(Untitled)

[zeitsein]

There are -

There are ways this is supposed to work. An order to things. A fucking -

She isn't the one who gets snatched, not anymore. She isn't supposed to be. This is wrong. All wrong, like goody-two-shoes and a smile wrongThe tension spidercracks up her arms until she has to shake her shoulders to shake it off; she hisses in misspent

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[zeitsein]

...

This is possibly the most retarded rescue op Tara has ever tried. It reminds her why she doesn't like rescue ops; the target almost always does something stupid and ridiculous and beyond all hope of salvation.

Usually it's something like trying to negotiate for their release with the people trying to kill them. It is not, usually, levitating in midair while being chased by angry wolf-things. (They did not sound like wolves when she heard them; something else to look back on later, when there is a later.)

In the same moment she notices the levitation, she notices the two wolves she shot, even the one that took a bullet to the forehead from that close up, getting to their feet to join their pack again, and she swears and fires two more shots (eight, she thinks) before shoving Stranger behind the outgrowth. "Stay put," she barks, and turns back to face the wolves.

A steady hand and a hard heart; these things make for good violence.

A faint yellow glow trickles down the line of tendons on the back of her hand. She spits off to the side, and can't resist:

"Do you feel lucky, punks?"

[has_its_poetry]

With another high-pitched noise of startlement, Stranger stays put.

She's more above than behind, because when the levitation starts it doesn't like to stop for a good while.

It's possible that there is applause. Yes, werewolves, very scary, but Tara is cool. Whee! What's she going to do next?

[zeitsein]

With a lick of her lips, Tara fires. The wolves scatter, but she wings one in the leg and it limps, which is good enough for her purposes. She moves, almost as fast as the wolves do, and fires - again. Again. Again. And she is good, because she hits each wolf she was aiming at. (Four.)

Her next shot misses - three - but the next one connects - two - and then she has one bullet left.

They can probably smell it on her, judging by the way they regroup slowly, leisurely, like they have all the time in the world (and maybe they have, this place is befucked enough in just the short glimpse she's had of it).

Dust swirls at her feet and the trickle-down glow peeks out from under the cuffs of her jacket. Tara sets herself, licks her lips, and waits for the wolves to come.

And come they do, looking like an onrush of inevitability and rage, right for her, right for her throat -

That's it, you bastards, that's it, come right fucking at me, the scared little girl you'll tear apart, that's it, run -

Her forehead feels light with sweat, and she drops the gun when they're not more than seven feet away -

Her hands close in a vise grip around the air and with a CRACK, the earth punches up through the broken streets and right into the waiting faces of the wolves, fast enough it lifts them off the ground higher than Tara's five-foot-nothing height before they're thrown backwards by yards.

Tara - Tara laughs, then kneels to pick up her gun before grabbed Stranger again and making a run for it.

If her hunch is right, there should be a mostly-serviceable hotel with a lobby two blocks down and to the left.

Spiderweb fractures in the ground. Things walked here and broke other things till they couldn't be used anymore. Everywhere tells a story. Every story can be used.

Wolves. What does she know about wolves?

[has_its_poetry]

THAT WAS AWESOME O_O

CAN SHE DO IT AGAIN?

Yeah, Stranger's just sort of staring. And trying to clap her hands gleefully some more, but considering Tara has her by the arm, that doesn't work so well.

It takes her until they get to the hotel to sort out this highly puzzling dilemma.

[zeitsein]

Tara drags them both back behind what used to be the hotel front desk and firmly pushes Stranger down for as long as she has to until the floating stops, then growls, quietly, not unlike the sounds the wolves were making earlier.

"Don't suppose you're paying enough attention to the universe to tell me why the fuck there are wolves running riot over the Las Vegas Strip, are you?"

Don't tell her, let her guess - you don't have a fucking clue. She hates rescue ops.

[has_its_poetry]

For someone who can do such cool things, Tara is obviously kind of dumb.

"They're here for the carnival," she says, rolling her eyes and digging in her pockets. "See?"

