Eisen raised his vodka-tonic to the orchid colored lights of a new barcade in the lower part of Manhattan. His gaze fell to the girls and boys with torsos exposed by chain-mail clothing, grinding up against individuals inspired by someone’s twisted wet-dream: clowns in lifeguard outfits. He stared with an interest that had peaked a long time ago and dwindled with every passing moment; his eyes glazed over the scene of white-painted, blown-up heads on chiseled and voluptuous bodies, the cognitive dissonance of what he was experiencing mixed in with his alcoholic beverage.

“I hate New York.” He uttered the phrase almost every day, with the same passion as someone saying “I hate money.” He told himself he needed the Big Apple to function, the city and its eccentricities and capitalistic drive, but deep down he also wished he didn’t need it at all. Moments when the allure of the weird and insane were effective at distracting him from his deepest darkest insecurities happened often enough for him to stay willgfully ignorant of the extent of his hatred for the city.

Eisen brushed his tattooed hand over the shoulder of a woman with purple lipstick, and her eyes said yes, but the guy on her left said no. Eisen gave a loving bird to the dude, then drifted to another part of the barcade. He ignored his phone, which buzzed with notifications of all the group-texts that he poked his head into every other moon. And without admitting to himself that all the people he actually wanted to hang with were busy, he drifted to the the basketball hoop-game that had UFO’s as the rims and little green men painted on the skins of the balls. Tonight, he wasn’t so sure he was willing to ride the game of potential rejections just to find someone he was probably going to leave anyway. So, he put his drink down and started shooting hoops.

Until the game shut down on him and he kicked the machine in the metaphorical shins, hurting his foot in the process. “Fuck me.” He also spilled his drink. “Even better.” Eisen picked up the glass and looked around to see if anyone had seen his pathetic outburst of rage. He so hoped to Jupiter, no. 

This...was not Quin's usual hang-out.

The lights, the clothes, the dancing, the...clowns.

Nope, this was not the kind of place that Quin would have ever frequented on her own. The thing was, Quin wasn't on her own. Haven was a bustling metropolis of youth these days and some of the younger members had convinced her that she need to button down a bit, stop working so hard on her law school work, stop spending so much time on her internship, and have a little bit of fun.

This...was...fun...at least until the other members of her group, that she hadn't known to well to start, had drifted off into the crowd. It was fine, they had a meet up point established for later, Quin had her phone, and Quin could take care of herself for a little bit. She didn't really want to dance anymore though, the clowns were really getting into their art and people were starting to get sloppy to the point where the dance...floor? was getting scary. The crowd was getting to be a bit much too, there was a lot of pleather and latex around and the buzzing in her ears was getting uncomfortable. Out of necessity she'd picked her way to a more open area where she could at least breathe without inhaling someone's vape cloud or worse.

"Fuck me."

The language somehow drew her attention even though the redhead had heard far worse as she'd made her way to this little bit of open space next to, of all things, a basketball goal and an angry man who had apparently tried an failed to seduce said basketball hoop and spilled his drink.

"I don't think you're going to have much luck there...but I swear to God there's a girl out there somewhere who is actually dressed up as a vending machine. You might have more luck." she said, gesturing back at the writhing crowd as she sipped her Jack and ginger.

Eisen’s hopes came crashing down like Santa tumbling into a big, deep, open chimney. Except he had no presents other than a little stutter and a blush that streaked across both cheeks of his. Lo and behold, a gorgeous woman, a tall glass of V8 that looked packed with vitamins and minerals, stood and looked down on him with her own sophisticated beverage.

“I think I’ve had it with machines for the night,” Eisen said as he puffed up his chest and reached down to pick up his glass just so she wouldn’t notice him taking a long, drawn out look of her from her toes to the tip of her ginger-head. His heart bumped around inside his chest, a rush of anxiety grabbed his shoulders and made its way down to his toes. Of course it had to be someone beautiful to see him as the mess he was this evening. Though, the fact she almost looked like she could be his long lost sister added a strange twinge of confusion to his already dazed heart.

