everything is happening right now

[somebadnews]

WHO: Five and OPEN (with some closed starters)
WHEN: After the events in the Tower
WHERE: Serthica (various locations)
WHAT: Aftermath / November Catch-All
WARNINGS: Usual Five-related warnings (language/will edit as needed)


( Planned starters being added. If there's anything you'd like to do pre-event just hit me up and I'll write it in! )

Comments

closed > Wrath

[somebadnews]

At some point, Five started to appreciate how small their apartment is. Some might find it claustrophobic, but there's a certain comfort in being able to see every room from any one vantage point. Along with the wards that Wrath put up that keeps is blissfully void of unexpected visitors, it's one of the only spaces where he's able to work without the constant threat of something appearing and upending his progress. (Which is what he's generously calling what he's doing now.)

It could use more wall space. He used up what he could reach in his bedroom this morning, and his equations have spilled into the kitchen and encroached on the living room until he'd gone back to his pad of paper to cross reference what he'd been working on over the time he spent in the Mouse House. With every hiccup, the solution becomes more complicated, but there's a solution in here somewhere. The trick is finding it before he loses what's left of his family, or the rest of them finally turn on him and he doesn't have any more quiet afternoons to work on his math.

He acknowledges, at least to himself, that he's made mistakes. Several, as he's reminded with the way his back still aches from the worst of the injuries he sustained in the tower. Mistakes that have snowballed since he came here, and every new complication stretches him beyond what he can rationally handle. So he messes up, when he can't afford to. People disappear. It's unfortunate, but he's only human and he hasn't been under this much stress since he was counting down the days until an apocalypse.

The idea of murdering a child had really seemed like the right solution to their problems.

Five takes a drink of coffee, that he spiked just to get through the morning, and shuffles his papers. He misses his wife. Obviously. Seeing visions of her in the Unwinding, and again in the tower, made him realize just how much he leaned on her. She would have pointed out where he went wrong. Got him to take a step back to see that he was jumping to the wrong conclusions. And she'd probably have something to say about his drinking, but it helps dull the buzzing pain and the curse that he realizes now he really should have taken care of back on the ship when he had the offer.

His droid is a poor substitute, but it keeps him company. One of the few things Five easily adapted to was having it around to clean up after him and prepare his meals. When he got back from the tower, he was starving and suddenly couldn't remember the last meal he had. Maybe it's his knack for working with robots, but the droid did as he asked, its many legs making sandwich after sandwich in a neat stack on the table that Five reaches for whenever he remembers it's there. They're not bad; he was lucky to find something like peanut butter in a place like this. A candle burns nearby. It helps.

Even with the sustenance, having to go back and rework his equations for the hundredth time is starting to make him crosseyed. He's run his hand through his hair so many times he's nearly pulled it out. He spots Wrath with emerging from the next room, because it's hard to miss him in their tiny space, and stops writing long enough to greet him. It's good timing, he needs the break, and Wrath always helps to put things in the right perspective.

"There you are." Had he gone out? Maybe he'd been here for a while, but Five hadn't heard him. He turns and gestures to the stack of sandwiches at his side. "Hungry?"

[inferus]

Wrath has been here for awhile, but Five was lost in what he was doing and had not noticed. It is only recently that he steps out into the main part of the apartment. He had taken the time in his own room to be aware of Five's current state of his emotions along with the state of his curse. It would be impossible not to notice, which means this is the worst possible time for the city to erupt in whatever chaos remains as the group chooses to stay to attempt to set it all right again. Being the king of Hell is about more than judgement, than reigning in the demons who slither through it seeking power at any cost, it is also about balance, and this city has tipped off the scale of any type of balance. He knows Emilia too wishes to see justice be done in this place. There are many innocents affected by the cruel twisting of dark magic throughout it including the dragon she has come to love so well. They have made the right decision by staying, but he wonders, worries, strategizes.

On top of all that, the Tower has placed the curse - his curse, Emilia's curse back into his focus again (not that it has ever left, but in the village, on the seas, there were few resources for solving it). There is no time to deal with it now, but he refuses to allow it to continue on, to hope that when they return he will find a way to break it. This is a world full of curses - one exists inside of his roommate now, feeding on the misery of those around and poisoning him with it in the process. The mirror itself within Five may be a key to doing so, but he hasn't had the chance to ask him yet. He will find a way to end it, to lessen it, to stop it before they ever are returned to Hell, which means the beacon is not yet a concern for him.

For the time being though, the group has more immediate concerns.

