14440/Free Ain't Free

Free Ain't Free
Date of Scene:	17 March 2023
Location:	'the Morrison house'.
Synopsis:	Sasha investigates something. Sassha finds something. Sashsa gtfos from something.
Cast of Characters:	Tomie Kawakami, Sasha Moore

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Tomie Kawakami has posed:
It's a fact of life that even in a world of superheroes and billionaire genius philanthropist playboys that the homeless go missing.

Her name was Fred. Sarah probably ran into her once or twice at the encampament, and she was definitely not the type to just up and vanish like that. Sure, it *happens*. Sometimes for good reason. They get a job, reconnect with someonme who can help them or, rarely, the state does something useful and steps in.

Fred was not likely the type to have any of that happen to her, what, with being a product of the state in the first place, story as old as it gets. She stayed scrupulously clean, and the last time anyone saw her, well, she was gone to squat in a particular house. A house that nobody else wantse to squat in. A house they dared her to squat in, actually, which is how Sarah hears about it in the first place.

An old, abandoned squat. The Morrison house. Don't go there. Nobody should go there. Nobody really says why. It's just the kind of house that's approached 'urban legend' status. Story about blood stains that come back after being scrubbed out by people trying to redevelop it, come back until they give up and stop trying.

There's one other legend, though, about the Morrison house: that in the basement, there's a little bit of standing water, and that if you throw the right something in, someone will help you.

That sounds like something Fred just might've been willing to try. No one else could help her.

Sasha Moore has posed:
Sasha is on a turn back in the streets. It's nice to have a place to go and all, but there's too many rules that keep her feeling just a touch uncomfortable around a bunch of other mutants. Don't do this, can't do that... it's stiffling. So she's run away, back into the places she knows: Shelters and homeless communes spread all over New York.

Fred was always a cool chick. She always had an in with the places that gave out food at the end of the night rather than throwing it away... neither of them was above eating from a garbage can, but it's so much more humanizing when it's given to you in a takeaway box.

Now she's gone.

A little snooping and Sasha was hearing a lot of rumors about the Morrison House. Which she'd heard about... who hadn't... but had never really paid much attention to. So with her backpack held tight against her, Sasha was off, flashlight in hand, to go snooping in a place people say is dangerous.

People say a lot of stuff though.

Tomie Kawakami has posed:
An old, dilipidated house in New York that no one has been able to redevelop? Of COURSE ther's something going on there. There's way too much money in New York real estate to NOT do that.

And yet, breaking in is easy as pie. Plenty of people do it. The back windows show all the signs, and Sasha is able to slip inside with the gentle crunch of glass breaking underfoot where someone had left some shards, just right there.

It's ... smelly in here. Mold. Mildew, and what not. Ah, the scent of urban decay.

Sasha Moore has posed:
There is few structures that can keep Sasha in or out. Seeing the derellect building, she casts a glance up and down th sidewalk, then slips around the side of the building by way of a small alley. She takes a step and runs towards the wall, high enough to grab the windows edge and lever herself inside easily.

On the other side, she crunches into glass with a frown.. going stark still, incase someone had heard her landing. The flash light is retrieved from her belt, the high strength beam clicked on and aimed around in a slow sweep of the interior.

Honestly, she's use to the smell. She's squat in places far worse than this...

Tomie Kawakami has posed:
Good news: no one seems to have heard her.

This is mostly because there's no one else here, at least at the moment. The house has a deathly quiet over it but for the creaking of one's own foot steps on decrepit floorboards.

Exploring wil lead one through the various graffiti covered rooms. There's definitely been a lot of squatters here alongside the accompanying detritus over the years. Some of the designs on the walls are ... well, they belong in someone's nightmares, for sure. Hands with eyes in them, for example, bleeding, always a classic. Flayed skulls. That sort of thing.

Someone may have a little too much time on their hands. The bedrooms are empty, but stink, and the matresses are ... also a thing of nightmares but for entirely other reasons.

Eventually, after creeping around in her elong enough, all that's left *is* the basement.

Sasha Moore has posed:
This is nothing Sasha hasn't seen before. New York is a pretty dark place once you scratch far enough beneath the surface tourists see. An underbelly of horror that sits just beneath the surface for anyone brave, or foolish, enough to go looking. Sasha is not, in and of itself, an advanture seeker. Weird shit just happens to find her...