“Have you tried popping a quarter in her, and seeing what comes out?” Eisen tried to say coolly- but as soon as the words rolled out of his mouth he wished someone would come out from behind the arcade machines with a giant bat and smash it against his nut-sack. It would’ve hurt less than the sound of his own stupidity right now.

“Uhh… Not that I support the utilitarian idealogy that people are merely vehicles for personal pleasure. Of course not. Right? And if it isn’t an ideology I subscribe to, then I ought to be in that psychic-orgie fest using a yardstick to keep those hormone-charged fleshbags far away from each other.” Eisen gave his new companion a wink and offered her a vodka-stained hand.

“But if I were to be a hedonist, even just for tonight, would you care to dance with me, you beautiful thing?” Eisen no longer paid attention to his words. Pretty girl and lots of her. A young night. Nothing more to lose than he’d already lost. Might as well shoot his shot, as skewed a shot it must have been at this point. The lifeguarding clowns awaited them.

Oh wow, Quin thought as the man bent to pick up the spilled drink and took his time standing up. She supposed she hadn’t worn what she’d worn to avoid being looked at tonight, but it was still an interesting experience to have it happen. At least he’d been discreet, she supposed as she crossed her arms and took another sip of her drink.

The man mentioned creative things to do with a quarter and the vending machine girl and then launched into a colorful soliloquy about utilitarianism, psychic-orgies, and flesh bags that had Quin’s eyes wide and her taking another sip from her glass to hide the inevitable laughter that was threatening to spill forth. So many big words strung together in such creative ways. Quin almost felt like she was in one of her classes learning legalese.

If nothing else, it was flattering, because the tattooed man was clearly flustered and determined to dig his hole as deep as possible before he quit digging.

Then, he was asking her to dance and calling her beautiful. The hole he had been so studiously digging filled itself in a bit. Quin had decided a few minutes before when she’d come over here that she was done dancing, but there was something charming about the way things had gone down and she tossed back the rest of her drink before setting the glass down on the edge of the basketball game. Littering wasn’t usually her jam, but there weren’t any trash cans readily available and she was here to let her hair down…metaphorically…because it was already down.

Reaching out to take the slightly sticky (ew) hand offered, Quin smiled. ”I’m Quin” she said, ready to head off once more into the crowd as the music ramped up a notch.

Normally Eisen would have had all the thoughts one would label as “gutter” and “fuck-boyish” proliferating through his mind like a train that someone set on a set of tracks, with no friction and an endless rail— the many alternate ways he could land on those thighs in an hour or so like a cheap family keeping a rental movie on replay just so they could squeeze out every ounce of their dollar’s worth.

But for somereason, her taking his sticky and sweaty little hand softened his heart just a little bit that he may have actually looked at her eyes long enough to notice a human being with emotions, suspicions, and some verifiable lick of taste. He saw himself as scum tonight, with his skin-tight, gamma-yellow collared shirt, unbuttoned to reveal a white A-shirt underneath, on top of his white skinny jeans and matching neon Jordans. He had on his favorite Jewish star necklace — he loved the Jews - and had his hair tied back into a little man-bun because he was growing it long out of sheer indifference. But her, something about her screamed a little more pomp to the circumstance.

“The fuck you doing invading this little shithole, Quin? Maybe it’s just me, but hell, you look so normal — you must either be virtue signaling, or trying to show these clowns what actual decency looks like.” The way her taking his hand was like grabbing onto a ballet instructor, really did change the name of the game.

He pointed at the lifeguarding clowns, now breathing down the necks of a group of wasted Spencer’s models. He maneuvered his own hands from Quin’s hand to guiding her to the dance floor with skillfully placed touches against her lower back, back of her elbow, the ‘accidental’ pressure of his hip against her thigh in the sea of bodies. He let the music dictate the rest, whether he’d put his hands up in the air and smile at her with his lips curled and his eyes pretending to drift in and out of euphoria, or if he’d stare at her deeply in the eyes as he chose his most over-the top gyrations — but only until she laughed and not a moment longer. He finally chose to lean in when the music was at its loudest, so he could scream into her ear. “Eisen — that’s my name.”

