Event - Material Goods

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Material Goods

➥ By Hook or By Crook

(cw: potential for violence, criminal activity, bombs/bomb threats, injury, incarceration, police brutality)

It's not difficult to identify the crates marked for Things of Beauty. They're colorful things, some might even say garish. Whoever chose them has a particular sort of taste, and it seems to be stuck somewhere in the 70s. They're stacked up on one of the docks, waiting to be loaded into delivery trucks by burly dock workers who look alternately annoyed by the hideous crates and disturbed by something about them. Anyone stopping to eavesdrop will hear one of them mention that he heard the crates murmuring. The concerns will be dismissed quickly as they move to load up the trucks, though.

The boat that's brought these over seems… confusingly small, like it's something local, rather than anything international. Getting onto the ship, itself, would be impossible during the day, and it seems to leave after having dropped off the boxes, heading out of port and off to places unknown. Anyone checking the ship's name–The Tarabroo–will quickly find it's not a ship that seems to be appropriately registered. The Tarabroo, as an internet search, does bring up some interesting information about a black hound with two snouts that oozes gasoline and breathes fire. It seems to be a legend associated with the Appalachian region.

There are, of course, many ways to disrupt the supply chain, and while stopping the actual boat that brought things isn't an option, there's slashing tires, incapacitating drivers, and attempting to shift or destroy cargo. However you try to stop things, best be careful not to get caught. There's security on the docks day and night, and they don't take kindly to intruders. You might find yourself boxed, tased, or otherwise incapacitated, if caught, and arrested by the police if a longshoreman doesn't decide to just punt you into the harbor for getting in their way. Enjoy the very icy swim.

Or maybe you're going the more… call in a bomb threat, or a gas leak, or otherwise cause a mess of paperwork route. It's not a simple task, either way. The people dealing with the bureaucracy at the docks seem to be uncannily well-organized and are quick to dismiss obvious lies. There might be more luck with bomb threats and gas leak notices at Things of Beauty, but after one or two, the police are going to catch wise to lies and start looking into exactly who has been making those calls.

For those who are caught, either in the act on the docks or making calls that tie up police resources, you'll find yourself chucked into the city jail for a night, maybe with someone else who was caught. The police seem to have varying degrees of what's considered appropriate use of force against those they catch, especially once they find out they're associated with ADI. You're horning in on their turf and making their lives difficult? How about they leave the lights glaring on you all night while playing some really annoying music and taking away any semblance of comfort? If you got arrested by a particularly angry officer, you might even end up with some bruises or a bloody nose for your trouble, before you're released.

➥ Comfortably Numb

(cw: body horror, injury (hands/arms), bleeding, mouths where there should not be mouths, supernatural drugging/apathy)

Despite best efforts, at least some of the product intended for Things of Beauty do actually make it there. Not many, but a small amount. ADI is tasking volunteers with the mission of acquiring whatever product has made it into the hands of the public… by whatever means necessary. (Which will likely amount to stealing.)

What is the product? Well, it appears to be… phone cases that have the approximate appearance and texture of flesh. Maybe even human flesh. With so much apparently persuasive marketing ahead of time for a product that will “change lives”, the fight to acquire one of these phone cases is intense and people are paying absurdly high prices for them. Those that aren’t able to buy the phone cases from the store itself can be seen offering even more money to those walking away with the precious goods.

Their efforts are all apparently in vain, though. Once someone has their hands on a phone case, they seem to be even more obsessed with it than they were with obtaining it. Any attempts to get them to relinquish the object–either legally or through less honest means–are rebuffed. They also appear to be very reluctant to let the cases physically leave their hands as well.

Even when the cases start growing mouths. Toothy mouths that are employed to bite at their hands. If people notice this disturbing occurrence, they don’t appear to care at all and continue to jealously guard their possession even as it makes a mess of their hands. Victims of these cases can be identified by the blood covering their hands, if they don’t happen to be holding on to the case.

