Look down, back up! [Slightly backdated]

[live_ringer]

Characters: Gene-1 (live_ringer) and OPEN
Date/Time: Mid day - May 18, 2010
Location: Out and about in the Disney World Wilderness
Rating: PG?
Summary: Gene walks about the theme park in an attempt to get away from the voice outside his head, i.e. the Old Spice guy that has become his personal disembodied narrator. [spoilers: it doesn't work]

Comments

...sorry Gene

[feathered_earth]

Cara had been exploring around the park after her guard shift ended, and was contemplating going to find Sailormoon. Her sister seemed to have no end of love for the rollercoasters. She hadn't managed to have a proper breakfast before running out, though--the hotel beds and the air conditioning in there made sleeping late much, much too easy, so when she smelled the french fries she changed direction. French fries were good. Whoever had figured out how to do that to potatoes had to have been pretty smart, in Cara's opinion.

She grinned when she saw who else was there and was about to say hello when a deep, disembodied voice spoke out of nowhere. The shock of it instantly set her on edge--disembodied voices were bad news, and she almost swung her spear down to attack the monster that was sure to appear when she heard what it was actually saying.

...Which made no sense to her at all. "What in tarnation was that?"

Never apologize!

[live_ringer]

Gene flinched slightly when he heard Cara exclaim something behind him. He turned around, nearly making a quip about her use of 'tarnation' when he saw she had her spear at the ready.

"Whoa, calm down. It's just a memory punishment. ...That is what you were talking about, right?" After all, for all he knew she may have just spotted a stray ant in the vicinity.

"Look down, back around you. I am not in tarnation, but the happiest place on earth. But look more closely. Can you see me? Maybe I'm not actually here. Anything is possible when you live in Edensphere!"

[feathered_earth]

"Uh--" Cara glanced down at her spear and hastily put it up, looking embarrassed. "Yeah. It just caught me off-guard." Now she thought of it she couldn't explain why it had been such an instinctual reaction. Expecting a monster to come after a random voice in the air had made perfect sense a minute ago.

She blinked and looked around, not because of the voice's instructions but in another attempt to figure out just where the heck it was coming from. "I know that!" she said. "And tarnation's not a place--wait, why am I even talking to you? It?" Cara shook her head. No matter how long she lived here, Edensphere never ran out of ideas on how to be weird. "Good grief. Has this guy been butting into your conversations all day?"

[live_ringer]

"All damned day," Gene replied in exasperation. "All of yesterday, too." He hitched one shoulder in a shrug. "It's irritating, but maybe it won't last too much longer."

And it could always be worse. At least he was not the one saying these things out of the blue. That would have been a helluva lot harder to explain away.

"So, what brings you out to this part of the park?" Because any distraction from the Voice is a good one and he figures that works as well as anything else.

[feathered_earth]

"It probably won't." Cara resisted the urge to look around once more, wondering if the voice would pop back up. She was kind of curious about what other things it said, she had to admit, but Gene seemed pretty aggravated by it. So she figured the best solution was just to be chipper. (After all, it wasn't like she could miss the voice if he decided to speak up.) "And I just got off my guard shift--I didn't have much breakfast, so I figured I'd get some french fries."

And reminded of that, she did so now--man, it was a good thing she kept track of her money. Things in this place were way too expensive. "After that I was just going to find someone to ride stuff with me, or go on the monorail or something." She wondered if Gene would be willing to do that--Aim had said pretty flatly on the journals that he didn't like the idea, so she hadn't tried to ask, but maybe Gene wouldn't mind.

[live_ringer]

Gene hung back as Cara fetched a snack. Once she returned with the over-priced treat and mentioned the rides, one corner of his mouth quirked upward.

"Is that so? Any you have in mind? The Tower of Terror was pretty exciting, I have to admit." Gene wasn't much to hold on to regret or guilt unless he had a heavy hand in something. There wasn't anything that could be done to stop the ants at the moment and they had a lot of work ahead of them when they got back. He figured he might as well take advantage of the holiday while he had the chance.

"Hello, young miss. Look in the direction of the tea cups, then to the Tower of Terror. Then back at the cups, then back at the tower. One is charming, the other is meant to scare you out of your pants. Both come with a high chance of seeing those fries you are eating once more."

Gene's nose scrunched slightly at that visual. Well, that was appetizing.

[feathered_earth]

Cara was much of the same mind about the ants. There wasn't much they could do for now except to lay low in the Wilderness, and if that was the situation they were better off trying to enjoy themselves while they could, rather than fretting about something they wouldn't be able to fix until they returned to the Tree. She'd rather have been able to fight them, but that wasn't an option.