He walks over to Five, noting the candle, the sandwiches, the paper, the equation that has spilled out on to the walls here - well, there goes the decor. The question gives him pause, but he shakes his head especially as he smells the sickening sweet condiment Five has placed upon his sandwiches from here. Safe to say, they have vastly different tastes (aka Wrath is kind of a snob and would not have deigned to eat human food at all before Emliia introduced it to him through her cooking).

"...no." There's another pause as he surveys the equation on the wall. "How long have you been working?"

[somebadnews]

Five doesn't push any food on him. He should tell the droid to stop, but he thinks it helps him focus to have it working in the background, and it'll probably figure it out when it runs out of bread. The sandwiches should keep for a few days, so it seems like a good idea to stock up so he can grab them as needed. At the moment, he's still starving, and he takes a bite of one before he answers Wrath's question.

"Since I got back." A while. Not long enough to get where he wants to be. He notices what Wrath is looking at, and it occurs to him that he did say something about keeping his equations to the walls in his room. Things he forgets when he's in the middle of working. "I had to rework that one. Too many variables."

Hence why he had to spread out into the kitchen. It's almost said like an apology, so he might have meant it as one.

"The good news is that I'm going to get it right eventually." Lila is proof of that. She might not know how he does it, but if he believes what she told him, he's able to gather his siblings and bring them back to face whatever is waiting on them there. Theoretically. Unless he's creating an alternate timeline, but that's just something he'll have to factor in. He'd like to believe he's heading in the right direction.

"It's the meantime we have to worry about." If he doesn't have time to figure it out. Which, given how long he's been working, seems likely. It was either this or stockpile weapons for when shit inevitably goes down again, no thanks to Five's last meeting with the Beastmaster's kid. He lowers his pencil to turn to Wrath. "I've been meaning to ask you. The wards you put up, did you say they protect against compulsion too?"

[inferus]

Wrath hears the tone of what Five says, aware he does not hand out apologies with any ease, accepting it for what it is. At least, they are unlikely to stay in this city much longer at this point. The equations themselves are nothing that Wrath could ever parse. He is intelligent and well read, but the technology and math is beyond the time within his own world.

He turns away from the equations, leaning back against the counter as he watches Five, aware that he has not slept or ate for some time at least until this moment where he's taking bites of the sandwiches he has piled up. It's clear in his body language, and mortals especially require both.

"...you sound confident." It seems to go beyond pride or belief like he has another reason to believe he will get it right eventually even if Wrath doesn't know what that reason is.

His own expression shifts to one that is more serious. The meantime promises to be dangerous, but that is not new in this world. Rarely do they have the chance to settle down, to rest.

"It would depend on the compulsion. Primarily, it would prevent anyone from getting close enough to use compulsion." However, he is aware this world operates differently than most, and his own magic has been tested. "What are you worried about?"

[somebadnews]

His confidence comes from an unreliable source, but he hasn't found any holes in Lila's story. Mostly because he hasn't had the time to interrogate her. Maybe if he weren't so sure that the rest of that story isn't as rosy as them all getting home, he'd have already cornered her about it. Right now it's too much of a distraction, so he's trying his best to use it as motivation.

"I got a tip about the future." Simply put. Wrath is one of the few, or the only, person outside of his family that he might elaborate on that with. From the way he sighs with his full body after he says that, it's been something he's had a hard time not thinking about.

There are more important things.

"It's happened too many times. Again in the tower." If Wrath thought the Unwinding was bad, the tower was worse. He found who he was after, but he should have come with more of a plan. "I spoke to the Beastmaster's child and told him who killed his father. I don't know if I can get close to him without it happening again."

Somehow he needs to figure out a way to shield himself. It never worked with his sister, but Wrath has some resistance. And Emilia said she learned how, so it's not completely out of the realm of possibility. Just not something he could learn overnight.

"I went there to kill him, but I couldn't. He vanished." He left that part out when he was talking over the network about it, and he watches Wrath for his reaction. "I think it's going to be a problem."

[inferus]

"...what tip?"

There are only so many places a tip from the future could have come from after all. It is not as if they can reach the worlds they came from, and Five would not attempt to until he has found all of his siblings and worked out the equation he has been wrestling with. There is a long pause when Five mentions the Tower. For the most part, Wrath was unaffected except for that damned fourth level, and then he was as compelled as anyone else, lost in the vision of temptation that switched swiftly to one of damnation.

"If you want protection from it, it will not come from the wards but training your mind. Even then, it would take time, and this world has seen fit to push past my own protections against such compulsion."

