entrancelogs | Here it is again, yet it stings like the first time

Entry tags:

Here it is again, yet it stings like the first time

Who: Seta Souji [

eatsyourscience] on the Mirrorside, Mirror!Seta Souji [

denyingpets] on the Realside, and anyone stuck with them on their respective sides of the glass
Where: All over Wonderland
When: From shortly after the Queen's announcement, until the end of the event
Rating: PG-13, to be safe
Summary: Souji and his Mirror have switched sides before, under circumstances that weren't entirely different.
The Story:

+ The Mirror +
It's been nearly two years since the Queen of Hearts ordered her Mirrors through the glass to keep the Real things from crossing through magical doors. That was when Souji's Mirror received this mark on his forehead, barely hidden behind his bangs, and it's been itching and stinging and driving him insane ever since. He has to get rid of it. He has to, and if he can't manage it, he'll ask her to unmake him. He can't stand it anymore.

He darts through the glass when he's ordered like a loyal thing and he begins to stalk to Real side. He'll find some information, some clue. He just has to look around, talk to people, make people talk to him. Anyone will do. Anyone at all.

+ The Real +
Moving over to the other side of the glass is an unexpected jolt, but it's not unfamiliar. Souji's been here in this room before, but the terrariums had spiders in them then. He takes a moment to wonder at what happened to them before shaking his head and leaving the room. He should see who else is on this side and see if there's anyone who needs any help. He can fight or heal, so he might come in handy.

[OOC Note: This log is a catch all for both Real Souji and Mirror Souji. It's open to anyone, whether we've planned something or not. Just let me know which one you want in the subject line.]

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James just stares, missing the point entirely. He's never seen a horror movie in his life.

"Well, what happens after that?"

Souji knows he should have expected that and he takes it in stride, his expression and voice the normal deadpan when he answers.

"Then they all die." After a couple seconds, he adds, "Every time."

"Every time?"

That's just bizarre - so they all die more than once then? Maybe it's jsut Wonderland rubbing off on him, but if that's they really die every time...well, James makes a bit of a face at that.

"Why do they keep doing it then?" Shouldn't they have figured out by now that it's going to go badly?

Souji looks over at James, then snags his sleeve and tugs him down a hallway, looking for an empty room.

That catches James completely by surprise, but he lets himself be tugged anyway.

"Where are we going?" he asks. Weren't they about to go outside a few minutes ago or something?

They were, but something's come up, and since they have no idea how long they'll be over here, they have plenty of time for this detour.

"To find some DVDs. I need to show you horror movies."

He is totally serious.

"Right now?"

He thinks about it for a moment though, and then he shrugs.

"...Without any way back, I suppose we've got the time for at least one," he decides. Mostly because he's fairly curious himself. "What's a deeveedee though?"

"It's just a way to store movies. I'll show you how it works."

Souji opens a door and decides the room will do. It already has a TV in it, so he gets to work rummaging a DVD player and a couple of movies from the closet. He only had a genre in mind and nothing specific, so when he pulls out The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Urban Legendz\s, and Bloody Reunion, he feels like those are decent examples.

"One of my friends really likes scary movies, but she likes the ones about ghosts and curses the best."

James playfully scoffs at that, despite never having seen a muggle horror film in his life.

"Ghosts are not scary," he says. "I mean, if you catch the Bloody Baron on a bad day, certainly, but that's got more to do with how he was in life than the fact that he's a ghost."

Of course, there was that time Wonderland made him some sort of ghost, but that was absolutely horrible and obviously doesn't count.

"Ghosts are scary in Japan."

Maybe it's something about Japanese people that turns them into horrifying ghosts. Then again, maybe the nature of ghosts is just different in their worlds. Everything else is.

Souji selects ~~To Sir, With Love~~ Bloody Reunion, mainly because he connects more to the Korean movie than the American ones, just a little. He takes it out of the box and shows the disc to James before putting it into the machine and picking up the remote.

"This is like a wand specifically for this machine."

"Ghosts are scary to Muggles, because they don't know any better." he says. "No offense, of course."

It's hardly their fault. They don't have the frequent exposure to ghosts that wizards do, so of course they would be scared of them.

He tilts his head a bit when Souji shows the disk to him - it looks sort of like a shiny metal coaster to him. The remote is fascinating to him though, and his eyes go wide.

"Really? Can I see it? How does it work?"

Souji shrugs. He's never actually seen a ghost himself, with the exception of James when he was one, so he can't say for sure that they are or aren't scary.

As the main menu comes up on the screen, Souji holds out the remote control, letting James take it if he wants to.

