Participants:
| Scene Title | Sand-Ridden, Miracle-Healing, Chickenshit Ass |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | A teleporter, bartender and a stylist go into the deserts of Mexico hunting a healer. |
| Date | January 8, 2010 |
Mexico
Antigua, Mexico (imaginary city) and A ghost town.
Mexico is a lot more nicer tempurature wise than New York right now. Late morning, the appropriate people assembled in Abigail's place above the Bar. Time for Raquelle to see his daughters off to school and/or babysitters as needed, time for Abigail to hit up the bank again for more Peso's and to make more arrangements regarding her parents. On time though, she, Raquelle and Elias had gathered above the not yet open bar to start the trip.
Antigua Mexico is the destination adjacent to whatever little hole Deckard has opted to hide out in and avoid life - and in turn apocalypse - and Elias was supplied with the necessary maps, co-ordinations and the like. A hiking pack on her back with what they need that can't be bought in the city right off the bat, it wasn't that long once they were assembled and Elias to do his special trick. The trick that makes stomachs spin, things uncomfortable but gets them to Mexico a lot faster than if they drove. Also deals with the whole declaring things at the border.
For some being in Mexico was not so strange an experience, the language familiar and understandable. For another in the group, it was par for the course given that when one wants authentic sushi, once just thinks about it and - You're in Japan and dining on Sashimi to your hearts content. For the third, it's the last month, but a whole different culture.
But Raquelle is the translator, and Elias is transportation for when they need to go to further than somewhere in the city. It takes about an hour of searching, talking, money exchanging hands to pay for information from said talkers and yet eventually they discern where Deckard is hiding out. Or the miracle healer as he's been noted as. If Abigail's lips downturn a bit into a frown at thsoe words, it's because they are. Flints been down here doing miracles.
The ghost town is located on a map, the pit stop of a place long since lost to the maps but a toothless plaid wearing adn denim panted man was able to point it ou ton the map. Which is where the tri stand. In a quiet part of the Antigua where they won't be seen disappearing into thin air.
"Right here. they couldn't tell Raquelle what building he was in, but really, it's a ghost town. We could just run around yelling for him. He'll either shoot at us or stick his head out." Unless it's at the metaphysical steering wheel. "Ready?" The brunette asks of the other two, perspiration dotting her forehead and anxious to get on with this.
Unlike Abby, Elias seems to be fairly well adapted to the heat, despite wearing jeans, a t-shirt and his tanker boots. The only bit here that does seem to belong are the wide-lensed aviator sunglasses he's wearing. "Ready whenever the rest of the posse is," he replies. Rather than wrapping up a sandwich for later, he folds up the newspaper he's reading - the New York Times - for later. "Just need to check its place on the map and I think we'll be fine from there."
A search and rescue thing of some type - Check. In Mexico - Check. He's wearing a pair of fitted dark jeans, hiking boots…nice and brown to match his leather jacket and backpack. This is Raquelle naturally, in shades and a fedora perched on his head to block the sun as he sighs and rolls his eyes. So not his scene! But he is here for Abby, adjusting his backpack and nodding. He hasn't really talked much on the trip, just translating where he needs to, or reapplying and asking about his eyeliner. But he's quiet.
The map is passed over for Elias to check again, double check, triple check as Abigail slides her sunglasses down over her eyes to block out the sun. She's used to humid heat. To new York heat. Not Mexico heat. "I'm ready" and Raquelle is ready which means she slides her one hand into his, the other clutching her crutches to her and holding tight to them. This beats taking a taxi or finding a ride out to where her absent lover has run away to. This leaves Elias to grab a hold of her or of Raquelle and poof them to…
Elias gives the map a good look over, studying it intensely and taking note of the distance from their present location to their new one, relevant landmarks, alignment to other, larger cities that he knows better, and likely an entire host of other tidbits that he may well need to know. Finally, he folds the map up, places one hand on Abby's shoulder and the other on Raquelle's, and lowers his head in thought. It's one thing to simply think about a place. It's quite another to actually see it, but in a way, this is exactly what the teleporter does. He can't see Flint Deckard, of course, but he can see bits and pieces. A boulder here, some bushes there, the vague outline of something larger. Several seconds pass in silence, but finally, enough data is enough data. Sucking in a deep breath, the sensation of standing is replaced almost immediately by the sensation of teleporting. A sensation that is strikingly similar to the sensation of falling and screaming.
But only for an instant, and then it's over. Elias wobbles a bit, but remains standing and quickly recovers his equilibrium. There are some place other than where they started. And that, perhaps, is the best they can hope for at the time.
Raquelle squeezes Abby's hand gently before closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. He's probably trying to pray before there is…this teleportation falling, screaming business and he doesn't scream, he just might be singing 'FAME! I'M GOING TO LIVE FOREVER! I'm GOING TO LEARN HOW TO FLY /FUCK!/' as it happens but hey…other than that, he's quiet as he takes a deep breath and then another deep breath, steadying himself once they arrive.
