Bonfire Garden(Pre-Game Exposition time...?)

The rooftop of an abandoned apartment complex has been set with row after row of perforated oil-barrels. Each one may or may not be filled with either merrily crackling fires, dying embers or cold ash, and the fuel is more than likely trash from off of the streets and weeds from the concrete. There's a few makeshift tarp tents, and what looks like a planter filled with wilting flowers.

It's possibly one of the most welcoming places in the entire city, though it takes a bit of work to get there. Who went through the trouble of hoisting large barrels all the way up here...?

He's sitting near the edge. Quiet for now, with an almost infuriating, easy-going smirk on his face. He's watching the buildings below, sometimes squinting, sometimes leaning forward as if it would help him see better...

From somewhere behind the furthest row of barrels another man emerges. He stands up and brushes his sleeves off, yawns, stretches. That done, he carefully steps his way around the barrels to join his partner. Turns his collar up as he approaches, as if that were adequate defense against the wind.

"Morning," Chistyakov says.

He stops just behind the other man. Tilts his head to the side in order to look at the streets below. It's hard to see the details from here, but that might be a blessing. In any case, there's not much to see right now.

He sits down next to his partner and asks, "Did I miss anything?"

Had his friend missed anything...? "From what I can tell, no, not yet. But the dogs're gatherin' again. Not like last time, they're takin' blocks. Systematically, almost?" He pointed out a pair of the beasts on the streets below, only barely classifiable as "dogs".

"Now, I may be seein' things, I may be wrong, but this seems a little more organized than usual." He runs a gloved hand through his hair to keep it out of his line of sight and he gave the area more thorough surveying. "Somethin's up."

Chistyakov frowns, and leans forwards a little to get a better look. Dark shapes prowling through the maze. Hardly a good sign in the best of times. Worse if Luke's right about the strange organization and not merely speaking out of paranoia -- and Chistyakov does not think paranoia is at work here.

"Hm." Chistyakov gets up, and walks off to a different part of the rooftop. Different view. He looks down from the edge again, until he spots the dogs there. Approximately a group to a block, as if assigned.

He makes a slow circuit around the perimeter of their territory, repeating his actions each time, until he circles all the way back to Luke. This time he remains standing. Hands in his pockets, gaze wandering their aerial view of the city.

"You're right," Chistyakov says. And then, with a faint smile, "What do you think it means?"

"Can't say for sure." Luke reaches into his pocket, but then quickly gave up. He hadn't found any cigarettes in a long, long time; it was a gesture of habit. "Obviously somethin's happenin', but there's no way yet of sayin' what." He wondered briefly if they should go looking for the other member of their party.... he wasn't quite a third member, more like second-and-a-half member for the amount of time he was there, whether "there" was physically or mentally.

He gave one more check around, and pointed north, towards the ruins of what might have been a cathedral, right next to an enormous parking garage. "They look like they're headed that way. Dunno if they're headed for that place, but there's a couple prowlin' around it that ain't left yet."

Chistyakov tugs at a stray lock of hair as he stares at the cathedral. His gaze then flickers to the garage next to it. Both are prominent landmarks of the city but he can't imagine what would be attracting the dogs to them. He is inclined to think 'nothing good'.

In truth, he harbors more specific guesses than that, though he will not say them aloud.

"How close can we get without having to descend?" Chistyakov asks. And in there, the unsaid suggestion that they should be on the move.

Luke looked over the bridges to the nearest buildings. "Ah, it's gonna' be hell to ger back up here either way, I'm gettin' to old for this." He stood and started walking towards a dubious-looking plank bridge to the next roof. "Should be able to get within two blocks, four at th' very least."

He stops, rethinks just walking off, and decides on heading back to a tarped tent to retrieve a few pre-prepared pouches and a messenger bag to put them in. "Lemme ask y' somethin' Vic, are y' ready for a show? I think I've been gettin' bored up here!"

He tromps across the rickety board without waiting for an answer and without any other hesitation. It's yet another practiced motion but a strange-looking one. Luke looks like he was built to keep his feet on the ground, and when he had first taken to the canopy he had protested quite a bit.

How long ago had that been...?

Before Luke had even finished his first syllable, Chistyakov was already on the move and picking up his own personal effects. He disappears under one tent, comes back out with a handgun in his makeshift holster and a knife on his belt. Speedloaders too.

He's lost his trenchcoat, though. Would rather not let the dogs get a good bite of that for various reasons, and vanity is not one of them.

"A show?" Chistyakov asks, as he walks over to the bridge. He smiles at Luke's back. "I suppose so. We're somewhat overdue for one."

He waits until Luke has reached the other side. Waits until the boards have stopped trembling from Luke's passage, too. Only then does he step foot on it and walk across, rather more lightly than his partner. A different sort of practiced ease.

"Damn right we're overdue for one." He hoped he wouldn't be regretting that phrase later. The various fire escapes, rope bridges, knot ladders and other crossings only went on so far. Their group had only managed so much before dwindling in numbers. The red-haired man silenced himself as he got closer, crouching down low to observe the dogs from the new vantage point.

They were pacing in front of the garage. Almost impatiently.

Chistyakov lags a few steps behind Luke the entire way there, as he usually does, constantly on the lookout for one of the few other inhabitants of the city. He's not entirely sure whether he ought to be expecting them. The general consensus is that it's best to be as far away from the dogs as possible.

Once they stop he glances at the dogs in front of the garage, then to the garage itself. Darkened from even this close, hard to see into. Black rectangles and concrete. Cracking apart.

"Hm. Gathering?" Chistyakov asks, indicating the animals below.

