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Date & Time: Backdated to evening of 2/12
Location: Back in the armory again.
Characters: Bariyan e Kodhi (

stonefaith), Problem Sleuth (

armistyx)
Summary: Too much alcohol and too many sharp pointy things all together in one place. [Completed: Bariyan and Sleuth swordfight and Sleuth cuts Bariyan's left arm off. Bariyan laughs, A LOT. It's stupid.]
Warnings: STUPIDITY, with a generous dose of DRUNKEN AMPUTATION

Okay, so he's a little bit drunk.

What.

Is that even fucking possible? He's a, a, a zombie, for heaven's sake, you can't, you can't get a corpse drunk. That's not physically possible. Of course it's also not physically possible for a corpse to walk and talk and start having an existential crisis courtesy of cheap wine but, well, there you have it.

He'd wandered back to the armory. Drinking had made him remember that there were all sorts of interesting things back in the armory that he hadn't the time or inclination to look at when they'd first dragged him through, or even when he'd gone in again with Artika. And, hell, he has nothing better to do right now.

But instead of looking, Bariyan finds the nearest wall to lean up against. Then he takes another drink from his bottle. And gets depressed. Zombie. Him. Dead and cold and so on, stuck in a completely new universe which he doesn't know about and can't get out of and so on, home universe is even shittier than and filled with unpleasant people and so on, and...

Bariyan scowls at nothing. Fuck this line of thought.

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Hell, he missed being this drunk.

He wasn't exactly a member of law enforcement, but with cops that crooked he may as well be--that was Dame's reasoning, anyway, and that meant laying off the sauce.

It was worth it, of course. Dame knew best. Made the early-morning phone calls more tolerable, if nothing else. Hung up a full five seconds later, on average.

Now, though? This shit's nothing if not a hell of a reason to drink. And it just so happens, here? It's legal as a lined pad of paper.

He's not sure where he's going. There's a little side door here, marked "ARMORY"--can't see much through the window--but it's giving him trouble. Slippery knob. He settles instead for kicking on the body of it and shouting.

"Hey! Anybody home?"

Bariyan starts and nearly drops his bottle when he hears the knocking. Ye gods, that's loud.

"Yeah, yeah, hold on--" Bariyan walks over to the source of the noise and, after a few tries, manages to get the door open.

He squints blearily at the man behind it. He's not entirely sure what he's looking at. There's a hat involved somewhere in all that blurriness. Bariyan, impaired, has fewer manners than ever, and so he continues to stand there and stare at Sleuth and finally raises his bottle to drink again. Still staring.

Finally he says, "What."

Sleuth's honestly surprised that the door actually opens; when it does, though, he grins up at his host like the cat that got the cream.

"Howdy, scarecrow."

He watches as Bariyan takes a swig. Yes, good--more drinking, that's something he'll drink to--and moves his own bottle to clink them together in a clumsy toast.

"Birds of a feather," he tries to say. It sounds more like "hhblalcohol."

Bariyan's not expecting the toast so when it comes, he clumsily tries to avoid it and Sleuth manages to toast Bariyan's forearm instead. Whoops. Also, he has no idea what Sleuth just said.

"All right. Lovely. I'm drunk, you're-- whatever, come on in." Bariyan steps back to allow Sleuth into the armory.

He idly wonders how many people are drunk right now, in this hold. There'd been a lot of kids in that room so Bariyan hopes that they're not drunk, at least, but as for everyone else... What better way to cope?

"You've got the right idea, friend," Bariyan says, waving a hand at Sleuth.

Good enough. Sleuth takes another pull from the bottle and slides in past Bariyan.

"Hell, what else is there to do?" Besides research, maybe. Or sleep. He very vaguely recalls the promise of combat training tomorrow. So there's lots else to do, but Sleuth thinks he's deserved a little celebratory excess.

"Oh, hey!" He takes a step back, then gives Bariyan a wide-eyed look. "We're in the goddamn artillery. Would you look at all this hardware?" He leans forward and has a good old admire at the guns. No touching, though. It'd be awfully rude to leave 'em all innocuous for the next guy. "What'd they set you up with, pal?"

Edited 2012-02-18 08:38 (UTC)

"Nothin'," Bariyan says, "Didn't need any of it."

That's a bit of a gloss, there. More like: Bariyan was never any good with swords, only passable at bow-and-arrow, has about zero experience experience with guns, and as for any other weapon -- well, let's just say that at any given time, there's an 80% chance that he'll accidentally hit himself in the face with it.

"What about you?" Bariyan squints at Sleuth and tries to make a guess. Er... rapier?

Sleuth regards him for a moment, then shrugs. "Whatever, buddy. Just don't pull my guts out with your brain."

He fishes around in his breast pocket and pulls out a bundled handkerchief. In his palm the corners fall away to reveal a large, brass key. He holds it up without touching it.

"Key." He frowns a little, hazily. "I got...a condition."

Bariyan gives the key a bleary stare. Well. It's reassuring to know that if they are all little soldiers in some big war and he's gotta fight alongside these people, one of his brothers is going to be armed with a piece of dull metal.

"Well... it's... big. For a key. I guess." He keeps staring, like he's hoping that it'll transform into something slightly more impressive if he just stares long enough.

Yeah. 'It's big'. That's about all he's got.

Bariyan fills in the silence by drinking more.

Sleuth rewraps the key and tucks it back into his pocket. "Damn good key," he agrees. "Unlocks all the bad guy... floodgates. That keep their... liquids inside..." It occurs to him that he doesn't quite remember who they're going to fight, and that he oughtn't try to do metaphors when he's drunk because they always sound very gay. He squints. "Not like... hmmng."

Maybe a demonstration, then. Sleuth turns to a table of crowbars and fire irons. He chooses one at random, picks it up — and clicks the end of it with the pad of his thumb to extend the ballpoint towards Bariyan. "Where should I sign?"

Even drunk, Bariyan thinks it's completely out of the ordinary for an iron to suddenly become a ballpoint pen. He blinks. What the hell did he just see? What did-- All right, Bariyan, calm down, this isn't hard, it can only be one of two simple explanations. Either alcohol fucks him up bad when he's undead, or: magic.

"Uh..." Bariyan looks around, sees no surface for signing, and therefore extends his left arm instead. "Here?"

It doesn't even occur to Bariyan that turning Sleuth down is an option.

Sleuth grabs Bariyan's hand and scribbles something on it with the pen before letting go.

He sets the pen back down on the table, where it resumes existence as a poker. "Capisce?"

He's sure that explains everything.

Bariyan looks at his arm, looks at the poker, looks at Sleuth, looks back at his arm, rubs at the ink, and settles for okay that is a thing that just happened. Take another shot, Bariyan. Well, another drink, anyway.

"Er, sure." Bariyan stares at the poker again. What the hell, might as well ask the question. "Wasn't that... just a pen?"

Sleuth gives him a bleary look. A dim bulb.

"Hard to explain," he says. It isn't, really, but he'd never had to explain it before. "Hey! I'll show ya where I chose from. Completely useless table, don't think anyone else even touched it."

He upends his bottle one last time and leaves it empty on the table by the crowbars, then beckons Bariyan to follow him towards the far side of the room.

Edited 2012-02-19 03:57 (UTC)

Bariyan follows along curiously and wonders what sort of man would, when presented with a room full of weapons, go for a brass key. Of course, Bariyan could probably ask the same question of himself, but he's different.

"Might want to be careful about that bottle over there," Bariyan says, glancing back. "Someone could, could uh, use it as a weapon. I guess."

Like the room isn't full of actual weapons. But hey, Bariyan can think of people who'd go straight for the bottle, even if empty.

Sleuth turns and regards Bariyan with a level stare. Eventually, dawn breaks.

"You're a funny guy, Scarecrow." He grins sloppily.

For the first time, the stitches catch his eye. "Nice duds." He gestures at his own throat and maneuvers around a shelf of what look like laser guns. "You look like a friend'a mine."

Edited 2012-02-19 04:55 (UTC)

"I do? That's very unfortunate. For them." Bariyan finishes off his bottle and, somewhat inanely and very tipsily adds: "Tell them I'm, I'm sorry for their loss."

Bariyan edges around the laser guns too, looking at them and not recognizing what they are at all. He thinks about picking one up -- and then sober Bariyan wakes up briefly to kick him in the shins.

Nope. Not a good idea.

"He got better." Sleuth eyes him again. "It don't look that bad. You're movin' a hell of a lot faster than he was, at least."

That sounds like a euphemism for he was in final negotiations for the farm—wait, damn, that's two euphemisms—but Sleuth's being literal; Tootsie Roll Pickle Inspector was a slow piece of shit.

"Here it is." Sleuth stops at a long table flush against the wall and gives one of its legs a good kick. It rattles the items on top—useless bric-a-brac, for the most part, except for one or two things in the vague neighborhood of "pointy". A slinky flops to its side, impotently.

