2013.07.04 - Scrubbing the Walls

Sssschlurp!
"Eugh..that's a keeper," TJ mutters with a low groan while peeling another hunk of stuff off of the Majestic's walls and flinging it into a heavy-duty garbage bag.
"So, how's life, TJ? Oh, you know. After leaving the Exiles I chilled for a while in another dimension which I thought was my own but probably wasn't before getting called on ye olde Timebroker--"
Splorch!
--"for what I assumed was going to be another team effort and not a one-way trip into Hell, that's always a fun practical joke."
Splack!
"Now I'm here in yet another timeline that had once been inhabited by another me from another timeline, gods know what happened to her since then. Oh, how's that all working out for you? Not bad, really. I've been upgraded to scraping unmentionable biological crap off of the walls of an eighty year old theater. So, that's cool."
Plorch!
"Gonna take more than ice cream to brighten this evening, tell ya that much."
"Careful you don't damage the walls-" Any more than they already are, mind. "Oh.. that is.."
Disgusting?
From the ceiling, then.. the parts that are still attached to the building, that is, Kurt is pulling out some of the fixtures, the wires offering a little resistance to the elf's pulling.
"We could go back to Hell und you can visit your old haunts, Herzchen? I'm sure Rover, und Fluffy would be more than happy to eat-- greet you."
BAMF
Appearing on the next bit of ceiling, on the other side of the hole, screwdriver and chisel in hand, his footing loosens up yet more plaster, and it rains down onto the floor. "Watch out below!"
"I'm telling you," Amanda says to Kurt, as he bamfs and inadvertently sends more plaster raining down. She raises her hands to keep the worst of the dust from begriming her face any worse than it is now. "the fastest way to decontaminate this place is Eldritch fire. I can control it, you know. It doesn't have to torch the structure, too." Though, truthfully, she thinks it should.
Nevertheless! She may respect her best friend's wishes. Maybe.
At least, she will while he's here.
She glances over to where TJ monologuing and gives a wry smile. "Steak and beer in Dusseldorf?" she offers. "Ice cream from Copenhagen?" Where Piotr said he found that great sundae shop...
She'd offer a bbq in the back parking lot, but she's afraid of what might come crawling out of the woodwork in the meantime.
Speaking of... "Oh. I forgot to tell you both: Be careful if you go rooting around under my bed. I've adopted a couple of new friends..."
With the warning called TJ automatically shields her face, waiting for the debris to settle before uncurling from the smaller ball of blue which she has become. "As opposed to this place where everything else is trying to eat me while the building itself threatens to collapse on top of my head. You take me to the nicest places, Dad. Next time I pick the location."
Do you know how difficult it is to find rubber gloves with only three fingers? They just don't exist! Thus, she's cobbled together a thick pair of welding gloves with the aid of a needle and thread, though she's still using that one sword that she had 'borrowed' from Kurt on their last excursion out here to help peel most of the gunk free. She's not coming into contact with anything more than absolutely necessary.
The included kitchen tongs may have been a little much.
"Now, see, those would all sound like fantastic ideas if I wasn't currently peeling hardened ichor off of the plaster. I'm--wait, what? What..makes you think I was rooting around under..there is so much wrong with what you just said that my brain can't parse every humorous response!"
"I know you can control it, liebling. I just.." and Kurt turns those featureless glowing yellow eyes in Amanda's direction, his tones taking that deadpan tenor, "I trust you to do what you believe is--"
Blink.
"Adopted two new friends." Pause. "Und they are under your bed."
scrapescrape
"Why.. how.. und you, young lady.." Suddenly Kurt is waving his screwdriver in TJ's direction, trying so hard not to laugh as he does so, "Don't go near her room.."
The suggestions, however, gains the fuzzy blue elf's attention, and he swivels his attention back to Amanda even as he's unscrewing the next fixture. "Dusseldorf sounds perfect!"
Amanda glances to TJ. And she laughs. "What? If you're anything like your father, at some point you'll end up going after something in my box of tricks." The chest she keeps under her bed that's filled with potions and such. "I don't want you to get bitten."
Did she just say bitten? Why, yes. Yes, she did.
She gives a dry chuckle, now. "I was in New Orleans over the weekend. Ran into Baron Samedi." Voodoo god. Nasty character. She doesn't go into details about him. "Bastard tried to use a pair of snakes on me in ways that, frankly, are just rude." Not obscene. Rude. There is a difference. "So, I confiscated them." A beat. "Their names are Brad and Roger, and they're currently living under the bed... and will until I find some place better for them."
