nightlogs | SLEIGH BELLS RING ❄ MINGLE

SLEIGH BELLS RING ❄ MINGLE

SLEIGH BELLS RING

Those that escape from the theater all seem to come out through the same doors. When they get there, they can see that the theater isn't actually a building. There's only a free-standing set of theater doors on the playground. At the rear side of them is a brick wall.

Those that exit will find they can't re-enter.

None of the humans have seemed to notice the door or them, even those driving by.

Not everyone escapes at the same time. It comes in fits and starts, them filtering of the theater. Some can walk out mostly unharmed, some limp out, some come out supporting each other.

What they find outside is... uncanny. There in the playground is a massive sleigh, but one that looks not-exactly-traditional, with equipment and boosters that look almost like a mix of technology and something magical.

It's been expanded into many carriages, almost like a roller coaster. Harnessed to it are eight massive reindeer, champing slightly at their bits. It appears the people that attacked and created the theater are at least long gone. That means that as people slowly filter out they can check up on each other, provide first aid, and reassure each other.

OOC DETAILS
❅ Status effects: Any injuries or damage that happens to a character will stick when they leave the Multiplex. That means that someone that gets facehugged by a facehugger will have an alien larva problem that may be causing some serious indigestion soon. Anyone that gets Borg-nanited through the neck will start having the nanites take over them. However the myth healing will slow these processes down until they can get to the Pole, and there are magical means at the Pole to help the characters survive this.

❅ First Aid/Other Supplies: The sleigh will have magically anticipated their needs. While it won't have the antivenom for Kaa because only a magical plant that grows at the Pole can cure the bites, it will have plenty of well-stocked general first aid kits. Applying first aid can help the myth healing heal someone more quickly and is important for injured characters that opted out of the myth healing.

❅ Timing: People can bendytime the timing of when their characters have escaped to play in this and "Let's All Go To The Movies" at the same time. People can also intro here late if they need to wrap some things up in the other post first.

❅ Intro: Players can use this post to intro instead if that's their preference. You can just assume your characters had to run from scary things in the theater and either handwave their circumstances, or assume your character found a way out more quickly than others.

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Fuck, she couldn't be happier to see Stacia. If she had ended up here without her, that would've been... rough.

"Not avoiding people," she corrects. "I don't wanna spook the reindeer. Animals tend to freak out around me."

That's an understatement.

"What're the chances you'd be willing to grab a first aid kit and bring it over here?" it's not asking a lot, but clearly Stacia has her own idea of how Elle should be dealing with this.

Stacia glances back at the reindeer in question, which are very large and could do a lot of damage if they were freaked out, even if people weren't already injured and traumatized. Yeah, okay, it's fair for Elle to err on the side of caution in this instance.

"Moreso than most people with Rage?" she asks, lowering her voice. Getting into Rage is edging into territory they're still generally keeping secret. "I didn't notice them getting antsy over me, but I'm on the lower end of that scale."

Elle suppresses a wince. She's really not supposed to talk about it, but right now she doesn't have much of a choice. And if she's going to let anyone know, Stacia's the person to do so.

"Yeah." That's the most she's willing to say on the subject. Isaac will probably want to metaphorically kick her ass for giving away that much. A lecture is in her future, that's for sure.

"Glad to see you, by the way," she gives her best strained smile. It's not her most elegant deflection, but she's willing to give herself a break.

Stacia nods and adds a note to her mental file on Elle as she turns around and heads back toward the sleigh. Sometimes people have that kind of Rage; it's always good to know who is going to set off animals.

She comes back with a first aid kit and a smoothie cup for some reason, which she gently sets down nearby before she cracks open the kit.

"I got an unconscious guy in there," she says by way of explanation, jerking her chin toward the cup. "I don't want someone to sit on him or toss him in the garbage or anything by accident."

She pulls out a bottle of hand sanitizer, of which she makes liberal use.

"All right," she says, "am I picking shit out of you or just cleaning and bandaging?"

Elle's eyebrows raise in surprise, but she doesn't question Stacia's explanation. There's a guy in the smoothie cup. Why not?

"Mostly just bandaging."

The worst of it is the claw marks from when the thing climbed its way up her back, the deep bite wound it gouged out of her shoulder, and the hole in her side from a bayonet. They rest of her is scraped up from claws and teeth and couple of grazed musket balls, but nothing's nearly as serious.

"My healing's fucked, but it's still better than a humans. I'd say focus on my side and shoulder. Those are bleeding the worse." She's getting lightheaded, and she'd really rather avoid passing out if she can. Also they hurt like a motherfucker, but she's managing to keep pretty stoic through pain so far. It's a matter of personal pride, if nothing else. She can take it. She's gone through worse.

A guy stashed in a smoothie cup isn't even the weirdest thing Stacia and Elle have dealt with today.

"Damn girl," Stacia says, looking over Elle's injuries. "I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you got these saving some idiots from certain death."

As she gets to work, she starts filling Elle in on the information she's picked up so far; to give her something to focus on other than the ouches and ows of getting patched up when you don't have someone with a healing gourd on hand.

