st_oriedqueen: (the light I chase)
Regina Mills ([personal profile] st_oriedqueen) wrote in [community profile] strangetrip2019-03-15 04:39 pm

Check-In Day: Around the Inn

Finished with self-imposed paperwork and emergency planning for the week, Regina permitted herself a leisurely ride on this absolutely gorgeous spring day. After a good gallop, Grace was content to walk, cropping at dried scrub and new shoots when Regina gave her rein. Regina steered the mare gently toward the west; she could teleport, of course, but she appreciated the quiet of riding toward the beach. She found, in the wake of Henry's Christmas visit, she more often craved the scent of the salt air and ocean breezes. Of course, the Pacific never quite smelled like the Atlantic, always warmer and less bracing somehow, but it soothed the wildness in her just the same.

Back at the Inn, Kitty busied herself with stocking the pool bar and generally setting up for the warmer seasons. The pool had been skimmed of winter detritus and chlorinated by the staff-spectre she rarely if ever saw, and there were fresh towels set out like a proper resort. Since the choice of music was hers, the air around the bar filled with dance beats, Afro-Caribbean today, and Kitty moved right into it. She didn't usually dance at work, but she felt bright today and maybe Lara would come down and work with her and they could goof around Cocktail style.

Sam passed through the Copper Cafe in search of a cup of coffee and a salad, or one of the two gorgeous women he'd somehow wound up involved with. His brow scrunched like a caterpillar hurrying away from a predator while he semi-consciously outpaced thoughts about babies and brothers, and possibly babies and girlfriends. His mild scowl wasn't helped by the pack of spirits trailing him and chatting at him about the lives of his family members. He'd asked them not to gossip about people he wasn't close with, but as a consequence, they talked rapidly and often about River's most recent oddness or his mother and Hathaway acting like...well, like him and Molly and Bo, and no thanks. Ditto on Dean and Jane. For all that he looked a little bothered, there wasn't anything menacing or aggressive about it. If anything, the slight tilt of his head as he strolled through the Inn looked thoughtful, as though he listened to something somewhat distant.

Lillith had come to a bit of a routine for arrival days, and around noon, she sat for tea with River Song. They spoke little, and it was difficult to tell whether the women even liked each other. But for all that, Lillith was content with the ritual. If Curnen sang, she would go out to the lawn next and listen. In fact, on such a sunny day, she would undoubtedly flop on the lawn with a sketchbook and a practice notebook, letting her mind float between image and spellcraft as it would. Out here, she would quickly veil herself at the approach of anyone new, but she often was distracted enough that they might catch her in her true form with her all unaware.

Around them, the Inn hummed and buzzed with the happy energy of winter giving way to spring. The most patient and subtle would undoubtedly note the undercurrents of tension, fear, frustration, and boredom that built up over time. But for day, at least so far as this four were aware, the worst of it had been suspended, in favor of enjoying warm sun and the company of friends.

[OOC: GP. It's a gorgeous day. Come and play! All four of mine can be available. Ping me if you're inspired to tag. <3 Welcome, Carol, Toby, and Number Five!]
st_warhammer: (Default)

Toby - Assigned Threads

[personal profile] st_warhammer 2019-03-16 12:58 am (UTC)(link)
Toby was bone tired, they had just defeated Morgana and stopped the Eternal Darkness, saving all of Arcadia. Toby was also excited, THEY HAD JUST DEFEATED MORGANA. Seriously. Like THE MORGANA. He did a little fist pump on the sidewalk outside his house to change out of his armor and take a nap.

"Toby, you and your friends just saved the world, what are you going to do next?" He joked as he opened the door. "Nana! I'm home!" That wasn't unusual to not have her answer, she was hard of hearing. He shrugged and headed toward the stairway to his room but when he'd turned, the house had disappeared around him to desert scrub.

"WHHHHHAAAAAATTTTT?" His eyes widened as he dragged the word out. "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. Is this something that Morgana did? Did she do some wacky spell on us? Jim, I have to call Jim." He reached for his phone but forgot he had the armor on and couldn't get to his pants pocket. "Stupid armor. Okay not stupid, awesome armor, but stupid armor."

He turned to see a stone building in the distance and headed in that direction. Hopefully there would be a phone to call Jim to see if he knew what was going on. Or at least he could find some answers and a bathroom... he really had to go. Stupid, awesome armor.

