Logs:To: Joshua S. / Subject: Basement Nazi hoard / ... okay, maybe not.
| To: Joshua S. / Subject: Basement Nazi hoard / ... okay, maybe not. | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia | 2025-01-10 "We know Jews." |
| Location
<XAV> Vault - Xs Basement | |
Certainly no students are allowed down here, past the Armoury and the Teacher's Lounge and the Headmaster's office, down a narrow, quiet back corridor. The door is deceptively plain, which doesn't quite mask how very sturdy and very heavy it is, its also-deceptively-plain lock inset in the burnished steel. "Jee-eez." In contrast to the tone of vague disheart with which Roscoe usually says this mild oath, there's an undercurrent of gleeful fascination in his voice as he stoops to bring his face right up to the lock, squinting one eye (though the pulsating pink growths on his face, now ruffling down his cheeks and up from the neck of his t-shirt, under which even more can be seen in odd tiger-stripes along his ribs -- have already half-closed it anyway.) He twists his head to the left, then to the right -- "Wow, I never got this close up before, that is a way more fancier lock than I've ever seen, real Indiana Jones hours in here," he says, though then he's fussing at the long sleeves of his waffle-knit thermal, starting to push them up and then tugging them hastily back over yet more burgeoning fungus. "I bet I could pick it," he says decisively, "give me like... thirty, forty minutes." Natsumi's chunky overlarge sweater has a faint and telltale glow coming from beneath it, not fully disguised where she keeps reflexively tugging one sleeve down further over her hand. The scarf she's paired with it -- wound up around and around her neck in light layers more for decoration (and concealment) than for any sort of warmth -- will probably not much longer hide the unsightly growth reaching its knobbly fingers up over her neck, but for now at least her face is largely untouched. "Woah, you can do that. Not that you needed to clinch your place on everyone's heist teams, but wow." Sriyani has been dawdling a little ways back in the hall, largely because they have succumbed to the irresistible temptation to scratch up beneath their sweatshirt sleeve at their arm. Probably a mistake; there's stretchy pink gunk raw and bloody now under their stubby fingernails, and from their contorted expression the itch has not subsided. "Mmmnh," they have stopped at a less heavy side door. "Why do they even have a treasure vault, I mean, don't you guys keep all your stolen loot in Swiss Banks and the Caymans and all." When they pull that open, the vault door swings ponderously as well, and there's an odd echoey effect to their voice now -- coming strangely from behind in the hallway but also coming via the open doorway. They step through their side door, vanishing from the hallway but reappearing as if by magic in the open vault door. Their eyes have gone huge and wide as they look around -- beyond them there's a bit of an Aladdin-in-miniature feel to the vault they have stepped into. There are bars of gold stacked high and neat, but in addition there's a messy scattering of all kinds of eclectic treasure. Ornate circlets and pendant necklaces. Gilt worked picture frames (some with paintings still in, though others have had the artwork removed.) Elegant ornate chanukiahs and jewel-studded two-handled cups. Diamond rings and ceremonial daggers with ostentatiously inlaid hilts. Old coins from a scattering of countries. "Um," Sriyani is saying, hushed, eyes still wide. Roscoe had stooped down again, fingers tapping ponderously at his chin to keep staring at the no-doubt devilishly difficult puzzle lock, until it moves and he backpedals hastily out of the way. "Oh," he says. "Or we could do that. That's way faster." He doesn't sound disappointed -- well, he doesn't sound earnestly disappointed -- well, he doesn't sound that earnestly disappointed. He drops the potential ego boost of the lock rather easily, though, for the much more immediate ego boost of saying casually over Sriyani's shoulder, "-- told ya." "Oh my God." Natsumi's expression goes through several small shifts before settling on a scrunch of brow that looks just a little supercilious. "Okay, sorry to your place on the heist team but wow I didn't know you could..." Only after this initial burst of wonder is she looking past Sriyani to: "-- woah." The scrunch of her brow gets a little deeper. "We don't steal our loot but this definitely looks like -- uh." Sriyani's brows hike, and they step back through the door, immediately vanishing and reappearing in the hallway again. The vault door whumps shut as they push the other side of the portal closed. "Oh, sorry, didn't mean to kill the fun. It is super sketch in there, though, like, maybe we have to do some kind of -- de-haunting? Bad vibes in that vault, are you guys sure --" Despite the words they are saying this with an eager cadence, wide-eyes, fingers already twitching on the door handle to open it again, "-- you want to touch the ghost-gold?" "No, your way is faster," says Roscoe, this isn't not wistful and it's also somehow not not a grumble. He's still craning his neck around at the gold even with the door firmly shut again -- "It's way more -- I mean, I could tell that it was gold 'cause it looked like gold and I couldn't see through it, but the vault is hard to see through so I didn't know --" He shudders