Work Text:
L.A. Todo-O-Nada Penitentiary
Cell Block B - Hallway 17
Okay, that had been… Interesting… He’d definitely had fun scarin’ Krissy-Boy, but now it was time for work… After Carson had returned to his post, Tai went back to inspecting the grounds…
Oh, he could feel the little priss’ eyes tryin’ to glare daggers through his skull. Well, he could just take his bruised ego & shove it where the sun never shined. Chuckling under his breath, he released puffs of smoke as he was wont to do; kinda his trademark, really. Yeah, that thing he did, snuffing out burning cigs & matches with his bare fingers; he used to do that all the time when intimidating new recruits.
As for striking the match with his stubble… Well… That was just something he did. The pouch came about because of his youngest girl, Aurora.
See, not long after turning 10, she went all green on them. Not majorly green, but definitely Eco-friendly. Like, she sure as hell wasn’t a hippie, ‘We have to chain ourselves to this one single tree, because if we don’t it’ll somehow destroy the entire ecosystem!’ More, ‘It’s just one tree! I’ll be sad to see it go, too, but the community NEEDS this hospital! Tell you what; we can carefully dig it out of the ground & plant it somewhere else! That way, we don’t lose our leafy friend!’
Nor did she rant on about animal rights. She didn’t go around screaming, ‘free the animals!’ at zoos. If anything, she was more likely to slap the rioters with animal cruelty charges saying, ‘No, do not free the animals! They were bred in captivity & if they’re released; they’ll be EATEN by other animals!’
What she was most concerned about was garbage & recycling. Wanting to be a considerate & attentive daddy, he’d tried very hard to listen. Admittedly, he’d fallen asleep a couple of times during the lecture…
Truth was, he considered himself a relatively conservative individual…Which begged the question… Why the HELL was he still livin’ in LA!?
That's right... To stay close to family… Teryll better be glad that he was his kids’ favorite uncle… Seriously, they were only cousins thrice removed, so they weren't even that close blood-wise.
Still... Tai supposed that he'd miss the honorary Captain of the Lollipop Guild if they were to move.
His stride was even, back straight, shoulders pulled back, hands in fists behind his back, chin level, eyes scanning the hall as he took in the details of his surroundings. With his face fixed with a blank mask of indifference & an overall appearance as a giant wall of muscle with intelligent eyes guiding it, he immediately had all of the guards at attention as he passed. While, one might think that would be a boon, he found that, at times, if one was overly intimidating, your laziest subordinates tended to go out of their way to keep their true actions a secret.
It was the same back when he was serving, unfortunately. As such, he’d likely have to employ the same tactics if he found that there were too many signs of lackadaisical work ethic. It wasn’t ‘till Tai spotted one guard that seemed to be standing too casually. In fact, he was slouching against some of a cell’s bars.
The man still saluted, but it seems almost mocking with a smirk as he smoked on his own cig. Tai didn’t recognize the brand, but didn’t really care enough to ask. At 1st, it’d only been a passing detail to the old leatherneck.
He just figured the guard was some punk-ass kid being disrespectful. Having seen plenty of the type already on his inspection, he planned to gather the lot together & either teach them some respect or fire ‘em, he simply kept walking without even stumbling.
As he drew closer to the punk, he noticed with growing suspicion that his eyes looked glassy & far away. He’d thought that he caught the stink of burning weed, but had been hoping that it was just him going senile.
Evidently, that wasn’t the case…
Making a mental note of this particular guard, he quickly looked through his nearly encyclopedic mental file of employee names that he’d made sure to memorize before starting on his 1st day, along with a few other important bits of information. Coming up with the name ‘Jackery Shreet,’ he continued on his walk.
Tai would deal with the little shit later… Now that he thought about it, the smell was very strong & too spread out for just one snot-nosed punk guard to produce on his own.
