13555/The End(less)

The End(less)
Date of Scene:	30 December 2022
Location:	The End of The World
Synopsis:	Vic and Cait set up an experiment to figure out why Irie keeps aging. The experiment goes terribly wrong, yet also very right. Irie witnesses the last day of Earth's history alongside the Endless, gets to discuss the future of Wonderland with Dream, and comes home all better. (Note: this is a backscene set shortly before https://heroesassemble.mushhaven.com/index.php?title=11873/Wonderland:_The_Cheshire_Question)
Cast of Characters:	Donna Troy, Caitlin Fairchild, Victor Stone, Irie West, Dream

---

Donna Troy has posed:
    The amber rays of afternoon sunshine creep with summer laziness across the waters of the Hobb river, shining off the very tip of the great high whiteness of the dam at Hobb's park in the distance and dappling their way through the rooftops of St.Martin's Isle before easing through the windows of the Tower's west-facing windows and into the lab. It dances lightly on gleaming equipment, trips through the heavy cabling of the temporary force-field generators erected here by Victor, and glares from Caitlin's monitors. It shines on Irie, waiting to see what exactly is going to happen here, and lightly shadows Donna, sitting on a bench and watching with nervous energy.

    In the center of the room, a sphere of blue energy six feet in diameter, projected by a S.T.A.R labs technology temporarily cannibalized from the Danger Room rolls gently against six smaller spheres arranged around its base, a near frictionless 360-degree treadmill of projected force.

    "You're going to use this for a VR setup later, aren't you Vic," Donna heckles. "I can tell. You've got that look about you that you always get when you think of a way some expensive bit of technology can be used for playing games." The heckling betrays a degree of nervousness, but Donna's not good at hiding that anyway. She glances for the hundredth time at Irie.

    "Are we sure this is a good idea?" she asks. "Last time Irie went into the speed force, she..." the sentence is ended with a helpless shrug. Nobody there needs reminding -- Irie has never, since she arrived in this time period, been physically as young as she should be, but she currently looks older than any of the other Titans.

    It's a problem that has yet to be resolved. How to stop Irie aging? Even though there are other problems to solve (this is the Titans, there are always problems to solve) such as how Terry is currently deep asleep in Wonderland, dreaming the demi-realm into continued existence, this is a problem that hasn't stopped being pressing. Both the Titans and G.I.R.L have been working the problem, and today's another chance for the Titans team to make a breakthrough. It's a follow-up of a theory mooted years ago, observing Wally's impact on the universe about him. A hope that whatever it is that Irie's doing when she enters the speed force that causes her premature aging will leave a mark that can be analyzed on accretions of what Donna had utterly inaccurately summed up as 'frozen time' when Caitlin and Vic had explained the concept. It would be more accurate to say that the passage of time leaves a mark on certain forms of matter that can loosely be described as 'time crystals' -- matter that displays a crystalline dimensional stability not in the three dimensions of space but the forth dimension of time, unstable when viewed from a single point in time, but stable across time itself.

    "Can't we get Wally or one of the other speedsters in the treadmill thing instead to generate these crystals?" Donna asks a touch fretfully. She has developed a strong sense of responsibility for young Irie since she arrived at the Tower which she insists is sisterly and denies fervently has any kind of mom energy about it. Irie currently being apparently older than Donna makes that a touch weird perhaps, but doesn't seem to have lessened the feeling.

    Donna already knows the answer. It's Irie who's having this problem with the Speed Force, it's Irie who has to enter the Speed Force for this experiment to produce meaningful results.

    Hopefully she can enter it shallowly enough and for a brief enough time that she doesn't age any more doing so. It's a risk, but it's perhaps the best chance anyone has come up with yet to find an answer.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin's set up at one of the bio-monitoring stations. She's got half an eye on the engineering console but her primary task is ensuring Irie's life signs stay stable. ...ish, anyway. For a speedster.

"At the rate Irie is aging, she'll start suffering serious health defects in the space of a few years," Caitlin points out. She's all business; labcoat, hair tied back in a bun, and wearing tinted computer glasses. And also pink scrubs, but the point is, she looks very Science-y at the terminal. "We don't really have a cure for aging, though speedsters do seem to age better than most," she allows. "I mean, Jay Garrick was still active well into his late eighties."

