recolle | awakened by the sounds of long before [eventually open]

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awakened by the sounds of long before [eventually open]

WHO: Anna Lehmann and, eventually, you!!
WHERE: All throughout the city
WHEN: Through October
WHAT: October catch-all!
WARNINGS: Nothing yet, updates to come when they become necessary

a. hidden from this, an end, middle, beginning [closed]

Is showing up to the amusement park with a katana in poor taste? The better question is whether Anna cares. She hadn't made plans with Jasmine to go anywhere in a while, much less to check out the possible point of origin for whatever this infectant is. She still can't come up with a single damn thread to follow herself, since all the branding she was expecting to be here is gone now, but... but. Jasmine is smarter than she is. Maybe they can figure something out working together.

Maybe if Anna would put a little more effort into looking like she's here to investigate. She's got the katana strapped to her back, the tang (or whatever) tied down in a jury-rigged holster (or whatever) and she's mostly just waiting around wondering if Jasmine will actually show. From Anna's perspective, she's been isolating herself lately, and it's hard not to get a little worried.

b. maybe it's my night to turn it upside down [wildcard]

((more prompts to be added!! if you have anything you want to thread, hit me up in DMs or at

roseward))

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"Yeah. I think we can figure this out," she said, thinking back to that little study sesh they'd had at the base of that tree in the woods. For as much as Anna put herself down, called herself a dumb burnout who didn't know anything, she wasn't really any of those things. And she knew Lillian was sharp, too, and she knew that this puzzle had an answer.

Anna took a couple steps forward and leaned against the mailboxes, ignoring the feeling of tiny bits of metal poking against her. "So it's... it fucks with electrical signals?" she asked, mostly trying to sort stuff out. "So maybe we'd find one somewhere where there's a lot of electrical stuff going on. Power plants or something?" Seemed like as good an idea as any. She glanced up at Lillian again, offering to toss the brainstorming ball to her.

Lillian stayed where she was, her weight shifting from foot to foot as she looked around them, like she expected a clue to suddenly spring up out of the ground. "Mm..." Anna was right, she couldn't argue with that.

"Oh!" A thought popped into her head, and she turned back to the taller woman. "If it's messing with electricity, then a spot where stuff ain't workin' right could be it too?" She grinned. "Like, where they're havin' blackouts or reception problems."

"So we're looking for... huh." Anna thought about it and immediately her mind went over to Tisse. That place must have burned through an entire country's electricity bill by this time in the year.

"Okay. I don't hang out around enough places, but, like, if we're looking for a place that's drawing a ton of power and also breaking constantly, there's... the casino, right?" Hard to miss that place. "The amusement park, the Atrium, obviously... am I missing anything?"

She was counting them off on her fingers and couldn't help but feel like she was missing something, but these were just places she knew about or had been to recently. She was an old woman and didn't have time to hang out at cool, hip places for kids anymore.

"The power goes out in my apartment a lot?" Lillian joked, even as she half-turned away, considering the streets again. Hmm...

"Should we split up? I'll go check the park, you get the Atrium, and meet up when we figure out which one it is?" She didn't particularly want to split up, but it had to be faster than them both checking each one together.

"Can you keep yourself out of trouble long enough to investigate without me?" she offered with a smirk. She knew the Atrium like the back of her hand by now, but maybe this had been, like, planted somewhere? As she looked out in its direction, she couldn't help but notice that... one of the big-ass signs was flickering. More than neon usually did.

She nudged Lillian's shoulder. "Hey. Ain't that the roller rink over there?" Sure, the sign might have only read "RDUST" right now, but she knew the name, even if she hadn't stepped inside in a grip. "They're usually pretty good about keeping the lights on." And her nudge turned into a knowing glance.

Lillian just grinned at that. "Probably not," she said with an overly exaggerated sort of 'what can you do?' shrug.

"Hm?" She turned at the nudge, looking up at the flickering sign as well. Huh. "Yeah, it is...never seen the lights do that, thinkin' about it." Lillian had gone there on at least a few dates, and they'd been pretty well kept and maintained.

"...Guess that's the best place to start lookin', huh?" She said, immediately starting in that direction.

"Yeah," she said quietly, immediately falling into step next to her. It wasn't hard to keep pace; the hard part was going to be not outpacing her. Not like Anna needed to worry about her legs getting tired anymore, after all.

"You been in here lately?" she asked as they made their way to what Anna was slowly starting to remember wasn't just a roller rink. "Just so we know what we're getting into. Like, I know you're all about doing everything, but this really ain't my scene, so I'm as in the dark as that sign."

Oh, she was clever as fuck.

"Not in a few months," Lillian shrugged. "Honestly it ain't a weird place or anythin'. It's just a roller rink." She grinned. "I think they do roller derby there sometimes? Never really gone to check it out though."

