Participants:
| Scene Title | Nine In The Afternoon |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Into a room where thoughts can bloom; Ryans and Huruma lay down some important points and brown Berber. |
| Date | October 18, 2010 |
Gun Hill is named after Gun Hill Road, the street that the five story tenement resides on. A bright red brick exterior separates it from the surrounding buildings, making it difficult to miss even though the complexes on either side of it are similarly coloured with fresh coats of paint in yellow and blue donated to their proprietors by an urban renewal project devoted to eliminating graffiti from the Bronx's residential zones in an attempt to raise property value and reestablish the borough as a desirable place to live.
Inside, the building shows more obvious signs of wear than the rusty fire escape affixed to its front, including old hardwood floors so scuffed that no amount of wax or polish can return them to their original luster, and faded wallpaper in neutral shades of cream with a strange mottled texture. Instead of an elevator, the tenement's upper floors can be reached by taking a stairwell with numbered flights and roof access via a heavy metal door that sticks more often than not.
The whirring hum of an air compressor can be heard in the midday at Gun Hill. While the place is marked as condemned the place is still got an ongoing reconstruction as a cover. The chunk-thwip of a staple gun accompanies that hum. Someone is hard at work.
Approaching apartment 103 the sound gets louder and the smell of fresh carpet greets any visitor. The dark brown berber is nice and clean. Rolls of it sit stacked against the wall outside the door, waiting to be used.
Inside would find Benjamin Ryans down on hands and knees, working to secure base boards around already lain carpet. Wearing a dark read plaid shirt with it's sleeves rolled to the elbows over a white long sleeve shirt, jeans and his work boots, he's hard at work.
It isn't hard to find him, when she walks in for that purpose. She could feel him in the first floor from her entering the building, doing something that seems to have him quite occupied. The hammering sound of an intermittent staple, and the rolls of carpet give Huruma a good hint as to what. Unless he happens to be using the gun for something else, she gets what she expects when she sidles down the hall and peeks around the side of the door.
The brace on her face isn't going anywhere soon- the swelling has gone down a little in the couple of days she's had it on, however, but her dark skin looks almost naturally mottled because of the bruises visible out from under the bandage. It's easier to notice her peering over there, too- a plaster-colored 'X' on dark brown. Not a target, but close enough. If he knows she is there, Huruma still doesn't say something immediately, preferring a few moments of examining the room, and Benjamin.
"You look …Canadian."
A few more staples go in and he's not even looking up yet, "Laugh if you must… it's clothing." Meaning it's stuff that was found in the Ferryman store, not that Ben has never really been picky when it comes to casual. "Never look a gift horse in the mouth and all that."
"What — " Benjamin sits up on his knees, glancing her way and stops, eyes going straight to the splint on Huruma's nose. Brows tick up ever so slightly, before evening out again, tho she can feel the amusement. "What happened to you?"
Normally, Huruma would repel his amusement with angry indigence. However, she seems to be at that stage with him where she can dismiss it. Try to. At first, she does sound offended. "Don't laugh." But by the time she finishes the two words, her lips are fighting to stay down, and there is amusement in her own voice, if only a tad. Her hand lifts up to gingerly touch her face, and she sidles the rest of the way inside. Huruma seems normal today- the brace with a simple dark shirt and jacket, boots and denim leggings, makes the mundane factor stand out that much more. Not to mention a sheepish tilt to her skull.
"I got into a fight with an Irishman."
Considering his heritage this actually amuses him even more, enough so that there is twitch upwards at the corner of his mouth, followed by a slow shake of his head. Picking up the next base board, he gets back to work. "So Irish are your weak spot?" He actually jokes.
"Good to see you back and okay, nose aside. I wasn't sure if you all would make it back." He pauses while he punches a few more long staples, before moving down. "Of course, I honestly didn't think we were going to make it back, when some…man named Rupert did something to hijack the shuttle and made Rebel go haywire. Spoke a word, right before everything went wrong" Brows furrow as he tried to think of it. "Gaba-ri."
They really got lucky there, Ryans knows this.
