ArchivedLogs:A Moment

A Moment
Dramatis Personae Ion, Jim, Melinda, Micah, Tola
In Absentia	Saturday, 30 November, 2019 Part of Future Past TP
Location <NYC> Bronx
The northernmost of New York's five boroughs, the Bronx... well. You might get shanked. The twilight sky of early winter spans out across the western horizon in whistful eggwhite and watery yoke, transforming the twisted landscape of ruined buildings into silhouettes of jagged broken bones, naked crossbeams of ribs, deep trenches of shadow snaking through the cracked pavement. There are sounds - muffled, hollow, rhythmically metallic - in the distance, obscured by the whistling wind. A few pebbles break loose within a building, somewhere up on the second floor, rolling merrily through a hole in a faded linoleum floor, toppling into a lower level shrouded in darkness. After a moment of freezing, Jim withdraws his foot from the hole's edge, an arm fastened firmly around the torso of a small child-shape. His other hand is wrapped around the rim of a once-merry kitchen sink - now expose to the outside world by a car-sized hole punched through the side of the building. "Watch out. Floors loose on this side," he doesn't EXACTLY laugh. But all that OH SHIT tension of almost falling has to come out somehow, and a ragged exhale is effective enough. The healed over side of his face, all snarl-swirled bark, has been working well enough as some variety of eyepatch, not seeming to infringe on his activity much, dressed in a ragged and stained corduroy jacket, the rifle strapped to his back and gun holster under either arm sit with hardened familiarity. He goes back to dragging open cabinets, sticking his head inside them. "...we need dishsoap?" "What, for our fucking good china?" Ion's jittery, but he's /always/ fucking jittery, a restless twitch-bounce to his leg, a restless twitch-bounce to his eye. His arms have curled across his chest where he stands near one wall, fingers in their fingerless gloves squeezed tight around each upper arm. He's in weatherbeat old leather jacket, the scarf around his neck singed and frayed, tall shitkicker boots that have seen better days. Around one wrist there's /still/ a /godawful/ gaudy watch glittering bright. Pink and green. /Rubies/ and alligator straps. Still ticking. His eyes tick almost in time with it, flick-flick-flick from one busted-out window to the next at the wasteland beyond. "Ain't had a bath in..." He stops here, teeth clenching and muscles seizing up in sudden high-alert. Something unheard. Maybe something imagined. It passes as soon as it came. His eyes go back to ticking out the windows. "We always need dish soap. It doubles as laundry soap okay, too. I love soap. It's amazing. I miss it so much." Melinda rounds a corner into the kitchen, eyeing the hole that Jim was kicking gravel through. She's dressed in a long coat, one a little dirtier than she'd like. Underneath, she's got a mint green sweater and worn jeans that while they don't currently boast holes may have them soon enough. She is careful to test each step with a hiking boot clad foot as her hands sweep that long hair of hers into a pony tail. "Anything else of any use?" Micah is, surprisingly, not in a lot of layers considering the winter-chill outside. He has a dirty black knit cap pulled down over his equally dirty auburn hair, streaked through now with early silver starting at his temples. This, in turn, is tied back with twine in a short ponytail to keep it out of his face. A fraying canvas jacket in faded--tan? green?--covers his torso and a pair of half torn-up jeans only covers about to his knee on one side and mid-calf on the other. A lack of shoes is explained by the robotic legs and feet extending from beneath the denim, all metal and carbon fibre not putting a lot of effort into mimicking typical human appearance. The fingers sticking out of his fingerless gloves (navy blue on one hand and grey on the other) are busily working with a very small key-tool on the left knee. The right set is also gnarled with aging scars. "Soap's good. I'd put m'lot in for some clean, warm water first, if we're makin' a wish list." His lips tug over in a half-smile at that, though he doesn't look up from his work. "Aaaand dishsoap it is." Jim makes the bland executive decision, not seeming to hear much of the REST of the peanut gallery's commentary. He