sixthiterationlogs | Never a Breath You Can Afford to Waste

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Never a Breath You Can Afford to Waste

WHO: (Who is making the post)
WHERE: The Tubes, The Schoolhouse, Inn, various places around the village and beyond.
WHEN: Oct 21 - 30th
OPEN TO: Any and all, only 1 for the tube arrival, though.
WARNINGS: None yet though likely mild spoilers for the InCryptid novels.

One of the last things I remember is voice of my sister coming from the TV screen at the end of that last episode of her reality show. I hadn't actually been paying a whole lot of attention to her dancing, admittedly. Do you want to watch your sister shimmy and gyrate in a costume appearing to only be held together by dental floss and Swarovski crystals? Didn't think so. My eyes had been drifting to Shelby for most of the show.

Shelby hadn't even had the chance to meet Verity yet, but she'd been helping my colony of hyper-intelligent mice vote for her spot on the Dance or Die reunion show all the same.

My family is weird, and my fiancee is proof that sometimes, just sometimes, the universe throws you a break. A gorgeous, blonde break. One that, in my (ok, entirely biased) opinion justifies the existence of every single venomous and deadly thing in Australia, since Shelby is all the more deadly and glorious for her time stomping fearlessly and expertly through the Outback and underbrush.

What can I say? I'm in love. I can't pinpoint the moment I knew it, but I can tell you I spontaneously proposed after watching her wrestle a half-crazed cryptid the size of a large crocodile to the ground, and when she held me to it a year later, I was entirely happy to go along.

Watching her gleefully sending text after text on Grandma and Grandpa baker's supply of burner phones to vote for "Valerie Pryor" as Sarah (mostly) helpfully rattled off numbers and facts to make their voting strategy all the more effective.

It had been a moment of domestic bliss as far as I was concerned, listening to the people I love the most talk excitedly about Verity's Argentine tangos and hip hop numbers.

At least until things went sideways, with a snake cult once again making my sister's life- and by the looks of things- all of our lives even more complicated and dangerous than they already were. Shit. Why had they sent Grandma Alice alone, I should have flown out to LA, it was a snake cult. Why am I never the one the snake cults bother? I could have been helping, I could have been-

And then there was darkness.

Arrival, Bunker

Dr. Price, Alexander Jonathan. Vitals stable, chamber lock disengaged. Begin retrieval process: Y/N?

The man inside is unassuming, though the fact that he's unconscious probably helps. Clad in black scrubs with short, sandy blonde hair, with a large scar on one bicep that looks like the work of some sort of animal, with months of healing behind it.

The nearby box of supplies contains a pair of glasses along with the usual mix, and it isn't hard to imagine him in them. Even floating unconscious in a glass tube of water, he still has that look of this right here is one giant nerd.

Schoolhouse

Even if his desire was to disappear into the wilderness for a few days for intense, first-hand study of the local wildlife and the ecosystem supporting it, he's not so stupid as to go out into the field unprepared.

And the best way to be prepared is to know as much as you possibly can about where it is you're going. So for the first week of his time in the village, Dr. Price can usually be found here, making his way steadily through as much as what's written about the area as possible, while trying to beg sheets of paper and ink off anyone who might have any to share, or trying to figure out if there's any kind of memo app on the network watch.

Inn, sheriff's office, Various (location of your choice!)

Everyone has to eat, and a cryptozoologist is no exception. What other people don't have to do, and Alex seems to think he does, is ask questions over dinner. Or around the fountain. Or while visiting the hot springs.

Because as much as he's Not Great with people, collecting first-hand witness reports about things is often even more useful than simply reading about them.

Word spreads around pretty fast that the new guy is looking for stories about encounters with the local wildlife, and spending as much time as he can watching the livestock in and out of their jail cell pens, eager to speak with anyone working with them.

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Bull had been exploring down in the bunker. He doesn't like the place so he is jumpy as fuck, but he pauses when he sees someone in one of the tubes. He steps closer, looking carefully. A doctor hm? That would be useful. Besides what can happen when you just leave people in there? Bull has no idea.

