This is just a test - open for those that like that sort of thing

[lunch-princess.livejournal.com]

Big Thunder Mountain Railroad -- it seemed just a ride, at first, but Orihime saw the top of it for what it was after her discussion with Cayce; it was a very tall point in the park. It was just a matter of getting high enough, she figured. There were other places, of course, but she road the ride up close to one of the craggy like peaks and started climbing to make her way up, determinedly.

Cayce had told her the place would allow her to float down if she fell, but in the event such a thing failed to happen, Orihime truly believed she would just flatten like a pancake, then spring back. Convinced of this, she forced herself to keep climbing until she found a spot she could properly stand on, then took a look around at the view her vantage point gave her. It was quite beautiful, and she eyed a few other high places for a moment. Well, maybe she could try them when the others really needed a distraction for the park. For now, she just wanted to test the whole thing out and see what results came of it.

First, she took a deep breath, then Orihime pushed with her feet and walked off. Right before her dangerous step, however, she giggled to herself about how she was parachuting out of a plane. She was a stunt woman doing a thrilling scene for an action movie. She was famous. She was wishing she had tied her hair back first. Finally, she reached out to find there was no parachute and accusingly called out, "It's a conspiracy! They're trying to kill me!" as her descent noticeably slowed.

A smile followed. "This is FUN!"

Comments

[redo-fromstart.livejournal.com]

Ponder was wandering through the park, puzzling over some of the things the park kept throwing at him, when he heard someone shouting from above, and looked up to find something that the park was literally being thrown at him.

Correction. Someone. Falling. Seemingly slower than he would have originally imagined, which made him think this place had a magical atmosphere. Even so, he probably shouldn't take a chance. He raised his fingers and shot out a bolt of magic to slow her fall further. If, for that matter, it was really necessary.

So freaking sorry -- LJ problems + no internet + moving + sick = DISAPPEARING PLAYER

[lunch-princess.livejournal.com]

It wasn't necessary, but Orihime was hardly one to get upset over the matter. In fact, Orihime had no idea Ponder had done anything anyway. She slowly reached the ground again and giggled happily over the grand success. She also hadn't noticed she had been thrown near anyone, so laughing and without looking up, Orihime started to walk right into Ponder.

[redo-fromstart.livejournal.com]

((s'alright))

Ponder coughed a little and shifted to the side to alert himself to her attention, "Scuse me, are you alright? That was...well, a long way to fall."

[lunch-princess.livejournal.com]

When someone moved and spoke Orihime looked up in surprise, then stammered out, "Oh, sorry! I didn't see you." Then Ponder mentioned the fall and she looked back up, beaming. "Yes, it is! It was a blast, too!" Up and up, she kept looking. "Wow...it really was a long fall without a parachute."

[redo-fromstart.livejournal.com]

Ponder raised a sceptical eyebrow, "So...wait, did you jump? Did you know it would slow you in the atmosphere?" This could be fascinating. He had no idea this place had such a thick magical atmosphere.

[lunch-princess.livejournal.com]

"You're clever!" Orihime remarked, a bit impressed Ponder had figured that out. And at once she explained, "But yes, I did. Cayce-san told me another person had found out you slow down when falling, so I decided to test it out."

[redo-fromstart.livejournal.com]

"Did anyone know why?" Clearly, a magical atmosphere, but nobody around here seemed to really follow magic as he knew it. "What did the air feel like as it was going past you? I'm intrigued."

[lunch-princess.livejournal.com]

"No one seemed to know why," Orihime answered truthfully, realizing that with Rukia jumping in the conversation she hadn't had time to ask if anyone knew. "And it just felt like air, then it was rushing by slower." Nothing distinct or different.

[redo-fromstart.livejournal.com]

"It's because it has a magical atmosphere. And quite a strong one, it seems. It slows things down." Ponder grinned, jumping at the opportunity to explain, "Like, where I'm from, the atmosphere slows the sunlight down, so we have time zones. Despite the fact the planet's flat."

[lunch-princess.livejournal.com]

FLAT?! Orihime looked amazed for a moment, then said, "There is such thing as a flat planet?! Where I'm from it's round. I didn't think that was possible. I'm not even sure where Disneyland is, though, now that I think about it." Was Disneyland even on a planet?

