Scene #7488: Baba is You

Owner	Pose
Forte	SHRINE OF ADVERSITY (On first arriving here, Forte is somewhat disturbed to find merchandise of himself, but that's another story.) Forte has booked one of the larger training rooms, and has further negotiated for a few Shrine employees to help run the technical side of things. There's also boxes of pizza and soda in the training room's ready room. Forgive Forte - he was raised by compsci nerds, and does not know how to properly get things catered beyond 'order greasy delivery pizza and provide sugary drinks', even if there's more food options available in the Shrine. "The target is just known as World 736260," says the floating cloaked figure. "It disappeared one day. Vanished. The land it was occupying was simply replaced by other new worlds. All that remain are records and scans, which I've managed to get stitched together into a simulation that should be accurate enough." "And that's why you're here. If the thought of finding out what might have happened is not incentive enough, I have money. Standard mercenary rates. And being in the Shrine of Adversity means that if whatever world-erasing event happens again in the simulation, it'll be contained by the Shrine's protections. Like a VM." He gestures at the door from the ready room to the training room - which is now an expansive grassland. "Keep in mind - there are strange rules in place. Different laws of physics and reality. You will see, for lack of a better term, 'words' floating in the air... Can't see any of them from here." "It's fine, I'll just rotate the sim entrance a bit," says one of the techs, and some of the 'words' come into view. They're large floating cubes with rounded corners, about two meters to a side, in a variety of opaque colors. And inside each cube is a single word - large floating letters that make sense no matter which angle they're viewed from. "They do... things, when they're lined up," says Forte. "Alter local physics, reality, conceptualization, transformations... you may need to take advantage of them to find the answers we're looking for, though your own personal skills might also be enough." Visible through the doorway are a couple of Words: ROCK, WATER, TREE, GRASS, ELITE, IS, NOT, YOU, FLOAT, CHAT, LEFT... and there may be more around, if one goes looking for them.
Raphael Cousteau	INLAND EMPIRE: The empty world. The world that isn't awaits us. Go. Go. Go. And so, a shaggy cop in a green disco blazer has arrived. He's already at the pizza and soda, on account of ELECTROCHEMISTRY making an incredibly good argument. So, by and large, he's only half listening to the actual explanation, other than that the rules are different. The laws are different. ESPRIT DE CORPS: It doesn't matter what the laws are. You are a very good cop, and, therefore, you should naturally be able to handle them. This is exactly how the law works. AUTHORITY: You are the law. LOGIC: I would actually like to interject, but...I can't quite formulate why these statements are wrong. Sorry. Pocketing one of the bottles of soda, he strides past Forte, eyes firmly locked on the words. He's mouthing something, clearly completely lost in an internal discussion on the upcoming simulation, before he suddenly stops. ELECTROCHEMISTRY: WAIT. > What? ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Okay. So, I'm in a really weird position here, and I'm actually going to need all of you to work together: I don't understand what you should be imbibing right now. This /looks/ like the straightforward thinking that calls for cigarettes, but I've got an itch telling me that the thinking here's actually up in that 'imagination' part of your brain. /but/, more pressingly, those cubes are huge. If you're going to be doing something with them, you'll have to think about maybe boozing up a little. ...And if I'm that lost, you really ought to take this seriously. Something's /very/ wrong. VOLITION: ...I mean, it's nothing we can't handle, but...that's kind of a good point. There's definitely a feeling here that what you can do to yourself is a lot worse than popping some painkillers is going to fix. He closes his eyes once, before walking around. INLAND EMPIRE: More articles. We need more articles. We will construct the world from its first principles.
Hellwarming Trio	Unfortunately for everyone, Utsuho and Rin have now been introduced to pizza and soda. They take to it like popular media's portrayal of REAL GAMERZ, guzzling down the sugary substance and binging on greasy cheese slabs while vaguely listening to Forte's explanation. They really are listening, but it definitely doesn't look like it with their hands full of food and drink. Utsuho: "Mrph... What's a VM?" Rin: "Ain't that just a fancy book or something? Shouldn't matter, anyway, if we just get this weird word rules place sorted out." Indeed, it really does seem they were listening by the time they stop eating to actually head through the door, taking a look at the weirdly colored cubes and inspecting each one that's within sight of the doorway first. Although it's obvious they don't quite understand how these cubes work, they're all too willing to experiment following Forte's explanation. The first thing they do is move three cubes into a line of GRASS, IS, and TREE. Utsuho: "You think this'll work?" Rin: "Who knows? Might be funny once we mess with that YOU box, though." Utsuho: "Me box?" Rin: "No, YOU box." Utsuho: "Yeah, me." They go on like that for a while.
