Felfri Part 1 Overflow

[youngtimer]

Continued from here!
Part 1 Top Level

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[boneshears]

He's leaning close as he stitches the wound, so there's not much room for Horatio to see the facial journey Gabriel goes on as he's carefully pulling the muscle back into place. But the flinch is obvious, and hard to avoid, Gabe looking down and away as he debates with himself on whether he should lie and cover what had actually happened. It was personal. It should be private.

But... He didn't know how to deal with it. He didn't know how to broach the topic with Montgomery over text and he was frankly... Scared to try it face to face. What if he snapped? What if Montgomery snapped? It was too much. There were too many variables he couldn't control.

"...He didn't think I was real."

It's so soft at first. Like he doesn't trust himself to say it louder.

"Said I didn't make any sense when I tried to tell him what had happened. That he'd been gone. I... Snapped. Lunged at him because I wasn't sure if it was him or some trick. We'd just arrived here and I was in my old tactical gear."

He sets down the forceps, giving the wound one last clean out with saline before he begins carefully pinching the skin back together, assessing if this is a stitches job or if he needed to get the medical staples.

"He's always been stronger than me. And I guess... He didn't think I was real."

He smiles, but it's thin, tight. Sad. He doesn't yet know that to Montgomery's eyes, with his ability to detect magic and strangeness and with the Veil absent, he'd lit up on his radar in a way he never would have before. Of course he hadn't thought this was Gabriel. He hadn't had the benefit of the Veil to help hide away just how fucked his bloodline really was, and just how much closer to monster than human they were.

"I... I regenerate, Horatio. I have to pay a blood price for it, but my wounds close themselves over time. Makes me a nightmare to kill, when I've got access to it. I stopped fighting."

He picks up a fresh needle, and starts attaching fresh sutures.

"He didn't."

[seacub]

Coping would, assuredly, be ideal. There's a slight humming grunt, a short 'mnm' in reply for now, but at least he accepts the blanket and holds it more tightly around him. It's a little foreign to have, actually.

He didn't have a blanket in his piano.

The question does its job- with a slow blink, he looks up to frown. "....I haven't seen any other rooms..."

[alchepistol]

Then....

[ Saint-Germain tilts her head. Classical references, hm.... ]

Ariadne.

[ she's thinking "women who logic and practicality their way through befuddling situations"

she's not thinking "by using string"

but WHOOPS spider joke ]

[i_am_emmet]

I hid mine in a rock. I thought that E+L could use it as a way to track me also.

Re: For Bucky

[buckybbarnes]

Bucky nodded slowly, taking that all in, frowning slightly. "So...all that means that...that things aren't going to be the same even when we go back again?"

He just grimaced slightly. "I don't understand any of this. This is all so far above anything I've ever...I'm an assassin, I just deal in matters of...taking out one piece, ending a conflict that way. I don't know about gods, or dimensions, or monsters. This is...way too much..."

[youngtimer]

"I get it. Believe me, I do. Try learning stuff this complicated when you're only fourteen..." He shrugged it off, making it clear he wasn't trying to invalidate how overwhelming it all was to Bucky.

"But I was an assassin for a while, too. I know what that laser focus is like, how strange it is to lose it, to not know what to do with yourself. Something like this? Best thing you can do is put one foot in front of another until it's over with. But ..."

He thought a moment about the other thing Bucky had said. "It won't be a complete change. Last time, it was just the balance if power shifting. Political climates, that sort of B.S. We won't be different monsters, most of the city will still be the same. Maybe a couple of buildings might change, but ... if there's one thing you can count on, it's change. You already know how to stay on your toes and adapt to a situation, you'll be fine. Even if it might not feel like it right now."

[buckybbarnes]

"I don't know how well I feel like I adapt," Bucky answered honestly. "In the last months, I went from HYDRA's Asset, to falling here with no powers and getting found by Peter, who said he knew me, and then ending up in those woods with those monsters, then turning into a monster and mutilating people, and then when I think I can just hide from that, I'm me, like this, again, here, and..."

He shook his head slowly. "There's change, and then there's...too much change."

[youngtimer]

"Yeah." Horatio nodded slowly, remembering their previous conversation. The poor guy wasn't going to be able to figure out who he was very well at this rate.

"While you were hiding, did you at least get a little time to think? That's better than nothing."

[buckybbarnes]

"...mostly, I just tried to focus on not attacking people. It was...getting close to the point of pain when...when all of this happened."

Bucky grimaced a little, looking away again.

[waitingforplayer2]

Y-yeah... th-thank you... I...

[ She's still shaken. Horatio's power - she hasn't seen it used like that before. She didn't even know he had time powers before today. He came from a very powerful world, didn't he?

The conscripts are still glaring at her, despite Horatio's admonitions, and she winces. When she turns to Horatio to speak again, it's quietly so they can't hear. ]

E+L... they got to us so fast...

[charmpagne]

That would be perfect actually, thank you...

[And while he wouldn't exactly blame Horatio for dropping a soggy cookie, he wouldn't be all that happy to be dropped right now either. He's very glad he's resisting that urge.]

And I...I don't really know much of anything, no. An alternate dimension, you say...

[Well! That's...cool. Great. Love that for them. It's not like things could get any weirder!!!]

You say you were actually here before, then?

