closed/catch-all → give me time to prove.

[pse]

Who: Kimiko Miyashiro and friends!
Where: Here, there. Panorama, diffusion zones, etc.
When: Through-out the month of August.

Warnings: TBA if needed.

( If you'd like to plot something, feel free to hit me up via PM or at rannoch! )

Comments

ERIK.

[pse]

[ She ends up driving them to the most recent sighting of the pirate ship, parking the car under a scraggly tree that dips its sagging branches so low the leaves brush against her windshield.

The ship is, well. It's a ship.

It has a mast and sails and a flag flying colours she can't quite make out. Every time her eyes try to focus on the insignia, her gaze teeters slightly to the left and she can't get a mental foothold. Whatever it is, it doesn't want to be looked at. The ship's not transparent so much as it is rendered in greyscale and wrapped in fog. It's nestled snugly on a sandy beach that seems a bit dismal, but there's no ocean on the other side. It leans between a layer of sand and a layer of cement. It looks like something about of a child's storybook... or Muppet's Treasure Island, which Hughie had insisted was the greatest movie about friendship ever made.

There's a ladder carved into the ship connecting the curve of the hull to the lowest deck. Kimiko climbs it first, in case anything is lurking above — Erik is more powerful, but he lacks her immediate resilience. Once her boots settle firmly on creaking planks of wood and nothing jumps out at her, she peeks over the railing and waves him up. All clear! ]

[heavymetals]

[ The sight of the ship is about as eerie as he would expect; Erik's gotten used to pretty much every diffusion zone having a strange energy to it, whether it's a resort with glitching bots or an abandoned decrepit mall. This is no different. At least out here he doesn't count on running into any mannequins, which he frankly is glad for. One traumatizing experience was quite enough for him.

Though reluctant to let her go in first, he decides not to argue, studying the outside of the ship while he waits. It sits at a slight angle, some parts worn out, a ship wreck with less emphasis on 'wreck' since it looks (mostly) whole.

He looks up again to the flag but to no avail. He might be considering going up there himself, when he spots Kimiko looking over the railing. He holds both his hands up and lifts himself off the ground, flying seamlessly up to her and landing softly on the deck. Stairs are for peasants. ]

Anything of interest on a first glance?

[pse]

[ He floats up and touches down so softly that she tilts her chin so her hair can fall into her face before he sees the brief cloud over her brow. It isn't his fault. The last person she saw take to the air with such effortless grace was Homelander.

When she steps forward, the ship doesn't sway under her foot. She motions to a door leading into the belly of the ship, carved into the slant separating the lower and upper deck.

As she does, the ship seems to shudder. The door creaks and then opens slowly, as if pushed by invisible hands.

Kimiko's brow furrows, her shoulders tucking back slightly. ]

[heavymetals]

[ Flight isn't necessarily common even among mutants, and Erik can achieve it in a few different and unique ways. Her reaction seems a little off but then plenty of people are surprised that he's capable of flight. She doesn't ask, though, so he doesn't elaborate.

Besides, they have plenty else to worry about at the moment. The ship seems stable enough, but Erik's not necessarily trusting or filled with confidence. He's ready to intervene if necessary, but for now he follows after her as she motions to that door, standing alert when it opens on its own.

He steps forward to go in first this time, hand on the door. The room is just as deserted as the outside, though, a few pieces of furniture abandoned inside, the whole place as if left to rot. ]

There's no one here.

[ Well, not that they can see. Erik's mostly relieved that there aren't any mannequins. ]

[pse]

[ Kimiko, likewise, is grateful there are no mannequins.

She steps in after him, paying attention to how the floorboards seem to groan and give under her foot. In reality, the wood should be damp and rotting and giving her no succor. The room certainly smells damp; as they walk through, the smell of salt and the bitter lingering of long weeks unwashed at sea fill her nostrils. The room is wide — far, far wider than it ought to be when considering the size of the exterior. It leads to another set of doors, presenting them a parody of a foyer.

Kimiko almost thinks she can hear footsteps. From the left, slightly above her head. Her eyes tilt that way, trying to find the source—

All at once, every door in front of them slams shut, except for the second last on the right. It creaks open, beckoning them.

Kimiko exhales, almost a huff. By now, it feels like she's sand lodged in her diaphragm. It's a struggle not to cough. ]

JOHN.

