[Semi-Open] All the Little Angels

[old_stoneface]

Who: Sam Vimes
When: May the 25th
Where: Curti Centre, Dream Width
What: The morning of May the 25th, Lietenant Vimes has gone missing. He's not at home, and he's not at work, but later that day he seems to have been detected in the Cloud.
Warnings/Notes: Death, war, torture, quantum, a distressing lack of truth, freedom, justice, reasonably-priced love, or boiled eggs.



There was a song that he'd sung, on occasion, when things were going bad. It was never really audible, just something he'd mumbled under his breath. He hadn't ever explained it, really, just that it was an old soldiers' song. Where Vimes would have picked up a soldiers' song, when he'd pointedly explained that he'd never been a soldier and was proud of it, was anybody's guess. But it went a little something like this:

All the little angels, rise up, rise up
All the little angels rise up high!
How do they rise up, rise up, rise up
How do they rise up, rise up high?

And it was a funny thing, the bits those little angels rose up by. Hands, feet, heads, arse- that was a soldier's song for you. A cadence you could march to, with dirty bits. Somehow, something in the cloud, small as it was, brought the song to mind, and as the mists swirled below the airship's deck there were already fleeting bits of memory taking root. A song, and the scent of lilacs in bloom.

Comments

[bladeofconquest]

Corrin finds herself humming the tune under her breath as the airship approaches, brought on by the memory of lilacs in spring. When word reached her about Mister Vimes being in the Dream Width, she'd been on the first flight back to the Curti Center. She'd had to make some quick arrangements with her new job, but it hadn't been hard once she told her sergeant why; another officer-Corrin's mentor, even-was in trouble, and she was needed for the rescue.

She was trying to prepare herself for whatever could be in the rift, only to realize there was a lot about Mister Vimes' past she didn't know. A lot about his present, certainly; his family, his job as Commander, a little about Ankh-Morpork itself, but significant events from his past? Corrin was coming up blank. Hard to prepare for the job in front of you when you don't actually know what the job will even be.

Corrin is so deep in thought it takes her a few moments to realize the song she's humming is one that she's, technically, never heard before, but somehow she knows the tune perfectly. That's the Dream Width for you. Shaking her head, and attempting to loosen the smell of lilacs and the tune she'd never heard before but somehow knew by heart out of it, she looks over at the others. "I don't suppose anyone has any idea what we might find in the rift?" She asks, leaning forward and resting her hands on her knees pensively. She wouldn't normally wish to intrude on matters Mister Vimes obviously doesn't like to share, but as that is literally what they're about to do in a very physical sense in order to help him, any little bit of information that can assist them in doing so is necessary.

[shinra_dog]

While Corrin smells lilacs, Reno smells smoke. It's not negative, exactly. While it wasn't great, it was the nostalgia of home.

"Hm?" He looked over as Corrin spoke. "You mean... in general, or specific to Mr. Vimes?"

A smirk; he assumed the latter. "Yer guess is as good as mine, princess. I know next to nothin' about the guy. But, he's an important part of our number -- 'specially our representation in the good ol' police force a' Vaikuntha. So I'm preppin' for basically anything weird at this point, yo."

[tiredcharmer]

When the others arrived at the hangar, Tyzias was already there, pacing back and forth in front of the airship and growling under her breath in agitation. It wasn't just that Vimes was one of her best friends here--oh, no. It was that he was Tyzias's boss.

As soon as Corrin showed up, Tyzias's snapped to attention and rushed into the airship, staying grimly silent the entire time. When they find the rift, Tyzias immediately grabs her sword and leaps in.

[defenestraighttomyheart]

How does someone disappear like this?

Richard's no stranger to being lost in thought, he spends most of his free time staring at a tablet trying to turn blank space into a film noir story and failing. But this seemed...

Aggressive.

He's heard Vimes hum this tune in the apartment. Typically, when he's doing the dishes. And he never really has a pleasant look on his face when it happens. Drenched in the scent of lilacs, quietly listening to the sound of military cadence, Richard polishes his revolver in silence as the airship meets it's eventual end.

