sixthiterationlogs | July Arrivals

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July Arrivals

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.

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Jo nods, and holds out a hand to take his bag, even as they make their way back to the fountain. The only people who seem keen on the idea of heading back to that spot, or the place where this all started, rather than somewhere further away from it. Walking back gave her a closer look at it, too. Half-forgotten in the strange mostly-forgotten park. The two raised tiers to catch water as it flowed down.

The edge nearly against the ground as it was, and looking down into gave nothing away that she could see.

Distorted shadows. "Yeah. Got it." Beat. Without any shift to her tone, "Try not to die."

Given they had no fucking clue if this place would like this idea,
but really a fountain full of blood next wouldn't do any good in the slightest.

He crouches on top of the concrete of the fountain and stares down, cracking his neck from side to side as he closes his eyes and places himself back in the zone he slips into before he takes a shot. He evens out his breathing until it's slow and steady, inhaling deeply to store up his oxygen reserves.

Then, he slides down into the water, turning to hold on. Another three breaths and he holds his breath before turning to kick down against what feels like a current. Thirty seconds gets him halfway, struggling to kick harder than before. At a minute, he's at the bottom, but his hands slide over concrete and nothing else. No opening, no door, no handle. There's nothing here.

Cougar stays for another minute before letting the current take him back up, spitting out water when he surfaces and yanking himself out of the water as he mutters frustrated profanities under his breath. "Nothing," he spits out, dragging a hand through his sopping wet hair.

Jo watches him, kneeling on the edge once he's in. A nervous energy creeping along her muscles upward as she watches the dark shape of him refract from looking solid, especially the further down he gets. A want to move. An absolution in the distaste in holding back, being still, waiting. Ready in case. A small bounce of ramping energy showing in her the press of her still soaked boots.

Counting. Counting. Watching him. Making sure that he's still moving. Gaze shifting across all the water every few seconds, too. In case, of new people. In case, of anything else that might come out of nowhere, not liking their choice of tactic. Back the dark shape of him, under the midday shadows of overgrown trees and the constant splashing from the water coming down from the fountain sprays.

That he breaks the surface swearing, even in a language she doesn't know, is answer enough. No door. No entrance. No exit.
Jo frowns, and the single word she says first is, "Magic." Caustic at the idea, and backing up for his getting out. "Joy."

He doesn't believe in magic. Even superstitious, there's a difference between magic and religion and Cougar favours the latter more heavily. "Just a bottom," he says, standing there and watching the water begin to coalesce at his feet and make a dark pond of water, thanks to him. He balls his hands up tight and reaches for his bag, thinking that there must be an exit point somewhere else.

"Another fountain," he says. "What if this is the in door? Need the out."

Jo would be glad for it not to exist on days like this, whatever it's called. Whether it is magic, or some science greater than she can recognize, or some being powerful to drag them from their beds and lives elsewhere with a blink. There are too many options already. She's only been party and witness to a couple hundred and more in the last half a decade, or more.

"Maybe." Jo looked between him and the rest of the fountain that towered over them both. It was creepy and pissing her off for existing, being whatever someone needed it to be to get them here, but nothing they needed to be anywhere but here. "But doubtful. These things are rarely that simple and straightforward."

And most of the time they never had an exit door at all. Only when you got intensely, and minutely, lucky. The rest of the time? Well. There was a reason it'd been the better part of a decade since Jo had even seen her planet. Still, she had hope, and she almost more annoyed with herself for it.

"Better to search than stand around," is Cougar's firm opinion on the matter. He's never been able to sit in one place and let a situation like this just happen. He picks up his bag again, even if the press of a heavy strap digs cold fabric into his skin and makes him shiver, almost violently.

"You coming?" he asks, already ready to go.

The last thing he wants is to sit around here when he could be finding himself a way out. Failing that, somewhere that he could warm up from his second dive in the pool would be ideal.

The guy with the black hair already went one direction, and they already tried this, too. None of them familiar. None of them with the answer. Again. None of it touching her expression or her eyes in the slightest, when her gaze back to him from the fountain. She really didn't like unfamiliar, even if it was the keystone of her life, and following was even less a thing she did.

"The other guy, the one who came in after me, took that way," Jo said, pointing toward one of the three, equidistant, brambled and wildly overgrown, paths away from the fountain. "If we both took one of the others, we'll have all three covered. The faster we know if any of them actually goes anywhere, or whether anything useful is at the end of them."

Cougar gives her a look that says that the thought of splitting up and going alone is as smart as coating yourself in honey and heading out to bear country. He shakes his head firmly. "Not alone," he says. "Backup." Because if something happens or does wrong or, dios forbid, there is someone here to attack them, he wants someone on his side.

"Together."

Jo looked back, a wrinkle to her brow. Momentarily dangerous and wary.
At the words as much as any of her ideas about why it might have been said.

She didn't have time to explain that no matter what he saw when he looked at her, small, slender and soaking wet, she'd been on her own, hunting and killing monsters, of every shape and size and deadliness, alone, for most of the better part of half a decade now. On planets where the Apocalypse had won, that had gone as bad and broken as bad and broken could be, and even demons in a hell dimension. Not that it was of secret her kind gave up, even if they had the time for it.

But he doesn't really look like he's judging her.

At least in so much as she can tell anything about a dude she met ten minutes ago.

"Fine." There's a frown, but she still says it. "Together." Then, almost a little patronizing. "Want to choose which path, too?"

