entrancelogs | [OPEN + CLOSED STARTER] All the dinosaurs are running wild

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[OPEN + CLOSED STARTER] All the dinosaurs are running wild

Who: Taako and YOU (and a closed TAZ "party")
Where: Inside looking for his crew and outside because dinosaurs
When: 2/9-2/11
Rating: Probably nothing worse than PG-13
Summary: Taako's separated from some of his party buT THERE'S ALSO DINOSAUR FRIENDS TO MAKE SO WHO CARES???
The Story:

1. Welp

It's weird. Which makes some sense, he supposes. He's never, like. Fully died, before.

Except when it happened with Magnus or the others, they just reappeared on the ship when everyone left. So waking up in some weird room (that's clearly his, if the bonbon wrappers and fashionable scarves are any indication) comes as a surprise. As does finding the room is in some big fancy mansion. Did he get rich on this planet and then hit his head or something? Damn.

It doesn't feel like an illusion, but he'd feel better with a second opinion from Lup-- especially since he can't find his wand and just has this weird...magic...staff...brella? That he found in the room. It's strange how good it feels in his hand, to be honest. Still, he holds it out ahead of him, hoping anything it lets off flies into an adversary and not back towards him.

So that's what he's doing-- holding the magic umbrella out in front of him and searching the various halls and rooms for his crewmates.

"Lup? Cap'n? Uhhh, anybody?"

🦖2. Go Go Godzilla!🦖

STOP EVERYTHING, THERE'S DINOSAURS OUT HERE.

Taako knows he should be more concerned with how people are missing and also their ship? And they have to get out of here? But shit, dude, look at these guys! They're so big and toothy and one just demolished a hedge. And the tiny, ineffectual arms clawing at the air as they wander around, strangely docile...

He's not a scalie or nothing, but he's a little in love.

It takes a few tries. He's never turned into anything that big before. But he's the best transmutation wizard possibly of all time and on all worlds, so it takes significantly fewer tries than anybody else would probably need. He even manages, as he rises, towering over the lesser lifeforms, to keep his hat perfectly atop his rough, green, beautiful head.

"DUPREEEEEEEEEEE!"

He doesn't know where this comes from, but it feels right. And so Dupree is born, and, hat still clearly indicating his real identity, he stomps off to commiserate with his new best friends.

3. Team Meeting [Closed to TAZ cast!]

Eventually, Taako's found everyone he can (or they found him, more likely), and somehow the four of them end up in a tearoom. Everyone's out of sorts. Nobody remember the same things. Lucretia looks like she went through the ringer. Not to mention their ship and its captain and science dude are just totally gone.

As much fun as Taako's had the past couple days, he can't help but feel the tension once the four of them are together and planning on getting all serious. He opens and closes his umbrella a few times, peers over at Lup's.

"They're really, like, exactly the same, huh?" He clears his throat. "Weird."

Can we not talk about how we might be doomed?

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Magnus wasn't quite sure what he was supposed to do to help his friends get out of this mess. He certainly wasn't the smartest guy on the crew and it didn't seem like a situation he could punch his way out of (though his rowdy boy nature didn't help him gain any favor with those judges during the last cycle). Nearly half the crew wasn't here, their ship was nowhere to be seen, and they didn't know where the Light of Creation was.

This cycle seemed a little fucked from the get go.

"You two go shopping for some magic umbrellas before calling for a team meeting?"

Magnus is on board for temporally ignoring their current problems.

"It's a twin thing." The retort comes all too naturally from Lup, who doesn't even look up from where she's following along with Taako's movements, opening and closing the matching umbrellas they just so happened to wake up with. Whatever magic portal they popped out of, at least it kinda works as an accessory with her outfit. Which is probably going to be the best use the twins get out of them considering they're inside.

Lup finally hooks the umbrella handle on her elbow and turns to Magnus and Lucretia, carefully appraising them. "Sooo, with Cap'n Port gone, that makes me automatic new captain, right?"

Looking around at this group, it just makes the most sense to her.

Lucretia sighs, her head propped up by her hand as her elbow leans on the table. "Do you really think that's what we should be worried about right now?"

She's... trying, having them here, but everyone can probably see she's struggling. Cycle 65 was a mess on them all, but readjusting to it, coming down from that year, is proving harder than she expected. Her body is healed, but there's still moments she expects it to be broken, disoriented by the return of her depth perception with her left eye and the fact she can run without the early cycle bust in her knee that never healed right. Everything about her feels oddly foreign now, from her hair back to it's long dreaded style (she had shaved it, it kept getting in the way) to the missing blisters on soft hands.

Worse off, they're at only half their number right off the bat. Merle, Davenport, and Barry were all missing, and for someone who waited and fought a year to see her family again, this is hitting her harder than she can say. Even not having Fisher here is worrying, considering it was the only constant in her life last cycle. "Without the ship, there's no point to calling a captain at all. We have to concentrate on finding them, or finding out what happened to them. We can't be down this many of us so early in this cycle."

Taako looks up at Lucretia and winces a little. He definitely thinks she's a super bad ass after everything she went through, but he can definitely can see how it's drained her. Coming back to a world where they're already this fucked is probably the worst possible scenario for her.

