lostcarnival | ⇨ CAMPING GROUNDS

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⇨ CAMPING GROUNDS

Who: Everybody!
When: Day 64
Where: The Camping Grounds
What: While the Ringmaster attempts to purge the carnival of magical tracing spells and deal with the angry fire fae in her belly, everyone else is getting sent on an emergency camping trip with some unusual local fauna.
Warnings: Camping.

CRYPTIC CAMPGROUNDS↴

You're given about three hours to prepare, after the Ringmaster tells you her plans for the coming week. There is a vast selection of camping equipment at your disposal, and the means to take along enough food for the length of the stay. The wilderness of the planet you're left on is nearly idyllic, but some people just don't like the great outdoors.

► CRYPTOZOOLOGY: As it turns out, the carnival won't be alone here. There is a varied ecosystem of cryptids to be found as well, living in relative peace and mostly reacting to the newcomers with curiousity. More details can be found on the plotting post. You are free to NPC the cryptids as much as you need to, as long as you stick to the behaviours described.

► DREAMSHARING: There is a player plot going on which will allow characters to share dreams! These are specifically more dreams than nightmares, and the mushi-adept characters will be here to help.

► CHILLAX: There isn't any plot twist for this setting, so this is mostly an opportunity to decompress from the last plot and get ready for the future. The Ringmaster will show up occasionally to help with needed medical treatments and check on things, but won't stick around for long.

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"Well what about me?" he snaps. Smoke's starting to rise from Strange's fist as he gets more and more irritated. "Am I responsible for what I did to Childermass? To Steven?"

He's stubbornly glaring at Rita, as if a petty staredown will help her see his point.

Two can play at this petty staredown nonsense. Rita meets his glare with a stubborn look of her own, and retorts, "What if you are?"

Because he very well might be. If what Lambert said was true, then in some way, they really did live their lives in Portland. It was a realization with heavy implications for Rita... but nowhere near what they would be for Strange.

"I'm not," Strange definitively answers. "I could have been that man but I am not him. Were I in possession of my own memories and had my own life, I wouldn't have done half the things I did. And I'm certain others would agree."

And yup, there goes his fist, setting itself on fire. Unfortunately, his hands are sitting on the sheet, which means that the sheet has set itself on fire. As much as he'd love to keep yelling at Rita, there's a sheet that's on fire which is now a bigger problem.

Strange still hasn't gotten the hang of the fun new 'spontaneously setting himself on fire when he's pissed' aspect of his new changes. He scrambles slightly to toss the sheet off of him before it can set even more things on fire.

It takes a moment for Rita to react - briefly, it seems, she considers letting the standoff continue while the bed or even the tent burns down. Once Strange starts moving, however, it snaps her attention to the sheet, which she helps wrench away from him, throwing it onto the floor of the tent.

Then, she holds a hand over the crumpled, burning sheet, coaxing the fire away from the fabric. The flames lift into the air, seemingly drawn towards her hand, which curls into a fist. The fire is summarily snuffed out, leaving only wisps of smoke in the air and crispy black marks on the ruined sheet.

With that done, she lets out a small sigh of relief.

Strange is having less luck getting the fire away from his hand. He's muttering spell after spell under his breath, trying to draw the fire away from himself. Any flames that he manages to lift up and extinguish are soon replaced with new flames. That anger at Rita is still there. But added to it are anger at this stupid thing happening with his hand and anger at himself for not figuring it out (despite the fact that Strange has had less than twelve hours alive with his fire powers).

So instead, he's just kind of sulking in an angry pout before Strange moves his still-on-fire hand in the vague direction of Rita. "Can you do anything about this?" he grumbles, almost under his breath.

"It doesn't hurt me," he quickly clarifies. "It's just..." And he trails off, before going into a sulk.

The interruption has taken some of the wind out of Rita's sails, and she looks back to Strange with a tired, but still decidedly unhappy look, seemingly trying to decide if she wants to get back to arguing again.

... It's probably not worth it. And it's hard to muster up that level of anger against someone who looks this pathetic.

"You're hopeless," Rita mutters after a delay, settling back into her chair and tugging it a little closer to the cot. She squints at his hand, then raises her gaze to him. "It's not a spell, so I'm not sure I can help, but... I'll try."

