A New Challenger Approaches

[sentbydpd]

He'd thought at first that it was a nightmare, a result of a bender after a particularly bad case; no matter how the people in his life that cared about him tried, the alcohol was still part of his life, a crutch and a numbing agent that he preferred over facing his problems and the people that were involved. The fog, dark and glittering with sinister red flecks, enveloping him where he'd collapsed in the stairwell of his building, making him feel as if he had slid back down them until he was lying in damp grass and staring up at stars that make him think that he's no longer in the middle of downtown Detroit.

Worse, he was sober. He wanted to die and he no longer had a drop of alcohol in his system to dull it. Miserable, cold, and aching, Connor sat up and inspected himself in case there might be some indication of what had happened to him. But there was nothing, just patches of wetness from the grass on his jeans and the outer layer of his slightly obnoxiously patterned button-up, the plain black shirt underneath untucked but otherwise pristine. He sat in the grass for a long while and puzzled quietly over it all, before pushing himself to his feet and panning around for any sign of life.

He didn't recognize what kind of trees he was surrounded by, so that told him he wasn't close to home. Concerning. He started to walk straight in the hopes of finding any indication that civilization might be nearby, trailed by that same mist that curled around his ankles until he found a bubble of blessed firelight. Nobody present that he could tell, but the presence of the bonfire and arranged logs around it told him that they couldn't have gone far, nor that they'd been gone for long. So he sat, elbows on his knees and his hands rubbing together slowly in front of his mouth as he debated on how to approach whatever was happening to him now. If he'd been kidnapped, he at least knew how to handle that.

Comments

[calmspiritsaboteur]

"Come on, I panicked." Jake chuckled as he rolled onto his side. "Can you blame me? It's not exactly every day my hands are covered in blue blood. Blood sure...but not blue."

Shaking his head Jake shifted to pillow his head with one arm before continuing.

"But I will say it might be better others know, just so they don't freak out and panic or something. I don't think most will care much, they might have a lot of questions but I doubt they'll really think any differently about you."

[sentbydpd]

Connor pulled a face. "I don't know about that, man. Best case scenario, I'm the new camp freak. I'll take care of myself unless something decides to stab me in the back."

[calmspiritsaboteur]

"I mean, couldn't be any worse than when Cheryl got here. She can literally talk to the Entity to an extent...people really didn't trust her at first." Jake shrugged, or as much as he could while laying in bed.

Squinting at the lights he sighed before rolling out of bed and over to them to turn off. Falling back into bed Jake stared up at the ceiling before looking back at Connor.

"Doubt you'll be able to hide it forever but...you don't have to worry about anyone finding out thanks to me. Promise."

The young man turned onto his stomach, burying his face in his pillow with a sigh.

"Oh yeah," He turned his head slightly. "Axes are the least of your worries. There is one guy who has a giant kitchen knife....like...drags it on the ground giant. A couple have chainsaws. There's also a woman who vomits on people and hits them with a censer. No joke."

[sentbydpd]

"Fuck dude, sounds like a party," Connor replied, tone absolutely dripping with sarcasm. He sighed and put his forehead down on his arms. He was running through his various skills in his mind, trying to figure out if any of them were actually applicable here. He was good with his hands, that much was apparent immediately. He was quick on the uptake but really anyone could be. He wrinkled his nose, then scrunched his face briefly, until a less detailed version of his old scanner display faded out his surroundings. That...hm. That could work.

"Well. Here's hoping I don't have to deal with them until after I've gotten some rest. I wanna see if the self-mending protocol actually works like you all healing up at the fire does. I'll worry less if I know it'll knit back together after the fact."

[calmspiritsaboteur]

"A party, sure let's go with that." Jake chuckled as he shook his head.

"Yeah...here's hoping. Wouldn't be great if it didn't." Jake had no idea how to help the guy if it didn't work like the healing they all did, he wasn't exactly a mechanic. The only reason he had gotten as good as he was with the gens was because they had diagrams...and trial and error.

Lots of error.