Margot
It was a little past midnight and the city was relatively quiet. After all, most people worked or had school the next morning and needed to sleep. Even those who didn't were staying in-- a winter storm was projected to begin overnight and make the morning commute a proper pain in the dick. It was cold and damp and windy. There was no reason to be out tonight.
Unless, of course, you were aiming to get in some trouble.
Andrés Sepúlveda had lived a good amount of adult life at this point. He was settled into a career and had numerous stories to tell.
He knew that it was never good news when your phone started ringing after midnight.
When he answered, regardless of how pleasant or otherwise he sounded, the voice on the other line would be just as pitched and shaky and tight with anxiety.
"Doc, I'm so sorry, I didn't know who else to call. I just, I mean...." It was Margot. He didn't know her well, but she didn't seem the sort that was prone to unwarranted hysterics.
Dr. Sepúlveda
Even if he had not spent the entirety of his adult life preparing for a career in a field that required a person to function on little sleep Dr. Sepúlveda would have known no one ever calls late at night just to chat.
Well: okay. Sometimes folks call late at night just to chat but those folks are drunk or high or both and he has known Verbenae and Cultists for about as long as he has known he wanted to go into forensic pathology as a career field. Even then those phone calls are not exactly good news.
So his phone tells him that Margot is calling and for half a second he considers letting it go to voicemail but then he registers the time. Peels off the nitrile gloves that are covered in god knows what and answers with a "What?"
She's so sorry. She didn't know who else to call.
"Christ," he says. "Relax. Where are you?"
So she tells him. Or starts to tell him. Or doesn't know. Either way he's moving.
"I'm coming. Stay on the phone a minute, yeah?"
Margot
"I'm in the parking lot of this shut-down gas station from the Ogden. I was waiting for the bus and these guys came up and I.." He said to relax, but as soon as he spoke the word he probably already kenw it would do nothing. There was a particular keen of panic to her voice that sang the song of unreason.
"There's something wrong with them. I missed the bus, they didn't get on it either. I just don't want to..."
Again, she failed to finish her thought or really explain. This second time she at least did pause to take a few deep breaths. She was trying to make herself be calm, but the gulping quality to the forced breathing made it seem a bit futile all the same.
"They're just.... sitting there. Like maybe they passed out, but not."
Dr. Sepúlveda
"Stay where you are."
He has to imagine that one if not both of his students have post-traumatic stress riding their bones but that doesn't mean he's going to coddle them. So long as he can keep her centered in the present she won't lose herself to it.
Awakening is traumatic enough without adding in car crashes or domestic violence to the mix. From what he told them of his Awakening they could gather nothing from the emotional tone of it. Whether he had emerged from it unscathed or not.
"I'll be there in twelve minutes. Maybe eleven."
This is when Margot learns about the realness of the theory of relativity and time dilation. Twelve minutes was the estimate he gave her assuming that his GPS was full of shit. It was not the estimate he gave her knowing that any time he has to be someplace in a hurry that the universe takes notice and laughs at his sense of urgency.
He arrives eighteen minutes later. Headlights cut through the dark and he makes the righthand turn into the gas station fast enough that Margot can hear the chassis of his sedan bark with the impact. When he pulls up next to her it's with the passenger-side door facing her.
Deep breath and he flexes and relaxes his hands without taking them off the steering wheel.
Margot
The parking lot that he pulled into was dark, the streetlamp on its corner having long since burned out. It was entirely possible that the city may have just temporarily shut that particular grid down, for the gas station and the two buildings beside it didn't look as though they'd seen much use in the past thirty years. The building that sat on the lot itself was a small thing that couldn't have held more than just a few candy and snack aisles to go along with the counter and fridge-walls. The windows were gray and almost impossible to see through by this point. The overhead structure for the pumps stood like a skeleton, the pumps themselves having long since been removed.
Margot sat in the deepest shadows, came out of them almost like an owl (with those wide-eyes and her dark hair flapping out in the wind as to imitate the wings). She'd been against the front wall while waiting, and soon as he arrived she walked stiffly to the passenger door and got in.
