Logs:Gentryfication: A Doll, A Volcano, Some Lights

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Cast

Mearcstapa and Spider as Doll Wood with DadHoc as Peter Wood. Part of Plot: Gentryfication

Setting

Summer Hollow, Doll & Peter's Cottage

Log

He begins to sort through the stack of paperwork, looking at the papers carefully, looking for any hidden marks or hints of personal code that might be on them. "I'd say prone to hoarding tendancies--though I don't know if that's out of an attempt to occlude important data, or due to a Frailty. Signal to noise ratio--we're not intended to find the important stuff in the bullshit, but I bet Robin had some method to."

Screeech. It is the tiniest of screeches, indeed, and that kiss makes Doll's glass eyes light up from within, like someone stuck a flashlight against the back of her head. "Thank you, Peter, I love you very much." She looks back at the papers, and just sort of sighs. "I did find one person who I could confirm she had done the identification for, only a couple of months ago, but I do not know how to pronounce this name." A folder with ASBOLUS written on it is handed over, inside the paperwork for one 'Christopher Martinnson.'

"If you have an idea on how to sort this, I would be very happy to hear it. I have been looking at it all day and mostly it is just her sending letters about nothing to people in ... Baltimore... Dover... New York... Vermont... Virginia... They are very boring and talk about absolutely nothing."

"And yes, Peter. We are going to kill her. But not colloquially. We are going to kill her really."

"Actual factual," Peter agrees with a nod of his mountainous head. "I had a friend-- a southie back in beantown --who let us all know she was trans. So we worked together and pooled our money and got her a lawyer. Did the whole name change and all that. And I bet it's a bit like that, you know? What she was doing? Point being, my friend had a fire. Lost some of her documents, so we went back and was able to get the filed forms from the county." Peter scratches at his chin as he says this, "I only bring it up, cos the shit that's in front of youse might not be what's actually got filed. Especially if she was a two faced lying jockstrap of a person looking to hurt us."

"Asbolus." He pronounces the name for Doll. Not, like, slowly enunciating it, just offering it if she wants it. "As for the letters, those could also be coded messages. There might be a ring of bridge burners in nearby Freeholds, for all we know. We should keep those, definitely, and try to sort them for a code. Note the names, any recurring themes."

Asbolus's folder is put down beside him, and he looks up at Peter. "She was a two-faced lying jockstrap of a person, but her work's held up this long, so at least some of it has to be good enough. I'm more worried about her somehow yanking the plug on people. Or tracking them down to the apartments she got for them."

"Well, you can have those. I do not want them. It is too much mess, and I am not any good at figuring out hidden motivations. People ought to say what they mean, it wastes way too much time to not say what you mean. Makes me angry." Doll's Mantle -- not inconsiderable, but not Peter's -- flares briefly. It's got the scent of summer campfire smoke and marshmallows, the sound of crickets chirping.

"Oh, that would be bad. Do you think that we should move people into the Hollows? Or ... I think I have some money in the budget to put people up in Hotels. No one has gotten arrested in a bar fight lately."

"I think that...if we show that we're scrambling, put out a call for people who had IDs made by her, we'll let her know that's something we're worried about. Like...she's the opposite of you, she's not going to say what she means, she's thinking like a snake and a sneak and a piece of shit. I don't want to give her the idea if she's still in her own hidey survival mode right now. But keeping money on hand in case we end up needing to grease palms, that's probably a good idea." He takes a breath, looking through the stack of paperwork she'd first given him.

Peter watches the other two be thinky sleuthy types and slowly begins to look more and more like the side of a volcanic mountain than a person. Albeit a mountainside that is wearing a pink shirt and claiming to be the mean one. The smoke rising from his eyes grows dark and thick and the light in them winks out. Like he's shut his eyes or similar. Not that they appear shut, or anything. "I'll be here if you need anything sweared at."

"That is very true, and you are highly intelligent to say so, Mearcstapa," Doll agrees firmly, turning over papers and shoving a pile of them at Mearc. "I think this one has some files in it. A second set of eyes, please. I am starting to get a big headache. But still, we should have our options open. I will put up a notice that I can be contacted at any time if people need to be gotten a hotel room for a safe place to sleep. I know sometimes some of the new kids will sleep in their cars from stubbornness. No one should be doing that right now." When Peter starts to settle like the old volcano he is, she leans over and kisses his hand. Another little screeeech of porcelain against granite.

"I'm a little more used to thinking like a sneak. I don't like that I can, always." He continues to sift through paperwork, putting Gallowglass's folder on top of Asbolus's. "But if it can be used to help people now, then it's worth it. Also, if they're sleeping in their cars out of pride, we could, like...make it clear we're not going to hold a favor over them by asking them to help sort the paperwork we've got. Not to read into it, but just to make piles. Letters, IDs made, other. That would be a way to use one potential problem to solve another. Right? Though the question of how much we trust them with the paperwork is a thing. Maybe if one of us is in here, working on the stuff that's already sorted and supervising?"

