Participants:
| Scene Title | Supervillains |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | With the world's future looking rather bleak all of a sudden, Raith brings Hector full circle with a pep talk and the potential promise of alternative employment. |
| Date | December 26, 2009 |
Cerro de Hierro Negro Argentina: Slartibartifast
It's been…well. It's been about thirty six hours since Hector's last hangover, and he's already well on his way into the hellish depths of the next one. If the look of him and the fact that he's been missing for some twenty odd hours are good indication, he's only just dragged himself out've wherever he fell asleep and he is looking shoddy indeed.
His suit is rumpled, he has something that looks a lot like two days worth of five o'clock shadow scuzzing in around the normally pristine trim of his goatee and the bags under his eyes would put the most oggle-eyed of lemurs to shame. The fact that there may be some eyeliner and/or mascara smeared into the darkness there is probably not helping his case.
BUT. He is awake and alive and he has found a bottle of advil, from which he swallows down four pills before pitching the rest of the bottle blithely into an unoccupied room off the main corridor. Little metal velociraptors litter the floor here and there, alone or in pairs, and in this section of hallway he's only just managed to get the lights back on.
The section looks probably about like Hector would remember it. Save, of course, for the fact that the far end of it is occupied by one of the two men who stumbled upon him not long back. The larger of the two, Raith. Odds are good they hadn't met before then, which only means that Hector might have been ill-prepared for what he sees even if he wasn't preparing to battle a hangover. There's nothing unusual about Raith himself, save that even in the chill of the bunker, he seems to have elected to forego half his military-style fatigues, wearing only the boots, camo pants and black sleeveless shirt.
What is unusual is that he appears to have been sneaking around in the dark in a half-crouch, holding in his hand a length of thin rope that very plainly looks like a tiny velociraptor-sized lasso. An instant after the lights click on, he stands up straight and practically throws the rope behind his back, holding it out of sight. Nope, I wasn't doing anything.
"Good morning!"
Err.
Hm.
Stopped short after the second or so it takes the blurry accumulation of shapes that is Raith to filter through the claggy stoppage that his headache has smudged thickly through his optic nerves and on into his brain, Hector knits his brow. One brilliant white collar flap is flared open along his jaw — the other is rumpled down at an odd angle angle, contributing to his overall baffled air when he turns enough to hazard a glance over his shoulder.
Everything approximately velociraptor-sized in his hallway appears to be quite dead. Metal dowling is littered in skeletal piles here and there. They glitter like cutlery under the compound's yellow lights, quiet and still. No ticking. No whirring. No glowing eyes.
"They've been de-activated," is what he says when he finally finds words, voice hoarse from the acid effort of vomiting up whatever he had for dinner. He can't remember what it was when it went down but there must have been citrus involved from the — no, nevermind. Steel blinks hard, trying futilely to clear his head. He succeeds only in taking a deep breath once the last one has been entirely exhausted by a sigh. "I have a Playstation."
"Oh, I figured they were, sleeping," Raith replies, as if hoping that in his current state, Hector will buy an obviously bogus answer. But then again, maybe it's not so bogus. "You know, there's a few versions of that floating around now, right? Which one do you mean?" Walking on at a casual pace, Raith sticks otherwise close to the wall, and when the opportunity presents itself, he loses his tiny lasso in an adjacent cell as discreetly as he can.
"How do you even get games out here?" the ex-spy follows up, deciding that this question is among the more important of the ones he could ask. "What about a television? I mean, it's not like Amazon ships out here…" But then, it's Raith's turn to knit his brow. "Do they?"
"It's a Playstation 3. …I brought it with me." Is that so strange? He hadn't thought about it before.
After a moment of awkward silence or so, it occurs to Hector that this is a strange conversation to be having under strange circumstances, and he manages to look only slightly exasperated when Raith's lasso is lost to the black maw of an unlit hallway. His weight shifts anyway — right to left, with a slight awayward turn of his shoulders in ill-disguised unease. How did they get the video games?
"We're supervillains," is what he answers eventually, flatly, factually, as if this should answer the current question and any others that might come after it, "and most of the televisions were already here." The so there is silent in the slight jut his lower jaw has adopted, gingery brown stubble not the manliest that's ever been managed around here. He might be able to outdo Peter but it's hard to compete with the likes of Nathan, Raith and Iago.
"So," he tries to start up again after another pause — less defensively, "I've heard there's going to be an apocalypse. Are you excited? …I'm excited."
