Day 8: Morning

Morning: 6:00am - 12:00noon

[ IRL Timeframe: February 10th, 2020 - February ~~19th~~ 26th, 2020 ]

After the events of Day 7 and the chaos that it brought, the heroes have learned a number of things that most of them still aren't sure they're ready to know. What will they do with their knowledge? How will they share it with each other? How will--

At about 6AM, everyone receives a text from Garrot. Anyone who saw him the evening before may be surprised to see him forming complete sentences and, uh, threatening everyone? Is he okay? Anyone brave enough to want to text him back?

What a great start to the day, an early text. But that's... surprisingly the only shake-up? It's eerily calm.

The Protector had been knocked out to sea by the Wizard, spawning a number of serious worried conversations on social media. Is he okay? Was he dead? Is it time to panic? There were plenty of memes, too. Like the wizard in the foreground with sunglasses, a golf club, and a wide smile with the protector in the background and the words "time to go golfing" memed accross the image. At least some people were still in a joking mood.

The Wizard, too, had a collection of social media posts about her current circumstances. The overall opinion was that she was way scarier than before, was she a terminator? Wizardinator?

To make matters worse, Sxicq was missing. The hashtag #childlookout was trending with almost hourly updates of the island. Sxicq didn't make themselves difficult to find, which meant that spotting them even from distant photos or drone snaps was pretty straightforward. But there was no sign of their characteristic glow or disruptions anywhere. No bigfoot-esque sightings in the back of other photos. No panic that they were eating entire restaurants' stocks of food.

Nothing.

Talk about a calm before the storm, especially since Eight had alluded to several of the heroes that there was still going to be a fight today.

It turns out to be another opportunity for the heroes to collect themselves, gather information, and get themselves on stable ground. It's warmer today, and there are passing waves of light rain all over the island. Little drizzle showers that stick around just long enough to make you seek shelter, but not so long that you wonder when it'll let up. The sun dares to peek through every now and then, occasionally at the same time as the drizzling rain.

Eighth Morning Event: None.

The Weather
Light rain.
68°F / 20°C
A gentle breeze.

Prompts:

6:00am The Text, All Cities: "Mandatory medical exams today at 8AM at Far Haven General. The front desk will see you're escorted. You will be frisked, multiple times. Hospital staff says no weapons, no chaos. We can't piss them off.

That means nobody gets their animal companions, since some of you are idiots. They'll be left at the front door before going off on a guided tour. If you or yours don't cooperate, it will be assumed that you want to harm the Princess and you will die.

See you then!"

At about 6AM, everyone receives that text from Garrot. Anyone who saw him the evening before may be surprised to see him forming complete sentences and, uh, threatening everyone? Is he okay? Anyone brave enough to want to text him back?

8:08am Eight, All Cities: Anyone who decides they're going to text Eight to make a plan will find that he doesn't answer any of his texts until 8:08am. He replies to everyone all at once, at exactly 8:08 and 8 seconds. Whether your hero sent one text at 6am, or eight texts between 6 and 8am, all the answers come at exactly the same time. If anyone asks to go to the garden, they'll be deposited on the landing pad in the garden... at 8:08am. Predictable.

9:00am The Wizard, The Garden: The Wizard can be found in the vegetable section of the garden for any heroes who go looking for her. She's tending to the plants, picking weeds, watering the beds, and preparing new sprouts to grow in the empty spaces.

?:00am Anywhere, All Cities: Surely your character has to be getting up to something this morning, somewhere. This is a general catchall post for any threads among heroes that occurs. Whatever your character is getting up to, however they're preparing, or however they're coping. This is the place for it. Eight said there was going to be a fight this afternoon, after all, so there's something on the horizon at least!

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: February 2020

[ IRL Timeframe: February 1st - February 29th, 2020 ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Gyre watches his face for a moment, trying to read him. That failure to react has him absolutely worried, but he's not about to interrogate him here in front of everyone. He moves inside, glancing back at the hand over his shoulder. There's this brief moment of hesitation here. He can feel something in the air, a weird, tense energy that's making his skin prickle. Why are they afraid?

