ArchivedLogs:Outreach

Outreach
Dramatis Personae Dusk, Jim, Tatters
In Absentia	2013-08-25 '
Location <MOR> Below New York
Buried beneath the bustle and noise of New York's busy streets, the world underneath the city is a quieter place. Quieter, but far from deserted. Occasional ladders, often rusting, ascend to the city above and are evidence that at /one/ point these tunnels had been in use, or had been planned for it; perhaps by way of maintenance, or access to subways or sewers. These stretches have been abandoned by civic infrastructure for some time now, though, but occasional scraps of evidence -- discarded food wrappers, piles of tatty blankets or moldering old mattresses, sometimes voices carrying echoes through the dank concrete -- give evidence that /someone/ still uses these tunnels. The rumbling of subway trains sounds frequently through the walls, many of the train routes accessible through various doors and openings. Somewhere up in the city above it's -- well, dark. It's dark down here, too, so that's not much different, really. It doesn't bother Dusk all that greatly; the pale batwinged mutant /looks/ like he belongs skulking in dark places, from his fangs to his pallor to the nocturnal /eyeshine/ that the occasional dim lights reflect in his large dark eyes. Down here he actually wears /clothes/! Dark sneakers, tatty faded jeans, a grey t-shirt modified to fit his wings. Somewhere, Hive's radioed ahead -- or, well, /Jim/-radioed ahead to /say/ that there will be one vampire bat skulking through here, but who /knows/ how well Morlock communication disseminates such information. Not knowing these tunnels at all himself, his keen nighttime vision and inaudible-to-most echolocation doesn't do much to help him /find/ his way though it does plenty to help him not /crash/. So unlike many wanderers down here, he doesn't keep a hand against the wall, just shoves hands into his pockets, wings tucked against his shoulders and his eyes skipping absently through the tunnels in front of him. After probably a grumbling mental relay between Jim and Hive that is technically just confirmation of what entrance Dusk will be using, even if it would be phrased something like a series of repeated 'what the fuck' 'dude I don't fucking know' exchanges. Dusk will find himself under the suggestion to follow a vein of creeping sewer vines along a winding course. There is no way to offer shortcuts - he has a /walk/ ahead of him. In the mean time: Jim has sent off someone to find Tatters. /Maybe/ it was Anole, he does tend to be the tunnel's speedPatrol amongst the heavy-hitters. Go go Gadget ANOLE. He waits for either of them to reach his enchanted monster glade. A cavern coated in a thick carpet of clinging vines raveling open small fuchsia flowers, the occasionally swampthing monsterTree has drawn in branches and roots to form something man-shaped, leaning back against a wall wearing a ratty kilt and a hawaiian-print button up. And a fedora, because why not. Fitting a cigarette into his mouth, a brief thrash of orange lighter flame is stark in the dark of the room. A stooped, heavy figure steps quickly through the tunnels, cane tapping at the floor with a regular rhythm. The figure's features are weathered and worn, with an eye patch and a Malcom McDowell-style shock of white hair. A threadbare tweed jacket is thrown over its shoulders, and a surprisingly intact pair of thrift-store quality formal shoes clip along the ground as it walks. It is, of course, Tatters, wearing one of the handful of shapes she's started switching through since she started being paranoid about the military shooting her. This particular one looks a bit Mad-Eye; deep, creased lines provide some definition for her face, and if the coloration's a little bit gray, well, it's hard to tell in the sewer light. And besides, she's meeting a vampire. Or something. She got an Anole-gram, and now she's off to play escort. Don't want to let another visitor get shot at, it's a bad habit to get into. Finally, the clip-clop of shoes yields to a crunch as she crosses into Jim's carpet-zone. Dusk follows the vines, once he meanders into them. A slow winding path through Jim's underground /wonderland/, there's a faint twitch of his lips as he takes the scenic route. Through the sewers. He slips quietly into Jim's domain, wings unfolding just slightly; not really a stretch; in enclosed spaces there's very rarely room for /that/. Just s soft rustle of