July Arrivals

[sixthiteration]

WHO: Arrivals
WHERE: The fountain park
WHEN: July 1, 12:00 PM
OPEN TO: ALL
WARNINGS: N/A
STATUS: CLOSED

---

In the snug circle of an old park, a fountain sits burbling beneath a broad, midday sky.

Once-neat paving stones have buckled and cracked from the slow nudge of wayward roots. Benches stand covered in lichen and rust. Three paths push into the underbrush like the spokes on a wheel, the encroaching forest creating lush tunnels through the dark.

But the fountain stands singular and pristine, brightly splashing in open rebellion of the deep, muffled sounds of a place long ago gone to seed. A vibration hums through the ground, there and quickly gone, and the water in the fountain trembles, lapping against the high walls of its cool, pale reservoir.

It is the first of July.

It is precisely twelve o'clock in the afternoon.

Comments

[markwatney]

I rapidly nod my head in agreement, because he's not wrong. The wooded area surrounding the park we're in is old, thick and untended. This has to be the first time wind like this has happened here for a long time; there are simply too many precarious branches left for it to have been swept through recently.

Pushing against the wind seems an exercise in futility, but there is a roof line just visible to the east. If there's any benefit to the wind, it's that it's buffered the wail of the siren just enough that it's not entirely head-splitting. Still, I don't bother with shouting -- I just point toward the east, where an overgrown path leads through the trees.

[generalginger]

Hux finds it strange that this woman doesn't know what a star destroyer is; he assumes her reaction would be different if she were part of the resistance, but even the most mundane people should be aware of the of what it was. Clearly, this woman is from an isolated planet. It's the only thing that makes sense.

"It's a ship for intergalactic travel." He scrutinises her a moment. "In which system is Los Angeles?"

[generalginger]

"My excuse?" Leave it to Ren to act insolent, even in a situation such as this. Hux would've loved it if Ren was a little more mature, but instead he's blaming Hux for them winding up here? As if his headache isn't bad enough.

"You let yourself get defeated by a girl. Your series of poor decisions resulted in the destruction of Starkiller, and while you were bleeding out in the snow, I ensured our survival. How we wound up here, I cannot say, but you were unconscious in the medbay prior to this."

He doesn't have the answers, and that troubles him.

[generalginger]

Hux knew how to survive; it was common sense that he'd need food, water, and shelter if he was to withstand the elements here. He made a point of learning about a wide variety of topics when he was able, but ultimately he didn't have any practical experience. Survival and fighting tooth and nail as he climbed through the ranks of the First Order was completely different from anything regarding survival here.

The amount of time he exclusively spent aboard one ship or another certainly didn't help matters, either.

"Having all of our questions answers would be too convenient, I suppose." If anything, it made Hux more determined to figure things out. But this man had a point, and after nodding in acknowledgement, he gestured toward a particular direction. "I'm headed this way to investigate." Although unspoken, his tone indicated that Jon was welcome to join. Or not. He didn't care.

[thecatinahat]

He shakes his head, but thinks he could find a rock or two and get a spark going. He's made fires in worse areas of the world -- and he's also avoided them if possible. "Cold?" he asks, because if she's not, then he'd prefer to avoid putting light up and letting people know they're there. Light, scent, and heat will act as a beacon and until he knows what they're up against, he wants to maintain an unknown position.

He doesn't like the dust, either. He's grateful her wound isn't open anymore, but it means no one has been here in very long. No one in a populated place like this is bad news. Because what happened to make it this way? He runs a finger over the dust and looks at the layer, thinking that this is the dust of years -- not days or months.

[andrend]

"If nothing else a way to purify it can be found or thought up. I will take a planet of odd weather over a desert wasteland." His words are short and clipped, but over all Ren has dropped his combative bristling attitude for the moment and settled in on the knowledge that for now he has to work with these people. It's no different than being aboard the Finalizer, other than the respect or fear he would have to work to re-instill in these new strangers.

"This building is too ill-conceived to have stood weather like this for long." He agrees without directly saying Sam was right and frowns, the slightest downturn at the side of his mouth and a furrow of expressive brows.

"We should check on the others. If nothing else they can be directed to more productive uses of time than huddling in refuge from the storm."

[andrend]

"The fountain is unsanitary, but it could well be a source assuming it doesn't drain out." Useful, even if it failed to be so as a means of escape. He glances at the vegetation around them and then the buildings. The whole place screamed a lack of civilization and development the likes of which he had only seen on lesser moons and the reaches.

He started to speak again when a sudden piercing assault on his eardrums ripped through the valley, echoing off cliff-sides and buildings and drawing a flinch from Ren's composure and a stutter to all of his thought processes.

