2019-08-17 - Building A Better Mouse Trap

ONE TOUR! That's what Duncan and Maddie have managed to book so far, a group of elderly people that were on some kind of bizarro vision quest and detoured through Gray Harbor. Not one of those old people was shiny, but they were a pretty good group, and they provided a much needed injection of cash. Most of which got spent on supplies!

Duncan is making use of those supplies. He's climbed up onto the roof of the camper with a bunch of duct tape and a bucket full of marbles. And a stick. "See, the great thing about this," he's explaining while his legs dangle over the side and he figures out how to rig all this. "Is that it'll be a good security system forever, even after we deal with Keene. But, uhhhhh, I forgot the rope, can you throw me some rope?"

It might have only been ONE TOUR, but it was proof enough that they were on the right track with their business. At least, that's what Maddie keeps saying. One tour would turn into two then four then before they know it? They'd have a wait list a mile long. They'd have to expand, hire people, maybe venture out into other markets! Soon, SOON, they would RULE THE WORLD of the ghost tour business.

But today, today was dedicated to setting up traps. Maddie's sprawled out on the grass, tangled up in a net that she's decided will drop from the door as soon as Keenelxander opened it. She still hasn't figured out how to keep the net from dropping on them when they open the door, but she'll get there. She squints up at Duncan though, laughing at his question. "Can I throw you a rope? Can you KNOT get it yourself?" ha, that's funny. She's giggling her ass off as she gets to her feet, except she discovers in this moment that she's caught up in the netting. Her arms spin like windmills as she flails, stumbles, and yelps.

"Dun! DUN! I'm TRAPPED!"

"SHIT!" Duncan checked Athletics, not Composure, so he definitely loses his cool when Maddie gets trapped, dropping the entire bucket of marbles on top of their camper. It makes a tremendous amount of noise when they plinkplinkplink and then roll around all over the metal roof, leaving him scrambling down the side of it. He lowers himself as far as he can, feet dangling a significant distance from the ground, then lets go... and drops to the ground, landing with only a little arm-flailing when he straightens up. "Don't worry, Mads, I got you!"

The obvious solution would be to run over and start untangling her. But he grabs a box-cutter and a blowtorch and throws himself into the fray, hacking at the net with the former while he keeps pushing the igniter on the latter. It has not, as yet, produced a flame, but it will!

The thing about netting is it only gets worse if you struggle. And Maddie is definitely struggling. She hits the ground on her knees as Duncan overturns the bucket of marbles, wildly kicking her feet, but still manages to shout: "D! You've lost your marbles!" as those tiny shiny balls make plink-plink-plink noises along the metal roof. There are so many jokes that Maddie just doesn't have the time for, considering she's currently caught like a mermaid in a fisherman's net, ready to become somebody's tuna.

And now Duncan's approaching with a box-cutter and a blowtorch, and she starts scrambling away from him on her rear-end, flailing her ensnared feet. "Stop, staahhhp! You're gonna cut me and burn me to a crisp!" she was starting to panic. It was only making things that much worse.

"They're not lost!" Duncan knows where they are, and where at least a handful of them will stay forever now, rolling around in some mystery cavity atop the camper, making irritating noise every time they drive anywhere. 😃

He's on to other things already, like how he's going to cut and burn this net that trapped his beloved. "No, I'm not. I'm going to - " He is really just ruining the net with the box-cutter right now, slicing through strands of it. " - save you!" That's when he gets the blowtorch to light, and looks from the little dagger of flame to Maddie, his eyes enormous. "Hold still, this'll work." Assuming the net is nylon, he's melting his way across it. Mind you, he could already have just walked over there and liberated Maddie, but this is way more awesome. Except that he's about to melt her shoelaces.

