11794/Wonderland: In The Upper Room

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Wonderland: In The Upper Room
Date of Scene: 28 June 2022
Location: Wonderland
Synopsis: Nadia is kidnapped, again! This time, tough, she's taken to church and subjected to an Inn query.
Cast of Characters: Terry O'Neil, Nadia Pym-van Dyne




Terry O'Neil has posed:
There is much that can still be learned from Wonderland. As Uffish continues with the building The Device, the Titans don't have much to do- except wait.

And explore.

It's not a good idea for Terry to be left in Wonderland by himself, without the Cheshire. He has no powers, and although he is much more experienced than he was, it's still... well, Wonderland.

It is a rather beautiful afternoon, with honey-colored light filtering through the trees, the greenery lush and vibrant like the best of summer days.

If some things are unusual- like the crabapples hanging from the trees crabbily trying to pincer-pinch at passersby, or that the sawgrass waving in the wind has some very shap points that should be best avoided... well. It is Wonderland. Par for the course.

"You know, the village that the White Rabbit comes from should be just around that bend in the road," Terry says, pointing to Nadia. "I remember it vaguely. Do you think that might be a good place to go? Leverett is currently at Queen Amy's court- well, last we saw him, but maybe his servant is at home?"

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    It has been strange days in Wonderland for Nadia ever since their first encounter with the Church of Alice in that small village and their first brush with the servants of the Jabberwock. Not to mention fighting a giant Mecha Alice as a Kaiju Alice in another village to save it from one of Uffish's creations run amok. At this point it is a very open question if she should just dress as Alice or try to keep whatever parts of the cat still might remain in the bag inside of it.

    For the moment Nadia still seems to be erring on the side of caution and super hero action, wearing her black and red stylish Waspette armor body suit, as she walks with Terry, though still not bothering with the helmet. "So does Leverett like levers? It seems like everything here is a put, female levers perhaps? a Lever-ette?" The world can thank Wonderland for Nadia's ever expanding knowledge of puns. "Do you think his house will have anything useful?" She asks, attention half on Terry and half on the crab apples, the latter of which she is likely pondering experimenting on, and possibly the former as well knowing Nadia.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"It usually is. That's where Alice found the gloves and the fan, if you remember the story. Not that /you/ need anything to grow tall or short, you've got that part covered pretty well," Terry grins, hands in his pockets as they walk down the path.

And then there is something strange in the middle of the path. It looks like an enormous patch of vegetation... it looks like a weed with gaggles of white flowers along its stem. What is peculiar about these flowers is that they appear to be in the shape of tiny boxing gloves. The disturbed dirt on the path indicates that this weed has been recently planted.

"Well, isn't that just absolutely peculiar," Terry says, and walks towards the flower. Leaning in to peer at them, he says, "They're shaped in the weirdest-"

And the tiny boxing gloves, as one man, extend and /whack/ Terry right across the jaw. The redhead spins on his heel and falls to the ground, out like a light as the knockweed acts. "Oof-"

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    Magical treasures to study, that's even better than crab-apples! Unless you ask Gwen or Kaida, they would most assuredly like to study the crab-apples more. But Nadia has a grand theory of everything that needs completing and the opportunity to study magical treasures is simply too much to pass up! "Ooooh let's go!"

    No sooner has she finished saying that though then the knockweed appears in the path ahead of them. "That's a strange flower.. Terry you might not want to get too clos.. oh no. Terry!" Nadia rushes forward when Terry is knocked out. Somewhere 'Mother' is clucking her tongue with disapproval at Nadia not dispassionately analyzing the situation first, but in Wonderland for all she knows that plant might just eat him after knocking him out, so her first course of action is to rush forward and try to pull Terry's unconscious form back out of range of it. That she doesn't actually know its range is a separate issue...

Terry O'Neil has posed:
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And just as Nadia is pulling Terry away, someone has sneaked up behind Nadia! A flower that looks like a red, yellow and orange daisy is pushed against her face, and as the Sneezeweed comes apart in front of her, the Titan is possessed by such continuous and violent sneezes that she can barely do anything else /but/ sneeze! The sack that is thrown over her head and, well, entire body obscures her view of things, and in a second she feels like she is being lifted bodily by someone incredibly strong and, by sheer momentum, incredibly fast at running, as the wind /wooshes/ outside of the sack.

She is moving, and by the time the sneezes begin to subside, the environment sounds have changed completely. At some point her carrier ran up some stairs. There are murmurs surrounding her, and it becomes apparent that she as been laid down, sack and all, on top of some flat surface.

And then, an expectant silence.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Achoo! Achoo! Aaaaaaaachoo! It is worth noting for the historical record that Nadia's sneezes are in fact high pitched and mousey. And sneeze she does within the bag, so much uncontrollable sneezing. The Red Room may have prepared her for all manner of mundane incapacitation methods, but flower induced magical sneezing? They did not anticipate that.

    Which is good for Nadia's captors given what she is capable of when she has her wits about her and is not sneezing her head off. This is demonstrated when she finally recovers from the sneezing after the bag has been set down and suddenly the bag bursts apart as a twelve foot tall Nadia grows out of it, wincing as she bumps her head on the ceiling. "Who?! What?! Where?! What did you do with Terry?!"

Terry O'Neil has posed:
The ceiling is just shy of twelve feet, as Nadia can easily verify by the sore spot on her head. The room is also quite spacious, it has to be in order to fit the roughly thirty people watching her. They are a fine cross-section of Wonderland's fauna, alright: Humans, and frogs, and cats, dogs, even some fish, all dressed in white robes. At the center of the crowd, two bishops flank a woman dressed in the robes of a Bishop herself, although her bishop had is triple-tiered and her crosier is thoroughly elaborate. She has short black hair and she bears a passing resemblance to Nadia. Not much, but just enough.

