welcome to eden

Hey, you know what's fun to do in Eden?



....no, I'm asking.

Sokka would be asking, too, but there's no one around. That's part of the problem, actually. He'd go bother his family but Mel and Zuko are "busy" and while Hana and Loo have started getting mobile, the playpen he made them makes it so that his siblings don't have to find a babysitter every time they get the urge to...

Well.

So Sokka is left, sibling- and baby-less, and also project-less because he's used up all his wood stores for the day and has to wait for Eden to regenerate the material in the morning before he can carve again and training's over and he refuses to drink before nightfall and everyone else is busy, or at least missing and...


Sokka would be the guy having what looks to be a fascinating discourse with the clouds right now, lying flat on his back on the edge of the roof of one of the abandoned buildings.

Claire is bored. She doesn't doubt for an instant that everyone else is similarly bored, but Claire is bored.

And sitting on the front window ledge of a deserted store, playing with a knife.

Nothing good can come from this.

Eden is quiet.

Eden is really, really, really fucking quiet.

Steph hasn't heard a single car engine in months now. No aeroplanes. No zeppelins. No sirens at night, no screaming people, no clubs, no traffic snarls, no angry landlords. Fuck, she hasn't even heard a phone ring.

She plays with the babies when she can, trains with Cass and with Babs every day, with Sokka in the mornings and Tim in the afternoons, helps Faye out running coffee every Sunday. (At least, once every seven days, on a day they've arbitrarily declared to be Sunday. Not like there's any other way to know.) Fighting-wise, her skills are improving in leaps and bounds. Detective work with Tim and Babs is challenging, but she's improving there, too.

Tim's getting more worrying. He really loves her, she knows that. It's just that he seems to express his love by hardly ever letting her be alone, watching suspiciously any time she goes anywhere, and really just kind of creeping her out a lot. She's woken up at nights to find him just staring at her.

It's kind of freaky.

But Eden's so quiet. Learning to fight better, getting quicker and stronger and smarter, it's all kind of pointless. There are howls outside the walls at nights and that's creepy or whatever, but it's not like she can do anything. It's getting to the point where she starts secretly hoping something will attack again, just so the monotony is broken.

This place is driving Steph insane.

She kicks her legs against the chimney stack she's sitting on and chews another jellybean, waiting for something to happen. Anything will do. A bird, a moth, an insect. Even another person.

It's hard to describe the sound of something being whittled down. There are the long strokes, the short strokes, the forceful slices to take off a particularly difficult lump and the smaller, softer slices use for the finishing touches. The echoing sound of a stake being dropped to the floor with the others, followed by the creak of a chair as a large, bare hand reaches down to pick up another piece of scrap wood. And the whole thing starts again.

His armor is off to the side today, close at hand but not being bulky and in the way. He's in the first floor of the hotel, a scavenged chair being leaned against the wall with him in it, the two front legs right off the ground. He's got a crude knife in one hand and the old remnants of a chair leg in the other, the latter of which he is beginning to carve. To his left, a dozen make-shift stakes and knives, to his right a dozen pieces of scrap, chair legs, door splinters, anything he could find and make useful.

Given the amount of wood-shavings lying around, it's safe to assume he's been doing this for a while.

Something very important is happening in the lobby. And it's sort of stressing Mel out.

You see, she thought it would be a good idea to come down to hang out with the girls, to see who's around, to talk to people.To let them know she's not just spending all her itme on the roof with the husband and the babies.

The trouble is, when you have two Firebenders who have each decided crawling is more fun when done as far away from her sister as possible, it tends to result in mothers pacing the room constantly trying to keep them near to each other without restricting their freedom.

Right now Mel's sitting and playing Paty-cake with Hana, with one hand constantly on Loo, who is exploring along the reception desk.

Maniac's been a little out of sight lately, it seems, but he's in clear view now - settled just outside the hotel, munching quietly on a bag of chips and watching the sky. He can just see clouds in the distance, heavy, massing, threatening a storm.

Not yet, though, and he stares thoughtfully at the runners he's wearing, a size too big, scuffed and dirty. They remind him of home, the buffalo pens, the way Amanda complained at him 'cause he smelled like a zoo and her new slippers were covered in buffalo poop. It's a funny feeling to think of home. He hasn't in a few days.

He's getting used to it, here, and that's starting to almost worry him.

Claire is in the street, limbering up for a training session. It's got to the point now where she's stopped feeling embarrassed about how bad she is, and perfectly willing to train outside where everyone can see her. There's even a slight smile from the anticipated adrenalin from the training that has taken the place, in her body's memories, of cheer practice.

The reason the smile is only slight is possibly related to the way her eyes flick from the 'workshop' to the bar. She just doesn't know which building her sparring partner's going to come out of.

Steph has never been one to take well to boredom. The bottles along the top shelf behind the bar are looking more and more appealing every day.

It's a little after midnight, as far as she can trust her watch here, and she's sitting on the counter, cape wrapped around her against the cold, hood around her neck. Outside, the howls are quieter than usual; Steph's hoping they've found something better to do.

Eden is creepy this late at night when you're alone.

You know what I haven't gotten to do a lot of lately? Besides seeing family and friends, eating a decent, normal meal, and living my usual life?

Running.

Being in this place is pretty confining. There's a decent amount of room, technicaly, but there's still not a lot of room to actually be moving around. I spend most of my time on the rooftops, with Steph and sometimes alone, watching or training or examining little details of Eden. On the rare occasion that I'm down on street level, I'm usually inside. Basically, I don't get much of the freedom I normally enjoy. No big buildings for me to swing from, no criminals to apprehend, nothing.

