Application: Susan Sto Helit, Discworld

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

A tall, thin young woman appears in a puff of hot-pink smoke. Her hair, coiled in a rather prim bun, is white with a black streak through it; her eyes cold blue. She's sensibly dressed in a plain white blouse under a black jacket, long black skirt, and boots, and she looks rather schoolteacher-ish -- although instead of a ruler or pointer, she holds a cast-iron fireplace poker in her left hand. Her right hand is empty, which seems to startle her when she realises it.

She looks around hopefully, and immediately her face falls. "Oh hell. Hell. Now what?"

At the sight of Mickey and the Cat, she seems not so much astonished as deeply, deeply aggravated. She pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs.

Mickey coughs theatrically. "'What is your name?'"
"Susan Sto Helit."

"What is your quest?" asks the Cat. It's perched, suddenly, on the roof of one of the gate-stiles.
Susan narrows her eyes at the Cat, suspiciously. "Who wants to know?"

"'What is the average w..?'" Mickey frowns down at the notebook. "You know, I don't really see why that's important." He flips a page. "'If you could be granted three wishes, what would they be?'"
She looks thoughtful for a minute. Then she laughs, humourlessly. "No, I don't think so. There'd be a trick; there always is. Wish someone alive again, they come back as a draggy re-animated corpse with a taste for brains. No thanks."

"Or," the Cat says, examining its tail with interest, "if you were a genie and someone you were trying to give three wishes to was trying to trick you into giving him more, what would you say?"
"I'd tell him to stop being an idiot and that he clearly didn't deserve any of the damn things."

Mickey looks rather nonplused at the next, but reads, "'When the revolution comes, what skills will you be able to barter for food?'"
Susan rubs her forehead and looks very tired. "Revolution? Are you expecting one? Well, I'm a schoolteacher by profession. I'm good with children, and I've got a solid education."

And I can walk through walls, vanish, DO THAT VOICE, work outside and around time, oh, and save the universe if needed as well. Best not to bring that up now, though; who knows what these ... beings might do about it. And one never knew who might be listening. She doesn't mention the poker either, although she shifts it from left hand to right and holds it in a matter that suggests that she's had a lot of experience beating the hell out of things with it, or at least threatening to do so.

The Cat rolls its eyes in a friendly (and rather disconcertingly out-of-sync) way, and asks, "Milk, dark, or white chocolate?"
She smiles, although it has to be noted that the smile really doesn't quite reach her eyes. "Dark, of course. And no bloody nougat centres, please."

"'Choose the two coolest: robots, pirates, fairies, bears, ninjas, monkeys, vampires, or humans,'" says Mickey, giggling a bit as he goes through the list. "'Explain.'"
"Someone once told me that 'ninja' was Agatean for 'the passing wind'," she says. "Some vampires are all right -- well, the Black Ribboners are, anyway -- and the Tooth Fairies tend to be good, hardworking girls. But for the two 'coolest' -- humans, because for all their stupidity and aggravation, they do manage to pull off some remarkable things. And bears, because as animals go, they're relatively sensible beasts."

"Great!" Mickey flips through the blank pages of the notebook at top, cartoon-y speed. "Well, I think that's just about it! Oh, and I'm supposed to ask, 'for your safety: are you carrying anything sharp?'"
"Just this," she says, indicating the poker. Her seemingly amiable expression is not entirely pleasant. "It only kills monsters, mind you."


((Susan is taken from a few years after the end of The Thief of Time; before her arrival at Dizzy Land via an unfortunate magical accident, she spent a few months at Hogwarts in hogwarts_hocus.))

Comments

[kuchiki.livejournal.com]

Rukia leans in close, wide-eyed, not entirely sure how to take that. "I see," she whispers, mind racing. Voice dropped so that only Susan can hear her, she asks, "What kind of matters were these?"

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

Susan pauses for a long moment before she answers; there's so much ground to cover, too much really, and a lot of it involves things that she has no desire to say in front of others.

"You ... turned into a popcorn kernel," she says finally, shaking her head; it still sounds just as ridiculous as it always did. "It's been quite an epidemic, in fact, and -- oh. Oh my." She frowns. "If you're here and there's a popcorn kernel with your name attached back there, then -- hell. I must be -- damn it." She laughs a little, mirthlessly. "Well, that is one bugger of a botched spell. I knew I should have bashed out the research more before trying it."

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

Susan considers her response carefully. "My grandfather is in a line of business very much like yours," she said. "And I have some of ... talents. So there were those who, shall we say, wanted things from me as a result. And others with vendettas." She looks at Rukia apologetically. "I didn't want to drag you into it, but certain people insisted on making it your business as well as mine."

[late-born-myth.livejournal.com]

"I...? Oh." The statement makes somewhat more sense to Psyche than it would to someone who hadn't lived at Hogwarts and become accustomed to the high daily oddness quotient. She lets out a brief laugh of her own. "Did I really. I wonder how that happened." She had had a notion or two of how the popcorning started, and at least one of the ways in which it could be brought to happen, but...