It had taken longer than he thought to get to the inn and he pulled open the door but the edge of the hammer hit the edge of the door and he had to back out. "Darn it!" Toby had to enter the lobby going sideways so he and the hammer could make their way through. "Um, hello?!"
st_illfive: (desolate)

Number Five - Assigned and OTA

[personal profile] st_illfive 2019-03-16 01:32 am (UTC)(link)
Forty-five years, to get here. Forty-five years, innumerable murders, and puberty twice, to get back and save the world, and the world was getting destroyed again anyway. To anyone else, it would have been a depressing failure. To Number Five, it was progress.

Last time, his family had died. This time, he would save them. Last time Harold Jenkins had lived long enough for Luther to rip his eye out. This time Vanya had dealt with the problem herself. Last time he hadn't known what had happened. This time and going forward, he did.

He had no doubt he could carry his family with him on one big jump into the past. He'd never even thought about carrying anyone with him before, much less tried, but since doing six at once (seven if you counted Ben) was their only shot at fixing things for real? Number Five always did whatever was necessary, and allowed nothing to stop him.

Was it harder? Yes. Were the equations compounded to the nth degree by having to account for 4-6 additional temporal change vectors and having that many more consciousnesses to project into suspended quantum-state versions of themselves? Oh hell yes. Was traveling to the past harder than traveling to the future? Of course.

But he did it. He felt all of them move into the quantum state with him, even unconscious Vanya. Even a wispy thing that was probably Ben. No doubt the fire burning out the world swept across the stage seconds later, but they were safely out of it.

When he opened his eyes on the world, the first thing he did was look around for his siblings. They were... not there. And, come to that, the 'world' seemed to be a desert surrounding an old-ish road. Not a city. Not civilization. For a few seconds, it was like the bottom of Five's stomach dropped out - had he miscalculated? Was he back in the apocalypse? What had happened to his brothers and sisters?

Only for a few seconds, though, because then Five kicked adaptation into gear. What had happened to the others was either simple or complicated. If simple, they were all in this time, but physically scattered. He might have rounded wrong on the spatial coordinates. If that, they wouldn't be hard to find. If it was complicated, well... that would be harder. So be it.

In the meantime he had to take care of himself. A less upset look around revealed an intact building in the distance. Five stepped towards it and jumped outside the front door. It looked like a hotel? Tacky decor aside, it was nicer than the ones the Commission booked for its agents, but Five put a 'to be dealt with later' mental pin in the idea that maybe all of this was Commission fuckery.

Front desk, complete with desk drone staring at him. (Five ignored the desk drone.) Restaurant/cafe to one side. Fine. He'd have to swing by again and convince someone to let a thirteen-year-old rent a room with no parents in sight, but for now he pulled at space and jumped elsewhere.

This seemed like the only structure in easy range, he had to stay at least temporarily. But he was not going to do it without a little recon first.
st_arforce: (Capt Marvel in Flight)

Carol - Assigned Threads

[personal profile] st_arforce 2019-03-16 03:07 am (UTC)(link)
She had not expected to be needed. Earth, or C-53 as the Kree called it, was a somewhat rural planet. Not in the sense that it didn't contain a lot of life (or, well, did), but it was farther away from other life-containing planets.

Space is exhausting, but particularly so when traveling alone and in urgent circumstances. When Carol was flying through the cold vacuum, the only heat that she was exposed to was her own, generated from burning energy by traveling at top speed. She had made the promise almost thirty years prior that if she was ever needed, there was a way to reach her.

And then the page came through.

Carol had left immediately. Her energy projection carrying her through a couple galaxies before returning to the Milky Way. She had been charting her course through the system embedded within her suit, and the closer she came to Earth, the fuzzier the coordinates and the precision became until it shut down. Her computer was first, her vision was second--her heat signature went cold and her vision went black.

When she awoke, there was--hay. It was, in fact, everywhere around her, to the point where she lifted her head and sneezed. Questioning her senses, she lifted her gloved fingers to her exposed cheek before taking some skin between her index and thumb and pinching herself. After satisfying her curiosity, she slowly moved upwards. Her arm raised, she began to fuss with her system before it gave what was the modern day equivalent of a spinning circle. Frustrated, she began to examine the area closer--was this some sort of attack and she was just still unconscious and dreaming this? The Skrulls had the sort of technology, but she had made peace with them. That did not mean that others didn't have such abilities, though.

Even though her system was not able to adjust, she was willing to trust herself; it was all she had left, at this point. Pulling herself up and examining the area around here, she squinted--a stable?

Maria had her plane in a makeshift stable; it was not so farfetched to believe she had landed where there would be one. Ever so carefully, she quietly moved towards the stable, moving to peer in and hoping to see a plane to command. It did not matter to her that she couldn't pull the coordinates for the last place Fury was; a plane was comfort.

