1674/A Doll Visit To The Nurse's Office

A Doll Visit To The Nurse's Office
Date of Scene:	14 June 2024
Location:	Radiant Heart Academy
Synopsis:	During school, Doll-Amy comes to talk to one of the only people in school who knows about magic and isn't in class. Talk about the daily life of mascots, book recommendations, and the frustration of stealth missions.
Cast of Characters:	Amanda Faust, Setsuna Meiou

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Amanda Faust has posed:
    So, it's a few days ago after school. Or maybe near the beginning of the school day. Either way....

    Thanks to MAGICAL SHENANIGANS, Amy's currently a doll! About 1½' (45cm) tall, with a painted porcelain head and glass eyes (with moving lids) that can look around under a red wig; There's articulation for her mouth to move like a ventriloquist dummy but when she talks it animates with much of the flexibility of a human mouth, except filled with creepy sharp teeth. Her painted-on eyebrows also move with her expressions because magic. The body must be some rigid material under her clothes; limbs have 'doll joints' although only her neck and hands are usually exposed. On the whole, she's still kinda creepy but not quite as much as you'd expect: For the most part she doesn't move like some unnatural puppet or doll creature, she moves naturally like a human being, which helps.

    Still, she's clearly unnatural. Wearing a blue coat over a slim black dress, the 18-inch doll has made her way to the Nurse's office. Amy comes in while Nurse Meiou is in the back and stands near the counter. She looks around for a few seconds -- boy will she feel awkward if there's another student here -- and then calls out, "Nurse Meiou?" Her voice is recognizable. "This might be a weird question, but how do you feel about creepy talking dolls and stuff like that?"

Setsuna Meiou has posed:
Hearing the voice call from the otherwise empty main office, Nurse Meiou walks in from the small side room that houses the supplies best kept refrigerated.

As she walks in, she spots the small Amy doll standing there...but...well..her ability to be creeped out or surprised by animate dolls was burned out of her weeks ago by Hotaru's animated doll friend Yochu.

Thus, the extent of her reaction is an absent eyebrow raise as she walks by to sit down at her desk, "Well, then. Magical accident or outright curse?"

If she's at all surprised, she's managing to not let it show.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy blinks up at Setsuna. "Oh! Uh, sorry..." She looks a little embarassed and steps back. "I meant to stay out of view 'till you answered... I didn't wanna, like, creep you out or shock you or anything."

    She then cocks her head to one side. "But you're acting like this is pretty normal... wait, has it happened before?! Or does stuff like this just happen all the time and I keep missing it? Like when you were small that one time..."

    "Ummmm. Curse, I guess? A mannequin youma named J-something did it. Tuxedo Mask recognized the name? Um. Some dark general lady said it should wear of in a few days."

    As she speaks, she first tries to pull herself up onto a chair, then returns to the desk/counter, looking for a way up so she can be in a good position to talk.

Setsuna Meiou has posed:
Nurse Meiou just grins at Amy, "Well, in point of fact, this IS fairly normal."

She tilts her head, "I mean, on any given afternoon, I'm likely to converse with a sentient book, walk through a place outside the normal flow of Time, swap heights with a student, see people transformed into one of several kinds of doll, deal with the sun going out for a while, watch someone bitchslap Death itself, get teleported halfway across the country without warning for a consult, see a truck the size of a small prefecture get turned into a youma..."

She trails off and waves her hand absently, "...the list goes on."

Eventually, she leans on her desk, chin propped on the knuckles of one hand, "...frankly, Amy-chan, after a while the choice becomes reach a kind of zen state about it all...or have a psychotic episode."

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy's mouth hangs open in shock and amazement. "Daaaaaaamn!"

    "...Well, if you ever need an assistant who's not gonna freak out when confronted by patients coming in with weird transformations, please feel free to call me. ...Seriously, I would feel less weird around somebody else who's been transformed. Or... would that just make them feel weirder, having me around?"

    She continues looking for a way up, then sighs. "Look, um... I don't think I can actually hurt my neck looking up like this but it's still kinda awkward so um..."

    She holds her arms up in the universal gesture for 'uppsies' while looking away awkwardly.

Setsuna Meiou has posed:
Nurse Meiou waves a hand absently, "Oh, don't get me wrong. Ninety five percent of the time, this job is just scraped knees with the occasional bruise, laceration, or rarely broken bone."

She then shrugs, "...but it's also Mahou central...so enough wierd makes it here that I've learned to roll with it."

At Amy making the 'upsies' gesture, she chuckles a bit and gently picks Amy up to deposit her on the desk, setting her local copy of Grey's Anatomy on it's side to make a convenient place to sit, "So I take it you just walked across campus like this, trusting small size and the Veil to keep from causing the absent psychotic break?"

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy nods. "I mean, I don't mind helping people... like... look, magical girling's all I've got in life, besides reading weird manga..."

