epidemiology | EVENT ★ BACK TO THE FUTURE

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EVENT ★ BACK TO THE FUTURE

BENDED TIME

As outlined in the OOC post, things start to slow down and grow quiet in Oska for a few days as the bugs crawl away and slowly disappear. But then the cocoons hatch. Fully grown temporal insects claw their way out of them, each about the size and temperament of raging bulls.

They come out far more aggressive and eager to fight, are are willing to take on anything that moves with jaws and claws alike. Except, of course, another insect — when two of them encounter each other, they enter into a mating dance and then slip away into another dimension, leaving behind only the temporary ghosts of years gone by. If you can’t find a way to pierce that thick shell to take one down, better find another one to pair it off with instead. Just try not to get bit while leading them around and find yourself suddenly 5 years old again.

The insects aren’t the only thing going on in Oska, though. As it turns out, unicorns really hate this adult form of the temporal insects, and will start kicking their way out of their stalls in the stables to get at the insects in an attempt to impale or trample them. According to Uruz they’re gallant warriors, but not always quite cut out to take on a bug, and can easily get themselves hurt or killed. She would really appreciate recruits taking a moment to recapture any stray unicorns they may come across and leading them back to the stables. Try to avoid any insects on the way, or you’ll find yourself suddenly fighting insect and irate unicorn, which is no one’s idea of a good time.

The lake is getting more active, too. All the fighting has woken up something in the depths of it. Dark red tentacles sometimes creep up onto shore — and don’t worry, this time they don’t belong to a sea goddess. The tentacles don’t attack unless attacked, and can in fact be quite agreeable. Nodes along the length of them act as primitive eyes, which see well enough to interact with anyone nearby. They’re also all a little peckish. Toss a tentacle a bit of food and watch it curl around and ingest it using tiny mouths on the underside. It might even be willing to play a few rounds of fetch or slap a bug into the sky for you if you put it in a good mood with a morsel of food.

The senior ALASTAIR members can be seen out and about and doing their part, too. Uruz and Dagny fight as a team, centaur and elf, sometimes fighting back to back and sometimes as mount and rider. They’ll stop and lend a hand, but the cats are a little less generous. Cherenkov and Crowley fight inseparably and use magic and science in deadly combination to ward off and destroy the bugs, but can usually only be seen darting on their way from one place to another. They have a lot of magitek to repair in the destructive wake of the insects. Pomarr, neither as senior nor as invested in actively picking off the bugs, offers shelter near a tentacle-free portion of the lake, calling down storms to toss away bugs for her and anyone in the vicinity.

OOC NOTES

This log spans a week ICly. Characters will find themselves beginning to understand each other again as the bugs first vanish, as the effects of the cats’ work on the magitek pays off. The translation problem will be completely fixed by the time the cocoons hatch. All of the bugs will have been killed or shipped off by the sixth day, leaving the last day before their departure to the next mission blissfully relaxing. Any temporally misplaced recruits will be back to normal by the last day, as well.

A reminder to anyone still texting: the texting feature of magitek jewelry operates based on thought! There are no physical keyboards, recruits merely think the message that they’d like to send to another recruit.

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[Luckily (unluckily?) late at night is prime time for Bat-activity. Jason's settled on being inconspicuous while navigating the unfamiliar interior of the castle. And good thing he did, because he's not alone. He spots her near the mess hall. Stalking through the halls looking dazed and half-there. A little concerning, really. So he decides on turning a corner and colliding with her full-speed.]

Woah, hey! [He'll pretend it's an accident, though. Since he's being inconspicuous, he's not wearing a mask. Co-opted some ALASTAIR basics and hid his gear beneath the coat. (Just another recruit, nothing strange to see here—) And absently, he reaches up to her shoulder to steady her. As he does—] Sorry 'bout that. Say, you know the way to the kitchen?

[He knows where it is. Just finding a reason to talk to her in the first place.]

