FACE THEM ALL [open]

[The Ghostfacers]

IT WAS PERFECT. Yes, the Ghostfacers had discovered the PERFECT place for them to go; RACCOON CITY! A place that once was blown up by the government because a wave of ZOMBIES had attacked it! There was almost no better place for the Ghostfacers to be. Besides, all those zombies and whatever were loooong gone! There was no way they were going to get attacked by something like that... right? AFTER SPRUCE SET UP THE CAMERA, Ed and Harry walked right in front of the camera and sat down at the table. "Welcome, watchers to the most terrifying night of your lives; something that makes Count Dracula look like Edward Cullen - a night of GHOSTFACERS!" Ed said, as the logo flashed across the screen of watchers everywhere.

Before Harry could continue with the speech, a loud moaning sounded from a nearby street as a HORDE OF ZOMBIES shambled out. "OH SHIT!" Harry shouted, standing up from the table and trying to run in the opposite direction... ONLY TO DISCOVER ANOTHER HORDE OF DAMN ZOMBIES. Spruce grabbed his camera... to find that it was stuck on the tripod. "Forget the camera AND GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE!!" Ed shouted, leading the group into a nearby buiding. HOPEFULLY THERE WERE NO ZOMBIES IN THERE...

[Garchomp]

There were, indeed, no zombies in the building! Not that Makya had been able to properly analyse the undead horde that was apparently shambling around - all she knew was that she was tired, there was an empty building with a doorway she could fit through, and the Garchomp had promptly barged in and curled up to sleep. By either luck or virtue of being an apex predator, she hadn't been attacked yet - a fact which promptly ceased to be true because several somethings were running into what sort of counted as her territory. The yelling and footsteps could have meant an attack or a group of people running for their lives, but either way, she lurched to her feet, hissing quietly.

Humans! Not the first ones she had seen since her mountain had gotten up and disappeared on her but this was the first real group of them. They didn't seem to have their Pokemon out - if they had Pokemon at all - so attacking would have been out of the question. Humans were pathetic prey, after all, with barely a challenge if they had no weapons or no one fighting for them, and these ones seemed to be panicking. Still, it was probably a good idea to be wary of whatever they were panicking about. Tail lashing idly, she flexed her fins. She had no obligation to help them, even if she felt no need to attack - maybe if she just looked intimidating, they would run somewhere else?

"Grraauh."

[samus]

Why Samus ever bothered with small fry, she had no idea - it was the same with the pro bono jobs she'd done over the years, and more or less exactly the kind of behavior that had gotten her the boot when she was working with the Federation during the early days of her career. Pirates, mutants, science experiments gone wrong and run amok - people seemed to stumble across these things like trash on the street, and you'd think they'd learn how to deal with the problems themselves once they realized how often it happened. Not that she could really complain all that much - it was precisely because of these things that she had a job to begin with. To be completely honest she had no idea how she'd have fed herself without mishaps like this being common enough to necessitate private militaries or mercenaries like herself - it was all she'd ever known, and all she was ever likely to. The nice thing about the zombie outbreak, as horrific and a senseless loss of life as it was, though, was it was an open bounty - anyone who cleared out enough of the things would get paid by the kill as long as they could provide the proof, an open bounty, and with Adam keeping track of it all through her Fusion Suit's hardware she'd made out like a bandit.

Raccoon City, though, had been particularly profitable. It made plenty of sense on the surface - it had been ground zero for the infection, and zombies were an expected sight. What didn't make sense, though, was the frequency of the outbreaks and the fact that no matter how many times the place was cleaned out, it would invariably happen again, almost like someone was deliberately releasing the infection after the mess was cleaned up and the previous problem solved. If it was possible, Samus would have liked nothing more than to find the source of it all and deal with it, permanently. The regular cleanout crews clearly weren't dealing with it or missing whatever it was with each pass through the city, and with difficult problems cam big payoffs - she'd already done pretty well dealing with the cannon fodder, generally speaking, so a kill like that would pay enough to keep her autonomous for weeks or even months.

Moving through the street, arm cannon at the ready, Samus remained as close to the center of the roadway as possible lest any of the undead she was there to hunt attempt to lunge at her from the darkened buildings. So far, so good - only a few of the things here or there, easily dealt with without too much noise so far, but knowing her luck it wouldn't last. Fate had an annoying habit of screwing with her at the least opportune moments, a trend that had not gone unnoticed by the hunter, and she would be damned if anything got the jump on her this time.

As soon as the thought passed through her mind the radar in her HUD lit up with a solid red wall, and Samus would have sworn quite liberally had it not been heading away from her. If there was one thing she'd learned about the creatures so far, there were only two things that could make such a large group move en masse like that - fire, or a meal. She could see the street ahead of her curve off towards the mass of red that was around the corner, but there was no light, no indication of anything burning, which left the other possibility. The lack of gunfire was extremely telling as well - were there still civilians in this hell hole?