"It's fine if it's you," he finally says, letting this wary trust leak into his voice. He trusts Garrot. He cares about him. Much as everything about him screams that he should get out of here right now, he's giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Said benefit takes critical damage when the man barks at everyone in the room and they all look pointedly away. He is allergic to authority and that's what Garrot is projecting in waves, more so than usual. It makes his whole body tense under that hand. He keeps walking with him, but it's more delicate, more skittish. He'll bolt at the first sign this big dude is going to lash out at him.

While that hand was gentle on first touch, there's a moment of shaky wavering the moment Gyre tenses. For all the force in his approach, this isn't how he wanted to do this.

But he had to do everything he could to hide this from the people, from the animals, from anyone who could say a word to the Protector. He just hopes Gyre could understand, later. In the meantime, that hand gently pushes on Gyre's shoulder, guiding them both around a corner and out of sight of basically everyone.

"You shouldn't have had to go through that. I know you, I should've had a better plan for you, I-" The words come tumbling out, not anxious enough to be frantic, but fast, until he catches himself. Garrot needs to stay in complete control of this situation and himself.

"I'm sorry." As he says those sobering words so readily, he gives his friend's shoulder a light squeeze. "We can talk when we're upstairs, okay?" Garrot gestures to a door down the hall. Elevators can break down. Trap people. Nobody's taking those today.

Oh my god, Garrot. He's genuinely about to jump out of his skin as they round the corner. He notices they're alone, and the Protector trying to stab him in the back in one of these lonely hallways leaps into his mind unbidden. He doesn't think Garrot would do that, but there's clearly something wrong and--

He does jump when the other starts talking suddenly, and so quickly. His attention darts upwards, a moment of anxiety that resolves almost immediately into this gentle worry. The moment he apologizes, Gyre reaches up and cups hands around his cheeks, his fingers wandering back to twine hair loosely around them.

He looks over his face again, the tip of his tongue stuck just slightly out of his mouth as he thinks about what to do next. If they were wild elves, he'd just confront him about what was wrong right here, right now. But there's clearly something making him act like this, something more then whatever distressed him so badly yesterday.

"Okay," he says after a beat, turning to move ahead of him towards the door Garrot pointed out. He obviously wants to get there, pausing and glancing over his shoulder to make sure the other is staying close. "What floor are we going to?"

"Fourth floor, east wing." If Gyre were reading the signs, he would realize that they were on the first floor, in the west wing. Of course, Garrot knows that they're actually going to the third floor, west wing. Two flights of stairs. In case anyone was listening. "Let's go."

He gives Gyre another gentle pat on the shoulder and then increases his pace, opening the door to the stairs like it was nothing and stomp-stomp-stomping up them. Garrot's body is still working, even if his mood isn't. But soon they reach the door, clearly labelled "3F, West" and Garrot opens it, holding it so his friend can go through.

It's dark. Creepily so. The power's off beyond the threshold. There's a bit more of a draft, due to the gaping holes in one room, and Gyre may recognize some features. This is where Sxicq was.

"We're here, come on." Garrot knows how weird this looks and how he just blatantly lied. But he can't keep doing this, he just needs to get everyone together and it'll all be fine. So his eyes get that sad, hurt look again and his ears even start to droop like when he was normal. By his standards. "It's safe. Please?"

He climbs the stairs directly behind him, sticking close until Garrot peels off to open the wrong? door?? He continues along the landing for a moment, beginning to climb the next flight of stairs when he realizes that the other has uh stopped? Why?

"But you..." he starts, his mouth closing when Garrot gets that sad look in his eyes. How can a man that big look like a puppy when he needs to? He sighs roughly through his nose, looking decidedly frustrated for a beat. But he wants to talk to him, about what happened yesterday if nothing else, and so he goes back to him. He pauses briefly in the door, looking him over.

