Graveyard Shift (Open)

[Zosimos]

If there was anything Zosimos hated about his 'job', it was this.

Every so often, his sister would demand he return with a part of another; a heart, a voicebox, an optic, preferably something vital that couldn't easily be replaced, to prove that he was indeed doing as she asked, and slaughtering what Saviors he came across. He never did quite understand her hatred for them, but he did know if he returned empty-handed, those silver talons of hers would give him another spot on his body to patch up.

And that's why he was here now; in the graveyard, which luckily for him, held both humans and anima alike. He hated killing, he didn't even like harming another unless necessary, much less murdering an innocent. But these dolls were already dead. It didn't do any harm taking their parts instead, right?

It was rare the parts he presented to Florin were indeed from his own kill, but fortunately for him, she didn't seem to know the difference. It wasn't as though she kept them or used them, she just wanted them as proof. Sure, he was lying to her, and defiling the resting places of the dead, but that was better than killing another.

Tonight, though, things did not seem in his favor. Florin was expecting him by morning, which meant a night's journey to return to the Clocktower from here. The quickly approaching storm wasn't in his benefit either. He could almost feel it nipping at him, rushing him to finish and leave, each crack of thunder and flash of distant lightning screaming at him to hurry.

Often he'd come to the graveyard for a part and be gone in mere minutes. Sometimes he'd even find a fresh anima corpse just laying there, as if someone didn't have the time to bury them, but at least wanted to put them in the proper place. Today held no such luck.

He had to dig. He hated having to dig. It was wrong, it was disgusting, and Lord knows should someone else come to the yard while he was performing the task, they'd be appalled, and likely turn hostile. He began with the freshest looking one, but when he'd uncovered the body, it seemed someone else had beaten him to it. The dead doll's body was already stripped of anything usable. Perhaps that was what killed him in the first place.

The second had been a child. A stitchling, likely just months old. If he had a stomach, he would have vomited at the sight, and at the fact he had just destroyed it's grave. He took special care to rebury it, but the thought of the child's parents taking notice of their offspring's vandalized grave haunted him. He wouldn't take a part off it's body. Even if he did have the gall to do so, Florin wouldn't except it. Even his shrew of a sister had her limits.

Now Zosimos was on his third grave, furiously digging at it, his copper fingers tearing the ground apart, racing against the brewing storm.

[Neodymium [144]]

It was a dark and stormy night and Neo, proverbial lost soul that he was, had been caught in the open...again. The slight, black-clad doll hunched his narrow shoulders against the sporadic gusts of wind, his optics flitting back and forth across his surroundings frantically, fearing the worst.

The Emtiness was a dangerous place, everyone knew that. These sparse, forsaken lands were teeming with the foulest sort of monsters, and to be out here, alone in the open at night...that was a death sentence. Neo shivered slightly, trying to shake off this feeling of unease. He wasn't some defenseless idiot, he could stand up to a Machine if he had to...but that wasn't what was bothering him. For some reason, he felt like he was being watched, that he wasn't completely alone out here.

However, nothing seemed to be around, at least, nothing he could see. A navy blue darkness had fallen over the emptiness like a blanket, yet a faint silvery-blue light seemed to grace the edges of things. The normal, steady glow of the moon had been supplanted by a strange, insubstancial light that the roiling black storm clouds on the horizon seemed to throw out. Neo picked his way delicately through this bizarre otherworld, crumbly bits of dead leaves making a raspy whisper as they swirled around in the wind. He was moving swiftly yet carefully over the uneven and loosely-packed dirt of the graveyard, hoping to find a place to sleep somewhere near there. In all honesty, the graveyard freaked him out, and he wanted to be away from it as soon as possible.

But then, he saw something that stopped him in his tracks. A bright flash of lightning crackled through the sky, flooding the graveyard momentarily with light as bright as in the middle of the day. It was them that Neo saw a strange figure, a doll hunched over in the dirt, hands tossing up fistfuls of loose earth as it tore into the soil.

What the-? Neo thought, pausing for a moment, the horrifying realization of what the other doll was doing not quite dawning on him yet.

[Zosimos]

The flash of lightning illuminating the world around him, as if a warning sign, didn't deter him. This had to be done, he had to find something...

Finally the tips of his fingers touched what he recognized as fabric. He began to scoop away what he could of the remaining soil covering the body. He just needed to uncover the chest.

