024-027 » neither reward nor punishment

[villagemod]

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern/Central/Western Mathias + ???
WHEN: Days 024-027
WHAT: The consequences of their actions.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: Plotting post over here! The next log will be posted January 23rd.

RECOMMENDED ♫ Deadly Avenger "Onryo" 怨霊

DAYS 024-025
CONSEQUENCES
“There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments —
there are consequences.”
— Robert G. Ingersoll
When the unwilling residents of Mathias Township wake on the morning of the 24th day, they will find themselves in yet another set of frustratingly unnerving circumstances. None of them are where they last remember being, and some of them have strange marks on the palms of their left hands. It's all incredibly unsettling, but truthfully they should be used to it by now. No one will remember traveling to their new location.

Residents can wake up anywhere within their new location and in any position. Curled up in a bed, sprawled on a couch, huddled beneath a coffee table, propped against a wall... Wherever they are, they will themselves to be in quite an unusual state. While they are wearing whatever clothing items they went to sleep in, plus their shoes and a coat. The newest arrivals to Mathias Township will perhaps stand out for being slightly more appropriately dressed than their new neighbors. They are all a bit damp, physically worn out, and half-frozen from their apparent walk through a blizzard.

Each of the four locations is inescapable — residents are trapped, with exterior doors and windows being shut tight and a blizzard raging outside. The locations are stocked with fresh food and water and a large pile of firewood for the fireplaces in each building. The circumstances residents will face, however, may vary wildly between locations as the forces at work in Mathias respond to the recent actions of certain individuals.


BOARDING HOUSE | GREY GULL
NEW HOUSE | MYSTERY MANSION

These residents will wake with a mark on their left hand palms, a spiraling black symbol similar to those some may have seen around town. All marks are identical and cannot be removed, but will have seemingly vanished from their skin on the morning of the 26th day.

Castiel, Daisy Johnson, Dean Winchester
Elena Gilbert, Elijah Mikaelson, Helen Magnus
Phil Coulson, Quentin Coldwater, Sherlock Holmes

DAYS 026-027
IN THE AFTERMATH
After their ordeals of the past two days, the unfortunate residents of Mathias Township will be grateful to find that they were back where they are supposed to be, a chill still clinging to their clothes in whatever place they went to sleep the night of the 23rd day. New arrivals will wake in the living room of the boarding house. None of the residents will wake with anything in their possession from the locations in which they were previously trapped, including any notes or documentation they may have made during their time there.

---

CONDITIONS UPDATE

— SNOW continues to fall heavily on Days 024-025, resulting in white out conditions from the wind that blows in gusts of over 35 mph; the temperature also drops drastically, making conditions extremely dangerous for residents. The blizzard clears on Day 26 and residents are left with a cold, calm world covered in white.

— THE FOG remains blocking the paths in the forest, urging residents to stay huddled within the town proper, and it also now blocks the northern section of town, beginning just before where residents know the chasm in the earth to be. Venturing into the fog is... ill-advised.

— DISAPPEARANCES continue to plague the town. Kylo Ren and Thomas Richardson have vanished without a trace.

— NO NEW DEATHS have occurred in town, but there is a new "grave" in the small makeshift graveyard near the schoolhouse. Rey's corpse has been moved and covered with stones to wait for the ground to thaw enough for a proper burial.

— THE LANTERNS will be gone from the morning of Day 024. No trace of them remains.

---

OOC UPDATES

— A GIFT for everyone! As a thank you for being part of this spooky little game, every character in the game is being gifted 2 Activity Points. These may be banked over here — instead of linking to an AC post, you may put "New Year gift" in that field. Happy 2021, friends!

— NEW LAYOUTS have been installed for our communities! Huge thanks to our Eldritch Librarian Stars for putting in the time to get this place looking shiny. (You may have also noticed some new page layouts being installed — these are also our Librarian's handiwork!)

— DISCOVERIES have been collected and collated for your review. Please note that this is OOC information only, put together for the purpose of helping you as players see connections and possibilities for CR and your own character's potential avenues of exploration and investigation. (If we are missing something, please report it so we can add it to the list.)

— REMINDERS — Don't forget about the bulletin board. Please continue reporting your updates to locations, plots, and discoveries. The map of Mathias has been added to the locations page for ease of reference. Make sure your character's sanity level is kept updated. Prospective players are still joining the TDM, so it's recommended to track new top-levels so you don't miss them.

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Comments

[abrightboy]

Perfect. He was hoping that was where Neal’s face would go. It wasn’t about whether he had one favourite or ten; it was about reminding him of things that made him happy instead of things that made his stomach churn.

