Aug 03 18:14:08 105 PA

From Chronicles

Log Entitled: Do Not Pass Go Location: Cheapo Apartments - Eliza's Rooms The current game time is: Mon Aug 03 18:14:08 105 PA. Players: Eliza, Minnie, Janus

Plunka-plunka-plunk. Someone's come a-rappin'. Probably another door-to-door solicitor. That, or a door-to-door ghoul. Building security is pretty lax with regards to either, which goes a long way to explaining the un-neighborly atmosphere here at Chez Cheapo. Residents have learned that if one waits quietly for long enough, the person on the other side of the door with delusions of social communication and/or stealing livers will eventually get tired of waiting and slink away. Plunka-plunka-plunk.

Given that the walls of cheapo's are thin as cardboard one who surrepticiously places their ear against the door to listen can hear exactly what is going on inside! In this case, lots of running water. It is a glorious and happy sound; the sound of wonderment and relaxation. Of soothing serenity after a very long day. With this in view it is mayhap a shock that a cuss word doesn't come from deep within. Instead the water shuts off and the sound of someone padding across the room inside comes to ears, followed by a muffled metal thunk against the door. "Kay!" Eliza calls cheerfully. "Who is it? If you're a sales person, I'm going to make a forty calibre peephole in the door!"

There's the requisite pause in which the knocker considers the tone of voice and its sincerity, the inevitable shuffle over to the side. Then, instead of ensuing dead silence while the solicitor makes good its escape, there is: "It's....Keith? Minnie's friend, Keith? Right?" The young male voice comes through loudly enough despite the hesitancy evident in his words.

"Oh!" The response is cheerful. Click, click go the locks and the door opens to reveal the insane one clad precariously in a bright orange towel that barely covers from her collarbones to the middle of her thighs. One can hope that Keith isn't a prude. "Hi." She says, holding the towel in place with her chin. A clicky click is heard as Eliza racks back the slide of the gun that was in her hand and puts the safety back on, tossing it onto a nearby shelf. This done, she can more securely keep herself modest. "Come on in and sit on the sofa with Brutus over there while I get dressed." She turns her back on him and pads into the bedroom where the door closes. Muffled a little, she keeps talking. "Aren't you Minnie's boy, not her friend? Is everything okay?" That is real concern in her voice.

His green peepers fly open a little wider when the door opens to reveal subject matter for a letter to some new-age Penthouse. His attention slides from the pistol to the chrome of her forearms, then takes a wavering leap to her face, where it more or less remains until she moves deeper into the apartment again. Since he isn't cursed with tunnel vision, he can see the rest of her just fine in his periphery. And he is seeing her. The saving difference is the absence of any sort of leer or even goofy-toothed grin, as he keeps his arms a little ways from his sides for her benefit, and responds with a quick "hey". At the invitation he leans in to first check on the status of this 'Brutus', no doubt a grizzled, cigar-chomping mercenary of very little brain and quick reaction time with regards to throwing relatively skinny punks such as himself headlong through the window. "Okay 'nough," he calls while he visually scopes, "she's just come down with somethin' after, y'know, racing around in the rain all night." Some traces of reproach in his voice...and some of that due to her semantics. He said 'friend', not 'boyfriend' - does she have to rub it in like that?

Eliza is totally oblivious to Keith's looks. She is too busy disarming her insturment 'o fiery death. When it is discarded though and she makes her retreat Keith is left alone with Brutus. He does not like cigars, but rumors has it that he enjoys a good bluing and a few rounds with his friends. As in there is no kitten present. So she must be crazy enough to mean the rifle. Eliza comes out a minute or two with her hair dangling in sodden masses. "Hi." She says again, this time dressed in shorts and a modest tee. "She's sick? That sucks. Is it safe to go see her anyway, or is she worshipping porcelean?" Flopping into a kitchen chair, she tries to get the measure of this fellow. Eliza hasn't even yet figured out he was being mildly accusatory. "You haven't answered me yet. You Minnie's boy?"

