villagelogs | 001-003 » a chilling mathias welcome

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001-003 » a chilling mathias welcome

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: The east end of Mathias, along the waterfront.
WHEN: Days 001-003
WHAT: The newest residents of Mathias Township are welcomed with a storm.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: A small love letter from your mod. This spot can be used for plotting.

RECOMMENDED ♫ Deadly Avenger "Mara"

DAY 001
THE ARRIVAL BEGINS

Is it the whooshing crash of waves on dark jagged rocks that wakes you? Perhaps. It might also be the near-continuous rumble of thunder growing closer every second, the vibrations almost seeming to come from the wet sand beneath your hands. Or maybe it’s the shivering of your own body as water recedes from the pebble-covered shore, the cold sinking into your very bones as a chilled wind picks up. It could be any of these things that rouse you from a deep slumber that leaves you feeling groggy and out of sorts--

But it’s the fear that gets you moving. A deep, intense terror grips your chest and squeezes the breath right out of you, and you know without a shred of doubt that you have mere minutes before whatever it is you’re so afraid of arrives on that stretch of rocky beach to greet you. Even if you want to stay rooted to that spot and faced it head-on, your body betrays you, a survival instinct etched into your genetic code forcing you to seek shelter.

Welcome to Mathias. You should probably run now.

THE STORM ARRIVES

When the storm crashes into the small township, it's hard to remember what life was like before it. The ocean becomes a raging thing, waves rising and falling as if trying to attack whatever they can reach along the coast. Any foolish enough to venture along the beach have no hope of surviving the encounter; their bodies will be swept out with the current, gone in the blink of an eye.

The wind is a howling beast, screaming between buildings and driving spikes of cold into any crevice it can reach. The rain is just shy of freezing, every drop like a shard of icicle trying to itself into your skin. It will bite at your nerves and leave you shaking if you stay out in it too long, so you had best get inside if you haven't already. You certainly don't want to attract the attention of the lightning that arcs in the sky like a vengeful god ready to unleash its wrath.

The Grey Gull restaurant sits at the edge of the town along the beach, and just a few yards away are two parallel rows of houses lining what might be a picturesque street if the world weren't beginning to resemble an apocalyptic landscape.

Move quickly, and choose wisely.

DAY 002
THE STORM RAGES ON

The storm has somehow become even more violent overnight. The world outside your shelter might be trapped in an endless night, for all you can see through the thick covering of storm clouds. Lightning continues to streak across the sky, thunder following almost immediately in its wake, threatening just how near those spikes of electricity truly are. You can see them touch the shore at times, even the street between the homes, but never the buildings themselves. A blessing, perhaps, or an oddity to take note of?

Some may be foolish enough to try venturing outside. They are welcome to, of course, that is their right, but the rain is still like ice and that lightning is so very near. You may try heading further into town, and you can certainly see buildings beyond this row of houses, but should you walk toward them...

Well. It is far from a pleasant experience. Exhaustion sinks into your bones so quickly that it leaves you reeling, and every second you push through it makes you physically ill with a feeling that you might collapse at any moment. The second you turn away from that path, however, you feel infinitely, and even more so each step back the way you came.

Something wants you to stay where you are. Perhaps you should.

DAY 003
THE CALM DESCENDS

The third day begins much as the second, with waves crashing upon the shore and thunder booming with such force that the ground seems to shake. It feels very much like the world might end right there, torn apart by a force of nature unlike any seen before. Any who venture outside at this time are almost immediately afflicted with a terror so intense that they can make it no more than a few yards or the short distance to cross a street before they become incapacitated by the fear that sets their heart beating dangerously fast. The term scared to death may very well become literal this day.

And then, suddenly it stops. The rain, thunder, lighting— all if it just stops and the silence that fills the night is deafening. There are no sounds of life within the town, no car motors or dogs barking or the voices of anyone beside those new arrivals in the immediate vicinity. In fact, none of those things even exist in Mathias. There are no cars, no animals or insects, no other people. There is just... emptiness and silence.

