Day 6: "Monster Arrival"

Afternoon: 12:00noon - Evening

[ IRL Timeframe: November 13th - ~~November 20th~~ December 4th, 2019 ]

Following the events of the morning, with the Wizard and Protector locked in a heated duel, Gyre has paved forward with his plan to gather all the heroes to show them something. Be proud of him, he texted EVERYONE!

The fight between the two powerful entities continues, they won’t be joining anyone just yet. Sxicq, meanwhile, is… somewhere. No one really kept tabs on them, even social media has lost sight of them.

Monster Arrival: Far Haven: No one! Six is preparing to “arrive” in the evening.

The Weather
Clear with a few clouds.
52°F / 11°C
Bring your heater, the chill continues!

Prompts:

12:30pm Mounain, General Post:

I.
Gyre arrives early to the main hiking trail at the base of the mountain. There’s a big sign advertising where it starts, and he sits against one of the legs of the sign. His legs are neatly folded, his arms crossed over his chest. As people begin to arrive, he greets each of them, standing after a second or third has arrived.

Once they’re all gathered, he raises a hand to get everyone’s attention. “Is this everyone?” he asks, clearly counting heads. A flicker of angst crosses his face as he realizes how much smaller they look without Rory and Web and Gail. As he counts, he realizes Zafika and Joanna are missing as well. He wasn’t able to talk to either of them, so he supposes he’s not surprised, but there is a little bubbling concern in his chest. He’ll have to address it later.

He waves at the lot of them once he’s done counting, gesturing for them to follow, “We’re going to the top. I’m going to move quickly so we can get back down before dark. If you need help, ask me. Rely on each other,” is all he says before he turns and heads up the trail.

The ground is worn enough to make the climb relatively easy, but it’s still climbing a mountain. How is everyone taking it? It’s a long trip. There’s time to catch up now that they’re all together again.

II.
This is the top of the mountain. When the heroes arrive, they’ll find Five and Ten seated at a small foldable table playing cards. Five is wearing jeans and a black hoodie with a computer error screen printed on it. She looks at the group of heroes arriving, giving a small wave once she’s seen some familiar faces-- but she immediately moves to hide behind Ten when she sees Luka.

Ten, meanwhile, is wearing a shirt with a picture of himself wearing a shirt with a picture of himself wearing a shirt-- you get the idea. How did he pull that off? The shirt is printed with a picture of him here, on the top of the mountain, outside this cliff door. Did he plan for this? He gives a wave at the group, greeting them with a Microsoft Sam voiced phone message:

“All around me are familiar faces. Ha ha, hello.”

Did he just reference a song? He definitely did. That was definitely “Mad World” by Jary Gules.

12:30pm Onward: Mountain, The Mountain Cave Entrance:

When the heroes decide to descend into the cavern, what they’ll find is a strangely winding corridor that’s barely lit at all. The ceiling is rarely higher than six feet, sometimes shrinking down to four feet and even three feet near the bottom, and most of its length is only wide enough for two people to fit through. The floor is slick with water, the slope of it acting as the perfect place for water to drain into from above. This means the descent is cramped, dark, and slightly slippery.

Good luck, heroes.

The corridor suddenly opens up at the bottom into a wide-open cavern, the walls spreading out too far in every direction and disappearing into the darkness of the cavern. The walkway into the space narrows as it crosses over a massive pit that surrounds a central circular platform. There aren’t any other walkways leading to the middle.

The circular platform in the center has twenty-seven metal rings that make up the floor, smaller ones in the middle surrounded by one massive ring around the outside. It'd take a lot of counting to see the 27 rings but, believe me, they're there. What the heroes will be able to spot, though, is that a few of the rings on the floor are rotating very, very slowly. It would be easy to miss, but once noticed it’s clear that there are exactly ten rings moving and seventeen that are not.

Surrounding the center platform are twenty-seven raised platforms in a big circle around the center. Floating above four in a row are bright yellow blobs with one, two, and three eyes respectively. The fourth and fifth have the slain bodies of Four and Five. Four is wearing the game show garb they’d worn on the day of their games. Five is wearing a set of heavy black robes, not the assassin garb she’d worn on her day. The other side has five occupied platforms each with knights floating in them. Web, with Aqrisqi floating above them. Rory, with Sefaq floating above her. Gail, with Giqra floating above him. Joanna, with Fius floating above her. Zafika, with Muraj floating above them.

Wait. When were Joanna and Zafika defeated? Both of them have a single red mark above where their hearts are like they’d each been stabbed with a blade.

Five and Ten have followed everyone down to this room, looks like they’ll be able to answer questions… maybe? But everyone knows that neither the Wizard nor the Protector will be here, they’re still fighting up on the island’s beach.

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.

