Chadius: TOA Summary 3/18/08

• Bus breaks down outside Li's Monastery
  • Full of high-tech fancy execs
  • They need to stay at the monastery while the servant goes to the village to call for repairs
  • Funny! Li gets some students to watch the bus
  • Master Quilos is a bit edgy right now
  • Li heads with the servant to translate to Chinese and talk to TOA

• Hollywood has the Spiderdude situation under control
  • It's an on-screen shoot of Spiderdude Slayer 8!
  • On screen shooting near you!
  • Lily and Ceelie set off the bus phones to play music

• Li and Jervis reach town
  • Jervis makes a call
  • Li calls TOA, talks about the strange occurence
  • Heads to the monastery, asks Ceelie to turn off the phones

• Agent Ekrose arrives to talk to Ceelie
  • Asks them to hop in his 80s station wagon (all sorts of myths about those)
  • The Myth of Tabula escape the Mythkeeper's radar; good thing Ceelie was the focal point
  • Head off to a beach around sunset, glowing warm green emerald
  • Looks like Emero is slowly regenerating
  • Ekrose gives Ceelie the location of the beach (against protocol)
  • He offers them invitation to Mythkeepers
  • Tara and Diiman have beach fun
  • Lily takes pics of Diiman on the beach in his boxers; puts it on her blog

• Li has all sorts of calamity at the monastery
  • Businessmen have papercuts and chopsticks
  • Li gets a splinter (!)
  • Supplies fall, including Imitation Ming Dynasty vases(?)
  • Master evaporates in a unplugged space heater

• Li calls TOA, too many cooincidences
  • Lucy says there's a patch of unluck that materialized around a storm
  • Li's certain it's the lady he rescued
  • Bad things tend to happen around her
  • Li can't convince her to go to TOA, but he can go join her to the middle of nowhere

Brain Dump: Ceelie

Once Hollywood got the whole "Spiderdude" outburst under control, things were a little boring. They had some kind of cover story, like they always do. Just when it gets boring here though, things get all crazy by Li again. As if a lady in a tornado wasn't weird enough, now there's a tour bus full of high-powered techo-execs that broke down right outside the monastery. Li went to talk to them. They said they could certainly have the driver call someone to come handle the repairs, if he could just use their phone. I think that's when I started giggling out loud. Li had to tell them, politely as always, that the nearest phone was down in the village. They were aghast. And also, low on water.

Li went to ask Master Quilos if they could stay at the monastery while the driver went to call for repairs. Come on, it's a monastery -- isn't that the kind of thing they do all the time? The Master was obviously a little uptight about it, and made them leave all their techno gadgets outside. Li sent a few of the novices to keep an eye on the gadgets and the bus.

So this is when I started to hatch a brilliant, brilliant plan. We could totally pull it off, but I was going to need a lot of help from Lily.

The bus driver didn't speak Chinese, so Li went with him to help translate when they got to the village. I bet it also helped, having someone to escort him down the mountain. So they left to do that, the execs all headed in to hang out in the monastery, and one of the cell phones beeped. What? Yes. The novice monks were a little surprised. It stayed quiet for a while again, and then...Beep! Beep, boop! Now two of the phones are beeping different notes! I think we spent at least an hour building up the different noted beeping until the whole pile of phones was playing music. No one had any clue what was going on! It was so great. I was laughing so hard I had tears pouring down my cheeks. Scathingly brilliant.

Yeah, I know, it's my new word. Yes, I know what it means. No. No! Seriously, you think D-man uses words like that? I read it in a book, okay? What do you think I do all night when you all go to sleep and it gets really boring? Sheesh. Can we get back to the practical jokes?

Anyway, Li and this bus guy, Jarvis, they got to the village just fine and Jarvis called in for repairs. While he was doing that, Li decided to get in touch with TOA and explain some of these really strange happenings. They told him to keep an eye on it, and be in contact again if things got any weirder. Jarvis's repair guy showed up pretty darn fast, and gave him a ride back up the mountain. As usual, Li just flew on ahead. It's faster. When he landed outside and saw the pile of gadgets jumping around and playing music, he didn't think it was as funny as we did. But he's really nice, so we stopped when he asked us to.

