ArchivedLogs:Needs Some Work

Needs Some Work
Dramatis Personae Noah Ringe, Trib	2013-12-19 Trib finds a rooftop Squatter, and helps him relocate.
Location <NYC> Heroes for Hire - Midtown East
The front room of the Heroes for Hire office has the secretary's desk, a small filing cabinet, a computer, and a ceiling fan. Janice, the aforementioned secretary is a sixty-something woman who's accent clearly marks her as being from Eastern European descent, though probably one generation removed judging by how well she speaks English. Janice was almost certainly selected by some busy-body lawyer on Luke's behalf, probably to keep him free of any more accidental law suits. The paint is faded, but everything pretty much works. Off to one side is the bathroom, and the other door leads back to Luke's office. There's isn't much in Luke's actual office but a small desk and a swivel chair pushed into one corner, with a pair of straight backed chairs on the other side of it. A couch is by the window that looks out over the city, with Times Square in the distance. All things considered, its actually a pretty decent little spot. Aside from some strange clawmarks around the doorframe coming into Heroes for Hire, there's nothing amiss or unusual around the front, really. It does look like someone tried to claw their way into the door at around knee-height by going after the frame, but the stability of the doorframe remains intact. Most of the 'amiss' things, at the moment, are in the vicinity of the roof. A large black shape lurches over the upper roof's edge, sending a clump of snow off in a heavy pile down by the side. And again, on the other side, as if some strange confused snow shoveler decided to do the roof. Several more scrapes and rasps continue, as another pile of snow is flung, far enough to sprinkle sidewalk and street in clumpy white debris, stained by the grime of the rooftop. With the boss in jail, and the office more or less closed, there's no real reason for Trib to be stopping by tonight. Maybe he's coming by to do some paperwork or something. Dressed in jeans and workboots with an army surplus flack jacket and a knit cap, the boxer seems unbothered by the snow and cold weather as he comes up the steps. That is, until some of it nearly lands on him. He frowns up at the shadowy shape, narrowing his eyes as if to see through the darkness. Seeing nothing immediately to raise concern, the boxer continues to the door, pausing as he notices the claw marks. His brow lowers, and he takes a step back to regard the roof again before he moves to the door and unlocks it. Five minutes later, he's at the access door to the roof, easing the door open as quietly as a cold-driven squeal will let him. The big man moves panther-like onto the expanse of the roof, and he pauses a few feet from the door, addressing the shadows with a hard cast to his flat expression. "No squatters." If normally squatters are timid, the result is not standard squatter behavior. "Yeees, well, I'll throw them off if I see any. Do you have more muffins, Cage?" is hissed immediately back. The voice is thick with decades of damage, like a dedicated, lifelong smoker, but has an eerie upper register mixed into it, chalkboardy in type. And out of the shadows, it slides: Pitch black, angular, mostly humanoid but with the sheen of an insect off the dark plates and the featureless, masklike head. No eyes, nose, just twisted spines and a low-slung fanged thick jaw. Several coats (and still one magenta Hello Kitty Blanket!) are layered over one shoulder and across the back, where the huge black spines that arch off his body protrude randomly here and there through the fabric mixture. Bits of fluff from the inside of a jacket float out as the rips grow worse. It's clearly hunched in the warmth of the mixture of coverings, moving along partially-squatting, though most of it remains in the dark shadow. Trib's gaze locks onto the odd-shaped entity, finally picking him from the shadow. He frowns, and takes a step forward. folding his arms across his chest. "Hey, Kafka," he says, raising his voice. "I'm talkin' to you. No. Squatters." Said shadow creature releases a sharp, sudden screech, that sounds like an awful clash between a sneeze and a cough. It's loud, and bounces off the nearby buildings immediately in a stark echo. "You're not Cage," he realizes, grumpy, and seems to lose interest. "I'm a new /hero/, just hired, so .....go away," is his response, shifting backwards again with a rasping sound of maybe metal on concrete. Trib barks a sound that might be