+ Now I've Nothing Left to Give +

[vitaelamorte]

Who: Everyone
Where: What's left of Wonderland
When: Beginning on 1/5
Rating: PG-13 to be safe, warn if going higher
Summary: Welcome to end game.
The Story:

Every part of the Mansion is gone except for parts of the first floor and on 1/5, the lights go out. The stairs go nowhere, and everything looks distinctly abandoned and dark. We suggest you find your loved ones, and stay close to them. This might be it. Maybe you’ll really die here.

Later that same day, the first floor begins to crumble away. Gravity is gone, and everyone rises into the void. There are probably tears and goodbyes. Maybe even conversations of when they’ll have to start eating each other to survive.

But then, there is a bright flash of light. A familiar light to anyone who has dealt with the Core before. It washes over everyone and suddenly you are somewhere else. Maybe you’re even someone else.

Everyone will find themselves in dream-like versions of pother worlds; memories from the absolute bottom of Wonderland’s barrel. These are things it has been sitting on for decades that it threw out there so everyone would have a place to land and finally get some food and water. Maybe your character finds themself having a drink at the Cantina from Star Wars with the Cantina Band on repeat until the end of time. Maybe your character is a magical person who traded their soul for the ability to fight witches. Maybe you just really, really wanted a Harry Potter AU one more time. Almost anything is fair game!

These will truly feel like dreams due to the fact that Dream Side is no longer a separate place in Wonderland, meaning that it will be relatively easy for characters to snap out of their respective AUs if needed, though some characters will naturally be better at that than others. There will be weak points in the events where people can slip back out into the black void, where they will see hundreds of little wisps of events in pale rainbow colors. They can travel into any of these to try and recover their friends. Anyone who went missing when the mansion started disappearing can be found here. Sometimes, if no one is in an event, its light will go out. It is unclear how long Wonderland can truly sustain this.

Go forth and break free from events one last time! And it might be a good idea to figure out how the heck you’ll get out of this one alive.

Please post a top level for each event with the relevant details (what you might see on the bulletin board) so that others can come play in the events you've created! We will also put up a top level specific to the void for anyone who wants to thread their characters in between the different event wisps.

Here is the info post for this log, along with it's FAQ and a few event suggestions.

Comments

[entreats]

That makes her look right back at him.

"Are you only questioning that now?" She raises an eyebrow. "I thought everyone got their freakout about it done when that bear first told us that this was the situation we found ourselves in."

[entreats]

That really was a close call. Ange was already trying to bend away from the hand a little in instinct, but thankfully she didn't accidentally get smacked before even facing the monster.

"250 meters? That's not too far off." Thankfully. She's not social enough to keep up some conversation while walking all the way across town.. "Come on, let's go check it out."

[agemofchange]

"Good choice!" he chimes, while pointing a pair of finger-guns at her. "I was kinda getting attached to the whole sand inspector thing, but this works too! Okay, so we'll be childhood friends, who totally aren't magical at all, and we really like chilling around the sand." After a beat, he says. "Oh, it might be more convincing if we say that we're vibing! I think that's the word these days."

[krmvgivv]

Dipper is glad to have the refuge of the familiar ship and the familiar gruntled, but he’s a little concerned about the brown meat. It’s much, much better than nothing, but it’s still... questionable.

“Is it weird that the most concerning part is that they specify it’s brown?” He shakes the can until the “meat” glops down on his plate. “Like, what other color would it be? Red, I guess? White? What does brown meat even mean?”

This is not the most important thing to focus on, but he can’t focus on the most important thing for too long without wanting to scream. This is good for now.

[entreats]

"We are.."

She pauses. It's almost as if she can't even say the word. You can turn Ange into a magical girl, but you can't take the internal grandma out of her.

".. vibing."

No one has ever said that word in a less cool way than this very instance. Isn't she so convincing?

At least she seems to reach the conclusion that she's terrible at this as well, since she quickly adds: "I think it may be better if you talk if anyone speaks up to us about our presence."

[agemofchange]

Oof. Even Steven can see the problem with that delivery, and his smile becomes more politely strained as she tries saying the word. He then nods along.

"Iiiif you say do! Just leave all the talking to me! We'll get to the bottom of this no time. Quicker than... quicksand!"

If there's not much else to discuss, they'll soon be off to a local playground!

