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

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[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.

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Vax got a bit of a gleeful glint in his eye as he began to show Percy the way, satisfied that his nibs seemed to have his land legs coming back in under him. "What if I told you that they were one in the same?"

"I would say that sounds expensive." But Percy's imagination was caught, intrigued by a common inn with in room bathing facilities. Growing up, servants had gone to great lengths to provide hot baths to the de Rolo family. It was an enormous waste of effort. Percy stumbled and caught himself against a wall, too distracted to coordinate his lanky frame. "Though I've considered a system of pipes and levers to draw water but the construction would be tricky and then heating would be a challenge. I suppose an enchanted stone could provide heat on command. It hasn't been a priority."

Maybe those land legs were still on the rubbery side after all. Vax didn't hesitate to catch Percy's arm and sling it around his shoulders as before, continuing on.

"It's something to do with a whole bunch of pipes and heaters," was about as much as Vax could agree. "That's all of it I know. But it's easily the best thing yet about being trapped in this bloody place."

Percy mostly kept his legs under him for the rest of the trip out from the main building and to the three story structure. He was rather grateful when they didn't have to take any stairs to the red door marked "Old World". He reached for the handle, but though it moved, the door wouldn't open.

Remembering the paper sleeve, he took it out and waved it at the door, then pressed it against the wood. Nothing. "What's the trick?"

Vax reached for Percy's key, sliding the hard rectangle out from the paper. He faced it the right way and inserted it into the slot in the boxy thing over the door handle, and it beeped acceptance at them. Vax pushed the handle and swung the door open with a dramatic wave of a gesture, smirking back at Percy.

"I've broken a few of these," he noted almost proudly, handing the card and paper sleeve over to Percy again. "Still no idea what's going on that makes them work. And only your card will open up your door."

"That's...interesting. That's very interesting." Percy stared at the box on the door for several long seconds, then shook his head. "Later."

He looked up then and got his first good look at his room. There was... a lot of rock. Percy didn't have anything against rocks. Rocks - or rather stone - was the fortune of his family and his city. Greyskull keep was build of stone. And yet, nothing about this place had prepared him to suddenly be faced with polished to a shine rocks that nevertheless looked rough hewn. There was a fireplace. It was lit. He took a couple steps forward. "What in the devil?"

"You can't escape all the red and pink in this place," Vax'ildan remarked, poking in after him for a look. "But the rock is better than most get. Makes it almost liveable. You're lucky compared to some."

Percy toured the room slowly, around the enormous fireplace, to the massive bed, then through yet another red door into... "What is this place?" More stone, some part of it formed as a shelf with an indentation in it - some kind of basin, he imagined. A long white robe hung from a bar in an open alcove. Another alcove mystified him entirely.

"This is your private bathhouse," Vax explained from the bathroom's doorway.

He pointed at the basin. "The fiddly bits pour water for hands, small jobs, drinking," he'd entirely intuited the last. Tasted different from home, but he'd not been sick. He continued on to the toilet. "Nethers. The lever whisks it away." He gave a more expansive gesture with his hand at the largest. "Bathing. You can have it come out hot any time you like."

Percy immediately moved to the basin to test the theory. A twist of a knob and water poured forth. Another twist and it began to warm slowly. "Remarkable." Twisting it off again, he went to the white seat Vax had indicated. Pushing the lever made the water in that basin, swirling with a noisy sound. Soon enough, just as Vax had said, the water was gone and new water filled the bowl. "Wasteful?" Percy said, dubiously.

Finally, the bathing chamber. Percy stepped in and found two more knobs. He gripped one, looking up at the silver tube of metal above him. To his shock, water instead poured down over a shelf of rock, drenching him instantly. It was cold and Percy yelped in shock.

Vax'ildan lingered in the doorway, entirely entertained by watching the somewhat over-lubricated gears turning madly in Percy's head. He shrugged at the question. "Doesn't seem to be a problem, or they'd ration it. But it's better than a chamber pot by miles."

He did have keen perception and very deft reflexes. Vax might've been able to yank Percy out of the way of the water. Vax didn't honestly think to try. He'd gone for the cold, after all.

"You could do with a bath, Freddy," Vax had an impish look where he gathered up a few of the big, fluffy towels.

Frantic adjusting of the knobs soon caused the water to cease pouring out. Percy gave the rock wall a long, penetrating look, like he was considering tearing it apart for its secrets. The look he then turned on Vax suggested something similar, but with considerably more vengeance. "You might have warned me."

He looked down at his ruined and now quite drenched coat and shirt and with a sigh, started to strip out of it. Blood still streaked liberally over a torso covered in barely healed wounds laid over the scars of years past. The dark stone floor covered any red tinge to the water. "Anything else I should be aware of?"

Faced with such a clever mind and a heart full of vengeful indignation, Vax'ildan only smiled at Percy fondly. He'd missed them all so much. And even if Percy wasn't Vex or Kiki returned to him, he was no lousy consolation prize either.

