sixthiterationlogs | (no subject)

WHO: Frank Castle, Killian Jones, and ota
WHERE: near the inn/the inn
WHEN: the night of the feast
OPEN TO: All!
WARNINGS: Uh. Gore and blood and stuff.
STATUS: Open and ongoing.

After four mutilated animals in as many weeks, Frank isn’t feeling much like celebrating. Word gets around, and the sudden appearance of this morning’s feast does nothing to settle him. They need the food, to be sure, with more hungry mouths coming out of the fountain every day and their winter stores getting no fuller; he doesn’t begrudge those who decide to eat it — but a meal like that appearing out of thin air? Sounds like a trap to him, and somebody’s got to not get caught in it. (If the feast would have turned his thoughts to crayon-colored hand turkeys and cookie crumbs and Frank Jr.’s small, still fingers in the blood-wet grass no matter what the circumstance, Frank doesn’t let his mind linger too long on that. )

Almost as soon as he’d arrived at the inn, Frank had set back out into the cold, bright day, but by the time the sun start to dip he’s swinging back towards it again, black wool coat buttoned up over his overalls, a lamp swinging by his side.

The now-familiar scent of fresh woodsmoke gusts through the air — and beneath it, the coppery bite of blood.

Killian had fewer qualms about enjoying the feast, even though he is still uncomfortable at the thought of someone watching them. Someone toying with them. But like he’d said all those months ago after he and Jo found the weapons (or tools, as some prefer to think of them), it’s also about survival, and the spread of food currently occupying the inn will go a long way towards ensuring their survival for another day. Discovering the presence of alcohol, which he hasn’t had a drop of in months, was another deciding factor in his determination to enjoy the food and worry about its consequences later. (He’s good at dealing with consequences. He’s had a lot of practice at just going with a situation.)

Even though the warm inn, with its smells of food and the smoke from the fire, is exactly the sort of place he used to frequent when he and his crew would put in at some port or another, he finds himself in need of some fresh air to clear his head. He’s been indulging in the rum, and having lost his tolerance due to going without a drop of it for months, it’s gone to his head more than it used to. Plus there is the looming concern about making it through the winter, and even if he’s not in charge here, worrying about the survival of everyone present is a hard habit to break.

He’s a distance from the inn before he stops, reaching for a tree for support. There’s the smell of blood in the air, familiar from his many years of a life at sea, but he thinks nothing of it. There have been so many attacks lately, and the smell ends up clinging to his clothes when he’s been preparing a pile of fresh-caught fish. It’s a smell he’s used to by now.

It’s when he’s reaching for the tree that it happens. His foot connects with something, something that shouldn’t be at the base of a tree. Something he can’t see in the dark. If only he’d thought to bring something with him when he came outside.

“What the hell…?”

At the sound of a voice, Frank squints ahead into the dark, trying to make out the approaching figure. Luckily, it’s someone he’s seen around enough to recognize from a vague outline in the dark. “Everything alright, Captain?”

As Frank lifts his lamp, the light falls across the well-trodden ground toward the tree, and Killian — and the limp arm resting against the ground at his feet. A woman’s, and far too quiet and still out here in the night. Frank lifts the lamp higher.

"Karen," he breathes, as the light hits her pale face. "Karen--" Louder now, Frank’s moving before he's thinking, boots skidding through the dirt as he rushes for her, his lamp hitting the ground hard and his knees harder as he drops down beside her.

She's too still. Too red. At her neck, in her hair, there's so much red, Jesus. Meat is coming out of her abdomen, and on some futile instinct Frank reaches to scoop it back in, like he can just put her stomach back where it belongs and she'll make it. She'll be okay. (She doesn’t look like she’s going to be okay.)

When Killian catches sight of her face, he can tell right away that she’s someone he saw around but not anyone he ever talked to in any way more than passing. He wishes he had, though, if only because he’s sure that she wouldn’t want to be remembered this way by strangers. He reaches out to stop the other man -- he doesn’t have to be a sawbones to know that it’s too late -- but then stops. This is how he’d be reacting if it were Emma beneath the tree, and he’d strike out at anyone who tried to stop him.

“The others need to know.” They’ll probably wonder, for one thing, and now it’s a matter of everyone’s survival. “I’ll keep them from coming out here themselves.” For privacy, and also because even during the course of several lifetimes at sea, he never saw anything like this. The others don’t need these images keeping them from sleeping tonight.

He turns away from the tree and heads back to the inn, allowing time for Frank to speak if he wants, but not expecting it. Killian pauses for a moment outside the door to the inn. He really doesn’t want to be the one to break the festive mood, but there’s no other choice. At least it’s given him a chance to sober up somewhat.

He stops just inside the door and waits until he has everyone’s attention. It takes a moment, because everyone is enjoying themselves, but the grave look on his face and the blood that he’s sure to have picked up from stumbling in the dark should help with that. He makes sure to stay calm when addressing the room -- panic would only cause more panic, and he’s hoping to keep enough of them calm for this not to turn into an even bigger disaster.

