Somewhere in the deserts of southwestern North America, Wednesday, Fandom time
Raven did not expect to lose track of the days so quickly.
She hadn't really been able to look up directions or research survival plans in the few hours she'd had, when Kathy had been sick, to come up with this plan. She knew that Baltimore was something like 3,000 miles from LA, and that it was mostly east and a little north. She knew that she'd have to be able to find food and water along the way (but she could turn into an actual for real tiger if she wanted to, how hard would that part be?), and she'd known that she would probably have to fight off a lot of exes while she was at it. She'd wondered briefly if she should head north first, because exes were dead and didn't have metabolisms, so maybe they'd freeze up in the cold, but it was spring, headed into summer, so she'd have to go way too far north before that even became a factor. So maybe, she thought, she should head south, because they didn't drink, so they'd dry out and mummify in the heat.
Yeah, the exes didn't seem to give a good goddamn about whether it was hot or cold. Which it was plenty of both, out here, depending on whether the sun was up or down.
Fortunately, Raven didn't much care, either. The sun had baked her scales a little harder than they were back in Fandom, and a little darker blue, and she had never, ever been more thirsty. She'd found a busted up old umbrella a few days ago that helped keep the worst of the sun off while she was walking, and she'd stolen some sheets from a laundromat to wrap around herself when the wind picked up. She didn't much care about temperature, but windburn was no joke. A toga at least didn't become totally useless the moment she had to change shape.
And she was doing plenty of changing shape.
Longer legs were nice when she had long, clear stretches. She'd managed a small giraffe for a little while before she started carrying the umbrella and preferring to have hands, but the stretch ached and became unbearable after half a day. She'd been so proud in Fandom of her animal shapes, elephants and falcons and lions and rabbits, her anatomy classes paying off in the secrets of speed or strength or even flight, but it turned out she was crap for endurance when it came to anything that wasn't humanoid. She still practiced in the mornings before the heat of the day started baking into her, as long as the coast was clear, but she didn't have the time to spend all afternoon and evening recovering if she went too far. Who knew how long Kathy would stay safe? How long before someone mistook her for any other ex and tried to --
She found a bike, back on the edge of San Bernadino, and she rode that a good long while, past the forest and out into the smaller towns that hugged the road through the desert. But where she didn't find exes, she found survivors, folks deeply uninterested in sharing their supplies. Folks who chased her out of town with shotguns or baseball bats or whatever they could find when a stranger, even a pretty, young one with fluffy blonde hair, came along. She ditched the bike when she ditched the road and the small towns with it, somewhere around Joshua Tree. She tried to keep the towns on the horizon so she wouldn't get lost, and snuck in at night when the lights went out to scavenge for food and supplies.
It turned out people were less likely to shoot a coyote walking through town than a human they didn't know.
Then the buildings went away and she went back to the road, afraid of getting lost. She found a few abandoned cars with their keys still in, but most were out of gas and useless. One turned out to be less abandoned than she originally thought. A tiny ex strapped into a carseat in the back jerked into movement and gnashed its teeth at her when she jimmied open the driver's side door. She snarled back as she rifled through the glove compartment for anything useful, then smashed it in the head with its family's own handgun when she got tired of the gnashing.
It was hours later before she thought to wonder what had happened to the ex-kid's parents.
She was pleased with the acquisition of the gun until she remembered that she only had a limited number of bullets. Then she was still pleased, but less inclined to test it on cactuses.
The motorcycle was her favorite.
She found it just when she was starting to realize that she really could die of dehydration out on the long, empty road. It was lying on its side, a dark, sticky streak down the road the only evidence of where its owner had gone. It took several tries, but Raven eventually got it started up, and let out a tremendous "WHOOP!" when she saw it still had gas -- more than half a tank. She was as likely to kill herself riding it as she was doing anything else she was doing out here, so she gave it a shot, creeping just fast enough down the road to keep her balance and avoid stalling out until she decided she had the hang of it enough to open up the throttle. She lucked out -- didn't wipe out, didn't tear off her skin on the rough road or break her limbs with a bad landing, just glided effortlessly through what would have been three or four days worth of empty road walking, headed straight for the Colorado River.
There'd be more people there, she knew. More exes and potential exes, with their paranoia and their weapons. But there'd be food there, too. And gallons of glorious, cool, flowing water.
