9514/The Anomaly Garden: Conclusion

The Anomaly Garden: Conclusion
Date of Scene:	07 January 2022
Location:	The Knot Garden
Synopsis:	In order to save the day, the Titans need to know where home base is, and whether it's duck season or rabbit season.
Cast of Characters:	Terry O'Neil, Kian, Donna Troy, Garth, Kate Bishop, Gar Logan, Kaida Connolly, Nadia Pym-van Dyne, Victor Stone

---

Terry O'Neil has posed:
PREVIOUSLY, on the Golden Girls:

Rose: This reminds me of something that happened back in St. Olaf.

Dorothy: Oh, Rose, stop! Rose, why is it that every time one of us makes an observation, the first thing we hear from you is "Back in St. Olaf?" I mean, did it ever occur to you that maybe we're tired of hearing "Back in St. Olaf," "Back in St. Olaf," "Back in St. Olaf!"

Rose: Gee, no, I... I'm sorry.

Dorothy: Oh... that's okay.

Rose: ...................................... Back in that town whose name you're tired of hearing...

Dorothy: ROSE!

BZZZZT
*CLICK*

PREVIOUSLY, on THE ANOMALY GARDEN

Just as Caitlin, Kaida, Gar, Garth, Gil and Donna slow their headlong charge to a walk, the hedge wall opposite explodes, a circular hole burning through it as Vorpal flies through and lands with a thud at their feet, unconscious. Following close behind are Nadia, Kian and Vic, who walk through the new hole in the hedge in a rather more sedate fashion, to find themselves face to face with Gilgamesh and the other Titas.

Within the space is a table, overthrown with broken crockery scattered across the ground, and close by it a tall stone sundial, beneath which a slender-limbed bird faintly resembling a shabby pink dandelion clock, with ragged feathers sprouting all around and a beak resembling a parrots, only upside down. On spotting the visitors to its lair, the bird lets out a passionate squawk.

What really dominates the scene though is the tree in the middle. Although the trunk is not very broad, it is twisted ad convoluted as if it has grown for a great number of years, and the branches spread out in a wide, almost flat canopy of leaves overhead, sheltering the very center of the maze with soft shadows. Nestled into the roots of the tree and leaning up against the trunk is a most peculiar musical instrument, something like a four-stringed guitar with a body resembling a battleship in shape. It even looks like it has tiny cannons.

All in all it would seem like a reasonably serene and peaceful place, were it not for the fact that a tall, gaunt man wearing a top hat is nailed to the tree by his hands. At first it looks like he may be dead but a few moments after the heroes arrive he raises his head painfully and looks at them, licking his dry lips. Tucked into the brim of his hat is a hand-written price card reading 'In this style, $49.99 or 0.012 Frabcoin.'

Kian has posed:
    Kian of course flits into the air as soon as space allows, although he pulls up well short of the canopy.  The Gods only know what's lurking up in there, and he doesn't want to find out the hard way.
    He catches a glimpse of the crucified man and automatically winces and looks away.  He's mercifully distracted by the squawk of the strange bird, and that's where he focuses his attention, trying to make sense of the strange creature which is the nearest thing to something sensible he sees here.
    He squawks back at it, trying to sound friendly.
    He does not notice that his own wings have turned a matching pink.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna looks down at Vorpal with a raised eyebrow. Somehow the fact that he came hurtling through the hedge is unsurprising. This is just Terry things. Caitlin crouches next to him, gives him a quick check over to determine there are no significant injuries, and gives Donna a nod to indicate he's okay. Donna picks him up to sling him over her shoulder. "Sleeping on the job," she says. "Typical cat."

    She gives a broad grin to Vic, Kian and Nadia, happy to see the other Titans have found their way through the maze to join them. "What took you so long?" She asks. "We've been here for hours." If the lie was intended to deceive, it would be a huge failure. Caitlin, Donna, Kaida, Gar, Garth and the large man accompanying them, Gilgamesh, have clearly arrived at a run and show clear signs they've just been in a fight.

    Donna nods her head in the direction of the central area, a couple of dozen feet ahead down the last stretch of widening hedge corridor. "Heart of the maze," She says. "Let's do it."

    "This place is odd," Gilgamesh comments as the group starts the short walk forwards. "It's hard to believe I am in Metropolis." Suddenly it's rather less hard, as the ancient Sumerian god-king finds himself blocking traffic in a busy intersection of New Troy.

    Donna stares at the space where Gil had been standing. "He vanished," she says. "Kaida, your guy vanished. Does he do that a lot?" The way things have been going here it barely seems unusual. There's not much to do other than hope he's okay - perhaps answers can be found in the heart of the maze.

