Day 5 Morning

Morning: 6:00am - 12:00noon

[ IRL Timeframe: August 28th - September ~~11th~~ 25th, 2019 ]

The strangest part about the morning of the fifth day is the silence. There's no earthquake like day four started with, there are no horrible hero-kidnapping shenanigans, and there are no glowing cracks in the ground. The cracks from before are, unfortunately, still there. But there's no glow now, no sign that anything out of the ordinary was going on.

At least until after sunrise.

The morning is shaken up by three significant events of varying intensities: The Wizard, Four, and the unknown child that had appeared on the mountain. The heroes could've easily guessed that things wouldn't go smoothly for anyone. With impressive teamwork the previous evening, they'd brought that unknown child to Harsen Island's only actual hospital in Far Haven.

Unfortunately for everyone, the doctors really can't tell much of anything. None of their machines can get a reading of... anything. There doesn't seem to be a pulse, the child doesn't even appear to be breathing. The only thing that anyone's been able to comment for certain is that the child's eye glow matches the glow that everyone had seen coming out of the cracks in the ground. That's not a good sign at all!

Fifth Morning Event: Far Haven: The Hospital.

The Weather
Eerily still.
72°F / 22°C
A little hotter today.

Prompts:

06:00am Train Station, Craydon: Anyone going for a walk in the Craydon area is going to be in for a surprise: There's a new crater. Laying sprawled at the center of the crater is the Wizard, unmoving and unresponsive. Standing on the defensive is Ten, and he's already urged several locals away from the scene. Despite wearing a pair of shorts and an "I love the beach" T-Shirt, he's looking surprisingly intimidating with all of his fingers turned sharp as needles. Looks like he's not letting anyone close to the body of the Wizard! For anyone who gets a look, there's a very clear scorch mark like she'd been blasted by something... and whatever that something is, it isn't here anymore. By the time social media has started buzzing about it, the hashtags of #heroeswin and #goodprevails are almost instantly coined to celebrate. Better go make sure the Wizard is dead, heroes!

07:00am Train Station Video Stand, Bamborough: Apparently unfazed by the events transpiring in Crayon, Four has arrived at the train station in Bamborough to capitalize on sales in the tourist region of the island. Fortunately for everyone, they're offering the full 9-hero-set of videos for every one of the heroes that had participated in their game shows the day before. There's a special discount for participants: It's free! For tourists it still costs money, but no one's buying it. They'll be visibly losing their optimism about sales opportunities by 8am. And to think, they even put out a tablecloth and designed their own poster to go above them to advertise! Their handwriting isn't the worst!! (They think that, but they're wrong.)

08:00am Harsen Island Regional Hospital, Far Haven: When the child wakes up, it happens abruptly and without warning. They sit upright, eyes snapping open to look at the room they're in. Unfortunately for everyone inside, they turn to the window in their room and detonate it. For anyone watching, a visible blue glowing circle appears on the wall a second before it explodes outward. The child hops to the ground a moment later, their feet clacking like glass strikes stone, and they move to leave. If anyone's in the room, now's the opportunity to stop them. If no one moves to stop them, they'll be jumping out of the window.

Procedure:

Reply to the appropriate toplevel comments for events below. Indicate if a post is a private conversation with "Private" in the subject otherwise all threads should be open to interaction with others. Plan OOCly how you'd like to toss everyone around.

Important: 'Child' toplevels will unlock additional information as the story progresses. Send a ping on Discord to get a reply with further details regarding this thread.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This is not useful!! If he could sigh in frustration he would. He definitely rolls his eyes beneath the rubble, and his body turns, reaching out to find Luka again. He grabs his shoulder, runs his hand down his arm and takes up writing in his palm again:
B-E-N L-I-K-E T-H-I-S
H-E-L-P

He pauses there for a second, mind spinning about how to emphasize that last bit. He just needs some help, even if all Luka can do is move a couple rocks down off the pile. Anything is going to help at this point, and he resumes clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth, hoping it's a strange enough noise that one of the two of them will pick it up soon.

Luka wordlessly crouches down and starts feeling around the rubble in an effort to help. His arms frantically move over the piles of indeterminate debris around them, though nothing is feeling quite like what he's looking for. All cement, dust, fiberglass -- until he picks up on the faint clicking noises that he recognizes as vocal.

