Woods Surrounding Camelot, Wednesday Morning

[bitchprince]

After the feasts of a few weeks back, Arthur had fallen into the routine he preferred above all. Training, training, and more training, interspersed with some talks about minor adjustments in grain dispersion and the occasional audience for the public, as well as the odd hunt.

But he was hunting for something else today; he was hunting for contact with Fandom, or rather, his friends both on and off it.

As it turned out, having his old routine back made his thoughts about the island far kinder than they used to be.

[[ for phone calls, yes! ]]

Comments

[raspberryturk]

Reno was bored. Bored, bored, bored, and it was entirely possible that he was thinking of doing the unthinkable and actually holding office hours or something like them later on in the day.

That was how bored he was.

Which meant that it was probably a good idea to channel his boredom into something productive, like sorting his socks or fixing the lock on his apartment door, or harassing people that he hadn't given a rough time to in way too long.

Go figure, he chose the option that didn't involve effort. This was Reno, after all.

Ring ring, Arthur!

[bitchprince]

Ring, ring, and Arthur picked up after studying his display carefully. "Reno," he said, somewhat pleased that he'd figured out the whole number recognition thing well enough, "What brings you to my Blackberry?"

[raspberryturk]

"Oh, you know," Reno drawled, grinning at the sound of Arthur's voice on the other end of the line. Too long, man. It had been too long. "Been one of them weeks, man. Wake up one morning, go out to train, get eaten by a hole in reality. Same old, kinda gets boring after a while."

This was Reno's way of saying, 'big shit went down and I want to ramble at you about it.'

[bitchprince]

Arthur, being Arthur, bless his soul, nearly missed Reno's point entirely as he spoke. What? He ranted on rather quickly, and he seemed fairly affable about the whole thing, s-- "What kind of hole in reality?" he said, sharply, about a beat too long after Reno had stopped talking.

[raspberryturk]

"Oh, you know. The kind that lets monsters in, eats up businesses an' junk around town, stuffs people into other worlds or total voids in reality. Pretty much busted the whole friggin' island."

So very casual. What? There was something off about all of that? Reno hadn't noticed.

"It got better."

[bitchprince]

"I would hope so," Arthur said, and if he wasn't more composed than that, he would have taken a moment to stare at his phone. Rather quite a bit, because Reno wasn't here, and so he couldn't stare at him.

"What happened? How are the casualties? Are there any?"

A thought struck him.

"Are Francine and Katchoo all right?"

[raspberryturk]

Awww, Arthur's concern was kind of adorable.

"Everyone's fine, man. Maybe a little shaken, yo. I guess some people didn't get it as easy as the group of students that got sucked through with me an' Price did." Only Reno would think of that particular experience as easy. "From the sound of it, everyone got home, things have been slowin' down at the clinic, and the healers on the island don't have their hands as full as they used to. I'm sure your friends are fine."

[thismaskiwear.livejournal.com]

Katchoo had known Arthur long enough that she could fairly well imagine exactly the way he'd yell at her -- with accompanying amazing facial expressions -- if he thought she'd gone out and done anything particularly stupid during this last invasion. Apocalypse.

Whatever it had been. The thing where she'd occasionally gone out and shot at things, but mostly stayed the hell indoors.

And, suspecting there was a good chance he'd gotten wind of what had happened already, she thought she might as well bite the bullet and give him a call.

While perched on a cluster of rocks out on the beach, partly for the solitude and partly because damn, she couldn't get enough of seeing the sunshine again and all of the island just frikkin' there again like it was supposed to be, yes. It made for a nice soothing backdrop of sound, anyway.

She dialed his number and listened to it ring, idly pondering the question (and thank the frikkin' zombie Jesus for the luxury of being able to ponder inane questions again): If I were my ringtone on Arthur's damn BlackBerry, what would I be?

[bitchprince]

Sadly, the answer would have to remain 'nothing creative'. Arthur, who could be anal-retentive to a fault, had mainly kept his ringtones to classical pieces of the like that were neither obtrusive nor annoying to his ear, although Katchoo's was slightly louder than everyone else's.

It was also the one that made him perk up the most, but don't tell anyone about that.

He took the call. "Katina, the next words out of your mouth had best not be 'I'm in the clinic'."

[thismaskiwear.livejournal.com]

Did it involve tympani, at least? Please let there be tympani. Something loud and crashy in a subdued baroque kind of way.

