taxonomites | [Everywhere.]

Entry tags:

[Everywhere.]

When the crystal is broken and the witch's power defeated, the city seems for a moment to hold its breath. Then, somewhere, the first icicle snaps from its overhang, quivers in the air, then lands with a soft plop in the snowbank beneath it.

Followed by the entire accumulated snow on the roof that held it, in one giant FWUMP of powder that buries the witch's body completely.

After that, the sun begins to peek through the gray clouds, and everywhere the snow glitters and glistens, more and more wetly.

Within the space of a few hours, the snow has melted to nothing but patches on porches, a melting as unnatural as the original snowfall itself. The meltwater can be heard everywhere; dripping from eaves, turning the ground into mud, flowing through the city's sewers. Taxon children run outside after days of forced habitation, to enjoy the last bits of snow before it's gone.

The wind that blows through the city and spurs the tattered clouds to break further comes from the west, not the north, and smells of springtime and the sea.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"....uh..."

Jeremy's peering nervously outside at the melting snow. He's scruffier than usual, because what the eff is shaving when you're in Alaska Hell?

"--so is that, like... it? Crazy-lady is gone? No more risk of turning into an icecube?"

"Yeah, pretty sodding much. There will be another barmy thing in a month or so. Welcome to Taxon, new guy."

Spike looks a bit put out. It might he that frostbite is a little challenging to recover from as a vampire if you're not feeding on actual people.

"Is it all-- is it all like, life-threatening and shit? Because if so, I feel so broke up, I wanna go home."

"All the stuff here when the aliens get creative?"

Spike thinks about it, "No but it does all seem geared to screw with your head."

"This is the worst trip I've ever been on?" Jeremy says hopefully, but his face falls.

"Hey, man, if they just wanted to screw with my head they could give me catnip and tell me it's weed."

"Is that that it takes? You're in for a hell of a time here," Spike says with a smirk.

For those paying attention to where the witch was there is an explosion of winter as Madelyne violently makes her way to the surface in a tall pyre of green power. Snow, ice, and icy water go flying outward from where she surfaces. The power flares brightly, though briefly as Madelyne takes to the air a few feet above but quickly drops back down to the surface, perhaps more abruptly than she may have planned as the green aura gutters around her.

She'll just lay here... for awhile... and look at the sky.

After some time, there will be an awkward shuffling she'll hear, approaching her position.

After a moment, there's a slump to the ground just a few feet away, with an accompanying squishy sound.

If she looks, she'll see that Logan has carried his still-healing guts with him, leaving a trail of bloody mess behind him in the snow.

"This seat taken?" he asks, as he's spent enough to be flat on his back, to finish letting his body do the work it needs to do.

Turning her head to look at Logan causes the world to spin. Actually seeing Logan causes her head to spin in an entirely different way. Swallowing hard, it takes Madelyne a few moments to reply to his comment, "Please. Feel free."

A pause before she adds, "You look horrible, Logan."

"S'funny, cuz I feel peachy," he quips back. The delirious-with-pain version of Logan doesn't come out often, but here he is, which means he'll use words like 'peachy.'

"Those wolves were somethin' nasty. Mind tellin' me what the hell this was all about?"

The redhead closes her eyes. She's still not sure what, exactly, the list of her injuries it but she thinks that a concussion is likely the worst of them but, she's sort of afraid to try to get up and find out.

"The aliens decided to send an evil ice queen," she says with amusement beneath the surface. "... I think I've read the book she's from or at least what they were basing her on."

"Christ, they're just minin' a library, huh? What was that, Narnia or somethin'?"

Logan turns away from her, and spits out a bit of blood.

"Looks like you kicked her ass well enough."

"... think so."

Madelyne chuckles softly, "I have some experience but as much as I'd like to take credit, I think something happened somewhere else." Even if the snow is melting, she's still feeling the cold deeply.

"Pff. 'Til someone tells me different, I'll give ya the credit. Nice job."

A small splurch. Something shifted in his guts.

"How bad ya hurtin'?"

"I hit my head. I think I have a concussion."

Madelyne starts to take stock of herself, "And maybe I sprained an ankle? I'm really not sure and I'm not in a rush to try to get up and test anything out right now."

"Yeah. No hurry."

There's a quiet moment, a wave of pain that Logan grits his teeth through. A silence as the cold starts to give way.

"You gettin' by all right without Summers around?"

Madelyne lets out a long sigh at that.

"I ...." It is hard for her to put how she feels about this into words, "I miss him. I think... I think I was just getting used to the idea that he didn't hate me."

Another pause before she adds, "I also think I only reminded him of pain and failure. I hope, wherever he is, that he's happy."

"You guys okay?" says Paul's voice crackling over the tablet eventually-- when he got done seeing to Wyatt's possible hypothermia, he'd emerged onto the roof again to notice the two figures sprawled on the snow.

[ooc: I don't want to interrupt Logan and Maddy's awesome chat, so you can feel free to assume this happens sometime after they are done talking if you like!]

Logan had started getting used to not hating Summers so much, but the weird freeze-up, followed by the literal freeze-up, has kinda scrambled things a bit for him. Thinking of him still brings some bile - or would, if his bodily fluids were working properly at the moment.

Before he can respond, the voice cracks into the serene silence of where they've fallen. Logan glances to his wrist - couldn't be lucky enough to have the wolves eat off his hamster tracker, now, could he? - and responds.

"You a doctor? Maddie could use some help."

It's video, so Paul will see that Logan has no business being alive with his wounds, but somehow, he's deferring for the girl with the ankle problems.

"I think I have a concussion," Madelyne says over the tablet. "And it is kind of cold down here?"

