4343/The Apocalpyse of Terry's Apartment

The Apocalpyse of Terry's Apartment
Date of Scene:	08 December 2020
Location:	2D - Terry's Apartment
Synopsis:	Terry's behind on the rent. Drama ensues.
Cast of Characters:	Colette O'Connail, Gar Logan

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Colette O'Connail has posed:
    It's a few weeks before Terry was to return from the Great Beyond, or at least from Space. It's a few weeks since Gar had last heard from Colette, when she had taken him and Kyle out for pizzas. Not to mention when she'd dumped a confusing confession on him about being Martian or something along those lines, carefully timing it to ensure he wouldn't have any chance to ask immediate questions.

    Gar has been busy since making psychic probes and visiting Jupiter, and it's quite out of the blue that he receives a message from Colette. Said message gives little clue as to why she is contacting him now either. It simply says 'Meet me at Terry's apt asap. Emergency.'

    When he gets there, assuming he doesn't take too long, he will quickly observe the reasoning behind her message. Shoved to one side by the fire escape of the apartment building is a large stack of junk. Furniture, books, clothing, decorations, many of which are obviously recognizable as belonging to Terry. Colette is sitting on a small, battered chair that used to sit in Terry's bedroom.

    "No, I really don't fucking care," she is saying into her mobile phone. "But if you /really, really/ want, I will have ask Mister Jason to take a /really, really/ close look at what he can dig up about the way you run this place so he can figure out how many ways he can fuck you over. Alternatively you could bring back whatever you /haven't/ sold yet. And I'll be wanting invoices and sales receipts for everything that you have sold. Yeah? Oh, look at me not giving a damn, cry me a river. No... no. Because you got your fucking money, you idiot! You have no legal right to... do you want me to get Mister Jason to explain that to you? Because I can. It's no problem at all. He's an employee. Yes, that's right. Now are you going to..."

    Apparently whoever she was speaking to has hung up at this point, because she takes the phone from her ear, stares at it for a moment, then says "Fine," pockets her phone, and sits there looking distinctly annoyed.

Gar Logan has posed:
The only response to Colette's text was 'What? Don't go anywhere!'

Gar took to the skies, making it over to the Metropolis apartment in a matter of minutes. Good thing Titans Tower was there and not outside New York City. He lands in the midst of a change back to his usual self, wearing a long-sleeved shirt, jeans, and sneakers as he runs a hand through his wild mop of hair.

"What's going..um, what is all that?" he asks, changing the question as he points to the pile of stuff set out in the open. He looks up from there, toward the windows he knows go to Terry's apartment, then down again. By the time he got there, she'd already had her unproductive phone conversation.

Colette O'Connail has posed:
    Colette looks at Gar with a sardonic tilt of the head. "It turns out that Terry's land lord gets upset if you don't pay your rent for three months, that's what's going on," she says.

    She sighs, gets to her feet and walks over to Gar. If there was any suspicion she might be about to give him a hug it's quickly overriden by a firm crossing of the arms which one might almost imagine was a way of saying 'No, I wasn't about to offer you a hug, where the fuck did you get that idea from'? Instead she turns and gestures to the pile of junk. "I... was passing and I noticed his stuff was in the street. Most of it. His landlord decided to sell anything that he thought he could raise some money from, which apparently, and I am quoting, is 'there wasn't much of'.

    She gives a nonchalant shrug. "Anyway, your boyfriend's homeless if he ever gets back. I thought you should know. And probably he'd want his stuff kept safe rather than left out here where it'll get rained on, or stolen if their are any theives in the area with really bad taste."

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan rubs his temples, and gives Colette some space when she begins to approach, in case there was any suspicion he might be about to accept a hug from her. He probably would have, but she's not really the hugging type as far as he's seen. "Yeah, they kind of tend to do that when you're missing, rent hasn't been paid, and there's no answer to any calls and stuff," he mutters, adding, "I should have thought about this, but it didn't cross my mind."

