sixthiterationlogs | let the choir sing;

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let the choir sing;

WHO: Karen Kasumi
WHERE: Arrival at the fountain, elsewhere around the village!
WHEN: September 25th
OPEN TO: Bucky Barnes, All
WARNINGS: N/A
STATUS: Open

ARRIVAL (Closed to Bucky)
Karen is used to the feel of concrete on her back. Rough stone, digging into her skin? It's been too soon that she's been laid out like this, although she's surprisingly not sore or even bleeding, once she sits up and checks her surroundings out. In fact, she's not in Tokyo at all, if all those trees so far above her are any indication, never mind the walls that stretch out far above her. She's not wearing her normal clothes, either, and she clucks her tongue a little in disapproval; she's not into the cotton scrubs look, preferring a more tailored silhouette. She even glances at the backpack, but it's cursory and quickly forgotten (although she doesn't remove it).

The sun is high in the sky, and Karen shades her eyes against it. She can already tell she's not going to be able to make that jump, a fact that's got her unsettled, considering she'd been able to leap skyscrapers in Shinjuku with little to no issue just a few hours ago. There's no ladder or stairs that she can see, either, and there presents the problem. There's no way out. She unshoulders the backpack, settles down on the ground and tries to see if she can find anything in it but there's nothing helpful (except the hat, which Karen puts on to help shade herself from the sun). No rope, no way to contact anyone, not even a pager, which Karen finds odd.

She's still contemplating when she hears movement from above, zipping up her backpack. Karen stands, and takes a few steps back so she can try to see the edge of the wall, and shouts up.

"Hello? Is there someone up there?"

INN (OTA)

Karen prefers the hustle and bustle of the inn. It reminds her of the city she calls home, and even the soapland she used to work at, even if the noises aren't really the same. It's why she's chosen to stay at the inn, even with the multitude of houses that are could use a resident. She's not good at manual labor (even though she's willing to try), either. The inn, at least, affords her a room and a bed and that's all she needs to survive.

She's crouched in front of the fireplace, eyes narrowed just a little, concentrating on the slumbering coals. This, too, is more difficult than it should be, and Karen's idly been wondering if it's because she's gone from Tokyo and the End of the World. There are no barriers, here, and so maybe now that they're not needed, her powers are fading. She'd always thought she'd feel relieved if that were to ever happen; when she was a child it was her one wish. But now that she's used them to protect and help the people she cares about, she's not so sure.

When the fire flares up, Karen relaxes a bit and smiles, calling a small flame from it to her palm. She stands up and lets it dance around her fingers before she releases it, and lets out a small sigh of relief. This, she can still do, thank God.

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Ravi has been out trying his best to identify herbs, which had led to a disappointing lack of much useful contribution. So after that, he'd gone to dig some more and help in the garden, but now he's hungry and thirsty and knows that the inn is the best place to sate both those needs.

What he doesn't expect is to walk in on a pyromaniac who's apparently capable of creating her own little fires in her palm. Mouth open, Ravi gives her a wary look, and wonders how wide a berth he ought to give her. "Are you the new grill?" he asks, trying to diffuse his discomfort with a joke.

So either it's going to work or he's about to become very roasty.

Pyromaniac is a strong word - or at least that's what Karen would say if he were to say that. She doesn't hear him come in, doesn't even realize he's there until he says something, and she opens her eyes with a start, raising her hand up to cover her mouth in her surprise.

"Oh! I didn't hear you come in."

Karen smiles, just a little teasing, and winks at him, moving away from the now roaring fire in the fireplace, glancing to it when she comes to stand in front of him.

"The new grill? I'm a little better at roasting, I think, than grilling." She turns back to him, and grins.

"But for you, I can do whatever you like."

He opens his mouth to reply, but then he feels like that's a lot of flirting that he hadn't been prepared to deal with, and when in the presence of a beautiful lady, he hardly wants to disappoint. It takes Ravi a few seconds, but then his brain stops clicking through his thoughts and he turns on a winsome smile (or at least, his best version of one). "I'd settle for a light show," he quips. "Fireworks, shiny lights, dancing fire," he teases.

He's not entirely joking, though, because her little work with the fireplace had been quite impressive and Ravi is nothing if not intensely interested in things he doesn't understand.

"I can do that," she says with a smile, and holds up her hand. She can't do massive displays anymore — she's already certain of that even as she creates little globes of fire to dance around her hand in a spiral pattern.

"Is this alright? Since arriving here, I haven't been able to perform to my usual standards."

Ravi tips his head to the side and his eyes are awash with how cool that is, but he's sort of trying to play it cool because how pathetic is it to meet a hot girl who can do fireworks in the palm of her hand and get too excited. That's something you do after a few months working together, as Liv can attest to.

"Performance issues?" he quips, because apparently his smart mouth doesn't require a warming up period. "It happens to everyone," he assures with a winsome smirk.