Heaving a sigh, he grumbled under his breath. “If I find out there’s a damn Drug Ring or somethin’ in this piece o’ shit hole-in-the-wall prison, I’m kickin’ an actual hole in the fuckin’ wall…”
He was walking down the hall in a pretty bad mood when he spotted an open door. The name plate indicated that it was a Break Room. However, what had his attention was the stink of burning weed coming out of the room. There were a few different trails headed from either direction of the hallway & several of them converged here.
Sneaking up as quietly as possible, which really wasn’t saying much, Tai pressed his back to the wall outside the door & peered in, not seeing anything, he opted to dig through his pocket for something his cousin Badd had given him once. ‘The paranoid sod… Then again, I’m just as bad. So, I guess it runs in the family…’ As he did this, he kept his ears trained for any little tidbits of information.
A gruff voice sounded from the room. “So, have you two heard about the new Warden? He’s supposed to be this big war vet or whatever.”
A second voice responded; as much as Tai hated describing it this way, the guy sounded pretty dopy, like he didn’t know any better. “Wait… He patched up animals that served in the army?”
Tai stopped for a moment to revel in the sheer WTF of that sentence. ‘The HELL did this guy make it passed High School?!’
Finally, there was a third voice, one that sounded deeper & almost stuffed up with a bit of a Brooklyn accent. “No, ya mook! He means da guy was a member of da military for a long time or somethin’!”
The dopy kid just replied in an absent tone. “Oh…”
“Anyway, I hear he’s a real hard-ass. He’ll probably be cracking down on a lot of things, so we’d best be careful about how we go indulging in our vices. I even hear he’s having that Gavin character moved to a real cell!” The astonishment lurking in the twerp’s voice as he spoke the final sentence actually made Tai want to bash his own head against a wall.
“No way!” “Really?” Was it really so difficult to believe that somebody was planning to do their damn job, here?!
The spokesman of the group went back to chatting. “Really… Though, he shouldn’t expect to get any support… Not from the inmates & not from the guards…” Now that caught Tai’s attention! While the retired military officer’s strategic mind was already buzzing with possibilities, he didn’t want to jump to conclusions before getting the information he needed.
“Yeah! Not with Mr. Wh-mph!” At that point, Tai had brought out the hand mirror that his cousin Badd had given him & maneuvered it so that he could see the trio of guards sitting at a circular table. One had a hand covering another’s mouth. “Quiet! You know the rules… Say his name & you could be next…”
Tai narrowed his eyes, ‘What? Is L.A.T.O.N. Pen harboring one of Lord Voldemort’s Horcruxes or somethin’? The hell is goin’ on here?’ Oh, the possibilities were damn near endless, but, once again; assumptions.
The trio of guards slouched back in their seats. “Let’s just finish our smokes & clock out for the night…” They just clammed up after that.
Not seeing much else he could get from staying there, Tai again mentally searched for their names. The spokesman was named… ‘George Malone.’ The punk who thought that ‘vet’ was short for veterinarian was… ‘James Sharpe’… No comment… Then, finally, the punk from the City of Nuts who called his buddy a mook seemed to be… ‘Adam Bork.’
Walking away silently; again, it didn’t help much, he continued on his investigation pulling out the tablet his daughter, Techna, had gotten him. It’d taken his sweet, dedicated baby-girl days to teach his non-technologically advanced ass how to work it…
He looked up the names; George Malone, James Sharpe, Adam Bork, & Jackary Shreet, just to be sure. Sure enough, his encyclopedia brain hadn’t failed him! He’d successfully matched the correct names to their faces. One thing bothered him, though… According to Malone, Sharpe, & Bork’s schedules their break should’ve ended hours ago.
Now that he thought about it… Malone had mentioned them clocking out, but he & Bork were both on Night Shift & shouldn’t be clocking out until 3-4 AM the next morning. It was only around 15 minutes after 7 PM right now! They should only have JUST arrived!
Even Sharpe was in the middle of his Evening Shift, so what the FUCK were these idiots doing leaving!? Well… The stink of weed was pretty strong in there. Maybe they were just too stoned to realize that they still had work. That's what he was hpoin', anyway... Though, he had a gut feeling that this wasn’t the case.
