[EVENT] A NEW WORLD ORDER

[ironwood]

Characters: ALL!
Date: December 8, 2015 (with some starters for the following weeks)
Location: Keeliai, the Midnight Hotel, others
Situation: The Foreigners have awakened.
Warnings/Rating: Add warnings as needed.

They've been in the Dreaming for so long that when they wake up their bodies feel more like automatons, alien and ill-fitting. They haven’t atrophied, thanks to Milyn, but they’re stiff and a little bedsore, and the solidity of the Life Plane is jarring. Here, the surroundings don’t move on a whim. Here the world is more stable, almost harsh and unyielding in spite of the homey surrounds.

It’s been a year, says the clock on the mantle and on the second floor. Says Milyn, too, when she’s able to stop hugging them long enough to speak.

Nothing much has changed in the Midnight Hotel. There are dishes out of place, objects belonging to either Milyn or Eva in evidence, the diorama exactly where it had been but now brightly-painted thanks to Milyn's boredom. Milyn and Eva took a room each, in the time the Foreigners were sleeping, though neither used them much.

Eva’s upstairs, Milyn will tell anyone who asks. In her room.

Eva hasn't left that room in three days. She hasn't spoken in three days, either, or walked, or moved, or breathed. Her effects are neatly arranged around her bed, and the sheet has been pulled up. There is heavy incense in the room and Milyn has managed to preserve the body enough to remove the risk of too much mess (and other things). In a way, that makes it worse: as though Eva is sleeping. It’s difficult to tell whether Milyn is in denial or whether spending three days with no one to talk to other than sleeping Foreigners and a corpse has had its influence.

---

LINKS
Dreaming log | Foreigner's Awakening (Hotel) | Milyn’s Relief | Exploring Keeliai | Old & New Faces (Canon Updates/New Arrivals) | OOC: State of the Shell

Comments

AWAKENING (MIDNIGHT HOTEL)

[ironwood]

The Foreigners awaken one by one, sprawled and curled and buried in pillows and blankets and sheets -- more, the observant will notice, than they’d fallen asleep upon. It’s a slow process, first groggy and then painful due to stiff limbs and the intense feeling of being in the wrong body, or perhaps the wrong world. The common-room in which they’d slept is a melee of rumpled bedclothes, like the world’s longest and largest slumber-party.

One of the first things they’ll notice as they recover is that each Foreigner is wearing a small piece of unfamiliar jewelry. It will be either a necklace, ring, or bracelet and is embedded with a small crystal shard that seems similar to the shards of the Vilii Stone that was shattered to help defeat Malicant. However, the light coming from them is gentle and warm, and though their settings are crafted of metal, they're not cold to the touch.

"Eva undid the spell on the lanterns," Milyn will explain. "As part of her attempts to bring you home again. It didn't work, but these have replaced them. You need to keep them on your person, to stay connected to this world."

They’ll be hungry. It’s been a year since they’ve eaten, after all. There won’t be much in the way of food left in the kitchen -- not enough for a full meal for all of them -- but enough to slake their hunger until the Hotel can be returned to the city’s surface. The showers will need a little more in the way of a timetable before everyone’s had their use of them, but at least the plumbing is in working condition.

((OOC: This section is for the initial awakening and the movements within the Midnight Hotel as the Foreigners regain their bearings.))

Re: AWAKENING (MIDNIGHT HOTEL)

[gathersnomoss]

Zelgadis is used to the feeling of being in the wrong body -- between his own attempts to cure himself and Malicant's meddling, he has to examine a hand to see what species he is.

"Someone should start some coffee or something," he said. It was slowly dawning on him that he's hungry and cranky and feels like he overslept and that his limbs cramped up.

[royalguard_style]

Dante woke up to find things too strange to be true. He could feel Yin's connection to him return, but only barely. He thought about calling out to her, only to have his attention torn.

Wait, how long has it been? Why is his hair long again? And his beard, for that matter? And what the hell happened to the hotel?

Anyone else would have bolted upright after being this overwhelmed. Anyone else would want to make up for lost time. Anyone else would have wanted to figure out just what happened. But not this someone. This someone has been running around far more then he wanted to for months, and now he's expected to get right back up and watch this mess unfold? Screw that.

