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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"How about the part where I cut Cairax's head off his ugly ass," Dante asked. Pointedly.

"I mean, I appreciated that," Max said. "That's what finally freed me from that fleshly undead body and everything it...entailed."

His eyes went flat for a moment, voice dull.

"So if you're looking to be all scary-intimidating right now, reminding me of how you freed me probably isn't the way."

... Well, that shut Dante right up.

He made a noise in recognition of that and sped up his pace.

It wasn't much further, was it?

Nope, in fact the Walls were close enough that they could make out the guards patrolling the top. "C'mon," Max said, causally, like that last few moments had never happened, "let's head off to the side. Easier to do if we're not climbing up directly under a literal checkpoint."

"I'd say you're the expert, but you haven't ever actually done this before either," Dante said, throwing Max a pained, thoughtful look in the seconds before he huried off to the side.

"I'll have you know, I've done plenty of sneaking out and into places in my day," Max said haughtily, deliberately not acknowledging that look, even to himself. "This may be the first time the place ever involved a fifteen-foot wall made out of cars, but the principle is the same."

"Yeah, you look like you were a regular ninja," Dante snarked.

"And you look to pretty to be half-demon, so looks like both of us are mysteries to the world," Max said, rolling his eyes. "You think a lot of the shit I needed for the Sativus Medallion was shit I could just order off of Amazon? Hell, you think all of it was legal? Don't even bother going into magic unless you're an accomplished sneak thief, kid, word to the wise."

"Yeah, I'll let Anders know that," Dante said. "Except he doesn't need to steal trinkets to do magic, and he doesn't do dumb shit like mess around with demons."

Oh, Dante. You were going to regret that some day.

"And hey, my dad's the only demon in the family."

"We can't all wander the world with phallic symbols strapped to our backs like rejects from a King of the Bracelets convention," Max said merrily. "And your dad being the only one or not still makes you half of one."

Dante rolled his eyes. "Doesn't say shit about my mom, though," he said. "Fuck, why am I even arguing this? Let's get on this wall already."

"I'm sure she was a lovely woman," Max said, not adding 'for someone who likes to bang demons.'

Mostly because he wanted to live, you understand.

"Hold on." And he performed a complicated series of gestures, someone the tattoos on his hands catching the light and almost seeming to glow. "Okay. So long as we don't make too much noise, we should be fine."

Oh Max. You didn't really know the half of it. Fuck, being a demon who liked to bang angels was probably also considered a moral faux pas somewhere.

Dante watched him work with interest. Funny - he'd seen several types of magic before, but this was new. Wondering now if the artful branches on Kat's hands had been a magic thing too, though.

"Can you make it up there by yourself?"

"Awww, you don't wanna hold me again?" Max asked, giving Dante sad eyes.

"I think you like that too much," Dante retorted.

"Who doesn't wanna be carried like a princess, cradled to your chest?" Max asked, batting his eyes.

"Funny, I never took that as your deal," Dante said dryly.

"That's the thing, Dante," Max said with a silky grin. "You don't really know anything about me, do you?"

"Not really my fault, is it?" Dante said evenly.

Ugh, did he have to use that voice?

Yes. Yes he really did.

"I dunno know, Dante," Max said with a peculiar little smile. "Did you ever really try?"

He flicked the quarter up into the air--

And when it came back down, it landed on the ground, no Max there to catch it.

Did he just--

Dante blinked.

"Dick," he muttered, a moment later, and shook his head, beginning the ascent up the wall as quickly as he could. Would he still be able to squeak in? He had no idea. Was Max going to be safe? He was just going to have to assume so.

"Hey there, what the fuck?" One of the guards patrolling the Wall stopped and stared. "What the fuck is that?"

He leaned over the edge of the Wall, squinting into the oncoming gloom of dusk.

"Fantastic," Dante muttered to himself. So much for that.

Nowhere to go but up now. Time to face the music.

"...Yo Makena!" he shouted back to one of the other guards. He waved the dreadlocked guard over. "Look past that big building right there, into where Koreatown usedta be. Is that me? Or is that a big fuckin' tree that wasn't there before?"

He wasn't wrong. Straining up through the remains of an old apartment building, its branches bedecked in leaves of yellow and orange and red as they burst through rotting walls and broken windows, was a huge oak tree, healthy and vital and alive.

Dante didn't look. At least, not until he was already over the wall and any danger of someone catching him in the act had faded.

But curiosity got the better of him, and he turned around, searched the city for the building he knew had been Kathy's.

Max hadn't been lying.

He touched the tin still reseting easily in his pocket, mostly to make sure that it was still there. His worries settld, he allowed himself a brief smile for what the monument would mean to Kathy - and for its proof of some fundamental spark of decency that, even here, hadn't quite gone out of the world.

(Fuck, he loved humans.)

The Mount, Ex-Los Angeles

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