Happy Halloween!

[mosaic_archive]

It might be a good idea to carry an umbrella when walking in the open area of the Nexus today. Not because of rain, however, but because of a light shower of wrapped fun-sized candies that started when a threshold number of portals reached midnight on October 30th (or the first second of the 31st, depending on how you look at it) and will continue until the same conditions for midnight October 31st.

The free candy is perfectly safe. The ground fog playing over the grassy field, however, carries an LOL with the following effects: If someone is not in costume they suddenly will be (mun's choice), and may have abilities to match whatever they're costumed as. An example would be someone in a ghost costume gaining the temporary ability to float or walk through walls. If someone is already in a costume they might get related abilities, but will otherwise be partly immune. All effects will wear off at the same time as the end of the candy shower.

In other words: Happy Halloween, everyone.

Comments

[deadgirlslikeme]

"Well, that's fair," Victor says, trying not to smile. "It's much better once you get it into your mouth."

"Victor!" Alice hurries to the front of the group. "Well, isn't that an interesting -- oh!"

She stumbles to a stop as the LOL hits her, turning her usual blue dress and apron into -- well, it's still blue, technically, just a more grayish shade. But now the blue's bled onto her skin, along with what looks like dark twisty tattoos all over her body. Her bodice features a prominent ribcage, her skirt now resembles a ragged piece of torn flesh, and her boots have been replaced by a pair of large paw-like feet. She reaches up to feel the long pointed cat's ears now poking from her hair, one with a silver hoop dangling from it. "I guess this LOL figured, if you're Caterpillar, I should be Cheshire," she comments. She glances behind her -- yup, long bony tail with a tuft at the end. "My, isn't it thorough."

"Weiwie!" Poor Nibbles attempts to hide behind Victor's neck -- which isn't easy, given how thin Victor is.

"It's okay, it's okay," Victor assures him. "It's still just Alice."

[pogo_boy]

"She looks hungry..." Little Blaine comments, sounding a bit worried. He looks up to Quint. "Am I edible?"

"It's all right," Quint reassures him. "She won't eat you. I don't think anyone here would try, especially with all the candy around, but they'd hurt their teeth if they did."

[museicalmarty]

"No, this is just how Cheshire looks," Alice assures the little ghost. "And I am much more likely to go after the candy than you."

"Uh -- is that tail real?" Marty asks, stepping forward -- then almost tipping back over because the LOL thinks the best costume for him is a classic 80s Ghostbuster jumpsuit, complete with what is obviously a full-weight proton pack. "Whoa!"

"Marty!" Doc hurries forward to steady his friend, picking up -- well, it would look like the LOL's run out of ideas by the fact he ends up in a pretty staid sweater vest and brown trousers combo, until you notice he's also got a mustache now and realize it's supposed to be Einstein. "Great Scott, how odd. . .you all right?"

"Yeah fine. . .holy shit, how did Bill Murray and the others lug these things around?" Marty manages to steady himself, leaning forward slightly and tugging on his straps. "Come on, LOL, you couldn't go inflatable or something?"

"Well, no one says you have to wear it," Alice reminds him, grabbing an umbrella and opening it over the three of them so they don't have to suffer being pelted with candy on top of everything else.

Dee, by contrast, darts in without a care in the world, ending up in a kid-friendly Optimus Prime costume. "Cool!" She does a little twirl, before going to the ghost. "Hi! I'm Dee!"

[pogo_boy]

The Magelets have taken to the tree branches at this point,and it's easy to think at first that the tree is just decorated with bobbing lanterns and - for some inexplicable reason - random bedsheets before one of them chirps a hello to Alice.

Little Blaine is already half-hiding behind Quint and thus has nowhere further to hide. Plus, he knows he should reply if spoken to... even if there had been previous times he hadn't if there was too much risk of Big Blaine noticing he still existed. Big Blaine was gone now, like Patricia. "Hello Dee. I'm Little Blaine."

Quint smiles. "Hi, Dee. I'm Quint. I don't know if you'd remember me, from the carnival? Little Blaine here is... well, he's still kind of getting used to being around people, and he was in a very scary place before so sometimes people scare him. I think it would be good for him to have someone to play with, just be gentle with him, ok?"

[dee_lorean81]

"What -- oh, hello up there!" Alice says, looking up into the tree branches. "Happy Halloween!"

"Nice to meet you," Dee says to Little Blaine, before looking up at Quint. "Yeah, I kind of do -- you were one of the food stall people, right? And then came by while we were eating and getting Pokemon and stuff?"