So yeah, he's going back to sleep. He can figure this out in the morning. Or next year. What's the difference?

[gistful]

When Anton awoke it was with the sensation of having been through a recent battle, if not pummeled by the enemy then worked over-hard. But the ceiling above him was familiar, and Anton stretched in place and then rolled to get to his feet and walk out the stiffness before properly taking stock.

They were all still swaddled like children, sleeping or waking and confused. Anton rubbed his bearded jaw and glanced at the clock, and was unsurprised to see a great length of time had passed--though the length of it was a touch alarming, certainly. Then there was the pendant around his neck, which was new but too familiar in crystal, and shared among the Foreigners too much to be anything other than important.

He didn't see Skulduggery there. So that was not a dream, at least. Ah well; with this many people around Anton would have to see to the kitchen as soon as he could, and he would need the help. It had been a long time since Anton had stepped through slumped bodies in such a way; it had happened frequently with the Dead Men in one tent, especially after the raid on the magical opium dens. Still he did so with ease until he reached Dante, and knelt by the man to shake his shoulder, alert for an instinctive reaction in the event Dante awoke battling.

[royalguard_style]

Dante woke not with combativeness, but with a groggy delirium that one might expect out of a teenager, not a man who had been asleep for the year and turned forty during that time. He had already been awakened once before, and didn't much like the idea of actually getting up.

But on the other hand, Anton was standing over him, and given what happened to him in the dreaming? He was uncomfortably close. Might as well stop pretending he never woke up.

"So what do you know? We're not dead." He grumbled as he sat up.

Re: AWAKENING (MIDNIGHT HOTEL)

[solo_patria]

Enjolras had spoken to Sokka in the Dreaming, so he knew that he was all right, but he'd had no way, while he was out, however long that he was out, to contact Taraja. As he's waking, before his eyes even fully open, he's reaching for the hatchling with his mind, seeking, apologetic that he'd been away, even though he suspects at first that it was not for a very long time.

That is, until the ache in his muscles starts to settle in, around the time that he notes her presence, and that he has to really stretch to find it, more than he has had to stretch during any of his time with her on the island. The immediacy of her presence is gone, along with...Oh dear God his legs hurt just as much as they did every night when he was in his teens. The only way they do that now, and only sometimes are the times that he sleeps like the dead. Of course, given the powerful headache flooding over him, perhaps the drug is responsible for causing some sort of a hangover effect. At least the pain is dull enough that Enjolras is able to ease himself upright, and when he glances around the room, he finds that he is blinking hard.

Among his fellow Dreamers, he notes some growth of the hair of a few of them, for one thing, and speaking of matters of that sort, his own hair feels heavier than usual, having both long ago escaped its braid, and having grown out quite a bit past his shoulders. Surely none of that could have happened in the day or two that he suspects he was asleep. Groaning as he tries to untangle his legs from a nest of blankets that he's become trapped in, rather like one of Combeferre's moths and their coocoons, he does take a deep breath, and finds himself smiling as he remembers that last moment with Malicant, and the feeling that he'd won, that all of them had done so, rushes over him all at once. The fear of being left at someone's mercy has now started to fade away, and he can be content with that, confused as he is in the moment.

And that is when he notices something rather heavy on a cord around his neck. Blinking, he reaches for the pendant, turning it over in his hand, and studying the stone inside which seems, well, QUITE familiar, although it takes Milyn's explanation for him to slowly nod, though honestly, he is not catching most of this, his mind racing, given everything else floating around here.

Really, the best thing he can do is pull himself up to his feet rather slowly, groaning as he does so, and almost falling on his face, given he hasn't braced himself for it very much. As he stumbles, he groans loudly, though a moment later, he has to laugh at himself. Apparently, some things never change. As to the world around him though? He'll admit to curiosity about that first hand.

OTA

[redlightgreenlight]

The first thing Valdis felt upon awakening was confusion. The world no longer shifted. It was stationary and solid, the edges were sharper, more defined, more colorful, and yet harsh and painful to look at. Gone were the mists and sense of weightlessness. Her limbs were heavy, seemingly from lack of use, her throat dry and her senses dulled.

Something stirred within her essence and it took her a moment to recognize that it was the souls she held, they too were waking from their stasis. A few moments later the heaviness in her limbs faded, her senses sharpened and her head began to clear. She sat up, perhaps a little too quickly, because the world began to spin, but it quickly settled as her sense of balance returned.

