Hotel Obsidian | Morning

[knife_bender]

Diego was sore, a little bruised, but totally satisfied with how his evening had gone. He hadn't said anything to Annie about it just yet due to lack of time before they had to try to find where the hell everyone else was.

It felt like they hadn't had time to talk about anything since they ended up in this universe.

Annie	It was insane how little time they'd gotten to spend together alone. It was honestly like the universe somehow knew that Annie had something incredibly important to tell him! Anyway, completely unrelated to any big news she had, Annie was about to overreact to something she'd normally be pretty cool about. "Hey you," Annie greeted him as she wandered over with a smile. "How'd things go with -- oh my God, what happened?" She was referring to a gigantic slash on the back of his neck. Did you know you were bleeding, Diego?
Diego	"I'm fine," Diego assured her. "I just took Allison out last night for some family bonding at a Neo-Nazi bar." Just good ol' fashioned family fun. "That woman had a lot of rage to let out." It had been awesome.
Annie	So like, on the one hand: clearly. On the other, the idea of Diego deliberately putting himself in what was an entirely optional, incredibly dangerous situation was suddenly not nearly as cute as Annie usually found it. "What the hell? And you didn't tell anyone? What were you thinking?" Annie demanded, eyes going wide in panic. She got not like, bringing her white, blonde ass along, okay, but like...all Annie could think about now was how many gleefully reckless situations Diego (and she, too) got into, and how much she did not want to raise a child (or two children!) alone because he'd gone out bonding with his sister and some racist managed to get a good shot in.
Diego	"I was thinking I'd help Allison out?" Diego asked, looking confused. "It's not like these guys had superpowers; it was just a good old fashioned bar fight." You know, the same dudes that they fought in Baltimore all of the time, so he wasn't sure what the issue was here. "Are you mad because we didn't take you?"
Annie	"No, I'm mad because you didn't tell anyone --" Annie, you didn't know that. They didn't tell you. "-- and I'm not mad, I'm...." Annie trailed off, a headache starting to throb at her temples. Now she knew, at least, that it was a symptom of the pregnancy, but it was also definitely a symptom of how frustrated she was that Diego still didn't know. "Worried," she concluded, blowing out an irritated breath. "Something could've happened, and we're supposed to be -- I mean, I thought we told each other when we were doing stuff like that. That's all." And mostly, she just felt sort of lonely and left out, right now, but she couldn't tell him that. She really, really needed to find time they could be alone today -- not just so she could tell him how incredibly, actually freaking pregnant she was and how he should maybe cut back on his Nazi-punching, but also just because...she kind of missed him. This felt like another disconnect in a series of them.
Diego	"Okay," he said, nodding. "Okay, I'll say something next time." He knew they had that rule in place, but he thought it applied to actual threats, not sad Nazis. He reached for Annie's hand, leading her toward the lobby where he could already hear raised voices.
Luther	The raised voices were coming from Luther and Viktor. Viktor, who had a rather large cut across his cheek. "Oh my god!" Luther said when he spotted Diego. "What happened to you? Was it Harlan? The Sparrows are right. He shouldn't be here, he's dangerous."
Viktor	"He's only dangerous because I made him that way," Viktor said, already tired of this conversation. "This is my problem, and I appreciate the concern, but I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to fix it."
Annie	"You probably shouldn't start any sentences with 'the Sparrows are right,'" Annie advised Luther with a slight smile, though she was also already a little tired of this conversation. "But that's from Harlan? Not Nazis?" She nodded towards Viktor and his cheek, and that was a normal question to ask a person first thing in the morning, yep.
Luther	Luther gave Annie a weird look over the Nazi comment before getting distracted by Allison's arrival. She, too, looked like she had been through the ringer. "Oh god, he got to you too?"
Allison	Allison didn't know what that meant, and she wasn't going to reply to it, too focused on the gnarly cut on Viktor's face. "You okay?"
Viktor	"Great," Viktor responded coldly. "You?"
Allison	"Never better." No tension here, guys. None at all.
