A/N: I think I've gone crazy.
JD awoke with a start as the bus suddenly lurched forward on a sharp turn, inertia causing him to pitch sideways and headlong into the window pane. A pained squeak tore from his throat as the side of his head and his shoulder hit the glass. He had half a mind to throw his hands out as the bus came to an abrupt stop, catapulting him into the seat in front of him. Behind the hazy cloud of pain, JD was aware of a reverberating bang that was shortly followed by a loud pop coming from somewhere below the vehicle.
He nearly shot up in alarm as a large hand clamped over his wrist, but his features melted in relief when he turned his head to see Perry's grave expression under the flickering cabin lights. The older man retracted his hand to place an index finger to his thin lips, raising his eyebrows at him warningly.
There was a collective intake of breath and more than a handful of frightened yelps as the bus was suddenly pitched into a tense darkness.
"L-Listen up," a shaky, masculine voice piped up on the intercom. "You've got to do as I say," the voice in the darkness whimpered. "P-Please! I'm going to turn on the lights again and file you out of this bus one by one… There are m-men out there, and you have to listen to them." His voice was hushed, almost haunting, "If anyone of you don't comply… We. All. Die."
"Wait!" a shrill voice broke the silence that felt so safe, and panicked murmurs resonated throughout the cabin, on the very brink of pandemonium. "Who… Who are you?"
"I'm…" the voice on the intercom trailed off, his voice becoming very small. "I'm so very sorry," he whispered.
The hum of the speakers cut off completely, and the silence was deafening. Startled gasps echoed throughout the bus as the lights flickered on, revealing a white balding man standing at the head of the bus. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down nervously as he surveyed the crowd of frightened faces before him. He turned away without another word, the coattails of the white lab coat he wore fluttering behind him as he made his way down the crowded aisle. The man's footsteps thunked heavily upon the stairs as he made his way out of the vehicle.
The intercom hummed to life again. "We'll start with row one, seats A through D," the same voice as before murmured. "Make your way out of the bus. Slowly. No sudden moves, and single file."
JD's eyes flickered towards Perry's direction, the questions in his eyes evident. He swallowed hard as the older man replied with a shrug of his shoulders and a shake of his head. Perry motioned to their carry on luggage laying askew on the floor with a terse nod of his head. JD nodded in reply, slowly bending forward to pull the other man's duffel bag and his backpack onto his lap. The younger man glanced back at his colleague, frowning when Perry touched his nose with a grimace.
JD raised his eyebrows at him questioningly, nearly flinching when the older man's hand darted out to swipe gently across his right brow. There was blood on his fingertips. JD's hands raised towards his face, tracing along his brow bones and surveying the dark red liquid that stained his fingers.
"Row two, seats E through H," the voice on the intercom announced breathily.
JD unzipped his backpack with shaking hands, digging around blindly and tugging the first piece of fabric his fingers skirted upon. Perry unscrewed the cap of his water bottle, the liquid sloshing over the dark, crumpled cloth clenched between JD's hands. The younger man pressed it to his right brow thoughtlessly, flinching as the wet fabric met his wound.
'Alcohol?' he mouthed incredulously, and Perry just shrugged, the corner of his mouth quirked into an a grim half-smile.
JD shook his head in disbelief as he wiped at the open wound tenderly, grimacing all the while. He pulled the cloth away and pointed at the laceration, pantomiming a threading motion with his other hand. Perry leaned forward to inspect it, nodding his head as he pulled away.
"Row three, seats A through D," the intercom hummed again.
JD watched the passengers seated in front of them rise to their feet, a gruff looking man bracing himself against the plush chairs as he pulled forward and out of the row, his wooden cane meeting the floor with a soft thud. The man seated beside him followed after, his eyes raking over the crowd of nameless faces behind him before he finally tore away his gaze.
The dark haired man gazed at their retreating backs unseeingly, his stomach clenched in tense anticipation as they descended the stairs in single file. He flinched as the intercom came on again, glancing nervously in Perry's direction. The older man nodded, gripping the back of the seat in front of him, his knuckles white.
