checkingout | a gent of good intent who's content to be ( OPEN )

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a gent of good intent who's content to be ( OPEN )

Who: Everyone!
Where: The initial arrival rooms, the main lobby, all over the place.
When: March 3rd
What: Welcome, newbies.

ARRIVAL.

you wake up when you hit the floor in a dark room, and the air is knocked out of your lungs. the carpet is threadbare, worn with use, kind of dusty. and you're not the first person to endure this crash landing. nor will you be the last.

once your vision rights itself, you can see the well-lit hallway through the doorjam straight ahead of you. not to say there’s monsters in the shadows, but something propels you towards that door and out into the bright hallway beyond.

and once outside your room, you can hear it: the steady thrum of rain outside.

MAIN LOBBY.

there's a staircase at the end of the lengthy hallway you tumble out of. grab your suitcase and follow the dull green exit signs on the ceiling until you reach the disappointingly bland stairs that lead you down to the ornate old fashion hotel lobby.

to your left is a warmly crackling fireplace, to your right is a lobby desk. straight ahead are three large sets of doors, though only one of them is open to the public. and outside the few (curtained, permanently dark) windows is the continually steady hiss of rain. once you leave the hallway you wake up in, you won't be able to return.

welcome to the hotel.

FRONT DESK.

though there is a bell and a plaque designating the desk to be the main desk, the customer service desk, there are currently no staff members behind it. none shall answer your calls, either.

terribly sorry for the inconvenience.

SCREENING ROOM.

on a long pull-down screen, a silent version of the phantom carriage will be playing on loop. at the back of the room, between the neat rows of fold out chairs, mounted on a wobbly table is the old-timey projector, and mounted on the walls are some rather old speakers that warble out "terrifying" old music.

along the curtained windows is another long table, with a large bowl of popcorn and a large hot drink dispenser full of hot water, but without any tea or hot chocolate packets around.

OTHER.

the ballroom is currently closed, and the grand doors locked.

there is no main door leading to the outside, good luck trying to find one.

the doors to the courtyard and breakfast hall are unlocked, but looks like you've missed the morning meal. sucks for you.

ROOMS.

you've a room key with your assigned room number on it. all the new guest residences will be located on floors three and four. while there is an open elevator in the main lobby, and the buttons light up inside, the doors will not close. all in all, you'll be better off taking the stairs.

while they're the same stairs you undoubtedly came down to get to the lobby, the door to the endless hall everyone woke up in will not reappear between the main floor and the subsequent residential halls.

there are twenty rooms per floor. feel free to get to know your surroundings; or your neighbors as they trickle in around you.

EXISTING GUESTS.

it's late when the newcomers arrive, there's a good chance you'd been about to go to sleep (or just waking up, who knows, your mom's not here to tell you when to go to bed or get up). but if you're paying attention, you might hear the hustle and bustle in the lobby below; or maybe you're just drawn there because your gut told you to go join the commotion. whatever the case may be, go mingle!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Eggsy doesn't hear the thanks. Or, hears, but is too busy poking around the bland hotel bathroom for a rag. He looks for antiseptic too, but comes up painfully shorthanded, and instead improvises on the cleaning end; rubs a bar of soap viciously into the washcloth he's wetting in the sink in lieu of any proper sanitizer.

He's not Captain Jack Harkness, thank you very much, he won't clean Harry's hands for him. He'd look at the shoulder if asked, and run an errand for a doctor if one were present, but for now just hands over the washcloth and awkwardly hovers like a worried mother hen.

"For your..." He gestures by way of finishing his sentence; gestures at his own chin where he thinks Harry ought to start dabbing. And then after a good bought of carpet kicking. "Arthur was in on it, too."

"...Fuck."

It's quiet but deeply felt. He presses the rag to his jaw, cradling it more than cleaning it; he feels like he's been beaten with an entire church's worth of furniture, which is almost certainly the case. It's just as well that he hasn't broken anything. A few of his ribs feel a bit creaky but they'll heal.

The soap is a sharp sting; plain water might have been better, but he's not of a mind to correct him right now. More important matters to discuss:

"He's dead, then."

Kingsman forgives little. It categorically does not tolerate traitors.

"Dead as fuck."