‘How the fuck they didn’t hear me, I’ll never know. As epic as this Robo-Leg is, I sound like a one-legged Tin-Man in it! Maybe, I should talk to Aura about gettin’ a Scare the Ever-Loving Shit Outta Some People Stealth Mode…’
Stashing that last thought safely in the ‘Look at Later’ portion of his brain, he went back to the more serious situation at hand; namely, the fact that he was beginning to see more & more rotten apples walkin’ around here.
It was starting to look like there was a lot more going on here than he thought & if he was going to make any headway in fixing this hell-hole, he’d have to weed out the gnarled roots of the old, termite-infested tree then replace them with healthy, dedicated, hardworking saplings; ones that Tai could trust to grow into tall, strong trees that could whether any storm… & he believed that he might have, at least one, officer in mind.
However, 1st he’d need to sift out the bad from the good. It might take a lot of help & extra planning, but it needed to be done. As it stood, L.A.T.O.N. Pen was more a detriment to society than anything else.
In his musings, Tai soon found another opened door, this one seeming more like a storage room. Figuring that the last one had given him some useful information, he decided, 'Why not?'
Inside he found stacks upon stacks of boxes layered in dust. Most were unopened, but a few at the sides seemed to be empty. Each one had the same logo & date on them, indicating that they came from the same shipment.
Curious as to what the prison had possibly been planning to use so much of at the very start of its creation, Tai pried open one of the nearby boxes… & blinked…
His mind blanked at the sight of the plastic-wrapped neon orange t-shirts folded up inside. ‘This can’t be right…’ Retrieving another box, he opened it to reveal more orange shirts. Another box was opened & this time, he found bright blue pants.
Gritting his teeth, Tai snorted clouds of smoke out of his nose as a result of his growing temper, then with a jerk, he ripped off one of the papers attached to the boxes & read it out loud. “5,000 sets of Orange & Blue Regulation Inmate Uniforms: Male & Female?!?! THE FUCK!? IF THE PRISONERS AREN’T WEARIN’ THESE, THEN WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK ARE THEY WEARING!?!?”
He immediately stood up straight, turning around then exited the storage room. The retired Lieutenant Colonel began something that his subordinates back in the Marines had dubbed the ‘Power March.’ It was something that he’d mastered long ago & anyone with some sense knew to get the ever-loving shit outta his way whenever he implemented it.
(Power March, also known as a Tai Run, as defined by Aikoiya: A fury-fueled & quick-paced, speed-march; while anger is at the source of its origins, it is tempered by determination & self-control into a stern, yet curiously blank mask. This allows the user to maintain an air of professionalism while still managing to give off a mental signal of "Get the FUCK outta my way or I'll run your ass over!" without actually having to say it out loud.)
He left a large, billowing trail of thick smoke behind him as he enacted, not only the knowledge he’d picked up from memorizing the Prison’s blueprints, but also the tracking skills he'd honed from years serving as the leader of the most highly skilled & well trained Shadow Wolf Packs in come about in generations. It didn’t take him long to hunt down the place where people, both inmate & staff, frequented the most on a daily basis; an intersection that was placed, somewhat, between the Canteen, Gym, & a set of Lavatories.
Taimak was trying his best to calm himself down, not wanting to let his temper get away with him, knowing that leaders, or anyone really, who allowed themselves to do so, often made more enemies than they could handle. However, he was finding it very difficult to contain himself with all the corruption he was finding.
His nostrils flared as he tracked the numerous scents to their convergence point, noticing more & more the amount of slacking guards. Some were even outright sleeping at their posts. He even caught sight of a guard giving one of the inmates a fucking KNIFE!!! He didn’t care if that apple was the juiciest, most delicious apple on the face of the planet; guards don’t give knives to inmates & expect to keep their jobs!!
Tai’s mind just blanked at that point, opting to narrow into tunnel-vision. He wasn’t even sure how many people he’d caused to scramble out of his way without even saying a word, but it didn’t really matter.