[pse]

[ What started out as Panorama's unassuming citizens, driven to opportunism by hunger, leaping out of their vehicles to gather up JL notes doesn't take long to devolve into petty fist fights on the street, car windows smashed, and at least one fool waving his gun around screaming, "I'll shoot, don't mess with me!" while crying his eyes out.

Kimiko doesn't leave her car (lingering in park, the traffic at a standstill) to join the throngs scooping up bills. Better it be left to people who need it. The Dome's continued interest in her ensures she eats and sleeps very well.

She does, however, leave her car when things start getting rowdy. It takes her a few minutes to make her way through the maze of vehicles and toward the overturned truck.

Her first action is to deal with a large, tomato red-faced man ramming his fist into the front hood of a vehicle again and again and again, as the terrified family inside the car scream at him to stop. It takes her only a second to drag him away from the source of anger and slam him up against the top-slash-side of the truck. Her intention is to knock him out and leave him in the road, but he slams his head forward into hers — causing her nose to break with a faint crack only a trained ear could detect — before tilting his head slightly to the left and biting through the upper shell of her ear. His teeth clack down; the flesh splits with alarming ease.

He spits, and a good quarter of her ear (now blood-soaked) splats onto the tarmac. Understanbly, Kimiko cries out. Less understandably, the noise she makes sounds like this. ]

[adrenalines]

[ john's attracted by the sounds of the standstill more than anything. his bike makes it easy to weave through traffic, though the number of people trapped in their cars that lean out the window to scream at him are numerous. still, curiosity has grabbed him, so he weaves - slowly, cautiously, until he sees the scene of the action.

joolies, everywhere. people, just as scattered, chaos breaking out through all of them. john parks his car on the side of the road, somewhere that's as far off enough to the side to not cause more issues with the traffic, and - with the shield strapped to his back - he starts off into the chaos. he avoids those on their hands and knees grasping up as many bills as they can get their hands on. john steps over them, uninterested in the money at the moment, but he's worked enough high-intensity scenes to know that this is on an edge-

and edge that immediately breaks, if it hadn't before he arrived. he hears two gunshots, and without hesitating, takes off in that direction - towards a large man, red-faced, yelling at someone who has fallen back on their ass in fear. john, without thinking twice, kicks the back of the knees of the man and takes him down, disarming him in a single moment and ejecting the ammunition. the man turns on him, fury now redirected, and john dodges the first flail and levels the man with a single, well-placed punch.

bodies swarm at his feet, collecting the bills, and john turns to another sound - something that sounds like a scream, but...a frog? he frowns, trying to find the source, and sees the the girl from the dome - blood pouring from her ear, and a man standing there with blood covering his chin.

john bolts, sliding over the hood of the car between them, weaving around the next couple until he jumps, slamming into the body of the man with his shield and knocking him to the ground. john glances to the girl - the girl who definitely beat the shit out of him not that long ago - and frowns. ]

You good? [ he's going to wait for an answer before he follows after the man, but he keeps a corner of his eye out on the man's form, pushing himself to his feet. ]

[pse]

[ The man goes flying, some of her flesh still between his teeth, and—

You know what? Okay. She's not about to look a gift U.S. Agent in the mouth.

It only takes her a second to push her nose back into place. Burning pain blossoms anew across the front of her skull and she does her best to ignore it; a faint ribbit of a wheeze falls from her lips (ugh) before she clamps her mouth closed and nods. She's fine. She's good. The skin of her ear is already resolving itself, building itself back up like a lizard regrowing its tail and leaving only a smear of blood behind. Her entrails aren't pouring out all over the tarmac to be scooped back into her stomach, so things could be so much worse.

Or so she might think for a moment or two! Because when the man, let's call him Angry Andrew, greatly offended by John's intrusion, reaches into the back of his waistband and pulls out a pistol, the tension in the air thickens severely. Two shots ring out. The first ends up puncturing a stationary vehicle's tire, the rubber shuddering and deflating.

The second one whistles through the air and toward John's chest. He'll experience a rough shoulder check from Kimiko before her body crumples at his feet. A small, perfectly circular hole darkens her forehead, the burn of the entry wound still smouldering. Blood trickles faintly down her face, down the slope of her nose and across her upper lip.

