ArchivedLogs:Of Shadows, Trees and Angel Dust
| Of Shadows, Trees and Angel Dust | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia
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2013-05-14 Nox talks. Jim talks. Masque talks? ... Something is wrong. (Part of Thunderdome.) |
| Location | |
It's a basement, somewhere, that much is clear from the slightly musty-cool feel, the lack of windows, the stark-bare cement decor. What purpose this place originally served is hard to discern; something industrial, judging by the heavy reinforced eyelet hooks still set into the ceiling, now devoid of any loads to bear. Of late the place has been repurposed, though. Around two parallel edges of the room, sturdy cells have been constructed, heavy reinforced metal segmenting off large cage-like cells. The enclosures are largely identical: two sets of bunk beds with pillows, thin sheets, identical grey wool blankets. A pair of large covered bedpans, a bucket usually filled with fresh-ish water. The center of the room is divided in two. One half is large and open, a spacious expanse of cement floor and emptiness. The other half holds long trestle-tables, long benches, both riveted into the cement floor. The ceiling -- of the room, of the cages -- hold very noticeable dark security-camera bubbles. There is one door leading out of here, heavy steel that is securely chained and barred from the outside.
One of the people watching is Masque, seated at one of the tables at the very far end of the room with his back pressed against the wall. He looks... at home, really, as he does most other days. Long fingers idly rap in an absentminded little pattern against the wood of the table to his side, while his other arm is draped unceremoniously over his stomach. He was /not/ one of the fussy, slow eaters. In fact, he's probably had ten times more food /here/ than he's had in the last two months prior to arriving. Said food is probably what he's got to thank for his week-and-a-bit-old bruises having nearly faded entirely, and even the slashes across his chest and arm are starting to go from its once fervent red to a somewhat more healthy pink, still stark under the brownish blotches on the torn wifebeater. An overall lack of redness around his throat - and around that /collar/ in particular - hint at the fact that he's been mostly behaving. Perhaps annoyingly so, to some of the more confrontation-prone people here. His face is... back to its old self, more or less, give or take a slightly more crooked nose. His attention glides steadily from person to person, searching for specific individuals with each switch in focus. As if he's got an /order/ down. Maybe he's counting. Friends and foes come and go, after all. Speaking of coming, Jim drops ingloriously into a seat across from Masque. You could probably see him coming from diagonal of the way, laying down narrowed looks from time to time. The rotation of mutants in the basement has already hit a few noticeable cycles; the two loudmouth telekinetics in the cage by the door have gone missing, replaced by a single sullen blobmonster man prone to belly-checking his way through the suppertime crowds. The little creeping gremlin girl with the glowing lantern eyes that had once skulked beneath the tables hasn't returned, and a new avian woman with sharp talons has been trying with only partial success to carve out a niche gang for herself with the other prisoners. All of which Jim is abstaining from with generally abject isolationism. He probably continues the steady trend of handing his meat and proteins over to Peter, trading out for whatever passes for /greens/ in turn, and otherwise mostly skulks around with the other likely skulkers that share the opinion that they are Too Old For This Fucking Shit. He's paring down from 'autumn colors' and right into a winter look. That is... bare branches and no greenery. His hair has gone almost entirely gray, the perpetual tension lines in his face seemed deeper in the rough-bark flaky-brown texture of his skin. And his collar? It's hard to tell if it even works; the tell tale bzzt's, when they come, fail to earn much response - the bark beneath has been burnt black. Not much else that /can/ be done to it. He leans back against the wall as well, arms crossed on his - actually, his clothes are dirty, but undamaged, nor does he have any injuries to be healing - chest, and tosses an ankle up on a knee. "Big dude in the second cell is gone." He comments. "They brought back that walking razorblade already." When two are taken out, and only one is brought back, there's really only one meaning. Two days now since Nox’s inaugural fight and if one were unfamiliar with her, they’d think she’d bounced back from it in record time. Since a cardboard box was tossed into her cell, she’s been slightly less scattered and being able to curl up in darkness has also helped with healing. But--and around