He shakes his head to say that he doesn't need to pick the path, only that he wants to make sure whatever path they go down isn't going to be one that leads to them being injured or even worse. Going it alone is the kind of thing that gets you in trouble and Cougar ought to know, given his history.

He just waits, patiently, for whatever road they're going to take. He's already trying to think of weapons he can find, but for now, hand to hand will have to do in a bad situation. Gesturing forward, he waits for her to take the lead.

The push back doesn't happen, and maybe he reminds her a little of someone. Or specifically a type of someones. The kind that hasn't been around for a good long while. Close enough, that for a second, it's too close, too oldly-new again, and she looks away from him toward the paths. Her face not changing the slightest. She has no time for those kinds of thoughts.

"That one." She says, with a chin tip. Her voice is less sharp, like maybe she realizes her last question was idiotic, without reason quite yet, but she's so used to her first few weeks, maybe even months in one of these places. With people who don't know her. People who had to be slapped upside the head until they stop trying. She heads off toward that path, expecting the man who could jump into the fountain and stay down that long, can figure out that well enough.

A few seconds in, once he's at her side. "You got a name?" So she can stop referring to him as that guy in her head.

"Cougar," he introduces himself, a calm and steady aura radiating in his gait, his words, and his general bearing. No one here needs to know his real name. He falls into casual step behind her, used to bringing up the rear where he can make the long range kind of shots that the team so often needs. He makes sure that he stays within her peripheral vision, though, not wanting her to get jumpy and attack.

"You?"

"Jo." No hesitation. Nothing to it really. Even though it's a strange though. After thinking about how no one knows her, and how much she has to prove herself, what comes next is what came last. How strange it is, to have to tell someone her name. The smallest thing. When not even an hour ago, she owned a bar with her family name that everyone was starting to know where.

That everyone associated with Jo Harvelle, even if it was just generally to ask if Jo was the small, angry, woman they'd just met.

"It's all overgrown," Jo said, even if silence was better. Surprise, was better. Sneaking up, was better. So was having any kind of weapon. Maybe if she was lucky the guy next to her knew how to fight, and not just how to swim and use broken English. She didn't ask or assume of people they were willing to be walking weapons. She just didn't want to end up worrying about protecting him either. "Old looking."

Edited 2016-07-09 18:31 (UTC)

Cougar's seen ghost towns before, but none of them ever looked so old before. This looks like if he went inside, he wouldn't find AKs and comm equipment that could be used to try and flag someone over the lines. It sets a chill down his back as he wonders what could have happened. "Do you have enemies that could do this to you?" he asks, wondering if maybe this is some awful prison.

Or, maybe, he's finally made it to the afterlife and he doesn't get hell after all. Just purgatory.

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."

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.

"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?"

"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.

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?"

Edited 2016-07-12 19:56 (UTC)

"Sold him wrong type of cookies," is Cougar's deadpan response, because telling her that a very bad man framed his team and killed twenty-five children in their names is not the kind of opening conversation that he wants to have with anyone. He barely likes to relive it with his team, let alone other people.

He eyes her, for a very long time. "Could you be dead?"

Oddly enough? It's those first few words that makes a muscle in Jo's cheek flutter, before her mouth curves into a smile. She appreciates the humor of the lie. It's the kind of thing a hunter would say, had said a million times. A deflection made of an innocent absolutely useless comparison to nothing of the sort from the question.

Maybe that's what makes it easier to laugh, even at the buildings coming closer to them. It's a dry laugh. Amused without being amused at all. Rye and dry and hilarious. Clipped razor sharp right at the edge, like that isn't even a surprise. Nor, to her, is the way she says, "No."

Clipped razor sharp at its edge, too. Over tired, and over positive. "But there are a lot of people who think I am."
And by a lot of, she meant every single other person she'd ever met from beyond her time from her world.

He furrows his brow, because it means that his only going theory is gone. He'd been thinking this as a purgatory, a place with no bodies because this is not their turn to repent -- it's his. But if she's not dead, then how can it be that? "Then what is all this?" he asks.

"Why no other people? Why the abandon?"

She isn't dead. She never died at twenty-four. She hasn't even been twenty-four for years now.
It's a thought process with claws that digs itself into the back of her mind, even as she shoves it to the side.

"I don't know." There's a hover of the whisper yet in her thoughts, but she's not positive she believes it, and she doesn't have any reasons for lying and giving this guy any hope that's going to happen anytime soon. Not if she's never figured it out before, except for the one of them she chose herself. Which made it null and void.

"But for now," because Jo refused to admit that as any point of defeat. Not in the last universe, or the one before it, or the one before that, and she did not plan to start it with this one, "--we find out what is or isn't actually here. Whether there's anything dangerous, or people hiding somewhere."

It itches at him badly. Cougar hates not knowing his situation because he's a sniper and he's used to being able to take everything around him and turn it into something useful. Right now, it feels like he can't do that. "Yes," he agrees with a firm nod of his head. He knows if anyone else is here, they won't be happy when the two of them come across them.

"Then, shelter."

Having taken what seemed like it might be a smart path at the beginning, it devolved into what looked like a small old house, and another building not far from it, across what looked like a nor very kempt road, more like a business. Solid and boxy. The closer they walked though, the more others appeared behind it. A row of odd, not exactly cookie cutter houses, that looked....old was the only word that seemed to fit.

"Well. It looks like you've got shelters." They looked old and weary, these odd places.

Jo was frowning slightly. "It's like something out of Children of the Corn."

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

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Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle