Logs:Of Woods and Worries (Or, Find Shippenville)

Of Woods and Worries (Or, Find Shippenville)
Dramatis Personae Kavalam, K.C., Lael, Marcus, Marinov, Naomi
In Absentia	2020-11-30 "You hear something?"
Location Across the Rift - Somewhere nearing the Maine-Canada border
It's cold, and for a while it's been quiet -- or forest-quiet, at least, which once you get used to it is never all that quiet. The high call of a hawk, the heavy crunch of some (please don't be a moose) hooves moving at a distance through the trees, the creak and groan of the trees under the wind which, today, is unfortunately sharp. Maybe it's that that's kept conversation to a minimum for the past little while -- K.C. at least has had her hood pulled up snug, scarf wrapped around her face, head bowed -- or maybe it's the fact that the closer they draw to Canada the more frequent near-runins there have been with roving border patrols. It's not the first time, then, when K.C. stops sharp, lifts one fist silently, her other hand twitching at an invisible something in the air nearby her. Lael had been trudging along steadily, but comes to a stop when K.C. does, straining all his senses--psionic included, little though this gives him any insight on her mind--out around them. He's worked up some warmth from the exertion of their trek and has unwound his tan striped scarf to hang loosely around his neck, his camo jacket unzipped a few inches, his gloved hands braced on the straps of his backpack. Even beneath his hood and the intentionally oversized tuque the suddenly intensifying motion of his hair is quite obvious, possibly more disturbing in some ways than when the writhing locs are themselves visible. He does not speak, though he is clearly biting back the urge to as he waits on K.C. to sort through whatever she's picked up, his eyes darting around the forest anxiously. The days of travel with his power cranked up high are telling on Kavalam quite clearly -- moreso, even, than the hiking alone should be. Kind of too pale, noticeably more sluggish than when they set out, he barely looks up when the others come to a halt. Just stops himself, slouching against the nearest tree with his eyes already starting to droop shut. He lifts a hand, grinds his gloved knuckles against them. Slouches harder. Naomi is bundled all the way up - the shell of her outermost layer zipped tight around her mouth makes it seem like her face is all scales. She’s drifted to the side of the pack, glancing over her left shoulder every so often with wide eyes. Her gaze shoots back to K.C. when they stop, fingers curling tighter around the straps of her pack. She squats for a moment, legs pressed together, waiting for instructions. Marcus has been a bit lost in his own set of thoughts, for a time; what it will look like once they get to the border, what the asylum process will be given none of them have any ID, if that will or won't be complicated by the existence of potential otherworld alter-egos. His eyes snap up when K.C. halts them, internalized musings turning sharply external, little though he has any capacity to sense whatever it is that gave the girl pause. All the sounds of the forest seem to attract Marinov's attention at least a little bit, a tension in their shoulders and their body. Their jacket is undone, the cream coloured sweater now stained with a couple of spots of blood, and their scarf is wrapped around their face, not that it particularly helps obscure their inhuman features. They stop when K.C. does, the tension they carry only becomes tighter. They speak softly when they come a little closer: "You hear something?" K.C. stays quiet, her fingertips dancing lightly in the chill air. "Sentinel," she says, finally, very low. The hand that had been in a fist points off through the trees, somewhere to their northeast. "Looking for someone. Not us." Her brows are knitting slow. Deeper. Her other hand works back into a fist, loosens. Back into a fist again, her head starting to bob slowly. The harsh mental screech of the Sentinel's feedback in her mind is growing, taking up more and more space as she searches for -- something, that ends in only a small blink, a toneless: "Uh-oh." A pause. "Where is Shippenville." Lael's jaw tightens, though not apparently in response to K.C.'s quiet declaration, which seems to come as no surprise. One of his eyes starts to scrunch shut as K.C.'s mental static grows louder, but he's quickly distracted from the pain. "Shippenville?" he echoes, nonplussed. "Never heard'a no place like that. What's in Shippenville? Kavalam does not look up at this question, either. He's registered it, sluggishly, somewhere in the back of his mind -- ah, yes, danger again -- and filed it away with a grim kind of fatalism. Maybe the robot will pass by. Maybe it will kill them. These options both ping kind of flat and meaningless on his mental landscape. He sinks down lower, seating himself now against the base of the tree and busying himself with a vaguely wistful daydream of a fresh fried vada. Under the layers, Naomi frowns. Her thoughts begin to pick up speed again when K.C. points to the Sentinels, layers of unclear anxiety and fear heating to a rapid boil, then - <<what the hell is a Shippenville?