She didn't look at him, but stared forward through the windshield instead. She looked like she'd been crying, and was no doubt embarassed over the situation as a whole. But all the same, speaking thickly as though through a throat still clenched with anxiety, she gestured through his window with a point of a finger.
"There."
Across the street stood a pair of men, one small and lean and the other taller, stretched out and paunched. They dressed in the winter clothes of men who worked outdoors. They were at the bus stop, and the light above it was dim to begin with and flickered often. They wore hats, and their hoods up. Stood shoulder-to-shoulder, arms to their sides and still (except for the occasional sway or waver, as though about to fall down but then catching themselves).
They stood facing away from the street and into a paved parking space for an appliance repair shop. Saying nothing at all. The most curious thing of all was, in the poorly lit night it almost looked as though a vaguely orange cloud was hanging around them.
Dr. Sepúlveda
This car was built with a larger body in mind. Particularly the front cabin. He has the driver's seat pulled up close to the steering wheel and the wheel itself adjusted so he does not have to reach up to grab it. A man of average height would find it difficult to slide in and drive without making some adjustments.
She may or may not notice that he is wearing the same getup he had had on the day they met. Scrubs and a lab coat and black-rimmed spectacles. At least she did not wake him up.
Though he looks across the darkness at her he does not begrudge her either her tears or her frazzled state. All he does is turn some knobs so that the seats begin to emit heat and the radiator blowers do the same.
There.
He rests his hands on his lap and takes a moment to observe the two miscreants who had caused her alarm in the first place.
"Ah, hell." Though they're within line of sight of their targets he is still not close enough to do much. "I don't suppose you Awakened with Correspondence in your bag of tricks, did you?"
He knows the answer.
"Lock the doors. I'll be back in a moment."
Margot
Margot looked confused at the question about Correspondence, as though she had to stop and think for a moment about what that would actually be. Then she shook her head. No, she realized, she always had to be in some kind of immediate proximity to whatever it was she was picking up a reading on.
Lock the doors, he advised. She swallowed at the lump in her throat and nodded, stayed firmly in the passenger seat, and would lock the doors promptly after he was outside the car.
This particular stretch of street was not particularly busy, so far as traffic was concerned. By this point a light snow had started to fall, the flakes small and still easy to see through. They helped mask the strange cloud effect happening around the men, made it seem as though the orange tinge could be due to the dirty filter through which the street lamp was struggling to burn.
But no, all the same they had both seen otherwise. The men still simply stood shoulder-to-shoulder and swayed a little with the breeze, but made no movement beyond that.
Dr. Sepúlveda
That look of confusion isn't anything he hasn't seen from her before and he doubts it will be the last of its kind either. Students have only a few default expressions and confusion is one of them. In the meantime her safety is the reason he is out here and it's the reason he implores her to lock the doors while he leaves the engine running. What passes for kindness from a man who seems as capable of affection as the corpses with whom he spends his days.
As he pauses at the sidewalk the snow melts before it can settle on his dark hair btu it begins to dust the shoulders of his peacoat. Crossing the street brings him near enough to notice that the orange tinge hasn't dissipated.
The rational part of him wants to think there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for this but the part of his brain that believes in jetpacks and time travel and reanimation of the dead knows that a cynical mind clinging to reason in the face of that which does not follow such rules is a dead mind.
He watches them for signs of illness or intoxication as he approaches.
"Oye," he says. Whether or not they turn: "You alright?"
[matter/mind/life 1: KITCHEN SINK SCAN. base diff 4, +2 after all the other modifiers.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )
Margot
When called to, neither man turns. Up close the orange cloud was a little bit less noticeable, for it was fine in how it hung in the air. The men didn't turn when they heard footsteps, nor when the good doctor called out to them. There was a kind of sweet-rotting smell about them that was strong enough to be detected even with the winds blowing most of it away.
They just stood like young trees in the wind, offering no protest whatsoever to the doctor's approach or his scan over their faculties.
He'd find that they were alive, living human beings, men with names and day jobs and (based on what the life scan told him) poor health due to crippling addictions to herion (what year is it, anyways?). However, they were in what would amount to being a coma (from what he could tell about their minds). There was another kind of a life to be found as well. Something apart from them, but growing within them. Like a... bacteria, maybe?
