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[N Spencer]

The stoner had gotten closer. Normally Neil didn't mind, but there was something... not quite right about him. Looking in his bag yet again, Neil rummaged for a while before pulling out his phone and a disposable hand warmer. Luckily, he still had reception... just. Eating another handful of Skittles and putting the warmer in his jumper pocket to warm himself up, he looked through his contacts, wondering whether or not to check if there had been a delay.

A peal of thunder prompted Neil to shift his view back up at the road, where all around rain was falling. Fortunately, it seemed to have the effect of getting the guy in the suit to leave, as Neil caught a flash of him running back into the forest.

Screw it, thought Neil, looking back at his phone. I don't care if she thinks I'm overprotective or something. I need to talk to Katie.

Shuffling through his contacts again, he selected Bri's number and pressed dial.

(OOC: It's okay for me to assume a connection of some sort with a bus character, right?)

[Seraphic Adonis]

(OOC: If you have their permission.)

[SlenderSniper]

Adrian had ridden into the next neighborhood he saw. It was a quaint place, townhouses, well kept lawns, and shut blinds. It was true that this whole area was actually boring, but Adrian and Julia had picked it because it was better then living in some big, hectic city where you could barely sleep. Julia was such a light sleeper that she could never live in a place like that.

Adrian's eyes filled slightly with tears. He pulled aside and gathered himself. The usual badass was losing it. Finally he took a deep breath and got out of the car. Rain again soaked his white shirt and black tie. He pulled out a cigarette and put it in his mouth. But he wasn't looking to light it, he was looking for a reaction. He got one too.

The people had obviously seen the car pull up, but didn't want to be seen, or spoken to. He quickly looked at the windows, and saw several people staring. Their eyes grew wide and they quickly shut the blinds. He shook his head angrily. This is why he hated most people. They would spy on people, but never wanted to be caught, or fess up.

He got back in the car, unhappy that it was just his neighborhood that was fucked up. He lit the cigarette, started the car, did an illegal U-Turn, and sped off up the road and onto the highway. Then, well he got lost in thought. Worry was one thing, but this was something else entirely. Nothing added up. Who would abduct someone, leave no ransom note, and then most importantly, come back and wreck the house that they had abducted said person? Nothing added up.

Adrian was drawn back to reality harshly. He looked up and saw a man, standing directly in the middle of the road. Adrian slammed on the brakes and turned the car to the right and away form the tall man. Right into a tree. With a loud crash, his cigarette flew from his mouth, and his whole body jerked forward.

Gathering himself he groaned and opened his eyes. The tree had really done a number on the front of the car. He looked around and saw the cigarette on the dashboard. No sense in wasting it. He picked it up, and took a deep inhale. Then he readied himself, hand on his revolver, and opened the door. He turned back to the road and looked around.

"You'd better be prepared to pay for this!" He said pointing at the wrecked car. There was only one problem. No one was there. Adrian shook his head. This was the worst day ever, of anyone. He looked around. The car was fucked. It wasn't going to move. He pulled the keys out of the ignition, just in case, and stuffed them in his pocket with his cigarettes. He didn't bother to get the two packs that he's thrown in the back. He couldn't carry them.

So he turned and looked ahead. He saw a bus stop, and a motel ahead. He was oblivious to any people at the bus stop, and trudged on ahead. He was gonna sit there, then he would head into the motel after a bit. Take a long ass nap. Then when the rain ended, he would eat, then search for Julia till the sun went down. He trudged ahead towards the station where a girl was sitting, fiddling with her shoes.

[Dray]

Unbeknown to either Adrian or Ashley, the passengers on their journey south were hurtling along the highway without a relative care in the world. No stops from here until Niagra Falls, which was still a good hour and a half away. Regular orange, phosphorescent globes of light passed them by, made strange by the streaks of rain across all of the windows.

Then, from nowhere, a loud bang could be heard and a moment after that, the bus skid and jerked roughly towards the shoulder of the highway. Those closer to the front of the bus could hear the driver cursing quietly under his breath, fighting to get the vehicle under control. A definite vibration, along with a muffled whuppitawhuppitawhuppita noise could be felt and heard all along the port side of the bus.

Finally the vehicle was back under control, after a few shaky moments, and the PA crackled to life. "Ah, folks, we're having some minor technical difficulties. It looks like we're going to be making an emergency stop over in Beam's Creek. Sorry for the inconvenience this might pose." At least the offturn that the bus was taking seemed to be a few short minutes away...

///////

A sharp bang! noise startled Ashley into looking up, though she'd missed spotting Adrian's car hitting a tree. Sitting as still as a hare in the terminal's shelter, her socks dripping between her hands, she watched a tall man wander into the shelter's entrance and collapse onto a nearby seat.

