[05] Mountain Sector

[DA 2009]

MOUNTAIN SECTOR

Time Of Day: Dawn

Bunker: Active

Starting Players: Sage

[Sage]

Sage found herself in a black tunnel - a tube, really - surrounded by stretching, twisting lights of every color. She would have sighed, but she was being broken down at the molecular level, and it seemed a good portion of her body was already just particles hurtling across the sector. Soon, even the lights faded away, but only for a moment.

Soon, she watched the lights dance in reverse, as she was set down somewhere and meticulously reconstructed, molecule by molecule, until she found herself standing nearby a rocky outcropping, with nothing but the wind to keep her company.

But at least, Sage assured herself, she didn’t murder Pierre. He was alive, just unconscious. Somewhere. She spared him after he fainted. After he had ceased to be a threat. It was a bad decision, she knew. Pierre might wind up crossing her a second time before the tournament was over. But she was glad to have made the decision anyway. Somehow.

Realizing her hands were still encased in her claws, Sage allowed the ice to recede. She allowed herself the slightest giggle. The girl must have looked so absurd. Only five-foot-five, rushing her enemies with massive claws outstretched at her sides. The girl frowned. It wasn’t as funny as she first thought.

But Sage wasn’t in a contemplative mood. There wasn’t really much left to contemplate, aside from her waning conviction that she was, indeed, doing what she needed to do. And contemplating that was stupid, because to change course now would mean all of those horrible things she had already done were for nothing.

Forget that.

Instead, she decided to make for the bunker. The azure haired girl wasn’t sure she needed to, but it would at least scratch that nuisance off the list for a couple of days, and there wasn’t really anywhere else to go.

She hoped her friends had survived, but it was difficult, at this point, to assume they had. Still, she didn’t need to see Ashe in a pool of her own blood, or Sophia. ...Again.

The sight of the priestess tumbling down into the volcano made her sick. Sage crumpled to the dirt as the color drained away from her face. Damn you, Kai! The girl rubbed her eyes and tried to relax as her dizzy spell faded away.

Lumping the horrors of Friend or Foe onto her current situation would just cause a nervous breakdown. She knew that, but it was hard to fight it all away. She shook her head, hard. She had just come off the crest of a good deed. She had spared Pierre! It was time to think ahead, not backward!

That’s what the hero would have said, anyway. Sage climbed to her feet, and brushed herself off. She frowned. Her clothing was still in tatters, and she had fought Pierre like that. She cringed, thinking maybe her state of dress might have sent him a different signal than the one she wanted him to receive. Maybe he wasn’t... as creepy as she thought.

The girl hiked through the mountains, having to rest frequently. Her lungs would start to burn after only fifteen minutes or so, and she would have to take a break. Finally, after her breaks began to become more and more extended - out of necessity - she reached into one of the black ribbons in her hair and retrieved a capsule. With a click and a pop!, a purple asthma pump appeared in her palm.

As she put the device to her lips and pressed down on the dispenser, she couldn’t help but notice how long she had gone without it. Sage inhaled the gaseous concoction, and held her breath for as long as her irritated lungs would let her, before she released it with an unladylike, hacking cough.

The girl returned the pump to its capsule, and the capsule to its ribbon. It had been weeks since she’d used the thing, she suddenly realized. Maybe... the girl shook her head. For all of the evils all of this adventuring had thrust upon her - and extracted from her - maybe some good had come from it. Maybe she was getting... better.

Sage took a deep breath of the brisk, mountain air, this time able to fill her lungs without coughing. The hiking continued much more easily now, although the girl lamented not having a proper pair of boots for the occasion.

- - - - -

Exhausted and sore, the remarkably young doctor arrived at the mountain sector bunker. Why Damon decided to put the bunker halfway up the mountain, Sage had no idea. Probably for the same reason he thought it’d be funny to put the arctic sector bunker in the middle of the wasteland, she conceded. Although for her, that one was beneficial. Climbing a mountain wasn’t. She wasn’t Captain Kirk.

Tumbling into the bunker, Sage went straight for the fridge. Please not bread and butter again.

Throwing the door open made the girl’s eyes light up. Either this refrigerator hadn’t yet been touched, or someone restocked it on the sly. It was loaded with all the coolest eats imaginable.

Throwing proper diet to the wind, Sage withdrew a big hunk of smoked beef and plunked it down onto a conveniently placed plate on the counter next to the fridge. Fishing through the drawers for a fork and knife, the girl took her prize to the table, and voraciously dug into the food.

It had been days since she had a good meal, and yet, she was surprised to finish her meal and still be hungry. Still, it was there, so, with a shrug, Sage went back to the fridge, and piled her plate with meats and cheeses and grapes and things. Taking her new dish to the table, she carved into it with the same fervor she had with her first helping.