Riza had chosen the inn for similar reasons and, much as she'd done in Manhattan, she made a point of trying to keep tabs on who was staying under the shared roof. There had been hundreds of people trapped in Manhattan, so it was just easier to keep track of members of the Strand. Here, there weren't so many, so Riza could feasibly try to keep tabs on everyone in the village. However, at the end of the day, it seemed easier to focus on a small group.

She hadn't been the social type -- not back home in Amestris nor in Manhattan -- but here she didn't have the same people to fall back on to be social for her. In Amestris she had stood behind Roy as he gathered his pieces and made his alliances. When she'd been taken to Manhattan, her attention had quickly shifted and latched on to Harry and offering to protect him and the people he cared about. She hadn't made such a claim here yet, so for once Riza was having to rely on her own ability to connect with others. It's with this in mind that she means to approach the recent addition to the inn.

Riza walks in to the inn with small plate of left overs. The woman had arrived after the shared meal time so there wasn't much left but scraps -- but it would make for a nice conversation starter. Riza came through from the kitchen and was about to speak when she noticed the dancing flames. Briefly, and only very briefly, does she think of Roy. However, she knows Roy would never have used flames like that. She also thinks of Harry, but he lacked precise control. Harry was more about big, unstoppable forces of nature magic -- not flames dancing and being released like a breath of air.

It's the woman, she realizes, the new woman can wield fire. There hadn't been a lot of people around that had displayed open feats of power like that before. It instantly made Riza curious about where this woman might be from.

Riza sets the plate on the table and clears her throat, "I brought you something to eat. I'm Riza Hawkeye, I heard we had a new person staying in the inn and thought you might be hungry."

Karen doesn't have the power (that she can feel, anyway) to do much more than light the fireplace or make the flames dance around her. It's a display she hasn't done in literal years, more out of the necessity to hide it (for whatever reason) than anything. People in Tokyo just simply didn't have the ability to create fire from nothing, and Karen's already familiar with the reactions of people who don't understand her power.

The clink of dishes and the sound of someone speaking catches her attention, and Karen turns around, eyes wide in curiosity before her expression settles into a kind smile.

"Thank you, Riza," she says, moving to settle into the chair. "I'm Karen. Karen Kasumi. Are you from here?"

"As much as anyone can be," Riza said. She then realized that might be misleading so she added, "I came through the fountain like everyone else. I've been staying in the Inn though." As far as she knew, there was no one who was a native here and seeing as the other woman was new she might not know that.

"But welcome to the inn, Karen." Riza takes a seat as well, "The food isn't much...but it's what we have to live on here."

Now that's interesting, and it gives Karen pause. She lifts a finger to her chin in quiet contemplation, head tilted to the side as she thinks. Everyone had come through the fountain? A little strange, but likely something the people here had already thought.

"Thank you," she says, dropping her hand to the table and pulling the plate a little closer.

"It may not be much, but it looks delicious."

Riza shrugs off the thanks with a slight lift of her shoulder. It didn't seem necessary. "It's not bad. We have a few people who actually know what they are doing in the kitchen. I stick to clean up myself, I've never been big on cooking," Riza says conversationally. She knows Kate does most of the work, but Riza has been here long enough to also know that Kate has a lot of help back there.

"You should know they try to have a regular meal for everyone to get together here. It's a good way to meet people. We may be in a bad situation, but that makes those meals even more important."

Bucky has almost made it into a routine now. At first he started to head to the fountain to check if Steve or one of the Howling Commandos had come through. After days turned to weeks, it's juse something he does now.

He is on one of his walks around the village when he hears the yelling. Without the water in the fountain it makes for a decent echo. It doesn't hesitant to move to the edge of the stone and peer down.

"You alright?" He calls down to her. He wonders for a moment when or if the water will ever return. He hopes so for everyones sake. It just made crawling out of there so much easier when all one had to do was push and swim.

"Oh!" She exclaims when she hears him, and clears her throat to shout a little louder, waving a hand.

"I think I am, yes, although I seem to be stuck down here with no way out. Do you have a ladder?"

The fact that it's been pouring down rain for two days straight might seem like a reason to stay indoors, but with more and more new faces every day, they can't afford to start eating into their stores just because it's a little wet out. Come rain or shine, Frank is out hunting with Aretha.

It's twilight, or what counts for it under the heavy gloom of rain clouds, and they're coming back toward the village with a few rabbits in tow, when a long creak from the woods behind them sounds through the even deluge. Quiet at first, it swiftly gains volume and momentum before erupting in a sharp crack -- that tumbles into another, and another and another down the hillside, a veritable canopy of young trees buckling like toddlers on an ice rink.

A sharp bark and a whu-whumf marks Frank's impact with one of the few trees left standing -- and his ribs' introduction to one of the many trees not. The dog scrambles out of the path, mud up to her chest, but Frank just grunts, teeth grit against the slosh of earth as the mud spreads out up to his waist and sends the wood grinding into his back. Ow.

And quick as it came, the earth settles to a stop again, pinning man and trees where they stand.

