Don't Let Your Friends Play With The Mushroom Bag ---
OOC: Yes. I decided to come back as Martin. Talked with Helix decided that I have some time and since no one has apped for Martin in a year.... here i am. The Amber Bug Bites Again.
IC: The below is a scene that ensures that yes, Martin was lost and found. Like a puppy.
Two foot high Martin is running through the pipe with a look of terror on his face, the tongue is sweeping towards him and he manages to psyche it into thinking that he was taking another corner when he runs into, "Lir on a bike you scared the wits out of me..." he pants, eyes flaring. "huh...you're human..." he stares at Yvonne through wide bleary eyes. "The Tongue Cleaner is coming! We gotta run!"
Yvonne stares at Martin like he's suddenly gone mad--well maybe not suddenly, he has been missing for most of a year. "The Tongue cleaner?" She looks behind him and her eyes widen. "Martin, all I'm seeing is an overly aggressive red kite screaming down your back." Fortunately for her, she is on the other side of the pipe and the 'kite'.
"NoNo..." Martin panics, "Here have a mushroom...." he offers a 'bag' and then snatches it back muttering excitedly, "Wait. No. You lead!" He cries, "The thumb princess has to be rescued, we gotta find the key. It's down this pipe, at the end of the pipe. That's what the map said. C'mon! We gotta book!" he encourages desperately. "Kite huh...It's a tongue! And its evil."
"Are there eyes painted on that kite?" Yvonne asks in an enthusiastic voice. "Oh look, I think one just winked at me it's soooo cute." Martin's frantic fumbling does start her to running but she looks about as if she's not exactly sure why until the kite makes a low dive at Martin. "That kite doesn't have a string!"
"You've got to be kidding, Martin!" This may sound a little odd coming from a woman who lives in an enchanted palace where everyone sleeps all the time and has for some number of years. "Arrrrrrhhh!" She flicks some oil substance off her right arm. "I think it slimed me."
Martin says, "No I can do this, I gotta just run and jump. Lookit, piggyback." Martin offers desperately. "We get that key and we're off this level.""
Vanity makes her stop and protest looking down at her suddenly digital self. "Martin I have no waist!!" Yes, that's exactly what she's worried about the block pixel figure not the fact she's shrunk and the 'kite' suddenly is looking a lot more imposing. "This is ridiculous. Who am I going to find to be my tailor?" She looks a bit petulant now to play a game of piggy back but the evil tongue gets her moving.
RPG: Martin challenges a difficulty of 7, using his Wits. Martin almost succeeds.
"never mind that!" Martin says as he helps her climb up on him. "Ok, one two...WWBD? What would Benedict do?" Turn around and fight the tongue, that's what he would do. Martin glances over his shoulder, "Screw that". In the air around them as Martin moves backwards you can hear music suddenly. It cold be a theme song. Beep BOOP Beep BEEP Bedop. Beep. The catchy little lyric repeats over and over again. He starts to run forward and leaps into the abyss! He reaches out and swipes the key but he just doesn't quite make it and they are about to fall...unless...
RPG: Yvonne challenges a difficulty of 7, using her Wits. Yvonne succeeds.
(Shew!)
...Yvonne catches the key but she has a bone to pick with the musician. "How the hell are you supposed to get that out of your head? Anyone around here hear about more than two lines of music strung together?" Since she's leaving bootprints all over Martin's back it's not a great surprise that she stretched out ahead of him to get the key. "No wonder the inhabitants are so angry all the time."
And there's a flash of light and faster music plays! And they tumble into a fairylike garden, holding the key which frees the princess. Martin is a mess, though, and yvonne will need to literally drag him somewhere using her own pattern skills to get him out of this shadow. Those weird looking thumbs are all trying to thank him now, are those mouths on the thumbs? Does one of them have a crown. Do you really want to stick around and find out?
***
It's a miracle that she did find him in the first place, as she is isn't that much worse at pattern shifting than Martin although she does not quite have his flare for deep shadow. "Remember" Yvonne says in a cheerful voice as they approach Amber. "What the Dormouse said." She does seem to be giving him time to adjust. She could just trump someone to pull them through the other end.
