multiversallogs | does it cause me scarring if the words stay true

Who: Laura Kinney & OPEN
What: Laura leads a busy life. Also, fuck the police.
Where: Specifically mentioned are Aspic, the Arena in Griss Twist, and the Spatters, but she can be anywhere.
When: Ruudary 19th-22nd
Notes: Laura is a highly unsocial character -- I WANT YOUR CR /GRABS HEADS but like, she won't strike up conversations with strangers and she won't say very much at a time if she does speak, so uh. There's that. Doing Stuff she can respond to is probs better.
Warnings: Violence is very possible! Otherwise, to be added as needed.

Laura is not bored. Her days are too full for that, although if asked, she'd have very little to show for it -- because most of it she can't tell anyone about. She leads people to think that she doesn't do much except wander and acquire money from some mysterious sources -- people probably think she's hooking again, but she isn't.

She prefers to get food from the various street vendors, especially down in the city's center; to be polite, they're more colourful than restaurants that tend to play down unique flavours to attract human Earth-native customers. Of course Baedal has very little in the way of food regulations so God only knows what all they're actually serving, but she is neither squeamish nor easily scared, so she tries everything. Every time, she asks for peppers or hot sauce; they sometimes try to talk her out of it, it... is never very successful. Sometimes she stays and chats with them (or rather, lets them chat at her), and she hears a lot of interesting things this way. Small things, like the right way to season wyrmbeast meat, and bigger ones -- missing people. Who's been arrested for what. ... dognappings.

She stops a purse-snatcher in Aspic -- by running after him, breaking his arm, and driving her clawed fist into the wall by his head. He drops the purse and wets himself before the Sheriff gets there and reads her the riot act over it (apparently authority figures dislike it when people take the law into their own hands; who knew?) but she more or less just shrugs and walks off.

She has started visiting the Arena. She doesn't participate and she doesn't bet, but she watches and thinks about it. That kind of organized bloodsport makes her sick -- it's hard for her to extricate her memories of what was done to her -- but she tells herself these people chose this... until she sees the brands on some of them. Hands. Chests. Faces, sometimes. She leaves angry and sometimes she picks fights that she never loses, and after which she never has any bruises. The memory of scars is not enough; there is enough rage and pain in her to flood the city streets, but she does nothing about it.

She has a friend in the Spatters -- a teenage xenian girl who was born a Stranger, her family having refused to integrate into normal Baedal life. Laura visits her a lot, listens to the way she talks about how things are there -- and more importantly, she gets a couple of interesting names. Corruption on this scale can never be stopped by picking off a couple bad apples (they are all bad apples, nobody has ever been able to convince her otherwise) but it's still a good idea to have specific names and faces in mind. It's still imperative to be aware.

The more she sees of Baedal, the less she likes it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Affection or not, it makes Steph smile, "I hope you're right."

"Sure. I'll race you there?" She barely even registers the fact Laura is perched precariously on something, Steph hangs out with Robins. She also isn't bothered by the fact she only vaguely knows where the pools are, she's confident she can keep up in a race anyway.

The look on Laura's face cannot accurately be described as a smile, but her severity softens enough to imply that -- that's as far as she gets, most of the time, the last time she tried to smile it was actually kind of terrifying.

"Yes." Without any further ado, she leaps off and makes a run for it, heading southwest, towards Sobek Croix. It's hard to keep track of her for long, she blends in so seamlessly in crowds when she wants to, and she's quick, quicker than even someone of her size has any right to be.

Steph's only moments beyond; she'd expected Laura to take off as soon as she'd replied. There's no point trying to keep track of Laura, so she just heads in the same general direct, figuring she can find Laura again once they get closer to the pools and in a less populated area.

She'll goes up instead of down, she doesn't want to draw too much attention to herself and anyway, rooftops are what she's used to. It's easier for her to travel quicker this way.

No one pays much attention to one running girl -- although a few passersby who manage to catch a glimpse of her probably vaguely think that she's running from the law, which is kind of funny -- and Laura is surprisingly well-versed in the smaller side streets and back ways even though she doesn't come here often. Her memory is more or less perfect; if she's been there once, she remembers it.

Anyway, she has a good sense of direction.

