2998/Holding Pattern

Holding Pattern
Date of Scene:	20 August 2020
Location:	Rijeka, Croatia
Synopsis:	Seafaring mayhem ends with a picnic. Featuring Strider kicking crabs!
Cast of Characters:	Jane Foster, Dane Whitman

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Jane Foster has posed:
Just down the way from Venice on the other side of the Slovenian border, Rijeka masquerades as a Croatian city on the Adriatic. Once upon a time, it used to be the Italian port of Fiume. Its dual existence with Baroque and Renaissance features alongside remnants of the Yugoslav past makes for an unusual creation, but a pretty one. As the European Capital of Culture for the year, it stands to reason that a week-long trip here might not be out of the ordinary, especially as a celebration of the scientific achievements in old Fiume. Showing up at the University of Rijeka for a lecture series is one thing, as is a visit to the Astronomical Centre and admiring some of the terribly interesting Venetian and Byzantine artifactos on display.

It's not like a certain knight can't just drop by for a surprisingly inexpensive stay on the waterfront. Jane has a fancy room in a building that clearly once housed some fancy kind of Greek or Austro-Hungarian noble family. Given a marina is all of two lanes of traffic and a walkway away from the daffodil-yellow balcony, the possibility of an early evening ride on one of the many canals or slow, calm rivers snaking into the harbour seems reasonable.

And if neither of them can use an outboard motor, well, they can row.

Dane Whitman has posed:
Thankfully yes, Dane can manage an outboard motor just fine. He grew up in Gloucester...if he couldn't handle a boat he'd have likely been exiled. Or at least bullied like hell as some kind of weirdo. Though of course they could've just chartered a boat with a pilot pre-arranged, but where's the fun in that? After a day or two spent touring (Trsat Fortress and the Cathedral of St. Vitus were both on the agenda as well), a leisurely boat ride sounds like plenty of fun.

So Dane's loaded up the fresh baked bread, along with some Croatian charcuterie and cheese, and of course a local wine, arrayed between a basket and a small cooler, and offers Jane a hand into the boat. Picnic on the water? Certainly looks that way. Thankfully he's passingly familiar with the local language and more-than-passingly so with Italian. So navigation and following any signage and the like shouldn't be too much trouble.

"We forget anything?" He glances around trying to run through the mental checklist himself. Nothing immediately comes to mind but still....

Jane Foster has posed:
Jane's not entirely hopeless with an outboard motor either. Try living in spitting distance of Puget Sound all your life and avoid a boat. Like Texans unable to identify a cow, such rarities exist but not in this tale. With her laptop securely hidden in the safe downstairs and a few notes fired off to Darcy, she can finally claim her work is done and the Tuesday flight home leaves at least a day and a half of sightseeing to be done. Saturday night claimed some, but the remaining hours belong totally to Dane Whitman.

She has a bit of a Grace Kelly look going on, minus the brown hair, a kerchief tied securely at the nape of her neck and those saucer-sized sunglasses on her nose doing nothing to disguise who she is. She takes Dane's hand after departing from the cement promenade, sensibly wearing running shoes rather than daft sandals or heels. "I found that apple cinnamon braided bread! The bakery took only six turns through the old city, but accomplished." A plastic bag with the red-and-white checkered paper wrapped around the oblong loaf sticks out of a reusable cloth bag on her shoulder. "We can use my cellphone for a candle if we need extra light." Almost said life, but she catches herself without stumbling. "We've got the life jackets stowed there, and the gentleman at the front desk reminded me we must avoid the navigational buoys. 150 meters, so 150 yards." Easy metric conversion there. "Alas, no beautiful islands for us to avail ourselves of as a picnic spot, but we can always drive over to Dubrovnik and pretend to be in that Ice and Fire book series."

Dane Whitman has posed:
"Yeah I kinda lost my taste for that series after sort-of living it." Dane replies with a mild touch of a sour expression, but it fades as he unmoors the boot and fires up the engine, slowly taking them out of the marina and towards more open waters, "So which direction are we headed?" He queries, "Probably shouldn't go too far...we'll lose daylight in a a few hours." Not that he's terribly worried about their personal safety given a Strider is but a summons away. Still a few hours is plenty of time for a picnic...either in the boat or on a patch of shoreline somewhere (Who said it needs to be an island?).

