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Priscilla     After a pedalo recovery button(?) had mysteriously appeared in a landlocked shopping mall of all places, where on earth it had actually appeared, and what possible importance it could have, had taken some searching. With Bismark heavily built around, and emphasizing, the four cardinal directions, at least there wasn't that much area to cover.

    With the south being the way to the other Zones, the north being the shopping mall, and the library being the center and crux of the world, there are only the east and west left. Attempting to go east results in being sound repelled by a barrier of obnoxious pink cubes of the 'someone couldn't be assed to think of a more believable obstacle' kind, with a handful of samey people outside talking about how safe the district is and how nobody who doesn't live there could get in (and how terribly frightening it is just to imagine it. To the west, is the sign that indicates an amusement park, though the people there seem to be cut off as the path sinks completely underwater, stranded on the city-side by the ocean of white plastic, gazing forlornly at the bare end of the walkway peeking up above the waves like an island, and consoling themselves with the fact that it's probably very unsafe anyways if it's been sealed off.

    This is where the pedalo is found, of course. The little duck-shaped pedal boat would logically appear somewhere with . . . liquid, to traverse. At least it isn't meat this time. Crossing the lake drops you off at a perfectly pepto pink island, the shore of which is a winding maze of soft rubber picket fences, interspersed with signs, all eventually leading up to a gate that, just as unimaginatively as the shopping mall, says 'PARK' on its big pink banner. There is a balloon randomly floating off the ground, its string stuck. The signs along the way say 'From here, maybe . . . 74 minutes' and 'From here, maybe . . . 39 minutes', but of course this is a falsehood. Nobody is in line. The dream of just walking through the gates of an amusement park is realized.

    The inside, as all inside/outside colour dichotomies here, is a deep, soothing blue, and once again takes on the aesthetic of a cardinal direction spoke, just like Bismark itself. A couple of pasty loiterers can be found inside, quite probably stranded by the lake outside, but seeming to not be particularly bothered, outside of their constant state of intense meekness and low-key anxiety. Once again, the south is the way out, and the east, west, and north lead somewhere else, marked by signs. Twin decorative pools of plastic on the north side somehow light up the room, with an additional warning sign, reading 'Danger: Do not approach the pools of plastic'. The man nearby says "Putting water in a room is a really crazy concept. We are definitely in a park" to the first person to look.

    To the east, the sign says: 'The Cruise of Happiness. Wander down a bed of roses in security and serenity.', but the nearby loiterer says "What a terribly frightening place . . . At least there are no phantoms to be found here" regardless. They seem to be *aware* of the threat, despite few Spectres showing up so far. To the west, it says: 'The Roller Coaster. Completely safe for the whole family!', but the man staring nervously at the door seems to have different thoughts. "Perhaps the room that lies beyond this door will cease to exist if I enter . . . And then I would fall endlessly into an abyss, which in itself does not even exist. What a terribly frightening thought! I should probably stay here . . ." The north says 'The Balloon Game. Attention: Due to loud noises, this attraction is not recommended for the faint hearted . . ." A man in the center of the room keeps turning around, saying "Choosing between three attractions is too difficult for me . . ."

    This definitely is an amusement park. Nobody seems to be having fun.
Thomas Alva Edison Then the man who is also a lion is there, having traveled across on the pedalo.  Edison looks at the 'amusement park' and frowns deeply.  This isn't a place of fun, this is a place of fun for people who don't know how to live!  This place seems to have some things right, but not others...with a sigh, he looks towards the three possible attractions.

"If the balloon game is considered the most dangerous attraction, then the other two are likely not very exciting at all.  Start there and just loop around I guess?" He suggests, having no other better ideas than this.  

Crossing his arms, he is already deciding on how to improve this place, jets of water, fountains...a person selling food that is delicious but bad for you...a CLOWN.  

With a sigh, he speaks, "It's like nobody actually saw a real amusement park before!"
Doctor Strange      Strange has decided to have a little fun with this place. In addition to his usual garb, he wears a name tag (the store-bought sticker kind) which has been matched to this world's preferred shade of pink. It denotes him, in similarly hued, capital permanent marker, as 'WIZARD.' It changes from this color to the deeper blue color depending on whether he's outside or inside.

     "Or maybe they did," says Strange to Edison. "And they really wanted to make fun of it. Hope we meet the god of this place soon--bet he's a riot." It's unclear whether he's being sarcastic or not. Either way, he seems to agree with Edison's idea that they start with the baloon game. Strange makes for that attraction, and looks for an attendant or someone who can otherwise start the game up, if it's not as simple as the 'shoot little target with water pistol' deal that he's expecting.
Aoko Aozaki     "You want to play this game by the RULES?" Aoko says, having followed (read: stalked) Strange to the attraction's stand. "Come on, be creative!"

    She makes finger-guns motions towards one of the unfilled balloons and sparkling blue beams of energy fire from them, with impossible accuracy, right for the balloon's opening.

    No, perhaps what's impossible is that unless the physics of filling a ballon work dramatically differently here, the balloon is actually filling up with... laser. It's probably starting to glow, too, from the fact it currently contains LASER. Somehow, it is neither melting nor bursting.

    "Come on Sorcerer Supreme, let's see some creativity! This place probably has some dumb rules anyway." It really probably does.
Yuuki Kuran Pedalo...

Is Pedalo. At least this time, Yuuki has the immense aid in pedalling (and it becomes a dorky 'contest' and their pedalo is potentially more like a speedboat pedalo through the plastic morass.