Victor Stone has posed:
    "What's expensive technology /for/ if not playing video games, huh?" Vic replies. "You can definitely play Doom on this, by the way." He finishes fiddling with some obscure aspect of the setup and steps back, nodding. "Alright, Irie, in you go."

    Aside to Donna, "If Wally or Bart or one of the others generated exactly the same time crystals as Irie then probably--/probably/--they'd be having the same problems. And I'm not really against having one of them do this as a control, but... let's see what we can glean from Irie doing this, huh?"

Irie West has posed:
    "It should be fine!" Irie insists, as she looks at the sphere before her dubiously. She's got her Kid Flash costume on, even though it's a little tight on her. If anything goes wrong, her suit will have a better chance at surviving than street clothes. "I only age if I put some kind of stress on it, or some weird magic stuff happens. It's not like we're going to push me to the limit." She looks nervously between the three others. "Right?"

    "Right," she mumbles to herself as she steps up to the sphere. She pokes at it tentatively before stepping into it like some kind of giant hamster ball. The frictionlessness of it causes her to wobble a bit as she tries to find her center of gravity causing her to let out a low, "Woah."

    "All right. Let's do this." She pulls down her goggles (she doesn't really need them but they make the costume look cool) and lets out a breath. She starts slowly at first, at normal speed, just to get a feel of the sphere before calling out, "Okay. Entering the speed force in three... two... one..." and when she hits zero she punches it.

Donna Troy has posed:
    The arrangement of force-field spheres means there's almost no friction -- the outside of the bubbles are smooth to a quantum level, though of course the inside is structured with a finely bumped surface to give Irie's feet something to grip. Nevertheless as Irie accelerates, active heat shunts cut in to draw energy away and avoid a field collapse. As the first crackles of lightning mark Irie hitting the edges of the speed wall, lights throughout the tower dip slightly for a moment as the tower's systems work in overdrive.

    Suspended at six points around the inner surface of the sphere, in slight bumps, are the tiny lumps of exotic, gleaming, blackish material that will, if the theory is correct, develop temporal stress fractures that will mark a kind of signature of the impact Irie's speed has on time itself. Here on the periphery of the Speed Force, Irie can see them begin to glow...

    The lab, visible to Irie with a ghostly bluish hue through the bubble of energy, slows to her perspective in the normal way. Donna's legs are frozen mid-swing. Caitlin's fingers slow their tapping at keys until their motion becomes imperceptible. Vic, standing stoic at the controls of the force projectors, is barely moving anyway - but the glow from his artificial eye starts to strobe, then appears to flicker on and off lazily.

    Something isn't right. Irie can feel it almost immediately. There's a slipperiness to the Speed Wall that shouldn't be there. She feels herself hurtling forwards on the spot, but also feels a sense of falling forwards, deeper into the Speed Force. She's felt this before. When? Perhaps something's interfering. Maybe this was a bad idea -- the Tower hasn't exactly been itself lately, with far too much magic doing odd things. Donna's back to being Donna and the Tower is no longer dimensionally warped, but perhaps there's some residual force interfering?

    This isn't a good idea. Irie starts to reduce speed, and surely enough, the motion in the lab accelerates back towards the normal pace of life.

    And continues to speed up. Irie's run is down to a jog now, just keeping up with the motion of the ball as it decelerates, but outside, things are getting faster and faster. Caitlin's fingers dance across the keyboard faster than she has ever typed. Vic and Donna are moving around the lab rapidly, doing incomprehensible things.

    Slower and slower inside the ball becomes faster and faster outside. What to do? Run fast again, try to reverse this? Irie's legs seem heavy. Each step becomes harder and harder. Going faster doesn't seem like an option. Outside, the three other Titans blur around the lab. Is this what it's like for other people, watching Irie?

