Hush, little baby, don't say a word...

[onlythingtofear]

Who: Anyone!
Where: Anywhere inside, and outside, the mansion.
When: 1st - 3rd
Rating: Likely some disturbing imagery, at the very least.
Summary: Little fear gas dispensers have been left around Wonderland, by a particular scientist. Treat this as a mingle-party-gathering post. Even if you don't want your character to be gassed, you can come help someone who is. Or be attacked by them for your trouble. Heheheh.
The Story:

Overnight, on the grounds and inside the mansion, toys appear.

Small, innocuous, sweet things. Teddy bears. Ragdolls. Stuffed animals. All of them appear hand-sewn, and all of them are very appealing. That's the whole point of them, after all. Nestled into their neck, or their chest, under and amidst the stuffing, are small devices with a aerosol-delivered payload. Just the slightest amount of pressure will release a small dosage of Scarecrow's very best fear toxin. A new, lighter kind. He wants to know how long it will last, and how effective the housing is for grabbing potential victims.

Wonderland is, unfortunately, the perfect testing ground.

He waits just out of sight of them, placing them when most people are asleep, lurking in the darkest corners of the mansion with a small clipboard to take notes on. What do people from different worlds fear? He's keen to find out, in addition to everything else. He places them in front of doors, in chairs, on tables. Anywhere they'll look potentially out of place and worth investigating.

Everyone here is so good at investigating.

He's counting on you all to help him.

[ooc: I'll tag in for anyone who would like to run into Scarecrow. He's being a good boy and is keeping a distance from his prey, unless you want to come across him. (Said encounter could be lethal. For either!) Otherwise, tag in with what your character is seeing, etc, and where they are, and whether your post is reactionary or open for people to tag! Have fun! Tag around! Have feels! Be terrified! MUWAHAHAHA!

Also, you by no means need to keep things to this post, of course. Feel free to post network entries of fear gas results, or other logs! Have a ball.]

Comments

[swooshycape]

He understands the unspoken question, however, and after a moment he offers an answer.

"... I witnessed many of the early experiments with Jenova... Gast discovered it shortly before my ninth birthday. ... both my parents worked for Shinra, and I joined the ... Turks when I was sixteen..." Teenage rebellion to join then and there, perhaps, but... he'd had other reasons, too. "... I was privy to a lot of information. ... and I was there for the experiments that... produced Sephiroth..." He takes a deep breath and lets it out in a sigh, ducking a little more into his collar. "... and since Meteorfall I have conducted... additional research..."

Into Shinra, Jenova, Geostigma and more... though Jenova and Geostigma and just -- reorienting himself to a world thirty years beyond what he remembered had taken up most of the past couple years for him.

[colorofthesky]

An ex-Turk...

That's news since, much like SOLDIER members, Turks get too close to Shinra's secrets to ever really retire. The fact that Vincent looks as young as he does is also curious, but thinking back on their conversation on the beach, it makes sense. Vincent clearly has no love for Professor Hojo, and though Zack doesn't ask, he has a feeling he knows why Vincent is no longer simply human.

"Hindsight is 20/20, huh?"

It's thoughtful, as much to Vincent as himself. There were a lot of things he would have done differently if he'd known what he does now.

"At least things are getting better."

[swooshycape]

"Mm. Little by little..."

Hindsight... it is a cruel thing, in Vincent's opinion. To look back and know all that you would and could have done differently.

"Rebuilding is a slow process..."

And it is constantly hindered by things from the past coming back to bite them. Not that it matters right now, of course, not while they're here. Vincent closes his eyes and slowly sinks backwards onto the grass, lying down and opening his eyes again to look up at the sky.

"And some wounds never heal..."

[oversight]

"Why do you run? Pathetic," Blake spat, his words suddenly distorted, much like his face. Of course, he was totally unaware of being an unwitting participant in Greed's mind, because he's totally crooning out gentle words explaining he was only around to help.

But things weren't always as they seemed. Because John had no idea what Greed was seeing, he had no idea how to react. Should he have tried defensive maneuvers more readily? Perhaps he would have been better off going on the offensive right away. In any case, this struggle only seemed to get worse by the minute.

"Why don't you give up, you simpering fool! Make this the end, you know you want to."

[appealingavarice]

"Nah, I'm greedy as hell," he gasped. "Want your life, Wrath. Won't be enough. But. I want it." And he focused on raising more of his Shield and to hell with what it made his face look like, hoping to get himself entirely protected before Wrath inevitably skewered him again.

Because there was no excuse for giving up in the face of certain torturous unmaking (never mind that, unlikely as it was that both of them had suddenly arrived, the idea that they could take him back to Father was clearly ridiculous; that was exactly what he didn't want so it was obviously what they were going to do to him). He was pretty much doomed now that his brothers, oldest and youngest, had taken hold of him, but he'd laughed in Father's face while being melted down so why should he give up just because he was pinned to the ground by enemies he couldn't hope to defeat?

[colorofthesky]

"It's easier to destroy than build something."

He has faith, though. There are good people in the city of Midgar -- Edge, now, since Meteor. With Geostigma gone, he expects they'll pick up the pieces, and though it might take a while, eventually, the planet will stand strong once again.

He looks at Vincent, and he really thinks about that statement for a moment.

"There's always scarring." A beat, then- "Never is a long time."

