i said a-MONAAAAY......CHANGES EV-REEEY-THAAaaang....[Closed]

[summertimeblues]

Who: Richie Tozier (summertimeblues) & Red (persistor), Boxer (desistor), Sandra the Unseeing (tutorb), and J.J. Leroy (underwhelms), possibly others
What: Mission stuff!! And a catch-all for January if need be
When: Early January
Where: Olympia, visiting Wyver for the lovely mountains and lakes and the profit they hold
Warning(s): Potty mouths, perhaps dirty humor, maybe a violence...also J.J. is a terrible embarrassment to dw rp and Canada as a whole, I'm threading with him so you don't have to. You're welcome.



Rod and Bexer - Disturbing the Dead

[Not a month ago, Richie would have outright laughed if you told him to hitch up his suspenders and drag his ass out for a tomb raid. The whole thing would have seemed ludicrous. Childish even, searching for buried treasure in taped off ruins. That's the shit you pulled when you were fourteen and bored and you hear a rumor that the old mill's light turns on by itself at the stroke of midnight.

But call him curious. Or suitably bored. Suitably irritated with how daily life in Olympia now means he's serving liquor to men and women who can't shut up about what a pack of ingrates the good folks of Wyver are. That insipid survey that'd been floating around ground his gears further. Though the two situations hardly co-relate, rising dissent versus hunkering around in caves for trinkets, some irrepressible madness was stirring in him. A need to dissent himself, the likes of which he'd abandoned in his early thirties when he cast off the picket signs and weekend marches. Get his head out of the puckered asshole Olympia was becoming and throw a middle finger to the air.

Also, his wages as a barkeep were fair, but he was used to far, far better. This had money involved.

He contacted Red on a whim for company (and for a moment doubted the choice — she was a mute, would that make it harder to navigate together? They'd have their phones but maybe she'd be stuck doing hambones and finger snaps to call his attention if there was a bat nest he might trip into) and she'd responded quick enough that there was nothing more to discuss. The pair were to meet at the mouth of the mountain and make the trip into the crypt together.

Except the pair's more like a trio.]

So I've gotta say, of all the coincidences I could have imagined, I wouldn't have sat you two down on a love seat if you paid me ten dollars to think it over. Don't I look the fool.

["Wally" is human now, the light from the flashlight catching his fleshy ridges and the leather of his jacket, but he's dragging the sword with him. The sword that he lives in, clinking over ancient stone as they pass into the dark world of the dead. The world's most solid hologram, folks, step right up and take a poke yourself! You won't believe your eyes!] I take it that you hitched wagons before all of that. Or you're a Super Freak the likes of which Rick James couldn't conceive. Congratulations Red, I'm impressed.


Sandy Crabs - A Day in the Life

[The second rebellion takes place on a deceptively more forgiving stage. There's no ghosts or trap doors, but there's pitfalls here all the same. This one is bordering on (or in fact, is) illegal. Something a sensible adult wouldn't have done, and he wouldn't have dared as a grown man in California. There was no risk worth taking it for. In Maine, maybe, but the snooping they'd had to do laid firmly outside of the realm of man and institutions. This was legitimate espionage.

Richie's only been here how long, now? Two, edging on three months? He can't decide if this sudden bout of daring is a healthy change or a stupid one.

This time, he enlists what he can only imagine is the perfect accomplice for the job. She's travel-sized, smart, a verified psychic, and easily hidden into small spaces. Hello Sandra, we're very impressed with your resume and we'd like to welcome you on board. Happy to have you on the team.

They slip through security with relative ease. Sandra's got a neat trick there: blind she may be, but unseeing is a damn lie. She confirms or denies the presence of approaching bodies, and only through her cheats does Richie slip through doors and around the right corners until they hit the office they need.]

You oughta do this full time, babe. You're a dab hand at playing dispatch for thieves. [Richie shuts the door behind them with his heel, and gently props the old gal on the sprawling desktop as he takes a quick gander around.] Maybe we can get you some wheels. Motor you around and you can zip in where man may not follow.