"I trust you," is all he says in that moment, turning down into this fucked up hallway. This debris is the shit that knocked his head off a couple days ago, and he definitely looks wary as he waits to see where Garrot is intending for them to meet. This here is certainly isolated enough, in his opinion, but he'll go wherever else the man wants to take him right now. Lead the way, buddy.

Maybe it's the prickly, controlling, threatening side of him coming to the forefront, but Garrot is legitimately surprised to see Gyre comply. No arguing, no bullshit. Wild.

"Phone in the box, please." Garrot's voice is tired, almost like he's talking to a child. On a table is a box with a simple doodle of a cell phone taped to it. The doctor pushes a few buttons on one phone, and then drops both in the box.

While he's standing there, facing Gyre, the elf may notice that a sudden line of Garrots extends from behind him and into a room, causing quite a stir as their hands thump against furniture and walls. They're... checking things? There's a lot of muttered utterances of "Nope" from the clones in the room until, like a rubber band contracting, they suddenly start disappearing.

"There. I'll be another second." He gestures with his head towards the room he just examined, and suddenly another line of clones stretches into an adjacent room, and the process repeats.

What! Is! Happening!!!! He walks into the room and automatically puts his phone into the box. He has no attachment to the thing. He literally only checks it to communicate with the other knights who are, presumably, going to be here with him soon.

Not yet though, apparently. He watches Garrot stringing his clones into the room, banging on the walls, announcing that whatever they were checking is apparently not there? He looks more and more confused as he follows into the room in question, his eyes beginning to squint as if he might be able to pick out more detail in this process and understand it that way.

He can't. This is baffling. "What are you doing?" he finally asks, arching an eyebrow at him.

The central Garrot just watches as Gyre puts his phone in the box. That's good.

But in the time it takes Gyre to vaguely process what he kind of witnesses, another chorus of "Nope" echoes from the adjacent room. The clones disappear.

"You're lucky you're nice to look at." The words are sighed out as Garrot shakes his head, and suddenly a chain of Garrots reaches into a third room, allowing him to check the important room as well as the adjacent ones. On the upside, it was a moment of playful flirting, a glimmer of the normal Garrot deep down.

"Advances in technology allow the creation of cameras and microphones to secretly record video and audio. They're called bugs. They could be in our phones, too." The words come out easily, casually, without an ounce of paranoia or anxiety. Like a teacher. "Someone could've been up here since I left to get you, so I'm making sure we have privacy. Does that make sense?"

Then there's a final chorus of "Nope" and suddenly, there's just one Garrot. And he didn't move, didn't snap a finger. The clones just happened.

He listens to this explanation, watching the way the clones are checking around him. He knows what a bug is. He was a soldier. But the idea of them being planted in these rooms never occurred to him. He begins to understand at least, even if he's still decidedly confused by the time Garrot finishes what he's doing.

"Who do you think is going to spy on us like that?" he asks after a moment, brushing past the flirting for now. He'll flirt once he's found out what made Garrot react quite so terribly yesterday. That's probably got something to do with why he's being paranoid now. He might've explained the bugs calmly, but the idea of searching for them four rooms deep is clearly some kind of prolonged panic attack.

"The Protector uses magic. The Wizard can block him. She's been hiding the princess for a couple days now." So they should be at their safest once Luka shows up.

"Huh. Okay." That's an oddly specific thing for Gyre to know. Probably heard it from Luka. That means they're still talking. Good.

"I'm worried about well-intentioned idiots." He sighs, his shoulders starting to sag a bit. It's hard for Garrot to maintain composure right now, but he doesn't have other options. "People who see the guy who punched out the Princess returning to the scene of the crime and almost punching someone else." He leans back on his heels a bit, staring at the ceiling.

"Power's out, no security cameras. Doors are locked, only one way in." And his gaze rolls back to Gyre. "Medical exams are supposed to be private."

