2019-08-15 - The Scum of the Earth

Summary:

Turtle Bay has its castaways. They aren't nice people.

Log Info:

Storyteller: None
Date: Thu Aug 15 17:20:11 2019
Location: Turtle Bay

Related Logs

None

Theme Song

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phoboswanda

.~{:--------------:}~.

Thursdays are free days. No classes, no labs, no distractions unless classwork requires it. Though, to be fair, Alexander approaches his classes like a military officer, attacking them and choosing them to make sure they can easily be dealt with! That's why he's taking mostly history classes, since well… with his upbringing it's easier.
But today is his day, and Thursdays are or trying things new. Which is why he took the subway to the nearest stop, then walked the rest of the way here… the Sentinel equivalent of Ground Zero.
It's definitely different to see in person than to look at it on TV, through the safe distance of a screen and the comforting ability to turn it off. Blot the evil out of one's mind and go on to the rest of the world. But being here, it's a moment of weight and severity. It lands on the shoulders and perches, whispering grim tidings silently to the psyche of those around.
A glance around as he stood on the edge of a demolished building. Not many visitors today. Still held off as dangerous. But some still sneak in. For Alexander it was… relatively easy.
Though for some reason he takes no pictures. He just stands there on the lip of a small crater, hands in the pockets of his baggy pants and his gaze distanced in thought.

Trouble is coming, in two parts. First, that awful acidic smell and a weird spin of inscriptions on said crater. Around it, really. The small bits and pieces of rubble are aligned in bizarrely regular lines. Plus, there looks like someone imploded a bushel of plums and left the juice to soak into the ground, leaving a pale purple hue to the concrete. Graffiti is common around here, scribbled and sketched in places, but the weird film of goop is still tacky in places, laid over the painted image of Iron Man having his armour opened by an electric can opener.

The weather isn't the kind that welcomes gallivanting out of doors. Rain pummels the cracked pavement and gaping wounds left in the heart of the big apple, a chunk of rot never quite repaired. Petrichor dances on the air in the faintest refrain, washed by ominously thick clouds pouring out gouts of water.

In short, not very appealing. Refuse clogs the gutters, what few there are still operational and not choked by old debris. The grey shadows linger in a miasma thick with despair and hopelessness, where not even so much as a rat quivers its whiskers above the fallen tenements. A three-storey, mid-sixties apartment looks like it belongs in Beirut or modern Syria, not here. Not in New York, where a sandwiched array of floors and ceilings slump to the earth. Rebar sticks out from the shattered concrete, and the rubble of lives spent and lost join together Ina weathered avalanche mixed with books and blankets, the brown carpet and one ragged sheet printed with Star Wars. That's a peek behind the curtain into turmoil, into degraded possibilities.

A place where things live that shouldn't. A place where gangs rarely roam, but those without other choices do. Something that walks like a man but slithers through moribund, broken alleys. Its shadow is bent away from it, and the unfortunate /thing/ riding its shoulder is a filthy starfish turned black and bulbous, poisoned. They're in some kind of argument conducted in half-psychic and half-chirping terms.

Clearly wrong. Clearly they don't belong. Not when the man is a filthy interpretation of a hipster, tattoos on his skin obliquely enriched by abyssal purposes and a questionable metallic purple dye. The clothes don't line up, either, a mismatch of a handsome trenchcoat that had better days, an ironic band t-shirt, a pair of wingtip shoes that 1956 would like back. And that beard, of course, split by a too wide, too lurid red grin.

He's not hard to see, but why would he worry? This domain is hazardous, full of entanglements; electrocution wires, pitfalls, crumbling buildings, radiation perhaps. Things to worry about. A young woman for whom the ruinous state of the city isn't particularly unfamiliar lurks in one of the abandoned homes, windows kicked out, cobweb blinds spilled over the empty hole peering into the street. Back to the wall, she carefully maneuvers a slim, dark mirror to catch the fiend's reflection.

