Day 59: Sun Room

[witchdetective]

Erika stood back to survey her work, and she had no idea why no one seemed to care.

By 'no one', she was referring to the soldiers who were on guard, who should be looking particularly anxious due to the atmosphere of this place. It didn't make sense in her mind. Someone who just took up a large chunk of the middle of the Sun Room to build a

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[commentated]

This was, like. A really confusing conversation. He was pretty sure it was because he came late, but with the talk of fire and Harrington and, like, what? Who got set on fire? And why did no one seem to find this strange except him? Again. Seriously. Was everyone crazy?

When Harry looked at Sora, that was full-on surprise right there. Really? The kid was into the fort? Not that Harry had any issues with the fort or held anything against people being into forts. It was just, Sora was, what, like, teens, right? Like, fifteen, sixteen, or something? Definitely not younger. Anyway, most of the teenagers he knew were less of the Ferris Bueller type and more likely to stack their shelves with Linkin Park.

And now Venom was looking at him like he was supposed to agree which was just. Okay, this was really awkward. Was it just him? It was awkward, right. Why did he suddenly feel like the cool dad withering away under the wife's insistence that their kid not go to the concert tonight?

He flicked his gaze back and forth. See, the thing was, Venom was right about his flightiness. What he was wrong about was the degree of it. Which basically meant that instead of backing Venom up, Harry decided to make the greatest fucking escape since Steve McQueen: into the fort.

"You know what, you're never too old to be immature," he said, and dove right in.

[chippforprez]

Chipp immediately decided, upon Harry's response, that he rather liked Sora and Harry. Okay, deciding to go into the fort was a little weird, but hey, it wasn't like they were hurting anyone. The thing was still there so Chipp guessed it wasn't like they were going to get in trouble just for going in. But hey, what did he know, maybe it was for military use only. But then, they were wearing these weird uniforms...

Anyway, he didn't think he really had to reply to the question of "Are you okay" since it was so obvious, but Chipp just shrugged and waved his hand dismissively anyway. "Yeah, I just got my sleeve singed a bit. And then the bastards gave me a new shirt. And put it on me without waking me up."

Wait... when did he even get to sleep?

Suddenly, it was like Chipp had just now noticed something was weird about this whole situation, and it was probably a good thing that Harry chose that moment to dive into the fort since Chipp might have hurt himself if he tried thinking about it more. Not that he thought the fort looked particularly fun, but... Chipp looked at Venom and shrugged. Why not? The moment he crouched to get into the fort himself though, he could feel the glare of the approaching soldier who was ready to yell at him for trying to break that "no sitting" rule.

Determined to get in some form of resistance, no matter how pathetic, Chipp quickly scrambled inside the fort and stood straight up, lifting the blanket up with him. Since there were so many, he didn't quite destroy the fort, but now Chipp looked like a guy trying to pretend to be a ghost with a sheet as he aggressively waved his arms (or tried to, from underneath the blanket).

"Screw you, I'm still standing! I don't need to sit to get in the damn fort! Back off!"

The soldier just gave Chipp a pointed stare before warning him once more about the punishment for insubordination and something about being tired of babysitting his stupid ass. Though Chipp's face was obscured by the blanket, one could still see the shit-eating grin on his face in his moment of greatest triumph.

"Stupid bastard." He looked down, as if trying to figure out where Harry went or if Sora joined them yet.

[scintillatingly]

It had been a long shot even asking and Sora had known that. Venom's response was exactly what he would have expected, but he barely knew the others and so their reactions took him by surprise. The man named Harry was the first one to go in, and Sora found that he liked his belief that there were just certain things that you never outgrew.

"That's the spirit!" he chimed out in reply, moving to follow the older man. Before he got the chance, though, Chipp went in as well, except that it seemed that for some reason he wasn't allowed to sit. Sora had seen other patients who had to stand around all day, which probably meant that he'd gotten in trouble with the soldiers somehow. That wasn't a good sign, but at least the fact that Chipp was standing caused one of the blankets to raise up, giving Sora an easy opening to head inside.

It was a shame that Venom was probably going to ignore all of them after this, but at least this gave him a chance to get to know the man's friends (or acquaintances, whatever he wanted to call them) a little better. He settled down next to Harry, seeing how it was going to be tough to talk to Chipp when he was standing like that.

