Fireworks (Micheail, Mark, Amos, Connor)

[Sophia Klein]

Sophie’s day started off like any other. She woke up with a hangover, took a hot shower, put-together a quick business suit while brewing a cup of coffee, and flew out the door in a hurry. She arrived at work fifteen minutes early in time to slap Mark on the back of his head and worked vigorously throughout the day without taking a single break. Fortunately, Sophie’s work load wasn’t as heavy as she had anticipated. She finished the majority of her paperwork in the beginning of the week, and only had a few memos left to type-up before she could move on to the next big assignment. She worked without interruption for as long as she could – answering the few calls that Amos couldn’t handle – and decided to call it a day around four p.m.

‘Finally,’ Sophie thought to herself as she grabbed her jacket from her chair and headed towards the door. She had accomplished much more than she was expecting, which is commendable given her pounding headache. She was surprised to find what she could do when she put her mind to something. Sophie had cloistered herself in her office with one purpose and after many hours of tedious, painstaking work she emerged victorious. Now, at four p.m. on a Friday afternoon Sophie was looking forward to an early weekend and a quiet night at home with her unopened bottle of Bacardi rum.

She left the office in a hurry, much like she had entered it, and barely offered Amos a farewell as she booked it for the elevator. Upon reaching ground level she rushed out the doors as soon as they opened and nearly collided with Mark who was trying to enter while she left. Instead of bickering with him, she swiftly maneuvered around him and ignored the fact he was even there. She didn’t feel like dealing with Mark and his puppy-dog charm right now. Sophie was off-duty. She had a night of solo drinking to look forward to and didn’t need Mark to tempt her with extending an invitation.

As soon as she exited the building she veered to the right and crossed into the lot where her car was parked. Her baby came into view within moments. It was a hot little number – red and shiny – with a convertible hatch-back top. She approached the car with a smile on her face and thought about how amusing it was that no one ever seemed to park next to her. Were they afraid of her? Or were they simply afraid of what she would do to them if they got so much as a single scratch on her sleek, polished car? Whatever the case was, she found it completely comical. She pulled her keys from her pocket and was just about to hit the unlock trigger when her phone suddenly rang.

“What the fuck,” she mumbled before halting her footsteps and digging through her purse for the source. She snapped her cell open as soon as she found it and quickly held it up to her ear, waiting for the other person to speak first. “Amos,” she finally sighed after a long moment. He knew not to call her unless it was an emergency. “Tell him I vhill call him on Monday. I am going home. I d’ought you knew not to call me unless it vas an emergency.” She paused to listen to his anticipated apologies, her fingers drumming against the side of her hip. “It’s fine. Don’t forget this time. Okay. You too.” She hung up the phone, her goodbye implied, and walked a few paces towards her car with the unlock trigger pointed at the door.

In the moment it took her to depress that button, everything turned to chaos. The car beeped like it normally should, the locks popped up from their confines, but by the time Sophie took a single step closer to her flashy red car it exploded in a burst of flames. The impact sent her flying backwards until she was skidding across the cement like a rag-doll. She landed in a sprawling heap on the ground and immediately fell unconscious. With Sophie out of commission and her car spewing flames, it wouldn’t be long before someone noticed her. After all, the sound of the explosion must have spanned at least four blocks. The real problem was finding her in time.


((OOC: I see this starting with a witness (Micheail) and extending back to the D.O.G.S offices when Amos and Mark catch wind of the situation. Connor will be dispatched later on for an investigation; perhaps Amos can be the one to call him?))

[Micheail Sullivan]

Sometimes, it seemed like there were only three things keeping Micheail Sullivan from going insane: Running. Merlot. Sex.

In the direct aftermath of the deaths of Moira and Scott, Micheail virtually shut down. He couldn't believe that the treaty would ever make a serious difference, and even if it did, what difference did it make to him, who had lost his wife and only son? For a long while, all was doom and gloom; he couldn't face the world outside, much less the people in it. Then, several years after their funerals, he started running. It took a few months, but eventually he was able to trade in his solitude for cross-trainers and he began what would become a lifelong habit. He could think when he ran; while most of the time his brain was moving so fast, the gears whirring so quickly, that he could barely grasp a thought, running allowed him to focus on one issue, or two, so that he could think things over completely.