here, there always seems to be a but--having been pushed into the ring with someone made of lava, it is probably no surprise to those who do know her that she’s still suffering the deep damage of burns. Still wrapped in Masque’s coat--oddly enough it was returned to her by one of the guards after the fight--she comes drifting towards the table occupied by the two men. A chair is taken one down from her fellow tunnel-dweller. Veins of harsh white cross-cross her visible skin--overlapping the stark band of white that circles her throat courtesy of the glowy collar--and makes a harsh map of her face. Even her hands are marked. But her smile, that remains untouched. She offers it up to the pair, like a gift. “Good morning.” Pause. “I hope. They allowed you to take my breakfast.” Masque's acknowledgement of new arrivals at 'his' table is fleeting. Once they are close enough to be visually inspected, he scans them ever so briefly, before his eyes flick up to the walls instead. His head tilts in a tiny snap upwards only a moment later to facilitate the action. /Looking/ for something. "The older woman. With the slime." He grates this to Jim, before a sharp inhale through the nose, "Her back's a thing. A weak spot." His voice trails off. Perhaps it is all the information he is willing to spare. The rapping of his bony fingers on the table's surface stops. Then continues again. His search of the walls comes to a stop, and come to rest on Nox, now. Slowly trailing downward to that coat around her. Something about it prompts a short-lived, lopsided grin that disappears as quickly as it came. "They don't /allow/ us to take anything. They- enforce it. Why haven't they called us back to the cages yet? It's been... mmhm." Back up go his eyes, to the walls. Clocks would be mighty useful right now. Tap-a-tap of fingers. Speaking of eyes, though... there's something different about his, today. Even looking straight up, beyond the lights, his pupils refuse to constrict. Just slightly dilated. "Y'noticed that too?" Jim mutters, presumably to Masque, though he makes no major shift to direct it. His head is tipped down, hard fucking stare aimed /outwards/, lips barely moving. "The new kid, looks like a puckered asshole," one of his fingers is /picking/ at the table top, grinding at some small ink stain with his thumb like some displaced Lady Macbeth. Out, damn spot. "Guess he's got a light sensitivity. Thing." "Fhh." He uncrosses his legs when Nox arrives, a small token of acknowledgement before he... just crosses them the other way, "Y'holdin' out, lady." Is it a question? A greeting? A statement? He has a passing side-eye for Masque, "What. You /wanna/ get locked back up?" “I hurt. Inside.” Yet Nox’s smile doesn’t change. Perhaps it is sheer force of will, the way tiny flowers will sometimes push their way up through cracks in concrete. She too looks down, touching her fingertips to the web of white lacing the back of one hand. “Fire. I hope. I am given more time. Before the next.” She pauses again before whispering even more softly, “But he did not die.” And that’s what matters, right? When she looks up, her eyes go to Masque. Masque, with that here and gone again grin, and odd fix and staring nature of his gaze. Slowly, she blinks. “Are you well?” Tap. Tap-a-tap. Tap- ... tap. Masque's hand sinks flat against the surface of the table. Still. The question posed by Nox finds him pressing his back harder against the wall behind him as his expression takes several seconds to figure out what to do with itself, before settling on mild annoyance. This question strikes him as being /completely/ out of nowhere, apparently. "Little-" He starts, gritting his teeth during the short pause in between it and the next word, "-spy. Worry about /yourself/. Y'need it more." The arm over his stomach draaags itself across his chest, before he /thwops/ a hands across closed eyes, rubbing at his eyelids while letting his head /thunk/ back onto the wall. "I don't /want/ to go any-- nnh. I mean. I don't /want/ to be locked up. But it's been..." He gives a one-shouldered shrug, before opening one eye and peeking past his own fingers at Nox, first, then Jim. Somewhat questioningly. Then somewhat... amused, twitchy halfgrin and all. Like he's discovered a /thing/ and they haven't. "... Nno?" "What d'you need?" Jim is all about pertinent questions, looking at the marks on Nox's hand. He breaks the lump-on-a-log stillness to reach out and touch them. Sadly, he's no doctor, nor mutant-biology expert. Just... rough-textured and, stripped down to his core, flat /curious/ yet, in these grim time. Poke. "These hurt?" For how /colorfully/ expressive he is wont to be, his face doesn't have much beyond a flat /abstain/, one that doesn't change when he looks from Nox, to Masque. And whatever 'jesus-christ he's /smiling/ wtf' sentiments might lurk in the murky bog behind his washed-out blue eyes (the only /human/-textured