5601/Putting The Pieces Together

From Heroes Assemble MUSH
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Putting The Pieces Together
Date of Scene: 16 March 2021
Location: Main Room - Titan's Tower
Synopsis: Terry and Gar compare notes on last night's strange encounter.
Cast of Characters: Gar Logan, Terry O'Neil




Gar Logan has posed:
What night is it? It's Gaming Night, otherwise known as 'Any Day That Ends In A 'Y' And Nothing Else Is Going On At The Moment!'

Who is gaming? Gar is gaming! How can that be? Simple: by sitting on the sofa, controller in hand, tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth as he mashes buttons and moves in unison with what's on the screen. He does that often, but he's playing a VR game with the headset and everything. It's one of those survival horror games, showing a darkened corridor with jump scares galore.

"Abort! Abort! Hostiles at..well, everywhere!" he calls out. It's a single-player game, so maybe there's a voice element to it. More like he's just getting into everything. "Ah dinna think we're gonna make it, Cap'n! Get to da choppa!" He blends accents like a pro.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Vorpal wasn't there when Gar started playing- he was at the planet, turning his copy in. Admittedly, he could have done this online, but there were a few things he needed to check in for. So the Tower as Gar knew it before sinking his teeth into Virtual Reality was decidedly Vorpal-less.

After a noiseless Rabbit Hole opening, the situation has changed. Now Vorpal is staring at Gar's one man gaming troupe with growing amusement. Tiptoeing quietly, he perches himself on the back of the couch, not fighting the urge to toy with Gar anymore. The Cheshire leans forward, hands hovering at either side of Gar's head as he stares at what's on the screen. At the right moment, he uses his powers of illusion to make it sound like there's a rustling sound to Gar's right, to signal an enemy.

Gar Logan has posed:
It's evil is what it is. Gar is so engrossed in the game, there's just no telling what effect an outside influence might have. "C'mooonnnn..go down!" he shouts, punching at the air in front of him as a weapon is swung in-game. It connects, splattering the screen - and his viewfinder - with blood and other gore. Much of the development budget must have gone into that, for the corridors themselves barely look better than upscaled Doom hallways from..a very long time ago.

The faked sound gets him to turn that way, expecting to see an enemy ready to attack. He swings an arm up, to get ready...

Terry O'Neil has posed:
And Vorpal leans to the other side, so that now he is hovering over his other shoulder, ducking the punch. He is definitely in a cat-and-mouse mood. There is plenty of room for evil, he could prolong this for quite a bit.

"It's got me!" he uses his powers of illusion to make the voice come from Gar's left- that is, the screen from which Gar had turned away.

Evil.

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan moves in tune with this. He's good at the game, no doubts there, but now he turns and blindly strikes at the left side. "Got you..! Eh?" There's nothing there, just..the wall.

Ahead of him, the game's actual enemies are closing in and it leads to him ducking, making a motion that causes his in-game avatar, still in first-person mode, to backstep in order to create some space. "It's like a glitch in the Matrix, only different," he mutters.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
He tries very hard not to laugh... and he succeeds. But now comes the coup de grace. Hugo Weaving's voice emerges in glorious stereo around Gar, and intones in a stentorian manner:

"That is correct... Mister Gardenson. We have come for you."

Predicting that the next thing Gar will do will be to take off his Visor, he perches on the back of the couch and stretches, so that his face looking at him, upside-down, will be the first thing Gar sees.

Gar Logan has posed:
"What the f...that's not part of the game." Gar /does/ reach up to take the visor off, just as his in-game self is about to need a checkpoint to continue. He spots a foot, the tip of a tail, something that at least starts to give the plot away, and he turns to see Vorpal lying there across the back of the sofa.

Squinting, he points out, "Dude, Spider-Man does the upside-down thing better. You're not him. Also, you're a dork." This is punctuated with a nudge, or a shove, or whatever works to see about dislodging him from his perch.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Vorpal oofs and rolls off the back of the couch when shoved. A second later he is back up on it again, looking mock peevish, "Yeah, well, If you're going to tell me he's got a better butt, too, you're sleeping up on the roof." Crossing his legs, he smirks and rests back on his hands. "No greeting kiss? Just a 'dork'? I am positively heart-broken. Maybe I should go and see if Spider-Man is looking for a boyfriend!"

He isn't, of course.

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan turns up his nose. "I sleeps where I wants." But he does go through with the request now that Vorpal's back there again, just at the cheek before he grabs the catboy by the back of his head and aggressively thumb-rubs his ears while putting their foreheads together. "Happy now? And you'll always be my dork."

See if he catches that while recovering from the moment. "Anyway, I was having a gaming night but I kinda forgot to tell anyone else. We miiiiight want to talk about yesterday."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
To his embarrassment, Vorpal does purr, but he is too much in heaven from the ear-rub to mind... or care much about being called a dork. "Very happy. You know what would make me even /happier/?" he asks suggestively, a hand reaching over to run a finger along Gar's jawline, before the green Titan speaks again.

Then he blinks. Oh. Right.

"Yesterday. Right. The thing with Steel and the thing at the park, you mean?" he says, slowly getting himself up into an upright sitting position.

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan gives a very knowing look up and down Vorpal, chuckling for some reason. "I bet I do, but that'll have to wait for later." A finger taps the cat's nose, then he vaults over the back of the sofa just as Vorpal's taking a seat.

