Nathan - Haunted House 2/Log

WARNING

The following scene may contain spoilers regarding the OOC Masq of one or more characters. If you do not wish to know these secrets, or feel there is any danger of mixing IC and OOC information, do not read this log.

The door is stiff and doesn't want to budge at first, popping open in Nathan's hand and warbling on rusty hinges, flecks of ancient Stuff flaking off as it's swung open. Inky blackness fills the basement, the sagging wooden steps dissapearing into the gloom quickly. The dripping sound continues louder, lost somewhere in the darkness.

"This can only end in tears," Joel decides.

Nathan raises his eyesight and grits his teeth. "Fucking dark creepy /basement,/" he mutters, and heads down the stairs. Singing. "Wondrous Love."

Joel heads down the stairs after Nathan, and doesn't sing. But everyone has their specialty, you know? Some of us sing holy music, some of us eat pulsating hallucination food. "What are we even looking for? And what are we gonna do when we find it?"

Nathan pauses for breath in between lines to say cheerfully "Dunno."

"Oh, okay. As long as we're on the same page in our Cunning Plan Guidebook, here," Joel replies, dryly. "I'm gonna go ahead and say that my experience in Making the Unmade is kind of limited here. I wonder what the fuck happened to Damian?"

Nathan says, “Damian's probably sitting outside happily smoking a bowl and convinced we're doing just fucking fine in here.”

Just barely enough wan light from the open doorway allows eyes to adjust a little bit, paranoid undead probably watching for more vicious cutlery. It's no wonder then that Nathan only has a second to realize the step isn't supporting his weight right when suddenly with a crash it gives way altogether. Managing to dive back a little saves Nathan going completely through, only having a leg eaten (figuratively speaking) to about his knee.

Nathan says, “Ah, /fuck/!" Nathan has little qualm about mixing hymnody with vulgarity, especially when an evil house is trying to EAT HIM. He tries to catch himself enough to avoid starting a game of Vampire Dominos with Joel. "Uh... watch the steps.”

"Well, we haven't gotten any deader than we already are," Joel puts a positive spin on things, screeching to a halt as Nathan wrecks the staircase. He winces and adds, "Yet. Jesus, be careful. You okay? Are we at the floor yet?"

Nathan struggles to pull his leg out from the stairs. "There is some nasty fucking shit under this staircase," he says, his voice dropping a little bit in his throat.

"Oh, HELL no," Joel replies, staring at where Nathan's leg disappears through the fragile wood. "What kind of nasty shit? Are you stuck? I'll jump down and help you from the other side." He peers over the edge of the stair rail where he is, apparently assessing the drop and what's below.

Nathan extricates himself eventually. "No, don't. There's-- sharp stuff down there. And it's /cold/, like where that-- ghost or whatever was upstairs. Why's it always gotta be the basement?"

And yes, just yonder is the floor. Cement and dusty, the place is crowded with a family's life time supply of Stuff in moldering boxes on shelves and so on. Fairly well organized, though spilled a bit due to time. There is quite a good deal of broken shit under the stairs, mop handles and part of a crate, etc. Pointy wooden objects galore.

STAKES, YOU MEAN?

<OOC> Joel says, "This is a high stakes RP."
<OOC> Nathan says, "Kill him."
<OOC> Joel :D

Joel seems mollified as Nathan gets free without falling through the stairs, and resists the urge to jump over edges as they can now presumable continue their precarious journey from stairs to floor. "I wonder if there's books in any of these boxes," he murmurs thoughtfully.

Nathan scrambles down carefully. "If there are, you're not taking them home. Because they're all the fucking Necronomicon."

Joel laughs! "Malleus Maleificarum," he agrees. "I think I can pass up a souvenir."

The stairs creak threateningly, but careful work gets them to the floor safely. The place is a maze, but goes generally back towards the front of the house.

Nathan laughs too, because sometimes you have to. "Good to know even you have limits. This house sucks." He threads his way carefully through the basement, keeping an eye out for... anything weird.

"It's an evil fucking house," Joel agrees, with a shudder, as he picks his way around stacks of boxes. He's not really trying to get to the front of the house, or even necessarily follow the same path as Nathan -- just looking around, exploring, just like Damian said to do! He's looking for bodies, or the Hellmouth, or what have you.

Nathan mutters "1408," and meanders, following the cold spots if that's an option.

With just the barest traces of light to see by, haunting faces are sometimes half glimpsed in the dark, every day objects in shadow appear far more sinister, and cold spots seem to be everywhere, moving and vanishing. Once or twice there's what looks like a man with the long gleam of a shot gun, shaking his head, but he's always gone too quickly to find again amongst decorations and brickabrack. There's a single door, of course, set in the gloom at the front of the house, and hey, under the living room. There's all the trappings of plumbing and heating near it, old pipes long rusted, valves and grimy dials, big huge scary tanks of pressurized doom that are surely harmless.

