Light of May ::: an original roleplay

Who: Kat and Otter
When: Awhile after the explosion
Where: One side of the Broadway Bridge

Kat didn't think that she was ever going to be able to stop crying. She hadn't ever seen anyone die before and today she'd seen so many bodies scattered around, not moving even a little bit, that it couldn't mean anything but that they were dead. Horribly dead. Finally dead. The sort of dead that there wasn't any coming back from. This wasn't vampire dead or movie dead, this was really dead and Kat's mind wasn't processing it right. Her mind just wasn't programmed to deal with death on any sort of scale. And the worst part, the absolute worst part, was that she knew other people who'd been at the march. What if one of those people who'd she only met at school was one of the ones lying dead in a pool of their own blood just because they'd come out to this? Or what if something had happened to one of her siblings because this was right up their alley? I knew that I should've stayed with them. I shouldn't have left them. I don't know what's going on! And she couldn't even text any of them because her phone was ten different kinds of busted thanks to the fall she had taken. While others had gone into the river, she'd been knocked forward off the bridge and the fall, though it hadn't really hurt her more than some falls she'd taken while blading, had broken her phone. Otter's wasn't working either. At least Otter was mostly okay.

Speaking of Otter... Kat pushed off the building wall and walked over to where the dark-haired boy was sitting on the ground. She crouched down next to him and, without asking if it was okay, leaned against his side so that she could bury her face in his shoulder. He wasn't her brother or sister or anyone that she really wanted right then, but he was the guy that she'd come with and she needed someone. "My phone isn't working," she told him through her sniffles. "Is yours?" They both had family members somewhere at this thing and needed to find them. It was beyond necessary. Though knowing her sister, Kat was pretty sure that she'd be one of the peoples in the ambulance helping everyone in sight. She was pretty sure that she'd seen Cole's hair too, but she hadn't seen it since everything had knocked her onto her side. The only face she recognized that she'd seen since then was Otter's. "I don't know what to do..." What to think, what to say... nothing made sense and she just kept seeing bloody faces with vacant eyes and burned skin or missing pieces... and she was pretty sure that that was a leg over there, but it wasn't attached to anything else.

Who: Jack, Gretel/Penny and Ava
Where: The park
When: After dark

At around the time his mother came 'home' Jack decided it was impossible to stay there anymore. The way she talked about "you freaks" and how "you should all have died anyway", coupled with the fact that he was now certain that he had somehow felt this was going to happen but didn't do anything to stop it - and couldn't have, because he didn't know for sure if anything was going to happen, let alone what it was - had done a number in his already depressive mind. He had thrown his ramen in his mother's direction and left, knowing fully well there would be hell to pay when he returned. Maybe this was the time he wouldn't be able to take anymore and finally kill her or, with a bit of luck, maybe he would never come back home in the first place.

He was shaking as he walked, and by the time he got to the Scarlet Oak park Jack could no longer walk properly anymore, so he sat down on a bench in the dark, trembling. There was a broken bottle nearby, and without thinking Jack managed to get a smaller piece of the glass, which he observed for a while. Then, he pulled his sleeve up and slashed away at his arm. He wasn't sure whether he was harming himself not to harm anyone else - namely, his mother - or if he was punishing himself for being useless, so utterly useless that he had felt a catastrophe was about to happen but couldn't do anything to stop it.

Either way the pain felt good, made him feel better and made his heartbeat slow down little by little. It was a good thing that the only light was coming from a streetlamp across the pathway, since the one near the bench wasn't working. Jack preferred to break down like this in the dark, if he had to do it in public. Beyond the guilt were the harsh words his mother had told him, hammering at his head like so many instances before. He should have been there, he was a freak and he should have died, she would have been better off without him. Jack still didn't understand why (or how) she had paid for his medical expenses when he had had 'the accident', if she wanted him dead so much.

Then he began to wonder... if he had known, really known what was going to happen, would he have stopped it or gone to the march, stood at one of the most dangerous spots and hope to die with the rest of them?