IT still makes Abby's stomach turn, but Elias's shoes are safe even as she wobbles on her one foot, hands digging into Elias's shoulder and Raquelle's hand . Her own head bow'd for the duration, it flies up to locate where they are even as Raquelle is singing. There's a grin on her face as they're at least successful, not half in the ground or through a wall, or through a cactus.
"To think Elias, there was a day I dreaded seeing you" That day in the church when Wu-Long put her under the church bench and Elias played patty cakes with brian and his clones up top.
And they're there.
The ghost town without a name splays out around them at a disorganized scatter. One roofless, windtorn building here, two over there. They're all small. Even the caved in ruin of a church looks like it was cramped before it fell, and nearly everything's the same uniform shade of dusty brown. Ridgebacked mountains mottled green with dry, scrubby growth break up the horizon to the north, east and south, with sparser stuff pushed up through the sand and dirt and rock that forms the base of the valley.
Signs of recent habitation are present in the form of scattered beer cans glinting pale silver in the sun. A fire pit is still host to embers and hot ash fresh enough to glow faintly against the wind. Further on, a big blackish brown horse whinnies uneasily at their sudden arrival and turns restlessly in its rough-hewn paddock to check them out from a safer(?) vantage point some twenty or thirty feet further away. Were it not for the sheet-covered El Camino parked out front, the squat, rotted out tavern the paddock's built onto would be indistinguishable from most of the other buildings around. It doesn't even have a door.
"One day," Elias begins, ignoring Abby's fingers digging into his shoulder, "This'll be kid stuff. I'm telling you, one day I'll go to the moon and back, just so I can say I did it." But that is apparently that. "We should grab lunch soon." A quick glance around puts those thoughts on the back burner immediately. They all, in some capacity, have brought their own carry-on luggage, and Elias' take the form of the small survival pack strapped to the back of his belt. A survival pack he clicks the clasp opened on before reaching in and withdrawing two of the items had been keeping inside it; a 9 millimeter Beretta and the first magazine to be slid into the weapon today. Just in case, of course; even as he chambers a round, Elias doesn't expect that he will actually even need to discharge the weapon.
"Alright boss-lady, what's the plan?"
What is the plan?
She had expected to need to work harder to find him. Not just teleport into town and… be confronted with evidence that someone is living there. The brunette peers at a beer can warily, then the horse with a crooked head while she gets her balance and her crutches under her arm. Car, horse, beer, pit fire. "Well. If he's here. I think we found him right away"
She takes a step forward, crutches creaking and protesting the added weight of the hiking pack. "Plug your ears" She warns them.
"FLINT DECKARD! YOU WILL GET YOUR SAND RIDDEN, MIRACLE HEALING, CHICKEN SHIT ASS OUT HERE RIGHT NOW BEFORE I SEND ELIAS IN WITH A GUN! DO YOU HEAR ME?!"
There is no mistaking those southern tones. Abigail leans on the aluminum supports now and waits. "That's the plan"
"…I'ma…go…wait outside…" Raquelle offers veeeeery carefully pausing. "I mean uh, over…there with the - Oh look! Some trash.." Off he edges.
Whatever Flint was doing — he isn't doing it anymore. Somewhere inside the defunct bar there's a scrape and a clatter. A thud. Something that sounds like it might've been a glass being turned over. It's dark inside. Hard to tell.
But there's no mistaking the scruffy head that leans warily, carefully sideways out from the bar's black interior. Dusty grey hair has grown a short ways out of its formerly tidy buzz. Enough for him to look unkempt, which is convenient giving that he's working about a month and a half worth of beard, too. His eyes bleach blue against the shrill beat of the sun and he withdraws to emerge in uneasy full a few seconds later, still buttoning his jeans and adjusting his holster as he goes.
He looks — like he's been living in the desert for four or five weeks. The once white of his Raquelle-bought and currently open dress shirt has yellowed and browned out in patches around the sleeves and back. The undershirt beneath is discolored around the color, and the rest of him is the kind of dusty that happens when you live on a pile of dirt and don't have access to a shower for days at a time.
Deckard doesn't make it far from the black rectangle of his doorless door, rather, he stares at the trio of them from a distance. Kind of like the horse, only less sure they're actually there.
As Flint stares at the trio, Elias stares right back at Flint. At the beard, the shirt, the hair, at everything, and he can think of only one word to describe what it is he is seeing.
"Yikes."
"See, I have him sorta trained" Is muttered under Abby's breath when Flint actually does emerge from bar proper. There's a purse of lips as she takes in the sight and state of her would be, has been, might still be lover. She's sure that she's not the only one suppressing an urge to dunk him in a horse trough full of water and scrub him down while Raquelle trims his hair. "Yikes? Little more than yikes Elias"
With those words, she starts forward, no weight on the plaster encased foot. "No, you're not hallucinating. You left me a map with a cross and your name. It took Raquelle, Brenda and I two days when I finally got back from Russia, to track you down. Do you know how far it's spread about the miracle healer? It's spread far enough that I'm surprised there's not people lining up out here for you to cure them" She's being a little sharp tongued and pauses to look at Raquelle.