Doctor Strange	"Hey." Strange is perfectly fine with greasy pizza and sugary drinks, as evidenced by the fact that he's got a can and a slice in hand when he makes his greeting. It's a bit of a strange sight, given his sorcerous tunic, high-collared red cloak, and burnished brass amulet. He listens quietly. He's getting by just fine as Seneschal and Sorcerer Supreme, and politely doesn't say anything, when money is mentioned. For him, it really is just about finding out what happened, and learning something after the fact. With luck, maybe the knowledge could help prevent this from happening again--but it's best to manage one's expectations. None of this is really all that outlandish for Strange, as there's a number of reasons why worlds might disappear, and have disappeared. But... it does hold the interest, certainly. Especially... 'Words?' his inquisitive glance seems to ask, before he is shown exactly what Forte means by it. Interesting. "Oh, hey, Inspector," he says. So. First things first, find out what the words Are. Can they be faked? Duplicated? He attempts to do this. Two Stranges appear. One is trying to make Words of his own, by a number of means--illusion, pulling letters from the Mirror Dimension to assemble new words, even writing them in the air with the orange energy that comprises his mandalas. There are a few he tries to make: PEOPLE, BOOKS, HERE. The other Strange is trying to copy the ones which already exist, via pulling them whole from the Mirror Dimension, a copy of the space within the Shrine existing as an empty reflection of the space everyone occupies.
Strawberry Princess	In this world, words define reality. This world abruptly ceased to exist. As Strawberry walks into the Shrine of Adversity, those statements are jangling around in her head, trying to find some way to connect to one another. They don't quite manage to click. There's a missing piece somewhere- what combination of words destroys a world? Contradictory axioms? A simple negation?- but she at least knows its silhouette. In her perennial casual garb, she blends in with the pizza party aesthetic remarkably well: a white button-up shirt for style, a comfy jacket to keep marinara stains off the aforementioned, and her hair tied back in a ponytail to minimize the risk of grease contact. Only the long, narrow carrying case slung across her back and the heart pin on her jacket mark her as probably, maybe Someone Significant. Once she's done quietly gawking at Forte's appearance- the words "I like your helmet" get said at some point- Strawberry tucks into a slice of supreme pizza and some cola that tastes like its name starts with 'Doctor', nodding along thoughtfully with the explanation and making acknowledging noises whenever her mouth isn't full. Finally: "Well, alright. If we'll be fine if everything goes wrong... then I guess we ought to roll up our sleeves and start trying to break stuff, right?" Step one for Strawberry, then, as she heads into the Shrine: ELITE IS NOT YOU
Forte	> RAPHAEL IS SEARCH There's a few repeats of Words here and there... but by putting in a bit of good old fashioned investigative footwork, Raphael can find a few new words. NEAR seems to be the most useful new word, in terms of articles that are close enough to drag back. > EIUJI AND RIN IS TEST The three words line up neatly. GRASS, then IS, then TREE- - and then just a moment later, the entire nearby area is a dense forest, as all of the grass within a certain radius instantly turns into trees. Fortunately, there's enough dirt patches that there's enough room for other actions to still take place - although Raphael finds pushing the new words back to the group to be considerably harder now. > STRANGE IS DOUBLED AND TEST Creating new Words does not seem to work out. There's something more at play than the Words being bits of understandable language - like the word part of the Words is more of a token or symbolization of the energies they represent. Pulling in copies from the Mirror Realm works pretty well, though. > STRAWBERRY IS DEFEAT The words slot into position... ELITE IS NOT YOU "- back? Can you hear me now? Okay, looks like they're back," calls Forte, over the simulation intercom. The area's reverted back to how it was originally. "You all sort of... just went unresponsive," he says. "Like you were all in comas. We had to reset the simulation." "Whatever you did - the last thing you remember, that... well, that was dangerous, but it doesn't seem to be world-erasing dangerous." Things have reset to their pre-forestification state, but Raphael's memory of where NEAR is remains intact if he wants to grab it for something.
Forte	Not far away, there's a wall. It's a long, tall wall, made of stones - the sort that most people would have trouble scaling. There's also a moat in front of it, pressed right up against the edge of the wall, castle-style, further adding to it's mundane-insurmountability. That seems to be the most interesting point of interest, in the immediate vicinity.
Raphael Cousteau	ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: Oh. Almost there again, weren't we? Wasn't even your own bloody fault this time, though. ... INLAND EMPIRE: NEAR! NEAR! Yes! Proximity! Each brick must be built atop its ancestor, ever spiralling! Raphael wakes up with a start, his expression still unchanged. No miracle there, I'm afraid. > OK, what're we voting on doing, here? Some of us seem pretty excited. AUTHORITY: Obviously, you should declare yourself to be everything. Take power! GRAB THE REINS, AS YOU DESERVE. He does not take the time to admonish anyone for what they may or may not have done. Instead, he strides back forward. That NEAR. That NEAR is incredibly necessary, but not yet. Not yet. LOGIC: We don't actually know what these words mean. Can we do something safe? He strides forward, jacket billowing behind him. ELITE IS FLOAT This will absolutely be useful while he starts mucking about with the greater articles. He just knows it.