    As the group continues, Donna turns to Caitlin with a wry smile. "He was good in a fight. It was fun, the three of us tanking it at the front like that. Hopefully no more pitched battles, but we'll manage. We always do. Glad you're with us, Cait."

    Cait is no longer with them. A short height above where Cait had been walking alongside her, there's a sudden surprised squawk as Kate appears in mid-air. Donna throws out an arm to catch her fall, but fortunately Kate is conscious so Donna does not find herself burdened by a sleeping Titan over each shoulder and lets Kate to the ground.

    "Uh... hi Kate?" she says, nonplussed. Outside the maze, where Kate had been standing talking to a police chief manning the barricades at the north entrance, said police chief suddenly finds himself talking to Cait, rather than Kate.

    Here at the heart of the maze, the maze is listening. It's just not great with names that sound alike.

Garth has posed:
Garth takes to the air as well, if only to make sure he's not getting in the way of anyone else's view, a sheathe of lavender magickal energy surrounding him and carrying him upwards, the glow seeming to bleed from his eyes.

"I'm getting pretty tired of being trapped in this bubble," he says, and then he hiccups and, moments later, a few bubbles come out of his mouth. Henceforth, anytime he speaks, an array of prismatic bubbles will escape from his mouth. He does not find it particularly amusing.

"Ha ha ha," he says, crossing his arms as he floats in the air. "Such whimsy. It is to laugh."

Kate Bishop has posed:
    It wasn't a normal day in Metropolis for anyone really, though it had been more normal than other Titan's for Kate.

    Having arrived late to the call of the naval yard turning into a garden center gone wild she found herself wrapped up with dealing with local authorities. Well that and trying in vain to contact the rest of the team on comms, which were not proving to be very reliable crossing the threshold of the Maze.

    The surprised Squawk is almost followed up with a punch to the head, which would have only hurt Kate's archin' hand ... but thankfully she recognizes the person catching her from her fall mid-air. Once down on her own two feet the archer looks around confused at the tablaeu and then mutters "I was just talking to the police chief about the situation and... bam falling..." she blinks and shakes her head slowly as she looks around even further. "Is that the Mad Hatter crucified to a tree... why is Kian pink...." she pivots and shakes Terry's shoulder "What have you done!" as he is thrown over Donna's shoulder "... at least there is no glitter".

    Glitter bursts as she pulls her hand off Terry covering her "Rrrrgh."

Gar Logan has posed:
It's been real. Real weird, that is. And it's about to get even more...that. Beast Boy's back to normal by the time they get where they're going, and he's well and truly confused by some of what he's been seeing. Definitely an Alice in Wonderland thing, so having seen cartoons or movies or read books, of course it's familiar. That doesn't mean it's comfortable.

"Dude!" he blurts as Vorpal comes crashing through, landing practically at their feet, out. Just as he begins to step in that direction, Troia's on the move and he stops to look around quickly, and almost..skittish look to him. A sound here. A glimpse there. "What is it this time?!" he blurts...

...and where he was now stands a short, anthropomorphic rabbit, but a very green one, wearing what else but a waistcoat with a pocket watch in hand. "Oh dear," the sudden bunny adds, still sounding more or less like Gar. "Are we late?"

Kaida Connolly has posed:
Looking at the situation, Kaida blinks several times as she notes many things happening at once. Her arm is in pain but she's fighting through it. Thanks to Cait, she had escaped from a couple of enemies that were rather tough for her. She would have kept fighting but keeping going was apparently important and her arm looked pretty bad. Possibly fractured.

"Umm, no." She stares at the space that Gilgamesh had been, zipping over to it, her arm in her shield, using it like a sort of brace for her damaged arm, the two straps holding her arm steady. She looks about before shaking her head.

"He punches things and he's an amazing chef." She nods her head, not quite noticing as a chef's hat materializes on her head and then the rest of her outfit becomes something more akin to what might find on a chef in a fancy restaurant rather than her normal outfit. She doesn't notice just yet as her sword and shield still seem to be fine.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
"I think we're on to something though!" Nadia calls to Victor as they pursue Terry down the newly blazed trail. "That definitely produced results! Maybe we can develop a belt or something to let Terry adjust his own color coding. A Color Belt!"

The clearing brings the Waspette up short again though, because if this maze is anything it is a source of neverending weird. "Is that a Christian thing? Does Wonderland have Christians?" She asks upon seeing the figure of the man nailed to the tree. "Wait, that's probably another real person! This is going too far! We have to help him!"

She runs towards the tree, in her mind she is running towards the tree, running as fast as she can. As far as everyone else around can see though, Nadia is running in place like one would in an aerobics class. Did the Waspette armor always have leg warmers? You can almost hear an 80's fitness trainer shouting 'Feel the burn!' from somewhere.

