Roleplaying

Sarah just started pointing the way. The place wasn't actually that far. Might take some time though it was difficult terrain. The horse in question was a mustang the closest thing to an all 'American' steed. Sarah had to keep to a friendly small size and she was the one leading the horse along. Gradually Sarah got the mare to pick up the pace and they were on their way. Fox knew where they were going and why. They'd be welcome back but if the others had decided to relocate Sarah would have to find them all over again. The journey had begun.

Arran kept following Sarah when they seemed to wander into a small town. It seemed surprisingly..clean. There were a few abbandoned cars on the road but not many. The houses still seemed intact, some with boarded up windows and doors but that was to be expected. There didn't seem to be any survivor activity untill Arran looked into a window on the second floor of one of the houses, he saw a face staring out the window at him but as he looked up the curtains were pulled close and whoever it was dissapeared. "Seems like we're not alone here." he said to Sarah

Sarah said "Well we can't stop and chat, she could be moved at any time." They cleared the town without incident. Back into the wilderness and they went as far as they could for the day. They had to let the horse graze, rest, and drink. Sarah went off and came back with food. The mare was grazing as Sarah used fire breath to cook the bird. She ate her share and passed the rest to Arran. Sarah got clean water for them. Seriously this would be easier without him. But he insisted on coming so Sarah had to stop to take care of the human.

"Thank you." Arran said to Sarah as he sat down with a small sigh, and began to eat. He seemed to finnaly relax a bit after the..news about his wife earlier. That wasn't to say he wasn't still upset. He was..very, but..not as much. Now he just wasn't sure how reuniting with his daughter would go..it had been twelve years..she was ten when he left..he was afraid that at one point she might have started to think that he abbandoned them..that he was never coming back..or he was dead. Anything was possible, really. There wasn't any real way for her to know

Sarah took fox form and curled up in a little ball next to Arran. She could have gone for another twelve hours. Once the girl was busted out and in the clear Sarah could have gone at a slower pace. But the faster Sarah found this girl the less likely it was that she was transferred or sold to another place. At the rate they were going it would take two days. Sarah could have gotten the girl much faster and stolen a horse to get that girl out of there faster. Time was of the essence. The faster the better. Sarah was slowing herself down. Fox said the group wouldn't be ready to relocate until next spring and it was summer so they had some time. But the longer they waited the less likely it was the girl was going to be alive, mentally sound, and free of any nasties including an unwanted pregnancy. There was a reason they wanted women...

Arran looked down at Sarah as he leaned back a bit and relaxed..he was getting tired..he started to close his eyes but he heard something from nearby, footsteps and whispering. Arran reached for his crossbow and whispered to Sarah "Hey, we got company." He looked as he saw the beam of a flashlight nearby, then another. Two people, searching for something it seemed..or someone.

"I thought one of our scouts reported some guy coming through here on a horse." he heard one man say

"Why are we here? He could be long gone by now. We don't need any guys anyway. All we're going to do is kill him if we find him. Whats the point?" the second man said

Arran tried to find some place for cover, trying to listen to the two talk.

"Idiot. He could be part of a larger group, if he finds out where we are he could report our position to his people and they'd come wipe us out." the first man said, still searching with his flashlight in one hand, some sort of rifle in the other

"They can try. But we've got enough guns and enough people to hold them off."

Arran looked to see where Sarah was, still clutching his crossbow, not quite sure what to do

Sarah heard all this and got Arran moving again leaving a note on some paper under a rock stating what their intentions had been. Sarah hoped that it would have been enough for these people and she got back on the road clearing some distance and putting some difficult terrain between them and their persuers. Sarah then set up for some more rest. Only this time she was doing something whales and dolphins did and only let part of her brain sleep. Whales and dolphins do this so they remember to surface and don't drown. The part that was wide awake would get it's turn to rest later but she could still hear everything and her fox ears were swiveling to every sound.

Arran sighed as he sat down to rest. He had wanted to catch at least one of the guys that were trying to find them..if they were part of the group that had his daughter, which he was sure they were, he wanted to question them..or at least beat the living crap out of them for obvious reasons. He unzipped his backpack to check on his supplies. He found something that he forgot he even had, his old phone. He tried to press the power button but wasn't surprised when it didn't turn on. It hadn't been charged in years. A building with power was hard to come by at this point.

