Night 49: Bill's Hardware

[swornandbroken]

[from here]

Mello was ready for it, sure, but dizziness still took him for a moment as he put his foot down somewhere completely other than the hall that should have been there. He swayed on his feet, making an abortive, instinctive grab for his gun before realizing he didn't need it. Yet

Comments

[gamingsostfu]

Matt blinked in mild surprise as he took in their new surroundings. Slightly puzzled, he looked directly at Mello as he started forward, down one of the aisles - the one with the drills and bits and... was that a sledgehammer? Turning and looking around a bit more, he asked, "Do you always have such damn good luck when you're running around this place?"

Something told Matt the answer was a resounding no, but he just couldn't help the slight grin that was working its way onto his face. Mello's just got the touch tonight, I guess, he mused as he looked over the sledgehammer. Setting his loot down on the floor, the grin reached full capacity as he took the sledgehammer by the handle and hefted it up off the rack. "Y'know what, don't answer that. I'll just... keep stickin' with you once night hits."

Unless he could figure out a way out of the place before night fell again. Fat chance of that, but hoping illogically was a talent that Matt had somehow retained, despite his stint at Wammy's.

[swornandbroken]

"Yeah, every night's a fuckin' party," Mello said, dryly, knowing full well that Matt already knew better. What a night for his first one here, the whole Institute gone non-linear. Mello was still trying to find any pattern in the jumps, clinging stubbornly to the belief that there had to be a reason for it, some governing principle. But maybe the point was simply to watch the prisoners get tossed around, not know which way was up all night, and drive themselves insane for real, trying to find meaning it in when there was none. Par for the course, on a bigger scale than usual. Mello still couldn't bear the idea that his whole life had been turned upside down for no better reason than that Landel could. It felt true, but that didn't mean he had to believe it

[gamingsostfu]

The grin faded at that, his eyes narrowing at Mello as he set the sledgehammer back down, deciding against taking it. The thing would be more than useful, but it was pretty heavy, and he wasn't all too sure he was strong enough to utilize it fully. Hell, it seemed the kind of thing that not even Mello could really use properly. Momentarily gazing at the sledgehammer, Matt moved on, knowing well that it would seem more fun that it probably was.

Waltzing down the next aisle leisurely - mostly to spite Mello for urging him along almost constantly - he found exactly what he could use. The grin returned, even broader than before, as he stepped up the shelf, taking one of the crowbars in his hand and settling it against his shoulder.

Returning to where Mello was standing close to his pile of pantry goodies, Matt grabbed them back up into his arms, juggling the items with relative ease. The grin remained as he nodded. "Ready."

[swornandbroken]

Mello thought he might have hit a sour note with that whole I'm the general, you're my troops, move out thing. Overacting at playing himself, how pathetic would that be? But Matt wasn't doing any more about it than the expected, dawdling along like a smartass. Funny how easy it was to fall back into familiar patterns. Mello imagined any psychiatrist, even the quacks at Landel's, would have a field day with it, if he ever admitted that being himself was easier when he wasn't alone. It wasn't as though he didn't know it; what he resented was having it thrown into sharp relief.

He gave Matt an approving nod. Mello's own weapon of choice these last few nights had been the pipe (he fought back a pang of anger and frustration to think that his real weapon of choice had been given back to him all but useless): portable, practical. "Let's see what else we can get, then." He headed for the door.

[to here]

[tiny_chef]

[From here.]

The first thing Remy noticed was the dizziness, yet again, and he began to understand it. Hey, it happens every time we go through a door.The other thing that happened every time he went through a door was that he found himself in an unexpected place, and this was no different. If his eyes hadn't told him, his nose would have. The scent in the air had changed completely, becoming more earthy: wood and -- he sniffed -- oil, but not olive oil. It presented a strong contrast from the suggestive ghost of a culinary smell that had filled his nostrils just seconds earlier

[scarefaux]

The Scarecrow was so sure Remy and Kibitoshin had been right that they'd somehow made it back to the Institute- he'd been wondering that himself- but as they stepped through the next doorway, he found himself questioning his own judgment. It had to be that recurring lightheadedness that happened as- as they stepped through the door! There had to be a connection

[bitpartgod]

Kibitoshin would have been perfectly happy to stay in that nice, small, safe room in the Institute (wow, he never thought he'd ever put 'safe' and 'Institute' in the same sentence) all nice- no monsters, no chance of warping, and all he'd have to do was sit the whole thing out. Admittedly, it wasn't the bravest or not Kaioshin-ly thing to do, but given that he was still damp and muddy he couldn't help but feel that he was owed a favour for once

[tiny_chef]

Remy sighed, then addressed the Scarecrow. "I think we'd better get Kibitoshin out of here. We end up somewhere different every time we go through a door -- well, the first time was over a wall, but we were going from one place to another, right? I bet if we go right back out the door, we won't be in the street with the 'zombies.' We'll be somewhere else. And if not, we can always come back inside."

As he spoke, he moved back towards the door, his hand already on the knob.

"There are lots of things here that we could use as tools."

[runner_up_robot]

[from here]

After the momentary confusion, Forte was glad to find himself dry and relatively warm. From the sound of the storm, they were Doyleton again, or somewhere else with big windows. Hopefully something worth wrecking or stealing from. He shone his flashlight around to assess the situation.