"I'm, not so excited," Raith admits after a moment of hesitation, "You're excited?" The follow-up question is asked with at least a small measure of disbelief. But it seems to pass quickly. "I guess it is a little exciting. I'm…a little bit no, no I'm not excited. You're excited?"
"Oh. …Er. You're not?" Disbelief is reflected in kind, subtle in the slightest of deeper furrows at Hector's brow. He is doing a lot of hard thinking very quickly, or at least trying to — the ache in his skull keeps pushing coherent doubts off the rails and into alcoholic oblivion. It is highly possible that he might not blow a .00 on a breathalizer if he were to try right now, even after eight hours of sleep.
His eyes flicker aside, clear blue despite the fog cobwebbed up in his brain behind them, then back to Raith. "I suppose — not really, no. I'm not. Very."
An aborted gesture fails to illustrate the full sum of his ambivalence, and wavers off into a vague point down the hall at his back instead. "Shall I show you where we keep the guns?"
"Well, actually…" Raith's reply is cut short by a glance over his shoulder, followed by a quick stroll to Hector's position. A quick stroll that seems just short of Raith hurriedly tip-toeing into position, which might not seem terribly out of place, given the eccentricities he appears to possess. When he speaks again, it's in a lowered, almost whispered tone. "Guns seem awful, crude-" The ex-spy very deliberately turns his gaze downward to an inactive velociraptor, obviolusly hoping that Hector gets the message- "Especially when there are so many wonderful gadgets around to play with. Don't you think so?"
Typically not one to be slow on the uptake, in this instance it takes Hector a bit of a pause to get the gist of what, exactly, Raith is suggesting. Shorter by a longshot, he's also slower to angle a look down at the same inactive cage of metallic components, blonde-frosted hair mussed and probably in need of a good washing. He looks sort've pitiful for lack of a better word, disheveled and exhausted, silken tie slung loose around his neck, masterful creations strewn lifeless around his feet.
He also stinks of tequila and sick and expensive cologne gone a bit stale at closer proximity, Raith may note.
"There's a bigger one 'round back."
"Good, good." Raith chances another glance over his shoulder, and then a second past Hector. So far, so good. "Now, foof-" Raith does indeed notice the smell, taking a moment to clear the air with a few waves of his hand- "Now, you'll take a shower, because the world thinks there's nothing worse than being saved by a drunk. File, saved. Now, you got the remote for the beasties roaming the jungle, right?"
"I'd like a shower," Hector agrees, brows lifted amiably and agreeably enough for all that Raith has essentially just told him he smells like the sidewalk outside a cheap Mexican restaurant. He doesn't argue that he isn't a drunk. He isn't really. There's just a lot to drink over lately, seems like.
"There isn't just one remote, per se. It's…very complicated. Lots of science."
"I'll take your word for it, Steely," Raith says. In a moment of surrealism, maybe, he takes a moment to actually right Hector's collar and straighten him up, just a little bit. "Science is good, because that means there aren't a lot of us around who can use it effectively. Now-" Very dliberately, Raith places both of his hands on Hector's shoulders, making sure that they can see each other's faces very clearly. There can be no misunderstandings- "Can I count on you to stay sober for the next few days? Never know when you'll have to act, and it won't do any good to trip over yourself. And at the end of it, you'll be free to work on your machines."
"You got workspace lined up that you can go to, Steely?"
Hector's shoulders shift somewhat slackly with the momentum of various collar tugs and smoothings. He does not resist, but rather sullenly allows Raith to have his way with his shirt and coat, and probably does look…ahm…slightly better for the effort. Slllightly.
"If I so much as catch wind of alcohol right now I will be sick," is stated something like reassurance. His breath readily reassures that he is probably telling the truth and has in fact already been sick. The height difference isn't quite enough to prevent that, even if he does have to tip his goatee'd chin back a bit to make reluctant (and perhaps remotely suspicious) eye contact.
Any lingering suspicion is fortunately lost to a concise and mopey, "No," on the subject of whether or not he has anywhere to go once whatever Raith is intending to do with his help has been done.
"Well." Raith gives Hector a pat on the shoulder. "Do your best to stay alive," he says, "And if I come out of this alive too, I'll find one for you. Put those skills and talents of yours to good work. Without the whole, end of the world as we know it thing. You'll feel fine." And then, perhaps just to add to the creepiness that may be present, Raith gives Hector two pats on the cheek. "Go get yourself cleaned up. I'll be in touch." And that's that. Raith releases Hector, turns and takes his leave, walking back the way Hector came.
"Six o'clock, TV hour, don't get, something, ya da da…."