2021-07-04 - Lightning and Thunder

Isi has new shoes. This is only remarkable in the fact that it's remarkable to HER. They're nice running/hiking shoes for uncertain environments. It's probably a hit to anyone else who joins up the TYPE of hike she's intending to lead today.

Everyone is overwhelmed with storm stuff, and so if one can toss in to help, they're being asked to. After presenting her credentials and experience she's been given a list of names of people who live fairly far out from town and haven't made it back. Along side a local first responder they've gathered a group to head out and look for one name on the list in particular.

Emmett Watts isn't a particularly social type. He's older and prefers people to stay away. It's pretty likely that he's completely cut off and despite the fact that he's an angry SOB, they're going to go check on him anyway.

The worst thing that could happen would be for him to yell at them to go away.
% Or be dead. It's fine.

Ravn Abildgaard has a busy schedule -- and more so this week. There's that little matter of a tropical storm? And of course there is the knowledge that Isi -- whom he has found he likes -- deciding to do the right thing and volunteer to help people (just like he does, and yes, that is totally different), and yes, he fully expects her to be heading out there in the lull of a storm. Because she's that kind of person -- the one who goes fuck you, I do what I want at a storm. He's not entirely sure Isi is the church bazaar volunteering type -- but she is the look out for your community type, and Gray Harbor is her community now.

So sure enough, here's Ravn, wind breaker up around his ears, limping slightly, walking up with fast strides and praying that the hurricane shelter doesn't explode in his absence. "I had a feeling you'd be out here," he says by means of greeting. "Wherever you're going, should be careful to not be more than a few hours. They say the storm's going to pick up again anytime. Do we know where we are going to go looking?"

Isi can't help but smirk at Ravn's reply, but it's a tired god-so-many-people kind of smirk. "I was about to go stir crazy staying inside. At this point I think it would be preferable to drown in storm surge at this point." She moves slightly away from the first responded and lowers her voice to talk directly to Raven (and anyone else about.) "He doesn't have the glow, right? I'm not crazy?"

"He is right." That's the responder, now to be called Nick R. "The storm looks like it is coming back soon, so we need to find Mr. Watt and get out quickly. Let's go."

He's probably a red shirt guys.

Did someone order a bossy blond? No? Too bad.

Much like last time, Cassidy isn't meeting up for anything. She just happens to be out walking today and taking advantage of this lull in the weather. She's in black leggings, bright cyan running sneakers and an 'OMG that's really pink!' pink short sleeve shirt.

She also has the fanny pack again filled with what you might expect: pepper spray, concealed razor blade, whistle, handgun. The usual.

Cassidy looks up from her phone (finally) to check where she's going. "Oh hey Rav. Hey Isi."

Blissfully unaware that he is about to go walking in a storm with at least one gun-toting psychopath with a fanny pack full of murder weapons, Ravn glances at Isi. "I don't actually know," he confides. "I'm not familiar with this Mr Watt. But if he's lost out here I reckon we better try to find him before the storm picks back up. Do we have any idea where we're looking?"

He nods a greeting to Cassidy. "Good of you to come join us." No need to mention the Sig 9mm in his own coat pocket -- it's not like it's his anyway, he stole it off a shelter resident.

Isi is NOT armed, so go Cassidy and Ravn for being prepared. She blinks at the woman and her SHIRT before whistling slightly. "Girl, you got more bravery than anyone should."

Nick R. is marshaling the troops now, so Isi doesn't have much more time for chatter. He's leading the way off into the forest. "The main road is down," he calls out to explain why they're not y'know, driving to Watt's place. "Trees that'll take too long to get out of the way. This trail should lead the way to his house and back out again. Watt's used it more than once."

INTO THE FOREST. It's very wet. Thankfully, no one is wearing white, right?

Ravn hasn't worn white since he was seventeen and his mother made him dress up for a family event and he got even by deliberately spilling the entire punch bowl in the lap of Her Grace, the Dowager Countess Miehe-Renard and since then no one complained in the slightest that she didn't bring that lanky, sulky teenager, thank you very much. Definitely not wearing white.

"I wonder which part of 'hole up and lie low' people don't get," he murmurs, with the pained voice of someone who's spent three days in a hurricane shelter, telling people that no, actually, they can't just nip home a mo for something and yes, actually, high altitude winds and flying debris can kill you. Yes, also if you're driving. Also, he's watched Frozen twenty-one times and he's about ready to kill the vegan teenager who keeps asking him questions about the food.

Maybe he came out here to just get some peace and quiet in a nice and tranquil hurricane.

Cassidy blinks at Isi for a moment as her commentary sinks onto her airhead space. "Oh!" she puts her fingers to her face, "Girl, I know! I was worried I might have too light a complexion for this foundation but I think it blends really well, actually, and I hear it's great for breakouts and stuff."

