Mansion Living Tip #6: Expect weird things to happen at any time.

But honestly, there was no way of preparing oneself for the weird.

One second, Clyde was returning a book he'd borrowed. The next, said book floated upwards as soon as he reached to put it back on the shelf and his feet left the floor. Before he knew it, he had already drifted several feet up. Books, pens, papers, even other people were suspended midair.

Yep, this was yet another of the Mansion's strange occurrences. This time, one of the students had managed to envelop the entire library in a zero gravity field in a fit of power mismanagement.

There wasn't anything close enough to push off of, so Clyde flailed around, trying to direct himself back to the floor. It didn't work. Well, this was just brilliant. He crossed his arms and huffed.

I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?

The library was, by far, probably Margo's favorite place in the building since she had first arrived at the Mansion almost a month ago. Most afternoons, that was where she would be found, leaning against a shelf skimming a story, or curled up on the window seat with a choice book. Ah, the wonder of books. She was lucky that the Mansion had just about the best library about, almost better than the one she had gone to back home.

That was why, on that fateful afternoon, she was in the library, reading as always, when something strange happened.

It took her a a moment to figure out why everything was suddenly floating in the air. She clung tightly to the armchair she had been sitting on. "Honestly? A zero- G field? In a library?" Glancing around, the situation began to dawn on her. What fun! It was like an obstacle course... In zero gravity... Like the Battle Room in that Ender's Game she'd read last week! A pity about all those paper and pens floating around like junk, though.

"Woo!" She grinned, pushing off the armchair and sending it flying in the opposite direction as herself. One kid who looked like six was stranded in midair. "Need some help there?" she asked.

Clyde may not have been having fun, but the grin of the girl nearby seemed to indicate that she was enjoying it! Okay, there were times in Clyde's life when floating around like an astronaut sounded appealing, but doing so at the mercy of a person who was likely a child or teenager who may have been having power control issues? Not so much. Since the girl was offering help, he was going to take it.

“Yeah, I'd like to get back to the floor,” he replied. “Who knows when this thing will be turned off. I'm not even sure who's doing this.”

As he said that, his eyes did a quick scan of the library, but he had no luck picking out the individual responsible. Floating around at heights of several feet was a little unnerving for one who didn't have flight, invulnerability, nor any other power that would negate the effects of a fall.

(Sorry can't figure out how to do the orange word thingamajig, I hope italics work?)

“Yeah, I'd like to get back to the floor. Who knows when this thing will be turned off. I'm not even sure who's doing this.” the kid replied, eyes scanning the library nervously.

Well, that looked like the end of her fun, Margo thought. At least for the moment. "Ah." She said, catching herself on the edge of a bookcase, breathless with excitement at this particularly...non-dire situation. Why, this was just about a dream come true! Which child, among his school fellows, hadn't longed to do something like this, ever disappointed, first by the laws of physics and then also by the rules, the restraints, of age and dignity, to even express such thoughts? Certainly, for Margo at least, it was quite the once in a lifetime opportunity. It was the Mansion; nothing was impossible; with little power came little responsibility; misquotes were fun. She could push off this shelf at this moment... she could see for once what this little wonderland of her library looked like from an aerial view... she could feel for once what it would be like to somersault head over heels in the air, freer from gravity than a bird...

But then again, gravity would come. It would certainly happen. The results would be unpleasant, were she caught where she should not be when that occurred. That must be what the stranded kid feared. She glanced down. She would have suffered worse falls- that time on the old balcony so many years ago, back in Canada- but this girl had no urge to repeat that experience. Last time, she'd fallen into snow. This time... yeah, no.

"Uh, I don't think 'ground' is going to happen anytime soon?" She said, so thinking, to the boy. If he did get onto the ground, he wouldn't be able to stay there very long before he started drifting again. Obviously he should find something to hold on to, preferably close to the ground, until gravity was restored. But he was floating in the middle of nowhere. "Not even a guess?" She asked, referring to the culprit of this episode, who she could not see at the moment. If she pushed off of the shelf as hard as she could, it was likely she'd reach him. Yes. What to do after that, she wasn't so sure.

