"Ready, Set, ACTION!" (IC)

[\/£in]

Scenario 1 START!:

((CHECK OOC for Scenario details))

[Familiar]

The lights flicker, die, the barn plunges into darkness, and for just an instant the heavy techno beat of the rave is cut silent. What replaces it is a cacophony of screams, followed by a series of sickly wet splashes. The lights come up, and twelve eyes look upon the visage of hell itself. Garish red and ichor beige paint the walls like some obscene mural, and countless glassy eyes stare up at the half dozen still standing figures. A morbid frieze the likes of which none of the survivor's had ever seen before danced in stillness before their eyes.

"What the hell?" Alexander Beat couldn't form a more complex thought than that. Not yet. Not this soon after the lights came up. It was odd, not to even be able to come up with something clever to say within his own mind, especially since he usually prided himself on never being out of words.

He could feel something hot and wet running down the side of his face. Blood, as it turned out. Was it his? Possibly, but not probably. There was too much of it for it to be entirely his. No matter, it could be dealt with later. For now, the most important thing to do was to answer his initial question. Just what in the hell happened?

"What in the fuck was that!? Are all of you alright? Well... everyone left standing, anyways..."

[UberPingu]

When the lights died, the first thing that zipped through Garrett's hyperdrive-mind was, "Oh no! Where are the lasers? Cue strobes lights! CUE STROBE LIGHTS!" However, the sickening sound of something slicing through a dozen bodies silenced him. Frozen in the darkness, he felt disoriented and terrified. In his head, he explored a million different possibilities. It's a prank. Someone cut the lights and...threw water balloons! Yes.

But there were no startled screams. No laughter. And the music had stopped. The lights came on. His boss, Angela, stood beside him, just as she had been standing the whole time. At his feet (his shoes were covered in blood. oh the horror!) were the bodies of the party guests. Strewn across the floor like gassed mice. Except... they were... cut up...impaled...mutilated mice. "Angela," Garrett whispered in panic. Everything had gone so wrong.

"Angela, they got blood all over the floor. It took me three hours to clean the floor." Garrett was so in shock he could only go through his thoughts in the exact order they came to him. "Angela, we can't afford a lawsuit. We can't afford to be blamed for this. Did we do a background check on the DJ? Oh wait, it doesn't matter. He's dead too. How could this happen?"

There were a few others that were left alive. Garrett quickly assessed their chance of survival. The good-looking fellow looked like he could make it. But he wasn't so sure about that girl over there... In any case, sticking together would be their best chance...

[Shani]

Before the lights went out everyone was injoying themselves. Heck, even she was having a good time. Angela was standing with Garrett talking and laughing about, what a success this party was. Then the lights went out, all she heard was "water" splashing and the sound of something ripping. As soon as the lights came on her smile faded. She quickly became wide eyed, Blood was everywhere. It's everywhere, there's so much, so much blood. So many are dead, the boss is gonna kill me. If I survive. She thought, but then snapped out of it when she heard Garrett calling her name. "Yes, Garrett?" she questioned. "Yes Garrett, I know, I know it took a very long time for you to clean the floor. I know we can't afford a lawsuit right now, We'll be ruined. Wait, no we won't, how can they besides us there are only a few people left. We didn't do this we did everything we were told to do, this is not our fault. I don't know, everything was going so well. Garrett listen to me, the main thing we need to do is to stay calm and stay together." Angela stated, anwsering the questions she could.
She looked around and saw the others standing around confused about what happened. Though she seemed so calm and collective she was really scared.

[UberPingu]

"My thoughts exactly," Garrett pushed up his glasses and began to address the other survivors, "Um, hello? Everyone listening? Okay, let's not panic. Let's just get together and form an orderly line.. to.."

The horrific violence. Bodies tangled up, skin flayed and cut into strips, limbs bent the wrong way. Oh the disarray! It drove Garrett crazy. How could such horrific violence happen in mere seconds?! Garrett closed his eyes and tried to articulate, "We need to leave the area. We're not safe in this barn. The road is just up that way..and.. with luck.. we can make it."

Garrett pulled out his cell phone and swore, "We don't have service. And this damn barn doesn't have a landline. So much for '911'.." He scratched the back of his head nervously. Adrenaline pumped through his veins, making him shaky. Without thinking, he began to wipe the blood off his shoes on a random corpse. He looked around expectantly, waiting for everyone to gather.

[Whimsical Wail]

Cued by the crimson crew of corpses revealed by the sickening sincerity of light, Jennifer languidly clapped with a sarcastic tempo.

“Hah … hah. Very. funny.” Her voice was heavy with the sauciness of sardonicism.