Keith gazes at the longarm for a lengthy moment, before finally deciding that he really isn't surprised. He'd only caught a glimpse of the woman the other night, after all, and had had the thought that she was more of a hostage than a willing participant in Minnie's escapades. But then, the way Minnie had gone on and on about her... just maybe it had been the other way around all along. His thoughts in the doorway are interrupted by the reappearance of the human tenant, and he takes a step further inside rather than back into the hall, a non-verbal hint that it's not all that safe to go visiting his roomie just now. "Is that what she's callin' me?" he shoots back, annoyed. And what the hell, foolishly hopeful too.

Eliza doesn't like to break hearts but she totally doesn't see what is wrong with her coming statement. "Hmm? Oh, she's barely mentioned you at all." Eliza is not actually talking to Minnie. She is engaged in conversation with Keith, Minnie's other half. Though the conversation is perhaps going to seem a little bit one sided to anyone who walks in. "I just have a curious little mind and like to know everything about my friend's business that I can. I am the final repository of gossip. I hear, and don't let go." Turning to the fridge, dressed in a pair of shorts and a tee rather than her usual garb with soaking wet hair she rummages. "Do you have anything for her to eat? Like soup? I assume you can look after a sickie?"

There's a sound of voices from the hall that slips through the gap of the slightly ajar front door, the recognizable accent of Erik speaking to someone with a gruff tone and poor enunciation. This followed by a token knock, but the door is already pushed open before there's a chance to respond to it. Janus steps in, clouds of worry rolling across the stormscape of his eyes. "Oi, 'liza? Minnie come over here...?"

The young feller just looks at Eliza while she chatters obliviously away, the conversation quite running away from him while he mulls over her initial claim. It's with a resigned sigh that he leaves the entry area, with a slight nudge of his shoulder to get the door into closing motion. Probably around this time that Janus shows up in the corridor, to find the mercenary girl's door knock_ok. "We got soup, of course. Not drinks, everything's fizzy. Have't'go find something with citrus. Orangeade, 'r lemonade," he starts off in absent response to the young woman's lulling discussion of mundane concerns, before abruptly wondering, "True you gals hooked up in that graveyard..?" Then Janus enters the room, his voice preceding him within Keith's perception - and although the boy's never chanced to have heard Erik's voice or accent personally since that first day in the park...already he's assuming a scowl as he turns around to meet the man, standing halfway between Eliza's kitchenette and the door. He doesn't offer an answer on Minnie's behalf just yet. First gotta get over the bitter taste of that surge of bright green poison that's suddenly flooded his throat.

Poor Liza. Poor Janus. Poor Keith. Janus' sudden entry causes her to drop to one knee with a twitch; right arm extended and a soft glow emanating from her fingertips. Twitchy. Twitch. Twitch. "Don't DO that!" She exclaims unhappily with a frown on her face. Some things die hard, even they are likely to scare off young Keiths. "No." She says as she tries to master herself. "Minnie is not over here. This however, is her boyfriend." She is not sounding so calm now, but is at least getting back to her cheer. "Here. Take this." A cupboard is opened and a plastic bag full of powder is taken out. It's quite well sealed which is good since it perscribes a loop towards Keith's chest. "Vitamin drink and electrolytes. It's what we use in the field. It'll keep her hydrated and such even if she's determined to barf it out." She then blinks a little bit. "Hooked up in the graveyard? Well, maybe. What do you mean?"

Janus purses his lips and recovers from Eliza's moment of startled violence with an unhappy frown which carries over to Keith. "I knocked, didn't I?" he asks the youth, reaching to unlikely corners for an ally. Then foodstuffs and hydration drinks are flying around and he tries to piece things together from what Eliza tells him. "Sent me a message she was under the weather, but she's not answerin' the door." He shifts his gaze back to Keith and offers, "We met in the park, remember?"

Keith is not too sure what he means, not at this point in the visit, not after catching a glimpse of the woman's metal hand powering up for auto-self-destruct or whatever it was doing. Then his focus is divided between the two, a little more equally than he would have preferred. What he would have preferred was a little staring match with Erik, a few moments' abject critique of this man whose accent rings eerily familiar in his mind if only because it has begun to seep into his roommate's speech patterns. Strewth, indeed. Knockahs, sheilahs, whatever. Aces-a-go-go...augh! Only his few years' experience in an amateur ballclub allow him to catch the baggie against his chest without effort or comprehension. "Yeah, guess we did," he allows to Janus's memory-jog. "Minnie...that's what you're callin' her too, right. She's sleepin'. Spent last couple nights splashin' in the rain. With 'Doc Sparkle' here," he gestures with a hitching shoulder Eliza-wards. No fair throwing around the nicknames so soon, Keith. Also no fair blaming Eliza. She was only out with Minnie for *one* of those rainy nights.