"I believe we got a pizza from him, yes," Victor says -- though, really, so much happened at that carnival that he's fully prepared to admit he might be wrong. He's reasonably sure that's where they first met Quint, though.

Dee nods, then looks at Little Blaine again. "I'm sorry you were in a scary place. It's no fun being scared if you're not trying to be scared." She bounces a little on her heels. "Do you have any games you like? I like tag, but--" She points at the falling candy.

"Yeah -- good for trick-or-treating, less good for running around in," Marty agrees.

[pogo_boy]

Quint nods. "Yeah. My family actually lived in the Nexus for a while when things in our home universe got kind of rough for a bit. And though we've moved back now, we keep the Warehouse here as a kind of... um... 'Embassy' might be the closest word. Or a checkpoint for imports."

Little Blaine doesn't understand why someone would try to be scared, but he doesn't ask that as his mind goes over games instead. "I don't know how to play any games I like," he says after a moment. He hadn't been with the Wilys for long enough for them to teach him any of their games, and the games played by either the people of Lud or Big Blaine... he didn't even want to think about those, much less play them.

"He's only been with us for about a day... or so, Nexus time being what it is," Quint says. "And he wasn't even mobile when we found him. Just stuck in some big server system under a ruined city."

[dee_lorean81]

"Is that so?" Alice says, playing with her tail. "Funny to think of the Nexus as safer than one's home universe. . .then again, it was definitely safer than Wonderland during the bad old days." She still remembers her first time stumbling in, after -- a scrap with some Army Ants, she's pretty sure. It had been a relief to come to a place where she was merely expected to ask a question, rather than slaughter creatures intent on her destruction. "That's a good idea, though -- having a spot to take visitors and anything you might want from here and make sure they're all on the up-and-up."

Doc nods in agreement. "And just having an extra place to stay in case you can't get back to your home universe for a while too. Makes me think we should have some sort of similar waypoint here."

"We're never really that far from our door, though," Marty points out, looking back. "Maybe we should just buy an emergency tent or something."

"Oh." Dee frowns. "Well, that's no good. Maybe I can teach you some games! Though we should probably get out of the candy storm first," she says, looking up again at the falling pieces.

"I agree," Victor nods. "It's fun, but -- kind of painful." Nibbles nods with a little "wei!" "If I know LOLs, the costumes should remain even out of the fog."

[pogo_boy]

Quint nods, not about to bring up the details of, well, everything that had happened leading up to World War Four in his own world. "We still visit other worlds for supplies sometimes for the colonies. And we have a policy of staying in the Nexus if possible when any of us have certain kinds of LOLs, just in case they don't play nice with our world's physics or something."

Little Blaine looks up as well. "I think there were other games, long ago, before the world moved on. But... Big Blaine took a lot of memories with him when he died."

The candy storm seems to be shrinking in on itself as if it's some timer of how many portals still lead to a Halloween. It shouldn't be more than a minute before there will be a big enough patch of field to safely play games in - though they might have to clear away the fallen candies first.

[dee_lorean81]

"Now that's a smart idea," Doc says. "I don't think we've experienced any LOLs that had additional deleterious effects in our own universe, but -- for example, we know the vending machine has -- or had, anyway -- a certain kind of soda that could change humans into machines. I'm not sure if it had the opposite effect on machine lifeforms."

"Yeah, I only ever saw it working on a human," Marty confirms. "Got mixed with an animal LOL too, so he ended up a mecha-poodle." He shifts his proton-pack again. "Figure this one should be safe though, right?"

"It does seem to be just clothes," Doc says, picking at his sweater vest. "And they all wear off sooner or later. We should be fine."

Dee's starting to think there's a lot more to Little Blaine than meets the eye. But she doesn't want to bring up bad stuff, especially on Halloween, so instead she says, "If we can get something to draw with, maybe I can teach you hopscotch?"

"I don't know if you need chalk -- you could probably make a board out of all these sweets," Alice jokingly suggests, watching as the candy storm slowly shrinks. "There's certainly enough of it on the ground. And it looks like that bit over there's clear now."

"Great! Let's go!" Off Dee charges, ignoring any last bits of candy bouncing off her head.

[pogo_boy]

Little Blaine is still adjusting to walking, and doesn't try running - especially since he's still wary of getting too far from Quint. Quint will protect him, he thinks, based on what happened in Lud and afterward. But Quint's walking over to the storm-free area too, so it all works out.

"We had some problems with some of the LOLs that were used to help emergency med-evac during the Ragnarok War, so we've learned to be extra careful," Quint says. "Um, you see... damaged humans can't just be shut down for later repairs, or can bleed to death and things like that. They can keep getting worse, even if nothing's damaging them any more. So the medical teams were LOLing severely injured humans into reploids... um, androids like me and most of the rest of my family. It saved a lot of people who wouldn't have otherwise survived long enough to even be moved anywhere for medical attention. But later..." He sighs and shakes his head.

