tushanshu_logs | [EVENT | FOURTH WALL] THE DREAMING'S FLATULENCE

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[EVENT | FOURTH WALL] THE DREAMING'S FLATULENCE | APRIL 15-30

Characters: ALL and plus ones. (Yes, fourth-wall characters, that means you.)
Date: April 15-30 2016 (2017 in-game)
Location: Mod-posted comment starters are for the immediate aftermath of the odd explosion which starts the event, but this log can also be used for anywhere in the setting anytime between April 15-30.
Situation: The College went BOOM. Weird people began appearing randomly in the city. After that, other buildings went BOOM even though nothing actually exploded besides the College. After that, scattered buildings developed spontaneous structural damage overnight. Could these events be related? You be the judge.
Warnings/Rating: Add warnings in subject headers as needed.

The morning of April 15th dawns cold, but clear. There isn't a cloud in the sky, the sun's barely risen, and in general the kedan are going about their daily lives - opening shops, heading to work, leading kirin through the city streets. In particular, there's a small but steady stream of people moving in and out of the College.

Then, without warning, a section of the College implodes.

During the following few days, an influx of strange Foreigners appear, seemingly dropped randomly by the Dreaming throughout Keeliai. Someone might end up in a canal, or on a rooftop. Someone else might find themselves flying through the air to land heavily in a disused alley. Someone might wake up in the corner of a kirin stable. A few might even land in Hatal on the mainland, and feel a curious draw leading them back towards the turtle. They arrive in the same unexpected manner as normal Foreigners; the only differences are the sheer amount of people arriving at once, and that none of the newcomers seem to possess any soul gems.

Also during the next few days, kedan and Foreigner alike might be startled by an exact replica of that thunderous boom from the College explosion echoing around Keeliai. This only occurs for about a week, but it occurs regularly, and the source of these strange echoes is impossible to trace.

Once the explosion echoes stop, investigators might notice that specific and exact sections of structural damage from the College appear on other buildings in Keeliai without any obvious cause. These cases of spontaneous long-term damage continue all the way through until April 30th.

Apart from those disruptions, life on the turtle is generally normal for the next two weeks - or as normal as it's possible for life to be when one lives on the back of a turtle where the most powerful gang makes the rules. No one can say for sure exactly when the strange Foreigners vanish again. Some will swear they all vanished at once; others will be equally sure they disappeared one by one over several days. One thing's for sure, however -- by the time April 30th draws to a close, not one of the strange Foreigners is left in Keeliai.

LINKS
The College | The Echoes | The Structural Damage | OOC Information post | Fourth-Wall Character Check-In

OOC
The top-level comments are for the explosion and its aftermath, but fourth-wall characters should feel free to use the rest of the post for anything within the setting! Just remember to label the top-level comment for location and date. You can also add more fourth-wall characters throughout the event at the character check-in, linked above. Please direct any questions to the OOC post.

Fourth-wall characters are also free to tag into player-posted logs and console/radio posts dated between April 15th and 30th! A quick reminder that fourth-wall characters will not have soul jewelry, and will not be able to create their own network posts or logs.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It takes a few minutes, but there's someone running to his side, coming to a stop and kneeling down, a green bag placed onto the ground beside him.

"Hey, mate! Can you hear me?!" An English-accented voice calls out, a hand placed on Dex's shoulder.

It takes a moment for Dexter to realise he's no longer alone. Possibly he was distracted listening to his slowing heart-rate. He opens his eyes and the world spins over him, waxing white and dizzying, but it's enough to get a glimpse of a human face. At least, Dexter's decently sure it's human. Not a whole lot left of anything else these days, except vampires.

Wandering thoughts. Not good. Maybe. Does it usually take this long to die? He wouldn't know. He's never died before. Maybe he could ask Skulduggery.

--Person. Person come to help. Dexter opens his eyes again, his breathing shallow to avoid catching on the gurgling deep in his chest, and he manages to blink a few times, rapidly.

He's noted the shallow breathing, looking up, motioning for the two kedan who came from the guild to hurry on over with the scoop stretcher. He's going to perform a full top-to-toe survey.

"Alright, mate. I'm just going to examine you, make sure you're not gonna die on me, alright?" He says, trying to make light of the situation. Shallow breathing wasn't exactly a promising sign. He's going to run his hands down over Dexter's body, checking each area for signs of fractures or internal damage.

He pays particular attention to the chest, resting a hand on it, watching to make sure the breathing is, at least, equal.

Oh, that's very funny, that is. Even in the middle of dying, Dexter manages to roll his eyes.

He's a bit beaten up on the outside, injuries he hasn't noticed compared to the major ones--scratches and bruises like he was picked up and thrown against something which then fell over and landed on him in pieces (since that's exactly what happened). He's got the physique of a soldier, a few scars here and there--these sorts of bruises and cuts one usually ones he'd shake off with a laugh and a grimace, if it weren't for the rest.

There's blood and tearing around his mouth and throat (due to the aforementioned person reaching into his throat to yank out bits inside), but outwardly his chest looks in the same condition as the rest of him, at least until Fletcher touches it.

