[ Video (CW: blood) ]

     [The landscape Dean is standing in would be beautiful - gentle rolling hills, copses of colorful autumn trees visible in the background, a terrestrial current of waist high golden grass - if it weren't for the fact a battle has very clearly occurred there recently.  The grass is tramped down in a circle around where he's standing when the feed clicks on, blood painted over some of it, bodies scattered here and there.  Dean himself has a spray of it down his front and across the legs of his jeans, and he's holding a gasping, clearly ill man in front of him, carefully out of reach of his rabidly snapping teeth or reaching, clawlike fingers.  It's a bit of a strain to hold him in place, but Dean does it while the black counterpart to Iris's robot horse grazes placidly off to one side.]

     So first of all, sorry about this, but these are my fault.  Which means I should warn anyone listening that if you see these - we call 'em Croats back home, short for Croatoan, which is the virus they're infected with - they should be considered contagious.  The virus makes 'em faster and stronger but mostly angrier, kinda like rabies, only it spreads by blood to blood contact.  They'll die the normal way, but if you see someone running around acting an ass with -

    [He grunts, hefts the Croat in his hands around so its face is more readily visible.]  Bloodshot eyes, highly visible rash, waxy skin, or a lot of crazy basically all over their face, and they get blood on you, you could be doing this within 48 hours too.  Symptoms usually take about three to four hours to start to show and you'll still feel like yourself, but you'll start to sweat, your lymph nodes will itch, and your vision will blur.  The temper tantrums come after that.

    If you're not sure if you're infected but think you might be, come find me.  I'll show you how to cure it.


    [ Private : Iris Wildthyme ]

   So uh.


    [ Spam : Throughout the Event ]

    [Dean still doesn't pay attention to the network - different reasons these days, but the result is the same - so he misses that anything is happening until it already has.  Even then he's more inclined to stay out of the way until he runs facefirst into his first horde of Croats barreling through the library like fanfiction groupies, and realizes he can't.

    Which is why he can be found after that searching rooms for anyone stranded and clearing stairwells, mainly.  Early on he's on foot but eventually he begins being more visible astride a massive black horse, wielding a machete like he was born to it because he basically was; his horsemanship is more awkward than that but he's not completely hopeless, and the artificial intelligence of the steed lets it compensate for his inexperience as well as respond smoothly to what he does know.]