2025-02-05 - A Question of Mechanics

Artemisia is perched on one of the still horses, a blue one, with her legs dangling over the side as she addresses Ari (who is hard at work on the mechanical center of the ride), "Right. So then I found a magical bunny. I kept calling it a cuddlebunny. It was pink." She kicks one foot clad in a mary-jane, pausing to take a bite of the sweets that she brought to keep Ari company with. They had planned to hang out, but things break down. "So I named it Fluff. Anyways. Cutest thing, I'll show you the video later - but it turns out it was looking for it's little bunny match! Ari they sung to each other. It was the cutest thing I think I've ever seen." She smoothes crumbs out of the frilled edges of her dress's skirt, topped with a thick sweater.

The thing about having an engineering degree is that people think he is capable of engineering things. Look, he only took an Intro to Circuits class, and he has no idea what he's doing. But here he is, trying his best to poke through the innards of the carousel and figure out what's wrong with it, making it slow to a stop during times when it should be spinning merrily around. Y'know, as carousels do.

He's in his usual getup, which is the standard blue-grey coverall for the park, and he looks over his shoulder to Artemisia. "A pink bunny, like... dyed pink, or are we playing by anime rules here?" he asks, brow crumpling in confusion.

"Anime rules," Artemisia says with a firm tip of her chin. "They sang too. Like-" She clears her throat, humming a little tune that rises and falls sweetly. "I take it you haven't seen the gargoyle like cats?"

Ari's hands pause in the depths of the carousel, as Artemisia hums what he presumes to be the song the little bunnies sang. Which is... "That's weird," he says, only to clamber (verbally) to correct himself with, "That they sang, not your singing!" He returns to testing connections in the wiring, the machine in his hands letting out a little beep every once in a while that earns a nod from Ari each time.

"I have not," he says of the gargoyle cats. "I mean, I've seen regular cats around. There's one in the shop, he's the shop-cat. What d'you mean by gargoyle, though?"

"Ari." Artemisia says this as if it is a very serious point. "They shared a song. The little bonded pair." She presses a hand dramatically against her heart, then giggles. "Thank you. I'm working on my singing." She tips her head when the machinery beeps. "I take it that's good?" A good beep?

"Like a gargoyle. Like the kind on buildings but alive," Arte explains with a quick sketch of her hands in the air. "Oh! Wait." That sketch takes shape in the form of a stoney-like gargoyle around the size of a cat that prowls towards Ari. "There. That's the best I can remember." He's seen her illusion trick, right?

The beeps continue, and Ari says, "Sort of," over his shoulder. "The beeps mean that there's continuity, so that's a good thing, but it isn't helping me figure out what the problem is." He pulls out from the carousel's depths to look over at Artemisia, which means he catches the transition from her gesturing with her hands to actually creating the vision in real life.

He stares at it for a moment, though not out of any surprise at seeing the image advancing towards him. Just general curiosity. "Huh. That's... something." Then he goes over to his toolbox to rifle through it, in the hopes of something inside it revealing itself to him as a solution to the mechanical problem facing him down. "What do you think they, uh... want? Is that even a thing?"

The gargoyle stares back at Ari. It doesn't blink. It does look like stone. At least, until it fades away like mist off of the water.

"I dunno. I think people have like - theories? I know there's been talk of lights at New Years?" She shrugs and crinkles her nose a bit. "I don't really remember them myself, but I had like way too many champagnes that night." Artemisia's blonde head scrunches as she lifts her shoulders in a shrug. "Between that and folks getting magical powers? It's a mystery."

"Everything here's a mystery," Ari says as he discards a hammer, a wrench, and then another, different wrench as useless to his cause. He rocks back on his haunches and tucks a fist against his chin, mouth twisting in thought.

Then he takes the same handheld machine (a multimeter, which is the technical term) back to the exposed circuitry of the carousel. "It's all pretty wild, though. Things feel like they're... amping up?" Then he lifts the multimeter in his hand and laughs, saying, "Amps!"

Artemisia blinks at the multimeter in Ari's hand. "That doesn't look very much like an amp?"

"Oh, uh, it's--there's an amp setting, and you can use it to--" Ari pauses, going quiet, and then eventually shakes his head. "It's dumb, sorry. Uh. Anyway."

He goes back to checking readings in the machine, but this time it doesn't make any beeps, good or bad. "It's not just me, though, right? Maybe I have a different perspective since I arrived late, but it seems like everything is... more now, y'know?"

"No. What do you use it to do?" Artemisia asks, leaning forward with a bit of a wobble on the horse. "I take it that it's not like a music amp?"

"Def not just you. It seems like things are escalating?"