Annie	Oh, cool, were we all mad at each other? And here Annie was just low-key irritated because she had a headache and a secret reason for it and couldn't get off this ride long enough to tell Diego what the hell was up with her. At least if everyone was mad, it probably made it less weird how moody she kept finding herself? "Maybe I should go find us all some, like, ibuprofen?" Annie suggested, giving Diego's hand a little squeeze. She'd been hard on him, and she knew it, and she wasn't helping much. "I bet Chet's got some."
Five and Lila	No time for any gross affection here! A possibly familiar looking portal appeared above them all in the lobby, sending Five and Lila hurtling out and onto the ground. It did not look like it had been planned like that, no.
Viktor	And you know that they have been at this weird shit for too long when the first response came from an exasperated Viktor. "Where have you been?"
Annie	"Are you okay?" Annie asked, right on the heels of Viktor's question. That was less genuine concern about their well-being and more, 'I really don't want to deal with either of you having a broken leg from falling out of a portal that high up on top of all the shit you missed,' but you know.
Five	Five rolled off the now crushed briefcase, batting at Lila ineffectively to disentangle himself from her as he staggered to his feet. "Just fine. Facing my own mortality," he said, looking from Annie to Viktor in to answer their questions. "I don't recommend it."
Allison	"You had the briefcase? We've been looking for this!" Allison immediately rushed towards the briefcase, her hopefully look falling once she saw the state of it. "Oh, that's toast." Just excuse her for a second while she had a panic attack.
Diego	Diego, meanwhile, was doing the gentlemanly thing and helping Lila off the floor. "Are you okay?"
Lila	"Thank you." Lila made a strange sort of juking motion towards Diego once she was up, as though she was about to give him a hug and then abruptly stopped herself. Her eyes flicked to Annie, just for a second, and instead, her hand came up and patted Diego on the arm in thanks. "Turns out we have less time to hold grudges than I thought. You're off the hook." And similarly, the time for mind games and making herself miserable was also past. But, on that note -- "Where's Stan?"
Luther	Diego wanted to ask what the hell that meant, but he was quickly being dragged away by Luther. "Excuse us," Luther said to Lila as he pulled Diego aside. "Did you and Allison get in some kind of a fight last night?"
Diego	"Hell yes!" Diego said with a grin. "We kicked some serious ass last night." But he was still very sorry for not telling his wife where he went, of course.
Luther	Luther shook his head. "What the hell is going on with this family?"
Diego	"I don't know, but it's awesome," Diego said. "Swear to god, I never saw her do things like she did yesterday. She was brutal." Then, after catching Luther's disappointed look, added, "It's fine. You know, just needed to blow some steam off. I helped. She's good."
Luther	Luther rolled his eyes. "Oh yeah, real good."
Annie	"Thank you," Annie told Luther, because she very much agreed with that given how Allison was, like, fuming across the lobby from them. Like, she really did get it, Diego, and she was done being annoyed about it, but even aside from her own peevishness over the whole thing...Luther was right. It was probably going to take more than a skinhead or two with a broken nose to make Allison actually feel better, especially after the briefcase discovery.
Five	"Hey, Chatty Cathys," Five snapped. "Quit the chit chat all right? I'm calling a family meeting here." About yet another apocalypse! It was starting to turn into a trend.
Diego	Oh, right. There was a thing here happening. Diego caught Lila by the elbow as he caught her trying to make a quick escape. "Nuh-uh, that means you too." If Diego had to suffer through this, so did the rest of you.
Five	Welcome to the terrible family, Lila. Be thrilled to be included. "Where's Klaus?"
Diego	That was a very good question. Last Diego knew he had been babysitting Stan. Now Stan was in the lobby, carrying way too many bottles for the small cleaning jobs he had to do. "I'll be right back."
Annie	"Be quick," Annie requested, her eyes flicking to Stan, while Lila looked pained to be left alone with the varying Hargreeves she liked even less than Five. "I'll take notes for you." Not, like, literally.
Five	Well, clearly putting Klaus in charge of anything had been a mistake on his part. "Lost another one. Great."

