Introductions are handled. Not in the way that handlebars or dogs are handled, but in a nice straightforward manner nonetheless. Doll watches as a few of the new members of their party go through the membrane, silent behind her smile.
If she’s studying everyone, well, it’s only good manners to return the favor. After Dee has made his leap, Doll strolls in after him. For a moment it’s nothing, and then it’s hands and arms around her, pulling her back. Around her waist, her neck, her ankles, a palm pushing her head to the side - and she lets it happen with a soundless, breathless giggle, eyes slipping nearly closed as she keeps moving forward into the vein’s embrace. There are things not even she really wants to see.
Another few steps and the hands unwrap, open palms pushing her forward and out the other side. There’s a slight stumble in her step as she reaches solid ground again, but she recovers with a few hopscotch hops.
Miss Jacque is giving instructions again, and Doll is the first to speak up when there’s a call for a vote. “I say we meet some trees. Best not to lingy-linger.”
This vein doesn’t feel like Home, doesn’t feel like the hands might keep her. Another one to cross off the list, then, but she’ll still stay to help.
“Oh they totally do look like dead trees, that’s so rad.” The acid sky really helped to set the mood, but the place really needed some eerie fog in the distance to totally set the mood. Though, that would like make it harder to get this job done so maybe it was for the best that everything was about as clear as a winter forest could be without the snow. She cast a look sidelong back at the vein, it was like easier to see sidelong anyway, taking a note about what was where. It was good to know what was around where the like super duper important things where, maybe like even more important that the important thing itself!
Kitiara turned her gaze back to the forest. Four miles through or eight around was easy enough math for her, so it wasn’t hard to decide on her vote. Also it was like so cool they were voting about it! Usually adults just wanted to tell her what to do which was lame. “We should, like, head through, yeah? Well that’s my vote anyway.” For a moment Kit drummed her fingers against the handlebar of her moped before looking back to Jacque.
“Hey, so, like, how close can we get to the not-trees before they, like, blow a gasket? They just don’t like touching, because I can totally get that, y’know?[/b]” She nodded with that thought of hers.
//... into the dark she stepped, but never did she feel free of the gaze...//
Em met Jack's gaze with their own, hidden behind the visor, but there nonetheless. At the unspoken nod and gesture, Em nodded back, hefting the nozzle of their flamethrower experimentally. They already knew Dee was their charge. That came with the territory of bringing him along. A massive glove landed on the frenetic man's shoulder, gave it a quick squeeze, then returned to the flamethrower.
Don't be an idiot.
At mention of going through or around - put up to a vote - Em shifted. Letting the group vote was good for making the group feel like it was doing something, but letting the group vote also meant a lack of experienced leadership making the calls. If Jack wasn't sure this group could handle going through or not, what else wasn't Jack sure of? Didn't bode well for how skilled she thought they might be, too.
Leader Woman Jack took out a sick compass as the rest of the slowpokes pulled themselves through the vein. Dee was ready to start running as soon as she pointed out the direction until he felt a familiar gloved hand upon his shoulder, a familiar squeeze. Em didn't talk much, which was fine because he probably did more than enough for the both of them. But over the time working with the big guy, he'd picked up on some of their more subtle expressions. The old 'hand squeeze on shoulder' usually meant something like "Hey Dee, doing that would be really sick and cool and normally I'd tell you to go full speed ahead, but maybe you should hold back in case something awesomer happens." They were usually right about it, so Dee shifted positions, no longer about to break into a dead sprint.
"Yeah, straight in sounds great! In, out, show these "trees" who's boss!" He said excitedly. Almost in response, the "trees" in the distance flexed, swaying in the dead air. He was also interested in how close he could get to the "trees" before they got angry. If they literally blew a gasket, that'd be pretty cool. Dee hadn't seen any veins with exploding trees before.
He was pulled from his thoughts of naturally explosive not trees by Em's follow-up question. He knew the big guy had a thing against the dark, not that he'd call it an outright fear. Em wasn't scared of anything. But he did notice that there was always a lot on during the night, whether Em was tinkering with the bike or flamethrower, or whether they were in their room area thing.
"If it does, I can always get us more light." Dee cackled, a worryingly common occurrence. He'd been tinkering with some substances to create long-burning light sources, but hadn't had much of a chance to test them. You usually didn't want to be seen when the veins got dark.
