Who: Leon Orcot and Lina Inverse What: Leon's forced to arrest a madwoman who wreaked public havoc. When: Today~ Where: Park in Costa Mesa Rating/Warnings: Sass, Satan accusations, Michael Bay explosions. Status: Complete!
A darkness beyond blackest pitch, deeper than the deepest night. Hues of gold, hues of blue, where things felt numb, as if she’d been deprived of almost every sense. All she had there was her mind, her memories, some kind of strange dialogue between she and the Lord of Nightmares. The King of Darkness from her universe, the Mother of All things. That’s what ultimately ripped her from this plane of existence to the next to pay a price and restore balance, and the Sea of Chaos was where she was.
Or used to be, anyway.
It wasn’t a particularly special park. It was quaint, an ideal spot for family get togethers and it had plenty of trees, lots of space for kids and dogs to play, swings and slides and really bitchass jungle gyms. It was somewhere in Costa Mesa, though she’d never actually been here. So why she was there, curled into herself behind a bush and snoozing away, well…
Uh. Lina probably couldn’t tell you, even if she was conscious.
Sometimes it was a popular place for the homeless to rest too, or just find a lot of junk so they could sell it to whatever idiot would buy it. And this particular homeless man was filthy, old, wearing a pantyhose as a hat and was probably not all there. But he spotted the body of one slumbering petite redhead with a killer snore and a pair of glittery flats that caught his eye. It was right then and there he decided that those shoes were his and sat his happy ass down, prying them off midget-sized feet, but the sensation of touch was enough to stir her awake and blink open blood-red eyes.
He smiled over her like an idiot, teeth missing, and Lina let out a scream that could wake the dead. In the span of a couple seconds, heat engulfed her fingers, the element of fire summoned from the other side into a ball of flames and the instinct of defense kicked in, and she let it all loose: “FIREBALL!”
One could argue that she probably overreacted, but it was probably too late. Everything flammable was engulfed, there was a crater where the jungle gym was, children screamed and the homeless man was scorched (and he had successfully stolen her shoes, let’s not forget that) and began screaming: “THE DEVIL IS HERE! THE DEVIL IS HERE!”
Meanwhile someone was taking video on their stupid phone.
There was one more day before Chris came home from summer camp, and while Leon missed his little brother, he was taking advantage of having the weekend to himself. He had come to the beach to get in some surfing, maybe drink a couple of frozen, fruity beverages that Revy and the guys at work could never know he drank, and attempt to pick-up some bikini clad beach broads. The last part of the plan hadn’t really gone over that well, but at least the surfing and the daiquiris had been nice.
But, all good things had come to an end, and so he was getting ready to go home. He had parked next to a park, and had been eating a particularly good cheeseburger when there was a flash of light and then a wave of heat, and everything was on fire.
“What the fuck?” Leon cursed, tossing the burger on his passenger seat and pulling a handgun and his spare set of cuffs out from his glovebox and then rushed into the park attaching both of them to his belt as he rushed toward the explosion, following the helpful voice of some homeless man who was yelling about the Devil.
“The hell is going on here?” he asked the kid who was filming on his camera.
“I think that girl just blew up the park,” the kid responded, not putting his phone down.
“Of course she did,” Leon muttered. There was a time when Leon might have doubted that, but he had been on the Network for long enough that it wasn’t really that hard to swallow. Can’t even come have a damn day off with someone blowing up a park. “Alright Miss,” he said a little louder and heading toward the confused looking redhead- slowly, holding his badge out so that she could see it clearly, and watching her in case she attempted to attack him - “Put your hands your head.”
That girl looked like a frazzled hot mess, now officially barefoot and she really had no idea where the fuck she was, a semi-conscious idea of what just happened, and her eyes were following the creep that ran off with her goddamn shoes and -
“I have no idea where I am,” Lina blurted honestly, everything around them blazing, people trying running from their cars and behind Leon, she could see the fucker run! With her shoes! “But he - my shoes - ah!” The summer breeze helped the flames spread, trees and bushes and seared grass. Steel jungle-gym ruins were scattered around the crater in the center. She didn’t throw her hands up in the air but she was definitely on defensive, hostile if she right button was pushed. “And I don’t have a weapon, just tell me where the fuck I am, mister.”
She saw the badge, sure, but her mind didn’t seem to process she was dealing with the goddamn po-po. Not yet. Where was--
Leon frowned, really wishing there were more of him. He could hear the sirens somewhere in the distance, firetrucks most likely. But he needed to get that video from the kid as evidence, needed to round up other witnesses, and his number one suspect for all of this was clearly in distress and needed help. The poor girl didn’t even have shoes, and while he’d seen the homeless man run off he had missed the fact that he had been carrying shoes with him at the time. It didn’t take him long to decide that that should be his priority. Hopefully he could trust anyone who had witnessed whatever had happened to talk to the local police.
“You’re in a park in Costa Mesa,” Leon said, continuing to move closer to her in a non-threatening manner. “In California. I’m Detective Leon Orcot. Are you injured?”
Park in-- Okay, that made sense. Made a lot of fucking sense, and she tried to take a deep breath of air but she inhaled a bit of smoke, which just resulted in a cough and hack, jesus. California made sense, Orange County made sense, this didn’t feel like some sort of surreal swimmy-like state of fucked up consciousness, so…
“No,” she told him, brows furrowed, and then a realization dawned on her. Blue skies (though her spell caused the haze of charcoal smoke, her bad), the heat, the lack of icy dread and magic-imbued lightning that would zap, shock and destroy everything it lashed. Everything seemed intact (except for the shit that was burning down but, heeeey, semantics) and nothing was disappearing into nothingness.
