Fable - Ask Drunken Mess, Part II

[Caeso Diemut]

Vel Yuna. The Yuna Lager tavern. Before noon, but definitely far past sunrise.

Caeso awoke on the sticky floor and the first thing which greeted him was a keen awareness of the smell of dried vomit. He didn't know whose it was. Kress, he hoped it wasn't his. There was a draft. Why was there a draft? Well, that's because, apparently, someone had absconded with his pants and all he was wearing was his undershirt. His armor, his weapons, were likewise all scattered throughout the Yuna Lager.

His head was pounding with a hangover.

Patchy memories. He and a few other Dreadlord Initiates had been sent here for a mission. The town of Vel Yuna had once again been plagued by trouble, this time in the form of rogue rock golems that had turned on some insane, wandering mage and ran wild. The golems were vanquished, and the Yunarians threw a celebration once all the pebbles had settled, and the Initiates had all gotten swept up in it. Didn't...something like this happen before?

Caeso tried to roll over. Couldn't. He was laid out against the front side of the bar counter. He tried to roll the other way. Couldn't. Because now he was spooning with someone.

"I believe..." he said aloud, cradling his forehead, "...some mistakes were made."

Spoiler: Short Post Challenge!

For this thread, try to keep your posts under 200 words. Nope, not going to be checking. Just on the honor system.

 

[Soleil Verdane]

Rock golems. No fun. Them? Annoying to kill. Just big dumb rocks. Not even rewarding. But a mission was a mission.

Once they all got back to Vel Yuna, something exciting. A celebration. Much inebriation! Don't remember much. Blacked out before the night was over.

Soleil slowly stirred back to consciousness after hearing Caeso mumble something about mistakes. She wasn't quite sure if he was near or far. She was aware, vaguely, that was lying on top of somebody, splayed out across whoever it was as if they were a bed. And she was also aware that, for some reason, she was wearing her dress upside-down on her body and her fur-lined jacket was elsewhere.

Soleil trilled her tongue in a loopy fashion. Said, "Alcohol? Fearsome foe! Lay us all lo—"

Low would have been the completion of that word, but Soleil gurgled out some vomit that, after dribbling down her cheeks, turned to sand and flew back to be reincorporated into her Sandform body.

 

[Aelita]

Soft clattering of utensils on a plate could be heard in the tavern common area. A bit of the smell of bacon and eggs filled the air. The source: Aelita.

Sitting at one of the trashed tables, Aelita repeatedly attempted to scoop up half burnt, half under-cooked eggs onto a knife. The bacon on her plate looked worse for wear as well.

At least, Aelita had a mug of ale next to her already. She experienced more success in slowly sipping from that than in eating breakfast.

Dark sandbags hung beneath her eyes. As her comrades began to stir, she first looked up to the bar toward Caeso and his “partner.”

A tired smile.

“You two had fun?” she asked in a raspy voice.

Anyone looking at Aelita would see her disheveled hair. She wore a shirt of unknown origin.

And her pants were Caeso’s.

 

[Zinnia]

Memory was a funny thing. For instance: the last thing Zinnia remembered was being ushered into the tavern with her friends and some townsfolk shoving a drink into her hand, then thinking 'Gosh, I've never drank a shot that big all at once before.'

Then her eyes snapped open. Perhaps it was the scent of cooking food entering her nostrils, or perhaps it was the horrible crick in her neck and spine that roused her. Whatever the case, she was presently eating a face full of the tavern's floor, arms splayed wide and random while her lower half was occupying a booth behind her.

Zinnia groaned as she attempted to push herself up, slowly pulling her legs from the booth until they thumped onto the wooden floor. Light began to filter into her corneas and her head throbbed. Her cloak and shirt were gone, she quickly realized, though she had retained her bra and...something was on her head still. Getting into a seated position with her knees pulled to her chest, she reached up and felt the object. By the feel it seemed to be an...oversized...bowler hat? How odd.

