ArchivedLogs:New Roots

New Roots
Dramatis Personae Jim, Masque	2013-06-02 Jim trades a smoke for the warmest of welcomes, and perhaps a change of environment.
Location <MOR> Welcome to the Freakshow
Wider and more spacious than many of the surrounding nooks and niches, this chill cavern is the central hub of the Morlock's underground network. With tunnels branching off in many directions, it takes a while to learn to /navigate/ from here to where you want to go, but there's generally plenty of more experienced people around to teach newcomers the ins and outs of the pathways. Here, though, is a safe place to come and relax, for what value of relaxation can be found among moss-covered walls and the occasional stagnant puddles on the floor. There's been furniture brought in, a mismatched assortment of crates, mattresses with busted springs, a few broken and subsequently repaired chairs, a folding table in a corner. Shelves along a wall hold entertainment; books, a smattering of board and card games, sometimes snacks. There's even electricity, wiring none too safe and visible in places where the wall has been broken open; the naked light bulbs flicker often and the lone outlet has had so many power strips attached it is undoubtedly a fire hazard. Time means so little here down in these cavernous rooms. It's been claimed by one particular individual to be the time to /rest/. Though to be fair, he hasn't been seen doing much /else/ here for the past... long while. Save for, perhaps, scornfully snapping at people or moving to another quiet spot when disturbed for silly things like needing to /eat/. Masque sits slumped against a wall in one of the quieter nooks of the hub. The scarce light from the bulbs only just reaches far enough to make the distinction between the darkness and his red coated form possible, on a stained (humidity, sewage, /blood/?) mattress that looks like it's been BUSTED INTO at some point - like someone expected to find money inside. Unlikely. Legs propped up in front of him, elbows on his knees, hands drawn inward and disappeared into his sleeves. If not for the fact that the head under Masque's hood /twitches/ up in half-sleep every now and then, he could pass for a weirdly posed dummy. Now, he could pass for a poorly constructed animatronic. It's /sort of/ a step up. The traffic of inward and outward flow amongst the tunnel dwellers is organic; disorganized but not without its own natural order. Stirred up and on a patrol ever more vigilant, those that trickle down to these dark places are not left unnoticed for long. Just when Jim arrived isn't a single moment markable on a watch; a meander turns into a meeting, a meeting turns into a meander, a rustle of leaves and singular steps from bare feet turned eventually into the passage of two, and the unofficial tour is short and exacted with off hand precision; the situational toiletries, the emergency exits, protocol as limited as it is, ending with the inevitable warning not unlike what you might tell naughty children regarding a boogieman: "-and watch out for Masque." Why this earns a smirk encircling a thin flash of teeth, warped through the deep scar lashing up Jim's twisted cheek, where parallel indentations have left a snarl beside his eye, is unexplained. Watch out he /does/. And presumably sometime after locating him, an intensely used and re-used and re-used some MORE plastic bottle of water - half full and /probably/ no longer containing the crystal clean spring water that had once filled its no-longer-sustained brand label - is kind of set, kind of dropped alongside the red-cloaked figure. And then the quiet creaak crumple of straining wood and flaky bark thumps in a standing lean against the wall. Ankles cross, and Jim roots in a back pocket, "Just can't get enough trouble, can you." It isn't until that bottle hits the ground that Masque's head ceases to occasionally /bob/ up, though it's a good few seconds before that hood moves again. Under it, his head angles to eye that bottle. Then, Jim's ankles. Torso. Finally Jim's face, weight shifting as his own comes into view. Not much about it has changed about it since the two last met. Though he may need a /wash/. What else is new. The visitor (?) is eyed silently, Masque's expression curiously /light/ for a man usually lacking subtlety - the lower part of his face fails to budge, but his lower eyelids raise slightly as the winkles nearby deepen in what appears to be wry, subdued amusement. Passive. Like he'd been expecting to see Jim turn up at this precise moment. "... I used to bring people down here." The older man's voice is the vocal equivalent a dead cat pushed onto a moving conveyor belt covered in sandpaper. His right hand reaches for the bottle, creeping out of the sleeve to reveal it as missing a ring and pinky finger underneath brown-splotched bandages. It clunks into the bottle with a slosh of liquids inside, and the drink is drawn upward and inward (a little wobbly, with the three, still healing, remaining fingers on that hand) to /sniff/ at. What's this, then. Masque's nose will detect just