James T. Kirk (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
doneinthree) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
damned_institute2011-09-25 11:15 pm
doneinthree) wrote in damned_institute2011-09-25 11:15 pm
Night 58: Pantry 1
[from here]
Momentum carried Kirk forward even as the scene changed: snow gave way to tiled floor and the field to a row of shelves, which they all got to experience intimately as Kirk slammed into Glasses and Wichita, and the two of them slammed into an assortment of soup cans, which tumbled off the shelf and down on their heads. Being the tallest, Kirk caught the brunt of the assault, because that was really all he needed right now on top of a gunshot wound and disorientation from the sudden teleportation. "Ow, ow, ow—"
Vaguely, he was aware of how deeply unheroic this whole thing had been, just as he'd been aware of how ridiculous he probably looked to the transporter technicians after he'd gotten trounced on the drill by Romulans and nearly killed himself and Sulu after losing his 'chute. But they were alive, or so Kirk judged from the echoes of ow from beneath him, and he'd take a ridiculous rescue any day of the week over an unsuccessful one. He let the pipe drop from his fingers, where it clattered on the floor alongside the last of the rattled soup cans, and grabbed his flashlight as he stepped away from the other two. They were in some sort of pantry... he remembered storage rooms marked on the map beside the first floor kitchen. Interesting.
It appeared they were— No. Kirk turned to point his flashlight at the exit, and frowned. He thought he'd saw someone darting from the room — short, with long pale hair — but the door stood firmly closed, and he hadn't heard anyone or anything in here except Wichita and the other guy. Funny. The last time he'd been in this area, he'd been with... okay, never mind, those cans hit in the head harder than he thought. The three of them were alone. Kirk finally allowed himself to prod at his bloody arm and grimaced. The bullet had passed clean through and hadn't hit bone, but his shirt sleeve was a mess. So much for his shiny new uniform.
But as much as it hurt, he knew he'd gotten off inexplicably lucky. Wichita had probably been shot worse. Kirk clamped a hand over his wound and looked over at the other two. "Everyone in one piece?" he asked, trying for a tone of confidence.
Momentum carried Kirk forward even as the scene changed: snow gave way to tiled floor and the field to a row of shelves, which they all got to experience intimately as Kirk slammed into Glasses and Wichita, and the two of them slammed into an assortment of soup cans, which tumbled off the shelf and down on their heads. Being the tallest, Kirk caught the brunt of the assault, because that was really all he needed right now on top of a gunshot wound and disorientation from the sudden teleportation. "Ow, ow, ow—"
Vaguely, he was aware of how deeply unheroic this whole thing had been, just as he'd been aware of how ridiculous he probably looked to the transporter technicians after he'd gotten trounced on the drill by Romulans and nearly killed himself and Sulu after losing his 'chute. But they were alive, or so Kirk judged from the echoes of ow from beneath him, and he'd take a ridiculous rescue any day of the week over an unsuccessful one. He let the pipe drop from his fingers, where it clattered on the floor alongside the last of the rattled soup cans, and grabbed his flashlight as he stepped away from the other two. They were in some sort of pantry... he remembered storage rooms marked on the map beside the first floor kitchen. Interesting.
It appeared they were— No. Kirk turned to point his flashlight at the exit, and frowned. He thought he'd saw someone darting from the room — short, with long pale hair — but the door stood firmly closed, and he hadn't heard anyone or anything in here except Wichita and the other guy. Funny. The last time he'd been in this area, he'd been with... okay, never mind, those cans hit in the head harder than he thought. The three of them were alone. Kirk finally allowed himself to prod at his bloody arm and grimaced. The bullet had passed clean through and hadn't hit bone, but his shirt sleeve was a mess. So much for his shiny new uniform.
But as much as it hurt, he knew he'd gotten off inexplicably lucky. Wichita had probably been shot worse. Kirk clamped a hand over his wound and looked over at the other two. "Everyone in one piece?" he asked, trying for a tone of confidence.
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She was going to die. This was the end. She was so sure! How else could this go? It made her want to just curl up right there and give up. What was the point?
"I can't- I can't reach where he shot me." Wichita reached back again with her hand, but the pain just made her whine quietly, and she could feel it as she moved, the way her shirt was sticking to her back and the steady pulse of blood seeping from the wound. Unreal. It all very very unreal. She scrambled to her feet, trying to put space between herself and the both of them, but it was imoossible to see and there were cans all over the floor and--
"What do I do? I don't know what to do, I don't know how to fix this. I don't wanna die." BECAUSE GETTING SHOT IN THE SHOULDER CLEARLY COULD ONLY LEAD TO CERTAIN DEATH. How sad...
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Billy wished he had asked more questions about the various ways to move things and people. When Wati and Dane had discussed it, the hows weren't important. Billy might have disagreed, if he knew he was going to be jumping around through space this often. Regardless, he didn't feel any more or less alive or dead than he had earlier. That was probably the most important thing, or it had to be, considering he had nothing else.
