tushanshu_logs | [EVENT] A NEW WORLD ORDER

[EVENT] A NEW WORLD ORDER

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It was exactly five and a half hours after realising he was on Tu Vishan's back once again that Skulduggery wandered into Keeliai. He'd noticed the differences during his trek; noticed the farms, the aqueducts, the frigid attitudes of the scattered kedan. He noticed enough to deduce a large chunk of time had passed, but he didn't know how much. Nor did he care.

To those who would recognise him, he looked the same as before, well-dressed in a tailored suit and all. His bones were perhaps a bit bleached, and he was missing his hat. But apart from that, the only indication anything might have been wrong was Skulduggery's uncharacteristically aimless gait, like he didn't have anywhere he needed to be.

Cain had been in his own sort of wandering mode ever since they had all woken up at the Hotel. He was cleaned up and back to normal; there was no way to judge a passing of time by his appearance. Whether it be a month, a year, ten years or even a hundred, Cain always stayed the same. So did, it seemed, Skulduggery. Even a year unattended by his consciousness did nothing to decay the bones or anything like that... except perhaps for the change of his step, the coloration of his skeleton.

Then again, Cain wasn't going to assume it wasn't the lighting or something. Still, the guy looked pretty damn lost. After years of being highly selective with his memories in order to keep the important things before they could fade away to the rigors of too much time, it was easy to hold onto a dream. Cain remembered creating a mirror image of his brother (and, earlier, killing someone else's facsimile of the same) and making somewhere safe in a war. All of his secrets being laid out like that was a bit daunting, but nothing to start avoiding people over.

He sidled up alongside Skulduggery and tilted his head, a slight smirk on his lips. "You look like someone just stepped on your grave," he said by way of greeting.

Ah, good. A familiar face. With the way the entire face of the world had changed, Skulduggery hadn't known for sure if there would be any left.

He chuckled, and then fell into step beside Cain. "I never actually had a grave. If I had, it would probably be more like someone just danced on my grave, complete with grave-robbing." He sighed. "How have things been on this side of the proverbial track? Any sign of Malicant since the battle?"

Given that nothing happened with Skulduggery's mention of the name, he doubted it.

"Nah, he's gone," Cain said with a large shrug. He watched where they were going, adopting the same sort of aimless walk as Skulduggery. He knew it well enough himself, there was no need to do anything but follow where his feet felt like taking him; he did know, however, that it was easier to do with company of the same mindset. That Skulduggery had apparently not managed to get himself updated yet said more than anything else, really. "Tu Vishan might have gone with him. But hey, on the bright side, now we have mafia."

"Do dirt naps last longer than our regular mortal naps?" he asked. It was lighthearted, but the lack of Skulduggery for the better part of a week after waking and his apparent ignorance was enough to fill the gaps, and Cain was more than capable of insatiable curiosity. "Or is this to do with the grave party?"

Mafia. Of course.

... Hang on a moment. Not of course. Mafia took a while to develop - a while unopposed by any other power. How long had everyone been stuck in the Dreaming? At least a few months, if not more. That didn't bode very well for Keeliai's state of affairs.

On the other hand, Cain's ready explanation meant Skulduggery hadn't been missing for quite as long as Cain was implying. No more than a month. Most likely less.

"I went home," he said simply. "Is Tu Vishan dead?"

"Probably," Cain said with a sigh. That was indeed a worrying prospect, but there didn't seem to be very much to be done about it. At the least, not with all of the turtle hatchlings so far away and most of their allies either dead or as disadvantaged as the rest of the foreigners now. They were going to have to rebuild before they could take any kind of large-scale measures. "That, or he's stuck in the Dreaming like we were. Which, how would we even test that or wake him up if that's what it is? Might as well be dead for now."

Maybe he was just being too optimistic. On the other hand, it didn't sound like there was any way to confirm one or the other and Cain didn't like to make things concrete until he had proof for them. He reached up for a moment to fiddle with his collar, still unused to it after spending millennia avoiding things placed around his neck due to sentimental reasons. "You didn't miss much more than the rest of us did, to be honest. Mostly just the 101 class."

