logsinthenight | keep me going 'til the night turns into the day

Entry tags:

bucky barnes (gail)

keep me going 'til the night turns into the day

characters: Johnnie Redmayne, anyone who still tags here, yes even you
location: Bonfire Square, North Beacon, wherever you want him tbh
date/time: I GUESS NOW?? November?? Must be really super cold out
content: hi this is Lauren plunking another terrible dead boy into this extremely appropriate setting because I want threads, everyone come meet him
warnings: I'm sure there will be eventual drug and alcohol use, don't you tell him how to live

1. Arrival

These days the portal doesn't drag up random people, well, ever. The combined efforts of the few who remain in town stabilized it long ago so that those who wanted to leave could attempt to do that safely. Whether they made it to their destinations or not is unknown, but there hasn't been any indication that the portal system has any major faults.

So it's probably startling to anyone at the lab when the machines whir up unprompted, and also probably startling to anyone near Bonfire Square when the first person in a very long time appears.

Appears, gives a startled blink, narrows his eyebrows and opens his mouth, then actually hesitates for a second and looks around.

"All right, what the hell's this now?" he exclaims at whoever he's just happened to spot. "I swear, this fucking bullshit -"

He slows, then stops again, mid-sentence and mid-gesture with a hand in the air, because the first thing he's already done is walked too far from his lantern without realizing, and he feels it burning in his chest. He sucks in a breath, then slowly backtracks. The object itself is obvious enough once he looks at the spot where he arrived - a green glass bottle filled with flame and lightning, somehow perpetually burning, attached at the lid to a chain. Huh. Okay, that's badass.

But, right, back to - "You gonna explain yet or what?" he shouts, now twirling the bottle absently in the air as he stalks back over.

2. Kickaxe

It takes Johnnie all of a few hours to work out that a) no, the portal will not give him a car or even a motorcycle, which is extremely lame, but b) it will give him one sweet-ass electric guitar. Also, that weird sorta medieval-looking pub in the square looks incredibly lame and is not at all his style, and surely this town has something better going for it, so it's time to go for a walk.

He comes across the old ruins of the Kickaxe Brewing Company first, though the Fallout Shelter is next on his agenda for sure (finally, a street in this town that doesn't completely suck! Two bars!). He deftly hauls the large garage-style door open and sets to poking around.

"What the hell happened here, anyway?" he asks, kicking aside a ruined pile of debris still left from that long-ago flood. This bar, or whatever it was, is still slick with mud and algae, not to mention ice as winter sets in. "An' also, have you seen an amp anywhere?"

And if you instead come by much later, he'll have scoured the town for equipment and hooked the ground floor of the place up to be his own temporary hangout. Lights, his desired amp to plug his guitar into, and a chair that isn't a piece of total shit to sit on. It's definitely the sound that draws your attention from all over North Beacon though, because for all his rough exterior, the guy's damn good with a guitar - especially if your taste in rock comes right out of 1967 and tends toward very loud.

3. Wildcard??

[ Hi I'm still here and I still love this setting and couldn't resist making a log with my most obscure but non-OC ever to date, don't be shy. Hit me up on plurk any time if you want to talk ideas before adding a thread, or just like, I dunno, go for it.

Lots of info on Johnnie's journal but tl;dr he's ~20, kinda short, Latino, big awful scar on his face now, definitely a normal kid from 1960s Los Angeles and not at all a guy who has had some really wild personal issues with space and time and life and death lately. The cosmos is a very fucked-up place. ]

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Soldat still patrols, these days, even though it's frankly not that necessary. The world may be alive again, but it is still very lack in actual people. The only animals here are ones they've slowly brought in via the portal and set loose in carefully controlled areas to test whether a real ecosystem can be recreated, or the ones Soldat and Misty keep on their little farm to help feed the remaining residents and, well, keep them company. The spirits are for the most part long gone, with the possible exception of any who still reside in the underwater lab or in the deepest of caves, unable to venture out into the light. There simply aren't many dangers left on this world that a patrol would be needed to alert anyone about.