Nathan adds as he moves "Thing is... it wasn't always an evil fucking house. Once it was just a house. A family, with kids and Christmas and biscuits that didn't pulse that I still can't believe you /ate/. It'd be sad enough if it had just turned into this crumbling old shell for the crack dealers, but it's more than that, and worse, and sadder, and it's concentrated down here. Oh, hey, most likely behind that not creepy at all door."

Joel seems upset and unnerved by the half-seen faces and cold spots, the man with the shotgun and the whispers of forgotten lives. Somewhere he's found a pinecone, a little thing covered in green glitter glue -- a child's craft, long forgotten, which years ago traded its piney smell for dust and sadness. Joel carefully sets the little decoration down on a box near the door they'll have to enter, and looks to Nathan. His aura is aching for these lives, these human lives. "What happened?" he asks, helplessly. "Why did it turn into this?"

Nathan pauses beside Joel, reaching to touch his shoulder, quietly. "I don't know. But maybe, even if we don't know what we're doing, maybe we can stop it from going on- like Damian said, before it becomes a wound that can't heal. Maybe we can make it... just an echo of a house, and not this... fractal horror. I'm praying to every god I know who might want to help, and hoping just being good will be enough. Because you know, we /are/ good."

The dripping sound continues, louder here near its apparent source, rhythmic and slow, blending with the hushed whisper of steam through pipes.

Joel listens to Nathan intently, seeming to cling to each of his words -- at the conclusion, he smiles, reciprocating the shoulder touch. "Then cry havoc," he says, quietly. "And let slip the vampires of war." With that, Joel reaches to open the door, stepping through to god knows what manner of drippy horror in the realm beyond.

Nathan echoes Joel's smile, small and serene. The only thing stopping him from stepping through side by side with him will be the size of the door.

As Joel reaches for the doorknob and begins to turn it, he's first to note out of the corner of his eye a child rushing towards them, just the vague outline at first, but then the malicious, pale face. It brandishes a solidly built toy fire engine, which it uses to bash the pipes near the pair with a weird distorted bong sound before vanishing.

"Hey!" Joel shouts at the kid, surprised by both its sudden appearance and its malice. He steps forward to chase it, but poof, gone. "Hey, kid, don't..." Oh, shit, pipes. It was hitting the pipes, that can't be good...

The pipes right next to the door explode with a DEAFENING BANG AND WHISTLE, a burst of skin meltingly scalding steam bursting out of the weak metal at vampire head level. This would probably have seriously sucked but for Joel beginning to lean back jut as Nathan's unhindered by door knobs hands come up to grab him, pulling him down and safely out of the way. Door open and Joel hovered in a sort of L shape on his feet and supported by the knob in his grip and Nathan's hold to hover over the floor, the steam subsides and the house settles with a cracking groan.

Nathan throws Joel's jacket over Joel's head-- still wearing it himself, which makes it extra awkward-- but uses it to provide another layer of protection from the scalding water drops that fall from the condensed steam. Thank goodness Joel gave him the jacket and he didn't have to use his pants. "Glad I didn't look in the playroom now," he mutters.

Joel cries out in surprise as the house tries to kill him, but due to the combined reflexes of the ninjalike undead, he is okay! Joel seems slightly deafened by the noise assaulting his heightened-sense ears, however, and cringes as he peels himself away from Nathan and unsteadily back to his feet. Fangs are out, on account of the shock and the ow, and it takes him a moment to get through the ringing in his ears. So Nathan's comment about the playroom gets squinted at. "Thanks. Huh?"

Nathan's deaf too, an unfortunate state of affairs. "Never mind." Slowly he releases Joel, smoothing his hair reflexively as he hauls himself back up to his feet. They are /going through that door/ comma /dammit/.

THROUGH THE DOOR! Joel has no idea what Nathan just said, even though his hearing is returning, so he settles for a nod he hopes translates as, FUCK YEAH! and then seizes the doorknob again. ONWARDS!

The inside of the room is dank and somewhat dark, though as if movie industry had a stranglehold on events, there is a dim, eerie reddish glow, as if a light shining through a lense of blood. The concrete floor steps off suddenly to bare earth, parched and dry. There isn't a whole lot in here, no stored boxes of holliday things nor momentos, but there is a well, an old stone walled well that's covered in dust. The ceiling above it is a dark stain of red wood, wettest at its center where it drips, drips, drips down into the dark tunnel of the well where the glow seems to eminate. The walls of the room are decorated in a terrible mockery of child's art, pictograms of awful beasts never meant to be seen, strange symbols and smears in some unknown dark substance. Hand prints, the size of childrens and what might be a woman's, dot here and there. Connecting the well to the four walls, including the spot above the door, are four stout chains.

