Scene #8121: PNL: Enter, Cop

Owner	Pose
Stanley Padgett	It is a pretty normal night at Southcourt Mall. That is, despite the fact that someone killed themselves over the weekend, there was a hazmat team on the scene, that rude fog rolled in again this morning, and now there are more cops than usual milling around the place. At least that's kept the riffraff out of the mall, but then the shop owners are going to start complaining about the police scaring off customers, and... well, that's politics. The political angle of 'protect the mall' is mostly lost on Stanley, who has been loitering around the place for the afternoon. It's Indigenous People's Day, and a federal holiday, so school's out, and so he, along with plenty of other of The Youth had little to do. The young man with his garish yellow hair is parked on the edge of the atrium where the lady fell and died and was turbomurdered by Weird Reversal Shit. He's got his phone out, and is tap tap tapping away at the Reversal, all while keeping a close eye on the Mall Cops. None of them have gotten too interested in Stanley, and he's got a 6th Sense on that sort of thing...
Caelan Stuart	If only anyone could actually agree on what they're spending all this effort to protect the mall /from/, that would be great. Someone killed themselves here over the weekend, the second spontaneous and unexplained suicide event in Lampport in under a week. Of course, 'suicide' was the easy explanation, the one that everyone settled on when nobody could figure out what the hell a sinus cavity full of necrotized tissue was doing in a fresh corpse's skull. That kind of thing seems to suggest 'horrible flesh-eating bacteria,' but other than the usual suspects, the biohazard tests came back basically negative. So was it poison? Probably not. Toxicology, also negative. One thing's for sure, though. A woman was killed here, even if nobody else wants to admit it. It's a familiar story. Too familiar. And it's not one that a certain police officer can just... leave alone. Caelan Stuart has had a rough time of things. He looks like he's had a rough time of things. Hands tucked into his coat, the officer makes his way to that self-same railing from which that woman fell, peering with exhausted but utterly piercing eyes at the empty air through which she fell. He does not ping as A Threat to Stanley. Not yet. He's too busy trying to recreate the moment of another human being's death in his mind to do that just yet. After all, he's Just Another Kid, isn't he...?
Stanley Padgett	No, no one has managed to connect the weird theater kid with the wildly offbrand hair to any of the three events he's been involved in yet. Yet. That said, Stanley knows something is up. He knows that something or someone is trying to geek people, maybe using the Reversal and he knows that someone is here at the Mall, doing things. Which is why he's trying to time things out. His head is on a swivel, he's got the 'are people watching me' thing going on, he's trying damn hard to not be noticed, as he gets up from his spot at the edge of the atrium, wanders over towards one of the "FREE WIFI SPONSORED BY THINKR.COM" booths, the kitschy ones that look like old time-y phone booths... and then slides out his phone. And then in the next instant, there's a horribly jagged digital tearing, on this side of reality, and he's gone into The Reversal.
Caelan Stuart	'Weird theater kid with the wildly offbrand hair' describes like, upwards of fifty percent of all theater kids. Still, it's obvious to most cops when there's a kid who looks like he might be Up To Some Shit. The swiveling head, the always-looking-over-the-shoulder. It may be as innocuous as a shoplift in progress, but there are never coincidences in this town, and someone looking suspicious here, /now/, is grounds for at least some interest. Caelan's gaze drifts towards Stanley just as he ducks behind the free WIFI booth... And rips a hole in reality. Caelan staggers at the... sight? The sensation? "What...?" He mutters, moving with practiced This Is Not An Emergency haste toward the spot Stanley had briefly occupied a moment ago. Immediately, his brain begins to buzz. With a grunt, he rubs at his forehead, eyes fixed on that... that /gap/ hanging in space... That... can't be real, can it? Or... could it...?
Stanley Padgett	The Third Eye doesn't lie. It can't lie. It can't keep secrets from you no matter how much you want it to, can it? As Caelan rounds that corner, there's a shimmer in the aether around the Wifi Booth, and inside the booth, glowing in that Mystic Knowledge that Caelan knows is Truth... is a glimmering QR code just waiting for him to scan it with his phone. Doing so... will pull up a copy of The Reversal. You know, that game his daughter plays all the time. And a Handy Dandy EULA to accept to find out more and Get Started Playing The Reversal.
