AU: Welcome to Hammel 2k16

[Marnie Sullivan]

((I'm stealing this idea from the AU thread from 2014. Everyone is invited!))

There was sunlight streaming through the window when Etch opened her eyes, and that was her first clue that something was wrong. 

Shit, I'm late.

Her alarm must have been off, or she'd forgotten to turn the sound up or something. Rolling over with a grunt, she reached past the gently snoring ball of fluff curled up against her shoulder. Etch groped blearily at the bedside table, finding nothing - neither her phone, nor her glasses, nor any of the books or half-filled water cups that usually littered its surface. Leaning up - the white and black cat, disturbed by the sudden move, lifted his head and brrrrppp in annoyance - Etch squinted over the bedside, wondering if somehow it had all been knocked off. But the floor was bare. And also the wrong color.

So, she realized, was the bedspread - buttery yellow and tucked in at the corners instead of striped green and tossed any which way. The walls, the desk, it was all wrong. She recognized nothing but her cat; this was not her room.

Did she pass out at someone's house last night? No, she had work this morning, she hadn't gone out anywhere. (Shit, she needed a phone, she needed to call her boss!) And what would her cat be doing here if she had?

"Look out, cat." The Lieutenant brrrpped again when Etch lifted him from his spot so that she could swing her legs over and get to her feet. Out from under the blankets, the room was chilly, maybe the chilliest it had been all month. Weird, New Mexico wasn't expecting a cold snap this weekend, was it?

Etch's bare feet padded to the desk across the room, which stood littered with papers and folders labeled with class names but no phone. Still totally confused but too sleepy for any better ideas, she flipped open the first folder hoping for a clue, and got one: a class schedule.

"What the fuck?" Wishing she had her glasses, Etch squinted at the paper carefully - Monday, first period, biology with Samantha Rayburn. Second period, math, Adam Deulane. Third period, training, Trevor Cunningham....

Slooooowly the sleepy gears turned. A couple of those names sounded familiar but - 

Etch screamed. Her cat jerked with alarm, followed by a glare for disturbing his sleep. Etch screamed again. Her cat meowed.

"What the fuck how the fuck!!" she yelled, followed by a knock on the bedroom door.

"Everything okay in there?" 

Etch must have looked like a lunatic when she yanked the door open, hazel eyes round as saucers, dyed red hair sticking up at every angle.

"Where am I?!" 

"Who are you?" asked the suddenly very nervous pajama'd teenage girl whose hand was still suspended at knocking height.

"Who cares, where am I?" Etch repeated.

"Uh, room 402..."

"Room 402 where? What building is this?!" 

"...Hammel? Hammel Institute?"

"Holy shit!" This time the teenager managed to cup her hands over her ears in time, but Etch didn't catch her wince; she had dashed back to the bed to scoop up her fat cat, who swung heavily in her arms as she doubled back and zoomed (or more accurately, thundered) past the girl and out into the hallway. Her boss would never believe this.

[Nora Marie "Nory" Gwinn]

As she galloped down the hall, Etch passed another misplaced-looking woman attempting to have a calm conversation with a dorm monitor.

"I agree that I shouldn't be here," the woman was saying. She was tall, thin and long-waisted, with a lot of curly brown hair and a very loud voice. "But I really can't just leave, and--no, I am no one's older sister, technically I guess I'm some sort of god here--"

Her eyes caught the back of Etch's head, and the woman whirled away from the dorm monitor. "ETCH!" Her voice probably woke up some of the lighter sleepers in the boy's wing. "Thank heavens! It's me, Elsinore!"

[Daniel Taylor]

Doro was all snugged in bed. She was starting to slowly wake up. It was getting close to the time Hunter, the German shepherd, would start taking because he needed to go to the bathroom. Doro remained in bed until then. Time ticked on. Doro was very happy that Hunter was allowing her to sleep in. Now if only her bladder would let her sleep. That wasn’t the case.

She tossed the covers aside and got out of bed. She walked the same path to leave the room. She reached for her glasses on the dresser. The glasses weren’t there nor the dresser. Did Doro rearrange her room again and forgot about it? Doro looked around the room. The whole layout was wrong. And there was no dog crate.