It may be best to wait until daylight to move further inland.

THE NIGHT DARKENS

For those who are foolish enough to leave the relative safety of the cluster of houses near the Grey Gull, they will find their journey quite chilling, in a very literal sense. There is another row of houses beyond where they had been, branching off on either side into a neighborhood. There are no lights on in any of these homes, though there are occasional streetlights illuminating their way. But as they continue further, reaching a third block of houses, those lights begin to dim, until they have gone out completely, and what had previously been a simple fall chill becomes biting cold as the temperature sharply drops.

In all of this, there is silence. No sounds travel through that night air to comfort them, and even looking up to the sky stretched out above them offers little reassurance. That sky is black, without a single star and not even the faintest outline of the moon to guide them. All that reaches them here is the barest hint of light traveling from the way they've come. The longer they linger outside in this place, the colder it will become, and any light they carry with them will slowly begin to dim as well.

Truly, they should have waited until the sun rose once more.

LOCATIONS

THE GREY GULL is what one might expect of the most frequented restaurant in a small coastal town. The wrap-around porch is lined with white chairs characterized by peeling paint. Exposed wooden walls and worn seating speak to its many years of existence, and the mishmash of décor confirms that the owner never much cared for how the place looked. What mattered here was the food, and faded chalk menus advertise soup specials and a daily pie. The bar appears to have once been well-stocked, but all the bottles remaining are unfortunately empty. There is, however, quite a bit of food in the kitchen that is somehow as fresh as if it were purchased that day.

The second floor of the restaurant is a sparsely furnished apartment. There are no personal items to be found; perhaps it was waiting to be rented out to someone.

THE HOUSES are well-kept, middle-class homes, four lining either side of the street. Their doors are unlocked, windows unshuttered, and everything within feels like the owners might return at any second. There is running water and electricity, fresh food in the fridge, photographs on the wall... but also dust everywhere. If you didn't know better, you'd say the place had been abandoned for years, and yet nothing has aged. It is both strange and unsettling, and yet no matter how hard you search, no answers may be found within these homes.

What can be found within them, however, is a phone. One single black phone within a main room of the house, and beside it, a list of handwritten numbers and names that have been crossed out.

1302 8-5491 ~~Thomasen~~
1304 8-9256 ~~Lyrie~~
1306 8-4712 ~~Anders~~
1308 8-3201 ~~Mulcalley~~

1301 8-0415 ~~Sanderson~~
1303 8-6762 ~~Reese~~
1305 8-9132 ~~Evers~~
1307 8-9025 ~~Hirano~~

Should your character choose to shelter in one of the houses, you are welcome to choose the features of that particular unit. Please reply to the comment thread below with the details you decide upon, specifying the house number in the subject line.

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"A place inside the computers?" she repeats, thinking through what the fuck that means. Oh. "Wait, like the internet?" She only has a vague sort of idea of what the internet was or did, having heard about it and mostly just been awed by the idea of it. YouTube was some thing on the internet that had...videos? She can't imagine it, and really, nothing she imagined would be anything close to the real thing.

Of course, she'd left some things out. She's best with a bow and arrow, but she doesn't feel like it's good to play her whole hand, just in case. Henry seems nice, but people aren't just nice. People are always something else too. It just depends on what that something else is.

Ellie herself doesn't even seem nice these days. Trauma and violence have pushed it out of her.

Manners, though? Well, she never had many of those, and the way she eats probably conveys it. She hasn't eaten anything even this substantial in days, and besides that, she's still talking, not always entirely between bites.

"Yeah, make do til we find that stockpile of all our shit someone somehow took," she says, cynical but not insincere. Those things have to be somewhere.

Doc shrugs. "Yes. The Internet." Hopefully she doesn't ask him how that all works. He's only just started learning a bit about cars. One thing at a time.

It's hard not to smile at the way she's attacking her food. Most unlady-like, sure, but he hasn't kept much lady-like company in a long time.