She'll be back in a few seconds. Her chest is still, and then her breathing restarts faintly. Her body doesn't even have time to grow cold. ]

[adrenalines]

[ he sees the blood, the evidence of what had occurred just moments before he arrived. he checks things off like a list - she's breathing, she's alert, she's upright. there is a lot of blood, but john has also watched kimiko shove her own sternum back into place in front of his eyes, so he considers these wounds manageable. assumes that, considering the lack of panic in kimiko's eyes, she can handle this. john doesn't know the degrees of her healing, but he's picked up on some back in the dome. has put together some pieces from their casual conversations.

first her nose is pushed back, and then kimiko meets his eyes. nods. if the injuries linger, john and her can figure it out, that's a manageable variable. but first, they need to neutralize this one, this being being angry andrew, who reacts just about how john figured he would. the pistol comes out, and john's shield goes up to deflect, but not before a couple of shots ring out. he's not a good shot, john could have told you that from the onset, but even bad shots can get lucky. or- he supposes get lucky, because that second shot gets a little too close, considering how the shoulder check sends him a good foot or so to the right, and out of the way of the bullet.

kimiko's body crumbles, and john- despite what he knows, despite what he's asked about and objectively understands and had just been thinking about moments before- freezes. it's barely a second, barely half a second, where he feels his heart stop in his chest. he's seen death, watched it happy to his brothers at his shoulders and in front of his very face. he's downed countless just over the last couple of years under val's orders.

but death is still death. and as kimiko's body crumples, john drops - immediately setting the shield up to cover her body, and his head, from any additional shots. as he looks over her, his chest tightens - dangerous - but he forces himself to wait. ]

Kimiko! [ he hisses between his teeth, feeling one, and then a second shot bounce off his shield. with his free hand, he grabs for her shoulder, his throat tight. ] Kimiko, hey- hey-

[ he knows, he really does, what she'd told him. what he's seen. but he also doesn't know how far that ability goes, and as much as he'd like to think otherwise, getting shot in the head sounds very much like a step too far.

( if he waits too long, he'll blink and see lemar. he knows he will. so he starts to get impatient. )

he remains fairly still, his jaw tight, as he shakes her a little too hard for anyone else, but there is panic starting to swell in his gut. ]

C'mon-

LASZLO.

[pse]

[ What starts out as a very boring morning is promptly made a bit too exciting when an ambulance hops the curve and starts to do the driving version of serpentine all across the shoulder. The tires leave black, smouldering tread marks on the grass and gravel alike; Kimiko hears it before she sees it, the abrupt whirring of the siren and the engine growling with purpose.

In its direct path is a couple: two women holding hands, one of them extremely pregnant. They don’t move fast enough, so Kimiko moves for them. The front grill of the ambulance hits her shoulder and swerves agonisingly to the left.

The couple dart to the right and tuck themselves safely around the corner.

Kimiko goes splat.

The front grill of the ambulance, once merely rusted and slightly peeling from lack of maintenance, is now dented and coated in bright, fresh blood. Blood also splashes up the hood and across the window.

In fact, let’s let Garth Marenghi himself set the scene.

A few feet away from the front tire, a body lays face down on the tarmac. ]

[haemosexual]

[The poor ambulance has suffered so much abuse at this point that it's a wonder it hasn't completely fallen apart yet, really, and in fact it's gotten to the point where its very amateur pilot isn't even surprised whenever he finds he's run over someone again.

Laszlo takes a moment to crank down the window, sticks his head out, and sees the body. He is not even surprised.

He kicks the door open—treatment which just compounds the insane luck of the ambulance not being in a million pieces of scrap metal right now—and saunters over to inspect his handiwork. Which is pretty gruesome, all things considered.

It's here that he notices the couple huddled together around the corner. They look at him. He looks at them. Then he lifts his hand toward them, fingers waggling ominously.] You didn't see shit. [He pauses, briefly.] Congratulations, by the way.

[Hypnotism only works if you remove the evidence, though, so whilst the couple is still under its effects, Laszlo quickly hauls the corpse over his shoulder and hoofs it back to the car. He's more bothered by the blood (blood!) soaking his coat than anything else, but that's only until he opens the back of the ambulance to throw the body inside. It's then that he is reminded of just how many bodies he's already got back there, and for how long he's been ignoring them. It's shit work meant for a familiar, but in the absence of one, he'll have to do it himself. Shameful.

Laszlo tosses the new body on top of the old, slams the doors shut, then climbs back into the front and tries to recall where the local reservoir is located as he speeds off, nearly side-swiping a Prius in the process.]