And then Yuuki, and her put-upon companion is delivered to the PARK. It's definitely one sad boy.

"Thomas! Doctor Strange, and Aoko too. Are you going to be playing the park games? That's good, good. Zero, come on!"

Yuuki drags Zero by the arm in only the way a shoujo going to the love cruise ride can drag a sadboy - it's very specific and irresistable, an unstoppable force. "We'll go check out the ~Cruise~."

She says it in such a way that flower patterns spontaneously come into existance around the word. A shining-eyed desire.
Zero Kiryu It's been a while since Zero was last here, but it should come as no surprise to anyone that he does so once again at Yuuki Kuran's elbow. A trend of showing up looking better and better than he ever did years ago continues-- his clothes are unwrinkled, he has a normal color to him, and he doesn't act like he's fighting a fever because he's not.

It's a good thing too, because otherwise all of this pedalling would actually have been a little bit onerous. As it is, Zero surveys the park a little dully, his gaze trailing from Edison, to Strange, to Aoko. That is, until the PARTY SPLIT.

"Ah...?"

The questioning noise that leaves Zero's lips is merely ordinary. Same as when they used to go into town with each other, years ago. It doesn't seem to bother him exactly, but... well. If they were going to be in a situation like this, he really would have preferred...

If it was not in bizarro land. There's no telling what this cruise is actually going to entail.

The only truly visible sign of his acquiescence is a deliberate effort to keep pace with Yuuki so as /not/ to be dragged.
Priscilla     Those expecting a balloon game wherein they fire water pistols at a target to fill one up will be both disappointed and perplexed. Going north brings them to a much smaller island in the middle of a much larger pool of plastic, where balloons have been arranged in a 'low-resolution' circle, starting with one, then a row of three, then five, then three, then one again, for a total of thirteen. Directly across from them, is a man inside a booth so thick and metal it almost looks like a little bunker. When they walk in, he hesitantly starts up "Play, play, play the Balloon Game!"

    "If . . . If you win, you get the grand prize. But . . . But if you lose, you might be sad. So . . . uh . . . be careful." he finishes off, more than slightly lamely. Apparently, it's been a while since anyone played. "So . . . Here are the rules. It's easy. When it's your turn, you can choose to pop one, two, or three balloons. When it's my turn, I'll do the same. The one who's left with the last balloon loses the game. So . . . if you want to play."

    Without actually leaving his booth at all, the one balloon at the far end pops of its own accord. "It's your turn." he says.

    Going to the east to the !love cruise leads you into a small blue waiting room with yet another pedalo, waiting in a river of plastic to be boarded. An employee stands blocking a small door off to the side, looking kind of bored and nervous, probably guarding a back entrance. Actually hopping on the pedalo will reveal that you don't really have to pedal it much. There are motors hidden under the 'water', barely visible as a little squareish shadow, which propel it forward quite a distance.

    The motors are rather inconsistent though. It's difficult, but not remotely impossible, to end up off the track, and having to pedal back on it. Being pushed around winding corridors of romantically lit pinkness, small islands of dubious usefulness appear along the way, with more incongruous balloons stuck to them for no reason. In a far off corner, an island has been tucked up against the wall, with a very large, very old-timey breaker switch is conspicuously placed.

    Back in the main hall, the Batter mostly just shrugs, and then goes for the west entrance, only to find the roller coaster blocked by CUBES. He stops in place, as if thinking, but then it seems he rarely ever acts on what he thinks for himself. *Someone* is thinking.
Doctor Strange      Strange nods at Yuuki, giving a slight shrug of his shoulders. "Might as well," he says, as Aoko fills up the balloon with lasers. His emerald eyes flick between Zero and Yuuki as the latter drags the former off towards the inevitable cruise attraction. "Have fun, you two. Don't do anything I'd do. Or do. I can't tell you how to live your lives."

     Pop!

     He turns, expecting Aoko to have popped one of the balloons. What he sees when he actually bothers to pay attention to his surroundings does indeed perplex him, though this is far from disappointing in his personal opinion.

     "Ah, don't worry about me," says the sorcerer with a dismissive wave of his hand to the attendant. "Losing's not so bad, once you get used to it. So..." says Strange, steepling his scarred fingers. His brow knits together, and he considers the rules of the game, formulating a strategy, taking into account the number of balloons, likely strategies the attendant might employ, and ways to tip the scales in his favor...

     "How long have you been in there? What happens if you have to go to the bathroom?" A NOTE appears at Aoko's feet, after a hushed 'PSST!'
Aoko Aozaki     "Heeeey, looking good Zero!" Aoko notes before the party separates, because that's called being nice and considerate!! She wonders if that means he ate the fruit or not. Or maybe something else. Something to grill him for info about later, when he's not being forced into a nice, romantic cruise.

    The actual rules of the balloon game now clear, Aoko frowns, because this is neither a balloon game nor a fun game. It's a math puzzle!

    It's the /worst kind of game/.

    In the most unsubtle of fashions, Aoko peers at the note and then gives Strange the equivalent 'lol I dunno' response, in stare form.

    Then a stage-whisper response of: "We just need to aim for... 5 left on his turn, right? Then no matter how many he picks, we leave him with one. So working up from that..."

    Well, thank god it's still less complex than magecraft. "We should pop three!" Go big or go home!
Yuuki Kuran Yuuki doesn't know that the awesome carnival game that Aoko, Strange, and Thomas are playing isn't a game at all, but a shitty deterministic game about math.

Everyone knows math is awful. Especially Yuuki.

