malnosso | [Locked to Residents]

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malnosso

[Locked to Residents]

[Appearing on the journals is a written message as follows. A voice option is provided for a computerized reading of the text.]

Attention Luceti Residents.

The following names are being called to participate in a strike against the cultist hordes:
[the names listed here appear on the journal.]

All subjects are required to arrive at the tunnels at 8AM on the 27th of March for deployment. All listed individuals are required to be present. Subjects will then be escorted to TERRACE for battle preparation and further details.

Target will be Region One, a former Malnosso stronghold, presently in cultist hands. Subjects are advised to prepare for combat in forested areas. Further information will be made available at TERRACE. Questions and answers will not be provided at this time.

[The Malnosso will not reply to this message, but everyone is free to use this post to discuss among themselves, whether using voice options on the journal or doing action threads.]

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[There's some people he knows on there, sure. But he's not worried about them. They can take care of themselves and hell, he's relieved to not have to go. Who needs that kind of stress in their lives? But then there's Clem. Little Clem.

Dammit.

He goes into the bar, because he knows the announcement of a battle can only be prepared for by lots of drinking, so it's best to be ready to do the bartending gig and serve out drinks to all the poor suckers about to die. Besides, he's got something to ask of Buffy.]

...The buzz was in the air. The undeniable and unavoidable hum that overcame the small town when something had happened. It had only taken a strangely turned sentence from someone else to send Buffy Summers to her journal she kept tucked away from the working mess of the bar-counter. She flipped through the pages. Names. Lots of them. And yet a few remained conspicuously absent. She ruminated on these absences and inclusions as she headed for the back room, for her and Horner's mind were coming to the same conclusion: pre-battle evenings were best entertained through a boozy haze, so she had a few crates to haul out from the far corner.

By the time Jack arrived, she was already two-crates deep into restocking the shelves immediately behind the bar. She peeked at him from where she crouched, not yet bothering to stand up straight. "...Aha. There he is. The de-facto boss. You realize you're the only tender being left behind, right?"

Buffy. She was going, of course. He hadn't realized it'd be just him, but it was hardly a surprise. Frankly, he didn't mind. It would be nice to be in charge. He nodded and gestured to the bar itself with an ironic smile.

"My glorious inheritance. Maybe I'll change the name while you're gone."

"Risk it and I will personally castrate you," she threatened so casually. So calmly. Did she like leaving the place in his hands? No. Not especially. But she also didn't expect him to go ruining it. Horner just wasn't that kind of person.

She filled her arms with wine bottles and stood up.

"It'd grow back."

He hoped it would. Dammit.

"...Seriously?"

She indulged this question with the full weight of her curiousity. Buffy wasn't letting the draft announcement get under her skin. She was determined to be her sassy self.

"What, have you tested this hypothesis?"

"Hell no I haven't. Do I look crazy?" Though it occurred to him in some of his more horrific injuries, it may have already happened.

"Anyway, listen. You. You're big on the hero shit, right? Protecting the weak?"

Her witty repartee about just how he looked was abandoned in favour of his description of her, however ill-worded. Her answer was cool: "It's in the job description. Why?"

"You know the kid I picked up? Clem?" He may have mentioned it. May have not. She wasn't really important to mention to women he wasn't going to try and bed. "The suits have her lined up for the big battle."

Clem. Clementine. So that was why the name had looked so familiar, on the list. Buffy had only barely paid attention that one time Jack had mentioned the girl, and she'd certainly never fully filed the name away for future reference. But now, her echoic memory filled the blanks.

"You're asking me to babysit?" She asked, not an ounce of indignation in her voice. She was serious, however flip the words themselves were.

"She's six years old!" Okay, older than that. Whatever. "Someone's gotta keep an eye on her. I told her I'd be the one to do it, but I can't exactly do that from here, can I? So you watch my kid, I watch your bar."

It sounded like a fair exchange in his head.

"Your kid?"

She folded her arms. Oh, Buffy was already on board. She couldn't very well say no to a request like this, could she? But she could at least negotiate the terminology.

