Day 6: Morning

Morning: 6:00am - 12:00noon

[ IRL Timeframe: October 31st - November ~~7th~~ 13th, 2019 ]

In the typically quiet town of Craydon, most residents know that the beach is only a short walk away from the train station at the base of the mountainous region they live in. They've constructed a long wooden path out to the edge of the sandy area, with a number of benches available for any residents. Typically there are a handful of locals either walking, relaxing, fishing, or ocean watching on this normally quiet and uneventful beach. But today, at sunrise, the Wizard and the Protector are on the beach. The Wizard has made short work of sending everyone away but a few have remained to post it to social media.

It's a stalemate, for the most part. For every blow one flings, the other parries it. For every shout, there's one in return. Most unsettling, however, is that they're arguing in a language that isn't native to this world.

Far Haven isn't having an uneventful morning but it is having a quiet morning. The Hospital is looking better after the events of Day 5, the front doors are now available for use and a construction team is hard at work undoing the damage that had been done the previous day. It's definitely not fixed yet, but it's clearly on the way.

That isn't the big event that's drawing people's attention, though. Six, today's monster, has borrowed a chair from inside the hospital's lobby and placed it in the courtyard right outside the front doors. He can be found sitting, one leg propped up over the other and showing off one of the cowboy boots he's wearing, with a clipboard leaned up on his leg. Two of his arms are sitting on the armrests, casually drumming like he's impatient. Two more arms are folded across his front, and the last two arms are holding and writing on the clipboard. His yellow skin is bright as the sunlight hits him, but he's clearly ready for the sun with a pair of aviator sunglasses covering his eyes. Are there multiple eyes under there? He's wearing a cowboy hat with a white bandana around his neck and thick hair(?) bound up in a ponytail dangling off the back of the chair. This monster's a cowboy!

Oh, and there's a huge double-headed axe propped up against his chair. Can't forget that, that's scary.

Bamborough is a strange blend of eventful and not. The Child's boat is back and social media has made no secret of where they headed: Breakfast. The Bamborough Diner, a staple location in the tourist town, has been serving them meal after meal all morning. They're on their sixth meal, stuffing pancake after pancake into their mouth. They've been using the diner's picture-filled menu to order item after item and they haven't repeated one yet. It's time to EAT!

But with all this happening, surely the heroes won't be up to anything else? There's definitely no reason why the Wizard has suddenly chose to go toe-to-toe with the Protector this morning, right? No way, no how.

There's definitely a reason.

Sixth Morning Event:: The Fight.

The Weather
A little foggy.
55°F / 13°C
Uh, grab a jacket, it's actually chilly.

Prompts:

06:00am The Beach, Craydon: Today, at sunrise, the Wizard and the Protector are on the beach. The Wizard has made short work of sending everyone away but a few have remained to post it to social media.

It's a stalemate, for the most part. For every blow one flings, the other parries it. For every shout, there's one in return. Most unsettling, however, is that they're arguing in a language that isn't native to this world.

The heroes can try to get close, but they'll eventually find a barrier in their way. Is your hero here? Are they talking to others? Is there anything they can do? Or do they know more about what's happening than they've told others?

07:00am Harsen Island Regional Hospital, Far Haven: Far Haven isn't having an uneventful morning but it is having a quiet morning. The Hospital is looking better after the events of Day 5, the front doors are now available for use and a construction team is hard at work undoing the damage that had been done the previous day. It's definitely not fixed yet, but it's clearly on the way.

That isn't the big event that's drawing people's attention, though. Six, today's monster, has borrowed a chair from inside the hospital's lobby and placed it in the courtyard right outside the front doors. He can be found sitting, one leg propped up over the other and showing off one of the cowboy boots he's wearing, with a clipboard leaned up on his leg. Two of his arms are sitting on the armrests, casually drumming like he's impatient. Two more arms are folded across his front, and the last two arms are holding and writing on the clipboard. His yellow skin is bright as the sunlight hits him, but he's clearly ready for the sun with a pair of aviator sunglasses covering his eyes. Are there multiple eyes under there? He's wearing a cowboy hat with a white bandana around his neck and thick hair(?) bound up in a ponytail dangling off the back of the chair. This monster's a cowboy!

Oh, and there's a huge double-headed axe propped up against his chair. Can't forget that, that's scary.