"So, this is second-hand from an unconfirmed source, but supposedly this is a world very similar to Bunny's world, and that Jack Frost guy is very similar to Bunny's Jack. I heard that from the Jack in question, but we should definitely keep an eye out for Bunny to confirm it.

"First-hand, I can confirm that Kenzie's here, and Need, and a cat girl Need claimed as her daughter. There's also a talking wolf who isn't a Garou named Amaterasu, and a Garou whose name I didn't get because we were too busy running away from a dragon. I also met this huge guy named Miguel who indicated he works in reality repair, but he's pretty cranky so remember to be extra cute when you deal with him."

Luckily, Elle's always extra cute.

"Dan's here, if you haven't seen him yet, and said the same. It's been a few years for him, though. He's looking pretty good."

Older. Healthy. Happy. Better than the last time she saw him, that's for sure. Something in him has settled.

"I met the cat girl. She was there when I got most of this," she waves toward her general state of injury. "She got cornered and I provided an escape route," mostly by playing bait, she doesn't say. It's not like she knew her healing was gonna be fucked up at the time. She might've played things differently.

Elle's happy to hear that Kenzie's around. She didn't get to know her super well, but she knows Stacia likes her. The other Garou, she's a bit more wary of.

"I assume you're gonna do your check-in with the wolves," she says. The Garou need to figure out their pecking order, after all, even if it's in the most informal ways. "How involved do you want me to be?"

She doesn't want to stick her nose where it's not welcome (that's a lie, she loves sticking her nose where it's not welcome), and not all Garou work well with Fera. She'd rather know what she's getting into before having to put some asshole in their place. Hopefully that won't be necessary.

"I haven't seen him yet, but I'll be sure to find him and give him a big hug," Stacia says happily. She adores Dan, so hearing that he's here too is a delight. Maybe it's selfish of her to be pleased that Dan is in a situation as dangerous as this; but to be fair, Dan finds dangerous situations at least as well as Fera do. At least if they're both in the same place, she can help watch his back. "A few years, huh? I came straight from the Wilderlands, as far as I can tell. If the North Pole doesn't have running water, I'm breaking into a fancy hotel."

She chuckles, pleased that Elle already knows she doesn't have to ask. "Yeah, I'm going to do a check-in, as soon as I can figure out who they are. We were both wolves when we ran into each other, and I didn't get a specific vibe off of them; so all I know for sure is that they're not one of Falcon's."

Language, language, language. Even when they're mostly off in a private corner by themselves, gotta watch their language. Can't get too comfortable throwing key words around. Besides, Elle's a Bastet, she appreciates secrets and being circumspect.

Stacia hums thoughtfully. "My first impulse is to have you hang back for round one. If they need to be smacked around about playing nice with other shifters; that's my responsibility more than yours." Garou aren't even known for 'playing nice' with other Garou, much less Fera. Stacia knows she was lucky to have fallen in with such a Fera-friendly sept after her First Change, though she hopes that she'd have been smart enough to question their superiority complex even without that twist of fate.

"I figured I'd let them know that you're here, though I can keep quiet on exactly what you are if you want to play Twenty Questions with them, too."

Edited 2023-08-16 04:16 (UTC)

"That's where we're heading? Explains the ride, I guess."

That... may be a problem for Elle and the reindeer, but she's not going to panic about it. Yet.

She's happy to pawn off responsibility for making sure the Garou play nice. She's just not sure whether she wants them to know who she is before they meet her. Thank fuck they're not Silver Fangs-- Ace is a one in a million.

"Let them know there's a Bastet around, but don't point me out. I'll approach them and--" she snorts in anticipation of her own bad joke "--let the cat out of the bag myself. I'd appreciate an update after the talks, with whatever you're comfortable sharing."

There aren't many Garou insider secrets that Elle isn't already in on, but she doesn't need to play her hand so easily. She doesn't have a specific plan yet, but she appreciates any opportunity to cultivate an air of mystery. She knows Stacia gets it.

"Yeah, apparently it's got some kind of protection on it that keeps people like the guy who made the multiplex from getting in," Stacia says. "Which is why we're all camped out here instead of getting ferried there in stages; Jack and Bunny don't want to leave anyone behind when we go."

She takes a quick break from Elle to check on the guy on the smoothie cup, make sure the visible effects of the poison haven't progressed into the we're fucked zone. It hasn't, so she returns to patching Elle up. The bad joke gets a groan and a flick on an uninjured stretch of shoulder.

"I can make that work," she says, of indicating the presence of a Bastet without tying it to a specific name and face. "Assuming the privileges run my way, of course. But the one I ran into -- literally -- seemed flexible enough. And yeah, I'll pass the relevant deets back to you; though that might interfere with your mysteries if get it into their head to see who else I chat with."

She might even let them! It's good to encourage Garou to use their brains instead of just their claws and teeth.

"Smart. We might actually be in a place with infrastructure! Well, non-hostile infrastructure," she says, thinking of everything she's heard about the Rig.

Elle laughs when Stacia flicks her.