[ His hand reaches for her shoulder and instinct kicks in before the reserved, measured sense of calm that she had accrued later in life. Natasha's hand shoots up to find his and twists his palm back at the wrist, pressing it just to the verge of breaking as her other palm shoots up to the joint of his shoulder to press him back to arm's length.

The retaliation happens in a second, and it's only after she's done it that she processes the harmlessness of his question.

He is hiding something. He's dressed up in every way to seem normal, but she can see it in the way he walks, the pooching of his uniform. That makes him a threat. Adrenaline pumps into her brain like the steady flood of siren sounds, telling her to push her thumb forward just slightly to finish the break. Instead, she releases him. ]

I don't like being touched. [ She straightens her shirt and moves around him to the hallway on the right. ] Follow me.

Edited 2016-09-08 02:08 (UTC)

[She moves fast, and he's not expecting it. By the time he's realized he ought to can the innocent act and jerk away, there's a sharp pain rocketing up his nerves. It would only be more startling if he hasn't been pinned like that dozens of times, over and over again in the Batcave, until he learned better. Still, reflexive, his free hand twitches tellingly upward before he puts the breaks on. His posture pulls up tense, brows drawing together, jaw setting in a way that reads as combative more than alarmed. As if clamping down on the reflex to bite back. Most of him is screaming at him to try and break free. The rest of him—

(It's a skilled response, which is remarkable, but otherwise not an entirely unreasonable one, given the circumstances. The part of him that still lives and breathes in the worst backstreets in Gotham finds it pretty justifiable, really. Not in a very good way, but not in a way that doesn't make some kinds of sense. If you don't like being touched that much, odds are you got reasons for that. You learn how to stop it from happening again.)

He didn't bump into her to pick a fight. He weighs his options fast and waits her out, watching sharply until she releases him. Once she does, he keeps his feet planted and his hands to himself as she brushes by, flexing the soreness out of his wrist once he gets it back. Trying to reconcile the first part of that answer with the follow me. (Mapping through his run of the castle for the possible courses to the kitchens in his head to see if any of them line up.)

Since she's apparently obliging him, however—]

Sure you know where you're going?

[The incisive edge on it could easily be chalked up to wounded pride, if one didn't look too close.]

No.

[ There's no reason not to be honest with him about that, but as her eyes scan the hallways here, she has the indefensible feeling that she's walked this path sometime before. It has all the same weirdness of a waking dream, heavy around her senses, chalk full of inexplicable oddities that she can't quite place—but probably will be able to once she wakes up. ]

Technically, I haven't been there. But I have a feeling, and you asked. So follow me.

[ She repeats it and turns to face him with sharp eyes that wait to see if he'll obey. ]

[Weird. Not supervillain weird, just weird. Frowning, he watches her for another few seconds. Then he finally plays along with his own farce and starts to follow a few paces behind, glancing up at the hall to mark where they've been. It's about the right direction for it, so her feeling is actually a pretty good one. Lucky guess, maybe.]

So where've you been, then? [Prying. Just a little.] You just wound up here?

[Had to have been a pretty recent arrival like himself, if she hasn't at least eaten sometime. It would explain the weirdness, maybe. The dazed look. The hypervigilance. Timespace jet lag? Is that a thing. Either way, kitchen seems like a pretty good place to start. His information on the situation is a lot less complete than he'd like, but at the very least, someone ought to warn her about the bugs.]

[ She nods, even though she's not entirely sure that's true. Something doesn't jive right with her perception; the whole world feels slightly surreal, as though she's weaving in and out of a constant state of deja vu. She doesn't like it. Black Widow thrives on being the one person in the room who knows the most about what's going on. ]

I woke up in a bedroom. [ Duh. She looks up at him, realizing this sounds ordinary. ] One that belonged to someone else, but I was alone.

[ She realizes then that she hasn't been trying to look for a way back to Russia, exactly, but rather trying to test out the environment that she is in using the skills she'd acquired. She's not eager to return to the Red Room, no matter how hard they tried to pretend it was her home. Home isn't a word she knows. ]

What about you?

Well, you're not alone anymore.

