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Current Location: The Cooper Farm, Kansas

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A single figure is trekking slowly up the road to the Cooper Farm as the sun begins to creep over the horizon. Though only awake for an hour, Ichigo feels as if he's been walking all night. Jane gave him directions to the farm when he told her he needed to get out of the city, but it still took him several days walk to get there. His other half was less than co-operative in going in the direction Ichigo wanted it to, and more than once Ichigo felt sure he woke up several miles in the wrong direction.

Nevertheless, Ichigo has finally found his way to the farm this morning. He's not sure what he intends to find here, but he knows that staying in a crowded city is dangerous with his transformations every night. Maybe it'll be better out here in the open.

Hopefully Jane wasn't wrong about the farm. He doesn't want to show up after all this time, only to be told to leave from the wrong end of a shotgun.

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No shotguns here.

There's a shovel, but there's not a shotgun.

The shovel in question is being carried by a woman just a touch too small and wriey to be able to hold it lightly on her shoulder like that, who's heading from the farmhouse to the fields while pushing a twin pushchair in the other hand. There are twin girls in the pushchair.

She stops when seeing the approaching newcomer, and de-shoulders the shovel.

"Hey."

He stops dead when he spots the woman and her pushchair, not wanting to get much closer without being invited. He's still not sure if he's allowed to be here.

"Hey," he says cautiously. "Um, Jane told me to come here if I needed a place to stay, or...something." Technically he asked Jane where the Farm was, but those little details aren't of much importance right now. "I needed to get out of Metropolis, and somebody told her about this place, so she told me."

"Dunno who Jane is, but she's right," Mel says. "We take all comers."

Though she reserves the right to kick people out if they prove dangerous.

"I'm Mel."

A policy no doubt considered discriminatory by psychopaths everywhere.

"I'm Ichigo." He isn't sure how many people live on the farm, but that open policy sure does sound pretty tempting. Being outside is infinitely better than being in a city right now. "Is this your farm?"

"No," is the answer. "It's Lucy's. She's quiet, sweet. Turns into a dragon.

"I just try to look out for the people, and run the farm part."

She jerks her head in a nod to indicate the fields.

"Lots of people come and go, but I wanna keep a place for my kids."

Again his attention is drawn to her children, and he finds the sight of them somewhat unnerving. He can't imagine a child growing up in this world. They seem so out of place.

"So you guys grow things h-"

Pause.

"...a dragon?"

Hana grins cheerfully at him, and throws a wooden otterpenguin at his head.

"Yeah," Mel says. "Not been in this world long, you think that's spun."

He's trying to figure out his reply to her comment and also not think about his arrival to this world at the same time when the wooden carving hits him in the head. Not hard, but enough to get his attention.

"Ow." He should have caught that, but not sleeping properly will do things to a guy. "Um, I've been here a month or so, but I haven't seen much of anything. I only got to Metropolis recently, before that I didn't even know if there were other people in this world. And where I'm from, dragons aren't real."

Not that he knows, anyways.

Mel winces at the toy, and tips the pushchair back to glare at the kids. "Stop that!" she snaps to the twins, who pout at the admonishment.

To Ichigo, "Sorry, they're brats, and I kinda forget how skitzed everything is when you're new. How long?"

Edited 2009-09-28 19:25 (UTC)

"I got here just over a month ago, popped up in a small town outside of Tokyo. It took some time to get used to this world, but after wandering for a week or two I found my way to Metropolis. A woman there offered me a place to stay, but I have trouble sleeping at night since coming here, and I think the city makes it worse. She told me how to get here, and...here I am."

He doesn't want to lie if he doesn't have to, but he doubts anybody would run to his aid if they knew the truth. He figures the more space he has, the less likely somebody is to notice him at night, or to notice he disappears a lot. If he didn't need food he might just head off to live alone, but he does, so here he is. He just hopes they could use some help, because he certainly doesn't have money, and his clothes aren't worth much.

She answers that concern for him.

"Well, we could use the help. You're OK with weirdass toy?"

Like dragons. "'Cause we get a lot of it here."

"I've got some experience with weird stuff, so I guess I could get used to just about anything."

He used to be pretty narrow-minded when it came to weird stuff, but he's been forced into a more open-minded kind of view.

"What kind of help? I'm not from any kind of farm, so I don't know a lot about that kind of stuff."

"Neither did I, couple years ago," she says. "Come harvest, you just grab a tool and pitch in.

"You got any skills I need to know about?"

A couple of years? He didn't think people even stayed here this long.

"Nothing special," he lies. "I can understand just about any language, I guess, but only spoken. I can't read or write anything but Japanese."

"Definitely gonna need you as a translator, then." Mel replies. Since Jack's more or less expulsion, a translator could be needed.

"And I'm guessing you can clean? We kinda all pitch in, but there's a lot of us, small space."

His room (in his world, anyways) has always been unnaturally spotless, so Ichigo is pretty confident in his cleaning abilities.

"I'm pretty good at cleaning," he says. "I can handle anything simple just fine, and I can learn the rest if you give me time."

"Great."

Hana is struggling in the chair, so Mel unclips them both, and lets Loo climb on to her shoulders.

Standing, she jerks her head towards the half-sucken bunker. "There're beds in there, that you can stake your place out in. The bedrooms in the house are taken, but the communal places are for all. Don't get possessive about food."

He looks over at the bunker, makes a note of its location in relation to the rest of the farm. He's still feeling a bit lost amongst the very strange layout of the place, but he hopes he'll get used to it.

"Is it okay if I sleep outside? I don't know what there is in the way of wild animals around here..."

He'd rather avoid being attacked (or doing the attacking) in his sleep if there are animals around, wild or otherwise.

"Are there any rules I should know about? I can come and go whenever? Is there anyplace I should steer clear of, or anyone?"

Questions to get out of the way before he encounters situations that require the answers.

"Sure, sleep wherever you want," Mel says cheerfully. "Rules add up to not being a dick. We kinda expect people to put in if they're gonna take a living here, but other than that everyone's spled with each other.

"Not too much wild animals. Sometimes something comes along, but we see them off where we can. Don't wanna attract the bad stuff from outside."

He'll have to be sure to keep his nighttime adventures outside of the Farm as best he can. The last thing he needs is to get booted out on his ass (or worse) for being a dangerous liar.

"Sounds good then," he says, feeling optimistic about the change of setting. "I guess I'll go try to get my bearings around the place. It's not like any farm I've ever seen, that's for sure."

"We're special," Mel says cheerfully.

"Come find me you have any more questions."

"Thanks."

With a quick wave, he's back to marching up the road.

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