"You seem fairly convinced they haven't been thrown out into the water which we washed in on," he observes. It took a bit of practice and a lot of staring at people talking while eating but he can understand muffled talking with mouths full.

"I should like to find that stockpile too." He reaches over to rip out a paper towel and also prepare a clean tea towel for her cleanup afterwards. "Anything of yours I should be looking out for?"

Luckily for both of them, she doesn't ask. Joel hadn't known how the internet worked, either. Neither had Tommy. She gave up a few years ago on ever figuring it out. It was something people had and don't have anymore, like most things before she was born. But wherever and whenever Henry's from, he had the internet. But not can openers? Hm.

"I guess they could be," she says with a slight shrug. "But this place seems more calculated than that. And like, what, not one person found a washed up gun or anything? Come on." She just doesn't buy it. It's too convenient. And she isn't from a world with magic or any of that, despite having heard that magic might exist here or in some other world. She's still mostly using her own instinct here.

"I had a shotgun. Handgun. Pocket knife. Couple other things but those are the ones that matter most." She says that matter-of-fact, like there's nothing weird about it. Really, for her, there isn't. Without weapons, you die, even when you aren't on a half-mad revenge journey. She has some sentimental attachment to the knife, but it's not that big a deal. It's more useful close up on Infected than fighting other things. In the end, in this place, she'd rather just have a gun.

"There's gotta be more here, right? I mean, more than just the houses and this place. I couldn't get anywhere yesterday because the storm fucked me up." She doesn't elaborate, but it was pretty wild. It was like having all her energy sapped somehow. Maybe John's thing about magic isn't all speculative bullshit.

"A shotgun? Oh my. Pity the poor folk who try and mess with you." They're heavy beasts designed for heavy duty work and Doc is surprised she can even use one without putting her shoulder out.

"When the weather clears up, we can explore further. I expect there to be a school, a church, a store of some kind at least." Most towns just needed a school, a church, a store of some kind and a saloon in order to hold a group of strangers together. They're in what sort of could substitute for the saloon so it stands to reason there is at least a little bit more they haven't seen yet.

"I will be taking another look down the beach as well. Just in case anything or- anyone - washes up."

"Yeah. Pity the folk who try to mess with me," she parrots back at him. She means to be sarcastic, but it sounds much darker, closer to a threat. She doesn't correct that, though. She thinks of a girl choking in the spores in the hospital's lower levels. She hadn't needed a shotgun for that. She also thinks of threatening the girl with the headphones. God, she's done some fucked up things the past few days before waking up here. But she can't lose her resolve.

She forces herself back to the present, to the conversation with Henry and not her own grim thoughts.

"You think there might be more people who end up on the beach?"

He can hear it in her tone of voice. Untold stories he would very much like to delve into, once she would allow him to be more than a lunch buddy. Trauma, resolve, anger, hopelessness, bitterness, love, contempt, shame; these kinds of things manifest in universal ways whether you've got a 19-going-on-166 or 166-going-on-38 year old face.

"Seems like the way all these folks have come in," he reasons. If there's another way into town, he hasn't heard of nor found it yet.

"Who's to say it is only us lucky ones who were brought here?" Hell maybe if they came in by a boat or something he'd be able to spot that out in the water. That's at least one answer to put one of many questions to rest.

She nods her agreement. "Yeah, seems like it. I guess it makes sense. We can't find a way out of this town, so it's not like someone is going to come stumbling down the road on accident." Or so it seems to her. No one is here by accident, even if they don't know the reason.

She hasn't considered things like boats or whatever yet. There aren't any cars or vehicles to be found, so...who knows.

"Hey, weird question. Has anyone talked to you about, like...multiple universes and shit?" She's still dealing with this in her mind, but hopefully she's not the only person in this town who finds it seemingly impossible.

"We could keep walking, but. I'm not sure how far we'll get." He'd rather they spend days looking for transport, even if it is a horse just like them good old days, than spend those days walking and getting nowhere fast.

