It was not as serious as he had first thought, though it would likely require stitches.  Her blood ran down his arm in smears, and he hoped that whatever she was, whoever she was, that she had a clean bill of health.  As the gentleman stepped between the two cars and walked towards them, Darrell squinted his eyes to make out what the man was carrying.  Had it been anything but a shotgun, he would have raised an eyebrow.  “Christ,” he explained.

Whether it was because of the fact that his day had went from bad, to worse, to fucking terrible, or whether it was the fact that he wasn’t about to let Opie here bust a round of shot into this girl’s lungs, acting out of some foolish chivalry, he didn’t know.  Normally, he would be screaming at the both of them for brutalizing his Ford, but today, he closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and pulled the two of them back behind the Torino, of only to offer a bit more cover.  He heard the man’s footsteps drawing towards the pair of them, laying on the asphalt, have covered by the Torino, and scared for his life, more than anything, he moved his right arm, which had been cradling the girl, tightly beneath her bust, and went to slide his hand into her jacket to pull out the gilded hand-cannon that she was packing.  Before his fingertips had made it inside of her jacket, she opened her eyes and moaned once more, before looking up at him with eyes that could kill.  “I know what must be going through your mind right now, but I’m pretty sure this crazy fuckin’ Mississippian is about to wing the both of us.”

[Timber Wright]

Timber came to just as Darrell was pawing at her jacket, trying to take her gun from her. Most women would have given someone the death glare for simply entering their space; Timber, however, was much more protective of her golden gun than her honour, and thus, she snarled blood-stained teeth at him, snatching the thing back with strength that would have surprised the human if his knowledge of shape-shifters was on the poor side. Despite being an Avian, Timber had all the capability of punching through a wall if she really wanted to. Of course, she'd shatter every delicate bird-bone in her body doing it, but it was totally a possible outcome of her day.

"Get behind me," was all she said, her words clenched through her teeth as she pushed herself off of the side of the vehicle and to her feet. She would push him off of her if he tried to stop her, and he would be wise to avoid those pointy elbows of hers (she was capable of breaking a rib, the mood she was in), and staggered around the vehicle that was covering her. Her red hair marked her as an easy target, but it always had. That was nothing new.

It wasn't until she saw the Diamondback through the smoke and fumes that she realized what the bystander had meant about 'Mississippian'. "Awfuck," she cawed, the words smashed together as they came from her throat, formed more by impulses in her chest rather than by her lips and tongue. She dropped down as quickly as she had popped up, and that was when Uriah's "special" ammunition gave way.

Incendiary ammo was frowned upon in general; as a flame shot forth from his Mossberg, Timber counted her lucky stars she could hear his fingers moving on the gun before he had a chance to melt her face off. No longer, since the boom of the weapon was resonating, but that didn't mean dick. If he had Dragon's Breath, he didn't really have a chance at hurting her unless he got close. She popped back up like a carnival game, pointing her Desert Eagle right at him.

She had been dumb to do so; Uriah had only done that for his own amusement. He knew it would lure her into a false sense of security. The second shot was fired, and bits of metal shot out at Timber. Fucking flechette rounds, was he serious? She got scattered with little blades, but thankfully managed to keep her face unscathed. Now with pieces of metal fucking sticking out of her body and making her look like a porcupine, she was just mad.

She fired her gun at him indiscriminately, causing the snake to take cover. She began to advance as she did so, losing her hearing in the process, but she had left her last fuck somewhere on the ground when she pried one of the blades from her arm. That was when the other snake chose to take her cue, firing off a few shots with that hand cannon of hers. Timber dove behind something for cover, but disliked how close she was to the fray. And there was still that guy back there who was now a witness to all of this. Fuck.

She jammed her gun into the back of her pants and gritted her teeth. She couldn't shift with all of this shit in her body; her luck she'd damage her wings and then she'd really be boned. She made a dash back to the car where she'd left the witness, all the while making motions for him to keep his fucking head down. She practically slid on the knees of her pants to get to him, ignoring the massive amounts of injuries she had going on for the moment. That was part of being in Frost: you didn't get to lay there in pain.

She had to assess the situation. He'd already seen enough, and she was a memorable face. That was what sucked about being Timber. She could get him to come with her, probably play on his sense of nobility here or there, and then just make Patryk erase his memory and drop him somewhere with a ticket for reckless driving. Or something. She felt bad about blaming the wreck on him in the end, but even after a memory wipe, it wouldn't do well for him to see her. She was just fucking recognizable, period.

