(Untitled)
Characters: Lenalee (OU) | fallforthesky, Alex Mercer (OU) | angryaffliction
When: Backdated to the 11th or 12th.
Where: Hospital
Rating: M for Mercer's Foul Mouth
Summary: Lenalee is curious about the hospital and piqued Mercer's interest too. What hilarious hijinks will they get up to? What ghastly ghouls lurk in the dark?
( [WHAT SLAPSTICK SHENANIGANS WILL TRANSPIRE?] )
When: Backdated to the 11th or 12th.
Where: Hospital
Rating: M for Mercer's Foul Mouth
Summary: Lenalee is curious about the hospital and piqued Mercer's interest too. What hilarious hijinks will they get up to? What ghastly ghouls lurk in the dark?
( [WHAT SLAPSTICK SHENANIGANS WILL TRANSPIRE?] )
...But in Nesreca, where there's no such thing as a mission and all routine has fallen away into monotony, what the dawn really is to her is bloody early. She wakes on time, stomach heavy with a weird kind of anticipation, but the instant she opens her eyes to the washed-out interior of her room bathed in watery, Kanda-would-be-proud-of-me light, all she wants to do is... go back to sleep. She can't ever seem to get enough nowadays ( ... )
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Alex's eyes darted towards the source, hoping to glimpse Libitina.
No, not Libitina. The girl... Lenalee. In a skirt? And heels? That didn't seem very practical to Alex. Still, if she was here, he expected she was ready, heels or not.
Jumping down from the roof, he slid down along the wall, small tendrils clinging to the old brick. He landed by the entrance, his biomass rippling as it settled back into skin, leather and denim.
"You're ready?" He gave her a skeptical look, one dark brow raised but still looking as surly as ever.
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-But it's just... Alex. Doing more of that building-scaling, looks like. She takes a half step back as he lands heavily on the ground, her expression still somewhat guarded, but she nods and lets the stiffness seep from her shoulders. "Yes."
A pause. Then, "I'm not late, am I?"
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That's what Lenalee was exhibiting. Tenseness.
The thought was unbidden but he could certainly understand it. He had a vague concept of what it was like to relax, but as with most things he understood it was foggy and second-hand. He understood that readiness, that constant paranoia though.
"No." He shook his head, surveying her with a glassy, quizzical stare. Why ask? If she was, he'd have just gone on ahead. "I figured it was better to get started early while we have the daylight for you to see." He wondered if she wasn't much of a morning person? Regardless he moved ahead, pushing in the mouldering door which just crumbled off its rusted hinges.
Alex peered into the dusty gloom, a strong scent of woodrot and mold and ancient chemicals hung in the air. Alex gave her a sidelong glance. "Find something to cover your nose and mouth with. You probably don't want to breathe in whatever's in the air."
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She meets his gaze with the same uneasy feeling erupting in her stomach as the first time (what is wrong with his eyes?) and stands a little straighter. It doesn't do much to help with the huge gap in height. And this would probably be a prudent time to mention that darkness isn't much of a problem for her- 19th Century dreary castle with insufficient lighting and all that- but he's already crossing the threshold to the hospital.
The smell that hits her then is strong enough to turn her empty stomach. She scrabbles with the pouch attached to her belt for a length of cloth dressing that, being rather outdated in and of itself, obviously came from her own medical kit. She folds it lengthwise and ties it behind her head as tight as she can bear, grimacing at the lingering smell. "What about you?"
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He gives her a puzzled look, and then averts his eyes. The way Lenalee looked at him made him terribly uneasy- it reminded him of the same look his sister always gave him. Like she was looking through him at the monster underneath. He didn't like that- that scrutiny. And Lenalee was obviously not stupid.
He shifts and there's an awkwardness behind his predatory grace- a perpetual uncertainty. That's the problem. He no longer thinks of himself in human terms or fitting in and it's where he slips up so often. He doesn't need light because he has various ways of 'seeing'. He doesn't need a mask because the only reason he takes in oxygen is to speak.