"It's alright, it's okay," he told the girl, more authoritative than he might have once been. Much more tired, that was certain, but he didn't need to convince himself it was all under control, just her. The blood didn't bother him as much as he thought it would either. He clicked on his flashlight, demurely aiming it downwards before he blinded someone. The ambient light lit up her pretty face a bit, contorted with emotion as it was. She was young, a little younger than himself, but not a girl.
"You aren't going to die." Maybe. God, Billy didn't know. Maybe she really was going to bleed out in front of them. Despite being fired on multiple times recently, he'd never seen a gunshot wound anywhere but on television. He extended a hand to her cautiously. "Just turn around, we'll get it."
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"You'll be okay," Kirk echoed. He stepped away further to give them both as much room to breathe as they could get in this pantry. He'd been around Bones enough to know that if someone else had the situation in hand, crowding them wouldn't help. "Just put pressure on the wound. Maybe sit her down too. You can use... ah..."
Kirk's flashlight swung around the room but there was nothing in here except packaged food. Shaking his head, he lifted his hand from his bleeding arm and tugged his uniform shirt off, leaving him in the black undershirt he'd worn for much of the chaotic trip he'd had before landing in Landel's. He tossed the bundle of gold fabric over to the bespectacled man.
"Apply pressure. I'll look around outside for something we can use, unless you both want to follow me too." Kirk smiled reassuringly as he nudged the door open to the kitchen. "I'm Kirk, by the way. Her name's Wichita." Longer introductions could be made later.
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It should have bothered her more that she sounded all wrong, but she was too distracted to question it beyond the idea that she was probably just over-reacting due to the fact that she'd never been in a situation like this before. Her mouth opened to protest when Riverside started pulling off his shirt, because what no she didn't want to use his uniform to mop up her blood. He had his own wound to take care of!
But. She was selfish enough not to turn the offer away.
Wichita turned her body enough so that the other man could get to assessing her shoulder, but once the door was open she was moving again.
"We're coming with you." Because yes, she could speak for the both of them, apparently. At least, she thought it was a safe assumption he wouldn't want to hang out in the pantry the rest of the night. She turned to look back to the man that was now stuck with looking after her, gesturing towards her shoulder with her other hand. "If you could just show me where to press, I can hold the shirt there. I can't actually tell where the bullet went in, it all just hurts."
At least she wasn't panicking like she was a couple minutes ago. And again, it was weird how fast she went from crying to adrenaline-induced action mode, but maybe she was the only one that noticed. "And you," She turned to face Riverside again. "what the hell was that all about? The blipping we just did? You can teleport? That's fancy."
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Billy had thought he was beyond this. He'd seen too much to get caught up on weirdness now. His life was weird. He, Billy, was weird. But all the same, his mind emptied of any thoughts that were not tied up in Star Trek. It had only been in jest that Billy had called the man Captain Kirk, and it was strange enough to have it echoed back at him. What shocked Billy the most was his face. Billy nearly shivered when his eyes met with the actor's. Hell if Billy could remember his name, though, so apparently whats-his-face was going to reprising his on-screen role tonight. He wished Simon could have seen this, maybe kicked his last ghost out of excitement. But on the other hand, Simon seemed like the sort of fan that had more venom than love for the reboot. Billy had been ambivalent.
Composing himself, Billy accepted the shirt. He tried not to react to how detailed and high quality the garment was, but he did spare it a couple glances before he applied it to the now very visible wound on Wichita. There was already blood on it, and his confusion was tainted with a concern that Kirk, like his T.V. counterpart, wanted to play the hero. Again. His eyes briefly moved down to the action star's arm.
"Right here." Billy told Wichita, stumbling out of his reverie. He folded the gold cloth, then pressed it gingerly to her back. He waited for her to reach around and take the shirt from him, and prayed he wasn't going to make anything worse. She didn't seem particularly at a loss to Kirk's Kirkness, and was only somewhat puzzled by his knacking.
"Whatever you did, thank you." Billy released any questions he might have about his rescuer, or his rescue. It was looking like one step forward, and two steps back. They were inside, but inside where? Billy felt like his feet were tangled up, and every time he tried to run, it dragged him back. The Angel was silent and undisturbed, or maybe still out on that field, rolling and clattering its way to him. "Thanks for stepping in in the first place. But she's right, we're not staying here."
Each for their own reasons, of course. He glanced at Wichita, but gained no clue to what she wanted out of this.
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S.T. landed in the pantry, his feet in the middle of a pile of cans and his stomach taking its damn sweet time showing up. It sloshed, when it did. Food was definitely a good idea. Something with less bulk than bran flakes or activated charcoal, but in that vein.
