Kate Gregson

This is probably a terrible idea. Carla Jean is plenty aware of that fact, but she has no intention of letting it stop her, largely because she has a feeling that it would be a far worse idea to let Kate and Reggie wander down here alone. Besides, though she's never really been one to wander into dangerous situations willingly, she can't deny a sort of curiosity about all this. The city has been there since before she has, but she's never once been to it, and now that things are apparently happening, it seems like the time to change that.

Her own gun is tucked into the waist of her jeans, loaded, though the cardigan she's on is long enough to keep it mostly hidden. She has no intention of using it, she sure as hell doesn't want to use it, but there's no way she's doing something like this without it. Some risks just aren't worth taking, and this is unfamiliar territory.

"Ready if you are," she replies, mouth twisting to one side. "Shall we?"

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Despite the fact that it obviously couldn't be a bad idea since he was the one doing it, Reggie had his reservations. It wasn't that he was scared, of course, that would be ridiculous, but cautious wasn't a bad thing to be, right? He could be cautious as well as a devil-may-care bad boy, it was simply a matter of balance.

Besides, someone had to protect the girls.

"Let's rock and roll!" he grinned, cracking his knuckles. Reservations were always best when hidden; there was no sense in flaunting them until you knew they were good ones.

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A part of her can't quite believe they're going to just be let down there, especially now that there are things moving around, but she doesn't say that as they head for the Bathysphere.

"I went down once before," she says, wondering if it's going to be busy, if half the island will be down there or if they'll be the only ones crazy enough to do it. "But it was quiet."

At least it means she knows how to work the Bathysphere, though, and she steps onto it, looking for the control.

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"I haven't seen it before," Carla Jean says, following Kate's lead. Even just this leaves her a little tense, when it doesn't even seem like it should be real, but she reminds herself that, even if she can't trust this place itself, the people are a different story. They wouldn't have been let down here if there were too much to worry about. She can take care of it if that proves not to be the case. "Honestly, I can't even imagine."

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"Imaginations are for little kids and poor people," Reggie told Carla Jean confidently, letting Kate do her thing as he stepped on, since he sure as heck didn't know what to do with the equipment. "Finding stuff out firsthand is where it's at!"

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"And that's why we're going," Kate says as the door to the Bathysphere swings shut and it begins to descend. It's dark at first, then they hit the water and light filters inside, first from the sun penetrating the ocean and then the lights from the city below.

"Check it out," she says, pressing against one of the windows so she can look down as they approach.

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"Good lord," Carla Jean says, eyes going wide as she stares out a window at the lights below. Even having had some idea of what this was going to be like, seeing it is a completely different beast. She can't help thinking that it should be impossible, even though it clearly isn't, all of it existing right here in front of them, growing closer. "I've seen a lot of things here, but this might be the strangest."

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"It's definitely up there," Reggie agreed, slightly awestruck before getting hold of himself. "Well, not up there, obviously, heh. Man, why haven't I been bringing dates down here? This place looks great!"

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"Because the girls you're going on dates with aren't into super creepy?" Kate asks, leaning against Carla Jean a little so she can get a better look. "I mean, it's amazing out here, but inside... it's creepy." It's exactly the type of place she'd go on a date, but she doesn't know many girls who would.

The bathysphere shakes slightly as it finds its path, then begins to glide toward an opening in the city. Seconds later, the water drains away, leaving them in a huge, empty room.

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"How many dates have you even been going on?" Carla Jean asks with a scoff, though she's more amused than anything else, her mouth twisting to the side. "If you want them to go out with you more than the once, this isn't the place to bring 'em." It's certainly not a statement that applies universally, but this sort of thing, she knows, isn't for everyone, and it isn't romantic. Maybe for people who've been together for a while, it would work, but sure as hell not early on. "Jesus. What do we do from here?"

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"I will have you know that I have been on all kinds of dates, and any drop-off from my previous levels of social activity can be chalked up to a lack of optio- man, talk about atmosphere," Reggie said, veering abruptly from one topic to the next as be wandered about the room. "Yeah, Kate, where are we going? As the man of the group, I'll obviously be taking point, but you should probably call the shots."