So much for a strict diet. As a doctor, Sage firmly practiced what she preached, and here she was, gorging herself on whatever she thought would taste good. Still, there wasn’t any inkling of guilt creeping into the back of her head.

Pushing her empty plate away from her, the blue haired girl leaned back in her chair, satisfied, for a change. It probably wasn’t the best for her figure, but it was good. Sage almost laughed. She’d tried to kill herself - more than once - and yet she had always worried about taking care of herself.

Vanity. Maybe.

The diazepam addict put her plate in the sink, but didn’t bother cleaning it. She knew it wouldn’t be Damon Dukes himself who would be forced to clean it, but some innocent, hard-working and poorly paid employee, but right then, she didn’t care.

Even now, she knew it would bother her later, but there were worse things, bigger things, that bothered her now. The unlikely princess sighed. To be so self-aware was, at times, frustrating. What she wouldn’t give to distract herself. Anything, even television.

Surprisingly, as she strode into what passed for the living room, she found a book sitting on top of one of the chairs. Picking it up, she scanned the cover. ‘The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead.’ Sage contained her skepticism, and arbitrarily thumbed to a passage at random.

A true crisis. Class 3 outbreaks, more than any other, demonstrate the clear threat posed by the living dead. Zombies will number in the thousands, encompassing an area of several hundred miles.

With a groan, Sage closed the book and tossed it back onto the chair she’d taken it from. Maybe later. First, she decided, she would look for clothes. Slim chances, sure, but it was something to do. And then, as she passed by the bathroom and noticed it contained a shower, ‘first’ changed. Her dirt, sweat, and blood covered clothes and flesh, and her sticky, matted hair was all the motivation the girl needed.

Locking herself in the bathroom, Sage peeled her already-ruined clothing off and unceremoniously dumped it all in the corner of the room, before stepping into the shower, doing her best to hide her incredulity at its existence in the first place.

Deciding it best not to consider the logistics - and sanity - of installing working plumbing halfway up a completely uninhabited mountain, Sage instead opened the ‘hot’ tap as far as it would go.

Sage enters Mountain Sector Bunker

[Jesper]

Sophia hardly even knew what to do with herself.

Ashe remained on the ground, eyes steeped shut as she remained in her unconscious stupor. The teenager remained safe, at least for the then and there, but the former priestess couldn’t help but wonder how much that mattered, or how long it would last. The incessant beeping and booping of the electronic devices that they both sported around their necks didn’t do much to ease an already troubled mind. Was she about to be—oh, what was the word—dusted? She assumed that it wasn’t the case, as she wasn’t dead or even writhing around on the ground in immense pain, but she kept the possibility of either circumstance happening locked in the back of her mind.

The pink-haired teenager disappeared, vanished in thin air, causing the healer to jolt. She fought off a laugh, however, as she realized that it was not Ashe who had disappeared, but Sophia herself, teleported to a completely different part of the city, as was a common occurrence during her experiences on the island. Peering up towards the skyscrapers and otherwise tall buildings, she couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed. She had traveled through the area on two different occasions, and she still didn’t feel as though she was any closer to knowing her way around. That, she supposed, was why she had a map.

She opened it, searching through it with a finger. The healer slowly moved the appendage away from the urban area, and down towards the forest. She pondered traveling there again, maneuvering her way around the trees until she made it to the bunker that had been built there. After all, the place seemed to be nice, at least when compared to the arctic bunker. Maybe the place had been sullied somewhat by the cold that had surrounded it, but it didn’t seem to have the same…pizzazz as the forest. It seemed as good a place as any to go.

Bears lived there, though. She had to remind herself of that before she had any inclinations to make the trip. That fact alone made her reconsider everything; it even made her consider braving the colds of the arctic instead. Grizzly bears were more fearsome than an eternal winter, after all, but maybe…Sophia shook her head and shivered at the thought. Maybe polar bears were in the arctic. It wasn’t outside of the realm of possibility, considering everything else that seemed to be happening. Sighing, she moved her finger onward until it stopped on something she hadn’t even considered before.

The map was separated into four parts, and the mountainous region was just as large and dominating on the page as anything else, but her eyes had failed to run across it before. Even better than that was its proximity to the place where she figured she was standing. Landmarks were hard to discern from one another, but the barrier to the juxtaposed position wasn’t far away at all. Besides, bears were likely harder to come by in the mountains—after all, who had ever heard of a mountain bear?

