revivalproject | Deadly Friend

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Deadly Friend

WHO: Stu, Billoo, and Donnie
WHERE: Donnie's house!
WHAT: The boys drop in for a friendly movie night
WHEN: Beginning of September
WARNINGS: There's some obvious manipulation going on here that could be skeevy, but no one should die this time.

Knowing how to pull a trigger didn't feel nearly as mindblowing as knowing how to manage a power plant, and for the first time in his life, Stu wasn't watching for people or picture-perfect scenes as they (reluctantly) meandered down the empty streets. He was wondering at how every leaning, infested building was connected, empty eyed now but wound with arteries that bound them all together, back to a humming heart of the great, dead city. He knew how to animate them, if he wanted, prop them up like convincing dummies, bring the whole scene to life. It was almost an effective distraction from not having a fucking car. Stu still expressed his frustration with wild kicks at rocks that sent them hurtling through windows and an occasional shove at Billy if he got too enthusiastic while explaining the elaborate measures he would have to take to effectively electrocute a linked chain of ten people to death using the Agrii's power system. Ten, exactly ten, was actually an ambitious number. This way, the journey was only longer when his pun was stupid enough, or the shoving was irritating enough that Billy had to retaliate, and they were delayed by a scuffle that left their clothes dusty and hands scraped by the time they made it to the ominous cluster of factories. Stu had to sober enough to ensure none of that wrestling had done any obvious damage to their replacement communicator device before passing it off to Billy and pointing enthusiastically toward the one building with light spilling out of its cracks between the long shadows.

"Dooon-NIE!" Stu's voice broke the hush of the abandoned neighbourhood as they approached, scaring a swirl of roosting birds up into the sky and bouncing off of the walls, like it could chase out the kid just as well. "DON, BABY!" One of the doors was going to eventually open, and Stu was ready to slap his hands on either side of the frame with a wide-eyed grin and greet, "Hey, kiddo. You up for a party? Of course you are." Stu and Billy were dusty and sweating from the long walk in the unrelenting heat. They at least deserved the courtesy of a brief interlude.

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The first shout had startled him out of his careful wiring progress, and with a grumble Donnie set to it again, trying to get things into just the right position to weld in place when the second shout interrupted.

Giving an exasperated sigh, the turtle shoved up his goggles, powering off his tools before he pushed away from the table. There was only one person he knew who was normally that loud, and the added effort was just making him insufferable.

The door hummed and there was the sound of a heavy bar sliding open on the other side- golly, what did this kid do, reinforce the thing? Well...

"Stewart. And William," Donnie greeted curtly as his attention shifted between the two, looking none too amused. "A party? Actually I'm in the middle of something-"

What was this kid, 14 going on 30? Billy made a face at yet another person refusing to call him by his preferred name. What was up with that.

"...it's Billy," he corrected, looking exhausted from the long walk out to find this place. "Did Stu not- Fuck, Man- I thought you cleared it with him." Billy put on an exasperated look, and smacked Stu upside the head. Maybe that would help endear the kid to enough to take pity on them. "This place is a real hike."

Stu's smile fell, brow knitting in confusion at this cold rejection, and for a second it looked like he might push through it as he leaned in closer, arms flexing where they remained braced on the door and held him from breaching into the building. He forced another smile when he suddenly broke away, shoving back to turn on Billy and lament, "I thought he'd be happier to see me. My bad. We can probably make it back before it's too dark..."

"Billy, right. Number three, if I'm not mistaken." He'd never met a Billy before the alien abduction, and now there seemed a plethora of them on this alien planet. Maybe the He Row search had some preference for Williams.

Donnie looked between them again, his expression souring at Stu. He could still feel the atrocious heat outside, and he supposed it wasn't completely unheard of for people to barge in on other people. Heaving a sigh like it was some great burden, and in his eyes, it probably was, the turtle stepped back from the door.

"Oh, fine, you can come in. Better being inside than outside when there are knife-wielding psychopaths running around, right?"

Edited 2024-09-07 17:27 (UTC)

"What there's more of them now?" Billy asked, looking back the way they'd come as though he suddenly regretted making the journey out here. He stepped inside with an apologetic smile. "If I knew it was so far I never would've let Stu talk me into it. Guy's still only just healed up from his attack."