"How is this tree so far away, why can't this place just /make sense/ for once?!" Which was perhaps a bad choice of words again, as it begins raining pennies from above her. "Ow ow ow! Stop it! Ow!"

Victor Stone has posed:
    Vic's been dealing with French puns and swarms of bees and ladies in eggs and magic colors and... it's all been a lot. But he's riding the bouyancy of him and Nadia having figured out how to adjust Terry's magical resonance (this is absolutely what he's calling it), so he's grinning as he comes into the central area, following Vorpal. "I /love/ that idea, Nadia! Color Belt sounds--"

    The grin dies as he surveys the place, particularly the guy on the tree, and the craziness going on all around. "No puns, nobody make /any/... just..." He snaps his mouth shut. He's not risking getting dousing in copper or disappearing.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
There is groaning coming from over Donna's shoulder, as the Cheshire Cat slowly starts to come back to the world of the living. It takes him several seconds for him to gain full consciousness, but when he does, he says very clearly: "Geez. What hit me?"

Wrigging himself free from Donna's hold, he lands on his feet with a quiet /thud/ and stretches, rubbing his head. "... Ow. Just... " he glances around, blinking to orient himself, seemingly not remembering how they got here in the first place. Which might be a good thing.

Oh, something else- he is now, currently, made entirely out of cheese from head to toe, and his grin seems to have become a fixed expression.

The man in the tree makes some more groaning sounds. At least Nadia is trying to get to him, even if she isn't quite profiting it from it yet.

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Vorpal," Donna says slowly, eyeing the Cheshire Cheese with some caution. "I didn't think you could get any cheesier. Kaida, don't eat him." It's weird when a team-mate turns to cheese in your arms, but then Garth is blowing bubbles, Kian is pink, Nadia's pelted with pennies, and... and everything. The Amazon decides that the best approach for now is to ignore it. Usually that seems to work with Wonderland nonsense, right? It's attention-seeking. Ignore it and hopefully if you ignore it, it will go away and try to impress someone else. That, and the fact that Wonderland Nonsense seems to have very little ability to resist the temptation of punning are two lessons Donna has taken from her time knowing Terry.

    Donna says nothing as she approaches the Mad Hatter, hoping that the Wonderland Nonsense doesn't take her silence as an added challenge. Hopefully it will look elsewhere for victims. It's not going to be easy to take him down from the tree because the Titans may have first aid kits, but safely removing nails from someone's hands is a little beyond first aid. She studies the tree trunk instead, figuring that it'll probably be easier to take the tree down than the man down. "Are you okay?" she asks the Hatter. "I mean apart from the obvious."

    Behind Donna, the pink bird puffs out its feathers even further, its long neck craning about as it keeps its eyes firmly focused on Kian. It responds to his squawk with an excitable "SKARK! SKWEE!", holds it wings out, and turns a full circle. When it's facing him again, it lowers its wings, cranes it's neck low, and watches, waiting.

Garth has posed:
Garth sees some of the effects on the others, notably Vorpal's state as a denizen of dairy, and decides that bubbles aren't really that bad. He can just not talk, which is usually the way he'd probably prefer to do things anyway.

Trying to 'sense magic', of course, is entirely useless given the environs, so he instead focuses his attention on the Hatter, his healing magicks at the ready if need be, although he wondered if this being was a trick - or perhaps someone that should even be trusted at all. He was used to being a fish out of water, but this was more like being a fish out of his home dimension - flopping around and unsure of what to do.

Kian has posed:
    Kian focuses on the bird, which is better for all concerned.  He doesn't really have the first aid training -- or the stomach -- to help with the medical emergency.
    Understanding birdchatter is almost more of an art than a science as most of it's instinctive to the bird in question.  And of course this is an Earth bird, not one native to Kian's world.  And a creature of magic, which really means all bets are off.
    But he concentrates on its squawking anyway in the hopes of gleaning some sort of meaning out of it, and slowly spirals down to land nearby it.
    By the time he touches down, he is not merely pink-winged, but an actual flamingo.
    He looks around in some confusion.  "I feel weird."

Kate Bishop has posed:
    Kate is sputtering and spitting out glitter. She has never been so glad her costume includes tight fitting wrap sunglasses than literally right now because crying glitter would be awful. "It got in my mouth." she coughs and spits colorfully at her feet.

    She does though decide to not tempt fate as she graces hands on her knees bent forward catching her breath. She doesn't nother saying anything or asking for further explanation. It isn't like any explanation will be anything other than nonsense or whimsy. Fucking wonderlander magical bullshit. Terry's fault surely.

    A bit of her compose regathered she straightens back up, dusting her front off as she follows Donna to look at the crucified Mad Hatter there.

