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]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

hollywoodex_tras

"...You have a brother?" Max asked, immediately zeroing in on that. "And you didn't decide to bring him along? Didn't think he could hack the exes?"

From:

rebelseekspizza

"Twin brother," Dante said lightly. "He's in Hell."

From:

hollywoodex_tras

"That's a pretty image," Max murmured. "Doing what? Vacationing?"

They were at least half- demon after all.

"I mean, the Abyss isn't my idea of a fun weekend away, but to each his own, I suppose."

From:

rebelseekspizza

"I dunno, he's a power-hungry dick," Dante said casually, as he took a quick left into a building to avoid a group of exes not far away. "Probably doing some fucked up demon power shit."

From:

hollywoodex_tras

"And you're totally fine with this," Max surmised, following after Dante and making surprisingly little noise. He was lighter on his feet than he appeared.

From:

rebelseekspizza

"He likes demons better than humans, I'm the other way around," Dante said.

He realized five seconds later he probably shouldn't be telling Max all this, but he hadn't talked to anyone outside of all that bullshit about it for so long it just-- kinda came out.

"What way is Koreatown again?"

From:

hollywoodex_tras

"South," Max said, pointing off to their left. "What's left of it, anyway. There was a huge fire that swept through it, destroyed most of the area. Happened a few hours after Kathy died, actually. You ever try to fight exes and fire at the same time? I don't recommend it."

From:

rebelseekspizza

"The only time I ever fought zombies was down here," Dante said, gripping Cerberus a little tighter.

From:

hollywoodex_tras

"It was bad," Max said. "We were grieving one of our own, trying to get survivors out before the fire or the exes could get them, and not doing a great job of fighting either."

He moved into the lead. "Say what you will about your brother's choice of friends, demons are a lot sturdier than we mere humans."

Which was, of course, the time an ex lurched out of the shadows to fling itself at Max.

From:

rebelseekspizza

Dante ,em>heard it first, twisted and dashed forward, his answer dying in his throat - at least for the moment.

It was Arbiter that met the ex, not Cerberus; he didn't want to make collateral damage out of Max. Not right now, anyway.

Edited Date: 2018-09-28 07:34 pm (UTC)

From:

hollywoodex_tras

Max appreciated that almost as much as he appreciated the ex's teeth finding Dante's weapon and not his flesh. For his part, all he'd managed to do was fling himself backwards, crashing into the wall of a deserted bodega.

"Well," he wheezed, having managed to knock the air out of his chest with the impact, "that was a great case of proving my point."

Pause.

"...Didn't you have a different weapon before?"

From:

rebelseekspizza

"Meet Arbiter," Dante said, yanking the massive waraxe - the size of Dante himself - out of the ex's skull. "Anyway, my brother used to argue that. Said humans were so weak, it should be his job to rule the world and protect them."

From:

hollywoodex_tras

"Hey, not the argument I was making," Max said, eyeing the axe with respect. "Just said I get wanting to have durable friends. We lost a bunch in the war. Banz, Midknight, Daystar. Me. It was tragic."

From:

rebelseekspizza

"I'm sure a ton of people cried at your funeral," Dante retorted, holding onto the axe with ease as he gestured for Max to take point.

From:

hollywoodex_tras

"Funerals weren't really a thing by the time I went," Max said, moving forward again, but a little more skittishly than before. "For the heroes, the best we got was St. George picking us up and dropping us off in Griffith Park."

Which had started because of where he'd left Kathy, the first one to fall.

"I swapped to Cairax after I got bit in an attempt to buy myself more time, so I didn't qualify for pickup service."

From:

rebelseekspizza

"And made us all deal with a giant demon zombie," Dante said, the axe melting away in his hands. "Fantastic plan."

From:

hollywoodex_tras

"Well, it would have been worth it if it'd worked," Max said with a careless shrug. "And after it didn't, I was way too dead to care."

From:

rebelseekspizza

"How'd you get bit anyway?" Dante asked, clambering over a bit of debris.

From:

hollywoodex_tras

"Ahhhhhhh..." Max stumbled over that same pile of debris, thrown by Dante's question. "So the first thing you have to understand is that I don't just put on Cairax's body. Some of his thoughts and perceptions filter in with it. It's my mind, sure, but everything's a little...hazy."

From:

rebelseekspizza

"I get that."

Devil Trigger came with something similar, after all.

From:

hollywoodex_tras

"Okay, so have you ever seen a Jessica Alba movie...?"

From:

rebelseekspizza

... This wasn't going where Dante thought it was going.

"Sure," he said, frowning. "She was one of like, two good things about that Fantastic Whatever movie."

From:

hollywoodex_tras

"So I want to make it clear it was just a kiss and that was only because I was Cairax at the time..."

From:

rebelseekspizza

"Oh jesus fucking christ," Dante muttered. Charitably, you could say that was because he saw the small crowd of exes down the street.

"Trust you to get zombified trying to stick it into an actress."