(no subject)

[alldeduction]

Who| Sherlock, John, Joan, Punchy, and OPEn
What| Sherlock decides to build a computer.
Where| In the Parking Garage
When| Endish of Week 2
Warnings/Notes| None yet, beyond the general warning of Sherlock being a complete tosser.

He'd been collecting pieces for days. Dissembling anything he came across that could possibly have electronic components in it, building a slowly growing pile of loot where Joan had been stashed while John built her a brace. Eventually, though, she was able to walk again, and Sherlock made the decision to make the final push.

Dragging his companions back to the parking garage with his trusty crowbar in tow and only a few broken ribs, he had all his components wrapped in various pieces of clothing stolen off the backs of glaring manikins. He would have to thank Timaeus for the crowbar later, but for now it was going to come in more useful than the man probably meant it to.

His aim was a vehicle, and he managed to find one that hadn't already been totaled by the other tributes.

"Stand back," He murmured to John and Joan as he angled into the window and cranked the door open before sliding inside. Checked the glove compartment, smirked a thanks to Punchy and drew out the key to hold it up.

"Well. Time to build a computer."

Comments

[drpsychosomatic]

John shook his head in bewildered amusement. "Only you, Sherlock," he laughed, scrubbing a hand through his hair as he cast an eye over the rest of the parking garage. The last thing they needed was to be caught off guard.
"Alright. So... you want us to stand here and look pretty while you get on with being a genius?"

[alldeduction]

Sherlock was busy ripping open the dashboard where the cigarette lighter was usually plugged into.

"Well, neither of you quite have my collar bones, but I'm sure you'll manage," He smirked. The key was in the ignition, but he had not turned the car on. Not yet.

"Perhaps keep me alive for the next few hours? That, also, would be wonderful."

[formersurgeon]

"Right. Okay." She shifted her eyes to John. "So...we both keep a lookout and John fights off anyone who tries to attack us? Because, gotta say, me trying to fight somebody? Would be way more hilarious than I'd like."

[drpsychosomatic]

"I think you get to do the being pretty while I do the standing," he chuckled- though the thought had occurred to him, too. "Just keep an eye on my back, and Sherlock? If you really want to impress me, you could cut those few hours down to, say, one. Two at a push."

[alldeduction]

"Everything I ever do is to impress you, John Watson," Sherlock muttered, though it had an element of truth to it.

"And no, Joan, I don't expect you to fight." He pulled out of the car for a brief second, and handed her his crowbar. "Unless absolutely necessary, of course," he added with a smirk before returning to his work. "You'd be surprised what necessity and adversity will do to a person."

punchy is free to tag in if he wants, otherwise we can handwave him dragging Carlos here

[youbarium]

"What do you intend to use it for?" Carlos asked. As someone who was no stranger to building machines out of scrounged and salvaged parts, he respected the endeavor, but he wasn't quite sure how useful it would be in a gladiatorial arena.

[alldeduction]

"To stave off the crushing weight of boredom," Sherlock muttered as he tinkered. He couldn't really give an honest answer, of course. There were plenty of things he was hoping to get out of this endeavor, none of which he really wanted to advertise for the viewing public.

"As John so eloquently put it, perhaps a few hundred games of solitaire."

[nunpunching]

"It's like some FBI shit. Confidential." Punchy smirks and winks, then strokes his chin. He's just barely starting to grow some red beardiness. It isn't terribly flattering. It also itches.

He's also taken off the top of his pajamas, wondering if he can get some Sponsor gifts just by standing there and flexing those carved superhero muscles every few minutes. Occasionally he drops and does some pushups before horning in on what Sherlock's working on.

"I ain't a hardware nizzle and I don't work hoopties." It's not an excuse - he still wants to try. He's also hauled the corpse-cleaning robot over and has pulled a sensor out of it. He holds it up to Sherlock and Carlos. "Pretty sure this is their hound."

[youbarium]

Carlos raised an eyebrow. It took Punchy's wink to get it through to him, but he understood: Oh, because we're being constantly monitored, you can't talk about it. It made perfect sense.

It was also terribly inconvenient.

"Computers aren't my area of expertise, either. Most of my homemade devices are things like microphones and electroreceptors -- made to detect and record, not compute. But that looks fascinating." He leaned in to get a closer look at what Punchy was holding up. "It's clearly a sensor, but what exactly does it detect?"

[designatedfreak]

She had left the group of french resistance fighters in order to hunt for supplies. Real supplies. The traps she had set up around their camp where simple noise alerts -- what they needed was a far more lethal deterrent.

In the two weeks she'd been trapped in this world, Max had kept note on what could be found on each floor (and in some cases who). Most of the others had gone up, so her safest option would be to go down. There had been a number of vehicles parked around their arrival area and with any luck those vehicles would have just what she needed.

The gate to the bottom floor was open, which wasn't that much of a concern, but it did remind her to be extra vigilant. She moved quickly towards a car and forced open the hood. Wincing at the noise she'd caused, her small fingers moved to unhook the battery when the sound of whispers stopped her. Of course she wasn't alone down here. Damn.

[formersurgeon]

Joan was in the best position to check out the noise. She sidestepped, dragging her bad leg as much as possible, and peered around the line of cars to see the girl. Joan was well aware that many of the kid here were the most dangerous in the Arena. Still, she figured that there was enough distance between them that if the girl decided to get aggressive, John would be there to defend Joan than the girl could be there to harm her.

Still, she tightened her grip on the crowbar as she called out softly.

"Hey. Do you need help?"