Instead she settles in for a nice boat ride to get rabu-rabu with Zero on! It barely needs pedalo-ing! How romantic.

"You're doing better these days, Zero. It makes me really happy. The idea that things would continue to be bad forever and ever..." She sighs, leaning over to let a single slim finger dip into the room-temperature plastic off the side of the boat as pinkscapes pass the pair by. "But instead, it just... took a while. Actually, it didn't take that long at all. Maybe I should be more patient."

She turns, eyes wobbling and misty, an outpouring of some emotion stopped like a hose cranked just before bursting, and it's then that she---!

Notices the switch on the wall. "Oh! An obvious switch, that seems important."

Completely forgetting (or perhaps tactically avoiding) her Shoujo Moment in Progress, Yuuki gestures at the switch, and tugs it down with a barely-visible wave of force. "I bet it's for a secret puzzle."
Thomas Alva Edison Edison frowns at the 'game' itself.  'You might lose', of course, you might lose...that's how games are!  There are winners and losers, the risk of losing is what makes winning so great?  He sighs, man these people are getting worse and worse to relate to.  At first, he thought they were just fine chaps, but now something is definitely wrong beneath the hood...which might relate to the Spectres themselves.  

Crossing his arms, he looks towards Aoko and shrugs.  "Going big is an American tradition, if you don't go big then you don't win big!" Edison says with a nod, agreeing with her decision to pop three.  Anything less than that would be /UNAMERICAN/.  

"But really...you might lose?  What kinda warning is that?"
Zero Kiryu Zero makes an affirmative noise towards Aoko in passing, which may or may not actually be practically audible. He has, as of yet, not eaten the fruit. It is waiting for a crucial and relatively imminent moment. Right now he's just managing to do what we call 'taking care of yourself', which was until relatively recently mostly just not something he bothered to do.

Doctor Strange just gets a little look. He's not certain /what/ that man would do, although his entire exterior demeanor for the moment has hinted at mischief.

He winds up surveying the pedalo in the love cruise area with vague suspicion. This seems like a terrible 'ride' to him, and at least a /little/ bit defeating the point of what these things are supposed to be. The track underneath doesn't escape him though, so he assumes there's a little more to it than it appears. Which there is, but not a quarter as much as he would /like/ it to be to be involved with it at all.

Unfortunately, Zero isn't very well equipped to deal with the fact that Yuuki takes this entirely seriously. He looks at her, mixed feelings flashing through his mind. It /was/ pretty bad, all told. Sometimes he wonders if, he'd just held it in back then at the dormitories, it wouldn't have ever gotten quite so bad. But then, he can only imagine that Yuuki has thought the same thing about her reply.

"What? Hold o--"

Zero isn't really in the here and now when Yuuki decides to telekinetically flip a switch. Once upon a time, he could've put a stop to that /real/ quick. /That/ though, he can't do anything about. He sighs, reclining in the pedalo to await whatever that's going to cause. And thinking.

His mind goes back, at once, to that first soiree. It was a masquerade, which worked to their advantage. But...

Thinking about it now, considering how they had parted, they really had taken the first excuse to ignore it and do as they pleased.
Priscilla     Aoko pops three balloons, bringing the total down from twelve to nine. "Okay . . . my turn." almost whispers the employee behind the booth. POP! He pops just the one, somehow, even flinching slightly behind his counter. There are now eight left.

    Yuuki irresponsibly flips the big old-fashioned breaker on the wall as the pedalo glides by with the near-silent rippling of plastic. Just at a glimpse, she can see a piece of tape that calls it 'SWITCH PREVENTING ACCESS TO THE ROLLER COASTER', and another one below it 'DO NOT TOUCH'.

    The switch is set to ON.
    Yuuki flips it.
    The switch is now set to OFF.

    The pedalo boat eventually cruises to a halt back at the same hall they'd started at, completely anti-climactically, with nothing so offensively nerve-wracking as a single big red heart with flashy lightbulbs along the way. The bored and anxious-looking guy standing in the doorway off to the side at least half-heartedly wheezes "I hope you um . . . enjoyed the ride." How useless.

    Also, why is there a switch for such a backwards thing like that? Wouldn't a switch to just turn the roller coaster on and off be the sensible thing? Turn it off to disable it, turn it on to enable it.
Aoko Aozaki     "I don't know, maybe if we lose we have to have a longwinded argument with Dedan about something. Anything, really! Now that's punishment," Aoko surmises as to the potential meaning of 'you might lose'.

    And since Edison approves of going big:

    "Pop three more!"

    No thinking involved.

    She flips back around to face Edison and Strange again. "Isn't this place kind of sad, though? I mean there's barely any amusement! Honestly, there's barely any park. This is false advertisement!" So're about half of the things in this world.

    "I'm just expecting this guy to suddenly have his head pop off and try to maim us any minute now." Actually, speaking of popping heads off...

    "Where's the Batter, anyway?"
Thomas Alva Edison Edison nods at her decision to pop three more...really this was just too easy, and the timidness of the guy was going to be his own undoing.  Shaking his head, he turns towards Aoko when she mentions Dedan's argument at them for losing.  He frowns only slightly, "Yeah...probably not what I'd want to be subjected to."

"I'm not going to wish for that, it's a horrible way to go.  Or I imagine it is...it's not his fault the world was created this way...probably.' he says, with a shake of his head.  He's still trying to puzzle how this falls into the narrative.  

