+ The Time Has Come, the Time Is Now +

[vitaelamorte]

Who: Everyone in Wonderland!
Where: The chessboard hills
When: Monday, June 11, all day starting at 10:00 AM
Rating: R for (sometimes excessive) violence
Summary: The Queen of Hearts has declared war and the time for battle has come.
The Story:
♥ ICly, the Real Things who will act as pieces volunteered and are led by the Red Queen. The Mirrors were chosen by the Queen of Hearts without being given a choice. The Queen of Hearts announced her choices to her Mirrors very directly, with an order to show up at 10:00 AM on the chessboard, ready to fight. The Red Queen announced her choices more politely, but just as firmly, with a text message sent out over the network listing her pieces and requesting their assistance to protect their fellow Real Things. Characters were not ICly able to respond to this message.

♥ Those pieces who choose to obey the summons will have time to gather any items or weapons they might want to have with them, within reason. Those who don't heed the summons will find themselves suddenly and instantly transported to their square on the chessboard when 10:00 AM rolls around. They will arrive with anything that was on their person at the time, as well as one weapon (whatever it would be normal for them to use). Likewise, any spectators who are not in or around the stands by 10:00 AM will find themselves transported there.

♥ Each player sports an armband, white for the Real Things and Black for the Mirrors, with the shape of their assigned chess piece embroidered in the opposite color. Royalty pieces wear crowns indicative of their status. Should a pawn be promoted to queen, a crown will appear on their head.

♥ Pieces will find that they can't leave their assigned spots until they're told what square to move to by either the Queen of Hearts or the Red Queen. And if they refuse to move, after a couple of moments, an unseen force will scoot them along to their new space.

♥ When threading moves on the board, please find the appropriate top-level under which to comment! It might be helpful to label your thread with which move/encounter you're playing out.

♥ Players on the board can not communicate with those in the stands and vice versa (other than by jumping around and flailing, I guess). However, players on the board can communicate directly with those in squares adjacent to them or with any challenger whose square they share. Since some pieces have a lot of down time, feel free to have them chat with others on the board while they're waiting around.

♥ Directions from the Queens can be assumed. Go ahead and play out moves without waiting for a comment to officially announce them.

♥ The plotting and info post for this log is here.

♥ For your convenience, here are links to the thread headers:

The Donation Box
Pre-Game
The Game - Moves 1-20
The Game - Moves 21-40
The Game - Moves 41-60
The Game - Moves 61-80
The Game - Moves 81-100
The Game - Moves 101-117
The Holding Area
The Stands

Have fun!

Comments

[postictal]

[Does it matter? Does it make a difference, if they end up winning? What does the Queen of Hearts gain if she does win?]

[The goal behind the game is just as esoteric as the process itself, and while he doesn't necessarily mind being the willing sacrifice so that a pawn could claim a crown on the other side of the board, it'd be nice if they were a little more privy to how the battle would have worked beforehand.]

[The fact that nothing about the battle was actually their decision whatsoever.]

Never really played myself. The king's...well, Jay's the king. He's the piece that can't get caught, and he can only move one square at a time.

[aka the objectively worse piece in the game.]

[God.]

[rightcall]

( Clementine makes a face at that, because it's still strange to think of themselves that way, as a piece in a game. She wanted to be more, and she hates Jay was reduced to it too, Tim was too. And so was she. So was everyone out there.

She pulls her legs in against her chest, wrapping her arms around them. Her chin rests against her knees as she stares at the screen. The water starts to dry out, and she shivers. )

Do you think we'll ever be able to change things here?

...or are we just pieces in a bigger game?

( pieces in wonderland's game. she's always been worried about survival so she's never thought about any of it so in depth before, never wondered who she is and why. what her place in the world is. )

[postictal]

[Can they?]

[Even pieces like pawns can become queens. Even the king can be a useful piece, under the right circumstances. But then, for every one of them that manages to pull ahead of the group, there's countless others that get crushed en route.

[Some princes don't become kings.]

[His shoulders shift in an incremental shrug.]

I've always been someone else's piece. I just changed owners for a bit.

[rightcall]

( Clementine lifts her head to look over at him. Sometimes it feels like the walls are crashing down. She presses her fingertips against her arms, pressing her face to the top of her knees. )

Jesus, that's shitty.

( It's just shitty to feel like this. She doesn't know what to do with it. It is crawling up inside of her, making her want to run away from herself. )

It would be better to think no one and nothing had any control over anything. ( Like it was all just bad luck or bad choices. That's better than the feeling of being in a square unable to move, unable to interfere as she watched him get shot down. as. all of it. )

[postictal]

[There are questions people pose in that regard: questions about god, about fate, about who decides what. Tim, for his part, doesn't bother. There's only one figure in his life that's loomed larger than any of them, puppet strings threaded through his veins, yanking him into position.]

[His life has never truly been his.]

[He glances away, hands creeping up his forearms, hugging around himself.]

No one should feel like that.

[rightcall]

( Clementine lifts her head up to watch him hug himself, see how he glances away. She lets out a low, slow breath, closing her eyes. She can barely handle this brief foray into feeling this way. Will she ever feel any other way as long as she's here in Wonderland? Can this place be home truly when she realizes- when she realizes what little choice she has even when she makes a choice? )

Yeah, no one should.

( She reaches out the rest of the way, resting a hand against his arm gently, without saying anything more.

What else can they say? All they can do is sit and wait. Their part in the game is done for now. )

[postictal]

[He barely tenses, when once he might've frozen stiff at the unexpected contact.]

[But eventually, one hand drifts up to close around hers, and squeeze gently. She makes it easy. Makes it an invitation, instead of a necessity. And - ]

[And it's Clem.]

[He just would have preferred it, if she had never had to end up in this room.]