"Not trying to jinx us, I'm just glad we haven't gotten any call-ins...." Though truth be told, Dane's still a junior enough agent that he's not the first on the list for the big stuff, and Jane is specialized.

Jane Foster has posed:
"Asgard replaced any possibility of fantasy for me. That and the endless, dull travelogue of a writer clearly confounded on where to go," Jane agrees, pushing the one strand of hair away that managed to evade the kerchief. That means it wants to stick to her mouth and spool around her chin. Getting her balance in a boat means immediately kneeling to sit, tucking her feet under her, and carefully reviewing the laminated map of the coast of Croatia. "Let's see. This tiny little cove up the way has a beach as large as your boot. What about the World War torpedo launch in ruins? It's a park, supposedly." She points northwest, following the gentle curve of the coastline studded by low apartments and the occasional outpost of something older, stonier, and blockier. "South gives us the option of another marina or this big bay. It's about, hm, fifteen kilometers or so. Look at those waters, mountains all around and probably beaches wherever we want to pull up. I'm in love with these red clay roofs and blue waters. Nothing like that close to us that isn't wretchedly polluted. I love the Med, I won't lie. I need more of this with you."

A soft, deliciously satisfied sigh exposes her contentment. She sinks back a bit to watch Dane, just admiring the wind in his dark hair and the freedom of not fighting their way through a SHIELD evaluation. "No call-ins? Oh, *you* got free of them? Not me." A shake of her head follows. "But nothing too serious. Personally, I say let's go south and enjoy the shallows. Have our snacks. Unless you feel like it's worth zipping up the coast two miles and having our picnic on the beach."

Somewhere offshore, not far away, monsters stir. Or rather, they reach the shallower shelf of the Adriatic, slinking with a purpose and a hunger.

Dane Whitman has posed:
"South it is." Dane replies with a smile, blissfully unaware of monsters or the like. The boat turns north, now clear of the Marina and speeding up as it passes the threshold to where wakes are now allowed.

"You're the navigator." Dane grins, sunglasses firmly in place as the sun slowly makes its' way towards the horizon.

"Yeah, I can imagine fantasy seeming a little quaint compared to a heightened reality." He's still all smiles, watching the scenery as they cruise along. There's not a great deal of traffic on a Sunday late afternoon, which is all the better for their little excursion.

Jane Foster has posed:
The city limns the margins of the city, staccato pulses of red roofs in rippled clay, the occasional Soviet-era grey concrete block in brutalist design at odds with the more gracious Italian columns and tiny little restaurants squashed in. Surf pops up, white lacy ripples breaking around the bow of the happy metal-framed boat lined in wood and aluminum. The kick might topple her into Dane were she not braced with both feet on the floor, tilting back into the pointed bow. Little windshield doing nothing to deflect the spray, she grins; a freedom there to be found, she stretches her hands out to him, beckoning, the map tucked under her thigh.

"It'll be easy. See the hill to your left on the coast. You follow until the sea opens into a bay around the bottom there. It looks like a village or two have marinas there, if we need more gas." Unable to resist blowing him a kiss, she peeks into the basket and then pulls open the plastic bag. Tearing a chunk of the apple and cinnamon-laced bread, she holds it out to him. "Open up," she playfully offers.

Another scudding wave bounces them along, giving the motor room to roar. The slippery gurgle of something cresting doesn't make a lot of noise, but the sinuous black shapes bob and drop, suggesting that some very large eel-like faces attached to chitinous bodies might be swimming to shore. No chariot with Triton pulling them, no, these wobbly wolf-eel monstrosities are probably about the size of a horse and in a slithery pack of five going for a beach.

Easy to spot, given they're ahead of the boat, and if he steers wrong, Dane could literally jump a not-quite-shark.

Dane Whitman has posed:
Dane is almost distracted enough by the beckonings of his paramour and the mouthful of apple-cinnamon bread that he almost doesn't notice the dark shapes beneath the water. His initial reaction isn't an immediate assumption that anything is out of the ordinary though...Marine Biology barely qualifies as a passing fancy for him. But it IS an unusual sight, and so Dane slows the motor of the boat down to the merest crawl, canting his head slightly, the polarized sunglasses he's wearing helping to keep the shapes more distinct, but the ripple and refraction of the water don't make them easily identifiable.

