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A muscle spasm. That's all. A muscle spasm. A sharp pain flares in Kingston Brown's chest without warning. Right over his heart. It jarrs his focus from the current conversation and a hand rises to rub at his chest, as he hastily tries to cover it up.
'All right well, let's,' he tried to smooth the enroaching grimace into a smile. 'Let's get to it.'
As Kingston tries to keep his attention on Sophia and 'Madame Anastasia' and their previous conversation (Iga has narrowed her eyes at him but Sophia seems none the wiser and Ricky is politely listening to Cody's stubborn ranting), the intracies of which are already escaping him as the pain tightens his chest, he feels a pair of eyes cut into him from the side. Kingston's gaze flits to the side and his eyes meet Pete's momentarily before shifting to the empty rail in front of the remarkably empty platform. Even a glance was enough to see the concern in Pete's eyes. Stupid observant kid. Kingston would have to dissuade his concern later, it wouldn't do to have Pete distracted going into a likely inevitable confrontation by Kingston's inconvient muscle spasm. A simple, normal muscle spasm. The pain spikes for a moment as in disagreement.
Extending into darkness, the vision of the subway sways before him woozily. It's as if they where standing in the middle of a scorching hot day, so hot the heat is visible and anything too far away has fuzzy edges and shifts slightly as if a desery hallucination. Except this is right in front of them, and underground. Kingston feels like he must be imagining it but tendrils of the haze seem to stretch out towards their group clustered on the platform. Luna, hovering in front of Pete (who's eyes still keep flicking to Kingston), seems to blink in and out from existence from momemt to moment as if the frequency tuning her to the waking world was failing. Misiek, poking his head out of Iga's bag, buffers into the most wrinkled looking chihuahua Kingston has ever seen before reverting back to a little dragon he feels he needs to get to some form of vet.
As the true forms of Luna and Misiek settle, the voices permanently drifting at the edge of Kingston's mind (it's all of New York, and some are so loud, and so many people need help all the time, and he does what he can but it hurts sometimes, because it can never be enough) surge forward with a crash and magnify with almost physical force against his skull. Move over. I said fucking move! Why are you always like this? I'm not giving up my seat. Shut the fuck up man! Oh my god movebudgeshutupidiotinconsideratecan'tbelievepeoplethesedaysstupidnewyorkersfuckingtouristsquietquietMOVESTOPICANTYOUDEAFBECONSIDERATESELFISHBITCH-
The words ram against his skull over and over, a throbbing migraine hammering behind his eyes, robbing his thoughts from him. Gripping his jacket in his hands, Kingston forces the voices to the edges of his mind, far enough back so he can keep enough focus on the battle clearly coming, but they're still so much louder than normal. The migraine still remains, pulsing in his skull.
Kingston recalls a conversation he'd had with Alejandro a decade or so before, over breakfast at the Grammercy Occult Society.
'Anti Populi is a dangerous substance to the essence of New York, Kingston. To both the waking world and the Unsleeping City.' Alejandro had said. 'You know what antimatter is, yes?'
Kingston nodded in afirmation.
'It's like antimatter but made specifically of ill will towards people. Anti Populi is rooted in the culture of the place that it's in. In New York, it's specifically related to the misanthropic ill will and refutation of the social norms of the city that create a magically toxic spiritual substance. When it congregates, it can become spiritually poisonous to people in a very potent way. It's extremely dangerous stuff; a combination of misanthropy, ill will and substance that exists in direct opposition to the social customs and norms of a place.'
Kingston remembers the fear that had crawled its way up his spine, and it must have shown on his face because Alejandro seemed to hesitate.
'What is it?' Kingston pressed.
Alejandro had sighed, 'Kingston, your presence as the Vox Populi of New York acts as a defence against Anti Populi congregating in harmful amounts. But as dangerous as it is to everybody else, it is immensely more dangerous to you. It is anti populi, the opposite of your entire being. You have to be careful if you are around it Kingston, it reacts violently to Vox Populi, and can do great damage to them.'
'Will it be a problem?' Kingston asked.
Alejandro shrugged, 'I do not know. I do not even think it is a likelihood, but I thought you should be aware of it and the danger it poses to you.'
'Well,' Kingston mused. 'I suppose we'll have to see what comes of it.'
'Yes. I suppose we will.'
Something definetly came of it, Kingston thinks, as pain infects various parts of his body, dredging up a conversation he had almost forgotten about, long since buried in the past. His heart aches anew for a moment at the thought of Alejandro, his passing still fresh at times even these years later.
Though the haze reminiscent of a heat wave, which has now retreated slightly to the edge of the platform, glowing eyes burn in the dark depths of the subway tunnel and a train rapidly begins to approach the station. With it, the voices still thrumming under the harsh yelling thudding against Kingston's skull, began to wail and cry out, danger, danger, help please, which seemed to fill his body down to the core.