"There's nothing in here that would make me sick." He explains and says gruffly. "C'mon. We're wasting time." He marches into the chaotic, dusty gloom, the floor creaking ominously under his considerable weight. He peers around, expression sour as ever as he realizes he has no clue where to
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"Nothing..." It's only a murmur, soft enough that Alex won't have to consider it a question, but could expand on it if he wanted to (she doubts he does). With remarkable balance for someone wearing high heels in a ramshackle building, she picks her way around the rubble, gingerly toeing something unidentifiable. "...Are you looking for something in particular?"
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He watches her in turn, out of his peripheral vision as he scours the mess of rubble for any kind of answer to present itself. She carries herself with an unusual grace- not like the eerie movements of Elizabeth Greene. He'd heard talk about people here with 'powers' but Lenalee didn't look like the hulking super soldiers he'd fought. But there was something strange about her. Something Alex didn't have the knowledge to place.
His eyes traveled along the floor, a broken vial by a rusting stretcher catching his eyes. Without warning, he visibly cringed, holding his head, unbidden memories flooding through him.
A vial shattering on the concrete, red liquid that held the virus spreading over the floor. Or was that his blood? It mixed, red with red, chemicals acting like a crib to his last creation as it unwittingly consumed him and ( ... )
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"...Yeah." He repeats himself and coughs. "Fine." His voice was normal again. Gravelly and unpleasant but normal.He wasn't sure what to make of Lenalee's concern though. That, like so many things, was alien to him. He decided though that it was better not to dwell on it. He needed to focus on the task at hand. "Older records would probably get put in a basement, but we're looking for whatever was most recent. So check offices, filing cabinets, anything. We can look for quarantine rooms as well."
His brow furrows. He knows he's missing stuff but he was never that good at planning. But there's somewhere to start.
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"Are the quarantine rooms actually safe to go into, do you think?"
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If it was a disease that had caused this, it had either died off or was long gone by now. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to bring along Lenalee if it was as potent a virus as he. But it was too late to get rid of her now and she would ask inconvenient questions about his sudden change of mind in going alone. He doubt he could pass it off as chivalry.
He stepped into the dusty gloom, careful to watch his footing on the aged flooring.
"They'll have kept the secret stuff somewhere where people wouldn't wander in aimlessly. Which means our first stop is the basement." He shoved aside some rubble, and peered down an old-fashioned elevator shaft. He could make out the wreckage of the thing some fifty feet below, and then to Lenalee, a smug grin on his face. "Shortcut?"
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Click, clack, tap, go her shoes as she follows after him, toeing aside broken tile and twisted scraps of metal. All the dust in the room seems to catch on her eyelids, making her feel even more exhausted than when she first woke up ( ... )
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When he catches the movement on her legs, he raises a brow but said nothing.
When she jumped, Alex lunged to the side to stop her, but as she landed on the bottom, his doubts were erased.
"Stand back," he warned and then jumped, forming his hand into a claw and digging it into the wall to slow his descent. It reformed it into a hand before he was visible and landed heavily, denting the tiled floor.
"Any other tricks up your sleeve?"
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Curiosity isn't enough to make her chance a glance up, though.
Which she's especially glad for when he lands and leaves yet another dent to mark his passage through Nesreca's ruins. She stares at the cracks in the tile for a moment, eyes readjusting to the dim light, and then glances up at him. He can't see it through the cloth she has tied over her face, but she smiles a bit at his comment.
"A few."
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His eyes didn't have trouble adjusting to the gloom but that may have had something to do with the whole not being human thing. He scoured the gloom, looking for a likely place to start.
Down the dark passage, something clatters, and Alex's head snaps immediately towards the sound.
"Is someone else checking this place out too?" His voice is a low growl, and he's poised almost like an animal about to strike.
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