Eliza gives Keith a funny look first off. "'Course it's true." She says. "I just had to get some clarification from you, because that could have been taken more than one way, y'know? But yeah, that was me on the bike. I think anyway; it was a strange evening." She is calming down slowly and the glow dissipitates into sort of a fuzzy light and then is completely gone. "Anyway. When she wakes up, I'll go over and see her. Little sickie never stopped me. And besides, bet I can make her laugh." She looks a little dissapointed then, and nods her head towards the mammoth rifle on the sofa. "I was goin' t'take her and Brutus out to the range later today. Then she had to go and get sick." An exagerated look of sadness and then she is happily looking at Janus, good mood perked up again.

Janus's frown softens, the stony forbearance of his manner sliding towards the easy-going nature that's more familiar for those who know him. "Roit," he drawls at Keith, nodding. "'Minnie'." It's a kindness, letting the youth have his shared secret with the girl. He flicks his eyes to Eliza, to her rifle, then back to her. While it's clear that the thought of Minnie being anywhere near that thing does not sit well with him, he expresses it only in a passing look. "Like to check in on 'er with you, when you go," he remarks to the mercenary girl.

Over my dead body, announces Keith with a glance at the shoulder cannon that's accompanied by a hard painful throb in his temple. Painful throb because he didn't actually say anything out loud, and the words, the energy behind the words, merely expanded within his head. He stands listening to the other two inviting themselves into his (their) apartment, and briefly struggles with another unspoken protest. Then he just makes a face, and presently lifts the baggie of crystals to give them a cautious eyeballing. Sure. Sure it's vitamins and electrod..electri..elect..bits of energy. He drops his arm, bag slapping softly against his leg as he turns to take awkward steps towards the doorway. "Reason I came in th'first place was to check on you, for her," he informs Eliza over his shoulder. "Worried you'd taken sick too. Guess you can tell'r yourself you're indestructible?" Again, some accusation there. Something. To Janus, he grunts ungraciously. He can come too.

Eliza gives Keith and Janus both an increasingly funny look as he listens and gives that glance towards Brutus. "You'd be invited too, you know. Brutus is a good friend, he'll have fun with just about anyone. And come on, if a little thing like she can handle it you'd hate to be shown up right?" Appeal to his sense of challenge! "I really appreciate that. Was nice of you." She is saying as she turns away to open a cupboard. One, two, three, four. All of her armaments come out and are holstered and finally she can cheerfully skip towards the door and is already waiting outside before the two men can exit. Shows where her interest lies.

"I guess it's now, then," Janus remarks to Keith with an amused chuckle, a note of apology there in his voice. He turns to follow Eliza out into the hall, leaving the door open for Keith. "How are ya findin' Kingsdale, mate?" he inquires over his shoulder, making conversation and seemingly oblivious to the seething dislike that's radiating out of the boy in waves.

Keith edges out into the hall around Janus to take the lead, his comparatively slender frame making him panther to Janus' lion. Also tends to give him a skulking aspect as he moves to his own door, not bothering to rummage for a key. "I can handle rifles," he mutters to Eliza scoffingly, after a dubious glance at her quartet. "Rode with the caravan guards 'tween Whykin'n'Lake Mich, two years." Yeah, that's right. He, Keith, is capable, is Keith. Oops, did Janus hear that? Well, now he knows what he's dealing with. A veteran caravan guard. Mm-hmm. "It's a freakshow, Kingsdale, but I'm getting over that. Don't care, s'long's they leave us alone. I got work in'n hour, so. Short visit, hm?" The door swings open into the short hallway into dimness, beyond which a ghostly white figure seems to drift around the corner, kitchen-wards. "Hey Mi-.." Keith starts, hesitates, then continues lamely, "..you...get back in bed." He pushes inside, remembering the suspicious baggie and shaking it. "Look, medicine..."