Diego	Diego missed catching Stan's elevator but did manage to catch up with him in the hallway. "Stan! Stanley!" Diego called, jogging a little to meet up with him. Now he was close enough to see what was written on the bottles Stan was rushing around with. "Acid? What the hell is this?"
Stan	Oh, shit. Think fast, Stanley. "Well, um, you told me to clean up my own mess." Yeah, yeah, that was the ticket. "I just have to thank you for teaching me such a valuable lesson in personal responsibility."
Diego	"Yeah, I'm not buying that," Diego said, crossing his arms over his chest. "You got blood on you." He knew what blood stains looked like, mister! "Come on, talk to me," he said, frowning as he watched Stan's expression fall. "Hey, I'm your dad." Which was still so, so weird to say out loud.
Stan	Yeah, but even dads weren't normally okay with that just happened to Stan. But, sure, he'd give it a shot. "You gotta promise you won't be pissed." If he promised that means it wouldn't happen, right?
Diego	Diego wasn't sure what he expected Stan to show him, but it certainly wasn't his dead brother lying on the floor of a tacky room where the centerpiece was the head of a white buffalo. He spent a couple minutes crouched down next to Klaus' body, trying to keep it together for the kid's sake. He reached out to close Klaus' open, glassy eyes. "What did you do?"
Stan	"Nothing," Stan replied, shifting nervously.
Diego	Diego whipped around and grabbed Stan by the shirt. "Do not lie to me." Right, a kid. This was just a kid. Diego took a deep breath before continuing, "This is my brother. Tell me what you did."
Stan	"We were just messing around and it was fine," Stan said quickly. "Until the gun went off."
Diego	Diego looked over at Klaus' body, then to the chemicals Stan was sneaking upstairs, and then back to Stan. "And you were gonna dissolve the body?!"
Stan	"I didn't know what else to do, okay?!" Stan said, eyes filling up with tears. "You were gonna hate me, and I'd have to go to prison, join a gang for protection, and end up in the hole!"
Diego	Oh, god. "Hey, hey, I don't hate you. I just...I can't believe it, okay? All the stupid shit Klaus used to do. I used to think he could survive anything, and now he's dead."
Stan	Stan put his arms around Diego. "I'm really, really sorry."
Diego	Diego sighed, hugging Stan back. "Me too, kid. Come on and help me wrap your uncle in the carpet." Hiding bodies was a Hargreeves family tradition at this point.
Stan	Stan learned today that dead bodies were heavy. Sure, Diego had been doing the majority of the work, but it looked like he was struggling to carry Klaus' wrapped up body down the hall to the elevators. "Are you sure we can't just torch the evidence?" Stan asked, flicking open his lighter. "A couple of flames from Mr. Burns over here..."
Diego	Diego leaned Klaus' body against the wall and pressed the button of the elevator before reaching for Stan's lighter. "Give me that, you little pyro. We're not burning anything." He appreciated the initiative though. "We're gonna go talk to the family together. They'll, uh, understand this was an accident." Hopefully. Diego could tell that Stan didn't quite believe that either. "Hey. No matter what happens, I got your back, okay? Tu ya eres mi sangre."
Stan	"I still don't speak Spanish," Stan replied.
Diego	"And I accept your flaws, all right?" The elevator bell dinged and he went to grab Klaus again. "I've got it--wait over there." That's when he noticed that Chet had been on the elevator they called. "Uh...we're playing a game."
Chet	If Chet was weirded out by seeing a man rolled up in one of the hotel's carpet he didn't show it. "What's it called?"
Diego	... "Guy in carpet." Smooth.
Chet	Oh, well. That explained everything. "I hope you win." Then Chet wandered off to continue his work.
Diego	Diego smiled as he hauled up Klaus' body over his shoulder. "I love this place." He lugged Klaus' body as delicately he could into the elevator, placing him against the wall. He made sure Stan was safely inside before pressing the button to the lobby. There was a few moments of blessed silence before Klaus' head jerked up and he let out a loud groan. Cue the sound of a grown man and a 12-year-old screaming.