Tracking down and retrieving all the cases will take a few weeks. It also poses a bit of a logistical challenge. Seeing the victims being utterly unaware or uncaring of their mangled hands doesn’t make any sense… until you physically come into contact with one of the cases. Then the reason becomes crystal clear (or will become crystal clear, in hindsight.) Touching them–even with gloved or otherwise protected hands–quickly begins to produce both an obsession with keeping possession of the object and an indifference to pain of all kinds, including emotional. Disposing of them becomes unthinkable, which poses something of a challenge for the mission characters have been given. However, if the cases are taken out of a person’s possession, both the numbing and possessive effects quickly wear off. They can then be destroyed or even just thrown away. Hopefully where no one else will be able to find them again.

➥ Feed Me, Kahlil

(cw: severe emotional distress, emotional blackmail, internalized victim blaming, kidnapping, injury (hands/arms))

Things are not beautiful at Things of Beauty. In the days leading up to the launch the proprietor, Kahlil Nassir, sporadically haunts the place with a wide-eyed, tearful look and bandaged hands he tries to hide under long sleeves, his presence peppering the place with outbursts at complaining customers and his own numb, blank-faced employees alike. Weirder than that, perhaps, is how often he isn't seen around his shop at the height of the new product launch and the days following. ADI's investigations department has been having trouble sniffing out just where he's been going; it appears that he hasn't gone home in at least half a week by the time they finally give up on subtlety.

On the morning of January 18th, Kahlil is hauled kicking and screaming into an interrogation room on floor B1 of ADI headquarters. It seems that a pair of native ADI investigators took it upon themselves to stake out Things of Beauty and caught him pulling into the alley behind the shop several hours before opening time. He was driving a car that wasn't his own and that investigators suspect might be stolen, and at the time they apprehended him they also confiscated several cardboard boxes full of more fleshy phone cases that had been in the car's trunk.

This rather heavy-handed approach has not been immediately fruitful. Kahlil is clearly terrified but has been refusing to answer questions. Tensions are high at ADI; not all staff believe that bringing him in was the correct move, and removing him from the situation doesn't seem likely to have completely cut off the supply chain or sales of the phone cases. He's here now, though, and information is needed. Anyone who thinks they can get him to talk will be allowed to try, though higher ups make it clear that torture is not permitted.

➥ The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary

(cw: body horror, uncanny valley, pregnancy imagery, loss of skin, implied animal death, implied human death, unsanitary conditions, self-doubt/body image issues)

The warehouse is virtually silent when people enter. No sounds of industrial machinery, no signs that anyone is there, just the low hum of electric lighting and a heater running. The entryway appears to be utterly unremarkable, and it's not until moving deeper in that people might begin to notice something off. It starts with a smell, the scent of rotten, putrid meat, and the deeper into the heart of the warehouse one travels, the more pronounced that scent grows. The walls, too, take on a moist, unpleasant sheen, turning from an industrial gray to something that looks almost… living, flesh-like. Touching the walls, people will find they feel warm and quiver slightly. It's like touching the inside of a mouth. The doorways, too, seem to be warped, appearing to be more like gullets than anything else. They squeeze inward whenever someone passes through, shrinking just a tiny bit more with each passage. If there are too many people going in, they may find it significantly harder than they expected to leave.

There's a sound in the air, carried faintly through vents, and growing louder as people move toward the center of the warehouse. It's a bleating sound, like there are animals being kept in this place. Finally entering into a large central room, the source of the sound becomes clear: This room is infested floor-to-ceiling with what at first appear to be plants with fuzzy white flowers. They're roughly the size of fists, and in the form of giant puffballs on thick, glistening green stalks. The bleating is louder in this room and seems to be coming from the flowers. Anyone checking closer will find that the flowers are actually malformed lambs, their stalks more like umbilical cords growing out of their stomachs, propping them up.

All around the room, there are scattered evidence of animals being fed to the lambs. Blood and bits of bone are visible in the field of flesh. For the keen-eyed, they might also spot what appears to be some blood-stained clothes and larger bones.

