sociallychallenged: (0 8 2)
Hank Anderson ([personal profile] sociallychallenged) wrote in [community profile] dualislogs2020-02-15 11:12 am

(no subject)

WHO: Hank Anderson | Harry Du Bois
WHAT: The Wonderful World of Ultrasound
WHERE: The Park
WHEN: Mid-Month
WARNINGS: Dun dun DUUUUUUNNN

The Zoo.

The Park.

The Dorms.

Those are the three places in the city that never move. Which means something about them is important not to move. A power supply? A cloning facility? The servers? There has to be something under each one.

Harry 'the Zooman' Du Bois has access to one of the places. Is also a former cop. One the Dualis Police Department never had a chance to look deeply into, not like him and Connor. Hank is hoping that means a grizzled veteran detective's skills can help pick apart this mess.

Putting a lot of faith in a relative stranger, he knows. But he's honestly desperate for that old sense of camaraderie, and he's hoping that he's not wrong. He uses the connections he made after the bombing, while he was searching for the source of the detonators, to 'acquire' a couple of spare city groundskeeping uniforms. And he uses it to also acquire a piece of ultrasound equipment.

Using that and some landscaping equipment enough to do some early spring pruning, Hank's found a nice hidden place in the shrubbed area of the park. It's early evening. A time when it'd make sense for them to be out, and everyone's gone back to work from their lunch breaks but haven't swarmed the traffic grid. The window is tight. They can't be here forever.

"Keep an eye out," he warns Harry as he's setting the thing up. "This has gotta work or I'm gonna lose my fucking mind."
hobocop: (How about the *Ex-* something)

[personal profile] hobocop 2020-02-16 04:14 am (UTC)(link)
"Peeled and ready, chief," Harry mumbles in return, head twitching up as he sets about actually surveying the scene around him.

He wasn't drifting, so much as he was busy staring down at the equipment Hank's now fiddling away with. Sure, he's not the biggest torque dork in the RCM, but having been blasted by the waves of Ruby's pale-emitter, there's a natural kind of wariness in place. And, unsurprisingly, he's also very keen for it to actually work, too.

"You know how to use that thing?"

He's glancing down again, somehow resisting the urge to tug at the collar of his disguise for the fifteenth time. A disguise that absolutely does nothing to hide his identity, frankly. Not up close, anyway.
hobocop: (your body betrays your degeneracy)

[personal profile] hobocop 2020-02-16 09:20 pm (UTC)(link)
It's hard to put a word to the emotion that bubbles up, hearing about Hank's mod. It's a complex, slightly ugly thing - one that probably falls somewhere under the banner of envy if he's completely honest with himself.

Which he isn't, unfortunately.

He simply frowns, distracted by it for all of a moment or two, before following along again. Nodding, as he's apt to do.

It strikes him that the feeling Hank's struggling to describe - it's not so different than his own slow moments of self-discovery, back in Revachol. Moments like picking up his old hand-cannon again, or brushing his fingers along the sleek metal of Kim's Kineema. He might not remember driving, but he knows he could. He knows how.

And he supposes he knows how to operate a hedge-trimmer, too, even if he stares at it stupidly as Hank pushes it into his hands.

"Roger that: hack away all the bush."

He leans forward just enough to rap a set of knuckles against Hank's shoulder. "Don't worry, you got this."

The 'And I got you' is implicit.
hobocop: (Skills: Shivers)

[personal profile] hobocop 2020-02-20 02:51 am (UTC)(link)
It takes a hell of a lot of Harry's willpower to keep himself from craning his neck to try and sneak a peek of the ultrasound's screen from over Hank's shoulder. Instead, all that antsy focus is set on proving those latent landscaping skills. A respectable effort to look at least somewhat like an actual groundskeeper. The moment Hank moves to take the hedge-trimmer, however, he gives up all pretense and reaches across for the machine.

His chin jerks a little as he registers what Hank actually said, but his eyes stay rooted to the image, brows reaching in vain to meet one another.

VISUAL CALCULUS
— What are you trying to do? The longer you stare, the more you're filled with a sense of vague disappointment. The lines criss-crossing the screen could be bodies, sure, but giving anything more than a "maybe" would be lying.


"Hold on."

