taxonomites | [Location: The Boundary to the Northern Zone] [Visual]

Entry tags:

[Location: The Boundary to the Northern Zone] [Visual]

The tablet broadcast pings to everyone, showing... nothing.

Or rather, showing a blank, flat grayness, like mist, except with nothing on the other side to see.

"This is Jason Blood," says Blood's voice, flat and neutral as it usually is. "Has anyone yet attempted passage through this... fog?"

He moves the tablet as he speaks, and comes into the camera's feed himself. He's standing at the edge of it, on the bridge that crosses the river between this district and the rest of the city, a few feet from the mist. He's dressed for the winter cold, and his breath steams slightly as he surveys the wall of blankness before him.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Not yet," comes the skepitcal sounding reply from Glitch. "Kinda doing a wait-and-see thing with it, which is tricky since...fog."

Also it's really cold out, okay.

"Picking up on anything interesting there?"

"It has been several weeks. There are limits to waiting," Jason answers dispassionately.

His answer to the question is a little while in coming, several puffs of breath against the chill air.

"Activity. A feeling like a... a beehive. Something is happening within this, but I cannot say what, precisely."

Glitch shrugs. Can't change what hadn't been done, and he's not going to be ashamed of not taking a lead.

A beehive. All of the random trivia he knows about bees shuffle through his mind (bumbles are his favorites), honeycomb and swarming and hierarchies and noise. Activity. Stinging.

"So maybe we shouldn't take a stick to it," he offers. "All right, I've got some gizmos I can...wave around. Gonna be there for a bit?"

Jason exhales, slow and measured, at Glitch's initial words.

What he would like to say runs something along the lines of I NEED TO TAKE A STICK TO SOMETHING, I NEED TO LIGHT SOMETHING ON FIRE, THERE IS A THING INSIDE ME THAT'S BEEN CAGED SINCE I GOT HERE AND IT NEEDS TO KILL SOMETHING.

Of course he says none of this. He's aware enough how it sounds aloud. He's aware of Etrigan, always; of playing the calm to the devil's fire.

If it makes him appear foolishly indifferent to the dangers of what he may be doing, well, he's been perceived as worse.

"I will be here," he says aloud. "There is nothing much else in particular for me to do with my day."

Activity is better than waiting, waiting, listening to the voice in his skull.

And if Glitch knew any of that he'd be passively alarmed, but since he doesn't...

"Ditto. See you soon."

In good time he appears on the bridge, dressed both practically and classily, and approaches with a nod.

"I've got a doohickey from when we had ghosts, dunno what it'll tell us but it'll give a baseline for...something. Hi."

By the time Glitch arrives, Jason is crouched in front of the foot of the wall of gray fog, using a bit of chalk to scrawl on the asphalt of the bridge. There appears to be a circle, and lot of squiggly lines that seem to not quite stay still.

"Hello," he answers Glitch's first words, without turning around. Skritch skritch goes the chalk.

"A... doohickey? How useful. There are no ghosts present here currently."

But he's interested enough to stop drawing, look over at Glitch. "But you say there have been in the past?"

"No way. So long as it's not coming after me I'm not going anywhere near it, I've seen enough horror movies." Not to mention her recent experiecnes with smokey-foggy things.

"Speaking of: your name is Jason Blood? Seriously?"

"Hello," Jason says distantly, since this a new voice, one he hasn't heard during his time in the city.

Princess, mother, hunter too
Lonely little thief.
Anger her, she'll run you through
And stab you with her grief.

Yes, thank you for that, Etrigan.

He looks down at the tablet to see who he is speaking to, but no, only the voice. Ah well.

"Yes. Have we met before, or do you simply find it unusual?"

Edited 2013-01-18 20:26 (UTC)

"Definitely unusual. It's like one of those names you're supposed to run away from really fast." That must have sucked to grow up with, come to think of it.

"I'm Emma, designated newbie. So the fog hasn't always been there?"

Edited (someday I'll remember to proofread. today is not that day.) 2013-01-19 01:12 (UTC)

"Mmm, is it?" Jason asks, in much the same distracted tone he said hello. Looks like Storybrook isn't the only place with weirdos.

"No, madam, it has not. Three weeks, give or take. The city has rearranged itself substantially from the configuration it was in upon my arrival."

Clearly not. In fact she's just going to get a move on from there.

"...re-arranged itself? So this place really is some kind of Habitrail?"