"I mean, we knew when we went on this trip-- like, originally. We knew we could lose people." He props the umbrella up against the table and sighs. "But we kinda need the ship in a bad way. Unless all this timeline mess means we aren't getting chased anymore, I guess."

Seems unlikely. Their luck hasn't been that good.

"I dunno. That seems like science shit. Man, where's a nerd when you need him?"

"But what if the others are still with the ship? Even in this weird alternate dimension place or whatever the fuck this all is, aren't we still fine as long as they're still on the Starblaster?"

Magnus leans back in his chair, tilting it dangerously back on two legs as he tries to think his way through this.

"Does anyone remember how we got separated from them? I mean, I've fallen off the Starblaster before mid flight, but I think I'd remember falling on top of a magic mansion. Plus, that'd probably kill me like it did last time..."

Not his finest cycle.

Lup's gaze flicks over to Lucretia, mouth pressing into a tight line. The worry she sees in the other woman is like a perfect reflection back of her own concern that Lup's been trying to hastily shove down. They've been doing this for over sixty cycles now and this is the first anomaly they've run into at the very start. What if the bond engine was beginning to fail? What if the damage the Starblaster had taken while being shot down was greater than any of them could actually fix?

What if their unlimited time wasn't actually as infinite as they'd all believed?

"Look."

Lup leans forward from where she's standing to place both of her palms on the table, turning her head from side to side to make sure she catches everyone's gaze. "They're out there. With the ship. Everyone's fine. We've never had a cycle start and just go to shit within the first second, so they have to be out there. That means it's up to us to track 'em down. A good ol' fashioned rescue mission. Done it a million times before, we've got this shit."

Lucretia's already running through a thousand options in her head, none of them good, as the rest of the table talks. Maybe there was some sort of magical field when they entered, maybe they ended up on different sides of the world because of a crash, maybe-- there were a thousand, thousand maybes. Trying to consider them all was tying her stomach in knots, but she still finds it in her to roll her eyes at Lup, not as playfully as she'd like.

"You mean except for last cycle, in which we entered, the ship immediately crashed, and the rest of you were murdered. Got it." She sits back with a huff, but it doesn't have the power she wants behind it, thrust back into this self she no longer feels she has the right to be. "If they're really out there, they're the ones who have the biggest option to look for us. And I know it's only been a few days, but-- has anyone even seen the Light fall? If it drops on the other side of the planet, without the ship's tracking equipment, we have no hope of getting it and this planet is doomed."

Taako groans into his hands. "Can we even assume the same rules apply? I mean, you're talking about 'last cycle', but I don't even know what you're talking about. And not for the normal 'I wasn't paying attention' reasons! We got all our timelines out of whack, and that takes some serious magic or, or deities or something and--"

Tugging his hat down over his face, Taako makes a high pitched, whining sound.

"I miss Merle!" Sniff. "The one time he might actually know some useful crap and he's all dead in a ditch somewhere. I hate him! I hate him so much and I wish he was here so I could tell him to his face how much I hate him."

"Maybe this place has some weird mind magic or something that's making us think we're from different times. I remember the cycle Lucretia is talking about. And yeah, that shit went real bad but I haven't seen any giant murder judges around here, so I think we can at least rule that out. Unless there is something like Fisher here that can mess with memories."

Magnus' chair rights it self back on the ground with a click as he leans forward with his arms on the table.

"We could make a big fire and hope they see the smoke and come to investigate. Or maybe write something in the ground so they'll know we're here when they fly by. Maybe we take shifts camping outdoors trying to spot them or the light?"

Without any warning, Lup reaches out to whack Taako in the back of the head for his outburst, shooting her twin a glare. "Knock it off, doofus. They're not dead. They're not."

None of this makes even the slightest bit of sense, not when there's mixed timelines and everyone's apparently from a different cycle, but Lup refuses to be told otherwise. Wherever Davenport and Merle and Barry are, they're with the ship. They just need to be found...

"You really wanna stick around this place and, what? Just wait everything out, put up a few fires, and hope they find us first? That really doesn't sound like a Magnus plan to me. What if they need our help? We can't just leave 'em."

A better version of her might have laughed at the twins' shenanigans, Magnus' half baked plan, but it all feels like a dull buzz of too much. They need to do something. She needs to do something. More than she already has. Lucretia sighs, putting her hands out on the table, trying to grab for something tangible.

"It may be more complex than that. I've been trying to run some tests here, and I can't seem to reach the edge of this world." It's worrying, to be honest, that she has no answers, but maybe they've noticed too. "This building stretches on forever despite not having such limitations on the outside. More than that, if you try to reach the walls in the distance you'll simply never arrive, and never be father than a certain distance. It all centers around this house. Whatever magic this is, we may be the trapped ones, and luring them here may get them stuck too."

She knows she's sounding worse than better, but Lucretia doesn't know how to pull herself out of it. "I just... don't see how we can fix this. There's so many factors, so much to consider, I... I don't know what to do."

Taako scowls at his sister and rubs the back of his head. Alright, fine, he was being melodramatic. Whatever. He's owed! They're all trapped!