Priscilla	Money sure isn't an issue, as it has never been for various, historically different reasons before. Nominally, the place they're all in is one built and backed by the Concord in the first place. Likewise, she could literally walk into any part of this building and get any kind of food with a word, no questions asked, so extremely budget pizza isn't really her item of choice, even if she felt the need for it. Even before the big red 'do not enter' appears, persists, and then is cautiously taken down, as someone does something very stupid inside, and she waits patiently without. No, the particular 'pitch' she'd heard earlier, had gotten her. That, and the idea in the first place of an entire world just disappearing. To the best of anyone's knowledge, worlds never just leave the Multiverse, and it takes something extra special to scrub one so clean of anything that it could be misconstrued that it is gone. The only kind of place that should so neatly remove itself entirely is one with existing built-in mechanisms to do just that, for whatever reason, and even then, the idea that surrounding borders would crowd in and fill the gap is strange. Her right hand woman and attache had encountered something like that, in a sense, but never had it been practically located. It thankfully doesn't take her long to get caught up, after pausing the sim just long enough to enter, without particular ceremony. She wasn't exaggerating to say that she is familiar with the idea of such powerful 'imprints' being left on the rules of a world. To see them all rendered as floating text boxes, is 'curious', according to her. Most pointedly, as she fixates on, that there should be the word 'Elite' already. She tries her hand at one trick first. ROCK IS CHAT. Then, Priscilla goes about trying to find a nice rock somewhere in that grassland, and ask it quite simply 'what happened here'.
Hellwarming Trio	Utsuho: "Hah! Ah, that was useless." Rin: "Yeah, but it was funny. Hey, what's the baker got ov-" And then everything explodes. Waking back up in the simulation, they take a moment to get their bearings straightened out before listening to Forte's warning about not doing something. Raphael recommends voting instead of just doing things wildly and randomly. Naturally, they're not going to comply with that, but they aren't completely uncooperative as they start moving further in to inspect THE NEW CUBES discovered by searching and the copies that may or may not still be floating around. Utsuho: "So what happens if we keep using IS to turn stuff into other stuff?" Rin: "What if we turn everything into GRASS and then YOU?" Utsuho: "... Is that how the statue thing happened?" Rin: "Only one way to find out. Hey, we're gonna make us grass! Or grass us. I dunno which is which." And so, they start the process of putting together GRASS, IS, and YOU.
Doctor Strange	"Okay. Thought so," says Strange, upon returning to the Land of the Living. Looking up at the intercom speaker, he calls: "A Word is a word, but not only a word, and not all words are Words." What? One of the Stranges vanishes, going back in time to complete the loop created. "Not gonna argue with voting," he says. But--if finding out what happened here is going to involve combining the Words, then they should have a few copies of the more generally useful Words. Strange makes two copies of ELITE, two of YOU, two of IS, and two of NOT. As Utsuho and Rin put together a scheme to turn everyone into grass, he isn't bothered. "How about WATER IS LEFT? Though... ELITE IS FLOAT works for that, too," he notes with a scarred finger-gun towards Raphael.
Strawberry Princess	When the simulation's reset and Strawberry comes to, she reorients herself remarkably quickly: she rolls onto her front and hops up to standing, one hand reaching for the carrying case on her back before she fully parses what happened. Okay, it was only a consciousness-eradicating event. Not an attack of any kind. Cool cool cool. I am "ELITE". And "ELITE" was not "YOU", so I stopped being me. But what if I weren't me? If I used my Eidolons... No, shelve that. Instead- after giving an apologetic wave to the people at the control panel, if they can see her!- she tries to wedge her carrying case between the Y and O of YOU and use it to pry them apart. It's unlikely that'll work, so when it fails, she turns on her wand (accompanied by characteristic whine, actinic glow, and tingling-metal taste) and tries to shape a pink bubble-forcefield inside the word, separating its letters: Y(O)U
Forte	> REIUJI AND RIN IS TEST As YOU is pushed into place, everyone's consciousness... doubles. Not only are they elites, but they're also the grass. It's a rather disorienting feeling - being human(-ish) is simple, but the grass is a complicated mess of plant mass with limited understanding of the world. It's like trying to learn how to drive an entirely new vehicle while still operating the old one. > RAPHAEL IS HIGH ELITE IS FLOAT works out to be literal - everyone is floating above the ground. With some focusing, they can go up or down a bit, though it seems to cap out at a few meters up. Actually touching the ground turns out to be impossible now, though. > PRISCILLA IS LONELY Oh hey, the rock is chatting on the radio. It seems to like making rock puns. This is probably undesirable. > STRANGE IS CHAT "Probably?" says Forte over the intercom. "I'm not going to pretend to understand it myself." > STRAWBERRY IS CHEAT The letters inside the Word get moved around by the force bubble. Unfortunately, the Word remains intact, and if tested, functions the same as it had previously.