The music began to crank up and the lights flicker, like the winning screen of a METROID game. Eisen only hoped he was making strides, because truthfully, if the exaggerated gyrations didn’t show it, sweatbeads streaked down his temples as the scene around him began to scream ‘imposter’, ‘loser’, and ‘good for nothing’. Here he was again with a stranger, but hey. That’s the vibe he had been looking for right?

To be honest, Quin had vastly preferred “beautiful” to “normal” and when her new friend asked what she was doing here she just shrugged her shoulders, bristling just slightly at the insinuation that somehow she didn’t belong…even if it was true. When she’d found out where they were going, Quin had scoured her closet and found nothing remotely resembling appropriate attire so she’d been stuck borrowing something from one of the other girls. Her black top was cropped just below the chest and had just enough straps and buckles across her abdomen and shoulders that she wondered how people put the damn thing on without instructions. She’d had a black skirt to go with it thankfully because she was enough taller than the other woman that anything she borrowed would have been indecent. Not that it would have mattered here. As it was, Quin didn’t really care what she looked like because she wasn’t there to pick up guys or make a statement about society with her clothes.

She was here to dance.

Everything about the man leading Quin to the dance floor screamed of effort, meticulous effort, to not give a single solitary shit and the redhead had to admire the audacity. As someone planning to literally sell herself to the system, it was intriguing to meet someone so polar opposite.

He was a bit handsy too. But not enough to earn a broken nose, Quin decided. That same carefully practiced irreverence of his was on full display as they danced and Quin found herself smiling and laughing at her dance partner’s antics as she let herself move with the music.

Quin knew she wasn’t the best dancer there, but she knew her body and knew how to move with a beat. Years of drum circles and chanting courtesy of her parents had taught her that if nothing else. The thrumming of the absolute sea of synthetics rolled through her as surely as the bass and made it all the easier to let loose. The music spiked to a new crescendo and her partner chose that particular moment to introduce himself. Loudly. In her ear. Smooth.

Having crested, the wave of sound receded a bit and Quin nodded, pulling back hair that kept sticking to her face into a low ponytail.

“Nice to meet you Eisen.” She said, voice just loud enough to be heard over the quieter, but still loud, music.

”You don’t seem impressed.”, she said, waving a hand at their surroundings. “What brings you here?

Every so often when Eisen closed his eyes, he would see flashes of his empty bedroom. The littered cans of Celsius, Monster, Red Bull, and wrappers and wrappers of plantain chips, and his array of bongs named after various presidents like him, all orbiting his huge king sized bed where many a nights were spent with his ‘friends’ and lovers alike. Where were they when he wanted them or needed them? He never asked. As he danced, however, these thoughts latched onto him like the perfumes and bodily stenches of the strangers in his vicinity. He had almost tuned out Quin, the music, the dancing, the sights the sounds. A chilling chant at the back of his head, ‘Loser’, ‘Imposter’, ‘Thief.’

But just like that, he jumped even harder, pumped his fists even faster, gave into the ache of his body and opened his eyes again once the ginger facing him asked a question. He pondered whether to give her a fat lie, or to swing at her with the hammering thoughts in his temple, and go all out. What did he have to lose? It’s not like he’d see her ever again anyway.

“What? You mean— why am I here? At THIS shithole? Why ELSE does anyone do ANYTHING in this city, gorgeous? We’re all running away from SOMETHING. So just fucking DANCE.” Eisen spoke loudly, to the point of yelling. He almost lost all reverence as he rubbed his ass on a lesbian couple behind him. They rubbed themselves against his white and yellow. The purple lighting turning Eisen into a neon polar bear in the middle of a dark forest, and he invited Quin in by widening his wingspan and beckoning her closer.

Then the DJ put on a headbanger. The dance floor was a black linoleum that was already sticky with spilled drinks and hard earned sweat. The crazies raved, legs and arms finding new homes on other bodies. He loved this scene, the zaniness, the hype. He loved it. Right?

