Charlie Gale (persuasionfu) wrote in strangergamesrp, @ 2012-05-30 10:45:00 |
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Entry tags: | charlie gale, closed, gin charlie, log |
[Log] Two Charlies
Who: Gin Charlie, Charlie Gale
When: May 14
Where: Infirmary, then dorms
What: A newbie arrives!
Warnings: Swearing and mention of sexual favors.
Open or Closed: Closed
Observable: No
She pretended to be asleep, at first, of course. Pretending to be asleep was an important skill, when you were likely to wake up after one too many drinks not sure whose bed you were in, or worse, wake up with someone or other trying to play a prank on you. It was best to assess the situation before deciding how to respond, and so she kept her breathing measured, tried to sort out the sounds and smells of the place before she opened her eyes.
Was she in Calgary? No. She’d been on her way back to Calgary with Jack, but she couldn’t smell his sulphur-scent, and she certainly couldn’t feel any of the familiar presences of the household around her. There was no scent of baking, which counted out pretty much any other Gale home, and the place smelled a little too clean for any of her friend’s places. Far too clean, almost sterile. She cracked one eye at that thought, and was greeted with what appeared to be the kind of curtains that you saw in the hospital, cordoning off one area from another when there weren’t quite ‘rooms’ to be had.
That caught her attention. She couldn’t imagine why she’d be in a hospital; Jack had taken her home when she’d been injured, and would have done the same again. That really only left the possibility of having been injured and found by a stranger, but that didn’t make a lot of sense, because the car had been well protected and she hadn’t been driving that dangerously!
Besides, nothing hurt. Except that spot in her hand where her guitar should be and wasn’t. She was a little too busy focusing on that to realize she wasn’t alone, at first, closing and opening her hand as if the motion might make the instrument appear. The fiddler in her head that had plagued her so much recently didn’t seem to have a comment on the situation, and she found herself reaching up to feel at her head as if trying to figure out if she’d hit it. “Hey, don’t you have a song for this one?”
There was, in fact, a chair beside the bed, near the monitoring screens that had told him she was awake. Gin Charlie, as usual, disdained the chair. He was leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. He was wearing dark, wide-legged pants, soft worn moccasins, and a pale blue sleeveless shirt with a high collar. It only partially masked the metal collar he’d slipped on for this meeting. He didn’t have to wear the collar, but the scientists thought it made a better impression if he did.
Gin Charlie stood still, and watched her move, talking to herself. He waited for her to sit up or realize he was here.
It took her a moment, and when she realized just how long it had taken her, she felt both very stupid and a little paranoid. Charlie pushed herself up rather quickly, clinging to the sheet like a lifeline, and turned her eyes to focus on the man in the room with her.
He was not a pretty man. In fact, he was pretty much the opposite of a pretty man, with his rough features and obviously much-broken nose. He looked rather like someone who had been chewed on a time or two, but she had no doubt from the look of him that whatever had done the chewing had spat him out.. and probably not lived to regret it.
His song would be low, she thought, and involve a lot of drums, maybe. Deep bass drums, slow and rhythmic, a funeral tune. She hadn’t actually reached out to try to hear him properly yet, but the speculation was amusing enough.
“You don’t look like a doctor,” she pointed out, rather idly.
“Thank the sacrificed god I’m not,” Gin Charlie snorted. “No. That’d be the scientists. I’m Gin Charlie. What should I call you, wench?” She was calm enough, a nice change. Many were often panicky or downright aggressive. Calm, Gin Charlie liked.
“Probably not wench,” she responded with a snort. She considered for half a second giving a false name - one of the cousins perhaps - but that wouldn’t serve any actual purpose. Besides, real power lay in being able to tell the truth the right way, not lying.
“Huh. I’m a Charlie too. Plain old Charlie, no booze in front. Though I suppose I wouldn’t mind a drink right about now, because I’m missing a car, several instruments, and a dragon prince, and that can’t be good.” She ran her fingers through her blond hair slowly, as if the motion helped her think, and then pushed it back over her shoulder. “Scientists?”
“Yeah. The Scientists. They’re in charge of this place.” Gin Charlie shrugged. “You’re in a different world now. The Machine brought you here. The Scientists can send you back. Costs a shitload of money, so while they’re workin’ on that, you work to earn money.”
That was enough information for now. Time to see if that calm would hold up under this revelation. Gin Charlie hoped so. The Scientists didn’t like it when he broke chairs over the newly-arrived’s heads.
