Magical Girl Quest - The Fire That Burns

Despite the frantic energy that's racing through your veins, you are still able to think clearly about the situation. Need to leave, need to hide body, need to destroy body, fire? With your new powers, it would be a cinch to set the entire area ablaze with nought but a thought. And that did seem to be the best way to hide a body, it would be found but unrecognisable in the aftermath. All evidence of their stay would also be hidden completely.

Plan firmly in mind, you reach over to your sister and grab her by the shoulder. You turn her to face you and look straight into her eyes. "Una, wait by the fence. When I come running out, I want to you start running. Don't stop for anything, I'll catch up and guide you. Ok?"

You stare at her until she lets out a small nod. Once you have that affirmation, you quickly make your way back into the house and over to the pile of towels. You were about to simply flare out your Aura when a better idea comes to mind. With reluctant hands, you reach out and throw the towels off of the body, its quickly paling form greeting your eyes. He's completely still now, not even a slow trickle of blood from his neck wound.

With a grimace, you haul him out of the corner and slump him against the kitchen counter, then you make your way over to the cooker and flick it on at the wall. You turn one of the knobs to max and wait for it to ignite, moving a pot onto the flame and throwing something from the fridge in without looking at it. Your misdirection set up, you reached inwards and for the first time since the mall, let lose your flame entirely. With a rushing roar it explodes out of you with enough force to throw everything from the counters before it promptly bursts into flames.

Ignoring the exhilarating rush that you feel at letting loose, you deliberately try and crank your flames hotter and larger, the edges of your Aura pushing forwards and burning even hotter. After several seconds you struggle closed your bindings again, your Aura slowly dimming until you stand alone in a house that is completely ablaze, the air around you shimmering with heat as pots and pans glow a molten red. You don't turn your eyes to whatever is left of the body very specifically, but you can smell burning flesh from where you stand, and with that you turn and burst through the weakened and flaming door with a clatter.

The sight and noise reach your sister just as your eyes do, only to see her already halfway down the garden to the fence. With that conformation, you trail a slight amount of magic through your limbs and push off of the wooden porch behind you, the flaming wood snapping in half completely where the flames were weakening it. With a single bound you make it half way to your sister, and by the time she has reached the top of the fence you are just starting to jump yourself.

You throw yourself over the other side and ahead of your sister, taking a quick glance back to make sure she's following before you rocket across the street and into a nearby alleyway. Ignoring the people who spotted you, if all goes to plan you should be able to make it to the shop and leave town before word of what happened even reaches the shops. Making sure Una is always a step behind you, you reach the corner of the alley and push off of the wall at a run, your sister making the jump just as effortlessly as you tumble down darkened alleyways and run down buildings.

Only a scant twenty seconds have passed since you set the building alight and already you can hear distant sirens, followed with the occasional soldier rushing towards the fire as you catch glimpses of them from the dark. Over the next several minutes you and your sister make good time towards the shopping district, trying to avoid attention the best you can and avoiding soldiers wherever they are. Despite your best efforts, you are pretty sure that several of the soldiers that you passed on the way noticed you and called out to you.

Regardless, you ignored them and continued your journey towards the shops. You manage to make it all the way there without actually getting stopped and none of the soldiers standing guard there seem to be looking for you, though that might be because they are all staring in the direction of the fire with serious looks on their faces and tight grips on their guns. You worm your way back towards a camping store, a different one to the one you stole the knife from and walk into it as nonchalantly as possible, your sister taking note and waiting outside after passing you some of the money she had in her bag.

You make your way to the outdoors camping section and grab the first tent that looks about the right size, making your way over to the counter only to be greeted by the tired face of a teenager, who obviously wasn't paying attention to any of the racket that was going on outside. You quickly ring up your purchase and make your way back to the door, Una peeling away from where she was leaning in a shadowed corner as the two of your quickly walk towards the northern edge of the town as quickly as can pass under notice.

You manage to make it almost the entire way, a couple of hundred metres left when you see a soldier look up from where he was taking a call on his radio and his eyes narrow right onto you. Your heart roars as you grab Una's arm and start running as fast as you can, ignoring his shouts to stop. You try and put as many objects between him and you as you run, pushing Una in front of you so you stay between him and her, constantly glancing back at him as you run. You manage to make it about a third of the way there before you hear a deafening crack of a bullet whizzing past you, the shouted warnings turning pleading.

The warning shot almost makes you lose control of your bindings in pure surprise before you manage to control it, you do flush as much magic into your limbs as you possible can and grab Una from the ground into your arms. Once you have her you start running as fast and hard as you can, desperately trying to keep cover between the two of you.

You manage to make it between three buildings and a sign before you hear the deafening crack again followed by a sharp burning pain in your back. The pain makes you stumble briefly before your magic washes it away and you take off running again. This time you mange to make it to the edge of town, the occasional crack of the gun behind you whizzing past, some shots grazing your form as you run before you get hit again. This time you don't even feel any pain, just the feeling of your left arm going completely numb, forcing you to tighten your grip with your other so you don't drop your sister.

The last stretch of the race left you completely out in the open as you dashed towards the forest, completely exposed. Then your beloved wonderful sister throws something from her hands that makes the soldier behind stop chasing after them as it lets out a hissing noise. A quick glance back shows a billowing cloud of smoke seeping from a small container. Did she steal a smoke grenade from a soldier when we passed? You wanted to be angry with her for doing something so risky, but seeing as she managed to save their lives, you thought you'd let it go this time. Later, at least.

