Ya' Don't Have to Live like a Refugee...

[Marcus Evan]

Marcus pulls into the parking lot of the Days Inn just off of I-80. He had given the girl in the passenger seat a t-shirt he had bought at the flea market, for the sake of her modesty and to cover her wounds. "Help will be here soon." He gives her an encouraging smile. "Sit tight. I'll be right back." Marcus walks up to the office, pays cash for a room and strides purposefully back to the Jeep. Lucky number seven... Collecting the girl, he enters room seven, making straight for the bathroom. After running a washcloth under some warm water, he hands it to the girl before sitting down to keep a lookout for his sovereign's Hummer. "I know things were a bit mad before. I'm Marcus. I don't mean to push, but do you remember your name... or just something to call you, besides the girl with the mean round-house kick?" Marcus has a glint in his eye and a grin on his face which he hopes will break the tension.

[Fractured]

The girl takes the washcloth and wipes the dried blood from her skin and talks slowly, like she's unused to speech. "Marcus," she nods. "I...can't remember. I've been in a...in a...barrel!" She starts crying again, but her hysteria has dropped a few notches since the forest. "I don't know who I am, I don't know how long I've been gone, all I can remember is being in a dark, stinky barrel!!! It fell over, and I...spilled out? There were shiny metal people there," she adds quietly, not daring to meet Marcus' eye. "They were yelling at me. There was a field my mother took me too, to pick the...the..." snuffling pause, "the blueberries. I fell out, and I knew I had to get back there...

Then thorns. Then you." She looks at him with those big eyes. "Can you find me something to wear? These are all...oily." She sounds upset at herself, like it's her fault her clothes are soiled.

[Marcus Evan]

Marcus nods as she tells her story. "We'll find you some new clothes after we get you fixed up. My... friend is on his way over to help us sort this out. You see... you were taken by something and it changed you. I'm terribly sorry, but your old life is over now. You're not alone, we're going to help you start a new life." Marcus keeps glancing out the window. Where the hell is Harry?

[Fractured]

Even as Marcus looks out the window, he can see his out-of-season Sovereign's bright yellow Hummer pulling into the motel parking lot.

The girl just continues to sob. "Can I at least take a...a...shower? I still have all this...this...oil, or something, all over me." She sniffs.

[Marcus Evan]

Marcus looks at the girl with genuine pity in his eyes. "About that... I'm afraid it probably won't wash off. Ever. You can try if you like, I just don't want you to be too disappointed... if it doesn't work." He had almost said when instead of if. "Ah, here's my friend, Harry, now. He's sort of a leader of people like us... who were taken but managed to make it back. He'll know what to do to help you." I hope.

[Fractured]

"No...no...what? What? No...it'll come off...look..." The girl starts wiping her arm on the comforter. "...no...it'll come off..." She wipes faster. Harder.

The Summer King, the crazy, pathetic looking wild-eyed hairy turkey bastard walks right into the room without knocking and puts his briefcase on the table near the window. The girl stops sobbing and scrubbing long enough to give a short yelp when she sees those eyes that look like the craziest billiards game you've ever seen shaking at her. "Marcus," he says at last, bobbing his head towards his courtier. "Get me some towels, please, and fill the ice bucket with hot water."

He turns back to Jane Doe and says slowly, carefully, "What's your name, young lady?" The innocent question begets a new onslaught of black, viscous tears and wails.

"Alright, alright," he says, and it looks like he rolls his eyes at Marcus, but that's pretty difficult to discern for certain. He opens his briefcase which, instead of paperwork, is full of items you'd find in a Combat Medic's pack, and a few other glowing and squirming and downright odd things. "My name is Harry. Harry Turkleton. I escaped from the same place you did. The same place Marcus did. You've made it back home, child. Take comfort in that, for now."

He removes the antiseptic and hands it to Marcus. "Pour this on the towel, then wipe her wounds with it." Then he goes about preparing the more exotic elements in his attache'.

[Marcus Evan]

Marcus collects all of the towels that are to be found in the bathroom and fills the ice bucket with hot water as directed. He gently holds the girl's hands for a moment, preventing her from scrubbing off a layer of skin along with the oil. "Harry's right. You made it back... most never do. That means you're one of the strong ones. You can handle this." Releasing her hands, he pours antiseptic on a towel and gives her a sympathetic look. "This will sting a bit." Bet it doesn't sting as much as getting a kick to the gut. C'mon man, let it go... Cleaning her wounds as best he can, he eventually relinquishes the towel to the girl so that she can finish cleaning anywhere he might have missed... or had felt uncomfortable putting his hands. "We really should come up with a name for you... just for now. Alright? So, what do you fancy? Emma... Mary Jane... Penelope?"

