2025-05-01 - Glittery Bouncy Chaos

Hey, free food. Who is Roman to refuse an offer like that. Especially considering how much he eats. Being a mermaid burns lots of calories ya know.

"Thanks man." He says to the staffer that is passing out plates and stuff, and then he is heading to the assorted food to fill said plate with whatever is there.

Ash’s shift ended a few hours ago as he typically works the morning to mid-afternoon, so he’s here in his civvies and not in uniform. Today that means slender fit cargo pants, blue Vans Sk8-his, a fitted white tank top beneath a loose fitting buttoned Seattle Seahawks shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows.

He’s shamelessly rummaging through the swag like a raccoon in a dumpster, audibly “ooh”ing as he finds a ball cap that he likes and puts on.

Iseul is a little late to the party, but it seems there's still plenty on offer for her to peruse and potentially claim. If nothing else, she heard tell of baked goods, and that's more than enough to draw her here. Hands tucked into the pockets of her jeans, she strolls toward the tables, happily accepting a plate from a staffer. Swag can wait for now, she wants noms!

Here Ash was just accepting a plate of leftover food too when Mystery Balls happen. To be totally fair he almost just ignores them entirely. One, he’s off the clock and somebody else is on shift for security right now. Two, this is not really on his radar. He’s been here for some weeks and learned already that weird stuff just happens here normally.

It’s like if you turned a Six Flags into Hogwarts, kind of.

But at the same time they look like they’re about to break windows so he sets his plate down and step-trots to try to catch a ball before it can smash glass and make a mess.

Roman is not in the least bit picky when it comes to eats, so he is pretty much taking one or two of every thing until is plate can't hold anymore. As Iseul comes up he points to some of the food stuffs "Get those while they last. They are usually the first to go." He definitely grabbed a few.

As the first ball drops Roman is nomming on one of the sandwiches. He gives a chuckle looking upward where the ball fell from. Seeing nothing he goes back to eating, and then it is raining bouncy ball. "Au-we!" He exclaims in surprise as he drops his plate on the table and rushes to catch one that caught his eye. He sprints the few feet and reaches out to snatch a blue-greenish one from the air.

A mischievous kid being at fault would in no way surprise Iseul, though she's startled by the sudden appearance of bouncy balls nevertheless. With a bemused little half-grin, she looks first toward the others nearest her to gauge their reactions, then toward the balcony the balls seem to be originating from. The balls don't look as though they pose any significant risk to property or life, but it's probably best to see them coming so she can dodge accordingly, if need be.

Or maybe even snatch one before it can bounce past her, if she's lucky. They're glittery and pretty! Girls like sparkly things, right? She's not an athlete by any means, but since the orange one seems to be headed straight at her on its way toward the windows, Iseul sets down her plate and scurries the few steps needed to intercept, fumbling it between both hands briefly and then securing her grip. "Ooohh. Got one!"

“Oh. Okay I see what’s going on. This is gonna get stupid!” Catching balls seems like it won’t work for long at all and Ash just settles for the red one he snatched to hold onto. He stuffs it in a cargo pocket and looks to Iseul and Roman and the staff and says, “Somebody should call the magical studies people.” Meanwhile he makes his way past and through bouncy balls in a quest to find the way upstairs. Maybe he can find the source!

The steady increase in the number of balls starts to cross over from amusing to concerning territory, and despite her victory in catching that orange ball, Iseul's brows knit slightly as she watches the chaos take shape and grow. They're not stopping. They could trip someone. They could ruin the food!

This cannot stand.

Ash has the right idea, as far as she's concerned. Address the source, prevent a further heightening of the madness. And if there is a kid involved, she might be needed, so she leaves calling in the cavalry to someone else and starts after him with a scrunched nose that signals consternation mixed with the teensiest dose of anxiety.

"This is sick!" Roman crows out as the balls continue to drop. Of course he would think this is awesome instead of some hazardous situation. He pockets the blue bouncy ball in his board shorts, before racing around and catching more of the things as the bounce around.

Of course he is curious about where the balls are coming from besides upstairs, so he makes he way to the stairs, grabbing more of them as he goes. It doesn't take long before his pockets are full of the things. "I don't exactly have that department on my contacts list."

By the time Ash bursts up onto the upper level he sees there isn’t any person present doing this with the balls, though something has to happen. Glancing around, he points at a trash can and says, “Let’s see if we can catch them. Grab another one and I’ll get this one.”

Much to the vexation of custodial staff he ends up dumping the bin on the floor to empty it, then goes to hold it beneath where balls are appearing, clearly hoping to give some relief to the staff below.

"If they keep coming like this, I don't think these little wastebaskets are going to hold them off for long," Iseul points out, her eyes starting to light again with mirth at the absurdity not only of the situation as a whole, but of seeing Ash hunkering down with a waste bin to try and play catcher.

There's definitely a level of fascination underneath it all, though. She's still new enough to the park that she's incapable of going completely unphased by these sorts of events. "Where are they coming from? Is that... some kind of wormhole?"

Long legs, and taking the stairs two or three at a time makes it easy for Roman to get to the upper balcony with the others.

"Da kine lolo." Roman's Hawaiian accent is thick on the words as he watches a few of the bouncy balls fall from nowhere. "On it man." He grabs another trashcan to empty it haphazardly on the ground. No the question becomes if two cans can fit under the bouncy ball portal.

