got caught up again

[wronganswer]

who: Anderson and you, hopefully! Open!
what: Anderson tries to adjust after arrival. Prompts for floor 10 in the communal housing, the shooting range, and shopping. Also feel free to respond with anything! She's on the police force so any potential coworkers have an easy way to run into her, or be doing something suspicious and she'll investigate. Additionally, I have no attachment to prose, so please feel free to switch to brackets.
when: Various
where: Various
warnings: She is telepathic and empathic, although not very aggressive with it. But please fill out her permissions before threading!

    > FLOOR 10

Anderson is an astonishingly easy roommate to adjust to. It might even take a while to realize she's there. She's used to Spartan living, and it shows: she never leaves traces of her presence around in the communal areas, and she cleans up after herself promptly, immediately. That doesn't mean she's a hermit. She's morbidly interested in meeting all of her roommates, just not quite forward enough to seek them out in a concerted fashion.

But feel free to describe something they would be doing on an average day, and perhaps they could run into each other.

    > SHOOTING RANGE

About the only place she still wears her Judge's armor now is the shooting range, where she goes to clear her mind and practice with the local firearms. She intends to get up to snuff on every single weapons comp there is, as one of the only remaining things that she considers inside her comfort zone. Some part of her relaxes just to be back in the uniform with a gun in her hands.

Anderson has never considered herself one of those Judges that can't turn off when they're off the job, but she's starting to realize that only works in comparison to other Judges. Not in comparison to average citizens, or at least not the ones here. She feels completely unmoored, at a loss, pretending she knows what she's doing as she's had to pretend so often before. When she's really having a hard time adjusting, she uses her Lawgiver, keeps up on pure target practice. She's frighteningly efficient, and she doesn't practice only kill shots; she fires to disable as often as to kill.

The new weaponry takes more concentration, but is enjoyable in its own way. She can be found several days a week practicing, if not shooting then stances, smooth reloading, safe carrying positions. She's thorough.

    > SHOPPING

Easily the strangest part of her week is shopping. Anderson's prior shopping experiences have been starkly divided: the dim memories of her childhood in the poorest slums of the city, where her parents could barely afford anything and shopping was fast, sparse; and the luxuries she used her tiny disposable income on as an academy student, the Hall of Justice providing everything she needed to live and nothing more, same as a military cadet. Those were a chance to breathe, an excuse to get out and be among the people she wanted to protect as much as it was to fulfill the purpose of shopping.

Here, in the Quarantine, she is here to shop. She needs clothes. Toiletries. Cooking supplies. Books to read-- for pleasure. It's a bit overwhelming, truth told, not in the scope but just in the mundanity of it. Anderson had gone from poor mutie to terrifying Judge with nothing in-between, and suddenly being thrust into average daily life is a bit baffling. She doesn't dislike it, though. She enjoys the chance to see life from a new angle, appreciates the amount of decisions she can make with no consideration for regulations or for anyone else. She can take her time, since she's still in training at police headquarters and hasn't shifted to a full time schedule yet.

She had to rent a car for the day in order to have somewhere to stash all her purchases. Circumspect and restrained, she doesn't have a ton of them, but here and there she can be found poking through more feminine shopping areas, makeup or jewelry or sundresses, pondering. It's not a part of herself she's ever really considered before, usually on the defensive or the offensive, never just herself, and she's curious.

For about a week, you can run into her shopping for just about anything, poking around in interest even if she has no intent to buy.

Comments

shooting range

[advanced]

[Even though Bucky is efficient and well trained with weapons, he doesn't come to the shooting range in order to practise. He does that elsewhere, somewhere less public. He comes here to see who else comes here, to scout out the different people and their varying skill levels.

It's the first time he's seen her, either she's new here or she's just started learning. Definitely the first one now that he's seen her practise. He doesn't approach her, he's not even visible as he's sitting up on the roof of the gun shack, but he doesn't know that she can probably feel him there with her abilities.

Just watching like a creeper.]

[wronganswer]

[ She mostly sinks into her own mental space, enjoying the solitude, while shooting. She goes long stretches without checking her surroundings. It would be distracting to leave her psychic abilities on while shooting-- and if nothing else, it would make it hard. She has a hard enough time shooting people she's not sure deserve it, although she can do it and doesn't hesitate anymore.

Seeing their final thoughts doesn't help that issue one bit. Overall, Anderson has detached her telepathy from combat entirely, unless she's scouting.

