entrancelogs | [OPEN] Ready or Not...

Entry tags:

[OPEN] Ready or Not...

Who: Natasha & whichever unlucky souls stumble across her!
Where: the kitchen
When: evening of 4/21
Rating: PG-13ish? There might be cursing but hopefully no violence. Probably. Maybe? >.>
Summary: Hello, Wonderland! There's a spy rooting through your drawers. Wait, that didn't come out right...
The Story:
Natasha knows something is off before she even opens her eyes.

She's slumped over a solid surface, her head cushioned on her arms, toes just barely reaching the floor beneath the stool or whatever it is she's perched on. She goes from the unawareness of sleep - or unconsciousness? - to high alert in the span of a heartbeat, although visibly she doesn't so much as twitch. Her breathing remains calm and even as though she were still deeply asleep, but she's already cataloging what her senses can tell her without the aid of her eyes.

This is not her sofa, where she's fairly certain she'd drifted off a short while earlier. Her thoughts are clear, not clouded or foggy, no telltale traces of a foreign agent responsible for missing time and changed locations. She's unhurt except for the lingering ache of still-healing injuries and as far as she can tell there's nothing restraining her. It's quiet - no hint of anyone else around, although she waits almost a minute to be sure before letting her eyes slide open.

The kitchen's unfamiliar. Large, well-equipped, tall windows letting in the warm rays of a setting sun. There's a bowl of fruit at the other end of the counter, simple and unassuming. Nothing is familiar and nothing stands out as obviously out of place, other than her. It's just a kitchen. One she's got no idea how she arrived in, but at least she's apparently been given the freedom to look around.

Natasha slides off the stool to prowl around the room, checking the windows first but there's no one in sight, just an ornate stretch of gardens outside. Her second task is rooting through the kitchen drawers in search of a knife or anything else she can use as a weapon.

She's not sure why she's here, if she's in danger or not, but she likes to be prepared for anything, just in case. And call it paranoia but waking up somewhere strange and unfamiliar - no matter how pleasant - rarely results in anything good.

On second thought, maybe she'll borrow a few knives...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

::Ed digs his comm out of his pocket and holds it up for her to see.::

You should have one of these things. I think the only people that have computers are those that know what they're doing with them because they're from the right time period for them.

::Hint, that is not him.::

Just as a word of warning, these like to randomly turn on sometimes, so don't take it with you somewhere you want privacy.

::Then he smirks.::

Or we may get something like a view of a demon being all domestic with the angel from his world. Even if everybody got to see way more than we wanted.

Her hand goes to her jacket pocket, where the weight from her own phone is familiar and comfortable. Drawing it out shows her she was wrong, however, and this one is far different from the one she has at home. Which is an annoyance at best, but at least there's a way to communicate in this place. She'll have to play with it more later on when her attention's not divided.

"Duly noted." There's genuine humor in her voice at his warning, a hint of a laugh coloring her words as she glances up to meet his gaze again, grinning crookedly now. "I'll be sure to check that it's secured somewhere. I'm not a fan of giving inadvertent peep shows."

"I think most of us would appreciate it," Ed says with an answering grin. "I'm still surprised it's only done it to me once so far. At least it picked when I was dressed properly for it's tricks."

Edited (Choice of icon didn't take.) 2014-04-24 02:16 (UTC)

Natasha could think of a person or two she'd prefer forget at opportune moments, but she keeps that comment to herself. "So it feels sentient along with the house then. Good to know. A cellphone with a mischievous personality. Just what I needed." Sounded like something Stark would invent, honestly. "Is there any other vital information I need to know about this place?"

"Besides memories, this place runs on magic. So, the closets will give you whatever you want provided it's not a personal belonging. There may be the occasional misfire, though. Whatever it is not being the color you had in mind, too many of whatever it is you ask for, things like that. Dining room also gives you whatever you want to eat."

Ed thinks for a moment. "I think I got through most of the important stuff? Wait, I only touched on the mirrors. Cover the one in your room when you pick one if you don't want to be watched. Whoever's on the other side will still be able to hear, but at least they won't be able to see you. Taking that ability away requires breaking the mirror and that fixes itself after about an hour and while satisfying the first few times, gets old after awhile."

Strange magic, but she's intrigued, eyes widening slightly. "Do you just ask? Wish really hard? I'm not going to ask how that works. Magic... isn't something I'm overly familiar with."

The explanation about the mirrors has her frowning though, tapping a fingertip against her arm in thought. "What is on the other side? Or should I ask who? Is that something to be worried about?" Natasha liked her privacy. The idea that anyone could be eavesdropping from reflective surfaces made her skin crawl.

