epidemiology | [CLOSED]

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CHARACTERS: Waylon Park
DATE: Now
WARNINGS: Generic zombie warnings
SUMMARY: Waylon Park never wanted to go back to the 90s.

I'm A Programmer, I Have No Life Miles & Shuusei
He'd lived through the 90s the first time. It had been somewhat silly but mainly nondescript, he had still been somewhat of a newly wed. Astonished with his good luck that Lisa loved him, and falling more and more in love with her every day. He was always more lost in his own head more than engaged with culture, but he remembers a few things. The sitcoms that Lisa liked to put on while she cooked or ironed, the way she had made him listen to "My Heart Will Go On" more times than he'd ever wanted to hear it, laughing when his nose would screw up at his desk when he would realize she'd had it playing on loop behind him for a while.

He tongues one of his canine teeth and tries not to think about it as he sits back in his chair. The computer he'd picked up, quickly and on credit, is a pathetic vehicle of the past, but he remembers all of its ins and outs and oddities. He'd done his PhD on a computer like this, grubby tan outer fixtures and a crappy convex CRT that catches the overhead light with a blinding glare. When no one else is there, he sits in the dark.

If someone were to accuse him of fetishizing his own sadness, he probably wouldn't even be able to deny them.

It takes him most of the first week to actually get it going -- god back when development had timeline expectations like that, now it's a few hours -- but he draws down all the WHO data and plots it, making a pattern of frequency and density of the local area. With a police scanner, he can even keep it fairly well updated hour to hour. It sits there, flickering, downloading new data every few hours.

He sits around and drinks coffee the rest of the time, watching the news, an ear out for the scanner. Looking like a sadsack, scared to sleep around his creepy asshole roommate. No. Big. Deal.

Hot Zone For Teacher Gio
He gets tired with being a sadsack. It is now a documented problem of his: his conscience and desire to do something right for the world. The police scanner item about the elementary school draws him out of his own misery. It's the kids that do it, thinking about his kids. A pair of little boys with their mother's handsome features, luckily, rather than his. He's never going to see them actually hit school age. Never going to watch track and field days, plays, recitals, graduations--

He's already left the apartment and gone down there before he's even realized it.

He stares up at the building, hands in his pockets for a moment before he gets on the magitek, looking for some backup before he gets himself fucking killed... But he has his camera, and he knows entirely too well how to climb into the vents of this place. He'll go in alone if he has to.

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[ Miles brings home a kid, and that kid is actually an alley cat masquerading as a young man. He can't leave Kagari alone, not in a shitty motel when the world has gone crazy around him - not when he doesn't know if anybody is looking out for him. Kagari's so snide and caustic, and the one person ( other than himself ) that he knows can handle that shit is Waylon Park. Waylon, who's a father and who's had to deal with Miles since day one among Audentes.

The apartment was pre-furnished, and Miles has no problem pointing to the room that he'd been utilizing as his own and indicating that it's now Kagari's. ]

I don't sleep, [ he explains, and casts a pointed look over to his roommate. The one who also looks as though he doesn't sleep, but needs to.

Waylon, you look like shit!! ]

Kagari, this is Waylon. Waylon, this is Kagari. [ And to Kagari: ] This is the safest place you could be right now.

[ He says it in a way where Waylon will know what he means, without fail. ]

[Kagari gives Miles a hard squint when he says he doesn't sleep--he's been under the impression that his human-shaped compatriot was, in fact, human. Maybe a cyborg, like that Senguji nutcase, and that's why he's weird about the Terminator movies? Things to bother Miles about later, maybe.

He's being introduced right now, after all--which he notes, is maybe the first time anyone's ever actually wanted him to meet someone; he doesn't know how he feels about that--so he might as well stay on topic.

He doesn't know anything about this guy, of course (without the last name, that w in w.park could stand for anything, after all), but he can practically feel the sadsack radiating off him.]

Yo, Waylon. So, Miles your knight in shining armor too?

[aka are u another of his adopted strays or are u here for a different reason...]

It seems he won't have to.

Giovanni shares none of his conscience, his higher motives, has no real desire to do anything good for the people of this city, or any other place in any other world for that matter. But restlessness gets under his skin like an army of marching insects, a scurry and itch all through his blood, his bones, right down to the core of him. It's worsened lately, this feeling, and whilst the fact that this worsening coincided with discovering his 'sister' on this mission has contracted the Bristol Virus isn't lost on him, it's not something he knows how to adequately explain. Not even to himself.

And so he's up and out when the call comes through, dressed in police uniform and armed with two pistols just to make things that little bit easier-- not that he's opposed to a challenge, but why not use the advantages one has been given? He arrives just fifteen minutes after Waylon sent out the message, and on finding the man he flashes his crookedpin smile.

"Waylon Park, I believe."

