The Marvels of Science (IC)

[Fox]

Dragonfly turned pale, heaving a little and throwing a hand up to her mouth as her last meal tried to zero-gravity its way up out of her stomach. She kept from throwing up - barely - but she was visibly disturbed by the sudden loss of 'down'. hate that effect - hate hate hate - focus - try not to vomit while helping someone give a tour

She was frowning as gravity came back - at least somewhat - carefully landing to make sure she didn't bounce right up again (bouncing would not help); she tried to ignore her stomach by keeping her attention was on the walls - or where the walls would be, anyway - as she ran some math in her head. "Lag in-" She paused, swallowing hard. "- lag in gravity cancelling. Thought I'd tweaked that. Working with other peoples' machines is never reliable...complicated to reverse-engineer their science, and diagnose problems, and maintain safety features, and make sure it doesn't harm nearby components. Mm..." She bit her lip, thinking back on the design. "Will have to toy with it later."

She shrugged...carefully. "Expensive technology...high power requirements. Slightly abusable, of course. Will be more common when it's commercially viable, likely - currently would cost too much to use without releasing other, more dangerous technology. Suspect that the entertainment industry would get a lot of use out of it."

[Aoiroo]

With the returning wait she turned herself and landed softly onto her side to the ground. Pushing upward she let out a sigh of relief as Dragonfly started to speak in terms she didn't quite get. Though she had a good understanding of what she was talking about at the end,

"Anything can be abused in the wrong hands, even mistletoe will kill if properly sharpened."

Standing up she looked around at this place,

"I can see it happening, such things can be very amusing."

She walked very lightly in the landscape as she looked around,

"So, what is it that we will be doing?"

Cupping her hand, she tried to get a good visual and quietly she got an enlarged visual of potasium she saw in a book of a dot with little rings and moving dots on the rings,

"The lesson I took seemed to have something to do with these."

[Supercape]

"Looks like Potassium to me!" exclaimed Supercape, peering at the image. "Nice effect, by the way", he commented.

"Chemistry labs are mainly on floor 17, so its probably a trip up again. Will stairs do. Its only a few flights. Otherwise I can bring us up again. "

"A bit of fooling around with potassium and water never hurt anybody!" he smiled, remembering his chemistry lessons at school in England "of course, it has a whole lot of other uses. But the water thing is fun!"

As the gravity slowly resumed, he lead Etain and Dragonfly out.

A small glitch appeared in the forest, followed by a buzzing sound and a crackle of electricity. It only lasted a moment.

[Fox]

Dragonfly tilted her head. "Hm. Interesting." science unlikely - rare for mutations - magic? - mm - bothersome interesting curious "Any other information on your lesson? Chemistry is a very broad subject. Even when limited to a single--"

She blinked, turning her head around. what? - nothing there - mm - thought I heard... She frowned, shrugged the thought off, and brought her attention back to Etain. "--single element. Many useful effects, entertaining effects. Suppose stairs are fine. Could use the exercise."

[Aoiroo]

"I am glad, it is a bit confusing to me."

Reaching into her sleeve she pulled out the project sheet she was given.

"They said that it was a scale up from normal schools because of the powers, but the department has been busy because of some concerns with dimensional travelers. It seems to do with some of the less nice worlds along side this one."

She did not see how it was so large a threat as there is inevitable backlash from large scale travel between worlds, but apparently there was some previous history that made this one slightly uneasy.

Following Supercape out of the room and explaining the location shift she smiled,

"It is fine, I have become used to stairs in my stay. There are quite a few of at Claremont and several stores have them as well. Though they have moving stairs at the big stores."

[Supercape]

Seven long flights of stairs later... floor 22...

"Huff...Puff...Here we are!" said Supercape, brightly "Floor 22! most of our...wheeze...chemical laboratories are here!"

The whole floor was set out neatly, with six equidistant chemical labs on the periphery, and what appeared to be a central area for storage of hazardous chemicals.

"Now then, potassium...potassium..." rummaging through the stores, he brought out a sealed container. "Here we are!" with a schoolboy smile on his face he scuttled off to Laboratory 22.1, the nearest one.

"Come on, come on! violent chemical reactions don't happen every day, you know!"

Unnoticed to all, a glitch appeared on the computer screen behind them

Error: Safety Protocols Offline!

[Aoiroo]

Etain was right behind him though not really out of breath. Seven flights wasn't much to her, and she was certianly more use to walking places. Glancing around the place she took everything in particularly places and surfaces she wanted to avoid. The list of avoidable spots was geting rather long when Supercape found the chemical they were to work with. She made a slight concerned look,

"I hope not."

Moving past she glanced around the empty lab looking for maybe a wooden table they might work on.