Milyn's voice cut through her confusion and Valdis became aware of the necklace around her neck. She supposed that it was suiting to have her soul bound to a wolf pendant.

She looked around, keeping her movements slow as her regenerative powers worked to restore her body to order. She didn't yet have the strength to stand. It was similar to coming back from death, but without the pain and she knew that the recovery would be faster. The first thing she noticed was the smell and she immediately tried to shut off all sense to her nose, which of course didn't work. She covered her nose, opting to breathe through her mouth in order to dull the offensive scent. As she continued her analysis, she knew that they had been asleep far longer than intended, because all the men had beards.

Normally the passage of time wouldn't have bothered her, but a lot could have changed in a year and she had slept through it all.

Re: OTA

[gathersnomoss]

Not quite every man; Zelgadis apparently didn't grow a beard naturally, and it was hard to tell if his hair had grown, though it did look like what might happen to a very abused steel wool pad.

"Everyone needs a shower," he noted, his voice raspy from lack of use. "We should just burn the bedding."

[redlightgreenlight]

She turned her head to regard Zelgadis, slowly removing her hand from her nose. She glanced at his hair and reached up to test her own, managing to work her fingers through it without too much difficulty. It was longer than she liked, but she pulled it around, continuing to work out tangles and knots carefully with her fingers.

"Agreed," she replied, her voice equally raspy, "Women and children first," a weak attempt at a joke, "And we shouldn't burn the bedding inside."

Upon further examination,it seemed that many of the foreigners had opted to stay in Keeliai, but as to what they had woken to remained to be seen.

OTA

[onethirdthesoul]

Hungry and achy, Ryou sat up as his head spun to take in the scene before him. "That was a weird dream...," he mumbled, rubbing his eyes as he let out a tired yawn. Those slight movements caused a jingling down by his chest, just clear enough to have him look down to see a familiar Ring. Bakura's Ring.

"Hm...?" It took a moment to really sink in what it was, as Ryou slowly panned over the room to see if Bakura was around. "That's weird..." Looking again, he had a new bracelet to match.

Weird, but he was too groggy and hungry to really think into it. His first order of business was raiding what he could of the kitchen and then, with a complete disregard for manners that was likely surprising for some, just sitting on the floor as he chomped down on scraps...and drank right out of the carton of juice.

Imagine a beard for now.

[royalguard_style]

If this had been any other cirucmstances, Dante would have already beat Ryou to the fridge, but as one of the few currently employed people among the foreigners. And thus he was tasked with the insurmountable and unenviable task of helping to clean up after that year-long slumber party. Ah well, it gives him a good excuse to skip a shave and haircut. Who has time for stuff like that with this whole mess going on.

He steps into the kitchen; apparently the good disenfectant is under the sink, and he needs to add it to a bucket of hot water or something like that. Then he gets the mop. Which is in the broom closet. Why are all of these things in different places?

"You know that's a year out of date, right kid?" He's supposed to be on security detail, but he figures the new information he just gave Ryou will be enough of a deterrent.

imagines beard!!

[onethirdthesoul]

"Hm?" Ryou looked up at Dante, almost laughing when he saw the beard on his face; he was really one to talk though, what with his long hair practically down to his butt by now.

"Are you sure? It tastes fine," he pulled back the juice to take a look at the date, his face turning green the moment he saw it. "Ahh, that's...not good..." He already drank half of it!

[akito]

It's hard to wake up.

Not because everything feels wrong, but because he doesn't want to be awake. Akito would rather stay Dreaming, exploring strange new places with his memory of Agito until he could wake up at home to the sound of Ikki's loud snoring.

The wrongness isn't helping much either. His skin feels too tight, like it's been stretched across a skeleton too big for it, and his joints ache as though he just finished an S-Class Parts War. His clothes don't feel quite right, fabric falling differently around his shoulders and hips. Fingernails too long. Hair too heavy; strands that normally reach just past his collarbone falling instead to just above his bottom ribs.

"What if-" Akito cuts off what he was going to say, covering his mouth in surprise with a hand. The movement is painful, but he's used to chronic pain and so it's easy to ignore. What's harder to ignore is that his voice is different. Maybe not to everyone else, but to someone as attuned to sound as Akito is, even a small change in his voice is noticeable.

