ArchivedLogs:Urban Decay

Urban Decay
Dramatis Personae Billy, Dusk, Shane
In Absentia	2014-06-18 part of infectyplague. (Followed by bringing more strays home.)
Location <NYC> Abandoned Warehouse - Brooklyn
Just one among many old buildings in an industrial section of the borough, this warehouse was undoubtedly once bustling. It's large, a spacious segment of floor with a number of high-rising shelves still lining the walls from floor up to the exposed beams of the ceiling. There's plenty of smaller nooks and rooms tucked away at the sides of the building, and though the ceiling is mostly still intact and the windows boarded up a crumbling hole near the roof and a few removed planks from a window near the back make it a common home for wayward birds, stray cats, and the occasional vagrant taking advantage of strong walls and bathroom plumbing that still largely works. The latter tend to avoid this place more often than not come nighttime, though; among street people there are rumours that this building is often populated by monsters. Billy's footsteps reverberate through the cool, shadowy warehouse space. The temperature change is something sharp compared to the bright, hot day happening just outside and he's thankful for it. Wearing all white, the light filtering in from the cracked building above makes him look a little ghostly. His manner of dress, which tends to be dressy and old-fashioned, doesn't help. A few pigeons, spooked by his presence, blunder into the air. He lifts his little white Diana to his eye and snaps a picture of them bouncing off of each other. The camera flash, if his clip-clopping wasn't enough, announces his presence loud and clear. The flash of camera and clip of shoes elicits a muffled breathy laugh from somewhere -- way high up towards the ceiling far above. Shadowy shapes are moving up near the rafters, somewhere tucked up mostly obscured behind a few beams on what is probably a slightly precarious perch on a shelf up high. "-- mmph." There's speaking up above, too quiet to make out, but it is followed by another sharp inhale and then a sudden, far more audible -- "... fuck." This coincides with a flutter of clothing -- a shirt, pale silvery-blue button-down -- falling down from the ceiling towards Billy. Then a flutter of /wings/ -- there's a bat-like shadow that flits across the ground, though if it /is/ made by a bat it's a truly enormous one that disappears off into the shadows of the ceiling. "... oh /goddamn/ you," comes a second voice, this one also laced with laughter. The next shadow to appear is smaller and /definitely/ human... oid. Though it's followed by a THWP, some ropey white strand shooting out to latch on to a beam -- then another then another as a tiny blue figure /swings/ his way on these strands down from the roof, making his way towards the floor at rather rapid speed. Thwip-thwip-thwip. Shane is dressed (thank God) in black slacks that have gotten a little /dusty/ in here, dress shoes, though he has no shirt on, blue skin and the long sets of gills that stretch up along his sides and the sides of his neck both very visible. As are a pair of some sort of wrist-cuffs on his wrists, which are /shooting/ the ropey strands he swings from. His enormous pitch-black eyes have zeroed in on the falling shirt, though even at rapid speeds he's not likely to /catch/ it before it touches down. He /does/ swing his way over to a shelf much closer to the floor. Right by Billy, who he looks down at with a wide grin very extraordinarily full of razor-sharp sharky teeth. "Hey uh. So um apologies that's my shirt I. Lost it." Billy is too alarmed to take a photo of the shadow, or the falling shirt, but he does take a mental picture as he retreats a step. The blonde looks from Shane to the shirt, and slowly back. "Oh, uh, right, sure," he gulps, pressing together his lips into a straight line as he kneels to retrieve the garment. "Silvery-blue, huh?" He accidentally remarks. From behind his thick glasses, he scans above and past Shane for signs of the bat. "Matches him." This voice comes from above, where the bat is -- hastily tugging his shorts back into place. Ziiip. There's another flap of wings, a draft stirred up by the powerful beat as Dusk drops down from the ceiling to land in a crouch behind Billy -- in the descent it's easier to see just /how/ large a bat it really is. OK, well, he's normal man-sized, 5'10" and built lean and ropey, but the outstretched span of his wings in flight