The lambs will nip at anyone reaching for them, and those who manage to pick one up without being bitten will be in for an unpleasant surprise. The lambs split open, once they're 'picked,' sloughing off their skins and transforming into… the phone flesh cases being sold at Things of Beauty. These 'freshly formed' phone cases seem to have a different effect than their packaged and shipped counterparts. Instead of biting, they whisper.

They whisper your deepest insecurity into your mind. They promise they can take that away if you just hold them, if you just feed them. Unfortunately, these early stage phone cases haven't developed a numbing effect, yet, and when they bite, it hurts, but maybe it's worth if for them to be able to take away the thing plaguing you most?

Those not waylaid by the cases will have a tricky time dealing with the plants themselves. They don't seem to respond to being burned with fires fizzling out on their uncomfortably moist bodies and within the warehouse that pulses almost like it's a living thing itself. There are other options, though. Poison maybe? Hacking them to pieces? Eating them? The warehouse has all of the standard safety equipment one might think of. How would you go about murdering a field of fleshy flowers that grows back at a disturbingly rapid pace? The lambs seem to be able to regrow from any part of a live plant.

➥ Mod Notes

• GENERAL - Players are welcome to play NPCs for themselves when they are needed in a thread. If you need more information on general behavior for these types of NPCs, please feel free to ask! In general, the information provided in the prompt should be sufficient and you're welcome to make up any details beyond that for your specific scene. Please remember that character deaths are permanent and plan accordingly!
  
  
• BY HOOK OR BY CROOK (15-16 January) - Information on the Tarabroo as a cryptid is sparse, but stories seem to tie its appearance to disasters involving mines, particularly anything where a collapse or explosion led to the release of a tailings pond. These ponds hold the poisonous cast offs generated during mining operations and are highly toxic. When they break and run downstream, it can poison a landscape for miles.
  
  Anyone attempting to look into the crates at the docks will get a sneak preview of the flesh phone cases, but not have time to really do much with them.
  
  In terms of the dock disruptions, players are encouraged to get creative! Not every officer will be abusive if your character ends up arrested, but some will be. Characters will be held overnight, then released with a fine ranging from $500-$2,000. No complaints to the police from those who are jailed will be taken seriously, but ADI will help to pay fines... provided you're working with them regularly.
  
  
• COMFORTABLY NUMB (16-31 January) - The effects of the phone cases are not instantaneous, but they do come on quickly enough that characters attempting to steal and dispose of them on their own will have serious difficulties in accomplishing the second part of the task. The phones can be dealt with in any way that destroys them except for the use of fire (thus neutralizing their effect) or brought into ADI for disposal. (Or they just can be thrown away, though that does run the risk of them being rediscovered and is not ADI’s preference.)
  
  
• FEED ME, KAHLIL (18 January) - Characters will have the opportunity to talk to Kahlil in this prompt. Please respond to the NPC Threads comment below for responses from him. Shortly after he's brought in, investigations reveal that the car he was driving belongs to Hakeem Williams, a retired bank teller who was reported missing last week. Legally-minded individuals might realize that a private investigations company like ADI "taking Kahlil into custody" constitutes kidnapping–Kahlil is certainly aware of that fact.
  
  
• THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTARY (18-19 January) - While the vegetable lambs' whispering will mainly focus on body image insecurities, if your character does not have those, they will hear the lambs whispering about other insecurities that plague them. Fire is the only option that will not work to kill the lambs, and they're numerous enough that no one person will be able to wipe them all out, whatever method they're using. Once the lambs are killed, the walls of the factory will revert to normal walls. Until then, they will appear to be uncomfortably close to real flesh and will bleed if cut. The 'blood' that comes out will appear to be putrid, black, and corrosive.

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[musicdied]

She doesn't look away immediately, instead watching him for a moment. This, whatever triggered it, is too important to let slide - but there's no time now to run it down.

Not when they're surrounding by rustling, fluffy monstrosities who will have who-knows-what reaction to their herd being culled.