[Fox]

Dragonfly was a little out of breath but soldiering on; inwardly, she sighed. out of shape - should exercise more - or build a motion-assist skeleton - danger of atrophy? - may as well build a whole battlesuit at that point anyway "Moving staircases. Escalators," she wistfully commented, sighing outwardly this time. "Could be nice to have here. Turning corners an engineering feat...possibly redundant with elevators. Mm."

Making her way into the room, the young woman leaned against one of the hard and heavy plastic work tables, glad to take some weight off her feet. just had to put short heels on costume - even less than an inch - vanity hurts

[Supercape]

"Right then!" proclaimed Supercape. We have here a large, 3 Kg block of potassium. He showed it for Etain to see, making sure only his rubber gloves touched the dangerous element.

"And we have there" he continued "a robotic arm, a blast shield, and a bowl of water"

He grinned "prepare for basic chemistry lecture.... the marvels of oxidation!" he spent about a minute explaining the science behind the process, as a token gesture to get to the "experiment" itself.

"If you would now place yourself behind the blast shield, I will get the robot arm to pick up this, and we get to the fun stuff!"

[Aoiroo]

Etain noted several things about this experiment that were troubling, like the fact that the person helping wasn't touching it directly, or the fact that there was talk of a blast shield. Either was it was no surprised that she was almost the first behind said shield as she peered out to see the blocks of potassium quietly. It was also around this time that she produced a spiral bound notepad and a lead pencil from one of her pockets to record what her guide was saying. Even if they might take the labs word for it, she wanted to make sure she had proof to get credit for the assignment. Plus, she was geniunely curious,

"What is happening with those two things that makes it nessicary for a blast shield?"

[Fox]

Dragonfly moved to a spot behind the blast shield, and brought up her own force field just for good measure. "Supercape explained...mm. Will summarize. Potassium is an alkali metal," she observed, folding her arms and watching the experiment with interest. never gets old "Sodium, lithium....alkali metals react violently with water. Exothermic. Reaction creates hydrogen, produces enough heat to ignite hydrogen gas. Very dramatic, fun to watch. Makes storage difficult."

She shrugged, eyes still on the experiment. "More details...would have to find a chemist. My knowledge is basic. Or have Supercape repeat explanation...very professor-like. Or so I assume from what I know about professors. Professional, at least."

[Supercape]

With a schoolboy grin, Supercape theatrically pressed a red button. "And now" he proclaimed "we lower the potassium, via computer controlled robotics, in a safe and controlled manner..."

No sooner had the robot arm moved, than it promptly fizzed and sparked, and dunked the whole block of potassium in the water.

A deafening and concussive explosion ripped the room, alarms sounded, and flashing lights glared, the blast shield cracked and flew from its bolts from the force.

[Aoiroo]

Etain didn't know much about a lot of technologies, especially robotics but she knew enough to know that the sudden robotic spark was not a good sign. Dropping down she put her hands on her head as the explosion roared over them. Taking a few seconds to recover from the shock she looked around to see to the guide in the blue cape who seemed to have been injured by the explosion,

"What has happened?"

[Fox]

One moment the arm was working just fine, and the next it had dropped a dangerous amount of a dangerous chemical into the water. Dragonfly tried to drop to the floor on time...and didn't quite make it. Her world got very, very loud for a moment and then very, very quiet, and a the force of the blast knocked her head backwards into a cabinet with a hollow-sounding crack.

She was lucky just to still be on her feet, looking rather dazed and disoriented by the explosion. "Wh...?"

[Supercape]

Supercape stood up carefully. A Robotic Arm had just bounced off his chest, fortunately not flying too fast, but enough to hurt. The poor arm looked broken and twisted.

"What the...?" he started, until he realised he couldn't hear a blessed thing. The noise had completely blasted his eardrums. He shook his head for a while, but he could only hear the faintest of sounds, all muffled.

Dragonfly looked pretty shaken. Fortunately Etain looked like she had had the presence of mind to duck. Perhaps as he and Dragonfly had thought there was no danger, they hadn't been prepared. Etain was relatively ignorant. And in this case, relative ignorance may have lead to relative bliss.

The flashing lights continued, and Supercape scrambled to the nearest computer screen that was still working.

"Multiple errors" he said, without hearing "looks like something screwed up when we were in the simulator suite. Loose connection or something, I don't know. Stupid floor 13 I guess. "

He looked at Dragonfly "and now that explosion has caused all sorts of havoc. We best repair what we can before things get out of control. "

[Aoiroo]

Looking at the one with the cape not respond but seem on top of the problem regardless. Though it seemed that the problem was something she could help very little with so instead she went to the girl was was much more frail looking. She didn't look like she was very balanced so she held out a hand,

"You look,"

Etain tried to search but couldn't find an appropriate word,

"off center, do you need some help?"