part of his anatomy not given over to desert-plant coarseness), he only asks, /baldly/, "She get marks like these before?" "Time. Shadows. To be home again." Simple, impossible answers. Nox allows her hand to be touched, even taken. She doesn't appear to notice the inspection, locked as she is in her own, of Masque. The tracery of white coursing her skin looks very much like her circulatory system, if someone had shifted it to the surface and injected it with ivory. They are slightly harder to the touch than the velvet of her skin. "It is a hard thing, to swallow fire...Masque. I have worry enough for both. For all. Are you well?" Masque's hand /drops/ back down and off of his face, so that he can stare at Jim properly. Or at the very least towards him. "You look like a fucking... you look..." What? Oh. Jim asked a question. And Nox... is staring? In an attempt to recompose himself, Masque leans forward and straightens, then-- just back again, slouching. Nox's hand gets stared at, but he can't quite seem to /focus/ on it. "She gets... I've seen..." ... Now, apparently, is the time for him to shake a lingering remainder of a grin and promptly /scowl/ in a mix of anger and confusion. And yet, there is something else on his face that precedes it and mixes with it all. Something curiously similar to - fear? Eyebrows knitting and eyes widening, pupils dilating yet further as both his breathing and heart rate /spike/. "Something... is wrong." The hand resting on the table gets /yanked/ inward, as if it was in danger of spontaneously being lopped off otherwise. He rises from his seat at once, /fury/ drawing deep lines across his face as he bares his teeth and stumbles unexpectedly to the side. However unpleasant his voice is usually, it is about to get scratchier, rougher, and more /broken/ still: "SOMETHING IS WRONG!" ZZAP goes his collar. Down he goes, onto his hands and knees, greasy grey hair falling messily around his head where it hangs. "/Masque/." Jim's voice, brittle-dry as leaves, is not broken. It's not even alarmed -- just very, very /immediate/, dropping down on a knee. He leans nearer with an all too pragmatic awareness of where his bare forearms (and /face/) are in relation to Masque's hands. "Masque. Hey. Breathe." He looks to Nox - is this /normal/? He's lividly awake, deep-rooted focused... and filled with a very simple dread. Something is wrong indeed. Nox's reflexes are not what they were but when wrong begins with Masque pulling his hand back, she reacts. They have achieved a tenuous peace here. Like that, it's shattered by one quick movement, one bellow, from a man she knows to be dangerous. The woman stands abruptly, clutching /his/ coat around her. "What is happening? Masque? You...you have to..." What was she saying? Already she's forgotten. Going several shades duller from apprehension, she reaches out to touch Jim's shoulder in a bid to encourage him /away/ from arm's length of their stricken comrade. She looks up at the ceiling, for the first time seeming to notice the camera bubbles. "What did you do?" she whispers. Masque stays where he is, head down and eyes open but focused at /nothing/. A reluctant sort of noise leaves his throat, a growl scraping its way past gritted teeth and fuzzy mind. Breathe. Right. Breathe. He /heaves/ himself onto his side with a gasp of breath, flicks Jim the briefest of glances, then kicks himself back toward the wall again, to sit on the ground, back arched, one hand /clamping/ over his own forehead - and pressing upward hard - while the other is kept at chest height. Fingers splayed and palm forward. The fearfulness is still there, amongst that chaotic thundercloud of anger now rising in his mind, but... he laughs? Yes. Of sorts. Through madness or realisation, or both, he /laughs/, quietly, hoarsely, his throat nor brain no longer familiar with the sensation or sound of it. Even his face makes it look like every breath outward is in /pain/, but fortunately, there aren't many of them. It subsides back into quick but normal exhalations, and he is left, pressed against the wall, bunched up, staring blankly ahead. At his own hand, held up ahead of him. In threat? Or in reflex. Likely both. Jim isn't exactly chasing after him, meeting that brief glance with a grim stare that turns away when Masque's does. He doesn't shrug Nox's hand off when it finds his shoulder, but she will also find a recalcitrant default /uncooperativeness/ when she seeks to draw him away - at least until he's damn well /ready/ to move. Pat. He's locked down his jaw and then drops a hand over the shadow of fingers on his sleeve absently, and stands up, shifts his hips in a way that rotates his weight on his heels, putting his back to Masque instead. And he looks out hawkishly at the room at large. If anyone is looking in their direction for the animal-ratchet roar Masque had made, they'll find their view of its source blocked