a laugh at the identification, and shakes his head. "No, I ain't Cage," he says. "But I fuckin' work for him, so -- " he breaks off as the rest of the creature's answer filters through, and his expression is a mix of anger and resignation. "Cage fuckin' hired you?" he verifies, his brow lowering even further. Then he shakes his head, muttering to himself. "Course he fuckin' did. Soft-hearted bastard." He shifts his weight, considering something, and he juts out his lower lip. "If you're on the payroll, what the fuck are you doin' freezin' up here? Ain't Cage give you a nice warm place to lay your..." he furrows his brow. "I guess it's a head?" "Payroll? --- Do you know that you're now a non-profit? I came for the good deeds, helping people and that shit," The monster Noah answers in a cheeky way, quite happy to return the tone back, it seems. "But for the freezin' part: I didn't ask, but I think it had something to do with me not fitting in doorways," he continues, with a little bit more irritation, though it's probably not readable about if the irritation is about Cage not having wider doors, or just doors in general as a concept. "Not that I like it up here, it's too cold for me anyway. I /was/ trying to fix it, but it's still too fuckin' cold. So you'll get your way without freezin your ass up here to yell at me about it." Noah stalks out of the shadow more fully, his distended, strange limbs uncurling and taloned hands adjusting his blankets while shivering pretty heavily. His massive battering ram of spined tail arches upwards high, twisting a little to shake off snow that was clinging to it from it's previous use as a snow-shovel. Trib frowns at the reminder of the company's new status, and he shakes his head. "Even non-profits have a payroll," he says. "You gotta keep some people on the books, to keep things runnin'." He waves a hand at the door behind him, as if this illustrates his point. "Ain't nothin' wrong with helpin' folks, but damn -- a guy's got to fuckin' /eat/." He frowns at Noah's explanation for his current location, and exhales a foggy snort. "Cage is a dumb fuck," he says flatly. "Otherwise, he'd know that the fuckin' basements in some of these old buildin's have fuckin' wider doors, on account of back when they delivered coal. All he'd have to do is fuckin' rip the bricks out." He shrugs. "You might have to fight the rats for the warm corner, but you'd at least be fuckin' warm an' dry." Noah doesn't cock his head, or move much at all, beyond, well, the shivering which has nothing to do with his personal attempt to STOP shivering. "I excel at brick removal. Let's go see," he suggests, simply. He doesn't stare at Trib or look at the door expectantly, those types of things require eyes, so he simply stands there. Trib's grin is a fleeting thing, a brief flash of teeth at one corner of his mouth. "You're okay, Franz," he decides, turning back towards the door. "Come on. We'll check the alley entrance, first." And then he's heading back through the door, pulling it open this time with a bit less stealth, pushing up a good shelf of snow before he disappears inside. He doesn't look back to see if Noah follows; he seems to expect that this will happen, narrow doors and all. It doesn't happen. Noah will do another one of those screams, but this one's full blast. A shriek that rises in pitch and rattles the windows just briefly from the sonic pressure, as if a car's metal side was being dragged down the side of a building. Noah will instead climb to the edge of the roof and wait until Trib comes back out, whereupon he'll jump down directly into the alley. It's not quiet, he makes a heavy crunching noise when he hits the ground in a crouching squat. Trib emerges from the building a few minutes after he disappears, frowning deeply as he looks up at the roof. When Noah comes plummeting down, the boxer takes a step to the side, making for a larger landing area. The other man gets a glare for his efforts. "First thing you gotta work on is stealth," he says. "Unless you're keen on folks callin' the fuckin' cops, which I /ain't/." He turns, then, and leads the way to the basement entrance, a small set of steps leading down to a bricked-in arch that does indeed look like it would accomodate a mutant of considerable size. "There probably ain't no proper door, on account of the bricks," Trib says, wrinkling the ruin of his nose and reaching up to rub a finger of his half-hand along its crinkled length. "But me an' Cage can probably fix that pretty quick, when he gets out of the jug." The glare gets