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

[womanofvalue]

It's like she's back in the New York office. Her hands fall to her hips out of habit, but she refrains from snapping in his face or doing something brash. She's had to learn the importance of patience and waiting, allowing people to think they have the upper hand (or smarts, in this case) while she simply continues on beneath the grid. "It depends on how quickly we think we can find an exit," she says. "Otherwise, fresh water is going to be a problem if we don't find any."

[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.

[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."

[andrend]

The siren is less familiar an alert to Ren, but he can guess at the reasons such an alert would be triggered. Whatever the reason, it is rarely good news when an alarm goes off.

He reaches again for the saber hilt no longer at his waist and growls under his breath in frustration. His eyes follow hers to the sky, but there are no ships or even signs of a ship or fight in the sky.

He gestures forward, partially deafened by the sound.

"We need to find an open building." Or break into one. Even if the siren was not for something they could duck into safety from, walls would at least provide some buffering against the sound.

[womanofvalue]

Peggy tries to keep one hand over her ear in order to block out the sounds, trying to fight the onslaught of memories that want to accost her. They're there at the edges, but she refuses to let them overwhelm her, especially as she squints and seeks out where the path leads.

"There," she shouts. "There, I think I see something, like a door of a building," she says, trying to gaze through the trees.

[andrend]

Ren shoves his way through the brush and branches in the direction of her gaze. He grits his teeth in irritation at the sound but pushes onward regardless, heading for the building she had spotted. Unlike Peggy, Ren has no memories to accost him, only frustration and irritation with their situation and an undercurrent of curiosity.

He doesn't even bother trying to figure out what the building is. They can figure that out later. What he didn't expect is the sudden gusting wind that hits the moment they escape the cover of the bushes. Winds fast enough to knock Ren back a couple steps right off the bat.

He plants his feet, stubbornly trying to fight the forces of nature for a moment before grabbing the nearest sturdy looking object and gripping tightly.

"That answers one question." And creates about 20 more, the siren fighting the growing sound of the wind for worst assault on his ears. It makes perfect sense to Ren that the wind could be cause for a siren. Plenty of planets have severe weather their populations get warnings for. Sand and Snow storms in particular come to mind.

Uncharacteristically, Ren actually checks to see how Peggy is fairing against the increasingly violent wind. It isn't making visibility easy, throwing his hair into his eyes in a series of stinging whips.

[womanofvalue]

Peggy winces as soon as the gale force winds descend on them, making the trip that much harder. She'd like to think that the sirens are particularly for this and not some other disaster on its way, but it still doesn't bode well when she has to struggle through. She keeps working her way, finding that the shoes she's been equipped with have better traction than her typical ones, though the pack on her back isn't helping.

"Maybe we should go with the wind!" she suggests.

[andrend]

She has a point. With the strength of the sudden gales, it hardly made sense to keep trying to fight the direction the wind is pushing them. Logically, Ren is sure the wind is a natural force that isn't actually actively trying to direct them. But the idea of being forced along by anything, nature included, doesn't sit well.

He digs his heels in and grabs her arm without asking. She likely doesn't need the help, but it would be easy to find themselves thrown to the ground with the right gust from the wrong angle.

"Keep your head down." He has no interest in being blinded by the storm, and he continues to dig in his heels even while moving with the wind, his head ducked down with only brief glances toward the buildings around them to get his bearing.

[womanofvalue]

Peggy lets out a sharp cry when he pulls on her arm without her needing any help or asking for it, but this sudden windstorm doesn't exactly leave much room for bickering. She shoots him a sharp glare, but does as he says as she moves along with the push of the wind.

"I'm hardly a ragdoll!" she snaps at him. "I won't simply float away if you let go!"

[andrend]

Ren nearly disregards her protest entirely. He didn't expect her to float away, but he did intend to try and get her to the same destination. Though with the direction and force of the wind it seems their options were limited to the building at their front.

He lets go of her shortly after her protest just to have his hands free. Getting a door open against the winds at their back was either going to take a fair amount of strength or end in doors broken inward. The ones on the building don't look the type to slide to the sides or up.

Instead of focusing on pulling her, he tries to focus on what little force has been left to him and tugs at the doors before they even reach them, causing them to rattle and shake outward instead of inward as the wind should move them.

"Good. I need more than a ragdoll if we intend to get into the building." The smarter solution would be to go around the back and try for another door or take shelter on the lee side, but it's too hard to predict whether the wind will remain consistent. It could grow stronger or change direction and then they would be deeper into the trouble of it.

[womanofvalue]

She manages to get there just slightly behind him, an unavoidable thing given how long his legs are compared to hers. When she arrives with him, she presses her shoulder to the building as if it will somehow help to ground her, though she's not entirely sure that she'll ever be that steady.

"Here," she says, trying to get a hold of one of the handles. "On three? We need to get inside," she says, though she knows that he already knows this. It's stating the obvious, quite clearly, but right now, she'll take the obvious as her attention is on getting out of this awful wind.

[andrend]

He nods his agreement, bracing one arm on the side of the door fram and the other on a handle. With a little extra force and their efforts the should be able to get the doors open. And if they could manage that he could hold them open, at least long enough for them to get inside the building.

Ren reaches for every bit of the force he can manage to tug at and manages a somewhat strained countdown.

"One. Two-" He tightens his grip on the handles with the force, breathing steadily out and ignoring the buffeting wind around them. "Three." And as strong a pull as possible, given the circumstances.

[womanofvalue]

Peggy does her best to help and she'd like to think that between them, they've put enough effort in to truly get it moving. She lets out a sharp sound when the door seems to give all of a sudden, like it buckles, and allows them the opportunity to hurry inside. "Quick," she shouts, reaching out this time to grab at his hand.

"In here," she coaxes, before something else can befall them.