In the time it took her to think that, a bullet glanced off of the hood of the car. Now Uriah was just back to actual hardcore ammo, and he was fucking close. "Oh, FUCK," Timber yelled, unable to hear much more than a dull buzz and vibrations in her throat. "MAU. MAU. I CAN'T FUCKING HEAR," she told him, gesturing to her ears. She could see movement, and just threw the dice down, grabbing at Darrell's hand.

"COME WITH ME IF YOU WANT TO LIVE," she commanded him loudly. Thankfully she was yelling over gunfire, but she did feel a little sense of pride. She'd always wanted to roll out a James Cameron script in her work, and now she had. She felt pretty fucking wizard right now, even if she was going to have to re-break her already-healing arm.

[Cory O'Malley]

Sunlight bathed the scene for a moment, rays reaching to glance off of the gold plated pistol.  The grip secure in his hand, he began to draw it from her jacket, surprised at the sheer size and weight of the gun as compared to the lithe and seemingly agile being he cradled.  “What the fuck…”  So eloquent; but what was the guy to do?  He’d just wrecked his most prized possession, pulled a girl out of a car worth more than he’d make in three years, watched a man approach him armed with a street howitzer, all before realizing that the ‘damsel in distress’ as he saw things, was packing a hand cannon.  It was about that time that Timber brought reality crashing down around him, coming to and disarming him with ease, despite her condition.  He had no knowledge as to the truth behind all of this; that he was caught in some kind of struggle between two shape-shifters, with abilities far and above that of their mundane brethren.  In fact, he had no knowledge of shape-shifters at all.

He blinked as she bounded out of his grasp sliding up against the fender of his mangled Torino, gun handled expertly at her knee, double gripped, elbows loose, but firm.  When he began to rise to his knees, she turned only briefly to be sure that he had, indeed, done as she requested and stood behind her.  Crouching, he turned his back to the cold metal door of his automobile, and watched the woman as she slowly lifted her head; the wind blowing through the street catching her cherry red hair and tossing it, just for a moment.  She barely had her eyes over the front fender of the car before she ducked once more.  The sound of her curse and the ignition of the shell’s charge were nigh-simultaneous.  Crackling sparks and flame shot blurred through his line of sight, before their fuel faded, sending charred debris bouncing between cars sitting and waiting for the wreck to be cleared.  Instead people began to pop out of their cars, screaming.  The sounds of sirens could be heard, though they were faint, and, lets face it, this was New York City, those sirens could be going anywhere.

Once a shot had been fired, Darrell was officially fucking scared.  One hundred mile an hour into a hairpin turn, he could handle.  No power steering on a ridge course over looking a two hundred foot ravine, he could handle.  Fire arms being shot in his direction, that was not his forte.  He nearly flattened against the car before grasping for the handle of his door, attempting to open it, thinking if he could just get the thing started, he could drive away from this mess.  Then another gunshot rang out.  By the time he got the old rod started, pulled her in the car and took off, they’d both be dripping lead.  He was thinking of how to best run from this situation, when she popped back up to take aim at the man with the Southern drawl, his ears humming exponentially louder until there was nothing but a sharp ring and numbness in them.  He didn’t hear the shot of the revolver, but he saw his fender instantly take new shape, the black gloss of the paint pealing back to expose grey primer and metal in the time it took to blink an eye.  He saw her jerk back in pain, though, and saw the black needles sticking out of her shoulder.  “Holy fucking shit!” he screamed at her.

When the girl, who looked to be in much better shape compared to how she looked only a minute or so ago unconscious in his lap, gestured for his hand and moved her lips â€" the words unintelligible to his deafened ears, he moved towards her.  Blood spilled down her shoulder in thin ribbons from the fleschettes embedded there, and he hesitated, and then seeing that glare in her eyes, he bolted towards her, hunkered down behind his automobile as if it were a concrete barrier, his hand grasping hers.  Whatever she was planning, he hoped it work, and gritted his teeth tightly, knowing that any second he was about to be a pound of flesh lighter, if that shotgun took aim at him.

[Timber Wright]

Timber kept looking behind her to ensure that the man was still with her - he was, and amazingly enough, mostly in tact. It was ridiculous to believe that she was leading a human through a gunfight with one of Midnight's better contract killers and he hadn't even so much a scratch on him, but Timber was good at her job. It just hurt to be her at the moment - though thankfully, the adrenaline was keeping her mind off of that subject. She ducked behind an F-150 with massive Super Swamper tires on it, grabbing Darrell by the sleeve as she did so and yanking him down to a squatting position behind said tire. The compound was thick enough to conceal them near-entirely.