"I can spin the kids up housing on the quad no problem. And I was a union carpenter for a long time back in Boston. If it comes to putting up frames in the really real world, that is." The embers in one of his eyes briefly gutter back to life, turning the black smoke to gray as the flames curl up his forehead again. "Call it sleepaway camp with Uncle Pete. We can do arts and crafts, a hike where the vegetation tries to eat you, a talent show, and the food will be awful. Just like the real deal! I can teach everyone the Bosstones and Dropkick Murphys for sing-along."(edited)

She leans over, squinting at the folder. "Peter, I think this is one of yours. 'Gallowglass'. That is the one you gave away your flower to." It might sound like an accusation. "The one that I made special." Yep, Peter got in trouble for that. A very little, at least. The kind of little bit of marital trouble that never seems to die. "Anyway, I guess we should tell him?" And then she swivels her head to look at Mearcstapa, her glass eyes sparkling. "Oh, that seems like a good idea to me, but I am not very sneaky. You are used to thinking sneakier, and maybe that's a good idea if you think so!"

She stops and looks at Peter for a long moment. "Are you teasing me or are you serious, Peter Wood?"

"I am always serious about the Dropkick Murphys, Doll," Peter assures her. "I got fuckall else to do, sitting on my goddamn hands, twiddling my dick."

"One of these nights while Sturm's being emergency mom for my guards, I will have to come to sleepaway camp. My mom made me go to scout camp as a kid, but none of the other kids liked me much. And yeah, Gallowglass is Summer, and should probably be informed. I have his phone number, if you want it to do that, or I can reach out."

"He's a good kid, that Gal. Got my eye on him. He's been doing some good shit out past the wire. I can take care of notifying him, if youse like." Peter, ever the kind facilitator. "And fuck, yeah. Come to camp. I'll get fuckin' s'mores and shit. Hot dogs! We can tell spooky stories by camp fire. It'll be great. Anything to get the kids off the streets, man. Ain't safe." His eye winks out and the smoke begins to pour black and acrid again.

She stares at Peter for a moment when he doesn't rise to her pushing at him at the needles, and then makes an exaggerated 'hmph' noise, going back to opening the folders in an exaggerated way. That's about as indirect as Doll Wood gets, apparently, and only with Peter. "Well, then you should tell him, yes. He should be careful not to get arrested or anything, because if he comes near the police, who we hate because they are bad and class traitors, maybe his identification will cause him problems."

"Which is a potential risk, for Gallowglass, he's got some temper to him, and he's been working under the table for a tattoo shop." He nods. "Asbolus, I can talk to. Depending on what he wants to do, we could even spin him up a new-new identity that'll suit what he wants to do. I know he was thinking of becoming a private eye or something."

"Well, of course he has some temper to him, he's Summer, you can't do one without the other, really. It would be silly." Doll stretches her arms up over her head, and there's a stretching sound like a bunch of rubber bands all getting pulled at once. (That's what's happening.) "Oh my goodness. I think we have found them all, at least for now. Maybe Lumi will bring me more papers later." Since not everyone's been online since the call went up for broken IDs. "Probably it is a good idea to get everyone whole new identifications, yes. Honestly it is probably not a bad idea to look and see if anyone has been messing with any of our identifications that are sneaky and faked."

The jagged rocky line in Peter's face that would, on a normal face, describe a mouth? It crooks up just a bit at the corners with a crackle of stone and a brief flare of magma under the surface. That, in response to the 'hmmph' Doll made. "I'll tell 'im." With that, Peter's eyes both flare to life and he slowly rolls up to his feet with several loud cracks of rock and a sudden wash of heat and light as his body adjusts to no longer being sedentary. He lumbers back to the door in his bare feet to attempt squeezing out the door again without taking the wall off with him. "Gotta make a phone call, though, to do that."


"Right. Please set aside the letters for me, Doll. I'd like to make a separate deep-dive of those later. But IDs first. Those are immediate danger." He pauses in his sorting to watch Peter move across the room to the door, his freckles warming. "Thank you, Peter."

She starts stacking up all of the folders, neatly, in a box. "Okay, Peter. Thank you for doing that task. Even though it is part of your assigned duties, I am thanking you anyway, because that is how people know that we appreciate them." Doll's vocal inflections are smooth and perfect, the Mid-Atlantic Golden Hollywood manner of speaking, as if she's reading the news. "I will see you in a moment, in both the figurative and literal sense." Her head turns toward Mearcstapa, and she pushes her dark hair back over her shoulder with one porcelain hand. "I think you will do a good job of being Scrivener. I am good at not getting bored of paperwork, which is why I am Quartermaster. But you can think sideways."

He nods. "Your determination and willingness to plough through the paperwork is important. I think we're going to make a good team together. Especially because we don't bullshit. That makes things quicker."

She doesn't so much rise to her feet as unfold from the ground in a strangely graceful motion for all the ceramic limbs it involves -- like watching a marionette gracefully rise, its strings in the hands of a masterful puppeteer. Doll extends one of her slim, warm hands out to him. "I believe this is also the case, and will believe it until I am given evidence which suggests otherwise. The social contract says I should offer you my hand to shake as a gesture that this interaction went well, and that I wish us to continue working together in an amenable fashion."

He levers to his feet in a more humanoid manner and accepts her hand. "I agree and wish the same. I also hope the rest of your evening is pleasant."