The Mount, Ex-Los Angeles

[spin_kick_snap]

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]

Comments

Re: Wednesday Evening

[spin_kick_snap]

"It's not like you were wrong though," Kathy sighed. "Besides, that wasn't the comment that wrecked my self-esteem. Those just pissed me off. It wasn't till later that I realized that they were true and that's on Nick, not on you."

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

"Then I'm sorry you got stuck here with a bunch of assholes," Dante sighed. "Can't believe fucking Max is alive."

Re: Wednesday Evening

[spin_kick_snap]

"They brought him back to life!" Kathy said, exasperated. "Deliberately! Like, that was a choice they decided to make!"

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

...

...

"Why?"

Re: Wednesday Evening

[spin_kick_snap]

"Because he asked."

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

"But he's a fucking shit-stain, shifty motherfucking perv," Dante snapped.

Re: Wednesday Evening

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy raised her eyebrows at him. "Okay, so I know he didn't make the best impression at the diner," she said slowly, "but that's a pretty specific way to describe him."

And, you know, accurate.

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

Long pause.

"The diner wasn't the only place I talked to him back then."

Re: Wednesday Evening

[spin_kick_snap]

"Whut."

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

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

Re: Wednesday Evening

[spin_kick_snap]

"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?"

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

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

Re: Wednesday Evening

[spin_kick_snap]

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

Though not of Dante.

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

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

Re: Wednesday Evening

[spin_kick_snap]

"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!

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

"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.

Re: Wednesday Evening

[spin_kick_snap]

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

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

"Yeah," Dante said softly.

Re: Wednesday Evening

[spin_kick_snap]

"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?"

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

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

Re: Wednesday Evening

[spin_kick_snap]

"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.

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

"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."

Re: Wednesday Evening

[spin_kick_snap]

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...?"

Re: Wednesday Evening

[rebelseekspizza]

"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."

Re: Wednesday Evening

[spin_kick_snap]

"...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.