ArchivedLogs:Levelling Up

Levelling Up
Dramatis Personae Anole, Tatters, Lily	2013-07-23 Tatters and Lily's homecoming.
Location <MOR> The Realm of Lost Things
Cramped and dark and tortuous, the tunnels here are not the most hospitable place. With enough exploration or someone to guide the way, it's possible to navigate through the underground labyrinth to these dim halls, lit sporadically by the often faltering electricity stolen from the city above or candles when those fail. Down here tarps cover rows of crates or plastic tubs shut against the large rat and mouse population; inside is a trove of goods scavenged from curbs and dumpsters and patched back into working order, or outright stolen from stores or homes or people. There's generally food to be found, canned more than anything else, and a mismatched assortment of clothing and blankets in various states of repair. There's other things, though, too; aging electronics, children's toys, bicycles. Board games (often missing pieces). Pet supplies. Dishes. Soap. It's hit or miss whether any of it is /useful/ or even in one piece, and there's no sort of organization to the mess. It keeps them going, though, and occasionally there are gems to be found in this communal trove scavenged together by the community. Free for any Morlock to take from and generally /viciously/ guarded against outsiders who have the misfortune to stumble in. There's a creak of wheels, a quiet rustling of objects somewhere back in the gloom. Anole is tucked away amid the clutter, sitting on an old dog kennel, a skateboard upturned over his knees. He's very focused, right now, on attempting to fix its wheels, tightening one and spinning it experimentally. Beside him there is an overlarge backpack, bulging right now though it's currently zipped closed. He's dressed pretty blandly, jean shorts and a black sleeveless shirt, no shoes. Strange wristwatch-looking things strapped to his wrists. Two pairs of footsteps approach, the staggered sounds clip-clopping along the tunnel floor. The figures that appear are...well, they're familiar, but different. Leading the way is a tall, gray-skinned scale-covered woman with four arms, no nose, a *tail,* and a webbed, lizardlike crest sweeping up and back over her scalp like a mohawk. She looks powerfully built, but is certainly less *bulky* than the Tatters who'd left those months ago -- apparently, she's shifted some of her weight off her trunk and into her collection of extra limbs. She's dressed in a tank top and a skirt modified to fit around her tail, and wears a travel-worn backpack with a round shield strapped onto the back and what looks like a fireman's hammer hanging from the side. The figure with her is smaller, with mismatched black-and-white eyes and a short shock of blonde hair falling across the side of her face, the sides of her head buzzed down, dressed in a loose t-shirt and a pair of ripped jeans. She's got a backpack too, but less weaponry. Both women look fairly relaxed, as though a stroll through the sewers is nothing unusual. The front one waves to Anole as he comes into view. "Hoy." Anole freezes, reflexively fading into a mottled shift of colour that blends in with the piles of junk around him. The skateboard wheel on his lap continues to spin, until his hand clamps down on it. A moment later, mottled sewer-colour shifts back into green. Huge green eyes blink owlishly at the pair of women. Moreso at Tatters. Slowly, his head tilts faintly to one side. "-- You found new arms." "Yes." Tatters nods solemnly. bowing her head. "I went on a journey to find myself. Instead, I found some arms." Her lower hands flex and unflex, and she looks back up at Anole with a shrug. Her face is quite a bit smoother than it used to be (if you ignore the scales) and almost looks like that of a real person (if you ignore the lack of a nose), but for all that it's a bit stonier and less expressive. She's quiet for a moment. Behind her, Lily coughs. "So, um. What did we miss?" "Did -- you find yourself, too?" Anole asks uncertainly, pulling his knees up towards his chest. The skateboard stays, trapped between his legs and his torso. "Where did you go?" He watches the motion of her lower hands, gaze skimming back up towards her face. Then over to Lily. "Did you go, too?" The question just makes his head dip, an uncomfortable expression crossing his face. He shrugs, stiffly. "Nox killed a police officer. The tunnels have kind of been on lockdown because they're -- a little," he says with a troubled frown, "unhappy about that. I don't -- know what you missed down /here/," he admits, "they locked me out for a while but it's um -- it's not. /Good/. Up -- top." "I found a lot of OTHER people." Tatters rolls her eyes, halfheartedly. "Some people were cool. Others weren't. Got in some fights, got shot at, uh," She starts counting on her fingers, then gives up and waves the thought away. Behind her, Lily answers Anole's question with a nod and a smile. Tatters' face sobers slightly, but it's harder to tell -- it was already pretty impassive, as though she's carrying on the conversation from some distance away. "Yeah, I've been reading about it. Got a cup thrown at me on the way here, but it was full of ice so it ended up just being refreshing. East entrance through the subway needs watching, that's how we got in." "That doesn't -- really tell me much," Anole points out with a small wrinkle of his nose, a small upward curl of his lips. "It doesn't really sound like the best journey, though, either." He studies Tatters's face for a long while. "If you found