    The light fades, and the room is dark. What's happening? Irie can no longer move, frozen like the crystals. It's light again, but nothing seems to be happening in the lab. And dark again, just moments later. Faster at faster; dark, light, dark, light, dark, light. Soon the lab becomes gray and bleak. Things suddenly vanish and disappear. Faster and faster. The blue cast is gone, but there's little color anywhere now -- the world seems gray and flat. After what feels like about a minute, there's no longer a lab.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Below, the waters of the river ebb and flow strangely. Metropolis seems to pulse and vibrate like a living thing, some vast geometric slime-mould crawling slowly across the ground.

    Perhaps another minute later, Metropolis is gone. The land below is nothing but an expanse of greenish-gray. The river seems to crawl snake-like across the land. The ground rises and falls. The island that was New Troy merges with the land, and the river vanishes. The horizon itself seems to undulate.

    And then, very suddenly, the gray is gone, and Irie is falling. Not far -- a half dozen feet, no more, before her feet find rocky ground. All about her is a brilliance of sunlight, oddly orange, and the heat of a desert.

    There are no birds in the sky, no sounds but the faint howling of wind blowing through crevices of rock and around a collection of tumbledown concrete walls. Not far away from Irie, a figure dressed in black sits atop a low broken wall, her back turned, a black parasol held over her head to shield her from the sun.

    "Ah, there you are," the figure says, her voice soft and gentle. "Hello, Irie."

Irie West has posed:
    "No," Irie says, starting to panic when she feels that slipperiness. "No, no, no, no, no!" She's sure she felt it before, and if she were to guess, which she is, she felt it right before she got trapped in the Speed Force proper and hurtled herself back in time.

    This time she knows better and starts slowing down. "Hey guys!" she calls out from her bubble when things start moving at normal speed. "I think something wonky is going on!" And things start moving fast speed, at least outside the bubble.

    "Wait..." she says, as her pace continues to slow down. "No! This isn't right!" Faster and faster things go outside, until it's all a blur. She knows what's going on. She's seen The Time Machine. You know, the old one. She's hurtling forward through time.

    Then the ground unexpectedly gives way underneath her and she finds herself landing on her butt. "Ow!" She stands up and looks around the place, rubbing where she landed. "Ohmygosh," she groans. "You really did it this time, Irie."

    The woman's voice nearly scares the bejeezus out of her, causing her to jump a little bit. Turning she sees the woman in black and she gives her a cheery smile. "Oh, hello! I guess there's still people this far forward in time. That's good. Ah.... you wouldn't happen to know //when// I am? I've seem to have experienced some kind of relativistic causal event." She blinks when she realizes something. "Um.... how do you know who I am?"

Donna Troy has posed:
    The young woman in black gets up, turns around, and walks over to Irie. She reaches out a finger and boops Irie's nose. "I know everyone," she says, giving a playful grin.

    She looks very normal, if perhaps a bit Hot Topic. Black combat boots, black jeans, black tank top, black hair, pale skin. She wears dark eyeliner with a curious design, and around her neck is a silver chain from which hangs an Egyptian ankh. "Not many people," she replies to Irie with a kindly smile. "At least not here. Not any more. As for /when/ we are?"

    The young woman reaches her arms out wide, the black lace parasol extended, and turns three-sixty degrees, taking in the desolate landscape around them. It's oddly Mary Poppins. "We're at the End, Irie. We're here to shut up shop. Tie up lose ends, make sure everything is right."

    "Welcome to the last day of life on Earth."

Dream has posed:
Sand swirls. It's not the radiation-scorched earth underfoot; it's a perfect, fine sand, glimmering with subtle hints of ancient old rocks polished into microscopic gems. It moves unnaturally in a low cyclone that rises to over seven feet in height. The dust devil subsides and collapses, revealing a strange man. White skin, white hair, white robes; the only color he sports is a single emerald hanging from a chain around his neck.

He looks first to the young woman with the ankh, and a brief but sincere smile flashes on his face. "Dear sister," he bids her. "I hope you don't mind me stopping by."

He turns to face Irie, and at that point the speedster gets a look at his eyes. They're not eyes at all; they contain an infinite starfield, as if looking into his eyes reveals a slice of the universe behind him. "Hello, Irie. Do you know who I am?"