Jimmy Johns Leeroy - Preaching in the Material World

[After all that recklessness, he's ready for something a little more sedate. A trip to the country, so to speak. Luckily there's an option to earn some money there too, and as much as he misses swimming daily in pools or long California beaches, he can only shudder remembering that horking motherfucker that tried to bite his face off on the boat trip in. The lakes might be inland, but even so? No thanks.

He opts to get quartz from the Edrathe Ruins instead. Sets off early in the day so he has a bit of time to see the sights as well, admiring the graceful lines of ancient monuments and having a quick lunch on a snowy knoll. The weather has been downright amicable, even if there's no melt. While the sun is still high and he has plenty of hours to make it back to town, he treks into the dark.

It's some time before he comes across what he needs. He's careful to chart his way through the cave. While not labyrinthe, it's dim and deep enough that he feels caution is necessary. Richie hums, wedging the light between his shoulder and cheek as he pries the crystals off the wall.

There's a splashing sound from further ahead.

He freezes. Whips the light around with a hunchback's pirouette. His hands are still on his knapsack and the rocks so he has to tuck them away before fetching the light proper. Richie waves the light this way and that, but only sees the esophagus of bedrock stretching longer and longer down. How deep does this go?

What's splashing around in the dark down there?

For once, he opts to stay silent. He's alone out here, he's sure of it...]


((if you want to do something in our fair month of January, please feel free to shoot me a PM on this journal! Happy to throw up closed starters anytime.))

Comments

For Yooski

[summertimeblues]

[The kid's birthday had been a rather modest affair. He was somewhat surprised to get an invite, frankly, but finding out that Sandra, Wally, and Red all held down the fort next door shut the case pretty quick. No doubt they didn't mind a fellow grown up coming along, and Yusuke wasn't the kind of kid who craved a reckless keg party in the dark of the woods anyhow.

What a strange lil' fella.

Even so, rather than heading back to his own place he was invited to spend the night at this lunatic's jumble of a halfway home. And Richie, head spinning from plenty cups o' wine and feeling the post-cake coma setting in, had agreed. Not to mention he'd offered to make a killer brunch the next day. It wasn't all boast either. Akira had tasted his cooking and deemed it good enough to back up his hype once the offer came. Wouldn't it be easier to get a head start if he stayed? Wasn't it nicer to fall asleep in a place that felt alive, held other souls, seemed like a home? His sleep had been shit anyway, maybe it would help to get out of the empty den for once.

It doesn't.

It's four hours from sunrise when the prone form on the couch starts turning in his sheets. The apartment has a slight chill, yet sweat is starting to dot at his forehead.

He dreams. He dreams of long tunnels. He dreams of the fetid stench, shit water lapping at his legs. He dreams of Patrick Hockstetter propped up in the muck, the remaining half of his liver lips bloated even bigger than they'd been in life.

He dreams of something huge, skulking, waiting in the darkness. A deafening sense of wrong.

He dreams of the house with the elves in the wallpaper, mouths stretching into screams as the ceiling and the doors rose away and away until Stan lost his mind. He dreams of Paul Bunyan, twenty-plus feet high and rendered in plastic, lifting off the metal spikes that held him up to swing his axe down on a little boy's bench, to cleave the pavement behind his fleeing heels as he ran for his short and unstoried life.

He dreams of a photo album, of motion picture cast in sepia browns where only two small boys played audience. Two small boys watched the picture move, watched themselves in the picture, watched their small picture selves giggle and trot towards the canal ledge.]

Don't...

[Watched them look over the edge.]

Don't do that.

[Watched as it sprang up, watched as it reached for Bill, watched as it grinned wide and without eyes and wearing Georgie Denbrough's face.]

That's not Georgie!

[The world explodes in pain and Richie yelps himself awake, clutching a goose egg sprouting on his temple. He'd rolled off the couch and hit the end of the coffee table, and was now sprawled on the floor like a suicide jumper. He struggles to sit up. His hands fly to his face and press into the cooling sweat as his brow.]

