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Hopefully nobody had any plans for this little building over, the one that looks suspiciously like an unfamiliar fast-food chain restaurant might if one removed all the restaurant contents and signage but left the building itself standing untouched. Hopefully, that is, because Roxie's been dismantling the non-load-bearing interior walls to roughly remove the framing inside, leaving drywall and insulation and other bits scattered around. (She made sure to turn off the building's main breaker first, at least, though she's been lucky enough not to hit any actual wiring.)

And, one awkward load at a time, she's been dragging the wood over to a building across the broad avenue, one that seems rather like a small veterinary office. The front door's been propped open with a brick, and she's been laying out the roughly-removed lengths of wood on the carpet, trying not to track too much drywall dust inside.

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"What are you doing?" It isn't Sherry's habit to interrupt people when they're working (she's learned!), but she's watched the girl move her loads of random building material from one building to another. It doesn't have a whole lot of rhyme or reason, and that bothered her. There needed to be a pretty good reason for this. What if someone had other plans for the building (not that seems to be a big bother; everyone seems... to do what they want in the city..)?

And someday, Sherry will learn that it's not a good idea to sneak up on strangers with her quiet little steps. Someday.

If Roxie was a cat, the sudden question would have made her fur stand on end; as it is, she jolts, nearly swinging the lengths of wood she's currently transferring at Sherry in an awkwardly twisting reflex.

She catches herself in time, though, and it takes her a moment to relax again, face settling from half-conscious shock back into something of the calm coldness she usually bears.

"... ... I want to board up some of the windows," she says, finally taking a proper look at the other girl. Her face softens somewhat. It's not often she really interacts properly with someone close to her own age, not in a way that isn't just sniping at each other or the perfunctory minimum needed to continue in school. "I think one of the rooms would be good for meditation."

Sherry's hands flew up to guard her face instinctively, but the blow never came. Her brain reminded her, distantly, that the fast something goes, the harder it's swung, and the more would hurt. It sounded like that wood was going awfully fast. She dropped her hands experimentally and watched Roxie with her flat blue eyes. Just what had she gotten herself into?

Oh well, answer and further your findings. "Really?" Sherry asked, a bit dubious, but then again, the other girl had swung a 2x4 at her. "How long have you been working on it?" And, of course the more logical question, "How did you tear all of that up without tools?"

"About a half hour," Roxie says, and shifts the wood back a little on her shoulder. It's in that awkward spot where it's too big to lift easy and so it's balanced over her shoulder, with one hand up to keep it balanced in place. "I'm almost done."

She glances over at the building she'd just left. "My things are in there." There's a hammer and a butcher's knife, both stained with drywall dust, on the counter in the building being gutted, but that's all.

"Oh," she replied. Well, that explained that, didn't it, and Sherry peeked into the other building quickly to ascertain where the tools were. "Well, I guess that makes sense, then."

This was probably the part where she should introduce herself, and offer to help, but she found herself still suspicious of the other girl. "So there's no one else helping you, you're doing this on your own?" Where was she going to get nails? "I'm sorry if it seems like I'm asking a lot of random questions, but... it just seems kind of strange..." People didn't go around making meditation rooms all the time, after all.

One might think that a knife like that would dull pretty quick, trying to cut any amount of drywall or wood with it. If that were even feasible, anyway, given the sort of strength somebody would have to apply to leave a mark in the framing.

Well, there are nails left in the framing here and there. Maybe she'll be able to reuse some of them. "I tried just using some drapes, but the change between light and dark out here that got through them bothered me." She points upwards, at the city's faux-sky.

Sherry followed her point and eyeballed the faux-sky. "Yeah, and it's not very consistent. I don't even think it's on a twenty-four hour time table." Sometimes she woke up, knowing it should have been time for the "sun" to lighten the sky, and it was still dark, and stayed that way for three or four hours longer than it should've.

"I'm Sherry, by the way. Nice to meet you," she added as a bit of an afterthought.

"I'm Roxie." She edges back so she can turn the wood without swinging it too close to Sherry and continues towards the little vet's office (if that's what it is)—slowly, given the soft-footed shuffling way she walks. "... I still need to find something to sleep on," she comments, halfway to herself.

That part Sherry couldn't help with... then again, "Well, you can always try asking my dad for a couch from the precinct. He might help." She was around Sherry's age, and if Roxie could maybe see Leon... and successfully puppy-eye him, it could work.

"Anyway, I'll... let you get back to whatever it was you were doing."

"... wait," Roxie says. It's about the closest she can get to a strong objection, most of the time. For a long moment there, Sherry made her feel halfway normal, and even halfway is nice—

"Who's your—dad?" She almost said 'father', but she caught herself, wondered if that would be too pretentious somehow, and just went with the same word that Sherry did.

She lets the two-by-four slide down her shoulder behind herself so that it ends up leaning forward against her.

Sherry stopped mid-step and turned back to Roxie, "My dad? He's Leon Kennedy, the Chief of Security."

And no, she knew she'd never get tired of saying that. "I don't know, I sleep on a couch there, maybe we can find something for you, too." Or at least a cozy office chair...

"Oh," Roxie says succinctly, not sure how to respond to that.

Well, no, she can figure out something to say: "... that would be nice. I've been sleeping on the floor so far. I don't like those... pod things." That area that's supposedly the crew quarters, she means, with the disturbing fleshy bunks.

Sherry wrinkled her nose in response, "No, I don't like them either. They're a bit nightmare-inducing, I think." And that was just from Claire's description of them. Having seen enough rotting flesh to last her a lifetime or five, Sherry was glad that it hadn't been even a half-thought in her new parents' (she had to stop thinking of them like that) minds.

"Right," Roxie says, smiling just a little bit.

In an ache up behind her eyes, suddenly, she wishes Cathy was here, the woman who's been the closest thing she's had to real family for a long time, because then at least she could give up having to be strong for long enough to collapse against her-- Her face quavers, but she slides it back into the smooth mask before anything more can happen.

"... Would it be all right if I came to ask now?"

Sherry decided not to ask if the other girl was alright; it annoyed her when people asked her that constantly, so no doubt it probably annoyed this girl, too. "That's no problem, at least, I don't see why it would be." Sherry looked around for landmarks, and saw the Precinct a bit further off, rising up in the city. "It shouldn't take us too long to get there, either."

Roxie would be so, so glad for that if she could hear Sherry's train of thought.

"Roger, let me just ..." She turns, lifting up the section of framing and tossing it roughly—it clatters over, not quite next to but definitely closer to the building. And then she shuffles over across the street (to get her hammer and knife before she comes back to Sherry, it turns out).

"Lead on," she says as she maneuvers the pair of tools(?) into place under her jacket. Sherry may get a momentary glimpse of a broad array of things tucked against her under there—screwdriver, knife, pizza cutter, tape measure... The only real connecting elements are that all are kept in place hooked into loops sewn onto the denim, and that many of them look like they could be used as makeshift weapons.

The weird part is that the jacket doesn't seem to sit heavily enough for all that stuff, though.

Sherry got a peek under Roxie's coat and felt her eyebrows draw together quizzically. That... how was she carrying all that stuff and not falling over? Obviously, she was seeing things. Sherry rubbed at her eyes and straightened up.

"Will do, this way," and that was all the warning Sherry gave before she started off towards the Precinct quickly.

Roxie shuffles after--and quickly has to speed up to match Sherry's pace. She's naturally a slow walker, apparently.

She shakes at her jacket, trying to free off a bit more of the drywall dust.

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