"There's a big hole, a really big hole. I fell into it. Down down down..." Martin murmurs, "Ring of mushrooms. I stepped on them, they smushed." He rubs his hand in his hair. "Where are we? What time is it?" Then he rubs his face irritably as though trying to get rid of an itch.
"Anytime you want it to be!" Is that a fairy circle of mushrooms in the distance? A little cheerful whistling can be heard as Yvonne tromps forward in her crazy military uniform. What? Is she doing some type of protest? No, it seems legit. "That's not what the dormouse said, Martin!" the redhead complains faintly. "You miss the door prize."
"What's the door prize? Do I need a ticket?" He blinks blearily through sleep depraved eyes at Yvonne. "What happened, is everything where I left it?"
"Feed your head!" Yvonne snaps when Martin still seems to fail to 'get it'. In the distance is a blurry neon sign and last diner before the Shadows Martin has been calling home for the last several--digits--erm months. "I want some Onion Rings and a cherry-coke. We can talk inside." The faerie ring remains, there are even faeries dancing in it.
"We ate the fairies." Martin moans, "We had to or the princesses would die. They were bad fairies though, so that's good right. Hey..." He pauses as he blinks at the sign on the door to the Best Little Diner In Shadow, "Is this it? Is this the tunnel out?"
"You could say that," Yvonne says pushing forward and opening up the door. The interior hasn't changed much since the last time Martin visited. There are new specials advertised on the board but is the same friendly staff.
"Martin! Yvy!" the hostess greets, "You missed our dress up night, that's on Moonless Wednesday! You should know better!"
"I know you." Martin squints at the waitress, the dark circles around his eyes seem to get more prominant. "It is the tunnel out, I knew it. I knew I found the right key. Yvy. This means that they're safe! Do you remember the morse code message?" He pauses in the tirade of words and blinks a few more times, "Rootbeer float, with real beer and ... uh.... ice-cream yah. shit, i'm starving. Food. any kind of food. Just no mushrooms."
"And Onion Rings and a Cherry Coke," Yvonne says dragging Martin toward a table and starting to flip through her deck of trumps while she waits for him to settle down. "Don't drink the ketchup. I'm looking for my trump of your butler." Butler? Martin has a butler.
"Wendy--no mushrooms on the double cheeseburger tonight, got it..." the girl grins and bounces off to give the order to the actual waitress. Appears she's got a promotion or she's just working another gig, then grabs drinks for the table.
"Make that two double cheeseburgers!" Martin calls after Wendy. "My head feels like swiss cheese," he moans and it falls onto the table. He looks like he's still a little wobbly. "Having no muscles sucks you know? So does having no stomach."
"She's going to think you want swiss cheese," Yvonne settles in and is quiet as she sorts through the cards, finally finding the one she wants. "Ricky. I hired him when the last one left. He's kept them from cleaning out your rooms and giving it to some new kid."
Wendy returns and leaves a cherry soda and a milkshake on the table.
"Guitar and everything? Fantastic." Martin picks his head off of the table and prods it back into shape. This time it seems to stay that way. "We can take it to go? I gotta get back...gotta get..." he doesn't look like he's sure what it is he has to get to. "Best person to call? Uh. Morgana? Dylan... shit. I'd settle for Random at this point. But what about everything else
"You're assuming that I know? When you didn't come back I went off looking for you when things with Uncle Bleys got a little boring." Yvonne reaches for her coke and adds. "I mean, it was okay for awhile. I was learning about how to handle a sword but then we just watched the black road shift by a few feet at a time and I thought the work we were doing before that was more interesting, so why not go find Martin? At least I knew you had a morse code message. I didn't know where Desmond went only that he said he could be gone for awhile--" she shrugs. She is still Yvonne. "So I thought, if I was Martin what would I be doing and I started out here and kept coming back while I searched around shadow waiting for you to fall out of some odd place. It was rather like finding a needle in a haystack but I've been trying your trump as well and it seemed with you being this far out it helped to be out as well...but I can call Ricky and get us back and you'll see. Last I knew Uncle Brand was Regent and then passed it to Prince Julian causing Uncle Bleys to get very angry and petulant. I think he got over it."
Food starts arriving in plenty to meet the appetite of a scion of Amber. The initial plates are appetizers but soon there will be even more filling every nook of the booth so that Martin can eat until he pukes if he wants.
