Quentin "did you ever have a sister?" Compson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shadowstepped) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
riverviewlogs2017-06-20 12:59 pm
shadowstepped) wrote in riverviewlogs2017-06-20 12:59 pm
( closed ) too much sanity may be madness
who: Quentin Compson, Cassandra Anderson, and Rin McPrettyelf
what: Saving a damsel in distress (guess which one is the damsel)
when: Time is an illusion
where: Somewhere outside the gates
warnings: Mild violence
What compels Quentin - unarmed, inexperienced, and alone - outside of the walls and into that which had been reclaimed by nature, by the disdain of that God of the Old Testament, is no mission or spirit of Manifest Destiny, but rather a cloying desire to simply vanish for a few hours. In his daily wandering, with his thoughts as peripatetic as his footsteps treading his shadow, it had seemed to him that the buildings towered too high, their windows gleaming too brightly like the water's surface catching the sun, and the people too numerous, each one of them rooted in different soil and sustained by different air. All of this striking him quite suddenly, as if he did not notice the water until it was sloshing over his nose and mouth and rushing in his ears. Perhaps too it is some shadow of a boy's recklessness, which he in his youth confuses for bravery, that lingers on him - the solemn recklessness with which he and a troop of boys of a particular age had once trampled the overgrown yard that swathed the sunken carcass of the Sutpen house, only to run (for what he couldn't say, but it wasn't terror) when they found the placid-faced wizened Negro woman still guarding the ruins of greatness.
He is alone, and then suddenly he is not. A faint clattering atop the loosened tiles of an abandoned house yanks his attention to where, through the thick tangles of vines, he sees a pair of butter yellow eyes perched upon a gnarled brown snout, the face lizard-like but the body ballooned beyond all probable proportions. Quentin holds perfectly still, holding the beast's gaze and watching it crawl down the eaves. Wondering if it is fear that arrests him there or the complete absence of it, the forgetting of it. Wondering when it might leap for him, or if it would leap for him at all, and knowing that turning his back to run would only lash the beast after him, because one should never run from a wild predator whose eye he has caught.
what: Saving a damsel in distress (guess which one is the damsel)
when: Time is an illusion
where: Somewhere outside the gates
warnings: Mild violence
What compels Quentin - unarmed, inexperienced, and alone - outside of the walls and into that which had been reclaimed by nature, by the disdain of that God of the Old Testament, is no mission or spirit of Manifest Destiny, but rather a cloying desire to simply vanish for a few hours. In his daily wandering, with his thoughts as peripatetic as his footsteps treading his shadow, it had seemed to him that the buildings towered too high, their windows gleaming too brightly like the water's surface catching the sun, and the people too numerous, each one of them rooted in different soil and sustained by different air. All of this striking him quite suddenly, as if he did not notice the water until it was sloshing over his nose and mouth and rushing in his ears. Perhaps too it is some shadow of a boy's recklessness, which he in his youth confuses for bravery, that lingers on him - the solemn recklessness with which he and a troop of boys of a particular age had once trampled the overgrown yard that swathed the sunken carcass of the Sutpen house, only to run (for what he couldn't say, but it wasn't terror) when they found the placid-faced wizened Negro woman still guarding the ruins of greatness.
He is alone, and then suddenly he is not. A faint clattering atop the loosened tiles of an abandoned house yanks his attention to where, through the thick tangles of vines, he sees a pair of butter yellow eyes perched upon a gnarled brown snout, the face lizard-like but the body ballooned beyond all probable proportions. Quentin holds perfectly still, holding the beast's gaze and watching it crawl down the eaves. Wondering if it is fear that arrests him there or the complete absence of it, the forgetting of it. Wondering when it might leap for him, or if it would leap for him at all, and knowing that turning his back to run would only lash the beast after him, because one should never run from a wild predator whose eye he has caught.
no subject
On the whole, even the normal elements of flora and fauna around the Quarantine zone amaze her. She takes a long, leisurely walk-- more a hike-- on her first day off from police training, armed and armored because she is not stupid. Going anywhere foreign necessitates preparing for the worst, however idyllic this all seems to her. Anderson quickly becomes lost in her thoughts, enjoying the relative isolation out here, opening up her psychic abilities to their fullest expanse in a wide, light sweep. It doesn't take self-control for her to refrain from scanning, but it's still enjoyable to expand outward, like stretching a stiff limb. There's no privacy concerns out here for her to trouble herself with, and she is not particularly good at reading animals past the very barest surface layer.