Nathan says under his breath (he can't even hear himself) "A singer and a pizza boy walk into a hellmouth..." Nathan says, “Stop me if you've heard this one before. One, two, three, four chains. Four chains, four ghosts? Man, woman, child.. and their new friend maybe. I don't suppose you brought a sledgehammer.”

"A singer and a pizza guy walk into a hellmouth, and they say, 'well well.'" Despite the joke, Joel is looking the well with horror. He's looking at everything else around them with horror, too, but it's the well, with its dripping and its glow and its chains, that seems to have caught his attention. He's walking toward it, as though drawn inexorably forward. "No... I don't have a sledgehammer."

Nathan turns where he's standing, regarding the walls and studying the chains for signs of weakness. Ha. "Because I'm wondering what happens if we release these chains."

"Probably we're gonna have to find a way to release them, one way or another," Joel agrees, though he's still fixated on the well. Having reached its edge now, he's leaning over, peering down inside. "I can't think what else we could even... Something's moving down here, Nathan. Something black, and red, and wet..." He leans a little further, trying to get a better look!

Nathan grabs Joel back from the edge of the well. "Don't touch that /either/! Jesus, it's probably /blood/ and have you seen Hellraiser? These walls might break... I'm not sure, but that might be the best chance to get the chains out of them."

As far as tools for the sledging go, there's not a whole ton lying around, better inspection of the room mostly just furthering the depth of unknown atrocities committed in here. Stiff patches of bare soil with a faintly coppery smell, splashes of dried dark stuff, and half buried under the dirt the torn and long ago decayed corpse of some sort of small animal. There's stuff outside the room though, generic household stuff one could probably use as tools.

"I haven't seen Hellraiser," Joel admits, blinking a little at Nathan as he finally yanks him away and manages to break the spell of the well's fascinating allure. Reaching for one of the chains, Joel gives it an experimental tug. "I'm gonna have to pump the hell out of my strength to even have a chance at budging these. Did you see any tire irons or whatever in the basement?"

Nathan says, “Shoulda grabbed some of those stakes on the way in. I don't like the idea of splitting up this close to the miserable heart of this poor sad place, but I bet we can find something out there.”

Joel is starting to investigate where the chain hooks into the wall; like Nathan he seems to think this is the weak point. "I'll start pulling, and you go look for a hammer or whatever. I don't want to split up either, but by the time you get back maybe I'll have made some progress. And it's just a room away, anyway."

Staticy, tinny sounds begin to mingle with the sound of the dripping, a sort of droning chant that zones in and out, higher pitched and unlike the standard movie setting deep, sonorous chanting, as of smaller people perhaps. The vaguest of shimmers in the air can be seen beside the well near the chains' bolts, a half hearted flicker lit by the bloody glow from within the well.

Nathan says, “Yeaaaaaahh... uh, no, I /really/ don't think we should split up.”

The chanting seems to give Joel pause as well, and he stares at the well in horror for a moment. "I think we're out of time," he agrees, and with that, starts tearing at the wall area around the chain bolts! Punching, kicking, clawing, heck, he'll bite if he has to, trying to make some damage that might release the chain.

Nathan nods. "Fair enough," he says, and starts digging into another chain.

Aged stone chips and breaks in chunks, a blackish ichor running from the wounds the vampires make, the chain's bolt beginning to wiggle in its weakening hold. The house, as if sensing its coming doom, begins to hasten its efforts to awaken whatever is in that well, flickering forms beginning to appear, three children of young age and a woman with a fantastic '50's hair do, scattering and solidifying. A man with a shot gun appears in the doorway and raises his weapon, aiming it at the small, seemingly helpless figure at the base of the wiggling chain, and blows its not quite there figure away just as the chain tears free of the wall and snaps as if yanked down into the well.

And as soon as he's managed to yank his chain free, Nathan jumps down to get himself between the shotgun and the once and future victims. He's fucking dead already, what difference does it make?

"Nathan, don't you fucking get dead on me!" Joel yells at his hero bff, running over to assault another chain/wall connection. "I will never forgive you! I will bind your soul to the lawn gnome and keep you with me forever!" Joel figures this ought to scare Nathan into not dying.

Nathan's response to this, though his attention is on Shotgun Man and staying in the line of fire, is, indeed, "Fuck you, Joel!" Which, of course, means 'I love you more than life itself and will miss you very much if I get dead.'

The man with the shot gun doesn't look happy about the grisly things he's doing, his face contorted with pain and anguish in the moments when he's solid enough to see, unshaven cheeks wet with tears one moment, and then blood the next, his shot phasing harmlessly through Nathan. TWO chains down and two to go, the house groans, nay, it growls with upset, much like whatever that is in the well. Dark, writhing shapes begin to move at the upper reaches of the well, shapeless coils flopping tiredly and just beginning to slip over its edge. The now more visible, fervantly worshipful chanting trio thats left pay no attention to the rest of you.

