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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"That," said Skulduggery, "depends heavily on how accustomed you are to the idea of alternate dimensions." He tilted his head, admittedly impressed thus far. She was startled, but practical in spite of it. A rare quality these days. "You're in a city called Keeliai, which is on the back of a giant turtle swimming in the current between life, death, and dreaming. This is a world in between worlds, or so I've been told."

She brought up an interesting point, though. With Evastelei dead, how were there still new arrivals? Milyn couldn't be doing it, and unless there was someone else on the turtle powerful enough... but there wouldn't be a point. Malicant was gone. There was no one left to threaten worlds, no more need to recruit unwitting soldiers.

Skulduggery's head tilted to the side. "But I'm not sure who brought you here. You didn't wake up in a basin of water, did you?"

"No, I woke up in a glade of some sort." Her eyes had stayed locked on Skulduggery's face. There was something spine-tinglingly unsettling about seeing a jaw open and shut with no muscle to guide it. There was enough nuance to his posture, to the way he transmitted his emotion into subtle movements of his hands and his balance, that it became harder to believe this was an illusion.

"The dream theory has gained some ground on the abduction theory," Sonja said, inadvertently aloud. "What are you?" Curiosity was the overwhelming emotion in her tone. Skulduggery's comment on alternate dimensions had not gone by without notice, but it was only now that Sonja started to contemplate it.

A glade. Something like Skulduggery's waking up in a farmstead, then. The process of dragging people here against their will must have been left in place, sans any method of control. That was going to be all sorts of fun for the new arrivals, Skulduggery could already tell.

This particular new arrival, however, was starting to grow on him.

"A skeleton," he said, though his tone of voice added a silent obviously. He hadn't missed her wandering gaze before, either; he spread his arms out to prove they weren't attached to anything but his own body. "Not a puppet, nor an automaton. You're not dreaming, either. I won't rule out the possibility of abduction, but if that's the case, your captor either means well or isn't human. You're taking this remarkably well."

"Well I don't know what 'this' is yet, so that helps. You'll pardon if I don't just take your word on any of that."

She turned away from Skulduggery and looked back at the path she had traversed. From her place at the city limits she could see multiple pockets of trees in the distance. She couldn't tell which one was the one she came from, if it was even still in sight. She tried to figure out at a glance the size of this place, but found that her mental calculator was booting increasingly sluggishly. Sonja had finally reached a point where she had all the information she was currently capable of handling; gathering more data at this point was too exhausting. Her head was growing fuzzy, and the trials of her body were starting to catch up with her. She needed a place to rest, and a place to think.

She finally turned back to Skulduggery. "What city is this? No, nevermind, just tell me where I can get food, water and a room to myself."

Edited 2014-12-10 10:25 (UTC)

"Keeliai," Skulduggery answered anyway. It was always difficult to read someone when they were cranky - whether or not they had full justification for being cranky - so he didn't try. He did notice her streak of practicality ran right through exhaustion. That was promising, even if her memory was suffering a little at the moment.

Skulduggery looked up at a pair of kedan who were outright staring. The tilt in his skull was enough to send them scurrying. They were younger, probably told for the last year that Keeliai belonged to them, despite a failed invasion and absolutely no evidence of where the Foreigners had gone. Sonja's question would have been much easier to answer before the end of the war. Ironic, that.

"Right now?" he said. "The Midnight Hotel. It belongs to a friend of mine. It's a little tricky to get to if you don't know where to find it, but the proprietor isn't a skeleton, so you should feel right at home."

He paused, suddenly mindful of what else immediate exhaustion could mean. "One other thing. Are you wearing a small piece of jewelry you weren't wearing before?"

"What? No," Sonja said, sure that she would have noticed something like that. But she started a quick self examination all the same, checking fingers, neck, ears. She found nothing except her gold chained necklace.

It took Sonja a moment to realize that she did not own a gold chained necklace.

