trans_9 | ==> Volanz: Fearlessly Trespass

Entry tags:

==> Volanz: Fearlessly Trespass

Who: Volanz and OPEN!
Where: The City, probably inside or near any trespassable building around dawn or dusk. Taggers welcome to clarify.
Summary: Volanz goes searching for pillows. The best solution is obviously to sneak around in buildings.
Warnings: Nothing. Well, maybe getting hit with a shield. Bruises at worst.

Volanz is not fearless about this at all, and he might not even trespassing! He's still not quite good at identifying which buildings are occupied, and is largely operating under the assumption that if he can find a way in, it's probably okay.

You know. Probably. Unlocked windows are a bit of a grey area but he's on a quest dammit.

Just to be on the safe side, though, he tries to remain quiet as he explores hallways, rooms, and little side streets. As usual, he's brought his shield with him and is prepared to smack anything that startles him.

This is probably not going to end well.

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The City is big enough that Elle doesn't always run into others while she's exploring. However, this time, she's not alone. She notices the boy as she walks between two nondescript buildings. Despite the gray skin and the brightly colored horns, he still looks like a child, and her heart can't help but to go out to him. He's looking rather... jumpy... so she should do this carefully.

She adds weight to her steps so that he can hear her coming up behind him. She regrets the shotgun on her back and that she's wearing her combat armor, but, well. She didn't exactly know what to expect while exploring the City, and she's learned that letting your guard down at any time is fatal.

"Excuse me," she calls out after following him for a short time -- just long enough for him to notice, but hopefully not long enough to make him too paranoid. "I think I'm lost. Do you think you could help me?"

She's lying, of course. She knows where she is and how to get back to her entrance into the area. But she thinks that it would help him relax some.

Volanz noticed he was being followed and it prevents him from jumping too hard when addressed. It's a person, not a wandering animal or anything weird. It's a stranger, though.

"Oh," he says, relieved. "It's kinda easy to get that way down here?" He hooks his free hand behind his neck.

"I might be able to help, I guess? It depends on where it is you're trying to get to."

PLAY IT COOL, VOLANZ.

Oh, good. It worked! Elle gives him a friendly smile.

"I'm just trying to get back to something I recognize. Everything around here looks the same. The last thing I remember is this blue house with a pointy roof, but I can't seem to find my way back to it..."

Volanz looks off down the road, examining the paving. "I mostly keep track of where I'm at by the way the ground's broken up?" he says. "Like here there's paving paste and here there's stones and here there's dirt." He points out the varied patches of ramshackle path that make up the ground. "I know that closer to the transport hub it's pretty much smoother and less..." he has to think of a word, "crap," he finishes lamely.

"I haven't seen a place like that, though? Why are you looking for it?"

"Because that's what I remember seeing when I last knew my way." She shrugs helplessly and smiles again, though. "I'll have to remember about the roads, though. Thanks! It's a great tip.

"Oh, and my name's Elle." She offers her hand for a shake.

Volanz swaps his shield to his other arm to accept the handshake.

"Volanz," he replies in kind. "I'm not actually looking for anything specific at all, myself."

"It's nice to meet you, Volanz," she says brightly. She even goes as far as to tip her hat.

"Just exploring, huh? That's what I was doing before I got lost, too."

"I was actually looking for some stuff," he admits. "So I could get a favor from somebody? It's not a big deal though."

"What're you after? Maybe I can help you look for it. Back home, scavenging was pretty much a big part of surviving for me, so this is the kind of thing I'm good at."

"Pillows, maybe other nice stuff? I'm looking to trade with somebody," he explains.

"If you'd like, I can help you look. It won't be any problem at all." Here, that kind smile returns.

Volanz hesitates. "Are you sure?"

On the one hand, help is awesome! On the other, he's not sure to feel about the offer. Maybe what he's doing is wrong and it will make the alien mad.

"Of course! I wouldn't offer if I wasn't, right?" Teasingly, Elle taps her finger against her temple.

"What're you wanting to trade the nice stuff for?" she asks curiously. "If it's not something terribly personal, I mean."

The old castle near the bathhouse is quiet, but shows signs of occupation. The gates are open and the doors are unlocked. Inside the courtyard, a bright red car shows signs of recent care. Once upon a time, someone tended the plants, but that person has either gone or given up their job. The lawn is overgrown and the shrubbery rambles. But there is a light in at least one window.

