not_every_mage | Room 322, Tuesday Afternoon

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Room 322, Tuesday Afternoon

Kathy was an idiot.

Kathy was suicidal, and irrational, and self-important, and probably a few hundred things Anders couldn't put words to quite then. He kept replaying their conversation in his head, except somehow in those versions he found the exact right thing to say to convince her to portal back immediately and let Los Angeles take care of itself.

And somehow, while he was having those discussions with her in his head, he found himself throwing some clothes into a bag and looking up portal prices to her LA. Because jumping right into the middle of things was obviously the most logical way to deal with a friend intent on fighting a zombie apocalypse.

[OOC: Primarily for one, but open.]

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"She knew it happened in that world. I think that just means it's possible, not definite," Anders explained. "But if you know it's possible, and things start heading that way, why wait around to see exactly how right you are?"

He resentfully added another t-shirt to the stack in his bag. Stupid Kathy who he was going to go help.

"Because she's fucking nuts," Dante snarled. He threw Anders' pack a quick look, shook his head, and wandered over to the like... three shirts he had left. "She's got no fucking idea what she's doing."

Easy on the f-word, kid.

"I was going to go with, 'she lived through it then and figures she's safe this time,'" Anders volunteered. "... you're really angry."

Well-spotted, Anders.

"I'm fine," Dante said.

... a really angry kind of fine.

"This is just so fucking stupid."

"It's insane," Anders agreed. "What is she going to do, bounce at zombies until they fall over?"

"Right?" Dante asked, finally picking one extra shirt and throwing it onto the bed - and then rooting around his clothes for one pair of skinny jeans to match. "But no, she's Superball--" Banzai, but whatever, he'd forgotten that codename seconds after hearing it and had never really found it in himself to use it. "--gonna save everyone with her super bouncing powers."

Anders snickered. He knew it was Banzai, but Superball was better.

"Not to mention that it shouldn't be down to the people with powers anyhow," Anders added, shoving an extra hair tie into the pocket of his jeans. He went over to his dresser to see if he could find his earring for luck. "Los Angeles must have soldiers and guards and all of that. Make them earn their keep for once."

Dante didn't really have any bags to speak of, besides a plastic bag that he finally managed to produce from somewhere under the bed that smelled faintly like beer.

Whatever. He'd live.

"And there's heavier hitters in that crew," he said. The fact Anders wasn't treating this like it was somehow a sane thing was helping him calm the immediate explosion of rage that'd been fueling him for a while now. "I just can't get my head around this shit."

Well, he knew Kathy was that stupid - he'd been there to save her from dying from it the first time. But he still didn't get it.

"There's space in my bag," Anders offered, which was both practical and weirdly domestic. He was still hunting down that earring: He swore they grew legs whenever he took them out.

He gave Dante a curious look. "Did she say anything to you about catching zombies?" he asked. "She hit me with that one right before she hung up."

"Yeah, she said she wasn't going to kill them because, I dunno, killing is bad even when shit is trying to kill you." Beat. "Which is nuts."

He looked to Anders' bag, then his own filthy plastic one, shrugged, added in a, "Thanks," and picked up his stuff.

Anders sighed deeply and let out a long and impressively filthy swear against the Bride of the Maker.

"Somehow I thought that after all the shit we've been through, she'd be over that," he added, once Andraste's honor was thoroughly besmirched. "I miss home. At home at least they know that if something wants to kill you, you kill it."

A beat, and a vague hand gesture at the bags. "... and no problem."

Dante rolled his extra shirt up into his pants and shoved it into the bag. "Yeah, well," he said, "Sense was never her strong suit."

He walked away, squatting down to rummage around for a bottle under his bed - then thought better of it and stretched back up. "She's going to get hurt," he said, after a long pause. "Going into it like this? Fuck."

There was worry behind the anger. He was trying not to let it pour out.

"Right," Anders agreed, frowning. "And this probably won't be the last time, is the thing. If she makes it through this there'll be something else to fight."

And that was what worried him. He didn't think either he or Dante was likely to live a long peaceful life, but there was a difference between running into unavoidable trouble and throwing yourself right at trouble.

"I remember when she threw herself at that fire," Dante said.

He sat down on his bed. It was the best he had. "She knew it was stupid. She did it anyway. She thinks she can control this shit."

"She does, and no one can," Anders said immediately. "She did the same kind of thing when we went to help Alluka. I had to patch her up a lot then, too. I still don't know how we all got out of that one alive."

Well. This was cheerful. Anders found the earring and stabbed it at his ear almost violently.

Welcome to the mindset that had had Dante taking his anger out on chunks of paper for the past half hour or so. 'Course, it was starting to bleed out of him now.

"Right," he said, after a long moment. "So we go out there, we drag her back, let her yell and stomp for a while, whatever, then the cavalry can sort this shit out."

Or not. In Dante's experience with the cavalry it was usually not. But mercifully, he didn't say that out loud.

Edited 2016-04-05 20:56 (UTC)

It was better to take the anger out on paper than on your own earlobe. Paper didn't protest with a shock of pain when you stuck cold metal through it.

"Perfect plan," Anders said, and leaned toward Dante for a fistbump. "Maybe we'll even kill enough zombies while we're out there to make a dent in it."

He wasn't one for trusting the cavalry either, but the cavalry had one very important advantage in this situation. They weren't Kathy.

For Dante, who was pretty sure everyone was going to get fucked over eventually anyway, that was a powerful argument. Anders got his fistbump without hesitation, though it was a particularly grim one.

"Yeah, I should grab the girls on our way out," he said. "Better come equipped to handle this shit."

"I'll bring as many potions as I can scrape together," Anders promised. "Maybe it'll do some good."

He picked up hos phone and looked at the Portalocity app again. "Should we get three tickets back?"

"Wouldn't hurt," Dante said. He rubbed the back of his neck. "Portalocity can get bogged up, right? Don't want to be scrambling for another portal."

"Right," Anders agreed. "The last thing we want is to get anybody stranded there."

"Bet Kathy would just love that," Dante muttered. "Right." He let out a breath. Plan made. That should be a relief. And yet. "Fucking zombies, though. Jesus. How fucked is that?"

"Completely fucked," Anders agreed. "Especially the part where if they bite you, they get another zombie. That's a nightmare."

"There's gonna be a million of them in no time flat," Dante said. "She thinks she can stop that, she's nuts."

Tiny bouncing girl vs zombie hordes? Not gonna happen.

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Room 322, Tuesday Afternoon

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