Stan	"You told me he was dead, puta!" Stan shouted.
Diego	"Now you speak Spanish?!" Diego shouted, rushing to keep Klaus upright before he fell face first onto the floor.
Klaus	"Lets turn down the volume a smidge, shall we?" Klaus groaned. "Celestial comedown is a bitch."
Diego	Diego let Klaus slide down to the floor gently, breathing out a sigh of relief. "You scared the shit out of me, Klaus! I thought you were dead!"
Klaus	"Yeah. Me too," Klaus said. Both started laughing a little out of the ridiculousness of the situation, though it turned into something like tears for the both of them after a minute.
Diego	Diego knew they were on a short timetable, but even he didn't think Klaus and himself had enough time to deal with the situation before the elevator doors opened and he was running out of them. "Okay, whoa, whoa. Dude, slow down. You were dead, like, three minutes ago," Diego said, gesturing for Stan to follow. "Dead dead."
Klaus	"Well I'm back now. Apparently it's a thing I do. Who knew, right? And look, look--" Klaus opened up his shirt to show that the harpoon wound was healing.
Stan	That was so cool. "What would happen if we cut off your head? Would it grow two of you?"
Diego	"Stan," Diego chided. "...would it?"

Allison	"Spit it out, Five," Allison said, any resemblance of a good mood obliterated after losing another briefcase.
Annie	"Seriously, this is a lot of preamble for an emergency," Annie added with a sigh, crossing her arms around her midsection irritably. She didn't want to hear the world was ending again, but she already knew the signs when Five had news of that nature.
Five	"Well, we're going to need a drink for this," Five replied with an equally unhappy baring of his teeth as he headed for the bar. "Our little paradox brought forth a freakin' kugelblitz." Still sounded like some kind of Hipster German food, Five.
Viktor	"What the hell is a kugelblitz?" Viktor asked as he followed Five. It sounded like extreme kegels.
Annie	"A football thing?" Annie tried, unhelpfully remembering the primary context she knew 'blitz' from. "Is this a sports metaphor?"
Five	Five lined up a row of glasses that he rather messily poured whiskey into. Because they would need it. Or maybe that was just him. "A kugelblitz is the end of everything," Five announced. "Every rock, every star, every atom... sucked into a radiant black hole."
Lila	"Randomly collapsing matter in every moment of time across all existence until nothing's left," Lila shared helpfully, taking her shot.
Annie	Annie, if there was anyone who'd notice such a thing at such a moment, took her shot glass and didn't drink, electing instead to spin the glass between her fingertips thoughtfully. This all just got a lot more complicated. And kind of a lot more heartbreaking than usual, if she let herself think down that road to its natural conclusion.
Five	"Hate to say I told you so, but..." Five. Five.
Viktor	"You love to say I told you so," Viktor said before knocking back his own shot.
Lila	"You know, it's impressive," Lila observed. "Whoever knocked off your mums hated you enough to end the entire universe." And if Lila knew anything, it was that negative attention was nearly as good as positive attention. The opposite of love wasn't hate; it was indifference.
Viktor	“We don’t know what,” Viktor said, perhaps a tad too quickly.
Allison	“It doesn’t matter who created this thing,” Allison said. “We just have to kick its ass.”
Luther	“How?” Luther asked. “You and Diego going to punch it in the kugel?” Someone was still mad about the bar fight.
Annie	"Nice." Annie was going to take this opportunity to discreetly dump her shot onto the floor in the process of leaning over to give Luther a high-five for that. Both because she was a little mad about it still, too, and also because she knew the longer she sat around not drinking that, the more likely it was that someone might notice.
Five	Everyone was acting tense and weird and Five was just going to pretend that was their default setting. Because, well, it kinda was. "The best plan is to go back in time and eliminate the paradox, destroy whatever it was that took out our mothers, and stop the kugelblitz before it starts," Five said, downing his shot and pouring himself another. "But we can't do that. Briefcase is kaput." Hence the drinking.