"Uh- no." He squints at her a bit and tilts his head, eyebrows furrowing before one crawls up towards his hairline. He has not yet experienced firsthand back home what happens when timelines or realities diverge through magical or non-magical means. Honestly, he's already struggling with what is happening in just the one universe.

"Can't say I know what that is, exactly."

If Ellie knew he liked horses, she'd be right there with him. She's spent more time on horseback than in actual vehicles, generally speaking. It's difficult to keep vehicles running without fuel, and fuel is harder to come by than a lot of other things. Horses, though? Jackson is a great place for horses. She tries not to think about what happened to her last horse. One more thing for her to pay those WLF fuckers back for, really.

"God, I don't...I don't really know either. It's like...no one here remembers anything that happened where I'm from and I feel like I'm losing my fucking mind. Different shit happened for all of them, and for you, too. We don't have the internet anymore because the fucking world went to shit before I was born. I mean. We have can openers at least." She manages half a smile at the last bit. At least her sense of humour is hanging on as well as it can.

"You do not have the internet anymore?" he repeats, sounding as bewildered as that singular raised eyebrow implies. Doc is far more accustomed to the notion of not having the internet yet.

"Perhaps you are from some..." Doc purses his lips and shakes his head. "Unhappy future awaiting us all. Could you tell me more about where you came from?"

"Yeah, it's...uh, it's 2039 where I'm from. I kinda gathered that no one else is from then." She withdraws a little bit, one arm crossing over her torso to grip her other arm, tension evident in the way her thumb can't find a way to stay still even as the rest of her does.

"There was an infection," she says. It sounds hollow in her ears now because she's getting used to saying it like that, like it's some new idea and not history, not the world she grew up in, not her own life sentence. "It was before I was born. Millions of people died from it, but it's...you don't just like die right away. The infection takes over your body and uses it to infect other people. It's madness first, I guess."

Not for her, of course. She's infected, too, but that's not common knowledge back home and it sure as shit isn't common knowledge in this nightmare town.

"Anyway, society just kind of fucked itself after that. There's some places that are safer. We have medicine and electricity and houses where I live in Jackson. The military isn't running our town, but they run a lot of the cities that are left. And they're fucking douches about it, too, but the people who aren't military are never any better."

She takes a breath to refocus and looks at Henry's face to see how he takes that.

"YouTube or whatever it is sounds pretty cool, though. Sorry I missed out on that one."

He's got a way to go yet before it turns 2039. He will be... close to a hundred and ninety years old by then. Dear God.

"I see," is all he can say at first. Seems to be a grim future awaiting them. Doc wasn't optimistic enough to think it would be sunshine and rainbows while the people around him grew to a ripe old age and withered away, but he was rather hoping they would get to enjoy a few more years than that living in peace.

"I am sorry too sweetheart. Seems to me you deserve a whole lot more," he offers up quietly.

"Perhaps this place will be good for you. I have not seen any diseases running rampant here." And if sickness was the reason the locals are gone, well. They are lucky that it does not appear to have stayed behind to ravage them.

"Is that why you needed the guns? Looters, or the military and the other people running the towns?"

"Don't do that," she says. "It doesn't really matter what anyone deserves. The world doesn't give a fuck and it's unfair and it's all bullshit." There's a lot there to unpack, probably. There's her simmering hatred for Abby and the WLF, her inability to get over Joel's death. There's her twisted up feelings about Joel himself, Joel who had taken her choice away and lied to her about it and acted like he had some fucking right to act like her dad after that. There's her fear for Dina and Jesse. There's her fear that something inside her is all fucked up now, the part of her that slit a girl's throat and would have left another girl to choke on spores instead of granting her a merciful death.

Who deserves anything, anyway?

"It's...it's a fungus, not a disease. Not like the flu or whatever," she corrects, mostly automatic, without thought. "But there's nothing like it here. We'd know by now if there was."

She shakes that off as best she can (though not very well, her thoughts still threatening to spiral out and overwhelm her) and looks back up at Henry with wary green eyes.

