ArchivedLogs:Audrey II meets Octopus Girl

Audrey II meets Octopus Girl
Dramatis Personae Chelsea, Jim
In Absentia	2013-12-02 Chelsea pays an arm and a leg for Jim's help. (Part of Infected TP.)
Location The Sewers
It's always dark in the sewer tunnels, which makes it doubly obvious when the bobbing circle of light cast by a headlamp swims into view at a T intersection. The girl wearing the light is quite a sight. She's fairly light-skinned, but definitely African-American, or perhaps Afro-Latina. Her hair is a matted, tangled mess hanging half-way down her back, consisting of three or four thick, gross looking dreadlocks. Even worse though is the collection of limbs sprouting from her joints. She has two extra left arms growing from that shoulder, and an extra right leg in her hip joint. The limbs are clearly not useful, and in fact hamper her movement. However, even more hampering her movement are the zombies hanging on to her as she tries to scrabble away from them. With a sickening, twisting crunch, the girl stumbles and falls as one zombie latches onto her extra leg and actually tears the leg from her body, stopping to sink his teeth into the severed limb. The girl grunts loudly, but doesn't scream. She uses the opportunity to get to her feet and get some distance from the leg-meat preferrer, though the second zombie is still trying to grab at the extra arms dangling from her shoulder. There's a sudden and terrible /ripping/ sound, a deep-roots sound, broken up by the hard-rain patter of mortar and crumbs of brick showering down behind this unlucky traveler, exploding out off a dark wall that had, up to now, been silently overgrown with moss and kudzu vine. The dark, wildly bouncing light of the lantern will have difficulty making out the sudden wall of solid tree that's slammed shut behind her, not just pinning but /crushing/ one of the undead against the wall. Dust and debris choke the air, wild shadows cast through snarly naked branches that /creak/ as they twist. Shift. MOVE. And then, from amongst the branches, the shape of hand can be seen thrusting out to snarl up in the back of the second animate corpse's shirt. The voice that can be heard speaking is... considerably less epic in comparison, graveling out blandly with a vague nasal quality, "/Yeah/ maybe not so much." YOINK. The undead is DRAGGED back in amongst the branches. They close in around it. "Ohshitohshit..." The girl sees it all happening as if in slow motion as the sewer tunnel explodes all around her. She dives forward and away as the biter is picked off her back. It had however, just clamped onto one of her extra arms, and the combination of his quick yoink and her dive forward resulted in one of her extra arms being pulled off in the zombie's hands as well. She rolls onto her back as she slides away from the Jim-wall, terror in her eyes, and then her light goes out. She can be heard cussing and fiddling with the lamp, trying to get it back on. The darkness is full of /sounds/. Wet, cronching sounds like a massive mouth chewing slowly. Intermittent is a wet /thunk-thunk-THUNK/. And a curse. Then a long stretch of dead silence, where the girl's breathing is the only noise heard. Then: shff. Shk. And the dry pop of a match being struck off a wall. A man's flat-disgruntled face stands illuminated by the small flame. A deep scar runs down the side of his face, gray hair fallen down over a lined and furrowed brow, the lips pursed around a cigarette that he's in the process of lighting. "Y' picked a bad time t'go sightseein', kiddo," he mutters. And shakes out the match. The tunnel goes dark again, save the glowing red cherry that burns a baleful orange when he inhales. "Shit don't hurt me..." The girl's voice is hardly more than a whisper, then she clears her throat and sounds more solid in the dark. "I- I mean, stay b-back, or... or I'll cut your balls off and feed 'em to ya." The girl can't be more than thirteen years old, and from her tone, he's clearly terrified and full of shit. She's tough, but not /that/ tough. With a rasping click, her lamp flicker back to life, held in her hand now, rather than on her head. There is surprisingly very little blood marking where her extra limbs were torn off. She is primarily just wrapped in blankets though. Presumably she has trouble getting clothes to fit with the extra limbs. Her brown eyes stare up at Jim from where she's half crawled away, but bumped up against a crumbled bit of wall, looking like she feels trapped and cornered. "Psh," Jim makes a KIND of blunt laugh-sound, kind of derisive exhale through his teeth, "You'd need a /handsaw/ if you wanted to