» Disaster, Open

[Somerset Agrippa]

Thread is open, but please if you join it, be prepared to finish the thread. This is important for Grip's plots. =]

Grip had never been a patient soul. It was what had gotten him his reputation as something of a womanizer; he pressured almost every girl into things they weren't entirely sure they wanted to do. It was also what tended to get him in trouble in school, when he had been in school, because he would get bored with an assignment halfway through and finish it shoddily so that he could do something else. Things needed to be happening constantly for Grip, and happening quickly.

Unfortunately, since he had been expelled, things hadn't been happening very quickly at all. In fact, things seemed to be happening more by osmosis than because he was making them happen, which he hated. He'd made the shelter for his gang, but they were more of a state of being than any kind of event. He'd found Oscar's wand for her, but that hadn't been much of a real event. Basically, Grip was experiencing what most Slum kids experienced; it was very very hard to get anywhere when one was stuck in the Slums.

Relatively speaking, he had been at this transfiguration thing with Devon forever. Since January, which was longer than he'd ever devoted to any one thing. Devon kept teaching him about it, kept telling him about it, and he didn't know what else he would be able to possibly learn about it without trying it. Of course, Devon said that you couldn't try to turn into an animal for a year or a year and a half, but Grip didn't see why. He knew all the theory, or at least thought he did. There was no reason why he couldn't do it now. And then, when he was a bird or a snake or a tiger or something, he could do whatever he wanted. He could fly or run away and find himself a better life.

He'd walked out to the park at just past dusk--the Slums were far too busy with all this Hogsmeade Trail business, and Cole was gone, so there was no reason for Grip to stick around with the Ministry officials and the strangers. He'd been out of the Slums all day, but the Park seemed like a good place to give it a shot. Nice and open, plenty of room if he ended up turning into something big. It was also somewhere that, depending on the animal, anyway, people wouldn't necessarily freak out about some nature occurring in the area.

So there was nothing left to think about or plan for; here he was. It was time. He was going to do it.

Grip braced himself, spread his legs, and started.

A tingling sensation rippled up his spine. That was a good sign, right? Concentrate. He had to concentrate. Except that the tickling along his spine was starting to twinge in a painful way. Well, maybe it was supposed to be like this. He was changing his entire body, after all. It should hurt a little, right?

But this was more than a little; it felt like his muscles and organs were all bubbling up inside him and trying to fight their way out of his skin, like any minute he would erupt and no one would be able to put the pieces back together again. He opened his mouth and wondered whether he was screaming or not. He wanted to stop--immediately--but realized that Devon and he hadn't ever gone over that part. Merlin, he was going to die here. He really was going to die here.

Collapsed in the shadow of one of the trees in the park, Grip's body shook as the skin moved and rippled, trying to decide whether it was human or animal. It hurt too much for him to make any movements, but regardless, his body writhed of its own accord, trying to keep up with the magic that was trying to decide whether it wanted to work or not while running through his system, veering heavily towards not.

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[Abbey Burkett]

Abbey had a job. It was a job in an opium den, and it was cleaning, but it meant she could eat more regularly so she liked it. She had somewhere to sleep, too, and she was a lot cleaner than she had been before. It didn't count as a real job, in her mind - opium den - but she was better off. It was brilliant. She had finished up early today and was wandering around, as she tended to do, and she hoped she would run into someone she knew or at least something interesting. The Slums were too busy right now for her, though.

Padmore Park was nice and mostly empty, and Abbey couldn't help but smile as she breathed in the air. It smelled clean, unlike the Slums and unlike Ahen-Ka. It reminded her of the grounds of Hogwarts, and a drop of nostalgia blossomed in her chest before she shook it off. Abbey played with the sleeves of her blouse and debated lying in the sunshine by the Black Lake. No, she didn't want to laze about. Wandering it was.

She flounced through the park, humming to herself, and almost missed the shadow of a body under a tree. In her experience, that wasn't a good sign. Maybe they had come here to starve to death or something. "Hello?" she asked. "Are you okay?" Abbey stepped closer, and her mouth fell open as recognition burst in her mind.

"Grip!" she exclaimed. Grip was her friend, her gang-leader, and her (unknown) half-brother. And he appeared to be dying. "Grip, what the bollocks are you doing!" Abbey skirted backwards a step before running forwards and kneeling next to him. Not sure what to do, she placed her hands on his shoulders and shook him, biting her lip hard enough to make blood burst in her mouth. The taste of iron made her think again.