Nathan says- maybe to Joel, maybe to himself, maybe to Shotgun Man, on whom his eyes are fixed, "It's okay. We're gonna fix this."

Nathan says again "We're gonna fix this," speaking now most definitely to Shotgun Man. And then, again, singing while Joel takes care of the chains. Wondrous Love.

Fangs out, dead hands ripping at the wall, Joel is tearing shit up! There is a sort of feral growl as he breaks off chain three, and starts running toward the fourth and final chain's connection to the wall. His hands and arms are covered with the house's blood, that tormented black ichor oozing out of the walls. "Shit's gonna get real, Nathan," he warns. "Stay away from the well! Shit's coming out of the well!"

Nathan calls back "No problem, we got this," in the space between notes.

This last chain is of course just slightly more difficult to get to than the others, located above the open doorway. Not terrible difficult, just annoyingly so. Lowering his head, shotgun-man takes a moment, maybe believing Nathan's claim, and then raises his weapon to remove one of what must be his children from the equation with a tinny, warbling boom. Nathan's voice competes with the chanting, drowning it out briefly and even taking away from the growing slithering sound coming from the well and the plopping, glooping sound of those tentacle things beginning to spill outwards.

"Nathan, give me a lift!" Assuming his fellow monster complies, Joel is able to reach the fourth and final chain above the doorway. Once there, he's bracing his feet against the wall, clinging to the chain with one hand, and clawing it free with the other! The result of this genius plan is no doubt going to be that he falls the fuck right back down when the chain comes loose, but this is apparently of little concern to him. Claw rip tear!!

Nathan almost falters in his singing toward the end of the verse, and although he finishes it, he doesn't pick up the second verse, instead shaking his head swiftly as if to clear it and then dropping down to give Joel a boost, balancing him /really/ quite precariously.

The last chain flies free of the wall with a yank and a loud crack, snapping backand dissapearing with a squelch into the reddish blackish mass of horror birthing forth from the hole. You'd think Nathan and Joel had been doing boost ups and balancing acts all their lives, hardly a waver from the snapping chain upsetting their balance or Nathan's hold on Joel. The shotgun-man finishes off his family then as well, their images shattering in a half seen flicker flash of death. There's a pause then, a brief silence even from the Thing, and then a groaning rumble, the blind horror sucking backwards through the gap with awful noises one gross slimy piece at a time.

Nathan, steadying Joel on his back, says "Okay, Joel, I think we did our thing. Time to get the fuck out of here?"

"Ughh... this shit is starting to sting," Joel winces a little, looking at the black nastiness covering his hands and arms. He's walking back toward the well again! "I'm not sure it's over. I'm not sure this thing is dead, or whatever..." he's going to peer down into the well, again! "I don't even know what it was. And that poor man, fucking shooting his family? Why? I still don't understand this, and I've got it all over me."

Nathan grabs Joel back from the abyss into which the Thing is sinking, AGAIN! "Could you /not/ look into the demon well from hell, /please/? I don't /know/, I don't know any of this. I don't know if they got free, or-- or what else we need to do, or what, I just know that man is as trapped as any of the others."

The rumbling increases, and there's a cracking sound as the chains, still attached to the well's collar, begin to rip the thing inwards, the rest falling inwards as if pulled. The load bearing beam above the door buckles then as well in a poofing cloud of dust, a massive crash heard somewhere else in the sighing, groaning house. Joel, you poor bastard, you just had to say the I'm not sure it's over line, didn't you? It's almost like thinking that summons the chain that flies up out of the collapsing hole in a last ditch effort to take someone with it!

The chain gleams wetly in the fading red light and arcs deftly in the air, aimed to coil around Joel's throat as he leans to look down the well. Nathan's quick grab doesn't pull him entirely out of the way, but the chain misses Joel's neck and wraps instead around his flailed forearm, yanking tight and attemping to pull him down into the doom.

"JOEL!" Oh, that is /not/ happening, even if Nathan has to dive into the motherfucking well and grab the other end of that chain. Nathan grabs at it, pulling as hard as he can to try to get enough slack to free Joel's arm.

"AHHH!" Joel yells, eloquently, as the world begins to rumble, and crack, and collapse. Arms windmilling, he does indeed get snagged by the chain. The chain of DOOM. "Fuck! FUCK!" He's sounding just slightly panicked as the chain drags him off-balance, toward the hellmouth. "Nathan! STOP! It's just gonna pull you in!"

Nathan, amazingly enough, /isn't fucking listening./

The house can be heard breaking apart and things can be heard tumbling and falling over in the basement as the whole place falls apart. The chain resists being pulled as only a chain can, though Nathan's efforts do succeed in unwinding it some.