“Don’t forget the original Dogs Playing Poker,” Malcolm teased gently, picking up the last unpeeled apple and starting on it. “A classic.”

[conning]

“Cassius Marcellus Coolidge. It’s actually part of a series of eighteen paintings he did, sixteen of which were commissioned to advertise for Brown & Bigelow cigars. Not particularly valuable, over all, but—”

Neal stopped. Grinned slowly. “You did that on purpose.” He ducked his head like that would hide the smile. “...Thanks.”

[abrightboy]

“Just because I normally apply psychology to Evil, doesn’t mean I can’t use it for Good,” Malcolm joked. He looked up from the apple to glance at Neal. “You’ve never been interested curating an art gallery or something? It sounds like you’d be good at it. Or curating someone’s private collection. If we lived in the same New York, I’d tell you to give my mother a call. She’d love to hear about how to make her collection more enviable from a pleasant looking face,” he remarked with a grin.

[conning]

“You use it for Good, wherever it’s applied,” Neal said. He believed that entirely.

He gave another one-shouldered shrug, amused at the thought of working for Malcolm’s mother. “It’s crossed my mind, but there’s no equivalency test to take that proves a fox won’t go after the hens if you let him in. What’s she like? Your mom?”

[abrightboy]

“If a fox is fat and happy, he doesn’t eat the hens,” Malcolm pointed out reasonably. “My mother is... dramatic, overbearing... fierce. I think you two would get along. As long as you can get through the first meeting without her eating you alive, of course. She appreciates people who have taste.”

[conning]

"Sounds like my kind of woman. I could introduce her to my landlady." As though June wasn't so much more to him than that. Neal returned to the pot to turn the fruit and add more liquid.

He tried to keep his tone casual. "You know. I told Raylan yesterday that you three are the strangest people I've ever met, and you're not really changing that opinion."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm smiled, putting down the last apple.

"I'm frequently called way worse than 'strange'; I actually feel like it's a compliment in this context," he teased.

He considered Neal's profile for a moment.

"You didn't expect us to accept who you really are. Has it never happened before?"

[conning]

Neal stirred the pot to give himself something to look at that wasn't Malcolm.

"You're also all very blunt."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm breathed out a faint laugh.

"Yeah. Sorry about that. It's just... it only happened to me recently for the first time at home. I spent ten years with the FBI pretending to be... not a complete mess. And they found out anyway and fired me for it. Then I ended up with my mentor's team at the NYPD and every time they found out something about me that I always hid... I was just waiting for them to reject me over it. And... they haven't. So then I end up here and... the cowboys literally picked me up off the floor at my lowest. So I understand how disorienting it is, to find acceptance when you've been conditioned not to expect it. And 'strange' is a word for it."

[conning]

He poked at the fruit, still focused on the pot instead of Malcolm. Really, there was nothing for him to do but watch the fruit simmer and make sure it was submerged.

"Before I came here, I had the chance to disappear with the score of a lifetime. Cut the anklet. Start over with my best friend, wherever we wanted to go. We could have afforded to be whoever we wanted. Had ironclad IDs from a guy who'd been cultivating fake lives for people for years."

He shrugged. "I couldn't do it. I couldn't leave. I like my life. I like who--" Who he was becoming. "--who I share it with. One of the last things Mozzie said before he walked out was that I was lying to myself if I thought that was who I really was."

Neal took a deep breath, trying for casual again. "Still trying to figure out if he was right."

[abrightboy]

"He's not." Malcolm said with certainty, turning to lean his hip on the kitchen island. "My dad pulls that one all the time. He wants you to believe you're what he wants you to be so you do what he wants."

[conning]

"Mozzie's not like that," Neal said at once. "He's not that kind of person. He just doesn't get it. He's never had what I've found, he's never really wanted it."

Neal shook his head, chest heavy. "And maybe he is right, I don't know. Peter's given me more chances than I deserve. He's protected me when it could've cost him his career if things had gone a different way. I like what I do. I love the people I do it with. But..."

Keller taking Elizabeth was all Neal could think of, suddenly. Keller taking Elizabeth and promising to do it again and again until he got what he wanted.

"The choices I've made put those people in harm's way. The choices I make. So who knows. Maybe he is right. But I can pretend to be this guy a little longer."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm stepped closer. "Anyone who works in law enforcement runs into those types of criminals; the ones who would threaten the people you love to get away from the consequences of their crimes. I was after this serial killer a little while ago. He knocked me out and chained me up in a basement. Among other methods he designed to break me down, he took an axe out of his bag and told me he was going to murder my mother and my sister with it. And he meant it. He was trying to break down my mother's bedroom door with that axe when I caught up to him. She'd barricaded herself inside with my sister. But that doesn't mean you're a bad person. It means you do a good job of putting bad people away."

