VIDEO & ACTION ✪ TOOK HER TO THE FAIR 'CAUSE SHE LIKES IT THERE

[slaying]

[ it is a fine, late august monday and buffy summers has just been returned from a kidnapping. but she isn't laid out on the forest floor or wandering the village in a daze. she isn't harmed but she certainly isn't happy. this is because buffy summers is standing unsteadily -- arms crossed tightly over her chest -- in a lavish little bouncy castle

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[voice]

[lists_to_port]

BUFFY! [That's all he can manage for the moment because he is very, very, very drunk.]

Castle? In the castle? Like...like a princess?

[voice]

[slaying]

...Jack. [ goodness, but she doesn't realize how much she'd been looking forward to hearing his voice again until she hears it. some of that anger and embarrassment and frustration dissipates. but only some of it. ]

No. Not like a princess. I'm guessing princesses get to come and go. Also? I'm guessing princesses don't have inflatable floors. Who invented these things? They deserve a brow-beating. I don't even really know what a brow-beating is but it sounds painful and I want the someone who invented this thing to feel pain.

[ ...and back came all the frustration. ]

[lists_to_port]

[Jack has similar feelings about the tunnel of love.]

I'll find you! I'll rescue you! But first I've got to find the door, darling.

[slaying]

I don't need rescuing. [ yes she does. ] I just need...helping. There's a difference! [ not much. ]

...Are you drunk?

[lists_to_port]

No! [Yes.] I'm just.....mirrors. There's mirrors everyplace.

[Yes, he is trapped in the hall of mirrors; this conversation will probably be punctuated by sounds of Jack muttering "bugger" and "again?!" and worse things as he runs up and down trying to find the way out.]

And everything's all wonky.

[slaying]

...Wonky might as well be your middle name. [ a beat. ] Take your time. We don't need to you go and break one and bring down seven years of bad luck.

[lists_to_port]

"Hmph. Annie? I'm not the sort of pirate what goes about breaking mirrors. Or stepping on black cats. Or pestering men named 'Loris' on Thursdays."

More sounds of scuffling and swearing.

"Annie?"

[slaying]

"...You lost me at Loris."

And she was about to ask him whether he even had a middle name -- her head bowed against her folded arms and her unease ever so slowly easing when he spoke again.

"Yeah?"

[lists_to_port]

"Are you alright?"

[slaying]

"...I'm feeling a little worse for bouncy wear but that's the now and the then -- the kidnapping? Jack, I'm fine. Finer than fine."

It wasn't the strictest of truths but she wasn't about to get too divulgey over the journals.

[lists_to_port]

That was all he needed to hear. So much anxiety and fear lifted at that statement, and Jack was back to trying to suss out why in this mirror he was nine feet tall and in that mirror he looked like Gibbs after a very long weekend at the Twelve Daggers.

"Fine, and fine, and finer than fine," he mumbled, poking the Gibbs-face in the nose with his index finger. Relief. "Annie? If you're so finer than finer than fine, why can you not leave this castle? Is there a particular...does one need a key?"

[slaying]

"Something like that. Something like a key. If that key was also soft and stuffed and shaped like a narwhal."

[lists_to_port]

Mad. They'd sent her back to him utterly mad. God, he'd have to...McCoy. McCoy, if he ever got returned, would have to get right inside her brain and set things to rights. Jack finds his upper lip curling over in distaste at the thought, and even more so at the idea of his Annie, mad.

Very cautiously: "Narwhal-shaped plushy key. Right. I'll...find it."

He gives the Gibbs-mirror a vicious push and to his surprise---and inability to cope with fast-swinging mirrors---finds himself stumbling and tumbling and falling through the wall of the tent into the street outside.

"AAAAH BUGGER!"

The pirate sits up and brushes stray bits of popcorn out of his hair. The journal has fallen nearby, and he crawls toward it. "Found the way out, just then."

[slaying]

"...Sounded like the way out found you, instead." The thinnest veneer of affection over all that impatience. She was very much on the cusp of clinging to the journal's covers and demanding that Jack Sparrow get his butt in gear and get over to this stupid bouncy castle and get her out. But that would require a little too much help-needing. A little too much asking. And maybe she sorta-probably-admittedly loved the man but she was not ready to be rescued by him. Not from an amusement park attraction.

[lists_to_port]

Jack ignores that statement, because he is too busy staring up at what looks like a castle wall. Except this castle? It's bouncy. So bouncy. Bouncier than a Bouncy Funtime Animal, even.

And there's a droid guarding the entrance.

"Buffy?" He picks up his journal and dusts it off. "The droid looks as though he'd like to slowly pull my legs off. Where's this narwhal key meant to be, o most beautiful?"

[slaying]

"...Well, I guess it doesn't have to be a narwhal. It could be a cheetah. Or an eagle. Or even a dinosaur. I'm not picky."

She could hear him, now -- not just from the journal but with her own ears. So she peeked out from the castle's entrance.