goodguygrifter | (no subject)

"Uh?" Stan understands as much as he needs to. He understands that this thing is going to cut him off from his brother if it closes up much more, so without thought he steps forward, slipping the flashlight into a pocket, and ducks under the squares that look like they're about to close up in front of the entrance of the tunnel. He, of course, is plenty agile thank you very much, but that doesn't mean he knows where to step. "Ford? Did somethin' go wrong?"

Goddamn it Stanley, you had one job.

Ford looks sharply over his shoulder, sighs roughly in frustration, and hits a second tile a little harder than is strictly necessary before side-stepping one of the shifting pillars blocking his path and making his way over to his brother. It's just his luck that the third tile is near him.

"Remember when I said this was a death trap?" It's a rhetorical question, but even so he asks it like he's asking if Stan recalls a particular episode of some old cartoon they watched as children.

"Because I'm pretty sure I explicitly told you this was a death trap."

"A death trap you're in." Stan says it like it's an obvious fact that Ford missed, frowns at him like he's confused about just why that might be. That's because he is. If Ford is in here, isn't it obvious Stan's got to be here too?

He looks around, ducking a shifting set of blocks and trying (and, of course, failing) to make anything at all out of all the different symbols. "You don't have to walk me through it or nothin'. I trust that big old brain of yours. Just tell me what to do."

Maybe he shouldn't, maybe Stanley shouldn't trust a single damn thing that comes out of Ford's head now, but this honestly does not occur to him. Up in the woods he'll doubt him, sure. In Ford's house, sure. Normal places. But this ain't a normal place. This place is new, and weird, and more than a little dangerous, apparently, and when it comes down to it? Well. Yeah. Old habits, and all that.

Ford side-steps yet another pillar, then ducks under another and nearly trips over a third before catching himself at the last minute. He frowns at Stan, not in the least bit happy that he's putting himself inside the literal death trap without so much as a second thought.

"A death trap I know how to navigate." He corrects, before kicking another tile with his boot, making it glow. "Unlike a certain someone who is standing right in front of the last pressure pad."

He gestures towards his brother, or rather, to the pillar closing in behind him.

"Press the tile, if you'd please, before we're crushed to death."

Funny, how he doesn't sound particularly alarmed despite how grave the situation is.

"This one?" Stan turns, steps out of the way of a couple of the weird moving wall things, and stretches to slap at the one he's pretty sure Ford meant. "There. That wasn't so bad. Come on, what other sci-fi alien deathtraps did you build into this place? I can handle 'em."

Stan doesn't sound too alarmed either - in fact, he sounds cheerful. He is cheerful. They haven't even done anything yet, but it's like - it's fun, doing this, it's so different from all the shit he's spent the last few days, hell, the last month, the last few years, dealing with. It's a relief.

Besides. This wasn't that deadly. No one squished or anything. Good news all around.

Things are starting to get a little tight now - Ford hurries his pace a bit, dodging this and that pillar as he makes his way over to Stan and grabs his sleeve.

"You won't be able to handle this one if we don't keep moving."

And he's not just saying that either - because even as he hits the fourth and final tile, which prompts the door on the other side of the room to open, the pillars keep closing in on them.

"Come on, hurry it up."

He doesn't let go of Stan's sleeve as he moves forward, stepping over one pillar and ducking beneath another. If anything, his grip tightens - he doesn't want Stan to fall behind.

Edited 2016-01-14 03:34 (UTC)

"That's one hell of a security system." Stan turns to watch behind them as the room closes, fascinated. "I've never seen anything like it. If more folks had a room like that in front of their valuables it woulda' saved me-"

It would have saved him a trip to the big house, yeah, but he remembers just in time who he's with, who it is he's talking to. This ain't just a joy ride inside some rich asshole's mansion, or whatever. This is his brother, leading him to somethin' that's supposed to make him believe all that, all that stuff, make Stan believe in those things Ford's been seeing for, how long was it he'd said it was? Years?

"-a lotta' people a whole lot of trouble," Stan finishes, his light spirits a little dimmed. "You get that many people sneakin' in down here?"

If Ford notices the way Stan trips over his words in the middle there, he doesn't bring attention to it. There's a time and a place to ask about certain subjects, and when it comes to Stan's...less than legal activities, this is time and place is neither nor.