Stanley Padgett	This version says The User Accepts All Rights And Responsibilities as a user of this Application. And goes on to say that NovaCorp and its subsidiaries are not to be held liable for any injuries or other damages received by taking part in The Game.
Caelan Stuart	The Third Eye cannot lie. Even if he really wishes it could. Even if the sight-searing, brain-buzzing sight of other digs into the backs of his eyeballs like jagged scoops to the untrained mind. Caelan grunts at the sight, but his gaze does not turn away. And he sees... something. A QR code. Everyone knows what those are, even fuddy duddy cops. It's floating there, glimmering like an ancient, runic glyph, hanging in the air suspended by the very fabric of reality. It's an undeniable sight. His heart throbs in his chest, hammering blood against his eardrums. His brain feels as though it's about to burst from his skull, but somehow he finds the wherewithal to scan the code with his phone-- The Reversal...? Alice plays that, doesn't she? It was a game. Just a game. But... Why is it /here/? With another grimacing growl, he fingers the 'accept' button, but his gaze hovers over the EULA for just long enough to read a fraction of the line. 'NovaCorp.' With a grunt, he presses the button. And things... happen.
Stanley Padgett	The code is scanned. The Contract is accepted. Caelan's body is suddenly slammed with horizontal vertigo as everything goes sliding sideways. And then he is no longer in The Real. This is now a world of smoke and mirrors. Neon and Darkness. What was the pleasing, highly marketable curves and sleek marble and brass of Southcourt Mall is a towering Megastructure that sits over the top of Caelan like some great obscene monument to capitalism. Garish signs in languages he can't understand flash and flicker, with digital tearing raining down on him from far above. All around him, whispy golems of xenon and neon mill about, silently swishing from day to day. And in the middle of the great atrium of the Megastructure, stands that same weird kid, his phone out, looking up at the unending static haze of the sky.
Caelan Stuart	There are stories- fables of those who have been spirited away, stolen by the fair folk into their bizarre demenses. Caelan knows them. He was told them as a child. And yet, the search for Truth demanded that he throw caution to the wind. And so he is drawn out of what is real, the only world he has ever known, and thrown into its underside-- its... Reversal. Caelan staggers as the Southcourt Mall is replaced by the profane cathedral of expense and expenditure. Here are worshipped the twin gods of Greed and Fear, whose all-encompassing will rains down in neon streamers. He rubs at his face, as if to try and scrub the image from his mind. And yet... They do not. ...But there is yet something here who is unchanged from the Real. Vertigo and nausea waltzing between his gut and inner ear, Caelan staggers towards Stanley, his eyes fixed on the one solid point of sanity in all this madness. "You..." Caelan manages, steadying himself on a nearby pillar. "What... /is/ this place? What did you /do?/" A human, here in the Reversal...!?
Stanley Padgett	Those ghostly whisps of color don't seem to react as Caelan slips through them, but he can get a feeling of... the same sort of sensation you get nudging up against someone in a crowd. But it's the shout that reverberates through the building, the environment. The noise and force ripples at the aether, and a crowd of ghosts flickers away from Caelan, leaving the path between him and Stanley blessedly clear... And it's now that Stanley's own senses ping, a little too late, and he startles, turning to look at the officer, nearly dropping his brand new phone in its heavy duty case. "Ahhh! Wh-what? What are YOU doing here?" There's a look of fear in the boy's eyes, though not "I've been caught." Caelan knows that fear, has seen that fear in the eyes of many arrests, many suspects. This is "Am I Going To Have To Fight You?"
Caelan Stuart	The homunculi of neon haze disperse like fog in the morning sun, leaving Caelan standing (okay, leaning) alone, an anchor of reality in unreality. Even through the all-consuming ache pounding against his nascent senses, he can read someone like Stanley like a book-- especially since he's a little too spooked to bother even hiding his emotions right now. That's fear. And not the 'I'm about to book it' kind of fear. It's the 'Fight or Flight' kind of fear. The sort of thing that gets a cop shot if handled improperly. Caelan grunts, straightening up against the pillar as the world swims all around him, vertigo sloshing this way and that. "I'm... I followed you, could ask you the same," Caelan explains, rubbing at his eyes, "Sorry, can't-- feels like my insides are tryin' to become my outsides. What... Is this place? Are you some-- some kind of 'multiverse' type?" He doesn't ping as /hostile/ at least. Though that may be because he's too busy fighting to keep his lunch down to actually fight a teenager.
