MHA #6, Monday Morning

[firstofitskind]

Liam woke at his usual absurdly early pre-dawn hour and slipped out of bed. Now that the island had definitely established a pattern of changing things around, his daily run had an added purpose, at least on Mondays: figuring out those changes and how they affected the island's layout.

Most notable, of course, was the fact that the island... didn't seem to be an island at the moment. For one, the dome up above made it quite clear they were underwater (if in a slightly different sense than a couple weeks ago). And the coastline, the lake, the Preserve... all gone. There was no actual physical divide between what was Fandom and what was wherever they were, but Liam turned back once he started venturing into streets and avenues with nothing even slightly familiar.

The less said about that encounter with the person in the mask who'd done their level best to make sure he didn't make it back to his apartment, the better. (He’d really liked that shirt, and it was now a lost cause.)

He opened the apartment door, only to be greeted with a chorus of "HAIL!!"s.

"Hail," he responded tiredly, stripping off the remains of that shirt and heading over to the kitchen for the first aid kit. "What are we hailing, anyway?" he asked absently.

"The Sacred Rite of 'What Nonsense Is This Island Pulling Now?'" one of the mice informed him.

"Yeah," Liam nodded. "Yeah, that tracks. It's still pretty early, though, maybe celebrate quietly until Verity's up?"

The mouse who'd spoken considered this, and then nodded. "We shall endeavor to Watch The Volume until the Arboreal Priestess has awakened." The pronouncement was greeted by a chorus of somewhat more subdued 'Hail!'s, and Liam noted that he'd made no promises about waiting until after Verity had coffee, but he wasn't going to push it.

That taken care of, he flopped down on the living room couch and got to work cleaning and bandaging the damage that whoever (whatever?) it was who'd attacked him had done.

[ooc: establishy, but also open.]

Comments

[arboreal_priestess]

"Is it just me or have we been on a downward spiral since this whole thing began?" Verity asked and then glared into her cup. "What's this supposed to be, exactly?"

[firstofitskind]

"Coffee. I think." Liam said with a half-shrug. He hadn't taste-tested the stuff, but it even smelled like the embodiment of 'meh'.

[arboreal_priestess]

"Looks like you just ran hot water through some used grounds and used cheesecloth as a filter," Verity opined before taking a sip. The face she made was eloquent, but she kept drinking. "This place murdered the coffee reserves, I'm guessing."

[firstofitskind]

"Sorry," Liam offered. "If it makes you feel any better, the tea's stale too," he made a face.

[arboreal_priestess]

"It keeps becoming worse with every way you describe it," Verity said, her eyes back on his chest. "Recon?"

[firstofitskind]

He nodded. "Apparently that's part of my Monday morning run now. Geography's changed pretty significantly- all of the natural features are gone. No coastline, no Preserve, no lake. Just town. With fewer stairs." But not no stairs, because even merging with Rapture couldn't get rid of all of Fandom's geographical quirks.

[arboreal_priestess]

Verity nodded, heading back into their room to lay out her weapons for the day with the same precision that she would have laid out a tango costume for Nationals. "Any luck figuring out where we are?"

[firstofitskind]

“All I’ve got so far is ‘horror movie version of Atlantis’,” Liam admitted. “Figured I’d wait till I had backup,” by which he meant her, naturally, “to really venture out there.”

[arboreal_priestess]

"You know," she said thoughtfully, trying to find her brace of knives she wore around her calf, "I anticipated saying 'You never take me anywhere nice' in my life, but I hadn't expected to be saying it to the island where I live."

Just. Needed to be said.

[firstofitskind]

“Check the spot between the nightstand and the bed,” Liam suggested absently, taking a wild guess at what it was she was looking for. “And I don’t know, this past week was pretty funny,” he pointed out.

[arboreal_priestess]

Verity poked her hand in that gap and--voila! One calf brace at hand.

"It was cute," she agreed. "Though I spent most of it thinking some variation on 'welcome to my life, be glad your dog hasn't invented prayer.'"

[firstofitskind]

Liam grinned triumphantly as Verity produced the calf brace in question.

"That's pretty much what I said to Kanan," he said. "Stance may have been... chatty... but he didn't take the opportunity to perform an elaborate song and dance number about Kanan's dick."

Unlike the mice, who absolutely had. So like... enjoy that knowledge, Verity.

[arboreal_priestess]

And suddenly everything else about the morning could wait.

"Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?" Verity asked, eyebrows practically shooting up to her hairline. "Gooooooooooooooooooooooo onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn."

[firstofitskind]

The elaborate song and dance was in regards to Liam's anatomy, not Kanan's. Just in case that needed clarification.

"Oh yeah," Liam nodded. "I now know far more rhymes for 'scrotum' than you'd think anyone would ever reasonably need to know."

[arboreal_priestess]

That possibility hadn't even occurred to her, thank goodness.

"I would like to hear all of them," she informed him. "In song format if possible."

[firstofitskind]

Liam turned bright red. “Ask the mice if you really want,” he mumbled.

[arboreal_priestess]

"But I wanna hear it from yoooooooou!" Verity pressed, adoring the way he blushed.

[firstofitskind]

"I don't remember much of it," Liam blatantly lied.

[arboreal_priestess]

"That's entirely bullshit," Verity announced with a laugh. "But, I mean, if you really want me to call the mice in so they can serenade us both, I'm willing to do that."

[firstofitskind]

"No," Liam shook his head, suddenly finding the floor like. Super interesting. "You can call the mice to have them sing it to you some time when I am very far away." He didn't embarrass easily, but that didn't mean he was inclined to recite a song about his dick. Or listen to the mice do so (again).

[arboreal_priestess]

"Awww," Verity said, dropping the teasing to pull him in for a kiss. "I blame me," she said, still amused. "They must have heard me talking about how much I love it."

She was going to have them come sing it for her. She'd just wait till he wasn't around.

[firstofitskind]

"I blame you too," Liam said cheerfully, that kiss doing an admirable job of wiping away any residual embarrassment.

[arboreal_priestess]

"Have a dick less worthy of swooning over," Verity said with cheerful lasciviousness.

[firstofitskind]

“You’re allowed to swoon all you want,” Liam said, like the generous soul he was. “It’s weird when the mice do it, though.”

[arboreal_priestess]

"Well, you'd get more than swooning, but you're covered in blood and bandages," Verity told him. "This place sometimes."