ArchivedLogs:No Minutes

No Minutes
all of them
Dramatis Personae Masque, Jim
In Absentia	2013-05-16 (setting kind of timewarped between JiMasque fight and Nox's) (Part of Thunderdome.)
Location Thunderdome
It's a basement, somewhere, that much is clear from the slightly musty-cool feel, the lack of windows, the stark-bare cement decor. What purpose this place originally served is hard to discern; something industrial, judging by the heavy reinforced eyelet hooks still set into the ceiling, now devoid of any loads to bear. Of late the place has been repurposed, though. Around two parallel edges of the room, sturdy cells have been constructed, heavy reinforced metal segmenting off large cage-like cells. The enclosures are largely identical: two sets of bunk beds with pillows, thin sheets, identical grey wool blankets. A pair of large covered bedpans, a bucket usually filled with fresh-ish water. The center of the room is divided in two. One half is large and open, a spacious expanse of cement floor and emptiness. The other half holds long trestle-tables, long benches, both riveted into the cement floor. The ceiling -- of the room, of the cages -- hold very noticeable dark security-camera bubbles. There is one door leading out of here, heavy steel that is securely chained and barred from the outside. Has it even been twenty four hours yet? Everything is always the same damn thing. In cages, out of cages, feeding time, down time, quiet time always. Mutants are taken out, some with roars, some in silence, sometimes they're returned. Sometimes they're returned changed. One particular cell is left mostly alone in this time. Within, Jim dwells in a place not sleeping, but not immediately awake. Two consecutive fight wins have earned him a small kiddy pool of dirt, and he's dropped down onto it, back braced against a wall of bars, with his pantlegs rolled up to the knees and his feet - essentially gone, it's just two gnarly trunks that merge below him in an expanded complicated system of roots. That was when he was first returned to his cell. He hasn't moved much, save to hold up his arms. And to narrow his eyes on them, where there had once been hands and are now winter-bare branches partially broken off at their ends, split and fractured up either elbow. And, occasionally, he sinks his teeth into a portion of bark hanging off too loosely to bother regrowing and to strip it like a beaver. Gnarrl rarlgh. Sitting down and leaning back, it's hard to really tell precisely what's wrong with his chest; concavities in tree trunks could mean anything, and the texture is a little dipped in, but there's no sign of agitation or discomfort, healthy brown and green roughness. Eventually, his unofficial cellmate will likely be returned, probably mostly unconscious, though they would likely have taken no chances and /cuffed/ his ass while administering their indelicate first aid to the legion of shallow punctures all along his arms and hands. Only removing the cuffs after depositing him BACK HOME. In his little cage. Welcome home, Masque! Masque's return to the cage comes with a stumble and a fall, after he is pushed in and de-cuffed. He clambers back to his feet only just in time to hear the door's bolt sliding into place behind him. He rails at the door /anyway/, plunging one bandaged up hand out through the bars to grab for one of his frankly /infuriating/ captors, trembling fingers just barely missing a clothed shoulder. ZZzZZP. He reels back when a considerable amount of electricity jolts in from his collar, this being the first clear sign that he has sobered up at least enough to be aware of pain again. Still, one hand bandaged up and a large part of him making him look like a freakin' human/mutant pincushion, he doesn't look HAPPY to be in the state he's in. One win and one loss have earned him nothing but those puncture wounds, a tremendous headache, and a head full of rage. What he can only assume was a nice, medium dose of PCP now having mostly left his system, he swivels around and directs his rage at Jim instead. Unfortunately, he can't seem to think of any words. Thus, his arms go up to the height of his own head, and just... "... HHGHAAGH!" Raspy, scrapey hoarse gravelly RAGE with nowhere to go. Before Jim can even respond to this nonsense, he starts to pace, briskly, from one side of the cell to the other, using his non-bandaged hand to /shove/ himself off of the bars before every turn. Every muscle tense, every step calculated and