Bariyan watches the slinky. Then he watches the other objects on the table. None of them are terribly impressive looking. He looks across the room, spots: a greatsword, a mace, a battleaxe, some vaguely gun-shaped thing. Lots of vaguely gun-shaped things. He looks back at Sleuth's table. The items look even less impressive now.

He picks up the slinky, and slides it back into place.

"Er." Bariyan looks at his bottle. Nope. Still empty. He goes back to the conversation. "Why? ...Why anything from this table?"

Sleuth digs around in his coat pocket and pulls out one flask, freshly filled as of an hour ago. He screws off the lid to take a drink, and then offers it to Bariyan.

"Okay," he says, slurring his words only a little. "So. There's this...thing." He stares at his fingers. His head hurts, a little, having to explain things that just are. It's like describing colors to blind man, if he and the blind man were both dead drunk. "It just doesn't...do. Those," he gestures, sweeping and clumsy, to the roomful of swords and guns, "aren't anything. Can't use 'em. Just tables'a pens and can-openers." It's like someone's asked him to explain why he's not drawing blood with a watergun.

"This, though," and he turns back to his table, "I can work with." He picks up the slinky; it melts and uncoils in his hands into a garrote.

Magic. Got it. What a good and common explanation for everything that Bariyan's seen and heard here so far.

"So... normal objects turn into weapons for you, and weapons turn useless," Bariyan says. What a weird power. Useful, though. You could get past so much security that way.

"Can you weaponize anything?" Bariyan gestures at the rest of the items on the table.

Sleuth wrinkles his nose. "That's a gist, I guess. And...not anything. I mean it ain't exactly voluntary. Don't want my cornflakes turnin' to buckshot in my throat like a crazed fuckin' Midas. Don't ask me about the finer mechanics, I got no clue."

He walks along the table until something catches his eye. "Haha! Would you look at that? I had one just like this, not too long ago."

He plucks up a feathered quill from where a quiver of them sit in an inkpot, then stumbles forward a couple steps at the sudden weight of the broadsword in his hands.

Bariyan arches an eyebrow at the sudden broadsword. All right, he takes back all his initial reservations about Sleuth's choice of weapon. Sure, pick the key, not a problem when you can turn it into a god damn... whatever it turns into.

"Heh! Very nice," Bariyan says, giving Sleuth a thumbs-up for the sword. He's definitely impressed. Maybe slightly drunkenly impressed, but impressed nevertheless.

Sleuth gives it a couple practice swings. "Hell! I kinda missed this."

He grins over at Bariyan, and jabs the swordtip at the melee section of the room. "What say we have us an altercation?"

Whoops, there's sober Bariyan kicking in again. Hey, remember how you weren't supposed to pick up that gun because you're slightly drunk, or at least really good at thinking and acting like you're drunk? You probably shouldn't pick up the nearest sword for that exact same reason-- oh, you stupid son of a-- no put that down--

"Sure," Bariyan says, and he is definitely picking up the nearest sword. Hey, he could use the practice, right? Yes. Definitely. Right. Good idea. Totally.

He lets go of his empty bottle, and slides away towards the center of the armory for more space.

"Right," says Sleuth, leveling the sword in front of him with both hands. "I'm a...shit, United...Resistance? Fuck it, whatever we are. You're..." Here Sleuth gives up the ghost. "You're Scarecrow."

Sleuth takes a step forward and swings with both arms, sloppy and hard, towards Bariyan's sword.

Bariyan swings his sword clumsily and somehow succeeds in knocking Sleuth's blow away. The impact causes him to lose his grip on his blade, though. Whoops. He staggers back from it so that it won't stab him in the foot, then swoops back down to pick it up.

"That didn't happen," he insists, pointing his sword at Sleuth as dramatically as possible. Then he sort of steps forwards and jabs the blade awkwardly in the other's direction.

Sleuth does a graceless twist and hops back, bumping into a moving rack of what might be tuning forks. He keeps trying to hold the sword one-handed and only remembers that he can't when he's already off-balance. It's with one of these clumsy movements he ends up, mostly accidentally, stumble-charging towards Bariyan's legs.

Seeing as Sleuth avoids the attack entirely, Bariyan loses his balance and stumbles forwards three steps in order to regain it. He swings back around, loses sight of Sleuth as he gets distracted by the tuning forks (what? why?), catches sight of him again, and just barely swings his sword down in time to block Sleuth's next swing. But the angle is awkward, so Bariyan twists back away as quick as possible.

Man, fuck swordfighting. That shit's hard.