"An epidemic. Is anyone doing anything about it? Investigating causes?" Psyche frowns for a moment. "You know, the longer I'm here, the more I realize just how odd things were there. We can't all be popcorn, can we? Or...leaving popcorn in our places? I mean, if Crowley's from the past and...none of this makes any more sense, does it? Oh well." She hugs Susan again. They'll figure it out. Or perhaps they won't. But still, "I'm still very glad you're here. I shouldn't be, perhaps, it's a bit selfish of me. But I am."

She doesn't want to ask about personal troubles while there are all these people around, so... "What was this spell you were trying to do?"

[alicereflection.livejournal.com]

Alice performs the obligatory curtsy before repeating the sentence she must have said a thousand times before (it feels that way, at any rate).

She sighs in relief at the sight of Susan. "At last," she says, "someone with a sensible concept of clothing. May I ask what Aggataean is?"

[kuchiki.livejournal.com]

Rukia nods, slowly. The story's believable enough, if you ignore the Wizarding school aspects of it. She reasons that Susan must be the Discworld's equivalent of a shinigami, then, even if they probably don't use that terminology there.

She did her best to assure Susan, "I wouldn't have wanted to have stayed out of it, anyway. That wouldn't have been fair to you." She sighs. "Who were the people that wanted something from you?" she wonders aloud, although she has her own suspicions already.

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

Susan shakes her head. "Honestly, I don't know. I've been far too buried under my own research. At least that made sense. It was something I could get my head around properly, you know?" She smiled ruefully. "Thanks. It's ... I'm not sure yet how I feel about being here. I was working on this enormous research project -- how to travel between worlds and times, how to stop that kind of thing -- and I thought I had the 'how to travel' bit finished. So I tried, experimentally, for another time on Earth -- and here I am."

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Looking perhaps the slightest bit relieved, Crowley nods. He feels that he can count on her, for some reason.

"I don't see why we can't continue to be on good terms, then..."

If any part of that statement is a threat, it's probably just habit. He is genuinely pleased to have another intelligent adult around, whether she knows about his nature or not.

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

With some reluctance, she says, "His name was Ichimaru Gin. He disappeared himself before anything serious happened, but ... he made my life, and that of some of my friends, very uncomfortable for a while there."

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

"Fair enough." She's pleased; the truth is, she rather respected Crowley as a professor, and would have liked to have gotten to know him better. It's nice to have another chance, however peculiar it might be. "You're a good teacher, by the way," she adds quietly. "And as a teacher myself, that's not a compliment I give lightly."

[late-born-myth.livejournal.com]

"And here is...here." Psyche sighs, reflecting that Susan is probably the last on Earth...or whatever world...who's likely to embrace the Disney spirit. "We're none of us sure of what exactly that means. This is..." she waves at the park, "well, it's the semblence, at least, of a place on Earth, built in the mid-twentieth century. I've been there before, decades ago, and it looks like it's grown since then, so this might be what it looks like now. Or in 2006, at any rate. Except there's...that." She indicates the void outside the gates. "Which means it can't be that place at all. And we haven't been able to find a way out."

She looks down and smiles awkwardly. "You, well, you see why I said it was a bit selfish of me to be glad you're here."

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

Susan smiles a bit at the comment about the clothes, and reminds herself to ask Psyche if she's seen Logan. "They're --" Explaining that they are natives of the Counterweight Continent isn't going to help, is it? "-- foreigners. At least relative to the city where I live, back on my home world."

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

"Well. I can think of at least four or five ways in which the situation could be significantly worse, so at least there's that." She regards the void with a grim half-smile. "I suppose attempts have been made to venture up or out? I can say with fair certainty that I can't go back the way I came -- not without my notes or my wand. So that's out."

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

The faintest hint of colour appears on Crowley's pale cheeks. He's certainly not accustomed to receiving compliments, so he covers his confusion with bluster and bravado.

"I don't doubt your sincerity," he says and adds in an undertone, "though I do my motives."

He indicates the poker. "At any rate, if you use that in the classroom, I'm sure you have no trouble getting the students' attention."

Adjusting his glasses, Crowley continued, "So, has anyone filled you in on the conventions of the place yet? The various lands, time abnormalities, et cetera?"

[kuchiki.livejournal.com]

A shudder runs up the back of Rukia's spine. Now that name, she does remember. Rukia can only imagine what he must've wanted with Susan. . .

"Gin is generally not a trustworthy character," Rukia says. "I hope you didn't have to learn that the hard way."

[alicereflection.livejournal.com]

"Oh," says Alice. This is a reasonable explanation for her.

"You said you were a schoolteacher?" she continues. "Have you served time as a governess as well?" Something about Susan's stance reminds her of her old governess. Except she has no doubt she will get along better with Susan than she ever did with Miss Prickett.