Nathan grits his teeth and keeps trying! He's leaving this house with Joel or not at all.

"You stupid bastard!" Joel yells at Nathan over the sound of the Doom Well rumbling and the house collapsing. But, let's be honest, that tone is all relief as Nathan does choose to mess with the chain instead of saving his own undead skin. Still perilously poised on the precipice of disaster, Joel tries to work his way free of the chain. "I think maybe the stairs broke," he informs Nathan, as they struggle against the Forces of Evil.

All Nathan says is "Fan-fucking-tastic."

Nathan's the man, however, and unwinds Joel's arm of the furious chain. The shotgun man just doesn't help matters, sagging off to the side on his knees in flickers and looking.. well, vaguely releived any how, given the circumstances, before beginning motions that can only be suicide by gun. From here, the trip out is sort of a mess of crap but navagatable, clear up to the yes indeed somewhat broken steps. There's still *some* stairs there though.

Nathan drags Joel bodily away from the well, without looking back. Shotgun man's self-banishment isn't going to keep this house standing any longer, and he tries to scale what's left of the stairs, hauling Joel behind him until he's confident Joel's coming under his own power.

Freedom! Joel balks, horrified, as ghost-man decides to off himself, but Nathan is The Man again, and Joel really has no choice but to keep up, keep moving, and not stay here and die. Covered in ichor, fangs out, an emotional aura-landscape that can basically be translated to "AHHHHHHH!", he tries to hurry back up the stairs with Nathan. Assuming the house hasn't collapsed yet, causing them to be buried in the rubble while Damian, outside, looks up and wonders how things are going in there.

Nathan scrambles back up what's left of the stairs, pulling himself and Joel in more or less equal measure. Once they reach the kitchen he actually hesitates for a second, but you know what, it's just a goddamn t-shirt.

Joel is not hesitating! He's just running right the fuck through the kitchen, on into the dining room. He /does/ hesitate there, looking at where the food was, and maybe wondering if the illusion has collapsed so he can see what the fuck he ate.

It does collapse around them as they run, very dramaticly so, with things falling from the second floor and a rain of dust and splintering wood, the stairs to the stairs to the second floor can be heard crumbling and heavy things slide around on the tilting floor above. The dining room is a stanky, fly infested chamber of rotted remains, dear god don't even stop to inspect *what* they're the remains of, it's best not to know.

Nathan hustles Joel along, thinking it's probably best if Joel doesn't know what he ate, because, SERIOUSLY, HE ATE THAT?!

Sadly, there's no time to give the poor dead woman in the living room the respect she deserves either. Nathan dodges a rain of splinters and plaster dust, his enhanced stats coming in mighty handy as he races to the door with Joel more or less in tow.

"Ohh..." Joel has enough time to see the fly-ridden rotting corpses-of-something, and enough time to have that burned into his memory FOREVER! But for the mercy of everyone's collective sanity, they don't stay long, and soon the pair are bursting back out through the front door, into the safety of moonlight, and the street...

Nathan /warned/ him! But no time for that now; Nathan stumbles down the walkway, shirtless and covered with dust and plaster, and looks behind him as he reaches the street as if to watch the house of Usher collapse.

The house, once tall, collapses in on itself just as the two vampires burst out the door, the rotting porch collapsing just moments after their feet leave it. A poofing cloud of dust and rubble, broken glass and timbers, is all that's left now, the collapse more centered over the living room area of the house. And then blessed silence, as all is finally over. Damian is near wher he was left, huddled against the fence and watching with deep worry and apprehension in the darkness.

Nathan stands there, staring at the house as it settles in its swelling cloud of dust. After what seems like- and is- a long time; ten, twenty seconds- he takes off Joel's jacket, his movements slow and deliberate, and hands it back to him.

Nathan stands there, staring at the house as it settles in its swelling cloud of dust. After what seems like- and is- a long time; ten, twenty seconds- he takes off Joel's jacket, his movements slow and deliberate, and hands it back to him.

Joel joins Nathan in staring at the house. His expression is one of horror and disbelief, and it's only after a few seconds of staring that he remembers to put his fangs away. Snik! He accepts the jacket with a hand made gray by plaster and ichor, disgusting house-blood mud. The exchange is wordless, and he just keeps staring at the collapse.

Nathan steps closer, sliding his arm around Joel's shoulders, and the two of them just.. stare.

Joel dips his head against Nathan's shoulder, a brief touch of gratitude. "Thanks for making sure I didn't fall into a hellmouth and die."

It takes a few for Damian to blink his vision clear and shake his head back into this plane's alignment, looking around quickly before finding Nathan and Joel across the street from the ruined house. He trots quickly towards them, worry melting into happy relief, "You lived!" he says joyously, going for a group hug.

