[Midnight Hotel] Fourth-wall catch-all; 15-30 April

[gistful]

Characters: Anyone, everyone.
Date: 15-30th April, ‘2016’.
Location: The Midnight Hotel.
Situation: It’s the fourth-wall event and there’s a sudden influx of patrons! Feel free to use this post for anything that happens within the Midnight Hotel during the two weeks of the fourth-wall event, using the subject header to label specific rooms or for specific people. Regulars should feel free to continue using the non-fourth-wall Hotel post for pre-fourth-wall threads! See also the OOC note at the bottom.
Warnings/Rating: Mark your threads if content warnings become applicable, please!

The Midnight Hotel is a magical place—which is fortunate, because Keeliai has magically doubled the number of patrons the Hotel is capable of holding. Where else is capable of catering to an extra fifty Foreigners? the kedan say. Where else would want to?

Unfortunately, for all the Hotel’s many qualities and all the proprietor’s many skills, he can’t conjure up enough rooms for fifty extra people on no notice.

The solution: giant slumber party.

For the next two weeks the ground-floor common-area and the dining-area beside the garage have been repurposed as sleeping areas. Blankets, sheets, pillows, bean-bags, sleeping-bags—Mr Anton Shudder has gone, quite literally, to town in order to cater to the new arrivals. No one is going to be uncomfortable, except by the prospect of sleeping so close to strangers—but there isn’t much to be done about that. The very few rooms still available have been reserved for those who well and truly require the privacy.

Catering is a little more difficult. Suffice to say Mr Shudder is outsourcing for a good part of the fortnight.

On the plus side, Mr Shudder is gracious enough to let those without a soul-gem stay for free. As long as, of course, they Follow The Rules, which are told to every newcomer nearly as soon as they’re welcomed through the door.

Although Anton does attend the festival, he can be regularly found throughout the Hotel for anyone who has questions or concerns. He will, most of the time, be dogged by a bouncy fellow with an indefatigable grin, and it won’t be uncommon to hear variations of the following conversation:

“Hey, Anton—”

“No.”

“You didn’t even—”

“No.”

“Excuse me, I was just going to say—”

“Absolutely not.”

“Anton, hey Anton, hey hey Anton?”

“No.”

And so it goes.

[ooc: The Midnight Hotel’s status page is available here, with the rules at the top and ongoing status at the bottom. PLEASE PM ME IF YOUR CHARACTER WILL PERFORM A VIOLENT ACT. The Hotel is a neutral-zone and the proprietor is very strict as to acts of violence, and it will receive a response.

It will not be necessary for fourth-wall characters to officially check into the Hotel during the event.]

Comments

[kreitech]

Krei's still wary about doing much of anything to piss off the guy who owns the Hotel that's keeping his ass safe, but after a moment or two he shrugs. "If you don't think he'll mind." Larrikin knows Anton better than he does, after all. And he's still doing this with the Hotel's best interests in mind. That has to count for something.

He takes one last look around the kitchen, trying to set things as right as he can (what with the oven and the burnt book and all) before he turns and motions Larrikin toward Anton's office.

"Such as?"

[larrikinism]

All bouncy step and enthusiasm, walking backwards and guiding himself with the air, Larrikin went into the lobby. "Well, I remember this one time, right, so Anton and me were meant to meet the rest of the unit someplace and we're following their marks and then my darling intelligent idiot of a husband of mine left a written note. A note."

Larrikin threw up his hands all full of indignant and laughing exasperation. "It didn't occur to him that, oh, me'n'Anton both being men of the world and not nobles, neither of us knew how to read. So we went along to the original rendezvous point and it was a good thing we did, y'see, because old Mevvy-poo had managed a feint. The whole army had gone off someplace else and left a force of fifty guarding a route into Italy, and of course that's where Mevolent hit with his two hundred strong. Well, not him him, but bastard-ass Serpine--" He blew a raspberry, rubbing his chest. "--was in charge--scuse me!"

He chirruped the apology at someone he nearly tripped over. Anton wasn't nearby, so it was clear and free as far as Larrikin was concerned to produce a few pins and kneel by the office door.

"So there were our guys being utterly routed and in retreat through a valley," Larrikin went on, "when we show up. We split our forces and let Serpine's minions come at us, and then our line pulled back and Anton stepped forward, and--" Larrikin started to laugh. "--the front line flinched just shouting, 'SHUDDER! IT'S SHUDDER, WE'RE GOING TO DIE, FALL BACK YOU BLOODY INGRATES!' But the guys behind them didn't get the memo, so they're all tripping over each other and running into each other's swords, and before the rear can catch up to the change the rest of our guys pelted 'em from the ridges above, and the next thing, it was Serpine in a rout and not us."

