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

Entry tags:

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

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.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What Blake is doing around the corner is completing a preventative measure. He's just closed the breathing apparatus over his nose and mouth, and the first breath out and then in is tentative. Nothing adverse seems to happen — he counts himself fortunate in this case — so he turns on his heel to face down the hallway, that toy in hand.

Are you out there Crane? He's looking for you, his dark eyes narrowed, his heart pumping fast. Anything he has to do to get this dialogue started. C'mon, he's ready to start tossing insults right now, in no mood to fool around.

The madman in question laughs — oh Blake, maybe you're so much cleverer and fun than he thought you would be — and the sound echoes around a little due to the high ceilings. This is playtime, clearly, and he's almost sorry he isn't taking his pet for a walk, right now. But it's not that kind of playtime. Not with Blake. Not yet.

That laugh.

Even at a distance, Blake finds the nature of it has goosebumps raising on his skin. There's no mistaking who it is, and Scarecrow's definitely nearby. So, he advances. Crane may have the upper hand, but John can be wholly unpredictable under the right circumstances. Maybe not so unpredictable as this nut job, though.

"Come out, Crane," he demands, his voice a bit deeper than normal. "Wanna have a conversation." Maybe not so much a conversation as a brawl, but who's really checking these things? Perhaps he'll sweeten the pot. "'Bout fear." And, if he's lucky, he can use that to inspire Crane to go away from a long while. Preferably forever.

"Oh really?" He laughs, again, amused by this notion. "And what do you know of fear, Mr. Blake? What is that you fear most? What has you waking up in the middle of the night, sweating, heart pounding?"

He keeps as far away from the edge of the corridor that he can, hoping to spring on the younger man when he comes around it. Just as long as he can keep from laughing further, and giving himself away. But it isn't like he has the best control over himself, as a rule, and the jury's still out.

It's almost as if Scarecrow's eerie voice carries just perfectly in the hallways to throw off Blake's senses. All at once, he feels as if the insane doctor is in front of him and behind him. It has less to do with paranoia and more to do with knowing things in Wonderland are not always as they seem.

Tense and ready to spring into action, the former cop cautiously inches his way down the corridor. "Can tell you this isn't my fear," he answered, though he isn't affecting too much of an attitude. He's John Blake, not the Batman. His approach needs to be a bit more typical for a jet-setting executive with a penchant for martial arts.

"Banking a bit much on ignorance, don't you think? Key to defeatin' fear's understandin' it. Might wanna think 'bout the brains here."

Inwardly, he seethes, froths, at the concept of this Gotham-lackey calling him ignorant. Or was he calling him stupid, perhaps? A psychiatrist specializing in fear, not knowing how feared worked? Oh, perhaps some of the shrinks in Gotham operated in such a scary way, but not a man who had devoted his whole life to the study of fear. That seething anger manifests as he hears Blake begin to cross over into his line of sight.

"Yes. Brains. I wonder how lovely yours is, when properly stimulated?" he laughs, and then, without much other warning, he flings himself at Blake with the energy of a madman and a height that's utterly deceptive. Jonathan Crane might hunch over, but he's much stronger than he looks. And perhaps just a bit taller than the Crane that Blake is more familiar with.

The action isn't totally unexpected. Blake left his room knowing a scuffle is a possibility, but he'd guessed that Crane would at least speak to his villainous roots and monologue for at least a couple minutes. That's usually how it goes, right? Maybe not this time.

As the madman comes within striking distance, John is sharply (heh) aware of those syringes. He dips out of the way, but the hallway is graced with a table and there's just no room to maneuver. He slams into the side of the table and everything rattles. He growls out his displeasure through the mask. "There's no upper hand here," he supplied cryptically.

Scarecrow laughs, again, that low unhinged tone of a man so far out of the box he doesn't even remember the box anymore. He eyes Blake, waggling those shiny filled syringes at him. They're filled with a fear toxin more powerful than the ones he put in the children's toys.

"Do you think so?" he croons at Blake. "Do you think a little mask is going to stop me?"

You know, Crane, he kind of did think that, yeah. Except, not quite in the way the ~~good~~ doctor is thinking. In retrospect, he may have been better served as the Batman in this situation, but that hand's been dealt already and he has to make due with the circumstances.

"Know it," he spits back. "This ends here." And that is fully Blake's intention, as he springs forward, an arm up to fend off just in case he can't knock Scarecrow's feet out from under him. Gotta watch those needles, though — gotta really take care.

This time, the laugh is higher. He can't rival the Joker, but as far as purely unnerving laughs go? The Scarecrow does a good job. Especially when he's a lot more offended than he lets on, mentally huffing about this silly boy who thinks he's so much better. He lets Blake tackle him, in fact, collapsing right to the ground in a disturbingly lean heap, but then immediately takes advantage of his position, the very second he's down, to go for a painful jab with multiple syringes. Clothing, armor? There's no hiding from them, as Blake's counterpart in his Gotham knows all too well.