"Hey...what /are/ those?"

It may be hard to tell, given that they're technically several years (and growing if they continue towards the shore) but still.

"They don't look quite...right?" Not fish, nor cetacean, nor amphibious mammal. "They don't have manatees out this way, do they?" Though that doesn't seem quite right either.

Jane Foster has posed:
The Mediterranean isn't exactly known for large species, long ago fished out and strip-mined by everyone from Phoenicians to Roman Byzantines to Russians and Turks. Especially not jellied monsters bearing a face entirely out of keeping with their crustacean bodies, smelling heavily of rotten oil and salt. Their strangely circular patterns gleam greyish blue, almost unreal, but the blue-crab bodies are an added bonus for nightmares about seafood coming to get its revenge on a picturesque urban shore.

Jane tilts her head back over her shoulder, trying to get a sense of what Dane sees. "I assume you aren't talking about the oil refinery stacks?" It takes a little more effort for her to get on her knees, harbouring care as she clings to the bench with both hands. "No, nothing like that. Dolphins, the odd shark, but that's more like Jormungandr's bastard offspring."

She shrinks back a little, giving a pat, but bringing an ICER along on a date hardly counts as sanctioned. She has bread. A pen. A phone most likely not about to authorize an orbital strike. "Might be a smart idea for us to get to a beach. I can call the port authority, and hopefully they speak English? Or hopefully they're not hungry for sailboat?"

They do have pointy teeth. Nomnomnom.

Dane Whitman has posed:
"Yeah..." Dane agrees with Jane on the subject of heading ashore. If nothing else he doesn't like the thought of one of these things clambering aboard. He takes a wide, circuitous route to try to stay mostly clear of the monsters, which seem...fixated on getting ashore. The plus side? They don't get boarded. The downside? By the time they make it to a mooring, the beasts are already starting to clamber out of the surf and into the village.

"Make the calls and try to stay out of sight." Dane notes as he hops ashore, armor appearing around him as his feet touch down, complete with the Ebony Blade sheathed at his waist.

And but a moment later trusty Strider also half-gallops, half-flies out of a pulse of light, coming to a halt beside Dane.

"I'll see how many of them I can head off." Maybe literally.

Jane Foster has posed:
By the time they can pilot a small boat to a largely developed waterfront, those seaborne horrors cover a rather considerable distance. It helps to have a chitinous body hastened along by rapid momentum, some managing to arrange their formation in a widened spread that will give multiple landing spots. Because Lurkers may not be top-tier intelligence, but these ones hunt in a scuttle happy to devour whatever they come across. Their jellied eel bodies are weird enough, more face than not. Still, though, see how they run!

The first strike is unquestionably going to be on the people on a low-lying taverna of sorts, a very humble cafe right up against the waterfront. It isn't pretty. Neighbourhood cheap eats, as so many Balkan countries have, which amounts to a kitchen facing out to the back, people ordering at the counter in the front. A stretch of dingy rocks slick with kelp, cooking oil, worse. Someone can just leap to the fore and get into so much trouble. The first monstrous Lurker has no problem scuttling up from the shallows to check out the back door.

"You've noticed how low these sides of the boat are? I think my only option is lying under the boat itself," Jane notes but too late; Dane's already on the ground, Strider manifested.

Or visiting. A girl could get really jealous about that, except she blows him a kiss. "Go, beautifuls."

With that, her task is hopping out of the little craft and trying ot tug it closer. SHIELD won't likely pay for its recovery, no matter how cheap Croatia is. So with a swift bit of care, she deals with wet shoes and pulls their picnic out when her strength isn't enough to do much but assure a wave won't steal the craft.

Dane Whitman has posed:
Dane half-flies, half-gallops back towards where the creatures make landfall. He doesn't speak the local language fluently, but he knows Italian quite well, and is banking on enough of the locals knowing enough of it to get the gist of what he's shouting.