Allison	“And why the hell can’t you just jump us out of here?” Allison asked, even as she held her shot glass out for another round.
Annie	"Yeah, you've gotten pretty good at it," Annie offered, downright encouraging about it. Look, you get thrust into a situation with a teleporter who you relied on way too much, you start noticing the improvements he made in his little jumps.
Five	He couldn't always be a deus ex machina! "Last time we all did that, we all got trapped in time. Do we really want to risk that again?"
Viktor	"What's Plan B?" Viktor asked.
Klaus	Only for the answer to be interrupted by the arrival of Klaus, Stan and Diego. Klaus immediately reached for the bottle of booze. "Give me that." Anybody caring to pay attention would notice that, yes, that was blood on his flowery shirt.
Five	"What happened to you?" Also, don't drink all of his booze there.
Klaus	It was a bar, there was a lot of booze! Unless it gets blitzed away. "Oh, speargun to the chest. No big deal," Klaus said before taking a healthy swig from the bottle.
Diego	"What'd we miss?" Diego asked.
Annie	"The universe is ending again," Annie answered, feeling disconnected from the words and the situation and Klaus and his apparently not-that-bad spear gun injury, which she would normally find to be a real cause for concern. It was a joke, at this point, the thing about Hargreeves and apocalypses. It just wasn't as funny to her anymore. Not that, even as a joke, it had ever been anything but a way to stave off the nihilism, but -- now it was a question of whether to even tell Diego what she needed to, or whether it was kinder to keep it to herself, if they were all going to die, anyway.
Diego	Oh. Well, that tracked. Diego couldn't even be surprised at this point. What was surprising was the pulse of energy that happened just then that caused most of the people in the lobby to disappear in a blink of an eye. "What the hell was that?"
Five	"That was a kugel wave," Five explained helpfully, going for a new bottle of alcohol to drink. "It's getting worse."
Annie	"Five, how long do we have?" Annie asked quietly, reaching for Diego's hand and really needing to hear the answer to this. It would be better to know than to just...wonder and dread, right?
Five	"At this rate of escalation," Five muttered, tilting his head to the side as he calculated in his head. "If you factor in--"
Luther	"How long, Five?" Luther snapped. Of course the one time things in his life are going mostly okay an apocalypse happens.
Annie	"Years?" Annie asked, figuring optimism was a good spot to start from. "Months? Weeks?" Hours? Minutes?
Five	Oh, bless her heart. "Four, maybe five days, before the rest of existence is blitzed." Always the bearer of bad news, Five.
Luther	Luther shook his head. "We should have given the Sparrows Harlan."
Diego	"What about Harlan?" Diego asked. Did he miss something while lugging around Klaus' dead body?
Luther	"The Sparrows said if we turned him over, we could end the fighting, and then work together to save the world. But we didn't--"
Viktor	Nuh-uh, Viktor was nipping that in the bud. "And the step-siblings from hell attacked, kidnapped you, and they tried to kill us. I mean, come on, we can't trust them. Working together would be like trying to defuse a bomb by pouring gas on it. It's only going to make things burn down faster."
Klaus	Klaus shrugged. "Yeah, but don't we need the big glowy thing in their basement?"
Five	"...Klaus, do you know where the kugelblitz is?" Five asked slowly.
Klaus	"Oh, yeah, I saw it," Klaus said casually. "When I went to visit Dad. It's in the old storage room where Mom used to keep her luggage."
Diego	Diego slapped Klaus on the arm. "Why didn't you tell anyone?"
Klaus	"I did!" Klaus said, rubbing his arm. "I told you."
Diego	Oh. Right. The huffing paint thing. "Well you say stupid shit all the time."
Annie	"Why did your mom have enough luggage to need a whole room?" Annie wondered, which was not really the point at the moment. But like. That robot lady didn't get to go anywhere, Annie knew that full damn well. "Whatever -- it's down in their basement?"
Five	"Of course," Five said, fully ignoring the bickering. Just full on blocking it out. "It appeared the same place that we did."
