Beyond Evolution

Details on the rallies:

PRO-REGISTRATION
- Roughly from 12 - 6 PM EST, held in DC at the mall
- Speakers: Le Peregrine, Gateway (both mutants in from countries with registration, speaking on its benefits), Amanda Greenway (current AG under Borrell, known mutant)
- Groups Present: Earthbound Angels (physical mutations), Mutants Without Borders (like DWB but charity for mutants)
- Etc: Mixture of people supporting benefits and quelling fears, and people who thinks mutants are dangerous, no violence though

ANTI-REGISTRATION
- Roughly from 1 - 6 PM EST, held in front of the UN headquarters
- Speakers: Nolan Harland, Dazzler, Cassie Vickers (human Senator from Nevada, believes in benefits for mutants but not registration)
- Groups Present: Unknown if the real Brotherhood was there, but a fair amount people were in shirts for both them and the MLF
- Etc: A counter-protest across the way, large but not causing trouble due to heavy police presence


Please ask questions in the provided thread!

There was something about this which was almost nice. If Cleo squinted, and blocked out all her knowledge of the dire situation in which they found themselves, she could almost pretend they were camping. She’d never been camping before. Nor had she ever wanted to, admittedly, she would always pick a roof over her head rather than the stars, but still. Considering everything, considering the way friends were being forced to fight to the death, the way classmates were hunting each other down like dogs, the way their mysterious captors were filming their torments for the entertainment of a television audience, considering all of that, the idea of camping with Drake was an attractive one. A comfort.

The two of them had made their way into the ruined city tonight, having spent the daylight hours skirting around the edges of the jungle. Cleo preferred it here because she felt she could hear people approaching better. It was easier to mask footfall on the softness of mud and grass than it was on the dusty gravel littering the ground out here. Part of her wondered what had become of this city and the people who lived within it, how it had ended up in such disrepair, but most of her didn’t care. Idle curiosity wasn’t really a thing when you had to spend every moment in fear of your life, she’d found.

It could be worse though. She could be alone. That had been what she’d wanted, what she’d told herself she’d wanted when the decision to split away from Holly, Riley and Michael had been made, but now she was secretly overwhelmed with gratitude that Drake had taken her under his wing. Now she didn’t really have to fear an attack because she was confident that between the two of them, they could survive it. She was more concerned about running out of food and about exposure to the elements. And she was most concerned about how, as the days ticked by and resistance became increasingly untenable, she was at ease with the idea of killing a familiar face to last a little longer in the game.

That wasn’t on the agenda tonight though. It wasn’t something she and Drake had seriously pondered at all. Not out loud, at least. Rather, they were focused on getting some food into their bellies. Making up for Cleo’s abject lack of hunting skills, Drake had managed to trap some small animals he intended to transform into a dinner for them both this evening. Under normal circumstances, Cleo’s stomach would have rebelled at the prospect of consuming something which was little more than roadkill but needs must. She was leaning against a crumbled half-wall, watching him work and rolling her belly to work up as much bio-energy within herself as possible now their powers had returned for a couple of hours. Never knew when she’d have to call on her mutation at this time of day.

“You done this before?” she asked casually as she tied back her greasy hair. “Hunting and shit.” Drake certainly seemed to know what he was doing. Hand moving from her hair to her lips, Cleo stifled a yawn. Adrenalin had kept her from sleeping properly for the first few days but weariness was catching up with her now. So much so that she didn’t even notice the four-armed grizzly bear rearing up from nowhere behind the crumbled wall, its mouth stretching impossibly wide and salivating as it prepared to bite down on her head.

[ DRAKE ]

( EXT. CLEARING - DAY )

(Open to the one with the beeping collar - you know who you are! - and then to everybody on the island.)

((TW: Sexual harrassment/assault.))

Cleo Morsi pulled her coat a little tighter around her as she stepped out of the back entrance to the club, bracing against the chill of the middle-of-the-night air. She had to kick the spilled contents of an overturned trash can out of her way, turning her face from the stale stench, as the door swung shut behind her with a metallic clang. For a Sunday, tonight hadn't been too quiet but she still hadn't made enough in tips to ride the bus so she'd be walking home tonight. That wasn't unusual though, she'd been dancing in this particular strip club, a place with the dreadful name of Vavavoom, for months now so she knew the drill. Sundays weren't a money-spinner but they were worth doing to top up the healthier funds generated by Fridays and Saturdays. Not that Cleo had much of a choice. She worked every night but was only just keeping her head above water.