Shit...

[tricksune]

[ His 17th-ish birthday comes and goes without incident. January 28th probably isn't accurate anymore, but with a new life comes a new start—or so it's easier to say. It was a nice get-together, so he doesn't belabor the more existential questions. Or, if he does, it's simple enough to attribute his wakeful energy to new art supplies. He breaks in some paints he'd been so graciously gifted, wiling the time away until he loses track of it altogether, only leaving his room to get more water to clean his brushes.

But their very full house is a little bit fuller tonight. (Which he doesn't mind—much as he likes his own space, there is a fine line between a private home and a lonely one, and the latter would be a shame tonight.) It does make navigating a little trickier, and he steps quietly through the space, careful not to wake anyone as he runs the tap.

—Apparently, not careful enough. He's about to apologize when he hears Richie's rumblings, but the closer he squints through the dark, the more something seems... amiss. It isn't the grumbly, murky sluggishness of someone roused to half-consciousness, and there's a sudden cry-jerk-clunk of motion and noise that has him quickly trotting over. ]

Mr. Tozier—!?

[ A harsh but low whisper, though the rest of the apartment is quiet enough that it rings clear enough. He crouches beside him, reaching out cautiously for his shoulder in the dark. ]

Are you all right...?

[ That was a very... abrupt tumble. ]

[summertimeblues]

[The touch to his shoulder isn't a comfort. Woozy thoughts and a throbbing head had him missing the shout out, and the hand that brushes him is the first sign of life he registers. Richie startles violently. He jerks back into the couch as if brushed with a hot poker. When he turns to see his eyes have gone owlish. Even in the dim light he's lost several shades of color. You'd have to take the faintest dab of Ultramarine and drown it in Titanium White to make a true match.

Richie squints for a moment, then gropes for his glasses on the coffee table. Settling them back on confirms that he's looking like a jitterish dolt. That cream stroke topped by a black, swooping blob solidifies into a human form. It's only Yusuke.]

Fit as a fiddle in a junkyard heap. [Read: could be better. How embarrassing. When he makes to lift himself upright he finds his legs have been sapped of strength, making due on half a tank of gas. He has to steady himself on the couch arm to rise. Can the kid hear his heart hammering? It feels like it's trying to batter ram its way out of his chest, it wouldn't be a surprise if he could. Richie winces, rubbing at the lump.]

Man, what a knockout hit. I didn't wake you, did I? [Blearily, he takes the boy in. His frown deepens.] Is that paint water? It's tits o'clock in the morning...

[tricksune]

[ Yusuke responds with like surprise, twitching his hand back, fingers curled in towards his palm with uncertain stillness. Richie's reaction is much more violent. There's enough ambient light from the moons and the kitchen enough to spot the nasty swell on his face and how hard he's washed out, practically vibrating.

He waits a long moment, then answers quietly with a loose shrug. ]

I hadn't gone to bed yet.

[ Him being awake definitely wasn't as weird as... whatever just happened. He upturns the glass, water turning to ice as it pools in his hand. He hands the chunk to Richie placidly, figuring his usual skittishness to magic might take second place to whatever's got him spooked now. ]

...For your wound. It's clean, don't worry.

[ He'd only just refilled it, the tiniest swirl of ink embedded in the ice. It should do—doesn't look like the skin's broken, anyway. ]

[summertimeblues]

[It's a nifty party trick when there's no thirty foot sea snakes to kill.

Richie takes the ice cube with a bemused calm, palm stretched flat. He's less shocked by the gesture now, considering relativity of strangeness (both Boxer and Sandra outclass a little instant freeze, and they're sleeping none too far away) and the fugue state he was rousing out of.]

Wound is a strong word. Idiot bonk is more like it. [He presses the cube to the second head sprouting next to his hairline. Richie's laughter lives high and quiet in his throat, more breath than sound as he tries to temper his volume. He drops back onto the sofa and shuts his eyes.] Sorry about this. You should get to bed, kiddo, you're gonna be dragging excess baggage under your eyes come morning, and that's a look that don't suit anyone south of thirty-five.

