sixthiterationlogs | July Arrivals

Entry tags:

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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"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."

He blinks, blankly, at her reference. He knows mainly Spanish books that he reads in his spare time and even those aren't very popular because they're not English and they're not modern. He doesn't like the houses either, though, and finds them spooky in the way they loom above them, uniform and neat.

"Don't like this," he says gravely, annoyed with being taken.

Jo stands there looking at the for a moment, and something twitches in her cheek the same second as it stabs her chest. The memory flitting in, cold and warm all at once, of breaking into a handful of Mundus houses the first day on Medietas. Followed by the cold, hard fact of Abby's face, and how Abby was gone. Another door closed, hard and fast, with no warning.

It makes her keep her mouth mostly flat, as she's looking between the houses.

"You don't strike me as someone who be entirely against a little B&E."
Not after the pool, and not given the way he carried himself.

Not after being someone whom someone with bombs chased.

He raises his brow at the presumption and shrugs. B&E when necessary means he gets a roof over his head. It also means that the job gets done and that no one takes him by surprise. "Yes." It's all he says, all that Cougar offers. He needs Pooch or Jensen here to talk for him, even Clay to interpret the silences. As it is, he can only let the silences draw out and hope she can find meaning in his tells.

"So?"

Jo doesn't mind. Jo's been around all sorts of men her whole life. Hundreds. Thousands. She learned how to talk to, or at least translate well enough, all of them. From well to just enough to know what they needed and stay out of their space. He'll be slotted at some point, but not this one. Not this soon. He's still new. This is all still too new. Everyone still dripping wet, and the dust on everything thick and noxious.

In fact, all it earns him is a smooth kind of smile, tossed over her shoulders. This kind of thing she can do, has done, has no problem pushing in to. No matter what it earns them, even if it's just the same as the Medietas Cookie Cutter Houses, it's informing on the situation and Jo would take anything.

"So," Jo repeats, as she starts headed for the houses. "Let's see if anyone's home, and if they aren't, if they left anything useful, to us getting out of here as soon as possible, or us being prepared for whatever the hell they want to throw at us next, behind."

He nods his head, thinking that if he had his kits from home, he could find something that would let them sneak into the homes. He doesn't mean pushing his way in, but it's not his style. Cougar prefers sly and quiet, moving in and out without being seen.

Loud? Well, it can work, but it's not him. He gestures towards the first row of houses. "Lady's choice," he says with a tip of a hat that isn't there.

Jo would love anything that she'd normally have on her, and everything her backpack had carried across four worlds. She'd even go for a full new stock from what had been the Roadhouse's filled coffers out of Aja's hands and bankbook. All of it gone entirely annoys the hell out of her. Salt rubbing into the wound, over and over and over, each new time she remembers and her tense just enough without no one to punch for it.

Though she'd still take a gun, and or, especially, her father's knife, over a lockpick kit even now.

She heads for the first house. No lights on in any windows she can spot. A thick dust settled on the stairs, and the window ledges, the porch and the door. That makes her give Cougar an odd glance, but even then, she still raises her hand and knocks first. Just. In case. The lack of a gun made it harder to have anything defensible if it was just someone who didn't give a damn about their place hiding inside it versus it just being this abandoned.

He raises a brow when she knocks at the door, because politeness isn't something that being in the Losers teaches you. It's fast in, quick out, and don't get shot in the process. He doesn't hesitate as he walks up the stairs and kicks the door open without damaging the lock too much (at least, nothing that a little repair can't help). Only when he's inside does he look back and see that it hadn't been locked at all. "Oops," is his deadpanned reply, seeing as it's not like he feels entirely guilty for when it's not like anyone seems to live here. At least, not given that level of dust.

He covers his mouth with his arm as he heads inside, trying not to inhale too much of it. "No one here," is his opinion, because if they are, they're messier than even Jensen.

Jo can't help it. The snort or the smirk that follows it, shaking her head. "Or, sure. There's that option."

She doesn't even sound like she's annoyed or scolding. She's far more of the class and kind who like to get in and out without being seen, heard, or leaving the hint to be questioned later. But that's what hunters do. They don't mind fucking with shit, or talking you out of your money, across a table or through a card, or taking things that aren't rightfully theirs. But usually without any clues that might lead back.

The oops just makes her shake her head more. Amused, even by way of that being creepy, in and of itself.

