Welcome to Gaia! ::

She woke up gasping in the tavern. The sheer difference in atmosphere--from the ghastly, cold forbidden room to the warm, inviting, downright casual bar--made her incapable of moving for a little while. Then she remembered that nothing would kill her here. Nothing was supposed to.

Then again, did it matter if it did? She'd seen the clones. She'd heard the AI.

Maybe this wasn't even the original Q. Maybe she was just--

No.

Q shut her eyes tight and curled up in her booth, taking deep breaths to try and calm her racing heart; her new cape-wing hybrid did an excellent job of covering her up in a much needed soft embrace. She wanted out. She really, really wanted to get out now.

Numbly she fumbled for her pocket card, almost dropping it in the process.





She couldn't get that out before, so clearly now was as good as any.

Big didn't get the dignity of a booth. He woke up under a table, well away from Q and the door, a chirping squeak escaping him before he realized he was safe. Or was he? He'd died, right? Did that mean...

He managed to hold back another yelp as his pocket card buzzed for the second time... ever. He scooted out from under his respawn point, rising onto very shaky legs and tapping out a wildly misspelled response before he saw Q in the flesh. Blight too. They were all right.

"I did get out. Not on my own, I'm afraid." He paused, squeezing his eyes shut as he remembered how it had felt to get sliced in half. Big waved weakly at Blight, urging him to join them. "Are both of you okay?"

BigIdeas was there too. Good. They hadn't actually died or anything. Just ... seemed to die to a thing with many eyes that disguised itself as a shadow thing.

Blightning seemed to be doing a bit better than both afroQueen and BigIdeas, and that was probably because he hadn't just been destroyed. He managed to escape in tact, which did not seem to be the method most of them had gotten out of there. Maybe he wouldn't mention that he had managed to escape unless he was confronted with the question directly. For now, he would walk over to them and focus on the fact that they were alright.

"I wouldn't say the game sucks," admitted Blightning, shrugging. "The game itself is rather fun. The reasons behind it? Not so much." If the game was just some kind of front for stealing their memories and destroying them, only leaving replicas remaining?

Well, it made his blood boil, really.

Virtual blood.

Whatever.

"It didn't really answer much. Just kept going on vaguely and I think it mentioned something about us wishing her that way? I have no idea." Blightning shrugged. "Just more supervillain nonsense."

She hmph'd regardless, because a game that was whacky wasn't the same as a game that was fun--much less one that yanked them out of the real world with intents to replace them once their "task" was finished. At least Big didn't last long; she felt a smidge better about getting OHKO'd so quickly.

"Wished her that way?" Q repeated, frowning in confusion. "The hell's that supposed to mean? I ain't seen her before in my life." Everything just seemed designated to frustrate her more and more ever since she strode into the Red Queen's territory.

The Red Queen.

"Maybe we have to kill one of the queens," she suggested, a little wary still but more bright-eyed at the prospect than trying to destroy, say, the AI. "That's the whole point of this, right? Maybe we kill ol' Destruction b***h and go home."

The frown was about accurate as to how he felt about the whole statement of 'wishing her that way.' It made no sense to him.

"Who jacking knows," remarked Blightning, laughing. "She might just be trying to say that it's our fault she's cloning us." Because he totally wanted to be cloned.

Not really. He was the only him that was allowed to exist. He was too awesome to be repeated.

Destruction b***h? ... That was Red Queen. Right. He was aligned to the Red Queen.

Though he wasn't really sure if he wanted to be aligned to either Queen anymore if aligning to the Queens might just lead him to death. After all, she said something about that being what she wanted them to do, too. They were supposed to kill the Queens. "Isn't that just what she wants us to do? Kill the Queens, then we'll be replaced..." Did he really buy it, though? It sounded like more supervillain nonsense, as he said before.

Still, it was the closest thing to a solid theory they had. What else were they supposed to do? It seemed that challenging Alice directly wasn't really something they were capable of right now if she could literally just choose to destroy them and send them back to the Tavern as if they had never been there in the first place.

"I'm on Red, though, so I'd have to aim my attacks at the White Queen."

"I guess killing the queens would be as good a strategy as any." Although he had been quick to try to throw Alice under the bus, Big sounded reluctant to fight now. He had never dissipated before, and even though there had been no pain, he really didn't want to die again. "Either one."

He noticed a little Caterpillar ghoul and a flaming Cheshire Cat nearby and turned to peer at them more closely. Had they been at the fight too?

"But how do I say this?" he continued, looking back at his companions. "I don't want to go right now." He sighed. "But we should. Ignore me."

He liked the way afroQueen was looking at it.

Honestly, it sounded like they way he'd look at it, anyway. Well, maybe. First, he'd try to see if there was anything else he could do, but ... a lot of the game world was just going to keep going anyway. Only some of them managed to have the experience that the few of them in that room had, and he knew there were far more of them in the game than just the few of them. He had seen far more of them.

It was a little disappointing that nearly everyone he had managed to team up with so far had been on the White Queen's side--perhaps he had made a bad decision when he had chosen--but as much as he liked being with people, he knew he was strong enough to manage on his own, too. Confidence was something he certainly had in spades, and even if he didn't have the support of his allies, he would have support of those who were fighting on the side of the Red Queen.

He could hold his own anyway.

They'd get out of this, anyway. Alice couldn't win with her "Replacing Them" nonsense. He knew that for sure. "Whenever this nonsense is over, maybe I'll see you guys back in Halloween, right?" He was going to assume they were all from Halloween, considering he had heard them all use the phrase 'Jack' at least once...

He spared a glance over his shoulder at the other people managing to spawn in. Blightning was glad he had managed to escape before Alice had gotten to them, but he had to give a small, sympathetic wince to how unnerved a lot of the others seemed to be...

Lights would not have objected to a hug, not at all. He wanted one too, but he also wanted fire and warmth. Really just curling up in a nice lava bath sounded good right about now.

But he would not go any closer. nope he would sit right here, at the designated 5 foot line.

"I think.... I think she, someone, is trying to use us to make a seal of sorts... using game dynamics. So basically we, our avatars will be here fighting the queens back forever."

He voiced his thoughts. "Or at least that's the most sense I can make of it from what she said." thinking about it that way made it hurt less. "She was just moving us out of the save files. we could do some damage in there.... like..... breaking the code holding our avatars together... " or his mind. he wasn't sure which, his memories were too jumbled.