Making a quick dash to clear the corner, Samus immediately regretted the action as she saw the horde, too many to count at a glance - without many of the suit upgrades she'd obtained on the Biologic Station, specifically the plasma beam, she'd never be able to mow them all down before they overwhelmed her, but if the building they were charging had people in it they wouldn't last for long. The building was the priority - get in it, find whoever was still alive and drawing attention, and then possibly get to a rooftop and either call in Adam for pickup or leave the area so he could safely bombard the street and building with her gunship's plasma cannons. During that brief moment that she spent assessing the situation, several of the horde noticed her presence and began to split off from the main group in an attempt to reach her - not that she had any intention of letting that happen. Arm cannon snapping back up, Samus took down a handful with expertly placed power beam shots as she ran towards the zombies and the building behind them before launching herself in the air, high enough to easily clear the zombie horde and land on the other side. Not stopping for a moment lest one of the creatures grab her, Samus vaulted into the air again, her left hand catching the sill of a second story window and allowing her to latch on long enough to fire a single shot into the glass, exposing the room to the night time air. Kicking off from the wall but not relinquishing her grip on the sill, Samus pulled herself up into the room through the now open window, quickly taking in the empty room and leaving through the only door, intending to make it down to the first floor and link up with anyone still alive..

[The Ghostfacers]

Well THIS was a pretty crappy situation. Not only were the Ghostfacers stuck in a large, multi-story building, but there was something making growling noises nearby! Ed, in a strange move of bravery rarely seen by 'Facers who encountered things that weren't ghosts, peeked into another room to see a HUGE DRAGON THING there. Letting out a shout, he ran back into the other room and motioned for Spruce to get a shot of it. "Okay, okay... We've got multiple zombies; maybe apparitions, but probably not. In the other room, we've got a dragon." Ed said, motioning to the other room again. Everyone else just.... stared at Ed like he was batshit crazy. He really did sound like he was, but he'll be damned if there wasn't a giant freakin' dragon in the other room!

The other Ghostfacers moved forward to look in, saw the dragon and promptly backed into a corner. WELL they would either die by zombie or by giant dragon! At least they got it on video. "Okay, watchers, looks like this is it." Harry said, gesturing for Spruce to turn the camera towards him. "You've stayed with us through everything - all the scares and ghosts and whatever. But now, the Ghostfacers are going to do the unthinkable. We're going to- RUN!!" Everyone blinked before realizing the zombies had burst into the room. Turning his crappy, small video camera to get a shot of them {they'd had to leave the other camera behind}, he shouted and ran up the stairs with the other 'Facers.

But as they were running up the stairs, they saw something they REALLY never expected to see! Some kind of... space-marine-y guy with a plasma cannon arm running right for them! "...Huh?" ...Was pretty much all Ed could say to that. This really was going to be the perfect episode of Ghostfacers... unless those douche-nozzles Sam and Dean found some way to ruin it again...

[Garchomp]

The sound of shattering glass drowned out the insistent mutterings of the humans who, while they had shown some wisdom in keeping away from her, weren't moving much. The Garchomp twitched, irritated at the fact that she would have to exit the room she was ensconced in to see what had broken. There was a chance that the intruders would do something stupid, and she wasn't attached enough to the building to feel territorial - she just wanted to be left alone. Still, she felt like something was going on, even if there were no indications other than a group of frightened people. The humans were still talking and occasionally waving around a camera, which wasn't very interesting -

And then the undead horde decided to break in.

Instincts honed by years of battle - for survival and then for sport - propelled her forward, lunging into the next room and letting energy gather in her jaws. The Dragon Pulse was hardly focused, mainly meant to drive back the shambling zombies, and she really hadn't expected it to do much. As soon as she took stock of her opponents, however, adrenaline made firing off another in succession quite easy - the zombies were wrong in a way she hadn't encountered before. Eerie and mindless - making them the perfect opponents when she had so much instinctive fright to draw upon. The humans were all running up the stairs, and she planned to eventually find higher ground herself, or at least get outside where she didn't risk collapsing a few walls on bystanders. Besides, in a house she couldn't call up a sandstorm or flee (or better yet, do both), and the idea of closing with so many at once made her hide creep. A pity she was only average at long-range at best of times, and this was most certainly not that.

At least she was most definitely faster than the corpses. Backing towards the stairs, she snarled, glancing at the odd sight of what was probably another human - this one in strange armour - before focusing on the threat at hand. She hadn't planned to stay here long, but now it seemed her chance at resting would be cut even shorter. Leaping back, she fired off one more Dragon Pulse and then joined the others on the rather crowded staircase. She itched to purify herself of her fear and irritation - but in these conditions it would be useless to even try. She could hold back until she was outside, at the very least.