The smell of blood wasn't helping. He shone the flashlight around. There it was. Not much. Maybe someone had splattered an overgrown mosquito somewhere. Not even close to enough to be fatal to a human. He ignored it. He wasn't sure what someone else's blood, especially when it had started to coagulate. Instead, he scratched his hand with the prongs, and it slurped the blood up like a four-toothed gold-plated vampire.
"Here we go." He ignored the really salty stuff in favor of some cookies that were shaped like peanuts just in case the smell wasn't enough. Then he wrestled a box of single-serving yuppie waters down off the high shelf.
He knew what was in Boston tap water. Among other things, his often ill-washed self, back when they were sampling the reservoirs. People freaked out about bird shit but it was the little things that killed. Parts per billion, invisible and engaged in an ongoing cold war with fancy filter gizmos and testing kits. He drank the fucking water. Life was too short to carry a recycling bin on your back, and you couldn't give water bottles to a homeless guy as a free nickel.
"Drink some of this. You'll thank me for it tomorrow. If we can't find anything else, you can re-use the bottles."
They'd make good beer bottles, too, if you didn't care if a few exploded. Which was just as likely with the larger bottles, that didn't have screw-top lids.
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Picking herself up off the floor, Tifa scrambled to grab her flashlight before it rolled too far away. Sangamon was already pulling from the food storage shelves by the time she had begun sifting through fresh fruit.
"Oh, thanks..." Pulling the plastic away from the bottles to make the grabbing a bit more convenient for everyone. Tifa savored the novelty of holding a bottle of water in her hands. Filtered water was hard to come by in the Slums, and extremely over priced. Snapping the security ring around the top, the young woman took a satisfied swallow.
"I guess everything should be dry. I don't really want to clean up messes in my own room..." It was likely the institute would do it for her, but what if there was a slipping hazard? She couldn't let her drunken patrons skull themselves all over the linoleum floor.
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"...Whoops," he said as he grabbed for the empty spot the jar had left and regained his balance. The nausea faded quickly and then he turned to the others with a sheepish grin. "Sorry about that."
Not that the pickles were that much of a loss. It wasn't like Tifa would be smart to hide something like that in her room. No, it definitely made more sense to go with the stuff that wasn't likely to spoil or spill. Plus, she only had so much space.
"Don't mind if I do," he said, taking one of the waters for himself. He took a swig and found that it was surprisingly refreshing. As nice as it was to have a drink after all he'd been through, there was nothing like water. Once that was done, he took a glance around. "I guess we should have brought a pack or something with us..." Well, too late now. They'd just have to pile as much as they could in their arms.
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He'd already started stacking a pile on the floor. He'd grabbed another tray of water, and now he went for the bread. He pulled a loaf off a shelf and stared.
"What the fuck?" That was skin. Wrinkly balls and a dick with RAT tattooed on it, which gave a good indication of its owner.
S.T. approximated and pulled a box of corn flakes off the shelf several feet down, revealing Spider's forehead. Another box and his face was visible. He was typing on thin air, with a look of rapt concentration usually reserved for rabid dogs and computer nerds. S.T. waved in front of his face. Nothing.
"You guys see this? That was just vodka, right?" He didn't feel like he was high. Spider wasn't screaming or dying. Maybe he was real and S.T. was the hallucination. That made more sense.
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"I'm not drunk enough to be seeing this..." Yet here she was, staring at a naked man who gave no sign of any real clarity as he moved his fingers back and forth intently.
"Is it... an illusion?" Whether or not it was manufactured by the institute or their own alcohol was not the problem. The problem was that if this wasn't just a part of their own imagination, it had the potential of hurting them. "Maybe we should leave..." It may have been a bit cowardice, but Tifa still remembered the last time she had been greeted by a shadow person. None of that conversation needed to be repeated again.
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Well, that was something they'd have to find out the hard way, unless the others had any insights. Zack started to pull bags of chips and boxes of crackers off of one of the shelves until he heard the others sounding very perplexed.
He turned to see what all of the commotion was about, and as his flashlight moved over the body of a naked man, he couldn't help stumbling back for a second. "What..." It wasn't anything he hadn't seen before, of course, but the guy was just standing there, moving his fingers as if he was inputting something on an invisible keypad.
Tifa seemed to think this might be a bad sign, and Zack was inclined to agree. "Guess we'd better grab what we can and book it," he agreed as he bent down and started picking the snacks up off the floor. He didn't know how a naked phantom was supposed to hurt them or bother them, but it was certainly unnerving.
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S.T. wondered what would happen if he stuck one of the bottles of water in. Ghost cooler, just add water. He grabbed a bottle out of the open box, loosened the cap so the plastic wouldn't split if it did freeze, and set it next to Spider's shoulder.
"Too bad he's not here. He'd eat up Aguilar's doublespeak and shit out nuggets of truth, and love every minute of it." Not that he'd admit the last part. The rictus he called a smile did that for him.