Nathan leans his head toward Joel's in reflexive mirror of his movement, lifting his hand to run his filthy fingers through Joel's equally filthy hair. "Thanks for making sure I didn't get a ghost cleaver to the spine." He doesn't quite seem to notice Damian despite the shifter's exuberance, quite yet.

"I am so. Fucking. Hungry," Joel admits, and then Damian is bounding up to them! Lovely sweet Damian with his hot, red, crazymaking blood. Joel stares at their kittyfriend's neck for a moment or four, then finally manages to make eye contact. "Is it fixed? Is the bubble fixed? I don't know if we made the wound one that can heal, or if we just got out of it before it made us part of itself."

"It looks fine to me." Damian says with a shrug, slowing when he gets close with arms outstretched, totally not thinking about the pair being so hungry after their ordeal, "It's just a ruined house. It'll get bulldozed away along with all the bad memories, you must have done whatever there was to do. I'm so *proud* of you both! ...We should flee. That was really loud."

Nathan stares over Damian's shoulder at nothing in particular. "Damian," he says, made polite by his weariness, "can I have your wrist please?"

Joel punches Nathan in the arm. Not lightly. "Right here in the fucking STREET? Go to a bathroom at a gas station or something at least, for fuck's sake."

"Let us go to your truck again, and then yes." Damian answers, and attempts to take Nathan and Joel's hands, tugging towards the way they originally came.

Nathan looks over at Joel, and maybe-just-/maybe/ the fact that he's half naked and covered in about six kinds of /gross/ slowly registers in his head. "Okay. Yeah. You're right," he says; the wheels just aren't turning in there.

Joel glowers at Nathan for a minute, and grumpily plucks his hand away from Damian. But he does follow the shifter back towards the truck. "I ate dead things," he announces to everyone present, traumatized. "I thought it was biscuits."

"I fucking /told/ you /not/ to!" Nathan wanders a bit unsteadily back to the truck and whisks everyone to safety before The Authorities arrive on the scene.

"It's okay Joel," Damian says sympathetically as they speed walk away from the cat-ass-trophy and yonder towards safety, "I've done that before. At least you wont get sick!"

"Oh, no, I will," Joel glumly assures Damian. "Might be a couple days from now, but I'll be throwing it up eventually." Once they get to the truck, he'll squish in with the others -- either middle or window seat, sort of grumpily zoned out for the ride out to the desert, or wherever they happen to be headed.

Nathan can't resist muttering again "I warned you not to eat the pulsating demon-food. I did that for a reason."

Damian pets Nathan's thigh in a rather familiar sort of way and makes soothing sounds, "It's okay, everything will be fine. Drive us out to my place, you can both recenter there and I'll get your hunger tended to for you."

"I took a RISK for SCIENCE!" Joel replies to Nathan, having to lean forward to snark across Damian. "We learned they weren't real biscuits, didn't we? /And/ they weren't mental impressions of biscuits."

Nathan drives them the hour or so out to the desert, continuing no doubt to bicker back and forth across Damian. "You know, it wasn't that big of a /stretch/ that they weren't /real biscuits/."

"But we didn't know what kind of real they weren't!" Joel continues the bickering. It's gonna be a long drive.

Damian deals with the bickering and the claustrophobia as best he can, trying to soothe either undead in turn, "Hey it's okay, everything's fine! It was gross but no one's hurt, there's no need to argue!"

Nathan says, “Joel! Demon house! Who /cares/ what kind of real they weren't?”

"I cared, clearly! Why you gotta hate on things I care about!" Joel is losing his already tenuous grip on logic, though he seems more irrationally cranky than actually mad. Poor Damian, he is sooner or going to be canonized as the patron saint of hungry, bitchy vampires.

Nathan says "/Pulsating flesh-biscuits!/" Which really should be the name of his next hardcore album. This sort of thing continues pretty much all the way to Cavetown.

"Look!" Damian blurts with desperate relief, "It's the *tree*!" Oh man, he's never actually been *glad* to be home before, and gestures emphatically out the windshield as if that'll distract the demon biscuit argument.

"MAYBE I LIKE PULSATING FLESH BISCUITS!" By the time they get to Damian's abode, Joel's arms are folded and he's silently sulking.

"Well that's LUCKY then, ISN'T it!" Nathan's pretty happy to see the leaning tree too, and piles out of the truck as soon as piling out of the truck becomes an option.

Damian practically falls out of the truck in his haste to get out as well, not really caring which side he gets out of as long as it's *out*. "Oh grasshoppers, here, here!" The evil shapeshifter's sleeves are shoved up to his elbows and wrists bared before he even goes and turns on his cave's lights, one thrust towards either vampire.