    She glances at Kian when he says he feels weird though and winces "Mmmm!" she bites her lip and looks back to the problem at hand. Do not make jokes about Kian. Don't do it. No banter. Banter is dangerous Kate.

Gar Logan has posed:
The Green Rabbit starts running and hopping around, frantically saying, "The hurrier I go, the behinder I..wait, why am I speaking like I'm the.." Looking down, he blinks at the watch in hand, then his larger rabbit feet, then he reaches up and feels at his rabbit ears as his nose twitches. "Oh, my fur and whiskers! There I go again! Vorpal, what's going on? Why are you even more cheesy than usual? And..Kian just turned into a flamingo." Just two of the people he's spotted, who are going through things. This is Wonderland magic, isn't it? Fine, I'll just change back and.."

He stops, focusing, straining, and..nothing happens. He can't change back yet, for some reason!

Gar starts to say something the White Rabbit surely never did, at least while being overheard by anyone else. "Okay, this is some bullsh.." He clamps both paws over his mouth before finishing, eyes going wider. Muffled, he asks, "What do we do now?"

Kaida Connolly has posed:
Ok, so this is becoming very difficult. Not only is Kaida not typically into the idea of staying quiet and really not into the idea about not commenting about a teammate being made of cheese. Oh, boy is he ever made of cheese and her senses are going crazy. However, her scientific mind can tell that everything that is going on is based exclusively around the idea of words. So, for the moment, Kaida is keeping her mouth shut.

Instead, she eyes Terry carefully before racing by him and going straight for the tree. She looks back briefly as her hat flies off and then she notices she is in a chef's outfit and then she sighs and huffs and stomps a foot before rolling her eyes and continuing. She scrambles up the side of the tree and eyes the hands with careful eyes.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia stops trying to run forward as the pennies pelt her from above, though eventually they taper off with a final clunk clunk clunk of the last few impacting her helmet. "Pennies, right." She says looking down at a few of the coins in her hand putting together what happened.

The wheels begin turning in her mind. She watches Donna walk forward, turns her head this way and that taking in the Cheshire Cheese Cat, the Pink Kian, and Glitter Kate. The last is perhaps the least unusual and could easily have been Terry's fault on any number of occasions. One might almost guess she is trying to SCIENCE! Wonderland, trying to think up some pun that would actually be advantageous, which of course isn't really how any of this works.

"Donna be careful!"

Nadia walks forward after her, "This reminds me of the things Cait sometimes talks about. Wasn't Jesus nailed to a tree, too? Those wasps at the Zoo were also in a church. Are pancakes important? Did God create Wonderland?"

Nadia doesn't seem to notice it but as she naively speculates about religion her Waspette helmet has become a Sunday Bonnet and her armor a pretty yellow dress for Church, like a good Protestant girl, because of course it did.

Victor Stone has posed:
    "Cheshire... cheese? Oh, c'mon, this is getting ridiculous," Vic groans.

    And then, as he gets closer, he changes. Instead of chrome, he's wearing black leather and pipes. Little thought bubbles appear beside his head:

<<This is /weird/, man.>>
<<Res-->>
<<What are we gonna do about this guy?>>
<<Resistance-->>
<<Damn it, Terry, now I kinda want cheese>>
<<Resistance is-->>
<<No, focus, man, okay, guy nailed to a tree, somebody's gotta-->>
<<Resistance is futile!>>

    He's a Borg. Projecting his thoughts. A Psi-Borg, if you will.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"I'm just a little held up," the Hatter answers weakly, coughing. He once again wets his parched lips and says tremulously, "... I coul just murder a cuppa."

His voice, squeaky and nasal, causes some commotion up in the tree, near Kaida.

It is absolutely ridiculous. And yet, somehow, it all feels disturbingly familiar to Terry. "Oh god, Gar, you look absolutely adorable! I don't think I've..." he glances over to his side and blinks. "Kian? You're a... you're looking... healthy."

Turning on his heels to watch what is going on, he frowns and looks from Donna to Nadia to Kaida and Garth, "We should be able to pull him down. It really should be a piece of cake!"

Pop.

"Oh fuck..."

The Cheshire Bundt Cake looks at himself. And sighs. "Rasberry. And I don't even /like/ raspberry..."

Up on the trees, a 'caw caw' can be heard, weakly.

"VICTOR?" the Cheshire stares. Oh no, this is bad. How can he help? "You are wrong! It is not futile- is a measure of the opposition to current flow in an electrical circuit!" because that's going to help, right?

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna stares at Vic long and hard. Her eyes turn to Kian, and again she stares. The Cheshire Cake gets another long stare. Gar? I mean that's kind of normal for Gar. Think think think.