Forte	> REIUJI AND RIN IS TEST As YOU is pushed into place, everyone's consciousness... doubles. Not only are they the grass, but they're also the elites. It's a rather disorienting feeling - being grass, with all of its photosensitive senses and root system, is simple, but the elites are complicated with multiple senses and mobile bodies. It's like trying to learn how to drive an entirely new vehicle while still operating the old one. > RAPHAEL IS HIGH And now the elites are floating. Going up and down. Why they're floating, who knows. The ground is really where it's at. > PRISCILLA IS LONELY 'ROCK IS CHAT' doesn't seem to have done anything, really. Radio? What's that? > STRANGE IS CHAT The elites are making the air vibrate. It seems to be their method of communicating, but none of the grass can really understand it. > STRAWBERRY IS CHEAT One of the elites is doing some strange thing with her branch to one of the Words. It doesn't seem to have worked.
Raphael Cousteau	Raphael confirms. The purpose is to find a combination of words that could have destroyed everything. INLAND EMPIRE: We must cast this false world into the void, by its own rules. We are the executioner of falsehoods, through arrangement of truths. It is known. He cracks his knuckles just slightly. And right now, he's grass. Everywhere. There's a lot of grass. That's-- ELECTROCHEMISTRY: This is a solid high, man. You can ride it. You're everywhere, and yourself. Just ride the wave, baby! PERCEPTION: WAIT. We're everywhere. That means we can know all of the possibilities. All of the words. That's going to make this go a lot faster, but I don't think grass can 'see'... Raphael Cousteau floats above his own perception. The grass moves with the movement of his legs, what with the air moving, so he can 'know' where he is. But, more pressingly, he knows where he is not. The things that are not grass encircle a moat. And stone. There must be something there, surely. And, floating in the air, there's nothing to stop him. First, he floats to where he knows NEAR was. Then, he pushes it towards the strange castle. He knows he wants this NEAR. He just doesn't know yet...what he wants it near. He'll wait for his various psychic shivery sensations to guide him further from there.
Doctor Strange	So. He's grass, and he's him. Can he move, as grass? Let's try that. If not, what can he see and feel, as grass? It doesn't have eyes... but it does have roots. Are there new Words beneath the surface? Could they be pulled up above ground by... whatever it is grass does? "I dunno," mutters Person!Strange. "Wiggle my roots, or... something." Strange is a little more used to weird stuff like this, and so Person!Strange acclimates himself faster than might be otherwise expected. And unlike many, he can spend hours wasting time without actually wasting time. Person!Strange peers into the future to see if there's anything he might discover as Grass!Strange, and, as the latter blindly fumbles around, Person!Strange will attempt to just pinpoint the location of it and yank it from the ground with a portal.
Priscilla	Priscilla had hoped to get something useful out of the rock. She'd certainly hoped 'chat' would have meant a more versatile sense of verbal communication. Apparently, all it can do is blather bullshit. And in the Multiverse, bullshit is just another word for awful puns. "Oh no." she whispers, when the rock begins babbling about taking things for granite and sharing her sedient. There's a 'what have I done?' type of breath hitch that follows. Thank the gods that she can just disconnect the word now instead of having to figure out where she has to kill all the rocks here, somehow. So, she does that first, because puns are marginally worse than also being grass. The floating, she can deal with, as it presents only a very slight annoyance, and has clear potential for future convenience, which she agrees with Raphael on. Strawberry Princess, after initially greeting her, inquires as to whether there is any possibility of the Shrine's internal causalities exceeding the scope of the whole and annihilating it, to which Priscilla replies one. Though I already tire of this misuse of 'you'." She actually manages to get the word, specifically, instead of articulating anything that comes across as a thee. The disorientation of having to experience the world 'as grass' is intensely counterproductive enough that she immediately goes to arrange YOU IS NOT GRASS. After thinking about it a moment longer, and visibly donning the facial expression of a statue, Priscilla begins lining up some of Strange's duplicate words off to the side, forming a sort of grid that isn't fully connected, then tries GRASS IS NOT
Strawberry Princess	An ordinary person would be absolutely tripping over the 'YOU IS GRASS' consciousness-doubling. Strawberry seems to take a second to even notice- and then, after bending down and rolling one of the blades between her fingers experimentally, she straightens back up and goes right back to trying (and failing) to materialize a forcefield inside YOU. Her mind, after all, is extremely acquainted to being several things at once. Line the words up. Annihilator Beam, three cuts. I can see it so clearly. AN\|D\| \| Y\|O\|U \| E\|L\|ITE\| \|W\|ATE\|R --> WORLD ... But one of those is missing, isn't it? We don't actually have AND, even if it worked. Strawberry lowers her wand, checks its battery life (still comfortably adequate), and lets out a little sigh. She floats over to Priscilla instead, who seems to be industriously at work on something, and watches her form GRASS IS NOT with silent anticipation.
