trans_9 | Life's a Drag, Pun Intended [Open]

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Life's a Drag, Pun Intended [Open]

Finally having moved all the scrap he allotted for the day from the borders of the explored city to the little abandoned building he's calling The Warehouse, Howard nearly collapses onto the couch he's 'borrowed' from a neighboring, uninhabited house. After laying completely still for a few minutes, soaking in Stacy's downright weird artificial sun - though he guesses it's not much weirder than the FAYZ's - he sits back up and looks over today's haul.

A bedframe. About sixty pounds of various pieces of scrap metal, mostly aluminum this time, from the looks of it. Some PVC piping. A cardboard box full of jewelry, some of it looking expensive. Some weird alien cube that keeps making humming noises when it's not chirping. A dead iPod-ish computer thing. Corked bottles full of smokey, glowing substances. Walkie-Talkies with no batteries. Folding chairs. A box of gel pens. Flashlights. What looks like an alien ukulele. Something that may or may not be a magical wand. T-shirts with four arm-holes. An empty refrigerator that doesn't appear to work, but may be useful with a lock installed. Not that he'd have been able to get it here without the trolley he also kiped. And another plastic box full of various odds and ends. There's another mountain of stuff, slightly better organized, just behind The Warehouse's door.

Howard chews on the end of one of the gel pens and sings to himself as he starts sorting. It's probably nearing time for him to actually let other people come look through the stuff too. He cracks his neck and rubs one shoulder ruefully - skinny teenage bodies aren't made for dragging refrigerators.

"Spacey Stacy, give me your answer, do
You're totally crazy and more full of snot than the flu
Your food is a sloppish nightmare, but it's better than starving, I swear
It's not your fault, but could you use some salt? Because some spice is much overdue..."

(( OOC: Feel free to have your character find stuff in Howard's pile of junk, as long as it makes sense to have found in The City. ))

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He nodded; if nothing else, Howard seemed eager to learn. "Anytime you're ready. Is Engineering short on supplies? There's such a large stockpile of weapons on the ship; I assumed there must also be adequate supplies for mechanical tinkering as well."

Howard's initial attempt to pin down Zouichi as a non-human good guy might have been more or less spot on at the beginning, but Zouichi was changing -- adapting -- long before he even arrived on the ship. The constant presence of people to interact with and being forced to improvise his way through novel situations has only increased the rate at which he's learning. And part of these changes include the idea that maybe he wants to hold some of his cards a little closer to his vest. Where Howard is concerned, anyway.

Also, Zouichi has never pushed a shopping cart in his life.

"The belle of the ball," he agrees. Thank you, Media Library. "But I haven't seen much paper around to actually write with, anyway."

"There seem to be, but I've heard about specialty stuff that can be hard to find. Alien tech and all. Karis was looking for stuff too. Besides, sometimes heating systems have propane in them, and you never realize how important fuel is until it's gone." He takes a box out of the shopping cart and starts pushing it out the door. "I've got about forty pounds of paper in the back. And jeez, spend much time in the Media Library, Zou? You coming?"

Zouichi walks toward Howard, holding the door open so Howard can pass through more easily. "Anwei suggested it. Is it all right to leave all your things here?"

Not that anyone would necessarily take it, but...

Howard has found a set of locks that he's jury-rigged to the door. He keeps most of the keys in his pocket, except one he keeps around his neck. He locks all four of them before they leave. "None of the valuable stuff is where people can find it." He doesn't tell Zouichi yet that he chose this building because he found out about all the secret compartments - including an entire cellar only accessible through one of the cabinets.

The dojo's only a few hundred yards away, and it's clear which rooms Howard's already stripped. Most anything metal, besides what's used to keep up the punching bags in one room, has been removed, as has any and all artwork. Somehow, he's managed to get up to the ceiling to get strips of tape and lightbulbs. The back half of the dojo is untouched, though. It's mostly wide space with sliding doors and some pads on the walls, very clean and elegant. It looks as if it were once beautiful, back when someone bothered with upkeep.

There's a strange, flute-like, minor-key melody coming from the ceiling. Howard glances up. "Okay, that's new."

