revivalproject

Entry tags:

Xtro

WHO: Stu Macher, Billy Loomis and open!
WHERE: Temba, by the fountain and the hospital
WHAT: A new arrival! He looks bad!
WHEN: Early June
WARNINGS: Stu's coming in already stabbed, so there's blood right from the start.

a. the fountain
Movie blood felt more real than the genuine article. It was always brighter red, lurid and fast flowing, not like the dark and dingy trickle that rolled sluggishly along the dirty clefts in the cobblestone. The real blood picked up dust and grime as it went, and rapidly dried, getting darker and slower and duller, Stu realized, quickly abandoning the reflection of the strange light. He couldn't see where it was coming from at first, only aware of the way it bounced where the blood was still sticky, fixated on its unfamiliar ambience from where he lay on the hard ground. It was like the diffused lighting from a softbox, glowy and indirect. He had to touch it.

By the time he could make his eyes focus again, he could feel the hard stone pressing into his back. He must have propped himself up, his legs still twisted awkwardly where he had collapsed onto his face. He could hear the constant trickle of running water, too, that was weird, that kind of made him have to pee, and was suddenly too aware of just how much beer he had been drinking and regretted not hitting the bathroom before the bloodbath or the alien abduction. You should always go before you take a big trip like that, even if you don't think you have to. He started to laugh, loud and unself-conscious, until the blood bubbling in his throat made it stick and splatter down his front instead of echoing around this empty square. He sobbed then, raising his shaking hands to that glowing light of the alien-ball like he needed any more confirmation that it was still him that was bleeding, then pressed them back around his middle to try to stem the flow. Being abducted should have been so much cooler than this. There should have been a spaceship, and a metal table, and a chip they were putting in his neck. Instead, Stu was sitting on a dirty, empty street, holding his guts in, not sure if he was in complete pain or entirely numb. If he died before the probing, he'd never forgive himself.

"Billy?" he suddenly realized, soft and plaintive. He had tripped and fallen onto his face on the way out of the kitchen, after he heard Billy's cry, after he had been attacked. Someone had to help him. "I'm comin', buddy..." Stu strained, pitching forward to try to climb up onto his feet. He had a long way to go.

b. the hospital
The sweater that Stu had been wearing was ruined. Even if he knew how to get the crusted blood out of it, there were huge holes where the knife had sliced through, enough that it was practically falling apart. He should have been falling apart. Instead, he was lingering in the hall of the weirdly dark hospital, wearing a new sweater with too many sleeves. The extra pair of them were sitting on his shoulders, all of the extra fabric gathered around his neck like a cowl, and when he wiggled they flapped in a way that made him snicker and feel like some kind of alien royalty himself. Maybe he was less likely to come back from this experience screaming and eating snake eggs than dazzling the aliens with his strange, human powers, like a normal amount of arms, and resilience to stabbing.

He had too much energy to stay put an heal like he was supposed to, he didn't know anyone that could just lay around in a bed for hours and not want to blow their own brains out. He had left the ruined sweater in his place, and dutifully kept his arms stiff by his sides to limit just how much he was moving as he went prancing in the echoing corridor, swinging his shoulders from side to side to make his empty sleeves flap while he bounced. Already, he knew not to expect to encounter just about anyone around here, but when he did he also wasn't terribly surprised and gladly pivoted to welcome them into this game. "Do you like alien movies?" he immediately greeted, his very posture impish, all stretched out six feet four inches of him drawn up straight with his shoulders back and arms still tight to his sides, and chin tucked down to make his wide grin look like a wicked challenge.

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Donnie blinked then, staring confusedly at Stu.

"Which one? I thought I covered everything." He was pretty sure he had anyway. What had he missed?

"Who?" Stu repeated with another poke, then again as he jumped from foot to foot to hoot, "Who-who!" He settled as quickly as the energy had burst out of him, face dropping to elaborate seriously, "You can't go making this accusations then say a bunch of big words about con-jacking off or whatever."

"Ow, would you please stop that?" Donnie scowled, rubbing at the spot.

"I don't know who! You're the one who got attacked- shouldn't you know who??"

Stu absolutely would not, and poked him again through his fingers, then immediately cringed away to defend against any retaliation. "I was busy being stabbed!" he shouted back, drawing out the word with his tongue down his chin again. "You're the one that said it wasn't new! I get attacked, and you're sitting here like--" He drew himself up, chin tucked in to push up his imaginary glasses and voice tight and nasally, "Well, in theory!" He dropped character to splay his hands out to ask how helpful this nerd act was, then gave the guy a shove to both of his shoulders, come on.