[Now that he's sure she's not going to bolt on him—or try to break his wrist again any time soon—it's got some irreverent cheek in it. In a trying-too-hard-but-not actually-very-serious kind of way. He even throws her a grin, once she takes her eyes off the castle long enough for it. Tough crowd.]

Same thing. [And his grin fades a little as he recalls it. Some unfamiliar room in the castle. A small collection of firearms on the table, along with something that might have been a motorcycle helmet. No identifying information about who it might have belonged to, or if they were even responsible. They pass a small side door, and he stalls, looking thoughtful.]

Hang on, this way.

[ In a way, that was unnerving to hear. She had been both surrounded by people constantly and painstakingly isolated for such a long and paradoxically concurrent period of time that she felt starved for companionship and repulsed by it simultaneously. It took a beat longer for her to process his cheeky grin and recognize it for the joke that it was.

She cracked a smile. That's what they said she should do. Mirroring, it was called. It made people more at ease. But her smile was fragile and faint, not as bold and warm as his, and she wondered how he got it that way. How hard had Jason been forced to work on it?

Their sudden stop interrupted her train of thought. ]

Why? [ She turned to stare at the door. ] How do you know anything about this place if you just got here too?

[ Prying back. She pursued him, earnest in her task because she suddenly wondered if he'd had the same lingering sense that he knew the place, that he knew where he'd woken up, but couldn't place why, just like she had. ]

[Jason Todd may be just another orphan from the worst backstreets in Gotham. But now he is also Robin. And being Robin means being smart and fearless and undaunted. Covering up insecurities and doubts with confident charm and quick chatter. He's nothing if painfully aware of the boots he has to fill.

(Besides, she's pretty when she smiles. Robins and redheads.)

He hums under his breath in a way that makes it clear he doesn't have a good answer for her. Distracted like a dog with a bone—or a detective with a lead. It's nothing that should be remarkable, really...If it wasn't battering at his attention. Picking at the back of his head. And that's irrational, but it's certainly weird enough to warrant investigation. Couldn't hurt.]

I got a hunch.

[More like a case of deja vu. He hasn't been this way before, not yet. But he's somehow very unsurprised when the door opens up to a narrow hall, only big enough for the two of them because neither one of them is done growing into themselves, yet. Probably meant for the castle staff to slip through inconspicuously when the castle was put to more traditional uses.]

I'm Robin, by the way.

[No mask, technically, but he'll keep the alias up. No names in the field. (And you?)]

Black Widow.

[ In a way, it's funny. Usually, names are a useless matter of manners and nothing more, for they tell you next to nothing about a person except how willing they are to share information about themselves. But in this case, Natasha has a strong feeling that Robin represents him as clearly as Black Widow represents her. ]

Does this happen to you a lot, a hunch?

[ She sounds suspect, striding quickly beside him in a way that seems determined not to follow (mainly because she anticipates that it will be a matter of significant note to him that she keep up), but also in a way like she's teasing him and like she's seeking reassurance all at once. A joke seeded in a truth that she hopes rings for him as well as her, an effort on her part to measure his response to the perception of her vulnerability. ]

[It's a good thing she keeps up, because he casts a sharply critical glance back at her for Black Widow. That's some moniker. And it is a moniker, clearly. But maybe now's not the time to throw stones at glass houses. Instead, he'll take that teasing tone and that matching pace as an invitation, ducking swiftly through the cramped stone halls.]

Well, if you can't trust your gut, what can you trust?

[Certainly not your spur-of-the-moment partner, diving into the bowels of a castle in the midst of a timespace displacement. Gotta start somewhere.]

[ What she didn't tell him was that her gut didn't feel like hers lately. It felt like some life that she had never been privy to, flashes of something that she never experienced ever since she got there. ]

Yours, hopefully.

[ She didn't trust his either, but she suspected that his was similarly thrown off. Just a hunch. And she hoped it might endear him to her, to imply that she trusted him. ]

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EVENT ★ BACK TO THE FUTURE

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lmk if this isn't ok!!!! and i will edit

don't worry, he deserves it

bless his heart

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