Which he has trained over countless decades, centuries so his brothers could never influence him and his actions, so he could never be controlled as he was by his Maker in Heaven. Even then, Wrath was ultimately able to resist, but he refuses to ever be placed in such a position again.

Wrath takes in the rest of what Five says. If he is looking for a reaction from Wrath, Wrath's expression does not shift at all through what he says. It is one aspect of him that has frequently angered Emilia - his ability to make himself unreadable, but he imagines Five might find some comfort in it.

"I'm surprised you told him who killed his father." It must mean Five did so assuming he already knew - a mistake. "It is unlikely the child can be killed by conventional means alone. He is no child - not entirely even if he has the demeanor, appearance, and personality of one." Wrath does not know what he is, but he is not merely mortal, merely human. Or he would have aged, he would have died in the volcano. "It will likely be a problem if he has as much power as he apparently does. Chrichter was the one making the mannequins so is he aware of the child?" Do they have a relationship? Why exactly does Chricter want to help him? There are too many pieces missing.

[somebadnews]

"We make it back." So no matter what happens, he succeeds in doing what he set out to do. He just has no way of knowing how long it takes for him to get there. "Someone from that future showed up out of the blue. According to her, we were all there with her."

He doesn't look as relieved as he should with that knowledge. There's always a catch, and he's clearly leaving plenty of room for mistakes. He diverts his attention to the sandwich and takes another slow bite. Wrath makes it sound possible to train to be able to resist compulsion, but as expected, it's nothing he can do in the amount of time they have. If wards can't help, he's going to be at a disadvantage. Things he should have considered before antagonizing him.

"I thought he had something to do with my brother's disappearance. He would have had the motive, but he didn't even know his father was dead." An explanation, not an excuse. Five felt something was off the moment the child started crying. It never crossed his mind that it wasn't all an act until then. Wrath doesn't seem to judge him for that much. He's killed innocents as indiscriminately as he has those who deserved it, but he's been thinking about it since then. He knows he should feel more remorse for the things he's done, but every time he tries, he can only say it's enough that he doesn't like it. He's detached from the emotion that would make most people hesitate. It makes him a good assassin, but not much else.

"...I haven't looked into Chrichter as much as you have. You think he's making them for him?" The mannequins. In the tower it felt like the child had been twisting them to whatever nightmare he thought up, but maybe he was pulling from what was supplied for him. "Do we know anything about his abilities?"

closed > Emilia

[somebadnews]

It catches up to him the second he jumps.

Five blinks by the apothecary and only narrowly avoids slamming directly into a wall. His alarm is quickly overtaken by confusion as he grips the rough brick keeping him upright. It was a long distance, but he's made it countless times before. He was relatively fine before he left, at least better after he ate, but he didn't account for the way a jump would sap away the last of his reserves and make his bones hum with exhaustion.

Obviously he miscalculated. His entire body suddenly feels like it's too heavy to carry and he doesn't have the energy to drag himself inside. Wrath had made his own concerns known about his sleeping habits, which he bitterly recalls as he teeters on the edge of consciousness. In hindsight, he might have only been able to mask how tired he was, but that was the whole point of running an errand. Coffee only works half as well as magic-candles, and he has so much more to do.

As he reaches for the door he finds himself drifting. That's when the same man who made a point of giving lectures about being careful, decides very abruptly to take a nap out in the open in the middle of the day. He stumbles near the alley and it's only luck that a stack of boxes are there to break his fall as he sinks into darkness.

[valeas]

The odd customer here and there begins to complain, one of the complaints issued with genuine fright. They didn't get close enough to the body to determine if it's merely sleeping or dead, after all. And oh goodness, the body itself looked so small, as though it may belong to a child. It's all so dreadful!

Emilia wastes no time in heading out to investigate, though she half-expects to be met with a white umbrella and a child with a fox mask. ... That is not quite what she gets.

She knows far better than to step too close when waking someone like Five Hargreeves. But concern for his well-being takes precedence as she makes her way over, her dagger in hand — there may be danger nearby she hasn't accounted for. Really, she's just relieved to see the rise and fall of his chest.

Allison would never forgive her if something had happened to Five so close to her apothecary with Emilia none the wiser. Emilia would never forgive herself. "Five? Five."

[somebadnews]

Five will be horrified at his carelessness later, leaving himself completely vulnerable in a hostile magical city. Amazingly he doesn't stir at a single person who walks past, blissfully dead to the world on his bead of broken boxes. Whatever nightmares swirl in his head will be forgotten when he wakes, but they cumulate in someone calling his name from the ruin of the world. It echoes impossibly off piles of bodies, urgent, like a terrible trick of his mind to convince himself that he's not alone. He fixates on trying to find out where it's coming from until the first rays of reality filter through.