clears seventeen feet from tip to tip easily. It makes it all the odder how /tight/ they manage to fold back in against his back as he stands, still large but not nearly so imposingly so in their flexible fold. In contrast to Shane's dressiness /he's/ just in a pair of cargo shorts, Vans sneakers -- no shirt either, though /his/ is crumpled up and protruding from one of the large cargo pockets. The shorts make it easy to see the boxy black electronic device cuffed securely around his ankle. "Apologies. Didn't mean to, uh." Dusk's face is flushed a good deal redder than the rest of his pallor, his grin -- also very sharp-toothed with its long twin sets of fangs -- a little sheepish-crooked. "Silvery-blue. It suits." He flicks a long upper thumb-claw on one wing towards the (kind of gleamy-blue) sharkboy on the ledge. Shane's nose twitches slightly as he hops down from the ledge, gills fluttering open along his sides. He turns up an arm, shoulder hitching in a shrug as he glances down to his /own/ skin. "Yeah. I was feeling more in a sheeny black mood today but it was /way/ too hot for that. Jesus -- /Christ/ I left my water up there I'm going to die. Uh. So. Hey. Did you come here to /clean/ or something what." His gills shiver again, nose crinkling as he approaches to take the shirt back. "Thanks." The shirt is ruined, if Shane looks closely. But what's one more white stain? "No, I-uh," Billy tilts up his Diana, before letting it fall limp around his neck, again. It may have finally struck him what he just interrupted. "Yeah. Cleaning crew. Sorry for uh-" He holds up a hand, taking another step away, "Carry on." He stifles a shy laugh, glancing up and around and over his shoulder. "Cleaning crew. Dude. This is an abandoned fucking -- I don't think this place has seen a cleaning crew since Reagan was president." Dusk's eyes -- an odd /shine/ to them in the dimmer light inside the warehouse -- flick down to Billy's camera with an amused quirk of smile. "S'all good we just got a little, uh. Distracted. Exploring. /Meant/ to go check out some of those back rooms but I think I --" His wings hitch up in a brief shrug. Shane shakes out his shirt, smoothing out some of its rumple as he pulls it back on -- and then immediately pulls it off again to /scowl/ at the fabric. "What the /fuck/, dude. Do you know how fucking /hard/ it is to find clothes that -- Christ." He is /glaring/ at the bleach-stain. "That is not getting fixed -- {Goddamn /goat-fucker/.}" This is in Vietnamese, rather than English, sharp and irritable /despite/ the fact his sharp-toothed grin is still returning, crooked, flashed towards Dusk. "Yeah. He can be kind of a distraction." His eyes return to his shirt in a deep scowl, his nose twitching again in reflexive irritation. Somewhere off back in those yet-unexplored rooms there's another clatter -- though it's soon followed by another flutter of disturbed pigeons spooking back into the warehouse. Shane scowls at /them/, too, as though they might have had something to do with the ruining of his shirt. Billy flinches, knees buckling inward as he leans away from Shane. He looks shocked, looking down at his sweaty palms, "I'm sorry, man. I didn't mean to-I'm really sorry. I wasn't thinking!" He steps forward, "I can make the whole thing white if you want?" He offers, pathetically. Then, he frowns at the fabric. Can't he just go back to New Jersey and pick up another? "Here - how much was it?" He pats at his pockets. The pigeons and clatter don't register to Billy. He isn't that astute. Dusk's wing curls inward, one segment of it scrubbing against his scruffy-beareded cheek. "Man, getting in between Shane and his clothes never ends well -- dude." His brows raise as Billy flinches and buckles. "It's not like anyone /hit/ you." "I don't want the whole fucking thing white, I wanted the whole fucking thing /blue/. Like it's supposed to be. And I can't /buy/ another this shit was custom-tailored for me. It's goddamn impossible to get good things in my size that aren't gonna chafe my gills and irritate my skin all to hell. /Ngh/." Shane's gills flutter faster, a sharp disgusted sound huffed out. "You shouldn't say that word so much," he adds with a twitch of discomfort to all Billy's apologizing. He does look up towards the pigeons, but it's with a /hungry/ rumble of growl thrumming briefly in his throat and then subsiding. One of those broken back doors is swinging a little more open, though, a thumping shuffle of footsteps