Should she say anything? She didn't recognize him, though that wasn't too surprising. He looked pretty miserable, too... maybe he was a junkie? There were enough kids in Beam's Creek who did whatever drug was popular that month for her to recognize the signs. This guy seemed twitchy, though she supposed she couldn't rule out that noise a moment earlier.

"You okay?" she asked tentatively. Realizing that her socks were still dangling from her hands, she set them down on the bench next to her, ready to grab her shoes and run, if he turned out to be crazy.

[Seraphic Adonis]

"Delightful," sighed Casimir, standing up and putting his coat on. He looked back down at his seat, to make sure he hadn't dropped anything. A dog leash was directly on the sear that Casimir had been on. He picked it up, looked at it, tilted his head. Judging that nobody here had a dog, he put it in his pocket and got ready to depart the dingy bus.

[SickSlickMan]

Oh, son of a BITCH.

J.T. almost cursed out loud as the other passengers started to groan. Great. Fanfuckingtastic. That was the problem with the bus; the fucking engine fails. Jesus Christ on a shit shingle-

Bus engines don't just fail

Yes, that did feel weird. Someone probably fucked up the maintenance. Where the hell was Beam's Creek? What STATE were they in? Could he walk to Manhattan from there, or did he have to really wait until it was fixed?

He sighed, and pulled out his phone. Christine was not going to like this.

[SlenderSniper]

"You okay?" asked the girl who he noticed was sitting next to him. He had stumbled under the shelter and was now exhausted.

"No. Not really. My life is falling to pieces." He mumbled to her, grabbing the cigarette and flicking it into the street. He began to cough very violently after that, and his eyes again grew blurry. Standing up, he walked out of the shelter for a second, and spit into the muddy grass. Even through the thick mud, he could see the blood he had just sent flying into it. He turned and again sat down.

"So, who are you, and why are you sitting here? You seem to young to be going anywhere on a bus. Are you running away?" He asked in his raspy voice. Before she answered, he flicked out another cigarette and a lighter, and began smoking his 9th of the day. He usually conserved them, but today sucked, and he needed them. He inhaled deeply, and didn't care if there was a teenager there.

He turned back to Ashley and asked again, "Are you running away?" In the same raspy voice. Holding the cigarette in hand he realized how fucked his life was at this point. Hell he was talking to a teenage stranger on a bench. At this point she could be running away, or planning to kill someone, he didn't care.

[Mr.Beyond]

[N Spencer]

Done with the conversation, Neil closed his phone and put in back in his bag. The conversation had been a bit awkward, but at least he had a number to call once he could get to a laptop. Pulling out a notebook and pen, he wrote down a list of things to get.

His list written, he stood up and stretched a little before sprinting to the shelter of the forest, then setting off at a slow jog towards Beam's Creek. Neil had never been there, but from what Bri had told him, it was a dump compared to home.

Still, at least there was a tech store there.[/i]

[Dray]

Ashley felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickling, watching this guy rasp and cough and light up and then repeat questions to her. He was in a bad way, sure, but following her instincts was what had kept her safe from harm despite her odd-hour escapades. Her instincts told her to back off from him, and so she turned her attention back to squeezing out her socks and pant-legs as best she could, while still keeping one eye on the newcomer.

"No, I'm not running away, I just got back from visiting my grandma. My parents should be here any minute to pick me up." She spoke matter-of-factly, though the truth was that her parents had no idea where she was and probably wouldn't until she came home. Her mom was probably worried sick, with the rain and all, but she was too much the sort of person to respect Ashley's boundaries to phone and demand that the girl came home. Made rebelling and running away kind of a moot point, in the end.

She shook her shoes out and slid them back on, doing her best not to grimace at the sensation of cold and wet confinement that inevitably came with that. "I'm just going to head inside to phone them again, usually they're not late like this. ...Sorry." She did her best to make a quick exit, worrying about the strange man and what his problem was. He looked like an office worker. Maybe... maybe he'd gotten divorced for being a workaholic. Or maybe he'd gone postal on his coworkers or something?

Ashley usually enjoyed making up stories about strangers, though for some reason conjuring images of this unhappy man on a killing spree just made her more antsy to get away from him. She scanned the bus depot's wide parking lot as she hurried to its squat, drab looking office, and noticed someone even taller than Adrian standing across the rain-soaked pavement, body illuminated by the lamp post directly behind him. He was facing the shelter, just standing there, not moving or apparently aware of the pounding rain.