Volanz doesn't like going into strange places. Unknown territory, unknown occupants, possibly bigger and more dangerous than he is. But so far, nothing's gone wrong for him in the City. This has given him reason to be bolder.

There's only one light on. This thing is so big, whoever's inside can't be using all of it. The dark corners are probably his for the plundering. The untended plant life backs up this line of thinking while the -- What is that, some kind of vehicle? -- pulls in the direction of caution.

Volanz debates for a little longer, shrugs once, and picks his way across the flagstones and up to the castle as lightly as a ghost.

He can always run.

Volanz was nearly to the large front doors of the castle when something came around the side of the building, a heavily muscled four-legged beast with large, fanlike ears and very prominent teeth, sniffing the air. Bronx spotted the troll and bared those teeth, growling, prepared to charge.

Not much chance Volanz could run back to the open castle gates without being intercepted.

Oh god it's a beast. Just when he'd started to think there were no beasts.

Several things are immediately obvious. It can outrun him. It is strong. It has teeth. Everything he thinks he knows insists that it's probably planning to leap at him, aiming for a smothering grip on his head or neck like his lusus would've done to bring something down. Volanz could fight, but if he missteps there's nothing to stop the creature.

He can't take that risk. He bolts for the doors.

Bronx barked, twice, but didn't charge, because Goliath had already heard and come to the doors, pulling them open just as Volanz charged through.

Shield or not, it was like trying to charge through a brick wall.

"What are you doing here?"

Although Goliath was trying to make the castle open to the crew, old territorial habits died hard.

Oh.

Oh.

This is worse than the beast.

Volanz bounces off Goliath and manages not to fall over, then he jumps back a pace and reflexively pulls his shield up to guard his midsection.

Oh god this guy is so tall that shouldn't even be allowed.

"Nothing!" he chokes.

As Bronx trots over to investigate, Goliath capes his wings, making himself a little less enormous.

"He won't hurt you, and neither will I."

Bronx has taken his behavioral cue from Goliath's calm response to the intruder, and is sniffing at Volanz, curious about the alien creature's scent.

"Now - what are you really doing here?"

His body language is not aggressive and his deep voice is neither booming nor angry, but the grim set of his expression says he is not a good person to lie to.

Volanz isn't totally ready to believe that, and he focuses a lot of wary attention on Bronx. It works out in his favor, he doesn't trust this animal and somehow not looking at Goliath makes it easier to talk.

"I was looking for something," he answers. That's true, at least. He isn't eager to go into a long involved explanation, which he thinks will probably sound really dumb.

Bronx, possibly sensing Volanz's mistrust, stays where he is, still crouched tensely, but silently. Goliath's acceptance of the trespass does the job of calming the gargoyle beast, but Volanz's shiftiness discourages him from settling completely.

"I have made the supplies in this castle available for the crew's use." Maybe this is not what Volanz was expecting to hear, but Goliath uncrosses his arms as he prepares to let the troll through the doors. "What is it you're looking for?"

He looks up in surprise. "Really?" Volanz didn't expect that. "I just thought that things might still be here, because they are that in some places! And maybe they weren't anybody's because this is so big and I don't really see very well how only like... one person could end up needing all of the things so I thought it might not be that big a deal?"

And there he goes with the rationalizing and the explaining. He manages to stop himself from rambling further.

"I was looking for pillows."

"No one person does," Goliath agrees, though of course, Xanatos would probably have a different point to argue. "Three people live here - four, if you count Bronx - but none of us require much."

He likes having his library, but in no way would he say he requires it.

"We have those to spare, and you are welcome to them." Bronx trots over to the clan leader's side as Goliath gestures Volanz in with a sweep of his large, clawed hand.

"Oh." Volanz peers inside a little warily. At least he doesn't seem to have made the big guy angry. Mostly. This is good.

"You really don't mind?" he asked, hesitating on the threshold. Volanz knew how he was about his own hive, which had accounted for a good percentage of his nerves about this in the first place. The idea of letting strangers inside his home just felt wrong on some deep, visceral level and it was still hard for him to imagine that someone else might not get that.