Her ivory dress, meant to both emphasize her figure and capture the essence of seizure-inducing strobe lights, was an ironically virgin hue as it was now juxtaposed with the corrupt color of a barnyard massacre. However, while humans strewn about like carrion definitely dampened her flighty spirit, she would not lapse into hysterics just yet.

Normally, Jennifer was a connoisseur of practical jokes if she was not the target of comedic scorn. She was the type to spare no pity for the gullible and weak; she did not take into account external factors of circumstance, but found the victims as inherently flawed. Others might have called it projection due to the upbringing of alcoholic parents, but Jen merely chalked it up to honest observation.

Tonight, she was not in the mood to humor eccentric party planners – when she frequented raves, she wanted the traditional fixings: predicable musical hypnosis and a replicated rainbow of kandi kids. This was her liberation and her desired terrain.

What sort of sick social experiment is this, anyways? She bitingly thought as she glanced at her wrist with the teddy bear stamp proving that she was over twenty-one. The magenta ink denoted that she consented to a series of drunken escapades, not nightmarish pranks.

This was her mode of escapism as she had now assimilated to the adult world. Confined in a cubicle with a monotone color scheme that included varying shades of gray, Jen embraced the neon inanity of this particular scene. What she did not anticipate was grotesque gore that would upstage the prismatic glow she so desperately craved.

Even her stoic denial could not fool her olfactory senses as the scent of death permeated the aura of evaporated sweat and hormones suspended in the tainted air. This was just too masterfully staged … why they wanted to rain on her parade with a deluge of artificial guts was beyond her.

“This isn’t Halloween, you whacked fuck-heads! More than that … this is not what I paid for! If this is the game you want to play, I want to be fully reimbursed.”

[Bia]

As Marlaina was dancing with some random good looking guy. The lights suddenly went out. Her first thoughts were ugh we must have shorted out and she figured the beginning screams were just done in fun...until she felt something wet hit her arm.

She grimaced, thinking someone had just had a little too much to drink, and reached to wipe it off. It didn't feel like up-chuck though. The lights flickered back on and she looked down at her hand..it was covered in blood! She let out a squeal of surprise and jumped back. Making sure the blood wasn't hers. She realized it was the persons she had been dancing with! She looked around quickly, seeing blood everywhere, and a few people still alive, looking just as bewildered as her.

She pressed herself against a wall, watching all around her, her first thoughts being on self-preservation. She was NOT dying tonight.

[chowder]

Marc had somehow been enjoying himself earlier, finding himself getting dragged into the crowd by some sultry girl with a skirt that barely covered her ass. He wasn't one for partying or dancing or drinking excessive amounts, but tonight, he found himself enjoying the crowd pressing against him, sweaty body against sweaty bodies. There was a loud bass beat, with people grinding in all directions, and the smell of alcohol and party drugs before the lights went out and there was an eerie silence... Until the screaming and the ripping. Marc felt something wet land on his cheek.

When the lights turned back on, it was like falling into a movie set for some gruesome slasher. There were horrifically disfigured bodies, strewn all about the room, with blood pooling around him. In fact, the girl he had been dancing with was gruesomely torn up with what looked like a machete or other kinds of knives, and the first thought that popped into his head was, Cool, it looks like a horror movie! The second thought was, Oh wait, that's not good... This is a joke though, right?

As a test, Marc prodded with the toe of his shoe a limp arm. If it was a living arm connected to a human being, it would have twitched, but instead, it rolled across the floor, completely ripped out of the arm socket. He felt himself gulp - Crap. It wasn't a practical joke. This was an entirely real mass murder, and he had just survived it.

He felt himself say out loud, "If this was a movie, we'd all be screwed right now."

[Familiar]

"If this was a movie, we'd all be screwed right now."

"No no," Alexander said, numbly "None of us have gotten naked or done drugs on screen yet, we'd have a little while yet... Though as guys we would wind up biting it eventually. Probably me first now, people hate the genre savvy characters..."

It was a fairly lame joke, even by Alex's standards, but it wasn't even a conscious decision on his part; more of a knee-jerk retort coming straight from his unconscious mind. Regardless of how bad the humour was however, hearing it emerge from his mouth did serve to knock Alexander out of his reverie to some degree.

"Alright, sorry about that. That was awful. Alright... Alright... First things first, cell phones are out, no land-line... We need to get out of here. Now. I don't know what in the hell that was, but it happened in here once, it could happen again."

[UberPingu]

Idiots. The survivors look around them and spoke in excited voices, flabbergasted and terrified. All except this one girl who didn't seem to know what was going on. Is she asking for a refund? Incredible. Her assumption wasn't totally unbelievable, but how could she not hear or feel the obvious panic in the air? The situation was dire and Garrett decided he couldn't wait any longer

"Hrrrugh.." Garrett pried open the barn door. The squeak of the hinges was like the screech of a tortured rat. "Come on, Angela," Garrett panted, "Let's get to the road as fast as we can." At this point, he didn't care much for everyone else or the lawsuits. However, the blood on his shoes drove him crazy. He tried to wipe the rest off in the dirt just outside the barn, but it had stained. To make matters worse, there were a billion night crawlers and mosquitos waiting for him... Oh lord. Choosing the best of two evils should've been easy in this type of situation, but for Garrett it wasn't so easy. His mind tugged like a persistant child on the shirt of his parent.