She'd only taken a few steps down the back alley when a figure stepped out of the shadows behind her. "Miss Nefertiti?" Fuck. ( Should've been more careful. )

[ DRAKE ]

Everything went as it was meant to, as it had been seen. There had been a hundred ways each moment could have gone wrong and shunted everything just slightly off course, off enough to mean that the whole thing would fail but that had not been the case. All those hundreds, of little mistakes, those thousands of tiny errors hadn't happened, everything had fallen where it was meant to. Even the dead. Everything that happened, happened so that something else could or so that something else wouldn't. All these significant moments spread across a raging battlefield, the smaller force of impossibly brave mutants against the seemingly unending Sentinel threat that went on and on: From the Gen I relics to the Gen IIs, far fewer in number and now piloted no by mutants but by what was left of mutants, meat fused with the machines themselves, shades of people that had once been, to the Gen IIIs and IVs that could dominate a battle so easily. they were held back, put down, and it was all pushing the mutants towards victory.

The bomb was set in the core of the Hive, it was armed. The timer was started.

The device had been retrieved from the heavily guarded labs. The team were carrying it out.

The Sentinels were so distracted by the incredible battle going on outside that they had left minimal forces inside the Hive so the teams that had been sent in had been able to cut their way to their objectives. Not without resistance, not without loss, but with enough breathing space to do what had to be done, what could never have been done without the frontal assault. The losses were racking up, the terrible price they were all paying for this, this one chance to put right so much that had gone wrong with the world around them. Their time was short, their forces dwindling.

"THE BOMB IS ARMED. EVERYONE, GET OUT. EXTRACTION POINT, NOW."

There were various iterations of this after the initial voice of Layla Miller had crackled and screamed over the comm units, nearly drowned out by the cacophony of the fighting; team leaders relayed it to their troops, it was repeated as friends and comrades picked one another out of the dirt, grabbed one another by the shoulder or the hand; Everyone get out, everyone to the extraction point. They had done it, now time was counting down to a nuclear explosion that could destroy them all in the blink of an eye if they waited around. It wouldn't be easy, but what about this, any step of this from the first, had been easy? None of it. They didn't know what easy was these days, they didn't need things to be easy, they thrived in the fire of combat, they could do this. They had to do this.

Escape or die. Extraction or Eradication. Go.

[ OPEN TO EVERYONE: The bomb has been set and is on a timer, everyone get out of/away from the Hive! This is your last fighting post before the aftermath! ]

It was cold, where they landed. In the Danger Room one moment and then in the open air somewhere. It was dark, and it smelled of ozone, and overhead clouds darker than anything natural moved across the sky in strange ways, blocking almost all of the light from the moon. It was quiet, too. Too quiet, really; the sound of some wind, but other than that none of the usual nocturnal noises that helped to settle a person. No cars. No other people. No faint music or movement. No light pollution from the city. Even the sound of animals was muted, down to the last insect. Wherever they were, it was devoid of life.

They would be able to see though, as eyes got used to the darkness, more and more familiar landmarks. The treeline, some ways off. The broken road, headed into the darkness. The size and shape of the rubble where they stood. This was the school, or what was left of it, at least.

The silence was broken by a gasp and the sound of something moving -- a stone tumbling and falling a bit, coming to a stop from where it had been budged. Not a stone at all, a piece of bone. They were on an open grave.

"We can't stay out here." It didn't really matter who said it; the truth was felt immediately. This was a dangerous place.

There was a quiet whirring sound, as something came from the sky towards them. No bigger than a model helicopter, the camera at its front zooming in and then out. It didn't engage, keeping its distance but recording all the same. Sending a signal. Letting the others know that mutants had been found -- a large group of them.

Two Gen-4's in the area turned their focus to the school's grounds, blasting off and flying there before landing on either side of the group, hands out in a defensive gesture. The voices were strange -- robotic, but with an almost human quality to them. Like they'd tried to blend in, but nothing would ever fit just right about it. "Mutants. Stay where you are. We are here to help. We are here to help."

The question of what they were here to help with was left unanswered, as a blast from behind one of them hit its shoulder suddenly, knocking it off-balance, and it turned to deal with the incoming attackers. Teams from the mutant underground, apparently alerted to the newcomers as soon as the Sentinels were. Now it was just a matter of who would actually win. Three more Sentinels landed and moved to engage.

(Open to volunteers, teams on Rapid Response currently, and a few nomads if they're in the area! (Please not everyone, use your own discretion!))

