DAY 43: CAFETERIA, MORNING

[hailmegatron.livejournal.com]

Where was Blitzwing?

Lugnut ignored the nurse's fussing over his foot, even as it howled objections to his ill treatment of it the night before, pounding through the town in search of his wingmate, reportedly helpless and injured by an attack the night before-- and not finding him, not seeing even a glimpse of his crazy triple-changing ally.

Snarling at the nurse, but restraining himself from shows of violence-- Blitzwing would mock him if he showed up drugged already, and he would be useless to Megatron like that--he made his way impatiently to the cafeteria, stopping for just long enough to post an urgent notice on the board.

Where was he?

Looming in the middle of the cafeteria, he took the tray the nurse handed him (filled with disgusting human fuel, didn't she know he didn't have time to eat, not when his wingmate was missing?) and ignored it, watching for Blitzwing, where was he?

He refused to think about what might have happened to a wheelchair-bound, drugged, incapacitated warrior, with the swarms of monsters flooding around him, clawing and biting...

[for Scourge]

Comments

[its-the-mileage.livejournal.com]

He looked up from his potatoes in time to catch Peter scrutinizing him before the boy looked down at his tea. So far they were talking more to the contents of their trays than to each other. "Yeah, well, this place doesn't always bring out the best in any of us, does it?" Indy answered ruefully, gaze still focused on Peter. It wasn't the zippy one-liner he'd probably been expecting, but it was about the best Indy could come up with right now.

That was part of the problem here--all the expectations. Indy got the sense he wasn't just playing surrogate father figure in this conversation, but some other kind of character as well. Hadn't Peter suggested that he was a big fan of the (decidedly non-academic) cinematic saga of Dr. Indiana Jones? With a title like "Temple of Doom," Indy pictured the film version of himself as a swaggering hero right out of a radio serial--finding the buried treasure right under the X, single-handedly beating up the whole Nazi army and always getting the girl. It was even easier to picture all that crumbling as the kid kept staring at the real guy in front of him. Indy glanced back down at the plate and realized he still had flecks of Zombi gore under his fingernails. What a hero.

He was really making a mess of this. Indy felt that he should be saying something encouraging, something to demonstrate that he had at least some idea of how Peter felt. Thing was, he wasn't sure he did. Indy didn't think he'd ever had a seemingly dead friend turn up as a Zombi and try to kill him with knives and high explosives; if he had, it wasn't coming to mind. But he had been a teenage boy sometime in his life and he'd lost people too, so maybe he could begin to empathize. Anyway, he had to throw something out there.

"Look..." he said, and then immediately got stuck again and groped for where to go next. It took a few more seconds of helpless silence before he continued, "Thanks. It was good of you to try to watch my back there with that--with your friend. I know what happened wasn't easy." Come on, Jones, what else? "And this might not be high on your list of concerns right now, but I wouldn't worry about the movie thing either, if you can help it. You know the facts about your life better than anyone."

The facts, not the truth. Just like in archaeology. There was only one set of facts about your life. The truth, Indy thought, wondering again what the "Temple of Doom" was like--now that was the elusive thing.

[tightsofmight]

"Not really, no," he agreed, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. Last night was a prime example. Even one glance on the bulletin could tell you that. Stupid jackass asking if anyone was hungry for brains. God, how could you be so insensitive?

Or it was just that some people were still taking it as a joke. Unbelievable. Peter would have been one of them before, but now that he had actually seen zombies face to face? He could never watch Dawn of the Dead again. It would be like a violation somehow. Like that time MJ was over, flipping through the channels and stopping at Interview with a Vampire. Peter was cringing the entire time, and it took MJ a good ten minutes before she clued in and switched to Vertigo.

The same would have to go for...well, everything, to be honest. Was there a separate little universe for every story ever written? The thought was overwhelming. And terrifying. The writers could dick around as much as they pleased, bring in whoever - and whatever - they wanted. For all he knew Jason fricking Voorhees was stalking the halls and that was why twenty to forty people disappeared a night.

And they weren't just limiting themselves to fiction shocks, either. Any conceivable twist in the plot was game. A teenage boy gets into a fight on the board, and lands himself in a wheelchair, watching his only friend bleed to death. A man who could heal from anything in seconds is suddenly knocked out cold for days, practically disappearing from the face of the Earth. Your best friend comes back from the dead, and just when you think you've got a second chance? He's gone. Eaten alive. And the third time...

"No, I-" He raised his hand, but forgot the gesture halfway through, dropping it in his lap again and sighing. "You were right. The whole time. I should have listened to you." Awkward pauses. That was the name of the game here. The lump in his throat went down thickly as he swallowed, searching for his thoughts. "He wasn't...there anymore. They took his body and - I don't know what they did, but Harry wasn't in there. He wasn't human anymore. They perverted him. And I know they did because he was dead - we saw him in the morgue. So whatever made it talk, made it recognize me? It was something they did."