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Kate grins at Carla Jean's comment, then rolls her eyes at Reggie's before she bends down and picks up an abandoned length of pipe. It's not as good as having her gun, probably, but it feels less terrible in her hands.

"There was this really creepy theatre I went to last time," she tells them. "But I think there are new places open now. Like an amusement park and an area where the rich assholes would go and swim? Something like that."

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"You really want to say that to a girl with a gun, Reggie Mantle?" Carla Jean asks, brow shooting up, though it's all she can do to keep her mouth from twisting with amusement. It's adorable, really, how he can say these things and mean them so genuinely. From anyone else, she'd be a lot more likely to be a lot more pissed, but somehow, with him, it's just endearing. "'Cause I don't see anything obvious about you takin' point."

Turning to Kate, she grins outright. "Let's see where the rich assholes would go and swim."

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"So you'll take charge when it comes to shooting things, the rest is just science," Reggie explained patiently, already feeling a strange sort of affinity for these 'rich assholes', as the girls put it. "I can't help my sex's natural sense of direction!"

Exploiting said sense of direction, however, briefly took a back seat to other concerns. "Uh... you don't actually think we'll end up having to shoot anyone, right?"

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Kate was prepared to roll her eyes and laugh at Reggie's comment when he asked his next question and the laughter died. "I don't know," she said honestly, because she really didn't want to, but she was glad Carla Jean had her gun all the same. "There wasn't anything moving around last time I was here and now..."

She trailed off, looking around for a map. Somewhere in the distance, she could hear someone singing. "Adonis Luxury Resorts," she read from a sign. "That sounds like the kind of place where rich people go, huh?"

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"Keep goin' on about that science of yours, and you'll be the one gettin' shot," Carla Jean quipped, not having any problem with rolling her own eyes. It was, admittedly, something of an unsettling thought, but she'd come prepared for a reason, and she didn't think anything could be much worse than the one time she'd had to draw her gun previously.

Brow raising at Kate's question, she nodded after a moment. "Sounds like it to me."

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"Heck yes, they might as well have named the place after me," Reggie agreed with a preening grin, since it sure beat standing around and worrying about what might all be down there in the dark with them.

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Kate snorted and rolled her eyes at that, then headed in that direction, still holding the pipe she had picked up earlier. There was another sound in the distance, someone laughing, and she shivered. This place had been creepy enough the first time around, but not with new residents it was even more unsettling.

"The last time I was down here the person I was with told me these people were basically drug addicts, but with shit that altered their genes or something," she said.

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"Jesus," Carla Jean said, eyes widening a little at the sound. To her credit, she managed to fend off the impulse to reach for her gun already. Chances were, it was nothing, though the story Kate told didn't offer much in the way of comfort. She didn't actually think anything could or would happen to them down here, but it was eerie to say the least. "I'm not even sure I'd want to know how that'd happen."

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"Because normal drugs just weren't bad enough," Reggie said, trying and failing to suppress a shudder. "What a total creepshow. After-school specials have nothing on this place."

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"I guess they thought it was pretty cool to shoot fire from their hands," Kate said. She didn't want to do anything to her internal structures, but she could see the appeal in something like that. She ducked under a fallen beam, then led the way into a large, tiled room that had once held a swimming pool.

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"Sounds more'n a little unnecessary to me," Carla Jean said, mouth twisting to the side. She'd hardly have had any patience for the normal sort of drugs that people did as it was, but something like that made it seem even worse. Head tipped up so she could look around the room, she exhaled slowly. "Jesus, look at all this."

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"Seriously," Reggie scoffed, crossing his arms. "Sure, it sounds like fun, but come on. Besides, super powers hardly count if they come from somewhere else. Johnny-come-latelys, the lot of 'em!"

Not that he knew about having super powers first-hand, of course. Did he?