Activity Check: November 2019

[ IRL Timeframe: November 1st - November 31st, 2019 ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sure, Garrot's done his research, but hearing that Papa Eutychia had the money for a chef but not enough to get away from work and cook a meal... it makes him scoff.

"Your dad sounds boring." The words are natural, like they were two kids on a playground. So he slides into a wry little chuckle and just... keeps going.

"My dad didn't come from money, and he loved cooking. He'd wake up early, cook breakfast, and then get home before me or my mom and cook dinner." Admittedly, Garrot grew up with both parents. They could work with each other, even as Garrot's dad threw himself into his anti-Wizard work.

"It'd be... weird not to try and do that for my kids." He doesn't quite go so far though. He'll shove responsibility on his mom or his boyfriend or takeout whenever he isn't feeling it. "Plus, they're kinda picky."

"He is!" Luka laughs. Garrot's assertion was absolutely spot on. "So boring. He didn't speak to me for a whole week when I came home with my pierced ears as a kid. He's always been stuck in the dark ages when it comes to things like that. Kind of ironic for the head of a magitek manufacturing corporation, right?"

"Your dad sounds like he was way more fun. You're lucky." Luka smiles, hoping he's not somehow overstepping. "Your kids are lucky, too."

Garrot sputters a bit at the mention of not speaking to Luka for a week. The Princess can't see it, but Garrot is offended. His kids can ignore him as hard as they can (good luck) but he would never do the same to them.

But then Luka brings it back to his father. His kids. And he can't stay mad.

"He was... a great man. If I could just be half the man, the father he is..." Garrot sighs, trying not to get into too sappy a territory as he thinks about how lucky his kids are, with their dead parents and adoptions and trauma. So he redirects.

"My father might not have minded if he'd seen me with piercings and tattoos, but my mother?" He laughs, and suddenly he sounds like a rebellious teenager. "She lost her damn mind."

He is entirely neglecting to mention that his mother thought he was dead between her husband's funeral and when he showed up fresh from a monastery like five years later. But details.

Luka laughs along with Garrot, unable to resist joining in with his infectious laughter.

"Oh, you have tattoos?" It's not something he remembers ever having learned about Garrot. "My parents would have slaughtered me if I ever came home with tattoos."

Luka can only wait a moment before he launches into interrogation mode, curious to know all he can about Garrot's look.

"How many do you have? And where are they? Oh, and do you still have piercings?"

"What? You-" The questions are surprising, at least until Garrot remembers two things. One: The Monkey Knight has not taken his shirt off in front of the Princess. Two: When in public, he often wears more conservative clothes. Three: Luka is blind. "Oh. Right."

So he laughs all deep and hearty, mostly at how much he'd been engaged in the conversation so much that he'd forgotten who he had and hadn't stripped for.

"The piercings have been gone for decades. Not worth the upkeep." He sounds a bit sad as he says it, but he ditched them when he got to the monastery and just... tried to maintain appearances better. Plus, they're not the best thing to have around in the hospital or a lab.

"And the ink? Well..." He chuckles again, and this time he starts flexing, making a slightly audible noise as he strains the fabrics he's wearing. "It depends on what you consider as a single tattoo. And I've lost count." Does one dragon on either arm count as one tattoo since it's a set, or two? Are bloody tally marks down his spine one, or many more?

"But they're all over. And you can probably feel them... if I let you get my clothes off." Yep, he's gonna tease poor Luka with the possibility of a striptease and gropefest. So much easier than thinking about sad or serious stuff.

"Awwww..." Luka frowns facetiously about Garrot's current lack of piercings. "I don't find the upkeep too taxing, but admittedly, our lifestyles are pretty different."

He laughs, astonished, learning that he has so many tattoos that he claims to have lost count. Body modifications were so far removed from the concepts of fatherhood and the medical field in Luka's mind that the mental image of those distant worlds colliding was absurd enough to make him giggle.

"If you 'let' me, huh?" Luka raises an amused eyebrow. "Well, I don't know how good touch is for discerning tattoos but... I'd give it a try anyway."

"Yeah, imagine a primary schooler climbing you like a jungle gym." He wanted to address that first, since the funny image would help the mood. But Garrot decides to press onward into this, stomping his foot down into the space right in front of Luka. The Princess is going to learn not to be so dismissive of his suggestions!

"Get down here." The words are firm, and based on where Garrot's voice is coming from, is he... taking a knee? And is that... the sound of fabric being moved? Yes on both counts, Garrot has begun pulling up a pant leg and then he just slaps his own exposed calf to bring attention to it.

"Purebred humans are squishy. I'm not, so they gotta try a little harder to ink me." And if Luka does decide to grab at Garrot's leg, he will be able to feel the lines of a rather edgy wolf. "Go ahead."

The thought of being climbed by a young child makes Luka wince. It's amusing to picture Garrot in such a scenario, but himself? He's not sure he could handle that on a regular basis.