The attack no one had really seemed to care about, and oh look- someone else had paid the price. And even now they'd barely heard discussion of it over the network apart from poor Richie. What was it going to take for the people of this community to take this threat a little more seriously? Be a shame if the next victim finally died...

Donnie's expression wasn't any less of a rejection, and through his teeth Stu muttered, "C'mon, we don't have to, man..." as Billy passed, only that left him alone outside in the open where he threw his own glance down the empty, shadowed street and his shoulders tightened with apprehension. Quickly then, he followed into the safety of Donnie's reinforced door. It was an obvious struggle, but he did have one subject that could make him brighten considerably, and he announced to Donnie, "I told him about your movies, little dude. Primo home theatre experience."

"What, Billys? Technically there's already been two, you're late to the party."

The turtle closed the door after them, hitting a button so the locks slid back into place as he turned, wandering towards what amounted as the kitchen area, or at least the space he and his brother ate. He pulled a thing of water from a small refridgeration unit, pouring a couple of glasses for the two on the table.

"Stu's resilient, I'll give him that. Did you see how much he was moving around even after his assault and stitches?" Yeah, he's totally tattling on you dude.

Inside, it was a comfortable temperature, cool but not freezing. Perfect conditions for a turtle to keep working in.

"Oh yeah? Well I mean, my place is probably the only one with a home entertainment area." He point at the space adjacent to the kitchen area where some pillows had been piled and covered over with a blanket in some shapeless sort of couch, and a projection unit sat in front of it, propped up on a crate and angled towards the blank wall, small speakers set up about the area for some facsimile of surround-sound.

"Did the best I could anyway. Harder to do outside, but I don't think movie night had gone off too badly."

"What- no, the knife-wielding psychopaths part. There was only one guy who attacked him, why do we suddenly think there's more?" Billy clarified, gratefully taking up one of those glasses. Stu earned himself a look from the tattling, as if Billy wasn't fully aware how risky his partner in crime played with those stitches.

He was very quickly distracted by the promised home entertainment. "You could earn yourself a lot of favours having something like that all to yourself. People would kill to have access to some actual entertainment."

"Don't bother, dude," Stu cut in, looking barely aware of his own body as he swept up the glass blindly, focus already completely on this factory theatre, "He doesn't actually believe in 'em. Knife-wielding psychopaths." Stu was off, sauntering toward the projector set-up to bow over it curiously like a praying mantis.

"I never said I didn't believe in them," Donnie huffed. "Anyway, I meant in general, although there has been conjecture of the possibility of multiple suspects. Different MO, but I personally cannot confirm such things with only two data points to refer to."

He poured himself a glass of water since it was a good reminder to hydrate, leaning against the table as he looked over at his guests.

"Well, that was kind of the idea of why I set up a movie night. Temperatures are only slightly more tolerable in the evenings, but I figured that trying to alleviate the tedious existence we've been forced into here is at least one step in spitting at our unseen alien overlords' faces." He sighed. "Of course with all this potential murder nonsense happening, that does put a damper in things."

"You talk like Johnnie Cochran," Billy chuckled, sipping at his water and looking around seemingly at the place the two had set up for themselves.

He glanced over at Stu and shared a small look. "I wasn't able to make it that, but Stu told me it was something to see."

It was with Billy that Stu shared that laugh, mouth twisted in a lopsided smile, and he agreed, "'Conjecture', that's a good word, smart word." Through the shine of amusement, his eye was hard on Billy. Multiple suspects? This was only a brief interlude, though, because Stu had to straighten out of his examination of the movie magic, distracted even from that by Donnie's betrayal and forced to open his hands emphatically. "So, I get stabbed and maybe I'm just so stupid that I forgot I fell on a knife, but some other idiot covers himself in corn-syrup for a good shot and suddenly we're talking about ehmoes." Now that he was done complaining, he had to admit, "What's an ehmo?"

"Who?" Donnie asked, a blank look on his face at the name drop. "Is he cool?"

He shrugged. "Oh yeah, the outdoor theater setup. It's along the wall outside of the next place over. -not the one inhabited by giant spiders, just to be clear. Moved the projector and stuff inside though since I don't know when we're going to use it next."