Gosh, she hoped this worked. No fancy tricks like she wished as she pushed off into air. Now, if only the kid could catch her hand before she lost all her momentum and got stranded just like he was.

(OOC: You do colored text like this:)
[color=orange]text[/color]

“As I said, who knows when this thing will be turned off,” Clyde said with a shrug.

Clyde motioned to a girl floating on the far end of the room who was desperately clawing at the air. “Maybe it's the panickah, but it's impossible to tell.” Losing control of one's power was a good reason to freak out, but so was being caught in a zero gravity field. Plus, not every power had glowing eyes or auras that came with its use.

Figuring out who was responsible was not his job, anyways. His real priority was getting to the ground and possibly out of the field. So when the girl pushed herself towards him, he grabbed a hold of her outstretched hand. As they both drifted across the room, Clyde reached out for a bookcase with his free hand, hoping to come to a stop.

Except that bookcase was not bolted to the ground.

(Sorry for such a long time since posting! P.S. Thanks...I hope this works... P.P.S. Not sure if this really would happen but I can go back and edit later if needed)

“Maybe it's the panickah, but it's impossible to tell.”

"Possibly-" Margo started to say, glancing at the "panickah" she presumed the kid was talking about- that girl at the far end of the room, the one apparently trying to scuba dive in midair? That was, what she was saying before the boy reached out for a half-empty, pretty unstable-looking bookcase with his free hand, evidently looking to bring them to a halt, and nearly killed them in the process.

He caught the edge of the shelf with his hand, but their momentum carried them past the bookshelf at a decidedly inconvenient angle, and as Margo tried desperately to right herself before she got stabbed in the head by a floating pencil, she somehow managed to push the bookcase in the opposite direction.

Thank goodness, it neither crushed Margo or sent all the books plummeting to the floor like it would have done in normal gravity. The disorienting panic of attempting to cling to a rocking wooden frame, however, wasn't exactly pleasant, either. By the time the world righted itself, the girl was decidedly dizzied.

"I guess we better decide soon."

The law of momentum conservation dictated that the total momentum of two objects before a collision would equal the total momentum of the objects after the collision. With the gravity absent and nothing holding the shelf in place, it proved even someone his size, along with someone else, could tip it over. Clyde's stomach lurched and he quickly let go of both the shelf and the girl. He could only breathe once the girl pushed it in the opposite direction, leaving it to tip slowly into empty floor space.

“I'm not going to lie. That was kind of scary,” he stated. Good thing it was an end shelf. Bookshelf dominoes would not have been good.

“I guess we better decide soon.”

“Yeah. We could try to calm her down? She might not be the one doing this, but the last thing we need is a second powah going crazy.” Not that he really had much of a plan; Clyde simply wasn't great with the “calming down” aspect.

"That was a little more than kind of scary." Margo said, as she clutched at the now relatively stable bookshelf and willed the room to stop spinning. Maybe holding on hadn't been the best of choices. At this point, she was pretty sure hanging around in midair was better than this slightly-seasick feeling.

She was just about to offer a bit of practical, infinitely clever piece of advice before the kid beat her to it:

“Yeah. We could try to calm her down? She might not be the one doing this, but the last thing we need is a second powah going crazy.”

"Good idea." The girl returned. The following statement that her confused head came up with she blamed on the dizziness. Why else would she say such a stupid thing?

"On a completely different topic: what is with everyone here and powers?"

Okay, looked like plan “Calm Down the Scared Girl” got the go-ahead. Phase 1 was obvious – they needed to get to the girl. And in order to do that in the zero gravity environment, they needed something strong and set in place. There were the bookshelves, but using those to start and stop already proved to be a bad idea. After looking over the vicinity, his eyes fell on the railings several feet away. Perfect. He used his hands to push himself along the floor towards them. Like planned, he anchored himself on one of the rails.

He blinked when he heard the girl's question. Did he hear that right? “Um... This is a mutant school,” he replied, confused. “Almost anyone who hangs around heah is a mutant. Ah you feeling okay?” He didn't think she had hit her head, but he was pretty distracted then...