He could sense the material of what was growing within them, something sticky and clotting within organs but the scan wasn't strong enough to tell him for certain.
All the same, these men were vegetative to the world. He knew he would get no answer from them.
Dr. Sepúlveda
Though he could not tell from looking at them the sense of a spore-like growth was enough to grab his attention. Proliferation inside a living organism is almost always cause for alarm. In only a few instances is the proliferation wanted and even that's not always a given.
He still can't do anything with it without knowing what it is. So he comes closer prepared to startle the men with his presence and transfers the sheathed scalpel he had grabbed on his way out of the lab from his breast pocket to the left pocket of his scrub pants.
Though he left his portable lab in the car he still has a stethoscope around his neck and the ability to tell if a body is living or not more or less by touch. If they will let him he steps nearer to the smaller of the two and puts his index and middle fingers to where the kid's radial pulse ought to be.
[extending that last roll]
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (3, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Dr. Sepúlveda
[perc + alert!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Margot
Tools always help, and even if Dr. Sepúlveda's were a stethoscope and an understanding of medicine, they still did what he wanted and needed them to do. With those tools he was able to understand much more than a sleeping human doctor would.
He was able to confirm that there was a fungus growing within the two men. It bloomed in their bellies and was spreading throughout their bodies, into their major organs and swimming in their bloodstream. There seemed to be one particular growth forming along the spine, stretching slowly and crawling its way up the spinal column and, presumably, toward the head.
The fungus itself was unfamiliar. Not anything that he'd recognize. Maybe tropical? Probably something entirely different, given the affected hosts.
It was as the Doc was recognizing this was an entirely unfamiliar strain that he picked up the sound of footsteps on the sidewalk, rapidly approaching from the shadowy depths of that repair store parking lot that the men were facing. They continued to sway, unaffected by this figure's approach as well.
Given how the doctor stood under the lights along with the men, he was largely visible. Wouldn't have the opportunity to try and hide himself from this figure's approach. Whatever it was, it was short, no more than five feet tall and perhaps even less, and it was dressed heavily in a hat and scarf and long coat and long pants and boots. Its voice was surprisingly high-pitched when it called out from the shadows.
"What do you want! Go away!"
Dr. Sepúlveda
Oh shit.
Sepúlveda puts his hands up shoulder-height and palms out to show whatever it is that he is not armed though he has no notion of how long his new companion has been stood in the shadows and how much of his activity it has seen. No point showing his palms if the unseen entity knows he's got a fucking scalpel in his pocket.
He had told Margot to stay in the car with the doors locked. He's sure it is of no comfort to her to see her two almost-assailants immobile with her mentor holding his fucking hands in the air but compassion and empathy are skills that were never his forte to begin with. That's why he works with the dead and not with those on the other side of the coil.
"Do you want me to go away," he asks the figure, "or tell you what I want?"
Margot
Half-shadowed as it was, it was difficult to tell if the person in the parking lot starting conflict was male or female. Abnormally small for certain, and the pitch of the voice suggested that there was a medical reason for this, perhaps. If the doc were to glance back at the car again he'd find Margot still in the passenger seat, watching fretfully from the driver's side window. Where he parked the car, though, you'd have to really look to notice anybody sitting inside.
The figure wasn't looking there, fortunately. It was much too wrapped up in the man messing with the two fungus-filled people standing and waiting for the harvest. Apparently this person, whoever they were, was the farmer.
At the question the figure paused, having to think carefully about it. Apparently this person wasn't the brightest crayon on the box. It sounded pretty dull when it answered finally.
"I want you to go away. Go away! Leave us alone, we were here first."
Hands raised from jacket pockets to make a shooing gesture, and the doc would probably notice that the fingers in the shadows seemed far longer than they ought to be.