Viktor	It didn't matter where the kugelblitz was as far as Viktor was concerned. They weren't going to give up Harlan. He broke off from the group and went towards the elevators, ignoring how empty it was in here now.
Luther	Of course Luther was going to follow. "This is ridiculous, you have to stop covering for him."
Annie	"I don't even get how this is a choice," Annie admitted, catching enough of that as she trailed after them. Presumably along with everyone else. Come on, were you guys not interested in an argument? Annie kind of wished she had popcorn. (....goddammit, now that was all she wanted.)
Five	Yeah, nobody had a better eye for fresh new drama than Five. Like a shark with blood in the water. Or maybe he a suspicious old man who was having a really bad day right now. Could be the latter. "Covering for what? What's going on?" he asked. Because manners about eavesdropping were for other people.
Viktor	Oh, great. Now they had an audience. "Harlan didn't mean to hurt anyone," Viktor said.
Luther	"Really?" Luther gestured to the cut on Viktor's face. "You mean when he did this?"
Five	"Wait, Harlan did that?" Five asked. Because they might all want to kill each other, but other people weren't really allowed to do that.
Diego	"I'm gonna end him." Because, yes, Hargreeves could only be beat up by other Hargreeves.
Viktor	"Look, I know how it looks," Viktor said. "But Harlan didn't ask for this. If we hadn't gone back to 1963, if I hadn't had saved him--"
Luther	"He killed Jayme and Alphonso, not you," Luther interrupted. "He's the reason we're in this mess, and he's our only way out."
Annie	"Viktor, Harlan's a grown-up who's had fifty years to become his own person," Annie pointed out, a little gentle even if she was still pretty firm about it. "This isn't on you at all, and you need to stop thinking that way." It just made it so much harder to make these kinds of calls when you tried to take responsibility for the choices people made after you'd met them.
Five	"They're right," Five said, gentling his tone in a way that usually only Viktor got out of him. "If we're going to have an iota of a chance of getting out of this alive, we need access to the kugelblitz."
Viktor	"You told me no one was insignificant," Viktor pointed out. "They'll kill him."
Lila	"Uh, so?" Lila really did not see the issue here. Yes, sure, Viktor had made a friend, how wonderful. But that seemed very unrelated to the problem at hand. "We're talking about one person versus billion of lives here. I mean, is this really a debate for you people?"
Viktor	"Hey, Little Britain?" Viktor said, in an uncharacteristically harsh tone. "You don't get a vote."
Klaus	"Lila lives in this universe too," Klaus pointed out. "And she's family now. Sort of. Kinda."
Lila	"Thanks, kitten," Lila replied faintly, narrowing her eyes slightly at Viktor. Since yeah, it was kind of her universe, too. She damn well better get some kind of vote.
Diego	"I don't give a shit about the Sparrows." Well, at this very second. Usually he was actually very focused on them. "I'm not going to let this scary-ass grandpa finish you off."
Viktor	"He was just a little kid," Viktor said. "And now what? We just decide who lives and who dies?" Was it a special class that Dad didn't let him attend?
Annie	"...yeah, Viktor," Annie said softly, shrugging a shoulder. "I mean. Yeah. That's kind of part of the hero thing. This kind of responsibility comes with gifts like ours." It wasn't nice to talk about, but it was a reality of their role in the universe. And it was easy to judge right up until it was your turn to make one of those tough calls.
Five	"Viktor, we're down to ethical triage here, alright?" Five said, not unkindly. But he wasn't going to budge here. "We can't save everyone. The kindest cut wins."
Luther	"You always wanted to be on the team," Luther said, not as gently as Five. "This is what it is. Saving the world means making the hard calls." And this call involved killing a weird old man.
Viktor	Viktor sighed, shoulders slumping. "I hate this."
Luther	"I know," Luther said. "I'll go get him."
Viktor	"No," Viktor said, holding up a hand. "Let me do it. I can get him to come quietly."

[NFI, NFI but OOC is always great. Taken from TUA 3x05 The Kindest Cut and preplayed with apocalypsehow and defenderofdesmoines]