>> She slips her pack off her back, reaches for the torn up map of Maine surrounding states she grabbed during her first attempt to help. Scans it, just looking for a Shippenville <<or Shippinville? Spelling?>> in vain. Marinov attempts to visualize where this Shippenville might be, but on their tragically inaccurate mental map of the US, they come up short. "I don't really know geography," they admit, glancing back towards the others. "What's going on in Shippenville? Is it--" They glance towards Naomi's map, "something to do with us?" "Prison there." K.C. is still focused, brows knit deep and her breathing speeding. "Mutant prison." She drops her hand. For a moment, the loud blare of static in her mind quiets to only an intermittent crackle, laid over a much more acute clanging worry about the friends they had left behind, what kind of tortures might occur in Weird Mutant Prisons in this world. The screeching blares back loud again when she reaches up to grasp at the air again. "Big mutant prison there." Lael straightens. His eyes have ceased blinking altogether, as happens whenever he lapses in consciously willing them to do so. "Reckon there's a lot of those, in this world," he says, his voice soft and even--calmer, probably, than he actually feels. Then, a bit more hesitantly, "You thinkin' maybe Gaétan n' them all's passing near there? They in danger?" "Of course they're in danger." Kavalam hasn't looked up, head propped on his knees. There's an irritable sharpness to his voice. "If New York were safe we would all be there." "Some news?" Marcus draws a little closer to K.C., his voice hesitant. His own mental map of the United States is reasonably well-populated for An Average High Schooler, but he's failing to place Shippenville anywhere on it. "The others?" Marinov points towards Kavalam with their thumb when he gives an assessment of the other group's situation. Their anxiety of that, however, is increasing sharply. "Are they in-- is something happening in the mutant prison there?" K.C. shakes her head, quick and jerky. "Mutant prison," she repeats again, more firmly. Her hand flaps toward Marcus. "Others. Others there. Others all there. Where is Shippenville. Others all in there." Lael's eyes narrow ever so slightly, but the irritation is fleeting. "They been caught," he concludes heavily, lifting one hand to rub at his temple, then to make an abortive attempt to hold down the violent squirming of his hair. His wince suggests this was ill-advised. "Ain't none of us know where that is, an' if it ain't on that map..." He looks at Naomi dubiously, then back to K.C. "We get closer to somethin' with the Internet, you can look that up easy, right?" "Caught?" Kavalam does look up now, and the sharp sting of dismay is clear enough on his face even without its heavy echoes in his mind. "You are -- certain?" His thoughts race to Harm and the Māhoes first, and after this to the rest of the group, sick and worried before he pushes that aside to focus on the additional anxious stress of keeping the group hidden if they venture closer to somewhere with more people. He turns his head back down against his knees once more, silent. Naomi’s mind is quick to echo the distress of the others, but she doesn’t look up from her map. Her finger runs down the edges of the grid. “Ain’t no Shippenville in near us, in New England,” she says finally, “though maybe I missed it?” In her head, though, she is confident in her read on the map. She bites her lip, glances at the older students with increasing worry. "Caught." Marcus's expression falls. His mind is the picture of disappointed but not surprised; no matter how confident he may have been that they had made the safer choice, still quietly hoping the others would fare better than -- "Big? Mutant prison?" He chews slowly at his lip. Looks back between the trees. "Was some -- town? South. Went around. Maybe now we go? Find Shippenville." He sounds -- very uncertain. "Find Shippenville and then... what." "Find Shippenville and then... Fuck. I don't know." Marinov's imagination turns towards them breaking into the prison and doing a jailbreak, to fanfare and cheering from the current inmates, without really knowing how that would realistically work. Their voice, though, just sounds a little weary. "Maybe there's some kind of. I don't know, people who can fight back? Like a resistance?" At this, they think not of the X-Men, but of the Brotherhood's particular brand of resistance. "Anyways, we-- We can't just leave them to rot in prison." K.C.'s hand drops again. The screeching in her mind quiets to a background crackle once more -- she's still keeping wary track of it, but it's growing more distant. The worry in her mind is growing more present, loud and jangling and nervously spiraling into ever more fantastical images of what could be happening to their classmates. "Find Shippenville," she echoes, nodding far more decisively than she feels. She turns, slowly reorienting back vaguely in a south-ish direction before she starts walking again. "Find Shippenville, and then."