psl: reposession is a fact of life

[electro_kinetic]

When Noriko strolled through the door expecting to be back in her world, she had anticipated the bar dumping her back out actually into her world: about twelve feet past the door on her skates she realized quite abruptly that was not the case.

And came to a dead stop, balancing rocking on her skates as she takes in her surroundings.

"....What the legitimate fuck is this," she says out loud, head cocked and hands in her pockets. Her beacon-bright blue hair is almost luminous; someone might want to tell her to move.

Comments

[quick_clean_pure]

"An alleyway," answers a voice not too far away. He's not immediately noticeable; blame it on the face that he's a head poking out of a dumpster, clearly comfortable sitting amongst the bags of trash around him. He does have the courtesy to lean up and get a closer look at who's talking before he squints slightly.

"You might not want to be here, unless you're looking for a fix. This ain't the good part of town, kid."

[electro_kinetic]

Her head swivels in mild disbelief towards the voice, and she pinpoints the head poking out of the dumpster. "You think so, Copernicus?" she asks, before she really pauses to interpret the rest of how his words sounded.

"One: I ain't a kid," she says, "And I ain't lookin' for anything you got to sell." Been there, done that, no thank you.

[quick_clean_pure]

"Then you might want to make tracks," he says, blithely ignoring any offense she might have taken, still perched without any indication he might move. "The only people who hang out back here are junkies and repo men. And me, naturally, but I'm the least of your problems if you don't head back the way you come."

[electro_kinetic]

"The fuck you think I got that needs to be repossessed?" she asks, now mildly concerned for this dude's sanity. She has literally nothing that couldn't be paid for in one installment on her, to begin with, and the confusion definitely shows on her face.

"I'm not running off anywhere until I figure out where the fuck I am." Haring off half-cocked is not the way to end up where she wants to be, this much she has learned very well. "Something I notice you're being super helpful with, garbage-can dude."

[quick_clean_pure]

"I mean, nothing, if you don't have any debts," he said, tilting his head curiously. This girl seemed way too out of sorts and unfamiliar with the things he was saying. Nothing he'd told her was that strange to the people of this place, but she definitely didn't seem to have any clue. Weird. Was she high on something?

"You're in the bad part of the city, not far from the cemetery," he answers. "There's not much more to it than that. Nobody comes around here unless they want drugs, they sell drugs, or they sleep in the streets. Or some combination of the three."

[electro_kinetic]

"I literally just walked out of a door and into this alley," Noriko says. "I haven't looked at anything, much less accrued any debt. I don't even know what city we're in, because this looks like no part of the New York I was supposed to be walking into."

And now, she is Concerned. Because this means all sorts of bad things if she has indeed been dumped into the wrong world.

What the actual fuck.

[quick_clean_pure]

...okay that's definitely not right. He frowns. Maybe she really was high? Or just really confused?

"New York is thousands of miles from here," he answers, looking her over, trying to parse this out. "You're in Genetic City. On the west coast. Or whatever's left of it, at any rate."

[electro_kinetic]

"Nah, man. You gotta be fuckin' with me."

Sure, she'd made it from New York to Denver in a couple hours before, but she knew how long that had taken and she rememered the passage of time for it happening. Doing it instantaneously, and going farther, that should be impoosible.

Then again, her entire existence should have been impossible.

"Genetic...City. The fuck does that even mean? You guys have some kind of flatscans-only rule?" That would be just her luck.

[quick_clean_pure]

"I'm really not," he says, clearly concerned. Zydrate didn't make people hallucinate, and that was the main drug on the market. Was she on something else? No one could zap to the city from the East Coast, not even the Largos. Maybe she'd hit her head?

"...it means this is Genetic City, with GeneCo," he says, now starting to genuinely think maybe this girl was either unwell or had taken a hit to the brain. "Like, the Largos and the surgeries and all that. That's where you are."

[electro_kinetic]

Her face is every bit as nonplussed with what he's saying as he is with hers.

"The Largos? What surgeries? The only surgery I've ever had was to fix a shattered rib when it punctured my lung, and my arm. Hank did those, we didn't go a hospital."

[quick_clean_pure]

"You don't know who the Largos are?" he asks. Was she a time traveller? Everyone in the world knew Rotti Largo, after the plague. Even people on the other end of the globe knew him. That made no sense.

"The family of the guy who basically saved the world. Because of the plague, and people's organs failing. So he invented surgeries to fix them. Those Largos."

