ArchivedLogs:Round Up

Round Up
Dramatis Personae Jax, Tian-shin, Joshua
In Absentia	2015-07-31 "This isn't any of your fucking business." (Part of Amped TP.)
Location <NYC> Abandoned Warehouse - Brooklyn, <XS> Command and Control Center - B2
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. "S'not quite as scenic as home." Kind of half an apology. Kind of half not. Joshua is sitting on an upturned crate to one side of the huge ramshackle warehouse, halfway through a very large burrito. There's an assortment of detritus scattered around his perch -- perhaps equal parts remainders of a morning spent in practice, and the accumulation of years of rubble already collected there. Boards with rusted nails hammered in at skewed angles, dented jugs half-filled with liquid, cheap plastic lighters, screws in mismatched piles. A half-drunk cup of coffee long since gone cold. He still lives in hope. "Isn't that why we're here and not there? Home gets a lot less scenic when I mess up." Tian-shin pulls a water bottle from her shoulder bag and drinks deeply. She wears a fitted pale pink t-shirt with an adorable cartoon Chinese dragon, black gi pants, and metallic hot pink sneakers. "I wonder if the warehouse Tag want to buy is anywhere near here. Whole area might get /more/ scenic if they get their art collective thing going." She offers Joshua the water bottle. Joshua leans forward to claim the water bottle, taking a long pull. "Mmn." He shakes his head, once. "{We're here because fuck if I'm jumping to Mexico and back without caffeine when I have a shift tonight.} Sleep just wouldn't be enough." After another sip and a small consideration: "I suppose sparing my home some destruction is a side bonus." He offers the bottle back. "They actually put an offer on it or anything?" "{This is /much/ less scenic than Oaxaca, but I'm not complaining.}" Tian-shin laughs--just barely, a short puff of air exhaled sharply. "I really appreciate you doing this. I know you don't have much free time." She takes the water bottle and returns it to her bag, then leans on the crate where she has deposited her belongings. "Yeah, but there's some holdup with the paperwork, probably over his name. Some computer systems just can't handle people with no surnames." "On paper I have a lot of free time. I just don't know where it all goes." A small quick laugh huffs out of Joshua's nose. "Ingress, maybe." He grimaces at the mention of paperwork problems. "There was a time in life we never had bullshit problems like that. Had a friend..." He trails off, shakes his head, reaches into a pocket for a pack of cigarettes instead. "{Anyway I don't mind. This is way better than some of my work. And I have kind of an interest in making sure the air at home stays breathable.}" "I sent a firmly worded letter that should encourage the seller to sort it out, but still, bureaucracy is a ponderous beast." Tian-shin arches one slender black brow, perhaps at Joshua discussing air quality with cigarettes in hand. "{You do an awful lot besides work--besides your job, I mean.} And this," the sweep of her hand indicates the various hunks of corroded and bizarrely half-formed matter littering the floor, "has gone beyond 'how to not turn the salt shaker into a poison bomb.'" "Well, sure," Joshua answers lightly. "There's also 'how to turn the salt shaker /into/ a bomb at exactly the right moment'." He leans down to swipe a lighter from the floor, bowing his head over it to light his cigarette. "{Used to do a lot. These days -- a lot of fucking sleeping.} I'll be glad when I have some /energy/ back. Hard to want to do much of --" He pauses, lowering his hand to his knee and tapping at the filter of his cigarette as his head cocks, slightly. There's a scuffling somewhere behind them -- below them? Quietscuffle. Quietscrape. At a distance it could almost sound like rats moving in the tunnels beneath the warehouse but as it grows closer it resolves into the more definite sound of footsteps. A few muffled voices from one of the back rooms. A shuffle-thud. "Oh, perhaps someone is staying here, after all?" Tian-shin's eyes scan the byproducts of their training. "I don't think there's anything especially dangerous lying about, at least." She cants her head and listens more closely. "We should probably go." "Yeah -- maybe. I didn't think --" Joshua's expression has tightened, discomfited, eyes scrunching and lips pressed thinner. "Didn't think anyone --" He trails off, very abruptly stubbing out his nearly-untouched