ArchivedLogs:Intrusion

Intrusion
Dramatis Personae Violet
In Absentia	2014-08-01 A cat-girl gets some new..uninvited tenants. Part of TP-Laughter.
Location An abandoned warehouse, NYC
Hello, abandoned warehouse! There might not be millions of them in New York's industrial areas but there are enough--and most of those run about the same inside and out. Here's a gritty, weed-grown lot. There is a tall, dull and blocky building with windows that are either dusty or broken out. There is a chain on the huge rolling doors that guard the entrance but one corner of said door is bent in a way that allow intepid souls to eel inside if they so choose. And inside is a wasteland of huge defunct chunks of machinery, tarp-covered junk and a walkway high above that's fallen in places, and looks to be on the verge of falling in others. The ceiling is crisscrossed with bars and piping conduits, distant and shadowed and cobwebbed. It is, in short, exactly what one might imagine when thinking "abandoned warehouse"...except this one isn't quite as abandoned as it seems. High in the rear corner of the building is a rickety metal staircase that leads up to what might have been an office or a control room. The windows there have long since been shattered out and the door is missing but it makes for a cozy nest all the same. This is where Violet has set up shop and made a little home for herself. The floor has been piled with soiled sleeping bags and cast off coverlets scrounged from who knows where. Counters were control equipment used to rest now serve as a place for a number of candles and take-out containers. There's a backpack (closed), and an old CD player (out of batteries), and she's hung a crude black cross on the wall beneath a dusty plaque that proclaims this site one of EXCELLENCE. The catgirl herself is sprawled on her belly on the blankets, heels kicked back and hands holding open the pages of a paperback library book. On the cover, a long-haired and heavily muscled gentleman in loincloth and horned helmet is gripping the arms of a voluptuous woman. The woman's eyes are closed, her lips parted in passion. "HEARTS ENTWINED", reads the title, and Violet is /totally/ buying it, skimming the pages wide-eyed in flickering candlelight. Outside, two gray, non-descript vans drive up towards the warehouse, parking close to the rolling doors. The driver of one van doesn't seem like much, an older man with a thick moustache and graying hair, whilst the driver of the other definitely seems a bit odd, a young Asian woman with pink and purple hair and a multitude of piercings. The older man getting out of the back, he opens his door to check the cargo, a bunch of electronical equipment inside, before shutting it back closed and heading to the other van. This is where it seems a bit fun. Opening the door, the second van contains 6 individuals compactly fit into the back of the van, and they don't seem too normal. A large man, skin, hair, and clothes monochromatic in coloring, a tiny (/very tiny/, maybe 6 inches) Japanese man inside his shirt pocket, who once removed and outside the van grows to 8 feet, a skinny, sickly looking man with gray skin, white eyes, and pointed ears who calmly removes himself from the van, two almost identical teenaged females with a rather large rat around one's shoulders, and a snake around the other, the snake-girl's eyes slitted whilst the rat-girl's eyes black and beady, and a man looking to be in his thirties, looking normal other than the fact that his nose is wrapped up and obscured. The six individuals get outside the van, and approach the gate. And then, pulling a comic book out of his jacket, the large man stares at the chain. Rapidly flipping through the comic book, the /colors/ inside start to vanish, as the man himself becomes bright and colorful, sort of like a rainbow. Putting his hand on the bars, a burst of colorful energy leaves his hands, muting the newfound colors to him, but destroying the chain. However, the energy blast also rattles the metal, and whilst most outside won't hear..who knows about inside? The group begins to move the rolling doors..who are they? Yes indeedy, even if Violet weren't the proud owner of animal-sharp senses, she'd have heard that rattle. And noise hereabouts? That generally means no good for her, whether it be zombie remnants or kids out to create a little destruction. While the sound is still echoing through the warehouse, Vi is up in a flash to blow out the candles and then pull herself up out of the control room through a hole in the roof. That corner is wreathed in shadows--and should remain so, even when light begins to splash inside from the opening doors--but she can't trust that that will be cover enough. So it's up into the ceiling she goes, a silent leap and pull drawing her up onto that dirty map of pipes far overhead. From there she can creep, belly down and eyes huge, peeping below to spy out just who is invading her personal hideyhole. The two drivers return to