caveofsapphires | smaller patch of fading sky [ open ]

smaller patch of fading sky [ open ]

WHO: EVERYONE. All PCs thus far will be in this log, through active tagging or implication.
WHAT: THRILLS. SPILLS. Hiking trip toward the Diamond City.
WHERE: The Overworld.
WHEN: Forward-dated to May 1st (Tuesday) through May 7th (Monday).
WARNINGS: May contain violence or other mentions of physical harm. This is not summer camp.
NOTES: More information can be found on the OOC post here. Please read it!

Gathered in the morning haze, Sleepers were brought to the mouth of the Cave with plenty of supplies and equipment. Compasses that would point them toward the City. Backpacks full of clothes and food, medical kits, tents and even weapons. Stun rifles and knives — to fight off any unwanted company, they said. ("Watch out for their bite," Ryan had commented. "Those fuckers are downright feral.") The straight and narrow path would get them there in six days if they kept a good clip. They were sent off just like that. Refusals to leave were met with a wall of guard force officers blocking the entrance back into the cave city. No way to go but forward, unless someone was particularly stalwart about remaining.

From the exterminator's station near the mouth, leaving the Cave was as simple as a short hike upward into the fresh air of the Overworld. Dust and an uncomfortable sort of heat pervaded the atmosphere, light winds stirring up the sand and teasing the meager bits of vegetation that had grown. No matter what direction you looked... it was all wasteland, cracked ground and desolate emptiness. Jutting up from scarred ground were boulders and small spires made entirely of glass and patches of stone; instead of reflecting the harsh sunlight, they seemed to absorb it and only add to the muted loneliness of the atmosphere. As far as the eye could see, there was no life to be found.

With no other option, the Sleepers eventually made their way onward.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Re-l thought for a moment, seeing the advantages to both, but at last she said "Me. I can test out the ground first."

The trail was widest at the base, and the first hundred metres or so were easy going. Then the first switchback came, and she had to change her angle of movement sharply. They were already quite high, and the ground seemed to yawn up at her, waiting for her to fall. The trail was narrow here, too, narrow enough that she was sliding sideways. She shimmied up the track until it widened out again, and then stopped to catch her breath, looking back to Gabriel.

[ooc: this is the scene I mean, if you want to double check: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItAl1bS2ZTA&t=2m40s]

"There are things I want to understand," Re-l said.

The trail led them on across the desert. It was particularly bleak her, with not even birds to break the monotonous silence. Re-l found herself both unnerved and comforted by the silence, which was so much like the wastes outside Romdeau.

She ignored Gabriel steadily, though he didn't stop looking at her, and concentrated on the motion of walking. It wasn't long before she entered a half-daze, thinking mostly of the old days, before she'd met Vincent, before her life had changed. She couldn't say now, whether the memories made her happy or sad.

Once or twice she thought she saw a hint of the larger group, moving across the sand ahead of them. A glint of metal, an odd dust plume. She couldn't be sure, and so she said nothing.

Gabriel shrugged. "Eh, if you live without risks life just gets boring. So, then! If you're going to be boring, what were you doing before we went into the coffins?"

Judging by how similar backgrounds seemed to be, or at least how similar his and Balthazar's had been to the reality, it might give him some good insight into this guy.

"Canaries first." Gabriel waved her on ahead before following. Even as 'easy' as the first section was, Gabriel was still puffing by the time they got to the switchback. He'd also pulled his goggles on, because the sun reflecting off the stone had gotten to be a nuisance on his eyes.

He paused and leaned against the cliff as Re-l moved across, grateful for the brief rest, but was already searching for good cracks in the rock. There was no way he was going to manage to get across that narrow a ledge without help; it was just as well he didn't have a thing about heights.

Except that he kind of did. Coming down the cliff on the other side, he'd made the mistake of actually looking down. The realisation that he knew exactly how far it was, and that such a fall would make his human body go splat like that unfaithful dick he'd punished the first time he met the Winchesters in person, had made him shiver.