The day after taking a beating was always worse than the few hours following. The pain of it, the aches that his body was feeling, was what woke him up, although the clattering sounds of someone messing around in the bar's kitchen didn't help. Drake had been sleeping on a couch in the back for the last few months, not wanting to stay at someone's place and not wanting to start putting down money on a place of his own. He didn't want to think about why that was. He'd come back here because he'd made a choice to. Because he knew that he needed to stop pretending and get back to his life. DeGroat was running out of patience with his being gone, using his powers as an excuse to stay that way. He was sending people up to remind him of that, and Drake wouldn't let that happen to the people at the school. All they'd done was help him; he wasn't putting more shit in their way to deal with. And this was his problem, anyway. His life, his creation. He didn't like psychobabble. The whole idea that someone could size him up after a few words or gestures was unsettling to him. He didn't think he was all that complicated a person -- hell, he knew he lacked the layers for that -- but he was still one that didn't cotton much to the idea that people that didn't know him might act like they did. Fittingly, he didn't like the idea that he was just a product of his environment, nothing more than the sum of a lifetime's worth of parts that spat out another footsoldier for the Dixie Mafia.

He couldn't help what he was born into. He couldn't help the people that he'd grown up around or what he was told was normal and what wasn't. But he was a grown ass man now, and excuses like that didn't apply still. It was a choice that he was here, now. It was a shitty choice with no good options, but it was still a choice.

He tried to tell himself that it at least wasn't as bad as it had been. DeGroat hadn't taken it well when Drake had refused to go back into the enforcing business, but he was out, at least. But he wasn't out of the family. You didn't get to just leave them that easy. So he was given another job, a much shittier job. He'd done the fights before. Quite a bit in his youth, actually. Bare-knuckled brawls for men to bet on, with almost no rules to speak of. Don't kill the other guy. Keep it above the belt. That was about it though, and even those two things couldn't be counted on every time. Drake was good at it though, and wasn't overly concerned -- until he'd found out the real plan. He wasn't just going in to fight like he used to. His wins were just there to pad the bets for when he took a dive. His stamina was only useful for those times when money was made off of the number of hits he took instead of the number he could avoid.

He knew that it was his father's way of trying to shove him back where he wanted him. Waiting for Drake to give up this idiot idea he had in his head about being better than the jobs he was supposed to do. Go back to them, quit getting whaled on so much. But Drake was stubborn, and he refused to let everything at that school be for nothing. He'd had a glimpse of the other side, and even if he didn't think he'd be able to see it again, he wanted to be worthy of it if it showed. No more hurting, torturing, killing others for their infractions against his father. He could take that pain on himself.

( But Jesus Christ did it hurt the next day. )

[Narrative; closed]

Serving as the off-campus escort should've been a fun way to see the city, but Drake thought it sucked. Not the job, necessarily -- it was money, and it was easy enough work (so far, at least), but New York as a whole? He was Not Impressed. Somehow everyone there seemed to give off a vibe to him that made him want to hit them, which he wouldn't have thought was possible for a city that was supposed to be so diverse, and yet here he was. It almost made him want to have something happen, just for the excuse. But he knew that was just his moodiness getting to him, and his dislike of places that catered so strongly to the urban way of being.

He glanced into the store that the girls had gone into, eyes watching them for a brief moment as they showed shirts to one another, before looking again to the other three that were there (a mother and daughter and the cashier -- still none paying any attention to the Xavierites that were inside). Normal. He flicked the ash off the end of his cigarette, rolling his shoulders a bit. Nothing was out of place, and yet something felt...off. Like there were eyes on them. He didn't like it, but it wasn't worrying enough to go in and tell the girls that they needed to leave.

( Until he spotted the car across the street and a few storefronts down. )

They should never have stepped inside the house. They should never have wandered off. They should never have tagged along to visit this stupid pumpkin patch in the first place. Aaron had only gone because Ms. Tucker had 'encouraged' the FA class to attend. This wasn't how he'd pictured his first week back in school ending.

If they'd just stuck with everyone else, they wouldn't have been in this predicament now. He'd gotten - inevitably - bored by the pumpkins because pumpkins were not inherently interesting things. One of his new classmates, a guy who called himself Q (which was odd but Aaron had friends with names like Pester and Tar so he couldn't judge) had looked about as thrilled by the outing as he was, so they'd wandered off together, somehow finding a moment when neither the chaperones or the security detail were looking their way. Once the group were out of sight, they'd soon happened upon a house. It wasn't in great shape, the screen door banging in the wind, flies buzzing in clouds around the yard, the outer walls a sweaty brown. It was anything but inviting. But the boys needed something to occupy their attention so they decided to take a look inside since there were no signs anyone was home. Maybe there'd be something inside to pilfer. This place didn't look like it contained priceless riches but whatever, it was more intriguing than pumpkins.