Irie West has posed:
    Irie giggles at the boop and rubs her nose in response. "Is that because you have some kind of supernatural sense of it, or because there's like, twelve people left on Earth?" She cocks her head curiously. "Is it still called Earth this far forward? Or do they call it something else like Blargnar..."

    When the woman explains, she just nods solemnly. "Twelve people, got it aaaannnnd..." She turns her gaze to the sun, which is about to go nova. "Five billion years in the future? Wow. I think that's a new record! Can't wait to tell everybody when I get back." Not 'if', 'when.' Irie's faith that she'll get back into her own time is nigh unshakable.

    Then the man shows up in a swirl of glittery sand bringing her attention to him. When he asks if she knows who he is she screws her face in concentration, thinking. "Ummmm....." Then she snappoints at him, "Oh yeah! You're Robert Smith from The Cure! What are //you// doing all the way out here?"

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Rather less than twelve," Death says, spinning her parasol as she rests it over her shoulder again. "Depends what you count as 'people' though. There's only one human here right now, and that's you." She stares out over the horizon, were the swollen sun sits heavy in the sky. "No, really we're down to one. That's why I'm here. I told you, today is the last day of life on Earth, I could hardly stay away."

    She looks around to smile brightly at Irie. "But don't worry, it's not your time. Your time was long, long ago. I'm here to take someone else to where they go next, not you. You're more in the category of loose ends."

    Death does not look around when she's joined by her brother. She doesn't need to, she knew he was coming. "I never mind you stopping by, brother," she replies. "You have as much right to be here as do I. It's an important day. This has been such an... interesting world." She nods her head in Irie's direction. "Don't mind me. I know you two have something to discuss."

    Death takes a few steps away, clambering up a small incline to stand on a rock a little way away, and seems to address the sky. "I know you're there. I know you're listening," she says. "It's time. Haven't you waited long enough?" There's a faint rumbling in the earth, the only reply.

    Death turns to Dream. "The old ones always find it hard. Even if it's what they really want. Habit, I think."

Dream has posed:
Daniel gives a little bow of thanks to Death. It's a little over-formal, which means he's gently teasing her, but respectful all the same. "I hope I'm not quite so callow in this era," Daniel says. "Perhaps in time I'll become as cantankerous as the rest of us." Amusement curls his lips and he faces Irie again.

When Irie dubs him to be Robert Smith, the Dreamlord chuckles. Brief, again, but still sincere. He's a restrained sort of personality, though far from as taciturn as the previous incarnation of the Dreamlord.

"Thank you; I'll take it as a compliment," Dream tells Irie. "My name is Daniel. But most call me the Dreamlord. I preside over the realm of dreams. This includes the realm you call 'Wonderland'," he clarifies. "Which is currently in a state of... flux, one could say. Or peril, depending on your point of view. Your companions among the Titans have pled for Wonderland's continued existence. I followed you here to hear your argument for or against that cause."

Victor Stone has posed:
    "/There are no loose ends, sister,/" comes another voice, "/merely paths that have not yet reached their destination./" The speaker is an old man wrapped in a greyish-brown cloak, walking along carrying a large book. The book is chained to his right wrist--or perhaps he is chained to the book. His head is hunched slightly to look at whatever is within its pages, face shrouded in the hood of the cloak.

    He stops, a little ways from the three, glances up from the book. Then he closes it and tucks it under his arm with an air of one waiting patiently. His eyes, visible as he looks up, are filmed over as if he is blind. Whatever he's doing here, he seems content to let Irie and Dream's conversation play out.

Irie West has posed:
    Irie rubs the back of her head. "Soooo... you're not human. You /look/ human, though. What are you, kree? I mean... yeah. Last day of earth! It's sooo coool. Too bad I can't stay and watch it happen, though." She truly sounds disappointed in that. "Unless you've got some kinda forcefield you can use on me to keep me from being vaporized."

    When she hears the rumble in the earth she nods at Death. "Yeah. Old Gods are... old. When you get to be that kinda old I guess you'd keep on living out of habit more than anything." She grins brightly, "Not me, though! There's //always// stuff to do, things to learn. No regrets, right?"