[Fox]

Dragonfly blinked, hard, shaking her head and finding her feet again, thanks in no small part to the offered hand. She looked around the room, and then at the girl who was....mouthing words at her? "What?" she asked, and then paused. "Can't....mmh...проверки, один, два, три...deaf. Great." head hurts worse than normal - good thing I had my force field up - probably saved my skull

Little lights danced behind her eyes as she glanced at one of the nearby computers, which flickered through a series of errors and diagnostic screens. "Many errors!" she called out to the young woman and the caped scientist. "Starting back at the simulator. Should repair them before they cascade into worse problems. Explosion did not help."

[Supercape]

"What?" yelled Supercape, as he saw Dragonfly's mouth moving but only a muffled rumble in his mouth. "I can't hear you!" he continues, again in a loud voice. Not that he could hear anything, including himself.

He had never really tried to lip read. "What did you say? Cart in Battering Hater? I can't hear you. Iv'e gone deaf!" he pointed at his ears and made some nonsensical twirling sounds.

Frustrated, he started typing text into the Computer Terminal

Gone deaf from explosion. Can't hear you. What did you say?

Wish we had some good old fashioned pen and paper...

The computer started flashing up all sorts of warning alerts about the simulator suite A, Floor 13, and, most alarmingly, the particle collider in the sub levels. And to make matters worse, all the lifts were down...

[Aoiroo]

This was very troublesome, they could not hear and if they continued yelling like this it was likely she would not be able to soon as well. She couldn't do any hearing if their ears were damaged, and even if she could spell between them any words she wanted to say in the air then, it would be complicated with more then one person speaking and terms she might of been unfamiliar with. It'd be easier if they could just hear what she was hearing, which,

""

It wasn't much longer that she said it that she cast the illusion, she didn't generally exclude visuals but it wasn't nessicary, she started with her own voice and said,

"You have both been deafened, so stop yelling. I was lucky so I can hear, and now I am letting you hear what I hear."

Letting out a breath she cast the sound of the alarms, though it was a bit delayed by the fact that she was producing them after she was hearing them along with the other sounds. Any speaking would probably be out of synche as well but it was better then hearing nothing.

[Fox]

Dragonfly's face immediately fell - well, fell further - at the voice that came out of nowhere. psychics - annoying She frowned, trying to focus on the noise, to glean details from what sounded like a very bad radio station in the middle of a blizzard. "Mmh. Interesting talent," she observed, consciously lowering her voice. "Thoughts on repair priorities? Had very little to do with several of the projects in question."

[Supercape]

"I guess the glitch happened in the Simulator Suite" replied Supercape, banging his head in a futile attempt to start his hearing again.

"At least from these readouts..." he pointed at the screen. "That explosion may have caused some additional damage, but I think the simulator suite is our priority. And unfortunately, there is too much quantum disturbance to teleport there - at least from this distance. I think the particle collider at the basement is doing some very strange things with Tachyons. Which means things have become unentangled. Which means..."

"...the stairs..."

[Aoiroo]

Etain was almost relieved at the suggestion, the stairs meant that they'd be alway from the things like the sparking arms and the broken bits, of well everything. Though it did seem a long way. She turned to her guide in blue, her voice ringing clearer then it would of usually thanks to the illusion,

"Let us go then, it seems dangerous for this to not be taken care of."

Well she honestly didn't know how dangerous, but it certianly sounded bad. Picking up the hem of her skirt she started past them to the doorway that led to the stairs and hurried down.

[Fox]

Dragonfly groaned but headed after Etain, pausing for just a moment to link to a computer and send an alert to evacuate the floors in question, just in case there were stray employees or visitors. can't hurt to be careful - easier without others underfoot anyway

The stairs were not a happy prospect, but she soldiered on; it was, she had to admit, at least much easier going down. The sound of their steps echoing in the stairwell made her realize something important, too: she was finally getting her hearing back, bit by bit. Her head still hurt, though...but then, it almost always did.

[Supercape]

Supercape shook his head. His ears were still ringing, but he could start to make out the alarm bells ringing out from around him.

"HEY, I THINK I CAN HEAR AGAIN!" he shouted, his voice having unconsciously adjusted to his previous impairment.

"I mean.... I think I can hear again!" he repeated at a normal volume. True, it was a bit muffled and he head still sang with church bells, but he could at least hear what he was saying.

He glanced at his PDA, which was hooked to the Lab's main computer. "Oh dear. We better hurry, if we don't get this sorted soon, the large particle collider in the basement, its going to go haywire. No idea what will happen. "

He started pelting down the stairs three at a time. "Quick, we haven't got a moment to loose!"

[Aoiroo]

By the time they had gotten to the bottom floor Etain could hear several voices other then her guides. There were a lot people on the lobby level. It was good that they were no longer deaf, because she would not be able to keep an illusion of the noise she met of people chattering and speculating. She waited quietly at the base of the stairs for instruction since most of anything to be done here was pretty much over her head.