Nathan groans slightly, falling to his knees and grasping Damian's wrist without a flicker of hesitation, murmuring deep in his throat "Thank you." A flash of teeth, too white and too shar

Nathan struggles to pull his leg out from the stairs. It's okay. We're gonna fix this.p, and he bites deep and hard.

Joel doesn't so much leap out of the truck as he kinda oozes out, as though the stress of their recent ordeal has made him enter a state less solid than usual, like jello, or pudding. Though by the time he does get out, close the door, and walk around the truck, Nathan has his teeth in Damian's wrist. Uncertainty! Joel seems to balk a little, and walks back around the other side of the truck again, as though feeling they require privacy.

Damian makes a less than innocently pleased sound, and pets Nathan's dusty bald head slowly and with a vaguely drunken feel to his movements. Swaying slightly, he exhales a breath and pants, "Joel? Are you hungry?" during a clearer moment of thought, "You'll be okay..." There's a giddy sound to his claim and a smile, he for one is gonna be fantastic.

Nathan drinks to slake immortal thirst, swift and deep, and it's only with visible effort and a reluctant groan that he pulls himself away from Damian's wrist, his mouth smeared with blood. He stays where he is for a second, eyes half closed, and finally, slowly, pulls himself back up to his feet, even if he has to use Damian to do it.

Joel has found a seat on the ground, with his back against Nathan's rear truck tire. "No," he answers Damian, followed by a confused, "I mean, /yes/, but not... No. I don't want your blood. Thanks. I'm okay. Yep. I think I'll go for a walk."

"No, no just stay here." Damian cautions, giving his wrist a secondary lick to clean it and then pulling his sleeves down, "Let me go get you a deer, if that will suffice? Just stay here and let the calm take you, alright? I don't want you to get lost or hurt, I owe you dinner after all this."

Nathan, eyes still closed, draws a long, contented, completely unnecessary breath. "Can I borrow a shirt?" Full of demands tonight.

Joel doesn't seem to have any idea what to do about things Damian is saying, and settles for pointing at Nathan. "He needs a shirt!"

"Of course you can, you know where my things are." Damian answers Nathan, "There's wash water and towels and everything, both of you should make yourselves at home." And then off he goes to be a helpful cheetah, with a few uncomfortable sounds before bounding off as a spotted menace.

Nathan does indeed know where Damian's things are. He wanders into the cave, digging around a little bit before he comes up with a faded t-shirt which, while not as cool as the one he lost, will do. He cleans himself up a little too, at least washing the plaster dust off his head. "He'll be back soon."

Joel is still dusty, dirty, and seeming a little lost. "How come his blood doesn't make you crazy anymore?" Joel wonders, before hauling himself to his feet. "God, I feel terrible. I feel like..." he just shuts up for a second or three, one hand braced against the truck, looking at the dirt like he's never seen dirt before. And then, with a choking, liquid sound everyone knows well, he just throws right the fuck up in the dust by the truck. Blood and gobbets of something awful that must have been the "biscuits"... it smells amazing.

Damian, meanwhile, tracks animals like a pro and rapidly gets far away from home after a herd.

Nathan says, “It made me crazy that first time because I was already upset because I didn't know what was going on. Don't get me wrong, it feels awesome, and I get a lot angrier a lot faster, and that's why I stay out here at night when I'm feeding on him- he makes sure I don't go before I've, uh, come down, but at least I know wh-- oh, jesus, Joel." He's next to Joel in a second, hand between Joel's shoulder blades, and kicks some dust over those... 'biscuits,' rubbing Joel's back as soothingly as he can. Yeah.. yeah, Nathan was right about the biscuits.

HUUUUERksplat. Joel decorates the desert with more blood n' biscuits, just as horrible as the first heave. "I'm never going to be able to eat ham or biscuits ever again in my whole LIFE," he despairs. "And my life is basically forever, Nathan! Forever! FOREVER and NO BISCUITS."

Nathan shifts his boots out of the line of fire juuuust in time. "You'll always have sweet rolls?" he tries, wincing in disgust at the stench; it's not that easy to hover soothingly.

Joel's boots are not so lucky. He at least seems to be done blowing chunks everywhere though, and kicks some dirt to cover the Spew. It settles into disgusting, bloody mud. "Yeah," the grimy horror that is Joel eventually agrees, "There's still sweet rolls. Where can I get cleaned up?"

While Joel cries over immortality without biscuits or ham, Damian finds and begins herding back food for the poor guy in an exhausting Animal Planet chase that's a lot farther than is comfortable for him usually. Zig zagging and kicking up dust, trying to vaguely aim a freaked the fuck out deer towards-ish the tree, he's forced to just slap the running thing's ass to trip it up about a half mile away, wrestling with it in a cloud of sandy dust before eventually beginning an annoying repeating mrowling call.

