Puff, a dainty yellow-green canary, 2 Leary House Guards, Sir Jesmond the Giant arrive, following Arcadia.

(OOC)The scene set/room mood is now set to: The lab has been set up for OPTIMUM SCIENCE. Elloise, with glasses that make her eyeballs look enormous, has a giant smock over her outfit and is mixing test tubes. Another station is set for physics. Another, biology! It's a big array of disciples, as scattered as she!

The lab has been set up for OPTIMUM SCIENCE. Elloise, with glasses that make her eyeballs look enormous, has a giant smock over her outfit and is mixing test tubes. Another station is set for physics. Another, biology! It's a big array of disciples, as scattered as she!

Quintin eases his way into the laboratory with greasy-looking eyebrows. Seems he took the warning to heart - there's some kind of gel on them making them glossy and slick. The young Ashford lord adjusts his swordbelt so he doesn't go knocking things over. "Hullo," he greets.

Arcadia comes scurrying in "I'm here! Sorry! Sorry!" In her hands is an assortment of things. Placing them on the desk, Cady lists off each bottle and vial, "Garlic, leeks, bear fat, hedgehog grease. And, urine. It's only horse urine, but there's certainly lots of it." She shoots Elly an apologetic look, "Couldn't get a fat cat's guts I'm sorry."

"Hell--" Elloise begins as she adds some compound to the tube in her hand. After a second, there's a soft "PFFT!" from the vial and the liquid overflows, cascading down Elly's hand. Above the vial, smoke puffs up into a perfect 'O' above Elly's head and her unfinished word. She smiles proudly.

Quintin blinks twice at the smile, a bit puzzled. Then he notices the 'O', and he nods. "...Huh." He was not expecting that. "What is that stuff? Is it bad for your hands? Hullo, Lady Cady."

Arcadia immediately moves out of the way of the latest experiment. Too many years of losing eyebrows and almost limbs have taught her better. Beaming at Quintin, she greets him, "Hello Lord Quintin.I shouldn't be surprised you're here. Science and books and learning." Reaching into her purse, she pulls a tub of some sort of grease and proceeds to coat her own eyebrows.

"Oh," Elloise says, looking down at her hand. "Probably not." She smears it onto her apron and gestures for everyone to follow her to the lab table, where she starts mixing substances as she explains what she's doing. The liquid in her beakers changes colors -- red! Blue! Sparkly pink! -- as she prattles on, though one ear is cocked to the conversation betwixt her two students.

"Quite right. That looks like the same stuff Olivia gave me," Quintin tells Arcadia, looking at the tub of grease and sounding... well, relieved, to be honest. Tucking his hands behind his back, he follows Elloise over to the lab table and watches with fascination as the liquid changes colours.

Arcadia grins and admits, "Well she gave me this too. So hopefully we both keep our eyebrows." Warily she watches and listens to Elly, but occasionally checks that there is a bucket of water nearby. Just in case.

Elloise checked dexterity + alchemy at difficulty 15, rolling 47 higher.

Elloise puts on thick leather gloves. "Now, everyone. STAND BACK." She caaaarefully -- CAAAAAAAREFULLY -- picks up a smoldering vial. It's literally liquid on fire inside of a glass. "You can tell all your friends you saw what Elloise Leary was TRYING to do the day she blew up the Grayson apothecary!" Uh oh...

"See, I wondered if it would do something weird to my eyebrows. Make them change colour or fall off or something," Quintin explains, with a rueful look, even as he takes several large steps back. "At least whatever happens, I won't be a....?" Wait, what? His eyes go wide at the side of the glass. He backs up another few quick steps. "What is that?"

Arcadia hears Elly and immediately flings her hands over head, a precaution obviously! As a secondary step she shifts behind Quintin too.

Lite, a little blue canary arrives, delivering a message to Arcadia before departing.

Elloise sloooowly starts to pour the liquid fire into a totally DIFFERENT vessel, one that contains a bright yellow something. BRIGHT. Yellow. "Oh, just a little something I like to call licardium," says Elloise. The fire spurts slowly in the yellow liquid and FOR A MOMENT it really looks like something might explode. IT bubbles! It boils! It troubles and toils! But then, at the veryyyyy last second .......Elloise looks delighted and takes a sip -- TAKES A SIP OH GOD. "Perfect!" She offers it to Arcadia and Quintin.

