fandomtownies | The Toybox, Thursday [NFB}

Regina had spent a fair amount of her life in creepy dungeons. Hell, Regina had spent a fair amount of her life running creepy dungeons. She knew how they operated, knew all the tricks.

This was, despite the bright, cheery colors, a very creepy dungeon.

The "bad toys" were kept in cells of variously cartoonish, but remarkably effective designs. At frequent, irregular intervals, a pink, vaguely horse-shaped toy would bounce in, announce that it was time for one of the toys to be "fixed", and cart them off, whimpering and pleading for their lives. The first time Regina watched this happen, she turned to her cell neighbor, a~~n NPC~~ fluffy bunny doll in a polka dot bow tie, and asked what was happening.

"They're going to the Workshop," the bunny told her, in an odd, squeaky voice. "To the Toymaker."

"Oh," Regina said. "So we'll get to meet them." She nodded, eyes narrowed, a small smile on her face. "Good. I've been wanting to ask them some questions."

The bunny's ears had quivered, and he stared at Regina with round, glimmering eyes. "Noooo," he moaned. "Not good. Not good at all!"

Try as she might, Regina could get no further information out of the bunny. She could only sit in her cell, watching the toys around her be lead away one by one, and plot her escape. (Teleporting in a puff of purple smoke was a classic, and one she was reasonably certain she could execute, even if this form, but it was built for drama, not stealth. She'd need quite the distraction before she could pull it off.)

Thursday morning, the pony came in, bouncing wickedly along the line of cells, playing eenie meenie as she selected the Toymaker's next victim. "My maker said to pick the very worst one," she sang. "And you!" She bounced closer. "Are!" She stopped in front of Regina's cell. Regina braced for a fight. "IT!" She pointed her stubby leg at the bunny and laughed maniacally.

The bunny reached through the bars, managing to grab Regina's arm before he was dragged out by the pony. "Please!" he hissed. "Tell my story!"

Regina would never see that bunny again.

[open, should any other toys be in the Toybox just now. Details run past our lovely BDE maven, pink pony cameo at her request!]

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Nina was not really built for sitting properly, like a lady, her joints not letting her bend enough to sit with her usual picture perfect posture and prim, studied, perfection.

It was infuriating, this lack of control in a place where she already had no control. She hated her stupid plastic body and her stupid fake hair and her clothes, well, the less said about those the better.

But hate and anger were good. They were better than the fear that hit her every time someone was dragged off. They were better than the ugly, swooping feeling of betrayal at the knowledge that she was here because of Prompto.

That he thought it was for her own good. That it would help her!

Nina watched the bunny get dragged off and then tilted her head back at the cell. In her own body, she'd be able to get out of it.

In this stupid, horrible, rude toy body… ha.

Nina scoffed.

"You alright?" Regina called. She'd been in here a bit longer (more than 24 hours now, she was sure, though it was hard to judge from inside a dungeon), but at least she had a certain (disturbing) flexibility in her rubbery body.

At least she could sit.

Nina took a slightly shaky breath.

"Like, I'll have my screaming hysterical fits later," Nina ventured, making it half a promise to herself. If they came for her, she wasn't going to go out screaming and begging for her life. "No one has tried to drag me off to… that… yet…"

She was going to have nightmares about this for months. Months. She had better not go out screaming and begging for her life.

She couldn't even hug herself.

But it was… it was so nice, to have someone ask if she was okay, and not mean it in the 'or are you a Bad Toy' sense.

Regina's hard-won maternal instincts were screaming at her to offer this girl a hug, though the bars separating them meant that wasn't a viable option.

"Believe it or not, I think they actually have a queue," she said instead, keeping her tone darkly humorous. "I'll probably go before you do."

She was going to get out before that happened. And she didn't think she'd be able to take anyone else with her.

A hug right now would be great, especially if it wasn't weird and plastic but real.

It didn't even matter that she had no idea who she was talking to. Just that they were kind, right this moment.

Nina sucked in a breath, wanting to protest that it wasn't funny, that joke, and then realized...

"Do, like, you know where we are in the queue?" she asked, shifting the best she could to see what other toys she could spot. "That would give us a time frame, wouldn't it?"

To escape. Or panic about their impending... reprogramming? Death? Whatever was done to them? Would she be out and about tomorrow, not remembering having being Bad, just knowing she had to be really, really Good?

Regina sighed. "Not exactly," she admitted. "But I've been here . . . awhile now. Since Tuesday evening." She wasn't entirely sure what day it was now, other than 'no longer Tuesday'. "The cells aren't in order, but none of the toys brought in after me have gone yet."

Edited 2019-08-15 19:58 (UTC)

"It was Wednesday night when I was brought in," Nina said, with a hitch in her voice.

She was quiet for moment.

"I don't suppose you, like, have a crayon or something on you?"

If she could draw, she could get out, Nina thought. It would take some work, she'd have to time it right…

Regina shook her head. "If I had the right ingredients, I could maybe summon one, but -- well. If we're wishing for that, we might as well wish for the crayon itself." She looked at her cell, all plastic Lego bricks and what looked like fork tines. "Maybe one of these cells is made of something you can use?"

Nina considered the floor of her cell. Painted building blocks. She scuffed the surface with one of her feet, but her foot slid along them rather than doing any damage.

"Toothpicks, maybe," she said thoughtfully, calmer now that she had something to focus on. "Or even popsicle sticks. I don't think those tines of yours are going to come loose easily, but one of those would be perfect."

Hell, it would be perfect as a weapon right now, let alone an instrument to magic.

"Not without getting noticed," Regina said. She'd been pondering that herself. The trouble with learning magic as an angry young woman, all her tricks were really dramatic. "I really don't think either of us wants to risk getting bumped up the line."

Nina shivered.

"Definitely not," she said, "since, like, if that happens, all I've got is hoping he can't read minds and lying."

And she was a really good liar, but when the alternative was…

She shivered again.

"He can definitely do something with minds," Regina muttered, then shook her head. "I doubt it's that -- deep. I've seen curses like this one before cast by people with no mind-reading ability." She'd cast them herself, and didn't have even a lick of telepathy. "It's probably just some form of torture."

Wasn't that reassuring, Nina?

The Toybox, Thursday [NFB}

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