Ford makes a mental note to ask Stan about that later, sometime. If, you know, if he ever gets the chance. The closer they get to their destination, the less sure Ford is of how well this plan of his is going to work out. He can't help but worry that maybe - because wouldn't that be just his luck - there would be nothing to show Stan after all. There would be nothing there with which to prove his sanity because there never was anything, because he's not sane, because this is all in his head after all.

Stanley certainly believes that's the case - he tries not to show it, but Ford knows. Ford knows, but he's not sure Stan knows that he knows, and he'd prefer to keep it that way until they figure out for certain which of them is in the wrong.

"No, thank God. As far as I'm aware, you're the only other person who even knows this place exists."

That says a lot, really, about how much Ford trusts his brother - or maybe it just says a lot about how desperate he is to prove his own sanity.

You know what else it says a lot about? Whatever the hell is down here. Because Stan knows plenty about stuff meant to keep people out, yeah, but he also - as has been established although, luckily for Stan, not out loud - knows a little somethin' about stuff meant to keep people in.

"Aside from the guy who was helpin' you, right?" Unless he's a figment of Ford's poor brain too, jeez, don't think that, all this is enough to deal with already without things being that bad.

"So you just put that deathtrap room in for shits and giggles? And this whole place, it's for, uh... Science stuff?" Stan sweeps the flashlight around, frowning. The excitement of the place is starting to wear off more, the more time he has to think. And the things he's thinking of? Mostly questions. Scary ones, and the worst are the ones that start with why. It might show in his voice, that unhappiness, the hope that Ford will come up with some perfectly innocent answer that explains everything. Because as cool as all this is, as much as it all looks like something out of a movie, Stan can't help but wonder just when Ford made all of it. Did he make it before his mind started to... Well, before? Or after?

"It's a lab." Ford corrects, as he very carefully dodges the question about Fiddleford. "One I've been conducting some very...unorthodox research in."

There's really no good way to word what he's been doing down here without digging himself deeper and reinforcing Stan's belief that he's lost his marbles, so he's just going to hold off on the in-depth explanation for now.

He walks to the other end of the room, puts his hands on the circular latch which keeps the door sealed shut, and hesitates. He glances over his shoulder at his brother, and feels his hands begin to sweat a little. This is it: the moment of truth. Once they make it past this door, they'll be inside the lab and Stan will finally get a look at the - at the proof he needs. Or maybe they won't find anything at all. Ford's not sure which idea scares him more.

He swallows, his mouth suddenly feeling dry, and then turns the handle.

"We'll need to stand under the decontamination spray for a minute or two before the door will open to the other side."

He steps into the small enclosure, which is more or less the size of a particularly roomy closet, and waves his brother in.

"Don't worry, it's not toxic unless you ingest it. It'll just hurt like holy hell if you get it in your eyes."

Ford makes a point of taking off his glasses and slipping them into his coat, so he won't have to wipe them off later. Out of habit, he rubs at the red-spots the nose-pads leave between his eyes, though that doesn't do much to make the redness go away.

Stan grimaces at the explanation. Or, you know, what his brother obviously thinks will pass as one. And the thing is, he's right. Stan isn't gonna' push it. They both know. Neither of them want to, he's sure, but they know. Is it 'unorthodox' to experiment on shit that ain't even there? Is that what all them science nerds with their lab coats and fancy degrees would call it?

Yeah. He guesses it must be.

But he's here anyway. He's here because this is his brother and the idea that Ford always knows best, knows more and better no matter what the rest of the world thinks, Stan wants that to be true. That's what he remembers being true back when he was a kid, back when things were good.

And even if it ain't, well. This is his brother, and the least he owes him is a chance.

Even if that means he's about to get his eyes sprayed by super special toxic acid, or whatever. He glances around the room, frowning, and the frown only gets bigger and deeper once he steps in. He's okay, though, he's cool. It's his brother leading him in here, okay, so it's fine to close the door behind him, he only hesitates a couple seconds before doing it and nevermind how stiff his whole posture gets when he hears the thing hiss shut.

"Couple minutes, huh?" he asks, shutting his eyes so the chemical whatever don't get in. And maybe, a little bit, because that feels like it ought to help. "You couldn't cut that wait down a little?"