He heads over to inspect what /is/ there, but stops short when she adds to what she'd already said. "He was /selling/ stuff? That's just grrrreat." And that isn't Tony the Tiger trying to get kids to beg their parents to buy Frosted Flakes. "He /will/ get back, and at the least he'll have a place at the Tower if he needs one. He's still part of the Titans one way or another. And I'm going up to see if they missed anything. You coming, or not?" He isn't waiting, already storming inside the building.

Colette O'Connail has posed:
    "Yeah well I guess neither of us thought of it," Colette replies a little grudgingly. "And yeah, he was selling stuff. /Was/ though. He's bringing back the rest of the... stuff... that. Yeah. He's run off."

    Colette watches Gar charging off to the inside of he building, and sighs to herself. "I was sort of thinking about not leaving his junk just completely unguarded," she says to nobody. "But whatever. No doubt if there was anything worth stealing, someone already stole it." She glares momentarily at the chair she had been sitting on, daring it to object to the implication that it wasn't worth stealing, but it is a chair and does not respond.

    Colette shrugs her shoulders, shakes her head and makes for the fire escape. It's easier to get into the apartment via the fire escape, though she's kind of curious to see what Gar is planning.

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan, impulsive sometimes? Guilty. A quick glance didn't catch anything obviously vital in the pile outside, but that doesn't mean it's devoid of value. One can't expect a landlord to know, and he's got to at least see if anything /hasn't/ been removed yet.

By the time Colette's up the fire escape, maybe she'll catch sight of Gar simply appearing from seemingly nowhere on the inside of the main door, looking around afterward. Whatever he turned into, it was small enough to bypass the fact there /is/ a door there.

Whether Colette enters with him opening the window from the inside or not, once she's joined him he says, "TV's gone, or probably trashed. I can still see the imprint of my butt on the couch from when I was staying here for a couple weeks. 'Couch Beast Boy slept on' has to be worth big bucks to someone. The landlord wouldn't be thinking about that."

His stomach picks that moment to growl, and he heads over to the fridge. "Let's see if he still has anything--" Edible? Open door, quickly close door. "--nopehedoesn'tohmanIthinksomethingdiedinthere!" he sputters, speaking rapidly as he fends off a gag reflex. "I am not cleaning that." But he does give the bedroom a check.

Colette O'Connail has posed:
    Two can play at that game. Colette watches Gar through the window as he appears inside the apartment and gives him a helpless shrug followed by a slow shake of her head. She steps away from the window and before he can open it for her, she steps out of the shadows in the corner of the room behind him.

    "I was trying to tell you," she says patiently. "The landlord took anything he thought might be able to sell. People like him are dumb. The see a TV and thinks hey, that'll sell, without it occuring to them that a piece of crap like Terry's TV isn't worth someone taking for free. Meanwhile Terry's probably got some old comic book or plastic toy that's worth a small fortune, and that'll get dumped on the heap. So..."

    And he's off again. "Jesus, Gar. He's been away for like ten weeks. Best not to open the fridge, really. I mean... there wasn't a bottle of champagne in there, was there? I left Terry a really good bottle a while back, but he probably never got around to drinking it. I swear, if the landlord drank that, I'm going to kill him. "

    "Anyway, you're kinda missing the point." She gestures back towards the fire escape. "We should be trying to get his junk back in here, not looking for more junk to take out of here. I mean later, we can get it shipped to storage. But for now getting his crap off the street seems like the primary concern."

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan raises a finger to say something following the shadow demonstration, then he thinks better of it and closes his mouth prior to disappearing as well, courtesy of the doorway to the bedroom. "We had some, but if you want to check, be my guest," Gar calls back. "Bed's still here!" follows a moment later. He's not listening, at least not until he's coming back to the living room, hands at his hips. "You think we can bring it back inside? I could turn into, say, a brachiosaurus and make it a little easier. You said the guy's coming back?"

Approaching the window overlooking the street below, he freezes and looks back. "Uh, someone's running off with Wonder Woman's cloak. Hang on." He throws the window open and dives out as a hawk, keening in swift pursuit.

