Tale as Old As Time [Finished]

[accalia]

Echo nods and carefully closes the lid of the piano before following Siegfried.

"Lead on and this one shall follow."

[CalamityJade]

"No thanks. You got some business to handle." Still, he scowled right back. "And no, I'm not going to just go away because you decided to stay up all night."

[yamikuronue]

Lance scowls, pulling back. "Suit yourself." The door swings open, revealing the room beyond.

The sitting room is... totally different than he remembers. Instead of the nice hardwood desk there once was, instead there's a cheap plywood desk, likely sold as a flat-pack. The bookshelves are gone, but there's a calendar on the wall, and a framed family portrait as well. The lamp has changed out, as has the rug, and the small loveseat and coffee table -- all for cheaper, less durable furniture. The two doors off the sitting room are shut tight, but there's evidence of damage to one of them -- the door is dented in a little, like it was punched.

The basement is a vast, multi-room affair; Siegfried leads Echo through the first room full of boxes and covered furniture to a sort of closet area, walk-in, where smaller boxes are stored. Lightbulbs, cleaning supplies, gardening tools... "Maybe in one of these boxes?"

[CalamityJade]

Obsidian was a little...shocked as he looked around. He could see replacing a thing here and there, but the room hardly looked like the old one. "Well...shit. You redecorated." Still, that wasn't why he was here. "Look, I know you're busy sitting up here and brooding, but Sig needs you to sign off on some paperwork. Try and get this place looking less like a masoleum."

[yamikuronue]

Lance scowls. "It's none of my concern what he does with the house."

[CalamityJade]

"Well, seeing how it's your house...yes it fucking is. Not to mention you should try getting out of this room once in a while so people know you aren't dead." Obsidian gave a bit of a sigh. "So, basically, he's barely able to keep this place going. So someone who's in charge of all the investment money has to spend a total of about an hour looking and writing on bits of paper so people can still live here."

[yamikuronue]

Lance balls his hands into fists. "It's not my-- It's your house, if you want it." he growls. "You sign the papers. Have fun. I'm going back to bed."

[accalia]

"Hmm... looks promising. This one will start at the back and work forward then."

So speaking Echo walks into the closet and starts carefully inspecting boxes.

[CalamityJade]

"Fine, it's a house that people are in. That DOESN'T mean you should let it go to sod and fucking waste away because you can't be bothered to interact with someone for a goddamn hour." Obsidian pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm not legally able to sign shit and no, I don't think you can make me. So grab something to fucking wear and come on."

[yamikuronue]

"What do you mean, not legally able to sign shit?" Speaking of clothing, that's another oddity -- Lance is wearing a long t-shirt over his pajama pants, where he used to sleep topless. "You're a grown fucking adult. It ought to be your money, all of it."

Siegfried sets about going through boxes as well. Weird -- this one's full of tiny screws. Why they have an entire box of tiny screws, he has no idea...

[CalamityJade]

"Interesting thing. They don't let you control money of people you go to jail over accidentally killing. As it is, you're the one in control of it, and since you've been sticking yourself in here and listening to nobody, Siegfried's been trying to keep this place afloat. Fuck, you'd probably have been kicked out of here years ago if he'd not stuck around."

[yamikuronue]

Lance snorts. "Bring me paperwork that turns it all over to you and I'll sign that. In the meantime, I've got shit to do." Unlike his earlier bluff of going back to bed, this time he does start walking -- toward the playroom door.

[CalamityJade]

Obsidian tries to grab Lance's arm. "Bullshit that's what you're gonna do. If you're just going to sit up here and sleep, the LEAST you can do is deal with this shit yourself. Then you can go back to stewing up here." He wasn't about to let Lance try avoiding everything. Someone needed to drag him out of this spiral he'd been in.

[accalia]

After several minutes of searching, including a short break to repack a box that was filled with pup up fun snakes for some reason Echo finds the piano wire in a box marked "Murispoiler[/spoiler]"

"This one has found it..... yes. bass strings, treble strings.... ah Alto strings. This is the one we want."

[yamikuronue]

Lance moves -- faster than he has any right to move. Obsidian misses his arm, and he's at the door to the playroom by the time he realises he's missed. "Fuck off." he says, moving to open the door -- just enough to slip through, not very wide.

Siegfried nods. "Should we bring the box up and store it by the piano?"