wasteyard | Bub FM: first broadcast

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Bub FM: first broadcast

WHO: Logan & anyone who hears his dulcet tones
WHAT: broadcast
WHERE: a snowed-in shack with a bunch of radios in it and wherever the heck you are
WHEN: during the event, probably before he's actually reached the labyrinth

[ There's a squirt of static and a second or two of some warbling jazz music, then Logan fades in, already halfway through a word. ]

-- one out there? Goddamn thing's probably broken. [ A thud, like someone just hit something with their fist. ] Hello? Am I alone here? Anyone still alive in this fuckin' blizzard? Ruth -- you out there, kid?

[ Those with decent hearing or a particularly good connection might catch the sound of someone taking a drink from a glass bottle. ]

I swear, if this is another goddamn.. Arcade thing, or Apocalypse, or Mastermind or Sinister or any of you freaks, I'm gonna come find you and stick my claws down your goddamn throat and keep goin' until I reach the ground. I'm done havin' my mind messed with. I'll cut my way outta here if I have to.

[ There's a crashing noise like someone just knocked a whole bunch of stuff over; then, more distantly, as if he's moved away from the mic and accompanied by more sloshing noises: ]

Least I can.. get drunk here..

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I don't need a goddamn fire, kid! There ain't nothin' here that can help me!

You walk around in fucking spandex! You need a goddamn fire!

[Yeah, she's... she's definitely imitating his accent for a second there.]

It's not fuckin' spandex. [ It's a spandex-unstable molecules blend, Ellie. ]

I ain't makin' a fire. Besides, I'm pretty sure this place is dry enough that if I start one I'm gonna burn down this whole block.

Whatever! It'sn ot made for this kinda fucking snow. If you're not gonna take care of yourself, I'm gonna find your ass, shithead!

[ That gets her a sort of growly laugh. ] I ain't gonna stop you if you want to try, kid.

Good, 'cause you couldn't!

[And. It takes. A while. But eventually Logan man hear the sound of an... explosion. Look the shadow monsters are still a problem and Ellie's got bombs.]

[If he looks out the window, he'll see her wrapped up in the best winter clothing she could salvage (torn and worn as it is), lighting another molotov cocktail.]

[ He's through one bottle and working on a second by the time she arrives in all of her explodey glory. At the first thump-boom he almost falls back off his chair, but half-staggers up to his feet and goes to the window. ]

Goddamnit!

[ He shoulders the door of the office open, throwing out a spray of snow, and wades out towards Ellie and the cluster of shadow monsters. ]

Fuck you!

[Another explosion. Ellie lights another molotov, though she's running low fast. That said, she's crafty; she rolls directly into a snow drift for cover, and the shadows chitter, confused at where their prey has gone.]

[ Logan, huffing and growling his way through the drifts, admires her form. It's a good trick, distracting them before diving for cover, especially when you have backup to get their attent --

Oh. ]

Shit.

[ Logan pops both sets of claws as the shadows turn to look at him, some growing humped and clawed in response as they dart across the snow. ]

Ellie watches Logan, and moves to support. This is shit she's good for, more than. She's used to fighting alongside someone bigger and tougher than her, but being quicker and easier to forget. And Logan's doing a helluva job making himself a target.

She moves a little in the snowdrift, as not to give away her position, though every movement makes her shiver. It takes effort not to let her teeth chatter.

She throws a nailbomb next, a little tin can with sharp points of metal sticking out of it. It bounces off a shadow, confusing it, before exploding into bits of shrapnel. And Ellie, for her part, is back hidden in the snow, moving quickly and quietly and ignoring how numb her toes are going.

The shadows move fast, flowing over the crust of snow and ice. Logan has just enough time to push out a breath and to wonder how much impact his claws will actually have on these goddamn creatures before they're on him.

He expects to feel it -- maybe some coldness, maybe some kind of psychic feedback; these kinds of ghouls don't always go down easy. He doesn't expect it to hurt.

It does.

Teeth and claws lash at his skin, shredding through his uniform; grinning with Creed's smile, the proud tilt of Daken's head, as they rise above him. He throws them away, snarling, but they don't stay back for long. His claws slide through the empty air, grating through something as they pass through one shadow's chest. Another climbs onto his shoulders, sinking needle-sharp fangs into his neck. He pulls it off with a roar and throws it into a snow bank.

