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.

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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.

Edited 2014-12-10 07:47 (UTC)

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.

"Not in so many terms," Anton agreed, glancing at the clock without noticing any of Dante's misgivings or putting any distance between them. "But we've been asleep for a magical amount of time, and I'm going to need help to have the Hotel properly cleared." It wasn't a mess, from what he had seen--mostly it was the dankness of the room in which they'd been sleeping, and the kitchen's stores would need to be checked. Even with only two using them for a year, they had to be low by now.

"I'm going to the kitchen to ration what food is spare," he said, turning back. "If you will awaken the other Foreigners, we can organise groups to use the public facilities." Once the room was emptied he'd be able to put the bedding through the wash. That was something to be thankful for; his Hotel didn't run out of water or plumbing.

"I'd hardly call a coma magical, but whatever." They were low, yes, but more importantly, what kind of food keeps for a full year? That, and the room stunk to high hell.

However, is Anton suggesting they shower together? Dante's not modest enough to care if other people see him naked, but god, that is just too intimate of a thing to do with Anton right now. Is he being paranoid? Yes. Is it justified? No. Should Dante stop assuming that Anton is coming onto him? Most likely. Nevertheless, he rolls over away from him before sitting up.

"I've got it. Waking everyone up shouldn't be that hard." He groaned somewhat reluctantly as he gathered his own sheets. Oh god how he hated being gainfully employed, especially to a man who he thinks has feelings for him. All he wants to do is crawl back into bed but then the problem wouldn't go away and he'd be out of a job.

Can he go back to Malicant disguising himself as his father and telling he's an awful parent? At least he knew how to deal with that problem. knew how to deal with that problem. He's skilled at hiding emotions like "sheer terror" and "moritification", but otherwise? He's got nothing. The best he can do is get to work and hope that he can avoid any awkward discussions. Or showers together.

"This one was," said Anton. For a moment Dante seemed concerned, though over what Anton couldn't guess--it could be any number of things. The state of the room, the state of himself as an individual--certainly Anton himself hadn't sported a beard this thick since the war.

Anton stood back and rose as Dante did. "There are four shower cubicles in the downstairs bathroom," he said, glancing across the lounge to count swiftly. There weren't as many as they'd started with, but still too many for the downstairs bathroom alone. Not, however, too many for rooms in the Hotel. "Unless some of them wish to use the private upstairs rooms, they will have to take them in shifts. Let them know I have soap, hair-washes and towels at the desk, and to please keep their showers to half-an-hour."

"I wasn't disagreeing. I just don't like the word magic. It makes the kind of crap demons do sound too.... Disney-ish." Magic is not a toy in his world. Even the small bit he used could easily be described as demonic. Anton could try and object, but Dante could also point out that he once turned into a monster and tore his own sword out of his hands and put it through his chest.

"Sheesh, what the hell could someone do in a shower for half an hour?" Dante muttered, but quickly shut his mouth, hoping Anton didn't hear. He really didn't want to hear the answer to that question.

"So get them up and point them to the bath stuff? Sounds like a plan." He would really rather get to work then sit here talking about baths with Anton, and remained visibly avoidant.

"I recommend Grimm's fairy-tales," Anton said blandly, but with an amused glint. "Most of Disney's tales were based upon them, but you would be hard pressed to describe them as anything other than brutal life lessons. With magic." It was something of a point of amusement, for him, having lived as long as he had and see magic as something with pretty colours and sparkles.

In some ways, he could wish it was; but it wasn't. In his world, magic was powerful and savage and dangerous, regardless of how popular culture tried to say otherwise. It said a good deal about Dante's upbringing that he equated the two.

"Any number of things," Anton said absently, but he was regarding Dante with a furrow in his brow, the avoidance impossible to miss after the casual interaction in which Dante had given Anton Gilgamesh. "Is there something amiss, Dante?"

"I'll have to remember that when I'm somewhere I can read the local language." Or, you know, Dante could learn kedanese. But we all know that's not going to happen.

If anyone from Anton's world thought of magic as a grim and dark subject, they should try going to the lovely land of human sacrifice and powerlust-driven-insanity that is Dante's world. There was a good reason Dante learned so little magic; it's evil. Very very evil. The fact that he ever thought of magic as good could only be attributed to the fact that his dear, sweet mother just so happened to be a witch. Truly, Dante's mind was a thick web of contradictions.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Nothing's going on." Dante lied obviously and immediately, much like one would lie about having read a website's terms and conditions. "Just had a bit of a rough nap. I'm sure you get what I mean."

"I could recite them for you should you ever get bored," Anton said, though it was more of a statement than an offer, as if it was something that ought to be taken for granted. Anton hadn't even learned to read until he was well into his third century; all the stories he knew were oral in nature, even those he had read in the end.

Anton had been telling stories all his life. It was a hobby, of a sort--something he did when he was around others, rather than a special occurrence for a handful.

He regarded Dante for a moment longer, recognising the lie for a lie but considering whether it was worth probing further. In the end Anton let it slide, because he made it a point not to pry unless necessary. Instead he nodded. "It was a difficult dream. Make sure to take some time for your own recovery."

To anyone else, that statement would have seemed amusing, but not at all odd. However, though Dante's oh god, he's coming on to me goggles, that statement seemed very, very wrong. His mind goes back to scenes of lovers exchanging stories by the campfire, or under the sheets. No, no, a million times NO.

"I've had about a year. If I'm not over what happened by now, I figure I'm not going to be." He planned on taking the time to stretch out, eat, and go back to bed, but that's not something he really wants to say out loud. Nothing like being scared to death that your boss is hitting on you to rally you to work.

There was a lot that Hopeless would have had to say about that, but then, Hopeless cheated by being a mind-reader. He knew psychology better than anyone could. He would have been able to tell Dante that dreams and waking thoughts were very different things.

Anton wasn't Hopeless, however, so all he said, "If you find otherwise, do not feel the need to carry the burden alone."

That, Anton had learned from Hopeless--and from Skulduggery. But he didn't press, and instead nodded toward Dante and turned to leave, unless Dante should stop him.

This shell needs a psychologist who won't kill and eat people. Badly.

"Don't worry too much. It's like I said, I've been doing this for a long time." And honestly? It kinda felt good to fight his father like that, even an imitation. "That wasn't the first time any of that nonsense happened to me. Only new thing is that I fell asleep for a year."

Dante was happy that Anton had finally left. God, that was the most awkward conversation he's ever had.

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[EVENT] A NEW WORLD ORDER

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