fandomtownies | The Park, Wednesday Evening

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The Park, Wednesday Evening

It had started as a walk. Just your normal, casual walk on an insane island, with tiny rainbow ducks raining from the sky. Not enough to have Nikolai wishing he had an umbrella or anything, but definitely enough to have him looking up toward the clouds suspiciously, even as a small brace of the little birds started waddling along behind him. He was, after all, the first thing they had seen upon landing. Weird, fine, but Nikolai figured he could probably lose them around the park, hoping that they would imprint on a real duck, instead.

Nikolai had not been counting on flamingos. When he thought of birds and the Baltimore area, orioles jumped to mind, mostly, and entirely because of baseball. Not those big pink moody menaces that turned out to be standing across the path on his way to the pond. What were you even supposed to do when you ran into a stand of flamingos, anyhow? Nick figured that just giving them a wide berth would do, and it was even working! Until another duckling fell from the sky and clocked one of them with alarming accuracy right upside its head. The flamingo made a noise that Nick would not have associated with anything not from hell, flapping its huge pink and black wings in shock and then looking around for something small and rainbow to give a piece of its mind to.

And that's how Nikolai wound up running halfway across the park, with an armload of ducklings, being chased by a flock of angry flamingos.

Tripping and falling, interestingly enough, was how he learned that he could knock a whole flock of angry birds out cold with a glance. And now he was sitting on the ground, surrounded by large sleeping pink fluffballs, buried under smaller chirping rainbow ones, and reaching to pick up the sunglasses that had flown off of his face in the fall. He was just going to sit there a little while longer, while the leg he'd injured in Greece stopped throbbing and he worked on wrapping his head around what the hell just happened, here.

He was almost willing to admit that this place was a little strange, now.

[Open park is open!]

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Allie's one concession to the hot weather was leaving her coat behind when she left her apartment for the night. Otherwise she was in her usual outfit of dark jeans and dark shirt, boots on her feet and her sword in its case over her shoulder.

"They're not where they're supposed to be," Allie said as she came upon the sleeping flamingos.

"Florida? Yeah, I noticed," Nikolai replied, taking a moment to straighten his shades, make absolutely sure they were secure, before looking at the young woman who had spoken.

... And her sword. Huh.

"Any idea why there's a pack of killer flamingos in a park in Maryland, by any chance?"

That sentence might have sounded less odd if the flamingos were actually in the process of being 'killer,' as opposed to napping on the ground.

"They were here when I came to town last Fall," Allie replied. "Why are you calling them killers? They usually hang out peacefully over by the pond.

Eyebrow raised, she checked over the flamingos on the ground. "They're not particularly threatening at the moment."

"One of them got pegged in the head by a falling duck," Nick explained, realizing the moment he said it that he was still holding those ducks, and pretty much instantly feeling ridiculous. "I guess he didn't like it, because next thing I knew, I was being chased by them."

A beat.

"... I guess I tired them out."

Yeah. That's totally what happened.

"Uh-huh." Allie didn't quite believe him, well she did about the falling ducks considering she'd had several bounce off her head since she'd left MCA. The flamingos though? Not so much. They were the closest thing to a pet she had, so she took their well-being seriously. But since Allie could hear their hearts beating peacefully so she was willing to let it slide.

"Hopefully they won't hold a grudge when they wake up."

"God, I hope not," Nick grumbled, setting his armload of ducklings on the ground one by one, and then attempting to heave himself back to his feet. It was slow going; he'd felt a bit of a buzz when he'd looked at the birds, but nothing really worth mention, and his leg was still pretty damn sore. "Nothing against the local wildlife, but that's an experience that I'm not in any hurry to repeat."

If anyone were to tell him why they were really here, to be used as glorified croquet mallets, he would probably have wondered if the crazy person who brought them here was dead, now. Because honestly.

Fortunately Allie didn't know that story.

"Most of the wildlife is harmless. About the only thing you need to really worry about are the gremlins." She watched his attempt to get up for a short moment before holding out a hand. It seemed like the polite thing to do. "They bite and their venom will mess you up for awhile."

Nick glanced at her hand, and was tempted to stubborn his way to his feet on his own for a moment before better judgment actually won out and he took it. He didn't particularly want to fall onto the ducks or something.

"Mess you up?" He raised an eyebrow at that one. "Sounds like something they'd be selling for top coin in dark parking lots at night, back home."

Maybe. If more bad drug trips involved tutus.

Despite her small size, Allie didn't have a problem helping him to his feet. If he was paying attention, Nick might notice that her hand was cooler then what would normally be expected, but if he was distracted by the ducks, that was understandable.

"Not that kind of mess up. More like the kind that makes you hallucinate and do ridiculously embarrassing things while the squirrels write it all for the radio report."