He only barely managed to catch sight of a familiar guard as he passed. At that moment, he’d been acting almost purely on instinct & instinct had been telling him that Carson was the best help he was going to get here. So, as he passed, he shot out his arm & grabbed the poor guy by the back of his collar & dragged him along for the ride.
While, Tai had been careful not to hurt the kid, he didn’t really blame him for freakin’ out. For all he knew, he could be getting kidnapped, after all.
Luckily, the spot he was looking for wasn’t that far away & at the clip he was going, it would only take a good half minute to get there. Upon arrival, the large man slowed to a walk, not even out of breath from the small exorcise.
Placing the Correctional Officer safely on the ground, Tai glanced around the room. Only spotting a few, suspiciously alert, guards standing around, he noted how some were trying to leave the area at a faster pace than they had been. Then, there were those who were standing too rigidly; like they were trying to hide what they’d been doing before his arrival.
Sighing heavily as his suspicions were slowly being confirmed. Tai glanced at Carson out of the corner of his eye & spoke quietly. “Keep an eye open, Officer Carson. I could use your help with something.” Leaning against a wall, Tai tapped his cyborgian foot in frustration, a tick in his eye as he scowled deeply, arms crossed over his barrel-shaped chest.
He didn't even give a damn about the sharp metallic ring that would sing through the air every time it made contact with the cold stone floor. While normally he'd take amusement in the reactions of others when they realized he had a Kick-Ass Robo-Leg, at the moment he was more concerned with the absolute manure field that his new workplace was. As such, he didn't give a rat's ass about the shocked & a few honestly frightened expressions on the guards faces.
Wide-eyed, Carson just watched warily as the, possibly insane, elder man (was he even a human or a robot?) wrenched his greenish suit’s sleeve up to reveal a watch which he examined the time of. He then looked up, critical Harvest Gold eyes scanning the room. The hand adorned with the watch lifted to remove the ever-present cigarette from the Warden’s mouth & away from his face. He took a deep breath through the nose then narrowed his eyes, grumbling in not-quite-satisfaction as he still seemed very upset over something.
The officer nearly jumped out of his skin when his new boss actually spoke in his rough, deep voice. “Looks like we shouldn’t have to wait too much longer. Guess I was damn lucky to have chosen now to get pissed off…”
Carson blinked in confusion. Opening his mouth, he was cut off by the man using only one of his hands to push his entire body against the wall beside him. ‘Okay, THAT’S it!!’ Just as he was about to demand an explanation, the bell rang for dinner to begin & a thundering stampede of inmates & staff alike steamrolled past the exact spot that he’d been standing in just seconds ago.
All angry protests died on his lips, knowing how unlikely it was that these people would’ve stopped for him.
Glancing up, Carson saw his boss smirk at him before his face smoothed into a serious expression. The man turned back to watch the people passing by. His eyes seemed to grow harder & his frown deeper with every passing second.
A derisive snort left the man’s throat. “Okay, Carson; correct me if I'm wrong, but I think your 1st name's Douglass, right?" Carson nodded. "Well, Doug, I'm giving you a quick exorcise in observation skills. What all can you see wrong with this scene?”
Blinking, Carson turned to watch the people passing by the intersection. It took a minute, but he mentally catalogued several problems. “Well… I see several of the other officers behaving lazily even though you’re here, Sir. I also see that the area could use some maintenance…”
The gruff man sighed, releasing a puff of smoke. “Not exactly what I meant, but I’m glad to see that you caught those too. I was more thinking along the lines of the prisoners’ outfits.” He jerked his head towards the crowd of passing people, indicating that Carson should look.
Now clued in on what he should be paying attention to, the officer became uncomfortable with the vast number of inmates in civilian wear. Though he might’ve been working here for years, it didn’t mean that he liked some of the policies & this happened to be one of them. Where most prisons had the prisoners in a specific regulation uniform, in all the years that Doug Carson had been working here, only a few of the prisoners were required to wear it.
Anytime he asked another guard their opinion, they’d just suggest that it was to save money. Something about that just didn’t sound right to him, but he could never be sure because he was just a guard & didn’t have access to the prison’s budget.