Duncan may know where the marble-marbles are, but he's most certainly lost his brain marbles, considering he's trying to BURN HER with a BLOW TORCH! "OhmyGOD!" her own eyes get wide when the open flame sparks; she starts pushing frantically at the net, shoving it down to a tangled pile at her shoes, least he get the idea of burning her calves as well. "Put the torch DOWN, Duncan! You're going to melt my shoes, these are my good shoes!" she likes these shoelaces, they are neon yellow and her only pair! 🙁

The blowtorch was not a good idea. Duncan does all right with melting the net, hacking it and then setting it alight so the plasticky nylon shrivels away from the flame, but he definitely catches Maddie's shoelace in the process. He accomplishes this by crouching next to her and making some shhh-shhh-this-is-fine noises, then grabbing her ankles and shoving them into his armpit, so he's just got her feet all tangled up in the net. When the flame hits the flammable cotton of the shoelaces, though, it actually ignites instead of just melts, then burns right over to the top of her sneaker. "OH NO!"

At least he puts the torch DOWN at that point (by which I mean that he drops it carelessly), and it tangles around to burn/melt more of the net, yay~!

The first roll felt unfair for what Maddie's about to do, as Duncan goes 'oh no' and burns over the top of her sneaker. 'Cuz blow torches and cheap sneakers from the nearby Gray Harbor Walmart equivalent do not a happy foot make, and she feels that flame bursting through the top of her sneaker, melting down the shoelaces, leaking into her sock, and trying to make her foot become one with her accessories.

So yes, sorry Duncan's face, she does kick her legs back to get them out from under her armpit and then flail them upward. It had all been with every intention of knocking the torch out of his hands (not knowing that he was going to put it down anyway). Except.. she misses, and her melted-netted feet go slicing up through the air and straight into his face, making an awful connection. She doesn't have a lot of strength? But apparently when she's in distress, she's something of a successful ass-kicker. Or.. face kicker, as the case may be.

Duncan takes the foot square to the chin. There's no cracking noise or anything, but it obviously hits him in just the right way that he winds up seeing stars. He falls back onto his butt, dropping the box-cutter, landing so that he jostles the flamethrower, which then tilts and catches the frayed cuff of his jeans on fire.

So, to recap. Maddie's shoe is/was on fire, and she is still stuck in the net. Duncan got kicked in the chin, and now his jeans are on fire.

And yet! Duncan manages not to completely lose his cool. Instead, he wrestles with the flamethrower - like, literally wrestles with it, rolling around on the net and everything - till he gets the flame turned off. Then he flings that horrible beast away (it crashes into the side of the camper, lands on the ground, rolls underneath the camper, disappears into shadow), pulls off Maddie's flaming shoe and throws that in the other direction. It sails off and lands in the grass, smoking slightly. He sits there, panting and looking at Maddie.

"These traps work great."

These two are LITrally a hot mess. Seriously, Maddie's foot is still painfully warm.

Her foot goes into his chin, the burning starts on Duncan's jeans, and the chaos continues. "Ohmygod,ohmygod, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry!" she flounders, trying to throw herself at Duncan in every attempt at extinguishing the flames on his jeans by hammering her BARE hands against them - and then, "OUCH!" 'cuz fire is hot. By the time it's all over, her shoe is off and smoking in the grass, the flamethrower is never to be seen again, and Maddie's sprawling herself on the grass, her feet STILL IN THE NET, panting too.

"Shit," she needs a minute. This was more strenuous than sex. But.. "You're right. This is going to be AMAZING!" She raises her hands triumphantly in the air, then looks down to the melted net still around her feet. "... but we're going to need a new net."

Now that his pants aren't on fire anymore, Duncan is left to cope with the pain in his chin, rubbing it with the back of his hand a few times while he sits among the wreckage. He also opens his mouth, reaching in and wiggling a couple of his teeth, but none of them fall right out, so that's a good sign. "I still think we should just go check down on the beach," for nets, he means. In his mind, and he had no qualms about sharing this with Maddie, the beach is just strewn with fishing nets, ripe for the taking.

Anyway, he's already sitting here, so he starts pulling on the net, lifting Maddie's feet out one at a time. After he tries to lift both of her feet at once, grunting with the strain of trying to pick up Maddie by her ankles. He gets it right eventually, and that's what matters. "You okay? That was pretty intense!"

Thankfully, the two of them were smart enough to tuck the camper far back from the road, so there was nobody around to see these two being gigantic idiots. "Okay, all right. We'll check the beach," she concedes, because there was no point in arguing .. and maybe he was right. It was better than spending another however many dollars on buying a new net; nets are expensive! Besides, "I bet if we found a fishing boat, we could just take one. They probably have a lot of extra." Take one, steal one, same diff.