suedelike skin as a flicker of eyeshine rivets onto Jim's lighter flame. "Nice garden." One wingtip extends to tweak at a small flower with a claw. He tips his head upwards, chin lifting to Tatters. "Hey. Thanks. For, uh. Coming." "Jesus," Jim has a way of expressing even surprise that's ragged-flat, phrasing it almost like a greeting for Tatters. That, or he has strange thoughts about the Christian holy son. "That is /you/, right?" It doesn't even seem to be the real question he's asking - that comes next, with a lopsided squint, "...you can grow that eye back, right?" Sometimes, Tatters has too many limbs. Sometimes, not enough EYEBALLS. Jim's probably seen it before - that doesn't mean he needs must be /serene/ about it. Oh, ho - night vision would see a crook of grin behind his cigarette as Dusk arrives, "Y'like? Grew it all myself." He ashes into his own greenery. "It's my fuckin' /savings/. Sink a lot of energy into growing it big /now/ so it's free god damn lunch later if I suddenly got /work/ to do." You might call it his… /powerplant/. He offers his cigarette pack /to/ Dusk if he draws near, "I'm guessing you didn't come down here to sail the /thermals/." The flowers those wings brush past blossom wider. Like a freakish Ferngully. Tatters steps carefully through Jim's sanctum, the tap of her cane muted by the foliage, her exposed eye flicking and rolling unnaturally until she stops by the pair and inclines her chin to Dusk. "S'what she said." Pause. "...and, uh, no probs. Less wildlife down here than there used to be but it's still, uh, you know. You're a friend." Slowly turning her head to regard Jim, she gives him a look for a moment and then breaks into a scraggly, gaptoothed grin. "Yeah, s'me. And I can, but…" Thin fingers reach up to her face, shaking slightly as they flip her eyepatch up to reveal a perfectly serviceable eye beneath. It looks subtly different from her other, but it's hard to tell how, and Tatters is always a little asymmetrical as it is. "It's not like this isn't, you know, a disguise." He's right about the not enough eyeballs, though. She's probably got a spare or two tucked away somewhere. But those aren't good for being /inconspicious/. Dusk does take a cigarette, stepping forward to accept one with a nod of thanks. He leans in, too, for Jim's lighter as well. "Have people been back down here? I mean -- I know Anole's been picking up --" His brows crease. "But have people been harassing --" He waves a hand around the tunnels around them. His eyebrows hike up as Tatters flips up her eyepatch. "You keep any extras? Eyes seem like they'd be tough." His wings pull back in, his head shaking. "No, man, I just came down to take in the /scenery/. Get sick of all the concrete up there, sometimes you just need some --" He pokes at the blossoming flower. "Green space." The kind that smells like /sewage/. "You guys been following this shit in Harlem?" "...Yeah." Jim has. Though he says it leaning nearer to Tatters to /eyeball/ her eyeballs, "-s'that one do something?" Shoot lazers. Spit acid, like those horned lizards. Flk-sizzle, he manages not to light Dusk's face on fire, though he manages it mostly by just holding the lighter out and letting the other man's superior night vision deal with the finer mechanics of it. It all seems pretty blase - save that his eyes keep flicking towards Dusk in the gloom. "...weird story, huh? All we need now's for Tatters here to go hoisting her skinny sister over her head and screamin' for sanctuary." Like the Hunchback. "THIS one sees in the dark." Tatters drops her eyepatch back into place and indicates her unpatched eye, then steps back and...well, her expression doesn't change. She spent a lot of time putting this one in place, she doesn't want to ruin it. Wearing her Old Man Face, she...kind of just looks like she's on something. Her voice gets a little graver, though. "Yeah. I've been, like, trying to decide if I want to do something. Slash, like, can do anything. Killing a bunch of people isn't, like, a good start, though, and I can't think of a clever way to untangle this." She glances at Dusk, then leans back agains the wall and continues not-frowning. "Mine see in the dark, too. S'handy." Dusk demonstrates this by not lighting his face on fire when he lights his cigarette, drawing in a deep breath and tipping his head back to blow out the smoke. "It's that I came to talk to you guys about, actually. It -- is pretty tangled. Don't