"I have to call in someone to get us out of this. They aren't going to stop coming," she told him, her voice trembling from shock despite how calm she tried to appear. Thankfully, her hearing was coming back, and that dull ringing in her ears had begun to fade away amidst the wreckage and horns of the rest of traffic. She reached into her pocket for her phone and swore, realizing she must have dropped it in her car somewhere during the wreck itself. Wouldn't have been the first time.

"Here, give me your phone," she commanded him. They had a good amount of distance between the duo at the moment that she could afford a few seconds to converse with him - but if he argued, she'd hit him with her gun. She held her hand out expectantly, assuming automatically that this man would oblige her. And why not? She was saving his ass right now - or so she felt. Timber was an entitled little thing.

[Cory O'Malley]

At this point, he had little choice but to do what this lithe little thing before him seemed to want him to do.  His ears were slowly beginning to clear, though that ever-present ringing may stay there for ever, for all he knew.  Another blast from the Mossberg sent him diving to the ground, scrambling, rolling and crawling to his feet, keeping crouched and hoping that she made her intentions known before he was missing a lung.  "What is the plan?!" He screamed at her, "What the hell is this?"  His questions, of course went unanswered as she rounded a off-road vehicle too polished to be actually taken off-road.  'Why would you have something like this in downtown NYC?' he thought, and then as she jerked him behind the 44" tire, and informed him that she was going to have someone come and pull them out of dodge, he paused, extending his hand towards her as if to pause her.  "Wait, who.. what?  And did you quote James Cameron back there?"  When she demanded his phone, he didn't hesitate, he put his hand in his pocket and withdrew his old Nokia and handed it to her.  You know, the kind with an actual keypad that has immaculate service ANYWHERE, despite the fact that it is one generation away from the phone that Vanilla Ice made famous.

He watched her as she snatched the phone out of her hand, and wondered how this young lady had all of the moves of an action movie star, while looking completely girl-next-doorish.  She was cute, that much was true, but... Was he oggling this girl during a god damned firefight?  He blinked and moved his eyes quickly to her own, as she placed the phone to her ear and looked at him in kind.  "I really hope you're calling 911."

[Timber Wright]

"The plan is get the fuck out of here, that's the plan," she informed him, holding the phone up to her ear. She drummed her fingers against the side of the gun while she waited for Patryk to answer his phone. "And yes, I did quote Cameron, I'm so glad you heard me. You know how long I've been waiting to be able to do that?" she asked him, and the way she said it, it sounded like she'd been waiting for a long time, indeed.

"Of course I'm not calling 911 - why would I do that?" she said, giving him a shocked look. She turned her head slightly, her physical signal that someone had picked up on the other end, and spoke. "Hey, it's Timber. I need an extraction. There's me plus a civ.. " she hesitated, then snaked her head up to get a better look around. "On the corner of twenty-seventh and Greenway. We're tucked behind a fancy truck that has big tires he will never use," she remarked, echoing Darrell's unspoken sentiment without realizing it.

"And now, we wait," she informed him, deleting his call information and handing the phone back to him. "It should only be a few - "

"I expect a full explanation for this," n third voice said. As Timber turned to espy the new addition to the group, her vampire friend crouched down next to them. "Patryk," he said, introducing himself to the man who looked like he was in shock. "You guys ready to blow this Popsicle stand?" he asked.

"I was born ready, bitch," Timber told him. She grabbed his arm, and looked across at Darrell. "Hold on tight cowboy - you don't wanna miss this," she instructed him.

[Cory O'Malley]

Unless she called in an airstrike, he was pretty sure whoever she called was going to arrive to a scene out of Grand Theft Auto.  "Wait?!"  He could hear rapidly approaching footsteps now, their fate was all but sealed.  It was times like this that divided the men from the boys, and in that moment, Darrell -completely jacked up on adrenaline, and growing increasingly pissed about the ruin that his Torino was left in - turned to Timber and finally issued her an order, "Look, if you're not going to use that thing, give it to me so that I can.  If this is how I'm going to Hell, I'm going to make sure this... whatever the fuck he is... comes with me."  He might as well have asked nicely for all the good it did him, because when he extended his hand to reach for the gun, she simply wrinkled her nose at him. 