Anyway, she's going to feel bad about his face just as soon as he gets the net off her feet. Except for that point where he tries to pick her up by her ankles and she nearly bashes her head open on a rock from falling back into the grass. There's a lot of noise, but she gets free, and she brushes grass off her shirt and slips out of her other shoe so her feet match before she wrinkles up her nose at him. "Am I okay? More like are YOU okay? I got you pretty good," it sounds sorry, her tone, and she picks herself up to crawl towards him, putting her hand on the side of his chin that she didn't hit with her feet to assess the damage. "I'm sorry, Duncan. I didn't mean to kick you! I wasn't aiming for your face," she leans in to very very carefully peck a kiss against his boo-boo. "At least we know though that Keene's not getting out of the net by himself."

And that's how Duncan and Maddie started robbing fishing boats. "That would make us like pirates," he deduces, awed by the prospect. Not dissuaded, mind, hence him practicing an 'arrr' while he throws the ruined net away.

"Yeah, I'm all right," he assures without even pausing to think about it. He turns his head up, so his chin is easier to kiss, and he promises, "Don't worry about it, Mads, it was just one kick to the face." His easy laugh makes light of this, no worries! "It's totally a perfect plan. If he gets stuck in the net and then the marbles all fall down on him, he's definitely gonna be unconscious, then we can jump on him and expose him, just like you said." He sits there, daydreaming about how they will be pirates attacking Keene, whee~!

"We'd only be like pirates if we stole one of the boats and sailed off into the sunset," Maddie replies matter-of-factly, though the far-off look she gives after suggests she's thinking about this intently. "That would be kinda fun, huh? Ditch the camper, sail the seven seas! I bet we could make it to Japan in like, a week." There's a certain eager sparkle to her suddenly huge eyes when she adds: "Add it to the list!"

But first, first, she has to worry about his chin. And then they have to capture Keene. After they steal themselves another net. She peppers his chin with a few extra 'I'm sorry I kicked you in the face' kisses, and then adds one to his lips for good luck, before she pulls back with a big grin. "Once we pull off his Alexander mask and reveal his true face, we can use the blow torch on it to make sure he never disguises himself like somebody else again." Pause. "The mask. Not his face. We don't need to burn his face if we have the veiltures eat all the skin off his bones. They probably don't like their dinners burned to a crisp anyway."

"Are you sure?" Duncan feels pretty confident that stealing fishing nets makes them pirates, evidenced by the mere fact that he would even question Maddie, squinting at her confusedly. He must take her word for it, though, 'cause he moves on pretty quickly from that.

He's still smiling from getting kisses while she's talking about melting people's faces, so his smitten expression is really way out of place. He does have the good grace to go, "Oh good," and seem relieved when she clarifies that she meant the mask, not the face, so whew! "My only concern." While he pulls her feet over into his lap, since apparently he's just going to stay in the middle of this net for life now. "Is what if he brings some of his friends? I dunno if you noticed, but he's got, like, a whole crew in this town. I dunno if we can take 'em all, Maddie."

"I'll get you an eye patch, just in case," Maddie reassures, though she's pretty certain she's not wrong. Still, if it makes him feel better to be a pirate? Maddie will tell Duncan he's a pirate, even if he isn't. She lets her feet be flopped into his lap and inches forward on her rear to sit closer to him, pert nose wrinkling as he talks of Keene's friends. "This new troupe IS a problem," she agrees, rubbing his chin in thought instead of her own. It helps her process, deal with it. "Honestly I'm surprised he's gotten people on his side. Especially since, as Alexander Clayton," if that even IS his real name!, "Keene is very.... weird. Not his usual self. But that's what makes him such a great actor!"

Still, it makes her think. She drops her hand to her lap and sighs, looking to the camper and then back to Duncan again. "There's only one solution. If he brings friends?" she surveys the area - the marbles rolling on the top of the counter, the net melted around them both, and then back to Duncan again. Her next words are incredibly serious: "We're gonna need a bigger net."