really see the cops just letting them /walk/ out without a whole lot more bloodshed. Don't really see them, uh, rolling over and letting the cops shoot them. But we thought if they had other ways -- in and out. There could be other options." His hand turns up, gesturing again to the tunnels around them. "Got a friend who's offered to help carve out tunnels to and from the church. Get them a way out. Get other people a way /in/, if they want it. But --" His smile is quick, and a little wry. "She's had a run in with you guys before. Didn't go so well the last time. And we really didn't want to butt heads again, this isn't -- didn't want to step on any toes. /Especially/ not after everything you guys have been through, we want to make sure we're not intruding at all. But we thought maybe if we work /with/ you all, make sure she and her people only dig far away from any places you live, that might be okay. And if -- with the trouble you've had down here recently, it might even be helpful. If you could use some extra digging done yourself, while we're down here." Jim is the odd man out in the /night vision/ department. He just extends a few narrow branches to brush against walls he gets too close to. Like /whiskers/. Feelers his way around. He's not saying any of this - the hand tucking his lighter back into a breast pocket has paused mid-route. His eyes are scanning the obscured face in the dark, where Dusk's cigarette glows. "--what." When he leans forwards, a number of vines remain attachet, strung forward from the wall like some sort of strange life support system, "The bug lady? That wasn't Jax and crew that busted her out, was it?" He'll answer to the rest later. This now. "I'm not s--" Tatters' face does crease a bit more as some of the frown shows through, abruptly magnified by Jim's interjection. This is the problem with being out of town: you miss things, and when you get back you're left to reassemble some useful narrative out of a dozen snippets of gossip (and occasional, news stories). Sometimes it's just about who's going out with who and who's giving who the Silent Treatment and where people are working now. But apparently sometimes it involves who's got a murderous vendetta against who and who broke who out of prison. This, Tatters muses, is what organized crime must feel like. It's not a good feeling, feeling like you maybe need to have someone whacked. Especially since those stories never have happy endings. With a low grumbling sigh, Don Tatters plants her cane in front of her and raises her eye to fix it on Dusk, her mouth forming a thin line and her free hand adjusting the lapels of her jacket. "Yeah, uh. I think you're gonna need to do some more, like, explaining." Dusk shakes his head, plucking the cigarette from his lips between two fingers, both his hands lifting in a gesture of surrender. "Oh, hell no. She kidnapped one of Jax's schoolkids. I don't think that really -- goes a long way to /endear/ her to him." He drops his hand, thumb flicking at the butt of the cigarette. "Besides. We break people out of -- the labs we break people out of aren't /jails/, they're --" His jaw tightens, a muscle twitching in his cheek. "Jax and Ryan wouldn't -- whoever it was, that wasn't our lab crew." He lifts the cigarette back to his lips, taking a slow drag. At his back, his lips quiver, faintly. He holds the smoke a long time before he exhales. "She's been kind of understandably laying low since she got out. But this crap up in Harlem, she thought she might do some good. Quietly. If you all are willing to work together to carve some new routes out." Fffff, Jim runs a hand down the back of his head. It makes a planty rustling sound. He shifts eyes to Tatters, explaining, "I wasn't there personally. But there was this rash of fucking - giant bugs burrowing around under the city. I mean, real giant. Car-sized. They ended up on some kind of rampage downtown, killing cops left and right, blew up City Hall. Made Nox's little oopsie in the park look like a fucking cakewalk." He jerks his head towards the dark of the deeper runs from whence MadEye Tatters had come, "/Before/ that, though. Some of 'em ended up burrowing into our tunnels. Don't really know how it went down but a fight broke out. Took some of Masque's fingers off." So, the usual. "Guess they were under the control of some mutie bug woman. She /was/ locked up but…" But SHRUG. He's relaying the summary with a few jaws rhythmically grinding