kore_logs | Santa Claus is coming to town

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Santa Claus is coming to town

Who: Secret Santa participants, but also EVERYONE!
Where: Town Hall
When: Evening of day 24
What: Present giving! The Secret Santa reveal, and anyone who wants to have a christmas party is welcome to join too!
Notess: Party style thread guys, so go nuts. No order, everything is chaos, tag to your hearts content, feel free to break off into separate threads, and no spiking the punch! Also I think she's sort of mentioned it to a bunch of people but want to do me some lovely favours and handwave the actual name drawing? I will backtag if people want but it seems a little pointless to thread that out.

There's another message on the network that morning from Anna, just audio again. It's about as garbled as her first one regarding the Secret Santa idea, but for anyone who is listening closely enough they'll make out a few details. Namely this evening, town hall, and bring your presents before she shuts it off.

She's spent the rest of the day trying to do what she can to make the place look nicer. She's hardly got Christmas decorations on tap, but she's done what she can with what she has all the same. There's paper snow flakes up around the place, some of the food from her house placed in bowls to make it more party-appropriate, and it's no fir but she has relocated a small tree from the edge of the woods and placed it in the hall. Barely decorated, not even the right kind of tree, it's the best she can do with the resources she's been given.

Now all there is to do is wait for people to come.

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The voice in the back of his head telling him this is a bad idea doesn't really register until after he opens the box. He's relieved, for a moment, when he finds that his suspicions were wrong, and it's just a pair of ugly mittens inside -- but something feels different, and he's not sure what.

She's looking for one of her presents to give someone when she sees Galen, and is he heads over with a smile to say hi. Things seem to be going well so far, she can suck away for a moment to say hello right?

"Galen!" She's all smiles and brightness, a pleasant contrast to her usual neutral-to-a-fault demeanour, "How are you?"

Her voice makes him look up from the weird, anonymous mitten gift, and when he sees her, he smiles.

"Hey," he... well, would say. Except nothing comes out, so he tries again. Nothing. Galen looks a little panicked, and his hand jumps up to his throat. What?

Anna frowns at his lack of response, and glances around quickly before touching his shoulder. Hopefully Galen doesn't notice any minor injuries he might have healing up nicely, but as he tries to speak again Anna just curses under her breath. Not at all subtle and it didn't even work.

"You can't speak?" State the obvious much? She doesn't know how to fix this kid of thing, so she scans the people around them for Dr Banner instead. He might be of more use. "Are you okay? It doesn't hurt, right? We should fin the doctor."

He does half notice the dull pain in his cheek going away, but he pretty much immediately forgets about it in trying not to panic. Where the fuck did his voice go? It's not even gone like laryngitis gone, it's just gone.

Galen shakes his head, then -- wait, no, nods. Ugh. He mouths an I feel fine, then looks down at the box in his hands, then back up at Anna. Okay, he mouths, eyes darting around the room for Bruce.

"Hey, don't worry, okay?" Sure, she's got no idea what's going on, and she's exhausted pretty much every chance of her helping in one shot, but she's damn good at keeping calm in a crisis at least. That's why she just smiles, gives his shoulder another gentle squeeze and nods in the direction that she's fairly sure she's seen Bruce recently.

"We'll figure out what's going on here. Just try to stay kind of calm."

Kind of calm. Kind of calm is something he can do. He managed to show up in this place without panicking too badly, so losing his voice should be less terrifying. Except somehow, it isn't.

Shit, he breathes, and rubs at his eyes. If Anna spots Bruce, he'll gladly follow. Meanwhile, he'll just close this box and consider the mittens the prime suspect. They're probably full of some kind of deadly voice-stealing mould, or something.

He's not completely freaking out on her, so that's something at least. Anna can work with this. It's the first time she's almost literally seen the change happen, which is why she thinks of Bruce first. After all, he might not be able to actually bring his voice back yet, but surely with observations and tests and all that jazz he'll be able to find a cure, right?