So he resolutely didn't look down. Instead he picked out three different places in the rock, evenly spaced within reach of each other; then he snapped up a trio of steel rings, embedded in the rock not far over where his head would be, without stopping to overthink it. Simple, effective. He sidled across the edge, pressing himself to the cliff and using the rings to steady himself until he was across, keeping his gaze up.

[ooc: okay, I know it's the last scene and all but it makes me want to watch it already. xD Just wish I had the Internet to dl stuff.]

"Haven't I heard that before," Gabriel murmured with a yawn. "Something to be said for not bothering with that, y'know. Just trust that sometimes, that's just how things work."

Except that it never worked. Not properly, and not in the long-run. He'd questioned. Just never ... explicitly. So he'd never understood.

The archangel couldn't help but keep glancing sidelong at Re-l as they walked, half fascinated and half hopeful. It at least passed the time, especially when he let himself assume, for a while, that what he'd seen really was what he thought--her soul--and tried to figure out what the glimpses meant.

It was kind of obvious, really. Prickliness and armour. Geez, no wonder the chick was so icy. Obviously, he had a challenge ahead of himself. He needed to keep himself sharp and entertained somehow.

Re-l watched the rings, waiting for one to vanish or fail, but they held firm.

"That's quite the trick," she said, when he was across. "Though be careful. You'll want to conserve your energy. The next section is going to be tricky.

The trail climbed up steeply from the relatively flat ledge they were on, smooth enough that purchase might be tricky. To make matters worse, it had crumbled away in sections, leaving gaps that had to jumped across. Re-l thought she could make all of them easily except the last.

"How do you want to handle this?" she said. She didn't particularly like handing the initiative to anyone else, but she wasn't the one who could make objects out of thin air. Sometimes you had to concede the advantage. Grudgingly.

[ooc: My evil plan to make people watch Ergo Proxy gains traction. I love every ridiculous mindfucky moment of that show.]

Gabriel shook his head. "Steel's easy in a place like this; metal particles are everywhere in the rock." Still, he hadn't exactly put much into it, not enough to make them last--when he glanced behind, the first ring was already crumbling slowly. He'd timed it just right.

So he was feeling pleased with himself as he examined the track. "Steps might be a bit much," he said regretfully. It was a long path; he could only imagine how much that would take out of him, and this was the wrong time to get hit with another migraine. "But I can ..."

He frowned for a moment and then leaned against the wall to take a look at the soles of his boots. They were worn, grubby as anything, and a quick feel confirmed that the traction had been lost in both. Well, he could solve that. At first he didn't bother with a snap, and instead just laid his hand across the rubber, but when nothing happened he frowned and did it the other way.

This time it worked. Well, damn, that was a tad inconvenient, if his constructs actually relied on the fingersnaps. Used to be he only used 'em because they were annoying, irreverent and just the right kind of pointed showiness. With a shake of his head he slide down the wall to crouch and gestured at Re-l. "Lemme see the bottoms of your shoes; I'll traction 'em up a bit for the trail. The breaks are easy--I just need to make another foot or so of path to stand on. They only need to last a minute, tops."

He was, the archangel realised, going to be making more things in sequence than he ever had before on this trip. He only hoped he could hold out that long, even as small and simple as these things were.

Re-l didn't dignify that with an answer. She just looked at him. If he didn't know by now how unacceptable that option was to her, he was never going to understand.

Her throat was parched, and she swallowed uneasily. She'd used up most of her water cleaning their wounds last night. If she didn't find more soon, she would be in trouble.

Her eyes scanned the desert, and spotted what might be a copse of stunted trees, far in the distance. It wasn't too far off their route.

"Would you object to a slight detour?" she asked, the the crack in her voice made her wince. Her throat was closing off.

This time when Gabriel looked at her, he wasn't looking for anything around her. It still took him a few minutes to understand what the problem was, and it was only the crack in her voice which made it register.

"And you say I can't take care of myself," he muttered, finding his water canteen and pushing it into her hands while nodding toward the maybe-trees. Hey, no reason to wait until they got there for a maybe. He didn't want to have to drag her ass back. "Let's go check it out."