"The LOLs didn't wear off like we expected, because we'd repaired them while they were 'bots. Some were ok, depending on what kind of injuries they'd had. Some ended up cyborgs. And some of the others, the ones who were almost as good as dead when they got LOLed, changing back would have killed them. Once we realized what was happening, we had to find a way to make the LOLs permanent."

[dee_lorean81]

The others fall into step beside them. "Dee!" Doc calls, waving to get her attention. "Wait for the rest of us!"

But she's already too far ahead, gathering candy in handfuls to try out Alice's idea of a candy board. Marty snickers. "Yeah, I don't think getting anywhere, Doc."

"Well, as a father, I have to say I at least tried."

"We're all human -- mostly," Alice says as steam hisses from under Doc's costume. "We know about how fragile the human body can be. I personally survived a massive house fire. The fact that I'm not an absolute mess of scar tissue should tell you a few things about how good my immune system is." She flexes her blue-tinted fingers. "I don't blame you for making the choice to save people by LOLing them into an easier-to-fix form. I wouldn't have minded being a robot in the wake of the fire, and not having to deal with those burns. . .but I can imagine those first few instances of LOLs not wearing off as expected were -- very scary."

"Yes -- particularly with those poor people who were risking death by changing back," Victor nods, grimacing. "Though it's also a bit scary to think a LOL could be made permanent. . .how did you do it?"

[pogo_boy]

The Magelets have mostly fallen asleep in the tree, and thus do not follow for now.

Little Blaine, however, watches what Dee is doing closely. He doesn't interfere, since he doesn't understand what she's trying to make.

Quint nods. "Yeah, and even after that there were some problems. It's mostly better now. It'd say we're more careful now, but... if it came to the same kind of emergency situation we might risk it again. A chance of complications is still better than certain death."

To the rest he says, "There's a vending machine that shows up here sometimes. One of the buttons dispenses things that can either remove an LOL or make it permanant. We found out because my oldest brother, Blues, used an LOL and one of those drinks to make himself look like an adult. He was designed to look about twelve years old, and I guess... well, he kind of has some trust issues so he couldn't just ask someone to make modifications. But when he caught an LOL that made him look older, he just took advantage of that."

[dee_lorean81]

Victor takes a moment to glance back, wondering why the Magelets aren't following -- then sees them snoozing away in the tree, giggles, and lets them be. They shouldn't be too far away if they wake up and want to join in.

Dee, for her part, is busy arranging the candy into wide squares (to minimize the risk of any being knocked out of place). It's not too long before the board takes shape. "Here we go!"

"Well, of course," Doc agrees with Quint. "I think most people would feel the same way. Not an ideal situation, but pretty much everything is better than death."

"Oh -- we know about the vending machine," Victor says. "We've gotten things from it in the past." He pets Nibbles. "Including, technically, him -- another friend of ours was clearing out some of the old stock and happened to drop his PokeBall." He smiles at Nibbles, who nuzzles his cheek. "We took a liking to each other."

"We never ran across the item that you mentioned, though," Alice says. "Probably for the best if it's either-or -- we wouldn't mind the LOL remover, but I can't think of a LOL yet that I would want to make permanent." Frowning, she adds, "Then again, I've never been stuck in the body of a twelve-year-old. I'm glad Blues was able to turning that LOLing to his advantage."

[pogo_boy]

Little Blaine looks at the squares of the playing area and waits for the rules to be explained. He doesn't see anything that could cause damage, at least that he could identify.

"Someone was cleaning out the vending machine?" Quint asks. "I just thought it worked on LOLs somehow. I know an alternate of one of my brothers tried to put a warning sign on it once and was turned into a girl for a few days." He looks at Nibbles. "He's one of the Pokemon? Some of my family have some of those from the vending machine... Um, so do I, but Daisy just stays at home and has sort of just become a family pet. She's some kind of pink cow."

"Most of us don't mind looking the way we do," Quint says, "but it got awkward for Blues because, well, Kalinka's human, so she grew up... They have kids now, partly because of another LOL that turned Blues human for a couple of weeks." He snerks, because leave it to BLUES of all of them to sneak into the human gene pool somehow.