    She rests a hand on Kate's shoulder, giving it a squeeze. Perhaps it's sympathy for the archer's predicament -- A Kate without banter is surely not a happy Kate. Donna doesn't turn into a bee, but Nadia's chattering, so opposed in style to Kate's unusual silence, filters into the whirring of gears in her mind. She looks back at the long upturned table, and the shattered crockery surrounding it, the remnants of a tea party that has clearly seen better days. The gears of her mind stop turning and the needle points to 'let's try this.'

    "Garth," she says very slowly. "Can you do some magic to ensure he doesn't fall too hard or fast? Let's see...."

    She turns back to the Hatter. "Yes, I see you're a little held up," she says. "But I'm afraid there's no more tea for your cuppa. The teapot is overturned at it all drained away. I'm sorry to /let you down/ like this."

    As for Kian and the bird... "You look weird," the bird says to him. It fluffs out its filthy plumage again, looks around with an expression of faint embarrassment, and says "Skwark?"

Kian has posed:
    Well.  If Terry says Kian looks healthy and the weird bird says Kian looks weird...
    "AIGH!!"
    Guess who just took a good look at himself.
    Kian shoots into the air -- well, at least he can still fly, even if it's not as well as he's used to.  "What happened and how do I turn back--AIGH!"
    He wasn't ready for the instantaneous 180 he did upon saying 'turn back'.
    "I *really* don't like this," he grumbles.  "I don't know how to pun in English and I'm afraid to in my own language because I don't know what will happen next!"
    At this point, Kian states an Obvious Truth out of a combination of fear and frustration: "This is your fault, Terry!"

Kate Bishop has posed:
    It is definitely weighing heavily on Kate, though she looks sidelong on as Nadia just goes and goes asking questions. When she ends up in a church bonnet and dress though Kate sucks in a deep breath and shakes her head looking back up to the Mad Hatter.

    If what Donna tries works, well she will step in to help the poor man down, she has decent faith in Garth's magic but this is wonderland. She may just need to help break the poor Hatter's fall.

    Regardless though she finally speaks up and asks, succintly. "Who did this to you Hatter?" keeping it tight, brief, no banter, no puns.

    Gosh Kian's outburst makes her happy though.

Gar Logan has posed:
"Focus on who you really are," the Green Rabbit calls out. "This /is/ weird magic, but it's following a kind of pattern!" He hasn't changed back yet, in spite of this, but he hop-runs over toward the tree, where not only the Hatter is, but that battleship guitar as well.

"Do you get it yet? This is the naval base, except now it's a base guitar! I don't know how we're supposed to get it to change back, though." He's got a clue, but he hasn't got the answer.

Garth has posed:
General floating magick is at least still well within Garth's range of spells he can do. However, it does require a bit of articulation. They won't find a lot of puns in the archaic Atlantean dialect he speaks in order to invoke the spell, but he does eject a rather large stream of multi-colored bubbles, some of which just swirl around him and make little musical note sounds as they pop.

The tune appears to be "Under The Sea". He is not amused.

Kaida Connolly has posed:
A hmm and a hmm and a hmm and then Kaida stares upward, standing on the side of the tree, gripping with her toes the way she sometimes does. Spider-peeps and Mouse-peeps, they just stand on walls. It's how they do. She pulls her sword out and looks to Donna before pointing up.

"There's weird birds." She then races up the tree and lands on the branch the birds are on and grins at them. She grins at them in a fashion not too dissimilar from a Looney Tunes character before she suddenly races around the branch once and it's a fast little race and the branch looks deeply cut and creeks.

She then tilts her head at the birds and races the other way and the cut is deeper. Amazonian steel, sharp and tough, combined with some degree of speed and that branch doesn't have long.

"Bye bye." And then she goes the other way, cuts one more way through leaps into the air to land on the side of the branch against the tree and waves a hand before reaching out with the tiniest of toes and...pushes down.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia shares Kian's pain, smart as she is she has no training in puns. In the Soviet Assassin Daycare bunker, jokes were expressly not allowed let alone puns.

Comprehension dawns on her face though as she watches Donna manage exactly what she was trying to come up with, turning the puns to positive ends, harnessing their power to address the situation rather than throw it into further chaos. It's not the first time she's thought Donna would make a good scientist.

"Sometimes being let down is for the best. A chance to re-cover yourself and move forward." She agrees with Donna, before flying up to attempt to help the man if needed. Insect wings still extend from her back and carry her aloft like a true WASP.

Victor Stone has posed:
    Vic stares at Terry for a long, long moment... and then he begins to float, gently. There's a soft hum about him now, an 'ohhhhm', and a glow.

    "You're right," he says wonderingly, "Why didn't I think of that?"

