taxonomites | (002) Location: The Sanctuary For All: Dear Lord, this place is too big.

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{ claire bennet

(002) Location: The Sanctuary For All: Dear Lord, this place is too big.

It was just a fact.

Sam was doing his best to adjust. He was extremely thankful for Helen's generosity, don't get him wrong. But he also had the sneaking suspicion that if he made the wrong turn he'd never find his way out. Not that he knew what 'wrong turn' was in this case, he had no idea, and that just made things all the more unsettling.

He'd get used to it though. Or he'd be lost forever. One of the two. No mater how it went, call him crazy, but he was doubtful Mojo would be able to sniff his way out for them both if it came to that.

The dog was far too busy running around and sniffing everything else, investigating the place in what was clearly a very fascinating event for a dog. Sam made sure to keep him close by at all times, at least until he was sure where it was okay to let Mojo run around as he pleased. Also, he had to make sure he marked his proverbial territory in as few places as possible.

That, however, wasn't as easy as you'd think.

"Mojo! Bad!"

Mojo recoiled from the admonishment, and lowered his leg away from the wall, running back over to Sam. Sam was about to reach over and pick him up, when suddenly the dog sniffed. And sniffed again. Then a third time. He then turned, and ran off away from him down the hall in the other direction.

"No no no no no come on! You're going to get us kicked out of here!"

Sam thought Helen might be a little nicer than that, but at the same time, he didn't see her being ecstatic about this either. Chasing after the dog and whistling sharply every couple of seconds to get his attention did nothing. Whatever Mojo was picking up on, he really liked it.

When Sam followed him straight into someone else's room, the last "Mojo! Here! Now! Bad!" tumbling out of his mouth, he saw why.

And internally -- thank God it was internal -- he might've thanked his dog some.

It was also great that he stopped himself from blurting out that he had a girlfriend. He kept that one internal too. As a reminder.

"... Hi."

OOC: This one's locked to The Cheerleader.

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There was a dog in her room. Sure, the guy with him seemed nice, but she hadn't seen a dog since the last time she'd stayed over her mom's house. Claire liked animals, and she was really starting to miss Mr. Muggles, so seeing a little chihuahua run into her room looking for a new friend made her smile. "Mojo?" she called out curiously, sitting up on her bed and waiting for him to approach her.

She moved one hand over his head to pet him, more worried about scaring him than she was about Mojo biting her. He seemed friendly enough, and started licking her hand right away. "You're not bad, you're sweet." She knelt down on the ground, letting him rest his paws on her knees while he sniffed her. "You're new here," she added, looking up and acknowledging the guy who had chased Mojo into her bedroom. "He's yours, right?" Mojo wasn't listening to him, kind of like how Mr. Muggles never listened to her dad. She was familiar with how this worked.

"... Yeah."

Girlfriend. He had a girlfriend. Sam shook off the initial surprise, nodding. Girlfriend. Anyway. "Yeah, he's mine. Sorry, I think he's just having too much fun checking everything out." If only he felt the same way. Girlfriend! "I can get him out of here, or..."

She liked Mojo, and Mojo clearly liked her, he didn't need to that. "Or he could hang here." Hey, he wasn't running around like a tiny lunatic, Sam figured he could live with that.

"I'm Sam, by the way. Sam Witwicky."

"Claire Bennet," She grinned, reaching up to adjust the neck of her shirt in case the angle she was kneeling at made him uncomfortable. He sure seemed like he had something to be awkward about. Her attention was back on Mojo when he licked at her knee and she laughed, straightening up and extending a hand to Sam. "It's nice to meet you." She couldn't tell whether that was mutual or not yet.

"He can hang here if he wants to. My mom breeds -" Showdogs, or showdog? And why would a stranger care in the first place? "She has a Pomeranian. Mr. Muggles." If he laughed at the name, he was a dead man. "Most of my family is still back home." Except for the one she wasn't talking to and the one she was afraid was going to die on her.

Mr. Muggles? Well, he does have a dog named Mojo, so Sam is pretty sure he doesn't have any room to laugh here. His eyes do go straight to Claire's shirt the second she adjusts it, and that's a little awkward for him. Just a little. Even if he missed what had just been there for him to see.

