Edgar Roni Figaro (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
girlsandgadgets) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
damned_institute2009-09-17 02:34 pm
girlsandgadgets) wrote in damned_institute2009-09-17 02:34 pm
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Nightshift 43: Janitor's Closet
[From here.]
Once inside, Edgar swept the room for anything useful- especially something which could be used as a potential weapon in the event that Kuukaku and the newcomers started brawling outside. A broom caught his eye- it wasn't spectacular, but it'd be better than nothing if the situation went sour. He decided to leave it where it was standing- if the entire group did follow him into the closet, he didn't want to seem like he was looking for a fight. A fight in the closet wouldn't have been a very good idea, anyway- the room seemed fairly crowded with only his body and all the implements.
He knelt near a pile of assorted items on a shelf near the sink, keeping an eye on the doorway, listening for the sounds of a scuffle. He was sure Kuukaku was capable of taking care of herself, but he was not going to leave her alone to fight them both. The smells of paint and cleaning solutions were thick in the air- his head swam strangely for a moment before he shook the feeling off. His eyes landed on something of interest- an open, metal box with a screwdriver inside. Jackpot.
Once inside, Edgar swept the room for anything useful- especially something which could be used as a potential weapon in the event that Kuukaku and the newcomers started brawling outside. A broom caught his eye- it wasn't spectacular, but it'd be better than nothing if the situation went sour. He decided to leave it where it was standing- if the entire group did follow him into the closet, he didn't want to seem like he was looking for a fight. A fight in the closet wouldn't have been a very good idea, anyway- the room seemed fairly crowded with only his body and all the implements.
He knelt near a pile of assorted items on a shelf near the sink, keeping an eye on the doorway, listening for the sounds of a scuffle. He was sure Kuukaku was capable of taking care of herself, but he was not going to leave her alone to fight them both. The smells of paint and cleaning solutions were thick in the air- his head swam strangely for a moment before he shook the feeling off. His eyes landed on something of interest- an open, metal box with a screwdriver inside. Jackpot.
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Luckily, the other man had cut in and defused all of it rather quickly. It wasn't his words that did the job so much as his decision to just walk inside. That alone was enough to spur Harvey to follow after him, since he knew that finding what they were looking for before night ended was way more important than brawling for no reason. No, that was hardly his style, even if Jason seemed fond of the idea. If the kid wanted to stay behind and fight it out with the one-armed woman, then that was his prerogative.
The blond man was already poking through the clutter, so Harvey didn't waste any time either. While he had been here once before, the place was still such a mess that he had little idea of where to start. He turned toward the shelves and used his flashlight to scan over them for anything rope-like.
Unfortunately, he still wasn't being left alone. He could hear his own voice now, telling Rachel that it was all going to be fine. He remembered how he'd lied to her; even during that moment, he'd been lying through his teeth. Her strained voice started asking him, begging him to tell her what was going on.
He remembered the smell of gasoline, the taste of it as he'd tried to keep it out of his mouth. Harvey had to fight not to move his hand up to that side of his face. Dammit!
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Besides, the closet was getting damn crowded with the number of people in it. Rather than try and cram in himself while they were all trying to sort through the piles of crap Jason stayed lurking in the doorway. This way he could keep an eye on the hallway outside and he'd have room to move if she did want to fight. In this case he trusted Two-Face to find what they were after, Dent was the one who'd first suggested finding the rope so he wasn't going to get careless and overlook it.
"See if you can't find matches or a lighter in there too," he called to Two-Face. He hadn't seen any last time he was here, but with everything that had been happening then he could've easily missed it.
Jason frowned as he glanced over to check on Two-Face's progress. He didn't know Dent well enough to tell but it looked like something had gotten under his skin. If he was that pissed off by Jason not just standing around like useless muscle while he did the talking then they were going to have some real problems if they were working together much longer than it took to get Batman where they wanted him. Fuck it. So long as Two-Face got what they needed he didn't care what had crawled up Dent's ass and died.
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Once inside, the fireworks master noticed that this place was definitely a huge mess. Why the hell was there so much junk crammed into such a small space, anyway? She swept her flashlight beam across the shelves, looking for anything useful before her eyes fell upon steel pipes of various sizes. Those could be used as decent weapon, she figured, and metal could be a handy material
Unfortunately, she couldn't carry multiply of those in one hand. She glanced around, looking for something to carry them with.
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He stood just outside the door, keeping an eye on the hallway. It still gave him an unnerving feeling- the fact that he kept hearing disturbingly familiar voices from the speaker in the wall didn't help matters much.
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He was able to convert his discomfort into the way that he started tossing things around in search of rope. The others would likely assume that he was just trying to move quickly through the mess in the room. Besides, the blond man was already out of the way, giving him more space to search around.
