Mits reaches into her pocket with one hand, and takes a selfie with the hiding person with the other.

"I'm Mittens, and this is Joe.  We drove that train here.  Never been here before.  Maybe you can enlighten us as to where here is, and why the three of us are the only ones here."

A little boy peeks from behind the trashcan. His hair is disheveled and his face a little dirty. He has goggles on and other such post-apocalyptic gear on him. "I'm Eli... You're in Metterville." Which is what the stop is labeled. "People don't usually come to the old train stations... how come your train works?"

  "We're still hazy on the actual reason we ended up here, though ten minutes ago it was because we were driving a train full of people in a functioning society.  And now they're gone, and we're in a station that wasn't even on our map yet.  I'm expect things range from unpleasant to lethal outside, if we checked the exits"

Now that it's sinking in, Mits is getting super excited!

"Hello, Eli!  Nice to meet you!  I'm guessing the reason is Time Travel!  We must have stumbled upon one of those unexplained space-time rifts in science fiction!  What year is it?"

Eli says, "2030." And yeah, we're going by "the RP started in 2016". "Time travel? Please tell me you're from the future..."

  "Sorry, we're random civilians from the past.  Now, is the primary threat to life mobile? Infectious?  Immune to physical harm or only having specific vulnerabilities?  Or just a bunch of people in an out for themselves survival brawl?"

Joe's got the pertinent questions covered.  Mits takes her hand out of her pocket and shows off her pepper spray.

"This the only weapon I've got.  Pepper spray.  It makes you temporarily blind...  If you're a living thing."

Probably doesn't work on zombies.

Eli looks disappointed and says, "Oh... um... I guess you'll wanna stay with me then." He then looks up at Joe. "The primary threat is other people, I guess? Hard to say. I usually try to keep away from most people, but you two didn't immediately attack me... and you look genuinely lost."
This message was last edited by the player at 06:00, Thu 01 Sept 2016.

  Well, that was fortunate so far as disaster hazards went.  Despite how often it is a tagline, people are not the worst monsters.  Even when it's people who eat other people, because they lack teeth that can chew through reinforced steel.

  "Well, hopefully you're not just leading us to our deaths at the hands of your more heavily armed associates.  But not like we have anything better to do today."

"Mittens wonders if the boredom of her job really did drive her insane," Mits muses, "Nevertheless, Adventure calls!  And I have caller I.D."

She follows after Eli.  "So what happened that caused humanity to turn against itself?"

"Many of the foods people relied on started to just die off. Large quantities of crops and animals. I've never known that world, but that is what I heard happened. Now it's just everyone for themselves." Eli looks around to make sure they are not being watched and then taps some buttons on a panel and then has his hand scanned, causing a door to open to a flight of stairs and Eli descends.

  Yeah, mystery famine would be one of the more drastic yet mundane of such problems.

  Joe follows along, "Take a while to set up, or just keeping old locks working?"

"Mittens is also surprised to see high tech working in a post apocalyptic world.  She suspects that maybe the boy is a little techie wiz like you find in such movies.  And looks forward to the part where she'll be in a pod race and power needs re-routed to keep things exciting..."

Eli has concluded these poor folk are obviously from the present and they are just the kind of crazy that think they are from better times. And narrate from third person. "I.. set it up myself." He flicks a switch, the door closes behind the trio and lights turn on to show a small living area with a bed, a fridge, what looks like some kind of high-tech tub, and a big mess of parts everywhere.

  "Can't have been easy, then.  Particularly with having to go out and find all the parts yourself."  The Batcave would have probably taken a lot longer if it required personal looting sprees for anything but the trophy displays.

Mits gives a low whistle.

"Wow.  Niice!"

She heads over to the tub.  "It looks like a high-tech tub.  But what is it really?"

Eli can't help but smile when Mittens appears impressed.

In answer to Mitts' question, though, Eli says, "A high-tech tub."

He then nods to Joe. "It took me a while to set all of this up. The tub is the latest major addition. Before that was the fridge. The fridge, I was lucky enough to find and just repair it. But the tub I had to build from scratch... it takes water molecules from the air, stores them, filters the water, making it doubling as both a tub and drinkable water... Extra nice is that because it can do that, I can recycle the same bath water over and over while the filter gets rid of all the dirt."
This message was last edited by the player at 06:41, Thu 01 Sept 2016.

  "Even just the molecular scale water filter alone is kind of a big deal in this situation."  Sure beat purifying the end result of a more mundane dehumidifier, likely less heat being blasted out in the process as well.

  "I'm assuming most people running around would rather run one of these into the ground, than go to the effort making more to basically remove water scarcity."

Mits tail-wags, smiling brightly.

"I knew it!  Super genius tech wiz!  And tub is more than just a tub!  Sweet!"

She starts zipping about, poking her nose in every curious thing she can.  It's a cat thing.  But she's adult enough to not touch anything.

"So in exchange for sharing your awesome place with us, I would like to do something useful for you.  Like maybe do the dangerous things you've been putting off but will need to get around to eventually anyway."

To Joe she's all, "I know, right?"

To Joe he looks a little saddened. "I... can only hope you are wrong. The world can't stay bad forever, can it?"

To Mittens' offer, Eli is flabbergasted, even a little scared, and says, "D-dangerous? Why would I ask you to do dangerous things?"

One of the things Mittens examines is a robot eyeball that examines her right back.

  "Because if you have to hide, that means so much as walking outside can be dangerous.  You offering the hospitality is very appreciated, but just sitting around leeching off you isn't very appealing."

  Because Eli isn't an asshole.  If it were highly sarcastic wizards or something, it would be another matter.

"Yeah!  What he said.  Thanks for welcoming us in!"

Mits smiles at the robot eye and wiggles her fingers at it in a hello.

"Robot eye.  So cool!"

The eye "blinks" in response to Mittens, along with some beeps sounding from it.

Eli says, "Well..."

He puts a hand on the wall and the wall changes from wall-colored to having a map on it. "I really appreciate your offer. But until you know this place, I wouldn't want you leaving for any reason." He is staring at the map, as if trying to figure out where to begin. He then looks at Joe and Mittens. "What are you good at?"

  "I know enough to fix things like cars and trains, not molecular physics or advanced robots.  Unless they shoot me first or don't show a reaction to physical injury, I can defend myself well enough."

Mits squees from the star wars droid eye reaction.

"Best robot eye ever!  What useful stuff do I know how to do?  Well...  Imagine a girl who grew up with excessive energy and who's easily bored with scholastic stuff.  So I know lotsa survival skills like hunting, sneaking, trap making, self-defense, camo, swimming, tight-rope walking, and so on.  Algebra will kick my tail every time, though.  And I'm probably nowhere near as handy with a wrench as Joe here."