Damn i-- Anyway. "All of my family's back home." Including his girlfriend. "I have no idea how my dog ended up here, but..." But he was happy he was. Even if Mojo was driving him out of his mind.

"I guess it could be worse. It could just be me." No matter what, it'd still be just a little crazier than what he was usually used to. "So where're you and your family from?"

"Oh, um." Claire wasn't sure how to answer that question. She was from 2009, but a different place in it than Nathan and Peter, and her memories kept changing on her. She was from a world where people didn't get kidnapped by aliens, but did have abilities. She was from all over the place, if you wanted to get picky. "I go to college in Virginia, but I've been moving around a lot for the past few years." She could see Mojo biting at a blanket that was hanging off of the chair by the window, but she didn't stop him from tugging on it. Who could blame him for being bored?

"How about you?" It wasn't share time unless he started doing some sharing himself. Besides, she wasn't going to tell Sam anything good. She'd seen how well that had worked out.

"I was going to school in Pennsylvania." He paused. "I mean, I am." Well, 'was', then 'am', then... "Was, I guess." Alright, this wasn't going very well. Who knew verb tenses when you didn't want to lead into questions about your life, which would then lead you to explain how weird it was, and then the cute girl wouldn't talk to you anymore.

Nope, he didn't want to go there at all. "Some stuff happened, I was out for a little bit, then I got back in." There. That was that. They were strangers, she wouldn't ask anyway. "... Mojo, down." Claire might not care now, but Sam had to think she'd start being concerned when he started making holes in that blanket.

Of course, Mojo ignored him.

"Mojo, hey!" She started, figuring she'd get the dog to stop chewing on the blanket, since it seemed to annoy Sam so much. She had to laugh at the way Mojo looked at her, tugged the blanket onto the floor, circled it, and laid down on top of it. He appeared to have warn himself out running around the Sanctuary.

"Stuff?" Claire asked curiously. His kind of 'stuff' couldn't be her kind of stuff, but it helped to think that other people had problems during their freshman year of college. They might not have been psycho sorority sister problems, and that was fine. Anything out of the ordinary was comforting at this point. "Sounds like attendance record in high school. I ended up getting my GED because I'd missed so much."

So he wasn't the only one that'd been through weird stuff. Sam liked that. Although he was pretty sure his weird would outdo her weird, no matter what she said. It was just... He had that feeling. "More like a surprise vacation." There, it wasn't entirely lying.

"Then we had to talk the University into letting me go back to school afterward." Which hadn't been too hard when you can name drop people from the Government who you might call if the Dean doesn't give you a little leeway. Just some guys, really.

"I don't think surprise vacations go over very well with professors," she nodded. Attendance hadn't been a problem for her. It was keeping her friends alive that she had struggled with, but apparently, she didn't have to worry about that anymore. She had no friends, and Becky was back with Samuel, where she belonged. "They get jealous." Vacation time was a precious thing to people who could take them for normal reasons.

"Well it wasn't really kind of a vacation thi--..." Sam started to ramble, and then remembered himself, and closed his mouth abruptly. No, no, he wasn't going to go there. He wasn't. Especially to the girl who served as a constant reminder that he had a Girlfriend.

"Yeah." He amended with a short nod, looking at Mojo. "They get jealous." And she hadn't even like, asked for him to expand on anything in the first place. What the hell was going on?

"So, uh..."

Yeah.

The ramble didn't go unnoticed by Claire, but she wasn't about to make him talk about things that he thought he was working a smooth subject change on, so she just laughed and crossed her arms over her chest, watching Mojo settle in like he was about to fall asleep.

"I think he likes me," she commented, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "Did Ms. Magnus tell you about this place?" It was probably a good idea to warn him that most of them had abilities, that wasn't the kind of thing that someone should be left to figure out on their own. "Why it's called a Sanctuary, all of that?"

"Not really, she just got us settled in here. I kind of guessed with a place this big, she's got a lot going on." He looked behind him to the nearest chair, and took a seat, since it seemed like he was going to be there for a while. Not that he minded. Not really.