hard. Rustle-scrape. That's the sound of Jim's small array of branches brushing against the bars when he looks towards Masque. There's about a thousand pounds of not-giving-a-fuck weighted around his treebark face, his cheek still sporting those annoying parallel dents. So when Masque turns on him he opens his arms like BRING IT, with that aggressively little forward /jerk/ of his shoulders. Not Helping. When Masque falls into pacing, he turns his attention back down to stripping off some parts of his arm, and the rest make wood-strain and popping noises as he pulls the excess of outward shoots inward... inward.. inward, re-absorbing them until the end of one wrist is just a stunted knobbranch, the other has the semblance of a hand but it hangs off on a /very/ thin connection point. DANGLE. He actually wiggles his arm to /watch/ it dangle there. LIke - like some sort of weird spider egg sac. Argh. Pace. Pace. Pace. Masque doesn't do much else for a good few back-and-forths, only occasionally hissing out a breath as he pushes off the bars when reaching either end. The plethora of superficial injuries must hurt as he moves, but it isn't likely that anyone but Jim is close enough to see the tiny little twitches indicating this. The belief of WALKING IT OFF is strong with this one. Pace. Pace. Glance at Jim. Pace. Pace. Push off bars. His face contorts into possibly the most murderous sneer he's managed in years - even the less helpful side of his face participates plenty. Pace. Pace. Push off bars. "I'm going to find them." Fact. His hands restlessly curl into fists then relax again, as he walks. Like he wishes there was something under his palms already. So very badly. Pace. Pace. Another sideways glance at Jim, this time slightly longer, searching. "Did I do that." And right back to pacing. This is the most energy anyone will have seen him exert in a long time. It seems he has ceased to give a fuck. Jim props the danglyhand on a knee to keep it supported about where he wants it, and is concentrating on slowly, slowly trying to grow a pair of branches out around the thin neck it's still attached by to give it better support. Like built in splints. While doing so, he holds up his knarled other hand-nub and rocks it back and forth in the air - the gesture that tends to mean 'half-and-half'. Or 'kinda-sorta'. He's not looking up from his work while doing so. KINDA, Masque. KINDA. Pace. Pace. Slow pace. Masque doesn't push away from the bars, this time around. He /leans/ into them, door-side, to peer at Jim as the response comes through gesture rather than vocalisation. The flesh-mangler's expression does not yield much, his inner disgust and hatred dial apparently stuck on eleven. After observing the answer, he lets his eyes dart over the rest of Jim's shape as his bandaged hand snakes through the door's metal to let one arm hang through on the other side. As if - now that that he's standing still - he needs the support to stay upright. "You ain't talkin'." Though it is an idle observation, it comes out /awfully/ pissed off, through gritted teeth. "I stick my hand down your fucking throat?" This... sounds more like genuine curiosity. Like he's just trying to figure things out, starting with the most bizarre scenarios. Finally, his eyes go to the other bunks. Then back to Jim. He presses without pause, "She out?" /Out/, out. Jim rolls his eyes at Masque's /throat/ inquiry, like AS IF, having to reabsorb one of his wrist-splint branches because it keeps trying to FORK. Plant training is not an exact science. Much erasuring and redrawing needed. Ctrl+Z. He leans back absently to show where his chest is sunken in, bouncing a lumphand off it in demonstration of /something/ having bumped into it at some point. His faded blue eyes rotate not to Masque, but beyond the bars towards a certain cage that is currently vacated save the essentials and a little empty cardboard box. He tightens his jaw, and then shrugs one gnarly shoulder, pushing out another splint attempt. There's a spot of silence as Masque follows Jim's gesture first, then eyes. To at least one of those, then, he simply replies, "Hmnh." He moves away from the door again, letting his arm drag over metal instead of lifting it as he pulls away, so that he can lower himself to a knee, reaching his bandaged hand out to Jim's chest. Unconcerned, apparently, with asking for permission to do such a thing. But he doesn't reach all the way. No, his hand pulls back again, sneer halfway receding to make