Luka blinks in surprise when Garrot suddenly stops and apparently presents some part of his body for touching. He follows suggestions and reaches a hand forward, not clear where exactly he's about to touch the man, but when his hand makes contact with Garrot's skin he is surprised to feel the noticeable edge of the art.

"Oh!" Luka blinks, again, in mild surprise. He imagines a tattoo artists really digging hard with the needle and his mouth twists, slightly put off at the thought. "That feels like it must have hurt though, no?"

Garrot's muscles tense slightly as Luka actually goes to touch his tattoo. If the Princess were to trip or slip on a rock or something, he'd want to be able to spring into action. But at the question, he just... shrugs and offers a very noncommittal grunt.

"Yeah." A beat. "I mean, probably?" Garrot follows that vagueness up with a wry little chuckle. "I don't even remember. It was... more than twenty-five years ago..." There's a bit of wistful sighing at days gone by, at youth misspent, but poor Garrot doesn't let himself feel like an old man quite yet.

"I was..." He trails for a bit, a dash of uncharacteristic hesitation in his voice for all of a moment until he pushes through it, brash and cocky. "Probably drunk. Or high. Or both?" And then he chokes out a vicious little cackle. Oh, he was such a scamp in his younger days. "Yeah, probably both."

Doctor dad did drugs????

Luka's initially caught up on the idea that Garrot had gotten these tattoos more than twenty-five years ago. Twenty five years ago Luka was practically still a baby. He hadn't even lost his vision yet. And so his next question clumsily stumbles out of his mouth.

"How old are you?" He blinks, facing Garrot but still keeping one hand on the man's calf.

Processing that he was also apparently a something of a partier back then would come next. It was about as unexpected as discovering his body mods - Luka would have guessed he'd have been a studious med student or something more predictable like that.

"You've lived a very... adventurous life, haven't you?"

Garrot absolutely starts guffawing when he's asked his age. It's still quite bizarre that Luka couldn't just... do the research and figure that out. He has people he could pay to do that!

"I'm forty..." He trails off for a moment, apparently unsure. "...sev...en...?" He stops, blinks a few times, and lets out a quizzical little grunt. Hold on, he's doing math. "Yeah. Old enough to start goin' gray at least." He does sound a little sad about that one.

"But I guess I have had quite the life. It helps that when I want to, I can just kind of... run away from it all." The Monkey Knight can't help but chuckle and sigh as he says that, absolutely earnest. Not only is he affluent and connected and pretty much his own boss, but Garrot's lifelong tendency of avoiding his problems means he's gone on quite a few intensive vacations in his time...

He had hired people to do research for him, kind of. It was more of a briefing on the Knights that didn't delve too deeply beyond the basics, and somehow ages didn't factor into it.

Forty-seven tracks, Luka thinks. Old enough to be an accomplished career-man and a father but young enough to carry the energetic spirit that Garrot embodied.

"Run away from it all, hm?" Luka says as he rises to his feet again. "Where do you go when you're running from your own life?"

As Luka rises to his feet, Garrot pulls down his pant leg and does the same. And then he asks the obvious but still intrusive question.

And Garrot yawns. Not out of boredom or exhaustion, but... to try and distract. There's a very fine line between sharing personal details and getting too personal, even with the Princess.

"Got a family cabin up in the northern reaches of Koskenkorva." He shrugs gently, because while it's surprising to some people, he's been going there since he was young. "And when I'm looking for somewhere warmer, I'm always welcome at a couple Tellan islands."

It sounds like he has some places in mind.

"Oh... that sounds... nice. Cold." Luka wasn't much for snow and ice, which he imagined the north of Koskenkorva must have in spades. "But a Tellan island retreat is much more my style."

Luka stretches his arms above his head and yawns too, a contagious reaction in response to Garrot.

"Maybe you'll be sick of islands for awhile when we're all done here. I'll bet you'll be packing for your cabin soon enough."

"Maybe. Those islands basically have family, though." He pauses for a beat, contemplating dropping a detail or two. But the elaboration, thinking about family and people who treat him just the same, it kinda hurts. "A lot happier than this hellhole, at least." Garrot catches himself before he complains anymore, however, and with a little chuckle he... blazes onward.

"I think you're right. I'll just pack my whole family the moment I get back." Garrot could absolutely go for collapsing into a snowdrift right now. Or throwing literally any of his loved ones into one. Whichever.

Luka avoids bringing up Sxicq's insistence on leaving and making their home planet uninhabitable, instead allowing Garrot to have this fantasy of returning to a familiar place after the dust settled. But the thought of leaving their home has rattled Luka since he first considered it, and its always at the back of his mind.

"That sounds fun." Luka smiles. "I think I'll have a big dinner with mine when I get home. Traditional Faridian cuisine. It's the best."