He watched as Quin also put on her own moves, finally giving himself a chance to see her in her simple black outfit, her curves and skin and inhibitions all in full display. She obviously wasn’t used to this scene at all, and Eisen had his ways to get what he wanted. To say the right things, touch the right places, tickle the right fancies. But for some reason, tonight he felt like a sieve, his gusto leaking out onto the floor like the rest of everyone’s fluids. She didn’t seem like a girl he’d have an easy time taking home either, and he wasn’t so sure if tonight was a night for a challenge. So he gave her just a little more breathing room.

“And YOU? People don’t come to BARS to be ‘IMPRESSED’. What brings you HERE?”

As Eisen asks the question, a couple groans and shouts of pain and surprise can be heard from some individuals on the dance floor. But the music drowns out the waves.

[OOC: The clowns are starting to be mind-raped and begin to bite the people they’re dancing with. Feel free for Quin to notice or not.]

He was here for the same reason everyone else was? He was running? They were running? Everyone was running?

It was true, Quin supposed as she did what he said and just effing danced. At least for a while. Maybe she wasn’t as comfortable as he was with utter and wanton abandon with the other strangers on the floor, but she was definitely having a good time.

Eisen, it seemed, was curious about her too and she smiled at his question.

”I’m here because I felt like I was going to explode if I spent one more minute being me, so I decided to try and be someone else for a night.” she hadn’t realized it until she’d said it, but Quin was telling the complete and unadulterated truth.

It was then the screams started.

”What the hell is that?” she said, standing on tiptoes to try and see over the crowd.

What she saw was a crowd that was quickly beginning to surge in one direction.

“I’m here because I felt like I was going to explode if I spent one more minute being me, so I decided to try and be someone else for a night.”

Eisen nodded silently to himself, letting the music shuffle through him. More and more he began to realize he’d rushed into bringing her on the floor, but a little spark of hope returned to him. Could he help someone else tonight? No… No there was no reason for him to take on such a role, but deep down inside he believed he wanted the same thing. To be someone else. Someone who wasn’t just the Neon-Banana outfit man with the anger spurts and wild dance moves… But how does one really go about being someone else?

His empty, disheveled bed came back to mind. The endless nights of wearing loneliness, and seeking, running, going after something in the wild of the Big Apple. That image would keep haunting him. ‘Loser’, ‘Imposter, ‘Thief’. He wasn’t that… right? He didn’t want to be that.

The screams caught his attention too, before he could respond to Quin’s very self-piercing comment. Her honesty, meddling with his. The screams were those of agony, hilarity, chaos. And they were coming from the mob swarming with the lifeguard clowns.

The barcade strobe lights descending on the crowd like someone flicking the lights on and off and snapshots of the clown lifeguards latching onto the other partygoers reached the eyes of those unfortunate enough to be watching. On top of the already pasty white make-up adorning their faces, they seemed to have a soft glow emanating from their skin. There were three of them in total, each holding onto the screaming faces of their dance partners, as they performed a strange ritual. Each held their partner below their face and pried their mouths open as a strange goo emanated from their eyes like tears. Drip-drip-drip, onto the lips and teeth and gaping caves of the partygoers.

Then their bodies grew slack and dropped to the floor like ragdolls, whilst the lifeguard clowns grabbed and reached for any other partygoers unfortunate in their obliviousness.

Eisen instinctively leaped in front of Quin, to shield her from the gruesome scene. “What the fuck? Watch out, gorgeous. I haven’t seen shit this fucked up before.” As much as it surprised him, his training forced him to stay calm and assess the situation. A brainwashing mutation? Was this mystics? Why here? Now?

Those who had turned seemed to be moving faster, and the crowd was pushing hard against them, the exits being at their back. “Let’s go. Go, go.” He took Quin by the arm and began to follow the flow of traffic.

It was like something out of a horror movie, complete with the strobe lights and over the top monsters. The clowns that had merely been weird before were horrifying now, forcing peoples’ mouths open and dripping goo into their mouths.

The people were dropping to the floor after they were released and Quin couldn’t help but wonder if they were dead. The crowd pressed and Eisen leaped in front of her, apparently as shocked by the tableau playing out as she was. Apparently he did give a shit.

