[closed]

[wroughtiron]

Characters: An NPC (wroughtiron), Annabeth Chase (sophos), Hellboy (histruename), the Doctor (iwaspromisedtea) and Zatanna Zatara (backwordscompatible)
Date: November 25/28th.
Location: The Mainland.
Situation: These characters are tracked down by an NPC and given some information, as well as asked a few things in return. Individual scenarios are in the main body of the post itself.
Warnings/Rating: Shouldn't stray much above pg-13, but if it does I'll let you know.

Comments

Annabeth;

[wroughtiron]

[When the storm kicks up, it's sudden and harsh. The air becomes difficult to breathe, the light diminished nearly to darkness. And then there's a tug on Annabeth's hand and someone is leading her away.

It's barely visible from the surface – a narrow slash in the ground, but it's actually a staircase that goes gradually down. Some forty broad, winding steps later and it opens into a cavern quite untouched by the storm outside. It's a beautiful place, picturesque, a pool of still clear water nearby. There are shelves carved into the walls and the shelves hold many things, books and sextants and maps and a broken-looking globe, child's toys and a hunting bow. They don't look like a set of anything but rather random items collected, rescued or restored from elsewhere. Scavenged.

The woman that led her here is tall, wearing a roughly spun hood that she throws back from her face with the carelessness of one come home. She shakes the sand out of her hair with an exaggerated huff.]

I'll be digging sand out of my unmentionables for weeks. Lucky I found you when I did, girl. Those devils have been known to flay people's skin from their bones.

[sophos]

[The sudden sandstorm shouldn't be as surprisingly as it is, and Annabeth's first thought is to find shelter. At least until someone grabs her, then her first thought is to pull away. But the grip is strong, and it's not someone she knows - a native, to the mainland?]

[With that potential, she lets herself get tugged along, down the stairs, into the cavern. She's keenly aware of the knife attached to her belt, of her hat in her pocket, and she calculates several ways to escape and flee. Immediately she cases the room, the shelves full of so many items - things she wants to look at, if she gets the chance. But that's to come later, because the woman is revealing herself and speaking, and Annabeth's eyes focus on that. There's nothing blatantly threatening about her, she clearly looks like she lives here, and there's the possibility of information.]

[So she looks over the woman, a little skeptically and with her guard up. Not looking like a threat doesn't necessarily mean the threat is not there.]

They do have a tendency to come out of nowhere. Experience in escaping them, I take it?

[wroughtiron]

Years of it. They never get any more friendly, that's for sure.

[The woman, oblivious to Annabeth's myriad thought process, merely thrusts a hand towards her in a 'let's shake' gesture.]

Name's Eva. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but you aren't a kedan, right?

[sophos]

[Years of it. The woman's lived on the mainland for at least that long then.]

[She considers the gesture, deems it better to roll with the hospitality for now. Holds out her own hand and shakes Eva's.]

Annabeth. And you're right, I'm not. Are you?

[Because she can't quite tell.]

[wroughtiron]

Not a kedan.

[She repeats that almost to herself, affirmation of Annabeth's status rather than admission of her own, and her expression is briefly unreadable.]

At it again, is she? The Emperor?

[sophos]

[She frowns, for both lack of answer and the new question.]

You mean summoning people from different worlds? Are you implying she's done so before?

[She'll come back to the kedan question later.]

[wroughtiron]

At least once. Maybe more. I'm a little fuzzy on the details. Before my time, as it were.

[She sighs, drags a hand through her hair and goes to stir up her fire.]

Coffee?

Hellboy;

[wroughtiron]

[This time, it's an oasis. An actual, honest-to-Emperor oasis, a blue jewel in the midst of all the desolation. A little piece of heaven. There's shrubbery and cacti cropped up around the water, and a few scattered, rather pathetic-looking trees. It's not ideal, but the water is clean and clear (and cold, for the curious) and although it's no storybook fantasy, it's bound to be a sight for eyes gone sore scouring the endless desert.

But Hellboy isn't alone there.

Instead there's a woman – perhaps in her mid-thirties – leaning up against one of those oddly shaped trees, utterly still and silent and more than a little camouflaged, in her brown homespun cloak, a scarf of the same pulled half over her face. She's got an arrow notched to a bow, and she's obviously been there a while waiting on some sort of small prey to come into view. There's already one little critter of some denomination (looks like... rabbit?) hanging from her belt.]

[histruename]

[The oasis drew Hellboy in like a siren's song sinking ships. If Liz really was out there somewhere, this is where she would go. It was the only source of clean water he'd seen for miles, and she would've run out of her own supplies days ago.

But the place is deserted, just like everything else. His hooves sink deeply into the mud at the water's edge as he stands glaring down at his own reflection, tail lashing behind him, and trying to decide if looking for her like this was really gonna do them any good.

A sudden rustling in the bushes snatches him away from his brooding, and his head snaps up in its direction. That's when he notices the woman with her bow, her dull cloak making her seem to have materialized like a ghost from the equally dull landscape.

He considers her silently, the dull glow of his eyes apparent even in the growing daylight of the harsh early morning sun. She's armed, but that doesn't seem to bother him. He regards her with easy confidence.]

I'm looking for a woman. About 5'5", brown hair, brown eyes. Seen anyone like that around here lately?