But patrols are soothing. They're routine, they remind them of what they have and where the boundaries of their home are now. So Soldat is out on patrol.

They're aware of the new person, and are as baffled by it as the ones actually operating the portal, but they're not expecting to run into him. Let alone find him making some not-actually-bad music in one of the buildings. They poke their head in curiously.

Movement at the periphery causes Johnnie to look up from his jamming away. He grins on seeing he has an audience, and rather than stop, he just plays harder.

"Hey! C'mon in, sit or dance or - oh, fuck."

Attention divided, his pick somehow escapes his fingers and flutters to the ground, and so this time he does stop so he can go retrieve it.

All right, fine, maybe he'll pause the music for a second, it's a good excuse. He's full of questions and anyway, there'll be time for more of that later, maybe. He pockets the pick and kicks a cable out of his way as he straightens up.

"Maybe hold off on the dancing. This place is so damn quiet an' empty, though, it's a real shame. Wait," he pauses, eyebrows narrowing slightly in anticipation of having to be annoyed. "You weren't comin' here to tell me to quiet down, were you? 'Cause that's not happening."

Soldat laughs a little, but it's a friendly sort of sound, rather than a derisive one. "Sorry. Didn't mean to interrupt. And no, I wasn't comin' to tell you to quiet down. I'm usually the one with music going at all hours around here. Recorded, though. I don't play."

And they doubt they could. Especially not with a metal hand. They'd be dropping that pick a lot more than this guy is.

"Yeah? Betcha could if you wanted to. Anyone can play drums."

He smirks, and looks around a moment as if searching for a stick or something to bang on things with, but gives it up quickly. He doesn't need to make that point, even as part of a joke, it's fine. Instead, he gestures to that metal hand.

"Even with a hand like that. That's fuckin' cool though! How'd you get it? Wait, did you get that here?"

"No, no, this is from where I come from," Soldat says, shaking their head a little. They do hold it up, though, pulling back the sleeve of their coat and the two shirts beneath it so he can see the metal all the way up to their elbow. "It goes all the way to the shoulder. Lost the arm in a fall, and a-- a mad scientist stuck this one on instead." They stutter briefly at the mention of Zola, but soldier on.

Then: "You're Johnnie, right?" Look, there's very few of them left here, and gossip travels. "I'm Soldat. I've been here a few years, now."

"Years? Fuck, man. Not what you thought the afterlife would be, huh? Buncha old buildings an' one cold fuckin' lake. I mean, I thought the whole angels an' pearly gates stuff was bullshit enough."

It is obviously not quite an afterlife, of course. No, this is something more akin to another world, maybe, but he's no expert. The few glimpses of truth he's seen from his experiences between life and death didn't exactly clarify anything encyclopedia-style, so he's left to bumble around and figure it out.

Or not. Figuring stuff out is for boring nerds.

"I haven't seen hardly anyone here, where's the people who built all this stuff anyway?" he asks, gesturing at the building around them as an example.

"They died a very long time ago," Soldat says, shaking their head a little. "A couple held on for a while after, the one who discovered how to make these." They pull their lantern around their shoulder to show him. "But they're all gone now, too. Those of us who got brought here just live here now, and fix things when they break, best as we can."

They're still working on making the portal work the other direction. Though Soldat won't ever be going back where they came from. This is home, now.

"Oh. Huh."

He takes a second to process that, but no more than a second, then cracks a smirk.

"Guess that makes this a ghost town then, huh?"

Yeah, he laughs at his own jokes, what of it? He dissolves into snickering for a moment, then waves it off like it's best left ignored. Ghost town. Fuck. Too true.

Much more important: "Hey so where's someone go to get some grub around here, anyway?"

