"How is it that you always manage to come up with the worst case scenario?" / "I practice."

[duat_die]

In a few hours, Nathan Cwirko might be dead. If he's not dead, there's still an even chance something will go wrong and he'll never see his home, let alone Earth, again. But his mind's not on that - not completely, anyway - as he marches up the ramp with the rest of Col. Everett's team to relieve Atlantis from the Wraith attack: it's on the fact

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[duat_die]

Martha Jones. His first thoughts are that, great, a woman, probably a civilian, and that means he's going to be annoyed nine times out of then. An instant after he thinks it he catches himself thinking it and kicks himself mentally - Dr. Weir was a civilian woman and hell if General O'Neill didn't say she was doing a hell of a job, and Lt. Col. Carter was a woman and probably capable of kicking his ass to the Hyades Cluster and back, and just because that's his gut reaction after living in the armed forces for half his life doesn't make it any less wrong.

"If you wouldn't mind," he says. The sooner he can weed out a chain of command and see how the people here organize, the sooner he can start stalking the nearest scientific team.

Or, failing that, dig in.

"So we're persona non grata around here," he says, falling into step beside her. "Hunted." He doesn't blame her for helping the guy who attacked him - medics cross lines. But he is going to keep one hand on his P-90, scanning the streets as they walk. He really should have requested to take a zat along, or something else nonlethal, but he really didn't think he'd be going to a place where nonlethal combat would be a factor.

[sophicsulphur]

She glances back over her shoulder to address him. "That's... pretty much it," she says, her tone somewhere between sorrowful and apologetic. She's never heard it put quite like that before, but he's right. They are unwelcome here, in the eyes of some, and they are very much hunted by the same. And no one should have to be thrust into that situation. No one.

"That's... part of why I really try to be involved in making things better for people here, though I'm really new myself." They pause at a crosswalk, and she glances around warily at the traffic. "--Mind the metal boxes, they're kind of scary. Um. But yeah. Everyone around here's really been so nice, and I think the people here deserve better. ...But I should probably start by not attacking people on the street. I really am sorry about that. I misread."

[duat_die]

"Wouldn't be the first time," Cwirko mutters. Jury's still out on whether getting hunted by these guys will be easier or worse than having Jaffa on his tail.

He has to hide a grin - and, to be honest, he doesn't really try very hard - when they get to the crosswalk. He waves off the apology. "Hey, no harm done. Just be a bit more careful. Pulled the trigger on that last guy because he came at me just like you did. Never a good idea to go surprising people with weapons." But that's not what he was grinning about. "Guess you came through from a place without cars, then?"

[sophicsulphur]

She nods. "It was all just-- such a blur. I didn't even think about you being armed, even though you must have done that to him." And, privately, even though she'd like if she could gauge the situation more carefully next time, she's also not sure the presence of a weapon would have kept her back. She's sorry to have accused an innocent man, but risk to her own safety is not, in general, very high on Iris' Big List Of Priorities.

Although she still doesn't like the cars. "...yeah," she says, sheepishly. "You're catching on pretty quick." She's impressed by how well he's got the other worlds bit down already. Usually, that's the second snag people get caught up on, after why doesn't this look like home?: the presence of people and ways of doing things that mismatch with not just the culture but the time period they're familiar with. "My village wasn't anywhere like as big or populated as this, and you didn't need cars to get around. I don't actually think they'd been invented."

They're making good time to the Kashtta, largely because he's a fast mover and she just wants to get clean. The tall, silvery building looms large above them, and she points it out from him. "--That's where we're going. It's safe there, and there's food and board and stuff."

She's a fan of the board part, even if the cafeteria food isn't exactly stellar. Right now, though, that whole safe part sounds particularly enticing to her. She may not normally prioritise it, but her nerves are pretty much shot.

[duat_die]

Cwirko eyes it up. And here he'd been expecting that maybe they'd have a camp or be skulking in abandoned buildings or the sewers or something. "Not making any special effort to be subtle, are they?" So whoever set this place up either isn't that worried about the people hunting them or has more balls than brains. Or both. Or one because of the other.