[old_stoneface]

Tyzias was the first to dive, and if the others followed her... Richard may well have been prepared for the smell. He'd been here before, after all, and Ankh-Morpork's signature aroma was not for the faint of heart- a city the size of a modern metropolis, with none of the conveniences of modern hygiene. It was, in fact, worse than Richard remembered- but he couldn't know, of course, that this was the bad old days. Before Harry King and his small army of workers had started making a mint off of 'cleaning up the city'. Before Vetinari had started the Undertaking.

When their feet touched solid ground once more, the world solidified around them as a city at night. It wasn't cold- there was a warmth to the air which suggested late spring, perhaps the beginning of summer. There were people milling about, all of them worried, many of them frightened. There were barricades, too, that could be seen nearby, though this thought was, perhaps, interrupted by a streak of movement that impacted Corrin and rebounded off her, crashing to the ground.

"Oi, watch where- oh. Sorry, miss." It was, in fact, a boy. Late teens, dressed in the sort of dingy, banged-up armor that they'd seen Vimes wear into battle, with a brass badge attached to his breast, numbered 177. "Er," he managed, after a moment, straightening up and staggering to his feet. "Didn't see you lot there. 'Scuse me!"

He ducked to the side and kept running. Maybe Reno wouldn't be familiar enough to tell, but by the light of the torches the other three could have seen the similarities. No scars, and the voice was younger, untouched by a few decades of shouting and smoking and drinking- but one look in the eyes and it was unmistakable. That had been Sam Vimes.

[bladeofconquest]

Corrin is not prepared for the smell of Ankh-Morpork, and is so taken aback by it she doesn't see the boy in time to stop him running into her. She doesn't keep her footing either, thanks in no small part to unfamiliar sensations and weight on her feet, as she pulls herself into a sitting position.

"Ah...it's okay. Are you-" Corrin begins but as the boy turns to leave she catches a glimpse of him and blinks in confusion. "M-Mister Vimes...?" She asks, but then he's up and off again, leaving Corrin to look at the others in confusion.

Corrin, for her part, has also been dressed by the Dream Width in a suit of rather new-looking Ankh-Morpork City Watch armour, that has yet to acquire the dings and scruffiness of a few years on the street. It also gleams rather well in the relative dark of the city streets. Despite this, she's also been outfitted with a pair of black leather boots in defiance of her normal preference for bare feet; very high quality leather boots, in fact. The sort that would last you for years and years. The sort of boots a well to do noble (or princess) would wear, but definitely not the sort of ratty, worn-out second-hand boots your average Watchmen would have to content themselves with, especially not a still green-behind-the-pointy-ears lance-corporal (as her rank insignia denotes) with shiny, unrusted armour, the last thing you want when you work primarily in the dark of night...

[tiredcharmer]

Considering that most used technology on Alternia literally starts rotting after a few days and the sheer size of Thrashthrust, the smell does little more than remind Tyzias of her own home. Which puts her in an even more foul mood. She lands solidly on the squelching cobble, barely stumbling at all.

The former troll's (she's a human now, oddly enough, with dark brown skin but the same mess of black hair) uniform is just about the polar opposite of Corrin's. Her breastplate's scuffed-up and dinged to high Hell, looking like it's been through dozens of brawls and is held together with nothing more than sheer willpower and a few repair jobs. Same goes for her helmet. Her slacks are stained, in the manner of a true Ankh-Morporkh native, but it looks like some care's gone into making her armor presentable. Her weapons, while as old as the rest of her uniform, are likewise well-maintained. And her boots... well, they're worn. Filthy. They might've been high-quality boots a long time ago, but they're old now, kept intact by stubborness alone. Her badge is numbered 612.

There's even a burnt cigar in her hand.

Flicking the cigar into the mud, Tyzias barks after Vimes, "VIMES! REPORT!"

[old_stoneface]

"... Er. Yeah? I dunno 'bout mister, but I'm Vimes- listen, I've gotta get Sarge, they're bringing up a..." he paused. Watch uniforms. Two ladies, one man. That didn't make sense. Was Sergeant Keel letting girls into the Watch now? The barking of an order in that tone, though, had him saluting out of pure reflex. "Lance-Constable Vimes, sir! It's the Regiments, sir! They're bringing up a bloody great siege weapon or something, sir- I was going to wake Sergeant Keel!"