[designatedfreak]

Max knew that even without her enhancements she could overtake the woman and... She took in the leg and immediately knew this was most likely the friend of the Doctor. There had been a familiarity about the older man. He had held himself like a soldier, but he was an old soldier and Max was confident that even with this woman she could take him. That didn't mean she allowed herself to relax as she shook her head at the woman's question; that crowbar she held stood out.

"Is that Doctor with you?" If Joly was any indication on what the Doctors in this world were like then Max felt safe enough.

[formersurgeon]

"You mean John?" Of course he would have met lots of people in the two weeks that they'd been in the Arena. Even Joan met a couple, and she had been stashed away in a hiding place.

"He's here. Do you need him?"

[isthistheregion]

He hadn't been down here since they had been released into the Arena. But after days of cowering on the roof, the Creature had been slowly making his way downward, taking stock of this place in a way he hadn't done before. This, the bottom floor, was his last stop.

He was carrying a small bag with the remainders of his rations, and the bone he'd broken off of one of the skeletons on a higher floor: blunt at one end, jaggedly broken at the other. Bits of gravel and broken glass crunched under his feet as he ventured into the place, and the sound echoed with what seemed like unnatural volume.

[formersurgeon]

Joan turned at the sound, narrowing her eyes. She slowly moved toward it, not too far from Sherlock and John, just enough to get a better view. When she saw the man, her grip tightened slightly on the crowbar. The last time she saw him had been when they met at the wedding, and he (she still refused to call him The Creature) had been violent then. What would he be like in the Arena?

She decided to call out to him, softly. To let him know that she was there, that she saw him, and to let John and Sherlock know about his presence. It took the element of surprise off the table, of course, but Joan and her companions weren't here to lie in wait and ambush people.

"Hey."

[alldeduction]

Sherlock was still in the car, fiddling with his computer and didn't look up.

"What is it?" He called out in a low voice to Joan, somewhat irritably.

[isthistheregion]

He stopped and held up his weapon when he heard her call out, instantly on the defensive... but oh. It was her. And just the sight of her was enough to put him on the back foot for a moment. The wedding reception, recent as it was, already felt like ages ago.

For whatever it was worth, there wasn't a spot of blood on his weapon. He hadn't needed to use it in anything like a fatal capacity yet.

"I mean no harm," he announced, taking a step -- not toward them, but parallel to where they stood. Still holding his weapon up. He didn't trust anyone here. "I'm only -- exploring."

[tis_allgood]

Cuthbert was exploring the parking garage on his own for a bit, he had more maneuverability than his partner. He had been sticking to the shadows as much as possible, especially once he saw Sherlock and his band of merry men and women. He waited to see what he was actually up to before he came close enough for his voice to be heard.

"What sort of trappery are you up to now?"

He left himself enough room to get away if he had to, but it meant he couldn't attack them well either. Just as well, he would like to play this safe. At least this time.

[drpsychosomatic]

"Sherlock," John called out- nice and steady, his eyes snapping to the source of the sound- he recognised Cuthbert's voice and was under no illusions as to what it could mean despite the conversation they'd had at the Crowning. "Visitor. Are you hurt, Cuthbert, or is this a social call?"

[tis_allgood]

"The only hurt, doctor, is your immediate distrust of me. But then, I've earned it, have I not?"

He shifts in the shadows so they have a hard time pinning down where he is until he speaks again.

"What exactly are you up to? Is curiousity a sociable enough reason to call on you?"

[alldeduction]

Sherlock made a grumbling noise from inside the car, but eventually stuck his head out to get a look at their visitor.

"Oh it's you. I don't have time to die, Cuthbert, I'm busy, and it's none of your business."

[googledox]

The parking garage was not exactly a place with much to offer in terms of supplies after having gotten picked clean by the Tributes after the Cornucopia run, but it also wasn't a place where many may have thought to go back to, which meant it might be safer than other areas of the museum.

That was Brainy's reasoning for going there.

His reasons for not running away when he saw that others were there were plentiful. One reason was that the tall man who'd wanted to speak to him was there and he wanted to get a better sense of him before talking to him privately. Another was the fact that the woman seemed to be injured - that made them fighting him somewhat impractical since they wouldn't be able to move her if he went on the offensive.

The main reason was because he was Brainy and they were trying to build something and he could, on occasion, be an arrogant prick when it came to technology. When he spoke, his skepticism was genuine, touched with none of the faux villainy he was projecting for his chosen cover.

"Please tell me you don't think you're actually going to accomplish something by building a primitive counting machine out of this dreck." He added, "I'd call it a computer but I don't like imbuing inanimate objects with false hope that they can be something more than they are."

[drpsychosomatic]

Well, this was a new one. John weighed the visitor up as quickly as he could, filing him in the relatively new category of 'not from earth', which had certain connotations when it came to Sherlock. Not from earth generally meant that Sherlock wouldn't have a frame of reference, and not having one of those tended to make him irritable. He glanced over to Joan.

"I think you might have a question from the peanut gallery," he informed Sherlock with a grim kind of certainty.

[alldeduction]

"Brainiac Five." Sherlock said without actually looking up from what he was doing, his tone incredibly long-suffering.

"The peanut gallery can keep their uniformed opinions to themselves," He added a little louder, while he continued tinkering. "If our esteemed colleague doesn't believe in ancient technology I would remind him that his supposed future relies on their foundation."

In more ways that one, with this particular machine.

[googledox]

"Yes, and that same future relied on the creation of the wheel," was his very dry response. "I'd be telling you the same thing if you were attempting to roll your way to freedom."

Because his opinion was needed and wanted here, clearly.