2020-01-09 - Wrenches & Reprisals
Amazing things also have Amazing consequences... Sometimes it's not the big wounds that cut deepest.
IC Date: 2020-01-09
OOC Date: 2019-09-11
Location: Spruce/Steelhead Service Center
Related Scenes: 2020-01-16 - Everything's Broken
Plot: None
Scene Number: 3532
The neighborhood of Spruce hears the whiiiiiiiiiining of something electric revving up. There's an unmistakable smell of ozone in the air that hangs thick pregnant with importance and unspoken, terrific intent. Everyone knows its coming. No one knows what it is, or what it will do, but there's a sick feeling of knowing that reaches Itzhak in his own home sitting heavy in his chest and that rush of adrenaline in the back of his throat. Something... something is off. Too many particles at too high a frequency maybe? And then suddenly everything is too still. Inside the dream he is dreaming everything skids to a perfect, nauseating stillness. A whispered voice fills the hush from all around him:
"...WE...SEE...YOU..."
And from all sides there is not a person, but a void rushing in on all sides, and in front of him a hand raised to his chest shoving him out of the dream he was having.
Across town on Spruce at 4:28 a.m. there is a tremendous Implosive BANG! in the center of the Steelhead Service Center. pulling the bay doors inward and leaving the civilian access door stuck in a door jamb that has shift and is crushing down on the top and bottom leaving one spider-thread of a scar through the glass. The building looks in tact. The numbers that advertise the price of the oil change have popped off the sign and stick in the damp, heavy slush. The numbers 1 and 3 left stuck poking out. The 7 blows away in the wind.
And tomorrow? Well rumor has it someone's coming to talk about money lent.
No one does a Monday like Gray Harbor.
Itzhak wasn't sleeping too well. That feeling of potential puts bees in his bones. He has a bad feeling and he can't pin it down. The Song hisses and hums to him as he drowses fitfully on the couch, his mandolin on the coffee table, a music notebook open underneath it. He was writing a song, a song about the Song. Itzhak writes his own material once every decade or so, it's unusual.
4:26 AM, he's scowling in his sleep. 4:27 and he's making low throttled sounds of protest, head tossing. 4:28 he surges to his feet, shouting in Yiddish, reeling hard enough to thump back down on the couch as he loses his balance.
Breathing hard, he grabs a handful of cushion, trying to figure out where he is and what just happened and whose ass he needs to kick.
The sense of his garage--his garage, when did it become his garage instead of the anchor Monaghan tied around his neck?--brings him back to his feet.
"Lemka," he mutters, a cold knot of fear in his throat. Then he's yanking on clothes and grabbing his keys. He has to check on his baby.
He will have to deal with the difficulty of the doors. The bay doors are jammed in their tracks and the civilian door is partly crushed on the top. The building doesn't look damaged so much as it is presently an OCD assailing, non-Euclidean, Feng Shui nightmare of subtle proportions.
<FS3> Itzhak rolls Physical: Great Success (8 7 7 6 6 6 5 5 3 1 1 1) (Rolled by: Portal)
Thank God the snow melted. Itzhak drives as fast as he dares on the wet, dark streets. At four thirty AM early January, it's still as dark as midnight and more silent, the only sound of rain patting asphalt. Streetlights gleam orange off the wet.
"Oh, Christ," he moans as he pulls up in front of the garage. He flings out of the truck, jogging in fast long strides to the civilian door. The Song swells in him--he grabs the bent frame and pulls. The door comes right off the busted hinges on a squeal of metal. Itzhak curses and flings it aside. CRASH! He'll care about that after he's sure Lemondrop is okay.
He plunges into the darkness. Weird fairy light glimmers from the broken light sockets, obeying his will. The terrarium is kicked open, too, the Masterlock on the doors hanging broken. Itzhak half-climbs inside, reaching under the platforms and substrate. No snake.
"Lemka, vau bistu?" he calls in a harsh whisper. "Vau bistu, hartseleh?" She's probably under something, going to ground on instinct. God, how he wishes his sense of living things hadn't deserted him!
When he finds her she's coiled up under a workbench. "Gut meydl," Itzhak murmurs to her, sighing in relief.
<FS3> Itzhak rolls Alertness: Good Success (8 7 6 5 3 2) (Rolled by: Portal)
Lemondrop looks... well it's hard for snakes to emote but she is coiled in a tight knot under the the workbench and partly under the grate that serves as the oil change channel. Ultimately she'll need to get cleaned off but it's the lowest point she could 'burrow' to.
The corner of the work bench looks like it's lower. Is it falling away fro the wall? No. Everything seems to be anchored and structurally in tact. From underneath it though both 'blades' on the hoiste are not parallel to one another.
