⇨ DANGEROUS ENCOUNTERS

[ringleaders]

Who: Anyone out in the library.
When: Day 59
Where: The Athenaeum
What: Towards the end of the visit, we are visited by a series of worrisome NPCs, who may or may not be illusions. There will be at least 5 NPC toplevels posted overall, all happening in a similar time period ICly (in rough chronological order), so not everyone needs to be in every thread.
Warnings: Possibility of very real danger to anyone who participates. Remember that Sans has told everyone to travel in groups, so if you aren't, you'll probably get a scolding later.

TURNING THE PAGE↴ As the carnival continues to explore the Athenaeum in the pursuit of more information about the legendary Miracles, the tension is thick with the knowledge that the Summer Court could be in pursuit any day now. On Day 59, a series of threatening encounters will begin manifesting - but are they real, or an illusion?

Comments

[npcarnival]

Ignatius is watching for when it happens, but when it does, he doesn't actually raise a hand to defend himself. Instead, he lets Rita hit him with the full force of her spell - he disappears with the water as it crests down the hall, gradually dying out as it travels around a corner.

Ignatius is gone with it, but... You know by now he almost certainly isn't actually gone. He looked like he was smirking as the tidal wave came upon him.

On the bright side, Herbert and the floor are no longer on fire.

[scientificist]

Oh...good. Things are suddenly significantly less hot and painy. Still somewhat hot and painy due to the second degree burns but he's pretty good at ignoring that kind of thing. He staggers up and over to his radio and turns the volume up again.

[stompadour]

Jasper stands there sputtering for a couple of seconds, drenched and massively indignant --

Then she rounds on Rita in anger, turning with such force that some of the water that just soaked her spatters onto the floor from her hair.

"What was that?" she snarls.

[anti_nonsense]

Rita just deflates. The energy seems to drain out of her, the fight in her eyes fading into a tired, empty look.

In the end, she couldn't do anything. Strange was taken and she couldn't stop it. She finally got the nerve to fight, but accomplished nothing.

Faced with Jasper's question, she offers a simple, unenthusiastic answer. "It's magic." What else would it be?

[stompadour]

Jasper's eyes bulge a little. "That isn't--" UGH.

She decides abruptly it isn't worth arguing about this and just turns and starts to stomp away.

Squelch squelch squelch

"You." She hauls Herbert up by the back of his shirt this time. Variety is the spice of life.

[scientificist]

Herbert goes hhhhgggnnggn when Jasper lifts him, the guy with fairly bad burns going on, up by his shirt again. He hates the library. He hates Jasper.

"What?!" he croaks, arms limply at his sides this time.

[stompadour]

Having absolutely no concept or context for what happens to organic flesh and skin when it gets burned, Jasper just assumes that noise is because he is Weak.

"Lapis Lazuli," she says. "I need to know more about what happened to her."

[scientificist]

"Then stop manhandling me," he demands hoarsely, glaring very flatly at Jasper. "I'm not made of light."

His first goal is to get put down. His second goal is to get Jasper to stop asking him things and go the hell back to the Carnival.

[stompadour]

She huffs and unceremoniously lowers him back to the ground.

"Well?"

[moonfang]

It's too late for Zangetsu to try and stop Rita from doing something that, even by his standards, is extraordinarily stupid. There's a woosh of water, some low-key panic in his gut (not again, not ever again--!), and then Ignatius, the ashes that were definitely still Strange, and the circle of flame are gone.

And his clothes, hair, and feathers are sopping wet, as well as Strange's bag. He sure hopes there's nothing that can be ruined in there. He shoots Rita a withering glare, but says nothing to her. He has to get back to camp and make sure Strange's belongings are taken care of. He speaks to no one in particular, almost announcing his inner thoughts. "We should get back to the Carnival and we can start workin' on a plan to get back Strange and Lapis Lazuli there. Clearly it ain't safe out here."

He turns to look the direction they came and what little color he has in his face drains. Now, he actually does address those present.

"Uh. Hate to interrupt, but..." he points down the corridor he'd come from, which just a few minutes ago showed a clear path back to the carnival, all familiarity and light. Now -- it was black as pitch. "That... is different than it was."

[scientificist]

"You have--" he manages to start before Zan interrupts, and Herbert looks, following the line of his arm to the now pitch-black hallway. "I'm sure it's...some sort of lighting damage." He sounds a little less strained, now that his shirt isn't taut and actively grating on his burns.

That said, he turns right back to Jasper.

"We found a pond in the library with, I assume, some sort of naked water fae in it. She dragged Lapis in with...prehensile seaweed hair--I made a sword and attempted to come to the rescue, but by the time I found where they were located underwater, they. Kissed? And Lapis disappeared--perhaps destabilised, as you said. That's all I know!"

[anti_nonsense]

Rita looks almost lifeless, standing and staring off into the distance. She hears what's being said, though, and at Herbert's explanation, she lifts her gaze slightly.

"A water fae...? That suggests Winter Court involvement," she says, sounding distracted.

[stompadour]

Jasper looks concerned about the supposed lighting damage for a moment or two, but Herbert's reply has her full attention.