He turned a puzzled look at Stu, ah, the movie perspective again. "...modus operandi?"

"...for a lawyer, I guess, yeah." Billy had a complicated relationship with lawyers because of his father. He smirked and shared a laugh at Stu's addition. "From the OJ Simpson trial?"

"Buddy, no one thinks you fell on a knife, who'd say something that fucked up?"

With wide eyes of innocent disbelief, Stu pointed to Donnie then spread his hands again in surrender to this groundless cruelty. "This guy right here, officer," he said. "Between him and the doctor, I was starting to think it really was all in my head. Only Eddie seemed to believe me."

To add further insult to injury, Donnie was speaking a foreign language at him like that helped, and Stu could only raise a confused eyebrow then had to quickly distract from how much smarter a little green kid was than him. That was embarrassing, no one would want to linger on that. Abruptly, he swung down to pick up the projector, holding it out in both hands like an angry cat, and he asked, "Did you make this?"

"The... Oh wait. That was practically in ancient times, right?"

Donnie rolled his eyes at Stu then. "UM, I did not say that I disbelieved you to have been attacked, I just wasn't sure how accurate your recollection of events could be under extreme stress and blood loss in terms of remembering whether you had in fact been attacked right out of the gate, or rather, immediately after being dumped at the fountain on an alien planet or if you had in fact been attacked just before your arriv- HEY careful with that!"

The turtle jumped, setting his glass on the counter to scramble over to where Stu was.

"Yes, I made that, most everything in here, in fact."

"It was like...last year." Not all that ancient to either of them.

He looked between Donnie and Stu in surprise, like he didn't know every bit of this. "Well I guess the new attack pretty much confirms he was telling the truth, huh?" Billy said, watching as the turtle rushed to deal with Stu and moving quick to do a more thorough sweep as casually as he could manage.

There. Spotting the communicator, Billy silently made the switch while Donnie was distracted, and set his glass down to interrupt- "This place got a bathroom?"

Stu snickered at how quickly the kid moved, and at how lifting the projector just slightly put it significantly out of reach and he could examine it curiously like he was just bringing it up into the light. "Cool, man. Like the door? All those cameras are yours, too, huh? Can I have one?" he enthused. "To make up for calling me stupid, natch." He didn't see how Donnie's version of events proved otherwise.

"I didn't call you stupid, I would have to your face otherwise!" Donnie protested, looking quite close to springing at Stu, knowing full well he could, but managing to keep from doing so for the moment.

"The door to your right," he informed Billy, which was really the only door besides the one they'd come through in the immediate area. The space was otherwise quite open, with what looked like a skateboard ramp curving up and into the second level of the building, and another, unfinished one just beyond.

"What cameras are you talking about? Anyway, you have one on your tablet, what kind of camera do you want?"

Edited 2024-09-08 23:58 (UTC)

"Try not to kill each other while I'm gone," Billy said with a small laugh, excusing himself and disappearing through the indicated door.

He wouldn't have long to set things up, but he should be able to finish before he's been gone long enough to be noticed.

The tension in Donnie like a spring was obvious enough that Stu raised the projector again, like he might dangle it over Donnie's head as his focus flicked to meet Billy's eye with a laugh as his friend slipped away. "The cameras!" he repeated, gesturing widely. "All over the place. You said we were being watched, I think you're the one watching, look at you, look at this place. You could make me a proper, movie-making camera, real film, f/2.8, you know. Then we could put some real movies on this thing."

"No promises!" Donnie called out after Billy, his attention still however on Stu. He scowled as the projector was held higher. The fiend!

"Why should I bother installing cameras when they're already there? Anyway, they're lousy angles for any decent framing. Anyway who needs film when you have digital? If you wanted a movie camera you could have just asked, I could probably throw something together, a handheld like the ones they used way back in the nineties."

The projector came ticking back down as Stu looked surprised and puzzled by the cameras being a permanent fixture, and he had to ask, "That's how the aliens are watching us?" He had dismissed that assumption early, Donnie was the much better fit for the role. Why wouldn't everyone be destroying them if they belonged to the aliens? Easy revolution, dude. His confusion quickly spun into enthusiasm as he noted, "Little green dude from the future, you are one of the aliens!," so he wasn't really wrong, either way.