    When the Dreamlord speaks his purpose her mouth purses in a moue of thoughtfulness. "Wonderland, hunh." She walks over to some of the rubble to take a seat. "I mean, I'm obviously //for// keeping it around, but that wouldn't be a question if there was some kind of drawback for doing so. It's a unique place filled with all sorts of strange living things and it would be just... wrong to see it all disappear."

    When Destiny pops up she gives him a grin and a wave. "Hey, hi! You're all siblings, right? I have a twin brother, you know. Sometimes he's a pain in the butt, but I really love him and miss him. I mean... that's how siblings are, right? They get on your nerves, but you wouldn't git rid of them for the world."

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Not everyone shares your perspective on these things, big brother," Death replies to Destiny. She turns briefly to Irie to give an eye roll and a loudly whispered "Brothers! The worst." Even her family are not entirely sure whether Death's impish tendencies are an affectation, or the influence of spending time with so many mortals.

    She turns back to her business, and taps a foot twice on the rock beneath her. "Are you coming?" she calls out.

    There is another rumbling, and slowly a spur of rock shot with white crystal rises up from the ground, something vaguely approximating a face forming in its surface. "I thought you were here for the human," comes a sibilant voice from the spur. "I didn't think I would ever see you."

    "She has a name. Don't you remember? You met her, long ago. And everyone sees me, eventually."

    "I met so many people, I have forgotten much," the voice from the spur replies, a hint of puzzled uncertainty audible in the voice. There's a pause. "Me? Really? I didn't know... I didn't think I really counted as alive."

    "You do. You...did," Death corrects herself. "You desired, you dreamed, you despaired, you delighted. And now..."

    "Thank you," the sibilant voice whispers, the words lost on the wind. The face on the rock spur is unmoving.

    Death turns away and steps back to stand next to her siblings. "Not a god," she says to Irie, a little sadly. "Though I am there for them too, when it is their time. And I will be there for you, when it's yours. To hold your hand while you discover what there is to do and what there is to learn, after that.

    She turns to Destiny. "Did you bring the rock they left here for her?" she asks her elder brother. "Geography can be so /unreliable/ when you leave things so long."

Victor Stone has posed:
    Destiny merely inclines his head to Death's statement, acknowledgement of the words more than agreement or disagreement. He said a thing, she said a thing, all goes as it should. As it always would. The death of the last living being on Earth comes and goes and is witnessed, and then the ancient man turns that sightless gaze to Irie.

    "We are indeed siblings. I am known by some as kismet, others as fate--but most often, as Destiny. I am the oldest, and I will be the last." There's no inflection in his voice; it's a statement of fact. Another inclination of the head to Death. "I am here to pass something along."

    He reaches into the folds of his cloak and pulls out a crystal that shifts and changes every few moments--every 1.4 seconds, to be exact. There is a word carved into the crystal, a word that changes back and forth with each shifting moment between two states. Destiny holds out the crystal to Irie. "Here the 'loose end' weaves itself back into the weave of the fate of this planet, as it should. As it always would."

Irie West has posed:
    Irie scowls thoughtfully at the conversation between Death and the rock lord. Lady? Person. When Destiny names himself she looks between the three of them. "Destiny," she says, pointing at him, and then points to the others in turn, "Dream... which would make you Death. Neat!" She tilts her head as she remembers something Death said. "So are Despair, Desire, and Delight more of your siblings? That seems right."

    Then Destiny hands her a crystal with it's strange oscillation she looks at it, feeling it in her gloved hands. Run. Irie. Run. Irie. Run. The words flip back and forth, giving her instructions. "Hunh. I mean... yeah. That's kind of my whole shtick." She thinks on what this could mean for a moment before grinning. "Neat."