The collar. Cain fiddled with it; it was new. Like the pendant Skulduggery discovered around his neck when he regained consciousness out in the farming communities. He'd put it in his pocket the moment he found it, but very nearly tossed it away before that. He was glad he'd kept it now, since it was apparently important enough for Cain to keep wearing it despite the discomfort. Were they new soul anchors? Certainly more convenient than the lanterns, if a little more annoying.

He made a mental note to take a trip up to Tu Vishan's head at the first available opportunity. Not for a conversation, but to find out if they were drifting - and if so, in what direction. Someone somewhere had to have a map of where the closest landmasses were.

"I missed the formation of a mafia," Skulduggery said. "How much did the rest of you miss?"

"It's been a year, Mr. Pleasant, we all missed that formation," Cain said matter-of-fact. He could tell Skulduggery thought he was further separated from the foreigners' waking and the events that had transpired in that time than he actually was. Probably better to save the guy some grief and give an even more watered down version than Cain had pulled together himself. "And a lot of other things, apparently. Like an invasion attempt. The kedan are acting different, but I'm probably not the person to talk to about that considering how long I was here before the whole shebang went down. Eva died getting us out of the Dreaming."

Although it certainly seemed like a lot to be dumped on someone at once, Cain wasn't all that surprised. So much could happen in a single year that it almost seemed like enough hadn't changed in the face of such a world-altering event such as Malicant's destruction. At the very least, it gave the foreigners to finally band together now as long as someone could use the opportunity properly. Now with Eva gone, apparently their chances of returning home in any sort of a controlled manner was gone with her, but Cain wasn't too fussed about that as long as time remained still where he had come from. "Oh, and we're pretty much all out of living quarters or cashflow but that's probably going to be easiest thing to tackle out of it all."

Skulduggery wasn't too bothered with living quarters and cashflow. He didn't need to sleep or eat. If he needed a place to meditate, he was sure Anton would offer him one - assuming, of course, Anton was still here. Skulduggery was more interested in all the other problems Cain mentioned.

It was little wonder Eva died pulling everyone out of the Dreaming if they'd been stuck for a year, and on top of that, Cain's wording implied less of a time-frame than Skulduggery had been thinking of. How long had he truly been gone for? Weeks? Days? Long enough to be missed, but short enough for the phrase it's been a year to remain valid. He'd spent over a year back in his own world. The time discrepancies no longer surprised him.

The invasion attempt didn't exactly surprise him either.

"Anton and his Hotel are still here, I hope," said Skulduggery. "What about Solomon Wreath?"

Cain tilted his head toward Skulduggery, then shrugged. It seemed the skeleton was taking things in stride, but he wasn't surprised. Skulduggery had a very visible head on his shoulders and whatever he was working out right now would wait until he had come to his conclusions. Cain was patient, and he was in no hurry to be anywhere else.

"Midnight Hotel and Anton Shudder are both where they should be," said Cain. "So is Solomon. Far as I know, most of us are still accounted for. Then again, those aren't the questions I've been asking lately."

That was good to hear, for more potent reasons than simply seeing familiar faces. Would telling Anton about what his world's future held do anything to alleviate Skulduggery's own situation? Or would it only affect Anton's version of events?

"What questions have you been asking?" Skulduggery responded absently, his focus more on his own thoughts than on Cain's answer.

Cain would have no answers to those questions, although he would be curious about what it would mean to spill the future for someone who had yet to experience it. Even if it did change things when they finally returned home, did that mean that Cain himself would change due to the difference or would they end up separated forever by the interference?

"What kedan are still willing to deal with Foreigners," Cain said with a shrug. "Who's all in charge now and who to talk to about getting in contact with them."

All very practical and sensible questions. Skulduggery nodded approvingly as they walked through the city, noting many of the changes for himself. "Did you find any answers to those questions?"

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insertdadjoke - 2014-12-28 15:12 (UTC) - Expand

A week had been more than long enough for Solomon to work out certain practicalities. He knew where the turtle hatchlings had gone, and staunchly ignored the sense of missing something that had overtaken him at the knowledge. Marcelon was still there, somewhere--too far to talk to, just close enough that he could still feel her presence, like an itch. In some ways, that made the loss of his magic worse.

He had taken back the courtyard once in the housing complex; the kedan hadn't spent much time in his apartment, given how unpopular he'd made himself after the murder of the hatchlings. He was a necromancer, a creature of shadows. If anyone could harbour Malicant still, they thought, it would be him, and apparently most of the kedan weren't willing to risk that wrath.