"I'm asking right now, my man. And you're talking to me about digital, like you've never seen a movie in your life. I'm asking someone else, someone who actually cares about the media. Um. Median?"

"Pretty sure," Donnie said, not bothering to differentiate between the mystery cameras and Tony-built.

"...I am a mutant turtle. Get your facts straight."

He sighed, folding his arms. "Medium. And no, I get it, there are qualities that give grainy, thirty-five milimeter celluloid film more character but around here that's one more thing you'd need apart from proper lighting and an entire rig, boom mics... You'd be much better off with a handheld, and going digital? Oh the clarity, HD- you really need a modern movie experience."

That was a lot of information to expect Stu to understand all at once, so he had to narrow his focus to the most important element: "You don't know how to make lights?" It wasn't an accusation, but dejection, bringing the projector finally all the way back down for Stu to cradle against his stomach in disappointment.

Abruptly, all of that sadness transitioned back into tension as he announced, "Let's go take 'em out then, dude!" He gave the projector a swing like it was a rock that he was crashing into the camera lens, remembering they were supposed to be kung fu masters with a high, "Hi-yah!"

"What- of course I know how to make lights, I was fixing those since I was six!"

Donnie jumped, startled at the abrupt shift, Stu needed warning lights or something. His reflexes were faster, moving to snatch the projector from his hands, lower lip jutting out in warning as he clutched his precious machine close.

"Take what out?! I thought you wanted to make movies! If this is a script then you sir cannot keep to one page!"

Whatever Donnie was doing when he was six, he was definitely lying about it now, because he just said they couldn't have lights, and couldn't seem to follow a straightforward plot. His frustration had Stu raising an eyebrow while he easily relinquished the projector, hands open innocently, and he had to explain in slow, small words and exaggerated gestures to help Donnie understand, "The alien cameras that are watching us pee." He nodded hopefully, to encourage Donnie to follow along.

Donnie grumbled, looking over the projector for any signs of loose parts. He turned a flat look towards Stu. Was it possible for someone to be worse than his brothers?

"...I would actually love nothing more than to take the alien cameras out except I don't know where they are."

It was Stu's turn to grow frustrated, hands up toward the sky plaintively as he cried, "The cameras!," then dragged down his face, completely aghast that Donnie could have possibly missed them. Flailing both arms toward the door, he said, "You can't miss them. Come on, I'll show you. Bring a bat, we'll take care of this. Damn the man! Fight the power!"

This was getting needlessly complicated and fast. Donnie ran a hand over his face, smothering another sigh. He definitely couldn't have this guy breaking Tony's security network.

"That would be a perfectly good waste of a camera. If you want one so badly, and you know where they are, why don't you just use one of those instead of decide to break it?"

Stu was rapidly running out of ways to deal with Donnie's mutant brain. Until he could figure out how to put it back in the right way around, he was left throwing his hands out with imploring eyes, teeth grit. The devastated expression turned to a smile as a realization dawned on Stu, and he pointed an accusatory finger to declare, "You really are one of them, man." That wasn't really a good thing, so the euphoria from the act of figuring out why Donnie was behaving so bizarrely wore off quickly. "That's why you didn't care that I got stabbed, you're doing the stabbing! We're rats in your little cage!" Or: Donnie knew the truth, and he had to choose to admit to that, or admit to torturing Stu. There was no other good reason for him to be defending the alien surveillance network like he really thought anyone could use a security camera to make a movie.

Donnie's brow twitched, and he irritatedly batted the accusatory finger away.

"One, you're wrong. Two, I have more important things to do than go around stabbing people, especially newbies, three, stabbing is messy, these attacks are messy- whoever's doing them isn't trying to be subtle, they're trying to stir things up. Because why? Boredom? I suppose I can see that angle, some sort of alien cabin fever."

This was definitely a distraction technique so Stu stopped thinking about Donnie's alien allegiance, and was not effective enough to keep Stu from watching him talk skeptically. His face dropped, turning that unimpressed, flat look back on Donnie to clarify, "You think boredom is a believable motive for murder. That's your defence, someone else must have done it because they were bored, and you're too important."

