What happened

Without anyone to keep him on track, Jean-Paul was becoming more and more prone to doing things that Heather McDonald Hudson would definitely not approve of. It wasn't anywhere near planting bombs in government buildings (and not only because he wasn't entirely sure which buildings would fall under that heading), but a certain amount of apathy was setting in. While Heather or Mac might've stepped in, and Anne certainly would've - as a Mountie, that sort of thing seemed to have been hammered into her - Jean-Paul was perfectly to let petty squabbles go on.

An unconscious woman in an alleyway was not quite the same, unless she was having a petty squabble with the ground, or the contents of her stomach were having a petty squabble with her digestive system. He watched for awhile (thirty seconds was a long time to ask for, for him), and when she showed no signs of getting up on her own, he dropped down off the roof and pondered the situation from a much closer vantage point.

"Why can't I have a bunny?" the woman muttered, but it didn't seem to be directed at him, so Jean-Paul merely waited. Just in case she really was alright, or perhaps just crazy. There was a faint groan, and then her arms shifted. "Where is it?" she asked, stronger than before.

The voice was familiar, and come to think of it, the costume was too, though it had been less dirty the last time he'd seen it. The red and black pattern with the high-collared cape was as distinctive as the woman who'd worn it. There was just one catch that wasn't really a catch here; linear time seemed nonexistant.

"Nemesis?"

Her head lifted, and through a tear in her mask, he could see one blue eye. For a second, it went wide and vulnerable, and then it narrowed. "Northstar. I'd heard you were dead."

Well, if that was how she wanted to play it. Jean-Paul crossed his arms over his chest. "Well, the last time I saw you, you were dead."

"Hm," was all she said, and set about digging in the shadows beside her until she pulled a long, thin-bladed sword out of a pile of trash bags. Immediately, her posture strengthened, and what little expression he could see in her face set itself resolutely. "I don't suppose you Alpha Flightians managed to mess up the timeline again, did you?"

"It's not us." Jean-Paul jerked his chin up towards the sky. "Come on. If you just got here, there's a lot you need to know."

It was like something out of a bad teen romance movie. The boy from the wrong side of the tracks finally decides to do something right, go for the prom queen, and everyone else decides to jump in the way. Well, it wasn't that anyone was really fighting Dick for Babs, not directly, but everyone everywhere was talking about her. Some had heard of her, and their boasting drew glares or rapt attentive eyes. Others merely gossiped, trading speculation based on rumors and blown-up stories.

Dick couldn't take much more of this.

Even the rooftops weren't much of a respite. He could still hear the voices, coming from open apartment windows. Sometimes he could hear fights starting, and for once, Nightwing had no desire to intervene. Let them fight. She was his, and they both knew it. Everything else - this weird obsession - it didn't mean anything.

Now, if one of those maniacs decided to go after her with a knife or something (people had odd ways of expressing admiration), then he'd jump down, but until then, he was content to merely fight the urge to cover his ears with his hands.

"Disgusting, isn't it?" The voice was lilting, a faint French accent to the words, and the tone dripped arrogance and a stretched patience.

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Tara Markov had seen stranger things. ‘Seen’ was a poor choice of words, though, because the girl had not only seen these things, but also experienced them and had the unfortunate luck of having to deal with their aftermath. So naturally, the girl dealt fairly well with change, and this would include being swept away from her traveling to here.

Wherever here was. What looked like a cradle of dirt and rock had caught Tara while she had fall from the portal in the sky, and she lie on the brown earth, hurt but whole, and for once in her life, not broken. She wanted desperately to sit up and see where she was, but whatever had happened had sucked most of the energy from her, and this included her powers. She had no fear that her powers had left her (like she’d be that lucky) because just from the height of where she could see and the warmth of the dirt beneath her, she could tell she was the one that had made the earth move. The earth always smelled warm and fresh once she manipulated it; it was her favorite scent.

She couldn’t move thank to that damn thing that brought her here. Tara felt very vulnerable during that phase –something she intensely disliked- but tried to calm herself down. She had faced situations like this before, she could handle herself. She had had to her whole life. And at least the view was terrific, she was faced west towards the setting sun, the sky was illuminated beautifully. She took a deep breath and began to feel the energy flow back to her body, giving her enough strength to sit up, leaning forward to see the city. There was an intense glare from the sun, but Tara could tell it was a large metropolis, which meant there was probably someone there that had heard of her. Someone homeless, like herself, of course. She would expect anyone of status to trust her, or remember her enough

Tara sighed, running her leather-gloved hand through her scraggly blonde hair while she tried to formulate a plan. She glanced over the side of the cradle of dirt and rock, and instantly did a double take when she saw how high she was. Fuck. She was at least ten feet up, and the sides sloped down almost vertically. Double shit. There was no way she could get out of this without someone noticing…but, if anyone could do it, it’d be her own self, right? She could handle this situation, and the park-ish area she had landed in seemed pretty empty. She didn’t even know where she was, so if anyone did see and ask questions, she could BS her way out of it. It’s what she did best.

