strangetrip | [GP/EP] THE FLOOR IS LAVA

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[GP/EP] THE FLOOR IS LAVA

It was arrival day, and therefore it was possible that there would be new inmates arriving at any time. Someone else might have delayed this until some other day, but for Loki the prospect of new people was simply a bonus. New arrivals tended to be confused and upset already, any consideration from him was unlikely to change that, so he didn't plan on displaying any. He'd already raided empty rooms and moved much of their furniture into the hallways, that was enough general consideration for one day.

Instead, he took a seat on the front desk (ignoring Darryl, who also ignored him) and wove a spell that would let him be heard by everyone in the Inn. "Good morning, fellow residents. It's been a quiet few weeks, hasn't it?" All the weeks, barring undead invasion, tended to be quiet here. It wasn't exactly maddening, but Loki had spent two months being quiet and exceptionally well-behaved, for him.

"To break the monotony, I give to all of you a rousing game of The Floor Is Lava. For those of you who may not know it, it's a descriptive name. When I call time, the floor will become lava. If you touch it, you will die. Metaphorically, at least, so take this seriously." Those who sincerely wished not to play would have no difficulty; the lava was an illusion, and any 'reality' to it depended on belief or buy-in. For those who sincerely didn't want to play, the floor would simply look odd. This was fun mischief, not viciousness. "Also, because I know some people need encouragement in order to engage with fun, the spell creating the lava has been broken and invested into several individual runes and hidden around the Inn, discoverable only by those playing the game. The lava ends when all of those runes are disrupted - you win - or when no one is left alive to disrupt them and I win." That was only sensible. There was no reason to continue playing a game when no one else was playing it.

"Furniture only, staircase railings are fine. No books, no bags, no cloth, the dead can't speak but if they wish to continue playing they may come back as a lava monster under my dominion." Even in games, there were fates worse than death. "Lava monsters may do as they please, including trying to pull the 'living' into the lava. Should there be a clear non-me winner somehow, I'll owe that person a favor of their choice, at some point in the future."

Did that cover everything? It seemed like it, but he could always make another announcement if he had to. "The floor becomes lava in ten... nine... eight... seven... six... five... four... three... two...." He spaced out the countdown enough to make sure that everyone who wanted to scramble for furniture high ground was easily able to do so.

"...One." Loki released the spell and the floors everywhere in the Inn (for those who believed it or at least bought in to the game) turned to churning hot lava.

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“I believe I will be fine,” but she smiled her thanks at her friend. Just a flash of a smile before she leapt (form was a little off, not quite a perfect grand mete) from the ottoman she’d selected as a perch when the countdown had begun to a chair.

Then she surveyed her options before looking up to where Peter cling to the wall.

“That looks very useful.”

"Yeah, it's really helpful for climbing up tall places. Or for staying off the ground. Or off radar. Lots of people don't ever look up at the ceiling."

That seemed weird to Peter, who found his eyes wandering skyward whenever he was thinking, and occasionally, whenever he was feeling anxious.

"Aerial attacks are not highly anticipated," she agreed. She has hidden high up like that before, more than once. So she knows he is correct, that people rarely notice what is above their heads.

She looked up at the ceiling and considered, not really much to hang on to unless you were special like Peter so she filed the idea but rejected it and started looking for her next perch.

"This game is... unfamiliar."

Peter crawls along the ceiling, following behind River.

"Really? Ned and I used to play it all the time in elementary school. We used to knock stuff over. It drove my mom crazy." And later, May, but they'd mostly grown out of it by the time that Peter's parents died.

"Never played it with real lava, though." Or sort-of real lava. "It's kinda fun!"

"It does seem very real," but she has a hard time with real and not real.

She leaned down close to the lava, possibly too close if it was real lava and possibly at an angle that made it look like she was about to tumble into the stuff.

"Whoa!"

Peter's reaction is immediately; he sends out a long line of web-fluid to catch her, and with the flick of a wrist, pulls her backwards and out of harm's way.

"You okay?"

She gave him a look, "I was not in imminent danger."

But it was nice of him to save her regardless so she smiled at him.