Cheapo Apartments - Minnie's Rooms This is a fairly plain single bedroom apartment. The walls are dingy off-white, and carry the bare minimum of furnishing, though it does at least have a small cramped bathroom with a cramped shower, a few closets, a small kitchen area.. and cockroaches. Curiously enough there seem to be many different messages scribbled into the hard cement floor as though the place had been used to house a lunatic at one point. The extent of the chalk and crayon babble has been partially obscured by a few mismatched area rugs, and a threadbare runner leading to the outside corridor.

Eliza lifts an eyebrow to look at Keith, interested now. "Really?" She asks. "For what trader? We ran guard along that route for a little while. We cleaned some soups out of a little town called Porkmouth or something like that." Genuine interest on the crazy one's tone and words too, she seems to have no dislike for him whatsoever. He can hate her all he wants, but it is almost like she isn't going to go for it. "Oh." She murmurs, when she sees Minnie up and moving; fully intending to push right past Keith and offer her a hug with one metallic arm. "How're you feeling? Is Keith not looking after you properly?"

Janus is far more restrained than Eliza; diffident even, and comes into the little apartment with his mouth in a bloodless line and his arms folded defensively across his chest. "Freakshow," he echoes Keith's assessment, sounding like he likes the word and has already filed it away into his vocabulary. "You runnin' the deliveries for the noodle shack too?"

Minnie comes back around the corner, groggy and unmade like a lump of sourdough before baking. Her fair hair lays in tangled sheaves over her bare shoulders, thin straps of her white cotton camisole accentuating the broad line of her shoulders, the strength there, still holding her upright. The light blue checked pajama pants hang a little less well-filled, too wide and long and rumpling all to hell around her bare feet. "'Liza," she remarks dryly, as the woman gets closer, and backs up a half-pace. "Wait..I'm sick.." It hasn't yet occurred to her to make a logical connection between her presence, the presence of Keith, and also the presence of..."Erik!" The name croaks its way through the empty space in the sparse apartment. "I'm a'right. S'just a cough. Some sniffles," she begins to add, hasty and embarrassed now.

Keith is moved aside without much trouble, sort of buffeting gently against the wall as he turns to address Janus's question. "Nah. Mediator gig over't th'Arena. No deliveries for me." The poor guy flinches a moment at the sound of Minnie's raised voice, though after a moment's observation he can't help but smirk over her sudden discomfort. "Nowhere near's fast as *her*," he adds, with an odd irony in his tone lengthening the words.

Eliza at least pauses for the benifet of her intended target. "Since when did that make any difference t'me?" Her voice asks. "Come on, give me the oppertunity to do somethin' dumb?" A crooked smile is given. "Just figured a hug wouldn't sound too bad now. I get pretty worthless when I'm sick. On the off chance I get it, we can be worthless togeather and throw tissues at the television set all day." She takes a breath and then decides to invoke hellery. "Keith invited me in to see you since I was indestructable, he said. Would y'rather I leave?"

Janus picks a hand up from his bicep and gives Minnie a finger wiggle of a wave and a quiet smile. He's uncomfortable and uncharacteristically at a loss for what to do with himself. It doesn't make much more than a casual observer to connect the dots, tracing a triangle from he to Minnie to Keith and back again. "Got your message," he offers up for his own reason for coming over. He leaves out the part where he didn't even stop to turn off the lights back in his room on his way out the door before the message was even done playing. That wouldn't help thing any here.

Minnie turns mournful raccoon eyes up to Eliza. "A hug?" What the deuce is a hug? her tone conveys. What she probably means, however, is why would you want to hug me? Then her gaze shifts back over to Janus while Eliza does go on, her pasty pallor warming into color gradually as she locks her gaze on his for a long, considering moment. Despite her vain mortification at being discovered in a snuffly, bedraggled state, she makes zero attempts to preen or pick at the rumples in her outfit. "No. Want you to stay," she responds, probably to Eliza. "You wouldn't get't anyway." Yeah - she's already a walking pharmacy. "Y'brought...medicine?"