Fortuitously, the door had been unlocked. Inside, the house looked... uncared for, to say the least, but Aaron and Q didn't get the chance to poke around much. Instead, they heard sudden movement behind them before everything turned dark, heavy sacks being placed over their heads and strong arms holding them tight. The shot of fear-fueled adrenaline was enough to trigger Aaron's transformation into Slither, his serpentine head pressing against the coarse material, but even in this form he found himself powerless to escape the grip of his assailant as he was dragged down a set of creaking stairs. When the hoods were finally removed, their attackers were somehow nowhere to be seen. They were in a dimly lit room, a basement. Every surface was streaked and stained, grime, blood, urine, worse. One wall proudly boasted an array of implements propped up by rusty nails, each more terrible than the last. All around them, hunks of unidentifiable meat hung from hooks, slices gouged out of them at random. The boys, too, were hanging from the ceiling, though the meat hooks bearing them were mercifully pierced through the backs of their shirts rather than their flesh. Really should have stayed at the school today.

Now, Aaron wriggled on his hook like a maggot, snake eyes wide and alert, involuntary hisses rattling off his flickering forked tongue. "What the fuck?" he breathed, shooting a look at his companion before again trying unsuccessfully to look behind him, to get off this damned hook. "What the fuck?" His arms were flexible in this form, maybe he could reach around behind him and get a grip on his hook, prise himself to freedom. Aaron was working on doing that when a sound made him freeze, eyes swivelling towards the rotting door at the other end of the basement, cloaked in shadows. The sound was coming from behind that door. It was a mechanical noise, a whir, loud and jagged and fearsome. A chainsaw. "...We need to get the fuck out of here, Q. We need to get out of here now."

[ Q, then DRAKE/BEN ]

Kyra was raised in a small southern town, so when the guy she had matched with on the MMatch had suggested that he pick her up for dinner she agreed readily enough. In truth, she was excited about this, it was her very first ever real date! Not a friends date, not hanging out with a group, but a real actual date-date! She’d gotten dressed up with the help (and hindrance) of Kiden and had ended up in a short, fitted black dress with a modestly low v neck, velvet mary jane shoes and the nebula/moon pendant she was never seen without. She’d even smoothed a bit of golden shimmer oil on her skin and through her hair, smelling sweetly of vanilla almond cake and done her makeup, including lipstick this time rather than just her usual eyeliner and mascara. ( In all truth, she felt rather pretty. )

[Open to Drake]

The smoke that escaped Drake's lips seemed tangible enough. He could smell it, he could taste it, he could feel the heat of it passing from his lungs and into the room. But it wasn't setting off any of the fire alarms as it wafted up to them, and no one rushing past seemed to notice or mind. No one seemed to notice or mind him, either, sitting on one of the counters and most likely in the way, while people on the beds were taken care of.

He wasn't sure how he'd gotten here. He remembered fighting, being hurt. He didn't remember coming downstairs, and he didn't remember sitting down and lighting up a cigarette, but here he was, smoking one freely.

"This another zombie thing?" Maybe he'd made another mutant spirit angry and now he was invisible. Seemed about as plausible as goddamned aliens coming out of the sky. He looked over to Kit sitting next to him; like with his own situation, he didn't know when Kit had shown up, or why, or why he knew he could talk to her but not the others milling around. For all of his lack of education, Drake wasn't a stupid man. And it didn't take terribly long to start putting the pieces together to come to another possible conclusion. "....We dead?" He didn't seem particularly bothered by the idea, but his closed-off nature would hardly allow him to show it if he was. This did seem like sort of a boring afterlife though, if they actually had passed on. He'd never been a church-goer really, but he was pretty sure there should've been someone at some pearly gates telling him to kick rocks, at least. Not just watching the goings-on of a mutant school's medlabs while he had a smoke.

He offered the cigarette over to Kit in case she wanted a drag, hoping she had more answers than he did.

