joan_of_bark | A Chemical Plant Near the Chesapeake Bay, Thursday Evening

Unmakings took time.

She knew that. Had always known that. Poison Ivy had spent weeks feeding spores into the systems that supplied a place just like this, not even a year ago, letting them spread into the bodies and bones of those inside. Letting them pull together, however unwittingly, into a colony, into something she could mold.

Unmake.

(But then there had been a young blonde woman on the floor, so achingly resembling--)

(Why... why do you want to hurt me?)

But she had made Janet a promise, of sorts. To be a monster, but only to those who deserved it. Not to the little ants running around inside that hulking cage of metal and acrid smoke, with their little lives that harmed little in the space of all things. To embrace some humanity (sentimentality), for once.

(She knew herself better than that. Knew that it wasn't about the promise to Janet, but the promise to herself, to grow, to rise, to genuinely improve what could be improved, instead of lashing out.)

So out in the marshes, she waited. An access pass sat snugly within a pocket on her overalls, stolen from some poor sap in a bar who couldn't believe his luck. (He was alive, too.) Should she wait for that dark-haired woman with her dangerous hands?

Probably not. She always worked best alone, and the vegetation here stood tall, vulnerable to deadly fingers. So Ivy righted herself, and let the vegetation move with her as she walked the last half-mile into the belly of the beast.

Not an unmaking, but a precision strike.

It was a place to start.

[[ nfb due to distance. open for interaction only to those aware of the situation, if they wish ]]

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From:

joan_of_bark

For now, the area looked quiet. There were barely any cars in the nearby lot, and someone had clearly taken pains to make sure this plant had been built in the middle of the wilds, not near anything important.

Ivy opened the service door with a quick swipe of the card. "Ready?" she asked, hand on the handle.

From:

okteiviakom

There was a 'sha' ready and poised on Octavia's tongue, for some reason.

But that wouldn't mean anything here.

"Yes."

From:

joan_of_bark

She nodded.

And then opened the door up into what was clearly a service corridor, with pipes running along both sides of the narrow path ahead. "Step one," Ivy said, "We're not far."

From:

okteiviakom

Upon entering the corridor right on Ivy's heels, Octavia found herself thinking about the bunker.

And the Ark.

Nothing new there, really. She'd been thinking about both lately whether she wanted to or not. She shook it off. "Control room on this level, or below?"

Edited Date: 2024-10-24 02:39 pm (UTC)

From:

joan_of_bark

"Below," Ivy said. "One more level."

And that was all the pause she allowed herself. She touched one of the pipes along the walls, and followed it through. The lights were dim, some flickering - they had clearly seen better days.

She ignored the first two doors they passed.

Then opened the third, revealing a stairwell-- and reached up. Fungus crawled along her hand, tangling with the security camera that sat against that wall. It flooded the lens.

She pulled her hand back. "Don't touch that."

(Maybe she should have done this alone, after all. To minimize the risk of her to Octavia's life.)

From:

okteiviakom

Always underground, Octavia had time to think, and then they were moving again.

And there was... that.

"Wasn't going to," she promised, eyeing the growth. "Are we expecting a lot of cameras along the way? I'm assuming yes since what these places want to protect is themselves."

From:

joan_of_bark

"Likely," Ivy said, stepping out of the way, further into the stairwell. "It's best to blind them and move on. Destroying them calls too much attention to us."

From:

okteiviakom

"So you'll have to keep walking point," Octavia said with one of her very tiny nods, following Ivy but also peering past her down the stairs.

Not a challenge. Agreement.

"I'll watch our backs."

From:

joan_of_bark

"Thank you."

No more words needed to be wasted. Ivy descended into the yet darker level below.

Somewhere, something metal clanged in the dark. A groan of old steel? Or something else?

From:

okteiviakom

When the noise came, Octavia didn't stop to listen, but slowed down so that her footfalls were even softer than they had already been.

The building was in clear need of repair. The odds that it was just that were great.

But she wasn't an idiot.

From:

joan_of_bark

Ivy tilted her head at the noise, her face unreadable.