[ I mean. Technically. Miles may or may not have already saved his life. And Waylon is game to give him credit for those good guy points, but the Walrider in general is a murder machine, and it's vast negative points may entirely override all of Miles'. None of this really matter, because Waylon, unshaven and drinking from yesterday's coffee pot, is squinting at this situation with a tired resignation that doesn't even come near to being actual curiosity. ]

Wel...come?

[ Seems the simplest way to go about this. He's not sure he agrees with that statement about this being the safest place. But, he is definitely not going to start that conversation, ever, in his entire life with Miles Upshur. ]

I think you've insulted me online once or twice.

[ A mild statement, he's been insulted on the internet before. Sticks and stones. ]

Waylon knows this is a bad idea. He's aware of it, niggling in the back of his head. Making it out of Mount Massive had been an act of God -- something he doesn't believe in -- and to think he's really acquired any skills from the events of scrambling his way out of that horror is incorrect. Beyond that, making it out had injured him plenty. The leg he'd broken falling down an elevator shaft had never quite gotten back to normal. Damaged. Easier to break now. Easier to catch.

He inhales. Meets Gio's look head on. He thinks maybe he's talked to this one and found him... unnerving. His easiness with the situation and the guns -- something Waylon also does not believe in -- just settles it in. But, well. Gio's not foaming from the mouth trying to kill him right now, so he'll do.

"That's me," grimly, and his lack of total conviction to the success of this thing he's about to do is not very well hidden. "Look, uh, there are kids inside. So... "

I'm here to do my best? Is that what's about to come out of his mouth. His lips twitch, reconsidering that entire line of dialog.

"So, I think... avoiding bullets flying is the better idea."

[Normally, that wouldn't register too clearly on Kagari's radar, because he gets into it with various people on the fake internet. But he just remembered something about that very unique name. Waylon. w.park. This guy did introduce himself, once upon a time.]

Shit, that's right, you're that guy who wrote me like, fuckin' love poetry about typing.

Hope your keyboard hasn't gotten too sticky since you've been here.

[Someone save poor Waylon from Kagari being a crass piece of shit, Miles-Wan-Kenobi ur our only ho]

I'm not surprised you and Upshur get along.

[ Is... what Waylon has to say about that. To say Waylon and Miles get along, on the other hand, would not be entirely truthful, but they're pretty stuck with each other. The ties are a mess, oily black threads of guilt and fear and power. It's not something to talk about, just something they are forever aware of, so to a teenage boy they just look an incompatible pair of old men, really. The scrublord programmer and the undead journo. ]

Make yourself at home. Did you do something to warrant a need for 'the safest place you could be right now'?

[ A shrug, conversational tone with a hint of the fatherly disapproval he's ready and willing to use. Not that he thinks Kagari will respond to that kind of thing, he seems to remember this kid with some anti-social problems, though chipper enough about them. Were they still problems with that kind of self-awareness? Waylon isn't really sure. Overall though, he's not really complaining about an extra person around. Another person's ambient noise would help cancel out the headache inducing whir of the swarm that keeps Waylon from wanting sleep while Miles is around. ]

You two already know each other, wow. And you're getting along fantastically.

[ They're not. He knows this, and he's being facetious about the whole thing. ]

Kagari is helping me in the field.

[ Like an assistant, except this assistant is a fully grown man with a wild need to lash out and hurt everyone. He really picks the winners, don't you know? Miles is nonplussed by the tension in the room; primarily brought on by his presence and his sudden introduction of their new roommate - who is, more or less, a grungy cat that's been kicked a lot - to his other roommate - who is, more or less, tragically scarred and indebted to Miles. For reasons. He's not sharing them. ]

He failed to find himself roommates and was living out in some shitty motel. It's not a defensible location, and I don't want to risk him getting infected and becoming useless as fuck. So, I brought him here. You find anything new?

[ WHAT AN ASSHOLE!!!!!! ]

Maybe he didn't want roommates.

[ Waylon answers mildly, turning instead towards his computer screen, he clicks the zoom out on the flickering green and black map. It's all laid out by literal pixel coordinates, nothing sophisticated about it whatsoever. There is one red dot which represents them, their apartment. It helps with orientation. ]

Police scanner had one or two near enough for me to hear.

[ It had its limitations. ]

Pulled down W.H.O. reports for yesterday this morning. Big bubble popped in a couple apartment buildings.

[ He holds out a piece of paper with the address and tries not to look too eager about Miles leaving. Eager isn't even really the word, he doesn't like not being on the scene to watch him, but also isn't down for being infected while getting underfoot. NOT YET ANYWAY. His sense of helpless sadsackery needs to build up a little first. ]

Aww, it almost sounds like you were worried about me.

[Which is...something that makes him more uncomfortable than he wants to admit, honestly. Miles didn't need to get him out of that riot zone; he has no obligation to Kagari at all, even as his fake boss. So obviously the way to react is with unnecessarily barbed sass, rite.]

What's the W-H-O, anyway--some kind of government agency, I'm guessing? Related to the virus?

[Look, you don't need to worry about such things as world organizations when your country has gone Full Isolationist and doesn't even teach material about history anymore, okay]

[ To Waylon, referring to Kagari: ] I mean, I think he's housebroken.

