[Open]

[smokeeasy]

Location/time: Starting at room 217 and going up. Right after this.
Characters: Badou and anyone who wants to run into him.
Rating: PG-ish?
Summary: Crazy chain-smoker trying to get from floor 2 to floor 7.
Notes: Anyone who'd like to join is welcome to, but FIY, when Badou gets to his destination he's gonna have to go it alone, so you might not

Comments

[smokeeasy]

Badou was indeed bookin' it up the stairs. Primarily this was because of the thing that was after him. It was pale and moved kind of like a snake on electroshock--alternately quick and twitchy, like it might strike at any moment but with about as much control over its aim as...a snake on elctroshock.

It had also tried to grab him nearly as soon as he set foot on the second floor landing, or anyway, he thought it had. The stairwell was dark and he hadn't had a chance for his single eye to adjust properly to the dim light before he got a glimpse of it coming towards him, its pale face nearly iridescent in the gloom.

He didn't stop to draw his guns and shoot it--something told him that would be pretty damn futile anyway--he just ran, which in the semi-dark involved a fair bit of stumbling and scrambling. And then there was a crack of light and an opening door ahead and Badou plowed through it, barely missing the figure who held it open and who, he did notice, was pointing a gun right at him.

Priorities first though: "Close it! Close it!" he yelled as he skidded to a halt in the hall.

Well fuck, this was off to a great start, and he'd only made it up a single floor!

[inhumanguise]

Zero's eyes widened as the redhead barrelled towards him. He pressed his back to the wall, as much out of the way of the open door as possible. He might break something if he got knocked down the stairs -- Badou's neck, for example.

He stared down at the pale, twitchy woman crawling up the stairs. His finger squeezed the trigger but then relaxed. Shooting it wouldn't do any good, even if it might improve his mood. But he was a vampire hunter, not a ghost hunter. Zero backed through the door just as it was reaching out for his ankle. He pulled the red tape from his pocket and unrolled a bit, tearing it free with the help of his teeth. He smoothed it over the crack in the door. The door rattled briefly. And then the stairway fell silent.

If looks could kill, Badou would be taking his last breath. "I don't think you have to worry about the ghosts here killing you." Either someone else would do the job or he would kill himself with all the stumbling and flailing. "Do everyone a favor and go back to your room."

[smokeeasy]

Hands braced against his knees as he bent over to catch his breath, Badou watched the door as the young man in front of him sealed it with tape. His hand almost reflexively went to one of his guns as the door rattled, but then shifted when it stilled, reaching instead into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulling out the pack of cigarettes there.

He was all set to say thank you to the guy who'd helped him out, whoever he was, but the look he received did manage to change his tone, if not to shut him up outright. "Yeah, well if it's not one thing it's another."

He shook a smoke out of the pack, lifted it to his mouth, and then lit it with a match that he struck one-handed on its own matchbook. He took a long drag, shaking out the match and putting the whole kit back into his pocket before he spoke again, "Wasn't out taking a stroll just for the hell of it. Got somewhere I gotta get to." Either the smoke really was doing its job, or else he'd managed to suddenly get very good at putting on a calm, cool exterior. "Thanks though."

[inhumanguise]

Zero had perfected that look for just such a purpose. But before coming here he'd used it to intimidate teenage girls who wanted to get a little too close to the gorgeous Night Class, without realizing that their idols wanted to suck their blood.

He watched the other guy take out a cigarette and light up. Zero didn't understand the habit, but at least it kept him quiet for the moment. It also seemed to steady the urge to stampede. "Yeah. Good luck with that." He could at least try to sound a bit more convincing. But he had somewhere else he needed to be too, and he was still here. The odds should be a little more in Badou's favor since where he was going was actually still inside the apartments.

Zero still wasn't convinced that he'd make it.

"Give it a few minutes and try the stairs again. If you stop on every floor, you might just stay far enough ahead of her." Zero started to turn away, but glanced back at Badou at the last second. "There's also the elevator." Was that a smile on his lips? Just a tiny one?

Hey, a smirk is technically still a smile.

[smokeeasy]

Badou certainly had no trouble picking up on the sarcasm or the condescension. Personally he didn't think he deserved it, but then he was also kind of used to that sort of attitude from people who didn't know him well enough to know what he was capable of when push came to shove. Mostly he tried not to let it get to him--he didn't give a damn what people thought of him anyway, just so long as they didn't impinge upon his supply of smokes.

Besides, like it or not, they were all here together, this bunch of strangers in this weirdo building. He didn't expect everyone to like each other, but he figured that they might as well at least make a try being neighborly, and attitude or no, this guy had just helped him out. It was all a kind of teamwork, he supposed.

He snorted what was almost a laugh at the suggestion of the elevator, "Yeah. Definitely want to be trapped in a haunted six foot square box. Always been a dream of mine. Man, there aren't enough cigarettes in the world for that." But he could tell by the look on the other's face that the suggestion hadn't really been a serious one. At least it gave them a moment of almost-shared levity.

"What about you?" he asked with a jerk of his chin towards the closed stairway door. "Doesn't look like you're planning to hide out in your own room. You going up or down?"

[inhumanguise]

Zero was known for always being a little bit angry. He'd been bitter for the past four years, and would continue to be until vampires were wiped out. Though he hadn't heard of any vampires being in the apartments yet...he should be happier.