WHO | Drina and Marco
WHERE | Anywhere But Here
WHEN | Evening

( and i can see the ground far below )

Who: Open to all Elias's
Where: Elias home
When: Afternoon

( But until then - come home. )

Who: Aiden, Quinn and open, why not?
Where: The remnants of the Broadway Bridge
When: After 11:37am

( And fire in the sky )

Who: James and OPEN! One or many! (expect a lot of these from me, I’ve got a lot of characters to cover -_-)
Where: Partytown USA riverbank below what was once the Broadway bridge
When: Noonish

One minute James had been walking with Aiden at her side, and then she had blinked. Just fucking blinked. When she opened her eyes, she was in an awkward position on her side, and the world was one of pain. For one terrible second she thought she was back in that horrible place, chained up in some closet, but the pain was enough to center her in the here and now. She felt like she was in a bath tub filled to the brim with cold water and broken glass. Groaning, she managed to roll onto her back. She was looking up at… well, she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. It was like something out of a movie. It took her several moments to determine that she was looking up at what had once been part of a bridge. It looked like Godzilla had karate chopped it in half. This thought was weird enough to bring about a bit more awareness.

Awareness was one thing, but she was still not precisely coherent as she tried to sit up. She realized that she was sitting half in the river, and half on the rocky shore. When she tried to move her left arm, she hissed in pain. She gingerly pushed herself up using her right arm, and assessed the damage. Her left wrist was looking particularly mangled, and her arm was most definitely dislocated. She had landed on it. When? How had that happened? She’d had trouble with her shoulders ever since the abduction, and was no stranger to having to pop them back into place. She did this now without thinking, and let out a dreadful scream at the white hot flash of pain. It was enough to knock her down to her back again. Everything hurt. She hurt so bad she didn’t want to breathe. This fresh batch of pain brought her round a little more. Other people were screaming. The air was full of dust and smoke, so thick it felt like she was choking on it. Looking down at herself, she was covered in dust and blood. The words William Ballard House: Proud Sponsor of Preternaturals for Peace could still be made out on her tattered T-shirt.

That did it. Something bad had happened – whether the bridge had collapsed or had been blown up, or any other host of ideas, she wasn’t exactly sure. And it didn’t really matter. Something bad had happened, and Aiden had been walking next to her when it happened. She scrambled clumsily to her feet, the world spinning around her as she did. Her head was pounding, and she felt like she might fall right back down. She looked around for any sign of Aiden, but didn’t see him. She screamed again. “Aiden! Where are you?!”

Who: Eloisa, Valya and an unfortunate NPC
Where: Valya's home
When: Late afternoon
Warning: Vampire feeding

( Eloisa was in a splendid mood. )

Who: Renee, Charlene and Vivianna
Where: The park
When: At night

Renee had been doing a little therapeutic shopping when the news of what was happening in Ann Arbor broke. She was informed by an employee coming from the break-room of the shoe store she had been in while paying for a beautiful pair of ankle boots - which she was wearing right now. Somehow from that morning to tonight, the concept of having enough time to wear them later seemed to not ring true anymore.

While she made sure her brother was alright as soon as she managed to put her credit card back in her purse and run the hell out of the store the event in itself still hit Renee a lot more than she would have expected. Especially because she spent the rest of the day thinking about it while watching it unfold on the news. With the knowledge that the same thing had happened on other Preternaturals for Peace marches across the globe, Renee was now pretty sure that this was a very well planned act of terrorism against all people who somehow counted as non-"pure" humans and those who supported them.

Herself included, if she had been there. And her brother, too. It was a sobering thought, and that was why Renee, without knowing Scarlet Oak as well as one should when one decided to do what she was doing right now, had finally broken down and gone to the nearest open liquor store in town, bought herself a bottle of scotch - the best and oldest, by the way - and was now downing it while sitting on a bench in the park. Nobody knew her here, why bother trying to maintain her composure? If ever there was a time to lose it, now was it.

Who: Holly and Zeke
Where: The street preceding the Broadway Bridge
When: From 11:37am onward

( Things keep blowing the hell up )

Who: Jameson and Hannah
When: 11:37 and on
Where: The pile of rubble formerly known as a Broadway bridge

( Trauma. )

Who: Telyn, Jonas and Selena
Where: Site of epic shenanigans (aka the bridge)
When: Shortly after the bombing
What: Everyone has a job to do. Telyn just doesn't realize who everyone is just yet.