Still, she's not looking to try to stand up any time soon. It seems like a bad idea when the world spins when she turns her head. Other than that, she's feeling just fine and dandy, thanks. Except maybe her ankle but, whatever.

"How're you feeling now, Logan?

"Like one o' those wolves passed me through 'em," he grumbles. "Nothin' I ain't felt before."

Everything hurts a lot.

"Sky's pretty, though..."

Yeah, still sorta delirious with pain.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Paul mutters when he catches sight of Logan's injuries.

More loudly: "Okay. Okay, I'm getting down there as quick as I can. Try and keep, uh... talking, both of you-- no going to sleep in the fucking snow with concussions, yeah? I'm not a doctor but I can do first aid and it looks like I'm closest, so."

He's not even sure which one he should be thinking about triaging: concussion and possible hypothermia is nothing to sneeze at, but the other guy looks like he went through a chainsaw party. Except he's still conscious. Fucking Christ.

Paul hurries down to the infirmary level to grab supplies, using his tablet as he goes to send out some other messages.

"Yeah, I'm not going to sleep. Logan will heal and then he'll need a few steaks and a beer and he'll be back to being a grumpy old man," Madelyne says with a soft chuckle.

"It is getting warmer, right? The snow is melting..."

"Feels like it. Frost on my pancreas is drainin' off," he says, offering more detail than anyone could want.

Keep talkin'. Helps keep from sleepin'.

"Them wolf carcasses still over there? Don't know if I've ever had barbecued magical ice dogs before..."

Paul's unsure whether talk about Logan healing is concussion-rambling or revelation that Logan has some sort of magicky healing shit. The latter would be really convenient, he admits.

The wolf carcasses are definitely still there; the sun's out, shining down on the bloody, messy snow.

Paul finally gets there with a bundled-up Wyatt Cain following, the both of them tugging a toboggan-style stretcher over the snow. It's melting, but not THAT fast-- toboggan is still a lot easier than trying to carry a stretcher.

"Okay," he says with a huff, looking over both of them. Logan doesn't look QUITE as bad as he had from the visual-- so maybe he does have some weird healing shit. Paul crouches by Maddy, squinting down into her face.

"Maddy, I'm going to shine a light into your eyes, okay?" he asks, digging out a flashlight from his parka pocket with gloved hands. "Logan, is it-- has she sounded lucid while you two have been talking? No memory issues?"

He's asking the guy who got partially disemboweled these questions. Paul's not sure this is entirely logical, but hey.

"Pretty lucid, yeah," Logan says, a slight gurgle in his voice. If they try to help him, though, he'll wave it off and direct 'em to Maddie first.

"Sure. Shining a light in my eyes. Okay," she says sounding somewhat resigned to it but at the same time, she sounds happy that there are more people here. They all survived, right?

"Forgiven about the powers thing, right?"

Paul's hands are first-responder careful as he checks Maddy over for broken bones, as he aims the light. He gives her a crooked grin at the question.

"Just because I'll bitch someone a red streak doesn't have any bearing on a crisis situation, Red. We all bleed pretty much the same. I think."

She's tracking the light pretty well, there's that at least.

"How about you, buddy?" Paul calls over to Logan. "Because, no fuckin' offense meant, but you look like ground chuck over there."

"An' I feel like underground chuck. Got a mutant healin' factor, though. It's just gonna suck for a while."

Still, can't NOT overhear that little exchange. Especially given what he knows of Maddie's history.

"What'd she need forgivin' for?"

Madelyne chuckles at Logan's question, but she's not going to answer for Paul. He can say what he wants to say about it. It makes life interesting, right?

"Logan will heal. He'll need something to eat soon, though. And beer. A lot of beer."

Paul glances over again at Logan at the question, his eyebrows arched.

"A difference of opinion," he says, with nothing more than that. He looks back to Maddy, and snaps off the flashlight.

"Okay, you're tracking pretty good. You having any neck pain? Nausea? Drowsiness? And I'll find a nice big steak for Mr. Logan here-- dunno about the beer, but I've got some vodka in stock."

"I'm feeling a little queasy," Madelyne says softly, turning to look at Smecker, though she doesn't try to get up yet.

"I think that could be okay, vodka."

"Yeah. That'll be peachy."

And with that, he zones out for a while, needing to ignore the feeling of his intestines repositioning themselves.

Queasy's an understatement.

"Alright then, Dr. Smecker says no getting vertical just yet," Paul says at Maddy. "However, you're very lucky in that the hunky silent cowboy over there," a jerk of his chin at Wyatt, "is here to help me get you onto the stretcher, because he's a lot fucking nicer than me."

"And you got it, chief. All the vodka you can-- wait, I'm not promising that shit. You probably have an interdimensional hole in your stomach or something. You can have all the vodka I can drink."

With that, Paul leaves the smartassing aside to help get Maddy onto the stretcher, and back somewhere warmer. He and Wyatt will get Logan inside too, and, true to his word, Paul will start cooking some steak for the Canadian. While making sure Maddy doesn't move too much until they can rule out concussions.

Madelyne puts up with all of this surprisingly well for someone with 'superpowers'. Eventually, this will start to be frustrating but right now, it is sort of nice to just... lay here and not have to worry. It is nice and warm here, at least in comparison.

There's definitely worse things than lying somewhere semi-comfortable and having food and drinks brought your way.

As the air outside warms up with the continued thaw, Paul will open the Birdhouse doors, to let in the promise of spring.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Everywhere.]

[video] [all]

[video] [all]

[video] [all]

[video] [all]

[video] [all]

[video] [all]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

[visual]

[visual]

[visual]

[visual]

[visual]

[visual]

[visual]

[visual]

[visual]

[visual]

[visual]

[visual]

[visual]

[visual]

[visual]

[visual]

[visual]

[visual]

[visual] and wrap?