It isn't much, and Dexter knows it isn't much, but that little extra weight of hands flips the fragile balance he'd been maintaining. His breath hitches and blood gurgles up, and he starts choking and trying to cough at once. His vision burns white and for a few moments he teeters between blacking out (or possibly, he thinks dizzily, something more permanent).

For Fletcher, the injuries might present as strange--there's no broken bones, despite the copious internal damage. Maybe a few bruised ones, maybe one or two fractured where his back hit the wall he was thrown against, but nothing that indicates the internal damage was caused by an external blow.

The second he starts coughing and gurgling, Fletch is grabbing his side and his hip. He's confident nothing is broken, so he's log-rolling Dexter onto his side so the man can cough up the blood.

Once he has Dexter stable on his side, he's grabbing his radio. "This is Fletch. We're bringing someone in who needs immediate healing from the College. If someone can meet us on the way, that'd be great."

He's then going to motion the kedan with the scoop to hurry the hell up, taking out a stethoscope in the meanwhile to find out what the hell is going on.

One moment Dexter feels like he's drowning (zero out of ten, would not recommend); then the world tilts and some of what's in his chest actually manages to come up. He tries to spit and it kind of just dribbles out of his mouth instead, but okay, whatever. As long as it's out instead of inside.

... Unless it's blood. Then it's probably a bad thing it's outside instead of inside. Unless it's inside but in all the wrong places. That'd be a bad thing, right?

Right.

At least like this the weight of the stethoscope on his chest doesn't feel like much; in fact Dexter barely notices it, compared to the general cold numbness settling into him. His heartbeat is irregular, his breathing squishy and full of liquid.

What the hell is he even doing, still awake? Bad choice there, Dex.

He blinks vaguely at the man still hovering over him. Are things really so bad off that they've got English healers on side? he wonders. That had been an English accent he heard, right? Bloody idiots. Second time they'd tried to invade Ireland in a century. He'd kind of like to scowl, but it's a bit too much effort at the moment. He doesn't seem to have full control of his body.

So much for being the brawler.

"Stay still, mate. We'll get you some help, alright?" Fletch mumbles, loud enough for Dex to hear, as he continues listening to the man's chest, moving the steth around. There's definitley fluid in his lungs... He's not too sure how the healing will cope with that.

"GCS 10, Pulse 160, tachy, irregular irregular." He mumbles under his breath, removing the stethoscope from his ears. "Come on!" Fletch yells at the kedan, who are just now bringing the stretcher over.

"Get him on the scoop, keep him as much on this side as possible. He's got some bad internal bleeding. We've got a healer on the way from the guild, but we need to get him moved now."

The kedan nod in understanding and, soon enough, Dex will feel himself being lifted, still kept mostly on his side.

It is an English accent. Dexter hopes it doesn't belong to anyone who'd recognise him, or, God forbid, know that he was in one of the US Sanctuary's outposts only a few months ago. England and the US had been pretty tight back then.

Going suddenly from down there to up here is almost more than Dexter sense of consciousness can handle, even as gently as the corpsmen move. Corps ... people? What's the politically correct word there?

Events after that are a bit hazy, right up until Dexter feels the warmth of magical healing in his chest. He's abruptly brought out of his half-daze of dyingness by his lungs, no longer quite so ragged, catching on what isn't meant to be in there after all. Explosively he coughs, and chokes, and gasps for air as his body tries to expel what had seeped in where it shouldn't.

Turns out Fletcher is right. Healing doesn't remove fluid from the lungs.

Lucky for Dexter, Fletch is used to spending his nights in an Emergency Department, so is quick with a bowl for him to cough up into. A hand is on his back, rubbing it.

"There we go, big fella. Cough it up."

Big fella. Big fella. If Dexter could at all breathe right now, he'd make an ill-advised quip about being hit on by an Englishman that would impress Donegan. Because Donegan's an Englishman, and probably around here ... somewhere ... getting killed for the sake of world-wide liberty ... way to make Dex feel bad, doctor-person.

Dexter is not terribly coherent right now.

The back-rub is kind of soothing though, so there's that.

It takes some time but eventually, after the gagging and the hacking and the spitting up various ickiness, Dexter manages to catch his breath and sink back down on whatever's he's lying on. His chest feels like it's on fire. Isn't it supposed to hurt more when you're closer to death and less when you're being healed? He has objections about the process of things as they stand.

"Where--?" he whispers croakily without even opening his eyes. It's all he can manage, but it pretty much encapsulates all his questions.

Is he still--where was he? Wherever the fight with Darquesse was happening. Or is he back in England? In a camp somewhere? Slated to be thrown in a cell?

The thing he settles back onto is one of the beds in the emergency ward of the Healer's Guild. It's quite firm, but still rather comfortable for a hospital bed, if firmness is what you like.

"Here." The voice says, again, and Dex will feel a wad of tissue-like paper being pressed into a hand. "As for where you are? That's... A little hard to explain, mate."

It's a surprise, and Dexter's hand jerks before he realises what it is, and also how kittenish he feels. Like a wet noodle. Like Sabrina when she used to flop on his lap all bonelessly, only he isn't doing it by choice.