in his jaw, smoke raveling slowly through his nostrils and teeth. He jerks a chin at Dusk, "Y'know they carve out too much, we'll have another fucking sinkhole like down at whatsitMills. Only this one in my goddamn living room." There isn't quite a 'but' at the end, but his dialogue more peters off than comes to a full stop. Maybe thinking about his /other/ livingroom, because he slowly turns his head towards Tatters, "...but if we brought Ash in. Some some /new/ walls up for every tunnel they carve out…" "Hold on, that whole thing was with the City Hall woman? Friggen," Tatters listens patiently to Dusk, and then to Jim, and then makes a face, her aged visage crinkling unnaturally. She takes a breath, then opens her eye and looks back to Dusk. "Okay, so, glossing over the fact that you're apparently best friends with an Actual Friggen Terrorist who's apparently also a kidnapper -- was it Peter? I bet it was Peter -- ANYWAYS so leaving that aside are you sure this is, like…" She squeezes her eye shut and spreads her hands. "Okay, look, her getting spotted at the church is gonna be the quickest friggen way to get them friggen SWATted. That kid Jess may be innocent, but Bug Lady's killed a whole friggen bunch of people for literally no reason. "Nevermind if they think we've got a friggen terrorist cell here in the sewers. The raid that came after Nox fucked us pretty hard, and that was WITH Nox and Jax on the scene and an operation of limited scope. And with the peeps they've got--" She waves a hand vaguely towards Jim, implicitly including the other two remaining capturees, "-- you can bet they know where we live. The only reason they haven't come after us is the same reason they haven't hit the Lofts -- 'cause it'd be expensive and bloody and they can't justify it. But Bug Lady in the sewers would change everything sure as her showing up to your game night would." Tatters knits her brows and shakes her head, straightening her shoulders and resting her weight on her cane, giving Dusk a serious look. "Like -- you know this isn't about me being afraid to stick my neck out. But her presence anywhere NEAR this mess -- anywhere near US -- will escalate things immediately. If she wants to do some digging I'm not, like, gonna stop her, Harlem's not our territory and I'll make sure we've got no one there to get in her way. But please, if you've got any pull, tell her that she'll be doing more harm than good. "...well, if she's genuinely trying to do good, I mean. If I hear about any, like, /rampaging/, you can scratch what I just said and promise her that I WILL be coming after her." At Jim's mention of Nox's 'little oopsie', what warmth there was in Dusk's expression has faded; by the end of Tatters' monologuing his posture has stiffened, wings snapping back in to tighten against his shoulders and his muscles clenched up tight. The cigarette in his hand snaps in half with the sudden curl of his fists, his jaw clenching. "Yes," he says, very quietly, "let's just gloss over the fact that I'm /not/ best friends with anyone thanks to /your/ best friend's -- /little oopsie/. Small whoops." The broken halves of cigarette fall forgotten to the floor; he takes a step back from both of them, vines crunching softly under his sneakers. He draws in a breath, slowly, and then another. His eyes turn away, looking off down a tunnel, very much /not/ looking at Tatters or at Jim. "It won't be in your living room." His voice is quiet, still, calm now and even. "Harlem is many miles away from here. The tunnels they dig are stable and even if they went horribly catastrophically wrong, it'd be miles away from anywhere any of your people live. I only came to talk to you because last time she was -- /also/ miles away from your living spaces, but Masque melted the faces off of some of her bugs and with how shitty things have been for you guys we /don't/ want to intrude, not even -- come /close/ to intruding. We'll be miles north on the other side of Manhattan entirely and the whole point of this plan, Tatters, is to give them a way out that /isn't/ seen. We don't want her or her bugs spotted by anyone on the outside. They'll come up from underground and stay underground and close the tunnels up after themselves -- or Ash can if it comes to that, though given who we're talking about I'd rather not drag him into any of this shit -- and we can stay far away from all of you and not bother you one bit." Jim wears no colors of surprise, for