At that prompt, Keith re-remembers the baggie, and heads for the kitchen. "Something about it bein' good 'gainst yarkin'," he says flatly, while turning the corner. The lights in the living room flicker on dully; he must have hit a switch somewhere. Soon the crash of cutlery comes jarringly from the little ceramic space, as the young man continues on his apparent quest to make this visit short-lived and awkward.

Eliza is rejected. However, he can handle it. Her face only shows a mild and momentary pang. See, Minnie? See? See? When she never broaches such things on anyone for the next two years it's going to be your fault. And Janus' too. "Ah, well. I get pretty desperate when I'm sick. To each to their own." And then she forces herself back to her unusual cheer today. Her chemicals must be fantastic. "Still won't take up too much ti..." She trails off, eyes cast after Keith. Her brow is furrowing and she opens her mouth to speak and one can she she is struggling very hard not to speak.

Janus slips his arms free from one another and shoves one hand back against the door behind him, making sure it's nice and closed before he moves away from it. There's no telling what would happen with twitchy Eliza if someone else were to come strolling in. He walks over to join the two girls, his growing smile wrecked flat again by the ruckus in the kitchen, but he's got eyes for nothing but Minnie just now. "Look at ya," he murmurs warmly while he does just that, feathering a couple of fingertips through her mussy hair and straightening it up a bit. "Cute as a bunny and all. Out ridin' in the rain, was it?"

If Minnie senses that she's just taken two steps back on the Monopoly board of Eliza's trust game, she doesn't take any immediate steps to play catch-up, even when the opportunity presents itself with almost literally open arms. "Oh I get dethp'rate when I'm sick, too," she instead agrees softly at first, before warming to the topic. The soft click of the door closing has her regard moving back to Janus, a questioning glance for him while she continues, "Gotsta get motorin' again. Ride t'beat th'sick. Hate bein' cooped in!" she makes her louder protest kitchenwards, then settles back between her two friends. And has to smile at Janus's remarks, like she *could* believe them, if he is only able to keep it up. The prince of lies that he is. "Right, was lettin' it all out after the 'liveries were done. But Keith thought't was time t'come in, 'cept't wasn't, an' I rode'm one'n'ended findin' 'Liza in the boneyard with'er kin, an' then these loonies started comin' at us, so that's why we went ridin' s'more." The story concludes with a wheeze and a few hacking coughs. "'Liza wants a frog," she finally croaks after the spell has passed. "I got'r frog, right *here*." And she turns solemnly to the taller girl to offer her a look down into the froggy depths of her throat. Must be an inside joke.

Keith makes a metal spoon go *tunktunktunktunk* around in a plastic tumbler, the water spiral within mixing up the powder crystals until most are dissolved, leaving a layer of supersaturate to silt the bottom. He glances over his shoulder now and again, eyeing Eliza where she stands, and each time there's a growing irritation in his expression, like he knows she's thinking something he probably doesn't care to hear.

Not just two steps back, well before go. Do not cross it, do not collect two hundred dollars! Try as she might, Eliza is having difficulty restoring her good cheer. Probably because she's been without her chems for most of the day today. Isn't this how it always happens? She decides to have a dry day, and ends up mis-speaking and mis-taking everything that people say. Maybe it's because her limited social skills are thrust to the forefront without being inebriated to apologize and account for them. She nods distractedly at Minnie, looking like she is thinking about one thing or another. "You'll be better soon and then we can go to t'range like we promised." Minnie's demonstration of her frog makes 'Liza at first scrunch up her face but then peer forwards and down. "Ribbit." She agrees, with a little smile that quickly fades. Biting her lip, she steps away from Minnie and pads over to Keith. "Keith, isn't it?" She asks, softly. "Did I do something wrong, or are you usually act like a wanker to people you just meet?"

Janus is overwhelmed trying to keep up with Minnie's mind while it skips around to whatever place the whim takes it. Somewhere in there is his answer though, but he holds off saying anything to watch the litter interplay between she and Eliza and lifts his brows wonderingly when the latter goes over to irritate Keith. "Whole town's a freakshow," he comments as an aside to Minnie, delighting at his first chance to use his newest word. "Reckon the graveyard'll draw the worst of 'em." Like Eliza? Woops.

