Compromising Positions

[Narrator]

Feel free to continue the other threads if'n you're enjoying character development and/or smashing; just figured I'd get this going as well, since everyone's agreed to meet

They had commandeered the school building for the negotiations, and they were going swimmingly, if by swimmingly, you meant long awkward silences with everyone glaring at one another.

Wonka!Will still hadn't grown much, sitting perched on one side of a square table in the center of the room, abashedly looking pretty much anywhere but at his counterparts around the table.

On a second edge of the table, X-Man!Will still hadn't said anything; sitting there rubbing his temple; looking back and forth between the two other Wills expectantly, as if waiting for them to start.

Savage!Will still hadn't put on pants, or taken a seat, or had his people untie Ennio from the spit he had been brought in on, as he glared down at the other two Wills, in challenge.

That left the fourth side of the table for the non-Wills to sit, watching a whole bunch of nothin' going down.

[Robin Stanton]

"Well!?" Robin exclaims with probably a little bit too much frustration. Sure, she'd burned off some of it smashing through buildings, but still.

"I waded through way too much mental garbage for you three to sit here moping at each other!"

[Samantha McManus]

"I'd say for starters, the two of you owe the one in uniform some help. Both of you let him get broken down for parts."

[Will Stanton]

"You say 'let'," Wonka!Will complained. "Like it was a conscious decision on our part. That's not really fair..."

"You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs,", Savage!Will confirmed. "I do not owe anyone anything."

[Samantha McManus]

"Then let's get the elephant in the room out of the way."

"Miriam's imprisonment of the merry murderess isn't going to hold forever. There are parties on the other side of the divide that can hold her in check. Indeed, did hold her in check before the present situation happened."

"The groundskeeper needs to be allowed to roam freely. For the good of all three of you."

[Will Stanton]

"You have no faith in Miriam's ability to keep her other self in check, I see.

Not that your concern is entirely unwarranted, or unappreciated, but if it comes to that, I will be able to hold her off," he added, puffing up his chest. "I grow stronger by the day."



"We grow harder to integrate by the day, you mean," the X-Man countered.

[Robin Stanton]

"What you need is a place to come together, discuss and vote on stuff without whining or bullying. Crazy Murder Lady seemed pretty solidly coated to me, unlike the swamp-zombie shuffling around in the sewers. That you gotta deal with beyond shunting all that crap into the Nightmare department."

[Will Stanton]

"It's not his fault he's dark and creepy. We all have some dark stuff inside of us, Robbie..." Wonka!Will said, trying to defend the Personification of Horrible Nightmares.

[Robin Stanton]

"Yeah but he buried it." she says, jerking a thumb at JerkWill. "And now it's all festering goop and fungus slime and it's probably at least part of why he's such a grump."

"Maybe you could use it to make him feel embarrassed enough to put on some dang pants too while you're at it."

[Samantha McManus]

"Wait, are we talking about that well?"

[Robin Stanton]

"The one full of self-loathing and misery, yeah."

[Samantha McManus]

"Okay, he's been shoving shite in there a lot longer than the split."

"I know because Melpomene bunged me in there once when I was trying to solve something."

[Will Stanton]

"Out of sight, out of mind. You wouldn't want that ruining this land, would you? You wouldn't have an above-ground sewer. It's unhygenic."

"We try not to dwell too long on hurtful things. We bury them as deep as we can, and try to seal them away."

"To hell with them all. If other people can't recognize how awesome I am, they can blow me."

[Samantha McManus]

"So whose heads do I have to knock together to convince you lot to get a sanitation plant?"

[Will Stanton]

"I don't know, Sam. Darkness can be useful, when used in tiny amounts. Robin and Bruce here got to star in a brand new nightmare; we process it that way."

"And encourage it to grow," the Savage!Will countered. "They are false, and frankly, caused by YOU being so insuffurably weird that everyone -- everyone in this room! -- thinks you're a disgusting maggot. That's always the pattern with you. You let people get close to you, and then you reveal who you really are, and it revolts them. Or, at least, gets them to flinch for a moment. And then you TAKE that memory, and you save the worst parts of it, and you encourage them to grow until that's all you can remember. All of which could be avoided if you weren't such a fucking freak!"

"Says the man with no pants."

[Robin Stanton]

"All three of them, apparently. Build a ding-dang plant, you idiots! Have a pipeline for bad dreams, let No-Pants point at it when Wonka gets some especially dumb ideas. Hell, put the zombie in charge of it, I don't think he means ill, just make sure it doesn't fester."

[Samantha McManus]

"There's got to be something more sustainable than 'yeet it into a deep dark well.'"

[Will Stanton]

"Well...maybe it is best if we do recombine, then..." Wonka!Will hedged. "The factory can process a lot of things, and maybe keep things from festering too much..."

"You're just saying that because Sam told you that would be a good idea. Not a spine in your body."

"Plus, it was there before the split, as Sam pointed out. Self-esteem has never been one of our high-points."