This will very obviously not be a medical exam. There is no such equipment in sight. Anywhere.

He glances around the room at the mention of medical exams. That is what that text had said, wasn't it? It's a good cover, he supposes, especially after Seven's rampage.

"Okay," he finally says, accepting the strange circumstances and moving to the wall. He pushes himself up onto what's left of a counter, sitting on it and swinging his legs lightly.

"You're getting very good with that power," he notes curiously after a beat.

"Yeah..." Garrot acknowledges the remark, in a halfhearted, almost fake kind of way. He doesn't feel comfortable telling Gyre that his power's gotten easier to manage because of the Protector. There's even a flash of anger on his face for a moment as the thought bubbles up. He wishes he could just turn that upgrade off altogether, just cleanse himself of that murderous bastard's influence. But he pushes it down, pushes it away. He can't express his emotions until everyone's here. He only has the resolve to declare his father's killer once, tops. So he'll dance away from that.

"I don't really have a choice. It's the only way I can stay alive." A beat passes, and he sighs, clearly struggling with some untold number of oppressed emotions. "If we can survive an explosion, then I need to be able to do whatever it takes. Whenever." Looks like someone's still putting too much pressure on himself.

Gyre watches him struggling with his emotions and it makes his chest hurt. He wants to help, but he's not sure how. And he doesn't know how much time they have.

"We're here to help. Don't forget that," he offers after a beat. "I have a shield. That can keep you alive just as well as your clones can. Maybe better since it doesn't make either of us dizzy."

He's smiling slightly as he speaks, hoping the little tease will help the other ease up. Anything to make him look a little less tense, a little less like he's one wrong word away from exploding.

Garrot's body reflexively lets a deep, throaty chuckle echo as the tease. In fact, he looks a little surprised at his own display of emotion, and he quickly crosses his arms, burying it down again. He wants to be his old self, his real self again, but... there's too much on the line. He can't have himself making mistakes or showing weakness. To anyone.

"Yep, you're here. All of you." He sighs, still utterly gutted by the bodies whose fates he fully grasped the day before. But he can't think about that either. So down it goes. Because there's something else he'll have to confront.

"I'm probably gonna start barking orders at people. You, too." And suddenly, he can't even look at Gyre anymore, his gaze locked firmly on the floor. Garrot doesn't like being this person, this severe, but he doesn't see any other way. So he sighs, one long and shuddering breath. "We've got four or five days left, and everyone's dead if we don't organize and- and get smarter." He sighs again, forcing his voice to stop escalating in pitch, forcing himself to bury everything that isn't control.

"Please just..." Garrot's voice is hurt, scared, because if Gyre won't work with him, won't trust him, then he'll lash out, and people will argue, they'll divide, they'll get killed. And he can't let that happen. "...wait until it's all over to hate me, okay?"

Gyre is frowning at him before he's even looked away, looking over him as he crosses his arms and closes himself off. The dude is clearly fucked up about something that happened yesterday, and clearly hasn't thought about it in any meaningful way. When he starts talking about barking orders as if that will solve a single thing, he can feel himself bristling. It's only the fact he trusts the guy that keeps him settled, even if uh he's not just going to roll over like Garrot seems to want him to.

"No," he says, just flat and dry and utterly unyielding. He pauses for a long breath there, the frown on his face deepening into a glare.

"Do you think barking orders is going to help? Do you think those people down there," he nods down to the scared workers in the lobby below, "would say a damn word to you if they thought you were wrong? You want us to be like that?" He pauses again, dropping down onto his feet and huffing softly.

"There are seven of us left. We need to be organized, and we need to work together. A boss will just get in the way. Besides," he waves a dismissive hand at Garrot's entire posture over there. "I've met people who want to bark orders. Those kinds of people don't ask their subordinates not to be mad at them. They just do it. What's actually wrong, Garrot? Cause I don't believe this at all."