"Welcome, Alice-" she begins.
"Or /not/-Alice," the male bishop next to her interrupts.
The woman appears unperturbed, "To the Inn of Quisition. I am Popess Mary Anne, and you are invited-
"Indicted!" the man says, and she reacts by slamming her staff on his foot, causing him to shut up for the moment.
"Invited to provide proof."
"Proof! Proof!" the others agree, nodding their heads.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    "Ow." Nadia rubs the spot where she bumped her head. She is listening the Mary Ann though. Three out of four questions answered isn't too bad. They probably just weren't interested in Terry, not without the Cheshire anyway.

    In the blink of an eye the twelve foot tall young woman vanishes and several seconds later, post-mid-air acrobatic quick change in free fall, reappears at her normal size dressed as Alice. It isn't too hard to piece together what is likely going on here, the nature of their quest is plain.

    "Popess?" Nadia asks curiously. "Is that like a Poppins?" Another book she received from Terry, at this point she wouldn't put it past this strange reality to be crossing the streams.

    She peers at Mary Anns familiar appearance, but it isn't quite like looking in the mirror. 'Oh good, not another evil twin.' She thinks to herself.

    "Why would someone fake being an Alice?" She asks the annoying Bishop crying foul. "That's like faking being a Meredith or an Elizabeth. It's almost enough to wonder whether you really believe in Alice at all that you would question her so?"

    Her eyes return to Mary Ann. "The Church Goers I met, and really I have to say I was not expecting a Church, why make a Church?" She wonders aloud in another digression for a moment. "They asked me if I would erase the Jaws that Bite, the Claws that Catch. Is this not what you want?"

Terry O'Neil has posed:
The Popess clears her throat, and the congregation falls silent as she speaks. "It is absolutely imperative that it be Alice that vanquishes He Who Bites, it simply would not do for it to be an Alisn't."
"Indeed," the male bishop pipes up- he has a nasty habit of cutting his superior off- "Nay four, five years ago we had an Allison attempt it, and as she neither was Alice, nor Alice's son, it was an unmitigated disaster!"
"No, it was a mitigated disaster," the other male Bishop butts in, "An unmitigated disaster would have been if she had succeeded but /not/ been Alice!"
"The point," the Popess retakes the tale, her verbal stride not even one bit upset by that outburst, "is that with each Alisn't that faces Him, he becomes stronger. There were many who wanted the glory of vanquishing him, legitimate Aliceness or not, and so we decided-"
"By logic"
"By reason"
"By ruler and question that we would allow none to face Him, should they fail to prove that they were, indeed, Alice, for we cannot bear Him to become any stronger!"

There is silence for a moment, and then the Popess speaks again, "Thus, why you are here, to prove you /are/ Alice, as you have been heard to claim-"
"Contrarywise," the male Bishop says, "We shall suppress you!

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    "But why a Church?" Nadia rounds back upon her previous unanswered question. "I'm not god, just a girl, why would you make a church to a girl? Why it doesn't make any sense at all." She brings her hand to her chin seemingly turning this over in her brain. "And why bishops, why not Rabbis or Ministers? I think personally I might prefer a High Priestess, why not one of those? But really why claim such authority to begin with? Can't you all be equal in your devotion? I certainly don't like the idea of anyone so nasty as him," She gestures in the direction of the most disagreeable Bishop. "Being in charge of anything."

    She looks between them, they might think she is done with asking questions but such would be severely underestimating Nadia's inquisitive nature unleashed. "And what even is a quisition anyway? I might have understood an Inn of Quest, given the nature of your mission here. But quisition doesn't make any sense at all. Or perhaps Sight, the Sight to see that I am me. But I've never heard of a quisition before, not even once."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
The three put their heads together once Nadia is done asking questions, and for a long time there is a great deal of hubbub. Mary Ann's expression is ecstatic, but the two male Bishops seem to disagree on some fine point. Occasionally whispers of "--orthodoxy! Orthodoxy!" and "Post quod ergo et habimus" reach the Titan.

Then the three figures separate. The two males look sullen, but Mary Ann is beaming.

"We are-" someone clears his throat, she amends, "SOME of us are satisfied. You have aptly demonstrated, as our parables say, that the questions are the answers, and the answers lead to more questions-"
"Curioser and curioser" mumbles the congregation.

"And so," Mary Ann continues, "We shall reach out to you again at the appointed time for the final test, which will prove to all beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are who you are."

A small mouse girl walks forward towards Nadia at Mary Ann's indication, and offers her a parcel.

"Do not open it until you get home. When you do, follow the instructions therein, and we will be waiting for you... Alice."

The two male Bishops exchange glances, and narrow their eyes slightly at this.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    Nadia waits patiently while they confer, her eyes going this way and that as she takes in the room in more detail now that she she doesn't need to focus as much on talking her way out of a potentially dangerous situation. Truth be told it has only just begun to dawn on her that impersonating a cult's messianic figure might have unintended consequences.

    But too late now! With Mary Ann's decision, now she /is/ Alice and there's a whole lot of expectations she has no intention of betraying. Besides this is Terry's home, she can't not save it! That's a given.

    Carefully Nadia accepts the parcel from the small mouse girl. She looks over the package curiously, perhaps wondering if this is meant to be yet another test of her curiosity. It certainly is a curious thing and the curiosity is clear in her eyes. Curiouser and curiouser. "Thank you, I will do so." She finally says with a smile. "I know you've been waiting a long time. I will try not to keep you waiting too much longer." And with that she excuses herself, eyeing the two Bishops as she leaves. Now she just needs to find Terry again, hopefully a frumious Bandersnatch hasn't eaten him.