strangetrip | [EP/GP] Check-In: I Assure You We Are Open

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[EP/GP] Check-In: I Assure You We Are Open

The damp, cool, chilly morning clouded with fog seemed to fit the mood about the Madonna Inn. Nobody had been quite right since the undead invasion. Definitely not Vax'ildan. But for him, it was less about their sense of day-to-day calm and safety shattered, less about undead specifically. It was a lot more to do with losing Scanlan and Pike, and the new memorials installed in the Temple.

He wondered about it, not for the first time, even as he readied for the fresh arrivals that might be coming today - or not, because they didn't always. What decided who came and went? Was there any sense in how many and when or why? Not so far as he could tell, but he'd never been the brains.

Gathering up the great heap of cloth and rope in his arms, the lean figure summoned the wings of his armor, the black of his silhouette merging with the other dark and shifting shapes skulking about in the first light of dawn. With a crouch and a lunge from the roof, he spread his wings wide and circled through the air right up to the face of the main building, unfurling the massive banner he'd sewn of spare bedsheets and painted with dark dye to tie it up taut:

WELCOME NEWCOMERS
YES, THIS MEANS YOU
NO REALLY WE'RE SURE

Life kept going on around you, no matter how confused or scared or fucked-up you were. And the best thing, the kindest thing, the sanest thing he could think to do in all this was to start up the coffee machine, stack some decorated pumpkin-shaped cookies on a platter in the lobby, and prop open the doors for whoever would join them in being confused and scared and fucked-up today.

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They had saved the city, but it didn't change a lot of things. Even with Connors disappeared to... wherever the darkness sent him, Tyrone was still wanted for the murder of a police officer. He snuck into his house to grab a few things and then headed for the church he would call his home for a while.

As he entered the church, he found himself in an entirely different place. He was inside a hotel lobby instead. He blinked with confusion and turned around. Through the glass on the door, he could see a desert outside.

"What in the hell...?" He said trailing off.

"I know, isn't it just super weird?" The slender half-elf dressed in all-black armor complete with feathered cloak more or less appeared from thin air to stand near the wary young fellow. It was a very 'goth Lord of the Rings' look, he'd been told, and his not-quite-British accent added to the effect. "I take it you just got here, yeah?"

"Uh.. I guess so," He answered. "Where is 'here' exactly?"

Tyrone went from wondering where a desert was in New Orleans to wondering if Halloween was today. The man in front of him looked pretty believable.

Maybe I got here with my powers somehow... maybe I traveled farther than I thought I could.

"Can you point the way back to New Orleans?" He asked.

"I could tell you to turn around and go in the opposite direction as far as you can get, but I don't think it would do you much good," Vax told him with a slightly sad expression that didn't make it out to be much of a joke. "'Here' is The Madonna Inn. It's in Kahl-ee-Fornea, one of the realms of Ahm-Erikah's United States. If that means anything to you?"

"California and America, sure." He said. "But I came from New Orleans and as far as I know, I don't have the ability to travel that far in one..."

Tyrone paused as he regarded the strange man. He shook his head.

"Is there like, a bus or something I could get on?" He said. "I... should probably get back home."

"I don't know where that is, but... Transportation's going to be kind of a problem." Vax sighed. "There's no easy way to say it, and I don't expect you'll believe me straightaway, but I'm sorry to say you're stuck here."

"Stuck here?" He repeated.

Tyrone looked around and frowned.

"What about my family? My friends?" He asked. "There's a lot I still need to do back home.... How are we stuck? Can't we just... Walk in a direction until we find a highway and some help?"

"Okay, to start... Your friends and family are probably fine. You're welcome to walk for as long as you like, but it's the strangest thing, because nobody seems to get more than a few miles out before they're turned around again. And all that important stuff you've got to get back to..." He paused to take a deep breath. "What's your name, if you don't mind?"

"Uh... Tyrone." He said, while trying to process.

Maybe I'll just try to use my powers to leave when I can find a place to hide

"Hello, Tyrone," Vax repeated by way of acknowledgment. "I'm Vax'ildan. This place isn't normal. It's magic somehow, and cut off from where you came from, where I came from, and where all the others you meet here came from too. I know what I'm saying doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but... The way you got here probably didn't make much sense either, did it?"

The man was talking about magic.

"The way I get around sometimes isn't exactly... normal." He replied.

Tyrone peered at Vax.

"One time I was stuck somewhere. It seemed like a really long time." He said slowly. "There was a puzzle that needed to be solved in order to get out."

"Was it a dungeon? I've been stuck in my share of those. They're filled with puzzles and traps and monsters more often than not." Vax wasn't quite putting together what that meant about how Tyrone traveled. Puzzle Magic or something?

"I guess you could say that." He answered.