Then an important question.  He blinks and looks around.  "I... don't know?  It feels like I just got here myself..." Which is impossible, he was here for the last two parts, right?  Obviously.  
Doctor Strange      "I'd just fast forward us through it," says Strange with a characteristic wave-off towards Edison and Aoko both. Trust and believe he's not gonna sit through any lectures, especially over some damn baloons. And if it's one of those 'pick the right dialogue option' deals, he's got spells for /that/ too. His face undergoes a series of differently-flavored annoyed frowns as he plans for that possibility.

     "Y'know, Aoko, they have these little... wooden... triangle things at Cracker Barrel. If you can stand eating in a civil war dungeon, you'd probably be pretty good at that, too."
Priscilla     Aoko pops THREE again, going BIG and AMERICAN. This reduces the number of balloons from eight down to five, exactly as Strange's target predicates. "It's my turn again . . ." the employee almost whimpers, bursting three himself, flinching at each pop and leaving two left. "I . . . don't leave . . . What would I even do? I work at the amusement park . . . so . . . if I wasn't here, how would people play the Balloon Game?" he says. He's visibly sweating with only two balloons left, looking sickly and fevered. She may not be wrong.
Thomas Alva Edison Edison looks towards the man who looks like he's about to burst himself. He speaks calmly, and with some authority, "Hey don't sweat losing.  We had fun, and that is the important thing.  Good game." He says, with a smile, trying to coax the little guy away from turning into a spectre.  Hopefully.

Towards Strange, he nods, "Oh yes, I know what you are talking about.  Fun little game, nice little restaurant.  Though probably far too southern for my tastes.  I can say I am definitely more fond of the more modern restaurant's people have started."

There is a pause, "I mean, like a real restaurant, not these fast food places.   Fast food should be ashamed of itself."
Aoko Aozaki     Huh, two left.
    Poor guy.

    "Well, glad we have you to deal with any awful consequences for losing, then," she says to Strange, "Because!!"

    Aoko spins back to face the stand and the employee.
    "POP THREE MORE!"

    There's only two left, though!
    What's going to happen?
    Can there be MINUS ONE BALLOONS left?
    Sorry Edison, she has to know.

    Back to the lion man, though: "How can food be /too southern/? You're saying food can be TOO GOOD, that's not how it works!"
Yuuki Kuran 'Don't do what?' Yuuki doesn't ask, though her face reads entirely like that, like a cat being scolded and beig surprised that a cat could ever do anything wrong.

Because it can't. "But the switch was important." She mumbles, pointing a plastic-dripping finger at the little piece of tape. "See? It opens the roller coaster. Do you want to ride that next?"

The pedalo boat continues back to the start, and Yuuki hops up onto the dock, reaching out a hand to offer her steady ground back to Zero. "It's alright. We probably all did stupid things we regret, but if they're a secret between us, then if we move past them, it's the best parts of them happening and not happening. We learned somethig... but they don't hurt us any more. Right?"

"Come on, let's go ride the Roller Coaster now!"

Yuuki spins, her hair fanning out around her as she does, before giving the attendant a thumbs-up. "Thanks! It was fun! Good job."

With the genuine encouragement given out to the poor vibrating dude, she breezes past him to find the batter - and the ROLLER COASTER
Zero Kiryu "I...
    "... suppose."

Amusement parks have never been Zero's 'thing', but at the moment he isn't independently sick so as to make whatever effects the rides have on him 'actually just categorically terrible'. He hates to think about what it would have been like on a roller coaster back then. Like heat stroke combined with a horrible flu all at once, probably.

He takes Yuuki's hand -- he knows that she's stronger than he is, and has no qualms with this -- and steps up.

A thoughtful hum is his initial answer to Yuuki's question of hurts. It's not until she's done TWIRLING and directing their path that Zero actually chooses to voice his previous thoughts.

"I was just thinking," he says, "that even back then... we grabbed on to the first opportunity to pretend that nothing had gone so terribly wrong. Even if it was just for a little while."

"And no. That's not right."

"I said so before," Zero points out, "that if none of this had transpired and you were simply Yuuki Cross and I was simply Zero Kiryu, that we probably never would have met. That is not an exchange that I have even once wished to make."

He, too, heads towards the ROLLER COASTER.
Priscilla     "That's . . . That's not how it works." says the Balloon Game attendant. "There are only two balloons. You can't pop three. I . . . I don't know how to do that. You . . . You can't." he wheezes growing more and more stressed by the minute. "There's only two. You have to . . . You have to . . ." He seems barely aware of Thomas, fidgeting profusely under the counter.

    Yuuki and Zero move on from the shitty pedalo ride with the employee standing in front of the office none the wiser. To the west, they find a much bigger island, hemmed in by fences of that persistently babyproof kind, serving as a sort of waiting area filled with chairs. Numerous identical people are sat or stood around, but none seem to want to actually get on. One of them is anxiously staring at the obvious boarding gate, and says "This is the way to the old Roller Coaster . . . It closed down before it was even completed." and looks forlorn.

    The others sitting in the waiting chairs are completely useless. ="I'd rather look out there. This attraction seems too daredevilish to me." "It's . . . less . . . scary . . . like this . . ." "I'm afraid to get up . . ." "I feel like I'm going to vomit. That wouldn't be careful at all . . ." "I want to sit on that chair. I'm just waiting for him to finish whatever he's doing." Just the waiting in chairs is apparently already exciting enough, if not too exciting, without even boarding.