Soon he finally had a portion of the doll's body exposed. Good, it didn't seem like anyone had disturbed it since it's burial. He just needed to open the torso, grab the first vital organ he saw, and go..

[Shel]

It was cold, the kind of cold that clung to his frame and made him shift uneasily in his light sleep. He was pulled into a ball, long arms wrapped around his knees and hat tied around his neck with its hanging ribbon to prevent it from blowing away. Nestled down by his gravestone, he clung to the edges of uneasy sleep.

There was a sound in the darkness, unlike the wind. A sound of something or other in the dirt. He could hear it from inside his uneasy dream and it drew him into wakefulness. Sliding his optics open, he winced at the darkness. Not morning, and yet he was awake. The reflective lenses over his optics made it difficult to see at night, and anything attacking now would be far more dangerous then it normally would. He pulled himself into a tighter ball and hoped the noise would go away, but it didn't.

Light flashed across the dark sky and he could see the tip of a long shadow inches from his gravestone. Whatever it was wouldn't have seen him yet. His own shadow was hidden behind that of the tall stone behind him. However, whatever it was was close enough that, if hostile, he might become prey if he didn't strike first. He hoped to whatever might be watching over them that it was just Endremit or something and he didn't have to worry.

Slowly, he pushed himself up the gravestone, the friction between fabric and stone making a quiet rustling sound. His scythe lay beside him, and he looked at it for a moment before grabbing it. Any hostile creature he would need a weapon for. Not everything could be taken with his hands alone, efficient as they were.

He peeked out from behind his stone, trying to make out the other being. He could see a dark shape a couple graves down, bent over something. He counted, one, two, three, and made a dash for the next grave, and the hiding place it promised. He was almost there when once again light split the sky, casting long silhouettes on the ground. Shel swore under his breath and kept running, stopping when he touched the next stone. The sound was close now. Very close. He just hoped it hadn't seen him.

[Neodymium [144]]

For a time that seemed like ages, Neo just stood there in the dark like a tree stump, slowly working out in his head what was going on as his optics strained to pick out details of his surroundings. He was painfully aware of how cold it was out here, how the wind cut straight through his fabric to wreck havoc on his frame, how much his joints ached...

Without warning, the sky exploded with lightning, preceded by a rasping noise that might've been the wind, but somehow he felt like it wasn't. As the cemetery was flooded with a light like the noonday sun, he saw something, out of the very corner of his optics: a big, dark, sprinting shape flitting between two nearby gravestones.

No, I'm seeing things. It's just my imagination playing tricks on me, he told himself. He swallowed and tried to calm his breathing, his fear like a lump of ice in his throat. Shaking his head as though to clear it of fear and darting shadows, he turned instead to the gravestone where the other doll was, apparently done with his digging now.

It had taken longer than expected, but he'd finally figured out what this strange doll was doing. He was digging up bodies, desecrating the resting places of the dead for God-knows what purpose. Few things in this world made Neo really, really angry, but he had great respect for the dead, and this doll-whoever he was-wasn't going to get away with this on his watch.

"Hey!" he shouted, disappointed to hear a lingering quiver of fear in his voice. "Yeah, you there! What do you think you're doing?"

[Zosimos]

Damn. Someone had seen him. Oddly, Zosimos found that he wasn't too surprised that someone had caught him in the act. He supposed he'd expected to be caught all along. Still, that didn't keep him from being frightened. He had barely a second to spare, managing to grab the dead doll's heart in one hand, unceremoniously ripping it out and taking off, his own heart pounding in his chest as he sprinted behind the headstones, hoping to lose the other doll's gaze. Under most circumstances, he would have taken great care to fix the grave before leaving, especially before a storm. He hadn't been given the chance now. He hated leaving the grave open, but his own life took priority.

[Shel]

Shel tensed at the yelling voice, hoping it had not been directed at him. He did not want to be seen. Not yet. He squinted into the darkness, trying to spot the doll to whom the voice belonged, but to no avail. He did not dare step out from behind his tombstone for a better look. He tightened his grip on his scythe, and realized with a start that the dark figure from before was running quickly in his direction.

It was a split-second decision but a dozen thoughts came through in that time. Had it seen him? It was going to pass him. Did he want to let it escape? Did he want to get into a fight? And then the deciding factor: Did he want this thing roaming this place while he was unconscious, did he want to be it's victim? His scythe shot out to the side, barring the running doll's path. "Nice to meet you. A shame it couldn't have been under better circumstances."