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

"Frustrated" isn't even accurate. It hasn't been since he went to sleep on the first night. "Enraged" is usually better. Because. Well.

"Then when the fuck did my dad talk to them?!" He's yelling again, but there's a method here. "Was it before or after they fought?!" Maybe Eleven survived that year's fight?

But Garrot is coming to terms with having a very small timeframe with which to meet Eleven. He does not like it.

"On the third night." She answers, the small smirk staying put on her face even in the face of Garrot's rage. He can shout and yell all he wants to, he can try to manipulate answers all he wants to, but he'll only get the truth.

"When he sought them out himself."

"What?!" Garrot is naturally incredulous at this series of revelations. He just cannot get a moment to breathe, can he??

"How-" His brain short-circuits a bit for a moment. Poor guy, when was the last time he did something soothing? "How did he know to go looking for them?" The answer was probably the hat-clad woman in front of him. But he doesn't stop there.

"Where did he find them? Where are they this year?" And thus, he may have a new quest marker.

Garrot was the one asking for answers and he was getting them. If anyone was to blame, it was him. He could be angry at whoever or whatever he wanted, but the truth of the matter was that he was digging and being astonished by what he dug up.

"He chose to, because he wanted to, he could've found them anywhere, and they could be anywhere." She answers his deluge of questions with the vague truth, an unfortunate set of facts that would leave him still waiting solidly at square one.

Because that's where everyone was when it came to Eleven.

The truth of this conversation is that Garrot expected it to suck, like everything has sucked since the seventh day. But the deeper he digs, the more he regrets it. Not because he doesn't want the information, but because mentally, he is in no shape to be doing all these mental gymnastics. He's traumatized, recovering from drugging himself, and sleep deprived.

And it's about time he realizes that.

"Stop it!" He's pleading as his hands clutch at his head as if he had a headache. Given how angry he keeps getting and how tense he is, it's entirely possible he does have one, and he's repressed the shit out of it.

"Why can't you just-" He stops for a moment, bending over a bit and just flopping onto his butt. "Give me a straight answer?" There's even a little whine as he starts to curl inwards a bit.

"It's like you're trying to torture me." Garrot was trying to be nicer to her, so here's a moment of breaking point vulnerability.

Honestly, Garrot should take a nap. She takes another sip of her mug as she watches him. Unfortunately her next answer isn't going to help much.

"I'm telling you the truth, sometimes that's not easy to hear. But it's what I have." She explains like it answers everything.

It definitely doesn't answer everything.

Garrot needs to take like three entire days worth of naps, but that's an incredibly unsafe life choice. He's done some like 12- or 16- or more-hour long surgeries before, so it's totally the same thing, right? Yeah. Totally.

"Easy?" There's a weak, exasperated sigh from poor Garrot. "He killed my father, and I wanna know why. The truth. Every detail." And then he just groans and rests his forehead on his knees. He knows the Wizard can't help with that, or else she would've given him everything a long time ago.

"And Eleven was involved, so..."

She takes a long sip this time, watching him. There's only one thing she can reiterate here and it's the thing he doesn't want to hear.

"You already know why he killed him." She casually drops again, wondering which dots Garrot will link together with that statement.

"But I need to know more." Have another groan, Wizard. Garrot's hands move to pull his hair back and out of his face, whether it was there or not.

"If he found Eleven on the third day, right after he probably met the Protector, how did he survive to the twelfth day when he tries to kill anyone who questions him?" A short little sigh. "Did he spare Eleven? How many monsters did he, or any of them kill that year?"

Another groan, and he buries his head into his knees again, as if doing so could knock him out and he'd wake up when it's all over.

"Sometimes they die, sometimes they don't, you would have to ask them about each year. They know better than anyone." She answers, redirecting him to the ones who have all the answers about themselves.

After all, only the ones that have or haven't died would know about that, but...

"But they might not want to talk about it." She adds. That's a pretty morbid conversation topic, Garrot. 'Hey tell me how many times you died.' Great ice-breaker, just the best.

Take one (1) loud, exasperated sigh.

"You're telling me you live here with them, but you know more about how the Knights die." If they share this space, if there's a house, shouldn't she have a better grasp? In fact, it's casting doubt over her claims of the Protector killing all those Knights he asked about.

But at least now he's looking at her again, a scrutinizing gaze and a little pout abundantly obvious.

Garrot sure is taking a shovel and clearing the dirt off of some obscurities here, because she shakes her head when he assumes she lives here.