Sarah saw the cell phone and got a charge cord and plugged the thing into the phone and a strange textured skin formed around it. "I figured out how to copy an electric eel to charge electronics. I have a few degrees in biology..." The strange skin pulsed and contracted. The charging thing showed up on the phone and in about half an hour it was charged. Granted there was no signal because the towers were in such a state of disrepair. "No signal. I can't shoot a bolt of electricity or make enough of a charge to do more than charge small electronics. I did a trade off of sorts. Focusing on honestly dumb stuff I could do behind my parents back and healing instead of size or variety of forms. If my parents hadn't inhibited me I might be able to swap genders or something weird like that. People are scared of shapeshifters because we can become any animal, hide anywhere, change to look like someone else, but finger prints always give us away in alternative human forms and it takes training to cover for one residual trait that tends to follow any form we have. In my case my eyes. I used to watch you in the city, granted I was keeping an eye on a percieved threat but I still watched and tried to help a few humans get out of the city... Some humans see my kind as a menace but just like you humans there are good, bad, neutrals, and everything in between. I like to think of myself as the next stage in human evolution, but I still value you humans. I don't like killing humans... My grandparents were humans and they taught me right and wrong..." Sarah rambled on for a few minutes as the sun was setting making her pale skin seem to glow red.

"Well.." arran said "As you probably know I'm not like those people..when I first heard reports of shapeshifters like you I thought it was..strange, but I never really felt..that way. Honestly untill I found you and the others at your camp I never really met one." he said, checking his phone now that he could actualy use it again. He looked and saw he had many missed messaged..he pressed the icon for the messages and found many of them were from his wife..after he left for New York and she was left in DC. He played one of the messages

"Arran? Are you there? I've been trying to call you.." her voice was shaky, she sounded scared "Those..those things..its all over the news..there was someone infected on a plane that landed in DC..now its spreading everywhere..the president is dead..the whole city is locked down..I heard the army is trying to get people out..I'm gonna take Alina and see if I can get on a transport..please call me back..please."

Arran sighed and played the next message

He heard crying, but it wasn't from his wife, it was from his daughter. He could hear her trying to comfort Alina, and he could also hear faint gunfire in the background "Arran..the evacuation zones have been overrun..the army they..they left us here. They took whatever vehicles they had left and just left us here to die..I'm lucky I got a good enougn signal to call you..but you..still havn't picked up.." Arran could tell she was struggling not to cry "Please..if you can..come back here. Come back to us..I'm scared..Alinas scared..I don't know how much longer we can-" the message cut off there.

Arran sighed and played the last message

"Arran..I don't know where you are..hell I don't even know if you're still alive but..Alina and I were picked up by a group of survivors and were heading out of DC..I don't trust them much but..they said they'll keep us safe for now..my phones running out of battery and I'm probably gonna lose the signal anyway..whereever you are..I miss you..I miss you so much..Here..hold on.

Arran waited for a moment, wondering what she was doing when he heard his daughters voice "I miss you daddy..please come find us soon..we miss you."

"End of messages. If you'd like to play them again pre-" Arran stopped the phone from continuing and hit the button to decline, he sighed, closing his eyes for a moment before looking at Sarah

Sarah sighed and said nothing. She just shifted back into a fox and rubbed up against Arran trying to offer some comfort in something soft and warm to the touch. She was still listening for trouble. She didn't know if her parents were alive and she herself did not give a dang. They would have rather she died not using her powers than lived and kept them alive too with her powers. Her grandparents had died of old age and a heart attack respectively. Her grandfather had seen the horrors of WW2 the death camps, D day, all of that. He'd been a fighter and survivor. Sarah seemed to inherit his will to live, to keep fighting. She didn't know why she was helping Arran, why she was trying to comfort him. He wasn't her friend or lover not even a crush. She had no obligations to him. She could run off but she'd feel guilty for abandoning him. It was strange...

Arran looked down at Sarah and smiled. He put his phone back in his pocket and leaned back a bit "You know..I'm glad I have you here.." he scratched his head "I could have gone looking for her on my own..but I wouldn't know where to start..and it..feels kind of nice to have someone like you to back me up in case things get a bit..out of hand." he said to Sarah "And..its nice to have a friend..erm..if I can call you that." he scratched his head again "Sorry just..friends are hard to come by these days..real friends I mean. Thought I had friends at that military camp I was at before I found you and your people..then their leader kicked me out at gunpoint when I was forced to put down one of their infected.."