After a while, clip burned through, she leans back onto her heels and lets out a long breath. She goes about the wind-down of cleaning and ensuring it's not loaded before putting it away. Today, she'd borrowed one from the range to get familiar with it, and it's not until she's put it back that she sends out an idle mental scan, a sort of muscle stretch to get reacquainted with her surroundings after the dead silence earlier.

She's not expecting to sense someone on top of the roof, and it's such a predatory position that she instantly tenses, gaze snapping up there unerringly like a lodestone.

She's not a Judge here, she repeats herself, in what is becoming a mantra. No one's going to shoot her out of the blue. Don't go for your weapon. Don't escalate. Whoever it is feels attentive, but non-hostile. Good enough. ]

Who's there? [ she asks evenly, after a tense moment. She still can't see him, only sense him. ]

[advanced]

[She's good, exceptionally so.

He watches carefully to see if he can tell which hand she favours, what possible weakness she has, if she has the sort of aim that might be attributed to something like a super soldier serum such as he and Steve have. All through it, he thinks he's safe, she obviously hasn't noticed him.

Until all of a sudden he isn't safe any more.

Bucky has no good explanation for being on the roof, and his thoughts are immediately wary and sharpened to a high focus. Should he run or attempt to diffuse the situation by talking? In the end he does neither, just stays perfectly still and silent in the hope she was just guessing.]

shooting range

[couldkillthedevil]

[She hasn't practiced in awhile. Certainly not since she arrived in Riverview, anyway, which was an oversight in and of itself. She'd been busy attending to other matters; namely, researching whatever she could find about this place and its history, gathering insight from other arrivals, and having an existential crisis over the realization that magical portals, God and the Devil all existed.

Yeah. It's been a long week.

Which is mainly how she finds herself at the range that day. It's good practice, but more than that, it's a distraction. A way to let out the frenetic energy coiling tightly in her muscles. When she shoots, she can let everything fall away for a moment, until there's nothing but her and the target. A deadly kind of calm that radiates throughout her entire body.

She's just shot her target full of holes when she eases back, her shoulders relaxing as she allows herself a moment to rest.]

[wronganswer]

Hey, Chloe.

[ Easy, relaxed, having waited for a moment between both of their rounds that matched up. Anderson's feeling a lot better herself after having some time at the range. One of the few things that still feels familiar to her.

That guy on the network had been right.

She glances over at her, knowing. ] Feeling better?

[couldkillthedevil]

[Her ponytail swishes with the sudden swivel of her head in Anderson's direction, not having expected the sudden greeting.]

Oh. Anderson. Hey.

[The question has her lips quirking up as she places her gun down for the moment.] I might've needed that, yeah. You here for a similar reason?

Floor 10

[seekthelight]

[Sora hadn't run into most of the people he was apparently rooming with and that had a lot to do with the fact that he hadn't spent much time on floor 10 yet. He'd been running around trying to figure things out, exploring and attempting to get his bearings that he had slept in his bed and promptly left when he woke up.

There had definitely been some greetings shared but that was the extent of it.

For the first time since arriving the young man can be found sitting on the floor of the common area, one of his keyblades resting on his lap as he toys with the keychain hanging off the handle. He's clearly lost in thought, the fact that he was actually alone here and had no idea where his friends were weighing heavily on him. Were they alright? Were the worlds alright? He'd been told why people ended up here but that didn't make sense. He'd never felt like that...had he?]

[wronganswer]

[ As she gets home that day, there's a faint prickling to the edge of her senses that it takes her a moment to register as someone actively worrying. Anderson listens to it long enough to identify where the owner of that feeling is, and then switches her absent internal scanning off, not wanting to be invasive.

She comes deliberately into the common area rather than detouring straight for her bedroom. She's a short figure in a beat cop's uniform, her posture and expression too intent and serious for such a low-level position, although it fades as she comes upon Sora.

To her, he looks young. Anderson's only 22, but mentally she feels much older most of the time. She wasn't really allowed a childhood once her parents died. Her features gentle as she decides how to approach this. ] Hey. You must be one of my roommates.

[seekthelight]

[The sound of her voice startles Sora out of his thoughts and almost immediately there's a smile on his face as he blinks and focuses on her.]

Hi! Yeah, I'm Sora!

[His keyblade disappears as he moves to stand, offering her a hand in a proper greeting because certain people back home have drilled it into his head that he needs to be more polite. (coughLeoncough)]

It's nice to meet you! Sorry I didn't hear you come in, you haven't been here long have you?