The first voice Zinnia heard as she roused was Aelita's, or at least that was the first one she registered cognitively. She glanced to the blond girl and noticed that she seemed to have been the recipient of Zinnia's shirt. Then she looked towards where Aelita had and felt her cheeks flush hot with a mix of envy and anger that surprised her. Caeso, sans pants, spooning Ysobel. Instinctively, she glared.

 

[Ysobel]

Ysobel joining a mission to fight rock golems was no cause to celebrate. Everyone knew the ground was immune to those with electric type powers. Were rock golems even made of ground? Ysobel didn't know and she was confident that she would have no effect on them so she refused to participate. Whatever, she offered moral support and joined in the celebrations post-success.

Probably.

Was it even a success? She didn’t know. But what she did know was that someone or something was stirring next to her. She wrapped her arms around them in response. “Mmmm, Larkin…”

I believe…some mistakes were made.

Someone’s husky voice had rudely awoken her. Someone who was not Larkin. Her eyes opened as she scrambled, kicking at Caeso's legs. “Ew. Get. Off. Of. Me.” The blonde demanded, despite being the one that had him up against the counter.

A little bit of wriggling and she was free from his space and able to slowly adjust to the spinning room around her. Everyone looked terrible, herself included. While all of her clothes belonged to her, there weren’t many left. At least she wasn't naked but the scarred up arm she was embarrassed of was on display.

Aelita caught her attention which in turn made her scowl in the direction of her cuddle-buddy. "That is disgusting."

 

[Lumen]

Lumen woke up with a pounding headache.

Was it due to alcohol?

Kress no.

Very unfortunately, Lumen couldn't physically get drunk. And for once, she regretted her magic. She'd been running around trying to take care of everyone else. Trying to make sure everyone else kept all their limbs and things in tact. A shame to lose them after being triumphant against rock golems. It had been a very wasted dancing someone from behind who had clonked her head with a full-tankard of ale and sent her into an unconscious spiral.

Her clothes were wet with what she hoped was ale.

And there was something warm and breathing pressing right into her backside.

"Soliel," she winced, moving her head too fast. "Move. And Aelita, Caeso, and Ysobel. Quieter voices please."

 

[Kor]

Heavy.

Kor lay on his back on the floor, his braids untied and splaying across the wooden surface underneath him like long dark brown tentacles. His coat had vanished, leaving him bare chested, save for the whistles hanging around his neck. At least this time he woke up with trousers on, though they appeared to have been unfastened and loosened...

Kor didn't drink. It was a rule that he'd set for himself some time ago; he was already blind, so what good would it do him to impair the senses that did work properly? Evidently, the celebration offered for their victory had convinced him to break that rule just this once, and he awoke with a headache that made him wonder if perhaps he'd taken the hilt of a sword to the temple.

It wasn't his head he was focused on though, it was the weight sitting on his chest that truly gave him grief at the moment. It was warm, moving around slightly atop him. It wasn't until she spoke that he groaned, realizing the exact predicament he was in. "Yes, Soleil..." Kor mumbled. "Please dismount Lumen so that she can dismount me. I dislike being the bottom of a pile..."

 

[Caeso Diemut]

It was all Caeso could do to be wriggled away from. Presently, in so groggy a state as he was, he just lay where he was.

"Next time...I will forego my forbearance and drag Larkin along," Caeso said lazily. "Be sure to collapse on him then. Make your dreams come true."

Caeso was keenly aware of his current state of impropriety. The best he could do about it (now that room had been granted by Ysobel scooting away) was to roll onto his stomach to hide the Diemut family jewels. Such shifting of his head made for a rather unpleasant experience.

He wasn't trying to be loud, but...he could see where Lumen's compliant came from.

Caeso looked up with his eyes only, his head mostly flat on the floor, to Aelita. He tried to ignore her scandalous comment.

"How did you...acquire my pants?"

A groan. A glance over revealed Zinnia there in a booth.

And he added to Aelita, "...and Zinnia's shirt?"

