'So, what is this bulls#!t anyway?' Kylo asks Dhara as they sort through the racks of clothing for a... leprechaun detective look, apparently. the f$*k 'Do you have any idea what's going on here?'

"I have no idea," Dhara says, shaking her head. "Are you new? Someone who's behind this is awfully into old Earthish lore. I got some texts from home though. According to Doctor Pines it's a sort of old Earth fairy that likes green and rainbows. According to my boyfriend they're weird little green critters that have sixteen kinds of romances." She held up her phone and showed the new person the images. "Does this help at all? I'm definitely going with green. And this is a plant they like, although my boyfriend says that's also the symbol for the sort of person that sorts out other people's disputes."

'Um.' Kylo blinks, processing this information. It sure helps with one of her problems, but not the more pressing one. 'A... little? That's a shamrock, I know what a shamrock is. They're like... lucky I guess. And detectives wear, uh, trenchcoats? Are there any green trenchcoats in here?' She turns back to the racks and looks through them for a second before something catches up. 'Hang on. What the f$*k is an Earth.'

"It's a planet. Humans come from there, although they sure do end up almost everywhere else." Dhara shook out her braids. "I've never heard that called a shamrock before, interesting. I've heard it called Clover, but that's also the name of a girl I met once."

'Yeah, they're also called clovers... I don't know if there's a difference and people just conflate them or what, but yeah, and, uh, Clover is a girl's name too cause people do that with flowers and they flower sometimes I guess? What's a human?' beat. 'Hang on - planet?'

There's a couple of birds in the rafters... Dhara knows them. One's bigger and looks like a big gray/pink parrot-like one, the other's smaller and a shiny black with a bright yellow-orange beak, sort of like a crow but the beak is totally different than a crow's.

Dhara waves to the birds. Kassiri also looks up, makes a chuffing noise, and then makes a face at the green bodice she just dropped on Dhara's feet. It's annoying when your main method if greeting people is incompatible with your main method of carrying things.

Kylo looks up at whatever Dhara's waving at, then back to their conversation

Nicsy flies down and lands on one of the racks. People dressing up. This is familiar and she's got to get started some time. It's also, she thinks, likely to be a situation where clothes-wearing people are not going to be weird about her being naked when she shifts shapes, because there's lots of clothes to put on right away. She starts looking to see what she'll want to maybe choose. Head bobbing and darting glances from either side of her little bird face ensue.

"Planet means world" says the mynah.

Kylo watches the bird fly down. Her conversation-mate was waving at it. Something is up with this bird. She frowns at it, keeping the corner of her eye on it as she continues her conversation

"Hi Nicsy," says Dhara, picking up the bodice. "Thanks Kaz, I think this'll do." She pets the thylacine and feeds her a treat.

Nicsy spots a light green thing she could wear that has pink shoulders. She's not sure what it is but it looks like it's comfortable and would cover her sufficiently to suit most types of people who wear clothes's rules about clothes. She flies over to the rack it's on, changes to her elf form - a brief but disorienting thing to watch - and snatches the garment from the rack, putting it on herself. it's some kind of shirt that goes down to her hips and snaps closed between her legs. mostly light green, it's got some blue around the bottom hem and pink shoulders.

Kylo keeps an eye on the bird out of the corner of her eye, and involvuntarily stumbles back into a rack which rattles dangerously as the bird turns into a hairless person thing. 'Okay, uh, what the f$*k?'

9e meanwhile rolls over to investigate the new threat, parting the hanging clothing as he rolls under the racks.

Kylo after a moment bothers to right herself, clutching at the rack to push herself to be standing and watching the rest of the room warily.

Nicsy manages to get the green thing on and looks for more green clothes to put over it. She finds a kind of loose looking top and pulls it on. some sort of sleeve thing over that, and then some pants with a triangle cutout making them loose on the legs. it's tighter clothes than she prefers but not as uncomfortable as some of the "steampunk gown" things she had to wear here before.

She looks down at the rolling black metal sphere. "What're you?" she asks when it gets close enough to talk to.

9e boops indignantly. <I am a BB model astromech droid. Identify yourself>

Nicsy isn't sure what the beeping is. It's not a language she knows. She looks up at Gish, who might know? Gish does not know.

But Dhara does - it's a sort of binary beeping version of the language everyone speaks here.

"Nicsy's a shapeshifter," says Dhara. "And humans...you don't know what humans are?"

"I didn't know what humans were either when I first got here. They're like elves but more lumpy looking, and their ears are smaller." Nicsy seems very matter-of-fact about this.

Dhara nods. There aren't many humans where she comes from either, but the head of their program is one.

Kylo looks behind herself at the rack absently while she processes the information, checking it for damage, then turns back around. 'No. Never heard of that fuckin thing. You're telling me you're from a different planet?'

'Niney get back here, don't go rollin off in this place.'

9e dutifully rolls back over to idle by Kylo's feet.

"Actually a different dimension entirely," Dhara says breezily, pulling out a couple of coats. "Are these trenchcoats? They look leprechaunish, I guess." She glances at the droid. "Sorry, BB astromech, I'm afraid you're going to run into people here who've never eveh heard of droids or robots and don't know any binary code whatsoever."

'Oh, you speak binary,' Kylo says while BB trills excitedly. 'Those are trenchcoats. And uh, is that what this place is then? I just sort of uh. Wound up here.'

"I know what binary numbers are," Nicsy says, "but what's astromechs and droids? robots I know, we met one ... um... she was sort of a machine person?"

'Android, is the word you're looking for. Or AI maybe? Cyborg? It doesn't fucking matter. We're in a different dimension?'