Martin doesn't eat until he pukes but he eats, eats and eats some more. "mirrors." he mutters, 'there were no mirrors. and i couldn't look at my trumps because they were sideways...and.." he rubs his head, "Lir on a bike my head hurts, Amber goes through so many freakin regents lately." he smiles at yvonne though "Thanks for coming after me."
"True that," Yvonne smiles and eats what she wanted and no more. The temptation to nibble is there but she supresses it while she waits for Martin to finish. "I can't say what we'll find when we get back." She shrugs. "Least I could do, at least I had an IDEA of where to start looking which is more than I had for Desmond. Wonder what happened to him anyway?" She looks a little sad until her smile returns. "Want to share a banana split?"
Martin eyes Yvonne, eyes the idea of more food, "Sure" his stomach growls again. "feels like i haven't eaten in months." which is true really. Oh, he's been nourished, but he hasn't really -eaten-.
Two banana splits are ordered when Martin's stomach growls. Yvonne picks at hers slowly and fills Martin in on months old gossip from the court. Oh well, it is not quite as old as Martin's month's old gossip and they'll finish by sharing gossip older than some of the waitresses here have been alive. "Ready to go back?" Yvonne eventually finishes the story she was telling and reaches for her trump deck.
Martin nods, after polishing off his and most of yvonne's. "yeah, lets." he stretches when he gets up, feeling a little more 'himself'. He moves his hand around, muscles flexing. "Feels a bit jittery but I'm ok...I think."
"You forgot your bag of mushrooms!" Yvonne has the card she wants but she points to the odd two dimensional flat shrooms. "You really shouldn't leave your drugs around for unwitting tourists." She isn't so much scolding as taking a motherly tone.
Martin collects the bag of mushrooms with a sheepish grin, "Wouldn't want anyone else to find that shadow, that's for sure" he murmurs ruefully. "Lets hit the road."
Roads are for shmucks. Yvonne concentrates on her card and she and Martin are pulled through to the Burgundy Salon. A tired 'butler' answers the call, "I didn't think you really meant it when you said you were going to find him." He looks like he may have been enjoying Martin's stores of Bayle wine.
Martin reaches over to cling to Yvonne's arm. "Take me home, honey." he pecks her cheek, risking aunt Fiona's wrath just a little today.
To Amber and Beyond.
IC: The below is a scene that ensures that yes, Martin was lost and found. Like a puppy.
Two foot high Martin is running through the pipe with a look of terror on his face, the tongue is sweeping towards him and he manages to psyche it into thinking that he was taking another corner when he runs into, "Lir on a bike you scared the wits out of me..." he pants, eyes flaring. "huh...you're human..." he stares at Yvonne through wide bleary eyes. "The Tongue Cleaner is coming! We gotta run!"
Yvonne stares at Martin like he's suddenly gone mad--well maybe not suddenly, he has been missing for most of a year. "The Tongue cleaner?" She looks behind him and her eyes widen. "Martin, all I'm seeing is an overly aggressive red kite screaming down your back." Fortunately for her, she is on the other side of the pipe and the 'kite'.
"NoNo..." Martin panics, "Here have a mushroom...." he offers a 'bag' and then snatches it back muttering excitedly, "Wait. No. You lead!" He cries, "The thumb princess has to be rescued, we gotta find the key. It's down this pipe, at the end of the pipe. That's what the map said. C'mon! We gotta book!" he encourages desperately. "Kite huh...It's a tongue! And its evil."
"Are there eyes painted on that kite?" Yvonne asks in an enthusiastic voice. "Oh look, I think one just winked at me it's soooo cute." Martin's frantic fumbling does start her to running but she looks about as if she's not exactly sure why until the kite makes a low dive at Martin. "That kite doesn't have a string!"
"You've got to be kidding, Martin!" This may sound a little odd coming from a woman who lives in an enchanted palace where everyone sleeps all the time and has for some number of years. "Arrrrrrhhh!" She flicks some oil substance off her right arm. "I think it slimed me."
Martin says, "No I can do this, I gotta just run and jump. Lookit, piggyback." Martin offers desperately. "We get that key and we're off this level.""
Vanity makes her stop and protest looking down at her suddenly digital self. "Martin I have no waist!!" Yes, that's exactly what she's worried about the block pixel figure not the fact she's shrunk and the 'kite' suddenly is looking a lot more imposing. "This is ridiculous. Who am I going to find to be my tailor?" She looks a bit petulant now to play a game of piggy back but the evil tongue gets her moving.
