entrancelogs | 'cause you thought you'd escaped

Entry tags:

'cause you thought you'd escaped

Who: Alex Kralie and anyone/everyone
Where: All around Gravity Falls
When: February 5th-9th (specify which day in the subject header)
Rating: Let's say PG-13. Alex is a foulmouth
Summary: Fairies and gremloblins and tourist traps, oh my!
The Story: beneath the cut!

February 5th and 6th; Mystery Mansion

God, he is so bored.

Alex thinks he might be starting to have an allergic reaction to how much obnoxiously fake stuff there is scattered all around this place. And people actually buy this crap? He turns over the price tag on one of the dubiously-named "attractions" and snorts. What a scam.

But man, he can't remember when he last had two hundred bucks in cold hard cash to just spend however he sees fit. Ordinarily that'd go to a savings account, or to chip away at those student loans, or would be added to his private stockpile devoted to the Production-Level Movie Equipment Investment Fund, but he sincerely doubts the money will linger past the event's end. So, with a sigh, Alex submits to the thrall of capitalist purchase. He might put forth some money for a tour just to see what all the fuss is about. He might even buy something other than a disposable camera, just to shake things up. He's gotta use up this cash somehow, right?

February 7th; Fairies

Of course, what should he walk into within five minutes of venturing into the woods but a swarm, a literal swarm, of winged little pests? He swats at them furiously, stumbling blind through the semi-thick woodland, practically snarling under his breath as those bright fluttering pains in the ass dodge every clumsy swipe of his hand. This place had better not have poison oak, or Alex will have words. He'll have angry words, furious words, as soon as he gets - these - things - off - his -

Crash.

That's roughly the point in time where Alex trips over a root and faceplants, possibly onto a rock or sharp object of some kind. You might trip over him as he lies there, surrounded by a dancing halo of colorful chirping lights, wondering where in his life he went so wrong.

February 8th; Gremloblins

"Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, HOLY SHIT - "

Running at breakneck speed through the woods. Yep, this sounds familiar. Only instead of some ghostly-thin spectre-like faceless nightmare, this thing is a hulking, lumbering, snarling...well, he doesn't really have a word for it. He just knows it apparently doesn't like cameras or bright flashes, and it's currently fixated on him and mad. Oh, joy. Too far, Alex. You went too far, and now you're going to suffer for it.

He barely manages to duck a swipe of the thing's massive claws just as its jaws part in a furious roar.

"For the love of - help! Can anyone - " The rest of that sentence is lost as Alex once again has to devote the rest of his attention to keeping those wickedly curved claws from taking a sizable chunk out of him. No other choice here but to keep running and hope he crashes into someone who knows how to kill or maim or otherwise get rid of this thing. Dignity be damned. Pride be damned. He lost all claims to pride the minute he started shrieking to help at the top of his goddamn lungs.

Speaking of which -

"Help!?"

Alex Kralie, the only man who can manage to make a desperate entreaty for aid sound utterly and deeply sarcastic.

February 9th; the Hide Behind

He's been camped in the same spot for hours. His palms are slick with sweat, his tongue stuck out between his teeth in concentration, hunched in scattered underbrush as he waits for the telltale rattle-hiss of the thing he knows is after him. Stalking him.

"Come on," he whispers, eyes narrowed at the empty air in front of him. "Come on, you stupid son of a bitch. I know you're out there. I heard you. I heard you. Come on out."

And so it goes, a quiet, ongoing litany as he waits and waits and waits and waits for the thing behind him to show its goddamn self. He's had enough of things he can't see. He's going to chase this one down, wallpaper every tree in the forest with its ugly mug.

There it is. The rattle. The click-clack-click of the beast drawing near.

Alex grins faintly, poised to spin around and catch it in the click and flash of a shutter. 1/500th of a second. That's all it'll take. Come on. Not so mysterious now, are you, Mr. Monster?

[ooc: prose or brackets are good, will match accordingly]

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"Well, maybe it'll just get behind you. It's gotta see me up here." And given Rocket's voice comes from somewhere in the thick pine-scented foliage, that will be a feat. He finds a sturdy branch, tests it out, realizes it's not sturdy enough and backs up closer to the trunk as the thing makes a painful sounding snap and breaks off.

"Flark that branch in particular," he says, loud enough to be heard, so it sounds like he intentionally broke that one. His next one is stable enough and he sets up, focusing on the spot just behind Alex. "All right, kid. Just don't turn around for nothin'."

And the waiting begins. And stretches on. Rocket takes to hissing "c'mon, c'mon" under his breath to urge the stupid monster to wander into his line of sight and just as trigger finger gets itchy, he hears it- a weird maraca-like sound

From behind him.

The sound jars something in his animal hindbrain and his finger yanks back hard on the trigger and a burst of hot plasma proceeds to obliterate a tree across the way- fortunately missing scorching Alex, but there's always the chance of falling tree debris.

That happened.