Huruma crosses her arms at the first bit- so either he's right, or she isn't going to dignify it with an answer. His next admission, on the other hand, makes her shoulders slack just a centimeter's worth. Her breath has to leave through her mouth, and it comes out in a rushed hiss of air. "Whatever it means, it is Sumerian. Rupert was Messiah's tactician. It's all but falling apart."
"Thankfully, I do no'particularly care what happens t'Messiah." It was only something to do. Her irked disposition with Rupert seems to be purely on a level for personal offense. "He can plant triggers. The word had to'ave been one. No clue why it happened then, other than per'aps Rupert was feeling- jilted."
"I'm worried about Rebel." Ryans admits gruffly, pausing again in his work to look at the tall woman. "Messiah or not, that technopath has helped me out more times then not, despite who I was and our differences. Wireless saved our asses, just barely. The ride back down was an iffy thing, cause the shuttle's electronics were fried.
"But whatever it was that was said, the shuttled started to turn away from the satellite and the power went off." It was scary, but he doesn't say that out loud. "Luckily, we were able to get back control and were able to finish the mission." To Ryans that was the important part.
"I know. If what you say is true- I wonder if we should find out where- how he is. If he is, anymore." Huruma's voice does have a certain gentleness to it, when in such agreement. "I am glad you did." She adds, albeit also gently. "…I wasn't able t'tell you I was worried, b'fore you went." Now that he is back, it is much easier to admit that she was, as he has no chance of- well- falling out of orbit, or into the sun, or what have you.
"Would you like a hand?" Huruma's arms unfold, and she gestures to the staplegun and the carpet rolled up just outside the door.
"The one that would know, would be Wireless, if Pierce was right and it was her up there with us." Ryans states firmly, but then presses lips into a fine line. "If we knew where to contact her…" He trails off, before shaking his head.
Finishing off the board, Ryans stands staple gun in hand. "A hand would be useful. I still have the bedrooms to do." He moves to flip the compressor off and set the tool down near it. "Promised Lynette I'd have this apartment carpeted today." Of course, the mention of the land lady bring with it a slight warm of feelings. A new thing, with promise of becoming something more. Even with that, on the tail end of it is guilt.
"Send out periodical messages f'Wireless, she will notice eventually…" Huruma is not terribly familiar with the various technopaths, but she knows that they often will function the same ways. She shrugs out of the dark jacket, leaving it beside the door and straightening her dark red shirt before getting her hands on a first roll of carpet, planting it down again on the inside of the door. The motion, however, carries with it an almost imperceptible stumble of muscle movement. It occurs in her arms when she puts the carpet against the inner wall, and when she looks back to him, it is with the tiniest of squints, eyelids narrowing barely enough.
It takes a moment for Huruma to open her mouth again, and it is likely that he will realize what just happened, knowing what an Empath does at virtually all waking moments. "I brought that AA-Twelve back with me." Words come out a bit tightly at first, simmering back into her usual smoothness. "It was …quite an experience, using it."
"Was it?" Ryans asks curiously, as he picks up a few items used for laying carpet, he steps to the doorway of one room and motions inside. "I got the tackless boards down around the edges. So be careful when you walk in. First have to lay down the padding so I say leave the roll of carpet in the hall here."
The man is all business as he steps into the room, making sure to avoid the strips. Maybe Ryans is too focused to notice. "Delia cornered me the other day. Know anything about a woman named Eileen?"
"Thirty-five round barrels, self-activating fragmented rounds." Huruma busies herself with recall, hop-skipping her mental notations away from something that could provide her with nothing but navigational error on various fronts. She'll do what she's told, really- she knows very little about carpentry- but hell if she isn't smart enough to learn.
"Somewhat. I know tha'she is Ferry. She used t'be one of th'Vanguard troops. The remnants of them seem t'ave made themselves useful here, wit'th'community. Not as much soldiers of fortune as they seem t'ave become- mmm-" Huruma considers a good term. "Specialists. Much like myself, in varying degrees."