cigarette and letting it drop to the floor. The remainder of his half-eaten burrito is left on his crate when he stands. "Noyeah," quicker than before, "we should go." One of the doors not far behind them opens, just then, pushed by the hip of a lean brown-skinned woman in boots and jeans and faded old Empire State University tee. Quite a lot of muck collected on the boots. Her back is turned to the doorway; at first she doesn't notice Joshua or Tian-shin, most of her attention quite preoccupied with a collection of long metal chains held like dog leashes in one hand. They drag and shift against the ground erratically; she's not taking her attention away from their other ends, hidden in the rooms beyond. Another man, similarly muck-encrusted in his heavy boots, is following her out the door, though. His eyes widen in sudden alarm at the pair already in the room. "... the fuck are you doing here?" It's sharply accusatory -- though moreso to the woman with him than to the others. "You said this was empty." Tian-shin settles the strap of her shoulder bag across her chest and takes a step closer to Joshua, just near enough to reach. She has already half turned toward the wide double doors of the warehouse, poised to sprint. Her gaze falls on the chains and her other senses stretch out for what lies at their other end, beyond the unexpected visitors. "We were just leaving. S'all yours --" Joshua's voice is a little gruff. He's taken a step nearer Tian-shin, as well. The uncomfortable tension in his expression hasn't lifted, though now some color is slowly draining from his face as he looks back towards the door. The woman, the chains. "... {Jesus Christ}, what are you -- where are you --" He pauses, takes a deep breath. Speaks again more levelly: "I'm a paramedic, if you need help getting to a hospital -- we can help." The woman has backed up through the door, now, still reluctant to turn around but moving far enough into the room to sneak a look over her shoulder at Joshua and Tian-shin. From inside the room the chains still rattle. There's a scuffling of feet and then an angered-sounding snarl. "Help? We don't need help we /got/ this." "We don't need a hospital," the man says brusquely. "We aren't hurt. I think you two should go." Tian-shin's eyes widen and she tenses--but only for a moment. Just as quickly, just as subtly, her stance shifts lower and looser. "We're not interested in getting you in trouble, but we lived through the outbreak, too." Her eyes cast about the floor until she finds a likely-looking length of rebar. "It's not just your lives on the line here. Put yourselves in our shoes." "I didn't just mean for you," Joshua replies quietly. "I meant for the people with you. From the f --" There's the faintest of pauses before he stops, catches himself, corrects: "-- sound of it they need treatment real soon if they're going to make it at all. Please, we can help." "They're not," the woman sounds clipped, her grip on the chains tight as she backs away a touch further, pushes the door as shut as it will get around the heavy lengths of metal, "gonna /make it/ -- I think you need to listen to the man and get the hell gone." "Those meds can bring back people who seem pretty far gone." Tian-shin's tone remains calm, conciliatory. "And if not, they still need identification and disposal. What would you do with them?" "They're still people." Joshua's voice is quiet, but firm. "People who could be helped. You can't just chain them up with corpses waiting to --" He pulls in a slow breath, dropping his hand to his pocket. "I'm going to call a friend at a clinic I know, okay? If money is the problem, they won't care about that there. We just -- need to get those people help." The man's eyes dart to Joshua's hand when it moves, quick and alarmed. There's a sudden wrench of pain, fierce and tearing; if he's /trying/ to operate his phone he may find it difficult to do so, his fingers rather abruptly not able to respond as he is used to. The bones in his hand and wrist are thickening (with unpleasant tearing at the surrounding ligaments where suddenly there is more bone than there is quite room for), his joints calcifying stiff and hard to keep his hand immobilized in position. In the man's mind, mostly panic mingled with anger: "I said just go. This isn't any of your fucking business." "We just --" Joshua's words break off sharply; instead, a sudden hiss of pain, his hand (cell phone imprisoned in the rather cagelike grip of unmoving fingers) yanked out of his pocket to curl against his chest. "{What the fuck?