4th! - OTA

[charlastan]

He had it. He had it, and some little pint-sized twerp practically ran him off the road!

Stan manages to roll out of his kart (made mostly out of a thick toffee brittle and peanuts) and watches as the whole thing speeds right off the track and over the edge into a ravine, where it shatters into about a billion pieces. Then in a fit of anger he utters a few curses that would up the game's rating and spikes his helmet onto the ground (where it also shatters into a billion candy pieces).

"YOU THINK YOU'RE SUCH A HOT SHOT, TAFFYTA?" He yells into the distance and shakes his fist, even though her kart is long gone. "WE'LL SEE WHO'S LAUGHING WHEN I TAKE A HAMMER TO YOUR CANDY TIRES, YOU LITTLE TROLL!"

Of course, no one answers, and Stan sighs.

"Guess that's enough of that," he says to himself. "Now how the heck do I get outta here...?"

OTA!

[breakthecurse]

Being a magical girl isn't easy by any means, but Tohru hasn't become jaded just yet. Her wish, the thing she traded her soul for, is something she would wish for again if given the chance.

If there was one thing she could do for the Sohmas, for Kyo...she could break their curse. She could remove the spell they were under, and she could make sure that Kyo wouldn't have to be locked away. It's worth it. It's worth it. She's sure of it.

Her outfit is pink with white and red accents, and more ribbons than anyone strictly needs. Her weapon is a crosier that she uses to for her primary ability - the power to break illusions cast on others. However, it isn't an ability that causes much damage itself, so she isn't particularly strong on her own. But...in order to stay alive, to stay a magical girl instead of a witch, she has to become more skilled at fighting so she can obtain grief seeds.

(It hurts her heart to think of where they came from. Every time she fights a witch, every time one attacks, she wonders who they used to be. What did they wish for? How did it come to this?)

All of this is why Tohru is, in the dead of night and alone, transformed and swinging around her crosier, trying to get used to using it as a blunt weapon. It doesn't feel quite right, but...what else can she do?

[singloversing]

Wirt, otherwise known as Hope's Peak Academy's Super High School Level Poet, is far too squeamish for this. He looks like he might be sick, and he is definitely trying pretty hard not to look at the body at all costs.

"...Do I have to?"

[entreats]

And so they are! Insert swirling Batman and Robin transition!

Cut to them standing at a local playground. They're lucky enough that it seems to be empty for now, because Ange really is not in the mood to potentially be judged by a bunch of toddlers. But she still looks extremely out of place despite her age by just.. standing there. Next to the sandbox. With her arms crossed across her chest and just looking bored out of her mind.

"I sure hope we won't have to go visit every single playground out in the city like this."

[entreats]

"Someone has to."

If Ange recognized Wirt, she'd probably be a little more sympathetic of the fact that he obviously doesn't look like he's equipped to handle something like this. But right now they're all stuck in a crappy situation, so they all got to get the short end of the stick sometime or another, Ange figures.

"Or are you saying you'd rather have that we lose the trial and all die?"

[agemofchange]

Swirling transition go!

There they are, with the playground all to their selves! While Ange talks, Steven leans over the sandbox. He scoops up some sand experimentally and pinches at it. Unlike her, he looks easily entertained by all of this. "That wouldn't be so bad," he chimes back. "It could be like a little field trip of friendship! A grand playground tour! All until we nab that baddie."

[entreats]

She's just not going to comment on how the words 'a little field trip of friendship' make her feel.. Don't use the f-word so casually around her, Steven, you'll make her expire! There's no word that induces more dread in her!

But there's something else she notices about the way he speaks. And the way he's almost playing with the sand. When Ange speaks up, her tone sounds less cynical than before - as if there might actually be a hint of regular curiosity in it now.

"Are you not scared at all?"

[agemofchange]

Unfortunately, she's stuck with someone who drops f bombs left and right!

As she asks that question, he pauses and scratches at his head.

"I... wouldn't say I'm not scared at all. But focusing on being afraid won't get us anywhere, y'know?" Then he grins at her. "I like the kind of hero who can face danger while still smiling!" And so he tries to be that kind of hero.

[entreats]

He seems to have got being that kind of hero down pretty well. Not that Ange seems particularly scared. And.. really, it's true that she isn't very scared. But that's more due to just being stuck in an eternal downward spiral of nihilism.

