[color=lightgray][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][table][row][/row][row][cell] [h3][color=4682b4][i][b]Ash Holloway[/b][/i][/color][/h3][i][b][color=4682b4]Location:[/color][/b][/i] Mechanics (K) [i][b][color=4682b4]Skills:[/color][/b][/i] N/A [/cell][cell] [right][img]https://i.ibb.co/4SyBv75/Ash-FC-2.jpg[/img][/right] [/cell][/row][/table][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][/color] Cleaning supplies... This was a time that Ash genuinely wished that this place had a pressurized waterhose and some industrial cleaner. Bleach. Degreaser. Things with activated enzymes and that may or may not be flammable. His mind darted back to his time stationed in Central and South America and his work with limited resources. The battles to keep things clean and/or sterile were near constant. He remembered one of the best cleaners he could improvise primitively involved alcohol and citrus rind, two things he might be able to put together here, though he was almost certain that these people had already thought of that. Maybe ask first, as he had an opportunity, before merely assuming they didn't already have something like that set up. Write it down for later on, as it had zero bearing on what was going on that day. Curiosity did get the better of him as he looked to the clipboard. It was a regularly cleaned room, supposedly. Ash could only assume that it was, looking at a series of names and dates backing up that theory, though the hard and fast, on the ground evidence inferred a different story altogether. This place was disgusting. Maybe if it was outdoors, where the breeze could catch the funk of concentrated human leavings and move it away, or at least give it room to diffuse, it wouldn't be so bad. But here he was, amid the tile and porcelain of a fallen civilization, on cleanup. It would have been quite metaphorical if it wasn't beginning to singe his nostril hairs short. If this room was actually cleaned out a couple of days ago, he wanted to know the name of the slackass who signed off that this was handled, and if that wasn't the issue, who the hell did this to the bathroom afterwards? He could solve one of those immediately. The last name on the list: [i]Checkbook[/i]. [color=4682b4]"Hmm,"[/color] came the only comment he chose to make for the revelation. In any case, this train of thought was likewise not productive. [color=4682b4]"Fix the problem, not the blame,"[/color] he reminded himself. If it had to be addressed later, it would be addressed later. That wasn't his job. Cleaning it up [i]was[/i]. So on he continued, despite the smell of it seeming to concentrate and build. Once or twice, he even swore it grew a malevolent intelligence and sought him out personally. Though he clung to his personal work ethic, even dipping into the oath he swore as an officer to an army that only truly existed as a creed anymore, it did not stop his physiological reaction to the unrelenting filth. More than once, his stomach tried to assert itself, threatening to empty its contents [i]just in case[/i] that might fix the problem. Suffice it to say, Ash was not happy. He blinked away the moisture building in his eyes and stoically steeled himself to the task at hand, forsaking unnecessary conversation in the hopes of getting the job over with quickly and thoroughly. That, and he really didn't feel like opening his mouth in this room any more than he had to, lest the dankness taint him further. [color=lightgray][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][table][row][/row][row][cell] [h3][color=dc143c][i][b]Thalia Carmichael[/b][/i][/color][/h3][i][b][color=dc143c]Location:[/color][/b][/i] Administration (A) [i][b][color=dc143c]Skills:[/color][/b][/i] N/A [/cell][cell] [right][img]https://i.ibb.co/4MQGYbk/Thalia-Portrait-III.jpg[/img][/right] [/cell][/row][/table][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][/color] [color=dc143c]"Thanks,"[/color] Thalia said to Gunny's back as he left the room. Maybe he heard it. As far as she knew, an expression of gratitude wouldn't have mattered to the man even if he did catch it. Gunny reminded her of her uncle, a little. It was the quiet way that he communicated only that which was necessary for the moment, and otherwise stared at people in an unnerving way. Hell, Thalia grew up with that, from the age of ten onward. No problems there. But she still felt the need to thank the man. Best foot forward, or something like that. So Joaquin took lunch at noon. Checking her slip of paper from earlier, Thalia saw that the their mealtimes overlapped by a half hour. She'd get a chance to confront the slippery, iambic pentameter speaking jackass in a few hours, and then she'd get her answers. Barring anything else, it would give her a few minutes with her half-sibling. It would be nice to catch up a little more. Again, that was hours away. Thalia had bitch work to do, so she figured that she'd better got to it. Sorting crap. Yay. It could be worse - a whole lot worse - and she was in there with someone she was more or less comfortable around. There were harder things one might do to get food and shelter. She'd done a lot of them, too. Junk sorting. How quaint. It was like scavenging, except she was keeping [i]everything[/i], not just what was useful to her, personally. She could do this. Ignoring the fact that she was in a basement with limited exits (behind walls or not it ran contrary to her general survival strategy), Thalia started sorting. Alexander's question struck her as odd. In the many months they were on the outside, hadn't they had this conversation? It seemed weird that they wouldn't have. Than again, that was all about what you could do to help each other, not how they came across the ability to do so. Survival on the day-to-day. Why not? Conversation it was. [color=dc143c]"Hands on. That's funny theah, Mugs,"[/color] she said sardonically, glancing to her metal limb. [color=dc143c]"I wanted to work for my uncle's company as more than a corp-sec agent. Went to school for it in Boston. Electronics major, Criminal Justice minor. Suffolk University,"[/color] she noted at the end. It was a decent school once upon a time; while it didn't have the clout and recognition of MIT, it was a place that moneyed people tried to get into, and spoke a little of her background. [color=dc143c]"Go Rams,"[/color] she finished dryly. It was at about this time that Thalia heard a cracking sound from just above her. The box she was pulling down wasn't the issue, she had gotten pretty good at hauling close with her left and propping it up with her artificial right. Damn near a workable system, even. But the act of slipping a box toward her that was just barely in her reach put too much pressure on the shelving, causing the whole damn thing to come collapsing down in an avalanche of junk. Instinct took over, and while Thalia wasn't able to fully get out of the way she could shield herself from the brunt of the falling objects - but not all of them. Something brass colored and shiny slipped into her vision for a quarter second, maybe, before she felt a sharp pain strike her cheek. Thalia let out a wordless grunt of pain and impatience, [color=dc143c][i]"Nnnaah!"[/i][/color] and reflexively slapped her hand to her face. It felt warm and wet. Holy shit, she was actually bleeding. It wasn't [i]bad[/i], but it did surprise the hell out of her. [color=dc143c]"Really?"[/color] she inquired of no one in particular. [color=dc143c]"Fucking really?"[/color] A heavy sigh later, [color=dc143c]"Gimmie a minute, heah. Hate fucking [i]bowling[/i]..."[/color] She actually didn't. It just seemed like the thing to say right then.