Donnie looked about ready to start biting, glaring menacingly at the offending finger. But then Stu shifted gears- was he insulting him??? And then suddenly the turtle was being shoved back. At least he was more sturdier than he looked so he didn't go falling completely, just danced back a few steps to keep his balance. His fists balled up out of reflex like he was ready for a fight.

"The previous known offender is gone, that's why!" he hissed, glaring again. "She wouldn't have bothered with stabbing anyway! And as close as she had gotten to drawing blood, anything serious was prevented. That's how it usually works here apparently- the Agrii try to make sure no one hurts anyone else, so hearing that someone actually has managed to hurt someone badly enough that it warrants stitches is news to me!"

"She?" Stu asked, incredulous. Maybe that did make sense, with how little damage she seemed to have done, and how reluctant this guy was to admit even that much. Still, that was helpful, it was good, and Stu had to school his surprise to go on, "She's clearly not gone and you guys have been letting a psycho run free for who knows how long. Where are the police? No one's even come to question me!"

"Dude, if she were still here, you'd have a pair of puncture wounds in your neck or wouldn't have even suffered something so grievous that you'd needed stitches because anyone intending harm gets removed immediately from the location and victim."

Donnie folded his arms, brow hiking up impossibly high. "Anyway, there is no police, there is no formal law. We are pretty much otherwise expected to take care of ourselves."

There were no police, but an attacker was immediately removed. Stu clearly did not understand, mouth hanging open and ready, but completely baffled. If that were somehow true and the little guy wasn't green all the way down to his brains, then that would make Billy's plans a little more difficult. It would make the story of Stu getting stabbed post-abduction far less likely. But that was the only clear evidence that he had, so he pulled his alien sweater up again to display the peeling bandage, free hand out to ask what else this was supposed to be. "Do you think I did this to myself?" he asked. That would have been outlandish, ridiculous, no one would believe such a thing. "Maybe that's where he went," he added, hoping this new dimension didn't mess with Billy's plans, and had to quickly correct, "She. Removed immediately."

"She hasn't been here since..." Donnie pulled out his communicator to consult his notes. "...more than half a year ago. Also, there were no recent updates to the directory to say that she had ever returned."

He continued to scroll through things, looking through said directory to match this new face with a name.

"Given how bad the wounds looked from what I can- ugh would you please stop with that, no one wants to see that!" he flinched, turning about to pointedly face away from Stu and his wounds. "-anyway, perhaps if you were delirious from blood loss then it's quite possible that you lost track of where your attack took place. Arrival to Temba is quite discombobulating as it is, I can only imagine that if you were suffering from the immediate effects of an attack and then abruptly pulled to this world that it's only compounded- Stu Macher? Is that you?"

That was a lot more information and big words than Stu was prepared to understand again, up until the one he understood very well and could light up with a grin, pointing to the device and then the green guy to enthusiastically confirm, "That's all me, baby! Stu Macher! What is that, some kind of alien scanning device, are you scanning me?" He clearly wasn't put off by the idea, spreading his arms for better assessment.

Donnie cast a dry look over his shoulder. "No, I am not scanning you. This is a tablet- it has multiple functions such as various information about the city and some of the plants and fauna you may find within and nearby. But more importantly, it also serves as the main method of communication betwixt you and everyone else stuck here."

He turned to waggle the thing around, sleek and purple- something he'd purchased at the spaceport and reprogrammed to act as his new main comm given that the other one was still consistently flooded with pings from signals the ship was sending out. He was also fully prepared to pull the tablet out of reach should Stu's grabby hands attempt to take it for closer inspection.

"Anyway, you should have received one when you arrived... But given your current state I would not be surprised if you missed that detail."

Stu would have admired how cool that was, except he was busy repeating, "Betwixt," softly in different voices, and did take that waggling as an invitation that he was wounded to have immediately revoked. He dropped his hands and the fun new word. "My own tablet and some radical scars, they really shouldn't have," he said. "No, really, they shouldn't have, this is the weirdest alien abduction. Was I, uh, supposed to go get a welcome package? Maybe the guy that stuck me got it. A motive!"