"You push these buttons to make the movie play or to make the disc do other things."

James happily takes it, though he gives it a funny look. It's so clunky for something that's supposed to be a wand.

He could ask Souji what all the buttons do, but why would he ask when he can just try it for himself?

So, he pushes a button entirely at random and swishes the remote at the television - because obviously if he doesn't have some sort of motion in the remote wand then the spell won't work, or whatever muggles want to call it.

Of course James would have pushed one of the buttons that does nothing at all when on the main menu screen. Souji looks at the screen for a moment, then at James, then at the remote control. His expression, though still largely neutral, has just a hint of an indication that the remote has failed him and that he's very disappointed with it, if not personally affronted by its behavior.

With a sigh through his nose, he takes the remote control back and presses play. Then he stares at the buttons for a moment as the opening credits start, before looking at James.

"...I wonder if I need the subtitles." Wonderland translates James's English for him when they talk, but he has no idea if it will translate the Korean in the movie for either of them.

"I...have no idea," James admits. He's only seen a muggle movie one in Wonderland, and it had been in English, as far as he knows.

But mostly he has no idea because he's only familiar with subtitles as in "the little title in smaller script beneath the actual title of a book" - he's not totally sure what Souji means, but when Souji looks back at James he gives an exaggerated shrug. Souji's the muggle movie expert here, not him.

After a second more of consideration, Souji goes ahead and turns them on. If they don't need them after all, he'll turn them back off.

"Okay. If anything bothers you a lot, we can turn it off."

James isn't afraid of ghosts, but Souji doesn't know where he stands on people being forced to swallow razor blades.

James just looks at Souji with an eyebrow raised and laughs.

"Souji. I'm sure there is absolutely nothing in this that could possibly scare me enough that we would need to turn it off. I mean, come on now."

That being said, James is one hundred percent not expecting people to be forced to swallow razor blades.

That's only the first of several gory things in this movie. Next, a young woman's eyes are stapled open before she's killed, then the killer in a bunny mask smashes a young man's head in with a bat. Another young woman falls off a cliff to her death and the killer takes out the last young man by forcing his fingers deep into his eye sockets.

Of course, that's nothing compared to the twist ending, where none of their stories were what they seemed, but Souji doesn't glance over at James curiously when that's revealed the way he does when each act of violence occurs.

James starts off the movie strong and entirely confident in his claims. But as the movie progresses and the content gets worse and worse, James finds himself...not scared; he refuses to call it that. It's just that the amount of gore is entirely unsettling and not at all what he was expecting.

However, hell will freeze before he admits that to Souji. He goes from commenting on every little unusual muggle thing in the movie to quietly watching in horror and trying not to jump when jump scares happen, but it doesn't work very well. He's visibly disturbed, and whenever something horrific happens (after he's shut his eyes long enough to make the visual memory fade) he looks over at Souji, as if Souji can personally explain why muggles are so creative about their violence.

Souji keeps any answers to himself until the credits roll and he turns it off.

"People are afraid of other being hurt. Especially by other people. So people are afraid of other people."

It didn't even have to be physical pain. Souji had known people who stood at a distance from everyone because they didn't want to risk losing them.

"That's more depressing than scary," James points out.

It's true though. Fear of being hurt drives a lot of people to do terrible things.

"I have to admit though, I've never thought about fingers in eye sockets before, and that was deeply unsettling."

He shuts his eyes tight and shakes his head, like he's trying to shake the image out of his mind. As someone with poor eyesight already, that one easily bothered him the most.

"They get pretty creative in order to keep people interested." Souji rests his elbow on his knee and his chin on his hand. "A lot of people where I'm from are pretty desensitized to this kind of stuff in the movies and on TV."

Souji can understand it. It's easy to disconnect from the terrible things happening around him. He did it for most of his life, and he has a feeling that if he'd kept on that way, he'd have ended up a lot like Adachi.

But moving on. He picks up the other two DVD boxes. "Want to watch another one?"

The correct answer is no, he never wants to see any of that again. But that's also the cowardly answer, and he doesn't want to admit just how unsettling these films are to someone who seems mostly unfazed by them.

So, James shrugs as if he's unfazed too (but it's an easy act to see through).

"I could watch another - if we've got the time, I mean."

"We have."

Souji has a feeling nothing's going to happen right this second, so early in the game. He gets up to put another disc in--Urban Legends this time.

"This one's a little different, since it's American, but you'll see what I mean about people dying when they split up."

He settles back next to James and starts the disc.

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Here it is again, yet it stings like the first time

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