Ysobel Aelita Zinnia

 

[Soleil Verdane]

Soleil giggled when Lumen spoke.

"You? Warm. Me? Need warmth. Good match!"

She promptly hiccupped and puked again, some of it dribbling down past Lumen and maybe or maybe not landing on a select part of Kor beneath. The vomit only stayed liquid for so long before, once again, it simply morphed into sand and streamed back up into Soleil.

Sometimes Soleil's Sandform body...malfunctioned like this. This was known to her. Whenever she got blackout drunk, she had the tendency to puke. A lot. More than a normal human body would. It was a kind of over-imitation.

Soleil couldn't just stand up. The problem: her dress. Because she was wearing it upside down, her legs were sticking through the neckline and her head was poking out of the hemline. It would look ridiculous to any outside observer.

So Soleil simply rolled off of Lumen and down onto the floor. Whereupon she came face-to-face with Kor.

"Boo."

Lumen Kor

 

[Aelita]

“Heh. Heh. Heh,” came out of Aelita’s mouth as she witnessed Ysobel’s reaction to the situation.

Lumen’s complaints reached Aelita’s ears. She slowly turned toward the sandwiched peer.

“Mmmaybe some breakfast is what you need,” she told Lumen as she poked a piece of burnt bacon with her knife.

Then, Aelita’s eyes returned to Caeso as he took efforts to hide the goods. She heard his questions and glanced over to Zinnia, then back to the asker.

Pointing to Ysobel with the knife, Aelita told him, “Ask the culprit.”

Aelita then rested her head upon her hand. She closed her eyes and frowned as she claimed, “It’s a bit... embarrassing. I’m afraid no one will marry me if they knew...”

 

[Zinnia]

Good to see at least one person in the room was in something resembling a good mood, Zinnia supposed. Aelita seemed content to be cheeky in her responses, but somehow Zinnia didn't think she remembered any more than anyone else did.

"I sh-should hope that the p-piles we ended up in...guh...were f-formed from convenience and n-nothing else..." She stated flatly, rolling her eyes and trying to keep what little she had in her stomach down. Neither Caeso nor Ysobel seemed particularly happy about their predicament, and it was no secret that the latter had eyes only for Larkin the flirt. Still, she was feeling a tad exposed. "I'm admittedly m-more curious to know where my c-cloak has gone. Also where th-this hat came from."

Zinnia reached up to grab the brim of the thing and saw a shimmer in her peripheral vision. "Wha--"
In an instant the hat was no longer a bowler hat, but instead a big, floppy wizard hat.

"...Oh dear." She muttered, sinking in the booth. "B-breakfast is probably a g-good place to start, actually..."

 

[Ysobel]

She scowled even harder after Caeso brought up Larkin. They never confirmed it, but everyone knew they had (unofficially) broken up partly (completely) because of Ysobel turning the pied piper into a…erm...fried piper. No no no no. He wasn’t dead, just lightly toasted in a pattern that resembled the same scarring on Ysobel’s arm.

“Dick.” She spat at Caeso, insulting him and not announcing what she had just seen prior to him rolling over.

Her eyes shut as she rocked back and forth for a few seconds, continuing to rub her temples. The next time she opened them, Aelita was pointing a knife at her.

“And why the fuck would I have put his pants on you?” And how? It seemed unlikely the tiny girl could have drunkenly styled not one, but TWO people that were so much bigger than her. She pointed back at the girl. “You seem to be the only semi-functioning person here. How do I know you didn’t set this all up?”

 

[Lumen]

Mother of the ever loving RANGERS.

Until she heard his voice, she realized her head was resting on a bare rising and falling chest. A familiar bare chest from when she'd ran into him the last time during Everleigh's midnight drill. Her gaze tilted downward just to make sure...

Thank the higher powers. The man had pants on this time.

You? Warm. Me? Need warmth. Good match!

"Soliel," she growled in warning as the other girl rolled. The motion feeling like an exfoliating scrub on the bare skin of her arms.