Tyrone didn't normally share stuff about himself, but he found himself willing to say something to this man. He supposed it was because the man seemed so nonchalant.

"I ended up stuck inside someone's mind." He said, leaving that up for interpretation.

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After her meeting with Thor had gone like it had, Sunny had been all the more prepared for someone to enter the library in some unconventional way. What she didn't account for of course was that it was check-in day, and that meant the face that appeared in front of her might be a new one.

Young. Black. Some kind of teleporting ability. American. She couldn't explain exactly what it was about him that made her certain he was American rather than African, but there was a definite difference even if it wasn't immediately quantifiable.

So while she couldn't exactly be cool about it after she'd jumped, she could smile a little and ask, "Tried to make a break for it, huh?"

Edited 2018-10-07 01:52 (UTC)

Tyrone had been certain he could just appear somewhere closer to New Orleans. Even after he had been told he was stuck here, he didn't believe it. He didn't want to believe it. When he tried to teleport, somehow he ended up inside. There were books around. A library. He turned his head to the woman who spoke.

He wasn't sure what caught him off guard the most. That she was black in a otherwise seeming white person place, that she was albino, or that she didn't seem entirely shocked he could do what he did.

"Uh, yeah." He admitted as he lowered the hood of his hoodie. "Sorry to just show up. I was trying to get home."

He looked around the place. He recognized the set up looked like the people here planned to be here long-term.

"I guess this place showed me, huh?" He said, looking back to her.

Tyrone smiled sardonically.

"It tends to do that," she agreed with a wry little smile of her own. "Though we all understand when it takes a few escape attempts to sink in." And even then, none of them actually wanted to accept that they were stuck here. She hadn't managed to polish up her courage and hope enough to make another break for it lately. She extended a hand to him. "Sunny Nwazue. Welcome to the Madonna Inn Expanded Public Library."

"That's a big name for a library." He replied as he extended his own hand to shake hers. "Tyrone Johnson... and as you probably know I'm new. Didn't even know a place like this existed, to tell you the truth, and I'm pretty used to weird lately."

"Well," Sunny said with a shrug, her smile going a little sheepish. "I just work here. Illyana is the one with the actual library science degree, so she got to name it."

She glanced about the room, though in such a way as to indicate that she wasn't actually looking at it but was instead thinking of the expanse of their own tiny world. "I don't think most of us really had any idea that a place like this existed. Other realities some, but one that's entirely a kitschy hotel and sixty people?"

"Yeah, that sounds about right." he replied. "this is sort of a new level of weird. And my reality had aliens attack New York last year."

Tyrone watched enough movies to understand the concept of this place. It unsettled him, but when you got stuck inside someone's brain and attacked over and over again by terrors, it was easier to come to terms with strange happenings.

That got a little snort out of Sunny. "New York, always New York." Aliens never came to Lagos or something of the sort.

She tucked one of her braids behind her ear idly. "Did you get the full rundown on how this place works? Find your room?"

"I don't mind it always being New York," He said. "Means I don't have to deal with it. Although lately New Orleans hasn't been any better."

When Sunny asked him about his room, Tyrone visibly paused.

"Yeah. I think I understand this gist of this place," He continued. "But, uh. I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but my room sucks. Can't tell if it's a joke or not, but there's like, zebra print in my bathroom and, I guess, the whole thing's supposed to look like a jungle."

As someone who had been called 'jungle monkey' before, he did not exactly appreciate the room by any degree.

All right, that was a good point.

Sunny's face twisted in disgust and she swore, though not in English. This was definitely a pattern, though she was almost more annoyed and disturbed that someone was tasteless enough to design rooms like these in the first place. "A lot of the rooms suck at least a little, but... yeah. They put me in 'Safari.'"

Which, congratulations, was indeed something in Africa. East Africa. Which was different in many ways from West Africa.

"Safari? Really?" He said, then shook his head. "The guy at the front desk said I couldn't change. I'm going to guess if you're still staying in yours then I probably can't, huh?"

Tyrone rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully.

"It's still kind of surreal to think I'm in some completely new place, you know?" He added.

"Set it on fire a couple of months back, too," Sunny said by way of confirmation, her arms crossing, eyebrows arching in an expression that wasn't sure if it wanted to be amusement or annoyance. "It restored itself right down to the cheap fake tiger skins. Can't control your room assignment or move out, but if you make friends you can always bunk with them when the racism starts to choke."

This spoken from more experience than she cared to have.

"It... takes getting used to all around. For what it's worth, most of the people around here are okay." And she'd trained Jackson to stop saying Negro, so that was something.

"Yeah, the ones I've seen seemed okay," He admitted. "I just had things to do back home and I thought I might be able to leave because... I can travel a different way than other people."

Tyrone knew that Sunny was here when he suddenly appeared, so he wasn't going to hide it.