It's all AU.

This, admittedly, was not what he'd been expecting when he battered down the metal door. He wasn't entirely sure what he'd been expecting, but he knew that it wasn't a town.

Vaguely, he thought he might have been expecting a hospital, although he couldn't quite remember why.

And that was the problem, wasn't it? he mused, wandering over to a bench and sitting down, absently leaning down to scratch at his foot. It felt like something had got caught around his big toe. He couldn't remember why he was expecting a hospital, he couldn't remember why he felt as though his hair was just slightly wrong, and he really couldn't remember why he was wandering around in a blanket.

Perhaps someone else would know why? Or perhaps it would come to him if he waited. Whatever the outcome, it wasn't as though he could do anything but wait, at the moment. And rest, as his chest still hurt for some reason that, yet again, he couldn't remember.

He wasn't short on finding things to occupy him. New place, new time - everything was interesting enough to hold his attention, especially now that he'd decided he was at least mostly safe here.

At the moment he was sitting on a bench outside, with a basket of fried chicken strips. He was pulling them apart with his fingers as much as eating them, at least at the moment. There was a paper cup with a lid and straw sitting at his feet, and he was, just in general, looking really relaxed, and maybe even a little sleepy.

When he heard - sensed, felt, something - someone near-by, he looked up and cocked his eyebrow slightly. "Hey."

Owen had awoken slowly, shifting carefully, but his hands and legs had still managed to bang against the railings on the bench. He'd shot up the second that had happened and smacked his forehead on the bottom of the bench and had rolled painfully to the side and out from under the unfamiliar wood and metal object. He'd been so sure that he was going to wake up back in his cell. But it seemed that they hadn't taken the time to move him during the night like they had apparently the night before. They wanted him to relax his guard. That had to be it. They wanted him to start to feel comfortable in this place before they decided to club him over the head and take him back to that cell that wreaked of death and decay.

The trouble was, he really wanted to indulge. It had been so long since he'd seen the sky, felt the grass, smelled air that wasn't recycled and stale. It had been too long since he'd seen the sun. He'd almost started to believe that these things had ceased to exist. But here they were, right in front of him.

Pushing himself up onto the bench (baby steps), Owen leaned back and surveyed the area around him. A small, nondescript town. They could have been anywhere. Raising his hand to pressed against his eyes, Owen leaned forward, elbows perching on his knees. Fresh air, sunlight, relative freedom. This game didn't make any sense.

( Cut for length )

She was in a hallway, carpeted and with several doors leading off it. The few furnishings she could see didn't look particularly old-fashioned. That combined with everything else she'd seen since arriving made her think she couldn't have travelled back far. She wasn't sure whether that was good or bad, but it probably gave her a fighting chance, so long as she didn't talk to the wrong person and blow up the universe or something. Further up the corridor she glimpsed movement, and she stopped and cautiously backed against the wall, pausing to consider what to do. She'd never find out where and when she was if she didn't look, and whoever it was might be able to help, assuming she didn't say anything mad like 'Hello, I've just been sent here from the future by a statue that was really an alien, what year is this?'. She called out, grateful that her voice sounded relatively steady,

"Hello? Excuse me. I seem to be lost. Can you help me?"

The town was getting a bit much for the Master. A bit... claustrophic. He wanted somewhere with more air, maybe even some water. And there had been a fishing shop, so presumably there was a river or a lake or something nearby. He took a leaf out of Jack's book, climbed to the roof of the hotel and surveyed the lay of the land.

Sure enough, there was a lake, just a couple of miles away. The Master practically danced down the stairs, swung out of the hotel, and started walking.

As soon as he'd got out of the town and onto the rustic little lane that should lead him to the lake, the drums began to quiet down and he started to really enjoy his walk.

He hadn't really expected to see anyone else this far out, but as he neared the lake someone else came into sight. Someone very familiar.

"Grandpa? You know the thing that went on last week, with Yerpie-boy an' the loups-garoux and all? Well, here's me thinking that it might just be over and I could get back to becoming Head Man, an' then this goes and happens.

You ever tried to walk into a room and find yourself out on the street, Grandpa? Not just out like being thrown out or nothing, either, really in a different place. Cuz I've walked through a door and been inside a miracle, but this ain't no miracle."


Perhaps it wasn't a normal immediate reaction, speaking to one's purse-comm immediately after finding one's self in a completely new place, but Rosa Caiman had never been normal, she'd always maintained.

(Besides, talking to her Grandpa had always stopped her from freaking out, even with the lobo-king on her tail, so it had been a calculated risk. Calm down and have people think she was crazy for talking to her wrist, or panic. She'd take being thought crazy any day.)

She didn't think it was Rio, and Rio summed up her entire experience with towns; they didn't have buildings like this back home, and she'd been about to enter a roadside diner before she'd ended up here.