So it was much to her surprise that there was no plane, but horses. And a certain orange tabby that looked particularly familiar to the point where Carol cocked her head before whispering quietly, "Goose?"
st_ormbreaker: (Laughing.)

Thor & Toby

[personal profile] st_ormbreaker 2019-03-16 04:27 am (UTC)(link)
Thor Odinson had, like a few others, taken to staying in the lobby during check-in days. He just managed to finish a chapter of a book on American law (all in preparation, he hoped, for a future Asgardian refugee ship arrival on Earth) when he looked up to see a small armored boy holding an enormous hammer.

Thor's reaction is immediate; he launches to his feet, eyes wide and smile broad and approaches Toby. "Is that yours?" he asks pointing to the hammer. "That's amazing! The fire --" Thor twirls a finger. "-- is that you or it? Are you making the fire?"
Edited 2019-03-16 04:27 (UTC)
st_ockandbarrel: (Casually Percy)

OTA

[personal profile] st_ockandbarrel 2019-03-16 05:02 am (UTC)(link)
Sleep when the baby sleeps, that's what all the books said. But Percy had work to do and neither he nor his beloved wife were willing to let the new center of their world out of their sight.

It was Vex's turn to attempt to nap, or whatever else she chose to do in the time that Percy claimed his daughter's presence. A bit of ingenuity had adapted a trail bag into a small pouch that he could wrap around his chest, keeping baby Elaina snugly against his heart. Thus situated, he took her with him as he worked on a few non-forge projects. Together, father and daughter went up to the library and collected a coffee, stopping to check out a couple of engineering books and then to the women's restroom to make a couple sketches.

Why there was only a baby changing table in the women's restroom Percy had no idea but he meant to correct it.

Percy settled at a table in the library and set to work while Elaina napped, small mouth slack and wet against his formerly clean white shirt. Her dark hair was surprisingly full, as he had been of the opinion that babies were properly bald for at least a good year.
st_andingtall: (eyebrow)

Re: OTA

[personal profile] st_andingtall 2019-03-16 05:35 am (UTC)(link)
The library was one of the few places the ghosts didn't chatter at Sam. Since he couldn't answer without speaking aloud, and Illyana didn't care for noise in the library, they'd learned not to try to follow him in there.

Relieved to have some time to himself but less than interested in his own thoughts, he went to get another cup of coffee and to dig around for anything to complement the Enochian teleportation sigils he'd been working on.

He found a text he hadn't seen in several months--which meant one of the sorceresses or wizards had been at it--and drew it out to take to his usual table. So lost in his thoughts about witches, wizards, sorceresses, and whatever he was now, Sam didn't see Percy until he'd already pulled out a chair. And when he did, there was something awkward about how he was holding his arms.

"Hey Percy," he said quietly. "What's wrong with your--oh." He blinked, his eyes widening when he released the straps around his chest weren't bandages but a baby. Dean would be next, he couldn't help thinking, before he remembered to smile and offer, "Congratulations. How's Vex doing?" You were supposed to ask after the mother when a child was born, right?
st_ockandbarrel: (Deal With It)

Re: OTA

[personal profile] st_ockandbarrel 2019-03-16 05:49 am (UTC)(link)
Percy raised his finger to his lips, then dropped his hand to rest on Elaina's small back. "Vex is doing well," he said quietly. "Sleeping, I hope."

After a moment, he leaned back from the table and unwrapped a bit of the fabric holding Elaina in place, enough to show off her round face and delicately pointed ears. "Elaina de Rolo, say hello to Sam Winchester."
st_warhammer: (excited toby)

Re: Thor & Toby

[personal profile] st_warhammer 2019-03-16 03:08 pm (UTC)(link)
Toby looked up and up and up and up when Thor rose to his feet. "WOAH." He said with the same wide eyes as when he'd arrived in this place. He wasn't as tall as ARRRRGGGHHH but he was ginormous. Of course that was coming from a five foot two inch teen.

That awestruck expression evaporated with Thor's comment about his hammer. It morphed to one of excitement, and all thoughts of Morgana and magic disappeared. "I know, right?" He said excitedly. "It is pretty awesome and I wish I was doing that with the fire but it does that on its own." He twirled it like it weighed nothing and at that moment it practically did. But like all things that you were just learning, Toby didn't quite have the handle on when it was going to be light and when it was going to weigh a ton.