"No, but I believe that crazy people will jump on any reason to try and kill someone if there isn't an outright motive."

Donnie frowned. He was so not in the mood for this, especially not when he hadn't slept lately. He pinched the space between his eyes.

"For instance, what reason would someone attack you? Have you figured that out?" He didn't mean to sound like he was accusing Stu, that was just how he always sounded, sharp and sarcastic.

"Fresh meat," Stu reasoned, looking proud of the status with a lopsided smile, then lolling tongue and crossed eyes of the criminally insane. "If someone here is that crazy, you must have noticed already. You're telling me someone is so crazy they're stabbing random kids, no reason, but you can't see that in their eyes? No way, dude. That guy is killing cats. I didn't almost die because someone was bored."

"It was an example! If someone's crazy, they're usually not very inclined to admit it. You really get hung up on like, one thing and it is very annoying."

Donnie glanced over towards the bathroom door. "He okay in there? Hope he didn't drown." Now that would be an embarrassing almost death.

"You were targeted because you're a newb, plausible. How about Richie? Random? Or maybe someone doesn't like stand-up comedy? ...at least I think that's what he does, I've only talked to him once..."

Edited 2024-09-17 21:38 (UTC)

This was far from the first time Stu had been called annoying, but usually it was actually his fault. This time, he rolled his eyes with a chuckle, unconvinced and unimpressed by Donnie's refusal to follow through with his own plotline. "Whatever, man, sure," he mumbled. Getting further bullied by a mean little kid didn't sound like a party, but the reminder that he had to keep Donnie distracted a little while longer kept Stu from bouncing away, instead forced to rock on his heels as he reluctantly groaned, "Yeah, that's why I'd do it, bad jokes. Quick, get a knife!" He brandished his nails with a manic grin, wound up to give chase to the guy with the worst comedy in the room.

The self-proclaimed 'funny one' of his family apparently didn't take his acting cues very well either, a brow hiking up at Stu's shift in expression before flicking to the human's hands and back to his face, more puzzled than anything else.

"Definitely talking to the wrong turtle, knives aren't my thing. Anyway what are you doing, what is this?" he asked, briefly mimicking Stu's claws.

Stu's arms dropped heavily to his sides and he let out a sigh of defeat. There was no getting through to this one, Donnie was absolutely determined to hate him. "Do you, like, keep the movies and skateboards locked up in a vault just so no one can have fun?" he had to ask. It was starting to seem like the downer sort of thing Donnie was capable of.

In reality Donnie just...was not sure how to deal with someone like Stu. The guy skipped between ideas and thoughts like Mikey but he was so much more intense. Donnie had never been good with reading people, being on the far end of the emotional spectrum from his brothers when it came to social interactions. So far as he could tell, Stu was just trying to push his buttons for some unfathomable reason.

"No?" he answered, still looking just as confused. "Look, if you want to watch a movie or skateboard, just say so but otherwise, I need to get back to work and cannot possibly do that with company."

There was no way Stu could have been any more clear about what they had turned up for, and despite appearances, did know a gentle suggestion toward the door when he heard one. He twisted his mouth, then said, "Whatever, dude," again, in time to glance up and catch Billy's eye. That was enough to brighten him, and it was with renewed enthusiasm that he went bounding for his friend to announce, "Hey, did you know this guy was one of the aliens? We've got to get out of here, pronto." Gleefully, he was lifting his claws again, this time to commit to the threat and start giving Billy playful punches in the sides to herd him toward the door. Billy wasn't exactly thrilled with the display, either, but his complaints were a love language.

Was that a real thing random people did? Donnie lived in a sewer so it wasn't like they had many guests come over outside of April, and she was practically family so it wasn't weird.

Donnie eyed Stu expectantly while simultaneously trying to decide if he was supposed to do something else when Billy finally emerged from the bathroom. He turned to watch Stu rejoin his buddy, frowning as the other was hustled off, but he trailed them to the door, at least not outright shutting it to lock up after them until they'd gone off a ways.

"Sigh, why are social obligations so exhausting?" he groaned, turning back to his work.

...but first, coffee.

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Deadly Friend

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