"If the lava were actual lava we would roast from the heat at this distance." And the chairs and things, also the walls, would be on fire.

"Have you ever seen Lord of the Rings?" he asks. "There's this one scene with Frodo and Samwise, two of the main characters go to Mt. Doom to throw the one ring into it. They're really far up, but I always think about how it'd probably be blisteringly hot. Then when Gollum falls in, there's this really artistic shot where -- I don't know -- he just kinda falls in and sinks without all the really gross stuff that would happen if you did fall into lava happening immediately."

Obviously, Peter's thought of this a lot.

"I have this really bad movie up in my room called Volcano if you want to watch it."

She wasn't sure why you would want to watch a bad movie but he seemed sincere about it. Then she considered if she wanted to watch a movie, watch people jump from one furniture island to the next or look for the runes.

The movie won.

"If we watch it here," or in some common area, "Others may wish to join in."

"You think so?" Peter says. He wonders how many people are playing right now. He's seen a few people jump around since he's attached himself to the wall, but people can be anywhere.

"Did you want to watch it here?"

She wasn't entirely sure she wanted to watch it anywhere, what with his assurance that it was terrible.

"I have no preference for where as long as we obtain popcorn."

"I think that's obtainable." Peter starts making a crawl over to the cafe. "Is it actually hot down there at all? Like cooking things hot?"

River was following him, pace slower as she had to move - cat like - from one piece of furniture to the next. And she had to pause to consider the lava, it certainly seemed real but she knew it wasn't real... but did that mean the heat didn't exist either?

"I am not certain." She could try standing in it. But Loki had said she would die. And she didn't want to die she wanted to eat popcorn.

"Let's just make it to the microwave," he says. "You might have to stay outside the kitchen, though. There's not really a lot of furniture to jump on in the kitchen."

Just counters and stovetops, and those were far away that...

"Unless you want me to swing you around," he says.

There was a moment when the analytical part of her wanted to ask a series of questions about how exactly he did that (the swinging part) and the teenage girl part of her who absolutely wanted to try it regardless of the scientific explanation.

"I will accompany you into the kitchen," she decided, because the teenage girl sometimes won.

It isn't long before the two of them navigate through the cafe. When River reaches the table closest to the kitchen, Peter drops down beside her.

"Okay, ready?" he asks, wrapping an arm around her.

She put her arms around his neck because that seemed the easiest way to hold on and gave him a stern look, "Don't drop me."

"I won't."

With Peter's free hand, he sends out a string of web-fluid at the ceiling near the door. With the sheer force of their momentum, he knocks open the kitchen's swinging door before shooting off another string of web-fluid that he rides to the nearest kitchen counter.

"Okay," he says. "I think the popcorn's in one of these cabinets somewhere."

River slid along the counter and opened one of the cabinets to see if she could locate the popcorn.

"Did they make you different? Or were you always different?" She's curious because even if she was always a bit different she'd been created not born as she was now.

"I was bit by this spider," he says. "I don't really know what was up with it, it just bit me and died and then I got super strong and super durable and started crawling up walls."

All of that had been utterly bizarre.

"I thought I should do something with it, so I became a superhero. Like the Avengers."

That sounded like a very unusual spider.

"They wanted to use me, but I don't want be what they were trying to make." She was sure they had succeeded, but she hadn't stuck around to see if she was good enough.

Peter hesitates for a moment before he finally asks her: "Who's they?"

"Alliance," she didn't know more. Or she did but she didn't like to think about them. Or the things they knew that she knew now.

"Wanted a weapon, not a girl. Didn't get either."

"Did they --" Peter opens another cabinet from the counter and peers inside, moving things around. He knows there's a box of popcorn somewhere around here. "-- did your parents send you to them?"

He glances over at River at that moment. He remembers her talking about her parents, how they were nobles and they wouldn't have thought much of her playing in the sand like a common person.

"Yes." Because, they had. But there was a pause and then, "No."

Another pause. Her parents were less than warm, but she didn't think they knowingly sent her off to be broken.

"It was a school. I wanted to go. So they sent me."

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