The wine was simple. Micheail loved him a glass of merlot.

The sex, in a way, was also simple. Micheail loved women, especially beautiful women, and he found the thrill of a woman's touch the ultimate relief of any worldly stress. Again, after his wife's death, he would have been appalled at the very thought of taking up with another woman, but as he came to accept her death, he also came to accept the thought of moving on with all aspects of his life, including his love life.

Recently, he'd taken to running twice a day; once before work, and once after, like a palate cleanser. He loved history and strategy -- he'd made them his career -- but even he needed a breather between those heavy subjects into the lighter world.

After getting off from work, where he'd just authenticated a replica of a car bomb circa 2008, he was on his second daily run, thinking about the bottle of wine in his fridge and the copy of Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose waiting on his coffee table to be reread for the seventeenth or so time, when the explosion shattered any vestige of calm his running may have given him.

He was knocked off balance by the shockwave before he'd even realized what had happened, and found himself tumbling to the ground. He got up in horror at what was over in the parking lot of the building near him; a car had just obviously exploded -- and the explosion had hit a woman close to the car, sending her flying like a doll across the lot.

He ran over to the woman; he wasn't about to leave her to die of any wounds she may have received. He knelt next to her.

"Miss," he said, turning her head up; she looked to be unconscious. "Miss, are you all right?"

That was stupid question, he immediately thought. He shook the instability from his head.

"Miss, I'm going to check you for any shrapnel wounds," he said calmly. He didn't know what good it would do, if any, being that the woman was obviously unable to respond, but it made him feel better about groping an unconscious woman.

Shrapnel was the deadliest thing to worry about right now. After all most bombs killed with shrapnel rather than fire or shockwaves. He gave her a once over and, feeling no bleeding, judged her to be more or less unharmed by any flying debris. The next things to worry about were her eardrums and the status of her brain; the sound of that blast was deafening, and it could've blown out her eardrums, and being blown back as she was, she could've gotten a concussion or broken a bone. He checked her pulse and breathing; at least she was still alive, but unless she gained consciousness, he wasn't sure what to do next.

[Sophia Klein]

Brilliant red swarms of color usurped Sophie’s vision as she felt her body soaring through the air. Is this what it felt like to die? She was weightless, luminous, and completely captured by a silent oblivion; it was peaceful, in a way. Sophie’s life didn’t flash before her eyes nor did she see some enlightened perception of reality; she merely tilted her head back and reveled in the sensation of nothingness. If this is what it felt like to die, she’d like to die a million times over. Today, tomorrow, and forever – she’d sell her soul every time just to hide in the solace of deaths embrace. Even when her body hit the ground she couldn’t feel a thing. She was floating up and away from reality, drifting from the pain that tried to take her.

Her body landed in a twist of limbs, head pitching back, and then there was nothing. Sophie couldn’t think anymore; consciously or subconsciously. Her mind was empty, wiped clean of everything it ever constructed in favor of the momentary silence. Why should Sophie ever hope to wake up again? She could revel in this bliss forever; never waking, never sleeping, and never dreaming. Because reality beyond death was just a wave of silence.

Eventually, however, Sophie’s fantasy world would have to come to an end. She just wasn’t as susceptible to death as most people were, probably because she wasn’t even human. The explosion had certainly knocked her hard, probably even left some nasty bruises on her back with cuts from cement burn, but it didn’t kill her. It couldn’t kill her. Her life was cursed with such an unnatural amount of longevity. She’d live for many years to come and likely die by some other means, so deaths consoling embrace would just have to wait.

The moment that consciousness flooded back into Sophie’s system she immediately wished it hadn’t. A variety of emotions plagued her at once, filling her with confusion, pain, anger, and sadness. Worst of them all, however, was the pain. Extreme pain. Every single drop of pain she couldn’t feel before, hitting her like a ton of bricks and quickly stealing the air from her lungs. She gasped into the hands of a stranger, only noticing now his warm, foreign touch on her skin. His fingers began to trace her face then slowly other areas of her body, but he was careful not to aggravate the pain that claimed her. She might have enjoyed the attention on some other occasion, but her return of reason told her to be confused. Whoever was touching her seemed unfamiliar, both in scent and by movement. What if he was the reason she was here, like this?