(Kit! Backdated a bit, obviously -- sry, you're probably going to be seeing several backdated things from me coming up lmao)

Just a few months ago no one would have expected John Allerdyce of all people to be as proactive as he was being today. When that ship had appeared over the city he had sent out an alert via the burners for everyone to get their shit together if they weren’t already doing so, casting his eyes out the window of the motel room he’d been staying in even as he hit the keys, not really watching what he was typing but managing to spell everything correctly anyway. The phone was shoved deep into his pocket after that even as he moved for the nightstand and retrieved his gear from it, already on his way out of the room even as he donned and secured it. Everyone else was already on the move, rallying and readying as they started to get underway to their destination.

Xavier’s School for the Gifted was under attack and this was what they had been preparing for. This was why so many of them had left and grouped together on the outside so that they could be ready when this moment came. None of them had known exactly what would happen but they had known something was coming and there it was, dark and dangerous and otherworldly, a black shape in the sky blocking out the sun, full to the brim with enemies that wanted God only knew what but John and the others sure as shit weren’t going to let them get whatever they’d come here for. This was all connected, whoever these assholes were they had something to do with their people going missing, John could feel it with a concrete certainty and as he looked at the faces of those with him -- Betsy, Rhett, Emerson, Pete, Prince, Danny, all the rest -- he knew that they felt it too.

It took them next to no time at all to get back to the school, they hadn’t left anything to chance in their planning and training and preparations and even though the mansion and its grounds were already under attack by the time they got there they still had time to make a difference. When they reached the gates Rhett was already transformed into the perfect motorised battering ram, engines revving and tyres squealing as he smashed headlong into the gates and sent them screeching and crashing inward explosively. John almost laughed, he couldn’t help himself, gripping the dash in front of him with Betsy and Pete occupying the forwardmost seat alongside him, the former’s hands on the steering wheel but not actually doing any of the driving. Everyone else was in the back, jostling and bouncing around but ready to spill out as soon as the armoured vehicle skidded to a suitably dramatic halt on the lawn, smashing a few of the invading aliens -- fucking aliens -- out of the way as the back end swung around, sending a shower of gravel arching through the air and onto the lawn.

John had already popped the passenger door open and was jumping clear, with a deft flick of his wrist one of the lighters strapped there flared into life and he sent a blazing hot streak of flame ahead of him where a trio of the green-skinned bastards were harassing a group of students close to the main entrance. They hadn’t seen it coming, they shrieked and roared as they flailed and the kids went bolting into the mansion, presumably heading for the Danger Room.

The back of the armoured vehicle dropped open and the rest of the outcasts came pouring out. Time to kick some alien ass.

[ OPEN TO ALL ]
THE FIGHTING CONTINUES

The med bay was busy as ever, although they were doing their best to keep only those needing treatment and one visitor each if they were capable of having that. Everyone else had to wait outside of the medbay itself, enforced strictly by Nev. Even healers weren't welcome at the moment, while everything was sorted through.

Those that had been bit were, ironically, some of the best off. When they came back to their normal forms the only injuries that needed bandaging were the bites that had turned them. It was in the lab's best interest to patch them up and send them on their way so that they didn't have to sit and stare at the carnage they had wrought upon their friends and colleagues.

The teams were making the rounds through and around the school, looking for more people in need of help, and trying to clean up and return the non-local bodies that they found. At least the sun was rising -- that was something, wasn't it?

(Open! People needing treatment or seeing loved ones feel free to tag in here <3. Time is un-paused, now! The school is running on generators but will be back to full power/comfortable AC and the rest by tonight)

This was stupid. He knew that he should appreciate Kit wanting to stick up for him and find some other way to end all of this, but letting all of these innocent people get hurt or killed while they figured something out was just wrong. And it was why Drake had left his old life anyway, too many innocent people getting hurt because of him, one way or another. He'd never slashed a little girl's throat, but he might as well have if he'd killed the people around her and left her to fend for herself in the world. He wasn't mad at the assertion that he was a bad man or that he needed to pay, just that they were going after Kit and the rest to make it happen.

He should've left weeks ago. He had everything in order too, but the things haunting him -- literally, it would seem -- had made him stay, vaguely hoping that they could be fixed instead of going with him wherever he went. And now here he was, with everything coming home to roost.

He knew that Kit wanted to help somehow, but he also knew she wouldn't give a second thought to getting hurt or worse for her family or friends. She didn't owe him that. And after all she'd done, he did owe her. Which was why he slipped out during the discussion, noticing that the things in the halls didn't bother him as he went by, making way for him to get out to the back lawn. There was a girl there, near the woods, glowing a greenish-red and she was where he went.

