(no subject)

[mosaic_archive]

The Nexus Clinic near the Warehouse is mostly quiet today, with no large emergencies taking up the time of the medics who volunteer here. The most recent group to arrive is actually the closest to 'busy' it's been all day, and they're not there for current help but to give some thanks for previous events.

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[puppet_scientist]

The man who'd been injured then, Rick Myers, is still slogging his way through physical therapy, and had to sit down and take a rest once they'd arrived. The other man with him, Patrick Bramwell, is glancing around for signs of other patients while holding a large duffel bag. While they didn't have to be quite as careful here about some things as they had back in their own timeline, they'd still tried not to give up all semblance of caution.

The puppets inside the duffel bag are a bit restless. They haven't been back to the Nexus for months, from their perspective.

[mordredeschain]

*Mordred is sitting nearby, drinking hot lemonade with honey because someone suggested it as A Thing You Drink When You're Sick. He looks up curiously when the others enter.* Hile to ya, sais. Don't be a-scared, the people here be nicer than any others I ever did hear tell of.

[pm_torch]

"Yeah, we know, kid. We've been here before," Patrick says. And even then they'd be a bit cautious about just who saw certain things - though nowhere near so much as at home.

The four puppets in the duffel are quietly discussing things among themselves regarding the Puppet Master's long recovery and the pros and cons of staying in the Nexus and telling a certain prophesy to go hang, or heading back into danger to hopefully finish things for good this time. They're all more in favor of the latter, though the former is certainly tempting after that last close call.

"What's your name?" Rick asks, trying to be friendly while he rests.

[mordredeschain]

I be Mordred Deschain. 'Tis a pleasure ta meet thee.

Prophecies be nasty things, you're well rid o' them.

[pm_jester]

Well, the cat is out of the bag, so you may as well let us out of it also Jester says.

Rick nods and Patrick puts the duffel down where Rick can unzip it. "I'm Rick Myers, that's Pat Bramwell. And these guys... that's Jester, Blade, Pinhead, and Tunneler."

The latter four are stringless marionettes of wood and cloth, yet despite that they certainly seem to be alive...

[mordredeschain]

It be a pleasure indeed. *Mordred raises an eyebrow.* Robots or magic, iffen I may ask?

[pm_torch]

Rick's still uneasy about not just giving the old 'they're an animatronics project' excuse, but he's been told enough about this place and recent events to know that the time for that is past.

"No point hiding something someone can learn from a one-dollar movie rental, boss," Patrick says.

Rick sighs and nods. "They're magic. Really old magic."

[mordredeschain]

Not so different from me, then, in a way. I be half demon, kennit? The ancient an' the eldritch have left their mark on me, for all that I myself be young indeed.

[pm_jester]

The puppets are happy to get out of the duffel bag and stretch their legs for a bit, tho when they fan out it's still with thoughts of making sure they can protect the two humans they're with, especially Rick.

Jester stays closer to chat, though the sounds that come from him sound more like whispered giggles than any speech - and for most people that's all they'd be able to hear. Patrick is an exception due to complex events, Rick due to being the current Puppet Master. And sometimes Lauren could figure out what they were saying if they yelled at her repeatedly... But those with the telepathic skill to hear them were few and far between. Well, as long as you are not related to Sutekh... slightly grudgingly he adds, And even then, this is meant to be a neutral place. Like Switzerland, ja?

Patrick can't help a wince at that though. "Hell, I'm hoping that guy didn't somehow manage to breed." Though it would explain why the cult might be resurfacing after roughly a decade.

[mordredeschain]

Never heard o' Sutekh. My Red Daddy be Los', the Crimson King, himself son o' the Crimson Empress who be Atlach-Nacha an' Ungoliant an' Lolth. I be the Anti-Christ o' my whenwhere--an' I be hungry an' a-tired an' alone. *He slumps a bit, no longer the proud young demon prince but just a scared and abused child.* My side hurts--my leg hurts--and I be sick. The worlds aren't kind ta such a one as me.

[pm_jester]

Rick recognizes one of those names, due to long stretches in college of playing DnD. He's half trying to convince himself he misheard, and half thinking that Mordred doesn't look like a Drow. Or a spider.