The arch was broken, distributed around the courtyard. Obviously it hadn't been worth keeping for them, or too dangerous to do so--Solomon had laid a few traps before he left, and that was evidence in the scorch-marks, powerful enough that the kedan hadn't even bothered to take the rubble away to use it elsewhere. They didn't know he couldn't use magic, and it wasn't worth staying there when they knew the building was his. Better to take what he could and leave--where, exactly, he didn't quite know, but if nowhere else then the Hotel would do.

Either way the arch needed to be moved, and it wasn't exactly built for being easily transported. Solomon would have to amend that, once he got it somewhere else and had retrieved his books from the laboratory, but not now. Now, he was working to pick up the remains of the arch, dumping them in the wheelbarrow he'd bartered out of one of the kedan, wishing he had Marcelon's bulk to help pull a cart or his own shadows to move it for him.

Now he was reduced to nothing but his own hands, and Solomon found he knew very little about the work.

A part of Skulduggery was surprised Wreath hadn't gone home the moment he had the chance. It was pride, mainly; spending years outright furious with the man for being a necromancer was difficult to sweep under the rug, even with overwhelming evidence of Wreath's dissatisfaction. The man was just so unbearably smug, both here in Keeliai and back in Skulduggery's world. If Skulduggery had kept his memories when he returned home, he would have had some Words with the necromancer at every available opportunity.

But it wasn't hard to understand Wreath's choice. Raine was here. People like Bakura, people Wreath genuinely considered friends. He probably hadn't had anyone like that in the Temple. After everything Skulduggery had been through back home, the last thing he would do was fault the choice.

Far from it. In Wreath's case, he would encourage it.

For a long moment, all he did was stand in the courtyard's doorway, watching Wreath struggle with the arch. He didn't say anything, but he didn't step forward to help, either.

It wasn't until Solomon turned around, wiping his forehead and reaching for the jug of water he'd left on the wall, that he even noticed he wasn't alone. For a moment he stilled, staring, his mouth twisting bitterly. Once upon a time, he could have pinpointed Skulduggery's presence halfway across the city.

Now ...

Abruptly Solomon turned back to the arch, pushing his rolled sleeves further up his arms and reaching down to pick up more of the stones and dump them in the wheelbarrow. "I'm surprised to see you back, Detective. Your world not interesting enough for you?"

It came out bitter, and Solomon wasn't even sure how much of it was due to his magiclessness. After all his pretty words about letting things progress as they would naturally, with Solomon's memories returning by stages, and Skulduggery had left without so much as a goodbye.

Wreath was bitter. Why? Because Skulduggery managed to sneak up on him, because he was wearing the same magic-cancelling gauntlets Raine described from the Dreaming? Or because he expected Skulduggery to do something he'd forgotten to do?

If Valkyrie was bitter in a similar situation, it would have been because Skulduggery disappeared without telling her anything. In her case, that was a justifiable response, given her youth and her friendship with Skulduggery. Wreath, on the other hand? Had his perception of Skulduggery healed so far that he was starting to expect the same sorts of things Valkyrie did?

"Solomon," Skulduggery said, and then stopped. It was only an educated guess. Then again, he wasn't sure he cared about educated guesses anymore. "If I were to give you a hug, could I be relatively sure you wouldn't kill me in return?"

That was ... precisely the opposite of the reaction Solomon had expected, and he straightened up and turned to stare once more, this time incredulously. Skulduggery was asking for a hug? Skulduggery was asking him for a hug?

"Who are you," he said suspiciously, shifting just enough to put the wheelbarrow between himself and the skeleton, faint defence though it was, and putting his hand down on the biggest loose rock he could feel nearby. "Or which dimension are you from?"

Skulduggery would never have asked Solomon for a hug, no matter how many of their memories they'd both regained. Ridiculous.

Skulduggery tilted his head, eyeless gaze on both the wheelbarrow and Wreath's wandering hand. "I'll take that as a 'no'."

Not that he could blame him. Every single one of Skulduggery's fights was over, and he still shared that same suspicion - the certain knowledge that no matter how calm things got, there was always something new waiting around the corner. Something dangerous. Another fight that would never end. In Skulduggery's case, the suspicion was a tad more valid; despite his best efforts, he was never going to die.