He sighed as the lock clicked, and straightened to open the door with a flourish. "That was a good day," he said wistfully. "Anton didn't even need to use the gist, he just needed to be there to break their inflated morale. Against two hundred and we only lost about fifteen. I mean, sure, Hopeless taught us to read after that, but we were lucky. Lucky days like that are always good days."

[kreitech]

It's not hard to simply tag along after Larrikin, letting the man talk as they move through the Hotel. He tells a good story, Alistair will give him that--although he blinks in surprise at the word husband. With the kind of serial flirt Larrikin is? (Or at least the kind Krei suspects he is--he doesn't have much proof other than his own experience.)

He's paying more attention to the story than the people around them, much like Larrikin, though he does take a second to make sure that whoever it was that Larrikin nearly bumped into is all right. Brush them off, send them on their way with a polite nod and a smile, all with an eye still on Larrikin. While the other man is picking the lock--and is apparently pretty good at it--Krei leans up against the wall next to the door looking nonchalant, hands in his pockets, one knee bent with his foot on the wall. He might as well play lookout, just in case.

As the story progresses, however, that look of nonchalance gradually fades, replaced by a look of surprise, and then disbelief.

"What on Earth does Anton do that would have scared that many people witless? I mean he's imposing, sure, but...."

And why, oh why, if Anton is so frightening... are they breaking into his office?

[larrikinism]

Once upon a time, Larrikin did used to be a thief. Out of necessity, true, and usually in terms of pickpocketing, but Anton had long since learned how to prevent magic-use on locks, and that was a challenge which obviously made learning the mundane art vital.

The look he gave Krei was surprised as he went in and beckoned Krei to follow before he closed the door. "No one's told you about Anton's dog-on-a-leash? Well then!" Larrikin clapped his hands and beamed. "Siddown in one of Anton's really comfy chairs and I'll tell you all about it! Anton's magic takes the form of a gist, see, and a gist is basically all of its owner's anger and hate and bad thoughts made real. It goes schloop--" He motioned something appearing out of his chest. "--right outta his chest and then massacres anything he directs it at. Only, he can't keep it out too long or it'll take him over and then he'll be a tiny little voice inside the gist instead of the gist being a tiny little voice in him."

Larrikin looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling, rocking back and forth on his heels. "I remember once--no, wait, there was this other time, we were in the middle of this battle, a few hundred strong on each side when suddenly they came out of nowhere on the flank and we didn't have the men to spare. The whole army would've been cut in two, you know, that really annoying pincer movement which sucks unless you use it yourself and then it's really satisfying? But Anton was on the flank and he shouts at us to keep our lines, and steps out and releases his gist and--there must've been a hundred of 'em coming at him, but inside ten seconds they weren't anything more than limbs and organs and bloody mud splattered everywhere."

Somewhere along the path of this dialogue, Larrikin's face had sobered. "That's what the gist does, you see," he said. "It's violence incarnate. It kills, and that's it. Anton tries not to use it, but when you're in a tight spot, surrounded and nothing left to lose, no one can get you out of it faster."

[kreitech]

"Jesus."

It comes from one of the so-called "really comfy chairs," where Krei's taken up residence while Larrikin tells his next story. Only this one isn't quite as much fun, aside from the bit about Larrikin and Anton actually surviving the encounter. And the longer Larrikin talks the paler Krei goes--not necessarily because they're in the office and shouldn't be, but just the sheer violence of the imagery. What must it be like to live with something like that inside you?

What must it be like to live in the kind of world where something like that actually happens?

"I... no, no one told me about that." He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and rubs the back of his neck. "I would imagine it's probably not Anton's favorite topic of conversation."

[larrikinism]

"I dunno," Larrikin said thoughtfully, rubbing his weirdly short hair. "I've always known, and by the end of the war, everyone else always knew too. It's kind of hard to miss the bloke whose evil twin bursts out of his chest and murders a battlefield."

He tugged thoughtfully on one of the longest strands by his temple. "Actually, he's never tried to hide it, that I remember. I mean, sure, when the war started we were across the Continent and wound up joining the army 'cos we were helping another group get there alive and no one asked what our magic was 'cos mine's obvious and they all assumed Anton's was martial--where did that sentence begin? Eh."

Larrikin shrugged and flopped into the chair nearest Krei, so he could sprawl across both their chairs and dangerously close to Krei's lap. "He didn't tell anyone for a while, but he couldn't afford to keep it hidden for long. Gist-users are too valuable in a war, see? They're like--like--I don't know, some massive weapon which can single-handedly change the course of a war. Like Greek fire to ships. He had a guard for a while at first, until they were sure he wouldn't get taken over by the gist, but Anton's stable. He's the oldest gist-user in known history, yanno. Most of 'em don't live much over three hundred, and from what he's said about his timeline he's over five."

He grinned. "That's my boy."