You're Not Supposed to be Here (open)

Lucas tilted the boomerang at a downward angle before flicking his wrist and sending it flying across the abandoned office space. It twirled lazily as Lucas watched it duck between toppled cubicle walls and weave between forgotten computers. As it approached the far corner of the room, it briefly eclipsed a green LED light on the wall before turning sharply before returning to Lucas' outstretched hand. He snatched the boomerang out of the air without moving from his slouched position in one of the office chairs he and Ava had discovered.

Shifting his eyes toward the green light, he entered a short staring contest with it, daring it to blink itself into a different color. Lucas had rigged a homemade security system from spare electronics to the floor beneath his and Ava's as an early warning system for the gang members and stray pillagers which managed to climb the several flights of stairs between them and the ground floor. The green light revealed no motion detected on the floor below, which also meant a boring day for Lucas and his sister.

A loud click broke the silence as the light blinked from green to red, and Lucas' face broke into a grin. Something had tripped the motion detectors below him. Beautiful! If he stared at the green light long enough, it always seemed to shift to red and break up the monotony of the day. Leaping to his feet, Lucas met the gaze of Ava from across the room, "I've got this one!" he mouthed before dashing out of the room, into the corridor, and through the door leading to the building's stairs.

Boomerang in hand, Lucas found the stairwell and crept slowly down it, careful not to make too much noise. When he reached the landing for the floor beneath him, he eyed what he could see of the floor's corridor through a small window in the door separating the stairs from the floor itself. Nothing seemed to move, but the dark hallways could easily disguise any number of opponents. Lucas knew the motion sensor laid hidden at the other end of the floor, so he had plenty of areas to search for intruders. Like hide-and-seek, he reasoned. Taking a deep breath to settle his nerves, he opened the door quietly and crept into the corridor.

"Well this is interesting." Lysander said, walking through around a corner and down an aisle of cubicles. He stopped in one to take a peak. "These cubicles still have computers and chairs. It's like nobody made it to this floor yet, or at least not made off with anything. This must be where those kids are hiding then." He said. He pulled his right arm out of his pocket, a wire extending from his forearm and pointing out over his fingernail.

He tapped the screen of a computer and it made a satisfying glass 'tink' noise. He smiled for a second, wires poking out around his other five fingers and then launching into the screen and out of the other side of the monitor. "I'm in." He muttered in a deeper voice than his usual tone. He recoiled the wires and continued his march toward the stairs. He was certain something should happen soon and with a wave of his hand the four reapers with him that had AK-47's raised their weapons to their hips and spread out. The fifth Reaper stuffed his hands into his hoodie pockets. Lysander took the time to sing a little song, his wires extending from his hands a and acting as claws as he tore the fabric on the side of the cubicles.

"If you live in the city and you want it to burn because you think nobody could learn the delicate demons and loneliest ways of a heart that's been broken..."


(hint: it's a link to the song)

Lucas appreciated the unsettling song which drifted toward him from several aisles over. At least he would not have to search too long to find the intruder. As he began to walk at a quicker pace, Lucas took a quick right followed by another, quicker left. The voice grew louder as Lucas approached, and the young conduit began to mentally rehearse his first words to the intruder. Maybe he could intimidate them into leaving or handing over any goods they had found on the lower levels of the building. "That could be nice..." Lucas mumbled to himself. Unfortunately, his mumbling had distracted him from the sound of footsteps approaching the intersection in front of him.

Lucas jumped when he saw the bring red of the Reaper's jacket flap around the corner and turn its AK-47 to face him. Acting quickly, almost out of reflex, Lucas threw his hands in front of his face and summoned a powerful gust of wind which blasted the Reaper into the ceiling before slamming him back to the floor. Lucas grabbed the Reaper's rifle from the ground and began to jog away from the semi-conscious Reaper who would attract attention with his noises. "Shit, shit, shit..." Lucas mumbled under his breath as he realized how ridiculous he had been not to even consider the possibility of Reapers in the building. He quickly heard the sounds of another's footsteps approaching, and threw a gust of wind down the aisle just as the second Reaper turned to face him. As the wind hit the gang member, he rolled down the aisle before slamming hard into a wall several feet behind him. Another Reaper ran into the same aisle soon after only to find himself knocked off balance with a boomerang to the head before being tossed head-first into the ceiling.

With his boomerang snapping back into his hand, Lucas turned left down the next aisle to find a fourth Reaper, who shot a round toward Lucas before the young conduit threw him through several cubicles into the next aisle over. Lucas stepped through the debris of the collapsed cubicles toward the now-incapacitated Reaper, but quickly noticed the presence of two more figures in his peripheral vision. Turning quickly, he observed a Reaper with hands casually placed within his pockets and a man with bright red hair. Stunned by the non-traditional appearance of the two, Lucas shouted in exasperation, "Just how many of you are there?"

Lysander's song was interrupted when four of his Reapers had been taken out. Only three had been knocked out, sadly the one who's gun was stolen wasn't one of them. The source of the beatings remained hidden from his site. Lysander tracked his movement by watching his reapers go down one by one and the fact a boomerang poked out and around. Oh, and the fact that the boy had blown his men through several cubicles with his bare hands. It made visibility much higher now that there weren't walls.

