Welcome to Gaia! ::

Emmanuel was rather bummed to find himself stuck with going back up so many floors again, but in the end, it wasn't so bad. He found that his leg was hurting considerably less than it had been before, so it was no longer so painful to make it up all those flights of stairs.

Besides, he didn't exactly live on the ground floor either, even if he didn't live on the fifteenth floor. And considering the situation, he might want to consider moving his room up here anyway...

Emmanuel quietly reminded himself that he was not going to make himself anxious. He couldn't survive if he was anxious. Anxious people could make rash decisions and the rash decisions were almost always bad in this survival situations. At least, that was what some of those story video games said. Emmanuel guessed it was probably true.

Probably.

Once the dust from the floor was gathered and tossed into a trash bin, Emmanuel looked around for something else to do. It looked like further dusting might have been the name of the game, considering this room seemed like it had been unoccupied for, well, a month.

This time, though, the dusting required what chemicals there were left and some cloths, wiping down furniture that either hadn't been touched or could not have been touched for the duration of time since Day Zero. After all, what use was a television when there was no reliable source of electricity?

Well, that they had access to, anyway. Emmanuel was admittedly sometimes tempted to try and get to the electricity that was running their security system, but not only was that underground, it was also unlikely to get him anywhere. There was probably no internet connectivity, that was for sure...

While he was in there, he might-as-well reinforce the present barricades in the room, right? Emmanuel cracked his knuckles and looked around for some material that might be of use in the apartment.

Was it just him or were there a lot of random wooden planks sitting around in these rooms? It was probably one of the best materials for barricades, though, so Emmanuel would not complain as he hefted the pile up and moved towards the windows. He'd have a reinforced barrier up in no time.

Perhaps Emmanuel was just in a hurry to get off his feet or perhaps he was just in the zone, but just like that, his work was done.

Planks were hammered onto barricades, properly blocking up the windows where there had been inappropriate gaps before. Emmanuel took a step back, placed his hands on his hips, and admired his work for a moment. That had been an achievement, dammit!

Not that it ultimately mattered if they were all doomed to die--

No, Emmanuel could not let himself think like that. Even if it was the truth. He needed to have hope! He needed to play more paddle ball.

Emmanuel went to go do just that.

Progress: 30/30

For a thrift store, Emmanuel quickly noticed that this place had a lot of food in it. Perhaps this wasn't a thrift store after all. Had he entered the bargain grocery store?

He supposed it was possible that so much of this food got mixed up here when there was so much chaos on Day Zero. Honestly, it wouldn't surprise him, though he chose not to think any further on it because that meant he was probably about to profit on someone else's demise. Not that it was really profiting so much as making use of items that would go to waste otherwise.

That included two packages of five Aero bars. Impressed with the find, Emmanuel immediately scooped them up, attempted to sniff them through the package, and let out a loud, happy sigh as he put them away into his bag. Too bad there weren't more of those around, he could eat those for the rest of his life...

As he looked around further, he came across a can sitting on the ground, and he lifted it up to realize that it was another can of Beefaroni. He was a little surprised by the sheer amount of Beefaroni cans he seemed to come across, but he wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, or however that saying went. It went in his bag too.

There was enough room in his bag for one more item, and Emmanuel decided that it would be the small bottle of water he found on the ground. It was overall only a couple sips of water at most, but any water was better than no water, and that was enough for him to pack it. Unfortunately, that left no more room in his bag, so he turned around and walked back towards the Apartments.

The biggest problem here was that Emmanuel was not exactly all that good at parkour, being a lanky guy with little muscle mass that spent most of his time sitting down and doing very little exercise. But he would try, dammit!

The course was set up in front of him. He moved some chairs so he would have to hop over them, placed some drawers conveniently near walls so he could run on top of them and maybe get some curve and momentum to run up to the wall for a couple seconds... this would be awesome! It couldn't be that hard, right? He kind of had the basics of how parkour worked, considering he had watched Ezio Auditore do it enough times.

That was his biggest mistake, really, and it took a spectacularly short amount of time for Emmanuel to go from leaping over a large armchair and attempting to grab onto one of the busted light fixtures to tripping over one of his immaculately placed ledges, nearly flipping over in the air, and ending up faceplanting a loveseat.

There was a burst of laughter from the people he was trying to entertain, and dizzily, Emmanuel got to his feet and held up a thumbs up. It was at least entertainment, right?! Though he was fairly sure he needed to go ... lay down ... Emmanuel flopped over to the side and held his head. Oww...

When Emmanuel arrived inside these apartments, he immediately found the first unlocked door he was able to force open and made his way in there. What would he find in here that would be of any use (or was not totally destroyed or molded due to the amount of time it had been since this room was occupied)?

It did not take long for Emmanuel to set his eyes on a haphazardly opened package of batteries.

He was a little surprised to see it just strewn in the open like it was--Emmanuel always kept his batteries safe in a drawer as opposed to half-used and out in the open--but he would not complain. The batteries were scooped up and placed within his bag with little remark. These would be useful for them, considering how useless electronics were at this point.

For a moment, Emmanuel wondered if he should have regretted going into esports as opposed to something a little more physically useful in an apocalypse, but instead he spotted one of those infamous cans of Beefaroni. He was fairly sure everyone in Delta was obsessed with this particular canned soup, considering how often he was running into it as he looted these places. The can was gathered and placed in his bag nevertheless. Even if the same old got same old boring, they could always take it to their mysterious chef.

Finding little other room in his bag, Emmanuel decided to take what he had gathered and high-tail it out of there. He had no idea if there were infected lurking in that building anyway...