[pse]

[ Kimiko doesn't "wake up", so to speak, until she's tossed into the back of an ambulance and her body is being tossed about like a corn kernel in an oven. Breathing heavily, she holds her body together. The collision that had pancaked her had hardly been gentle; her organs slosh and slip every which way as she curls her knees toward her ribs and curls her back so her regrowing skin can hurry up. Every jostle of the vehicle — of which there are many — sends fresh waves of pain barrelling through her.

Eventually, she's able to tug herself to a standing position. The ambulance is equipped with rudimentary handholds; she grips as tight as she can, bending her knees to brace her centre of gravity—

For approximately thirty seconds, before the vehicles veer sharply left and sends her flying again. Laszlo might hear a metallic thud as she smashes against the wall before sliding to the floor, her nose unfortunately buried in the half-melted neck of one of the other dead bodies. An old, busted IEG monitor jostles from its perch, tipping, tipping, tipping... and then falling.

It crushes Kimiko's head like a grape.

Today fucking sucks, some part of her thinks. ]

[haemosexual]

[Beneath the roar of the antiquated engine, Laszlo definitely hears something happening back there. Some kind of rusted-out equipment finally dislodging itself from the wall, he thinks with a grimace; there is going to be a horrible, corpse-y mess and he's going to have to find a hose, if not a bucket. He makes a mental note to speak with Nandor about getting a new familiar for about the eightieth time.

He eventually finds the retention pond he'd been looking for—or at least a retention pond—and nonchalantly drives up on the curb, wheels ripping up the already-patchy grass as he swings the ambulance around so the front is facing the street. It's nighttime, but there are still people driving around at all hours, and he really does not need anyone to see him pulling bodies out the back.

When he gets out of the car, he takes a second to study the very annoying chain link fence that is blocking him from the water. He could probably back up over it, but that would only bring more attention, so he settles on leaping over it. He'll have to carry the bodies one by one, which is irritating, but so be it.

Nodding to himself, pleased with his very intelligent and effective plan, he opens the back of the ambulance.]

FRANK.

[pse]

[ On a random Tuesday night, Kimiko finds herself in a bar she hasn’t frequented before. Going places by herself is still somewhat novel to her, even after so many weeks in Panorama. In an average week, she goes to The Dome, she goes to the grocery store, she goes home. Occasionally, she goes to diffusion zones or to the Scrapyard when her car starts making loud, upset, ear-splittingly metallic bellows or clunking thuds. She doesn’t walk by a spot that looks warm and crowded and she can hear laughter pouring out through the cracks between the door and the wall— Until the day she does, on a whim, because maybe that’s what Serge would do.

She ends up at the bar, eventually, placing her order through pointing and other such shadow puppetry to a politely smiling bartender. She barely is through the first sip of her extremely bright and girly cocktail when someone brushes up against her hopefully.

A phone, open to a blurry picture of a poster with Kimiko’s face on it, is thrust out for her to look at.

”This is you, right?”

She nods.

”I knew it!” and, ”Hey, can I buy you a drink? I’m Gary.”

Another nod, although she lifts her drink to show him she already has her hands full.

”Oh, right. Well, next one’s on me. Your name isn’t really Loudmouth, right?”

As he’s talking, she pulls a piece of paper out of her pocket and hands it to him. He unfolds the quarters without really thinking about it too much; he’s still going a mile a minute, loudly telling her how much he liked her last fight and how awesome it was when her opponent spat out their own teeth. Between adulations, he remembers to glance down and read, mumbling the words out loud.

”'I’m Kimiko. I am mute but I can hear. I am originally from—'”

The mumbles trail off as the first part catches up to him. His eyes widen, his shoulders tilting back an inch or two.

”Oh, uh. Sorry. Look, never mind. Great fight, though.”

He claps her on the shoulder and all but runs away. If this leads him to rudely shoulder check a man shuffling his way up to the bar, well, that’s life. ]

[terrorisms]

( He recognized her face the same way Gary had — the difference is, Frank's got the good sense to leave people the hell alone most of the time. Whatever she does for money isn't an invitation for strangers to walk on up to her in bars, and Frank doesn't make it widely known that he sometimes swings by the Dome to scope things out.

So, one stool over and leaning against the bar top, Frank minds his own business.

And eavesdrops, because it's right there, and he's perceptive, and he likes to people watch. Sue him. The expression on his face grows gradually more dubious and less impressed with every passing moment, until that absolute coward bails out abruptly.

A couple feet to her right, Frank scoffs loudly. )

What a jackass.

