Weaver: Detroit

Casimir "Phantom Friend" Pangari

Location: Detroit - Outside of Dome
Date: 2010 sometime.

Interactions: Everyone



As everyone started piling in the truck and Lemuria made his decision, Casimir borrowed his Tinker power. He was going to need to borrow that power if Lemuria was leaving. For as long as he'd be able to borrow it, at least. Probably no longer than a few minutes at best. Their line of defense was being pulverized, and Breezeblock had just slid through the truck into the driver seat. Rhapsody and Breathtaker were both He slammed on the accelerator. Stoneroller was by the side of the truck, but Casimir really didn't have time to deal with him. He turned to Breezeblock. "We're going to have to leave it. Dunno about you, but I'm no good for a direct fight against enemies I don't know the abilities of. Get ready to swap out. I'm going to have to go back with the drill as soon as we're out of sight. And I agree that he shouldn't be driving, so someone else needs to beat him to the wheel."

His part said, he rolled down the back window so he could give whatever instructions he might be able to get right off the bat from the borrowed Tinker power.

If nothing happens to cause trouble, he planned to just whip the truck around the corner of the dome, drive a few seconds to get the group a moment's respite, then stop the truck so he could hop into the bed with the drill.
 
Cursing under his breath in a mixture of English and Russian, Breathtaker opened the door closest to Stoneroller, grabbing the man by the collar of his shirt and pulling him up.

"Get your ass in the fucking truck! We can fight over who drives later!" Breathtaker tried not to burst a vein due to the rage he was feeling at the moment. There was blood everywhere on that damn man, and, more importantly, they were being chased by a giant reptile. Or they would be soon if they didn't leave already.

After doing his best to pull Stoneroller inside the truck, he leaned over the man to close the door. "Ok, go!"

Once the truck was moving, Breathtaker rubbed his face with a hand, trying to calm down. Again. He hoped they wouldn't be chased by the PRT for the moment, considering the kid has stayed behind. But it would be way too lucky to count on that.

"Perhaps we should just try to lose them inside the dome first. For how long can you hold the kid's powers?" he asked Phantom. "If we can reach another spot on the dome safely, we can look for a source of energy first, make an exit point, and then go looking for the money. Otherwise... Let's just get going and hope for the best when it's time to get out."

Considering how their luck had been so far — in big part because of Stoneroller, but it was better not to think too much about it, or he'd get pissed off all over again —, he doubted hoping for the best was a sound plan.

But it was better than being killed by giant reptiles.
 
Rhapsody jumped out of the truck bed momentarily, seeing a pile of shards that split off from the dome during the cutting, and seeing his chance since they hadn't left yet. He took one of the shards; he would've taken all that he could find if the team wasn't so pressed for time to get inside the dome itself, choosing to take one that could be used as a makeshift long shank, though the bottom 'handle' part was still as sharp as the top. Just as the truck was driving away, Rhapsody vaulted back into the bed of the truck with his prize.

He wished he had been more forward thinking with the battery and the drill, but he didn't of it because they were both Kid Lemuria's. He should've snatched them away as soon as they were finished cutting the whole, since the Kid wouldn't be coming with. Again he had to remind himself to be mindful and work on what could be done now.

The interior of the dome was dark, which wasn't surprising because of the dome blocked out the sun from what he could see, and it stank of acrid and stale air, the dome having kept most of the air inside, only pouring out with the comparatively small hole they had cut on the dome itself. Rhapsody tried to push through it by thinking about the payday if the plan became a success, and focusing on the new totem, the dome shard, now in his possession, steadily focusing his resonance into the shard in a small experiment.
 
Detaching my DLSR from it's mount, I glance over to Phantom Friend.
"Swap out? You want me to drive? Cos I mean I can drive. Dunno how good I am in a chase against giant lizards though, okay? I'll do what I can." Stoneroller is getting serenaded by the creepy bitch in the red dress, and Lemuria is making it clear that he's neither joining us or handing over the battery. Not ideal, but I guess I still have a chance to film inside the dome and an exit. Beggars can't be choosers. Especially when they're not the ones paying the bill.

Slinging the camera's strap round my neck, I hit record again and then get in position. This is it. My moment. My chance to film a space that no-one has before. I'm about to be the one with the first footage of the interior of the dome, and the one willing to make sure that footage is loud and proud for all to see online if I make it out of here alive. No more PRT red tape, no more 'need to know' basis. The world will be able to see the result of what happens when the powers that be fuck up, and I will be the one to show them.