Memories were cracked, things were slowly beginning to piece itself together but her mind had been foggy with confusion, the end of the world, a sacrifice. Whiskey, she could still almost taste it in her mouth - why the hell could she taste whiskey?
“You’re trying to arrest me, aren’t you?” Shit.
“‘Fraid so,” Leon said, smiling a little. She seemed to be getting her wits about her at least. “I don’t really know what happened with you,” and he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know. It was probably just going to be something else that pissed him off, “but blowing up parks is generally frowned upon.” And man, was the park ever burning. He was sweating from the heat that was radiating from the nearby trees. He’d need to get them away from the area soon.
It was a little hard to explain what happened, not to someone she didn’t think would even understand where she was or how she even got here. Even Lina herself hadn’t a damn clue how she came back here, if this was the right world, the right time, bones and skin felt out of place from being gone elsewhere so long. Like her body had been dormant forever but her mind had been active, cycling through events, memories, all of it a blur that still rattled every cell.
But she knew one thing.
There was no way in hell she was getting arrested.
“Um.” Fingers wiggled at him. “Bye!”
Then the bitch darted, barefoot, across the park, avoiding flames, leaping over a bench. LATER, suckers!
Leon stood in place for about two seconds. She’d recovered her senses quickly, and he’d honestly thought she was going to just come along quietly. Nothing could ever be easy, could it.
“Oh for fuck’s-” Leon started as he began to run after her. It was way too hot to be running around like this, but things were getting a little smokey and he couldn’t let her get lost in it. “Stop! Stop right there!” he yelled, though the amount of times that actually worked made him wonder why he bothered doing it. It did seem like he was gaining though. He might have smoked like a chimney sometimes, but he still kept himself in shape. He also had shoes. He had no idea what happened to the girl’s shoes, but he was thankful as all hell that they were gone.
Running was two things: pointless, because she didn’t know where the hell she was going, and painful, because her feet were sensitive and were not made for getting pricked by twigs and acorns and whatever the fuck else covered the grass. Firetrucks made the scene already, hosing down the wildfires and now it just wasn’t one person using their camera phones to follow the wild on-going goosechase.
Oh, sure people, nevermind the fucking fire and the fucking crater, like that’s not important.
Lina might have been lagging, yeah, but she was about to say ‘screw it’ and conjure a levitation spell. And she was almost, almost there, her feet beginning to hover off the ground for take off. And that’s when it happened - an aggressive tackle down and surge of electricity tickled (putting it lightly) her side, because cops actually did make the seen and one of his buddy’s had thrown himself at her, gotten her on the ground, and tased her until she was a puddle of groaning mush.
What the fuck just happened.
“I got her! I GOT HER!” The cop in question looked like someone that never really won a lot in life, and this was probably his greatest feat in his entire history. He was beaming with pride. “Leon! I got h--” Whack! “Ow!”
“That hurt me more than it hurt you, asshole,” she mumbled, hand dropping down but she didn’t move from the grass, dazed and confused and ow, thanks a lot.
Leon was a little disappointed when one of the younger cops flew out of nowhere and tackled her. It should have been his arrest. Then again, he was supposed to have the day off, this wasn't his precinct, and his boss had very recently yelled at him again about making off-duty arrests (yelling something about how Leon should just use some of his holiday time and go to a beach someplace, pfft).
"Good job, Silverman," Leon said. He really did not envy the poor girl getting tased, having recently been on the receiving end of those barbs. "You're not supposed to let your guard down until after the cuffs are on, you know." He knelt down next to the two of them to put the cuffs on her. "Silverman, it's your arrest. Wanna read her her rights?"
Silverman... really wasn't the greatest officer out there. Leon could give him this arrest. He also didn't entirely trust the officer to not screw it up somehow. Well, that and Leon did get a certain level of satisfaction arresting suckers who tried to run away from him. As Silverman got up and started to read her rights, Leon attempted to roughly help Lina to her feet. "You could have made this easy on yourself, Miss. Looks like we get to add resisted arrest to your charges," Leon added as Silverman finished, almost gleeful sounding.
If this was a cartoon she’d have a little halo of birds and question marks circling her head, and barely felt it when Leon so helpfully hoisted her up on her bare feetsies. Lina made an attempt to move her hands but was met with some restriction - and that’s when her demonically red eyes honed in on the stainless cuffs circling her wrists. Fanfuckingtastic. “You guys suck at handling ladies,” she huffed, but there was an exhausted slur to her words and a couple knee-buckles on the way to the police vehicle.
In a minute she’d gather her wits again and slip out of these damn things with a spark of magic, and eventually escape. Evidently magic was at full-force again, the subtle crackling of energy under her skin; a chill of darkness, the promise of destruction. She wouldn’t be contained for too long. Jackasses, all of you.
A pimply nerd popped up by the vehicle, one of the many that had videotaped the entire debacle through his phone and he took a close up of Leon’s face, and then Lina’s. A click. A couple seconds later… “Annnnnnnnd it’s on YouTube.”
“Maybe not, but we’re great at handling nutjobs who set parks on fire in the middle of the afternoon,” Leon said, and Silverman laughed. He had been concerned about the fire spreading, especially with the drought, but the firemen had arrived in a timely fashion and appeared to be doing a very good job at keeping the fire contained.
He scowled when the fucking nerd stuck his camera in his face. According to his dreams, being a police officer was a whole lot easier in the nineties when everyone and their grandma didn’t have a pocket-sized camera on them at all times. It wasn’t as though he could do anything about it though, so he tried to ignore it as he went to manhandle Lina into the car. “Time to get you behind bars, missy.”