introduction

[ownerless]

A new door opens. The room on the opposite side glows faintly, and the person who steps through looks only mostly (but not really not quite) like a normal human woman. She is very tall, and her skin is very white; pearlescent, one might say. And look, she has a pearl: a big one, set in the very center of her forehead, not affixed by any visible means. Still, hardly strange enough to attract comment in a place like this.

But of course, she doesn't know that about this place yet. Or that she's in any place except where she expected to be. Though that one, at least, it doesn't take long to figure out.

"Hang on," she says when she sees the room. She backs out, shuts the door, then opens it. "What?!"

She tries a few more times. Out, in. Out, in. outinoutinoutinoutin--

"This isn't where that door is meant to go!" she cries.

[ooc: here's pearl from steven universe. she is (at least for now) from early in S1, but could potentially reveal backstory spoilers (but can just as easily avoid them if you want!).]

Comments

[hangingoutwithcrows]

Ursula is not wearing a tank-top, shorts, and sun-hat. Her icon is lying. She is wearing a heavy sweater and heavy boots; and she's busy peeling off a coat and hat and mittens, all damp from melting snow. She's just come through her door, which is...not exactly where the new person's door is, but very close--because how do all these doors work anyway?

"New arrival?"



((slow slow slow times, as you know))

[ownerless]

"Arrival to where?" She can't know if she's knew if she doesn't know where she is. Of course, she'd surely remember somewhere like this, but-- places change.

[hangingoutwithcrows]

"Milliways," she answers cheerfully. "It's magic." She looks down at her boots, with their rim of mud, and makes the executive decision to take them off and leave them by the door, wiggling her toes in bright woolen socks.

[ownerless]

"Magic. I see." A word that humans use so freely as to render it essentially meaningless as a descriptor! She needs specificity! (This person is a human, right? She looks like it.) "But how did it get here? That's not where that door is suppose to lead! New rooms can't just appear, someone has to put them there, and I certainly didn't do it. And-- can anyone else just walk right back through?!"

[death_gone_mad]

[ooc: and the moment this mun had been hoping for/fearing has arrived. It it had to be Pearl! Oh gosh]

At a nearby table, a spoon drops into a bowl of fish stew. The woman sitting at the table, a tall athletic redhead with sunkissed skin, stares at the new arrival with wide eyes.

There's is no way the that the woman at the table can have naturally red irises or naturally red hair, can she? Well, maybe... nope, her hair is turning pink, that's not natural.

She seems to be refusing to blink, too.

[ownerless]

[ooc: ha! dare I ask?]

Pearl catches the change out of the corner of her eye, and does a double-take. Someone changing their appearance is less strange to her than it could be, but-- does that mean she's a gem? She doesn't look like one.

...also, she's staring.

"--yes, hello?"

[death_gone_mad]

Oh no, it is one of them. The forehead gem, the pearlescent skin... they found Milliways! This place is doomed!

Pearl's words snap Amascut out of her sudden hyper-awareness and tunnel vision. Her expression turns slightly more analytical.

Well, she doesn't recognize this ... female? And last she checked, the only surviving females of the species could be counted on one hand. But not recognizing a particular member of the species isn't so odd, they are shapeshifters, after all. At least the new arrival looks like she hasn't participated in the Ritual for a few hundred years.

How does she play this? The woman at the table gives her head a slight shake, still not taking her eyes off of the new arrival. "Hi, this is your first time here, right?" It's not a confident sounding greeting.

Amascut takes small comfort in the fact that the new arrival doesn't recognize her. Or is pretending not to, she reminds herself.

[ownerless]

If it's a pretense, it's well carried out! She looks genuinely bewildered!

"Well... yes, it is."

[vive_lavenir]

Jehan Prouvaire was deep in a volume of 21st century American marriage law, but he naturally responds to the sounds of distress from a lady. "Madame," he says, "what place are you looking for?"

[ownerless]

She is a distressed lady-shaped being! And she will happily accept that prompt to think out loud.

"That door is supposed to lead to my room. It shouldn't be possible for anyone to redirect it! And they did it without any of us noticing! I don't even know how they could have done that!"

[vive_lavenir]

"No one might have redirected it at all," Jehan says, carefully. He has no idea of the strange magic this pearlescent lady may be accustomed to, or what enemies she fears, but that doesn't stop him feeling excited about it. "Doors to this place have a habit of just...appearing, in people's worlds."

[ownerless]

"Well that can't be," she scoffs. "A door can't just appear, someone has to build it. And it certainly can't appear in the middle of our temple without anyone noticing! Even if it were some sort of galaxy warp, you'd have to be able to direct it, you couldn't just-- open a door in one place and have it appear in some place you've never been!"