She's oily, she's cold, Itzhak needs to get her taken care of. But as he's kneeling to reach for her...
what. The. Fuck?
He scowls furiously at the underside of the workbench. It's crooked. He sticks a thumb into the corner and wriggles it hard, expecting it to give. It doesn't.
It's crooked af and it's stable.
WHY IS IT STABLE?
Itzhak hisses a long elaborate curse. No, this is...this is wrong! THAT IS WRONG. That shit right there, that's WRONG. That's not how things work!
Lemondrop looks a her dad like You going to get me out of this fuckhole or what? You weren't here when the loud noise hit. Specifically she stares at him and her tongue flicks out to sniff the air and get a read on it. Still wrong. Very wrong. And full of more wrongness.
The glass is bowed but not broken like it has a bit of a blister from heat but it doesn't go out with rapid heat expansion, it bows inward.
<FS3> Itzhak rolls Alertness: Success (7 6 5 4 3 3) (Rolled by: Portal)
Implosion. Some kind of implosion, but hot. Itzhak goes still, eyes wide, staring at Lemondrop but he doesn't see her, he only sees the computations in his head.
They all come out to FUBAR.
Itzhak refocuses on Lemondrop. Swallowing, he oonches under the workbench to wrap his arms around her head and neck and oonch back out, dragging 15 feet of snake with him. "There ya go, baby girl, I'll getcha warm," he murmurs, soothing nothings he's not even thinking about. He's thinking about a lot of other stuff. Like, why?
Why did this happen? He'd almost think it was some kind of vacuum in a gas line except...that doesn't leave things crooked yet otherwise unharmed. No. This is over There.
It's now, and slowly on return every time Itzhak will start to notice: Everything looks atiny bit... off. It's not a big deal unless the majority of things in the blast area aren't precision tools.
Oh and they are.
3/4" wrenches are slightly melted inconsistently to 13/16". What was 1/2" is now slightly off by 2 mm. in varying directions with no rhyme or reason and his wire clippers bow apart at the ends. Everything is slightly warped, slightly imprecise, and slightly askew to physical space where it. should. be.
Everything except ONE THING that is jarringly out of place in this slightly angled mess.
A box.
It looks like someone might have ordered and received maybe Fed-Ex in.
It's a box.
And this box?
This box is 90* squared on all sides absolutely perfectly and without error.
<FS3> Itzhak rolls Composure: Success (7 6 2 1 1) (Rolled by: Portal)
Itzhak drags Lemondrop over to the oil heater he has for the sitting area. She's sluggish, doesn't give him trouble. He piles her near it and turns it on--the damn thing is now contrapposto but it still works. "Stay here, warm up," he mutters. He's now smudged with grease, and he needs to get that oil off her asap, but...
his tools.
It's the wire cutters that really get to him, for some Godawful reason. The way their tips no longer come together is the biggest 'fuck you' in history to him right now, and when he gets a look at them, rummaging in his tool chest trying to figure out why everything feels so weird, he bellows wordlessly and flings the goddamn things across the garage.
EVERYTHING IS FUCKING WRONG AND SOMEBODY IS GOING TO PAY.
In a rage, he wheels around to find what else he needs to get pissed off at--and there's the box. It's like ice water down his neck when he spots it. All those precise 90 degree angles. Taunting him.
<FS3> Itzhak rolls Physical: Good Success (7 7 6 4 3 3 2 2 2 1 1 1) (Rolled by: Portal)
As Itzhak looks for signs, portents, and anything small things alert and confirm It feels personal. This feels like they maybe want him to know They are paying attention? Their agents in the world reporting back to Them. They don't have to hurt him to make him hurt. They just have to wait.
This is the Mechanic's death by a thousand paper cuts.
This is the lingering death that will leave him finding things that need to be replaced. Fixed. The table that his pencil will roll off of because it subtly tilts forward. The doors that don't secure.
They know he cannot just heal this.
Everything will have to be replaced...
And Felix is collecting money this week.
Physics shouldn't work like this.
They did tonight.
Everything. EVERYTHING is broken. Fear, fury, and hatred twine into Itzhak's backbone. He hears something now, all right, an old song switching on and escalating in volume until it's roaring in his head and he's crying out and clamping his hands over his ears trying to shut it off. But it's not a song at all. It's the footsteps of the Hungry Dark, Their voice resonating through his skull.
I see a bad moon a-rising
I see trouble on the way
I see earthquakes and lightnin'
I see bad times today
Don't go 'round tonight
It's bound to take your life
There's a bad moon on the rise
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