RPG: Martin challenges a difficulty of 7, using his Wits. Martin almost succeeds.
"never mind that!" Martin says as he helps her climb up on him. "Ok, one two...WWBD? What would Benedict do?" Turn around and fight the tongue, that's what he would do. Martin glances over his shoulder, "Screw that". In the air around them as Martin moves backwards you can hear music suddenly. It cold be a theme song. Beep BOOP Beep BEEP Bedop. Beep. The catchy little lyric repeats over and over again. He starts to run forward and leaps into the abyss! He reaches out and swipes the key but he just doesn't quite make it and they are about to fall...unless...
RPG: Yvonne challenges a difficulty of 7, using her Wits. Yvonne succeeds.
(Shew!)
...Yvonne catches the key but she has a bone to pick with the musician. "How the hell are you supposed to get that out of your head? Anyone around here hear about more than two lines of music strung together?" Since she's leaving bootprints all over Martin's back it's not a great surprise that she stretched out ahead of him to get the key. "No wonder the inhabitants are so angry all the time."
And there's a flash of light and faster music plays! And they tumble into a fairylike garden, holding the key which frees the princess. Martin is a mess, though, and yvonne will need to literally drag him somewhere using her own pattern skills to get him out of this shadow. Those weird looking thumbs are all trying to thank him now, are those mouths on the thumbs? Does one of them have a crown. Do you really want to stick around and find out?
***
It's a miracle that she did find him in the first place, as she is isn't that much worse at pattern shifting than Martin although she does not quite have his flare for deep shadow. "Remember" Yvonne says in a cheerful voice as they approach Amber. "What the Dormouse said." She does seem to be giving him time to adjust. She could just trump someone to pull them through the other end.
"There's a big hole, a really big hole. I fell into it. Down down down..." Martin murmurs, "Ring of mushrooms. I stepped on them, they smushed." He rubs his hand in his hair. "Where are we? What time is it?" Then he rubs his face irritably as though trying to get rid of an itch.
"Anytime you want it to be!" Is that a fairy circle of mushrooms in the distance? A little cheerful whistling can be heard as Yvonne tromps forward in her crazy military uniform. What? Is she doing some type of protest? No, it seems legit. "That's not what the dormouse said, Martin!" the redhead complains faintly. "You miss the door prize."
"What's the door prize? Do I need a ticket?" He blinks blearily through sleep depraved eyes at Yvonne. "What happened, is everything where I left it?"
"Feed your head!" Yvonne snaps when Martin still seems to fail to 'get it'. In the distance is a blurry neon sign and last diner before the Shadows Martin has been calling home for the last several--digits--erm months. "I want some Onion Rings and a cherry-coke. We can talk inside." The faerie ring remains, there are even faeries dancing in it.
"We ate the fairies." Martin moans, "We had to or the princesses would die. They were bad fairies though, so that's good right. Hey..." He pauses as he blinks at the sign on the door to the Best Little Diner In Shadow, "Is this it? Is this the tunnel out?"
"You could say that," Yvonne says pushing forward and opening up the door. The interior hasn't changed much since the last time Martin visited. There are new specials advertised on the board but is the same friendly staff.
"Martin! Yvy!" the hostess greets, "You missed our dress up night, that's on Moonless Wednesday! You should know better!"
"I know you." Martin squints at the waitress, the dark circles around his eyes seem to get more prominant. "It is the tunnel out, I knew it. I knew I found the right key. Yvy. This means that they're safe! Do you remember the morse code message?" He pauses in the tirade of words and blinks a few more times, "Rootbeer float, with real beer and ... uh.... ice-cream yah. shit, i'm starving. Food. any kind of food. Just no mushrooms."
"And Onion Rings and a Cherry Coke," Yvonne says dragging Martin toward a table and starting to flip through her deck of trumps while she waits for him to settle down. "Don't drink the ketchup. I'm looking for my trump of your butler." Butler? Martin has a butler.
"Wendy--no mushrooms on the double cheeseburger tonight, got it..." the girl grins and bounces off to give the order to the actual waitress. Appears she's got a promotion or she's just working another gig, then grabs drinks for the table.