Right in the middle of the twirl, the hammer suddenly stopped having fire and the head hit the ground with a loud thump. Not enough to crack the floor but almost. "Man, I hate when that happens."
st_ormbreaker: (Laughing.)

Re: Thor & Toby

[personal profile] st_ormbreaker 2019-03-16 04:06 pm (UTC)(link)
The brighteness never fades from Thor's face, even when the hammer hit the ground. He had some of the same problems with Mjolnir when Odin first bestowed the hammer to him.

"No, no, it's great!" he exclaims. "The twirling -- that'll come later, I used to mess that up all the time and then I got very good at it." The twirling was what made it possibly for him to fly, after all!

"Can I give it a try?"
st_arforce: (Default)

Re: Carol - Assigned Threads

[personal profile] st_arforce 2019-03-16 04:50 pm (UTC)(link)
Carol didn't jump when she heard Regina speak, but she did look closer. There was no sign of her disappointment there was not a plane, but horses. She wagered that if her system was not working, her universal translator probably was also defunct, in which case she was working with English speakers. It was a start.

"I--don't even remember it." She did her best to recall the last moments before waking up and replaying the scene again, but all she remembered was fading to black and waking up in hay.

The orange and white tabby-looking figure wrapped itself around her boots before it rose and put its front paws on her shins. Carol lifted downward and picked the "cat" upward, examining it against her memory. There was no way this could be the same one.

"...where exactly is this?"
st_warhammer: (Default)

Re: Thor & Toby

[personal profile] st_warhammer 2019-03-16 05:47 pm (UTC)(link)
"Well I don't know." Toby looked at his hammer and then at the guy BUT like with his friend AAARRGGHHH, there was an instant connection. Plus, he seemed to know about hammers and how they worked.

Then he shrugged and pointed to the hammer on the ground. "Okay, sure. But I gotta warn ya, it's really heavy when it's like that, but it's sneaky and changes to super light."
st_onecoldfox: (patient)

Mildmay (OTA)

[personal profile] st_onecoldfox 2019-03-16 09:58 pm (UTC)(link)
Nobody wanted Mildmay giving the welcome to the inn speech. Kethe, most people could barely understand him even when they had understood what he was talking about, let alone when trying to explain something like the inn and how they got there when nobody really had a clue.

It was better, leaving those first conversations to the people who were good at 'em, like Corbie. He'd stay out of the way, in the spa. Maybe somebody would come by wanting a massage. Til then, he waited for a load of towels to come out of the dryer, and flipped through one volume of an encyclopedia set they'd had in the library.
st_opsummoningme: (wtf)

Re: Number Five - Assigned and OTA

[personal profile] st_opsummoningme 2019-03-16 10:43 pm (UTC)(link)
Illyana had just finished pouring the piping hot water for her tea in the library cafe, cool eyes widening suddenly as the spatial rift tore open practically on top of her. She felt it, moreso than saw it, vibrating through her senses like a struck tuning fork. Her hand clenched around the handle of the kettle, and her hair whisked as she whirled to see the culprit of this flash-phasing nonsense.

Which was to say - a petite woman with long blonde hair and blunt bangs was there to glare at the boy as he appeared adjacent to the cafe section of the library, sleeveless black turtleneck and vivid red checkered slacks ending in black leather ankle boots. "You would yield a better understanding of your situation if you would stop that aimless teleportation and engage with your environment," she informed him crisply, replacing the electric kettle onto its base.
st_ormbreaker: (Pleased.)

Re: Thor & Toby

[personal profile] st_ormbreaker 2019-03-16 11:15 pm (UTC)(link)
"It looks heavy," Thor agrees, and he reaches down and lifts up the weapon easily. "My hammer -- its name was Mjolnir, by the way -- was enchanted by my father so only those worthy of the power of Thor could lift it." Thor tosses the hammer up into the air and catches it, then tilts it from side to side, judging the balance of it.

Thor doesn't spin it. Not quite yet.
st_illfive: (profile)

Re: Number Five - Assigned and OTA

[personal profile] st_illfive 2019-03-16 11:15 pm (UTC)(link)
Five ignored her, for the moment, and looked around. What kind of hotel had a library, of all things? And even after a glance he could see that some of the books looked handwritten, which was... odd.

Huh. So. A nicer hotel than the Commission usually reserved, in the middle of the desert, with a very strange library "I'll engage when I'm interested. What's the date? The exact date."
st_warhammer: (Default)

Re: Thor & Toby

[personal profile] st_warhammer 2019-03-16 11:36 pm (UTC)(link)
"Woah." He was impressed that he could lift the hammer. The only thing that Toby knew about enchanted hammers was with Troll magic. The guy didn't look like a troll but he knew that changers were human looking and then turned into their trollselves.