even try." The illuminated tunnel will find only hints now of the horror that had taken place; the wall behind Jim is damaged and clung through with broken shreds and spears of vine and bark, but it's dried out and dead now, the bodies of the undead, now the normal-dead once again, crumpled and caved in and speared through like shredded rags on the ground. Jim stands leaning against the wall, absurdly underdressed - wearing a ratty brown corduroy jacket and a fraying kilt, barefoot. His skin is rough and crackling, seeming not to particularly notice the temperature, a few rogue green leaves poking out from behind an ear, off the bone of his wrist, from beneath the collar of his coat. He tips back his head to blow smoke at the ceiling, eyes askance to study the sites where the girl's extra limbs had been, "...Christ, they were tearin' your ass apart." The girl's tough expression actually breaks a little when she chuffs at the mental image presented by Jim, though she does manage to suppress any actual grin or laugh. "So... you're made out of wood or something?" She looks like she's relaxing some, and actually gets to her feet, though she lets the light dangle from her fingers, allowing the ambient glow to light the area. When Jim mentions the dismemberment, she nods and shrugs. "It's ok, it's my thing. I heal. And they only got my duds. Been trying to get rid of them for months, but..." She looks over her shoulder at the one remaining limb, and shrugs, making it jounce in an oddly disturbing way. "I figured they'd just grow back, like everything else. But I guess not." She has an strangely optimistic tone about the idea of these particular limbs not replacing themselves. “Euwegh,” Jim watches that extra arm bobble off the girl’s shoulder like it vaguely /pains/ him, lips peeled back so that he has to grip his smoke filter with his teeth. “Uh, kinda? Think ‘houseplant from hell’ and you’d be closer.” He crams one hand in a jacket pocket, glancing once briefly over his shoulder to make sure his six is clear of shambling dead and then approaches to squint with horrified fascination at the points where the extra limbs had once been attached. And kind of – absent-awkwardly extracts his box of cigarettes to… offer? The girl? One? Do you DO that, how young are kids /smoking/ these days? Meanwhile he’s asking in an undertone, “-s’it hurt? How’d you get /down/ here anyway?” "Yeah, I know, totes gross, huh? Guess I'll just call you Audrey then." the girl says, making an 'ew' face of her own as she glances over at the extra arm again. She arranges her collection of blankets into a haphazard toga of some kind, leaving the multi-shoulder in full view. In the light, there's a red, splotchy patch where the arm was, but even that is quickly returning to it's normal color. When Jim offers the smokes, a mix of feelings flicker over the girl's face. In the end, she clearly wants to /look/ like she's used to smoking, but almost certainly has not done so with any regularity. When she gets a cigarette lit, she doesn't turn green, but she does cough a bit, and then grins up at the tall man trying to cover for her newb-ness. "Thanks," she says, eventually getting the hang of the cigarette. "I've been living down here for months. More than half a year, I think? But look, if you're not gonna kill me and eat me or anything, any chance you could help me find my pack? I dropped it a couple turns back, when they were chasing me." “Audrey /II/.” Jim says it so briskly he sounds /affronted/. At… absolutely nothing at all, really. He will probably be the one holding the lighter steady for the girl to draw flame from, his brow twisted up dubiously like he’s /pretty/ sure this is wrong but he’s gone too far to stop it now. “/Months/…” He looks back over his shoulder as though someone invisible there could explain this nonsense to him, muttering low, distantly, “What’re we doin’ without you, Nox…” He jerks his head in the direction the girl had come from, implication enough perhaps that he’ll accompany her in this search and then just STRIKES OUT down the tunnel. She’ll have to beat feet to catch up. “Kid. The fuck – ever is your name, y’know you can’t /stay/ down here. It’s gonna get colder. Ice up. An’ we’re all near outta food as it is.” "Nerd," the girl says at the Audrey correction, watching Jim sidelong. She tries to hide her smirking though. She wraps her blanket-toga tighter around herself and runs to catch up, making it clear from the sound that she's running through the sewer barefoot. Apparently… that's just fine. "My name's Chelsea, and I'm not a fucking kid, ok? I'm /thirteen/. Uh…" She looks down a