Chapter Text
Brennan Lee Mulligan is a very busy man. You'd think that someone who appears in comedy shows and plays dungeons and dragons for a living would have a pretty laid back life, but no. In fact, those things are why he's so busy. Busy with what, you may ask? Planning for his current D&D campaign. It does get easier, he will admit, after years of running games and creating these worlds for his friends and coworkers to experience, but that doesn't change the fact that it's an incredibly time consuming process.
The environment, NPC's, encounters, and that's just the stuff he can do on his own with his laptop. Emails had to be sent to the art department with details for props, background music had to be reviewed, and he wanted to (if not had to) look over the final edits of the latest episode to make sure all of the post production effects were okay. Not that he didn't trust the editing team, they were great! It's hard to kill old habits however, so reviewing the latest episode is on the agenda. Most of those things were a tomorrow Brennan problem though, and later than he probably should have he climbed into bed, Izzy snuggled up beside him.
It was cold when he woke up, which meant that Izzy had gotten up already, either because the kids were up or she was hungry and wanted breakfast. Maybe both. He turned his head over on the pillow, chasing just five more minutes of sleep, but instead succeeded in breathing in a lungful of dust and giving himself a sneezing fit. When his body had decided that it was finally clear of dust he managed to crack open his eyes to see why there was dust on his pillow. Maybe one of the kids had played a prank on him? That train of thought got cut off really quickly when he actually looked around the room, because it was quite obviously not his bedroom. It was a bedroom, yes, but certainly not his.
The fact that he was in some random bedroom wasn't the weirdest part of all this either, surprisingly. The entirety of the room was colored gray in a way that made him think of old detective movies, everything except for him. Although he wouldn't call his current outfit 'brightly colored' as the weird cloak he was wearing was a dark-ish, dusty (both literally and metiforically) red. Honestly the entire outfit was just the stereotypical DM's outfit, and when he went to stand up from the bed he felt something more solid hit his hip. A small leather bag was attached to his waist, and when he looked inside there was a small notebook, a pen, and a set of dice.
After some careful consideration, he comes to the conclusion that he's dreaming. He's lucid dreaming. why else would he be in some random room that's nior gray head to toe, in an outfit that he definitely does not own, with no idea of where he is and how to get home. He decides that staying in the weird bedroom probably won't answer any of his questions, so he opens the door to the right of the bed, and is greeted with the rest of the house, the same gray all over and with a floor plan that feels familiar, although he knows he's never been in this house. He stumbles out of the room, still a little lightheaded from all of the sneezing he did earlier. Strange, how he can feel lightheaded while dreaming. As soon as he steps out of the room color seems to come back to the house, the walls and floors gaining back their white and browns, the rugs all over said floors turning dulled blues and reds.
He doesn't get long to marvel at this as not more than a second later he gets hit with a blinding vision, a scene of what looks to be a teenage boy, half-elf with lean muscles, taking a break from fencing practice to drink a green drink brought to him by a halfling in a maid dress. the scene shifts, and he's looking into another bedroom, one with a girl with red hair and a tiedye shirt, and she appears to be deep in prayer. But he's not there anymore, he's in another bedroom this one with a tall half-orc teen who is looking mournfully at a broken bed. Brennan is whisked away again, and suddenly he's in a fancy, upper class dining room with four high elves while the two teen elves appear to be bickering. H e doesn't get to hear any of the argument before he's watching a small goblin teen use red string to connect various pictures and newspaper cutouts that are pinned to a corkboard. A second later he's in some sort of attic that has been refurbished to be a bedroom, with a teifling lounging on her bed, ignoring what sounds like knocking.
Then he's back in the house he was in earlier, in full color this time, leaning against a railing to some stairs that lead down to the first floor of the house. After taking a second to steady himself he says the only thing that is appropriate to say in this sort of situation; "Holy shit." He rubs his eyes as if what he just saw was a trick of the light, not some vision of characters in a D&D campaign he ran seven years ago. He starts to mutter under his breath. "God, this feels way too real to be a dream. It definitely hurt my nose sneezing that much, so i'm not even gonna try the pinching myself thing. So my options are either this is a dream where I can feel pain, or this is real. Neither of those are ideal. I've got to find a way home, which means I need to find out where I am. Given….whatever those were, I have a pretty good idea. Now I just have to find Aguefort. Great." He walked down to the first floor, being careful on the stairs because even though most of the dizziness had passed he really didn't want to take any chances of getting hurt this far from home.
As he exited what appeared to be less of a house and more of a manor, it suddenly clicked why it had felt so familiar earlier. Mordred Manor. The house Jawbone and Sandra Lynn moved into with Tracker, Adaine, and Kristen in later seasons. Based on what he had seen earlier, he probably didn't have to worry about being an intruder to this house until much later, so until he can find a way home he can probably crash here. Probably. he turned around and saw someone walking down the sidewalk in front of the manor, and decided it would be best to get directions to Agueforts. So, he went up to the person, a half-elf in jogging gear, and introduced himself.
"Hi, I'm Brennan, I'm new here, do you think you could point me to Agueforts?" realizing that it could come off a little creepy that a grown man wanted directions to a high school, he added "It's my child's first day and…they forgot their lunch!" He didn't get a response from the person so he figured that they probably had earbuds in and didn't hear him. He went to tap them on the shoulder but failed as his hand actually went through their shoulder, causing them to shiver and look around a little bit. When they saw they were in front of Mordred manor they started walking faster, like it was something to be avoided.