Her walk to the mountain sector was filled with similarly mundane thoughts. Most of it was intentional on her part, as there were certain things which she didn’t want to remember, though they raced through her mind every time she so much as closed her eyes. Kaden, for one—the courier was most likely…dead at that point in time. He did so much for her, intentionally or not, and just like that he was gone. She didn’t even have the chance to say goodbye, and that’s what killed her the most. It didn’t matter where they were or what was going on—one of them would eventually be torn from the other. Well…those were poor word choices, perhaps. The simple fact still remained: she was there, and he…was not.

A large chunk of rock ceased similar thoughts. The mountain loomed overhead, casting its shadow down on the grassy plains below. The healer could do nothing but stand and stare in awe before she was able to snap out of it—she needed to figure out where the bunker was if she was to stay alive. Her eyes glided along the edge of the landmark until it fell upon the structure itself, which was surprising when she consulted the map, to say the least. She felt like she had just crossed the threshold, but the map said that the bunker was well into the sector. Had she really been lost in her thoughts for that long?

Shaking her head and shrugging her shoulders, she approached the building and walked inside. What she saw was more or less what she had expected: a line of beds spaced in between a few doorways to lead to other various rooms, and a large table in the middle. Damon Dukes didn’t exactly earn points for design, but for what he lacked in creativity he made up for in dependency. Walking to the table, she sighed and sat down, resting her head on the wooden surface. Someone else was in the bunker, taking a shower from the sounds of it, but she made no attempts to discover who it was. What did it matter, she’d end up fighting him or her anyway.

Sophia leaves City Sector and enters Mountain Sector.

Sophia enters the Mountain Sector bunker.

[Tamsin]

A deep breath. That is what Tamsin took as she regained consciousness and became aware of her being once more. She gasped heavily as her body practically begged for additional oxygen, She touched her sore throat, suddenly remembering the unpleasant encounter with Hollywood. It was the second time someone had aimed for her throat. Considering what she had to experience in both instances, it was suprising she was still among the living.

Her eyes still wide from the shock, she looked around her einvironment. She was no longer at the shopping street where she encountered the stuntman. Instead, she was lying on a road at the edge of the city, tall mountains towering in the distance in front of her. Ignoring the buldings surrounding her, the maid forcefully got onto her feet as she remembered that the collar around her neck was still a threat. She wanted to stop and think, she wanted to clear her thoughts....but sheer survival took precedent. It was amazing she still lived, she was not about to let her opportunity pass.

Suddenly, she started walking towards the Mountain Sector. Her mind entirely blank, her feet practically dragged on by themselves as she braved the ever increasing heights. Although the temperatures were getting lower, the adolescent felt completely numb to the outside effects. Pressing through the heavy terrain once more, it was suprising how much quicker she covered the distances compared to before. Infact, before she felt like she was truly fully aware, the silver-haired human saw the concrete structure in the distance.

Her collar gave out a usual beep as she passed through the entrance, indicating it had deactivated itself. But Suzaku payed it no heed. Infact, her brain had preety much shut down any outside influences. As soon as she entered, she walked to the nearest free bunk and literally collapsed onto it. There, she laid still as she finally began to gather her thoughts and think over what had occured...and what was yet to come.

Tamsin moves from City Sector to the Mountain Sector

Tamsin enters the Mountain Sector bunker

[Alexander Trafford]

How many men would die before he could yield? How many would fall at his hand before he found the answers he so desperately sought? Doubt swallowed him. By performing actions unjust how could he free himself? Certainly two counts of murder would not help him cleanse his soul, but, he thought to himself, was that even what he was searching for? Perhaps his faults were so deep and so damaging that, in confronting them, peace was impossible. He hoped that was not the case. And, at the same time, the fragment of Alice’s soul that would forever reside in his urged him forward. If she advocated his actions then they could not be wrong.

While confusion encompassed every aspect of his conscience, there were a few things he had been certain of. First, that he could no longer reside in the miserable cold of the frozen tundra. As he trudged along, with his jacket and shirt being carried in toe, the howling wind raped his naked, meager frame with menacing gusts of ice and snow. And he still had not eaten. That crazy, valium-addicted girl had attacked him before he could get to the refrigerator, and, immediately following her icy antics, he had been whisked away into the coliseum.

And so, with a cigarette hanging from his lip, he headed back towards the mountain sector. It was early, and the sun was just barely sneaking over the distant horizon in both the frozen, arctic region and the area that lie ahead of him. The crimson ooze that stained his chest, which he had still not cleaned since the end of his exhausting duel with Belle Hibiki, gleamed and reflected the sun’s awakening rays. His guilt was overrun and, for the moment, forgotten as the beauty of the encroaching dawn mesmerized him in its artistic beauty. God was clearly a painter, applying tender strokes of violets, yellows, oranges and red across the mountainous sky. Unlike his explosions, this beauty was pure and it was true.

He sighed, and stamped out the cigarette on the bunker’s stone walls before he pulled open the door and slipped inside. He needed food, and he needed a wet cloth.