[redo-fromstart.livejournal.com]

Ponder resisted the urge to roll his eyes, "Yes, I'm aware most people here are from the roundworld. But yes, there is. It's a great feat of our universe's thaumatic powers." He was used to explaining things to the Arch Chancellor. At least people here had an excuse for not understanding the ways of the universe.

[lunch-princess.livejournal.com]

"But how does the water keep from falling out into the universe? How is gravity maintained on a flat planet?" Orihime asked, blinked, then guessed, "Thaumatic powers there too?" Which she deduced must mean the magical field Ponder had been talking about earlier.

[redo-fromstart.livejournal.com]

Ponder nodded, as she was picking up on things faster than most people, "Yep! It's all to do with magic, essentially. It's why so many of us study it, essentially. I mean, there's complicated calculations and massive experiments to demonstrate how it all works, but we spent a long time wondering how it was possible for people to stay on a globe. That seemed as ridiculous to us as, no doubt, a flat world does to you."

[lunch-princess.livejournal.com]

"Oh! Well, it's the shape, and the spinning the planet does. It creates a gravitational force that keeps us on the planet. And it creates a force between the moon and planet and sun and planet, too," Orihime explained. "And a flat world doesn't sound ridiculous, actually. Everyone thought our planet was flat at first, because no one could understand how you could stay on a round surface. Flat makes more sense. And then you have magic to explain everything else!" A pause, then, "Are you a magic user?"

[redo-fromstart.livejournal.com]

Ponder paused, not quite sure what to say, as he'd spent a lot of time studying the roundworld and puzzling over it, "Well, yes, and it's a little more complicated than that, but essentially, yes." He smiled and nodded, "I am a wizard, yes. Actually, I teach high energy magic at the university in my world. I generally spend a lot of my time working how to explain how magic explains everything else, if you like."

[lunch-princess.livejournal.com]

Orihime nodded -- it was more complicated. She was just trying to explain it clearly for someone from another world, but he seemed to understand it anyway. "A teacher! Well, that explains why you're so smart and curious. What else does magic do in your world?"

She started to walk away from where she fell, looking for a bench to sit at.

[redo-fromstart.livejournal.com]

Ponder sighed and walked with her, trying to figure out how to answer her question, "To be honest, it's more of a question of what doesn't it do? Our whole universe works around some kind of magic or another. But wizards are the only people who can truly control it to...use it for things, I suppose. I used it to build a thinking machine, but most of the older wizards prefer the spectacle, you know, fireballs, dribbly candles, the works."

[lunch-princess.livejournal.com]

"Okay," Orihime said, finding this easy to recant. "What doesn't it do?" Then she listened intently, and perked up. "Fireballs would be incredible to use, though. And useful! I could do something significant with those. But, a thinking machine would be awesome, too. What does the thinking machine do?" She did find machines rather fascinating. Especially ones with bombs, guns or missiles.

[redo-fromstart.livejournal.com]

Ponder shrugged, "There's quite a lot of things which seem to be quantum. Oh, and human emotions. They're not easy to control with magic either. Unless you're a witch. They seem to think they can, but they...have issues, those witches." He didn't hold much stock by witchcraft, it seemed more like manipulation to him, "My thinking machine does a lot of things, but mainly, it answers questions. Any question you answer it."

[lunch-princess.livejournal.com]

"Well, anyone that wants to control emotions has issues, don't you think?" Orihime asked like it was the only explanation that made any sense to her. As for the machine, she looked absolutely thrilled. "Any question at all? Even about the future?!"

[redo-fromstart.livejournal.com]

"I'd say so, but witches seem to like manipulating people. Or...the one I met does. Some of them are different." That Magrat lass wasn't so bad, but anyway. More important subjects. "Yep. It does it's best. Sometimes, it needs more cheese or something, but most of the time, it can answer anything you ask. Even dumb arse questions. Trust me, my students have tried."

[lunch-princess.livejournal.com]

"Oh...." There was a moment of thought. "Manipulation is a tricky thing. Not so easy as it sounds." Orihime took it as basic fact everyone was different, whether a witch or not, and left that to question, "Cheese? Your machine...eats?"

[redo-fromstart.livejournal.com]

"It's not really magic, either, but that's another debate." One which had been going on for a very long time. "It has a small mouse wheel in it. It needs to eat. The mouse, that is. Keeps it going."