Dream has posed:
"A moment, Irie," Dream says, and lifts a hand to forestall her taking off like a... well, a flash. "You are-- will be-- central to the story that unfolds around Wonderland," he explains. "Its future is in flux, from your perspective in time. Wonderland is unique, yes, but there are uncounted other realms that are all equally unique. Realms so alien to your experience that they would be incomprehensible to your mortal perspectives. Like all living things, Wonderland has a season. In its current state, it is a threat to all of the Dreaming. It must be culled, like a tumor in the body. It is within my power to save Wonderland, but... I have yet to be convinced of the need for this."

His brows lift expectantly at Irie.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Death settles next to Destiny to watch as the crystal is handed over and the conversation between Dream and Irie continues. "Brother," she calls out to Dream. "It is not my place to stand between you and our sister when it comes to the choices you make about that delirious dream. What impacts your realm is your business. But perhaps I need to remind you that the seasons are /mine/. Have you not asked yourself why /I/ have not stepped in to stake a claim?" She gives him a bright smile -- and then, suddenly, for just the blink of an eye, sticks her tongue out at him.

    Death turns to Irie, and nods her head to indicate the crystal held in her hand. "This is not our gift to you, Irie. You have friends who did not forget you. But you know well about keeping secrets, for the sake of things happening in the right order." She breaks off a moment to smirk at her hooded brother. "That crystal is one of those things that should be kept secret. Meeting us here and now is another. Do as the crystal advises you, and when it shatters in your hand, it has done its job. Though it may take a little time after that for its full effects to become obvious." Her features soften into a smile for the young and yet not so young speedster. "I don't often get to meet people twice. Farewell, Irie." She gives her parasol another twirl.

Victor Stone has posed:
    As Irie takes the crystal, Destiny nods and steps back, a portion of his purpose here fulfilled. His shifts slightly, and then opens the book once more to look upon the pages. He doesn't even glance up as Death makes her commentary. He knows which way things will go for Wonderland--because of course he does--but bearing witness to the conversation, through his book, remains no less important.

    He doesn't confirm anything Irie asked, either. He merely reaches up to turn a page in his book, reading along. Waiting for his siblings to finish their business, perhaps.

Irie West has posed:
    Irie listens to Dream and looks concerned, and maybe a bit of confused. "How is it a danger to the Dreaming? What is the cost for saving it? You wouldn't be asking my opinion on this if there wasn't some kind of cost to you for saving it, unless you were just some kind of jerk who wants to see it die." She looks up at the Endless, "I mean.... if //that's// the case, then I don't know why you'd be asking me anyway, so I bet you're not a jerk."

    "See... the problem here, is that you don't see uniqueness as unique. To you, specialness isn't special, but to us it is. Kinda boring that way, don't you think? Wouldn't it be better to savor each one for what it is? Like... I bet you consider your siblings unique and special. Wouldn't you be upset if one of them left before their time? That's kind of what it'd be like for us."

    When Death turns to leave she gives her a little wave. "It was nice to meet you! No offence, but I hope I don't see you again for a very long time. Unless, you know, you want to come and play board games with me and Maddie. I bet you kick butt at them. And... look. I bet you don't get this a lot, but I'm glad that when my time finally comes it'll be you that comes and get me. It'll be nice to see a friendly face."

Dream has posed:
Dream is patient as eternity, but Daniel only has a few decades of existence under his proverbial belt. Irie's rapid-fire accusations elicit the faintest of frowns from the Dreamlord.

"Perhaps some perspective would help," he suggests, and gestures subtly with one hand. The blasted heath that is Earth disappears; they stand upon the beach of some tropical island. Jungle to the right, crashing waves to the left. The wind is cool with a salty breeze. Daniel stoops and picks up a palmful of sand, and holds it out for Irie to inspect. "Every realm is unique and as numerous as the sand in every desert and every beach on Earth," Daniel says. His palm opens, and Irie can see not just the sand as a whole but each and every individual grain. It's an abundance of detail, with tiny shells, polished gems, and broken, jagged rock all forming a complex melange. And at the same time she can see a glimpse of a world in every one of them as well, each an island unto itself full of creatures and stories and ideas.

One in particular turns black, an ugly and malignant color. It spreads from there into the other realms, until obsidian starts pouring down the side of Dream's palm. He watches Irie closely. "One realm is all it takes. It is already festering, a cancer that will spread to the rest of the Dreaming. If I were to unmake this single realm--" he plucks the grain from his palm, and abruptly all the sand returns to their glorious individual grains. He crushes the black nugget in his fingers, where it's whisked away by the wind. "I save all other parts of the Dreaming. To preserve this one realm is no small task," he says, and makes the dark sand appear in his fingers again. "It is within my means, but there is a cost that others must bear to make it so. You, perhaps, among them. Would you save Wonderland at any cost? Or let this one grain go, to protect all the other realms?"

Irie West has posed:
    "Woah," Irie says as her perspective shifts to view each little grain of sand the tiny universe that it is. "That was cool." She looks up at Dream and furrows her brows. "I mean, I get that it's cancerous and that it's a danger. I get that it costs... //something//. You haven't said what. But //how// is it cancerous? Maybe there's a solution out there that you're not seeing because you're stuck in the middle of it."

    "Maybe we can do something clever like... like..." She pauses to brainstorm up ideas, and hits on one that particularly unique. "Okay. Let's say that the problem is that its borders are undefined and it's encroaching on your territory right? Well, what if we border it with a predestination paradox?"

    "Like..." she starts moving her hands nearly as rapidly as her mouth as she speaks, "Let's say that the border of Wonderland is a ring of oak trees. Or whatever kind of tree that's like oak trees in Wonderland, because I can't imagine any tree in there as boring as an oak tree. But let's say that there are these oak trees, right? Since I'm going back in time //anyway// I could hit it right at the end of Wonderland, and grab an acorn from each tree. Then I go back further from before the oak-but-not-really-oak trees gew, and planted all of those acorns in the //exact same spot// as each tree! I could do it lickity-split! That way the border has to stay right where it is throughout the entire duration of Wonderland, because if it doesn't, it'd break the paradox."

    "See? That could work!" Irie says, putting her fists on her hips in a superhero pose. "All you gotta do is just think a little bendy." She drops her pose and turns a bit more serious. Well, as serious as Irie ever gets. "But if we //have// to do it your way, yes. I would bear that cost. Ask any of the Titans. We all would to keep Wonderland around. I would still bear that burden even if it was just me. I couldn't let Wonderland die if I had a choice."

Dream has posed:
Daniel smiles at Irie. "The only thing about you stronger than the Speed Force is your optimism," he tells the young woman. "It's an admirable trait of you Titans. Persistence, too. Suffice that this is a... vast oversimplification of the issue," he says, and lets ten thousand worlds tumble out of his hand towards the ground.

"What I came here for was your perspective, and you have given it to me. I will take it under consideration when I make my decision."

The Dreamlord straightens and looks to his siblings to see if they have any last-minute contributions before Irie runs home.

Irie West has posed:
    Irie smiles brilliantly at Dream. "Hey, no problem. Besides," she says giving him a knowing wink. "I know you'll do the right thing." Does she actually know, or is she just messing with one of the Endless. Who's to say?

    "It was good to meet you!" she cheerily says at Dream, and then turns to Destiny. "And you! Don't be strangers, okay?" She, then reaches into her pocket to pull out the oscillating crystal. Run. Irie. Run. "Well. Time to run."

    She settles her goggles over her eyes, and cinches up her gloves, and lowers herself in a runner's crouch, pointing herself to the horizon. "Okay! Three... two... one... BLASTOFF!"

Donna Troy has posed:
    Death watches with her two brothers as Irie races into the distance. If Irie were to look back, just before she's over the horizon she would notice four other forms seem to have joined the three, as if from nowhere. When she's out of sight, Death gives her parasol another twirl, and smiles brightly at Dream. "We could tell you what you decided," she says. "But where's the fun in spoilers?"

    The smallest of the seven leans lightly against Destiny. "I'll miss the Earth," she says. "I always liked how it smells."

    "It was an interesting world, little sister," Death replies. "For all of us, I think. But everything must end. Even us."