The blond steps in line to follow the crowd after not really listening to Nick R at all and still unaware of what's going on.

Isi can't help but laugh at Cassidy's words, "I meant the shirt! The foundation does work - but is it waterproof?" It's an important question to ask. Despite the lull the group is ALREADY getting drenched. The trees don't keep the water from the ground completely - they just delay its progress downwards.

She glances back at Ravn for that mutter and cocks a smile. "I don't see you holing up anywhere Mister. "

Nick R. also hears the commentary and calls out, "Watt's one of those solitary types. Doesn't like people, and I swear we respond to a hiker complaining he pulled a shot gun on them at least once a year. Doesn't like people on his land - doesn't like people period."

So maybe it's a good idea that several of them are armed.

"I'm at the hurricane shelter at the high school," Ravn returns. "Most of the homeless people and a number of folks from the trailer park. And a handful of stranded yachters, so we have a quite delightful range of argum--"

He looks up. Then sighs. "Here we go again."

Nick R and Cassidy Bennett may live in the illusion of a perfectly normal tropical storm. Ravn Abildgaard does not.

Cassidy unties that jacket that was around her waist (👀) and slips it on. It is ALSO pink. Very. "It IS waterproof, AND nourishing."

She marches along with the rest of them. "Oh I love lightning," she murmurs.

Nick R. glances upwards in worry. "That's a sign it might be getting ready to storm again - let's pick up the pace." Pick up the pace means that Nick is going to start jogging and he expects that his volunteers (does Cassidy know she's been enveloped in volunteering? Does Nick R. realize that she probably hasn't signed a waiver yet? These are important questions to deliberate on at some point.)

Isi glances upwards herself too, responding back to Ravn with. "Back home we have stories about lighting. Never thought they could be true." Hello foreshadowing.

A glance at Cassidy, "Was that sarcasm, or do you like dangerous things? "

"... You eat your foundation?" There are things Ravn does not know about women's make-up. This is clear.

Then he needs his asthmatic breath for walking fast / running slow, and refrains from making more observations about feminine war paint. He follows Nick's lead and hopes to whatever power that might be that Isi's folklore and his gut feeling is wrong.

Except, gut feelings are never wrong. "Please, please, not an Aztec fertility goddess again," the man murmurs, in a voice that's positively traumatised.

"For your skin, loser." Cassidy sasses at Ravn and sticks out her tongue.

She frowns, "Lightning's not dangerous. It's like 1 in a billion you get hit by it...Hey, Siri! What are the chances of being struck by lightning?"

'Bleep bloop - the chances of being struck by lightning are 1 / 750,000'

"See?"

Even Isi has to roll her eyes at Raven for THAT comment. It's a non-verbal echo of Cassidy's loser comment.

"A fertility goddess? For someone who doesn't get around RAvn... you get around." Isi says aloud though, eyeing the sky above them with wary concern. Lightning should NOT look like a bird. At all. The snakes make her doubt just enough though that she keeps a weather, get it? eye on the sky when the trees open up.

"You know what's a fundamental tenet of Aztec faith?" Ravn murmurs, ignoring the ribbing about make-up and getting rather distracted looking for snakes, raptors, and any combination thereof. "That the year is a cycle. And that to continue to the cycle, there must be sacrifice. And this is why meeting an Aztec fertility goddess is not half the fun erotic adventure you are thinking of, and a hell of a lot more oh god, run for your life."

Cassidy is with Isi on this one, "We need to get you laid, Rav."

Then a fucking tree is falling down? Wtf even is this hike?!?! UGH! Cassidy yelps and scrambles out of the way. After the scene clears she's there with her hands balled into little fists held at her chest.

"S-see? Now that it was so close, chances of it doing that again are, like, 1 in 3 trillion...."

"She tried to eat us, not get us in the sack," Ravn murmurs, not paying much attention to the fact that least Cassidy probably assumes he's drunk. Or crazy. Or both. Or maybe just exhausted from four days in a hurricane shelter and quietly hallucinating.

Maybe he is exhausted. At least he looks up and adds, "Also, they're smaller."

Because feathered raptors made from light, toppling trees in a hurricane is apparently perfectly normal and nothing to get excited about. Ask a man who's been forced to watch Frozen twenty-one times in less than a week.

Trudging along at the fringes of the group, one could be forgiven for not noticing Gray Harbour's eminent police chief. He's somehow been roped into accompanying this stupid excursion, on the grounds of being the designated first responder. Since Sergeant fucking Patel had to go get his appendix out. A likely excuse.

He frowns at the sight of the lightning, though; fingertips brush the grip of his gun, and he prowls forward with a snap of underbrush beneath his boots. "The fuck," he mutters. Then a little louder, so the others can hear him, "You see that?"