"I think guns might not be the most efficient for these monsters," she says after a moment, a little reluctantly. "They're like plants. It's maybe more effective to kill them at the root."

[worthallthis]

"Yes," he agrees, scanning the room, pointedly not looking at the actual sheep again in case they create another malfunction. "There may be one single root system. If we can find the source stem. Taking that out should cause the whole to wither."

He starts out into the plant-herd, deftly avoiding sheepy mouths or blocking with his metal arm, following roots along the warehouse floor.

[musicdied]

"Or we salt the earth," Yelena says. There have been times when she's suggested broad destruction in jest. This isn't one of them. If they can't find one main source of the horrible, quivering things, then ensuring nothing can grow anywhere within the warehouse isn't the worst plan B.

For the moment, though, she's willing to search amongst the herd for a central cluster. She palms the hilt of her combat knife and does watch the creatures - warily, not entirely convinced the monstrosities won't have an equally monstrous guardian lurking just out of sight.

[worthallthis]

"Not sure these wouldn't just lick up the salt," Winter says. They're sheep, after all. (Or is that cows? He doesn't know a lot about animals.) "Fire doesn't work on the phone cases. So probably won't work on these if they're related."

A pause, then the thought: "Don't touch them. If they are related." He doesn't want to have to punch Yelena in the head to make her give up a magic phone case.

[musicdied]

"Then we mix it with rat poison," Yelena replies grimly.

One corner of her mouth twitches slightly upwards at the warning, and she lifts the hand holding her knife slightly, to show it angled along her arm, the better to turn away any horrible, questing mouths without risking the sort of prolonged contact that might allow them to contaminate her.

"I know to be careful. But I promise I will not be mad if one of them gets its teeth into me, and you have to hit me to make it let go."

Better that than those teeth digging into her mind, making her want to feed and shelter them. Far, far better.

[worthallthis]

That's sufficient. For now. So he nods, and says, "Good," and gets down to the business of cutting up roots and shooting through stalks when he gets too frustrated with a combat knife.

It takes all of them working together to clear the place, staying ahead of the rapid growth, but clear it they do. Winter regards his poor knife blades as the ADI regulars crawl through taking notes. They're going to need serious sharpening, after that. But the walls are no longer breathing and bleeding, so he'll call it a win.

[musicdied]

There's gore coating Yelena's boots and the metal mesh gloves she'd repurposed from a kitchen supply store to serve as armor, and her leather jacket and pants are slick with slime. There are bruises beneath, and her right shoulder stings and throbs from contact with the caustic blood the walls had insisted on oozing right up until the last of the horrible lambs were destroyed.

She's intact, however, body and mind, and that's more than some of their comrades can say.

It's a shame the horrors of the warehouse don't burn. Fire would be cleansing, both for the land they stand on and for everyone's soul.

"I almost miss the pigs," she mutters darkly as she comes up alongside Winter. studying him sidelong to reassure herself that he is also intact, or at least not suffering any worse a blow than whatever had hit him upon entering the reeking incubation chamber.

[worthallthis]

"They were much better than this," Winter agrees grimly. Something he could just hunt, bait, and shoot? Much better than bleating sheep-plants that pop up like daisies.

He's dirty, but all right. The wound in his leg broke open again and there's a little blood staining his pants, though it's hard to see since it's black. There are probably going to be more bruises soon, but nothing else got through his body armor and metal arm.

He wipes the poor blades off on a clean part of his pants and sheaths them. He'll sharpen them later. "This place is terrible," he decides. "Not as terrible as HYDRA. But terrible."

[musicdied]

"It's poison," Yelena says by way of agreement, the line of her mouth twisting in a grimace as she surveys the carnage. With the sprouting lambs dead, it's easier to see the bones that litter the floor of the warehouse, animal and human.

"But at least it's poison we can kill. Even if it is awful."

[worthallthis]

"Only the tools of the poison. Gonna be hard to shoot the fear-entities," Winter says heavily. "Though I'm willing to try."