Like guarding the nexus point here. Don't think she hasn't considered that. But, they need to finish cleaning, first.
(Which could take YEARS, at this point.)
TJ makes a motion like she's trying to shoo away an irritating fly that's buzzing around her face. "Way, way too late for that! I think it's definitely time I found some digs in Mutant Town..."
Bitten? "Amanda, sweetie, you know I love you, right..? We're trying to get rid of the creepy crawlies of this place, not domesticate them."
The explanation helps, to some extent, though it also raises even more questions. Questions which she isn't about to ask at this point. Or..ever. With eyes pinched shut and hands held palms out in the air she gives a firm shake of her head then jams the sword under another chunk of goo, prying it away from the wall. "Glad I'm an animal person, though I find it funny that the people living in that apartment shed more than the pets do. Is..is that a ring?" she suddenly changes gears, squinting at the slab she just pulled free. "I'm really not sure how I feel about this discovery..."
"Bitten?"
A screw drops to the ground, and when it hits the floor several floors down, it bounce-bounces, not to be seen again. Until stepped on.
Though, the explanation gains Kurt's attention, pulling it from the idea of having his tail bitten should he sit on the bed. "Baron Samedi.." and it doesn't sound as if he's heard the name before.. not until, perhaps, he gets his memory jogged. "Tried to use a pair of snakes.."
Why is it that he can feel the anger well at the thought of using snakes 'rudely'? "Und you sent him away, ja?" Not just take the snakes..
Though, the thought of Brad and Roger living under the bed... and he hazards, "Are they in a tank?" Please?
Tugging the fixure from its seating, Kurt *bamfs* to the floor and sets it beside the others that he's pulled. "I will have to agree with TJ on this one.. perhaps all the way arou-"
"Ring?" That's.. strange. "Normally, there's newsprint or somesuch in the walls.. but jewelry? Here?"
"Oh, he's dead," Amanda assures Kurt, a sharp, humourless smile on her face. "I set him on fire." A beat. "Eldritch fire. Seriously, Kurt. It takes care of all sorts of magical garbage..." Laying it on a little thick, perhaps?
She shakes her head. She'll tell them the full story of Baron Samedi and Madame La Masque over dinner. After she's had a shower.
She moves over to where TJ stands now. "Costume piece?" she suggests. "I think the costume rooms are actually downstairs, but since this, I'm pretty sure, was the greenroom..." Well, it's entirely possible.
Of course, this place has also been exposed to any number of magical whatsits for decades. So, it could be something a whole lot more complicated, too...
One does not simply walk into Mordor... But, then, that's what teleporters and interdimensional portals are for, right?
Okay, here's one question that won't get ignored. TJ stops, points toward Amanda, and pins Kurt with a look of mock-accusation. "She kills people? The people you're friends with, I swear..."
As far as the snakes go, she's going to take up sleeping on the ceiling.
"That's what I'm thinking," she agrees with Amanda while carefully plucking the ring free with the tip of the sword. That it goes 'ping!' against the floor instead of something more ..fake-sounding causes one of her eyes to grow bigger than the other, plucking it from the floor to get a closer look.
"Now..I know 'they don't make 'em like they used to' isn't just a figure of speech, but this..looks a little fancy for a fake. Real weight to it, middle isn't hollowed out..."
Now she's just puzzled, handing it over to Amanda. "Maybe someone lost it a while back?"
Okay, here's a question..
"Why are you using my sword? I meant to ask that before.. but you're prying ick off the walls, und now?" Kurt tosses a metal scraper in TJ's direction, his expression.. a put-upon scowl. "If you don't stop that, I'll sic Amanda on you.."
If Amanda killed someone, however.. and those yellow eyes rise to the blonde, his brows rising in the shadow-blue of his face. "Back to his dimension then." A statement rather than a question.
Though, the comment regarding the people he is friends with gains something of a cough. "I have many different types of friends. A couple closer than most.. und THAT is all you need know." After all, if one wasn't close, why would he give the gift of a helicopter? "Some of them, however, don't hold the same belief I do about the sanctity of life, und that it's not up to judge their souls." He holds up a finger to forestall any comment before he finishes, "But I don't discount there is evil in the world either.. und it needs to be destroyed."
There.
Now.. with the soft *ping* as the ring bounces, he watches as TJ picks it up and hands it over to Amanda. Perfect choice! She'd know immediately if it was magicked. Yellow eyes, then, move towards Amanda once again to watch her reaction to touching the metal.
