tampered | Log (ongoing)

Log (ongoing)

When; February 3, afternoonish
Rating; PG-13 for various "don't do this at home" exploits
Characters; Dr. Horrible (

horrible_phd ) and Carl (

somekindofsin ), with Karrin and the illustrious Captain Hammer later on.
Summary; The elevator in the City's laboratory is unwilling to take orders. Attempts to fix it lead, naturally, to mayhem and plans to destroy the carousel for the good of humanity. Or whatever.
Log;

Carl shuffled about the laboratory's lobby, waiting for his associate (well, they weren't really associates, as they worked independently and on different levels of the laboratory, but Carl was in the habit of thinking about all other scientifically-minded individuals in his general vicinity as associates), Dr. Horrible. The friar didn't usually collaborate with anyone with "horrible" in their name, but the City hardly allowed one to be picky. Anyway, Carl suspected Dr. Horrible was more of a Dr. Morally-Ambiguous.

From what Carl had learned from personal experience, the elevator that they were going to attempt to fix refused to allow any one City citizen access to more than one floor of the laboratory. There was undoubtedly a reason for it, but the arrangement made it rather difficult to visit associates on other floors. Carl was almost certain that whatever odd 'magic' infested the City controlled the elevator's movements, making the contraption rigged rather than broken. This didn't faze him. Neither did the fact that he had virtually no experience with lifts of any kind. Carl had no doubt that scientific ingenuity could overcome virtually everything, supernatural forces and general ignorance included.

Of course, Carl also had every intention of trying to destroy the City's carousel at a later date, which, he surmised, threw a fair amount of doubt on his convictions and sanity.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Yeah, that's Emma. She's from--I forget exactly, but close to the beginning of the 19th century. I like her a lot, I mean she's been very nice and did manage to convince me to get out and go to a Christmas party and things, but...

Emma lives in a special Emma-land
And the situation's getting of hand
At first it was sweet and endearing
But she's already hurt someone's feelings
And I still haven't said anything."

He noticed he was getting into full-blown ramble mode, though not that he had broken out into song, so he stopped for a moment to check if he really did have a concussion. But no, it was just the effect of having a willing audience.

"No, no concussion. Believe me, I know how to recognize the signs."

Carl was vaguely familiar with that particular Emma, but Dr. Horrible's sudden bout of singing surprised any comment he might have been prepared to make right out of his mouth. To his knowledge, there weren't any singing curses today.

Once he had sufficiently recovered, Carl--who believed Dr. Horrible, if only because he had never heard a properly concussed person sing--said, "If you're certain."

The friar glanced up at the ceiling and wondered just how dangerous it would be to try to melt through it with acid. He wasn't however, eager to try any other daring escapes until Dr. Horrible was in full possession of his senses. "Your problem, then," Carl began, "is that you're fond of Emma because she's nice--not just to you, but to everyone, and everyone includes the 'him' that you referred to on the network?"

"Well, she is being nice to him which I don't like, but the truth is she isn't nice to everyone. She really upset Rain by refusing to be her friend anymore...it took me a while to figure out why, but I think it's because she found out Rain was living with a guy she wasn't married to. Which in Emma-land is apparently a big deal."

Billy sat with his arms wrapped around his knees and stared blankly at the definitely useless panel of buttons.

"But the thing is, Emma believes in me and I don't want that to stop."

"Aha. Well... you do have to understand that the attitude towards unmarried adults living together isn't necessary as... liberal elsewhere as it is in the City. That sort of thing is certainly frowned upon where I'm from." And Carl was not from Emma-land.

Carl watched Dr. Horrible, feeling rather out of his depth. "It doesn't need to stop, does it?"

"I know, but...I don't know if I should have stopped talking to Rain, but I thought it was for the best because I didn't want to cause more problems and she thought she shouldn't talk to me and she has a very scary friend."

He paused for a moment to reflect on Tony Stark. Yeah, probably best to stay out of that guy's way for now. One superhero was enough to deal with.

"I haven't really managed to tell Emma how I feel about her yet, not even when I was more sure, and now I have no idea what Captain Hammer's been telling her about me, and a lot of it is probably true, anyway, so--elevator! Ceiling! Maybe we should get back to that."

"Actually, go on, if you like," Carl encouraged. "You have an unusually complicated personal life." He enjoyed hearing about the personal lives of others, as he had yet to find one of his own. "Or, if you'd rather we were back to business... will you try leaping again, or would you like to try a new approach?"

Carl pulled a small vial of thick, greenish goo from one of his robe's pockets (making a mental note to store hazardous materials on his person as he did so). "I can't tell you what it is, of course, for fear of replication, but, suffice it to say, it should disintegrate most anything it comes into contact with--except for glass, naturally."

Billy really did have an unusually complicated personal life, even just due to things that had happened in the city. "I'm not really sure why. I mean, I have trouble interacting with people...I this is sort of what took the place of trying to get into the League--without that to aim for, I have a lot of time on my hands."

He shook off these reflections and focused on the green goo. He really wanted to see it in action, but as for using it on the top of the elevator...

"Um, just how much would it disintegrate? I mean, will it burn through the cables holding us up, causing us to plunge to our deaths?"

"The League?"

Nono, further inquiry could wait until after they were out of the elevator. Carl, always more than happy to go on--at length--about anything he had made, did so. "Oh, I don't think that would happen. It's rather too gelatinous to spread as a liquid would. If I were to toss this vial at that ceiling, I suspect the glass would shatter, this chemical would dissolve whatever small area it came into contact with, and then it would fall to the floor... well, assuming it didn't fall on either of us, but I've engineered it to behave more like a rather sticky, malleable solid than a liquid that might splatter."

