Participants:
| Scene Title | The Tempest |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | The travelers depart the Wasteland and find themselves somewhere beyond the sea… |
| Date | October 22, 2018 |
There was nothing beyond the threshold.
La mer
Qu'on voit danser
Le long des golfes clairs
A des reflets d'argent
Beyond the night black disk ringed with auroral shades of blue, green, and pink was momentary weightlessness and then the horrifying sensation of falling in the dark. Flashes of lightning illuminate not the rooftop of a skyscraper, but the storm-tossed waves of an angry sea. Magnes Varlane feels the world spinning around him as he plummets, arms windmilling, mind racing, and as he assesses his relative position to Earth’s gravitational field and asserts his will over it to catch himself, he sees the others. Falling. Like toys dropped by a careless child.
La mer
Des reflets changeants
Sous la pluie
Screams are drowned out by the roaring crash of swelling waves and wind-whipped sea spray. One by one those who stepped through that yawning vortex found themselves plummeting into the dark abyss of the sea. Lynette, the last through El Umbral by necessity, falls away from the rapidly closing portal with traces of auroral light spilling from her eyes and mouth like smoke. Magnes is able to catch her in his gravitic field, and she bobs weightlessly beside him as the winds push them like an untethered balloon.
La mer
Au ciel d'été confond
Ses blancs moutons
Avec les anges si purs
Bursting up from the surface of the icy, night-black water, Kain Zarek bellows with a howl of shock. On the surface he sees a sea of tiny, blinking white lights and in the flashes of lightning little Orange life vests. Each traveler was equipped with an emergency beacon, a strobing light attached to their life vest at the insistence of Eve Mas. She may have seen this only in metaphor, but a tempest is a tempest.
La mer
Bergère d'azur, infinie
“Raft! Raft!” Kain shouts, twisting in the water and swimming against the surging tide toward the floating box with its bright orange beacon, the container holding the emergency raft. Lightning flashes again as Kain grabs a hold of the box, struggling to find the ripcord release in the dark. “Raft!” He keeps shouting, even as lightning traces its way across the sky again and silhouettes looming monoliths rising from the dark of the sea…
Voyez
Près des étangs
Ces grands roseaux mouillés
…skyscrapers.
Voyez
Ces oiseaux blancs
Et ces maisons rouillées
Elaine is screaming something, incoherent and drowned out by the roar of the ocean and the howl of the wind. She grabs onto Kain’s shoulder with a vice-like grip, fingers wound in the fabric of his jacket that is weighing him down. When he pulls the ripcord on the floating box, it explodes outward in a rapidly inflating black and orange raft. The flashing beacon continues to flicker in the dark.
La mer
Les a bercés
Le long des golfes clairs
Et d'une chanson d'amour
Kain hauls Elaine up into the raft, looking up into the air to see Magnes trying to pinpoint lights atop the water, pulling them out one-by-one with his gravity powers. Sweeping wet hair from his face, Kain wheels around and looks out into the open water. He's scanning for something, staring wide-eyed. He doesn't see Liz. He doesn't see Aurora.
La mer
A bercé mon cœur pour la vie
Below the water thunder sounds muffled and the flash of lightning blooms on the surface. The water’s frothing surface looks like a night’s sky the way the individual emergency beacons twinkle mutedly against the dark. But Elisabeth Harrison is focused on another light, one cast below the tides, one she swims violently toward. Her daughter. Sinking.
La mer
Qu'on voit danser
Le long des golfes clairs
A des reflets d'argent
Somehow in the fall from the portal to the ocean, Aurora got tangled in a backpack full of supplies and torn from Elisabeth, dragged down by the bag’s weight. Her cheeks puffed, eyes wide and breath held she watches her mother’s frantic swim as lights flare behind her. Elisabeth snatches Aurora’s sleeve, pulls her forward with a water-muffled scream and brings a knife out with her other hand, cutting the tangled strap from around her baby girl's leg.
La mer
Des reflets changeants
Sous la pluie
A haze of green lights shimmers across the surface of the water as Liz pulls Aurora close to her and scissors her legs rapidly, swimming back up toward the surface. Fear dies behind her eyes, panic resolves into resolution, anxiety crumbles into determination. These crushing, dark, watery depths are nothing and they will not take her fucking child.
La mer
Au ciel d'été confond
Ses blancs moutons
“Liz!” Kain screams from the raft where dozens are now gathered, soaked to the bone and freezing in the late autumn air. Magnes has finished hauling the surfaces survivors into the raft, as many as he can find. Others are calling out for her, and just when Magnes turns his attention to a mass under the water, Elisabeth explodes to the surface with Aurora, the pair gasping for breath. As they surface, the storm clouds are thinning in parts, revealing a partly-obscured curtain of shimmering blue green light tinged with pink.
Avec…
They survived.
Falling.
Fucking falling. "I'm gonna kill you-" she's already done this to Magnes once indirectly and it's drowned out anyway by the howl of the storm and the roar of the ocean. Isabelle is a falling ball of flames, her body mostly free of the flames save for her legs and arms orange that flicker and change to bright blue. Hazel colored eyes search out for Shaw in the wake of the chaos but all she sees is darkness and the rushing water coming to meet her and the sizzle of smoke as she falls beneath the surface putting the fire out as a spitter almost instantly. Swimming up to the surface and looking down at the semi damaged life vest, Izzy screams the name the most important to her in this moment, "Shahid!"