"It's a different world probably. We're mostly all from different worlds. I guess dimension is another word they use here for that, and planet. I'm not sure what the difference is or if it's just a lot of words in this language for the same thing, like big and huge and large and giant ..."

'R... right....' Kylo peers around trying to assimilate this, and then gives up. It doesn't matter, frankly. She's just. Here. Being asked to do bullshit. Like usual. 'Uh. Okay?'

9e rolls in circles around her legs, not so willing to just immediately accept their new location, beeping wordlessly.

'Yeah, no, calm the f$*k down. Um. So why are we pretending to be green detectives exactly?'

"I think it's some sort of game?" Dhara glances at Nicsy. "I wandered into the last one."

Nicsy nods enthusiastically. "Yes, they give you lots to eat and drink, and places to stay, and you help them with their problems. Apparently the problem today is there's a reward for solving this leprechaun person's murder, and the suspects are at a party. We just have to put clothes on that look right to them so they let us into the party, so we can talk to the witnesses and suspects and things."

"I'm called Dhara, and this is Kassiri. I gather you're called 9e, and... I don't believe I caught your name?" Dhara smiled. For some reason most people liked this expression even though you were baring your teeth.

'I'm Kylo.' She looks over her new companions properly now that she has some acceptance of the situation. Do the thing, get fed is her usual MO. Works out pretty well that she wandered right into this thing.

9e is still booping worriedly. <How are you so calm in this situation Kylo we are in completely new territory possibly just having made a scientific breakthrough and how the hell do we get home and-->

'Shut up.'

Nicsy finds herself a pair of shoes and puts them on. She looks up at the rafters and spots Gish. "I'm Videnicse, but everyone calls me Nicsy. I'm actually a fox, if you know what that is, but I can change, and in fox form I'm not able to talk. I need to talk a lot.. usually I'm being a bird because then I can fly and talk. But I can't really wear clothes and fly, and all the clothes they have don't fit birds anyway. So right now I'm an elf. And that's my friend Gish." she points at the pink and gray bird still perched near the ceiling.

"Hello," Gish says from up there.

Kylo looks up. 'Hi.' then turns back to Nicsy. 'Do you know jack shit about leprechauns? And what do you mean you can't talk as a fox? Do you mean, like, an animal fox...?'

Nicsy nods. "A fox, right. Not a fox-person-thing." Nicsy takes some of the clothes she's put on, back off, puts them in a pile to put back on in a few minutes. Easier to show than explain. She shifts into her fox form, and looks like an entirely ordinary fox.

Nicsy makes a sound, which doesn't sound anything like talking, though maybe you could almost turn it into words if you were imaginative.

9e trills shrilly and rolls away from the suddenly appeared fox. Kylo says, 'Huh. Uh... you can still understand me and stuff?'

The fox nods her head

'Ok. Sure.' Kylo pauses. 'So do you know anything about leprechauns? Because my current plan involves dressing like a complete dumbass.

Enjoying her natural form for once, Nicsy scampers around the room playfully, darting in and out of the rows of clothing

She peeks out and shakes her head no at Kylo. she knows nothing about leprechauns other than that one was murdered and they're supposed to solve it, and what Dhara just told everyone she'd got info from her contacts

'Okay, cool. Dumbass it is.'

Gish, from above, says "I know they're supposed to be a kind of fairy. They enchant rainbows into gold. My aunt met one once. She told us stories."

Oh. The bird talks. 'Okay. So we're in made up bullshit land and we need to go solve some made up bullshit. Got it.' she pulls out a green button down shirt and holds it up to check its size against herself, then hangs it over her arm to look for more clothes.

Nicsy can't let this pass. She has to argue, because, she knows what fairies are - or thinks she does - and why this leprechaun can't be one. So she makes a sound again, but it's not talking. the drawback of fox form. Frustrated, she runs back to her pile of clothes and shifts back to elf form, and puts them back on, while talking. Some of it's muffled by material. "They can't be fairies. Fairies reproduce asexually. The elf wizard said so. muffled words and we know this leprechaun had a scrotum, so that means his species reproduces sexually."

Kylo ignores this argument in favour of finding more clothes. All of it's going straight over her head anyway.

The argument between Nicsy and her companion devolves into debates about residual features and mimesis that has no bearing on reality in most worlds/planets/dimensions, but has more to do with how a shapeshifter views anatomy from a comparative internal perspective.

Kylo goes and gets dressed like a cop except entirely in green. she even finds a pair of shades to go with, and some shamrocks to clip in her hair. She tops it off with one of the trenchcoats Dhara found. she looks, in her opinion, really fucking stupid, but she's good at doing what she's told.

Given some time to just think to herself, she also starts processing the situation. she's fuck knows where. Her cell phone doesn't work, she'd already tried. 9e can't get any of his normal signals either. And they'd already tried going back the way she came. so they're basically stranded, but here was a bunch of people who just so happened to be willing to give her food and shelter in exchange for her help. She would do it, obviously, because she doesn't have her head up her ass, but the coincidence sure smells awfully fishy to her.

She hopes she isn't missed too soon back home, but it's not like she can do jack shit about it. honestly overall she has no clue what she's going to do next. so what's in front of her seems the best and easiest option. ugh. she hates having to think about stuff.

She gets dressed and emerges from the rack she was dressing behind. She sees a fake plastic badge on a shelf so she swipes it and attaches it to the front of her trenchcoat. There. Now she looks like a real demented cop.

"I think there are different kinds of fairies in different worlds," says Dhara.