"Are we under attack?" He yelled thee query, not covering his ears but scanning the sky. Was this an outpost or training ground and he had somehow missed the signs? He saw no blaster damage or evidence of warfare or routines.

[andrend]

Ren searched for a planet he could claim without having to tell too many lies or avoid too many questions. Westeros and Winterfell were unfamiliar names, but there were many cities, moons and planets in the galaxy, and several had already claimed not to even know travel between planets was possible. Any name would have theoretically done, but-

"Birren," He responded with an unpleasant taste in his mouth. It was good enough. It would suffice. "The Inner Rim." His voice was raised as well, smooth and heavy with his words. Jon was not the only one wishing he had a weapon. Ren had relinquished his makeshift one at the urging of a stranger and he still regretted it. But the man had been right to caution riling a group of world-torn and unarmed strangers.

"This place is neither." It was a guess, but he claimed it as fact all the same. No one knew where they were. Even with his connection to the force hampered, with so many people feeling the same emotions he could sense the general emotional state of their unwilling comrades. Confusion, frustration, anger. Any other time and he might have enjoyed the feel of those emotions coursing through him. Now he was conflicted. Trapped.

"My name is Kylo Ren." He had told enough people so far, none had recognized the name or shown any indication of emotional response to it. "Master of the Knights of Ren." If anything, perhaps he could find some level of respect from these people and use it to his advantage in getting them to work with him in whatever corner of galactic trash system this planet or moon was located.

[andrend]

"If your stormtroopers were not so weak-willed, that girl never would have escaped." Ren's snapped retort was instantaneous, but he forced his emotions back under control after it, straightening his shoulders, trying to draw himself up and force a calmer expression. Fighting would get them no where and it wasn't the time for the dispute that would circle around them if they did not stop it before it really started.

"You're certain we haven't died?" If hell was real, it would only make sense that his would have the general in it. It was reassuring to hear that he had made it to the medbay, even if he bristled internally at having Hux to thank for that. It explained why he was not bleeding out when he came to in the fountain.

"Exile without trial. Slave trading. Whatever this is, it hardly seems like the work of the Resistance."

[womanofvalue]

"I'm afraid at my point in history, we're still trying to manage oceanic travel without its perils," is her mild reply, thinking that perhaps he's making assumptions about her knowledge of his world. "I come from Earth. In the Milky Way?" It's said with a touch of gentle caution -- not quite like she's speaking to a madman, but perhaps close.

[womanofvalue]

She's opening her mouth to say that if they could find a fire source, they could boil off the water, but that's impossible as she claps her hands over her ears, wincing as old memories come flooding back. Her brain is already telling her to find shelter in a station somewhere along the tube, but that doesn't seem to be an option here.

"Air raid!" she shouts, but a glance to the sky yields nothing. "It must be something! People don't set off alarms like that for no reason at all."

[rangerbecket]

East seems to put the wind at his back and Raleigh prefers that to trying to walk against it. He still stumbles a little and he wishes he was a little shorter so he didn't have quite as much area to provide drag but he makes good pace. He tries to keep the other man within his sight line, matching steps with him, and after he goes for a little while he chances trying to talk again.

"Can't tell where that siren's coming from. Think the canyon's screwing up the sound?" Raleigh isn't exactly a scientist, or anything, but he's heard enough sirens and warnings to know how they sound more shrill up close and lower from farther away; this one is just a steady blare from every direction.

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo is too quiet, too still, for maybe a beat too long, even while they are still walking.
She doesn't think anyone, anywhere, has ever asked her that question.

Made her think about in specifically that way. Whether it was a punishment of someone who didn't like her. And, while the Archangel could do this, if he got the extent of his powers back from the Medietas lock box cage, he had no reason for this. The people she slept with on the spur of the moment didn't usually chunk her into other universes.

No one there. No one in the Apocalypse. Those were fast thoughts. Followed by. But. . .in the Hell Dimension. . .

There's was an odd knit to her jaw. "No one where I came from before here, and now."

[generalginger]

"Whose idea was it to seize the girl instead of the droid?" They could play the blame game day all day, and Hux was certain he would win. Some of the mistakes, of course, were ones of which Hux was responsible, but his faults weren't as egregious as Ren's.

"We are not dead." He refused to believe that, and Hux was certain he'd remember if either of them died. "As to who is responsible for this, I cannot say. It's the work of enemy even greater than the Resistance."

[generalginger]

Hux hadn't heard of the plant, or the system of which she referred. Perhaps that should have come as no surprise, considering how many planets existed in the galaxy. One thing was certain: this Earth was not one of importance.

"Is that one of the primitive planets?"

