![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
OOM: UN Building
Sep. 20th, 2013 04:50 pmThe feeling of being sick is something Noriko’s had for a while now.
She hasn’t yet noticed the way her gauntlets spark more than usual, or how things shake when Keller gets nervous--which is pretty much the only constant they’re both feeling, that hollow jittery bitter ball of nerves that settles in the pit of her stomach. They know exactly where they’re going.
The United Nations building has always been a landmark in the city; all that gleaming white, the colonnade of flags snapping in the breeze; it would be picturesque, patriotic even if no one knew what these two teenagers were about to do. Funny, because no one really does. The Leper Queen has her ideas, and Noriko and Keller have theirs, feverish as they might be.
The Virus has already taken hold of both of them, both are showing the lesions on their skin and have the pale sweaty color of someone that might have the flu. If the flu was particularly deadly to the infected, and anyone in their vicinity. From the moment they pass the doors, things are bad. Noriko’s gauntlets trip the metal detectors, and guards come out to the lobby like ants from a kicked nest, and it only serves to make Nori more nervous. Her electricity isn’t stable, and it’s hard to suck it back in once it starts gaining any sort of power, and her gauntlets are sparking, webbing over with the familiar blue-white--
It’s like being hit with a hammer, dead between the eyes, Noriko will remember that part pretty clearly. That much electrical force goes through a person and it’ll hurt; it stops her heart for a few nanoseconds, everything in her going rigid as she feels the current take over a heartbeat after all the lights go out. She doesn’t even close her eyes, though she feels them and her arms burning like they’ve been set on fire when the light blasts back on; it’s less a glow now and more like someone’s lit a bonfire all around her. Even her scalp burns--and she’d know why if she could see herself, a massive conduit with honest-to-god lightning licking away from every body part she has. But she can’t see herself; she can’t see Keller directing the energy blast away from the people surrounding them and up.
She can feel it shake the building, though. Her boots slip fractions of inches on the floor and she whimpers, though the noise is lost as the building fractures and crumbles around them with the sound of concrete cracking like gunshots. Noriko can feel something like a feedback loop almost form between her gauntlets and her arms, in the minute spaces between metal and skin, and just as she feels that she sees one of the doors change.
It looks like the Milliways door. She doesn’t want to bring this destruction there, and yet she desperately doesn’t want to be here, either--and the latter impulse wins out as she runs for the door.
The basketball-sized chunk of balcony concrete with carpet glued to it that glances off her head and shoulder breaks her arm when she falls, head knocking the door open just enough for her other arm and the top of a brightly-blue-dyed crop of hair to show through the opening. She can feel the bones snap. Maybe it’s her gauntlet that actually did it--one is crushed to her arm and has cut the skin up badly, she can faintly feel the blood. Nori doesn’t have a whole lot of time to contemplate it before she has the distinctly unpleasant sensation of her eyes crossing and the whole upside-down view of the bar going blurry and grey as if she was going to pass out.
She hasn’t yet noticed the way her gauntlets spark more than usual, or how things shake when Keller gets nervous--which is pretty much the only constant they’re both feeling, that hollow jittery bitter ball of nerves that settles in the pit of her stomach. They know exactly where they’re going.
The United Nations building has always been a landmark in the city; all that gleaming white, the colonnade of flags snapping in the breeze; it would be picturesque, patriotic even if no one knew what these two teenagers were about to do. Funny, because no one really does. The Leper Queen has her ideas, and Noriko and Keller have theirs, feverish as they might be.
The Virus has already taken hold of both of them, both are showing the lesions on their skin and have the pale sweaty color of someone that might have the flu. If the flu was particularly deadly to the infected, and anyone in their vicinity. From the moment they pass the doors, things are bad. Noriko’s gauntlets trip the metal detectors, and guards come out to the lobby like ants from a kicked nest, and it only serves to make Nori more nervous. Her electricity isn’t stable, and it’s hard to suck it back in once it starts gaining any sort of power, and her gauntlets are sparking, webbing over with the familiar blue-white--
It’s like being hit with a hammer, dead between the eyes, Noriko will remember that part pretty clearly. That much electrical force goes through a person and it’ll hurt; it stops her heart for a few nanoseconds, everything in her going rigid as she feels the current take over a heartbeat after all the lights go out. She doesn’t even close her eyes, though she feels them and her arms burning like they’ve been set on fire when the light blasts back on; it’s less a glow now and more like someone’s lit a bonfire all around her. Even her scalp burns--and she’d know why if she could see herself, a massive conduit with honest-to-god lightning licking away from every body part she has. But she can’t see herself; she can’t see Keller directing the energy blast away from the people surrounding them and up.
She can feel it shake the building, though. Her boots slip fractions of inches on the floor and she whimpers, though the noise is lost as the building fractures and crumbles around them with the sound of concrete cracking like gunshots. Noriko can feel something like a feedback loop almost form between her gauntlets and her arms, in the minute spaces between metal and skin, and just as she feels that she sees one of the doors change.
It looks like the Milliways door. She doesn’t want to bring this destruction there, and yet she desperately doesn’t want to be here, either--and the latter impulse wins out as she runs for the door.
The basketball-sized chunk of balcony concrete with carpet glued to it that glances off her head and shoulder breaks her arm when she falls, head knocking the door open just enough for her other arm and the top of a brightly-blue-dyed crop of hair to show through the opening. She can feel the bones snap. Maybe it’s her gauntlet that actually did it--one is crushed to her arm and has cut the skin up badly, she can faintly feel the blood. Nori doesn’t have a whole lot of time to contemplate it before she has the distinctly unpleasant sensation of her eyes crossing and the whole upside-down view of the bar going blurry and grey as if she was going to pass out.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}