[lunch-princess.livejournal.com]

"It's still a skill," Orihime said happily. But then she looked perplexed by the mouse bit. "A mouse.... It has a mouse? OH!!" This sounded awfully familiar. "Is it a computer machine?!"

[redo-fromstart.livejournal.com]

Ponder paused and thought on this, "I...well, it computes things, I suppose you could call it that, yes."

[lunch-princess.livejournal.com]

"Ah! Yes. We have computing machines," Orihime tried to explain. "With mice, too. Only the mice are kind of like other machines. And you use them to navigate through the computer's software programs." She beamed at the idea of other worlds also having similar objects from her own world.

[redo-fromstart.livejournal.com]

"The mice aren't...mice then? Because I doubt my mice would like being used for navigation. It's not like they have a compass or anything." It was...puzzling to Ponder, but it intrigued him.

[lunch-princess.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, they're not real mice. Which was confusing for me, at first," Orihime admitted. "When I first learned about computers I was picturing real ones. So I got all happy and took cheese to school to feed the computer mice. I think I'd like your computing machine better."

[redo-fromstart.livejournal.com]

"Do yours have teddy bears?" Please say no. Ponder wanted to see one of these computers. "Are there any of those around here, or not?"

[lunch-princess.livejournal.com]

"Teddy bears...." Orihime slowly shook her head no, wondering why a computer would need with a teddy bear. "I don't know if there's one around. I haven't seen one. But I thought this park would be using computers to run the rides. Or something. But now I think maybe that's magic, too."

[redo-fromstart.livejournal.com]

Ponder shrugged, "Well, that's the interesting thing. This place is clearly from your universe, but seems to run on rules similar to ours. It's...weird." Ponder had done all sorts of experiments, but some of his more complicated ones had been sent a little haywire.

[lunch-princess.livejournal.com]

"Maybe...." Orihime was thinking once more and closed her eyes. "Maybe this place is something between the two. That's why it runs more like yours, but is familiar to us."

[redo-fromstart.livejournal.com]

"Makes sense. Someone mentioned a kind of bleed through principle. I'm wondering if it's the convergence point of several universes, but I haven't been able to prove it yet." It was difficult to prove a lot of things here.

[lunch-princess.livejournal.com]

"That would explain how people got here from so many different places," Orihime supplied. "Maybe this place has other aspects from other universes, too." She should really talk to more residents.

[redo-fromstart.livejournal.com]

Ponder nodded, "Quite possibly. I'm yet to meet anyone not from a roundworld or my world so far, but I'm sure there is." The Doctor was a weird one, but he seemed fully versed in roundworld physics. A little too fully versed. "It's something I'd like to find out, anyway."

[lunch-princess.livejournal.com]

"We could always ask the others what kind of worlds they're from," Orihime suggested. "Perhaps there are other ones. Or ones different from just the world I'm from."

[redo-fromstart.livejournal.com]

"We could indeed, and I'd be interesting to hear if there's anyone from another planet. I think it could explain a lot." Ponder shrugged.

[lunch-princess.livejournal.com]

"We could always use the bulletin board," Orihime suggested. "That seems like the best place to get their attention.


[ooc: So...how should we go about combining this with the opening of the door bits?]

[redo-fromstart.livejournal.com]

((I've...uh, been working on this. Hopefully, this might work. If it doesn't work for you, hit me. Hard. I'm going to throw Ponder at the other thread shortly.))

Ponder had, for that matter, been caught up quite a bit in his own head. It had become somewhat second nature to dismiss minor explosions as well...minor explosions. After all, if nobody got sucked into a pocket dimension, started to unravel the fabric of human nature, got stuck in a tiny cupboard with weird dimensions or ran into a god of evolution and battenburg cake trees; well, it just wasn't worth the bother. Things normally blew up a bit at the university, it showed things were going somewhere. So things blowing up here and there in the park wasn't that fascinating. Things were going places, that's all.

Wait. Things didn't go places in the park. That was the point of it, a dimension stuck on a loop, repeating and...why were there explosions? Ponder paused in the middle of his conversation just as all the lights went out and looked around. He was missing something. It suddenly struck him that something big was happening and he wasn't there. "This...you know, I think something massive might have just happened, and we missed it." He remembered the door, which he'd kept intending to get in on, but he kept getting caught up in thinking about universes and the damn bloody Doctor. Things were slipping his mind, and that was bad, but this was far more important.

