Participants:
| Scene Title | No Complaints |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Ygraine acquaints herself with the newest member of the Hub. |
| Date | January 15, 2012 |
The Hub
His arrival in the Hub had less pomp and circumstance than blind folded journeys had promised him. A twenty-four hour quarantine in a space about the size of a broom closet, a dose of negating medication to dampen his power and limit the risk of disease, followed by, well.
The monotony of daily existence, apparently.
And an escort, someone for Logan to talk to, experimentally, in the way a cat uses its claws to make itself comfortable. To not a great deal of effect, honestly. The several hundred strong living under the ground, here, do not apparently recognise him as being Vanguard, although Logan is rather certain that rumour is about as catching the Shanti-Rage itself. It will only be a matter of time.
Currently, he has taken to existing somewhere above the monotony of daily existence, and watches it from on high, seated on the edge of a metal catwalk with his arms folded over metal railing. He's been given a few new items of clothing, but all of them as well worn and old as everything in this world — practical trousers, a little big for him and rolled at the cuffs, and a loose fitting, pale grey T-shirt with old sweat stains dried in along the neckline. Short sleeves aside, his arms are bare, all wiry muscle and scars.
The platform on which he sits vibrates slightly as today's escort sees the next one on duty approach, moving off without a word. Likewise, Logan keeps his eyes trained on the trade and socialising going on some thirty feet below him, expression inscrutable.
There's still a sense of strangeness to coming up here. Before the world fell apart, Ygraine had begun eagerly embracing her power's capacity to grant access to places others did not go - and the high points of the world opened up to her, as a semi-private playground and training field. But in the wake of Phoenix's failure to stop the release of the Virus and her withdrawal from 'active service', she began to avoid everything likely to remind her of the brief period when she thought she might be (super)heroic.
More recently, and especially with the arrival of Elisabeth, she has sought to reclaim some small portion of that drive… but still, there's a shifting tension in her gut and throat as she comes up high to overlook the others, even before she catches sight of the erstwhile world-killer she's due to keep an eye on.
"Morning," she ventures by way of eloquent greeting.
For anyone else, it's highly likely that Logan might have ignored them. At Ygraine's somewhat familiar voice, and familiar accent, he angles a look upwards as she approaches. Without his ability activated, that eerie glow in his eyes is gone, leaving behind green that's pale enough to be grey, stark and wolfish. He's sort of cleaned up, in that he's cleaned up, but it's going to take a few more meals to eliminate that hungry look about him, and maybe a few more friends to do away with his kicked coyote demeanour too.
He looks back down at the milling people. "Hard to tell from down here, isn't it."
Ygraine grips the railing, smoothly swinging herself down to sit with feet hanging over the edge - a brief flicker of the parkour she once enjoyed. "Tell what?", she asks softly. "That the world's fucked?" The question's asked wryly, rather than as an accusation. For her own part, she's also lean… but with the odd look of a woman pushing herself to be as fit as possible on a far-from-perfect diet.
There's a soft laugh out of Logan, dry, cracked down the centre. A brief smile, made to look more crooked than he intends it to be due to a broken tooth.
"Nah," he says. "That it's morning."
Blunt nails itch some new scrape on his wrist. "Looks fucked from here, too," he adds. Clears his throat, as if to rev his own voice, which hasn't seen too much use over the past few days. "Not that I'm complaining."
"The time-keeping seems to have been maintained better than I'd have expected," Ygraine agrees. "I seem to recall old research into depriving people of access to the outside word for a sustained period. People slipped into a 25-hour day rather than a 24-hour one. We need external stimuli to remain 'in sync' with the planet. So keeping us even approximately in line with the outside world is one of the little achievements here."
She shrugs, wearily amiable - even shooting him a hint of a sidelong smile. "Not complaining's a good start, yes."
"Mm."
Logan tucks his chin on his folded arms, absorbed in his people watching. It might occur to Ygraine, or anyone, that this is more people he's seen in one place than he has in a very long time. But then, who knows — maybe the Vanguard have hundreds of people too, flocking to the master of the universe at its dark heart. Maybe the appeal is new people. Maybe he's thinking about twenty-five hour days, livings spinning out slower than the planet they're on.
He says, "Not complaining," again. "Everyone's been very kind."
In the tone of someone who is not sure he can take said kindness at face value.
"That we have a community here - whatever its timekeeping - is pretty impressive in many ways. Common 'wisdom' was that a bunch of fearful strangers would tear each other apart in the first few weeks, if not days," Ygraine muses before shooting Logan another sidelong look. "Not that I can really claim to know what it was like where you were. I've been out a fair amount" - which she thinks he has probably already guessed, given her presence on the strike team and her appearance - "but it's not as if we tend to have much social interaction with other people."
"Not kind," Logan says. "But not awful. There's a comraderie, so long as you can run with the wolves, so to speak."
And if you can't, well.