Makes joy-riding with a bunch of criminals and maniacs almost worth it.
 
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"Don't let her drive! DON'T LET HER DRIVE!"

Stoneroller thrashed around on Breathtaker's lap, his body half in and half out of the truck as it rattled through the dome-hole. As the moody doctor tried to reach over him and get the door shut, Stoneroller in turn tried to reach between the seats and grip Phantom's shoulder. He had to keep the little bastard in the driver's seat (better a Kenyan than a woman). But as the truck lurched it brought his pinky-stub into collision with the seat.

Then came the screaming. It mixed nicely with the interference the dome was causing to his Classic Rock station.

...ing 'weet m' Ala ma 'l'summ oooooooong!

The unpatriotic disruption of Kid Rock's opus only quickened Stoneroller's sorrow. He wriggled into the footwell, his clunky, armour crushing Breathtaker's ankles. This was probably what it was like trying to pull off a high-speed kidnapping of a knight in platemail. Stoneroller cradled his bleeding hand to his chest and sobbed a little while using his other hand to rummage under the seats.

"Where are my guns? I need my guns, man! You don't understand. None of you sand-monkeys understand!"

His hand alighted on something promising and he began yanking it. And that was how Breezeblock spent most of the ride in with Stoneroller grabbing her ankle under the seat.

...wurrrrrrr 'olves o'London....!
 
1: Dearborn

My mother told me once of when
A young hare ventured from her den
And as she danced in field and glen
The world sang joy about her.
But wicked hateful things abound
And that young hare these evils found
Then whisked her up from off the ground
And glen was left without her.

The wicked power tore asunder
And with this cruel and fateful blunder
Cast her to a world of wonder
Would she e'er see home again?
And so hare flew that mournful day
Over the sky and far away
And down and down, beneath the sea
To a place unlike the glen.

A world of men and man's design
A place where God's light would not shine
A Hell of steel beneath the brine
Where misery's echoes boomed.
And all around her there were others
Beasts like her, all sisters, brothers,
Locked up, all, with one another,
In deep sea-dark, entombed.
​
As the truck trundled through the gap in the dome, each of the crew felt a deep nausea building in their stomachs. The eerie light filtering through the blue crystal above, reflecting off facet after facet, served more to unsettle than to unveil. Breezeblock flicked on the headlights, only to reveal... normality. Wear and tear had certainly taken its toll on Dearborn, but there were no alien spaceships, no horrific cannibal cults, no sand worms breaching the highway to devour the Chevy. That feeling of nausea, though... it roiled in them as they passed under the thick crystal wall, something in their heads screaming of wrongness. That this dome was the wrong answer to a question they didn't ask, a question they couldn't even percieve. Breezeblock sensed a horrifying, gravelike stillness from the structure. Rhapsody saw the pause, the moment where a great conductor left the city in suspense. Breathtaker noticed the suppressive atmosphere, finding an uneasy comparison to the way his powers worked on others, while Stoneroller suddenly felt a stark loneliness grip at his heart. Nobody was coming for him - not the militia, not mother dearest.

The Phantom felt something different, though that was because another person's powers were running through his system. He saw the Lemurian Kid's power, and understood his scope. He wasn't a drill-maker, but rather a portal engineer. Resonances and harmonies began to sing to him, the cheap components of the slapdash drill singing much more loudly than the finely produced truck beneath them. Behind the team, they saw Monitor's beasts amble to a halt, the PRT clearly intent on forming a perimeter around the breach to stop them from getting out.

That was outside. What was inside, though, was unusual. A little further in, they saw that this section of Detroit still had power. Streetlights were working, though some that had fallen into disrepair had unusual growths of what looked like bioluminescent tissue. The air was stale, but breathable. While it was certainly possible that riches lay before them, the sight of startled and confused people staring at them from the sidewalks - real, living people! - gave them the suspicion that not all would be as easy as first thought.

But wasn't that proving to be the case already?
 
I'm filming history, right now. Sights and sounds that no-one in the outside world has yet seen are being committed to the memory card stored inside the camera mounted on the Chevy's dashboard. This must be how those combat reporters stationed in Africa feel when they step into the wake of some new parahuman warlord, documenting the aftermath of powers and abilities never before seen by human eyes.