"No, I-" Garrot pleads out those words, clearly torn about whether he wants his allies to be afraid of him. He doesn't even know how he wants to treat people, who he wants to be anymore. But Gyre keeps going, he says there's seven of them left.

"I-" A tremor reverberates through the doctor's entire body. His knees shake, and he finds himself stumbling towards Gyre as his eyes go wide with shock, and... he's hugging Gyre, burying his face into that warm and welcoming jacket and... is that a sniffle?

"If I'm calling the shots, then if something goes wrong, it's on me. If anyone else dies, it's my fault." There's another sigh, another sniffle. "If you all need to hate anyone, to blame anyone, it can be me." That's a hell of a way to indirectly and poorly state that he's being fucked up by learning that his father's killer was someone else and he doesn't know who to blame or what to do anymore. But, well, Garrot isn't willing to let himself say those words yet.

Gyre is shocked by this. He knew Garrot was trying to hold himself back, but the way he just crumbles all at once catches him off guard. He doesn't respond to the hug for several moment, his eyes wide in surprise.

"You--" he starts, but then Garrot is talking, and he wraps his arms as tightly around him as he can. He can't get his hands to meet on his broad back, so he settles for grabbing the back of his jacket instead and clinging to it. He's squeezing this dumb man as tight as he possibly can right now.

"No one is asking you to do that, Garrot. No one-- I don't want you to do that. You'll kill yourself doing that," he murmurs against his ear, his hands balling into fists and pressing into his back. If he could squeeze him any harder he would.

"Seven backs can carry that weight better then any one of us could. We can't do this if we're not all working together. If anything goes wrong, we all have to recover from it. If anyone dies, it's not anyone's fault but the one who did it. You know?"

"But-" Garrot tries to force out a protest, a counterpoint, a reason for Gyre to just shut up and roll over and let him be the martyr for every single thing that'll go wrong. If everyone can just shut up and blame him, even if everything goes wrong, even if all their families have to mourn or the world has to burn, it's still better than hating some magical asshole who will never allow closure. Garrot's body buckles a bit more as the reality of Gyre's squeezing hits his consciousness. The way his center of gravity starts to sag, it's as if his entire body is about to give out.

"But what if you're wrong?" The words are stern, pleading as he buries his face about as deep as physically possible into Gyre's coat. "What if we can't all carry this?" His words quicken, and the freakout is absolutely obvious. "What if asking them to carry that breaks them or kills them or divides us or makes someone do something unforgivable?!"

He won't say it out loud right now, but he's clearly scared someone will side with his father's murderer. He'll talk big and scary, but he doesn't want to be in that position at all.

This man is so god damn stubborn. He makes a low sound, something a little bit frustrated, but mostly deeply sympathetic. It's a soft purr of a sound as he starts running his hand nonclawed hand up and down his back, scratching at it. He needs Garrot to take a deep breath and start talking about the actual problem. This thing where he wants to martyr himself feels like a hundred layers of protection he's built up around whatever he's really feeling.

"What if you can't carry it? What if you break? Then it all falls down around us," he says, trying to be stern but gentle at the same time. He has to find a way to cut through all this. "If there are seven of us, and one falls, or two, there are still people there to hold it up. We don't need a pillar, Garrot, we need a plateau. We need everyone."

He has been saying this from the beginning, from the day they climbed up the mountain. Much as Garrot tried to turn it on him and make him out to be someone who wouldn't work with people, this feels so much worse to him. Better to try to work as a group and lose one or two, then demand everyone follow your lead from step one, as if Garrot knows any better what's going on then the rest of them.

As Garrot is a man of ego, the idea of him failing as the leader never really dawned on him. It gets a tiny little gasp, and it actually catches him off-guard as his friend keeps going, preaching of togetherness and unity and cooperation and all that. Stuff that, were he of a different, less triggered and burnt out mind, he'd have been spouting days ago. It was where his outlook had been... until he'd learned he was siding with his father's killer for decades.