<<Danger! Danger! Get away from the shore! Away!>> Some are stupefied by the sight...not many superheroes in this neck of the woods. Others gawk for a moment or two, but catch the gist of the words and start moving away. Others move immediately, but none of it is quick enough for at least a couple patrons of that Taverna. Though a lot more folks are starting to catch on that something is distinctly amiss as more creatures climb from the water...or they follow Dane's trail down to where he performs a ride-by beheading of one of the creatures, striking at an elongated neck. Dane slides from the saddle easily, taking to foot to barge in the back of the Taverna, pushing the gruesome sight that awaits him to a dark corner of his mind as he lashes out against yet another monster. The Ebony Blade performs as expected, cleaving it easily...but there's only one of him (and it), and a lot more of the creatures. Thankfully Strider helps pick up some of the slack, racing about and kicking at creatures either from the ground or the air, deftly keeping out of reach of their own strikes, for now.

Jane Foster has posed:
Enough people on the near Italian border can get by. English, Italian, the odd spattering of Greek all tell of the tales of eastern Mediterranean hegemony shifting over the years. Tourism ebbs and flows but filthy greenbacks always follow, and the lingua franca of any country is money.

Sadly Lurkers have no currency or reason to spend money. All they do is take, take, take. A swipe of the mighty claws rips away lumber and half a door, leaving a startled cook preparing some hummus and flatbread into delightful meals. He doesn't listen to warnings immediately because he's singing to some horrible German pop tune, badly, off-key as ever. The appearance of flashing white wings hardly warrants a second look but that sudden appearance of a man or -- hey, crab legs, segmented bodies rolling around, with some wolf-eel faces are problematic.

"What--"

The guests on the other side of the building run flat out into the street, racing between the low-rises with their Sovietesque stylings. They get some space, but when fighting against a crab monster that moves faster than a horse, save Sleipnir, what can you do? Flee, hide, scream. They can throw rocks, but they aren't stupid.

Jane calls the police, for all that does. "Yes, there are /sea monsters/-- do you..."

"I'm Doctor Jane Foster." A pause shimmers in the air leaves her hastening to cut off the call and dial into SHIELD, hoping someone will hit the horizon with authority beyond hers.

Dane Whitman has posed:
Dane's been neck-deep in the chaos of combat before. The fleeing crowd causes him to raise his blade, the better to not accidentally cut anyone as they flee around him. And once most are clear he surges forward again. Snicker-snack, and another Jabberwock falls. But a glance outward brings the realization that his pace is not likely to keep up with the tide.

Dane looks for a choke-point that they might funnel to, but as he spots one of the creatures starting to scale a building he realizes that's a non-starter. With a somewhat inarticulate shout and a gesture, Strider takes flight to try to clobber that monster as it climbs, and indeed he succeeds in his task, sending it falling down onto its' back with chunks of building in its' claws.

Dane slashes off a snapping claw, then drives the blade deep into the abdomen of another creature, heaving to push its' weight away from the taverna to allow the last few people to get clear, but he's barely got the blade clear when another creature slaps him across the body with a mighty claw, sending him flying right into the drink, disappearing beneath the surface of the water and knocking the Ebony blade from his grasp, landing a few feet away from where he'd been standing.

Jane Foster has posed:
It's not a massive crowd for they lie outside the city center. Lazy evenings mean strolling through a park or getting a quick meal, meeting friends. Nothing different from New York except a population of 8 or 9 million missing from the area. Dane doesn't have to worry about much of a crowd beyond the initial rush, swallowed up into the safety of surrounding apartments.

Snicker-snack, goo rushes from a severed limb. The Ebony Blade comes away grossly gleaming when encountering the gelatinous neck, the eel-like face, the maw of way too many hungry teeth. Lurkers slashed by pain do not fight to the death, their bestial instincts of hunger and rage sending them skittering away protectively to the shore. One snaps claws at Strider while he tries to bury well-trimmed hooves into a chitinous carapace, cracks like hitting cinder blocks but eventually breaking through. Truly the whole process is a whirlwind of movements, the horse on the wing against something with a neck that slithers and twists in pretzel formations to try and bite at the belly. All it wants is to eat.

