28 Bleach Vats Later

[subconmodo]

WHO: Avery Atchison (subconmodo), Imelda Rivera (no_dejare_de_quererte), Héctor (unpocoloco), Peter Parker (made_up_names), Souji Seta (punches_fog), Shuuji Miwa (willnotbeyourneighbour), Ellie Williams (elliexir), Fakir Ansel (schwanenritter), Bumblebee (thebreakfastbug), Orihime Inoue (leekspins)
WHERE: North Dakota
WHEN: January 18th, 2019
WHAT: Obtaining funding for the Academy at the cost of one's dignity. Unless you're in the cleanup group.
WARNINGS: None atm. Will update as they pop up.
Note: Full mission details/plotting can be found Here

To Avery's credit, he had tried to prepare his students for this. The zombies had been the easy part. The corpses were slow and weak and as long as none of them did anything stupid they wouldn't be in danger. Wouldn't help the smell or the grossout factor, but such was life, death, and undeath.

Their clients were another matter entirely.

"It's not death that's going to be our enemy here," Avery had said during the briefing. "It's customer service." And if he wasn't allowed to rip into this bunch of stuck up jerks (literally as well as figuratively), neither was anyone else. He'd let minor acts of passive aggression slide, but that was it. And maybe, just maybe if they were lucky enough, Avery might be able to convince the bigwigs to let one or two of them fire off something or another.

---

The cleanup crew is much luckier. The smell may be worse (rot and burning flesh and whatever scents habe wafted up in the wake of Coldsteel's blow-shit-up-themed office party. Avery looks to be just Abbott on his last legs as he suits up alongside everyone and hands out holy water and runecasters, all the while grumbling about how he needs a pay raise.

Comments

[whatsupdanger]

-Plane ride-

Miles struggled not to bounce in his seat. ZOMBIES! The real deal! Avery was saying something about customer service but apparently he didn't even have to worry about that, he was in the group that had FLAMETHROWERS! Man this was CRAZY!

It's a long plane ride from Europe to America, though, even in a fast plane. Miles needed something to help kill the time. And he had zombies on the brain, so...

"You ever seen Night of the Living Dead?"

Look his only source of knowledge on zombies before this was Hollywood. He's got some preconceived notions he needs to get rid of.

-Clean up-

Naturally, no one would give a thirteen year old boy a flamethrower. Miles was behind the main squad that was burning the bodies, and he had a backpack canister full of holy water connected to a spray gun. He was spraying the piles of burning ash that had, previously, been bloodthirsty zombies. It was interesting at first but after half an hour without a single one of them jumping at him dramatically like in those movies, he was starting to realize how itchy the hazmat suit was and just, generally speaking, getting dangerously bored.

"Man, I thought zombies were supposed to be scary. What IS this?"

CLEANING

[made_up_names]

Of course, by the time they actually get there and do stuff ... Peter is not enthused. He's frankly kind of upset? These dudes are dicks and Héctor is dead and the zombies are just shuffling walls of flesh and all of this anti-undead magic is giving him a headache for reasons unknown and - ugh. He's never doing this mission ever again.

"The worst zombie horde ever," he says, making a face. "Also the worst mission ever. What kind of BS even is this?"

[whatsupdanger]

"Video games did not prepare me for life nearly as much as I thought they would."

And that's all there is to say about that. Miles squirts a still twitching hand with holy water and watches it bubble and steam before melting away to nothing, which was cool the first 15 times he did it, but now...

[made_up_names]

But now it's just another melting zombie hand. Yawn. "At least you didn't have to deal with the dudes from earlier," he grumbled. "Bunch of assholes."

He kicks at the melted hand, which mostly just gets goop on his shoe.

[whatsupdanger]

"Well, they were a bunch of old rich guys. That goes with the territory, y'know?"

There was so much zombie gunk on his boots. Thank god for the hazmat suit, as itchy as it was.

[made_up_names]

Peter probably shouldn't even be here with like full protections and stuff but. Whatever, he's so done with today. Not literally the worst day of his life, but it still sort of feels like that.

"I just didn't think we'd run into rich assholes on a zombie mission," he says. "Like - that's the last place you'd expect them."

