fandomtownies | Streets of Fandom, Friday morning

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Streets of Fandom, Friday morning

Raven prowled through the streets of Fandom, keeping a wary eye out for any villagers foolish enough to be out by themselves (herself excluded, of course) or those who had gone hollow. She was also looking for any of these new visitors to the island she'd both sensed and heard about. Some of them felt...familiar in a way, though she couldn't really explain how -- due either to her empathy being turned down by choice or tiny fragments of her memory drifting away. If they were friend, she'd direct them to the village and safety. If they were not, well, she'd deal with that, too.

She didn't want to get her hopes up that it was help. Hope had long since evaporated, the last traces of it gone after she'd lost Karla. Now it was just protection and survival.

[Open to any villagers, transplantees, hollows, monsters, whomever!]

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Good luck directing Karla anywhere, Raven. You of all people should know how stubborn she was. But rather than continue to be stared at by Cassandra and not willing to kill what was left of the girl before they had a chance to see if they could somehow fix this thing--after the Nothing, Karla had a lot of faith that things could be fixed--she'd decided to leave the shantytown and head for the library, where hopefully the researchers would be hard at work. She'd always preferred to be on the fighting end of these things, but another pair of eyes on the researching side could only help.

"Raven?" she called when she spotted her friend. Karla was confused; hadn't she left Raven in the village still? "Did you teleport here to meet me?"

Kanan's morning had been rough. Being thrown from a roof by what appeared to be a giant, monstrous version of himself had a funny way of doing that, really. But now that he'd managed to re-gain his bearings, collect his (very colorful) dalmatian, and get away from that place, he was feeling...

Well, not better, really. He'd bandaged up his skinned hand and had gone so far as to actually reassemble his lightsaber, which he was wearing openly at his hip, a weird, almost unfamiliar symmetry to the blaster he had on the other one. The Empire was the last thing he needed to be concerned about, here, and it wasn't like he was fooling anybody who had any idea who the Jedi were in the first place. Probably.

The Force was chewing at his head, rattling the inside of his mind, telling him to make his way to the Park. So... here he was, with a technicolor dog, doing just that and looking less than pleased (and possibly a little traumatized) as he went.

Space, he needed to get the hell off this island.

Raven tensed as she saw Karla and shifted into her demon form. "You finally dared to leave your nest?" she snarled.

She could hear Hannibal's words again in her head. "One day one of you will kill the other. Or you both will. No matter what happens, you'll hate it." True, but she wasn't going to run from the chance to put Karla to rest.

"It is unwise to be wandering about alone," Raven said, teleporting from the roof she'd been crouched atop to the street behind Kanan.

The dog didn't count. At least not unless it proved itself a fighter, but the technicolor canine was probably going to attract some of the creatures that roamed the former town.

"You should go to the village. It is safer there."

Behind him? Raven, that was positively sadistic. Kanan jumped, spinning on his heel, hand reaching for the saber at his hip and halfway to having it ignited before he registered that the person standing there... probably wasn't going to throw him off another roof.

Stance, meanwhile, hunkered down and growled.

"The goal wasn't to wander, believe me," Kanan said, taking a deep breath before straightening up again, moving to clip his weapon back to his belt. "I needed to get out of that apartment. The village... is that the quiet space in the park?"

Sorry, Kanan, Raven firmly believed people wandering alone should get a good scare.

Again, herself excluded, of course.

"Yes, the park," she said. "It is protected as best we can manage and safe from most of the horrors that wander the island."

She tilted her head, eyeing his lightsaber. "You are a Jedi?"

Deep breath, exhale. Right. That was a question he hadn't been asked in a long while from anybody who wasn't a Jedi themselves, and the answer was... complicated. More than a little.

"Close enough," he settled on, briefly looking to the dog and giving him a little nod and a silent wave of reassurance through the Force. Stance settled down, the growl fading in his throat, and he looked up at Raven curiously, giving his tail a cautious wag. "That won't be a problem, will it?"

Raven gave Stance a look and stretched out her hand so he could sniff it. He made her think of Philia for a moment, but she quickly shunted that pang of loss aside.

"No, it is not," she said, returning her gaze to Kanan. "I have counted Jedi among some of my closest friends. My name is Raven. How did you come to be in this place?"

"Would you believe I woke up here?" Kanan winced a little as he glanced up toward the rooftops. Stance, meanwhile, trotted over to sniff the offered hand, and then, deciding that Raven wasn't all that bad after all, licked at her fingers for a few moments. "In... what was my apartment, at some point. Looks like it's seen better days, though."

He shook his head. Shook it off. This wasn't even the worst situation he'd ever been in. It just kind of looked like it.