[tricksune]

[ Looks like they're making strides. Granted, showing up in a place like Thesa Station and not getting accustomed to the various, otherworldly abilities and people sounded like a great way to die of heart failure. Though Richie only looks a few shades better than corpse-white right now anyway. Yusuke rolls back onto his heels, curling his legs up as he makes himself comfortable, apparently fine with a little sleep dep. ]

It's all right. Sleep seems very slow to find me tonight anyway.

[ Hence why he doesn't run back to his room now either, instead quietly tidying the table of some leftover cups, crumpled napkins, and other residual signs of a modest get-together. The clean-up was put off for the next morning, but it keeps his hands busy, and it seems a bit callous to leave right after Richie's knocked himself upside the head. And... y'know. The other stuff. There's a lot that he's really very dense about, but not that. ]

—Was it a dream?

[summertimeblues]

[Busywork is a great excuse to linger. And it is a linger, make no mistakes. Dread of a different sort creeps in.

The question seals it. Richie's eyes lock shut. Shameful. He chuckles low and sits forward, elbows to knees.]

Something like that. [It was a bad 'un, then. The details have already half leaked away, as dreams always do.] Didn't say anything too weird, did I? The way my ex tells it I've got a lot of songs to sing once the lights go out.

[tricksune]

[ It's obvious, isn't it? He isn't really known for his subtlety, despite his propensity to stay out of the din of things. Yusuke hovers, not versed enough in people to know exactly when to leave well enough alone, or when to engage.

All he's learned is that averting his eyes from a problem doesn't solve it. And—it is a problem, isn't it? The ice is slowly melting, and he looks for something that would help catch the droplets. ]

If by songs, she meant elegies. [ What else would sound like that? ] It was not a happy tune.

[ He pauses, finding a tea towel in his half-blind groping around the table, slowly recalling the dozen or so people Richie had rambled about earlier. Even so, ]

...I don't think you mentioned him before. 'Georgie.'

[summertimeblues]

[Richie grins.] Next time I'll make sure it's a top forty hit.

[The name is all it takes. Like the decisive quarter in the jukebox, letting it shout out your pick for the whole bar to drink and sway to. It had been the album, hadn't it? The one with the moving picture.

The ice cube is starting to leak down the side of his face. Creeping droplets, inching over the cut of his cheekbone to bulge at his tin. One or two drop onto his pyjama pants, and he takes it as a good excuse to leave the couch and take refuge by the kitchen counter. He faces the wall as he fetches his own towel, lips twisted with the stormy greys taking over his face.]

I hadn't, yes. [He cups the cube in the folds of the cloth. Presses it back to his head and still fails to move away. It would be the same as crawling into the cupboard, or taking the door and wandering back home. Hiding, brooding, same difference. Either way you've already spooked the kid.] Georgie...

[He gives a scoff. Leans on the counter one handed, head titled over the sink. All that does is remind him of Beverly's old stories. In the dark it's easy to trick yourself into thinking the black pits in the drain are swelling, perhaps with blood, thick and old and rancid, bubbling, ready to burst.

He swivels back around, shaking his head and lips curled around gritted teeth.] I wouldn't have mentioned him, no. It's not really my story to tell, but...just, uh, suffice to say he passed away. When he was six. He was my good friend's little brother. Bill's brother.

[Richie's gaze stays firmly on the ground. He is uncharacteristically slow to speak, sentences dropping staccato instead of on a smooth radio melody. None of that practiced grace shows now.]

Bill used to think he was being haunted by him. Got us all a bit spooked.

[tricksune]

[ As impressive as sleep-warbling would be... this is not the same, celebratory Richie from just some hours before. Or the one at the gala. This is more like the Richie on the little rocking boat when they'd first met, except instead of a lake there's just a glass' worth of water, and rather than a snake it's the memory of someone else's brother.

