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

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.

She munches another marshmallow, looking at him over the rim of her mug.

"Time changed." She answers, confirming what Garrot wasn't expecting. "And circumstances. How do you face the unwinnable when you want to win?"

If the Wizard asks a question, Garrot can never grasp if it's rhetorical. But this question, it seems like something he can answer.

"You take control and change the rules." The words come naturally, because Garrot is of course the sort to march to the beat of his own drum and drag everyone else along with him. And it kind of makes his stomach drop a bit.

"But... wasn't he in control before Sxicq?" Her words gave the impression he was at least pretty similar all those years ago.

She takes another sip from her mug as he makes his assumption about what she'd said. When she lowers the mug, her characteristic slight-smirk is back on her face.

"Was anyone ever really in control?" She counters, wondering what he'll do with that little bit of food for thought.

"I never was."

Garrot just grumbles. It's frustrating, the idea that nobody was in control, and the Protector either thought he was or tried to force it. Really, talking about the Protector and who he vaguely was or was not, it... didn't seem to be getting him anywhere.

So he tries to shift his perspective.

"He said my father tried to convince the others to side with you." On the other hand, the Protector seemed to treat Gyre like he was a disease, so... "How did he know that? Was he lying? Or did he actually-"

Garrot stops dead in the middle of that thought. He can't actually voice the notion that his father could want to destroy the planet. For any reason.

Unfortunately that's the nature of the universe. People could pretend to be in charge, but against the backdrop of hundreds of thousands of stars? There was only so much control anyone could ever have in the endless expanse of space.

She watches Garrot work through his thoughts, but he leaves it as an utterly vague cliffhanger and she's left to clarify what he means here at the end by asking:

"Is it so hard to believe your father wanted something better for this world?" She pauses there, letting Garrot process it while she takes another sip of her cocoa. Another marshmallow down. Her mug only has nine left in it-- when did she add more?

"I-" He stammers out the word, going silent again. It's not hard to believe, because the more Garrot learned about the state of the world, the more he wanted to do something, anything to fix it. This year's Monkey Knight hardly wants to destroy the world, but...

"How much did he know?" The question is direct, but without the force of someone expecting a meaningful answer. His father knew enough to want to convince the others, if the Protector is to be believed. But given how the jackass talked about Gyre, it's unlikely. "What did you tell him?"

The Protector wouldn't have told him a damn thing.

"He knew what you know." She answers, casually taking another sip of her cocoa.

"And I told him anything he asked about." She follows-up, vague as usual.

"But where did he learn everything I know?" The words are combative, almost accusatory. "How much did he know when he started asking you?" Both of these, of course, are dancing around one far more direct question.

"How much did the Protector tell him?"

Garrot's asking the impossible here, an exact timeline of someone's personal knowledge from decades in the past? There was some level of specificity that couldn't ever be achieved here.

"He sought out the information he needed from the only sources who had it." She answers, before getting to the more important point:

"How much did he figure out by himself?"

Garrot, asking the impossible? What a shocking notion. The Wizard's answers are cagey and vague, like always. But her question makes him gasp, his eyes going wide.

"I- I don't know! I was a kid, he didn't tell me anything, I..." Maybe he shouldn't have just trusted his father, maybe he should've demanded the opportunity to help however he could. His mother may know something, but that's not exactly the sort of conversation you have over the phone. And in that moment of petty hindsight, a gut-twisting moment of doubt hits him. His pupils shrink and, well...

"If the Protector was secretive like always, Sxicq was in the mountain, the companions were censored, the monsters didn't talk, and they didn't go back in time, what other sources were there?!" He's more frantic than anything; she's making it sound like forty years of historical data have been wholly wrong, or that information flowed more freely in the past. And that doesn't make sense to him!!!! So Garrot's sure he's missing some simple detail that lets his worldview sit undisturbed, because that's, well, easier than wrapping his head around the alternative.

Poor guy has to refactor his perception of the planet like every day, it's a lot.

Another marshmallow bites the dust as Garrot struggles to make sense of what he knows. He can try to parse and understand it all he wants, but he'll still be left with a lot of unanswered questions.

"Just me." She answers, tilting her mug towards him. What a terrible turn of events, huh! She's sure that hearing his dad got a bunch of info from her was exactly what he wanted to hear in this moment. But there was also...

"And Eleven."

All things considered, Garrot learning that his father got info from the Wizard wouldn't have been troubling in and of itself. Many Knights have spoken to the Wizard over the years! It's just the part where the Protector seems to think breathing the same air as the Wizard erodes one's capacity for free will or doing good. So when she mentions Eleven...

"Oh." That's all he can say as his brain temporarily breaks. It wasn't just the Wizard, it was the second-strongest monster of them all. It's commonly accepted by the public that the monsters don't talk. But Ten was easily talking, Six was hanging out in public. Maybe the monsters' intelligence was just another thing the Protector hid.

"Where's Eleven?" The Wizard is very, very cagey, so if he can talk to whoever got his father, a Princess's Knight, up to speed, he's bound to make a lot more progress. Not just on getting answers about this shitty yearly game, but about what actually made the Protector kill his father. "We need to talk."

The strange case of the monster's sentience was something that would probably get dug into later. There were plenty of people who had learned about it, and plenty more who hadn't. But that was a story for another day. For this day, though, the Wizard only had one answer.

"Away." She answers first, sipping and obtaining another marshmallow reward.

"Not ready to talk yet, either." She adds, leaving it at that because it was the truth.

Of course Eleven isn't around with answers or anything helpful, of course he has to wait while trying not to just take the Wizard's words at face value. Of course this can't be easy and straightforward.

"When?" The monsters, as part of Sxicq, are powerful and can do weird things. Just look at Ten. So if Eleven doesn't want to be found, they won't.

Garrot's thoughts are spot on. Eleven hadn't been seen yet because they didn't want to be. That was just the fact of the matter. Ten was around, visible, and involved because he wanted to be.

And that's just not who Eleven was.

"Probably in three days." She answers, vaguely, implying that Eleven will at least still show up on day eleven.

"I haven't heard any desire to arrive earlier."

The Weather

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