The would-be thief looks over his shoulder, blurts, "Oh, shit!" and seems to think he's going to outrun matters. Yeah, no. The hawk changes into a tiger and lands atop the scruffy-looking guy, pinning him while snorting a hot feline breath into his face. "You want to pretend you're Joe Exotic and I'm one of his tigers about to maul you? If the answer's yes, don't give me back that cloak right now."

He doesn't have to know the threat isn't real. Or is it? It works.

Colette O'Connail has posed:
    "Yeah, back inside. We got nine days. He didn't do a great job of filing the paperwork, and I pointed out he can't just reclaim the apartment like that. Well my father's company lawyers did. And as Terry's now not officially in arrears until the end of the month, he's gotta wait to reclaim the apartment. So we can arrange for all his gear to be put into storage. Or I mean you can if you like. But that doesn't have to be straight away, 'cos the place is still Vorp's until the end of the month. See, it's all worked out."

    Except it isn't, because Gar's off again. Colette comes to the conclusion that either Gar has developed a coke habit in Terry's absence, or that Gar is notmally like this and that Terry somehow keeps him sane and balanced. When he hawks out the window she shakes her head, and when he tigers the rest of the way, she follows along behind at a lazy stroll, hand in her pockets.

    When she reaches the scene of the tiger-pinned cloak purloiner, she stands close by, lookinging into the miscreant's face with an expression more of curiosity. "Down, kitty," she says without much enthusiasm. "No eating the nice man's face. You had two today already, don't be greedy."

Gar Logan has posed:
The tiger is talking to the guy. Who's /really/ one something right now? The one hastily pushing the cloak back to the green tiger so it can claim it.

Colette is eyed for a moment, then he speaks with a deeper rumble. "Not even a little bit? I guess you're right. There isn't much fat on this one. Now get up and go." He steps off the guy and literally bats at him with a paw, but just before he bolts away the tiger's jaws clamp down on the side of the man's pants. With a snap of the head to the side, the material is torn apart. Let him think about what he's done while running off in his underwear.

By the time the tiger turns back into the Titan, he's cradling the cloak in his arms, then shaking it out to fold it back up. "Wonder Woman gave this to Terry. When I saw that guy with it..well. I just had to get it back." He doesn't seem sorry about it. Rather, he's annoyed. At himself? At the situation? Probably a combination of both.

"Maybe we'd better start getting this stuff back upstairs, then." He heads back over to sift through a few things. Books, some memorabilia that was missed, a laptop that was somehow /not/ taken and sold...and another book Gar picks up to flip through. His eyes widen as he pauses on a page after thumbing through it, then he comes to another that has some writing in it before the rest are blank. "Damn. He was keeping a diary." It's closed back up and kept right with the cloak.

Colette O'Connail has posed:
    Colette doesn't change her mind and suggest that maybe, yes it would be okay for Gar to eat just one more face. Either she's in an unusually forgiving mood today or she's just finally come to the conclusion that Gar is way to good for his own good and it would only provoke an argument later. She does silently applaud his last moment ass-biting pants attack though.

T"Wonder Woman's cloak, huh?" Colette smirks a little. "See, that's what I'm getting at. That's gonna be the most valuable thing in Terry's apartment, and the landlord just tossed it aside. That would go for thousands on eBay. Oh hell. Harley's gift. You know, the uh... banana hammock? Isn't that supposed to have had like real diamonds on it? I am *not* going through Vorpal's underwear to look for it. That is absolutely your job, not mine."

    Judging by the way Colette carries only a small stack of books upstairs and then promptly seats herself on the kitchen counter, she has obviously concluded that the 'your job, not mine' rule applies to anything that involves lifting and carrying. She watches with only the faintest interest until the diary appears.

    "So uh. Neither of us are going to look at it, right?" She says. "The Diary. We're just gonna pretend we didn't see it, I'd imagine. That would probably be the noble and moral and boring thing to do."