"Row four, seats E through H…"
JD's vision spun as he got to his feet. His colleague glanced at him as he teetered, grabbing hold of his shoulder and ushering him out onto the aisle. Perry's hand settled at the back of his neck as they made their way off the bus, the cold night air shocking their senses. There were two men waiting outside the door, both armed with shotguns. One of them glared at Perry, smacking the hand on the nape of JD's neck with the butt of his weapon.
Perry yanked his hand away with a hiss, inhaling sharply and glaring hard at the ground. They were ushered across the street and were left to stand on the sidewalk among the others. JD turned his head as he heard a soft, metallic click that was followed by the smell of butane and burnt cigarettes.
"Smoking's bad for you, y'know," the young doctor found himself blurting, blushing when a peroxide blond in a black trench coat gave him an inane stare.
"You're in a hostage situation and you're prattling on about what's bad for me?" he snorted, his British accent palpable. He took a drag of his cigarette, his black nail polish gleaming under the street light. "You've got bigger things to worry about, buddy boy," he muttered under his breath.
JD gave him a strange look of his own, barely registering the black blur coming at him until he found himself being lifted several inches off the ground, two pallid, grubby hands grasping at the lapels of his jacket. He flinched as he felt something scrape sharply at his neck - enough to break the skin - his breath coming out in short gasps as his hands found their way around his assailant's wrists.
"JD!" Perry hollered.
JD felt himself crumple to the floor suddenly, sneezing as a cloud of dust showered over him. He coughed, blinking as his hand traced over the pulse point on his neck. He trembled as something warm and wet met his fingertips.
Someone's hands were grasping the lapels of his jacket again, this time pulling him onto his feet. JD flinched as he watched the slightly shorter peroxide blond pull away from him with what looked to be a wooden stake in his hand.
And that's when all hell broke loose.
"That idiot!" one of the men wielding a shotgun roared, dropping his weapon. There was a strange, dull crunching noise, and everyone around him began to take several steps back, gasping as his face contorted into something monstrous. He lunged for the man in the trench coat, and the peroxide blond ducked under his swinging fist, only to pivot and strike him in the back with the wooden stake. He let out an anguished growl before exploding into ash.
"What the hell is going on?" Perry snarled, stepping forward to pull JD out of the fray.
A small blonde girl ran up to them suddenly, glancing behind her at the peroxide blond before her eyes scanned over the frightened crowd. "Is everyone okay?" she asked. Before anyone could interject, she said, "Listen. Make a run for it, now. Go across the street and head for that shop." She pointed towards the only store with its lights on before grabbing Perry by the shoulder and pushing him in that direction. "Go! Go!"
Perry took a second to stare at her incredulously before yanking JD's arm and pulling him towards the shop. By the sound of clattering footsteps behind him, he knew that the rest of the gang were following. He reached the door, the sounds of the chaos behind him still grating on his ears. A woman's high pitched scream cut through the air, and it took everything within him not to turn back and see just what had happened to her.
Perry pushed the door open, a bell tinkling cheerfully overhead as the door jostled its mallet. Six people were seated at a round table in the middle of the room, glancing up at them curiously. "Knights of the round table," he addressed them sardonically, "what the hell is going on?"
For more than a half hour, the brightly lit store was full of griping and incredulous doctors. They phoned taxi cabs and filed complaints to Greyhound Lines, Inc., red-faced and panicked as they yammered into their cell phones.
"Think we have enough radiation in here to kill everybody?" a gruff, cane-wielding doctor quipped cheerfully.
"There're enough baddies loitering outside to kill everybody in here," the peroxide blond said with an eye roll. "Twice," he added as an afterthought.
"Right," he remarked with a sneer, "I'm sorry. Could you explain that again?"
A redhead came up to them, gently touching Perry's shoulder. She smiled at him sheepishly. "Hi, I'm Willow," she introduced herself, handing him a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. "This must be really weird for you all…"
"And I'm guessing this is the epitome of normalcy for you?" Perry barked, peeling off the bottle's protective wrapper before unscrewing the cap.
"Pretty much," she replied with a shrug.
"Let me guess," the curly haired doctor went on, cleaning JD's wound with a soaked paper towel, "D&D convention gone horribly, horribly wrong? Or is it that sale at Sears that everyone's going gaga about? I'm pretty sure I heard something about this new vacuum on the market with new and improved sucking action. Goes straight for the jugular, too!"