And Eggsy waffles on telling Harry that it had been him who killed him; that he'd been given the option to join the new world, be part of the new Kingsman and had boldly rejected — I'd rather be with Harry — that offer. He's sure his mentor would be proud, no doubt, but killing superiors isn't something that one should toot their own horn about.

"Valentine and his valet too. Who, by the way? Not a real valet at all. More like a sharp ballerina — of death. Oh, and about, two hundred elected officials world-wide, Merlin blew up their heads." And a source of morbid delight for Eggsy: "Charlie's, too. After I decked him."

"It's been an eventful few days for you," Harry says lightly, and tucks away what he might have said about Charlie's untimely demise (to wit: Good. Parasitic, entitled little arsehole).

He peels away the cloth carefully. Beyond a couple of spots, the bleeding seems to have stopped. He looks from it to Eggsy. He looks flawless in the bespoke tailoring, of course, but moreover he looks comfortable. Not a boy in costume, or a man in uniform, but a knight in armour.

"What of the SIM cards?"

"Oh, well."

Biometrics. KC & The Sunshine Band. Fireworks. Disco balls. The world went to shit, but he stopped it from getting too bad.

"There were a couple —" thousand "— casualities as a result of the chips. But the whole plan got doxed, and they're recallin' them all now. I've heard a lot of people are rippin' them out of their cells on their own, and the news says the masses're calling for full disclosure from private companies now. Not that you could blame 'em."

Harry wonders what is hiding behind the phrase 'a couple casualties'. His were unusual circumstances, true, but he knows perfectly well what was accomplished in a small room over the course of under four minutes. He doesn't push it.

He loosens his tie, then neatly pulls the knot clear. There's still the barest weakness in his hands (I killed all those people), the tiny tremor (I wanted to).

"...Merlin and Lancelot?"

Are they - alive, unhurt, still loyal to Kingsman? He could ask the same of any of them, of course, but he knows precisely who Eggsy would turn to in the event of a crisis situation and Arthur's death.

"Fine 'n fine."

They all defer to Merlin as their leader now, and Eggsy doesn't know if he's going to take up the mantle of Arthur, but would be hard pressed to think of a better candidate. The Scotsman'd had his back throughout the entire ordeal with Valentine and his cronies, and if there were any two people he'd trust his life to... Well, it'd be Harry and Roxy, but Merlin would be a close third. Briefly, he allows himself to wonder if the two of them are here too, if they'd been unfortunate to be snatched by whatever ghost nabbing kidnappers that'd managed to wrangle themselves two iterations of Galahads. Selfishly, he'd like them to have been. But time would tell, he's still rather preoccupied with (a shaken, not stirred) Harry Hart here.

"Roxy floated up to the edge of the atmosphere and shot a satellite out of space," he says, rather proudly and with a wide grin.

Floated?

Ah.

"The prototype TAV? Christ. I had no idea Merlin kept the thing in storage." Taking off his jacket makes him wince. The stab wound doesn't look like much from the outside - Kingsman suits are designed to minimise blood staining - but there's an undeniable red patch across his shoulder. "Still. Damn good show on Lancelot's part."

(He'd kept meaning to ask Percival about the precise nature of the bollocking he'd have gotten from Arthur for bringing a girl to their boys' club. Women have done great things in the background of Kingsman, but if there's ever been an actual agent, he's never had one as a colleague. The time has passed now, he supposes.)

"...and yours," he says, glancing to meet Eggsy's eyes. "I - you have no idea how proud I am of what you've accomplished."

Ah, praise from someone resembling a father figure. That's something he's been perpetually robbed of since he was five, with all the niceties Dean ever doled out having been liberally applied with insults and fists. It stirs something in his heart, though it feels kind of like a kick in the rib cage, and looking at Harry, Eggsy can't quite help thinking — even without his mother, his sister, his dog, and his other fellow Kingsman agents; even with the looming question about exactly what sort of hotel and kidnappers could bring people back from the dead (without any signs of decomposition, looking good for a corpse, Harry) — there's worse places to be.

And worse things to hear from your mentor, but pride swelling in his chest, the compliments still leave Eggsy shifting awkwardly from foot to foot.