Luckily for Stan, the room is pitch dark once the door shuts so Ford doesn't see the way he tenses up so much he goes as rigid as a post. He knows his brother is afraid of heights, but this strange discomfort in enclosed spaces is new, and something he'd question if he had noticed it.

It's probably better for them both that he doesn't.

"Nope!" He replies, ever-so-flatly, before reaching up to pull the switch without another word of warning.

The spray hits them immediately, first from the sides then from above. Ford hisses as the chemical mixture hits the back of is head, because holy hell the skin back there is tender, then swiftly moves his hand to shield it from further agitation. All the while, he silently curses himself for not thinking to do that before he pulled the switch.

The smell of a strong chemical solvent fills the room, and their sinuses, but soon enough it's rinsed away, leaving them both damp yet probably the cleanest either of them have been in a while.

Then the door hisses open, light pools in, and Ford takes in a deep breath. Alright. Alright, here they go.

"Well, here we are." How's that for a grand introductory speech?

He turns to slip around Ford as soon as the door opens, taking a slow breath and, incidentally, a big whiff of the place. And the two of them.

"Sheesh, I smell like a hospital now," he says, turning in a slow circle, taking the whole thing in, and trying to figure out what to make of it all. "You really need whatever's in here to stay that clean?"

"Hey, uh," Stan interrupts his own griping to nod at one of those freaky tubes. At the glass, really, the way it's all shattered. "Your 'unorthodox experiments' usually, um. Break out?"

Out, he says, because whatever did that did it from the inside. There's glass all over the metal platform leading up to it, none in the big tube. It coulda' been chemical shit that did that, sure. It coulda' been.

Did he think earlier that this was like being in a movie? Yeah. The problem with that, after a while, you start to figure out how the people in movies feel.

Ford doesn't need Stan to tell him that the cryo-pod has broken. He sees it the moment they step out of the decontamination room, and the sight stops him dead in his tracks. For a moment, his heart stops. All his thoughts come to a screeching halt. He doesn't blink, he doesn't breathe, he just stares.

Then stiffly, he reaches for his brother. He reaches for him with a shaky hand, grips tight to his sleeve like their very lives depended on it.

"Stan." His voice is hushed, as if he can hardly force out the word. "Stan we need to turn back. We need to turn back now."

He's already pulling at his brother's sleeve as he says this, taking a step backwards towards the door. He doesn't take his eyes off the shattered tube. He can't seem to look away from it.

"Okay," Stan says, and he knows he sounds worried but he tries to sound reassuring, too. "Okay, we'll go. We'll skip that chemical stuff too, huh?"

He walks with Ford, not fighting the grip on his sleeve and putting a hand on Ford's back, not quite pushing him but not quite not, either. "You got a way around that security room of yours? Somethin' quicker?"

Ford opens his mouth to respond, but before he can utter a single word, the lights abruptly cut out and they're plunged into complete and total darkness.

His grip on his brother's sleeve tightens, his knuckles turning white.

"Stanley, I am so sorry."

Beyond the quiet thrum of machinery, beyond the occasional drip drip drip of a leaky pipe, a skittering sound can be heard. It seems to come from the far wall, or maybe the ceiling.

"I never should have brought you here, I never should have--"

He never finishes the sentence. Something descends upon them before he can, dropping down upon them from above and knocking them apart despite the iron-grip Ford has--had--on his brother's sleeve.

And then the lights are back. Just like that, like nothing happened. Except for one itty bitty little detail. One little thing that leaves the room still, and silent, and empty. One screaming absence that Stanley is going to remember for a very long time, that he's going to dream about. When he does, he isn't going to be even a little bit surprised. A single room, perfectly still, perfectly peaceful, and no one but but Stanley in it.

"Ford! Ford! This isn't... funny..." But Ford never was a joker. Stanley knows that. He turns in a circle, like his brother's just gonna' be waiting somewhere behind him, and runs a hand over his hair. "Ford! Oh fuck, oh, oh jeez, I-"

Okay. Okay. There's not one single thing in this room that he could use as a weapon, just fucking equipment, stupid science bullshit, and he'd give his fucking left arm to be holding a baseball bat right about now and that might be kinda redundant, okay, but just never you fucking mind. There's a tunnel over there, okay. This room ain't just a dead end. So he don't think things like he was right, your brother was right and you didn't believe him, look what you drove him to, now he's dead and it's your-

"Fuck you!" His voice echoes through the room and good, fucking good, he hopes it does, he hopes everything in here fucking hears it because he's not thinking that shit, he's just going in this goddamn tunnel to rescue his goddamn brother. "Fuck you, you hear me, you shitty Exorcist reject! I'm going in here after you and you better not make me wait! You better be right there waiting for me!"