"You're out of your mind, if you think you're..."

Where in the hell had this guy come from?  He regarded the man briefly, returning, "Darrell, a pleasure.  Now let's get out of here."  He readied himself for another sprint, kneeling just slightly before he felt the woman grasping his forearm and telling him to... hold on tight?  And then he was lost, in an instant he felt as if he were falling into some never ending precipice.  His world was a dark blur, and as quickly as it had began, it had ended, and Darrell found himself in a completely alien setting, his stomach churning.  He nearly doubled over, his hand at his stomach, turning from them his hand outstretched as if to tell them to get back.  He paused, and the moment passed.  He hadn't yacked all over the floor, thankfully, and he slowly brought that outstretched hand to rest on his knee, panting, the ice water leaving his veins slowly.  When he had gathered himself as much as he can, he turned to them slowly.  He was a mess, bloody smears and hand prints over his arms, from her or from the scratches and gashes in his arm, he couldn't be sure.  There was little to be done at this point.  If her blood was, in fact, laced into his wounds, the damage was likely irreversible.  She looked clean though, and he hoped that his worries were unfounded.  "Where are we?"

[Patryk Verona]

Patryk had been enjoying a conversation with his very distant relative, and his guild leader's wife, Evangela, regarding his plans for the holiday season (boy, was he enjoying it - Evangela was about as bureaucratic as it got, and how she and Christian had married, he would never know), when his phone rang. Timber calling surprised him, normally because she tended not to involve him in her debauchery, and she was off assignment as far as he knew - but when she said she needed him to come and get her plus one - well, he couldn't miss that, now, could he? Timber wasn't very friendly as far as he knew, not in the way of regular people, so he really wanted to know how it was she'd gotten someone else wrapped up in this.

"We, my new friend, are safe. And you're lucky - I don't know what you did to piss off the Southern Psychos, but boy did you ever. I think I saw your Mercedes in that pile somewhere," Patryk said, addressing Darrell first and then shifting his voice - and body - to the pale bird as she secured her weapon by dropping the magazine out, discharging the round in the chamber, and winging it at the couch so hard it bounced with a muffled sound. The accessories went after it, the spare bullet caught in her hand.

"I think the both of you could use some medical attention. Let me go get Jessica," he said, holding a finger up. With a mischievous smile, he turned and left the two in what appeared to be a living room. 

[Timber Wright]

 Timber was on her feet as soon as they had been moved, pulling her weapon apart and flinging the magazine and gun alike at the soft, velveteen couch as hard as she could. Boy, was she ticked off - "I totally could have taken them, Patryk!" she said, pointing a finger after him as he went to go find the aforementioned medic. He wounded her by reminding her of her AMG, a car that had taken her years to not only select but to fucking pay off. "Now I'll have to buy another one," she said, sighing wistfully and plunking down on the edge of the couch that housed the remnants of her gun. She tossed the spare round up and down with the arm that was less bad, flicking her teal eyes to their guest as he tried to re-orientate himself with the time-space continuum.

"Hey buuuudddy," she drawled. "How ya feeeeeelin'?" She slid off of the couch and went to him, offering him her arm to help seat him. "You want a soooooda?" she asked, unable to help herself.

"I'll explain everything, swear, but first, you need to meet our fine doctor and get your head checked. I need some TLC myself," she admitted, observing damage that she had previously not noticed. Damn needle ammo. Who used that shit, seriously? She'd have to update Uriah's file, and soon. "And when I say fine, I do mean very easy on the eyes. Try not to drool," she said, giving him a hard pat on his cheek. Her eyes left his form as the medic's bubbly voice filled the hallway, betraying her approach.

[Cory O'Malley]

Darrell was still attempting to gather his senses, and at the moment, he wasn't sure if his campaign was going to bare fruit.  His ears still rang, his sight was blurry, and his stomach roiled in strict protest.  Questions flew through his mind so quick that he didn't have time to pause on any single one of them to try and make sense of it, and to be honest, it was probably better that way.  He scrubbed his hands through thick strands of dirty blond hair, damp with perspiration.  He continued for a moment, as if he itched, before turning his head sideways, still bent at the waist, looking to Patryk and nodding as if to communicate that he understood the fact that he was both safe and lucky.  Who had she pissed off?  And how was she even upright?  She should be in the hospital; the force of that crash had to have caused some type of internal injury, but aside from an awkward bend in her arm, she appeared to be handling things much better than Darrell, who surprizingly was unscathed, aside from the fissures that the slivers of glass had cut into his arms and stomach.  Things started to settle, and Darrell slowly began to stand upright, allowing his mind to calm a bit before beginning to sort through things.  Where am I, what had happened to the smell of asphalt, gasoline and spent ammunition?  Where is my car?  How did we get he - I'm gonna puke.  His hand went to his stomach, and he heaved, but sucking in a sobering breath of air, he seemed to draw up a truce with his stomach.