Ever the optimist, Anna keeps that reassuring smile fixed firmly on her face and loops her arm through Galen's. it's not like Tony, he's not blind, but she feels the need to do it all the same. If nothing else she can keep track of him as she winds through the people on their hunt for Doctor Banner.

"If its any consolation, it's not just you. Something's going on, I think it might be the people who brought us here. I don't know how it's actually happening yet, though."

Galen narrows his eyes. That's right, Tony had mentioned something about others being affected, but he thought it was just blindness. Maybe he's right about it being payback. ... Oh, fuck, maybe he shouldn't have had that water.

Fuck, he groans soundlessly, keeping close to Anna and keeping an eye out for Bruce. Maybe that's him, over by that wall.

It is Bruce, standing off to the side and holding onto an empty cup because he hasn't found a place to put it yet, and he's hit his introverted limit on friendly conversation for the moment. He's recharging his social batteries in the losers' corner, and when he sees people approaching him, he starts to cringe inwardly -- but their faces suggest something more serious than talking about looking for presents in random attics.

He smiles as they approach, holding his cup in front of him with both hands.

"Hi. Merry maybe Christmas. Everything okay?"

Anna makes a beeline for Bruce as soon as she sees him, and although he gets an apologetic smile as she approaches, she doesn't really want to waste time making small talk.

"Galen has just lost his voice," she jumps right into it, and though she's maintaining that smile and is the very definition of calm for Galen's sake, there's no masking the mild concern in her voice. "I think it might be the same thing that happened to Steve, maybe Tony too. But it just happened. I thought you'd be the person to see."

Galen waves awkwardly, attempting to make light of the situation, but his nervousness is apparent in his eyes. Hi, Doctor Banner, please to be miraculously finding a cure. To that end, he remembers that he's holding the sender-less box - the last thing he touched before this happened - and holds it out to Bruce, before deciding that that might not be a good idea, if there's something wrong with it, and points at it instead.

Then he just shrugs, hand going out to his side, and hopes this is making any sense at all.

Bruce starts to reach for the package too, automatically, but then he stops as soon as Galen points, and then the gears shift and click -- what happened to Tony, what happened to Steve.

And Blaine. And there's a package.

Frowning, Bruce hands his cup to Anna without really thinking about it, and he gestures for Galen to lower the package again.

"You got this, opened it, and lost your voice, am I right? When did this happen?"

He looks over at Anna, eyes narrowing. "Did you touch the package?"

Anna doesn't actually notice, or indeed care that much when the cup is passed off to her. She just takes it without protest and takes a small step backwards to let Bruce in closer. That's one of the benefits of having a distraction as big as random sense loss, if it could be called that.

"As far as I know he's the only one who's touched it," she says quickly, shaking her head as she looks at the package. She's not all that concerned for herself, since she's sure it won't actually have an effect on her like it has the people here, but for appearances sake she doesn't take it off of him. "Do you think that's what's doing it?"

Galen lowers the package so that Bruce can clearly see the mittens inside, and nods at his question. As for the when, he hooks a thumb back over his shoulder. Standing over there, just a few minutes ago.

His attention is drawn to Anna, and he chews nervously at his dry lower lip as she speaks. Unmarked packages making people mute and blind? This is a new level of weird. Hesitantly, he glances at Bruce and waits for his answer to this weird-ass question.

"Someone else got a present like this, and he went blind after opening it." Bruce follows Galen's gesture, and then frowns deeply. Whatever is being released when the present gets opened is pretty specific; it can't be airborne, and it must be touch, which means that they're dangerous. What if they can affect more than one person? It's not like he's eager to go testing that out on anyone.

"Does someone -- do you have actual gloves?" he asks Anna. "We should get this out of here, to the clinic. Unless you want to carry it." That one's to Galen. Not to be morbid, but hey, he's already mute, right?

This is good, at least. They're not exactly on the verge of answers but at least Bruce is willing to look into it. It's more than she can do at least, and when he asks about gloves she just shrugs.

"I don't have gloves, but well-" she pauses long enough to slip her jacket off of her shoulders, tugging her arms out and holding it out over her hands as she extends them out to Galen, nodding at the package. "Here, you've held onto that thing long enough. If I don't touch it I should be okay, right?"