"Okay, for the record," Amanda retorts, pointing at TJ in return, "I did not kill a human being. A killed a Loa -- a voodoun spirit -- who will simply reconstitute somewhere else. It's more accurate to say we banished him." From hell. Yeah. That's a trick. If you kill a demon in hell... where do they go?
Amanda has some vague idea, thanks to Margali's teachings, that greater demonic entities like Baron Samedi essentially reincarnate themselves elsewhere, after a certain amount of time, after a serious defeat. So, wherever Samedi is now? Well, he's not going to be bothering the living world for a while. That's all that matters in her book.
And the look Amanda gives Kurt, then, is the same shifty-eyed one he gives her, whenever he knows he's about to tell her something that simply won't thrill her. "They... have a basket," she tells him. Well, c'mon! Snakes have been kept in baskets for centuries! It's a proud tradition!
Or, at least, a long-standing one.
She now looks at the ring TJ sets into her hand. Shaking her hand up and down very lightly, she causes the ring to jostle a little. Then, she pinches it between two fingers and holds it up to a ray of sunlight slanting through the ruined roof. It sparkles prettily, despite the grime. She uses her thumb to clean it further.
"It's magical," she says presently, watching how the light plays around it with her magesight. "As to what it does?" Her nose wrinkles lightly. "Could be anything... or nothing." It could be out of energy, after all. "I'd have to examine it further at home." She cleans the inside of it with a fingertip, careful not to slip it past her knuckle at all. "I don't think it's cursed." But, again, you never know.
She looks at TJ. "You found it. What do you want to do with it?"
TJ turns toward Kurt with a dramatic flourish of said blade, "Is this not the blade which thou hast forsaken upon our last journey into this unholy locale? Seriously, like I would have used one of your good blades for cleanup work. You seemed pretty well done with this one the last time I laid hands on it."
"So, if I just happened to make good friends with a raving lunatic it would meet your blessing?" she inquires with a broad, purely teasing grin. Then Amanda clarifies and her expression vanishes. "Oh. So I should probably cancel my plans for tonight."
Kidding!
"Oh good! Baskets are real easy to tape shut. Crisis averted."
Just imagine her surprise that she found a magical ring... Yellow eyes go wide, staring in disbelief for a moment before she fist-pumps with a "Yes! A winner is me! You guys can take the next treasure chest." Wait--possibly cursed? Slowly that outstreched arm drops back down to her side. "I think we should figure out what the heck it is before figuring out what to do with it. Besides, rings and I have something of a love-hate relationship." Thick fingers, not standard sizing. "Is it going to cause problems if I turn it into a pendant?"
"It's still a blade. I would be less offended if you used a butter knife. In fact, I would feel better if you DID use a butt--"
"Magical?"
Kurt puts his screwdriver down and approaches the pair now, the spade-tip twitching in curiousity, yellow eyes fixed upon the ring. "But you don't know if it's cursed or not. Isn't that something you'd feel? Bad magic..?" Duh. Like the elf is the big expert?
He shares a grin with TJ, however, approving heartily of her solution to the problem. "Und.. baskets have enough air." Even when taped shut. "At least you didn't name them 'Nag' und 'Nagina'. That makes me feel just a little better." Though, "Are they poisonous?"
"It shouldn't," Amanda tells the blue girl. "But, that's mainly because it's only likely to work when used as intended." I.e. when worn on a finger. She glances at TJ's hands. "We might need to resize it..."
Providing, of course, whomever it belonged to before doesn't decide to come looking for it. ('Cause that just never happens, right? *gollumgollum*)
She gives Kurt a wry smile. "Kurt, we're standing in the middle a place that's saturated with bad magic. I can't tell, at this point, what's background noise, and what's a real threat. Not on something this tiny, anyway." If a critter comes at them -- that, she's likely to sense before it hits. But, in this place? She's just inclined to assume everything is bad mojo.
"Beyond that, magical jewellery is notoriously deceptive."
Oh. Poisonous? "The snakes?" She shrugs. "Probably not. They're pythons. Still... They came from a swamp in hell. What isn't poisonous there?" A beat. She smiles. "I like 'em. They're funny."
TJ dramatically rolls her eyes ceilingward, transferring the sword from hand to tail then holding it out toward Kurt with an unspoken 'take it if you must!' "Killjoy."
"And she doesn't know if they're poisonous," she mutters with a weary tone. "There sure are a lot of unknowns flying around the place this week. Kinda makes me want to rip all the labels off of the cans in the pantry, what's a few more mysteries?"