"As I said, I have made this castle open for the use of the crew." But that wasn't exactly what he said, and defying his instinctive desire to keep his castle closed off made him antsy, all right. But he was the primary guardian of his home, and no guest was better escorted than with him.

He turned and swept into the castle, indicating to Volanz to follow. "I will point you away from the rooms of the two humans who live here, but there are many others to chose from."

Inside the castle, rich tapestries and vases of incomparable artistry were arranged along the stone halls. At the end of the hall ahead of them were two vast doors open onto the two-story library, from which Goliath had come.

Volanz tagged along behind Goliath. "Well, I know, but that doesn't mean you really have to like that, right?"

He couldn't help looking around a bit, especially into the library.

Volanz had rarely been in places like this, and the castle brought to mind a few scant images of the place where Inalos had lived. Tall stone walls, rich decoration, windows. It was all a bit much compared to his pretty much literal hole in the ground. Volanz was glad he'd never had to go there, it was as strange to him as the surface of the moon and Inalos had never liked him to boot.

"It is not in the nature of my kind to allow outsiders passage into our territory," he admitted. "But my clan at least has given protection to refugees before. In essence, there is not a one of us here who could not be called one."

The room Goliath guided Volanz to had yet more fireplaces, a long dining table with no less than a dozen chairs, and an adjoined seating area full of rich furniture. The seating area had throw pillows in plenty.

Goliath stood to the side as Bronx trotted up behind him. "If you require more or different than these, there are other rooms."

"My lusus hated that too," Volanz replied. "He tried to teach me to chase stuff away? But I kinda wasn't all that great at it, honestly."

At the sight of the room his eyes lit up. He picked up a few pillows, examining them. "This should be alright! Rarity said she wanted some so if I bring her some I can trade her for a shirt," he explained.

"A shirt?"

Far be it for Goliath to interfere in trade, but it occurs to him that he has a bunch of those too.

"Is this 'Rarity' in charge of clothing distribution?"

Perhaps he should give her, oh. All of Xanatos' wardrobe.

Volanz nods a little too vigorously, which causes him to lose a pillow off the stack he's gathered. He stoops to pick it up and the others scatter. Whoops!

"Yeah, I need one with my symbol on it," he says, scooping the pillows up again. "And she said she could make me one!"

"Perhaps I should offer her pick of the castle wardrobe." Meaning the pick of Xanatos and Fox's extensive (and expensive) fine clothing. Which, strictly speaking, don't belong to him, but may still do the crew better service in the hands of a tailor or merchant than they do as they are, hanging and gathering dust.

"Your symbol?" he asked, as he stooped to help Volanz regather his pillows.

Volanz nodded.

"It's a troll thing, I guess? It's like nobody else does it. And it's kinda dumb here because I guess it doesn't actually mean anything to anybody but trolls but it feels really wrong to not have it?"

"The customs of your people are important, no matter who does or does not understand."

He's been too long a minority among humans not to feel strongly about this.

He adds, "If there is anything else you require for trade, my home is open to you." It still went against his territorial instincts to allow so many strangers passage, but he had to remind himself, the castle had been built for occupation and for refugees. And this youngster seemed acceptable enough.

Don't worry, Volanz! You didn't have to do this alone the whole time. Karkat was just as curious about all the buildings in the City as the fellow troll, and if he wasn't busy doing other, incredibly important things, decided to accompany the lowblood on his quest.

He wasn't without a weapon of his own, cautiously navigating the streets with his sickle un-sylladexed, hoping that nothing lurked in the abandoned houses.

"This place needs a better fucking map," he growled.

"I know mostly all of the stuff around the hive," Volanz noted. "It is kind of fuzzier the further away you get? But I think I can basically remember the way without having to draw it."

It was nice to have company, though. Karkat was bossy and angry, but he was at least consistent and Volanz knew to expect that now.

The redblood looked up at the long row of houses, like something that would've been ripped out of a development on Earth. White siding, green lawns, pale driveways, all of it disturbingly regular and samey from Volanz's perspective.

"It'd be nicer than this if I could see the horizon, though."

By all accounts, Karkat knew he shoudln't like Volanz. The guy was Tavros Lite, timid and jumpy and kind of a terrible troll, but he knew that kidnapped as they were, he couldn't afford to be picky with his allies. Given the choice between Volanz and some of the other characters on his team (Eridan), Karkat had to admit it wasn't a bad deal.