[Shani]

"I'll be right there Garrett. Attention, please, attention those of you who are still alive, I thank you for coming and apologize for recent events. I don't know why or how this could have happened but I think my friend here who is respondsible for the decorations before the blood, is right we need to get to the road as soon as possible, to get help." She annoced to everyone, then she saw Garrett fussing with his shoe. Angela walked over to the door, "Alright Garrett lets get out of here before who ever did this comes back." She was worried about the others, but she was worried about the both of them as well. They had worked too hard to get to their possions and if they didn't move soon there was no telling what would happen.

[Maple]

Ingrid Van Hassel was bored. She never would have said so - she always insisted that only boring people get bored - but it was obvious to anyone who saw her leaned up against the wall, watching her friend Serena dance with some frat-boy loser. An old friend from high school, Serena now seemed as tiresome to Ingrid as algebra class. She let herself be dragged along because the party sounded interesting, but as so often happens, the reality was a disappointment.

That was, until everything went dark. That's when the party got... interesting.

When the massacre came to light, Ingrid stood gaping as the other survivors began chattering desperately. She swallowed hard when she noticed a shred of Serena's neon dress glaring like a beacon amid the carnage. Ingrid felt a cold sweat dampen her own dress, the shimmery blue nylon now stained with splattered blood. Suddenly, she missed algebra class.

She snapped out of her daze when a girl nearby began clapping, and a look of horror grew on Ingrid's face as the girl spoke.

"What is WRONG with you?" Ingrid hissed, the horror quickly turning into anger. She turned toward the other survivors and cried out "She's a monster! SHE must have done this!"

[UberPingu]

Garrett swerved around and stared at the girl who was yelling, then followed her eyes to the suspiciously calm woman. It didn't seem probable. She obviously didn't know what was going on. "Let's not jump to conclusions, miss.. uh.." Garrett flinched at the sight of the girl's blue dress.

The horror! The red clashed with the blue so harshly it rendered Garrett speechless. He tore his eyes away. How disgusting bodily fluid was... especially when it was all over his shoes. He quickly ran out of the barn, shaking his head. What would become of them?

His hurried steps thudded against the compact dirt as he speedwalked down the path that led away from barn. The night air bit through his thin dress shirt, especially through the wet cloth.. The trees formed impenetable walls of darkness around him. Unknown threats drove his mind into panic mode as his eyes flicked back and forth behind the lenses.

[chowder]

Marc internally laughed as the guy who was clearly uncomfortable with the blood all over the place stepped quickly out of the barn house. Knowing from horror movie experience that those who opted to stay behind on the murder scene were more likely to be killed, he followed suit as some girl started yelling about monsters and blaming the woman who seemed to be in charge. Girls are so melodramatic, He thought to himself, as the cold night air hit him unexpectedly.

The thick forest of trees surrounding the barn made everything look incredibly dark - after all, it was pretty late at night. The only lights were coming from inside the barn, and the cold night air made the blood on his cheek rather cold, as Marc wiped it off with the sleeve of his shirt. "Bummer." He remarked dryly, to nobody in particular, eyeballing the soon-to-be stained dress shirt he was wearing - he had been in such close proximity to all those people, his dress had changed from a pale, pinstriped blue to a blue shirt with blood polka-dotted all over.

He made a note to himself to go to parties that weren't located in the middle of a forest somewhere, if he could ever find the heart to go to a party after this.

Digging through the pocket of his jeans, he found the crumpled box of cigarettes and a lighter. Opening the box, he lit up for himself, bent-up cigarette hanging from his lips as he lit it, the lighter threatening to extinguish with the night air blowing directly against the flame. Marc looked like the calmest man in the world, but in the moment, there were a million thoughts racing around his head. He needed to calm his mind, organize his thoughts, and come up with an action plan.

[Shani]

Angela turned to face the two women. "He has a point you know jumping to conclusions will get us no where." She stated calmly with a slight tone of worry. Angela heard the fast footsteps behind her, she turned around to see Garrett running away from the barn to the path. "Garrett, wait up." she called. Turning back around, "Well I'm not sticking around to find out what might happen. Best of luck to you all." she stated. Angela took a few steps out of the barn and looked around a moment. Then she took off her heels and ran to catch up with Garrett. It was a little chilly that night, it moved through her dress and made the fabric flow gracefully. Wait a minute. she thought. "Garrett why are you walking remember we drove here let's get in the car so we can leave." she called. Angela wasn't real far away from him but she wasn't right there with him.