Stranger's search for her ticket is doomed from the start, since neither ticket nor carnival actually exist. But the first things she pulls out are a crisp new twenty-dollar bill and an assortment of brightly coloured origami paper, all of which she discards on the floor like litter.

"I know it's in here somewhere..."

The amount of stuff she can pull out of one seemingly empty jacket pocket is nothing short of inconceivable.

[zeitsein]

Tara is beginning to regret not shooting Stranger when she had the chance.

"All the buildings are dead," she says, hissing to keep her voice low. "There is no carnival. Why am I here? Why are you here? Where is here? Do you know the answer to anything I just asked?"

[has_its_poetry]

Stranger considers this very, very carefully for a few moments.

Then, in an uncharacteristically serious tone: "I don't think there has to be a why. There usually isn't."

Throughout her life there has been exactly one constant: nothing ever makes sense, at least not for long.

[zeitsein]

She has a point - the universe prefers to manifest as a drooling idiot with no fashion sense, in Tara's experience - but that point is somewhat obscured by the immediacy of their situation: namely, Tara finds herself in a world that is not her world, talking to a girl who is not all here, hunted by wolves who don't die when she shoots them.

Something caused this insanity, and Stranger is the only fucking thing in the situation that seems willing to share. "But there's a fucking what, isn't there? Do you know what it is? Do you know anything?"

[has_its_poetry]

A little helplessly: "I know lots of things! It's just they don't go together very well."

Stranger is not used to people relying on her for information. Most of them give up before this.

"I know there are bugs, and monsters with tentacles, and bright lights all over the place with people in them, and sometimes they talk to me-- I met a god in the desert, his head was on fire and he sent me where there were flowers--"

It sounds like the ramblings of a madwoman, because it is.

It's also at least partly based on reality.

[zeitsein]

"Sweet merciful fuck," Tara says, and stares because there is no other sane response to that speech than sweet merciful fuck, what the hell?

"There are gods here?" Here, too?

Those wolves should be getting up right about now.

[has_its_poetry]

"And I know there's empty places everywhere, cities like this one with all the people gone or hiding or I don't know what, and I know the wolves are coming back."

It has all the terrified authority of a precognitive vision, because Stranger believes she can tell the future.

But it's nothing more than a wild guess with some rare common sense behind it.

[zeitsein]

"Well, you've got that much right," Tara says, just as the first audible signs of the wolves' recovery can be heard, in the form of scratching and wuffling at the loose-hanging remnants of the hotel doors.

She shuts her eyes tight; she's not willing to exhaust herself on just. On just five fucking wolves, and she doesn't have a very sizable ammo supply on her person.

"I will not die like this," she whispers. "I will not die likes this. I will not die like this."

Just as the wolves start to step inside, the ground shakes and Tara clutches one hand close to her breast. And then the hotel floor explodes upwards, sealing off the lobby from the outside world completely and catching one of the wolves on the jaw hard enough it gives out a yelp of surprise before disappearing behind a wall of stone and concrete.

She misses one, though. One makes it through. She can hear it sniffling about, pawing at the wall first, then settling back into the dedication of the hunt.

Spiderweb cracks in the ground, up the spine of the building now, growing, spreading.

Unstable bases.

"Fuck."

[has_its_poetry]

She was right. (Well, of course.)

Stranger wishes, very hard, for her seven-league boots.

They do not show up.

So instead she starts pulling things out of her pockets.

Lint, a very forlorn chocolate bar, an impressively large diamond (which goes back into the pocket, because it is shiny), two rubber balls, four dollars in quarters, a fork, a hard-boiled egg--

--A fork.

A silver fork.

"Werewolves," she says, holding it up for Tara's inspection. "They could be werewolves."

[zeitsein]

Tara takes the fork just on instinct, then spends a moment getting a good look at it.

Her brow furrows tightly. "Are there really gods here?"

... this question does have some actual relevance to the situation at hand.

Very pressing actual relevance, since the wolf can hear, after all.

[has_its_poetry]

Vigorous nod.

"Hades, Lord of the Dead."

In case she'd forgotten: "His head was on fire."