Captain Stephanie Rogers (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
therighttime) wrote2013-10-20 01:00 pm
therighttime) wrote2013-10-20 01:00 pm
Shatterverse
Steph is glad, on a daily basis, for how well-made her flak jacket is. Even if it's really too hot for it in summer woods of Colorado, there's plenty of pockets and a bandoleer that keeps the radio close to her jaw.
Which will make it easier to call in for back up, if whatever's causing all the ruckus on Babs' screen ever decides to show up.
In the meantime, it's a hell of a lot easier to take a hike through tumbled stone and beds of pine needles than it is to tromp through the Italian forest during rain, sleet, and stone.
Even if she'd prefer company in either locale.
Which will make it easier to call in for back up, if whatever's causing all the ruckus on Babs' screen ever decides to show up.
In the meantime, it's a hell of a lot easier to take a hike through tumbled stone and beds of pine needles than it is to tromp through the Italian forest during rain, sleet, and stone.
Even if she'd prefer company in either locale.
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Weeks and months where she's not think about the jackass who definitely isn't her boyfriend, nor any longer belongs to the category of isn't-maybe-or-maybe-is that looked so, somehow amusingly good once upon a time, before he was having a kid without someone else who, also, definitely isn't his girl friend.
Which is why she's sliding through the woods, tight jeans and clingy long sleeve shirt, quiet boots in the brush, a gun in her hand, and a knife not far from her reach. Because it's straight forward, and it's simple. Because she's fucking good at it, and it doesn't suddenly spin her upside down. No matter the world. No matter the job. No matter the creepy bastards she's ended up against.
Because, sure, civilization is still going on half the continent away, even though she's been gone enough weeks it could have burned down. Bab's would tell her if that happened. If anything worth anyone telling her was emergently necessary, and losing contact with her for another week or two was worth the cost, she'd know. But she hears nothin' but the rain, and the calls to send her new places. With the pauses that still consider breaking their tense, but managing, work truce.
Because she's got a job to do and she'd rather be doing that than anything else the pause could be suggesting she should.
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Shame, maybe, but not much of one, all things told.
Even if a nurse's uniform would probably call less attention.
Steph's not entirely sure what she's looking for out here, mostly because Babs wasn't entirely sure either. But the idea was that it was unidentifiable and what Steph just heard - with serum-enhanced senses, it must be noted - was definably human.
Doesn't mean it's not dangerous. Just not what she's looking for.
"Hello?"
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But that was definitely a voice. A normal enough sounding voice. Female, and that discounted at least a handful of things.
"Who's out there?" Jo called back, gun raised several fractions higher, half debating what was worse: a new creepy, crawly that sounded normal, which wasn't all that odd given some of Shatters creepier things, or a civilian who got lost out here with whatever Bab's sent her after.
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What?
She wears a red white and blue shield that looks like a the targets they teach you to shoot at in basic. What's Steph got to hide?
She has at least quit tromping through the brush, pausing with her shield on her arm and her hand resting on her hip, near but not quite on the gun in her holster. "Come on out, ma'am."
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There's the small possibility it could have been Babs. Since Jo tunes her out for everything over those two.
There's nothing to it but to come out though, not shooting, but ready if necessary.
"I prefer Jo, if you're fishing for names. Ma'am is something for peoples' mothers."
She usually prefers people not making a ruckus at a scene, but that's already blown.
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She quirks a smile at the response. There's a woman named Jo Babs talks about, and some of the others, when they're talking about hunters. It may or may not be this particular woman but it's a fair enough guess.
"Harvelle?"
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But, especially, people you found in the middle of the woods carrying defensive weaponry half their size.
"And you're--?" Aside from her name, her very large shield, and her all too nice looking smile.
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Names are as easily faked and remade as they were no actual descriptor toward who a person was.
What they knew. What they could do. How hard or how easy it was to break them. Or make them, too.
"Guessing she sent you, too." Which, fine, Jo's gun lowers. Not enough her reflexes couldn't snap up. But still.
Jo was going to have a talk with that woman about springing 'team work' on her without a warning. Even that was probably exactly why Babs didn't mention it, too. Jo probably would have considered passing the person, the way she'd never consider passing on going to the place Babs said most needed people out there solving the problem now.
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She lowers her shield a little more, smiling at the other woman. "Guess so. Haven't had much luck yet, though. Intel wasn't great."
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Because they are both already here doing the same job.
"She didn't give me much to go on when she called. Just that it was big."
Jo didn't really need to know much more than that lately. Direction. Location.
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No point splitting it up, trying to solve it against each other like it's some sort of competition.
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There were worse ways to do it, and it was probably pointless to split up now.
Even if this Steph was not someone she'd be quite to comfortable just walking away from. Beside or within the work. She wasn't Rachel. No one was Jack now, except the aching ghost of a memory. Not to mention that she was only talking, marginally, to one of the two others she'd trust with every side of a large cover.
In a pinch, she'd probably still go to bat with Cookie Girl.
"Onward into the dark and creepy wood." Not that is was much of either currently.
But the motif fit her mouth and the whole reason they were there, tracking down the monster.
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The ones that keep her alive, across worlds.
"Not yet. I didn't get here long ago."
"Anything good there?"
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She's either, seriously, literal. Or way too new.
"Details. Clues." Jo clarifies. In small, pressed words.
Things that would have given them a leg up on direction.
She's seen a lot of death. Victims and hunters in her years.
None of those count under good. No one would even joke it.
Well. There are certain people who would. But they can be run over.
"Anything telling about it? What happened to them? Or how?"
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Jo is not, in fact, a superior officer. Or any sort of officer, in all likelihood.
"Not especially. Folks just keel over, sick, and then..."
She frowns, looks away, and continues the hike up the slight incline of rocky land. "We'll go back, if you want, take another look. See if anyone remembers something new. Won't be a pretty sight, though."
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That's another part of being away from people too long.
She knows that was a little too harsh. But apologies don't come easy.
But she did notice the way the woman jump to at a loud voice. She hasn't seen a lot of people do that here in Shatter. But that didn't mean she hadn't known a man or two, with the right background, to jump to the moment Ellen Harvelle raised her voice. Soldiers. Making Jo give the woman, outfit and shield, a slight more speculative glance this time.
Bab's people did come from everywhere though. As with the whole population of Shatter.
Her voice is at least lower. More pushed toward something more in the middle. "Are any of them?"
"We can, if we need to go back, but if you think it's useless we can just keep going forward from here."
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Only then had she flown over to the States, where she could hear Barbara's voice coming over radio signals emanating directly from her parents' farm. Kara's been ignoring that for now, if only because this Barbara recognized her shape and spoke to her directly. Later, Kara will go to the farm and establish directly what's going on around here. But for now, she's been directed towards someone who might need her help, and she finds her in the Colorado woods.
"Hi there!" she calls out as soon as she's under the treeline. "Do you need any help?"
Kara's so used to being a feature in her world, that it doesn't occur to her that some people might not expect to see a woman in a white leotard and a red cape flying over their heads, much less be pleased to see her.