    The 'ohm' of resistance helping him focus, he moves up on the other side of the man from Nadia, to help make sure the Hatter gets caught, if that is a thing that will be needed. Not that Garth's magic won't work, of course--but as a backup. Just in case.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
The Hatter is, mercifully, very light, and so the combined efforts of the Titans are enough to bring him down once the nails holding him up vanish. He is in quite a frail condition from his ordeal, but he is breathing, and conscious. When he is asked for the author of his miseries, he says "... Alice," he says, his voice raspy and his breathing labored, "Alice. She made me... told me that..." he begins to look agitated. "I thought she was- Al-is, but she isn't! What have I done?" he hides his face in his hands. "... or haven't done?"

Terry, meanwhile, has meandered up to Gar's side, glancing at the guitar with wariness. "You have an idea? what is it, honey?"

POOF

"OH GODDAMNIT!

The cheshire cat is now amber-colored, mostly transparent. And sticky. "I swear!"

Donna Troy has posed:
    The large pink bird watches Kian rise, and watches Kian fall. It hops forwards with a few clumsy, shambling steps that resemble what you might imagine the gait of a step ladder to be, could a step ladder walk. It fluffs out its wings, and starts to helpfully groom Kian's feathers with its inverted beak, making reassuring cooing sounds.

    It should be pointed out that while the birds intentions may be helpful, it has a poor concept of good grooming, and is making Kian's wings rather ruffled. "Nasty spill there," it says to him. Followed rapidly by "I mean... SKWORK!"

    The other birds up in the branches of the tree seem to be more conventional avians, at least at first glance. They watch Kaida cautiously, eyes particularly focused on the sharp metal of her sword, heads tilting one way, then the other, but not intervening. When she finishes her work the branch falls away to land with a distinctly metallic THUD on the ground, where the crow's branch seems to have become a crowbar.

    The crows take to the air in a cacophony of caws and beating wings, fluttering madly around Kaida before the settle on fresh branches. "{{Oi! Watch it!}}" the crows quork in a singular voice from many beaks, the sound echoing with an odd bell-like resonance and sounding distinctly Cockney. "{{Bloody mouse! I was sitting there. Go find yer own tree! Go on, ge' out of it. This tree is mine. Bleedin' rodents wif' their bleedin' swords. Cor stone the us.}}"

    When Gar says the words 'naval base', the four strings of the guitar with that odd battle-ship like shape seem to thrum in resonance, as if strummed by an invisible hand. Donna glances at it in surprise, then looks back at Gar. "Good call Greenie," she says. She turns back to the Hatter. "You could help us undo what you've done," she says. "How do we get the guitar to turn back into the naval base?" The strings hum in sympathy with the words again.

    "DON'T TELL 'EM!" the dirty pink bird calls out. "She'll wrap us both in carpets and eat us for lunch. Erk! I mean SKWORK!"

Kian has posed:
    "I know how wings work!" Kian snaps -- and in fact he does, although straightening them out with an upside-down beak is not as easy as he thinks it should be.  The only person who's ever heard Kian use that sharp a tone is Terry, when they encountered the priestess on Kian's world.  "Ai, /c'Rh/--"  He stops before finishing that word.  Calling upon his Gods, even figuratively, is probably a very very bad idea right now.
    He flits over to the instrument.  "I thought a guitar had six strings, this has four, does that make a difference?  Play it, maybe?  I don't know.  I don't know much about watercraft.  I don't even really know much about waterfowl.  Quack."
    Quack?
    "Ai, /*QOKH*/!"

Kate Bishop has posed:
    Kate will help ease the Hatter to the ground and crouches listening to him now. "So someone posed as Alice and tricked you into doing all this or being part of it. Who was she?" yup no witty puns or word plays, very close to the chest.

    She glances at the battleship guitar. "Perhaps a song must be played on the guitar?" she is a trained musician actually, not that she shows the Titans that side of her really, but she isn't sure what one would play on the instrument to undo all of this.

    "If we know what to play. I can play it." eyeing the strings and instrument.

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan, still the same rabbit as before, eyes the Mad Hatter but then peers more closely at the guitar as the flamingo Kian now is calls attention to the strings. "No, no. A regular guitar has six strings. This is a base-slash-bass guitar, and should have four. But it's missing the top one. Why?"

He paws at the sides of his head, trying to figure this out. "I can 100% Expert songs on Rock Band but I can't remember the right letters! How does that even work?" Looking around, he hops up and down in place. "Anybody?" Then he eyes Kate, whether she's still being glittery or not. "I could play something too, but there's something wrong with the...uh, Kaaaaate?"

Suddenly the rabbit is hopping around her excitedly. "Do you still have any spare bowstring?" He points at the instrument repeatedly.

Kaida Connolly has posed:
A look over at the birds and Kaida shakes her fist at them and then she points at them, "Bleeding sword?!" She points at it, "My sword..." ANd her sword is bleeding and she stares at it before cackling, "That's cool." and then her sword is ice and she smirks before shrugging and swinging it a little.