08:00am Bamborough Diner, Bamborough: Bamborough is a strange blend of eventful and not. The Child's boat is back and social media has made no secret of where they headed: Breakfast. The Bamborough Diner, a staple location in the tourist town, has been serving them meal after meal all morning. They're on their sixth meal, stuffing pancake after pancake into their mouth. They've been using the diner's picture-filled menu to order item after item and they haven't repeated one yet. It's time to EAT!

0?:00am General Post, Anywhere: Are your characters interacting elsewhere? Are they texting everyone? Put any threads here that don't fit elsewhere with the time and location in the subject.

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Garrot's body relaxes a bit as Gyre starts to reach up, and he can't help but loose a bass-laden chuckle at that simple request. Isn't the first time he's heard that.

"Only because you asked so nicely." Now Garrot's got a big, toothy grin of his own as he bends over an inch, maybe two. Definitely not enough to give Gyre a good grip on him. "But are you sure I shouldn't just..." The Monkey Knight's hand that rested at Gyre's back starts to glide down, closer to the elf's tailbone. "...sweep you off your feet?"

But then he does bend down more, as if his coy remark didn't really matter. Because it doesn't.

Gyre's skin prickles as he feels Garrot's hand slide down his back. It's so slow, so deliberate, it actually throws him off a little. A wild elf would have just gone for it by now if they wanted to grab his ass, but here's this man promising to sweep him off his feet instead? Like he's a damsel?

He wrinkles his nose teasingly, shaking his head. "And what would I do all the way up there?" he asks, just a moment before closing the distance between them and pressing their mouths together. Sure, he has to go up on his toes to do it, but he needed to finally do this. Gyre is not a person who can deal with this particular kind of tension for very long at all, and he bites lightly at Garrot's bottom lip as he pulls away from him again.

"Was that enough of a stretch for you?"

Garrot wanted to say something, to keep the cheeky little dance going, but suddenly Gyre and his mouth were right there, and he wasn't going to clone himself just to deliver a sexually-charged one-liner. Maybe next time. Instead, as Gyre pulls away, he'll feel Garrot's once slow hand move with ferocity as his clawed fingers dig into the underside of the elf's ass.

"Such a hard worker... Relax." The doctor's still looking down on him, but he's filled the void left by Gyre's teeth by biting down on his own lip. "Unless that's all you want from me?" Garrot's got no qualms with sharing a single, intimate moment, but he's not interested in misreading his friend's intent. Gently and slowly, giving ample time to object and resist, the low-reaching hand begins to lift the elf's body up from the hips. No more stretching. But if there's even a hint of unease or resistance, that lift will stop.

Most people have to stand on their toes around Garrot, so this is a motion, a power move, he's very intimately and obviously accustomed to.

"Mmf," he grunts in surprise as that big hand closes around his ass, and his eyes flutter. He definitely wants more then this, and for a moment he nearly closes the distance between them again to reclaim is lip like a bit of territory. Only he gets to bite him there right now.

Before he can make good on this though, Garrot starts lifting him, and unfortunately he knows a power play when it starts and he's not interested in power expressed in this way, especially not for a first time encounter. It took him months to let his husband lift him up, and he's the one that asked for it then. Instead of kissing him again, his hand snaps to Garrot's wrist and pushes him very slightly down and away. He doesn't put any more distance between them, and he doesn't seem nervous, but he is absolutely making his opinion known.

"For now," he says, his eyes flicking from Garrot's eyes to his mouth, lower for just a moment. "Today is busy. Tonight too," he admits, his thoughts drifting to promises he made to Luka. "You know where I am. You're welcome to find me when you want me."

Garrot expected some twitching or writhing or hissing, not a single, deliberate hand motion. But as his advance is rebuked, the doctor loosens his grip, and delicately returns Gyre's feet to the ground. If the rejection didn't sting enough, the curt, almost evasive nature of the response sure did. Gyre's got plans for the rest of the day, but they both knew damn well something like an earthquake or time travel could happen again.

"R-right." He can feel Gyre's gaze as it tracks down his body for a moment, but he can't help but wonder: is this because he overstepped? Will Gyre ever take things further, or will they just flirt and tease forever? So a blush comes almost reflexively, and in fact his hands both remove themselves from the elf's body. His eyes awkwardly follow suit, bounding from the man's face to his chest, then off to the side.

"Sorry." The apology tumbles from his mouth quickly and powerfully and earnestly, and it's clear that Garrot has lost his ability to steer this conversation for a moment. Whoops.