“It’s not just animals. Whatever is out there, going after livestock, has come for one of us now.” He pauses a moment to let that sink in. “Her name was Karen.”

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Unfortunately, I've an extremely strong stomach," Ravi replies, staring at the body and thinking that it's not even the worst he's seen. It's not even in the top ten, which is a sad state of affairs in his life. He does think it's telling that he's already calling it 'the body' in his mind, because he needs to disassociate in order to get the memory of meeting her out of his mind.

"Will you help me move her, once the investigations are done?" he asks of Killian.

"Find someone else who does to assist you." They're going to want that particular quality to deal with this. He should have warned people not to come outside, based on the number of people going outside and staring with horrified looks.

"Frank knew her." At least that's his assessment, based on Frank's reaction. "Perhaps he would agree. Otherwise, if you need my assistance, I'll give it."

Ravi glances in Frank's direction, trying to gauge whether he's going to be able to handle it. The man looks fairly broken up, truthfully, or just stressed, which means that he's probably not the best option to stand by while Ravi cuts her open to find out the cause of death and the time of it. "Time of death is the most important thing," he says. "It'll help to establish a list of suspects."

The idea that one of them killed Karen is beyond him, but if Ravi's learned anything, it's not to be surprised about what a person is capable of.

"I know nothing of autopsies, but I'm no stranger to blood." So he'll be helpful only in that he won't pass out while attempting to assist.

He looks back over at the huddle of people gathering around. "It does make you wonder now if the feast was provided as more than just an offering of food. If perhaps someone wanted us all in there so that we wouldn't know what was going on out here, and couldn't stop it."

"I think that there's something to be said for balance," Ravi says, speaking soberly as his eyes track back to the body as he tries to remind himself that he's seen so much worse over the years. "For every good, there's bad," he says. "Perhaps whoever is governing this place believes in that to an extremely literal degree."

"They could have found something else for the bad." His life seems to tend toward the bad, when taken all together. There has been good, but it hasn't been as consistent as the loss and pain. "I'm not sure even the feast cancels this out."

"There's also the more likely possibility that whoever was killing all those animals has finally decided to up their game," Ravi offers, though he feels a little sick to even have to say that. After all, that means he suspects someone in the village of being capable of doing this and that's a place he doesn't want to go to. "Serial killers do often practice and escalate."

Which means there could be the chance of a reprisal, if they're not careful.

"Are we sure that whatever's killing the animals is human?" He's not sure if it would be better or worse to have it be some kind of animals doing it. Animals might be easier to kill, but humans can be reasoned with (hopefully).

Whatever the solution, he's sure it won't be easy.

"I'm absolutely not sure at all," Ravi says, which is just about the only thing he really knows to be true. This whole place seems to be one big exercise in frustration and futility. All the evidence he has points to something brutally killing everything, but there also seems to be some level of purpose in how they're being left and how they're escalating. Really, he has no clue what to think and he hates it. "I'd rather be safe than sorry, though. I can tell you that." He may be thinking of building himself a bit of a little paranoid antiquated panic room at this point, if only to protect himself from whatever it is out there causing this havoc.

"Maybe once you get a chance to examine the body, you'll get some more answers." Some might consider it cold to refer to the 'the body,' so soon after the death happened, rather than using her name, but he was a military man, and lived at sea both before and after. He's seen plenty of death, some of it hitting closer to home than others, and he knows that thinking of her as Karen rather than 'the body' is only going to make it harder to do what has to be done.

"It's almost like maybe we shouldn't leave the weapons in a location where many can't get at them in a hurry."

"Yes, that would be rather intelligent," he agrees, his gaze still sliding over to the body. He swallows and tries to think of what Clyde might do about this. "Do we have any law enforcement types here? Detectives, maybe?" he suggests. "I can look at the body and see if there are any clues, but it will only be part of the puzzle and I'm not very good with corners," he says, but the humour is flat and lifeless.

"We don't have people whose job that is here." There's not really a lot of need for it, at the moment. There's really no organization of any sort. "I know there are some who used to that before they came here. Emma, at least. There may be others."

Not that Emma necessarily wants to see this, and he'd keep her from seeing it if he could, but they really could use people who know how to investigate things like this.

Ravi gives a nod of his head, because even though this isn't exactly anyone's normal day to day life (well, at least not with the fire powers and lack of evidence it's not), it's also something that they should get all the clues they possibly can. "You go get Emma," he says. "I'll start working on seeing if I can perform an autopsy."

"I'll be back as soon as I can. Where are you hoping to move the body to?" So that he knows where to look for him. It will be easier to find him that way.

"Probably a house close to the Inn?" he suggests. He doesn't think bringing her back to his will be a good idea, since he doesn't want to eat breakfast at his kitchen table thinking about an autopsy he'd performed there. "Anywhere with a flat surface and good light should do."

"We'll find you then. Hopefully it will be of some good, once we're done." Since whatever or whoever is doing this needs to be found and stopped.