That automatically made her a little suspicious. It was one thing to wake up in a strange place and not know how she’d gotten there; for all she knew, any number of things could cause that. It was even possible the Aunties had somehow engineered it. Being told, however, that a machine was to blame and that the people in charge of the place were scientists, that was different. She didn’t have enough experience with science to feel comfortable with that at all.
“And how-” Her tone was still calm enough, but slightly harsher. “-are we expected to earn money here?”
Good, no freaking out yet. Gin Charlie shrugged. “However you can. If you can fight, you work in the Games. If you can’t, you could work in the club - bartend or wait tables. If you can’t do that, hell, you can do chores around the dorms. Blessed ghosts only know I need the help.”
That wasn’t as bad as it could be, she supposed. Though she had no intention of letting on that she were in any way capable of fighting, because that was the last thing she wanted to be stuck doing for a living. After all, she’d recently very nearly died at the hands of a troll; she didn’t plan on being in a near-death situation for at least... a few weeks, given how her life had been lately.
“Fight? Um... do I look like I can fight?” She wrinkled her nose, tilted her blond head a little. “Fighting, no. But hey, if there's a club, there’s a place for a musician, right? Assuming those instruments turn up or can be replaced around here somewhere, I can play just about anything the fans around here like.”
Her finger sketched idly against the sheet, a seemingly random pattern. The real purpose of the charm was just to make her look and sound just a little more harmless.
“All your shit’s in your locker in your room.” Gin Charlie grunted, gaze going to the nervous fidget. As long as there was no weaponry involved... “Fuck if I know what you can do, Charlie. Any more questions?”
He stayed still. Asking and answering questions was best done here, in relative quiet. Once they got to the dorms, well, any strange shit could happen.
She snorted, pressed her hand flat against the sheet. Apparently such a charm wasn’t going to do any good with this one, who didn’t judge people at face value anyway. So much for the innocent and helpless act. She’d never been too good at it in the first place.
“Sure, plenty. How about: Which way to my room? What do they call this place? I assume ‘all my shit’ doesn’t include teenage dragon princes that were in the car with me, or well, my car? And if you’re not a scientist, what is your job around here? Because you sure aren’t pretty enough to make a proper welcoming committee.”
Gin Charlie snorted, then smiled. It wasn’t a pretty expression, and revealed a gap in his teeth where one of the front ones had been knocked out. But there was amusement in his dark eyes. “I’m master of the dorms. Your shit involves whatever clothes and weaponry you had on you. No cars or other people. I’ll show you down. And Charlie? Welcome to Pacis Urbs.”
“Master, huh?” Charlie cocked an eyebrow at the man, her tone teasing and light. She wasn’t panicking because it wouldn’t do any good to panic, and because she’d learned recently just how strong she could be when she focused. The fiddler in her head was still silent - maybe he’d been left behind too? - but she was sure she’d think up a song for this herself any moment.
It might have had something to do with tempting fate, the little twist of her lips as she reached up to touch the collar around her neck and winked at the man. “So you’re the master and I’m wearing a collar... and you’re going to show me the way down?”
Gin Charlie grunted. “Heard that afore.” He reached up and tugged the high collar of his shirt aside to display the matching sleek metal. “The collars are the control system here. You can’t take them off, so don’t bother.”
He recrossed his arms.
“Aww and here I thought I was being clever,” Charlie said, but the words were followed by an easy laugh. She slid to the side of the bed and hopped, a little too eager to be out of it, and then gave a slight stretch. It felt strange to go from driving her car to this suddenly, and her mind was still worrying over Jack. Of course, he’d be able to sort out how to drive the car, and he could always fly home if he needed to. Or take her phone and call Allie, assuming that the phone wasn’t among her things here. Surely it wouldn’t be; even the aunties’ power couldn’t create cross-dimensional cell reception, could it? The problem was, she wasn’t sure she bought into there being much of anything the aunties couldn’t do, if they put their minds to it.
Except control certain younger members of the family, at the moment. Well, okay, so maybe they weren’t omnipotent after all.
Charlie blinked, as if realizing she’d been distracted for a moment, and then lifted an eyebrow. “You wear one too? Hardly fitting for a master, is it? Or is there someone you bow to, these Scientists, perhaps? Are we just puppets of puppets around here?”
“We’re the Others. The Machine bring us here, and the Scientists send us back. They’ve been trying to stop her, but they haven’t figured it out yet.” Gin Charlie shrugged, and pushed away from the wall, arms swinging down by his sides. Despite his apparent age - the wrinkles, the grizzled hair, the leanness of his body - he moved strong and sure, a fighter to the core. “I’m master of the dorms, not the whole damn Ludus. If that’s anyone, that’s the Scientists.”
