(Untitled)

[waltsnothereman]

There were parts of life on Tabula Rasa that everyone had to come to grips with sooner or later. The disappearances. The stretches of tranquility (many would say boredom) broken up by the occasional bouts of complete madness. The existential problems that arose with the knowledge that, somewhere, you were nothing more than a fictional creation

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[spirited_hero]

[waltsnothereman]

Wanda smiled patiently, having expected just such a snap judgment from Zell, and nodded. "Probably not, no, you're right. But what if it was for something really important? Do you think it could ever be justified?"

[spirited_hero]

[waltsnothereman]

"I already said it was a hypothetical question. A thought experiment," Wanda said unconvincingly, giving up on the act almost immediately. "Maybe I'm just a hell of a dreamer. Or will be. One day." It was probably wholly inappropriate given the subject matter, but at that last bit, as the truth of it slowly sunk in, the ghost of a smile flickered across her face, cutting through all the doubt.

"Heh."

[spirited_hero]

[waltsnothereman]

"What? No, no no no," Wanda replied, waving a hand dismissively. "Or, well, yes. In a purely academic fashion, though, it's nothing I'm actually in a position to... here, I'll show you." She pushed herself out of the chair, heading excitedly over to Zell's side as she flipped back and forth through the comic.

"This? This is my team. My friends. My... mostly dead friends, at this point. And... this is me. Making... I'm not going to call it a bad deal, I'm not there, it's not me me, who am I to judge? And then we have this, which would be my friends again. My significantly less dead friends. Family is probably a better word. So are you starting to see my dilemma here?"

[spirited_hero]

[waltsnothereman]

"Oh, yeah," Wanda said easily, even if it wasn't quite so cut-and-dried as all that. "Maybe there were a few missteps along the way, but we always managed to pull through eventually. Mostly, anyway. They? Didn't."

[spirited_hero]

[waltsnothereman]

"Future," Wanda said, lips briefly pursed in thought. "I'm not even sure how far. Years, probably. But I've known about the whole 'they're all gonna die' thing for a while now, so this is... this is kinda big." That one still felt more real, if only because of the manner through which she'd learned of it, but hopefully that just meant she needed a little more time to dwell.

"Pretty fantastic, actually," she added, smiling broadly again.

[spirited_hero]

[waltsnothereman]

"What's it like for you having your life in video games?" Wanda asked with a shrug, but she was thinking about a proper answer even as she did so. "It's... strange. I think it gets to me more now than it did when I first found out, for some reason. Like it's... belittling everything we went through or something like that. Which I know is ridiculous, I mean, hell, there were comics about us back home, too, but it obviously wasn't the same. At the very least, it's one hell of a way to find out what would have been in store for the future, though."

[spirited_hero]

[waltsnothereman]

She felt bad about it a moment later, but Wanda couldn't help the brief laugh that escaped at the thought of that. "I'm sorry, I'm -- that's not funny, that's terrible." She'd been a teenage boy once, too, after all. Privacy was kind of a big deal. "Guess we'd better just hope there's no video game of our lives in this place, otherwise nothing's sacred."

[spirited_hero]

[waltsnothereman]

"Believe me," Wanda chuckled, "it wasn't all just badass fights, much as I might wish otherwise. I did plenty of stupid things in my tenure as a superhero. Bad enough having the people I was close to in on them, let alone a bunch of nerdy strangers."