Doro wandered around the room hoping to find her glasses. Luckily, she found them on the nightstand. Doro left the bedroom. She was not in her house. She had no clue where she was. She cautiously walked around. All was quiet. Or at least inside the apartment/dorm place was. Out in the hall there were voices.

Doro opened the door. She poked her head out in the hall. Two people were speaking to each other. The woman had loud voice. A third person was running around…with a cat? Doro was about to close the door again until a couple of names were said.

Etch. Elsinore. Etch. Elsinore.

Wait.

Doro knew those names. She left the dorm room. She combed her fingers through her curly brown hair trying to tame it. “Guys, wait for me!” She called after the two other women. Doro didn’t know what was going on, but having some allies would be great. Perhaps at least one of them knew what was going.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean woke up on his back in a bathtub.

This was not the first time that he had done so, even if it was infrequent. As he slowly roused from “half-asleep” to “fully-awake,” he rubbed his face with one flipper.

This wasn’t his bathtub.

This wasn’t his bathtub, which meant that this wasn’t his bathroom. Yet, it looked familiar, as though he had seen it before.

He pushed himself to his feet and glanced around, craning his neck to see every angle of the ceiling.

A bathtub and attached shower. A toilet. A sink. A medicine cabinet and mirror – he took the opportunity to smooth his head feathers down with his flipper; he might have spent the night in a bathtub, but that was no reason to look sloppy. A hot tub.

A hot tub?

Stepping out of the bathtub, he waddled over to confirm that, yes, it was a hot tub.

He spun around and found navy blue and olive green towels hanging on the rack. Waddling over to the sink, he found decorative soaps shaped like seashells, and then a bottle of Island Margarita-scented foaming hand soap. The penguin remembered picking that out and showing it to Dryope to get approval, when they had decided that the Bath and Body Works line of island cocktail scents would provide soap to Sean and Josh for at least three months.

Which meant that the bathroom was familiar, because he had created.

This made for a complicated development.

[Marnie Sullivan]

Etch let out a squawk at the sound of her name. She tried to stop in her tracks; instead of finding purchase on the smooth tile, her bare feet flew out in front of her and she landed flat on her butt. The Lieutenant squawked to match, ruffled by the sharp drop.

"ELSINORE!" Talk about luck! The first real person she could find was the one Hammelite she'd actually met before. They could skip the introductions and go straight to complete bewilderment.

Careful to maintain a hold around her cat's middle, Etch awkwardly lurched back onto her feet before doubling back to the other woman. "Elsinore! Man am I glad to see - "

From behind them came another yell. Etch didn't recognize this one right away, but clearly she recognized the two of them. Right now that could only mean one thing.

"Hi, hey, come here!" Etch called, beckoning with one waving arm while the other held the cat.

[Vincent Meian]

Waking up was a strange event, and while Eris (also known as Kallisti) was used to being woken up to screaming and being kicked out of bed... it generally wasn't by someone her size.

THUD "MMMPH!"

The fall was what had woken her up, ears twitching and tail thrashing. What the hell? Who kicked her out of...

Wait, that wasn't her nice, shiny new bedframe. And this wasn't her tiny little corner bedroom. And the voice yelling at her wasn't her kitten-child. "Who the hell are you?!"

No, that voice the cat-mama knew very well, and green-blue eyes peeked up over the edge of the low bed to find... blue. Icy blue, and white hair. A woman seen only in her mind and occasionally on a computer screen before now.

"...Nik?"

The woman paled further (shocking, considering), and Eris jumped up to get back away from her lest she scream again. "Now wait a minute," the writer warned, backing towards the window with chestnut-furred fingers lifted. "I'm not sure how I got here, so just let me-"

"GET OUT."

"Precisely. Bai!" The window was flung open, and in a brown-red blur the chubby catwoman was gone, racing away through streets only imagined before now. Fortunately, seeing a befurred and tailed humanoid was not entirely an uncommon occurrence in town, and few paid her any mind, save for that she was dressed in wildly weather-inappropriate clothes this morning - a thin shirt and sport shorts.

There was only one answer to this, and that was... the school!