He hasn't entirely shaken the feeling when he jerks awake and grabs the nearest object he can grab to fend off a perceived threat. But as soon as he reaches for his powers, he finds that he's empty, and in the rush to scramble to his feet he nearly sinks right back down again.

Luckily the person who found him isn't an enemy. He deflates when he recognizes Emilia and drops the object he was holding — a piece of wood he probably broke off of something when he fell — and groggily tries to make sense of where he is and why he's here. A glance behind tells him why the alley looks familiar.

The apothecary.

"Emilia." Right, the errand. Exhaustion hangs off of him and he seems to be having a great internal debate on how much of it he should acknowledge. Evidently he goes with 'none at all', so he mops his face with his hand and nods to the store. "Good. I was just coming to see you. Are you open?"

[valeas]

Her grip on the hilt of the dagger tightens as Five rushes to his feet with a makeshift stake, though she lowers it the moment recognition hits. She hates that she even had to wonder if it was truly him. The Unwinding has left her with more guardedness than before, an understanding their reality can shift at any moment if it wishes to.

Their memories can be twisted — like she doesn't already struggle with them as it is.

They've dealt with all sorts of peril before, but Serthica has been particularly challenging. Five isn't the only one that frays at the edges, but she's never seen him this exhausted.

His question is met with incredulity.

"Yes," but, "surely you're not expecting me to sell you candles right now."

[somebadnews]

Apparently Emilia isn't on the same page he is. He didn't think she'd see through him that easily, and he might look flustered if he wasn't still trying and failing to keep his eyes from fully opening. It's only been what... a few days since the tower? How long did he go without sleep on the ship? True, he hadn't combined that with jumping as far as he just did, but it never hit him this hard.

He scowls when he can't come to a conclusion he likes, and he's silent while he straightens his shirt. Just in that simple motion he can feel how sore his neck and back are from the awkward position he fell asleep in.

The entire situation is unfortunate. If he'd had just woken up a minute before Emilia found him, she wouldn't be questioning him.

"Why?" Can't she take one look and see that he needs one? There's no way he's blinking back without something to replenish his energy. Then he remembers something he asked Wrath that's suddenly back into question. "You're not out, are you?"

closed > Una

[somebadnews]

[ Five hasn't seen Una since the tower. He isn't holding a grudge against her, but it occurs to him that he should check and see if she's recovered from that whole incident. Five sure hasn't, but that's no reason not to pretend he's doing just fine. A change in clothes and an unintentional nap in an alleyway does wonders. More importantly, he's been spending the past several days working on math and he needs another pair of eyes on it. Especially after the aforementioned nap that makes him somewhat less confident in that he hasn't made any obvious errors.

He shows up like he always does, out of nowhere and without any heads up. The only difference is this time he knocks. When she answers he stands there for a moment with his hands in his pockets. ]

Good, you're still alive. [ He gives her a long look with a critical eye. Then he fishes out a notebook, in case she thought this was about anything else. ] Brought you homework.

[unas]

( even though none of their meetings are exactly conventional, this one definitely starts more surprising than una would have expected. she'd definitely avoided him for far longer than she'd intended to, though after the tower there was a lot that she had to sort through as well as checking in with several people -- and trying to figure out how to say 'it wasn't really me trying to kill you'. that part she didn't know how to do, though it seemed he was moving past it already )

Same thing or a new project?

( she'd figure it out from reading the math most likely but it didn't hurt to ask as she opened the notebook, recovering a little from her own surprise )

[somebadnews]

[ She's hardly the first person to try to kill him, but one of the few who managed to get him quite as good as she did. Mostly it's embarrassing that he let his guard down. Luckily she didn't hit any vital organs and he was able to get stitched up before it became a problem.

He isn't even sure what she remembers. ]

Same project, new angle. [ He nods inside, again notably not just blinking in as he usually would. ] Can I come in?

[unas]

Yeah, come in.

( she's already started reading the equations, trying to read it fresh first without judgement before comparing it to their previous angles to see what's different )

What inspired this one?

[somebadnews]

[ He's moving slower, but he comes to a stop after he crosses the room and folds his arms over his chest. ]

I met someone from my future. [ Who coincidentally has also tried to kill him. At least now he knows what brought about that sudden change. ] Apparently it isn't the first time I've successfully rebooted a broken briefcase. Now we have the means to effectively double the power source.