"I don't live in this place." She answers, her soft smirk still in place as she looks him over before taking another sip from her mug.

That is not the sort of brain bomb she should drop on him if she wants him to look in her general direction. But he did ask. So now his head is back in his knees and a tiny little groan echoes out.

"Is that because you don't sleep? Or because you're dead?" And then there's a little scoff, because poor Garrot is already bracing himself for something he doesn't want to hear or comprehend. But he's too far in, now, so...

If Garrot wanted to stop being blown up, he should probably have stopped digging up landmines.

"It's one of those." She answers, sipping again.

"The other one is a little more complicated." She adds, leaving it vague which she means. But if he thinks it through, he'll know which is which.

But if he stops digging up landmines, he may never start again. Part of being the sort to ~~bully~~ coerce people into submission is having knowledge. And, y'know, supporting the team. So they don't have to ask these questions instead. He'll take it all on his shoulders.

"So where do you live?" As much as he wants to confirm why she doesn't live here, well... it doesn't matter, in the long run. And if she lives in the same place she takes her Knights to? Maybe they can work with that somehow.

"You've been there already." She answers, tipping her mug towards him. He'd successfully uncovered a landmine that didn't explode, at least, but it would probably be significant for others.

"Several nights, now. But isn't in the best of shape right now."

So the dream world was real? That was troubling medically, was he even getting sleep for the first, like, week?!

"Okay, that makes sense." Garrot takes it all in stride though, because he's not falling apart from sleep deprivation, and the state that it was in on the final night sure made it seem real.

"There's no way your home is on the island." Sure, the garden apparently was, but the dreamscape was... far too different. "So where is it?"

And of course if she has a summer home somewhere, so could he...

"It's here, on the island." She answers in the simplest, most matter-of-fact way possible.

"Where else would it be?" She follows-up, she hasn't ever set foot off of this island, so where else could she be living?

"I dunno," he sounds defiant at her simple, expectation-defying response, "a fucking moon?" Honestly, space would make more sense than hiding a fantastical, dreamlike farm somewhere on an island. And yet...

"So where is it? Were you just teleporting us there each night, or were we asleep?" Garrot exhales sharply through his nostrils, trying to hold back his frustrations as he asks his next question. "Is the Protector the only person who managed to find it during the day?" Because clearly he found it recently, but if someone could teleport this year, then...

"I wasn't doing anything to you, but you were asleep." She clarifies his double question, before escalating it further with another reveal:

"He never found it, I brought him there while we fought." She adds, taking another sip of her drink as she watches Garrot's thoughts unfolding while written all over his face.

"He can't get there himself."

Garrot had seen the damage in her little pocket of the island, to the beach, to both her and the Protectors' bodies. The sane and just assumption to make would be that she did it to protect people, to keep the fight from hurting anyone else. Or maybe she'd have a home field advantage. But it begs a more important question or two...

"Is his dream world the same way?" He pauses for a beat, knowing he needs to clarify. "Can we get in without him knowing? Find him? Stop him from killing anyone else?" While Garrot sounds doubtful, he knows he needs to ask. If they could somehow neutralize the Protector without killing him and ending the world? Well... sign him up.

Garrot's having some good revelations here as he gets to the bottom of some of it, and he's asking good questions. And then he asks about the Protector's space and...

"Anyone can go there, but he hasn't been there in days. I don't think he'll go back." She answers, theorizing out loud before moving on to his clear concern.

"It will take a lot to stop him, and it's never happened before."

"How do we get there? You used to work together, you should know." There's an obvious dash of scorn and contempt, dialed up to about twelve because trust be damned, he doesn't particularly care much for either of them. "There might be information, some sort of weakness or leverage."

"We have to stop him. It's not like we have a choice, with Sxicq involved." Of course, he didn't hold any of this against Sxicq. Garrot would love to ask them all sorts of questions, but... well, they can't right now.

"Throw yourself into the pit in the mountain." She explains simply in response to his annoyed inquiry.

"And we do have to stop him, or else the world ends." She reminds him, that fact hasn't changed even once in all this.

"So what do we do when we get to the bottom of the pit?" The question is pushy, because they do have Matilda and Eight who can teleport. Sounds pretty easy.

"Unless you've got a better plan?" He knows she has a plan, at least. It's probably not great because she's been losing for forty years and the Protector is a piece of shit, but...

The Weather

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