And they happily turn on one another should there be a need, devouring the wounded, not about to give up on that. Disturbing no doubt to watch from the ground, or the sea, as it might happen to be.

Nothing much Jane can do about that, still under cover, relaying instructions to SHIELD and shoving the phone in her pocket. She peers around the cover of a tree for some gauge of how badly things are going. Well, twenty or thirty feet away, a dismembered crab being kicked at by a flying horse is enough to goad her into fleeing down the block, skirting around a parked car awkwardly in the middle of the street. On a whim, she rushes up to the open driver's side door, looking for a trunk button or latch. Anything to spring the back, to check for flares in a road kit. It's something she can throw, at least.

Dane Whitman has posed:
It's a discomfiting feeling, knowing you have to dismiss the armor that's protecting you from slavering beasts in order to make it back to the surface, much less out. But it's a better chance at survival than drowning. He MIGHT be strong enough and have the stamina to make it topside with the armor on, but it'd leave him exhausted for any further fight ashore. So the armor goes, and Dane kicks back to the surface, grabbing on to the stone "shelf" that marks the edge of the water and pulling himself out, not wasting any time lolling about, but instead getting to his feet and running at the next creature that looks like it's not in a departing mood. Armor and blade reappear about him or in his hand, respectively, and he drives it into the creature's back, before a jerk rakes it down and out, leaving a grievous wound before he moves on towards the next. The teeth of that eel's maw clamp onto his shoulder, causing him a yelp of pain, but not truly piercing his armor.

Still, Dane is slowing, armor or not that trip into the water took a bit out of him, and being soaking wet while doing all this fighting isn't helping. He may have excellent stamina for this sort of thing but it's still within the bounds of humanity, and despite the ease with which he cleaves these creatures, they're quick and strong and it's not as easy as it looks.

Still, the one trying to gnaw him gets a blade through the neck for its' trouble, and releases him before falling back. Dane ducks under a claw-strike and slashes across the midsection of yet another.

"Come on Dane..." He says to himself, somewhat breathlessly, "You've made it through worse raids than this..."

Jane Foster has posed:
The smallest of the Lurkers would be a pony, the largest laughably outsizing a Clydesdale. Or a scooter to a modest SUV. One pursues the possibility of eating out of a dumpster, harassing two people backed up to a balcony and rattling the glass door in hopes the occupant will come forth and rescue them like a knight in a housecoat. Not the knight fighting for his life against horrors of the oceanic depths.

Shouts in Croatian and the occasional angry Serbian ring out, mostly to the tune of "Go inside" and "hurry up, hide!" Sirens wail in the distance, the police assembling from some station or another, but how fast they arrive depends on factors like navigating old streets and truly believing the American intelligence jammed through their lines.

Dane fights for his life on a percussive beat of swings and swipes, cutting open the Lurkers and causing a whole other host of troubles for animals driven purely by bestial purpose. They have no tactics other than swarming; cornering and cutting is more in line with a bloodthirsty shark than anything else. They know pain and retreat from it. Bleeding out is reason enough to rush away.

Jane's search brings up a few options; a tire iron she isn't especially competent with, a flashy aluminum blanket, flares, small road cones. She snatches up the blanket and the flares, yanking up on the paper seal on the cap. Peeling the wrapping away, she twists off the cap and ignites the tip of the flare on a second or third strike downward. No hope of a lighter in there, alas. No smoking in Europe. Bright orange-red flames bursts out, spewing away in a noisy crackle. First one down, seven more to go, a run bringing her out of cover.

"Hello! Hey, crustacean!" Right, not the greatest ruse but suitable. She waves the first orange flare and flings it overhand as hard as she can, sending it flying in Dane's general direction. The next flare will be lit soon enough to follow, sending a trail of fire at it.

Dane Whitman has posed:
The flares do cause at least one of the monstrosities to turn its' attention towards Jane, it starts to stalk towards her, claws outstretched. Dane bolts forward,but is cut off by yet another creature snapping at him. He nearly bisects it at the diagonal, and then grins with a touch of relief as Strider swoops down to air-trample the "fellow" headed towards Jane, not putting it on the ground but halting its' progress. Dane starts to rush forward, then sees what's developing beyond the creature, and grins as he dives behind the nearest piece of cover.