water; not maybe the /purest/ water, but it's consistent with whatever they have available down here. It is probably only half full because Jim wasn't so generous as to not help himself first. If the one or two bits of bark floaties inside are any indication. Jim eyes are absently tracking whatever manners of mutants are going about their strange daily lives in the distant gloom, "They still hangin' around?" Off /meat hooks/, perhaps? Hmmnhn. Bark floaties do not seem to bother Masque much past a lowering of one eyebrow. A peer inward later, and he's lifted the thing against his palm and upward, pouring the liquid down his throat. Quite a lot of it, in fact- hardly anything is left inside of it when he lowers it again to let dangle precariously between his knees, water left trickling down his chin and along his neck. His head lowers again, onto his left forearm, as though in an attempt to /escape/ what little light there is here for a brief moment. "Some." Comes grated from under the hood, before his head lifts again. Also to survey, it seems, the others. "Most chose /not to stay/." These last three words come slowly, the remainder of his teeth gnashing. Maybe because it wasn't really their /choice/. Or maybe because he's implying someone else might not, either. Fishing around in ass pockets eventually produces a carton of cheap cigarettes; a little smashed but it does what it needs to. His better hand is already learning how to thumb it open solo, lipping one out and utilizing mandibular dexterity to caterpillar walk it to the side of his mouth. "You gonna?" He has to speak through the one side of his lips, peeling it upwards in idle dog snarl to enunciate. His own voice is more a husk than husky, breathed over catches and inward irregularities like broken fingernails snagging over rough wool. He isn't looking at Masque - there's a region of moss near the far junction of ceiling and wall that he's squinting at through a tangle of crows feet - but he shakes the carton of coffin nails down at his level off hand. "Place is a mess." Though Masque says this with disapproval jerking his tone of voice down into an implication that this may actually physically /nauseate/ him, a specific 'yes' or 'no' it is not. He lifts the bottle to his broken mess of a mouth again, downing the last of the water before- that bottle is promptly discarded, -thud-, sideways onto the mattress. His bandaged hand reaches without question, sneaking one of the cigarettes in between bony middle and index finger and bringing it to his face like it, too, was something he'd been expecting. Waiting for, perhaps. He leans back against a humid wall with a rattling breath of a sigh, cigarette worked over to the less battered side of his mouth as the hood falls partway over the back of his head. Not much to hide from, down here. "Had some /intruders/. They're gonna attract more attention." Jim shoves the pack back into his rear pocket and goes on a patting quest against either front pocket and two breast pockets like he's just realized he's forgotten to wear a bra - ah. There's his lighter. Chk-chk- /chk/, he eventually gets the wheel struck right. "It is no fucking /nursing home/, I'll give it that." Yes, he's just /going/ there, his cigarette end bounce-bounce-bouncing in and out of the steepled flame. Long-since mastered the art of puffing and exhaling without needing to remove his filter from his mouth, he maintains the same light and lowers it down towards Masque like he's intending to light his eyebrows on fire. Or maybe just the end of his smoke. The two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. "What kinda pest control you got set up?" Except Masque'd like his eyebrows to remain unsinged- he's had enough bodily harm inflicted upon him to fill his quota for a /while/. Maybe to the end of his days. A lean back precedes his left hand snapping upward to worm the lighter out of the other man's grasp, either for a lack of wanting to LEAN for the damn flame or a lack of trust. Gimme that. Chk-chk-chk... god damned non-dominant-hand bullshit. /CHK/. Like there's some unfelt /gales/ sweeping through the tunnels, he lights his own smoke with bandaged hand curled protectively around the process. Smoke wells up around his face, shoulders sagging as he just /breathes/ it in, grey against grey hair and pale face. "Got a few fighters," He continues out of the uglier side'a his mouth, tossing the lighter /upward/ with little regard for its flight path potentially landing it knocking into Jim's face. "The shadows help to see it comin'. More than the light." A pause, as he plucks the cigarette out from between his lips and /peers/ at it sticking out between crooked fingers of his right hand. "You. Staying?" "What, y'miss me? Who -- fuck -- knows," the last word /jumps/ out of Jim as he misses the fucking lighter on the first snag for it, swats after it and manages to catch it pinned to his hip. Convenient for turning over and stuffing into the pocket nearest there. "'m here. Bring on the fucking bugs." He says this with smoke leaking out through his teeth and