The clowns were scary, but there were a lot of people between them an Quin. The crowd was much much scarier as it surged toward her and Eisen. Quin knew about crowds from training she’d received as an intern for Zselyke in the event that a crowd surge happened at a political event and she knew that panicked, stampeding people were dangerous.

Eisen grabbed Quin’s arm, and she let him pull her along, shouldering her way through the crowd as they moved forward.

”We have to help…” she said as she started to focus on the various sources of the buzzing in her ears. The clothes of the people around her, the very floor they were walking on, all of it could be useful. People were falling down though, and the crowd was rolling over them just as she’d been warned could happen. The shoes and clothes the bar goers were wearing simply weren’t conducive to fleeing.

Suddenly one of the clowns was there, almost as if it had materialized out of thin air rather than coming up from around a corner. The crowd continued to surge forward around them and Quin watched as the clown snagged a fleeing young woman as if she weighed nothing, hands prying her mouth open as the goo dripped freely.

Not even thinking, Quin reached out with her powers.

The woman dropped to the floor and the clown snagged another party-goer by the neck. It pried the young man’s mouth open, but as it bent to drip its goo, several floor tiles slapped onto its face like the tape in those infomercials that could seal anything.

Quin didn’t know how long it would hold and she was breathing a bit heavy from the exertion of pulling the tiles up from the floor, but it was better than nothing.

The fleeing crowd combined with the bottleneck effect of the barcade exit doors, utterly terrifying. He’d been in enough mosh pits to know, a crowd could as relentless as waves on a stormy beach. The arms and the legs and the screams rolled over in on them, and when someone in front of them tripped, they were down and out for the count. Eisen for some reason he could not discern in the moment, held onto Quin for dear life and pushed and shoved his way through. He took an elbow in the rib and a sweaty palm to the face before he realized they needed to get to higher ground. They were currently on the top floor of the barcade, and thus the one exit was through the two stairwells at the back, and he realized that would be death, trying to rush down a stairwell with this crowd.

It was as if the clowns had read his mind, for only a few moments later did he notice one of the creatures leaping over the startled partygoers to make his way to the exit. Suddenly, Eisen’s stomach wrung like a towel squeezed of all its contents before being hung out to dry. These creatures must have had some sentience, or rather, something was giving them instruction. But immediately the crowd began to surge in the other direction; the other side of the barcade was the balcony and they were at least three stories up.

>>“We have to help…” Quin said, but Eisen couldn’t agree until they themselves were out of the sea of frantic faces.

“We need to find higher ground.” A few meters to their left were the pool tables, and Eisen pushed his way towards them, holding out his elbow, and body bulldozing through a good amount of people, his arm still on Quin, who allowed him to keep guiding her.

Before they could make it however, another one appeared in the vicinity, a little too close for comfort, and displayed his dominance over a poor woman. At the same time, a floor tile flew out from the ground and planted itself on the zombie’s mouth. The woman slumped on the floor, unable to avoid the goo, but as the zombie tried to pry off his muzzle, it gave Eisen a chance to reach the pool table.

As he pulled himself up on the green surface, he beckoned Quin to jump on it with him. Then he realized, from her suggestion that they should help, and the way she was focusing on the zombified clown, she must have been the mutant who slapped the tile on his face.

“Oh thank God you’re a mutant too.” Eisen breathed a sigh of relief. That meant he wouldn’t have to worry as much about protecting her. But they still had a situation to take care of. Eisen grabbed a pool stick and held it out like a bowstaff - of all the nights to forget his own weapon at home, this wasn’t the night.

“This’ll do.” Eisen then watched as the closest zombie struggled with the tile on his face, white-makeup and all. Then pried it off and latched itself onto another victim.

“That tile was you, right, Quin? What else can you do?” He asked as he picked up a pool ball and threw it at the zombie, who swiveled its head in their direction. It looked visibly pissed. Then it began to charge, the crowd having parted enough that there was no one between it and the pool table.

