She's lying in the middle of the road, shattered glass all around her. The nearby twisted pretzel of a car is a bit of a hint for sequence of event reconstruction, but approximately nothing else is. Everything is very... orange. Extremely, aggressively orange.

Except for the one thing that isn't. A large twisted dark mass floats above above her, black tendrils weaving threads of shining orange-gold. It's probably the source of the orange.

What the hell is that? She doesn't want to be near it, whatever it is. She scrambles backwards.

It doesn't seem very interested in her, whatever it is. It hovers for another few seconds, then languidly floats away, trailing orange wisps as it goes.

Well. That was a thing. She'll just. Take a second to get her breath back under control.

The floating tendril monster doesn't return to accost her. It definitely looked like it had some interest in her, earlier, but she seems to have lost whatever made her novel.

That's probably good? Whatever.

She can look around more carefully now. It looks like some kind of riot happened or something.

One could say that.

Everything looks to be in pretty bad shape. Shattered glass, crashed cars, conspicuous bloodstains that may or may not be hers. But riots don't involve omnipresent orange light stuff floating everywhere. This - seems like it might be more than a riot.

This doesn't make any sense at all.

...She doesn't even recognize this part of town.

It'd be hard to recognize even if she knew this part of town. There's a humanoid figure walking through the orange gloom up ahead, talking quietly to themselves. Maybe she can ask them.

"- damn teenagers, always too busy texting to look at the road..."

It doesn't seem like that should really be a major concern.

"Hey! You!"

It turns to look at her, then keeps walking as if she hadn't said anything at all.

Something seems... off about its silhouette. And its voice too, actually. Both are slightly distorted, unnatural. Its limbs are too long and spindly, its voice slightly garbled, like a bad recording of someone.

"- and I bet he never gets out of the house, oh no, can't leave the precious wifi even for a moment -"

Something here is deeply wrong. Alien invasion or eldritch incursion or something, total societal collapse, et cetera.

Is there a handy rock or piece of metal she can chuck at the 'person'?

There's a bit of car debris that's small enough for throwing nearby. She can throw it at the person if she likes. It's even a little bit sharp.

She picks it up and throws it.

It hits, bouncing off the creature's body. The creature hisses, turning towards her. It disappears into smoke, then reforms several feet closer to Ellie, staring at her with a pair of eyes that seem to glow white.

Oh now it's going to pay attention, sure. Seems like a point in the 'eldritch incursion' column.

More throwing debris?

Yep! She already grabbed the smallest throwable bit of debris, but there are some heavier things that she can throw if she'd like.

Her eldritch incursion stops its approach. It just stands there, watching her. Muttering to itself about tax returns.

She grabs another projectile.

"What the fuck are you?"

It falls silent, and answers only with creepy staring. It tilts its head, slightly, then turns to walk away.

She chucks the- what is this? A piece of fender? She chucks the piece of fender at the back of its head.

Thonk.

It roars, then turns and begins flicker-walking towards Ellie, clearly angry. She has time for perhaps one more thrown object before it gets to her.

Oh, it roars. Okay.

She eschews throwing another thing in favor of finding something swingable.

There is another slightly longer piece of fender available! It's kind of heavy, but that should be good for beating eldritch abominations to death, right?

Well, if it isn't, it's too late to switch. She now has an eldritch abomination made out of amorphous black goo, smoke, and tendrils bearing down on her. It attempts to swat her with one of its hands.

She swats back.

It misses, and she successfully hits it! It reels back, growling.

Then it flickers and reforms to her left, and this time it successfully hits her. It is very strong, and has sharp claws.