The ghost was in DG's ear and in her mind and in her body, controlling her motions. He'd been a mutant in life, and apparently whatever his powers were before gave him license to overpower and possess even someone that should've been able to brush away a ghost quite easily. She held a hand out and demanded the knives, and he passed over what he had on himself easily. The feel of something spectral grabbing at his arms took him by surprise and he struggled for a moment, but then his attention was caught again by the red-eyed girl coming close. The voice that spoke didn't belong to her, though. It was familiar to Drake, belonging to one of the last men that he'd killed before coming here. A low-life, a trafficker making quite a bit of money off the children he funnelled through to various places. Drake had been there to kill an associate that had done DeGroat wrong, but when he saw his opportunity to get rid of this human stain, how could he not?

"I'm taking you with me, Cody. You and your whole goddamned family." The knife DG held had started to glow a blueish tone and he barely had time to wonder what that meant before it plunged into his abdomen. Almost instantly, he could feel the injury pulling at him, like it wanted to drag something inside of him out. He grit his teeth and bit back a shout as another searing pain went through his side. Near them, a darkness had started to appear, deeper and thicker than the night's sky already was. He didn't like the looks of it, and he had a feeling it was where he was headed.

The magic users that were left had convened in the Danger Room, each sitting in the middle of a circle of four volunteers holding hands. Raising energy that the magic user could funnel for two purposes -- to hide Kit and Gio as they made their way outside, and to begin to disorient and loosen the spirits that were present already, to make them more easily peeled away by Kit, and more easily fought by those that were still trying to stay safe within the school.

(Open! With Gio's help (and the help of the magic coming from the DR!), Kit is going to be exorcising the thing out of DG and sending all the violent ghosts away. Feel free to keep tagging fights in here, people needing help, etc! There will be a recovery thread up shortly!)

The carnage, the panic, the fear. All of the negative emotions flooding throughout the school only fueled the ghosts further, making the apparitions more clear and their attempts at gaining corporeal form stronger. They moved throughout the grounds, watching as the undead and the possessed did their work, and themselves took to appearing in sudden and terrifying ways to those trying to run, or those that were already safe in the Danger Room. The few times that a skeletal hand did become real and make contact, tearing at hair or skin, the Danger Room itself became suddenly active, sims appearing to fight the ghosts away from the students and others seeking shelter.

The one that had started it changed his form, shifting down to the ghostly visage of a five year old girl, her throat slashed, still holding onto a teddy bear. This was how he appeared in the Danger Room, moving to a girl with a phone in her hands. Help me. It was spoken out loud and in Priya's head. You have to stop the bad man that did this. If you give Mr. Cody to us then we can finally rest.

He didn't stick around for questions, disappearing and moving back through the mansion, enjoying the fighting going on in the different areas, the destruction they were raining down on themselves. As soon as these people gave up Drake, he could drag him into hell himself. And his cousin, for good measure. And everyone that the man had ever spoken to. And then enjoy the finale that these reanimated creatures were building to.

He'd enjoyed evil in life well enough, but evil in death, as it turned out, was even more fun.

(Open! Please tag below the appropriate header <3!)

Unlike a number of others at the school, Drake didn't actually mind the dark. He didn't wander around looking for blacked-out corners to skulk in, but in his lifetime he'd gotten fairly used to sleeping for a lot of the day and conducting most of his business at night. It just felt more natural to be out and about then, even if right now it meant that he was on his own for a lot of it. Normally that would've been fine too, but there had been….strange things happening, he felt like. Feeling like someone was watching him. The hair on the back of his neck standing up. Something falling over when there wasn't anyone else in the room. All byproducts of living in a mutant school, he knew, but it was still hard to shake that feeling from being a kid and sure that there was actually some kind of nameless monster around.

Which one would think would only serve to make the darkness all the more ominous, but not for Drake. In his mind, the dark provided him as much cover as it did whatever might be out there. It was easier to hide than in the daylight.

Not that he was doing much in the way of hiding at the moment. He was just having another cigarette, the glowing embers lighting up red and casting a small glow from where he stood near whatever tree this was. He wasn't out by the woodlines -- he'd seen things moving around out there and didn't really have any desire to go poking around to see what was living out there at night -- but he was near to some small grouping that was likely there for decoration, to go with the fire pit and everything else in this part of the grounds.

His head turned as he noticed someone coming in his direction; at first sight he thought it was a child, given the height. A kid wouldn't be out here at this time of night though, right? ….Maybe they were evil.

(Open to Kyra!)