Lavender Town Syndrome

[Audrey]

"What do I mean 'What do you mean'? I mean why in the world are you sending me to a hospital?! Especially when it's not rigged with explosives with little children inside being held hostage? Dammit Jim, I'm a vigilante, not a doctor," the rather aggravated voice of Afterburn came from out back near the emergency exit of Jump Hospital. With a heavy sigh, she turned off her communicator and tossed the briefcase provided to her against the hospital wall. "Where's Dr. McCoy when you need him?" she thought as she kicked open the breifcase revealing a nurse's outfit and a keycard for the locked doors of the hospital. As of late, there's been a spreading epidemic of children suffering seizures, becoming incredibly morbid, speaking in elevated depressive language, and in one case jumping off a roof due to some video game they all played. Suspicious as to the true nature behind this situation, Hephaestus decided to send Afterburn into Jump Hospital undercover to take a look at the effected children. She had NO IDEA how this going to help anyone considering she had no medical experience AND she was pretty sure this was some internet ghost story blown way out of proportion, but orders be orders.

She extinguished her revenant form and changed from her body suit to the nurse outfit and stashed the keycard in her breast pocket. After locking her suit up tight into the breifcase and handcuffing it to her bike, she swiped the card into the emergency exit door panel and slipped into the establishment. Visiting nurses for education were fairly common in Jump Hospital, so no one often paid very much mind to an unfamiliar face, especially when she had a clearance card for the highest of areas in the hospital. Most probably thought she was their boss in some sort of way. She mingled with some of the other nurses, and soon managed to overhear that the patients from the Ivory Disease (The official medical term for the situation due to it's tendency to make the children's skin appear like ivory.) were being kept on the top floor away from the other patients due to their erratic tendencies. As nonchalantly as possible, she slipped into the elevator and took it to the top floor, sliding her clearance card once more.

Upon stepping out, she was immediately met with groaning of several people forming an almost euphony of droning. How wonderful. She sighed and continued on only to suddenly slip on the tile floor and slam her head against. She felt something wet against her leg and found she had slipping on what seemed to be... ketchup? She ran her finger across the substance and tasted it. "Definitely ketchup," she thought sticking her tongue out in disgust. She stood up from her tumble and from higher up noticed the ketchup was spelling something out. 'YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE COME HERE.' How threatening. Morbid messages written in ketchup. What was this, Scooby Doo? Next thing you know Old Man Jenkins is going to try and scare her away with his big scary knight costume.

She entered the main treatment hall minding the ketchup on the floor and soon found more messages similar written on the walls as well. 'TURN BACK', 'DEATH WALKS THESE HALLS' , 'HE FOLLOWS', 'REMEMBER THE SCENT OF MOTHER' were among the messages. She had no idea what that last one meant in the slightest. She could only assume the slow child wrote that message. His name was probably Jon with no h. Jon's were always slow and weird. In the beds were the children in question, resting as they moaned somehow. Looking at them, she saw where the ivory moniker came from. They looked practically like living porcelain dolls. She leaned over the first one she could get to and looked in close at the little girl. She seemed to be asleep, but was wriggling around and groaning like she actively in pain. Afterburn reached the tuck her arm under the covers, but pulled her fingers back after feeling the child's skin. She gripped it more firmly and made an audible gasp. It was solid. Like actual ivory. These was no moniker these kids were literally turning into ivory!

Afterburn decided to get a look at something else and pulled the girls eyelid back. Feeling it go up in a solid piece like a doll's eyelid made her almost physically ill. As she thought, the girl's eye was not normal at all. The entire eye had gone purple with a slightly different shade of it outlining her pupil. Then something Afteburn didn't expect happened. The little girl opened her other eye on her own, stopped moaning and started screeching. Quickly, Afterburn began stroking her hair (which she noticed felt like plastic) and shushing her assuring her she was just the nurse, but the girl kept screaming regardless of what she did. As she realized someone would come find her soon, Afterburn bolted from the bed only to slip on the ketchup message on the floor and slam right into a bookshelf, causing all the heavy medical books to tumble onto her, burying her underneath them. With a big textbook to the noggin, Afterburn was knocked unconscious.

