Logs:Thoroughly Mediocre Wonderland

Thoroughly Mediocre Wonderland
Dramatis Personae Echo, Nahida, Sriyani
In Absentia	2023-07-05 "This is not the afterlife I was expecting. But -- I guess -- for a group like us, it kind of suits, no?"
Location <???> Dimension of Misfit Toys
Southwest(?) of the Sculpted Junk Tower in Lassiter Limbo, a bizarre and colorful forest appears to have sprung up around these teenagers. Clothes (random rain-battered sneakers that might have once adorned telephone wires, a faux-leather jacket that might have once been sort of nice but is now completely falling apart, some highlighter-colored exercise gear next to some perfectly normal tees with protest slogans) have been draped off of a variety of broken furniture and One Actual (rotted, split down the middle) Tree. The smell of food is, distressingly, still not yet present. Echo is back to her new-to-Lassiter position of walking up very close to everything and squinting at it before moving away, though the frequency has slowed as it becomes evident they are just in the Wrong Place. That is, until she spots a creepy mannequin (with a painted, open mouth) and lifts a pair of ugly glasses with thick lenses and circular red frames off of it, hesitantly sliding them onto her face. She grimaces. "Well. I can see more, I think? But it also hurts. What is this place, the Room of anti-Requirement?" "One man's trash --" Nahida has been poking through some of the furnishings until she finds, dumped in with all the protest tees, a keffiyah in the colors of the Palestinian flag. She glances around them briefly, evidently satisfied enough with present company to shed the very grubby scarf she's been wearing all this while, wrapping her hair back up in the new(...ish) scarf. She adds a pair of sunglasses (with rainbow-tortoiseshell frames) to her ensemble before quickly whipping them back off, squinting -- prescription, apparently. "Try these?" She's wandering closer to Echo, holding the glasses out. "Interdimensional junkyard? This could solve a lot of ocean problems." Echo's smile is quick and grateful as she accepts the shades, though this is quickly replaced by telegraphed bafflement about the confetti-colored frames as she turns them over. "Dark and still blurry, but who am I to complain after the last two months," she asserts as she turns to look through them at the other teen, though she slides the too-strong pair into her scrub pockets, just in case. "New scarf, nice. Just goes to show, the government's hiring this guy for torture jail enforcement instead of plastic or nuclear waste." Armed now with some sight, she digs out a black MAGNETO WAS RIGHT tee and holds it up with a wry smile. "...Thoughts?" "Suits you," Nahida judges in short order. She's poking through what looks like some punk interpretations of cheerleader outfits, frowning at these before flashing a small smile at Echo. "After one raid and one uprising I think the Brotherhood should be excited to have us." "Uhh --" Sriyani is just emerging from behind the tree, and snatches up one of the patchwork skirts that Nahida has just Disapproved At. "I think they'd be more excited if we, like, ever succeeded though. Not that it's not cool here and all but did we actually -- well." Their nose wrinkles. "What did we actually accomplish?" Echo lowers the T-shirt thoughtfully and drapes it over her shoulder with a slightly uncertain pat. "I always thought of them as, well, terrorists..." her shoulders climb up to her ears and then fall down heavily with a slightly demoralized chuckle. "But I think I got that from people who think we're terrorists, so now I just don't know." She turns to Sriyani, adding another skeptic glance to the skirt they're holding. "Let Beau punch some shitfucks? Got a...prison vacation?" she asks halfheartedly. Quieter, she adds, "You think we're stuck here?" In the distance, they can hear high-pitched drunken whistling coming from one of the long-term inhabitants. Nahida's expression crumples briefly at terrorists, but she nods at Echo. "Many people have been terrorists, I think, who were just trying to..." Slowly, her brows knit. She shakes her head, and plops down on a very sagging and busted armchair liberally draped with clothing in varyingly garish rainbow patterning. Her head tilts to listen to the whistling. "Would it be better or worse than being stuck there?" Echo hugs her arms across her chest and looks down at a childishly failed tie-dye job (Springfield Summer Daze 1991!). "No 'testing'," her fingers curl in air-quotes, "no racists, no...hope of rescue? I guess the last one was sketchy to begin with --" her hands plummet to her sides, pulling her shoulders down with them, "...maybe it's. Even?" Casting about for a seat of her own, she finds the nearest one taken by a calico cat lounging atop a tiger-striped blanket, who blinks at her a few times before mewing loudly to indicate its disinterest in moving. A strangled sort of sound emerges from her throat as she reaches tentatively toward it. "There are cats? Does trash dimension win?" "How sure are we about no racists?" Sriyani doesn't sound worried, here. They're turning their back to the others, stripping off their scrub shirt to replace it with a BLACK LIVES MATTER one. "Cuz if we get a chance to piss off interdimensional racists I'm taking it." Their eyes light at the mewing, and they bounce to their feet with a bright smile. "Fresh clothes and cute animals is definite improvement. If trash dimension just had a private hot shower I might think we'd died and gone to suuuuper bizarre heaven." "Well, if they also came from Lassiter to begin --" Nahida shrugs, but then her eyes are lighting, too. "Oh!" She reaches up to her newly wrapped headscarf, plucking it -- off? No, it's still on, she's just pulled a second one away from the first, twisting one end into a smaller knot so that she can dangle it for batting near the cat. "This is not the afterlife I was expecting. But -- I guess -- for a group like us, it kind of suits, no?" "Well -- at least they seem like they have things to do that aren't beating us up, maybe?" Echo is holding her breath as she lands a gentle stroke on the cat's back while it is Discovering Headscarf, another little sound escaping her at the tactile experience of more softness than any of them have touched in a while. "That's a sales pitch. Come to mutant...-hood? -dom?, get jailed, we have a Thoroughly Mediocre Wonderland Afterlife." She's looking critically off to where the fabric leaves are thinning. "If we look for a shower forest, we can bring some of this with, for the others. Disco suit fashion show party. I can play, uh...September...? for us." "Some of us really need it." Sriyani's nose wrinkles as they tilt their head closer to their armpit, sniff, grimace. "-- oof, me included." They're grabbing up an armload of clothing without much discernment, just piling on mismatched items until they're clutching a hefty pile. "Okay, what did the others say? Think -- positive shower thoughts? Here goes nothing." And with determination they are marching off to very shortly disappear into the distance -- whether to a shower or to even more baffling parts, only Positive Thoughts will tell.