If they were paying attention, though, there was something... odd. This was, no doubt, Sam Vimes- the face was the exact same shake, though the nose was straighter, which suggested it had been broken in the past. Sam Vimes, aged sixteen- but this, somehow, was not quite the Sam Vimes they knew. There was no flicker of recollection, no sense of familiarity which might suggest that this was Vimes, trapped in his own memory.

So where was he?

[tiredcharmer]

Tyzias narrows her eyes at the young Not-Vimes, sizing him up with all of the weight of your average Ankh-Morpork load gaper at maximum capacity. Even beyond the strange unreality of the boy, Tyzias struggles to envision a squirt like him becoming the grizzled officer that she knows today. (She's not exactly in a position to criticize, though. Tyzias would've had a difficult time imagining herself having a rooftop duel with a masked villain half a sweet ago.)

But the greater mystery is where the actual Vimes is. Tyzias has her own share of experiences with wobbly "quantum," as her officer would put it, in the Dream Width. Though with no obvious spatiotemporal distortions, they're going to have to do most of the heavy lifting themselves. "Right-o then, Lance-Constable. Bring us to the contraption and fetch Keel. We'll buy you some time."

[bladeofconquest]

It really is weird to see this is who Mister Vimes used to be. Of course everyone had been young once, but the memory (was he a memory? If so, where was the real Mister Vimes?) of this fresh-faced youngster becoming the grizzled, no-nonsense City Watch Commander she knew was...quite a leap.

She can only imagine at the events that must have taken this boy and turned him into that man.

But Tyzias is quick to take charge of the situation, and Corrin falls in line; she's had plenty of experience as a soldier true, but being a copper was, as Mister Vimes had taken great pains to demonstrate to her, a vastly different beast altogether. Tyzias is the veteran here, not her.

The mention of siege weaponry though, that's something her soldering experience probably can help with, but in this context it doesn't make sense. "A siege weapon inside a city?" She asks, incredulous. "That's...idiotic. Any halfways-competent commander would know that." They're too big, too slowy, too unwieldy. A city's streets are too cramped to move it effectively, and the risk of ambush increases exponentially once you take side-streets and back-allies into consideration. To say nothing of the damage they could cause inside.

Which says a lot about the military minds they must be up against. A commander would have to be stupid or incompetent to make an order like this. Or just outright mad.

[old_stoneface]

There was a note of panic in the lance-constable's voice. "I dunno! I heard some people talking about something called 'Big Mary' but they're bringing it up the street right now-" he pointed, in the direction of a barricade up the street, a pile as tall as a man of furniture and detritus. There was a general commotion, here, of frightened people scrambling over the heap, trying to get to safety, and then Vimes was gone, running for another gathering of people, all in varying states of concern.

[tiredcharmer]

Chasing down Young Vimes isn't going to be prductive. He's just a memory construct, after all, and Tyzias isn't certain that he'll lead them to the real Vimes (although knowing that doesn't stop Tyzias's instinct to follow and protect him). However, making some noise and changing the trajectory of the memory is likely to draw the real captain out of the memory.

Jerking your head and indicating for Corrin to follow, you stride to the barricade, going against the flow of people and climbing over to the other side, where the enemy is. Time to make Vimes proud. What's it like on the other side?

[old_stoneface]

It was difficult to see through the throng of fleeing people, slowed to a crawl by the bottleneck of the barricade.

But, at the far end of the street, there was a wall of metal, surrounded by torches. That was all there was to see, in a city without lights. But the fear of the people in front of it made its threat obvious.

It was called Big Mary and it was mounted on a heavy cart. There would be a couple of oxen behind the cart, pushing it. The walls weren't solid metal, but merely a skin to stop defenders throwing fire at the wooden planks underneath. And the whole thing was simply to
defend the men who, behind that cosy shelter, had the big, big hooks on the end of the long chains... They'd fix them in the barricade, and the oxen would be turned around in the traces, and maybe another four beasts would be added and then there was nothing you could build of wood that wouldn't be pulled apart.

[bladeofconquest]

Corrin follows behind Tyzias, though her gait is awkward; these boots are really throwing her off, and she doesn't exactly have time to stop and pull them off. Having to push her way through the throng of people fleeing the siege tower isn't helping either.

"City Watch! Let us through!" Corrin manages as she and Tyzias push through the bottleneck. After all, they were decked out appropriately. But then they clear the bottleneck and get a good look at this "Big Mary" Young Vimes had mentioned. Corrin had been expecting a ballista, or maybe a catapult, not...this.