Duncan peels back the burned edge of his jeans, showing the slightly reddish skin of his calf, which he frowns at after talk of eye-patches. He doesn't say anything about the peg-leg he's going to need, but Maddie'd know: he will also need a peg-leg.

He pushes his pants back down, covering the little burn, and juts his chin out for the rubbing for as long as Maddie needs to. "Yeah, he seems like he went pretty weird with this sleeve he picked." Coming from Duncan, that's saying something. He tunes in to her incredible seriousness, leaning forward with his arms draped over his bent knees, his attention totally fixed on her. With a slow, serious nod, he agrees, "And some gasoline." Beat. "Hey, what happened with the bear traps?!"

Maddie's eyes fall to the small red mark on Duncan's calf, narrowing into a squint. Not to see the mark better, no, but instead to gauge just how difficult it would be to saw his leg off before it turns gangrene. She sucks on her front teeth as she thinks it through, then gives her head a shake. "We'll add it to the list," she says, as though answering his own thoughts about his soon-to-be peg leg. Right now, they had bigger fish to fry.

"Mm, it makes you wonder," not if Alexander Clayton is actually Keene - because Maddie's 105% certain that he is. But, "Do you think any of the of them had sleeves, too? 'Cause I'm willing to put all the money we have on that other guy being Megan," not that they had a lot of money right now, "He just had that.. 'I'm better than you' sort of personality," she scoffs. But the bear traps, oooohhh the bear traps. Her expression turns dark. "That Abernathy guy refused to put any on order unless I proved to him I had money," she sniffs. "I told him we'd have tons once the tour business got up and running, but he wouldn't let me put any fliers up! So I put fingerprints all over his display cases," take THAT, Noah Abernathy, "And then I pinned the fliers all over the lampposts right outside his place." Like a boss.

"WOW." Duncan sounds appalled by this idea that some businessman expects them to prove they have money before he goes out on a limb for them. "You know what we should do? We should add his store to our tour. Then we can tell people that the shop's haunted. By the ghosts of the Democrats who tried to take away our Second Amendment right to bear arms. It'd become a whole big political fiasco, and people'd probably wind up picketing out front, and nobody'd go inside to buy anything. Then! Then he would see how much better his life'd be if he just ordered us some bear traps."

Pretty sure almost nothing he just said is practical or realistic, but he's really serious about it. Also, he smooths a hand down poor Maddie's hair and kisses her cheek when she sniffs. THAT'S SO SAD.

It didn't have to be practical or realistic (it wasn't) - it just had to be said. This was, in fact, a big reason why Maddie kept Duncan around. Not just because he thinks she's the best thing since sliced bread and that he was good in bed (hey that rhymes), but also because he knew just what to say to make her feel better. She nuzzles into him as he kisses her cheek and smooths out her hair, getting a few extra sniffs in there in the process. "You're right," she shifts closer to him to snuggle in, pecking his cheek and the side of his mouth and then right there on the lips - MWAH!

"But we can plot our revenge on Noah Abernathy after we get our revenge on Keene. And maybe that Eli fellow, if he really is Megan," she wrinkles her brow. "All things considered, we might have to stay here awhile. Just, you know, revenging. At least this isn't so bad of a place? Except for .. you know." How thin it is.

They have not really accomplished a lot on their traps, here, but Duncan sits there, looking at the camper like this work-in-progress is totally going off without a hitch. It helps that he's getting snuggled and mwahed, makes it harder to be all grim when nice things are happening. "Yeah," he agrees about the duration of their stay. "But, I mean, revenge is pretty serious. Like, if I was Jimmy, I would really appreciate all the hard work and you and me are putting into this. I'm pretty sure it's the only reason he's being so quiet, 'cause he can see we're really busting our humps, here." Not right this second buuuut! With a breath held in his cheeks for a second, then expelled with a lip-flap, he nods somberly, 'cause he knows. About the thinness. "At least the ghost business should be pretty lucrative once we really get going!"

It definitely does not look like they've gotten very far at all, but that would be a lie, since they discovered through this process that the net actually works! Sure, they need another one now, and they are down a few dozen marbles. But still. PROGRESS! "I don't know what Jimmy's thinking, but if I was Jimmy? I'd be pretty damn impressed with us, I know that much," Maddie agrees, touching his face endearingly and offering him a big smile. "We're gonna do right by him. And then we're gonna get our revenge on Noah Abernathy for doing wrong by us. And then," dramatic pause. "We're gonna do right by us and embrace our futures as pirates." Arrr!