[Deleted]

Hospitals were completely and utterly stupid! Not only were they denying Charlie in at visiting hours because she wasn’t family but they wouldn’t even take the stuffed bear to her friend! She sat on the steps with the stuffed animal in her hands. The beady eyes were staring at her with question she couldn’t answer. How was her owner? Did she miss her bear? Was she scared? Charlie hugged the light green bear to settle the questions gathering in her own thoughts. Nina was the daughter of a Pawn shop Charlie frequented, a young girl a little more mature than her other nine year old friends. More mature than Charlie even, but when it came to her stuffed bear Emily she showed her real age. Now Nina was sick with some kind of rare illness or something. From what Charlie’s heard in the underground it was more of an outbreak then a rare illness, affecting kids around Nina’s age. So being the good friend that she was Charlie got permission to take a few things from Nina’s room to her including Emily the green teddy bear and her handheld game system which Charlie thought was a little old.

Now she couldn’t go see Nina at all. Suddenly an idea struck when she saw two nurses on their smoking break. The little ID cards hanging from their pockets just screamed ‘steal me’. And who was she to deny their inviting whims. She stuck Emily in her bag and walked back into the hospital with her head hanging low. When an ambulance pulled up with it’s sirens blaring it was just fate giving her the go ahead. Doctors and nurses rushed out the door, one of which bumped into Charlie giving her the chance to steal her card and sneak off down the hall. She picked up a mask from a gurney and slipped into an empty locker room. Who knew hospitals had such terrible security? Charlie found a pair of scrubs laying around and slipped them on quickly. They were really big on her and she had to roll up the bottom of the pants. With the mask on she exited the locker room and entered the hallway heading for the elevator. How can it be this eas—

“Hey you!” She froze mid step and turned to see a doctor approaching her. This was it! Her cover was blown! How many years did someone get for impersonating a doctor again? Wait she was dressed as a nurse! That couldn’t be as long right? “There was a disturbance up at the top floor, one of the kids is screaming her head off. Go up and help whatever staff is already up there.”

“Uh… why don’t you go?” Charlie asked still unsure if she should stay or bolt.

“I’m busy down here, plus those kids give me the creeps,” the doctor visibly shivered before he was paged and rushed off. Well he just saved her a load of time. To be honest Charlie didn’t even know what floor Nina was on, she was just gonna check every floor. Now she knew what floor to narrow her search, the one with the creepy kids… That was an exaggeration right?

Charlie shrugged and continued her way to the elevator and hopped in the first empty one that appeared. With the press of a button she was on her way up. She hummed along with the elevator music and rocked back and forth on her heels. The girl could never sit still for very long. When the doors opened she peeked her head out and looked for any nurses or doctors. One rushed by going in the direction of screams, trying to blend in she followed rather reluctantly. Screaming in a hospital was never fun, it was usually creepy. It didn’t help that there were cryptic messages all over the hallways. This was such a bad idea!! Charlie thought as she caught up with the nurse, managing to avoid the blo— ketchup messages on the floor.

“Hey you!” Really again? “Check on that nurse there,” the nurse pointed to some girl under a bunch of medical books. Ow… “the poor girl must have been scared silly.” The nurse rushed into the room with a few others while Charlie walked over to the girl and pulled some books off of her. From the looks of it, she slipped on the ketchup when she was rushing to get out. Understandable, Charlie thought.

“Ma’am?” She started giving the nurse a poke. “Are you alright ma’am?” Charlie wondered if she should call her ‘ma’am’ given that the girl look about her age. That was why she wore a mask, so people couldn’t tell how young she was. Maybe this girl was just an intern or something. “Hello?” She kept poking cause she really didn't know what else to do.

[Audrey]

Afterburn slowly stirred from her tomb underneath the medical textbooks as one of the apparent nurses prodded her back to life. Given she was not being dragged out and tossed into a cop car, it seemed her ruse had not been discovered yet. Score 1 for people assuming the best. She slowly arose from the book pile, rubbing the back of her head. "Yes yes I'm alright. Just a little bit of a tumble. Apparently I needed to 'hit the books'," she joked hoping it would make her seem more genuine. Medical staff loved really bad puns right? Of course they did. She used the now emptied shelves to help herself up and looked about. Seeing the big long line of ketchup leading right to her crash site, she could hazard a guess as to what she slipped on in order to ram into the bookshelf. It seemed the doctors had managed to quiet the screaming child and hadn't turned wise to her little ruse. Afterburn turned her attention onto the nurse who helped her up. She seemed awful young, probably around her age. Weird. Must be an intern or something. Intern or not, she probably knew quite a bit more about these kid's condition than she did. Couldn't help to inquire, this didn't seem like standard medical condition.