Stanley Padgett	Stanley blinks a bit at that, and there's a pretty obvious list of things that flicker through his head. >help cop? >fight cop? It would seem that he picks 'Help Cop', as his hand slides away from his hip, which now that Caelan can get a better look, Stanley's got his fencing foil. "Ah crap, hold on." The teenager hustles over to assist the Adult, who is obviously in distress. "Hold on, I got..." He fishes around in his pockets, and pulls out a pack of chewing gum. "Just work your ears a bit, it helped me my first time in here too." A hand shoves through that yellow hair, a Stanley walks a circle around Caelan in inspection. "...You're... oh jeez, another actual person in here. And no, I'm not from offworld. I'm Stanley." He shuffles around in front of the officer, and holds out his hand. "Welcome to The Reversal. The actual one, not the one in the game."
Caelan Stuart	The kid's carrying a /sword?/ Caelan's brow works as if he's trying to decide whether he should do something about an adolescent carrying around an actual weapon, before deciding that it's PROBABLY a sports thing. That may be because his brain is too busy being overwhelmed by /everything/ to make that kind of judgment call on the only actual person he can see in this strange, alien place. "Stanley," he repeats, gratefully receiving (and chewing) on the stick of gum. The chewing, at least, helps to settle his inner ear-- and the minty flavor oozing out of the wad of gum keeps his stomach in check. "...I appreciate it. This is... The Reversal...?" Hand extended. Hand is shaken. Good cop? Probably! He's not making any arrests yet!! Also that is definitely a gun underneath his coat, there. Yep. "...My daughter plays that game. You're saying that she's been exposed to this the whole time...?" Not quite, or maybe...? The officer shakes his head, dislodging the neon cobwebs, "...Caelan Stuart, Lampport PD. What can you tell me about this place, Stanley?"
Stanley Padgett	Stanley blinks, and looks around. "...unless she's ended up here and not told you about it, no." A hand shoves its way through that yellow hair, which blends into the scenery around here. "This is uhhhh, the other side of Lampport. The collective unconscious. The actual seedy underbelly of the Real." He turns to look up at the digital streamers, and then up at a horrible dark red stain about 20 feet up in the air. "And I came here trying to sort out what the crap happened over the weekend." Hands go wide, and he grumbles. "But I didn't want to go too deep in here because usually there's beasties in the corners. Shadows in the dark. But something offed a lady on the real side from this side, and I just... I'm not sure if I want to toss down with something like that just now."
Caelan Stuart	"...Well, I hope not," Caelan mutters, suddenly gaining another entirely new reason to worry about his daughter's well-being. Being a single father is hard enough, but now in addition to chasing off potential suitors, he's got /double/ the city to police? But then Stanley says... a thing. /Several/ things, actually. But the fact that this is somehow a world forged of the depths of the human psyche is inexplicably low on the totem pole of Things Caelan Picks Up On. No. He's much more worried about the fact that someone /murdered/ a woman using this place. "You... You're saying you know how she died...?" Caelan reaches out, taking the boy firmly (but not /forcefully/) by the shoulders. "Tell me everything, Stanley. What is happening here?"
Stanley Padgett	"Oh." Stanley takes a BREATH. "Right uh..." He scratches at his hair a moment, and then sort of just sits cross legged on the ground, laying his foil in his lap. "...So. Uh, where do I start? Okay. SO. I'm not sure when this started but this place? He waves at the Reversal at large. This has been here a while, as far as I can tell. Only people haven't been able to get in maybe? All I know is that something is letting people make Wishes in Lampport. And it's fucking with people's lives." He coughs. "M-messing with people's lives, sorry. Uh." He takes a piece of gum himself, and chews. "So when /I/ got here, I got pulled into the Reversal at school. That's Silver Springs. And uh..." Stanley's brain ticks. Forte says, "If the cops find something, you may be tempted to deny everything. This is wrong. You shut up and stay shut up." A blink... "...am I being detained?" ...Stanley.