"Right, you're concussed," he shakes it off, reaching for the jacket on the pretense of hanging it up so Harry doesn't have to stand up unnecessarily. "How'bout I go find you a doctor."

"Thank you - I am not concussed, Eggsy," Harry says tiredly. He knows exactly what a concussion feels like. He's not - well, alright. Borderline at worst.

And it's depressing but not surprising that his protege is using praise for his achievements to diagnose head trauma. Regardless, they have to prioritise:

"We need to discuss our situation."

"A'right."

He's still going to go for a doctor. But that particular venture can wait for a few minutes; they can have their discussion, but from where he's standing, the basics are pretty clear.

"We've been kidnapped or something, yeah? I don't know by who, this don't look anything like Valentine's set up." They're not locked in a mountain; they've windows and can roam about free as they please, so it seems right now. No armed guards, no one attacking them (well, there'd been that one drunk, though he'd turned out harmless) but also no door. "No one'd tried to kill us. Yet. Though looks like they've no concept of personal space neither."

( Jack. )

At any other time, Harry would be using that remark as an opportunity for a brief lecture on the particular importance of courtesy to friendly strangers in a potentially hostile environment (no matter how overfriendly they happen to be), but this is not any other time. He can't begrudge him some lost decorum when he thought he was -

- was -

He realises belatedly that he's been working with a theory, but there's now someone with him who knows the facts of the matter. And it's a surreal question to be asking, but:

"...Eggsy, what happened to me after the church?"

[OOC: for my own ref and retconning Harry saying Jack was the first person he'd spoken to, but I'm going with a chronological order of Helen -> Fitz probably -> Jack -> Eggsy for Harry's early threads because it. makes logical sense.]

The petulant scowl at the not so distant memory of the Captain mocking his name and glasses slips off his features in a second; a split second, in the amount of time it would take to snap ones fingers. And then Eggsy is paling, looking a little sick because — Harry was covered in blood, roughed up and a little out of it (he saw that hand tremor), it had seemed like a fair assumption to make that he's just walked out of the church. But now for the first time, it is occurring to him that maybe Harry hadn't walked out of the church. And now he was going to have to tell him he was dead.

What tragic news to break.

But no sense dancing about it.

"Valentine shot you in the head." His voice sounds like gravel, and Eggsy swallows, gesturing his hands without anything to actually gesture to. "I watched on your tablet."

What did you do to me

"I see."

I wanted to

He looks down at the tie now draped across his hands, and there it is again, the tremor in his fingers. It could be simply biochemical. The aftereffects of the wave. He clenches his fists, placing a crease in the silk that he'll be fretting over later but doesn't care about in the least right now.

This ain't that kind of movie.

"I am dead, then. By your understanding."

Clear enough that he's confirming something he already held to be true.

Hella dead.

"— But you're here. I'm pretty sure 'm not hallucinating, you're definitely real and alive."

So back home almost doesn't count. Right? Right.

Right.

Or one of them is hallucinating the other. Or this entire hideous affair is an unexpected side effect of Valentine's SIM cards, taking place entirely in his own head. Or they were actually transported through time and space into an inescapable hotel.

Some of these explanations feel truer to him than others.

He turns the suitcase towards himself and frowns faintly at the combination lock. The third attempt, made on a whim - 29071981 - works, which pushes a furrow into his brow. He didn't program the damned thing.

"...I've spoken to a doctor who lives on this floor," he says, shifting from the abstraction of his 'death' to the slightly more concrete surroundings of the hotel without further comment. "I didn't get much, but she believes the environment is deliberately changed to challenge the occupants. Last month there was no heating."

No heating? Well, that's doable; he's spent more than his fair share of hours walking around London midwinter, and those cement apartment complexes didn't do all that much to hold in the heat (yet baked in high summer). But what other necessities could this place take away? Remind him to fill up his bathtub with water in case that's the next thing that goes.

Eggsy's only moderately pacified by the disclosure of his casual doctor's visit, same way he's only moderately disturbed with the revelation of some higher power at play (if there's an actual person at fault, they can find them). What draws his attention is the obedient click of the lock on the suitcase.

"What's in it?"

"Clothes, mostly." He picks his way through. Clothes, boots, nightwear - what he might pack for a few days away, less the laptop and weapons.

