silentspringmods | ( SETTING INTERACTION. )

( SETTING INTERACTION. )

Non-Event Explorations

As of 2/3/24, this is the new page where all character interactions with the setting/explorations/etc unrelated to events will reside. Here are some examples of the types of things to post on this page:

- My character would like to search the library for xyz, would they find anything?
- My character is going to approach an NPC outside of an event and do xyz, what happens?
- If my character goes asking around for x, what will they be told?

Examples of things that should still go on the FAQ:

- What kind of books does the library have on x topic? (Character is not specifically searching the library IC).
- Does the town have x facility?
- Is my character able to do x?

And, when in doubt, it's fine to just post the question on your best guess and I can move it as needed!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Numbers is also gonna do some physical poking and prodding around the shelves and floor, just in case said secret tunnel is a thing.

The basement's footprint is completely typical, and there are no hidden switches, levers, etc. If they're talking, the acoustics of the space will also sound a little different from the basement Arthur remembers. This doesn't seem to be the place.

Damn.

In that case, time to give the upper floor one last quick sweep! Knowing there is a dog there, the boys will raid the fridge for a dog-appropriate treat, probably some kind of raw meat, so they can bribe it into letting them into the room it's being contained in.

As soon as the door opens, a red and white springer spaniel matching the painting in the dining room launches out of it, decidedly more animated than its cousin in oils. The dog leaps around, eyes bright and mouth hanging open, wagging its docked tail, jumping up on them, and scrambling around the hallway.

The dog is delighted to accompany them into the bedroom, still wagging. It's neat, like the rest of the house, the bed made and bordered by a large, quality dog bed. Aside from some run of the mill sleeping pills on the side table, everything seems normal - except for the top shelf of Norman's dresser, which contains a gas mask.

Numbers will try and avoid the very cute very handsome dog to take a closer look at that gas mask, see if he can make out any further information about maybe if it's military issued or the like! And if not, he'll suggest to Arthur that they put the dog back in the room and try to leave like they were never there.

It's a military model, although whether or not it was issued by the military itself or obtained aftermarket is unclear. It doesn't look like something someone could buy in the town, although gas masks are of course available with all other civilian preparedness devices.

Was there anything else in his house that would suggest active military service from Norman in the past? Would the gun they saw be typical for army weaponry?

The gun they see isn't terribly typical to any military. There is a small leather box containing a few ribbon bars kept with his watches atop the dresser, suggesting some form of past military service, but the duration and nature of it is unclear. If they compare the graduation date on the diploma Norton encounters in the clinic, it will seem most likely that he was present during the Korean War.

Arthur's gonna try the mask on. J u s t i n c a s e. And try and prompt Numbers to, too.

Numbers will reluctantly put it on if prompted LMFAO

The boys' dress-up session is fun, but unremarkable. No magic masks here!

...Arthur is still gonna pocket the mask, lmfao. HES SUS OKAY. Slips it into his inside jacket pocket before they leave the way they came.

~~It's not a trademark Arthur Lester Investigation unless he steals something.~~

Numbers and Arthur make it midway through the house before sirens come down the street and stop in front of Norman's well manicured lawn. Town police chief Dick Clark and another officer meet them face to face as they try to exit the same way they entered, looking decidedly unamused.

"Hands on your heads, boys. We're going to take a ride down to the station."

Numbers is going to initially resist being arrested but then give up pretty quickly--he's been arrested multiple times, both intentionally and unintentionally, so he's aware that trying to drag this out longer is going to result in hell for him.

Arthur will be perfectly calm while they put cuffs on him - until they search him, thanks to the obvious distortion of the mask in his jacket, and he will fight back with intent to injure out of sheer panicked reflex.

It hardly seems to be Dick or his partner's first rodeo where struggling arrestees are concerned, and while Arthur lands a few hard hits, the only effect is to clearly annoy his apprehenders.

