[Log] We Found a Witch Who: Gin Charlie, Sophie Hatter When: May 15th Where: The Dorms What: Sophie Hatter arrives and gets a rude shock, and the tour. Warnings: Swearing Open or Closed: Closed Observable: No
*We found a witch. May we burn her?
Sophie woke up with the urge to yell at Howl. She didn’t know why until she opened her eyes and looked around. This was not her room in the castle by any stretch of the imagination. She could tell her clothes were not what she had fallen asleep in. In fact, it felt like she was wearing trousers.
With an indignant huff, Sophie sat up, took in her alien surroundings, and pinned the man beside her with a glare. Yes, she was frightened, but she would not be intimidated by the setting or allow anyone else to intimidate her. Shocking as the man was, being huge and muscled and looking like a barbarian from distant lands, she refused to be cowed. She could only assume that Howl had done something to land her here, or would be coming soon to take her back home.
“Where am I and why am I here?” Sophie demanded
Ah. A smart one. Gin Charlie eyed the indignant glare without alarm or anything more than mild disinterest. “You are in Pacis Urbs, and the Machine has brought you here,” he answered, succinctly, his deep voice rough but the tone not unfriendly.
“That is the most useless answer I have ever heard, and I live with the most unhelpful man in three worlds,” Sophie scolded, wrapping the sheets around herself better in case she was wearing trousers.
“And who are you?” Sophie continued, sitting up as straight as possible.
Gin Charlie snorted. “I’m Gin Charlie. And who are you?”
“Sophie Hatter, and I would say it was nice to meet you, but it isn’t.” Sophie frowned and finally flipped her legs off of the bed. She was in trousers. Drat them! Who had taken her clothes? “Now, if you will give me back my things, I am more than ready to go back home.” Or wait until Howl came to take her home. She hadn’t figured out how the door portals worked yet, but she could try them on her own. Howl’s Wales portal was the trickiest, but maybe she could get back to Ingary easily enough because she belonged there.
“The scientists can send you home, but it’s damn expensive. You gotta work to get home, Sophie.” A nice old-fashioned name. Easy to say, too. Gin Charlie waited to see how she would take that.
“That,” Sophie said with indignation. “Is exploitation if it’s your own machine that brought me here.” Her eyes flashed. She wished she had her stick still.
“She’s not mine,” Gin Charlie retorted. “They created her, but now she’s her own. They’ve got to build a part to send you back.”
Sophie gave a harrumph. “That is still exploiting people. You shouldn’t rely on others to fix your problems.” Sophie demanded.
Gin Charlie blinked at her, then chuckled - a dry rusty rough noise. “You’re a hell of a wench, Sophie. But that’s how it works here. You and I don’t get much of a say.”
That was how it always went, wasn’t it? People tried to shuffle you along and make you behave nicely. Sophie kept a steady glare on the man, wondering if he was telling the truth. He didn’t act like he was someone in charge, but she wasn’t normal by any means.
“How do they expect me to make enough money to pay my way home?” Sophie asked. She was not going to make hate again, and she doubted she could find enough flowers to sell. Howl hadn’t taught her enough magic that she felt comfortable making charms to sell to people. She still really wasn’t sure what she was doing when it came to magic.
“If you fight, you go in the Games. If you can’t, you can work in the club, or do chores around the Ludus.” Gin Charlie shrugged, completely unperturbed by the glare. She was taking this very well, she was. All spitfire and puffed-up-bluff like a gamecock.
Sophie sighed. “I can clean.” It was also a good way to snoop. Now Sophie also noticed something around her neck. She reached up and touched what felt like a metal choker. Sophie frowned and tried to find the catch. She glared and Gin Charlie again.
“And what is this?”
“Good. We need a house-keeper bad as fuck.” The drones did well, but they were not human, and as the ones on the third floor were often rejects from everywhere else, they were often glitchy and awkward. “That is their control system. Don’t try to get it off, it won’t.”
He reached up and tapped a finger against his own collar.
“It’s charmed.” More a statement than anything else. It must be charmed. Sophie frowned. She didn’t like the idea of anything controlling her after what the witch had done.
“What does it do?” Sophie asked.
“If you get to fighting or fuckin’ shit up, the Scientists can block your abilities, or just knock you out. That’s all. Well, it also translates everything.”