    Despite the roller coaster supposedly being closed down however, the Batter reaches some kind of decision, or else is hit with his 'divine inspiration', and proceeds on through, turning the path to the unenthused employee behind a booth bench. "Who are you? I thought the Roller Coaster had been closed down . . ." he practically yawns. "If you ride it, you have the right to get a photo." he adds, with lackluster excitement."

    Climbing to the top involves a long, long, long series of straight stairs, sort of ascending into the air in a way that should really have caused them to sag and break in the middle from the lack of struts or supports. *Arriving* at the top involves looking down an extremely steep ramp, that goes into precisely no scary loops or turns at all; it's just a straight, extremely vertical track. Bizarrely enough, there's a shitty-looking mannequin statue of . . . Zacharie, at the top. Mask and all. The warped frog-mouth smile looks more like a curly mustache on the pink facsimile. It's sitting right next to the coaster seats, facing the ride, as if at the front of the line and patiently waiting to board, propped up on one of those storefront stands designed to be lighter and more easily moved around for employees to change the displays.
Doctor Strange      "Okay, okay," says Strange, holding up two scarred, trembling palms towards the attendant in what's meant to be a calming gesture. "One balloon would be perfectly good, right guys?" The Sorcerer Supreme looks between Edison and Aoko. He mutters something under his breath about the attendant having a panic attack in his little bunker. In fact, that's probably a possibility.

     "Hey-- guy." He doesn't really know the attendant's name. "What happens if we win? Do you know? Totally okay if you don't. We're, uh... aaaall friends here."
Thomas Alva Edison Edison sighs, shaking his head at these shenanigans.  Holding his hands up he says firmly, "It's alright, she just misspoke.  She's very excitable...anyway, we'll just pop a single balloon, ok?" He says, with a calm and smiling lion-headed face.  

With a sigh, he does tense slightly, just in case this guy does turn into a spectre...but it doesn't look like many spectre's are here.  That doesn't mean there aren't any.
Aoko Aozaki     Aoko casually slides behind Edison, whose manly, buff muscles will be the perfect shield against an hypothetical and sudden shower of gore coming out of a headless neck.

    "You know, if Strange used his magic we could totally pop three right now, just saying."
Priscilla     "You . . . You win the grand prize. Like I said." the counter attendant says, sweating more nervously by the minute. "Here . . . This is what the grand prize is." he says, reaching under the bar, and producing . . . a neck tie. A plain black one. Exactly like what he's wearing. Exactly like what *everyone* is wearing. No matter what calming gestures and tones of voice used by the group though, they don't seem to reach him. They never seem to reach *anyone*. It's like the people in this Zone are utterly, psychologically capable of calming down. Like a mental illness.

    Before the attendant can do much of anything, the last balloon is popped, and he begins freaking out, just like Aoko had predicted. "I . . . I . . . I've lost . . ." he mutters, fast and fevered. "No . . . That's impossible . . . I have been cheating from the start . . . !" he continues, his voice raising to a shrill, emphatic yell; it's the first time any of these people have successfully raised their voice at all. "You cheated!!" he screams. "You bear me much ill will!!!" His voice rises to an unnatural octave well past soprano, becoming distorted and weird, as if artificially sped up to the point it sounds like buzzing more than speech. He wheezes out again, and it sounds like whining insects.

    His head explodes from the stress. Rather than sheer anxiety, however, it's terrified indignance that blows his stack, popping him in half like an overshaken soda bottle. Rather than the usual fountain of rank black gore however, what shoots out from beneath his starched white collar is a twisting, looping stream of fuzzy blackness (and gore) that flows through the air as if alive. Around where his head would be, an elaborate 'halo', not *entirely* dissimilar from the peculiar 'Add-Ons', forms out of pale white and grey, encircling the blackened stream, and then encircling it again with overlapping circles within itself, forcing the geyser through a mesh of halos within halos.

    He staggers out from behind the counter, jerking and spasmodic rather than 'fast zombie'. The black spray twists out of sight, and then comes back down as a rain of buzzing black flies, swarming the three of them in nipping, biting, burning, blackening pain. No, buzzing is the wrong word. Panicked wheezing. Breathless shrieking. Coughing, gasping, sickly hysteria. Most of the flies go straight for the head and throat, as if trying to take the your heads off as well for such a transgression.
Thomas Alva Edison Edison frowns, he knows that it's definitely coming NOW.  He frowns and starts to speak again, but by then it's already too late.  The transformation is grotesque, deforming...like a zombie he walks and it's disgusting.  He is thankful that he is a ghost, instead of flesh and blood.  Taking a breath, and then regretting it when the insects come, he covers his face and eyes, trying to be a shield for Aoko.

Mostly because it's the kind of man he is.  

He, however, steps forward and starts crackling electrical energy, aiming to become a large bug zapper for the group, trying to keep the attack checked, before retaliating with his own surge of electricity.  

"We probably need the batter here.." he frowns, sending another surge through the creature.  
Doctor Strange      The Sorcerer Supreme watches the whole display without moving or changing his facial expression. "I feel bad that you died, but, and this is important," he says as the flies begin to fly out of the man's head, "You admitted you were cheating the whole time, so..." He doesn't really have a counter argument past that. But he's not sorry they won. Fuck that guy.

     When Edison goes bug zapper, Strange goes scented candle. He begins weaving a counterspell, tracing energy into a square within a circle within a square within a circle. The assembly hums, and from it sprouts a roaring fire. This is set into the ground, and with gestures from one hand, Strange forms a sort of 'lid' over the fire from the ground beneath it, with holes interspersed throughout it.