It was clear Big Sis Lumen was in no mood for niceties today. There was a goose-egg sized bump forming in the back of her skull. And dried blood in her beautiful golden mane. And every sound felt like Zinnia's hammer slashing through her skull.

I dislike being the bottom of a pile...

"A top guy, huh?" Lumen stared down at Kor for a moment before peeling herself away from him. But as she stood, the world spun and she found herself crashing to the ground again. Had she just seen Caeso's bottom?

 

[Kor]

Kor couldn't tell Lumen was looking at him, but her little comment drew a groggy smirk to be sure. "The things we'd like to know." Oddly enough, hungover and as disheveled as he was, Kor found himself in a rather decent mood. Enough so that he was able to mostly ignore the brief introduction of Soleil's sand vomit on his crotch. What had happened last night? He couldn't remember a thing...

Soleil rolled off of Lumen and fell to his side with a thud, her head and shoulders sticking out of the bottom of her dress while her legs barely squeezed through the neck hole. Kor couldn't see it of course, or else he'd have been questioning how she managed such a feat without taking the whole thing off and either climbing in backwards or... no, best not think too hard about it.

"Soleil." Kor deadpanned. "Vomit on me again and I'm going to personally sew your lips together." The boy sat up, rolling his neck as his dreads hung down his bare chest to his waist. Damnit, there weren't any birds in here for him to see through, so he was as blind as could be. "Which'd be a shame since you can be such a good conversationalist." He added through a smirk.

Though he couldn't see Zinnia, he did hear her open hope that nothing untoward had happened to cause them to wake up in such a situation. Kor shrugged. "Speak for yourself. I woke up with two, so if anything that would look good for me."

 

[Caeso Diemut]

Ysobel was, as ever, a volatile individual. But she kept it at crass profanity and that was fine enough for Caeso. On the matter of his inquiry, it seemed unlikely that he was going to get a straight answer out of either Ysobel or Aelita (it seemed to Caeso increasingly true with each passing day that Lumen was the only blonde-haired Initiate with any sense of stability).

He groaned from the dull throbbing pain in his head, and then spoke half in general and half to Aelita, "Dare I ask what has become of your attire?" Valid enough. If Aelita had his pants and Zinnia's shirt, what then, had her own clothes become vagabonds of their own accord?

Speaking of Zinnia (did her hat grow in size, or was his sense of sight still teetering over the line from reliable into deceptive?) she did make a sound statement.

"Yes. Breakfast," Caeso muttered in agreeance before nestling his face back onto the floorboards of the Yuna Lager.

Breakfast. In a minute. He just needed a minute.

Ysobel Aelita Zinnia Lumen

 

[Soleil Verdane]

Soleil just stared blissfully at Kor for a moment, as if trying to select the appropriate reaction from a range of options. Then she laughed in that punctuated, lilting way of hers ("Ha! Ha! Ha!") and said, "You? Funny!"

Which one she thought to be funny, the prospect of her lips being sewn together or the idea of her being a good conversationalist, was left to the open air as unsolved.

Kor replied to Zinnia, and Soleil piped up, adding to it, "Us? Pile of winners! All woke with two."

She hiccupped, then announced, "Danger! Attempting to stand!" and giggled and made good on that attempt.

And she was successful in ascending back up to her own two feet. What Soleil forgot to do though was secure the hemline of her upside down dress as she did...so it promptly fell into a heap around her ankles, leaving the whole of her gaunt body exposed. Far from alluring was it to look at; likely it was that some men had more substantial bosoms than her.

But Soleil wasn't embarrassed at all. She just looked down as if she'd dropped a copper coin and gave her hand a little twirl and her dress, affected by the magic of her Sandform, became sand and swirled around her and reformed back into thin cloth again—this time right-side up.

Kor Lumen Zinnia

 

[Aelita]

Questions.

Questions.

Aelita rubbed her temples with one hand. A slight groan. Aelita drove her knife into a piece of bacon (?) and took a bite.

