[LN] Send in the clowns

[juniordreddy]

This was a nightmare. Except it wasn't a nightmare. Tino had pinched himself no less than eight times and still hadn't woken up. Eight times!

The last thing he remembered, he was hanging out with his friends, sitting on the small wall at the beach. Then he'd lost consciousness and woken up in a strange, dark scary warehouse. One that seemed to be full of carnival equipment. Here and there an ominous sight peeped out from the shadows, illuminated by beams of light through the holes in the warehouse roof. A carousel horse with faded paint here, a rusted sign with a teddy bear face on it there.

"Okay, I'm ready to wake up now!" he called out. "Totally ready to wake up. Ready to commit to that waking up thing like a champ and give it one hundred and ten percent."

He wasn't waking up.

"Waking up in three, two, one...go!" Nope. "Annnd...go!"

That wasn't working. Why wasn't it working?!

Tino turned around to find a clown statue staring at him and let out a high-pitched screech of terror and ran away from it, nearly tripping over his own feet as he did it, until he was a good distance away.

"Where's the way out? Come on come on come on..."

Comments

[didnotdoitforthevines]

...hoo boy.

On one hand, this was not good; but on the other hand, he was taking it somewhat better than the whole choking zombie-gomblin ordeal. Korra reaches behind her head, rubbing it for a moment and just waving off the robbed yeti. She sighs quietly before stooping down - there's only so much 'do what Tenzin would do' that she could muster here. Her specialty was punching problems, and that didn't work here.

She reaches out, tentatively putting a (hopefully) comforting hand on his shoulder, and glancing around. Hopefully Tadashi wasn't too far off.

[the_civilian]

"I'm coming, I'm coming," Tadashi said, stepping carefully around the elf that was trying to drag him somewhere by the cuff of his jeans. "You know, this would actually go faster if you just-- Oh."

Apparently, they'd arrived. The elf relinquished Tadashi's ankle and Tadashi beat feet for the freaked out kid curled up on the floor. He didn't even need his magical scanning powers to recognize the signs of a panic attack.

"Hey, kiddo," he said in his most soothing voice, kneeling down next to the kid so that he wasn't towering over him. He flapped a hand at the concerned Yeti and elves to indicate that they should go to literally anything other than stand there and stare. "I know this whole situation is pretty freaky. I had a bit of a panic too, when I arrived. But I promise that you're safe here, all right? Nothing here is going to hurt you."

He held out his hands so the kid could see that they were empty, and grab one if he needed to. Tadashi wasn't going to touch him first of course, since that might make his panic attack even worse.

"I need you to purse your lips like you're blowing out a candle, all right?" he said soothingly. "Like this," and he pursed his own lips, breathing in deeply and slowly, at a rate the kid could match with his much smaller lungs.

[juniordreddy]

For a moment, he stared up at Tadashi suspiciously, but then he remembered that Korra had said she was taking him to someone who'd be able to help him better. His eyes flicked over to her, then back at Tadashi. She saved him, right? She said she was taking him to someone that could help. She wouldn't have saved him just to lie about that. "My friends - usually get me - a paper bag," he gasped out. But his mom did breathing exercises with him like this if he got himself worked up. She said they were better because the lack of oxygen with the paper bag method could make things worse. So he pursed his lips and tried to breathe like the man was showing him and then timidly reached out a small hand to grasp the man's hand with a vicelike grip, trying to ground himself as he did the breathing, trying to focus on the man's hand and Korra's hand on his shoulder. For a moment, he seemed to be doing better but then one of the many toys whizzing around the shop swooped down near them and he let out a little squeak. "Is there somewhere - that's not - here?" he huffed out, hoping the man would understand what he meant by that. He wanted to be somewhere quiet. There was just...stuff! Toys and clanking and sawing and whizzing. He was pretty sure it'd be super cool to look at when he wasn't freaking out but right now it wasn't helping. It was like trying to calm down in the middle of a shop class.

[didnotdoitforthevines]

There's immense, visible relief when Korra sees Tadashi coming. She stands idly by, keeping a hand on Tino until she sees reason to pull it back - either from him or Tadashi. Once Tino asks about another place, she perks up. "Yeah, there's lots of places to go here," she answers, then looks expectantly at Tadashi for a moment, as if asking if he had any ideas.

[the_civilian]

"A paper bag isn't a good idea at this altitude," Tadashi said. "If you'd prefer, you can also try breathing through one nostril, or we could do belly breathing."