"Of course." He mutters to himself as he presses yes. Then he stands ready to catch the guy and make sure he doesn't hit the floor.

His body flops limply into the Qunari's very, very solid arms, and within a few moments, his lungs are forcibly ejecting the water- hopefully mostly on the floor- and gasping for breath.

His vision might be awful, but he can at least register that the person pulling him out of that mysterious, cold darkness is... very much not human. For most people, this might be alarming, or at least startling, but once Alex seems to register this fact, he actually relaxes a little.

This man, human or not, is not someone the Covenant of St. George would suffer to live for very long, never mind try to recruit.

Speaking is a little beyond him just yet, beyond a few fragmented words- "Sh-" he starts to say her name, but stops himself. If someone had taken only him, he could be putting her in danger. "Shit," he coughs out instead.

It doesn't take long before Bull puts him on the floor, placing him in a position that is better for him coughing up water. "There you go, easy now." He places a hand on the other's back, stroking gently. "Easy easy, you're safe."

He looks around for the bag of clothes they all come with, hoping that this guy has some dry clothes in there. It might not be full on winter yet but it is cold enough if your clothes are all wet. "I'm going to get you into some dry clothes, alright?"

"Yeah- OK" he says, finally filling his lungs with blessed, blessed air. "Where are we? Is it... is it the Covenant?"

He's assuming Bull is a cryptid. Not a cryptid whose species he recognizes, but that hardly means anything. Any non-human capable of conversing with him would know of the Covenant, and what danger they pose to anyone unlucky enough to be born not-human.

Bull blinks back at him and shakes his head. "Never heard of them." He admits. Maybe it is another name for the chantry, or for Corypheus' guys. Or the Venetori, but none of them are here. At least as far as he is able to tell. "No this is a strange place. None of us are really sure where it is but we're a big group of people from all over trapped here."

He digs through the pack and pulls out nice and dry clothes, placing them next to Alex. "You good with changing or do you need help?"

Then after a moment. "I am the Iron Bull, by the way."

"Alex Price." If the man had been human, he might have lied and said Preston- which would have been awkward with his name displayed on the readout like that.

"I'm- uh. I'm fine." He starts to pat himself down in the places he usually carries his weapons (it's a lot of places), and frowns deeply. "Unarmed, apparently, but fine." By the sound of it, that's more of a problem than being wet and cold. He spends enough time in swamps that being wet and cold is just another state of being that he can accept and cope with.

Showing that curious trait of human modesty, he takes the dry clothes and ducks behind something to change, though he's comfortable enough at least peeling off the shirt before he's behind cover.

He comes out, dressed and mostly dried, and putting on the glasses with relief. "Oh thank God, I can see."

Rube Goldberg couldn't have designed a more convoluted system for distilling vodka than Sam had. There were tubes and jugs and pots and potatoes all over the kitchen, strewn like Halloween decorations, sending glittering bubbles of pure alcohol from one end of the room to another. She did her best to brew only during downtimes, when the kitchen wasn't the center of meal activity. But putting it up and taking it down each day was a fucking hassle.

Which was why she was still distilling at lunchtime that day.

As if to compensate for taking up so much space, Sam was sitting up on a countertop beside her mash mix, with all of her papers spread across her lap, instead of along the tables. She'd been right in the middle of sketching out some double helices when she realized what time it was. Now she had DNA all over her.

Metaphorically. On paper.

And she was just starting a new sketch, trying to model her own altered DNA in light of her arrival to the clown rodeo when she looked up and spied a new face.

Wonderful. Another underwear model.

While Alex is investigating the spring, an example of the local wildlife appears from the undergrowth, trotting cheerfully towards the water with the permanent grin of a crocodile. The hairless little canine heads for the pool, goes straight into the water and starts paddling, its legs cycling energetically.

"Coco!"

The dog is followed by a hurried-seeming young man dressed in red camouflage print pants and a henley, tall, well muscled, handsome enough to draw attention in a crowd, but Finnick's thoughts aren't on appearances right now: they're on looking for the dog, which is contentedly ignoring him for now.

He sees Alex before he sees the dog, and Finnick stops, gaze flicking up then down in a quick assessment of the man, who's unfamiliar and therefore must be new.