"I wouldn't really call it a welcome package but it's about as much of one as you can expect. Along with all the info uploaded right into your brain once you touch the data point by the fountain." Yay. Fun stuff. Only not really. "At least you didn't get dumped here in the middle of winter. Then you'd be nearly frozen to death on top of suffering from stab wounds. Or maybe it'd be so cold it'd keep you from bleeding out? Hm."

Donnie looked through his tablet again. "Well, either someone has an extra tablet or yours is just lying sadly by the fountain, unclaimed." He tapped on the directory entry for Stu and started typing out a message: Hey, do you like free pizza?

"Is everyone here a psycho?" Stu had to ask, sounding more intrigued than spooked by all of the ways his new friend could imagine him dying. It certainly hadn't earned the green guy any breathing room, because as he went tapping away, Stu was ready to loom over his shoulder, or more like over his head, to watch what he was doing. "Dude!" he said gleefully, grabbing the kid by the shoulders for an appreciative shake, "I love free pizza, thanks for asking." Surely, everyone did, so this trap was irresistible. In the meantime, Stu prompted, "Everyone has one of these? You're on there? Then he's got to be on there."

"Fifty-fifty chance," Donnie replied, eyes not moving from the screen. Upon being so rudely disrupted he jolted in surprise before giving Stu another flat look.

"Yes, everyone has one- theoretically someone has two if they have yours- and yes, I am on here. I'm Donnie, by the way," he added in afterthought. "He who?"

That deserved another shake, this one with a much tighter squeeze and sharper jerk, because the first one had evidently knocked Donnie's brain loose. There was only one person Stu could be talking about. "He, she, whatever!" he allowed, because Donnie seemed so fixated on women being the problem. "The guy who stabbed me!"

Like shaking him around was going to fix anything! "I swear, if you give me a whiplash I'll-" Donnie started, just barely managing to stop himself from trying to shove Stu away, instead giving him a testy pat on one of his arms, release him please.

"-well yes. So you know it was a guy and not some vampire girl? I thought you were delirious. What, do you want to send a mass message on the network asking for your attacker to please give you your tablet back?"

While Stu did let go, it was only to lean down close to provoke, "You'll what?," with a grin. "Watcha gonna do?" His focus dropped to the tablet curiously then, knowing that no trap set was going to lure out the serial killer in question, but now very aware it might get him an audience with a vampire girl. Aliens and vampires? "Or if the vampire girl is single," he suggested.

Donnie frowned up at him but decided that threatening a patient was probably not an acceptable thing in a hospital and the last thing he wanted was to be yelled at for agitating already questionable stitches. So instead he turned away with his tablet again.

"I told you, she's not here anymore, and if she was, would be less inclined to respond. It'd probably for sure get you an audience with the bigger one though- if he were here as well but again, they are not, thankfully."

Donnie was so sure about other people's comings and goings in the alien abduction situation that Stu was less sure that he was just some guy that they had turned green, and more sure that he really was one of the aliens. He wasn't exactly doing a great job of hiding it, if that was the case. Stu still asked, "So, what are you still doing here?"

"That is an excellent question for which I have no real answer aside from the fact that perhaps I have not outworn my usefulness... Or someone just finds me entertaining to have around." Donnie made a face at the thought of the latter.

"Look, we have even less a choice of staying as we do of being around, people just appear or disappear sometimes."

Suddenly, Stu was leaping into action, the lightbulb going off to jump into his ready stance with both hands up, fingers pointed to make his brilliant point. "Maybe that's why he stabbed me," he said. "Removed immediately, that's what you said. Second motive!"

This guy was as excitable as Mikey. Donnie hugged his tablet as he eyed him, not entirely sure he was in for another shake in the foreseeable future.

"I mean. I guess that could be a plausible if twisted motive. But so far as I can see, there have been no new absences from the directory. Only additions."

"That's the problem with a motive, man," Stu declared, flat hands out for his captured audience. "You get something in your head, doesn't always work out the way you want it to, and then you're stuck burying a body for no reason." Better to be in the game for the body disposal, then it's all the good parts, no disappointment.

Despite that tablet being mostly hidden now, Stu leaned in again like he might be able to peek at the screen, and challenged, "How do you know people didn't just swap out? Even out the numbers, you know, plus one, minus one, little math dude."

Donnie huffed. "It's not just numbers, there are names involved, faces that go with them. There really isn't any intent to keep a consistent number it fluctuates and at random times, it's all data."

Delicious, reliable data. Unless someone had hacked into things and messed it up but that was another problem altogether.

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