    And then she's picked up, which is... She remarks as she's set on the desk, "Gods, that's weird. I mean, not bad, but like... I'm what, a few pounds? Like, even when I was a small child, which I don't really remember, I can't have been just... lifted up so easily." She shivers a little, and then rubs her forearm, looking down at the desk. "It's this weird mix of helplessness and expecting to be made fun of for it, and... that not happening."

    She slumps slightly while making the sound of letting out a breath, and then starts pacing back and forth on the desk.

    "Yeah! I mean, originally I was like, I can't go out there, I'll be seen! And then folks were like, but, the veil! And... like..."

    She looks up at Setsuna. "To be clear, I don't wanna mess with people, I'm a nice guy, I swear! It's been... like a stealth mission the whole way over, you know? I tried not to be seen, but I got spotted a few times and people notice and then I hide and they just... go on about their day like they didn't see a fucking doll walking around! It's nuts, it's like..."

    She makes the gesture of snapping her fingers but they just kind of scrape together, "It's like when we were in the past, almost. Except this time it's here. Right at Radiant Heart Academy! It's..."

    She finally sits on the book, with her chin on her hands and her elbows on her knees. "It's kinda like I'm a ghost, or don't exist. I guess this must be what it's like for Luna, or the charas, or Pin and the other Cures' fairies. It's a little... I dunno. It's weird..."

Setsuna Meiou has posed:
As she watches Amy pace a bit, Nurse Meiou absently reaches over with her left hand and starts a bit of typing...though it seems like she's doing so without really paying attention to it.

She then shrugs a little, "To be fair, our eyes are drawn to movement...so when you hide and there's no movement, it's easy for someone who only caught a glimpse to lose track of where you were."

She pauses, getting a slightly thoughtful look before going on, "...and then, yeah, the veil probably helped a bit with making them think it was just something 'normal' and getting them to dismiss it in their minds."

A glance over at her screen is given, then Nurse Meiou does a few more keystrokes before turning to Amy once more, "And to be fair, if someone DID get a good look at you, they'd probably assume you were some kind of robot toy...which may or may not be any better...but the same could be said for Luna as a cat...and her sometimes less than stellar acting skills."

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy blinks and looks up at Setsuna. "...Yeah. I figured if, like... if I'm with someone, like if someone walks in right now, I can be all 'Oh, yeah, I'm just a cool robotics project! Got an Arduino and some motors in here, and a speaker with an internet connection to a computer running an AI LLM and speech synthesizer. No, you cannot open me up to see, how would you like it?' But if they see me walking around?" Amy shakes her head.

    "How does Luna do it? It must be bothersome having everyone think you're a cat... like, it's convenient sometimes I'm sure, but... she can't talk to anyone but magical folk and be remembered..."

Setsuna Meiou has posed:
Nurse Meiou shrugs, "Unless her acting skills have gotten better, from what I am given to understand, the answer to your question is 'poorly'."

She puts a hand over her mouth to conceal a grin, "...I mean, one time when I took Luna over to have a talk, someone asked about her after seeing her in the carrier and Luna responded by SAYING 'Nya'."

There's a brief pause as Nurse Meiou supresses a giggle, then she shakes her head, "That WAS quite a while ago, however."

She pauses and looks off into the middle distance for a moment, "...very nearly a year ago, in fact..."

After a moment, she shrugs, "Anyhow, you've been medically excused for the last few days and a few more...if you're not back to normal in the next three days, I can get you an extension as long as you're keeping up with your homework."

The greenhaired woman leans back in her chair a little, "...I imagine your biggest problem is probably going to be boredom until you're back to normal. That said, I have books I can lend you to read if you want."

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Saying Nya. "Like the dog in Discworld."

    She blinks. "I can get medically excused for turning into a doll?! ...Okay, yeah, that makes sense actually. I mean, I figured we'd just say I'd sick and someone would find a way to cover for me... I guess this is how."

    She blinks. "I actually have a surprisingly large backlog of manga, there's a lot to keep up with... but I confess sometimes I'm just not in the mood. What do you reccommend? And that reminds me... how've you been, what've you been up to lately? Computer working out well for what you wanted it for?"

Setsuna Meiou has posed:
Nurse Meiou leans back in her chair a bit and smirks, "Ah, Gaspode. Yes, something like that except without Foul 'ol Ron' in attendance."

She then snorts, "Strangely enough, common medical forms don't really have a field for 'what was the patient transfomed into'."

She shrugs, "I make up something suitable that works as an excuse and have the teachers email your homework to you so they don't get too annoyed."

When book reccomendations come up, Nurse Meiou absently twists her hand and produces a hardback book, "...well, it sounds like you already have the Discworld books, which are generally my first reccomendation...my second one then would be the Dresden Files books, though being Urban Fantasy, the might hit a bit closer to your day-to-day than you might like for getting away from things. In which case, I'd probably reccomend the book series I suggested to Hannah-chan, and get you a copy of the Honor Harrington novels."