He hears the crack of an explosion and feels shreds of metal punch into the side of his face, blood stinging his eyes and running into his mouth. It was another bomb; he can smell Ellie, can hear her footsteps and her quick quiet breaths as she moves around the pack. Angling to pick them off from the sides as he keeps their attention.

Smart girl.

So make it count, Logan.

Her support gives him a spark of resolve, lighting up the whiskey-soaked shreds of his strength. He shakes blood out of his hair; shows the hissing shadows a double fistful of claws.

"Come on!"

She can see, through the haze of the blizzard, that the shrapnel of her bomb hit him. Guilt and revulsion wash over her. The ingredients for Molotov cocktails are harder to come by than the crap for nailbombs, but if that's what it takes...

She lights another with shivering hands, deeply grateful she found a lighter, deeply unsure how much juice is left in it. But it does enough, lighting the alcohol-soaked rag, and then she just has to throw it and not miss.

Luckily, her aim's pretty fucking great after all this shit. It falls between the feet of the creature Logan's wrestling with, just as another falls directly on a shadow prowling toward him. Both soon have flames licking up their sides, and the creatures make animal-human sounds Ellie's never before heard.

She moves quickly, dipping behind a dilapidated fence, peering through the holes.

Another shadow darts in, bristling like a porcupine, slicing impossible knives across his palms and stabbing into his belly, Deathstrike's elongated fingers sinking into him. The agony that blooms inside him is strangely cold; he grits his teeth around it and reaches out with both hands to wrench the shadow-creature's head back, feeling something snap inside its body.

Redness blurs the edges of his vision; rage is rising up in his gut. He's been fighting the animal inside for days, maybe weeks, in this place. But he can't let it out here. Can't risk hurting Ellie. So he ignores it, though it costs him.

The beserk doesn't feel pain. He does.

He smells the Molotov before he sees it, the harsh scent of alcohol and fire whistling through the air before exploding at the shadow's feet. Logan's more than pleased to find out the spooky bastards are flammable. He kicks the one that's already burning in the chest, pulling its claws out of his body and sending it staggering back even as it screams and crumples. Another falls, shrieking as it burns.

Logan spits blood onto the snow and raises his head.

The shadows are wary now, hanging back, chittering and clicking. One on the very edges of the fight seems to see something and breaks off, heading for a nearby fence -- where Ellie is hiding.

"Kid!" Logan barks out, charging across the snow to intercept it. But the shadows are fast, so fast.

Ellie screams. It's not a scream of fear. It's the angry screech you let out when you attack something with all you have, even though you know it isn't much. She jumps on the back of the nearest shadow with the intention of shoving her knife into its throat, only to be town off and thrown into the snow; she's left shivering from the incredible cold of the creature, and the pile of snow she's sinking into isn't helping.

Logan chokes out a curse as he sees Ellie leap from her cover onto the shadow arrowing for her. Running through thigh-deep snow isn't easy but he manages it, hauling against the ache and burn of his muscles and the wounds in his gut and shoulders.

He reaches the shadow as it swings back after throwing Ellie off. His claws are there to meet it, slicing it down the middle into two shivering halves, which seem to melt away into the air.

The rest of the shadows are gathering on his heels, clicking and screeching, so he doesn't waste any more time. Pulling in his claws he scoops Ellie up, ignoring whatever resistance she wants to give at being picked up like a sack of grain and held in his arms against his chest as he starts running for the nearest building.

Ellie ends up being carried, and there's a faint sense of deja vu she can't place as she shivers in a grown man's arms. The part of her that wants to be independent, self-reliant, taking nothing from nobody, falls away to the animal instinct to surive. She curls into every bit of warmth she can get while her teeth chatter.

So, no resistance. The icy cold of the shadows-- it felt like dying. She's been closer, but she can't remember it so well as something that just happened.

The fact that she doesn't so much as curse in his ear as he hauls her through the snow gives Logan a cause for concern. That she's hurt enough or scared enough to be down to the shreds of instinct, just trying to survive to the next minute -- it's not good.

Logan forces himself to go faster, ducking away from the swipes of the shadows on his heels. Snow sprays up around his thighs as he forges through the deep drifts, then into the shadow of what looks like a parking lot. The ice left behind from the receding flood water makes the going slippery, so he tightens his hold on Ellie and lopes across the concrete to the door of some sort of security office, kicking it open and skidding inside into what turns out to be a warehouse full of snow-dusted mannequins.