Quintin's head half-turns to track Arcadia standing behind him. The rueful look returns, but he snaps his attention back to the ominous vials. One hand hovers above the hilt of his sword, perhaps instinctually, but he gets a handle on that and pulls his hand away. You can't sword an explosion to death. It's not how explosions work. When Elloise offers the vessel to them, Quintin holds up his hand. "Thank you, but no." Still. He does look a bit curious. "What's it taste like?"

Arcadia peeks out around Quintin suspiciously eyeing the vial. Trusting Elly explicitly she reaches for the vial, "If I die, I will haunt you forever."

Elloise smiles impishly and wiggles the vial. As if wiggling were a temptation. "Oh, it TASTES terrible," way to sell it, Elly, "but what it DOES do," she hands the vial to Cady. "It brightens the spirit and cleanses the mind - you feel READY FOR ANYTHING." ...is that meth. Did Elloise invent meth. (No) "It's just a little pick me up, no more harmful than a bottle of ale."

"You're haunting me or you're haunting Lady Elloise?" Quintin asks, for clarification. He glances between Arcadia and Elloise, and back to Arcadia, watching her. "I'll just observe how you feel after your... cleansing."

Gathering the vial, she decides "I'll haunt you both." Cautiously she takes a sip and immediately gags, "Oh! Ugh!"

Sir Floppington, the soulful hound arrives, following Rowenova.

Sir Floppington, the soulful hound have been dismissed.

"I'm um. Still tinkering with the taste," Elloise says, peeling off to showcase this or that invention. The whirligig is particularly ..whirly. Elloise sets it in motion and it clunks and clonks along. "Any requests? I was thinking strawberry."

Quintin is amiably taking the tour, his eyebrows smeared with some kind of glossy grease. He listens to instructions, it seems. Quintin stoops a little and turns his head to examine the whirligig, nodding at it. "I like apple."

Showing up without her usual companion, but all alone on her very own, is a young woman in a wolf pelt (headdress style), and a long frock-style robe over her other gear she obviously wears due to the form said robe takes on, and her cobalt-blue eyes currently have no makeup because they are goggle covered for the time being. After slipping inside, she lifts up a ringed hand to those who are already here but does not speak up, staying silent to not disturb any important Alchemy.

Arcadia shudders slightly, "I don't even think strawberry could cover that taste." Licking her lips anyway she admits, "Huh. I do feel better." She then inches closer to the experiments.

"Yeah," Elloise admits. "I think it might just be one of those tastes you have to get past in order to feel the benefits." She pops around the room, showing off this thing or that thing and then eventually asks, "Are there any questions I could answer?"

Quintin offers a quick smile to Rowenova. And a nod. And he's returning to the whirligig. "I don't think I understand enough to have good questions to ask," he tells Elloise. Then he extends his hand toward the whirligig. "May I poke this? Gently."

"You can even poke VICIOUSLY!" Elloise exclaims. "I've never done that before! Maybe something neat will happen!"

Nova quietly adds herself to the group scenario and then smiles slightly to Quintin's greeting before speaking up, "What Alchemy did you just make?" to the event hostess, Elloise, and then waves a little to Arcadia, too.

"Oh, THIS," Elloise says, bounding across the room (and tripping over lab equipment) to pick up a murky looking vial. It's warm to the touch. She thrusts it to Nova. "Drink it!" And then, softly, she warns, "It tastes terrible. But you'll feel super get-things-done-y!"

Arcadia gives a wave to Nova too, before heading closer to the table. The new found energy and cleansed spirit has Cady touching different vials. "Hey Elly. What happens if I mix these two?"

Arcadia checked dexterity + alchemy at difficulty 15, rolling 1 higher.

Nova reaches up and carefully accepts the warm vial, steadily holding it from any potential spills, "Oh? What is in it? By what method does it give one the super get-things-done-y feelings? I could use something like that, but I am loaded up on Alchemy from home, so I want to know if there is any reactivity."

Quintin prods the whirligig. It stops whirling. He retracts his finger, and it starts to whirl again. He reaches out and carefully takes hold of one of the flippy bits. The whole apparatus makes a sort of whistling noise, which he seems to find slightly alarming, so he releases it. A quick sidelong glance at Arcadia - still no side effects - and then he says, "Alright, I'll try it after Miss Rowenova."

Rowenova checked perception + alchemy at difficulty 15, rolling 45 higher.

