[hr][hr][center][color=bf7300][b]Watts // Landon[/b][/color] [color=598527][sub][b]LOCALE[/b] // Landon's Workshop/City of Thorinn [b]TIME[/b] // Previous Morning/Previous Afternoon/Next Day (current)[/sub][/color][/center][hr][hr] The sun was already fairly high in the sky before its bright rays punched their way through the angle of Landon's high bedroom window and found his sleeping and unshaven face. His limbs were askew under the scattered covers, perfectly relaxed, though life crept back into them as the light finally woke him from his late morning slumber. He cracked open his eyelids and rolled over, and he reached out a hand toward the bed's other occupant to stroke her hair. "G'mornin', beautiful," he croaked. The other occupant, startled by his touch to sudden wakefulness, started gnawing on his hand before she realized it was just her human. Then she gave him an apologetic lick before she wriggled out from under his hand and hopped down to the floor. Sylvester the cat meowed at her human as she slipped through the crack of the open bedroom door, her tail teasing with a "come hither" gesture before it followed her out. Landon sat up, letting the covers fall off his bare chest as he stretched and yawned loudly. He scratched himself in the nonchalant way of someone who lives on their own does, and he flipped a switch mounted on the wall as he grabbed a housecoat from a nearby chair. A series of clicking sounds followed along the wall as he went down the spiral staircase from the upper floor of his workshop down to the kitchen and living room area. All around was the clutter of spare parts, tools left out, and scattered half-finished gadgets, all arrayed in what was actually an organized format on nearly every open flat surface available...including the multitude of shelves and the floor. And the couch. And the kitchen counters. The top of the fridge too. The ratcheting clank of gears accompanied him to the kitchen as he stuck a cigarette into his mouth and lit it with a lighter of his own making. Sylvester hopped up onto the counter nearby and sat next to her food dish, her eyes focused on the mouth of the machine stationed behind the dish. Landon, meanwhile, patiently reached into a drawer and pulled out a razor blade - the old-fashioned flip-out kind - and used a flat mirror, some shaving soap and a boar's hair brush to shave in the kitchen sink. Sylvester meowed plaintively, and Landon muttered, "Easy, kitty, just a few more seconds." The black and white cat, who Landon had adopted and didn't realize was female until she had a litter of kittens inside of his prototype steam engine (which caused enough of a delay on the project that he never finished it), did not deign to take his word for it, and pawed at the slot. Then the clanking reached the kitchen wall behind the coffee machine and the cat food dish, and suddenly, coffee dripped into the pewter tankard and cat food pellets rained down into the dish. Sylvester bent down to crunch away at the food, and Landon rinsed his face (still somewhat unshaven around his jawline and chin, but it looked neater than it had) and grabbed the tankard once it was full. "To yer health," he said with a smirk as he petted Sylvester and took his unreasonably-large coffee cup out to his front porch. Landon stood on his bare feet as he looked out at the countryside that surrounded his home and workshop, and drank heavily from the tankard once it was cool enough to do so. There were only a few homes close by in this semi-wooded area, and Landon liked the privacy for both his experiments and the simple peaceful quiet that pervaded. He stood there for a while, half-empty tankard in hand, enjoying the fact that he was alive, awake, on his feet, and lots and lots of this world's equivalent of caffeine pumped in his veins. Life wasn't so bad. "Mr. Longcrooosss!" shouted a young man who ran up to the porch, which startled Landon out of his reverie and caused him to lose his grip on the tankard. He managed to grab it out of the air before it lost so much as a drop, but his cigarette now hung sullenly from one corner of his mouth as he considered the young man. "No need to shout, Brent," grumbled Landon, then he finished off the coffee in several long swigs before he shook the tankard at the young man. "Now, why are you seeing me this early in the morning?" "But Mr. Longcross, it's almost noon!" Landon gave the lad a look that caused Brent to clear his throat self-consciously before he gave his report. "It's a new dungeon! It appeared outside of Thorinn just the other day! It's really close!" Landon calmly removed the cigarette from his mouth and blew the smoke out to one side. "That close, huh..." "You told me to tell you if anything like that happened." "Yup, I did." There were a few moments of silence before Brent coughed pointedly, and Landon grumbled as he dug around in his housecoat for a few gold pieces left loosely in there and handed them to the young man. "Here, one for the info, and the rest is to take care of the place and my cat while I'm gone, like we agreed. If you get anybody to help you, I'll make sure they get paid after I get back." Brent grinned as he saluted. "Yes sir, Mr. Longcross! Good luck on your trip!" And without another word, he ran back the way he had come down the dusty road. Landon put the cigarette back in his mouth and reached up to scratch the back of his neck. "Great, Thorinn...if I hurry, I can probably get to the Gate and join a party in time for..." He continued to mutter his travel calculations to himself as he went back inside and shut the door behind him. --- The gadgeteer stepped out his front door again a few hours later, equipped with his adventuring gear, when he stopped short of the feyling that floated in the air in front of him. He adjusted his cigarette (the third for the day so far) and nodded silently to the small creature, who repeated the message for him before it flitted off into the sky. "Well, well! Looks like Elly is on the ball!" He smirked around the cig. "And if I know Elly, then this is gonna be more fun than I thought!" He started off, carrying all the gear he would need, his long coat flapping in the breeze. --- The next day, he was at Lefig Lawn with a horde of other people, players and residents both. Caught in the press, he grunted a few obscenities before he managed to break through the crowd. Squinting in the sunlight, he raised a fingerless-gloved hand up to shade his eyes as he tried to spot Elian. He brought his hands to his mouth as he drew in breath to shout, and- "Hey, Elian!" Landon looked up, startled that the words he had just been about to say had come out of someone else's mouth, and he saw her - just as vivacious as ever, he'd say - standing under one of the group banners. Two others approached her, a knight in full armor and at least four weapons strapped to his frame, and a leather-clad woman with a metallic helmet and sabre. With classic Landon grace, he strolled up in time to interrupt the newcomers by placing himself between them and Elian. "I knew you couldn't keep me away for long, Elly," he said with a shrug of his hands and a waggle of his eyebrows, exaggerated by the goggles on his forehead. Then he jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the two adventurers behind him. "You've got more coming than just these two, right? Might be a short raid if we don't get more folks." And then he stepped to one side so he could look at Elian and the others too, take a puff on his cigarette, and continued, "Hey, want to save the introductions for when everybody gets here, or should we just start jabberin' while we wait for the slowpokes?"