entranceway | Astral Destruction

[ Clementine and Mae appear on the screen. It’s a little girl and a cat girl. They’re standing in a room on the first floor. Clem has a crowbar in her hand, slung over her shoulder. Mae has her trusty baseball bat and a very cat-that-got-the-canary grin on her face.]

Hey, so… Mae told me about how she breaks shit sometimes and how it’s… cathartic? [ that’s the word she used, right? ] And I tried it with a light bulb. It felt pretty damn awesome so we thought it might be cool to have an official place where people could break stuff whenever they needed to deal with bullshit.

[Mae immediately picks up the thread, grinning wide.]

So we are super effing pleased to introduce…The Destruction Room.

[She pans the camera over to the sign on the door. It’s generic and straight to the point. Then she pans the camera around to take in the room. There’s rows of shelves filled with china plates, vases, glass figurines and other fragile-looking items. Along the walls are dozens of light fixtures and free-standing lamps, as well as just a metric ton of lightbulbs, both fluorescent and incandescent. All of it is very precariously displayed and it looks like it wouldn’t take much to just knock some of these shelves right over.]

Isn’t it amazing? We stocked it with everything that could possibly go smash.

[Clementine gestures then to have Mae pan the camera toward the wall on the side which has a giant weapon rack with every blunt weapon imaginable from bats to maces to hammers and more. ]

Over on this wall, we’ve got every blunt weapon you can think of so you can really make the breakables crack into a hundred awesome pieces. Also, it’s on the first floor, room 4 so if you hit yourself in the foot or get glass stuck in your arm or something, the clinic’s right next door.

Yeah, we pretty much thought of everything. Because we’re awesome.

[Mae holds out her hand to Clementine for a high-five. Clementine leans over, high fiving her back, with a smile. Totally awesome. ]

Anyway, yeah, come on down and get your smash on. Work out some of that pre-event anxiety or whatever.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yeah.

He really shouldn't have. Not ever. I wish neither of you ever had to live in that world for even a day. ( and that was a whole fucking weekend of it. no one could escape it. ) But that was the worst possible way to have to experience it, and I hate he had to, and that you had to see it too.

[Mabel cringes.] I just waited outside.

[It feels kind of cowardly to admit it.]

( she thinks back to her own experience shooting someone she loved. she tries to imagine having someone so important to her in the room at the time. clem shakes her head as if she can sense mabel's feelings on it. )

That... actually probably helped. He'd worry about you if you were in the room. Not be able to focus. It'd just be harder to do it, but you were there to help him after. That's more important.

Yeah, I know. It's just-

[she sighs.] Did he tell you about Stan that one time? It was the first zombie event we ever went through... Except when Dipper raised the dead back in Gravity Falls.

No, he didn't tell me. What happened?

( it had to be bad. it's almost always bad when zombie events come along. )

Wait, Dipper did that back where you're from? How? ( he'd told her about the zombies, but not that he's the one who actually raised them back from the dead. )

[She really should answer that question, but now she's distracted and she'll do just about anything to buy herself time to steel her nerves against explaining the whole "Stan had to kill Dipper" thing.]

Oops. [Dangit, Dipper. You should value honesty in your relationships!!] Uh... With Grunkle Ford's journal. I think there were some FBI guys and things kiiinda got out of hand.

I didn't realize that's how it happened. ( Clementine frowns as she slides a hand behind her neck then slowly. Or why it would happen like that. ) FBI guys? Yeah, must've gotten out of hand, but at least you guys figured out how to defeat them.

( Dipper told her that part. It sounds awesome to just be able to kill zombies like that. )

Zombie events would be so much cooler if all you had to do was sing at them.

[she cringes, realizing she has now backed herself into a corner wherein she has to explain the situation with Dipper and Stan.] That's what we did when we had our first zombie event. It didn't do anything, and that's not why Dipper got bit, but we were sooo underprepared. And Stan had to...

[she waves her hands, unable to really say it.]

Yeah, I'd appreciate it if that could kill my own walkers.

( maybe the world would be less fucked up then. she quiets, closing her eyes as mabel explains. it hurts. she wasn't there at the time, but it still- it hurts to think of dipper bit and dying and someone he loves needing to kill him-

she can't imagine how difficult and painful it must have been for mabel. it must have been terrible, traumatic. another one of those moments that stay, that weigh. mabel doesn't have to finish the sentence. clementine understands without wanting to understand- without wanting to be able to picture it so easily, but she's seen it time and time again.

dipper and mabel have just always been separate from it, free from it except here- except in wonderland. no wonder they'd want to leave and go back to a place where that hasn't happened- to a place where zombies can be killed by singing. )

I'm so sorry.

It's fine... It happened right when we first got here, so a lot's happened since then. [Which doesn't make it fine by any means, but there's worse things. Things about Wonderland's entire being that are more important.] We're just way more careful about things like that now. Not as much as the adults want us to be, probably, but we're not dumb.

[Which is, honestly, why she was glad that for all that she didn't want Dipper to have to put Wirt down, it was kept between people their own age. She has no reason to distrust adults nor does she, but... People are weird sometimes about what this place can do to children. She doesn't want to be treated differently or handled differently, even if she knows she's just a kid and shouldn't have to deal with this stuff.

She's a kid. She's dealing with it. And it's way too late to protect any of them from it.]

That's one shitty way to start your stay in Wonderland. ( Then more happened after that, because it's Wonderland. God, no wonder most people want to leave this place when they come in. It's just the worst kind of Events happening every couple of weeks or so.

She grimaces. )

Adults want us to be locked up somewhere in a safe room like nothing will ever touch us if we do that, which just isn't true.

( She'd run into people like that in the apocalypse sometimes. They'd see she was a kid and want to protect her from things she'd already done and seen. She made herself valuable and hard and violent for a reason. So she could survive. She saw Carlos do his best to protect Sarah like that. He locked her in her room and didn't let her know how bad it was outside, but eventually the outside got in and she didn't have the tools to make it. )

Ugh. Right? Like... Guys, I survived an actual apocalypse. I got possessed by actual ghosts after eating twice my weight in illegal candy. I'm kinda all set on the whole "trauma-rama thing." I'm just trying to deal with it now, even when it sucks. I need help figuring it out, not shoved into a room full of stuffed animals.

[She drags her hands down her face.] Though that would be nice right now. Maybe after the breaking stuff part.

Yeah. I get that. I got a lot of advice recently on how to figure out what to do about all the trauma. I can give you a list of the stuff they all told me if you want.

( Clementine smiles. That's something she hasn't thought to do, step into a room full of stuffed animals. In Wonderland, it'd totally be possible. ) You should make that into an official room, but first come and break all the shit.

You can list off all the helpful things while I take a golf club to some pottery. I can multitask.

[a beat] Thanks, Clem.

Let's see... There was:

Record yourself talking about shit you've been through either writing it down or talking into a recorder.

Spend time with friends.

Break stuff

Drink stuff

Talk to someone else who has been through the same shit

Honestly, it wasn't profound- not any of it, but it helped to know I wasn't alone. I hope it helps you too.

Astral Destruction

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