[pse]

[ As the man beats a hasty exit, Kimiko shrugs — largely to herself, not aware she has an audience — and returns to her pastel and neon concoction. In truth, the rejection stings a little; but he isn’t someone she would have sought out for a conversation of her own accord. And, in truth, she understands that leaves a question: if not him, then who? It’s one she doesn’t have an answer for. Sometimes her eyes skim over a crowd, looking for Serge or someone who looks like him. Other times, she’s convinced that’s the last thing she wants, decides the reminder would only be a weak comparison and a cruelty.

For the moment, she’s comfortable with her own company. But when someone speaks up, she glances over. The way her fingers flick to and ‘fro between the two of them is pretty telling, helped along by her gentle expression.

It's a politely inquisitive Are you talking to me? ]

[terrorisms]

( He'd been paying enough attention to the exchange to hear it, that little self-directed mumble. You know it's bad when a guy doesn't just move his lips when he reads, he has to sound the whole damn thing out, out loud. The point is, he knows not to expect her to talk. Also knows she can hear him just fine, so he doesn't modulate his speaking voice like some moron that can't parse the difference between mute and deaf. )

Yeah. Sorry, not to horn in on your business, but uh- ( He jerks his head in the vague direction that Whatshisdick wandered off to. ) That guy? Seemed like he had fewer brain cells than a potted plant. I wouldn't get too broken up about him taking off. I think you probably dodged a bullet. That's all.

( Not that it's really any of his business, obviously. It's not. He just doesn't like it when guys are rude assholes to women. What is it Nash said that's called? Benevolent Misogyny, or something? Sue him, he's almost 40, he's set in his ways. He had a wife and a daughter; he just thinks about the way he'd want other people to treat them. )

LAURA.

[pse]

[ LuxFilms is small and lacking in the glitz and flourescent of modern cinemas, but a large bag of popcorn is only 7 JL, so Kimiko can't help but have some level of fondness for the place. It's hard not to like an activity where you can sit in the dark, carb-load without judgment, and no one expects you to talk.

Right now, it's the movie posters framed up on the wall that hold her attention. They all suggest different genres and time periods, a smattering of films across the alleged multiverse. A documentary about a country's fall to a fungal zombie infection; a black and white silent film about a nurse working for an extremely wealthy but quite concerning family with unusual rituals; a series of interviews with pilots from the Long Earth, in what probably is misplaced pro-military propaganda; and a marathon of all six episodes of the Buttons McGroin the Mouse cartoon.

When she hears Laura's particular footfall, she waves agreeably and gestures her over. Guess who is given the dire responsibility of picking between these... treasures? ]

[valle]

( Laura can count on one hand the number of times she's been to a movie theater. She didn't have a ton of years of freedom between Transigen and the Void, and the first several months there'd been an overbearing sort of paranoia weighing down on everyone involved. The people who took the kids in, the kids themselves, all of them were constantly looking over their shoulders expecting to find a contingency of hired paramilitary assholes ready to snatch them off the streets. They didn't go out much, for a while.

When she finally got the chance to go, she'd loved it. Dragged Rictor there whenever she could convince the people who took them in, and Rictor himself, who was not quite so enamored with the experience as she was.

She's honestly surprised to learn there's a theater here. When she gets the text invitation, her answer is an immediate, no-questions asked:

ok :)

The smile's much more visible in text form than on her face when she does actually roll up, but don't worry, she's smiling on the inside. Probably. Definitely waving back, at least, even if it's slightly less exuberantly than Kimiko. )

Hi. ( Hello stranger, nice to see you again — genuinely. She's short on friends here, and Kimiko had been friendly. Good vibes. ) Which one are we watching? I'm not picky.

[pse]

[ Kimiko, who is quite picky, is caught between two posters: the black and white nurse flick about the dangers of billionaires, and the alleged documentary about zombies. Her expression is one of exaggerated thoughtfulness, brow furrowed as she faces down this immense choice in front of her. If she picks the wrong one, her new friend might decide she's super uncool and bail.

That would be terrible.

After a moment or two, she pulls a coin out of her jacket pocket — a loose nickel, left behind to bounce around in her pockets among little fuzzes of lint and a used hair elastic, all detritus from home. Shows Laura heads, points to the poster displaying artistically shot zombies digging their teeth into the belly of a still-living pig. Shows Laura tails, points to the inalienable proof that the ultra-rich people are a plague to be eradicated in backlit 20x40. Hands the coin to Laura. ]

[valle]

( So here's how this goes:

Laura takes the coin, flips it neatly, catches it gracefully, and slaps it onto the back of her hand — then slowly peaks at it by peeling her other hand discreetly up.