way for something a little puzzled, twitching at his brow as he /glares/ at that dent. A mystery. "They will suffer." He murmurs, makes a fist, then reaches again toward the dent in Jim's chest - this time, elbow forward. No. That's not it either. "The men behind the monitors." He twists his arm hand down, and squints - but no, that doesn't look right either. "The people taking /bets/," Finally, then, he shifts his weight sideways and downwards, to face Jim with his shoulder ahead of him, momentarily absorbed in this little puzzle. Bingo. "If it'll be the last thing I do." Jim could be helpful. But he's NOT. He lets Masque puzzle over it on his own, maybe contributing some sort of 'hot' or 'cold' by angling the thumb-ish side of his hand /downward/ when he guesses wrong and then distractedly thumbs-up when he angles down a shoulder. Gold star. His eyes remain focused out beyond the bars, somber and stark where eyewhites are settled in ragged surface that is soft and elastic enough yet to allow for blinking. It just makes a kind of snickery-rustle sound. Very quietly. Presumably, because he's quiet, he's listening. Or at least hearing, unless he's somehow gone stone-cold deaf somewhere along the way. In interaction, though, he only gestures at Masque's bandaged hand somewhere between a grim /statement/ and an inquiry, jerking his chin at it. Leaning forward vaguely. Peer. It's the same hand Jim had pierced with a thorn before, when he and Masque had first met. This time, whatever is under those bandages is apparently enough to make the fingers /twitch/ and tremble involuntarily. That's maybe what he /gets/ for trying violently to pull his hand free even after it had been stuck full of sharp plant. As soon as Masque notices the peer downward, his expression gains back in hatred once more what it had temporarily lost. But he rises again, to direct that hate elsewhere. Past the bars. Cameras, anyone around he doesn't recognise, or anyone who hasn't managed to get onto his good side yet. So in short - everyone gets a turn. That all-encompassing loathing travels over oh so easily into his tone of voice, making it harder to discern whether he's pissed about the /subject/ of his question or just plain fucking pissed as everything right now. "You see who else they took, when she went?" Jim flicks his eyes towards a different cage, one that also sits empty - or possibly with whatever cell mate /hadn't/ been taken, and raises his hand to splay it across his brow to signify, just /possibly/, some variety of stylishly shaggy HAIR. (The way one of his eyelids /droops/ might suggest even gesturing it is exhausting.) The Fop. Message received, apparently, because after a quick sweep of the room, the lines of Masque's face deepen still, pulling tight around his mouth where the muscles don't quite seem to want to work anymore. Okay. Yeah. The Fop. Fucking great. He promptly turns around, then, to head back for the bars - his anger, with nowhere else to go, has built up enough for him to risk another GRAB and SHAKE at the door, though admittedly his bandaged hand is doing a poor job of it. "OH, let's put 'em BACK IN A CELL TOGETHER." He /barks/ at no one in particular, though three different camera bubbles get an eyeful of ugly grimacing. "What a BUNCH'A FUCKING JOKERS!" Zzp, says Masque's collar. His hands tighten around the bars in response, though he stays right the fuck where he is. Glaring at one of those bubbles. Through gritted teeth, he growls, "Whaddya think, Jimmy." The utterly displeased glance he spares the other man is brief; GLARING must continue. "How many minutes'd they last 'fore they'd snap and beg for dea--" He sinks halfway against the bars again, though the cause is probably no surprise - ZZZP. There are probably many messages intended in the /pointed/ twitch upward of one of Jim's mossy-green eyebrows, directed at Masque when he /sinks/ under that last voltage fry, tipping down his head, a moment's flash of naked /skepticism/. Can't do a lot if you're /frying/ yourself, bro. But he's also apparently taking Masque's question deadly serious. Looking him up and down slowly, then looking outwards, upwards at the cameras, the door. And his slow, narrow smile is one of pure malice. He raises a hand, gestures at Masque - /point/ - and then at HIMSELF, while his smile transforms into a deep, graveyard grim /frown/. And THORNS press up from the mess of his hand. And shakes his head, no. NO minutes, possibly. Between the two of them. Fuck.