Call it bad luck.

The light shines on these pictography with a deep frown. "Some cult shit." She murmurs, it's always some cult shit. At least it's not alien worms, that's still a pretty sore sticking point every time she eats a bowl of oatmeal.

The further she goes, however, the more she knows she's going to have to go down in that basement.. "Why is it always in teh basement." The flashlight switches to her left hand so she can take the collapsable baton from her pack and snap it out in her right. Ready to head down with sure steps landing cautiously on each stair.

Tomie Kawakami has posed:
It's always the basement.

Always. The. Basement.

Down the treacherous steps she goes, right? Creak, creak... *CRACK*.

Someone sawed that one, and it gave way right as she was putting her foot on it. Depending on how agile she is, she *might* be able to avoid taking the head down the rest of the stairs that someone intended.

Sasha Moore has posed:
Sasha is /very/ agile. She's a free runner and has spent the vast majority of her young life chewing up the urban jungle like a modern day, female, Tarzan. When the step gives way, she shifts her weight forward, using a grip on the railing to vault forward and keep from tumbling down those steps in a heap at the bottom. Instead she lands and rolls over her shoulder... but her baton slides off into the shadows. Thankfully she kept her flashlight and aims it around quickly trying to find her weapon!

Tomie Kawakami has posed:
There! There's someone!

...no, wait. That's just more graffiti. It sure looks like a person, though! An attractive, east asian woman with a mole under one eye. Very, very pretty. /Very/.

It smells like rot down here, worse than anywhere else in the house. It's the rancid pool of standing water in the corner, just like she was told about.

Sasha Moore has posed:
Sasha almost jumps out of her skin when the light flashes over the graffiti and yelps, "Oh you..." Her surprise and shock of terror is replaced by a flare of anger, sneering at the woman drawn upon the wall with a sigh..

When the smell hits her right in the nostrils and she almost gags. Stretching her face trying to protect her senses, she instead pushes it into the curve of her arm, "Oh god.." The light dances around from the end of her flashlight until it hits her baton. She scampers over quickly to scoop it, then turns the light towards the standing pool.

"What the fuck.. man.."

Tomie Kawakami has posed:
It's fetid and dark.

Very. Very. Dark.

...and it looks ... looks way deeper than it *should* be. No way that should be able to be here. Not like that. Something is very wrong here. The edges of it are just ... wrong.

Sasha Moore has posed:
Sasha isn't a demonologist or occultist, but she knows some not right shit when she sees it. And this is some not right shit. "Ookaay, this is way out of my depths." She wont look directly into the pool, it's so not right that her brain is telling her peering into it is dangerous. That's how the brain works, protecc. The light bounces around the rest of the basement. "I... need to get the fuck out of here."

Tomie Kawakami has posed:
That's for the best, really. Staring into the pool too long *is* dangerous.

... and that's when there's a creak behind her. Soemone else is coming down the steps.

Sasha Moore has posed:
Absolutely not today Satan.

Sasha whips around and aims the flashlight up the stairs, "Don't come down here, I'm ... uh.. it's fucking Superman, bro, seriously, I'll fuck your shit up." She does not sound like Superman.

Obviously.

Tomie Kawakami has posed:
The creaking stops for a moment and then a muffled snort before they resume their trip down the stairs and --

"...UAAGGHHH!"

...they did not know about the step. They do not have the agility that someone else does.

Tumble, tumble... CRASH.

Sasha Moore has posed:
There's here opening.

Sasha rushes towards the steps, side stepping up the wall at the bottom, wall running across the corner, and twisting up onto the step with a hand on the railing. "Fuck you, gotta go!" She's rushing up the steps with all the speed of a very exceptionally well versed free runner.

If Eldritch creep show wants to catch her, it better have brought their Jordans, because Sasha is out with a capital 'fuck this shit'.

Tomie Kawakami has posed:
Escape!

Up the st airs she goes, leaving behind whoever it was that went down there.

Escape is easy enough. The 'pool' does not seek to claim her, not at all.

... She can get away, for now.

/FOr now/...