It also takes him a moment to realise what he's meant to do with the tissue, but then brings it up to wipe at his mouth, turned half into the pillow because rolling over is too much effort.

But it gives him the chance to figure out whether he can speak some more. His throat's burning and he could really use a drink, but he figures he can also manage a couple of words. This time, he opens his eyes, turning his head so he can search, blearily, for his English benefactor. "M'I dead?"

Well, if it's difficult to explain ... what were the odds he managed to die slowly enough to actually get rescued? How healed is he? The hand clutching the tissue moves to press probingly against his chest with some degree of field-medic experience.

Again, Fletch has your back, Dex. Nursing for so long, he knows people generally want water after coughing and throwing up stuff. A glass is poured and placed nearby in Dex's field of view, Fletch stood off to the left of him.

"No, you're not dead. I wouldn't worry about that." He shifts, pulling a chair over and sitting down. "You're in a place called Keelial... It's not where you were. Somewhere different..." He laughs, nervously. "I barely understand it myself."

What a wonderful, perfect, incredible, amazing mysterious nurse guy. Dexter eyes the glass and gingerly pushes himself upright, reaching out with a shaking hand. He manages to touch the glass and comes to the conclusion that holding it is probably not going to happen without water and glass going everywhere.

Especially with that bombshell that makes him try to snap upright. He doesn't even make it off the bed, luckily, but it's still a burst of adrenaline that gets him to a sitting position, even if the ward does swirl dizzyingly around him afterward.

His chest hurts too, but he isn't sure if that's because of a lingering injury or just because his lungs feel like they've been through a cheese-grater from all the coughing.

"Shunted? Where? Which dimension?"

Damn it. Who did it? One of the Children, one of their allies?

"Hey-!" And a hand gets placed on Dex's chest, pushing just enough to be a warning. "Woah, there, mate. Hang about... Don't go ruining what the healers've done, alright?"

And from what this guy's saying, he knows a good deal more about different dimensions than Fletch... At least he isn't trying to talk to someone who's clueless... Like he was when he first got here.

"I don't know who they are, but we're brought here by some magic spell that was cast by an Emperor ages ago. We're not needed, but the spell's kinda broken, so it keeps dragging people here." He pauses. "When you go home, you'll go back to the exact point you left, or so I've been told."

Best to be honest, right?

Right. Right, ruining healing wounds is probably not a good idea. Dexter obeys the hand on his chest and doesn't try to stand. "Shunting spell," Dexter repeats, and hangs his head to huff out a hoarse chuckle. He consciously stifles anything more than that, though. At least he can think through numbness.

Like about the fact that he'll go back to dying.

Dying in a world where most of his brothers were already dead. Or worse. Not exactly much to live for, there. Maybe dying in his world just means he'd find the others again, after.

"I can live with that," he says, lifted his head with a twisted smile. The words catch in his dry throat, so he reaches for the glass again, and htough his hands don't precisely feel steady, with the both of them he manages to bring the glass up so he can drink. He maybe spills a bit, but eh. His shirt is already probably beyond saving.

"So who's my saviour, then?" he asks between sips, eyeing Fletcher for a nametag.

A nametag he does have. Above his left breast is a white badge that says "Adrian Fletcher", and the printed badge has "Holby City Hospital" and "NHS Foundation Trust." Not a native, for sure.

"Nurse Fletcher. Call me Fletch." He replies automatically, hands still on the cup so the guy can drink. "I'm the nurse in charge of... well, just about everything considering I'm the only nurse at the moment."

He removes the cup once it seems Dexter has drank enough.

"I'm not from here, either." He replies. "So, let me welcome you to Keelial."

The name makes Dexter flinch, and the glass nearly upends; if it isn't for--Nurse Fletch's--hand on it, it would have.

Dexter almost wonders how Fletcher is doing, the Fletcher he knows, from back home, a young man--boy, almost; English, too--shoved into spotlights and danger and war and "Renn! Bug out!"

The cup vanishes without Dexter really being aware of it, but he answers automatically. "Thanks. When can I get out of here?"

He means, When can I get out of the ward?, but it maybe doesn't come out like that.

"The guild, or Keelial? Cos the latter will be a bit hard."

He's noticed that flinch, there, Dex, and he's giving you a questioning look.

"Bad memories?"

"Kid named Fletcher in my unit," said Dexter automatically again, because filtering the memories with a response was easier then trying to throttle the lot. "War's on. Don't know what's happened to him."

It was enough of a controlled outlet that the bad memories sailed on by and Dexter took another, steadier breath. "The Guild. If I tried to walk out, would I regret it?"

Would it stop him? Probably not.

"Oh." A pause. "I'm sorry." A hand goes to his shoulder, because what else can you really say? Fletch sounds like he means it, though.

"Right now? I guarantee it. In 24 hours, after I've kept you under observation, maybe not."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[EVENT | FOURTH WALL] THE DREAMING'S FLATULENCE | APRIL 15-30

Here, have Nurse Normal.

you'll do, pig. you'll do.

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