He smiled. It was small, grim but honest, and he was finally looking the other man in the eye. "It didn't have a soul. I should...I should be thanking you. It would have killed us both if you didn't show up."

High list of concerns. Right. There was a list, for sure, and the fiction thing was definitely top three. Did he still not get it? Even after last night? Maybe there weren't any zombie stories back in the thirties. Not highly publicized ones, at any rate. Indy might never clue in, unless Sherlock Holmes or some other dusty old book guy popped in for a visit. Peter's world could just be closer in years to the real one. It would explain why he recognized so many people here. Monsters too.

"Comic book. I get off easy. It's harder to recognize someone when they're just a bunch of drawings." He batted the cup back and forth between his hands. "I think fake names might be a good idea. Less of a hassle that way."

[its-the-mileage.livejournal.com]

So the Zombis were Landel's experiments. Indy's eyes narrowed as he processed what he was hearing--bringing people back from the dead. Just like the stories. It was impossible. Then again, so was time travel, as far as his knowledge went, and here he was in the next century.

Control over life and death--the ultimate attempt at playing God. Just like the Nazis, Landel was tampering with things he couldn't possibly understand. Indy might occasionally be tempted to make that last grab for a priceless artifact or use whatever technology had brought him here to see ancient civilizations firsthand, but he also believed that science should have limits--and in his experience, people who crossed those lines didn't come to good ends. The only problem was that Landel seemed to have no qualms about bringing everyone here down with him.

"You probably were lucky your friend and I were there," Indy replied carefully. "But I can't fault you for trying. At least you know it wasn't him in there, instead of wondering." It was easy to be objective when the bad guy was a stranger, but he wasn't so sure he wouldn't have done the same if one of those things had started talking to him. Until now, Indy'd still been pretty convinced he could handle himself alone at night, but he was starting to get that having partners here wasn't just about being able to fight Landel's lab rats. You needed other people as a buffer against what this place could do to you.

The revelation that Peter was (at least, claimed to be) part of some sort of comic actually might've been more unexpected than the fact that Landel was manufacturing Zombis. Indy couldn't help but wonder what kind of comic the kid would be in--he seemed pretty ordinary, a far cry from Dick Tracy or that new Superman fellow the students had been talking about in the last couple months (come to think of it, weren't they a little old to still be reading the funnies?).

"So far it hasn't been too much of a problem for me. You and a drunk I ran across yesterday have been the only ones who've heard about that 'Temple of Doom,'" Indy replied. Which reminded him... "By the way," he added, feeling more than a little foolish, "the guy got really angry, said I 'owed him for Short Round.' Any idea what he meant by that?"

[tightsofmight]

"Yeah." He looked back down at his cup, lips stretched into a thin, bitter smile. "I think...I don't know. I guess you never stop hoping for another chance."

It wasn't even wondering at this point, was it? It was...fuck, the fourth wall totally bulldozed all the rules. Gone. No use for logic. Was enough of Harry in there to make it important to the story? What was the point in worrying about souls and minds when it was all scripted in the first place?

He couldn't handle thinking like that. It was driving him mental, even worse than this place was. This story. It was so hard to separate the two and then you had to wonder if there was a good reason to separate them in the first place. Landel's was a story, and what happened happened. It was all worked out beforehand. Peter felt real, and he did what he thought was right. If that's the way he was written, then...fine. There was nothing he could do about it, was there? He thought things over, tried to pick right from wrong, made friends, lost them, made enemies, lost them too. All that felt natural to him. And as long as it felt real and not forced, he was going to have to go along with it. He didn't know how the story ended. He was still fishing his way through the rise to the climax. So to him, it was real. He was making choices. Maybe they weren't his, but he was making them. Obsessing over it was only going to make him go nuts.

"Still, though, you probably should make up one for the board," he insisted. "There's been a couple times I've seen where someone posted their name and a bunch of people start harassing them about their movies or whatever. You might not be able to do much if they recognize your face, but broadcasting that you're here only means that someone's gonna come looking to bug you about it." Briefly, he thought of Eddie. Geez. He hadn't seen hide nor hair of him, and there was nothing on the board about him lately, either. Was he even here anymore? "And if someone you know from home is here - someone bad - it only makes it easier for them to find you, too."

The guy said he owed him for - oh. Cripes. Short Round, of all people. Peter had forgot about him. "Um, I guess the guy must not have liked him? Or something? A lot of people did, but some might have thought that it was weird you had a kid for a sidekick all of a sudden. He was only in the one movie, so...I don't know. The guy was drunk, like you said, so it's probably not worth worrying about."