horror movie sequal veterans and the new addition

Who: Dean, Lullaby & Nic
When: while chaos ensues elsewhere as well
where: Chapel

Attacks had been coming off and on all day, but none enough to get people hurt. It had almost been like the demons were testing the defences of those holed up in the chapel. When a real attack came, it came suddenly, as another window exploded inwards, showering the room with glass as a black shape hurtled through with apparently no thought to the holy ground it would be landing on.

Lullaby had been close, sort of trying to stay in the main room and talk to people, since a few seemed to want to, and of course, just in case. Really, she hadn't been under the impression that 'just in case' was going to mean a demon was going to come barging in. Because that was bad, right? That was very bad? Demons and holy ground and everything weren't meant to be mixy-things, and for a reeling few seconds, that was what was going through her mind. That this wasn't actually meant to be happening.

It didn't trip her up for long, however. Because she was also on edge and primed to move, so after the second of 'what the fuck' she was up, and knocking an arrow, or trying to as fast as she could.

Nic, however, was a bit more tripped up by the intrusion. She'd been sitting between the rows of pews with her back to the end of one, idly tapping an unlit cigarette between her fingers to fight the urge for a stress-induced smoke. The shower of glass raining inward and the crash of whatever wreckage they'd moved to barricade it snapped her from her reverie, sending Nic scrambling for her feet.

She was up quick, some part of her mind cluing in to Lullaby and the bow she held. The knife snapped open in Nic's hand before the cigarette she dropped even hit the ground, a wash of nerves racing down her back like icy water. "Everyone back!" she snapped without looking around, ready to buy Lullaby the time she needed for a shot if it came to it.

Dean hadn't been far from Thia, though his back had been to the window, and the first thing he knew about the attack was when he was showered in flying glass, as little pieces rained down on his back from a distance. There were a couple of moments of frantic stumbled reaction, as he tried to move further away, stand up and pull out his gun, all at the same time, which wasn't the most graceful of maneuvers from the teen, but then he was standing and he aimed at the dark, clawed shape coming at them and fired, four shots into its torso, one after another. They all hit home, pushing the demon back with the impact, yet it was clear that the thing wasn't down, let alone dead. Just slowed.

Lullaby was going to fire, her problem came when she aimed, and all of a sudden, there was a fucking fireball of doom flaring up on the other side of the room, something she felt the heat from in a flash. It was enough that when she looked back to their demon, it had moved again. Which meant she had to re-aim, and oh, say, hope the building wasn't burning down while she did that. She let the arrow fly, though it had been watching her, starting to go for her, so it sliced into it's arm, but didn't bury itself in. Which meant in theory, it was on borrowed time, but they needed the time for it to work through it's bloodstream.

And shit. Shit, it was coming at her. She acted before she really thought about it and concentrated--and suddenly she wasn't where she had been before, her form dissipating into nothing and the demon fell forward where it's target was meant to be.

There wasn't any way Nic could've anticipated Lullaby doing that, all she knew about the back-from-the-dead girl was that she wasn't dangerous. Not to the other teens, at least. It shocked her, watching the younger girl vanish in front of the demon's charge, but some part of Nic's mind wasn't going to waste the opportunity.

She rushed in at one flank as the demon staggered through empty air, knuckles balling tight. Nic struck fast when the chance came, stomping a foot out and down into the side of the demon's knee and following it with the hardest punch she could manage to the side of the thing's throat before she dove over a pew, eager to keep obstacles between herself and this thing. The crack her kick drew from the beast's knee was encouraging, and between that and Lullaby's disappearing act it groaned as it pitched forward.

Dean let out a cry as the demon turned on Thia. He'd expected it to come for him, if it was going to go for anyone, given the bullets he'd put in the thing's chest, but then he remembered the tattoo on his arm. The one that should supposedly protect him from being noticed by things like that. Well, clearly, it worked. Didn't mean he wasn't going to put a bullet through the skull of the thing trying to take down his girlfriend though. He aimed and let off another shot just as Nic took the demon down, with the result that, rather than hitting the thing dead centre, it took off the top of its skull, sending blood and god knew what else flying.

Thia appeared again, though it happened to be in time to get a little gore-splattered. Possibly demon-brain splattered. She watched it drop, and was blinking, a little dazed, a little wide eyed as she watched brains literally leak out of it's head. It was mostly the fact that she could still hear noise in the room that snapped her out of it and she looked around, trying to see if anyone was hurt, and she couldn't help it but she immediately went for Dean, latching onto his gun-free arm.