She jerked her eyes open with a start and attempted to reel backwards away from the man, but was stopped short by her aching back. For the first time in her life, Sophie felt defenseless. She squeezed her green eyes shut in pain and waited for the sensation to pass before slowly opening them again. Whenever she did, a pair of shocking blue eyes met her vision. She was immediately reminded of Mark, her heart nearly skipping a beat, but the temporary slip of thought was only fleeting. She knew the man holding her was just a stranger; a stranger who - for the time being – appeared to be helping her. Thinking that she should probably try and say something to him, she fumbled for words, but after a minute or two of constricted breathing all she could manage was, “Get me… inside” which seemed to do the trick. At least he would know she wasn’t dead.

[Amos Artan]

The day hadn't been too bad, busy enough for him to have somehting to do but quiet enough so that Amos wasn't constantly answering phones and taking messages. Also Sophie had been in her office all day, meaning that Amos could use his newly gained 'pain killer' without her having to see which he prefered, He does not need his boss to know that he is using drugs even if it is for a legitimate reason. Not the least bit surprised that Sophia had decided to call it a day early he had tried to tell her something but the woman had rushed off before he could even get a word out. A message had come through while he was away from the desk for a moment.Someone had been seen skulking around outside the HQ but was gone before anyone could get a good look at the persons face. Feeling annoyed at Sophia ignoring him he holds the idea of simply not telling her but then he'd blasted for not passing it on and bringing it to her attention.

Sighing to himself and against his better judgement Amos calls the boss's mobile, only once again to be cut off before he can say anything. “Tell him I vhill call him on Monday. I am going home. I d’ought you knew not to call me unless it vas an emergency". "No you have to listen, someone ha-". She had hung up before Amos could finish. "Bitch".

Sitting at his desk in a rather sulky mood his train of thought is broken by a sudden and very loud bang and the lights flickering. "Fuck, Sophia". He would have run outside, hell he would have flown down the stairs to get outside, but his knees and breathing problems stopped him doing such things. Instead he had to wait for the elevator to take him down to the foyer. People had gathered in the main entrance, the shock wave of the explosion having blown out some of the windows and lights.

He pauses for a moment to catch his breath then pushes past a group of office workers to get outside. The first thing he sees is the large burn mark where his boss's car had been, the smoking wreckage a fair way away. If the explosion had done that to the car what had it done to Sophie. Looking around hurridly Amos finally spots her with someone leaning over her. For a moment his heart beats faster and his skin burns. For all he knew that could be the person the message had been about, the one who set the bomb. Limping slightly from the pain in his knees he walks over to the man and Sophie. "Is she okay? I mean I know werewolves are pretty resillient and shit but that was a huge explosion". He was about to ask if she was conscious but she answers his question by wanting to be taken inside. He looks at he male. Not a human, rarely any human but himself is within the walls of D.O.G.S. "You're going to have to carry her, me I've got weak girly human arms. I'll see if I can call the cops or something.

[Micheail Sullivan]

"Is she okay? I mean I know werewolves are pretty resillient and shit but that was a huge explosion".

Micheail looked up; he had been so concerned with the injured woman that he'd barely registered that someone from the building was running over to them. The boy -- and he was a boy, reasonably young even for a human, to say nothing of the nearly-200-year-old Micheail -- looked pale, and terrified on top of it.

"I can't be sure. She doesn't have any shrapnel wounds, but --"

“Get me… inside,” the woman suddenly choked, getting Micheail's attention.

"You're going to have to carry her, me I've got weak girly human arms. I'll see if I can call the cops or something."

"Good man," he said, and wound one arm around the woman's waist and the other through her knees, lifting her. She was just a wisp of a thing, and it wasn't hard for him to carry her over into the lobby of the building and set her down on a couch in there. He looked to the human. "You should call an ambulance. What's her name?"