Frantically turning in circles in the water looking for her fiancé before she sees and hears Kain screaming by the raft that he's opening for them. He'll get there, Shahid would get there. Even among the tragedy he associates with water, drowning, she can't fucking see him yet powering her legs forward she is battered by waves and dives under the water to swim faster, the crackle of lightning above her lighting the way. Magnes luckily had an ability that could save himself and Lynette. The small dirty gold band on her finger is closed upon, she can't lose it.
Eventually Izzy is pulling herself over the side of the raft and catching her breath with wide eyes, heart pounding in her chest rapidly. Eyes go to Elaine and she clutches the young woman's shoulder and whispers a word of encouragement before she's turning to lean over the side, defiant gaze ahead searching for Shaw. Dark hair matted to her face and lips from the water. This was fucked. The temperature in the raft and just outside of it spikes as Izzy battles off the cold as they wait for sight of more survivors, "Liz!"
She had been afraid to lash Aurora to her, knowing they'd likely land in water this way, but Elisabeth underestimated badly the way the pack would catch. She hadn't expected to fall from such height. She has no time to scream as the child is ripped away from her in the depths. By the time she and Aurora break the surface, she's seeing spots in front of her eyes, but her sole concern is making sure the little girl is breathing. The sound of coughing and sobbing is definitely reassuring in this case. She pulls the cord on Aurora's vest to inflate it, and then wraps her legs around the child's legs as she herself floats and coughs. Though she can't answer the shouts coming from the raft just yet, she holds her arm up to at least make them aware that they're okay. She'll swim in a minute. After she's done wheezing sea water out of her lungs.
It takes her longer than planned, if only because the waves and the driving wind are both disorienting and strength-sapping to the bodies floating in the cold water. And it's actually a good bit colder than Liz would have expected — it'll only occur to her when her brain is fully functioning that 'oh yeah, ice caps melted, deeper ocean water, of course it's colder!' Not that the North Atlantic is ever precisely warm.
Finally managing to get her own vest inflated, Liz shoves the sodden mass of blonde hair back, nuzzles the shivering child, and points both of them toward the raft's blinking light. "C'mon, sweetness… Uncle Kain's gonna lose his shit if we don't get a move on." She winks when Aurora tries to giggle at the bad word. Liz has to keep it together to keep the kidlet calm, so that's what she does — Keep Calm. Swimming lessons for the win, though, Aura's able to doggy paddle along with Elisabeth, who slows her strokes to make sure they remain together until they reach the raft, where she boosts the little one up first. "Sound off… do we have everyone?" She's working on isolating the ranges of human voices so she can listen for anyone shouting from further away than expected.
The last time Cassandra went through a portal was to save her life from assault teams invading the version of Looking Glass she had been working on, and it seems that inevitable death is the end result if she doesn’t leap. With the glow of a mushroom cloud rising steadily in the background, wearing a scavenged military life jacket and a waterproof rucksack stuffed full of things they might need on the other side, her choices were pretty clear, to say the least. The choice to stay was passed over long before she was standing on top of this roof, and now, it was time to make a decision. Either she could stay here and face the blast wave that's approaching at approximately the speed of sound or leap through the portal to whatever waited on the other side.
She went with option B.
This time is different. Taking a running jump like the last time, she braces herself for the unknown. Thankfully, this portal transition isn't as violent or destructive as it was the last time for her, and she makes it through relatively unscathed. Instead of finding herself on a rooftop or deep in an abandoned ruin, she finds herself falling, plummeting face first into a rolling sea whipped by strong winds, arms pinwheeling, screaming, as she tries to orient her body to wherever 'down' is, shielding her face and head just before she impacts the surface of the water with a splat and a splash, bobbing to the surface a few moments later with a gasp after pulling the cords to inflate her vest. She bobs there, wheezing, the wind knocked out of her, the surprisingly cold water bringing her focus back to the reality she's facing right now.
The glint of the marker beacons surrounding her gives her a point of focus, and once she can breathe she calls out. "I made it. Cassandra made it." Putting a name to the voice, just in case anyone didn't know who she was after all of this. She starts to kick, floating on her back, toward the oversized aircraft emergency raft. How someone managed to find that thing is anyone's guess, but right now it's the only place they've got to go.
Eve had warned them, in her way. When she’s placed in the raft, Lynette curls up into a tense ball, clinging to her own knees like she’s trying to ride out some sort of pain. Worry for her husband and daughter makes her strain against spasming muscles to look out over the water. Lynette’s kids know how to swim— as someone who grew up half in and half out of the oceans of Los Angeles, she insisted— and she knows Ruiz wouldn’t let Evie go for anything. But still, she won’t settle until she sees them.
The sudden clinging coldness of the air, the sudden impact of the water - all of it is disorienting, mounting on top of the already uncomfortable trip between points in the multiverse. Ripples pass over the surface, further disturbing something that was probably never calm and serene, but is now more than ever ruled by absolute chaos.
Ling watches it from below as she sinks down into the water, too initially stunned to do anything to fix her current predicament. Eyes wide and stinging from the salt in the water, her knife tugging as it tries to drift out of the sheathe she has it slipped into. Still, like a ragdoll as she floats downwards.