"Who exactly are you? What do you do on this floor?" she asked trying to give a little bit of administrative tone to her words to go with her Level 5 badge. It came off a bit stern, but what were they going to do about it? Fire her? Fake it 'till you make it they say in the performing world. "And why in the world hasn't anyone cleaned up these ketchup messages? They are a major safety hazard! One of the books could've given me brain damage!" she added more as a personal concern. She had a nasty headache now thanks to these stupid ketchup messages and she was intent to figure out what irresponsible jerk was to blame so she could whack them a new one.

[Deleted]

Charlie was relieved when the nurse intern person woke up if she had had a concussion or something then the blonde wouldn’t have known what to do to not blow her cover. Those textbooks were really heavy and hard! She couldn’t help but laugh at the girl's pun, was that like a running thing with medical staff or something. Still ‘hit the books’, that was pretty funny given the situation. “I see that, might want to tone down the hitting to more of a tapping,” she quipped. Charlie was more for comics herself, they didn’t really hurt when they hit you unless they were hardcovers or something. When the screaming stopped Charlie couldn’t help but look towards the door it had come from. Was that Nina? The question caused the items in her bag to feel heavier almost like the green bear was made of lead. Yet the name on the door didn’t read 'Waren, Nina', but someone else. Still the little girl needed her teddy bear and Charlie needed to deliver it to her.

Her green eyes widened slightly at the questions the nurse was asking. From her tone Charlie guessed she was a nurse or a high ranking intern. Great, alright Charlie just tell half truths, you’ve done it before. “Oh I’m Rudy a sort of new intern,” she made to reach for her ID badge but pulled out the access card that got her up here. “Crap, forgot my badge in my locker,” she said in what she hoped was an embarrassed tone. “Um… they just told me to rush up here to help with the screaming patient,” that was the truth. Charlie scowled a little at the nurse when it sound like she was being lectured, it wasn’t her fault she slipped. “I’m not the janitor and I just got here. How was I suppose to know someone decided to be creepy and write cryptic messages in ketchup everywhere?!” Well they did say the best lies were formed from truths right?

“Now if you’ll excuse me I have to make my rounds,” she adjusted her bag. “See if there are anymore ketchup messages to report,” Charlie started to walk off and nearly slipped in the red mess as well. Someone really needed to clean that up!

[Audrey]

Good, it looked like the nurse bought her facade. She didn't get any information on the kids condition unfortunately, but with her guise established, she could probably get away with a bit more research on the kid's condition. She dusted the textbook mold and dust from her apron and approached one of the children, wriggling and groaning like the others. From her pocket she produced and syringe and attempted to take a sample of the child's blood only to find the tip unable to puncture through the skin due to it's incredibly thick nature. She gave it a couple more shots before packing the needle back up. She tried feeling for a pulse, but the ran into the same problem being unable to feel or hear any manner of heartbeat beyond their skin. These stupid kids were impossible to get a read on apart from the fact that they had skin as thick as a china teapot. It almost reminded her of the china doll from the Wizard of Oz books. Wizard of Oz... She never read those but she knew of the china doll character... She must've liked the books in her past life... She suddenly was overwhelmed with a sense of joy as she stroked the child's cheek. "Don't worry. I'll save you. I'll get you out of this," she murmured without even hardly thinking.

She stopped and thought about it. "Man, for someone who was apparently a wicked tyrant in my previous life, I've got a real soft spot for those in peril," she thought seriously in question of who in the world she used to be. She then turned her attention back to the child and noticed that the child's wrist had formed into a slip joint. Like the little joints dolls have so you can pose their hands around. This wasn't any manner of sickness, these kids were turning into real porcelain dolls! Something was up here, there's no way a simple video game could cause this... Someone in this hospital was not who they were saying they were... I mean, apart from herself obviously. There's a villain somewhere around here and Afterburn was going to figure out who it was.