Charlotte Newman	Some of the gaseous mannequins milling about suddenly scatter from a particular point. Why they do this becomes clear when video artifacts tear a hole through realities. Amidst the glitchy blocks, a blonde teenage girl sort of... rotates into position within the Reversal. The tearing ceases and the glitchy artifacts disperse while she looks down at her phone. After a moment, Charlotte turns around, eyes closed as she tucks her phone into her bag, "Sorry I'm late, Stanley. I was going to take a shortcut but the Reversal near my house is all choked up with that fluorescent fog again--" It's at this point her eyes open. Immediately, Charlotte stops, mid-step. A heartbeat later, she places that extended foot down and draws the other up to a more normal standing posture, staring at the adult. She doesn't have the Sixth Sense For Cops that Stanley does-- but he is accosting the kid. Her hand goes for the baseball bat dangling off her purse's shoulder strap, "Who's your friend?"
Caelan Stuart	All I know is that something is letting people make Wishes in Lampport. And it's fucking with people's lives. Caelan exhales slowly, the cool taste of mint chilling his throat as he draws in a long, exhausted breath. He fixes Stanley with a gaze that could freeze an inferno or carve a canyon through a glacier. It's the look of a man for whom all of the cogs have finally slipped into place-- a gaze that has affixed on Truth and can never let it go. "I believe you," he says, releasing his grip. "No. I don't know Multiverse law, but around here, I can't arrest someone just for loitering in some kind of..." Caelan gestures, "Neon hellvoid. I don't know how I'm even going to explain this to the guys back at the office." Beat. Someone... /else/ shows up. Caelan's hands fall into his pockets. He looks at Charlotte, then back at Stanley, then back at Charlotte. "Alright. Now I'm not so sure Alice isn't wandering around in here somewhere. I assume it isn't just kids who can get in here to muck around?" "And what did you mean, exactly, by 'Wishes?' Genie wishes? That kind of thing?"
Stanley Padgett	Stanley lets out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding, and then murmurs. "...Hi Charlotte, this is /Officer/ Caelan." A shuffle on the ground, an inch or so closer to his friend. "...and he followed me in here. And I think this is his first time. I'm not sure you can fake the reaction he had." He taps at his ear. "...He got the vertigo real bad." The yellow haired boy rises to his feet, and murmurs. "...Again, she'd have to be really crafty to hide this from you. Charlotte and I can only get away with it cause our parents aren't around." "RIght, so I was going to explain. There's uh... two or three wishes we know of. When I got here, Dr. Hunnicutt from Silver Springs had made a Wish, and so did one of our classmates. I know you know about all those kids that got found at school. I'm not sure if you knew about the time loop we were all having for a few weeks."
Charlotte Newman	"Vertigo?" Charlotte glances at Stanley in confusion. One could almost think this is the first time she's hearing about side effects from entering the Reversal. But after a moment, she nods once, "--Right." She releases her bat, leaving it to dangle after determining this wretched adult is not here to menace herself or her friend. Her hands thus freed, the girl rears up to her wholly unimpressive height and folds her arms, doing her best to exhude Rich Girl Confidence, "I can assure you I haven't seen anyone by that name running about here. I can't imagine how hard the White Rabbit would've lost his mind if there was someone named Alice there." Considering how hard the White Rabbit lost his mind as things stood, her supposition must be pretty severe. She glances at Stanley again as he goes into detail about the wishes he's observed, nodding along. Her eyes close, a hand raising in a 'matter of fact' sort of gesture, "Who or whatever it is, it seems to be carelessly granting half-hearted wishes made by people in the heat of the moment. Whatever stupid thought crosses their mind has a risk of becoming reality." Lowering that hand, Charlotte's forced confidence cracks a bit with puzzlement, "And I guess we...kind of...fix it?"
Caelan Stuart	Caelan stares for a long moment at the neon nightmare swirling all around him. He rolls his thumb over his knuckles, popping them in sequence. "Time loop...? No, I wasn't aware. Sorry, this whole idea of people being able to mess with reality with just a wish..." Caelan sighs. It's a breath heavy with months of anxiety and stress. "...I thought I was really going crazy. Then again, all things considered, maybe I have...?" Nobody would ever believe him if he told them. Not unless he could show them this place for himself. But even then... "'...Carelessly granting half-hearted wishes,' huh?" Officer Stuart rubs at his face. "Hah. And ones that are not so half-hearted, surely. If a half-hearted wish could break time, what could a wish made with /purpose/ and /focus/ do...?" But the real takeaway, the important thing-- is what Charlotte says at the end. "...'Fix it?' You can 'fix' these wishes? Make it so they'd never happened...?"