The patrol car takes them to the police station, where they're detained for three hours before being brought into an interrogation room to sit side-by-side at one of the tables, handcuffed at the wrists and ankles. They're left to simmer for thirty minutes or so before the door swings open and Chief Clark and Dr. Pollock both enter, walking astride. Dick holds the stolen gas mask in one hand, setting it down between them, and first addresses them while standing; Norman sets a black doctor's bag down a yard away from his chair, out of the shackled prisoners' reach.

"Boys," Clark says, in greeting. Nothing else.

Norman doesn't look thrilled to be presented with the men who have broken into his home while he was away—and although appearances would suggest that he is the companion to the police chief, brought in by Clark, the balance of power in the room seems to be equal, if not tilting slightly in Norman's direction.

Norman folds his arms, watching them with a cold, contemputuous eye. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

Numbers waits patiently while being detained, and when the two of them are brought to the interrogation room, he's able to maintain a neutral-to-pleasant expression, even though right now, the thing he wants to do the most is to leap across the table and strangle Norman. But that would most certainly get him shot, and he doesn't want to test if he can die after having died once already.

He meets Norman's contemptuous gaze.

"You know, you really shouldn't leave your dirty magazines out for just anyone to see." Deflecting the question. Being stupid and overconfident. His tone is level and casual, as if he wasn't literally handcuffed to the table. He shakes his head, going 'tsk, tsk'. "You'd give anyone a heart attack with what's in those things. It's a good thing this guy couldn't see the pictures."

He jerks his hand towards Arthur's direction.

Edited 2024-02-03 22:36 (UTC)

Arthur is less polite-looking but no less patient, letting himself sit vaguely hunched with a furious glower for the whole time, putting that ~~resting bitch face~~ cold, calculated demeanor to good use.

Even if his head cocks, sharp and immediate at the sound of footsteps, of something heavy being dropped nearby, out of reach.

And Numbers gets a cold smirk out of him. "I'm not sure what you expect me to contribute, Officer, quite frankly." He lifts his hands in mock deference, jangling the cuffs. "I'm hardly a reliable witness."

Edited 2024-02-03 22:49 (UTC)

Norman smiles thinly, in a way that doesn't reach his eyes and isn't trying to.

"It's good that you have a sense of humor about this. That will help you." A beat, as he turns to Numbers. "You'll just have to describe this to your friend for me, okay?"

He bends down and grabs his black bag, talking almost conversationally as he opens it. "I saw that you didn't take anything, other than my gas mask. Which, you know, you can get at the Civil Defense office. You don't have to steal them from law-abiding citizens."

Norman sets the smallest plastic terrarium on the table between them, a single mouse scurrying from end to end, each time standing on its hind legs to press pink hands to the clear plastic, nose quivering as it investigates the sudden change in its surroundings. He sets two syringes and two vials down next to the tank, pulled from the safe that was broken into earlier: the labels read PANCURONIUM BROMIDE and POTASSIUM CHLORIDE INJ.

"I thought I'd demonstrate what these things do, give you laymen the full picture," he says as he prepares each syringe, drawing up a minute amount of their respective contents and leaving them upright, prepared and sticking out of the tops of the vials. "It's different when you're just standing in someone's home reading labels."

Norman opens the lime green lid to the carrier and scruffs the mouse in a single, practiced move, injecting first with pancuronium bromide: all at once, its thrashing attempts to escape from his hand stops. Its body sags; its chest stops expanding. He sets down the first syringe and pulls the second. "Now, believe it or not, he's not dead yet. He can feel it, though. He knows he's going to die, just like a human. He just can't do anything about it. You were sniffing around a paralytic agent."

"But this will end his suffering." The second injection follows; there's no visible change in the already frozen animal. "It's very painful. For humans and for animals. But once the heart stops, there is no more life if nobody's around to restart it."

