fandomtownies | The streets of Fandom, Friday afternoon

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The streets of Fandom, Friday afternoon

Roland wasn't out busking today to make money.

Okay, he wasn't just out busking today to make money.

He was mostly out busking today to calm the weirdos the hell down. He had his guitar, his magic, and John Lennon, and he'd used all three before to calm an angry and depressed crowd and move them back towards peace and happiness, and that had been when up against a Dark Adept himself, so surely it'd work against a few violently crazy folks, too, right?

And, you know, if it didn't, he also had his running shoes on. Even if death was apparently temporary on the island, right now, that didn't mean it wasn't going to hurt a lot. Roland was a big fan of running away being the better part of valor.

[ooc: Open! I refuse to let the massive workload I have right now stop me from getting at least a little quality BDE in.]

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That was new. Busking during a crisis situation was new. Karolina flew further down to investigate.

"Um, is this the best time to be doing that?"

... Asked the glowing girl who'd just flown down from the sky. In her defence, she was steering clear of the really Hyperion-y part of town but still. She shouldn't judge anyone making questionable decisions.

A full spectrum glowing flying girl. Rebecca would have loved that.

"I'm a bard," Roland explained, even as he continued to play peaceful progression of chords on his guitar. "I'm calming people down."

You know, in theory. He hadn't actually tried to do this much, before. Still, Karolina would hopefully be able to feel at least a little bit of the soothing effect he was trying to put out, here.

Well, it was certainly... nice? Still weird, but pleasant?

"And um, how is that going so far?"

He wasn't currently dead, so he definitely had that going for him.

"Well, I haven't been attacked yet," Roland said, sounding cheerful. "I plan to run away if they do."

"That... seems like a plan."

It did! It was a very good plan. Karolina bit her lip and pushed her rainbow hair behind her ear. It didn't stay there, as it tended to have a floaty quality when she was in this form.

"I guess I shouldn't judge, since I'm out here too."

"Looks like you've got a pretty good defense system there, yourself," Roland noted. He wondered if she was one of the little folk. A big variety of them.

He really needed a better name for them.

Karolina had been called an over-sized Tinkerbell before, so, at least he wasn't alone. "I don't fly right above the dig site," she felt the need to say, wryly. "I guess this form attracts bullets."

Kind of an understatement. With her glow and her colors, she was a flying target.

"Which is annoying because I wanted to try and get, you know, an aerial view. For tomorrow."

"There must be someone around here who can make you a cloaking device or something," Roland mused. "Seems like there's folks who can do most other things."

"Well, Tony might've," Karolina shrugged. She hovered a little higher, then a little lower again. "But he's not here anymore. Anyway, I guess we'll have to make due with what we have, right?"

"Well, I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to find more," Roland said. "But knowing how to get along with what you've got is always a useful skill."

"And it's something I'm getting better at. And something the island is pretty good at, too, just in general." They were survivors. "I guess I should go back to my surveying."

"I could play you off, if you like," Roland offered. "I'd offer to try to work up some invisibility for you, but I've never tried that before, and I'm actually not sure how well it'd work."

"May be best not to try right now," Karolina agreed. She was already starting to slowly gain altitude. "But I wouldn't say no to that first bit?"

"Any requests?" Roland asked with a smile.

Karolina chewed on her lip for a second before it occurred to her. "Um... Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds?"

She seemd almost sheepish about choosing it, but wry in her own way too. There'd been a few months earlier this year where that song was everything she'd had to really remind her of Earth.

And there was that brief bit last year when it had been her codename.

Roland laughed good-naturedly. "Sounds good to me." He tapped out a four count on the body of the guitar and then launched into the song with gusto.

What an idiot.

Mike jogged over to Roland with a slightly goofy-looking gait. He was old, and didn't run so well anymore.

"Kid, what the hell are you doing?"

Roland liked the glowy teenager better. He bristled at the guy's tone, completely throwing off his nice peaceful calming magic.

"Well, I was playing a nice happy song."

See this face? This was Mike's "I'm going to wait until you realize what a monumentally stupid thing you just said" face.