He should get up. Eat, because he's hungry yet has no appetite. Shower, because he feels dirty.

All he wants to do though is stay curled up around his knees, wishing he could be someplace else again.


((ooc: PUBERTY!! YAY!!! 8D)-/ he managed to grow 1/2" and it's gonna mess him up. also his voice is slightly deeper now - so less like a prepubescent girl and more like a... normal teenage girl on the boyish end of the scale, or something. V(o_o)V))

hellooooo!

[oceanblue]

The moment he speaks, Katara is kneeling at his side, her hand gentle and light at his shoulder. "Akito?" She's offered to help wake up the others, and help ease the pain if she can, and she's all too willing to be there for her suite mate as he awakens.

[akito]

"Katara?"

And there's that stranger's voice again. Akito isn't sure if he likes it, the thought bringing a grimace to his face. He wonders if he and Agito even look the same anymore.

"My Bending's gone."

mad backthreading shhh. what are timelines.

[ruinsprofessor]

When she notices Akito, Raine rapidly comes to the conclusion that of all the growth that must have happened in the past year or so, those in his age group will have had it the worst. She's not fully decided on whether or not to approach him at first -- they're not exactly close -- but it does look like he could use a hand acclimating to the present moment. In the end it's not long before Raine makes her way over, crouches beside Akito. "Are you all right?" she asks, calm, a little quiet against the growing hubbub of the room.

wibbly wobbly timey wimey!

[akito]

Somehow everything is so much... louder than he remembers; too bright. More solid. Which makes sense, given where his mind has been for the past year. He isn't surprised when Raine speaks, if only because he had been expecting it since she came near him. Still, it takes him a few moments to re-acclimatize to his body enough to try using his voice again.

"My voice is different."

OTA

[i_speak_softly]

When Don groans awake, the first thing he notices is that he doesn't so much have a migraine as what feels like a memory of a migraine.

The second thing he notices is that he's wearing a pendant he doesn't recognize.

The third thing he notices is that the bodies he's jumbled up with in this room-sized blanket-nest belong to people he doesn't quite recognize.

*

Once that's sorted out, he'll attempt to hit the showers. He might have to wait in line, but when his turn comes he can be in and out in under three minutes. He doesn't even need a towel or a change of clothes.

Solomon | closed to Raine

[peacefullywreathed]

Waking up so closely on the heels of that vivid dream of being trapped in a cellar had Solomon's heart beating wildly at first, when he woke and found it hard to move. His eyes snapped open and he regarded the ceiling, controlling his breathing, until he recognised the architecture. For a few moments he kept counting off his breaths, if only to ease the vague sense of a missing limb.

Not that anything was missing; but it had been centuries since he'd been unable to use magic as an extra sense and it made him feel unnervingly vulnerable, and so Solomon pushed himself seated to look around, withholding a groan at the stiffness in his limbs.

His wrists felt heavier than anything else--because, of course, Solomon still wore the magic-binding bracelets. And with that thought led to the next, the dreams that had come after the memory, and the jolt of adrenaline had him glancing around for Raine. She wasn't too far, but she hadn't woken yet and her position hid any evidence of breathing, and without thinking Solomon rolled over and reached out. At first he meant to shake her; then he hesitated and put his fingers to her neck instead to find a pulse without disturbing her.

[ruinsprofessor]

Her pulse beat steady there, strong if slow, a reaffirmation that she yet lived and Solomon hadn't in fact done anything irreversible. Raine hadn't been too far from waking herself, in truth, slowed only by the fact that she could feel familiar mana signatures all around her, both those she knew well and those she was only beginning to. If her friends were present and there was no sound of fighting then they were safe, and she could afford to be slow about waking, doze comfortably for a time.

Solomon's touch, however, drew her firmly to the present moment. His touch, and his unmistakeable intent. The time for sleeping was past. Before anything else Raine covered his hand with hers. Then she turned, and sat up, wincing only slightly at the stiffness. It could be worse.

