Welcome to Gaia! ::

There was an awful lot of commotion. Belle, whose face was covered in chocolate and whose fingers were sticky from sweets, cowered in fear as some invisible force rattled the gazebo. Suddenly confused and axious, the toddler blinked and pursed her lips as she peered around the giant, card-board cut out of Frankenstein to see what in the hell was going on. She couldn't believe her eyes. In less than fifteen seconds, their jolly celebration had transformed into a slough of chaos. One moment the gazebo was there and the next, it was being sucked into the floor and a strange looking, very angry lady had practically popped out of the ground.

For a moment, the little girl forgot herself and choked on a half-eaten toffee. Her throat constricted painfully around the candy and tears sprung to her eyes as she coughed. It was hard to see. Frantic to know what was going on, Belle thumped on her little chest with a hearty fist and gasped when the toffee slipped free. She was sore from the inconvenience, but the discomfort was easy for her to ignore in the wake of so much bizarre activity.

Despite the way the winds and the sounds and the smells seemed to tug at her little frame, Belle sat back and observed as Riddick struggled to escape whatever it was that had hold of him. Then, when Owen tried to rescue him and the pair went tumbling into the ground, it occurred to her to find Green. If anything could keep her from the mysterious depths of the silvery pool, it was the safety of her mother's arms. Green was, however, nowhere in site.

Belle's bottom lip quivered uncertainly as she inched towards the place in the ground where the green haired lady had come from. The sounds- they were so pretty. At the edge of the shimmering liquid, she stared, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, at the beautiful country on the other side.

This was a portal, to another land! She was vividly reminded of the movie Space Jam, where that michael basketball what's-his-face was sucked right into the ground. Maybe this time, just like then, Bugs Bunny was on the other side, urging her towards him with a giant magnet. Oh, how she'd like to meet him!

Suddenly, venturing into the unknown didn't seem so horrible. With a delighted laugh, Belle took a running leap at the pool and cannonballed in.

Evelyn was NOT liking how this party was going. First, that wooden thing exploded, causing her to scream and try to hide behind her mother. Then, peering around her mother's leg, she'd seen a scary woman appear. She'd missed what happened next as she'd hid her face again. But then Alice grabbed her hand and headed towards the pond. Evelyn frowned, thinking that Alice was pulling too hard... wait, that wasn't her...

The girl was confused and was glad that they'd paused at the edge of the funny looking water. But then Alice let go of her and started towards another kid. Frightened, Evelyn took off after Alice, not wanting to be left without someone with her.

Unlike his friend, Nahuel had no wings to buffer against the wind. He was slowed a little by virtue of how he fell - Being upwind of Garrett, he was first pushed against his friend, and then once Garrett gave up fighting the wind, was carried along with the other boy.

"Woah!" he exclaimed, reaching up to hold his hat more securely against his head. This was his last conscious action before the pool was beneath them and the strange, quicksilver liquid and the strange land within it swallowed them both up.

The teen seemed barely aware of the much faster Teagan pushing past and then into the pool leaving Adam to slip into the pool directly after the lemur teen. The slowness could have been owed to a many number of things. People brushing past him as he blindly moved forward and such. In a comical sort of way -- not that anyone would have noticed, he walked into a few things. When this is all over and Adam could assess the bruises he wouldn't remember a damned thing.

Darby's sensitive ears caught the sound of the gazebo buckling before Cain even noticed. With a flying leap the ciel caught her charge and sent him toppling to the ground, just in time - the building exploded, sending a rain of shards into the air. Darby winced and hunched protectively over Cain, waiting for splinters to pepper them both...

Something pushed at her stomach. Both of her blue eyes blinked open, focusing on the space where the gazebo had been, and which now housed a silver pool. With her eyes shut, she hadn't seen the mysterious woman rise from underneath.

But Cain had. He wriggled and finally succeeded in pushing his guardian over to one side, taking in a glad breath through his crushed lungs. The toddler barely had time to pop his glasses back on before a strong gust of wind sent him skidding forward along the ground.

"Cain!" Darby had come to at last, and her terrified howl was accompanied by an even stronger push from the wind. He went rolling head over heels like a tumbleweed, too startled to even make a sound, right into the pool that had just taken Raven.

The building exploding was downright cool, Aidan decided. At first, the tugging sensation wasn't so bad either. Aidan tried to take a few steps towards the strange hole in the ground where the gazebo had been, but was held back by Qing. Displeased by this, Aidan stopped pulling. The thing, whatever it was, didn't do the same for him. Now it was unpleasant, and Aidan felt like a rope in a game of tug of war.

"Don't purll so much," Qing scolded lightly. But he was curious, and still holding Aidan's hand tightly, he took a few steps towards the pool, eyeing other children as they were sucked through. It didn't occur to him that his own might suffer the same fate; when Qing was confronted with a puzzle, he saw little else.

Being closer only made the dragging feeling worse. Suddenly Aidan simply could not be held any longer. His hand wrenched away from his guardian's, and with a shriek of surprise and fury, he slid headfirst into the pool before Qing even noticed a thing.