     The fire is shoved outwards towards the source of the bugs, whereupon it spins around the zombie rapidly, creating a cloud of acrid smoke around him. They /do/ need the batter, so... maybe it's time to make the chant.

     Strange begins uttering the sacred words known by baseball fans across the world. "Swing, batta batta batta..."
Yuuki Kuran As the pair of Yuuki and Zero move across the park, there seems to be... something good? Bad? Neutral? Going on? Ah well, they're having fun.

"I don't think that's true. We both ended up at Chairman Cross' house. Because of..."

Her brother. "Fate."

Her voice rings with a sort of unnatural conviction. An ownership of things, of words, as she wipes her plastic-dipped finger into a handkerchief. "We would have met. Yuuki Cross was a pleasant dream, but you have to wake up from those. You can't live in them, not forever. And because of that... we certainly would have met."

She passes by the identical copypasta people to climb the stairs behind the Batter, reaching the top to find...

A statue of Zacharie? "Oh, this looks great! I've never ridden one. I hear they go fast. Let's ride it!"

Yuuki clambers in, checking the belts (if any) and plopping down.

"Oh, Batter, I think Thomas needs you downstairs for something. Maybe a Spectre?"
Aoko Aozaki     Aoko avoids ruining her shirt on this day.
    Thank you, large buff president man.

    Of course, she won't let him handle this alone. And she won't let Strange help him alone, either! But the magus does take the opportunity to maybe slack off a bit more than usual, what with having cover and two proven, powerful allies to handle the nasties.

    "Grid, set."

    A bright blue mess of circuitry appears on the ground, spreading outward from Aoko like one of those paper mazes you'd find under your plate at kiddy restaurants.

    Whenever the headless attendant trips one of the maze's walls, a blast of blue light tries to bar his way further (and also scorch him!). That should keep it from running amok too much until the Batter arrives!

    And neither Edison nor Strange have to worry about tripping the maze either.
Zero Kiryu "Probably a spectre." Zero agrees with Yuuki, towards the Batter. He passes on by with her, climbing into the car with a dubious glance towards the... mannequin? ... and buckling in (if necessary) next to Yuuki. He returns to their previous conversation in short order.

"Without those hurts," he says, "I would have grown up at home. Ichiru would have been unable to continue training to be a hunter, due to his frailty. Maybe he would have been preyed on eventually anyway. Maybe he wouldn't. I don't know. I would have become a hunter. Perhaps I would have attended Cross Academy, and perhaps not. The Chairman is a family friend, after all."

"Where things would have gone from there... I don't know. We probably weren't ever going to have peaceful lives, even if things went a little smoother."

"It's better not to hurt if you can," he says, "but I don't really regret most of the hurting that I've done, even when it still stings a little."
Priscilla     At the Roller Coaster, the Batter really seems to consider getting on, even when Zero and Yuuki tell him that he should probably get moving. It's odd. He doesn't really seem like the type to want to ride theme park attractions. After a moment's strange contemplation, he pushes the 'waiting' Zacharie mannequin from his space at the front of the line and into a seat right behind the two, seeming to not really know why it's important, or care about it, but doing so anyways. "Okay." is all he bothers to respond with, and then walks off back down the stairs.

    The rollercoaster hisses and drops its safety bars over Yuuki and Zero, then begins pistoning to life, chugging away like an old train more than a track ride. They slowly start accelerating, and then as acceleration does, it gets gradually faster and faster, until they're dropping the steep incline at quite a respectable clip, making them feel almost weightless in their seats and having their shoulders press up against the innerside of the bars. They go swooshing past the booth, and then slowly grind to a creaking halt at the end.

    The bored carney goes "Here is your photo." and plops one on the counter, though there seems to be nothing around to actually take one. He spares a glance down at the content, with the two slightly levitating in the seats, and then the incongruous Zacharie statue just blankly staring in the seat behind them, somehow held down and stoically in place. The ride jockey sounds briefly half-impressed, saying "Wow, you're lucky, you rode it with the owner . . ."

    Okay so Zacharie runs the shopping mall *and* owns the amusement park? What?

    The mess in the Balloon Game room is not going well. Thomas sends crackling electricity through the densely packed swarm of Murmuring Flies, incinerating a clump of them out of the air and littering the floor with scorched fly carcasses (are they really?) but the volume of them just seems infinite, crashing against him and nipping and chewing away at his spiritual body. Strange sends a wave of awful, wafting smoke, but without a head, the Burnt employee doesn't seem to even notice. The flies wobble and disperse slightly, and then make millions of tiny, asthmatic coughing sounds, viciously converging on him next, rather than being put to sleep. If he peers closely, they don't even seem to have legs and eyes. They're like cartoon dot flies, lucky to have wings.

    The Burnt stumbles through the magic barrier Aoko has erected, barely even trying to follow its contours. It spasms and writhes as it hits each wall, its body burning away in layers and oozing black, burnt oil and meat and coal and plastic smelling tar down its front, but its flesh squishes and molds back together like paper mache, even including his shirt and tie. It keeps coming and coming, blindly walking into pain and harm without a thought.

