strangetrip | GP: April Fools!

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GP: April Fools!

It didn't take any sort of precognitive abilities to predict some kind of shenanigans on the first of April. Many of the people stuck in the bubble world of the Madonna Inn were from times and places where April Fools' Day pranks were normal, expected... (in many cases) minor annoyances. And then there were the residents who remembered the strange egg hunt from a year ago, and the sometimes confusing explanations of the two holidays falling on the same day and how that related.

Also, life at the inn could be interminable. After a while, people started hoping for some kind of strangeness to happen, just to break up the monotony of being trapped in a kitschy no-snow globe.

So, no. You didn't have to be a mutant fortune teller to expect some kind of joke being pulled. But Emma was, and even she had no idea what was coming, other than it was going to be frustrating and topsy-turny, and the visions she'd been getting from the tarot – and way more reversals than was usual or healthy in her experience – were even less clear than usual.

She definitely didn't foresee waking up without the powers that were as much a part of her as her heart. Or just as suddenly having powers she had no idea how to control. But she did, and she had*, and she was far from the only one. The same thing was happening to people all around the inn.

(*Not to worry. The singe marks should be gone in a day or so. Right?)

[Powers swap GP! Tag in. Tag around. It's a time for out and about at the inn coping (or not) with powers gained (or lost).]

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It had been an odd morning. He had woken up fine, in a good mood, until he looked down. His metal arm gone, he found a real, flesh one in its place. That was not something he ever expected to wake up to and the thought made him nervous. Rising to his feet, he dressed himself and made his way outside to think.

Random thoughts ran jumbled through his mind. This place, he knew it wasn’t like back home. He had seen enough things here to know when to be skeptical. Still, the lack of his metal arm made him wonder what else had changed around him. Did he still have his strength, his speed or other skills? There was only one way to really test it.

Outside the inn, surrounded by the trees and the quiet, Bucky began to explore inside himself. Forming his hand into a fist, he attempted to punch a tree. His eyes widened when he saw the tree fly forward from the impact of his right hook. “Shit.”

Everything was hitting her wrong today. The tarot had no answers for Emma; no matter how many times she threw the cards, she got nothing. When the cards failed, she'd tried meditation, but she couldn't grasp even the first (and easiest) Askani form. And she kept... doing things. Magicky things.

The fireballs wouldn't have been so bad, if she had any real control over them. If she'd been at home, she'd have gone down to the powers range and blasted the hell out of things for awhile. That felt like a really good idea about now. But this was the inn. No blast range around. There was a quiet spot she liked for meditation sometimes, not too far away, but where she could probably be alone. She could see it in her mind. Yeah. She'd go there. She just needed to –

A swirl of indigo smoke, and suddenly Emma was there, teleported to the exact spot she'd been thinking to visit. Whoa. Before she could wrap her head around being a teleporter – which was cool, but still not the powers she wanted to have – she heard a crash, and turned to see Bucky a ways off, and a tree he'd just... punched?

"You too?" she called out.

"Yeah..."

Bucky turned, smiling awkwardly towards Emma. Nodding his head, he lowered his arms and moved over to her, his approach slow and hesitant. He didn't know what to say about what was happening to him. He didn't know. The feeling inside of him made him very confused.

One arm gently raised to her as he spoke. It was easier to come closer and not yell his head off. "Hey," he murmured. "I... I'm not sure what happened..."

Emma shrugged. She wasn't entirely sure herself, and the cards weren't giving her anything in the way of clues today. All she had were the disjointed warnings she'd gotten beforehand.

"It's going around. Almost like the inn took our powers, gave them a good shuffle, and redealt them around. " It was strange, seeing him without the metal arm that was the first thing most people noticed about him, but Emma didn't stare.

"Mostly it's confusing and frustrating, and-" And just thinking about it made some of that frustration bleed through again, and Emma channeled it into yet another fireball that coalesced above her open palm, "I decided if I was going to be throwing fireballs, it was probably best to do it away from the inn... which right now just makes me want to blast it even more."

"Fireballs. Can't say that I have that power," he teased gently.

At least, he didn't think that he did. After what he'd seen, he really wasn't sure anymore. Anything strong enough to make this inn or swap people's powers around wasn't something to be trifled with lightly. He hated it, but he couldn't just go yelling at the walls, could he?

Bucky shook his head. "Makes me worry what happened to other people. Friends. Loved ones. Who knows?" Bucky bit his lip, looking up at Emma. "Why? Why would they do this to us? We're already trapped. Why can't they just leave us alone?"

Jag.

Emma hadn't tried to see him, not after Coby gave her a heads-up what was going on with him. An out of control empath, and especially with as labile as she'd been all day... she couldn't do that to him.

She shrugged. "My metaphorical Magic 8 Ball isn't speaking to me right now," for some reason it was easier talking about it as something other than the tarot right now, when her cards showed her nothing, "but even when my powers were working right, I never got any good answers about how and why we were here. But there are plenty who would do this sort of thing just because they like torturing people." That was what it felt like. Some kind of torture.

Bucky sighed, nodding his head slowly. Torture. That was how it felt, at least in part to him. He had a history of torture and he knew a thing or two about it. His previous experiences were physical torture, nothing so emotional, but he knew a thing or two. She looked as confused as he did and he doubted highly that Emma didn't have anything to do with it. If she did, she wouldn't have sought him out, even accidentally.

"It might have been an accident," he murmured. "Doubtful, but maybe." Bucky glanced down at his hands, then back up to her. "I don't want to get used to this. Normally? This is metal." He held up one of his hands, wiggling the fingers at her. "The minute I get used to it, I'm sure I will lose it. Won't I?"