Of course. Leave it to Howard to squirrel away 'the valuable stuff', whatever that is. ~~Hopefully not more drugs~~ He watches as Howard fastens all four locks, curious. "Why four? Two would probably be more than enough."

Because if someone was really determined on this ship, ten probably wouldn't do it; they could just rip out the door.

Once they reach the dojo, Zouichi looks around, curious. It's obviously been here for a while (as he suspects most of the buildings in the city have). And without people inside, practicing, it seems unusually empty. Almost eerie. He looks around for the source of the sound, but whatever it is, it's not immediately obvious.

"Because there's only two on the door to the valuables, but if someone sees both they'll be assuming door number one's got all the good stuff behind it. Besides, got robbed enough times in the FAYZ. Mostly TP and flashlights and stuff. Soap, anything that looked edible, that sort of thing."

He steps backwards, closer to the door, ready to bolt if the need arises but still curious. "It sounds almost like music. If this room's like the back one, there should be a staircase to the attic." He gestures up to the slanted ceiling, where there's a handle Howard can't possibly hope to reach. "You wanna do the honors or run away screaming?"

"I'll take your word for it; I'm sure you've had far more experience with thieves than I."

Zouichi reaches the handle easily, pulling the door down. There's a ladder attached to the back of the door, which folds out. When fully extended, it touches the floor, neat as you please. Sorry, Howard, no screaming and running today.

"I wonder. Feel like going first?" Zouichi doesn't even make a short joke.

Howard shoots a suspicious glance at Zouichi - is Zouichi implying that Howard's a thief? - but doesn't say anything to that.

"Uh, no. I mean, if you're scared." Howard is. He thinks this area is covered by Stacy's protections, but weird melancholy flute noises from the ceiling where there previously were no melancholy flute noises is a little upsetting. He wonders if he'd be as uneasy if it were playing something peppier. He steps up onto the ladder and climbs up, pushes the attic top up, and then goes up. "It's louder up here, but I need to find a light. Come on up."

Zouichi catches that look, and looks quizzically at Howard for a moment. He'd forgotten that Howard himself was a thief, once they'd gotten back in the rhythm of talking. After all, hadn't Howard just told him how often he'd been robbed in the FAYZ?

He follows Howard up the ladder, pulling himself easily up to the attic. "I thought you had a flashlight."

Never mind, because Zouichi does. He reaches behind him, sliding a slender black metal Maglite-type deal out from a loop in his belt, twisting it to shine a light around the various boxes and old knickknacks.

"Left it in the warehouse. Don't tend to carry it on me during the day." He follows the light with his eyes, squinting - he wonders if Zouichi's eyes adjust like his do, or if Zouichi's just That Cool that they switch to night vision instantaneously.

"Holy shit!" He stumbles backwards and narrowly avoids falling back down the hatch. "Shine the light back over there. There's a face in there!"

Zouichi does as Howard asks, swinging the light back around until it falls on the area Howard's pointed out. And it's not just a face, it's several faces protruding from the wall, grey and indistinct in their features, but still obviously humanoid.

The music has stopped now; in its place, he can now clearly hear the sound of children's voices. Crying? Moaning? Something in between? And some other background sound that he can't quite place.

"What the hell is that?" Howard's mood has gone from apprehensive and jumpy to outright panicky. Not to mention that he's heard way too many upset children's voices in his life. More than anything, it reminds him of that night with the fire evacuation, on Sherman Avenue.

He scooches behind Zouichi, nearly trembling, and fumbles for his pocket knife

"A ghost?" Because that's the only explanation Zouichi can come up with right now. Or an alien, maybe. Or a ghost alien.

It's getting louder, that crying, more insistent. Somehow, it feels like it's resonating within Zouichi's bones, echoing inside his head. It sounds like human children. He shakes his head, trying to clear it.

"Perhaps we should get out of here." Just a thought.

"Who the hell does that?" Because no way kid faces just ended up in the wall. If Howard were thinking clearly, he'd suppose maybe it's possible it's an illusion or something, but right now all he can think is that there are kids in the wall and that's terrifying.