"But right now, we have to find your marbles," she points a finger up to the roof of the camper, brushing off the netting that still seems to tangle itself around the both of them. "I think if you get the bucket up there, we don't really need the stick? 'Cause I can just give it a little push," she taps her temple to indicate how. "That way, we don't drop a bucket of marbles on our heads when we get up in the morning."

"We could probably get set up as pretty good pirates just by defeating Abernathy." Okay, seriously. No clue how Duncan has reached the conclusion that ruining Noah's business is going to make benefit their future piracy, but it's all combined in his brain now, and no point attempting to untangle it. His tone is stubbornly certain that, somehow, it's all connected.

His eyes stay on the camper for a second, specifically on the door of the camper, specifically the top of the door of the camper. Where the bucket will be and make the marbles fall. "Oh, yeah. That makes a lot more sense than my plan. Plus," he starts pushing himself to his feet there, "I didn't even see pressure-sensitive plates for sale at the hardware store in this town. Like." He laughs with skittish humor about this weird town. "What kinda town doesn't have pressure sensitive plates for sale?!"

Maddie lifts her brows at the whole leap between defeating Abernathy and them being pirates, but soon enough, she's nodding her head. "I suppose Abernathy does have a kind of .. pirate captainy feel to it. And if we defeat the pirate captain? Then obviously we become the pirate captains." There, she's made sense of it somehow. Duncan must be rubbing off on her when he rubs off on her.

She takes the pieces of the melted net with her as she hops to her feet, frowning contemplatively as she walks over to the nearest bin to stash the net inside of it. "That is weird. It's probably because this is a small town. If Gray Harbor had a Walmart?" her brows go up. "There'd totally be pressure sensitive plates there. Still, I can push over the bucket," she scampers over to sweep his hand into hers, dragging him along with her as she goes to the camper. "Then you throw the net over him, and hopefully he gets tripped up, falls back, and smashes his head against the big rock I'll conveniently place. How tall do you suppose he is now?" she looks from the door, to about six feet behind, trying to judge distance. "Maybe we'll need more than one conveniently placed rock. Add it to the list."

Duncan walks over to the camper and puts his back against it, measuring how tall he is compared to it, holding his finger to the top of his head then stepping away, turning to peer at the spot he's marked. "He's this tall," he figures, reaching up with his other hand to mark a spot about four or five inches taller than he is himself. Maybe it's his (other) mutant power, this ability to guess heights. (Or he just has the luckiest fucking dice...)

"Hey Maddie," he adds, apropos of nothing. "I like being the good guys with you. This is better than being the bad guys with Keene and everyone." Yes, yes; his whole version of 'good and bad' is skewed, but that's not the point. The point is, he smiles smittenly at Maddie before he starts trying to climb back on top of the camper. Where all his marbles are.

Do you see Maddie's 'I'm so impressed with you right now' face? It's extremely good . It's not even necessarily an act, because she's frankly in awe of Duncan's seemingly numerous mutant powers. "I think you're right. Like, crazy perfect right," the smile she beams at him could power the entire city for at least a day. "We should do a couple of test runs. I'll put down pillows, that way when you fall out of the camper, you don't hit your head on any conveniently placed rocks." It makes sense. "Then we'll just measure another four or five inches past you, and that's where we'll put the rock!" Huzzah.

She's so pleased with herself, and with him, whistling a happy little diddy as she waits for him to climb - since, obviously, he'll pull her up. But wait, he says that sweet thing, and before he's got a chance to haul himself up onto the camper? She takes him by the shoulder, spins him around, and hops right up onto him, arms around his neck. He better hold on, 'cuz if he does? He's going to get another smack of her lips right against his own - MWAH! "I like being good guys with you, too," she nuzzles his nose, and gives him another kiss. This one's a bit more lingering, definitely a mood changer. ".. I think we should find your lost marbles later." A beat. "I have something else for you to find right now." It's definitely her naked. In the camper.