damned_institute | Nightshift 44: Equipment/Chemical Storage

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Nightshift 44: Equipment/Chemical Storage

[from here]

Bart needed no encouragement to follow Scourge into the chemical storage closet. He'd already known that Landel's was a freakishly creepy place from personal experience, but that didn't make the things they'd just heard any less creepy. What were they doing to those poor animals...? And did he really want to know?

Still holding Piper's flashlight, he panned the beam over the shelves full of chemicals, wondering where they were supposed to start. And speaking of starting..."Did anyone remember to bring a pillow case?" he asked, the strain showing in his voice despite himself. It wasn't right for a superhero to get freaked out, but...Bart would really rather get out of here, if it was all the same!

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As they passed through from the decon. room to the lab, Hart shivered, frowning. Whatever Scourge was hearing, he was catching too. The quiet, old familiarity of his expanded hearing seemed almost within reach, but the moment it began slipping back to him, he heard exactly the sort of thing that made skin crawl and hearts stop. One of the adjoining rooms held something none-too-kind.

He hurried on into the storage closet (this was a closet? it was huge--the dimensions had to be twice over what his room was!) behind Bart and Scourge, secretly wishing that they'd close the door in on themselves. Maybe that would blot out those noises. He'd certainly never heard any natural-born animal or human for that matter make anything sounding like that. But then again, there were stranger things in Heaven and earth...

"Pillow case?" He paused from a brief stint of overlooking the chemicals shelved as well. "--I didn't know we were--" Captain Obvious may please sit down now. NONE of them had known the night would come to this, so their caught unawares was more than, well...obvious.

"Hold on a second."

Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice was humming along to a song Hartley knew, culminating in a;
I have a tendency to wear my mind on my sleeve, I have a history of taking off my shirt--

--which was precisely what Hart was doing. With coat shucked to the floor, he stripped out of his happy-faced t-shirt, and proceeded to tie off the bottom in a knot, doing the same with each sleeve.

"Instant bag." He nodded, holding the makeshift bag by the collar. After that, however, he was quick to shuffle back into his coat, retying it at the waist. "Time to shop?" he asked, looking back to the shelves himself.

With a magician's flourish Scourge whipped the pillowcase out of his pocket and snapped it back to its full length. "I got mine."

...and now Piper was stripping his clothes off. Scourge stared for a few baffled moments until Piper explained what he was doing with it. Sensible, that, but he never would have thought of it.

"What is it with this place and shirtlessness?" the tracker murmured to himself as he began pawing through the bottles. Now, which ones had the high numbers on their diamons...

Bart laughed quietly, as unbothered by the shirtlessness as only somebody who spent nearly all their free time hanging out with friends and family in form-fitting spandex could be.

Seeing that Scourge seemed to know what he was doing -- not that he would have been especially happy about helping him out, though Bart would have if he really needed it, because hey, superhero -- Bart moved closer to Piper, still looking over the closest shelves. It all looked pretty much the same to him. "Where do we start?" he asked.

Oh. Scourge had one.
Oh. DAMNIT.

Hart buttoned up a few more of the coat's buttons, feeling a bit undressed after the other produced forth a pillowcase. But though he felt ridiculous, it still meant they could carry twice the amount between the them all.

"We start here--" Hart bit back his nervous, twitchy grin, pointing up to a line of chemicals on the shelf. "James worked with explosives a lot. Ah--shine the light up here please?" he asked, voice soft as he scanned the labels. "And while we we criminals then, sometimes it was hard to get our hands on the heavy duty chemicals, so we had to make due with some of the more common stuff. And when I wasn't headfirst into Fury back then, or off doing my own thing, I was helping James with--ah, these will do."

Hart gave a quiet chuckle, halfway between tensed and worrying, and a warmer nostalgia from old memories. He pointed to a few of the needed bottles;

Peroxides, hydroxides, acids--god, the acids.

"I remember only how to mix a few of them. Recluse and Scourge might know the rest, otherwise I only know what to grab." With everyone he took down, he paused before putting it into his shirt-bag, letting Bart catch the label for later reference.

"Hey Scourge--" Hart called it out just loud enough to trump his earlier whispering, unsure if the noise-room was locked tight. He remembered full-well the sight of Scourge's scars down his back from the spider attack. "--how much of this stuff do you think we should clear out? --as much as we can carry?"

There were a few soft clinks as Scourge shuffled the bottles about, testing the stoppers to make sure they were on straight. "Yeah. They seem to have replaced most of it since the last time I was up here and we should get them before Landel wises up and gets this room a better lock."

Acids he knew were important, and the sulfur. Scourge wracked his mind, trying to remember what all the names were. "Lord Recluse knows a lot about chemicals," he continued. "If we can't use it he might be able to."

Slag, what Recluse could do, or at least said he could do. Scourge knew what acid could do to skin but he hadn't imagined there were chemicals to burst your lungs or make your insides bleed, or to blind you beyond repair. Human bodies were so amazingly fragile and every time Scourge remembered it he wondered why he hadn't tripped and shattered himself like a glass sculpture whenever he took a step.

Bart obligingly moved the flashlight where directed, though he quickly began to fidget a little as the subjective minutes dragged on. Reading the labels helped a little, but not much. It was a little weird; it wasn't as though he actually wanted to fight a monster, not with his speed not working properly and a mouthy civilian hanging around, but this was boring. Still, he tried to keep his cool.