"Back in the main part of town, there's an inn with a tavern on the fist floor. Called the Invincible," Soldat says. "I serve lunch there every day. I'll leave leftovers there for people overnight if they stop in and need a little somethin'. Gal named Pudding makes breakfast most mornings." They add, with a little smile, "Though a lot of us cook in our own homes, too." Soldat treasures their evening dinners with Misty and Pudding. "Have you decided where you're going to settle yet?"

The Invincible. Leftovers. Got it. Even if he's dead now and probably doesn't need food, he's sure as hell going to eat, because food is fucking delicious. Especially food he didn't have to make.

"Settle? Nah, hadn't really even thought about that. Dunno that I'd settle here anyway, there's a whole damn world here, right? Might do me some wandering for a while, see if there's somethin' better out there. But... Well, I guess it wouldn't hurt to have some kinda home base here while I figure shit out. You got recommendations?"

"The Invincible is really probably the best for that," Soldat admits. "We keep it clean upstairs. A few people still live there. It probably feels the most lived in out of everywhere left." Which, if you're Soldat, is an important quality.

"I have a place out that way--" They gesture in the direction of the farm. "--but it takes a while to get there. There's an old bed and breakfast you could maybe hole up in by the lakeshore, if the Invincible won't do. I can take you around to see, if you like."

The Invincible does sound better as an option - he likes the idea of being around people, certainly, and easy access to the food. As a temporary home base, it's all he needs.

But he also wants to get to know the lay of the land, after all. He drums his fingers idly on his guitar, then shrugs. "Wouldn't mind goin' to see it just to see, 'cause what the hell else am I gonna do? Sure beats sittin' around on my own. How long's 'a while'?"

The longer he can put off being stuck with his own thoughts right now the better, he figures. Dying normally would've been easy, but he didn't get to have that luxury.

"The Invincible is maybe half an hour's walk," Soldat says. "My farm is more like two hours. I have a bicycle I use some days if I don't feel like going by foot." Not today, though. Today had been so nice out, they'd wanted to enjoy the trip. "I can show you around the town proper, first, though. How much have you seen so far?"

"Sure, I'd take a tour," he says with a grin. "Even the shit I've seen, it isn't like I knew what it was. Some building here, another one there. I saw that inn, your Invincible, and some kinda store? Then I just followed the road past some harbor until I wound up over here. Long walk. You got more bikes sitting around somewhere?"

There's no immediate rush to get up and go anywhere, but since he's done playing for now, since it sounds like they'll get moving soon if not right this moment, he takes the opportunity to unplug his guitar and kick the cable aside. What he really needs is some way to haul some of this equipment to that inn if he's going to base himself there, but he'll figure that out later. Why come all the way out here to play, when he could play for the people staying in the center of town? That's more fun.

"We don't use the store as much anymore, since there's not many of us left," Soldat says. "But it used to be where we'd keep supplies when they came in, for anyone to come get. There is an old bike shop, though, yes, on the far side of town. We could probably fix one up for you so you can get around easier. Otherwise there will be a lot of walking."

Might take a bit. They haven't had a new person around... in a while, and most of the remaining bikes that haven't already been claimed are in bad shape. Soldat thinks they can piece something together, though, with what's left.

"An' while I ain't opposed to walking, if I gotta, I was never a fan of the slow route. Hell, I'd really rather have a motorcycle if I could, but this place barely has real roads to begin with. Can't say I ever tried to spend much time this far out in the boonies for more'n a day or two my whole life."

But, oh well. It's still better than being really and truly dead, so he'll adjust. He's flexible. He's put up with a lot of things in his life, what's one more?

He pauses, actually taking a second to reflect on how much he's going to miss, then snorts. Fuck.

"So what's the deal with this place, anyway? Why me? I mean, obviously not everyone winds up here after they die or this place'd be a hell of a lot busier. There aren't hardly even any girls here, man, that's..."

He gestures aimlessly at the rest of the town. What do they even do? No real city to speak of, no night life except for him and his guitar, apparently. No girls, no nothing. He doesn't really want to complain, because it could have been so much worse, but fucking really?

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keep me going 'til the night turns into the day

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