The maintenance tunnels below weren't very different from the ones above. The floor beneath their feet looked worn, and so did many of the pipes. (It must have been so easy to just... direct the flow of waste into the area.)

She turned the right corner into the hallway. More doors up ahead. Her fingers trailed over the bottom of another surveillance camera, but this time she barely paused as the fungus overran it.

Keep walking.

From:

okteiviakom

It was the smart thing to do. If there was anything smart about having come here in the first place. Octavia watched Ivy use her... power, and thought idly about just how little she knew about the woman.

And thought, even more idly, even more faintly, about how much Duke and Lucifer would likely have disagreed with her choice to come here.

Which was why they didn't know.

Keep walking.

Edited Date: 2024-10-25 07:35 am (UTC)

From:

joan_of_bark

The corridor seemed like it went on forever.

Easy to lose your focus, if you weren't careful. Especially with the door you needed - the relevant door right there, just a few steps away from Ivy's feet.

And then a door to Octavia's left opened, pushing out into the corridor, revealing the arm of one startled young man. (Not a security guard, by the looks of him.)

From:

okteiviakom

An arm was all Octavia needed.

Instinct took over as she grabbed him. The sound of a scuffle was minimal, and then the man was unconscious on the floor.

Which would buy them time, but there was definitely a clock ticking now. "Are we close?"

From:

joan_of_bark

She's efficient, Ivy thought. (Octavia wasn't the only one who'd gone into this not entirely sure of the other party involved.)

"We are," she said, brushing past commenting about any of that. "Here."

A bigger, heavier door awaited. She swiped the card.

It opened. It was empty. "Guess our new friend was the night shift."

From:

okteiviakom

Octavia glanced back at where the man remained on the floor, no particular expression on her face.

(Even from just this distance, he looked very still. More so than he actually was.)

And then back at Ivy. "Good news for us. Cameras?"

From:

joan_of_bark

Pam's eyes swept across the room. "I don't see one, but there must be one," she said, slipping quietly through the door. "Somewhere."

From:

okteiviakom

Octavia followed her, but not before a cursory glance of her own to make sure she wasn't about to step right into anything Pam had missed.

"Guessing your... plant friends can't be used to find things."

From:

joan_of_bark

"They're fungi," Ivy said absently. "And no."

She stayed close to the wall as she moved, her eyes trailing along the ceiling. Looking for a telltale dot.

They could figure out the controls afterward.

From:

okteiviakom

Octavia lingered by the doorway. It doubled for listening to any possible sounds from the corridor.

"To your left," she said, after a brief moment of looking up, herself. "Is that it?"

From:

joan_of_bark

Ivy turned her head, and narrowed her eyes.

"Yes," she said.

She moved quickly, after that. Flooding the camera with lamia.

"There," she said. "Now we can overload the systems running this place."

From:

okteiviakom

Octavia moved further into the room once the camera was fully covered, looking around, trying to make sense of the systems in question.

This was not a part that she held any delusions about being very helpful with.

From:

joan_of_bark

"This facility is old. It won't take much," Ivy said coolly. She walked over to the terminal. She held no illusions about doing anything particularly intricate to it-- but with a swipe of the card, she got in, and she could at least bring the power down to zero.

Stop the heart from pumping.

"There," she said. "And now we do it the old-fashioned way-- we break things."

She reached for a pipe. Gripped it tightly. And let the lamia push into its weaknesses, wrenching it open.

From:

knightinshinarmor

The facility was old, yes, and full of large, dusty duct work along with all those pipes.

In one of the ducts, a figure in black paused, red-on-black eyes narrowing as he listened to the all-too-familiar sounds of tearing metal.

Looked like he wasn't the only one who'd had the idea to infiltrate this place tonight.

He picked up the pace, crawling past the vent to the CEO's office on his way to the server room, where he would plant his bug.

You know, assuming the server room was still functioning when he got there.

From:

okteiviakom

Octavia hadn't moved yet. She was eyeing the newly torn metal.

"You think breaking the pipes like that is safe now?"

As much as any of this was safe for them.