The rain continues to pelt around him, the small bit of shelter Alexander has giving him at least some respite from the steady pounding of heavy droplets that set their on rhythm of impact upon the debris, upon aluminum siding, upon a pile of abandoned bricks. It's enough to perhaps mute some sounds, crippling the carry of far off words though there's occasionally still a distant clang from the river buoys a block and some over.
Alexander looks up, espying another visitor. The last one he had seen was a group of youths not much younger than him who had been pulling at a last bit of copper wiring. A brief grasp at treasure before they caught sight of Alex's arrival.
One hand lifts as he waves toward that lone figure, not having seen the young woman in her hiding place. "Hey!" He calls out, though the weather likely muffles it. For some reason trying to get the person's attention.

Gloomy and soaked, Turtle Bay looks a bit like the miserable animal. Everything has a weak sheen to it, puddles gathered around slouching pylons, fallen telephone poles and lampstands hardly able to hold up the sky. The sounds are completely washed out, and it's hard to hear much past a certain distance as it all fades together, short of the odd lonely honk of a freighter navigating through the waterways leading to the East River. The starfish fighting with the tattooed hipster slouch their way collectively through the overhanging cement floor chopped up with holes and speckled impact craters, and the man has to bend to slink his way under. The apartment building apparently has a loiterer, if not an occupant. It's hard to imagine someone, surely, trying to eke out an existence in there.

Wanda is a properly hidden creature, for the most part, lowers the mirror from being used to check his departure and position relative to her own. Him; that tattooed figure tapping one of the stony outcroppings to reveal a skein of rebar and a disgusting crawl of stomach churning writing that leaves some minds reeling with vertigo. Others might simply feel revolted and not know why.

Alex falling into the space near him earns a slow, slow turn. The lurid smile from the hipster is gone. "Hey?" he says coldly. "That's the best you can say? Hey?"

Wanda reaches down into the rubble at her feet, sweeping a space clean on the curling linoleum. She taps the ground, carefully arranging a few pebbles in cairns.

Things definitely do seem out of balance for some reason, a subtle feeling that the world right here… right around here… is just not right. But Alexander frowns as he considers it, turning to the left and right a few times as he looks upon the ground. That writing that seems to accentuate that feeling, then the being and its starfish passenger/comrade.
Bright blue eyes are under a furrowed brow, gnarled a bit with a hint of confusion as Alexander hears the words offered to him. He tilts his head to the side and then says, "Umm, hi?" As if that might serve better. It's helped out with a half-smile.
"Just uhh, I saw these guys… you might want to be…" But things start to add up into a negative situation as he slowly gets the vibe this guy doesn't need a warning about the looting hooligans that were around here. Finally,
"Who are you?"

"Come on, really? You came out for coffee or romantic strolls on the beach?" The hipster combs his beard with his hand, practically preening. It has been oiled, trimmed and immaculately styled. The bulbous, stiff starfish on his shoulder slithers behind his neck, concealed partly by equally well-groomed hair that seems a bit flattened by the rain. But not really. Creepy, perhaps, but not the strangest superpower anyone has ever had. He quarter turns back in Alex's direction, his hand still balanced on the overhang, as if he might just start to climb up. His wingtip shoes sure as hell doesn't look like he should be able to manage that, rather than wearing hiking boots. But it's a dapper, weird look all the same.

He shakes his head, coughing out a wet, phlegmy laugh. "I'm not your friend out here, you know." He cocks his head. "Kelvin. You can call me Kelvin."

Wanda keeps connecting the cairns. Pebble, rubble, broken stone. Chipped plaster, a bit of dust, dirt smeared together. She murmurs in rapid form while Alexander is in conversation with the hipster demon, shaking her head. The mana buried into the circle rotates round and around, unseen.

"Well, no." Alexander speaks with the ease of youth combined with an individual who doesn't seem given to hesitation. As if there was naught that could threaten what he holds dear, or a wanton disregard for personal safety. Yet he looks curiously to the side, head tilted as he watches Kelvin, though his eyes drift to the critter.
"I thought I'd take a stroll, be a bit reflective. Introspective?" His bright blue eyes lift, but then he bites his lower lip and sort of points at Kelvin. He doesn't seem to mind he's getting wet from the rain and his jeans are all sticking to his legs, and his t-shirt's gone from being white to almost see-through under windbreaker.
"But I'm sorta curious about your pet. Or is that like…" One eye squidgys up, "Is that you speaking through the guy? Or what?"