“Blegh.”

And softly spat out the charred chunk of meat with a look of disgust.

A cough followed.

“Excuse me,” Aelita muttered.

Then, she looked up toward Ysobel and the prone Caeso. She pointed the knife toward them – but obviously aimed for something just beyond them at the bar.

"Look!"

Anyone that would walk around toward to the bar and toward the kitchen would see what Aelita meant.

And also smell it.

Sitting on the ground were the clothes that Aelita wore during the festivities the prior night.

Covered in staling vomit.

 

[Ysobel]

"Lumen!" She cackled at her friend's comment before realizing that her voice was much, much too loud. Instead of continuing, she shut up and observed the state of the rest of her classmates.

As Caeso finally moved on and addressed Aelita, Ysobel’s attention drifted towards the pile where Soleil stood. She shielded her own eyes at the foul sight and moved to cradle her head in her hands. Disgusting. Which was worse: being flashed by Sandy or the mere thought of breakfast.

Probably the latter. No. Nope. It was both.

“Ugh. No. Don’t talk about food.” She groaned, resuming her rocking motion to soothe herself. If she didn’t, she feared whatever contents were creeping up her throat would make their appearance. The place already stank of something ungodly. Best not to make things worse.

She saw the knife pointing in her direction once again, but shook her head. “Not…gonna” She gagged. “What the hell are you pointing at, now? Aelita did you shit behind the bar or something?”

 

[Lumen]

Lumen looked up from her prone position and sat up a little more slowly this time. Fingers came away from the back of her head, covered in fresh blood. A groan left her lips. Wishing she'd missed Soliel flashing her.

A weary sigh like a mother dealing with her bickering children between Ysobel's comment. Kor's preening. Caeso's nakedness. Soliel being Soliel. At least Zinnia was being somewhat reasonable.

She rubbed the crimson together that painted the ends of her fair fingertips. "Has anyone seen my bag? I need some bandages. And probably a medic." If she moved too fast black spots still threatened to dance and expand across her vision. For once, she wished Leander was here so he could take away her power so she could take a few shots and happily become numb and forget things.

 

[Kor]

After a fairly placed warning, Kor felt Soleil's weight leave him, followed by the sound of both fabric and sand. In his current state, he had no idea what had just happened, and if the symphony of disgusting sounds coming from his classmates told him anything, there was nothing pleasant to look at in this building anyways. Granted he wouldn't have considered Soleil or Caeso's nudity an issue.

No longer held down by the women who'd been stacked on top of him, Kor reached out with his arms in both directions, looking for any sort of an anchor in the darkness to hoist himself up. The tips of his fingers on one hand almost certainly brushed against some bare flesh belonging to Gods know who, but he took the safer option and ignored that handhold, lest it be of a phallic origin.

Finally, Kor managed to find the leather top of a bar stool. Twisting his upper body to face the stool and using his arms to pull himself unsteadily to his feel, it suddenly became clear why Kor always had his hair tied so snugly to the back of his head. Without the extra support, the long braids of hair cascaded down every side of his head, even covering his face to the point where it was difficult to make out his features. He almost didn't need anything on his torso with the coverage his locks gave him.

"I need eyes, and my coat. You've no idea how hard Direwolf fur is to find without going all the way to The Spine..."

The dull ache in his head worsened standing up, but as long as he kept himself held to something, he'd be fine. Of course, with one hand holding himself up and the other holding his trousers up, it didn't leave him with any free arms.

"Who the hell tried to take these off of me? I can't fucking tie them when I can't see!"

 

[Zinnia]

Zinnia decided it best to count her blessings that memory seemed to be foggy throughout the whole party. If anything she'd not wanted to be seen was, at the very least no one seemed to acknowledge the fact. That was the only thing keeping Zinnia from entering a full blown panic attack at this point.

