Welcome to Gaia! ::

It was best to arrive a little after trains left- right as a train left there tended to be people still milling that missed or didn't fit on the previous scheduled train. Giving them four-ish minutes to come to the realization that they'd have a wait meant that there was enough time to meander off to find vending, bathrooms, or otherwise clear away from the platform itself to do the business of waiting.

It was equally important to dress appropriately to high-active hiking and free-climbing, not wear flashy colors, not wear attention grabbing non-fashion. So Jack wore jeans with some army canvas patching here and there, a leather harness with some needful holders for leatherman, ice-climbing hook, and crampons that only barely peeked out from under an oversized, goth-sorta nazgul hoodie. Coming down the stairs, Jack pulled up and unfolded the knit collar of military sweater beneath the hoodie up ninjastyle over the bottom half of face to be less identifiable by inevitable platform surveillance.

There was a man in view from there showing gauze. A quick scan didn't show anyone else around him. Jack slowed and stood near one of the pillars, using the edges of the hood as a screen while watching for thirty seconds if anyone came by to rejoin the guy. No one did. He'd shifted back and wasn't fussing. He should be okay right? Maybe he's on his way home from one of the quickclinics or something. Well, hey, it doesn't hurt to ask and check. Sometimes someone random caring enough to check on another human being is all the difference in the world.

Jack stuffed hands into hoodie pockets and made the couple steps back around pillar and over to where the man reposed, "Hey, you alright? You need any help getting on the train or anything? That looks like its pretty painful. "

The hiss was a little sad, but expressed truth of pain where the words brushed it off. Eh, if he wants to be all stolid about it, he can. I asked, so he's in his rights to say 'naw, 'yo. I got this.'

" 'All the world will be your enemy, prince with a thousand enemies. And whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first, they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, Prince with a swift warning. Be cunning, and full of tricks," Jack's eyes crinkled with a smile behind the knit. " 'And your people will never be destroyed.' "

"Where I cannot reach from below, this hook is my hand. This bracelet my rope. The rest of this at need when I call. Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints....and not those if it can be avoided. Harder in the thick ballast. I explore. Probably not what you're waiting on. Miss your train?"

Jack waited, following to the platform and rails proper and looking out at the tracks and advertisements on the wall bannered opposite them before offering an answer to his further inquiries. "Lapine Origin Myth, part of Watership Down by Richard Adams. Its a pretty fun little read, even if its mostly considered kids' literature. " It really applies, though, doesn't it? He gets it. It's all ******** up, but it has a ...well I guess beauty, for how succinct and mirror it is to some sort of primitive world state. When was the last time humans were part of the food chain on a large scale? 'Food chain'...if it counts as that. No wonder we're all spooked and not used to being prey. Suddenly we remember that we were never particularly fast, never strong, never big, never weaponized. We just could use tools, developed lore systems that held learning longer than word memory, and had a superior heat-relief system.

Jack turned, back to the ads and looked over at the new acquaintance. Winked.
Vanished off the platform with a quick, unhesitating hop the 8 or so feet down to the ballast and rails below with a soft landing. "You are beset by peril, sir. Whatever stories say, monsters aren't really just limited to the dark. We just tell stories fearing it because we can't see as well then. Because lots of other things found they could catch prey sleeping then. It's not the subway that's going to save you, it's your wits. "

"You're welcome to come if you want. Just be careful of that hurt."

"Different cities use different rail sorts. You can either go through learning which ones do or don't have active electricity, when its having to touch both to complete the circuit, or just avoid touching the rails in general always. So don't touch the rails, unless you want to play 'race you to Jesus'. "

Jack started into a measured, sustainable lope with extended, floating strides. It was neither a run nor a jog, but stood somewhere between. "Timing is important, since there are parts of the tunnels where there is no more space than for the cars. We'll get to the second maintenance branch here, and have to wait there for the next one to pass in order to have enough time for the down."

