Who: Gale & Revy What: Finding each other while looking for others, and teaming up against Gale's literal nightmare When: Today Where: Somewhere out there, in the foggy maze Rating/Warnings: Language, monster guts Status: Complete!
Dismal, that was a good word for it. Completely fucking dismal, and straight out of what you’d expect to find in some gothic Victorian horror movie. Very little daylight, you couldn’t see people outdoors from your windows, any barely there dingy-yellow illumination that happened to peek through wasn’t very visible - it was also prime time for criminals to come out and play. Especially since they could easily, in theory, evade detection by darting back into the fog once their business was done.
Assuming they could even find their business in this fog.
Gale was out there, of course. Even though news advisories blasted warnings about staying inside, he and Leliana made the decision to traverse the area, looking for civilians who needed help. That was what they tended to do in times of crisis, what Gale was determined to do anyway - all that tension in knotted muscles and stubbornness etched in eyes the color of soot, same as this weather nuisance; crises were frequent in Orange County no matter what, so to do his part wasn’t a big deal. The bow and quiver of explosive arrows were his weapons of choice, and he was also armed with his sidearm pistol and extra ammo - but the only thing was, he and Leliana had gotten separated some time into the ‘mission,’ and he wasn’t quite going to panic but he’d settle for worrying a little.
Still, he stayed calm, he’d faced worse during desert nights at war. He nocked an arrow and began to feel out a new path, though he couldn’t tell shit about where he was. The OC didn’t even look like the OC, from what he could make out - but sinister fog wasn’t going to be his cause of death. Not today, Satan.
Fuck this, fuck that, fuck everything. A mantra of complete and utter hate for this rotting hell of a place, but instead of fire and brimstone it was a chill that hit the bones like stabbing needles and a fog so thick, Revy didn’t know where the even was. Wouldn’t really matter if she was just out shooting every slime-covered blob that was leaving gunk in its way, but she was legitimately on the search for the fucktard whose shit all this belonged to. Henry had talked enough about his dreams - often in great detail - for her to figure out what kind of horsecrap had graced their presence and this was it, this was definitely it.
Not one to sit idle, not one to really give a rat’s ass about what kind of creepy things were going on, she equipped herself with ammo for days and the two pirate inspired firearms. Combat boots, ripped jeans, a black top. Monsters were out there alright, nothing with a lot of strength. Mostly pains in the asses? It didn’t bode well. Something about it felt off to Revy, like there was something worse slinking in the shadows, hidden by the mist that invaded the hotspot known as ‘home.’
Footsteps came ahead. A silhouette of a person. Both hands were armed, cautious - she hadn’t seen a soul since she’d been out, so she’d rightfully be suspicious of the vague outline of someone. “Who the fuck are you?
Gale was armed and ready, but he wasn’t about to blindly go shooting at vague outlines - and when the person spoke, he knew immediately it wasn’t Leliana. The silhouette wasn’t right, for one, and the voice was rough, like she’d gargled with glass, rather than the sugared pearls that reminded him of Leli’s bit of an accent - yeah, those fancy pearls made of sugar that garnished the sweet stuff in glass cases, in French pâtisseries. It was what he’d conjured in his head when he thought of her, even though he’d never even been to Paris.
“My name’s Gale,” he replied into the fog, not lowering the arrow, but that was only because he felt the presence of something skulking on by - like this was going to get a hell of alot worse. It made ‘creepy crawly’ sensations, ice trickling up and down the spine, seem tame in comparison. “I was with someone, but we got separated. How about you?”
He took a step closer, toward where he’d heard her voice. “And it might be better in pairs, for now, in this type of shit.”
Definitely not Leliana. This one had dark hair with a burgundy sort of shine (from boxed hair dye, whatever), toasty olive skin both inked and scarred and dressed in ware that was meant to get bloodied and ripped. A mercenary, through and through, and the man she came face to ace once they passed through the thickness of the fog sure as fuck wasn’t Henry. Too huge, for one thing. Built with muscle, and in a stance that made him look like he knew exactly what the fuck he was doing with that old fashioned weapon. Gale didn’t lower the sharpened shaft, she didn’t lower her dual guns.
“Revy,” she answered, and bit the inside of her cheek. “I’m looking for someone. You’re the first person I’ve actually seen so far.” Which also obviously meant she hadn’t seen whoever he’d been prowling around with. Pairs wasn’t a shit idea, either. All she knew what to expect were monsters, but all she’d shot were blobs that were wastes of life. Nothing awful. Bottom of the food chain sort of thing - the worst was still out there. “I’ll be fucking dandy with the buddy-system if you lower your shit, though. I’ll lower mine. We’re cool?”