their vans to pull them in, as the man with the wrap around his nose suddenly starts poking at it. He pulls it off..revealing a completely normal nose. But then, his head darts upstairs, and around, hands waving in the air as the others back away from him. The Japanese man speaks, rather loudly. "Edgar, what you got?". Edgar, the 'nose man', remarks quickly, Dutch accent clear. "Another of us. Scent's upstairs... moving..?". At this time, the sickly gray man looks up, before shouting upwards, voice rather deep for how he looks. "Ma'am, no harm, no harm. We mean none of'it. Just show yourself, aight'?" The vans pull in, whilst the monochromatic man and the large man lift open the one with the equipment, starting to unload. Violet most certainly does /not/ show herself. It is not in her, either in personality or genetics, to just saunter out into the middle of a /mystery/ without sizing up what she's dealing with. So she stays hunkered down, hidden from view by the pipe she's resting on. What she /does/ do, however, is to call out in turn--hoping that the echoey acoustics in the warehouse will prevent a solid bead from being drawn on her position. "I dunno what all ya'll are about," she hollars down in her coastal South drawl, "but I'm just gonna warn y'now that this place ain't exactly takin' in new occupants. Might be y'should just move on 'fore anyone else notices you're here." This threat actually makes the gray skinned man laugh, as he speaks up again. The rat girl's rat saunters off her as she whistles, moving up the stairs as the girl follows. "How about we introduce ourselves, yeah, yeah? I'm DJ Wight, the mono guy here's Roy, color hair is Jillian, big guy's Kiyoshi, snake girl's Emi and her twin's Amy, and the other dude's George. And then there's Edgar, yeah." He smiles, teeth having a rotted /appearance/, as he speaks again. "And you may have heard of us, we're NeXGen." Meanwhile, Amy's rat, Rattigan, continues to sniff, attempting to locate Violet somehow. Edgar comes up the stairs as well, obviously to help the search. The closer they get to that control room, the easier it'll be to smell hot wax, a whiff of smoke, the perfume of the candles so recently snuffed. As for Violet, she's on the move too. A veil of dust shimmers down through the air as she proceeds to wriggle on down the piped to a connecting one. Still well above their heads but now on a course towards the front portion of the warehouse, putting distance between herself and the rear. Maybe, if they look quickly, they might see a flick of something up there--that'd be her tail, doing its duty by keeping her balanced. "Yeah?" Vi pauses and from her new vantage point, peeks down. She spots the folks on the stairs, then steals a glance at the vans. Her nose wrinkles. "Guess I maybe heard 'bout ya'll. Them radio folks. Don't see as how that /changes/ much, done told you already this place is /took/. Ya oughta find one of your own." "Where's ya proof of ownership?", Roy shouts up, his own accent Texan in origin. DJ Wight and Jillian begin whispering something, before DJ Wight turns back up to Violet. "Maybe we can make a compromise, yeah, yeah? Moving again so soon will doom us, ya see? So perhaps..we'll share it for a short time, yeah yeah? Don't gotta be friends or nothin, you can keep your bunk, and we'll be out before the police suspect a thing, yeah? See, we're all bretheren, you know, the next stage of man? And man's job is helping other man, yeah? Whaddya say?". DJ Wight's rotted smile doesn't fade, as Edgar, Amy, and Rattigan keep moving with the scent. "Compromise don't keep a roof over m'head when th'cops come knockin', does it? If they didn't suspect a thing, ya'll wouldn't be lookin' for a new hidey hole, either. Don't y'feed me nonsense just cuz y'got me outnumbered. Mama didn't raise no fool." Violet's drawl, even in echoey tones, sounds deeply disgusted. But beneath that possibly there is a thread of interest. She bellies forward, pushing herself with bare, clawed toes until she's directly over the vans. She is the world's biggest ceiling cat, staring down at them. "Seems t'me, not bein' a man an' all, /my/ job's landlord. Maybe y'can rent some floor or maybe I can get y'evicted, how's that?" "It took them three months to find us, yeah. And we know how to keep people off us. Whaddya want, yeah?". DJ Wight's grin is only stronger, because he knows that they /do/ outnumber her, and she's realized it. "We can get you money, you want money, yeah, or you want something else? We can get you whatever you want, sweet little thing, yeah?". The bloodhound/bloodrats continue moving with the catgirl, keeping her scent close. There is a rumble from above, nearly inaudible, but it marks Violet's first genuine spark of amusement since her romance novel reading was interrupted. "Money'll do, I'm a simple sorta girl. But ya'll ain't stayin' for no three months, don't care /what/ you've got in your wallets or how many folks y'got at your back." Why? Because this