Museum Studies

Face to Face

There had never been anything like it it before, and there probably would never be anything like it again. In the space of just half an hour, Central Park was swarming with SPW chinooks, airlifting people out of the city in groups of 55 at a time. The harbour had a continuous line of ferries collecting up civilians, as smaller water taxis and air ambulances evacuated injured people out of the city's many hospitals. Kids were loaded onto school buses and shipped out, whilst the only vehicles travelling into the city were SPW trucks and tanks, loaded with troops. Each of these soldiers carried portable UV nightsuns- the huge searchlights usually tethered to search and rescue helicopters- as the skies around Manhattan swarmed with drones, armed with more UV lights and facial recognition tech. Boeings took off from the airports, each seat filled with humans, as the billboards in Times Square displayed warning signs.

VAMPIRA ULTIMA APPROACHING. ALL CIVILIANS MUST IMMEDIATELY EVACUATE. Read the signs, as all across the country alarm bells were sounding. As the 9 million souls who called the city home left the urban jungle, the SPW shut down the bridges with barricades. Only the Brooklyn bridge was left open, creating a chokepoint. Amongst the gigantic crowds, Lizzie, Valerie and Dana were there, getting onto a Chinook to be flown away to safety.

"Where's Kylie and Roberta?!" Lizzie cried, just as Kylie's familiar pink convertible zoomed past the park, on the way to the Brooklyn bridge.

"Don't worry about us, just get out of here!" Whamerta yelled to them as the car rounded a corner with Kakyoin's hybrid in tow. The 7 stand users were heading towards the bridge, as the SPW had requested that any active stand users should be present and ready for a fight. As New York turned quiet, the city that never sleeps nodding off towards an eerie silence, all was still on the bridge.

"Whamerta, you're a conglomerate of one of the remaining pillar men and a stand user. You need to be up there for negotiation, as you're prettymuch our best hope at bargaining our way out of this one. If we kill the pillar men, we don't know how Wamuu will react to this, so we've been told to act with caution and to only fight in defence. Do you understand?" Jotaro asked.

"I do." Whamerta replied. Their group weren't the only ones at the bridge- the woman from the High Priestess boutique was there, as was (shockingly) Roberta's roller derby referee and his younger brother. They both seemed to recognise Jotaro, and stepped back.

"Do you know them?" Kylie asked.

"I'd rather not say." He replied. The boutique owner glared at him, her false teeth flashing, before moving back into the crowd of SPW soldiers.

"How will we know when they're here?" One agent whispered to another. Suddenly, there was a great crunching noise from the other end of the bridge, the part that wasn't in Manhattan. The agents dropped to defensive stances and readied their weapons. A manhole cover burst from the ground, and three thin, emancipated vampires crawled out.

"Open fire!" An agent screamed. Several thousand watts of UV light blazed, and the vampires shrieked as they were solidified into stone. Two agents drove up in a jeep, parking it over the now-uncovered manhole, and loaded the statues onto the back of the jeep.

"Dead as door nails." One laughed, feeling the jeep jerk as he dropped the huge statues on. They drove back over the bridge, past the Manhattan-end barricade, both with huge smiles on their faces.

"We got 'em!" One cheered. "Get the big one and the old man over here to take a look."

Whamerta and Joseph approached, and Joseph looked confused at what was before him.

"I don't remember them being so skinny..." he said, before gasping. The statues shrivelled, losing their signature stone hair, and turning back into three ordinary zombies.