[Deleted]

There was something about this floor that creeped Charlie out, and it wasn’t the ketchup messages saying the same things over and over again. Those were getting old already the farther down the hall she walked. She glanced around after feeling a prickling sensation on the back of her neck. Something was very off about this floor, and it affected her so much Charlie could feel her body grow lighter as her powers activated. Even though she hasn’t gotten the hang of them yet she knew that when she started floating for any other reason than a chase it wasn’t a good sign. Plus she didn’t need to be floating around the halls, that would just blow her cover and get her thrown in jail or worse. She shuddered at the thoughts filling her head but then gave it a shake. No! This is not going to the be end of me! Charlie thought. I’ve already managed to convince one nurse and it wasn’t that hard. This isn’t my first breaking and entering and this place has like no security, she glanced around again.

A name plate next to a closed door caught her attention. WAREN, Nina This was it! Quickly she opened the door and slipped in, closing the door slowly to not alarm any more nurses. The room was eerily quiet and the cold sent a chill up Charlie’s spine. She removed her mask and turned to see a bed halfway hidden behind a curtain. When Charlie pulled the curtain away she gasped at the small body she saw. The girl had always been small but never in the time Charlie knew her had she been so pale. Not only that but something was wrong with her wrists. Upon closer inspection Charlie found that they looked like a doll’s wrists. Carefully she took the little girls hand only to drop it soon after touching it. It was hard! “What the…” this couldn’t be possible. This was someone’s bad idea of a joke. It wasn’t really Nina laying in the bed, it was just a doll that looked like her! That was i—

“Char…lie?” She looked up at her whispered name to see two shiny green glass eyes staring at her. This was Nina and she was awake. Against every instinct screaming not to Charlie took the little girl’s hand again. “Hey there Sunshine,” she said using the pet name her brother used to use on her. Charlie brushed away a few of Nina’s dark locks from her face, surprised to feel how fake they were. “I brought someone who misses you very much,” she placed her bag on the bed and dug Emily out holding the bear up for the girl to see. “She thought you would be lonely here and begged me to bring her to you,” Charlie placed the bear under the girls doll like arm. Her fingers stroked the girls forehead gently, “There, now you can sleep peacefully.” She gave the girl one of her brightest smiles and let it fall as soon as her eye lids closed.

Normally Charlie would just leave after her mission was done, but this was wrong. She couldn’t just leave Nina like this. Where were the nurses and doctors that were supposed to take care of her? Something is very wrong, Charlie thought as she quietly slipped out of the room. And I’m going to find out what.

[Audrey]

"Doctor? Excuse me, you must be the doctor on duty up here." Afterburn called out to the doctor that had come to attend to the screaming girl.
"Yes, Dr. Meyers, you must be a visiting nurse, otherwise you would've known there's been a strict request that if any nurses must come up here they are not to touch the children," the doctor answered somewhat stern in his response.
"Yes, from Gotham University in fact," Afterburn responded, thinking of the first university that came to her head.
"Then I'll let the disturbance go this time. I'm a Wildcat myself," the doctor smiled.
"... It's the Nighthawks actually," Afterburn corrected, not exactly sure WHY she knew the mascots of school on the clear other coast of the country.
"Oh,"
"Anyway... what can you tell me about these kid's condition, I looked myself but it's like nothing I've ever seen."
"It's a new disease of some kind, brought on by soundwaves of some kind by what the stories are saying... You aren't a reporter are you?"
"Goodness no, I hate reporters." That one wasn't a lie. Afterburn hated reporters more than she hated superheroes.
"What's peculiar is why it's only effecting these children. The supposed game 'causing' the sickness was released world wide to people of all ages, but only kids in Jump City seem to be responding this way."
"By the way doctor, is this the tone in question as curiosity?" Afterburn asked after pulling out her phone.

