savetheearth | I wear a demeanor made of bright pretty things [Semi-Open]

Who: Julien and whoever decided to come with him! See the plot post.
Where: The Locke City Reservoir, maybe an hour's drive west of the city center. It's a fair-sized lake surrounded by forest, with a shoreline that is mostly inclined gravel. It's not suited to canoeing or camping and isn't a recreation site, but the area isn't exactly off limits either.
When: Sunday the 11th! Forwards-dated slightly.
What: Finding the source of the contaminated water.

[This is three threads. Please, PM or plurk me if you have questions or concerns. I'm

Joysweeper.

Thread one is pre-reservoir on the tenth - as part of the handwaved preparations Julien wants to see if people actually can sneak, so asked some of the volunteers to meet him in a park. This is specifically set up so Julien can meet Alex and Nick in separate threads, but if anyone else wants to meet/talk casually with him, even if they're not going on to the next two threads, feel free!

Thread two is finding the site and Julien deciding to stake it out. His plan is for some quieter people to be investigating with him, a bunch of more combat-oriented ones hanging back in the woods, and a few people even farther back at the cars, but he doesn't really have authority. Feel free to have people from any group mingle and kill time together, especially if it's been a while since he decides to wait.

Thread three is the tanker full of pink goop showing up, a few hours after thread two started. You're fully welcome to have a character who was in thread two decide to leave and not be there for three! This is kind of in the middle of nowhere but waiting is boring.]

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The driver was not prepared for Hajime, and his eyes -- wait for it -- bug out in shock.

"What the--?!"

Since Hajime is explicitly strong enough to take off the driver's side door, it pops off after a bit of a struggle. Unfortunately, the driver hit the gas pedal in his fight-or-flight panic, and as Hajime is tearing at the door, the truck starts to move forward -- slowly at first, but it's going to pick up speed before long.

"Shit shit shit shit shit--!"

Hajime is only slightly less surprised when he both tears the door off the van and is able to toss it aside like it's nothing. He's known he was strong, but he's never had a chance to test himself to the fullest. It kind of scares him, but he can't really take the time to think on that now.

He scrambles to keep his grip on the vehicle. "If you don't stop right now, I am going to tear your head off like I did that door!" He tries to lower the pitch of his voice and put even more of a growl into it...and hope he didn't scare the guy into running off worse. He's nervous and angry, and he's never been really good at being a nice guy under those conditions.

The man shudders and slams his foot down on the brake. The truck screeches to a halt on the gravel road and the driver shakes in his seat, antsy and close to tears.

"I-I-I don't know what you are but please don't hurt me I was just doing a job I don't know what it is, they just told me it wouldn't hurt anyone! I'm not hurting anyone!"

The sound of the brakes in action is sweet music to Alex's ears.

The driver's pleading? Not so much.

Alex trots on over to the driver's side and comes to a still beside Hajime. Ish. He gives him a little room, tbh, because this is the first time Alex has been next to a huge bug and he has learned from his wee years that you give space to creatures that can kick your ass.

Until you know them. Alex doesn't personally know Hajime too well yet.

"Hey, man," he says, taking over before Hajime makes this guy piss his pants, "it's all good. We're just here for a few answers, that's all."

He's not even touching his rifle anymore!

"Can you tell us what you do know?"

Hajime is glad Alex approached when he did; he has no clue how to deal with the guy now that he really has no cause to punch the driver. Diplomacy has never been Hajime's strong suit; that's why he'd spent so much time in school getting into fights. He backs off a little to give Alex a bit more room to talk...

...but he really does want to make sure the guy didn't try anything funny, so he adds another growl at the driver as he does so. Someone's probably a little too good at playing Bad Cop.

The man looks from Alex to Hajime and back again, swallowing hard.

"What are you doing here? H-how did you know about this? How'd you know I'd be here?"

He looks torn between the idea of facing his employers and facing that bug person. Which one scares him more, he wonders?

"That stuff you're dumping does things to the roaches in the sewers. They sent an emissary to find out why," Hajime says. He's still lowering the pitch of his voice and trying to growl as much as possible. "That's how these humans knew." He then adds another sentence in the weird monster language he'd picked up. It wasn't anything important, more or less just a comment on the weather that probably sounded like another threat of dismemberment.

But hey, at least he thought of some story to cover the presence of a giant bug.

Edited 2013-08-18 04:29 (UTC)

It's a good thing the majority of Alex's face is obscured because the stunned look of disbelief he's got going on would certainly reveal Hajime's explanation as the bullshit that it is.

"Yeah," he says, after that last line of bug language. "I'm actually not sure what he just said there, but I wouldn't want to piss off roaches. They're some gross little fuckers."

No offense, Hajime. You are neither gross or little.

The driver's breaths are shallow and panicked and his face is a mask of terror and disgust. "S-s-so you're a mutant roach?!"

Alex's comments about roaches being gross earn another bit of grumbling in Hajime's monster tongue, mostly just to keep helping to sell his story. Really, he thinks roaches are disgusting too, despite being a rather large sort of one. "I am a highly evolved roach, and as far as I am concerned, I am surrounded by mutant apes. How your ridiculous species is ruling the planet is beyond me."

...yeah, he's going to owe Alex and anyone else within earshot some kind of "I am really not crazy, and I am sorry that I ever made you think otherwise" speech later on.

Later, Alex will reflect on this moment in his life. Mostly he will be impressed with Hajime's improv skills.

"Hey, hey, don't insult him," he says to the driver. "The quicker you tell us what you know about this stuff you're dumping into the water, the quicker you can split."

Neku, for the most part, is officially just listening in- but since he's in range, he'll be over here reading the driver's surface thoughts and hopefully confirming anything he does manage to get out. Anything that's not 'oh god giant roach,' anyway.

The driver took a deep, shaky breath. "They told me it wouldn't hurt anyone," he repeated, saying it like a mantra that would save his life. "They just hired me to do the driving. Drive it from the warehouse to here, dump the payload in the lake, pick up a fat paycheck. I'm just doing a job," he said, gripping the steering wheel and looking more than a little sick.

I wear a demeanor made of bright pretty things [Semi-Open]

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