[wroughtiron]

[She almost leaps a yard into the air at the voice, startling her out of her hunter's reverie. Then she whirls away from the tree, arrow nocked and drawn--]

Oh hell you're huge.

[She almost literally reels back away from him.]

And-- red. You are both huge and red. That's.

[-- Probably being rude. She clears her throat and lowers the bow fractionally. A woman. Right. A woman with brown hair and eyes.]

I haven't seen anyone matching that description, no. She a friend of yours? Or, um, dinner?

[histruename]

[Oh, this crap again. Hellboy just stares at her with mild irritation, waiting for the initial shock to work out of her system.]

A friend.

[But no sign of her. His eyes sweep the landscape one more time, hoping he missed something. Somewhere he must've missed something. It's like she vanished into damn thin air. The fingers of his stone hand grind into a fist as he mumbles under his breath.]

Great.

[wroughtiron]

[Working, working... there it goes.]

-- Wait, you're one a foreigner. And she is too?

[histruename]

[He should probably move on. Retrace his steps again. Maybe she'd gone back to camp. Or maybe it's time to head back to the island. Probably should--

And then the woman's talking to him again, interrupting his train of thought. When he answers he's still obviously distracted.]

Yeah.

Zatanna;

[wroughtiron]

[Fortune telling has always been something of an imprecise art. Read one tea-leaf wrong, and you can have gone and doomed an entire civilization. Which is exactly why when Zatanna finds her, she's puzzling over an arrangement of small plaques. These plaques bear no indication to anything Earth-based – sorry, no tarot cards here – but they are obvious fortune-telling paraphernalia, and she is obviously fretting over them.

She's stretched out across a flat rock, enjoying the warmth. One elbow is braced beneath her and she's arranging these triangular plaques in formation. Her cloak is folded beside her and there's a napkin laid out with bits of various food. The rock itself is atop one of the largest hills in the area, and there's visibility for quite a ways. It makes a good vantage point, doubtless why she's there to begin with.]

[backwordscompatible]

[Zatanna didn't particularly consider herself talented in the art of divination. There had been a few instances as a child--prophetic dreams that could have just as easily been coincidences--but little else. However, she still knew enough to recognize the signs of a reading. Any magician would.]

[She approached with caution. Out of respect, not fear. Divination usually required intense concentration, and the last thing she needed to do was anger a stranger with her mere presence. So she remained quiet. Watching silently. Waiting for her presence to be noticed, or for the fortune teller to finish so she could speak up.]

[Whichever came first.]

[wroughtiron]

[This fortune teller isn't anywhere near as respectful of the art as Zatanna. She blinks as if coming out of a daze and when she looks up she sees the girl in plain sight.

She's a little thing, isn't she? Young.]

You aren't lost, are you?

[backwordscompatible]

More like exploring.

[Zatanna was incredibly tiny. The second smallest of her group of friends by several inches. But she usually made up for it with her aura. Even now, speaking against a stranger, she didn't look or feel particularly timid.]

You were doing a fortune reading, weren't you?

Do you mind if I ask what it was you saw?

[From the look on her face, it couldn't've been anything pleasant. But that still left any number of possibilities.]

[wroughtiron]

Exploring's good for the soul.

[She sits up on the rock, cross-legged and pats an empty space in case the girl wants to come take a seat.]

I'm not actually very good at it, but every once in a while I give it a whirl. I'm pretty sure, according to this, we're supposed to have Fu dogs falling out of the sky the Wednesday after next.

[backwordscompatible]

[Zatanna remains cautious, but accepts the kind gesture. Taking a seat a few inches further from where the woman gestured to.]

So I should remember to bring an umbrella that day?

The Doctor;

[wroughtiron]

[When the Doctor finds her, she's sitting on the sand, the contents of her pack strewn around her. She's got her pant-leg cut to the mid-thigh and she's trying (with some success, thank you!) to dress wounds there. These aren't the dreaded (or fabled, depending on your outlook) llothi clawmarks, but rather it looks like she took a tumble down an embankment and disagreed with several rocks on the way down.

She glances up when she notices him, shielding her eyes with the back of her hand.]

I don't suppose you're in the business of helping strangers?

[iwaspromisedtea]

[ He'd been observing her for a moment before she'd spoken. He'd been taking in the entire landscape, truthfully, but mysterious figure alone and hurt in a wasteland? Oh, yeah. Something was definitely up around here. He approaches with a smile, already ready to aid in taking care of her injury. ]

It wouldn't be if my name was just The Guy Who Casually Walks On By. -- It's not. So yes, where can I help you out?

[wroughtiron]

You aren't a mystical healer or anything interesting like that?

[Her tone is hopeful, but her expression is at odds with it. She obviously doesn't expect him to be.]

[iwaspromisedtea]

Afraid not. I doubt I'd be very interesting at all if you asked those around me!

[ He is just John Smith. Regular, average, guy. HE CAN TOTALLY PULL IT OFF RIGHT?

He drops to his knees in order to be pro-active and help her out, holding his hand out for the bandages so he can unroll some and apply them. ]

[wroughtiron]

Pity you came alone, then.

[But she hands him a dressing, and her expression is just oh-so wryly amused.]

[iwaspromisedtea]

Not much company around these days. [ He smiles back before tearing off a bit. ] Or rather there is, but I didn't think it'd be quite so good if they all came here. Not the nicest part of town, is it?

[ the 'are you from here' is implied. ]