"It isn't uniform, though, no more than a forest of birches. They're all birches, yes, but they've all grown differently. They're all separate living objects. Cities are alive, you know. Its a machine life, an artificial organism, but it grows, changes, and decays just the same. And there's beauty to be found in all that...both in just looking at the deterioration itself, or looking at what people have made of it. The Beauty of how rust eats over iron is like watching lichen eat over stone. " Jack pointed out faded hints of graffiti neons as they went. In the tunnel itself, where time was short, it was mostly simple 'tags', nothing truly breathtaking, and much under siege from industrial grime black. Next, a nazgul-arm waved an arc towards tangles of wires and tubing that trailed over the ceiling above a rusting grate structure that kept it all from dipping down onto the rooves of the passing cars. It was like hair, or spiderweb, or in the cyborg life of the homunculus entrails and veins.

"I'll show you. "

"You can call me Jack. It isn't short for anything. Just as is. You? What do you go by?"

Leading the way was simple. As he'd observed, Jack had been here a couple times since coming to Destiny City for college. The pickings for exploration were different than other cities, but that wasn't a detriment. Different regions had different crops for foodstuffs, so it made sense that their detritus would be different as well. The first leg was mostly level, and they were making good time paced at a friendly clip. Jack waved when they got near the maintenance branch to duck into, and leaned in a crouch against the wall while catching up on breath. The sweater pulled up helped with both anonymity and with filtering out some of the ambient dust of the tunnel. The faint echoes of the next train came down the tunnel, still a handful of minutes away.

"Are you from the East Coast? Way back the manufacturing craze of like...the industrial revolution meant prosperity in the industrial cities that pretty much all clustered around this area. Public transport, posh buildings, luxury stuff just for entertainment and relaxation like public pools, theaters, huge hotels all went up during the Roaring Twenties. Then there was the whole crash and decline one by one at various points. Some earlier, like right after World War II, some later in the 60s. Some in the 80s. The informal description for the whole region of upper Northeastern, the Great Lakes, and the Midwest States, is the 'Rust Belt'. It pretty much guarantees that if you're in a rust belt city, there's gonna be really cool stuff you can find in decaying infrastructure that was abandoned or forgotten. "

"Abandoned subways range pretty across the board with the technology- hallow cut-and-cover routes to deep subterranean platforms. And then there's all the connecting corridors and endless stairways. Some get a little revival- used for urban art exhibits, sanctioned and unsanctioned, some get movie sets use by Hollywood, some get revamped as training digs for new drivers. I like the really abandoned kind where you can find vintage architecture and advertisements....like time capsules gone weird and lost for generations, closed off more than half a century ago when technology changed. Everything entombed just as it was...looking like there could be people walking there in another 5 minutes, only you're not sure if they'd be real people or what."

"This is illegal, but that's probably obvious. Usually they can't hit you with much more than trespassing and breaking and entering, but it depends on state and local ordinances. Mostly just a fine, but that's only if you get caught. Soooometimes its dangerous not from a legal standpoint but from other hazards. Unstable floors and walls, broken glass, asbestos, stray voltage, and entrapment hazards...oh, and hostile squatters or druggies. The latter you can usually get by just by being polite, showing you don't mean to hand around, and making sure you're not packing anything super valuable worth an assault. " It seemed reasonably assumable that he'd not done anything of this sort before, and that he wasn't a cop. There was a chance, but not likely with wound and agreeing to traipse about. Or crazy facial tattooing. Anyone with ink on their face wasn't likely to be major into the Establishment. He was more likely to be in the drug, thug, or general underground sort with that. Equally dangerous, maybe, but so far was seeming reasonable and friendly. And its always fun to share an experience with someone. Don't make friends if you never meet anyone.

Being all of three feet or so from a full-speed locomotive, even the passenger subway kind, was unusual for most people unless they happened to work in a maintenance or driver job. The usual experience was the cars slowly arriving or leaving a platform, being still for loading and unloading, or being on the actual thing while it went zooming about. Jack smiled at the man's alarm, or awe, for the ticking second after the pass while climbing out again to the path of the rails.