"Please tell me that you can fix that yes? The hair and the beard?" On and on she goes, filling the air with words, cluttering and coating the air almost liberally with a verbal barrage. "Raquelle has his boyfriend babysitting his girls, so that he could come help me look you up. He was worried about you as well. Elias, well you know Elias yes? Elias was our transportation and security. Thank you Elias for your kindness, as you can see, we've found him. Should have brought the girls Raquelle, think of the fun they would have had with the horse!"
"Oh my good lord, saints of Marilyn Monroe preserve us…" Raquelle's eyes almost bug out from behind his shades but he doesn't look surprised, just…like he watched somebody throw up. Resigned and mad about his shoes. "Fix that? Well I brought my razors but are you /sure/ you want me to cut /all/ his stuff off? You might need that…"
People are moving and speaking and talking about cutting his bits off way quicker than Flint can process what's happening and what he should be doing in any kind of timely fashion. He looks to Abby first, either because she's the one bearing down on him or because she's Abigail or both. To his credit, despite his silence he holds his ground long enough to look past her at Raquelle (whose presence flatly baffles him) and then Elias (who is even more baffling.)
He finishes with his belt a little hastily once she starts getting close, shirt tail tagged into an awkward half tuck somewhere around the back so that the open lapel trips over the butt of his revolver when the wind picks up again. Between the three of them, it's hard to pick out who deserves to be stared at the most.
In a matter of seconds he's decided it's safest to look sideways at the horse while he scuffs a self-conscious wrist across the bristle patched grey on either side of his chin and grizzled everywhere else. "Uh…"
For the briefest of moments, Elias isn't quite sure what to make of Raquelle. And then, it occurs to him that he should make of Raquelle the same thing he does everything else. As much fun of as possible. This thought, however, is shoved aside in the wake up a whole lot of not much that is occurring just over yonder. With an inaudible sigh, he does the smart thing and tucks his pistol underneath his belt, behind him. Hopefully, this will lighten Deckard's mood ever so slightly. But what would help the situation most of all?
"Say something, Flint. Try words, Those usually work."
She didn't expect him to say anything. It's Flint. He's never said much of anything while she's known him. "You can hang around if you like Elias, You don't have to stay. I'll call you when Raquelle wants to head home back to his girls" She wants to get this pack off her back and off her foot. "Keep an ear out for what we talked about okay? It happens, you grab his girls and his boyfriend and get to where I showed you and call us" She'd exchanged numbers with him beforehand. Around Flint she starts to move, heading for the building that he came out of. "Raquelle, we need to find water. Has to be a well or something of that sort here. I'm going inside to get lunch started so that Elias doesn't leave on an empty stomach" THis wasn't what she was expecting, not since he left the map there for her to find him.
Raquelle sighs and shakes his head, idly cracking his neck before adjusting his backpack and looking from person to person. "And today, on Days of our Drama…is the baby really Brightons? Is Doctor Transmannered /really/ a man? Will Miss Texas feed poor exotic Cockroach his own testicles on a platter of 'what the hell is wrong with your scruffy lookin' no callin' time wastin' yet shapely and so easy to buy boxers for ass'?" He snorts to himself and just nods slowly to Abby and offers towards Deckard. "We have to talk cupcake." He smiles angelically…really, turning on his heel and looking around, hands on his hips and expression grim. "Yo? Water?" More looking around. "God? You can take a rain piss now, annnnyyy moment now…" He throws his hands up. "I'm missing sex with a Mexican hobbit, for /this/." He starts to walk off. "REMEMBER TO USE PROTECTION LOVE MUFFINS." Off he goes.
Flint stinks up close. That's a given. He looks like he stinks.
He also looks slightly miserable when Abby moves to circle around him with crutches and a pack where he should probably, probably lean in with a here-let-me and stands there like one of his mesquite fence posts instead. Elias's suggestion prompts a rankle at his nose; Raquelle gets a dirty look. He's nobody's cupcake. Cupcakes don't glare and smell like sweaty horse and dirt and armpits.
"There's a well over by the church," is what he manages to gravel out in the end, another itchy scuff at his jaw sketching into a glance after El Camino and Chopazo respectively. In the end, though, after a minute or two spent procrastinating he falls into grudging step at Abby's heels.
"Don't mind me, Abigail," Elias says in reply to her mention of not letting him leave on an empty stomach, "Sometimes flying on empty is better for the digestion. Besides, there's a plate of carne asada fries up north with my name on it, and that's not something I'm about to miss."
"Besides, in the event that it becomes relevant, the closer to the city I am, the better, if you get my meaning. I think you do."
True enough. The quicker for Elias to deal with things should the world literally flood. "Okay" She calls back. To both men that is. The ones she's not somewhat - okay, not somewhat - mad at. "Teo sends his regards, he's off to save the world again since we found what we needed to find in Russia and he wanted to make sure I'd be okay when we got state side. And so help me god, if you lay a hand on me to heal me right now, I will not hesitate to take my crutch upside your head" She disappears into the building with a rankle of her nose and a hop or two to make it over the threshold proper.