He turns to leave the ADI flunkies to handle the clean-up, now that the work he's actually suited for is done. From the slight hesitation when he does so, glancing her way, he's expecting, or maybe just hoping, she'll come with. This isn't her job, either.

[musicdied]

"If you want to break in somewhere to get a rocket launcher, I'm game." There's an edge of brittle cheer to her voice, just enough to play it off as a joke if anyone happens to be listening in.

It is...not, entirely.

She falls into step beside him, gaze skimming over the pulped meat and scattered bone before fixing on the dull rectangle of light that marks the warehouse door.

[worthallthis]

"We could probably get one," Winter muses, with something to his voice that says he, too, is not entirely serious.

Not entirely. He'd still do it if the need arose. He knows where ADI keeps at least some of its bigger firepower.

"Whether not a rocket launcher would be enough." He considers his weapons with HYDRA a moment with regret. "I had a modified grenade launcher once. With magnetic rounds. Could blow a car clean off the ground." He may not miss HYDRA, but he does miss the materiel.

[musicdied]

"Now that would be very useful," Yelena says. "Why is it always the worst people who hand out the best equipment?"

Because HYDRA is indisputably the absolute fucking worst. Even her own years-dead monster, as much as she personally hates him, can't compare.

[worthallthis]

"Because the worst people are the ones most interested in blowing things up. Also they usually have more money." Which is too bad, but he does at least kind of understand how that comes to be. Kind of. Neither economics nor ethics are strong points of his.

He looks sidelong at her. "You have experience with HYDRA too?" Because he knows the Red Room was something of a competitor, even if he had been loaned in to help train the girls.

[musicdied]

"Usually money they get from blowing things up. Or destroying people."

The question catches her by surprise, a reminder of the sprawling stretch of time between where she comes from and where he did. "HYDRA broke after you came here," she says. "Not gone - I think probably they are still not really gone - but shattered. All of the worst people in the world swooped in to scavenge what they could before it was boxed up and hauled away by some government, or the Avengers came and set it on fire." She smiles, thin and fleeting and humourless. "I think Dreykov enjoyed sending me on those missions, because he knew Natasha would hate it if she knew."

[worthallthis]

"HYDRA broke," he repeats. There's tone there, and that tone is satisfaction. And maybe a little hope. "And the Avengers set the pieces on fire. Good."

He likes that idea. He likes it a lot, actually. He doubts HYDRA is really gone, either, he doesn't trust that someone won't hold onto the dream of owning everyone's freedom and try to rebuild. But the thought of those people on the run from the Avengers-- from Steve-- is a pleasant one.

But then she reminds him, and the tone drops out again when he says: "You got out. Before you came here. You were. Free."

[musicdied]

"I was," she confirms. "And Dreykov is dead, and most of his lieutenants. And many of his customers."

She gives him a sidelong look, a blend of weariness and as close as she can come to understanding. "But it never goes all the way away, does it? Sometimes, there is a voice, or movement out of the corner of my eye..."

She rolls one shoulder in a shrug.

"Is that what happened, when we came in here?"

[worthallthis]

The malfunction. Winter mouth closes tight, a firm line, as he tries to prod at his own reactions. He doesn't really understand it yet himself, but he make an attempt at putting words to the feeling, because it's Yelena asking. "It wasn't a current threat. It was. It was. Wrong. Turning something good and soft into something cruel and painful. It was wrong."

He didn't do it. He wasn't behind those sheep. He didn't twist them into those unnatural, biting things. So why did looking at them, thinking that thought, make him feel like it was his fault somehow?

[musicdied]

There's a moment's pause as she weighs his words, then nods slowly. "That is wrong. It's perverse, breaking something down and twisting it to be a thing of horror."

She considers the pupled and reeking remains of the sheep. "But I think... Those little monsters might have looked like innocent things, but I think they were always horrible and cruel. They just were made to look gentle so they could lure in their prey."