He picks out his cardigan, notices the gleam of polished leather beneath and extracts a pair of black brogues with an expression of light distaste on his features.

At least they're Kingsman brand.

"Not mine," he says unnecessarily, and puts them to one side. It's disquieting that he's received a kind of in-joke as a gift.

For the first time since hitting the floor in the strange, dark room on the strange, unlocatable floor below (above), Eggsy laughs. Not as big laugh, just a huff of mild bemusement — because of course it was important enough to Harry that he make note about the ugly shoes not being his.

"'Course not."

Interest peaked, Eggsy unlocks his knees and makes a quick trip from his spot in front of the bed to where he'd parked his suitcase by the door, and back again. This time he kneels on the floor and fiddles (unsuccessfully) with the lock. Huffing: "Did yours come with a cheat sheet or something?"

"It was the date of my first mission," Harry says quietly. "The twenty-ninth of July, 1981. Tried it on a whim."

Because Harry would never be so careless as to use such a deeply personal code on his luggage; he'd simply memorise a randomly generated eight-digit number.

"Whoever these people are, Eggsy, they know a great deal more about us than our taste in footwear. We ought to assume that we are under constant surveillance and have been for some time."

Distracted by punching any and all seemingly important dates into his luggage (his birthday, the date of his first arrest, the day he met Harry Hart, V-Day, the date his mum married Dean, his sisters birthday — click) —

"I've looked for cameras. Looked everywhere, haven't seen shit." And man does he wish Merlin were here to somehow hack into whatever security feed they were talking about if they ever found it.

Flipping open the lid of his suitcase, Eggsy rather carelessly roots through distinctly familiar clothing items and feels a strange sense of dread curling in his gut. There's the clothes he'd worn onto the airplane, as well as a few shirts that could have only been pulled from his laundry hamper at home. "Fuck, they've been to my fucking flat." With his mother, his sister, and — suddenly he's back on his feet again.

It's a conclusion Harry's already reached. His clothes, his favourite (lightly dog-eared) Hemingway collection, even the fucking apron from his kitchen. Though it's not as frightening a thing for him as it is for Eggsy, he knows. His house - Galahad's house - is his castle, and like any castle in its heyday it can be considered a target. But the flat Eggsy shares with his mother and sister (and execrable stepfather) is his home.

He watches the younger man get to his feet.

"There's no reason to believe your mother and sister are not safe, Eggsy."

Dean, he appreciates they're not particularly bothered about either way.

"There's no reason to think they're not somewhere in here, too."

And he idolizes you, Harry — you're like a guardian he never expected to have, then never expected to lose (and did) but he loves his mother. Loves his baby sister, too, and with tumultuous, troublesome thoughts clouding his head, Eggsy begins to pace with nervous energy. Just briefly, because the conclusion he's trying to work out is pretty quick to smack him in the face.

"I should go look for 'em."

"Alright. I'll join you shortly."

He really does need to get out of these damned clothes; he feels like he's wearing a funeral shroud. One very quick last thing before he lets the younger man go, however:

"If someone asks what you are, what do you plan on telling them?"

Because as far as Harry sees it, they don't have a single reason not to maintain cover. Their kidnappers might know them extensively, disturbingly well, but not so their fellow prisoners. Not necessarily.

That's not a hard story to come up with. Merlin had stressed that everything was going to be safer for his family if they knew little to nothing about his actual new career, and he'd spent the plane ride back and debriefing in HQ thinking of his cover. And when he'd been officially knighted — offered the mantal, accepted, signed the paperwork, been given Harry's old house — and Merlin'd told him that the Kingsman shop on Savile Row was going to be his base, things had just clicked into place all on their own.

So this is Eggsy, dropping down to haphazzardly shove everything back into his suitcase before locking it up again, and dismissively flicking his hand while he tries to get his hand caught.

"Juvinile delinquent, picked up for car theft and taken pity on by an old tailor —" That's you, Harry. "— who gave me a job and this posh suit. Or I could be your son, I don't care." Nor does he have a care or the patience to lug his suitcase around with him while he runs pell-mell all over the hotel. "Can I leave this here?"

Edited 2015-03-12 07:16 (UTC)

a gent of good intent who's content to be ( OPEN )

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