[youngtimer]

"That's okay," he says, with a little tilt of his head. Taking a washcloth from near the sink, he soaks it in the warm water and brings it over. "Would you be okay with me cleaning you up a little? That way you don't have to let go of the blanket, you can stay warm."

[youngtimer]

"That's unfortunately where you're going wrong," Horatio frowned. "As much as you might not want to, you need to feed once a month. If you consciously choose a person who's a scumbag, like a lot of us do, it's easier. You're keeping other people safe. Doing the populace a favor. But ... the sooner you find a way to deal with it on your own terms, on a regular schedule ... the easier it'll be to keep control of yourself. To not have it constantly intruding on your thoughts."

[youngtimer]

I know.

[he shakes his head, frustrated with the whole situation: Felfri, the war, these conscripts, the outcome of the operation. they could have gotten so much more, but what makes him angrier is the fact that they needed to do this sort of thing at all]

It's the cameras, it's the goddamn cameras. If there were a way to get in there and actually take their surveillance system down ...

[youngtimer]

Hiding the phone isn't going to do you much good if you've still got the damn chip in the back of your neck. We need to figure out a way to get those out, first.

[youngtimer]

Horatio's initial thought is: Who didn't think he was real? For a brief moment he thinks Gabe is talking about one of Felfri's Fog followers - try saying that three times fast, he amends, wryly - and then he realizes exactly what's being explained to him.

"Fuck."

The curse comes out as a pained sigh. After having seen Gabe grieve Monty's disappearance the way he had, talking him out of putting himself through death after death until nothing hurt anymore ... Horatio can only imagine how much all of this must have stung.

"I don't blame you for not trusting seeing him, not after the shit that's been pulled on us in the past. And if you were in your gear... Christ, that must've been like taking the partition out of a betta fish tank." When Gabe pinches the wound closed and explains the regeneration, it's six of one and half a dozen of the other on which is making Horatio wince in pain.

"So you just let him beat you up?" Something about that really makes him upset, and not in the sad sort of way. He can feel his jaw clenching again already. He wants to ask if some twisted part of Gabe thought he deserved it because of all the shit his old man beat into his head ... but that wasn't the sort of thing you said when someone, dumb as they were in some ways, was in the act of poking a needle through your open wound.

[youngtimer]

Normally, I'd say something like that was obvious, but given that there are probably a lot of other Arachne among the Felfri monsters ... that might work in our favor. I like it. Do you want to figure out some sort of code now, that we can use in case of an emergency? If you and Cagliostro need me to come bail you out? Or, you know, vice versa. Not that I expect that to happen, but I've been wrong before.

[alchepistol]

That's sensible.

[ She considers. A code that is suitably cautious....But not one that others are likely to respond to, believing the ad to be genuine. ]

Let's use "looking to borrow a book". Adjust the book's title for hints to your location.

[waitingforplayer2]

[ She listens to him vent. The transport rumbles as they go over a bump. Nanami looks around; the other conscripts don't look like they're paying that much attention to the relative newbies. She lowers her voice. ]

Do you think... you could do that? You've got an amazing power, Horatio-kun...

[seacub]

"Huh..?"

Ooof, that shock sank in hard. Emporio doesn't give an immediate answer, but after a second or so he does nod. Alright- yeah, he can...getting clean seems fine. That seems...

"...who are you?"

Getting answers is finally a thing that's occurring as a thing to do.

[youngtimer]

Horatio blinks, momentarily confused as he sits next to Emporio to start daubing at his face gently. Then he realizes that he's not being asked to introduce himself a second time: that the boy means it in a broader sense.

"I help run an organization called The Lighthouse, which helps people who've just arrived in Ryslig to get settled. That's the name of the peninsula we're on, right now. Only ... it's a little more complicated to explain than usual. And we're not at the Lighthouse. As far as I can tell, this is an underground cave system under the city of Felfri. I've only ever been to Felfri once before, and it was ... very different from how it is right now."

[youngtimer]

Not alone.

[he shakes his head, the response coming almost immediately: clearly, he's given this a great deal of thought]

First of all, I'd need a map, because it's not smart for me to just Blink into a place without knowing what part I'm going to end up in. And then I'd need other people to act as distractions while I take down the surviellance, especially since a son of a bitch as paranoid as Elias is bound to have all kinds of security measures for if someone unauthorized enters the room, no matter how they do it.

[youngtimer]

Not bad, not bad. [he smiled] All things considered, let's call all of this Dante's Inferno. Maybe not as many circles but ... plenty of monsters. And if you make it to the Arcade ... that could be Ready Player One. Or Ender's Game.

[alchepistol]

[ Oh! Player1! That is Ra's-Manifestations-Are-What-Is-Right-And-True Atem's RSDOS user name! Saint-Germain does not know the last two texts in question, but she has potentially connected some dots. ]

That suffices.

hazel u are too good at saving me from my own exhausted brain pfhfjkgh

[seacub]

He probably would've done better with 'why are you doing this', it's true. Sometimes, brains spit out words in...a bit of a mess, though.

He catches the gist. Normally he would wake in a place called Ryslig (or at least that's how Horatio sees it?? ...Is this somehow NOT the result of his own actions??), instead they're in Felfri, which is....

Wait-

"...what was it like before..?"