"What?" She said, pulling it off and examining the thing. On the end was a circular yellow steel locket with gold trim. She opened it to reveal an orange stone shaped like her homeland of Yellow Comet's emblem.

"But why didn't I..." the locket seemed so familiar, as though she had always had it, but she had no memory of it.

"... realise it wasn't yours?" There was a frown in Skulduggery's tone, if not on his expressionless skull. "I'm not sure. Possibly because you're new." He'd found his own pendant immediately, but not only was Skulduggery not new, he didn't have a physical brain. It was entirely possible everyone else went through a short period of confusion. That was something he'd need to investigate.

"It's your soul anchor," he explained. "Leave it behind, and you'll die a painful death over the course of three days. Don't ask me how the process works." After all, it wasn't as if the information had ever been personally relevant to Skulduggery. He had a soul, yes, but his state of existence made him a unique exception in most cases relating to death. "Someone at the Hotel might know. I can take you there, if you'd like."

"I..." Hold it together, Sonja, this is hardly the weirdest thing that's happened today. "...yes. I would like that."

She took an extra moment, then walked forward, closing the gap between the two of them. Rather than bowing in Yellow Comet tradition, Sonja held out her hand in Orange Star tradition - in part because she recognized Skulduggery's fashion to bear some semblance to Orange Star civilian business garb and decided he might recognize the gesture, in part so as not to avert her gaze from him and therefore drop her guard, and finally because she wanted to see what his hand felt like.

"My name is Sonja."

"A pleasure to meet you, Sonja." Skulduggery shook her proffered hand, noting absently that the gesture of a handshake clashed somewhat with what he'd assumed her ethnic background was. Either she was from a world he didn't know, or she was a well-traveled visitor from Earth. Either way, she was still taking things impressively well. "I'm Skulduggery Pleasant."

He had a glove on, so Sonja wouldn't feel the texture of the bones themselves; but the fabric was thin enough for her to feel their shape. They were long, thin, and - surprise, surprise - bony. They also lacked body heat, a fact which should have been just as obvious and which still managed to surprise people on occasion.

"Well you aren't a hologram," Sonja said, with a weak grin. Getting so close to the revenant had risen goosebumps on the entirety of Sonja's body. It took a some measure of willpower to minimize the shaking. "A strange name for a strange... skeleton."

She stared into the dark, inhuman pits of Skulduggeries eyes until she was forced to avert her eyes. She looked towards the city. "You'll lead the way? To the Midnight Hotel, was it?"

Practically everyone Skulduggery met in Keeliai had commented on his name, but usually right on the heels of commenting on his being a skeleton. In Sonja's case, she'd switched the two comments around. It was enough to make Skulduggery chuckle. "But not misleading, I hope."

She held his gaze for a surprisingly long time before moving on to more practical matters. Skulduggery gestured in the direction of the nearest Sector by way of an answer, and began walking towards it, hands back in his pockets. "Any other questions? I'm good for much more than just questionable holiday decorations, you know. I'm also a detective."

"A detective, huh? Where does an animated skeleton enroll in the police academy?" Sonja asked, falling into step behind Skulduggery. "Or are you the self-appointed hard boiled type?"

Of course, there several questions bubbling up in Sonja's mind with preeminence over Skulduggery's education... but Sonja suspected that Skulduggery was either sensitive or just cagey about them. If it was a trick, he'd obviously want to avoid revealing the strings. If he really was a skeleton... well, Sonja imagined revisiting whatever caused that might be something one avoided thinking about.

But still, if she played her cards right, she might find out eventually. Sonja had found that when it came to social engagements, a straight line was often not the most efficient course.

Edited 2014-12-14 10:07 (UTC)

"Both," Skulduggery answered with a short shrug. On anyone else, the shrug might have seemed modest. Anyone who'd known Skulduggery even peripherally knew better than to assume Skulduggery could be modest about anything. "I am freelance, technically speaking, but most of my work comes through my world's government, which does give me a little authority." He tilted his head in amusement. "There's no police academy, for animated skeletons or otherwise. Do you have any form of magic where you're from?"