So no matter how much she might side-eye Steven - and has over the course of this thread already! - she actually admires his attitude a lot more than her own.

"Well." She's not very good at vocalizing that though. So instead, like an idiot, she just dryly says: "Let's hope you can somehow smile that monster to death."

[mothmansplaining]

Nice. Very casually dexterous. Precisely the kind of showing-off-like-it's-no-big-thing he does. 8/10, could have used a somersault.

"Entrapta! Thank goodness we picked you up. I got a reading on the kind of energy the Core's been giving off, and I could use a hand rigging up a way to track it. In fact, I'm hoping to find a way to communicate with it. What do you think? Want to take a look?"

[tinyfoods]

Her eyes light up.

"Absolutely I do! I've been trying to figure out a way to do exactly that for a while now. My theoretical models say it's definitely possible."

[tinyfoods]

Entrapta keeps her tracker pad in hand as she begins to walk. She's rather excited, for someone who's going off to fight a witch.

"So what kind of weapon do you use?"

[mothmansplaining]

Ford gives the meat a calculating look.

"You know, I've never really thought about it. You'll have to ask Stanley -- they're his emergency rations. My half is the nutrient solution, over there."

He points to a plastic crate that's loaded with jars of even-less-appetizing-looking sludge. Proudly, Ford says, "That's got enough vitamins and minerals to keep you going for a week!" He looks it over with his hands on his hips, as though living on nutrient sludge were a good thing that everybody wants.

[mothmansplaining]

"Perfect! Follow me." He gestures for her to follow him into the main cabin, then down a set of steps into the makeshift lab he's set up in the hold below deck. There are lots of 80s-era blinking lights and dials and paper printouts, as well as paper books peppered with bookmarks lying around. Sketches and diagrams have been taped to the walls, models of what they know about the Core and Wonderland. There are many discarded diagrams of escape routes, but they all seem to fail before they can get out: the projected path takes an asymptotic curve upward, always approaching the wall of Wonderland but never reaching it -- like the interior of a vase, or a pitcher plant.

But the biggest display screen has data pulled up that's a detailed readout of a certain kind of energy, analyzing its spectrum and frequency and magical impressions.

"This is what our sensors picked up when Wonderland finally collapsed," Ford tells her. "I'm certain I can use this to build a tracker, something that picks up on this energy signature and tells us which direction it's coming from. But opening a line of communication with the core is more complicated."

[agemofchange]

If there's one thing that makes his smile falter, it's the mention of death. His least favorite part of the duty. And one he hopes to find a way around.

"Here's hoping." He speaks after a pause. "Or even better! What if it sees us having so much fun that it doesn't want to do bad things anymore? ...That... That'd be nice."

[entreats]

"Stakes."

Judging by how brief she keeps that answer, she's probably heard 'but we're not fighting vampires' jokes before, and is desperately trying to avoid those. Please don't make her go through that again.

It might be why she adds the next question a little too quickly.

"What about you? More of those technological gadgets?" Although it'd be kind of hard to fight someone with a tracker, huh.

[entreats]

There are a lot of things Ange has dumb deadpan comebacks for. Even when said dumb deadpan comebacks are a little awkward, like the last one just now. But this isn't one of them. What Steven is saying.. that's dangerous, isn't it? They're putting their lives on the line every day. There's no room for that kind of naivity. They can't afford it.

And she doesn't even really know Steven. She only just met him, but it feels hard to ignore anyway. Steven seems dumb, and weird, but sweet. Too sweet for this. She can't just watch him waltz headlong into his own potential death because of that attitude.

"Stop." Her voice is still fairly even, but it's like it starts to falter a bit. "Don't say that kind of stuff. It's either them or us, you know. If you don't kill them, you'll be the one to die."

[eatsyourscience]

Right...the bear...

"I wouldn't call this freaking out."

He looks at the body again.

"But you remember going to school here?"

[agemofchange]

He winces at her response, and then gives a sad sigh. It's not the first time he's heard responses like that. "I know, I know. I get how it is. A-and... what we're supposed to do."

Steven sits himself down, kicking up some sand in the process. "...I just like to humor the idea sometimes. That things can be different. That we can.... find another way, like the heroes on tv. We are magical, after all."

The sand that was kicked up settles down very slowly. Some of it settles into a neat mound.