“Ahh, just the dorms. All right.” She tucked that information away in her mind, because knowing who was in charge where was always an important thing. She needed to know as much as possible if she was going to sort out why she was here, and there had to be a reason beyond some machine. She watched the man as she followed him, raising an eyebrow at the way he moved.
“Hey, how come it’s the City of Peace, if the whole thing we do is fight? And obviously... you fight.” She didn’t ask. There was no reason to ask, with the way he moved. He reminded her of some of the older men in her family, the ones with scores from antlers littering their bodies, who still held their positions regardless.
“Because we fight, there is peace,” Gin Charlie answered, a little quieter than before, voice worn rough. He tipped his head to look at her. “And I’m fuckin’ retired.”
He opened the curtain and stepped out into the hall. A white-robed medic, with a green sash, sidestepped and stopped. “Alright?”
“Alright,” Gin Charlie answered. The medic nodded, and headed off down the tiled hall. Gin Charlie beckoned to Charlie and started off down the hall.
“Not just retired, but fuckin’ retired?” she responded with a snort. “I see. So you retired from the fighting and turned into... den mother instead?”
She stepped up to walk beside him, her stride confident and composed. She certainly wasn’t going to show any particular hesitance in front of a stranger, and besides, she didn’t feel that threatened by the situation yet. Especially if they were headed toward her guitar. She grinned. “Sounds like a pretty sweet gig. Get to meet all the newcomers, impress us with your knowledge, keep us from getting in too much trouble?”
“It’s a damn sorry job. Always too much to do and not near enough fucking time to do it in,” Gin Charlie retorted. “Dorm rules: No fighting. No killing. And don’t bother the drones.”
He punched the button for the elevator, and turned to face her again. “You destroy anything, you pay for it.”
“Well, as I said, fighting isn’t really my thing, and I pretty much don’t kill anyone unless they hurt my instruments.” She winked. “I’m pretty sure that’s standard musician behavior though. And... wait, drones? What drones? Like the Star Wars kind of drones?”
“The drones do chores around the dorms. You’ll see them.” The elevator dinged and Gin Charlie eyed the pair who came staggering out, one bloody and with a broken arm, the other with a brutally bruised face. Looked like he’d been hit with a shield. Gin Charlie shrugged, and stepped onto the elevator, holding the door open for Charlie.
Charlie blinked, moved into the elevator as if under someone else’s power, not her own. On autopilot, perhaps. She flicked her eyes to the door, and then back to the man beside her, frowning a little. It wasn’t that she’d never seen worse injuries. She’d had worse injuries, for that matter. But the idea of seeing that on a regular basis wasn’t at all a comfortable one, and she rubbed her hand against her jeans, rather awkwardly.
“You said ‘if you don’t fight’, like there are a lot of us who don’t. This isn’t... this can’t be nice for people to walk into if they’re not used to seeing stuff like...” She nodded her head toward the door, indicating the two who had just left.
“You’re taking it better than most,” Gin Charlie allowed, as the punched the button to go up. Third floor. “They adapt. Some don’t do anything, let others pay their way home.” Loafers and the lazy, the frightened and the hopeless. They got all kinds, and Gin Charlie was in charge of quite a few of them.
“You’re on the third floor of the dorms,” he added.
“Sometimes people pay for others?” Charlie leaned against the wall, crossing her arms over her chest as she thought. She couldn’t really imagine paying for someone else to go home, when she was trying to earn her own way there, though she supposed it depended on who that person was and why they couldn’t make their own way.
“I think I haven’t really gotten it all through my head yet. Little slow, sometimes. Besides, there’s a place for music, there’s a place for me.” The confident grin was real.
“There’s a place for everyone here.” Gin Charlie stepped out of the elevator. He groaned, cursed, and stalked over to the drone thunking itself into his office door. He took the robed figure by the shoulders, and sent it gently shuffling off in the opposite direction. It wobbled a little - probably needed something recalibrated. Damn.
“That’s a drone,” he called to Charlie, and went into his office. The door was pasted up with rosters for the fights and sign-up sheets for job shifts. He came right back out wit a bottle of gin in hand, top already discarded and bottle half-lifted to his mouth as he shut the door.