So I've resorted to running up and down the street. Sad, huh? It's no short distance, but it's not too long either. My cape and utility belt have been left up on the roof where Steph and I are staying, so there's nothing getting in my way as I race down the street, counting in my head as I go. In the back of my mind, I can justify this because I never know when I might need to get from one part of Eden to another on foot in an emergency, and trying to make sure I can do so in as little time as possible is important. Really though, I'm just restless, and I want to run.

So I'm running. Simple as that.

Ray was out on a roof, away from where the hotel was, laying out sunning himself in what appeared to be swim trunks, and just ignoring the world. He had been around, quietly watching and looking into buildings, and thinking about his future all week. So far, he was still unsure what he was doing here, or what he would do here. Today, however, was for rest, and quiet, and sheer relaxation. So there he was, on the roof, relaxing.

It was a nice day for it, ya know?

Barbara has been growing more and more stir-crazy with each day she's in Eden. She's used to managing data for hundreds of heroes, tracking patterns across the globe. Back home she was constantly taking on more and more responsibility because she needed something to do.

Yet here she is. In a place where there might be two dozen people, facing a threat that hasn't really been identified, equipped with almost none of the tools of her trade.

She's not sure how much longer she can keep up the facade that she's dealing pretty well with the situation.

But she's going to keep trying. That's why she's sitting in the hotel lobby with her notepad. Not writing anything at the moment, mostly just staring at it blankly.

Sokka is searching. Rather than the usual search of cameras or wires or aluminum shelving, this particular search focuses upon a human subject. And this particular human subject is blonde and blue-eyed and not sniffling snot all over the street.

It would be kind of silly if an explosion hadn't hardly singed Claire but Steph's cold had taken her down.

The sun is going down and most people are getting ready to either sleep or start watch for the night. It means some people aren't on alert at all and some people are very, very alert, but Sokka still feels more comfortable wandering into stores and buildings and alleyways looking for Claire now than he would have at the height of the day. There's no bag over his shoulder, no box full of parts. In fact, aside from the screwdriver sticking out of his back pocket, there's nothing at all mechanical or scavenger-looking about Sokka today.

Aside from the way he keeps peering down hallways and alleys, anyway.

It's only logical. Mel got it. The girls got it.

Now Zuko has it.

It's like a fireworks display on the hotel roof. Occasional bursts of flame and the occasional, nasal comment of, "Good one."

Just another day in Zuko's family.

He just wishes it'd stop. Mel's leaking -- he's belching smoke every time he coughs and his face is hot and he sneezes napalm.

It's just no fun around here when you're a sick firebender.

Sokka has managed not to catch the cold going around by pure force of will.

...and because, once the babies started sneezing fireballs, he found somewhere else to be. He loves his nieces but without a healer or burn ointment around, he's not feeling too keen on blackened skin.

It's likely, Sokka thinks, that Mel and Zuko will kill him for running off as he was prone to do during fireball-time, so he's trying to think of ways to make it up to them. For one thing, next to the catapult on his "work roof," there is now a fully assembled, fireproof playpen. Sokka's finishing up with it before starting to disassemble so he can bring it up to the hotel's roof to his family.

Mel has caught the cold that's been going round, and now she's leaking. Out of orifices. She objects to this as much as she objects to have been confined to the roof for the past few days.

So she escaped. She grabbed Hana and she escaped, still sniffing loudly, and apparently only capable of getting out in the street before she decided sitting on the kerb outside the hotel was a good idea.

But she's out and about, and singing softly to the baby, and occasionally sniffing quite loudly.

Barbara has scrounged up a notebook from somewhere and is busy scribbling into it. Well, "scribbling" isn't really the right term since each letter is neat and precise.

She's making notes, but not really for herself (she doesn't need the things). At the moment she's recording society-critical tech-base sets. Various sociologist and anthropologists have theorized that certain technologies are vital to fledgling communities, and someone here might be interested in looking over the lists.

After that she'll be recording her thoughts on ramp-up requirements: which tools you have to have to build the tools you need to build the tools you need...

It's not really a vital task or anything, she's just tired of feeling so useless.

Claire is in the hotel lobby, lying on her chest with her legs kicking up in the air.

She found the magazine rack in the Creep-E-Mart and decided she really was bored enough to try them. It took a few minutes browsing before she decided she really wasn't bored enough to read celebrity gossip about people she's never heard of, and she retreated with a Suduko book. That can't get too weird, right?

Wrong. Please distract her.

In the old building where they've set up makeshift training dummies, Steph is running through kata, veeeeeery slowly. This is because she's doing it blindfold, and there's plenty to crash into in here; that's why she chose it.

The blindfold also means she's being absolutely silent; she's relying on other senses than sight, so she's making as little noise as possible.

Except for the enormous sneezes that burst out every so often, and the sniffles, and the coughs; and her formwork keeps being interrupted by a misplaced step or a slightly wobbly hold on gravity. The flu, Steph has decided, sucks.

But it's no excuse not to train.

( an arrival... )

Cass was feeling... good. Her side had healed up enough that she was able to remove the stitches on her own and the pain was at a tolerable level. Stretching carefully, she set up her little training area on the street again.

Somewhere along the streets of Eden she was able to dredge up about a dozen mannequins of varying size and condition that she's been able to set up around her in a circle.

She closes her eyes as though clearing her mind and launches her attack on the retail dummies.

A few seconds later and all the mannequins have been smashed to the ground by a flurry of well aimed kicks and punches.

Cass smiled carefully and then started to set up the rest of the training area in case anyone else wanted to join her.