Elloise starts to lift her shoulders in an 'I don't know!' shrug but stops suddenly. It's just barely too late. Arcadia's tinkering fills the room with a slow, sooty smoke that covers everyone's shoes and gets in everyone's hair. "Oh. That was the burrillium," Elloise intones dully. "I really should label things. Um. It's safe, it'll just take forever to get out."

Sniffing reveals a truly horrific scent, but nothing that could hurt anyone!

After wafting the fumes of the vial back, Nova gives it a taste test like some kinda Lycene might do before they would pass a drink off to someone else, but then she takes a better drink of it after the initial one, making sure to leave a good amount for Quintin, too. Once she downs that much, then she hands off said vial his way.

Arcadia coughs and splutters a little "What's Burrillium?" Still energized, she continues to touch and prod and look at things.

Rowenova checked willpower at difficulty 15, rolling 13 higher.

"Some compound I made up," Elloise tells her sister as she tries to beat off the sooty residue from her smock. It doesn't work and she gives up. Oh well! This is just what she looks like now!

Quintin is both slightly alarmed by the smoke and intrigued as well. More intrigued than alarmed, which may explain why he's an Explorer. He accepts the drink, has a small sip, screws his face up with disgust, and then has a bigger sip. "Oh, that's horrible," he remarks, but with some enthusiasm.

Although smoke tints everything, Nova does not seem overly worried about it, and after smacking her lips about the nasty taste with the slightest of frowns before everything in her mouth goes all the way down. She waits it out for the hopeful/intended effects to take place. "Definitely horrible." she quietly agrees.

Arcadia bounces on her toes, a tad more excited about science that she normally would ever be. "What else have you been working on? Or is that it?"

"I tried to cover the taste with some flavorings but they somehow ... made it worse?" Elly offers before looking at her sister. "Oh!" The little inventor hurls a sheet off of a table to reveal....

A weird system of wires.

"THIS!" She seems so proud! But! What the hell is it!

Quintin holds his forearm over his mouth to cover his coughing. Smoke, after all. "What is it?" he asks, not at all adverse to admitting he has no idea what all those wires are.

Nova ahs softly, "That would explain it." She wolfishly grins which might look somewhat strange whilst wearing goggles. Surely her teeth are tinted somewhat, now, too. She peers down at the wire contraption. "Yes, what is that?"

Arcadia pulls the paper towards her face, her nose almost pressed to it. "What is this?" Testingly, she tugs at one of the wires.

"Well. It's nothing yet. But it WILL BE a book retrieval system for the archives," Elloise says, affectionately patting the thing. "This will free up scholars to write and think instead of fetch and deliver." When Arcadia pulls at a wire, Elloise frantically LEAPS at her sister to shove her off.

Who can say who caused it. Perhaps it was Cady's tug. Maybe it was Elly's dive-bomb. Or perhaps it was merely the wind...

The wire contraption wiggles. It wobbles. And with a horrifyingly loud PLUCK! the wires all pull apart.

"...Was that supposed to happen?" Quintin asks, all curious.

Nova perks up at the efficiency concepts behind such system, but then those sturdy shoulders of hers suddenly sag as the whole deal seemingly unravels. "Well, I was going to say I would love something like that for my own library, but... hopefully, you documented it well?"

Arcadia gasps and squeaks as she's tackled and stumbles and let's the machine unravel in her fingers "Aw. Crud! Sorry!"

Elloise's little chin wavers and she stares at the heap of wire. "N-- no," she says slowly. Elloise takes a long, deep breath and looks up at the sky. When she faces the group again, she is all smiles once more. ...Well. Forced smiles. "This is good," she decides. "When you have to start over, you remember the good bits and forget the stuff that wasn't working. B--but I will be about a month behind now..." Elly starts to pull the wires off of each other, beginning the deconstruction and reconstruction process RIGHT. NOW.

Quintin winces. "Oh. Um." He glances at Rowenova, then asks, "But you documented it, I hope...?"

Reaching over, Nova back pats Elly a couple times before letting her have at the broken wires. She head shakes to Quintin, "I just got here. First time." Then, she back pats Arcadia, too, the same way.

Elloise's tongue peeks out the corner of her mouth, and she answers through clenched teeth. "Nope, I," she holds a wire with her mouth, "Mmsdlfjbmbb." Cool. She's gone. Forget it, Jake. It's ScienceTown.