with his entire upper body, illustratively, then glances aside at Natsumi like he's sooort of hoping she will chicken out, but then he says, easily breezily, "Who believes in ghosts 'course I'm sure. We're just looking." "Heist team still needs a really good lookout." Natsumi is taking a step a little closer to the door, and then back away from it when she perhaps remembers how Sriyani's power will work, here. She casts a quick peeking glance aside to Roscoe, maaaybe hoping he will chicken out because there's a very small sigh afterwards. "If the Professor is on some sketchy thief thing, the people have a right to know." Sriyani bounces their eyebrows once, and pulls the door open again. They've stepped back through, picking their way step by careful step into the hoard. "Mmm," they say, picking up a jeweled photo frame with an aging sepia-toned family picture. And, more discomfited, "Mmm, as their fingers trail over an ornate menorah. And, "Mmm," looking at the dates and stamping on a plucked-up coin. "Guys..." Roscoe steps in carefully after them, brow pinching down over his nose, tilting a frown around the vault's glittering contents. "...how old is he?" he says. "The Professor. Like... ballpark." Natsumi is beelining straight for the pictures in their lavish frames, but after a cursory inspection of these she is also turning her attention to the wider cache. Her mouth presses into a thin line. She doesn't answer -- pulls her phone out instead to quickly google before making her initial accusation, but there's still definite relief in her voice when she says: "Too young to have be a Nazi collaborator." She is frowning at the wikipedia article, though. "But, I mean, his parents --" Sriyani's chubby fingers are clutching tight around the coin in their hand. "I mean, even so! Like to have it here -- these belonged to people. Right? There's gotta be laws -- ethics --" They open their hand quick, dropping the coin with a clink and a slither to fall back into a small pile of others. They are wiping their hand against their jeans, then folding arms tightly over their chest. "-- oh no we're definitely getting cursed." "Lots of dead people," says Roscoe darkly, though he flinches at the clink of coins, like he's not nearly as cavalier about all of this as he's pretending. He shifts from one foot to the other, gives the room another slow glance around, then -- "I mean, we should... ask, right?" Ask who? Apparently not the Professor because he is jumping straight for, "We know Jews." Natsumi has lifted her hands up in a gesture of surrender, definitively Not Touching. "You're getting cursed." She has to lower her hand though so that she can switch from wikipedia to her phone, starting to snap pictures of the Forbidden Hoard. "I mean, Avi..." She's saying this veeeery dubiously, like there's just Maybe Something (who knows what!!!) about Avi that is giving her doubts about his connection to this bit of Jewish History. "Where's Spence's real family from?" Sriyani's head is just bobbing slow and steady. Their wide eyes have not stopped flitting around this stolen treasure, and their hands are scrunching tight and repetitive at their sides, despite the somewhat unconscious way this makes their face pull in a twitch-twich of a grimace with each rasp of fabric against raw and mushroom'd skin. "Mr. Jax is his real family," they say defensively, and then, less certainly: "... Israel?" They are shooting Roscoe a look of growing concern: "Do you think Mr. Joshua would work here if he knew." "He's half-Syrian, I think," says Roscoe; he's wrapped his hands up in his sleeves, stretching the fabric along his arms, and tucked them over his stomach to keep from touching anything. "Dunno about the other half." He gives his head a short, fitful shake, like he's trying to get water out of his ears, then, "I'unno, should we -- I don't wanna bother him he's probably busy. And we're all sick. I -- we can -- wait. Probably. Right?" Natsumi is huffing quick and sharp at Sriyan's correction, but she just nods as she takes more photographs. Once she has finished this cataloguing, she is backing away towards the door, speaking again only once she's safely outside and not in any danger of Accidental Cursing. "I mean, he's gotta turn up soon anyway, right? We're all sick." She is looking down at her phone, but not doing anything with it, now. "You could email him?" Sriyani has been a little bit frozen in the center of the room, eyes locked on one of the faded family photographs. They pull their gaze away with a sharp inhale, and they're scooching towards the door too. "If it was my family I'd want to know." Roscoe grimaces as he's following the others out, in an awkward sideways shuffle, unable to stop looking around the stacked treasure as he does. "Email is so... I mean, imagine getting an email about this. To, Mr. Joshua, from, Roscoe, subject, Nazi hoard in basement." He shakes his hand out of his sleeve to scratch idly at the gunky pink ruffles on the back of his neck, with an uncomfortable twitch of his shoulders that turns into an odd head-shake-shudder. "It's not going anywhere, it can -- I mean, at least until he can come see for himself." Natsumi is scrunching her shoulders up; her head dips low, turtled down into her scarf in a way that is probably not just to deal with the discomfort. "Urgent: Nazi hoard in basement," she says. "Wouldn't want him to think it's not serious." | |