Shooting Range

[firelogic]

Chandra glances over at the newcomer with a smile as she loads a wooden target onto the belt to lead it back to the furthest distance it could go. Chandra stood out, just a bit. Wild red hair, big amber eyes, casually dressed in some green printed wraps. Orange welding goggles that didn't go with the green wraps.

Not having any weapon at all near her. That probably was the biggest one. Chandra's definitely excited about being here. As she forms five marble sized fireballs in her hand that shoot for her target one after another. Quick deadly little balls that group near the center... but are each off from the mark by a few inches. She squints down the path gallery corridor, "That's way better than last time!"

Chandra may be a bit out of practice with accuracy, too focused on going for bigger and meaner fireballs in her life. Or, you know, trying not to set things on fire.

[wronganswer]

Chandra is nothing if not an eye-catching figure, and that's before she starts flinging fireballs around. Anderson has to completely stop what she's doing to watch this progress, incredulous.

Okay. Okay. No doubt she's going to see much weirder, crazier things here before her time is done. She needs to adjust.

In true Judge fashion, she decides to adjust by tackling it head on. "Hey," she calls over, pitching her voice slightly from a few aisles down, "is that you with the fire?" She knows it is, but there's not too many ways to open this conversation.

[firelogic]

"Yup! I'm Chandra." Chandra calls back, entirely unbothered by the question. She's aware that even by normal standards she's failed at being normal. "I need to practice my aim just as much as anyone. Probably a bit more."

Mostly she is a surveyor with a power that could, quite effectively, run wild in the woods and be a huge mess for anyone else so it would be best not to set any forest fires. "Forests kinda burn a lot if I'm not more careful."

floor 10 | cw: vague allusions to suicide

[shadowstepped]

[The first day, Quentin had spent in the bright sterile hospital, unconscious at first while the doctor and nurses hurried to purge his lungs of river water and pull him back from the blackness he had welcomed like salvation, and then awake and dazed by the suddenness with which life was thrust back upon him. Now on the second day, he is out and little less dazed, as much by the novelty of his surroundings as by his predicament.

On his route from the hospital to the building in which he was told he ought to settle, he had bought for himself a simple breakfast of bread and hard boiled egg, but when the noon dinner hour comes he finds himself at a loss for what to do without dining hall or the servant-driven clockwork of his family's home to depend upon. And so, when Anderson comes through the large kitchen, she will find Quentin peering cautiously into a cupboard here or a drawer there, looking out of place as does one shoved into clothing that is not his own.]

[wronganswer]

[ It's such an obvious all-over body language of discomfort that she takes notice immediately, trained to observe people. Anderson had just meant to put something together quickly out of the groceries she'd bought that day-- she's a serviceable home cook rather than an inspired one, functional and practical, without a lot of patience for spending time on it. Cereal or scrambled eggs would do her. When in doubt, breakfast for dinner.

Hardened Judge that she is, she's nevertheless hugely soft-hearted when it comes to people out of their depth. Moreover, she does want to meet her roommates. ]

Hey. Hungry?

[ Her soft, neutral voice might be incongruous next to the overall figure of her. At least she's taken off her body armor and is wearing a simple zip-up hoodie with dark jeans and heavy combat boots, but the large pistol at her hip might break that impression. ]

[shadowstepped]

[At the sound of her voice he turns with the stiffened swiftness of a thief caught in the act. While he is draped in a mantle of discomfort, she will notice too that his carriage is of the upright sort that is ironed into children by parents who insist that what they are and whom they came from is is in itself cause for pride my boy my Harvard boy.]

Yes'm, I suppose so. I was just looking for something to fix.

[She is perhaps little older than Quentin's own nineteen years, but her presence possesses a nameless authority that he senses even past her bewildering appearance, a woman with a pistol at her hip and the hips not draped in delicate skirts but encased in harsh denim. His manner of dress traces him back to a bygone era in which respectability was something carefully curated: a crisp white collar and tie with a vest, slacks and, although he is indoors, the jacket to go with it. His manner of speaking too pins him precisely to his home, his land, Mississippi, the country of which even as recently as his grandfather's generation possessed that touch of wilderness still.]

floor ten

[maskerading]

[ It's still morning when Anderson may walk into the kitchen area, finding a familiar teenager lingering at a counter. The coffee maker is brewing, at least, so he's clearly up to something. Whether he hears her footsteps first or spots her out of the corners of his eyes, it doesn't take long before Yuuto glances over his shoulder.

His eyebrows raise in mild surprise—he hadn't expected to see Anderson come through this floor, quite honestly—but his greeting is as nonchalant as ever: ]

Mornin'.