"Alright," Brennan said to himself "It seems people can't see or hear me, and I still need to find Aguefort adventuring academy. Wonderful. Is this cosmic retribution for becoming a comedian instead of, I don't know, a banker or something? Alright, Aguefort academy, let's go!" Everything around him shifted and he was in the hallways of Aguefort, the first bell ringing. "holy shit" he says for a second time in the past hour, and for a second time it is an appropriate reaction. At the sound of the bell time seems to speed up around him, various NPC's moving around the hallways at something much faster than 2x speed until the final bell also sounds, swarms of children filling into the hallway, some of the going through him to get to the exit.
It makes sense he thinks, he missed the Gorgug and Fabian fight earlier, and other than the rest of the bad kids getting in trouble in their own various ways, nothing interesting happened until detention. Speaking of, he should definitely start making his way to the cafeteria so that he can catch Aguefort when he arrives to kill himself and mister Gibbons to revive Gorgug and Kristen. He enters the cafeteria just in time to see the corn monster form and hear Doreen scream as she's taken over by evil arcane energy. He quickly hides himself in between a garbage can and lunch table as he hears the sound of multiple people running towards the cafeteria, definitely the bad kids on their way to fight the "corn cuties" as they liked to call them.
Just as he predicted, the bad kids rushed into the cafeteria and Doreen began her evil monologue. "Hey kids, it's lunch time again! Because we had lunch earlier, but bad lunch this time."
Kristen rebutted "If you explain the joke it's not a good joke."
she was right of course, Brennan thought, but even bad jokes make a scene more immersive.
Adaine continued with "It was bad last time." and Doreen just restated her earlier sentiment. "It's a bad lunch, it's a bad lunch."
Kristen cried out "No!" as corn started to ooze out of the kitchen and Brennan could hear the sound of dice rolling as initiative started. The world went that same noir gray and two things happened simultaneously, the D20 from his pouch appeared in his hand and a small semi translucent rectangle appeared in front of him with the character names and numbers, showing the initiative order. Fabian, Doreen, Adaine, Gorgug, Riz, corn gremlins, Kristen, Fig, corn ooze.
The color returned but the initiative tracker stayed and the D20 was still in his hand where it appeared, and everyone started moving again, Attacking and failing to jump on tables as Brennan took a round to wrap his head around how much faster everything seemed in person rather than at the table. Six seconds. A round is six seconds so that's how long he has to figure out what to do about this. It's fine, he does improv, he's used to thinking on his feet. Yes and. That's the only rule to improv, yes and. How do you yes and the rules to D&D? He doesn't know what class he is, and he doesn't know what abilities he has other than the fact that he teleported earlier and that NPC's can't touch, see, or hear him. The teleporting suggests a wizard, and could have been really any spacial manipulation spell, given that he didn't see the intricacies of it. Regardless of any magic he potentially may have right now, the bigger question is if he should interfere with the plotline at all. This battle was very important for everyone's, but especially Kristen's character development, and if she doesn't die then that character arc might not happen.
It feels wrong to him to just do nothing though, so he lets the die fall from his hand and onto the floor, and watches as it stops on a fifteen just as the initiative marker moves back up to Fabian, and Brennan can see Fabians sword almost not hit before its pushed back on course by whatever his dice roll did, and the attack hits this time, dealing seven damage, effectivly killing the corn cutie.
That did more than Brennan had expected it to, and he held his action for the next couple of rounds in fear of messing things up and either Kristen or Gorgug not dying. There's plenty more jumping on tables, grotesque corn births, and eventually Adaine kills Doreen with her own ladle and Riz goes into the corn monster to retrieve the page, Fabian pulling him out just like the first time. As Riz tumbles out of the corn monster however, he looks over to where Brennan is sitting and locks eyes with him for a brief second before Riz gets caught back up in the battle, shooting the paper as Gorgug and Kristen go down, Fabian trying to defend from the rest of the corn cuties and Adaine reeling from the fact that she just killed lunch lady Doreen.
Riz doesn't have time to look at him again before he's off and running to get Aguefort, and Brennan takes a second to look at the carnage around him. There's enough blood and guts and general viscera to make him want to puke, and it's so different seeing it rather than just describing it to a table full of people. A different problem has come up though, and that's that Riz saw him. He doesn't think that he's supposed to be seen by the bad kids, at least not yet, so he tries to tap into whatever type of magic he's sporting to make himself invisible to Riz, just until he figures out how to interact with him without ruining the story.
It's not long before Riz comes running back into the cafeteria, Aguefort in tow, and Kristen fails her last death save despite the advantage. Riz glances over at where Brennan sits and looks confused for a second before apparently deciding he has better things to worry about. Aguefort looks solemn for a moment before he starts his iconic life and death speech. Brennan has seen this clip, a thousand times, he lived this speech once, but he can't bring himself to interrupt now that he's sitting here watching it in real time.
Aguefort begins: "death is a part of life, eternal and unforgiving. It exists around us in all places for energy can neither be created nor destroyed." Riz of course, interrupts, and Aguefort's speech gets slowed down because of it until Riz tries to leave and he finally just decides to get to the point. "The egg of the last Phoenix. However, death will exact its price. There's foul play in this school. Only you can save us. A life for a life, eh mister Gibbons?"
Mister Gibbons says "I'm sorry, what?" but that's all he gets out before Aguefort shoots him in the head, turning the gun around and shooting himself in the head a second later. Brennan can see numbers above the bad kids heads rapidly increasing as they all return to full health.
The numbers disappear as soon as they settle, and the bad kids just sit for a second in shock before Riz starts panicking, cleaning things up, and the rest of them contemplate what just happened. Brennan leaves before Sklonda arrives, thinking about Mordred manor hard enough that eventually he just appeared back there, in the no longer gray room that he arrived in.