Before the girl could inspect further, a Greyhound bus turned in off the side-road, limping lamely to a finish between her and the rest of the parking lot. The driver of the bus looked haggard, though she didn't turn to look at the passengers. Instinct told Ashley to get inside and phone her parents, just to be safe. She pulled the glass door with its faded 'Come in, we are OPEN!' sign and entered the equally drab interior. One of the Atkinsan girls sat behind the desk, reading People and chewing something that smelled fruity.

"Can I use your phone?" Ashley asked, leaning on the high counter and dripping puddles from her long hair. She got a looking over, and ultimately a dismissal as the girl realized that a bus had actually pulled in for the first time in hours. The... secretary? Phone jockey? dismissed Ashley with a swat of the magazine, telling her she'd have to wait for the real passengers. "Screw you, too," the girl grumbled and, spotting some seats, made her way to them to watch the incoming crowd.

///////

"We have arrived at Beam's Creek station, please feel free to enter the terminal waiting room while we arrange for maintenance, or wait in the bus. We'll have, ah, further updates as we get them, folks." the bus driver announced over the terminal. He didn't sound too happy about it, though that was no surprise. The bus had struggled just to make it this far!

[Seraphic Adonis]

"Righto." Casimir got off the bus, then immediately started looking around. He wondered whether anyone would have a map of the area; or one of those smart-phone thingies that had maps on them. If you started with the geography of a location, everything else would fall into place.

Yes. Perhaps it was best to start asking.

[SlenderSniper]

Adrian watch the girl tell him off, and then head into the dumpy motel. He rolled his eyes as she clearly didn't think well of him, considering him a possible lunatic. He waited there, smoking his cigarette, till a bus rolled up, rather slowly. He got up, finished his cigarette, threw it in front of the bus(ignoring the glare from the driver), put another in his mouth and lit it, nearing a pack for the day, then turned and started towards the motel.

On his way, he looked back at the passengers. They all looked miserable, wet, and disgruntled. In other words, they weren't likely to bother him. But as he turned back, he noticed something. A tall man. In a business suit. Staring at the terminal. He turned slightly and gave Adrian a passing glance. Adrian glared slightly, but then rubbed his eyes. They had to have been playing tricks on him. The man appeared to have no face.

Regardless, he looked away before opening them again. Whether he was crazy or not, he didn't want to know it. He opened the door, to the not so welcoming lobby. There, he saw the girl, now sitting on a seat, and waiting. Maybe for her parents. He glared slightly at her, still walking, then rolled his eyes, and walked to the counter. Pulling out his wallet, he pulled out 4 $50 bills, and put them on the counter.

"I don't care how much it really costs for a room. Just give me a key to one, and keep it all." He said slightly disgruntled. The woman raised her eyebrow, obviously confused by this, but she wasn't about to deny the request. She swiped the money off the counter before he could change his mind, and handed over a key, telling him that it was the room at the farthest left. He nodded, but waited by the counter, wanting to see the group of travelers he might have to deal with.

[SickSlickMan]

Once all his stuff was together, J.T. hopped on the bus, still on the phone with Christine. He spit out his gum so that he could be coherent.

"No, babe, I don't know how long it's going to take," he said. "Hopefully soon. Where the hell is Beam's Creek? Uh huh...perfect. You have no idea either." He sighed. Just his luck. "Alright, well, I'm going to go and look around. I'll call you if something comes up. Yup...okay...love you too...bye."

He hung up and pocketed his phone. As he took out another piece of gum and stuffed it in his mouth, he looked around at the shabby conditions he was forced into.

Jeez, someone have an accident? He asked, looking at the poor sod that was running from his car-which was currently mating with a tree- to the dirty-looking motel, looking as though he had seen a ghost. At least he's alive.

Probably best not to procure a room until he knew for certain how long it was going to take. J.T. parked himself on the bench, his stuff by his feet, and relaxed for a little while.

[Gymen]

Vlad was walking down the street, when he started hearing weird sounds. He saw a spanish dude doing the bartman, and that was pretty funny to him. It cleared the air of the creepiness of the abandoned street. But Vlad still felt like he was being watched by someone. Or someTHING.

[SticktheFigure]

"I'm getting pretty wiped out. Maybe training was a bad idea at this hour..." Davey was still running around and over things in the Niagara Falls area. Final feeling the effects of being on the move all day and training all night, he decided to get some coffee. No way he was falling asleep this far from home outside. Not with Him around.

After walking for a considerable amount of time, he decided to stop in a coffee shop that he never heard of. "Probably some local shop," he thought to himself.

Now, having had his coffee and doughnut, he went back to the bench to see a new face waiting for the bus.

[OOC: There, now if someone forgot to come in, I gave you a chance. Though this post is mainly to assure you guys I didn't disappear or anything.]