"Mostly you need guns to kill Infected," she says. "The longer a body stays infected, the...uh, the worse it gets. And the more dangerous. But they stay like that for years. Maybe forever, I don't fucking know. But yeah, people shoot other actual people, too. Sometimes it's you or them."

And sometimes you're a 19-year-old girl obsessed with revenge, whatever.

She changes the topic, maybe abruptly. "Is the internet, like, new where you're from? YouTube and all that? Dude, you didn't know how to use a can opener. 'Fess up. What's the deal there?"

Well, that's putting him off any kind of wild mushrooms he might stumble upon around here, even if he's certain they are safe to eat.

"I understand." He was forged in the unforgiving fires of that 'it's you or them' world. Whether it be by sheer luck, talent, or some other reason he has never thought deeply enough to uncover, he's managed to make it 'them' up until now.

"You would like to know my story now? I suppose that is fair." She did share hers, after all. At least, the parts of hers that she is willing to share. He also understands that there is a lot she is not saying. Difficult though it might be to remain impartial in light of very damning information, he would never fault her for not bringing up past deeds that should just stay in the past.

"It is new to me," he admits. "But it has been around for several years now. Decades, even. I have been... I believe you would call it 'living under a rock'." More precisely, at the bottom of a well. And he wouldn't necessarily call it living. He just- survived. "For many, many years. You may not believe how many," he offers up with a small laugh. Sometimes even he has a hard time coming to terms with how many things have changed over those years. Although more often than not, he finds that many things have stayed the same.

"What, like literally?" she says, joking. It doesn't actually occur to her that he really means it exactly as he says it. Maybe he just lived somewhere weird, like Joel had told her about the way there were religious cults or something that hadn't had electricity or whatever by choice. There are religious cults in her time, too, and she hasn't met even one that was anything but totally fucking twisted.

"You just decide to, like, leave and join the modern world or something?" she asks "You grew up in a shitty place and wanted to see what other options there were?" They're still not on the same page, because how could they be? But she's trying to keep up.

"Well..." He purses his lips and tilts his head, the tip of his tongue flicking over his upper lip as he brings his hands to his hips, breathing out a sigh. One hell of a long story, this one. He's not sure how many details he should be getting into.

"Not exactly. I was dying. Had been, for many years, but I was close at this point. A lady visited me, told me she had a cure." Among other things. "So I agreed, without asking as many questions as I probably should have asked." The man was dying, coughing his lungs out and struggling to get out of bed, and she made the offer sound so tempting. Give him a break for not asking for the full Ts & Cs.

"So here I am. Still alive. Even after," Doc sighs. He sighs every time he says it. "A hundred and thirty years. I would survive a-... strange sort of fungus, too. You can count on me, Miss Ellie, to be around. Nothing infects me anymore." Except the occasional bout of sheer stupidity, crises in self-confidence, and questionable life decisions. Those he is still vulnerable to, unfortunately.

She hears everything he says and processes it as well as she can. 130 years sounds like such bullshit, but after every damn thing in the past couple of days, her brain just kind of glosses over that for a moment. Instead, she latches on to the rest of it.

I would survive. Nothing infects me anymore.

It chokes her up for a moment. God, if only. If only she wasn't the only person in the whole fucking world who couldn't be infected. No, who could be infected and live anyway.

She almost tells him. But then she remembers where she is and how fucked up this is and they just met.

"That's...fuck, Henry, that's a lot to try to believe," she says instead. She can deal with a lot of shit, really, but she's still a teenager dealing with massive amounts of trauma in a short time even before Mathias and its secrets.

"God, three days ago I was in Seattle fighting some mean fuckers from all sides and that sucked but it was familiar, you know?"

Violence. Violence and death and gore is all familiar to her now. She's not desensitised to it, not entirely, and she'll be glad of that later. But it's so commonplace she feels like she'll never escape it even if she tries. There are still bruises on her face. It doesn't show, but she has a bandage wrapped around the place she caught an arrow in her shoulder a couple days ago.