Which, now that she thought about it, she really should have. That probably would've been crazy fun to watch.

"Ain't even sure they're open this time of day."

Ha. Yeah, the quintessential sport for who they were as people. Anna was a little disappointed in herself for not having come out here to see a few races if Lillian was in fact correct, but it wasn't a huge deal.

"Then it'll be easy for us to check it out if they aren't, huh?" she asked rhetorically. It might have meant breaking into the roller rink, but... well, whatever. They'd deal with that later. "Or we could scope it out at night if you didn't want to commit a crime."

Anna knew a cop. It would be fine.

Lillian smirked up at the taller girl. "Hey, I'm game if you are." She agreed, even as she began to hurry the rest of the way towards the building, reaching out to tug Anna along as she went.

"Plus I mean, if we're lookin' for somethin' weird, we ain't gonna find it when the place is crowded!"

It made sense to her, anyway. Although how crowded did roller rinks really get? It was a flimsy excuses, but she was sticking with it. When they reached the building though, she paused. She didn't know anything about breaking down a door or a window, not really...

Once they approached and it became obvious that Lillian had never done anything wrong in her life ever, Anna rolled her eyes theatrically. "What, never broken into a building before?" And she started leading her around to the most secluded entrance, back near the dumpsters along the rear of the building. An employee entrance, no doubt, and one that opened inward. This wasn't going to be pretty, but, well. They needed the thing that may or may not have been in there.

"This door probably isn't alarmed," she said, bending her right leg as though she needed to actually warm it up. The thing weighed a couple hundred pounds and had turbines and shit inside it. If she wanted to kick, she could kick. "Otherwise whoever's opening would have to run in and shut the thing off every morning. But it's still gonna get loud."

Summoning up all the knowledge she'd ever gleaned from late-night binges on YouTube, she stepped back and gave Lillian a smug look. "I got this." And even though the door was at least made of a little bit of metal, her legs were stronger, and with a few firm, heel-first kicks to the part closest to the jamb, the door popped open.

Lillian wasn't sure she agreed on the alarm front, but she didn't know enough about places like this to really comment one way or another. Still, roller rinks weren't really known to be targets of high crime, right? What were they going to steal, smelly old roller skates?

Instead of comment though, she just raised an eyebrow as Anna moved over to the door itself, an eyebrow that went up more and more as that mechanical leg of hers proceeded to demolish the door as if it were barely there. Holy shit.

She leaned forward to peer through the shattered doorway, her ponytail slipping over her shoulder to hang down behind her head. Holy shit indeed. She leaned back up, turning to look at Anna, one hand pushing her hair back again as she grinned.

"That was amazin'." She said. And after a second. "And really fuckin' hot." She almost looked embarrassed to say that but...

Well. It had been.

Anna looked impressed at herself, her eyes a little wide like she hadn't remotely expected that to work. Because she hadn't. Score one for YouTube, she guessed. And then Lillian said—god damn it, Lillian. Anna just rolled her eyes and tilted her head in the direction of the younger girl.

"Are you here to flirt with me or are you gonna help me steal an EMP?" she asked, the question clearly rhetorical because she knew exactly what Lillian's answer would be. Before even waiting for it, she worked her way inside the employee entrance and out of their whole area, which was of course much less secure on the inside, past some lockers and through a door with a small pane of frosted glass in the center to hit... just behind the counter. Nobody seemed to be around, fortunately, not that Anna had a backup plan otherwise.

She was also not keeping an eye out for any security cameras, which (if they existed) were almost definitely to spy on the employees and not for any actual security purposes. The place was, of course, deserted at this hour, which... god, this was almost creepy. She turned to Lillian, who she hoped had followed her all the way inside.

"Okay. So if I were causing a bunch of crap to burn out and short circuit, where would I be?"

"I can do two things at once," Lillian pointed out with a smirk, waggling her eyebrows jokingly at Anna before she made to follow the woman into the building. Her metal fingers flexed nervously as she surveyed the room, and beyond it the spacious building that was the rink itself.

"Hmmm..." She shrugged. "I mean, I guess we could walk around and see when my hands stop workin'. Or you fall over." She was mostly teasing, which she hoped was obvious from a small smile and a little bump to Anna's shoulder as she moved past her, further into the building.

"But I mean, if we were hiding something like that...best place would be somewhere most people never go, right? Where would that be in a buildin' like this?"

This was nice. It was a good way to distract her from how fucked up the entire situation was that they were hunting something down that could literally break parts of their bodies. She didn't really show it on her face, but she appreciated Lillian all the same.

"Somewhere behind the scenes, I'm thinking," she said, glancing around at their options. The DJ booth in the corner by the rink probably didn't see much foot traffic, and back behind the concession area was also pretty low priority, but... neither really fit with the rest of what they were looking for.

