Around Town | Late Thursday Morning

[knife_bender]

Okay, well, it had been pretty well established that patrolling the town was useless, but what else were people like Diego supposed to do? It had been hammered in his head since birth to take action, even if the efforts were futile.

Which probably also explained Five's determination to stop the apocalypse even though he had nothing to go on.

So, yeah. Walking around town yet again. For some reason. Maybe he'd find a hole to jump in.

[For a few!]

Comments

[defenderofdesmoines]

After Annie's class -- during which she had felt completely stupid and useless -- what choice did she have but to join in on patrolling?

Besides, if she and Diego stuck together, Annie figured they'd at least...end up in a hole together, worst case. Right? (Which was also a comforting thought as far as Rey -- like Summer had said, at least she'd probably found John. That was...something.)

"We should get some rope." It sounded dumb but it wasn't like she had a lot of other, functional plans right now.

[knife_bender]

"For amateur spelunking?" he asked.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"So we can get back out if we find a hole," Annie said with a nod. "Though I don't know what we tie the other end to."

Considering that nearby buildings had been falling in, and all.

[knife_bender]

Diego made a vague grunt of agreement, though he had his doubts about that working. He wasn't about to shut down any of the few ideas people had.

"If there's a way to get out," he said. "But it's not a bad idea."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"And I still think we could dangle me in and I could send a blast down to try to see as far as I can," she added. "And then if we had a rope we could just yank me back out again and run."

That had been a dumb idea when she'd thought of it with Rey last week, and it had not gotten any better, as a plan.

[knife_bender]

"Sounds good." Look, he knew he was being kind of a sullen bitch, but it had been a long two-ish weeks with jack shit happening. Let's all just be happy he wasn't shooting down all the dumb ideas.

"How'd your class go?" He felt like if he had been sitting there watching Annie it would have made her self-conscious so he kept himself scarce while it was going on.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Like how you'd think teaching riding a bike over the internet would go." Annie's words were more sarcastic than her tone, which still strove for something like self-deprecating cheer.

Weirdly enough, having Diego be so realistic gloomy was sort of helpful? Trying to keep everyone's spirits up was something she could do, even if it was starting to become something of a strain after almost two weeks of this.

"I dunno, I figured they need something normal right now, but it felt sort of -- frivolous," she admitted.

[knife_bender]

"Everything feels frivolous," he said. "If this were anywhere else the town probably would be shut down by now."

But as he understood it these things happened sometimes, and people just kind of dealt with it? He kind of preferred man-eating candy canes because at least that gave him something to stab.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"We could go to New York," Annie offered quietly, not for the first time. "My apartment could hold a whole bunch of people if it needed to."

But she also knew that most of the people she'd want to evacuate with her would turn her down to work on the problem here. Present company included.

[grenadesandohana]

Steve was pretty sure that the raccoons that they'd interviewed at the station this morning were the ones they'd interviewed yesterday, only with fake mustaches and glasses and that he'd had to deal with that without Danny yelling about it and tossing his hands in the air and complaining was just...

Not his favorite thing. So he'd gone for a walk.

"Hey," he said with a tiny smile when he saw Diego. "Good to see you."

Steve didn't have many friends and some of them kept disappearing, which was not great for the ol' abandonment issues.

[knife_bender]

"Hey," Diego said. "How did the raccoon wrangling go?"

[grenadesandohana]

"One of them tried to bite Calvin through the armor," Steve said. "I'm pretty sure the whole thing is pointless."

[knife_bender]

"I bet it was funny though." They needed to get whatever joy they could during these times.

[grenadesandohana]

"Hilarious," Steve admitted, snickering. "Calvin did a little dance and everything."

[knife_bender]

"Well, there's a legit fear of rabies there," he said. "I don't blame him."

[grenadesandohana]

Steve nodded. "I think my booster's up to date but I should probably check, huh."

Eventually.

[knife_bender]

Diego would have to be dragged kicking and screaming to get a vaccination so you bet your ass all of his were way overdue. He'd rather get rabies.

"Of course the local raccoons are all drunks, maybe the alcohol made their mouths sterile."

[grenadesandohana]

"I'm not anxious to find out," Steve admitted. "That's what the Troopers are for."

It really wasn't, but sure, Steve.

"Anyway, we've learned a lot of rude raccoon gestures but nothing really useful. The raccoons say they don't even dig holes and we should talk to groundhogs or something?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"So if you fell down a hole," Annie said to Steve, casually (because the other option right now was panic, so how about forced-casual?) "and you had a rope, do you think you could climb out? Like how you climbed up to Rey's the morning after the Christmas party?"

[grenadesandohana]

"Depends how deep the hole is, but in general, yeah," Steve said. "Why?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Thinking about tying rope around all of us," Annie said, well aware of how stupid this plan was. "Like we're mountain climbers. Then we could maybe rapel out if we fell in?"

[grenadesandohana]

"Depends how fast the hole closes back up, too," Steve said. "I wish we had video footage of these things. I'm quick, but I don't know how quick. We trained going up and down helicopters under fire."

He pursed his lips. "Think we could hook the radio squirrels up with GoPros?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"That's not a bad idea," Annie said, eyes widening as she just went ahead and latched right onto this, because it was the first new idea she'd heard in days. "And then if we can get the footage from the squirrels -- or just, like, set it to upload automatically -- we can at least see what we're dealing with."

Because she'd accepted that as soon as one showed up, they'd all fall in, too.

[grenadesandohana]

"I think I have a couple back in the apartment," Steve said, and really, don't ask why, Annie. Steve was just paranoid that way. "Do you want to sweet talk the squirrels?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Probably better me than you or Diego," Annie said, practically. Also totally unsurprised that Steve had GoPros. Why wouldn't he? "We'll need a bunch of rum, probably?"