"You okay?" he asked Thia, looking her over until he was certain that she was. Only then did he turn to Nic. "You too? You good?" he asked, ignoring the fact that he too was covered in demon gunk, though with a growing awareness that something stank.

Nodding dully, it took Nic a moment to clue into the fact that she too had been spattered with gore. The gunshot had been close to her, only a foot or two away, and it had sprayed her waist and legs in chunks of bloody tissue. "Ugh, fuck," she retched, stepping back from the demon's corpse as its' head wound pumped blood, "Yeah, I... I'm solid. You are a good shot." Slowly, realization was filtering in. She'd just... jacked a demon barehanded? "Fuck me," Nic muttered again in disbelief.

"I'm fine." Thia answered Dean. She was looking at Nic too, hoping the girl was okay, and she took a step closer, looking through the rest of the room. No one looked dead, anyways. God. "Nic, maybe you should sit down." she suggested lightly.

Dean put the gun away, turning and looking across the room, realising that that fucking awful smell? Was the stench of burning flesh. great - brains, gore, or charred demon. What a damn mess.

"Yeah, yeah I probably should," Nic admitted, not so proud that she'd act like fighting demons was nothing to her. If she was being completely honest? It was all catching up. Skye's death, Caleb's confession, this fight... and it wasn't over. Turning to move for a pew farther from the demon Dean had felled, Nic's expression went taut and pained as the stench of everything crashed down on her. "Jesus fuck! Am I seriously not the only one with a molotov cocktail?" she balked, looking back at Dean and Lullaby in disbelief.

Thia winced faintly, and walked over towards the girl, putting a hand lightly on her shoulder. "Sorry...and no, you're not." she said. After all, Taylor and Eben had been kind of....off in their own corner cowering, so....yeah. She also tried to draw in the huge amounts of negative energy Nic was putting out, to try and calm the girl down a little.

Dean stayed back, recognising that reaction - he'd felt it enough himself. And Thia was always so good at dealing with it, she was probably the best person to be there right now. He... "I'm... gonna go check on Caleb, okay?" he said, looking between the girls.

"Yeah," Nic murmured slowly, her eyes drifting from Lullaby back down to the prone corpse on the floor as she moved to sit at the edge of a pew. She wasn't entirely sure why, but somehow the tension was bleeding away. Maybe it was an adrenaline crash, maybe the knowledge that Caleb was here (and thus alive) but somehow she was leveling off her thought process. She sat forward, arms on her knees as Nic let her head hang and smiled faintly at Lullaby. "You and Dean... you two lucked the hell out," she observed quietly.

Thia kept drawing off the energy, seeing it was working. Generally, she'd not had much practice with it, since she couldn't do it to Dean, and most of the time, the others were pretty stable. She smiled back at Nic, though. "I'd say yes, though I'm curious why you say so." she said, sitting next to Nic.

Nic looked sideways at her, brow drawing down and together in thought. She hadn't had the chance to talk with Lullaby earlier, but the only thing that had happened between talking with Dean and this moment was the attack, which brought her more clarity on it all. "I don't know him too well, you know?" she murmured, "But Caleb trusts him, and he trusts Caleb. And... I do know Caleb. That whole proxy-chain-bullshit tells me just by existing that Dean's someone you can rely on, if he lets you in."

She smiled a little easier, centering her thoughts on organizing just what it was about the two of them that Nic knew was there. "I think you give him strength," she mused at Lullaby, "Because that dude? Is one morose motherfucker. And people like that need someone to galvanize them, because then they can do some incredible shit." Leaning just a bit in Lullaby's direction, Nic's voice dropped to little more than a whisper as she gave her a sympathetic smile.

"And... I don't know everything you went through? I think even if I had a timeline, I wouldn't get the severity? But someone who'll stick by you through the stuff I do know is someone you should never let go of. On the flip side," she offered with a more earnest grin, "Being someone who's worth sticking by? That's the sort worth hanging on to, too." That was the bit she was figuring she could relate to at present, at least.

Lullaby followed Nic's words and had to smile. There was something about it, a softness that was clear in her expression when she listened to the assessments Nic was making. "Dean's the most reliable person I've ever met." she said. "He's...if he commits to something, then it's getting done, not matter what. It's worth it to him. So...he doesn't let people down." she said, voice soft. Quiet, though there was a lot of background noise in the place she knew she wasn't hearing. So it was possible Dean wasn't going to be overhearing every word she said. "I hope I give him strength. I...we support each other. It's kind of how we work. When everything happened, he found me, and he...he's the kind of guy that does things. He thinks about them and just does them because they need doing, he isn't looking for praise, or a pat on the back, or a favor later. He does things because he thinks they're the right thing to do. I was lucky enough to be someone he thought was worth the time. He was my best friend before I...checked out, and afterwards...it took a while, but..." she nodded, and blushed a faint bit. "Yeah. He's...kinda hard to resist, honestly. You know sometimes there's just things about people that you can't look past, that are just...well...incredibly attractive and it all just draws you in?" she asked. "I didn't think that actually was a thing til him. Then I learned otherwise." She paused, knowing she was giving herself a second to kind of explain Dean, from her point of view. She never got to do that, really, she didn't have opportunity to. "Maybe you see things in Caleb. I...think Caleb's harder on himself than he should be. He's reliable too." She quirked a little half grin at Nic. "And he keeps looking over at you."