Roland recognized it easily. He'd been getting versions of that face his entire life.

He smiled blithely back in the face of that face, as it had very little effect on him coming from a guy he didn't even know.

"You'd be amazed what music can do," he said. Especially when it was being wielded by even a mostly unpracticed bard.

Mike sighed.

"Look, I can guarantee you that the guy who said music can 'soothe the savage breast' didn't say it while people were trying to kill him. You need to be inside."

"Yeah, I need to be where I can do some help. And the guy who said that might have meant it that way if he could actually perform magic with music." Roland lifted the fretboard of his guitar slightly. "I've done this before."

Admittedly, a mob of angry and depressed Canadians wasn't quite the same as a bunch of murderous otherworldly psychos.

"Magic. Actual magic. With your guitar."

This guy was not the first person who'd told Mike that his music was magic, not by a long shot. This wasn't even the first person who'd told Mike that and believed it. It was, however, the first time Mike had actually believed the guy.

"You don't say."

He looked Roland over critically.

"I'd suggest getting a guard, then. Some of these guys are gonna take a LOT of soothing."

He wasn't just passing it off as a bunch of bunk. Mike just went up a little in Roland's estimation.

"You volunteering?"

There was too much on this island that was too fucked up for Mike to start calling things bunk. If the guy said he could do magic, then good for him. Unfortunately for him, however, helping those in need out of the goodness of his own heart was not really something Mike did.

"I can't -- I have to entertain the whims of the crazy alien they are Skypeing. Even if I were free, you do NOT have enough in that hat of yours to make it worth my while. I'm sure someone in the library would be more than happy to help."

He shrugged, and jabbed a finder at Roland's chest. "In the meantime, I'd suggest you compare how long it takes your music to affect a crazy person against how long it takes them to charge at you and cut your head off. Maybe I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem like the math would work in your favor."

Roland was actually even listening right up until he got to the "in the meantime" bit, at which point his automatic "old person telling me how to live my life" tuning out began and he went into smile and nod mode.

"Uh huh," he said. "I'm also very good at running away. But thanks for the advice."

Psychos liked going towards noises. That made it much easier to find victims. So, the fact that there was now one stalking down the street towards Roland was hardly surprising.

"Another story to sing to the cages at home!"

Neither was the psycho's need to holler things like that.

There was absolutely nothing about that that wasn't deeply, horribly creepy. Roland faltered a moment in his song, backing up a pace or two, his eyes going wide.

Then he thought of Papa Bear back in the Dark Adept's world. Of the giants trying to eat him, the talking corpses, the evil elves, the roasted child. He'd survived all that, and had even been ready to face down a dragon after.

He stopped backing up, set his weight, and started to play again, throwing his magical all into a rousing rendition of "Imagine".

C'mon John, don't let Roland down now.

The psycho slowed down a bit, but it kept advancing anyway.

"I need another head for my merry-go-round!"

That sounded almost quizzical. For a psycho.

OHHHHHH god that's horrible. If he weren't getting just a little bit swept up in the magic he was putting into his playing, that would totally have come out out loud. Because damn if that wasn't a mental image that would now never ever leave Roland alone.

Well, he'd file it away with all the other horrible mental images, then.

He backed up a step, unable to stop himself, but kept playing, kept pouring himself into singing about imagining better worlds, imagining peace, how wonderful it could all be if everyone just learned to cooperate and stop dividing themselves.

Yeah, you motherfucker. Imagine!

The problem with psychos, though, was that they weren't very good at imagining things. Not things that anyone sane would want to hear about, anyway.

So after a moment of vaguely quizzical bobbing and weaving in place, the psycho seemed to reach a conclusion. And then it charged at Roland again, brandishing its rusty blade in the air.

"Let's agree to disagree!"

Holy shit, that actually made sense in context for once!

There was really only so much that Roland's composure could take.

"Oh shit!" Hands clenched around his guitar -- he was honestly more likely to protect her than he was his own self -- he backed off several more paces, then spun to break into a run.

Well, it'd been worth a try, anyway.

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The streets of Fandom, Friday afternoon

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