hands down a half-full bottle of green dishsoap to the small figure he'd been hanging onto. Tola, her once bright green skin begun to dust over with an aspen-sappling powdery gray-brown, holds open a canvas bag slung across her overly-skinny chest like a scrappy delivery courier. Her protohair hangs off her head in shingles of small autumnal golden leaves beneath a big floppy green hat with little ears knitted on. Though springy and smiling, she's grown quieter with the onset of cold, her skinny-bony body more sluggish with yawning - which she's doing right now, unabashedly dropping back her head and exposing the whole room to YAAAWWWN, in case anyone wanted to see past her white row of teeth and down her pale blond-white little throat. She rubs an eye and opens up a cabinet down at her own level. "How 'bout this, dad? S'/canned/." Canned means FOOD. Jim pauses, looking down at the can of Friskies. Then at her skinny little shoulders, the gaunt browning color beneath her eyes. And grins at the side of his mouth - or just exposes the teeth there, jerking his head towards her little satchel, "Extra gravy n' everything. Good find." He ruffles her hair -- which turns into a sudden hauling her against his leg for a sound outside. The two of them freeze. The distant rhythmic churn is nearer, now. Felt, in the chest. A steady, even 'WHUM-... WHUM-... WHUM'. The twitch by Ion's eyes keeps time, now, with that whump rather than the tick of his watch. The jitter-bounce of his leg doesn't stop. "Laundry, shit. We wishin', hermano, I wish me up a fucking taco." He skirts away from the window but only to stick to the perimeters of the room. Scarred fingertips never leave the walls, now, /feeling/ those whumps. Brushing against an outlet, here, a jutting-out edge of wiring there. His other arm wraps tighter around his chest, pulling jacket in more snugly against bony ribs and leaving the others to their gathering. "There's batteries." He's muttering this half to himself. "Somewhere. Micah. Over -- there. Flashlight maybe?" Frown. He's not going to claim whatever he feels though. Still sticking to the wall. A slow slump of lean. "Shit," Melinda mutters when she feels the thumping, her eyes sliding closed for a moment as she listens between the silences to the hopefully distant noise. She takes a few steps closer to her daughter and Jim, not necessarily to grab either of them, but to help root through the cupboards faster. Anything can shaped is passed off to the little girl rapidly. "I'll... take a look around if it gets closer," her voice is a rough whisper, her head bobbing as she ducks around the cabinet doors, "but we might want to get below again." She gnaws on a chapped lip as she stands up carefully, gaze locked on her daughter's face. "We're going to be okay, sweetie." "Don't go talkin' food or you'll hafta deal with all the tummy rumblin' back at you," Micah jokes in wry answer to Ion, clicking his key-tool into place /on/ his leg for storage after the adjustment is complete. "Food...well done, Tola." At least /that/ food isn't theoretical. He picks up the duffel bag that he's been using to collect goods, having taken point on gathering electronics and tools and the like to help keep things running. At the approaching mechanical sounds from outside, he very /quickly/ finds himself pressed into a corner by the shelf Ion indicated. "Batteries is nice. Flashlights, too," comes in more of a hushed-whisper tone as he speeds up the collection process, rapidly assessing items of use from the shelves. A flashlight. A small travel sewing kit. A pair of scissors. A book of matches. "Hope it quiets enough I can get t'the other closet first. Was hopin' for first aid supplies." Tola takes CHARGE in packing her own little sack of salvaged goods, wrapping both small hands around each can handed to her by Melinda to briskly arrange them /personally/ in her canvas bag. She nods solemnly, eyes over-wide and a touch too bright, to Melinda's words. "We're gonna be super, huh?" She whispers back. While... packing in tighter, bunching up between Jim's leg and the cabinet and shaky-handedly trying to grab things. Her elbow knocks one of the cabinet doors, and it swings back to CLUMP shut. WHUM-... WHUM-... The weighty piston-pumping noise pauses. An otherwordly stillness whistles across the wastes of buildings and roads. "Don't move," Jim