    The Batter arrives just as it approaches Aoko and extends its hands, pallid, sickly skin charred down to black and soot-smeared claws. He swings right over her head, blowing her hair aside with the wake of the bat, and cracks the thing in the collarbone, spurting bright red from its neck stump mingled with the black. It stumbles and gurgles, spitting flies every which way, but doesn't go down immediately. Its 'halo' flickers like a faulty light bulb, and then reestablishes itself. The reeling monsters slowly leans back forward, its spine audibly cracking, and then sets upon Aoko to simply drown her in its outpouring corruption, the crashing wave of flies and tar hitting Thomas and Strange as splash damage.
Thomas Alva Edison The swarm of flies bitting into his very spirit form was very disturbing, and also very painful.  Edison stumbles back, forced to a knee as the force of the infinite flies continues to swarm and damage, until he forces himself back to his feet.  Luckily, with the arrival of the Batter, and Aoko's barrier, things are looking better.  

However, the thing just keeps coming.  This is extremely horrifying, but he can't stop just because horrible abominations are trying to kill him and his allies.  America does not back down from abominations, and he is the embodiment for the moment.  

Then, with a sudden roar, he pushes forward trying to brace against the swarm of lies aimed for Aoko and fires a massive beam from his chest that is the colors of RED, WHITE, AND BLUE.  Trying to burn down the flies and the Burnt with the power of freedom, justice, the American way, and a massive bug zapper.  
Aoko Aozaki     The Batter's appearance is pretty good news right about now! Not because she's not sure they can kill that thing, but because it seemed even Yuuki and Zero, Hunters, couldn't kill them in a way that satisfied the Batter's zealous mission.

    Whatever it really was.

    The moment he takes to the front, Aoko dives back, and just as she's about to be swallowed in awful blackness and flies, Edison steps in with an AMERICAN BEAM, which means she only gets grazed by the... whatever it is that's coming out of that Burnt's neck.

    Blooddarknessfliesgore.

    Let's go with that.

    "Cutting it a bit close there, Batter! Sorry about the mess, we were too awesome at the balloon game and he snapped!"

    It's a way to look at it.

    Aoko finally pulls her hands out of her pockets, gathering a tiny sun in one of her palms and hurling it into Edison's beam. It explodes into a brilliant blue solar flare, adding to the destruction.
Doctor Strange      Strange coughs and sputters in that 'oh god I just swallowed a bug' kind of way. He waves his hands, not in a sorcerous way, but in a 'fuck off you awful little Satans' kind of way. His hands, throat, and face are covered in red welts from the flies.

     It looks like he's just gonna be stuck trying to get them off of him, until another Strange appears in a flash of green light, covered in welts. "No," says Future!Strange to the Batter, conjuring up a thick pillar of earth from the ground, "That's literally what happened. I could've cheated like, a /thousand/ times, but I didn't, because I felt bad for the guy." Present!Strange gives his future self an incredulous 'are you really making small talk while I'm choking on a thousand shitty bugs' look. The pillar blossoms out into an intricately crafted lotus flower.

     "Then," says Future!Strange, turning the flower on its side so that the center faces outwards, towards his past self, "He went bugshit, because we won, and said /he/ cheated. I feel bad that his head exploded, but he was really being a dick."

     "I'M--"

     "Dying over here, I know," says Future!Strange, making rapid circles with his hand. The petals of the flower spin like a fan, increasing in speed until they create a current of wind, attemping to just blow the flies out of his face.

     Present!Strange moves the fire so that it's in the flies' path, then removes the lid and amplifies the flames with a two-handed, lifting gesture creating a towering inferno that will hopefully burn the little shits away. He hopes.
Priscilla     The more Strange hacks and wheezes, the more the flies seem to directly target his mouth, trying to force their way down his throat in a solid stream of horrid itching buzzing wings, as if realizing that asphyxiating him will be quicker than shredding his flesh bit by bit. It's only when the big giant magical stone fan appears and starts blowing them back with a powerful wind tunnel effect that things start going properly in their favour.

    A column of scorching fire appears to be roughly effective, killing flies exactly how bugs tend to crisp up and drop out of the air when exposed to extreme heat. The AMERICA BEAM obliterates a swathe more when Edison has the chance to aim down the length of the twisting pillar, where they all gush out in a dense line before dispersing. Aoko hurling her magical bomb into the middle of it ends up disintegrating the loops of flies that the beam goes between, neatly blowing up the swarm in all locations between the three of them. The batter assesses the Burnt with a critical eye and a floral flash.

Valzong-Burnt x1
Resident of Bismark with inappropriate manners.
No weakness/resistance.


    "I see." says the Batter, ostensibly to Aoko. The Add-Ons fly out from behind him while the swarm is completely destroyed, before the Burnt can vomit out more. The 'Alpha' Add-On radiates a long string of luminous numbers that convert into a second string, which pierces into the Burnt and erupts in burning white light. The 'Omega' Add-On warps something around the Burnt, blurring its form as if by photo manipulation, destabilizing its solidity. The batter takes aim, and the odd targeting reticle takes its place. He swings for the stands, the classical wooden crack of bat on ball plays, and pure white sparks explode from the Burnt's torso. Blood violently splashes across the field of popped balloons. The Burnt collapses.

    NECK TIE x 1 was obtained!
Thomas Alva Edison Edison coughs for a solid minute after the fight was over, coughing up a few more bugs.  Ugh...that was nasty and awful and he never wants to experience that again.  Ever.  

However, they acquire a necktie.  Well...that's... a thing.  They had to beat a man at a game he was cheating at, and then kill him...for a necktie.  He wants to say people have died for less, but well...they actually probably have.

"Thanks," he coughs towards the Batter.  

"Is there anything else that wasn't checked out here?" he asks the Batter, who was out there while they spent all day in the balloon room.
Yuuki Kuran The rollercoaster is rather fun, in a simple, abrupt way that 'going very fast' gives a rush of endorphins and the sudden sensation of flying.