[wronganswer]

[ She looks very different today. She'd finally found casual clothes that worked for her, somewhere between citizen and Judge: neutral-colored zip-up hoodie, dark jeans, heavy boots, her gun on her hip. She looks much more her age without the bulk of the armor on her.

She wanders into the kitchen, having been awake for a couple hours already, to return her used coffee mug. She shoots Yuuto a pleasantly surprised smile as she comes in. Some of the melancholy has left her already-- not all, but having a direction and reassurance has gone a long way. Anderson always lands on her feet. ]

Good morning. Don't tell me we're roommates.

[maskerading]

[ It is different, but he does like the look better. There's always something a little odd about holding a casual conversation out on the streets with someone decked out in that much gear.

Yuuto turns around, leaning back against the counter, and rests his elbows on the surface. ]

I broke in since this kitchen is nicer. Don't tell anyone.

[ She did say... ]

floor 10

[earthy]

[Terra's been something of a skittish roommate lately. He'd started to settle in a little after his first month here in the Quarantine, but now he's right back to being restless, uneasy in his comings and goings.

When he shows up, it's usually late in the evening to haul himself to the bathroom for a shower, to the kitchen for a quick meal, and then straight to bed.

Every once in a while, he spends an hour sitting out on the balcony, whittling some small piece of wood into a rough shape, a star or a skeleton key or a fish, or skimming the words in one book or another without really reading them.

He always takes his leave again well before dawn.

He still makes sure to smile and nod at roommates when he runs into them, though. They're not all the same roommates he had a month ago. Many of those people are gone, returned to their respective worlds by the portal. Terra wonders how many more will go back. (How many more have anything to go back to?) But he doesn't ask after anyone's plans anymore, and in stark contrast to what was an apparent fascination with the subject during the first few weeks of his stay, he avoids talking about going home as much as possible now.

This is it for him, this life here. This is all that's left. Probably.

Probably.

His most recent return to the tenth floor sees him slouched in a chair pulled into one corner of the kitchen. A bucket of soapy water rests at his feet, his metal and glass helmet in his hands. He works over the helmet with an old rag, trying to scrub a web made out of a thick, tar-like substance off the metal. He's not having a whole lot of success with that, as is suggested by the low set of his eyebrows and the slight purse of his lips, a look of intense concentration that is slowly but surely giving way to frustration. Why won't this mess wash off?

He doesn't lift his head when he senses someone there, but he does offer a greeting, his voice picking up a friendly tone easily despite the circumstances.]

Good evening. There's tea on the stove if you'd like a cup and I bought a tin of cookies... [A pause and he glances up briefly to find where he put it.] On the counter there.

[wronganswer]

[ One day, eventually, Anderson will come to doubt her own return to her world, but for very different reasons. She's still fresh enough that she's a long way off from that, though. Currently she's just trying to figure out how to handle the culture shock. She's used to feeling capable and sharp in every context, knowledgeable about her role and everyone else's perspectives, aided by the fact that she can cheat and see in their heads directly if she needs to.

This is... all very out of her comfort zone. But-- she can land on her feet. And making connections is part of that, as well as being something that goes much more easily here, rather than being harder, like everything else. ]

Thanks. [ Tea doesn't sound bad, if he's offering. Anderson wanders over to the stove, glancing at the helmet in his hand as she goes. She's dressed in civvies today, but still has her Lawgiver pistol on her hip. Normally, Judges all wear helmets, although she doesn't due to interference with her psychic abilities. ]

What happened to your helmet? [ It's a logical question, and she's not shy. ]

[earthy]

[Terra has no reason to keep the answer from her.]

Monster near the fence. When I went to intercept it, it spit this stuff at me. [Giving up on the rag, he drops it into the bucket and then tries to fit his whole helmet in there with it. Maybe just soaking for a while will dissolve or loosen up the strings of monster goo.] I guess I was lucky to have my armor on... Hate to think what would happen if you got this in your eyes.

[He can't be sure it's venom, but he'd be willing to bet at least a little munny, or some Units, that it is.

With all his training and experience traveling worlds, culture shock hasn't been much of a problem for him. The impossibly wide variety of creatures that lurk outside the fences, most of which seem to have their own unique ways of trying to kill him, though... That's taken some getting used to.

Sitting back, Terra turns his attention to his roommate. His new roommate. For a second, his eyes fix on that pistol she wears at her hip. His new roommate with a gun.]

I'm Terra.

