strangetrip | [EP/GP] Today is Check-In Day

Entry tags:

[EP/GP] Today is Check-In Day

When the fifteenth of the month came and went without any new arrivals, most people logically supposed that there would be no new arrivals that week, or that the pattern they believed they'd found was false after all.

Kitty Pryde, Caroline Forbes, and Phryne Fisher were decidedly not most people.

Between them, they agreed it would be best to keep a watch for a few days following the fifteenth, on the grounds that, often enough, holidays interrupted regular schedules, which would reassert themselves again at the next instance. If "keeping a watch" had required them to do anything out of the ordinary, they might have been somewhat less sanguine about it. Might have, as they were not, after all, most people. Yet since their routines, almost invariably, had them in public places, working and people-watching, it required no special effort on their part to be alert for new arrivals.

So it was that Phryne had taken up a table in the lobby cafe to read and hold court, while Kitty took an extra shift tending bar, and Caroline tidied up and labeled the boxes of decorations from Valentine's day "for next year's residents" on the morning of the sixteenth and again on the seventeenth--and not one of them were surprised when, in early afternoon, newcomers began to arrive.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Darryl." It sounded like an odd name for a lord, but perhaps the man was more of an innkeep. Percy scanned the area, alert now for threats after the initial shock of the place had faded. There was a dark spot on the floor, darkening some of the roses but at this distance Percy couldn't make out what caused the stain. It was fresh, though. The light changed as he shifted, slick and wet.

Percy glanced toward the desk where Darryl stood, then turned and walked to the stain instead. He knelt, stiffly, and reached down with two fingers. They came back red and sticky. Blood, and it wasn't his. "Does this happen often?" he asked mildly, his gunhand twitching.

"Twice a month new folks seem to show up," MacCready said, hanging back. "Probably you weren't the only one showing up half dead tonight." He nodded around them. "There's no spray or anything anywhere, right? Just a big puddle of blood. You shoot or stab or maul someone, blood gets in more than one spot." People squirted when they were freshly hurt enough to bleed that much. They leaked when they'd been going at the bleeding for a while.

"Chances are pretty high that whoever or whatever that belongs to either already got help or got put out of their misery." Probably. Hell, did it matter? Whatever made that mess wasn't here now and he couldn't see anyone actively hunting them so may as well move on.

"What a charming location this is." Percy agreed with the assessment. This wasn't the sort of spatter from battle. But it was the amount of blood that indicated death, at least without a healer around. He stood again, his body protesting every move and went back to join his guide. "You used a potion on me. How common are such things in this world?"

Either some random weirdo who worked here would clean it up or one of the 'guests' would or no one would and it'd actually be an improvement to the carpet.

"Stimpak," he corrected, less of a chastisement and more of just a sharing of terms. Potions were from like stupid stories about witches or whatever that no one really ever told because they weren't actually that scary. "In this world? Yeah not so much. Haven't seen a single one. There's little bits of medicine and stuff but nothing like what I'm used to."

He cocked his head to where Darryl was. "You wanna get your room key now or wait until after drinks?"

An interesting question. There was a ration of defeat in accepting a room key that Percy misliked the taste of. "A drink, so long as my appearance will not be too distressing."

If people frequently showed up bleeding and nearly dead, then this may well be some kind of afterlife. His previous death, he had memories only of Orthax devouring his soul. It would not surprise him in the least to find that this time, he was well and truly in Hell.

MacCready shook his head, face scrunched a little like it was no big deal. Shit happened sometimes. Maybe to other people it'd be super distressing, but he'd seen way worse on a regular basis than some guy covered in blood. Really, if his gun didn't seem to draw any weird attention he didn't think this would.

He led Percy into the café. "Grab a seat. I'll get us a bottle. Red? White? Pink?" He didn't know a lot about wine beyond that it came with weird words. He didn't particularly care where they sat, but it was gonna be telling where and how the new guy chose to sit.

Percy raised his eyebrows behind his glasses. "I suppose whatever the barkeep recommends." Since the point of the drink was intoxication, not flavor, he didn't think it mattered much.

The cafe was no better than the lobby for looks. Percy scanned the room, then headed for the far corner, where he could have a good view of the entire space. There were an astonishing number of windows, far more than he was at all used to. Even Whitestone, with all her wealth, did not have the resources to invest in this much glass. He wondered what sort of industry supported this location. Then again, if this were indeed Hell, a bit of glass was probably the least of the wonders available.

