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Post by Kat on Mar 8, 2011 0:36:03 GMT -5
There's an exclamation of disgust from out on the landing, near where the latest scrawl of vandalism in red paint was recently found, and Fa comes rushing into Kay's room, wielding something like... like a strip of leather.
"I just found this," she says, looking utterly distressed.
Kay leaned in and eyed the odd strip, wrinkling her nose. Malton had shown them many unpleasant things over the years. "What is it?"
"I... I'm not sure," Fa lied. She was holding it gingerly, between gloved fingers. Allowing Kay to get a good look at it, the strip appeared to have something carved into it:
'You dropped something outside the Needs building and momo has the tools to get friend back. We be waaaaattchiiiiinnnngggggg'
Kay exclaimed, leaning back, her look of disgust transmuted to startled anger. "godd*mn it, that little sh*t really is back." She then looked grim. "I should go hunting... Wait." Brown eyes flicked up to Fa, and Kay gestured at the grisly strip. "What is he talking about, there?"
"I'm not sure," Fa replied, shaking her head a little, kind of wanting to lob the note somewhere far away. "Casey's up with Agate," she added, casting Kay a significant look
Kay's frown deepened, and she eyeballed the note again. "I should go tell him. Then we should go check this out." It had been a while since she'd had to hunt down anything that wasn't a zombie.
"Yeah, that sounds good," Fa agreed, handing the... note... to Kay as though happy to be rid of it. "But..." she looked a little harried as she added, "don't do anything hasty, alright? For all we know, he's got a legion of cultists after such a long absence?"
"So we'll look before we leap," Kay countered, looking increasingly savage. "I want to nip this sh*t in the bud, I don't want him coming near the Cosway again." She held the note up and looked at it again, giving it a critical examination despite the grisly look of the thing. She'd been around Malton long enough to know what this was, and the fact of it only made her more sure it was time to off Momo for good.
She paused in her scrutiny. "What's this?" There was a little doodle on the note. It was almost a smilie face, but could just as easily be two very badly written M's and a W. "Does this mean anything to you?"
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Post by Kat on Mar 13, 2011 1:22:01 GMT -5
((This is not proof-read just yet, so Dray or I may be back to f*ck around with it later.))
Fa glanced at the note, at the strange scribbles that Kay pointed out. Putting aside her disgust with the whole thing, she tried to make it out into something legible... if it did resemble anything, Fa couldn't piece it together. "No," she finally admitted. "Probably a signature."
Kay shrugged -- she was sure it meant something, but with nothing immediately forthcoming, she decided she'd chew on the mystery while on the move. They already knew who'd sent the nasty little note, after all. Momo was not subtle. "Right, I'm going to go get my gear," she told Fa, and then glanced again at the strip she held. She snorted and asked, "do you want to keep this? If you don't want to keep it, I'm tossing it out a d*mn window."
Unable to see a reason to keep it, Fa shook her head sharply, raising her hands as if to ward against receiving the thing. "I'll take Casey... we'll use the usual backup plan?" She stood in the middle of the doorway, now, crossing her arms and looking concerned. They had often had to deal with being split up in the past, and if any one or more of them wound up missing for more than a day, it was obvious what had happened to them. Fa, then, would be aware if Kay needed to be tracked down... and Agate, too, for that matter.
Kay was at the window, halfway through wrenching the thing open when Fa spoke. She looked over her shoulder and nodded, but raised her eyebrows. "Yeah, for sure," she said, turning her attention back to the window. She tossed the nasty note out the crack she managed to open, and then shoved the thing shut again with a screech of degraded metal and a bang of rattling glass.
Wiping her hands on her (dubiously cleaner) pants, she followed Fa from the room with a set look on her face.
Fa led the way up the stairs, their footsteps noisy in the empty well. Stepping out onto the second floor, they were greeted with the squeal of a tiny voice from a nearby room -- quickly after that, a squawk of indignation and then that same voice, "again! Again!"
When Fa entered the room that Kay and Agate shared (and which she sometimes shared), it was to the sight of a child clamouring up into her father's extended arms. Agate, though covered in heavy clothing to ward off the chill of late winter, looked well, and just as cantankerous as ever. "Tumbling's not a god damned game!" he was exclaiming, though Casey was ignoring his harsh tone as he hoisted her up so that she was balancing, cat-like, near his shoulders. Before Agate could settle her, the girl leaped from his arms and into a nest of torn cushions, blankets and clothing. She had managed to curl up as she fell, just as Agate was hastily instructing her, and didn't seem at all hurt by the fall, for she was on her feet again in a second and had finally caught sight of the two women.