He turns to Lucretia, expression softening as the bitter taste of what he's been told is guilt hits his tongue. What little Taako knows about what Lucretia went through in the time he hasn't experienced yet sounds pretty fucked. She doesn't even have like twenty ideas for shit to do like she normally would. Maybe he's got no right to complain.

Not that that'll stop him.

"I think Magnus has the best plan so far. Which...probably means we're gonna die. So there's that."

"It might not be the most Magnus plan in the world, but I need to make sure I'm here to protect you guys if I need to. I shit the bed on that during the last cycle and Lucretia suffered cause of it."

He listens to Lucretia go on about the magic of the mansion and how they're apparently in an impossible place. He reaches his own hand out and takes one of her hands in his and giving it a squeeze, trying to offer he what comfort he can.

"At the very least we can have fun lighting shit on fire while trying to come up with some more plans. It's a start."

None of this sits very well with Lup, who never had much of a defeatist attitude in the first place, but especially not since they'd first gotten trapped in this shitty time loop where none of them could really ever die. Just laying down and accepting their current situation seems stupid to her, especially if their three missing crewmates were trapped somewhere themselves. Then what? The Hunger comes crashing down and none of them escape?

Yeah, no.

"I could go. Alone. Find everyone and give you guys a ring. We all popped into this place with those weird stones, right? I'll call when I find 'em, then we can figure out what to do from there." And as if she's anticipating the response, Lup quickly adds while she plops down into the open chair she's been hovering over, "I won't go right away, alright. We'll see what this mansion has going for it first. Give it a few weeks." Just to make sure that they'll all be safe in this place without her.

Lucretia takes Magnus' hand when it's offered, squeezing it maybe a bit too hard. She needs it more than ever now, people by her side, her family here and not dead and gone. And while the thought of Lup leaving burns her, after that last cycle, she can feel the words burning on her tongue, ones they probably won't expect of her. But she's different now. She can help them.

"Let me do it." She tilts her head up, eyes still looking broken and scared, but determination in the set of her jaw. "I learned a lot about the ship-- I know it better than any of you. Even if we can't find them, I can find the ship, and we'll do better next cycle."

Taako's stomach lurches at Lup's suggestion. It's not like they've never been separated. The past few years in particular have had them walking more and more individual paths than ever before. But given how much of their situation has changed here, there's just no knowing if they can assume they'll revive on the ship like before. And sure, Lup can protect herself, but...

He forces his leg to stop bouncing under the table.

He's so lost in this acute panic that he almost doesn't hear Lucretia. But he does, and his eyes go wide as he gazes at her across the table.

"You-- are you sure? I mean, sure, you can fly it or whatever, but. Like, let's be real, you can't cover that much ground on your own and-- and you'd be on your own..."

He trails off, literally biting his tongue.

Magnus squeezes Lucretia's hand back, though not as hard (damn, he didn't know that writing in all those books gave you super hand strength. He'd have to look into that.

"I don't like the idea of either of you going alone. I know you can both take care of yourselves, but it's best to take backup when you have the chance. Especially since this cycle started out as a shit show."

Magnus always did best when there was something to rush into, but in a case like this (and with the last cycle lingering) there was hesitation in his every thought. Death meant little to them the last six decades, but they'd never been separated this quickly before and who knew what else could go wrong in this cycle.

"If we have to split up, we might as well go in pairs. Two can go searching for the ship and others and two can set up a base camp."

Anyone thinking she can't handle this completely on her own leaves the elf huffing in irritation, tipping back in her chair and rolling her eyes. But they've all been together long enough - Magnus and Lucretia are family, not just crewmates - that Lup lets her annoyance drop. On this she can compromise. She can do that to keep the others from losing sleep over her leaving.

Like anything could ever happen to her.

"Alright, so it's settled. Luce and I will go." And the air between them is tense and Lucretia looks so much less like the sweet, nervous young woman they'd all been introduced to at the beginning of this mission, but Lup offers her friend a smile. Whatever Lucretia's been through, whatever's changed her, Lup and the rest of the crew will be there to help see her through it. They've got this.

"Always up to us girls to save the day, huh? We've got this covered. You can handle the ship and I'll fuck up anything that gets in our way. Easy."

As much as she doesn’t want to accept the help, Lucretia knows that even with thin resources, she should make use of what she has. And even then, she finds herself wrestling with that perception- they’re not resources. Not expendable. They’re her family, everything she has left. It’s not right to think of them as anything else.

She doesn’t have the hands to grab all of them, so she manages a smile at Lup, but it’s not the same carefree look she would have given what seems like an eternity ago. It’s focused, with a drive forward. Determined.

“Okay. We’ll set off in a few days, then. Spend a bit more time getting our bearings, gathering supplies, and charting our path forward.” It’s not ideal, but she’ll do her best. They’ll figure something out. She wants to keep pushing forward, but she forces herself back. Everyone else likely wants some sort of break, but she won’t feel good until this problem is solved. Until they have the Light, and they’re back together.

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[OPEN + CLOSED STARTER] All the dinosaurs are running wild

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