Once the zombie clown was within two meters of them, Eisen channeled his mutation through the soles of his feet, into the pool table, through the floor and to the zombie’s clothing. He stood suspended, arms flailing, as his clothes held him in place. Within the strobe light of the barcade, its blood shot eyes spilling a glowing blue liquid made it seem like its vision must have been obscured. They could use that to their advantage. Eisen held his mutation, and felt the zombie tug against it; and he waited to see who would win the tug of war.

“If you’ve got anything else in your bag of tricks, now’s the time to do it.” He called out to Quin, holding his mighty pool stick up, ready to strike the moment the zombie broke through.

Higher ground. Quin nodded absently as Eisen pointed out that they needed to get to higher ground. People were utterly feral now, running over and on top of each other to clamber towards the stairs. The pool table was at Quin’s back and even though Eisen was encouraging her upwards, Quin hesitated as the clown pried the vinyl from its face and immediately went after another victim. The high ground was nice, but it also made you a target.

“The tile was you, right, Quin? What else can you do? “

”Not a whole hell of a lot.” she said as someone slammed into her from the side. Instinct and muscle memory kicking in from the training she’d been doing the last 5 years, Quin turned with the momentum of the body and rolled the person..thank god it had been a person…over her shoulder and onto the floor. The floor…where they disappeared under the crush of people.

Deciding she’d think about what that meant later, and noting the approaching clown, the redhead decided that maybe the pool table was the best idea and scrambled gracelessly up onto the green surface. She’d lost a shoe somewhere and kicked the other one off for better footing just in time for Eisen to do something to immobilize the monster bearing down on them.

Pulling up more tiles took time and effort, especially with people running over them and pulling them from her mental grip, but soon she had a small collection. Grabbing two, Quin concentrated and pushed them together and stretched them until she had a wider, thinner sheet than the full tile she’d used earlier.

”You’re going to have to hold him until this has time to work…” Quin said, a little sick about what she was going to do. The next moment the black plastic sheet shot forward and wrapped itself more fully around the clown's head than the previous one had, covering its entire face and sealing along the back.

Assuming the clown needed oxygen like most other living things…it should work.

Desperate times called for desperate measures.

>>“”You’re going to have to hold him until this has time to work…” 

The zombie’s strength caused Eisen to really dig in deep and concentrate. Once the zombie realized it was just its clothes, it began to push up against the ground with its feet. Eisen released his grip, at the moment the creature pushed, causing it to stumble forward. Then Eisen turned on his mutation again, leaving the zombie more parallel to the floor. This bought enough time for Quin to seal its head shut with two floor tiles— and Eisen let his mutation go.

His eyes widened with a twinge of disgust and surprise as the zombie clawed at its head, trying to peel off its new air-tight helmet. Those surrounding them witnessed the scene, and stopped for a moment to watch their new saviors. Eisen was just glad that Quin was on his side.

Once the zombie flailed around in sheer terror, seeming to realize that it was dying and those who had watched with curiosity began to run away again. Eisen turned his attention to the rest of the room, the lights were still flickering; his heart still pumping. From their vantage point, at their 3 O’clock was the balcony; and access to the fire escapes where people were running towards, with a zombie hot on their tail, about fifteen meters to that exit. And to their 10 O’clock was the stairwell. 

Of the crowd, those not trying to escape the room, were huddling in the corner at the bathrooms at their 12 O’clock, and a group was beginning to create a barricade with overturned tables, because to their chagrin, some of the bodies that the zombies poured their eye juice in, began to stir and slowly claw their way toward the survivors.

Behind them were the arcade machines where a few of the partygoers found places to hide as well, and at seeing them take care of the one zombie, began to scream out. “Help us get us out of here!”

Whatever and whoever started this scene, sure had a mind to keep everyone inside, and as much as Eisen wanted to figure all this out now, he also was just so overwhelmed. From their location, no one else seemed abled enough to take a zombie down. Eisen turned to Quin.

“We just need to hold them off long enough for help to show up. What you did with that one zombie was fucking amazing, but we need a game plan to take out the rest. This is why I hate zombie movies.” Eisen wasn’t so sure that he could take one on his own, since they seemed to have enhanced strength and he didn’t have anything lethal on him, nor did he know how human they still were and if there was a chance to bring them back.