Swimming had never been her forte. She'd only ever barely learned how to. And now here she was, sinking fast as time slows around her. She'd scream if it wouldn't fill her lungs with water.
Like all of those from the Lighthouse, Squeaks finds traveling through portals is no big deal. One of their number could make them and they were used pretty normally during supply runs. All you do is just go through and don’t touch the sides, and pretty typically the other side is as it’s expected. Maybe with some minor differences. Like a rocky ground instead of just pavement or patchy grass.
But a missing building is not a minor difference.
She might be screaming for any of her siblings, but it’s hard to tell. That sound could also be the rush of wind blowing every which way. It could be the water too. There’s no time to really tell. As soon as the question comes into her head it’s plunged out as she crashes into the icy water. Then all the sounds are muffled and lost beneath the waves and replaced for several endless seconds with an eerie half-silence. The deep cold seizes muscles, slowing her efforts to kick and flail to the surface.
A memory floating much better than she is draws the teenager’s hand to the cord that will inflate her life jacket and she gives it a hard tug. The inflation drags her to the surface with more force than her legs alone would and she bounces amid the surface, coughing and shivering by turns.
All the voices reach her in fits and starts, some sounding nearer and others further, but all close to the same place. Shaking with chill, Squeaks turns herself around until she can find the voices, directed by the sound and confirmed with the blinky lights. She kicks her legs and pulls her arms through the water, fighting cold and tossing waves in order to drag herself to the boat and the other travelers. Every few seconds she spares a breath to crack out a “Hey!” or sometimes just a wordless syllable, something to alert the others she’s made it.
There's a rush of adrenaline going through Magnes' body. He was warned they'd come out into water, Edward said they would, but he didn't consider the fact that they might be ridiculously high up and falling down in a Flood world where everything is in ruins. In fact, he probably would have figured they'd arrive under water, if he really thought about it.
Either way, he descends down onto the water, lowering Elisabeth's weight so that she can more easily pull herself up. Then he starts running over the top of the water, keeping himself light enough to avoid breaking the surface tension, trying to make absolutely sure that he has everyone. "I can't find anyone else! I'll be right back!"
That said, he dives underwater anyway, because even though he's found everyone that he can, it doesn't mean that he can't go after the sinking supplies that Aurora was caught in. He dramatically increases his weight so that he'll sink like a rock, gripping the ropes before reversing his and supplies' gravity, beginning to quickly rise back up.
He also rushes over to grab Ling on the way, because losing supplies and letting Ling drown would probably both have consequences that Edward Ray didn't warn him about.
Somewhere beneath the pitching, rolling, black waves, Shaw stares into the dark. A familiar chill aches in his whole being, and it's painful and peaceful all at once. He remembers this feeling. He remembers being surrounded by churning, ice cold water and darkness. He remembers the burning feeling of air wanting to find its way into his lungs, but only freezing liquid choking its way into his throat.
He remembers how it felt to die this way.
There are lights blinking away in the distance. Like stars in the night, twinkling and alluring. Shaw blinks in similar rhythm, and then, he remembers a word that sounds like a whisper in his mind, but loudly enough it drowns out the dull roar of the waves. Witness.
Fingers twitch, curl, and then bubbles join the blinking lights and burning. Shaw thrashes, flailing arms and kicking legs as he pops up to the ocean's surface, buoyed by the life vest strapped on him. Despite being surrounded by water, his finds his throat is dry with fear, salt ridden and hoarse. Seeing the others, he calls out, but the man's cry for help dies in front of him, lost to the thunderous roar of the storm and sea.
So, he swims for the lights. Or rather, paddles for them. But with each stroke, he doesn't make much progress.
Odessa Woods is terrified of heights. More accurately, she's terrified of falling from a great height. This experience ticks this box with thick magic marker. Shrieking the whole way down until she plummets into the freezing waters and only bubbles break the surface, the cold both snaps her to focus as well as dulls her reflexes. It seems like it takes a huge effort to move her arms and kick her legs. By the time she's coming up for air, her lungs are on fire.
Fortunately, she remembers the vest and yanks on the cord to give her the gift of buoyancy. Training comes back to her and survival becomes a matter of following steps, rather than a frantic act and series of prayers. Gasping for precious lungfuls of air, she locates the raft and begins to swim for it.
Amid the chaos, a thunderous blast of a fog horn breaks through the night air. It evokes memories of the DoEA Harvester atop the Deveaux Building roof, a terrifying howl that pierced darkness and comes with a sudden bloom of a flood light in the ocean fog. For a moment only the glow of a single yellow light defines that booming noise, but when it blasts a second time it is clear that something else entirely is here.
Through the fog, a small motorized boat breaks its way through the fog bank with the beaming light of a search lamp on the bow. The vessel looks like recreational ship, thirty some-odd feet long and easily captained by a single person. Thunder rumbles in the sky and lightning traces through the air, and the boat begins to slow its approach toward the flashing lights. Along its bow, a designation is seen in faded paint:
Oar Place or Mine?
“Hey!” Someone screams from the port side of the ship, wind whipping through short hair. “Heeeey!” He’s running alongside the port rail, and hurls a rope ladder down over the side of the ship. “Over here!” The hooded man is impossible to make out, cast in the shadow of the searchlight.