A squidgy eyestalk pokes out from around Kelvin's neck. That's Hobbs, staring down Alexander with a lurid stare. No blinking. Nothing but pupil and yellow-orange crenellations, disturbingly peaky. Disturbingly /assessing/, really, in the way that monocled seastars really shouldn't have. The hipster crosses his arms over his chest as the conversation continues, huffing. Clearly he has places to be. "Fine. Go do that. Go do that over that way." He points to the bay, to the barricades that eventually block traffic from getting in. "Don't be ridiculous. He doesn't talk."

A pregnant pause there. "You'd be too dull anyways. Shove on, kid, ain't your place." A hint of a warning there, in a black undertone.

"Well," Alexander's attention shifts back to Kelvin proper and his smile is given openly, warm and without hesitation. "I mean, I'm distracted now. And not feeling very introspective." He slips his hands into the pockets of his jeans, shifting his weight to the other foot as he looks over Kelvin and Hobbs' efforts in this particular corner of the ruins.
"And your tone sort of speaks to sort of an arrogance thing, not to be rude, but it's also interesting. Then the whole telling me what I should do sort of twinges the contrarian vibe in me."
He steps forwards a little if only to get a touch more out of the rain. "Curiousity is really a driving factor for most as they wander through the world. I wouldn't argue with it really."

Hobbs, the blobby starfish, sliiiinks back behind the neck of the hipster, Kelvin. It doesn't seem to like what it sees, or Alexander has sufficiently irritated it to seek refuge in the collar of the trench coat. A puff of fell-scented air, tinted in brimstone, licks the air. It bites deep into the senses, acrid and sharp, the kind of scent that hurts to breathe in too long. Caustic and hideous, it percolates around the unaffected man.

But the kid won't stop talking. Won't stop going on, and the glazed look on Kelvin's face is enough to turn a spark of movement out of him. He shoves his hands deep in the coat pockets and leans back into the wall. Concrete mashed with flooring and floorboards absorbs his weight, bending just a little in behind him. A very subtle effect, the kind that takes real effort to see.

But then the ground shakes. Subtle. Sprinkles of frosted dust and debris spill from the slanted wall, the collapsed house across the street. Pebbles bounce their way across the ruin of the road, a torn and gaping diversion shivering. In places the earth is bared, long weathered by the seasons, and that squishes and flexes to the harmonics being stirred up. Like someone running their finger around a cup of tea or coffee, the internal contents are fluid, slumping and rising, a radiating spill headed for Kelvin. For his apartment block. The jarring waves jump up and down, convincing the ground it wants to do the mambo /right/ now. Footing is a precarious thing, wingtip shoes or not. Alexander might be shaken around the same if he's on the ground, in a quarter-circle to the man's left.

Which gives Wanda cover as the earthquake starts rolling and the man starts swearing, darting out from the gaping hole that used to be a door in her ramshackle shelter. Right then, it's a good time to run, skidding a little as the ground hums around her, up to a wall, circling prey.

"Yeah," He offers as rejoinder, indeed agreeing that he did come here to the bad dangerous place. There's a space of several heartbeats where it might seem like that's all she's going to get. Even more infuriating! He even spares it a look as he glances around as if considering possibly other creatures or people or things being around. But then eventually, "I wanted to see it for myself," Which is true.
"Well," And there's the first hint of arrogance as she says to him that it would eat him, for some reason she draws the urge for him to stick up for himself, "It would try?" His voice lilts up at the end signaling that question.
"But, okay." He holds up a hand again and gives her a small wave, "If you're not too mad I'll… go?"

He came here where it was dangerous. He saved the demon! He killed the demon! All in a day's work for a hero of many stripes. Wanda says very little else until he's ground through all his responses, the weighted stare through her black lashes as penetrating as it gets, sometimes. A magnetic pull to that intense stare remains a powerful attractor in and of itself, fueled by stark consternation and worse than arrogance. It's probably curiosity.
"Who are you?" A flat question. This passes for Eastern European directness.