"So," he addressed the man as he tilted his head at him, gathering a pillow into his lap, "how did you meet Venom?" It was probably the same as any other meeting here, that they had just happened to talk during the day at some point, but Sora was still curious.

And anyway, this fort was pretty cool! He felt protected from the prying eyes of the soldiers, which wasn't something they were granted all that often.

[commentated]

Man, was that kid always this happy-go-lucky? You'd think with the abduction and everything, he'd be acting a little less like he was in Disneyland. You know, if Disneyland was, like, solely constructed out of chairs and blankets and guarded by Mickey Mouse with a machine gun.

But yeah, okay, it wasn't that bad in here. He'd mostly done it to get away from Venom's crazy intense eyes (eye?), but it was nice, right? Pretty nice.

He looked up at the man who would soon be Mr. President Chipp Zanuff (hey, why not. They could use a president who had a name that didn't sound like it came out of Tom Clancy's character lineup) and cocked his head.

"Oh, you, too, huh?" Venom hadn't been allowed to sit, either, when Harry had met that first time. This was officially the weirdest ragtag fort thing he'd ever been in, but Harry decided to just go along with it. His head was going to fall off if he thought about it too much.

He'd sat down with his legs under him. Ever tried doing that when you were in your mid-thirties and your only exercise was running away from the cops? Hint: not recommended. Ow. He dragged his legs out and flopped down into a position that felt less like he'd spent the night trying to keep up with the local yoga instructor.

"I, uh, just kinda ran into him between the-" He held up his hands, marking off a size of space of arbitrary measurement. "-Oxford English dictionary and Stephen King. Really Woody Allen romance, except. Not." He pulled up a pillow, too, just because. "Um, what. What about you?"

[chippforprez]

Now that three of them were in the fort, Chipp was honestly expecting Venom to follow them. Well, if the rest of them were in there, then Venom would have to crawl in too, right? They couldn't just talk to him from... well, Chipp guessed they could talk to him if he was still outside of the fort, but that was weird because he couldn't see anything, on account of having a blanket covering his face. It was dumb, but this way he wouldn't get even more attention of the soldiers. And he was covered in something flammable. As much as Chipp didn't like it, he had to be careful to prevent getting anyone else around him injured. Funny how he actually thought about that for once.

Sora had asked Harry a question, about how the two met, but it didn't make much sense to him; mostly because he didn't know what 'Stephen King' and 'Oxford' was. A place? It sounded like street names to him, so ... but wait, where was there a street in this place? Did Harry meet Venom before they were kidnapped? That made sense... he guessed. What the hell did romance have to do with it?

"You met him where?" Chipp asked, sort of looking down at Harry and Sora before turning back to Venom (or at least, where he thought Venom was, because he couldn't see). "And aren't you coming in? The rest of us are in here!" That sounded like a good enough reason to have Venom follow, right?

[scintillatingly]

That was kind of a weird answer. Sora probably wouldn't have even known what Harry had meant by that if he hadn't heard the word dictionary. The only place around here that had something like that was...

"The library?" he asked as he leaned back slightly, starting to get more comfortable. He felt bad that Chipp had to stand while the rest of them were relaxing, but at least he would know how to avoid getting into that kind of trouble in the future. Sora had managed it, and if he could, so could everyone else, right?

But the question had been turned back on him and for a moment Sora had to think. His first few conversations with Venom had been pretty run-of-the-mill, but they'd kept running into each other after that. Venom was an interesting guy to talk to, even if he was pretty grumpy. "I just talked to him over a meal one time, and we got to know each other better after that." They'd gone out together one night, although Venom had been pretty badly drugged at that point. There'd also been the time when they'd escaped the gas after that food fight... Yeah, he and Venom had been through a few things together, that was for sure.

Now, though, the guy was being a real spoilsport. Sora glanced over when Chipp urged Venom to come in, nodding along with him almost immediately. "Yeah!" He fell onto his side and then slid himself toward the fort's entrance, lifting up the sheet so that he could poke his head out. "There's still space!"

[anemptydecapo]

No. That was the answer on his tongue and the one that had been there since Harry cowardly squirreled himself into that childish construct. No. He was not going to degrade himself as an assassin by going into that thing. He was not going to degrade himself as an adult by joining them. He crossed his arms over his chest, feet firmly planted on the ground, and shook his head.

