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 Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 5:40 pm
The handle came off in her hand. This was because the handle was made out of jam, and though it had a strange solidity to it it was easy enough to take out of the door. It left her hand red. Vanessa was also experiencing a strange feeling: a trickling out of her nose as though she had a cold, one nostril and then the other, the droplets trembling on her lips before spilling down.
The steady trickle was bright red and smelled like copper.
Meanwhile, the piano and the table were exactly one dresser away from the perfect height to clamber up on to reach the doorknob. She was a dresser's length away from the door. Only a dresser's length --
-- but then the piano reared up like a stallion and jumped off the ground, and the table clip-clopped its way (not bucking off Polaris) to the side and stamped its table legs. The dresser shuffled towards to see the commotion and banged its legs in impatience at Sailor Polaris.
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 6:53 pm
Jam was weird. Like jello and pudding, it was neither a liquid nor a solid. These were the sort of things that preoccupied her sleepy brain every morning as she made breakfast. John Jr, clever as he was, liked to call it a soquid.
Vanessa knew that she should not have expected the doorknob to work, but she could not help feeling mighty disappointed as it came away in her hand. Palm and fingers were sticky. This was something that happened when you grabbed a doorknob made of jam and twisted it. The bloody nose, however, was not.
Super Van sniffed, struck suddenly by the familiar sensation, and blinked in surprise at the soft pat pat pat sound of the droplets as they trickled off of her lips and onto the floor. Eyebrows furrowed. Her poor, neglected brain hamster was dragged onto its wheel and forced to make it turn. Nobody had punched her. She had not hit herself. Something was not as it seemed.
"Dammit," Vanessa hissed in frustration and pinched the bridge of her nose like her father had taught her to. Raspberry jam was transferred from hand to face. This was uncomfortable. She held the sandwich still in her clean hand and spun on her heel with a stomp of her foot, to tell Polaris the bad news. "LOOK WHAT HAPPENED TO ME! My nose is blee-
Woah.
She trailed off and watched, wide-eyed, as the furniture started to move. This inspired a lot of questions and, if it weren't for the recent influx of monsters within Destiny City and what had happened to Hairy Pete, Vanessa would have thought it was very weird. But the rearing piano-table combination looked more like a ride at the fair in comparison.
When she spoke again, it was muffled by her hand. She willed her nose to clot. "How did you get them to do that?"
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 8:09 pm
-Super Van was loud. Not unpleasantly loud, in fact Polaris found the sound of a voice to be a comforting anchor in the situation. She smiled a little as the other girl cursed, writing off the crude words as unsurprising. The revelation of jam doorknob was enough to grab her attention though, turning her head to make certain she'd caught her words right.- "The door knob is jammed?"
"Are you alrig..." -The sight of blood on the other girl would have caused a wave of worry in Polaris, but her attention was drawn to a more selfish place as the table beneath her began to move violently beneath her feet. W... was it breaking!!? Was she about to fall? No, something far more scary.
Far more... non sensical.
Her eyes bulged, and she shrieked for lack of anything else to do, fingers gripping the table for life, oblivious to it's possibly non malicious intent. The dresser... walked closer, banging against the ground over and over? G.. ghosts?-
"I... don't... know..." -She moaned unhappily, feeling her long braids clack and slap against her back with each movement of the table.
It hardly seemed safe, but if the dresser was going to follow her anyway.. she gripped the top edge of the wooden 'thing', trying to pull it up. Super Van was already bleeding, the kidnappers were sure to be back soon, so it was time to do or die.-
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 8:18 pm
The dresser shuffled after her, though it was doing it cautiously and a bit unwillingly and would not get up on the table. It appeared to not want to.
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 8:34 pm
"What do you mean you don't know?" Vanessa, whose face was covered in raspberry jam and whose chin was covered in blood, set her cheese sandwich gingerly upon the nearest, cleanest table. She gathered the end of Super Van's cape in her clean hand, while still using the other one to pinch her nose, and used it to wipe off her face the best that she could.