It's troubling, though he's not really any closer to understanding it. This Georgie's passing was no doubt tragic, but six—Richie is not a freshly minted 17-year-old himself. How long ago must this have been? He frowns, small and thin. ]

I see.

[ A 'bit' spooked indeed. Rather than depositing himself on the couch, Yusuke stays sitting where he is, in case Richie decides to go back to bed. If he could. Seems a nasty thing to wake up from and risk returning to, whatever he'd seen in his sleep. He eventually finishes wiping away the moisture from his hands, speaking smoothly. ]

It seems he might be haunting you as well. Isn't it strange, that you'd hold onto such ghosts after the end of the world?

[ Isn't it odd that they all do? ]

[summertimeblues]

[Richie does raise his gaze then. The dim light doesn't age Yusuke, fails to hide the fact that youth clung to him from the twist of his over-long hair to the thinness of every limb. Height failed to count for much. The slim bones of his face didn't help either, though it was hardly his fault. Genetics in Japan could be sold off for a billion dollars, should anyone crack that code. The pretty people of Los Angeles alone would shell it straight out the pocket if it meant holding the glowing gift of youth for just another year longer.

Even so, Richie knows better. He's not your average kick-flipping skirt chaser. He's been and done bigger things than sitting down to tests and agonizing over puppy loves and pimples on picture days.

He holds the silence for a moment longer, pensive. The reply comes slowly, and it's not really a reply at all.]

Akira said you guys tackled a lot of tough shit. People who got away with things they shouldn't have. What's the worst...

[He halts. Rewinds.]

Don't answer that. [He lets the ice cube come off his head then. It's too freezy-cold by now anyway, he feels like his noggin will go numb. Richie drops the cube in the sink with a bitter plunk and drapes the towel over the counter ledge.] Hell. Happy birthday to you, lil' slugger, lay out all the dirty laundry for me. What a goof up.

[It's obvious now anyway, isn't it? No one would ask for the worst if they weren't trying to do a one-up, and where else do you go with a kid that died before he got to second grade? Richie laughs to himself again. He clears the wet remnants from his temple with the heel of his palm.]

Georgie was murdered. [And, because he hasn't pissed on the celebrations enough, because it needs that extra dose of stink to really make it a rotter, Richie just keeps going.] They found him in the street with his arm ripped off. Heads or tails whether it was the shock or the loss of blood that did it.

He was the first...1957, he was the first one to go. That fall. It bled over into next summer, the missing kids. They found a few, but you know... [He folds his arms and grits his teeth.] You only ever find a few.

[tricksune]

[ The worst thing? Was he trying to set the stage? Was he gauging to see if he could handle the punchline of the story? Yusuke isn't given time to answer, and nothing springs to mind immediately regardless—worst is so very subjective, after all.

For example... was anything they've experienced worse than finding a baby brother's torso sans an arm and however many pints of blood it takes to kill someone so small? Yusuke doesn't flinch, reaction almost invisible in the low light of their still-quiet apartment: just a beat of surprise before his eyes dip away sharply. The first of a series. One of many. (Isn't it just. Isn't it always?) ]

That's true.

[ He picks himself up slowly, walking himself over to the kitchen and reaching for their kettle. There's a measured calm in him and the way he nudges past Richie to the sink, still thinking as he lets the tap run. It'd be easy to read as awkwardness, or even melancholy. It is a heavy story, and he hadn't braced for its weight—the emotional whiplash alone could floor anybody. What a way to end the day, thanks, Uncle Richie.

But the usual, almost dreamy quality of his voice goes flat, and his next question does nothing to lighten the mood. ]

And? [ He shuts the water off and flicks away a few errant drops with a little more force than necessary. ] If you never found peace, and they failed to find corpses—what of the culprit?

[ Did they find justice, at least? ]

[summertimeblues]

[Yusuke takes this in with the same stillness of body he wears day in and day out. It's a small relief. He's not so shaken by the facts that Richie would have to worry about whether or not he'd sleep easy. Nightmares were likely out of the question, but nobody took the notion of murder to bed without mulling it over for an extra hour or two.