no response. But Noah can pick up on tone, which earns mostly just a shrug and a little chuckle. He clicks his way along in Trib's wake, towards the spot, seeming to kind of follow Trib's location but not getting terribly close to him, by the angular movement of head. "You're sayin I should make a hole there?" Noah asks, skeptical, but not unwilling, by tone. However, if he can exactly tell where the hole should BE, may be more questionable. Trib considers that. "Well, yeah," he admits, rubbing a hand along his neck, ruffling at the hair that pushes out from under his cap. "I mean, you can wait until Cage gets sprung an' ask permission if you want, but it ain't gonna get no warmer." He quirks a grin at Noah, and shrugs. "Better to ask forgiveness an' all that, right?" "Probably!" Noah agrees, glad to come to a conclusion about it, although possibly he just wants to wreck the wall. Noah approaches the wall and starts to tap his talons against it, sliding down to partially stand on the stairs. He taps loudly across the wall, against the bricks. And asks, while he's doing it, "Do you have a mutant power to break down bricks also?" in a conversational way. Trib grunts a laugh at the question, watching as Noah tests the wall. "Kind of," he says. "I could eat 'em, but they slow me down somethin' fierce." He scratches his chin. "So, what's your story, Franz? You a mutant who's a bug, or a bug who's a mutant?" "Mutant with the /name/ of a bug that used to be a REAL boy, so ...pretty close!" Laughs the bug-mutant. Or Lobster-mutant. Or Alien-Mutant. "I go by Roach," He informs Trib, and then remarks, "This won't be very stealthy," as if saying that amused him a great deal: clearly a warning that he's going to be noisy. "If you die when a brick hits you, what should I tell them YOUR name is?" he asks, cheery. "Roach," Trib repeats, his eyes crinkling with amusement at the other man's laughter. "If someone found /you/ in their kitchen in the middle of the night, they'd shit themselves." He smirks at the reminder of the danger of demolition, and fishes in a pocket to extract a shiny-looking nut and pop it into his mouth to chew it noisily. "Trib," he says, swallowing the nut and rolling his neck. "Just try not to do that shriekin' shit," he cautions. "That way, people'll just think it's fuckin' night work." "Well if you'd rather scream instead of me, that works nearly as well," Roach says without explanation, but starts away from the wall a little bit, and then spins his body in a neat loop for momentum and throws the full weight of his tail into the bricks. The wall shudders some, but doesn't move much-- but something clearly happens with the tail. The bulk of the armor trembles and the spikes elongate, and grow, a spasm of the armor all through up into the base of the spine. He repeats the procedure, though slower. The second time, most of the growth explodes through the lower spine, and base of tail, and some of the legs that are exerting the power. A third spin into the wall starts to collapse, and the mutant spines engorge cruelly through tail and spine, a mass of twisted nightmarish plate. Both size and strength increase visably, as the mutant simply beats the hell out of the bricks in a very focused way with mainly his tail, and legs for leverage, upper body is merely a counterweight. By the time Roach finishes speaking, Trib's skin looks to be shiny metal under his clothing, and when he moves away, it's with a very heavy step. He watches as the other man begins his demolition, eyes widening a bit as his mass grows. "Holy shit," he breathes, blinking a couple of times. "Does that shit go away? 'Cause at this rate, you're gonna be as big as the whole fuckin' first floor." If Roach notices the skin at all, he doesn't mention it verbally. He seems mostly occupied with his demolitions. He shakes the tail heavily, banging it on the ground a little bit since the spikes have gotten much larger, to shake away some of the cement dust and brick from it. "Over time, some," Roach answers, and steadies, coming still for a moment. Despite Trib's mention about not screaming, he releases a sharp shriek, and then promptly enters the hole he made, directly into darkness, with confidence, but the new size of his armor catches and snares on the hole's edges as he bends and wades in, tail lifted waist-height. Trib watches the demolition with a neutral sort of expression. "That's gotta be fuckin' inconvenient, if you just keep gettin' bigger," he says, and it almost sound sympathetic. "You must have been a little scrap of a thing