kore_logs | Beware of the Box

Mina had remained on the outskirts of the skirmish around the boxes. She had no real interest in food and, while, for a moment, the idea of collecting some as leverage had crossed her mind, she'd dismissed the notion almost as quickly as it came. That was the Fae talking. It wasn't how she treated people.

The only goodie she'd taken for herself was a box of bullets. They looked like they'd fit her pistols and, frankly, she was in need. She'd already wasted two bullets before. Neither one had accomplished much of anything. She would have to be more careful, rationing them in the future.

Absently patting them in her pockets, she departed from the mad dash, leaving the others to sort out the rest. She thought she might go walk down by the water. It had a certain tranquilizing effect.

She sang as she walked. "Oh, have you heard the story of late about the royal potentate? For if you haven't, tis in my pate. King of the cannibal islands!"

The side of the crate was half way off when he turned at the sound of the voice - Mina! He looked off in the direction of where her voice was coming from only to momentarily forget what he was doing until he felt something move across his fingers.

Spinning his head back, he was in time to see large spiders making their way out of the opening. He gave a startled noise when they moved faster than expected up his arms and under his jacket sleeve. Just how many were there?!

He sort of had a thing against spiders thanks to them being a cause of a past regeneration of his.

She thought she heard something. A wooden sound. And the Kindred in her was immediately on edge. Not that she expected someone to jump out of the darkness and ram a stake through her. She wasn't nearly important enough for that. But there was something wrong.

Drawing her pistol, she moved quietly forward, her song forgotten.

Rounding the trees, she spotted her dapper friend, the Doctor bloke. Who looked...to be in something of a situation.

Her eyes darted from the box to the man and to the spiders crawling toward him. One of them looked particularly nasty. It was the pinchers. "Get back," she called to him, leveling the barrel of her gun on the hairy little beast.

He ended up ripping off his jacket and brushing off the spider from his sleeve just as Mina came by. "H-hold up!" The Doctor had been startled, but still curious, "Have a torch? I want a better look." It was dim where they were, and despite having better night vision than humans (and probably on par with Mina's, if he were to guess), he still wanted to investigate.

"What a bizarre species. I'm not familiar with 'em. Like a cross between Rhabidosa rabida and Heteropoda venatoria..." It reared it's front legs at him, almost if to attack, which caused him to take a step back and looking over to Mina.

Mina, unfortunately for the scientist in her was, first and foremost, a woman of instinct. And the second the biggest of the spiders reared up in what appeared to be an attack, she shot. She had excellent aim. Trick shooting was her forte. So she hit the spider dead in the middle. All that remained were eight legs and a pair of pinchers.

Unfortunately, that seemed to rattle its friends. And really, she couldn't blame them. She would doubtlessly have a similar reaction if someone shot one of her friends.

"No," she called back, "no torch. I suggest you move out of the way. Now."

They swarmed over his jacket and started running towards them, now furious. "What are they?" Spiders didn't travel in packs, this was rather bizarre! How he wished he had his sonic to possibly analyze them.

Fire, they needed fire or something to attract them elsewhere and he began looking for clues. "You don't happen to have matches, do you?"

Kindred, by nature, didn't particularly like fire. Quite the opposite, really. They hated it. But in light of the poor lighting and boredom in this place, to say nothing of the low level electricity, Mina had taken to carrying a lighter with her. With very, very little fluid it in. Barely enough to start much of anything.

But hopefully enough.

She pulled it out of her pocket, tossing it to the Doctor. "Best I can do, darling," she told him, trying to determine if she could shoot any of the other spiders. They were moving fast now. And she didn't want to shoot her friend.

He circles around back to the crate and manages to rip off a plank, hoping the wood wasn't treated.

"Here we go!" And within seconds it caught on fire and he swun it around, pushing them back, accidentally catching a couple on fire. "Ha! There!" Rushing back to Mina, he tried to help her out from the swarm around her. Only... no one prepared that they were capable of jumping.

"C'mon, let's go!" He hated to sacrifice his jacket, but maybe later he could get it back. Maybe.

Given the choice between the fire and the spiders, Mina's first instinct was to choose the fire. Until they started to popping up, the pinchers flashing in the light. Mina was absolutely certain, without being able to explain it, that they could do every bit as much damage to her as the fire. And at least the Doctor wasn't actively trying to kill her.

She doubted she could expect the same courtesy from the spiders.

Mina took a step back, shaking her leg roughly as one of the little buggers latched onto the cuff of her trousers. "This is Italian, you stupid bug," she growled, managing to shake it off, only to have two more grab on.

A pause in his step as an idea comes to mind, he takes a skip and tosses the torch to the crate, setting it on fire. "Maybe that'll do some damage!" He catches back up to Mina and takes her hand. "C'mon!"

The spiders were following them closely and he could even hear the soft pitter-patter of their feet close behind.

"This is completely mental," Mina said, running along with the Doctor. She was rather surprised that he had grabbed her hand, but all things considered, it was hardly the least pleasant surprise of the evening so far.

That was reserved for the spiders.

"What the hell kind of game are these people playing?" she growled. "Starving a population only to feed or poison it? I've heard of less than ethical psychological experiments, but this is just ridiculous.

"Are you sure it's them? You would know more than I would, but I can at least tell you spiders don't travel in packs!" He was blindly running, unsure as to where to go. Every so often he'd look back and see them still pursued.

"Persistent little buggers, aren't they?!"

"I don't know who else it could be," Mina replied. "All I know is that every time something drops from the sky around here, it doesn't end well for anyone."