She doesn't have any useful contributions like Rita does, though. Her huge meaty hands form huge meaty fists and she fixes Herbert with a startled glare that's kind of frightening in its furious intensity.

"They what," she grinds out.

[scientificist]

"Don't take this out on me!" Herbert grouses. "It was through a wall of water--I can only tell you what it looked like." Driven once again by irritation, he walks purposefully over to Rita as if he isn't at all charred.

"You should sit down," he says, reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder. Now that he's not arguing with Jasper, his voice is soft again, almost suitable for what he's going for. "Zangetsu can take a look at the lights over there, and we can move on shortly."

[anti_nonsense]

Rita shakes her head. "I don't need to sit," she protests, her voice quiet.

She doesn't argue with his other suggestion, however. Zangetsu can go ahead and investigate; she doesn't care. What does a dark hall or two matter when there are much more important things to worry about?

[moonfang]

"Lighting damage?" Zangetsu repeats, incredulous. They couldn't... sense it? That something was off? He growls and folds his ears. Humans. And gems. Apparently. He mutters under his breath. "Ain't a damn handyman. I'm going back." The more he interacts with people, the more he realizes it's not just Ichigo who never listens to him; it's everyone.

He replaces his sword on his back and slogs toward the dark corridor, his stupid not-quite-rabbit feet slapping on the wet floor. He places his hand along the shelves and his footsteps and form fade into the darkness.





And not a minute later, he walks out of a different dark hallway, from a completely different direction.

"..... Uh."

[stompadour]

Jasper follows Herbert to Rita's side with heavy footsteps. She is looming intensely. Her hair is doing the Studio Ghibli standing on end thing, a little.

"Why would she kiss her?" she demands, even though Herbert very clearly has other things to be getting on with and also made it clear that he doesn't know anything else about what happened. She looks about to go on when Zangetsu reemerges from a corridor that does not look at all like the one he just left from, derailing her thought process a little.

She squints at him angrily. "What are you doing," she snaps, as though it's his own fault that the library corridors around them have apparently become non-euclidean.

[scientificist]

"I don't even know Lapis," Herbert has just had time to testily respond when Zangetsu returns. He sighs. Deeply.

"Does anyone have a flashlight with them?" he asks. Apparently, he has to be the responsible person in this group of two kids, a troll, and a singleminded enormous woman.

[stompadour]

Jasper scowls down at Herbert for a moment -- and then she sighs irritably and illuminates her gem. It produces a fairly substantial beam of light, like a head-mounted flashlight, except that it's coming directly out of her triangular rock nose.

[moonfang]

"Don't talk ta me like that, ya big citrus-flavored asshole! I didn't want to come back here! I wanted to go back to the Carnival."

He huffs petulantly and crosses his arms. Being back with this group is kind of the last place he wanted to be. Flashlights, though? He quickly digs around in Strange's bag and finds... some soggy paper, a pair of big feathers, and a bottle of water. Wow. Extra useless.

And then there's Jasper the Orange-Nosed Reindeer. He snorts. "Yer just fulla fun party tricks, aren't cha."

[anti_nonsense]

Perhaps fortunately, Rita doesn't have the energy to make any of her own snide comments about Jasper's glowing nose.

Instead, she answers the call for flashlights by quietly holding up a hand. Above her palm, a ball of fire forms. Unlike her water spell from earlier, this one is conjured instantaneously and with minimal effort. It provides about as much lighting as a torch, anyway, and she can conjure more if needed.

But when she looks down the hall and into the darkness, the fact that they aren't out of danger yet starts to sink in. "We should look for another way," she says.

[scientificist]

Almost laughing at Jasper's solution, Herbert quickly turns it into a strangled cough before he slips his radio back into his pocket. He hopes...that his reagent doesn't wear off with all of this...being forced to keep going he's doing.

"Yeees," he says, "it's best that we make our way back to the Carnival as quickly as possible--Zangetsu, how did you, loop around so quickly? We...shouldn't be that far from the Carnival."

[stompadour]

Jasper sweeps the corridors with her nose beam, scowling. "I'll talk to you however I want, runt," she snaps to Zangetsu -- and then, "I'm not going back to the Carnival until I've found Lapis Lazuli."

[moonfang]

"Hhrrrgggghhh. Open up your ears, Doc; I SAID I didn't want to come back here. All I did was walk in a straight line down that corridor! I even kept touching the wall!" He looks at the hallway again with a pout. "Before Ignatius showed up, that hall led straight back to the Carnival. Always had. You could see it before! Something happened. Something... feels different."

He snaps back at Jasper with a hiss, "I'm really not in the mood for your shit, lady! YOU need to listen, too! Herb said she vanished, probably taken by some other fae asshole. We need to get back to the Ringmaster and regroup."

[anti_nonsense]

Rita seems to perk up at Zangetsu describing what happened. That has to be magic... but...

"Shadow magic is within the purview of the Winter Court. Whatever happened to that path, Ignatius didn't do it. Someone else could be setting a trap for us."

Glancing at Zangetsu, she adds, "I hate to say it, but he's right. We can't go chasing after them now. Not when we've got two faerie courts trying to pick us off."