    Over the horizon, Irie continues to run. The faster she runs, the slower the crystal pulses in her hand, changing from one form to the other. The ground beneath her feet is hard and tired, and the endless landscape moves past in a lifeless blur, only the speedster giving a temporary lie to the emptiness all around. The familiar play of lightning takes her in its grasp, and still she runs. Still she accelerates.

Victor Stone has posed:
    Destiny finally looks up from his reading, briefly watching the girl disappear over the horizon. Then he snaps the book shut as if to close out the story of the Earth and turns away, to lead his siblings onward to whatever's next.

Irie West has posed:
    There is only one other time in her life when Irie has run this fast. It was March, 2041, just after she 'aged up' to her teenaged self (the best age, she's decided since she's been all the way up to her 30s) when her father wanted to test to see how fast she could go. She went so fast, she broke time and space and ended up getting stranded in the Speed Force until she could find an anchor that brought her back to the past.

    She's beginning to feel it now, as the crystal's oscillations slow down to where it takes what seems like minutes to flip over. Finally, with a flash, the crystal oscillates to 'Run.' and at that point she punches through timespace and into the Speed Force.

    Being in the Speed Force itself is a harrowing experience. She never wanted to be here again, but if she ever wanted to get back home, this is how it needs to happen. In the Speed Force there is no time, yet it's all happening at once. There is no space, yet it's everywhere. It's a paradox of extremes that you helplessly careen both toward and away from at the same time. You're unanchored from reality, and the only thing you can do is run.

    So Irie runs.

    Like last time, it feels like she's been running forever, lost forever in the Speed Force, clutching the crystal in her hand hoping it's the anchor she needs to get back to her time. Or 2022. Either would be fine with her, really. Then in no time at all, or forever from now, the crystal makes its last shuddering shift. Irie.

    Irie bursts out of the Speed Force with an explosive amount of energy which destroys the hamster wheel of a treadmill they had been using to test her speed, and careens against the far wall with, for anybody else, would have been a bone shattering impact. It just knocks the wind out of Irie, and she crumples to the floor.

    When she's able to get her breath back she starts cackling gleefully holding, for all intents and purposes, a handful of sand. "I'm back!" she shouts, her voice oddly light. "How long was I gone?" She disentangles herself from some machine she has managed to completely total. When she manages to stand it's clear that she's back to the teenaged self she was when she first arrived at the tower last year. "Hey! My suit fits again!"

Donna Troy has posed:
    For those left in the lab, it's all a bit confusing.

    There is perhaps a trio of Titans, on some lost timeline flapping free, who watched with growing concern as Irie vanished into a blur, and the field of energy became an impenetrable bubble of closed time. They must have fretted at another Titan trapped in some mysterious fashion. No doubt they tried everything they could think of over the weeks and months that followed. Perhaps in their version of the tower, after a year or two, a statue was quietly placed in a niche in the memorial room to lost Irie.

    That was then, even though that then is still in the future, and this is now. The experiment had seemed to be going fine right up until the moment it wasn't. Thermal shunts designed to take away a 50% excess above expected failed. Throughout the tower, power systems blew and emergency circuits cut in. The lab filled briefly with smoke and automated fire control systems cut in.

    For Vic, handling the controls, there's the near-instant realization that the projector panels borrowed from the Danger Room were not going to go back in. Fortunately there are still a few spare panels in storage, but it might be time to order some more from S.T.A.R. Labs. The Titans do get through them. For Cait, monitoring Irie's vital signs, there's a panic-making moment of no signals at all, but she's first to know that Irie is fine.

    Better than fine.

    Donna, meanwhile, does her best impression of a speedster as she runs to Irie, and no sooner is Irie free of the tangle of machinery than she finds herself equally trapped in Donna's arms, and lifted off the ground. "Gaia... Irie, are you alright?" she says, a hint of panic in her voice for just a moment as she inspects the young Titan. Donna inspects Irie's face for a few moments when she has finished checking for obvious bodily damage. She blinks a few times, and gently puts Irie back down on the floor. Her face breaks into a wide smile, which rapidly gives way to a disbelieving laugh. She looks around at Caitlin and Victor. "Guys... Cait. Vic. You guys are /geniuses!/"