[dee_lorean81]

"All right, so the idea is that you take a rock -- or a piece of candy--" Dee holds up one to demonstrate "-- and you toss it into one of the squares." She throws, and the hard candy ends up in square 7. "Then you gotta hop through the squares -- only one foot allowed in a square! -- and you have to skip the one that your candy is in." She hops along the board, balancing on one leg in the single squares, putting both feet down on the first double, then carefully making sure not to put a foot in square seven. "Then, when you get to the top, you turn around, grab your candy, and hop back the same way." She scoops up the candy, and back she goes in reverse of her previous jumps. She lands with a smile in front of Little Blaine. "Pretty simple, right?"

"Yes -- apparently she was the one who originally stocked it," Doc says. "Though I wouldn't be surprised if it had magic of its own from all the LOLs stored in it. She was clearing out of old stock -- in particular, anything living."

"Yes, she's helping to set up a whole new world, and she decided to take the Pokemon and other creatures inside to help populate it," Victor nods. "And yes, from what I understand -- a Scatterbug. He's supposed to become a Vivillon butterfly eventually." Nibbles "weis" and wiggles his little hairs. "But I'm quite happy with him how he is too."

"Ooooh -- yes, that would be a terribly awkward situation," Alice agrees, nodding. "All the better he got that LOL. . ." She laughs softly along with Quint. "And the next one too, it sounds like. I hope they're very happy together."

[pogo_boy]

Blaine watches this very closely. He thinks he understands the rules, if not the purpose. "Yes." And there seemed to be no chickens or dead babies involved, which was definitely a good thing. He'll look for a hard candy and then spend a moment examining it before tossing it at the board. It lands on six, and after considering that a moment as well he'll try to hop to the end, turn around, and hop back in accordance with the prevously defined rules.

Quint nods. "I always thought it was a bit weird that there were live things in a vending machine. It didn't seem very nice... but I guess there are worse ways to try to find a home."

Quint smiles at the scatterbug. "Hello, Nibbles. Like I said, some of the others in my family have them too. Bubble's Nemo was some kind of sickly looking fish called a Feebas, then it turned into a big lake serpent called a Milotic. At least a bug turning into a butterfly makes more sense."

[dee_lorean81]

Dee claps and cheers him on as he hops. "Yeah, that's it! There you go! Wooo!" He may not seem like he quite gets the game, but she's doing her best to make it fun for him.

"I never paid much attention to those options," Marty admits, adjusting his proton pack again. "I was more interested in the sodas. . .but yeah, wasn't exactly nice, was it?"

"I'm pretty sure all those animals were held in a kind of stasis," Doc says. "At least, I hope so. . ." He shakes his head. "Well, they're out of there now. Plenty of room to roam on a entirely new world."

Nibbles waves a stubby leg nub back at Quint. Victor blinks. "That does sound rather odd. . .I thought only Magikarps did that."

[pogo_boy]

Little Blaine seems pleased he got it right, though it's a bit hard to tell since he's covered with a bedsheet. "How do we know who wins?" he asks. And then adds, more hesitantly, "And what happens to the loser?"

Quint nods. "It's for the best... though I'm still glad my siblings got the ones we did before they were all gone." He shrugs before he replies to Victor. "We'd have to ask Bubble... he's the one who found a Pokedex at one of the Nexus Mall shops."

[dee_lorean81]

"Er. . .well, I guess the winner is whoever does it the most times without making a mistake," Dee says, frowning thoughtfully as she toys with her candy. "And I don't think anything happens to the loser besides losing. And maybe falling on their bum if they jump wrong enough."

"I'm glad I was able to get Nibbles before he was taken away to the new verse," Victor says. Nibbles nuzzles his cheek. "I don't have a Pokedex -- I just took a chance and looked it up on the computer. It's a game series in our world. There were all sorts of things on 'generations' and 'evolution' and 'Mega-evolution' and--" He shakes his head. "It's all very confusing."

[pogo_boy]

Little Blaine relaxes a smidge at that. "I like that. No one really gets hurt."

Quint nods. "I've heard about some of that." More hesitantly, he addsm "My siblings and I... well, some universes have a game series that we're in. I don't know if any of you have ever heard of Mega Man..?" He seems a bit wary as he asks this.

[dee_lorean81]

"Yeah. . .games aren't supposed to make people hurt." What kind of life has this kid been leading to make him so anxious about games? Dee would ask, but she doesn't know if it would do any good to bring up old, painful memories. So instead she'll toss her candy and take her turn again.

"Yes -- I'm just glad I was able to find out what I was looking for," Victor says. "Mainly, what Nibbles should eat besides Pokeblocks." Gotta keep your caterpillar pocket monster well-fed, after all.