"I..." That's all so much to articulate, especially when your face is pressed into a new and very nice coat and you're trying not to just start sobbing. So he doesn't even try, because he knows the waterworks won't stop if he does. "If anyone..." There's a composure in his voice, as if somewhere deep down, Gyre helped him find his conviction without wielding it like a weapon. So he starts to... let go a bit.

"If anyone's scared or lost or stuck, I'll... I'll decide for them if they want." If they want. Sounds like someone had to just point out how stupid he was being. "As long as they're with us and not..." The implication there being that he won't give any support or sympathy to anyone who throws their lot in with the Protector.

But he can't say it. Not out loud. Not yet.

He loosens his grip as Garrot starts to stand himself up, but his face twists slightly as his conclusion. He shakes his head automatically.

"No. Decide for yourself. They will decide for themselves. If you want them on our side, then we will have to convince them. Comfort them until they're more certain we can do this," he says calmly. The idea that someone might decide anything for another full ass adult just because they're scared is completely insane to him. He's not going to let it happen, but he does reach up to run his knuckles gently over Garrot's cheek. He's not sure how to make this man just let go, but he knows he has to try. He wants them all to work together, and that means Garrot too.

"They won't work for this as hard if they haven't decided themself. You can't force them, no matter how much you might want to."

"I know." Again, these were all things Garrot would be thinking and saying himself, if he were in a better place. So Gyre's reminder is... important to ground him closer to the person he's tried so hard to become, instead of who he used to be. As he is, all he can really focus on is figuring out how to make the Protector pay without dooming the rest of the world in the process. The only emotion that's consistent for him right now is anger. And it makes this more compassionate work difficult. So he sighs.

"I'd rather force them than fight them." The words are heavy, tired. That's what it's coming down to for him- he can't control the others, but he sure wishes he could if it'd keep them from a deathmatch. If Garrot had been told on the first day that he'd be planning to leverage all his social capital and trust on breaking the world order, he'd never believe it.

"But hey..." There's an exhausted little chuckle, more forced out than healthily expressed. "Maybe it'll all work out fine, and we'll all be on the same page."

"It would be easy to force them. This can't be easy," he says very calmly and with the certainty of a person who's entire society is based around compromising and working with people. It's hard to work with people, but it's possible. The first step is this meeting.

"But yes, I hope so. We won't know until we try." He nods a couple times, leaning away and releasing Garrot out of the hug. He seems more stable now, so if he doesn't need to be hugged any more, he'll let him go. Only if he wants though.

"Will you be alright?" he asks after a beat, trying to be as pointed as possible so hopefully this anger doesn't come out while they're talking. That seems like it'll just make things harder.

Garrot lets himself express the smallest of whines as Gyre starts to let go. He doesn't want the hug to end because he is, in actuality, so very broken inside. But he has to hold as much of that at bay for as long as possible this morning. He can break later.

"I won't be alright. Not yet. I..." He stops himself, taking a deep breath that catches in his throat as he chokes down his raw, vulnerable emotions. Maybe when he's bared his soul and named his father's killer, Gyre and all the others might understand why he's falling apart. Or maybe he's just been holding off his own monsters for decades, and now they've won and he'll never be alright again. He won't know until he gets through this meeting.

"Ask me again after this, okay?"

The moment Garrot squeaks like that, he shoves forward again, practically stuffing himself against the larger man's chest. He wraps his arms around him again, squeezing him tight like he never left in the first place. He's not going to a release a man who's so desperate for contact that he squeaks.

"Just remember to breathe, you know? Breathe slowly," he murmurs this against his ear as he presses himself close. He doesn't really understand why Garrot is holding himself back, but if that's the choice he's making, then Gyre can only try to support him in it.

"Let's talk after this?"

Day 8: Morning

Morning: 6:00am - 12:00noon

The Weather

Prompts:

Procedure:

Activity Check: February 2020

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