"Maybe whatever they have for maintenance? I mean, maybe it's already installed and actively messing with the lights." She offered it with a shrug, kind of figuring Lillian would shoot it down if she didn't like it. The closest doorway didn't look like it had an electronic lock on it, instead leaving an "Employees Only" sign as its only line of security. So she probably wouldn't have to bust that one down if they decided to explore it.

"I have no idea how roller rink maintenance would work," Lillian said absently as she peered out into the rink proper. "I mean, maybe it's the same thing as takin' care of hardwood floors?" She didn't know anything about that, either. "Probably ain't though, huh..."

Snicker at her own random thoughts, she turned back as Anna indicated the door with the Employees Only sign. Well, that was definitely going to keep them out. Definitely. Absolutely.

She strolled over and tapped on it once. It moved a bit, not really. Then she grinned at Anna. "I have definitely snuck through better Employee Only doors than this." She said as she reached out and grasped the knob, giving it a twist and...feeling a bit of unexpected resistance than she might have accentally powered through with her robot hand. Whoops?

"Well." A pause as she drew her hand back and the door slowly groaned open. "It was locked." A sheepish grin. "...It kinda ain't now though."

Oops.

"Hot," she teased, though she didn't mean it quite as much as Lillian had, of course. "We'd make a good team of thieves. I kick down the doors you can't break, then you steal all the shit because you don't have fingerprints anymore."

As though she was remotely interested in stealing more than just this EMP generator. Back behind this door, a short hallway with narrow walls, barely bigger than the doorway itself, broke into a T-junction a few feet back. Fluorescent lights flickered on and off, mostly off, and they definitely seemed to be getting in worse condition the closer they got to... something. Probably what they were looking for. But the first step would be walking inside, and she allowed Lillian to take that honor for no other reason than she was already there. Absolutely no other reason.

"Thinking we should follow the lights. Kind of looks like what's happening to the sign outside, yeah?"

Lillian just grinned, leaning around the door to peer into the room as Anna talked, considering the flickering lights, which had strange shadows dancing and swinging around the room. Oh good, that wasn't creepy at all.

"Well, if we become international thieves, you are wearing the cat suit." She glanced back at Anna, still grinning, and tossed her a wink before moving to step into the room. Aside from the flickering lights, there didn't seem to be anything immediately interesting, just a few lockers, some benches, a desk, and a small set of stairs leading to an access tunnel that probably ran under the building.

"I guess we're headin' into the poorly lit, unsettling tunnel," she said with a resigned little laugh as she started into it. She reached up as she went, placing the tips of her metal fingers on the wall and letting them slide silently along, just in case the lights went out completely.

Cat suit. Sure. "Bite me," she shot back, not able to think of anything smarter in the immediate moment. One look further down what lay ahead of them almost sent a shiver down Anna's spine. Nothing bad ever happened to people in creepy access tunnels!

Her footsteps followed behind Lillian as they walked, and she could see out in front of them that the lights were getting progressively worse until they just stopped flickering and shut off completely. It definitely seemed like the right place to hide an EMP. Or a body.

"This is how Law & Order episodes start," Anna said. Cheerful. She was a great companion. Figuring she'd also need to deal with the lights soon enough, her hand trailed behind Lillian's. They'd be fine. At least it was mostly a gradual descent, and it wasn't like she didn't have a flashlight on her phone or whatever. For now.

"Are you sure? This hardly seems like the place for that," Lillian couldn't resist a little follow-up to biting, though she didn't look back from where she was going, her attention on the flickering lights. How would they really know if they were in the right place? She had been joking, but would her arms suddenly just stop working? Would Anna actually just keel over?

Was she strong enough to drag the woman back if that happened? Hrm.

"Regular or SVU? 'cause those are much different problems to have..." She asked, slowing as the tunnel started to turn, a gradual curving arc that felt like it was going to lead more towards the middle of the rink.

Anna sure as fuck hoped their parts would still work down here, but the closer they got—and as they actually entered the absolute darkness underneath the roller rink—she started doubting she'd be that lucky. Because the impulses to her legs, well... she was firing them, or her brain was, at least, but her legs only seemed to be getting every other one or so.

Thank god she was already walking slowly or she definitely would've eaten shit on the concrete floor below them, but it was enough to make her stumble in the dark in the middle of jokingly saying "Criminal Intent". A swear echoed down the hallway.

"Fucks with us too," she said once she'd recovered her balance. If her legs shut off entirely, she'd just have to drag them along, but that would be some real slow going. Maybe she'd be spared because part of her legs were still biological? A very small part, which, like, thanks for that solid, at least, Retrospec. "Careful. We're probably gonna have to find, like, a fuse box or something."

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