kingdoms_of_auradon | Ian In The Wrong Place?

Entry tags:

Ian In The Wrong Place? - OTA

Open/locked?: Open
Who: Ian and whomsoever encounters them
What: Ian arrives in Auradon
Warnings: Some angst, maybe?

There was a figure slumped by the wall, their white and black hair disheveled, their glasses on the grass beside them. Their small suitcase was over their legs, their backpack dangling from one arm. After a moment they groaned and lifted a hand to their head. "Did I get hit by a truck or something...?" They mumbled.

Eyes opening, they looked around. "Well that's not good. I can't afford to be hallucinating now." They picked up their round lensed glasses and checked them before putting them on, then fished a phone out of their pocket. "No bars. Of course. I need to write an algorithm that will allow my phone to find signal from anywhere in the world. Of course, I should still be close enough to get signal anyway, hallucination or no. So... what is actually going on here...?"

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Lea chuckled again at that. "OK I'm gonna have to get her to do it now, just to see your face," he said. Because he strongly suspected that whoever Jenn was, she had nothing on Mal's dragon form.

Once Ian had held out their hands Lea laid his Keyblade in them. It was as solid as it had been a moment before, and pleasantly warm to the touch. And notably too heavy to be hollow plastic or something similar, though not so much so that Ian would have difficulty holding it. This was true for all of about ten seconds. Then the Keyblade vanished, dissolving all at once into sparkles of light and leaving Ian holding only empty air.

Ian whistled appreciatively hefting it lightly. That was solid work for a trick piece. And then it vanished and Ian fell back, startled, staring at where it had been. "That wasn't flash paper... Nanotech? Can't be mirrors... or string..." They might be babbling now in desperation to figure out the trick.

"Magic," Lea said, matter-of-factly. "It's magic. There's no trick to it in the sense you're thinking, and your not crazy, hallucinating, or on any kind of drugs; what happened actually happened, exactly the way you saw and felt."

"Look... it may be my job to accept that we can't always understand everything that happens... but that is taking it a bit further than I can easily come to terms with."

"Fair enough," Lea said. "I'm sure if Vexen was here he could give you a whole lecture on the subject of magi-science and magitech- it's kinda his entire thing, after all-, but most worlds still seem to view magic and science as two completely separate, incompatible things. Guess yours is no exception."

"How about we move on the the explanation and the tour? Figure that'll be a lot more convincing than just me showing off some more."

"I... am going to pretend you didn't say worlds until I have a very large, very strong coffee. So yes, tour sounds like a plan. Espcially if it includes a place I can lock up my bag and get something with caffeine."

Lea nodded. "Sounds like a good place to start the tour would be the kitchens then," he said. "Fastest way there is this way." He indicated that Ian should follow him, then started back around the corner he'd initially emerged from. "I think it'd normally be the entrance used for deliveries and stuff, but under the circumstances, no one's gonna care if we use it as a shortcut."

"Unless there is a part of the tour that gets me home faster, the kitchen should be fine."

"Would be nice, but no," Lea said. "If there was one, I think most of us would've used it by now."

After entering a pair of large double doors with a wide, paved path leading up to them, they passed through a wider than average and mostly unadorned hallway to emerge into the school's kitchens. Most of the equipment there was designed around need to prepare meals for large groups of people- for obvious reasons-, but there were a few machines designed to make individual cups or small batches of coffee, tea, or cocoa. He led Ian over to those.

"Any preferences? We've got a few different blends, plus some of those little cup things for the machine that uses those instead of regular coffee grounds."

"Right now, I'll take anything strong enough to wake me up."

"Right then," Lea said. He looked over the available options for a moment then selected an espresso-based cup and one of the larger mugs, before putting both in the machine that used them, turning it on and letting it do its thing while he got a simple black tea bag and mug for himself.

"I'm not really a coffee guy. Had the misfortune of trying some Xigbar made, and it was bad enough to put me off the stuff ever since." He filled the mug with water from the sink and casually heated its contents til the water was gently steaming- holding it in his hands the entire time- before adding the teabag.

Ian was.... going to pretend they hadn't seen that. Clearly they were on some sort of trip and needed to dry out. Caffeine should help.

"Any food we specifically are or are not supposed to touch? Or does everything just have its owner's name on it?"

"Nothing that really has anybody's name on it, but our supply situation is a bit tight at the moment, especially when it comes to perishable stuff," Lea said. "Someone'll make breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but if you want to make a bunch of snacks or something, you should ask first. Also if there's anything you straight up can't eat, for either cultural or medical reasons, now would be a good time to let us know so we can make a note of it."

"Sounds rough. Us?"

"A bit, though anybody stuck on the Isle has it way rougher," Lea said. "We've been making do though. And by 'we' I mean the Missrecalled; all of us that got pulled here from other times and worlds. Here in Auradon, that includes basically everyone you'd meet aside from Ben and Mal. Well... Jordan the genie's technically here too, but she's been basically comatose since the whole magical backfiring happened so you wouldn't really be meeting her."

"Okay, whatever my snack was laced with, it was good, I'll give it that much."

They got their drink from the machine and took a sip. "All the same, I'd like to sober up soon."

"If you're waiting for things to stop being weird- or extra weird, as the case may be-, I'm afraid you're in for a long wait," Lea said. "Because for better or worse, all this is actually happening. You're drinking real coffee in the real kitchen of a real boarding school in a real alternate dimension with real magic. And no amount of denial is gonna change that."

"Look... I can accept a lot of weird things as potentially possible. I might even be able to accept alternate realities or dimensions. I can accept the potential of other worlds. But there is only one Magic I believe in," they said with an implication that this... wasn't it.

Oh yeah, he was definitely going to have to convince Mal to go dragon in front of them. And take video of their reaction. It would be priceless. "Well I mean you can refuse to believe in it if you want," he said. "But in places like this world or the one I'm from, magic is just a part of the natural world. Trying to deny it exists is like trying to deny rain exists; you can do it, but eventually you're still gonna get wet."

A brow raised and then they shook their head. "Look, if it gets me home faster, I'll try to believe anything you want. But short of that... I'm sorry, I just... don't."

This unwillingness to accepts the existence of magic could be an issue if it persisted. True, he figured evidence would eventually win out, but how long would that take? Maybe it was just the terminology that was the problem? He'd consider it.

Right now though there were more pressing concerns. "Alright, tabling the magic discussion for now," he said. "When it comes to getting home, I've got good news and bad news. Which would you like first?"

"Since bad news usually gives me something I can work on fixing, let's start there."

"OK, the bad news is that there's isn't a way to send any of us home currently," he said. "It is on the priority list, but we don't really have a lot to go on other than what I already told you about how we got here, so... yeah."

"The good news is that while you're here, time effectively stops on your world, at least as far as you're concerned. So however long you're stuck here, as far as your world is concerned, you never left. Which is great if you had any time-sensitive things going on back there."

"Wait wait wait, hold up. You're telling me that whatever technology brought us here is tied up in time tech?" Yeah, they needed a better term for that...

But still, could this all be related to the experiment? They really needed to have access to Ziggy...

"It wasn't technology, but... kinda?", Lea said. "Basically, you're brought here from a certain place and time, you'd get put back at that same place and time if and when you got sent back; at least that's how I understand it."

"And any of your friends could turn up here from a different time than you. Or a different version of your world. Or both. Or another version of you could turn up, one who ended up in a totally different career, or who has superpowers, or has cat ears and a tail." He shrugged. "Basically just... welcome to the multiverse; it only gets weirder from here."

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