"Sutekh's the only demon we really know anything about," Patrick says, "If that's what he is. The whole thing's kind of a mess."

Jester moves closer to Mordred. Most of them had put on plays long ago for the children in Germany, before trouble with the Nazis had made it too difficult to stay, and he still has a soft spot for children. Then it is good this place is not part of a world, ja? And what I have seen of it, it does not care what you are or where your came from.

[mordredeschain]

Lolth be the one ya ken, sai? Not Atlach-Nacha or Ungoliant? I prefer Ungoliant myself. Even if it does reduce me to a mere spider o' Mirkwood, as Her grandson . . . an' I may not look a spider now, but just you wait.

Everyone else cares. I'd not be taken in by smiles and lies when there be gunfire in the offin'.

[puppet_scientist]

"It's the one I'm the most familiar with," Rick says. It takes him a bit longer than he thinks it could to place the other two names. H.P. Lovecraft and J.R.R. Tolkien's writings, respectively.

Even if they should, they cannot do anything here, Jester says. This place does not allow violence... although we are still careful in case places further from the Sign are an exception.

He briefly has Blade's attention at the mention of gunfire. They've had more than enough of that for a while.

Rick looks a bit uncomfortable at the mention as well, a somewhat broken memory of a mad woman with a gun flitting through his head. He'd been shot four times... and if it weren't for this place and some of the things in other worlds it connected to, he'd be dead.

[mordredeschain]

*Mordred responds with his own maddened gunwoman, a bullet through his leg not ten minutes from his birth.*

Violence takes many and many-a form. Be it only knife an' gun as are blocked? What of magic, mind control, simple cruel words? Emotions be weapons--they be fire and ice, ta quote the poem, an' will end the world someday.

[pm_torch]

For Rick, who'd been trying not to think of gunfire, it's almost one thing too many.

"You ok, boss?" Patrick asks, as he and the Puppets can all feel the trace of panic from the Puppet Master. Luckily it doesn't become a full panic attack... so far Rick hasn't had one despite all the recent trauma, but one reason they were all taking recovery slow is that it didn't help when you shared a psychic link to a guy who was still on edge from having almost been murdered. (And the 'almost' was slightly questionable, all circumstances considered.)

"Yeah, I..." Rick shakes his head, and looks at Mordred. "Try not to do that again, ok? I've had enough problems with gunshots lately without hearing any more of them, inside my head or otherwise."

Blade makes a warning hiss and stays closer to Rick for now.

Well, I think you have proven it does not stop words, Jester says.

"We don't know too much of what the no-violence field does and doesn't do," Patrick says to Mordred. "For the most part, we've avoided people who might want to start a fight."

[mordredeschain]

Cry thy pardon, sai. I know too well what gunfire be like.

After all, I died of it.

[puppet_scientist]

A still slightly too pale Rick, never one to hold a grudge unless it's intentionally earned, manages a shaky smile. "So did I."

Show of hands if you could say 'ditto'? Jester says, trying to lighten the mood as he holds a hand up. Tunneler's soon goes up as well.

[mordredeschain]

*Mordred waves just to show solidarity, then raises an eyebrow at the puppets.* Say true? My, what a bunch we are!

[puppet_scientist]

Patrick's that odd mix of amused and uncomfortable that happens when one knows something shouldn't really be funny. "If some of the others were here, there'd be a few more hands up."

"And if it weren't for this place, some of us wouldn't be here to do that," Rick adds. Just how close it got still scares him.

[mordredeschain]

I walked through my Door dead in truth and in full, say sorry.

Strange ta have it be just some.

[pm_torch]

"I don't really want to jinx us, but nothing's happened to Lauren yet... other than getting knocked into a coma due to demonic possession." Rick says.

"We don't really talk about what happened to me," Patrick adds. It gets awkward, and not just because he'd been sleeping off a drinking binge when it happened. There was a lot of madness and bad history in that particular bit of time for them. "And Blade, ironically, got stabbed."

[mordredeschain]

*He laughs.* Not ironic, apropos. They are, ironically, opposites, but no one remembers apropos anymore.

I know lots of random shit like that.

[pm_torch]

Patrick shrugs slightly. He's never heard that word before.