"Have you seen --" but he cuts himself off as the splashing sound from the pool draws his attention and he sees the dog.

"Guess you have. Don't mind him."

The still is easy enough to understand. Even if people didn't need to drink it, the ethanol would be useful for any number of other things. It's the sketchbook that catches his eye, though. He doesn't approach her too closely, knowing that looming over teenage girls is hardly the way to win new friends. But he still can't help but blurt out his first thought upon seeking the sketch.

"What would do that to human DNA?"

He can't help but blurt it out- he's no microbiologist, but he knows that that doesn't look right.

Of all the things a newbie might have said to Sam, that was without a doubt the last she'd expected. And not just because most people had no fucking idea what a double helix was.

That he'd caught its abnormalities was a whole different level of surprise.

She stared at him for a second and couldn't help but blurt out, "Marry me."

To say that her people skills were rusty was...a slight understatement.

But she heard herself and cringed--although not too apologetic--and cleared her throat. "If you know the word 'vitae' with regard to it's relationship to hemoglobin, it's that. If you don't, we have some serious conversation to be had."

At first, the little canine- at least, it acts canine, and appears mostly mamiliar. A synapsid maybe? he wonders, watching it splash around with both interest and amusement. It's distracting enough that he doesn't notice Finnick until he speaks up.

"Not at all. This is actually what I'm out here for-" he points to the dog, and then just to their surroundings in general. "I've never seen an ecosystem quite like this before, it's amazing. So is he- their temperament reminds me a bit of quokkas. No fear of humans whatsoever for something that size."

"Already engaged. To a woman who carries brass knuckles in her bra," he says, flattered if somewhat sheepish.

"I know my latin well enough to know the word, but not in any sense beyond it's definition. Life. Though, since you're mentioning hemoglobin, I'm guessing this is blood-borne," he ponders aloud, and steps close enough to have a better look, standing beside her. "I have experience with a lycanthropy outbreak, but I've never had a chance to study it on a microbiological level. Is this a naturally occurring phenomenon, like a retrovirus, or has-" he frowns.

"Has someone done this on purpose?"

Oh, someone is up for a stern lecture from the ethics board, somewhere.

Someone who was capable of speaking her language? Swoon. Not that the proposal had been serious. For one thing, he looked like him and Sam looked like her. And anyway, eventually, her obnoxious and disliked personality drove away most human beings. Which meant she had to take advantage of someone who spoke actual English while she could.

"It's similar to lycanthropy, at least in theory," she said. "To be honest, I've never met an actual lycanthrope, but there is scientific and social evidence to support their existence, in my little corner of the multiverse. My brother and I were talking about doing a study on--"

Hold on. Back up a second.

She frowned at the stranger. "You're new here," she said, somewhat needlessly. "I'd recognize your face. Exactly how long have you been in this clown rodeo? I mean...has anyone given you 'The Talk' yet?"

"It's been a few days, and I've heard most of it. My grandmother's been travelling cross-dimensionally for longer than I've been alive- and probably will be long after," he shares. Alice Healy is... unique. "I didn't think I'd ever have to use any of her 'what to do if you're sucked into another reality' advice, but there were enough of them that I'm not completely blind here." Unless he gets bitten by a snake bat.

He's still looking at the sketch, studying it thoughtfully. "You don't have to get me drunk or talk me through anything, at least. I'm sure I'm still in mild shock, but I am at least, on an intellectual level, somewhat prepared for things like this."

His level, even tone is almost a bit detached, though not roboticly so. More like he's working very hard to keep his emotions nice and compartmentalized, cataloged and put on a shelf to be dealt with later.

Edited 2018-10-22 18:25 (UTC)

Both of Sam's ginger eyebrows vanished beneath the fringe of her wig. The guy studied lycanthropy and had a dimension-hopping grandma? A part of her wanted to get him drunk. No doubt the stories would be amazeballs.

But it was just as well that he didn't need The Talk. Sam was probably the worst possible candidate to give it. Not just because of her personality.