"So this place actually has something to it aside from being huge?" Lame joke. This was getting sad. What was he trying to do?

"Oh, it's huge for a reason," Claire laughed. "This is probably going to sound a little strange." She thought about that one for a minute. "Actually, this is probably going to sound really strange, but you're here so you're going to find out anyway." Eventually he'd stumble into one of the labs, and want to know what all of the equipment was for. "Anyway." She probably should have left this for someone like Ashley to explain. Oh well.

"The Sanctuary was meant as a safe place for abnormals. People, or creatures who don't have anywhere else to go. The stuff of myths, is what she told me. Not all of the people living here now are like that, but if you look around a little bit, you'll see that this place isn't just some gothic castle."

"... Oh." Sam said slowly, and nodded slightly. Abnormals. Well, that would mean weird people. This was a place for weird people. How weird, he wasn't quite sure. But he had met a vampire here ~~thank God he hadn't seen that guy walking around~~, so that made sense.

"How abnormal are we talking? I saw a vampire, this guy named Eric," Who'd had so much fun scaring the crap out of him. "I haven't ran into anyone else." Just Claire. Was Claire one of them? Did she know about the vampires? Did she think he was crazy now?

What was he trying to accomplish here?!

"Eric?" Claire echoed, turning the name over in her head. "He doesn't live in the Sanctuary, but I'd believe that he's a vampire. We have some in the city." She didn't know much about it other than the fact that they existed. If she was stuck here for long enough, she figured she would encounter one eventually. They couldn't hurt her, so she wasn't afraid.

"Some of the people here have abilities." She was one of them, but she wasn't going to offer that up yet. "It's kind of like X-Men? But not really out in the open. Most people aren't comfortable with that sort of thing." People like Gretchen, who only liked people who were like them.

She wasn't bitter.

"Oh, that's... That's cool." Sam nodded quickly, although he wasn't sure how cool it actually was. Now he really wanted to know if Claire was part of this, but he wasn't sure how to ask. There was just asking her, and what was wrong with that?

She'd either answer him, or she wouldn't. Whatever. It was cool. "So, you're in that group? Or... Maybe not?" He was doing so well, wasn't he?

"What do you think?" She knew it was cheating, but it was easier to turn it on him and let Sam decide for himself. Did he think she was a freak, or a normal girl? Claire was a little curious to see what he would decide, and she didn't think she had said anything too incriminating. He'd guess whatever choice that he wanted her to be.

She was betting he'd pick normal over abnormal, because it being 'cool' could change to it being 'scary' pretty quickly if he was the type to panic over it. And from what she'd seen...

He'd pick normal.

And normal was in fact Sam's first thought. He also thought Claire picking this way to go about answering him wasn't exactly fair, either. He had a fifty fifty shot, and was it offensive to someone who wasn't normal if you called them normal?

Well, it wouldn't be to him, but then again, he sort of was. Mostly.

But he'd been the first to bring up vampires. She hadn't gotten specific until she started talking about people with abilities. Like it was something she might know about. Shaky ground to base his any assumptions on, but what else did he have to go with?

"I think... You have an ability."

"Huh." Claire grinned, ready to jump on that one, too. "So you think I'm some kind of freak?" She couldn't help but tease him about it. Her jokes never went over very well in Taxon, she knew that. Fortunately, Sam didn't have anything to fire back with. It was kind of unfair to put him in this position, but she wasn't really offended. She was just looking to have a little fun.

"What?" Sam's eyes widened immediately, and his brain managed to completely bypass the grin in favor of sounding the alarm. "No," He blurted, shaking his head quickly. "No, that's not what I meant, I mean I think it's possible you could be like that, and if you aren't that's cool too, but if you are--"

Wait. She was grinning, wasn't she. This was a joke. "... Not funny." He sighed. "Not funny at all."

Seriously, they were supposed to be getting along! "Look, if you had an ability, it'd be okay with me. I've seen some weird stuff too." Stuff that now he might be more inclined to think she would believe.