"Fa!" she exclaimed, streaking across to the other blonde and throwing her arms around the woman's legs. Casey, wrapped around them, peaked up at her own mother and gave a wary, if respectful stare. She was observant if nothing else; the look she gathered from the redhead was enough to prevent any arrogant tale that she was about to go off on.
Agate, too, noticed their grim attitudes. "What's the matter?" he asked. He was already reaching for the much dented bat that he had leaned up against the wall.
"Nothing that immediate," Kay told Agate, seeing his reaction -- and Casey's for that matter, the latter of which at least prompted her to make some effort to soften her expression. She was glad, though, that Fa had a handle on the kid for the moment. "You've seen the latest and greatest wall-art, right? Well, he left another note -- a wonderfully cryptic little thing." Her tone was acid, and the look of disgust that she wore for a moment might give him a hint.
She strode for her own pack, passing Fa and Casey on the way -- the girl watched her pass and crouch beside her pack, but kept quiet. Kay rifled through her pack, picking things for this outing and dumping the rest, and then stood to retrieve her axe from its safe place, hung far up the wall beyond where curious young hands could find it. "I really don't know what the hell he meant by it, but it pointed us towards the Needs building. I thought it'd be nice to go pay him a visit." Her fingers curled around her belt, from which hung her weapons of choice.
Agate's eyes narrowed, flickering from where Fa was picking up a hard-eyed Casey, to the equally stony expression of her mother. He'd seen the scrawled graffiti and, shocked for a moment beyond his usual muttering curses, had immediately put tabs on Casey. He hadn't really left her, since. Despite himself, his fingers curled around his bat and he had half-lifted it before he asked, "What did it say?"
"It said that he has something of ours outside of the building... and that he was watching," Fa answered, voice sour.
"Son of a bitch," Agate replied, voice low. He was and never had been especially good at censoring himself around Casey, and by this point, it was too late to do much good. He continued, eyes intent upon Kay and her axe, "anything in mind?" Whether he meant what they had apparently lost, or what Kay was planning when she got there, he was unclear.
Kay snorted and shrugged again, taking the question the first way. "I honestly would be shocked if it was anything beyond the ravings of a creep," she told him. "I think he's just somehow found us again and wants to play a game." She remembered Momo being childlike in moods and behavior, even in speech.
It hardly mattered, though. Kay was not looking Momo up for a social call. She shrugged her outdoor coat on, shouldered her pack and looked to her husband. "You good to go?"
"Can I come?" Casey piped up loudly, still attached to Fa. She was looking back and forth between Kay and Agate, finally settling her gaze on her father. She'd caught the word 'game', though the atmosphere of the room didn't exactly scream fun times, and this was not the first time that the little girl had wanted to accompany her parents on an outing.
"No, honey," Kay told her daughter, catching the child's attention again. She was frowning, and soon so was Casey.
"Why not," Casey demanded, rather than asked.
Fa, squeezing the girl, quickly quipped, "because you need to show me what you've learned so far about tumbling, my little nugget of happiness!" She nuzzled at the girl, but Casey seemed unswayed; she had long since learned distractionary tactics, and she was adept at gauging the threat level in the room. This was different from the norm, and she was intensely curious.
Agate pursed his lips and gave Casey a look that meant business. Shouldering his bat, he approached Fa and reached his empty arm out, and at once, Casey swung into his grasp. "You need to stay with Fa," he told her sternly, "and to do what she says, because this is big and bad; worse than zombies."
Casey looked disenchanted, her frown taking a deeper turn. She wanted to know what was worse than zombies, though her mind quickly locked on an answer. "Bad men?"
"Yes," her father answered, "bad men. When bad men come you go with Fa,"
"--Or else they take me away," Casey finished, knowing this litany well. She still looked very unimpressed with her parents, but Fa was prizing her away from her father again, and she knew better than to make a lot of noise about it. Casey was not the kind of child who threw a fit... no, she got her revenge in other ways. "Come back," she finally settled on, glaring at her parents petulantly.
"We'll be back," Agate replied, "you put the clock on an we'll be back before breakfast."
"And if you're not," Fa added, "I'll know where to find you."
Agate nodded, then turned to his wife. "Let's go."
Kay's frown had not subsided, and her eyes stayed on Casey. Not because the girl was doing anything particularly wrong (not right now, in any case). She just had old thoughts on her mind, memories dredged up from the beginning of the girl's life.