"Is your dad a Troll?" Mjolnir sounded like Troll language to him.
st_ormbreaker: (Laughing.)

Re: Thor & Toby

[personal profile] st_ormbreaker 2019-03-17 01:37 am (UTC)(link)
Thor lets out a bark of laughter. "No, my father is a god," he says, grinning. "Is there an Odin where you come from?"

It seemed even in worlds where he didn't actually exist, there were some where his family existed in legend.
st_opsummoningme: (witchy leather)

Re: Number Five - Assigned and OTA

[personal profile] st_opsummoningme 2019-03-17 04:53 am (UTC)(link)
Ilyana snorted at the boy's cheek. "The 'exact' date is a matter of some speculation when each person has come from an alternate time and place. Our best approximation is March fifteenth, in the year of twenty-nineteen." She arched an eyebrow. "Does that interest you, child?"
st_illfive: (fake smile)

Re: Number Five - Assigned and OTA

[personal profile] st_illfive 2019-03-17 05:16 am (UTC)(link)
Being called a child, while mildly annoying, got no reaction. He was a child physically, and if he got pissy whenever someone condescended to him about it, there’d be a trail of bodies and he’d never get any answers. Condescension aside, the woman had provided intel: two weeks instead of one week until apocalypse, or maybe not? Either way: it could be worse. Finding Vanya specifically shifted up a few places on Number Five’s priority list, along with figuring out who or what had messed with his jump, and how. There was simply no way he’d screwed up the equations that badly.

He pasted a fake (but usually effective) ‘friendly smile’ on his face. “Not really. I always defaulted to Wednesday when someone asked me what day it was.” At HQ, anyway. People hated Wednesdays and only new hires were dumb enough to ask what day it was there. On the job, well... he was always alone. “Never seen this place before, though.” Was this a Commission retirement facility, then? Why wouldn’t they just kill him?
Edited 2019-03-17 05:17 (UTC)
st_opsummoningme: (magik stare)

Re: Number Five - Assigned and OTA

[personal profile] st_opsummoningme 2019-03-17 05:39 am (UTC)(link)
The grin he affected, while mildly annoying, got no reaction. And it certainly didn't seem natural given his attitude a mere moment ago.

"No. You haven't." She lifted her tea, sipping. "This is an alternate reality to wherever you have come from," she reiterated. "And there is no known exit."
st_illfive: (time travel)

Re: Number Five - Assigned and OTA

[personal profile] st_illfive 2019-03-17 05:55 am (UTC)(link)
All realities were basically alternate to something, that was why the Commission existed: to ‘fix’ deviations. It was a little perturbing to get what amounted to an orientation, which indicated... she didn’t know about the Commission, believed he didn’t know, or somehow this was something else.

The first and third options seemed likeliest, but ‘No known exit’ was more immediate by a small margin. “I’m not worried about that. Nothing’s stopped me yet.”
st_accato: (Chin in hand)

Carol & Buffy

[personal profile] st_accato 2019-03-17 11:05 am (UTC)(link)
Buffy had been at the inn long enough that the hope for someone from her world had faded long ago. It would be a shock if someone from her world showed up now, but didn't mean she didn't try to catch a peek at new faces when word began to spread of new arrivals.

She stopped in the bakery to grab a small plate of brownies on the way to the lobby. Because why pass up a treat like that? And on the off chance that Willow or Xander had arrived, she could share it. If they didn't, well then all the more for her. Yay, Slayer metabolism.

Sadly, as she thought, there wasn't a Willow or a Xander but as she turned from Daryl at the front desk, she did notice an unfamiliar face. That meant new arrival. Buffy glanced at the plate of brownies and then at the other blonde, time to be welcome wagon.

Buffy could tell from her body language that she wasn't just arriving at the inn, which meant someone else had given her the information about the place. That left helping someone get used to it or just another friendly face. She approached her with a smile and her plate. "Hi. Welcome to Madonna Inn. I'm Buffy. You know what helps me after finding myself in another dimension with strangers in a strange place? Chocolate brownies, want one?"
st_opsummoningme: (shadowed bangs)

Re: Number Five - Assigned and OTA

[personal profile] st_opsummoningme 2019-03-17 11:24 am (UTC)(link)
He was so certain of himself for someone so young. But if that were still the case, she doubted that they would be having this conversation.

"Hnh," she intoned, removing her tea strainer and disposing of the contents appropriately. "Have fun with that."

Page 1 of 14