She took stock, quickly. Foreigners waking all around, apparently unharmed. The clock, and the staleness of the air, and... Solomon had a beard. Oh dear. They'd been out a while longer than anticipated, apparently. Raine smiled faintly at the sight of him, though it faded fast in the recollection of what, exactly, she'd last been doing in the Dreaming, and the way she'd last seen him. He couldn't still be in that altered state of mind, or he wouldn't have worried for her life, but all the same she was concerned. "Are you well?" she asked, quiet.

[peacefullywreathed]

Even with the beat under his fingers Solomon hadn't quite expected her to respond so quickly, or to catch his hand. He almost started away, and then almost turned his hand to take hers properly; then he dropped it instead, taking it back. His expression was intent as he examined her, almost impassive, but there was relief in his eyes nevertheless. A relief which warred with a well of other emotions he couldn't quite identify; it was the clearest of the lot.

Solomon wasn't sure how to define his own feelings much of the time, and that was unusual enough; certainly he enjoyed and appreciated Raine's company, for more reasons than one, but the situation in which he found himself with her was nevertheless wholly alien, and he still wasn't quite sure how to react to it. Especially given the number of times he'd encroached on far more than just her liberty. Twice, now, he'd killed her, and he recollected being eerily sanguine about it even after the fact.

"I remember why I put the bracelets on," he said, equally quiet, and while ordinarily he'd make light of it--right now, he couldn't. He didn't usually accede to apologies, either, but this occasion seemed an proper exception. Raine had done nothing but good by him, even shown him patience far more than anyone had bothered--even if he'd still been in the Temple's service, Solomon liked to think he'd have been at the very least discomforted by the situation.

The trouble was, Solomon wasn't much good at apologies, and he floundered inwardly, and a part of him hoped vainly--Perhaps she doesn't remember the details?

Not likely.

The Legend of Sokka: Sokka's awakening | OTA

[theideaguy]

[OOC: Katara has the luxury of getting to wake Sokka up directly. For everyone else, you get the awake and perhaps slightly cranky version of Sokka. Katara, just ignore the post and pose your own thing. :D]

Sokka isn't too happy about being woken up. Everything feels wrong. Being in the Dreaming for... however long it was felt like a warm blanket that had been covering his entire person, and waking up is like having that torn away from you and then doused in cold water. Sokka may very well have experienced this very thing at some point in his past, knowing his sister. But that said, he's going to look completely groggy and generally put out. Then again, this isn't much of a change for Sokka, at least for the put out part.

"So did someone forget to wake us up when the Arctic rooster crowed or something?" He yawns widely, not even bothering to cover his mouth. "Because this is for the birds. Is it naptime yet?"

Re: The Legend of Sokka: Sokka's awakening | OTA

[solo_patria]

Enjolras has to laugh at the announcement and the question there as he gingerly makes his way to Sokka, his legs protesting a little with the movement as he does so.

"Ah something like that, I suppose." He offers, grinning before he places a hand on the young man's shoulder. "I am a bit put out we seem to have missed some interesting things." And then, because he might as well know if he was crazy or not...

"We did speak in the Dreaming, yes? My mind did not just fabricate it to fill in the gaps?" Because he rather hoped not.

[oceanblue]

Her own awakening, she was loathe to admit, had been just as difficult as Sokka's would appear to be once she had found him. She wasn't sure what hurt worse: the physical pain of waking up after so much time had passed, or the realization that while it had been a 'dream', what had happened was, in fact, reality. Her friends were gone, and only a few familiar faces remained.

Despite the rush of growing pains and aching joints as she had eventually pushed herself to her feet, Katara went to her brother's side the moment she found him, falling somewhat less-than-gracefully to her knees beside him and calling his name softly before she reached out to prod his side--gently, of course. "Sokka?" She looks rough... but it's definitely Katara.

OTA

[michaeljangelo]

It feels as though someone's accidentally hit Mike with a bus.
Then backed over him...and did it again, this time intentionally.

He becomes aware of the world around him in stages, none of them pleasant, but at least the more he wakes up the more the feeling of bus crash fades.
Then, of course, his eyes catch light for the first time in what feels like weeks...and he hisses.

"raph?" his voice rasps out. "Leo?"
A pause.
No...that's not what he was dreaming about. He was dreaming about searching for...
"DONNIE!"

Mike sits up quickly, a bit too quickly. His head swims and just as quickly as he's up he's down again.

"Oooog. Okay. Bad idea. New plan. Sit for a spell."