[samus]

...... definately civilians, and not even armed ones at that. As Samus turned the corner down the staircase she found herself face to face with several other humans, thankfully alive and even better, uninjured - it would have been difficult to deal with the situation had one of them been bitten or even possibly scratched, but she'd need to check them over later and turn them over to the proper authorities once this was done. As much as she wanted to avoid the loss of life, letting an infected individual out of the city was completely out of the question, and Samus was nothing if not professional in regards to that. At the very least this contagion was unthinking, driven by only base urges and ultimately, containable - Samus still had nightmares over what would have happened if the X had gotten loose from SR388. There would have been no stopping that - not her, not the Federation, not anyone. Whether or not these people would survive, though, was entirely up for debate, and the first reaction she got from them seeing her, while somewhat understandable given the planet's current level of technology, didn't exactly inspire confidence.

"Move!" Samus said - she didn't shout, that was the last thing she wanted to do around panicked individuals, but it clearly wasn't a request either as she reached forward with her left arm, intending to pull the man in the lead past her and up the stairs. The best thing to do now would be to get everyone up to the roof, or at least to one of the floors that had a window facing the alleyway. The gunship that Samus had taken before fleeing Federation controlled space was not her largest one, meant more for small ship skirmishes, boarding actions and ground assaults - heavily armed and armored, but she wasn't sure if she could fit everyone into it, and she was not going to leave anyone behind to make two trips.

As she attempted to usher the other humans up the stairs quickly in an attempt to avoid the undead horde pouring into the building's first floor from the street, a slight shift in the air and a loud noise from the first floor caught her attention, causing her to momentarily pause while reaching for the man in the lead and look up just in time to see a form that was extremely and unpleasantly familiar emerge towards the bottom of the stairs. Something was still off, though but by the time Samus had realized that the creature wasn't big enough to be what she'd thought it was, her reflexes had already kicked into high gear, finishing her attempt to pull the man up the stairs while simultaneously raising her right arm and unleashing a barrage of golden energy towards the creature's face, extremely careful to avoid the people she was trying to save with expertly placed fire.

[Garchomp]

The stairs creaked a little under her weight, but right now the Garchomp could have cared less. The zombies were slow - and rightfully so, since they were dead - and her last few blasts had gotten the ones in the vanguard, meaning she had a little peace to hop awkwardly up the steps. Unfortunately, the armoured human seemed to have other plans, and she had little warning, only a flicker of motion before several bursts of energy hit her. Concentration broken, she staggered to the side, shaking her head. It had certainly hurt, and the pain was another distraction she didn't need. Forcing herself to ignore it, she whirled - with another groan from the stairs - and snarled at her attacker, preparing yet another Dragon Pulse and stalling it for a moment, the sphere of energy slowly growing in her jaws.

What were they doing? Even if the other humans were running up the stairs, fleeing as was wise, surely her attacker had seen she was defending them. True, her defence of the humans had simply been because they had led the zombies to her in the first place, and she was hardly going to stay and keep them safe once she got outside, but.... She certainly wasn't fighting them. She stayed like that for a moment, trying to gauge if she had to defend herself against this one too.

There was no time to explain and resorting to speech would be falling back on a needless crutch anyways. She could prove her intentions through action alone, and would. She turned back to the horde and released the attack, the beam felling the foremost zombies. That done, she growled and leaped again - this time with her fins extended so she could reach the second floor without any trouble. Her head pounded with the movement, and she was even angrier now - with the instinctive fear of the zombies beneath that - and she would not be able to absolve herself of pain the same way she could her emotions. This was not turning out well at all, and though she hadn't exactly been confident before, now she was just grimly determined to make it out as unharmed as possible, present injuries aside.

If it came to abandoning the humans? That wouldn't be a difficult choice to make - not in the least.

[The Ghostfacers]

Meanwhile, the Ghostfacers (having been ushered upstairs) were waiting around, listening to the sounds of battle from the downstairs region. They were also scared out of their minds. "Okay, okay!! We've got to calm down and- AHHH!" Ed's dramatic, inspiring speech was cut off by the site of zombies shambling out from the hallway. It seemed the building wasn't as safe as the Ghostfacers had originally imagined! The entire group ran away... ONLY TO FIND THAT THEY WERE SURROUNDED BY ZOMBIES. Ed snatched Spruce's camera, raised it over his shoulder and smacked a zombie right in the face with it. After loud cries of disapproval from Spruce, the group ran right back over to the stairwell.

"Hey, space marine dude? Would you mind giving us some help!?" Harry asked as the zombies from the above floor shambled out onto the stairwell. This was REALLY not what the Ghostfacers wanted to get themselves into. Maybe ONE zombie or something, but this many was just not what they wanted to get into. Even this many ghosts wouldn't be acceptable. One thing was sure - the Ghostfacers were NEVER looking into zombies... ever.... again....