She holds out her hands, one above his burning hand, and one below. Using her fire magic, she tries to exert her will over the flames, effectively suffocating them. But the technique definitely won't work if he's still stressing out and generating more fire, so...

"Close your eyes," she tells him.

Strange matches Rita's look with a sulky yet slightly cornered one of his own. He has a feeling that she'll get back to arguing...and is pleasantly surprised when she doesn't. The fact that Rita's helping him with his currently on fire hand is appreciated, even if a part of Strange wishes that he had figured this all out on his own.

"I'm not hopeless," Strange grumbles, as he closes his eyes. "I just don't know how this works yet."

He has had a very weird past twelve hours, okay? Strange is still stressing out and fuming a bit, but closing his eyes means that the fire's slowly starting to sputter out a little, even before Rita starts suffocating some of his flames.

Rita frowns at his protest, but manages to keep herself from arguing, focusing instead on his hand. With how close she's bringing her own hands, she needs to pay attention if she doesn't want to get burned.

"Take deep breaths. In through your nose, out through your mouth."

Believe it or not, Rita knows a thing or two about breathing exercises. Does she ever apply that knowledge when she's the one who needs to calm the hell down? Nope, pretty much never.

As she tries to snuff out the fire, she slowly brings her hands closer, trying to close them around his.

Strange still has his eyes closed as Rita moves her hands closer to his. He does the breathing exercise: in through his nose, out through his mouth. The fire on his hand continues to sputter out, but Rita's magic suffocates it and snuffs it out quicker than it normally would. The fire on his hair starts to recede as well, until it's tiny little pinpricks of flame.

He doesn't move, even if the end result is Rita grabbing his hand. Strange is focused entirely on his breathing and focused entirely on calming the fuck down.

As the fire finally recedes to the point that it extinguishes, Rita slowly clasps her hands around Strange's in a gesture that ought to be reassuring, both in the gentle touch of it, and in the knowledge that it's only possible because they've successfully stopped the fire.

She waits a few moments, then says, "You can look now."

It hasn't fully occurred to her that the result of this is Rita sitting and holding hands with the guy she was screaming at a minute ago.

As he feels Rita's hands around his, Strange looks a bit surprised. Oh. That's her hand. Maybe that breathing thing did help. Though how the hell Rita knew breathing exercises is beyond him. He opens up his eyes and looks down at his not-on-fire hand.

Strange doesn't make any effort to take his hand away from Rita's. Instead, without really thinking, he reaches over with his free hand to put it on top of Rita's. He gives her hand a gentle squeeze.

"Thank you for rescuing me," he admits, before the yelling can start up again. "And thank you for being there when I hatched."

Rita tenses when he places his hand over hers. The last thing she expected was to be thanked for those things now, after all that arguing. Her face reddens and after a moment of confused staring, she jerks her hands away.

"I-it was the obvious thing to do. Both of those things," she mutters, awkwardly. Without looking at him, she adds, quickly enough that it could almost be missed, "I'm glad you're back."

She is, even though she's absolutely furious about his opinions on Ignatius. For the past week, she's been compiling notes, researching the fae... and finding herself reminded again and again that the one person who'd be most enthusiastic about the task, who'd eagerly read every word of hers and contribute plenty of his own thoughts, wasn't there.

As Rita yanks her hand away from his, Strange gives Rita a slightly tired smile. Yeah, he kind of figured she'd do something like this. But even though she quietly admitted she's glad he's back, Strange heard it so it still counts. The moment of sincerity lasts for a moment before Strange continues teasing Rita.

"However, you didn't actually help me out of the egg," said as he still gives Rita a tired yet shitty grin. "Was it the nudity or the slime that made you pause?"

He reclines slightly, propping himself on his elbows, mostly so Strange doesn't have to put his head back on the awful wet towel that Herbert's making him use for a pillow.

Rita grimaces. She was hoping he was disoriented enough not to notice her slip away...

"Both," she retorts, looking annoyed. "The others looked like they had it under control, so I wasn't going to touch you if I didn't have to."