With the cover of smoke and magic pushing your limbs onwards, you burst through a hedge shoulder first and found yourself in a dense forest, trees shoulder to shoulder. You continue running for several minutes before you set your sister down, her looking at something on you in concern before you urge her onwards, the two of you changing direction slightly before continuing your dead run north.

You continue moving, running to walking and back until the sun is high in the sky, several hours having passed in complete silence. Finally your sisters body gives up, tripping over a thick root, you catch her and set her down, panting heavily yourself. The two of you sit shoulder to shoulder underneath an enormous tree that seems like it provides perfect cover from above. Panting hard enough for steam to be escaping you in great billows, you pat the tree in a silly sense of gratitude, though you don't know why.

There is a vague nagging feeling in your magic at the thought, but it passes before you can grab hold of it, the action also making you draw back the magic reinforcing your limbs. After the customary several seconds of lingering numbness you suddenly feel the agonizing pain in your back and arm that it had been holding back, you resist the urge to scream, but tears force their way out of your eyes. The sudden change catches the attention of your sister from where she lay, panting as you try to curl around your arm only to pull the injury in your back, your movements just making the pain worse.

She immediately sits up and starts fussing over you as you desperately try and raise your reinforcement again, unable to focus through the debilitating pain. You lie there with tears down your face as you feel your sister start tearing strips from a spare shirt in her bag and hastily tying them around your injuries as best she can. Once she has she just burrows into your arms and hugs you as gently as she can, ignoring your iron grip as you squeeze down as hard as you can to distract yourself from the pain.

(Cerys Health: 79 - 67 = 12
Injuries: Two gunshot wounds = 30 Health each. Torn open injures = 7 Health.)

Several minutes later, your body starts to go numb, enough that you can think instead of just cry silently. You very much just want to curl up and cry, but you need to be responsible for your sister right now, despite the fact that you feel like you are on the verge of passing out and never waking up. With several juddering breaths and your sisters help, you manage to prop yourself against the tree in a way that doesn't rest against your injury.

Do you...
[] Try and heal yourself before moving on
[] Suck it up and move on now
[] Bunker down where you are
[] Write In...

+ 5 XP Escaped the town

Joseph Arriaga was on edge, the entire town was on edge.

There had been a terrorist attack several days ago that had sent the entire country into an uproar. From what he'd head through the grapevine, it was made even worse with the tension that had been floating around since Canada had chosen to rejoin the Commonwealth proper. He'd heard whisperings in the barracks about there being some 'invisible war' going on now, lots of people near the border suddenly going missing, brutalised corpses no-one spoke of and now this.

An entire town set to torch, which, best as he'd managed to get out of a buddy who was doing intelligence recovery, couldn't be explained by anything that made sense. The fire started from nothing and there were still streets piled with corpses days later. That wasn't something that a fire caused, let along that giant thing they'd found in the mall. It was completely unrecognisable, melted as it was, but word had gotten around that it was alive at some point. And the people who'd been torn in half and buildings with handprints on them suddenly made a sickening sort of sense.

Joseph liked to believe that he wasn't a superstitious man, the only god he recognised was his lord and saviour, his rifle, which he was currently holding as he slowly walked around his designated area. In the inner areas, they'd been assigned buddies to patrol with, but they were too few to pair up everyone if they wanted to patrol the entire town. He'd gotten word earlier that a house had burst into flames on the other side of town and that it had spread to several nearby residences.

They'd all been told that this could be a distraction from a saboteur trying to make a run for it and a bit later they'd been given a description of a pair of kids who'd been seen running away from that area, one of which had been spotted on recovered recordings near the mall running into it on the day of the attack. They'd been called to stop but had ignored it, and the smaller one had actually attacked a guy who tried to grab her and stolen a grenade off of his belt. Once that had gotten out they had their orders. Order them to stop, give them a chance. If they keep running fire a warning shot, if that fails shoot to disable if possible. If it looks like they are going to escape, shoot to kill.

It left a bad taste in his mouth, thinking about being ordered to shoot kids, it made him think of his own child, just three right now. But when he spotted them later, he followed his orders, told them to stop. Gave them a chance dammit. When they kept running, he pulled out his pistol and took careful aim a fair distance past the larger girl and took a shot. She only flinched a little but kept running, so once he had a clear line of fire he reluctantly raised his gun and fired several shots.

With the way his arm was swaying as he ran the fact that he hit her at all amazed him, then disgusted him because hejustshotakidfuckfuckfuck. Despite his thoughts, he kept running after her on auto-pilot, her pace hardly slowing a step despite the fact that he'd hit her solidly in the back. Without thinking he raised his gun again and fired several more times, missing all but one that managed to clip her in the arm. Now that his gun was empty, he dropped it to let it hang on it's rope and pushed forwards as hard as he could.

Despite his best efforts, his well trained body and natural athleticism. She somehow managed to keep ahead of him, sometimes when she put her foot down on a particularly weak spot of concrete he could have sworn that he'd heard it cracking underfoot. And so once the two of them turned the final corner, he saw the long gap between her and the forest beyond. Remembering his orders, he shakily grabbed his rifle from his back and pulled it to his shoulder.

He looked straight down his sights at her, looked that smaller kid right in the eye and tried to pull the trigger. He stood there for several seconds, enough that the kid threw out a smoke grenade the stolen one? before he looked down at his hand to see what was wrong.

He let out a shaky laugh as he stared at his hand, firmly clenched on the trigger and looked at the side of his gun. The safety was on, he'd turned off his safety when he called out to them. With a huff, he sat down and stared out into the woods, reaching for his radio to call in that they'd gotten away.

Guess I'm not enough of a monster yet huh?