Because then, the tide turns. Not so much out of Dane's efforts (though they at least help mitigate the loss of life), so much as the arrival of the Croatian police, inasmuch force as they can muster in this particular locale, laden with rarely-used H&K SMGs and assault rifles. Most of them are clearly pale-faced and nervous, but they still do their jobs, and they certainly know what they're supposed to be shooting at. A couple of them rush to interpose themselves between Jane and the creature nearest her, with a third trying to guide her away as his fellows blast away at the crustacean-thing (right after Strider flits out of the line of fire).

Thankfully, Dane remains safe behind his cover as the gunfire continues, sending the remaining beasts into retreat, with the police polishing off one or two more for their kin to cart off for feasting upon in the depths.

Jane Foster has posed:
Fool woman with a foolish plan: throw fire at it, the atavistic terror of many animals. Probably not so helpful against sea creatures but maybe the temptation to eat it will have a positive outcome like incineration. It cannot hurt to try and allay the dangers presented by much bigger, faster-moving creatures she cannot hope to exactly match in the physical department.

Jane probably looks ludicrous, signalling in flare, lighting and waving them to attract attention. Something gamboling a bit closer than she might like gives a problem until the police show, flanking vehicles storming up at a reasonably fast pace given the rather windy, narrow streets even of downshore neighbourhoods away from the port, the downtown business center, and more. She is more than happy to be dragged back as need by, though she has to dispose of one flare away from trouble, tossing it to the gutter where it warns pedestrians and drivers of the hazards of a curb. Or vehicle-sized sea monsters. Bullets are useful enough against giant crabby things as they are eels, fish, and a host of marine life. True, most sharks aren't bothered by being shot immediately but they have internal structures not meant to be perforated by high-speed fire. Ventilating next week's dinner is a disgustingly messy business. It involves thrashing around, the dangers of a large crustacean almost sitting on two officers and instead smashing the hood of the car.

Surely Strider can laugh after his marathon Lord of the Rings viewing, knowing he has bested anything with an exoskeleton.

"He's out there," she's busy trying to explain amidst all of this. "Don't shoot the guy with a sword, please."

Dane Whitman has posed:
As gunfire comes to an end, surviving sea monsters flee (leaving behind only a few of their corpses and well...scattered assorted bits), and Dane catches his breath, he wipes off the Ebony Blade on his cape, and sheathes it as he rises from cover. Thankfully nobody shoots him, and his Italian is good enough to explain...well, the basics. That and yes..he DOES have his SHIELD badge. Just in case. It actually proves useful, and gets a laugh out of a couple of the policemen he's talking to when he explains he's actually here on vacation.

But in a few days word around town will be that some America SHIELD Knight on a flying horse warned people of the impending attack and held off an endless horde of creatures all but single-handedly until the police arrived to help. It's an exaggeration, really...Dane doesn't begrudge any life saved by his actions, certainly, but will always feel like he could have done more. Still, he's hardly a stranger to tales of his exploits being exaggerated in the retelling...some things never change. In all, a handful of folks near the shore perish, and two-score bear varying degrees of injury (though several are inflicted in panicked flight rather than direct confrontation with the creatures). Maybe not perfect, but better than it could have been, and maybe SHIELD'S rep gets a tiny boost in Croatia. He'll take it.

Jane Foster has posed:
The basics with a man wearing a sword and a cape probably involve a few confused looks. A couple questions; is he perhaps related to the statues in the local museum? Because they have helms like-- well. You know. Those Italians, Croatians, Venetians, Byzantines, Ottomans, and a sea of others bringing their stories and influences.

Jane works not a little to convince the authorities shielding her that Dane doesn't deserve to be shot, arrested or quarantined in the depths of a precinct or the nearest equivalent being questioned high and low. They have to clean up the sea creatures lying in bits, after all, and that clean-up or hazmat crew will have an awful day. The excavators, garbage trucks, dump trucks or tractors will need somehow to get in there.

Not their problem, though, since two agents of SHIELD get to run away. The only consideration for them might be finding one another again, extricated from crustaceans and slimy bites, patched up with a towel or a lot of sanitizer offered by a paramedic, possibly a worried look hidden behind a smile.