"I think we need a receptacle with softer sides, so they can't bounce off hard surfaces," Iseul posits, upon hearing the continuing chime-chime-chimity-chimes emanating from the wastebasket. "Maybe hang a sheet they could strike and roll down off of?" Not that she has any inkling of where something like that could be found, or how they could rig it up in front of the invisible portal into interdimensional chaos.

Beginning to laugh, Ash too sees the absurdity of this. “I mean…you’re right but I dunno what else there is to do. Okay I’m full, take over.” That’s him stepping back to let Roman catch more balls. Ash uses his hands to try to settle the bouncing inside and then empties his bin by gently rolling the balls out toward the wall, hoping they’re out of the way and the threshold at the railing stops them from going downstairs. Then he stands ready to take another turn at catching.

With a look at Iseul he says with dead seriousness, “Someone must’ve opened a dimensional rift to the jingle-balls dimension, but they misdirected it to here instead of the cats that need toys dimension.”

"Magic portal seems more Spellbound's vibe." Roman says in reply to wormholes and dimensional rifts. "Though who knows if these bouncy balls are coming from another dimension, or just the gift shop down the way..." That has him shrugging and stepping into place with the other can.

When he sees the balls actually line up to take a path downstairs, Ash just lets out a frustrated yell. “Noooooooo-ho-ho-hoooo…” There’s some laughing in there too, because you have to laugh. “I THOUGHT I WAS SMART BUT I AM STUPID!”

Watching in comic horror as the balls determinedly plod onward toward the ground level, just via a different method, Iseul gapes briefly at the single-file line they create and then groans when the first few ultimately begin bouncing their way down the stairs. "Problematic," is her summation of the situation as it stands now. "Um." Right, the couches! Hurrying over to the nearest, she snatches up a cushion in each hand, then rushes them to the top of the stairs to try and put them into some kind of blockade formation ahead of the balls. "We've got to find some way to corral them until people who know more than us can find a permanent solution," she calls out to the two men. "Ideas?"

If Roman wasn’t holding up the trash bin, he would have doubled over in laughter at this surprising turn of events. As it is his own bin is getting full. “Dude,” for him the word is gender neutral, but he is looking toward Ash so must be speaking to him “Your turn to catch.” He doesn’t spill his bin out, just sets them down.

“I suppose neither of you have some kind of mojo voodoo that would take care of it?” He doesn’t know how long either of them have been here so it’s a fair question. That’s his big brained idea. “Could just lay down at the top of the stairs, see if they can get past a prone body?”

Ash isn’t giving up, and takes over from Roman to refill his bin. Whatever good it’ll do them. Maybe they can keep emptying them out since Iseul is stemming the escape routes? “You know what would just be the worst thing ever? If we just said screw it and shoved these all over anyway and let chaos rule. Then ran away. I’m not trying to say anything but if we did that I saw nothing.”

Iseul's with the ones downstairs who are laughing, at this point. And Ash's suggestion only makes that worse. There's a sort of mounting helplessness to it all, so why not just surrender to the insanity? She does her best to reposition the cushions, and even grabs whatever throw pillows are available to help stem the flow of balls. There's really only so much those can do, though, so she plants her hands on her hips, thinks, and then leans over the balcony rail to yell down at whichever poor unsuspecting staffer is closest, "Where are the table linens stored?"

Glancing back toward Ash and Roman, she clarifies the direction she's headed with, "We could tie some together into a big circle to lay on the floor, and trap them."

From Ash’s mouth to Roman’s ears. He isn’t completely stupid though, he knows that such things would cause him trouble, so there is a moment of shifting, and instead of the overly tall, Hawaiian, is a slightly shorter caucasian man. He can’t do anything about the clothes though.

With a big grin on his altered face, Roman goes over the railing to peek over and make sure that no one is under or near where he is, before setting the the bin down and tipping it over so all the balls roll out and through the rails over the side. “Oops.” He says having a hard time keeping a straight face as he rushes back before he can be spotted from anyone below.

Ash laughs when Roman joins the dark side and just dumps a bin over the edge, but as he gets ready to do the same he looks around and notices Iseul has, against all odds, prevailed. She’s done it! The balls are contained.

So it is with a deadpan look he makes hard eye contact with her, lifts his bin to the balcony railing, and dumps it over too.

“My work here is done.”

Iseul has to clap both her hands over her mouth to stifle the shriek of laughter that their antics pull out of her, and then... well, then she's just stepping back. She's done her part. She helped to what extent she could. "They're eventually going to overflow and find their way through, so if we're bailing, it should probably be now," she suggests, shooting a hand out toward Ash for him to take hold of, should he choose. "Hey, maybe they'll find a way to turn these into the biggest, most weirdly musical ball pit in the history of ever, but that's gonna fall to someone else to figure out." There's no hiding her grin anymore. This is nuts, and she's kind of living for it now.

Roman dumped the bin of balls over the balcony which means it's empty again. "At least that work." he looks around at the balls that are still rolling around trying to find a way down the stairs. He sets the bin under the place where the balls are falling and starts to pick them up off the floor. He sets a few in the bin and picks up another which he seems to study. "It's magical, but besides that it's just a normal bouncy ball." he rolls it in his hand "Don't know what the magic does exactly. Maybe make them bounce more. Maybe the noise." he shrugs "The magic in them won't stick around, can't tell you how long it will take to fade."