Another book is produced, this one a paperback, "As for my computer? It turns out there's actually commercially available software that can reproduce the night sky of almost any time from almost any body in the Solar System. Learning to navigate it took a little work, but once I did, it wasn't terribly hard to find the information I needed."

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Gaspode. Amy fails to fingersnap again. "Right! That was his name. Gods, I used to be so good at remembering little details of stories like that. I guess I'm getting old... or my brain is getting full? Or... my gem...?" She'll try not to dwell on that thought.

    Amy oohs at Discworld. "I read most of them awhile ago... late 2000s, early 2010s or so? I started to feel like I should save the rest for a rainy day though, you know? There'll never be any more..."

    Dresden Files! "Around the same time, some friends of mine reccomended that back in America... I saw the show, which I'm sure wasn't a faithful adaptation, but honestly I got kinda bored halfway through the first book, and never got back to it? I heard it gets better..." She stands and paces. "Honor Harrington... I've heard the name, but haven't looked into it..."

    She stops and looks at Setsuna. "...Well, yeah, but just how well does the commercial software account for stellar drift? Like, accounting for exactly where the planet was and Earth's axis wobbling, sure, everyone knows that, but like... isn't that exactly what you need that dataset from NASA for? I'm not sure just what scientific software is used with it, though..." She taps her chin.

    "I've got so much to read... someone suggested an old Osamu Tezuka series, Princess Knight, as well... Oh, that reminds me!"

    She paces faster. "I found someone else. Who's been around a long time. Not like you, but like... since the mid-20th century? He's a magic-aware teen, but he's been stuck that way with some kinda super slow aging. I told him you were able to remember magic stuff if he ever wanted to talk, but I didn't mention you're older yet. That seemed... kinda private. Um. I just thought it might be nice for both of you to have one more person to talk to, you know?"

    She looks at Setsuna. "But... Yeah. I guess I should say... he's got a henchman job with some villains, so... opsec, you know? About any secret hero stuff. He saw me transform at a youma fight awhile back, I guess... And like, we got to talkin' and found out about eachothers' age thing."

Setsuna Meiou has posed:
Nurse Meiou snorts, "Amy-chan...NASA is full of basically nothing BUT geeks...and there's a fairly strong community of amateur astronomers worldwide. Stellar drift is a known process with known values. When I went looking, I found software to do this kind of thing has been available basically since personal computers became a widespread thing."

The comments about books and adaptations get Setsuna to smile, "Well, yes...the TV adaptation was...bad."

She frowns, "...I mean, really bad. The thing I like is that Dresden is often outmatched, so has to get sneaky and subtle with his opponents...but I can understand if you don't care to bore through something you don't care for."

A hand is waved, "The Honor Harrington books have probably best been described as 'Horatio Hornblower in space'. They're about the title character and her career in the Space Navy for the interstellar Kingdom she serves. They have a lot of very interesting uses for gravity (which is why I suggested it to Hannah-chan), and through the series there's a very steady evolution in how their tech develops.

The comment about the other young man gets a mild frown from Setsuna, "...given certain...things going on at the moment, it's probably best if I limit my interaction with anyone working with Obsidian...and to be fair...mid-20th century isn't all that different from my perspective than anyone else around here."

She shrugs, "I've spent most of my time at the Gates and while I was able to keep track of things back here, I didn't get to visit all that often...and frankly, I'd been expecting most of this to go down in America instead of happening in Tokyo."

Amanda Faust has posed:
    "Well... yeah... I knew that, I tried to show you on my phone... but they can't have been using the latest data, isn't it too huge with like billions of stars or whatever?" she shakes her head. "Ah, what am I saying, you know your stuff. Sorry."

    "Ah... I just wonder, is the first book the place to start with Dresden? I mean, I didn't start with the Color of Magic for Discworld but it was still pretty readable..."

    Horatio Hornblower. She's heard that name, but...

    As for Taro and Obsidian... she nods. "Undestood. I won't encourage him to come talk to you any further, then."

    She quirks an eyebrow. "The... gates? What gates?"

    So many big-name series she hasn't finished. "I'm starting to feel like I'm a really bad speculative fiction geek." She sits on Grey's Anatomy again. "I just... It's so hard to find stories where the characters are going through certain things I can relate to, that I keep searching and searching, you know? But there's so much trash and awfulness... but at the same time... that's not much represented in most stories, even popular ones." She looks down at the floor... well, the desk, with a bit of melancholy.

Setsuna Meiou has posed:
Nurse Meiou taps her lips with a finger as she ponders, "...well, I SUPPOSE you could skip ahead on the Dresden files books...but one of the strong points of the series is it's continuity...a lot of things that happen in the later books either build on or directly reference things that happen in the earlier ones."