If I get out of here alive, I'll be walking out with what essentially amounts to digital gold. The kind of information the PRT would want to sit on, tuck away and hide from the public: I'll have the chance to let it loose into the wild. And what a scoop it is. I've sat through hours of listening to pundits and red-faced TV talking heads spewing line after line about what could have happened to those inside the Dome when it came down on the city. Basically every asshole with a sharp suit and a bunch of letters after his name has been saying for the better part of two years that there probably aren't any survivors, that people shouldn't be hoping to see their friends and loved ones who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Curb your expectations, proles, your betters know the way things are.

And yet, here they are.

Grubby faces and patchy clothes, sure. A little worse for wear. But as the Chevy peels through the streets of Dearborn, I am filming undeniable proof that people have found a way to survive. Quite how the hell they've done it I don't know yet, but I fully intend to find out. Surely one of these confused figures we speed past will be willing to talk to me, if I get the chance. Surely there's something round here that will give us an indication of what's been happening for the last two years inside the Dome.

But first things first. If my fellow Dome-crashers and I want to actually make it out alive without being hosed with containment foam, we need to get our shit together. Taking a deep breath, and feeling more than a little grateful for the filters in my mask, I decide to get the ball rolling.
"Okay, plan time guys. We need a plan. An exit plan, cos going backwards the way we came would be a really, really fuckin bad plan. Phantom, how long can you hold onto what you need to make that drill thingy work? Cos I'm thinking that's like, plan priority number one."
 
Rhapsody stood up from the back of the truck when he saw Monitor's beasts stay at the border of the dome. He raised his rapier and a middle finger at them. He hoped that the length of his rapier could still be seen at that distance and sufficiently convey the message. Rhapsody presumed it was what his team would've wanted. He then sat down and concentrated back on the dome shard. He wondered if Kid Lemuria knew anything about the resonances he had experienced when the dome had shattered by the drill, those that made him dance in exaltation. Most likely he'd never see Lemuria again. It was a shame. You don't meet geniuses of that caliber very often.

Once the truck had stopped and The Five Elements had reassembled, Breezeblock opened the floor for a new plan.

"Going back isn't a bad plan, per say, as long as we were disguised and could sneak our way out, but we'll call that Plan Z. They probably think they can wait it out. Let them think we're still inside while we cut a small hole somewhere else to slip out. I was thinking we could cut a hole underground if we think PRT has eyes everywhere on the dome, but it would take a lot of work to move that much dirt and get the truck through at the same time. We should just assume they don't know that we can cut holes."

"If that doesn't work, we need to create a distraction. These people might not know a hole's opened. If we can create a mass exodus at the original hole, we might have better cover for Plan Z."
 
"Buncha fuckin' protaskinators!" Stoneroller shouted from the footwell. He let go off the ankle he was molesting (which turned out to be a mannequin's foot and not Breezeblock's, as he had assumed ((and also don't ask about the mannequin foot))) then struggled to get upright again. In the process, he slammed three parts of his armoured body into Breathtaker's face and left the doctor dazed on the back seat.

"Gotta do all this shit myself for you limp-dicked snowflake fuckabees!" He put his dagger in his mouth, rolled down the side window, lunged out of it, got stuck (as planned), took the knife from his mouth, then wriggled to sit on the windowsill while hugging the roof of the truck.

Perched just so, he waved his dagger at the people on the sidewalks they were passing by, as way of greeting.

"HEY!" he shouted at the general public. "IT'S YOUR LUCKY DAY, FUCK-NUTS. CAVALRY'S ARRIVED FROM PARADISE!" He tried to twist and point behind them, to indicate towards the drill-hole. "WE GOT YOUR FOOD, AND YER BLANKETS, AND YER BIG-TITTIED NURSES. THEY ALL COMIN FOR YOU, TO HELP YOU AND SHIT. SO ROLL UP! ROLL THE FUCK UP!"

He yelled down side-alleys as they passed, and slammed his dagger against lamp-posts and trash cans, causing as much noise as possible. "SHIT'S LIMITED THOUGH. BEST HAUL ASS, BOYS AND BITCHES. THE FUCKIN' CHINESE HAVE ALREADY LEFT, AND THEY'RE GETTING THEIR STICKY-ASS FINGERS ALL OVER THE BURGER TRUCKS."

When he ran out of talking points, he resorted to whooping and howling. He wanted to ensure a broad appeal.
 
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