Hephaestus had given her a sample of the song that had apparently caused this epidemic in case she needed it for reference. She had listened to it beforehand as it seemed to be safe. She didn't experience any manner of extreme symptoms, but she got kind of a headache and a tingly feelings like your hair on your neck standing up. Hearing the song a 2nd time as it played from her phone, she felt about the same symptoms.
"Oh yes, that's the o-AUGH!" the doctor fell backwards all of a sudden and covered his ears. The child nearby also began screaming loudly again. Quickly, Afterburn put her phone away, cutting off the music and approached the doctor. She went to life his head up, but pulled back when she found it too had gone the form of ivory. As she stepped away, he joined into the children's rhytmic groaning mindlessly. It was then Afterburn realized that the groaning was pitched. They weren't just griping about pain, they were singing the song. The song that was causing this. The next thing that caught Afterburn's attention was the abrupt stopping of the girl's screaming. She looked to the girl and saw her go limp. She cautiously approached the child and went a little pale herself. The child had become an actual doll. No longer breathing, no longer living. Just a hunk of glass with plastic joints.

Just when she thought she'd really seen everything though, the biggest sight for sore eyes came next. From out of the ceiling emerged a giant purple hand made of some foggy mist-like material. Afterburn didn't notice it at first, until it picked up the doll girl by the hand and started to pull her up towards the ceiling with it. Jumping into action, Afterburn leaped up and held onto the waist of the doll girl getting pulled up towards the ceiling with it. "Oh no, you don't!" Sensing an unwanted edition to it's collection, the hand began to shake the doll girl around in an attempt to make Afterburn let go. From the slippery surface of whatever these kids were turning into, Afterburn couldn't keep her grip and began to slip. With one last attempt, she tried to grab the girl's foot as she fell, but the entire leg ended up coming off the joint, falling with Afterburn onto the bed below where the girl was once laying. Looking up, Afterburn only just managed to glimpse the hand disappearing back into the ceiling with MOST of what it came for. Looking at the glass leg in her hands, Afterburn immediately flipped out a little and threw the doll-like leg into a pile of clothes. "AHHH! It's like a life-sized Barbie leg!" she screeched to no one in particular. She then noticed the kids had all sat up now and were glaring at her. "That can't be good at all."

[Deleted]

After visiting room after room Charlie saw that every kid was experiencing the same symptoms. It took her a minute to decode the doctor’s chicken scratch on the kid’s files but he had apparently assessed the same thing. She was looking at one of the clipboards when she started humming. A habit Charlie picked up for when she stood still for a little too long. But she stopped when she realized she had never even heard the song before. It was too creepy for her to have listened too on her MP3 player or to have even thought up of on her own. Confused she turned back to the groaning kids when her mind finally clicked. It was the groaning! When she listened closely Charlie could make out a melody from their collective groans. She must have picked it up subconsciously when she was snooping around the rooms. That’s just creepy, she thought and slipped out of the room. Charlie thought of the two weirdest things she had found, same symptoms and collective groaning of a specific melody.

She nearly collided with a couple of nurses in the hallway. Crap… They looked her up and down, from her rolled up scrub pants to the nervous smile on her face. It was obvious they knew she didn’t really belong. “Who are you?” One of them asked while the other just gave her a suspicious glare. Charlie’s mind ran through every excuse she could use but none of them made it to her mouth.

“Um… I’m a… new nurse,” she responded finally in an unsure tone. “Doctor… Doctor Meyers told me to do rounds!” Charlie said when she remembered the name of the doctor whose chicken scratch composed most of the files she had read. With her best smile, Charlie hoped that the nurses would believe her. The one that had spoken seemed too but the other one still gave her a suspicious look.

“And where is Dr. Meyers?” The suspicious one asked her. She looked like she was of higher ranking than the nurse next to her, but from the badges on their scrubs it seemed that wasn’t true. Charlie looked around for a moment as if looking for this Dr. Meyers. “He told me to check up on the kids around here and then took off,” she replied. It wasn’t a complete lie, just the last part and the very first part. Was it just her or was she getting a little better at lying?

“He was right behi—” another scream filled the halls and sent the nurses running. Charlie watched for a moment before running after them, she needed to be believable if she was going to stay around to snoop. It was coming from the same room but before they even turned down the hall the screaming was cut off. When they reached the room the two nurses went to the doctor on the ground saying his name and asking if he was alright. From what Charlie saw he wasn’t, this Dr. Meyers was showing signs of the dollification process. What? But how, it’s only affected kids so far, Charlie looked at the kids in question and noticed two things. One; there was an empty bed and two; the kids were sitting up and looking at the nurse on the ground.