“Son of a bitch,” Kain says aboard the raft as he checks on Aurora to make sure she's alright, “that better be somebody friendly.”
After getting a boost from Magnes, Elisabeth makes sure her sodden, shivering youngling is settled next to Kain. "If it's not, they won't have time to be very unhappy about what happens, will they?" she murmurs grimly under her breath to him. "Let's give the benefit of doubt, though. They're fishing us out of the drink."
She turns to lean over the side of the raft to help the other swimmers — Cassandra, Shaw, Odessa that she can hear out there — wherever she can. The raft, she blesses Eve silently for. "Jesus, it's fucking cold," she hisses. The raging wind is cutting through their soaked clothing and salt spray is stinging as it whips past. She keeps one eye on the boat approaching them and calls out to whoever is the head closest to that ladder, "Heads up!"
That portal had been very different from what Lucy was used to making. It was almost like a hole ripped through the fabric of space. A tear, connecting two places. What she did was more making the two places the same place, which just felt different. And her portal was nowhere near as loud, or as beautiful really. But she had chosen to come with them, as she had been helping them on their way to the building. When she finally reaches the boat, she pulls herself up, looking ragged and exhausted and cold, but thankfully not coughing up an ocean. “Wish we had dry towels,” she whispers as she pulls her arms closer. She had been dressed warmly due to the mid-autumn they had left behind, but that warmth doesn’t do anything when wet to the bone.
Meanwhile, between the two boats, bobs two more lights. Ruiz is floating on his back, pushed up by the waves as he holds the curly haired girl against his chest. The sounds of the ocean reminds him all too much of what he’d lost. That sound in his head that seemed connected to his ability in some way. It sounded like that. The roar of spray, the crackling thunder, the buffeting winds.
He would swim closer to the boat, faster, but he’s mostly just kicking his legs a little, unwilling to shift enough to use his arms. But he’s between the raft and the bigger boat that approaches, so hopefully they will meet halfway, the blinking lights from his and Evie’s life vests giving some notice to their location.
Lance didn’t plan on going to another world; he was there to see them off. The splitting of an atom over the Outer District changed his mind, as it obliterated— or so he believes— everything he had worth remaining in that world for. The frantic warnings issued before their departure had him securing a very precious bundle to his chest, one which after they hit the water had him nearly panicking to keep from submersion and protect.
It’s a good thing that growing up in a Lighthouse gave him plenty of practice swimming.
He’s right behind Lucy— doing the backstroke and kicking his feet mostly, keeping the bundle safe— and then he’s pulling himself up that rope ladder, rolling onto his back once he hits deck and looking down at his chest, fingers gently wiping water from the face of the coughing infant he’d been protecting. Six or seven months old at most. “You okay, ‘Lene,” he asks worriedly between his own coughs, soaked to the bone and shivering. Not that the child in question can answer him.
Growing up near a bayou, swimming every few days for exercise, and general health normally would make this a walk in the park, but if you add in the near starvation over the past few months and lack of practice, plus the waterlogged clothes and a backpack, you get a bit more of a struggle than you were originally intending. Cassandra does her very best, floating on her back and stroking with her arms in time with her breathing. “If you…” her head goes under, popping back above the surface after a second. “If you’re near someone, grab on!” she gasps. Big groups are easier to find. Finally she makes it to the raft and, with Elisabeth’s help, is hauled into the boat.
She lost a shoe somewhere in transit. It’s gone now.
Shrugging out of her backpack and leaving it in the center of the raft, Cassandra ignores the chill as best she can and works to help haul more people out of the water and into their somewhat buoyant craft. Her attention snaps to the oncoming boat when the horn is blown, just for a second, before she works to haul another person out of the water.
Through no help of the roly-poly seas, Squeaks finds herself coming up to the raft. Then pulled backward. Then pushed into the side of the raft. She finds a handhold before she’s dragged off again and makes a sluggish, exhausted effort to swing her feet through the frigid water to find that non-existent foothold she’s sure is somewhere down there. It’ll help when those hands dragging people into the craft are free enough to haul her out too.
Her efforts stall when that blasting horn sound cuts through the clamor of voices and waves and she sinks as far as the life preserver will allow her. Dread fills those parts that aren’t already frozen.
With her head whipping away from the sound as it happens a second time, she’s already trying to find a way that’s not toward danger. That it’s a boat isn’t immediately recognized and Squeaks’ hands flap uselessly at those that grab hold of her to finally drag her bodily out of the water and deposit her onto the bottom of the raft. As she flops wetly against the semi-solid floor, she gets a look at the boat — a boat and not a robot, no need to panic — and crawls, shaking from the deep chill, to sit out of the way and catch her breath.
As Magnes pulls her up above water Ling lets out a gasping breath, momentarily failing in his grip - before suddenly, she isn't there anymore. Instead, thick black smoke on the water drifts up, coiling about as it moved unnaturally across the water - though those who have been with LIng all this time are certainly familiar with the sight of the smoke mimic taking shape to escape trouble.
The indistinct voice, the sight of the Oar Place Or Mine? attracts the smoke toward it, Ling making a round around the ship, before slinking upwards to get a better look at the deck and crew - and make sure whomever this is isn't about to shoot them.