[Unlike a certain other roommate of theirs, Terra's plenty familiar with strong women in fighting occupations. And he does immediately assume she's some sort of... soldier or guard. Although, he supposes the weapon could just be for personal protection...]

Bed ten. [He splays his hand across his chest.] Teacher's assistant at one of the schools they have here for young kids and I'm with the Perimeter Guard now, too.

[The full introduction, so to speak.]

[wronganswer]

Her lungs burn as she heaves in her breaths, the muscles of her legs and arms singing with tension as she refuses to let them go. Anderson is damned if she'll back down from the first real challenge she's had since coming here, the first person to push her this far. She's used to being pushed-- Judge training is nothing if not merciless-- and failure does not dissuade her. It's not that she's perfect, or the fastest or the strongest or essentially the best at anything, but she doesn't give up.

This is what she wants to do with her life, protect people, and she'll work as hard as she has to to do that. She knows she has to be better than those she goes up against, because the first goal of any protector is to not die. If she's dead, everything she's trying to do dies with her. That's not her being conceited, it's just a fact. She has to keep going every time she stumbles, every time she misses some particular trick he wants her to learn, something that takes far more finesse than she's ever been called upon to do before. Judges get trained to a pretty high standard, but they're blunt, battering rams compared to the deftness of her trainer's fingers as he reloads or flicks away a cartridge. Nothing glamorous about it, pure functionality only. Everything efficient.

Anderson shines under it. Not literally-- she's sweating, hair in ragged clumps from the perspiration, has dirt smeared across her face from falls or slides through the brush. Her legs are trembling but her hands are rock steady. She is so focused and intent the rest of the world has ceased to exist. It's all burned out of her: there's no room left for worrying over the differences here, no space remaining to wonder if she belongs in Mega-City One after all. Her doubts have evaporated into the pure simplicity of again, again, again.

It spills out of her lips, too. "Again?" she asks, breathless, mindless with the repetition. She can't fathom a time when they'll stop.

She has no clue how many hours it's been already, but at least three. It has to be.

[adiuvio]

"Do you want to beat your own best record before we walk out of here?" John knows it's not a question. He crouches down behind her, counter in one hand and timer in the other.

"On my count. Three, two, one- go!"

Whether Anderson walks or crawls off the course isn't John's concern. His task isn't to spare Anderson's body, or her feelings, it's to provide her the support she needs to live up to her own expectations, and to prove to herself, once and for all, that she has what it takes.

John already knows she does.

She's tired. He can see it in the way she moves, the way she breathes, but more than that, she's determined. It's what keeps her hands steady when she shoots, striking every target. What keeps her feet moving as she climbs over fallen trees, quick, and steady, when one fall would be enough to disqualify her. What keeps her eyes, and mind, sharp enough to sweep behind her before slinging her rifle back over her shoulder and taking up her handgun to complete the last lap.

"Ahead, keep going ahead, you got twelve targets- ten targets!" She hits them all, for the first time, even though this is their hundredth time running the course.

"C'mon girl, what's behind that tank? You got it! Up and over!" Even John's legs are sore, one or both of his knees acting up as he climbs over the roof of the tank and drops down on the other side.

"Last target!" The final shot, the distance shot, which she couldn't stop moving if she wants to make time, is on the horizon. The setting sun cuts blindingly through the trees, casting hard shadows across the clearing.

"I know you see it! Line it up, line it up!" A bullet casing flies past John's cheek, and he knows she's got it even before he sees the hole blasted through the centre of the paper outline.

John doesn't announce her time, or her hit ratio, but he does throw down his gear to run over, grab Anderson by the waist and haul her up into the air.

"Victory!"

[wronganswer]

[ Anderson is exactly where she said she'd be, at the time she said she would be there-- she's dependable that way. And she is, in fact, a short blonde woman with a bulky pistol on her hip, stark and blatant over her plain hoodie and jeans.

Garrus is nothing if not obvious as one of the few non-humans walking around, and her eyebrows are up as they get nearer to one another. ]

I see you weren't kidding about the different planet thing.

sorry this took so long

[dispenserofjustice]

[If there is ever a f!Shep that apps, Garrus might definitely be reminded of her in this moment. It's a bulky pistol thing.

At least Anderson looks ready for trouble. Garrus can appreciate that. He isn't running around unarmed either. Likely never will be either. It's a new location and while it seems peaceful enough, the Turian doesn't trust it. He knows better.

His mandibles flick in a grin when Anderson finally makes a comment.]

Did you think I was? Or maybe you thought it'd be a costume? I haven't been to one of those parties for a while. Never could find anything to wear.