"Never been one of your high points, perhaps. I'm full of it."

"You're full of something."

[Samantha McManus]

"You know, for the one who claims he has no shame, you seem to have a rather acute sense of it."

"And the well is in your domain."

[Will Stanton]

"You're right; I am weighted down by the sins of my counterparts.

You want a proposal? OK. Let's build a siphon and spray all that shit over to his side, and call it a day. He feeds it; he can deal with it as he sees fit."

[Robin Stanton]

"Yo, butthead, you're not helping."

[Samantha McManus]

"These things are in places that match their function, aye?"

"So you're the shame function."

[Will Stanton]

Savage!Will curled his hands into fists, glaring across the table at Sam.

"And would you not be shamed by...by that?" he asked, gesturing at Wonka!Will. "Are you not shamed by it?

You call me shame. I call it the only sane reaction to an insane part of the world."

[Samantha McManus]

"And you bung it into a hole and don't deal with it."

[Robin Stanton]

"Hey! That's my Dad you're talking about!" Robin glares at SavageWill.

[Will Stanton]

"No, Robin. I am your father."


"We go to therapy....

...We did go to therapy....

...to try to deal with this. It isn't something easy to handle. Or deal with, for that matter.

But she is right -- the Savage just generating nothing but shame only causes it to fill faster. And the factory owner, with his frankly...unreasonable demands, just causes it to fill faster.

Both of them are the problem."

"Yeah, and you're just peachy, Mr. Duty? Because you're right, staying in your office for 96 hours at a time does prevent people from looking at you strangely, seeing as how you never actually interact with people."

"Just because my desires are...unconventional..." Mr. Grey Wonka!Will countered.

[Robin Stanton]

"He's the part that taught me not to be ashamed of who I am." she mutters.

[Will Stanton]

"You're nothing like him," both the X-Man and the Savage said, simultaneously.

[Robin Stanton]

"Yeah well that's not what I said, now is it? You're the one who let that rot get so bad it slashed at treasured memories of mine and you're the one who's being a giant butt about this whole thing!"

[Will Stanton]

"There's no need to yell, snickerdoodle," the X-Man said, frowning.


"What would YOU have us do, then? And I'll tell you why it would be a terrible idea."

[Robin Stanton]

"I already did! And you're right, yelling is getting us nowhere with this one." she says.

And the next moment she's climbed onto the table and takes a running leap at SavageWill, accompanied by an angry punch.

[Will Stanton]

Savage!Will took a half step backwards, kicking the chair he was supposed to be sitting up and into the flailing Robin.

This doesn't mean he didn't take the punch, mind you, but he was going to give as much as he got, there.

Punching this Will wasn't like punching her Dad -- much more firm and, well, fleshy. It was more like punching a normal guy, and where was the fun in that?


"No! No fighting!" Wonka!Will cried, hiding his head on the desk.

"She gets that from him," The X-Man said to Sam, referring to the Savage!Will. "Extraordinarily unprofessional, really."

[Robin Stanton]

Robin takes a chair to the face, but her elongating arm manages to land one on her Dad before going down in a tumbling pile of limbs and chair-legs. That is until the chair suddenly jumps up and gallops at SavageWill to ram the backrest into his stomach and toss him into the air like a charging bull.

[Samantha McManus]

"Okay, can we all just acknowledge that we like some unconventional things here?"

"Including that," she gestures to the bizarre chair brawl.

[Will Stanton]

"It's better than TALKING," the Savage grunted, a grin on his face, as he stretched down and tried to smash the Robin-Chair against the table, hard, looking to bend it, or shatter it, or otherwise cause it functional impasses.

"Fighting has it's place, but only when the cause is right," the X-Man countered.

"Go fuck yourself; this is a fucking blast. Bring it."


"And he's ashamed of me?"

[Samantha McManus]

"You're ashamed of each other."

"But let's face it, your average person isn't into either of these things, aye?"

[Will Stanton]

"Yeah, but you'll find... *OOF*" the Savage said, briefly interrupted by a Robin-blow

"You'll find MMA and wrestling and boxing and all kinds of people who like to fight. It's a normal part of being human.

Wanting to be someone's pizza so they feel better when they eat you is just fucking disgusting."

[Robin Stanton]

"So's not wearing any pants, my dude!" the chair counters, now more flexible thanks to getting smashed and the broken off bits being held together by pink-taffy-connective tissue. Which means her 'arms' are now nun-chucks. The goofiest deadliest weapon. With which she proceeds to smack SavageWill.

[Will Stanton]

Savage!Will blocked a few of the shots, raising his arms up and taking the blows on a more defensible part of his body.

"You were born naked, sweetheart. It's natural."

[Robin Stanton]

"Uh-huh, then try walking around campus like that and see what happens, you hypocrite." she says, collapsing to the ground in a pile of loosely collected chair before spinning around like a top, trying to slam Will's legs out from under him.