But good Lord, she was tired. Tara could sit up, but for the moment all she wanted to do was just sit and figure out how she got wherever she was; be somewhat productive. The last thing she really remembered was walking under an overpass and being practically blinded by some idiot driver using their Brights, and then falling. And ending up here. Tara sighed and looked around the area she landed in, towards the city. There was large sky-scrapper office building that seemed to be in the middle of the town. It seemed like a good idea, since it was obviously the most important building in the city, she had seen that before. She stood and positioned herself at a diagonal, sliding down the slope of the hill she had created. Now she was ready to get moving and find out where she was (and where to stay) but there was still the problem of the ten-foot mass of dirt and rock in the middle of the park. That couldn’t just be left unexplained. She sighed and glanced around, making sure the area was cleared before her eyes, hands and the pile of earth began to glow bright yellow. Tara had wanted to keep her powers a secret, but there didn’t seem to be anyone around, and a girl had to do what a girl had to do to keep it a secret.


OOC: Have fun with this. <3

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Jean-Paul was doing a fine job of not making friends, and not finding allies. On the flip side, he was also doing a fine job of not getting shot, beat up, killed, maimed, tortured or mugged. Not that he had much to steal, of course. He'd found a little place - no, it wasn't really a place, so much as an abandoned attic-type space, complete with bats, and had taken to going out in uniform, just to try and deter petty thieves. There was, oddly enough, something about seeing a man in spandex that translated to, "Don't try to attack me, as I will hand you your ass on a platter."

It didn't help with actually figuring out what was going on, other than the obvious, which was... chaos. Gunshots and shouts, the sounds of a city being overrun by crime. Something unfamiliar to him, because Alpha Flight had always dealt with the superhuman and the supernatural. Never anything so simple as bank robbers, unless they also had tentacles or three eyes, or something odd.

Now it was nighttime, and hardly quieter than the day. At least he had the atmosphere to flee to. The sky was the only free space, and even that was restricted, somehow. Sometimes he went up to look for people he knew - Aurora, Vindicator, even Sasquatch - and sometimes, like tonight, he was trying to escape from the bats. They were harmless enough, but the fluttering of wings going in and out of the window grated. Up here, he'd see the occasional winged shape, but it was easy to ignore in favor of the stars and the clouds. Mostly clouds, tonight.

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The bus came to a stop with the definite feeling that it wasn't going to move again, and he looked up. Pale blue eyes met those of the driver, reflected in the mirror above the wheel, and silently asked the question.

"Last stop," was the brief explanation, the words in joual-accented English.

He glanced outside, at the buildings and the streets, and didn't recognize any of it. Actually, the only thing he did recognize was the interior of the bus. No landmarks, or even familiar shapes, were outside. Puzzled, he stood up and made his way to the front of the empty bus.

Odd. He could've sworn there'd been more people, but then, he didn't pay much attention to the general populace while riding a bus.

"Where are we?"

The driver shrugged. "End of the line, sir."

That told him absolutely nothing, and he rolled his eyes up towards the ceiling before muttering an insincere thank you and heading down the stairs to the sidewalk with exaggerated footfalls. As soon as he was out, the doors hissed shut and the bus rolled away. Its absence revealed more unfamiliar architecture.

Jean-Paul didn't think he knew all of Ottawa, but he'd certainly spent enough time there to know that this was no street that he'd heard of, or seen – whether from the ground, or from the air. Grumbling to himself, he stalked off down the street, turning the high collar of his coat up against the weather and the unsettling feeling that he was completely and utterly lost.

He made it a few blocks, still without seeing anything, or anyone familiar. He didn't see many people at all, actually, aside from the odd lurking shadow. Sometime after crossing the fourth street, his patience ran out. There was no one watching who mattered, and it was going to take him forever to search the streets this way. It was better to just –

Zip.

– and then he was slowing to a walk again, only a second later, but with half a dozen non-descript, unrecognized blocks visited. It figured that the one time he'd been willing to swallow his pride to ask Jeanne-Marie for some sort of forgiveness, he would never even make it to her. If she'd checked her message machine and actually listened to his message, and was expecting him, she'd think him immature, now, or spiteful.

"Wonderful," he muttered to himself, the word slipping into French. If he didn't have to use English, he wouldn't, and since there was no one around him that he was actually talking to, he didn't.

There was still flight, and maybe, if he could get up high enough he'd be able to see a place he recognized. Maybe he'd ended up in a completely different city, though that was next to impossible. Continuing the search would be better than standing around and waiting for someone to find him, though. He'd feel better for at least trying. His head tilted back, eyes studying the rooftops calculatingly. Eh. Why bother with the extra thinking when he knew he would end up there regardless of how appealing the roofs were as landing pads? He could land wherever he wanted. His glance turned to the sky, briefly, and then he was airborne. Then he was above the rooftops, and able to see... nothing. A wall, mostly. A little higher, and he could see treetops. Nothing but treetops, for miles and miles.

What. The. Hell.

Jean-Paul tried not to look as frustrated as he felt, and dropped onto a rooftop, arms crossed tightly over his chest. It would've been nice to have received some warning about a weird teleporter/reality-shifter/what-have-you running around Canada. Maybe he would've paid more attention to things. Maybe he wouldn't have landed himself in a city in the middle of a giant forest.

Maybe he would've reconciled with his sister. Maybe not.

Maybe hypothetical situations, hindsight and sarcastic suggestions about how things should've gone wouldn't help him figure out where he was.

Maybe.

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