Maybe she wasn't always the most patient parent, or the most understanding, or really, ever much good at any of the things mothers should be good at; and maybe she was damned lucky to have Agate and Fa around to catch her blunders and teach the girl to be a good person; but there was one thing she could do for her daughter, and that was make sure that creeps and Bad Men got hacked to bits before they got close enough to cause her strife.
She turned as Agate approached the doorway, and lead him out of the room. He and Fa had admonished, distracted and reassured the girl. Now it was time for her to do her part.
As they set off, they could already hear Casey loudly demanding more about what had happened, though Fa was managing to deftly sidetrack her, as their voices trailed away. They were in the stairwell again, and Agate hefting the pack that very left his back, thinking about what they might possibly run in to. Momo had never seemed especially intelligent to him, but then, the man had demonstrated on more than one occasion a sort of savant-like ability to track them and cause trouble when they were at their weakest. That left Agate nervous; though the crew of the Cosway had been whittled down over the years until the small family were the only ones regularly using it as a home, they had otherwise been doing well for themselves, given their circumstances.
So why did Momo show up now?
He voiced as much to Kay as they rounded the last bend of the staircase, pulling his hood up and putting his gloves on in preparation for the chill wind on the roof.
"sh*t ass luck," Kay articulated, emphasis on every word. Wrapped up in her own winter clothing, her frown could still be seen from behind her too-large hood. "Crazy f*cker just happened to wander into our neck of the woods and got a whiff of a familiar tasty snack." Was Kay still angry about that? Maaaybe. "Figure we should put him down for good this time?" It was only barely a question. She shoved open the roof door, feeling it drag against accumulated snowbanks, and stepped outside. Her breath turned to mist in front of her, which was in turn whisked away by the small but steady wind.
"You know the fuckers don't stay down for good," Agate reminded, unnecessarily. "Whaddaya say we cut him up into pieces and separate them as far away as possible?" It was unfortunate -- miraculous, but in many cases extremely unfortunate -- that with the power of the bright blue fluid that pulsed through Malton, even that kind of retribution could not be enough.
Agate looked out over Malton's roof-top, which was littered with all kinds of detritus; it was as close to a zombie-free yard as one could get these days, given that it was a through-way for the living. Hunks of twisted metal, coils of badly frayed rope, buckets and crates littered the area, though their forms were muted by the piles of snow. Old bullet casings, long since buried for the winter, occasionally cropped up, though they and every other little piece of garbage that he and Kay strode over were frozen solid to the roof.
Before Kay could hurry them across the rope that slanted down to the auto shop, Agate shielded his eyes and looked further ahead. The sun had passed its zenith, though they still had a few hours to spare before it had set. To the south, a good day's walk to anyone who was sane enough to take precautions, he could make out clouds rising from the well-entrenched wall. He couldn't see the patrollers, but he knew that they would be there watching and waiting. The only reason that Malton had not become a blasted crater in the earth, he supposed, was because the wall was so diligently guarded. It was an unspoken boundary, these days, and so Agate's view only swept it briefly. He paid more attention to the streets that they could see: from the Cosway, they had a good view of jumbled heaps of frozen garbage and well-cannibalized auto parts, and more importantly, of those figures who stood, sat, and leaned up against protrusions, apparently heedless of the cold. "I count three active," Agate mentioned, pointing the emaciated figure standing near a foot-path that cut across one field, and two more lurking in the street beyond. There were other bodies, but they were prone, covered in snow and unmoving.
"As long as their friends don't get up, we shouldn't have a problem with them." Kay had picked out the same three. There'd been some freezing and thawing lately, and it wasn't unheard-of for the silent piles to stand up when tempted with fresh meat. But the roofways were well-established and the suburb was quiet lately, so their ground-pounding would be kept to a minimum anyway.
The redhead got a move on, heading for the long, diagonal plankway to Marston's much lower roof. "Through the junkyard," she suggested to Agate, sitting at the edge of the precarious-looking passage. "It's been patched up again." The junkyard's chain link fence had long since been breached to the point of nonexistence, but survivors kept filling the holes with the very junk they contained. The whole thing looked like four makeshift garbage walls and no roof by this point, but of all the open-air areas in the suburb, it was still the safest.
Agate made no move to argue over directions; he had developed something of a superstition regarding their only other option. Agate didn't like big office buildings because they contained many potential places to lay traps or surprises, and the Clive Building had been especially prone to such tricks. He'd learned the painful way to avoid it at all costs.