Cripes, look at him go. Alex raises an eyebrow skeptically when he starts making a bit of a racket clamoring upward, but it's not like Alex is an Olympian tree-climber himself so who is he to judge? No one, but he's judging anyway. That is how Alex rolls.

Once Rocky Raccoon has got himself settled, Alex hunkers down at his usual spot, parked against the trunk of the tree he's become very familiar with in his hours of lost time out here. He feels stupidly underprepared carrying nothing but a dumb camera when his sharpshooting friend has a freaking StarCraft rifle thing that he just carries around like it's a paperweight, but they've all gotta play to their strengths. Just the fact that he hasn't dismissed Alex as crazy has warmed him a bit to him.

When the sound comes, Alex whips around frantically, but it's not coming from behind. It's coming from above, that hated cht-cht-cht-chtz of rattle-hissing that's been driving him out of his goddamn skull all day.

And that's when the world detonates.

He thinks?

Something tears right through the trees and slices branches and canopy away like a hot knife through butter, Alex yelps in an extremely undignified and unmanful way, and he soon finds himself being pelted by a shower of smoking twigs and leaves and cinders. He grits his teeth against the minute burns peppering his arms but it's better than getting some molten plasma right in the face.

"What the fuck," he snaps in Rocket's vague direction once the ruckus fades.

When Stan catches Alex touching the specimens, he prods him in the side with his cane.

"No touchin' the merchandise," he says. "And obviously you don't know a thing about jackalopes. Sure they look cute and cuddly, but those antlers'll gouge your eyes out! Jackalope hunters gotta wear stove pipes around their legs just so they don't get their ankles gored."

Not that anyone actually hunted this jackalope, since Stan clearly made it himself by gluing deer antlers to a stuffed rabbit.

It takes Rocket a moment to get his fur to settle back down, and it's fortunate he's up in the tree so no one got to see him turn into a bottlebrush for a hot minute. He exhales. He inhales. He exhales again, the sound starting to take on a weird edgy quality, like someone trying to steady their heartbeat and failing.

And on the next inhale, he just lets loose, "Krutacking flark. Flarkin'... flark," he snaps, loud enough to startle anything else that wasn't already startled by the tree-destroying molten plasma blast.

"How the flark did it-" There's some definite shuffling in the foliage as Rocket tries to whirl around. "Ain't nothin' in the d'ast universe that freakin' fast. Where the hell is it?"

"I think so. Could be off about it, but there's some scientist guy, didn't get here too long ago, said his name was Pines too-- and actually I thought that guy was called Stan, and the other--"

His comm device beeps. Just as well. He checks the message with an arched eyebrow.

"Whatever the old guy's name, he might be selling to the local wildlife, too..."

He tosses the phone at Alex, so he can get a look at the message. To think Philip might have to share his incredible death raising powers with an owl? A travesty! A complete and utter travesty!

"Don't ask me." Holy hot Jesus. It doesn't take a genius to figure what just happened, and that's about all Alex is willing to take from a trigger-happy raccoon-thing. And the thing that's been on his ass since the start of the day - it's gone, probably, or looping around to fuck with them again, but with any luck maybe it'll jump on Rocket's tail instead of haunting Alex from here 'till Judgment Day.

"It just does that, sneaks up behind you!" Alex shoots a nervous look behind him, just to be safe, but of course there's nothing. Nothing but a smoking husk of what used to be a tree, anyway. "Told you, it's too damn quick."

How many Stans can one family have? How many Stans is too much? How much do you Stan - no, that's beside the point. Alex regards the response (ah yes, of course it's Dipper, of course it is) and arches an eyebrow, skeptical. An owl? Seriously?

"The Hide-Behind," he says dryly. "Real creative. Yeah, that's bullshit." He knows something has been following him. He can feel it in his intuition. He doesn't neglect his intuition. Usually. "There's something else out here. I haven't even seen an owl since ending up here."

Again his eyes fall on Philip's maracas, but he's not paranoid enough ~~yet~~ to assume the other guy's been lying to him about that one.

"Yeah Alex, don't you know anything about Jackalopes?" she whispers to him, rolling her eyes at his ineptitude. Come on, man! Get yourself together!

"Wow, gee," says Alex, folding his arms. "What a shocker. What new and exciting information."

Look, he's not touching the merchandise. Happy, Stan? Are you proud?

"What else you got in your Cave of Wonders back there, huh?" Come on, Stan, impress him.

Stan can't help twitching a little bit. This guy is such a pain in his ass.

"You want original? I'll give you original!"

He puts his showman grin back on and heads over to one of his most famous attractions.

"Behold! THE SASCROTCH!"

It is exactly what it sounds like.

WELL. Excuse her as she tries to stifle a fit of giggles and bite down on the wide grin that threatens to spread over her face. She ends up making some sort of choking sound and having to bring her hand up to cover her mouth in embarrassment.

She has nothing to say to this. It's so much better than she had hoped, worth every dollar.

She is literally speechless.

Alex is stunned into similar silence for a long moment. Several moments. He raises his eyebrows skeptically. Is this for real?