No.

It was because he shook his head that he managed to catch sight of the solider his business partner had taken to arguing with earlier. The guard's face read of quiet, silent disapproval (although that tended to be the expression everyone had when speaking to Chipp Zanuff), his eyes staring straight into that pile of blankets and immaturity. By the time the more relaxed members of the conversation looked back out of their next, the Guild Head's arms had already dropped to his side, his head tilted in consideration at that upset soldier.

...He wasn't doing this because they asked him to. He was doing this because he hated that solider--him and all the other ones. There was something altogether too pleasing about the idea of being childishly spiteful at every opportunity, enough so that he barely winced at the pain in his side as he knelt down to join the others. As a more crass man would say: Fuck them. They don't deserve my respect.

His expression remained blank even as he sat with them, one hand drifting to one of the items holding up the blanket. "Zanuff, help me flip this couch onto its side. That should give us more head-room." They also wouldn't be able to tell if the man was sitting afterward, though the assassin was only going to call that a side-effect rather than his being sympathetic to the other man's plight.

[commentated]

Oh. Yeah, library. Harry guessed he could've just said that. In response to Chipp's request for clarification, he pointed at Sora. "What he said."

It was pretty comfortable inside here, though comfortable was something of a relative term. The thing was, this was basically...fucking weird. There was no other way to put it. Like, his whole life was kinda crazy? Well, maybe not his whole life, but definitely the past year of it, what with bodies in a shower and murder conspiracies that weren't really murder conspiracies. Then ever since he got kidnapped, it'd gotten weirder. Meeting Harrison Ford pretty much solidified that. You didn't go back from meeting Harrison Ford.

God, okay, that was a lot of recap exposition. Newcomers, take note.

Anyway, the point was, after a certain point, it was easier not to think that much about it, so he didn't consider how bizarre it was to be dressed like G.I. Joe inside a blanket fort with a kid and some guy trying to drag some other (much surlier) guy with an eye on his hair into said fort.

"Yeah, he seems like a pretty good guy," Harry said, looking over as Venom decided to make his entrance. He gave the blanket collapsing in on them a bit of a poke.

Or they could put up a couch. That too.

He scratched the back of his neck, a belated realization occurring to him.

"Wait a minute, did you say you were running for President?"

[chippforprez]

"Took you long enough. Alright, lemme help..." Chipp was quick to agree with Venom, if only because having the damn blanket suffocating his face was kind of annoying. He sort of was getting what Venom was trying to do for him; if the couch was tall enough, the soldiers couldn't tell if he was sitting or standing, so it was worth a shot. Chipp already started to move the couch, while keeping one ear on the conversation. Huh, this place had a library? That was good; Chipp didn't want to stop doing his research and shit just because he was kidnapped by a bunch of crazy assholes running some damn boot camp. A good President had to be informed.

Hence why he was pleased when Harry asked him if he really was running, nodding to answer the man's question.

"Yeah, that's right. I have to become President, and then I'm going to start changing this country to make it better." Nevermind where "this" country was, Chipp figured any country that let this sort of shit happened still had to be changed. Seriously, kidnapping people? The idea that someone would even allow that was kind of sickening to him. "So I need to get enough votes to become President. That means you better vote for me."

Let it be known that Chipp had yet to refine his campaign for votes.

[scintillatingly]

Sora didn't know what had changed Venom's mind, but he also didn't really care. The man had decided to join them under the blankets, and that was all that really mattered to him. He decided to just call it a team effort and leave it at that.

"Hey!" he greeted as Venom ducked inside, waving to the man before glancing over to Chipp. They were going to prop up a couch? Well, that would make it a little easier for everyone to sit in here and actually have some space above their heads. Not that Sora needed it that much, but he wasn't going to dwell on his shortness right now.

Instead, he listened to what Chipp was saying about how he was going to run for president. A president was someone who was in charge of stuff, right? Kind of like the mayor of Halloween Town, but even more important.

"How are you going to do that?" he asked the man once he'd finished with his explanation. Sora thought that it sounded like a great idea -- when was making something better not a good thing? -- but he wanted to know what exactly Chipp had in mind. It didn't sound like it was an easy job; Sora understood that better after running the Arts and Crafts club.