[ He's looking at her again, like he wants to say something else but changes his mind a moment later. ]

You have any coffee?

[unas]

They didn't tell you exactly how you did it, I suppose?

( she closes the notebook and lays it on the counter to pull the coffee out and down, starting to boil the water )

Is that person anyone to worry about? With this project?

[somebadnews]

[ That's the big question, isn't it? If Lila would go along with the project if she knew what he's trying to do. She's already offered, but she's smart enough to look into specifics.

It's better that she didn't ask if he can trust her. It's a complicated situation, but he still shakes his head. ]

She doesn't know about the project, but it's the best option right now. [ He rubs his eyes. ] We can amplify my powers. She says we were able to jumpstart the briefcase like a battery.

[ And there's nothing he'd like more than to erase the past few months from history. ]

I think I'm close.

closed > Winnie

[somebadnews]

[ Sometimes he wonders if she does this intentionally. Five hadn't been out looking for Winnie. He'd only been trudging back from the errands that he had to do extraordinarily slowly without the use of his powers. He already made the mistake of blinking when he didn't have enough energy, and managed to nearly put himself in a coma. Between his injuries in the tower, his refusal to sleep, and that old mirror curse, it's only the worst possible time to run into her. So of course he does.

When she catches his gaze, he instantly steps away from a streetlight, just in case the shadows do him any favors. Winnie herself looks as unbothered as ever. It wouldn't surprise him if she was smart enough to avoid the tower altogether, but for some reason he still wants to take a closer look. For curiosity's sake. ]

Winnie. Shouldn't you be... [ He struggles to come up with what he expects her to be doing, which isn't a great sign for his mental state. Still, he presses on. ] Destroying droids or trying to sacrifice people to dragons? Or did that get old?

[soulsrob]

[She watches him, eyebrows slightly raised in polite amusement as she waits for him to get his thoughts together. The question makes her laugh, a bright little sound as she flutters her hand through the air, as if waving away the question]

Five, dear! If I keep doing the same old, same old, it'd get too predictable! No, no, it was interesting while it lasted, but I'm afraid it couldn't hold my interest forever.

[She gestures off as if to say 'after you,' and tilts her head welcomingly] Shall we walk and talk?

[somebadnews]

[ Sometimes he has to force himself not to be envious that she hasn't been affected by the city. Sometimes it really does strike him how much she reminds him of Grace in moments like these. He blames the exhaustion.

He reflexively takes a step away before she moves, and immediately regrets being so obvious. As tired as he is, it's probably a horrible idea to take up her offer, but he still gives her a tight smile in return. ]

Why not? [ He picks the direction, purposely guiding her away from his apartment. ] I guess it loses some of its appeal once you find out most of the population are worse actors than you.

[soulsrob]

It's true. [She sighs deeply, as if personally very saddened by the state of everyone's acting abilities.] No one ever wants to play along, it's terribly boring. No one has quite the sense of humor needed.

[If she's noticed his twitchy behavior, she says nothing about it. To her, he's the one being odd-- After all, it's been quite a while since the mirror incident. To Winnie it's hardly significant and therefore not worth the memory--and even more insignificant was the time she took Five's soul to let him rest. It completely goes over her head why he might be, justifiably, twitchy around her.

She folds her hands in front of her and looks around as they walk, as if everything around them is something new she's seeing for the first time]

And besides, you look absolutely dreadful, dear. How am I supposed to match you to a dragon in this state? [She flashes him a quick little smile to show she's joking. Maybe. Probably?]

[somebadnews]

[ They don't have a sense of humor because they're probably dead. Or mannequins. One of the two. For several reasons he preferred the undead they're used to. Winnie at least has the decency to never change. Even now, she puts on an act that she really doesn't need to around him, but she's too used to playing a part.

He suppresses a wince when she picks up on what he knew she would despite the dim light. There isn't anything he can do about the way he looks, but as long as he doesn't sound completely crazy she won't be tempted to take matters into her own hands. In hindsight, it's better that she caught him after he'd had a few minutes of sleep in that alleyway. ]

There's probably a reason I was never the front runner. [ It's not his favorite topic, but he stays with it in an effort to sound casual . ] Thanks for that, by the way. I didn't have enough going on until you stepped up.

[soulsrob]

Oh come now, it's just a bit of fun! You do need some more harmless fun in your life, Five. You're such an old fuddy-duddy.

[She laughs brightly and smiles at him, eyebrows raised] Didn't it make you smile? Just a little? You can admit it, you know.