"Well, I was going to ask about the Rum Tum Tugger thing, but sure. We can start there. Uh, that statue looked oddly familiar for some reason. Explain.../if you daaaarrre!/" At the end of it, he puts on his best horror film voice, curling his fingers like claws.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Vorpal rolls his eyes and smirks, reaching into a small Rabbit Hole to retrieve an item. "Well, it's because the carved face looked like something you'd see on certain kinds of objects... And this was one of the pieces left behind after that thing dissolved."

He tosses the object to Gar- an ivory carving of a horse head on a round base. "I know you're more into video games, but you know what this is, right?"

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan catches this, barely having to move his hand to take it from the arc its on. "Of course I do. It's from checkers."

He eyes Vorpal, waiting to see if he takes the words at face value. The moment a correction begins, or at least after Vorpal is quiet long enough - a feat of its own, and Gar can think that because the same thing applies to him - he says, "I know it was a knight, but I didn't see that one moving in an 'L' pattern. The question is, what was it doing here? You seemed to recognize it pretty fast."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Vorpal is about to correct Gar when the gig is up, and he can't help but flick a finger at one of Gar's pointy ears, "Goof. It's... not difficult to recognize a knight. But it struck something in me, the way it looked. It looked wrong, like something that had been disfigured."

The Cheshire purses his lips and looks at his hands, twiddling his thumbs for some time, in silence. "I hate to make any definite pronouncements but... there's something very familiar but very wrong about this. Animated chess-people come from Looking-Glass Land. You know... Wonderland-adjacent. But they didn't look like... /that/. And they certainly were not mindless brutes. So maybe I'm wrong..."

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan bats at that hand, but after it makes contact. "Staaaahp." He tries to focus on the matter at hand in spite of the distraction. No more ear stuff right now!

"This is the part where I ask you 'Vorpal, what makes you think it was disfigured, and what does that mean?' And then you say, 'Beast Boy the Magnificent,' and you explain." He looks at the Cheshire with intent as he finishes mentioning Looking-Glass Land, and that they weren't mindless, and..yeah.

He doesn't waste any time in moving on to the question. "So, Vorpal, what makes you think it was disfigured, and what does that mean?"

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"Well... the knights of Looking Glass Land don't have expressionless faces. They look like chesspieces, and they can converse. In fact, they will /not/ attack you until a joust has been declared. The whole thing is just... pear-shaped." He frowns, looking at Gar.

"I honestly don't think this was Wonderland-related. It's likely a coincidence. I mean... a villain creating chessmen automata? It's not outside the realm of probability. There's a crazy coot in Gotham who pretends he's the Mad Hatter, after all, and Theophilus would be /furious/ about that if he knew..."

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan mumbles, offering the piece back after he's examined it, "I feel like I should have done some more reading at one time or another." Back to a normal decibel level, he continues, "I'm not even twenty yet, and I've come to believe nothing we do is coincidental. We were in the area, and suddenly something that's /supposed/ to be from, you know, the world your catty half is from shows up, only it's twisted into some screwed up version of itself? C'mon, man. There's gotta be something going on there. I'm just glad that..you said Steel? Yeah, glad she was there"

After a brief pause, he squints. "Theophilus? Who's that?" Yep, read more, Gar. And we don't mean instruction manuals to video games. Nobody reads those, besides.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"Theophilus Hatta. That's the Mad Hatter's name. And now you know something nobody else knows, because that daft Dodo didn't draft it into the book." He crosses one leg over another and rests his hands at the knee. "It was good that Steel was there, but you could have crushed it as well with one gorilla paw."

Vorpal scratches his chin and narrows his eyes. "You are right in that coincidences don't really happen to us. Especially to me. Chaos magic and all of that... if only Raven weren't gone off to Themyscira with the rest, we might have gotten a reading for mystical energies from the piece. If Nadia hadn't gone, we could have had her scan for interdimensional residues. But as it is... there's not much we can do. Whatever residue is on the piece will likely be gone by the time they return."

He stands up and stretches, stifling a yawn. "So I guess we just keep an eye out for another similar encounter happening... unless you have any suggestions..."

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan deadpans, "Yeah, if my name was Theophilus, I'd be pretty mad too. Guess I can't blame him for that. And does anybody take the one in Gotham seriously, for that matter? What does he do, kidnap people and force them to have tea parties with him?"

Someone is extra sassy right now.

"Magic is one area I'm not gonna be able to help you out with. I got nothing there. Like you said, we just gotta be vigilant and ready. That's not just gonna be a one-time appearance, and I think you know that."

Last but not least, "The only suggestion I have right now is you tell me more about how you and that Cats character are similar."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
The Cheshire smirks, "I guess nobody does. Robin apparently thinks I am his sidekick or something. But you are right... this is probably not the first time we've seen this threat... whatever it is. We'll just have to be vigilant."

Stifling another yawn, clearly a fake one, the Cheshire says "Oh? I might take that suggestion to heart. Maybe. But I feel so tiiired, I'm just going to head over to bed." He grins and starts making his way to the elevator. "... I am open to being interrogated, though."

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan rubs the back of his neck, one of those tells. "You really got on his bad side somewhere along the way, or I guess I should say you never got off of it. I know Nightwing is trying to get through to him, but right now it feels like there's some stuff going on that might be too big a gap to bridge." Frowning, he adds, "I know he's tough to deal with, and the whole 'I'm better than all of you' thing is annoying, but he's not /all/ bad."

More for another time, maybe.

The fake yawn gets him doing it for real, and he grumbles, "Stop that!" In doing so, he follows after Vorpal after shutting the game off. "I'm gonna get those answers one way or another. I've seen the pictures you have up."