Tadashi glanced back the way he'd come and nodded. "Yeah, there are quieter places. Would it be okay if one of us picked you up?"

[juniordreddy]

Tino nodded somewhat frantically.

[didnotdoitforthevines]

"I got that, then," Korra said, stooping down a bit more to scoop Tino up into a somewhat awkward princess-carry, and even managed to keep from making him drop the bear. She didn't seem like she was straining at all, and she gave Tino a slight grin. "Alright - all aboard the Korra Express!"

Maybe doing that was a good idea? Maybe it wasn't. Stuff like that usually cheered up Tenzin's kids - but this was a different situation. Either way, she'll start off in the direction Tadashi nodded in.

[the_civilian]

Tadashi lead their strange little party, the kid's hand still firmly attached to his, out of the room and back toward the room he'd holed up in with a book. It was much quieter than the middle of the workshop, but it wasn't the library where someone else might come up on them by surprise either.

"You're doing great, kiddo," Tadashi said soothingly as he kicked the door shut behind them. "Can you raise your hands over your head for me?"

[juniordreddy]

After Korra put him down in the new, quieter room, he sat down on the rug, the bear still in his lap and went back to trying to breathe through pursed lips like he'd been doing before. Then he raised his arms up over his head, assuming this guy knew what he was doing if he was asking him to do it and hoping that he wasn't a quack. Was he a quack though? Maybe he was a quack. "Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

[didnotdoitforthevines]

Korra took a seat nearby - out of the way, but within a moment's crawling distance if needed. "It's different, but it should get the job done," she pipes up. If Tino looks over, he'll see the same encouraging smile Korra's had during some of the more low-key moments of the adventure.

[the_civilian]

"I invented and programmed a very fancy healthcare companion robot," Tadashi reassured the kid with a smile. Asking snarky questions was a positive development in the panic situation after all. "I did a lot of research. Lower your hands and then raise them again."

[juniordreddy]

If asking snarky questions was a positive development, he continued on with that positivity as he lifted and lowered his arms. "It's just that I didn't realize jazzercise was a cure for panic attacks. Should I be doing jazz hands, too? Will that make it work better?" He briefly did jazz hands and if it were possible for a hand gesture to be sarcastic it totally was. This was the face of skepticism. He looked over at Korra and nodded at Tadashi. "This was the best you could do? The Richard Simmons of healthcare professionals?"

[didnotdoitforthevines]

Korra just smirks at Tino. "Well, you clearly feel better enough to smart off about it, so it seems like it's working," she says with a chuckle.

[the_civilian]

"If you feel the jazz hands are helpful, you can keep doing them," Tadashi answered with the same reassuring smile that he'd been wearing since he'd shown up. The kid was going to have to try harder than that if he wanted to get a reaction, having a little brother like Hiro made Tadashi all but immune to sarcasm from the pre-teen set.

"Keep blowing out those candles, and raise and lower your arms a couple more times," he said. Then, when the kid had finished following those instructions: "How are you feeling?"

[juniordreddy]

Korra was right. It was working. In fact, he'd gotten so distracted that he sort of forgot to be scared. His breathing was finally slowing down to normal and the twisty feelings in his chest were gone. He lowered his arms one last time. "Huh, that actually worked. I rescind all former sarcasm," he said generously. He paused. "Wait a second, you did the parent thing. That thing my mom does, where she gets me talking about something so I don't pay attention to how terrified I should be of whatever food she's just put down in front of me. You're way too young to know how to do the parent tricks. That's freakish." He narrowed his eyes at Tadashi. (He's onto you now, Tadashi. He knows that you know parent tricks.) Now that he was calm, though, maybe it was time to actually get answers. His one lone flip flop was still on his foot and he slipped it off so he could sit more comfortably, grabbing the bear and holding onto it. "Now if you'll excuse me, I just need a moment of fuzz therapy and then I want answers." He rubbed his face against the bear, breathing in and out slowly just a few more times, finally settling into something resembling actual calm. It helped that the bear reminded him of home. Lor had a bear just like it that he coveted so, so much that when Lor had been freaking out over her knee surgery and written a will that she'd willed it to him. "Okay. Okay. Calm now. I'm calm. Calm enough to ask questions." Totally calm. So calm he was calm enough to freak out now. He threw his arms in the air. "I'm at the North Pole, what the heck?!" He paused briefly. "Please note: that technically counts as a question." He wasn't panicking, at least. The panicking was over. Now was time for heavy duty incredulity and bewilderment. And questions. So many questions.