"Stupid, stupid, stupid," Margo viciously moaned to herself, hand clapped over her mouth- far too late for that- in the aftermath of her statement. What had she been thinking? Her face flushed, she stared at the wall.

"Um... This is a mutant school. Almost anyone who hangs around heah is a mutant. Ah you feeling okay?” the boy asked, seeming confused but not insulted.

"I'm fine," she said, a bit curtly and with her eyes still on the wall. Curiosity had always been her great flaw, and yet, she'd never thought herself capable of being in possession of such a smart mouth. Clearly, her tumble in midair (if you could call it that) had shaken her more than she had thought, and this kid... She was the biggest idiot in history, and no doubt had just lost any regard he had had for her in the first place. "Sorry," she muttered, biting back her reply of "Yeah I sorta got that idea, but that's not even what I meant?"

They were clinging to the railing-the kid's idea, and a good one at that. She moved along behind him. To alleviate, if just a little bit, the awkwardness, she tried another question.

"So, then," the girl said in a lighter tone, "If anyone has some mojo that they think could be of help, is now the time to mention it?"

So that girl appeared to be a tad scatterbrained. At least that was a few steps above insane, so he wasn't going to say anything more about the subject. He simply shrugged and started “climbing” the railings as if they were a ladder, using the posts as rungs. It would have looked strange to an outside observer, but it was working so far.

“Mojo? Well, my age shifting isn't going to help heah.” Something like flight or telekinesis would have been a lot more helpful in navigating the zero gravity environment. If she had something like that, she probably would have mentioned it already, but it didn't hurt to ask. “What about yo mutation, err... I guess I don't know yo name.”

It wasn't hard to tell he thought she was pretty stupid. Well, she decided she didn't really care. Just some kid she'd probably never see again after today, right? Or at least, that was what Margo thought as she kept moving, following the boy.

“Mojo? Well, my age shifting isn't going to help heah. What about yo mutation, err... I guess I don't know yo name.”

"I guess you don't." she replied cooly, debating whether she should tell him. The last thing she needed was rumors running around the mansion of herself, "some sort of idiot girl". But she told him anyway, just because she didn't think the kid could do anything. "It's Margo. And I don't do much, just sort of make people around me feel certain ways, like sad or something. And it backfires most of the time, so basically I'm pretty useless."

She was actually feeling okay, until the implications from his first statement began to settle in. She froze. "Just how old are you really??"

What Margo described were empathic abilities. By the way she was talking, it sounded like she didn't have a good handle on them, either. Regardless, changing people's emotions wasn't going to help them cross the room to get to the student.

“I'm Clyde,” he responded.

He stopped in his tracks as soon as he heard Margo's question. Crap, he didn't even think she would ask about his age. Perhaps she was a little sharper than he'd thought. But she did ask, so he had to do his part.

“I'm almost eighteen,” was his hesitant answer.

This was really awkward. But seriously, when was it not?

“I'm almost eighteen,” he said.

And just like that, Margo's day got a whole lot worse.

"Wow," she said flatly, wanting nothing more at that moment than to sink through the floor or become invisible. (Thank goodness he wasn't looking at her, because she was looking at the wall and blushing like crazy.) She didn't think she'd been humiliated this badly since fourth grade, when her teacher had made her read her essay in front of the class, and she'd stumbled up and said a word she had had no idea was bad back then...

What, did this guy- she couldn't think of him as a kid anymore- do this on purpose? Like, just hang around looking like a six-year old just to trip people up? She wouldn't have thought so, but then you never knew.

As if it wasn't bad enough that he already thought she was dumb. Well, this was awkward.

The girl had SO many questions. The idea of age shifting, itself, was too cool. But she bit her lip and didn't say anything, because she had already made a big enough fool of herself.

A “Wow,” and then silence. He turned to find her staring decidedly away from him. Of all the reactions Clyde had seen, that was not one he was used to. It was surprising to see that she was acting more embarrassed than he was. Maybe the empathic powers she told him about were doing this? Or not, but the silence certainly wasn't helping the awkwardness.

Clyde never was good at dealing with people, but he felt like he had to say something. “Hey, I'm just glad you've been nice about it.” Unlike some other people. Really, he was kind of relieved that she wasn't laughing at him.