Well, that earned Allie a sidelong kind of look. He wasn't going to mention the cold hand. That could be anything from him being worked up after the flamingo chase to a case of anemia or something on her end. But...

"The squirrels?"

Somebody hadn't gotten himself a radio, yet.

"The squirrels." It wasn't all that hard for Allie to use her senses to pick out where one was lurking in the tree above them. "Like that one," she said, pointing to branch. The squirrel chattered cheerfully and waved.

"Biggest gossips on the island. They report to the radio and everything that happens that day is reported on the daily radio broadcast."

Nikolai took a moment to pick out the chattering squirrel, a little difficult to make out now that the sun was down and he was still wearing his shades. But there it was, sure enough, waving hello.

A little dumbstruck, he waved back.

"They really do that? This conversation is going to end up on the air, you mean to tell me?"

"Yup. That we were here and that I filled you in on the local wildlife." Allie paused for a moment, then decided to give him a little bit of good news. "From what I've heard, if you're doing something you don't want them to report on, you can bribe them with booze."

"Bribe the squirrels... with booze." Nick wrinkled his nose a little at that. "I'm starting to get the impression that I'm going to be needing as much of it as I can get my hands on just to keep myself sane around here."

Accurate.

"Thanks for the hand up, by the way. I'm usually a little better at standing on my own two feet."

"Yup, you are. I work Friday night's at the Devil's Nest. Stop by. I'll buy you a welcome to the island beer." Technically she wouldn't buy it. More comp him then let Eric know so he could dock her pay. Had to keep things legal after all.

She waved off his thanks. "No problem. People were helpful to me when I first came to the island. I'm just doing my part."

"This place is definitely big on hospitality," Nick noted, cracking a bit of a smile. "Wound up with a room and a temporary job to go with it when I arrived here without my damn wallet, and the lady at the bar last night was good about getting me a drink even with my ID lost in some airport somewhere."

Lost. Left behind in a mad dash. Same thing.

"I'm Nikolai. Fresh from Hollywood by way of a detour through Greece." Which any other time might have been a brag, but in light of everything that had led to him arriving on the island, he mostly just sounded tired and still a little bewildered when he said that. "Apparently I'm taking an involuntary extended vacation here on the island."

"Hopefully the hospitality will make up for the rampant insanity that occasionally happens." And the traumatic events. But Allie would wait a week or two before filling him in about things like scary dungeons and visiting dead people.

"Allison, but my friends call me Allie." She was familiar with that state of bewilderment. God only knows, she felt it enough her first few days on the island. "I was only going to stay here a night, but apparently the island had other plans. It happens."

"I would like to get back to California soon," Nikolai admitted, frowning a little in thought. "I've got a job back there, and rent to pay. I don't know if I'll be able to make rental payments on an apartment there and a hotel room here working just one day a week, though I suppose I have done a lot of work long-distance for the agency in the past..."

He'd have to get in touch with his boss, see what could be worked out. The more time he spent here, not quite knowing what to do about his eyes, the less it sounded like a great idea to rush back to L.A.

"So, would you say the island's treating you fairly well, rampant insanity aside, Allie?"

Allie let him ramble. Given her own circumstances, she really didn't have much in the way of advice, but at least she could listen.

"Honestly? It's been treating me very well," she smiled. "I've got a roof over my head, enough to eat, books to read, friends...what more could I need?"

[Must sleep. SP OK?]

"Given the way sanity here seems more or less optional," Nick mused, with a pointed glance at the sleeping flamingos and the rainbow ducklings that were mulling around his feet, "apparently not all that much. But for all that people keep telling me how crazy this place is, I haven't actually heard a bad opinion of it, yet."

So... Fandom Island had to have something going for it. Apparently.

[SP is great! Good night!]

"on a whole things are usually pretty good. More surreal and amusing then anything." Case in point, rainbow duckling. "But I'll be honest," Allie admitted. "Occasionally, very rarely, things aren't so much fun. But we stick together and we deal with it."

"The power of faith and teamwork compels you?" Nick raised an eyebrow at that, a small smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. Yeah, sounded legit. "Exactly how 'not fun' are we talking about, here? Less fun than large pink attack birds?"

"People died. Granted it was only temporary. But we didn't know it at the time." She looked down, remembering Stiles and Kitty's grief when they thought Derek was dead in the dungeon. "It was a bad few days."

"Oh..." Well, now Nikolai felt a bit like an ass for making light of something so ser-- "Wait. Temporary? How do you only die temporarily?"

Someday, Nick would look back on the moment he asked that question and kick himself a few times.

They didn't stay dead. It made it a lot easier to deal with.

"Nearest I can figure out is magic of some sort." Sorry but Allie had missed most of the specifics of exactly what and why things had happened in the dungeon. She'd been too busy killing zombies. "It's kind of a thing here. Along with vampires, a zombie band, people from space, people from the future, people from the past."

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