sixthiterationlogs | (no subject)

WHO: Cougar Alvarez
WHERE: Bungalow #22
WHEN: July 2nd - Day After Arrival
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: n/a
STATUS: Closed

It takes Cougar two tries down the well before he gives up. The sirens and the windstorm force him to move on and make nice in the inn, but when things clear up and the sun rises on another day, Cougar slings his pack over his shoulder and heads out to explore the rest of the strange settlement they seem to be in the middle of.

It's quiet.

Normally, Cougar likes the quiet. He's a taciturn man himself, preferring signals and gestures over words, but this is an eerie kind of quiet that he doesn't like. The homes are empty and that means something drove everyone out, but for Cougar's life, he can't figure out where they went. He tries to go to the edge of the cliffs, but he can't climb the sheer face. Returning back to the village, he finds a dark green bungalow near a forked path and knows that if he wants to get a better view, he needs to be in a sniper's nest.

More than that, he's going to need to set up base. Throwing his bag to the roof, he grabs for the porch and starts to lever himself up, using the windows and the shingles of the roof to scuttle his way along until he's managed to free-run himself up to the apex of the roof. He tugs his bag along with him (stuffed with a few berries he'd found on his exploration) and settles down at the top. High above everything, he feels at home even in this strange place.

He sits, cross-legged, and chews on some of the berries as he stares at the streets that wind below him. He'd prefer to be much, much higher, but this will do for now as he stakes his claim on this house as a base and keeps an eye on all the vantage points around.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Tres años más o menos," Raleigh says, grinning a little. "It was decent enough time, even though I was too busy trying to save the world to really go and enjoy the sights or anything like that."

"So, any time you want to speak Spanish, I'm good. I know Japanese too. That one is a little harder to pick up, though."

"No Japanese," Cougar says, gesturing to himself. In a pinch, he thinks that one of the other Losers might have mustered something up, but he'd have been lost. Pashto? He can do. Russian, he can even get the basics, but Japanese is Greek. So to speak. "What is Peru like, in your world?"

He wonders if it is the giant lizards or the robots that have laid claim to the country. He also wonders how he can suggest that either of them go after Max, if he's sitting in the same universe, somehow.

"Right now, bit of a mess. Kaiju hit Lima hard," Raleigh admits. "Gorgeous place though and the people don't give a shit about the kaiju destroying things. They just keep rebuilding."

In the US, most of the coastal cities have been abandoned. Not so in South America and the Far East - there's a lot more rebuilding in defiance of kaiju attacks, daring them to come back and take their land.

Last time he had seen Lima had been a flyover to get to the inner countries where people needed things blown up and people shot. Cougar's very good at the shooting people part, but it turns out he's not so good with the part where he's stuck in a place because a fountain spat him out.

He wrinkles his nose with distaste, but maybe the rebuilding is the sort of hope they need here. "Why do you think we're here?" he asks, because it's the question he's not asking. Why not ask now?

"No idea. I know that it's pulled us all from different places and most of us had a damned good reason we were in those places," Raleigh says. "I sure didn't want to leave my post to come here and I'm pretty sure you didn't want to either."

It didn't make sense. They were all from different walks of life, different countries, different versions of the world. How had they come here? How had they all been brought together? Was it calculated or was it by chance?

Cougar raises his brow as he thinks of LA and what happened there. No, he didn't want to leave, but he's also not crying about the fact that he's been pulled away from the mission. He wants to get Max and the CIA as much as anyone else, but after Roque...

Well, he needs a little time after Roque.

"Being here is not the worst," he admits. "It's not having my weapon." He doesn't want anything, he wants his rifle.

"It's feeling helpless," Raleigh agrees. "I don't have any way to defend myself except my own two hands. I'm not bad in a fist fight, no, but I really don't want to have to put that to the test."

Not when he's used to having much more powerful armament to back up his fight.

"If you want practice, I could use some." Cougar shrugs, because it's not like he wants to walk around with a black eye, but the truth is that he could use the practice more than anything, being so used to long range eliminations as he is. "Better than sitting here, wondering what will come next." Maybe the wind is only the beginning.

Maybe next, it's something worse.

"I could always use the practice," Raleigh says. He'll need it if he ever gets back home and he doesn't want to get soft just because he took an involuntary detour.

"You name the time and place and I'll be there."

"Come around this same bungalow," Cougar decides without thinking it over (most of his decisions and those of the Losers tend to happen on the fly, which is something he doesn't spend much time thinking about). "Two days from now. Then, you and I, we fight." It will be good to get the energy out, if nothing else.