Isi is too stunned by the sight in the sky that she doesn't move even when the tree starts to fall. It's only when the first branches slam down that she's shaken out of her staring enough to dive sideways. On her butt now she rolls over and looks upwards saying a single word, "Thunderbird." There's an overtone of complete reverence as she stares.

"Going to shoot the thunder, Javier?" Cassidy snerks as she crunches leaves to step back in 'formation' - still not totally aware they are doing a search and maybe rescue.

She stops over Isi and offers her hand to help the other woman up. "Are you guys, like, extreme weather watchers or something?"

"Thunderbird. Of course." Ravn blinks and looks back at Isi. "I'm not very familiar with that legend. How screwed are we, on a rate from oh look, pretty birdy to oh well, it was nice to know you?"

He too lets a fingertip trail across a pocket; just checking that Mrs Jankowski's Sig still is where he wants it to be -- and knowing full well that it probably will make no difference whatsoever. Myths tend to not really care a whole lot about lead.

"I... I don't know." Isi replies to Ravn as she takes Cassidy's hand and is pulled up to her feet again. She probably looks even more crazy than Ravn, having gone white under her naturally browned skin. "The... the stories are different. I mean, sometimes the Thunderbird helps? Other times it kidnaps hunters to help it... sometimes it throws ice from its cave to anyone who comes near it."

A quick glance, and then a little double-take from the captain when Cassidy speaks. Something at the corners of his eyes; irritation? "The fuck are you doing here?" he rumbles low, then shifts his attention back to the flash and shudder of lightning arcing across the sky. To Ravn, without looking over, "You know that's stolen property, yeah? Going to have to get you to surrender it for processing."

To Isi, "Well, let's hope this one's not too bloodthirsty. I'm going to try something." His hand drops from his gun, and he prowls in a little closer to the broken treeline.

"Hiking," duh, "it's called exercise..." Cassidy answers to Ruiz as she pulls Isi to her feet. She brushes her hands together and does her best to follow the conversation but ultimately decides they're crazy, or talking about Final Fantasy, or....what she's always suspected about this town..... She backs away a bit, "I didn't stumble in on some LARPing event did I?"

That's right. Cassidy is convinced that 60% of this town is involved in some weird LARPing group.

"I was just going to give it back to her when I'm sure she doesn't shoot Mrs Neely's cats in the high school hurricane shelter," Ravn murmurs back to Ruiz. "But you think it's better I hand it in at the station, I'll do that. Not entirely comfortable with Mrs Jankowski as a firearms owner, not going to lie."

Then he glances to Cassidy. "If this is LARPing then it's got the worst possible timing. There's a bloody hurricane on. And I am pretty sure that toppling trees on top of people is not quite something you can apply for a permit for at city hall. I can think of at least one zoning inspector who'll have a fit at the idea of harming landmarks and old trees as it is." Hyacinth Addington, the woman who will plot your death for looking at an antique lamp post wrong.

Cassidy stares at Ravn with her mouth slightly open and slightly smiling. It's the classic 'caught you in the act and it's kinda funny' look. "Was all that word vomit supposed to distract me from you not only not having a CPL but also carrying a stolen firearm?" See? She does catch on to some things. She thumbs toward Ruiz, "Give it, Rav."

OKAY PEOPLE, but there is a HUGE GOD LIKE BIRD UP THERE.

This is why Isi's not responding to the conversation about stolen or maybe not stolen firearms. She's staring. Don't mind her.

. o O (It's just thunder clouds like c'mon ppl)

Whatever the hell it is de la Vega's doing, it probably doesn't fall under LARPing. He's gotten rather still, his chin lifted so he can look the lightning creature square in whatever passes for its eyes. And Ravn, at least, will be aware of a startlingly similar energy around the cop. The slightest scent of ozone; the taste of an electrical charge coating every inch of his skin. As if he, too, is made from it, and just waiting for the circuit to close so he can ruin something.

But for now, nothing's being ruined. Nothing's being torn or broken. He almost looks like he's listening; his brows knit together, and he turns to the others, and explains, "Wants to know what the fuck we want."

"Try 'stop frenzied housewife from firing into crowd at hurricane shelter randomly by swiping her bloody firearm'," Ravn murmurs. "But no, I don't intend to keep it. And no, I do not have a concealed carry license."

If he sounds distracted it might in fact be because of -- well, huge god like bird up there. Somehow, paperwork around firearms seems a little... inconsequential. In a sort of 'yes, whatever, I'll pay the fine later' kind of way.

He's not very surprised that of all the people present the one who can talk to electrical chickens is de la Vega. "To find Mr Watt and bring him home safely," he suggests. It is the point, after all. Besides discussing the state laws about firearms, possession and concealment of.

These crazies with their stupid LARPing can kiss a fish. It's just thunder clouds because - HELLO! - there's a storm? Now, packing heat without a CPL? STOLEN heat?