Like me, she thinks, and grimaces. She'd managed to avoid entrapment. That doesn't mean the monsters didn't get under her skin.

[worthallthis]

"But even if. Someone made them that way. They didn't have to." He scowls, scuffs the gross floor with his boot as they walk. "Soft things shouldn't have to be cruel. They should be allowed to be soft."

And even he can't avoid the connection that time. He's willfully avoiding thoughts about himself, but thoughts about Yelena are fair game. There were little girls-- not just Yelena, but she was certainly one of them. They should've been allowed to be little girls. "You should've been allowed to be soft," he says slowly. "And I helped in that. I'm sorry."

[musicdied]

"No," she says sharply, and glares at one of the members of the cleanup crew who looks over in surprise at her sudden vehemence. It saves her from glaring at Winter, who doesn't deserve her anger.

That the tech doesn't deserve it either isn't important. He's no one to her, and will have forgotten the glimpse of temper come morning.

She shuts her eyes for a moment, trusting her companion to catch her if she stumbles over anything dangerous, and draws a deep breath.

"No," she says again, less forceful, but no less firm. "That is not your guilt to carry. You aren't the one who decided to make little girls into weapons. And you aren't the one who sold us back to them for a bit of glory. The things you taught us were hard, but someone was always going to teach them."

She glances over at him, then adds quietly, "Some of the Widows are still alive because it was you who did their teaching."

[worthallthis]

Her first "no" earns a little flinch, and he watches her out of the corner of his eye. He doesn't expect punishment from Yelena (though Yelena is probably the closest to being able to mete it out, of anyone here, should she choose), but he's always wary of angry people, even angry people who are his team.

"There still should have been. Something I could do," he says, cautious but stubborn. "You deserved better. Deserve better now, too." He pauses, then adds, "But it's good. You and the others survived. Some of the others." A lot of his training was in how to kill, sure, but a sizeable chunk was in how not to die, too. Even his training in how to kill focused on survivability in aggression. He remembers concerned feelings about them. Attachment. They were his tiny team, he thinks. They were very cute.

[musicdied]

"We did," she agrees. Half-agrees. She has no illusions about what she is now - a ruthless killer, no matter how she got that way. None of the things she deserves are things she particularly wants.

"But it wasn't your job to save us. Though it is very funny to think of you with a gaggle of little schoolgirls following you around Saint Petersburg." Her smile is a little wan, but it's an attempt to draw the sting from her earlier sharpness.

A brief pause, and then she adds, "I didn't just mean that we survived because of the lessons you taught us. I meant the way that you were. We knew we might get injured if we did something wrong, but you didn't hurt anyone for failing, or just because you could. And we knew if any of us failed badly enough to be decommissioned, if you were the one who was sent to do it, it at least would be quick."

[worthallthis]

There's a moment of clear horror, eclipsing his moment of almost smiling at the mental picture of himself, awkward and unformed, trying to take care of a bunch of children. This is definitely nothing to smile about, though.

"Did I...?" He knows he was sent on many, many internal executions. Some competitor kills. Maybe more of those than he was sent on missions against actual threats to HYDRA's schemes. He doesn't remember details, but he definitely gets the sense that Pierce liked to use him as his personal attack dog.

He doesn't remember taking out any of his girls.

He most likely did, though. Especially once HYDRA realized just how much of their own research the Red Room was using, and were furious that they couldn't get their own bloody hands on it.

[musicdied]

She wants to say no. To promise him that he never harmed any of the girls he'd helped train, to wipe away that horror the way no one can ever do for her.

She can't. She doesn't know for sure, and while she's certain she could spin a lie good enough to make him believe her, there's no kindness in that. Not when he has enough pieces of the past to still have flashes of memory. Not when it might all come rushing back one day.

"I don't know," she says quietly. "Not when we were small. They culled us before we came to you, and the girls who failed too many tests..." Her mouth twists, and she swallows against the taste of bile in her throat.

"They were not given quick. But I don't know if any of them found you on the wrong end of a mission."