shatterverse | (no subject)

...SYLAR SUPPOSES YOU'RE GOING TO BLAME HIM FOR THAT, TOO.

"You're asking me to justify it?" he shouts. "You wrote the book on it."

Chandra splutters.

"I'm terribly sorry," he shouts right back. "I must have blinked and missed the part where I wrote 'go out and murder innocent people, and drag me into it too'!"

Yeah, he's not getting over that anytime soon.

Meanwhile, from off to the right...

Gee, those plants sure are interesting, aren't they?

With the moving. And the rattling. And the turning towards you all.

"--uh, shit-- excuse me-- Chandra? G-- Sylar? I really think we have more immediate concerns than this discussion right now." She points, slightly pale, towards the oncoming triffids.

What? She's read some Wyndham.

He rounds on her. "Don't try to--"

--Oh.

Triffids.

What.

The.

Hell.

Sylar's always been more able than most to accept the fantastical, but, you know, until now the fantastical has been more about his own awesomeness and less about giant bloodthirsty pitcher plants.

Chandra stares a whole lot. He's not big on phrases like 'but that's impossible!', but if anything deserves them then Triffids do.

Somewhat shocked: "I've never seen anything like it!"

Easily distracted, this one.

Rattlerattle.

Rattle.

Rattle.

Fwip.

The stinger halts in midair, trembles slightly, and crumbles to dust.

There's no visible flow of energy towards Darla. There doesn't need to be.

She's oddly level-voiced as she says, "Triffids, Chandra. Carnivorous motile plants equipped with paralytic poison. I really suggest you run away now."

Like the fate of a twig on a bowl, but on a much grander scale. It's maddeningly impressive. Sylar feels that tug again, that twisting.

And why refrain any longer? If she's suddenly against him, why afford her any asylum?

...this is really not the time.

Moving things, freezing things, glass manipulation. Well, he knows which of his powers would definitely not be useful in this situation. He raises his arms, and the nearest triffid suddenly finds itself pinned to the ground.

He's finally getting to push himself further.

"Will you be all right?"

Now that the triffid community has finally sensed prey, ten more are approaching from behind the one Darla defanged (it flails in circles, rattling a triffid cry of agony) and the one Sylar incapacitated.

And twenty more from behind those.

You'll forgive them their excitement. It's not often they see mammals this large anymore.

Dar nods shortly to Chandra and, proving once again that her body language isn't something she thinks about, stands with Sylar against the triffids.

With. Not beside, not near. She's protecting him as much as she's letting him protect her, and both are present in the angle of her stance if you know how to look.

As for the encroaching hordes... the range on her ability to drain isn't as good as she'd like, but Darla still remembers how to messily explode things, and that works at distances.

Splat.

Splat.

Splat.

The triffids are still clustering in faster than she can kill them, but only just.

Oh God he should be able to do that so bad.

Sylar only notices Darla's stance peripherally, if at all: his attention is kind of taken up with a combination of power-ogling and triffid-fighting. The cryokinesis has a pathetic range, and so, sadly, does the force-slice; basic telekinesis it is, then. Giant flowers don't appear to have your average internal organ structure, but he doesn't have to study it in intricate detail to know how to break it with a few well-placed tugs.

(Fortunate that he's more or less gotten over breaking organisms, really. He doesn't think it'll ever totally stop being uncomfortable.)

...Darla. Don't make him be the one to suggest retreating.

Ow!

Sadly, the triffids aren't quite smart enough to retreat in the face of wholesale destruction.* So there are more coming, and more, and more...

*This is canon.

Retreat?

Why would she retreat?

Splat splat splat-- fwip-- sound-of-triffid-turning-to-greyish-brown-dust-cloud-- splat.

Now that she's getting into the rhythm of the thing, Dar sees no reason to leave.

All right, if she's not bothered by the ridiculous numbers of the things, then he's damned if he's going to be.

It's just that this is a slight step up from moving clocks around. (There's a reason that he doesn't flip a truck until the end of the season.)

...hang on.

1. Strain.
2. Strain.
3. Push with arms.
4. Nearly rupture self internally.
5. Flip a triffid!

See, if he makes it hit the one behind it, it's practically economical!

"Sylar," she says cautioningly, after a short space of time where the word Gabriel isn't.

Don't hurt yourself.

She's got you covered.

See: exploding triffids.

And off in the distance, the back ranks of the things are starting to become visible.

Hurt himself? Pshaw! He is superhuman! Caution is for those less awesome than Sylar.

...so the reason he isn't doing that again is that screwing with the triffids' insides is less time-consuming and slightly more fatal.

Yes.

Be quiet.

(He doesn't look at her when she says his name, but it's the very deliberate not-looking kind of lack of look that also involves an angry lift of the chin. You're still not in his good books, Darla.)

She's slightly more concerned with splatting triffids than she is with Sylar's mood.

Nevertheless, Dar's starting to get a little angry herself. All she did was point out that he kills people. Why is he pissed at her?

