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Who| Joel, Ellie, anyone else!
What| Joel shows up and gets tossed into the ring. Let's see how he does!
Where| I can put him just about anywhere in the museum you need - he'll be scoping the place out.
When| Mid-Week 1
Warnings/Notes| Joel is a highly suspicious dude and may assume anyone he meets is hostile until proven otherwise. This means he might punch first and ask questions later! I'll update this if anything else comes up.

Finally, please specify if you would like to meet Joel before he finds Ellie or after - if before, he'll be on his own, really worried about his baby girl, and slightly more prone to violence. If AFTER, you will probably get Joel and Ellie (two for the price of one!), and a lower chance of Joel trying to throttle you immediately.

"Put your hands in the air!" "She's not breathin'."

He woke with a start, phantom pain in his head and surrounded by - military? They were clearly military, but not any military he was familiar with. When they grabbed him, all sense went out of his head - normally, Joel would go quietly, because struggling tended to get people shot, but all he could think, all he could remember, was Ellie, her body so still. She's not breathin'.

"Where is she?" he demanded, over and over, landing a few punches but never able to break free. The pajamas they made him wear, the explanation given, all barely registered as he had only one thought in his head - find Ellie now. "What the hell did you bastards do to her?" he demanded yet again, attempting to yank his arm free when they came at him with a needle. Still, nothing. His shouts and struggles were in vain, and the next thing he knew, he was... in a parking garage?

With no one around to confront, and the knowledge that he was here to kill, or be killed, Joel quickly shoved his feelings to one side, dropping low and seeking a stairwell to climb to higher ground - it would take him a bit to realize the only way up was via elevators that actually still worked. They were far too slow and noisy for Joel's taste, but it became obvious that they were his only option, and he needed to get to higher ground, if he was going to find anything. Especially Ellie.

Joel moved quickly, quietly, and with one singular purpose: find the girl, and get the hell out of here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Venus is prowling the fourth floor again, making sure all exits are secured so no one can come in and attack Kankri, when Joel and Ellie come by. Her foot's feeling better now, which helps, but her ribs seem to have worsened. She finds herself wheezing more often than not, hunching when she isn't paying attention to her posture - and dividing her concentration between standing up straight and looking for enemies is not a winning strategy.

Eventually, she has to take a seat, crawling inside the ribcage of a massive prehistoric beast at an angle that can watch the elevators and the stairwell, although she's certain that door hasn't opened since she's gotten here. She reaches over and picks at some of the paint on her toenails, now peeling off, as she tries decide how best to proceed with the injuries she has.

When two people walk in, Venus stays perfectly still, waiting to see if she should watch them pass and then go protect the cafe Kankri's sleeping in or if she should attack them now. Her hand slips towards her knife and then-

-she recognizes that small silhouette. Not the big one, but the small one.

"Ellie?" she whispers. She still holds her knife, uncertain about the other dark figure.

Ellie hears the voice and whips around in the direction, just barely catching Venus' outline in the shadows.

"Venus--" She whispers back, making a beeline for her, though she gave a double check to make sure they were alone. "What happened? Are you alright?"

Ellie can make all the beelines she wants - Joel's got his eyes peeled for anything suspicious all the time - that's just the way it works when you trust someone enough to have each other's backs, anyway. They each knows how the other operates by now, so it's just a matter of keeping track of where she's getting to, and hanging back to double-check their surroundings before approaching them himself.

"Another friend of yours?" he asks Ellie, eyebrows quirked in an almost-amused expression.

"Fine, fine. Some bitch put me through a car window." She unwinds herself out of the rib cage and holds her arms out for Ellie. "Careful when you hug me, Shepard kicked in my ribs."

She doesn't take her eyes off Joel, though. It's not that she doesn't trust Ellie's judgment, but she hasn't had a chance to see this guy on tape. The camera changes people - Venus would know.

"And this would be?"

"Bitch!" Ellie agrees, before reaching out and giving Venus the careful hug she was asking for. "Shepard's kind of a bad ass though, somehow I'm not surprised."

She pulled back and grinned, looking between them

"Yeah, she's a friend. Venus, this is Joel," She said, thumbing at him. "Joel, this is Venus. She's a real, honest-to-goodness bonafied superhero."

Joel doesn't hold his hand out to shake, or make any attempt at physical contact. He keeps his distance from the stranger, close to Ellie without invading her personal space, but clearly on her side. Looking out for her.

He just nods at the older woman, his stance a little more relaxed, but only a little.