It's a bit of a thin limb to go out on, but well she's still under the impression that it won't work on her, and if she's going to do anything else then she at least needs to help somehow.

Galen shrugs and mouths I can carry it, but Anna has already gone to the trouble of taking off her jacket, so he carefully places the box on top of her hands, then crosses his arms. He's totally willing to follow, if it'll help any; right now he's not sure what to do other than find excuses to distract himself from freaking out.

Bruce wants to argue, but then it's done and he decides to keep his mouth shut so as not to freak anyone out. Anna should be okay, right? Probably. Clearly length of contact doesn't seem to have an effect, so maybe if she doesn't touch it, she really will be okay. But he really has no idea. Fun, cool, good.

"Okay, let's go." He glances around for Tony, but then realizes what an idiot he is. Of course he can't wave to Tony to tell him he'll be right back, and if Tony could see, he wouldn't even have to do that at all. He'd call him, but wow, clingy Seeing Eye Bruce or what? So he just hopes there won't be an issue, and catches Steve's eye instead, and then leads them toward the doors.

"Sorry. Just making sure someone around here knows to keep an eye on one of the aforementioned blind people. And someone in my house is mute, too." Bruce's tone is brisk because he's upset that he doesn't know how to fix this, or even how it's happening.

Anna quickly wraps the jacket around the parcel to avoid any accidental contact. She's got no idea how long someone might have to touch it, if it is the parcels at all, and that's a risk she's not going to take with anyone else. Even if she did just willingly all but take it into her hands, that doesn't mean she's going to let anyone else take that chance.

"There's that many?" Her head turns sharply towards Bruce at that, and her own concern is evident. Her hopes that this has been a relatively isolated incident have pretty much been dashed, and if there's already another two out there then how many more could there be? How many more are coming? There's a list of priorities though, and right now Galen has to be number one. He's the most recent case that they have, and if they can figure out anything to do with him, perhaps they can help everyone. So she nods, slow and firm, and is every inch the epitome of her real identity as they walk out.

"What do we know about this so far? It affects the senses, it could have something to do with this package. How many times has this happened so far, do we know?"

Edited (I AM KING OF GREATNESS) 2012-12-30 22:22 (UTC)

Galen just follows them both, wishing he could properly add to the conversation, not that he knows any more than they do. He goes on the hope that they can figure something out together, though, and uses that to keep himself from panicking about the fact that his voice will be gone for god knows how long.

He shakes his head and tugs up the collar of his coat, following close behind between Anna and Bruce.

"There's been a few now, yeah," Bruce says grimly, and he steps out, holding the door for Anna and Galen. "They open the package and bam, something's gone. So far I've only seen the muteness and the blindness. The packages don't seem to be left by anyone in particular, so of course, we can guess who's leaving them."

He cuts his eyes at both of them. Talking about the scientists is even less fun now.

"Though why they would want to do this to us, who knows? They seem to be hitting people at random."

"Everything about this place has strange motives, I wouldn't put anything past whoever has dragged us here anymore." She's watching the parcel in her hands with a determined focus, careful not to let it come anywhere close to touching anyone. She can't keep adding to that list of people she needs to feel guilty about, it's too long already.

"If you ask me, it seems to be some kind of experiment. Maybe it's just cruel torture, but it seems too random for that. Maybe they're testing, or they want to see the reactions we all have."

Either way, they've got to do what they can to figure this out, and then to cure it.

An experiment. There's a nice thought. As he follows and listens, Galen wonders if these effects were targeted specifically at certain people; after all, he knows that losing his voice is likely to destroy everything he has going (well, mostly everything) if it doesn't get fixed. Hooo, no big deal.

He'd write down his thoughts on that suggestion, but he figures using paper just to write 'what the fuck' might be a bit of a waste.

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Santa Claus is coming to town

THE VOICELOSENING

ANGEL OF CONCERN....is not concerned yet

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AAH WHOOPS