maskormenace | 001 [video

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001 [video - voice]

[A video image clicks on, revealing a broad, churlish looking man, in his late 40s but looks like he's in his 50s. His face is world-weary, haggard, with heavy-set wrinkles on his brow. His dark hair is flecked with grey, as is his beard. There's an angry concern in his hard eyes and his jaw is clenched tight. He looks like a man one wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of.]

--goddamn it.

[The video image switches off. That wasn't what he'd wanted to do. A second later, a voice feed starts instead, and there's a momentary pause as Joel examines the device to ascertain it is actually on. He was no stranger to technology similar to this before the outbreak but that was over twenty years ago. Reacquainting himself with technology like this, even after he was shown the ropes by that asshole soldier who escorted him from the lab, is foreign as hell after years of having to live with hardly any technology at all.]

Alright, look-- [A brief shuffling sound of him handling the device, switching it from one hand to the other. When he speaks, it's with a strong Texan accent, his voice gruff and hard.] I got no idea who's listenin' to this but I'm gettin' real sick of this bullshit. Just gonna cut straight to the chase:

First off, I'm lookin' for someone. A girl. 'Bout fourteen years-old. Red-brown hair, freckles, green eyes, scar on her right eyebrow. It's real important I find her. If you've seen a girl who matches this description, tell her Joel is lookin' for her.

Secondly, if the girl I'm lookin' for is here and I find out anyone has so much as touched a single hair on her head, I won't hesitate to hunt you down and pop your goddamn kneecaps off. I ain't messin' around here.

And lastly-- [another pause] I need, uh, need someone to point me towards a place where I can get my hands on some clothes.

[Because the clothes he's wearing right now? Are torn at the seams and shredded. Just in the last hour, he's transformed into a fucking giant bear twice without seeming to have any control over it and his clothes, the only clothes he's got, are now more or less destroyed.

And another pause, filled with the sound of a quiet, preoccupied sigh and the shuffling noise of the device being handled as he switches back to the other hand. Screw it, he'll just address Ellie directly. If she's here, if she's listening, he knows she won't hesitate to contact him. Jesus, he hopes she's alright.]

If you are here, kiddo… just lemme know, alright?

[The voice feeds ends.]

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Don't worry. Like all good saviors, I do a little pruning now and then.

Well, the car hovering - Joel wasn't fucking expecting that. A momentary look of alarm crosses his face while he's buckling his own seatbelt as the car becomes seemingly almost weightless in the air and begins gliding through the street. He throws a look over at Jesse as if to say, What the Sam goddamn Hill? And then, despite himself, despite his paranoia and his nervousness and his complete and utter suspicion of Jesse, Joel lets out a huff of disbelief that could almost pass off as the beginning of a laugh. Almost. But not quite.

Alright, he's gotta admit: this car is really damn cool. If Tommy was here, he'd be going mental with excitement. And as for Ellie, well, her awe is plain to see as Joel glances over his shoulder at her again.

But of course, she has to press the superpower issue. Joel isn't so sure his 'power' could exactly be called awesome. Randomly transfiguring into a giant bear and ripping all his clothes in the process has so far hardly proved itself to be awesome. If anything, it's been downright painful on his joints and muscles.

And according to his file back in his apartment, something called Ursine Familiars. Whatever the hell that's supposed to be. Joel so far hasn't been inclined to find out. The whole bear transformation thing has been unpleasant enough.

"Uh," he says again, reluctant. "A kind of... animal... thing.

"One of yours?" he's quick to go on and echo Ellie, turning to look back at her again. "...How many 'powers' you got, kiddo?"

A manhunt, something of the sort. That sort of thing is enormously rare.

Don't worry, you're off the hook. I haven't seen any of that around here.

What about your world, though? You have some priests, it sounds like, right?

Some asshole decided that he'd do that.

[But werewolves in general are frustrating and annoying.]

Back up a minute. Werewolves?

[The outright skepticism in his tone is unmistakeable. There ain't no such thing as werewolves, at least not where he's from. In movies, sure. But outside of that, hell no.]