( You're all by yourself but you're not alone )

Who: Bea, Simon and Marco (Plus an unfortunate explosion victim, NPC'd)
Where: close to the danger zone!the Broadway Bridge//Huron river
When: 11:37 and onward

( You made that bed you're laying on, deeds that you have done, now you can't undo )

Who: Frankie and Faith
When: 11:37 and on
Where: Broadway Bridge, Ann Arbor and in the Huron River
Note: >.> Frankie's language, it's pretty spicy

( Preternaturals For Peace, sounds kind of hokey if you ask me. )

Who: Halne and Vivianna
Where: inside Halne’s dream to start with
When: midday, when vampires sleep
Warning: NSFW

( I can't forget you, been going crazy from the moment I met you. )

Who: Troy, Tessa and Frances
Where: down the street from the Broadway Bridge
When: Just before 11:37, and then onward

( A scream or a cry, the truth or a lie, I'm not sure they will save us this time. )

Who: Daisy and Rina
Where: Broadway Bridge, Ann Arbor
When: 11:37 and on

( It never occured to her to stop and ask what exactly she was apart of. )

Who: Elizaveta, Liliya and Lux
Where: Near the Broadway Bridge
When: Sometime after the explosion

( Did vampires need tourniquets? )

Who: Niamh and Cole and open to any mermaid/man who wants to come play
Where: The Broadway Bridge/the Huron River
When: Shortly after 11:37am

( You just keep me hanging on )

Who: Winifred and Isaiah
Where: Broadway Bridge, briefly, then the Huron river
When: 11:37 and on

( They can't take you out of my thoughts )

Who: Bunny, Luke, and open to anyone who wants to join in on the trauma
Where: the wrong place THE DANGER ZONE
When: the wrong time 11:37 and on

Bunny’s head felt funny. Everything was dark, and she had opened her eyes, but if her eyes were seeing things they weren’t registering yet. She wasn’t sure where she was. It was a dark place, sure, but maybe not such a bad place. She didn’t feel much of anything. She just felt… funny. Groggy. Like she was having a hard time coming out of a nap. She’d felt kind of like this at the hospital, after—

Those memories triggered something in Bunny, and suddenly she was afraid. She was lying on her back in the middle of the road. Blood was everywhere. She could taste it in her mouth. She would be naked. If she turned her head just the slightest, she would see Lily Flores’ abandoned car. Not far from that would be the man she had just killed.

Her throat felt very hot. Her heart began to pound, and she tried to turn her head. But she couldn’t. She tried to sit up, or even stand, but she couldn’t. Something was pinning her down.

Slowly, Bunny realized she wasn’t on that road in Saginaw. She was in Ann Arbor. She’d been walking with friends, in the peace march. And then… this.

She could smell death. She wondered, Did I do that? but couldn’t remember killing anyone today. There had just been a big BOOM and then… lights out. Bunny tried to move again. She couldn’t. She was starting to feel very warm. Not the sort of warm one felt after walking around in the hot sun for two hours. This was a liquid warmth, a warmth from the inside when something with your body was so very, very wrong. She tried to move her head again, but couldn’t. She lifted her hands, and saw that her right arm was covered in blood. That would be the warmth. Her blood?

She was pinned. That was the problem. She just had to find what was pinning her down, move it, and get up. She could see shards of what had once been a large pole in the air. She settled one hand around that and tried to figure out how this could be keeping her down. She brought her hand down the length of it, and froze. Her hand had found the end, but… her brain couldn’t comprehend what her hand knew. It was against her right shoulder. No, no, that was wrong. It was going through her right shoulder. It was close to her throat.

Suddenly, Bunny was thinking of a Family Guy episode she’d seen once. Stewey had a shard of glass sticking out of his forehead and he ran around the room screaming, ’Do I take it out or leave it in? Take it out or leave it in?!’ Why was she thinking that? She was also remembering the chick in Signs who died when the cars were moved. “I am not thinking this shit,” she managed to force out. “I’m not. Oh, God. What the fuck. What the shit. What do I do? HELP!”