Because really, at this point? That's about all she expects anymore.
The warm air in and around the raft surges upwards again and settles at a balmy temperature. Isa's eyes search the water for Shaw and she soon spots her man in the distance flailing forward, flames shoot up in the sky to aid with the beacon and to attract Shaw, "Shahid!" He had trauma surrounding water but he was strong, the woman almost dives fully into the water but the arrival of another vessel has Isabelle pausing to whirl that way with a raised hand, light sparks at her fingertips and tiny flames dance and flicker due to high winds, her eyes squint as she throws Kain a look. He knows she'll fire if necessary.
"Who the fuck are you!"
Ling's smoke over water and Isabelle's fire in the sky grab Shaw's attention first, and he swims. The pack strapped to him slows him down, but the drenched essentials are just that, and he refuses to cut the straps loose. Slowly, desperately, he fights through the waves towards the fire.
Until he spots the two lights bobbing in the water that indicate Ruiz and Evie's location. He swims for the man he calls brother and the girl with him, fingers reaching out to grab and hang on. "All aboard, Akhi," coughs Shaw with as best an attempt at some kind of stimulating pep talk in the middle of the Atlantic, "Get on the board, no staying in the ocean… No letting go, Jack."
One way or another, Shaw will pull his cache of pack and people along until they are safe and together.
Lynette lets out a sigh of relief when she spots Ruiz and Evie in the water, and then Shaw moving to help them. It lets her feel safe taking a moment or two to try to recover. Or, at least, to be able to move when the occasion calls for it.
Like if they have to climb onto a boat.
She didn't get soaked like the others, but the warmth that Isa provides helps ease her muscles and lets her breathe without feeling like icicles were forming inside her lungs. Later, when they're safe, she'll have to remember to thank her. As is stands for now, she moves enough to make space for her family— including the extended parts.
"Javi," she calls out, not necessarily to get a response, but so he can know that she made it, "Evie, point your daddy this way, okay?"
Magnes rises to the surface, lifting the supplies up behind him as he pulls them weightlessly, walking over to the raft so that he can actually take a seat. He maintains the lack of gravity in the supplies, mostly to keep the raft as stable as possible. "Edward said the Featherlight is safe, he didn't say anything about this boat, so I don't know what's happening right now…"
Another voice shrieks put atop the deck of the ship when flames come alight and smoke starts winding up the side of the ship. “Woah, woah, woah!” Another figure in a hooded jacket scrambles across the deck, a rope spool carried over her shoulder. “I thought you said they were friendly!” She screams.
“Easy, Easy!” The man at the bow says, pulling back his hood and revealing a messy coif of coppery red hair and a lopsided smile. A golden necklace swings at his collar, looking like a Maori fishhook. “It's me, uh, Walter!”
Stepping to the edge of the ship, the adult Walter Trafford raises his hands and tries to look as harmless as possible. “Uh, okay… I'm not sure— I know any of you.” Then, quieter, “Oh my God, Eve. Why didn't you— ”
“Ahoy!” The hooded woman shouts, rising up onto her toes and waving one hand left and right in the air. “We’re not pirates!” She calls down, then ties one end of the rope off to the rail and throws it down to those still in the water. “We’re friends of Mad Eve!”
She pulls down her hood, squinting against the freezing cold air, dark eyes narrowed and brown locks thrashing in the wind. Not everyone recognizes her, but Magnes and Elisabeth certainly do.
It's Cat.
Magnes suddenly stands up. Don't worry, the raft isn't being upset because gravity stuff. Then he stares at Walter. "You're my daughter's friend." Then, looking to Elaine, and back to Walter. "My other daughter, I mean. Adel. You're Adel's friend."
Then, to Cat, his eyes are a bit wide. "Cat!" He jumps up from the raft, still holding the supplies, and lands weightlessly onto the edge of the Oar Place, staring down at her. "It's me, Magnes J. Varlane. I don't know what the me in… I mean, hey. I assume Eve sent you." He lowers the supplies onto the boat. "We have supplies, and we're all kind of hurt and/or exhausted."
Exhausted is a good thing to call them, really. Lucy also recognizes her, a little. Before the world went crazy, Cat would show up at the Lighthouse sometimes, but she didn’t know her a lot. Enough that she seemed familiar and unfamiliar all at once. She’s starting to wonder if she will be able to use her ability at all here— is knowing a boat the same as knowing it’s location enough to use it? With a shake of her head she continues to rub her arms, “We’re cold too.” She’s impressed her voice isn’t shaking, honestly.
As for the bobbing lights in the water, it isn’t until he can barely hear Lynette and Shaw over all of that Ruiz really puts any effort into moving. Even then he seems afraid to swim the way he would like. Lifejackets already make that difficult, but he’s more afraid of not being able to make sure Evie stays above water. She seemed to be enjoying the whole thing, or at least splashing her hands around like she wants to play with the ocean, and talking calmly to her in this raucous ocean was too difficult.
As Shaw reaches out for him, he pushes Evie a little off his chest in his direction, “Help me get her on board,” he says against the noise, that Shaw at least can probably hear due to proximity. He casts a glance toward the boat. They don’t look like they’re attacking, nor does he recognize anyone that he can almost see on board, so he’ll trust that it’s somewhat safe.