People thought the collars were a big deal, frightening or mind-controlling and shit. They weren’t. They were tricks and toys, carefully developed to a fine art, like any fakery. Gin Charlie recrossed his arms, and waited for Sophie to react.
“Humph.” It still sounded like meddling, but it sounded like a smart idea.If you were going to have strange people with stranger powers, then someone needed to be able to make them behave. Sophie would hate to see what the Witch of the Waste could have done if she’d been set loose on unsuspecting people.
“How long will it take for me to get back home?” Sophie asked, though she had a feeling waiting for Howl to come find her would be a better bet than waiting for these people to get something done.
“Depends. If you work hard, not long. If somebody gifts you a trip home, not long. If you put up a fight, break everything, and cause trouble, it can take a long damn time.” Gin Charlie doubted she would be that way, though.
“So, basically, you have no idea. I’m just supposed to follow your rules because you tell me to,” Sophie didn’t like it. She also didn’t think she had another choice for right now. She didn’t know enough, and it might turn out things could be fixed very easily. She wasn’t going to raise hell just yet. It would be better to sneak in unnoticed until she was sure of what was going on.
“Who is in charge here?” Sophie asked.
Why did the bossy women always want to know who was in charge? Gin Charlie shook his head. “The Scientists are over the Ludus, if anyone fucking is. I’m master of the dorms.”
It sounded like she’d just have to find out more for herself. “Where am I going to stay?”
“In the dorms. I’ll show you down to your room if you’re done asking questions.”
“No, but I would like some proper clothes.” Sophie stood and took the sheet with her, wrapping it around her to mostly hide the trousers. She wasn’t going to walk around indecent.
Actually, she couldn’t think of very many questions. “Is this the same world as Wales is in?”
“Your clothes and all your other shit’s in your dorm room,” Gin Charlie reported. “And no, Wales is not here. Dych chi 'n deall?”*
“That is why I’m suggesting we go to the rooms.” Sophie gave the man a long suffering look. She didn’t really think she liked him.
“Of course I understand,” Sophie tried not to be too offended. “Why wouldn’t I?” Just because she asked questions, didn’t mean she was stupid.
“Very well.” Gin Charlie pushed away from the walls, arms uncrossing to hang by his sides. Though he looked older, he moved with a smooth grace and agility, an utter awareness of his own body. He twitched back the curtain, and beckoned for Sophie to follow him.
Sophie did follow, draped in her sheet. She paused uncertainly at the strange box Gin Charlie lead her into, but didn’t think too much about it until it moved. Then she stumbled, gasping.
“Goodness!” Where was it taking them? Down? No, it didn’t feel quite like down. A door that opened to the rooms would be simpler! “What is this?”
Gin Charlie put out a broad calloused hand and caught Sophie at the elbow with a surprisingly soft touch. “It’s an elevator. You press the button, and it uses pulleys and gears to lift the box up and down. The Infirmary is in the basement, and we are going to the third floor,” he explained, calmly. It was more of an explanation than he usually offered, but he like little spitfire Sophie.
“Oh.” Most people just used stairs. She wondered if Howl knew about elevators. She thought he could like them. He did like strange things. Like spiders.
“Why don’t you just have a door that opens from there to here?” Sophie asked. If they could take her from Ingary to wherever this was, then certainly they could have a door that opened up onto a different floor. It was a silly thing not to have.
“They don’t use magic that way here,” Gin Charlie answered, and stepped out onto the third floor. He waited for Sophie to follow.
“Then,” Sophie asked. “What do they use it for?” She glanced around, but found nothing very surprising about the place. It looked more like Wales than Ingary. Oddly, she wasn’t surprised. Perhaps that would make it easier for Howl to find her, perhaps not
“Where am I going to find cleaning supplies?” Sophie asked as she walked.
“So you house-keep? Good,” Gin Charlie grunted. “I’ll show you where. The dorm rules are: no fighting, no killing, and don’t mess with the drones. That over there is my office.”
He pointed to the door, with papers tacked all over it, as they passed. “This is the commons.”
“What are drones?” Sophie asked, peering at the room and resisting the urge to go poke around in everything. She very much wanted to read the papers on the door to Gin Charlie’s office. Those would no doubt tell her a lot about this place and Gin Charlie himself. Maybe she could even get into his office to clean.
While the man was out, of course.
