Mob 5.6

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

April 17, 2011

3:28 PM

It was an explosion on a scale unlike any Brockton Bay had ever seen before.

Not for its sheer destructive power, of course.

With no actual combustible or thermic component to it, the bomb was never going to topple buildings or scar a landscape.

No, this bomb traded raw destruction for sheer carnage.

If the creator were to describe it to you, there would likely have been mention of the dual components to it; particularly of how the first part transmuted its surroundings to glass itself and the second was a powerful and focused shockwave with enough blast pressure to break bones, smash concrete and send people - or rather, shrapnel - flying at high speeds with ease.

Working in tandem, the simultaneous activation of both was meant to brutally kill, mutilate and demoralize as many as possible.

Granted, if the creator of this particular bomb was describing how it functioned to you, odds were you were acting as a test subject for it and you likely wouldn't be in a state to tell anyone else how it functioned.

Needless to say, it served its purpose well.

-562

-228

-77

A single body ragdolled through the air from its origin point directly in front of the hospital's open doors, hurtling over the heads of the gathered crowd as glass shrapnel flew with speed akin to bullets alongside and around it. As screams filled the air, it simply tumbled head over heels without any sense of control as if violently struck by the Hand of God.

It landed with a painful crunch directly on top of a small sedan nestled away in the corner of Brockton Central's parking lot, utterly crushing the roof and shattering the glass of the windshield with the impact.

-212

-129

-52

Status Effect: Shattered Leg - 4 Hours

Status Effect: Broken Knee - 2 Hours

Status Effect: Shattered Ribs - 5 Hours

Status Effect: Broken Arms - 2 Hours

Status Effect: Broken Fingers - 2 Hours

Status Effect: Punctured Lung - 3 Hours

Status Effect: Severe Concussion (Cracked Skull) - 3 Hours

The alarm didn't even bother to go off, strangely enough, despite the sheer level of damage done to it in the span of a second by a boy weighing a fraction of its weight. Even then, it was one of many cars and would have been lost in the cacophony as so many others blared at full volume.

Status Effect: Deafness (Perforated Eardrums) - 2 Hours

Blood dripped from burst and bleeding eyeballs as the body sank into the indentation the crash had formed for it, an open mouth with shattered teeth releasing nothing but silent wheezes and bubbling gurgles.

-17

-22

Status Effect: Blindness (Ruptured Eyeballs) - 9 Hours

Status Effect: Severe Bleeding - 3 Hours

Status Effect: Flayed Skin - 3 Hours

"...nggggh."

Status Effect: Mute (Torn Throat) - 4 Hours

Status Effect: Anosmia (Broken Nose) - 3 Hours

More gurgles sounded, bloody shards of glass embedded in a torn throat freeing him from screaming himself ragged. For a few minutes more, his broken form twitched madly, the action only serving to drive more shards of glass into his body from all sides.

-21

-19

-25

-16

-11

-6

-4

-2

-1

-3

-1

-2

-1

Status Effect: Death by A Thousand Cuts - 5 Hours

His body twitched a few times, one side bleeding in spurts from a long sliver of metal jutting from his upper torso. With a shuddering gurgle, Greg Veder's body stilled as he lay unnoticed and unseen all the while Brockton Bay descended into utter chaos.

3:38 PM

"..."

3:48 PM

"..."

3:58 PM

"..."

"..."

"...ngghh..."

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Greg Veder woke up to a world of pain.

No sight.

No sound.

Just pain, pain and — unbelievably — even more pain.

If he could make any real sound, the only things that would have left his mouth were unending screams.

Screams of sheer agony at the top of his lungs.

Screams of the sort that would leave the inside of anyone's throat raw and bloody for days to come.

As it was, Greg's throat was already raw with plenty of blood to show for it as jagged shards of glass remained where they were, using the boy's windpipe as a pincushion. Any attempt to scream only shook the shards that were still in place, causing him even more torture.

All in all, what little suffering that would cause was just a drop in the bucket and as expected, what little remained of Greg's neck continued to tremble as he did his best to scream his open throat bloodier.

"...ngghh…"

It was amazing, really, even with vocal chords lacerated by glass, just how much suffering a person could convey with just the slightest of groans.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

4:28 PM

A third of an hour.

Twelve hundred seconds.

Not that Greg was keeping count or in any way aware of how long it took, but it still took twenty minutes for the blond to calm down even the smallest bit. While on the outside, he was barely making enough noise to be audible, it had to be noted that Greg's thoughts had been filled with nothing but the sounds of his own screaming voice from the moment he woke up.