Her anger with the Overlords had started to reach an extreme boiling point. So much so that it really wasn't helpful. But as she'd told Danny, she couldn't give it up. Giving it up felt too much like...well...giving up. Entirely. To the point where she just allowed herself to be The Great Experiment yet again.

Not Sam's style.

She nodded slightly, taking the dude at his word. "Well, you're ahead of the curve...uh...guy." She sheepishly realized she'd proposed marriage before even asking his name. "Sorry," she shook her head and stuck out a hand. "I'm Sam. I used to know how social graces worked."

"Alex," He says, just as sheepishly. "It's fine. Social graces aren't my thing either- spend more time with animals than humans long enough, and you start to get rusty," he admits.

"Especially in my family. We've been in the cryptozoology business, for generations. If you can call something we don't really get paid to do business."

"Crypto...zoology..."

How was this guy not fresh from the Ordo Dracul? The mind absolutely boggled. He would be right at home with Avery and Grace and all of the others. And the casual way he talked about it, like it was no big deal, like it wasn't completely extraordinary? Yeah, Sam definitely needed to learn a thing or two about his world.

Or, like, all the things.

She dropped her hand to her side. "Well, kidnapping aside, I think you just hit the cryptozoology motherload here. I'd say today was your lucky day, except for the fact that this place sucks."

Bull smiles a little at the modesty. It is one of the things that you never get as a Qunari and even more so heis even more ok with nudity. Here he is shirtless though the heavy plants and belt cover plenty. He would have to look into getting something when the winter comes.

"Yeah, you might regret that later." He chuckles and sets about packing Alex's pack back up. "Ok so, this belongs to you." He holds it out once it is packed up. "Let's get back to the surface."

"Well, being kidnapped and without access to a full lab definitely sucks, but the ecosystem itself is fascinating," he says, sounding way too enthusiastic about a place this deadly.

"It's also nice to actually be able to talk openly about my expertise," he adds. "Does the Covenant of St. George sound familiar to you at all?"

"If something's going to kill me, I'd rather have a good look at it first," says Alex with a shrug. That attitude's only gotten him nearly turned to stone once, and it would have just been his eyes. Probably.

He takes the pack, and after wringing out the wet clothes he arrived in (why let them go to waste?) and tucking them into the pack in a spot where they hopefully won't get anything else too wet.

"Surface? How far underground are we?"

He'd managed to reach the conclusion Sam took over a year to reach in just a couple of days. Sam didn't know whether to be impressed or wary. Living out in the open. She still had a hard time with it. Even if it was insanely liberating. She wondered what that meant about the size of his secrets.

"No," she said, shaking her head slightly.

She really hated the words 'I don't know.'

"Does the phrase 'Ordo Dracul' mean anything to you?" she countered.

He gives it some thought. "No, but judging by the names alone, I doubt the two would get along." St. George being known for being the slayer of dragons, and all, and Dracul means-

Oh god. Did he seriously just make an etymology joke?

Yeah. He really is that much of a nerd.

Sam let out something between a snort and a giggle. Call it a 'snortle,' maybe. She covered her mouth, but a smile managed to peek out between her fingers. "Uh, yeah," she said. "I would say that's probably a reasonable assumption, going on names alone."

And the fact that there was very little room for religion in the Ordo Dracul.

Never mind the fact that she was, herself, an agnostic Jew.

"I'll go first," she said. "Secret society interested in supernatural genetics and finding ways to overcome natural physical, social, and physiological limitations."

"Secret society of religious zealots interested in the extermination of any species, intelligent or otherwise, that they deem unnatural," he offers in exchange. "My family defected generations ago. We're heretics and traitors to mankind itself, if you ask them. We mostly just think of ourselves as ecologists with some pretty extreme field experience."

Sounded like hunters. Even if he used words like 'defect' or traitors.' Sam tried not to raise her hackles, but even after so much time away from LA, it was hard to forget all of the conditioning that Karen had put her through. Hunters bad. Breaking the Masquerade bad. Being honest and yourself bad.

"They wouldn't like it here much," she said. "Even our humans tend to lean to the unnatural side of things."

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Never a Breath You Can Afford to Waste

The Bunker

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Inn Kitchen

Hot springs

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