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

[thecatinahat]

He gives a thoughtful little sound in the back of his throat. It would be easier to think that this is all some complex plan of interconnected enemies that has wound up dropping them here. "Knew someone," he says, of himself. "He didn't like us very much. Would put us here if he could."

All the English is more than he likes to say, but he needs to know if this is Max or some other threat. "He has money. Could do this, no sé por qué iban a secuestrar a ti también," he finishes, rambling the last.

[womanofvalue]

Her lips curve upwards in a wry smile that's biting back mild sarcasm, reminding herself that it's not his fault that he doesn't necessarily know about Earth. "It depends on which part of the planet you land on, I suspect," she says, thinking of some of the dry and dusty prairie states she had seen.

"What do you consider primitive?"

[generalginger]

"A number of factors fall into that classification, including ineffective command of the seas, and lacking in the capacity for extra-planetary travel and communication."

Perhaps it is a bit harsh; some planets don't have water at all, but the ones that do shouldn't have issues travelling across them. Are Earth's ships wooden? Either way, Earth sounds about as impressive as this place.

That is to say, not at all.

[womanofvalue]

"I'm afraid interplanetary travel is still in progress," is Peggy's reply, thinking of the progress they've made in the short time she's been alive. It's not enough, though, to be able to travel to the heavens. She supposes that means that she's a primitive dweller on earth, after all. "I can assure you, the seas are well commanded now."

"Though, perhaps there's still a mine here and there that make it dangerous. I doubt they've had the opportunity to pull them all out of the Atlantic."

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

[tobeclosetohim]

"Money isn't always the same as power." Even though they did look a lot like, did gease the wheels and make a lot of things possible, especially on a single planet. Just not as much across the multiverse where power had a whole other definition. With demons, and monsters, and magic, and flash-Banging into somewhere the world already lost its war, and waking up on flying carriages taking you to floating islands, and waking up drowning inside fountains in overgrown parks.

She doesn't know what he says in Spanish, and the lingering look, brows quirking upward just enough, says as much. But so does the conviction with which he says it. The conviction about this person he spoke of maybe demanding more words in a language he could speak better. "Did he have the ability to do anything like this? Make you wake up in another world, or universe, or whatever this is?"

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

[thecatinahat]

"Had bombs. Very, very big bombs," Cougar says, which means that he could be dead, for all he knows. They could all be dead or the snukes shoved you ass over head into some kind of different dimension. Maybe he never made it out of the Port of LA. Who knows?

It's a better explanation than nothing at all, so he'll take what he can get.

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

[tobeclosetohim]

That nearly makes Jo stop. The look he gets, while she actually doesn't stop walking, looking at the trees for a moment before looking back to him, is definitely more discerning. Bombs. He just said, very, very, big bombs. After that kind of leadup. "What exactly was it you used to do that a rich man with very, very big bombs is angry enough at you that you think he'd like to punt you across the multiverse?"

[tooktheblack]

Jon had decided that in order to survive, they would need to help one another to some extent. It wouldn't be anything above and beyond common courtesy, not until he learned the measure of each man and how he interacted with others, but he would show kindness and hope for it in return. It was easier to collaborate as a group for things like food and shelter than it was to strike off on their own; if it came to the latter, Jon thought he'd be all right, but he worried about others.

"Hopefully with a little exploration we'll be able to at least have more answers than we do right now." Which were, to say, precisely none. Jon had often been accused of knowing nothing but he'd never truly felt like it until now.

"Let's make toward those buildings there? Shelter, at least, is something we know can be found." They looked to be in reasonable enough shape.

[tooktheblack]

"Ser Kylo, then," Jon said, giving respect where it was due. He had not heard of the Knights of Ren before but anyone who had been knighted was owed that style and the courtesies that came along with it, especially from a bastard like Jon.

Perhaps he was the commander of the Stark armies now and perhaps he had risen very high in the Night's Watch but the dishonor and shame of his birth would still follow him no matter where he went. It was in his name, in those four letters that meant nothing and everything at once. Snow. As ubiquitous as his namesake, bastards were hardly rare occurrences. Still, being Ned Stark's bastard was something singular; the man had not so much as ever looked at another woman aside from his wife. It was a mystery to everyone who might have turned his head to lead him to father Jon.

"Jon Snow," he offered in exchange. "It's an honor."

[teen_angst_bullshit]

"Not really, but some light would be nice."

What she doesn't say is that despite her fierce teen girl independence, she can't quite suppress the frisson of fear tingling up her spine. This place is probably totally innocent. There is probably nothing to be afraid of. But it's dark and strange and the only sound is the straight-out-of-horror howl of the wind outside. She's seen too many episodes of 'Scooby Doo' to trust it.

"We should explore, right? See what we can find?" And she'd rather not do it in the dark.