Warden Thunderwolf just stood there glaring at the crowd, analyzing each person with expert efficiency before continuing the conversation. “Let me ask you something Carson; do you know how much money this prison is currently spending on laundry cleaning supplies?”
Well, that was an easy one. “Um… No, Sir. I’m afraid I don’t. I’m just a guard I’m afraid.”
His superior nodded. “True… Well, I’m sure you know that prisons have Regulation Inmate Uniforms, correct?”
At least this question was also easy to answer, too. “Yes, Sir.”
The elder man glanced down at Carson, taking a drag from his cig while scratching the stubble connecting to his goatee. “Did you know that they have them for multiple reasons; one of which is to save money on laundry?”
The guard could feel something like dread sink into his stomach at the direction this conversation was taking. Was Warden Kisher in an even more serious dilemma than he thought? “Actually, I had an inkling, Sir. That was something that always bugged me about this prison, but anytime I asked for my co-workers' opinion, they'd suggest that it cost less money. That didn't make much sense to me... However, the one time I asked Warden Kisher about it, he told me it wasn’t my place to ask questions.”
Tai glance at the younger man. “Well, normally I’d say that he was correct. A lot of the time, soldiers are expected to trust their commanding officers, but when something is this rotten; asking questions is a good thing. As such, I’m inclined to believe that I should probably rethink my opinion on some things, but that’s for another time. What’s important now is that you look around & give me a rough estimate on the number of inmates not wearing Regulation Uniforms.”
Feeling a bit nervous at the impromptu math problem, Carson looked around. Taking a while to get a good look, he quickly calculated an estimation. “I… Uh… Maybe about… 60-65%...”
Taimak squinted his eyes, “Hmm…” scanning the room in an instant then turned to smirk at the man beside him. “That’s actually a pretty good estimate. I was shootin’ for more 50/50, but now that I look again, I think your guess was better than mine, so why don’t we go with that one. Anyway, all these no-accounts are runnin’ around here wearing whatever they damn well please.”
The retired leatherneck clenched his jaw in anger. “Just this morning, we saw Krissy in his fancy Italian suit. Those things need to be specially cleaned, as do a good number of the clothes these assholes are wearing. This means that the prison has to purchase truck loads of different kinds of special cleaning detergent & shit in order to keep them all nice & pretty. Just one problem, they cost a hell of a lot of money.”
Carson didn’t say anything. What could he say? The new Warden, however, wasn’t finished talking. “Here’s my question; why wasn’t Warden Kisher enforcing the Uniform Regs when it would’ve cost a shit ton less to take care of them than all this special treatment for criminals?”
Mind awhirl with questions, the simple guard struggled to come up with an answer. Thing was that he just couldn't find one. “… I… I don’t know, Sir…”
Tai grunted, shifting his sight back to the bustling intersection. “…Well… Either way… If you’re still lookin’ for a uniform for Krissy-Boy, I found an entire storage room full o’ them in Cell Block B. I think it was Hallway 17. Just follow the cloud of smoke on the ceiling & the Red Sea Partition. It’s a room on the…” Rolling his eyes up in thought, he came about his answer. “… left, I believe if you’re coming from here. The door should still be open as I was in a bit of a rage rush on the way out. There should be plenty of them for you to choose from… Dismissed…”
Officer Carson just stood there awkwardly for a moment. “Uh… Thank you… for the assistance… Sir??” This was all kinds of confusing, but never-the-less, he turned around & began to walk off in the direction of the storage room. Honestly, he had been having some trouble finding an Inmate Uniform.
“Oh… & Carson? Sorry about snatchin’ you by the collar like that…” Pausing in mid-stride, the guard was unsure how to respond for a moment. In the end, he decided on turning back around & performing a salute before carrying on.
Back with Warden Taimak Thunderwolf, he stared after Officer Carson’s retreating back. Turning back to the scurrying gathering of roaches, he smirked not unkindly. “… Seems like a good kid…”