Well, English is not my first language is Jester's comment. Or the second.

"Well, no matter who died how, none of us are now," Patrick says. Though what the puppets actually were was complicated at best. "And it's nothing we plan on repeating... which is a good reason to invest in kevlar body armor if we end up going back."

[mordredeschain]

A good reason indeed, say true. *He grins.* If anyone tries ta hurt thee, I'd be most glad ta kill them.

[puppet_scientist]

An amused Patrick grins back. "Don't worry about it, kid. These guys have never needed help when it comes to killing people." The last is said with a little less amusement. Sometimes their 'talents' had been a good thing, sometimes a very bad thing indeed. And the bad memories were still very bad ones. He's serious when he adds. "They just took us by surprise this time, that's all."

After years of thinking it was all over, they'd relaxed their guard. And the cult had sent an assassin, a human woman with a gun, while the puppets had been away and unable to protect their master. None of the puppets are ever going to let that happen again.

Rick just sighs. Even before then, in all the time he'd had the puppets... they hadn't directly caused any human deaths. Ok, there'd been Jennings, but he'd fallen down an elevator shaft backing away from them.

Even the mummified undead cultists and whatever sort of golem-ish things the Totems were had quit coming around after the first few years. And while he knows the puppets have killed people before, to the point of having been given a rundown of their history via typed messages in the first year he'd had them... If things are about to get bloody again, he's not sure he's up to it. He's never had to kill a living person before, and it's easier to justify mummies or not-quite-knee-high razor-clawed life-sucking monsters. It's not that he's sorry the woman who attacked them is dead, either. Not after she shot Susie twice and shot him four times. But the months spent in physical therapy so far haven't made him have less of a feeling of impending dread about just what's going to go down if they go back.

Starting with that probably-still-fresh-due-to-timeline-weirdness corpse back at the hotel. Crap. Hopefully the police haven't gotten involved yet.

[mordredeschain]

*He notices the thought and grins horribly.* Need a bit o' help, do ya? Just say the word, I'm always happy ta lend a hand.

[puppet_scientist]

"I think that's the opposite of what I just said." Patrick's uneasy at both that grin and the way this kid seems to want to push his way into a dangerous mess. People who got too 'interested' in the Puppets generally didn't turn out to be friends.

Rick's not to comfortable with this turn of events either. There's no way he's dragging a kid into the kind of things they've faced. Even if he would do that... the eagerness is downright disconcerting. "We're not going back any time soon, if we do at all." They'll probably have to, because of the prophesy, because of that damned cult, but neither he nor Susie are in any condition for it yet. He's meant to rest here before heading back to the hospital, a failed attempt to see if he could get to the Nexus sign area... but he's thinking about leaving now, even if he'll have to PINpoint back instead of try to walk some of it again. He didn't need the stress.

[mordredeschain]

Cry thy pardon, sai. I’m from a world nasty enough that once I heal a bit I would have no problem with such things, say sorry but say true.

[pm_blade]

Sometimes not having a problem with it is the problem Jester says, thinking of their time with Gallagher. The memory of sitting on a table as the elevator doors opened to reveal Dana Hadley's corpse, and being so pleased she was dead. Gallagher hadn't just made them kill people who hadn't deserved it... he'd made them enjoy doing so. The danger of having an evil Puppet Master when their own minds and moods were affected by his.

"Maybe not," Patrick says, "but people that get tangled up in this mess end up dead a lot more often than not." He's thinking of his sister Caroline, who can go right on believing he's still dead as far as he's concerned. She's safer the further away from them she is.

Rick nods. "We were lucky. We had almost a decade of quiet after mopping up what we thought was the last of Sutekh's cult. When we go back, it's going to start all over again." And he's only three months into what's likely to be at least half a year or more of physical therapy before he'll have any idea if he'll ever be up to fighting Totems again... or even running from them while the Puppets do, for that matter.

Patrick's not surprised Rick said 'when', not 'if'. They had a way out, sort of... never go back. But if any of them were the kind to leave unfinished buisness unfinished they wouldn't be what they were. They'd have stayed dead the first time. But one thing to keep in mind, "Any buisness we have back there will keep, I trust Jes's instincts on that... he was right the last time. It was still the same day when we went back, after being stuck here for... I honestly still don't know how long." Time had blurred for them without a Puppet Master. It could have been a month, or months, or a year, or even years... months feels closest to right, but they'll likely never be sure.