Caught off-guard at the sight of Cat Chesterfield on a boat, Elisabeth sort of gapes for a long moment. Her eyes pick out the motion of Lance and Lucy being pulled up onto the rescue vessel and she can see Ruiz and his precious bundle in the water near Shaw. "Magnes," she calls, "Get Ruiz and Shaw up onto the other boat!" They're the last ones actively in the water that she can tell. None of them have dry things right now, but the heat Isabelle is generating is welcome. She remains on her knees next to Aurora and wraps her arms around the tiny girl, offering Squeaks a brief, quick assurance. "Lance and … I can't remember the other girl's name — your friends? They're up on the deck over there. Don't worry."
Well… maybe worry a little. Mad Eve has never yet exactly steered Liz wrong, but …. Her plans often have twisty, winding roads attached. Still. Their raft was only intended to help them not drown. It's not exactly meant for long-term use. "Lynette hang tight… Kain, can we maneuver this thing closer to the other boat when Magnes has them?" Can't be running over our own people in the waves! Shoving her blonde hair back out of her face is an automatic if futile effort in the wind out here, but Elisabeth holds it tightly and simply stares… Cat and Walter. Teo and Delilah's Walter… but all grown up? Okay… her brain can't parse this right now. First things first, all people out of water!
The warmth that Isabelle is putting out helps drive the chill away a little - the wind and surf spray still cause a bit of trouble for those still exposed, but the warmer air surrounding the raft is better than the alternative. “Squeaks.” Cassandra prompts, as a reminder, watching Elisabeth’s reaction - and recognition - of the dark-haired woman on the boat. “Or that other girl who’s name I don’t know either.” They only just met, after all.
“Can you blame us for being on-edge?” Cassandra turns to yell at the boat, pushing her sodden hair out of her face, her voice barely over the sound of the wind. “We just ended up here after…”
Hold on.
How do you explain their arrival to someone and not sound like they’re all complete mad men? “After our…um…boat sank.” Yeah, that’s the ticket. Until they’re sure they can trust these people, better that they keep the whole ‘we come from a distant timeline’ a closely-guarded secret. Hiding that they’re all evolved in some way with Magnes flying around the way he is? That’ll be more difficult to pass off. She pulls down her sleeves, covering the surgery scar on her arm from where the negation implant was removed. Just in case.
Lynette watches to make sure Evie gets out of the water safely. The girl doesn’t seem to think she’s in much danger— the Ruiz kids have no reason to fear lightning after all— but Lynette won’t relax until her girl is settled.
When Liz addresses her, she looks over at the woman and nods before she thinks better of it and adds, “I’m okay. Staying put.” There is a beat. “Liz, I swear, if he mentions Edward Ray one more time I’m going to lose my mind.” It was enough the last time they did this. She looks to the boat next, managing an amused, if small smile for Cassandra’s attempted explanation. It’s a good one, out here. “If Eve sent them,” she says, all the same, “they won’t be surprised by how we got here.”
The heat coming from whatever it is Isa is doing is a wonderful thing. It cuts the chill in the air a little bit, makes her skin feel a teeny bit warmer. But Squeaks hugs her knees tightly against her chest so she can find more warmth. The cold inside makes her teeth chatter and her whole body shake, but she tries to take stock of who’s in the raft — who made it through. She’s just about to call for her siblings when there’s those strangers in the boat yelling again, and she cranes her heck to give a long side-eye to the two calling down to the raft.
Neither face is recognized, and the only name she might know is Eve. Mad Eve. “Does everyone think she’s crazy in all of the worlds?” It’s an out loud thought, spoken instead of wondered in silence.
“Where…” The aside from Liz stalls the question before it really starts. That’s okay, at least someone saw where her siblings ended up. The information gets a nod, but much less worry. “That’s Lucy,” Squeaks supplies, deciding it’s important that the other girl’s name is known also. “Who are they,” she decides to ask instead, a look first indicating she’s asking about the Walter person and the no longer hooded lady, then going to the grown-ups in general to add her own suspicion into the mix.
Although he might have every reason to be as suspicious as some of the ones down in the water, Lance has a baby to worry about, and floating around in ice-cold water was not going to be good for her. He shifts to sit up a bit, involuntarily shivering as he looks around at the people on the boat. He doesn’t recognize them— it’s been too long for him to recognize Cat immediately, although he might later.
“H-hey,” he calls uncertainly, “Does— does anyone have a— a blanket or something for ‘Lene here?”
Surely concern for a baby will ease all of the paranoia!
As Ling's form coalesques back into something more clearly resembling human - though still not flesh and blood.She watches Walter and the hooded woman for a moment. At least, until she hears the name Mad Eve. She can't help but let out a smokey laugh. "Some things never change," comes like a whispers caught in the storm winds,
She doesn't trust Eve, or many other people, but they've been through this enough times to know that Eve - much like the woman she knew back in her world - was at least dependable. Dependable enough to be sending people out to find them in the middle of whatever the fuck insanity they've literally fallen into.
Mad Eve, indeed.