"Hey, if they work it out on their own, I'm not gonna stop them. Can't leave all the sneakiness to the Ragabash."

That is, assuming the other wolves aren't also Ragabash. Which is possible, if not plausible. And Kenzie's an Ahroun... they just need a Philodox, Theurge, and Galliard to get a "proper" pack. It should be interesting to see how things go.

"How traditional are you planning on being? You gonna lay down the Litany?" she's mostly joking, but Elle knows all too well that some Garou need that firm hand or they're gonna be trouble. Hopefully that's not a case here.

"It's hard to lay down that particular series of laws very hard when I'm already fudging them," Stacia says wryly. Sure, she mostly only shares secrets and vocabulary on a need-to-know basis, but she'd bet there are some hardline Philodox out there who'd disapprove of her letting anyone peek under the Veil. "I'm mostly going to put an emphasis on 'playing nice with the other kids' and 'not completely losing your shit if a vampire shows up'."

That had been a fun argument with Kenzie. Stacia had needed to pull rank to get the Ahroun to come around to kill the vampire later, after we use them against our enemies.

Fuck, she hopes no one outranks Stacia. While the Garou technically hold no power over Elle, it would make things a hell of a lot easier if they can all fall in with the party line.

"Yeah I, uh-- haven't really been worrying about the Veil." Not that she has any grand ordinance to do so, but it's generally a good idea to be careful about it. "It's not like anyone here's been suffering from Delirium."

It's almost like people other worlds didn't have a deep-set instinctive fear caused by thousands of years of being hunted and culled by Garou. Imagine that?

"Weird, it's almost like other realities don't have a history of humans being hunted and harried by shapeshifters or something."

Stacia has opinions about Garou throughout history and the ripple effects that history has had on the modern day. Like most of her opinions, one of the available options is 'yelling'.

"I'm just erring on the side of caution. Also, I don't really feel like giving a full TED Talk every time someone new shows up."

Can't relate, Elle loves giving TED Talks.

"Almost!" she agrees sarcastically, then winces when Stacia moves to a particularly tender part of her shoulder.

"What do you think, Doc, am I gonna make it?" Elle asks wryly. She'll be probably be okay in the long-term, but Stacia's input on the short-term severity would be appreciated.

"Dr. Stacia says that you probably shouldn't get into any more monster fights for at least twenty-four hours, or however long this takes to heal," Stacia says dryly. "You know, like that's a choice we can make for ourselves rather than something forced upon us by circumstance."

She gently pats the last bandage into place. "I'd be concerned if you were a normal human, but I think you're probably fine. Get yourself some protein and a nap when we get to safety, and let someone know if you start having chills or something starts smelling gross."

And isn't it wild that "blood" doesn't count as "gross" anymore? The things being one of Gaia's shifting children does to a person.

"I'm beginning to suspect Dr. Stacia isn't a real Doctor. What're your credentials, again?" she jokes.

Once Stacia's done Elle stretches, then immediately winces as she realizes her mistake.

"We're in Jersey. Everything smells gross."

"Oh, if you want the Dr. Novik with credentials, then you want my sister," Stacia volleys back -- accidentally inducing a furious tsunami of homesickness. She and Mila hadn't been close most of Stacia's life, what with Mila having been ten years older than her and either aspiring to or actively studying medicine. But they'd bonded after Stacia's First Change and the discovery that Mila was Kinfolk.

Stacia shakes the worst of it off her shoulders, cramming it into a mental box for later.

"Yeah, well, we're going to the North Pole, which probably smells like candy canes and glitter; you'll definitely notice it then," she says.

Elle notes the shudder, logs it, and ignores it. Stacia doesn't need to be poked at right now, especially since they're not in a secure location. Emotional processing can be put off until later.

"If I don't have hot cocoa within the first ten minutes of arriving, I'm leaving a bad Yelp! review."

She tries not to imagine the luxuries a place as magical as The North Pole could provide. No point in getting ahead of herself.

Elle stands up. "Anything other information you think we need to cover? I don't think I have anything else, and I wanna snag a seat at the back of the line before someone else does."

She normally wouldn't be this trusting of a rescue like this, but if Bunny's vouching for it she can try to dial back her instinctive paranoia.

A bit.

She is absolutely going to snoop around for tricks or traps, but that's just good sense.

"A bad Yelp! review sounds completely reasonable in that instance," Stacia agrees. She closes the first aid kit as Elle stands up, then goes to collect her cup full of poisoned dude. Another quick check confirms that he's still breathing.

"I think that's everything for now," she says. "Given that I didn't have to deal with a Frenzy in the theater, whoever this other werewolf is probably isn't going to lose it out here. But keep an ear out for animalistic Rage-screaming, just in case. Kenzie and I might need some extra body weight on top of a suppressive dogpile."

"Unlike most cats,--" coughIsaaccough "--I do come when called."

Most of the time.

"I'll keep a nose out for them, and for anyone else we know. I'm interested to hear what this Jack kid's got to say."

Elle starts making her way toward the sleighs.

Edited 2023-09-04 05:03 (UTC)

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SLEIGH BELLS RING ❄ MINGLE

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