And then offers the coin back, while decisively declaring: )

Let's do the zombie one.

( Because she's eighteen years old, and she hasn't lived in a world with a billionaire problem in a Hot Minute. Although she probably has the attention span to sit through something Thoughtful and Introspective with Commentary about Capitalism, her heart is really singing zombies are badass. You can take the girl out of the Wolverine, but you can't take the Wolverine out of the girl. )

JOHN (2).

[pse]

( Where we left off last episode...! )

[ It takes about twenty minutes for Kimiko to find the energy to rouse fully, swim back to shore, climb the razor-wire topped fence, and pull her phone out of her pocket. It takes another five minutes before she can get her phone to respond, waterlogged as it is. Her clothes are soaked through and plastered to her skin, her wet hair matted with blood in the back, and she smells of corpse and sewage. The ambulance is long gone, its blackened tread marks twisting this way and that way up the road. She can't see or hear another car coming; no one is around for miles.

Her first instinct is to call Logan; he would be efficient and prompt, and not ask (too many) questions. But her drying phone can only get to K in the alphabet before her contact list glitches out.

So, at about 11AM, John gets a text. ]

Hey.
Are you busy?
I need a pick-up.

[adrenalines]

[ he's so honored to be the 'his name comes before logan's in the alphabet' option, or he would if he knew who logan was. or that there was even an option. still, he is up at 11, working one of his early morning construction jobs. it's a decent gig - it's not like he's ever really able to get a good night's rest at the motel, anyway, and it helps add to the uncertain income from fighting at the dome. he's no loudmouth, so it's an unsteady income, which means he needs the additional cash.

he's got an hour or so left when his phone vibrates in his back pocket - a new message from kimiko. it's not odd - they've kept up with each other, carpooled to the dome every now and then, gossiped about other fighters. that's part of what he's expecting when he opens the phone, but he can tell immediately that something's off. ]

not busy
where?

[ he may still have that hour left in his shift, but john's all but dropped his work, already packing up his stuff before he's even got the response. ]

[pse]

[ It takes another minute or so — a lifetime for today's smartphone-addled youth — to send him a pin drop. Her location is at least a half hour outside the city, forming a neat little triangle with the granaries of Kolliery as one corner, Panorama as another. There's a road, fortunately. A highway, that becomes a rural back road, that becomes a dirt-and-gravel single lane. And then a fenced-in retention pond where the app will pop up a little warning (⚠️ authorised personnel only ⚠️), the tunnel of sewage runoff marked with a skinny blue indicator that's far less winding than the road itself.

It's... not a place people go to for fun, that's for sure.

By the time he gets there, Kimiko has set up on a large rock. Knees drawn up and tucked under the loop of her arms, feet firmly planted. Light cloud cover obscures the sun for a moment; she begins shivering almost immediately without the sun to bake the damp chill of her waterlogged clothes off her. Did she tell him to bring towels? Of course not. ]

[adrenalines]

[ by the time he receives the pin, he's already on his pike, having kicked up the stand and started off down the road. now that he's got a direction to move in, though, he twists the accelerator and speeds off down the road - weaving in and around the cars with very little care for the horns that follow him through the traffic. and yes - the location is at least half an hour outside of the city, but john makes it in just over twenty-two.

he'd been a bit on edge since he got the text, but as soon as the highway shifts to rural road to dirt and gravel single lane, john speeds up, the wheel of his bike spinning a bit on the loose dirt. he'd known that something was wrong if kimiko was asking for a pickup in the first place, but the further in he goes, the sight of the sign, a kind of stillness fills him. time to go to work.

he ends up ditching the bike right outside of the fence, tearing through the chicken wire and slipping down the hill into the water, shield on his arm, ready for anything. he's slid a bit down towards the water before he sees her - together, seemingly safe where she's sitting on the rock, and...

the rocks fall into the water even as he stops just sort of the drop, and then it's another minute or so before he's made it over to where she's curled on the roack, kneeling down next to her to check if there's something wrong. ]

Hey- [ he looks around, as if expecting something more, before his attention's back on her. ] You okay? [ another beat, and then he's setting down the shield on the roack and slipping off his coat, setting it on her shoulders. ] There a reason you're down here in the runoff?