[ooc: NFB/NFI, OOC is welcome. Content note: references to violence and dead children]
She hadn't really been able to look up directions or research survival plans in the few hours she'd had, when Kathy had been sick, to come up with this plan. She knew that Baltimore was something like 3,000 miles from LA, and that it was mostly east and a little north. She knew that she'd have to be able to find food and water along the way (but she could turn into an actual for real tiger if she wanted to, how hard would that part be?), and she'd known that she would probably have to fight off a lot of exes while she was at it. She'd wondered briefly if she should head north first, because exes were dead and didn't have metabolisms, so maybe they'd freeze up in the cold, but it was spring, headed into summer, so she'd have to go way too far north before that even became a factor. So maybe, she thought, she should head south, because they didn't drink, so they'd dry out and mummify in the heat.
Yeah, the exes didn't seem to give a good goddamn about whether it was hot or cold. Which it was plenty of both, out here, depending on whether the sun was up or down.
Fortunately, Raven didn't much care, either. The sun had baked her scales a little harder than they were back in Fandom, and a little darker blue, and she had never, ever been more thirsty. She'd found a busted up old umbrella a few days ago that helped keep the worst of the sun off while she was walking, and she'd stolen some sheets from a laundromat to wrap around herself when the wind picked up. She didn't much care about temperature, but windburn was no joke. A toga at least didn't become totally useless the moment she had to change shape.
And she was doing plenty of changing shape.
Longer legs were nice when she had long, clear stretches. She'd managed a small giraffe for a little while before she started carrying the umbrella and preferring to have hands, but the stretch ached and became unbearable after half a day. She'd been so proud in Fandom of her animal shapes, elephants and falcons and lions and rabbits, her anatomy classes paying off in the secrets of speed or strength or even flight, but it turned out she was crap for endurance when it came to anything that wasn't humanoid. She still practiced in the mornings before the heat of the day started baking into her, as long as the coast was clear, but she didn't have the time to spend all afternoon and evening recovering if she went too far. Who knew how long Kathy would stay safe? How long before someone mistook her for any other ex and tried to --
She found a bike, back on the edge of San Bernadino, and she rode that a good long while, past the forest and out into the smaller towns that hugged the road through the desert. But where she didn't find exes, she found survivors, folks deeply uninterested in sharing their supplies. Folks who chased her out of town with shotguns or baseball bats or whatever they could find when a stranger, even a pretty, young one with fluffy blonde hair, came along. She ditched the bike when she ditched the road and the small towns with it, somewhere around Joshua Tree. She tried to keep the towns on the horizon so she wouldn't get lost, and snuck in at night when the lights went out to scavenge for food and supplies.
It turned out people were less likely to shoot a coyote walking through town than a human they didn't know.
Then the buildings went away and she went back to the road, afraid of getting lost. She found a few abandoned cars with their keys still in, but most were out of gas and useless. One turned out to be less abandoned than she originally thought. A tiny ex strapped into a carseat in the back jerked into movement and gnashed its teeth at her when she jimmied open the driver's side door. She snarled back as she rifled through the glove compartment for anything useful, then smashed it in the head with its family's own handgun when she got tired of the gnashing.
It was hours later before she thought to wonder what had happened to the ex-kid's parents.
She was pleased with the acquisition of the gun until she remembered that she only had a limited number of bullets. Then she was still pleased, but less inclined to test it on cactuses.
The motorcycle was her favorite.
She found it just when she was starting to realize that she really could die of dehydration out on the long, empty road. It was lying on its side, a dark, sticky streak down the road the only evidence of where its owner had gone. It took several tries, but Raven eventually got it started up, and let out a tremendous "WHOOP!" when she saw it still had gas -- more than half a tank. She was as likely to kill herself riding it as she was doing anything else she was doing out here, so she gave it a shot, creeping just fast enough down the road to keep her balance and avoid stalling out until she decided she had the hang of it enough to open up the throttle. She lucked out -- didn't wipe out, didn't tear off her skin on the rough road or break her limbs with a bad landing, just glided effortlessly through what would have been three or four days worth of empty road walking, headed straight for the Colorado River.
There'd be more people there, she knew. More exes and potential exes, with their paranoia and their weapons. But there'd be food there, too. And gallons of glorious, cool, flowing water.
[ooc: NFB/NFI, OOC is welcome. Content note: references to violence and dead children]