Once Upon a Time...

[morethanmyth]

They likely felt the world shift, a fragmentation of all they thought they knew. It was the way a fictional character might feel if they could feel every page turn in the book they lived in. It was the beginning of a new story and that meant an end to an old one and they would each feel that.

To some it would feel like they had just died. To others, it would feel like they had just been born. To many, it would feel like both at the same time. It all really depended on who they were and what they were leaving behind.

In any case, this world had something New appear in it. After lightning crackled in the evening sky without any storm fueling it, they would find themselves waking up in the streets of a small town called Burgess. It was a perfectly ordinary Pennsylvania town, a place where the modern mixed with the old, American suburbia at its finest, making it all the stranger that something extraordinary would happen somewhere so ordinary.

[ooc: Make a subthread for each character and those of you that would like to toss your character at someone else before Bunny and Jack show up, tag a subthread already there.]

Comments

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Oh, whoop de doo. Fancy." Howard's got an air of distaste around him - even being isolated with this guy in a strange land isn't enough to overcome that flaunting a prestigious education rankles Howard. He's never been the bookish sort, but even if he had been odds of going to Stanford would have been extremely low for him.

"You a police officer or something? With the gun and all?"

[fromfryingpantofire]

Sam shrugs. "I got lucky." He really did and knew it. Though, these days, he isn't entirely certain he got into Stanford on his own merits anymore.

He looked down at himself, then back up at Howard. "Something like that." Not entirely, but...well, it was difficult to explain.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"If you really believed that you wouldn't flaunt it," Howard says with a bit of a sniff, backing up. "Have you ever shot anyone?"

[fromfryingpantofire]

He opens his mouth to defend himself, then closes it. It's quite possible that, for a lot of people, that would have sounded like flaunting it. Okay, he can deal with that.

Again, Sam shrugs. "Yeah, I have. It's not something I like to do, but to defend myself and others? I have."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"I've never shot no one." Howard raises his hands slightly again. "Like I said, I wasn't looking for money, college boy. I don't want trouble. I just want..."

Well, not to go home. "I want to find out what's going on."

[fromfryingpantofire]

"Kid. I wasn't going to do anything to you for picking a pocket." Sam's not that much of an asshole. And it wasn't like he'd never done worse to get some money. "And yeah, we're both in the same boat on that one, at least. I don't know any more about what's happening than you do."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"I didn't pick a pocket." When in doubt, continue denying. In as sulky and defensive a tone as possible. This always works, clearly. "You're just racial profiling."

He looks around. "Maybe this is supposed to be some suburban creepville where everyone's actually a robot or host to a bodysnatcher."

[fromfryingpantofire]

"Told you. Not a cop. And fine, whatever. Testing whether your hand would go through the kid just as well as the rest of your body, then." Even if it had been Howard's hand right at the pocket. And the kid is too defensive for his own good.

Sam glances around again, frowning. "Not sure about robots. Bodysnatchers? Maybe. Never seen any of them in so large a concentration, though."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard laughs, as if Sam's joking about bodysnatchers. Then he pauses.

"You are joking, right? I known some people who wouldn't be."

[fromfryingpantofire]

He really wasn't joking, but that was more than the kid needed to know. And if they WERE somehow in the middle of a demon infestation, knowing probably would only scare Howard.

So Sam grinned, with every bit of skill he had for lying with his face. He'd been doing it since long before he was Howard's age. "Well, it's been a long time since I've seen the movie, but I'm relatively sure it wasn't the entire town."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Oh. The movie." Howard's seen similar stuff in person, but he doesn't want to say that yet, because he's sure Sam already thinks he's weird - let's face it, starving kid in the middle of nowhere acting defensive and walking through people, kind of weird. Even if Sam's also walking through people.

"Maybe we should split up. I go down this street and you go up it, and we see if we run into anyone and give a holler if we do."

[fromfryingpantofire]

Sam nodded. Splitting up was probably not the greatest idea, though he had a feeling it was more for Howard's peace of mind than anything else. "Yeah, okay. Just shout really loudly. With luck, I should hear you."