“How many other people are there here? Are they all from different worlds?” Sophie continued to ask questions as they popped into her mind.
“Drones are the things that help me around here.” Gin Charlie led her across the deep shag carpet. “And there a a damn fuckin’ lot of people here, and they’re all from different worlds.” He glanced around at the collection of people on one couch; they were watching a Game. Another set was playing poker.
He kept walking, moving to the dorm hallway.
Sophie peered at the people. One had green skin. That was a very odd color for skin, but she supposed it wasn’t the oddest thing she had seen. She looked at the moving picture box much like the one Howl’s nephew had been playing on. This one showed a fight between two people. Sophie didn’t like to watch, so she hurried after Gin Charlie.
“Are they all waiting to go home?” She would be here a while if she had to wait for all of them to go home first.
“Yes. Well, no, the one with the blue hair has decided he doesn’t want to go home.” Gin Charlie stepped onto the cool brown tiles in the dorms hallway. “These are the dorms. We’ll find your room and you can get dressed and I’ll give you the damn tour.”
A tall man with a long blonde ponytail, just exiting his room as they passed, barked a laugh. “The hell man? You didn’t give me a tour.”
“You weren’t going to help with housekeeping. Fuck off,” Gin Charlie retorted. The man shook his head and kept going.
Sophie watched the man go and hurried to keep close to Gin Charlie. “Am I to clean all the floors?”
“Hell no. The drones do most of it already. You can do what you want, and they’ll get what you don’t.” Gin Charlie stopped and pointed at the door. Hmm, another double room with no roomie. Yeah, something was definitely up.
“This is your room.” He pointed to the plaque behind the door.
Sophie peered at the plaque, which arranged itself into her proper name. “Will I have it to myself?”
“For now. Later you may have to share,” Gin Charlie answered, calmly. He opened the door and pointed into the room without crossing the threshold. “There is the locker with your things.”
The room was fairly minimal. Sophie looked around and decided it would be better than her spare room at Howl’s. She didn’t like a fussy room very much. It took too much time to clean it.
Sophie walked in and opened the locker. Her clothes were inside. Good. Glancing around, she spotted the bathroom and spirited herself into it. A few minutes later, Sophie came out in a grey dress that fell almost to her feet and black shoes. She’d wrangled her hair back and looked at Gin Charlie.
“When am I supposed to start cleaning?”
“Give yourself a day or two to settle in,” Gin Charlie answered. “If you need it. Then come talk to me in my office.”
Two days to settle in? Sophie hardly thought she needed that much time, but she nodded anyway. “That seems an awful long time.”
“If you need it.” Gin Charlie shrugged. “Come along then, and I’ll show you where everything is.” He rarely did this but dammit he needed the help. A woman in charge of house-keeping made things far more pleasant. There was a reason they stayed at home while men went to war. Each sex had thir different strengths and by the eight winds, that was one of them given mostly to women.
Sophie, pleased she would have something to do, followed Gin Charlie out into the hall. “I’m getting rather used to strange things happening to me.”
Gin Charlie grunted. It would serve her well. He led her down the hall. “Here is the laundry room. The drones do most of it.” He opened the door to reveal the odd-shaped room. There was a drone emptying a basket of linens into a washer. “And that is a drone.” Gin Charlie pointed to the mechanical thing, which moved jerkily.
Sophie peered around Gin Charlie and stared. It reminded her of the scarecrow, only not so badly off. She wondered if it had been a person at some point. Or if it was like the Witch’s little page boys. This one moved like a badly piloted marionette.
“What are they?” Sophie asked. Under that cloak and hood, she couldn’t really see anything.
“Constructs. Mainly mechanical,” Gin Charlie answered. At least, mechanical wheels and cogs and electricity made up the physical aspect. Gin Charlie didn’t want to know exactly how they were made - they had appeared, apparently, around the time the Machine had been brought to life. (That gave him very dark theories about what made them tick, so to speak.) They’d been popular in their heyday for servants of the rich, but their use had declined as of late - rumor said it was the current trend to have actual speaking servants if you could afford to pay them - a status symbol, nothing more.
Bodies for sale, hire, and lives sacrificed for glory and entertainment.
Gin Charlie shook his head. “They get stuck, sometimes, or break down. Tell me and I can fix them.”