The moonpools deep within the forested areas of Sobek Croix are much harder to spot at this time of day than they would be at night when they glow, but there's a slight difference between them and ordinary ponds to anyone who is observant enough -- like both of them are. Laura has the advantage of having been here before, though not often. Sobek Croix is Hellsing territory and she's not sure how she feels about them.

She's not anywhere to be found by the nearest set of them. At least, not if anyone's looking ground-level; she's treed herself.

Once she's nearer the forest, Steph has to get down to street level too - it's harder to run across the rooftops of single houses - and she gets a lot more looks than Laura does. It's easier again once she's in the forest, now she just has to make sure not to trip over tree roots or anything.

Searching for the moonpools requires her to slow down a little, but she makes her way to the first set. For a brief moment as she catches her breath, she hopes she's beaten her, but quickly dismisses that as highly unlikely, considering how fast Laura is compared to her.

"Laura?" She wonders if she's jumped into the pools, and steps closer to peer over the edge of the nearest one.

Suddenly: "Hi."

Death from above, mutant edition.

(She does like areas like this -- the wooded parts of Baedal. They're pretty and they make her feel safer than the more densely populated urban and suburban areas -- the Northern Woods are better because there's barely ever anyone out there, but generally speaking the forested areas in the city limits proper are also safer. Less chance of encountering stray fog monsters.)

Steph is used to be snuck up on, so a brief moment of tensing is the only reaction she shows before looking up at Laura, "You won."

Steph hasn't had much of a chance to explore the forest areas; the urban areas are her main focus for now because it's where she'll be spending most of her time. That, and she has a bit of an instictual Gothamite reaction to densely forested areas -- they contain nasty things like Poison Ivy.

She climbs down to the lower branches, although she stays in the tree, her combat-boot-clad legs dangling over a couple feet over the ground. It's quiet out here, although even from this distance she can pick up normal city sounds from nearby buildings in this canton, and a little chilly. "They glow at night," she says, presumably of the pools -- they're pretty even by day, they have a sort of milkiness as luminescent things tend to in the light. In the dark, it's better.

Harder to find, though.

Steph walks over to lean back against the trunk of the tree Laura is in, so she can talk to Laura and look at the pools.

"I've heard you can go swimming in them, but it looks kind of daunting."

"They are deeper than they look."

Laura is not a huge swimmer -- she sinks in water, you only have to drown once before you decide you hate it -- but she likes to look at them. Sometimes she even puts her feet in, she is super adventurous.

"I can handle deep. I'd be more worried about monsters."

Because they're in Baedal :|

Steph can swim, and she kind of enjoys it, but it's not really a popular pasttime for Gothamites so she hasn't had a huge amount of experience.

Laura leans forward, peering into the water -- there's nothing visible to human eyes and even her enhanced sight, smell and hearing don't pick up on anything. That doesn't mean anything; water muffles sound, there could be something deeper there where even she can't sense it.

"I don't think there are many."

... 'many'. Thanks, Laura, that's reassuring!

"I think I might pass on going for a dip, then." Fish are kind of creepy in her general, she doesn't want to imagine what's lurking in the waters of Baedal. Not that it stopped her jumping in the river, but that was for survival purposes, "I'd rather not become dinner for some creature."

"Okay." It's really hard to tell when Laura is feeling anything, she looks about the same whether she's happy or angry or bored, but it seems like she's amused right now. She picks up a little pebble and tosses it into the pond, watching as it makes pretty, vaguely shiny ripples.

Steph kind of wants to throw a glow stick in there to see how deep it is, but she has a feeling it wouldn't work well because of the natural glow. She finds a stable looking spot near the edge of the pool and sits down, pulling off her cowl and watching Laura with vague curiosity.

"How old are you?" It's hard to tell, there's a fair bit of difference between the way Laura looks, and the way she acts.

"Nineteen," she says. ... More or less; she has a vague idea of how old she is, but she never bothered to discover her actual birthday because it's never mattered to her. Gambit gave her one once, even though she pointed out she wasn't technically born so much as excised from a womb. (The face he made.) Still: "Why?"

"I couldn't figure it out," Nineteen makes sense, although it's a little odd to think of Laura as the same age as herself, considering how... not like a nineteen year old she acts. Although Cass is similar. "How long till you turn twenty?"

She's curious how much small talk she can make with Laura, she's partly expecting to not get any responses.

does it cause me scarring if the words stay true

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omg i'm the slowest i fail

shhh no i love you