"Oh, plenty. This is a very strange place we've ended up in. If you try to leave the grounds, you can walk for a couple of hours, but it will always turn you right back around somehow. There are a few more staff like that innkeep who gave you your room, equally plain - I don't think they're actually people, but they don't do any harm as far as we've seen. The kitchens and bar stay stocked no matter how much we eat or drink, but no one ever sees deliveries made."

Percy raised his eyebrows. "Sounds like magic. It would be nice if one of the others were here." He could build things but despite a facility with a few small charms, magic was outside his expertise.

He took one of the towels from Vax and scrubbed the blood off as best he could. "So is this place like Scanlan's mansion then?"

"It's got to be magic," Vax agreed with a tip of his head, relinquishing the fluffy things easily. "Though there are some magic sorts about, and they can't seem to figure it much better than the rest of us." He'd been reminded of the mansion, too. Not that it had helped him any.

Percy draped the towel around his neck and stepped - boots squishing - out of the rock alcove. There was a drain, he noticed now, that neatly took away the dirty water. He approved of that.

He leaned against the wall as a wave of dizziness came over him. "I think...as lovely as a bath sounds, I might regret the attempt." He realized he was changing subjects again but staying focused was rather difficult. The wine's fault, he was sure, at least as much as the battering he'd hardly recovered from.

Not that Vax had ever had much modesty to begin. But after having travelled with him, fought with him, seen Percy dead, and even watched his sister fall hard for the nerd, there wasn't really anything he could imagine as being too awkward to be shared. Definitely not too much drink in another world.

"Yeah, let's not, bright boy," Vax'ildan agreed, giving Percy a moment to regain his balance before steering him for the bed with a hand on his back. He'd set to work on those boots as soon as Percy flopped down. "How is it you've been here not one night and you're sloppy as a sailor on shore leave before I can find you?"

"The man with all those terrifying guns gave me a health potion and then wine. I have a sneaking suspicion Raishan may have killed me briefly." Again. He hoped this wasn't becoming a habit.

Percy let Vax deal with the boots - the room had started spinning the moment he'd landed on the bed. It would have been alarming in other circumstances. "I admit, I didn't particularly want to face all this sober. Not sure that was the wrong option."

Vax stopped mid-tug as his deft hands set to free one of Percy's soggy feet, and he looked up at the white-haired man with a stark expression. When he realized he'd done it, Vax eased it off the rest of the way, and set the boot aside.

"No," he said, his whisper slightly raspy. "Maybe not." Vax started on the next boot, but his hands stopped again before he'd got to it really. "How'd the fight go? Before..." Before Percy had died, he guessed. Again.

"How did the fight against the incredibly clever and ancient beast who'd been plotting how to beat us for months and knows every last one of our weaknesses go?" Percy closed his eyes, decided that was worse and opened them again. "Very poorly. Without Kiki's spell, she'd have killed us all. For all I know, she did."

He tried to think of when he'd last seen everyone. "She almost got Pike. The armor, the Dawnplate, saved her. Allura went down and... I think Scanlan did too. I couldn't see him where I was. We were all... I don't know, Vax. I honestly don't know. We hurt her, that much is certain. She was angry and in pain and enraged."

Vax finished with those boots, and made himself look up at Percy after. ...What did that mean, that Percy was here and the others weren't? Had Vax got it wrong somehow, and the both of them were dead?

That still didn't feel right to him.

But it wasn't exactly fair to try to force Percy to grind out theories right now, either.

"Once you're sober again," he eventually suggested, standing, "you're going to have to noodle this for us better. In the meantime, I'm sorry what it took to get you here, but I'm definitely not sorry to have you," he clasped Percy's shoulder.

Percy gripped Vax's wrist, a hard clasp that was less reassuring than it was grounding. "Vax, she..." He couldn't bring himself to say her name, the half-elf woman who shared a face with the man standing above him. "They were both okay when I saw them last. I trust that they took Raishan down, whatever else happened. The girls...all of them, they'd have found a way to get everyone back on their feet."

Vax hadn't asked. He hadn't asked because he hadn't wanted to know. If something had happened to Vex, and he hadn't been there, like last time, to watch out for her -

He'd punched Percy after that, and so help him, if Percy had tried to tell him something mortal had happened to her now, when it would be worse than useless, he'd have had to wrestle with the urge now.

Whatever he'd been about to go do, Vax let it go. It was too late not to look wounded, too late not to think about his sister and the rest facing that green dragon bitch, falling maybe. He let his knees give out, so he sank down onto the huge bed next to Percy, sitting on the edge of it. "...Don't you try to tell me any different than that," he warned softly, voice low. He didn't try to take his arm back.

Percy shook his head. "You think I wasn't watching her? She got hit, we all did, but she was up. My word on it."

"I believe you," Vax answered, though he looked away. Mostly because he couldn't function if he let himself think of it any differently. He was barely functional as it was.

"...I miss her so fucking much, Percy." His heart broke across his face as he said it, no more or less than it had in all this time, but he'd never quite said the words aloud. They clung thick in his throat, like a sob. It was such a stupidly obvious thing, and such an understatement at that. But no one else here knew Vex'ahlia to be able to understand what he meant.

Percy loved her, too.

[EP/GP] Today is Check-In Day

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