There's quite a lot of puzzled head-shaking from the majority of the group -- and one nod, from Marty. "Heard of it -- never played it," he says. "Just seen stuff on it while browsing around the net in our pocket verse. First game came out after I got yanked out of my home verse." He tilts his head with a little, understanding smile. "Guessing your world doesn't quite match up?"

[pogo_boy]

Little Blaine isn't certain how to process that. He believes her, and he's heard similar since arriving here, but it still contradicts earlier things. Things he knows were Bad because it's part of why he was so scared... "Almost all of Big Blaine's games meant someone got hurt. But was it because he wasn't playing the games right, or because the games were different? I... I don't think he could have been playing them wrong, since he made all the rules."

Quint's trying to keep a watch on Little Blaine while he talks to the adults. On one hand, he's glad the kid is opening up a bit. On the other, he worries it could get disturbing fairly quickly. He rubs the back of his neck and looks a bit embarrassed about the reply he has to give. "Sort of... I mean, the earlier ones are just platform shooters, so they don't explain much of what's going on. And even then... well, they only show one side of the story. Things got more skewed after I came here... some of that on purpose. My whole family, well... If things had gone 'according to canon' none of us would still be around."

[dee_lorean81]

"If he made all the rules, then yeah, it's because the games were different," Dee confirms, hopping from square to square. She wobbles a bit in square seven, but manages to keep her balance with a bit of pinwheeling. "Games aren't supposed to hurt, but some people. . .well, they think it's funny to see people get hurt." She's thinking of the Tannen family here, no surprise.

"One side. . .you guys were the 'bad guys,' weren't you?" Marty guesses. "Well, hey, you wouldn't be the first villains we've met who turned out to be decent. Or got screwed over by how 'canon' was supposed to go." Meeting Jeannie and Jokester and all the rest has given him a new perspective on this sort of thing. "I'm glad you were able to avoid whatever the hell it had in store for you."

"We're also no strangers to having a media property reflect a version of our lives we don't recognize," Doc adds, smiling a little. "I don't suppose you've ever heard of the Back To The Future movies?"

[pogo_boy]

Little Blaine tosses the candy to take his turn while he thinks about this. He's still new to having legs, but he's done well so far... though each hop still looks a little too calculated to be 'normal' for a child. He almost loses his balance trying to nod just after a hop, but manages to correct it - though he almost overcorrects at one point in an oddly clockwork jerk before stabilizing. "I don't think it's funny, but Big Blaine did. He was the ghost in all the machines... I hid so he didn't know about me."

Quint tenses, but then nods when it seems that's not going to be a problem. "The games glossed over that Dr. Wily was insane... and didn't usually even mention that the laws at the time meant we were slaves. We didn't have any choice... and I mean that in a way few humans will ever understand. Hardcoded directives in our programming, based on Asimov's Laws. He just changed First so it only applied to him. But people need more to blame than just one madman, and we were the ones they saw following his orders."

Quint winces at the mention of those films. "Yeah, I didn't want to say anything... I, well... I'm not really fond of time travel. And I'd say I hate paradoxes, except that I sort of am one..."

[dee_lorean81]

Dee notices his lack of fluidity, especially when he wobbles and jerks back upright -- but she's not about to call him out on it. She had trouble coordinating her limbs sometimes when she first gained a human-style form too. Her first trip into the Nexus had only come after two solid days of walking practice. Maybe hopscotch will help Little Blaine get more used to his legs too! "Big Blaine sounds like a jerk," she says succinctly. "I'm glad you were able to hide from him."

There's a mutual wince from Doc, Marty, Alice, and Victor as Quint explains. "Shit -- yeah, that sounds pretty damn awful," Marty says. "I can't even -- well, I sort of can, thanks to that bastard of a Keeper I had, but at least it wasn't coded right into my brain to obey what he said. And there weren't other people there to blame me for what he did. You guys got a raw deal."

"Very much so -- I'm sorry," Victor adds with a sad nod. "What a terrible life. . .but at least it sounds like things are better now."

"One hopes," Doc says, before offering up an awkward smile for Quint. "Our reality is quite different from that of the films. Mostly because I got kidnapped by a faerie before I could actually invent the time machine." Yes, he knows that's a weird to say, but Quint's familiar with the Nexus. He has to be used to weird by now. "Spent most of my life making various things in an Arcadian lab before escaping with Marty."

"Yeah, I got taken by a guy who promised me fame and fortune and instead made me play endless concerts to an audience that didn't even appreciate it," Marty says, old hatred flaring up anew in his eyes. "Asshole. . .I think getting frenched by my mom once for five seconds would have been better."

Alice tilts her head, puzzled. "You are a paradox? How does that work? I was under the impression that was more of an event than an actual thing."