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 ]

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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?"

It's almost as if Garrot can't consciously focus on anything other than stubbornly pushing forward. And Gyre is, of course, a shorter and very attractive elf. Telling him to breathe. Holding him close. It's a very intimately familiar sensation, and almost immediately, almost reflexively...

He starts to breathe. A deep breath in, a deep breath out. It's a trained motion, a tool he hasn't been using as much as he should. That much is obvious. But his arms wrap tighter around his friend, and there's another whine... this one sounding more... helpless.

"Yeah... after." And then the squeezing continues.

Gyre breathes with him, somehow managing to time himself perfectly with Garrot's larger frame. Breathe in. Exhale. He counts to ten with each breath in and out, so incredibly even so quickly that it's obvious he does this all the time.

He's silent for a long time, just holding this man and breathing. He holds him tight, snugging his face against his shoulder. It's only once Garrot seems actually calmed that he finally thinks to say anything.

"It doesn't have to be after, you know?" he murmurs softly. It's the last little push he'll give him. If this doesn't work, then he really will wait until after. But he just doesn't great about going into this kind of meeting with the other feeling so obviously unstable.

Garrot didn't realize how much he needed the silence, the calm. It isn't the sort of thing he allows himself to bask in lately. He's been pushing so hard since he got out of the hospital, and now, when he can finally breathe if only because he's waiting...

He needs to do this more often. But eventually, Gyre breaks the silence, and part of the bugbear wants to get mad. But the breathing is helping so much, and...

"It does." He sighs, bringing a hand to gently wrap around the back of Gyre's head, as if to keep them together. "I... Saying it once will be bad enough." Because then he has to acknowledge it, share it with others, declare it as true. He'd rather this all be a bad dream.

"I'm sorry."

Gyre draws another slow breath, sighing against Garrot's shoulder. It's not the answer he wanted, but he doesn't know how else to approach this. The man is such a wreck, but if he won't share, then he won't share.

"People care about you, Garrot. Take care of yourself, okay?" he murmurs, shifting himself closer. He'll hold this hug for as long as Garrot wants, honestly. He just wants this poor guy to let go of all this tension he's holding on to.

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Day 8: Morning

Morning: 6:00am - 12:00noon

The Weather

Prompts:

Procedure:

Activity Check: February 2020

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