"Who's Fury?" he asked Piper, during a quiet moment. James he knew, in retrospect anyway -- and hadn't Wally freaked out when he heard about Bart's adventure with 'Toaster Man' -- but that was a new name.

As far as using the chemicals went...This was one situation where Bart wasn't above admitting that he was in completely over his head. Better to let the people who actually knew what they were doing take care of it; Bart could watch and pick it up as they went along, if only in an effort to stave off boredom.

"I'll catch Recluse in the morning when he gives me the map." Hart noted, grabbing up a few more bottles before turning Scourge, essentially done with his picking. "--he should be able to pass on any information to me and I'll work up that code, pass you all the codes, and," he concluded, "--once that's figured with, I'll either pass on said information by either word of mouth or via Bulletin. And Fury--" He cast a look to Bart, one almost shy.

God, was it really time to dip back and dig the old skeletons out of the closet? Bart really hadn't ever gotten to meet the man, had he? --even if said meeting would have been nothing short of an all-out brawl.

"--Fury was an old partner of mine back when I was wearing polkadots." Everyone knows that get-up. Maybe someday they'd let him live it down. "We ran jobs together, among other things." Unless asked, Hart would leave it at that. Bart was a bright kid at times, but Hart didn't exactly want to scream 'I sleep with men!' to him. It was sort of unnecessary.

"Polkadots?" Scourge commented, sounding amused. "And people give me scrap for pink nails." Fury sounded like a reasonable name for a person, not to mention a partner. Scourge silently approved.

He tugged down a few more bottles, not filling his bag completely to the top this time. He wasn't searching to repay anyone for anything and he'd had enough trouble traveling with such a bulky thing even before the spider dropped on him.

"You paint your nails pink?" Bart asked, immediately swinging the flashlight around to look at Scourge's hands. His nails didn't look any pinker than anyone else's though; what a let down.

Remembering that he was supposed to be helping Piper, he gave him an apologetic look and put the flashlight beam back where it was supposed to be, so Piper could see too. You couldn't blame him for being interested, though; he'd already seen the polka dots outfit, thanks to...

"Did they ever get around to updating your statue's costume, in the Flash museum?" No, that wasn't random at all! ...Not if you were privy to Bart's somewhat erratic thought process, anyway.

Hart gave the sort of smile oft seen on proud (albeit extremely amused-at-their-kin's-ridiculousness) fathers, and shifted the 'bag' in hand keep it with a tighter grip. Why couldn't have Bart stayed like this forever?

Oh yeah. That's right--it was because of Wally. Like the generation before him, when the Flash disappeared, the next under was forced to take the mantle. Even without the hindsight, Bart hadn't been ready at all for the baton pass of cowl and title. Whatever of the young, innocent little goofball had been left after Deathstroke(Jericho?) capped Bart in the knee never stood a chance under the weight of Barry and Wally's collective legacies.

The way Hart way the young man today--if only he could -stay- that way.
Hmph. Well, wasn't that the case? --protect Bart! --give him the years he deserves!

Before that, though--Bart deserved an answer.
"Mine?" he chuckled, "I really don't know. I haven't been since the last time it was rebuilt. Not too long ago," Hart explained, keeping the terms open so both could get the gist of the story. "--someone snuck into the museum and tampered with some of the on-display tech. Needless to say, the whole place turned into a smoking crater when he got done fiddling with it. But as far as costumes go, I think the staff dresses them in the gear they last went heisting in."

Uh. Hart? --did you forget the museum? L.A.? Him?
Oh. You're right...

To Hart's logic, it seemed his new gear would be in the museum anyway. Nice.

"And do we have everything now? Might want to get moving back. Last thing we want is to get caught by something, right?"

Always the pink, why did everyone talk about the stupid pink. It was a tiny blotch of color on one of the smallest parts of his body and everyone gave him heck about it. Even when he wasn't actually wearing it.

"I think my bag's almost full. You have your own museum?" Scourge asked, surprised to find someone like Piper was so important. He made a decent wingmate and probably a decent leader of a small group, but you generally bought wingmates drinks rather than dedicating an entire slagging building to them.

"No, he has his own exhibit in the Flash's museum," Bart corrected, leaving it up to Piper to settle the issue of whether or not they were leaving now. Oh, right; Scourge was from a different universe, he wouldn't know who the Flash was. Weird. "And the Flash is a superhero in our universe," he added, by way of explanation. "He's pretty famous."

He couldn't help the faint hint of pride that entered his voice at that; even if he didn't like Wally personally, he liked the Flash legacy just fine. It was his grandpa's legacy too, after all, and someday it'd be his as well.

It was going to be so much fun to be the Flash. Bart was sure of it.

With the matter in his hands, Hart struck right on out and back into the lab. However, without his walking flashlight, it made seeing things a slight bit more difficult. In the storage room (that was NO closet), his eyes had adjusted to the bright shine. Out in the lab, it left him a little lacking.

What he could recall of the room however, was that there had been more doors. Fresh outside storage, they'd be to his...right?

"Scourge..." Hartley called back quietly. "You've been here before." The outlines of the doors were faint to him, but slowly strengthened the longer he watched them. "--where do these go?" he asked as he gestured over.

_{To here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/743644.html?thread=60665820#t60665820)}

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Nightshift 44: Equipment/Chemical Storage

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