"And hi to you too, Pendragon," drawled Katchoo, who was sadly deprived of the actual visual of him perking up. He'd never hear the end of it otherwise. "I'm on the beach, actually. Had any good concussions lately?"

[bitchprince]

Baroque was already pushing it too far, if one asked Arthur. Of course, Arthur could occasionally twitch at the sound of Beethoven, so it was probably best if no one actually did.

"Hardly," he said. "Beyond the odd band of bandits, it's been quiet." And if this had been any other kind of genre world, he would have added 'too quiet'.

Well, all right. It was totally that kind of genre world; usually it would just be Merlin stating the obvious. "Had a few good hunts, doubt you're interested. Where were you last week?"

[thismaskiwear.livejournal.com]

"Not at work," Katchoo declared instantly. "I wasn't going out in that mess."

. . . she could have interjected with the 'too quiet,' but she felt that would be redundant.

[bitchprince]

"In the dorms?" Arthur prompted, "Which were properly barricaded, and with Francine?"

Worrywart.

And she could have, but would she have managed to attain the level of big eyes, fearful wobbly lip, and 'Could we please just go over the mountains?' that Merlin would bring to the role?

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

*riiiing* Dinah was calling from the beach, where she was practicing again.

Telling Arthur all the fighting he'd missed was going to be interesting.

[bitchprince]

Arthur answered the phone with a simple, "Dinah, not in the clinic, I presume."

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

Dinah snorted, and kicked at the sand. "You presume right." This time. "Someone else told you all about this weekend's excitement?"

[bitchprince]

"Reno did," Arthur confirmed, "As did Katchoo. I suppose it's too much to ask you didn't do anything profoundly stupid?"

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

"If I did, all witnesses have been bribed to be quiet," Dinah said, thinking of Karla going out on her own at the same time Dinah had. "I didn't get hurt, and there was no way I was going out in that mess alone...." After a while. "Too many people disappeared that way. You guys aren't taking on any armies or monsters alone lately, are you?"

[bitchprince]

"Just a few bands of bandits," Arthur said, idly. "I mean, there's always wars going on, of course. Our diplomatic ties with the surrounding countries are... rocky."

[thatsamilkshake]

With no Magic and Support reserves today, Francine -- like almost everyone else, apparently -- headed for the beach once she'd done her poster-hanging and cookie-leaving for the day. (Well, she'd left some of the cookies. Please. Like she was going anywhere in the near future without a couple of pockets full of food?"

Also, like she was allowed to be anywhere in the near future that wasn't within easy sight of where Katchoo was? Francine, however, was less into rock-climbing and more into stretching out on a blanket in the sand below, with plenty of sunscreen, thank you.

And a phone. Arthur's ringtone, because you all wanted to know, was Between the Moon and New York City because Katchoo wasn't the only one who thought she was funny.

"Hiya." Not Francine levels of chirpy, not Katchoo levels of cynical. Just thoughtful and tired.

[bitchprince]

"Francine," Arthur replied - her ringtone on his phone was yet another mostly indistinguishable-to-others piece of early classical music, but hers bordered on the Gregorian and the... almost faintly upbeat.

He glanced at the trees opposite him, past, and into the shrubs much further up ahead. "I heard you had recently fallen into some kind of gap," he said, finally. "You're in one piece?"

[thatsamilkshake]

"Missing a few strands of hair and a lot of sleep," she said, leaning on one elbow to better prop up her phone. "But no major body parts."

[bitchprince]

"Tell me your end of what happened," he requested. "I've heard of bits of island going missing and monsters, apparently, but nobody's got a bloody clue what happened to you."

Not that he was concerned. Perish the thought.

[thatsamilkshake]

Not that Francine was touched that he wasn't at all concerned. Perish the thought.

"People went missing too," she said sitting up a bit and tucking her hair behind her ear and out of the way of the phone. "And woke up in... a couple different places, I guess, but a bunch of us were in this little abandoned town that we couldn't get out of. There were monsters there too." In more ways than one.

[bitchprince]

It wasn't like 'What happened to Francine and Katchoo' had been about the fourth question out of his mouth. Nope.

"Right," he said, blinking over at the trees on the other end. "How did you--" He aborted half-sentence, and corrected himself. "Cracks in reality, they said."