"Interesting." Ben murmurs softly, looking at the blue and yellow flecked padding that will go under the carpet itself. "She approached Delia and asked her to pass on a message to me." Pulling the foam padding from the wall and letting it fall to the floor, with a soft whump, he starts to roll it out. "Said she's recommending me for some 'special activities' group within the Ferry. Only thing I can figure is that they seem to think I bring something to the table, so it must be something that compliments my abilities.
"I imagine, I'll just have to wait and see." Ryans finally concedes.
Huruma laughs, though the noise seems to startle her- the brace on her nose makes it breathy and quite- like the sound an 80s movie nerd made when they breathed. She clamps a hand up over her mouth, disconcerted for a second or two.
"There is a man named Jensen Raith." The dark woman removes her hand and continues to help roll out the foamy, scratchy padding over the floorboards. If she is aware of any thick-veined connection between anyone, she leaves it out of things. "He was an officer, I b'lieve- he is essentially a junkyard dog, when it comes t'his function wit'th'Ferrymen. If Eileen is seeking you out, Benjamin- I shoul'think it is t'do something similar. Question is simply- d'you feel like protecting this band of mutts from th'pack of wolves you once ran with?"
The sound of her nerdy laugh, gets a surge of amusement from the old man again, though he does throw and apologetic look her way. Setting about fitting the foam, a box cutter is produced from his pocket, so that he can start trimming the padding and getting it into place.
"I made the commitment to protect these people, they day a space shuttle launched me into space." He pauses in the midst of cutting, expression distant and thoughtful. After a moment he adds, "Probably the moment I offered to help rebuild this place." Ben glances at Huruma, expression unreadable. "But the true act of commitment was getting on that plane and helping destroy that thing.
"Not to mention I declared my side, the day I killed five men from the Institute," he states darkly. There was the day Ryans helped a girl escape, at the behest of her father, but that was minor compared to when he helped Darryl.
Huruma makes an effort to get the padding as flat as possible when he starts trimming it. During his explanation, she only offers him a very knowing smirk of her lips.
"Then, I think you should contact Eileen. See what she needs t'ask of you. I'ave worked with her b'fore. If she wants t'speak wit'you that badly, it is always-" She lifts a finger for immediate emphasis. "Always, for th'most practical, an'most true of reasons." At least to Eileen's version of what is true. "I am a peripheral force, an'many of these people d'not trust me much…" That is her own fault, and she even sounds like she knows this.
"But given th'chance, I would work with them." Possibly one reason that whenever she is asked, Huruma tends to dole out favors for favors between the Ferry, and even people like Richard Cardinal. "For you, it is all but written."
There is a small sigh through that large nose of his as he goes back to working the padding. Ryans is quiet for a time as he works, concentrating on the task at hand rather then worrying about this Eileen individual, at least for the moment.
"Maybe." Ryans rumbled out softly, in a non-committed way. "I never figured that would find any trust in me. The people I worked for had too much blood on their hands… and I worked for them. I should be where you are." Maybe he figured that would be where he was going to be. Held arms length.
Huruma waits again for the foam to be cut, hands busied with either supporting her weight or moving ahead to smooth foam onward. She peers at him, almost sad, when he compares their stations. "It is your loyalty to your cause, that they admire. Your people are doubtlessly being handled carefully as it is, but I make no mistake in saying that they need your type."
"I don'really'ave any causes I am loyal to. People, per'aps. I operate on case-by-case, mainly…" Huruma murmurs towards the end, the sigh from her mouth giving her just one more 'normal' thing to add to the list. She can't remember the last time she breathed solely with her mouth. "I'ave noticed that this group is generally forgiving, save for those who continually make it impossible."
Nodding in agreement, Ryans glances at Huruma, with only a subtle shift of his head allowing him to look at her out of the corner of his eye. "They are forgiving. Bennet and Lynette have both proven that beyond a doubt." His head tucks down a bit as she eyes the foam padding under his hands, expression thoughtful.
"I just hope I can repay that kindness and trust, keep proving them right." Ben smiles just a little bit, then shakes his head. "Now lets put that aside and concentrate on getting this carpet laid down."