We've all been lost for most of this life

[kick_ash]

It had been a dungeon in those dark ages after humans had overcome the pure vampire race. Now, hundreds of years later, it was rumoured to be housing an abnormal with a taste for roaming tourist bone marrow. Not the rest of them, and the remains they'd found hadn't been appealing

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[scorchtheground]

After a second or two, she might hear something else: the sound of a number of car radios blaring something bass-heavy and...well, that's all you can really get from a half-block away. But the sound is definitely coming closer. It appears, actually, to be following one fluffy-haired man in a black leather trenchcoat walking down the street -- as soon as he gets far enough away from one car, it stops playing said music, and the car a certain distance in front of him starts.

Hiroto has a song stuck in his head. And some stupid monster ruined his headphones a few nights ago.

He also noticed the glint off her gun when she still had it out, and has been moving closer out of curiosity. His wings are out under the coat, but he knows she's a wanderer before his spider demon sense tells him that, from the way she's trying her phone and the look on her face. Besides, it's pretty rare that normal humans flail about on street corners with guns -- those who do are usually way more interesting that normal humans.

So when he gets closer, he stops, staring at her. The music from the cars around them doesn't stop, but it does lower itself to a slightly annoying-to-passers-by volume. Mostly so she can hear him when he asks, "You are lost?"

[kick_ash]

Music wasn't all that unusual in a city setting, but it was moving closer and finding someone might mean she'd get an answer. Even if her first thought was the inventor of those radios and how dangerous this might get.

Her hand drifted to the butt of her gun, not pulling it free from the holster. Not yet. It doesn't mean that Ashley's relaxes her guard, not in the least as she looked the man over warily. Head to toe and back, not hiding the inspection.

"Lost would make sense,' she said, almost glancing at what was around her but unwilling to take her gaze off of him for more than a moment. "If I was lost though, where would I be?"

[scorchtheground]

Smart, this one. A fighter. Hiroto doesn't blink at the twice-over, and he's nearly as tense as she, now, ready for her to draw the gun again. If it's a fight she wants, it's a fight she'll get, but he's not going to start it. Unless she takes the copious amounts of concealed weapons -- well, not as many as usual, just a few handguns and some knives and the trusty nightstick -- as 'starting something'. A lot of angels and supernaturals and whatever else here have. Hell, a lot of demons back home did too.

He shrugs, looking at the city around them. He keeps her in his peripheral vision, sure, but he's not as spooked as she. "Not-your-Chicago," he says, then goes right back to staring blankly at her. "You are..." He searches for the right words, realizes he doesn't know them all in English (still), and goes for blunt instead, "a wanderer, here."

Well, maybe it'd be blunt if she knew even remotely what that meant.

[kick_ash]

Teleportation was nothing new to Ashley, but landing in a new city without finding herself cuffed to a chair was new - especially when nothing looked quite the same as the city she remembered. Not to mention she hadn't been alone in that tunnel but there was no sign of the others in her party.

Her gaze was still suspicious, wondering just what the man had to do with her appearing here, not willing to accept it might have been something coincidental. Believing in coincidence got a person killed; paranoid was a health state to live in if you wanted to live.

"Not my Chicago. Yeah, that narrows it down.' Her tones were snarky, eyes rolling with a toss of her head, but for the time being her hand edged away from her sidearm. "No, I am Ashley, where I was was Prague, and if you're here on behalf of Druitt, I have few choice words for you that the music isn't going to drown out."

Shock and panic were melting into the background of Ashley's anger, or at least the brave face she was more than willing to put on to cover anything else.

"If you're not, why not start with what the hell you mean by Not-my-Chicago?"

[scorchtheground]

Yeah, Hiroto is still all about the blank stare, though it's edging a little bit more toward 'annoyed' at this point than anything else. Mostly because she thinks he's involved with...whoever or whatever she's talking about.

"Not your Chicago," he repeats with a snort. "This is not your universe. I do not know 'Druitt'." He pauses for a moment to think of how to explain this, again. Really, all he wanted to do was inspect the newcomer, check out the shiny gun. «I don't suppose you speak Japanese, do you?» he asks, finally. On the offchance. It'd certainly make things easier.

Not to self, Hiroto: inspecting the new wanderers usually means having to explain things to them.

[kick_ash]

The answer didn't seem to make Ashley any happier, running her fingers through her hair and letting it fall back into place. She opened her mouth, closed it with a muttered curse.

"Damn. I was really sort of hoping you were with him.' She offered a wry smile at that. "It would mean this made more sense, and more importantly, I would know how I'd get back to Sanctuary." And her mother.

Ashley had the decency to wince, nose wrinkling as she shook her head. "I understand enough to know to tell you I can't say much. The director of our Tokyo office was on me forever about learning but I never found the time. Sorry."

Chewing at her thumbnail for a moment, Ashley seemed a bit less panicked and merely guarded. "Sorry about snapping. My... I know someone with teleportation and figured this was some stunt of his."

[scorchtheground]

Hiroto's lip curls at her answer about the language. Just his luck. And he has the sense that if he were to try and shut her up with the usual well-placed jab to the jaw, she'd fight back. Granted, he'd managed it with Akane more often than not, and he'd trained her, but he's not nearly close enough to this woman to pull it off in the first place.

The music from the cars abruptly cuts off, then; if he's going to have an extended conversation with someone in something that's not his native language, he might as well concentrate harder on it. Or at least not also be diverting some attention to his riftpower.

Riftpowers. Yeah, he's not even going to try to explain those. Fuck it. He'll get her to some place and they can do it.

He simply shrugs at her apology; he doesn't really care whether she snaps or not. "Not teleportation," he says -- yay for bad sci fi movies -- even though it...kind of is, in a way. But that's harder to explain. "And you can't go back. You die."

Might as well get the hardest bomb over with, or something.

[kick_ash]

The cessation of music made Ashley start. Silence was almost deafening to her in that moment, and she made a face as she tried to clear what felt like pressure to her ears. "Got to admit, that's a new one on me. Some abnormals get the weirdest things, at least yours is useful."

"I can't..." She repeated the words as if he was still speaking Japanese. Logically she understood the words, but they didn't quite make sense. "But..." She glanced down the road as if the tunnel she'd been in might reappear. "My mum,' she nearly whispered, mouthing the words as if that would make it better. Death she could handle, but to not see her mom again might as well be death. Her fingers brushed over the butt of her gun once more, almost as a child might with a blankie they cherished.

"Time slips aren't supposed to kill." Logic. She could go with that. Science and logic trumped all, right? Confused twisted her features, trying to make sense of it.