They're off to see the Wizard...

[gonebyebye]

Who| Ray, Ken, Koromaru, Tadashi, and Videl
What| The Wonderful Legion of Oz
Where| The Land of Oz
When| Through the Looking Glass
Warnings/Notes| N/A

The tornado appears in the middle of New Metropolis without any sort of warning. Everything that crosses it's path quickly gets sucked into the sky. Trees, benches, hot dog carts, cars, and even Legionnaires rapidly vanish into the twirling vortex of wind. Tadashi is the first to go, followed by Ray, and then Videl. Ken and Koromaru are the last to be sent flying away, before the tornado disappears just as quickly as it arrived.

Comments

If he only had the nerve...

[gonebyebye]

Now a quartet, Ray, Videl, Ken and Korumaru find themselves in a deep, dark jungle. The path has become hard to see, even though it's colored as bright a yellow as possible. There could be anything in this densely packed wood. Possibly Lions. Maybe tigers. There might even be bears (Oh my).

[the_civilian]

Tadashi isn't really a hiking in the woods kind of guy, but he's reasonably sure that it's straight up magic keeping him lost here. Mostly because he keeps going around in circles without making any turns, which he knows because he's been using his brand new claws to scratch arrows into tree trunks. He's pretty tired of that nonsense. He's also pretty tired of being hot and itchy because he's covered in fur that is much less soft than that of a domestic house cat.

As such, he can't quite help growling at the rustling in the bushes nearby. He doesn't particularly want to get into a fight on top of everything else, but he wants to get chased around the woods even less than he wants to wander around them.

[gonebyebye]

"And there's our Cowardly Lion." Ray says, climbing over the bushes.

"You can quit the growling. I can guarantee you that nobody else is happy to be here either."

[stophamatime]

"You can say that again," Ken mutters under his breath, tugging at his skirt.

[saltsweet]

"Now that was kind of rude, don't you think?" Videl asks Ray, lifting the burlap hat off her head and picking errant pieces of straw out of her hair. "Calling Tadashi a coward."

[gonebyebye]

"I'm not calling Tadashi cowardly. I apologize if it sounded that way," Ray adds as he glances Tadashi's way.

"The Cowardly Lion is the name of the Wizard of Oz character whose role he's taken."

[saltsweet]

"The wizard of where?" Videl flattened the hat back on her head, following Ray's glance toward Tadashi. "And why would a lion be cowardly? Has this wizard ever actually met a lion?"

[the_civilian]

Tadashi brightens considerably at the sight of his teammates.

"I'm actually pretty okay with the Cowardly Lion if it means I'm not stuck in the Lion King," he answers, crouching down and holding his hand (paw?) out for Koromaru to sniff. He hasn't read or seen any versions of the Wizard of Oz in awhile, but he thinks that Dorothy might smack the Lion for scaring Toto when they first meet, and frankly he'd rather skip that.

"And don't worry, I didn't take offense," he assures Ray. "I am secure in the knowledge that, if anything, I suffer more from poor judgment than cowardice."

[gonebyebye]

"Oz," answers Ray, "That's the name of the fictional country the story is set in. And the lion being cowardly is dramatic irony. You expect a lion to be brave and fearsome, and instead you get a lion that's scared of it's own shadow. Cowardly is kind of a misnomer, though. The Lion might have been afraid, but he was still able to help despite that."

"That's kind of the point of whole story, really. Each member of the group needed something from the Wizard. The Scarecrow wanted a brain," he says as he gestures to Videl and the rest of the group in turn, "The Tin Man wanted a heart, the Cowardly Lion wanted courage, and Dorothy wanted a way to return home. The thing was, they all had what they were looking for from the beginning, even though they didn't...know..."

Ray trails off, feeling particularly dumb for not noticing one very important bit of information earlier.

"It just occurred to me that we could've ended this ages ago."

[saltsweet]

"You mean to tell me we're actually in some kind of storybook?" Videl scrunches up her face, running over Ray's information. "That's just ridiculous."

Or is it? Nobody else seems particularly appalled by this revelation. And come to think of it, Ken brought up the same thing when he helped her down from the scarecrow pole. Videl's brows knit together and she reaches up under her hat to scratch the back of her head. It all feels like a puzzle, one she has all the pieces to but one that she can't seem to solve. It's been very difficult to keep focused ever since first opened her eyes and found herself dressed in a burlap sack.

"Wait, you know the answer?" she asks, turning her attention back to Ray.

[stophamatime]

Ken glances down at the (ridiculous) ruby slippers. "I guess technically, I could've been out of here before I ran into any of you..."

Which might be an argument for sticking around, now that he considers it all.

[the_civilian]

"I'm not sure that us being magically forced into storybook roles is any more ridiculous than people getting super powers from drinking chemistry experiments, which is definitely a thing that happens in this reality," Tadashi says in response to Videl's protest. He too glances down at Ken's ruby slippers, then back to Ray.

"If Ken taps his shoes together and goes home before the story's over, do we know that it's not going to trap the rest of us? Or any of the others who might have ended up here? There's still the Wizard, and that's assuming that we're only likely to fill the roles of named characters."