Used to. Most of 'em are either dead or infected now. Like most of the world.

Not a lotta use for priests where I'm from, anyways. Ain't like prayin'll save you.

Mm, I see. [ there goes his until-now permanent cheery smile ] That sounds like a pretty bad world, then. Mind if I ask for a little more detail?

Uh. Alright, then.

[This just all seems so hard to believe: spending twenty years of his life fighting to stay alive, killing in the name of survival, watching the world be torn apart by infection and chaos and despair - and then find himself here, in this seemingly quiet, humdrum kind of place.]

And there's no... infections here? No quarantine zones, no nothin' like that?

[If this girl is a nutcase, she's a pretty convincing one. It's the way she talks more than anything. It's like she's an old soul with way too much life experience trapped in an adolescent's body. Kind of like Ellie.

Still. Saviour? What the hell.]

No offence, but, uh... Havin' a hard time with this whole saviour thing. I mean, you just look like a regular young girl to me. Not much older than my girl, matter of fact.

Uh. 'Bout twenty years ago, there was a pandemic outbreak. A parasitic fungus, believed to have started out in some infected crops. Makes people lose their minds, turns them into crazed maniacs that'll either spread the infection by bitin' you or just plain tear you apart. Military couldn't control it, CDC couldn't find a cure. Martial law was instated, quarantine zones set up. Entire cities were bombed to wipe out Infected, though that only worked for a short while. The infection's wiped out over sixty percent of the world's population. Twenty years on, it ain't gotten any better.

[Joel says all of this in a tired but matter-of-fact way. It's all long since become a way of life for him.]

just saying it like it is
you may think they take care of people here but i got no reason to trust them

That's the sick part, right? [ Dryly: ] I'm just a little girl.

I don't think you have much of a choice. They're insistent on staying rather close to us.

You got pulled into a weird fucking world and given superpowers, and that's what you're stuck on? They exist.

[Of course, he knew before hand.]

I'm Balthazar. I said that didn't I? Oh well...

And if it's really that much of a risk don't trouble yourself.

Just... keep your and Ellie's head down if someone named Lucifer pops up hmm?

[Joel doesn't know what throws him more: the guy's weird ass name, or the mention of some other guy called Lucifer.]

...Lucifer? [As in Satan? he thinks to ask, but that's just fucking stupid.]

Why, what's he about?

Oh the usual to be expected from the Morningstar. Murder, mayhem and complete disregard for human life.

In other words; Yes, that one.

[Out of nowhere, it suddenly strikes him: this girl, nutcase or not, reminds him of Ellie: the mouth she's got on her, the way she talks with a maturity that's beyond her years, even the whole saviour thing. The weight of the world had rested on Ellie's shoulders, too - the cure for mankind, the only known cure for the cordyceps infection in all twenty years of it having ravaged the world. A saviour, of sorts.

Not that the world deserves to be saved.]

What're you, like fourteen?

Sounds no different to the way people are back where I'm from.

[But then there's another pause, the skeptical uncertainty palpable in the brief silence.]

So, Lucifer, as in...?

[...Yeah, right.]

Must be a rather rough slice of living.

[A laugh, amused.]

Yes. As in.

Ask after his name. He's known in these parts, maybe not as what he is, so many skeptics... But as a murderer yes.

[Alright, he's gotta admit, the guy has a point: he has been pulled into a weird fucking world and has weird fucking powers that cause him to turn into a bear of all goddamn things. But--]

They sure as hell don't where I'm from. Matter of fact, where I'm from, they ain't nothin' but fictional things that existed in books and dumb teen movies.

[Past tense because, well, there ain't been any books published or movies made in twenty years where Joel is from.]

yeah? and whys that?
what kinda "close" are we talking about here?

Yeah. End of the world tends to be kinda rough.

But lemme get this straight: Lucifer. Satan. Just... [the guy won't be able to see it, but Joel gives a gesturing wave of his hand as he talks] wanderin' 'round like you and me?

That bad, hmm? What kind? I've seen my fair share of apocalypses.

Well locked up but yes. That's the trouble with family.

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