open to all!

[shittybirthday]

Characters: Joel and open!
Date: Mid-April through to... whenever??
Location: All sectors.
Situation: Joel has arrived in Keeliai and is searching for Ellie.
Warnings/Rating: PG. Will edit to a higher rating if necessary!

If you want to do anything specific with Joel, feel free to hit me up at spongebong!

Joel has been wandering lost through the city for what feels like hours.

Ellie. That's all he can think about amid the mess of bewilderment racing through his mind about where he is: Ellie. Finding Ellie. From the moment he woke up in that damn tub of water, groggy and feeling like he'd been heavily drugged and finding himself staring up at a severe looking man staring right back down at him, Ellie is all he's been able to think about. His immediate thought had been that he'd been kidnapped and that Ellie had been-- Shit, he didn't want to think about what had happened to Ellie, what they'd done to her. He just wanted to find her.

And so, with the stagnant taste of water from the tunnel still in his mouth, in his throat, with the mental image of frantically applying compressions to Ellie's chest while she lay lifeless on the wet, water-logged ground, as his strength slowly began to return to him and the heavy fog began lifting from his mind, he started to fight. He weren't gonna listen to any bullshit about some great evil or some asshole called Malicant. He needed to find Ellie, god damn it.

Where is she? The girl? he'd managed to demand, his voice weak and croaky as he was lifted out of the water. When none of the strange people around him were willing to answer his questions, he began wrestling against them with all his might. He threw clumsy punches, tried grabbing them and slamming them into the wall, tried throwing them to the ground to stamp as hard as he could on their faces. Where is she? WHERE IS SHE? All to no avail: he'd been too damn weak to do much more than grope and grab and listlessly shove at anyone who tried to come near him. He was easily overpowered. Soon, he was shoved outside, left to fend for himself with no answers to any of his questions.

And now, here he is: navigating his way through a bewildering maze of streets and crowds. He's dressed in ratty jeans and a dirty, threadbare blue denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up his muscular forearms; his skin is weathered and nicked with scars, scabs and bruises. On his left wrist is a wristwatch, the glass face cracked, the hour and minute hands frozen in time. Strapped to his back is a dirty brown backpack, laden with various weapons: a bow, six arrows, a metal pipe with scissor blades crudely affixed to the end of it with duct tape, a shotgun, a hunting rifle, a flamethrower and a military torch clipped to his backpack shoulder strap. His face is tired, world-weary, the wrinkles around his eyes and on his forehead deep and heavy-set. His dark hair is greying and there are flecks of grey in his dark beard. Not a shred of mirth can be seen in his expression; but there's a look of something resembling barely contained worry, if not panic, in his hard eyes.

It's the first time in twenty years that he's seen or been in urban civilisation. Civilisation, that is, that isn't overrun by martial law, isn't secured into quarantine zones, isn't surrounded by militia, by the constant threat of Hunters, by decayed ruin and despair. By Infected.

He doesn't trust any of it. As he walks through the streets, he keeps glancing over his shoulder in paranoia. It's all too much. Too overwhelming. Too much noise, too many smells, too much stimulation. He's grown so used to the dead, dank silence of a world torn apart by chaos and sickness and terror that a thriving civilisation is completely foreign to him now; much less a civilisation as strange and almost otherworldly as this. Sudden noises make him tense; sudden movements make him defensive; people approaching him or getting in way makes him itch to whip out his pistol from where it's tucked in his waistband and aim it point-blank at their faces.

Comments

[alphatar]

The problem with the kedan that are criminals is that they are still kedan, able to shapeshift into practically anything. Which is why Korra’s not caring who’s in her way as she chases down the kedan that pickpocketed her juulan. Thirty juulan wasn’t anything to just wave off, but for the passionate eighteen year old, she would have done so even if it’s only one juulan.

The Avatar gave little leeway to thieves.

But when she turns a corner hot on his, or her, heels she is met with a crowd of people, none of them in a hurry like the person she was hunting down.

Her baby blue eyes scornfully scrutinized each kedan she passed, trying to see if they reacted to her gaze as she looked for the string that contained her chunk of juulan. "Playing this game isn't going to work." She muttered under her breath as she kept her eyes peeled.

Then she saw it. That look of paranoia, the one person looking over their shoulder.