“Ahh, fuck! What should we do?” His empty bed, his nonexistent friends, the darkness of his apartment room flashed again in his head. “Imposter”, “Loser”, “Thief.” I’m no hero. He thought to himself. Yeah he’d saved people before, but he didn’t really care about all that. What was the point if there was no one to save him at the end of the day?

Eisen slumped to the green of the pool table. He just wanted to run. He could easily leap over all these people and escape through the balcony, and just run away. He didn’t even want to be here in the first place— none of this was his problem. “Fuck me.” He sat there, paralyzed. He was no hero, even if he wanted to be.

The clown clawed at its head, it clawed at its face, it clawed and clawed and clawed, but fingers and nails weren’t strong enough to claw through the thick, cheap vinyl that was wrapped around its head.

Quin could see the thing’s panic increasing, see its chest heaving as it tried to pull air through the airtight wrap around its face.

It was dying.

Quin didn’t notice the people building a barricade, she didn’t notice the people running for the fire escapes or the stairwells, she didn’t notice the limp bodies starting to stir from the floor where they’d been dropped.

She couldn’t stop staring at the damn clown.

“Help us get out of here!”

The words snapped Quin out of her shock and she looked around, frantically pushing the panic to the back of her head. She could deal with it later, after they got out of this. At least she wasn’t…

Eisen sank down to the surface of the pool table, clearly overwhelmed.

Awesome.

Suddenly, something in Quin snapped and she dropped into a crouch in front of Eisen and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt to haul him up as much as she could, which wasn’t very far, and shake him.

”Pull it together, Eisen!” she said, nearly nose to nose with him. ”I did not come here tonight to get trampled or zombied or whatever. THINK. We handled that one just fine….” she said, studiously ignoring the clown that was now very still on the floor, ”But we need a better solution. I can do shit with plastic, vinyl, latex…synthetics. What can you do?” she said before shoving him back and looking around, brown eyes coming back to Eisen's. "Where can we go?"

>>”Pull it together, Eisen!” 

“What the actual literal FUCK, though!” Eisen let himself be shaken by Quin, as all this survivor zombie nonsense was crushing him. This was why he worked for money, and not for people. Being a paid mercenary? No problem. Taking out a few Mystics here and there? Check. But having the responsibility of keeping a crowd of people alive —- no sir. He was checked-out, thinking now only of his solitary bed, no matter how lonely it was. The sounds of people screaming and the palpable fear in the air began to squeeze all the air out of his lungs. He wanted out, and he wanted so desperately to care only about himself. But here Quin was, looking him in the eye as if he had all the answers.

>>“But we need a better solution. I can do shit with plastic, vinyl, latex…synthetics. What can you do?” she said before shoving him back and looking around, brown eyes coming back to Eisen's.  "Where can we go?"

”Shit. Shit. Shit. Think, Eisen. Think.” As they hesitated more goo-filled individuals, that had laid as ragdolls, began to arise slowly. They weren’t as fast as the three clowns had been, but they were getting up. And Eisen didn’t want anything to do with those either. But if he wanted to get out of here fast and quick, clearing an exit for those who were still alive may have been the way to go.

The stairwell leading to the downstairs was still blocked off by the clown zombie, but if they could take him out it would pave a way for people to make it out. Another option was to make it to the balcony, where he could take him and Quin to the roof and save their own asses. Both were risky, and one was more selfish than the other. But both valid options. Together, they should be able to take down at least one more.

“I can use my mutation to walk on air basically, and lock things into place as long as I’m concentrating.” He finally responded to Quinn, holding out the pool stick to point out their options. “We could either take out that zombie and make a way for people to escape.”

Then he pointed to the balcony. “Or we could sneak out the balcony, and I can take us out to the roof and save our own asses. Wait for help that way.” He then turned to Quinn and sized her up. He should be able to carry her on his back… Right?

“But the only way I can get both of us out of here… is if you ride on my back.” He stood in full glory in front of Quin, the pool stick in hand and his neon yellow and white, flashing in the strobe light. All while the screams of chaos echoed in the barcade.