behind it -- though at the moment Shane is mostly paying attention to his /irritation/ with his ruined shirt. Billy flinches again, this time at Shane's growling. He takes another step away from the pair, placing himself in between them and the unheard shuffle of feet. He meekly apologizes again, this time for apologizing too much. If anyone can sympathize with a physical mutation interfering with fashion, it's him - but he isn't prepared to say that. The shuffling of footsteps /does/ catch Dusk's attention, sudden and sharp in the manner of -- well. Someone who spent a lot of time out-of-doors in recent zombie-times. One huge wing snaps out quickly, reflexively curling out around Billy to try and steer the man back /closer/ to him and Shane -- probably not the most reassuring of gestures given that it comes in time with a sudden tension of lean muscles, a sharp baring of fangs, a low growl of his own. The growl doesn't /stop/ when he speaks, rumbling oddly /beneath/ his words, twin set of vocal cords handling both sounds at once. "/Careful/," he says, sudden, and "... you been here before?" "/Jesus/, dude, there's no need to get all /vampire/ about it it's just a fucking shirt." Shane's grumbly irritation is equal-opportunity, it seems, directed towards friend and stranger alike. His eyes dart down towards the electronic monitor strapped around Dusk's ankle, gills fluttering again. "And lord knows /you/ don't want any trouble right now, just chill." That's quieter -- a gentler tone (probably also-not-reassuringly) similar to one one might use to calm an angry dog. This calming attitude vanishes with another shuffle-stumble of footsteps from out back, a trio of people-shapes spilling their way out of the back room with a familiar slouchy walk, rather /determinedly/ honing in on the three (juicy) people a short distance away. "Oh fucking hell what did I say about that word it's like a goddamn -- /curse/." Shane is glancing down to check the webshooters strapped to his wrists, hissing sharp and angry. "Christ. My pa still carries a fucking knife everywhere why don't I learn from him." Though his irritable-grumbling is continuing in the /same/ blandly annoyed tone as before, the /rest/ of him has snapped very abruptly to high alert, muscles tense, eyes focused on the three shapes -- two tall and burly, one shorter, lean, their ragged shreds of clothing filthy and torn but the sturdy jeans, boots, flannel ensemble one might expect of manual laborers. Bringing his arms up to shield himself and hunching down low to avoid touching it, Billy is shepherded by the wing. Also, he screams. Well, let's call it a shreek. "N-no, I've never been here before?" He looks from the other two mutants to the trio of ruffians. "Should. We. ...We. Run?" He clutches the front of his shirt, barely speaking through short breaths. He's hyperventilating. He's starting to see those little glimmery, floaty spots all around. "Tsss." Dusk presses Billy gently towards Shane, shooting Shane a /look/ at Billy's shrieking. Gesturing to the hunching man sort of like -- are /you/ going to take care of that? There's an odd fierce /glee/ to his fanged grin, though, as he flares his wings wide, advancing to slam the long hard spar of one wingbone into the foremost of the zombies. "Yeah," he answers Billy, over his shoulder, "You guys should run." "Christ, boy, you'd think you'd never seen a --" Shane doesn't finish his grumbling-at-Billy with Dusk's Look. Though he does answer it with something of a /scowl/ as he throws his shirt on loose and unbuttoned and /scoops/ an arm around the older man's waist. For all the sharkboy's tiny stature there's alarming /strength/ in his hold, other hand reaching up to -- THWP -- shoot out another sticky-ropey strand from his webshooter, /sweeping/ Billy off the floor and over towards the exit. With, admittedly, /one/ small backwards glance -- though really he doesn't seem all /that/ concerned that Dusk is about to get eaten by zombies. "Breathe, dude. How about," this comes oddly casual as Shane swoooooops them out of the warehouse, "I get you a nice herbal tea or something." Billy does try to breath, but it's labored. It's like his throat is closing up on him. It gets even more difficult as he's tossed around and lifted up into the air. He watches his glasses slide off of his nose and float down into the scene. His grip, which might have been called 'for dear life,' start to loosen - just like conciousness err... loosens. Black.