Bariyan's blow knocks the sword right out of Sleuth's hands. It clatters on the floor and skitters away as a quill again; Sleuth clambers after it, still off-balance, and snatches it up by the feather.

"Shit!" He drops it again and presses his bleeding palm into the floor. This time he lifts the quill by the pointy part—counter-fuckin'-intuitive—and now he has to wield it one-handed. He throws all his weight behind the sword, pushing it straight up and using its momentum to get back on his feet running. Fuck, it's wobbly as hell; he can't hold it up like this, and—oh, shit, Bariyan's closer than he thought he was. The sword falls forward, straight for the other man's raised arm.

Bariyan's too close and too slow to avoid the inadvertent attack.

He doesn't feel it at first. He certainly sees it, though. How weird and interesting, what's going on, is that blade going clean through-- oh yes. Yes it is. There we go.

All in all, it's a very clean amputation. Probably because there's no blood.

The sudden change in weight distribution causes Bariyan to reel backwards. He jams the point of his own sword -- held in his only remaining hand -- right into the ground to stop himself from falling over, and leans on it for support. And from there, he continues to stare down at his left arm like he has no idea what it is. Or how to react to it.

"Uh." Bariyan looks down at the other half of his arm, the bit that's still attached to him. "Well, son of a bitch."

Sleuth doesn't even try to control the sword, now; he just lets it fall from his hand. The first thing he thinks is, hah! this thing is sharp as hell. The second: he sure isn't bleedin' as much as you'd think.

The third, he says aloud.

"Holy mother of god!"

Sleuth clutches his hair, knocking his hat off sideways and leaving a smear of blood on his temple. "Buddy, Scarecrow, your arm! Oh holy shit you're gonna die and I'm gonna be fuckin'—executed or somethin'—fuck I need a drink. Jesus Mary and Joseph. What should I do? Are you—okay? Should I go get a doctor?"

He stares at the arm like he can imagine it back into place.

Bariyan looks at Sleuth blankly, waits until he's done talking, and only then starts laughing. He's not entirely sure why.

"N-no hold on, you're fine-- I'm fine--" Bariyan puts the sword down, stands on his own two feet, and awkwardly brushes himself off with one hand.

All right. So he's been stabbed, shot, and cut more times than he can count, and all of those injuries heal overnight. But a straight amputation? That he doesn't know about. Which could be awkward. He's obviously not going to die and the cut doesn't hurt at all but all the same, he'd like to have two working arms.

"I think... yeah... doctor," Bariyan says. He looks back at his arm on the floor and snorts with laughter again, very unattractively.

Sleuth lets go of his hair, but doesn't stop feeling—or looking—half ill.

"Doctor. Sounds—good." Sleuth shifts his weight, hesitates, and then leans over. Goddamn, he wishes he'd cut off some sleeve, too. This is weird. As it is, he grabs the arm by the middle and throws it on his shoulder, recoiling a little when the thumb brushes his ear. He scoops up his hat, too, and holds it between two of his own fingers.

He looks again at Bariyan, neck craned to avoid too much... contact. "Jesus Christ. You're... definitely not gonna keel over?"

"Nah I'm fine and... are you sure you... don't want me to carry that..." Bariyan frowns. It's his arm, after all. Or is it? That's... that's arguable. Maybe it's technically Sleuth's now. It could be like, he cut it off, so it's his arm now? Or... something.

But Bariyan looks at Sleuth carrying his arm, takes note of how incredibly uncomfortable Sleuth looks, and just laughs. Again. Oh gods this is too funny. He's going to die. And he really needs another drink.

"Doctor," Bariyan says, between guffaws, "right. I think-- maybe-- I might know one."

Sleuth gives him a desperate look. He would like nothing more than for Bariyan to carry his own damn arm. He shrugs it off his shoulder and holds it out by the middle.

As an afterthought, and a sort of thank-you, he wordlessly holds out the flask. Wait—he probably should have—he pulls back to unscrew it, first, then offers it to Bariyan.

"Lead the way," Sleuth says, weakly. He jams his hat back on his head.

Bariyan takes his own arm back with considerably less queasiness. He gives it a good stare, and goes pffffff.

When he sees the flask, though, he's faced with a dilemma. Aw. Damn. Yes he needs that drink, no he doesn't have enough hands for this. His solution is to sort of awkwardly wedge his amputated arm underneath his left armpit, and then take the flask with his right hand. He drinks about half of it in one long go.

"All right," Bariyan says, when he's done and feeling considerably better. "Doctor's."

He sets off. He doesn't give Sleuth his flask back.

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