"We should go see. I should go see. It could be dangerous." Ponder sifted through his pockets, which were illogically deep, in search of anything that could help him. Anything.

[kuchiki.livejournal.com]

Amidst the chaos and destruction, Rukia, in her need to investigate what was going on, had lost Orihime and, knowing Orihime, was deeply worried about what the other girl might do.

So it was to Rukia's intense relief that she saw Orihime near Ponder and, to all appearances, apparently talking quite politely.

"Orihime!" she said, too flustered and relieved to even realize she had just used the other girl's first name for the first time. "There you are! Are you all right?"

She turned to Ponder, and blinked. "Ah... hello. I'm sorry, have we met?"

[lunch-princess.livejournal.com]

Orihime was about to agree with Ponder and go with him, despite his mention he should go -- she could block them both from falling rubble, after all! -- only then Rukia showed up. Orihime smiled, silently thankful to know where the other girl was in a time like this.

"Kuchiki-san! I'm fine. And this is..." and since she was asking about Ponder, Orihime opened her mouth, gesturing to him to explain who he was, but then realized, "Oh! I never asked his name. But he's a wizard teacher from a flat world, and we were talking all about his computer and how the worlds work and stuff like that." She added on, "Super secret information," in a whisper to Rukia.

"Do you know what all of the explosions are about?"

[redo-fromstart.livejournal.com]

Ponder stuck his hand out to the newcomer, "I'm Ponder Stibbons, and I'm what she said." He smiled and asked, "And if you don't know, do you want to go find out, because I think it might be a good idea."

[kuchiki.livejournal.com]

"Wizard teacher," said Rukia, absorbing that, slightly incredulous. It wasn't that she didn't believe Orihime; it was that it was just a bit much to take in, with everything that was going on. But perhaps, after all this time, she shouldn't be surprised by anything anymore.

"I do know, actually," Rukia told them both. "Some people were apparently trying to destroy as much of the park as possible, to distract the security from the people underground trying to open a door..." It all sounded a bit much to Rukia's own ears, but it was the truth.

"We should probably go down and check it out," she agreed with Ponder. "All of us." Thinking of Kyouya, and how much he'd probably like the chance to see Tamaki again, she added, "And maybe we could see if there's anyone else who'd like to come, too?"

[lunch-princess.livejournal.com]

"Down...." Orihime repeated, having to think for a moment. "Oh! Right! Yeah, we should. Who's left that doesn't know about it, or that isn't down there?" Orihime asked Rukia, thinking that would narrow down their time spent above.

[redo-fromstart.livejournal.com]

"Well, more of a lecturer, I guess. A wizarding academic." Ponder grinned and nodded, "We definately should. I was heading over to offer my wizarding expertise anyway, but I think it would definately be worth exploring for everyone else, too. Less likely to get lost or something."

[kuchiki.livejournal.com]

"That's a good idea," Rukia told Ponder, warming to him already. He seemed like a sensible fellow, but not a terribly arrogant one -- good. Rukia liked that. "They can probably use all the help they can get."

As for Orihime, she said, "A lot of people... I think Cayce and some others went down. I don't think Kyouya or Chii or... a lot of people... really know. Or maybe they do. But it can't hurt to check."

[lunch-princess.livejournal.com]

"Chii?" Orihime repeated sounding puzzled. "Don't think I met that person, but we should go make sure Kyouya-san knows what's going on."

She looked at Ponder and asked, "What would you prefer doing first, Ponder-san. I think the three of us should stick together."

[redo-fromstart.livejournal.com]

"The Doctor and, er, the other one, did they go too?" Ponder was somewhere between curious and wary at this point, "I didn't know when or where anything was going off until it started happening, if I'm honest." It was odd, though, how it seemed to coincide with Orihime falling, though. "I doubt anyone could really have missed this, and if they have, we should go inform them, as if the universe is being stretched and bombarded, its rules might falter."

He nodded at Chii, though, "We should stick together. It's safer. More people sticking together should be safe and sensible."

((sorry. confusion over who was replying.))

[redo-fromstart.livejournal.com]

"The Doctor and, er, the other one, did they go too?" Ponder was somewhere between curious and wary at this point, "I didn't know when or where anything was going off until it started happening, if I'm honest." It was odd, though, how it seemed to coincide with Orihime falling, though. "I doubt anyone could really have missed this, and if they have, we should go inform them, as if the universe is being stretched and bombarded, its rules might falter."