He moves next to Luke and likewise crouches down. Despite his curiosity, he makes no suggestion to get any closer to the garage.

"Think we should see if our canine friends can be dissuaded from th' entrance...?" He hefts a bag that spills a small stream of black powder from a puncture in the side. "Think it has somethin' to do with our old friend?" He asks, pouring a good handful out before putting the pouch back in its bag. It didn't appear that he was waiting for an answer to the first question at all. He keeps his sights on the gathering line of altered pariahs, and seeks out a safe place to create a distraction from...

Chistyakov has the distinct feeling that he could say yea or nay or even throw a punch, but Luke would still be set on playing with fire. Trying to stop him would be like trying to stop an earthquake. So Chistyakov doesn't bother answering and instead contents himself with a shrug and a smile, though he keeps a sharp eye on Luke's progress.

He does have an opinion on the second question. "That'd be my guess," he says. No more than that.

With that thought in mind, he gets up and walk a little ways away to the west side of the building they're on, leaving Luke to his own devices. From here he can see some more dogs coming in towards the garage. But they're not what Chistyakov is looking out for, now.

He was just about to slide down the fire-escape ladder when something tore over the wind. Laughter...? Screams...? He had heard crazy things before, but he was pretty sure he wasn't hallucinating. "Vic, you hear that mess...?" He was already making his way back towards the opposite side of the building to get a good second look at things. "Are some f' the others in there? Damn it to hell if they are..."

The hounds began to stalk forward. The howling dulled to a collective of rumbling growls...

Chistyakov had heard the noise a split second before Luke asked his question, and so he was already scanning the city, one hand raised to shield his eyes. There's an intensity in his eyes that wasn't there before. Someone's in danger, and very likely someone they know -- the count of people in this city isn't so great, after all.

He begins to pace, looking at their current rooftop and the adjacent buildings, trying to pick out a path from here to the source of the sound.

"Are you almost done here?" Chistyakov asks, pausing to glance at Luke. Pacing aside, Chistyakov does not seem hurried or alarmed. "I think we need to go take a look."

And then, in case it wasn't obvious, Chistyakov says, "It'd be easier to get off this roof if the dogs were distracted, I think." He cocks his head to the side and looks at the sky as he speaks, as if musing aloud.

He didn't have to be told twice. Luke was already jumping to the side of the building by the time more screams rang through the air (did he recognize that voice? He was almost certain he did). The dropped an entire back of black powder in the alleyway.

Seconds before it hit the ground it burst into flame; the sound was enough to draw some of the dogs aside, enough space to get some space to head down safely...

As soon as Chistyakov saw the powder drop, he was already scrambling to the next roof, a little lower than the building they're on now. He's made the decision that the rooftops in this area probably aren't safe enough to travel over. Bad enough to risk the ground.

Then he drops off the roof, curling up as soon as he makes contact with the ground. Shoulder rolls into an upright position again. He doesn't bother pausing to see if any of the dogs have taken notice of him; perhaps reckless, but Chistyakov thinks the time he'd lose in turning to see would be better spent getting some distance between him and the dogs who are distracted.

He doesn't bother to see if Luke's following, either. There's some trust here between them, enough that it looks and feels like respect.

Descending from the canopy is much slower going for Luke, but by the time he can jump the dogs have no interest in him or his partner anymore. They're running for a person Luke has only just spotted out on the street in front of the parking garage. He does not recognize the man. And is the man all they are hunting? He had heard other screams, and that meant more people.

Figuring the situation out could come later. For now, all of his concentration was best focused on the soft powder in the palm of his hand and the best escape routs for everyone involved...


((We should move to the main thread/threads now....?

A purple figure moved swiftly and silently through the city, dashing along rooftops and jumping gaps that others dared not tread over without the assistance of planks or ropes or bridges. The masked girl even had the gall to somersault and twirl midair for absolutely no reason. She appeared to be enjoying herself, an easy thing to do when the mask covering one's face was frozen in an expression of malevolent looking glee. After breezing her way over the rooftops Serephina finally paused in her fluid, continuous running, just long enough to stop and evaluated the next building in front of her. It was much taller than the current rooftop she was on, so no chance of jumping straight onto it. The dark eyes behind the mask flicked up the building, finding and calculating handholds others wouldn't think of or possibly see. Her mask grinned for her as she backed up, ready to leap and-

There was a distant booming sound of an explosion. Serephina immediately perker her head up and turned towards the sound.

"Hmm, I hear something spelled B-O-O-M and pronounced like 'Luke and his partner are distracted!'" Serephina said gleefully to no one but herself and the wind. With a flash of movement and a flutter of her raged skirt, Serephina had switched directions and was running, jumping, flipping, sliding and dashing in the direction that the sound.

Soon enough, Serephina had made it to Luck and Chistyakov's little camp. She eagerly began pawing her way through whatever she found. Unfortunately all she seemed to be able to find were ugly clothes that were too large for her anyways, black powder, and a few other odds and ends. Her mask continued smiling as she crossed her arms and tapped her foot, before noticing a small piece of paper attatched to one of the bottles of alchoholic substance (shakily called booze) she had disrupted.


Serephina let out a puff of air and flipped the paper over. She picked up a pen from the pile she disturbed and wrote.



Instead of signing it, she drew a large heart at the bottom of the message. After that, she proceeded to take one bag of gunpowder, the booze she had been offered, and then proceeded to turn all of the clothes she could find inside out, lining them up neatly but spread out on the rooftop. After that she leaped off the roof and disappeared back into the city, fiendish brain formulating a new plan.