spin_kick_snap | The Mount, Ex-Los Angeles

The last time anyone from Fandom had been in Kathy's LA, the heroes had been living inside the walls that surrounded Paramount Studios, with the exes and the South Seventeens laying claim to everything else. Since then, they'd expanded; the Big Wall pushing the borders out almost a mile in all four directions. In some spots, it was hard to tell that there had ever been a zombocalypse; the streets were clean, the buildings repaired, the blood all scrubbed away. There was a proper school, lots of farms and gardens, several churches, and even a small library. The studio was still the heart of the community, but people had started to spread out and settle. It was still a tight fit, several thousand people into one square mile, but honestly not much worse than Los Angeles used to be, back before the world died and reanimated again.

Life had fallen back into a rhythm again. People got up, got ready for the day. Kids were sent off to school, adults took themselves to various jobs, though there were fewer sales people, baristas, and aspiring actors and a lot more guards, scavengers, and farmers these days. There was a brewery down on Larchmont and a still over on Monroe. Burns Park let people enjoy a bit of nature where the kids could run around and burn off steam and a Gold's Gym practically against the Big Wall. That was where the Unbreakables spent most of their free time, with curious gawkers watching them put more and more weight onto the machines.

It was a bustling little community of survivors, as safe as a place could be, surrounded on all sides by millions of undead waiting to find a way inside to devour them all.

[For them that are there! NFB, and ~~please wait for the~~ OCD is up! Previous entry Next Entry]

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"Whut."

"I was so fucking pissed after the diner, I went for a walk," Dante said slowly. "Hit up a club. He was there."

"But the diner was hours before then," Kathy said, confused. "We went to the hotel, we had--" Her breath caught. She didn't like thinking about the fight in the hotel, even now. Not deliberately anyway, for all that it loomed large in her consciousness. "You were still mad after Anders and I went to sleep?"

"Mad, restless..." Dante shrugged. "Yeah," he said.

"And you just happened to find yourself at the same club as Max." Skeptical Kathy was skeptical.

Though not of Dante.

"Yeah, he was waiting there with a drink and a whole shitload of comments about how much power I was packing," Dante said slowly.

"Fucking Max Hale," Kathy sneered. "Was he trying to get you to join his secret cabal of underage wizards or something?"

Okay, she didn't technically know that Max had had one of those. But it seemed like the kind of thing he'd run!

"He definitely wanted to recruit me for something, kept saying I was a demon. Didn't take that too well," Dante said.

To put it mildly.

Kathy froze. "Wait. He knew you were a demon?" she repeated. "This was before you did."

"Yeah," Dante said softly.

"Fuck." Kathy pushed herself up off of Dante's lap to pace the four steps she could in her bathroom. "Max's whole thing is about harnessing demonic energy and then using it himself. What if he tries to turn you into some kind of, like, sexy Nephilim battery or something?"

"I think he just wanted me to back him up, or something," Dante said, dropping his arms as he watched her go.

"Back him up for what?" Kathy asked, spinning around to take another four steps before having to turn around again.

This bathroom had clearly not been built for pacing.

"I don't know," Dante said, shrugging. "I wasn't interested, so I didn't ask. Didn't help that he was creeping up a fucking storm and, oh, after I punched him, decided to go vanish in a puff of smoke."

Edited 2018-09-28 09:13 (UTC)

Wait, but if Max knew that Dante was a demon, then why had he -

And with what was practically an audible record scratch, Kathy's attention was brought back to Dante. "Wait, he was being creepy enough that you punched him?"

Max generally exuded a low-level creep just by virtue of his personality. But for Dante to have - "Cause you were still mad, or...?"

"He spent the whole time low-key hitting on me and then started talking shit about taking you on as an apprentice," Dante said. "... Might've lost my temper."

"...I'm honestly at a loss as to which one I'm more appalled by," Kathy said after a moment. "Why did he want me as an apprentice?"

Look, hitting on Dante was gross but at least explicable.

"I don't know, he was talking shit about how much you wanted to help," Dante said, holding his hands up. "Again, wasn't really interested in why he was pulling all this shit."

Kathy sighed at him. Of course he wouldn't remember.

And then she just sighed. "It was probably just another way to get to you. Not about me at all."

And...drooped. Just a little. She didn't want to be Max's apprentice, ever, but still. It would be nice if someone back then had thought she was useful for, like, legitimate reasons.

She hated this place.

"He wouldn't have brought it up if he hadn't been thinking about it," Dante said. "A whole fucking recruitment drive going on in that guy's head."

"What, collect the three of us for the hat trick?" Kathy asked, perking up slightly at the idea it might not have been all just a ploy to get on Dante's last nerve. "A mage, a Nephilim, and a possible apprentice."

"I mean, he said shit all about Anders," Dante said. "So maybe just a Nephilim and an apprentice."

"Anders is a better mage than him anyway," Kathy declared. "He probably didn't want the competition."

"True," Dante said, grinning. "Anders could wipe the floor with that dipshit."

"And be cuter doing it," Kathy added, tossing her hair.

She looked at the door. Sighed. "Guess we should probably join the others, huh? Unless you wanna take a shower? I could stand watch."

Re: Wednesday Evening

rebelseekspizza - 2018-09-28 16:37 (UTC) - Expand

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