[Log] Catch-All for February

[worthallthis]

Who: Winter and YOU
When: The month of February
Where: Locations in the prompts
Summary: Winter deals with the aftermath of his latest explore and the TDM prompts
Warnings: Various attempts at destruction, memory loss, mold


I. How Many Ways Can I Smash This - Outskirts of town, ADI headquarters

Two days after making a very satisfying crater out of a clearly Web-aligned artifact in Dogtown, Winter finds that same artifact in his pocket. A little silver triangle covered in etched cob-webs that fits easily in his palm.

Annoyed, he goes to the outskirts of the city-- not Dogtown side, the other side-- and hurls another grenade at it. It's back in his pocket the next morning.

He talks somebody into snitching him some highly corrosive acid from one of ADI's labs, and watching over him for safety purposes as he pours it all over the damn thing.

He has Steve smash it with Thor's hammer.

He finally returns from a meeting with ADI, disgruntled, and tells whoever's waiting for him outside, "They can't keep it, either. You're just supposed to watch me and make sure it doesn't make me do anything stupid." He sounds extremely displeased with this situation.


II. No More Dance Steps - Closed to CR, at a local swing club

Once a month, there's a swing dance club in the rec center in town. Winter always goes with whichever of his friends happen to be free that night (or more likely, those friends who make an effort to be free that night). Today is no exception.

Except today he's standing outside staring at the sign with a confused frown. "Why am I here?" he asks hesitantly. "I don't know how to dance."


III. One Fear - Around Glaucester and ADI

After that horrifying realization that he's truly forgotten something, Winter keeps stopping in the middle of whatever he's doing and pulling out small hand-sized journal from his pocket, flipping back through it to find something and double-check it, or hastily scribbling something new.

And he seems to have multiple journals in multiple pockets, when he's wearing his outdoor coat that has pockets big enough for them. "Wait," he says in the middle of a conversation, and fishes through pockets until he finds the right one and can double-check something.


IV. Safe Place Gone - outside the ADI apartments

One chilly morning, Winter is outside the ADI apartments, sitting on a bench in the snow, wearing his sole secondary pair of shoes, scrubbing vigorously at his combat boots and looking distressed.

There's a stack of other belongings on the bench beside him, blankets and clothes and a handful of books, all in various states of... grossness. Some of it is moldy. Some of it is damp. Some of it is crusted in something that looks like blood. Winter is trying to clean it off, to the best of his limited cleaning ability.

Come help him out? Or just be grossed out by what happened to his stuff.


V. Wildcard

Winter still does all his usual stuff: he patrols regularly around the ADI compound and the Dogtown fence. He eats lunch in the ADI cafeteria when he's on the campus. He reads out loud there, or in the park, or on a rooftop if he gets bored of (or paranoid about) the sidewalk. He practices with people or gives lessons in self-defense in the evenings at the ADI gym.

He's around, like always.

Comments

[worthallthis]

"I woke up," Winter says, "and my room was. It was all like this." He holds up one of his books with a hopeless sort of expression. The boots, at least, appear to be salvageable: they're just kind of crusty, and his boots are meant to get a little bloody.

The book probably won't be. It's got mold.

[musicdied]

Yelena mutters a low string of curses under her breath, but is already pulling out her phone to capture the state of his things. She can multitask - attempt to help him salvage what he can, and pester anyone in for the early shift in Investigations about any other reports of rampant decay.

"Just overnight? There was no sign anything was wrong before?" She doesn't think it likely - but if there was, even if it might have seemed inconsequential at the time, she's fairly certain Winter would have noticed.

[worthallthis]

"No. Nothing. It smelled fine, my things were fine." He stares morosely at the book, then sets it down and continues working on his boots. "Some things are still okay. I put them in the living room. Some things went in the trash. The more further from the door it was. The worse it was."

His bed, in fact, was the worst. That was unpleasant to wake up to, and he may have actually dealt with a shower to scrub off rather than his usual bath.

[musicdied]

"Were you in Dogtown in the last couple of days?" Yelena asks, the faint twist to her tone on Dogtown making it sound more like a curse than the name of a place.

She crouches down to inspect his rot-infected possessions more closely, with particular attention to the items that seem to have been bloodied.

[worthallthis]

"Not for a week and a half. Not since the stupid pyramid thing in the water tower." He's shown that to her, so she's aware that it isn't going away. (It happens to be in a pocket right now. Stupid thing.) "Patrolled around it, though."

It's mostly clothes that are bloody. Books are moldy. Blankets are dirty, like someone shoveled dirt directly onto them.

[musicdied]

"If this isn't happening to anyone else, then maybe it's that thing doing it," she says. "But if it's more widespread..."

She sits back on her heels, frown deepening. "Whatever did this, it was very deliberate. I don't know if we can save the books, but we should be able to get the clothing and blankets clean in the laundry room. And then I think we need to take a look at the rest of the mess."

Hopefully by then she will have heard back from someone else in the investigative unit.

[worthallthis]

"I don't think I can sleep in there again, Yelena," he says, sounding stressed, setting his boot down on his knee and looking unhappily at the rest of his things. "But I don't want to turn someone else's room into a disaster, either, if it's the pyramid thing."

[musicdied]

"You can stay with me until we are able to fix your room and prevent anything from happening again," Yelena says, reaching over to lay her hand gently overtop of his. "We will know before tonight if this is something that's more widespread. If it is, then we know it's not the pyramid. If it's not, we'll take precautions."

[worthallthis]

He still looks unhappy, but he turns his hand over under hers to squeeze it. There's a reluctant moment before he says, "Okay." And then, "Thanks." They can gather everything up and try the laundry. He already shook out most of the dirt... "Should we just trash the books?"

[musicdied]

She considers the books for a long moment, then suggests, "We can ask in town at a couple of the used bookstores if they know of any way to save them, but I think if that's really mold and not just a very disgusting illusion, they may be a lost cause."

[worthallthis]

"At least it wasn't my notebooks..." The ones he's filled with memories, nightmares, and attempts at piecing together his feelings. Those are safely in the living room of the apartment.

Resigned to probably having to start his small book collection all over, though, Winter sets down his mostly-clean boot. "These can't go in the laundry," he says regretfully. "I'll have to scrub the other one, too."

[musicdied]

Yelena considers the boots, then nods slightly. "I can gather up the clothes and the bedding, and get started on that while you finish with the boots," she suggests.

It's a practical division, she thinks, one that will give them a better chance of getting at least some of his things properly clean - and one that will let her spot anyone else trundling into the laundry room with strangely befouled belongings.

[worthallthis]

He gives her a clearly grateful look. "Thank you, Yelena. I'll. I'll come help as soon as the boots are clean." He can't help but think it's related to something he's done. Maybe not the pyramid thing, this is not a Web thing, but-- something. He's done a lot of murder and dirtying things up, in his past.

[musicdied]

She straightens from her crouch, and leans over to press a quick kiss to his cheek before bundling up the textiles and trotting off to the laundry room to salvage what she can.

By the time he's able to join her, the reports are starting to roll in - enough, at least, that she can assure him that it's not just him, and that the attacks, for lack of a better word, so far have no discernible pattern.

Whether that's something that should be a relief or not will be a question for the ages.