Jester nods. It is all waiting on us, ja. And it will continue to do so

Blade agrees. Which means we should take advantage of this and take as much time as we need to recover and prepare. Advantages like that were rare, and it would be utterly foolish not to exploit it as much as possible.

[mordredeschain]

You can use this place ta get rid of anything as needs getting rid of, ta gain aid for thy cause, ta learn ways o' fightin'. *He looks at them with an expression far too experienced for his young age.* I can see it in your mind, the thing that's a-waitin' for thee at home, an' I'd be more than happy ta take it off thy hands. Mordred isn't human, sais, a dead hume's useful to me.

[pm_torch]

Rick doesn't want to think of any situation that puts 'dead human' and 'useful' in the same sentence. He had the very bad feeling it would be even worse than Decapitron's stories of old Afzel the sorceror. "Well, that got to be TMI really fast."

Blade can't imagine anyone with a good use for dead humans, and thinks he'd be one to know given the use he had for them all those years ago, when he was still Dr. Hess.

Patrick's definitely uncomfortable too. Bad enough the kid rifles through their minds like an open-book library, but... "You think the dead crazy woman's the problem?"

That was the result of solving a problem Jester comments.

The problem is if the police show up and get killed by Totems or Servants, Tunneler adds.

"Or just try to deal with things way out of their pay grade and get in the way," Patrick agrees, though he's also thinking of the paranormal research team he and his sister were part of. As far as Caroline would know, she was the only survivor.

"Worse, dead or not, right now she's our only lead," Rick says. There had been a Totem at the house, so they know she had ties to Sutekh... or his cult, given that they'd killed Sutekh himself ten years ago. It's possible they might need the police to identify the assassin in order to figure out how she got involved. Either that, or they'd be stuck with waiting until the cult realizes she's not going to be answering any more phone calls and sends something else. However he's no longer comfortable with saying anything else out loud near Mordred, for all the good that would do. "It's time we got back to the hospital," he says to Patrick. They needed to plan. Away from someone who seemed way too eager to follow them for the chance to get to any resulting dead bodies.

[mordredeschain]

Part o' the problem, at least. You live in a civilized world, dead bodies worry folken in such places. But if you've need of what the dead can tell ya, that I understand.

*He sighs.* I'm tryin' not ta be bad, but my nature is Red an' the world o' my birth was hellish. Old habits die hard, cry thy pardon.

[pm_blade]

"Tip for later, kid," Rick says, "Telling people you've just met that you have a use for dead people and would like to follow them home to find some? Not a step in the right direction." More in the direction of wondering if they need to - or even could - get a restraining order. But Rick still needs to get back, gathering up the cane he's been using and trying to mentally prepare himself for a bit more of a walk until they PINpoint out of the Nexus. It's going to be a while before he's well enough to go anywhere for long, much less go back to their world of orgin.

Tunneler goes ahead and climbs back into the duffel bag. The bright lights around here don't agree with him, and he'd just as soon be out of them.

In general, people dying is seen as a bad thing, Blade says, though with the thought that certain specific people can make exceptions of themselves. And those who have a use for people to be dead... often are not good people. I should know.

Ja, you still get all the Nazi Zombie Army jokes, adds Jester, to which Blade manages to look embarrassed.

It's a good thing you figured out that would be a bad thing, Pinhead comments, giving the other Blade a pat on the shoulder that almost accidentally knocks him down.

[mordredeschain]

People dyin' be all I know, sai, an' Mordred . . . Mordred's hungry. Mordred's hungry and that is the truth, the truth forever and ever. I be sorry, but demon blood breeds true.

[pm_torch]

"We've already got too many demons in our lives," Patrick says, gathering up the duffel and helping Rick. Blade stays out just in case, despite the reported anti-violence field. This strange kid being way too insistant on wanting to follow them home and eat people isn't someone they want anything to do with. They have enough problems. They'll PINPoint out as soon as they can, hoping they can't be followed. So much for the Nexus being a nice break from murderous demons!