Because she pointed out that he kills people? Or maybe because he's fairly sure that, without her there being all reasonable, he could have persuaded Chandra that he doesn't? Because this, to Sylar, equates to her messing everything up?

Splat splat splat.

Splat splat--

--wait--

Why is she doing this individually, again?

Her hands are already out and up, mirroring the focus of her mind on destruction after destruction.

They lift a little higher.

As one entity, the gathering of triffids starts to shake.

And shake.

And--

--splat.

Okay now Darla needs to sit down.

Resting in the dirt with her arms crossed on her knees and her head pillowed on her forearms, it really doesn't look like she plans on standing up anytime soon.

...Wow. Okay, he felt that.

Sylar shields himself from bits of flying triffid.

And since they now seem to be out of danger, of course it is the appropriate time to start shouting again. It's not even to do with desire for her power, though that is getting insistant; he's just really kind of angry.

"I should have just killed you, as soon as you showed me."

See, Darla, in his twisted little universe, this is your fault.

"Right," she says, sounding more sarcastic than tired and more tired than anything else, "because that would've solved all your bloody problems."

You know things are bad when she doesn't excuse her swearing.

"I would have that."

Gesture to the large chunks of vegetable that are scattered about, occasionally twitching.

"I wouldn't have Chandra knocking at the door and trying to end it again."

That comes out in a snarl. Chandra isn't the only one drawing less-than-fond parallels with that argument.

She raises her head.

You couldn't call it a glare, but you couldn't call it friendly, either.

"So try me, or shut up about it," says a very fed-up Darla.

I just leveled an army of triffids and I'm not in the mood for your bullshit, says her tone.

She knew she shouldn't have brought Chandra.

There's no verbal reply from Sylar as he stalks forwards. However, the sideways lash of his fist may well be an answer, accompanied as it is by a telekinetic blow with which he hopes to knock her out. (Well, he's not about to try it with her conscious. He saw what she did to the triffids.)

It's quick. You might even say it was coming anyway, whatever her answer.

Dar doesn't even move.

Sylar, on the other hand, falls like a mag-lev train with the power cut.

Sighing, she stands and goes to look for Chandra.

HERE COMES CHANDRA TO SAVE THE DA--

--oh, hang on.

He sprints up, and pants loudly, and looks generally horrified. The sleeping Gabr... Sylar gets a stare. To Darla: "What-- are you all right?"

"Fine."

Okay, so she clearly isn't.

"That could sure as fuck have gone better-- where on Earth are we? If 'Earth' is even applicable?"

Chandra doesn't answer immediately, because he's still looking at Sylar. There's only so much detail you can make out when you're running from a distance, but it's obvious that some kind of disagreement went on here. And Chandra wouldn't be terribly surprised to find out that Sylar was to blame. Apt that he wants a different name, because it can't be Gabriel who did those things. Not the Gabriel Chandra knew.

He looks rather like he wants to kick him.

Chandra does look up at Darla after a few seconds, though. "...You think this is a different planet?"

Okay, so there were triffids. But this is a man who makes it his business to deal with gods and monsters on a daily basis.

She shakes her head. "I don't know. I just..."

Try to stand. Fail. Shake head again.

"...don't know."

...oh God, she's exhausted. And well she might be, after saving them from all those triffids. How did he not realise this?

"Do you need help?" he offers, worried, and moves to offer her a hand.

"Yeah."

Darla dredges up a smile out of God only knows where and accepts the hand. There! Standing up is now possible. With help. And perhaps some discreet leaning.

"...I vote we be elsewhere when he wakes up," she says after a moment's pause to catch her breath. Slight nod to the slumbering Gabr-Sy-whoever.

"We're just going to let him go?"

Chandra is more of the opinion that they should be making a beeline for the nearest police station.

Also, Darla will find a hand on her shoulder assisting with her balance. Chandra's nice like that.

"Well-- thanks-- d'you see anything resembling a precinct house? A working phone, even?"

Dar shrugs slightly.

"Look, we've just been assaulted by fictional plants and we're surrounded by things that pretty clearly used to be skyscrapers a few months ago. I don't think we can find anybody who's got the time or the inclination to deal with him. If he's lucky he'll wake up before the next wave of triffids shows up, and if we're lucky he won't think to follow us, or at least won't succeed at it."

That...

...is a point.

Let it be known that Chandra is still extremely reluctant to just walk away and leave this man unpunished. (Then again, Darla's right: there might be more triffids.)

Then again... mysterious teleportation, strange and desolate place, imminent danger. These are all things to be considered.

"...we should find some kind of civilization," he mutters.

"I'm all for it," Dar agrees.

Now if only she could, you know, walk unaided. That would be nice.

Until she can, Chandra is more than willing to act as the aid.

"And somewhere to rest," he adds gently.

"Yeah, definitely. Hey, looks like there might be a working car over there; worth checking out, don't you think?"

It would seem Darla has recovered sufficiently to start talking incessantly again.