Jason Blood doesn't know what a Habitrail is. He shrugs this away.

"The city seems capable of all sorts of interesting things," is what he says instead. "Many of them dangerous, so far."

"Dangerous." Right. She's half-gathered that but the confirmation's not a bad thing either. "Guess I'd better brush up on my swordswomanship."

Oh God that is so ridiculous but what else can she do?

A vague flicker of interest in Jason's glance down at the tablet, but no, she's only on audio. No matter.

"Fencing, or shortsword? Or one of the other styles?"

Jason you just went right out of her extremely limited amoutn of understanding anything sword related. She's still in pointy-end-goes-in-bad-guy.

"...uh, hang on." she switches to video, helpfully, rummages offscreen for a moment, and pops back in to show off this ridiculous thing. "This, I guess. Sorta just inherited it."

Jason studies the blade that Emma displays with a professional eye, head tilted slightly to the side. Not quite a longsword-- not enough hilt for it-- but it's no rapier, no smallsword or courtsword or anything else that would be substantially easier for a woman to use.

"An arming sword. Also called a knight's sword, at times. Single-handed use, oft paired with a buckler...

"Have you used it much, then?" There's not-quite skepticism in his tone, but something close.

"Nope," she shakes her head, but eyes the sword with a little more respect. A knight's sword...fitting for Prince Charming, she's not so sure about herself yet.

"Slayed a dragon, that's about it."

He arched a brow. And spared a glance for the woman as well as the sword itself: a critical glance, neither sympathetic nor hostile, just cataloging, matching her appearance with Etrigan's words.

"That's quite the starting foray if you haven't had training with a blade," he said, dryly. "Dragons tend to be the realm of accomplished heroes, according to all the tales. Did you at least get a handsome prince out of the deal? Half a kingdom, perhaps?"

"True love in a bottle," she says, honestly but with a sarcastic edge. Seeing as she was immediately duped into giving up said item (and where did Gold get to with that, anyway?) it's not something she wants to dwell on.

"Apparnetly I had some bullshit destiny destiny on my side. Or maybe it was a sucky dragon."

"Ah, that would have been my fifth choice, after heart's desire and the north-wind-in-a-bag."

Destiny, now. He knows about destiny. Fickle bitch that she is.

"The two are not necessarily exclusive," he shrugs. "Destiny may do many somersaults on its way to fulfilling itself."

Emma snorts and sets the sword aside. Yeah, probably a combination of the two. Presumably the dragon'd been sleeping for almost thirty years, and...well she has no idea what her whole deal is.

"I'm pretty sure I've gone off script now, though," she sighs. "Don't think any of the stories cover what happens when Snow White's daughter gets abducted by aliens."

"Perhaps she lives happily ever after," Jason suggests with a smile that indicates how much he believes that one.

He taps his fingers against his chin, the wall of fog behind him temporarily forgotten in face of this somewhat-interesting young woman.

"Snow White's daughter.... and do the other figures of the Grimms exist for you as well, then? Hansel and Gretel? Cinderella?"

She nods, her smile...grim. Ha ha and ha. "Rumpelstiltskin, Red Riding Hood...the Mad Hatter and Pinnochio too."

That's going to stay with her forever, August turning back to wood, begging her to save them all even with his last breath. Someone else she'd failed because she didn't listen and nope, not thinking about that.

"There was a whole thing with a curse that brought them from their world to Maine, it's a long story."

Rumpelstiltskin earns a brief grimace from Jason. There's one of those in his world, though it bears little resemblance to the one Emma knows.

"--Maine," he echoes, brows lifting. "That is quite the curse. How dreadful."

Is he a giant fucking troll still? Please say yes, please say he's universally a goddamn trickster asshole who needs to be punched in the face repeatedly.

"It was all atmospheric and foggy," Emma allowed because fuck her life she's gotten attached to Storybrooke. "But yeah, memory wipes for everyone, no happy endings, all up to me to save everyone. And then I do and end up here."

All Rumpelstiltskins are trolls. It's a universal-- a multiversal-- law.

"No good deed goes unpunished," he responds with a faint smile. "Save the world and you get exactly what you deserve."

He is interested though by this 'fairy tale' business. In his own life he's known quite a few inspirations for the so-called stories, but he's always been there to see how the reality became myth through a hundred repeats. From Emma's perspective, the stories of childhood have all turned out to be real, or so it sounds to him.