} But you're -- what the /fuck/ --" His spluttering voice seems as much bewildered as pained, even through the scrunched contortion of his features. "... {Oh God. Tian-shin. We gotta --}" No, wait, that time it's definitely just pain. Tian-shin's eyes stray to Joshua for a fraction of a second. She yanks the water bottle from her bag, slinging it in the same fluid motion with a sharp wordless cry at the man's head. Half-full, the steel canister tumbles end over end, reasonably accurate for so ungainly a projectile but still avoidable. Keeping her eyes on her mark but not waiting to see whether the bottle hits him, she grabs Joshua's uninjured arm and starts sidestepping toward the exit. There's a heavier thumping from behind the heavy door. Where it's been pushed closed now it starts to swing, a few inches then back shut; a few inches then back shut. "Kingsley," the woman snaps sharply, "a hand, here?" Her companion is just turning his attention towards Tian-shin when the canister comes flying at him. Disgruntled, he stumble-steps to the side to avoid it, grimacing and lifting a hand back towards the door. The thumping slows. "So could /I/," he hisses back. Joshua leans into Tian-shin's grasp, hurrying quickly towards the exit at her side, though his own steps are a little stumbling. He doesn't continue very far past the door; no sooner are they outside than the bright sunlit world is vanishing from around them, twisting and contorting and briefly slipping into black chill before being replaced with a new room, dimmer, quieter. <XS> Command and Control Center - B2 Here is the heart of the Xavier Institute's true operations, the room most central to its purpose, where the Institute's most adventuresome and powerful individuals gather to receive exposition. The room is dominated by an oversized viewscreen on one wall, presently displaying an intricate diagram of the planet Earth, as well as a large central holographic projector and a handful of computer terminals along the periphery. Curiously, the whole place is rather dimly lit, as though its designers prioritized dramatic lighting over being able to find anything. Joshua drops down into a chair as soon as they've arrived, breathing a little shallow and his teeth clenched. "... fuck." Tian-shin blinks rapidly, half-blinded by her brief trip into sunlight. When her eyes adjust, she does not look very much less disoriented. Even so, she kneels beside Joshua, sucking in a quick breath when she finally gets a steady look at his hand. "What...should I get something for you? Someone?" Other questions spin through her mind--who were those people, what did they mean to do with the infected, where had Joshua brought them--but she gives them no voice. For a long few moments Joshua only breathes. Unsteady at first but slowly more eveny, albeit still sucked through his teeth. His hand shifts minutely against his chest -- though it does not move out of its claw-grip on his phone. "Fff." His eyes squeeze slowly shut. Then open again. "Fuck, fuck, fuck." Kind of whispered, this time. "I don't -- even know what you'd get for this kind of -- I don't. Know if it's going to wear /off/ or -- or. Fuck. That -- that guy, he wasn't even a fucking /mutant/. I don't -- what the /hell/." He sounds almost /offended/ by this. Tian-shin glances around the room again, as if suspecting she might have missed someone standing in plain sight the first time around. "Wait, if he wasn't a mutant..." Her brows knit together, and she reaches for the arm Joshua still holds to his chest, but does not make contact. "Maybe we should get you to the clinic. I can inform whoever you think needs to know about those two." "I don't know. I don't know. I didn't feel /anything/ from him. When he was --" Joshua's hand lifts away from his chest in indication -- just a few inches -- then comes to rest back down against it. His breath hisses out sharply with even the light impact. "I don't think the clinic can -- /un/-- fuck. I don't -- know what the hell --" His shoulders tighten, and he swallows once, hard. "Right. No. Right. We need to -- to tell. They're going to /kill/ those people. Jesus Christ. Why would you even -- there's /medicine/ --" His undamaged hand scrubs against his face. "{... I need some goddamn Advil.