Re-l nodded, set one hand on the wall and turned her foot over, holding the heel up for him to meddle with. When he had repeated the process for the other foot she stood straight again. The extra grip would certainly help, but the path was more impressive still.

"Don't over exert yourself, whatever you do," she said. "I don't know what else we might need that power for. If you think you can't make it, call out to me. I can probably throw you across the two smaller gaps."

She wasn't totally sure that she could. At peak physical strength, certainly, but she was weak from six days of walking. Still, if she had to do it, she would. That was who she was.

"I know my limits," Re-l said thickly, "that's why I'm allowed to push them."

Still, she took the water canister greedily, gulping it down. She was careful, but a little trickle spilled down her throat.

"Thank you," she said, more clearly.

The copse grew larger slowly. The water had revived Re-l, and she felt herself to be thinking more clearly.

"How's your arm?" she said. "No infection?"

Somehow it was that sentence, 'I don't know what else we might need the power for', which stuck in Gabriel's head. It implied that he shouldn't use it for one thing if they could use it for another, rather than simply holding back as much as possible. Choosing what to use it for, instead of using it for anything he needed.

Keeping his power in reserve was a foreign thought. It wasn't something he'd ever needed before. It wasn't something he'd ever considered before. And yet that's what he'd just been doing, wasn't it? Using his constructs sparingly, because his energy was limited. And the reminder of just how powerless he still truly was made a chill run down his spine.

He frowned a little and then snorted to cover his unease at the thought that he might not get all his powers back at all. "Somehow I doubt you could manage to throw this." He motioned to himself mockingly. Sure, he'd lost weight over the past week, they all had, but he was still bulkier than she was. "Especially on this kind of field." The archangel shook his head. "I'll manage. Rock is pretty basic."

"I'd just have hated to have to carry you if you fainted," Gabriel said with a smirk as he took the canteen back. Somehow he doubted this woman would have ever let that happen--the fainting or the carrying.

His hand automatically came up to ghost over where his wound was under his jacket, and he shook his head. "Don't think so. It doesn't feel as bad as it did, anyway."

"Good. Foreign infections can be deadly." Re-l paused and then snapped her fingers. "I must add that to my list of questions. We must have at least residual resistance to the anti-bodies in the air, otherwise we'd be dead by now. But how did we get them? Are they built into our bodies?"

Her mind ran down a hundred possible avenues of thought at once, and she had no time to consider any of them. They had finally reached the oasis, and there was indeed a pool of water. There was no connecting stream, but there was no algae either. The water looked as clean as it was possible for desert water to look.

"A year ago, I would never have thought to drink water straight from the ground, but we can't be picky." She dunked her canteen under the surface, and watched the bubbles rise. When it was finished she took a drink herself, ignoring the flicker of embarrassment in her stomach as she raised her cupped hands to her face and drank greedily. When her thirst was quenched she splashed more water over her face, soaking her hair and her throat. It would evaporate soon, but it was a blessing while it lasted.

"Alright then. We don't have any time to waste. You go first from here, and I'll follow close behind you. If anything goes wrong, I'll be there."

She started climbing, hugging Gabriel's shadow. The new soles on her boots made the trek easier, but it was still arduous, and her calves and thighs were soon burning with the effort. Sweat trickled down the back of her neck and collected on her forehead. Overhead the sun beat down, and the sky was unpleasantly cloudless.

She was distracted enough by the sun that she missed her timing, and stayed slightly too long on the made section of rock. She felt it begin to disappear beneath her feet and jumped, landing awkwardly on the more solid trail.

She picked herself up and brushed herself off, wincing.

"That was stupid," she said quietly.

"It's not that hard to engineer a human body," Gabriel said dismissively, and then stopped. "Well, it is, but only in comparison to other things. It didn't used to be hard, in itself. Point is, they could've done it. They've got the gadgets."

Gabriel sank down in the shade with a sigh, debating whether or not to take off his pack before deciding against it. He let his canteen fill and unloaded the whole lot over his head before filling it again. Then he drank until he wasn't thirsty at all and filled the bottle a third and final time.

Gabriel's head was aching before not much longer; the goggles protected him only so much from the sun's glare, and he kept his face down to protect it better. He had to lean on the cliff, panting, but continued doggedly onwards despite the burn in his legs.

