strangetrip | Check-in May 15

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Check-in May 15

It was the 15th of the month and given the possibility of arrivals, Caroline decided that something should be done to make new people a little more comfortable.

So she was sitting in the lobby, wearing a bright yellow sundress and surrounded by a riot of materials. Her feet were bare, as her sandals were lying off to the side, and her toenails were blue. She was creating Inn survival kits. There was a little pamphlet of explanations: people call the guy at the desk Daryl; yes,everything is free; no, you can't leave; just be firm about towels. A basket of sundries - snacks from the gift shop, sunscreen, guidebook, toothbrush etc. There was a towel, because obviously.

She considered adding a bottle of alcohol, but not everyone drank - she'd noticed at least a few of the current residents who didn't - and if they did drink TOO much, she didn't want to encourage it.

Maybe chocolate?

Caroline jotted down that as a note and resumed chewing on the end of her pen. The lobby door opened shortly thereafter and she looked up with a smile.

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Caroline looked up with her automatic smile, which faded in an instant as she took in the state of the inn's most recent arrival. A moment later, she was off the sofa and by the newcomer's side, sliding her arm around his waist to support his weight. "Whoa. It's going to be okay. You're safe. I'm Caroline." He smelled of blood and she closed her eyes, fighting the automatic reaction. Control was second-nature, but she was still young, as vampires went.

Finally, she opened her eyes again, blue and unclouded. She glanced over at Daryl, mimed a key with her free hand. Then she looked up at the new man. "Are you okay? Are you hurt?" She ran through the residents in her head. Joanna knew some medicine, MacCready had some kind of med but she didn't want to use it except in an emergency.

Of course, if all else failed, she could give him some of her blood then compel him to forget.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa..." Kash fended off the arms trying to wrap around him like tentacles. He didn't like being touched at the best of times and this was so completely not the best of times. "I'm fine."

He glanced around, blinked, shook his head to try to clear the bright pink after-image.

"Okay. I'm not fine. Obviously, I'm not fine. I'm beat to shit, covered in giant blood--" He hoped it was giant blood. "--I'm pretty sure a couple of my ribs are broken and you are definitely not a spiritual servant. Don't take this wrong, what did you say your name was? Caroline? Caroline." He nodded to himself, satisfied he'd got that right. "But who the hell are you?"

"I'm Caroline," she repeated, then shook her head, because he didn't actually mean who are you. He meant where am I and what is going on. So she answered that instead. "You're at the Madonna Inn. I'm a ...guest? I guess we're guests." Prisoners, while accurate, seemed like the wrong thing to say to a freaked out guy covered in giant blood. "It's...complicated. Come sit down and I'll try to explain."

She ignored his attempts to push her off, because most people didn't know what was good for them, especially when they were beat to hell, like he said. "So you're right, I'm not a spiritual anything. I'm a college student. Drama. We have someone hang out here on arrival days. You're kind of late, you know?"

"Are you always like this?" he caught himself saying and then groaned to himself (possibly not entirely to himself because his ribs hurt and he wasn't spending spell slots to cure himself before he knew what the fuck was going on). He went along with her, but only to the extent he had to while he told her, "Listen, this is going to go a lot better if you get your hands off me. We won, but it's been--" He lowered his head and cocked it to the side, giving her a serious Look. "Kind of a long day, I don't know you, and I'd prefer to be moving under my own power."

He paused a beat, realized he'd forgotten something, added, "Caroline," and then "...late for what?"

They'd reached the sofa, so she released him and stepped back, her hands going to her hips. "I'm trying to help. Sit down, catch your breath. I'll explain what I can."

She frowned. "Not late for, just late. It's dark. Most people show up sometime during the day. Which," she added with a heavy sigh, "is what the explaining is all about and why you should sit down before you fall down and hurt yourself. It doesn't make the explanation easier to take or anything but there's not really any point in standing for it."

Kash bobbed his head in a weighing gesture and decided that, yeah, it was probably a good idea to sit down. He'd been half-asleep when he got here, and he could cast Sacred Flame sitting down if she turned out to be dangerous and batshit instead of just batshit.

It took a few to lower himself to the 'couch' what with the armor and ribs, but eventually he sat and propped his shield against his knees. "All right. I'm sitting." He gestured with his gloved fingers to tell her to get on with it. "Let's start with the basics. You haven't seen a woman, red skin, white hair, long tail, horns--" With the same hand, he made the sign of Z's horns. "Anywhere, have you?" Because nothing this Caroline had to tell him was going to be more important than finding Z and figuring out how to get back to Emon.

Caroline had heard a lot of crazy descriptions in the five months of being here, but that was one of the crazier. "Uh, no. No one like that." She perched on the couch next to him, not too close, since he'd been all weird and wriggly about her helping him earlier. "The basics are this is the Madonna Inn. As best we can tell, it's supposed to be somewhere in California but when you go out there, there's nothing but high desert. The good news is that it's pretty safe so far and there's plenty to eat and drink--" assuming you ate and drank regular people food and not, say, people "--but the bad news is that no one has found a way out. Not a permanent one."

"That guy over there will give you a key for a room. You have a reservation which is something else that no one knows how or why that works."

Kash waved off her basics and patently didn't listen to the 'no way out' part of it, because that was nuts. Even if Keyleth had dropped him in some pocket plane, there had to be a way out. "Whoa. Slow down. No one like that, okay. What about anyone else in armor? Big bald guy about nine feet tall, greyish skin? Crazy tattoos and scars, tends to go around shirtless? What about a gnome, white hair, shines like the sun when she smiles?" Might as well go for the two most 'inhuman' looking members of Vox Machina.

"I don't need a room. I need to know what happened to my allies and whether we're going after that bitch of a green dragon now or after we heal up."

Oh, he was going to be one of those.

Caroline sighed. "No, I'm sorry. There's no one here like that. And no dragons."

She folded her hands and waited for the next question.

No Z, no Vox Machina, no Raishan. So, teleportation accident or a banishment spell he really needed to learn if it could dump him in another dimension and leave him here more than a minute.

"What about wizards, sorcerers, arcanists?" Warlock patrons posed problems.

Caroline frowned and then picked up her notebook, flipping to her guest listing. It had all her notes about the people at the hotel and her best guess at who they were and what they did. She used marks to indicate her degree of certainty.

"I'm not sure what the difference is but yes, magic users. Witches, wizards, people who don't like labels." None of them had found a way out of the hotel, she thought about pointing out, but remembered her policy of waiting for him to ask the questions. It wasn't like he was listening to her answers.

Relief washed over him. Finally, something that made sense. He nodded, even managed to screw up a half of a smile. "Point me to the nearest one." Witches wouldn't be his first choice, but the enemy of my enemy and all that.

He leaned into his spear and pushed himself up off the couch again, clearly ready to be off as soon as she told him where to find the person he was looking for.

Caroline barely repressed the urge to roll her eyes. She looked around the lobby and spotted Joanna, surely one of the least threatening people in the hotel and probably one of the more patient. Plus she actually had some medical training or something, so maybe she could convince the new guy - who STILL hadn't given his name - to let someone clean up some of that blood.

"Joanna Beauchamp, over there. Be nice to her. She's a good person."

Kash had already made it a quarter of the way to "Joanna" before he turned halfway back (carefully, ow) to say, "Thanks," and then continued on.

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Check-in May 15

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