"No horizon on this flying meat party," he quipped, mildly fascinated by the little plastic red flag on a mailbox, "the sky's not real anyway."

"I don't like my line of sight being messed with is all," Volanz replied, shrugging a shoulder. "I like being able to see things coming? It's what I'm used to? Where I'm from pretty much anything you have to actually worry about is several times bigger than you are and it's kinda important to be able to see it before it comes down on you like a shipload of angry."

He paused to peer inside a neighboring mailbox. Because clearly mailboxes are full of loot.

"Except slitherbeasts," he added. "Just always worry about those. Especially the tiny ones."

Alas, no mailbox loot.

The mailbox was disappointing, to say the least. Surely there would be sweet loot around somewhere.

"I sort of lived in a place like this. Kind of. All the lawnrings lined up, close together."

Truth be told, Karkat found it a bit unsettling how strongly this human suburban neighborhood resembled his own. It made sense, when he thought about it, considering that he and his friends had effectively created humans, but looking at this bizarro mirror world of his own was more than a little uncomfortable.

Volanz took a moment to play with the red swingy dealy on the side of the box, but once he'd ascertained it was not a lever that makes anything happen/appear he abandoned the attempt.

He jogged up to a door to examine the mail slot, poking it open and peering through.

"You had neighbors?" he asked. "I only sort of had one and she lived like... a couple hours running away, I think? What was that like?"

There was only so much time John could spend in the company of a sulking Sherlock, even when he'd only just gotten him back from faking his death, so he'd taken some time to go and get a head start on exploring the City. He probably should have waited for Sherlock to be mobile again, since Sherlock probably wouldn't have gotten lost mid-exploration. John had been trying to retrace his steps for some time now, but hadn't yet had any luck. So when he heard the sound of someone (he really hoped that it was someone and not something) moving around quietly, he went to investigate it.

Someone (well, possibly something) was climbing on the fire escape of what appeared to be an old apartment building. The ladder at the bottom had been pulled down, probably with some effort.

Volanz had found nothing inside this block, which was a disappointment. Even more disappointing was the locked door that presumably led into the rest of the structure, so he was forced to crawl back out the window he'd come in through. At least that hadn't been locked.

Try as he might to be quiet, though, his feet rang on the rusty metal of the fire escape and his shield clashed against it as he scrambled through.

John looked up at the rattling noise of feet-on-fire-escapes (a sound he had not been able to instantly identify prior to his acquaintance with Sherlock Holmes) and frowned thoughtfully at the perpetrator scrambling around up there.

The shield was a good sign, probably. It seemed safe to assume that someone carrying a shield was more concerned about surviving fights rather than starting them. The gray skin was weird, and the -- were those horns? Weird horns -- were odd, but he'd chatted with a dragon-man and a woman who could heal people by vivisecting them. And he'd seen what the ship provided as "toilets". Soon, he probably wouldn't even blink at gray skin and horns. He cupped his hands around his mouth.

"Sorry," he called up, "but could you point me in the direction of the Hub from here?"

Volanz startled and there was another clash of the shield rim on metal as he spun around, then looked down through the grate to see the human.

Oh. Just a human. He forced himself to relax, but it was no easy feat.

He frowned a bit at the question, but leaned over the escape rail to talk.

"Which way'd you come from?" he called back.

John winced at the sound of the shield clanging, but relaxed when the...teenager?...didn't jump down at him or try to run off.

"That way, most recently," he said, gesturing back over his shoulder and pitching his voice loud enough to be heard a couple stories up. Surprising what skills one picked up, spending time with Sherlock. "But I've been turned around at some point, so tracing my steps isn't really an option."

Volanz peered off in the direction the man had indicated, then off toward the hive. Or at least, he was pretty sure the hive was that way. He'd been doing his best to cultivate a good sense of where "home" was at all times.

"If you're lost I can probably get you back to like... the main roads and things? You can find your way from there, right?"

There were main roads in this place?

"Probably," John answered. Once he got back to the main roads (whichever they were), presumably he just had to follow it until he saw the Hub. "The main roads lead to the Hub, yeah?"

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==> Volanz: Fearlessly Trespass

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/makes buildings up

/invents roads

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