Robert’s Wednesday evening odd encounter(Robert)

Date: 2025-09-17 17:16

(Robert’s Wednesday evening odd encounter(Robert):Robert)

[Wed Sep 17 2025]

At Birch and Oakwood/span>/spanafternoon, about 67F(19C) degrees, and the sky is covered by dark grey stormclouds. The mist is heaviest At High and Sycamore/span>/span(Your target stumbles upon a street prophet whose apocalyptic visions manifest as reality around them – trash cans burst into hellfire, parking meters twist into iron serpents, and the asphalt cracks to reveal glimpses of the abyss. The prophet cannot control these manifestations and desperately needs help before their terror consumes the entire city block.)

Mercy is standing out in the middle of the street, loitering as one with nowhere to be in a hurry does and avidly texting on her phone now that her chatting companion had run off.

Languid lounging along this lazy day is interrupted. Not by slaves the demons of HELL, or sudden mist monsters attack, as those are common and regular occurrences that a well-regulated and well-armed populace can perform. Except those who are trying to be victims, but, really, what’s the chance of that?

And it’s by a single… man? Ah, he has a beard. Yes. Man. Haggard and patchy and burned and rotten and signed, his hair a tangled mass and his trenchcoat a green color. The black and gray stains to it and the general smell indicating to Mercy that it might not be the original colors, grays and browns of matted hair, his skin gnarled and wrinkled. In his hands he holds aloft a sign. Wooden, wrenched from somewhere, and with a scavenged piece of cardboard nailed to it depicting a fleshy-looking dagger that oozes with some sort of ichor.

It looks wrong. It smells wrong. There’s something more to this man then simply the rotten decay of poor dental care and personal hygeine.

He screeches as he stomps down the street in booted feet, wild green eyes staring directly at Mercy. Or perhaps through her?

“THE END IS NIGH. IT COMES, IT COMES! HELLFIRE! RAIN! THEY’RE COMING! YOU CANNOT ESCAPE THEM, CANNOT STOP THEM, THEIR TWISTING SIGNS OF BENDING METAL AND FIRE!” And it is at that point six trashcans nearby all simultaneously exploding in sulphuric-and-brimstone smelling fire, shattering and sending metal plinking and banging in dangerous shrapnel and off of Mercy.

There’s a wail of tortured metal, as parking meters and iron fences themselves literally distort and twist into horrific, occult shapes that bend the mind to look upon them.

Mercy stifles a yawn while busily engaged with her peculiar social life on the phone of her garishly colored, glittery and self-deprecating cased phone. Occasionally a glance is thrown to the southwest where the peculiar monk had hurriedly pedaled off to, checking to see if his ominous silhouette is coming back this way, but otherwise she cares little for her surroundings- until an unpleasant scent hits her nose. She wrinkles it, trying to dismiss the odor, but as it only gets stronger she looks up from the phone screen just in time to see the strange man before his yelling starts. There’s a brief roll of her eyes at the theatrics she’s otherwise happy to ignore, but the literal dumpster fire of trashcans of exploding around her is much less simple to wave off. Eyes go wide, her horse bails with haste, and all the poor girl can do is try to hurriedly dive off to the side and get low, for all the good that does considering the bits of shrapnel and singed garbage getting hurled at her. She crouches down huddled against the wall of a nearby building and fumbles with her phone after hearing it beep, writing a misspelled frantic text that reads ‘TINK DUD SMTHIN STPID’ to the last sender who, ironically, only a few minutes ago advised her to do the opposite.

Fortuitously, Mercy has tough flesh and an even tougher body, but those shards still hurt as they ricochet off her skin as if she was made from stone herself. Then the burning sensation follows. Whatever that substance was that blew up the trashcans – or maybe the metal canisters themselves containing some potent chemical – it sticks like napalm and it burns as it adheres to the woman’s poor body. In other places, too, making singing, foul-smelling spots of burning as the metal curls inwards and melts like plastic in several places across peoples lawns and houses as it already starts to catch. One of the bigger dumpsters nearby rattles, bulging outwards, before slowly starting to collapse inwards on itself.

In the distance is the screech of tires and the revving of engines. Civilians are diving for cover, and someone is curled up on the opposite side of the street. Blood. Smelling foul, to boot, as the random bystander does not hold up as well as Mercy does.

The phone flashes something. It’s been delayed. Electronics flicker.

One of the vehicles getting louder.

The man raises his sign, then lowers it, up and down, marching, as the lamp-posts and parking meters lining the street all curl and bend inwards as if bowing, forming pentagrams and arrows and upside-down crosses or stranger symbols with their faces. The air starts to taste strange, and the colors of the sky itself changes.

“BEHOLD! BEHOLD THE ENDING! BEHOLD THE OPENING! BEHOLD THE PATH FORMING TO THE INEVITABLE! REPENT! REPENT! REPENT!” As the street itself begins to fracture, crack down the middle.

Throughout the ordeal of trying to duck for cover, which did not exist, Mercy nearly choked on the lollipop that had been in her mouth while screaming a thick-drawled “JESUS FUCKIN’ CHRIST” and summarily discards the woefully unfinished treat. In light of the burning sensations all over her skin and searing hot projectile refuse she also slides off her jacket, which had taken the brunt of it and was now carrying singed bits on its surface, to shake it off with increasing anger which she directs to the only potential source that makes sense- the strange individual still waving his sign around like nothing’s amiss. “What the hell, man?! This were my best jacket!” She looks like she’s about to storm over and toss him into the nearest trash bin not currently on fire, but even she has the sense to hold off when everything around them starts to warp, shift and redesign itself in ominous shapes. That doesn’t seem normal, even for this city. Not being the brightest of her kind she needs a second to take it all in, try to make sense of it, and only when the street keeping her from plummeting into the proverbial, or literal depths of Hell below starts to crack apart does she spur back into motion to take off at an unsteady sprint down the street, away from the sign-bearer, while clutching her phone for dear life and hoping to what ever gods exist that someone who still might want to kill her is coming to help. What a day.