As the blonde followed his wife into the junkyard and back up some planks onto another roof, he had time to think about what they'd do when -- or if -- they encountered Momo. He had a feeling that the deranged man would be difficult to spot, for all his pea-sized brain. He'd had a tendency in the past to slip away from right under their noses, and unless the last big freeze had really pared down the few brain cells that Momo had left, Agate wasn't willing to bet that it would be as simple as walking up to the man and dealing with him. They'd need some form of a plan.
He dwelt on this as they made a short hop between two roofs, and finally brought it up to Kay. "He's probably not going to be out in the open," Agate said, cutting straight to the point just after he'd paused for a breather. "We'll need to lure him out... I think if we play dumb, we'll do better for it." Not that Momo spoke any other language than dumb...
It wasn't necessarily that Kay was underestimating their opponent -- okay, so maybe a little bit it was. But she was used to creeps ranging from mindless to frighteningly canny, and knew that basic behavior frequently had little to do with how much of a pain in the ass something was to kill. She nodded, taking Agate's suggestion with a certain grim familiarity. "I could play bait," she suggested, not without irony, "unless it's the knocked-up part he found so tempting. Do you maybe want to hang back while I go in first?" she suggested. "Make it at least look like I'm by myself?"
The thought of leaving Kay alone at all with the man left Agate's gut squirming, even if the redhead had long since proven her ability to take care of herself. Begrudgingly, he replied, "yeah, we could do it that way. But if anything goes wrong..."
"If anything goes wrong the stakes are not as high as they were last time," Kay told him firmly, gloved fingers at her sheathed axe. "I'll be fine. You'll know if sh*t goes down." She did have a loud voice, after all.
The trudge down another ramp to the top of the junkpile was easier than the descent to the Marston; the angle was gentler, though the Cosway's long planks at least were studded with wooden dowels as footholes, while the set of boards to the junkyard only sported ice.
Agate snorted, thinking of several things that he could respond with, but in the end he kept his mouth shut. As they were moving south, evidence of damage -- more recent damage, not the initial fire damage that much of this suburb had been privy to at the outbreak more than six years ago -- became more apparent. They could spot bodies standing, rooted to the spot, and one was shuffling awkwardly in jilting motions towards the imposing yellow building that was the general hospital. A small queue of undead had formed around the building's weak-points, and Agate took note of all of them as they went by. Groans carried in the wind from those undead that were aware enough to claw at the trash pressed up against the windows and doors. Agate had long since grown used to those noises, though they never the less set the hairs at the back of his neck up and left an unpleasant lurch in his stomach. He gripped his bat a little more tightly, following behind his wife and looking for anything that might trip them up or otherwise cause them trouble.
Eventually they had reached the libraries roofs and he slowed, putting his hand on Kay's shoulder to stop her, as well. "Hey, stay safe," he told her. He pulled her close for a moment, careful not to get caught on her axe.
She kissed him in the cold, putting her arms around him. When she pulled away, she was wearing a half-grin that was tinted sardonic. Kay was self-aware enough to appreciate the cautioning as legitimately needed. "I'll do my best. No promises." She regarded him for a moment, and then quickly turned away.
The rest of the trip to the Needs was just as uneventful. Shamblers remained in the streets, but with Agate keeping tabs on them Kay hardly had to, and arriving on the top of the NT building they were headed for, she was glad the trip was over. Her fingers in her gloves and her exposed face were cold, but that was background noise. It was the tension that was getting under her skin, and so once they reached their destination, she only pause a moment.
"Here goes," she said to her husband. Shifting her axe, popping the latch on its sheath so she could easily take it out, she headed for the Needs's roof entrance and, with no regard for stealth (being bait and all), banged her way indoors.
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Post by dray on Mar 13, 2011 13:58:13 GMT -5
Agate hadn't expected to see a huge trail of smoke and light to burst from the warehouse to the building as Kay descended; he might be used, by now, to seeing the signals burst into existence, given that half a dozen seemed to be used every other day... but to see one so close, and so purposefully aimed...
He didn't waste time thinking. He exclaimed over the noise of the flare hitting the roof access and went straight for the planks that would lead him up to the Necrotech office's roof. He knew that he'd find the culprit one building further, but Kay was more important at the moment.
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Post by Kat on Mar 16, 2011 14:39:08 GMT -5
Kay had gotten inside before the flare had even been fired, but that didn't mean the noise of it slamming into the side of the roof doorway didn't make her jump. She hissed a curse and whirled around, not entirely clear on what the noise had been but convinced it had something to do with Momo. d*mn right red lady was not going to be happy.