Vanguard is only so interested in collecting mouths to feed.
"But for someone like me, you know. Like us. So long as I stayed useful, I survived. When the flood comes, you scramble aboard whatever raft you can reach. That day at the factory— " He swallows, dryly. He feels like he's saying things a little disjointed, a little out of pattern, but that they are necessary things to say. "Wasn't the first time I'd wanted to get away. First time I thought I could manage it without dying."
"I can understand not wanting to die," Ygraine concedes, keeping her voice quiet to avoid it carrying to anyone unaware of quite how Logan was 'found'. "And I'd imagine that there haven't exactly been many groups that could seem to offer much chance of helping with that. How… how long were you with them for?"
"Two years."
Which might seem like quite some time to be a hostage, but his tone is particular, like he's a little impressed with himself for having survived that long. Logan stretches his fingers, curls them in again, glancing at Ygraine to take her measure, her carefully worded empathy, before he resumes his people watching. "There was a man of theirs, before that. He'd hunted me with the intent to kill, like they did, back then. One by one, I mean."
As opposed to en masse. "When I used my ability against him, he seemed like he might've recruited me instead. Managed to slip away for a time, didn't want anything to do with it. But when the flood came, he was the hand that reached out to me."
Ygraine listens carefully, expression quite intent as she turns her head to look more directly at Logan. "The 'flood' being the virus release?", she asks quietly. "So they hunted and tried to kill you before that - but your… performance when 'caught' impressed them, so the directive regarding you changed? And when they did find you again… you were, ahh, brought into the fold?"
"That's about the size of it, yeah." Impressed got a reaction — a crooked smile, more cynical than self-deprecating, but it's good enough for the abridged take on the story of how he threw in with the men who killed the world. The 'flood', as he says. "It's what Lord— "
His mouth shuts, as soon as that word leaves it. A tic of tension, at his jaw. Pale eyes staring downwards, fixed.
Tries again. "It's what their leader called it. The flood."
"…the creepy guy who wants to end the world is a Lord V? Yeesh." Ygraine rolls her eyes. "Presuming he uses his surname, of course."
A sigh accompanies shooting Logan a sympathetic look. "I'm not meaning to make light of… being shit-scared of the world-killer", she murmurs. "But I suppose that Biblical pretensions fit a plan like this. Still… the world was rebuilt and repopulated after Noah's flood: did he ever bother to explain how that was supposed to happen, with the Virus out there?"
Ygraine's disgust gets a slightly belated smile from Logan — suppressed, without showing any teeth, but there. Like maybe it's the sort of thing he's thought before, but has never risked an eyeroll, or witnessed someone risking an eyeroll. The nature of the emperor's clothes, and so on.
"Some things," he says, smile dimming. "But I'm going to have to keep a few cards close to my chest when it comes to Lord V. I imagine you people aren't— like them, about a man's usefulness."
He glances to her. "But it's early days yet."
"No. We're not," Ygraine agrees, quietly matter of fact. "And I'm not one of the decision-makers, so sharing things with me or trying to impress me might be considered a waste of time if you're used to an environment where people are only allowed to live if they're deemed useful by key personnel. But… I was one of the nutters trying to stop all this from happening. Chasing around after the Vanguard to try to stop the 'flood' from ever starting at all."
Shrugging ruefully, she offers a tight-lipped smile of her own. "Yeah. Not exactly the most resounding success of my life, there. But there are people here who've been aware of and opposed to 'Lord V' for years. If you want to survive turning your back on him, these are the best people you can be with."
"You put yourself on the frontlines," Logan says, then indicates the mass of people below. "For them. Your word's worth a thing or two, I reckon." But all the same. The intricacies of the regime, goals and dreams for the future, remain unremarked on for the time beind.
Instead, he pulls in a longer breath, and lets it out slowly. Absorbing the things she has to say, and a lack of rebuttal must mean some of it sinks in.
He sets his hands on the railing. "If it's morning," he says, "then I suppose we ought to have breakfast."
He hasn't actually done this yet. Eat with the masses as opposed to some private corner.
Ygraine snorts softly, then nods. "I can show you one of my favoured spots for lurking without inviting lots of contact, if you like. There's a… language to where you position yourself, of course, in a shared space like that."
A tug on the railings helps her swing herself upright once more. She doesn't offer the runaway servant of Lord V a hand, but she does angle her stance to clearly invite him to accompany her, rather than just stalking off and expecting him to follow. "And it's not bad for people-watching, as a distraction from the flavour of the food," she even adds as a gentle attempt at a joke
Less spry, Logan is slower to get to his feet, more loose limbed and lazy than any particular sign of weakness. And he's cognizant to invitation, sensitive to things like posturing, power dynamic, the languages that his crowd had to recognise friendliness for what it is.
The rampway rattles underfoot as they make their way down, leaving behind heavier conversation to the rafters as they slip into the crowd below, becoming one with the whole.