Gar Logan has posed:
"That's not something you can really put a price on," Gar points out, but he'd be wrong. Colette is completely correct it would go for a lot on any of those auction sites, especially if it was verified as authentic. It's not like Gar's never sold something of his that way.

Not all the time, at least.

Then he grimaces at the mention of /that/ thing, the thing with the diamonds, and without hesitation he states, "We are not talking about that. Not now. Not ever."

He sends her a look or two as the lion's share of the Moving of All the Things falls mainly on his shoulders. He wasn't the only one who forgot to check in on the place! So did she! At least he can turn into a gorilla, which he does, and more easily carry things that way. So what if someone notices?

The diary? "I already saw a couple pages before I figured out what it was." That's all he is apparently giving her, for he's keeping it close by, in his possession. And, there's a little color in his cheeks once he's back to normal.

Colette O'Connail has posed:
    "Anything juicy?" she asks promptly, grinning from ear to ear. "You can trust me, I wouldn't tell anyone. Hardly anyone. Maybe Harls. And Kate. Nobody else, I swear. Kian. Wally, maybe. He seemed kinda nice. Easy to talk to. But nobody else, I swear. Except Kori. Maaaaaybe Captain Marvel."

    She is definitely doing it on purpose.

    "I mean, gives me something to think about instead of bringing up the banana hammock again. Harley has a way with words, huh? Banana hammock. Banana hammock. "

    Most definitely.

    By the time of the third gorilla trip with accompanying look, Colette's lounging relatively comfortably and sipping a can of cola. "You're just better equipped for the job," she counters. "You can turn into a gorilla I can't. That's why I called for you. Besides I spent like two hours sorting the rest of this mess out, you can do this bit. And paid two months of back rent so he'd no longer be in arrears until the end of the month, and by the way if you breath a fucking word of that to him I will destroy you, Garfield Logan." She can voice threats of murder in a surprisingly friendly way. "So it's your turn, you can do the heavy lifting. You're built for it, I'm not. Besides, he's /your/ boyfriend. "

    Colette smirks slightly and sips more coke.

    "Banana hammock."

Gar Logan has posed:
"No, there isn't," Gar lies. There is a growing silence on the part of the green teen by the time Colette's mentioned the words 'banana hammock' around the fiftieth or so time. He's lost count, and he's losing his patience.

Finally, after she's told him of covering some back rent, and threatened him, and reminded him he's Terry's boyfriend, /and/ mentioned those two words again, he growls at her and he doesn't even need to be in an animal form to do it.

"What's wrong with you, Colette? Do you get some sort of enjoyment over pushing my buttons? You came to find me when I was ready to stop living and gave me an idea to follow up on and it ended up working, and we put this beacon in space just in case they get back and are lost, but right now I just don't understand what you're trying to do here. They're still gone, and everything that matters to him was almost tossed out with the trash, and I saw something in that book that made me want to cry all over again, and you won't fucking shut up about a stupid goddamned../thing!/"

He just swore. He just raised his voice. He almost never does that.

And he turns toward the door, storming in that direction, but not before he thrusts the diary at her stomach harder than he needed to. "So you know what? Here. Read the whole fucking thing. Tell the whole world. I don't care. I'm leaving."

Colette O'Connail has posed:
    "Yeah right, like it's really me you're really angry at," Colette counters in a surprisingly calm voice. "Just like that homeless guy who thought he had found something warm to wrap himself up in tonight really deserved to have his pants bitten out. I mean that was /such/ a Gar move."

    "I mean that's cool though," She says, tossing the diary over to where Wonder Woman's cloak lays folded. "You need to get this shit out of your system. Have done for months. So by all means, go ahead and yell at me, I can take it. It's a hundred fucking times better than trying your best to feel nothing, which seems to be your solution to things. Just try to keep in mind that I'm not the wormhole that collapsed on Terry, so you're still shouting at the /wrong thing/."

    Colette takes another sip of her coke, then calls out after Gar again. "Nine days remember! Gonna need to get this into storage."

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan's only response is to open the door and slam it behind him.