[conning]

"I worked with the latest one. I worked with all of the people who've come back to hurt the people around me."

Neal didn't get it, how he could tell Raylan and Doc and Malcolm about these pieces of his past and have them not understand that he was exactly where he'd put himself. He smiles crookedly.

"You're not like the people you chase. I am."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm laughed sharply and ducked his head.

"Oh. I wish I was so confident about that," he admitted. "I try really hard not to be. But there has been much debate as to what I'm 'like' and all I can tell you is that the only person who can really decide who you are is you." He lifted his gaze to Neal's face. "I can understand how they think. I can understand why they do what they do. How much not like them can I be? The only real choice I have is what I do with it."

[conning]

Neal just shook his head. Even when he didn't want it, crime came to him. Just like with the treasure from the U-boat. He hadn't wanted Mozzie to steal it, but he hadn't walked away from it until he'd been forced to make a choice. And even after he walked away, it came back to bite him on the ass in the worst way he could possibly imagine. Peter nearly lost Elizabeth. Neal almost lost her. But only one of them was to blame for that.

It didn't matter if he tried to choose the right thing. The wrong thing always waited around the corner, and everyone around him stayed (rightfully?) poised for him to pick it instead.

"Your family. They came out of it okay?"

[abrightboy]

If he chose the right thing, then he wasn't to blame. Maybe if he heard it enough, he'd believe it some day.

He nodded at the question.

"Yeah. I locked the killer in a box. I knew he had claustrophobia. His super religious grandfather used to chain him up in his bedroom closet as a punishment. I knew it would hold him until the police arrived to pick him up."

[conning]

A pause. "Did you come out of it okay?"

[abrightboy]

"Oh, largely," he said with a wave of his hand. "I mean, he stabbed me just below the left side of my ribcage and I had to break my left hand with a ballpeen hammer to get out of the shackles, but. Nothing that didn't heal. Eventually. Having to stay in the hospital for almost four weeks was really the worst part. Gil wouldn't even let me work a case remotely."

[conning]

"First, we have very different versions of 'okay.'" Neal huffs out a breath that's not really a laugh. "Second, you're still the bravest person I've ever met. Third... not really what I meant."

He hesitates. "The night terrors aren't all because of your dad, are they."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm huffed a laugh and shrugged.

"'Just' is probably a bit of an exaggeration," he admitted. "But he features heavily. But... the killer that chained me in the basement was a friend of his. Apparently, we'd met. During the missing time when my father was drugging me."

[conning]

Neal studied Malcolm in silence. Tried to sort out the tumble of thoughts that wouldn't still themselves in his head. He felt something like the twist of lonely longing he'd gotten while he held Daisy in the Gull and she told him she'd been labeled a monster.

Two impossible people. People whose lives shouldn't have added up to make the individuals they were.

"How are you so good?" The question wasn't facetious in the slightest. "You have every reason to be... something else. Or even to just not care."

He really, really didn't get it.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm held his gaze for a moment, then leaned close, like he was telling a secret.

"Because I choose it," he murmured. "That's how I know it's your choice, too."

He straightened up. "You know what the worst part was? As soon as I got back to work, my boss and my mother conspired to make me take a vacation. Like I hadn't been off work for long enough already. It's been suggested that hunting murderers is somehow an unhealthy coping mechanism but... I don't know. It makes me feel normal, contributing to something good with the things I'm good at."

[conning]

You did this, Peter's voice said of the burning warehouse, the art Neal thought was lost. You'll thank me, Mozzie's note had said of the treasures stolen and replaced by Neal's own work.

He wanted to believe that Malcolm was right. He really, really wanted to think that he was capable of being more than what's assigned or expected.

He wanted to. He wasn't sure he could.

Neal blinked a few times, realizing with a twist of embarrassment that he was near tears. He quickly turned toward the apples, trying for a laugh. "I can definitely think of worse coping mechanisms."

God, Malcolm's reminded him of Daisy again. Doing good with what they were good at, even though the people around them thought that good was harmful. In Daisy's case it was more literal, physical, but psychological damage was damage just the same.

"Normally is wildly overrated," Neal said finally. He managed to meet Malcolm's eyes, his own emotions as under control as they were going to get. "Socially and culturally assigned normality, anyway."

Neal shrugged, his smile tiny but wholly genuine. "I think your normal is something pretty special, myself."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm smiled warmly and stepped over, pressing a kiss to Neal's cheekbone.

"Then that makes two of us," he said. As he stepped back, he glanced at the pan on the stove and pointed at it. "Is it supposed to bubble like that?"