"Give the fucking gun to the cop, Rav." and if her authoritative bossiness is accentuated by lightning strikes, well -- wouldn't be the first time. It only makes her more badass anyway. Hate to see what that lightning might do if she actually cared enough to order an arrest.

De la Vega just sort of continues to.. stand there for a while, as the others argue. Dark eyes squinted up at the sky, big shoulders hunched with tension as light slams into the ground in bright, hot spindles. He swallows, jaw working with the effort not to release that electrical potential in his fingertips. But he doesn't back down.

"Sure," Ravn murmurs, deciding to definitely pretend to let Cassidy have her way -- after all, he knows that she is not seing First Nations deities up there. He just takes a while fumbling in his wind breaker for that little Sig with the mother-of-pearl handle only a middle-aged housewife could love. Apparently it's buried itself well and good and hence, he's too busy fumbling for it to distract de la Vega from whatever the police chief is actually doing. In grifter terms, we call this 'a distraction'.

Cassidy eyes that mother-of-pearl handle. "Cute g---ahh!" and is swept away by a strong gust of wind. She oofs on her butt and then backwards somersaults into a bush that finally cushions her motions.

Turning his head away quickly as that force buffets him back, the Mexican somehow manages to remain standing. Perhaps by sheer force of determination. Breathing hard like he's just run a marathon, he spends a moment or two taking stock of things before crashing off through the underbrush to go track down the ADA. Last thing they need is another person going missing around here. "Bennet?" he barks, switching immediately to Cop Voice.

"For fanden da osse," Ravn mumbles -- a good, solid oath in his native because yes, actually, that hurts when you have neuropathy and don't see it coming. Also, he's grateful for the concept of safety catches on firearms. Peeling himself off the ground he glances to the Police chief (sorry, Nick, you thought you were in charge? Come back when you glow in the dark). He takes his cue from the other man's bark and looks around for a quick headcount (say, Nick, are you even still with us?).

Isi is fine too, just over here having a small crisis of faith. It's fine. She's here.

"Yeah, I'm fine!" Cassidy calls out after pulling herself up. She works on brushing debris, like leaves and shit, off her attire. She then starts walking back to join the others.

"Alright, give him the gun, Rav, quit stalling." Pick it back up where we left off? Because, you know, nothing odd happened. Just a little gale or windspout or - she doesn't freaking know, she's not like a weather scientist or whatever, ok!?

Ruiz halts his approach once the blonde, likely with a few twigs still caught in her hair, emerges from wherever she'd been tossed. He's briefly distracted by the sound of voices over yonder; Nick seems to have found Mr. Watt, at least. So that answers that.

Then there's the matter of the Sig that doesn't belong to Ravn, and of course Cassidy's going to be a stickler about it. He trudges back over to the others, slides his baseball cap off for a moment so he can scruff his fingers through his curls and murmur, "Hand it over. Make things easier on yourself, yeah?"

Ravn has no particular desire to hold on to the piece in the first place and he's more than happy to fork it over to the Chief, now that the Chief is not busy trying to wrangle a god. He doesn't hesitate in the slightest.

"Do we need to go check that Mr Watt doesn't set the dogs on our gallant leader?" he murmurs and glances back in the direction of the voices. "Weather like this, might be more to this than just someone chasing people off their lawn."

Since discharging one's own rifle and 'releasing the hounds' on one's own property is not illegal in the state of Washington, Cassidy just shrugs in the direction of the voices. "Sounds like he's okay." So she turns and starts walking back the way they came.

Whatever his feelings on the matter, de la Vega's forced to agree on the matter of the legality firearms on private property. He squints thataway for a moment, but seems to relax a touch once Nick reappears. To Ravn, a quietly murmured, "Gracias, perdón por esto," as the Sig's handed over. He'll check to see that it's safetied, of course. Then unload the magazine, and shove piece and clip in his jacket pockets separately.

Then a quick, flickered smile for the Dane, and a shake of his head for Nick. "Nope. We're going to get the fuck out of here. I'll send a unit out for a wellness check in the morning, once he's had a chance to calm down." And with that, he's turning to head off after Cassidy.

"Works for me," Ravn agrees and turns to follow, having no particular desire to end up with buckshot in his backside, either. "If he does end up coming down to the shelter? Tell him to leave his rifle at home, please. One gun-toting maniac on the premises was enough."

Isi's just over here shaking her head slowly. She'll take a cue from Cassidy and retreat. Occasionally she'll throw her eyes back towards the sky where the Thunderbird was as if utterly dumbfounded by the sight and trying to talk herself out of it.

Nick shrugs, glancing back at where Watt probably still is lurking, his gun out for some liberal to come an invade his home again. Pansies who can't even deal with a little bit of rain. (He's alone too much guys.)

Cassidy mutters under her breath, "...fucking LARPers..."