Most of all, he'd hate to make the kid worry. It's his fucking birthday, why should he be bothering himself with the grainy memories of a sad old man? Yet the damage is done. The kid joins him at the sink and makes to fix tea. Richie watches as the water swirls and rises, flicking his gaze up to really take the boy in. He's stiffer than usual, he decides.

There was a third, almost stupid outcome he'd failed to consider. Akira and Yusuke were used to suiting up and getting something done about their issues. Even if this was something that preceded them by thirty-odd years (maybe more than that, even), Richie can just see that same flame sparking, the twin of the bee that hit all their bonnets when they were eleven and too dumb to think better.

Did we have any choice? He wonders with a shiver. He thinks of all those neat coincidences, those unusual instincts, the way they each felt tethered to the other when the task needed doing. The way the rope went slack when it was over, and how they all drifted away from Derry like leaves on a pond ripple. No, they'd had no choice at all.

When Yusuke speaks it's with the bitter earnestness of anger. Impotent and sympathizing. His voice hits a baritone most can't to begin with, but this new angle really puts the gravitas in like no other notion could.]

...Aaah, you know how these things go. They made an arrest and called it a day. [He gives a small smile. Soothe the matter over. Yes it's hard knocks, no the real killer wasn't caught. And it's not over, not by a long shot, but until there's a few more pods cracking open Richie can't say shit.] The killings did stop.

[tricksune]

[ Birthday schmirthday. He is a little bit older, but that hasn't tempered any of his very teenage indignations, and his answer doesn't soothe any prickled nerves. (It reads like it has holes. Purposeful gaps to an easy mode ending, meant to assuage rather than answer him. Like a child.) After all, Akira had been apprehended too, and for what—being so bold as to help someone? An arrest doesn't mean much of anything, and Richie doesn't make it sound like the two points connect into one line.

He sets the kettle to boil, going through the motions. It doesn't make his answer any less stern. ]

And yet, it seems your dreams have not.

[ Said with a brusque sort of restlessness, the kind that comes from being wide awake and sitting very still. Yusuke pauses at the cabinet, almost forgetting why he'd gone there in the first place, eventually retrieving two mugs and setting them on the counter with a gentle clink despite how tight his wrist feels. It's not like he could do anything about any of this—and it isn't proper to let someone else bear his ventless anger.

Sorry, Richie. He shakes his head, leaning against the counter as he waits for the water to boil, digging up tea to steep. Some Olympian brew that reminds him a bit of chamomile and lemon. ]

...I don't mean to interrogate you. [ Yusuke's not the one who just woke up in a cold sweat. No reason for him to be so worked up. ] It must have been difficult, even if it wasn't your blood.

[summertimeblues]

[Oof. To be fair, if someone else were spoon-feeding him the platitudes he'd be unlikely to swallow them too. At any age, for that matter.

Richie's fingers twitch. The kid's fixing tea, but what he really wants is a smoke. He avoids lighting up when he's over, it's impolite and the cushions and the curtains soaked up cig smoke like a Hoover in a field of hairballs. He curls his fingers back around the underside of the counter, supporting his lean but really just disguising the itch. It had been so nice for those last years, that when the urges nudged and life got shaky he went for a pack of gum or threw on some tunes, threw himself into his work. He'd picked up smoking again nearly the minute he'd gotten Mikey's call. Hadn't put them down in the few months he's been here. Nothing's been smooth sailing, and there's so much to beware of, so much he couldn't begin to understand that facing it all without that little roll of tobacco and paper is a prospect that could wilt him flat.

After, after. He'll at least see that Yusuke goes back to his paints, and he'll slip outside to make his ash.

He snorts. A little derisive, though none of it's directed at the boy.] Not much, at least.

