therighttime | Shatterverse

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.

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Steph wouldn't mind an apartment full of blank canvases and a few shifts at the makeshift hospital in Metropolis. But you do what you can with what you got, you do all you can with what you got, and Steph can do more, better, faster out here with her shield than in the city with a stethoscope.

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?"

A voice stands out when you're listening for the sounds of nature. Or more aptly listening to the sounds of nature being missing from a forest, that screams disturbance, that Shatter had going on more than it ever had normal going on anywhere. This was Shatter's normal.

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.

"Steph Rogers."

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."

That name sounds familiar. Not known. Not recognized. But familiar. It tugs at something somewhere. Like she might have heard it once before. Though Rachel is the only person she lets talk to her for hours, and sometimes days, past where her next destination is or where to find the next cache of high grade med supplies for the worst injuries.

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.

Well, right now all they know about the 'scene' is that it's somewhere in the entire vicinity of the Colorado forest. Steph figures a little ruckus won't hurt anything, this many days into the search.

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?"

There are only so many ways people come by her name. At least people who didn't live in the six block radius between her house and the bar she'd worked for the better part of half a year a ways back now. "The same."

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.

The shield isn't quite half her size but it's awfully large all the same. Steph lowers it a touch as the other woman comes into view with a friendlier smile. "Still Steph Rogers, ma- Jo. Babs send you out here?"

Hrm. Jo's not fond of repetition, especially when she wasn't looking for a name again.

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.

Steph's of a different mindset entirely. Being a fan of teamwork, she imagines Babs sent out two individual teams, not intending for them to work together. Or why not tell Steph and Jo outright?

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."

"I haven't either." Because honesty at least does work.
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.

"Big and making a ruckus," Steph agrees with a nod, turning her gaze up the path again. Or what passes for a path. More of a deer trail than anything, but Steph had figured it wouldn't hurt to follow what might be considered a food source. "You want to go on together a while, see what we can find?"

No point splitting it up, trying to solve it against each other like it's some sort of competition.

"Well-" Jo tilted her head, even as she brought her gun back up. "-we are already here."
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.

Steph grins back, cheerful, and hefts her shield up and over her shoulder, hands far from the single gun she carries. "Been into town yet? I haven't seen a thing out here but they're eager to show off the scene of the crimes, if you wanna call it that."

Jo's watching as much as walking. Habit.
The ones that keep her alive, across worlds.

"Not yet. I didn't get here long ago."

"Anything good there?"

The grin fades and Steph glances over, blue eyes hooded. "Not sure I'd say 'good' about anything involved here. Hell of a mess, if you don't mind me sayin' so. Still not sure what it is or what it wants, and neither are any of those people livin' down there."

It's a hard choice there not to roll her eyes.
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?"

Steph lifts her eyebrows at the woman, surprised by the hostility. Jo's tone has her pulling her shoulders back automatically in response to an order, but she settles almost immediately with a faint frown.

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."

Jo doesn't sigh or shift awkwardly.

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."

The change in tone is noted and appreciated. Steph has a hint of a smile at her lips, even as she shrugs. "Everybody's got different skills. Nothing I saw there said anything but a bad illness, one I didn't recognize. But I expected that already, just from Babs said, and the reactions of the folks down there told me the same. They think something's doing it to them, not just a virus."

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