"Gotcha. Looking like a foreigner won't work." Korra knew most of them from checking the network, and his face didn't look familiar. Taking her chance when he wasn't looking behind him, Korra dashed up behind him and gripped onto his shoulder.

"Give it back." She ordered sternly, a menacing look on her face.

[shittybirthday]

Wood sector. Right. Tess had said something about Ellie living in the Wood sector; and so, that is where Joel is trying to find his way to.

The hustle and bustle of the crowds hasn't gotten any easier to contend with. Never mind the fact that Joel is struggling to wrap his mind around the fact that Tess is alive. In fact, the revelation of Tess' existence is setting Joel even more on edge as he's heading down the street, lost, hyper-vigilant, paranoid.

He'd locked Tess away in his mind as someone who was gone, someone to never let himself think deeply about again. Not that that ever truly worked - there have plenty of times during his trek across country with Ellie where he's found himself thinking about Tess. But the moment he realised he was, he clamped down as hard as he fucking could on those thoughts and even harder on the grieving ache threatening to spill over in his chest, and locked them away again somewhere dark and tight where those thoughts and that grieving ache couldn't haunt him. That is, until the next time they did.

And now, she's fucking alive. How the hell is he supposed to compartmentalise that? What the hell is he supposed to do with that? What the fuck is--

A hand clapping down on his shoulder snaps him violently out of his thoughts. Survival instinct kicks in: noise all around him becomes muffled and garbled as he rips himself away from the person and whips around. And without thinking about it, his hand is on his pistol, hard and heavy and cold in his palm, and he grabs it out and trains it right on them.

[alphatar]

Dealing with the gangs in Keeliai had practically become a hobby for Korra and she was expecting him to not give up easily. When he wrests away, she took a half a step back and waited for the punch or kick that would surely come.

"You guys can never make this easy, can you?" Not that she minded getting a chance to stretch out her martial arts abilities.

But when the strike doesn't come, Korra halted for a brief moment to take in what he was doing. While she wasn't familiar with what he was holding, she knew that having it pointed at her didn't make her feel any more comfortable.

So she spun around to execute a roundhouse on his wrist. Both to disarm and potentially break his wrist. Disabling him, getting her juulan back, and turning him over to the police was her plan.

[shittybirthday]

Jesus, it's a woman. A strange, young looking woman. He steels himself against his immediate surprise, his expression hardening, gun pointed with purpose at her and with his arms locked tight.

"The hell do you want?" he replies, his voice quiet, cold, dangerous.

Stay back. She better fucking stay back. And when she suddenly launches into a hard and fast kick, Joel almost doesn't know what's happening at first: his gun goes flying out of his hand, skittering off somewhere to the left, and he lets out a surprised grunt of pain at the assault her foot lands against his hand.

That's all it takes. He comes in hard, fast, pain in his hand be damned because he's fared far worse, with intent to grab her and throw her down hard onto the ground.

[alphatar]

"I want you" she snarled as she got back into her neutral stance. "to give back what you stole!"

At this point she didn't even care about the money, apparently he was bent on keeping it, and she had more than enough. Now it was solely about making him confess and turning him over to the police. That he was fighting over it only made her angrier, all of this could have been handled if he just gave up.

"But if you want to-" He grabbed her shoulders and she brought her arms up, but he was already throwing her down before she could break the hold. She grunted as her back slammed against the pavement and she put her hands next to her head, bringing both her feet upwards in a dual kick. Boots aiming for his chin. "fight, you got it, bub!"

[shittybirthday]

He's reaching to his holster for his revolver when the woman's feet are suddenly swinging up in a fierce double kick. The first kick clips him against the chin; the second sends Joel staggering off to the side with a stumble and another grunt of surprise.

He manages to extract his revolver, though. Normally, he'd rush right back in, grab the assailant, start punching and punching them until he's breathless and their face is a mess of blood, but he's already worked out that this girl is a force to be reckoned with; and so, as he steadies himself on his feet, chin burning with the beginnings of a bruise and the graze her shoes left scratched along the skin, he takes stance and points the revolver down at her.

He's breathing quickly, and his eyes are cold, hard. He doesn't know what the fuck this woman is on about, him stealing… whatever the hell it is she thinks he stole, but if she doesn't back the fuck off, he's got no qualms in taking her down.