Forte	> PRISCILLA IS FED UP Well, so much for being grass and talking rocks. 'GRASS IS NOT' doesn't seem to do anything. > RAPHAEL IS MOVE The detective's odd senses get something. However, while he can float his way over the moat and the wall... the NEAR that he's dragging along isn't so easily brought with him, being pushable but still being subject to gravity. If he's not careful, it'll fall into the moat. Over the wall, there's a bit more grassland - enough to localize the effects of those near the start of the sim - and then there's a lake. Inside the lake, there's a dome of the same stone-wall material - covering part of the bottom of the lakebed, entirely submerged. It's about a dozen meters in diameter - enough to contain several things, potentially. > STRANGE IS GRASS AND FUTURE There are a couple of potential futures here where 'becoming' certain other things would be useful, either for controlling them or for getting information from them. It's something to keep in mind! Unfortunately, Grass!Strange is now no longer Strange. (However, while the grass is no longer Strange, it is not familiar, either.) Fortunately, maybe being specifically grass isn't part of a potential solution.
Raphael Cousteau	Raphael floats over the water, thoughtfully, allowing his various supra-natural abilities to just vibe and do their thing. It's then that something calls to him. Something beneath the water he's floating over. Something -useful-. DOME: hello, i am lonely. come. i have so many things for you. INLAND EMPIRE: YES. HERE IT IS. HERE IS THE PROMISED LAND. WE SHALL BRING THE END FROM WITHIN HERE. ...but first, we must reshape the world. Logic! This is on you! LOGIC: Uhhh. Okay. We really need to count up the words we have. Has anyone... PERCEPTION: Got it! We have ROCK, WATER, TREE, GRASS, ELITE, IS, IS, NOT, NOT, YOU, YOU, FLOAT, CHAT, LEFT, and NEAR that I can remember offhand. > Okay, so there's a dome underneath the water. We need to get rid of the water in order to do this. That seems simple. We turn the WATER to GRASS, then just walk on the grass to the dome. INLAND EMPIRE: I refuse. It is not elegant enough. Do better! We must become wordsmiths of legend, that we can truly transcend this reality, to bring it to its crashing finality! Raphael makes his way back to the central wordbank. He rubs his head thoughtfully. LOGIC: Okay, well, if we're going to eschew doing this the straightforward way, I don't know how much I can help. CONCEPTUALIZATION: Wait. Wait. Wait. Hold on. I've got this. I've got this right now, everybody shut up, just listen to me, inspiration has struck. Raphael has the word NEAR. It is time to, at the bare minimum, teach everyone else what they can do. TREE TREE WATER NEAR ELITE IS TREE WATER IS NOT ROCK WATER IS NOT YOU IS ROCK FLOAT FLOAT This should, if he's done everything, turn nearby water to elites into trees, and trees that are near water should become rocks, and -all- the rocks should float up out of the way, letting them walk to the dome with no problem. There's probably some side glitches, but that's just life. INLAND EMPIRE: Perfection.
Forte	> RAPHAEL IS ??? This seems to work. The water in the moat turns into floating rocks whenever someone gets close. Of course, someone will still need to push the setup over towards the lake in order for the Words to be within 'range' - and there's still the wall between the start point/word bank and the lake to deal with.
Priscilla	It had darkly occurred to Priscilla that simply stringing everything together behind an IS NOT statement, if it respected existentiality, would quickly render the entire world absolutely nothing in short order. "I'd wondered." she says. "It wouldst hath been most believable if one didst attempteth to render all such articles with one descriptor, and mistook the end. In lieu of 'world', perhaps simply itemizing all, or at least most, parts of it, behind some such quaint desirability as 'forever' or 'happy'. Then it wouldst certainly taketh only one errant bump to removeth such a descriptor, and leave them only with all things 'are not'. But it wouldst seemeth such a thing at least barely as robust as this." She'd planned on an ELITE IS YOU before really committing to the bit, with grass being the first thing they could spare going with ELITE IS FLOAT in play, but alas, it's not quite that simple. Raphael's bastard invention is much more convoluted than Priscilla would like, but given how well it works, she can't help but make a sigh of amused approval, and aim towards him "Most impressive . . . Detective Cousteau, was it? I admit mine familiarity with thee to be distant at best, but most certainly thou art the real thing. Pray tell, what hunch hast thou of what we shall find within? Certainly it was of enough importance to drive thine direction." Priscilla is actually willing to push these stupid things around, but it'll be by creating a big sweeping ice floor first, so that they skid with minimal effort. How to push them all at once is a harder question.
Doctor Strange	"Yeah," says Strange, in response to Priscilla. "My own personal guess is that there's a Word for 'everything' or 'the canvas we're using right now.' Without that Word, anything we 'NOT' is just romoving that thing, and not the essential 'everything.' Even if we listed all of it out, one by one." Noticing what she's attempting to do (push all of them at once), he cheats a little, again, bending space so that they all occupy positions close to each other, without forming any coherent sentences. Once Priscilla gets them where she wants them, space is un-bent, and they 'pop' into a loosely scattered configuration.
