flora_segunda | [Road Trip Plot] - Arrival and Discovery (for Lex Luthor, Phil Coulson and Nikola Tesla)

What woke me was not the brightness of the sun. When it hit, I merely turned over and tucked my head. No. What woke me was when I tucked my head, and rubbed my face on ground so dry it might have been cobblestones. I opened my eyes to stare at a brown sand, so parched that it had clumped together and cracked.

Then I felt the heat.

Pushing myself up, I looked around, disoriented. I had, after all, just been in my bed in my hut back on Tabula Rasa. This place was entirely new. But it felt... as though I should know it.

Parched brown earth stretched away on all sides, the cracked clods like jagged tiles on a very boring mosaic. At the horizon, grey mountains stood, shimmering as the sun rose higher. The sky above was shockingly blue. I turned a full circle, staring, mouth agape. "Is this... Arivaipa?"

The heat suggested it was so. I looked down at myself. I was wearing the clothes I'd worn yesterday, on the Island: my military dress, augmented with items from my ITF uniform. My holster was around my waist... but no sidearm. I tried not to worry about that. It was easier than you think, for I also noticed that I didn't have my pack, and without it, no water.

I turned again, looking around, but I was utterly alone.

Until a gleam caught my eye. I turned. It wasn't a mirage. Something, not too far away, was reflecting the sun hard at my eyes. It was either water, or a mirror. Either way, heading for it was better than just standing there.

Pacing myself against the rising heat, I marched towards the gleam.

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He'd been awake for a few minutes before he finally stood, brushing sand and dirt off the loose linen pants he'd worn to bed. Which was where his last clear memories stopped, everything else was waking up with the beginnings of a sunburn in an acrid land that brought back some very... destructive memories. Land of Enchantment his ass. At least it had gotten him off of Stark-sitting duty. Not that any of those memories helped him now. He needed to find shade, shelter, water, some kind of communication device. If this was another island change, he'd probably have to help the IPD and Council make sure everyone was found before everyone started getting sunstroke.

Assuming he could avoid it himself.

It wasn't long before he saw two things that caught his attention. First, what looked like an abandoned vehicle in the distance and second, on the other side of him, a head of red hair that looked very familiar. "Nyana! That you?!" He waved. From this distance and in this glare he couldn't quite make her out, but he was pretty sure. He didn't know that many red-heads, though, so it was either the kid from magic-land or an ex-Russian spy. Either way, it would be a pair of helping hands.

Lex woke up with a start, which was his first clue that something wasn't right. On the island, he'd become used to waking up slowly with Anatoly by his side so going back to his old habits of waking up instantly was telling. He sat up and looked around, his first thought wondering if he'd been returned home, to the deserted island that would be his home for three months.

But it only took him a moment to realize he was in a desert and not an island, though he wasn't sure it was much better. He stood up and brushed off his clothes, already lamenting how sunburned his head was going to get. He shaded his eyes from the glare off the sand and realized there were others around, as well as some large ugly vehicle, hopefully others from the island. He knew he wasn't going to be lucky enough to have one of them be Anatoly. "Hello? Whose out there?"

I also saw the contraption and was heading towards it when I heard the familiar voice calling. I looked over, and smiled with relief to see someone I recognized. "Sieur Coulson!" I cried. I hurried over -- walking as fast as dignity would allow, and resisting the urge to hug him. It was bad enough to be snatched out of an ocean onto an unfamiliar island. To go from that Island to an unfamiliar desert? "Sieur Coulson, I--"

I stopped myself from babbling and composed myself. "What's going on?"

Then I heard another voice, and looked over.

"Your guess is as good as mine, partner." He noticed the change in her face and followed her gaze towards the other figure in the distance. He looked familiar to Phil, but he couldn't exactly place him, not at this distance.

Trying to shade his eyes, he thought he could identify the shiny object. "Let's go that way, pick up the other stray. And I'm pretty sure that's a car of some kind. Maybe there's a map or some kind of explanation inside?"

There was a girl with red hair and an older gentleman, both he'd seen around the island but neither Lex knew by name. He jogged up towards them, eager to know if they knew what was going on and what fresh hell the island was subjecting them too.

"I hope the plan is to head towards that pathetic excuse for transportation and figure out what the island has done now." Lex said as he stopped short near them. "Is it just the three of us?"

I recognized the man approaching us. I didn't know his name, but I'd seen his face on the Island. And the way he just came up... well, it told me that he had experience with the sorts of things the Island could do. Though I didn't know him, I felt I could trust him as an ally -- though I'd let Sieur Coulson take the lead.

When he pointed to the... thing, I looked over, frowning. "Transportation?" Where were the horses? Or did that thing just move by magic? It did have wheels. "What is that? A jitney of some kind?" I walked towards it, keeping an eye out for hiding places and things that might be hiding in them.

"It's a van, and if it runs, I imagine we can get it to take us to civilization." Explaining the history of transportation was going to take awhile, so he hoped that she would just follow his lead.

Extending his hand to the new arrival, he introduced himself, "Name's Coulson, call me Phil, this is Nyana, we're ITF." Figured some bona fides wouldn't hurt, even though he was in his pajamas and she wasn't much better off. "And yeah, that's the only shelter and shade we've got, we should check it out."

In Which a Girl of Spirit Encounters a Bewildering Detour & Bizarre Compatriots

[Road Trip Plot] - Arrival and Discovery (for Lex Luthor, Phil Coulson and Nikola Tesla)

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