"It's doesn't look like they've been here for a long time." Not with how much dust was kicked up just by him kicking in that door. The arc it made on the dust on the floor, and -- "Just look at this stuff." It looks old. Like old-old. Older than anything she'd had be far. Even the Apocalypse had been rundown after current. The furniture and everything. It was so much older than anything she could remember seeing outside of bits of old movies.

The question is, did people live here before and made an actual life here or were they people like him and Jo. Did they explore the town, find these houses, and find the dust of yet another group of people? Are they just doomed to repeat some awful cycle? Cougar tries to ignore the invasive thoughts as he starts to work at finding anything that might give them a hint. (That, or he'll happily welcome a weapon)

He opens the drawers in the kitchen, tearing through the possessions, but there's nothing personal here. No names, no pictures, no indication that anyone has actually lived here.

"Do you think these were built and left to dust?"

Jo ran a finger through the dust coating the top of living room chair, as she kept walking in more. Through a doorway to a dinning room, that looked just as aged, and just as dusty. Place settings, old and someone somewhere must have thought nice, but they just look archaic and so out of place. Or no. In place. Everything here looks in place with itself. Just so out of place with everything she's ever seen on any of the places.

It made more sense to be in the Hell Dimension with nothing, at this point, than in a room that seemed decades or a century old.

She passed through there, the awkward, heavy boots, scuffing up dust bunnies, to the kitchen when he's made it. "It's fucking creepy to think about someone building this whole town ages ago just to let it sit here, without anyone to live in it." Beat. "But if there were people, where are they now? It doesn't even look like it's been touched. Like people were only just here at some point."

Which just seems even stranger. Nothing personal, but nothing modern. But modern had any number of meanings.
Which is where her next words come from, "Maybe it's not that old. Maybe we're somewhere in the past?"

Cougar raises his brow when she says that they could be in the past. He's taken off his scrubs top to squeeze out some of the water and try to accelerate the drying process as they wander, but he has to shoot a glare over his shoulder at her. "Don't be crazy," is his rough reprimand.

And at the same time, is there anything sane about the fact that he can't get back through a fountain portal to his team?

He shakes his head, trying to dismiss the idea that he's losing his mind. "Even if we're in the past, why so dusty?" he demands.

The first words get an exceedingly well-worn in dart and half-roll of her eyes. It's only been minutes since she arrived and she's not sure she even wants to have that conversation. Not that Cougar's given her any reason to discount him, but it's been only minutes since arriving in this place. But crazy isn't something she is. Not when she's done that too many times.

The past. The future. Other planets. Other universes. Other beings.
So much other it had it's own boxes and dictionaries.

It helps that she gets it, when his next question actually incorporates her idea, like it's not insane. She doesn't want to be anyone's dart board. But she gets it. Or because she gets it. It is insane. A lot of the time. A lot to wrap your head around, and even years later, she's right fucking here today, still not at the end of that road, that never stops bumping, twisting, dropping her down, out, upside down like a rollercoaster without warning.

It's a why she really doesn't have an answer for, tossing back instead. "How long does it even take to get this much dust?"

"Years," is all Cougar says, because he's been to enough ghost towns and deserted villages to know the difference between weeks, months, and years worth of desertion. He shakes his head when he comes back from the last room, not finding anyone or any hint that anyone's been here recently.

It's not a good sign. "What next? Another house?"

"Can't hurt. Double check that maybe this one and the next one are the same?" Jo was headed back for the door, because it was good as this being an empty, forgotten place. Which was strange. Once upon a time, nearly a decade ago, she would have assumed something like this was gone and forgotten because it was haunted. Ghosts. Monsters. But that's not here either.

Nothing prickling at the back of her neck and warm in her palms.
No single sensor in the light sigils on her shoulders, check and back trembled slightly.

Headed down the stairs, she went back to it. "How many years? Five? Ten? Half a century?"

He gives a nod of his head, because more information in this case can't hurt. More information in general can't hurt, even if Cougar can't shake the feeling that he's doing recon without an actual purpose.

"No," he says, dragging a finger over the table and eyeing it. "Two possibilities," he says. "Not many years and there were people." Because dust comes from dead skin cells and that means if there are people, then this type of dust layer doesn't mean much. "No people? Could be decades," he agrees.

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July Arrivals

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle

Re: Arrival: Jo Harvelle