"Well, there were seven of us, but now it's only 3 seeing as the others passed out. I believe you have been the mysterious kid giving my boys so much trouble. I'm Lysander, nice to meet you." He said, taking a small bow. He was more focused on mentally communicating to the unarmed reaper to go behind the boy and be ready to block. Problem was the poor bastard could barely walk so Lysander would have to wait for him to crawl into position. The reaper behind him was starting to bounce where he stood. He knew the signal was coming.

"So I see you're a conduit. Decently strong too, strong enough to defend whatever is on the next floor. I do hope it's worth protecting, otherwise I guess I'm wasting my time and frankly, walking up all those stairs for nothing would certainly disappoint me." Lysander ran a hand through his hair, making sure it was still styled the way he liked. Wires began wrapping around his free arm and began making their way around the rest of his torso.

Lysander stepped to the side, leaving the Reaper with his hands in his pockets a straight line into the boy. "But you do have a point, keeping track of our numbers is quite hard. Seven, then three and in a few seconds, just one." He grinned. The reaper behind him let out a shriek as he ripped two homemade bombs out of his pockets and sprinted toward the boy. His hoodie moving unnaturally do to being lined with similar explosives as well. If all went as planned, he would back up and fall over the reaper who had crawled behind him and the bomber would dive on top of them both, killing all three.

The redheaded man's seemingly polite introduction had little effect on Lucas, who continued to glance nervously between the strange man and the Reaper with his hands shoved deep into his coat pockets. "I think you're confused, man. I've only been giving 'your boys' the same level of trouble they give me. Leave us and our building alone and we'll be just peachy. I don't want trouble, and if you're smart, you shouldn't want trouble either." Lucas speak sincerely, offering a potential arrangement between him and the Reapers. An odd feeling made him believe the arrangement would not be well received.

The conduit with the deep pockets began fidgeting more nervously as Lucas carried on his conversation with Lysander. When the redheaded man mentioned the value of what Lucas protected in the building, he felt hairs rise on the back of his neck. "There's nothing for you in this building, trust me. It's time for you to leave. You can choose whether that's peacefully or not." Lucas thought of what he did protect in the building: his sister, their possessions, and their home. Without any of these, he understood he would have died during the early days of the Quarantine. Even before the Blast, Lucas and his sister relied on each other to protect the other and help each other survive. He could not let her down.

As Lysander finished his ominous statement about the dwindling numbers of people in the room, Lucas felt his uneasy feeling peak. The Reaper with the pockets finally pulled his hands into sight only to reveal two homemade explosives and began sprinting toward Lucas. The suicide bomber fell upon the wind conduit instantly, forcing him to react instinctively by rolling out of the bomber's path. Glancing up, he noticed a semiconscious Reaper had managed to crawl behind where he had previously stood, and Lysander's plan made more sense. In classic schoolyard style, the Reapers had intended to trip him as he wheeled backward and away from the bomb-wielding Reaper. Once grounded, Lucas would have little hope of defending himself from the force of the Reaper's explosives and would die with the remaining two Reapers.

Now off to the side his original position, Lucas could see both of the Reapers. The bomber tried to turn his momentum and again charge at Lucas as the semiconscious one looked disappointment. As the two lined up in Lucas' sight, he summoned a powerful gust of wind to bowl them across the room and into the far wall. A powerful explosion rocked the building as the windows near where the two Reapers had lain shattered outward and sunlight poured in through a gaping hole in the wall. Turning toward Lysander, Lucas smirked. "And then there were two, right?"

The sounds of violent skirmishing had not escaped Ava, who sat on the floor above and indulged herself in a book. If anything, the sounds put her at ease. They had come to feel like a normal part of the building, and Lucas always returned with nothing more than a bruise or scratch. When the entire building shook, however, she pursed her lips and closed her book. "Well shit, Lucas, keep it down a bit..." she muttered to herself before grabbing the old police baton she had "borrowed" from a local police officer and made her way to the stairwell.

The boy managed better than he figured. Some sort of wind powers it seemed. Useful, but it didn't seem like he could fly, at least not in this office building. The explosion outside shook the ground beneath him and he retracted the wire from around his arm, no longer needing a shield from the blast. He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed deeply. He moved his hands together in a sort of prayer position and pointed his fingers to the boy.

"Well that was not as planned. And the correct number is 1. We were counting reapers here, not people here in general, you trash dwelling piece of actual human filth with no value to anyone but them self. Now if you will kindly step aside, I'd enjoy not excerting effort in fighting you. Obviously something is up a floor and I intend on getting there. Now shoo. Go on, boy. Respect your elders and all." Lysander said. He had a newfound hatred for this boy, living in an office building and protecting his home. It was cute in a way. If he hadn't lived Lysander might have respected him a little.

Lysander dropped some wires to the ground and tighten them to cut four distinct lines in the carpet, scraping on the concrete. It was a scare tactic that usually worked, and when it didn't it led into an easy attack. Several really. He could claw, he could loosen them and extend them to his feet, he could just shoot them out and go for a stab, the possibilities were endless. Only that stuff was never against a wind conduit. No ideal play existed here so intimidation would have to do. He marched toward the boy. Not to one side or the other, directly in line with him. The wind made his hair blow lightly and he had to blink more than usual to keep from tearing up. They were kind of high up and the wind wasn't exactly helping anyone here except well, the guy with wind powers.

~~closed because Gorma has gone missing!~~