...he's really going to have to speak with whoever's in charge.

"What was it called?" he asks. "-your village. See, me, I grew up in a place called Omaha. Still wasn't as big as this. Had cars, though." And only the bad parts looked this beat up, he doesn't add.

At the moment, he's just treating Iris like he would just about any offworlder - on thing life in the SGC is good at, it's teaching you how to get your head around new situations damn fast, and this is enough like a spin on a familiar one. He's just glad he's closing in on some answers.

He will be distinctly less glad when he finds out what some of those answers are.

[sophicsulphur]

Iris ponders that for a moment before giving a response. She'd honestly never thought about it, though now that he mentions it, it is a fairly conspicuous building. "I suppose there're too many of us to hide somewhere less big," she says, eventually. "Though not everybody lives here." She'd add that Saul lives in the sewers, for one thing, but she doesn't really want to give her friend away if she doesn't have to. For all she knows, they could end up on opposite sides.

It's not usually a precaution she takes, but Iris tends to stick with her first impression. And though self-defence is something she can understand, she's also a little wary of anyone who can do so much damage to another living being, that fast.

"Zey Meruze," she says, when he asks about her village. "It was mostly built over water, so... uh, I imagine you wouldn't fit the cars in anyway. We had gondolas."

It really wasn't much like Chicago in a myriad number of other ways. But they're closing in on the Kashtta's double doors, now, and she's not really at her chattiest. She feels like an accident in a butcher shop, and she reckons she looks about as bad as she feels.

[duat_die]

"Middle of the country, Omaha," Cwirko says. "Landlocked. Needed a car to get just about anywhere. God help you if you missed the bus home from school."

Cwirko steps ahead, glancing in through the door glass and, as soon as he's relatively certain he won't be running afoul of security systems or anything, pulling open one door for her. There's another thing he notes - there's a camera watching their approach, but the door's not even locked. And they could do with some security stations inside. Maybe the threat's not so great as he was led to believe, but in any case: mixed messages, he's getting them.

"I assume that someone's on duty to deal with people like me," he says. "Thanks for bringing me in. If you could just point me in the direction of the waiting room, I'd be much obliged."

And here he'd thought that this was going pretty well. Oh, he didn't miss the fact that she was not terribly happy with the whole violence thing, but she wasn't breaking down and gibbering - much - and she wasn't looking at him like he was a god, so that put her a couple steps up on most girls from Earth her age and a good number of offworlders. All in all, aside from getting attacked twice, he's thinking this meeting went pretty well.

[sophicsulphur]

Iris isn't too terribly afraid of him. She's just reverted to skittish mode, aided and abetted by being covered in blood, and is trying not to give out more information than she has to. He could probably win her over given time, but right now she isn't really in a state to take in much more new information, either.

Although she does notice that he got the door, which is nice. She didn't really want to leave angel-blood handprints all over it for the next entrant to find. Especially not handprints her size.

She shoots him a "Thanks." and a smile as she steps through, trying not to touch anything. She feels pretty self-conscious as she steps into the lobby, especially since one of the people often on duty here is an angel. She hopes she won't be the recipient of too many wayward glances, at least if she can get up to the bathroom as quickly as possible.

As for the god thing, he'd have to be giving off magical energy for that. If he were, he would have a fairly high chance of being mistaken for a god by her. You got lucky there, Cwirko.

"Um, there's not really a waiting room, as such," she says. "There's just a reception desk. If you go up there"-- she indicates the counter --"that person'll get you a room, and things."

She offers a quick bow, a strange shift to formality after the way their meeting began. "Please take care. Oh, and if you need an injury treated, or-- or if you see anyone who's hurt, like out there, please come by my room. It's over there."

She indicates the west wing. Iris' sense of security, you may be noticing right now, really doesn't extend to her own self.

"There's a sign on my door with my name," she adds, forgetting that they haven't exactly been introduced.