strangetrip | GP/EP: Check-In Day: Turning Tricks into Treats

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GP/EP: Check-In Day: Turning Tricks into Treats

Instead of the remains of a raucous night of dedicated drinking, the chairs were up on the tables, the counter was cleaned, the floor had been vacuumed and mopped as appropriate. Kitty had had plenty of time to straighten up at close yesterday, since almost everyone seemed more interested in drinking in Bonesville. For her part, she'd had enough after her and Wyatt's little adventure in Funland. At least, she'd had enough for the few days it would take her to heal.

On the upside, that made opening up this morning easy and fast. On the downside, it meant she had an entire day with not much to distract her from wondering when Barrel of Fun would lock down access to the outside and why it couldn't open onto a world with higher tech. She had managed to scavenge some computer circuitry and cell phones, but she hadn't worked out how they'd solve her current tech problem yet.

If Dot were still here, she'd be baking for Halloween. Even if they'd had to explain Halloween to her, she'd be making cookies and candy and cakes, and probably sewing costumes, too. Those thoughts summoned a wistful sigh from Kitty while she took down the chairs. She was still sighing when she finished refreshing her stock of cut up fruit.

By mid-afternoon, she'd put away a pot and a half of coffee, she was practically vibrating, and a buzz-by from Caroline prompted an amazing idea. Why not spend the afternoon testing Halloween and Thanksgiving cocktails, to help turn the arrival trick of Check-In Day on the 1st into, well, a little bit of a treat? So it was that the new arrivals, two days earlier than expected, found the bar counter covered with spooky and kooky and dry-ice steamy drinks and Kitty literally spinning between her coffee cup and the next bright green, weirdly black, or pumpkin orange drink.

[ooc: find Kitty making any of these or drinking yet another cup of coffee, she's OTA]

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Bo tensed a bit and then recovered. The alcohol was making it a little easier to disengage with what had just happened less than an hour ago.

"Nothing to them. Well, not unless you count watching the love of their life get stabbed to death by their ex girlfriend." Somehow she managed to say it all nonchalantly with just a touch of cynicism despite the gut wrenching feeling she had about the whole thing.

Kitty frowned but didn't withdraw the hand. "Are you saying you did the stabbing?" Because Bo did have a dangerous look about her, but Kitty usually had a decent sense about people and she wasn't reading Bo for the jealous-stabby type.

"It's not like I had a choice." It came out a lot more defensive and angry than she had intended. Bo paused, pulling away in her seat and bringing her hands in her lap. Her voice lowered. "...Sorry."

"Hey," Kitty replied quietly, gaze steady on Bo. "I know about not having choices when it comes to hurting people. I'm not judging you. I just didn't want to make any assumptions about what happened."

"It's not like it makes what I did less terrible." She gave a small shrug. "But I'm getting used to hard decisions."

A wave of sympathy passed over Kitty and she made the rare decision to leave her side of the bar. "Why don't we go sit where there's a little more privacy? You can tell me about it if you want, or I can just keep you company for awhile."

"Maybe you can show me around a bit? If I'm really stuck here I should probably figure out what there is to do here and where to go." She wasn't sure she could handle a chat about Nadia right now. Or Lauren.

"Sure. Have you gotten your room yet? If not, we should start there." She glanced around for someone else who could keep an eye on the bar and then shrugged. Regina was here, Caroline would be around somewhere. If no one stepped up when it was needed, one of them would voluntell someone to do it.

"Until you mentioned it, I didn't even think I needed a room." She stood up to follow Kitty's lead. "Are they at least nice hotels here or are they like one star flea-ridden motel rooms?"

Kitty led her toward the front desk. "I know it's hard to believe from the decor, but it was apparently a tourist destination before it ended up here. Some of the rooms are eye-bleedingly ugly, but everything's clean, high quality, and pretty comfortable."

Bo made a face. "Which means, with my luck, I'm going to get the ugliest one here." It's how the world sometimes felt to Bo, at any rate.

"Any chance I can redecorate?" Bo was probably going to miss her swing, not that that was on her mind at that exact moment.

Bo found a key with her name on it and picked it up. Her expression became one of unimpressed and she rolled her eyes at the key itself. "Oh good." She turned and held out the key to show Kitty. "Love Birds." Her life was pretty much anything but that at the moment.

"Daryl" emerged from the back room just as Bo was picking up her key. Kitty whispered to her, "Don't say yes if he asks if you want towels. I'll explain in a minute."

For his own part, the Innkeeper, the one they called "Daryl" either hadn't heard or didn't care. Or both. He simply smiled his unmemorable smile in his unmemorable face and said, in his unmemorable voice, "Ah, Miss Dennis. I see you've arrived and found your key. Love Birds. That's room 148. Building 3, second floor."

He acknowledged Kitty's presence then and said, "Miss Pryde can show you to your room, I'm certain. It's down the hall for Mr. Logan, Miss Pryde."

Kitty rolled her eyes slightly, and maybe blushed a little.

"Do you require fresh towels, Miss Dennis?"

