ArchivedLogs:Not For Eating

Not For Eating
Dramatis Personae Noah Ringe, Thea
In Absentia	2013-10-30 Thea negotiates for a little girl's wellbeing
Location Underground
The old, abandoned subway tunnel is bisected here by an earthen tube which is mostly round, but with a flat bottom. The tube cuts directly across the subway tunnel from a roughly downward direction, to a more upward direction further on. It's from the upward direction that the sounds of 'work' are coming from, though these are no construction worker, even without seeing. The sounds are scrapes, and seem to be accompanied by chittering, alien noises, occasionally punctuated with a woman's soft-voiced comments about structural integrity. Anyone coming into view would see Thea in most of a burqa, just with the head wrap thrown back like a hood. The cloth is sturdy, and probably warm. She's also in the company of a hulking, man-shaped hercules beetle, who has to hunch to keep his enormous horn from scraping the ceiling. She's also with a woman-shaped ant being, and the three of them are apparently discussing the finer points of tunnel physics and maintenance, like a foreman with his workforce. A handful ants the size of great danes scurry about working away at various tasks while the 'grownups' talk. Chittering, quiet noises, and all the rest of it will easily be drowned by the new sound source from the general subway area. It sounds like a young girl, evidently terrified out of her mind, that's screaming her head off. She's moving, maybe running, and takes a sharp turn within the subway tunnel, going quiet before some new terror makes her scream bloody murder again, yelling for help in a very disconnected way. It sounds as if she chose to run down the subway tunnel and then stop and be totally terrified of the bisected tunnel areas. All of Thea's minions halt in their tracks at a gesture from the woman as she cocks her head to listen more carefully. Already moving toward the tunnel entrance, Thea waves over her shoulder at the ant-woman, "Keep going, Sonja, you'll know it when you see it." Apparently she didn't even need to tell Herc to keep up with her. He trails along, catches up, and then puts a gentle hand on her shoulder. She smiles up at the beast, and then shakes her head. "Sorry, if it's some scared kid, she should see me first." He pats the nightmarish beetle-man's arm affectionately, and continues toward the tunnel entrance, carefully but with authority, like the mistress of a castle that has been invaded. "Who's there?" she calls, into the darkness. Their response is immediate and an extremely hopeful mush of "OhmygodpleaseSaveMeIt's going to eat me!" and similar sobbing, before suddenly she screams, but it's bizarre, like she's being shaken during the scream. Mostly since, well, she is. The girl is currently jerking and sobbing and rotating her arm to try to free herself ineffectively from a squatting black creature that would blend in with the other giant insects, except for a thick scorpion-like tail extending down the tunnel loosely. One front, angular limb has the girl's arm, the other has a tote brown bag like one would have for the grocery store (although there's no light to see the color). The only words come from the girl for now, who is twisting around like a rabbit in front of the larger carapace-covered intruder. Thea snaps her abnormally long fingers, but the gesture seems to be aimed back up the tunnel she and Herc just came out of. The sound echoes up and down the tunnels, but Thea sidesteps her way into the old subway tunnel, suddenly very cautious. Hercules is keeping himself more or less between her and the girl's captor. Thea's whipcord muscles are tight enough to sing with the tension, but she keeps her voice calm, and measured. "Heya, big fella. I assume that thing attacked you, while you were top side?" Apparently she means the little girl attacked Noah. The snap causes a slight movement of the head of the intruder. Although really the only indicator that mass is the head is the location compared to the body, at the current low, downwards angle it's tilted. However, the 'joke' gets more of a response. Low-slung jaws click and move as he snorts a sound that's probably a laugh, but has a lot of teeth-grating. "Clearly vicious, like... a chihuahua," he says in Herc's direction (and Thea as well, beyond Herc), tone amused; voice betrays gender easily, as well as a probable age-range of maybe young adult heavy-smoker in sound. He projects: it's like he's making sure the people ten yards behind her can hear too. "Don't listen to it! You're--no, NO, please help me!" the girl shrieks towards the female voice, orienting helplessly in the dark, her eyes huge and staring, groping. Noah, though, seems to perhaps not even be aware she's having an issue. "I like your tunnels," Noah adds, in a kind of thoughtful, curious way. Cordial, really, like he was mentioning he liked her nice car. Thea's head tilts, a gesture much more insectoid than canine, when she hears Noah speak. Her antennae twitch as she 'looks' the beast over, and then takes another step forward, still leaving a generous thirty feet or so between. Hercules is an enormous, but quiet, presence at her side. Scuttling noises can be heard at the tunnel mouth she just emerged from. "I'm glad you like," she says, turning, arms spread wide. "They're uh... they're here to be used, you know?" Thea manages to keep the worst of her nervousness with this hulk out of her voice still. "But uh... I need to ask you a favor. There's a lot of people who use these... and... we can't really have kids go missing down here. Missing kids. It brings cops, and lights, and attention." Thea swallows, and glances over at the tunnel. Sonja strides out confidently, but stays well back from Thea and Hercules. "We can't really afford that kind of attention. But I /can/ get you... well... is it food you need?" Thea's voice finally wavers, but she tries to cover it with a cough, and clears her throat. If he's thinking about it, or over her words, or if he heard even half of it, it's probably not terribly easy to tell. The girl has lapsed some into sobbing now, but is agreeing with everything Thea says. All of those things, yes, cops and attention. "I can get food," He says, a bit indignantly. The girl screams, on cue. "She's not food," he adds, suddenly, as if that was a terribly amusing idea, and hadn't even been on his radar. Eat the girl? How silly! "She's