off by one severely unpromising glare of one /pissed off/ private investigator. Sweeping the room with a rotation of his eyes, Jim compresses his tongue against his upper lip. "... the fuck is going on." "Their games." Nox sounds as if she is in mourning, rather than angry. When Jim repositions himself, she adjusts her stance as well. Standing beside, facing the man on the floor rather than looking outward, and maintaining that touch until the growing intensity of the light from her collar forces her to drop her hand. That's when she slides to her knees, as much from discomfort and exhaustion as a desire to place herself on Masque's level. It taxes her but she speaks. Not in fits and starts. True speech. "Masque, please, look around you. You are here, with...with Mister...Mister Morgan and I, we are here. Whatever you are seeing, we are here and you are not alone." No one... seems to know what's going on, around them. There are a few people looking, of course, but none quite so vehemently as to suggest they may have something to do with it. Sure, a few seem /pleased/ with this development, but the amusement on their faces is easily covered in a thin veil of with 'hey man I don't know either don't look at me like that'. A few of them even throw up their hands, taking a step back or returning to what they'd been doing before. Masque, meanwhile, seems to be entirely somewhere else. His pupils have now nearly eclipsed his greyish dead irises. When Nox sinks to his level is when he seems to spot her again, as if having appeared out of /nowhere/, but it does little to comfort him. In fact, it sends a spasm of /anger/ across his face, and he sinks back. Only to brace himself, it seems, to rise once more in a swift but largely uncoordinated attempt to stumblelaunch himself straight at-- who? Jim or Nox or both, it's hard to tell. But what /isn't/ is that he means to grab for their /faces/ if he is allowed near enough. To /melt/. "Geh... th'fh... /whhRGH/!" The thing about paranoiacs is that, in times of surprise attacks, there's little surprise to be found - "Shit." Jim manages to /state/ this fact, if with a bit of a /grunt/ behind it for how rapidly he's snapping out a hand to yank Nox back with him, skidding backwards on his heels in one rapid-reflexive movement the instant he hears Masque moving so /rapidly/ to stand. He'll be /trying/ to shove her behind him while he sort of fall-drops backwards, his feet - not moving actually. At least not /backwards/. He's trying to get one foot on /top/ of Masque's, to tangle up his legs-- It's all hindbrain instinct. There's little foreground consideration for the feeling of fingertips swiping past his cheekbone. Of everyone here, Nox really should have been the person to anticipate Masque's sudden moodswing. She knows how he operates. Another error, another crime to lay at the feet of their captors: to make her forget. Had she been uninjured, she could probably have moved herself out of the way. Fortunately, there is Jim. He gets a handful of the collar of the coat she wears, the subsequent yank sending her skidding backwards across the floor. For a moment, the woman is a tangle of limbs and soiled red cloth. It finally resolves into Nox again, fighting to hands and knees, watching the two men tangle. She is, of course, horrified. But rendered ineffective beyond the forgettable sussurus of voice that pleads, "Masque, /no/." Whatever has taken over Masque's brain, it's taken off the breaks. The fingertips that swipe past Jim's cheekbone do so regrettably lightly, but leave three shallow indentations where they trail, interspersed with hairline cracks tearing open near the deepest ends, swiped flesh and surplus of gathered skin displaced to sit just behind one eye. It doesn't hurt, but the tightness of it will be something to get used to. He doesn't even /look/ at his work, mind overtaken with attempts to get /away/, through whatever is in his way. This, apparently, includes someone who isn't even there but get SWIPED at either way. Two someones! Right behind Jim. GIT AWAY. But his slow, predictable stumblings make him easy enough to stop, and Jim's foot finds his without issue. He nearly falls over, but through some extraordinary act of his brain managing to keep balance, just... stands. Sort of awkwardly with one leg behind the other. His arms stop their swinging, and he just. Stands. Confused. Very slowly peering downward, as Nox speaks. Whether he hears her is not immediately clear. Zzzp. This is the sounds that his collar makes, but he doesn't move. Okay, that's not entirely true; the more functional side of his face gives a twitch. ZZZP. Now, muscles in his neck contract before his face does, staying tense as he /sways/, slightly, to the side. Mouth twitching in slowly ebbing anger. /ZZZZZP/. Nothing. "/Stop/," Jim barks up at the ceiling, at the cameras, with a hand already reflexively clapped against the side of his face. "Jesus, you wanna fucking kill him?" “They must.” This, from Nox, as she pushes herself to her feet. Shadow grace is gone as is all judgment, it would seem. Because she approaches Masque again, hands raised, the shining bracelets casting harsh light on his face. “Masque. Masque, sit down. Please. Sit down, they will stop. Sit down, you must rest.” "It wh... 