Tilting his head, he asks, "Genuine question: you wake up from a coma, maybe?"

[electro_kinetic]

"No?" she asks, shoving a hand through her hair. "Where I come from, the only people whose organs just randomly fail are people who've been exposed to massive raditation."

What the hell did she walk into?

"No, no coma. This is the twenty-first century, right? 2022, somewhere around there?"

[quick_clean_pure]

What. What. He hadn't even been born in 2022.

"It's 2056," he says, a little more urgently. "You're not -- you didn't, like, escape from someplace, right? Or hit your head? Nothing you're saying is right."

[electro_kinetic]

"20...56," she repeats, and a sudden realization hits her like a sack of bricks, leaving her sitting abruptly as her knees fold. She's only done this one other time and it had been unintentional then too, but noboy had any idea how it had worked, only that it had, and now she was alone.

And kind of screwed.

"Oh shit," she murmured, looking vaguely horrified. How the hell was she going to get back?

[quick_clean_pure]

"Yeah," he says, tone flat even if he was still looking a bit concerned. Unless she was about to start explaining some time travel shit, he was gonna have to assume she was in over her head. And maybe suffering a brain injury.

"You're also not in a good part of town for someone lost, truth be told," he adds. "Like, I can give you directions to somewhere less shitty, but, uh. I'm not sure what you'd be able to do once you did."

[electro_kinetic]

"Trust me, the dumpster-and-druggie side of town is probably safer for someone like me," Noriko mutters, raking her fingers gently through her hair.

"This is going to sound like I'm crazy if I explain," she prefaces. "But...I'm from 2022 and I absolutely didn't intend to be here. But now I don't know how to get back."

[quick_clean_pure]

"Huh. All right."

Graverobber doesn't immediately believe what she's saying. He's seen weird shit, sure, but he's also seen a lot of people say weird shit because of drugs or illness or trauma or what-the-fuck-ever.

But: the core truth of it seemed to be that she was a girl lost, far from where she was supposed to be, and that was more pressing than the how of it all. So he doesn't question it, instead glancing around the alleyways nearby.

"Well, I mean, I don't know much about time travel and all that. But I can get you to a different part of town where you're more likely to have, like -- other people to ask for help, and all that. 'M not sure I can do much in terms of getting you back on my own."

[electro_kinetic]

Noriko blew out a breath and shoved her hands through her hair.

"Son of a bitch, I would end up in a world without mutants. Just what I need."

[quick_clean_pure]

That earns her a couple of confused blinks. The more she kept talking, the weirder it got. Maybe she was injured to the head...?

"You mean like -- people with the wrong number of body parts or something?" he asks, unsure. "I mean, there's probably some, but that doesn't sound like what you're looking for."

[electro_kinetic]

"In...some cases, but I don't have any. What I mean is mutations like electrokinesis. Like what I do." She lifts a hand that crackles and glows with electric current, like lightning webbed over her metal-fingered hand.

"It has some...complications."

[quick_clean_pure]

Whoa. He'd been casually going along with what she'd been saying without worrying too much about believing it, but that was before she was crackling sparks in her hand. In spite of himself, his eyes go wide at the way the lightning arcs and webs across her fingers.

"Well, shit," he says, not sure what else he even could say. "You just -- have that? All the time?"

[electro_kinetic]

"Believe me, if I could figure out a way to turn it off, I would have by now," she says. "The side-effects can be a real bitch."

[quick_clean_pure]

"Huh." It takes him a second to mentally readjust to this new version of reality where people could just -- do. That. His world had a lot of weird shit in it, but, well, that was new. Maybe Rotti Largo could make a market for it.

Luckily for Noriko, he could roll with it, even if he was still trying to process aspects of what was being said. "Side effects like what? Shocking yourself on accident?"

[electro_kinetic]

"Like short-circuiting your heart or your brain from fifty paces."

Said into her hands, obviously trying to roll with this new wave but not succeeding very well. "Shit, shit, shit. What year is this again?"

[quick_clean_pure]

"2056," he answers, before casually adding, "Also, I'd prefer if you didn't short-circuit my heart or brain, I'm still using them, I think."

He really wasn't sure what to do in this situation. It wasn't like he was a guy with resources, apart from syringes, needs, and a shovel, if that counted. With a shrug, he says, "Though, uh, with skills like those, I'm sure you could find a way to use 'em. Assuming you can't get back."