"Someone help!" she shouted. Abbey was very rarely provoked into action, but this was something that was enough to shock her even if she was starving. "Don't die don't die," she muttered to him. "Don't die don't die you're not allowed to." She wished she could apparate, or do magic, or something, but her wand had fallen in the grass next to him and if near-starvation wasn't enough to fully block her magic, panic certainly was.

[Remy Townsend]

Remy walked stiffly on his legs as he had to concentrate on telling his body to move. He remembered his time in hospital only vaguely but the horror that came with waking up and being unable to walk had been horrible. He was an athletic man and he had loved to exercise but the fact that he'd had to learn how to walk again had irked him far more than the annoyance that the sleeping spell that he'd been cursed with had taken months out of his life.

The healers had told him to take things easy at first and to wait until July to return to auror training but he couldn't help but itch with the need to get moving quickly - his friends at work were strained by the absences of so many aurors who had been sent on the trail and all he could do was show his body how to walk again. It had made him grumpy and irritable and after he'd continually tripped over footstools and chairs that he hadn't seen (cursing all the while because he knew that if he stayed this clumsy there was no way he was going to be allowed back to work let alone graduate and become an auror).

His landlady had told after the thousandth time he'd tripped over an ill placed stool to go outside, get some fresh air and perhaps walk go for a walk in the park. He'd agreed though he hadn't wanted anybody to see him so accident prone and tripping nearly over his own feet. He refused to use the cane, or any of the other paraphernalia that the healers recommended and all he had was his wand to aid him. He was happy, at least, that his skill and knowledge at the wand hadn't disappeared along with his legs ability to walk.

He'd done a very uncertain lap around the outer side of the park when he heard a young girl cry for help. He tried to bolt and ended up catching himself with his hands when he tripped over his own feet. He said a thousand curse words in his own mind in as many languages as he knew to speak and pushed himself to his feet, making himself slow down and take his time when all he wanted to do was aid the girl who had called for help.

He saw a pretty girl, sitting behind a writhing boy which was probably the best indicator that it had been she who had called for help. He ran, as he best could, over to the writhing boy and cursed. He was no healer but whatever was being done was pretty bad. He wasn't so nervous around these kids as he was around people who earned lots of money but he felt the anxiety build up all the same. What the hell was he supposed to say? He couldn't remember if his training had covered this just yet...

"What happened?" He asked feeling stupid and staring at both the distraught girl and the writhing boy. Was it a jinx? A curse? dark magic? a potion maybe? or something else entirely?

[Somerset Agrippa]

Grip vaguely heard his name, echoing distantly as if someone were calling him from the other end of the park. He tried to look, tried to place who it was--Cole? Elsie? Oscarrine?--but no, he couldn't see a thing. He couldn't force his eyes open long enough to focus, before some flash of blinding pain or light forced them closed again. Besides, Cole was gone, on the Trail, and Elsie and Oscarrine would still be in school. Someone else, then, but at the moment he couldn't think of a single other person who knew his name. Well, he really just couldn't think.

A shiver of pain ran down one arm, as the bones in his hand tried to decide whether a half-claw was replacing his fingers or just being introduced on top of them, and, not being able to tell from the weakness of his magic and resolve, decided to writhe beneath his skin for a moment.

Don't die don't die don't die don't die. Were those his own thoughts, or someone else's? No matter, they were running through his head now, the only thing that was running through his head. Stop, stop, stop, he tried to command his body, and for a moment the movement quelled.

Grip took a breath, trying to see if he was still capable of breath. He sat up and immediately vomited, spewing the contents of his stomach out across the grass, and the movement was violent enough to start his body churning again, the skin on his legs literally moving to try and accomodate the changes that weren't sure they wanted to happen just under the surface.

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[Abbey Burkett]

Abbey looked up sharply at the arrival of the man. A sense of relief burst in her chest for a second; surely he would be able to do something. At least he didn't seem to be freaking out like she was. Abbey managed to gather her thoughts enough to say, "I don't know what he did!" she said, voice rising in pitch but not volume. "I was walking and I noticed him and.... and..."

She skirted backwards when Grip stopped contorting, half-hoping that it was all done and they could laugh about it before she went back to Ahen-Ka. Of course things like this didn't just fix themselves, and Grip vomited on the grass before going back to writhing. Stop stop stop, she thought, wishing she knew more magic, wishing she could be useful for once.

"Oh no oh no," she said, hands curving into fists simply because she didn't know what else to do with them. "Can you fix this?" she blurted. A more appropriate question may have been what did he do?, because in Abbey's experience, one did not just start dying out of nowhere. Starving, yes, but something had to happen.

She stood up and managed to refrain from wobbling, ready to go into action. Surely there was something they could do to help him.... What did you do, Grip! Or had someone else done it to him? The questions were endless, and her sense of calm was fraying quickly.