is her space. It smells like her, every nook and cranny explored and marked. This is her turf. And now maybe the vans are too because she finally decides to show herself. It's a hell of a drop, from the pipes to the top of the van but you know what they say about cats. Violet makes the leap in a neat, clean arc and sinks into a crouch as the vehicle's shocks bounce at the sudden introduction of speed and weight. Her t-shirt and jean shorts are dust- and dirt-smeared, and there are cobwebs woven through her fur where she's scraped against them, but otherwise she is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as she prowls forward to look upside down into the back of the van. What's all this? "We only need a week, yeah. Then we're outta ya hair." DJ Wight lets his grin fade easy, as he speaks again. "How much ya need, yeah? We can make it rain...none of us actually have rain powers, figure of speech, yeah?" The back of the van is mostly being cleared by Roy and Kiyoshi, but it's all radio broadcasting equipment, a computer, and a few mattresses, pillows, and sheets. "Ya need a downpayment?", Wight says again, as he gestures towards Jillian. Now..what's this about? Violet, after having her look, sinks back into a gargoyle crouch on top of the van. Her tail coils loose around her ankles as she cocks her head at the venerable DJ. Those big orange eyes of her don't blink and the size of her pupiles, in spite of the light streaming in from outside, put a lie to the outwardly calm appearance she presents. Is she normally that poofy? It's hard to tell, with fur being what it is. But her black lips do curl in a smile. Polite, she is. "Way I see it, fella, y'might well be gone in a week but doesn't mean th'cops won't come here sniffin' for ya /after/. Time like that, a li'l cash makes it easier for th'previous tenant t'find a place of her own again too. Seeing as how it'd put me out of m'home, yeah?" DJ Wight nods slowly, smile coming back. "I understand perfectly, yeah. Hard for people like us, yeah. Let's start you with a downpayment of say..500 dollars? Gotta take breaks inbetween, you see." And then, Jillian is moving to the front of the van, pulling out a 100 dollar bill and putting it in her hand. Her fingers gently move over it, as another bill flaps out of it, and then another, and then another, until she has five. Numbers and such are all identical, as she moves towards Violet. "Careful with these. Paper's..more fragile than most.", letting out a bright smile . "We can do other denominations too, if you want." Ears perk forward when bills are produced but it's the numbers on them that leave Violet sinking back onto her heels. The bridge of her small nose is wrinkled at them. "Twenties'd be better, yeah. Folks like /me/, we don't go 'round wavin' big numbers. Ya'll might pull it off but ya'll don't look like Disney characters either." See? See, she is poking fun at herself, surely that means she's in a friendly sort of mood still. "Take your time," she adds for Jillian's sake, "I'm not goin' no where." And she's not, either! To prove it, she flops herself down on her stomach atop the van and props her chin up on the heels of her hands. Her tail curls behind her, its tip lazy flicking back and forth. "Y'sure got a lot've stuff," the catgirl goes on to idly observe. "Got it.". Jillian pulls out a 20, doing the same trick, leaving all five on the hood, before going inside the van to sit down and take a breather. It seems to put a bit of a strain on her. Emi, the snake girl, is the one to speak now, tongue slithering as she does so. "Well, we're a radio sstation, and we're trying to sspread our messsage, so we need the besst equipment for that! Jusst don't touch it..me and Amy work really hard to keep all the ssettingss right.". DJ Wight nods, before speaking again. "As long as you stay out of our business, we stay out of yours, yeah. And at the end of the week, you'll get your full pay from a friend of ours, yeah?". "Me'n'stuff with buttons don't get along, no worries," Violet assures Emi. She has a lazy look going on now, one eye half-lidded, ears set at a relaxed angle. But now and then she sniffs the air--marking their personal scents--and the look that swings to the fella who seems to be calling the shots is more thoughtful than idle. "Guess that works. Seein' as how ya'll have pretty much done /moved in/," she drawls, sounding more amused than annoyed now. A quick push sees her slithering forward, down the windshield and once on the hood, she tucks her feet up beneath herself again. The money is gathered and folded and tucked under the neck of her shirt--likely stored under a bra strap--with all due care. "Bathrooms're in th'back. Mens don't work no more but th'ladies works just fine, so long as y'don't want hot water in th'shower 'n don't mind roaches." "That'll do just fine, yeah.". Wight grins, as he goes with the twins to set up for the broadcast for the night, one last grin at the cat girl. This should be a fun week.