Dusk's reaction, watching the tension and the pulling in of his wings with just… weight sagging down around the sides of his mouth. "Dusk," he doesn't say it gently. But it's not angry either. Just smoker-voice raw and grizzled-flat. "Take it easy. I'll talk t'Ash." He reaches out a foot to grind out the smoking cherry of the dropped cigarette, "You came down here to talk to us, we're /talking/. These're some really fucking legitimate worries. I'm sure the tunnels they were digging in Grover's Mill were /meant/ to be stable, but even you're saying this is a woman that kidnaps kids from that mutie /fortress/ Jax's kids go to and goes on public slaughterfests to blow up city buildings." He glances at Tatters, "I guess I don't got a reason to fight her if she doesn't cause us any problems. But dude - New Yorks a god damn island. Just remind her that. If she /does/ turn this into another Grover's Mills, we might not have /time/ to get blamed for it by the government before we're drowned." "Jim, Harlem's like miles away and we're in, like, a thing that's built to drain into stuff. We'll be fine, and if her tunnels collapse she'll be in more trouble than we will." Tatters closes her eye for a second, then glances thoughtfully along the path Dusk had come. "...and I'm figuring this isn't some ridiculous plot to, like, undermine Harlem and hold it hostage or something which I wish I didn't have to friggen worry about but jeeze, you know the kind of people I get into fights with down here and after City Hall she fits the friggen profile…" Grumbly sigh. "Sorry, Dusk. I know you've had a hard time too, and people down here haven't made it any easier. But...fuckin' seriously, man, if what Nox did taught us anything it's that killing folks only makes shit worse. I...haven't met Bug Lady and I have no idea if she's learned that. The folks who busted her out sure as hell haven't and I'm just really fucking...if something awful goes down I won't be able to stop it. If I didn't think that me just chilling in her--" Tatters blinks, and slaps herself on the forehead. "--you know what? Frig it. I can friggen disguise myself, that's a thing. She can dig, but I'm coming to supervise. Terms, there you go." "If I weren't taking it easy," Dusk's voice is a mirror to Jim's neither gentle nor angry but just flat, his eyes still not meeting the others', "you'd know. And no. The sinkholes in Grover's Mill did --" He stops, shakes his head, snorts. "This is stupid. I'm not here to argue whose crazy terrorist is worse. I'll --" His hand lifts, palm pressing against his eye, and slowly there is a -- slight, but noticeable -- unclenching of his tensed muscles as he listens to Tatters. "Yeah." His voice is a little rough. "Yeah, no, that's not -- what. Honestly, just want a way for this whole Harlem thing to -- /not/ end in a giant bloodbath, because right now that seems to be the way it's going. And a quiet escape might avoid that. I'll let her know. We're not here to make problems for you all. Just to try and minimize some for the people up north. I'll make sure you're looped in, then, and can be around when she gets to it. Um." He's still looking away, at the tunnels around them, at the vines. He frowns. Shrugs stiffly. "Thanks." He turns, hands shoving back into his pockets. "Be in touch, then?" Jim compresses his jaw, looking to Tatters when she lays out her terms to take point in all this. It's not a very happy look, but when the hell is Jim ever looking all that happy. He's /built/ for grumping. "Yeah," is all he says. "Always, man." He watches Dusk's back as the younger man makes his exit. And leans back more heavily agains the wall. Only if or when Dusk has made his way out of the tunnel does he murmer behind his cigarette, "...he said 'we'." Tatters gives Jim a quick glance, then turns back to watch Dusk stride off, her face returning to its neutrality, looking almost normal in the gloom. "Alright. You know where to find me." She stands there quietly as the surface dweller leaves, then shrugs and turns on her own heel as Jim voices his observation. "Eh, that could just mean him and...Theresa? Or maybe not, who knows. I'll find out when this thing happens, I guess." She glances over her shoulder at Jim, giving him a respectful nod before moving off. "I gotta hit the tubes, though. Research to do. Stay leafy." And soon, the tunnels once again echo with the tap-tap-tap of a cane. And soon after, they're quiet once again.