[dataexpunged]

"Huh, I know that feeling well." The friendly looking man in the lab coat nods at her, his hands absently fiddling with his ukulele. "I just had the same thing happen to me a couple nights back."

[ownerless]

She glances over. Oh, a human.

"It can't have been the same thing," she points out. "Unless you also found that your doorway, ordinarily activated by and given physical form by the presence of your gemstone, has suddenly opened into a room it should not have the capability to access."

[dataexpunged]

"No, but my door did open into this new place." He glances back at the door. "And my doors usually don't do that." Pause. "Usually."

[ownerless]

"But they do it sometimes?" she asks. Just a human he may be, but maybe he knows something useful!

[merryeccentricities]

Oh, good, someone new! It's so good to see someone new! ...And not an old friend who thinks they're someone new.

Someone new who's looking at her door with a reasonable sort of curiosity!... Oh no, are they Bound? Joly walks up to a polite distance before saying "Hello, is your door not working?"

[ownerless]

"In a manner of speaking!" the woman replies, not looking up from her very intense inspection of the door. "It does still go from one room to another, which is a start! But this is the wrong room. --and yes, I know it's supposed to be magic," she adds, flapping her hand dismissively and still not tearing her eyes from her work. "I've been told all about that, but it just doesn't make sense."

[merryeccentricities]

"Oh, it makes no sense at all! And even if it's magic, well, magic has rules!" Someone else is annoyed by this! Yaaay! "And there's nothing on this side to indicate that they're any different from the doors leading to our own rooms , here!"

[mjolnir_retriever]

Thor is still at Milliways because --

well, because.

(Because Hal is Hal, again, with no sign of Loki at all, but what if, what if, what if. Because even though he doesn't feel sick anymore, Thor wants to make very certain he's not bringing magical illness home to Asgard. Because as soon as he goes home, he'll have to tell his parents about all this; he'll have to put it into words, start to finish, and tell them what he knows and doesn't know, and see their reactions, their pain, and tell the rest anyway.)

Anyway. Thor is here: a large, muscular man in red, with golden hair and a very faint -- not exactly a glow, but a sort of look as if the light hits him differently, and shines more brightly off him, as if all the colors of him are just a little deeper and richer than anything else in the vicinity. (That may well not include Pearl.) His only visible armor right now is his vambraces, but he has a silver Security star on one shoulder of his sleeveless crimson shirt, and a massive hammer resting on the floor nearby.

The look he's giving Pearl is about two parts sympathy to one part interest. (And there are other things underneath, too, but they're not related to Pearl. He's trying hard to push his other feelings aside, while he's here in the main room of Milliways, to not burden others and to distract himself.)

"The doors of Milliways are a portal unlike most," he tells her, his deep voice pitched to carry with the thoughtless ease of long, long practice.

[ownerless]

"I can see that!" she huffs, frustrated. She is crouched down next to her door, but she stands gracefully and-- looks a bit startled when she turns to see Thor. She's not at all used to someone exuding that kind of light and power while also being so.... male.

[mjolnir_retriever]

Yeah, he is definitely that.

Thor, of course, doesn't know the reason for the startlement. So he assumes, half-consciously, that it's the usual sort of startlement that he often gets by being, well, Thor Son Of Odin Ruler Of Asgard.

He smiles faintly in reassurance.

"I have found it a good place, nonetheless. Despite the unusual style of invitation."

...Look, he's not going to insult the manners of his host or the doors' magic right here under this roof without a lot more provocation. That'd be just rude. But randomly changing doors into interdimensional portals is not the normal height of courtesy, one must admit. So, uh, let's go with unusual style as the diplomatic wording here.

[yinyangwizard]

A man in a blue-and-white kimono stands up from his chair at a nearby table. "Oh! Miss, please do not be distressed. This place has a tendency to appear unexpectedly."

Huh. She's not human. Or a spirit. Or anything else Seimei has encountered before. How curious!

[OOC: Hope I'm not too late to tag!]

[ownerless]

She's heard that tone from humans before. There were about two or three hundred years there where they could barely venture out in public without human men practically toppling over trying to bow and escort them places. It was very annoying.

"It's not that it's unexpected," she says, a touch impatiently. "It's that it's impossible. But that's okay! I'll figure it out."

[yinyangwizard]

Seimei feels the urge to point out that impossible things are generally also unexpected - but he holds his tongue, because saying this would probably be the opposite of helpful.

Instead he says, "In that case, miss, I will endeavor to answer any questions you may have. There is also an introductory brochure authored by one of the regular patrons that you may find useful."