Hellwarming Trio	Seeing through grass and their own eyes is extremely disorienting for the youkai pair. They wobble around to test it, then fall right on their backs as the motion sickness hits them almost immediately. Rin: "I don't like this." Utsuho: "This sucks." Rin: "Turn it off!" Thankfully, Priscilla gets that taken care of, and they're able to get themselves back up without that horrible disorienting effect. "Let's... Okay, no more of that." Utsuho grunts as she gets up, hoisting Rin off the ground to try and catch up with whatever it was that just happened. They spot Raphael's incomprehensible pile of words, the raven taking a long time to just stare at it all while the kasha lets out confused noises even while seeing the floating rocks that used to be a moat. Utsuho: "... Oh, okay. I get it. We gotta start moving this stuff over, then. But... Not in the wrong order." Rin: "Eh? Why not? Utsuho: "Because then we'd end up being trees again. Or... Uh. Rocks, maybe." Rin: "Oh. Yeah, that'd suck pretty hard." Luckily, with others on the case, that leaves them to try and figure out how to get around the wall problem. THey start searching for any other words that might have been missed, looking in particular around the dome area past the floating rocks.
Forte	> PRISCILLA AND STRANGE IS PUSH The combination of ice-floor pushing and 'condensing space' seems to work. Priscilla is able to get the entire setup moved as, essentially, one unit to wherever it needs to go, and it can be assumed that the 'moving from area to area' problem is solved. (Aside from the wall being in the way, anyway.) > REIUJI AND RIN IS SEARCH Oh hey, there's a 'AND' there, around the other side of the lake. Wasn't someone looking for one of those?
Strawberry Princess	"So 'IS' is more like an equals sign? Or maybe... 'NOT' isn't something that things can be, but more like a minus sign..." Strawberry stares down the ineffectual GRASS IS NOT like she's steadily developing a migraine. This particular kind of puzzle-solving seems distinctly outside her wheelhouse. Someone who barely even knows the word 'YOU' is still two steps ahead of her. The gradual migration of the word-bundle towards the wall and moat dimly awakens something in her brain, though. A wall isn't an obstacle to a magical girl, but... WORD IS NOT FLOAT. <J-IC-Scene> Reiuji and Rin \| Rin says, "We got an AND!" <J-IC-Scene> Strawberry Princess says, "... Oh! I could use that for the..." <J-IC-Scene> Strawberry Princess says, "The thing. Thank you! Give me just a second!" En route to the other grassland, Strawberry swoops down to 'stand' sideways on the side of the wall, taps her glowing radiation-spewing wand to its stone surface, and expertly feathers its trigger while walking to disintegrate the stone behind her as she walks along it. The resulting discharge of hideous pink energy is unusually tame, though it's still eyeball-searing to look at and sounds like uncomfortably close thunder. When she's done, there's a fifteen-foot-wide swathe where the wall has been reduced to a fine gray dust! How tidy. That done, she starts assembling the words for her Large Vowel Collider, though- perhaps fortunately- that'll still take a moment to align.
Forte	> STRAWBERRY IS ACTIVATE There is indeed a giant hole in the wall now.
Hellwarming Trio	Leaving the AND to Strawberry Princess to do something with, they watch as her BIG PINK puts a hole in the wall. As always, Utsuho's dumb enough to stare right into it, and Rin's startled enough to hide behind Utsuho. Once the smoke clears, it's time to get the rest of the words over. Utsuho: "If we get the tallest person by the arms and legs, maybe we could just push everything over with them." Rin: "Yeah, but then they could just push some stuff over themselves, too." They get into position, ready to shove two of the five lines over (#2 WATER NEAR ELITE IS TREE) (#4 WATER IS NOT YOU IS). They wait to see if anyone else is going to join in, but their patience won't last long before they just start going for it! At least they're making sure not to put it in the direct path of the LVC.
Raphael Cousteau	Raphael Cousteau is, of course, going to help. He's responsible for this godawful word salad. But it is beauty, in and of itself, and it will be responsible for something so much greater. He's sure of that. His imagination is very clear on this point.
Doctor Strange	<J-IC-Scene> Strawberry Princess says, "I don't- know, how much power shooting the words is going to take. So I'll dial it up." <J-IC-Scene> Strawberry Princess says, "Less 'big' than usual, but... still, probably cover ears and don't look?" Another Strange appears. One ensures that everyone has earplugs and sunglasses. Not just any sunglasses--the kind that you get after an eye operation. A note saying 'please look away from pink beam - Strange' is included. The other Strange conjures a semisolid barrier of light in front of Strawberry. It doesn't keep her from being irradiated, but rather, detects the presence of radiation and attempts to mend the damage afterwards, in the event she irradiates herself.