[Remy Townsend]

Can you fix this? He stared at the girl and for a moment wondered if he could and then cursed himself seven ways to Ipswich. Of course he couldn't fix whatever was wrong with the boy but he did know who could... or at least the people who claimed he could and he knew exactly how to get there.

"I can't." He said firmly staring down at the body wondering if he could simply just grab him to apparate away... no that wouldn't seem right. It might look like he was a kidnapper or meant the boy harm. He turned to face the girl.

"But I can get him out of here to somebody who can. I think if you can help me get him into my arms and if you hold on I can apparate us to the Hospital. They should be able to help." That was taking it lightly. Should should not come into it at all. He should've said would or could or can instead but he didn't know... because afterall he had heard that a lot of healers had been called out to help on the trail.

'Damn it to hell.' He thought of course an incident like this would happen when people were on the trail. He just hoped the hospital had enough resources available to cope and help fix whatever was wrong with him.

[Somerset Agrippa]

Grip was starting to lose feeling in different parts of his body, always, for the moment, temporarily, but also terrifyingly. In his half-sane state he was convinced that if he could no longer feel his left arm, that meant that it was no longer there, that he would wake up armless and crippled the rest of his life--that was, if there was a "rest of his life" to be concerned about.

Don't die don't die don't die don't die.

He tried to focus on stopping again--if he could stop and then he didn't move maybe he would be able to stop for real and then maybe--well, he'd have to move eventually, but maybe someone would find him and help him. Or maybe someone already had? Don't die don't die don't die.

He was expending too much energy on just trying to reassure himself that his body was actually all still there, however, to put much attention on the magic, and though he tried to stop and for a moment the sensations quelled slightly, they soon came back in full force. What did he look like, now? This was wrong, he knew it had to be wrong; he wasn't ready and he wasn't becoming an animal, but he didn't know what he was doing, or rather, what his body was doing without him. The resolve he kept in his mind, the only thing he could concentrate on, was don't die don't die don't die.

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[Abbey Burkett]

Abbey sucked on her bottom lip. The stranger couldn't help, which meant Grip was going to die, which meant that she was going to be all alone except not really because she had other friends. But Grip was the gang leader, and if he died everything would fall apart and then she would have nothing to do but clean things for Suzume.

She almost missed, in her little spurt of mental melodrama, the instructions from the stranger. Later, when Grip was okay and she was calmer - she would have to thank this man. He was officially one of her new favorite people. They had things to be doing now, though, so she couldn't quite yet.

"Okay," Abbey said, "Okay." Her panic was thrown to the side in favor of being useful. With a fluid movement and a slight struggle, she gathered Grip's legs up in her arms. (It was lucky that her employer fed her - a month before she would not have been able to do this so immediately.) She held them tightly, trying to ignore the fact that it felt to her like his skin was moving. That wasn't of immediate concern - they just needed to get him out of here.

She met her savior's eyes.

Abbey had never apparated before.

If Grip hadn't been doing whatever it was he was doing, she would have been excited.

[Remy Townsend]

The leftside of Remy's face twitched into a slight grin as he sent a thankful glance towards the girl and her efforts to help him, but managed to contain it. He would've liked to simply lift the boy up and cradle him in his arms, however he wasn't sure if he was strong enough yet to hold him firmly while his body seemed to seize in change. He made himself focus not on what would've caused the boy's problems, his issues, and made himself concerntrate on the task at hand:

Apparating all parties involved to the hospital.

It wasn't be a hard task he told himself as he steadied himself with the boys body, bracing his upper body firmly with Remy's own arms. He had apparated before, many many times, and it wasn't the first time he'd had to travel side-long with people, let alone the injured. He was training to become an Auror afterall and Aurors among other things helped those who were in trouble or danger. Quick, speedy entries and exits were not a foreign concept, but he had a feeling that moving too quickly might do more harm then good.

"Just close your eyes. You'll be okay." He whispered, though he was not sure that either the boy or the girl had heard him, and prepared himself for the rushing pop.

[Somerset Agrippa]

Grip had Side-Along Apparated once or twice before, with Devon, mostly, so he knew the feeling of it, the feeling of being yanked out of where you were and being thrown through space. In his current state, however, everything felt like it was being ripped and yanked, and all in different directions, so he didn't really recognize the Apparation for what it was. He did, however, get the distinct feeling of movement. His body was still doing whatever it was doing, and he was powerless to stop it, but now it was moving, too. This was treacherous, he thought; if he moved too quickly, he might lose some part of himself, leaving it behind. In fact, he might lose everything.

Grip wondered if maybe this was what dying felt like.

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