“Revy,” Gale repeated. “Sounds familiar.” Must be a network name - there weren’t too many people on there who had similar names, and he was sure he’d heard it tossed about here and there. “But yeah, we’re cool.”
He lowered his arrow, not pointing it at her, but still kept it nocked in the bow in case he needed to raise it up and shoot at something - not to mention cause a big damn explosion, because those tips caused a hell of a blast. Though his main interest was finding Leliana. “Fuckin’ A,” he uttered under his breath, an undignified swear. “I haven’t seen anyone else either though we can look for our missing people together. This is supposed to be downtown Newport Beach, but...”
It looked a little off. As in, something from a Wes Craven film on crack.
Nah, Gale couldn’t be a random civilian - he was taking the trippy weirdness to fucking well. Which was good. Sad to say but she wasn’t about to pair up with a blubbering dumbass who couldn’t handle his own; she didn’t have time to babysit. “It’s a ghost town,” she grumbled, holstering only one of the guns. The other remained in her grip. “I’m looking for the moron this shit belongs to - I’m betting both tits that he’s getting the brunt of this.” Maybe there was something he needed to do to fix what was going on, who the hell knew, she just wanted to make sure his dumb ass wasn’t impaled and dead somewhere.
There was sludge on the ground, the consistency thick, and she crouched down to pass her fingers through it. “Signals are shit, I can’t get any bars for texts or calls, and he’s not home. All I’ve been finding are these - I don’t know, leeches? Kill ‘em in time, they’re harmless. They leave this gunk everywhere. I know there’s more to this, way worse, but…” Revy growled a sigh, frustrated. And, yeah, perfect time for a goddamn cigarette - she pulled out her pack and lighter. “Fuck if I know. Anyway, whose it you're looking for?”
“This actually belongs to someone? Fuck, that’s the shitty end of the dream stick,” Gale whistled. And he thought he had it bad, when he actually was dreaming of sorrow, coal dust, oppression that smelled like the poisonous, rosy stank breath of President Snow, and the Hunger Games. “Guess we definitely better try to find them, yeah.”
He didn’t even ask whether ‘belonging to’ in this case meant dreams versus not dreams. Because fucking duh.
His steps were cautious, careful, as he meandered along with his newfound companion - usually as a hunter, this meant that he was damn near silent anyway, with his velvet-like tread, and also had keen eyesight to see from a distance. But there wasn’t a lot of seeing going on now. Though he did pick up on the cigarette smoke wafting his way - at least it was a good indicator that he wasn’t alone.
“My girlfriend,” he responded. “We were out seeing if anyone needed help - people get stupid when shit hits the fan - and then all of a sudden it was like we were on different planets.” Signals were definitely craptastic too, and speaking of. His cell phone in his pocket was useless but it began crackling with static anyway - almost frantically, like a warning.
It was something straight out of a fucking horror movie, honestly. Monstrous people were one thing, but actual monsters? Fuckin’ creepy. And not many things got under her skin, either. Human nature was usually predictable. A monster’s nature was an entirely different beast; who the hell knew what the tough ones were capable of. Hence the aggravating concern towards her co-worker - Henry had just learned how to shoot a gun properly. He wasn’t a professional. Didn’t have any cool wizard powers to help fend things off like some people she knew. It was a bad, bad feeling brewing in her gut.
“Here’s hoping she can handle herself,” Revy mumbled around her cigarette, the smoke blending in with the fog around him. “Who the fuck knows what’s -”
What a coincidence, her phone also burst with some kind of white noise. That was enough to whip out the other gun, dual equipped - ambidexterity helped fuck up multiple targets if necessary - and her arms shot out, ready to aim and shoot the shit outta something. And also thought it best to keep her back against Gale’s, because making sure both their backs were covered in case of any surprises seemed like a good tactic to stay alive. “Guessing that’s probably not a good sign.”
Shit, at least wait until she smoked her cancer stick. Puffpuff. No fingers needed.
It wasn’t his first rodeo, definitely wasn’t hers, but it was probably the first that dealt with something sinister cutting them off from the people they knew - usually when Orange County had a temper tantrum, there was collective bitching on the network. Now that was a lot more difficult, when laptops and phones only seemed to be able to work when you were at home. Kind of reminded him of that apocalyptic nightmare, except less Biblical end times and more...monster mash.