"You basically just think about what you want and then open the door." Now he snorts. "Before I got here, I'd've said that magic was all bullshit, but here we are. Anyway, the other side of the mirrors have a flipped version of the mansion there. I know this because first I got a stay courtesy of my Mirror running from someone out to kill him, since we can't be on the same side at the same time, and later, everybody got swapped around. Chances are, it's your own Mirror living in the room opposite of yours, whenever you pick one."

"And my mirror is what, a reflection of me but backwards?" she asked, nose scrunched up slightly in thought as she tries to decide what that would be, exactly. It was hard to guess when there were many possibilities. And the idea was a little eerie in itself anyway. "What do they want? Is there something they want? Or are they just as trapped as we are?"

"The Queen of Hearts made them. Their personalities are pretty much flipped. Some may share some traits. Mine apparently also likes to read, but he's an asshole that made my little brother cry and he would apparently run from a fight although he will attacked if backed into a corner." As Ed's seen from when he was possessed.

"As for what they want, I assume that's to keep on existing and not be wiped out of existence. Along with making the Queen of Hearts happy whether they like her or not."

"And that's by us being kept here?" Since she was fairly certain there had never been more than a simple reflection staring back at her from mirrors back home. "If the Queen of Hearts is anything like the book version, that can't be exactly easy."

For what it was worth, she was very glad to have landed on this side, she suspected.

She gave him a small smile, inclining her head. "Thank you, though. Your information has been very helpful. Strange, but helpful."

Of course she still wasn't sure she could believe all of it, but that would take some investigating on her own first.

"They disappear if we leave. Met one that seemed decent enough. He's been gone ever since his Real, that's the original, like we are, got sent home."

He scratches his jaw absently. "No problem. I know it's a lot to take in."

"Well, I suppose that makes sense if their opposite isn't all that decent," she mused, looking thoughtful for a moment. "And yes, it is. But I'm getting more practice lately at having to adapt to unexpected circumstances so I don't have to go all damsel in distress just yet." Not that she did that anyway, but the sharp curve of her grin probably hinted at that.

"Actually, the original Blaine was decent enough too, from what I've seen of him. Another one I met also wasn't bad, just... had no confidence in herself whatsoever. Unlike the original."

"Given that I've bet you've got at least a couple knives hidden on your person, I'm pretty sure you don't do the damsel in distress shit," Ed says a bit dryly.

"Maybe the sentient house just picks a prominent trait or two to counter, then," Natasha drawled, which is still just as problematic and yeah she didn't think she wanted to go peering into mirrors anytime soon.

His dry comment earns him a laugh and a bemused grin. "Aren't you the observant one? And not typically, no. Not unless it's easier to get what I need that way," she amends, lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug. it's not like she needs to lie about it at the moment and he'd been honest with her since she'd met him.

Ed raises an eyebrow. "I wouldn't have been much use to the Colonel if I wasn't. He kinda needed people that could use their eyes and brains."

"The Colonel?" That's another interesting piece of information from him, if for different reasons. "You were in the military?"

Ed bobs his head, not quite yes and not quite no. "I was a civilian member of a military run program. Not that it kept me from seeing my share of fighting either when things he sent me to do went pear-shaped or when it was expected to be a high likelihood."

"Things do have a way of heading that direction at the most inopportune moments, don't they?" she drawls, letting her gaze drift pointedly around the kitchen. "And here I thought my week had hit its quota of pear-shaped."

"I think it's probably about done, unless someone throws you a curveball with info I didn't get to or whatever."

Ed also glances around the kitchen and shrugs. "There's worse places to wake up or otherwise arrive in. Like in either the swimming pool or out in the water by the beach."

"Yes, I much prefer getting to hear all this while dry," she agrees, humor returning. "There's a beach? How big is this... bubble we're caught in?"

"There's actually a decent amount of places for us to go and give people room to spread out. I'm not sure of exact dimensions. Maybe at least a square mile?"

"So the house, a beach, the gardens," she adds, indicating the scene visible outside the windows at the moment. "What else? Are there giant mushrooms somewhere? A giant chess board?"

"No mushrooms, but there's the Checkerboard Hills. Which I've seen flattened out once for the Queens to use as a giant chess board, using people as the pieces." His lips thin. "It would have been nice if they played a normal game, but by using people, they made sure we'd all pay really damn close attention since people were friends with at least one of them."

She doesn't miss his displeasure at the explanation, her gaze narrowing slightly. "People were hurt?"

"My own Mirror went after one of the Reals when she invaded his space and didn't stop coming until she shot him multiple times," Ed explains. "Another Mirror is permanently on Greed's shit list for what he did to Blake. Killing him would have been bad enough, but he did more than that."

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...I just noticed that I switched to action in that last tag. ::facepalm::

It's all good! XD

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