As those syringes slip past what little defenses Blake had bothered with, the former cop tried to remind himself that at least some of this was part of his plan. One way or another, he needed to get a sample of the toxin, and with the event going on, the urge to test himself to the limits was nipping at the back of his mind.

Blake ground out a groan through his teeth and reached his hand for Crane's wrist, ripping it away from his body in an attempt to take something less than an overdose in this situation. In the same motion, he tried to bring his fist down to connect with Scarecrow, but found the instantaneous effects of the fear toxin throwing off his... well, everything.

Suddenly gripped by the effects, John's world burst into a fine powder. The furniture, the carpet, the wallpaper — everything exploded out in dark, acrid dust. And when it settled he could see the mansion, built from the materials of his childhood home.

The figure formerly below him was gone, turned to dust with everything else. He was alone in that hallway for the moment, breaths coming in short gasps. He closed his eyes to ward off the effects, some semblance of his slowly thinning logic convincing him he was hallucinating, but the visions were mind-deep and he could taste that powder to know it was actually gunpowder. His feet lost traction in the great piles left over from the furniture. The explosive mixture sifted and shifted as he tried to scramble back from the approaching shadow.

It had a gun. God, what did it want? He wanted it to go away — to leave them alone — but he couldn't bring himself to do anything but gape.

Scarecrow continues to laugh as Blake gets a few hits on him, satisfied with the knowledge of his toxin kicking in right about — now.

He watches the younger man scurry back, reminded of the rodent test subjects that he'd first used when developing his fear toxin. When Blake is finally off of him, so visibly convinced that his world has shifted on its axis, or whatever the 'poor young man' is hallucinating, he climbs back to his feet.

And then he laughs again.

Oh, but he really loves this part.

"Poor, poor little Gothamite," he taunts. "I can turn your dreams to glass and smash them with my bare fists. Watch it all crumble around you. Watch your dreams lacerate you as they fall apart. Where are you, little man?"

'Little man' is perhaps a bit too apt considering the tilt of his mind. He's a kid again, thin and helpless, too young to know what's going on. He's weighted down by worry, seeing into his own past, reliving a moment he's replayed a hundred times, where he first had to face the fact that nothing is ever quite what it seems.

But no. He's not a kid, is he? This exact situation is just history repeating itself. Crane's stint in Gotham, Ra's al Ghul's stint in Gotham, every insane case of the week... Blake pinches his eyes closed. Focus. Bruce had taught him how to fight back — how to press against the visions — but practice is one thing, and this is another.

"Wonderland," he growls out, face twisted with unseen exertion. His back's pressed to the wall, his boots are slipping against the carpet, desperately trying to push himself back away from the looming figure that can only be the Scarecrow, not a faceless gunman haunting him from his past.

Reflexively, a flatted foot comes out to take down the figure at the knees. "Go away," he cries out, voice tinny and high-pitched with the stress of the situation. That's sure to work, right?

Those enthralled in fear, due to adrenaline, occasionally have a real knack for strength and Blake's jab does what he intends. Scarecrow is too distracted to really pay attention, which he'll be angry at himself for later. But he's fascinated in the fear of the moment — at watching Blake surrender himself to his fears, and see them crawl into his mind's eye and take shape. So he goes down, hard, frail from years of abuse (his own, and Arkham's), and makes a snarling noise.

"Do you think you can hide from yourself, Blake? Who do you want to run from? You'd better hide now," he sing-songs, through a sudden surge of wrath.

"H I D E."

Oh god, he wants to hide. He yearns for that sliver of light through the closet door, for that separation he's been feeling guilty over for decades now. His hands press to the ground and the former cop pushes off, trying his damnedest to scramble to his feet and away from the embodiment of fear nipping at his heels.

His boots kick up more gunpowder and the air fills with dust. Blake doesn't care. He just wants to hide, just like the voice is telling him to, just like he did the first time a man came into his home and took from him the last familial connection that would bother with a kid like him.

The closet looks just the same. It feels just the same, no smaller or larger despite his change in size, so when he closes the door almost completely, he doesn't feel too confined. Heart racing, breath coming in terrified gasps, John Blake, once more feeling like a helpless boy, stares out a bright crack in between the door and the frame, and waits for that gunman to come for him.

He watches Blake go — shaking now through a combination of glee, hurt pride, and sheer psychopathic anger. He can barely organize himself properly enough to stand, but he does. His syringes twitch as he considers going after the man, but in the end he resists the urge. He'll finish this later. With... help.

Lots of it.

Maybe when he's bleeding and dying, the man's attitude will escape him and Scarecrow will see what's left underneath it.

Starting to feel cheered by this thought, Scarecrow gives one last maddening cackle. "Enjoy your fear," he murmurs, turning. Maybe someone else has found one of his toys. Someone who doesn't know what to look for. Waiting for something that never comes is much more maddening, and tiring, than being attacked by it. New nightmares — that's his gift to one John Blake.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject