trans_9 | The more things change...

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The more things change...

Zouichi had taken a few wounds during the mission, but nothing that he would deem serious enough to require medical treatment. He'd already begun to heal, and he estimated that by the time tomorrow rolled around, he'd once again be at full strength. This was not, of course, true of everyone who had fought on that moon -- those who had lost their lives, for instance.

But for him, intense combat was the norm. There was no sense dwelling on loss of life or regretting the past, and there were no nightmares about the dead or dying. There was only the future, and the battles to be found there.

So it was back to business as usual: maintenance on the HDC, clearing stray leaves off the front steps and caring for the flowers... and teaching his pet parrot some commands. Today, however, Alan seemed more intent on rolling onto his back and demanding to be picked up. So Zouichi settled back in the shade of a nearby tree instead, playing with the bird and occasionally wondering where he'd picked up all these new phrases that sounded suspiciously like Lash.

Maybe if Howard showed up, they could look for odds and ends in the City.

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"Nah, it started with a D." Desolate? Maybe. "Was that the guys who made up the zombie virus who industrialized everything?"

He finds a heavy piece of metal, maybe some abstract art doorstop, and walks up to one of the walls with it. He taps the wall and, satisfied it's hollow, starts knocking a small hole in it.

"Do you run around demolishing all these houses? No wonder they're in such bad shape."

Zouichi frowned. "No, the two are unrelated. Humanity as a whole was leaning towards building more and conserving less."

Howard punches enough of a hole into it that he can reach his arm in. He feels around blindly in there. "Nobody keeps their electrical wiring on the outside of their walls. I just need to find where it is. Mostly insulation in here, though."

Honestly, Howard's fine with totally getting rid of nature (nature is evil! It'll kill you!), but he's not about to tell Zouichi that. Given how Zou feels about animals and gardening, he's pretty sure it won't win him any points. "Conserving less? What about resources?"

Zouichi hoped no one had been planning to live in this house. "What are you doing with all this wiring, anyway?"

It would indeed not win him any points. He shrugged. "Farming. Tree farms, fish farms, zoos. There was enough to go around, but few large swaths of untouched wilderness."

"I give most of it to Engineering for free, and I use some of it when I try to fix stuff up." What, you think roller fridges make themselves? "And maybe next shore leave I can trade some of the leftover with people for like, maybe a new shirt or something."

Really, it just sounds like a more extreme version of what was already happening back on Earth. "No green movement where you're from, sounds like."

"You could always wear that shirt of wolves howling at the moon," Zouichi said, helpfully. Yes, Howard, you should wear that shirt.

"I think they did try, but..." He shrugged. That was progress.

"Yeah, when muumuus come back into style, I'll wear that shirt. Inside out." No, Zouichi, over his dead body. And if he dies, you are not allowed to bury him in that shirt.

He touches something inside the wall. "Oh, that feels like it." He retracts his arm, pulls his pocketknife out and starts carving a hole in the wall like a chisel.

Whatever, Howard, fine. You can be buried in your ratty old normal shirt. The wolf shirt can be your funeral blanket.

Zouichi looked curiously through the hole Howard was widening in the wall; he didn't think he'd ever seen what the insulation of a house looked like.

...what he saw instead was the death rictus of what looked like a man's face in the wall, his mouth stretched wide as if in a silent scream. If one were paying attention, rather than expecting MORE GHOSTS, one might realize that the man's face had an unusual bronze sheen... a statue.

He's so going to turn that shirt into a tea cozy. And he doesn't even much like tea!

Howard jumps about a foot when he pulls a piece of the wall back to be faced by that statue. And shrieks. And nearly trips over himself rushing behind Zuichi. "What the hell is that?!"

And then feels very stupid when he realizes it's a statue.

It's not even quite a statue, it's... it's...

...It's a life-size replica of Han Solo from that scene where he was encased in carbonite to be delivered to Jabba the Hutt.

...for some reason the owner of the house walled it up here.

Howard emerges from behind Zouichi. "Oh hell no. You've got to be kidding me."