Alexander Trafford moves from the Arctic Sector to the Mountain Sector and enters the Mountain Sector Bunker

[Sage]

By the time Sage was finished, and closed the shower’s tap, the bathroom had become veiled in a thick layer of steam. Damon’s fault for not including a fan. The hybrid stepped out of the stall and snagged a couple of towels from the cabinet next to the shower, and set about drying herself off with one, while wrapping her absurdly long hair up with the other. Locks of blue still spilled out from around the towel, but at least her hair wasn’t dragging along the floor.

Convinced she was still alone, Sage slipped on a pair of panties sure to have given Belle a heart attack, and over that simply wrapped herself in a towel. Her other clothes, after all, were totally wrecked. They weren’t doing a whole lot better to cover her than the towel was.

She toweled off her hair as furiously as she could. It was still wet when she was done, but dry enough - sort of - to do back up into her pigtails. She threw the soiled hair towel on top of her ruined clothes.

Sage just hoped she could find something else to wear in one of the supply closets. She hoped Dukes wasn’t a complete jerk, and that there was something to put on. He had to have figured one set wouldn’t last through the whole competition. Or, she thought with a frown, he intended for the women’s clothes to eventually disintegrate. Maybe the men’s, too. Who knew what the man was into. The man running Dante’s Abyss. Who knew?

The blue haired girl stepped out of the bathroom and straight into the adjacent supply room, totally unaware of the three people congregating in the room down the short corridor. Somehow, they didn’t notice her, either, and Sage continued on in ignorance, rifling through drawers and then came across a row of closets. The first was full of men’s clothing. The second, jackets and tougher outerwear. Boots and stuff. The third - Sage’s eyes lit up just a touch. No more dirty clothes.

She pulled on a pair of tight-fitting jeans, and then donned a grey turtleneck. She preferred her old outfit better, but it was covered with grime, sweat, and blood, plus it had been burned and cut and torn. Not to mention, Sage liked the fuzziness of the sweater.

Grabbing a pair of chestnut ugg boots from the outerwear closet, Sage slipped them on and ventured back to the main room of the bunker, and nearly jumped at the sight of Alexander before her. He had halfway disappeared into the fridge, but he’d see her eventually.

A silver haired woman was lying on one of the beds nearby, and seemed content to while away her time lost in thought. Sage could understand that; she’d given a lot of time to contemplation. It hadn’t done her any good, but she could still understand.

More importantly than that, though, Sophia was here. Alive!

Immediately, the hybrid took a spot at the table, and nudged her blond friend, who had buried her head in her arms. Sophia jerked a little, and then looked up at Sage. The former priestess offered a faint smile of recognition, but it was devoid of her usual enthusiasm. Not that Sage minded. “Hey.”

“Hi,” the blue haired girl returned. “I, um, I’m glad you’ve gotten this far, so far. I mean, this far... uh-”

“You said the same thing the last time we talked,” Sophia replied with a hint of a giggle. “Were you the one in the shower?”

Sage nodded.

“Oh, good. Is it hot?”

Sage nodded again.

“Maybe I should take one, then,” she stretched. “Maybe later.”

“You!!” a shout from behind Sophia caused the girls at the table to jump in their seats. Trafford glared through the priestess and straight into the doctor from where he stood. He was in rough shape, to say the least. “What the hell was that shit in the bunker about?!”

The older substance abuser just stared at Alexander, wide-eyed, and consumed with fright. Unfortunately, the truth was, Sage had no reason to give. She felt the need to flee. But that wasn’t really a good enough explanation for throwing a thousand razor-sharp pinpricks at someone.

An awkward silence dragged on for a long time, until Sophia finally interrupted it with a sigh. “What happened, Sage?” she seemed distant. Disinterested.

“I...” the hybrid looked away, trembling once again. “...Attacked him,” she finished.

“For nothing!” Alexander retorted. He was clearly angry, but he restrained himself, pacing a few steps away from Sage instead of cursing her out.

“H-He’s right,” the girl acknowledged. “I... panicked. He aimed his g-gun at me and I just didn’t-” the girl stopped, and started tracing the grain on the table with her eyes.. “...I’m sorry. I shouldn’t h-have...”

“Yeah, yeah... whatever,” Alex waved her off. “I’m going for a smoke.”

The fiery haired man pushed toward the door, and then hesitated. Anything he could have smoked was nothing but ash in the ruined arena. His head dropped. “...Fuck,” he spun on his heel and disappeared further into the bunker.

“May I sit?” it was the silver haired lady. She was gesturing to the chair next to Sage’s. The girl hesitated a moment, but then nodded. They couldn’t afford to be enemies outside of the fights, Sage decided. She just hoped everyone else felt the same way.