There it was; she was spurred into telling him that she did want to marry him, she did want to spend the rest of her life with him, and he still wondered if she had only said it because of the desperate moment they had been in.
There was no rope that he could find, but he did come across something else: coils of extension cord. He lifted one up into his hands, testing its strength. It was definitely only a shoddy replacement at best, but it was better than nothing. Who knew? Maybe it would actually work well against the Bat.
He took a few of the cords and then pushed past the woman so that he could get to Jason. "Looks like this is all they have," he murmured. "No lighters or matches, either." He wasn't sure what the kid wanted those for, but it probably wasn't good. Harvey's hackles tended to raise around fire these days, so he figured it was for the best that Jason didn't get his hands on that stuff.
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No sign of danger or anything besides the annoying flickers at the edges of his vision that always turned out to be nothing. He was getting better at ignoring them but he didn't like knowing someone was screwing with him and that's what this was.
Finally Two-Face was done, leaving the cramped closet to show him what he'd gotten. Extension cords were nowhere near rope but coupled with the duct tape it would slow Batman down enough for them. He was going to get free no matter how they restrained him, the only thing they could do was make it as difficult as possible.
"They'll do." Too bad about the lighter, it would be useful and with the cigarettes from 'Talia'.... He'd just have to find something elsewhere.
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No one was inside, but someone obviously had been recently--several of the shelves looked even more disorganized than usual, and Indy noted the absence of the infamous tool kit. How many of those were floating around the Institute by now?
Let's see, what did he need--oh, yeah, batteries, and anything else that looked like it might come in handy. A lighter, maybe, or some kind of fuel; the torch had started to feel increasingly useful as the night wore on. It'd help next time he headed outside, Indy thought. Keep off the animals--or the plants.
Right now, though, it was a little dangerous, especially in a cramped space that contained who knew how many flammable materials. Dying in a closet fire at a mental hospital had never been Indy's idea of a good way to go. "Got your flashlight?" he asked. "I'm gonna kill the torch." There wasn't anything to douse it with, so he carefully smothered the flame in a dry bucket. Hopefully Pilgrim's flashlight would give them both enough light to see by.
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Scott flipped on his flashlight when the torch went out. He squinted to see by the dimmer light at first, but his eyes adjusted soon enough. Scott started rifling through items, picking many of them up one after another, testing them. This was frustrating - he only had four inventory slots, and it seemed that every single item in the closet was able to be picked up, like in the real world. How do the game designers expect me to choose?!
That is, if there were any game designers. Scott still felt the sting of his elbows and rump, and the sounds from outside were still as strong as ever. He decided to make one more test. Into the crook of his left arm, he loaded a container of bleach, some lengths of extension cord, a box cutter, a squeegee, a box of garbage bags, and two mismatched lengths of pipe. He stood there for a moment, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. He was carrying over the maximum number of slots he had, and he could feel their weight pulling down on his arm by a lot.
After a long pause, Scott finally asked a question. " . . . Is this real life? Or is this just fantasy?"
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It took a second for his eyes to adjust, after which he started hunting. What was it that old guy from earlier had had--an aerosol can, hadn't he called it? It wasn't too hard to find a similar-looking metal can with a spray nozzle ("paint thinner," it read), but Indy was at a loss for a lighter or anything similar. Might just have to take the time to rub two sticks together at the start of the night. Just like in Boy Scouts.
He was still rifling through the shelves for batteries when Pilgrim spoke up behind him. Indy turned to see the younger man loaded down with what looked like about half the contents of the closet, looking uncharacteristically serious. It looked like the other shoe had finally dropped.
"Sorry," Indy said, suddenly wishing he could say ha-ha, got you, joke's over now. "I know it's hard to swallow, but this is as real as it gets."
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Scott switched tacks, turning so that his side faced the older man. He asked in a very matter-of-fact tone, "Hey, can you, like, punch me in the arm as hard as you can? I'll need way more than a pinch to know if I'm dreaming or not."
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"--real?" he finished. The direction that thought had been going wasn't hard to guess. "That was what Peter told me too, the first time we met. He thought I was a few sherds short of an amphora when I introduced myself as Indiana Jones. Got into an argument over it, actually. Then someone told him he was a comic book character." At least the costume and the wall-climbing explained why the hell anyone would include boy-next-door Peter Parker in the funnies, Indy thought. Where did you pick up a crazy hobby like that in the first place?
He gave himself a few seconds to choose his words carefully before going on. "His theory is that everyone here is the subject of one kind of fictional work or another. I'm not ready to buy that without a lot more evidence, and you'll have to make up your own mind too. But you don't need me to punch you to realize that this building, the people running around it, that door, those pipes--none of it's fiction, Pilgrim."