exsiliumlogs | lights out!

. . .Eh? [You've lost him again.]

What are you going to do?

Turn into a cockroach and walk across the ceiling looking for a lock.

Eh!? A-are you serious??

Yep! Really serious. You're not afraid of bugs or anything, are you?

( She pitches her tone as curious -- and concerned. No need to get squashed in the darkness because she hit a bug phobia! )

No- um, no, it's fine! [IS IT?? He's never met anyone who could turn into a bug, it's a bit of a shock.

But

it's true that an insect would probably be better at. crawling along the ceiling than him.]

If you'd like to...!

Won't hurt to try, right? Give me a minute, I'll let you know when I'm ready!

( It's a good thing that in total darkness, the silent process of morphing can't create it's own sounds by the visual cues of how disastrously wrong it all looks. Within the minute and some she promises, Collette has gone from girl in her clothes in a wheelchair to bug buried in clothes and crawling out toward the edge of the chair. )

< All changed! Okay, heading for the ground first. No sudden urges to tap-dance allowed! >

[Voice in his head VOICE IN HIS HEAD

It's disconcerting!!, but she had warned him, so he shan't complain. The quiet rustle of cloth in the otherwise silent elevator is equally freaky. Did she really become a cockroach, is this a prank or a trick IS THIS REAL LIFE. He desperately wishes he could see right now.]

I'll stand still!

< Thank you! >

( She can still hear/feel vibrations coming from Allen, but none of the throbbing, heavy ones of danger that tend to make her cockroach mind go haywire in a search for safety.

It likes this place. Dark, therefore difficult to find. Nothing much to eat, but plenty of interesting small movements in what might have otherwise been still air.

Shooting down the chair and plopping on the floor, Collette is off at top speed for the wall. Whatever one she hits, she follows to the corner, scaling upward with the surety of feet that found invisible footholds to pull a streamlined body up, up, up and away!

Into a light fixture, and a grating beyond it. She can't really walk on the ceiling, but careful maneuvering around the top of the wall where it joins to the ceiling. She keeps a running commentary for Allen's sake. )

< Okay, on the floor! Looking for the wall now. Geez, it's amazing what you can see without seeing anything! Oh, oh, that's the wall, that's definitely a wall. I'll look for a corner nex-- ha! Found it! Gotta climb up and see what I can feel out at the top. >

( She pauses in her chatter. )

< Hey, what's your name? >

[This is so. weird.

He can't see her, and he can't hear anything except his own breathing and the voice in his head. Describing her trek across the elevator from a bug's-eye-view.

It's sort of giving him the creepy-crawlies, somehow.

--The question throws him off.]

Uh- um, Allen. My name is Allen Walker.

What's yours?

< Zoom~ oh -- ah, nice to meet you, Allen! I'm Collette. When I'm not totally bugging out on you, I'm usually pretty fun to hang around. Speaking of hanging, I think I've found something. Are you any good at climbing? >

( using her antennae and the tiny footholds her feet had latched on to when she hit the upper corner, Collette has edged around to where she recalls seeing something during a maintenance visit in past months. )

< I think if you can get the light cover down, there's a service door up here! Speaking of, you don't happen to be a theif, do you? Or really gifted with picking locks? >

Nice... to meet you, Collette.

[He glances around the elevator, trying to recall what the interior looked like, and how high the ceiling was. He's not entirely sure he could simply climb to the ceiling and remove a light cover, blind like this, but, well, that's where superpowers come in handy.]

I can make it up there. And if there's a lock, I could... break it.

< I was going to say you could use my chair to help reach, if you need it, but woah. What kind of strong are you? You can break locks on ceilings like it's easy as pie? Oh! Yeah, definitely found it. Back left corner, I think? Yeah, back left corner, past the light fixture, this is definitely a service door! >

I could definitely break it. Um... [He holds his hands out and starts inching, carefully, towards the back left corner. What he thinks is the back left corner, anyway.]

Thank you for finding it! Although you should move out of the way now, I think.

< One sec, let me scoot! >

( Jetting for the far corner, she braced herself. )

< Ready when you are, Allen! >

All right!