"Is that you?" He asks, not really expecting any sort of answer. Luka hones in on the sound and starts searching in its direction. Luckily for them both, Luka's hearing is keen -- he finds where Gyre's head has ended up and begins moving the rubble around it.

When he finds it, he unceremoniously grips Gyre's head by the hair and yoinks it straight up.

"Gods, I hope this is the right one."

He hopes this is the right one? Does Luka expect there to be more then one head in this rubble? His thoughts scatter at that idea, and he doesn't realize what the Princess could possibly be talking about until his hair is being yanked??

It's not the nicest feeling in the world, and neither is the bit of concrete that catches on the ridge of his eyebrow and tears it open, but being able to see and hear again makes it worth it. His eyes roll around, figuring out where he is before he lands on his body.

Navigating said body while he's over here is uh always hard, and not something he'll ever get used to, so Luka will get to hear these several minutes while he struggles awkwardly across the rubble, going left when he means right, grabbing with the wrong hand, bracing his boot on unstable ground. He gets there eventually though, holding his own cheeks as he plucks himself out of Luka's grip.

It's easier from here, where he can hold his head more or less where it would normally go as he moves across the room, ransacking a nurse's station for some gauze and wrapping his head back into place. Finally. There is the rattling noise of him drawing breath again, and he coughs roughly.

"Nope, no," he mumbles to himself, his voice spare and nearly silent, like he's got laryngitis. He coughs again, and while whatever audience they've gathered at this point gets to see him loosen the gauze up and shift his head around again, trying to find the perfect position to settle into, Luka will be left in silence for awhile. Give him a second to adjust himself. He'll be will you soon.

Luka remains where he was kneeling in the rubble while Gyre acclimates to being whole again. He still isn't sure what to make of this whole situation, so a moment to reflect on just what the fuck was happening works out for him too.

"Gyre?" He asks as he rises to his feet, taking a few cautious steps in the direction he last heard commotion coming from. "Are you.... uh, okay now?"

He lets out another low cough, clears his throat, and uh nods. And when this gets him no response, he looks over and remembers who he's talking to. Right. Speaking.

"Yeah, hm--" he says, his voice immediately catching on something nasty. He clears his throat a third time, and while he still doesn't sound great, there is more of his old rasp as he speaks again, "Thank you for the help. You've got uh, good ears."

"Almost as good as my voice." Luka smiles. "Now, what the hell exactly happened here?"

"The child. Th... there was a child, and we brought them here. I stayed the night with them, but when they woke up they..." he rambles, trailing off as he remembers what had set the poor kid off. He shakes his head very slightly, letting out a heavy sigh.

"They were so scared. They destroyed the floor to escape," he continues, and as he describes it, he realizes he shouldn't just be standing around. He gives his clothes one last straighten, and moves past Luka, very much intending to get the heck out of here.

"I need to find them before they get hurt." If Luka was trying to find out about his head, Gyre seems to have completely missed that! Whoops!

"A child?" Luka repeats back, turning to follow the direction of Gyre's now moving voice. He recalls the voice of the child he heard on day three, assuming they must be one in the same. "I met one too, when we went back forty years ago."

Luka begins following after Gyre, a few paces behind.

"I'd wager that kid is stronger than us. I probably couldn't do that to a floor."

"Kids shouldn't have to defend themselves, even if they are stronger," he says automatically. He's pretty sure that child could burn the world down, but he'd prefer if they were never pushed that far.

That said, he slows a little so Luka can walk next to him, watching him curiously for a few beats. "I met one as well. This is a different child. They've been... I think they've been trapped for a long time."

"There's more than one kid caught up in this?" Luka hadn't considered that, but he'd also never been face to face with the child in question.

"Did they uh, take your head off like that too?"

"Yes, there's... several," he starts, trailing off immediately when Luka just goes ahead and asks him that second bit. He thought he was going to get away with pretending all that never happened, gods dammit.

"Ah, no. I've been like this for awhile. A piece of the floor hit me, and uh, knocked my head loose."

"Headless?" Of course Luka wasn't about to let that whole chestnut slide, unfortunately for Gyre. "How exactly are you walking around technically headless. Are you cursed?"

Well that's a loaded question. He certainly considers it a curse, but he's not certain the spell itself would count as one in the grand scheme of magic. He sighs roughly, clears his throat again, and decides to fall back into the familiar mode of passively answering questions. Luka doesn't need to know about his life, really.