"Not necessarily worse." She then spins and flips to the ground before she points at the birds and then looks around.

"The birds are definitely involved!" She shakes a fist at them and then looks at the guitar before considering it and tapping the flat of her blade lightly against the shoulder of her chef's outfit. She stares at it and then looks at the other people around.

"Anyone know how to..." She knows what she wants to say but it isn't helpful and she hmms, "...properly play a guitar and also have a string that will be useful in this particular situation." She speaks very carefully and clearly as she huffs through her nose.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
On buzzing wasp bings that seem to have an even more natural and authentic buzz than usual, even if Nadia doesn't truly subscribe to Protestant doctrines herself, the Hatter is helped down from the tree. "Alice? The girl from the book?" Nadia asks the hatter curiously as she reaches to pull off her helmet to make communication easier and comes away with a Sunday Bonnet instead, giving the thing a curious look, before noticing the rest of her attire as if for the first time. "Why would Alice ask you to come here? What did she tell you? It's okay we are here to help! Vorpal is one of your countrymen!" She gestures towards Terry, seemingly oblivious to the sweet predicament he's found himself in.

She does give the bird a curious look though, before asking innocently "Why would anyone want to eat a carpet?"

Victor Stone has posed:
    Vic makes sure the Hatter is down from the tree, his rocket shoes letting off soft 'ohms' as he moves. "Nadia, don't--" oh here's hoping this entire thing stays family-friendly. Let's just. Move on, shall we?

    "Is there a difference between Alice and Al-is?" He says it carefully, just like the others, doing his best to avoid puns or double entendres or anything else that might cause slip-ups.

Donna Troy has posed:
    "{{'Oo are you callin' involved!}}" the crows demand in synchronized disharmony. "{{The bleedin' cheek of it. Typical blahdy mouse, comin' in our tree, cuttin' our branches, cheekin' us like she owns the blimmin' place. I ask you.}}"

    The taller pink bird waddles up to Nadia with that spectacularly ungainly pose, cranes its long neck forwards until it's beak is almost touching her nose, tilts its head almost sideways, and stares curiously at her. "Al isn't the girl from the book," he says. "You're talking nonsense. Er... I mean SKWORK!"

    The pink bird scuttles away to hide behind Vic. "Ixnay on the isalnay!" it hisses at him conspiratorially.

    Donna picks up the guitar, because she's sometimes impetuous like that, and someone has to. Apart from the fact that it's rather battleship shaped, down to the tiny cannons, and that it's missing a string, it does look like it might be playable. She shrugs her shoulders, and plucks at the three existing strings experimentally.

    The topmost, or fourth string sounds a little off, and anyone such as Kate who knows their music might identify it as sounding more like the sixth string on a six string guitar. The next down is nicely in tune. String two... is complete silence, or at at least so it appears. The lowest string, string 1, is missing

    Donna holds the guitar out to Kate. "I think Gar's onto something, give it a go."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"We thought," the Hatter says, looking more and more tired by the minute, "We came looking, but all we found Al Isn't. She took advantage. She took..."

And then he slumps against the tree, with a deep exhalation as exhaustion sets in. The poor man is out for the count, his ordeal clearly tiring him out.

"We can get answers from him later, if we take him to the tower," Terry burbles, a few bees buzzing near him. The Hatter clearly didn't recognize him in that state, "But what's important now is tha-- OW!"

He takes his hands to his ears, to cover them up. Apparently, even in his viscous state, he can hear quite well, "That... that's way too high pitched. Ow. That /hurt/, Donna! And that's not just being catty-"

*POOF*

Terry looks at his hands, and his body, and then lets out a deep sigh. "Oh, thanks g- ... I mean. Yay."

He glances over at Kian, and just has... the strangest expression on his face. But he doesn't say anything.

Kian has posed:
    Kian has damned well had enough.  He's been a pink-winged Akiar, a flamingo, and now a duck, and he's just not having any more of it.  "All I want to know is, will I go back to the way I was before we wandered into this /qokh/ maze?  I am not spending the rest of my life in this shape.  I want my body back the way it was, and I want it now!"
    Someone has hit his weirdness limit for the day.  You'd think Kian's would be higher, considering who he hangs out with.
    "I expect chocolate when we get back to the tower."

Kate Bishop has posed:
    Kate looks concerned, she accepts the instrument from Donna and reaches into a pocket in her costume and fishes out a bowstring. It isn't quite right but well what the hell.