"And now there's magic and weird beaches and kids talking about the apocalypse or something but not like my, uh, world. And you're 130 but you look like, I don't know. Normal adult age." That's teenager logic for you.

It's a lot, in general. Whether anyone believes it or not - he suspects they don't, but it doesn't really bother him one way or another - is another matter. He doesn't expect anyone to take anything anyone else here says at face value.

"Well I can't promise there aren't any mean folk around here. Might not appreciate a shotgun or fist to the face." Sometimes problems that you can pull the trigger at are much, much easier than having to deal with them with alternative means. That probably says a lot more about him than it does about the nature of their problems though.

"Maybe it is best to focus on what's in front of us, for now. Other peoples' baggage, it's--" He takes a deep breath and tries not to sigh it out. "It's messy business, sweetheart."

Ellie might decide to believe him eventually. It's easy, she thinks, for someone to sit there and not really understand the infection and say they'd make it. But the part of her that still wants the world to not totally suck appreciates it even if it's not true, because it's hope. God, it feels like a million years since she had any hope.

"Chances are whoever brought us here, they're more than deserving of that shotgun. Just gotta find one first." Is she joking? It's hard to say.

She did finish most of her food, but she can't manage to eat anymore. Trauma and exhaustion fill her up so food can't. She hasn't eaten or slept like a real person since...god, how long has it been? Since Joel died, but the days have blurred and she's not sure how long it's been.

She shoves that out of her head as best she can.

"Yeah. Right. Focus on what's in front of us and how to get everyone home safe." Not that Ellie's home is safe, but that's not the point. Maybe nowhere is. But safe as in not dead is a start.

"Thanks, you know, for the meal and whatever, Henry."

In his mind she is referring to some kind of chronic illness. A fungus could be something that grows on the skin or something inhaled that causes coughing and retching and the like. Just the mere thought of it is enough to make his stomach churn uneasily. If he never got any kind of respiratory flare-up ever again, it would still be too soon.

He is still not really picturing the perils of what she has been living with all this time and it is unlikely he will understand even if she tried to explain everything to him outright.

"Not at all, Miss Ellie. And I would not mind if you would like to have meals regularly." He does not actually need to eat - at least, he does still get hungry but he won't die from starvation - but it would be good to have a lunch buddy. It would force them both into adopting good food habits.

Ellie can't explain it to him easily now, but maybe someday she'll give it a better go.

Her mouth quirks up at his suggestion.

"You offering to serve up some canned lunch every day? Yeah, I guess I could get in on that. I can...uh, make sandwiches as long as the ingredients hold out." She's not much of a cook, really. She can manage some other things but she's still too in her head to really think.

"Fuck, I should go back before that storm comes back."

"Alright sweetheart." She might hate the pet names but it is a rather tough habit to break. She might have to smack him out of it.

"Next time, I can make us a simple beef and potato stew," he offers. It is not much, but they do not have to live out of cans if the restaurant continues to offer up a decent assortment of raw ingredients.

"I will call on you again, if it is alright by you."

Ellie makes a show of rolling her eyes, because this is how she deals with overconcerned men like Henry. She's not really put out by that pet name.

"Really, just Ellie is fine. But...yeah, stew sounds great." She's not picky in the slightest, really, and stew is more than she's had in several weeks, what with travelling from Jackson to Seattle. But even before that, she'd just struggled. Grief is a terrible thing, and it gnaws at her so that hunger doesn't.

"I'm camped out at 1304 Phillips. I think it's Phillips? Anyway there's not that many places to go, right, so it's easy to find."

"It is. I will find you there," he promises. With stew, or at least with ingredients to make stew. Maybe she would like to participate. He wouldn't mind showing her a thing or two. And maybe she can help him with cans, and the like.

"You take care now." Overconcerned maybe, but he does want to keep an eye on her in case they run into any trouble in this place.

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001-003 » a chilling mathias welcome

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cw: TLOU2 spoilers, semi-graphic violence, murder

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