"Yeah, I saw her first." That was all it took to become a child's guardian, after all. Dibs.

"Kids aren't like front seats. You can't call shotgun."

"Whatever. The kids likes me, alright? So you gotta do your hero thing. Watch out for her."

"...This really begs the question of whether I should be watching out for her now, too."

"You're not the only one I could be asking for this, you know!"

Okay, so she was. He didn't trust anyone. But he distrusted Buffy the least of anyone.

"Cool it, Horner. I won't let her leave my side."

It was a promise she gave quickly. Easily. Surprisingly easy, given what it would mean for her own involvement. No brave advances. No foolish gambits. It would mean sticking close to the least troubled parts of a battlefield. Hopefully. Ideally.

"I'm just surprised to see you playing surrogate. That's all."

He did wonder about that. Sure, he wanted the kid so he could claim he was being responsible. But it was such a weird thing, having someone depending on you and not just because they were a selfish mooch. And he wasn't even getting much out of the deal anyway. He just liked the kid. She thought he was a good guy. Not many people ever thought that.

"It beats playing solitaire. Besides, I figure I ought to get this whole fatherly thing down. In case I end up with more kids. That way I won't have to worry about them trying to kill me."

She had to stop herself before she blurted the unretractable: you kinda almost maybe sorta had the fatherly thing down in spades. But those were thoughts and dizzying emotional heights she didn't dare revisit so casually. Still, it was hard not to remember him as the patriarch of their house. A house he built, in point of fact.

And now, here he was, coming to her for help. Oh -- he didn't couch it in those terms. She never expected he ever would. But that's what was happening. Horner wanted her help; her responsibility; her duty. He wasn't disparaging it, but commending it. Just by wanting it.

She lined up the four wine bottles on the counter, twisting them until all their labels lined up. "What's she like? You can't let me walk into this blind, y'know..."

What was she like? He had to think about that for a moment. Kids were a mysterious thing. He hadn't had much to do with them since he was one himself. So he thought about how he would describe her that didn't include just include general kid-like traits.

"Well, she's yea high." He indicated a height shorter than she actually was. "Nice enough kid. Got a big thing for zombies. Calls 'em walkers. I guess that's the big thing in her world. So just let her know that you're willing to kill her if she gets turned and she should warm up to you pretty quick."

"Oh, that is so unbelievably twisted."

But then Buffy thought about how many friends, strangers, children, and helpless old ladies she'd slayed. Gladly. And -- eventually -- easily. She glanced down across the wine labels and gathered her thoughts. Most of them tilted 'round the notion of this poor child.

"I get it. Shouldn't be too hard to say..." But it would be. It would be hard. Vaskoth had been so unbelievably hard, and even since then she'd been butting heads with the realization that Jack Sparrow had killed her and his beautiful dream child for all the same reasons: because it had to be done. Even just telling a child she could do the deed was a harrowing prospect. It pained her. That pain, she supposed, was a good sign. There was something human yet left to her.

She swallowed hard. "What a sucky world to be from."

Edited 2013-03-25 18:54 (UTC)

"I've seen some shitty worlds, but hers sounds like a real kick in the pants." He felt bad for the tyke. She should be getting ice cream and trips to the beach. Not surviving the end of the world. Or someone else's war, for that matter.

"I figure if she doesn't have to see any of that stuff here? All the better. She's had plenty of it to last her a few years."

"Mmhm," she hummed her agreement, her mind still a million miles off. Floating somewhere between Sparrow's stories and every iteration of a zombie she's ever witnessed in her too-long-of-a-short-life. In truth, she found that when she pushed past the murky trauma hazing up her thoughts, she admired what Horner was attempting.

This was a new feeling.

"I'll keep her out of the thick of it. It's not like they ever really need me on the front lines. There are more than enough super-powers to go around."

"Good. Then you're ready to meet the little runt. Wanna ditch this place before it gets too busy?"

As a matter of fact, he planned this. Little Clem wouldn't be far away.

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