Walter Frost never apologizes (greenmeanie) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-03-18 13:55:00 |
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Entry tags: | npc |
Who: Seymour and Walter (NPCs)
What: It's time we checked in on those guys!
Where: Walter’s lab
When: 3/15, not long after the blackout starts
Warnings: Mild language, shoe-throwing, and NPC villains being far funnier than they should.
It was customary for someone new in a city to spend some time exploring it and seeing the sights. Normally, someone new in a city would do everything in their power to investigate and see what their new home had to offer. It was exciting, after all. Exciting and new and interesting. For Walter Frost, Seattle was just a new time zone. The only thing that changed, for him, was the settings on his watch, laptop, and Blackberry. Everything else was the same. He wore the same clothes, worked on the same projects, and stuck to the same schedule. In the twelve days since he had arrived in the city, Walter hadn’t been anywhere but his apartment, his lab, or the commute between the two for more than twenty or so minutes. He was a man possessed by his work, lacking interest in anything else. Plus, he had left his precious company behind on the east coast - he wasn’t leaving her in the hands of a babysitter to just waste time.
For Walter, time adhered to the old adage of “waste not, want not.” Everyone complained that there weren’t enough hours in the day, but he knew better. All the whining and moaning just exposed the common man for the pathetic weakling he was. If you want more time, you make it. You forge it out of fire and sweat, and you reap it for all its benefits. Wasting time leads to not enough, but saving it makes you wealthy. That’s how Walter explained his success, and he wasn’t going to apologize for any of it.
So, like one would expect, he spent his Tuesday in the lab, alone amongst his creations. He consumed his time with research, focusing on what could be done. The problem of the Night Terror was most pressing, leading to his lab being filled with acquired sleep monitoring equipment - some new, and some painfully outdated.
He was currently welding together a prototype “dream machine,” a rigid shell that looked almost like a hi-tech tanning booth. Sleep monitors were outfitted with amped-up batteries to be hypersensitive. Some would think it cruel, but Walter thought it progressive. With his welding mask shielding his face, he crouched over the two long panels, very carefully drawing the fiery blast of the torch between them. Sweat dripped down his face behind the mask, his arms swimming from behind his protective suit. Every ounce of that sweat went into his work, forging it beautiful from its commonplace parts.
And then, out of nowhere, the lab went dark. The only light left came from his blowtorch, which he quickly snuffed out cold. Setting it down, he straightened up, lifting the panel of his mask to peer into the darkness. “Hello?” he called out, all apprehension and caution. It could have been just a fuse - maybe. But he could see that the hallway was dark, and he knew damn well that if it were a fuse, the hall wouldn’t be out. His power was dead, for whatever reason. And he knew that there were people that would benefit from blacking him out.
He quickly crawled out of his welding suit, the air warm on his bare arms. Though it was dark, he knew which direction he wanted to move in, making a beeline for a cabinet in the back. Opening the second drawer from the top, he reached in blindly, pulling out the loaded pistol inside. He slipped the safety off, holding it in both hands as he made his way very carefully towards the hallway out of the lab. “Is anyone there?” he called, opening the door slowly.
It seemed that the entire building was deserted, completely vacant and dark. He moved from the underground lab up to the in-construction school on the surface. Half-finished classrooms taunted him with partially assembled desks and broken down walls. It looked like something out of a horror movie, which only tightened his grip on the pistol in his hands. He kept expecting to see something jump out of the rubble, something vicious and in a cape. All the while, he mentally swore - he was getting too damn old for this shit.
When a check of the school revealed nothing, he prepared to head out onto the grounds, moonlight from the sky giving him a ghostly blue glow. Sweat kept his hair and tank top slicked to his skin, like a perfect second coating that he’d have thought to remove if he weren’t gripped by growing concern. He pushed open the front door, ready to examine the grounds, when a loud sound caught his attention. It was as if something had sprang to life below him, something hungry and vibrant.
Still clutching his pistol, he ran downstairs into the underground lab, throwing open the door with a shoulder and holding the gun out aggressively. Instead of seeing a masked vigilante jamboree, he saw the last thing he had expected: his lab, lit up, like nothing had happened. Gaping, he stumbled forward, turning three hundred sixty degrees as he walked as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. His power was back. But why had it gone in the first place? Maybe it was just a normal blackout, some kid putting too many X-Box consoles in their house. Maybe he was getting paranoid in his old age.
Just as he was calming down, the sound of footsteps in the hallway outside the lab caught his attention. Grip on his gun, he turned, ready to aim and fire at whoever dared to trespass on his almost-under-seige property.