"Uh. No.. thank you, though." Bo answered with a slight hint of unsure, but she followed Kitty's suggestion and wondered why it was best to say no to that line of questioning.

Bo had managed to pick up on Kitty's reaction to the mention of someone with the last name of Wyatt. A boyfriend, maybe?

She turned to Kitty. She kept her voice low as to try not to offend this Daryl guy. "If my room has a spinning heart shaped bed I might have to punch something."

"Very well. If there's nothing further you need from me--"

"We're good," Kitty piped in. "Key, directions. Thumbs up. Thanks." She took Bo by the elbow and steered her away before she started asking Daryl any questions.

They hadn't gone more than a few steps before Kitty said, "Not gonna lie. It could. Feel free to punch the bed if it does. It'll fix itself by the next morning."

She sighed and released Bo's arm. "Sorry about that. He's one of the five permanent staff who aren't guests. But they're not totally people. Nothing we've done in ten months has gotten any more information out of them than what they need to tell us to do their jobs. It's super-creepy, annoying, and they tend to get hung up on stuff. Like towels. They're always offering you fresh towels. Once you say yes, it's non-stop."

Bo made a bit of a face and then nodded. "Creepy not-people. Got it." She glanced back in Daryl's direction quickly before focusing back on where they were walking. "How can you tell the difference between someone who works here and people who don't?" Daryl wasn't exactly attractive, but there were a lot of people like that in real life.

"There aren't that many of us. Give it a week and you'll know all the people and all the not-people." Unless Vax's friend and Peter and Yana were more hide-y than usual. "Other than that, the fastest way to tell is to ask them something that doesn't have to do with work. If they don't offer you towels before you get a chance."

"Towels. Got it." Bo had a feeling somehow Kenzi would like this place. She also had a feeling Kenzi would totally accept the free towels. "Does this place have, like, a pool or better yet, a spa?" She figured with her luck, no, but it was worth a try.

"Both, actually." Kitty led Bo out of the lobby to the outside. "There's also stables, bikes, a basic gym and pink tennis courts. We've got a not-person chef who only cooks things with chicken and Ignis, an actual person, who cooks pretty much anything else.

"Somehow we get inventory restock whenever we need it, but my surveillance drones shut down if they even get close to wherever something might be coming from, or turned around, or fuzzed out."

"Sounds like whoever or whatever's responsible for this place really likes keeping secrets." Bo thought it was a good thing she was pretty good at uncovering them. It made sense there were things to do here, though. It was easier to control your prison population if they had stuff to pre-occupy their time with.

"What's the longest anyone's been here?"

Kitty didn't even have to think to answer that. "Snow, Steph, and Sam have been here since Christmas last year. A lot of the rest of us arrived on New Year's, including me. Talk to Sam or Steph if you want to know what it was like when they got here. Snow..." Kitty shook her head. "Doesn't talk much at all."

She pushed open the lobby doors and led Bo out across the parking lot. "As far as they know, they were the first."

"Kinda makes them sound like settlers." Maybe, she supposed, they kinda were. She was glad she hadn't been one of the first. She didn't think she would have handled it gracefully. Bo filed away those names.

"And no one ever leaves? Do we still grow old? I mean, if we don't at least I can't complain there." Not that Bo aged the same as a human, but still.

"People leave. Just...as far as we know, not by their own choice. Sometimes it's one or two. Last time it was fourteen." Kitty shrugged tightly and tried not to think too hard about who might leave next.

"If you ask Daryl what happened to them, he just says 'they checked out'. Usually, most of the stuff they collected while they were here gets left in their rooms."

Of course she knew what the next question would be. "How do we know they didn't find their way out, right? We don't. Except... except that Sam's brother would never have left without him, and Lara--" Her throat closed down over her name, even now. "Lara wouldn't have left without me."

And because she didn't want to talk about Lara, or even risk talking about Lara, she added, "We searched, too, to make sure nothing happened to them. And there are never any new ghosts, which Henry said there probably would be, if they died violent deaths."

Something in the way that Kitty said the name Lara reminded her of how she felt mentioning Lara now and though she was naturally interested, took the change of topic in stride. It was clear people were certain there was no way out. Bo would need to see that for herself.

"I'm not sure what's more disturbing. Being brought here suddenly or learning I can suddenly leave and all my stuff stays behind like some weird museum." She sighed softly. "I wish Trick were here. He tends to know everything about anything... Or at the very least a book that'll explain it."

"I have a lot of theories," Kitty said, happy to be away from the topic of the woman she'd only realized she'd loved after she'd disappeared. "But I don't have the equipment I need to test them. Unfortunately, the hotel didn't come equipped with a quantum mechanics lab."

She hoped now that Illyana was here that they'd be able to work it out, between the two of them. But so far, no luck.

"So you're a scientist." Figures she'd run into someone like Lauren the moment she got here. Bo had a lot of respect for scientists except right now it was kind of a reminder of unhappy events.

GP/EP: Check-In Day: Turning Tricks into Treats

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