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

Garrot raises an eyebrow at the refusal. Either the Protector was overplaying how beaten up he was, or she doesn't actually know how much damage she did. And if she doesn't even know his form anymore, it's definitely possible. But then she starts smirking.

"No, you won't." Garrot gets a little smirk of his own. "Pull your punches. He's not allowed to die until we're sure the planet can live without him."

Despite Garrot's objection, her slight smirk remains as she answers him.

"The planet is dead with or without him." She clarifies, popping a mug of coffee into existence in her hand.

"There's nothing he or I can do to change that."

"Well then run out the clock, dammit." There's a snarl as he barks out that order at her, and he uses it as leverage to shoot a nasty glare at her. Why are all the undead in Garrot's life so difficult?!

But he doesn't let this stop him. Garrot knows Sxicq is the crux of the situation, and the one he'll have to do most of the work on. So he'll pivot back to what she does know.

"Little birdie told me the Protector can take our powers." The glare intensifies, he's taking this very seriously. "How does he do it? Where do they go? Can we get them back?" There's a hint of panic in Garrot's voice all of a sudden. He'll be useless if he doesn't have his powers!

She takes a slow sip from her coffee as he demands the impossible. She lets him work through to his next big questions, asking her for every single answer that he thinks she has.

It's not like he can ask the Protector.

"He can, he will, they're his until he's done with them." She answers simply, giving a slight shrug. That was the nature of it, the nature of his abilities.

"Don't rely on them."

A sigh, long and haggard and just honestly a bit exhausted. Why can't anything be simple?!

"Dammit..." He whines the word out, the weight of all this clearly taking a toll on his body. Now they have to get through another four monsters and dodge the Protector while risking losing their powers at any point. Great. Cool. Easy-peasy.

"So is there anything we can do to stop it?" Another sigh, this time more wounded. "Or can he just snap his fingers from the other side of the island? And does-" The next question catches in his throat a bit, because the implications are plenty terrifying. "Should I assume he can freeze us in place or use weird strings on us?" He is, of course, referencing Joanna's and Seth's powers.

Those would make it a lot harder to keep their distance...

"Why would he be able to do that?" She counters, eyeing Garrot and his assumptions over the rim of her mug.

"He's only ever struck down monsters hasn't he?" She poses it like a question, but the way she looks at Garrot over the mug advertises an underlying meaning.

But what could she be implying?

The Protector was the good guy, right?

Garrot was honestly kind of proud of himself for not punching out the Wizard. But then she asks those questions, and the second one, it... it lights a furious fire within the Monkey Knight, and all of a sudden he's snarling.

"Because they're his powers, why can't he use them?!" Why, that's exactly what Garrot would do if he had the option. But his hands are balled into fists and they're shaking and he's closed the distance between the two of them as he towers, trying to resist the urge to grab the Wizard by the meat of her neck and-

"I-if you're not going to answer my questions, then give me a weapon." There's a tremor in his voice, a barely-contained violence. "And I dare you to call my father a monster again."

The Wizard takes another sip of her coffee as Garrot aggressively approaches her. He's snapped at her before and she has no doubt he'll do it again. But it doesn't phase her, and she lets it roll off of her as she answers.

"They're not his powers." She corrects him, giving her mug a slight swirl before shaking her head.

"And I have no weapons to give. Unless this counts." She adds, tilting her mug just slightly towards Garrot. Want a coffee mug? She leaves his daddy issues that he'd put the spotlight on... off to the side, unaddressed.

Garrot just... stares at her for a moment. They're not his powers. She has no weapons. Part of him wonders if it's because she's dead, but that part is silenced because he just starts grumbling again.

"First you said they were his until he was done with them, and now they aren't his at all." A beat, as he tries not to snatch that mug and shatter it against the robot side of her head. Part of him is still thinking. "So you're saying he can take our powers but can't use them?"

And after another beat, he does snatch up that mug, taking the chance to just give her one heck of a scrutinizing glare.

"You've made weapons for Knights before. Why not now? Too tired?"

She releases the mug as he grabs it, leaving it to him to make his own. She has plenty more she can make. But her yellow, glowing eye stays locked on him the whole time. He wasn't the only one with an intense look in his toolbox.

Not like she's doing anything with hers, though.

"He has his own ways of getting things done, he doesn't need to rely on anyone else's abilities." She confirms that he won't use their abilities. But it's left open whether that's an actual inability to or a personal decision.

"Too damaged." She answers his second question in... a very strange way.

Huh.

It's strange, yes, but Garrot doesn't think much of it. She's been literally murdered and half her body is machine. He didn't really expect her to be too useful anyway. But the rest of the news... it helps. Just a little.

"At least he can't freeze us before he shoots us..." He trails off, still disheartened by the idea that there's so little they can do against him. He doesn't like feeling useless, he has to figure out something...

"Wait. You know magic." The statement is a no-brainer. Sxicq couldn't help, and since the Protector is really dodgy and a murderer, his mortal enemy should be eager to share!

So he tosses the mug behind him, and it's immediately caught by a clone. And suddenly, the primary Garrot is dual-wielding... golden-bronze oven mitts? And he's glaring at her again, with actual concern piercing the grumpiness.