He creeps forward and taps it. "Think it's real?"

And then, being the either freakishly observant or having the mindset of a hoarder, Howard drops to his knees and taps the floor beneath Han. "Hollow. Trap door. Can you move Snowcone up there off it?"

"Well... it's a real... something."

Zouichi reached for the statue, easily lifting it up off of the trap door and moving it aside. "I'm not sure which is weirder: that someone put this statue in their wall, or that they put it here to cover something else."

"I mean, is that actually Han Solo frozen in carbonite? I thought we had a Han?" He slides his fingers along the rim of the door until he finds the right edge to pull. The door comes up easily. "That depends on what else it's covering, right? Wanna go in?"

Not that Howard's keen to be going through creepy trapdoors, but Zou's with him, and odds are if you're going to hide something with Han Solo it's probably marginally valuable.

"...I don't think so. There are some words stamped down here... 'made in Singapore'."

Zouichi sighed, then swung down onto the steps set into the wall leading down from the trap door. Did he really want to know what was in this man's basement?

"I don't know. Maybe carbonite stands are manufactured in Singapore and then shipped out to Saturnine or wherever."

Howard follows, pulling out his flashlight. The steps are wooden, and creak beneath them. "Hey, no sighing. Don't act like having adventures with me is such a chore. Oh, God, it smells like something died down here."

He really hopes that that remains just a a figure of speech.

Zouichi frowned. "Well, if you really want to know, I guess I can smash it open for you, but..."

He made a slight face at the smell of decomposition, turning on his pocket light and shining the beam around. "If there's more psychic mold down here, let me remind you that this time, coming down here was your idea. Besides, I thought you didn't like adventures."

"Honestly? I don't really want to know."

The ceiling's sloped enough that Zou will have to stoop, and though Howard doesn't have to he does by instinct. The floor is dirt, and the pathway stretches into darkness in front of them. Howard holds his nose closed. "I don't like adventures. I thought you did."

"Okay, then. We leave it here." He was sure it was just a statue, anyway.

Zouichi bent a little, moving down the path, sweeping the flashlight beam back and forth as he did so. The ceiling of the passageway began getting lower and lower, forcing him to crouch. "Well, I admit being partial to a little excitement."

Define little.

"Oh, the things I do for you, Zou," he says, coughing a bit as the smell gets heavier. "Man, someone's got a serious case of dry rot in here."

He runs his hand over the wall - it's wet and stone now, instead of dirt. There's a thumping sound upstairs. And that's when, of course, his flashlight runs out of batteries. "You've got to be kidding."

At least they still have Zouichi's.

In a moment, Zouichi's light flickered out, too. ~~Scream~~

"...Well. I suppose we should head back, then." Yep. Nothing to see here.

"Yeah, I think I'm just about done with adventure today!" Howard flails around, trying to find Zouichi in the dark. "You can see in the dark, right? That's why your eyes do that cat thing?"

Close enough, considering that strangely, the walls of the tunnel appeared to be lit with some kind of extremely dim phosphorescent mildew. Zouichi grasped Howard's hand. "Don't worry. All we have to do is go back the way we came."

He began backtracking his way through the passage, slowly as to not force Howard to trip and fall. "You know, this kind of thing seems to happen an awful lot on this ship."

"Zou? Not to be a buzzkill, but we should be able to see the light from the exit if it's still open." And it's not.

...And on that note, why is there wind in this passage? Back and forth, almost like breathing.

Well, if there's wind in here, obviously --

"The wind must have knocked the exit closed. Just keep moving."

Don't panic, Howhow! It could just be the movement of air from the other end of the tunnel.

Howard does keep moving and keep a lid on that panic. Up until the floor bucks a bit. Then it's time to panic.

"I'm moving, I'm moving! Let's get the hell out of here!"

The more things change...

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Let's find something silly in this house or something!

Re: Let's find something silly in this house or something!

Re: Let's find something silly in this house or something!

Teeheehee

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/wrap?

wrap!