She charged back up the stairs she'd already descended, but slowed when she approached the door, thinking fast. If there was something out there (or someone), they had probably seen her go in, and were probably expecting her to come back out. She tugged her axe out of its belt-bound holder and gripped it firmly, sucked in a breath, and bodychecked the door back open, charging onto the roof and doing a quick 360.
Red smoke still dissipating, Agate charging for the roof access and her. Nothing else immediate. She spit another swear and visually followed that trail of smoke back to its origin. Was that a little building on top of the warehouse across the way? Kay narrowed her eyes, but it was too far away to see detail. As Agate approached, she pointed across the way at that shack and said, "I bet that's where we're headed." Even if it wasn't, Kay wanted to find out who the hell was firing flares at her. "So much for springing a trap."
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Post by dray on Mar 16, 2011 20:21:34 GMT -5
It was an apt enough assumption, given that Agate had now reached Kay, and had his bat loose in one hand with a look of disgust and rage to give a guess as to what he intended to use it for. He was hurrying across the Needs' roof with his wife, scrambling to be first to cross over the rickety set of planks and ropes that allowed access from one to the other... the entire construction was shabby, at best, but the blonde wasn't worried just now about crossing safely. "Get out here!" he shouted, voice high and angry.
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Post by Kat on Mar 16, 2011 20:30:59 GMT -5
She'd seen the movement in the building and picked out not one, but two figures before that flare had obscured the sight of them. If Momo had backup, that complicated things.
The green flare fizzled off into the cold blue, unwatched by either Kay or Agate. She had enough presence of mind to let him get most of the way across those planks before she charged across herself, though the whole construction shook for the moments where both of them were pounding it. Kay picked up speed and reached the other side before Agate was too far ahead, axe still out and eyes locked on that shed. The smoke was dissipating, but now all she could see was one swaying figure -- either a zombie, or really not well. She madly looked about for the second body, to no avail.
When a gust of wind blew the last shreds of green away from the odd shack, Kay caught full sight of the source of those flares. She faltered, startled. "Werdnari?!"
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Post by dray on Mar 16, 2011 21:28:39 GMT -5
"Why not?" Agate asked, brought to a halt as he realized, as Kay did, that the figure who'd collapsed before them was the Werdnari that they'd once knew... God, how long had it been? Three years? Four? "Why the f*ck not?" he came pacing back to the shivering man, after having run half the length of the roof, looking for the one who'd run away. "Where the f*ck have you been?" he added, thudding the end of his bat onto the roof.
Angry enough to beat someone, but with no outlet, the bundled-up blonde leaned over his weapon, not yet offering to give Werd a hand up like he seemed to desperately need. He smelled horrible -- not that Malton exactly sniffed of roses -- and Agate guessed soon enough that he'd probably been chewing pavement or brains for some time. "Jesus," he snapped, "you were with that freak and you got something warm and fuzzy for him, helping him get away like that? He was in our home, he f*cking eats people and he's not even f*cking dead!" He regarded Werd as though the heap of rags and flesh wasn't far different.
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Post by dray on Mar 16, 2011 22:28:56 GMT -5
"Th'f*ck are you talking about?! That wasn't me, though it probably shoulda been--" Agate lifted his bat up, pulling away from Werdnari as Kay came circling around again. "This ratshit's got his brains scrambled, probably by our old friend, there." Some of the immediacy of his threats seemed to evaporate, though that was probably because he was speaking to Kay, now, and not to Werd. "Thinks I'm that soldier fella up at the fort or some sh*t." He paused, examining Werd for a few moments without saying anything even if he was frowning fiercely. "What did he do to you?" He wanted to believe that Werdnari and Momo weren't working together, though he was having a very tough time believing that right now, when he'd just seen evidence to the contrary.
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Post by Kat on Mar 16, 2011 22:36:50 GMT -5
Kay was still looking around, as if ready to believe Momo was going to jump out from behind a roof antenna or appear around a corner, though she took a moment to focus a baleful eye on Werd in the midst of her hunting. She'd been catching the conversation peripherally, and she too was thinking someone had gotten into Werd's skull with an eggbeater at some point in the intervening years.
Still, less important. More pressing was, "and why the hell are you covering for him? That little piece of crap snuck into the Cosway, left a note gouged in what I'm like 90% sure was human skin, and scrawled all over the wall asking about Casey. If you know where he went, point me the f*ck after him," she snarled, "so I can deal with him before he makes another midnight stop-in to finish the job he tried to start when he tried to eat her out of my belly the first time!"
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