"I'm the same Skulduggery as before," he reassured Solomon. "As far as that's possible, with a new year of memories."

"You're the same Skulduggery as before," said Solomon flatly, "and yet you want to hug me? I have to say, if you can't tell why I'm finding that difficult to reconcile then you lost a good deal of your intelligence while you were gone."

Skulduggery. Hugs. If he really was the same Skulduggery, what could possibly drive him to want to give Solomon a hug? It couldn't be something as simple Solomon's death; with the number of times Solomon had put himself in danger already, the idea that Skulduggery would react badly to it was absurd.

Oh. Unless-- "Did I lose myself to magic, over there?"

Not exactly death, but a loss of sanity that might have been enough to make Skulduggery react in such a way. Still, Solomon's tone was doubtful.

Edited 2014-12-11 09:53 (UTC)

"Lose yourself to magic?" Skulduggery almost laughed, but in respect to Wreath, he managed to avoid doing so.

Respect to Wreath. There was a motivation he never thought he'd be entertaining.

"No," he continued, a little more solemnly. "Over there, it was never an issue. If you'd prefer we keep our distance, you'll notice I haven't moved." Skulduggery gestured at the arch. "Do you need help moving that?"

Well, Skulduggery had no reason to lie, but Solomon still had to hesitate. If not that, then what? What could be so terrible that the great Skulduggery Pleasant would lower himself to tactility at all, let alone someone with whom he was only just beginning to repair a relationship?

Did Solomon want to know?

That thought was an odd one, but Solomon let it grow and studied Skulduggery, the way he hadn't moved, his posture. He didn't slouch, exactly, but there wasn't as much precision in the way he carried himself, either. As if he was too tired to care. And, to his surprise, Solomon found he didn't want to know. For whatever reason Solomon was here now, with no intention of going back without the memories he'd made here--or at all, if he didn't have to. What did he have that was worth going back to? And since there wasn't anything at all, what good was it to know things he wouldn't have to experience?

In the end Solomon shrugged and tossed the stone into the wheelbarrow, and turned back to the half demolished arch. "As you please. When has anyone been able to stop you, anyway?"

It was an open invitation, albeit grudgingly given. Still, Skulduggery hesitated. Helping to take apart and transport an arch was simple. Shouldn't he be taking solace in simple tasks? He thought he remembered Hopeless mentioning something about the healing power in letting one's mind wander, and that was the basis of the meditation which had saved Skulduggery's sanity all those decades ago.

Maybe that was it. Maybe he'd had too much solace recently. Maybe what Skulduggery wanted wasn't a simple task, or even a complicated one. Maybe what he really wanted was to try something utterly new.

"That's a no on the hug, then." Skulduggery nodded. "Alright. You can find me at the Hotel if you need me for anything else."

Solomon sighed. "Get over here and pick up that block." He pointed to one of the largest ones he hadn't yet mustered the energy to move. If Skulduggery wanted something to do, then Solomon could certainly oblige.

But the skeleton was almost ... uncertain, and uncertain with every moment instead of simply one. It was unnerving. Skulduggery wasn't one to show his trauma, no matter how much it battered at his sanity, yet here Solomon would almost think Skulduggery had given up. It put Solomon in the annoying position of having to play nursemaid.

Which begged the question: was it wise to reject a skeleton's plaintive request for a hug, when in no other circumstances he would have asked it, no matter how badly his bones had been shattered?

After a moment Solomon sighed. "If you absolutely must hug me, go ahead. I'm not going to guarantee hugging back."

The large block Solomon indicated would have been easy to move into the wheelbarrow if Skulduggery was still capable of manipulating the air. His magic was getting stronger with each passing minute, and he knew by this time tomorrow he'd be able to move the entire arch by himself. That knowledge wasn't exactly helpful for right now.

He could probably slam the rock against the courtyard wall, but he wouldn't be able to lift it. That took a powerful sort of finesse he hadn't yet regained.

When Solomon spoke for the second time, Skulduggery gave up trying to lift the block, turned, and hugged him. The speed was necessary to stop him from changing his mind, or so he thought. As it turned out, initiating a hug was new enough that Skulduggery didn't immediately pull away.

[EVENT] A NEW WORLD ORDER

OTA | Forward-dated about a week

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Warning: Minor Book 9 Spoilers

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