It's to her own surprise that she senses a human mind at the edges of her perception as she heads back in from her trek. Not only that, but a familiar one. She can't quite place it, the signal like a radio channel outside of its reception zone, staticky and indistinct. But there is a distinct tinge of distress to it, something Anderson is incredibly primed to sense, and she heads off at a faster clip toward it.
no subject
He's making his way through the overgrowth when he hears an animal snuffling nearby. A large animal. Probably hostile. He pauses, going still, and listens carefully--he picks up breathing, too, shallow and nervous. Very close. Rin parts the curtain of vines before him, and spots both Quentin and the beast.
Damn it.
He has half a mind to just keep walking. It's not his problem. Quentin's a jackass.
But that monster looks ready to charge, and Quentin is just so skinny.
Rin slides a dagger from his vest, cursing himself all the while. He aims, clenches his jaw, and throws--aiming to hit the thing right in its buttery eye.
no subject
The beast lets loose a scream that seems as if it ought to be consigned to some deep sandy pit of Hell, and in its bloodied half-blindness it stumbles down from the roof, tossing its head about as if to shake off the pain in the way that dogs shake off water. Quentin has hunted game and borne solemn and curious witness to the slaughter of livestock, yet never has he heard such a terrible sound rattle the air.
When he scrambles backward to give the wolf-sized lizard a wide berth in its rage, his heel catches on a tree root punching through the reclaimed pavement and down he crashes. His legs failing him (more jelly than flesh and sinew), he continues his retreat on hands and heels like a crab scuttling from a seagull's prying beak, except all his softest parts are perfectly vulnerable as he drags himself along, frantically throwing a look over first one shoulder than the other.
"Is someone there?" he calls. "Come on now, show yourself!"
Even in terror's grip, he tries awful hard to sound brave for a guy (a kid, really) fumbling around on the ground.
no subject
It's then that she hears Quentin's voice and places just who it is she'd felt. Oh, damn, it's her roommate. One of the people she'd already placed on her internal probably useless in a fight list. She moves faster, drawing her Lawgiver and clicking off the safety as she comes up from behind him.
"Quentin?" she calls back, judging from the animal screech that it's a wild threat and not a human one. If the latter, stealth is more called for, but she still has a hard time navigating the woods normally, much less stealthily. "Is that--"
She freezes, seeing the enormous lizard then, and fires immediately. The thing is so large it's impossible to miss. Her pistol muzzle had been leading the way, anyway. The first shot doesn't do much against its thick, armored hide, and she announces in a clipped tone, "Armor piercing." There's a short delay as the gun switches ammunition before she's able to fire again.
no subject
Rin plucks another dagger from its hiding place, aims carefully, and then throws--the weapon hisses through the air, its sharp edge going directly for the creature's other eye. Always go for the soft parts, he thinks.
sorry for the delay!
"Miss Anderson, look out!" he says, the warning as unnecessary as his sense of chivalry in this moment.
Perhaps his mistake is in forgetting that he himself is the prey. He is rising to is feet again - or attempting the act of rising, of fighting against the uselessness of his liquefied legs - when the beast, blinded now by blood and rage and impelled by desperation, twists its body and lashes its long scaly tail like a whip. Quentin throws his arms up as a poor shield behind which to duck, but the force of the lizard's tail cracks his arm into his face and flattens him to the ground once more. He tastes the coppery tang before he feels the pain throbbing at the center of his face. He rolls over then, spitting out blood and retreating at a crawl before the beast can strike again.
no subject
No time to wonder at the whole situation now: Quentin being flattened to the ground has one advantage, which is providing her a clear shot. Anderson takes it immediately.
The switch in ammo does the job. Armor piercing rounds can blast through concrete walls and then straight through a human torso-- not even extradimensional reptile hide can withstand it. She follows it up with a second shot to make sure, the entry wound tight and the exit wound large and messy, gore splattering across the grass, fortunately on the other side and away from Quentin thanks to trajectory.
She trots forward swiftly, holding her gun out and steady as she goes in case it's still alive. She has no experience telling when something like this is dead. "Quentin, you mobile?"