"Uh, C? None of the above?" Willow offered, raising her eyebrows.
"Alright, Newbie, take your pick," Perry muttered, lifting the metal lid off of his first aid kit and pointing at the single spool of thread. "I've got black, black, oh, and black."
"I guess black will do," JD said with a resigned sigh.
Willow watched as the older doctor plucked the small spool of thread from the tin, pursing her lips. "What if I said you didn't have to do that?"
"Then I'd say that, no, no, your circular head will not fit in that itty-bitty square hole, no matter how hard you try to squeeze through," he deadpanned.
"What if I said if I could get that square hole to take shape of anything I wanted, and at the drop of a hat?" she asked him quietly.
Perry dropped the spool, staring at her incredulously. "Alright, I'll bite. What exactly are you going on about?" He touched his nose in an aggravated gesture before crossing his arms to his chest.
Willow gave him a wry smile before promptly touching her pointer finger to JD's cut. "Sano," she murmured.
JD jerked in surprise as a warm and decidedly not unpleasant sensation permeated over his injury. He gingerly touched his brow when the redhead withdrew her hand, his eyes widening when he found the laceration to be completely gone. "And the weirder things just keep on happening," he grumbled under his breath.
Perry leaned forward to inspect her ministrations for himself, hesitantly running the pad of his thumb where JD's laceration had been. "There's not even a scar," he remarked incredulously.
"That'll definitely top liquid band aids. You better get whatever that was on the market," the gruff doctor said, looking her over in wonder.
"Oh, it is," Willow said with a sheepish smile. "Just… The black one." She frowned. "The other black one," she said after a beat.
The blonde girl from before strode over from the round table, smiling brightly at them. "How's the culture shock going for ya?"
"Oh, it's still shocking away," a masculine voice said behind her, sounding tired and disoriented.
The man with the cane raised his eyebrows at him, smiling grimly. "What's the pollen like, busy bee?"
"Strange, alien, and a little sticky," he replied pensive frown.
The blonde gave an enthusiastic nod. "Yep! That sounds about right," she affirmed.
"People're complaining of their cell phones losing reception," he said. "Your television's getting a bit fuzzy, too."
"Does that still reek of normalcy, Good Witch?" Perry remarked, glancing at the redhead.
"That's just the tip of the big normalcy iceberg," she said consolingly.
"Does the iceberg have tentacles?" the gruff looking man sneered.
"And horns," the blonde said, wrinkling her nose. "And it spews green and icky stuff."
"Would you say it's more of a bread mold green, or a meadow after a rain?" JD piped up.
"Can this conversation get anymore inane?" Perry groused.
"Oh, I think it can," the blonde assured him sympathetically. "I have superhuman strength, I've died twice... Oh! My sister is a key, Willow's a gay witch, and that peroxide blond over there is a vampire. With a soul. And I've slept with him."
JD raised his hand timidly.
"Yes?"
He cleared his throat. "Um, I've seen some bad romance novels describe their ejaculation as 'cold'?" he asked wonderingly. "Is that--"
"Priscilla, now is hardly the time to pick up on your outlandish sexcapades, mmkay?" Perry interjected. He gave a sharp whistle when JD's eyes began to glaze over.
"The safe word is 'pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis'," JD piped up matter-of-factly.
"It's safe to say that you'd be mildly violated by the time you got the word out," the gruff doctor said pointedly, producing a pill bottle from his jacket pocket. He opened it and tipped a capsule into his mouth.
"Buffy," a man in tweed sauntered over to their spot by the counter, "bad news."
The blonde pouted. "Is the world ending?" she whined.
"It's likely," he nodded, slipping off his glasses. "I-I've been listening to the radio, and the broadcaster's announced that there will be a solar eclipse at daybreak. It's unknown as to exactly how long it will last."
"I sense an impending 'but'," Willow said nervously.
"But," the man muttered unhappily, "the event is nowhere on the meteorological forecast, let alone the calendar."
The man with the cane uncapped his pill bottle again. "Christ, this place is worse than New Jersey."