"Oh--" Gyre makes a short, startled little noise when Garrot retreats so suddenly from him, removing his hands as well. He's suddenly wondering if he's the one that overstepped here? What just happened? He definitely looks a little distressed, a crease in his brow that hopefully makes it clear he wasn't rejecting Garrot, even if he was rejecting being lifted up.

"You... I... wait, why?" he asks in absolute confusion. He doesn't know why Garrot retreated and he doesn't know why he apologized! What a baffling man he still is, god dang it.

"Did you forget where my camp is?" he asks almost too quickly for Garrot to answer the first question, "It's fine if you did. I can take you there myself the next we get another moment," a wave between the two of them, "like this, when we don't have things to do."

After enough complicated back-and-forth with Gyre, poor Garrot's nerves are soothed by his buddy saying and doing, well, everything. He was visually and verbally confused, and he even flat-out stated that things weren't over.

So Garrot chokes out a laugh.

"No, no!" He pauses for a beat, eyes wide, ears perked up, and a grin creeping onto his face. He's relieved! "I mean yeah, I probably forgot how to find your camp." Garrot shrugs, even going so far as to roll his eyes at himself. A woodmsan he is not. "But that doesn't matter. I apologized because, well, we have totally different..." He trails off for a moment, looking for the word, before sliding right back into unburdened rambling. "Boundaries! And yours are really important to you, and, well, they're important to me, but you seem fine." He pauses for another beat, looking a little sheepish as that blush refuses to leave.

"So we're fine. It's fine!" Garrot Murtakhor hasn't stopped trying to be respectful, even if he's graceless and inelegant about it.

Garrot laughs, and Gyre answers with a confused, amused snort of his own, relaxing as he feels all the tension flow out of this conversation. His eyebrows raise slowly as he listens to the explanation, and he purses his lips in the beginning of a smile.

"I'm fine," he reassures, reaching up to cup Garrot's face with a gentle fondness. This man is a lot most of the time, but he can't deny the guy is trying his hardest right now. "If you really want to carry me around in your arms, we can talk about it. Later. Not here," he says, gesturing around to the uh trucks surrounding them. He's barely comfortable in the city air, and the idea of being stuck in anyone's arms, even someone he trusts, is not great for him.

He pats him on the cheek at that, winking up at him. "Relax. Isn't that what you just told me?"

Again, the reassurance is helpful. Garrot's accustomed to making a fool of himself with Gyre, so the fact that he took charge of a situation and didn't get yelled at is, uh... new and uncomfortable territory!

"Right. I should relax!" It's clearly not bad territory. The wink clearly keeps his nerves from acting up, and a hand wanders to scratch at the nape of his neck. "Follow my own advice." Garrot grins, reminding himself that as much of a horny old man as he may be, Gyre keeping him from doing anything more might've been for the best. This parking lot has a lot of solid surfaces and sharp edges, that'd be a, uh, painful mistake.

"We can talk about it later." If he just regurgitates Gyre's words like an awkward robot, he won't say or do something to deteriorate their progress! But all good things come to an end, so he's instead going to... try and change the subject a bit.

"So, uh..." He looks around, still trying to reclaim non-awkward footing. It's clear what Gyre's planning on doing with his afternoon, of course, he's gathering everyone together. "What are you doing later tonight?" A lewd smirk seems to leak onto his face, showing exactly what he thinks is going on.

"You don't seem like you need to plan time to yourself." Because you live in the woods, Gyre. Alone.

He makes that low, amused sound he does, stepping in so their bodies are very nearly pressed together. For just a moment, he decides they can all meet at the mountain tomorrow. He's not used to making such firm plans, and Garrot is not the only horny old man standing in this parking lot. He could just toss his plans away, and he'd almost certainly have more fun. He opens his mouth to say exactly this.

But he can't. There's too much going on today. That brief second of throwing it all away is immediately reversed, and his parted mouth turns into an almost overworked sigh. He lets himself tip forward, settling his forehead against Garrot's chest.

"I promised Six I would watch his play. And I'm meeting with someone after that," he mutters, minding Luka's request for privacy. He'll get to have fun at the end of all this, but not with Garrot. Not yet anyway.

"Maybe tomorrow," he offers, shaking his head very slightly. "There's so much going on every day."