"It can check voltages, currents, and resistances. Current is measured in Amps." To demonstrate, Ari turns the selector on the front of the multimeter, then... his shoulders droop. "Well I can't actually use it for that, not without disconnecting something, but the joke still works, I think."

He stares into the depths of the circuitry, hand on his cheek, and frowns. "I think they are. I don't know to what exactly, and I don't want to worry... but...."

"Huh." Arte kicks her feet a little, holding onto the pole that connects her blue horse to the ride. "Yes." She offers him a smile. "It works. Promise. Even my music brain can process that." There's a wink with that.

"So far things have been okay? Like... weird but not horrible?" Artemisia tips her head with a spill of blonde curls, leaning against the pole. "We'll just take things as they come."

Ari looks over his shoulder, a grin perking up his features as he looks back to Arte. "STEAM is ten times better than STEM in my book," he says, then winks back before he returns to poking at things with the multimeter. When there are no forthcoming beeps, he frowns into the machinery and reaches inside to start checking that everything is well-socketed.

He makes a thoughtful noise when the phrase 'weird but not horrible' enters the fray, and to that he can only nod. "Yeah. I don't want to be a pessimist about it and think the worst is going to happen. So let's just go with the flow?" Despite saying so, Ari sounds markedly uncertain about it.

Artemisia grins back at Ari, her dark eyes flickering with a warm pink. "I like that. You should make it a saying."

"That's life though - isn't it? I mean, you can never know all the things that are going or happen or if it's gonna be good or bad," Artemisia points out, slipping carefully off the horse to sit closer to Ari. Her dark and pink eyes inspect the machinery that's as foreign to her as the gears and cogs of the steampunk themed ride. "All you can ever do is go with the flow."

Ari makes another thoughtful noise, sort of a "Hmm!" sound, and looks back as Artemisia approaches. "You're not wrong," he agrees, easily enough. "And I try not to let that freak me out. The not-knowing, of it all." His hands twist together around the multimeter though, as if his attempts to remain calm aren't exactly going swimmingly.

He sets the tool aside so that he can get a bit further into the circuitry. Something clicks into place and suddenly the lights above, which have been out, flicker back on to full brightness. "Oh hey! Look!" He pulls back to stare upwards. "Something had just come loose, that's all."

"Does that freak you out? The not knowing?" She questions gently, moving between the creatures of the carousel.

"Oh!" Artemisia applauds as the lights flicker back on to brightness. "I knew you could do it."

"A little," Ari isn't ashamed to admit. "But a lot freaks me out. I have a reputation as the nervous Warner for a reason!" He doesn't seem too bothered by that, if the little smile he flashes is any indication. He powers the multimeter off and starts wrapping up its cords.

Hazarding another look up at the lights, which remain lit, his smile grows. "Thanks. Having you here helped, I would have given up ages ago otherwise!"

"It's okay," Arte promise with a small smile in return. "I used to get freaked out by a lot too." She grins at the suggestion that she helped. "Sometimes moral support is all you need."

There's a lot to tidy up, as Ari had been pretty frantic digging through his toolbox there, hadn't he? But he focuses on shutting down the panels that look into the carousel machinery first, probably for safety reasons, before he starts walking around to pick up discarded tools.

"You're right," he says. "Moral support sometimes is all you need. When I had to take an online quiz I would sometimes call up one of my sisters just to stay on the line with me -- not to cheat!" He's quick to add that, Ari looking a bit frantic as the realization of the implication hits. "But just to have someone there, knowing I could rely on them... it helped a lot."

"Well, anytime you need a buddy. You can always call me," Artemisia promises with a nod.

"Thank you," Ari says, and he means it. He looks a little teary-eyed, but he takes one long inhale to suck it up, and nods at Artemisia. "Same goes to you! I can even bring an emotional support furry friend with me so long as there's time to stop at the shop first."

A beat passes, before he adds, "I mean the cat. Just so, um, that's clear." He looks worried that it might not have been.

"Well, you said you didn't have a bunny," Artemisia points out reasonably. So reasonably, that she might not be aware what else a furry friend could be. It's probably best not to explain. "And I might take you up on that. More for company than anything, Poe works late some nights."

"I do not have a bunny but I know someone who does!" Ari says, brightly, in case he hadn't mentioned that before. Either way he's relieved to see that Arte probably didn't think him weird for his previous statement, so he... goes with the flow. That's what today's been about, hasn't it?

He closes and locks his toolbox, swinging it up into his hand as he turns around to salute Artemisia cheekily. "Happy to be company, especially since you're so good at it yourself."

"Come on," Artemisia offers her hand with a wiggle of fingers. "Let's hit up the diner and get some food."