It's a metaphor for something deeper, but that can wait until their many law enforcement buddies are turned away or Dane's jacket is not horrible. Relocating their pilfered picnic from where she dumped it with difficulty, she returns towards Dane's orbit holding the gift up. "Dinner, or is this where we return to our hotel and extend the stay a week?"

Dane Whitman has posed:
"Definitely dinner. I'm famished and thanking God we didn't bring any seafood." Dane replies with a somewhat weary grin, now back in surprisingly clean civvies, if of a variety that still smells fairly strongly of seawater. "And then we'll see what we can squeeze out of our bosses. A week would be nice but I'll take what we can get. And maybe book a hotel in Venice."

Jane Foster has posed:
"You know, anything akin to their big brothers might induce a pattern of guilt." Jane grimaces as she looks over at one of the oily, stinking corpses that was so recently an oily, stinking brine-horror of a Lurker. Their weird patterns of grey and blue might be construed as vaguely pretty but the rest of them lacks a certain something. "A hotel in Venice? Music to my ears considering the Hayden Planetarium may have my head. I will have to cash in a few days of holiday time, at least what didn't get eaten up in Hammer Bay." The sound of that leaves an uncomfortable note in the melody of her voice usually proffered with such warmth.

Seawater and brine don't end a kiss to his temple, her arms around his neck. Dane is far more stable than she is. "We can blow this popsicle stand whenever you like. I'll warn Venice is substantially more expensive but we can find something. A pretty little B&B with a balcony, a view of a giant cruise ship..."

Dane Whitman has posed:
Dane grins, turning his head and kissing Jane's forehead in kind, "Pretty sure I'm good for it." He notes with a touch of wry humor. He's not stinking filthy rich, or even filthy rich. But at the moment he may technically be classified as stinking rich. Probably with an unpoken "and" between them, but still!

For now though, he returns his gaze to the pick-a-nick basket and cooler and grins, "So is everything still good or do we need to try to find some more fresh bread or another bottle of wine?"

Jane Foster has posed:
Small delights to be found. "You need a bath, and we need a gondola ride. Though maybe not with these things roaming around. The canals are fairly shallow, so perhaps we can elude our maritime stalkers?" Jane dabs her fingertip against the slope of Dane's nose, other hand still supporting the picnic things that she carried over. Not all of it, but the important bits. Like what he packed.

"Fresh bread is going straight to my hips and I still won't be able to resist popping into a bakery. You are going to have me running miles to make up for it, aren't you?" Mischievously smiling, she steps back to look at the wreckage and ruin of the street. "It all seems good. We need to fetch that boat back, unless we can convince the police to tow it. No trailer for us."

Dane Whitman has posed:
"I don't know..." Dane glances towards the remains of one of the creatures, shaking his head slightly. "Don't think they were after us. Or if it's an isolated incident or not." He shrugs, "But dinner first, then boat, then bath, then bed. I'll file an AAR in the morning and let the analysts put it all together."

Dane grins at Jane once more, "Well, maybe I'll just make you row the gondola." He teases, putting an arm over her shoulders, "Come on, let's find someplace a little further away from the mess to eat."

Jane Foster has posed:
"Call it an occupational hazard but anything with tentacles, spines or strange shapes gets astronomers a little nervous. Deep Ones probably care more about classical university professor types, but you never know..." Trailing off, the brunette slips around Dane's shoulder to look past him just in case something comes out of the Med and decides that stretch of rumpled, rocky coastline deserves further assaults. Hopefully not; the old torpedo launch might need to be reactivated by some local heroes or teenagers.

Best not tempt fate. "Me, row the gondola? Oh no. There will be some strapping Italian in a striped shirt doing that for the authentic experience, thank you very much. I fully insist on reclining and eating some grapes or singing bad love songs. You can recite some poetry. We will be as authentically romantic and ridiculous as possible." Her breath escapes in a plume close to a sigh, and Jane leans in to the expanse of his arm. "No one dead. Call it a win, Sir Whitman. Definitely not the place to eat around here, though, the smell is awful. No, let's get our walk on the beach next to a mural of the beach we saw up by that cafe with the awnings..."