Purgatory.

Calliope gasped for air as her head broke above the water. "Very beautiful," she said to Olivia, so calmly that there was no indication that she had been drowning only a few minutes before. "I truly should visit Atlantis, sometime. Other dimensions are just so tricky to get to. In any case, Olivia, will these accommodations do for now?"

"Absolutely wonderful," Olivia said, "But I'm not sure I should stay."

"How come?"

"I'm a princess," she said, puffing her chest out and pouting a little, "I should do things on my own."

"Doing things on your own, in Purgatory," said Calliope, "is a good way to get yourself killed." She said this relatively impassively, per usual, although an astute observer might have noticed a slight edge to her voice.

Her pout turned into a little uncomfortable stare. "Ooh, dear."

"I agree with you, though. All heroes should have agency. But it's not bad to let other people help you once in a while, either." I can't force her to stay...

"I guess you're right," she said.

"How about you think about it? This room will always be open to you. No one else needs it right now." Calliope swam down to the door, opening the room to the room full of monkeys on typewriters. Inexplicably, the water from the Atlantis room did not spill into the monkey room. Calliope stepped out of the wall of water, shaking her hair like a dog.

Olivia took a deep breath, closing her eyes, her gills shifting with the cool flow of the water. This was a very nice space indeed, yet it was but a room. She needed more space to move around.

Calliope stood with the door open, watching Olivia swim around. Haven't seen a mermaid in a while, she mused to herself. With any luck, her assassins will come after her here and I can give them a good beating. And then maybe JJJ will have the inspiration to write something that isn't so darn depressing.

((Good roleplay! I think I'm gonna step out for a bit, but it was fun. :D ))

((You do that :) This really was fun. I think I'm going to turn in, though, for tonight. And I might be on tomorrow, and then not for four days! See you then, though, when the time comes.))

((Haha, Taefaros said the same thing, about the four days. See you!))

((I shall see you all then! Farewell, internet friends!))

((Derp derp derp. I r serious GM.))

Who wants to know? asked the strange-looking woman with the multi-colored eyes. "I want to know," retorted Edward. "You might not know this, but I'm Edward Racket." Nooooooo, whined Kit in his head. Don't say Edward. Say Kit. K-I-T. No one cares about Edward. Edward hesitated, before finishing: "Edward Racket, the henchman for the Fox. Maybe you've heard of me? Or, at least, him?"

((FLASHBACK TIME EVERYBODY))

Calliope was bored. Bored, bored, bored. She sat in her bedroom attached to the bar, flopping around her bed like a dead fish. Nothing excited had happened in days. Oh, sure, there had been a bar brawl or two, but that was about it. With a sigh, she got up from her bed and went to the door.

Joseph stood with his face towards the wall.

We, the dead have no eyes with which to see
No ears with which to hear
No hearts with which to


The wall was currently peeling. Enormous gashes had been carved into its skin in an effort to kill itself, but to no avail. Joseph tossed his notebook to the side and the wall let out a whimper of relief. "Oh, is there no end to this suffering? May not my broken fingers show the true magic that lies within them? Must I be so dreary and forsaken by the joys of light?" He collapsed on the grounds with his fist towards the heavens. "Why? Why must I suffer the injustices of purgatory?" Then, not for the first and not for the last time the narrator reached down and slammed Joseph's head against something hard.

The wall let out a little cheer.

Calliope stared at what was left of her wall. She was no friend of the wall, as they had suffered many disagreements in the past, and the wall had proven itself to be an incurable gossip time and time again. Still, she knew that she needed the wall, just as the wall needed her.

"What are you doing to my wall?" asked Calliope, standing behind Joseph. She cocked her head. "I have told you again and again, Joseph. Your fingers will not show magic until you have taken my lessons to heart."

She said this in a dispassionate manner, and did not elaborate. Calliope was not the sort of person to elaborate.

"Why? Why do I have to do all this work when my normal poetry is suitable?" He reached for his notebook and began thumbing through for his poem, The terrible story of the incurable maiden and the love that she never found because everything wants you to fail, and talking as he did so. "I mean, there's a sort of beauty in the morbidity isn't there? Just listen to this Haiku."

A bunny rabbit
Dances during the springtime
His death is painful


He looked up at Calliope, her epic aura shielding her from the sadness of his notebook. "Can't you see the intricate lines of depression in those words?"

"They are very intricate," agreed Calliope, who, despite her aura, felt a little sad. "In fact, I would say that your poems are epically depressing. But they are not actually epic."