Nathan looks up at the sound of the familiar call. "C'mon, he's got a deer for you. Let's get you fed and then we'll clean you up and then we'll just fucking sleep for three days, okay?" He gives Joel a brief, close, gently rocking hug and then lets him go, kicking some more dust over the remains of whatever the fuck it was Joel ate.

"Okay," tired, compliant Joel agrees, leaning into the hug until Nathan lets him go. "Thanks again for not letting the house eat me." A moment is spent with his eyes closed, listening, and then Joel trots off in the direction of the annoying mrowls, where poor Damian is after he's had to run around the entire fucking desert. All cause Joel is squeamish.

Nathan goes with. Hey, there's a lot of blood in your average deer.

Damian is a considerate provider and has left Joel's food alive, if slightly suffocated and with a slobbery bite around the throat under its jaw. Absolutely exhausted, the big friggin cat lays on the deer to hold it down, spewing heat like an overloading furnace and panting like mad even after such a brief trip.

Nathan lets Joel have first crack at the deer, himself going around to add his body weight to help Damian hold the poor thing down- petting him with a free hand. Like a housecat. Oh, the indignity.

How fast do vampires run? Who knows, but if you do some math involving distance and the speed, that's how long it took for Nathan and Joel to get there. And they're annoyingly not out of breath, not exhausted, not sweaty! Though Joel does still look like a fucking mess, covered with blood, ichor, House, plaster, and some spatters of Vampire Vomit (Vammit). "Sorry," he shoots a guilty look to the tuckered-out and adoooooorable Damian, before crouching down by the deer. Cruel fangs appear and bury themselves in the poor creature's neck, and he feeds. The deer probably doesn't make un-innocent cooing noises like Damian did.

But I don't really know what deer are into, so.
Hard to say.
They'll surprise you.

It's at least a kind and euphoric death for the deer, Damian couldn't have done any better. His cool down process is pretty damned slow and he's happy with just waiting there like a massive white and tan fuzzy lump until the pair have drained the animal. Then he'll finally get up, just to move to a better position so that he can eat the flesh of the animal. Running is hungry business.

Nathan's still hungry, and only too happy to dig in again once Joel's drunk his fill, at which point he lounges contentedly while Damian takes /his/ turn.

Joel peels off his shirt and uses it to wipe off deer blood, murder-victim-blood, and house-blood, as best he can! He doesn't make a lot of progress, but it's at least a little better than it was before, and Joel curls up right there on the desert floor while Damian eats the deer's liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti. "So, we did it. We made that house a wound that can heal, instead of a cancer that spreads."

Nathan watches Cheetah!Damian snarf up fresh deer meat way too fast. "Attacked instead of defending," he says contentedly.

Damian enjoys just a bit of delicious warm deer before padding over to roll across Nathan like a big huge affectionate house cat, and pokes Joel affectionately in the eye with his wet nose before collapsing and sort of ooze-shifting. "I'm so proud of you two." Damian says happily and with a great smile, "This is just like what my graduation night was like when I became a real cheetah. Welcome to the survivor's club! So how do you feel about the whole thing?"

"I feel like I did what I'm supposed to do in the world," the curled up ball of shirtless Joel murmurs. "But I wish that girl didn't have to die. There's never a way to save them all, and I'm not over that yet."

Nathan finds himself with Human!Damian in his lap, and wraps one arm around him companionably and reaches for Joel's hand with his free one. "Not saying you have to 'get over' it, Joel. But you have to learn to accept it, so you can be the bright shining thing you are meant to be." He pauses. "Goddamn demon house didn't like my singing."

Damian too has a comforting hand for Joel, his other for Nathan, "Don't let yourself be dragged downwards by the dark and sad half of things. If a girl died, then she didn't die in vain, she fulfilled an important purpose, and will be reborn again rewarded for her sacrifice. Her death lead you to a small step forward in saving the world. If given a choice, and maybe long ago she was, she may have chosen for her death to mean something."

"Demons can't abide the things of god," Joel replies to Nathan, still curled in a dirty little ball next to the dead deer. "You are a thing of god. Somewhere, right on you, it says, property of god." A pause lingers, and he opens his eyes, though he doesn't actually lift his head to look around. "If we died, did we already get reincarnated somewhere?"

Nathan smooths Joel's hair, very lightly. "No. We died, but our souls are still stuck to our dead bodies. Maybe when we hit Final Death, maybe we'll be free then. You are also a thing of God. Both of you."

"I like to think you're already reincarnated, and later on after Final Death, you will be again." Damian opines, sluggishly seperating himself from Nathan to get to his feet, "The best thing any of us can do is honor the sacrifices made by people that came before, and just let the rest go, now that it's over. One fighting step forward, and now a rest. You both smell like mothballs, let's get you properly cleaned up." Or suffer a cat bath!