"So what's your super power?"

Even the light hug is painful, but Venus refuses to let that change her body language at all. No grimace, no tensing.

"Making this tiger-print snuggie look amazing," she says, putting a hand on her hip. "Honestly, it's teleportation, but I can't use it in here or believe me, I'd be in Tahiti by now."

"A bunch of people here had superpowers back home," Ellie says helpfully, checking over Venus before scrounging in her pockets and pulling up a slightly beaten up pastry.

"Joel's from back home. Just you know, introducing him to the gang," She added sarcastically, "To keep him from knifing them."

"I wasn't gonna knife that guy," Joel protests mildly. "I don't have a knife on me."

Yes, Joel, but you were totally going to strangle him to death. To take his knife.

"What's the point of the fuckin' pajamas, anyway?" He's a little concerned about Ellie's, to be honest. If they glow in the dark, that'll give her away to anyone and everyone in her vicinity.

"Eh." Venus looks Joel up and down. He has a significant height and weight advantage, plus he isn't injured, but she greets him with a cocky smirk anyway. "I can take him."

She looks at the pastry and nods. "Good, you have food. The pastries at my-" she almost says 'our', and were it only Ellie she would, "cafe up here are hella stale. I'd feel bad offering them to you."

"Joel, just be glad you aren't in a fucking diamond dress, okay?" She says. She was actually pretty fond of her her onesie, despite the fact that she glowed like a nightlight for a little while.

"Well uh, it's a bit stale," She admits a bit sheepishly, breaking it in half and holding some out for her. She can't help but want to feed her wounded friends - you needed energy to heal, after all.

Winter had taught her that.

"But it's not so bad, really."

Joel meets Venus's gaze with a steady one of his own - she's clearly injured, and clearly posturing for the girl, and it's none of his concern, really. They both know who would win in a fight. If it came to that.

Joel also knows who's side Ellie would come down on, in such an event.

He would be reluctant to share food with anyone aside from the two of them, but for the moment, he's not stopping Ellie's bout of generosity. For teh moment. "How secure is this spot?" he asks instead, glancing around them.

"Thanks." She smiles and takes the half of a pastry, eating it with good manners that don't seem to fit her murdergames attitude.

"Secure," Venus says. "I know what to look for when I run a patrol. This is my territory and no one's breached it so far."

From this chamber of the fossil hall to the cafe to the hallway with the elevators. She hasn't claimed the room with the species-genus video - the noise makes it too difficult to listen for attackers. She just always keeps that doorway in sight.

Ellie nodded. "Alright."

She had a feeling that Venus wasn't telling her something but she didn't press. It was pretty impossible to keep something secure when there was one of you - everyone had to sleep. Even Venus.

"I've just been wandering, trying to find everyone. Get a good lay out of the place. Found Joel by accident, sort of." She can't quite keep the fond smile off her face. "I'm sure we'll bunker down eventually."

Joel gives a faint affirmative grunt. Which basically translates to yes we are agreed on that point. He keeps one eye perpetually on Ellie, as though afraid if she gets out of his sight, she'll vanish again and he'll never be able to find her.

Eventually, they will have to stop and find someplace to get some shut-eye, but until then, he has no intention of letting her get too far away.

"Lotta good places to get ambushed in a building like this," he says mildly. "Do you know if there's roof access?"

"Yeah, but I wouldn't trust it. The Capitol's trying to keep us in close quarters. I think if we try to press the boundaries, they'll push the perimeters in." Venus folds her arms, because that makes standing up straight despite the broken ribs much easier. "Besides, it's mostly made of glass. I'd bet good money that they're on tenterhooks waiting for someone to fall through it."

Trust her TV star intuition on this one.

She gestures with her hand that they should follow her. Tucked inside the skull of a beast is a bunch of candy bars. She throws one each to Ellie and Joel. If she and Kankri lose control of the cafe, she's made a few stashes outside it.

Speaking of Kankri, he hasn't been sleeping too well while Venus has been out on patrol; now he decides he might as well give up and just take a peek at how things look outside of their little haven.

When he hears voices he's about ready to scamper back inside; but then he realizes that Venus is talking to people, and it doesn't sound like she's in trouble. Maybe these are her friends, then.

With that in mind, he tiptoes over quietly and peeks around a giant skeleton to have a look.

Ellie let them chat for a bit, turning her attention to really get a look at the skeleton, still in awe of the fact that all of this stuff was still here and not looted and destroyed.