[He presses his lips thin and regards the kid a second time. It feels...important. Suddenly it feels monumentally important that it's Yusuke here talking to him, and not any of the other kind folk he's met thus far. Byerly was a snoop and a crusted asshole to boot. Steve couldn't do much, for all his well meaning and his savior complex. Couldn't shake the soldier out of him if you turned him upside down and swung him by the ankles. It's hopeless there, he's too old. Richie's too old, but it was also too late to count on all those extra years to save him. Yet the thought of trying to pass off the task makes him want to upchuck the whole long link of his digestive system. Nobody deserved it, not anyone. He wasn't sure it could be passed in the first place, with all those otherworldly nudges and coincidences and the way the seven of them together seemed like links in a chain.

But Yusuke was, in a way, at risk. Maybe on the cusp of getting out of it, growing boy that he was, but close enough.

Richie pulls the hair back from his forehead. At the border of the roots, faint and small enough that he has to angle his head to catch the moonlight streaming through the window, is a slash of a scar. No longer than a thumbnail.] Almost got ripped off the back of Bill's bike when we were making a break for it. My jacket split down the middle, thank god, or I wouldn't be here putting dents in your couch. Fucker tried to knock me off after and split my head. Gave me a concussion. [He releases the hair and fidgets on the spot. Unsure of how to proceed.]

We were pretty fucking stupid. Eleven years old and sneaking daddy's pistol out of the drawers, thinking we were gonna take care of things the way they do in all those comics we burned through on summer nights. But we kept trying, you bet your fur. We tried until we thought it was gonna be done. We did something right eventually, but I still can't remember it all. That happens once in a blue moon, strange but true. Especially if you're really young at the time. You go through something livid crazy and your brain pumps the brakes and says whoa now, I ain't riding with that in the cab. So it locks it in the trunk and it keeps on driving. Real great for keeping the gears grinding.

So...even after all that, we never saw his face. Not his real one. Every time, he was wearing something different. Made it real nice and personal for you, and it kept everyone's stories from jiving up.

[Nebulous truths, all cherry picked to make sure that what he comes away with is the lie. A man with many masks is the easier assumption to make, and it would be a smarter way to kill. Kept the delinquints from telling the cops, and how sensible would distrust of the grown folks sound to a teenage vigilante?] Save for one thing. You know, a calling card of sorts. There was always something orange. Usually like a pompom. Sometimes it was harder to notice at first, but...

[Richie trails off, staring at shadows cast on the wall opposite. No return on this. They'd weaved through the stone maze and were getting close, far too close to the minotaur in the middle. But Yusuke had to understand. Just this one thing.]

The point is, just before the world ended, I got a call from our guy Mikey. We all did. He was, ha ha...the only one that stuck around Derry. Never moved once and never made riches. You've got three guesses as to what he was calling for, but I bet you'll only need the one.

[tricksune]

[ Yusuke is no expert in the written word as he is with art, but sometimes Richie is just a stream of consciousness paragraph come to life: literary and arresting, if with many more curse words peppered through it all compared to classic Japanese text. He talks like he's still working out this situation, sounding it aloud. But while he's as colorful as ever, there's something very different to this story. What he'd heard at the gala had the same names, the same sad sort of energy swimming underneath, but this was... dangerous. He'd peeled back a layer to something very eerie. Yusuke stays silent, eyes fixed on the little dash of milky scar tissue until it disappears back under his hair. It's hard to spot, and he wonders how close he's come to never hearing this story at all.

But he can be a patient listener, and he lets him spin out all the details: someone was killing children. Leaving their pieces to be found—or not. A culprit rots. The crimes march on until they don't. They win a victory that Richie can't seem to remember against a foe he's never really seen. (There is a calling card, and he hates it in this context, finds the whole thing an insult.) Some decades later, Richie is no longer eleven and 'pretty fucking stupid,' and now he is here, talking to him in a kitchen about another chapter that'd been closed as abruptly as it'd been opened, no closure to be found.

...It's good that he explained in so many words. Any fewer, and he wouldn't understand a whit of it. Yusuke's eyes dip to the ground; at this hour, it'd almost seem sleepy, but there's a faint wrinkle in his expression, the delicate skin between his brows starting to bunch.