“Probably not, but I’d rather it come out and stop fucking with - “
The creature lurking in the fog, it had followed them here, hadn’t it? For some reason, the emergence of something that was distinctly not slimy (it had teeth, and claws, was large, oddly-shaped and nightmarish) had him right back there on the battlefield. Like navigating a whole sea of sorrow - he’d seen the statistics, knew he was more likely to come back saddled with PTSD because he met ‘the criteria.’ He’d had a longer deployment time, he’d volunteered for it, his combat exposure was severe thanks to deployment to areas close to the enemy.
He’d killed people. Had seen them killed. He’d watched as others, fellow soldiers, were wounded in ways that they’d never recover from.
And he hadn’t dealt with it, not really. Was assigned a therapist to go to, who helped him get Bella Nutella, technically a service dog. He popped pills here and there, when he needed to sleep. But his psyche was scarred up, it was far from fixed. Seeing whatever this was just a reminder of that, an unwelcome one.
“Over there!” When he shot the arrow, his hands were shaking. It was a miss, then panic began to close in on him - it attacked with a greater ferocity than that monster.
What the - what the everloving fuck was that thing? Revy took a moment to kind of gawk at it, because blobby leech things were faceless and one thing, but this was… this was a monster, the real deal sort of thing, a construct of nightmares and an incarnate of all things that go bump in the night. Where did it come from? Out of fucking nowhere? Was there just a fucking spot in the OC where they were being shat out?
All things to seriously contemplate later, after they routinely fucked it up and killed it dead. Killed it so fucking dead.
“Don’t know if arrows are going to work on this thing,” she scowled, aimed both guns ahead in a linear trajectory and pressed the triggers to shoot. Every recoil from a bullet set off was controlled, the sparks from the muzzle gave color to the mist of silver, and the smell of gunpowder was like taking a whiff of roses - this better do some damage, otherwise she was going to heavily regret not hauling around her grenade launcher. “Do you have something other than -” Tigress eyes briefly glanced over. All she needed to detect that something was off. “You okay?!”
“It’s a - “ Well, rather than explain his arrows, Gale just let them speak for themselves. There was a sudden KA-BOOM, and a bright streak of orange, of fire, in the fog - an explosion of something that the missed arrow hit, and it unfortunately wasn’t helping in terms of keeping him in the moment. Usually Gale didn’t have trouble with the sights and sounds of holidays like the 4th of July and New Years - but here, it took him a second. A second he couldn’t afford to waste.
Though granted, his newfound companion seemed to have things handled pretty well with those guns of hers.
Was he okay? That was the question, wasn’t it. “I’m fine, I’m alright,” he promised, despite the cold wave that washed over him, the harsh breathing, the way he felt like he was choking. His chest hurt, and his heart just about beat itself to a pulp against his ribs, pounding in his ears, as he steeled himself. The times he’d been to therapy, he and his psychologist did these “exposure” exercises - he’d focused on the memories that were stressful until he could move past them. He had just go on and do that.
“I took out a Capitol fighter jet with a couple of these arrows, this monster’s going down too,” he grumbled and while the creature was being pelted with bullets from one side, as it screamed and roared, he nocked another arrow, aimed, and let it fly.
This time it made contact, blowing half of its body off. That also meant gore.
“Capitol what -”
Well, alright. Damn. Explosive arrows weren’t something you saw every day. She squinted and stopped the flying bullets, arms needed to brace herself from the aftermath of the blow out. Both of them at this rate, considering the second try proved to be more productive to their cause. As in making sure that fucking thing was obliterated, and he’d gotten half of it - scorched blood, fire, black smoke in the air.
It was loud, too, made her ears ring and eyes bleary from the smog. Somewhere along the way she’d finally lost that cigarette (damnit!), but she refocused her posture and went on a full-blown sprint and leap towards what was remaining the grotesque fucker. Combat boots landed on it with an unappetizing squish of guts, spraying all around, and what was left of its claws swung and swiped and gashed her arms while she was this close. “You fucker - ow!”
Her goal was to jam the guns mouths into its head, shoot it’s fucking brains out like every survival horror fiction had taught, but even in its damaged state it managed to toss her off in a pained frenzy. Revy’s back hit the ground in a way that definitely wasn’t painless, but it didn’t stop her from firing those pirate-inspired guns like she was raining hell at the thing. “Aim for the head! Aim for the fucking head!”
Gale could hardly believe that the thing was still coming - it was resilient, he’d give it that. Just like he was. Their own sect of what was supposed to be the downtown area now smelled like a warzone - gunpowder, dust and debris, blood and guts - but he’d be damned if this nasty piece of shit was going to live to terrorize another day. The thing reminded him of something put together in the Capitol’s labs - literally, it was like a combination of different types of animals, the cross-breeding that they were so fond of doing to create weapons of war. The Jabberjays, the Mockingjays, the tracker jackers, those lizard things.