When he heard Re-l's feet hit the track he leaned his shoulder against the cliff so he could turn, awkwardly, to look at her. He grinned weakly. "At least I can say for sure your boots aren't going to fail on you as badly as your timing."

"That only leads to more questions," Re-l said. "Why create human bodies in the shape and memory of people from other worlds? Why create me, and not just Masa? There are a thousand questions, and all the answers are in the city."

Re-l stood up and brushed the sand from her coat.

"Speaking of which, we'd better keep moving. You have people to find, and I have a city to get to."

She swung her pack on her back and waited for him to get up.

Re-l sighed, leaning back against the wall in imitation of him. She could feel her knee stinging beneath her clothes, but that wasn't what worried her. Right now, the look on Gabriel's face was of more concern.

"Using that power really eats at you," she said. "Do you need to take a break?"

She dug her heels into the ground and leant out over the ledge. The ravine spread out before them, the bottom so far away that only the largest streams could be seen gleaming in the sunlight. Judging by the other cliff, they were about halfway up. It was slow work, and for a moment Re-l wondered if they would ever make it to the top.

Truthfully, it was as much the sheer exertion of climbing the trail was that exhausting him as the use of his power. Then again, his head was ringing slightly and he couldn't tell if it was the sun or the fatigue or how ever many steps he'd made to get this far up.

He hesitated for a moment, but then nodded. "That would be nice," he admitted, and this time the exhaustion was plain in his voice. At least the track was wide enough for a sit down, not all that far along; when he made it there he slid down the wall to sit without even taking his pack off.

Re-l dropped down beside him, sliding her legs out.

"It's strange," she said. "With all the power that the city has, with all that they've been able to do to us, it seems ridiculous to make us trek across such a dangerous world alone. They must have airships; why couldn't we just take one of those? What goal could they have in pushing us so hard?"

She couldn't admit to herself how worried she was. They had no idea of the trail ahead, and for all her bravado, she would be totally lost without Gabriel's power.

"Damnit," she said, kicking a loose pebble over the edge and listening to the sound it made as it bounced down.

How could she be so weak? Was it really impossible for a mere human to make any difference in the world? First Vincent, and now this angel; she was always being protected. It infuriated her.

Mal returned his shrug with an easy one; though she was feeling the pain and stiffness of travel as well, she wouldn't show it if there was any way she could manage not to.

"It's the name I've given for the most part," she said airily. "I see no reason not to, especially not out here. Not that I'm particularly attached to either version of reality; I simply choose to ally myself with the one that I remember."

Glancing up at him curiously, she let a smirk cross her lips and raised her eyebrows. "Now it's your turn, I believe. You have to give me some kind of name, even an invented one, or I'll be forced to think you're rude."

Brow furrowing (the children didn't like him?), Liam nodded slowly. He didn't have all of the information for this, and it was becoming increasingly more apparent that Twitch was missing a bunch of the pieces as well — along with simply not mentioning the ones he actually was in possession of. For another time, perhaps.

"Suppose some good has come of all... this," he admitted reluctantly. "Gotta say, that's a pretty rare viewpoint on the situation, though."

"Got two out of three already," Liam said with a shrug. "Sort of. One and a half? Food isn't too bad. Just... boring." His lips quirked and there was some humour in his gaze. "Could really go for adding a nice bed to the whole equation, though. Sleep — now that's something I'm not so averse to, even if it is a waste of time."

"You're suggesting I just leave him out there," Liam gritted out, eyes narrowing. Not only because he found the idea incredibly offensive, but because this was something he couldn't entirely deny. Logically, he knew going out there would be stupid and getting back would be nearly impossible. Logic held very little place in his mind when Liam thought about what must be happening with Ken right now, his own thoughts swirling and panicking and hoping to whatever deity or natural forces might be listening that Ken had made it to safety.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 16 of 24

smaller patch of fading sky [ open ]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

you know, this could be why they missed the fourth day stuff. XD

no subject

no subject

That... actually makes a lot of sense XD

yay for surprise continuity!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject