Well Hell

Participants:

hana_icon.gif logan_icon.gif

Scene Title Well, Hell
Synopsis This was not the outcome either of them signed on for.
Date December 6, 2010

Coco's Boxing Gym


One second, Logan has his pistol held steady on the door. The next, a flashbang grenade seems to wrench him from reality.

Sight and sound are beaten back with white and deafness, and he flings an arm over his eyes some crucial moment too late, gun held in a death grip. He is peripherally aware that gunfire transpires above his head— which must mean he's fallen, and so accounts for some confusion— and the crack of fire is reduced to an echoed sound of thunder that must come from somewhere very distant.

With those two seconds accounted for, it's the third that changes the game. Twin bolts of red lightning knifes through the white, breaking apart a room that already seems to Logan to be a light trick superimposed over a grey reality.

He doesn't see, out the corner of his befuddled gaze, when the crimson bolt hits Hana square in the chest and ripples tendrils of pseudo-electricity around her shape, which may or may not be familiar to her. It's nothing he can account for, as the second fork of lightning leaps out and hits him in the stomach, making his back arch, fingers hook like rigor mortis. Accidentally ricochets a bullet off metal shelving, going nowhere, hitting plaster. Burning is like this— he would know— but the only sound that he makes is a harsh breath in.

Pupils go blown under a light that isn't there, by he time he's lying limp, save for that one hand clutched stiff around his pistol.

A heartbeat's space to evaluate Case's pause on the stairs, to extrapolate its meaning. Two words suggest themselves as the small, immediately recognized object sails through the doorway, with not enough time for any other meaningful action.

He cheated.

Not that Hana can blame him; in his shoes, she would've done the same. Tries anyway to make a lucky shot, blurred physical senses and clear digital perception fighting one another for precedence. The tilting gamebord is then inverted entirely by red lightning that hits with a force not electrical, something that will be recognized later but for the immediacy of the moment repesents only injury added to insult.

And one heck of an injury for all that, however non-physical.

She has no idea how much time passes, really. An instant in which Case tromps back down the stairs; or a stretch of minutes in which she slowly comes to realize that her gun is on the floor some few inches away from limp hand, she is on the floor with what promises to become a bruise on the back of one shoulder, and a sinkeningly familiar cotton-swathed feeling has taken up residence in her head. Only… as pieces of information fit themselves together… it's not as simple as negation, this time.

Assessing the room as fingers reflexively scrabble for the pistol, Hana finds that she and Logan have apparently been left to their own devices. This entire situation can be summed up in exactly two groggy but heartfelt words.

"Well, hell."

And with those two words, Hana proves to be the more articulate of the two, all of a sudden.

What Logan sees and hears is not sight and sound, necessarily, although it would be difficult to describe it as much else. Words — words given life and personality and forcing their way through his head, as if taking revenge on someone who hasn't barely picked up a book in the last decade, knifing like a migraine. Not even good literature, at that, even if he could hear it beyond bits and pieces of unfiltered, clogging information that seems at first to vie for his attention before fleeing in the next second before he can grasp it. Sees words, hears words, nearly tastes words.

From Hana's perspective, it's a little less dramatic. He lies slumped against tipped shelving, holding a live gun without actually registering that he is. His breathing is hard, taking on a keening quality, growing in noise and intensity before a groan strangles out of his throat. His eyes are bright, dilated, unseeing.

He's still waiting for it to stop. Once he realises it won't

Looking briefly down at the gun in her hand, Hana snorts in wordless assessment of its current usefulness. Drags herself out of her sprawl on concrete floor, first to a sitting position and then up onto her feet. The firearm goes back into its holster; mindful of Logan's current state and where that gun is pointed, she moves to divest him of his. Weapons are worth enough in her worldview that she takes the time to separate it from its ammunition; the one goes back in Logan's shoulder rig, the other in one of his coat's pockets. At least for now.

Later is later's problem; one step at a time.

The Israeli takes a moment to step back and look at Logan, now that he isn't in danger of accidentally shooting anything. She never saw her own manifestation from the outside, after all; only has Bennet's word of her collapse into unconsciousness. Two weeks' sleep might well be a grace to Logan, right now.

"Welcome to the world of the walking Blackberry," Hana sighs, bitterness that Logan likely can't hear to appreciate.

It would be nice, and probably useful to both of them, if Logan did in fact simply shut down like an overheated laptop.

More keeps coming in, tornadoing around him, filling his senses to a break point. There is a beauty to it, like a lightning storm or a tidal wave, but Logan has only ever had a very superficial idea of what passes as beautiful. His expression is not exactly blank for all that his gaze is, and some vague idea that his hands are free has them coming up like maybe he could fend off the influx of data, fingers trembling like new branches on a storm-wracked tree.

He doesn't reply to Hana, doesn't seem to quite see her, either, as his keening heightens in volume until more ragged, laboured sounds grind out from his throat, reaching a crescendo until something snaps, and a scream tears away, body twitching from the assault on all sides. And again.

Embarrassingly for him. And maybe for Hana.

Any easy exit from this… as in involving them both walking out on their own respective pairs of feet… was of course going to be too much to ask for.

Hana drops down to kneel beside Logan, left hand reaching past his ineffectually warding hands to bracket his jaw, firm pressure adjusting the angle of his head. Wordless, she holds there for a moment, ensuring she can keep steady against the intermittent convulsions. It'll be really irksome if she has to try more than once.

"Now shut up."

The right hook which follows by necessity has less force behind it than a proper standing posture would impart, but the advantage of a stationary target.

In theory, Logan might thank her later. Probably not. There is no real reason that he shouldn't see her arm cock back and ready her fist, but he doesn't even bat an eye before she's letting the blow fly. His head whips away from the blow on impact, abruptly silencing smoke-hoarse cries, the kind of sound that could come during a nightmare-filled sleep. Fortunately for Hana, she really does only have to try it once.

He slumps to the side, eyes shut and head lax on his long neck, his ascot gone twisted and spilling free of his red satin shirt. The building around them, at least, is relatively quiet save for the buzzing of an old electrical system, evacuated more or less under threat of raid, save for a few stragglers.

Too quiet, but she can snarl about that later. Or, more likely, wordlessly beat some hapless punching bag into a shapeless lump.

For now, it falls to Hana to get them both out of here. Both, because with her ability now bequeathed to Logan, however unwillingly, she has some responsibility for him. At the very least, responsibility to give him a fighting chance at learning to cope. In the quiet, the woman hauls him up into a fireman's carry, breath grunting out under the heft of so much limp weight. Her progress to the door — the one out onto the main floor, rather than back into the basement — isn't the most steady, but it improves quickly as she compensates for the added burden.

They have a long ways to go even to her first potential safe harbor, and farther yet for the final destination Hana has in mind. A distance that can only be taken one lead-weighted step at a time.


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