He glances back to see the shadows standing at the edge of the lot, buzzing and chattering in frustration, before turning and setting Ellie down on the floor.

"Damn it, kid," he growls, pulling off his hoodie and wrapping it around her shoulders, not taking any excuses about her not needing it this time, "stay with me."

Ellie just curls up under the hoodie, shivering with her whole body. Through chattering teeth, she manages a very weak, "fuck you."

It's mostly to let Logan know she's not dying. She's pretty sure she's not dying. She might die, but she doesn't feel like she's going to pass out from cold anymore. She just wishes she could feel her hands and feet and nose and...

Logan grins at that, though it's mostly just showing his teeth and the humor doesn't reach his eyes.

"Yeah, fuck you too, kid."

He tucks the hoodie closer around her, then stands and stalks across the room, moving quickly and efficiently. There are a few old wood pallets, gone dry and crumbling with age. He pulls them apart, ignoring the splinters that dig into his palms, and dumps the pieces in front of Ellie.

"OK," he mutters, "let's see if this still works."

He lets out a single claw and stabs it into the pile of rotten wood. Then it's just a matter of -- not quite thinking, a similar instinctive push to the one that unsheathes his claws, except more like letting go. Raising the bar on a gate, or lifting a stone so a dammed river can run free.

Slowly, the metal of his claw begins to glow, first dull red and then growing, shifting through orange and towards bright yellow-white. It hurts more than it usually does -- and it usually hurts pretty bad -- and Logan feels an almost physical drain, like someone's opened up one of his arteries and he's bleeding out on the floor, so he has to catch himself on the floor to stop himself falling over. But he grits his teeth and lets it come, until the wood begins to smoke and finally catches in bright flickering flame.

Ellie is still shivering, wrapped up and eyes closed; she only notices when she hears the flickering of flame and the smell of burning. She shuffles toward it like human larvae. She shivers for a long time, but the fire grows, and so does the warmth surrounding it. Who knows how long it's been by the time she can stand to open her eyes.

"Thanks for saving my life again," she murmurs. "I think we're even for the beer."

Logan spends the time waiting for Ellie to warm up fetching more wood and stacking it nearby, ignoring the silent stares of the faceless mannequins and the itching feeling of being watched by the shadows. His breath smokes in front of him and he feels the cold in his joints and the places where his body is still healing. He ignores it, for the most part. He can take it.

By the time Ellie is able to open her eyes and speak he's back beside the fire, feeding it with splinters of what probably was once a nice office chair.

He grunts at her thanks.

"I wasn't gonna leave you out there in the snow, kid." He prods the embers, then glances over at her, masking concern with a wry smile. "At least you got me to make a fuckin' fire, huh?"

Ellie doesn't answer the first statement. Plenty of people would have left her to die; she knows that real fucking well. Logan is kinder than he's aware of. Must be nice.

She does let out a shivering laugh at the fire, though. "Guess I did. You're fuckin' welcome." Her grin is tired, but she tries for sly.

Logan shows his teeth in a grin at that and tosses the stick he's been stirring the ashes with into the flames. The movement opens the tear across the side of his costume. He scowls at it, shifting to examine how long the rip is. The skin underneath has healed, of course, but blood stains the edges of the raggedly torn fabric.

"Hey, tell me about how you made those nail bombs," he says, mostly to keep her talking. As long as she's talking she's not sleeping, which is where the danger is. And also because he's genuinely curious. "Don't think I've seen any explosives around here."

"Huh?" Ellie was, admittedly, drifting off. She's stopped shivering, but she's still cold, and looking at Logan and his rapidly tattered clothing. It reminds her of something, but she can't put her finger on it.

"Oh. The bombs? You just find some fertilizer and some other crap," she says. "Stuff that'll explode. Put nails and crap inside. Y'know..." Her eyes drift closed again.

Edited (GAME OF THE YEAR) 2019-07-17 19:16 (UTC)

Logan frowns at Ellie across the flames. Damn it, this is no place for her to be getting hypothermia.

"Yeah? And where the hell did you find fertilizer?"

He stands up as he talks, walking around the fire until he can drop down onto the concrete beside her, as if just taking his normal place at her side. Maybe he's a little closer than usual, but maybe that's just how it is.

"You got any food in that pack of yours?"

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Bub FM: first broadcast

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im switching to prose bc im deeply lazy y/n.

lol same

hi5.

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