ArchivedLogs:Trouble in Paradise

Trouble in Paradise
Dramatis Personae Hive, Jim	2013-03-12 Hive goes to see Jim's prize. Set after Hive talks to Io.
Location <NYC> 214 {Jim} - Sunrise Apartments - Clinton
Jim's apartment is not big, the living room area L-shaped with the entrance at one end and a kitchenette found at the other. Furnished by a scuffed wooden curb-found coffee table, a saggy green couch upholstered in a scratchy burlap material and two chairs, the habitat manages to just barely function as a one bedroom rather than a studio by merit of a walk-in closet sized bedroom you would have to cross through to reach his cramped bathroom. In here, water damage stains the walls. As does rust, around the showerhead in the cramped shower stall. At the moment, one of the chairs in Jim's livingroom has been dragged into his bedroom where the carpet is thicker and there are no windows. Here, Masque's slumped body is duct-taped to a chair at the wrists and chest with a pair of canary yellow dishwasher gloves /taped/ around his hands. One of his ankles is also taped to the chair leg, but the other is propped up on a footrest and wrapped in bandages. The slight smell of blood and the much stronger smell of iodine can be detected over the general 'bad apartment hallway' smell that hangs around the Sunrise apartments. Jim himself is smoking in his livingroom with his one screwed up arm lying in his lap like a dead animal. His feet up on the couch, lounging back against an armrest, he blows smoke at the ceiling like he'd just got LAID. << Knock knock. >> This doesn't come on Jim's door. It comes slipping into his mind, not bludgeon-hard like Hive's usual mindvoice but whisper-soft, gentle. It comes with not Hive's voice but a chorus of voices in quiet echo, some (Flicker's /determined/ cheer through pain, Thor's stridence) louder, some muted, Hive's lost in the tangle. << We're here open up. >> Hive is outside. Tatty as usual. Battered old jacket, faded fraying jeans, sneakers falling apart, a t-shirt reading, "resistance is futile (if <1 ohm)". Slouching. Hands in jacket pockets. << -still really fucking weird how it changes his brainvoice - sorry, dude. >> Jim amends at the end, /aware/ his thoughts aren't hidden, but not entirely all that apologetic in feel. There the sound of heavy feet crossing the livingroom, the clack-click-jingle of Jim disengaging about a million locks - he can't even blame his paranoia on these ones, they came /with/ the apartment, bless them - and then the door is yanked open. "Can't say I'm not looking forward to this mess being over." So that's his greeting. "What'd you bring me?" He steps back to allow Hive entrance. << Changes how we speak because we have more >> this sentence finishes more in feel than in thought: power/control mingled together into one concept. << And less, at the same time. Don't have to sledgehammer just to get through, though. >> Hive is sauntering in, wandering towards the couch like he belongs here. He's unslinging a backpack from his shoulder as he comes, just as battered-ratty as the rest of him. It's pretty full, but the first thing he pulls out of it to hand Jim is a carton of half-and-half. The second, wrapped in crinkly plastic, is a potted (and somewhat /squished/) basil plant. << Guess missing the sledgehammering's like missing an old beater car. >> Jim's musing this mostly to himself than actively to Hive, he just doesn't have enough fucks to give that Hive /can/ hear it. << A porsche might be a porsche but it's not the car you're /used/ to. >> Never more stark is Jim's actual /extreme/ lack of experience with telepaths in general. Hive is the only one he's ever gotten to know. And the devil you know... "/That's/ what I'm talkin' about." He takes the half and half and just sets it on the /ground/ to free up his hands to get ahold of that basil plant. "I'm gonna smell like freaking pesto again, y'know. Christ." He pins the little pot against his abdomen with his bad arm and seizes his good fist onto the squashed leaves. The plant instantly begins to wither and brown. "All this plantmorphing /bullshit/ is a pain in the neck, in the city. Nothing to fucking eat that isn't gonna get noticed. Every freaking tree and shrub, strategically placed, bought and paid for..." Om nom nom, the basil droops into a sad, dry husk. << Most telepaths don't sledgehammer, >> Hive admits with the mental equivalent of a shrug. << Maybe you need to learn to eat more carefully, >> his sussurating chorus of voice ripples back next, and this comes with an inadvertent mental suggestion coloring it: the difference between hammering his vice-grip down into someone's << juicy tasty >> mind vs. slipping a thin chain around it. The difference between