whispers. Standing before the kitchen window, his one blue eye is focused lividly out the window -- Before his knees begin to fold, crouching down /around/ his daughter, beneath the line of the counter. Encircling her with one arm, /entwining/ her with thick creaking vines. "No one move." WHUM-...WHUM-... There's another pause, another stillness. Then it resumes, WHUM-WHUM-WHUMing. It's less that it could be described as 'closer' so much as 'bigger', the sound resonating off the outside of the building. Through the stillnesses, Ion is drifting. It's slow -- it starts as more of a /lean/ towards the windows than any actual steps taken. His face is turning, his eyes are closing. Breathing slowing. Where before he was jittering, now he is calmer, an odd quiet peace pulling his haggard features almost into repose. His arm is bony, where it starts to skate out along the wall, reaching out beyond the fraying edge of his jacket. There's a new /liveliness/ in his eyes, sparking /feverish/bright when he opens them again, the tip of his tongue dancing out along cracking-chapped lips. He doesn't, entirely, seem to notice the shards of broken glass where he closes fingertips against the open windowpane. Melinda casts a glance in Jim and Tola's direction as she breaks out in a cold sweat. Her fingers grip the cabinet door she's holding onto tighter, her head bowing only a fraction of an inch, her breathing as calm and still as it can be - a conscious effort not to hyperventilate or panic. She swallows hard, watching as her child curls further into her father. Mel starts blinking rapidly, with each closer whump. Her head shifts, looking toward Micah next. The slam of the cabinet door tenses Micah's muscles visibly: shoulders hunching, spine twisting to afford him a better view of the room instead of the corner and wall he's facing. He turns the rest of his body around, as well, crouching down low on the robotic legs both to make himself smaller and to maximize the amount of power they can generate to move him quickly if the need arises. The small mechanical noises of the joints operating can be heard now in the near-silence of the room. Micah looks to Tola and Jim to confirm that they are in as safe a position as possible, then nods reassuringly to Mel. Then...he watches for whatever it is that Ion might be planning. One never really knows with him. Quiet, tense breathing. Watching. Waiting. WHUM. WHUM. ... *WHUM!* In the sunset street outside, a long stretch of violet shadow glides into just the barest visibility through the hole in the far wall. And stops. A soft, humming whir can be heard revving up. *clk-ah*. The quietest of noises, in the deafening quiet. As soft as a whisper against the side of an ear. And Ion will feel Jim's handgun press a cold, simple warning against the side of his knee. Knelt down, neither breathing nor otherwise moving, with his daughter half-enveloped into his now-bark and branch-encased body, he's pressing his forehead against the edge of the counter. His eyes are closed. His teeth - just faintly visible where they clench. One side of the ceiling corner abruptly lights up with a thin red strip of light. Distorted and jumbled, broken up from a sideways angle, it begins a slow scan along one corner of the room, folding into an obtuse angle where it transitions from ceiling to wall surface. In the quiet after that click the release of Ion's breath sounds almost loud. Almost pained, the soft edge of discomfited whimper to it as his eyes tear away from the window, drag back towards the people in the room behind him. From shadow to windowframe -- a small /blip/ of spark jumps to settle on his fingertips, draw down into his skin, and for a moment (just a moment) he breathes a little easier. The press of gun to knee and scan of red across the faces inside makes his fervent-bright eyes power back down into numb blankness. His hand jerks away from the window. His muscles tense-snap back into motion. "Maybe next house, hermano," he's muttering to Micah, just before his hand claps to the man's shoulder, "maybe next one will be our quiet." One touch and another and another, Ion gathering his people quick and quiet. Somewhere in the twisted-charred husk of the Bronx, an apartment wall is being pounded in. But there's only a lingering smell of ozone, and the dust and rubble falls into a broken empty room.