Sarah said "As long as it isn't offensive I don't care what you call me... I do not know why I'm even helping you but I started this and I'll see it through. After that I might just ditch you." It was kind of strange to see a talking fox. But she was talking, ears swiveling around listening to everything around her. For all she knew his daughter could be a shape shifter. Sometimes it showed up at random and you couldn't smell it until it manifested. If that was the case Fox had said the girl should be taken back for training. Sarah was still on the lookout for other shapeshifters...

Arran couldn't help but laugh, probably not the most appropriate repsonses but that was what came out "Well..I'd prefer you not do that but if you decide to I suppose I cant really stop you..well I could try but I don't know where that would get me.." he leaned back a bit, unsure of what else to say. He decided to close his eyes, just for a few moments. His eyes suddenly shot open when he heard someone shouting from nearby.

"Hey! Get those loaded onto the bus, now! Runners are gonne be all over this place in a few minutes if we don't get moving." he heard one voice say. It was a older males voice, and he could hear some other voices but they were quieter and he couldn't quite make them out. He looked at Sarah a moment and went to investigate. Near the road there were two vehicles. One appeared to be a broken down cargo truck and the other appeared to be a modified, armored up prison bus. There were two armed men near the bus and several men and woman working to move boxes from the truck to the bus. One of them was limping and collapsed, droping one of the boxes.

"Hey! Get up." one of the armed men commanded the fallen survivor. He moved toward him, nudging him with his foot "I know you're not dead. Get you lazy a--" as he reached down to grab the survivor he looked up and bit the mans hand "Ah! Son of a-!"

Arran watched from a distance as the armed man pulled out a silenced pistol and shot the survivor in the head, he heard a scream from one of the others as they rushed toward their fallen friend. He had to help somehow, he looked around for Sarah, clutching his crossbow

Sarah sniffed and said "Those aren't runners. I call them quislings. They want to join the so called winning team. They act like runners but they aren't undead. Their movements are too smooth and it gives them away. Apparently during World War two there was some guy called Quisling that cooperated and pretty much became a Nazi he was so desperate to be on their good side he ignored the tide of war. The man was executed as a traitor... [this actually did happen. I got the idea for these from the WWZ book] But now these nuts think they're runners and it's mind over matter. They think that by behaving like runners they are runners. The only real difference is quislings blink, and you can get a nasty mundane infection from a bite..." Sarah sighed "I don't think we can help and your daughter isn't with them. There's a gap in the quislings if we hurry we can slip through. Sarah guided Arran right past the nuts and onward. The horse was fed and watered the mare needed to rest but they'd be able to push her a little further. Another safer spot for a rest and Sarah stopped curling up in a hollowed out stump lined with moss. It was a cozy spot and she let part of her brain sleep like whales and dolphins did so they remembered to surface and breathe.

The year is 2026. Abbandoned cities and towns, some having been bombed by the military when things started. Sewers and underground tunnels and shelters and other areas.

You're one of the few survivors of a outbreak that killed most human life on Earth. Its been 12 years since it happend, and some have tried to rebuild the lives they once had before the outbreak, but have failed horribly. Cities and towns are left abbandoned, the military almost non-existant aside from a few outposts and bases scattered around the world. Few remaining scientists continue to try and find a cure to the disease, but all attempts have failed. The problem is that whatever it is, when it kills you, you don't stay dead. The virus turns you into a mindless monster, only wanting to feast on human flesh (And these aren't the slow zombies you usualy see either. These are the fast ones. Really fast). You must find survivors (Other players included), find shelter, find weapons, do whatever you can to survive.

With all the dinosaur related RP's I've started here, wanted to do something a bit different so..here we are.

*No killing other players unless they allow it.

*Don't get too graphic in killing the zombies. Or other people (Not exactly players unless..well refer to the first rule for this, but other survivors your character might meet)

*Just a note on the "Shapeshifter" species I added. This was something that came along after the initial outbreak happend. Years after everything went down, some survivors developed this ability for unknown reasons. One theory from scientists being the virus has a strange effect on some people. Not quite turning them into zombies but mutating them and giving them certain abilities in other ways.