spin_kick_snap | The Mount, Ex-Los Angeles

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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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"I don't like standing still," Max said. "Or being stuck in one place. You're pretty and useful, kid."

"You're welcome, I guess," Dante said, glancing his way for another second. "Even if I'm out here dealing with your shittastic demon because of you."

Edited 2018-10-06 10:00 (UTC)

"You're just wandering around exuding demon aura," Max retorted, rolling his eyes. "You're not dealing with shit. In a few days, if Cairax doesn't fuck back off to the Abyss, I'll have figured out a spell to send him back there instead."

"You think he's gonna leave just like that?" Dante said skeptically. "Cause lemme tell you, that didn't work with Mundus. That guy spent ten years trying to kill me just because he had beef with Sparda."

"And this is probably why Cairax was only the third-strongest Reaver Lord or whatever," Max said easily. "Impatience and a lack of general follow-through."

"Wishful thinking is strong in your family, huh."

"Right along with great hair and big dicks," Max said with a lift of his chin. "The combination makes us sure we can do damn near anything."

Dante caught himself snickering at that, and quickly tamped back down.

Dammit, Max. Stop being likable.

No could do, buckaroo. That was the worst kind of asshole; the one that made you like him, in spite of your better judgment. Because then you were mad at him and yourself.

"We're gonna have to sneak in," he said as they made their way along. "Unauthorized excursions are frowned upon."

"You couldn't have told me that two hours ago?" Dante asked.

He probably still would've done this. "I guess jumping over the Wall isn't gonna work."

"Why do you think we went invisible when we went over the Wall?" Max asked, rolling his eyes. "I could have just had you go all disco-seizure-warning on them if I were just worried about the exes."

Dante rolled his eyes. "So what's your plan?" he said. "You know this place better than I do."

"We could rile up some exes on one side of the Mount, then run around to let ourselves in on the other?" Max suggested. "Fewer eyes on us that way."

Or he could just make them invisible again, but where was the fun in that?

Dante rolled his eyes. "I'm not getting bit by exes again because you're a fucking drama queen," he said.

Hey now. Don't throw stones there.

"Oh, I'm sorry Pot, I hadn't realized it was Hypocrisy O'Clock already!" Max said, pitching his voice high and fussy.

Drama queen indeed.

"Hey, you can always J.K. Rowling our way over that wall again," Dante said, rolling his eyes.

Edited 2018-10-06 19:41 (UTC)

"That's it," Max said, stopping dead in the middle of the street. "We're going to get caught by Murrain and eaten by exes and it's all because now I need to school you on what bullshit those books are and how I don't care how bad Jo-Jo's divorce was, the solution wasn't to make everything she'd learned sound twee out of pique."

Dante blinked.

And then snickered. Loudly.

"Holy shit, do you have a vendetta against the chick who wrote all of those teen mage books?" he said. "Oh man."

"Jo-Jo knows what she did," Max said, crossing his arms over his chest. "And she did it deliberately."

"Jo-Jo?" Dante snickered. "You really on first-name basis with her, man?"

"Her first husband, Jorge, is a sorcerer." Beat. "And an asshole and this is from me."

"Are you fucking with me right now?" Dante said, squinting. "Seriously?"

Max just looked at Dante, shrugged and smiled.

"Holy shit," Dante said, and made a faintly amused noise.

Then: "Does that mean you can do the invisibility trick or not?"

"Jesus Christ, you're like a little kid," Max sighed. "Fine, I'll make us invisible again. Though that's not quite how it works. At least, not the spell that I use."

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