"What can he do about this?" And then he lightly pats the two oven mitts together. If the Protector powered him up, then...

She watches him toss the mug and then pull out some ridiculous oven mitts. She gets the point he's trying to make here and takes a sip out of a coffee that she just freshly manifested in her free hands. It was so much easier to hold a conversation over a drink than not.

"You're going to punch an enemy who has a sword?" She asks, curious if that's his plan.

"He could still cut one of your arms off." She adds, assuming that what he's asking about is 'can he un-power me' in which case her answer was true: He could un-power Garrot by lopping an arm off.

Garrot just groans loudly at the response. It's not... well, it's the sort of thing he'd say if someone asked him that question and he was trying to lighten the mood.

"No, I mean..." He shakes his head, and the oven mitts disappear. He doesn't really need them anymore. "He was trying to control Seven. Since he gave me that power boost, is there any way he can use it to control me?" A beat passes, and he feels the need to clarify. "With magic. Against my will. Like Seven."

"He can't do the same thing to you in the few days we have left." She answers before taking a sip of her coffee. Vague, but also clear? What an answer.

It is, undeniably, an answer. One that Garrot for all his bluster, is trying to be more trusting of the Wizard's intent, can accept. That said...

"Can he do anything on a smaller scale?" He asks a definite question, though his tone is more than a little self-deprecating. "I mean, if we don't count holding the world hostage and refusing to compromise." But then his posture straightens up a bit, he's not looming, or towering and he's... taking a bit of a step back. Giving her... space? Ha ha, what the fuck?

"Was he always like this? Thirteen planets of just... murder with the stick up his ass?" Garrot does not expect anything to faze the Wizard, not even this aggressive pivot.

She sips her coffee again even as he gives her space, her yellow eye not leaving him for even a moment.

"No." She answers the first, fairly certain in the answer, before she gives her mug a swirl.

"Time changes people. He is not who he was when we arrived."

Garrot finds himself rolling his eyes; he didn't expect anything else. He's changed plenty in the years since his father died. Even someone as stubborn and uncompromising as the Protector could be different if you go far back enough. And it makes the transition into casually murdering people all the more exhausting to think about.

"So who was he back then?" He pauses for a beat, letting the question settle before he pushes further. "And who were you?"

"Different." She answers both, sipping her drink.

"Those are broad questions to ask me to answer." She follows, watching him. There's a soft pop as a huge marshmallow appears and then plops into her cup.

Groan. GROAN. Of course she wouldn't cooperate with that! Garrot impacts the base of his palm against his forehead in an effort to undeniably express that frustration. Then he just shakes his head, taking the mug from his clone who then disappears, staring at said mug, and then-

"Tell me who you were when this all started." He starts to playfully smirk at her, of all things. "You can use your little mugs, if that's easier." If he can figure out who they both were, maybe he can use that against them both somehow, force them to step back or work with each other or something.

To be fair, Garrot, 'give me the description I would find in Wikipedia when I search for "The Wizard (Spoilers)"' is a pretty tough question to get anyone to answer even on the best of days. Unless she was trying to sell him a meal plan system by sharing her life's story of success where he could buy-in on that success and if he got seven more of his friends to buy in...

"I was just someone who believed it would all work out like everyone said it would." She answers, lifting her mug and-- being unable to take a sip because the marshmallow is too big. She waits for a moment and, suddenly, it's six smaller marshmallows all packed in instead. She takes a sip now, munching one of the smaller marshmallows. If Garrot's nose is working, he'll realize he smells cocoa now.

"It didn't, of course."

Garrot would not know how to react if the repeatedly-defeated Wizard tried to get him in on a multi-level marketing scheme. Maybe that's where the mugs are from. But a shift from blindly naive to jaded... sure. Makes sense.

"Who's everyone?" He levels a confused look at her. "I thought the two of you came here alone." On the bright side, he's fairly sure the thing that didn't work out is saving this planet... or twelve others.

"Everyone" She repeats, shrugging. He's digging into a dead-end here, but she'll explain herself at least.

"I never encountered anyone who believed in anything but our success."

Garrot is a little on the dim side sometimes, but even he can see what she's getting at. They didn't start trying to save worlds in a vacuum, they had people cheering them on. And by the sounds of it, it was everyone they'd ever met.

Kind of like how everyone cheers on the heroes each year. It's obvious pressure, the sort of thing that'll only get worse after twelve other planets.

"So what was he like before you got here?" There's a beat of pause, during which Garrot just sighs. "The Protector, I mean."

Garrot was, of course, assuming the cheering squad was always there. Were they? Hard to narrow down what she meant without more.

"Focused, determined, ambitious. Everything that he still is." She answers, sipping and munching on another marshmallow.

"He won't be that in four days." She adds, once again referencing her intention to kill him.

He doesn't really flinch at the intent, because she's been broadcasting it for years. But the idea that the Protector hasn't really changed, it... it seems wrong.

"But you just said he was different." There's some irritation in his voice, is she trying to pull a fast one? "What changed?"

Poor Garrot is expecting some single linchpin moment and not a gradual descent into paranoid hatred. Yikes.

The Weather

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