dizzy_land | Application: Susan Sto Helit, Discworld

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Application: Susan Sto Helit, Discworld

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.))

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"Several weeks?" Kira said something about it being months since he'd seen her (http://community.livejournal.com/dizzy_land/3712.html?thread=136576#t136576), but she remembered it had been a while since she'd seen him. But Susan...it can't have been over two weeks since their last talk...? "Well, everything about time is strange here," she says aloud, "but several weeks since I what? And oh, dear," she reaches out for Susan's hand, remembering what a precarious state her friend's life was in, "what happened?"

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."

"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?"

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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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."

"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."

"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.

"Oh, yes, there's plenty of food, and even aside from all the buildings available, the weather makes you fairly unlikely to have to worry about exposure." She considers the problem of clothes for a moment. "If you don't mind wearing the clothes they sell here, of course, there's a nearly endless supply. I can't imagine them suiting you especially, of course, but it would at least be something to change into. And there are plenty of large sinks and things, so it ought to be possible to do laundry."

She frowns down at her own immaculate chiton. "I suppose I could make you a change of clothes or two, with a little practice. I'm not really used to making them in your style, of course - I don't know how to make that sort of sleeve, or shoe..."

"Oh, thanks -- but I expect I can make do." It won't be the first time she's had to wash clothes by hand, and at the very least she should be able to find something that will suffice for wearing while washing up. She misses, briefly, the rather extensive wardrobe ~~and lingerie collection~~ she'd amassed before ... but no point in getting too glum about things beyond one's control.

"Anything else I ought to know? Where are you staying, by the way?"

"I'm in Fantasyland, apparently because of my 'fairy wings' and a comment Crowley made about my general outlook on life," Psyche says, looking decidedly amused. "I made a sort of a place for myself up on the far side of the park, to the right of It's A Small World. That's a..." she tries to think of a way to explain the ride to Susan, and ends up looking even more amused. "Well, you'll really just have to see it for yourself, but it's a fairly large landmark."

"If I were you, though, I'd ask for either Main Street or New Orleans Square." Fantasyland would most likely drive Susan around the bend. "Probably Main Street - it's probably a good idea to have someone practical looking out for that area, since it's the entrance to all the rest of the park has the First Aid Station. At the moment only Aziraphale and Alice live there..."

"Oh? Crowley said no one was living on Main Street. Must've missed the other arrivals, then. I wouldn't mind that, I suppose, and I could manage the First Aid in a pinch. All that governessing was good for some skills, anyway." And it would be good to be useful again, she reflected, recalling a conversation (http://community.livejournal.com/hogwarts_hocus/839485.html?thread=41939005#t41939005) from not so long ago on that very subject.

"That's odd," says Psyche of Crowley's comment. But perhaps there is some reason Crowley didn't want to bring up Aziraphale. He'd reacted badly when Psyche mentioned the angel as a friend - perhaps it's part of some sort of elaborate cover story they've agreed to stick to? These past versions of Aziraphale and Crowley seem much more chary of revealing their identities than the ones she knew before...but after all, she didn't known either of them that well. It's probably best to let the two of them keep whatever secrets they're trying to hide. "At any rate...yes, I think Aziraphale...no, he's going by Mr. Fell here...he's adopted Alice."

She sighs. "I wish I could say it's unlikely we'll have a pinch and someone will need first aid, but, well. Just yesterday some sort of soulless undead monster arrived, and while no one was badly hurt and it all got resolved with nothing more than another disturbing facet being added to the place...well, it's not terribly reassuring that such a number of residents seem to be carrying bladed weapons at all times."

"Ah. I didn't know Aziraphale at Hogwarts, although I sort of vaguely knew who he was. Mr Fell. Noted."

The comment about the bladed weapons elicits a snort. "Some things never change, do they? Please tell me that the weapon-carriers are at least sane. Soulless undead monsters, well --" a slight wave of the poker. "That I can manage. Still, to be honest, I was starting to think that one good thing about being stranded here might be having a bit of a breather."

"Kira, Rukia, and Alice," Psyche tells her. "I suppose it depends on your definition of sanity, but I wouldn't think any of them would be dangerous to the rest of us."

"And on the bright side...you don't have the...specific problems here that you did there, at least." Psyche makes a wry face. "You know, I used to try to think sometimes of a way some of that could be resolved without involving sudden death, betrayal, or mutilation. Being trapped in a mysterious alternate Disneyland certainly never occurred to me. Um." Of course, that might be even less funny a joke than Psyche thought, she realized. "That is...there haven't been any deaths while I've been gone, have there?"

"Well, at least I can vouch for Rukia -- even if the one here predates the one I knew before. And ... yes, while this isn't exactly the solution I'd have chosen, at least everyone is still in one piece." She smiled wryly. "No, no deaths. Just lots and lots of popcorn."

Oh. She'd almost forgotten -- how? -- one very important piece of news that she knew Psyche would want to know. And now was probably -- no, certainly not the time to bring it up, not with other people and entities standing around and passing by. "We have a hell of a lot of catching up to do, I think," she said.

"I think so too." With a sideways glance at Mickey and the Cat, "I think once they've decided where to place you - it only takes them a few hours, it's not like being Sorted - we should plan on taking a walk around the park. I can show you where things are, you can tell me what's been going on, and we can both try our combined charm on Crowley to see if he'll give us a few drinks. I have a feeling we'll both be needing them."

She can wait to ask about Eros till then. Kira did say he was all right...although the way he said it was a little odd. But...

Susan nods. "All right. I'll look for you when it's done. Thank you." A tiny pause, and then she hugs Psyche again. "I am glad you're here," she says.

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Application: Susan Sto Helit, Discworld

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