This adventure was becoming more and more like work by the minute. It was a good thing Super Van wasn't afraid of getting down and dirty.
"What are they moving for?" Vanessa had no answers. Nor did she expect any from Polaris- but somebody had to ask the questions. Eyebrows flew up into her hairline, visible over the brim of her sunglasses, as she considered the dresser's behaviour. She was reminded strangely of the way, only a couple of years ago, John Jr had reacted every time she'd tried to make him take a bath. He'd always fought her.
"I don't think it likes you," Super Van observed conversationally, lips quirking playfully at the ridiculousness of what she'd just said. The cape was still pressed to her nose as she stepped closer to Polaris, intending to help. Her words were smothered slightly by the fabric. "You know what I was thinking?"
She did not wait for a response, but clambered onto the piano and attempted to help Polaris by pushing on the dresser. "Nothing else opens- I'm gonna try and break through that window."
It was the only thing they hadn't tried. She was pretty sure, anyways.
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 8:50 pm
((If only she had a cheese sandwich to bribe the dresser up with, darn you Van! XD ))
"Doesn't like me?" -Her eyes bulged again for a split moment, as if trying to decide what kind of a nut job she'd been locked away with. Really though.. now that it was mentioned.. the furniture did seem to be moving in a pattern not just randomly. Almost like horses...
Thought pushed aside she tugged as the other girl pushed, shaking her head softly at the brash suggestion.- "Make sure you cover yourself with your cape then.. so you don't get all cut up in the glass."
"We'll clean you up once we get out of here" -She offered in a voice that seemed intent on comforting, whether the caped super hero seemed to want or need comfort or not.-
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 9:03 pm
The furniture did not respond to the window-breaking announcement. The dresser did not want to be pushed. The piano stomped a little, and the dresser drawers clattered in annoyance -- for a moment the piano reared up as though it was going to try to climb on something, but in the end didn't.
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 9:12 pm
Super Van did not understand why she'd have to cover herself up to break the glass. She stared stupidly at Polaris, and that old, neglected wheel in her brain squeaked to a painful stop. Instead of trying to figure it out on her own, she opened her mouth to ask. Hers was such an inquiring mind.
"I don't understan- OH." She giggled and clapped Polaris on the shoulder as though she'd just told the most hilarious joke. "I'm not going to jump through it. I could hurt myself."
Really. There could have been a fifty foot drop outside!
"I'm going to throw things at it." This would work, she was sure. While he hadn't made it to the pros, Mr. Rae had been a reasonably successful baseball player- an outfielder. She had a decent arm, and knew how to aim. Vanessa had broken more than her fair share of windows in her short lifetime. She had also, as an apology to unsuspecting citizens who happened to live by the baseball diamonds, paid for a lot of them out of her own pocket.
She leered sternly at the piano when it reared again, wary of its great weight, and then returned to the mission at hand when it stilled.
There was an old, chipped black 8-ball amongst the clutter. Vanessa had kicked it earlier when she'd been checking the other doors, and she collected it now. It was a solid weight and felt good in her hand.
A pause. Then, with her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth and blood still trickling from her nose, Super Van wound up and chucked it as hard as she could at the shimmery glass pane.
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 9:16 pm
With a heavy thunk! the 8-ball rebounded off the glass and rolled away. A wobbly-painted sign appeared in the view through the window:
THANKS, JERK!
Shutters were drawn across it from the other side of the pane. The piano tried to climb on top of the table this time.
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 9:58 pm
-She shrugged, the tinest hints of a tired and sheepish smile touching her as the other girl found her point. For an occassion without nasty youma and weapons flying at her she was remarkably tired. Her brain hurt, only slightly less then her bottom. Nothing made sense.
How in the world the piano had balanced on the table on the dresser on the sandwich she did not know, but even the oblivious girl could see how dead bent the... animated inanimate objects seemed on resuming the stack.
