strangetrip | Entries tagged with robert maccready

It wasn't a year, not yet. Coming up on one yeah, he was pretty sure, but fuck if he actually knew. It was messed up trying to keep track of one day at a fucking time when the calendars were kinda the same just shifted some and he didn't really know what day it was when he left in the first place. Still. November. End of November. Seemed about right for the time of year when he left, though you really couldn't tell it by looking outside. It didn't get cold enough. Not that it really snowed all that much in the Commonwealth in November either. Sometimes. They'd get flurries and crap. He'd heard stories of endless blizzards further north and tales from ghouls from back when the bombs dropped about a couple decades or whatever that everything was frozen. Not now. Not anymore.

Not here either.

Still, it was probably an anniversary of something. The day he met Blue? Shit, maybe. No. No, that was before Halloween. Close on about the time they finally raided Med-Tek though and Daisy's caravan set off with the cure for Duncan.

Close enough.

Reason enough to imbibe a little.

The months in the inn, the months of quiet, all this time with so little to shoot at...

Fuck, it chafed at him, and he sat in the slightly crisp morning sun, hanging out in the garden as he pulled an institute laser rifle apart, wondering if he'd be able to figure out something new from it this time, maybe see about actually making the damn thing quieter.

st_illfleshandblood

It was, Jackson realized belatedly, the first time he had tried smoking in his room. Way too goddamn belatedly, as a shrill sound pierced his ears, quickly followed by a spray of cold water coming from the ceiling. He was sputtering and drenched, ruined cigarette in hand, as he spilled out on the lawn outside his room, glaring back at the interior and throwing the smoke to the ground. "What in the blazin' hell! Can't a man have a cigarette in peace in his own room!"

He'd never been one to have many rules for himself in his own home, and being chased out of his suite by what he assumed was some sort of misguided fire-guarding system was not in the least welcome.

st_abby

Though the sun had only sunk for the day by the time that Vax'ildan got it in his head to have supper, there was still lingering heat that proved the summer months had begun. Vex had been making eyes at Percy earlier, so her brother let them be and saw to his own feeding. The buildings here had cooling devices (no, really, cooled air), but it was pleasant enough yet, even in full black leather armor, to eat outdoors once the worst glare of the day had passed. Or if you were a rogue with a whole bird motif going on, you could take your meal up onto the rooftops.

That's how it was that Vax had come to be sitting perched at the edge of the rooftop on the main building, dangling a leg off the side with another tucked under him, working his way thoughtfully through half of a sandwich Ignis had put out of the kitchen for the usual hopeless scavengers. He washed down his first bites with a swallow of cold bottled ale, watching as the daylight waned, the shine visibly coming off of the brightness of the world stretched out around him. The blue and purple and first blacks of the evening began to fold widely around the Inn and its people, gathering them gently into its cloak, and Vax found himself sighing quietly. Not at anything. It was just... This was nice.

st_abby

Date: 3/14/17

Vax'ildan seems to be collecting sharp-shooters. He and MacCready share a few secrets under the glare of the sun and to the tune of weapons fire.

[Here | R (There's GASP smoking) | Completed | Srs Talks]

st_ereoscopic

Abby wasn't sure if the semi-regular happenings of arrivals would continue today, especially after Songrun, but just in case she made her way to the cafe. It would be the perfect spot to see the lobby if anyone new didn't make it as far as the cafe seeking answers. It also gave her lots of room to spread her "project" out.

There were bits and bobs but mostly it was a couple of tubes, lens, spring and nobs. Abby was determined to make a microscope. It might not be especially useful around the hotel but it was a comfort to her. Besides it kept her mind occupied and she was finding that, that was more important as time in the hotel went on.

Time seemed to fade around her, which usually happened when she focused on her work, and it was the protest of her back muscles that had her stretching. It was then that she noticed more people trickling into the cafe and some unfamiliar faces. Which meant it really was check in day today and she stood to greet friends she hadn't met yet. In Abby speak that was practically everyone. No one was a stranger - at least not for long.

captaincorsair

Mosquitos whined in the sodden jungle air, divebombing the party as they fought their way through grasping vines. The path they followed wasn't a path as such, more of a list of landmarks in order of passage. Only the best trackers among them found any signs of bipedal passage, and they agreed it might have been years since anyone had passed this way.

The first signs of the inevitable irritations of a long slog had begun to show themselves about two hours out from the Road's End Inn and Tavern near the end of the North-South road. An hour later, damper, and more bug-bitten, the party arrived at the sheer cliff-wall that was the next landmark (and one of the last) on their journey.

Yasmeen shielded her eyes with her hand and looked up the cliff-face. The sketch that accompanied the "map" suggested there would be a cave mouth some 40 feet up. Keen cat eyes picked out a hidden entrance more like 60 feet up, screened by thick vines. If she hadn't known it was there, she would have missed it.

"Anyone fly or am I climbing?" she asked after she'd pointed it out to her companions.

captaincorsair

Yasmeen "refused to be bored, because she wasn't boring."**

She'd read that in a book in Gotham. But then, Gotham had a library, bookstores, and her Lady. Not being bored was a lot easier. So, when the city opened, Yasmeen all but bolted through the portal into the wet jungle heat in search of anything interesting to do.