He sets down the syringe and pushes the warm carcass across the table until its white-furred back brushes Numbers' hand. "Feel it. No heartbeat. Show your friend.

Do you understand?"

Numbers has been though interrogations before. He was half expecting to get beaten by the police chief while Norman watched. He's all-too familiar with the language of direct violence, the kind the police are so eager to employ, and so he is caught a little off guard when Norman takes out the mouse. The only thing that betrays his curiosity is the slight quirk of an eyebrow.

His curiosity quickly morphs into horror when Norman injects the mouse with the first solution. Though he keeps face remains neutral and detached, he can't help but feel disturbed by the underlying threat. He'd fucked around before and been easily taken by the authorities to Norman's No-Good, Very Bad Dungeon. What was stopping him from doing this the next time he felt Numbers was acting up?

...But, then again, what had stopped him from doing it the first time Numbers fucked around and found out? He finds himself with more questions than answers. He watches, quietly, as the mouse is injected with the potassium chloride. The mouse is passed to him. He wraps his fingers around its still-warm corpse, staring down at it.

"I understand," Numbers replies, flatly.

Then, automatically, he turns to hold it out to Arthur.

"He injected a mouse with the bromide, then the potassium chloride," he mutters under his breath to him. "Open your hand. I'm putting a mouse in it."

He'd heard the container get opened, caught the slightest edge of the mouse's scurrying, its pitchy voice on the edge of hearing - and then as Norman keeps talking, he hears it stop.

And he feels a vicious, disgusted hatred flow through him like poison.

He doesn't flinch, when the mouse is moved into his hand, but he's gentle with the poor thing. It didn't deserve that.

"If you're trying to prove you can simply kill us, you're hardly original, nor unique. So can a car, so can a gun. So can a particularly dedicated dog," he spits out, aiming to get a rise. But his his voice remains level and cold. "I've faced far worse than a doctor with trumped up ideas of status, so tell me. Why haven't you? What do we offer that's better alive and mindless than dead and out of your hair?"

"I'm not a killer, Arthur," he says, in an almost candid tone, as though leveling with him man-to-man. "I didn't serve abroad to protect American lives just to come back here and take them. But you're not being very easy to live with right now, and neither is your friend. You have to know you can't just go into other people's houses and root around in their private belongings. This is America. A man's entitled to have in his house whatever he wants to have."

"He's right," Dick says. He'd glanced away from the mouse as it was injected; his eyes still stay on their faces, not the small body on the table, when he speaks—but there's no lack of authority in his tone, his stare. "This man did nothing to break the law. He has all the required permits to have a gun and he's a doctor, of course there are medications in his house. You, on the other hand, committed a B&E in broad daylight with multiple witnesses."

"If you're not a killer than what the fuck was that display for?!" He lunges to his feet as he speaks, making the table jump when his wrists catch and remind him where he is. "You are still a kidnapper, you are drugging the people you dragged here from different fucking realities to play your sick game! What's the fucking point!"

Dick opens his mouth to reprimand; Norman speaks up, making it clear enough he's able to defend himself.

"Settle down, Arthur. I don't know what you're talking about with dragging people here and multiple realities, but it sounds like you've been reading too much science fiction. You bought the house you live in three years ago, don't you remember? Let's just calm down and talk through this."

As Arthur jumps up yells at Norman, there's a moment where Numbers sorely wishes that it was Wrench here instead of Arthur. At least Wrench knew the value of silence, the value of discretion. Not that Numbers thought he had any sort of discretion left, given he and Arthur were caught snooping in Norman's house.

"Yes. Settle down, Arthur," he says through gritted teeth, trying to keep a level tone. He then wrangles an insincere smile, turning towards Chief Clark. Trying to appeal to what authority he has in this situation.

"You've proven your point," he says, evenly. "Are we allowed to go? Or are you detaining us?"

( SETTING INTERACTION. )

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cw animal cruelty/mouse death by lethal injection, needles

cw: dead mouse

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