checkingout | master of the house, quick to catch your eye (OPEN)

Entry tags:

master of the house, quick to catch your eye (OPEN)

Who: Everyone!
Where: The initial arrival rooms, the main lobby, all over the place.
When: April 5rd
What: Welcome, newbies + happy Easter eggs.

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 an empty, ashy fireplace, to your right is a lobby desk. straight ahead are three large sets of doors, all three of them thrown wide open and welcoming. 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. there is, however, a pad of paper and a pen neatly aligned with the desk edge. you know. for notes.

terribly sorry for the inconvenience.

SCREENING ROOM.

on a long pull-down screen, a silent version of the cabinet of dr. caligari 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 caramel corn and a large hot drink dispenser full of hot water, with a few cups and some old looking packages of hot chocolate mix.

BALLROOM.

the third set of grand doors have been thrown wide to reveal a brightly lit, festively decorated ball room. all across the polished wood floor, all over the tables and chairs around the edge of the room, under the curtains, in the corners, hiding in the shadows, and behind the doors, characters will find:

easter eggs.

plastic easter eggs filled with jellybeans and chocolates, real eggs dip dyed and rolled in glitter; foil wrapped chocolate eggs, sugar eggs with little diaramas in the middle. there will be novelty plastic easter bunny rings sprinkles about, and general little plastic childrens toys. there will be plastic and paper easter basket grass sprinkled all over, and upbeat ambiance music intended to excite.

by the front door will be basket for people to use in their quest to collect the hundreds of eggs scattered all over the room. a sign on the floor invites them to "take one" in curvy handwritted script.

but there's no sign to warn that — some of these eggs?

are going to explode in your face.

( event details. )

OTHER.

the ballroom is currently open, 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, food is currently being served. a lot of it is candy.

ROOMS.

you've a room key with your assigned room number on it. all the new guest residences will be located on floors 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.

EGGSISTING GUESTS.

happy easter, kids.

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Harry shakes his head and closes the distance between them a little.

"Unfortunately not. I am here as a guest, against my will, as I assume you are."

He holds out a hand. He's been fairly remiss in making proper introductions lately and it's not a habit he's intent on continuing.

"Harry Hart."

She takes his hand and gives a shake.

"Darcy Lewis."

Against his will? All of this is starting to sound a lot more sinister than she thought. She really regrets leaving her taser on its charger that morning. Her first line of defense and she leaves it in her room, of all places.

"Great. Held against our will. No one can escape? Go home?"

He shakes his head as his hand falls back to his side.

"It seems not. Not at the moment. There are no exits, and you'll struggle to find the way you came in. Some people here have been seeking a way out for two months, without success."

He tilts his head in sympathy.

"I'm sorry to be the bearer of grim tidings, Ms Lewis, but I feel you ought to know what you've been brought into."

Everyone deserves, at least, to know what little has been scraped together. Nothing will soften these blows, least of all time.

She gives a shrug of her shoulders and a half smile.

"No one ever likes giving bad news, Harry. At least you gave instead of withheld, you know?"

She looked about before looking back at him. "Who's in charge of the place, then?" she asked. "Are you a part of SHIELD?"

SHIELD again. Aren't they popular.

"No, though I've heard the name. Those in charge have yet to show themselves in any meaningful way. Their presence is felt in that they provide food and housekeeping services, but not yet seen."

"You have?" That prompts a raised eyebrow from her. A secret organization and they're this popular? "How did you get to meet them?" As it could've been a good or a bad reason. She's still kind of weary of Son of Coul but at least he kind of worked for the good guys.

Thor trusted him and Darcy trusted Thor's judgement for the most part.

"They've been mentioned by a few of the other guests," Harry says neutrally, "that's all."

And he's on fairly good terms with one of them, but he doesn't feel the need to be any more forthcoming than that. The young woman seems harmless but that's no indication of anything.

She doesn't believe him and it's obvious in her features.

"They're not the kind to be mentioned pretty casually. Secret orgs and stuff like that. They cased our place and said that we could call in whenever we needed them."

No name dropping. Not with SHIELD at least. She isn't completely convinced that Harry isn't a part of a branch.

Harry looks politely nonplussed, partly because only a poor liar gets defensive over being caught in a lie but mostly because he's telling the truth. SHIELD's name has has been thrown around a few times, at least enough to be caught by the casual reader.

"Then they're likely good people to have to call on, if they're represented here."

The mere mention of the organisation could have just as easily come from a civilian like Darcy - if she is a civilian, he reflects. This could just as easily be an attempt on her part to work out if she's in the company of colleagues, or enemies.