Dr. Sepúlveda
[perc + occult: can i tell what you are in the dark?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (3, 4, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 1 )
Dr. Sepúlveda
There's something to be said for the moral imperative and as he stands in the dark considering the goblin-like creature that defies scientific explanation he makes a mental note to talk to the kids some night about knowing when to persist in a matter that has nothing to do with them and knowing when to say Fuck the consequences! and risk bodily harm in the interests of resolution.
He is a Scientist. He does not believe in mystery or allowing mysteries to remain so. That does not mean he has to teach his students that the only reason to do anything is FOR SCIENCE. His way is the right way but it is not the only way.
"'We'?" he says. "Look, these boys are sick, they need medical attention. I'm a doctor. Let me help."
Margot
"No!"
The thing practically shrieked at Sepúlveda now, its hands flung obstinately down to its sides in angry fists. It scrambled into its jacket pockets now, and whipped out what looked to be a small switchblade. Not anything especially threatening, but a knife was a knife and in the hands of an unhinged whatever it was still something to be quite worried about.
The thing wielded the knife awkwardly in the doctor's direction, waving it here and there almost like a sparkler on a summer night. "They only need my help, now scram!"
All the while, the two men stood and swayed. One of them hiccupped.
And across the street, a car door quietly clicked closed.
[Dexterity 4 + Stealth 0 (+1 diff penalty): Sneaky sneaky?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (2, 3, 9, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Margot
[Goblin Perception!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )
Dr. Sepúlveda
[!!!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Dr. Sepúlveda
Waving a knife at a doctor. He's not afraid of the pain so much or the damage that causes the pain. Doesn't mean he's fearless or eager to get himself injured. Gives him a sense of bravery he might not have possessed otherwise.
Then again here comes Margot trying to creep out of the car from across the street. As if sound doesn't carry.
Sepúlveda groans and it is an exasperated sound but it is not directed at the goblin. Or maybe it is. The goblin doesn't hear the car door slam.
"Are you?" He doesn't sound calm exactly but he isn't panicking in the face of that flashing knife either. "I'll scram, but they're coming with me."
Margot
Surprisingly, the little goblin-creature dressed up as a human under a mask of winter clothing layers didn't attack or scream or inisist further, which would have made much more sense. Instead, he laughed.
Well, cackled. The sound was as high-pitched as the voice and cracked off like firecrackers in the night. The long fingers emerged again as he pointed at the men, whose faces were turned vaguely upward, jaws slack and slightly frothed, eyes rolled toward the blanket of clouds above.
"They're not going anywhere. Look at them. They cannot walk with you." It cackled again, and the knife lowered. "Go ahead, try."
True to the goblin's point, the men didn't appear to be in any condition to do much more than stand. It was entirely possible that the only reason they were upright at this juncture was due to the fungus in their bodies.
Meanwhile, around the outside of the parking lot Margot crept carefully over the pavement. She was watchful for cracks and wrappers and things that would make noise, kept out of the reach of the flickering streetlight and low to the ground and even of pace. For somebody who hadn't done much sneaking around before in her life, she was pulling it off pretty well. While they talked, she made her way around into the back of the parking lot instead.
The goblin was too distracted to notice, the men too far gone to see, but The Doc would see his new student with her fingers nervously near her mouth while she searched over a pile of general rubble from where a ledge had crumbled in ill repair after a fence post was knocked down.
Sepúlveda
Like he doesn't have enough problems right now. He has to worry about Margot doing something that is the antithesis to her continued survival.
He does not worry. He keeps himself aware of the fact that she's skulking around in the dark but he does not turn his attention that way. Worry implies a lack of control and if it came to that he could split his attention between his new student and his most recent pain in the ass.
The two young men who had spooked her into seeking refuge are in no condition to leave of their own accord but Sepúlveda is a physician before he is anything else and though they are not dead the dead are still afforded respect in his book. If he can stave off their impending end then he will. If he cannot he will still try.
One hand remains aloft while the other comes towards the laden pocket of his lab coat.
"I think I will, thank you."
If the goblin does not protest with violence or further shrieks he removes from his pocket a small vial filled with clear liquid and stopped with a dropper.
Margot
The goblin was, for the moment, content to watch.