Oh yeah. It's for real.

This day might not be such a waste after all.

"Well," says Alex lightly, after those several...minutes it takes to process. "It's certainly different."

It takes some concentrated effort to keep a straight face as he turns and looks at Stan with as much innocent curiosity as he can possibly bring to bear. "You glue that dong on yourself, or did it come preshrunk?"

"But what does it want?" Is it just trying to make them crazy? Because krutack it to hell, it's working.

He hisses and finally starts climbing down the tree at a much slower pace. "And I thought this event was an easy one. 'Course not. Nothing's ever easy in Wonderland."

"You figure it out, you can let me know." 'Cause hell if Alex has figured it out by now. "That's literally all it does, it just - fucks with you, the whole time."

Which is really not something a guy with preexisting paranoia issues needs, you know?

"Maybe now it'll follow you around, instead." He doesn't exactly sound torn up about it, either. Better Rocket than Alex.

"Maybe Stan swiped their maracas for the resell value, and they migrated out of protest."

Philip gives the instruments a very solemn shake rattle rattle shake. See? He puts away his communication device. All right, fine, and the rattles too, they can stay at his belt.

"All right, so what's the next step in finding this thing?"

Because he's broke with absolutely nowhere to go, and nothing better to do whatsoever.

Maybe this is a two-man job. Alex looks at Philip speculatively.

"Well, I can already tell you that trying to catch it when it sneaks up behind you doesn't work." He's tried that about five times, and still zilch. Nothing but a crick in his neck and crushed dreams.

Maybe if he strapped the camera to the back of his head -

Which would look fucking stupid. Now, if he strapped the camera to the back of Philip's head?

"You feel like maybe duct-taping this to the back of your head?" He says dryly, jiggling the camera in his hand.

Unfortunately for Alex, Stan has reached an age where absolutely nothing embarrasses him anymore. Was he expecting Stan to stammer and get flustered over the mention of fake dongs? To not want to talk about it in front of the other guest? Does he really think he's the first little shit to ask about dongs on the tour?

Stan grins darkly.

"Actually, every dong in this museum's been generously donated by a combination of previous trouble-making visitors to the Mystery Shack and a number of my greatest enemies!" He laughs in that showman way, like this is actually a part of the usual routine. "Or at least, that's how my legal team says I oughta spin it, but what do they know?"

Without missing a beat, Stan continues the tour from there, gesturing to another abomination. "And over here we have the six pack o'lope! The buffest of all nature's creatures!"

Edited 2016-03-08 02:40 (UTC)

Fortunately, Rocket's paranoia is of a completely different subset, but that doesn't mean he wants to be stalked through the woods by a fucking monster. He growls low and moves his gun back into his tiny, disconcertingly human-like hands.

"Oh, thanks," he snaps, glancing suspiciously around. "If half the forest blows up before this crap's over with, don't panic about it. It's just me."

And he's gonna head off now, muttering to himself the whole way and finding new and creative uses for the words 'krutack' and 'flark.' But at least Alex may be free of the Hide-Behind. Maybe.

Alex watches him go without feeling very sorry for himself. Rocket's some kind of hyper-armed super-alien thing, right? He can probably handle himself. Way better than a guy with a dinky little disposable camera could.

So he lets him leave, and hopes he takes the Hide-Behind with him.

How scandalous. Max doesn't hide her eyeroll at the dong talk, but does fight down her grin. Regardless, she has to admit that Stan knows his tour stuff, and does a good job at keeping people entertained. She hastily grabs a picture of the 'Sascrotch' as they push forward with the tour.

She raises an eyebrow at the six pack o'lope, an amused smile on her face. "I'm pretty sure it skipped leg day, Stan," she says dryly, intending it more as a well-meaning comment than a heckle.

She makes no remark on whether or not it looks real, though, because she'd like to at least pretend it is. Though that's actually pretty impossible.

Really? Nothing? All right, so Stan's stone cold in the face of low-blow snark. Noted. Maybe Alex would find that admirable, if he didn't find the rest of this to be so eye-rollingly obnoxious.

"You are really scraping on the bottom of the barrel here, aren't you?" Alex remarks mildly, then decides to take a leaf out of Max's book. He starts snapping pictures, completely without any regard for framing and what have you. More like he's just making a racket to make a racket.

"Hey," he says, as if the thought's just occurred to him. Click. "These exhibits - " Click. " - aren't photosensitive - " Click. " - are they?"

Click click click.

Philip stares at Alex wordlessly for a long time.

( A very long time. )

Then he shrugs, turns around, and straightens his sweater.

"All right, if that's your brilliant plan, knock yourself out."

"Woah, what, really?" Alex blinks in surprise. After that lengthy silence he'd expected some kind of deadpan retort or impending snark-off, but nope.

"Well, uh." Haha, fun story, Alex has nothing on him but the clothes on his back and his stupid little camera. "Do you...have duct tape? Or anything?"

Either way, having duct tape in your hair doesn't sound very fun. Like, at all.

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oh my god