"Though sadly we seem to all be in the same boat," he continues regretfully, "'secret orgs' or otherwise."

She gives a snort at "good people."

"Yeah, they weren't that great when we were in London and I needed their help to get Erik out of jail. Or Greenwich, when we faced off those Dark Elves."

Did she resent that? Just a little bit. She could've used the help at the time. Now? Well, she isn't sure how much help SHIELD is gonna be in this situation.

"Where are you from?"

"London." Of which Greenwich is a district, but when it's a half-hour train journey from Central and bears little resemblance thereto he can forgive the misunderstanding from a tourist. "I'm sorry - 'Dark Elves'?"

He offers a small, curious quirk of his eyebrow.

"Yeah, Jane, Erik, and I kind of saved the world."

She looks rather proud of that.

"Dark Elves, trying to destroy everything because of the Convergence of the Nine Realms. Thor did most of the fighting, Jane, Erik, and Ian, and I did all the sciencey stuff."

Her brow furrows.

"You didn't notice?"

Fortunately, Fitz has already resolved this for him.

"This sounds like it won't be so difficult for you to get your head around as it was for me, but - the London I'm from is not the London you and your colleagues" (and a Norse deity?) "were responsible for saving."

"Obviously. You would've noticed the big alien ship trying to tear through the city. So how many different worlds and Londons can people be from?" she asks, curious. "And what kind of London are you from?"

It didn't seem too different from what he was like.

Harry smiles politely. "I'm afraid without a frame of reference I'd struggle to tell you. The London I've lived in my whole life is the only one I know."

"Sounds kind of like a nicer London than the one I came from."

She looks up at his face.

"So. Harry, what's your deal? What were you in London?"

"I was a tailor. Still am, I suppose, if one continues in a profession even in the absence of their workplace. I worked in a shop on Savile Row for many years. And what was your work, Ms Lewis? More specifically than, ah, 'sciencey stuff'," he quotes with a hint of wryness.

"Darcy, please. We're stuck here, might as well get friendly. I'm technically an assistant slash intern for an astrophysicist." She looks over the suit he's wearing. "Did you make that?"

"Darcy," he acknowledges, and doesn't add that she's welcome to call him Harry in return because she already has been. "No, this was a colleague's work. Tailors rarely work for themselves - makes final fittings and the like rather difficult. May I ask how an astrophysicist ends up fighting an alien invasion?"

"Well my boss is kind of dating an Asgardian God. And he needed our help. So that's how that happened."

She looked over the work and nodded, giving him a thumbs up.

"Nice work. Maybe when I get back, I'll see if we can swing by to grab something nice for Erik for when he has to schmooze with people."

Edited 2015-04-20 17:33 (UTC)

That raises an interesting question. SHIELD certainly doesn't exist in 'his' London, but it's wholly possible that Kingsman - the tailor's, or the intelligence agency, or both - exists in theirs. More discreetly, he should hope.

"He certainly won't do better than Kingsman," he says, with a polite degree of pride in his employer (and without mentioning that one does not 'swing by and grab' a bespoke suit). "But I'm afraid I'm keeping you. Have you had the opportunity to settle in?"

She wouldn't know; she hasn't had the paycheck to spend at Saville Row. But her honesty and earnest interest in the suit itself would hopefully make up for the lack of high brow taste.

Her corner of her lip turned up again, picking up on that near invisible sense of pride.

"Nah, I'm pretty much just trying to get my bearings around here. I don't know how long I'm settling in for. Just trying to figure out what the deal is with this place. I mean, are we just stuck here to wander around? Wouldn't some people get bored?"

"There is a great deal of wandering, I'm afraid."

He considers her for a moment. She seems quite resilient, at least insofar as she's taken the Norse pantheon and some sort of alien invasion on the chin. And withholding information is really no better than lying, in the circumstances.

"Though without meaning to alarm you, there are also...challenges, of a sort. Last month the hotel was, ah, haunted."

Her good nature fades a little at the thought of challenges. Darcy's brow furrows.

"Challenges? Haunted? Who's running this place? Why are they doing this?"

She knows he doesn't have the answer but the questions had to be asked. Darcy heaved a sigh and pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Sorry. You're probably looking for those answers too."

"We all are."

Including her, from this moment on. It's a difficult burden to tell someone they've had thrust upon them, but he suspects he'd be kinder - or at least less bloody-mindedly blunt - about the news than certain other parties.

"To date there's only been one communiqué from the management. Apologising for the inconvenience."

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