[ If Kagari wants to give him snark, he'll shoot it right back at him. He's compassionate enough to keep his mouth shut about some things, but it's just not in him to be quiet if there's something to be said. It's why, back home, he's been escorted off scenes by armed guards, by police. Shoved into the back of cars, warned off by men in suits with weapons. Tossed in prison for a few days and told to cool his heels, only to come out swinging.

He doesn't have it in him to be silence. Not even death - death? - stopped him.

Miles takes the paperwork from Waylon, flipping through it idly: ] They're the World Health Organization. I don't want either one of you wandering without someone watching your back. If the WHO snatches any of us, for any reason, it could be hard to get back.

[ Bad news bears. ]

Only in the literal sense. I'll be shitting up your place in plenty of other ways, don't worry.

[ha ha hA was that comment Pointedly not at him, well, too bad. Anyway, back to the matter at hand; it's interesting how smoothly Kagari shifts gears, as if whatever they were talking about before doesn't matter at all.]

The city's under quarantine, though, right? Doubt the government would be willing to risk their own to come round us up. It'd be easier for them to just let us either figure this shit out ourselves or all just rot and kill each other.

Not right now. Not yet. Hahah.

But it's true. For the moment Giovanni only appears poised and perfectly relaxed-- there's nothing in his outward appearance to hint at the way things jump and jitter in him, the way his bones seem to sing loud and ringing with an ugly pent-up tension. There's only the continuation of that uneven smile, the slight raise of one thin blond eyebrow above the rim of his sunglasses as the other man makes his pronouncement.

Slowly, he sighs.

They're all the same, it seems. The others on this team, and not for the first time he wonders how he ended up here, in a predicament like this, with people who's understanding of the world falls so far from his own alignments. No matter. Glacially, he's becoming accustomed to it.

"Oh, there's no cause for concern. I'm an excellent shot," though he knows that isn't what the other man wants to hear, and so-- "But only if it becomes necessary. I wouldn't want to offend your delicate sensibilities."

I am not an expert on quarantine procedure.

[ Waylon answers, forever mild. You'd almost think that was really his nature, if you'd never seen him fight for his life, for his principles. It was definitely the mistake Blare had made, and had tried to rectify in stabbing him in the guts... ]

Government protocol isn't readily available here. [ He gestures towards the computer. ] Even in 2014 those old-school culture based groups are reluctant to go digital. Unless it's actual military grade, in which case I don't have the equipment to be hacking that.

[ Look, he's just saying. Don't make that face at him like he's talking geek. ]

But I'm not concerned about being snatched.

[ He feels he should add that because like Hell is he going out with a chaperone... Is that why Miles brought Kagari here? To keep eyes on him? Waylon turns in his chair to squint at the other man. He certainly hopes Miles isn't that irritating. ]

Gio makes him distinctly uncomfortable. He remembers it, talking to him on the magitek before. Smiling in the wrong places, sharp and exasperated with niceties. Not as unhinged as the variants, clearly under a fine veneer of control, but not right. Not right in a way that Waylon has been much too close and personal with. He thinks of Gluskin. Sighing, so exasperated with him for not just laying down and dying -- My Love. Sweat prickles on Waylon's brow, head spinning.

"Pretty delicate, yeah," he agrees, mouth dry. "Proceed like you don't to break anything."

He doesn't know where that sudden snappish authority comes from, and it leaves him just as abruptly. He turns to look at the school again.

"I want to find... the woman, the teacher, before she gets hurt. Then we can all figure out how to get the kids off the grounds," he says, his voice softer again, hazy at the edges. "I can't fight for shit, so I guess that's your job. And I'll... see about getting in the classrooms."

Snappish authority, yes, and perhaps in some ways it's a dangerous tone to take with a man like Giovanni, someone with guns and who's itching to use them, for whom violence seems to vibrate in the air around him. And yet he just barks out a hard-angled laugh, looks the other man over with sly consideration. His eyes may be hidden, but the assessment in the way he looks at him now is none the less overt for it.

"I'll make no promises," there's something in his voice, something wry and amused that's suggestive of a tease, but whether there's more truth to the words than that remains to be seen.

A little of the tension around him seems to break as he shrugs, however, turns his gaze back in the direction of the school, his assessment moving elsewhere.

"And there's no cause for concern, in that regard. You can leave all the fun parts to me," another brief flash of his smile, teeth just a little too sharp, "at least getting in should pose no problem. I suppose our teammate was right when he suggested I take up this position."

And he gestures, then, to the uniform he wears, the identifiers of a police officer. He may suspect that Haise wanted him on the force alongside him in order to keep an eye on him, but the position has had it's advantages.

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hey it's ya boi

and it's ya other boi

let me know if this works!

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i'm not sure if we're doin a tag order but /gently slides one more in first

pax'll pop up when she ready

i here

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lmk if i'm assuming anything wrong, timeline wise ...

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