He too allows himself to dip his toes into fantasizing about returning home. It was a comforting thought, as much of a pipe dream it may be. Even if the world stayed intact, nothing would be the same as it was before.

"I'd bet they're all worried sick about me." He laughs.

While the notion of Luka's family being worried made the Princess laugh, it sort of made Garrot's stomach turn. His family was worried sick about him, and he was worried literally sick about his father all those years ago. So he blushes a bit, sighing gently before, well-

"Are you... not updating them?" The words are stern, but... fiercely concerned. "You should call them soon. Let them know you're okay." Garrot's been there, and it's not something he'll let the Princess of all people skip out on.

"I'm updating them! I promise, I promise." Luka insists. "Just... not as much as my mother would prefer. She's always been overprotective, but this whole situation is, you know, life threatening so... she's gone into overdrive, right?"

Luka says those words without nearly as much gravity as they demanded. He's aware of the danger of being a chosen Knight or the Princess, but doesn't seem to apply the risks to himself as much as one in his position should.

"If she had her way, she'd make me video call her three times a day."

Garrot sighs, long and deep and brimming with fatherly disappointment. What's worse, Luka will undeniably feel, in the core of his being, the equally disappointed glower that's crossed the bugbear's face. This is utterly unacceptable.

"That's once per meal. She can get used to the sound of you chewing." He's deadpan about the remark, enough that he might even sound serious. "Call her twice a day. Once in the morning, and after each monster." The fierce concern is still prevalent, but it's overridden by what is absolutely an order.

"And you're going to text her. Right now." And all of a sudden, he's back to being threatening. "Because if you die, the world is more interested in reacting than letting her grieve." Someone sounds like he's speaking from experience...

Luka completely detects the Stern Fatherly Disapproval that is absolutely radiating off of Garrot. He shrinks into himself uncharacteristically, because Luka knows that he's right.

"Hm, twice a day. I could manage that." He admits quietly. It isn't until Garrot mentions grieving that Luka realizes just how close to home they must have been hitting. But Garrot was absolutely correct - of course he would be, it was his lived experience - and Luka can only surrender to his demands.

He takes his phone and snaps a picture of himself before tapping away at a text to his mother:

'Love you, mama. We're doing okay. I'll see you in a week.'

He sends it off when he's finished and near immediately his phone is buzzing with dozens of texts. If Garrot can keep up with his screen reader he might catch what's being said, but Luka shares regardless.

"Ah, she's not too happy about the face."

There's a near-immediate chuckle from Garrot as Luka's mom floods his phone with messages. He doesn't even try to eavesdrop on the screen reader, he's got a pretty good idea already.

"You know, I could talk to her if you want. Parent-to-parent, doctor-to-parent. Get you some breathing room." There's another chuckle, because he fluently speaks frantic, worried parent. And of course, swooping to the Princess's rescue doesn't hurt.

"If you want a world-class doctor to vouch for you, that is." What an absolute smugbear.

Luka exhales a quiet laugh. The thought of a doctor talking about him to his mother makes him feel like a child again, and all the times he'd sat quietly while his mother fretted and some coldly voiced doctor did their best to reassure her.

"Are you sure you're ready for that conversation?" Luka laughs again. "You might be stuck talking her down for the rest of this trip up the mountain."

He's still texting with her as he walks, trying to quell the incoming flood of messages.

"I wouldn't want to do that to you."

Garrot, being a bit nosy, can't help but try to sneak a peek at Luka's phone. But then he realizes he's trying to snoop on a conversation with someone and their mother. Have fun dealing with that moment of unexplained looming, Luka.

"Sounds like someone needs to learn better boundaries." Pot, kettle. Fucking pot, fucking kettle. "It'd be mean, but if I tell her she could distract you and get you killed because you're not keeping an eye out for monsters..."

And of course, it wouldn't be too necessary, given that Garrot ran into Six this morning and was in zero danger. But it could give the Princess some breathing room.

"Mm, I don't know..." Luka purses his lips. "What if something actually did happen to me? I wouldn't want her to think it was her fault, you know?"

The idea of his mother losing her only son was enough, but her thinking it might be her fault too made Luka's heart sink.

"She'll get over the broken face eventually. Hopefully calling her after the monster battles will keep her at bay."

"She'll blame herself anyway." The words are sudden and invasive, nearly blurted out were it not for the poise with which he said them. "I know I did. So..." He trails off, having made things incredibly real once again. Oops. How can he fix this?

"So don't die." The words are matter-of-fact, almost an order. "I'll take care of everything else. I mean," he chuckles, clearly a bit of a different intent creeping in. "Scars are a lot sexier than coffins."

The man very obviously has opinions on scars. Is he trying to steer away from depressing stuff by getting lewd again? Maybe.

The Weather

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