Clinging onto the machine with one hand, Harry works at loosening his uniform shirt with the other. It's awkward and fumbling, but he pries the collar open and brings the machine back to rest against his stomach. Casts a quick, self-conscious glance Hank's way as he mumbles something close to an apology.

SHIVERS
— Your arms grow heavy as the cold finds its way into your skin, the hairs on your body standing at attention like soldiers preparing for review. Beneath your feet, the earth is hard from cold, undisturbed.


And further down?

SHIVERS
— Like a graveyard. Fingerbones and clavicles, some fractured like broken teeth. Sticks and straws forming wings. Skulls as eggshell. Dead flesh in rivers of polychrome, with a pervasive smell that comes with an ache and an ooze. Stillness.


The feeling recedes, and Harry sucks in a breath, throat bobbing with a dry, tacky swallow. He lifts the machine again, looking over to Hank.

"That's, uh... Yeah."
hobocop: (can't sleep. fucked everything up.)

[personal profile] hobocop 2020-02-22 12:52 am (UTC)(link)
That was the kind of casual summing up that takes more processing power to parse than what Harry has access to, honestly. He's struck dumb for a moment, stuck listening to what seems to amount to a kind of impenetrable, frustrated litany.

ENCYCLOPEDIA
— MINDSEYE? Oh, of course! The winged MINDSEYE scientists! Those guys!.


"You saw all of that?" He's looking back at the screen - at the shifting image creeping back, now the interference seems to have faded again. It's still a confusing mush of lines and shapes to him. His mouth sets into a grim little line.

Either Calculus is right, and this is yet another window into his own inadequacies as a cop, or...

INLAND EMPIRE
— Or?


"Sorry, uh..." He sniffs and looks up at Hank again. "Just catching up. You think the bodies are keeping this place rooted?" It's not a sentence that feels right, coming out of his mouth. He tries again: "Like, what, a mass-burial anchor?"

hobocop: (Literally the sorriest cop on earth)

[personal profile] hobocop 2020-02-23 06:45 pm (UTC)(link)
Harry finds himself staring down at Hank as the man sort of... concertinas into the bushes. For a moment he even wonders if it's an incredibly shitty attempt to hide, but—

EMPATHY
— It's disappointment. Exhaustion. Sometimes you need a win, and this wasn't it.


His knees creak uncomfortably as he squats down next to the other man. He keeps his eyes rooted to him for all but the brief moment he casts a glance to the floor. To where the mountain of dead just... sit, forgotten. Beyond rotting, even. It's grim, but it's not like it fills him with anything more than a slightly disconnected foreboding, really. After all, Revachol sat over a mountain of corpses, too.

"The one from the recording?" He lifts and drops a shoulder in a loose approximation of a shrug. "Maybe." And that's all he can say on that, without understanding more, really. What's one more to the mass, right?

He's busy digging into the uniform, retrieving his cigarettes from his pockets when he adds, "But what's that mean for us?" It's a broad, decidedly naive sounding question, he knows, but it's one he needs answering. He holds the packet out the Hank, gesturing like he's offering him one. "And what's next?"
hobocop: (sweats)

[personal profile] hobocop 2020-02-29 02:39 am (UTC)(link)
The first point earns a soft snort. That's about what he figured, yeah.

To the second, his eyebrows ruck up briefly. "Oh yeah." He manages to combine setting a cigarette on his lower lip with a nod. "So unless the rest are more corpse stashes, at least we checked that shitty reveal off the list, right?"

He fishes a green plastic lighter from his shirt. It proves to be about as cheap as it looks, as it then takes four goes for the flame to catch.

"But the zoo, huh?" The thought of something grim buried under that little refuge isn't a welcome one. "I'll be honest, man: interfacing... tech, all that kinda thing? Not my strongest area." The cigarette dances up and down as he speaks, but the words come out clear enough. He's clearly used to speaking around it. "So yeah, assuming I do it, and assuming I can work out a way not to get busted... I'd appreciate the tutorial."

He frowns, silent for a moment. Then, after a brief drag:

"I can't promise I'm some kind of Samaran master though. I ain't about to phase through a wall or... you know, pull off some super-secret spy shit." He gestures to himself - a slow sweep. "What you see is what you get."