"Ooooooookay. I guess we could try it, then." Billy stood and pointed to the top of the ceiling. "Try aiming for that area. I don't think there will be anything important there." He put his goggles back on and moved to the farthest corner of the elevator just in case Carl was wrong about the substances properties or had very bad aim.

Luckily, Carl's two most significant talents happened to be being right and throwing things. He watched Dr. Horrible back away and don his goggles. Ha! Precautions. As if anything could go wrong.

"If you say so." Carl threw the vial at the indicated spot and events preceded just as he had thought: the glass shattered, the gelatin-like chemical made the ceiling bubble and hiss as a small hole formed, and it fell to--and through--the floor.

That had actually worked out fairly well, in that neither of them we're being currently dissolved. He pulled out a small but powerful light, shaped more like a large pen than a flashlight, so that it could be fastened inside a pocket, and got down on his knees to peer through the hole in the floor. Because--well, it was a hole.

"Wow, this shaft goes down pretty far. There must be a lot of underground levels."

Carl was a little disappointed at the lack of praise for his ingeniousness. Perhaps other scientists were simply more difficult to impress than hunters and clergymen.

"Then it's a good thing we're not going down, isn't it? For all we know, there could be an infinite number of levels down there."

"Well, it's about time we went up. And now that we have a nice little hole in the ceiling we can--"

It was a nice little hole, fairly circular, no jagged edges, and it appeared not to be spreading. It would be really interesting to get a chance to actually work with Carl, but first they'd have to actually get out of there, and--"Er. What exactly was it that we were going to do next?"

"What? Oh! You can get your hand through the hole, can't you? You might use it to steady yourself while you open the trapdoor. I wonder if--there's every chance that the material around the hole has been weakened. If you can't open the door, I suppose you could do something to enlarge it..."

"Okay, then let's go for it, with less falling this time. By the way, assuming we get out of here fairly soon, would you be interested in working together on something else? I'd been thinking of trying to find out more about the clock."

"Less falling would be useful, yes." Carl didn't fancy being landed on again, if such a thing was avoidable.

"The clock?" The mechanism was of great interest to Carl. How convenient that it would come up in conversation! "Actually, I was going to try to destroy it. From what I've learned, it appears to be the focal point of the City's power. There's every chance that eliminating it might put an end to the curses and send us all back to our respective worlds."

Of course, there was also every chance that destroying the clock would end all worlds, but one never knows until one experiments.

"The clock itself is underground and protected by some sort of shield. No one, however, has attempted to get at the clock via the carousel, which is directly above it."

The, Actually, I was going to try to destroy it, sounded so incongruously pleasant that it took Billy a moment to parse the phrase, since if he had said something like that it probably would have been accompanied by maniacal laughter and some posturing.

"Huh. I'd wanted to destroy the clock too, before I got a roommate and a pet and mostly got the ticking to go away. But even though I have been exploring the Underground a bit, there are a lot of monsters, and I'd like my Stun Ray to be more powerful before risking an encounter with one. I never thought about going the other way. That's a really great idea."

He began the attempt to use Carl as a human ladder once again, this time a little more carefully.

Carl had, of course, considered being a mad scientist after leaving Oxford. His inability to sound convincingly sinister or evil--as well as a lack of funding--had put an end to that idea. He suspected he was also a bit too amiable and morally-upright for that sort of career.

"You've been down there?" Carl was impressed. He liked to avoid monsters and other things that could kill him. "Oh, thank you--careful, there."

Billy reached up and tried to grab the edge of the hole. It crumbled, but he managed to not lose his balance completely and grabbed the part behind it that was solid.

"Yeah, there are shops down there which sell some of the more unusual pieces of equipment I need and supplies that are hard to find anywhere else. It's not that dangerous in that part, though it's not totally safe, either. How were you planning to get through the Carousel?"

The lack of immediate falling pleased Carl quite a lot.

"I imagine it's dangerous enough. Mm? Oh! Well. I was going to try throwing a bit of trinitroglycerine at it. Really, if that doesn't effect the Carousel, I don't know what would."

"I don't know what would affect it, really. I mean, it might be sheilded or it might not be made out of the ordinary things carousels are made of. I think it would be a good idea to at least find out."

Billy managed to get the trapdoor open and began trying to climb his way through. Suddenly, the elevator shuddered and jerked.

"Of course," Carl agreed cheerfully, "and what better way to find out than to fling unstable, explosive chemicals at it?"

The elevator's sudden movement sent Carl--known for falling over on ground that isn't moving--stumbling, which effectively robbed Billy of his friar-ladder.

Wow, okay, clearly they were destined to be friends forever. Only the was no time to think about that because Billy's legs were dangling in thin air. Unfortunately, he just didn't have much upper body strength, and had to focus all his energy on getting his upper body onto the roof of the elevator.

"I personally can't think of one," he said, and looked to where the next floor was. He should have been right next to the doors, but they were slowly moving away from him. "So...it looks like the elevator is working again. Well, at least moving. That's a start."

Carl hauled himself to his feet. "Yes, but where is it moving to? ...Pull your head back in, won't you? Knowing the City, there's likely something in the elevator shaft waiting to decapitate you."

"We're not moving very fast, and we're going down--maybe about a floor? Anyway, I guess you're right. I'm coming down." Billy hoped Carl wasn't beneath him, but it wasn't like he could have stayed up there much longer anyway. He let go and tried his best to land on his feet.

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