She glanced back, pursing her lips a moment. They weren't going to slow down for a second, were they? Not unless someone slowed them down. But the fire wasn't cutting it.

Cutting. "Hmm."

Mina grabbed the Doctor's hand and swung him forward, ahead of her. She turned around, facing the spiders. Her fangs snapped out and she dragged them along her wrist. As her blood pooled up on the surface of her skin, she started to chant softly. "Blod vokser dolker fra bakken."

"Wha-What are you doing!?" The Doctor had skidded to a halt, watching her quite baffled.

He trusted her, he really did, but there was something far from normal with these spiders and he was well known with the not so normal kind. Blood. Were they attracted to blood?

The ground around them started to crackle. It was the sound of roots and shoots moving around, just under the surface of the dry earth. Another second or two and a thorn, the side and shape of a dagger, shot up out of the ground. And another and another. One went through a spider. Another spider skidded to avoid one, only to be nicked as a new crop sprang up.

Mina continued to whisper softly to herself. "Blod vokser dolker fra bakken. Blod vokser dolker fra bakken." It was becoming taxing though. As it was, there wasn't nearly enough blood in the damn town to sustain a Kindred, let alone more than one. Now, Mina was wasting blood and bullets, her most limited of resources.

And they were only slowing down the spiders at best. Though she reasoned if she kept it up long enough, eventually, the path of thorns would be too wide for them to jump.

Well, this was new to him, at least initially. He swallowed and watched the spiders screech from what Mina was doing, perhaps out of surprise, perhaps out of anger; he wasn't sure. Thinking back, he shouldn't have thrown away the torch he had created, but it at least cut their numbers in half, if he were to guess, which didn't seem all that comforting seeing this many here right now.

He felt useless for a moment, with such limited resources, but he kept an eye on Mina, tossing a few rocks at spiders that approached too close to his liking towards her.

Mina very quickly exhausted her energy. The path of thorns was, perhaps, six feet wide. Impressive all things considered. But not quite enough. Oh, it stopped the littlest of the spiders, yes. And the ones that were impaled. But the bigger ones?

They seemed to have neither fear nor qualms with jumping that distance.

"Bloody hell," she gasped.

Grabbing a nearby stick, the Doctor swung at a few of the large spiders still fighting them off. A couple of them were particularly nasty and large, and out of frustration, he pummeled one to the ground.

Digging in his trouser pocket, he fished out a knife and did his best to slice open the glands by it's pinchers. "Oh." He blinked as inspected closer, "It's acidic!" He turned and repeated his actions with another particularly large one, taking note of the same thing.

And without further thought, and ignoring the cruelty behind it and whatever morals one would carry for such a thing, he used the last bit of lighter fluid and caught the leaked venom on fire, causing the spiders to stop in their tracks.

"Well, it disrupts the proteins in the venom, and it was just a guess to see if the acid was flammable, as most aren't, so maybe it's acetic acid..." He kept rambling.

Since she didn't need to breathe, Mina had no need to catch her breath. But she still stood there a moment, panting. It was largely out of surprise and frustration and the sudden realization that she'd completely obliterated what little was left of the Masquerade. At least where the Doctor was concerned.

Strangely, she found that she didn't care. It was even a bit of a relief. True, she didn't know if she could trust him. He was a stranger and a man after all.

But she still liked him.

She let him ramble a bit. She could actually follow most of it, even if it felt largely unimportant at the moment. But finally, she held up a hand. "Yes. Acetic acid. And I think that--bloody hell." Blood from her wrist streaked down her arm and into the fabric of her blazer.

Quickly back to his feet, he moves over to Mina and holds pressure to her wrist, ignoring that he was using his bare hand to cover the wound. "You shouldn't have done that." He replies, before looking around them.

"C'mon, over to the church over there. I'm sure we can find something to bandage you." He paused, "You won't combust in flames in there will you?" It was a lame attempt at a joke.

She gave him a dull look. Truth be told, she didn't mind his seemingly constant need to grab her. Churches, however, she hated. And not because of any risk of bursting into flames.

"I suppose we have much to discuss," she told him dryly.

He rolls his eyes, "I'm not asking you to confess your sins and seek salvation." He just wanted something he could use as a bandage. The spiders seemed to have dispersed, which now was the best time to save themselves.

With a bit of a tug, he stopped just outside the door. "You don't have to go in if you don't want. I just need something to wrap around that." He nods to her wound.

Mina considered pointing out that she could heal it any time she wanted, but she decided it was best not to show her entire hand. Not at the moment, anyway. And, truth be told, she rather liked having someone fuss over her a bit. Yes. She deserved to have someone making a fuss over her for a change.

"I think I'll manage," she said, stepping over the threshold with no difficulties whatsoever. "Although, be warned, if there is a priest here, I promise to be on my absolute worst possible behavior."

She really hated priests.

Quickly his features eased and he smiled before walking off into the main room, found a table with a decorative pieces: lace cloths and a couple goblets. He returned to Mina, rolled up his sleeves, and without asking, took her arm and began washing some of the blood off from some water collected in said goblets and folded the lace to tie around the wound, making sure to add some pressure.

Once done, "Ah, just call me the Doctor!"

It was strange. Normally gabby and effusive, Mina found herself rendered eerily silent as he worked. It was just a matter of not being used to such treatment, she supposed.

When he finished, she tested out the bandage a bit, squeezing her fingers into a fist and experimenting with the pressure. Not bad. Highly unnecessary, of course. But all things considered...

...not bad.

She glanced up, leveling her greenish-blue eyes on him, one eyebrow solidly crooked. "I believe I already do," she remarked.

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