“Okay, what is going on!” She shouted having enough of this creepy scene. Then she caught a glimpse of the leg on the pile of clothes and covered her mouth to keep from screaming. “Is that a leg!?”

[Audrey]

"Something wicked this way comes," Afterburn spoke in a response to both the children staring at her and the nurse's inquiry. In a flash, her skin went grey and her hair aflame, assuming her revenant form rather suddenly. "And I'm getting to the bottom of it... Oh and that leg came off one of the kids. I MEAN, the kid had gone full doll, it just popped off. I'm sure it can be put right back on!" she added, kind of ruining her chance to seem somewhat cool as she tried to explain away the severed leg sitting around. Shaking off her nervousness, Afterburn tore off her nurse's outfit revealing her bodysuit costume underneath and hopped into the center of the room. "I know you're out there whoever's doing this to these kids, come out and show yourself!" she yelled towards the ceiling in an attempt to confront the dark hand that swallowed up the child just before. The nurses of the hospital just seemed to confusedly look at each other as no one answered Afterburn. "It figures you'd be cowardl-Oof!" she started, but was cut off by one of the afflicted children shoving her backwards after getting out of his bed. Tumbling backwards, she once again slipped on one of the ketchup messages and slammed right into a window sill before falling face first onto the floor. "YOU SNOT-NOSED LITTLE PUNK!!!" she yelled at the emotionless kid. She knew it was likely the curse forcing him to do it, but she was angry and she was going to let him know it.

She started to get up, but soon found she couldn't move one of her feet. Looking back, she realized the dark hand had appeared once more and was maintaining a death grip on her foot, trying to pull her into the infinite void it was coming from. Suddenly not so confident she wanted to see what was on the other side of things, Afterburn began clambering towards the center of the room as hard she could with her hands, but found her palms were covered with ketchup making every surface slippery and impossible to get a firm grip on. Slowly, the portal of sorts was engulfing her lower body as the hand dragged her in. She hate to say it, but she was in a bit of a pickle here. "HELP!"

[Deleted]

Charlie wasn’t really listening anymore, she was more so focused on the fact that the nurse wasn’t actually a nurse. Instead she was a gray skinned fire haired girl who apparently likes pulling legs off of the doll children. There were three reasons for the girl to lie as far as Charlie was concerned. Either she was checking in on a friend, or a hero trying to save the day, or this girl was the cause of all this. But soon after that thought it was sent out the window when she started shouting to the ceiling and one of the sick kids started pushing her. Charlie flinched when she tumbled and face planted on the floor. 

“Hey the kid’s sick there’s no reason for nam—” Her blue eyes widened when some ghostly hand was wrapped around the fake nurse’s foot. At the cry for help Charlie thought quickly about what to do.  The girl’s hands were covered in ketchup so holding onto those would be hard so she slipped her backpack off and held a shoulder strap towards the girl. Charlie positioned herself in a strong stance, making sure to avoid the ketchup on the floor. “Quick! Hook your arms around this! I’ll try to pull you out!”

[Audrey]

Afterburn quickly hooked her arm around the backpack as the hand pulled harder in an attempt to pull her in to it's origin. It remained a strong force like that of a body builders making the tension between the nurse and the hand in Afterburn's body ridiculously painful. Afterburn was just about to let go of the backpack as the strain was getting to be too much for her, when the same kid who went and pushed her over into the window proceeded to walk up as deadpan and emotionless as he did before and push the nurse holding the backpack right into the ketchup. At this point, Afterburn couldn't help but think the messages were deliberately made with ketchup just to be the bane of her existence tonight. With no acting force present anymore from the nurse's stance, but Afterburn's arm still locked around the backpack, the hand quickly dragged Afterburn, the backpack, and the other nurse into the void of it's presence.

The two tumbled down a short height and landed in what seemed to be plastic grass, like the kind you find in sushi bars as decor. Looking up, Afterburn saw that they were definitely not in a hospital anymore. They appeared to be in some bizarre technicolor town of some sort. The grass was all plastic, the benches were attached to the ground by pegs, and the roads were assembled like puzzle pieces. They appeared to be in a life-size play toy town of some kind. Even more disturbing were the various children strewn about the town, posed in place. Not moving, just frozen in the fantasy world they'd been placed in. Afterburn soon noticed the child she had tried to save just a block or two away on the sidewalk with crutches to account for her missing leg.