Every neuron in his body fires simultaneously as the train comes closer, screaming at him to run, leave, go. The blade buried above his heart twists deeper into his chest in tamden with the increasing intensity of the hammers inside his skull. It hurt. A sense of wrong, a sense of bad, fills Kingston, deep to the bone. The hairs on his arms fly upright, the most intense feeling of goosebumps he's ever experienced, the hairs preparing to stand and leave. Or stand and fight.
Kingston curls his hands into fists around the material of his trouser pockets and takes a shallow breath to ensure his voice is steady, but he isn't sure how much longer he'll be able to cover it up.
'Hey, everybody, this next train,' Kingston flounders for the right words to use. 'this is not articulate, but it's a bad train.'
'That sounds kind of fun to me. I like that,' Sophia says, a slight smile tugging at her mouth.
'Bad' certainly was not articulate enough. Kinston eyes Sophia's curled fists and the way she was slightly bouncing on the balls of her feet. Well, perhaps she was just itching for a fight tonight.
'Do you want to just throw a fucking rock at it, or...?' Cody asks with a frown.
At least he's trying to be helpful. Probably. From the limited interaction the two had had, to Kingston Cody's internal compass seemed to be spinning wildly at any single given moment in time, and when it did stop, not on something... good.
Kingston sighs, 'No, it's not the good bad. It's the bad bad. I might- I'd be ready for something.'
It's hard for him to think too coherently right now. That's likely going to be a problem very soon.
Slowing down as it does so, the train pulls into the station in front of them, Kingston's whipping coat to the side. He caught glimpses of communters as the train travelled past, but the drain itself seemed to be flashing in and out of vision, warping itself in and out of the dreamworld with an agressive zeal. The train seemed supposedly normal, just off somehow, distorted. The train trundles almost to a stop, when a voice crackles over the PA.
'My mistake, this train is going express. Not making this stop. Not making this stop at all!'
As soon as the announcement concludes, dark blue magic swirls around Sophia's feet and she leaps to the very back of the train as it starts to pick up speed again. Kingston runs after her, but is thrown off balance by the pain consuming his body. As he stumbles at the edge of the platform, Sophia grabs his wrist and pulls him up next to her with a surprising amount of strength, Kingston nodding in thanks. Kingston hears a yelp and turns to see Ricky tossing Cody over his shoulder in a fireman's carry with ease and leap to the back of the train. Wires spring from Iga and lift her up into the air, depositing her gently on the back of the train. Pete scrambles on behind her, putting a hand on Ricky's shoulder to steady himself as Ricky puts Cody down beside them all.
The voice springs to life again over the PA, 'That's right, ladies and gentlemen, this train is making all express stops. In fact, just one more stop. The end of a line.'
The train picks up even more speed and Ricky kicks the door in, the entire group rushing through into the train. Kingston's pain spikes again, nearly sending him flying into Sophia, and this time the level doesn't return to what it was. This is certainly bad bad. He has to get through this fight. He had to. The conductor's area they now stand in has been completely destroyed. Sparks kick up from various appliances and darkness from is visible from small holes where the metal body of the train has been torn away. Anything that wasn't torn down as been thrown into the wall and smashed onto the ground.
Sophia threw open the door in the rest of the train with urgency, they behold a scarily hollow subway car. For a moment, Kingston thinks it's empty before his eyes flick to the side and see all of the residents of the car crowded around the doors. Seemingly hemming in others like shepards, holding with lack grips onto the poles inside the cat the car, many people stand around the door, staring with blank gazes at phones or tatty paperback books, standing firm and not moving further into the car. Their blank gazes alluded to nothing of the person inside, simply empty, almost filled with television static.
A great deal of New Yorkers push and attempt to muscle their way through the ring of people jailing them by the doors, trying to get to the abundance of empty seats further into the train. The hollow people don't react in the slightest to being shoved and elbowed, not even flinching, not even moving an inch.
Kingston feels a shot to the heart as his whole body vehemently apposes the scene in front of him with his entire being. You don't do this. You just don't. It's an unspoken rule embedded into the etiquette, the community, the city of New York itself. The physical remnants of anti populi have since disappeared, but Kingston swears he can almost see the tendrils of it entwining around the doors and the unmoving people surrounding it.
Kingston's eyes drift over to the door at the opposite end of the car that leads into the rest of the train's subway cars. The entire drain must be flooded with anti populi. The pain coursing through his body pulses as if in agreement. Kingston can feel it around him now, a spiritual force gleefully shredding the most basic fundamental laws of how you are supposed to behave on the subway.
His eyes snap back over towards the doors as all the people surrounding them flicker in and out of existence for a moment. The people desperately trying to move into the car disappear and the subway car morphs and shifts around them, nearly knocking Kingston off his feet. Grass springs up from the floor, rapidly covering it and stone gravestones fly up from the ground, one of them nearly knocking Cody to his feet, inscribed with illegible carvings, moss growing on various areas of the stone surface. The flesh of the spaced out people remaining in the car, rots between one blink and the next, their posture dropping into a hunch as groaning zombies suddenly stand before them.
Pain infects Kingston's body and courses through his veins with almost desperation.
Halloween is rarely fun. But this takes the gold medal. And his patience.