The morning after the night before

[mutant_gi_jesus]

Cable hadn't won, or tried to win, any prizes in the carnival so, as a consequence, he hadn't spent most of Halloween trying to fend off bloodthirsty stuffed animals that had been foolishly let into his home

Comments

[starchilde_lost]

It had been a busy twenty-four hours and Rachel wasn't ashamed to admit that she'd enjoyed working her frustrations out on some stuffed animals. But in the aftermath, she realized that she hadn't seen her brother and while she doubted some crazy rag doll had a chance in hell against him, accidents still happened.

...mostly to the dolls, she realized as she saw the cages and the toys therein.

"Were we thinking of domesticating them?"

[mutant_gi_jesus]

Yes, was the truthful answer to that. Cable had mostly assumed, giving the powers behind the island's fondness for 21st century holidays, that whatever force animated these toys would disappear the next day, but he hadn't known for certain. And if they, like the splicers or the dinosaurs, were going to be around long term, then he'd hoped to be able to train them, at least in a vague, attack when I open the door of the cage, way.

Oh, well, some plans didn't work. It happened.

"Yes," he replied, slowly, after some thought. "Worked wonders, too. I've never seen a more placid bunch of toys."

[starchilde_lost]

"You'll be able to save a fortune on feed, anyway."

Picking up a stick, she poked one of the toys through the bars of the cage. Still not the strangest thing she'd seen, but it was creepy nonetheless. Creepy and she had to admit a little cute.

[mutant_gi_jesus]

"Do you think they'll be animated again next year?" he asked casually. "If I don't destroy them in the mean time."

It was deeply depressing to realize that he'd probably be able to find out.

[badblood_rising]

After the day he had yesterday, all Sam wants to do is crawl into bed with Natalya and stay there. He wants one eye on Cori and the twins and Calliope, too, and an idea where Dean and Neil and Shari are, as well as two more guns with full sets of ammo and a machete. Hey, might as well throw in a pony with that list of wishes. But he knows he can't have all that at once and right now, he settles for walking with a ginger step to the Compound, planning on healing his cuts and bruises with a judicious use of nanobots. He doesn't want any physical reminders of Halloween to linger.

He doesn't know Cable, but he knows of him because of Natalya. Even without that slight preparation, after the day Sam had yesterday, the man's appeareance isn't about to give him pause. The mass of toys are.

Sam halts, giving the entire area a wary once over. "..They're all dead. Right?"

[mutant_gi_jesus]

"Inanimate, at least," Cable replied, as he prodded a little girl doll that he'd tied to a boulder, with his shotgun and felt nothing but the give of metal pushing against wool.

"Zdravstvuj, Sam," he added, slipping into Russian to say hello. He hadn't so much as spoken to the other man, before, so the fact he used the informal greeting rather than the formal one probably wasn't earned, but Natalya was a good friend so it wasn't like he was unaware of his existence.

It also wasn't like he was unaware of how unhappy she used to be, and how she didn't seem to be any more.

[badblood_rising]

Sam, who has only ever spoken Russian to and with Natalya, blinks at the word and struggles for a moment to come up with a response. All his muscles are aching to some degree and his brain's included in that count.

"Privet," he manages, and turns his eyes the toys again. "You set traps? But they don't look-- Some are still in one piece." He remembers Coraline suggesting traps yesterday, and he's a little impressed that Cable managed so well for himself with that tactic. But Sam sees a lot of whole bodies midst the ties and stuffing. It doesn't look like Cable got around to killing them all.

[mutant_gi_jesus]

"Yes," Cable confirmed, calmly, as he put away his gun and untied the, now empirically harmless, little doll. "Some are."

"The ones properly restrained I left intact. I was curious to see what would happen this morning."

It took more time than simply blowing them up would, and it was possible that he could have taken down more toys, done more good, if he'd given up on capturing them. But he had been a guerrilla fighter before he'd had been anything else and his first instinct when someone pointed a weapon at him was to see if he couldn't steal it off them and fire it back. It wasn't something he would apologize for.

He wasn't a monster, though. The one time he'd found a toy too near a hut, when someone else's life had been at stake, then he'd forgotten about being clever and just used the shotgun.

[leftwithmybones]

"I'm not entirely sure I want to know," is all that McCoy admits when he finds Cable, the cage, and a scene worth writing in to a psychiatric magazine about. He raises a brow and studies the small toys, crouching down to poke at one of 'em before he looks up at McCoy. "If you're worried about them fighting back, I think you're good."

[mutant_gi_jesus]

The cage contained a cute toy giraffe and there was a small toy banana lying on the floor next to the cage, it's little toy arms and legs all secured by three sets of ropes. A rottweiler would have difficulty escaping those restraints.

Cable watched as McCoy crouched down and poked it and provoked no more reaction then he would have by poking any other children's toy.

"Yes," he agreed. "Shame."

He'd been quite impressed with their fighting abilities, for stuffed 12 inch tall toys. They would have made deadly guards, all he had to do was fence off the area he wanted guarded and then let them loose while he was else where.

[leftwithmybones]

McCoy straightens up after giving the toys about another moment or two of consideration. He'd seen what they were doing just a day ago and in the span of twenty-four hours, the most vicious and brutal of fuzzy stuffed companions have been rendered inert.

If this place thinks it has to be a goddamn jester, McCoy's not exactly laughing along. "Out of curiosity, if they had stayed mean, what would you have done with 'em? Trained them?"

[mutant_gi_jesus]

"If I could, yes," Cable replied calmly, as he holstered his gun. "At the least, I was hoping to keep them securely enough restrained that I could study them. And if they proved both un-trainable and uncontrollable then I would have destroyed them."

[howmanylives]

While Jamie didn't exactly make it a point to see Cable with anything approaching regularity, would never admit to checking up on him if only just to make sure he was still around, there was something sickly comforting about seeing the guy standing there with one of his many guns. Comforting enough, in fact, that Jamie wandered over instead of carrying on forward as might have been his usual inclination, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his favored trenchcoat.

"Now there's a Kodak moment," he said, blithely, to mark his entrance. Yesterday had been, in a word, interesting; though he and Layla had both managed to escape the killer toys unscathed, the most worrying part of the experience that they'd been separated for its duration, the whole thing had smacked of Arcade, right down to the carnival of the week before. "And me without my camera."

[mutant_gi_jesus]

"Yes," Cable replied slowly, as he raised himself up straight. "Remiss of you."

"I take it you and Layla made it out okay?"

He didn't particularly like Madrox, despite the fact they seemed to have very similar tastes in friends, but he gave the man enough credit that he wouldn't be wandering around so blithely cheery if anything had happened to his girlfriend.

[howmanylives]

"Safe as houses," said Jamie, brows arched slightly. "Houses made out of more durable material than bamboo, that is." He paused a beat, then stepped forward a few feet, dropping down to a crouch to get a look at the remains of the toys.

"Don't you already have a dog?"

[mutant_gi_jesus]

He did, Zero was curled up asleep at the moment only a few yards away, tied to his pole next to the hut, a safe distance back from any toys.

"I'm flattered you've been paying such attention, Madrox," Cable replied as he tucked his shotgun back into it's holster, without ever breaking eye contact.

"I do have a dog. I also have ten currently entirely inanimate fluffy toys. Did you have any other questions?"