"So I guess a quick dip is out of the question?"

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As a kid, Kate had always wanted super powers, something to make her fly, a potion to take her away, a way to make herself invisible so she could slip through the alters unnoticed. Even now, it appealed to her, but she didn't say anything.

"No water," she said, peeking over the edge of the pool. "But there's a lot of money down there." It wasn't money she recognized, though. Someone else's face was on those bills.

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"Who'd leave money in the bottom of a pool?" Carla Jean asked, expression twisting with obvious confusion, corners of her mouth tugging lower. Standing by Kate to look over the edge, there was no denying that was what it was, even if it wasn't a currency she was familiar with either, but it struck her as odd even so. Just an empty pool would have been one thing, but much like everything here, it seemed just a little off.

Glancing over at Reggie, she added, "And did you really just say Johnny-come-latelys?"

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"Looks like somebody's never heard of Scrooge McQuacks. Pool full of money? That's totally the dream!" Reggie grinned, crouching down by the edge of the pool for a few moments before the allure of free cash, however weird looking, proved to be too much and he deftly hopped down.

"Oof. And what would you prefer I say?"

Ooh, echoey.

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Kate grinned, unable to help herself, then went to the other end of the pool where she could walk down the gentle slope that led to the deep end so she could investigate the money and the other stuff that had been left behind.

"I don't think there's enough money to dive into here," she pointed out, lifting a fallen board to look under it. "But there's a bag of potato chips. Gross."

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"Wonder how long that's been there," Carla Jean said, nose wrinkling as she spoke. Everything, as far as she could tell, had the sense of being somewhat old, but then, she wasn't sure what kind of a gauge that was, either, when at least parts of this whole city had only just appeared here.

Heading over to the shallow end, she took a seat on the edge of the pool and hopped down into it, then looked up at Reggie. "Who in the hell is Scrooge McQuacks?"

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"Gotta start with something," Reggie shrugged, scuffing his feet through the debris as he walked around before looking back at Carla Jean incredulously. "Yeesh, CJ, I know you got married young, but you were still a kid at some point, right? Cartoon character, one of my many idols, Davy Duck's uncle?"

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"You mean Donald Duck?" Kate asked, lifting another board to find a weird blue syringe. She was all for experimenting, but she was pretty sure this was one thing she wanted to stay far away from. "And Scrooge McDuck."

The idea that there was a different version of Disney, of all things, made her stop and turn around to look at them. "Alternate universe Disney characters. Creepy."

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"I still don't even know who Scrooge McDuck is," Carla Jean says, brow raising as she looks from one to the other. Of course, it isn't as if she's paid especially close attention to Disney's cast of minor characters, but it seems more likely that he was just established after her time, which is about as strange as the idea of Reggie knowing an alternate version of him. "But yeah, creepy."

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"If you guys say so," Reggie said, shrugging. There was just something about that kind of minor difference that seemed pretty normal to him. "Heck, in some universes, people haven't even heard of my band, forget about calling it something else. Now that's scary."

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Kate was about to ask which band he was in that they were supposed to know, because as with Harry, she'd never once admitted to Reggie that her mom had a stack of comics in the garage somewhere and that he often showed up in them, mostly because she knew how weird that could be, but the sound of someone singing floated down one of the halls.

"Okay, that's creepy, we can all agree, right?" she asked, standing frozen at the bottom of the pool, suddenly glad she'd picked up the pipe.

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"Yeah, definitely creepy," Carla Jean says, mouth twisting into a frown. She doesn't reach for her gun, but she's distinctly more aware of it, about as suddenly as the singing voice drifted to them in the first place. "You think someone's actually there?" With as eerie as this place is, it wouldn't surprise her if there weren't, disinclined though she usually is to believe in anything like that. Obviously, here, the normal rules don't apply.

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"What else would it be? Like, a recording?" Reggie asked, really wishing they could have just stayed on topic. Paying attention to his surroundings suddenly seemed like a lot to ask for. "C'mon, w- what's so scary about a bit of music?"

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