"Yes, yes, th-the two of you are this m-morning's big w-winners." Zinnia rasped to Kor and Soleil, scanning the room for her cloak, or anything else she could use to cover up a bit more. Everything was all normal up top for the moment, but who knew how long that would last. Sans the hat, of course. She reached up and tugged the thing. It could shimmy atop her head, but she couldn't seem to pull it off.

"Oh...oh n-no...I think this th-thing is cursed...why me?" She bemoaned her fate.

Aelita pointed something out behind the bar and Ysobel decried its revolting nature. Better to not go looking. Soleil, meanwhile, was looking for her bag.
"I h-haven't--"

*WUMP*

As if on cue, the thing landed in her lap, strings of some sticky substance still loosely tethering it to its former spot pasted on the ceiling. Zinnia yelped as it hit her thighs.
"...oh. H-here it is, Lumen."

 

[Caeso Diemut]

Aelita said look. Caeso didn't want to look. But curiosity, hurried along by an exclamatory remark, had its way of gnawing through even the most resilient forms of wherewithal.

The problem was that he couldn't see it, this thing Aelita's finger was pointing to. Ysobel had a...crass suggestion on what it might be, yet with the unrestrained character of what happened yesterday night it was—unfortunately—a realistic possibility.

Caeso's throat rumbled as he groaned deeply, planting his palms on the floor and rising slowly to his—wait, hold on, use one hand to cover your manhood and achieve some level of decency. There. Now, he rose to his feet.

Turned out that Aelita had located her clothes. Her vomit drenched clothes. Well, more's the pity. Lumen, Kor, Soleil, everyone was missing something (and Zinnia appeared to have gained something, that strange hat), but Caeso at least knew where his pants were located.

So he walked over to Aelita, his gait trudging but purposeful, and he stood before her and gestured with his free hand to what he sought.

"I will be taking those back now."

Aelita Ysobel

 

[Soleil Verdane]

Soleil clapped a hand on Kor's shoulder (though the sound of said clapping was, of course, unusual). Said, "You? Missing coat. Me? Missing jacket." She made a popping sound with her lips and finished, "We search!"

Before anything else could happen, a conspicuous WUMP sounded from the vicinity of where Zinnia was seated in the booth. Soleil looked. It was on Zinnia, Lumen's bag, and stringy goop gave away where it had come from. Soleil glanced up, scanning the rest of the ceiling.

"Beware of ambush!"

She giggled.

She puked.

The puke splattered on the ground and it became sand and coalesced with her through her feet.

"Not on you," Soleil said matter-of-factly to Kor. "Doesn't count."

She flicked her eyes to his untied trousers and back up.

"You? Need pants help?"

Kor Zinnia Lumen

 

[Aelita]

“You know I don’t,” Aelita began as a response to Ysobol. She stopped for a moment. A slight hiccup followed.

“Uh, yeah,” she continued as if nothing happened, “You know I don’t shit when I drink.”

Then, Aelita’s attention snapped to Caeso as he rose and began to march toward Aelita. Only his hand prevented him from being in the most immodest form before the whole cohort. Aelita tilted her head back and grimaced.

“What are you-“ she began before Caeso made his demands clear.

“But... you gave me these?” Aelita told Caeso as an almost question.

Then with a tilt of her head and her eyes going to the side, she added, “I think?”

 

[Lumen]

"Caeso, are you saying you want to see Aelita pantsless?" She slowly peeled herself off the floor for the second time, keeping a hand pressed to the back of her throbbing and bleeding skull. She shuffled toward Zinnia an her bag, not caring what questionable fluid it was covered in.

"Excuse me," she murmured, her hip bumping into one of Caeso's as she squeezed past his naked form without looking. Focused on her medical supplies and not passing out again.

"Sol," she warned wishing to avoid further shenanigans and foreseeing a lot from her. "He needs help tying them not taking them off for kriff's sake." Plopping next to Zinnia, she began rummaging through her bag, pulling out some bandages. A wince as she looked up to Zinnia and meekly offered her the supplies, motioned to her own head.

"Can you help?"