"Both. More. Exploration, history, exercise, claustrophilia, cherishing the challenge, 'feeding the rat', the phenomenology of urban flow...I'm not trying to fetishize any context of dereliction. Some people HAVE to live this sort of life. That's interesting too. But not in a dehumanizing way. Ethnographics have a part. It re-aquaints me with different views of normal, too. Everyone gets so caught up in the 2.5 kids and picket fence image of what we're all supposed to be living according to advertising. Normalized relationships of human-to-city-space can create really hurtful expectations of others and yourself. "

The lope started again when he showed himself ready, making time to get to the old hatch and ladder- a manhole that was in a blind curve of track, one plainly newer in construction as part of some re-railing decades before as revealed by a faint change in the brick color of their straight away against the curve. Jack pointed it out silently as part of explanation for their leaving that particular part of the path. "The platform we're going to is old, back when the trains were smaller. This used to keep going straight, but it would go down an incline to join up another lower line that loops the Crosstown line. We're going to crawl an old electrician's duct, which is only just over a man's shoulders, for about 100 yards, then it will ladder down to a catwalk above a double line route that nothing has used in at least 50 years but us Urbex's."

"I've not met any monsters on any of my dives or climbs around D.C., but I've only been here a couple months. Maybe they come here, maybe they don't. Some out there may have already sat and sifted tablods and tumblr to put pins on a map to see where attacks are concentrated. I never have. Hell, I wasn't sure any of it was real until a few months ago when some people in my building were put in comas. Security took care of the thing."

"Everyone tries too hard to not talk about it, you know?" They reached the porthole, which Jack worked the bars and latch with experience if a little difficulty. Metal was unsurprisingly heavy. A quick shimmy down in and Jack started crawling horizontal rung by horizontal rung along. "Pull it shut behind you, right? Is a monster what got you? Personal experience seems to be the only reason anyone shows it any serious consideration other than wanting to get out of dodge. Like talking about the Mob in the 20s. "

" You know, sometimes people do in some cities. Hit or miss which ones go through getting the permits and stuff. I been on a tour into underground Edinburgh, but that was a tour-tour and not just trespassing. I guess if you get the permits it isn't 'trespassing,' anymore either. " 'Youma'? He knows what they're called? Is that in one of the TV specials, or is he more in on it? Hell, 'monster' works fine enough. Why use some weird word for it unless its a technical term. Well, I'm not gonna use it. There's enough context clue there that I'd understand the word, but some street doof like me isn't gonna just pick up using it from some stiffs in the hall getting jumped by Mr. Dead.

At the end of the access was a ladder that took some jimmying to reorient to in order to climb down, leaving them in a derelict, sightless hall. A jingle like a keychain, and light shone around them from a lanyard attached to one of Jack's pockets with a small, but powerful led lamp shape on the end. The cold light swung a little, but showed smooth walls and scuffed, but worn cement floor. Jack started walking along the hall, which was wide enough for two abreast. Deadened light fixtures along the ceiling proved the hallway was one meant for regular human access once. "You got me there. I haven't actually laid eyes on one of the costumed sort, but I've heard about them existing. Rumors and talk about gang war and vigilantism. I figure the best bet for normals is to try not to get in any of the gangs way if it can be avoided, like the Bloods & Crips stuff back in the 90s. Sure, either of those could be nice to people, but they both messed people up, too. The two are probably related though. Nowhere else has cryptids and capes running all over the papers and ruining all the parties. "


The hall opened up into a room that looked like a back office, most of the furnishings overturned, books rotting everywhere and small clearings with detritus from other trespassers with less respect and more drugs left in little rings of filth. Jack stepped around it all to the door on the other side of it all that lay politely open for them. It was the ticket office, and then lobby and more halls and stairs to take beyond. The graffiti started up, but less like skill-less scrawl and more pictures that bled into each other, fed into words and became a constant presence like visual music until the stairs ended. There were tiles that ringed the end, the floor changed, and there was a gate that also stood open instead of locked. It opened into a platform, much, much older than the one they'd stood at before. The ceiling was vaulted and mosaic-ed with geometry. The track and tunnel far away in the dim a much smaller sort than what would accommodate the trains that ran above- which made themselves remembered in that moment by a faint echoing like thunder as another passed. Jack unclipped the little lantern and offered it out to the new guest, "Well? What do you think?"