Mercifully Margot had stopped any further movement and was now standing there in the dark, against the back of the lot with her hands wrapped around a good sized chunk of concrete-and-rock mix that had crumbled and fallen to the earth. She was reading the situation relatively well from afar, enough to recognize that the doctor didn't seem to be in any current immediate danger of being stabbed.
The little person in the big coat and hood folded their arms over what one presumed to be a bony chest, for how the clothes hanged off narrow shoulders and skinny arms, with the knife still in one hand and now pointed outward from their body. A boot-covered foot tapped impatiently at the pavement while it watched and waited.
Curious, but not smart. Wanting to see what could happen from here.
Sepúlveda
That vial of his contains nothing that would alert anyone walking past as to either its contents or its lack thereof. The only person who knows what it is is the person who removes it from his coat pocket and the only person to whom he might divulge its chemical makeup is watching from a distance. Waiting to see if she needs to intervene.
So long as the doctor is upright and conscious she can rest assured that he does not require intervention. They do not know each other yet. They do not know the other's capabilities yet.
The goblin stands back and Sepúlveda can perhaps guess that he is impatient. Even if he could not guess the tapping foot gives him away.
So Sepúlveda takes a deep breath and comes to stand beside the shorter of the two gentlemen and speaks to him low and knowing that if he hears and registers he will not respond. Tells him he is about to give him a medicine and the medicine will make him feel better and he believes what he says. Belief is half the battle.
[life 3/matter/prime 2: ANTIFUNGAL POWERS ACTIVATE. base diff 6, -1 taking his time.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Sepúlveda
[extending. +1 for that, -1 for quintessence, spending WP.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (5, 6, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Margot
The medicine would have to be administered for them, be it dribbled into slack mouths or injected or rubbed onto their skin. It would take about a minute of suspense to finally start working, but it was noticeable when they did. The stink of fruit-and-meat rot would begin to abate, and the jaundiced and waxy quality that their skin was taking on had lessened considerably. The swaying stopped, and the men became more relaxed, like puppets with the strings cut.
They weren't altogether instantly cured, certainly not. However, they were at least able to wearily shuffle themselves around to the bus bench and sit down before they slumped back. Passed out, but The Doc knew that they would be okay. At least, as far as that fungal infection went.
The Goblin, on the other hand, didn't look all to impressed. In fact, judging by the way its narrow shoulders were hunched sharply up under its coat (its face was masked by shadows from its hood, but one could imagine it contorted with anger).
"What...? What did you give them? That shouldn't have worked! Damnit, they were mine! I had to follow them for a week and now that's all wasted!"
The knife flashed again, and now the goblin seemed to be considering whether it was worth the fight or not himself. It was worrisome, but not really competent apparently. Waffling on whether the men on the bench were worth fighting over or not.
Sepúlveda
At the flash of the knife the doctor does not quite roll his eyes but that resignation to an inevitable and pointless fight crawls into his bones and he takes a huge breath in preparation to have to do something more trying than what he just did.
He did not need to try as hard as he did to cure those men. Yet he did. It was an effort and he will have to dose himself up and sleep sound through the night to shake off the effort.
From a distance Margot cannot read the effort. He is better off than the young men were and besides he was not reliving a past trauma like she had been when she called him. He pockets the vial and faces the pissed-off goblin and after that huge breath turns into a sigh he considers his options.
"Life is hard, pal. What do you want, you wanna fight? Come on, then. Let's get this over with."
Margot
[Inits! +4]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( botch x 1 )
Sepúlveda
[+6]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( botch x 1 )
Margot
[Margot's Init! + 7]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )
Margot
Order:
Margot: 13
Doc: 7
Goblin: 5
Goblin Declare: Stabbity at Doc! Stab stab! (one action, to be clear)
Sepúlveda
Doc: Basic Transmutation! Turn the Goblin's knife into... uh... dirt. Dirt is awesome.
Margot
Margot: Moving one round, still taking advantage of the prior stealth roll to sneak up on Goblin-head for a stealth attack next round
Sepúlveda
[matter 2: YAY DIRT KNIFE. base diff 6 (vulgar lololol) blah blah modifiers -1 for quintessence the practiced rote/outlandish feat cancel out)
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (1, 6, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Margot
[Well there goes my fucking knife. Good thing I have claws! Ahahaha!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 2, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Margot
[Damage! (L)]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Margot
ROUND TWO!