Because she still doesn't know who'd thrown that knife, and it seems like they were helping, but she trusts no one, and she can't feel anything.
no subject
The creature is not moving, but Rin doesn't take that as a sure sign of death; he's seen plenty of beasts fake it, even while grievously injured. He's too far away for a good assessment, though, so he takes now as his cue. He jumps from the tree, graceful as an acrobat, landing on his feet with hardly so much as a rustle of leaves. He straightens up, tossing his pale braid over his shoulder, and saunters over to the maimed beast.
"I see you just make friends everywhere you go," he says, eyes on the creature, left hand on the long dagger at his waist.
no subject
"Yeah, I'm all right," he insists. The beast had left him little worse off than Gerald Bland had that final day in Cambridge, and he had cleaned himself up then, effacing from countenance and clothing the marks of their struggle. (If it could be called a struggle at all, the way Gerald had boxed him around like he really was just a doll filled with sawdust as his father said all of mankind were, filled with the refuse of all that had come before them.)
Rin he recognizes at once for his midnight skin and anachronistic silver hair, and although it's the lizard's corpse to which the elf turns his attention, Quentin just about bristles at him in the manner of an animal trying to disguise itself as something fiercer, which in the process of doing so also attempts to convince itself of this mistruth.
"I'd have made it just fine if I'd had a rifle with me."
no subject
That question tacitly answered, she keeps her gun trained on the ostensible corpse and nods at Rin. Obviously someone used to working with a partner when necessary. "You want to check it?" Strange times make for strange bedfellows and all that.
She keeps her sight where it belongs, on the lizard, but answers Quentin in a tone fighting to be even and not exasperated. "So why don't you have your rifle with you?" Anderson tries not to be snippy, but honestly, what is he doing out here unarmed?
no subject
He's put out both its eyes, and Anderson's gun did pretty much everything else.
"This is an ex-beast," he declares, nudging its hide gently with the hilt of his dagger. The bullets tore the creature apart, but some of the tough skin looks like it might be salvageable. Could be worth something. A task for later, though.
He turns to them, sighing specifically at Quentin. "And a 'you're welcome' would suffice, darling."
No manners on this boy.
no subject
His voice possesses a constrained quality, stiff as if he is clamping down anger that tries to rise up - anger for what, he cannot say, whether for Rin's patronizing or his own needing to be rescued or their having rescued him at all. His gaze is pinned neither to Anderson nor Rin, nor the bloodied corpse of the beast, but to nothing in particular. The greenery of the trees, the heavy stillness of the air that is different from the particular stillness that hangs in the air in Mississippi, the odor here not of honeysuckle but of alien flora, and he can hardly smell anything at present. From his pants pocket he tugs a handkerchief, with which he dabs at his bloodied lip and nose. He spares Rin a brief but cutting glare.
"I told you not to call me that."
He had not, but he thinks it was implied rather loudly and clearly.
no subject
"Next time you come out here, don't go unarmed," she says to him nonetheless, implacable where personal defense is concerned. She's from such a dangerous setting, and the wilderness is still so unfamiliar to her as a whole, that she can't condone anything else.
no subject
Said implications did not slip his mind. Neither did Quentin's direct insults, which are fueling his present state of spite.
He yanks his daggers out of the beast's eyes, one by one, looking stoic as gore sprays from each gooey wound. He wipes the blades on the grass--careful, not cursory--and then strides over to the two of them.
"Next time I'll keep walking, shall I?"
no subject
Quentin looks right at him then, lowering the now bloodstained handkerchief from his nose so as not to spoil the effect. While he is often as mild-mannered as his appearance would suggest, something about the peculiar man agitates his temper like fire agitates a pot of water.
"Go right on ahead," he says.
no subject
She really has been mellowing while she's been here, because she openly rolls her eyes. "Alright, boys, settle down. I'm not here to babysit. Thanks for the assist," she says to Rin, and then turns to Quentin again, "and I'm glad you're okay."
Going from exasperated to genuinely compassionate in the same breath is just how she is.
no subject
He swallows his rage like a hot coal, lets it sit and burn in his stomach. No point losing his cool this soon. He turns to Anderson, smiling like it's Sunday morning.
"No problem at all," he says, bowing his head slightly. "I assume you're more than capable of escorting this one back to where he belongs?"