[Fractured]

She lets Marcus take her arms and her crying has downshifted to a droning whimper and occasional hiss as the antiseptic sets her nerves ablaze. "I like the first one," she sniffs. "Emma," she says, trying it out. "Emma." She smiles just a little bit. The effort to clean her off has revealed that several of the thorns dug deep into her arms and legs, and even though the bleeding has stopped, it's hard to imagine she won't bear the scars for a long, long time.

Harry, meanwhile, has crushed the purple wriggling thing into the same wide-mouthed short beaker as the gold-tinted leaves and what may or may not be cherry tomatoes, mashed the result together, and offers it to Emma. "It's pretty," Harry agrees kindly to Marcus' suggestion. "Drink this. It's got rare herbs and fruits and such to heal those scratches." The stench is kind of like what you'd expect to smell if you left a pair of well-worn leather boots left out in the rain for two weeks, then brought them indoors, and after about six hours next to a heater you pick them up, shove your nose inside and inhaled. In other words, it's lovely.

Emma looks at the concoction suspiciously before deciding that you two probably weren't saving her from spiders and fixing her up only to poison her. She pinches her nose, shuts her eyes, and tries to drink it all in one go, but hadn't counted on how thick the mixture was, like molasses. "...oh, that's so gross..."

"So, Marcus. Hobs?" Harry clucks at Marcus, reminding him to explain the circumstances under which the Metal Man met Emma.

[Marcus Evan]

Harry's question snaps Marcus' attention from Emma's discomfort to the pressing matter of errant hobgoblins. "Yes. Right. I found her... Emma being attacked by a fair-sized spider in the woods near the Flea Market." The Metalflesh raises his hand to indicate the size of the thing. "It was covered in..." Am I really saying this? "...pink cotton candy armor and spat an adhesive venom." He shoots a quick glance at Emma for confimation, fearing he sounds ridiculous. "I managed to injure the thing, but it fled just as I heard a lot of growling from the trees all around us. I couldn't see what was approaching, and I didn't want to endanger the girl... um, Emma here, so I picked her up and hoofed it to my Jeep. That's when I answered your phone call." Marcus' face and neck gain a coppery tone and a slight patina of rust as he feels the embarrassment and shame at the thought of his sovereign perceiving him as cowardly for not taking care of the Hobs then and there. "I shall return to the site as soon as possible to eliminate the Hobs and locate the Gate from which they emerged... um, with your permission, sir."

[Fractured]

The King nods throughout Marcus' tale, glancing back at Emma every once in a while. Then he takes out a cigar, lights up, and exhales heavily. "Candy spiders. Damn," he says in a familiar, weary voice, then pulls a flask out of his sportscoat and helps himself to some private whiskey. "No way you walk in there by yourself again, Marcus, you don't know how many there are. You need to put a small team, four people, to reconnoiter the area. If it's just a small outpost, four of Our Boys ought to be enough to handle it. If it's a goddamn nest, you get me all the intel we need to plan a raid and get the hell back here. Understand?" His mad eyes come to a near-stop in their seriousness.

He looks back at the young woman. "Those wounds look a lot better, Emma. You want to get yourself cleaned up, go ahead. I left some clothes in the car, I'll go get them for you. C'mon, Marcus, give the poor girl some privacy." He smiles wanly at her and bobs his head for the Metalflesh to follow.

Emma sits there, looking down at her quickly scabbed-over thorn wounds, and the oil which pours from every pore, and mumbles her gratitude as the men walk outside, Harry collecting his medical case along the way.

"Alright, Marcus," he says as the reach his Hummer. "You ever interrogated a newbie before? Well, you're going to now. We need to know this girl isn't some Loyalist or Privateer in disguise. I mixed Liar's Wort into those healing fruits, if she tells us anything other than the complete truth, she'll turn as blue as an oompaloompa." He clucks devilishly as he reaches into the backseat and removes a backpack. Marcus can see a pair of sneakers sticking out the opening. "Ready?"