}" Tian-shin shakes her head slowly. "They must have something to gain from it, somehow--isn't that always why? Kingsley, she called him." She produces both phone and a lipstick-sized tube of Advil from her bag. She removes the cap from the latter and dumps four into Joshua's good hand. "Lo siento, I chucked my water at the guy," she mutters, unlocking her phone. "Who do we need to tell? I'll text them for you." "Kingsley? What the fuck kind of name is Kingsley? That just sounds like he should be --" Joshua pauses to put the Advil in his mouth, toss them back sans water, "-- sweater tied around his neck on the deck of his yacht. Not dredging the sewers for --" His teeth clench, again. "{/God/. No matter how many times I -- never get used to the feel of those minds.}" The heel of his hand presses to his eye. "I should have talked less. Dug more. Figured out what -- hsssss." His shoulders curl in tighter. "Jax." It sounds less like an answer to Tian-shin's question, though. More just /relieved/. And, just a moment later, the door to the room is opening. Jax looks a little flushed -- brightly dyed hair damply sticking to his forehead, tattoos glowing vividly; he's in boots and hiking pants, undershirt sweat-damp as well, his black X-jacket (beadazzled with a smiling sun on its back) unzipped over top. "-- what's hurt are you hurt Tian-shin are you okay --" Though here he pauses, blinks, does a small-quick double-take. "... oh. Hi. Uh. Your brain was loud." Tian-shin had just started to text Jax when the man walks in. Her double-take mirrors his, and the befuddlement that she had set aside by activating Doing Things Mode returns tenfold. "Hi. Joshua's hurt--somehow. I'm fine. We ran into some people who had rounded up some infected and they're going to--" She breaks off. "Wait, you already got this telepathy-wise?" "Tian-shin will fill you in." Joshua drops his head down to rest on the table. "I need to go to the medbay and -- oh, fuck, I have work tonight." The pinched look on his face gives way to one of panic -- just a moment before he vanishes. Jax isn't looking a lot /less/ confused at all this. He shakes his head slowly, looking at the space where Joshua had been, and then at Tian-shin. "-- No, he just. A minute ago said he needed help and come down here -- I was jus' across the hall so I -- what /happened/ is he okay? Are you okay? Who's gonna what, now?" Tian-shin sits back on her heels and stares at the space Joshua just vacated. Then she very deliberately puts her phone away and rises to face Jax. Some stray hairs have come loose from her ponytail, and cling here and there to her cheeks, still damp with sweat. "We were training at a disused warehouse in Brooklyn and encountered two individuals who clearly also went there expecting to find the place abandoned." She clasps the strap of her shoulder bag with both hands, then lets go of it. Sucks in a breath, continues. "They had about a dozen infected, in chains--some were already dead, but I think most weren't. We offered help, they refused. Joshua was starting to call...someone, I was guessing someone at the clinic, and one of them paralyzed his hand. I don't know how, especially since he had no visible weapon and Joshua says he wasn't a mutant, but it was clearly excruciating. I dragged him outside and then he jumped us...here." She looks around again, eyes finally registering the circled X symbols scattered throughout the room on hardware and software alike. "Are we at Xavier's?" Her eyebrows lift, but she shakes her head. "Anyway, that can wait. Joshua said those two meant to kill the people they had rounded up." "Roundin' up -- but why would they -- they're gonna /kill/ --" Jax sucks in a breath as well, pauses, nods. "We're at Xavier's. Under Xavier's. This is where /we/ train -- how long ago was that all? Is there still time? For those people..." His fingers scruff through his mop of bright hair. "I should get the team." "We just came from there, it was only a few minutes ago." Tian-shin looks up, thoughtful. "They were having trouble maneuvering the infected, so I'm thinking there's still /some/ time? I haven't been inside their heads, and they didn't volunteer any information. But faster is better; there were at least a couple of corpses already, that I could tell." She blinks at Jax, incredulity returning, if only weakly. "This is where you train--the Prometheus raid team?" A faint blush dusts itself across Jax's cheeks. "N-no. It's -- where my -- /other/ team trains. Come -- on. I'll -- explain. But we should -- you should come. Tell them. While there's still -- time." He's hastening back towards the door, cheeks darkening further as he holds it open. "If there still is."