when you changed." He steps back as a piece of brick glances off his forehead with a metallic ring. He reaches up, rubbing the spot as he follows the other man to the yawning entrance. He hangs back, though, staring into the blackness. "What do you think?" he asks, finally, leaing against the broken brick. "Feel homey enough?" "Well. I'll have to cover that big hole," Roach comments, his voice easily drifting out, with a thoughtful inflection. He makes no reference to it being dark. There's sound of him walking around in there noisily, he scrapes on the floor primarily. "I don't think ANY of my power is particularly fucking convenient," Roach adds with a snort that's more a sound of grating armor or teeth gnashing together harshly. "Aside from not needing halloween costumes, I suppose," he continues darkly, sounding like he's coming back towards the entryway. "I'll get my roof things." "Well, yeah, the hole won't work," Trib says, nodding as he looks up at the arch of it. "I bet if you talked to Cage, he'd get a proper fuckin' door for it. Maybe made out of metal, so you wouldn't claw it all to shit." His mouth curls into a tight smile, and he snorts. "I don't think anyone's power is fuckin' /convenient/," he says. "An' looks ain't everything. Trust me. Some of the shittiest people I know are a lot prettier than you, dude." He steps back as the voice draws closer, moving out of the entrance. He nods at the declaration of the other man's next action, and looks up towards the roofline. "You need anything? Food or shit like that?" Roach considers, "For now I can get a dumpster and put it there, ya think, Tribbs?" He says, with an arch of neck and head. His neck is just slightly too long, so as to be awkward looking, but generally isn't arched to where it's apparent. "I claw everything to shit eventually," he says, but it's not in annoyance, just matter of fact and offhandedly said. "It isn't difficult to be prettier, I'm guessing," Roach laughs. "I only have a vague idea of how monsterous I am. But. Oh, food? WELL. I'll eat whatever people don't want, sure. I don't see, smell or taste it much, so don't let that factor influence it," Roach says, plodding up out of the hole and shivering at the colder exterior air. "Brrr," he grates loudly. Roach tends to really project, as if yelling was his default style of speech. It always has a tinny quality, and his jaw never moves except for those screams -- all of the speech is from yelling /through/ the armor. He'll come out fully and sweep the tail around to partially hold it in one arm, and then scoots back towards where he dropped before, orienting his body upwards, and bouncing a few times in clear intent to prepare to JUMP back up: or at least weighing if he can make it. "Dumpster would work," Trib says, nodding firmly. "It'll at least block most of the wind and snow." He grunts when Roach mentions his overall lack of tasting ability, and there's genuine sympathy in his voice when he responds. "Oh, man. I feel your pain. I can't taste nothin', if it don't taste /strong/. Like spicy shit." He quirks a smile, and tips his head up the alley. "I'll go down to the place on the corner an' get you a fuckin' sandwich or somethin'," he says. "Should at least have a hot fuckin' meal, after that fuckin' workout." "Workout? Which workout? The bashing? Naw, that wasn't anything. But hot--- oh; There are some rats," Roach says, as if 'hot meal' made him think of that. "Well, there were. They fled when I went in there, but probably will come back later, they're good hot," he adds. "I don't have any money for sandwich. It's cold, getting my blankets," he adds, but then promptly flings himself up from the ground. He doesn't get all the way up, and clearly intended to clear it, but orients and grabs the building with both hand and foot claws, dropping the tail, sweeping it in momentum and throwing it up to use it's weight to jerk his body backwards and sideways up onto the roof with a noisy crash that sounds painful. But, it's followed by the scraping treads of him moving around up there, so he's clearly fine. Trib's eyes narrow at the demurral of his offer, and he wrinkles his nose up the building after Roach. "Didn't say nothin' about /you/ buyin' a sandwich," he says to the empty air, already turning to head down the alley. He winces when he hears the crash, and looks around at the windows near by. "Guy's all right, but he needs some fuckin' work," he says to the alley, tromping slowly through the snow and glancing over his shoulder at the hidey-hole. "An' a fuckin' door."