"I'm not headless. I have my head. It's just not uh, really attached anymore," he says, by way of hopefully lightening the mood a little. "It's just magic, to preserve the soul after the body dies. That's all." There's a pause here, just long enough that he can pretend that conversation is done and change the subject.

"Why were you coming here? Are you hurt?"

"I'm not hurt." Luka shakes his head. "I heard something about the child being here, so I came to find out what was up and I found all of... that." He gestures back in the direction of the destruction behind them.

Luka can tell Gyre doesn't want to talk about his whole situation, but can't completely let it go without some answers. Sorry, Gyre.

"So... your body is... dead, then?" The word seems to slip out of his mouth like he's uttering a forbidden term. "And you cast magic on it to stay around?"

Well, he gives him points for persistence anyway, even if it's annoying the shit out of him right now. Again, he has to settle himself into just answering the questions. There's nothing wrong with a question asked, he reminds himself.

"I don't cast magic. I asked..." he begins, hesitating as he tries to keep the regret out of his voice. He thinks he mostly succeeds, but there's still a dulled edge to his voice when he says, "I asked for magic to be cast. Now I'm here until it runs out. Hm, my body is dead, yes. Gone. This one was made for me."

He draws a sharp breath through his nose, clenching and unclenching his hands for a beat. "Any more questions?" he asks dryly.

"Yes." Luka responds instantly, taking no time to deliberate any other option.

"Does this body you have work exactly like a living one? Oh! And does it look like you used to? You know, before. And what happened? Were you sick? Did you know death was coming? How did you get someone to bring you back if not?" The questions rattle out of his mouth one after another.

Oh my god?

"Fuck," he mutters, bringing a hand to his mouth as he considers just where he went wrong here. He must not have read Luka, right. He's never had anyone ask such personal questions about his fucking dead body?? He expected him to get scared off after hesitating to call him dead earlier.

"It's similar enough," he says through his fingers, deciding to not get into the weird dysphoria he had to deal with for years. "I was able to contact an elder, a... a shaman, as a spirit. She did it for me."

He lets his hand fall from his mouth, his voice dropping down lower so he's not sharing his secrets with all the people in this courtyard. He's not enjoying this. "Uh, my head was cut off-- Do you usually ask people to describe their bodies to you, Princess? It's been unpleasant so far. Shall I strip for you so you can explore me more personally?"

"After a few drinks I've been known to." Luka laughs. "I'm at a disadvantage you know, I don't get the pleasure of sight."

Luka backs off his line of questioning, belatedly picking up on Gyre's annoyance.

"Didn't mean to overstep. I'm just very curious, you know, I've never met anyone like you before and I've met a lot of people."

"Mm, we can get dinner first if you want to ask more questions like that." He waves a hand idly, looking around for signs of where the child got off too. They can't have gotten far, right? They had such little legs.

"You're not from Amarosia, right?"

"Oh, don't say that. I'll hold you to it." Luka says, an air of mischief in his voice. "I'm from Farida. I've been to Amarosia, though. Why do you ask?"

"I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it," he returns, echoing that mischievous tone. He'd wink, but a moment before doing so, he realizes that it wouldn't do him any good this time. Oh well.

"Most of the uh, people like me. We're there. And I've never known anyone who listened to a lot of uh, what's it called? The music on the radio?"

"I think it's just called music on the radio, no? Maybe you mean 'mainstream' music?" Luka laughs. "So I guess your type doesn't come out to live shows either, then?"

"Pop music?" he says after a moment, still not sounding entirely sure of himself. He certainly heard enough people talk about it, but that was uh forty years ago. Still, he's smiling to himself. Luka has a very nice laugh.

"Not that I know of. There a lot of people at, uh, live shows?"

"Oh, hundreds of thousands sometimes!" Luka's face lights up as he recalls some of his sold out performances. "There's nothing that compares to that many people screaming for you. If everyone could experience that they'd never question themselves again."

"Hundreds of...." he mumbles, and there's an obvious tremor in his voice, goose flesh breaking out along his arms, the hair on the back of his neck standing up. Just the idea of that many people in one place makes him want to crawl out of his own skin, much less that many people screaming at him.

"Thousands, you said? Guh-- what could you possibly do to get that many people in one place? It sounds... hot."

The Weather

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