[With a (tragically brief) flash of light, Allen activates his claw-and-cape combo. From his right sleeve, he extends a ribbon with clings to the surface of the ceiling, and he pulls himself up like a spider on a thread, holding himself above the ground as he feels along the light fixture...

and then just starts tearing the covering off and slicing through wiring and metal with his claw, flinging chunks of elevator at the floor as he opens a service-door-sized hole in the ceiling.

He's acutely aware that he may end up footing the bill for damages, but you gotta do what you gotta do. And that lock has been thoroughly picked.]

...There's a way out now!

( There's this thing. This thing about cockroaches. In addition to being gross and the nightmare of apartment livers everywhere, they're very tuned in to vibrations.

Which means Allen has just played percussion through all of Collette's body, to the point where she's fallen down and skittered madly around the bottom, dodging falling debris, until she's parked under one of her own wheels. She keeps her mental calls to herself, figuring AAAAAH and WHAT WAS THAT and THIS IS NOT A LOCK PICKING, IT'S A DEMOLITION, MAN! wouldn't be appreciated by Allen.

She has trouble calming down what worked as her heart, but she mostly recognizes when he's talking to her and not sending her senses into overdrive. )

< Gee, is there any lock left, Al? >

[Meanwhile, he's poking his head out through the hole he'd carved, entirely oblivious to her distress. Alas, the elevator shaft is pitch black as well.]

Er. Probably... not.

The Initiative might be cross with me, but it's more important that we make it out!

( Collette shakes her little body off, antennae waving around as she moved along the course of her wheel. )

< Okay, okay! Think you can do that again once we're up the shaft, 'cause I'm not so sure the doors are going to be open. Wait... say, Allen, are you afraid of heights? >

( That's sure be awkward between floors. He had to get to the doors of the floor above and cut through them with whatever crazy weapon or moves he had used on the ceiling here! )

Heights aren't a problem.

[But before he moves,] Oh, but your wheelchair! I can bring that with me. [Might be slightly unwieldy, but they can't leave that behind, can they?]

< Or you could carry me out in morph. Really, we can't have the whole place be down forever, and then what'll I do? We're not on the first floor. Are you going to carry it all the way downstairs? What about when I want to come back up? I live on the fourth floor! >

( She sounds amused as she asks her questions. None of it seems all that practical to her! Preferable, in a big way, but not practical, and she could do practical when it was better suited to the situation. )

[Nonplussed,] I can carry you and the wheelchair out, it won't be a problem. Otherwise, it might be stuck in here for a while.

And I could take it wherever you'd like.

[IT SEEMS IMPORTANT! He crawls out through the ceiling entirely, and then pokes his head back down, holding out his right arm and slinging white ribbons down into the elevator cab, trying to latch onto the chair. In the dark like this, it takes a few tries before he catches it, the Innocence winding itself tight around an armrest.

And he starts hauling it up! Hoping that it fits through the ceiling...]

< Woah! Woah! Hang on, I've gotta catch my ride! >

( Collette propelled her little body like the tiny, demonic vessel it was oof the ground into the spokes of the wheel itself. Clinging and supporting herself through tension, she told herself to trust whatever Allen was doing would get them all out of this okay.

The guy ripped through a ceiling, he was like Rambo, RoboCop, and and... and James Bond all in one!

Only more awkward, and less tech savy. )

Just keep telling me what you're doing before you do it! I'm back in one of the wheels of the chair. The right one? No, maybe the other right. >

[RIGHT, SHE'S an easily squishable bug...]

Oh-! I'm sorry! I'm lifting it up now!

[So he starts yaaaaanking the chair up towards the hole he'd made, bracing himself with his claws digging into the wall of the elevator shaft. Once it's within reach, he grabs one of the handles properly with his right hand and tries to angle the chair in such a way that he can wrench it up all the way. Takes some grappling and jockeying, but he finally does negotiate it through, without breaking the poor thing.]

Okay... [Deep breath.] Are you still all right?

( It's been jarring, far more than she has words for, but her tone of mental voice is still cheery and chipper when she replies to his inquiry. )

< Hanging on a moment here with you! >

( Which was one hell of a jumbled way of saying she was still doing okay. )

< Maybe leave the chair here when you look for the nearest door? Pry them open, less tearing through steel and stuff? >

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im so sorry pol