Margot: 0 damage
Goblin: 0 damage, no knife
Doc: 3 lethal, sorry buddy
Goblin Declare: Haha, that sucked, didn't it? What if I do it again?! Claw Doc!
Sepúlveda
Doc: YES THAT SUCKED WHAT THE FUCK. rip the man body. you goblin fuck.
Margot
Margot: Throw a big fucking thing of concrete right at that Goblin's fucking skull
[Dexterity 4 + Athletics 2, +2 diff for called shot, -2 diff for sneak attack]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
Margot
[Damage (L): +1 suxx, +1 big fucking rock, +2 headshot]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )
Margot
[Goblin Soak]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Sepúlveda
[life 3: pattern damage, bitches! base diff 6, blah blah modifiers.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Margot
[Goblins aren't smart, and don't like being hit with rocks. Switching to claw at Margot wildly!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (4, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Margot
[Damage]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
Sepúlveda
If he stops what he's doing before he's gone ahead and fired off the effect he's going to effectively botch the damned thing. It doesn't seem to him much of a question when his student attempts to brain the little imp bastard over the head and doesn't knock him out. All she gets is a swipe across the cheek for her efforts.
For his part Sepúlveda is hurting. It's slowing him down. But he's old and he's lived his life and if he gets killed by a goblin at a fucking bus stop while two low-lifes walk off their fungal infection in continued oblivion then it isn't as if he's got a whole list of hopes and dreams he hasn't fulfilled. Margot though.
He drops the effect and tries to restrain the goblin.
"GET BACK IN THE CAR!" he says. To Margot. In case that isn't obvious. "DRIVE!"
Margot
What should have, and easily could have, been something that they didn't need to become involved in became bloody fast. The knife dissolved into dirt, which startled the goblin creature, but not enough to fall to inaction. It was challenged to a fight, and didn't have the wit or intellect to know that it was better to back away. A combination of threat, challenge, and the fact that its cultivated prize had been ruined had it abandoning the fistful of dirt and jumping forward to swipe at Andrés with long fingers, some of that length apparently happening to be claws.
Unfortunately, those claws caught him in the shoulder and chest and bit deep, ripping through into muscles and doing a large amount of damage for a creature so small and wiry and obnoxious.
There was a brief moment where the Goblin's dark little eyes flashed with victory and realization-- its claws were a better deal than the knife anyways, weren't they? It flexed fingers to swipe again, but paused when a hunk of concrete thumped off the back of its thick skull and onto the ground. Little to no damage was done, and the goblin just looked surprised and angry at the new assailant.
With a flash it whipped around and laid those same bloody claws into Margot. She yelped, surprised, and slapped a hand up to cover her neck and jaw and cheek where the claws had raked. The cuts were deep, and they bled bright red that seeped quickly down her front, but for the most part it looked cosmetic. There'd need to be plenty of stitches, but she'd be okay.
Still, the Doc shouted for her to go to the car and drive away and jumped to try to physically restrain the terrible little beast instead. Margot's face was pale, especially under the red of the blood and the dark brown that her hair cast in the night shadows. By now the snow was swirling in dense flakes around them, the wind whipping it up and about to generate confusion in the atmosphere.
Wild-eyed, panicked, Margot shook her head quickly. It seemed she was unlikely to just leave her small mentor here to wrestle with a similarly small knife-fingered monster.
[Keeping the same inits for ease's sake-- the Goblin's gonna try clawing at the Doc again but is probably just gonna end up trying to fight the grapple]
Sepúlveda
[Action: LOL screw grappling that was so Margot could GTFO he's just gonna use Life 2 to cause pain and try and incap him for a round.]