The silence lasts barely a beat, before the dog starts howling her little head off.

"For crying out loud," Frank curses under his breath, flicking a hand to shoo her. "Shut it-- stay." He is just trapped between some trees, ok dog, it's nothing to worry about.

Karen isn't a fan of the rain, not least of which because of her innate nature as a fire master, but also because the humidity does terrible things to her hair. She's not a fan of the gloomy days, the dank and dreary colors of the outside world. Back home, it's because everything is already covered with a palpable gloom. Here, it's because she's focused on the gloom itself. So she's spent most of the day in her room at the inn, puttering around and spot cleaning the area.

When dusk falls, she's getting ready for bed; there's no candles that she's been able to find to see by, and anyway, she doesn't have much to do to pass the time. She's reaching for her sheets to turn them down when she hears the crack. Karen's head snaps up towards the window where the rain is still coming down, the litany of repeated pops sounding like gunfire (although she knows that's impossible here, now). It isn't until the dog starts baying that she actually moves, though, running out of the inn in nothing more than her underwear and her black scrubs top into the deluge, one hand raised to attempt to give her eyes some shelter from the downpour.

It takes her a few minutes to find them both, soaked to the skin by the time she does, hair plastered to her forehead and her shirt stuck to her in uncomfortable ways. Her initial reaction is to ask them if they're alright, but the answer is obvious, so she refrains. Instead, Karen marches forward, a tentative step into the mud that, even at it's base, is already at her ankles. She reaches down, offers her palm to Athena first.

"It's alright, little one, I'm here to help."

The dog shoves her cold nose gratefully into the offered hand, shaking as much from adrenaline as the rain streaming off her fur. Despite Frank's shooing, she is actually smart enough not to go into the mud past her chest, but it's a near thing, and her warbling whine expresses her unhappiness with the situation.

"Just keep her there, alright, you don't gotta--," Frank starts as soon as he catches sight of the woman stepping into the mud, like he's just taking a breather out here and not securely wedged between a tree trunk and some branches.

As if to prove that's the case, he braces a forearm against the tree trunk and pushes his back toward the branch -- which not only fails to move the branch more than a few measly inches, it also produces a noise not unlike a tire getting half the air let out of it all at once, which is apparently the sound a stubborn Marine makes when the pointy end of a tree branch meets a probably busted rib.

Anyway. This is fine.

"Think it's just the angle," he manages, of the offending tree branch, which is in fact not that thick in the segment that's pinning him, it just happens to be stuck close enough to head-on that his squirming is sending it further into him instead of away. If somebody else could get a grip on it, though...

Karen rubs her thumb over Athena's brow before turning to her owner, one hand on her hip. She's judging him, a little, for his stubborness. He's clearly stuck, clearly in need of help, and he's refusing— he reminds her of someone back home. It took a lot of trauma to pull Kamui out of his desire to remain alone and not ask for help. She didn't really have time to hope that would happen here, either.

"I think it's the fact you're stuck between a branch and a hard place," she quips, giving Athena one more gentle pat before taking the few steps to get to Frank. She crouches, examines the branch, and takes hold of it.

"Alright. Stop squirming, and push. I'll help you lift."

Frank just grunts at her quip, but if you're listening closely it's somewhere between begrudging acknowledgement and approval, rather than the opposite. He may be stubborn as a mule, but he can apparently respect being disagreed with — especially when he's egregiously wrong.

Still, his jaw tightens a tick as she steps further into the mud, like he's going to argue more, but manages not to. He may not like it, but she moves like she can handle herself all right, and she'd know better than him what she's capable of. When she gets a good hold on the branch, he nods. "If you say so."

This time, there's a long creak and a snap as a few of the smaller branches give way under their combined effort. With another low, growly grunt from Frank, the sharp end that'd be digging into him lifts just far enough to tear through shirt instead of skin. Frank scrapes his way out from underneath, clammy hands clawing at mud-slick bark until he's got enough leverage to pull himself free. Mud still thick on his legs, he stumbles out and catches himself on another tree, breathing heavy.

"Shouldn't have done that," he manages between wincing breaths. "Come in after me." There’s gratitude in there somewhere, gruff and masked in macho stupidity though it is. Busted ribs or no, he offers a hand back to help her through the mud.

Edited (...two weeks later, i thought of something stupider for him to say ) 2016-10-26 20:15 (UTC)

Jo's a pretty normal facet in the inn, given how much she's taken over the main room of it. The walls covered in her hung, and written on, and drawn on curtain, for the maps and the trading lists, and that she's in this room before even the inn inhabitants wake up in the morning, then most days, unless she's out scouting with Sam or one of the few others who've keyed on with them.

She hasn't exactly been watching the new girl. But she has, too. It's a small, barren room.
There's not much else to be studying if it's not the lists, maps, books or the girl.

Who is playing with fire like it's toy.

"Well, that's certain a new one for this place." The last two words making it clear it's not new entirely.

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let the choir sing;

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