It's not the fastest Yuuki's ever gone, but it's pleasant in the same way cruising down a summertime highway with the top down can be. Refreshing in a way flight isn't.

At the end of it, Yuuki accepts the picture. "Oh. I'll have to try and remember to compliment him on being a beacon of normalcy." She agrees with the attendant, taking the PICTURE and smiling kindly in the way you would smile kindly at a retail clerk. Emptily, but with a flavor of genuine that cannot be called sarcastic or untrue.

As they walk back to the center of the park, Yuuki draws in a slow breath. "And the Hunter Zero would meet a sad-looking pureblood princess at a soiree or other event you were assigned to, being latched upon by the countless empty syncophants at court, and perhaps you would wonder why she looks so sad."

A little smirk. "Probably not, though. I've never seen another pureblood without a sad, distant look etched into their face. The far-off me I'm not would probably be no different than the me of now."

Her eyes fall, to look at her feet as she reaches out take Zero's hand in hers, lancing her fingers between his. "Those parties are /so/ boring." She asides, before moving towards the flashy fight going on at Balloons.

"Hello? Is this still balloons? Did you win?"
"... Did you lose?"

"Oh, Batter, if you want the photo, it was pretty fun." Yuuki holds out the PHOTO (YOU) WEREN'T IN to the Batter. It has Yuuki looking lightly jazzed, Zero looking like Zero, and Zacharie looking like a mannequin.
Aoko Aozaki     RIP, cheating man.

    Aoko moves towards Strange, offering him a hand up if he wants it. "It's nice to see even a Magicman Supreme can have trouble with and hate bugs, ahah!"

    A look towards Yuuki. "We did! Our prize was an awful zombieman. Batter saved us. Everything's dandy!" She looks at the photo, then towards Zero. "I didn't picture you as the amusement park kind of guy, not gonna lie. But then I guess this place is pretty empty, so it's not the same kind of experience at all. Not that I blame you, I have horrible luck with them myself!"

    Last two times involved fighting a moon and then entirely too many undead, so, you know.
Doctor Strange      When Present!Strange is no longer choking to death, his future self vanishes, leaving him on all fours and dry-heaving. He is absolutely miserable. He is miserable, but... someone on the radio just gave him the opportunity to make a Reference, and he's going to take it even if he's dying, because he might be alone in his forties, but by God, he knows pop culture.

<X-Paladins-Chatter> [4] Lilian Rook says, "Don't you have a court martial board? Or like, a commissar or something?"

<X-Paladins-Chatter> [4] Doctor Strange coughing like an asthmatic, "He's in town..." Hack. "God, I think one flew into my mouth..."

     One did indeed. A middle aged man in a cape with a pink nametag that reads 'WIZARD' is currently on all fours, coughing like someone just bug-bombed him. Technically, someone did. He waves Aoko's hand off and indiscreetly wipes spit from his mouth with the sleeve of his robe, getting back to his feet. He sniffs, clapping his hands. "So! Who wants souvenirs?"
Zero Kiryu Zero, for his part, just looks... comfortably content. It's probably as good as you're going to get from him, even if this were a real amusement park and not some horrible fascimile sprouted from whatever or whoever created this place.

He glances at the picture, and then back towards the mannequin in the cart. What's the point in that, he wonders?

"If..." His mind's eye drifts inexorably towards a night long ago, when his mentor lost an eye to a nurse who had succumbed to the condition of a Level E, "you met the person that I was, then I would probably have wondered what was wrong. And I might have asked."

It probably would have cost him something, in the end. He's not certain what.

When Yuuki turns her gaze downwards, Zero's attention rises. He supposes that he hasn't made it easy. Fair is fair, then. He meets her hand halfway, hoping to -- in a very small way -- reduce some of the awkwardness he suspects that averted gaze implies.

He is characteristically contemplative by the time they reach the game area, which probably makes the whole thing /look/ a lot more awkward than it actually is from the outside. Zero lifts his head slightly, violet eyes settling on Aoko.

Was he? Wasn't he?

"It's not that," he decides, "it just would have been a bad idea, even if I was feeling well enough to enjoy it at all."

Then, Strange catches his attention. He doesn't say anything, but he can't hide the are-you-fucking-kidding-me look. This place is horrible, he can't imagine a decent souvenir to take away from it.
Yuuki Kuran Yuuki's eyes light up. "Yes, absolutely, let's get a souvenier."

They really are opposite, aren't they?
Priscilla     "I doubt it." says the Batter. "This amusement park is a pale imitation. Nothing goes on here." to the question of there'd be something they had somehow missed. He glances at the prize, and actually takes on a dubious inflection, asking ". . . The grand prize was a neck tie?"

    When people return to the central room though, they find the crowd of terminally nervous loiterers suddenly in an absolute uproar. Pale, square-headed men are running around in circles or back and forth, screaming at the top of their lungs in uncontrollable panic.

"Aaaah! Aaaah! Spectres in the park! Panic!"
"I'm too scared! I'm too damn scared!"
"I knew we should have closed this place! It is far too dangerous! Far too much!"
"Aaaah! I cannot get through this wall! The ghosts will eat me!"

    hey don't seem to be aware it's already too late to panic. Overstimulated, they running around screaming obliviously, unwilling to enter any of the ride rooms, and unable to figure out the way out. At least none of them have gone Burnt, but . . .

    It's probably not a wise idea to stick around. Unless they really want to go pester someone who isn't freaking the fuck out.