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There seemed to be a lot of interest in going quickly towards some nebulous goal that was getting accomplished with or without their input; Junker was sure. It'd be a whole lot of wasted effort, or worse effort that amounted to something and set a precedent. There was no winning hand here. He looked onward, mildly aware of the growing distance between the three and their dead weight. With no heart to put in it, and a mild case of twice-sprained ankles, he'd had no reason to rush ahead like them.[break][break]

That was before even considering the complete lack of athleticism and fitness that defined his life.[break][break]

It was easy enough to understand why he'd been the target of choice here. It took him a decent amount of time to even notice that he was the target of anything though. The heavy footfalls of a mutant-type mob, or whatever that messed up thing was, didn't cut through the haze filling his mind. The sheer futility of all this effort generating an engrossing fog of spiraling disbelief that any real accomplishment was coming. It was the kind of mental pattern immune to the technical positivity of your party in chasing the unknown ill-defined boundaries of this quest but easily devastated by the primal reaction to gnashing teeth and rending claw seething in intent to deliver that most potent poison of "death." As the creature surged Torashiki was caught half between fleeing and freezing in an adrenaline soaked haze. No part of him was used to the body's reaction to real fear. The sensation so entirely alien he felt wholly dispossessed of himself.[break][break]

It couldn't have been him falling to the ground in an awkward step thrice the length of his normal stride — an action he would have been unprepared to follow through on couldn't even dream of reacting to in the moment. There was no sensation of collapsing onto the floor for the third time in the span of less than an hour. He was certain he was just some disembodied observer in the cold opening of some bad sci-fi show without a cgi budget. Watching some creature struggle too hard to move forward like the team involved had put in twice as many frames of animation without adjusting the playback speed.[break][break]

Even completely aware that there was no seedy, obsessed with the violence, third-person camera safely bound by the edges of an lcd monitor. It couldn't have possibly been him slowly crawling backward in a pathetic show of self-preservation instincts. No ability or awareness to stand up or get his feet under him. The idea that he was afraid, like real fear that he'd only read about, was still easy to completely deny with the expression of passionate, uncontained horror plastered on his ugly mug.[break][break]

Then somebody else acted. He couldn't have been sure about who but there seemed to be someone ineffectually yelling and throwing things at the bear-sized monster. There was a sense in the fact that one would scare bears away like that. Not that they were looking at a bear, but somewhere in the phantom—barely attached to the scene—Junker was appreciation of the act. One of those heroic main character types he was thinking would end up clearing the event for them had surely arrived.[break][break]

Some hopeful thought seemed to suck his disconnected soul back into his body. Instantly he started scrambling backwards from the monster, unconcerned with how his hands were torn up in the process, until he managed to shakily stand up and sort of manage a jog away. There was no hope he of all people would gain against the thing. Really it just put, huh... It put Gleeford into more danger.

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