Shaw latches on to Evie’s waist as Ruiz nudges the girl his way, his nodding lost in the dark and bobbing waters. “Did you hear that, they said they’re friends of Evie,” he assures the girl and her father. Eventually, he makes way up on to the larger boat and waits with Ruiz and Evie for the other travelers to join up. Every so often, he casts a glance skyward at the aurora and lightning storm, half expecting a giant robot ship to hover down under the cover of the storm. Wouldn’t be the first time.
Having reached the raft, Odessa takes stock of the situation. Shaw looks after Mateo and Evie, so she makes it her new objective to help the others aboard the raft. The cold water is miserable, but her misery may as well be productive. She swims out to where the rope has been thrown down, wrapping it around her arm, then swimming back over to the raft so they can use that tether to pull themselves alongside the boat. The sooner everyone else is safe, the sooner she can board that ship and start worrying about getting warm and dry herself. Only once everyone else is aboard does she finally make the ascent herself.
"Why does anyone listen to that fucking psycho!" Dousing her flames as she rushes over to embrace Shaw and Evie, giving the man a deep kiss before her eyes find their would be rescuers.
She's grateful of course but life vests and raft or not this situation is still fucked. The pyrokinetic stands up and looks over at Liz and Magnes before speaking up to Walter, "Thanks for coming to our rescue, let's get a fucking move on right?" Right, Isa is already done with this place. WATER and lots of it and while she could call forth fire even among water it wasn't the most friendly to her or her ability. Her skin is hot to the touch, any water on her has been evaporating sending sizzling steam into the air around them further increasing the warmth and giving it a humid feel.
Cat doesn't really pause when Magnes introduces himself, instead she stares with wide-eyes confusion as if she only now recognized him. “Master Varlane?” There's an incredulous tone to her voice, but then she stiffens a little and looks as though she's prepared to be scolded. When that obviously isn't coming, the wonderment on her face turns to amusement.
“Magnes!” Cat exclaims after that long silence. “It's a pleasure to meet you! We absolutely should talk, I'd love to… to figure out how all this is even possible.”
Walter has something of an answer for that. “Time travel!” He exclaims, as if that solves everything. “Magnes, my man,” he says with a slap to Magnes’ shoulder. “You're looking really good for a guy everyone said imploded! I knew you must've made it off that mountain alive. I totally disappeared when we defeated Cardinal in my time too. It's just the way the cookie crumbles I guess.”
He angles a look over to Elisabeth. “Ms. Harrison,” comes with an incline of his head. “My initial reaction is to apologize, again, for Joshua but… later. Anyway, uh, I'm really glad you made it. People were beside themselves when they thought you and Magnes died. I didn't see Richard much during the war— which— I suppose we should get back to? Forward? Stuff is a little weird right…” Walter stares past Liz, “…now?”
“Lance?” Walter croaks loudly, staring with vacant disbelief before he looks like he's about to just embrace the young man. But when his mind catches up to his mouth and he understands the name Lance said, all Walter can do is stare at the baby being cradled.
All the color drains from Walter’s face. “Jolene?” He’s barely able to contain his abject confusion.
Cat, mercifully, has her shit a little more together by merit of not really knowing anyone all that well. She's standing by the side of the motorboat, tugging on the rope and keeping it taut so Odessa and Kain can continue to help those who haven't moved from the raft onto the boat. “Walter,” Cat says firmly without letting go of the rope, “please keep your shit together. Eve said you might lose your shit. Are you,” she looks over her shoulder, “are you losing your shit? I don't know what that looks like!”
Walter, who is absolutely losing his shit, paws at his face with one hand. “What the fuck is going on here?” He whispers with a confounded look to the others.
“We’re traveling through different timelines,” Lynette says as she climbs her way up onto the boat. She seems to be familiar, even if she hasn’t done much boating since she was young. She moves to Evie, where she pulls off her own— dry— jacket to wrap around her. The little girl stares up at Walter, though, seeming confused by his confusion. Or maybe she’s just trying to take all this in. “Different possibilities. You understand, if you know about the war from their timeline.” Liz and Magnes, that is. “Mine was… two futures ago. Mateo,” she says with a nod and a smile toward her husband, “his was three.” It almost seems like she might be trying to joke, but she’s too tired.
“Now, my daughter and husband are soaked and I just ripped a hole in the universe. Is there a place we can rest?” Walter is the one she directs that question toward, giving him something more solid to focus on to help him get his shit together, as it were.
He's … apologizing for Joshua trying to kill Richard. Elisabeth cannot even. Trying to wrap her brain around all this is just a mess. "I …" Yeah, no. She trails off and simply struggles to stifle tears. While they work on getting transferred to the larger boat, Liz just works on assimilating. Cat…. that Cat is very different. "Zeke's machine, a temporospatial power, and the interaction of superstrings," she tells Walter succinctly. "Let's just get dry and I guess we'll figure out what the heck just happened," she sighs. "Do not lose your shit right now, Walter," she orders him, albeit in a gentle tone. Hand-flappy Kermit flailing from the son of her favorite Italian terrorist is just going a step too far right now. "The babies all need dry and safe."
“What just happened is we fell into the ocean,” Squeaks explains, helpfully, as she climbs from ladder to boat. “And it’s really cold.” She shuffles a few steps aside once she’s on board, and spends some seconds eyeballing familiar and unfamiliar faces. It’s those unfamiliar ones that she gets squinty at, a little suspicious even if there’s familiarity toward them from others of the traveling group. They seem safe enough, but… She huffs out a quick breath and joins the other teenagers. Sinking onto the deck, she sits beside Lucy and leans shoulder to shoulder with the other girl, for shared warmth and comfort.