Last Edit: Jul 21, 2023 20:33:50 GMT by HighVoltage
The vote went to unanimously through, which Jacque appreciated more for the fact that it meant that they weren't going to have to deal with someone whining that they'd wanted the other option than for the fact that it was what she'd wanted to do as well. Doll's comment about lingering was on her own mind as well, though - the more time you spent in a place like this, the more time there was for things to go wrong. In and out, get it done and don't think about it until it was time for the next one. That was the ideal, anyway, but anyone who'd ever been in a bad vein knew that you never really stopped thinking about it.
Sometimes, at night, Jacque wondered if there were veins out there that thought about her. What was it like, to be someone else's nightmare? Was it better or worse than having one of your own?
"You can get as close as you want as long as you don't piss them off," she answered Kit's question. "Don't do anything to them that you don't want done to you. And don't do half the things that you want done to you either. Don't cut the trees. Don't climb the trees. Don't burn the trees. And don't - because there is always that one guy that means I actually have to say this - don't fuck the trees." How many years had it been since Jacque had needed to add don't put your dick in that to her standard spiel? The answer was never enough, she supposed.
"Best not to light a fire unless we're already under attack," she said, with a look to Dee that very clearly communicated that she was watching him and was not above giving him a good slap upside the head if Em didn't get there first.
And on the topic of Em, there was that question she'd skipped answering, the one she didn't want to. It took a minute, not because she didn't know but because she wasn't ready. When she did speak, her voice was quiet, and full of warning, suggesting horrors that she wasn't going to speak of, not because she didn't know, but because she still couldn't bring herself to talk about it, even after all this time.
“Fuck the trees? That’s, like, so gross.” Kit said with an exaggerated shiver of her shoulders. Why’d all the gross weirdos have to go and survive the end of the world along with the fun weirdos, like that fire guy or Doll with her rad arm? Still, none of the gathered looked like they wanted to have sex with a tree and that put Kit’s mind at ease. “Only dark underground? That’s so totally weird.” Kit said, with a perhaps thoughtful tone to her voice.
Or maybe it was lackadaisical, the girl’s fox mask definitely wasn’t telling. She attached her sword to her hip as she slid onto the seat of her moped. “So, like, we just got to respect the trees and not go underground, sounds easy peasy enough.” She said, giving her engine a little rev, clearly unafraid of the darkness hiding just beneath her feet under the acid green sky.
//... into the dark she stepped, but never did she feel free of the gaze...//
Doll’s eyes stay fixed on the trees as everyone voices their opinion and asks tricky-tricky questions, the kind that have more meanings than the words themselves. Her eyes are unblinking, even with Jacque’s laundry list of do-not’s. No do’s to be found, what a doozy.
Well. “Don’t fuck with the trees,” she muses, a little amused and a little something-else. Something-tricky. “Don’t fuck with the ground.”
Her eyes shift to Jacque, then to Em. Underground and the dark. Nothing to cure there, no boo-boos to patch, but maybe something to watch for. She finally blinks and takes a step closer to the Fox Kit as the moped’s engine revs.
“Room for two?” She asks. She left her bike outside, of course. She’s had to abandon too many good bikes when the choice boils down to saving lives or saving two wheels and a little metal. Maybe it wouldn’t come to that as often if she had more hands to spare, but that’s neither here nor there. “I’m light.”
Best to save her energy for the running-time. The screaming-time. There’s always a time like that, and it would be awful to use up all the running and screaming too soon.
Dee let out a whoop as Jack told him he could get as close as he liked. There was a bunch of other stuff too that she told him not to do but honestly he was only half listening after she said he could get close to them. Yeah yeah yeah, he wouldn’t blow them up probably maybe. Not climbing them was annoying, vantage points were so great when you needed to see where to throw bombs. She also said no lighting fires, which was a bummer, but there was still a loophole!
“I don’t light fires, hermana. I cause them.” Dee pulled out a detonator and twirled it for effect. It looked sort of like someone had taken a child’s remote control car and added a not insignificant amount of duct tape to it. Which Dee had. It used to make cars go, now it made bombs go! And Em’s garage door, which he didn’t know he did it and couldn’t figure out how to stop either. But Dee was fairly certain it didn’t work while he had it in Veins. Probably.
His attention, fickle as it was, flipped to Kit and Doll as they piped up, focusing on Leader Lady’s insistence that they don’t fuck the trees. “Let me tell you, chicas, one time Em and I were with this guy who got handsy with one of these tentacle monster lady things. Completely ripped to shreds. Some people are just crazy.” Dee wasn’t excluding present company, as evident by his grin never faltering even as he described the man’s grisly fate.
Doll went on Fox Girl’s moped, which was fine by him. Well except that meant they couldn’t use their sweet ride in the vein. “Hey Em,” He turned to his suited companion. “Why can’t we use our sweet ride in the vein?”