The ball rebounded, and the curtains shut, and Polaris just turned back towards her mysterious moving furniture, moving from the table so that she could attempt to put it on top of the dresser.-
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 10:08 pm
Super Van's jaw dropped almost to the floor and she glowered, as though it had caused her a great offense, at the 8-ball as it rolled across the floor and out of site. It was fortunate for the window that she did not see the sign as it flashed on the other side of the glass.
Vanessa did not take well to being insulted. It would only have ended badly.
Cheeks flamed red with her failure, and she wondered if maybe it would have been smarter to hurl herself at it. Her nose continued to bleed and Super Van, who had lost her spiffy World War II helmet somewhere between yesterday and last Sunday, did not really want to to spend the rest of the day picking glass out of her flesh. She sighed and, hand on her hips, considered the curtains with an accusatory expression on her face.
"I think there's somebody on the other side of that window!"
She did not know that she was not helping. Frustrated, she stomped her foot and, retrieving her cheese sandwich from where she had left it, took another great big bite. When blood continued to pour out of her nose, onto the bread, she swore loudly and chucked it across the room.
"I want to get out of here!" This was half a shout, half a statement, muffled by the cape she had pressed against her nose, and directed at whoever had clearly pulled the string on those curtains. "I have people to SAVE, you know! When I get out of here, I'm going to give you a piece of my mind!"
She had always wanted to say that to somebody. It did not matter that she didn't have much mind to spare.
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 10:26 pm
The dresser immediately skidded to land on top of the cheese sandwich that Vanessa had thrown across the room. The table took a running jump to land on top of the dresser, and then the piano motored back before soaring through the air like a bird to land on top of the table.
The dresser stood up on its tiptoes, wobbling, to check that the sandwich was there. Then it sat back down again. The stack was completely solid and absolutely climbable -- but it was in the wrong place.
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 10:42 pm
Well.
Super Van stood very still, considering what had just happened with all the intelligence of a cocker spaniel that'd been startled by a squirrel running up a tree. And then-
"OH MY GOSH!" She declared excitedly through the end of her cape. It was soaked in her blood, but Super Van was quite unbothered by this. She sounded very much like a child who'd just caught Santa Clause stuck in the fireplace. "POLARIS, DID YOU SEE THAT?"
Vanessa could not contain her excitement. She raced over to the pile of furniture, collected the leg of a broken chair and then skidded towards the dresser on her belly like a penguin. With the stick of the leg, she poked beneath the dresser until the sandwich was, once again, in site and then picked it up.
She flashed a grin at her companion that clearly said 'watch this', and then wound up, but did not throw it.
This was the coolest thing she had ever seen. Kinda like fetch, but BETTER. She wanted to make sure Polaris was watching.
The man behind the curtain was momentarily forgotten. This was a good thing for them all.
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Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 2:21 am
-The thought that someone was right outside taunting them was unnerving and irritating. She echo'd the other girl's threat with a swift nod.- "As soon as we're out of here someone is going to pay."
-The furniture stacked on their own... on top of the half eaten... now partly blood covered sandwich, she could only blink really.- "Throw it right over here by the door!" -She called out, waving her hands lightly. Super Van actually appeared to have a good arm, unlike other unnamed individuals who threw like girls. Polaris was pleased with this bit of information. The other girl's talents were logged away in her mind for future reference.-
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Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 9:23 am
Super Van could see no reason not to throw it by the door. It was as good a place as any. She pulled her arm back, gave the sandwich a farewell squeeze, and then launched it across the room to the elevated door. It smacked against the wall just beneath the door with an audible SLAP and then, leaving a streak of cheese and blood in its wake, slid to the floor.
A lightbulb went off in her head.
"HEY!" She grinned at Polaris, clearly having understood something, "We'll be able to climb the stuff if it piles itself up! Then maybe we can get out of here!"
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