second and adds, "Well, what day is it? Is it December yet? Should still be thirteen, I think..." Kind of takes the edge out of her retort. It's hard to stomp off in a huff and then stop to ask for directions. She just kind of mutters as they walk. Clear evidence of someone who's been on her own for far too long at too young an age, just like too many youths before her. "Who's Nox, anyway?" It's not exactly directed at Jim, but it's said loud enough that it could be interpreted as conversation. "I met that furry guy... what, a couple weeks ago, and he said it was mid-November. Yeah, I bet it's almost December." “/Which/ furry guy,” Jim mutters, joylessly touching trailers of ivy – curiously /healthy/ for being in the sunless freezing underground – with loose /swats/ and bats. They flourish up vibrantly in his wake. “And hate to break it to ya but thirteen is still prepu-fucking-bescentOH my god where are your shoes, /yes/. It’s fucking December.” He’s still not LOOKING at her, just scowling on down the tunnel . The scowl only grows momentarily harder. “…she was a friend.” Oh look. A bend in the tunnel. Jim TAKES it, fingers curled around the cigarette in his mouth but not actually doing anything beyond just holding them there. He’s already muttering back to a previous topic, “-and it’s not just the cold down here. There’s been /things/ crawling around this godforsaken bowelsystem long before the dead started taking strolls. They mellow out when its colder but they don’t die. Never fucking die.” Grouse. Mutter. He side-glances at his unlikely charge, “-so you get run off for the--,” he gestures at one of his own shoulders, “/Limbs/ thing? How’s that work anyway. They just – sprout when you sneeze or something?” Chelsea looks down briefly while they walk, not equipped to deal with Jim's feelings of loss for his friend. She says quietly, "Well, if it's December, I'm almost fourteen, so whatever. I didn't need shoes when it was warm, but yeah… I should probably scav some." She looks up and points at the next turn. "I'm pretty sure I came from down that way. I got kind of turned around with the…." She trails off, her youth finally overcoming the thin veneer of bravado she had worn. She glances over with a wicked grin at Jim's questions about her limbs, probably a combination of amusement, and gratitude for the distraction from her own dark thoughts. "Yeah, the foster home didn't sign up for Octopus-girl apparently." She chuffs another short, mirthless laugh at the notion of sprouting. "Yeah man, they just show up, probably like how you pop branches every time you fart. Wind in the leaves..." Grinning, Chelsea reaches up to fit her lamp onto her forehead again, turning to peer down the new turn. Sure enough, another fifty yards down or so, a backpack lays, half-submerged in the muck. "Hey," Chelsea says, turning back to Jim, and subsequently shining her light in his face by accident. Kids, am I right? "I found a big pack of batteries a while back. I'll trade 'em to you if you show me the way out near that Goodwill over on 6th? I got really fucking turned around running from those things. I've never been in this part of the tunnels before…" Sssss foul LIGHT. Between the heavy bags beneath his eyes and the heavy hang of eyelids above them, Jim has a lot of skin to twist together to protect them. Like a turtle. This slitted expression could /also/ be the full some of his response to the wind-in-leaves comment. “Do you one better, kid. Dunno how you been feeding your ass up to now and I don’t even wanna know.” He adds in case she tries to /tell/ him. “I’ma show you how t’find a guy I know – y’mighta heard of him, Jackson Holland? Flashy dude? On the news now and again for do-gooding? He’s got a program now’n again for helping out mutie kids. And more important he’ll likely /feed/ your happy ass. And,” he has this /way/ of inserting words like he expect to be interrupted, “You don’t /want/ help it’s no skin off my ass. But that’s where I’ma boot you out.” Onto the STREET. It sounds almost like that’s all he has to say on the matter. Until he mutters, “… tell’m Jim sent you up.” It’s /almost/ like an introduction. Chelsea walks along in quiet for a long moment, scooping her bag when they go past it, but just letting it hang and drip-dry from her hand. She walks a long time in silence next to Jim before she finally says, "Seriously? You know Holland? I guess that's cool. But if you don't want those batteries, I'm not trading anything else, so don't get any ideas…" And with that, Chelsea wraps her hands, the two convenient ones anyway, into her blanket-toga to keep them warm as they walk.