The smirk fades as Gyre rests his forehead against Garrot's chest. As that sigh creeps out of the elf's mouth, Garrot can't help but move the hand from his neck to gently rest against Gyre's back, near his shoulders. Not quite a hug.

"Shh, I know..." He's not one to shy away from an opportunity to be supportive and compassionate to a friend, even though he'd much rather just wrap his arms around Gyre and squeeze until they both feel better. Maybe Gyre, like Haizea, could use a bit of positivity in his view of the future, instead of getting bogged down in exhaustion and worry. "It's a lot. But once we get through this, we'll have all the time in the world."

He wishes Garrot would actually hug him! But he also knows that if he did, he probably wouldn't pull away for uh awhile.

"Mm," he mumbles softly, forcing himself to stand back up after another few moments here. "I hope so. I hope there is something after this for you. All of you."

In his mind, the world will either end in a few days or something miraculous will have happened. They'll be someplace completely new. Regardless of which it ends up being, he can't imagine himself there at all. He'll just go back to hunting in the woods alone after all, right?

As much as Garrot wants to have any kind of warm and affectionate reaction, that dismissive response sends him right into, well, Parental Mode. His eyes get big, his ears comically droop, and his frown is impossible to ignore. You just ripped the wind from this man's sails, Gyre.

"All of us? What about you?" That hand moves from Gyre's back to a shoulder, and the only reason Garrot's other hand doesn't follow suit is because otherwise he'd start hugging. Hard. "You get to do whatever you want, too." Don't exclude yourself just because you're dead, Gyre!

He offers Garrot this soft, sad smile, and he really, truly looks like a man carrying almost eighty years of a life on his shoulders. Garrot's being Parental, but he utterly deflects it in this moment. He doesn't often feel his age, but when he does, he can't help but sink into a little.

"I know. I will," he answers gently. "I'll go back to what I had before. Or the closest thing I can get to it, you know?" He smiles after that though, returning more to himself as he reaches up to rest a hand on Garrot's forearm. His nails wind lazily over his skin, curious but unable to really explore just yet.

"Hey..." That sad smile hurts Garrot deep in his emotional core. The hand that was on Gyre's shoulder gives a light squeeze, and there's the slightest, whimpering sigh. There's so much he wants to say, to do for him, but he knows how the elf is. But still...

"If you decide to shake things up, I know some places that'd love to have you." He chuckles a bit before closing his eyes for a moment. Memories of the island monastery he lived at and his boyfriend's childhood home came to mind. "Quiet, remote, lots of nature, good people..."

Sure, he can't force Gyre to accept his help, but he can always leave the door open in case he changes his mind...

He hums softly, acknowledging him with that amused little noise of his. He appreciates the shoulder squeeze, tilting his head towards it very slightly, but he just doesn't think Garrot can offer him anything better then what he has. This is what he chose when he decided to live.

"I'll keep it in mind," he says, but he shrugs as he speaks, waving a hand as if to brush past this conversation. "Wherever we end up may not be anything like the places you know now. But we have to make it through this next week first either way. I'm hoping today will help us with that."

Garrot just rolls his eyes at the cagey, noncommittal crap and that dismissive hand wave. If you think things will change, then you change too, you loser! But it's fine, he has like a week to convince Gyre otherwise, so instead he just chuckles.

"So... what's today supposed to do to help?" He's still catching up, and he knows Gyre's planning something, but the specific details pretty much elude him. But shockingly, he's actually letting the personal conversation go in favor of Knight Business.

If he knew Garrot was trying to plan a better life for him, he'd have something to say. Instead, maybe, just maybe, he can be caught off guard enough at the end of this that he lets himself be happy. For now, he's way too dumb for that.

"I want everyone to share what we know. I'm going to bring everyone to the, ah, the place where it all started. And I'll tell everyone what I've learned," he pauses a moment, turning over logistics in his head. He has to believe that this is going to go the best it possibly can for now. The alternative just means more days of confusion, and maybe more dead knights. And almost certainly more dead monsters.

"If we all know as much as we can, we can decide what's best and work together to achieve it. That's the plan."

"We can... decide." Garrot approves of the approach, he really does, but he's seen firsthand how difficult Gyre can be when it comes to disagreements or being told what to do. What he's actually hearing is that Gyre will decide what's best and he will get angry if people disagree with him. He was so adamant about keeping the monsters alive on so little (despite the weight of the evidence), so how flexible will he really be?