He spent a few minutes chatting with the bartender. There was no point in getting on the bad side of whoever controlled the liquor and, really, barkeeps were pretty much some of the best people.

When he came back, he was more relaxed, a corkscrew, a sealed bottle of red and two empty glasses in his hands, the wide mouths of the long stemmed glasses facing the floor- old habit to make sure no one thought they were getting drugged or anything.

Maybe the guy was kind of uppity, but he at least seemed to have good instincts for a room. Not everyone with a gun was any good with it. Some rich jerks just carried to make themselves look tougher than they were. Coulda been before that Percy'd gotten hit by something that preyed on rich idiots. Now, MacCready was a little more inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

He set the glasses down and set about opening the wine and pouring them drinks. Percy could pick whichever one he wanted. Not like it mattered. "You care if I just call you Percy or do you insist on going by all twelve of your names? 'Cause I'm gonna need like a cheat card if so."

"Percy is fine. Were the rest of my party here, they'd have already established that. I suppose I've become lax." The glasses were clean - like everything here excepting the blood out in the lobby. The bottle was sealed. Percy approved.

He adjusted his things on the ground next to him, Bad News in its folded state and Animus still within easy reach on his hip. He was low on ammunition. He'd have to discover where MacCready got his black powder for making his.

"Percival is also acceptable, as is de Rolo." Other nicknames came to mind - Freddie, Whitey, darling - but he felt no compulsion to share them.

MacCready took his rifle off and leaned it against the wall before he sat down as casual as could be, taking a swig of his wine. It was probably better to sip it. Whatever. Liquor was liquor. It all went down the same.

"That's a weird lookin' gun you've got there. Pretty, but different. Where'd you find it?"

Percival poured himself a glass of wine, swirled it around the bowl for a long moment, then sipped. It was all a stalling tactic, allowing him to give MacCready another thoughtful study. The other man seemed calm enough, not hiding anything, but it was always hard to tell. Still, the wine was good, and he'd done Percy no harm yet.

"This one," he nodded toward Bad News, "I built. As I did this," he twisted his hand slightly to show off Diplomacy. "The pepperbox I took from a very bad person who had done a great deal of harm with it."

"Impressive," he said. Most of the hand built weapons he'd seen were basically pipe weaponry. They sure as shit didn't fold far as he knew.

He shifted in his seat so Percy could more clearly see the 10mm on his hip. "This one my friend modded for me."

And then, a little gleeful glint in his eye sparkled as he moved to take out a few more. Good Intentions, The Problem Solver, another pause and a thoughtful look before he added the gamma gun and an Institute laser rifle. Would the melee weapons be interesting? He didn't know. Maybe in a bit.

"Those first two we got off some raiders. The second off some crazy member of the Children of Atom and..." He paused and considered the laser rifle, frowning a little, "pretty sure that last one just came from a synth."

Percy considered himself an expert on firearms, after all, he was responsible for every one of the weapons currently available in Exandria. But he'd never even begun to imagine the sheer variety of weapons that MacCready had lain out before him. In spite of himself, he leaned forward, trying to parse what he was looking at. Where did the bullets go? What was the purpose of the strange parabolic muzzle? Why the garish paint job?

"What sort of damage do they do? Purely physical or is there a magical augmentation?" Dear god, was this what he'd unleashed on the world? He could almost hear a smokey laugh curling through his mind.

"Well, these two are ballistic, this one's radiation and that's energy," he said, leaning forward and pointing to each weapon in turn. Did radiation exist wherever Percy was from? He didn't know. It really didn't seem all that common here. Not like he had a geiger counter or anything, but by now he sure as shit knew what taking rads felt like.

"Do they have atomic energy where you're from?" Maybe when he was from. MacCready didn't know when the gun had been invented in the first place. Maybe that was what they looked like in the beginning? Hell if he knew. History from any time before the bombs dropped wasn't really all that detailed.

"Not by that name if we do." Percy looked up from the guns, curious now. He'd never heard of radiation, and was still wondering what sort of energy the other gun used.

He nodded and thought for a moment how to explain something that was simply a fact of life where he was from to someone else. It wasn't like trying to explain a deathclaw. Monsters were monsters. Nukes and crap were all science and he wasn't ever any good at that.