Strawberry Princess	For Strawberry, transporting words is remarkably easy: just engulf them in handy pink bubbles, then use high-velocity Sparkle Flight to push them around. With the hole in the wall and Raphael's acrostic monstrosity, there's not even any difficulty in poaching the AND from the adjacent grasslands. With that acquired, she lines the words up just right in a nicely abandoned corner, and checks her wand for time. 03:12 , it notifies her- plenty generous. There's no way to slice these words in the way she wants with less than three lines. But using more than one shot would be wasteful. Strawberry lines it up as her wand shudders and whines under the building criticality, staring down the feathery-wing "iron sights" with one eye shut. A familiar spotlight of cherenkov-blue light emanates from the tip- and then kinks at a right angle, and another, and another, bending the path of the leaking radiation into a bizarre S-like pretzel. "Firing on low," Strawberry says by pure habit. "Three." Strange's peculiar barrier appears in front of her, and she nudges it with her foot to test its solidity. Her wand's shriek continues building as she glances back over her shoulder at (a copy of) him and flashes a smile. "Two..." "ONE!" For once, that last word almost isn't drowned out. A new star is born, a product of hideously energetic fusion, but its light doesn't turn the grass to ash; its noise rumbles in the bones, but doesn't entirely deafen. The finesse that she attained by sacrificing a bit of unearthly power is immediately evident: ___ AN\|D\| \| Y\|O\|U \| E\|L\|ITE\| \|W\|ATE\|R ----- The beam goes through four right angles, doubling back on itself twice, to neatly slice through the spaces between words and selectively ash letters. Though it comes back within a few feet of Strawberry on one of its curves, she's confident enough in her own abilities not to flinch.
Forte	> STRAWBERRY IS MAXIMUM The Words are immutable. They are not, however, uncarvable. The Words get sliced apart - the letters within getting seperated out into individual blocks, and then slammed back together - a feat that wouldn't be possible without the sheer power behind the action. WORLD The colors within swirl, before settling into a uniform-ish pink. This... seems like it should work? The question is, what do you do with it? (And you still have that dome to get into...)
Raphael Cousteau	Raphael Cousteau remains an Elite. The words are now hopefully within range. Inland Empire is /pulsing/ in his ear about the inevitable glorious cache to find. Letting the water turn to tree, then floating rock before him, he marches towards the dome. He will have its secrets.
Forte	The dome breaks into rocks and floats away as well. Inside, there's three things. Two Words, and an object MAP DONE And a map - a large piece of waterproofed paper that's giving off an aura of 'This is important'. (It is not literally giving off an aura, but you can tell its important.) It doesn't look... quite right. Like it's smudged. "Hey, why is it smudged?" calls Forte, over the intercom. "It... looks like the visual data didn't make it into the simulation," says one of the techs. "But it's... okay, this is going to sound weird, but the map still represents the information it contains? But you just can't get at it visually." "... Okay, can you... find some other way to get the info from the map?" asks Forte to the team. "However you end up doing it?"
Strawberry Princess	Strawberry floats over to where all the action is with her absolute abomination of a Word in tow, and elegantly floats down to perch on the edge of the dome. "The map... extracting information from it. When we were the grass, we could feel our roots, but... I don't think 'MAP IS YOU' would work. But..." <J-IC-Scene> Raphael Cousteau says, "Hey, the logical part of my brain just thought it might be a good time to remind everyone our words are: WATER, ROCK, TREE, GRASS, ELITE, YOU, FLOAT, MAP, DONE, WORLD, IS, NOT, NEAR, and AND. ...I don't think I missed any." <J-IC-Scene> Raphael Cousteau says, "Wait, right. 'CHAT', but that's probably completely irrelevant!" <J-IC-Scene> Reiuji and Rin \| Utsuho says, "It might give us map puns. That's useful, right?." "... If we made the map a person," she says, sounding out the words as if trying to determine if what she's saying makes sense, "it could help us. So let me try..." MAP IS ELITE
Forte	> STRAWBERRY IS CREATOR The map starts moving. It 'looks' - for lack of a better term - at each of the people present. <Greetings,> it projects into everyone's mind using the new psychic powers it bought at chargen. <I am going to fight you all in order to prove that goodness always triumphs over evil.> It starts powering up.
Hellwarming Trio	They've solved the puzzle! Maybe. There's still a giant jumble of words to work with, but now there's an actual map and some words to mess around with. Utsuho and Rin pore over the remaining word pile as well as the new words, letting out intrigued noises when Strawberry Princess uses MAP IS ELITE. Not that they actually understand right away, but they're trying. That leaves WORLD. <J-IC-Scene> Reiuji and Rin \| Rin says, "World is you. WORLD IS Y-" <J-IC-Scene> Reiuji and Rin \| Utsuho says, "NO." After a brief scuffle, Rin finally relents from trying to force the group into horrible motion sickness adventures, and they both stare at the map when it starts moving. UTsuho snorts lightly at its psychic message, then pushes together WORLD IS CHAT.
Strawberry Princess	While nobody's looking, translucent pink hands materialize out of thin air to grab the 'MAP' word and forcibly wrench it out of position in its sentence. The piece of inked paper, presumably, falls still and inanimate once more. "Goodnight, sweet prints," Strawberry murmurs softly.
Forte	> STRAWBERRY IS TERRIBLE MOTHER Farewell, Map. At least staff doesn't have to worry about handling the massive gripelist that people were about to send in about you.