Sophie watched as the little machine man worked in jerky motions to put the clothes from the basket to a bigger box. It dropped a sock and jerked to a stop, staring mournfully at the sock. It jerked up, then back down, then up a little more, unable to decide what it should do.
Sophie stepped forward. “Here now, it’s just a dropped sock. You can pick it up. Just bend down and grab it. It’s not hard.” As Sophie spoke, the drone seemed to break out of the jumpy motion sequence, grabbing the sock and placing it in the big box before moving on to the rest of its task. If they followed directions so well, then housekeeping would be easy!
Gin Charlie watched with some interested. “You have a way with them,” he said, and glanced at the drone. He uttered a short series of clicks, punctuated with a sharp short whistle. The drone nodded jerkily and kept working.
“Is that how they speak?” Sophie asked. She’d never tried to learn another language before, but she could try.
“It’s how I speak to them. They talk to eachother somehow.” Gin Charlie shrugged. He didn’t need to know how they did it. “But they seem to understand you very well. Or this one does.” The drones were not all alike. Especially the older ones.
“I think we’ll get along all right,” Sophie admitted, thinking of the scarecrow and the skull. “There are stranger things in the world...worlds.” How many worlds were there? Was she going to get dragged into more? She hoped not.
“Good. You’ll probably meet most of those stranger things here.” Gin Charlie pointed. “These are the washers. These are the dryers. Do you have those?”
The drone put the soap in, closed the lid, and twisted the knob. The washer began making the usual array of noises, and the drone collected its basket and began to shuffle out. Gin Charlie stepped aside automatically, clearing its way.
Sophie shook her head. “No.” She hadn’t thought that there would be cleaning methods she didn’t know. This might be harder then she had originally thought. Sophie frowned at this. She would pick it up. She was certain it couldn’t be too hard.
“It’s easy enough. I can teach you later.” Gin Charlie shrugged. “Any questions? Some cleaning supplies in those cabinets.” He pointed. “Ironing board, iron in there.”
He gestured to the rest of the room. “If it’s related to clothes, either in here or in the closet just outside.” He moved across the room and back out the door. He opened the closet door to the left, and glanced at Sophie.
Sophie eyed the odd supplies and wondered what they would be used for. She did know what an iron was, thankfully. There seemed to be plenty of other new things to learn though. Sophie followed Gin Charlie, feeling a little like a dog.
“If they clean, why do you need me to?” Sophie asked, always able to think of some question.
“They’re machines. And I’m a goddamn bachelor.” Gin Charlie ran a hand over his short grizzled hair. “They miss shit and get stuck or glitched and an extra eye and hand will help a lot.”
Sophie remembered what Howl’s castle had looked like and grimaced. “I see.” Yes, there was nothing like mad witch for cleaning. Sophie wasn’t mad, but she could certainly get things here clean in a hurry.
“There’s another cleaning closet here. Brooms, rags, cleaning solutions, all that shit.” Gin Charlie crossed the hall and opened the door. The shelves were mildly messy, as seemed to happen with all closets of this type. “There’s others. Oh. And some of the Others like to clean their own rooms. I gotta list of those.”
Sophie grimaced at the sight. She could see where she was going to have to start! Honestly, that a broom closet should look so like a teen boy’s was disgraceful. Sophie looked at Gin Charlie, not really sharply, but pointedly.
“I think I’ll start now, if you don’t mind.”
“You sure you don’t want me to show you the cafeteria? I need to make a note of you in my office...” Gin Charlie leaned on the doorframe and sucked his teeth a moment, thinking. Papers, papers, and the list, cleaning supplies.... Drones, already done.
“That’s where the kitchen is?” Sophie assumed she’d need to clean that too.
“The cafeteria, yes. It’s manned by drones - I only expect you to clean the dorms and commons, some of the rooms. Some of the Others like to cook their own meals, and they do a little cleaning as well.”
Gin Charlie shut the closet and started walking towards the cafeteria, back down the hall.
That made things easier. Sophie wondered how many would really want someone else poking around in their room and nodded. She’d make sure she didn’t accidently start cleaning somewhere she shouldn’t.
Sophie squared her shoulders and marched after Gin Charlie. Strange as this place might be, she wouldn’t let it intimidate her. She would find a way home, and she would be back to badgering Howl into doing what he should before she even missed him.
Which would be a bit difficult, because she was already starting to, but she would manage it.