Keith sets the tumbler out along the counter, tosses the unused portion of the baggie over to bunch up against a small heap of package groceries. "This'd better be th'non-barfin' stuff," he pipes up at Eliza upon catching her approach out of the corner of his periphery, just a little joke between not-friends, just a hasty attempt to keep her from saying what's on her mind. Except she does, and his frown broadens, because he'd been considering that exact question his own self, for the past minute. With a quick, angry, searching look at the woman's face, he comes to the decision that Eliza is asking, not to aggravate him, but because she really does want an answer. "It's not..." he stops, looks around for a sauce pan, then digs in the cupboard under the sink. Pops back up with a clang, as the pot is set onto a burner. "There's stressful shit goin' down, right? I am operatin' under a vat'f it, right? And Min...Minnie doesn't help when she goes out there'n'just hooks up with...you." He mangles a soup tin with an opener, the mechanism jamming and protesting halfway around. "People like you, I mean." His gaze shifts beyond Eliza for a moment, but he doesn't say it. Like *him*.

Minnie looks up curiously at Janus, also sensing a faux-pas of making light of the graveyard, in Eliza's company. "I'm talkin' 'bout the kung-fu zombies," she admonishes him quickly, with a glance that follows Eliza into the kitchen a few paces. Then she's touching Erik's wrist with her warm fingertips, and nipping off towards the lone window set into the living room wall, overlooking a picturesque alleyway. Propped up with a block of wood to let in some air, the presence of a breeze points to there being another window in the apartment somewhere. Probably the bedroom. "Nice night for a walk," she comments innocently whilst looking down through the dusty pane, then inclines her head quickly to relay a hiked eyebrow and oblique gaze. "Have rope, will travel," is added, all but inaudibly.

Eliza takes all of this in very evenly and without showing too much reaction. Except to try and snatch the soup tin away from him so that she has something to do with her hands to avoid the awkward too. If successful, a little blade pops out of her first finger and slices around the rim and then bangs down onto the counter surface with maybe a touch more vehemance than is actually required. This, coming right after Janus' comment suggests that maybe she did in fact hear it. "Mm. Well. I can understand how y'feel about the stress. Nobody likes it." Then her voice lowers to where just Keith can hear it. It's not such a bad voice when lowered either, the soft tones suitable for broadcast. "I was sorry that I called you a wanker, till I heard your explanation. I'm sorry, but if you're goin' to pick anyone's friends... well, you are." Voice lowers even farther, to where Keith will have to actively listen to her to hear. "An' I'm sorry if I'm encouragin' her not to be a coddled an' controlled. Can't always have it your way, Keith. Don't mean it in a bad way, just... if you're going to live with someone, they got to have their own life." Back up to conversational tone then, she turns away from him to address Janus and Minnie both. "You get well soon. We've lots of shooting to do. And good to see you, too. I'm going home to finish a few things I have to do for today." She leans in towards Janus' ear then, quite honestly. "And I'd hate for you to put you there if you open that door of mine one more time."

Keith merely punctuates Eliza's remarks with slow nods, hands at rest against the counter's edge whilst the twisted soup lid is efficiently removed. On the outside, it certainly looks like he's condescending to agree with every single point she makes, even the sub-audible ones. Patiently brooding until she's done and away, whereupon he picks up the dribbly tin, makes a weary toast with it, then quietly dumps it into the sauce pan. Then spends a long span of minutes just looking down at a few lines of lunatic scribble on the floor, reading it over and over again, it seems.

Janus is found in the windowsill with Minnie when Eliza comes back out, on the tail end of nodding to something the girl's said and giving her hand a little secretive squeeze of understanding. A smile turns to Eliza, because he does actually like her, but her murmured threat is not received well, not at all. "Then you keep that door shut up tight," he says to her unhappily. "Tight as it get and you don't ever open it back up. You leave a crack, your friends are going to come inside. You don't get it both ways." There are doors and there are doors, and he's most certainly not talking only about the one out in the hall. Location:Cheapo Apartments - Eliza's Rooms

Tags:eliza, janus, minnie