Welcome to Gaia! ::

Juniper frowned into the darkness, but her eyes eventually moved to the ceiling as the red glow began to get her attention. "Weird." She said softly, before turning around at the sound of a mannequin moving.

She turned in time to see Chris manipulate the mannequin without any ill effects. "Well, they must like your or something." She said before turning her gaze back up to the ceiling.

"Hey, Chris, have any idea what that's about?" She pointed to the ceiling as she turned to look back at him. After all, he seemed to be the most informed of them all about this place.

Temperance couldn't get up to see what had fallen and so, she was forced to focus on her hand. She'd felt the tell-tale tap of plastic and had ignored it, telling herself she was hearing, feeling things that were untrue. Looking down at her hand, she sucked in a great gulp of air, probing the plastic fingers of her left hand with her right. It wasn't her dominant hand but.. but if it stayed. There were no nurses with one hand. She sucked in another breath, pressing on his fingers one by one, seeing if they bent. It didn't help that, in her panic, she could see, out of the corner of her eye, that Chris easily fixed the broken mannequin. Even when she had both hands, she was clearly a s**t nurse. And now she didn't even have that.

Her breaths became quieter, faster, her fingers closing around each other painfully, feeling the alien plastic. Temperance's shoulders bowed, shaking with each breath. She knew, in a calm corner of her mind that she was hyperventilating. Radial, ulnar nerve dysfunction - she recited in her mind. Sudden hyperatrophy, Klumpke's paralysis, acute manifestation of a symptom of scleroderma. Breathe, breathe in the space between words, slowly. She squared her shoulders and pulled out a handkerchief from her purse. Awkwardly, she wrapped and tied it around her non-functioning hand - not because it needed a dressing, but because it was easier for her if she treated it like any other wound. Wounds got dressings. Wounds eventually healed. She just had to ignore it for now.

She crouched for a while afterwards, hand cradled to her chest, before standing. Because she needed to focus on something, anything else, she looked up. "It's changing," she said, voice shaky and soft. Temperance cleared her throat.

"The ceiling has been changing; it can't be for no reason." She turned towards Chris and Juniper. "And something fell up in the mezz, but the stairs are blocked by rubble, so unless someone has a rubble-blaster..." Temperance was proud of how steady she could make her voice.

Connor was silent, and remained silent throughout the film, throughout the chatter that went on around him, even when it was about him, not because he couldn't speak, but because he knew he shouldn't. He was fighting hard not to panic, and opening his mouth would only give away how much his resolve to stay calm was cracking, chipping away at every second that passed, at every moment where he could not feel his eyes where his eyes should be, or even the sockets that was meant to house them. There was an emptiness, but more than that, there was absolutely nothing. No eyelids to blink, no tear ducts to water. Just nothing. He heard the crackling of the radio, could sense movement around him. At some point, he'd pulled up the hood of his jacket, and kept it pulled forward, head ducking down slightly, shoulders slumped.

In all of his distraction with the whole eye matter, he hadn't even noticed anything odd about his foot yet.

His mind was abuzz with deafening cacophony of thoughts that threatened to overwhelm and send him spiraling into panic mode. He was on edge, but forced his breathing to be even, though it sometimes hissed between clenched teeth. He was on the brink, teetering on the edge, when suddenly, out of nowhere, several things happened.

People were talking about magic, about this place that they called Other Ashdown, about the things they saw in the movie, and he focused on that, on just listening, and not on his own current plight.

Temperance moved away, he felt her, heard her voice as it became slightly more distant, and he fought the urge to reach out and grab for her, to pull her back, to keep her with him, to be grounded in the knowledge that he at least knew somebody there who would try to help him.

One of the new people approached...or at least, somebody who's voice he didn't recognize and who he thought was new. At first, Connor had no idea what he wanted, or who he was talking to, and he definitely had no idea that he was fixing the neck of the mannequin in front of him. It wasn't until the eyes question that Connor even knew that he'd been noticed, and it was the first time he was aware of actually being addressed since the film began.

He hesitated for a moment, because he didn't even know where to begin answering that question. He had an idea of why it had happened, but not how.

"I don't know." He finally answered, voice tight, with that slightly strangled edge, before falling into silence once more.

The boards do not budge in the slightest. If there is a way out, it is not through these doors.

Not now.

Instead there was another telltale falling noise from the upper area and - oddly enough - an empty hamster ball rolled across from the rubble covered stairs and hit Shun's feet.

It looked mostly normal, aside from the fact that in several of the places there were cracks that looked like they came from the inside.

As if something had been trying to push out.

The door to the hamster ball was missing and other than that it was just a piece of useless junk.

Alister had sat and he had watched. He had soaked in each event that occurred around him, staring grumpily as the scene shifted from one thing to another. The woman, Temperance, losing her hand to the beastly plastic that had overtaken the man's eyes. The man, Connor, attempting to right his wrong by repairing the plastic figure's tilted head. That weird ******** hamster ball that had fallen from the mezzanine, blocked by rubble.

He stood and moved towards the rest of the group, clapping his square-palmed hand onto the detective, Shun's, shoulder. "We should get that rubble out of the way 'n' go up 'n' check it out." He said, determinedly. "You said earlier it's better ta just play along right? Doesn't seem like we can do shite against this place." He removed his hand and rolled his shoulders, glaring around at the theater that surrounded them- at the mannequins still left-over from the mass exodus.

"If it's a copy of the real theater, then, if we search the place... we might find a fire extinguisher cabinet. There could be an axe in it, and we could possibly use it to chop our ********' way outta this place... then figure out how to get past that weird cloud s**t." He glanced at Temperance, the one that had gone and came back. How did they know she could be trusted, after disappearing into that creepy shite? Then at the most recent arrival, the man that had called himself Chris- the same one from the movie. Frankly, he didn't know who he could trust. Or if it even really mattered.

"What do ya think?"

Al was most interested in hearing the detective's opinion on his musing, before they began their next task. But by the way he looked around at the rest of the group, it was obvious he was up for an open forum of discussion.

Acacia tilted her head back to look at the ceiling, frowning. Changing, they'd said? How was it-? It looked like a spreading fire on the horizon. She lifted a hand to her mouth, covering a gasp at the sight and the immediate thought that followed it. If fire was lighting the sky of the mural, would it translate into a real fire in the theatre? With them trapped inside? She didn't know if it was possible or if she was just jumping to conclusions, but somehow after everything that had happened so far it seemed like a thing that could happen and that was enough to terrify her.

When she looked back down, she immediately zeroed in on the one bit of conversation that seemed relevant. There'd been some mysterious hamster ball, and now people were wanting to get up into the balcony again, but- Acacia stepped in closer to Alister even as Shun stepped away to head towards the stairs.

"I'll help you look! For the fire extinguisher cabinet, I mean." Smiles tended to be her default expression with friends and strangers alike, and it made it easier to pull one back on now. "I think we should see if we can find one first. Just- Just in case." It wasn't the axe she was entirely after, but she wasn't going to jinx it by saying she wanted an extinguisher handy either.

happy bonsai