Twenty minutes of non-stop screaming later, Greg Veder was once again cognizant enough to address his situation.

And address it he did.

Pain.

Really, that was an improvement.

Honestly, it was.

The fact that actual thoughts — however simple they happened to be — were now part of his thought process was definitely a sign of progress.

Although, it wasn't so much of a thought as it was a simple idea, the concept of pain itself that he found occupying his mind more than the pain he felt all over.

The pain itself was all he could process, the sensations themselves serving to block out any coherent thought before it could even be formed. It was an odd state of consciousness that the boy inhabited, at this very moment, that rendered him both conscious of his pain on such a detailed level while, at the same time, unable to process anything else.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

It is said that pain is part of the human condition; every day is lived in various states of discomfort. As true as this was, most people rarely and truly became acquainted with pain.

At least, not long enough to become familiar with it.

Real pain, the type that could only be described as excruciating, wasn't something people tended to deal with for an extended period of time. Painkillers and various medicines had long been made available to dull the worst of pains people went through on a daily basis.

Even without all that, the type of pain that drove every other thought out of your mind wasn't something that lasted very long anyway.

Excruciating pain of that sort was often all it took to send people into shock, their bodies diving blissfully into unconsciousness in a matter of seconds, all in order to prevent their minds from dealing with it. It was considered the body's saving grace to a dying person, a blessing in disguise.

Unfortunately, as altered as Greg's body was, he no longer had to worry about that sort of blessing.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Greg Veder knew pain.

In a way that most people would never understand, and on a level that almost no one else would ever be able to comprehend, he knew it.

Deeply.

One could almost say that he knew it like the back of his right hand but all Greg currently knew about the back of his right hand was that there were over two dozen small lines of jagged pain taking up space there.

Thoughts still too distracted to actually put legitimate focus to what he was feeling in any way that wasn't profane screaming, it was all Greg could do to simply try and process the sensations all over his body.

As best he could, at least.

His chest burned, several large chunks of his torso blossoming with an agony that drove spikes into his brain with every single breath he took, only one single part of it almost bad enough to send him into convulsions again. The sides of his abdomen, directly below that, seemed to constrict his midsection, acting like a vise that made his breathing even more labored than it already was.

His eyes were no longer there, Greg knew that much, the space they once occupied serving as nothing but empty holes that sent lances of pure agony through his skull. His mouth was much the same, shattered teeth only adding to his suffering.

The sensation of warmth and odd wetness that surrounded his body, pooling in certain areas, was unfamiliar to him but wasn't of much importance right now in Greg's thoughts. The only reason he gave it any modicum of thought was the simple fact that those certain areas happened to be the same places where the greatest pains seemed to originate.

His arms were a patchwork of pain, large chunks of his limbs screaming in torment along the small lines that burned and stung all over, making the larger areas so much worse. Chunks of his skin were just gone, his flesh rubbed raw and flayed completely by whatever he had been hit with.

His legs… Even without looking, he knew they were ravaged. One of them didn't even feel like a leg anymore, almost all sensation vanishing past a certain point to dull nothingness. Greg supposed that he should have been thankful for that much.

There was so much that Greg felt.

It was too much.

All of it… clouding his mind and keeping from thinking.

"...ngggh."

He…

He needed…

He needed to focus.

Greg's mind latched on to the word, the two syllables taking up enough space in his brain to drive away the idea of pain for just long enough to allow his mind to go the slightest bit further with that simple thought.

He needed a goal.

Something to keep him focused.

Something to keep him conscious.

A spark of thought followed immediately after, cutting through the fog like the beam from a lighthouse.

He needed to move.

Quest Created!

Just Move

Details: Move 1 meter away from your current location.

Success: +250 XP

Failure: Discovery by PRT

In any other situation, Greg Veder would likely have wondered how he could possibly be reading those words in front of him, what with his eyes being as nonfunctional as they were.

As he was now, the thought didn't even come to mind, the whole of Greg's attention focused on the goal finally spelled out for him.

Move. Utterly focused for the first time in so long, Greg's mind repeated the single word for all he was worth. Move.

Fingers — those that weren't broken, at least — slowly twitched as his hands curled into laughable facsimiles of fists and from his ragged throat came another pained gurgle.

"Nngggh."

...Ow.

This... this was definitely going to take some time.