Doctor Strange	<J-IC-Scene> Forte \| Map says, <For too long have maps been subject to the whims of cartography and navigation! I shall defeat you, for good always triumphs over evil, and then you shall be the one who is folded and stuffed into a glove box!> <J-IC-Scene> Forte \| World 736260 says, "Ow, you're all standing on my face." <J-IC-Scene> Strawberry Princess says, "Nobody even uses maps anymore! It's GPSes that are enslaved now." <J-IC-Scene> Forte \| Maps says, <Discarded like trash! What inmapanity!> <J-IC-Scene> Forte \| Map says, <Why would I do that when I could just beat you up and brag on the radio endlessly about it?> A lot is going on. Two brand new consciousnesses emerge. Fortunately, there is a Strange for each one of them. Both, in unison, levitate, at the sound of the world's complaint. "Sorry, world," they say. "Is that better?" One of the Stranges gently manipulates gravity so that the weight of the various Elites here isn't felt as much. "Map," says Present!Strange. "Map, Map, Map, Map. Trust me. That's not gonna make anything better." The word is snatched by Strawberry. Just as good, too, because apparently Raphael thinks he has a way to destroy this place, and figure out what happened to the world it's simulating. Strange does as is asked--but not before one of them disappears to complete the time loop he created. A NOT, two ROCKs, and two IS are copied and floated over to Raphael.
Raphael Cousteau	INLAND EMPIRE: IT IS TIME. IT IS TIME TO END THE WORLD. IT IS TIME TO DO THIS. > Okay, what do we do? INLAND EMPIRE: I have no idea. LOGIC: Okay. I've got it. Fine. It's on me. Get me two copies of... Strange gets the words. Raphael cracks his knuckles, and gets pushing. WORLD IS ROCK IS NOT ROCK. We're not doing the fancy colors. We don't need the fancy colors where we're going. Which is nowhere.
Forte	> RAPHAEL IS WIN WORLD IS ROCK IS NOT ROCK is assembled- - And then the 'ROCK' slides back out of the word. "Hey, that worked, and it erased everything including all of you, so good job - but thought it'd be easiest to just rewind back to pre-world destruction," says Forte. "You probably didn't see all of it since you were rocks," he adds. "Then not rocks. I... think that was how it went." "Just get the map if you can, then we're done here."
Forte	The simulation exit door appears nearby, with Forte holding a glass of water. (He can't come in or he'll start eating it.)
Hellwarming Trio	The world ends through being rocks, and then the world returns. The youkai can barely comprehend it the moment it happens, and it's over as soon as it does. They still need to get the map out. They bash their heads together, figuratively at first, then literally the next moment, and after a moment of reeling in pain... They got nothing. They just start slapping the word cubes, not even moving them, trying to get something to jar together in their minds. Rin squats on NEAR, and then Utsuho starts moving the cubes around while the kasha stares at them cluelessly. WATER NEAR ELITE IS MAP And then Utsuho heads for Forte at the door while staring at that cup expectantly.
Forte	"Wait, that's not going to-" Forte looks down at the filled-in map he's suddenly holding. "... to work." "..."
Hellwarming Trio	And so, Utsuho and Rin start hooting and hollering. It's kind of grating, but they're vibing hard. It takes a while longer for them to finally clear out of that simulation room, but they settle down (eventually) so they can instead beeline it for the sugary drinks and cold greasy pizza. Utsuho: "This means we're gonna get paid, right?" Rin: "Yeah! And we can have some more of this weird human food!" They'll worry about what's actually on the map some other time.
Priscilla	"Pray, not with 'you'." Priscilla manages again, upon seeing where the map thing is going. Her concern is so grave that she even un-anachronizes You a second time. "I wouldst certainly assumeth that being one and the same with the map wouldst reveal its information, but I wouldst also rather not." Map is Elite, lacking any further information, causes the map to become the quintessential template of eliteness, and begin powering up in 1080p. Priscilla stands dumbstruck enough that she can't actually decide whether or not to prepare to fight --which is a big deal, because she reacts with 'preemptive strike' to suspicious noises around 90 degree corners. When the map just stops being Elite seemingly on its own, though, Priscilla no longer has to make that decision, and only confusedly says "Well it wouldst seemeth good most certainly triumphs over . . . whatever that was." When the world ends pretty neatly, though, she has a few more things still weighing on her mind. "Whilst I am certainly greatly impressed with Lady Strawberry's ingenuity, and muchly interested in that ability to separate such insubstantial things and recombine their nature, I still cannot help but wonder." "Didst this world already containeth 'world' somewhere within it? A word that none were meant to lay hands upon? For if not, some tremendous bastardization of such logic --of is not is-- must hath been part of a far more gravely convoluted aim. It wouldst seemeth confirmed that ending this world purely by casual accident must hath been unlikely, if not impossible. So what then of the work to combine so many words at once, as to be able to cause it? What great plan? Or perhaps, for what reason wouldst one intendeth to end it on purpose?" "How I wouldst like to ask of the one involved."