"Come on, it was a little bit funny." If nothing else, it was funny to her. She hadn't had a good laugh in weeks, and if it had to be at the new guy's expense...well, he seemed like the kind of guy who would forgive her. He wasn't in the dog house, so that might have been a plus to him. "You haven't seen weird stuff until you've had to live with an ability," she laughed, getting up and walking over to her desk.

If that statement hadn't confirmed the obvious to Sam, maybe a little show-and-tell would. She opened her top drawer and pulled out a pink swiss army knife, flipping it open to the blade. "Most of the people who live here know about it, anyway," she sighed, dragging the blade across her hand so that he could watch the cut heal. "Now you get to tell me that I'm not like you, and you can't deal with it." She was just moving things along, really.

Originally, Sam'd been about to stop her from whatever Claire thought she was going to do. He'd also been thankful that his girlfriend was not this crazy, not talking about abilities and then looking to commit suicide in front of him, and if Taxon was that kind of place and everyone here was like that then he needed out of there right now.

Then she'd actually cut her hand. And then he watched her hand heal on its own. Then Sam really didn't have anything for a little while.

As the cut closed, something it definitely shouldn't've been able to do on its own without a considerable amount of time to heal, Sam really didn't have much of anything to say.

What finally did come out might not be quite what Claire was expecting.

"I have a car." Sam finally pulled his eyes away from Claire's hand so he could look at her. A little freaked? Yes. But what the hell, he'd seen plenty of crazy in his lifetime. "He's from another planet. He turns into a giant robot. He's part of this group called the Autobots, and they basically sucked me into a war with another group called the Decepticons that were out to destroy the planet. ... Twice."

Yes, plenty of crazy.

"Now run screaming from the room from the crazy guy and his chihuahua."

Alright, so alien robot car kind of trumped indestructible girl - but only because of the alien/robot combination. And the war for the planet, yeah. Claire was blanking on what to do or say to Sam, so it took her a moment to snap out of the shock. She caught what he was saying about running away and smirked, shaking her head. "I can't, the crazy guy with the chihuahua is in my bedroom," she pointed out, sitting back down on the bed.

She wanted to ask if he was serious, but he seemed to know how bad it sounded. If he had been kidding, he would have pretended that it was supposed to be believable. And it wasn't like she could doubt the existence of aliens now, after having been abducted by a group of them and forced to live in a town that was most likely in an entirely different dimension from home. "So you're familiar with the alien thing already." It was weird, but maybe it was comforting to him.

"Do you think your ...Decepticons could have pulled off something like this?"

Well, the shock he'd expected. And in the face of her slicing open her hand, Sam still half expected her to tell him to get out. Some things you apparently just don't get over, no matter who you're with.

At her question, he had to think. This was a little big, even for them. And what would be the point of getting all these people specifically here in the first place? He doubted all of them had stories to tell that were quite like him or Claire's.

"I don't think this is them." Sam shook his head, looking around now at the room he was in. "They're more brutal than this, y'know?" Well, she didn't, but they were.

"Megatron and The Fallen, the guys who were leading them, they were a lot more interested in a complete takeover." No matter who had to die in the process. "Getting a group of humans into a box," Or cave, whatever this was. "Isn't their thing."

Maybe.

"So we're talking about a different type of alien, great." She flopped back on the bed, turning her head to look over at Sam. When they finally started buying into the alien thing, they still didn't have knowledge of the right race of aliens. It figured. "I'm starting to think we're never going to get out of this place." Sam needed to know what they were up against. He was new to the city, but that meant that he had more catching up to do than the rest of them.

"The bracelet...won't come off. We're in a cave that fakes seasons and sends out flying monkeys on Halloween. Some people leave, but..." Xander had left before he could even explain what he'd known about her. "Someone told me that I was in the city before. I left, came back, and I don't remember any of it." That was the real problem with finding a way to go home and save Nathan - they'd have to remembre that he was dead.

"Whoever - whatever - is pulling the strings on all of this knows how to keep us from learning anything about them."

Edited 2009-11-25 05:06 (UTC)

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(002) Location: The Sanctuary For All: Dear Lord, this place is too big.

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