[late-born-myth.livejournal.com]

"I tried flying out minutes after arriving, and I nearly fell out of the sky. There's some sort of spell or field or something keeping us contained here, and if you go out to the edges you get horribly dizzy and disoriented. Two of the others - James Norrington and Mudou Setsuna - tried going out that way, and they couldn't get past a few feet. And it's like that," she couldn't keep a little anger and fear out of her voice and expression, whenever she contemplated the nothingness, "all around. I checked the whole perimeter of the park on foot, as well as seeing it from above. And of course I tried just travelling out by will...that was what I was doing when I arrived, you see, trying to visit a friend in the Underworld." That last was said quite naturally, as Psyche was pretty well used to thinking of Persephone and her realm as around the corner from her own home in Olympus.

She gathered a breath and sighed. "I suppose, for being some sort of...magical vortex, or whatever it is, it's really not as bad as it might be. I've enjoyed meeting everyone," not that she didn't always enjoy meeting anyone at all, people were so fascinating and there was always something to like and admire about every single one, "and it's not exactly a hostile or dangerous environment, that I've been able to tell. Not beyond the fact that we're trapped here. And I...well, you know, given my...history I don't want to jump to the conclusion that it's all meant for some evil purpose. But as I said, it really makes me wonder about the place we were before."

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

"Well, having a suspicious nature is good for something," Susan said. "No, he got no change out of me, if I do say myself. I'm still not entirely sure what he was after, but --" she shrugged. "All's well that ends well, I suppose."

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

Susan arches an eyebrow at the "motives" comment; of course, she can't speak to that, and so lets it pass. "I've certainly thought about using this thing in the classroom, although it's really for chasing bogeymen out of nurseries. Mostly."

She gave him a curious look. "Lands? No, do tell."

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

Susan listened, and nodded in agreement. "No shortage of questions, I see. Hell. I suppose if I could call Binky ... but no, I wouldn't want to risk him getting trapped here as well; Granddad would have a fit." She really didn't like the idea of there being a purpose at work behind all this; it made her deeply uncomfortable in a way that was hard to describe.

"So what's there to do while we're trapped? Crowley says the place is split up into these different 'lands' and whatnot."

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

"Yes, I have, actually," Susan says. She's mildly amused by the use of the phrase "served time"; gods only knew Gawain and Twyla made it seem like a sentence a few times during her first year with them.

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Ignoring the mention of bogeymen and nurseries as Crowley has no knowledge of either, he says, "Yeah. The least obnoxious of those three Japanese boys wandering around told me that the school you went to was organized into houses of some kind. The park is similarly situated. There are eight 'lands' and the mouse will assign you to one of them. Main Street seems to be for normal people. You won't be surprised, I'm sure, to learn that there's no one there yet. Tomorrowland is futuristic, Critter Country for animals and animal lovers, and Toon Town seems to be for people who are animated - in any sense of the word. I'm not quite sure of the differences between Adventureland and Frontierland, but Fantasyland seems to be for overtly magical or fantastic beings and New Orleans Square appears to be more attuned for the elegant and/or occult. If you don't mind my saying so, Susan, you'd be welcome in New Orleans Square. There are still plenty of places that you could scratch out a comfortable living space. The park isn't exactly designed to function as a residence, so we're all just making do."

Actually, Crowley is living quite comfortably with a bedroom, living area, excellent kitchen and bar at his disposal and no need for a bathroom or showers, but everyone else is making do.

[late-born-myth.livejournal.com]

"Well, you see, it's meant to be...I don't suppose there are amusement parks in your world? The real place is owned by this large and very wealthy company called Disney which is best known for various kinds of entertainment...usually focused on children. And this enormous park was built as sort of a playground or permanent fair, with rides and things for families and tourists to look at and be entertained by, and packed with things to buy. So different parts of the park are made to look like different places, real and unreal."

"Except that here...well, all the people who should be here making it run seem to be missing. But it does run, nevertheless." Which reminded her very sharply of a palace on a mountaintop, a long time ago, where invisible servants prepared everything for her but never spoke. "And no one stops you from just taking all the things that are meant to be parting you from your money."

She shrugged. "So far...most of us have been trying to get a grip on what's going on. Exploring the park, finding places to sleep, settling in or looking for ways out. It...it's only been a few days, you see. And Crowley and I were the first two to arrive, besides Mickey and the Cat."

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

Susan actually snickers out loud at Crowley's assessment of Main Street, and listens to the rest with some amusement. "Well ... one manages, I suppose. Main Street or New Orleans Square sound reasonably interesting. How much of a sense of humour do the organizers have in placing one, I wonder?" Because if they have a particularly bad one, Susan suspects she's headed straight for Fantasyland.

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

"Worse and worse," Susan mutters. "And I thought that school was unsettling. No, we don't have amusement parks on the Disc, and that's probably just as well, if this is any indication." She is reminded suddenly of Buddy and the whole Music With Rocks In business. She's pretty sure that if anyone ever did launch a Discworld amusement park, C.M.O.T. Dibbler's grubby fingers would be attached to it somewhere.

"Still. It sounds like we have food and shelter. Don't know what I'm going to do without a change of clothes, but I'll figure something out." She bends over and picks up the poker from where she dropped it when she saw Psyche; she needs something to fiddle with, and its weight is at least a little reassuring.