He dropped his plank.

[sixth_attack]

"I can do puzzle-solving part for ya then," Sechs said as he followed Forte out the door, "I've thought myself out of tight spots in battle before. We'll get this glitch figured out!"

The spinning sensation came over Sechs once again, giving way to another unforeseen location. Sechs had tromped through the door just before Forte dropped his wooden board. Sechs paused, alert for any danger, but once he saw where they had ended up, he relaxed as a vicious grin crawled over his pained face.

"Heh! Looks like we ended up in the hardware store!" Sechs exclaimed, taking in the wonderful scent of all the saw dust, oil cans and metal blades, "I pretty much got all that I need. Go knock yourself out, kid!"

Stepping away to take a glance out of one of the mended windows, Sechs managed to get his brain back on track over what they were dealing with. "That creep Landel did say something about repairing some stuff in the institute..." Sechs brooded to himself, "Could that be affecting how all the doors are acting like portals now? All because

[runner_up_robot]

Forte walked through the aisles like a kid in... well, like a kid in an unattended hardware store. There were all kinds of metal, plastic, and wood tools, of various shapes and sizes. He could imagine jabbing some of them into a monster's head, or using them as blunt instruments. Of course, the axes were tempting, being both sharp and hefty. But somehow he felt he couldn't just grab the same thing as Sechs.

Or... or the torches. He recognized the welding torches from Dr. Wily's workshop, and that would be fun. Hell, he might even be able to burn the whole building down. Of course, looking them over more, he realized he had no idea how to use them, and he'd need to carry around fuel anyway.

A little disappointed, he moved on to find... sledgehammers. Yes, these would do nicely too. He picked one up and felt its weight. It took a bit of effort to carry, but he liked the powerful feeling it gave him.

[sixth_attack]

As Forte did some impromptu shopping for makeshift weapons, Sechs kept on his brooding while occasionally having a look out for any threats through the window. The town was dark and almost still except for the steady rainfall outside. No crawling or shuffling of zombies could be seen within the dark curtain of rain.

"But if the doors are acting like random portals, does that mean they were always portals in the first place?" Sechs pondered, his amber eyes watching a trail of raindrops trickle down the window glass, "Or some line of code in a virtual reality that's supposed to act as an average door but ended up going haywire?" Shit! There was that awful "stuck in a computer simulation" theory again!

But then... Landel must have some teleportation technology to get everyone out from their worlds and into his institute. Maybe something went wrong with whatever machine he had for that purpose and it ended up screwing up all the doors? "Hmm... No, that can't be right..."The darkness inside Sechs wasn't too keen on his theories. "You'll

[unheroed]

[From here.]

After having grown accustomed to seeing rooms that logically fit in an institute, the sudden change made his head spin far more jarringly, to the point that he had to grab onto something in order to keep his balance. Once his vision cleared, he realized what the loud noise he'd been hearing through his disorientation was: rain.

While there had been low rumblings of thunder within the institute, this was much louder, and it became clear why. They were in the one of the stores at town, which meant there was only a door between them and that downpour.

More than that, there was only a door between them and more zombies. Hell, they might even be in the store with them. Harvey exchanged a startled glance with Jones, and then used his flashlight to take note of the bad state the store was in. It was a far cry from what they'd seen earlier that day, that was for sure

[tender_cruelty]

That was something that he was never going to get used to, was he? Allelujah winced as the world span and shifted within the space of a step and resolved itself into a completely different room. He stumbled forward a step, moving out of the way of the door, and blinked owlishly into the dark room, waiting for it to resolve itself into something solid

[its_the_mileage]

"Jesus Christ," Indy breathed to himself when the dizziness faded enough for him to get his bearings. A hardware store. There was no place at Landel's like this--it had to be Doyleton. How the hell had they landed in Doyleton

[unheroed]

When the other two jumped to action, Harvey made sure to do the same. It would have been hypocritical of him to hurry them and then take his sweet time. Not wanting to get tripped up, he made sure to head to a part of the store that the other two weren't trying to get to, and ended up over by one of the side walls. There were a variety of tools hung up on the wall, from hammers to rakes to

[herr_inspektor]

[From here]Their entrance to wherever it was they had been turned out into was greeted by both a wave of nausea and a throaty rumble of thunder in the middle distance. They'd missed the preceded lightning and their immediate surroundings were unnervingly dark and open, with a backdrop of raindrops beating on glass (glass?) like bullets. The smell, however, was unmistakeable, all metal and grease

[quarter_english]

The queasy, disoriented feeling hit L as he stepped into the hardware store; it was now obvious that it was a side effect of traveling through the doors. He teetered, unable to place his weight on either foot with certainty, then reeled, and was only able to right himself by clutching at the glass of the window behind him

[herr_inspektor]

More a rhetorical question, but having L make such a sensible reply was sobering enough that Lunge remembered himself and nodded again, more as a physical aid to snapping back out of the nauseous haze to match the mental one. "Of course. If we're lucky-" and it really is down to, though I hate to admit it, pure luck, "- we might have dodged a second flush of

[quarter_english]

"It's ridiculous that we should have to consider it at all." There was undisguised bitterness in L's voice. "When the esoteric becomes a factor, almost anything is a possibility. It amplifies the difficulty of our situation by several orders of magnitude