"At least you're not completely stupid." For deciding against the elevator. He didn't know of anyone who'd ridden one yet, no matter how many flights of stairs they had to climb with ghosts in hot persuit. Zero paused at the question, appearing to give it some genuine thought. "I'm going up to the roof." Which meant a few more floors for him too. He stepped towards the door and reached for the tape. It paused there while he glanced over at Badou. "Can you smoke and run at the same time?"

[smokeeasy]

Badou couldn't help but grin at that. "Do fish have gills?" He could smoke and do just about anything at the same time. He'd even smoked in the shower a few times in his life--not something he made a practice of, but he figured that it took some dedication to bother trying in the first place.

He wasn't insulted by the other's attitude either--he spent enough time in the company of the perpetually-moody and bad tempered that barbed comments tended to roll off of him like water off a duck's back.

"I gotta stop off next floor. Kid named Aaron sounded like he could use a hand. If that thing in there follows me maybe you can make it two floors in one go." He gave a nod to signal he was ready.

[inhumanguise]

Zero offered him a single nod before speaking. "Let's go then." He stripped the tape from the door and rushed into the relative darkness of the stairs. There were two flights between each floor, evenly broken up by a landing. And they'd made it to the landing when he felt the claw-like fingers wrap around his ankle.

"Shit!" Zero turned his gun on it and fired, but it was the tug of his leg and the kick to the ghost's forehead that made it vanish back into the darkness. "Keep going!" He doubted he had to even tell the guy that -- if he even hesitated at all. Zero went through the ritual of taping the door shut again. "Aaron, huh?" That name was actually familiar to him. "Do you know what he is?" Zero placed his hand against the door, catching his breath before facing that thing again.

[smokeeasy]

It was a close thing, just whose leg that ghost had grabbed: Badou was behind Zero, so by rights it should have been him, but the turn of the landing left a space for it to reach up between the railing of the stairs beneath that put Zero's ankle in closer reach.

Badou had reached for his gun the moment he saw it happening, firing a short burst from the uzi that seemed to echo back and forth down the whole stairwell, and though he saw the bullets hit the thing's pale elongated body, by the sounds they made they only impacted the hard concrete of the stairs as though its body hadn't been there at all.

When it withdrew--whatever worked, worked and he wasn't about to hang around and question it--he lost no time in continuing their dash up the stairs, yanking the door closed behind him and holding it while the other sealed tape around the edge. There was no rattling this time though.

He holstered his gun again, drew a long drag on the smoke he still held between his lips, and asked "You all right," before anything.

His brow furrowed a bit at the other's reaction to Aaron's name. He was about to ask if the guy knew him, but then--"'What' he is?" Not who--Badou wasn't sure what to make of that. Another drag on his cig, "Naw, what is he?"

[inhumanguise]

It was another reason to wander the apartment in pairs. That way you don't have to be faster than the ghosts. You just have to be faster than the other person. "You're pretty good with that." Zero noted while glancing at the uzi.

"I'm alright. What about you?" His eyes glanced up and down the hallway but it looked clear. At least until the ghosts started being drawn to the sound of their voices or body heat, or whatever it was that attracted them.

Hmm. He didn't know. And Zero didn't think it was his place to tell him. If the worst case scenario was the correct one and they were all stuck here together for awhile, then it was only a matter of time until everyone knew. "He likes hamburger pizza." So that makes him...a hamburger pizza fan? Zero reached for the tape again, preparing to continue on his way to the roof. "You can seal this back up after I'm through. It seems like a good idea to reuse this stuff as much as we can."

[smokeeasy]

"Peachy," Badou replied, flat and sardonic. He too was scanning the hall. He had to find room 419, and by the looks of things it wasn't going to be too close to the stairwell.

He glanced sidelong at his companion when the pizza comment came. Badou knew when he wasn't getting the whole story, and he definitely was not getting the whole story here. But there was a time and a place, and if you wanted more answers than were immediately forthcoming then you had to have leverage which, at the moment, he didn't. So he let the non-answer slide. It was a tip off about information he had yet to gain, and he was willing to take it as such. So he just said, "Who the hell puts hamburger on pizza," and left it at that.

He looked back to the door as the other prepared to depart again. Maybe it would be pointless but, "Yeah, I'll see if I can lay some kind of cover fire or distraction for you, or some shit." He drew both his guns this time, the first uzi proving to have a twin.

"Hey man, what's your name, anyway?" Almost an afterthought, but he figured it'd be worth knowing.

[inhumanguise]

"You're not going to go crazy at some point and shoot up the apartments, are you?" Two uzis? Yeah, not too suspicious. Zero eyed him a little closer, but at length decided that he didn't really look like the picture of some guy under the headline 'Man Goes Crazy, Kills Eleven'. And it sounded like he was actually trying to help someone.

"Thanks." Everyone was so poorly equipped against the ghosts here, but that didn't stop them from trying. He could appreciate that. Zero hesitated, not wanting to pull the tape away from the door until he was absolutely ready. "Zero Kiryuu. What's yours?"

[smokeeasy]

The crooked grin that answered this question was probably less than completely reassuring, especially given the fact that Badou's only answer seemed to completely avoid the question: "There's someplace around to get cigarettes here, right?" And really, though he didn't explain, that was the answer. So long as he had his smokes, he wasn't gonna go crazy and kill anyone.

If he didn't have his smokes...well, best not to think about it. He put the possibility out of his mind. It was a town. It would have cigarettes.

"Badou Nails," he spoke around the cig between his lips, but he was apparently practiced enough at this that it didn't slur his words in the least. "Nice to meet you."