[UberPingu]

"Car... car..." Garrett stopped in his tracks briefly, shook his head, then kept walking. His pace was nearing a jog. "I dropped you off and parked on the road remember? There's no parking down here. Everyone parked on the road. This killer is...smart. Wonder if he's been watching. Maybe he's still watching."

Panic again. Almost stopped his breath. Garrett took in his surroundings and scanned the ground. The moonlight barely illuminated the forest path. The old farmhouse was somewhere nearby. Perhaps they could find a weapon there. He marched onward, determined as ever to stay alive but still squirming at the thought of his bloody shoes.

[Familiar]

'Ah good, cigarettes... I could use one of those right now...' Walking over, he snagged one of the cigarettes, giving a nod and a curt "Thanks" as he did so. He didn't think of himself as a nicotine junkie, but when the shit hit the fan, or when it was thematically appropriate he tended to enjoy one or two. This situation met both of the above requirements.

He walked out the front door, ashes dropping to the ground as he did, calling back over his shoulder. "I'm going to be going to see if I can get into one of the cars and get the hell out of here. Anyone with me?"

Sure there was danger in going towards the cars, but not as much as what appeared at first glance. Whoever or whatever the killer was, it could have taken all of them when it killed everyone else. That meant that there was a reason for them being alive. Alex wasn't holding out much hope that they would actually be able to make an escape, but at the very least, there might be something there that would move the story forward, to give them a clue as to what the hell was going on.

[Bia]

"Oh I will" Marlaina volunteered quickly. She had remained silent and distant up til this point, mostly trying to figure out if one of them were the murderer...but coming to the conclusion most of them seemed just as scared as she was, and now she was intent on getting the heck out of here.

She picked her way over the blood and bodies, not easy to do in 3 inch heels and a leather skirt, and over to this guys side. She gave him a once over in her mind...he seemed a little calm for just having a great party drastically ruined, but maybe he just took crisis better...In any case, they might be getting out of here, and Marlaina was willing to go with almost anybody.

[chowder]

Marc sighed, taking a drag off his cigarette, and running his hand through his hair, effectively messing it up. "I'm pretty sure if that the murderer wanted to kill us all, he would have messed with the cars... Poured sugar in the gas tank, or worse, added cat litter to it to make napalm. If we started the cars, the car would be blown sky-high along with whoever was in the car." He stated, tapping ash off the end of his cig before taking another drag off it. "We'd need to get out to the road and see if we have a signal for a mobile phone there... If not, we're going to have to walk the road."

Basically, what Marc was trying to convey, was that more likely than not, the killer was smart, and he was out to kill everyone. They were going to have to move quick and fast, even if it meant running through the woods at high-speed. He sucked at the cigarette, nearly burning through half of it already, before exhaling a large cloud of smoke. "We need to get moving, and we need to get moving fast." He finally summed up, tapping off the ash on the cigarette.

[Shani]

Angela thought about what he said, "Garrett your right, I forgot that minor detail. What went wrong everything was perfect, it was all going so well." she stated with a slight tone of panic. When he spoke about the killer watching, and possibliy still watching she moved from behind Garrett to his side. "Who could have done this to us? Why? Who could have done that to so many people?" she asked sincerely a few tears had begun to fall from her eyes now that she was away from the others. When she's around people including Garrett, Angela never cries. She trys to remain calm, and keep her sophistication, but this was too much many people were dead now.
"Garrett? We're going to die aren't we?" she asked as she lost hope. Even if they made it to the road, this killer is smart, he'd have something set up waiting for them.

[UberPingu]

"I don't know who could've done this. But that's not important right now. We might not die, Angela," Garrett tried to use a soothing voice, but it was difficult when he was also quite terrified, "As long as we stay calm, and stick together.."

But it seemed like they had trudged ahead of most of the group. Garrett would've waited if he wasn't so eager to get away from the blood and the corpses. Distant young voices and footsteps reassured him, but the darkness made it difficult to tell where they were. Oh well, as long as nobody was screaming...

The old farmhouse came into view. No one really lived there. The property owners lived in the city most of the time and rented out their barn for parties and events. Garrett had picked this place out for Victoria's rave gig, a decision that he now regretted terribly. Picking his way across the tall, dry grass, he approached the house with caution. The building was a dark, ominous shadow in the moonlight, with plenty of places for a killer to hide. Garrett had calculated that their chance of survival would greatly increase if they had some kind of weapon. A pitchfork or a machete or a shotgun would do nicely.

"Come on," Garrett motioned quietly to Angela, "This way, maybe we can find something to defend ourselves or maybe use the phone in the house. If it works."