For a time he sort of rocks back and forth on his feet, watching her for some social cue as to it being okay to leave, since she can likely get the vibe… that he thinks she's weird. Since, well, yeah. But then she asks her question and like a light switch was flipped…
"Oh, hey." He removes his hands from his pockets and extends one toward her as his smile returns to that neutral sort of half-thing that he'd worn throughout most the time of dealing with that demon. "I'm Alexander. Aaron. Alexander Aaron. Or Alex. For short."
The smile is renewed as he awaits the possible handshake.

More the fool him, she doesn't /know/ handshakes. Because that would be a thing outside her bailiwick. A beautiful bow? Sure. Curtsy? Unlikely but possible. Handshake? Weirdo.

"Alexander," she repeats, spinning it with a clip halfway between Greek and Italian, a word that ran away with a gorgeous high-cheekboned Russian. It is an interesting slant, to say the least. Alliterative dancing on Wanda's tongue, slanted to her unique accent. "Alexander Aaron." Up and down, it skids through the balanced tone and lands neat as a gymnast named Nadia. Nailed it! It's a name she can do for once!
"Wanda," she says. Just Wanda. Only Wanda. Purely Wanda. There's no halfway point on that. "Hi."

"Soooo," The youth draws his hand back and repockets it. His bright blue eyes flit back and forth peering into hers, as if seeking some form of realization as to who she is, or what she's about, just deep in those irises of hers. Yet his spelunking sojourn draws merely blanks for him, at least as far as she can tell with his curious quizzical look that he holds.
"You're welcome for the assist?" He offers with a hint of a smile, one of those casual rejoinders that one offers out there to test the waters. To see if someone is likely to take umbrage, or if they're at a place where they can make light of themselves.
Consider it a social waters ping and one ping only.

The Scarlet Witch isn't widely known and the obvious coronet marking who she is, that happens to be curiously missing. Were it present, fairly obvious attention-grabber. But not declaiming her identity, there is an elegant basis for connection at a different level. The look is given directly back, even as he's at risk of her staring into his aura in search of answers. Slim fingers curl and uncurl, calming slightly.
Umbrage is a missing matter; unfamiliar, for she has no reason for pride or expectation. Undeniably direct, her midnight eyes hold him framed for a moment or two. "It is dead. Good this way." A shrug of her shoulders acknowledges a settled state of affairs; beneath her surface walls, there might be a more relaxed nature. Impossible to say.
"No bites on you?"

His long slow blink as he looks to her might seem almost crocodilian but then she asks of him a question and he gives a small shake of his head. "Noooo, don't think so." He starts to step around her, feet crunching some gravel as he moves. He brings a hand up to sort of point back toward the city proper as he says, "Soooo. I think I'm going to go?"
He walks past her side and then turns to start walking backward, "I mean, this was pretty wild. But also you're freaking me out a little bit. And I think… after today I'm perhaps not too good at the whole judging character thing?"
He smiles a little as he walks backward some more. "But I mean, are you going to be okay out here by yourself?" He asks, since clearly her safety can only be guaranteed by his presence.

"I don't know." A simple answer there makes for a straightforward contraction as she glances to the crater, and back to him. "You are lucky, Alexander Aaron. Or you are saying lies. Demons came here. Do you know why?"
Her statement is pointed and direct in that shattered English, goodwill melting down to the crux of a straightforward question.

Stopping from his slow retreat, Alexander answers her first with a shake of his head, then perhaps imagining she might not key into that since she's so weird. So he answers verbally, "No?" He offers, hands still in his pockets as he rocks back on his heels a little.
"But you could tell me why? Perhaps… somewhere away from here? With other people around in case you decide to flip out and kill me at least there'll be witnesses?" His lip twitches a little.

A pause lingers there, too long to be easy with comfort. Too long to trust in the sword that could come to hand or the expertise of a physical prowess she simply doesn't command. Wanda tilts her head a bit, the dark slew of her veiling hair curling around her shoulder and swaying free. No. Maybe? Maybe not.
"Telling you is a bad way to hunt." That comes with all the flat irony of her Balkan delivery, her ancestors and their bleak jokes wound up in at least one side of the family history, no telling on the other. "Yes?"
It's an opening, a proverbial slow extension of the hand.

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