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: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

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

Re: Thursday

[rebelseekspizza]

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

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

Max just looked at Dante, shrugged and smiled.

Re: Thursday

[rebelseekspizza]

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

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

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

"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."

Re: Thursday

[rebelseekspizza]

"So how does it work?" Dante said, ignoring the insult (Max, you'd been hitting on a 19-year-old, don't even). He walked between a large stack of debris, looked up to find the remains of an old sign for a... sex shop?

Okay then.

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

Hey, people had needed to get laid in Koreatown, too!

"Interested in what's inside?" Max asked, nodding to the store. He'd get to the explanation in a minutes, but this had the promise to be interesting.

Re: Thursday

[rebelseekspizza]

"Nah," Dante said idly. "Pretty sure Kathy would kill me if I shopped anywhere other than hers."

The sign was just... big. And somehow not what he'd expected to see in the debris of a post-apocalyptic city.

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

"Hers?" Max asked. "Her what?"

Sure, context clues suggested Dante was talking sex shop, but this was Kathy they were talking about, so clearly Max had missed something.

Re: Thursday

[rebelseekspizza]

"Her sex shop?" Dante offered.

Was that giving Max too much information? Ah, well. Max was going to be dead before he could do anything with it anyway.

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

Was his hearing going?

"Her what shop?"

Re: Thursday

[rebelseekspizza]

"Her sex shop," Dante repeated, and had to snicker. "Dude, she's in her twenties, she's not some 11-year-old in bunny pyjamas anymore."

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

Though she'd still have her duckie ones if she hadn't turned all Halloween zombie in them.

"Yo, there's a difference between having a vibrator in your panty drawer and owning a sex shop." Max's expression went thoughtful. "Huh."

Re: Thursday

[rebelseekspizza]

"That better not be you thinking about my girlfriend naked," Dante said, sticking his hands back into his pockets.

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

"Well, not completely naked," Max offered.

Re: Thursday

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante rolled his eyes and threw a spare quarter at him.

Not very hard, but still.

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

Max caught it without thinking about it. "Look, you know how bendy your girlfriend is," he said. "Besides, you don't get so bent outta shape when I'm thinking of her boyfriend naked."

Re: Thursday

[rebelseekspizza]

"Can you just shut up and go back to working on a way to get us over the Wall?" Dante said crabbily. He resumed walking.

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

"Touchy," Max said, falling into step behind him. "Besides, I already said, invisibility. Which is actually more like a don't-notice-me spell. True invisibility involves refracting light and equations and bullshit like that. Convincing people to just not look over here is much easier."

Re: Thursday

[rebelseekspizza]

"Just how much mindfuckery do you do on a daily basis," Dante said, shooting him a sideways look.

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

Max gave him a smug smile, making the quarter Dante had thrown dance across his knuckles. "Good question."

Re: Thursday

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante shook his head. "Magic junkies," he muttered, thinking of Arkham.

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

That wasn't at all what Max had meant, but he was amused enough by Dante's interpretation that he didn't bother to correct him, just shrugged his shoulders and kept walking.

Re: Thursday

[rebelseekspizza]

At least the path ahead was mostly ex-free. They got to walk for several minutes without anything bothering them, or lunging at them, or... something.

And that wall just kept coming in closer.

"Maybe we should've just brought something to bribe the guards," Dante mused.

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

"That would have been a good use of the booze we didn't go after," Max said regretfully. "There are only a few bottles of the good stuff left inside and to get to 'em, you've gotta know somebody who knows somebody. There's a still inside, but it still tastes like the bottom of somebody's bathtub."