nose. "You're gonna reek if that shit gets infected." "What, like after you shot me in the foot?" Masque's cigarette is used to gesture towards his left boot- a black, raggedy thing of post-captive /charity/ and so without the hole his last one used to sport. "Have you /met/ Nox? Pretty sure even if-" Somehow his hand and smoke manage to find its way to his face of their own accord, and his sentence is interrupted for a drag of the thing. Smoke is kept trapped for several seconds before it snakes out nostrils below broken nose bridge. "- If-" Breeaathe out. "-I /wanted/ to let it get infected, she'd creep in and change this fucking thing in my sleep." He gives a /shake/ of his hand, and a click of his tongue in annoyance. "S'what happens when you play hero," Jim is /taunting/ you, Masque, his lips vaguely peeled back from the teeth chomped down on his filter; kind of a grin... snarl. A snargle. His guide must have given him a reader's digest version of the story. It falls off his face soon enough like a crate off a loaded wagon, running over a mental /curb/ back into just normal grimacing. Bitter-beer-face. "--how's she, anyway." "Ain't in the fucking business of playin'- /hero/." The word leaves Masque like some disgusting little fly that flew into his mouth and needed to be spat back out before it left its disgusting /taste/ to linger, and it precedes another breath of smoke. "I was leavin' a fucking message." Or trying to. He's not /entirely/ sure the workers will pass it on. His own face - passive. He's staying here in his little spot on the mattress, hardly moving, hardly /wanting to/. Watching. Probably the most relaxed Jim's seen him, even if that relaxation manifests purely in a lack of scowling. Eyes occasionally slipping closed too long to be for blinking purposes only. "Fuck if I know." A genuine enough sounding tone of disinterest. Though he does add, a beat later, "Good enough to stand her own fucking ground." Tch. Quieter, "/Hero/." With no firm breeze circulating the cavern, it's ideal for smoke rings, drifting up from the treeMan's dispassionate face, jaw dropped open. Hwuhhhhh. Mouth-breathing. Watching them lazily pinwheel away and warp, twist and disintegrate into tendrils. It's a little harder to shape them when the corners of his mouth are just slightly smirky - truly, if ever a summary of Nox's state could be made /better/ than this, he'd be hard pressed to find it. There probably isn't a fantastic amount of dirt available in a sewer system, where cement reigns, but there are more types of plants than roots might need and Jim has begun to /fluff up/ and green over along the bare legs sticking out the bottom of his cargo shorts, moss growing thick, pouring off the sides of his flip flops to puddle around him and slowly creep up the wall he leans against. All adding to his environmental intake; still not /entirely/ in a perfect confidence for his respiratory and circulatory systems yet after so long without. It makes a very quiet damp straining sound, where it squeezes down against the concrete. From the corner of an eye, he's /observing/ Masque, the steady calculation possibly gauging what it'd take to steal his mattress, or possibly transitioning study from Masque's depleted hand, to the slow blink of the old bastard's eyes. "Kh." He, stubs out his cigarette and kind of sneaky-tosses it behind Masque's mattress. Totally out of the way. Masque's response to the moss is minimal. A frown, a squinting of his eyes down at all that green, and an idle blow of smoke at all of it. Back, healthy green. /Back/. The last of his own cigarette's dragged greedily inward before he unceremoniously flicks what's left of it aside, still lit, rising to his feet in the stilted movements of someone who probably should really be having bedrest. "Stay a while. Jimmy." He grates, moving to walk past the other man and out of his dark little corner. If Jim wanted the mattress, he can keep it. "I'm gonna go- piss." Or something. Walk poorly. Anything. He doesn't seem quite sure, shrugging under his coat so that it falls more comfortably now that he's not sitting anymore. "Yeah." Jim gruff out, in a hurf of air like a dog gearing up to bark but not yet past shoving whuffs of vocal air through its loose dog-chops. Setting his arms loosely across his chest, he's growing steadily into the wall, dark-loving vines finding chinks to cling to along the surface, filled in between with moss and weird little white flowers he wouldn't for the life of him be able to /name/ for you, but they seem to like it here. "Maybe I will." After a while, he'll be getting out another cigarette, smoking like a living topiary with livid blue eyes peering out of the clutter, scanning faces. Watching interactions. Probably, one or two moochers will wander over to bum a smoke, exchange names, point out different tips and routes for getting around, getting food, getting to the surface, finding a few places that sustain a dirt floor. But in general, he's left to his own devices. Which works for him. Lurking by that old mattress like it's HIS now. Fair and square. Settling in.