“Uh huh. So they’re not exactly... thinking creatures. Entirely.” Charlie looked after the drone with a certain disturbed feeling shuddering through her. Living with something like that around just seemed kind of creepy. But she supposed it wasn’t as bad as the injured fighters, either. Speaking of which, she might have to find out if there was any need for help with healing, but considering the medical-seeming place she’d woken up in, she guessed not. She’d rather not advertise that she had any particular mystical abilities anyway, not right away.
“Okay, I have two questions.”
After taking a long swig of the gin straight from the bottle, Gin Charlie joined her again. He offered her the alcohol. “They’re mechanical, mostly. Ask, but walk. That’s my office.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, and turned to lead her into the commons.
“Well you just answered one of them. You share.” She took the bottle, grinning, and turned in the direction that he was leading her, cheerfully enough. The bottle was lifted, but she paused before drinking it.
“The other one was if sexual favors got you any particular special treatment with dorm masters, but it was more of a curiosity than anything.” The comment was punctuated with a long pull from the bottle, comfortable as if she were used to both alcohol and informal ways of sharing it.
“No, they don’t,” Gin Charlie answered, calmly and promptly, as they moved through the commons. It had been a while since he’d gotten an offer, but apparently Charlie was the odd one out. Huh, figured.
The floor changed from thick shag carpet to tiling as they entered the long dorm hall. Doors were mostly closed, with plaques beside detailing the names of the occupants. Gin Charlie easily located the one belonging to the new girl, and held his hand out for his gin back. “This is your room.” And she had a double room, but no roomie. The name plaque was blank. That was a little unusual.
“Duly noted,” Charlie said, with a slight note of disappointment. It had been a long shot anyway, but hey, she’d take any advantage she could get. Granted, if he hadn’t moved in such a way as to telegraph a certain sort of power she wouldn’t have been quite so tempted to ask, but that was a whole other matter.
She handed the bottle back over, raised her eyebrow at the plaque on the door. “Hm, so I don’t have to share? That’s kind of nice, anyway. No one to complain I make too much noise.”
“I wouldn’t say that. Something up.” Gin Charlie shrugged, and took a swig of his returned gin. “Your shit’s in your locker. Anything else you want to ask about?” He absently sloshed the bottle, listening to the level in it.
She immediately stepped past him to find the locker, because she really did want to check her instruments right away. When he spoke again though, she peered back over her shoulder at him, giving him a long contemplative look. Knowing exactly one person in the entire world so far, she really did want to make a friend of him, though he didn’t look or sound exactly as if he cared about having friends.
That was a bit of a pity. She took a step back toward him, reached out a hand. “One more drink?”
Gin Charlie sighed, and obligingly took the step into the room needed to pass her the bottle. “I keep plenty in my office. The door is, unfortunately never locked. Damn thing’s broken.” He huffed a dry, rusty noise that could possibly pass for a chuckle.
She laughed. “Oh? Free booze, but we’re supposed to behave and stay out of trouble? Hmm.” She took a drink and then handed it back, stepped away. “Guess I’ll have to get back on the country bandwagon, proper drunk music. But hey, where would I find someone to ask about the whole job thing?”
“I didn’t say it was free,” Gin Charlie snorted. “I said my office is always goddamn open. And you ask me. And when you’re settled in, I’ll ask Gribbs if he needs another musical wench in the club’s lineup.”
“You mean an unlocked door doesn’t mean free?” She snorted. “Riiight. That’s totally not how it works where I’m from, sorry my friend.” She had her guitar out of the locker, out of the case, and was testing the strings as she spoke. A couple of cheerful notes, and then she was grinning brightly at him.
“All right then. You go ahead and find that out for me, because it takes me about two seconds to get settled in, just about anywhere. I can go from one end of the country to another to a stage in less than half an hour, whether I know the band or not, and I certainly don’t need any time to lounge around getting comfortable if working is the way to get out of here.”
She waved a hand at him between notes, almost a dismissal.
“I got more things to do than dance attendance on you. Take your damn time and I’ll do my job,” Gin Charlie answered, but without heat. “And it’s my fucking office. Nobody steals anything from it.” Not without him knowing...or being told, at least.
Tossing back another long drink, he turned to go.
“Mmhmm,” she said mildly, already considering testing that. It wasn’t that she cared that much about the alcohol; she was sure she’d get plenty of drinks if she played in the club. But anything you weren’t supposed to do was always at least mildly tempting.
She aimed a few playful notes in his direction as he went, the music stretching out cheerfully after him, each note longer as he moved further away.
“See ya, Master Booze, sir!”