[oversight]

"Wrath?" Somewhere in reality, where toxins weren't altering the state of everything, John Blake was arguing against the idea of being wrath. Granted, he was once the type to give into his anger and upset — to punch back a bit harder because of it — but this wasn't him Greed was reacting to. It couldn't be. He'd been imploring the other man to stop his onslaught in order to work it out between them. This wasn't the type of situation he wanted to be in, especially without some armor of his own.

John found he couldn't get the leverage he needed from the position he was in, so he vaulted over Greed, using him as a point of contact, and when he dropped down on the other side, he threw his arms around the other man's torso and tried to pin his arms against his sides with a massive bearhug.

"You gotta listen, man. I am not Wrath. I'm John. John Blake, y'hear? Snap outta it!"

[appealingavarice]

For all that Greed's body had been pushed near the limits of human capacity by the Philosopher's Stone, it had still belonged to a boy of not-quite-sixteen, and was slender enough for his opponent to encircle completely with his arms. Without much range of motion, and with most of his head still uncovered, Greed could only brace himself.

The pain never came.

Bradley alone was so damnably fast, he should have died by now- once, then again while he was still regenerating from the first time, again and again with no chance to get any more of his Shield up. But nothing happened, except some increasingly unintelligible words that didn't sound quite so much like threats and insults anymore.

For a moment, Greed went totally still, and still nothing happened. Then he started to struggle again, but this time it was less desperate and more insistent and accompanied by mutterings of "what," and "I don't..."

[swooshycape]

Vincent doesn't look away from the sky, and he doesn't answer for a while, save for a noise of acknowledgement at Zack's statement about things being easier. He thinks about scarring and then he tries not to. There's a reason he's content to let his clothing always reshape itself to cover him completely, after all. And never... never is a very long time indeed.

He doesn't really want to talk anymore. Not about this. Not about these things. Mostly... he just wants to sleep right now, even if it means nightmares. He doesn't, however. Not yet. He does have one final thing to ask, he thinks.

"... do you ... think that there is... an end to everything in time?"

[colorofthesky]

It's not a question he expects.

Sending a quizzical look Vincent's way, Zack leans back, thinking. There are a lot of things he could say about endings and beginnings, really. For instance- despite logically knowing that every soul eventually returns to the Lifestream, it was only when he became a part of it himself that he really understood what that meant.

He considers his answer for a long moment before giving it.

"There are things that operate in and outside of time."

The Lifestream, for instance, is so much more than what can be quantified or studied. ShinRa could pull the mako from the Planet and slowly make it decay, but they never really understood the workings of the Lifestream itself.

"When you pass outside of it, beginnings and endings...don't really mean much anymore."

[swooshycape]

"Hm..."

That isn't really the answer Vincent expects, but... it is interesting food for thought, all the same.

"... like this place."

In a way, anyway, it is outside of time. Beginnings and endings still have meaning here, he thinks, but time does not so much, it seems.

[oversight]

"'Course you don't," came a dark reply. The last vestiges of wrath were seeping through, warping reality in such ways that John Blake, unaware of what he was spewing, spat vitriol. "'Cause you're pathetic and you've screwed up everything. Always a threat, always comin' out pathetically short. Kill you for makin' me bother..."

But that was all the further it got before Blake was registering the confusion and the change in posture. As Greed relaxed in his grip, John slowly freed his arms from around the other man and began stepping back. He didn't want to scare the guy — didn't want to make him angry or upset — but he needed him to know that things were under control, despite the fact that the Scarecrow's toxin seemed to say exactly the opposite.

"Man, you okay? Can you hear me? What's— Tell me you're all right, Greed. Answer me."

[appealingavarice]

Greed backed away much more quickly, his wine-colored eyes wide and fixed on the figure before him. Not Wrath. That wasn't Wrath anymore, and the shadows weren't speaking or moving in to grab him themselves- Greed wasn't quite clear-headed enough yet to place him immediately, but Can you hear me and you're all right finally registered.

"Ah, fuck, what's happening? I hear you, I do, but the shadows are full of teeth. I hope he's not really here. Even by my standards he's a monster. Seriously, what the hell's going on?"

It came out desperate, embarrassingly close to a sob- the hallucinations were fading, but the terror wasn't gone just because it seemed like it might not have a cause anymore.

[oversight]

"Hallucinations," Blake confirmed, his expression remaining wary. "Toxin. These toys've been laced with it." He gestured to one of the strange teddy bears in the corner and shook his head. Of course, that was Scarecrow's way, wasn't it? He would have preferred the madman focus on the adults and leave the whole concept of involving children in any way out of it. Of course people were going to wonder when they saw discarded toys. It was almost a sure bet.

He felt on edge, but the bulk of it was beginning to fade away. John stepped back again, his hand coming up to run through his hair. This has him sweating, not just from the exertion, but the situation itself. Being constantly thrown into these kinds of situations wasn't foreign, but it never really got easier, just less painful.

"You gonna be okay, Greed? It's Blake. You back here in reality now?"

[appealingavarice]

"You?" Greed knew it was a stupid question as soon as he'd asked it; this was definitely, visibly Blake. The world was starting to settle and seem real again and oh shit Greed had just been trying to kill him, hadn't he? For a moment he thought he might start screaming, but he laughed instead, loud and manic and a little hysterical, and sat down heavily on the ground. His heart was still pounding, but with no brothers in sight anymore, his Shield began to recede.

"We've got to stop meeting like this, seriously," said Greed, and hated himself a little more for the way his voice shook. "You're good, but you're gonna get hurt one of these days."