Margot
[Margot's gonna stick to what she does best then: Kick that fuckin' guy right in his fuckin' center]
[Dex 4 + Brawl 2: Kick + 1 diff]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Margot
[Damage! (B): Str 2 + 1 kick dmg + 2 suxx dmg]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Margot
[Goblin soak!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )
Sepúlveda
[life 2: cause pain. base diff 5, fuck modifiers it's late af.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (3, 6, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Margot
The funny thing about being in a panic-inducing situation was that it evoked a Fight or Flight response. Margot really was geared more toward Flight when it came down to it, but sometimes that option was blocked off. In those instances she flipped over to Fight instead. When cornered and all of that... Except rather than being cornered here, she stuck by out of sense of guilt and some budding notion of loyalty. She was the one who called the Doc here, she was the reason he got mixed up in all of this and was splashing blood onto the sidewalk now.
Throwing the rock didn't help her much, so this time around Margot defaulted back to one of the very few lessons her brother provided to her that was worth keeping: how to kick somebody like a beast. Don't hit people with your fists, not unless you had something on them to protect them. You'll just break your little hands, he'd explained to her. She was a sprinter, a hurdle-jumper, an all around track-and-field star. She had leg strength, she may as well put it to use.
And that's precisely what she did. If it weren't such a shitty situation it might be an impressive moment, because Margot lifted one knee up high and powered the heel of her shoe right into the little goblin's skinny spine. There wasn't much finnese to the action, but the strength behind it was very effective. The little creature stumbled forward from the impact and almost fell to its knees. Cursed loudly and angrily and then--
screamed
because the pain that wracked its body was sudden and unexpected and the worse thing that it knew, as though its nerves were dipped in acid-fire and then laid out on a griddle to cook dry. It collapsed to the ground, seizing and twitching and panting and its eyes rolling in its head.
This would be a great opportunity to run, but Margot was standing and staring instead. Seemed to be stuck, with her gaze transfixed and horrified and her breaths shallow like she might benefit from an inhaler or just getting the fuck out of there.
Sepúlveda
For a few seconds the doctor stands breathing heavy for the adrenaline that just injected itself into his bloodstream. Part shock that the experiment worked and part shock at how well it worked.
He had wanted Margot to take off running and get the fuck out of here so she wouldn't have to witness any further violence. That she would haul off and kick the thing in the spine wasn't a variable he had prepared for.
Now he isn't sure whether he'd rather just kill this thing and dispose of a body or if he'd rather haul it back to his budding laboratory in the basement of his apartment and study it. This would be a great opportunity for Margot to run. Being as she does not run she gets to witness the Doc blowing out a breath like to mentally prepare himself for something awful and crouching down next to the goblin.
"Can we stop?" he asks as the throes begin to abate. If the goblin tries to rise from his writhing he's prepared to put a blood-drenched hand on its chest and try to pin it to the ground. It can swipe at his arm and he is prepared for it to swipe but he would like to think the thing will take the opportunity to withdraw if given it. "Eh? I mean you no harm, and I am sorry I caused you pain, but if we don't stop now and walk away, I will kill you. You understand?"
Margot
Some brief amount of time passed and the seizing subsided. The hood had knocked back and the goblin had a very humanoid face, but with skin like old parchment and beetle-black eyes and an unnaturally long and crooked nose, with a wide-set mouth and sharp little teeth. It had wispy black hair on its potato-like head and pointed ears and was panting when the pain begain to ebb away.
It looked around quickly, like it was just coming too, then looked sharply at the Doc whose hand was on its chest, holding it down, promising more and worse if the fight continued.
"N--no. No no, no it's smarter to walk away, huh? Eh-heh-heh-heh?"
It giggled nervously, panted some more. The fight was gone from it-- the imp was not smart but it had survival instinct embedded somewhere in the back of its head somewhere. Two junkies and a week's worth of work cultivating supernatural fungus within them wasn't worth that kind of pain again. The little beast would hold true to its word as soon as it was let up. There were no apologies made for what its claws had done, and as soon as it found its feet it stumble-scuttle-ran away, still with both of their blood under its nails.
Margot watched it go, still holding one hand to the blood still oozing from her face. She didn't look like she was going to start walking on her own without some proper kind of prompting, but when said prompting came she'd find the ability to use her feet again and start back toward the car without saying a word.
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