"I don't know what the hell you're talkin' about," he says, "but make any more sudden moves and it won't end well for you."

[alphatar]

He was a lot tougher than she assumed him to be when she chased him down, but she had no idea what the kedan’s original form was. Either way she was ready to start using her elemental bending to get her point across.

"My juulan, you swiped it off me. Now give it back."

She brought her knees down, ignoring his warning entirely, and shifted her weight so she could snap up from the ground to her feet in one movement. Having another weapon pointed at her wasn’t making things any easier for either of them, but neither was her bellicose attitude.

Her hands were balled up into fists and the stare she gave him was as much a threat as it was a warning that she meant business. Once Korra had sunk her teeth in, she wasn’t going to let go.

[shittybirthday]

God, he's so god damn sick of this crap. He's sick of everything being a fight. All that's rattling through Joel's mind is Ellie, and that's all he wants to do: find her. Not deal with this crazy woman insisting that he stole money from her.

And while the nimble and swift way she jumps to her feet is more than a little disconcerting, Joel's decided to put a fucking end to this.

"I ain't got time for any of this shit," he says with a single frustrated shake of his head, half talking to himself, half growling at her, and he takes aim at the woman's shoulder, then quickly changes his mind and takes aim down at her leg just above her knee, and pulls the trigger.

[alphatar]

"Me either."

Bending was the only way she was going to get through to him, and she was getting fed up by him not acknowledging what he had done. Korra reared her fist back and punched forth a strong gust of air to hurl him back.

Only, her airbending never had a loud banging noise come with it.

Sudden weakness in her leg made Korra practically fall, her hands reaching to the ground just in time to steady herself. As if boiling water had pierced her and spread out, rushing hot and Korra looked down to see-

blood.

Putting any weight on her leg caused a stabbing pain and she groaned loudly through her teeth when she tried. Walking was going to be a problem, let alone fighting. Her open hand slammed onto the pavement and she used it to make a wall of concrete rise up in front of her.

"Keep it." Spat out as she fished her power ring out of her pocket. She needed to get away, heal whatever he just did to her.

[browbeater]

He was on his way out when he heard the shot ring out. It wasn't a sound he'd really heard before, since it sounded like the sound of a hammer right next to his ear. But then the Kedan were running away from it, and his curiosity was piqued even more. So, he pushed his way through the crowd. He hadn't even made it to the source of the sound when he heard Korra.

Or rather, he heard Korra in pain. With her involved, getting there took a lot more precedence. And he pushed them aside even more quickly. When he got to the center, he saw Korra, bleeding, and some strange man sprawled on the ground. He ignored the man and called out Korra's name. "Korra!" He rushed to her side.

"What the hell happened?" His hand went to her back, supporting her. He looked at Joel, and frowned, protective of Korra. Fire appeared in his hand, though he didn't make any sudden moves. The wound Korra had looked nasty, and not like anything Mako had ever seen before.

[shittybirthday]

It's like the first time he fired a gun when his old man had taken him hunting - the kickback the gun had thrown at him when he fired it, like a punch in the face, had almost sent him sprawling backwards. Except there's no kickback here, just a sudden force of something slamming into him, sending him launching backwards off his feet and landing with a hard grunt and an even harder skid on the ground.

He's aware of people running away; he pays no attention to it, though, just groans and starts to push himself back up, confused by what the hell had just happened. And that's when he sees the woman slam her hands into the ground hard enough to cause the cement to do something he's never seen before.

"Oh, shit," comes his quiet, winded exclamation, eyes widening as he starts pushing himself backwards with his hands and feet. And then, he's quickly clambouring to his feet, revolver thankfully still in his grasp. He cuts his eyes away quickly to search for his pistol. Sees it lying on the ground a little further away. Cuts his eyes back to the woman, back to the pistol. He quickly darts over towards it, stoops down, snatches it up in his still aching hand.

When he turns back to the woman, he sees a young man approaching, and if things weren't already weird enough, the ball of flames that ignite on the man's hand takes the fucking cake.

Jesus Christ. It's like he's losing his mind or something.

"Hey look, that girl started attackin' me outta nowhere," Joel is quick to explain in case the guy decides to do something with that fire that Joel can't defend himself from. "I was just mindin' my business, she came up, started accusing me of stealin' money."