The monster now was scaly like a reptile, or it once had been, now it was just slippery and caked in gore - and it also had sharp teeth, not fangs like a snake might. There were oddly tufts of fur too, matted with blood, but he didn’t have time to pick off a sample and study it. “It’s definitely going to lose its head,” he promised, and came at it from behind.
He got what was left of it in a chokehold, since it was down on the ground but still flailing its clawed arm. Then his own gun was shoved into its mouth, trigger pulled - the literal explosion of monster brain matter splattered his rebel army uniform (he had worn it for patrolling, for old times sake) but the horror film monster finally stopped moving.
“Fuck, that was disgusting.”
“What the fuck was that,” Revy panted, still on her back, arms still stretched out with trigger fingers in place in case that thing decided to surprise them by miraculously resurrecting itself. Realistically, the chances were slim - hard for anything to function without a fucking head - but it was hard to apply the term ‘realistically’ to anything in this place, especially with what the hell they’d just gone through.
Their phones were silenced from making that noise, which was...convenient, considering it seemed like an alarm that let them know some kind of twisted night terror had sprung to life. An arm had gashes, angry slices into her skin that oozed blood. It was when the adrenaline quelled that she noticed the unpleasant sting.
Note to self: break into a fucking hospital. Clinics were emptied and boarded up, but chances were there were medical supplies stashed away.
A glance to the mangled, half-exploded corpse and then to the man who finished it off. Well, good. Part of her thought whatever internal freakout he had going on would fuck something up. Up she goes, right back up on her feet with a wince, and after she holstered the guns she rotated the wounded arm. Fuckin’ ow. “You’re good, Gale?”
“I’m good,” Gale nodded, though he had some bumps, bruises, cuts, and road rash as well. “Thanks for your help, Revy. Maybe we should find some bandages and iodine or something?” It was a fucking ghost town out there, everything literally twisted and looking like it was melting - pure nightmare fuel, let’s be honest - but there had to be something.
It was also eerily silent for the moment too, not weird crackling from his phone. He adjusted the quiver of arrows on his back and shouldered his bow, pistol tucked in its holster. May as well go together, now that he’d found another human being out here. He didn’t know how long it’d be until she got swallowed by the fog like how Leliana did, but he would stay as close as possible; maybe they’d get lucky and stumble into a clinic together.
Or not. Since when did anyone get lucky in a horror movie?
Add a little monster gore to the list of things on them, too. “Got a little worried for a second,” she mumbled. Could have been realizing just what the fuck they were up against, which she wasn’t afraid to admit was fucking terrifying. Revy didn’t know about him, but it was her first time going up against something that could literally be classified under the fictional description of ‘monster.’ She could go toe to toe with people, the toughest of brutes, but this was new territory.
“Let’s just hope neither of the people we’re looking for ran into something like that by themselves, yeah?” By herself, no, she didn’t think she could take it on. If she did, there’d be a good chance a limb would have either been ripped off or her intestines were tangled outside her body. “Thank fuck for your ass too, kid.”
Well, alright, he looked kinda young - younger than her, anyway, the ‘kid’ comment had a habit of slipping out.
Running into a monster ripped from your own head, your own nightmares, and not having any backup? That spelled trouble and all sorts of bad news. “I hope not either,” Gale spoke grimly, all the more determined to find Leliana in this hot mess of fog and make sure she was okay; she had her own weapons, and was used to things like Darkspawn, but it was like what he just saw was plucked from his fucking mind - like some mysterious force had weaseled into his stock of personal demons and brought them to the waking world. Of course he didn’t want that for her. “We’ll stick together, like we planned. They’ve gotta be out here somewhere.”
And he was pretty sure that Revy was with him for a good portion of the way; he could sense her presence. But then? Then? It was like he turned around and all of a sudden noticed he was alone.
The fog had gotten her too?
Shit.
Usually a lone wolf, Revy was all about sticking together - and moving in pairs to get the hell away from that thing before seeing monster scavengers become a reality. “Best to just keep walking with our fingers crossed and up our asses for luck,” she grumbled irritably, ugh about the situation in general. And she followed him, half-distracted by inspecting her own wounds, and she had literally glanced from him for two whole seconds before -
It was quiet, not even the sound of footsteps, and no matter what direction she spun to look at, Gale was gone. Revy was alone. Almost made her question whether or not he was a real person or if he was some fucking ghost conjured up by this place, and it made her hackles rise in angry distress, so she did the next best thing.
She lit a cigarette and cursed loud f-bombs into the fog in hopes an actual human being would hear her.