When he got inside, all sorts of crazy things were going on. The execs were all trying to eat with chopsticks, and failing miserably. A bunch of them had cuts and stuff, and there were a lot of little mishaps going on. Li went down into the supply room to get some medical supplies they needed, and when he opened up one of the crates, he got a splinter from it. The poor dear was so confused. Obviously, he'd never had a splinter before. It was a little unsettling. I sure don't ever want to meet that splinter. Then, as he's leaving, a bunch of stuff fell over and broke some vases. Ming Dynasty vases! No wait, they were fake. Less tragic than we thought. He got the supplies back upstairs, where they were apparently much needed, and then went to go talk to the Master. When he entered the Master's room, it was hot and muggy and the Master didn't seem to be there. Li quickly discovered that there was, somehow, a space heater in the room! How could the heater be on when it wasn't even plugged in? How could it even be plugged in when the place doesn't have power? Things were getting wilder by the minute and the poor Master was almost completely vaporized. Li took the space heater out of the room, and put it outside with all the electronics.

Luckily, the removal of the heat source allowed the Master to begin condensing. He and Li had a discussion about all the strange events, and decided it would be best for Li to get in touch with TOA again immediately. He produced an old rotary phone from some deep, dark corner of his room. Li was shocked. I was shocked! It was very strange, but this was certainly an important time. So Li made the call, and talked to Lucy. Lucy told him that there was a strong localized patch of "unluck" that has materialized around a storm in the area. Li assumed that meant it must be the lady he rescued from the storm. It all started to line up.

When he got word that she was awake, Li went to talk to her. She said she is always very unlucky, and she needed to leave. He tried to ask her to come to TOA, but she said she had somewhere else she needed to go, people she needed to meet. Li is such a big sweetie, he was so concerned about her that he offered to escort her wherever she needed to go. So they decided to stock up on some supplies and head up the mountain together.

Pretty shortly after that, things started winding down at the monastery, but things were just gearing up back here in Hollywood. It was the day we were supposed to see agent Ekrose about Emero! I couldn't wait, I was all excited and nervous. Is it okay, if I say I had butterflies in my stomach? It seems like that must sound a little weird. How about just...I was scared.

So he showed up in his awesome old beat-up 80's station wagon. D was mortified. The rest of us were cool with it. So we all hopped in and started driving somewhere. I'm not sure exactly where. But we kinda talked on the way, about the whole Tabula myth and how the Mythkeepers pretty much missed it altogether. It's very strange, that such a powerful myth could sneak by undetected. Ekrose said they were really lucky the focal point turned out to be someone like me. It made my cheeks go all pink. I'm glad I got to be part of it and all, but I hadn't really thought about what could've happened if it had all centered around someone mean or spiteful. That would have been bad. I don't like thinking about that.

Eventually we wound up heading on to a deserted beach. It was just a little while before sunset, and Ekrose led us across the beach and over to a cave. The cave was filled with sparkling emerald-green gems, and there was one particularly large one in the middle of the floor. Ekrose told us this was a very special place at sunset. Sure enough, just as the sun was beginning to touch the horizon, beams of light flooded into the cave, lighting up all the gems and bringing an enthralling glow to the large emerald in the middle of the cave. When it glowed like that, I could feel a person there. Not a real, whole person, not yet, but a vague mind. A warm and fuzzy feeling like a hug when you're half asleep, or curling up in a mitten when you're tired of playing in the snow. Mostly, it reminded me of the kind of memories I have of Helen -- just a sense, a feeling, an understanding.

Ekrose told us that E is regenerating here. I knew he was strong enough. I hoped we were strong enough to help him. Ekrose said it would take a long time, which makes sense. I miss him, and I'm anxious to have him back with us for real, but I know he needs time to be whole again. If he didn't, it wouldn't be E. D and Tara and Lily went and sat out on the beach. I think D and Tara played in the water, too. I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention for a while, because I was busy curled up around that gem in the middle of the cave just being happy. The same way I used to snuggle into the pillows and wait when Helen left me at home. Helen always came back, always, and now I knew E was coming back too.