And in he goes. The only other way out of this room, other than that puzzle-blocks-of-doom bullshit, and the only way in. If Ford is any way he's that way, so that way Stan Pines goes.

Stan isn't met with silence for long - in fact, he doesn't get very far at all before a disembodied voice echoes out from God knows where.

"So this is what you look like all grown up."

The statement is followed by a sharp, rickety chuckle that is anything but kind.

"If you ask me, you look better in the photo."

Something skitters across the ceiling, moving rapidly from shadow to shadow, safe from view beneath a curtain of darkness.

"He still has that old thing, by the way. Or, well, had."

Something drops from the ceiling, flutters apart as it tumbles through the air before landing at Stan's feet. It's the photo - or rather, the pieces of it that are left. It has been mangled beyond repair; no amount of tape is going to fix something that looks like it was set upon by claws.

Edited 2016-01-17 04:01 (UTC)

Stan steps back, looking around with wide eyes and gritted teeth, and when whatever this is drops in front of him he actually raises a fist before realizing - hey. There's one thing about all this freaky bullshit that he knows, because Stan Pines knows a psych-out when it echoes in his ears and makes him jump back like his feet are on fire.

"Yeah, well, if I'd have known I got a secret admirer I'd a' prettied myself up a little." Stan's eyes dart back and forth over what he can see, and when he makes out the picture the pieces used to be he bares his teeth. He doesn't bend to pick the pieces up, though. He ain't that stupid. He looks up instead, trying to see over the ceiling, but there's nothing there. Or, at least, nothing he can see.

"You too scared to come down here and show your face like a man? Or, hey, you afraid your secret admirer will think you're ugly? That it? Come on, sweetheart, I'll just close my eyes and give that mug of yours a big old smooch."

There it is again, that ugly, unkind laughter.

"Well, if you insist!"

The lights go off for a second time, plunging the entire laboratory into darkness. It's hard to tell where the skittering sound is coming from - the noise seems to reverberate from every wall, each echo more distorted than the last. But then another sound pierces through the darkness, one far less difficult to pinpoint - there, a a dozen or so yards ahead of him, Stan will be able to hear the tell-tale signs of a struggle.

Something clatters to the ground, something hard and metal. It skids across the ground towards Stan, before skidding to a stop a few feet away.

Then, as soon as they shut off, the lights come back on with blinding force. A short ways away from Stan's feet, he'll see a handgun. Further than that, at six or so yards, he'll find something even more alarming -

His brother, two of him, both wearing matching expressions of distress.

"Stanley, I--"

"Stan, don't listen to it, that's not me!"

Just when he was starting to get his feet under him with a few good taunts, he gets a damn right hook. Should he be expecting that with Ford now? Is that Ford's thing these days? Throwing people for a loop every five fucking minutes?

He gapes. Then he stares at the gun and, okay, no one could blame him for takin' a while to just stare at all this, right? Right. Fuckin' nuts, is what it is. And if he thinks about that, how weird and unfairly out of the blue it is, he won't be thinking about the way his heart's pounding, or how weak with relief he feels at the fact that Ford is alive, Stanley hasn't gotten him killed - yet, that is, hasn't gotten him killed yet, got to keep that in mind. It ain't time for a freakout yet, Stan. It ain't time.

Okay. Stan steps in front of the gun, hears it skitter a little bit back as he does, but doesn't pick it up. "What am I supposed to do, fuckin' shoot you? Jeez, is this what you been workin' on all these years? Fuckin'- cloning, or that kinda' freaky sci-fi shit? What the hell, Ford?"

What do you do in a situation like this? Shit, what do you even do? Can't punch, sure as shit won't shoot, so what's left? Stan does what he does best. He talks. Talk enough, get someone, one of them, both maybe, talkin', and if lady luck is on his side that'll clear this up. Come on, lady, Stan thinks. I could really use a break. I know you don't always like me, but shit, if you owe anyone anything, you owe my brother. Let him get lucky here. Give me this.