But then out of the corner of her eye she saw movement and started - immediately taking a step back towards Joel. "Shit--"

Joel reacts instantly to Ellie's change in demeanor - his defenses go up, and he reaches for a weapon that isn't there - cursing under his breath as he follows the girl's gaze.

"I thought you said this place was secure," he hisses to the older woman, automatically moving to put himself between the threat and Ellie.

Venus knows what the movement, the flash of black hair she can see from the corner of her eyes is, without actually having to think about it - it came from the direction of the cafe, and unless someone's come in through a window, only Kankri is over there. Furthermore, she knows he hasn't been sleeping well, and is surprised he stayed down and still as long as he did. Irritation flashes over her face that he didn't stay put, but she doesn't say any of that out loud.

Just like that, Venus moves to place herself between Joel and Kankri, protecting him with her body. It means a step forward, within range if Joel wants to take a swing at her. "He's with me. I told you it was secure, I didn't tell you I was alone."

She dares Joel with her eyes to challenge her on that fact, before calling over her shoulder, "come on out, kiddo."

For a moment, Kankri thinks he has deeply hecked up, as both of the strangers start going to defensive postures. But then Venus steps in, talking them down. He supposes he can't blame people for being on edge, with death announcements starting to filter through the PA system.

He bites his lip with his blunt teeth, but then straightens his posture and comes out from behind the skeleton. "I just wanted to see if you ran into trouble. Or friends," he says to Venus, knowing she told him to stay put and fully expecting to be scolded. Then he glances to the two new humans. Both of them look unfamiliar to him, but that isn't saying much with him being so new.

"Um, hello."

Ellie lets out a hard breath and relaxes. No curly horns. Not one of the trolls she was warned about, and any friend of Venus' is a friend of hers.

"Yeah, sorry. Should have figured."

She raised a hand toward Kankri. "Hey. Don't worry, we're friends."

Edited 2014-01-26 21:41 (UTC)

Joel, on the other hand, has not yet seen anyone who looked anything but perfectly human on this little adventure, and no one - not even Ellie - has thought to warn him about it.

So the sight of - well, a thing that is clearly not a regular person makes his eyes go wide with shock and a startled hiss of breath leave him.

"What the hell is that?" he exclaims, grabbing Ellie to pull her away from it, regardless of her and Venus's reactions.

"Excuse me?"

Venus' face turns red and her fists clench so hard her knuckles pale.

Foolishly, after a few months in the Capitol, after a few months in a human body instead of the mutant body that marked her an outcast, an abomination, a target - foolishly, she forgot how much it hurt to have it pointed out. It comes flooding back.

Doesn't matter that he was talking about Kankri and not her. It's the attitude, the attitude that anything different or strange was bad, that kept her from finishing school, kept her relatives kicking her around because having a mutant in the house was scaring the neighbors, that led her to deciding that the only way to avoid homelessness was to join a twenty-first century freak show.

She was lucky she could make money off of being a freak, a genetic monstrosity. That's all. Lucky.

Oh my god, what is that thing?

Are you even human? I mean, really, do you even count anymore?

You fucking freak! Get out of my house!

She's human now, what her life would have been so much easier if she'd always been. But nearly a decade of discrimination for her genes is imprinted so deep into her that it feels like a second skeleton (nearly as much as it would for her race, her gender...).

She brings a hand forward and grabs Joel's pajamas around the collar. "Take that back. Now."

Hearing himself being referred to like you would some kind of wild animal stings, and Kankri's all set to rip the stranger a new one over it. But then Venus steps in and does it for him. It's so gratifying to be defended, an unfamiliar situation.

But.

Venus is injured, and this stranger has a weight advantage on her, and the fewer fights they get in the better. So he steps forward and tugs on Venus's arm. "It's all right. I mean, I certainly don't appreciate being called a 'that,' but I suppose I had expected everyone to be familiar with...well. He didn't know, please calm down."

He looks over at Joel. "There's no need to be so alarmed, I mean you no harm. Even if I did, I doubt I could cause any. My name-" and okay, maybe he's a little tart with that remark, "-is Kankri. As for what I am, that's simple enough. I'm a troll. However, I'm given to understand that to humans, that word means something a bit...different. Some sort of folklore, or something. Suffice it to say that it isn't only your own species that our captors find, ah, 'entertaining.'"

He tugs Venus's arm again, looking to Ellie pleadingly for help breaking up the adults.

Edited 2014-01-26 23:06 (UTC)

for Joel and Ellie!

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