"You'll have to get used to nudity," Strange teases. And before Rita can question him, he continues. "9S wants to learn about humanity. I'm certain there's a couple of essential human experiences that he'd want to learn about with only you."

Like sex. Strange is implying that 9S will want to have sex with Rita at some point. Can androids even have sex? Hell if Strange knows. He does know that 9S probably doesn't have any junk, but he also knows that there's so many different ways to be intimate. They can work around that problem if needed.

Rita's face turns beet red.

Her body stiffens, and when she seems to find it in her to move again, there's only one thing to do. She leans in and slams a fist into Strange's stomach.

"Don't think I won't kick your ass just because we're in the medical tent!" she sputters, her voice shrill and strained. "Y... you're not even supposed to know about that in the first place, you creep! If I catch you spying on us again, you're dead, got it!?"

Strange already had a heartfelt and slightly awkward conversation with 9S about this back when they were at the space station. As such, he's not as mad at Rita as he will be when he finds out that other idiots he knows were secretly dating. Besides, Rita's reactions are hilarious.

Unfortunately, he can't really dodge the fist to his stomach. Rita nails him pretty good and it takes Strange a moment to catch his breath.

"I've known for a month or so," Strange points out, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. Bit too late for him not to know about things. "9S and I chatted about the two of you while we were at those Olympics. Besides, it's always best to be open about these things."

With a huff, Rita sinks back into her chair. "I know. He told me you were scrying on us when--" when they kissed for the first time, but that's hard to say, so she stops and starts again with, "--while Lambert and Syrlya were watching, too. So I guess everyone in the department knows, thanks to you." She sounds bitter.

"What's so good about being open about it?" she continues in a grumble. "Some people actually value privacy, you know."

"Being open about it means that people can't have the wrong assumptions. For instance, I knew about 9S and 2B—and specifically, how 9S felt about 2B."

Strange is just going to let Rita draw her own conclusions there. Needless to say, it was a very awkward conversation while Strange tried to delicately find a way to ask 'are you two-timing poor 2B.'

"Besides, when you're open about things, others can help out and give advice." The teasing lessens in his voice a little bit: this part, he's saying with 100% sincerity. "He really cares about you."

Rita winces slightly when he mentions 2B. So Strange knows about that, too...

"I know he does," she says quietly. Then, scoffing, she adds, "...Hmph. What the hell would I want advice for?"

Considering he's a terrible gossip and a creep with no boundaries, it's really best that Rita just assume Strange knows everything and work from there.

At her question, he simply smiles. "Courting. What to do during your first fight. Navigating all those tricky bits of a relationship that nobody tells you exist until you run into them yourself. And I can help because unlike half the carnival, I've actually maintained a successful relationship for years on end."

Strange loves his fellow coworkers, but he can only think of a handful who might have had a functional relationship to begin with.

"A successful relationship? I don't know, I'd sooner chalk that up to a statistical anomaly than start looking to you like you're some kind of love guru." Rita folds her arms, giving him a dubious look. She can only imagine his wife must have endless patience.

"Besides, even if we had problems, I doubt they'd be the sort that you have any experience with."

Arabella does have endless patience which contrasts wonderfully with Strange's endless persistence.

"Some of them would be," Strange explains, as if this is the most obvious thing in the world. "Most first time couples have the same problems. Besides, I know 9S is inexperienced with relationships and I have a feeling you're the same."

It might be a bit callous to say that. But Rita's an abrasive grump who talks to rocks: Strange has a pretty strong suspicion she's never had a boyfriend or girlfriend before.

A tinge of redness returns to Rita's cheeks. She knows it's true; they both have no clue what they're doing. But in a way, that's fine. It means neither of them have any specific expectations, no need to be like other couples.

"Whatever happens, we can figure it out ourselves," she declares. "We don't need your help."

As Rita blushes, Strange gives her a wry little grin. Pegged it. It really is adorable how predictable Rita is at certain points.

"I'm certain you can," he flippantly responds, with a little shrug. However, as he continues talking, Strange's tone gets a bit more serious and a bit more gentle. "But having a relationship is damn hard. Sometimes it might be nice to talk to someone who's gone through the same. And if that happens, you can always talk to me."

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