He's halfway down the ladder as he calls up to Zouichi "way ahead of you". As he descends he notices that the floor is covered with green-ish grey fuzz, which surprises him, because he didn't expect to able to notice anything else when confronted with that sort of thing. He sprints out the dojo and waits for Zouichi outside, pacing restlessly and taking quick, deep breaths.

Zouichi comes up behind him a moment later -- he's not panicking, but he is walking faster than usual. "Ugh, that noise."

He doesn't comment on Howard's mad dash out of the attic, but he does look back at the dojo, considering. "Did you see that floor? It was like moss, or maybe some kind of fungus." In fact, they might have some of it on the soles of their shoes.

"Ugh, if I never have to hear kids crying again..." He's scuffing his shoes into the dirt, trying to get any traces of the mold off him. "Can moss do that? Like, swallow a person? Or just grow into that shape?"

He stops pacing and takes a long, slow breath. "You okay?"

"I doubt terrestrial species are capable of putting on that kind of performance," he said. "But it's entirely possible it isn't terrestrial, considering the ship on which we found it."

Zouichi nods. "I'm fine. I've never heard anything like that before."

"I'd say it's nothing from Earth but to be honest, that level of creepy would be right at home back in the FAYZ. Do you think...do you think there are actually kids in there?" He asks, and then immediately regrets it, because if there's a good reason to think there are, then there's responsibility to help them. Responsibility that Howard would not want to touch with a ten foot pole, thank you very much.

"Throw in some choking and cries for help and you'd have had the soundtrack to the fire evacuation back home." He taps his teeth with his pocket knife anxiously.

He shakes his head. "I don't know. If those were children, they certainly don't seem to be alive. But I'm not exactly an expert on the supernatural, either. You don't know any Ghostbusters, do you?"

Zouichi glances back at Howard when he mentions the fire evacuation. "We're not in the FAYZ. And whoever those voices belonged to -- if they belonged to anyone at all -- they're not the children you knew."

Of course, he can't be sure of that, not totally, but what were the chances?

Howard's in a bit too grave a mood to respond with 'who you gonna call', so he just shakes his head. "I don't know. What about the Magic Department? Should we tell Stacy? Because they didn't seem dead either. Or I mean, they're a really noisy dead."

No, that's true, they're not in the FAYZ. He still keeps tapping his pocketknife and dragging his shoe back and forth in the dirt anyway. "No, I know, I'm just sick of that sound. Well, I guess we check that dojo off the list of places to train. Sensoriums are more than good enough for me."

He looks up at Zouichi, not necessarily surprised but still noting that the children in the mold were unsettling and new even to him. He really doesn't know enough about Zouichi's world - bar the zombies - to know how weird or not weird it was.

Zouichi nods thoughtfully. "The Magic Department... or perhaps the Science Department. After all, we don't know for sure what caused the phenomenon. It's possible the effects we experienced were due to some kind of environmental toxin."

His world has zombies, Synthetic Humans, psychic powers... just no ghosts. As a general rule. "Whatever is affecting this building may also have spread to other buildings in the area. If so, it could pose a larger hazard to the crew."

"Could be, like, the crazy mold makes us hallucinate," Howard says, trying to convince himself that it's something benign. "Except we both saw and heard the same thing, right? We should just...tell someone."

And lay any possible responsibility at someone else's feet, someone better equipped to deal with this, someone who is not them or at the very least not Howard.

"And it probably spreads fast, since I didn't notice anything a few days ago. Or maybe it was just...asleep. I don't know."

"Hmm... if there's a danger of it spreading, perhaps we should dispose of it." The wheels of destruction are turning.

"...do you have any weapons in that reclamation pile of yours that might be able to do the job?" Because if not, Zouichi can always go back and get his coil rifle.

Howard grinds his teeth in thought. "I have a flamethrower," he says, casting a long look at Zouichi to see how he'll react to that. Surely Zouichi wouldn't judge him for wanting to be armed.

No hesitation. "Then let's get it, shall we?"

Zouichi would be surprised if Howard wasn't armed.

Re: *snort* That last line.

TIME TO FIND MOLD.

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sob I wish I could reach handles

Re: sob I wish I could reach handles

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Re: snort That last line.