Joseph was not a very pliable poet as far as poets went, being so very wed to his depressing content. She wished, as she had found herself wishing many times before, that she could just write the darn poems for him. However, Calliope needed her poets as much as they needed her, as she was incapable of penning any poems by herself. She had once spent a year of her life trying to write a single poem, and by the end of the year, her bedroom was full of balled-up pieces of paper, and she achieved only the following:

My name is Calliope
I am pretty dope

So, Calliope needed poets.

Calliope kneeled next to Joseph. "How about this? Try and write a poem about a bunny that goes on a daring quest to find a cure for the incurable maiden." That might be pretty epic, she thought to herself. And if the bunny finds the cure, then it will not be depressing.

Joseph took a deep breath,"Alright, I'll try." He set pen to paper, and motioned that Calliope was losing some color and she should probably move to the right a bit. The wall shot Calliope an angry glare. Joseph was by no means a bad poet, just a depressingly sad one. His pen moved across the paper in ways that made it ripple and flash. The ink shook and splashed until he had something presentable to his muse. Then he crumpled it up and stared at it until it disintegrated.

Again he tried to put pen to paper until something amazing happened. All that happened was a horrible tale about a bunny who was beaten to death for trying to rescue his love. Then another one, and this time the bunny was beaten to death by his lover who was faking the illness the entire time. Then he got the girl! Only for the entire town to draw and quarter them after the marriage. Over and over he tried, with each attempt being worse and worse until he held in his hands a piece of paper so horribly vile and terribly....terrible that it literally vomited hatred at the pair.

"I-I'm sorry."

Calliope moved to the right. Grayness gradually consumed her tavern, chasing out the remaining customers. Calliope did not mind. To Calliope, customers were a bit like flies. You could never get rid of them and they tended to make a mess and every once a while you could kill them with a swatter.

Joseph's powers of depression never ceased to amaze her. He was often a disappointment as a poet, but never a disappointment as far as interesting and unique things were concerned. And Calliope was all about unique and interesting things.

Still, the poetry...

"Joseph," said Calliope. "I'm wondering about something. Has it ever occurred to you that you might be...you know..." She hesitated. "Um, depressed?"

Maybe, thought Calliope to herself, If I can just get him to be happy, then he will be able to write poetry that is a bit more sunny. And epic.

Joseph let his powers leak from his fingers and blanch the hatred spewing from the paper until it too crumpled and died.

"I'm not depressed, I just see the world as it truly is." He said, ignoring the fact that this is exactly what a depressed person would say.

"You still have much to learn, then. The world is not a single way. It bends to the will and perceptions of the people around it. If you want your world to be depressing, then it will be depressing." She looked around at the grayness. "I thought you, of all people, would have realized that by now.

"Well, Joseph, my mind is made up then. I will make you happy, one way or another. But right now I need to tend to the bar."

Or rather, retreat to the bar. I have a feeling that making JJJ happy will be no easy feat. Calliope grinned to herself. It's even kind of exciting.

"I see, you're one of his, huh?" she replied. "Finally wised up and realised he didn't want no turf war with the Red Flame Gang, huh? Wants to get in on the business, huh? Well, you can tell your boss I'm willing to make an agreement on equal terms. Unless he just wants to buy something. You want to buy something?"

"The Red Flame Gang? Never heard of you. And Fox only has one set of terms - any profits you make, give him five percent. Very lenient, if you ask me. You should have seen the terms he gave me." I'll have to report to Fox that this clown is running around. "But yeah, I wanna buy something. I'm looking for arms."

"Never heard of us, huh? Well, that's how you know how good we are at getting by undetected. So what can I interest you in?" From somewhere within the ruffles of her dress she pulled out a massive catalogue and shoved it towards Edward. "Everything you see inside is purchasable. We've got cannons, battleaxes, nunchucks, gunchucks, chainsaw scissors...And if you don't see anything you like, we do work on commission."

Edward scowled. "What the fuck is this? I said arms. I thought you were an arms dealer."

"What, like a power gauntlet?"

"No, like an arm." He motioned to his own arm. "You know, the things that begin at your shoulder and end at your fingers? Fox is doing some sort of weird ritual thing." He looked around the black market district. "I coulda sworn there were arms dealers somewhere around here. But I'll take a cannon, while I'm here."

"Ohhh...," Flo paused in thought. "Actually, I think we do have some of those kind of arms lying around somewhere. They were supposed to be ammunition for a new kind of weapon we were developing, but it turns out, so now we have this warehouse full of appendages down by the docks."