She steps up next to Tyzias. "If they get that thing to the barricades, it's over for them." She says. She doesn't know why the barricades are up, only that citizens are fleeing behind them, away from armed soldiers and that monstrosity. That immediately puts her on the side of the barricades.

She scans the street, but the crowds surging forward and the pervading darkness make it difficult to see anything they might be able to use. "There's got to be something we can use to slow it's advance!" Anything to give the defenders more time to...to do something. Organize some kind of resistance.

Mister Vimes-the actual, real Mister Vimes, not the memory construct of his younger self-had to be around here somewhere, as little sense as that made.

"Maybe...an alley? If we can get around behind them, we might be able to..." Be horribly outnumbered by armed soldiers? "Buy them some time." She finishes.

[tiredcharmer]

"Nah. Got a better idea," Tyzias says, stepping forward and assuming a wide stance. Then, bellowing as loud as her respiration sacs will allow (which is pretty damn loud, considering all of the debate she did on Alternia and her troll physique in general), Tyzias roars, "ATTENTION, OPERATORS OF THE SIEGE WEAPON KNOWN AS THE BIG MARY! FOR DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY, CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY, THE HIGH CRIME OF TREASON, AND FOR BEING A BLOODY GREAT NUISANCE TO THESE POOR PEOPLE, I USE THE POWER VESTED IN ME BY THE CITY GUARD TO PLACE YOU ALL UNDER ARREST!

"YOU HAVE THIRTY SECONDS TO LEAVE THAT BLASTED CONTRAPTION BEFORE LIEUTENANT CORRIN AND I DRAG YOU KICKING AND SCREAMING OUT OF THERE OURSELVES!"

There. That should get Vimes's attention.

[defenestraighttomyheart]

Richard is already on it.

Richard is no longer equipped with his normal sobriquet of kit, which came as a horrendous surprise. He no longer has his gun, only some weird tube with a trigger on it like some sort of deadly telescope or a particularly extravagantly built baton. No magic crystals. No magic pants.

His boots were hobnailed so that when he struck the ground hard enough with his foot, they sparked, though. So that was nice. And his hat stayed mostly the same, just made out of leather and a tad floppy. There was a belt buckle on it, because even in another world from the other world, people wear too many belt buckles.

Everything said, he looked relatively suspicious, but normal in his long, brown leather coat.

Which made the fact that he'd found a prybar and a couple of grime-encrusted rocks to be sort of suspicious as he ducked back behind an alleyway.

[old_stoneface]

The results of these actions, it seemed, were utter chaos. There was a chorus of shouting as several tons of wood and steel slammed into the mother of all pot-holes, and Tyzias' shouting was not quite lost to the crowd, but certainly attracted a great deal of attention-

At least some of which came from a man that looked... frankly, like he'd been through hell. He was wearing an eyepatch over his right eye, and he looked like he hadn't slept properly in days- but the face was, unmistakably, Sam Vimes. And... there was Sam Vimes next to him, a good thirty-five years younger and looking terrified.

"I told you, Sarge, they're bringing up a siege weapon or something, that's what I said to these two, er-" he faltered, seeing the look of confusion on 'Sarge's' face.

"Er. Lance Constable Vimes, these are desperate times and..." Well, time to tell a lie. "This lot are old friends, from Pseudopolis. We need the 'elp, and they happened to be in the neighborhood." He looked up, meeting the gaze of the three. He realized he was in a memory. How else would these specific three people be here? But how the hell to explain this?

[tiredcharmer]

Tyzias snaps into a salute to Vimes as soon as he comes into view. There he is. Figured this had to be some manner of time shenanigans. She could ask the precise nature of it later, though. If they disrupted the memory too much, it could break apart violently, and then they'd all be lost in their own memories. "Captain, sir! Ten seconds until the criminals' warning is up! Breach is imminent!"

[bladeofconquest]

Corrin also slips into a salute as Vimes and Vimes approach. Memory flicks a card; hadn't Vimes mentioned something like this to her, that time over coffee after Great McGard? Something about...being his own sergeant? It had been kind of vague, but...yeah. This has gotta be it. At least Vimes recognized them all; that would make it easier.

"Sorry we didn't get here sooner, sir. Came as fast as we could."