"Most of the time when weird stuff happens here, it only lasts a few days at most." Emma had been reminding herself of that off and on all day. She needed it to be true this time too.

"Right now I'm just trying to cope with the way things are, the way I might if I was sick or injured. Try not to make things worse until they get back to normal." She shrugged, again. "And not hurt anybody else in the process. If my room gets a little singed in the process, the inn will fix itself."

From behind Bucky, Thor lets out a long whistle at Bucky's display of strength. Thor hadn't entirely known how strong Bucky was (and neither one of them had been put in a situation where Bucky would have to demonstrate as much), but he didn't expect it was strong enough to make such an impact on a tree.

And a tremendous tree at that.

As Thor approaches, Thor discovers that something has changed about Bucky. True enough, his face, the long locks (which Thor is quite envious of), and the tired expression are still there, but there's also a new addition: an arm that isn't made of metal.

"You have, uh --"

Thor gestures vaguely at Bucky's newfound arm, perplexed.

Bucky looks down at his arm, then back up at Thor. "Yeah, I..." He laughed. "It's gone. Woke up this way. Came out here to play around with it and, well, that happened."

He's on the border of okay and tense, a bit of anger inside of him. He's trying not to show it to Thor, but he is not okay with this situation. He knows things happen here, and he's had to come to terms with that, but this? This is just like promising something to him. Something that he should not get used to because soon, he's sure it will be gone and the metal arm will be back. He won't get his hopes up.

And that's what makes him angry. The hint of being normal again, only to have it snatched away. "Woke up like this. Thought I would come see what else is wrong." The more angry he gets, the more things seem off. Above them, dark clouds start appearing in the sky.

Thor's eyes turn skyward as clouds darken the sky. This isn't a natural storm; he can tell the difference. This is exactly how it feels when he is manipulating the weather -- or Storm.

Thor looks around. Storm isn't here, though; all there is is Bucky. He tries to push the weather gently back into its proper place -- dissolving the dark clouds looming above them.

"You're not the only person who woke up with something different about them," Thor says, thinking back to Val. As far as he knows, nothing's changed about himself, but he has seen how something has changed inside of Valkyrie. She's not made of the same durable stuff she had been before today.

"Yeah, well, this place, it fucks with you." Bucky frowned, turning away from Thor to look back at the tree he'd punched. The tree that he'd risen out of the ground and flown a few feet just from the intensity of his punch. He hadn't even realized he was doing it. "Why can't they just leave us alone. Whoever they are, they're punks."

He began to pace back and forth, occasionally glancing up at Thor. "And this?" He held up his human hands to Thor. "Why? Why tease me with this. Tomorrow? Tomorrow I'll wake up and my metal arm will be back. Why??"

Taking a deep breath, Bucky let it out slowly, trying not to let the anger overtake him. Around them, he thought he heard thunder crackles, but he didn't pay any attention to it. He just assumed a storm was coming, not that he could be causing it. "Who else? Wait, have you seen Steve? He's not hurt, is he?"

Thor shakes his head. "No, Steve's fine." As far as Thor knows, anyway. "My lieutenant, Valkyrie. We were sparring this morning and she was injured. Something was changed about her, too."

What, though? Thor wasn't sure.

"Wait. Valkyrie. I think I've seen her around. The really tough girl with the bottle attached to her hand?" Bucky sighed, turning away from Thor and staring at the tree he'd punched so violently. "If they do anything to Steve, I..." His hands formed into fists and he growled a little. "This... Messing with people? Fine. Not Steve. Not Cap..."

Suddenly, a lightning bolt came down from the sky. The whole sky crackled as the lightning struck the tree and suddenly set it on fire. Bucky's eyes widened and he jumped back a few feet, almost stumbling onto the earth beneath him. "What the..." His jaw hung open a little as he stared at the burning tree in front of him.

"Did... Did I do that?"

Thor blinks.

And then he blinks again.

"What did you..." Thor trails off, and spins a finger at Bucky, then at the still-burning tree. "Do that again."

Bucky stares at the tree, his jaw dropping open a little. "Do it again?" He swallowed. He wasn't even sure that he could do it again. "What, the lightning thing?" He bit his bottom lip.

His head tilted down and he looked at his hands. "Well..." He'd been angry. His hands had been in fists. Maybe he had to be angry again? He swallowed, balling his hands back into fists and taking a step closer to Thor. "Steve. I'd been thinking about Steve. And the idea of him being hurt." He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly.

The last thing he wanted was to imagine anyone hurting Steve. "Steve is my friend. I care for him. If someone hurt him..." His fingers began to twitch. Above them, thunder began to crackle in the sky. "No. Nobody can hurt Steve. they'd have to go through me." He turned to Thor, lightning crackling around his knuckles. "Thor... What's happening?"

Thor holds his hands in front of him, as if in surrender.

"Stay calm," he says. "Take deep breaths and center yourself. No one is going to hurt Steve. All of us would protect him."

"They did this to me. What did they do to him? Did they do anything?"

Bucky was feeling the anger move through him. His shoulders tensed. "They took my arm. They took..." He sighed. "Why would they do this to me," he growled. Bucky turned and began to pace. "This hotel, this inn, it plays with us. Why, Thor?"

"None of us actually knows that," Thor says, hands still up. "We all wish we knew. There's a chance we might not ever know."

And Thor hated it just as much as Bucky.

"We can't change what they're doing. The only thing we can change is how we choose to respond to it." That was a lesson hard-learned by the God of Thunder.

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