[alphatar]

Hearing her name made her balance waver, and she almost fell over turning to find him. The voice she’d recognize anywhere and relief came over her when she saw Mako heading over toward her. As soon as he was there, she put her ring back in her pocket and held on to his non-firebending arm to help bear her weight.

"That kedan stole my juulan." She sternly corrected. The earthbended wall would be something she'd have to come back and fix later. In the mean time, Korra kept her boot just off the ground and she could actually feel the hot stinging fiery sensation that surrounded her wound.

"I don't know what he did to my leg, but he did it with that thing." She motioned her head towards the metal weapon in his hand. Now that he used it, Korra’s eyes darted to the handle of the larger one the kedan had on his back. It only reminded her that the pain was there, but having support for it helped. Pressure, she would have to put pressure on it soon to staunch the bleeding so she could heal.

[browbeater]

Mako had a good idea of what happened, and this was a conflict that needed to be over. He had no clue what the weapon the man was pointing at them was, but he could see the damage it'd done to Korra. They were going to have to get out of there, and get to a hospital, as soon as possible. He narrows his eyes at Joel, calculating the level of risk. And it was staring so pointedly at Joel that made him realize, "You aren't a kedan, are you?"

Kedan wouldn't have found bending so completely strange. They had their own forms of magic that were way more fantastical than anything he, or even Korra, could do. He slowly lets his firebending go, watching Joel for any sudden movements. If he backed off, maybe this guy would back off. He doubted the last thing this guy wanted was some sort of protracted fight from either him or Korra. "Look, pal, I'm not firebending anymore. Just put whatever that is down-- we're leaving."

He pulled Korra back and up into a bridal style carry. He wasn't sure how the wound was, but he figured that she wouldn't be able to walk easily, and it'd be easier for them to get away if he just carried her, this once.

[shittybirthday]

"I didn't steal anything--" Joel snaps back over the top of the girl accusing him, yet again, of stealing.

Christ, oh Christ. What the hell is happening here? Between that god damn wall of cement bent towards him, between the fire glowing in the guy's hand. Joel shoves his pistol into his waistband and just as quickly takes aim with his revolver again, with both hands clutching it and his arms locked tight. Points it between the girl and the guy. Back and forth, back and forth between the both of them. Any sudden fucking moves and he's going to shoot, no damn hesitation.

"Hell no, I ain't no kedan--!" And to his great relief, the fire in the guy's hand extinguishes, but that doesn't stop Joel from keeping aim on these two fuckers.

He's starting to slowly back away, though. Slowly, slowly, like he don't want any more trouble, especially not if that girl can make cement bend like that, especially if that guy can make fire appear like that in his hand, Jesus Christ, what the fuck? No way in hell is he lowering his gun, doesn't matter if the guy is saying they're leaving.

"You better leave quick fuckin' smart."

[alphatar]

There wasn’t anything Korra would have liked better than for him to have been the kedan she was chasing, but that was dying away the more he spoke to Mako. Now that she wasn’t in the heat of the moment and geared up for a fight, it was becoming obvious. Of course because Mako kept a cool head, unlike her and the paranoid foreigner who she did not want to take her eyes off of. Not when he was still pointing that thing at them.

But she didn’t get much of a choice.

Before she could even say anything, Korra was off her feet and she gave Mako a disproving, embarrassed look, though it did feel good to not have to balance herself anymore. It felt like a retreat, something Korra hated. But she didn’t want to have the same thing happen to Mako.

"Okay, let’s go." The sooner they could get somewhere she could heal in Wood, the better. Her eyes lingered on the weapon and then to the foreigner. The last thing she was expecting to have happen.

[browbeater]

He nodded, noting that the foreigner was backing away just as much as he was. He didn't want to turn his back, so he continued a few paces back, ignoring the warmth spreading across his jacket from Korra's blood. "We're leaving. Trust me, we don't want anymore trouble." Calm, collected, though he was keeping a wary eye on the gun. If it could do that to Korra, who knew what it could do to him.

Speaking of Korra... They needed to stop the bleeding, fast. But they needed to be away faster. "Hold on," he whispers to her as he looks for a safe opening for the both of them. Finally, when he gets an opening, he bolts, pushing away from the crowds and towards his home.

He'd remember that foreigner's face for later.