"No. Well..." Sonja tipped her head in thought. She had seen a lot of hard-to-explain things over three invasions from Black Hole: pipes that come from nowhere, blue-skinned clones, storms of dark energy summoned by tall stoic white haired men...

"Magic is just science that hasn't been explained yet," Sonja said with a confident nod.

Their journey had taken them into the main thoroughfare of the Wood Sector, where the farmer's market was in full swing. Numerous Kedan buzzed from kiosk to kiosk, trading and buying, buying and trading. A Kedan with a two-wheeled cart overflowing with husks of corn rushed past the pair, obligating them to step to the side to avoid collision. Sonja, in her haste to move, backed up into a stall and managed to overturn a table full of spongefruit.

"Watch where your going, foreigner!" yelled the portly Kedan that ran the stand.

"I"m sorry!" Sonja said, blushing horribly. She bent down to try to help pick up one of the large, porous red fruits but was alarmed at its alien texture and dropped it.

"I said get outta here!" The Kedan shouted more forcefully, as she re-oriented the table. Produce was scattered everywhere. "Foreigners always causing problems," she mumbled.

Edited 2014-12-15 20:09 (UTC)

"I agree," said Skulduggery with an amiable nod. "How disruptive, to offer to help. Completely disrespectful. Next time, we'll be sure to walk right into the cart and take up one of the valuable free-market clinic beds. If it's spoiled produce you're worried about, I'll happily make up the difference. How much would you like?"

Skulduggery had decided to make it his general policy while in Keeliai not to give the resident kedan any further reason to believe their mistaken impressions about the Foreigners. He was never able to remain completely civil, especially since practically anything sounded like a threat coming from a living skeleton, but his voice and manner always remained perfectly friendly. The important thing in this situation, as far as Skulduggery was concerned, was to show Sonja there wasn't any reason to be afraid.

Skulduggery's calmness was definitely a help - in fact, Skulduggery's laid back calm-but-hardness reminded her of Grit, a mentor figure she had back home. Well, he lived on a different continent, but 'back home' was a relative thing.

Still, anxieties were not something to be easily swayed, and Sonja was in the first stages of a panic attack. Sure, she was in a totally foreign land with magic and skeletons, but knocking over a table was *her fault*. Of course, this served as a catalyst for everything else to suddenly drop on her.

She was in a foreign land with no friends and no plan and no technology and she had just pissed off the natives. Any second, there was going to be a mob. Did they do witch burnings here? That was a thing that happens sometimes, right? And if she hadn't pissed them off enough yet, it was only a matter of time. How long before they wouldn't be able to stand her? How many mistakes would they tolerate?

The Kedan hardly noticed. "That would be a start," she said to Skulduggery.

"I-" Sonja tried to say. It was hard to focus. The ground was moving. "Sorry, I-"

"Grit!" Sonja said as she reached over and grasped Skulduggery's coat sleave. "I- I mean Skulduggery. Don't, I'll pay." Her head hurt. "I don't - I don't know what money you use here, I'm sorry." She started to cry. "I'm so sorry."

Edited 2014-12-19 01:31 (UTC)

Skulduggery looked down at Sonja when she gripped his coat sleeve, but he didn't move otherwise. He'd never really had a clear idea of what to do when someone was crying. Not that he could blame her, of course, not in the least - but it still left him a bit unsure before he turned back to the kedan and tossed her a few juulan coins from his pocket.

"That should cover it," he assured her, and then stepped away before she could reply, taking Sonja with him and holding one of the small coins in his open palm. "They're called juulan," he explained. "Consider it a gift. If you'd like to pay me back later, I certainly won't say no, but I'm not a loan shark." He slipped the coin back into his pocket. "The Hotel's just around the corner."

Lord knew culture shock could occasionally rob even the most steadfast of their better judgement.

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[EVENT] A NEW WORLD ORDER

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