Gently shaking her head, she admits "I'm not sure that it's anything I would want to have on my finger. Let's just keep it somewhere safe until we can figure out a little more about it, alright? At this point I'd be equally afraid of losing it as I would be of doing nothing with it or trying to figure out what it does by trial and error. In the meantime, maybe we'll find some of its relatives somewhere else around the place," she thinks aloud while finding some other non-sword implement to continue working with. "Hey, just a thought but why don't we hire someone else to clean this place out?"
Kurt holds his hand out for the sword, and takes it gently, with theatric gravity. "When you are ready to use it properly, I'll give it back." Read: he won't leave his daughter weaponless. Ever. It'll be nearby!
His tail sweeps back and forth slowly at Amanda's response, however.. and sighs with a touch of the dramatic added. "I thought we got rid of all the bad magic here." Yellow eyes turn towards TJ, and Kurt nods towards the ring. "Pocket, then?"
Leaping towards a portion of the wall that's been cleaned, Kurt begins to scale it until he reaches the ceiling again, and hangs upside down as if it is the most natural thing in the world. For him, it is.. and his tail hangs down. "Don't you dare tear the labels off. I don't want to be surprised by opening peas." There's a screwed-up expression that follows, one of serious distaste, even in the thought! Peas! "But, it would be too expensive to hire others to clean it. Und if we did, we wouldn't be finding the jewelry in the walls. They would. Und if it was bad?" A soft whistle escapes.. before he realizes what Amanda's said.. and with a *bamf*, he's back at her side.
"The snakes are funny?" Ooooh-kay?
"Fire," Amanda tells TJ sagely. "Eldritch fire, I'm telling you." She smiles sweetly at Kurt... and only just refrains from batting her pretty brown eyelashes.
"You want me to keep it safe for now?" she asks the girl, then.
She laughs, then. "Yes. Funny. The two of them bicker like an old married couple." A beat. She considers. "An old gay married couple."
With Kurt's ultimatum TJ mimicks him talking by opening and closing one of her hands, just to be a brat about it. It's all in the upbringing, blame her father.
"Hey, he's the one that doesn't want you to go get your pyro on around here," she promptly corrects. "I'm all for the idea! Only a loon would want to get hands-on with this crud."
Peas. Alright, that's a good point. Even she wrinkles up her face with that thought. "Good point. You win this round."
To Amanda she knods in confirmation, "You're the only one here that's qualified to lay out an appropriate volume of smackdown if that ring decides to pull a fast one--and again with the snakes..! I really don't wanna know," she mutters while prying another hunk of solidified goo off of the wall.
Splick!
Well, no.. Kurt will happily take the credit for everything wonderful Talia does, and easily blame her not-present mother for all the things wrong. It works out really well, all in all. Wouldn't be the first time! "I see you.." is rumbled in warning, though he's in good humour about it.
"No fire. Nicht.. ja? I want to do this.." Until, of course, he discovers that it'll be months before it's even vaguely ready for anything. New plaster, paint.. not to mention the roof that still need to get done! But that'll be long after they get the innards and the leavings of the nasties they'd sent packing off the floor and the walls.. and the ceilings.
At least it doesn't smell quite as bad.
"A couple of.. an old gay married couple?" Those tones rise in dubious question even as he teleports back to the ceiling to work on the next fixture. He's got a few of them to go.. and he's being careful. "What did you do? Talk to them?" Kurt's expression screws into one of confusion. "Are snakes gay? Can they be? Und.. if you were talking to them, are you sure they're not demons?" Snakes. Demons.
Duh?
"Yes, they talk." Amanda says, snirking, now, as she goes back to hauling debris out of the way and tossing it into, yes, a burn pile. (A controlled burn!) "I don't know if they're actually gay or not; I haven't asked them. And, no. They're not demons. They're demon-touched." She eyes the elf. "Rather like you. Would you like me to invite them out for dinner, so you can catch up with them?"
Okay. Seriously. Would she really risk her safety -- and that of those she holds most dear -- if she thought the snakes were likely to turn on her?
She looks morosely at the pile, glances at the time on her cell phone, and throws a heavy board down on top of the pile. "Right," she says decisively. "It's time for a shower." She dusts her hands off. "I'll open a portal back to the boat for one of you. The other can come back to the apartment with me. I get first dibs on the shower, but you can use it when I'm done. Then, we'll meet back at the boat for dinner. Good?"
And, yes. She'll leave the snakes at home.
Not a second goes by before TJ calls out "Dibs on the boat!"
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