Edited 2016-01-18 03:08 (UTC)

The Fords - or rather, Ford and his doppelganger (though which is which is impossible to tell by sight alone), both rush to respond. They wind up speaking over one another, their voices eerily identical. Their expressions, even their gestures and body-language, are similarly impossible to tell apart.

"I know, I know, I should have told you before we came down here, I--"

"--He's a shapeshifter. I told you, Stan, there are things in this world that don't belong here, and he's one of them!"

"Stanley, don't listen to it, that isn't--"

"Don't you recognize your own brother? He's the fake, not me - go on, ask me something only I would know!"

The Ford on the left looks from Stan to his double, who just spoke, then back again. He looks visibly distressed, no more or less so than the other Ford, but unlike his duplicate he looks thoughtful too. Something seems to be stirring in his mind, and before the other Ford can interrupt him again he looks back to Stan.

He looks Stan dead in the eye, raises his left hand, and speaks with calm, quiet confidence.

"Hey, Stanley. High-six?"

Stan's eyes widen, his mouth opens a little- Then he stops, paints a look of suspicion over his face, like maybe he's having doubts. His eyes move from Ford to the other one and he steps closer slowly, closer, head tilted, trying to look at both of 'em the same, because he's got to be careful here. He's got to be really careful, and he bets the only thing makin' it so that clone-thing lets him put his hands in his pockets is the fact that the gun's way over there behind him, further with every careful little step. He don't mind guns, ain't one of those guys who thinks he's makin' some stupid statement by avoiding them, but sometimes they're more trouble than they're worth. Like now.

Because now, you see, now one hand's got a palmfull of splinters and shards of glass both great and small, and his fingers curl around it and this is the moment, this here-

He throws all of it directly at the Ford-thing's eyes and grabs at the hand Ford held up and pulls, makes to run them both over toward where that gun slid away to because you know how sometimes guns are more trouble than they're worth? Yeah. Now's the time they ain't. If Stan bought them enough time with that little stunt, if they can just get to it, if he can even aim the thing - because Stan knows how far off a shot can go, they make it look real easy in the movies but he's never met a bullet that wants to go where he tries to put it - If, if, if. That's okay. Him and if are buddies. He's okay with if.

Edited (last edit here promise) 2016-01-18 05:38 (UTC)

If Stan had any doubts that he made the right decision, they should be swiftly eliminated by the ungodly shrieking that the not-Ford bellows out when that glass hits its mark. The sound it makes - it's not human. That's not a noise that could ever come out of a person (even a person with glass cutting into their retinas.)

Which means that the hand Stan grabs does, in fact, belong to his brother. Who, by the way, feels a tidal wave of relief wash over him that's so all-encompassing he thinks he might just pass out again. He doesn't, because this is quite possibly the worst time for an impromptu nap, but damn if he doesn't wobble a little as Stan drags him along as fast as they both can go.

Behind them, the long shadow of the shapeshifter grows, its body morphing into something too hideous and monstrous to proper describe without ample usage of the most vulgar swear words known to man.

"That won't slow it down for long--" He means both the glass and the gun, assuming they can manage to pump a few bullets into it, but there's no time to elaborate. "--We need to force it back into one of the cryo-tubes."

"Really? When you do somethin' you really do it don't you, shit, okay." He grabs for the gun and eyes the shadow of the thing on the ground, his jaw tensing, steeling himself for it. He doesn't want to see what's making that shadow, he really doesn't, but if the alternative is being dead then okay, okay, he turns and fires off a shot he's almost sure don't hit anything, partly because his eyes keep sliding off whatever the hell it is that's in front of him, doin' it all kinda' on their own just to protect him from lookin' at it straight enough that he'll remember what it looks like later.

"Go turn it on, turn 'em all on! Come on!" He pushes Ford a little, turning every now and then to fire a shot off that might, if they're lucky, will make the thing at least stop a second to try and avoid getting hit. And he runs. He don't stop running, means to keep running in circles all around the damn lab room if they need to, just so long as it keeps them away from that- that thing, god, that thing, long enough to fucking kill it.