[anemptydecapo]

Truthfully, Venom could have moved the couch by himself, at least in a normal situation. However, in this decidedly uncouth hour, the help was surprisingly necessary. Once the object was mostly vertical, the assassin had taken to pushing against it with only his left shoulder, his right hand gone to fix the material over-top their heads. They needed to be straightened out and readjusted in order to keep the entire structure from collapsing in on them and doing so while also moving the furniture required more hands than he owned.

Once it was finally put into place, the Guild Head slid to the floor. In regards to Zanuff's Presidential aspirations (...had he even decided which country to run in?), Venom stayed silent. He could answer that himself.

[commentated]

Some part of Harry had been expecting No, I meant President of the local country club or something along those lines less extreme ambitions. As it turned out, he didn't get No, I meant President of the local country club. He didn't even get, President of this useless island off the coast of New Zealand containing nothing but emus. He got President of the fucking United States.

(At this stage, Harry had yet to discover dimensions or Second World or any of that shit, so he was still pretty solidly convinced he was in America. Where else would he be? They all spoke English and no one had affected Russian or German accents and he was certain he smelled bacon one morning. This was obviously set in America.)

Harry scratched behind his ear. Possibly, the guy was kidding. Harry wasn't too sure about that, but he decided there was no reason to get down on someone for their chosen life goals. He'd had a lot of assholes tell him he couldn't possibly be the best magician since Houdini got appendicitis, and hey, look how that turned out.

...

...Okay, this required some rethinking. Hang on.

In the meantime, he scratched behind his ear. "Oh, yeah, sure, I'll vote for you."

When he planted his palms on the ground to get more comfortable again, he felt a blunt edge and immediately yanked his hand up again. Oh, hey, was that-

"Hey, look." He held the button up and squinted through the holes that were too small to really see through. He turned to Sora. "Wanna see something cool, kid?"

[chippforprez]

Hearing someone actually agree to vote for him was a plus, but Chipp seemed to be hanging on to see if there were any requirements to earn that vote. Was it as easy as just asking people to vote for him? Chipp hadn't had the time to do research or anything, so all he really had to go on was pure instinct and luck. In this case, both favored him and he was rewarded with his very first constituent promising to vote. Wow. That was easy. So all he really did have to do was ask! Who wouldn't want to vote for a guy who was confident enough to just ask, right? He knew those lazy assholes in A Country were doing it wrong. Politics was easy.

"Yeah! You won't regret it!" It was funny how something so simply cheered Chipp up so much. Yeah, one vote! That was the first of many, a big step forward! Damn, he felt good right now. Since he was in such a good mood, he obviously had to try for more, right? This campaigning thing was easier then he thought. He looked down at Sora, after Harry had offered to show the kid a magic trick. Was Sora old enough to vote? Well, in the meantime....

"Kurae! And what about you, Venom? You're still voting for me, right?"

[scintillatingly]

While Sora had been waiting for some sort of answer or explanation for how Chipp was going to go about all of that, it turned out that the man was distracted by Harry saying that he would vote for him. Sora wondered if it was really that simple to just agree to it, but he realized that he hadn't really voted for anything before. Sure, he and his friends had voted for who would be the leader in their pretend games back on Destiny Islands, but...

That all felt so long ago now. That had just been for fun, while Sora was guessing that Chipp meant it more seriously. He said he wanted to change things for the better, so that sounded like more than just a silly game.

However, Sora was then distracted by the whole subject by Harry asking him a question. He took note of the button in his hand and realized it must have come off of one of the blankets, pillows, or pieces of furniture during all the shuffling around. Still, what exactly did Harry mean? "Huh? Like what?" the boy asked.

[anemptydecapo]

Of all the questions Zanuff could ask...

A huff of air left the assassin's mouth in response, something too exasperated to be a laugh yet too short to be a sigh. Would he vote for him? The short answer was "no." The long answer was hardly that; it was three words at most. Criminals couldn't vote. That was always how it was and unless he found himself pardoned, that was how it was going to stay. Someone with the political aspirations Chipp did should know that by now.

It was also worth mentioning that, criminal or not, campaigning for votes in a place like this was particularly pointless. He could have vocalized that thought. He most likely should have. In the end, Venom only shook his head and turned his attention to whatever Harry was doing.

There was just something about the blaring optimism around him that was keeping his mouth shut. Maybe he didn't feel like ruining it.