It was at this point, Afterburn looked up and realized the 'sun' was in fact an oversized lamp and the blue sky just construction paper wrapped around it. This whole world was just a giant fake toybox. She soon turned to the nurse who had inadvertently been taken along for the ride. "Sorry about this. I didn't mean to pull you along into this. You must be terrified out of your mind right now. But don't worry, I'm gonna get us out of here, and I'm gonna save all these kids while I'm at it. Uh, my name's Afterburn by the way. As you probably figured out by now, I'm not a nurse. I just got assigned here to investigate the whole epidemic since there was a little suspicion something super was involved. Seems they were right about that," she said looking around once more at the dollhouse land they'd been dropped into.

[Deleted]

The thing pulling the fake nurse was strong, like super strength strong and with a lot of effort Charlie thought she was making head way. She managed a step back and a smile before the kid pushed her into the window and her feet slid in the ketchup. With a loud ‘oof’ she landed on her back in the red paste and began slipping along the floor.

“YOU CRAZY LITTLE TWEEEEEERP!!!” Charlie yelled when she followed the fire haired girl into the portal thing. Which was an interesting experience altogether, she was used to falling. It was a vice that came with the territory of flight. The fake grass was a little new, and rather uncomfortable to land on. “Ow…” she rubbed her head and sat up slowly. When she looked around memories of her childhood surfaced. The area looked like one of her really old doll houses that her mother left for her. They aways gave her the creeps and this was just a horror film in the making. Yet Charlie was more curious than frightened at her surrounding. She tried to pick at the plastic grass but it held fast to the ground which was definitely not dirt from the rather hard landing.

And the sky! It wasn’t a sky at all! Charlie felt saddened to see a lamp and what looked like paper above them. She wondered what night looked like, if there even was a night… Charlie loved the stars. Kinda why her super name was Black Comet. She was brought back to earth by the fake nur— or agent from what… Afterburn… was saying. Well she looked to be telling the truth and Charlie didn’t really see the need to lie anymore. They were both in the same situation after all.

The smell of ketchup was starting to annoy her. “Well my name is Charlie and if we’re going to be completely honest, I’m not a nurse either,” Charlie carefully started to take off the scrub shirt. At the moment she was very happy she kept her normal clothes under the large nurse scrubs. “I was here just to bring something for a friend who has this weird… doll disease,” she tossed the ketchup covered clothing out of the way revealing just a t-shirt and jeans. “God it feels good to tell the truth, personally I never liked lying. You’re right in saying I’m scared, but to be honest my curiosity is getting the better of me. Plus I really want to save Nina before she turns into…” Charlie stared at one of the dolls, “that.” She shouldered her backpack, “So Afterburn where do we start?”

[Audrey]

"Wait," Afterburn paused as she thought about the implications. "Are you telling me that we were both committing medical fraud trying to fool the other that we were real? That's marvelous," she said as she burst into laughter. A nice respite from the insanity that has been this entire endeavor. "Well Charlie, I won't rat you out if you don't rat me out. I think we can run an agreement there. To be entirely honest, I have no idea what's going on here. One of those kids in the medical wing went full doll after hearing the song that made them like this in the first place, and the doctor took on the kid's symptoms, but nothing at all happened to me. When the kid went doll that hand thing that pulled us into here took them. I tried to stop them, but when I tried to wrestle the kid from it... their leg came off. Not exactly an experience I'm used to," she added shivering a little thinking of the leg.

As if on cue, Afterburn was conked on the head with said leg, apparently dropped from the same place they came from. Once again, she quickly threw the limb away in disgust. She stuck out her tongue and looked again at Charlie. "My first guess is we should figure out who's behind all this. My money's on Puppet King. It WREAKS of his 'charm' here. There has to be some control panel making this whole "town" work. If we split up, we could certainly cover a lot more ground," Afterburn suggest as she dug through belt only to find it had been emptied when they were transported to wherever they were. "Do you have anything you can use as a signal for help? I can shoot flames which are certainly noticeable enough. The last thing we need is one of us ending up like they are."