"Make that two double cheeseburgers!" Martin calls after Wendy. "My head feels like swiss cheese," he moans and it falls onto the table. He looks like he's still a little wobbly. "Having no muscles sucks you know? So does having no stomach."
"She's going to think you want swiss cheese," Yvonne settles in and is quiet as she sorts through the cards, finally finding the one she wants. "Ricky. I hired him when the last one left. He's kept them from cleaning out your rooms and giving it to some new kid."
Wendy returns and leaves a cherry soda and a milkshake on the table.
"Guitar and everything? Fantastic." Martin picks his head off of the table and prods it back into shape. This time it seems to stay that way. "We can take it to go? I gotta get back...gotta get..." he doesn't look like he's sure what it is he has to get to. "Best person to call? Uh. Morgana? Dylan... shit. I'd settle for Random at this point. But what about everything else
"You're assuming that I know? When you didn't come back I went off looking for you when things with Uncle Bleys got a little boring." Yvonne reaches for her coke and adds. "I mean, it was okay for awhile. I was learning about how to handle a sword but then we just watched the black road shift by a few feet at a time and I thought the work we were doing before that was more interesting, so why not go find Martin? At least I knew you had a morse code message. I didn't know where Desmond went only that he said he could be gone for awhile--" she shrugs. She is still Yvonne. "So I thought, if I was Martin what would I be doing and I started out here and kept coming back while I searched around shadow waiting for you to fall out of some odd place. It was rather like finding a needle in a haystack but I've been trying your trump as well and it seemed with you being this far out it helped to be out as well...but I can call Ricky and get us back and you'll see. Last I knew Uncle Brand was Regent and then passed it to Prince Julian causing Uncle Bleys to get very angry and petulant. I think he got over it."
Food starts arriving in plenty to meet the appetite of a scion of Amber. The initial plates are appetizers but soon there will be even more filling every nook of the booth so that Martin can eat until he pukes if he wants.
Martin doesn't eat until he pukes but he eats, eats and eats some more. "mirrors." he mutters, 'there were no mirrors. and i couldn't look at my trumps because they were sideways...and.." he rubs his head, "Lir on a bike my head hurts, Amber goes through so many freakin regents lately." he smiles at yvonne though "Thanks for coming after me."
"True that," Yvonne smiles and eats what she wanted and no more. The temptation to nibble is there but she supresses it while she waits for Martin to finish. "I can't say what we'll find when we get back." She shrugs. "Least I could do, at least I had an IDEA of where to start looking which is more than I had for Desmond. Wonder what happened to him anyway?" She looks a little sad until her smile returns. "Want to share a banana split?"
Martin eyes Yvonne, eyes the idea of more food, "Sure" his stomach growls again. "feels like i haven't eaten in months." which is true really. Oh, he's been nourished, but he hasn't really -eaten-.
Two banana splits are ordered when Martin's stomach growls. Yvonne picks at hers slowly and fills Martin in on months old gossip from the court. Oh well, it is not quite as old as Martin's month's old gossip and they'll finish by sharing gossip older than some of the waitresses here have been alive. "Ready to go back?" Yvonne eventually finishes the story she was telling and reaches for her trump deck.
Martin nods, after polishing off his and most of yvonne's. "yeah, lets." he stretches when he gets up, feeling a little more 'himself'. He moves his hand around, muscles flexing. "Feels a bit jittery but I'm ok...I think."
"You forgot your bag of mushrooms!" Yvonne has the card she wants but she points to the odd two dimensional flat shrooms. "You really shouldn't leave your drugs around for unwitting tourists." She isn't so much scolding as taking a motherly tone.
Martin collects the bag of mushrooms with a sheepish grin, "Wouldn't want anyone else to find that shadow, that's for sure" he murmurs ruefully. "Lets hit the road."
Roads are for shmucks. Yvonne concentrates on her card and she and Martin are pulled through to the Burgundy Salon. A tired 'butler' answers the call, "I didn't think you really meant it when you said you were going to find him." He looks like he may have been enjoying Martin's stores of Bayle wine.
Martin reaches over to cling to Yvonne's arm. "Take me home, honey." he pecks her cheek, risking aunt Fiona's wrath just a little today.
To Amber and Beyond.