's in my..." Masque utters downward, before squinting and turning his face away from Nox's hands, yet staring at them all the same. Like /she/ is more of a danger to him than the other way around. His hands lift again, oh so slowly, toward hers. Or her face. "... mmhmy food?" He asks, like she would know. Wherever his hands were going before, another tiny zzp sends them right to his NECK. Fingers curling around the collar to /search/ it for something. Like it's got an /off/ switch. This only gets him another ZZZP, though. While it does not seem to hurt him, he's... definitely on his way down. Knees slowly buckling. "Fuck," Jim is rubbing /hard/ at the strange, strange reorganization of his facebits - moosh moosh. "-- when was lunch. How long - /dammit/." He's darting his eyes over the walls, possibly now /also/ looking for a wall clock that doesn't exist. He seems to be saying this somewhere around Masque's vicinity, possibly to him. Or in response to him. Maybe he speaks Masque-ese. He lets go of his face and demonstrates a /patent/ inability to learn by hovering near alongside Masque - not grabbing onto him but if he's going down, Jim would probably make some SOUR-FACED effort to keep his skull from smacking on the ground. "You alright?" This. This is for Nox. From Jim. With love (manic-sharp stare?) Nox has yet to look at Jim, to see the damage done his face. All of her attention is pinned to Masque, though she doesn’t dare creep any closer than she already is. Her hands remain as they are--an offering. Perhaps an unwise offering, but an offering all the same. Sincere and then /pained/ when Masque suffers a shock for moving to accept them. “Stop it!” she hisses towards the ceiling. “Stop it! Please!” Then Jim is there and thank every deity--until she looks up at him with tortured eyes and realizes what was done. “Your...oh, James...” No, no she is not okay. But she’s trying. “The food. If...why would they...why would they do this?” "Iii... hhnhh..." Masque tries. It's possibly a complete sentence in his head, but devolves quickly into a /hiss/. At Nox, though he fails to keep his eyes on her long enough to properly focus, gaze flicking up and down of its own accord as he finally lets his hands drop down from his collar again. No off switch. Then, he simply turns. And starts to walk, steps /heavy/ and dragging while one arm SWINGS for someone who isn't there to shove them aside. A painfully slow and unstable march towards... a guard. "Gggrgh." He tries, momentarily, before stopping a good dozen steps away from his target, still. /Swaying back/, like the tiny bit of momentum he had acquired now rolls across him in reverse a thousandfold. But he manages to stay up, and in a brief moment of clarity, shouts at the top of his lungs, raspy and /furious/. "HGHGET. FffFUCKED!" Then, with that done, he falls. Sideways, unmoving, eyes open and breathing just fine. Braining less so. Jim is halfway to him, catching Masque under an armpit from behind as he goes down, when the door, That One Fucking Door, bursts open. "Go. Quickly," says one of the first men (a policeman? They're not in uniform) into the room, gesturing. It's a very rehearsed procedure, mutants are /taken/ in and out of this room frequently, and often with extreme measures of force when resisted. Already, the sound of the door opening has an almost pavlovian effect on many of the veteran inmates, slinking clear into their cells as Jim, Masque and Nox are /descended/ upon. "You, get back," Nox is instructed with a instant triggering of her collar to /get her on her way/, while Jim is given just enough time to hear the words, "Drop him! Get back!" before he's dealt a little of the same. His collar notches up rapidly enough to make one of those concerning wet-wood /popcrackles/, and Masque slips free. He doesn't have time to hit the ground though before they're /on/ him. /Strong/ rubber gloved hands latch onto Masque's arms and the waistband of his pants and one of his legs and a handful of his scraggly hair and /everyone/ grabs for his arms to bind them behind his back with plastic handcuffs. Jim - has never been good at cooperation in the best of times. So he doesn't bother changing his ways now! At least until there are proddings and nudging and 'bzzts' and, most importantly, he's able to get a last glimpse of where the fuck Masque is under all those people ON him. He turns a last time, looking over his shoulder at Nox. And just a flat, almost bored frown. And then the whole parade is gone again and it's back to business as usual. | |