"So you've a Mad Hatter-- a relatively late addition to the tales, one we can pinpoint to a specific author, at that-- and a Pinnochio? It seems your world plays no geographical favorites with its tales-become-flesh. Interesting."

"Yeah, it's basically Disneyland." Screw the fourth wall, for real. "And it's not my world, it's like this other one that gatecrashed Earth then kept itself in a little snowglobe."

This is all guesswork, she's really shaky on the mechanics of it all.

Contrary to what you might expect, Jason Blood has been to Disneyland. That it was to deal with a child-sacrificing cult is neither here nor there.

Either way, he doesn't have good memories of the park.

"I suppose nobody could get in or get out? Such is the usual rule of pockets like that."

"You can in okay, at least I could." And she imagines someone had to come in and stock the stores and things, not that she ever saw a Dorritos delivery truck herself. "And I could get out because...oh, I wasn't under the curse."

Duh. Keep up, Swan.

"But everybody else? No. Bad things happened if they tried to leave - usually car accidents - and it was like time had stopped so for twentysomething years there's been this town of amnesiac fairy tale characters hanging out and not aging."

All because her mom was prettier than Regina, apparently. There's way more to it but Emma doesn't know that yet.

"Interesting," Jason repeats, a one-word summation and in some ways, dismissal. He's being quite sincere-- he does find it interesting; it's merely that investigating the forces that cause the effect in Swan's world will be hard to do from Taxon.

And his investigations into Taxon's own bubble have so far been nothing more than frustrating.

"Well, you have jumped from one bubble to another. One peopled by a different cast. At least all of your fairy-tale set seemed to have something in common."

"Nope. Not tried and not, really, interested in trying, either."

Selina isn't the valiantly brave nor the courageously stupid.

"Here I thought recklessness went part and parcel with the costumed antics," Jason says deadpan.

The tablet shows him tilt his head at the mist, assessing, for a few seconds longer-- and then shove his hand towards it.

"Obviously, you haven't paid much attention to how much attention I pay to the status quo," she says as she winces at him shoving his hand toward the mist.

The mist... does nothing, and Jason's hand stops at the edge of it, not because he stopped it. It simply can't enter.

He makes a small noise of noting this, not sounding terribly surprised, then continues the conversation as if no interruption had occurred.

"As a rule, Miss Kyle, I pay as little attention as possible to what you and Gotham's other ... night-people? whatever term we should use-- get up to. And here in Taxon, your activities interest me only as they affect me. Which they have not, to date."

"Huh. How about that."

Selina frowns at bit at the whole not actually being eaten by the thick fog. Yeah, she's ignoring him and... whatever that comment was supposed to mean.

(He ignores her ignoring him.)

"Quite the conundrum, isn't it. A pity Gotham's particular puzzle-solver isn't here. I'm sure he would be performing all sorts of deductive measurements upon an impenetrable fog."

"Oh, he'd probably have done that all already and would now be devising how to get in already," Selina says. It is matter of fact. Is is not at all casting aspersions on your ability.

"How unfortunate that we mere mortals don't have the good fortune of his presence."

Except that he, of course, is not mortal. Nor does he regard Wayne with particular awe, but that is neither here nor there.

There is a soft snort from Selina at that,"Of course. I'm sure you feel exactly like that."

"Is there something I may help you with, Miss Kyle? If not, I have work I can be doing."

He paces back and forth before the wall of mist, moving with unconscious restlessness. Etrigan is very bored.

"Get to it then. I wasn't the one who started the conversation."

Selina's amused by Jason and his... well, impatience? He seems a bit more snappish than normal - if that is even possible. Maybe someone is upset about high school?

Edited 2013-02-11 20:48 (UTC)

"As you say," is the short, clipped answer. Selina is definitely not imagining the increased amount of snappishness.

The feed cuts out with another press of a button, not even his usual quasi-civil, if stiff, goodbye.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Location: The Boundary to the Northern Zone] [Visual]

[visual]

[visual]

[visual]

[visual]

Re: [visual]

[visual]

[voice]

[visual]

[visual]

[visual] i still love you

[voice] will you love me after I LOST A NOTIF FOR TWO WEEKS?

baby i will always love you

no subject

[visual]

[visual]

[visual]

[visual] fuck it, I need a sword icon

[visual] sexxxcellent

[visual]

[visual]

[visual]

[visual]

[visual]

[visual]

[visual]

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

no subject