"Okay, so," he frowned again, "there's like building blocks or whatever that you can't see that make up basically everyone and a long ass time ago some scientists figured out how to I guess split those even tinier." He cleared his throat. "And some people used it to like power lights and stuff in whole cities and robots and cars and all that, and others used it to make bombs and weapons and crap and when those bombs drop they make huge explosions like miles and all the dirt and rubble and everything from those detonation spots blows up into the atmosphere and spreads out even further. If you're lucky, the explosion or the shockwave or shit even the fire kill you."

Did that seem right? That seemed right. "What gets laced into all that and left behind once all that is over is radiation and that stays. Nothing grows at the impact site and for miles around it. It gets slowly less worse but if you get hit with too many rads it'll kill you slowly. 'S not like gettin poisoned or anything. Poison's easy to get better from. It's like...like you're decaying." His voice got soft and sad, eyes gone a little distant. "The bombs dropped over two hundred years ago. There's still places where you can't go 'cause of the radiation. You wouldn't last more than a few minutes just standing in it."

Percy listened to the explanation, simultaneously horrified and impressed. He could imagine that scale of destruction with magic, with a mage who was mad enough. The explosion at Pyrah, the remains of Glintshore, the destruction wrought by Thordak, the poisoned Feywild of Saundor's madness. But hundreds of years of it caused by science? That was the sort of thing that he had nightmares about unleashing on the world. "It sounds like a blight spell."

MacCready thought about that for a couple beats and then nodded. "Seems close enough. Magic isn't really a thing where I'm from. It's all science and surviving."

He took a swig of his wine. "Anyway, that tiny thing'll fu- mess you up pretty bad. I don't even keep ammo it it, but I'm not stupid enough to think I've got the skill to destroy it safely."

"Magic has its uses. Unfortunately, I'm not a magic user myself." A few little tricks didn't count. "You're interested in destroying it?"

"If I could? Absolutely. This place ain't the world I left. I don't...I don't want something I had with me to send it down that path somehow." He shook his head. "I just don't feel like it's possible."

Percy nodded thoughtfully. He didn't know anything about radiation, but he knew something about locking away dangerous artifacts. "I'll help, if I can. It would be easier if my party was here. They're...extremely creative."

MacCready nodded, starting to put away some of his guns. No sense in keeping things looking like an arms deal gone weird. "I'd appreciate that." He was a sniper, not a scientist.

"What's your party like?" He kept referencing them. Might as well try and get him talking about them.

"They're..." He thought of the Vox Machina. Of the insane, broken, brilliant men and women that had been his family after he'd lost his own. He thought of Scanlan, irreverent and unpredictable but reliable in the clutch. He thought of Grog, strong, with a heart even stronger than his rage. Of Vax, dark, searching, trying to prove something. He reminded Percy of himself. Keyleth, his best friend, the light to his darkness and the optimism to his cynicism.

Vex'ahlia. Beautiful Vex'ahlia, who had his heart. Who was his match in wit and guile.

And Pike, the best of them all. The one whose trust they all worked to be worthy of.

"The're all completely mad. And they recently saved the world."

MacCready smiled a little. "Sounds like a story worth hearing if you're up to telling it." He leaned back in his chair once he got the rest of his weapons put away.

Percy considered, then drained his wine glass and refilled it. He was going to need something to keep his throat wet if he was going to tell this properly.

"To Vox Machina." He lifted the glass. "It all began when we returned to our home in Emon. Sovereign Uriel Tal'dorei asked Vox Machina to attend an announcement of some sort. As the ceremony began, a flight of four chromatic dragons descended on the city..."

Percy wove the story of Emon's destruction. Of the battle for Greyskull Keep and their eventual flight from the city.

Re: For Phryne

Re: For Phryne

Re: For Phryne

Re: For Phryne

Re: For Phryne

Re: For Phryne

Re: For Phryne

Re: For Phryne

Re: For Phryne

Re: For Phryne

Re: For Phryne

Re: For Phryne

Re: For Phryne

Re: For Phryne

Re: For Phryne

Re: For Phryne

Re: For Phryne

Re: For Phryne

Re: For Phryne

Re: For Phryne

Re: For Phryne

Re: For Phryne

Re: For Phryne

Re: For Phryne

Re: For Phryne