It didn't take long for her to discover there were no airships, no weapons modern even by her standards, and very little for non-natives to do. But there was always work in a port city, even in a river port, and she knew how to find it.

On day two, she met Ek Sothea, a young woman with a gift for spotting an opportunity. By day three, she'd agreed to front her the gold for a salvage operation in the river. It barely touched the reserves of what Yasmeen had with her when she arrived from Gotham, but it was enough to finance the operation and get Yasmeen a tip on a bar by the docks where Ek Sothea had gotten the initial information and the name of the man who'd supplied it. Soksan.

The third night, she staked out the bar and by the fourth, she'd met Sar Peou and his contact Hu Chariya who needed an ancient and valuable map retrieved from the business partners who'd kept it after a deal went bad. Early on the morning of the fifth day, she'd slipped into the third floor above the Phann Raksmei bank, picked the locks on the safe chest, and obtained the map. On the evening of the fifth day, she met Sar Peou at Soksan, slipped into his back corner booth and delivered the map in exchange for a healthy payment that covered her investment in Ek Sothea's salvage operation.

Business transacted, she bought herself an ale to nurse while scoping out her next job.

~*~*~*~
* Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf
** Zelda Fitzgerald

st_arkcrowblack

Even before she knew for certain that it was the first of a month, Snow’s body had started bracing for it. She was wary and tense, preparing to cope with yet more people in the space of the hotel. It seemed that no sooner had she adjusted to whoever had showed up the last time, there was someone new again.

She didn’t want anything to do with the lot of it. That was what those busy women on the welcome committee were for. She didn’t think the committee was a stupid thing, not at all. Focusing on settling new people in kept the lot of them busy and away from her, and that was where she wanted them. They terrified her.

Snow White had only come into the main building to forage for food. The original plan was of course to turn right back around and escape before the expected rush (small or large) of new people to flood in.

But that was of course not what happened. When a universe was a pocket, it had less to focus on and fewer people to fuck with, and so Snow was entirely certain it was fucking with her when she was the one in the lobby when a new face came through the door.

st_rontium

Date: 21 February

In this issue of The Wasteland Survival Guide, MacCready gets fed by Ignis and they have a pretty good conversation about the question of replenishing foodstocks in the hotel. The sniper, who up to this point has been mostly focused on keeping watch, decides to perhaps return to his farming days just a little and asks Ignis to set aside some seeds so he can get some starters going.

[Here | rating: pg-13 for some strong language | status: complete | warnings: none]

st_illunsmeared

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.

st_aff

None of them planned it.

It just happened.

After a week of nothing but Iron Chef: Chicken, Sam had gone to the Copper Cafe to make himself a salad and found Steph already there making waffles. Dean joined them when he couldn’t find Sam in the room and immediately started pouring draft beers. Snow crept down a little later, apparently planning to make mashed potatoes to go with her chicken, and found Steph already peeling them.

With promises of alcohol and no questions, they convinced Snow to stay. And then, to their surprise, she not only helped Steph with the potatoes but overheard Dean bitching about a bakery with no pies and rolled up her sleeves to make one or three. The Chef drifted in a bit later, made fried chicken without talking to any of them and left them to their demented, sad but drunkenly social New Year’s Eve “party”.

By ten they were bored of draft beer and Sam and Steph went and raided the Steak House coolers for champagne—Steph because she wanted it and Sam because it was entirely plausible that an insurance investigator/estate appraiser would know something about what was decent champagne. But when they found a room service cart, they didn’t stop at champagne.

Why should they? They couldn’t go anywhere. They had nothing to do except when Sam and Dean could sneak off to bust the odd ghost or Steph to crawl the odd roof and Snow for a horseback ride. No reason they couldn’t spend the next three days drinking in the Cafe if they wanted.

Which was why when the new guests started arriving in groups of threes and fours, they were still there, drinking, listening to whatever crap music Steph on her phone and ready to share their booze for consolation. There wasn’t any way for people to get out of the lobby without seeing them, either, so they ended up consoling a lot.

Of course, there were four of them and eventually like twenty-six new people, so pretty soon it was less you’re stuck, it sucks, I’m sorry and more have a drink, grab a chair, have some pie. Some stayed in the wood-and-red leather cafe with its copper fittings, and some didn’t.

Whatever they chose, not one could say it wasn’t an interesting New Year’s Day.

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Strange Trip

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave

Entries tagged with robert maccready

[EP: OTA, MacCready] Probably gonna break this one

EP (OTA): Jackson

[Locked to MacCready] On the Having of Nice Things

[Linkdrop] Butts & Bullets (Vax & MacCready)

[GP/EP Check In Day - May 1]

[Locked to Adventurers] Land Out of Time

[EP] a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life* - backdated

[GP/EP] You're not clear of story out here

[MacCready and Ignis - Link Drop] Food For Thought

[EP/GP] Today is Check-In Day

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