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

[checkingin]

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!

Comments

[lesson]

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."

[youcantransform]

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.

[lesson]

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.

[youcantransform]

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."

[lesson]

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?"

[youcantransform]

"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.

[lesson]

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?"

[youcantransform]

"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."

[lesson]

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.

[youcantransform]

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.

[lesson]

"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."

[youcantransform]

"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.

[lesson]

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?"

[youcantransform]

Harry is momentarily silenced, because Christ almighty, he cares.

Hasn't Eggsy been let down by enough fathers already?

"You may. And the standard cover," everything up to 'posh suit', the one he'd expected because it was typical of new recruits less the delinquency, "will be fine."

[lesson]

Yeah. Get let down by enough and you stop caring pretty quickly. Makes a lotta things a lot easier.

"Great, good," he splutters haphazardly, backing up to the door. "I'll come back for it, I promise." And with his hand on the doorknob, those deep seeded Harry Hart loyalties rear their head, and have Eggsy spinning back around briefly.

"You're alright, right? I can leave you and you won't —" Die.

[youcantransform]

And Harry Hart - covered in dust and dried blood, bruised and bleeding and feeling very much as if he'd just like to lay down and let the world pass him by for a few days - looks back at Lee Unwin's son, and nods.

"I'm alright, Eggsy. You can leave me."

He pauses. He doesn't want to keep him, but keeping their story straight is too important to skimp on.

"One last thing. A few people have seen me. Should anyone ask, and it is unlikely that they will, I was involved in a mass shooting at a church in Kentucky. Though telling people to mind their own business is as fine an alternative as it ever was."

The good lies are mostly the truth. Nobody needs to know he was the instigator and not a survivor. He nods at the door.

"I'll find you later."

And he sincerely hopes he doesn't find his mother or sister on his travels.

[lesson]

Valentine was the instigator. Harry is just wallowing in shame and blaming himself for things he couldn't control. That had kind of been the point of the V-chip, and is something they're going to address at a later point. But not now, not when Eggsy is jiggling his leg with the urge to bolt down the hallway and knock on every door for his mother.

"Church shooting, Kentucky, tailor, tell 'em to shove up their arses if they get nosey." He's got this. "Right, Harry. I'll be back in an hour."