"What if there's information that directly contradicts what you've learned?" His posture straightens a bit, and a hand moves contemplatively to his beard. This may be the first time Gyre's seen the Monkey Knight act like he's intelligent. But now there are stakes; Garrot's approach since day one has been supporting the group and generally trying to keep them together. And this? It's potentially divisive and counter to his goals.

"Don't get me wrong, I support this, but..." He... takes a half step back, making eye contact with Gyre before closing his eyes and sighing. "What if it's not that simple?"

Gyre watches Garrot work through his thoughts, his eyebrow rising higher and higher the longer he goes on. The more questions he ask. He doesn't understand his train of thought at all honestly.

He stares firmly into his eyes when they meet, and his expression falls into confused frustration at that last question. What if? What if a lot of things, Garrot. He has been asking questions constantly since that first night with the Wizard, and he still doesn't really feel like he knows what's going on. That's why he has latched on so hard to the knowledge, the unshakable truth, of the monsters' personhood. That's the axis all of this spins on now.

"Then none of us will know that until we've spoken," he says with absolute confidence. There is no step forward for him that doesn't involve finding out what all of them have learned, that doesn't involve him explaining all the pieces he's found so far.

"There likely will be... information that contradicts. The Protector lies. The Wizard might too. There is only a path through if we work together."

Garrot's brow furrows at Gyre's confidence and utter trust in their allies. With as anxious or afraid as many of them have been, he doesn't expect everyone to see things the same way. These two Knights alone are able to disagree on plenty!

"If things get rough, don't lose your temper. Please." Pot, kettle. But despite his condescension earlier, Garrot seems to have shifted to some more of that genuine concern again. There's a frown, and his ears are definitely drooping comically. He's thought through his approach, so the execution is the hard part. "You won't get people to work together if there's a repeat of our first day or if you punch someone again." Garrot sighs, looking down at the ground for a moment before focusing on Gyre again. It sucks that he's saying all this after that moment, but... Gyre hasn't exactly been diplomatic.

"I'll be there too, so... I'll try to help if I can, okay?"

Gyre could not roll his eyes any harder or more immediately then he does here when Garrot asks him not to lose his temper. His whole body tenses up and he folds his arms over his chest. He truly doesn't understand how they went form that moment of perfect understanding to this, Garrot making assumptions about how he's going to act before he's even acted.

"I won't know how I'll respond until we're there," he says, flicking his hand slightly as if to dismiss the concern.

"The help is nice, but I'm not sure what you're expecting from the others." He pauses a beat. "Maybe Haizea will fight it, but the others seem to have more care then her. If all but one of us decides to work together, that's as good as all of us working together."

Wanting to get everyone on the same page is all well and good, but switching from that to being so okay with excluding people on baseless assumptions is, well, ridiculous. Garrot has built more than enough rapport with Haizea to know her goal is to survive and get back to her life. Gyre wants to talk about whether people care, but he's the one hiding in the woods.

"It sounds like you know exactly what you're expecting and exactly how you want to respond." He shakes his head, disappointed. They were fine before, they were great, but now... "I'll meet you at the mountain later."

And the Monkey Knight turns to leave and starts a-walkin'. Gyre is fine. That's great! But it means Garrot's energy is better spent figuring out how to keep everyone else cohesive than just... arguing.

Well... Garrot will get to feel the heat of Gyre nearly physically detonating in rage on his back then. He cannot believe the absolute gall Garrot has to shake his head like that, and his whole body tightens up like a spring, shoulders rising, hands balling into fists so hard he nearly slices open his palms.

This man just tried to insist that things might go poorly. That he should expect less of his fellow knights. This man started trying to predict the future, which is foolish at the best of times, and when Gyre played the same fucking game and made his own predictions, this fucking man has the pure, unfiltered arrogance to imply that he is the one assuming the worst.

This is a lot of feelings to have all at once. He likely wouldn't be able to say any of them cleanly in his own language, much less after translating it through Amarosian and then into Common.

"You--! 《Fucking》--" is about all he manages, slipping into his own language for that cuss there. All he manages after that is just snarling at him, raising his hands to his face and digging his nails into his forehead to try to calm himself. He can't hit this man. He wants to physically fight this man, and he can't. His shoes nearly screech on the road as he turns with sudden force, and stomps the fuck away. He is absolutely done with Garrot for a little bit!

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Day 6: Morning

Morning: 6:00am - 12:00noon

The Weather

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