you, she's -- different. More human. Less human. Are you OK?" "I think I found some...serenity." Tatters wanders by and shrugs off her backpack, leaning lightly against the side of the tunnel, shifting slightly to lean on two elbows instead of one. She doesn't seem to be getting an absolute ton of use out of her smaller, second pair of hands, which mostly hang limply at her sides and seem to be positioned a bit behind her primary pair. "It's like. You ever have a computer that's got all cluttered and bloated, and you need to go through and uninstall a bunch of things and delete a bunch of old junk?" "I did something like that. I turned some things off. I'm rebuilding some other things from scratch. I'm a little bit less human, but a little bit neater. It's an ongoing process." A sniff sounds from behind her. "...that Lily is deeply ambivalent about. But it wasn't a bad trip." "Y-yes," Anole agrees slowly, at the computer analogy; he's peering at Tatters like maybe he might find an /on/ switch? "That's -- good, right? I mean -- Serenity. Neater. That's like. Maybe like you're -- levelling up?" His legs slowly sink back towards the ground, skateboard freed up to finish securing its wheels again. "Almost exactly like leveling up." Tatters rests her lower hands on her hips, and looks at her upper pair with a slight from. "Except it isn't always up, sometimes you move sideways, where you're different but aren't sure if you're better." "Like trading your ability to smile for an extra pair of hands." Lily finally speaks up, with a little snort, giving Tatters a Look. "This face can too smile. It just looks scary and horrifying. The goblin-face looked weird constantly." Tatters half-turns to give her a Look back. "Yeah but you smiled ever then." "Yeah but SERENITY." Impassive look. Glancing back to Anole, she shrugs and rubs her hands together. "So that's basicallly classic min-maxing anyways, but extra hands just means I've doubled the problem of what to do with my hands. Where do you put them? Who knows. But I'm growing, that's important. Lily too, look at that haircut." Lily mumbles something unintelligible. Tatters turns back to Anole, pauses a second, her eyes flicking around, then a question. "Have you started skateboarding? Is there a good place to do that down here?" SMALL TALK. "Learn to sew, I guess. They don't make a lot of four-armed shirts." Anole watches the shift of arms, eyes lifting afterwards to Tatters's face. "I have friends who look kind of terrifying when they smile. One of them smiles a lot anyway." He glances down at the skateboard, one finger flicking to spin at its wheel again. One shoulder shrugs. "A lot of the old subway tunnels are decent places. I just wanted to fix it. There's a -- a lot of broken things down here. I just wanted to fix --" Another shrug. "That sounds pretty worthy." Tatters nods quietly. "There's a lot broke down here, but you do have to start somewhere." She blinks, then twitches the corner of her mouth in something that's *sort* of smile-like. It doesn't really stick. "And it's summer. Lots of shirts don't have arms this time of year. And we met some hippies who helped sew this skirt for me with the tail thing. And gave Lily a hair cut." The latter sister shifts awkwardly. Apparently she isn't used to looking awesome. "Anyways, I should talk to people. Who's coordinating things nowadays?" "There's a lot broke down here," Anole agrees with a crooked upward twitch of his lips. His eyes fall back to the skateboard. "I don't know. Nobody, really. /Masque/. Some -- tree-guy, he's new, I don't -- really know who he is. He was in the --" His brow furrows; he looks up at Tatters for a moment in thought. "-- There was a thing. With cops. He was there. Now he's here, I guess. Running -- things." For a moment he fidgets, slightly uncomfortably on the kennel he sits on before putting his skateboard aside to hop down, dart over and give Tatters a quick squeeze of hug. Even if he only has half as many arms to do it with. It's brief before he is skittering back to his perch. "-- I'm glad you're back." There's a small curl of a smile to accompany this, but it's brief, too, turned more down towards his knees than up towards the sisters. This, at least, gets a reaction out of Tatters. Her eye twitches. "...really? I step out for a bit and MASQUE starts being...? Ugh." With a frown she returns the hug, patting Anole on the head with a free hand. "I used to think stuff just happened to go down on days I'm out of town, but...I've been keeping an eye on the news, I think crap is just happening constantly now. But I can't be everywhere at once." Pause. "...yet. Um, I'm glad to see you too." Hoisting her pack back onto her shoulder, she sighs heavily (which is expressive, at least), and frowns down the tunnel. "I...guess I should go talk to Masque. Stay safe." "Yeah. Masque's -- yeah. I mean." Anole's gaze stays fixed pretty much downwards. "-- Nox is kind of broken, too. So. I guess. Someone --" This trails off into a shrug. He offers Tatters a quick upwards glance, a quick curl of smile, for this farewell. "Yeah. You, too." "There's a lot broken. But we've got to start somewhere." She takes a few steps off, but stops to smile at Anole over her shoulder. It...well, it is a pretty creepy smile, her face creasing unnaturally before she lets it slack back to a neutral expression. Faces are hard, guys. As are lots of things. Lily follows after her sister as she departs, giving Anole a reassuring smile and a little wave of her own. And then they're gone, paired footsteps receding in the distance.