"Good to meet you, Raven. Kanan."

Much like the big Jedi-looking monstrosity that was haunting the roof of the MCA. He was going to continue not thinking about that, okay?

Today was a better day than yesterday, though not such a good one that Death remembered to cast a shadow.

She tilted her head curiously at Raven, wondering whether she would be fun to play with. (The strongest ones scream the prettiest, she thought, before dismissing the thought. She wasn't going to make anyone scream, not yet.)

"Hello," she said, a bit vaguely, as though she wan't sure whether to expect an answer.

Given that throughout her life in Fandom, Raven had often woken up someplace other than where she went to sleep, that wasn't surprising to hear. But it did explain why some of the presences had felt so familiar.

"You are from Fandom? Another Fandom?" she asked.

"A much cleaner Fandom, apparently," Kanan agreed, nodding and looking around. "What the hell happened here?"

It looked... well... he'd seen less war-torn towns back during the actual war.

"Hello, Didi," Raven said warily. She hadn't expected Death herself to fall victim to the corruption of the island, but sadly that hadn't proven to be the case.

They'd been to other Fandoms before and fixed them, or at least ended the horrors there. The vampire Fandom. Umbridge's Fandom. Maybe this was the same thing, only in reverse? No, she couldn't let her hopes get up.

"I am not certain," Raven said. "Something began to corrupt those who dwelled here, and there was very little we could do to fight it. It changed people. Turned them into monsters. There are not many of us left who have not gone hollow."

"Hollow," Kanan echoed, frowning thoughtfully as he looked up at the rooftops. "Good word for them."

The thing he'd faced had certainly been empty, after all.

"And they can't be fought?"

Sure they could. But who wanted to kill their friends? Especially since there was always that tantalizing hope that a cure might yet be found?

"They can be," Raven said. Karla. Out there in the woods, probably luring some fool to his or her death. She had to stop her.

"But they are many, and we are few," she said, "and some, like what was once the Principal of the school, seem almost impervious. Others are merely shells of their former selves, staying close to places that were familiar in life and mindlessly attacking any who might come near. We destroy them when we are able, but simple survival is the most important concern for us."

"My--nest?" Karla looked puzzled. "Is that some kind of bird pun from--Mother Night!" Honestly, it was a good thing that Karla had seen Raven's demon form frequently over the years, or she might have assumed she'd gone hollow in the ten or so minutes since she'd seen her last. "The Hell, Raven?!"

"People used to call me that," Death said, sounding surprised. She knew and forgot her human name and learned it again all the time. "People used to call me a lot of things. People used to call you Rachel."

It had taken island magic on top of the corruption for Death to become this hollow and this close to monstrous. But once the coruption's claws were in, there was nothing she could do to stop it.

"Your illusions may trick my eyes but I will not let them fool my heart," Raven said. "I know what you are. Wear her face and use her voice all you want, but I know you are no longer her, abomination!"

This was her chance. Without her web to retreat into, the thing formerly known as Karla had no easy escape.

Rachel. She hadn't heard that name in a long time, either. Why had she used that name instead of her own? She couldn't quite remember.

"Lady Death is what I would often call you," Raven said, still keeping her distance. Others who had gone hollow she could fight. She wasn't so sure she could deal with one of the Endless, even corrupted as she was.

"My illusions?" Karla asked, even as she tested the strength of her shields to make sure they were strong. She didn't want to assume that Raven was going to attack her--but she wasn't stupid enough to assume she wouldn't, either. "Hell's fire, I haven't spun a tangled web since we got here."

Since they. Wait. Oh shit.

"You're not my Raven," she said. "Oh, fuck me, are you one of them?"

Death, for her part, seemed disinclined to start a fight, though of course that might change at any moment.

"Lady Death," she repeated grandly. "I like that. I like it almost as much as I like eldest sister. Is my sister here?"

Was this some sort of trick? The thing knew all her weakest spots. Karla restored to herself was her greatest dream, but it was only that -- a dream. Once someone went hollow, there was no coming back, especially if they turned monstrous afterward.

She held her attack. "Where are the children?" she said. The spider queen wouldn't be able to resist another jab at that, the hole in her armor, would she?

"Not that I am aware of," Raven said. Thankfully. One hollow Endless was enough. She shuddered to think of a hollow Delirium, or worse, Dream. Dreams were their only escape in this place.

"I have not seen any of your siblings."

"Stay away from my children," Karla snarled, not about to tell a teleporter that her children were home safe with their father. "You even think about them and I will gut you and tie your entrails around a rock."

Way to not sound like a monster there, Karla.

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Streets of Fandom, Friday morning

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