    She strings it profeciently and then tunes it quickly, it does mean strumming all of the strings though as she checks the sound of each of them. "I'm.. still not sure what... but it's strung?" she thinks. One of the strings isn't even making noise she can hear.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
"Not from the book." Nadia nods slowly, looking at the bird with slightly wide eyes as it gets right up into her personal space. She stops and thinks. "Al-is, not from the book, wait wasn't that the name of Katia's friend? In Erebos? The short one who didn't like Terry?" Questions about the eating of carpets are mercifully forgotten for the time being at least.

The discussion of how to play the guitar is relatively lost on her, there may be a connection between the math and music centers of the brain but it is one that she has never pursued nor did the Red Room see any need to encourage in her and so for the moment she lets others puzzle that out while she turns the mystery of Al-is and Al-isn't over in her mind.

Victor Stone has posed:
    Vic is rapidly looking things up, frowning, muttering to himself--evidently even here in the maze he can at least look up music knowledge. He considers a four-string bass beside a six-string bass. They have B, A, something only Terry can hear... and it's all puns...

    "I've got it," he says. "B, A, C, E. BACE." He reaches out to take the bass from Kate and tinkers with it for a moment. Working with the sonic cannon means he knows enough about sond to get the frequencies right pretty quickly.

    Then he strums the bass with a bitchin' power chord! "BOOYAH!" he shouts, because you have to shout something when you're doing this. Clearly.

Donna Troy has posed:
     Victor Tunes. Victor poses. Victor strums.

     *BAWAAAAAOOOOOMmmmmm*

    The ground trembles to the sound of the thunderous chord from the Naval Base. The tiny canons fire a crackling cannonade in the air, that fan out and burst in multi-colored sparks, like tiny fireworks. The tree shakes, the hedges start to sway.

    The crows take wing and fly away, qworking. The Jub-Jub bird "SKWORK!"s one final time before exploding into a puff of pink feathers. Kate's bow starts to croon like a lounge singer. St. Elmo's fire dances across Kaida's sword. Garth is surrounded by blue fish that swim around his head, singing hard-rock ballads. A six-foot tall bipedal wasp steps out from behind Nadia, pondering "To bee, or not to bee" to himself. Gar and Kian find themselves briefly arguing whether it's duck season or wabbit season. Donna briefly gets the strange sensation she's supposed to be delivering something. Terry's hair stands on end.

    There is a sound that is roughly what a WHOOMP would be if you heard it backwards, which is remarkably little like PMOOHW. Letters have not been created that can be sufficiently onomatopoeic to express the noise that assails the Titan's ears...

    The Titans are in the middle of a large parking lot, with the Hatter slumped, barely conscious, against a Toyota. Sirens are going off all around them. People in uniforms are running hither and thither, and a flight of F-35s roars overhead. A little to the east, over the tops of some buildings, the flight control tower of an aircraft carrier can be seen.

    "I think... that worked?" Donna hazards.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
The Cheshire cat falls to his knees, covering his ears until it is all over. Then, and only then, does he open his eyes and uncover his ears. And..

EeeeEee
EeEeeEe
EeEeeEEe

It says a lot that he finds the sound of alarms comforting. And very mundane.

"Well, that's... solved," he says, without much conviction. Standing up and dusting his uniform, he adds, looking at the hatter "... we should take him to the base and put him in the medbay. We've got way too many questions left unanswered... and I don't want to explain to the navy what exactly happened."

Mostly because he doesn't think he /can/.

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan rubs his little rabbity paws together. He isn't going to be shredding anything on that guitar, but with the crows and the Hatter and the pink birds and all the other stuff going on, once Kate's got the battle(ship) axe restrung and it's been passed off to Vic, he can smell the end in sight. "Hurry! Hurry!" he encourages, bounding over to leap up and cling to one of Vic's borg-like shoulders. Then, just as the psi-borg is about to play that chord, he pulls off a very authentic:

"For those about to rock...FIRE!"

Just as those little cannons go off.

"We salute you!"

And everything gets weird.

No. Weirder.

No. Weirderer.

By the time it all settles, the naval bass sure looks like a naval base again, and there's the aircraft carrier back to normal, and he's already found himself no longer clinging to Vic, and...

"Dudes, are we all ourselves again? That worked? What the heck did we even..nah, you know what? Right now, I think chocolate-covered carrots sound great too. Or maybe just the chocolate."

He merely eyes Vorpal when he says 'base,' as if they didn't just have a whole to-do over base/bass, then he shakes his head.

And starts to hum 'In The Navy.'

Kian has posed:
    Kian inhales, and exhales, and opens his eyes to see if everything's back to the way it should be.
    Yes, he's a birdman again.
    "I am going back to my room and eating chocolate and drinking my dad's brandy.  Probably more than I should."  He sounds very tired.

Kate Bishop has posed:
    "Welp." is all Kate says about all of that.

    "What did you do Terry?" turning to look accusingly at the cat now that the naval base is back.