Nic had been trying not to do the same, to glance at Caleb over and over once he'd shown back up in the chapel. Largely, she was succeeding, but when she heard that he was already doing as much? Her eyes darted over at him and Dean and made her jaw knot in worry. He looked like absolute hell, bad enough that her doubts about them didn't matter at all because he needed help. "I know I see things in him. Things he worries about, that I've heard other people just not get... I don't know if I'm the first to get them? I don't care, either. They're incredible," she murmured, finally smiling Lullaby's way. She leaned lightly into Lullaby, bumping her with a shoulder and smirking, thinking that little, mundane gestures like that might mean more when you spent every day hiding from the entire world. "See what I said? You two lucked out. You're each others' strength, and it's... it's fucking kickass to see that actually exist. And I, uh, I know we weren't ever, like, close in school or anything? And that you've gotta be careful out here, every single day?" Nic smiled again, reaching up to tuck a braid behind her ear. "I'm glad you're here, Lullaby. That you came back and everything. What happened... it shook up everyone, and it's just good to think that you found something to cherish in spite of what you've been through. And for the record? We're cool, you and I, if like... you want to hang out or something sometime. I'll bring over pizza and a board game or something, think I'm done with horror movies for a while."

Lullaby smiled, a bright, surprised if happy expression. "Really?" she asked. "That would definitely be cool. I'd really like that." she said genuinely. "I can give you my cell number...though don't call, I can't actually hear anything on them? But texting is fine, or if you don't have a cell or anything, tell Dean or Caleb, or call the house, you can talk to Dean's cousins, they'll tell me, or...there's ways to get ahold of me. Oh, I've got an email address and stuff too." she said, wanting to give Nic a few ways to get in touch. She felt positive over the little talk she had with the girl and maybe it could be a good thing. The little shoulder bump had the desired effect as well, and she was fully on board with making time for her. She also gave a little bit of a shyish smile. "...and I'm glad we can be kind of an inspiration." she added to the bit about Nic liking knowing what Thia and Dean had existed at all.

That was just a flurry of ways to make contact, and the blurting of it all made Nic laugh slightly, nose wrinkling in amusement at how normal the moment was. She figured maybe Lullaby was just excited to have the opportunity again, and that thought made Nic feel good. "It's funny," she murmured, "Before Caleb? hell, just two months ago, shit was so mundane. And I was... I was okay, y'know? I was a bitch, but whatever. And now? Yeah, I need that kind of inspiration. I... god I can't even believe I'm thinking this? But I might end up bugging you if I keep screwing up with him like I think I might. If that's cool. And, y'know, we'd be hanging out anyway."

"You wouldn't be bugging, and it's cool." Lullaby assured her. "And if you ever needed a second opinion on something, I'm good for that as well." She tended to be available for second opinions for a few people, so that worked out well. She certainly didn't mind the idea of adding a new one.

"Yeah, think I might take you up on that," Nic murmured, smiling slightly again. Her tension was gone by now, but lingering doubts? Well, they weren't so easy to dispel. "You, uh... you don't have to hang out forever," she said uncertainly, not wanting to give the brushoff, "I'm gonna try to get Caleb to clean the hell up here pretty soon, see if I can't free up Dean for you. It's the least I can do for both of you, saving my ass and all..."

Lullaby gave a little smile. "I'm not here because I feel like I have to be." she told Nic. "But Caleb does keep looking over here and he looks like he needs a whole lot of tending, so you might wanna do that. Don't let him play tough guy or anything." she said. "I'll talk to you soon, I'm thinking Dean and I'll talk plans. Figure out what the next move is for everyone, what seems best. You go take care of Caleb. Just don't phrase it that way to him." she said and she gave a little wink.

Nic gave a short laugh at that, shaking her head Lullaby's way. "You don't need to tell me that," she said after Lullaby, settling back in her seat and glancing Caleb's way. She'd need a minute just to get her head straight before moving towards him, before even thinking of what to say. Just one minute...