But he's been silent long enough. After a moment, he turns and tips the hot water into the mugs, not quite boiling, gentle enough so as not to burn any of the leaves. However perturbed he is, he stabilizes himself on the little things. Being precise where it doesn't matter, taking in the hot, fragrant fog of tea... It helps keep his head clear, gnawing at all this information and looking for the right, pertinent question to push it.

Finally, he sets the kettle down and asks, ]

Do you think he's here?

[ In the pods, on the ground. Somewhere. ]

[summertimeblues]

[He's a good listener when it's story time, for what it's worth. Not so much at taking orders. The boat ride had been demonstration enough for that, bullheaded determination proving stronger than fleeting adult authority. His abilities put him at the fore there. Gave the kid and his pal Akira the wind in their sails to edge in on the frontlines, and in some cases, that might be for the best.

In some.

Richie isn't going to pretend to understand it all. He has the vague sense that there were different laws for different worlds. What might have allowed an anomaly like a talking raccoon in one universe would never stand in another. Sandra might have turned into a plain bag of bones after attacking her emperor, if she'd tried doing it on different soil. Or the curse would have come out different, having her haunt the locale of her death, or some other such ghastly possibility. They were all cooped up together now, zoo exhibits from across the galaxies that would've never met otherwise, and justifying the altered physics was turning into a stampeding cacophony.

Richie takes that mug. He cups it close in both hands. It looks a little like he's praying. Pressed to the heart. Do you think he's here?

Kiddo, the question isn't if. It's what you're going to do.

Impressive as that flash boom bang had been, icicles shot out from the palms of a demonic summons dressed in kimono silks, Richie can't say if that magic could cut it. The gun didn't work. Blasted a section off the werewolf's skull, but the bigger hurt came from Richie taking the piss out of Mr. Nell and screaming at it in a voice not one bit his own. Stopped It in its tracks with sneezing powder (of all fucking things). Beverly had nailed it with her slingshot and the slugs they'd made out of Ben's silver dollars — and hadn't it been a lucky thing that it had come in the shape of a werewolf again? That's the rules, silver kills the howlers, but would silver have worked on the mummy? On Mike's bird? On Stan's dead boys?

What would really work on the clown?

If he could just...remember. (Chud.) The ritual, it was a ritual, but how to initiate and win it was all still crackling static. If he could say for sure what it was he could trust in taking on more people, he could spread the word as far as it needed to go. If the magic that brought the seven of them together would make an exception, keep a new group just as strong in the face of It, then he wouldn't have to tap dance around all these eggshells. He could shake Yusuke by the shoulders and tell him what's really what.

But he can't. Assuming he'd be okay because he's something different was as good as fluffing the pillow for his coffin. The clown played a rigged game. Different world, different rules. Yusuke's icy tricks might well be as useful as that profane bullet from Zack Denbrough's gun. Close but no cigar, and now you're dead kid. Time for the next contender, come on come on, I'll take em on, I'll take em all!

He'd rather die himself. He would die himself. He doesn't want Yusuke playing hero, he wants him to stay the hell out of harm's way.]

Not on the ground. No. I would have had a visit by now. [He flashes teeth at that, grim grins. Yes tea sounds lovely thank you, even if a smoke sounds outright divine, but he'll take a sip. Steady himself.] He made his intentions pretty clear.

[No need to go into the photographs. Red smears on the wall next to chunks that used to be a whole child, Come home come home come home. The implication sits well enough on its own.]

Honestly, I've yet to meet a soul here I'd really call a danger, but if you take a walk through the pods upstairs? Just going on the numbers alone. You have to know that eventually, something bad's gonna wake up. Maybe it'll be my guy, maybe yours. Maybe the neighbor's. Who knows.

Just exercise a little caution, all right? You're no slouch when it comes to doling out the hits, I've seen it. But...you can't know what the next guy's capable of either.

[He pauses. Gravely now, and with a hand to the younger boy's shoulder. Taller boy. Nearly a man.]

But if you see something and you think it's odd, you don't fight it. You turn and you run. You run and then you tell me first thing. Got it?