She shrugs, "...so if you skip a book, I'd suggest reading a good summary of it before going on."

Nurse Meiou hrms and leans back in her chair a bit, "The Honor Harrington books are a bit similar in that regard, I suppose. A fairly strong continuity from one to the next. Not like Discworld where it's much easier to jump around."

The question about the Gates gets Nurse Meiou to blink, "Gates? Oh. The Gates of Time."

She'd honestly forgotten that Amy hadn't heard of them.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy nods along, though she seems a bit lost in thought, muttering. "Sometimes I kind of wish I could just be normal and look at life like any other teenage girl, you know? I wouldn't feel so weird and isolated sometimes..." She shakes her head. "But, that person wouldn't be me..."

    "..."

    "I'm sorry, the what?!" She looks up at Setsuna, wide-eyed. Well, there aren't brow muscles, but her eyelids open fully and the painted eyebrows raise up, somehow. "The 'Gates of Time'? The heck are those? Do I need to go get my magic element unlocked, or does it turn out I'm already rocket-elemental?" She's smiling at the little joke, but also still kind of shocked at... Well okay she still doesn't know what the Gates of Time are, but they sound important!

Setsuna Meiou has posed:
Setsuna Meiou says, "The Gates? Oh, they're a set of doors about fifty meters or so high, about thirty meters or so wide. They sit outside of the normal flow of Time in a bit of solidified liminal space. Sadly, they don't work right now. Something happened a while back that made the failsafes engage."

She then shrugs, "And unfortuntely, barring some magical shenanigans that are WAY beyond what we're capable of now...we're going to have to wait until we have a Type II civilization around for me to be able to get the reactors to fire again."

She then shrugs, "I wish I could help you more about what feeling like a teenage girl is like...but I really don't have any experience with that. You'd be better off talking to Usagi-chan or any of the others.""

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy just stares at Setsuna as she describes a giant door Outside of Time.

    She's also quietly reminded that Setsuna can, indeed, expect to wait until a Type II civilization has arisen.

    She laughs at the swerve in topic. "I guess not, huh... I wasn't asking for that, though. I don't think describing it's the problem though, don't countless books do so?" She stands. "It's just... I can't seem to use that lens... well, sometimes. Other times I get surprised..." She smiles, and looks away gripping her forearm again. "Like falling for Hannah. I guess I'm more normal than I think..." She starts to pace, then stops. "Hey um. Thanks. For uh. Talking to me. It's like, for a moment... despite the doll thing, we're just, talking normally, you know?" She smiles with those pointy teeth. "I can almost forget, and then remember that I'm standing on your desk here." She approaches the near edge of the desk and spreads her arms for a hug, even if she's too little to actually get them around Setsuna. "If there is anything I can do to help you, let me know! I guess I'm not attending classes."

Setsuna Meiou has posed:
Setsuna leans over and lets Amy hug her, and gently pats the young woman currently in doll form on the back, "I'll keep that in mind, but for the moment, I think things are getting back to 'normal' around here."

She pauses, then waves a hand, "...granted, going by what Mister Harlown tells me is the norm elsewhere in the universe, things we consider 'normal' are generally regarded as 'civilization-threatening-disasters'...which leads me to believe that the rest of the universe is a bunch of lightweights."

She then shifts Amy so that she can stand in one of the nurse's big labcoat pockets, "...in any event, it's time to close up for the day. Let me lock up here and I'll drop you back at your dorm before I go...it'll certainly save you a lot of time."

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy blinks. "Wait, did you say you spent most of your time... outside of Time... what, just... sitting... and waiting... alone?" She can't get her arms around Setsuna to hug harder, so she just tries to press her tiny doll-self against the woman more. "I'm so sorry... I'm glad you somehow made it through that, Setsuna."

    She chuckles a bit. "Well, I'm just an Earthling, so I don't know what's 'normal'... I'll ask Hannah for a second opinion, though."

    And then she's moved to... "...Well, this is a day of new experiences... I've never been in a pocket before..."

    The blue-and-white kinchaku she's wearing as a crossbody bag beeps to let Amy know that Zordon needs her. Or perhaps she just set its incoming text alert to sound like a Power Rangers communicator. She pulls the bag open and slips out her phone. "Rashmi's offering to take me around in her backpack so I won't miss classes and have someone to talk to..."

    Amy tries to press the notification with her finger, but nothing happens. "Ugh..." She pulls a pen-shaped stylus out of the bag as well and taps that way. She's gotten used to that fast... "I'll let her know I'll be back at the dorm in a bit..."

    She looks up at Setsuna and smiles. "And thanks. You're saving me another stealth mission! And nobody likes when normal gameplay is suddenly replaced by stealth missions."