[whatsupdanger]

"In movies if they do show up they usually get eaten within like five minutes of showing up on screen."

[made_up_names]

Peter looks back at the gaggle of rich dudes, briefly debating the morality of getting them eaten by zombies on purpose.

"No luck there," he says with a sigh. "Guess I'd be obligated to help if they were in danger."

[thebreakfastbug]

"Yeah, and this isn't going to be that. This isn't even going to be Shaun of the Dead." Bee said, as he pulled out his earbuds. Apparently he'd been listening Queen, if the fact that Don't Stop Me Now could be heard coming out of them said anything.

[whatsupdanger]

"Wait, what? But...zombies, man! Do we get shotguns? Swords?"

You're thirteen, Miles.

[thebreakfastbug]

"Not unless you brought any with you." Which Bee had, not that he was laboring under the impression that he was going to be able to use them at any point. He'd been through this before.

"We're not going to be fighting any zombies. Not unless something goes horribly wrong, anyways. We're mostly just here to do cleanup and act as lookouts for whoever won the bid to fight them."

[whatsupdanger]

"So...PMCs bid on the right to attack zombie hordes as like...a weapon's testing thing?"

He was struggling to understand this nonsense.

[thebreakfastbug]

"Pretty much. Mostly it just boils down to smug jerks in suits looking for an excuse to blow things up and wave their metaphorical dicks around."

It was the dumbest thing, and he hated it.

[whatsupdanger]

"I am so disillusioned right now. Is this what being a grownup feels like?"

Clean Up!

[subconmodo]

"Welcome to your first step into adulthood:" Avery replies as he idly kicks the remains of one corpse over to pile up with another, "the world of broken dreams and disappointment."

The bodies now close enough to feed the fire, he sets them aflame, making sure to keep a fair amount of space between himself and the holy water Miles is making use of. "Look on the bright side! At least your first mission is set to be a resounding success."

[whatsupdanger]

"Just wish I'd had anything to DO with that." He muttered.

Wasn't Professor Atchison a demon or half demon or something? Miles made sure not to actually point the holy water sprayer at him.

[subconmodo]

He sighs heavily and shakes his head. "You and me both. Unfortunately, money is and always will be 'a thing.'" That and the whole blight thing, he supposed.

"There will always be other missions. Who knows? Maybe next time you'll be the lucky hero of the day."

[whatsupdanger]

"I guess I shouldn't complain that real life isn't just like movies."

Clean up

[schwanenritter]

Fakir was methodical, stabbing the brain stems of the zombies, occasionally being forced to stomp on one with a hazmat-protected heel when it looked like they weren't quite dead, giving a noise of disgust before stepping away to run holy water over the length of his sword.

"Zombies really are only scary if you got a Necromancer or Daemon taking control of them." Fakir answers as he scrapes his boot against the ground, dousing the spot afterwards. "Be careful, some of these are ankelebiters."

[whatsupdanger]

"These guys don't look like they could bite much of anything through these suits..."

But he did check the ground around his feet, which was fine for the moment.

[inkedspell]

"Scary? This isn't a movie." She says as she continues to use the flamethrower to burn the bodies. Sarona isn't unused to this kind of thing. She's gotten into the muck and grime plenty of times working with the Inkmetal Forge, but they were very much against zombie auctions. This is the first time she got to see one up close.

"Can you get some on the area to our four-o-clock?"

[whatsupdanger]

"Well I mean. I didn't want to get eaten but...this is like if someone told you they had a T-Rex and then they just had a chicken."

He glanced behind him to see SOMETHING moving in the indicated direction and just kind of liberally hosed it down.

[inkedspell]

She rolls her eyes a bit there, not that he can see it. She's still making sure to burn every little bit she sees into ash.

"Pretty sure this is more like is someone told you they had a ferocious guard dog and the dog is 20 years old and doesn't care enough to do more than bark at you from his spot under the porch."

[whatsupdanger]

"Who cares which metaphor it is. It's still disappointing."

[inkedspell]

"Why?" she is serious in asking this, mainly because it's still a learning experience and they don't have to worry about the subjects being potential threats.

"Are you saying you'd really prefer to be hunting down rabid flesh eating zombies that some rich people bought to spice up their company outing? Zombies are zombies. Better off dead."