She shook her head and laughed a little when the voice spoke up again. "We're not asking for your advice," she informed it. Tower of Terror--well--Cara wasn't sure she wanted to ride something with a name quite like that. Rollercoasters and things like that were fun, but being terrified was a different matter. "But I'd rather hold onto my lunch. Hm..." She stood on tiptoe of one foot as she pondered the question, just an unconscious action to bleed off her abundant energy

[live_ringer]

Gene chuckled a bit as Cara balanced like an absent-minded balerina in mid-thought.

"Undead robots? Not in that one. Just mannequin's in bell hop uniform. The atmosphere's kind of neat, set up in what's supposed to be an old hotel. They have Twilight Zone video introduction, but that's not really scary. The big thrill is in the drops."

"Plunge down, now back up. Down, then up, then down again!"

"...Yeah, that, basically. But you may be interested in trying something completely different. May as well cover everything, yeah?"

[feathered_earth]

Wow, that did sound like a good recipe for getting sick. Cara was pretty sure she hadn't ever gotten motion-sickness before, but she didn't feel like changing that today. She shook her french-fry box a little to try and settle the excess salt to the bottom as she switched to the other foot. "Something different, I think," she said with a grin.

"Still, I'd like to go on something I haven't before--oh! Have you been on Thunder Mountain yet? I think that one's a rollercoaster--your little friend there would probably have trouble keeping up with something that fast," she suggested. "You'd just meet him on the way back up or down in the Tower."

[live_ringer]

"Thunder Mountain, huh? I haven't, but it sounds like a good time." Gene laughed outright when Cara suggested the ride as a means of getting away from his punishment. Leaning forward, he briefly rested a hand on her head and gave her a wink.

"I like the way you think, kiddo." Gene straightened then looked around. "Got an idea which way we'd have to head to get there?"

[feathered_earth]

"It's a brilliant plan, isn't it?" She gave Gene a light poke in the arm and glanced around mock-furtively, as if determining the best escape route from his invisible stalker as she pulled out her map. It had been somewhere starting with an F.

Ah! There. "Somewhere called Frontierland--so we've got to go this way," she said, pointing in that direction and starting off. "Hopefully I'll be able to stash my spear near those little cubbies without a problem."

[live_ringer]

Gene peered at the map over her shoulder, then in the direction she pointed. "Got it. And as long as you don't wave the thing around, I doubt there'll be an issue. Shall we head that direction, then?"

Just as Gene made like he was about to start walking that way, the voice piped up once more. "Onward, to the new frontier of Frontierland. HIYA!"

((ooc: Reference for the hiya found at commercial #2))

[feathered_earth]

"You be quiet!" Cara said, rolling up the map and thwapping the empty air behind Gene. That just seemed like the spot a disembodied voice would naturally be coming from, not that she really expected it to have any effect.

She rested her spear on her shoulder and shook her head with a grin. "Yeah, let's get a move on," she said, striding off with a purpose. "The sooner we ditch this guy the better!" And if it didn't work, well, they'd still have fun on the rollercoaster.

[live_ringer]

Gene shot an amused look over his shoulder when Cara swatted at the thin air behind him.

"Nice try," he said, every bit as doubtful as Cara that the shooing with the map would do any good. He ambled along behind her, his stride less driven, but the length of his legs making up for it. It was certainly one of those things that was useful in a big place like this. "Got any plans for what you want to do after this trip on the roller coaster? Or is another ride in the cards if it turns out to be good enough."

[feathered_earth]

"That's a good question," Cara said as she looked around, making sure she wasn't leading them to a different part of the park entirely. "If it's fun, we can ride it again! As long as neither one of us starts getting queasy."

She paused for a moment, checked the map again, and altered course. "Honestly though, I just like exploring this place," she said. "There's so much here I don't think I've ever seen before. Like the monorail--have you been on that?"

[live_ringer]

"Sounds like a decent plan of action to me, since I'd rather not see anyone's breakfast a second time. That's a good way to ruin the day." Though Gene had the sneaking suspicion that it wouldn't be a problem for him. Being tossed around in a giant robot was probably every bit as likely to unsettle someone's stomach as a roller coaster. Still, he was fairly sure this sort of thing was new to Cara, and her next statement only confirmed that.

"The monorail? Yeah, it's a pretty convenient way to get around. Kinda familiar, in a way... Couldn't say why, though." The cars on the monorail weren't unlike the sort of thing you'd see on the Orbital Elevators, after all, though he had no memory of the contraption.