so I don't draw attention," He adds, in a sort of patient way that suggests by tone that he's sane, despite that the words probably seem really backwards. "Are you insects? You look ...strange. Heh." And (still dragging the girl), he moves a few steps to the left to get a different angle without really approaching, and then shakes her, as if to make her scream again. She does, of course, but is getting exhausted. Thea flinches when he shakes the girl again. Herc and Sonja don't really feel the concern the same way Thea does, but they know /Thea/ is concerned, so that's enough. Thea manages a laugh to cover the idea of eating the girl. Of /course/ that never even crossed her mind. "Are we- Oh. Yeah, I mean, sort of. I'm a mutant. And these are my friends. I'm Thea. This Hercules. And that's Sonja over there." Thea sighs, and clears her throat again. "So, I guess there's probably a lot I don't get here. I'm really not clear on how this girl helps you /not/ draw attention, but she /is/ drawing attention down here. And also, I've worked out some pretty solid methods for getting around topside. Or... at least for getting what I want brought down here." She shrugs, intentionally flapping the burqa around herself to emphasize what she means. "It's criminal that we have to hide... but, I'm pretty sure it isn't that little girl's fault, either. Why not let her go? Let me help you out. I've lived down here a long time." "Let her go down here? I guess," he says, as if that hadn't been his original plan, but does let go, without much reluctance. She immediately gasps and runs a little distance and trips over his tail, going sprawling, groping now on hands and knees in the dark. "Well yeah. Mutant, me too," Noah agrees, as if the girl on the ground was just kind of incidental. "I don't use my real name anymore. I've decided to use 'Roach,'" Noah states, in a way that suggests he hasn't gotten to say it before, and is proud of it in some kind of juvenile way, because he also arches his body some, scraping the tunnel a little, to fill more space, as if that would impress her and her friends. "..For the survival part," he adds, quickly, as if fearing alternate views of that name. The more he talks, the more accent will come in, too. He has southern in there, definitely not New Yorker. "Why aren't you tryin' to drive me out?" he asks, in the exact same tone as everything else. "Maybe you can't see me, huh?" he wonders, almost eagerly. The tension drains out of Thea when the girl is released. She drops to her knees and says quietly, "It's ok hon, just follow my voice, back to me, ok?" Thea waves Sonja over, and the ant-woman complies immediately. Thea coos and cajoles the girl into eventually taking Sonja's hand, and then explains, "Sonja is going to take you to an exit, and then you're going to tell everyone how you got lost in the park, and couldn't find anyone. Nothing about underground, right?" She gives the girl's shoulder a reassuring squeeze, which wouldn't be reassuring at all if she could see the Thea-horror-show herself. With the girl on her way, Thea stands, brushing off her clothes. Herc hasn't moved an inch. "Well Roach," Thea says, miles more confident now that she's sure she's not going to see some little girl's head get twisted off. "We don't /need/ to drive anyone off. And you haven't threatened me." She shrugs. Thea's own accent is pretty clearly 'Jersey girl' and not much else. It's doubtful she's ever left the country. "There aren't /that/ many people kickin' around down here, and it seems to me we can all work out how to live together. There's plenty of room, and we're all down here for the same reason, after all." Thea gives an abnormally long middle finger in the general direction of 'up'. Upon closer inspection, Thea has an extra knuckle and segment in each of her fingers, giving her hands a spidery look. The whole of the girl being talked to, and moved, and all the rest of it, gets no response at all from 'Roach'. He just sits there, aside from a little bit of motion to move the bag in his right hand over to the left, but that's nothing special anyway, just suggests he has a hand preference. He doesn't jump on her to kill her or anything. No interference with Sonja's taking her: he isn't possessive in the slightest. "Which reason?" Noah asks, promptingly. Zero reaction to her pointing anywhere. "I like this near the subway," he says, as if that was his reason for being in the location he's in. "Well, I live down here because the rest of the humans won't leave me in peace, topside," Thea explains, her tone indicating she's not sure if Noah is pulling her leg or not. "I can't see /exactly/ what you look like, but know you can't 'pass'. I can't either, without all this." She shrugs again, indicating the burqa she wears. "Speaking of the subway, I actually have to get going," Thea nods in the direction of the tunnel. "Got miles to go before I sleep, and all that. But look, if you need anything, even you know, just, basic supplies or whatever, just let me know. I'll be by this intersection every day, around this time, through next week." She glances up and down the tunnels, before adding, "Just so you know, there's a bunch of people living down here. You don't want to do anything with their nest, or they'll kick up an impressive fuss. I've lost good people to them, so it's best to just keep your distance. Everyone's real territorial down here." She takes a few steps and turns to add, "Take care, Roach." "Well. Tell them when they hear me, just to stay away, then, and we're all fine," Roach says simply, with a bit of tiredness. "And I'm not afraid of anything," he also informs her, with an edge of arrogance, or defensiveness: maybe being reminded he can't 'pass' was a little sore. "Bye then, Thea," Roach says, and, although not suddenly, clatters around some due to his armor on the ground but also in opening his jaws suddenly very wide... and releases a horrible, throbbing, high pitched shriek in a pulse that causes bits of ground to shake off, rattles an echo deeply and far, echoes and bounces. It has an awful upper register to it, like a high pitched whistle. His body moves and dodges a little in the corridor for some reason, and then he heads off with a few harsh bounds down the tunnel in the way he'd been heading-- not her tunnels, the main ones. After about thirty seconds, he'll pulse again. ....it makes the girl's screams seem quiet and tame and relaxing. ....