With the help of Shaw and others, Ruiz and Evie get out of the water and onto the relative safety of the boat. He takes the time to turn the flashing light off on his own, though he leaves it on Evie. The weather is bad enough that he’s not entirely sure she won’t fall overboard anyway. And now that they’re out of the water she’s pouting of all things. She had found the whole situation fun, the lightning in the sky, the way the waves pushed her around. And now that she’s close to mommy she wants to go to her, too, but Ruiz doesn’t let her go yet.
“Yeah, blankets or towels would be a good idea. Maybe the youngest should get taken below deck, in case the wind picks up even more.” They seemed more likely to get swept overboard if a stray wave washed up on deck, after all. Not that he knows much about boats.
Suddenly he wonders how many of them are going to get sea sick. And he’s not sure he won’t be one of them.
Lucy is right behind Lance now, looking concerned, but nodding when he name is given by Squeaks with a soft, “Thanks.” She hadn’t been among those who had gone into the Outer District, so she wasn’t surprised that some of them didn’t really know her. But she had joined up to help facilitate their escape to the rooftop. Her ability had been quite helpful for that, really. Her and Paul had snuck into the city to memorize the roof for that very purpose. She just wished Magnes would have talked more of the kids into coming along.
"Master? Huh?" Magnes asks, in confusion, but he's soon taken far more off-guard by Walter. "Wait, you're literally Walter who came back to our timeline… so why or how are you here? That would make no sense, this is an entirely different branch…" But soon he's beginning to turn around and gravity people to the boat, holding his hands out to people as a bit of a warning to prepare.
He does it one by one, mostly for the sake of control, but partially due to the fact that he's feeling drained after all the chaos they just went through, plus the portal. "I had another daughter, Addie. The name, uh, I thought she'd be Adel, but she wasn't. She was kidnapped, and I'm trying to get back to our world so that I can find her."
He points to Elaine. "Same mom, different timeline. Yes, I complicated the multiverse a bit. But yeah, we can go into more detail once we get out of here, it's freezing and we're all exhausted."
In Cassandra’s amateur opinion, transferring across timelines is a complicated thing.l and, by default, sucks for everyone involved and the timeline too. God help her if she tries to sort through the timelines on an object that's made the trek across one string, much less two. Shivering, she takes hold of the bag of supplies she was entrusted with - along with the mason jar of dirt Eve insisted she take along with her for some reason - and makes her way up the ladder that simply refuses to stay still. Her stocking-clad foot soaks up the sea spray as she climbs and finally, when she reaches the deck, she collapses against the gunwale near Squeaks and Lucy, watching people climb or get gravity-boosted on board.
Towels, blankets, dry clothes, a hot shower, a roof over their heads - all would be welcomed if they're even a possibility, but this little boat seems to have enough room for them and their scant supplies, the people already on board, and little else. There are other things on Cassandra’s mind, though. “Is Mad Eve…taking guests? Or someone who may know something. We’re lost here.” She nearly adds ‘adrift’ too, but that might be overemphasizing the whole waterworld thing a bit more than necessary.
Catching his breath after the kiss from Isabelle, Shaw leans against the pyrokinetic's warm skin, fingers intertwined in hers. He's drips all over the deck along with the others, and peers out and around. With the Ruizes and other travelers all safe and aboard, Shaw finally manages a small, hesitant smile at the whole proceedings. "But she got our backs, Eanqa'," he says in Eve's defense to the pyro.
And in the midst of the introductions, the inquiries of accommodations, and shared histories, Shaw pipes up a tentative question for the crew. "Are the waffles still on recall?"
Walter turns a slow look at Shaw, mouth opening to answer a question but Cat is quick to cut him off. “Flour is hard to come by, ergo waffles are hard to come by. I'm sorry to deliver the bad news that all of the frozen Eggo’s on earth have likely spoiled.” The moment of levity seems to help Cat amid the chaos of the stormy rain and wind.
“Yeah it's uh, Eve’s rocked right now. Once the storm passes I can show you where she is. Honestly I don't know how much help she’ll be… but…” Walter rests a hand on Elaine’s back as he talks, motioning for her to head down the stairs to the cramped cabin below.
“Magnes,” Walter says with a smile, “you are a terror and a sight for sore eyes in any timeline. Let's get downstairs and we can talk out of the rain, get you all warm and make some— whatever the hell that is they pass off as tea here.”
“Tea.” Cat corrects him. “We just call it tea.” Then, as the others are being urged down the stairs, Cat steps beside Magnes and flashes him a smile. “I'm curious to find out if you're a practitioner of Akido in your home timeline as well. How much of people are nurture,” Cat says with a motion of one hand, “how much are nature,” then a motion of the other.
“But…” Cat looks up to the storm, sliding off her jacket and offering it to drape over Mateo’s shoulders, “I suppose there’ll be time for all of that soon enough.”
Above, through gaps in the thinning clouds, the aurora ripples and shimmers; a curtain of nebulous light that casts the night sea in shades of blue and green.
There'll be time for all of that soon enough.