Her insinutation that she could have easily bested the people persuing her sparked his interest, but still he kept silent.  She had handled her self amazingly, and she had professionally handled a very powerful weapon single handedly.  Her shots couldn't have been accurate, he thought, they were meant to be supressive.  That gun would climb quickly in his sturdy grip if he had let off the rounds, even with a proper grip.  For her to fire more than one accurate round one handed would have been extremely difficult, right?  While she had handled her self professionally, the way she tossed the gun onto the thickly padded couch as if it were a child's plaything was anything but.  Always treat a gun as if it is loaded, so his dad had always said.  Darrell could fire a handgun, though his experience was limited to large caliber revolvers, small caliber pistols, and shotguns.  What he would have given for his ten guage back there.  What was he thinking?  He had only fired his weapon at animals, never at a person.  He had been a good shot with that ten guage though, and he spent a moment thinking on being back home, firing a shot in the air to send the crows flying out of his field before taking aim at one and turning into an explosion of feathers and viscera. 

When he had finally collected himself, he turned to Timber, who was now quoting Family Guy.  What was with this girl?  The quotation caught him off guard, and despite himself and the entire scenario that had just played out before him, she brought a smile to his face, and a small bit of laughter, "Actually, I could use a Coke..."  He suddenly got the vibe from her that the quote was just that, a quote, and certainly anything but an offer to go produce a beverage for him.  When she informed him that the both of them needed to see a medic, he looked at her furrowing his brow, if ever slightly, "I think you need more attention than I do, I just need a bottle of peroxide, some towels, and a pack of bandaids."  He heard the sing-song tone of another female approaching, and when Timber informed him to try not to drool, she had certianly piqued his interest.  Darrell was not, in any way, shy about or around attractive women.  Timber was attractive, witty and she carried a gold-plated Desert Fucking Eagle, "Fair is fair.  I owe you a drink, by the way." 

[Jessica Markova]

The "fine" doctor, who would have blushed horribly and disagreed had she been present for that conversation, came around the corner, her arm linked in Patryk's. "Okay, thank you," she was saying to him, turning to give a little wave. She watched him go, if only because Jessica so did enjoy watching him walk away, and then turned around, her brown eyes foggy and the smile on her face rather complacent.

"Oh," she said, realizing the situation. "Oh," she repeated, really coming back to reality. "Wow, he wasn't kidding when he said you got worked over," she observed, hands on her hips as she relaxed her posture to survey the damage on Timber. She glanced sidelong at Darrell, who was staring back at her, and pointed to him. "You - who are you?" she asked, her eyes narrowing in confusion.

Patryk had told her there was a civilian, but not much more information than that. She hated being out of the loop. She'd motion for Darrell to talk and walk as she took Timber firmly by the good arm, leading them both to the infirmary. "I'll need to re-break that," she was warning the Avian as they walked. She said it in a low tone, realizing the guy behind her might react about how she did the first time Batten had told her she had to re-break Holly's finger because it had fused together already. Damn shapeshifters and their super-healing.

"Okay," she said, opening the door to the infirmary and practically thrusting Timber inside. She pointed to two separate tables. "Sit, both of you. If you're both very good, you'll get candy."

Timber shifted on the table. "Well, I sort of did tell him he could have a soda," she said. She hoped Jessica would take the hint - she could get him out of the room with enough time for Jessica to do the deed.

"Oh," Jessica said, blinking rapidly. "Uh, here," she said, fumbling in her pocket for something. She pulled out a handful of quarters and dropped them into Darrell's presumably open hand (if not, she dropped them on his lap). "Down the hall to the right, at the end. Just do me a favour and don't talk to anyone - or if you do, tell them you're with me. Jessica," she repeated again. She offered him a warm smile. "Don't worry, everyone has a first time here. Well, not everyone, but - " she stopped, stumbling over her own words. Jessica was a verbal klutz in the presence of good-looking men.