Stanley Padgett	"...yeah, fix." Stanley chews on his gum and sighs. "Somehow, making a wish on that side messes up this side, and then you make like a copy of yourself over here. Your Shadow." The young man swishes his hands through a passing mist person. "But like... These are what most people's Shadows look like. Just, a mist of the emotions they hide from people in reality. But making a Wish somehow makes you really nasty over here. It messes with the Reversal." Stan nods. "And if it gets really bad, your Shadow turns into a nasty monster. Dr. Hunnicutt turned into a weird version of Attilla the Hun, and our friend Chet turned into the White Rabbit from Wonderland. And when we defeated them, their wish got undone." The boy looks up at the ugly wisp of blood hanging up in the air like some fetid cloud. "...I'm not sure we can fix people who died because of a Wish, though."
Charlotte Newman	Charlotte snaps back into Rich Girl Mode when she realizes she might have volunteered too much to An Actual Cop, though the fierce expression is more about her being mad at herself than anything else. Lifting her arms, she folds them again, taking a semi-side-on position and just eyeing Caelan with one eye closed, "That's about the sum of it. We find the Tyrant and beat it, and we break the wish." That eye closes, "It's not easy. I kind of feel like we got off easy with Chet. Even he wanted his wish broken in the end. I think wording it badly makes it twist up in strange ways." Glancing upward, a thoughtful expression touches her face, "Isn't there something like that... Uh, monkey paw, I think." Head shaking, she returns her gaze to Caelan, "I haven't met any Tyrant formed from a purposeful wish like that." -- Which is actually true, though she's certain she knows at least one victim of such.
Caelan Stuart	Caelan's gaze fixes on the bloodstain. There's a melancholy cast over his features, but also a spark of hope-- futile hope, perhaps, but hope nonetheless. "...Is that so? Mmn... But are you sure they're dying because of a wish...? If someone is using this place as a murder weapon, then... maybe they already made the wish. Maybe the thing they wished for was the power to kill...?" And if so, then undoing the wish wouldn't undo the death. But if someone /wished/ someone else dead, what then...? "I figure if someone made a purposeful wish, they probably know enough about how this place works to hide themselves well in it," Caelan muses. He's... apparently thought about this sort of thing a lot. Maybe it's just Cop Instincts? "Well. Damn. I didn't think I'd get answers like this. But there are just more questions, now..."
Stanley Padgett	Stanley just looks up into the air a bit more, and then over to Charlotte. "...I know we don't want to go too deep into the Megamall." He points up at the cloud. "...how much you want to be if we go to that intersection... The one where those people walked into traffic... we'll find one of those up there too?"
Charlotte Newman	Charlotte tilts her head in thought, "...I suppose that logic tracks. For as logical as wishes can be, I guess." When Stanley addresses her, she glances his way, then up at the red cloud he's pointing at. Red eyes narrow in thought. "...Probably. You're thinking that's like the 'corpse' of someone that was killed on this side?" She cradles her chin in thought, the other arm supporting the first at the elbow as she looks upwards, "...Remee did say that they died in midair. Isn't that about in the same place..? I guess even if the body got cleaned up in the Real, there's nobody to tidy up on this side..." After a moment's pause, her eyes widen, "--Shoe Source..!" She shoots a look at Stanley, "The people who passed out but recovered. Do you think there'd be evidence on this side there?"
Caelan Stuart	The question of whether people could come back if they were wished away... Is not going to be answered today. All that Caelan can do is to wait-- and to hope. Maybe someday, they'd have their answer. But... For now, there's a mystery to uncover. "...Shoe Source. The unconscious episode-- you think it's related to these murders?" Caelan pauses to rub at his chin, "...I don't suppose you'd mind if I came along? I'd wager I might be able to help find... /something/ to track this guy down."
Stanley Padgett	Stanley perks. "Both good ideas, yeah." But then something happens. There's a ghastly rustle in the Megamall, and ghosts start to scatter. And rush. And move. There's a veritable stampede happening in the mall, as something wakes up. Stanley blanches a bit, and gets his phone out. "...Come on, let's get to the other side..."