sucking one plant dead-dry and taking just-so-much from many. He's looking down at Masque. There's a << sorry I'm late, >> that comes without much real apology to it. << Did you hit him /many/ times? >> Hopeful. So hopeful. "Do what you gotta do man." Jim comments this deliberately out loud, and its inner mirror reflection is aimed at himself. << He's gotta do what he's gotta do. Let it go. >> (for now), a different guilty echo that's all too familiar with temptation, remembering deep, dizzying moments of blackout, guilt, a hateful laughter thrown in the face of a cold Denver sky and the grim, grim reality of cold winter soil. "Uh, I hit him more than /once/," Jim wads the now-dead basil plant up and sets it down. "And shot him. Not really sure what you'd expect me to do, it's not like anyone /told/ me all he had to do was touch you." /Annoyance/. Then he wanders out of the bedroom door again and sits down on the couch, wraps hand firmly around the warped portion of his arm and /grits/. The fingers darken, twist, rotate, a change that spreads up his arm. Small leaves begin to shoot out and the mass of it begins to grow. While it grows, he keeps his grip on them and begins to /twist/, against the grain, pulling downward on it. << You really need to hang out with more freaks. You're not paranoid /enough/ yet. >> Hive isn't even being sarcastic when he says this. He stares at Masque a bit longer, then wanders away from the bedroom entryway to slump down onto the couch beside Jim. << That gonna work? >> He's blandly curious, but it's a kind of detached curiosity. Most things he's saying are kind of detached. << You actually go after him alone? >> He doesn't /say/ 'idiot', but 'idiot' is /heavily/ implied beneath his words. "No, I brought my imaginary SWAT team with me," Jim's voice is raw until the full on shrub his arm has become stops growing, and instead is getting pulled back into his arm, slowly resuming the shape of fingers, knuckles, wrist - the twisted-squashed portion remains, though maybe there's a slight difference in its shape. He'd only really offered shrug as to his confidence it would work, musing inwardly << You can shape plants while they're growing... slowly. Damn, this is gonna take a lot of energy. >> He takes a grip again and goes to repeat it, forcing out branches and /pulling/ on them in the direction he wants them as they grow. "I've been going after people alone for about as long as you've been alive, dude." Grit. GROW. The rapidly expanding branches make little leafy rustles and cracks as they get larger. << Doesn't make you not a fucking idiot, jackass. And most people aren't people like /this/. We've got a lot more experience going after /freaks/ than you do. >> Hive is more irritable than anything else, a sharp tinge of annoyance in his mental chorus. His fingers scuff in a jerky movement through his hair, curling a familiar path down the side of his skull. << The fuck was your plan, here? >> "...what." Jim stares at Hive. It's a total flatline. ".../you/ guys?" This option had apparently never entered his mind, only slowly taking shape right now at the suggestion, and he pauses mid-TREE-armed. "Pff, have you looked at you guys lately? Even I'm not that much of an asshole. You've all been shuffling around like the Walking Dead," capital W-D, he's been reading the comics lately. Though in his mind, he's equating the Promethian Rescue Squad more with the ragged-worn and hollow-eyed apocalypse survivors in the series than the flesh-eating undead. "Gueeeeess the plan was to get him. If I could get him to fix the girl, win. If not," he shrugs, gesturing to Hive, "guess that's right now, and I'm pinging you for ideas." 'You' is singular. << We've seen us a lot more than you have. >> Hive is getting up again nearly as soon as he's sat down. Tipping out his backpack to dump a pile of first-aid supplies onto Jim's couch. << You're an idiot /and/ an asshole, >> is still an irritable mental growl. << Untie him when he wakes up. >> He's heading for the door, in the same hands-in-pockets slouching saunter he entered with. Jim's mind is a moat of bewilderment and irritation, that drops all too easy into the familiar realm of cynicism. << And here I thought it was one less problem they'd have to deal with. >> Pride never isn't ugly, and smartass inner translation gives itself away: just leave it to the professionals next time, huh? Right. "Sure." He says, pulling his feet back up onto the couch. "Whatever you say, buddy." Hive doesn't answer this, either the mental words or the audible ones. He just slouches his way out of the apartment, in a cloud of irritation that nevertheless holds too much apathy to even bother slamming the door. Just shuts it. And slouches off.